"Stop!"
Watching the scene unfold mere feet away, Teacher Sekiguchi's mind went blank.
He himself didn't know where the surge of fighting blood had come from. He only knew one thing: he could not allow himself to keep making mistakes.
The muscles in Teacher Sekiguchi's face contorted with fear and resolve. His body moved before his thoughts could catch up — he flung himself bodily at the Slit-Mouthed Woman, pressing down against her flank and arm.
That desperate, life-staking lunge, clumsy as it was, did genuinely disrupt the Slit-Mouthed Woman. Her arm jolted, and she failed to grab Michina in time. The look she shot at Teacher Sekiguchi carried both surprise and contempt.
"Sekiguchi…"
She opened her mouth, as if she wanted to say something.
And in that very instant——
"BANG!"
At the far end of the corridor, a flash of fire burst forth, and the deafening crack of a gunshot rang out!
Amamiya Rin knelt on one knee, the modified firearm braced rock-steady in the crook of his arm.
The Ultraseven mask on his face looked oddly grave in the dim light. Through the eyeholes of the mask, his gaze was cold as ice, locked tightly onto the Slit-Mouthed Woman. Pale smoke curled from the muzzle. Within the impossibly brief window of time Teacher Sekiguchi had bought him, he had aimed at the Slit-Mouthed Woman's head and pulled the trigger.
The bullet tore through the air, flying with deadly precision toward the side of the Slit-Mouthed Woman's face — exposed by her turning head!
The Slit-Mouthed Woman's reflexes were astonishingly sharp. The instant the gun fired, she had already tilted her head aside — yet the bullet still grazed her cheek.
"Shrrrk——!"
The colossal kinetic energy first tore open the thick scarf that had concealed her face. Shreds of fabric and tufts of cotton burst outward in a cloud.
Then the slug drove mercilessly into that ruined face — split open from the corner of her mouth all the way to the root of her ear!
Flesh was ploughed apart, shattered soft tissue mingled with dark, congealed blood spraying backward, splattering across the wall behind her in a foul streak.
"Gaaagh——!"
The Slit-Mouthed Woman let out a howl of agony and rage, the sound rendered all the more garbled and grotesque by the damage to her cheek.
The scarf had slipped more than halfway off, and that hideous wound — gruesome enough to silence a crying child in the dead of night — was now fully exposed beneath the dim lights, more terrifying than ever.
"Oi! Ugly hag! Don't you dare run!"
Tomie's reaction was lightning-fast; almost the very instant the gunshot rang out, she had already exploded forward.
Her feet stamped down savagely, and her compact, solid frame shot out like a leopard. Her right fist, loaded to the brim with power, came rocketing toward the Slit-Mouthed Woman's body — staggering now from the wound.
Yet the searing pain and rage did not throw the Slit-Mouthed Woman into disorder. If anything, they stirred up an even deeper viciousness in her.
Seeing that her grab for Michina had been thwarted and that Tomie was bearing down on her at speed, those bloodshot, venom-laced eyes instantly locked onto Sekiguchi — the man who had thrown himself against her and clamped his arms around hers.
"Hypocritical man…"
Through that hoarse, hissed curse, the Slit-Mouthed Woman's free arm shot out, lashing straight at Sekiguchi's face!
Sekiguchi only saw a sweep of razor-sharp fingernails rushing up to fill his vision.
"Squelch!"
The Slit-Mouthed Woman's fingertips plunged unhindered into the socket of Sekiguchi's right eye!
Her fingers pierced clean through the eyeball and gouged deep into the fragile bone beyond.
Excruciating pain and absolute blackness swallowed Sekiguchi's consciousness in an instant. He could not even manage a scream before his body began convulsing violently.
The Slit-Mouthed Woman's fingers clenched cruelly, almost crushing the orbital bone caught between them.
Using the hand embedded in Sekiguchi's face as her leverage point and grabbing his clothes with the other, she actually hoisted the not-inconsiderable bulk of Sekiguchi clean off the ground — as if heaving a sandbag — and hurled him bodily at Tomie!
