Chapter 9: At Last! The Battle Against Serial Killer I
Yuichi and Mutsuko followed Natsuki’s directions and arrived at the designated town. It was a slum full of homeless people, about an hour by train away from their hometown of Seishin.
They used their cell phone GPSes to find the exact location, which turned out to be a run-down old factory.
One would expect an abandoned factory to be full of homeless people looking for shelter, but that didn’t seem to be the case here. The building was silent and still.
Yuichi and Mutsuko headed inside, still on high alert.
Steel beams and materials lay around, suggesting a former metalworking plant.
Though the power seemed to be shut off, they could still see a light ahead.
There was a low sound like the whir of turbines. Possibly a home generator.
They entered and walked toward the light until they saw a girl in a high school uniform. She was watching them with a sharp gaze.
Natsuki Takeuchi was standing at the center of a wide open space lit by blindingly bright lights.
Aiko was sitting at her feet. She wasn’t tied up and didn’t seem to be injured. “Sakaki!” The moment she saw Yuichi, Aiko stood up and ran straight for him. Natsuki didn’t try to stop her, but just watched her go.
Aiko threw her arms around Yuichi.
“Hey, are you okay?” he asked. She seemed pretty terrified. Yuichi patted her head gently.
“Yeah, I’m okay... Um, sorry I got caught.” Aiko’s momentary smile clouded over with regret.
“Don’t sweat it. You’re okay, and that’s all I care about.” He looked her up and down, but he didn’t see anything wrong with her beyond a dusty uniform.
“Oh my, Noro! How forward of you!” Mutsuko exclaimed.
Mutsuko’s words snapped Aiko back to reality. She quickly tore away from Yuichi as if she had realized what she was doing.
The hug had felt a little odd to Yuichi, so he was kind of relieved. But just then, he noticed the label above Aiko’s head.
It read “Love Interest.”
When did that happen?
“What does ‘love interest’ mean?” Yuichi murmured, sounding it out like a punchline.
“Y-You heard that?!” Aiko cried out, her face turning scarlet.
“Huh? I just mean, your label says ‘love interest’ now...”
Aiko swept her hands over her head as if trying to erase the words. It didn’t disappear, but as she worked at it, Mutsuko linked her arms behind her back and strolled into Yuichi’s line of sight, humming.
“What are you doing, Sis?” he asked, silently wishing she wouldn’t sabotage the mood.
“Come on, what does my label say?” she asked.
“Huh? It says ‘Big Sister,’ like always.”
“Oh, come on!” Mutsuko groused.
“If you’re the protagonist, and Noro’s a love interest, then I should be a love interest, too!”
“Um, you are my real sister, aren’t you?”
“Yes! We’re siblings, no question! There’s not gonna be any ‘not related by blood’ twist later on!”
“Then don’t you find that idea weird?!”
“Why can’t your sister be the love interest?” Mutsuko pouted at him. Yuichi pushed her aside to step forward. He could hear her behind him, still sulking, but he was relieved that she wouldn’t do anything more to get in his way.
“Anyway, you two get back. I’ll deal with the rest.”
“Noro! I think that spot should be good. It’s just the right height for sitting.” Mutsuko pointed to a mountain of steel materials, and the two sat down.
Yuichi checked to make sure they were at a safe distance, then began walking towards Natsuki.
They were about ten meters apart now, facing each other.
“Jack the Ripper,” her label read. The serial killer who had terrorized England in the year 1888. The case had gone unsolved, and the killer’s identity remained unknown. Who could say what his weakness might have been?
Mutsuko didn’t know the truth behind the incidents either, but...
“Over a hundred years have passed since then. So maybe the legend gave rise to some sort of yokai!” she had said with great interest.
Of course, it wasn’t Natsuki Takeuchi herself who had committed those murders. She didn’t even look English. Despite her exotic features, she was clearly Japanese.
“Good evening. All done with your emotional reunion?” she asked.
“I’m surprised you let her go so easily. I thought you would want to hold her hostage,” Yuichi commented. He had assumed she would want to use Aiko to keep him docile, but apparently not. On the other hand, that might also be a sign of how confident Natsuki was. If so, that could spell a new kind of trouble.
