#yajirobe sword
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Dragon Ball Super 057
“My own clone! Now neither of us will be virgins!”
Last time, Vegeta tried to fight that Goku Black jerk who’s been bullying his son, and he got stabbed through the chest. Remember when Frieza shot a Death Beam through Vegeta’s chest and he died? Yeah, well, that doesn’t happen here.
Also Zamasu shows up to help Black, so now Goku has to fight them both all by himself. He beat Zamasu a few episodes back using SSJ2, but now he’s in Blue mode and Zamasu is turning out to be a lot harder.
Black and Zamasu agree to kill the Saiyans together, since they both enjoy killing so much. They try to gang up on Goku, but then Trunks jumps in and seems to do surprisingly well, even though he’s nowhere near as strong as Goku.
Trunks even manages to stab Zamasu with his sword...
But he just shrugs it off and the wound heals over instantly. His clothes heal too. Huh.
So Trunks presses on, and unloads with the Final Flash. There’s a lot of fanservice-y moments in this arc, where Trunks uses Vegeta’s signature moves. It doesn’t improve this shitty story.
But Zamasu survives unscathed, and he reveals that he has an “invincible body” now. Trunks begins to despair, and then Goku Black charges up a Kamehameha. Goku and Trunks try to get out of the way, but Zamasu grabs them both and holds them in place so they have to get hit by the blast. That’s smart, because Zamasu’s invincible body won’t even be hurt. So how do Goku and Trunks get out of this one?
Uh... they don’t. They end up taking the full force of Goku Black’s Kamehameha. So... they’re dead, then?
Of course not. They’re not even unconscious. What was the point of forcing them to take a Kamehameha at pointblank range if it couldn’t even kill them?
How does this even make sense? Trunks is a lot less powerful than Goku, so you’d think that if Goku was worn down by that attack, Trunks should be in much worse shape.
And now Zamasu and Black charge up a follow-up attack to finish Goku and Trunks off. Why would we expect this one to do any more damage than the last thing they tried? Well, fortunately, it doesn’t come to that, because their big purple power ball gets knocked away by...
Vegeta? The guy Goku Black stabbed through the chest?
I mean, okay, let’s just say that Vegeta’s a tough bastard, and he can somehow not only survive a stab wound through the chest, but he can get back up and help the others. But he’s using Final Flash here, and that’s like his biggest, most powerful move. And he’s in Super Saiyan Blue.
Sure, he collapses right after he does this, but what the hell? Like I said last time, this isn’t even a matter of power scaling. This is me asking whether offensive moves even hurt anybody now. Goku Black has attacked Mai, Vegeta, Trunks and Goku, and none of them seem to be too bad off for it. It reminds me a lot of Omega Shenron, who kept beating up characters far weaker than himself, and they kept surviving and showing no sign of injury or fatigue.
So while Vegeta makes his big play, Yajirobe runs over and drags Goku and Trunks to safety. He couldn’t get Vegeta, so he’s on his own. Or he would be, except for...
Smoke bombs! How did they guess Goku Black’s one weakness?
Yeah the Resistance throws smoke bombs all over the place and the bad guys are too busy coughing to kill Vegeta or notice anyone else rushing in to save him.
So almost as soon as Yajirobe says he couldn’t save Vegeta, Mai rolls up on her scooter with Vegeta. She goes over to Trunks and she’s like “Yo, I just saved your dad, nbd.”
This shot is a complete mess. Vegeta looks ridiculous, and Mai’s upper body is completely disproportional to her lower body.
Mai reaches into Trunks’ pants to get.......... the capsule containing the Time Machine, and she programs it to launch with the three Saiyans lying helplessly inside. Trunks begs her to stop the launch and go back with them, but she just stands there and watches them go. Who showed her how to operate the time machine?
Goku Black finds them just before the time machine vanishes, so he missed his shot once again. Well, it’s not like he would have killed them even if they hadn’t escaped.
For some reason, the time machine falls on its side when it lands, and the good guys all spill out like a bunch of losers falling out of a box of losers.
Meanwhile, in Universe 10, Zamasu serves Gowasu tea... again. This time he’s watching TV indoors, so it’s totally different. Zamasu calls this “GodTube”, and the video is footage of the Destroyer Tournament, so I guess one of the Kais at the arena must have filmed this. Gowasu suggests that this footage of Goku fighting Hit might change his tune about mortals, except Zamasu despises Goku, and this is how he learns about Goku’s ability to use divine ki, which makes him hate Goku even more. Also, I just watched the Universe 6 Saga myself, and I can’t say it restored my faith in humanity or anything.
What really catches Zamasu’s interest are the Super Dragon Balls seen floating in the sky above the tournament. He’s never heard of them, so Gowasu explains how they grant wishes and such. And that gives Zamasu a li’l idea...
Next thing we know, he’s on Zuno’s planet, demanding to know everything there is to know about the Super Dragon Balls. Ruh-roh.
#dragon ball#dragon ball super#2023dbapocryphaliveblog#goku#vegeta#trunks#zamasu#goku black#gowasu#mai#yajirobe#zuno#fuck the zamasu saga forever
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@cc-vegeta: “Hey! Sword using fat man! You got until the count of seven to show yourself! Otherwise I will blow up this planet, you know I will do it! You were there when I fought Kakarot, weren’t you?!” the Prince demanded at Korin Tower.
@cc-vegeta
He doesn't want to speak. But he knows Vegeta would just nuke the area along with him in it if he keeps hiding.
Desperate to avoid the prince's wrath in either case, he speaks up, but in a rather raspy, dry impression of the cat he so often dealt with: Korrin.
"Y-yajirobe's not here today! You should look somewhere else! Anywhere else!"
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Dragonball Z: Abridged Episode 10 Review
Originally posted August 18th, 2015
A blending of long-form storytelling and rapid-fire jokes.
“The Punchline” is about twenty-five minutes long, making it the longest episode of Dragonball Z: Abridged at the time of release, and Team Four Star’s first attempt to craft an episode that fits into this longer form. So the challenge they’re presented with is to meld their “joke-a-minute” style with a story that demands more time than they usually allot themselves to tell their stories in. And personally, I feel like they successfully complete that challenge, for the most part.
Part of this can obviously be attributed to their decision to split the episode into three separate parts; this gives them the time to work on each part on its own, and develop it in the amount of time they normally have to do so. Of course, this makes it tempting to divide the episode by each part and look at them separately, and I would have done so, if it weren’t for the fact that it all flows together as a single episode incredibly well.
The majority of this episode deals directly with the fight between Goku and Vegeta, whose face off has been built up to over the last few episodes. Their fight is long and drawn out, typical to anime form, and yet it never seems to overstay its welcome, mostly due to the strong jokes Team Four Star injects into every moment. These jokes come, primarily, from the natural conflict between Vegeta and Goku’s personality, as Vegeta slowly becomes increasingly frustrated by Goku’s innocence, and gradually loses his temper as their fight drags on.
When the fight does come to the end, it’s a rather pyrrhic victory for Goku, as he has been physically broken, and the majority of their allies are dead. So it’s no surprise that Krillin’s immediate reaction to Vegeta’s attempted escape is to grab a sword and prepare to end it once and for all. What is surprising, of course, is Goku’s decision to allow Vegeta to flee, as long as he says he’s sorry. Yet it is still entirely in character; Goku’s innocence hasn’t failed him yet, and he still is optimistic enough to trust Vegeta not to betray him even now. Team Four Star, of course, leans in to how absolutely moronic Goku must be to still be willing to trust Vegeta, and rightfully so, but it’s still a rather touching moment (even when Vegeta immediately betrays him afterwards).
Goku still isn’t perfect of course, and Team Four Star refuses to let us forget that, as when Gohan returns to try and save his father from being killed by Vegeta, his only concern is whether Gohan told Chi Chi to put dinner on, and not the incredible risk his son took in coming back for him. Yet this selfishness from Goku doesn’t undo the fact that he still loves his son, as they have a brief moment of bonding right before Vegeta come to attack Gohan. The message of this moment here is mixed, and complicated, as Goku’s love for his son doesn’t preclude his failures as a father, which both taints the moment and simultaneously makes it more real.
Rating: 4/5
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Stray Observations
Vegeta: “I’m going to start beating you now. I don’t know when I’ll stop.”
Narrator: “Meanwhile, back at the plot.”
Vegeta: “As I reveal my giant, monkey… form.”
Bystander: “Thank god, I thought he meant penis.”
Yajirobe ex machina. And yet I don’t mind it at all.
Their “commercial break” gag is probably my favorite cutaway gag in this series, though the cutaway to the deer dying is a close second.
Vegeta: “That armor was a gift from my father!”
Yajirobe: “I’m sure your father was a great man.”
Vegeta: “I hated my father.”
Yajirobe: “I’m sure he was a total prick.”
Vegeta: “How dare you talk about my father like that!?”
Captain Kirk: “Suck it, Spock.”
Vegeta: “Yes. I’m very, very sorry. That you’re all still alive. Suckers!”
Krillin Owned: All the way up to 10.
Ghost Nappa!
#dragon ball z abridged#dragon ball z#team four star#dbza#film criticism#dbza ep10#aug 18 2015#i feel like i say a lot of words here#but don't do a good job conveying what works about this episode#there's a really fantastic melding of TFS's rapid-fire humor#and the frantic pace of Goku's fight against Vegeta#the story is driven as much by the movement from one joke to the next#as it is by each character's position in the battle#it's really good
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The androids come for the Son clan first.
It isn’t that they don’t leave any wreckage in their wake, traveling to Mt. Paozu; their appearance is simply so sudden and comes with so little warning that the world and its protectors are caught flat-footed. The androids move quickly, having no cause to seek distraction with a specific purpose in mind.
That changes on discovering that Son Goku is dead.
Gohan tries–tries to defend his mother, but his strength amounts to little more than a momentary deterrent; he falls, borderline paralyzed with pain and powerless to do more than listen as they break Chichi, destroy his home and ruthlessly cut short his grandpa’s furious bellows of grief.
