When Supernatural Battles Became Commonplace: Volume 3 E-Book

Kota Nozomi

• Herausgeber: J-Novel Club
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Serie: When Supernatural Battles Became Commonplace
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 320

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

When Supernatural Battles Became Commonplace: Volume 3

Leseprobe

Chapter 1: The Eccentricity of Himeki Chifuyu, Part Two

I feel like I probably don’t need to say this, but for the record, you can’t drop out of elementary school just because you feel like it. That’s just not how it works—it’s called compulsory education for a reason.

Speaking of dropping out, Chifuyu explained what had happened in more detail, and it all turned out to be remarkably mundane. Apparently, she’d gone up to her homeroom teacher after school the day before and told them that she wouldn’t be coming to class starting tomorrow. Her teacher said “Yeah, sure you won’t,” and she took that as an agreement.

Chifuyu...that wasn’t an agreement. That was your teacher brushing you off.

So anyway, I explained the intricacies of compulsory education and all that stuff to her, and she heaved a tiny little sigh before muttering, “Oh, okay. I guess I can’t quit school, then.”

And that’s how I ended up escorting Chifuyu all the way from my school to hers first thing in the morning. I couldn’t just leave her idling around on her own in front of a high school, could I? I’d probably end up blemishing my flawless attendance record as a result, but honestly, that was never something I’d been aiming for anyway—it just sorta happened. I’ve never been particularly obsessed with that stuff. Heck, I cut class pretty often back in middle school!

“Hey, Chifuyu?”

“Hmm?”

“Think you could give walking on your own two feet a try?” I asked, glancing over my shoulder at the little girl on my back.

Long story short: I said, “All right, we can go back to your school together,” Chifuyu said, “Carry me, then,” and the rest is history. Very confusing history, the logic of which I still haven’t quite been able to put together, but the point is, I was walking along with an elementary schooler in place of a backpack.

“Can’t.”

“And why would that be?”

“Too tired.”

Oh, she’s tired, is she? Honestly, fair enough. Nothing we can do about that. She’d used up all of her walking-to-school energy walking to a totally different school, so it was no wonder her morning stamina reserves were running on fumes. I resigned myself to the fact that I’d be making the trek for both of us and kept plodding my way toward the elementary school.

Thankfully, Chifuyu was pretty light, and her school wasn’t all that far away from mine in the first place. If I had to find something to complain about, I’d probably go with the fact that the stares from all the other students who were currently on the way to school were a little grating.

Then again, no matter how light she was and how short the walk was, I might’ve made a major miscalculation by underestimating my own lack of stamina. Plus, Chifuyu was wearing her backpack, and I had my school bag in one of my hands as well.

“W-Wait a second,” I gasped, veering off into a mostly abandoned park and setting Chifuyu down. “Just need a quick break...”

“Andou, are you okay?” she asked, sounding a little worried. On the one hand, the concern was appreciated, but on the other hand, this was all her fault in the first place, and part of me really wanted to call her out on it.

“Chifuyu...sorry, but I’m at my limit. Don’t you think it’s about time you just used World Create?” With her power, Chifuyu could create a portal—or a Gate, as I liked to call them—that would let her cover any distance in the blink of an eye. That’s why I brought her into the park. Nobody was around to see her here, and it really did feel like the right time to let her power do the hard work and take her all the way to her school.

Chifuyu, however, shook her head. “There’s lots of people in the morning. It’d be too hard to not get caught.”

Hmm. I guess popping over to our club room after school and teleporting into her school in the morning aren’t really comparable, challenge-wise. She hadn’t said it was impossible, but the risk of getting caught was too high to justify, considering we weren’t all that far away.

“Guess we’d better walk, then,” I sighed.

“Yeah.”

“But, y’know, I’m kinda about to collapse over here. Maybe we could call off the piggyback ride the rest of the way?”

“No.” She crossed her arms in a sign of unilateral rejection.

Man, seriously? I racked my mind for a way to convince her to give my poor back a rest, but before I had any decent ideas, Chifuyu puffed up her cheeks and started sorta sadly mumbling. “I like riding on your back.”

“Huh...?”

“Your back’s big, and warm, and comfy.”

“...”

“And reliable, and manly, and suuuper cool.”

“...”

“But, if you really don’t wanna carry me, that’s okay. I’m a good girl, so I won’t complain.”

