"Harumasa!"
Seeing Asaba Harumasa run through by the arrow, Tsukishiro Yanagi and Soukaku moved at once.
The bladed banner and the sword came one after the other, and neither so much as scratched Thousand Faces. He blocked them both.
"No good! No good! Right now I'm invincible!"
As he spoke, Thousand Faces produced a broad fan, and one sweep of his hand sent a freezing wind laced with frost and snow howling out, driving the two of them back.
Yanagi Tsukishiro had already read the situation. All she could do was pull Soukaku back with her and retreat.
Pinned to the ground, Harumasa watched Thousand Faces switch styles again, and it clicked.
"This guy's using nothing but our own moves."
Hoshimi Miyabi's swordsmanship. Asaba Harumasa's archery. Soukaku's frost-blade banner. Every one of them a technique the squad had made its own.
"Hmph. How does it feel, losing to your own techniques?"
Thousand Faces was thoroughly pleased with himself. This was exactly the effect he had wanted. All the data he had gathered on Hoshimi Miyabi and the rest had been kneaded together into one thing, and it let him do more than borrow their moves. It made him immune to their attacks as well.
After all, everything Hoshimi Miyabi and the others had mastered, he had already learned.
"The only exception is you, Yanagi Tsukishiro. I'm missing your data, true enough. But even you can't beat three of your own colleagues fighting together, can you?"
Thousand Faces raised the blade and leveled it at Yanagi Tsukishiro once more. The one variable he had feared most could do nothing now but stand there and watch him crush every last one of them.
Was there anything sweeter than this?
Having seized full authority over this virtual world, Thousand Faces was, without question, a genuinely invincible existence.
"Is that so? I disagree. If anything, thank you for the explanation. Now I know how to beat you."
"Oh? You think you can beat me? Don't make me la- gaaah!!!"
Yanagi Tsukishiro still wore that unruffled look, as if every piece of this were already sitting in the palm of her hand, and it put a sour taste in his mouth.
He opened with a sneer, but the words never finished. Pain split the top of his skull, and then a massive blade appeared right in front of his face.
That was where the headache had come from.
"Oh, come ON! >:( That didn't kill him either?! You've got one stubborn grip on life, you jerk!"
The greatsword belonged to Geno, of course. While Yanagi Tsukishiro and the others held Thousand Faces' attention, he had slipped around behind him and driven the blade clean through Thousand Faces' head. The point now jutted out from between his lips, like some kind of street-corner sideshow act.
"You wretch! A sneak attack! Have you people no shame at all!"
"You're the last one on this planet with the right to say that, you creep!"
Geno laughed, furious. As if Thousand Faces hadn't pulled every dirty trick and ambush in the book.
And now he was the one hollering about sneak attacks. The crook crying thief.
Geno didn't ease up for a second. He bore down on the hilt, forcing the edge lower, meaning to split Thousand Faces into two Five Hundred Faces.
But Thousand Faces wasn't about to let him have it that easy. Just as he'd said, inside this virtual world he was as good as a god.
"I'll show you what happens to those who anger a god!"
Thousand Faces' body twisted and blurred, and when it reformed he was already standing behind Geno. A huge hand shot out, seized Geno by his little ears, and hoisted him into the air.
"Crap! Hook!"
Geno thrashed with everything he had, fighting to break free, and before he could Thousand Faces hurled him away. He hit the ground hard.
The impact left him reeling, and before he could get his feet back under him, Thousand Faces stamped down and pinned him flat.
"A mere Bangboo, daring to wound the body of a god. You must be tired of living."
Thousand Faces had meant to play with Yanagi Tsukishiro and the others a while longer, but Geno's ambush had soured the whole game for him. He decided to sweep the lot of them away and be done with it.
Snap!
Thousand Faces snapped his fingers, and the space around Yanagi Tsukishiro and the others began to shudder. Then it pressed down on them, as if some enormous weight had settled over their shoulders, and they couldn't move at all.
"This is... gravity. My body... it won't move."
"Sis Yanagi... this really hurts..."
Thousand Faces drank in the sight. Anti-Air Section Six was wounded or flattened, every one of them, and he alone was left standing. What delight! What glorious relief!
"My revenge is complete at last! And now! Your bodies will belong to me as well!"
With that, Thousand Faces brought the butcher's blade down and hacked every member of Anti-Air Section Six into scraps.
Watching the shards of data scatter into the air, Thousand Faces felt like a dam had opened inside him.
"Next comes the part where I take over your bodies. You're brain-dead now, so watch from that faraway heaven of yours while I use your bodies to make a name for myself in New Eridu! Hahahahaha!"
When he had gloated his fill, Thousand Faces ground the Bangboo Geno to pieces beneath his heel, and then his figure vanished from the place, back into that mysterious space that belonged to him alone.
"All right, let's have a look. Whose should I visit first?"
He studied the bodies of Hoshimi Miyabi and the others, still sleeping out there in the real world, and found himself torn.
"Tch. Can't make up my mind. Fine, I'll start with the one I hate most."
His gaze slid over to Yanagi Tsukishiro's full, ample figure, and a grin of pure malice spread across his face.
"Once I have your body, I'll take very good care of it. In the other sense of the phrase, naturally."
Once Yanagi Tsukishiro's body was his, Thousand Faces mused, he would take it out to the most lawless corner beyond the city walls and hunt down the filthiest vagrants he could find. Whatever became of that body afterward, it wouldn't be pretty.
"Isn't that just marvelous! Such a pity I couldn't keep a piece of your mind intact. If you could watch your own body being defiled with your own eyes, it would be perfect."
Muttering away to himself, Thousand Faces got straight to work, preparing to transfer part of his consciousness into Yanagi Tsukishiro's body.
But the moment he began, something felt wrong.
"Wait? That's enough! No more is needed! Stop! Stop right now!"
To his horror, Thousand Faces found that although he had already uploaded more than enough of himself, the flow refused to stop.
Losing control like this stripped away every shred of his security. On pure instinct he grasped for the transfer, trying to shut it down, and nothing he did made the slightest difference.
"How! How is this happening! No! No!! Stop it!"
"Isn't this exactly what you wanted?"
A voice he had not expected drifted from the corner, and Thousand Faces' pupils shrank to pinpricks. He knew that voice far too well.
"Yanagi! Tsukishiro! What did you do!"
He forced the name of the person he loathed above all others out between clenched teeth. By then, there was almost nothing left of Thousand Faces' consciousness at all.
____
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