Piccolo arrives, too late to help by minutes. Despite the state he’s in, Gohan nonetheless reports everything he can; two monsters in the forms of callous teenagers, unnatural in that they don’t have any ki signature, individually almost as powerful as Freeza. Piccolo commends his protégé for surviving, apologizes he didn’t arrive sooner.
Then he puts the boy to sleep.
Gohan may be drastically stronger than the average earthling, but not only has his training been neglected after Goku’s passing, he’d actually regressed since Namek. In his current state, confronting the androids a second time is tantamount to suicide.
Begrudgingly, Piccolo reestablishes that mental connection he shares with his older, benevolent half; Kami, already largely appraised of the dire circumstances, directs the Z warriors to the Kame Sen’nin’s island.
Piccolo thinks of Gohan, and asks:
“Make sure the noisy woman–Son Goku’s friend–is there as well.”
Piccolo’s arrival coincides neatly with Yajirobe’s, the wild man armed with sword, senzu and an obvious desire to quickly remove himself before any plans for combat come up. Gohan’s unconsciousness puts them on edge, though Piccolo ignores the suspicious glares thrown his direction and explains the severity of the threat to the planet, to say nothing of humanity.
Piccolo asks that Bulma and Lunch take those who cannot fight, along with Gohan, somewhere safe; the androids knew to look for Goku at Mt. Paozu, so it stands to reason they could eventually come to Roshi’s island seeking out Son’s friends and rivals.
“Sure,” Lunch says over Bulma’s indignation over plans being made for her. “I know a few spots to lay low.”
The blond tears off with Bulma, baby Trunks, Gohan, Oolong and Puar in the hovercar Yajirobe arrived in despite the swordsman’s protests.
“If that bastard were still here,” he says, a beat after they’ve left. “We’d be better off.”
Alas, Vegeta disappeared into space shortly after Goku’s passing, with no indication he planned on ever returning; nor that he had any inkling that he’d sired a son with Bulma. Whether he would help is debatable, but as it stands, Piccolo and Kuririn are the strongest fighters they have on hand. Piccolo could likely contend with the androids if he fuses with Kami, but doing so would rob Earth of its dragon balls, and by extension, any chance they have to save the lives Gero’s creations have already taken.
“There is one technique that might work,” Piccolo says, turning squarely toward Roshi. “The Mafūba.”
#dragonball#DBZ#Piccolo#Gohan#Z-senshu#Z warriors#Android saga#Future Timeline#excerpt#draft#SRW#fanfic#Future timeline AU#Brucenorris007#Roshi#Lunch#Bulma#thrown into the void#Dragon Ball
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Krillin vs Vegeta
Dragon Ball Imagination Figure Vol. 4
from Dragon Ball Z
by Bandai
This week we go Into The Bins
Minifigures and gashapon that get rotated out go into storage, and sometimes it's a while before they get cycled back into display. So let's dig in and appreciate them.
The Imagination Figure gashapon series was released in 2004-2006 and featured miniature dioramas of classic scenes from Dragon Ball.
This one depicts Krillin as he approaches Vegeta, ready to strike him down with Yajirobe's sword.
There such an impressive amount of detail for such small toys, especially for the time. The gesturing, the Saiyan Pod, even the little painted details. One of my favorites from the series.
Check out the last three pictures for a glimpse into the bins (and that's only a miniscule fraction of what's on storage)
[Instagram link for this post]
#dragon ball z#dragon ball#saiyan saga#banpresto#bandai spirits#dbz#capsule toy#gashapon#minifigure#dragon ball adverge#gachapon#toys as art#bandai#vegeta#anime#tamashii nations#krillin#dragon ball collection#dragon ball collector#anime toys#ドラゴンボール#action figure photography#toy collection#action figures#toy collector#toy photography#toys
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Vegeta's Nicknames for the Earthlings
Krillin: short bald man / baldy (even when he has hair)
Tien: tall bald man / tall baldy / triclops
Yajirobe: sword using fat man / Sensu Fatman / Samurai Chubs
Yamcha: Earthling Raditz / Saibaman Sandbag
Choutzu: Exploding Doll
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N/A = Majin Buu just be existing for the lolz
??? = lmao, the balls that are very Super were made
??? = The gods were having so much drama without Gowasu existing
??? = Who is dafuq is Yamoshi? He fought his race and his race won-
??? = back then, Tapion was just that guy... now sealed in a little box
261 = rip Classic Namek, maybe...
461 = Roshi gets traumatized by King Piccolo or something
732 = King Vegeta gets punked by his old boss's tiny ahh son
734 = Goku is born
749 = Goku's adventure begins
750 = Goku competes in his first tournament
753 = Goku dogs King Piccolo after drinking special water
756 = Junior gets dogged too cuz Goku was trained by like... God
761 = Goku dies
762 = The Saiyans attack and "broski" goes Super Saiyan
763-ish = Cell is bitch-made and devolves after sneaking Trunks
764 = Mecha Freeza gets diced the figgity fuck up and blown-out
767 = The Butterfly Effect bullies Trunks, Vegeta, Cell & 17
774 = The Super Saiyan Bargain Sale is real and peeps forget Buu
778 = Goku kinda becomes a god or something like that
779 = Ayo- there's a couple of Super Saiyan God: Super Saiyans
780 = Go Broly Go Go! Go Broly Go Go! Oh, and a Gohan dies, lmao
780? = Moro swallows a guy and gets neck to go Ultra, but crumbles
781? = Granolah & Gas cheat at life, then Freeza gets a paint-job
782? = Goten & Trunks steal Gohan's entire flow + Trunks simps hard
783 = Gohan Blanco is REAL?!?! minus the blue skin though
784 = Goku sets off to train Uub in off-screen land for eternity
789 = But that other Goku though... He gets turned into a kid!
790 = NOBODY CAN BEAT ME WHEN I'M SUPER 17 & Goku ascends
790 = Meanwhile in another timeline, Miss Buu is born! OMG
791 = Can Majins fuck? Probably, 'cause they become an entire race
793 = Satan retires only to try scamming another way
794 = Pan low-key creates Hero Colosseum; Remote Fighting frfr
796 = Pan teaches randoms how to use their ki
801 = Goku & Vegeta probably kill each other or something
804 = Gohan finally sliced Katchin and wrote a book about it
805 = Goten & Trunks gets zesty with a sword
820 = Satan dies and the Freeza Force try to RoF without a Freeza
821 = Tien & Krillin create schools... Fighting schools...
826 = Yajirobe finally decides to plant some damn beans
834 = Majin Mani Mani is the REALEST Majin to ever Majin, dying
850 = ATTENTION ALL PROUD WARRIORS, HAVE YOU CONSIDE-
851 = Mira bombs Namek with... A SPIRIT BOMB?! Bro cheating
852 = Mira fucking dies, but not before going monkey
889 = OMG Goku Jr. & Vegeta Jr?? What's the Change!Goku doing?
890 = Hi, Beat! Hi, Ultimate Tenkaichi. The world's ending... again...?
900 = The Yardrats really got put on Time Machine construction
940 = Something something, Evil Namekians (hi) start hacking eggs
991 = General Bon, the Animal-human nationalist creates Red.. Pants
998 = Mira threatens Earth and Piccolo... orphans many, legally
999 = Trunks cant help but do Time Breaker shit by snitching on Mira
1000 = Just about everybody's able to box with ki now
2016 = Tekka & Pinich let their intrusive thoughts fuck time-space
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unprompted / always accepting / @rosavulpes
He smiles at the question and to be fair it was a good one. Slowly he unsheathed the weapon and held it horizontally before her. “You make an excellent point but the sword isn’t just a weapon. It’s so much more, a memento, a source of guidance and memories of my late mentor.” He spoke rather fondly as he remembered when Gohan had first given him the blade when he was younger.
“This belonged to Gohan…or at least the blade itself does..or did. I’ve does some smithing once or twice and enhanced it, repaired it..the works.” He spoke a little silently under his breath when it came to repairing. “But I do appreciate your opinion and to be honest the thought had always been there. Though I’d really like to learn swordsmanship from a real master, I’ve taken some lessons from Yajirobe in my time.”
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Probably my favorite thing about Dragon Ball Z coming to America sooner than (or at least more loudly than) Dragon Ball is how much canon the viewers were expected to swallow right off the bat, without necessarily realizing that we were joining a series in-progress Like "Okay, a bunch of people are showing up at this house. They're all friends. This girl is yelling about her boyfriend, who seems to be someone they all know" "A spiky haired guy shows up! They're surprised he has a kid! The kid has a monkey tail? They mention that this guy had a tail too back when he was a kid?? Okay" "Okay now some buff dude with a tail shows up and SAYS HE'S AN ALIEN and that THIS SPIKY HAIRED GUY WE JUST MET IS ALSO AN ALIEN AND HIS BROTHER and everyone's freaking out" "Also here's some green guy who hates the good guys for some reason but is willing to team up with them against the alien guy" "Well now the spiky haired guy is DEAD but he was rescued by some wrinkly green guy who got him special permission to train with some king guy while he's dead?? Who is this guy wait" "And now they're talking about some magic balls that can summon a dragon that can grant wishes like bringing dead people back to life? And they conveniently have a little tracking device to find these balls?? Hold on" "Okay now the spiky haired guy's wife is here with SOME GIANT AND NO ONE REMARKS ON THE FACT THAT HE'S A GIANT?? HIS SIZE ISN'T MENTIONED AT ALL? Who is this guy wait" "Oh and these guys are the spiky haired guy's friends and like, one's a chubby samurai, one's a bald guy with three eyes, one's a tiny pasty floating child, um, they're hanging out with the wrinkly green guy and some blackface genie, um, who are these" "OH APPARENTLY THE FACT THAT THE KID HAS A TAIL MEANS WHEN HE LOOKS AT THE FULL MOON HE TURNS INTO A GIANT GORILLA??????" "WHAT" "WAIT" "WHAT" And later on other pre-Z elements just show up with no explanation or backstory, like, you just have to accept that there's a talking pig, and like two talking cats, but one talking cat grows magic beans, and someone casually mentions that the two green guys used to be one green guy Like, I remember as a kid watching the screen with wide eyes and just nodding in awe as I soaked it all in ("yeah, people who have tails can turn into giant gorillas, I got it"), but also...w o w
#and for the longest time I definitely called Yajirobe 'fat Goku with a sword' cus his name rarely came up or I just never remembered it#really though#'Hey kids here's a new series! Within the first five episode our main character turns out to be an alien then DIES'#rambling#dragon ball
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H.I.V.E. Characters as Dragon Ball Z Characters
To start, you may be thinking, Otto is Goku, yes? Both our heroes. Both get stronger and learn new techniques as their series goes on. Both want to protect their friends and the people from Earth from certain doom and destruction and getting conquered. Goku craves a challenge - dare I say Otto is the same, at certain points?