“Perish the thought, my lady!” Before I even knew what I was doing, I’d spun around 180 degrees and knelt down on the spot, gesturing to my back with a spirited thumbs-up. “Climb aboard!”

Chifuyu nodded with satisfaction and hopped aboard my back. “Thanks. Andou, you really are too eas— I mean, a super nice person.”

“Oh, I’m just doing what any guy in my position would do!” I declared, springing to my feet and setting off toward the elementary school with a skip in my step.

“Good job, Andou. You have my praise,” said Chifuyu, patting me on the head as I gasped and heaved for breath. Going through a workout like that first thing in the morning was hell, sure, but Chifuyu head pats were enough to make it all worthwhile. Cuteness, after all, makes the world go round!

I finally managed to catch my breath and look up at the elementary school in front of me. Yokoi Elementary (or just Yokoi, as the locals tended to call it for short) was a perfectly normal public school, but it must’ve undergone some renovations recently. The facilities looked distinctly new and up to date.

“Chii!”

A girl sprang out from the school’s entrance, dashing over to where we were resting by the gate. She looked like she was about Chifuyu’s age, and she was around her height as well, with big, strikingly bright eyes and her hair tied up in a fashionable ponytail.

“Come on, Chii, do you realize how late you are?! I was worried about you! Ahh, and look, your ribbon’s all messy again! You’re a girl, Chii, so you have to keep yourself nice and cute! Here, let me... Okay, much better! Put Squirrely in your backpack for now, okay? The teacher will give you another lecture if you get caught carrying him around again! And that’s not even starting on...”

The little girl kept jabbering on and on as she gave Chifuyu a once-over, correcting all the sloppy little flaws in her appearance with an impressively practiced hand. Chifuyu, meanwhile, just let it happen without so much as a word of protest. It sort of felt like this whole exchange was a matter of routine for both of them.

“All right, that should do it!” The girl nodded with satisfaction at a job well done, then finally tore her eyes away from Chifuyu for long enough to notice me. “Ah! U-Umm, good morning,” she stammered.

“Yeah, morning,” I casually replied.

The girl leaned in to whisper in Chifuyu’s ear. “Hey, Chii, who is this person? Was he carrying you just a minute ago?”

“He’s Andou,” replied Chifuyu.

The girl’s eyes widened. She turned to face me again and gave me a polite bow. “Y-You’re the Andou?! I’ve heard all about you! Thank you for always taking such good care of Chii,” she said, sounding almost like she considered herself Chifuyu’s legal guardian.

“Umm, I mean, yeah, I’m Andou,” I replied. “And wait, you’ve heard all about me? Like, what sort of things have you heard?” Could it be—does she know that I’m the reincarnation of the Dark Lord Guiltia, he who ruled the demon realm with an iron fist?! If so...then she must not be allowed to leave this place alive!

“You’re part of the literary club that Chii always hangs out in, aren’t you? She tells me about you all the time!” said the girl, immediately betraying my expectations. Okay, so apparently, she hasn’t heard all about me after all.

“Let me introduce myself,” she continued. “I’m Chii’s friend, and my name is Kuki Madoka.”

I gasped. I shuddered. In the blink of an eye, I was covered in goose bumps, and my heart was pounding like a war drum. The name she spoke—her name—pierced me to my very core. Kuki? Did she just say her name...was Kuki Madoka?

“Hey...” I began, intent on confirming the suspicion that was setting my spirit aflutter. “You said your name’s Kuki? Is that written with the character for ‘nine’ as the ku and the character for ‘demon’ as the ki?”

“Yes, it is.”

“O-Okay, so then...how’s ‘Madoka’ written?”

“My given name’s written with just one character—the one for ‘circle.’”

I fell to my knees on the spot. Kuki Madoka. The sheer degree to which her name had shaken my soul was genuinely unfathomable. How could this be? How could a child like her—a little girl so undoubtedly well-behaved and diligent—be the bearer of a name like that...?

Kuki Madoka.

That is hella, hella, hella cool! Like, holy crap, that friggin’ name! It could be the name of a swordsman’s most powerful special move, completely unaltered! Like, a secret technique passed down through the generations of a bloodline that inherited their power from nine legendary demons!

