Editing Cute Kunoichis:Volume1 Chapter5 (section)

===3: An All-Out Battle Begins===

He had known negotiations would break down.

They had all come here because they had something they refused to compromise on, so fighting was the only option. Crossing blades with them was the only way to respect their respective feelings to the fullest.

“…”

The girl in front of him inhaled and exhaled.

She showed off her undeveloped figure in a bodysuit, a sleeveless kimono top, and a front and back skirt.

That was Kuhou Ouka.

She kept her eyes on Sugiyado Souha who could not even stand up, but she suddenly aimed Midnight Tempest to the side.

She was targeting a kunoichi whose ninja outfit included a pleated miniskirt, giving it a combination of Japanese and Western styles. This one had a red hair extension.

That was Shirazaya Guren.

“!?”

With a boom, the merciless gunshot was blocked by a ninja sword guided by Steel Rope and the blonde kunoichi with small throat trembling nearly toppled over from the impact on her weapon.

While bending the gun to load a new round, twintailed Ouka made an announcement.

“Bara, Hoozuki…and Asagao. Work with me.”

“Wait, are you really doing this!? We’re talking about Sensei here!”

“Words won’t get us anywhere here. He’s as dead set on his course as we are ours, so we can’t make any progress without tearing down this wall. Isn’t that right, Sensei?”

Just as he smiled, vertically-stacked double-barreled Midnight Tempest produced a storm of flames that scorched the entire column he was leaning against.

But which side truly deserved the praise here?

There was no mass of carbon writhing in pain within those flames. Only a few light sounds. How in the world had he moved from his seated position leaning against the column? The next thing they knew, he had flown up to the top of the column and in fact was clinging upside down to the ceiling. Needless to say, he was not burned or even singed.

He could not carry a single injured companion, so his nimble movements were his one point of pride.

Ouka’s surefire attack had been easily avoided, but she smiled while her sleeveless kimono top and front skirt fluttered around her. She had the look of someone seeing a demotivated boxer climb back into the ring.

“You’re the best, Sensei!!” she roared.

She fired more flames, but none of them could find him. With light sounds, he set foot on the side of a different column and ran straight down to the ground.

At this point, the other ninjas were done hesitating. However it happened, they would fail to reach their goal if they were defeated here. That obvious fact had finally gotten through to them.

Kuhou Ouka flexibly moved her growing body to use bayonet-equipped Midnight Tempest as a blade and a gun. In addition to simple bullets, she used paintball-like capsule cartridges containing powerful acid or high-voltage capacitors. Combined with the unit that could fire ignited rocket fuel or liquid nitrogen, she was an all-rounder who could fight with every element.

It had two stacked barrels and she could choose which one to fire.

By loading each barrel with different types of rounds, she could choose to fire one or the other depending on the situation. While swishing around the rope that dangled from her hips like a cat’s tail, she danced across the battlefield and used a variety of combinations to make a weapon out of all types of phenomena.

At the same time, silver ponytail Nantou Hoozuki used the pitching machine made from her off-road motorcycle to launch combination cross shurikens while suppressing the recoil with her back muscles. She no longer bothered hiding the roar of the engine.

Camouflage specialist Hanasawa Bara pulled some paper from her cleavage, loaded it into the tubes in her ringlet curls, and launched a colorful powder called Dizzy Eyes to the floor to mess with Sugiyado’s depth perception. In her bleached tight skirt military uniform, Shizukuma Asagao was sending her eyes around at dizzying speeds to work out a predicted course of action for Sugiyado.

But none of it went as planned.

Because those four students were not the only ones here.

“Dammit!! Stop right there, Sugiyado-san!!”

Chain links scraped together while guided by the invisible Steel Rope.

Those four were joined by Shirazaya Guren and Suiren who wore a combination of a sleeveless white kimono top and a pleated miniskirt. Sugiyado was up against a total of 6 elites. He had already withdrawn from active duty, so this was too much for him to handle.

Or so one would have thought.

“Eh? Ah!?”