Yes, Otto is Goku- BUT he is also Cell. He was created, not born. Meant to be more than human: meant to be perfect, all powerful, intelligent and capable of being the one to take over the world. The difference is that Cell wants to do these things; Otto just wants to be a person. Therefore while Otto was meant to be Cell, he chooses his own path and is a Goku.
Wing is Trunks. Here’s a mysterious young boy with incredible strength and loyalty. Who is his father, you ask? Well, they would like to keep that a secret at first. He wants to train, to protect. His mother is a genius scientist. (On second thought, maybe he’s Tien. Disciplined martial artist, loyal friend, has some good moves, still only mortal)
But Cypher is Dr. Gero, brilliant creator of androids. They seem to… decline over the years. We see how they’ve grown progressively more evil as time went on. Cause of much destruction. Will not hesitate to hurt a child. At least Cypher thinks he has good intentions, Gero is just kinda stewing over his defeats.
Pike is Dr. Briefs simply because scientist. Inventor. Often seen with a cat. Old but doesn’t seem to age, is always just old.
Overlord is Freiza, of course!! Our OG Big Bad!! Conqueror and lord of planets, nay, the whole universe!! Also keeps returning. How is he back again?? He doesn’t quit!!
Block and Tackle, our tough duo, would be either Raditz and Nappa, or Zarbon and Dodoria. R&N are basically just thugs, and definitely lower level than the other baddies. Z&D are more ruthless and are definitely henchmen. Block and Tackle are a mix of that “brute force over brains” and “organized order-followers.”
Francisco is Captain Ginyu!! Head of a fearsome squad of fighters that you do NOT want to mess with!! And yet, they are both silly at times. We get laughs out of them while knowing that this guy is strong and means business.
Franz I’m sorry, you’re Yamcha. You’re there and you help and you’re funny, but you’re not quite a main main character, and the rest of them are handling this all pretty well anyways. HOWEVER you are also Yajirobe!! We think you’re a silly side character, but when we really need help, you swoop in with a devastating blow to the bad guy!! Yay!!
Nigel is Chaozu, bald and nervous side character. Sidekick type. They do their best, and would sacrifice themselves for the greater good.
Nathaniel? Master Roshi. Old perv dude. Wise, the main characters need their advice, they’ve been in the game a long time… but yeah ppl immediately think of their gross lines. These two do have a purpose! And perhaps most of their relevance in the storyline was in a flashback/pre-canon sense, but they’re still here, doing their own thing.
Penny is Vegeta, but in reverse. She starts as having a family, surrounded by friends and loved ones and being a “good guy.” Then she ends up in enemy territory, alone.
HIVEmind is our King Kai!! He’s off in the distance. He’s not actually here but he’s helping. Sending out messages and giving advice. And we know he’s strong! But he’s supposed to be a helper, only.
The Contessa as Berry Blue, perhaps? Old. A right hand man in her organization, if you will. “Yeah I’m evil. Yeah I’m going to be mean to everyone, even if they’re on my side.” An evil advisor.
The Furans WISH they were King Cold, Cooler, and Freiza. They WISH they were an awesome terrifying dictator family. What’s that, you say? They are? Well they don’t have half the swag that the Colds do. Plus Elena doesn’t want to be a part of that. (Ok fine. Equal amounts of ruthlessness. Keep coming back after their ‘defeats.’ Will kill anyone. Command a large army of soldiers.)
Ms. Leon is Korin. White cat, very wise, a teacher type. Also maybe Captain Ginyu when he’s trapped in the body of a frog. When consciousness switching goes wrong…
The Bloodline antagonist is Broly, I will not elaborate due to spoilers. Trust me though.
Now the hard part. Laura and Shelby… who is Bulma, who is Chi Chi? Is Laura Bulma because they are both incredibly intelligent and work with computers/machines? Is she Chi Chi because she wants a life outside of fighting and conflicts? Which one is Shelby, they’re both tough and outspoken.
Is Shelby Launch?? Launch has two personalities, sweet/innocent and violent. Does this correspond to Book 1 Shel’s Valley Girl persona vs actual Shelby?
Is Raven actually Trunks, due to sword? They are faced with enemies deemed too hard to beat, and they still manage to take them down. I was originally having Raven as Piccolo: always by the MC’s side, skilled fighter, maybe Natalya/Raven can equal Kami/Piccolo? (They are the same person now. In ways, they didn’t used to be)
Yknow? Maybe Raven is Whis. Bodyguard and employee of a very high ranking authority, and everyone knows they are much much stronger than their boss. Don’t get them going, you can’t win.
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Dragon Ball Super 065
This is the one with the Father-Son Gallick Gun and... nothing else.
Literally, the first half of this episode is just Zamasu floating in mid-air while everyone reacts to how powerful he is now that his two selves have fused together.
I mean, he shoots some stuff that knocks Goku and Vegeta around, and he wipes out a chunk of the ruined West City, which terrifies the Resistance group down in their subway terminal base, but none of it really amounts to anything.
Zamasu makes this big purple bird thing that shoots Vegeta with a lightning bolt, so that’s something, I guess.
Also he makes bad weather happen all over the world. Here’s Kame House. I guess Master Roshi is dead in this timeline? He was alive in History of Trunks, but this is twenty years later, and I’d assume Zamasu managed to kill at least a few people during his year-long attack on this planet.
Also, Android 8 is still around, I guess. No one from Jingle Village is with him, so I guess he’s alone. No, wait, I think I see a few people in the lower right corner.
So Goku and Vegeta attack in earnest, and I guess they manage to wreck that purple bird thing somehow, which surprises Zamasu, but he still blocks their attacks when they try to punch him directly.
Also it looks like he’s breaking their hands, so that seems like a big deal.
So Trunks jumps back in, and Zamasu breaks his sword while they fight.
Then he goes for a Gallick Gun, but one of those special ones where he puts all his hopes and dreams into it or whatever. This one’s for Yajirobe, and those nameless Resistance guys. One of them sounds like Nappa in the dub.
And then Vegeta jumps in to help, and together they manage to push back Zamasu’s end of the beam struggle and hit him. It just doesn’t do anything, so Zamasu fires back and Vegeta takes the hit to save Trunks.
So then Goku gets his second win and fires his own big saga-ending blast, and that sets up another beam struggle. Do you see why I hate this arc so much? Like, all the other stuff I’ve been complaining about but it’s so damned repetitive. They had three climactic battles like this, and every time there’s a bunch of big finisher moves being tossed around, and now we’re at the end of the final round and it’s all meaningless. What was the point of the Father-Son Gallick Gun if it didn’t do anything, and Goku was just going to do his own attack to follow up? What’s the point of Goku doing the same basic thing when it didn’t work like two minutes ago? What was the point of Zamasu using fusion if this is the best he can do with it? What was the point of wastin half the episode gawking at Merged Zamasu’s enormous power level when he’s still struggling against the same three guys he dominated before he fused?
This is why I liken this saga to the Shadow Dragons arc from GT. In particular, the final battle with Omega Shenron is a lot like the fight(s) with Black/Zamasu/Merged Zamasu. There’s not much in the way of strategy or fight choreography here. We just have fighters doing stuff to each other, and none of it really works in the long term. A character will take a big ki blast or a stab wound and sell it for a little bit, but then they just get back up and act like nothing’s wrong. And it just keeps going because the fight is more about extending the arc for a predetermined number of episodes than anything else. In this case, it doesn’t really matter what happens in Episode 65, because the saga has to keep going until Episode 67, so they just sort of spin their wheels until it’s time for one side to win.
Dragon Ball Super at least tries to lampshade this with senzu beans and immortal characters, but that only highlights the problem. Goku Black is the one who wasn’t indestructible, but he still gets the crap beaten out of him and never seems any worse for wear. Hell, last episode he stabbed himself in the hand and yet there was never any sign of an injury. Vegeta’s been taking hit after hit after hit this whole time, and he’ll eat exactly one senzu bean in this round. That happens next episode, so how in the hell does he keep shrugging off the damage he takes throughout this episode?
#dragon ball#dragon ball super#2023dbapocryphaliveblog#goku#vegeta#zamasu#gowasu#supreme kail#trunks#mai#bulma#yajirobe#android 8#turtle#fuck the zamasu saga forever
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We're happy to welcome back... Scott and Nick from Team Four Star! Back in 2008, TeamFourStar hit the internet with the premiere of DragonBall Z Abridged! Ever since then, their team has grown, and so has their content! With TeamFourStar and TFS Gaming, and their fan favorites Abridged series in the past, Nick Landis and Scott Frerichs with the TFS Team have been entertaining millions! Scott “KaiserNeko” Frerichs is a Texas-based, California-native voice actor, graphics designer, and writer. Co-founder and CEO of TeamFourStar, he’s the director, editor, and co-writer for DragonBall Z Abridged, providing the voices for King Kai, Trunks, Burter, Korin, Yajirobe, Garlic Jr., Zarbon, and various side characters in the series. He’s also provided voices for several indie video game projects, professional MOBA-games Heroes of Newerth and Smite, Ernest in Gearbox’s competitive first-person shooter Battleborn, as well as anime titles including Hiroshi the Sword in Fairy Tail, Gundam Tanaka in Dangan Ronpa 3: Despair Arc, and various other anime titles! You can also create a character with his voice in Xenoverse 2 as Male Voice Option 13! Nick “Lanipator” Landis is a writer, actor, comedian, and other reasons he dropped of college and worries his parents! Lani is best known as the co-founder of Team Four Star, a troupe of online funny-bois that created Dragonball Z Abridged, Hellsing Ultimate Abridged, Attack On Titan Abridged, Final Fantasy 7 Machinabridged, among other gaming and anime programming! He’s also provided his voice for games such as: Smite, Paladins, Heroes of Newearth, Dreadout, The Letter, 5-Minute Dungeon, and Dragonball Xenoverse 2. As well as programs such as: RWBY, Death Battle, One Piece, Fairy Tale and others.