You could be all “For the likes of you, the Demon of the Third Circle alone shall suffice... Fiendish beast that slumbers within my blood, devour the foe before me!” and crap! And the Ninth Circle Demon could be, like, super dangerous or something, so you’re supposed to keep it sealed away under all circumstances! But then a super strong enemy shows up, and you have to use it anyway! And then the demon goes on a rampage and threatens to devour your very being! But your friends’ voices pull you back to sanity at the very last second! Hoooly crap, this is so good!

“U-Umm, Andou?”

Ah! Whoops—simmer down, back to reality. I’d let the absolutely insane coolness of the name “Kuki Madoka” sweep me off my feet in a very literal sense and was still kneeling on the ground.

“Hey, Chii? Is this guy, you know, all right?”

“Don’t worry about him. Andou’s just a dummy.”

“Oh, okay... Jeez, high schoolers sure are scary.”

There I was, enduring the pitying gazes of a couple of elementary schoolers who seemed to consider me sub-human in the saddest sort of way. I cleared my throat, stood up, and carried on the conversation as if nothing unusual had happened whatsoever.

“Oh, Chifuyu’s friend? I see, I see!”

“Yeah. Cookie’s my friend,” agreed Chifuyu. Cookie, I assumed, was her nickname for Kuki. The sinister aura of the Nine Demons was swept away in the blink of an eye.

Man, what a shame. I’ll sure as hell be calling her Kuki, though, and pronouncing each of its syllables with all the malevolence I can muster! Maybe I’ll call her Lady Kuki? That feels like it’d fit the ambience.

“Everyone at school says that Cookie’s my mom,” continued Chifuyu.

“Your mom?” I repeated.

“N-No, don’t get the wrong idea!” shouted Kuki, frantically waving her arms in the air. “It’s just, umm...Chii’s always so laid-back about everything and always does her own thing, you know? So I just sort of end up doing all sorts of stuff for her... Ah, I’m not complaining, though! I’m totally okay with it!”

Hm-hmm. I see how it is. Kuki, in short, was more or less Chifuyu’s personal attendant. Chifuyu had always lived her life with the attitude of a blue-blooded princess, unbound by the societal norms that dictated the lives of us commoners, so she probably needed a friend like Kuki who’d be willing to take care of all her worldly affairs.

“Gotcha, gotcha! Okay then, Kuki, I’ll just go ahead and pass Chifuyu off to you. Take good care of her, okay?” I said, acting like I was Chifuyu’s dad, or older brother, or something.

“O-Of course I will!” replied Kuki, sounding unamused and looking a little sullen for some reason. “Chii’s my friend, after all! Come on, Chii, let’s get going.”

“Okay,” grunted Chifuyu.

“It was nice meeting with you, Andou. Have a nice day.”

“Bye-bye, Andou.”

The two of them vanished off into the school. It sort of felt like Kuki had gotten a little distant with me at the end there—or maybe a little curt? But I figured that that was probably just the natural reaction for an elementary school girl meeting a high school boy out of the blue.

I left the elementary school behind, walking back the way I’d come. Considering the current time, I figured that as long as I kept up a reasonably speedy pace, I might still be able to make it to my own school on time.

“Ah...” Suddenly, a thought struck me. “Now that I think about it, I never asked Chifuyu why she wanted to drop out of school, did I?” I’d been in such a hurry, it had completely slipped my mind.

Eh, who hasn’t wanted to drop out of school at least once or twice, though? Judging by her attitude about the whole thing, I couldn’t imagine there was any incredibly serious issue motivating her. I declared the case closed without sparing it another thought and rushed off to try and beat the bell.

At that point, I still hadn’t grasped the situation at all. I hadn’t picked up on Chifuyu’s motives, nor Kuki’s intentions. More than anything, though, I hadn’t appreciated how hopelessly optimistic the conclusion I’d reached really was...

Chapter 2: Super-Tennis Is Super Fun, Right?

I twisted my upper body, pulling my racket back into a ready position, then uncurled, using the rotation of my hips to swing it with all my might. The ball impacted right in the middle of the racket’s strings, streaking away in a drive shot. I felt a faint tingle in my hand—the characteristic sensation you got when you hit the ball right in the racket’s sweet spot. Needless to say, I didn’t skimp on the shot’s follow-through either.