“My time and energy are valuable. Getting a rope all ready and tying her up would just have been so much trouble. And I don’t need to do that to finish you.”
“I can tell you’re really confident. But wouldn’t it still be more efficient to use a hostage as a shield to kill me? That would save you a lot of time and energy, too.”
“True, but killing a defenseless person just isn’t satisfying, sorry to say. So if you’re tied up, or if you can’t resist because I have a hostage, the kill doesn’t do a thing for me. I mean obviously it doesn’t make a difference if I’m killing you to shut you up, but why not sate my hunger while I’m at it?”
“You’re telling me an awful lot.”
“You’re about to die, so I can say whatever I want.”
“Takeuchi, no! That’s a red flag!” Mutsuko exclaimed.
“The ‘You can take that to hell with you’ line is a sign that you’re about to lose!”
“Who is she?” Natsuki looked at Mutsuko in puzzlement. She must have expected him to come alone.
“That’s my big sister. I accidentally told her your identity, so I brought her along.”
“Oh? You did that for me? How considerate... By the way, did you leave a letter behind before you came?”
“No way. I came here to talk. I’m sure we can find a compromise to get out of this without killing anybody.”
“Hmm, all right. Do you have a cell phone? That might be more natural. You can just send an email to your parents later... Hmm, but your sister being here complicates things.” Natsuki exuded casual confidence, seemingly thinking that everything was going her way.
“Hey... What is this place?” Yuichi asked. Since Natsuki wasn’t engaging at all, he was going to move on to another subject. His first objective was to get her talking to him. He needed some way to hook her.
“It’s our coliseum.”
“Huh?” Yuichi was dumbstruck. That was the last thing he had expected to hear.
“You think I hunt the local homeless? You think I’m an indiscriminate killer?” she asked.
“You mean you’re not?” Yuichi had just assumed that when he heard this was her hunting ground. This place saw several hundreds of deaths by freezing and starvation every year. It would be easy enough for her to mix her killings in with that.
“How rude. I feel insulted. You think I kill defenseless opponents? Sure, I’m a killer, but I still try very hard to blend in with society. I don’t cause unnecessary suffering, and I don’t kill people who aren’t prepared to die.”
“Noro wasn’t ready to die, but you were going to kill her.”
“That falls under the category of ‘necessary suffering.’ It’s a completely separate issue from sating myself.”
Yuichi decided to give up on understanding her logic. He wasn’t going to get into the mind of a serial killer.
“This is a coliseum where the fearless come to fight. Everyone who comes here knows there’s a chance they might die. Thus, if they do die, no one can complain, and it makes cleanup much easier. Of course, we don’t advertise what kind of place this is, but the smell of blood still permeates it. So even though it might make a nice refuge otherwise, the homeless stay away.”
“This is so cool! I thought the underground Tokyo Dome coliseum was the only one of these!” Mutsuko squealed.
“Look, there is no underground Tokyo Dome coliseum,” Yuichi said, instinctively turning away from his confrontation with Natsuki to correct Mutsuko’s ridiculous statement.
“Do you stream your fights on the internet?” she asked excitedly.
“The membership fee is expensive, but it’s possible to view it online... Who is she, again?” Natsuki turned back to check with Yuichi. She clearly had little experience with mood-shattering comments like Mutsuko’s. Yuichi couldn’t help but sympathize.
“Sorry, please ignore my sister. Anyway, we won’t tell anyone else about you. So please... won’t you let us go?”
“You know I can’t. Killing you two is the simplest way out of this.”
“You know, we could just run away.”
“Can you? I have no intention of letting you leave here, and even if you got past me, I have a friend blocking the entrance.”
“A friend?!” Yuichi hadn’t even considered that. He’d just assumed she was alone.
“Yu... You should have thought of that when Noro was captured! How else could she have brought her here when she was unconscious? She’d need a car! And Takeuchi’s a teenager, so she wouldn’t be driving. She must have had a collaborator!”
“Sis... Did you just come up with that deduction now?” Yuichi turned back to Mutsuko in annoyance. He could have used that information earlier.