The first to bring her baggy sleeves to her mouth and speak up in confusion was the youngest girl, Asagao, who was rapidly moving her eyes around the scene. Yes, when the outsider twins appeared on the board as allies rather than enemies, it had broken down all of her predictions and calculations.

If he were fighting any one of them head on, he may not have been able to win.

Not against Kuhou Ouka, Hanasawa Bara, Nantou Hoozuki, or Shizukuma Asagao.

And not against Shirazaya Guren or Suiren.

They were truly powerful.

But what if those powerful ninjas were suddenly forced to work with someone they barely knew and they kept tripping each other up? Then their great strength would only cause greater damage to each other during any accidents.

“What!?” shouted twintailed Ouka.

Her flamethrower and the weight at the end of a kusarigama struck the exact same point on a column, but Sugiyado Souha was no longer there.

He had flipped up into the air an he landed with his back against startled Ouka’s.

“Ouka, what is your greatest weakness? I believe I taught you this lesson over and over again.”

“What!?”

He did not give her time to load another round.

Ouka’s clothing swelled out and the tail-like red rope behind her fluttered while she spun around and launched a liquid nitrogen cartridge from Midnight Tempest despite being at close enough range to catch herself in the blast. She also used her spinning motion to make a horizontal sweep of the weapon.

But he nimbly ducked blow the ultra-cold attack while the sprinkler on the ceiling activated.

He swung a Fierce Fang so its ferocity tore through the artificial rain and the moisture flash frozen by the liquid nitrogen formed a clear blade around it. The kunai now almost looked like a katana of ice.

But while slender Kuhou Ouka took a fighting stance, he suddenly made a merciless attack on Shizukuma Asagao to the side.

“You always assume you’re at the center of the action!”

“!?”

Asagao did not know how to fight directly, so she could not dodge or defend herself. Her small face was colored only by surprise. Below her tight skirt military uniform, she was protected by an ultra-thin suit with a spider silk structure and solidified by a high-polymer water-absorbing gel and electric potential elastic fibers, but her exposed face was defenseless. That was an unavoidable fact of life for a kunoichi who augmented their more traditional strength by using their beauty as a weapon. Slamming that ice sword into her temple would knock her out much like a strike from the back of the blade.

“By the way, Asagao. I believe I told you to fix your bad habit of assuming ‘that couldn’t possibly be meant for me’ during group fights.”

“Don’t you dare!!”

A complex metal roar followed as Countless Calamities changed shape from its pitching machine form. Nantou Hoozuki, who wore an open-back one-piece swimsuit and baggy pants plus belts that bound her body, had transformed it into a different gadget. It looked like a giant brutal axe with two rollers that alternately sliced through everything. She bent her back like a bow and used her full body weight to swing it down.

But it did not matter.

She had mistaken what she was up against here.

“Hoozuki.”

The weapon of steel and the weapon of ice clashed. Sugiyado’s transparent katana was shattered far too easily.

But the kunai was still a kunai.

Hoozuki had been led astray by the apparent blade there, so she failed to stop her momentum and staggered forward. With his blade back to its original length, he reversed his wrist and stabbed the Fierce Fang forward as his true attack.

But not at Hoozuki.

At the giant axe made from her off-road motorcycle. As soon as she swung Countless Calamities down too hard and it carved into the floor, sending sparks everywhere, he caught its rapidly-rotating axis on his weapon.

“The number and complexity of your gadgets is impressive, but your focus draws too far inwards while you transform it. Your focus always needs to be on the world around you.”

He used the nitrogen to open up the air-pressure kunai’s blade to destroy the motor within, sending steel pieces flying off. The blast hit her so close up that her entire body was pummeled through her bulletproof ninja outfit and her back was slammed into a thick column. He did award her some points for not screaming.

Then he threw the already-opened Fierce Fang toward the center of her chest.

A sound like a bullet hit burst from her chest and the silver ponytail girl crumpled down. No matter how much the force was negated, the impact would still reach her, and this was a deadly weapon. Without that cutting-edge ninja outfit that could block a rifle bullet, it would have broken through her sternum and pierced her heart.

