Monogatari Series - Volume 16 - Chapter 11.05

005

The epilogue, or maybe, the punch line of this story.

So how did I fix this blunder, you ask─how did I put together an ersatz strategy for victory?

Well, it was nothing to be proud of.

It’s not like there’s all that much variation in my patterns of thought and behavior─I decided to retread the way I took on Ms. Kagenui over summer break.

Even if it’s a little late at this point, I’ll give a quick summary for those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about: One day over the summer, in order to challenge Ms. Kagenui, I let the legendary vampire Shinobu Oshino, or what’s left of her anyway, drink my blood…thereby mutually raising our vampiric levels and strengthening myself (and her).

The thing is.

However much I may have raised my skill as a vampire, I was shockingly helpless in the face of Ms. Kagenui, specialist in immortal aberrations─nevertheless, that had been the best option available to me.

The worst, but at the same time, the best.

So if there were no restrictions, letting Shinobu drink even more of my blood and powering myself up to face Ms. Kagenui would be my “ace in the hole,” a “no-brainer,” an obvious choice for how to defeat her at this game she cooked up─but this time I couldn’t use that plan as such.

I could no longer turn myself into a vampire─and Ms. Kagenui knew it. So if I pretended that I had, then yeah, it would only make the beating I received that much worse.

And anyway, if I gave any sign of becoming more vampiricized than I already was, as an expert─as an expert who takes down immortal aberrations in the name of justice, Ms. Kagenui would obliterate me without fail.

The fact that she let me go over summer break was nothing short of a miracle─since she’s fundamentally not one for sob stories.

Since she’s a pro.

So vampiricization was off the table, even as a strategy for losing─but the possibility of having Shinobu exercise her power on my behalf, well, that idea was alive and well.

Her power to manifest matter, specifically.

One of Shinobu’s fabulous abilities (fabilities, I like to call them) is that she can completely ignore the laws of conservation, of energy and mass, to construct at will, out of shadows and darkness, anything that she’s able to imagine─and so, on this occasion I had her make me a pistol.

A handgun.

A firearm.

Woo-hoo!

I don’t care how strong Ms. Kagenui is. With a gun, beating her will be a cinch!

Yeah right.

I wouldn’t even be able to beat her with a bazooka─a silver bullet might kill her if she were a vampire, but no matter what kind of bullet I used, nothing was going to penetrate Ms. Kagenui’s defenses, let alone kill her.

I went with the gun idea in spite of all this for purely rhetorical reasons─“hit,” she had said.

If I hit her even once─it would do.

So it shouldn’t matter if I hit her with my fist, or with a bullet!

Exactly the kind of rash impulse a complete idiot like myself would act on─and crucially, it was one hundred percent destined to fail.

It was extremely convincing as bad ideas go─once I pulled the trigger, the bullet wouldn’t even graze Ms. Kagenui.

A moronic high schooler with a moronic little sister played a game and lost─end of story. As a spur-of-the-moment response to her casual consideration…no, as a blunder in response to a mishap, I’d say it deserved a passing grade.

Which is how I ended up going to Kita-Shirahebi Shrine the next day with a pistol in my hand (a pretty strange pistol, since Shinobu had just kind of thrown together the design, somewhere between an automatic and a revolver).

It was pretty dangerous putting a pistol in the hands of a foolhardy guy like me, even if I do say so myself, but we’ll leave that aside. I still wanted to know about the relationship between Yozuru Kagenui and Yotsugi Ononoki, that hadn’t changed…but probably best to put that off a little longer until some other things were tidied up.

My not very reliable intuition, however─informed me that Ms. Kagenui’s habit of never setting foot on the ground might have something to do with Ononoki.

Just as I paid dearly for having Shinobu by my side─couldn’t I maybe ask her about that, at least?

If I could just find out that one thing.

I could settle down a tiny bit and face my exams─that was my thinking, anyway.

But when I arrived at the grounds of Kita-Shirahebi Shrine, I discovered that my not very reliable intuition had failed me again─though not on the subject of Ms. Kagenui and Ononoki’s relationship.

“What the…”

The grounds of that shrine without a god.

That empty, forsaken hangout for aberrations─where just the building, just the facilities had been renewed.

Was deserted─the strongest woman I’d ever met, the lifetime-undefeated expert Yozuru Kagenui, was gone.

Vanished, without a trace.

“What the?”

Impossible, she’d never leave without saying some kind of goodbye─never mind leaving Ononoki behind.

“What the…”

To be continued.