He let out a slow breath.
Let's do this, then.
The first thing he did was take one step to his left. That was all.
To Taro, which was apparently the Scrapper's name, announced upstairs like an introduction at a dinner party, which Manjiro supposed this technically was. He was already turning with the busted shoulder and the saw.
What the step did was let him check the room. The cage bar at his left, the pillar at the far end, the two ghouls near the north exit. He felt which direction Taro's swing would come from before it came.
Then the bandages fully unrolled.
The right one snapped out and wrapped around the wrist and hardened. The Hamon hit at the same time. The saw dropped. Taro was taken aback.
He was already moving before Taro finished falling.
The two ghouls dropped from the upper ring.
Both bandages came out at once.
Right one hit the far pillar, hardened, pulled him sideways so fast that the first ghoul's rinkaku variant missed him. The left one wrapped the second ghoul's forearm and smashed it into the wall at the same time. Both of them doing different things simultaneously, which looked strange enough from the upper ring that the crowd went quiet.
Upstairs, the clapping stopped.
"He's not using a kagune, is he?"
He noticed, without meaning to, that Kenji and Yui were holding together better than they should have been. they weren't where he'd have expected them to be given what they'd just seen.
[SKILL: QUIET RADIANCE - LV. S]
Effect: The user's presence is serene. High-level [Fear] or [Pressure] debuffs from enemies are negated for the user and all nearby allies.
The ghouls still standing had been slowly drifting toward the exits without realizing it.
He said, without raising his voice:
"I'd sit back down."
...
"If I were you."
"Because you'd really want to find out what happens next."
Three ghouls near the far exit felt fear. This emotion was visible across the crowd
[Selfless State: Active.]
Then he dropped it completely. The weight, the pressure, all of it gone. What was left wasn't calm. It was more like he'd stopped being there at all. The ghouls on the floor looked at the space where he was standing and found nothing in it to track, which was worse than any situation they could think off.
It was the feeling of looking for a footprint in water. You would think this would be less frightening and you would be wrong.
Three launched towards Manjiro anyway.
That set off the ones next to them, which set off the ones above and two went down in the press.
The nearest one came at him.
He crossed the arena before the sound caught up.
[Thunderclap and Flash.]
The ghoul hit the far wall. Manjiro was already rewinding the bandage.
The next two came from the left. Same angle as the first pair. he stepped through the first arc, caught the second at the wrist with the left bandage, finished it.
The ones who were still standing looked at the ones on the floor. Then they looked at him. Then they went back to their seats, because what else was there to do.
Manjiro watched this happen with a small smile.
He turned to face the upper ring.
"Now," he said, still in the same quiet voice. "There's going to be a new show."
"You're all going to stay seated. You're going to watch. And at the end of it, you're going to go home." He tilted his head slightly. "The ones who already left made the right choice for the wrong reason. The rest of you are making the right choice for the right reason."
He looked at them.
"That's better."