2.16: A Death Blossom of Legs and PantiesAika snatched my card straight from my trembling hand with the speed of a teacher confiscating contraband.

  She stared at the card… then at me… then at the card again.

  Her eyebrow twitched.

  Her jaw twitched.

  Her entire soul twitched.

  “Damn it,” she hissed through gritted teeth. “... But I STILL think you’re a yōkai in disguise!”

  She stomped very hard, mimicking Rui’s full oni-mode tantrums perfectly. Then she threw My Number card onto the floor.

  Before I could scramble to grab it, Ume bent gracefully, fshing the crevice between her breasts at me while scooping it up between two delicate fingers.

  Aika froze mid-huff.

  Rui giggled behind one hand, her eyes sparkling viciously.“Ehehehehe~ If she WERE a yōkai in disguise, you wouldn’t see her at all, baka. Too bad you can’t see my entire harem. You’d eat your heart out if you could.”

  Aika snapped her gaze back and forth between us… me, Rui, me again… her expression warping through denial, suspicion, and an outright existential crisis. Finally she inhaled sharply, as if steeling herself against all of the absurdity.

  Natalia-sama tapped her chin, smiling with polite venom. “They’re probably Nuppeppō, Shikome, Nigawarai, or Keukegen.”

  Ume’s lips curved in wicked amusement.

  Akuchi, however, snapped.

  Her fur bristled, and she bared her teeth…

  … and then she promptly transformed into a Keukegen.

  In a poof of shimmering fur and spite, she shrank into a small, dog-like yōkai made entirely of long, dirty, tangled hair. A walking mop of curses. A dust-bunny from hell.

  Then she charged.

  The floorboards rattled like the approach of a demon-possessed washing machine.

  Aika SQUEAKED and hopped onto one foot, her face twisting in revulsion as though she was surrounded with dancing, menacing rats.

  “NOPE—NOPE—NOPE—NOPE—!!!” she yelped, hopping backwards as though the shaking floorboards had turned into hot coals.

  “I hate her. I hate her. I hate her…” Akuchi chanted in an increasingly demonic register as she circled, her fur rippling like cursed seaweed.

  “I’ll make her sick! I’ll make her so unlucky she trips on her own FEET for the rest of her LIFE! I hate her—!!!”

  Her voice was so dark and cursed that I shivered and flinched away.

  Aika shrieked, “WHAT IS GOING ON?!”She was hopping like someone trying to avoid stepping on fast-moving cockroaches that she couldn't see.

  Rui cackled, wriggling her fingers like a witch casting hexes. “You made Akuchi really angry, idiot! Never call a vain woman ugly. Even YOU should know THAT much.”

  Aika’s face stiffened with a mixture of disgust and confusion, as she hopped from one foot to the other, the floor continuing to tremble beneath her. Akuchi’s antics continued to rattle the floorboards. She couldn’t not notice all the shaking, the definitely-not-normal vibrations in the floor.

  And then she gritted her teeth, dropped into a low stance, and unleashed a flurry of kicks with startling athleticism.

  Her skirt snapped upward with every strike.And every time it did, we all saw everything.

  The clean white curve of her sparkling white panties hugging her hips.The precise contour where fabric met skin, revealing her little cleft with each movement, fshing in sharp little arcs of motion that made my ears go hot.

  She kicked like her life depended on it.

  Wide, high and completely reckless.

  Every kick exposed her thighs, her hips, the faint crease where her lower body met her torso. Her skirt fluttered uselessly, offering zero protection from scrutiny, gravity, her velocity, or the ws of fanservice.

  My breath hitched, my cheeks burning.

  Beside me, Ume pressed a hand to her mouth and sighed like a woman beholding a divine work of art.

  “Mmm… she’s very cute,” Ume murmured, her cheeks pink, her eyes sparkling. “I wish I could glomp her…”

  Rui snapped her head toward her with the expression of a jealous chihuahua ready to bite someone’s ankles. “MEH! Aika’s a TOTAL baka! She’s not all that!” Rui barked, arms crossed under her chest with enough force to make it very pin that she didn’t have much in the way of breasts. “How dare you look at my useless sister like that?!”