posted on Instagram - https://instagr.am/p/CSaSI_aLfcM/
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Info // last edited on: 6 Sep 2020
OOC Info (includes rules, contact info, rp status, and other blogs,)
Links (to come): About | Threads | Tags
Name: Future Gohan (Mirai no Gohan)
Aliases: Gohan Miraison, Han(s) Songo, Hans Gruber, Mira, Mirai
Race: Half-Saiyan
Gender: Male
Date of Birth: May 4, Age 757
Height: 5'11" (180 cm)
Weight: 134 lbs (61 kg)
Allegiance: Z Warriors
Address: (Future) Earth
Occupation: martial artist, vigilante
Appearance
orange turtle school gi (with ‘Han’ kanji symbol on back), dark blue undershirt, wristbands, belt, and boots
office worker uniform with thick black glasses; white shirt, black belt, grey pants, black leather shoes (while undercover in the past)
Kai Uniform (when visiting the Sacred World of the Kais)
Personality: a mix of canon, TFS DBZAbridged, and my own spin on the character
Biography: the same as canon Future Gohan, but with some changes and explanations to become canon for him which include:
Cooler arrives on Earth after Goku kills Frieza and King Cold
Yajirobe does not give Gohan an extra sensu bean before he leaves Korin Tower
Gohan transforms into a Super Saiyan after Icarus is killed from protecting him
In a Super Saiyan Rage, Gohan rips Cooler’s tail and limbs off except one arm, allowing him to charge up a Supernova. He then sends Cooler into the sun with a Hyper Masenko
Salza sneak attacks Gohan with a ki blade while his guard is down, giving Gohan his scar. He is finished off by Piccolo like in the movie.
Sometime later, Cooler merges with the Big Geti Star and takes over New Namek, all the dragon clan Namekians are killed in the process (meaning no more dragon balls).
Hoi visits Earth and with the assistance of the Z Warriors, opens a sealed music box with a wish from the dragonballs, releasing the demon Hirudigarn and the Konatsa-jin hero Minosha.
Gohan and Minosha share a brotherly bond similar to Trunks and Tapion
Gohan is forced to kill Minosha with his sword in order to kill Hirudigarn with him
He inherits Minosha’s Sword and later passes it on to Trunks
Goku dies from a heart virus
Bulma is pregnant but is unsure who the father is. Yamcha fights Vegeta and self destructs as a last resort, it fails as bad as Choutzu’s did against Nappa
Trunks is Bulma and Yamcha’s son (instead of Vegeta’s)
The Z Warriors (except Vegeta) all teach their techniques to Gohan before they are killed by the Androids
AU-FT-verse // default verse
Future Trunks is killed (instead of Gohan losing his arm) during their first battle against the Androids years later
Future Gohan takes the role of Future Trunks in the past, and trains with Piccolo in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber to prepare against Cell
AU-Cell-verse // Alternate canon Cell’s Timeline
Future Gohan does not lose his arm or die against the Androids
Future Trunks retrieves blueprints from the past, allowing Future Bulma to create a remote to deactivate them, the Androids are destroyed after.
Cell kills Trunks and steals his time machine when he prepares to make another trip to the past
Future Bulma builds another time machine and sends Future Gohan to the same past to investigate
other au (ideas) include:
DBZ-RS-Krilling: based on sample rp fan manga from here
Xeno Gohan: takes the role of Xeno Trunks instead
Future Gohan Black: Future Gohan is turned evil because of his potential (body swapped by Ginyu/Zamasu, mind taken over by Babidi/Towa)
Bebi / Majin / Buu Absorbed / Time Breaker Future Gohan
Techniques & Special Abilities
Masenko (and Hyper Masenko)
Kamehameha (and Fierce Combination)
Special Beam Cannon (learned from Piccolo)
Burning Attack and Finish Buster (learned from Future Trunks)
Energy Dome (Evil Barrier)
Solar Flare (learned from Krillin)
Super Saiyan
Tri Beam // ttaught by Tien)
Wolf Fang Fist and Spirit Ball // taught by Yamcha
Destructo Disk, Homing Energy Wave, Kakusandan // taught by Krillin
Light Grenade, Hellzone Grenade, Super Explosive Wave // taught by Piccolo of the past
Super Saiyan (Second Grade, Third Grade): achieved in the first day/year of HBTC
Super Saiyan (Full Power / Mastered): achieved in the second day/year of of HBTC after seeing Goku/Gohan do it
and eventually:
Super Saiyan 2 // achieved through rage)
Super Saiyan 3 // achieved through training
Potential Unleashed (Ultimate Future Gohan / Chou Mirai no Gohan): achieved through training then breaking the Z Sword and getting his potential unlocked by the Elder Kaioshin
Super Saiyan God (// through absorbing godly ki from Beerus, or wish from dragonballs, no ritual)
Super Saiyan Blue // through training with Whis
Ultra Instinct (Omen, Controlled)
Trivia
The AU-Cell-verse of Future Gohan is based on the one I RP(ed) as on Dragon Ball Summit // please feel free to mention me as a referral if you wish to join the site, looking for a Future Trunks on there!
Themes
The Beginning (ONE OK ROCK) // romantic, towards Videl/au partner]
Clock Strikes (ONE OK ROCK) // platonic, towards Future Trunks, friends, and family
EMIYA (Fate Kaleid Movie) // Battle Theme 1 vs Androids
Dragonball Super - Ultra Instinct Rush (PokéMixr92’s HQ Recreation) // Battle Theme 2 vs Androids
Dragon Ball Super ED 8: Boogie Back (Megami33 of TFS; Future Bulma Version)
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Dragon Ball Manga: Chapter 138
Here’s the last stuffing moment with Son Goku as a teen in the manga and anime in sync, but not the last anime-wise.
(I was originally going to upload very rough flipped ‘left-to-right’ scans of these pages as they were all I could find on most site with the chapter. I took the liberty of reversing them for the sake of consistency, and cleared up some of the lettering...and thankfully found these high quality scans on the mangadog.club site right before posting this! Hooray!)
Goku won the match against Kuririn, and after losing the Tenkachi Budokai tournament, he’s shocked to find Kuririn dead, kicking off the Demon King Piccolo arc. Kuririn’s murderer was Tambourine, the scaly henchman and offspring of Demon King Piccolo, a villain who’s seen as a demon with how ruthless he is (but turns out to be an alien in Dragon Ball Z, along with son and reincarnation Piccolo Jr, who becomes a good guy and main character).
Goku kills Tambourine and is later starving, but fortunately comes across a huge fish. Giving into temptation, Goku devours the fish and winds up happily on his back patting a big stuffed belly, letting out a few belch clouds. I love his line, ‘I’m going to explode,’ it’s absolutely adorable. The moment he gets up, his balloon belly’s gone as he tests out his strength by punching a boulder and is pleasantly surprised to find he’s back to full strength. It turns out the fish belongs to the fat sword-wielding Yajirobe who he meets soon after, followed immediately by another one of Piccolo’s offspring...and then the dread Demon King Piccolo himself.
#dragon ball#goku stuffing#weight gain#dragon ball manga#manga#dragon ball weight gain#eating#son goku
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Shiogi Ranger
001
Hagihara Shiogi was an experienced tactician, Yukariki Ichihime was an adaptable string master, and Saijou Tamamo was a reckless berserker. That's why, even though those three were completely equal high school students just like me, they were beings that were completely different from me—although, recalling the fact that I myself had transformed into a mighty vampire over that spring break, then even if we were completely different living beings, you could perhaps say that we were completely equal monsters in that respect, so it was hard to judge.
Anyway, allow me to introduce them, one by one.
Hagihara Shiogi. Sumiyuri Academy third-year.
The academy was one that strived to gather various kids with various circumstances and train them into graceful Yamato nadeshiko, or perhaps into elegant combatants, and she happened to be that academy's representative—for my own convenience, I took it to mean that she's something like the student council president, but the title of tactician was not quite so easy to understand. Despite being in the middle of training herself, she had placed the academy under a substantial amount of control, like a shogi player manipulating the pieces on a board, so it was awfully awe-inspiring—if I wanted to look for someone similar to her at Naoetsu High, then there probably wasn't anyone other than Hanekawa. But, a high schooler that could actually compare to Hanekawa? Just the thought of it sent chills down my spine—not to mention, unlike Hanekawa who was primarily of the intellectual type, this tactician was well-versed in martial arts, which made her all the more difficult to manage.
Yukariki Ichihime. Sumiyuri Academy second-year.
A combatant that the tactician placed her trust in—however, her main role was to be in charge of searching for the enemy. As a string master—to put it simply, it was more or less a user of strings—she wove a complex system of "invisible threads" in all directions like a spider building a nest, using it to grasp the situation. It was apparently a technique she acquired from a "master" that went by the name of Shisei Yuma, but in a way, she'd already surpassed her master—the skill with which she used the gloves she inherited was far more accurate than even high-tech radars, and far more gruesome as well. However, just because she was entrusted with a support-like role did not mean that she was lacking in combat prowess at all—in fact, she was in that role because her combat prowess was exceedingly high. For the tactician who would use any means to achieve her duties, she thought "it would be unsportsmanlike to put this kouhai on the front lines" and decided to put that transcendental skill—in other words, Yukariki Ichihime—in reserve. The spider's thread that she wove around could just as easily turn into sharp sawblades with exceptional cutting ability. Even the legendary vampire had had her limbs cut off once before, and even I had more or less been chopped up into pieces before, but even so, I'd probably say that that was preferable to the fate of the victims that had gotten in her way.
Saijou Tamamo. Sumiyuri Academy first-year.
