"Hmph. Take a good look. Soon you'll never see them again."
Thousand Faces was thoroughly pleased with himself. Sure, he'd leaned on a little outside help, but now that he had seized this system's permissions, Yanagi Tsukishiro and the rest of them were nothing but fish on his chopping block.
"Is that so? I don't think I agree." Watching Hoshimi Miyabi and the others struggle through a losing fight, Yanagi Tsukishiro let a knowing smile curl at the corner of her mouth. And then, as if in answer to her, every one of them on the screen erupted with staggering power and put down their own data copies to the last.
"What? How is that possible?"
Thousand Faces couldn't make sense of it. How could this bunch dispose of opponents with combat strength identical to their own so quickly?
"It's a simple enough principle. The data you collected isn't all of us."
Yanagi Tsukishiro pushed her glasses up. She'd worked it out back while she was fighting her own copy.
What those copies reproduced was only the combat power the team had shown in their past battles against Ethereals, nothing more.
"Tell me, does anyone use their full strength when they're playing a game?"
Be fair about it: this was hardly a real battlefield. For professionals like Yanagi Tsukishiro and her colleagues, virtual data barely counted as a warm-up.
"Damn you! How dare you humiliate me like this!"
There was no telling what Thousand Faces had cooked up inside his own skull, but Yanagi Tsukishiro knew one thing. He was rattled now.
"All right, that's enough chatter. Send us out, right now, and surrender quietly. I'll do my best to save you a bowl of pork cutlet rice for your interrogation, one with the cutlet still on it, before Soukaku gets to it."
Yanagi Tsukishiro raised her naginata and walked straight at Thousand Faces, but his face cooled again in a hurry.
"Hmph, you wish! Once I've taken complete control of this system's permissions, whether you live or die will be one word from me! I am the god of this world!"
Having spat out that piece of arrogance, Thousand Faces drew himself up, turned, and ran.
"Wait! You little—"
"Hmph! A smart man doesn't take a beating he can dodge! Once this place is fully mine, every last one of you will be a loser at my feet!"
Thousand Faces really did bolt. Yanagi Tsukishiro hadn't expected a swaggerer like that to pull something so undignified, and she went after him at once.
She didn't get two steps. The scene in front of her shifted in an instant, and she was standing in the earlier setting again.
"Yanagi, you're back."
"Tsukishiro, what's going on!"
"Sis Yanagi!"
Yanagi Tsukishiro looked the place over. Her companions stood before her once more.
But wary as she was, she didn't say a word to them. She studied them instead, her gaze weighing each one.
"Section Chief Miyabi, is the post-event meeting report ready?"
"…? You're asking me that? Of course it is."
A flash of steel. Hoshimi Miyabi's head came off her shoulders, clean and neat.
No blood fountained from the stump. What shone there instead was a flickering, mosaic-like light, the glow that stood for data.
"Sis Yanagi! What are you doing!"
"Tsukishiro, you—!"
The pair beside her didn't understand. They pulled out their weapons, ready to avenge Hoshimi Miyabi, and Yanagi Tsukishiro's face never changed. She questioned them with the same cool composure.
"Mr. Asaba, have you written tonight's duty report? Soukaku, do you remember what you had this morning?"
"I, uh, that's…"
Two more strokes. Asaba Harumasa was quicker on the draw and blocked her attack, but Soukaku's small head was already sailing through the air, disbelief written all over her face.
"Tsukishiro! Have you lost your mind!"
"Answer my question, Mr. Asaba! Have you written the duty report!"
"Lunatic! You've gone mad!"
Asaba Harumasa's face twisted into something ugly, and his movements against her came a beat too slow. One look was all Yanagi Tsukishiro needed to catch it.
"I knew it. You're a fake as well. Damn you, Thousand Faces, impersonating my teammates!"
Fury cut across Yanagi Tsukishiro's face. When she had taken the heads of Hoshimi Miyabi and Soukaku a moment ago, knowing they were counterfeit hadn't spared her the pain of it.
So the anger in her now ran hot indeed.
"Tch!"
Hearing her name what he truly was, Asaba Harumasa, or rather Thousand Faces, dropped the act.
"So you know. What difference does it make? Right now every one of your so-called companions has an impostor just like me standing at their side. You may have seen through it, but they very likely won't."
"Is that so? I wouldn't be too sure."
Yanagi Tsukishiro's expression stayed grim, but the confidence in the set of her brow sent a tremor through Thousand Faces.
He checked for signs of the others without thinking, and saw each of them see through the truth in turn and cut down the impostors beside them.
Hoshimi Miyabi relied on a martial artist's instinct. Harumasa relied on his sharp eye for detail. As for Soukaku, she was the slowest of them, but a few moments near the fake was all she needed. Something about the feeling was different from before, and she knew.
Yanagi Tsukishiro smiled at that. "The bond between us isn't something a slapdash disguise like yours can slip past."
And with that, one stroke took Thousand Faces' head off.
Even then, the head wearing Asaba Harumasa's face refused to go quiet.
"Damn you, Anti-Air Section Six! I will never let this go!"
"Whatever it is you mean to do, we'll stop you."
Yanagi Tsukishiro put her weapon away and spoke to the ruined thing on the ground, her voice heavy and certain.
Thousand Faces heard that and laughed, too enraged for anything else.
"You think this means you're getting out? Let me tell you, I'll have complete control of this place soon, and when I do, every one of you dies!"
Yanagi Tsukishiro met his bluster without so much as a ripple of feeling. She even had it in her to mock him.
"Since you say 'soon,' that means you don't have full control of this system yet. And if soon is the best you can do, then we'll be faster. Go wash your neck and wait for us."
With that, she brought her heel down and crushed the skull, then set about finding some trace of Hoshimi Miyabi and the others.
She never got the chance to act. The space around her buckled and warped, and her awareness dropped away into pitch darkness.
"Sometimes being too clever isn't such a good thing."
Those were the words at her ear in the moment before consciousness left her entirely.
When she woke again, she found she was out of the virtual system and back inside the HIA Club.
____
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