"How dare you… you'd actually strike me?!"
The Nine-tailed Black Fox's blue-green slit pupils went wide, fixed on the distant giant, its voice thick with disbelief.
Aren't you the human host of an Ultraman? Aren't you supposed to be a paragon of goodness? Why are you striking so decisively?
"Defeat the water dragon, defeat the water dragon… how many times do I have to say it before you understand? You can't do it! The water dragon's threat has nothing to do with combat! Even Ultraseven can't solve environmental pollution! Otherwise the Ultraman series wouldn't need so many episodes!"
The Nine-tailed Black Fox shrieked at Hinako Shimizu in fury, its eight tails thrashing wildly behind it. Each swing churned up towering waves, the lake water surging outward and slapping against the unseen barrier at the edge of the Sanctuary.
"I don't understand what you mean by 'can't.'"
Hinako Shimizu stepped forward, and the lake's surface burst into rings of ripples beneath her feet, water spraying in all directions. Her back was ramrod straight, radiating an aura of unstoppable resolve.
"Giving up before even trying, admitting defeat before the fight even starts — that's not how the Giant of Light fights!"
In that instant, Hinako Shimizu's presence surged, her silver-and-red body seeming to blaze even brighter than before.
As her will and conviction transformed, so too did the power she could bring to bear.
The light energy within her surged through her veins, as if answering her resolve, bursting forth from every fiber of her body.
The Nine-tailed Black Fox fell silent. It could feel it.
Far from losing her conviction under its assault, Hinako Shimizu — Ultraseven's human host — had only grown more resolute.
In those blue-green slit pupils, the reflection was no longer a target to be beguiled, but a warrior with a will of iron.
To try to enthrall Hinako Shimizu now was simply impossible.
Giving the Nine-tailed Black Fox no chance to keep making excuses, Hinako Shimizu raised her right hand to her forehead. At a thought, the ice axe detached from the groove atop her head and hovered before her.
"Ultra Telekinesis!"
Golden light flared in Hinako Shimizu's eyes. Without wasted motion, her will surged, and the Eye Slugger instantly transformed into a streak of silver-white lightning tearing through the darkness. It shattered the sound barrier with ease, the air compressing into a cone-shaped shockwave ahead of its edge — carrying the force to cleave the void itself — and struck straight for the Nine-tailed Black Fox's head!
Fast! It was too fast!
From the moment the ice axe left its resting position to the moment it reached the Nine-tailed Black Fox's neck, distance seemed not to exist at all. It moved so quickly that the fox only caught a flash of silver light before the ice axe was already upon it.
The barrier it had hastily thrown up crumbled like paper before the blade's edge. The ice axe sliced through that layer of condensed demonic power as easily as cutting tofu, the sharp light-blade grazing across its neck without a sound — only a single moment of stillness.
Jet-black fox blood erupted from the wound like a fountain, scattering into a dark mist in the air of the Sanctuary. Half its neck had been cleanly severed, the cut surface smooth as a polished mirror.
The massive fox body staggered backward, its eight tails hanging limp, crashing down onto the water's surface and throwing up a wall of spray several meters high.
"Grandfather!"
The Seven-tailed Red Fox beside it watched in horror, eyes wide enough to split, blood welling at the rims.
It wanted to help. Its four paws clawed white streaks across the water's surface, but it had no idea what to do.
Its opponent was Ultraseven — Hinako's transformed self — that silver-and-red giant standing dozens of meters tall over the lake, whose mere presence was an insurmountable wall. Even if it were willing to throw its life away fighting Hinako, it had no power to shake the Giant of Light.
"Don't come closer! Go! Leave now! Our clan cannot all die here! Abandon the Sanctuary! Abandon our territory! Return to the mountains!"
The Nine-tailed Black Fox snapped harshly at its grandson, blood still gushing from the wound on its neck, staining the lake water black beneath it.
It lifted its head. In those blue-green slit pupils churned a hatred so thick it seemed almost solid.
But beneath that hatred lay something deeper still — the last remnant of a beast's instinctive reason, in the face of a power it could not resist.
"Grandfather…?"
The Seven-tailed Red Fox stared at its grandfather in shock, its four legs frozen in place, its tail no longer moving.
It had never imagined that the patriarch of the fox spirit clan could ever sink to such humiliation.
That's right — humiliation! On the surface, its grandfather seemed to be telling it to flee for its life. In truth, he was yielding before Hinako.
He was saying: if she meant to kill, killing him alone would be enough. The rest of the fox spirit clan would retreat into the mountains and never appear again, so long as she spared them.
The thought sent a chill through the Seven-tailed Red Fox's whole body. It had never imagined it would one day hear such words from its grandfather's mouth.
"Didn't you hear me? Go, now!"
The Nine-tailed Black Fox stared fixedly at the Giant of Light before it, a low, beast-like growl forced up from its chest — a sound full of resentment and fury, but even more, a bleak, helpless resignation.
A deus ex machina! This was a damned deus ex machina! In a world where nothing could stop them, an Ultraman had suddenly appeared out of nowhere.
Now, the Nine-tailed Black Fox finally understood how those villains in the Ultraman shows must have felt.
Fight — couldn't win. Talk — couldn't win that either. No matter what tactic it tried, to an Ultraman it was nothing more than a trial to overcome, never a means to truly defeat one.
Even when what stood before it was only a girl newly awakened as an Ultra Warrior, still carrying thick shadows in her heart to this day.
Hearing the Nine-tailed Black Fox's furious roar, Hinako Shimizu paused and glanced at the Seven-tailed Red Fox.
The silver-and-red giant stood still, the ice axe hovering in midair, black fox blood still dripping drop by drop from its edge into the lake.
She didn't press her advantage. Her golden eyes watched the young fox, her gaze complicated.
"Not going to finish it?"
Amamiya Rin asked.
"Hisayuki… let's just say it's Hisayuki. Hisayuki never did anything truly evil — or rather, he never managed to succeed at it…"
There was a shadow of melancholy in Hinako Shimizu's voice, an exhaustion she herself hadn't quite noticed.
She still couldn't quite accept that her childhood friend had been a fox spirit all along, and had insisted on forcing upon her a wish that wore the mask of kindness but was in truth a sacrifice.
All those years they'd spent together in Ebisugaoka, the smiles, the conversations — how much of it had been real, and how much had been a facade? She could no longer tell.
But even though she hadn't wanted to be sold off by her parents to the Tsuneki family, hadn't wanted to marry Tsuneki Hisayuki, she herself didn't hold any deep hatred for him. Those memories were too vivid, too real, to be erased entirely just because the truth had come out.
What they'd shared back then hadn't been fake. And now, since she — the intended victim — had never actually come to harm, letting Tsuneki Hisayuki return to the mountains was hardly a difficult thing to grant.
____
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