A combatant that the tactician didn't place her trust in—a berserker. If there existed high school girls that were born for the sake of combat, then she would certainly be one of them, and if there existed high school girls that were born for the sake of killing, then once again, she would certainly be one of them. The large knives, far larger than the usual 15 cm kind, that she gripped in both hands reminded me of the vampire hunter, Dramaturgy—however, she was not a solidly-built giant but a cute and lovely girl. However, the number of people that Saijou Tamamo had killed up until now surely far surpassed the number of brethren that Dramaturgy had exterminated. As for what those vacant eyes of hers was focused on, there was no one who knew. Not even she herself knew.
Tactician. String master. Berserker.
This ridiculous three-man cell of rangers was said to equal an entire country's troops with just the three of them—and it was none other than humanity's strongest contractor that had said so, so I probably couldn't take it as a simple joke. However, with that in mind, the facts were just too hard to accept—that I, someone who was "completely ordinary with no good points", would end up taking on all three of them at the same time.
It was like it had been fabricated.
Yes, as if it wasn't a story, but nonsense.
In the latest work of the series, "Musubimonogatari", I, Araragi Koyomi, had splendidly grown up into a fine 23-year-old, but this was an event that occurred after I'd only just turned 18—that is, near the end of April. If you'll allow me to use some know-it-all specialist terminology, then this incident occurred some time between "Kizumonogatari" and "Nekomonogatari (Black)". However, as things were, without even making it to "Musubimonogatari", I would have lost my life before even running into the various oddities that appeared after "Nekomonogatari (Black)"—becoming a 23-year-old would have been but a dream within a dream.
By the way, I'd be happy if you could still remember that three-way intersection.
After all the blood was sucked out of me by the iron-blooded, hot-blooded, cold-blooded vampire, and after I'd been reduced into a dreadful vampire, I'd fallen into a pincer attack from three sides by Dramaturgy, who killed those of his own kind; Episode, the half-vampire; and Guillotinecutter, who fancied himself a god—it was that very same intersection. At those very same coordinates, I ended up going through the exact same experience.
No, I could even say that the situation was even worse than that time.
After all, unlike during spring break, I couldn't rely on Oshino to help me—of course, that middle-aged guy in a Hawaiian shirt would claim that he didn't remember helping me at all, and that he was just keeping the balance between humans and oddities. But if I were to accept that twisted view, then that made me even more certain that he would not gallantly appear to save me in this case.
After all, those three that had me in a pincer attack this time were not oddity specialists at all.
They were human specialists.
Those girls were not trying to exterminate me as a vampire—they were trying to exterminate me as a human. Good grief.
However, I'd managed to just barely survive that hellish spring break in some way or another after this and that—I hadn't yielded to Dramaturgy's dual swords or Episode's gigantic cross or even Guillotinecutter's despicable hostage-taking strategy. So if I were to be murdered by these three girls in the same breath, or rather in the same spurt of blood, then I'd just feel sorry for those three men.
I'd show them that I could survive once again—even without Oshino.
I'd show them that I'd be able to survive, even if I wasn't a vampire.
Because one day, I wanted to appear in a mystery novel like, "My classmate that was supposed to have died during high school invited me to a class reunion...?", or something along those lines.
And I didn't want to appear as the "classmate that was supposed to have died".
But there was no time to cower. Now, at this three-way intersection where all roads lead to hell, what road should I take?
To take the right path and fight the berserker → proceed to 002.
To take the left path and fight the string master → proceed to 003.
To take the back path and fight the tactician → proceed to 004.
"Wooooobble... wobble."
"Your purpose will be cut off here."
"Even if the opponent is a vampire, my name is Hagihara Shiogi. By any means, fair or foul, I'll shoot you from head-on."
These roads leading to hell were full to the brim with high school girls in arms.
002
Without much room to make a decision, I broke into a run down the right path. Since the foolish option of cowering in place was out of the question, then I was convinced that this was the wisest path out of the three-way intersection.
However, this judgment seemed to go against common sense. Instinctively, it did not seem like a particularly preferable way to go. The reason being that, the one approaching me from the right path, Tamamo-chan, was the unique member of the three-man cell of rangers that was very obviously and very visibly brandishing weapons.
In both hands, she was wielding knives unbefitting of her physique, that you could mistake for hatchets or even axes.
Normally, I'd say you'd be crazy to deliberately choose such a terrifying path that involved encountering such a terrifying girl, but right now, you could hardly call this a normal situation—with that in mind, I placed a great amount of importance on the fact that Tamamo-chan did not seem used to those two knives of hers.
Indeed, those knives looked truly brutal.
However, when I focused, not on her hands, but on her legs.
Tamamo-chan's movements seemed extremely erratic—whether you described it as a staggering gait, or as if she were a fawn that had just been born, she was walking as if she were drunk, swaying back and forth as she moved forward, like Yajirobe.
She was surely being swung around by the weight of her knifes, which was why she couldn't walk straight. It was as the saying went: too much was as bad as too little. It would be like a beginner that thought, "The most expensive one is obviously the best one", and ended up buying a computer that was uselessly high-spec.
By not being fooled by her intimidating appearance, seeing through her true nature, and deliberately rushing down the path that looked the most dangerous—I surely resembled a hero that had managed to overcome a great number of battles.
Speaking of her appearance, Tamamo-chan, like a normal high schooler, was wearing a track suit. However, very much unlike a normal high schooler, her track suit was in tatters—I assumed that she was so unused to her knives that she ended up cutting her own clothes (and her cropped hairstyle was probably for the same reason), but what attracted my attention was not the fact that her track suit was in tatters, but that the design of her track suit was the bloomers kind—no, it's not that I was focusing on her bloomers.
Even if she was a high school girl, just what era was this high school girl from?—I happened to be someone who was incredibly strong-willed against those younger than me, but with that in mind, I couldn't feel the intensity of a veteran emanating from Tamamo-chan at all, let alone the sense that she'd had many battles' worth of experience... Really, bloomers?
If you looked down at me from a bird's-eye point of view, it might have looked as if I'd simply made a beeline for a high school girl in bloomers, which gave off a pretty problematic impression, but it wasn't like I was planning to tackle her slim body just like that—not in the slightest. Even if she wasn't used to them, knives were still knives. If we ended up grappling, then I wouldn't necessarily be safe from getting slashed even at random—I couldn't take that risk. Unlike when I was attacked at this intersection over spring break, I was no longer immortal now.
I had no intention of sparing any effort in escaping from this predicament I'd fallen into, but neither did I plan to engage in battle with a high school girl that had undergone special training—the reason I went with this forward-bent dash was not in order to fight, but in order to avoid fighting.
It was a stylish act of escapism.
As Tamamo-chan's footsteps unsteadily tottered left and right, I was planning on quickly slipping past around her. Doing so shouldn't necessarily be impossible to achieve... If I made sure to stay wary of the edges of the knives, it should actually be rather easy.
If a giant like Dramaturgy had been standing in my way, then there wouldn't have been an opening on this straight road to slip past, but as for Tamamo-chan, she was much more petite than I was, and she was walking while colliding with the walls beside her, like some sort of automatic vacuum cleaner. With each collision, she'd change her trajectory, all the while drawing closer to me—if so, then when she tottered to the right, then it was simply a matter of heading for the left.
Though it was a road, there was still width to it. That was all it was.
"Wooooobble... wobble... wobble."
See, even Tamamo-chan herself was murmuring her own onomatopoeia for how she tottered back and forth—that was proof that those massive weapons were too much for her. Together, those two knives surely weighed even more than Tamamo-chan herself, so it was a simple matter of universal gravitation—however, what I was making was a complete misunderstanding.
And it wasn't that those boorish knives weren't all that heavy.
It was that her weapons (kyouki) weren't too much for her at all—if there was something that was too much for her, it would be her madness (kyouki).
"Wob! Ble!"
Though it should have been onomatopoeia to express her precarious tottering, she'd suddenly shrieked it at full force—and all of a sudden, Tamamo-chan moved deftly, leaping in front of me where I'd been trying to slip past her.
She'd moved like she was in a sidestepping exercise test. No, it was like teleportation.
She was actually using the weight of the knives and her own lightness to her advantage.
She came after me as if she were falling over against the wall on my side—if I had turned my eyes away for an instant in fear of the knives' sharpness, I would absolutely have gotten stabbed right then.
I twisted backwards to dodge the blades. If Tamamo-chan's movements were from a sidestepping exercise test, then my movements would be the exercise in which you "turned your torso to elongate your spine"—it wasn't the kind of stretch you wanted to suddenly do after dashing at full force, and doing so would absolutely hurt your lower back, but I couldn't just let my heart get stabbed in order to preserve my lower back.
Your back couldn't replace your internal organs.
As a result, the knife in her right hand stabbed into a telephone pole in my place. The knife went in deep, up to the hilt, into the pole—eh? No way, were telephone poles constructed out of something that could be stabbed into like that?
Although I'd never once thought about what the inside of a telephone pole was made up of...
"I got you now—"
With an absentminded, practically monotonous tone of voice, Tamamo-chan spoke as if the telephone pole had been her target from the beginning—in fact, she hadn't once turned to look at me, who'd stopped in place. She was still facing away from me.
"My—name is, Saijou Tamamo-chan. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyes. Saisaisaisaisaisaisaijou Tamamo, Saijou Tamamo. Yesyesyesyes. I am Tamamo. Tamamo I am."
"......"
Yikes. What was with this girl?
Had I, perhaps, taken the worst possible path I could've taken?
Putting aside her two knives... Had Saijou Tamamo actually been someone to properly fear?
"Wait... Hold on. Tamamo-chan. Let's talk."
"Right, let's talk killing. Kill talking. Killer king. King is me. No. King Hagihara is senpai—I am."
Wow.
Hohey.
And, while I could only think of such a dull thing to say (if anything, I was probably saying "pawn (hohei)" instead), Tamamo-chan pulled her knife out of the telephone pole with a twisting motion—and that "pulling motion" became one and the same as a "motion to stab me".
Like something straight out of the art of iai, she made to slash at me in a single movement.
If she had been using a Japanese sword, then perhaps it could have been considered the kesagiri motion, but with that boorish knife of hers, it felt more like she was chopping wood.
