Tomie's raw strength and speed were, in truth, no match for the Slit-Mouthed Woman's — even with Crimson Lotus Breathing pushing her body to its absolute limit, that gap remained.
To say nothing of the mountain that always stands between a fighter armed with a weapon and one with bare hands.
In a fair one-on-one, Tomie could at best remain undefeated by relying on her immortal body — but she could not claim victory.
And yet — the Slit-Mouthed Woman's original target had been Amamiya Rin. Tomie's sudden intervention had successfully disrupted the Slit-Mouthed Woman's rhythm and drawn her into Tomie's own tempo instead.
The corridor was not wide. At close range, in this cramped space, Tomie held every advantage the terrain could offer.
She controlled the ma-ai — the interval between them — with the discipline of kendo, then drove her boxing into the Slit-Mouthed Woman's inner guard. Her attacks flowed without pause, unrelenting as a running stream, and the Slit-Mouthed Woman was like a small fish trapped in an endlessly rushing current.
In the dim, stuffy storage room, five elementary school children had curled themselves into five small balls. Pressed under tables and wedged into the farthest corners like startled rabbits, they gripped each other's hands and didn't dare breathe.
「The sounds outside… they're so loud.」
Kenta — the boy who had been shouting about exterminating the Slit-Mouthed Woman not so long ago — was sitting on the floor, too frightened to stand. He stared at the doorway of the storage room, at the two teachers standing frozen outside in a daze, at the crashing and banging sounds drifting in from the corridor, and his face had gone even paler than before, his heart a turmoil of dread.
「Should we go out and look?」
It was Michina — the girl with the twin tails — who lost patience first. The strange situation outside had sparked an irrepressible curiosity in her.
The fear was still there, but the urge to know what was happening beyond that door scratched at her heart like a kitten's paw.
The Slit-Mouthed Woman was unsettling enough — but this state of knowing nothing at all was, somehow, even more frightening.
The children exchanged glances, quietly bolstering one another.
At last, like a string of little crabs all linked together, they held their breath, hunched low, and scrambled out from under the tables and out of the corners on all fours, tiptoeing cautiously toward the storage room door.
They poked their heads out — and their vision opened up.
In the centre of the corridor, bathed in the mingled light of the fluorescent strips and the moon, two figures were crossing and clashing at breathtaking speed!
One of them clutched a massive pair of scissors — it was the terrifying woman who had been haunting the school grounds these past nights: the Slit-Mouthed Woman.
And the other figure clashing against her was…
In an instant, Kenta's and Michina's eyes went wide.
「Leo? It's Ultraman Leo!」
Kenta cried out in shock, his voice trembling with disbelief and barely-contained excitement.
Michina beside him, and the three other elementary schoolers crowding in from behind — all five little heads froze in unison.
Their eyes went round, unblinking, fixed on the figure in the corridor: the one wearing a white children's mask, locked in fierce combat with the Slit-Mouthed Woman.
That white mask — the yellow diamond-shaped eyes, the three horns jutting from the top of the head — wasn't that Ultraman Leo, straight off the television screen?
Kenta's mouth had fallen open without him noticing, wide enough to fit an egg inside. Every trace of the fear he'd felt a moment ago had vanished, replaced entirely by an excitement that made him want to leap into the air.
He grabbed the sleeve of the boy next to him and yanked hard.
「Look! It's Leo! Ultraman Leo! Ultraman Leo is fighting the monster!」
「It really is Ultraman Leo! Dad lied to me! Ultraman Leo is real!」
The other boy sniffled, rubbed his eyes furiously, and let out an excited yell.
To Sekiguchi and Ando — and even to Yusuke, who was already in middle school — it was nothing more than a cheap plastic toy mask made for small children, worn on the face of a woman with absurdly extraordinary combat ability, a woman capable of fighting a monster like the Slit-Mouthed Woman bare-handed.
But to children who were at most eleven or twelve years old — children still at the age of believing in Ultraman — the logic was simple and direct.
The Slit-Mouthed Woman was a real monster. So why couldn't the Giant of Light, who fought to protect humanity, be real as well?
Wasn't everything happening before their very eyes right now the most powerful proof of all?
Sound reasoning. Ironclad logic.
「Go, Leo!」
Kenta was the first to strain his voice into a full-throated shout, his little face flushed red, fists clenched so tight it was as though he were the one putting in the effort.
「Go, Leo! Beat her!」
Michina joined in at the top of her lungs, her twin tails swinging wildly.
「Use the Leo Beam!」
「Beat her! Use your Leo Kick!」
「Get her, Leo!」
The children erupted all at once, their voices bouncing off the corridor walls. Every scrap of fear from before had taken flight; all that remained was the electric thrill of watching a superhero beat the villain.
They crowded the doorway, eyes unblinking, fixed on that red figure in the corridor.
Every time Leo dodged the scissors or landed a punch on the Slit-Mouthed Woman, they couldn't help letting out a hushed little gasp of awe, or pumping a fist through the air — more overjoyed than if they'd won the fight themselves.
As for the Slit-Mouthed Woman's terrifying appearance — right now, in their eyes, she was about as frightening as one of the monsters on television waiting to be defeated by Ultraman.
Out in the corridor, Tomie had just slid aside to avoid the scissors sweeping at her shins, then countered with a clean, solid hook that cracked against the Slit-Mouthed Woman's shoulder blade. Behind the mask, one eyebrow arched slightly.
What were those little brats yelling about? Leo? What on earth were they on about?
She hadn't given a single thought to what was on her face. When Amamiya Rin had handed her the mask, she had simply dismissed it as a childish toy and hadn't bothered to look at it properly.
At the same moment, the shouting from behind had also caught the Slit-Mouthed Woman's attention.
Continuing this struggle was pointless. The woman in front of her was far too strange — leaving aside strength and speed, her boxing technique and her ability to predict incoming attacks were absolutely terrifying.
And the woman's physical constitution was deeply bizarre. It wasn't that she had landed no hits — she had — but the scissors' attacks seemed to have no effect on her whatsoever.
From the corner of her eye, the Slit-Mouthed Woman caught a glimpse of the storage room doorway — those small heads poking out. Beneath the scarf, the expression on her face shifted into something full of vicious intent.
Target — change!
The instant the thought formed, the Slit-Mouthed Woman's silhouette lurched sharply backward in a sudden retreat!
Her speed far surpassed Tomie's to begin with, and now that she was wholly intent on withdrawing, Tomie's fist could only graze the hem of her clothing.
In the span of a single blink, the Slit-Mouthed Woman's figure blurred like a gust of night wind and vanished from Tomie's sight entirely, lunging straight toward the storage room behind her.
Faced with the Slit-Mouthed Woman charging toward them, Sekiguchi and Ando instinctively stumbled backward.
But they were not her target.
The Slit-Mouthed Woman came to an abrupt stop at the entrance of the storage room. Her baleful gaze dropped straight onto Michina, and she reached out to grab her.
「Aaah——!」
All at once the elementary schoolers around her screamed, horror written across their faces, scrambling into one another in a panicked heap.
「Michina!」
At the far end of the corridor, Yusuke witnessed this and let out a cry of pure terror.
The Slit-Mouthed Woman had broken away without warning, abandoning her fight with Tomie to go after the elementary school children — it was something no one had anticipated.
____
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🔥 New history: Path of Elation in Warhammer 40K
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