That left Kuhou Ouka in the sleeveless kimono top and front and back skirt and Hanasawa Bara in the oiran-style outfit that left her shoulders bare.

No, there was also the beautiful twins Shirazaya Guren and Suiren who created a cheerleader-like silhouette using their combination of sleeveless pure white kimono tops and pleated miniskirts.

Those two may not have cared if they hit Ouka’s group too because they kept sending their kusarigama weights and stick shurikens in from the side. The weapons followed unnatural paths that included right angle turns, so simply throwing them was not enough to explain it. That should have sent them along unpredictable paths that pierced the target’s body, yet that did not happen.

“Got him!!”

Guren’s throat trembled beautifully as she raised her voice at the tactile feedback she felt from the bracelet around her wrist. With Steel Rope’s guidance, the thick chain of her kusarigama had tangled itself around the kunai in Sugiyado Souha’s right hand. That would prevent him from using it.

If it were your average weapon.

At first, she seemed to find something off about how he did not even bat an eye at her supposed accomplishment.

“!?”

A moment later, the air-pressure kunai’s blade was forced open by the nitrogen, mercilessly breaking through the thick chain from within. It was likely made of a thick chromium or tungsten alloy, but that was no match for the 15 tons of force Fierce Fang could provide. The destruction was entirely thanks to how tightly she had wrapped the chain around it.

And it did not end there.

Sugiyado grabbed the end of the broken chain and swung it toward Guren, its actual wielder.

It did not hit, of course.

Those twin sisters could use their Steel Rope that used electromagnetism to alter the paths of their ninja swords and kusarigamas in midair. A thick chain swung with only one’s physical strength would simply have control retaken.

But that did not mean there was no risk to the blonde kunoichi. She would bleed just as red if the blade she was controlling hit her. She had to focus on even the slightest fluctuation in the electromagnetic control.

And.

Simply by twirling around and leaping like some kind of dance, he continually dodged the metal weapons their Steel Rope controlled using the Lorentz force.

“What!?”

“Keep moving, Guren!!”

Shirazaya Suiren was right. Guren could not afford to come to a stop just because she could not believe her eyes. Time was still passing.

Before she could analyze anything or reach any kind of solution, an unidentified ninja moved right up to her.

“!!”

The blonde girl swung her ninja sword with all her might. The steel blade was externally controlled via the Lorentz force, so it ignored her own muscles and moved almost automatically, as if according to a computer program. The Steel Rope could have dislocated both of her shoulders if it tried and it could also bring down all the steel balls launched by a directional landmine, but Sugiyado Souha did not change tack in fighting the ninja sword it controlled. He took a dancing step and slipped right past it.

He accurately stuck the tip of his Fierce Fang into the slight gap between the sword’s blade and its guard.

Then he opened it.

The brutal force of the nitrogen tore the ninja sword apart from within.

“Tch!?”

Thanks to the Steel Rope’s Lorentz force, the remnants of the broken sword remained floating in midair, but that did not change that the weapon had been destroyed while it was being swung down in a supposedly surefire strike. In a way, that was more difficult than simply taking her life and it was pure humiliation for the one on the receiving end.

“Damn you. Doing that in a serious battle is as infantilizing as patting me on the head!”

At this point, the kunoichi with a red hair extension noticed something was wrong. This was too much for an ordinary person to accomplish. Predicting the path of her and Suiren’s blades was impressive enough, but why was his kunai not captured by the Lorentz force? The lines of guiding magnetism and electromagnetism filled the space in a complex marble pattern and it would take knowing that like the back of your hand to pull off what he did.

But that was as far as her thoughts got.

The bottom of a Fierce Fang, where the instant nitrogen foam cartridge was inserted, struck her on the back of the head. The blow to her central nerves led to a pause. The light in her eyes faded in less than a second.

Her throat trembled irregularly and the air burst from her lungs.