To be honest, rather than the blades themselves, I was more afraid of her ability to slash at me without hesitation—without any emotion whatsoever, she was moving to cut me in half as if it were as natural as breathing.
It wasn't even bending backwards—I ended up doing some form of backflip in order to dodge that knife. You might think that a dodge like that was trying too hard to be cool, and that it was exaggerated and irrational, but in order to face Tamamo-chan, who moved in eccentric ways, I had no choice to use eccentric movements as well.
Though I'd succeeded in dodging her attack, I messed up my landing. So if I wanted to score myself, I'd give it 50 points out of 100, but at this point it wasn't all that different from 0 points—if the saying went 50 of one and half of 100 of the other, this was more like 50 of one and 0 of the other. I may as well come up with a new saying that went, if you only go halfway, that's basically the same as standing still—but was I really busying myself with coming up with a new saying here?
"Wooooobble, wobble, wobble. Wowowowowo—"
Of course, I'd collapsed onto the asphalt by then (since I'd messed up a backflip, I was more than fortunate that I didn't break my neck), so I'd expected either of her two knives to come swinging down at me next, but Tamamo-chan's next attack was, for some reason, directed at the telephone pole again.
Did she have some sort of grudge against the pole? Jeez, this girl.
Taking the hilt of her knife, she loudly and violently bashed it into the telephone pole again and again.
...I didn't understand the meaning behind her actions, but I began to think that I might be able to slip around her like this, and slowly started to crawl away—and just then, Tamamo-chan turned her eyes towards me.
No, her eyes weren't facing (muiteiru) me at all. If anything, they were just wide open (muiteiru).
Though her head had turned towards me, her line of sight was following a completely different vector, and the movements of her legs and her arms were all over the place. Her form lacked any sense or reason, but somehow, the tip of her knife was extremely accurate in heading for me.
It seemed that, like a sensor, she acted on reflex to anything that moved—that must have been why, instead of going for me on the ground, she'd gone for the telephone pole that was wavering unsteadily, its balance having been disrupted.
My goodness.
To think that lying on the ground and not getting back up was actually the right thing to do.
In my crawling position, I had no other way to dodge but to roll over on the ground—my choices were getting more and more limited, and my survival skills were becoming more and more pathetic.
This time, the knife that swung down towards me stabbed into the asphalt.
Was this world made out of tofu?
However, the tofu this time was on my side. In other words, the weight of the knife had actually turned against Tamamo-chan—she was unable to pull the knife that had gotten stuck vertically into the ground.
"One knife is enough."
However, Tamamo-chan was not just quick in her movements but also in giving up. Without exerting any more effort in trying to pull it out, she let go of the knife's hilt, and switched over to the task of killing me using her remaining knife—it was true that, in order to kill me, a single knife would be sufficient (although the joke of one knife (naifu) being enough (inaffu) was unfortunately very funny. I felt like I wanted to use it myself in the future, if I managed to survive).
However, that opening had given me enough time to stand back up. It may sound like a bit of a surprise to hear this, but I was, at the very least, capable of getting back up.
Of course, even that movement of standing up made Tamamo-chan react.
As if she were being magnetically drawn in, she instantaneously leapt towards my chest. I wouldn't deny the fact that every man more or less had the desire for a girl in an exposed track suit to leap towards his chest, but when that girl was carrying knives, the story changed quite a bit—Tamamo-chan was rather like a Venus flytrap, as she wouldn't react if I didn't move, but not moving when a knife was pointed at you was effectively impossible.
However, since I'd managed to understand that property of hers, it didn't seem right to turn my back on Tamamo-chan and run away from her at full speed—the faster I moved, she was sure to move even faster.
The result ended up being that I stood in the same place and evaded Tamamo-chan's knife with the smallest possible movement—of course, performing such a boxer-like achievement was pretty much impossible for a mere high schooler like me, so my uniform slowly began to tear into pieces. My outfit was turning into a matching set with Tamamo-chan's. It almost looked like we were good friends. What could we do as a pair?
Rather than dodging by the skin of my teeth, I was dodging by the skin of my neck.
If there was some small salvation in all of this, it would be that her attacks were only coming from her knife—she wasn't hitting me with her bare hand or kicking me with her gym shoes. Without any headbutting or elbowing, either, she fully stuck to her fencing style.
In a way, her apparent pathological obsession with knives seemed to be my best chance to win—a chance to win against that madness of hers.[?]
As long as I kept my eyes on her knife, I could just barely dodge it.
After that hellish spring break, I'd forfeited that immortal vampirism that I'd possessed, but its vestiges still obstinately remained in me—in the human known as Araragi Koyomi, a demon had settled in.
Though my immortal powers were unreliable, I had confidence in my eyesight.
And my kinetic vision was no exception.
Tamamo-chan's illogical, irregular, and erratic movements gave her a form that was incredibly difficult to read, but fortunately, I was an extreme amateur when it came to martial arts, which meant that I wasn't led along by the preconceptions of those sorts of formalities.
When she was waving both knifes around, it felt like I absolutely couldn't take my eyes off for even a second, but with one knife, I had some leeway—and I could use that "leeway" in order to search for my next escape route.
"Shred shred—shred shred—shredded wheat."
However, despite none of her repeated attacks landing a single hit, it seemed Tamamo-chan didn't feel any stress at all. Since she was a soldier, so to speak, I would have preferred if she did get irritated, and perhaps even get bored with trying to kill an amateur like me... If she would just get irritated, then perhaps that could even serve as a weak point for me...
Why wouldn't she get irritated?
"Shredded wheat, put it in a bag. Take the bag and cut it up. Cut it up and the insides spill out. Spill out, like your insides—"
...It sounded like she was singing some insane cursed nursery rhyme, but she wasn't irritated at all—however, even if she wasn't irritated, it seemed Tamamo-chan actually found it surprising.
Surprising why I hadn't gotten "shredded" yet.
Well, of course, there was no way she could know that I was using my vampire sight to dodge her knife—and even if I did tell her, I doubted she'd be able to understand. In the first place, it was hard to believe that a person would so relentlessly try to cut up a regular human being as if doing papercraft, let alone a vampire...
"If your belly hurts, then I'll rub it—rub rub stab stab—wooooobble, wobblewobble."
I was the one who'd suggested we talk, but I should probably stop being led astray by Tamamo-chan's words (singing) now... In any case, I was going to just do my best to keep my eyes on the knife.
And as I thought so, I realized.
I'd assumed in the beginning that my eyes had gotten used to it, but that wasn't it at all—Tamamo-chan's movements that had been keen in all senses of the word had started to slow down in pace, little by little.
Through my eyesight, I noticed her fatigue.
Of course, a swinging motion was a great way to utilize the weight of the knife for the greatest effect, but it wasn't like she had arms the size of logs like Dramaturgy head—they were thin arms that were like withered trees.
Being eccentric, erratic, and unexpected had a nice ring to it (or did it?), but there was no way that keeping up those illogical and inefficient movements wouldn't tire her out physically. All right! By managing to hold out, I earned another opportunity—as soon as her movements got just a bit slower, I would find the right timing and dash away at full speed...
And then.
As soon as I'd spotted a faint glimmer of hope together with Tamamo-chan's fatigue, I'd lost sight of something else in turn—the knife, that I should have been following with my eyes without a single blink, suddenly disappeared from my field of fision.
"I might swish around and I might slash around—if you cut it close, then it'll be too close to call—and then, I my kill around—"
With her gaze fixed on who knows where, she thrust her now empty-right hand in a V sign into the air, twisted her torso, raised her right foot behind her, stood on her left foot on tiptoes, and, with her left hand—
Tamamo-chan's left hand was spun behind her back.
Her body's incoherent movements seemed way too erratic to just be a simple misdirection, but Tamamo-chan should have been holding her knife in that hand... Aha, so was she trying to confuse me for a moment by hiding her knife in my blind spot? But there was no use. As soon as she took the knife out of my blind spot, I'd be able to keep following it.
Or perhaps, was she switching the knife over from her tired left arm to her unused right arm behind her back—but that wasn't it. That wasn't it at all.
I should have been paying more attention to her nursery rhymes.
I my kill around—
It wasn't close to proper English grammar in the slightest, but she had done exactly as she'd said—before she could tear me to shreds, she went around and stabbed herself in the back.
And, after piercing through her flimsy torso that was barely there, the tip of the knife protruded out of Tamamo-chan's stomach—and pierced straight into my stomach.
It plunged right in. And then it tore me to shreds.
With the edge of the knife, she carved a Z into my stomach. Well, no, if the letter carved into my stomach was a Z, then she would be carving an S into her own stomach—in any case, she was cutting up her own bowels along with mine.
It seemed that for her, the saying, "Your back couldn't replace your internal organs", had no meaning.
Through her own back, she'd pierced my guts.
If my belly hurts, she'll stab it.
It wasn't that she was going to bring the knife out from the blind spot behind her, but that she was going to bring the knife out through her stomach—and not even a vampire's eyesight would be able to see that.
No. I'd seen the outcome of this battle from the beginning. I'd seen my own death, too.
The moment I chose the path on the right—
"...But, wait a minute, aren't you gonna die, too? What's going on with your spine?"
"It's fiiine. When people die, it's not because their spine breaks, it's because their heart breaks."
Feeling just the slightest bit happy that I was able to hold a proper conversation with this girl in bloomers at the very end, then with a snip, with a snap, I had no other choice but to die here.
003
Taking the path on the left as the natural decision to make, I ran down it at full force—without much room to hesitate, what was important was the courage to make a decision. After all, the right path had a girl with cropped hair, wearing bloomers, and wielding two knives tottering unsteadily in my direction. Anyone who picked such a path would have to be a complete and utter idiot. An idiot that wouldn't get better even if he died. An idiot that was better off dead, regardless.
Even so, I was reluctant to retreat behind me and face off against Shiogi-chan. After all, she was the leader of the three-man cell of rangers. To go head-to-head against someone who possessed an ingenuity that could compare to Hanekawa's was not something that appealed to me.
And so, by process of elimination, I decided to take on Hime-chan.
She was a girl with giant yellow ribbons on her head—she looked so young that it was hard to see her as the same age as Kanbaru, but of course, she was still a good enough soldier to attend Sumiyuri Academy, so I couldn't let my guard down against the cuteness of those ribbons.
