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 frame 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 came out of it had no business belonging to something 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 meters of distance had become none.
Phantom Step.
Her family's heritage ran through assassination and close-quarters enforcement, 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 something that went past fast into something closer to gone.
She came 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. Frame too lean. Not enough muscle mass.
Some 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 time 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 someone 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 came down from above.
An axe drop, angled directly at the top of Matsushita Yusuke's head.
The sound of displaced air came 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, someone is going to get--"
He stopped.
The furrow had left Matsushita Yusuke's brow.
In its place: a smile. The specific kind that came with watching something 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 something uncoiling, and shot outward in a flat arc that wrapped around Soifon mid-rotation.
"Wha—"
Chantless Kido?! How does someone 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 momentum 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 memory 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 something that had absolutely not intended to end up this way.
She began to roll.
Still struggling. Shifting her weight left, then right.
With the momentum building and nowhere for it to go, she started spinning in slow, helpless circles on the floor.
Kishinoshin looked away immediately.
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 outcome.
Soul Society had apparently never broadcast that cartoon about the unlucky bear. This scene was doing the job anyway.
"Don't look at me -- stop looking--"
Matsushita Yusuke crouched down to her level, expression hovering somewhere 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 came off the floor like something 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 name for itself.
Both hands clenched into fists at her sides.
"You absolute— you complete— shameless, 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 came at me 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 outcome here is fairly clear. Any objections from either party?"
Matsushita Yusuke put both hands up.
"None here."
Soifon's jaw worked for a moment. 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 moment, 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.
Time to collect.
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