The ball’s trajectory was sharp, and it was heading straight for the corner of my foe’s court. I pumped an internal fist. My shot had been perfect! So perfect, it was almost too good to be true! Absolutely no points deducted in terms of its speed or its course! And to top it all off, my opponent was currently off-balance on the exact opposite side of the court. No human being could possibly make it to the ball from her position in time, no matter how talented a sprinter they were. I’d won!

“Think again!”

I couldn’t believe my eyes. There, directly in the path of my unbeatable shot, stood the same girl who’d been across the court an infinitesimal fraction of a second earlier, smirking provocatively at me. She’d caught up to the ball that could not be caught—no, it was something even more astonishing than that! It was like she’d been standing there from the very beginning, racket calmly raised into a ready position! Whatever move she’d just pulled, it had been all results, no action!

Curses! How could I forget? I’m not facing just any opponent—I’m up against the sovereign ruler of time herself, Kanzaki Tomoyo! With Closed Clock, the power to stop time, on her side, there’s no such thing as an uncatchable ball! In other words, the entire court is her absolute dominion!

“But...but then, how...how the hell am I supposed to put up a decent fight?!” I wailed with rage and horror.

“Too bad for you, Andou! It’s over!”

I was facing the sort of despair you’d only feel after encountering an enemy with the power to steal your Bankai, but Tomoyo was grinning triumphantly as she brought her racket to bear! She slammed the ball right back into my court...or so I thought.Instead, the ball slammed right into the net with a pathetic little pft, then dropped to the ground. Point: me.

We stared at the ball. The silence was unbearable.

“Tomoyo. Please. You just...you just don’t hit the net in that sort of moment! What’s the point of stopping time to catch the ball if you’re just gonna whiff the shot?!” Think about all the effort I just wasted on that despairing reaction! Also, don’t try to pull off a cool finishing line if you’re about to make the most basic error in the rule book!

“G-Get off my back, okay?! Tennis is a lot harder than it looks!” shouted Tomoyo, who was blushing fiercely.

“And ‘it’s over’? Really...?”

“Ugggh! Wh-Whatever, who cares?! It was just an impulse! Lay off!”

“You could’ve tried harder than that! It’s so unoriginal!”

“That’s the part that bothers you?! Not the fact that I tried to pull off a finishing line?!”

“You gotta put your own spin on it, y’know? Like, say...‘Game, set, and you’re finished!’ or something.”

“Nobody cares about your taste when it comes to these things!” jabbed Tomoyo, ever fast on the callouts.

Anyway, you’ve probably already put this together, but we of the literary club had decided to play tennis on that particular day. We weren’t going through some summertime training arc, and we weren’t preparing for our school’s sports day or anything like that. We just sorta felt like playing tennis and ended up using our club time to do so, because why not?

A normal club would’ve had to go out into town, find a court to borrow, and rent a set of gear, but happily enough, we had a member with the ultimate power of Genesis on our side! World Create could make us rackets and balls aplenty, of course, but Chifuyu had gone above and beyond and even manifested uniforms and an entire pocket-dimension tennis court for us to play in.

Gotta say, it’s really nice having somebody with a power like that in the group! It’s like she’s walking around with a whole ROUND1 in her back pocket. That settles it—I’m adding “Boxed Elysium: The Pocket-Sized ROUND1” to Chifuyu’s list of titles!

“I gotta admit, though,” I sighed, looking down at my racket, “tennis really is pretty tough.”

Sayumi was familiar with the game and had given us a rundown of its rules and fundamentals, but for every one of those fundamentals we’d figured out, there was a mountain of them that weren’t working out at all. Neither of us were capable of hitting an overhand serve in-bounds, for one thing, and when we tried to hit a heavy return in a rally, it inevitably turned into a home run instead. It took us almost an hour just to get our rallies even remotely consistent.

“We might’ve jumped into a real match too early,” admitted Tomoyo. “Neither of us are good enough at this yet. We sure as hell don’t measure up to that, anyway,” she said, glancing over at the neighboring court where Sayumi and Hatoko were engaged in a seemingly never-ending rally. The ball sailed back and forth, bouncing off their rackets with a light pinging noise.

Dang, those two are good! They’ve got a proper rally going and everything!

“I’m not surprised about Sayumi,” Tomoyo added, “but I wasn’t expecting Hatoko to be that good at this game.”

