Even Kujou Iruka could not defy the power of the "Godmother's Laurel."
It was the Holy Relic that the Kirishika of old had left behind in the "Holy Royal Court" after she 'died'.
In the end Saint Michael had borrowed it out, and after that final battle it vanished without a trace. Eventually it came to Su Yuzu as a mission reward.
With the "Godmother's Laurel" behind her, Su Yuzu seized the upper hand in the space of a breath.
Black thorned vines climbed up Kujou Iruka's body.
The woman's lines were already graceful, already striking; set off against those pitch-black thorns, they took on a heavy flavor of taboo and temptation.
Looking down at those thorns, even Kujou Iruka, who feared neither heaven nor earth, felt her scalp prickle.
She remembered something from a long, long time ago, back when she was still studying at Keigunen Private Academy... certain very similar scenes from certain very disreputable manga.
They say a "Throne" is the embodiment of its bearer's inner imagery.
So it was true. Su Yuzu looked perfectly harmless.
In reality she was a nasty little thing.
Otherwise... how else would that stupid, weak, gullible Little Sister of hers have been swindled by Su Yuzu out of everything down to her underwear, gone as obedient as a big house-dog?
The pity of it was that, although the "Godmother's Laurel" was a Holy Relic left behind by the 'death' of a rule-type ability user,
the Kirishika of that era was, after all, long dead.
The Kirishika who remained now was nothing but an 'hollow shell'.
Even the "Seat of Evil" was only a partial thing — an incomplete Sixth Sequence form.
The "Godmother's Laurel" could not hold control for long.
It could only help Su Yuzu bind Kujou Iruka for three seconds.
Though three seconds... was quite long enough for the vines to creep up to Kujou Iruka's chest.
Able to do nothing but watch Su Yuzu do as she pleased for those three seconds, Kujou Iruka's dark golden vertical pupils brimmed with indignation and furious shame.
Kujou Iruka had never known three seconds to stretch so long.
Time itself seemed to stop flowing.
If this had been a gag manga, then at the very moment Kujou Iruka got 'time-stopped', the Aberrant girl standing off to the side on commentary duty would have hammered together a little wooden sign, bang bang bang, and planted it in the ground beside her.
The sign would read: "this ships itself" — loosely, "there's a doujin in this."
Sadly, reality was nothing of the sort.
It wasn't even an ecchi manga.
"Three—"
"Two!!!"
"One!!!"
The instant the effect of the "Godmother's Laurel" cut out, a terrible, surging pressure and power detonated across Kujou Iruka.
Meeting that power head-on, Su Yuzu shook so hard her lips quivered with it.
Everything before this had been playing around.
Now, at last, the Seventh Sequence "Abyss of the Eternal Smile" revealed her true, towering shape.
As if with a single finger Kujou Iruka could press Su Yuzu flat the way one squashes an ant.
She was angry.
She had finally been driven to real fury.
The wool suit and coat on Kujou Iruka's body seemed to catch fire.
Except what the burning left behind was not ash, but feathers, one pitch-black feather after another.
Pale skin was bared.
Jet-black wings unfurled from the small of Kujou Iruka's back.
At last, in front of Su Yuzu, Kujou Iruka had returned to the form that belonged to her as one of the Aberrants — as the Seventh Sequence Empress of the Abyss.
Facing Su Yuzu's "Throne."
Facing those irritating thorns, Kujou Iruka was nowhere near as gentle as she had been with Su Yuzu herself.
The vanes of those wings were sharp as knives.
One light sweep, and the wings at her waist sheared away great swathes of thorn.
As the thorns were severed, something clenched in Su Yuzu's chest like a heart attack coming on.
Kujou Iruka's valiant bearing looked exactly like a heroic Valkyrie out of a picture book.
It made Su Yuzu think of the Valkyrie statue in that warehouse near Imperial Capital University, the one sealed under years of dust.
In this battle of attack and defense between Su Yuzu and Kujou Iruka,
Kujou Iruka had swept to total victory in a heartbeat, routing Su Yuzu so effortlessly that the girl threw down helmet and armor and scattered in disarray.
The black wings spread wide.
Kujou Iruka caught Su Yuzu by the shoulder, laced their fingers together, and pinned her to the wall.
She no longer cared how much Su Yuzu toyed with this room, playing with it like a magician's box.
Whatever else happened, Kujou Iruka only wanted one thing: to pin Su Yuzu against that wall and keep her there.
And then to teach this little junior of hers a thorough, merciless lesson.
In this campaign, Kujou Iruka had won a sweeping victory.
Really... had she?
Holding Su Yuzu crushed against the wall, Kujou Iruka looked at the girl's face.
The girl's expression held no panic at all. If anything, she looked composed.
The fire that had been burning in those beautiful crimson eyes did seem to have gone out along with the thorns Kujou Iruka had swept away.
But something in those eyes kept making Kujou Iruka think she caught the scent of scheming and calculation.
The rotten little brat, brimming with bad ideas — she'd definitely thought up some new trick.
Anyone with the ability to Taming that stupid, weak, obsessive Little Sister of hers — Kujou Iruka had never for a moment assumed Su Yuzu was some sweet, harmless creature.
Only... what else could she possibly do?
The power of her "Throne" had already been suppressed, at least for now.
In this fight between the Seventh Sequence "Seat of Garan" and the Fourth Sequence "Seat of Karma," there had been a few twists along the way, but in the end Kujou Iruka had won it outright.
"Enough of all that—"
"Now it's time to pick the fruits of victory."
Looking at Su Yuzu, who seemed to have no strength left to resist, Kujou Iruka had already worked out exactly how she would haul the girl across her lap and give her a good, hard spanking.
Su Yuzu's arms hung limp over Kujou Iruka's shoulders.
But right then, Kujou Iruka saw the smile rising on the girl's face.
The instant that smile curled at the corner of Su Yuzu's lips, Kujou Iruka knew this was bad.
The black wings snapped open.
Kujou Iruka braced herself to take another Holy Relic on the level of the "Godmother's Laurel."
"Don't move—"
All this time it had been Kujou Iruka doing the murmuring, deliberately, wickedly, against Su Yuzu's ear.
Now the situation had finally reversed itself.
Kujou Iruka finally understood how Su Yuzu had felt.
Having a cute, tempting girl whisper right beside your ear really was hard to withstand — like a current crawling up your limbs.
But Kujou Iruka realized this was nowhere near as simple as a whisper.
Su Yuzu's counterattack had only just begun.
Kujou Iruka found that she couldn't move.
"Word of Command?"
She couldn't make sense of it.
That power should have belonged to Saint Michael. Why was it here, in Su Yuzu?
Pinned against the wall, her entire weight hanging off Kujou Iruka's body, Su Yuzu panted and gazed past the sliding door at the sun that had lost its blinding glare and all its warmth.
Su Yuzu felt the tremor running through Kujou Iruka's muscles.
Better than anyone, she knew this thin scrap of [Word of Command] was nowhere near enough to hold Kujou Iruka for long.
But Su Yuzu looked at the wings spread from the small of Kujou Iruka's back.
At last... she had forced out her 'true body'.
"Time to dig in~"
Breathing softly against Kujou Iruka's trembling ear, Su Yuzu wore a wicked little grin as she said the words that made no sense to the woman at all.
That's right~
Su Yuzu really did have a hard time landing a scratch on a Seventh Sequence like Kujou Iruka.
She stood no chance of winning against her.
And yet—
"I wonder what Sister Iruka tastes like..."
"What kind of flavor do you think it'll be?"
Seizing the upper edge of the wing spread from Kujou Iruka's back, Su Yuzu bit down hard.
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