Idol Gunner [Yuri Villainess LitRPG]

One half of Kana wasn’t sure what had just happened. The other half did not really wish to know. Splayed on the ground, hands twitching and back aching, she had to flex every muscle in her arm to get herself on her feet. After that, however, came the more difficult part – staying standing.

The door that she had been thrown out of looked far too innocent and unassuming, despite what had happened. She would have expected some damage on the edges, or perhaps even some of the rock to be broken, but no such luck. Sachiyo’s sudden attack had been as precise as it had been powerful.

Kana switched back to her grenade launcher and firmly planted her feet on the dirt below. She had just been caught by surprise again. That was all these girls were capable of, after all. Standing face to face, without any disgusting tricks up their sleeves, they would have been crushed in an instant. This was something that they must have known quite well, too. And hence, the dirty plays.

She scowled and aimed at the door. If they were going to have no honor, then she didn’t need any either. Her finger traveled to the trigger, the barrel lined with the opening, and she took a deep breath.

“Take that.”

Something black blocked her entire view. The sights were blocked by the back of the girl who came flying out second. Jina Ohara had been attacked second, and she showed no sign of stopping.

Trying to maneuver herself in the air, she brought out her sword and lodged it into the ground mid-flight. It helped her reverse the momentum enough to stop her from crashing into Kana, but her pose itself did not do the girl any favors. Her legs swung back, directionless, after she grabbed on tight to the handle of the sword. And by virtue of being quite close to Kana, they could not help but slap her to let out the last bit of kinetic energy supplied by Sachiyo.

“Wha!?” She turned, surprised, and then landed on the ground. “I’m so sorry!”

Kana clicked her tongue and spat out a mixture of saliva and blood. Aiming the launcher back at the door, she prepared to shoot a second time. But this, too, was interrupted post-haste. This time, it was by Sachiyo herself.

The woman, grabbing Kelsey by the neck, had made her way up the stairs with her other hand behind her back. After she bent down and stepped out of the door, Sachiyo threw Kelsey towards them and dusted her hands. The blonde-haired girl tumbled and rolled over to them, and Jina helped her get on her feet.

Kana, however, kept her weapon trained on the enemy.

“I don’t know how many times I need to tell you this.” Sachiyo rolled her eyes.

“Try once more,” Kana whispered.

“Oh, you think you’re being smart? Just because we let you do whatever you wanted back at the resort does not mean you’re hot shit. If you, for even a second, think that Aki-chan or I were actually trying back then, then you’ve got a big head indeed.”

“Fuck off.”

She shot. The grenade flew out and went straight for Sachiyo, but she still did not budge. Instead, she let it land on the ground in front of her, and looked at it with longing. Her eyes twinkled with anticipation as she counted down the seconds before it exploded. The mere confidence caused Kelsey and Jina to move back with fear. What exactly had the demons done to her?

Kana asked that question to herself, only to find it answered immediately after. The explosion consumed Sachiyo. The flames wrapped around her body and formed a cloud of shrapnel and smoke that would have burnt anyone else into a crisp. The attack should have torn her body to pieces, but it did not.

Instead, it started to contract. The flames started to roll back and collapse into a single point. The smoke and dust and metal of the grenade went with the fire, and turned into a ball that rested in Sachiyo’s hand. She smirked and closed her fist, snuffing out the fireball entirely.

“You’re wasting your time, girls. More than that, you’re wasting ours.” She warned. “There are things happening here that are bigger than you. Bigger than all of humanity. And what do you decide to do? Interrupt evolution itself. Then again, though, what else can you expect from people who think so small?”

She aimed her hand at a large rock to the right, and spread her fingers as she had done before. A second later, the rock blew up and shattered into smaller chunks. There had been no visual energy that had come out of her hand, yet the two actions had obviously been related to each other. Sachiyo had destroyed that rock with the energy, Kana assumed, she had consumed from the grenade’s explosion.

“Redirection.” She realized.

“What?” Jina looked at her, still amazed by the display of power.

“You’re a Vanguard Class. In other words, a shield. A shield, at its height of power, redirects.”

Sachiyo shrugged, putting both of her hands behind her back again. “I don’t care about all that. What I’m trying to prove is that you stand no chance, so it’s about time you went back where you came from. I’ve got important business to attend to.”

“We’re not going anywhere, and neither are you.” Kelsey snarled.

“Oh, come on. Don’t be difficult. If you come back down, then I can’t promise that I’ll let you all out alive. Aki-chan likes you, Minami, so I really don’t want to kill you. Please, do us both a favor and take these two with you.”

“Who said I’m leaving?”

“Now you’re just being ridicu-”

“And who said that you’re going back down?” Kana raised her eyebrows and started to run forward.

If Sachiyo absorbed energy, then Kana just had to switch her method of attack. Mid-run, she put her grenade launcher away and snatched the sword from Jina’s hands. It was heavy, made no sense as a weapon to her, and was ultimately something she had no practice with. Something else, though? It was a weapon that might work against this woman.

That meant Kana would use it, no matter what.

Letting the sword trail behind her, leaving sparks flying as the steel met the rock below, she held the handle with both her hands and mentally prepared to aim for Sachiyo’s head. With her strength, she might not reach there, but aiming high might help her get to the woman’s stomach instead.

Kana screamed, mustering all the strength in her body, and swung the sword once she got close. The unmoving Sachiyo kept her smile up and raised but a single finger to block the weapon. As the blade reached her stomach, Kana had to push through her muscles tensing up and hitting their limit. One hit was all she needed to prove her theory right.

If there was no exothermic reaction, no energy would be released. If no energy was released, Sachiyo could not capture and redirect it. She had been able to send Kana flying back because she had absorbed all of the energy from the railgun before. That had been a deadly mistake on Kana’s part. But she had to believe that this was different. She wanted to believe that a sword would be the answer to killing this woman.