“Oh, yeah, she was on the soft tennis club back in middle school,” I explained. Hatoko had always been astonishingly athletic. You’d think she’d be as clumsy as could be, but no, she had great reflexes and was way more coordinated than she looked. Normal tennis and soft tennis have plenty of differences, of course, but it looked like the skills she’d picked up playing one still applied pretty well to the other.

As for why Sayumi was so good at tennis...honestly, I didn’t even think to question it. I would’ve been significantly more surprised to find out that she was bad at it, really.

Eventually, the ball got caught on the net, ending the rally. Sayumi pulled out a new ball from the pocket of her skort and hit a serve.

Yes, you read that right: her skort. We were all dressed to the nines in proper tennis fashion, and that meant polo shirts and skorts for the girls. Sayumi was even wearing a visor, which made the whole ensemble look incredibly authentic. We had Chifuyu to thank for our choice of clothing, of course. The sheer number of applications for her power was seriously out of this world.

Though, all that said...I do have to wonder why people wear skorts when they play tennis. They get all, y’know, fluttery and stuff when you move, and, like...how to put it? Honestly, seeing that doesn’t excite me or turn me on or anything so much as it makes me feel uneasy. It’s like, I can’t tell if it’s all right for me to look or not!

“And just what’re you looking at?” said Tomoyo, giving me a death glare. She must’ve noticed where my eyes were glued. “Lecher.”

“Wha—why, you—n-no, I wasn’t looking! And I definitely wasn’t thinking about how great it is that they totally cover you up but make it seem like you just might be able to catch a glimpse of something!”

Then she jabbed me with her racket. Ouch. A moment later, Tomoyo seemed to realize something and grabbed the hem of her skort, glaring at me with an even sharper intensity than before and blushing all over again.

Suddenly, I felt the need to defend myself. “C-Come on, isn’t the whole point of a skort that it covers your undies even if it gets flipped?! It’s not like you’re flashing people or anything, so why bother getting embarrassed about it?!”

“You’re not exactly wrong—it does come with an underskirt and all—but that doesn’t change the fact that I don’t like getting leered at!”

Ugh. Girls are such a pain about this sort of thing. They wear risqué outfits then chew you out for having the gall to look at them. Seriously, what’s a guy supposed to do?

“Okay, then why not just wear a tracksuit?” I countered.

“Because... Well, I mean, I just sorta wanted to try wearing a real tennis outfit at least once...”

Hmm. Come to think of it, Hatoko told me that she only joined the soft tennis club because their uniforms were cute. Maybe there’s just something about tennis outfits that makes them universally appealing to girls?

“Anyway,” Tomoyo continued, “more than anything else, I don’t wanna hear you of all people judging my sense of fashion! What the hell possessed you to dress like that?”

“Huh? What’s that supposed to mean? What’s wrong with my outfit?”

Said outfit consisted of a T-shirt, a pair of shorts, and a long-sleeved tracksuit top. I hadn’t even bothered wrapping my arm with bandages or putting on a pair of fingerless gloves! There was nothing about the way I was dressed that should’ve made Tomoyo get on my case like that!

“How about the fact that you’re wearing your jacket like a cape?” Tomoyo replied, identifying the problem with incredible specificity.

“Huh? What’s wrong with that? It looks cooler like this, right?” I asked, taking a quick look at myself. Yup, definitely cool. Draping a jacket over your shoulders like a cape: hella cool, for sure. It has, like, a certain vibe, I guess? Whatever you call it, it absolutely exudes that certain something!

“That’s a look that only the captain of a powerhouse tennis club can pull off. And only in manga.”

“What? You’re kidding, right...? Do you have any idea how much effort I’ve been putting into keeping this look up?! I can barely lift my arms at all without knocking the jacket off my shoulders!”

“I was wondering why you haven’t tried to hit a single smash this whole time...”

“I thought I’d done a perfect job of putting together mundane, everyday items into a super stylish outfit too...”

“Gotta admit, it’s pretty amazing how you can draw out the chuuni potential of even the most insignificant things. You’ve gone so far past the point of reason here, I’m actually kind of impressed,” sighed Tomoyo, shaking her head. “Anyway, playing tennis while wearing your jacket like a cape’s way beyond you. Unless you’re literally Yukimura from Prince of Tennis, there’s no way you could pull that—”

“Stop,” I snapped, holding out a hand and cutting Tomoyo off.

