Part 15: The Conductor — Part 2: Flying Youkai.
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( Part 15: Flashback; - Half an Hour ago before Yukari met with Zhu Yuan & Qingyi - 08:44am )
Sitting on top of a hotel's tenth roofing, Yukari's hair flies along the wind as she lazily rests her chin on her palm.
Her usual fan and umbrella were stored in her gap-like inventory, as In front of her were many floating gaps that were open leading to different locations working as surveillance cameras. She found yet another way to use these.
There were quite a lot of points of interest; Victorian Housekeeping's group was on a phone call with the Heroes Association, probably handing the information she gave them.
Zhu Yuan and Qingyi had separated from Seth and Jane to work together in order to exterminate a potentially powerful Ant that appeared in another location.
Saitama who had just killed another monster in one punch, now was walking around jumping absurd lengths to see if he could find any others.
Lastly, a group of PubSec cops running from something enormous. This one had her interest currently, her gaps had just zoomed into what they were trying to flee from.
She leaned forward ever so slightly to give a better closer look at the giant Ant, whistling at the Titan-sized Monster.
Using her other free hand to reach inside a bag of potato chips that was resting beside her and eating it while eyeing the Ant.
" This one kinda resembles me of those big guys from Attack on Titan… The equipment they had there was quite cool as well… " - Not having to play a character, her lazy Weeb side had come back at full strength.
It didn't help that most of the original's traits came with quite the laziness behind it, to a degree she constantly found herself using gaps for everything and anything.
The change of how she would act in front of others and alone was significant, and strangely, so far not more than a few people she met had succeeded in making her feel comfortable around them.
Maybe it also had something to do with her own pride, for whatever reason she felt like it was the most natural thing in the world when it came to the way she acted around people.
Teasing, Pranking, and Speaking overly Politely at times as a way to disorient them. Those just came naturally to her every time she met anyone. Even when interacting with Saitama, someone who she had acknowledged and as a result deluded her playfulness seeing she did put some respect in the hero.
" Although this new body of mine doesn't truthfully need sleep, food, or water… It still feels a little uncanny to not feel like I need anything…" - Keeping eating her chips, she eyes the Titanic Ant from head to toe, seeking a fun way to deal with it.
The human cops were escaping just fine, so the barely-there part that was still human in her head didn't feel obligated to interfere.
All she had to do was make sure they didn't die, even if she didn't have a side right now, she wouldn't want people to think she enjoyed seeing others' suffering.
It might have some sort of humorous element in it, but she was sure it would never compare to seeing someone turning into a stuttering mess akin to how Ellen was earlier this morning.
" Hmmm… How should I deal with you big gu- * Crack * - YAHHHG?! " - Reaching for her hand to grab the last potato chip in her package, out of nowhere her back let out a loud bone-popping noise that forced her to stand up straight, but it seems the woman had forgotten where she was….
The back of her high heels slipped off the rooftop as her eyes sprung open once she realized her body going down.
" WHY WOULD THIS COME WITH THE PACKAGE!! YOU DAMNED FOX OF A GODDESS!!! " - Freefalling for a bit, Yukari's clothes and hair violently wave around as she prepares to enter a gap… Her anger resulted in a pitch-black aura that slowly began to sip out from her skin.
That was when she suddenly came to a halt around the fourth floor. The aura resembling the darkest of oils was swiftly able to bury itself back into the blonde's body.
Feeling stunned she blinked a couple of times in the same spot while hovering around the air, she looked beneath herself trying to come up with an answer for it… - " Was I supposed to be able to fly?... Wait…"
Facepalming, she remembered a very important thing about Touhou Games. Most fights took place midair.
There were also those balls of energy they shot, and how insane the amount could get given some no-hit runs she had watched back then on YouTube. However, she never searched further about the genre.
She knew the names of some characters, given the few meme comics she would stumble upon. But regrettably never searched in depth about them.
Moving around testing her new-found ability, she soon learned that this flight was based on her internal thoughts. So she entertained the idea of moving forward, and she did so less than a second later.
It was like learning how to move a new strange limb detached from your actual body.
