REVIEWS AND POWERSTONES PLSSS!!!!!REVIEWS AND POWERSTONES PLSSS!!!!!REVIEWS AND POWERSTONES PLSSS!!!!!Chapter 036: And Now There's a Tsundere Route?
Kishinoshin gave the signal.
Soifon moved first.
Her fra was compact to begin with. Dropping into a half-crouch made it smaller still, a lower and tighter target than before -- and then the speed that ca out of it had no business belonging to sothing that size.
Like a compressed spring releasing all at once.
Her silhouette stretched into a dark blur across the air, form going soft at the edges, and in the span of a blink --
Twenty ters of distance had beco none.
Phantom Step.
Her family's heritage ran through assassination and close-quarters enforcent, and the Fon bloodline had accumulated techniques to match that work over generations. Among them, shunpo variants were the crown jewel -- their particular specialty, honed into sothing that went past fast into sothing closer to gone.
She ca in at face level and narrowed her eyes.
Observation and speed. Those had always been her two best assets, and right now she was using both.
No calluses on his hands. Fra too lean. Not enough muscle mass.
So things could be hidden. But the evidence of training -- or the lack of it -- was written into a body whether you wanted it there or not. And what she was reading on Matsushita Yusuke told her one thing clearly.
He was not a close-combat fighter.
Then close combat was how this ended.
Kido and swordsmanship both needed space and ti to set up. Only Hakuda could be deployed at this range without losing anything. She was already there. He wasn't ready.
She read the response coming before it arrived -- he was going to kick low, because when soone that compact was in your face, the legs were the instinctive answer.
She saw the sweep beginning.
Exactly what she'd expected.
And exactly the opening she needed.
Both legs compressed, pressed, released.
Her body shot upward from near-ground level, straight and fast, like a firework that had decided to go sideways first and then vertical. She rotated in the air, easy and controlled, and brought her right leg out fully extended.
The heel ca down from above.
An axe drop, angled directly at the top of Matsushita Yusuke's head.
The sound of displaced air ca with it. Not loud, but sharp.
Kishinoshin had barely processed what was happening before the words were already forming.
"Soifon! That's going too far, soone is going to get--"
He stopped.
The furrow had left Matsushita Yusuke's brow.
In its place: a smile. The specific kind that ca with watching sothing land exactly where you'd set it up to land.
"Bakudo #9: Hōrin."
Bright yellow rings of light materialized at his flanks, two of them, moving upward fast like sothing uncoiling, and shot outward in a flat arc that wrapped around Soifon mid-rotation.
"Wha—"
Chantless Kido?! How does soone like him have a technique like that?
The answer was Basic Master, and it wasn't waiting for her to work it out.
Before the thought finished, the bands of light snapped tight.
CRACK.
Like an elastic pulled to its limit and released -- the two loops caught her and compressed, and with her body's own montum already spent and the angle of attack already committed, there was nothing left to change direction with.
Kido's advantage had always been exactly this. It didn't run out of variations. It didn't telegraph the way muscle mory did.
Soifon dropped from the air and hit the floor.
She landed in a configuration that was unfortunate from every angle: one leg still raised at full extension from the axe drop, the rest of her bundled tight and off-balance, trussed up like sothing that had absolutely not intended to end up this way.
She began to roll.
Still struggling. Shifting her weight left, then right.
With the montum building and nowhere for it to go, she started spinning in slow, helpless circles on the floor.
Kishinoshin looked away imdiately.
The professional composure of a senior officer was a serious thing, earned over decades, and right now it was the only thing standing between him and making a noise he would not be able to take back.
"Let— go—"
Soifon had managed to turn herself so she was facing Matsushita Yusuke, which did not improve things for anyone involved.
Even he was struggling with this one. He'd known the trap would work. He had not accounted for the specific shape of the outco.
Soul Society had apparently never broadcast that cartoon about the unlucky bear. This scene was doing the job anyway.
"Don't look at -- stop looking--"
Matsushita Yusuke crouched down to her level, expression hovering sowhere that wasn't quite a smile.
"Settle down first. Then we can talk."
The reasoning was plain enough.
"It's a Bakudo numbered below ten. If you calm down and push reishi through it, it'll break. That's all you need to do."
Silence.
A specific, awkward kind of it.
Then a pale blue current of reishi flared from Soifon's body and the yellow bands snapped apart.
She ca off the floor like sothing scalded.
Three rapid jumps put her across the room, back against the far wall, putting as much distance between herself and the previous thirty seconds as physically possible.
Her face was a shade of red that had given up on finding a polite na for itself.
Both hands clenched into fists at her sides.
"You absolute— you complete— shaless, disgusting—"
Matsushita Yusuke scratched his head.
"I used one Bakudo."
"That's not the point!"
"Then what is the point?"
"Why would you do it in such a— such a—"
"You ca at with a flying heel drop. How is that my fault?"
"I— you—"
She made a noise that didn't resolve into words.
Kishinoshin took advantage of a convenient cough to rearrange his expression, then spoke in a flat, carrying voice.
"I think the outco here is fairly clear. Any objections from either party?"
Matsushita Yusuke put both hands up.
"None here."
Soifon's jaw worked for a mont. Her eyes had gone bright at the corners.
She said nothing.
She turned and left at speed.
"You're both terrible!"
Matsushita Yusuke watched her go.
Was that -- a tsundere route? Did this story just develop a tsundere route?
He considered that for a mont, then decided not to examine it further.
The reward list had appeared while he was still watching the door.
All four combat disciplines, Reiatsu Level, a random technique draw, and whatever that special notification at the end had been.
He stopped thinking about the door.
Ti to collect.
****
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