After a short scuffle, the Anti-Air Section Six squad finally made it inside the building.
Before anyone could catch their breath, though, Hoshimi Miyabi drew her blade and leveled the point right between Yanagi Tsukishiro's eyes.
"Question. Are you the real Yanagi Tsukishiro?"
Neither of the other two lifted a finger at Miyabi's strange behavior. After the incident with the duplicates Thousand Faces had cooked up earlier, a little caution never hurt.
"Section Chief, is the document report for this afternoon's meeting ready?"
"Uh, that…"
"Mr. Asaba, have you written tonight's duty report?"
"Er, I…"
"Soukaku, do you remember what you ate this morning?"
"Ah, this morning I had — I had steamed egg!"
One moment it had been Miyabi grilling Yanagi at swordpoint. Three questions later, the whole arrangement had flipped on its head.
"Okay, she's got to be the real Deputy Section Chief. Nobody else nags like somebody's mother and makes you feel that terrible about yourself."
"So sorry for sounding like somebody's mother."
Yanagi nudged her glasses back up her nose. Harumasa's jab didn't seem to anger her much — she merely made a mental note to hand him a few extra shifts once this incident was over.
Nothing worth making a fuss about.
"All right, that's enough chatter. I have something important to tell you."
Yanagi steered the conversation back on course and laid out the situation for them.
"So that's how it is. Which means what we do now is keep that guy's attention on us, right?"
Harumasa snapped his fingers, putting his thumb on the heart of it at once.
"In that case, is it really a good idea for us to keep sitting in here?" Miyabi said. If they hid from the fight indoors, the other side would never feel any pressure.
"It's fine. Our opponent doesn't have that kind of patience."
Bang, bang, bang!
The words had barely left Yanagi's mouth when a clattering racket broke out beyond the doors.
A pack of Ethereals was hammering on the glass doors, and every blow landed as if against a wall of air. The glass, which by rights should have shattered, did nothing but ripple.
"Just like a safe house in a game, huh. Those Ethereals can't get in at all."
Asaba Harumasa looked completely at ease. The earlier fight had run him ragged, and this was a perfect chance to rest.
But before he could unwind, the Ethereals' pounding forced a visible crack into that supposedly unbreakable wall of air, and Harumasa nearly jumped out of his skin.
"Whoa! Come on, weren't we promised a safe house?"
Yanagi watched him yelp and flail with perfect composure.
"Don't get careless. The enemy is still seizing more of the system's permissions, and we need to pull attention away for the Proxy and the others."
In truth, the sight in front of her was cause for cheer, because it meant the other side still hadn't caught wind of what Belle and Little Geno were up to.
And just as Yanagi was about to wave the other three out to trade blows with the Ethereals and buy some time—
—the Ethereals swarming the building suddenly stopped. They gave up on the doors entirely and turned back the way they had come.
"What's happening? Why are they all running off again?"
Something about it was wrong. Yanagi left Harumasa's question hanging and climbed to the second floor, where the higher vantage let her watch farther out and from relative safety.
"What is that…"
She narrowed her eyes and stared. Somewhere in the Ethereal horde not far off, something odd seemed to have mixed itself in.
That "something" looked hemmed in on all sides, yet Ethereals kept sailing through the air in droves, bursting into heaps of data fragments as they went.
"What in the world is it? It's tiny… is that a Bangboo?"
The others had come up after her, and they saw it too — that distant spectacle best described as Ethereal fireworks.
"It really is a Bangboo. Who knew a Bangboo could fight like that."
Harumasa shaded his eyes with one hand and gawked, while beside him Miyabi was seeing rather more.
"Those techniques, that movement — why do they look so familiar?"
Short arms and stubby legs aside, a person's experience and muscle memory never lie. Miyabi had seen those techniques before, on someone.
The crude sort. The kind that worked anyway.
"That looks like… Geno? But why would he be a Bangboo?"
Miyabi's remark jogged Yanagi's memory: Geno had come in with her as well. Except, as she recalled, Geno hadn't been wearing a Bangboo body.
"What on earth is going on?"
Yanagi asked the question that cut to the soul of it — and it was precisely what Geno wanted to know.
"Damn you, Little Geno! Messing with me at a time like this (>皿<)!!"
Exactly as Anti-Air Section Six had guessed, the little figure whirling tiny fists and stumpy legs through the crowd was Geno himself.
After the Leap of Faith had flattened him into a meat patty, Geno had reconnected. He respawned in the same place as before, but the instant he arrived he noticed his altitude had undergone a subtle change.
"Why am I so short, un-na? Wait. Why am I tacking un-na onto the end of my sentences too, un-na?"
He raised his hands in front of his face in disbelief. Two absurdly stubby paws, without so much as fingers on them.
Then he looked down at his little feet. Right — they say a figure so magnificent you can't see your own feet is the mark of a peerless beauty, so by that measure this Little Bangboo body still had a certain lingering charm… like hell it did!
Why had he turned into a Bangboo all of a sudden, dammit!
Then he remembered the faintly amused little smile Little Geno had worn right before he logged in.
Don't ask how Geno read amusement off a Bangboo's face. He just did!
Thinking it over now, this had to be Little Geno getting even for the Bangboo body Geno had prepared for him.
"Damn you, Little Geno! Just wait till I get out of here!"
He ground his teeth — not that this build came with teeth — and soon enough he found a fresh outlet for his temper. A pack of snarling, clawing Ethereals was closing in around him.
"Perfect. You bastards can work off my bad mood for me! Sword, come!"
Little Bangboo Geno swept out one mighty hand — one tiny hand, rather — and a cross-shaped longsword answered the call.
Luckily, while Little Geno had rewritten Geno's body data, he hadn't touched the ability data.
The trouble was that the longsword's first act upon appearing wasn't to cut down an enemy. It clocked Geno instead.
"Ow! That hurt! I forgot I'm in a Bangboo body now — the sword's a little on the big side."
Beaned on the head by a weapon taller than he was, Geno shrank the blade down with a resigned sigh, and only then went charging into the Ethereal horde.
____
⚡ BONUS CHAPTER MILESTONES
✍️ 5 REVIEWS = +1 Bonus Chapter 💎 100 POWER STONES = +1 Bonus Chapter 🔥 P@TREON (Walnut-chan): Read +40 chapters ahead & unlock 60+ exclusive stories!
🔥 New history: Mushoku tensei: Speed Run to kill Hitogami — posted on The_Mikudayo