  I couldn’t help looking either.Ume only giggled and nudged me gently in the ribs almost like a bro.She looked at Rui. “Come on, RuiRui. Your sister is really funny and sexy.~”

  “What about me?” Rui whined.

  “A special different kind of sex appeal.” Ume winked, putting her arms around Rui and rubbing her face against Rui's.

  Rui blushed, slightly mollified.

  Meanwhile Akuchi, still in full Keukegen hair-demon rage, dodged each of Aika’s kicks with infuriating ease.

  Until…

  SMACK

  She got lucky. One accidentally well-pced heel collided squarely with Akuchi’s face mid-dodge, somehow unching the hairy yōkai across the room like the cursed mop she was fired from a catapult.

  POOF

  “What!!!!???” Akuchi screeched, wiping a tiny, dramatic trail of blood coming from her nose. “THAT HURT, YOU BITCH!!!”

  POOF

  Fueled by righteous fury, she charged again… spinning like a lethal lint tornado, before dissolving into a slick puddle of slime right under Aika’s feet.

  “SLIP!!!” Akuchi screeched.

  Aika, still kicking wildly, didn’t even notice this transformation.

  I marveled at that one lucky hit, unsure about how Akuchi had gotten struck.

  Even so, she kept kicking madly into the air, unable to recognize that Akuchi wasn’t doing very much right now.

  She was perfectly pying the part of a very embarrassed and annoyed puddle of slime that Aika wouldn’t acknowledge, practically break dancing in her substance with none of her slime clinging to her body.

  Finally after a while, Aika struck out with one more stunning high kick…

  … and then…

  She flipped forward…

  … and crashed down with her butt arched high in the air, her skirt fully flipped over her lower back.

  Her panties…

  …that perfect white cotton with the delicate fit hugging her backside’s curves… were on full dispy. Every contour, every soft crease, every subtle line visible under the fabric. Her hips had a graceful, youthful shape. Her butt practically glowed with health and sensual energy.

  The whole room froze.

  Ume squealed and covered her mouth, her eyes sparkling. “She’s so fun. I can’t help loving her!~”

  “No!!!!!” Rui moaned, grabbing Ume’s breasts.

  “Uhn!~” Ume blushed, giggling. “I’m sowwy for being so unfaithful!~”

  Akuchi, still a sulking puddle of slime, continued to mutter dark curses at Aika underneath her panting form.

  Natalia-sama turned away in a flustered hurry, her shoulders shaking as she tried not to ugh.

  As for me…

  I just stared for a mortifying moment, her face burning so hot I thought steam might come out of my ears.

  …

  …

  Finally, I stepped forward to shake her shoulder. “Um… are you okay…?” I whispered.

  Aika was breathing hard, her face flushed in pure exertion.

  “Don’t worry, Akuchi,” I said softly, gncing down at the grumbling puddle of Akuchi slime pooled beneath Aika. “You… um… definitely got her.”

  She extended one trembling index finger toward me, still bent forward, her shoulders rising and falling with her heavy breaths. Her skirt, still rumpled from its spectacur reveal, her butt still high in the air. Her skirt clung askew around her waist.

  She looked entirely too sexy like this for me to handle.

  Finally, she lifted her head.

  Her chocote-brown eyes locked onto mine with bzing fury.

  “I don’t need the succor of my enemy! Get your filthy hands off me!” Aika snapped, her voice sharp enough to cut tiles.

  I flinched and scrambled back a step, my hands up in surrender.

  “What are you even talking about?” I protested, my cheeks burning. “You’re Rui’s sister. And we’re… um... practically family now. You're not my enemy—”

  “SHUT UP!” Aika barked, her whole upper body snapping upright with a whipcrack of indignation.

  She yanked her skirt down properly, smoothed the fabric of her camisole over her abs, sweeping her hair back into order and rose with the poise of someone refusing to acknowledge that she’d just dispyed her underwear to an entire room of people.

  And then… without missing a beat, she dropped into a sharp fighting stance.

  “Forget what you saw.” She gritted her teeth.

  Her stance showed off her toned legs to advantage, her fred hips. She gave off the kind of aggressive athleticism that practically radiated heat.