“Wh-What...?”

“Careful about name-dropping other series like that. You can’t be that casual about jumping into a parody.”

A lengthy moment of silence ensued...

“Whaaaaaaaaaaaat?!Are! You! Kidding me?!”

...and then Tomoyo shrieked, her face painted over with an expression of pure betrayal.

“A-Are you seriously saying that?! After everything you’ve done up till now?! You?! You, of all people?!”

“I know, I know, just calm down and listen,” I said, doing my best to soothe Tomoyo’s indignant fury. I’d had this on my mind throughout the whole exercise, and it seemed like the perfect chance to explain myself. “Basically, I’m thinking we should put out a blanket ban on Prince of Tennis riffs today.”

“Why?! What could possibly justify that?!”

“Mostly, it’s that the moment we decided to do tennis, I could just tell that you were all thinking ‘Man, Andou’s totally gonna make a ton of Prince of Tennis jokes.’”

“Oh my god, have you ever considered visiting the real world every once in a while?! Nobody was thinking that!”

Hmm...or so she claims, but I know better. They were totally expecting me to call one of my shots the 108th level something-or-other, or structure a gag around the Andou Kingdom, or whatever. They have to have been expecting me to go all out on the Prince of Tennis parodies. I mean, come on, this is the long-awaited tennis chapter, for crying out loud!

But they thought wrong! Oh, how they’ve underestimated me! I knew perfectly well that they knew I’d go in that direction, so I deliberately chose not to do so! I don’t wanna do something that anyone could come up with! A life spent playing by the rules is a life wasted, and you can count me out of that! I’m all about betraying expectations, and if somebody anticipates me doing something, I always strive to rise above whatever they think they see coming!

“Always taking the road untraveled and never going with the flow—that’s me!”

“The way you get so weirdly obsessed with not letting people predict what you’re going to do is just so, so disgustingly chuuni of you, I swear...”

“So, yeah, that was kinda roundabout, but the point is if you’re gonna do a tennis manga parody, I’d say go with something other than Prince of—oh, dang, did you see how intense that shot Sayumi just hit was?! She’s the spitting image of the Red Bullet himself! Ooh, but Hatoko’s shot bounced off the net and just barely made it in! What was that move, the Royal Phoenix #1?!”

“Sorry, but I’m not keeping up with this at all!”

At around the time Tomoyo tapped out of the conversation, Sayumi and Hatoko had concluded their rally and walked over in our direction.

“Shall we change opponents?” suggested Sayumi. The rest of us quickly agreed, with the exception of Chifuyu, who had been napping in a sunny patch of the court ever since she’d used her power to make it. As such, we’d ended up with a perfect group of four for tennis. We played rock-paper-scissors to make new pairings, and I ended up squaring off against Hatoko.

“Okay, here goes, Juu!” she shouted.

“Mwa ha ha! I’ll give you a peek into the darkest nightmares of my infernal soul! Oh, and no overhand serves, okay? They’re too fast; I can’t hit ’em back.”

“Okey dokey!”

I’d whispered that last request, and Hatoko cheerfully agreed without a second thought. She could be really nice like that, sometimes. Hatoko tossed the ball into the air and thwacked it toward me with an underhand serve.

“Here goes! Firebaaall!”

Huh? “Fireball”? I had a terrible feeling, but as the ball sailed toward me, I reflexively took up a stance, prepared to return it.

And then the ball literally caught fire. I’m talking one second tennis ball, next second, fwumph, raging inferno orb. That’d be one of Over Element’s aspects: the power to control flame!

“G-Gaaaaaahhh!” I shrieked, dodging out of the way at the last second by pure instinct. Holy crap! Hoooly crap, fireballs are friggin’ scary! I mean, of course they are, they’re straight up balls of fire!

“Ah-ah! You’re not supposed to dodge, Juu, you have to hit the ball back!” scolded Hatoko.

“As if I could!” I shouted. A tennis ball that catches fire midair was the sort of special move I’d expect to come up in a manga aimed at elementary schoolers. It wasn’t bad, as far as special moves went, but it definitely felt a little, I dunno, uninspired? That is, it did until I saw one up close and personal in real life and realized that they were downright terrifying. Real-world fireballs: hella scary!

