Editing Cute Kunoichis:Volume1 Chapter6 (section)

===7: What I Wanted to Teach You===

Oniyuri could do nothing while she fell.

Her freedom of flight had been taken from her. Out in the open air, heating her surroundings with Divine Decree could not create new lava. She may have been able to lift up the existing lava from the ground, but it was too far away to stop Sugiyado Souha as he tried to cross blades with her right this instant.

Nevertheless.

Her wings had been taken from her, but in something like a magic trick, she pulled a standard 30cm dagger from her risqué surgical gown of a ninja outfit. Their weapons clashed a total of 6 times.

She really was a genius and the strongest in everything she did.

“Ha ha.”

She was unable to fight the earth’s gravity and fell toward the carpet of boiling lava below, but she laughed all the while. Her hair whipped around her and she alluringly licked her lips.

“Ah ha ha!! Incredible! Only you could keep up with me like this! Only you could speak with me like this! Yes, yes. I have never felt so fulfilled. It’s fun. So much fun!!”

If not for the speed of her fall, she might have clapped her hands together and held her sides as she laughed.

But Sugiyado Souha was not laughing.

“Hey, Oniyuri,” he said. “A truly happy person has more than just fun and they don’t push away everything else. We can call ourselves happy because we have overcome the hard times by working together with others.”

In that instant, he saw her expression silently but undeniably collapse. She finally had the look of a girl her age. Or so it looked to him.

“That’s more like it.”

She may have already known this.

She may have known it, but she had not had anyone to ask for help and was forced to continue on the only path she had. Because she was the strongest and a genius, turning back may not have been an option for her.

“You look much more human and pretty like that, Oniyuri.”

That was why he felt the way he did.

Yes, she had once slashed him in the back and he still carried the effects of that with him. Yes, she had bitten at the hand held out to help her and cruelly betrayed him. Yes, she possessed a soul that actively chose to trample on her own hope.

But when he had seen the way she lived her life, he had wanted to save her.

He had wanted to tell her she could live her life without following that path that was like walking on broken glass.

That was all he had wanted, and he was dead set on pulling it off.

Strength gathered in the hand holding Salvation & Punishment.

He suppressed the fear of falling into the abyss with her.

And he looked straight at her.

This was not an enemy to defeat. This was not an evil to be slain. She had simply strayed from the path and fallen into the mud without ever being taught how to find her way back.

So.

In that case.

“Isn’t this enough, Oniyuri?”

“Kh.”

“I will teach you everything you should have been taught in the first place! So stop here!! You can’t make any progress without first owning up to what you’ve done wrong!!”

He would catch her.

No matter how many times she fell, he would stay with her until she returned to the path she was originally meant to walk. He would work at it until she could do it.

Seeing her had made him want to be that kind of person.

And that was why he had become an instructor.

So he could not forget that here. No matter how many bolts he had in his spine and no matter what had replaced his torn ligaments, he could not forget that. He could not!!

“Gh!?”

With the seventh slash, her dagger finally came to a stop. His ninja sword had landed a solid blow on it. But that was not his only weapon.

He had the scabbard.

He spun it from his hip to push up the bottom end like a seesaw and it contacted the side of her dagger. The instant nitrogen foam burst out and the fearsome pile driver slammed into the side of the dagger’s blade, shattering it. The hand holding the remaining haft was knocked outwards and the kunoichi’s body arched backwards.

She was entirely defenseless now.

This was his first and last chance to get a unilateral attack in on her.

The boy reversed his ninja sword in front of the unarmed girl.

He would end it with his eighth attack.

[[Image:Kunoichis_v01_BW10.jpg|thumb]]

He knew exactly what to aim for.

Her form-fitting cutting-edge ninja outfit used a spider web structure and her odd additions to that looked like an ancient queen’s dress or a surgical gown. That outfit’s defenses could stop a rifle bullet, but he ignored all of that while holding Salvation & Punishment in both hands and stabbing it toward her stomach.

It did not pierce through, but its weight could not be ignored.

This was a mass of well-forged tungsten steel, so the impact it provided had to be greater than a blow from a boxer.

“Oniyuri, this is your first lesson.”

He ignored the pain in his back as he raised his voice.

If he could find victory here, he did not care what happened to his breaking body. Some fights in life were simply that important.

So…

“I will teach you how to lose! And how to accept that defeat!!”

With a great roar of impact, Oniyuri doubled over, her fingertips went limp, and the artificial madness in her eyes faded away.

<noinclude>
{| border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" style="margin: 1em 1em 1em 0; background: #f9f9f9; border: 1px #aaaaaa solid; padding: 0.2em; border-collapse: collapse;"
|-
| Back to [[Cute_Kunoichis:Volume1_Chapter5|Chapter 5]]
| Return to [[Cute_Kunoichis|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[Cute_Kunoichis:Volume1_Epilogue|Epilogue]]
|-
|}
</noinclude>