Flying around for a few more minutes she finally got a relatively good mastery of it, the fulfillment of learning such an ability so effortlessly was truly exhilarating.
" There were also those types of energy projectiles… How did they even create those." - Aiming her hand toward the hotel she was standing on before falling, she tries to imagine something like a ball of energy flying out of her hand.
For a brief moment, a Gap opens by her palm shooting out a red energy projectile as big as a volleyball. Upon contact with the hotel's wall, it dispersed itself.
Tilting her head, the Youkai closed her hand, looking at where she had hit. - " It did scorch the wall slightly. This is just barely any damage at all… Could these be non-lethal? Even though they fire them in a way that gives the impression they want to kill someone…"
Trying to shoot three at a time, the damage increases to the point of actually taking a piece of the wall.
Focusing a bit more, she shoots another one that turns out to in fact do a lot more damage, it explodes and tears through the walls leaving a decent-sized hole twice as big as the projectile.
Proud of her progress in just a few seconds, she relished being aware that if she kept up, these blasts would have kept increasing in strength substantially each time.
But even with such good news, Yukari could tell what was happening here. It has been less than twenty-four hours since she got tossed into this new life with a body she knew almost nothing about.
She lacked practice, be it with the body or its owner's techniques she had just recently scrapped the iceberg of.
The thing that got her thinking was if these blasts were so weak even at an unpracticed level for a supposed High-Tier Youkai like herself… How would it be for other weaker ones back in the original Yukari's Universe?
Then it hits her, those runs she watched back then on YouTube.
The reason these characters irresponsibly spammed so many of these was to maximize their damage… That was at least the conclusion she had achieved.
Chuckling while sitting in the air, she shakes her head nonchalantly.
" It does indeed seem like something that would be interesting to play around with after I learn how to increase its firepower to a useful degree, buuuut~ On a side note…"
Pointing her gloved index finger to the damaged spot left on the wall by her attempt at using Danmaku, a gap opened by her shoulder in an instant, shooting out a blurring object with so much force her hair and dress swayed around wildly.
* BOOOOM!!!! * - " Heeeh~ I see~ These will undoubtedly go a long way~ " - The stop sign exploded out from the gap and went straight through the hotel and in the blink of an eye the other buildings behind it.
Leaving a garage door-sized hole in whatever obstacle it went through. If you kept an eye on it, the stop sign was still going strong until it hit a mountain, digging a good fifty meters inside the mountain's ground right up until it broke apart.
Its piercing power was truly unlike anything else.
As for the culprit behind the buildings' destruction, all that was left was to smile while having an idea. - " How about a different kind of bullet hell… A more fun one~ "
The thought of hundreds of stop signs raining down, each with this level of destruction, left Yukari completely locked in her thoughts.
But then a stray thought immediately stopped her on the tracks of a possible attack that would devastate Z-City. - ' But wouldn't that just be…. Too boring?.... These bugs can't even deal with one attack, let alone a barrage of them… '
Floating backward, she thinks through it for a moment. Then after a minute of tens of thousands of thoughts coming and going from her head, she finally hums having concluded.
" Let it be my Ultimate Move then. A beautiful finisher, and a devastating one at that~ "
Now that she was done playing around, the blonde willed the camera-like gaps she was using to watch her surroundings reappear in front of her.
And switching from one to another, she finally caught a PubSec female officer talking to the radio receiver of Zhu Yuan, and it seemed that all other ants were dealt with besides that Titan-sized one.
She watched as the black-haired officer nodded and responded so formally before hopping inside PubSec's truck and calling out her partner, who had just delivered the final blow to the ant they came after, Qingyi, who was quick to follow as she jumped in the vehicle passenger seat.
Closing the gaps, Yukari stretched her arms forward, feeling the discomfort radiating out of her back… She couldn't help but exhilarate, tiredly. - " That Fox….. Tsk… I better have some fun before my mood drops any further."
Not overlooking the reason behind why she learned about her new flight ability, Yukari was quick to bring up a gap towards the last and possibly strongest mutated Ant.
" * Sigh * - Hopefully this particular one won't die just as swiftly as the others before it. "