Fortunately, I could see what was in her hands.
I could see what was in her gloves.
She was a user of strings.
She was stringing up a system of "invisible threads" in the surrounding area in order to get a grasp of the situation and begin searching for the enemy—as such, it would be an impossible task to dodge her and slip past her on this straight road. It would be as hard as trying to steal a jewel guarded by a security system of infrared laser beams.
Normally.
However, I was endowed with the eyesight of a vampire—while a normal human's sight might not be able to perceive those superfine strings, they were not "invisible threads" to me at all. If I was in perfect form, I would even be able to see infrared beams.
I wouldn't say that evading the strings that had been set up three-dimensionally on this straight road was like taking candy from a baby, but they weren't so hindering that I needed to run any slower than I was.
If anything, the strings were surely a hindrance to Hime-chan instead.
It was as if the zig-zagging spider's nest that she constructed had actually become a spider's thread that was coming to save me—they say that spiders only walk on the vertical threads of a web, right? Then I could simply run while hiding in the horizontal threads.
In the first place, moving while setting up a web was not something that could be performed at a fast pace—Hime-chan would have to proceed slowly. I hadn't exactly thought that far when choosing to take the left path, but it seemed now that I could move as I pleased while slipping through the gaps in the web.
However, at my incredible feat of running at full speed without touching or cutting even a single one of those "invisible threads", the girl with the yellow ribbons, Yukariki Ichihime, simply watched over me without even blinking an eye.
She simply displayed a cute smile upon her cute face.
"Huhuhu. It sure is brave of you to perform a suicide attack, Araragi-san. But from Hime-chan's point of view, that barbaric act is just like a moss to a flame," she said.
What, was her signature move to get proverbs wrong?
Sorry, but in our world, that was a fundamental skill that anybody was capable of using.
You're a hundred years too early to think you can charm me with such a traditional character trait, string master—however, her actual signature move, naturally, was not playing with words, but playing cat's cradle.
Today was a nice day in spring, but if there were any moths flying into flames, I would certainly be one of them—I'd leapt straight into the spider's nest because I'd had the confidence that I'd be able to get through, but I hadn't predicted how the nest would move.
No, of course I'd known it was possible.
This web wasn't just something that could lie in wait—it could even attack.
These threads were not threads to tie up the enemy, but threads to slice up the enemy.
So I'd more or less prepared myself to respond to however the "invisible threads" decided to come at me—but what landed outside of my expectations were the dynamic movements of those threads.
All of the threads returned, back to Hime-chan's hands. With a swoosh, swoosh, swoosh—they'd retracted and wound back up into her gloves.
Compared to walking along while stringing up the spider's nest, it seemed that she didn't need to be as high-strung about retrieving the threads—well, it was a simple matter following the reverse procedure of stringing them up, and thinking about it, it was obvious that I'd managed to get this far because the "invisible threads" were visible to me, so there was no reason to bother winding them up surreptitiously.
And, on that note.
There was no reason for Hime-chan to perform her next action surreptitiously, either.
If I was able to see them, then she may as well show them to me.
She took the threads she'd just gathered up and immediately reused them—her role was normally for logistical support, but when it was necessary, and also when it wasn't necessary to keep the strings out of sight, she was capable of reconstructing her nest in an instant.
And this time, it wasn't the nest of a spider.
Or rather, it wasn't even a nest—it was a wall.
In an instant, a "wall" appeared before my eyes.
They were no longer "threads" that had been strung up—an entire "surface" had been knit together.
Without needing to fuss over the details of where to hang it or what to hook it on, she had knit the "net" across the two telephone poles to the left and right—and it was an extremely fine net, as if a hundred million volleyball nets had been put together. This wall was something I could not dodge, even if I could see it.
Just physically, there was no gap through which a person could pass through.
"......!"
Of course if you bundled threads together, you could make a rope, and if you bundled ropes together, you could make a net—I'd hit the brakes as fast as I could, but I was too late. I collided head-on with the wall.
I'd sworn to keep moving even if my legs were cut off, but I had ended up being stopped by this.
However, threads were still threads in the end.
If this were a single piano wire, and I'd been running at a speed of 80 km/h, then I surely would have reenacted a Hollywood-like scene where my head was cleanly cut off, but if the "invisible threads" were bundled up into a clearly visible wall, then even if I collided with it at a speed that humans were capable of (about 15 km/h?), then I would only end up getting tangled up in the threads. In that sense, you could say this net was a safety net.
It was like, if you lay down on a single needle, it would pierce into you, but if you lay down on ten thousand needles and distributed your weight, then they wouldn't even be able to pierce your skin—not to mention, this wall, like the spider's nest before it, surely worked to protect me as well.
After all, if you erected a wall in the middle of a straight road, then in terms of oddities it would be the same as a "nurikabe", seeing as it stood in Hime-chan's way just as it did mine—but it wasn't the same at all.
Strictly speaking, it was less like I'd collided with the wall and more like I'd gotten stuck in the wall—after all, it wasn't a wall made of concrete or plaster, but a wall made of threads. As mentioned above, I'd gotten tangled up in those threads—and it was less like I'd stopped running and more like I was floating in the air.
One of my legs and one of my arms, as well as my head, had burst through to the other side of the wall.
I could perfectly lock eyes with Hime-chan.
She had an extremely happy grin on her face.
There wasn't even an ounce of malice in that grin—but there wasn't even an ounce of innocence, either.
"Uhuhuhu. You've fallen into my trap, Araragi-san—literally."
"......"
Ah, so that was it.
This wasn't a nest, and it wasn't a wall, either—it was a trap.
If I remembered correctly, something like a fowling net... The kind you used to catch wild thrushes and the like... With my entire body being caught in it like this, I could move neither forwards nor backwards... Yes, my weight had been distributed...
But fowling nets should have been banned as a hunting method in modern times due to their viciousness...
"...Won't you help me out?"
I gave it a shot, since I had nothing to lose.
"No way. The early Hime-chan catches the bird, you know."
It sounded like she'd gotten a proverb wrong yet again, but in this case, it was quite "literally" so—she put her hands behind her head and quickly untied her yellow ribbons.
She loosened the hair she'd tied up—seeing it like this, her hair was longer than I'd thought.
But why was she letting her hair down at this timing?
"Well, Hime-chan used up all her strings in order to make that fowling net. So I was thinking I'd prepare something in place of those strings."
"Th, then, are you going to use those ribbons? It's true that they're just cloth, which is a bundle of threads..."
"No, no, these are precious ribbons that I received from my master, so I couldn't possibly use it in such a hurtful way."
So, I'll use my hair, instead.
Saying as such, Hime-chan bounded towards me, who'd been rendered unable to move an inch—and wrapped a lock of hair around my neck.
The action was like she was wrapping a scarf around me, but if you thought it was anything like such a scene shared between fellow high schoolers, there was not one aspect of that in the current situation. In the first place, I was completely stuck in her trap.
The early Hime-chan catches the bird—or strangles it.
"Then, farewell, Araragi Koyomi-san. Your purpose will be cut off here."[?]
During spring break, I'd died in roughly a thousand different ways, but being strangled to death by hair was certainly not one of them—for a good-for-nothing like me to die like this, it was perhaps not so bad after all.
However, even in my fading consciousness, this came to mind.
If only I hadn't chosen the left path—
004
This was by no means a retreat—I was turning on my heel with a lighthearted backstep, exhibiting a foolish courage by choosing the route that would have me face off against the tactician: Hagihara Shiogi. Of course, I wasn't trying to be unexpected at all—going after the team's boss was the usual play to make in situations like these. Not to mention, if I just used my common sense, then taking the path behind me was the only choice that made sense—obviously, it would be no joke to go up against Tamamo-chan, who had large knives in both hands, and trying to evade Hime-chan and her radar of threads that perpetually probed the surroundings for enemies would surely end up being the most foolish decision made in history. If those choices were no different from me just biting my tongue off and dying right then and there, then it would surely be better for my survival if I went for the sly tactician instead.
Even if she was a high school girl that could compare to Hanekawa, she was by no means Hanekawa herself. It was true that, if she was a "Hanekawa capable of fighting", it was basically making the strong even stronger, but the moment she used violence, she would become a completely different person from Hanekawa. It was her pacifism that completely rejected acts of war that was one of Hanekawa's unique strong points—and that was why I had a chance to win.
I didn't know how many battles she'd lived through, but I'd long since passed the border of death over spring break, to the point that my entire body was obliterated—if we were to face off in just a single match, then perhaps I'd be able to outwit this tactician.
With an air of composure, Hagihara briskly walked down the center of the road and approached me—as if this simple path in this ordinary town was some royal road.
At a glance, she seemed like a standard high school girl in a uniform with the aura of a proper young lady, but she carried with her an intensity that made it hard to believe that she was my age. By this point, I'd already begun to deeply regret choosing this road... Wouldn't it actually have been better to face those two knives, or leap into the spider's nest that had been strung up...? Why did I choose something that was so much like a last resort in the very beginning?
"So you've decided to come to me on your own, Former Vampire-san. This is all going so according to plan that I'm actually a bit taken aback—it appears that there won't be any need for garlic."
With a faint smile, Hagihara reached inside her uniform—garlic?
Whoa, whoa, a lovely high school girl shouldn't carry around something like that in her bosom. Isn't that a bit too crude to use as a weapon in vampire hunting? I flinched back for a moment, but then began to run even faster, as if I'd been encouraged by the enemy.
Of course, that just meant I'd allowed her to provoke me.
Even so, at the very least, I was going to remain alert. And if she pulled out from her bosom not garlic but a knife like the ones Tamamo-chan held, then I prepared myself to react accordingly and run past her while staying safely out of range. When I said that Hagihara could even compare to Hanekawa, it wasn't just her intellect alone. Even the size of her chest could rival Hanekawa's—and within that cleavage, she could surely even store a large knife. Well, I probably didn't need to worry about her bringing out any "invisible threads", since that was the specialty of a string master that was rare in modern times. That was something that only Hime-chan and her master should be able to use. So I would probably be able to circle around her even while keeping a distance of two meters.