“C-Certainly not!” Mutsuko’s triumphant expression collapsed into despondency. He must have been right. Yuichi knew that if Mutsuko had come up with such a theory beforehand, she wouldn’t have waited to reveal it.
She was really ruining the tension in the air. But even so, Yuichi turned back to Natsuki and continued the conversation.
“A friend... You mean an oni like Ibaraki?”
A serial killer friend, Yuichi thought. At the very least, whoever it was probably wasn’t human.
“Hmm? What do you mean? Did he reveal his secret? I can’t imagine how...”
“He talks a lot. He must really hate you.”
“Oh? That’s unexpected... I wonder if he underestimates me. Maybe I should have killed one of their species as an example to him.”
Fighting multiple opponents would be tricky by itself, and Yuichi still didn’t know how skilled Natsuki was. He decided to just ask.
“Are you... really tough?”
“Hmm? Good question. I’m no match for an oni in terms of brute strength. But that’s overrated in this day and age.” Natsuki reached into her breast pocket and pulled out something, then turned towards Yuichi.
“Huh?”
In a way, it was suited to the movie-like set stage around them, yet its appearance still took Yuichi by surprise. It was a gun.
“Oni and other beings of the old world are extremely vulnerable to this kind of thing. Of course, it works on humans, too.”
Yuichi glanced at Mutsuko while trying not to take his eyes off the gun for too long.
“I’m sorry, Yu. I don’t know much about guns.” Mutsuko sounded genuinely apologetic.
It wasn’t a disappointment, though. His hopes hadn’t been high to start with. He knew that Mutsuko didn’t study small arms in detail, claiming they weren’t a realistic concern in Japan.
“Now, talking seems to be getting us nowhere, so I think I’ll kill you now. Are you sure you don’t want any final professions of love with Noro? I don’t mind giving you that long.”
“Nope, nothing like that,” Yuichi said with a sigh. “B-Because we’re not like that!” Aiko stammered in irritation. “Really? I was hoping for some kind of passionate kiss exchange, or something.”
“Yeah, give her a big old smoochie-poo!” Mutsuko threw her arms around Aiko and pretended to kiss her.
“No one asked you, Sis!” Yuichi groaned.
The tension was rapidly slipping away.
“I don’t feel like dying today, and I won’t let you kill Noro or my sister. If you want me dead, you’ll have to work for it,” Yuichi said, turning back to Natsuki.
“Oh, what a manly thing to say,” she said pleasantly.
“I do like that kind of thing... But goodbye.”
With that, Natsuki pulled the trigger.
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“Huh?!” Natsuki’s eyes opened wide. She fired two more shots in quick succession, but neither even left a scratch. Yuichi dodged them all with the slightest of movements.
“What’s going on?!” Natsuki asked, her dismay unguarded.
“I thought you you were going to use some kind of superpower, but you just shoot people, huh? That’s a relief.”
It wasn’t that she was missing on purpose. She had taken aim at his chest to ensure a direct hit. He was about ten meters away — more than close enough — and her bullet had gone exactly where she’d aimed it. Yuichi just wasn’t there.
“It’s not that surprising, is it? Bullets fly in a straight line from the barrel. They’re the easiest things in the world to read,” he said.
The moment she’d pulled the trigger, he’d stepped to the side, dodging the bullet. A simple enough thing to say, but nearly impossible for an ordinary person to do.
Natsuki stared blankly into space for a moment, then adjusted her aim.
Again and again she fired, pushing Yuichi towards a corner. She wanted to get him somewhere where he would have no room to dodge.
Soon, she had accomplished just that. She fired again. But he didn’t fall.
Natsuki’s jaw fell in disbelief. It was inconceivable.
The bullet had been deflected.
Yuichi stood in front of her, holding his right arm perpendicular to the floor, along his median plane.
The sleeve of his blazer had ripped, revealing something black beneath. It was a weapon known as a tonfa. Yuichi had carried it in hidden in his blazer.
“Projectiles won’t work against Yu! He can even dodge a bowgun in his face!” Mutsuko exclaimed.
“Yeah, Sis... though I thought I was dead when you started using real arrowheads without telling me...”
“That’s a special baton known as a tonfa! It’s made of steel so it can deflect even 9 mm bullets!”
