/jp/ - Otaku Culture

>>45978556
With everything set, Sekibanki declared her card.

"Flying Head [Seventh Head]!"

She could see his face change to confusion for a brief moment, trying to mouth out "se" and "be". Just perfect, he was ignorant of what was coming for him. Her English skills were finally of some use!

She then flew backward, following the path to the yard, goading him to follow with some shots from her eyes, to which he obliged with enthusiasm. The trap was sprung.

As they flew to the first turn, Sekibanki stopped right at the wall. When the tanuki was about to grab her neck, she saw him through four angles - most of them above. That was a signal, there was no escape. Hearing the sound of beams sizzling in the air, he just barely managed to dodge lasers shot from the front and left sides of a roof's valley of a row house making the corner, jumping away, only making himself an easy target for the head looking down from a roof's hip to his right. A direct hit to his side launched him right through a wall, with screams coming from the inside, a resounding success! Using that, Sekibanki rushed to the next ambush spot.

"Hiding familiars?" He peeked from the hole he made to the roofs surrounding them, his hair having returned and his sharkskin now absent. "Clever, but not enough." He threw some danmaku onto the spots he thought the shots were coming from, and for that, the unseen heads rewarded him with a shower of blue spheres. "Ah, shit!", he cursed as he jumped away from the bombardment.

Recovering from his sudden dodge, the tanuki saw his target running to another corner. Thinking himself clever for not getting fooled by the same trick twice, he flew higher, pelting the rooftops with danmaku. Sekibanki judged his joyful expression as him finding that ensuing explosions of blue spheres left nothing but scorch marks on tiles. Good, he must've not noticed the heads getting away, and thought that he got rid of all her familiars. She cemented this illusion with a look full of worry and bolted straight to the finish line.

The yard was just a few ken away when she heard a shout behind her. "You ain't getting away!"

"Transformation [Tsuchinoko's Lies]!"

Running past some drying racks full of wet clothes, Sekibanki saw herself from above, moving closer to the center of the yard, which would be fine if there also wasn't something long and dark brown moving quickly from the tanuki's right arm towards her. She tried to dodge it while turning to face him but suddenly saw how it wrapped around her back and stuck to her right arm. A jolt of sharp pain went through her, as she realised what it was - a big, fat snake had it's fangs in her shoulder, her red kimono becoming a bit darker. What the hell?

"Come 'ere!", the tanuki shouted as he pulled his snake-arm-thing. Sekibanki tumbled to him with a spin and soon was nearly completely bound with a snake. Thug's left arm added to it, grappling her neck in a chokehold. This was it, now he'll force a surrender, or try to knock her out... Only instead he suddenly started to painfully pull her head up, forcing a choked cough out of her! What was he doing? With an effort to keep her neck the same length, she tried to turn her head to get a look at him, and found him with an evil smile and murder in his eyes.

"What, ya thought I was joking? About your head?", he sneered, straining from effort. "Ha! That was our wager! Boss'll have a snitch's noggin for his head-viewing ceremony!"

Oh really now? Was he hoping she would get somewhere isolated to assassinate her? Or was this some pathetic tough guy act? Sekibanki couldn't help but chuckle.

"Wh-What the hell?! I'm killing you right now, you know!" His murderous facade crumbled, and the chuckles became harder to resist. "That's no laughing matter!". That's it, the dam was broken. She was now howling with laughter.

"Ahh... Sorry, but you're going to need more than this head for your rank, you two-bit hatamoto!"

It was time to finish this. Her many angles on him confirmed it - he was in the middle of a perfect killbox. It didn't matter if he was going to kill her or not, for that snake bite she wasn't going to spare him. With some struggle, she pulled the card out of her pocket and spoke its name through her teeth.

"Glinting Eyes [Hell's Ray]!"

With the declaration finished, she bit his left hand as hard as she could, there was no escaping this. Tanuki's cry of pain was silenced by the cavalcade of lasers shot from the rooftops surrounding them. They filled the air, most of them hitting the tanuki in the back, she felt every impact.

By the time she ended the spell, his back was a mess of small burns and bruises, his fine kimono totaled. His grip was nonexistent as his arm was no longer a snake. Sekibanki slipped from under him, and he fell like a cut tree. His ears and tail were for all to see, just as messed up. She felt a foul taste in her mouth and spat out a tiny piece of flesh she had bitten off his hand. Disgusting.