  “No matter what Rui and the Yōkai Council have pulled here,” Aika growled, “I won’t accept you as family.”

  Her gre sharpened into a bde.

  “You’re a fraudulent successor.”Her fists tightened.“Prove to me you’re worthy of carrying on MY father’s legacy!”

  Just like that—she lunged.

  With a blur of motion, kicks whipping through the air, her skirt snapping dangerously high as she came at me with real killing intent. Each of her kicks showed off her panties in tiny glimpses.

  “AIKA—!!” Rui shrieked behind her with her jaw dropped.

  For one stunned heartbeat Rui didn’t move…

  Then reality hit her.

  “OH HELL NO—DON’T YOU HURT MY GIRLFRIEND!” Rui roared, sprinting toward her desk and diving for her baseball bat like the feral chibi oni she was, going to war.“I’ll help, Susu! Stay alive until I get Excalibur!!”

  Aika reached me.

  I shrieked.

  Rui shrieked louder.

  Ume's shriek was prettier.

  Akuchi yipped and dove under Rui’s kotatsu like a roach escaping the chaos.

  I barely twisted aside as Aika’s kick sliced through the air where my head had just been. Her heel clipped a potted pnt instead. She sent dirt exploding across the tatami.

  “MY FICUS!” Rui howled, her eyes bzing red. “YOU BITCH—!” She lifted her bat menacingly.

  Aika didn’t even acknowledge her sister’s indignation. She ran off and grabbed Rui’s ceramic teapot off the kitchenette’s counter, and threw it at my face.

  “WHA—?!”

  I ducked with a strangled cry.

  Natalia-sama jumped to catch the pot, mortified.

  The teapot shattered against the wall and sprayed cold leftover tea across the floor.

  “That was a very lovely pot… handmade… I ordered it specially for her as a gift…” Natalia brandished her hands like cws and growled but sighed, facepalming, knowing how futile attacking Aika would be.

  Ume lifted her feet and squeaked as a puddle of tea spread under her shoes, “This is no way to treat even old tea. I’ll make more once this is all over.”

  Even the power of a ninetails kitsune might be nothing against Aika’s strange spiritual insensitivity. It was as though she was made out of some kind of spiritual teflon.

  “Okay…” Natalia-sama sniffled. “It’s just things. We can just repce whatever she breaks.”

  Rui made a strangled noise like a kettle forced to swallow its own lid. “It’s not that SIMPLE, Natalia! Damn it Aika! Don’t TOUCH.MY.STUFF!”

  “No way,” Aika said, grabbing one of Rui’s anime Blu-ray box sets off the shelf. She hurled it like a shuriken at me.

  “THAT ONE IS A LIMITED EDITION YURI MASTERPIECE!!!” Rui screamed, diving to save it, dropping her bat in the process.

  She failed.

  The box hit me, ricocheting off my face, and rebounded to smack Rui in the forehead with a dull bonk.

  We both colpsed on the floor.

  “WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT, YOU MANIAC?!” Rui wailed.

  “To test her reflexes,” Aika said sweetly, already grabbing a broom like it was a bo staff.

  “Reflexes?!” I yelped, scrambling up. “I’m not—WHOA—”

  She swung the broom at my ankles.

  I hopped and filed, gasping as I danced furiously as she thrust, sweeping the broom at me.

  Rui, rose, fuming with rage. She retrieved her Excalibur baseball bat off the floor, and instead of attacking Aika, she pointed her bat right at me. “Susu, STOP BEING SUCH A LOSER AND FIGHT BACK!”

  “I’M TRYING!”

  Aika twirled the broom once. “Are you?” she asked, deadpan. “Because this… whatever this filing of yours is supposed to be… it isn’t worthy of my father’s legacy. It isn’t worthy of my family name.”

  That hurt.

  Like emotionally.Deeply spiritually.And even physically…

  …

  … because she threw the broom at me and struck me in the face again, the bristles leaving red marks, and a little trickle of blood leaking down to my upper lip.

  “OW!!!” I yelled my teeth clenching.

  “You want my legacy, impostor? You want to steal my destiny from me? Fucking fight for it! I’m going to absolutely trash you.”