“Why did you even have that?” Aiko asked in exasperation.
Natsuki listened in stunned silence.
“I had one in my room!” she chirped.
“Yu said he won’t carry blades, but it still works pretty well! And it’s cool!”
After running out of bullets, Natsuki reflexively exchanged cartridges to reload. But no matter how many times she fired, she couldn’t hit him.
“I bet I know what Yu is thinking... ‘Now, Takeuchi! Cast your gun aside and come at me!’”
“I am not thinking that!”
Natsuki tossed her gun aside. To the others, it probably looked like she had risen to the provocation.
“Huh?” Yuichi squeaked uncertainly. He probably hadn’t really expected her to really throw her gun away.
“I can’t believe it... I actually underestimated you...” Natsuki began to shift her stance forward. Surgical scalpels appeared in both of her hands.
“I’m going to dissect you,” she cried, “and decorate my room with your skin and guts!” And then, she charged straight for him.
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Natsuki crossed the space between them in an instant, bringing a scalpel up in a swing. Yuichi blocked with his tonfa, and she sprang back instantly. The tonfa split in two and hit the floor with a clatter.
Cutting through steel. Was it a special property of the weapon, or was Natsuki just that skilled? Either way, he knew that he couldn’t afford to take a direct hit. The slightest scratch might tear his arm off.
“There’re a lot of theories about possible victims of Jack the Ripper, but there are five we know of for certain. They were all prostitutes, but there were signs that even after the incidents started, they invited Jack into their rooms willingly, which has led to a theory that he was really a woman. And he used some kind of blade for the kill, which is why we call him ‘the ripper.’ Because of the surgical precision with which he removed their internal organs, they think he might have been a medical professional... So Takeuchi being a woman fighting with scalpels is kind of a cliché,” Mutsuko was explaining, barely even glancing at the fight between Yuichi and Natsuki.
“Mutsuko! This is no time for lectures! Sakaki’s gonna die! Shouldn’t you be helping him?” Aiko reproached her.
“Aw, Yu’ll be fine. Anyway, under the ‘woman’ theory, it’s weird to call the killer Jack, so they usually use Jill the Ripper or Jane the Ripper. Jack is a common name kind of like Taro in Japanese, see? And I guess Jane would be like Hanako, huh?”
“Excuse me! Is this really the time?” Yuichi screamed as he dodged scalpel slashes coming at him from all directions. Her apparent total lack of concern was really starting to get to him.
“Keep it up, Yu!” Mutsuko cheered.
“Sakaki!” Aiko screamed.
Mutsuko’s lackadaisical encouragement betrayed a total lack of tension on her part. He was grateful that Aiko, at least, was screaming her heart out.
“Oh, Noro, I keep telling you, don’t worry so much,” Mutsuko said calmly.
“He’s using his furukami, it’s just at a very low level! Probably because of that friend Takeuchi mentioned. He doesn’t want to exhaust everything he’s got just on Takeuchi and end up immobilized!”
That’s true, but you don’t have to tell her that, you know... Yuichi grumbled to himself as he continued to dodge. It was really annoying to have someone see right through you.
“Oh, so you really are underestimating me...” Natsuki murmured icily. Her attacks picked up in speed.
Yuichi kept avoiding her blows. He knew he had to judge his counterattack
carefully. If he got too careless, he could end up sliced. But even the dodging was starting to get dangerous...
Natsuki’s scalpels were already moving faster than his eyes could see. Her hands were moving in constantly-changing, disorienting patterns. He couldn’t keep dodging them forever.
He was moving at least halfway on instinct by now. If he kept this up, eventually, she would catch him.
He had no choice but to find a way to finish this now. He gathered up all of his focus, then thrust his arms out instinctively in the direction of the scalpels’ arc.
“Ah!” Natsuki’s eyes opened wide. Yuichi’s hands found purchase around her wrists.
The scalpels fell from her hands as he started to squeeze. He then tried to apply crushing force, but she wouldn’t bend. They were locked together in a stalemate.
“Wow, it’s impressive that she can hang in there against Yu’s grip strength! And he’s using a weak furukami, so his grip strength exceeds over 200 kg. She really must be a sort of yokai.”