“You can’t? Oh, okay... I thought that since you use fire too, you’d be able to return a flaming ball,” explained Hatoko. She almost certainly didn’t mean anything bad by it, but somehow, her words came across as weirdly provocative to me. As if I could just sit down and take a statement like that!

“Mwa ha ha! Interesting... In that case, it’s a contest! Let us see which of us can truly claim greater mastery over our flames!” I thrust my right arm out before me, racket and all, and prepared to release the accursed power that dwelled in it. To do that, of course, I would first need to recite the Malediction of Unleashing! “I am he who conquers chaos! O purgatorial flame that sways upon the brink of the Abyss, O twisted blaze of—”

“Ahh! Sorry, Juu! I already served!”

“—sable...huh? Oh god aaaaaaugh!”

I canceled the Malediction midsentence and frantically took up a stance to return the shot. Unfortunately, I wasn’t quick enough, and my racket whiffed pathetically through the air.

“Dang it, Hatoko! How many times have I told you not to attack when I’m mid-Malediction?!”

“But, but, it wasn’t my fault! You’re the one who just started chanting it out of nowhere! You have to say ‘I’m gonna chant now’ first!”

“I don’t wanna! That’s not how these things work; power incantations always come out of nowhere! Nobody ever stops to say they’re about to start chanting mid-supernatural battle, and bad guys always have the decency to sit around and wait until they’re finished!”

“Booo!”

“Sheesh, you’re impossible...” I sighed deeply. Restarting the whole process after all that would feel even less dramatically appropriate than just going for it, so I decided to omit the Malediction and bring out my power then and there. The Tartarean flames of Dark and Dark sprung to life, dancing about my right arm in a roiling sea of pitch-blackness.

My flames were as stupidly cool as ever that day, of course, but I wasn’t planning on stopping there. My plan was to extend the blaze from my arm onto my racket, coating it in a fiery veil! That’s right: I was going for a form change, the same skill I’d trained a while back for the sake of using my power to create a black dragon!

I closed my eyes and sharpened my focus to a knife’s edge, envisioning my power taking on a new form. If I had to compare it with something... Ah, that’s it! It was just like Shu, the technique Nen ability wielders use to extend their Ten to strengthen weapons and stuff!

“Grrraaaaaahhhhhh!” I shouted, pouring every ounce of my body and soul into inciting a form change in Dark and Dark! I coaxed my flames toward the racket, step by step! Closer, closer, closer!

And...I failed.

Nope. Can’t pull it off. Form changes really are way harder than you’d think they’d be. I knew when to accept that I was attempting the impossible, so I quickly gave up and resolved to play tennis the normal way.

“Okay, Hatoko, here I come!”

“Kaaay!”

“You gave up on that way too quickly! What the hell was all that buildup fhhngh!” jabbed Tomoyo from the next court over. Not really sure what happened, but the last bit of her sentence sounded less like a word and more like a muffled groan.

“Ah, Tomoyo! You shouldn’t try to call him out mid-rally, it’s dangerous!” shouted Sayumi, sounding a little concerned. I glanced over to find Tomoyo hunched over, clutching her side. Best I could tell, she’d taken one of Sayumi’s shots right in the flank.

“O-Oh, I’ll get you for this one, Andou,” growled Tomoyo.

Oh, come on! How was that my fault? If you’re gonna blame anyone for this, blame yourself and your own irresistible impulse to pick holes in everything I say.

I turned my attention back to my own court. “Okay, Hatoko, hit another fireball at me! I’ll hit it back this time for sure!”

“Okay! Here goes!”

Once again, a raging orb of flame sailed into my side of the court. And oh, jeez, it really was scary, but I knew it was coming and wasn’t nearly as freaked out as I had been the first time. C-Calm down. It’ll be fine! Remember what Kenshin said when he fought Shishio: “Don’t let the flames deceive you! The fire itself is hardly lethal at all!” I fixed my gaze on the ball and prepared to return it!

“Haaahhhhhh!” I shouted once more, overcoming my fear and pouring my whole body into swinging my racket with all my might! And what did I get for my trouble?

“I-It punched right through it?!”

Well, more like it burned through it, really. The second the ball impacted my racket’s strings, I heard a quick sizzle. By the time I realized that I could smell something burning, the ball had already scorched a sizable hole in the racket’s center.

Right. I guess that would happen. Considering that tennis racket strings are, well, strings, of course they’d be weak to heat.