His face a mask of blood, his body twisted with agony, Sekiguchi traced a wretched arc through the air — sailing with unerring precision straight at Tomie, who had already closed within striking distance!
Tomie was charging in at full tilt. Seeing a whole grown man hurled at her head, she had no choice but to slam her steps to a halt and twist her body aside to dodge.
"Thud!"
Teacher Sekiguchi's heavy frame brushed past her shoulder and crashed hard into the unforgiving floor of the corridor with a dull, sickening thump. Blood spread rapidly across the tiles.
He twitched once, and then was still — alive or dead, no one could say.
Behind them, Amamiya Rin was silent.
She hadn't caught him… well. Fair enough. About what he should have expected.
Tomie was Tomie, in the end. Even if she trained her brain into solid muscle, she would still be Tomie.
Besides — compared with catching a hostage flung by the enemy, which would only have handed the enemy an opening, dodging in order to keep up the chase was the more combat-sound choice.
Tomie did not so much as glance at Sekiguchi on the floor. Her gaze remained nailed dead onto the Slit-Mouthed Woman. She kicked off the ground, ready to resume the pursuit.
However, that single moment of delay had already been enough for the Slit-Mouthed Woman to open up the distance.
The dark figure made several swift, vaulting leaps, like a night owl skimming low across the ground.
In the blink of an eye, she had retreated several dozen metres to the far end of the corridor, melting into the deeper shadows near the stairwell.
Only those eyes — brimming with malice and killing intent — burned in the dimness like two pinpoints of crimson hellfire, fixed unblinkingly upon Tomie.
"Tch! Ugly little hag who can only bully elementary schoolers and ordinary people! If you've got any spine, fight me head-on!"
Tomie wanted to spit at the Slit-Mouthed Woman, but because of the mask, all she could do was click her tongue.
Faced with Tomie's provocation, the air seemed to freeze for a single heartbeat.
Then those two points of hellfire suddenly flared blindingly bright!
The Slit-Mouthed Woman moved!
No detours, no flourishes — just the simplest, most brutal, and most perfectly suited tactic for her advantages: a straight-line charge!
"BOOM——!"
The floor beneath her feet seemed to detonate, an invisible ring of pressure exploding outward. The instant that shockwave rolled away, her figure blurred into a long, trailing afterimage.
An ear-splitting sonic boom reverberated violently through the narrow corridor, hammering against eardrums until they throbbed.
This time, the Slit-Mouthed Woman held nothing back — unleashing her absolute top speed, surpassing every previous burst she had shown!
The enormous scissors clenched in both her hands were now fully splayed open. The two ice-cold blades, like the wings of the Reaper himself, slashed through the air at blistering speed, carving two arcs of deadly light that blanketed a wide swathe of space before her!
The edges caught the faint distant light, carrying with them a brutish, overbearing momentum that promised to shred everything in their path!
Tomie's pupils contracted.
Fast! Too fast!
Her combat instincts, fused with the precognition granted by the Dhyana state, allowed her — in the very instant the Slit-Mouthed Woman launched — to understand her opponent's intent and clearly read the trajectory of the swinging scissors.
Her brain frantically fired off evasion commands, but her body's speed, in the face of this absolute disparity, was painfully, helplessly inadequate!
Too late!
Whether it was boxing footwork or kendo footwork — both, in the face of this brute, no-frills assault, exposed a single enormous flaw: insufficient range!
The attack surface of those splayed scissors was simply too wide; it sealed off the bulk of evasion space to either side.
Her reactive ability could read the Slit-Mouthed Woman's line of attack, but her body's speed could not meet the threshold required to escape it.
"Haaaah——!"
With no room left to retreat, Tomie's fierce fighting spirit was set ablaze instead!
She exhaled in a sharp, vocalised cry, driving Crimson Lotus Breathing to its absolute ceiling. The muscles across her entire body surged, visibly swelling by a fraction.
Tomie did not dodge. She did not evade. Twisting her waist and driving her shoulder forward, she hurled out a single, full-power heavy punch — aimed at that blurred afterimage that had already closed in, at the hideous face behind the scissors — unleashed with savage, unyielding force!
Attack against attack! A head-on collision!
____
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