Mutsuko’s leisurely commentary once again reached his ears. She must be completely unconcerned about him. He was glad to know she had faith in him and all, but a little pearl-clutching would still have been nice.
Natsuki’s murderous stare brought him back to reality. This was no time to be dividing his attention.
Natsuki’s hands were immobilized, but so were his. It was strength against strength. Neither one could use their hands, which meant that kicks were the only option. Even so, he could tell that Natsuki was on guard for any sign of sudden movement.
So he lashed out with a kick Natsuki couldn’t possibly anticipate.
It came from above, crashing down on Natsuki’s head.
Natsuki slumped to her knees, not knowing what had hit her.
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“Huh? What?” Aiko couldn’t believe what she’d just seen.
Yuichi had pitched forward, throwing his right leg up behind him. His toe had drawn an arc through the air, over his back, and crashed back down on top of Natsuki’s head.
She had never seen a person’s body move that way.
“Scorpion! A special number one finisher, making use of extreme flexibility to send a kick over your own back in a mimicry of a scorpion’s sting!” Mutsuko cried.
“...I don’t know why, but something about knowing Sakaki’s legs are that long kind of gets on my nerves...” Aiko murmured.
“No matter how incredible the move, she seemed to be able to tank it if she knew it was coming,” Mutsuko continued. “But it looks like she didn’t anticipate that one at all.”
Yuichi looked down at Natsuki, who had been forced down to her knees.
She raised her face, looking up at Yuichi with tears in her eyes.
“Huh?” he asked.
“That was just mean...” she moaned.
“Um, well, we could stop this right now if you’d just drop that weird plan of yours...”
Yuichi was caught off-guard by Natsuki’s strange personality shift. She began reaching a hand towards Yuichi, slowly and carefully. Taking it as a concession, he took her hand and helped her up.
“Yu, no!” Mutsuko shouted, leaping to her feet.
Just as she started to get to her feet, Natsuki suddenly tugged on Yuichi’s hand, throwing off his balance.
Then she lashed out with a merciless kick, which Yuichi was too off-guard to dodge.
It struck him directly in the crotch.
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Her hit having landed, Natsuki smiled in triumph.
As long as Yuichi was standing, he seemed capable of defending his median plane against any attack. The only way to get past his guard was to disrupt his balance.
Once she had done that, all that was left was to kick with all her might.
A man’s greatest weak point. Even the slightest touch would have an effect. It could rupture his balls. In the worst case scenario, the shock could be enough to kill him.
But her moment of victory was short-lived. Suddenly, the world went white around her.
An instant later, she processed the pain.
Once again, without knowing what hit her, she hit the ground, tumbled end over end, then slid into the pile of steel.
Blood leaked from her nostrils. She coughed up red.
The pile of steel began to sway. She tried to get away, but her legs wouldn’t move. She just barely covered her head in time.
Just one hit had done all this. It was like being struck in the face with a steel beam.
“That hurt!” Yuichi cried out, his tone more annoyed than anything. It was clear that the ball-shot hadn’t been as effective as she’d thought.
It made no sense. Yuichi Sakaki... he defied understanding.
Why could he dodge her bullets?
Why could he stop her slashes?
Why could he strike from a deadlocked position?
Why could he counter after a kick to the balls?
Her mind was a whirl of questions. But she silenced them all. It didn’t matter.
This was fun.
A feeling of joy welled up in her heart.
Yuichi was strong.
Oh, the ecstasy that killing him would bring her! It could satisfy her killing urge for years to come... Just the thought of it caused her to tremble.
Her lips began to curl upwards in a smile.
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“...Um... Sakaki got kicked, right? In his... um... you know...” Aiko stuttered, balking at actually saying the word. She knew that a man’s crotch was his most vulnerable point.
“Hey... Yu, you let your guard down! You’re lucky she went for the crotch-shot, but what if she’d used a scalpel instead?” Mutsuko seemed relieved, letting out a sigh as she sat back down on the steel.
“Why is that better?” Aiko asked.
“Because Yu can take it. He does kotsukake. It’s a technique where you use your abdominal muscles to draw the balls up into your body.”