It wasn't easy to dodge her when she was standing right in the middle of the road, but maybe if I feinted—or if I made a feint by pretending to feint—or a feint of a feint of a feint—however, when I was only five meters away from her, what Hagihara pulled out from her bosom was not garlic.
"Very well. Stop right there. That's perfectly within range of my gun."
What she pulled out from her bosom was a pistol.
Of course I'd stop at that. Even if she didn't tell me to.
"Eh? Are pistols even allowed? In your world."
"Against professional players, a gun like this is nothing but a toy that wouldn't be effective in the slightest, but against a demon, I'm sure it'll be fine—the object itself is low quality, but the bullets are made of expensive silver."
So she'd brought silver bullets with her.
Indeed, if she was carrying those around, then there wouldn't be a need for garlic...
"Yes. In our world, 'mobile devices' would fundamentally refer to weapons, not cell phones, after all. Would you mind raising your arms above your head? Araragi-kun."
So those ostentatious knives and that fantastic thread usage, in the end, were both just misdirection, and the clincher was an extremely simple and straightforward gun... It felt like both the gun's muzzle and reality itself had just been thrust upon me.
"Okay, it's my loss. I surrender. Please have mercy."
I raised both my arms as I was told. If I'd still been a vampire, then at this point I could have used the breakthrough solution of turning my arms into vegetation, but now, it was a bit ironic—it was more or less because I'd lost almost all my vampirism then that I'd come to be defeated again at this three-way intersection.
"However, I wonder if you could answer a question of mine. Why are we even like this? Hagihara. Why are you—why are you, Hime-chan, and Tamamo-chan going after me? Why are you trying to stab me, to tie me up, and to shoot me?"
"......?"
This tactician was essentially a bundle of tactics that moved with a solid grasp of the state of the game, but at this question, she displayed a dumbfounded expression for the first time—it was as if she didn't even understand what I'd just asked.
This girl... She wasn't even playing dumb—this was actually behind her comprehension.
It was almost like she was a normal high schooler, racking her brains at the last question on her final exam—it seemed that my "wanting to know why I was being aimed at" was much too mysterious for Hagihara.
"Why am I going after you? Why am I fighting? Hm. What a leisurely perspective to take—but I've never once thought about it. I've only ever acted as I've been ordered to... Even a tactician is just a soldier in the end."
"You—you guys fight for no reason?"
"A war doesn't need a reason, correct? In the same way love needs no reason."
It sounded like a pretty smart thing to say.
I see—she wasn't someone who could compare to Hanekawa at all.
If anything, she was the exact opposite of Hanekawa.
"...You really don't know anything, don't you."
"I don't even want to know. It's because I don't know that I'm able to fight."
Every oddity has their own reason for existing—those were the words of the oddity specialist, Oshino Meme. And then, the specialist of humans, Hagihara Shiogi, would surely continue like this—humans don't have any reasons for existing at all.
Because she was ordered to, for some reason or other, because it came to mind, on the spur of the moment.
She will fight.
"...Then, why did you stop me? If you didn't plan on talking it out, you could have just shot me without wasting your breath."
Was it not to tell me the reason for this battle that had suddenly broken out? I'd held onto a sliver of hope that there would be room for negotiations, depending on what the reason was, but...
"......Aha."
Hagihara laughed. She laughed like a normal high school girl.
This wasn't her doubting me or anything—it seemed she'd just found it funny.
"Expecting to hear the reason for being shot before being shot? Araragi-kun, you've watched too many westerns."
"I haven't watched that many westerns, though. Huh? Then, what was the point of this 'Freeze!' and 'Put your hands up!' thing? Weren't you giving me a chance to beg for my life?"
"The reason I stopped you was that, it's hard to aim at a moving target with this low-quality gun. The reason I had you put your arms up was so that you wouldn't be able to protect your heart."
"...I'm glad you at least told me that much."
"Well then, BANG. My name is Hagihara Shiogi. By any means, fair or foul, I'll 'shoot' you from head-on."
Hagihara pulled the trigger of that low-quality gun.
A silver bullet would have an immediate effect even on a human, not to mention a vampire, but even as that bullet pierced through my heart, I still felt like I wanted to know.
Not the reason for being shot, and not the reason for fighting.
If I hadn't doubled back, and instead gone straight ahead into one of the left or right paths, then how would it have turned out? That was all I wanted to know—
005
The epilogue; or rather, the punchline.
In the end, no matter what route I chose, no matter what parallel world I went down, the ends of every branch seemed to probabilistically converge towards much the same conclusion. It may seem like a very mathematical moral to this story, but this wasn't actually the case.
Even if all roads were blocked on this three-way intersection, there was still a route in which I could survive.
My first mistake was assuming that I was only limited to three options.
Even if cowering where I stood was out of the question—despite being at a three-way intersection, available paths spread out in all directions. I wasn't a shogi piece, so it wasn't like I was restricted to the spaces on the board. In that case, I'd be better off choosing a route that involved confronting neither Saijou Tamamo, nor Yukariki Ichihime, nor Hagihara Shiogi—and it wasn't that hard to do.
The steps were what I could call, "back-and-forth".
Well, to be exact, it would be the footsteps I would take... I'd only analyzed the three combatants based on how threatening they were, but that was an extremely grave error on my part. Well, of course, I'd needed to take into consideration their respective threat levels, but "only" doing so didn't expand the range of decisions I could make—if anything, it reduced it. In the first place, the threat levels for all three of them had far surpassed the threshold, so it was all the same to me whether their combat prowess was 100 points, 1,000 points, or even 10,000 points—since my own combat prowess was less than 1 point.
In that case, I needed to focus on something else. Something that I could compete in.
For example... Yes, what if I "only" looked at their movement speed?
Now matter how they were trained, a human body could only reach a human's running ability in the end—they wouldn't be able to run faster than a car, and when compared to a train, we humans would all be more or less on the same level.
Furthermore, even if we were all on the same level, we weren't exactly the same.
Each person had their own individual speed.
A-kun went out to go shopping at a rate of 5 km/h. In order to give him more tasks to do, B-kun chased after him 30 minutes later at a rate of 6 km/h—and to deliver the wallet he'd forgotten, C-kun went out 30 minutes after that at a rate of 8 km/h. How long would it take for B-kun to catch up to A-kun, who departed 30 minutes earlier? How long would it take for C-kun to catch up to the other two?
Of course, as people like to say, applying a problem like this to reality brought about various logistical inconsistencies. Like, "How far do they even plan to walk?", or "Aren't there any traffic lights?", and so on—and the most extreme of those would be, "There's someone chasing after you, so turn around and go back!"
And I would utilize that inconsistency.
Among the three high school girls, the one with the fastest pace was, to my surprise, the one walking briskly down the middle of the royal road, taking elegant and composed steps, Hagihara Shiogi. As it were, she was just walking normally, but if we were to assign her pace a score of 100 points, then relatively, then the one with the slowest pace, once again to my surprise, was Yukariki Ichihime. Because she was walking while stringing up her spider's nest in all directions, her pace had slowed down considerably—so compared to Hagihara's 100 points, Hime-chan's pace would get a score of around 80 points. And, as for Saijou Tamamo, who proceeded forward while swaying and shaking with a lightning-bolt-like trajectory, I'd say she was somewhere in the middle with 90 points.
Of course, this was just their basic speeds, and I could only gaze in wonder at Tamamo-chan's keen and eccentric movements when reacting to "moving targets". And even Hime-chan could move at an above-average speed if she abandoned all pretense of secrecy. As for the speed of Hagihara's silver bullets, they were difficult to track even with a vampire's eyesight. However, I could still use it as a basis—a basis for choosing my path.
First off, I'd take Route Left. In other words, I would head for the spider's nest.
However, I wouldn't run at full speed. I'd run at a speed of about 100 points, fast enough so that I wouldn't be chased from behind, and proceed straight down the left path—at least, only partially. Before running into Hime-chan, before getting caught in her radar, I would turn around.
I would turn around and return the way I came—using that inconsistency of my choices in a consistent manner. Of course, it would be ideal if I could return backwards without being seen by Hime-chan, but it didn't matter if she did see me. In the end, her role was just to "stand in my way", and that spider's nest was made just for that, so she wouldn't abandon it to chase me too far—since the other routes were blocked by the berserker and the tactician, after all.
Or they "should have been" blocked.
However, before I could "return to the start", the tactician that walked at a 100-point rate would arrive at the center of the three-way intersection. There, she would have to make a decision.
She'd be confronted with the same choice as I had—should she go down the left path, or the right? As long as her objective was a pincer attack, she absolutely needed to choose one of them, but which path should she take to continue the pincer attack?
In other words, I was transferring my options to the other party—however, if she thought about it for just a little bit, she'd realize that she had no other option but to take the right path. After all, if I'd gone down the path where that radar lay in wait, then she wouldn't be worried about letting me escape... But if I'd gone down the path with the out-of-control berserker in charge, then there was a million-to-one chance of an unexpected defeat. That's why she would have to proceed down the path on the right.
And so, the tactician would take the right path, and the unguarded back path would then be open for me to escape at a 120-point pace—an unguarded escape route would be created.
Well then, let's go with that plan in 006.
Having my stomach be turned into a Z sign while listening to nursery rhymes, being caught in a forbidden fowling net and getting strangled by a girl's hair, or getting shot by a silver bullet even after I'd become a human... If I was going to meet such wretched fates, then I would rather just die sooner—was not what I thought in the slightest. Even this route may fail against the tactician's iron fence, but if so, then I just needed to look for another route.
It didn't sound too bad to be stuck in an endless loop where I got to play with high school girls from another world forever, but I would much rather prefer to enjoy myself with everyone I was going to meet from now on—so until I find the route I could use to escape, I'll revive myself over and over again. If there's no route, then I'll just make one. And, someday, I'll turn into that boring, 23-year-old adult.
Even if I'm torn to shreds, my heart won't break.
My purpose won't be cut off here.
My name is Araragi Koyomi.
After just barely escaping from that spring break of hell with my life, unlike when I'd been a vampire, my life was something I wanted to cherish.
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