Reality, to her detriment, was not on her side.

The blade did hit Sachiyo’s flesh, but not her stomach. It had reached her finger, which she used to block the sword. Kana tried to push further, but it did not budge. Her shoes dug into the small layer of dirt and started to grind against the stone, but the sword did not move even an inch.

One small push from Sachiyo’s finger, however, and Kana was sent back to the position she had started from. The sword fell out of her hand and dropped down before Jina put it back in her inventory. All the while, Sachiyo stood there and looked at her own finger. Then, she looked up at the bright red sky of the Monster Dimension.

“Do you know the hue of the sky changes based on the time?” Sachiyo spoke with wonder. “Their day-night is surprisingly similar to our own. That would make sense, given that they also breathe oxygen and drink just a slightly different water.”

Kana coughed, her heart starting to ache. The muscles around her chest began to cramp, and she went down on her knees. Blood poured out of her mouth, trailing down her chin and falling to the ground.

“Sorry. Too much force.” Their enemy sighed. “What I’m trying to say is that the constant red clouds blur the sky above a bit too much. That is why you rarely see space and stars from here. But they’re very much there. Just like how, right now, the early morning sun is shining quite brightly above our heads. Or, well, early morning star. I haven’t yet learned what they prefer to call it. Incidentally…”

“Shut up…” Kana tried to murmur, but only ended up spitting out more blood.

“Incidentally,” Sachiyo repeated herself, clearly annoyed at having been interrupted for no reason. “I have learned what they call themselves. Netsolnians. It’s an interesting name, don’t you think? Comes from Netsolnia, obviously. That’s the name of the planet itself. Their name for it. Personally, I think it has more of a ring to it than ‘Monster Dimension’, but you do you, I guess.”

Jina bent down and got Kana on her feet, taking even more steps away from the enemy. Kana did not want this, but she was being forced to make space. She wanted to take her weapons out and fight. She wanted to kill this woman, then go down and kill Akiko. It was meant to be. She wanted to do it. She was supposed to do it. And still, she had no choice but to keep moving backwards instead.

“I’m sorry. We’ll go.” Jina shook her head, trying not to burst into tears. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t fucking apologize,” Kana mumbled, but was once more subjected to being left unheard.

“Don’t apologize, Ohara.” Kelsey somehow picked up for her, though. She took out her sniper rifle and aimed it at Sachiyo. “Why did you give them Naomi Yamazaki’s name?”

“Hmm?” The girl cocked her head. “Oh. That woman. Yeah. She gave me this ugly scar, so she had to pay. More than fair, wouldn’t you say? I mean, you would know better than anyone else that people who slight you need to pay for it.”

Kana wasn’t sure what she meant by that just yet. Neither was Kelsey, who did not show any patience. Aiming straight for her head, she pressed the trigger. The bullet went forward, but was stopped by a single palm once more. The casing itself fell down on the ground while the power inside it was absorbed by Sachiyo, who started walking forward.

“What was her name? The girl who you threw to the wolves after having a fight with her?” She asked as she got closer.

Kelsey scrambled to aim the weapon once more, but was not fast enough. Sachiyo reached inches away from her and brought the same hand up.

“Oh, yeah. Rie Rin. You killed her for arguing with you, too, didn’t you? Or was that not how that went down?”

“You b-”

Sachiyo tapped Kelsey on the head, and that was it. The next moment, the sniper rifle had fallen down to the ground. Its owner had been injected with enough momentum to send her flying away once more. But this time, it was no small distance. Kana looked back, only to see that Kelsey was nowhere to be found. Sachiyo had, with a single finger, sent her further than their eyes could see.

“I believe you might find her at the gate in the ruins.” She explained. “I’ll be kind enough to send you both, too. Does that sound alright? Don’t worry. It really does not hurt all that much.”

“Who said you’re…”

Kana was not able to speak, owing to the blood in her mouth. She just took out her grenade launcher and pointed it at the girl. It was useless, and she knew it, but this was the one weapon she had. This was all she had. Surely, her one and only strength could not be so easily mitigated, right?

What about her destiny? What about her fate? She was meant to do this. She knew that she was supposed to kill them and take her revenge. Aharu’s revenge. Kana was going to make these girls lick the dirt off her feet, wasn’t she?

“Oh, yeah!” Sachiyo’s eyes lit up. “That’s what I was trying to explain, but I got sidetracked. The sun! I was just going to explain how I blocked that sword of yours. It was all the energy coming off that star!”

Kana ignored her and started to press the trigger. Halfway through, Sachiyo’s finger touched her forehead, and the environment around her blurred.

She only got the feeling back in her body once her head hit a familiar grey rock.

Behind her, Jina had been sent further back about the same distance as Kelsey, who was only now managing to stand up after recovering. The three of them had not only been sent to the gate, but past it. Sachiyo had thrown them straight back into Neo-Edo with two fingers. And this was the woman Kana had expected to kill.

With blurry vision, she looked up at the gate and tried to stand up. Screw Jina and Kelsey. She could do it alone. She could go back in all by herself and fix it. She was going to kill Sachiyo Tanaka right here and right now.

Kana stood up, and the gate came into focus. Along with it, a figure standing right between the doors, on the side of the Monster Dimension. No. On the side of Netsolnia. That was what this place’s name was.

Sachiyo looked at them and gave them a short wave before she put her hands on both of the doors and took a deep breath. Her face went red as she forced them closed. Kana stumbled forward, hoping to get in and stop her. Three steps in, and she fell back down to the ground, not out of injury, but out of exhaustion. It had probably been a whole day since she had given her body any proper rest now.

By the time she fell down and went unconscious, Sachiyo Tanaka had already closed the gate.