Aim for a weak point and you could knock someone out even in a bulletproof spider silk ninja outfit. Even if you were a washed-up ninja whose back felt odd at 5kg and exploded with pain at 10kg.

“…”

He approached Shirazaya Suiren in the same way.

Those twins were meant to work as a pair, so they were far too fragile with one of the wings broken.

“Sorry.”

“Gh!?”

After a dull sound of impact, Suiren doubled over.

But she managed to stay on her feet for a moment.

“The bolts…in your spine? Yes, that explains it. You could feel the tug on the metal in your body, so you could read the electromagnetism.”

But only for a moment.

After another dull sound of impact, she dropped down.

With a new Fierce Fang in both hands, he faced his final foes.

This time, it really was only twintails Kuhou Ouka with her undeveloped figure and red ringlet curls Hanasawa Bara with her sexy figure.

But taking out the twins had removed the interference.

With a solid thunk, Ouka returned her bent gun to normal.

Their group of four was not complete, but Ouka and Bara were excellent partners who could draw out each other’s power more than if they fought alone. And the purity of their combat had returned. Sugiyado Souha would be chewed up and spat out if he challenged them head on.

Yes.

If he did that.

“Ha…ha ha.”

Someone could be heard kicking off the column directly above.

(There he is.)

Sugiyado smiled in his heart, but the poor puppet had no way of noticing that.

It was the faceless ninja who had worn a gasmask before.

It was the assassin who had supposedly been stuffed in a large coin locker.

“You dumbass!! Never take your eyes off a pro ninja until you’ve delivered the killing blow!!”

“Welcome, fool. You’re right on time.”

If he had not wanted this, he would have killed the boy or knocked him unconscious. Why did the boy not realize that? Apparently even pros had a hard time breaking the bad habit of wanting to believe the convenient lies.

Just like Sugiyado Souha had when he had not noticed that his own students were rebelling.

The beautiful boy in a leather bodysuit truly caught Ouka and Bara off guard when he jumped in from above. After all, they had never even noticed that they and the Shogunate spy twins had nearly been slaughtered by PCB9.

And you could not plan around something you had never imagined.

After finally getting back on their feet, slender Ouka and curvy Bara were tripped up once more.

They were thrown into a three-way brawl without any time to prepare.

A storm of steel raged.

First, the beautiful boy wanted to have the upper hand over Sugiyado, so he tried to take the students hostage. However, that only led to the instructor’s air-pressure kunai roaring out and knocking the boy away. Redheaded ringlet curls Hanasawa Bara was caught in the blast, knocked onto her stomach, and squashed beneath the boy’s weight. Her large breasts squished softly between her body and the floor. The 18 coilgun launch tubes in her hair could not aim while similarly squished by her body.

“Sen-”

“Go to sleep, Bara.”

When he used a blow from the bottom of a kunai to send a nonlethal impact to the back of her neck, she went limp.

That left just one – Kuhou Ouka.

“!?”

“!”

The air was sliced through.

She raised Midnight Tempest and he raised a Fierce Fang, but they were too close together. He was already close enough to hug her. When it was time to use the bayonet, Midnight Tempest functioned more like a spear, so this range was better suited for the kunai.

He jammed the tip of the blade into the gap between the vertically-stacked barrels and used the nitrogen to pry them apart until they dully snapped.

When speed mattered more than weight, he could make good use of his body with three bolts in the spine and springs in the knees.

“We…”

The pieces of the hunting gun fell to the floor.

It had truly been one-on-one in the end there, but Sugiyado had still pushed through. Something escaped Ouka’s trembling lips while she showed off her growing figure with that white sleeveless kimono top and front and back skirt.

She sounded like she was enraged with the absurd violence, but also like she had seen the thing she had so longed to see.

“We only wanted to help you…even a little bit.”

“Thank you.”

In this Sugiyado Souha was entirely honest.

But then he reversed the hand holding the opened Fierce Fang and said more.

“But you still have much to learn.”

The bottom of the kunai roared over like a hammer.

With a dull thud, it knocked the girl unconscious.

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