“Um?” Aiko was dumbstruck as to how to respond. She didn’t know much about boys’ bodies. Maybe they could do that? Her health classes had never covered it, at least...
“There are ways of moving the body taught in old-style martial arts. You can change the position of your internal organs, or stop their functioning to channel that power elsewhere and stuff. Kotsukake is one simple form of that. Well, at the start, we just forced them in...”
“Huh? Forced them in...” Aiko turned bright red. She was imagining something entirely unseemly.
“Huh? Aw, c’mon. He didn’t have hair down there yet, so it doesn’t count!” Mutsuko waved her hands dismissively as she spoke.
Aiko found herself wondering, once hair grew down there, did it count? “Hey! Stop talking about that! That was traumatic!” Yuichi shouted.
“Hey, Noro, in Japan we call them kintama, or ‘gold balls,’ but in America they call them ‘family jewels.’ Did you know that? I wonder if we had a similar inspiration. Anyway, I’m just glad that Yu’s good ol’ jewels are safe. He’ll be getting a lot of use out of them, I bet!”
“U-Use? Um...” Aiko turned even redder and looked away. She didn’t have to ask. She could easily imagine what Mutsuko meant by that.
✽✽✽✽✽
“Quit talking about that already!” Yuichi groaned, desperate for the conversation to end. His sister was talking to a female classmate about his balls. He wished he was dead.
But that couldn’t be what he focused on. The battle wasn’t over yet.
Yuichi looked at Natsuki.
She pushed her way out from under the pile of ‘ and staggered to her feet, snapped her broken nose back into place, and snorted out a fountain of stored-up blood.
“Ah, this is amazing. What’s going on, hmm? Are you really human, Sakaki?”
“Look... Can we just call this off already? I swear we won’t tell anyone about you, so please, stop all this nonsense.”
“How can you say that? I’m so excited right now... Can’t you tell?” Natsuki began to stagger towards Yuichi.
“No, I can’t.”
“Come on, let’s keep going. I want more. More!”
Natsuki rushed into melee range, lashing out for Yuichi with a stab from her right hand while her left hand struck at his side. Even without scalpels in them, her hands were quite powerful. But they didn’t make contact.
As she fell upon him, Yuichi dropped his hips and lashed out. His hands caught Natsuki right in her soft chest. It was a move where the heels of both hands struck the opponent simultaneously, similar to a strike known as the Double Crashing Palm.
Natsuki was thrown back a second time, and hit the floor immobile.
This time, it was over.
Yuichi fell to a knee in exhaustion, the aftereffect of the furukami. He’d been using it in small doses, but now he’d reached his limit.
“Yu, you pervert!” Mutsuko shouted.
“Huh?” The accusation left Yuichi open-mouthed in shock.
“Sakaki, you lech!” Aiko added, parroting Mutsuko.
“Huh?!”
It had been a spur-of-the-moment desperation move, but to Mutsuko and Aiko, maybe it looked like he’d copped a feel. Mutsuko had taught him this move as part of his so-called “kamehameha training,” though, so he couldn’t figure out why she was so mad at him.
He’d survived a match to the death only to be called a pervert by his sister and his classmate. Could there be a more pathetic fate?
“Hey... Why do you have to call me that?”
“Yu! I know you wanted to touch them because they’re bigger than Noro’s, but that’s no reason to cheat on her!”
“Um, could you not put it that way? It really hurts...” Aiko mumbled.
“Whew... I think I won, but what do we do now?” Yuichi collapsed onto the floor. Even sitting up straight was beyond him. Two battles in two days was taking a toll.
“We just have to talk to her, right? The battle’s over, so she’s got to do what we say,” Aiko offered.
Yuichi agreed. If this wasn’t enough to stop her, he didn’t know what would.
“What the hell?” The sudden voice caused everyone to turn back.
A big man swollen with muscle had arrived at the edge of the arena.
The words “Serial Killer’s Lackey” hung over his head.
There was a katana in his hand. He sounded genuinely surprised to see how the battle had turned out.
“Damn! She threw off my pacing...” Yuichi swore. He had known she had an ally in the wings, but Natsuki had taken all his attention.