“Heh heh heh! How was that, Juu?” asked Hatoko with a proud smile.

“What do you mean, ‘how was that’?! No way in hell anyone could ever return that shot!”

“Huh? But Sayumi returned it just a minute ago.”

“Seriously?!”

“Yeah. She repaired the racket’s strings the moment they hit the ball and sent it back just fine.”

“Ooh, so she used Route of Origin?” That was certainly one hell of a countermeasure. Apparently, an astonishingly high-level super-tennis match had been taking place right next to me, and I’d never even noticed.

In any case, hitting back a fireball was clearly beyond my capabilities, so Hatoko and I decided to play a perfectly normal game of tennis instead. I swapped out my half-incinerated racket no problem, by the way. Chifuyu had made a ton of them back when we started this whole activity, so we had a literal pile of spares off on the side.

“Oh, whoops! Sorry, my bad!” I shouted partway through a rally. I’d skimmed the ball with my racket’s frame, and it had sailed off in totally the wrong direction. It was on track to land way out of bounds.

“It’s okay!” replied Hatoko in a perfectly carefree tone. The next instant, a powerful gale blew. She’d used another of Over Element’s aspects, the power of wind, to create a precisely localized burst of air that corrected the ball’s course and delivered it directly to her. She hit it back to me, and our rally resumed without a hitch.

Oh, I see now. No matter where a shot’s supposed to go, if you can manipulate the wind, you can just blow the ball right to you. She could hit every shot without taking a single step!It’s almost like the Tezuka Zo—oh, whoops! Almost forgot Prince of Tennis references are banned today.

“Mwa ha ha! You hear it, don’t you, Over Element? Yes—you hear the voice of the wind!”

“Huh? Does the wind have a voice?”

“It does indeed, and only we who are truly beloved by the winds can hear it!”

“Oh, wow! What sorta voice is it? Does it sound nice?” asked Hatoko, apparently in complete earnestness.

No, that’s not... Look, the voice of the wind is, like, one of those things you just sorta say! It’s a metaphor, you know? You’re not supposed to ask what specifically it sounds like, it’s just a thing!

“U-Umm,” I floundered, “It sounds...s-sorta winded, I guess?”

“The voice of the wind sounds winded?!”

“Yeah, that’s it! The wind doesn’t work out enough, and gets out of breath super easily. Weird, considering it’s always blowing all over the place.”

“I didn’t know! Okay, then how does it sound when it’s not out of breath?”

“I-It sounds...like, uhh...like an anime character.”

“An anime character?!”

“Yeah, and the wind’s actually super sensitive about it! That’s why it barely ever talks.”

“Oh, huh... Ah, I get it now! That must be why it only talks to the people it loves!”

“Th-That’s exactly right!”

“Oh, wow! That’s sorta romantic, isn’t it?”

“R-Right? Anyway, that’s enough talking, Hatoko. Focus on the rally, okay?”

“Okaaay!”

With the conversation brought to a sudden, forced conclusion, we went back to thwacking the ball around.

A short while later, Chifuyu sat up from her impromptu nap zone in the corner. She climbed to her feet and slowly wandered over to our court. “I’ll play too,” she droned.

“Oh? You’re up for some tennis, Chifuyu?”

Apparently, it was time for another lineup swap! This time, Chifuyu and I ended up squaring off against each other.

“Mwa ha ha!” I cackled. “Do you truly believe, Himeki Chifuyu, that the likes of you has the power to stand against my might?” It finally felt like I was up against an opponent I held the upper hand against, and I was maybe getting just a little bit full of myself as a result. Meanwhile, the high school girls’ division started whispering off to the side.

“For somebody who begs for mercy when he’s up against an opponent who’s better than him, that guy sure has a way of talking himself up the second he thinks he’s on top,” muttered Tomoyo.

“He does vividly bring to mind the sort of self-important bit character who gets humiliated by the protagonist in the first chapter of a manga,” noted Sayumi.

“Honestly,” whispered Hatoko, “Juu’s just not very good at tennis at all!”

Three blades pierced my heart from different directions. Dammit, guys, can’t you just let me have this?! Am I never allowed to talk myself up just a little?!

“Don’t underestimate me, Andou,” boasted my opponent in her usual monotone. “I’ve never played tennis...but I have World Create to help me!”

“Ack!”