He tried to sit up, but he couldn’t muster any strength. He couldn’t even find it in him to stand.
“Sis!” Yuichi cried out, pleadingly.
“Yeah, yeah. I got it, I got it. Whenever you can’t deal with something, that’s when I step in.” As if reading Yuichi’s mind, Mutsuko began strolling up to the large man.
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“I guess it’s safe to assume you’re against us, huh?” Mutsuko said haughtily. Aiko came along with Mutsuko, cowering behind her.
“A-Are you sure about this?”
The man was so tall she had to crane her neck to look up at him. He’d be a tough opponent even for Yuichi. It was hard to believe Mutsuko stood a chance. The man didn’t attack right away, perhaps still a bit off-guard about the situation. The thought that his boss might lose had probably never entered his mind.
“Don’t worry! No need to be scared just because he’s big! He might be stronger than me, but strength isn’t what matters when it comes to incapacitating someone,” Mutsuko said confidently.
As if coming to his senses, the big man broke out into a run, closing the distance between them quickly. Perhaps he thought she would be an easy mark, because he ignored the fallen Yuichi and went right after Mutsuko and Aiko.
Mutsuko took something out of her blazer pocket and gave it a light underhand toss.
It traced a neat arc directly for the charging man’s face. He tilted his neck to dodge it, but he was a bit too late. He hadn’t realized the slow-flying object’s real danger.
It exploded right in front of his face.
“Um...” Aiko stared in disbelief.
The man spun around clutching at his eyes.
“See? It doesn’t matter how big you are! No one can withstand an explosion right to the face!”
“I guess not, but... What did you do?”
“It’s a battery bomb! A homemade bomb made from a battery.”
“Um... you walk around with that?” Aiko said. Everything about it was unbelievable. A bomb? There was a high school girl, standing in front of her, who walked around with homemade bombs?
“For self-defense!”
Suddenly, Aiko thought back to the dangerous objects she’d seen inside Yuichi’s pen case and bag. Mutsuko had picked them out, so naturally, she had some of her own.
“And now, the finish!” Mutsuko drew something from her pocket. Aiko’s jaw dropped. It looked like a gun.
She pointed it at the man and pulled the trigger. Something like a spring shot out of it, stuck in the man and caused his body to jolt. Then he fell over, limp.
“Is that... a pistol?” Aiko asked timidly.
Natsuki had had a gun, and Mutsuko had this thing. She was starting to fear for the future of Japan.
“It’s a taser! I made this one, too. They’re illegal in Japan, so I keep it secret! It’s a type of stun gun, you know what that is?”
The bombs were probably illegal, too, but Aiko decided not to bring that up. “It’s for self-defense, right? It electrocutes people?”
“Yes! It shoots out electrodes, so you can use it even at long range! Taser is the name of a company that makes them. The electric shock locks up the muscles and incapacitates the target. But it only has an effect while the electricity is running, so it’s relatively harmless as weapons go! Stun guns themselves aren’t illegal, but ones with a firing mechanism are!”
Aiko listened as Mutsuko joyfully went on and on about tasers.
“Um... He’s unconscious, right?” The flow of electricity seemed to have stopped, but he still wasn’t budging. Aiko began to wonder just how “harmless” these things really were.
“I guess maybe it’s not good to turn up the voltage all the way!” Mutsuko said offhandedly, deflecting the question.
It was easy to imagine how increasing the voltage would increase the danger. Aiko felt her understanding of these siblings slipping away more and more.
“Whew... You think it’s over? There’s no one else left?” From his spot on the floor, Yuichi let out a sigh of relief and looked around.
Aiko did the same. Natsuki didn’t appear to have any more friends.
“I think it’s over. Well then, Yu, we’ll get going the minute you’re mobile again!” Even with the battle over, Mutsuko was still in her own little bubble. Aiko almost admired the way she let it all just roll off her back.
“Huh? What do we do with these two?”
“They won’t be up for a while. So we can probably just leave a note or something.” With that, Mutsuko walked up to the unconscious Natsuki.
She made a few furtive, secret motions, apparently writing something. After a while, Mutsuko returned and declared, “Okay, let’s go home!”
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