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"Minato." - Regular Speech

'Musubi' - Thoughts

"Kaminari!" - Sekirei Incantation

Beta'd by BigCC

Chapter 20: Gorgeous and Dangerous Tsukiumi

The Previous Night

"Oh…wow…!" Matsu managed to pant out, her knees shaking slightly from the sensation that had just run through her. The Sekirei of Wisdom was with the rest of her sister-wives going over their plans for the day when the powerful feeling of joining came down their link to Minato, along with the distinct thrill of connection to a powerful Sekirei.

"Looks like Minato-sama managed to Wing Akitsu-san." Yomi offered with a smirk. She and the rest of her sisters-wives were faring better than Matsu, though all of them were at least sporting a blush of some kind. Matsu was an Intelligence-type, and her physical abilities were noticeably weaker than her sisters, including her pain (and pleasure) threshold.

"She's been deprived of the mere possibility of being Winged for a while, and the first person she Reacted to is someone who helped her become a normal Sekirei again." Hikari stated confidently, her own smirk a bit more predatory. "Of course Minato-sama Winged her. She probably made the first move."

That earned her nods of understanding from the other Sekirei.

The feminine scream of rage, and the thump of a body hitting the floor that immediately followed it though, made all of the Sekirei leap to their feet.

"Yukari-sama!" Oriha shouted and sped off, swiftly followed by Shiina.

"Shit! You don't think that little brat actually attacked Minato-sama, do you?" Hibiki growled as she and the others followed the two panicking Sekirei up the stairs.

"With a Single Number freshly Winged at his side? If she did, she's the one on the ground." Hikari scoffed.

And sure enough, when the whole houseful of Sekirei stampeded their way upstairs, they discovered one unconscious Sahashi Yukari lying on the floor and a troubled-looking Sahashi Minato staring at her, with Akitsu hovering protectively at his side, her kimono open and revealing her lack of panties.

"Yukari-sama!" her Sekirei shouted and went to her side.

"What happened, Akitsu?" Hikari asked firmly.

The Single Number looked back at her and inclined her head to acknowledge the question from one of the two First Sekirei. "I Winged myself on Minato-sama." She said simply before jabbing a finger at Yukari's insensate body. "That one attacked me less than two seconds later. I couldn't dodge without letting her strike Minato-sama, and she is his sister so I couldn't attack or defend with my ice, so I carried him with me as I dodged. I landed behind her and delivered a simple chop to the back of her neck that knocked her out."

This succinct summation made the attention of the rest of Minato's Sekirei fall on the unconscious Yukari with a distinct lack of friendliness.

"Matsu-chan, can you call Takami-okaa-san please." The more even-tempered of the Raiden Futago sighed, massaging her nose as she frowned down at the younger Sahashi. "We need to determine what to do here."

Shiina suppressed the urge to stand up for his Ashikabi but found himself unable to. Yukari had committed one of the greatest faux-pas among Sekirei and Ashikabi by attacking them right after the Winging Ceremony, when emotions tended to run high. It was fortunate that Akitsu was as emotionally collected as she was, otherwise she might have instinctively counterattacked Yukari with a wall of ice spikes.

Shivering, he scooped his Ashikabi up into his arms and took her from the room, Oriha following him closely. This was not going to end well, he could tell.

Later

"Yukari…" Takami let out a long breath full of exasperation. "Well hell. You're OK, Min-chan?"

"I'm fine, thanks to Akitsu." her son replied. The two of them were sitting in the living room, with Akitsu and Yomi cuddled into his sides. The look of utter contentment on the Sekirei of Ice's face as she snuggled with her Ashikabi made Takami want to smile, but there were more serious things to talk about.

"I cannot believe that it didn't even take two weeks before Yukari lost her head and attacked you." The ash-haired woman sighed.

"Technically she attacked Akitsu." Minato pointed out absently, feeling a bit uncomfortable about what was happening. "Not that that's any better."

"Doesn't matter which she did." Takami said briskly. "She attacked an ally with a sneak attack; under the circumstances, you'd be completely within your rights to defeat her Sekirei and remove them from the Sekirei Plan. That you wouldn't do that, to either your sister or your 'brother-in-law twice over' as you put it, is fortunate for her."

She turned and looked at where Oriha and Shiina sat, under blatant guard by Musubi and Yahan. Oriha had an uneasy, but simultaneously stubborn look on her face, while Shiina looked unhappy with everything.

"So you see why I am not happy with my daughter?" she asked her daughter-and-son-in-law.

"Y-Yes." Oriha wilted under her mother-in-law's gaze. "B-But what the Raiden Futago plan on doing to our Mistress isn't right!"

"It's a sharp escalation, I'll grant you that." the Head of the Sekirei Plan conceded. "But ordinary measures just don't work on Yukari. She's a lot like I was back at that age, full of fire, but unfortunately she hasn't found something to focus that passion on yet and it ends up making her overreact to the extreme. I'm sure my mother tried with Yukari, but…she needs a sharp shock to get her to reassess what she's been doing and what she has to do. Hopefully, what the twins are planning will make her decide to remove herself from this place and either buy somewhere of her own or go to the Inn she was supposed to move to after she Winged a Sekirei in the first place."

"Yukari-sama…isn't likely to do that." Shiina put in hesitantly. "She's…very stubborn."

"I had noticed that about her, funnily enough." Takami replied dryly. "I'll lay it out for her tomorrow that I have reached the end of my tether when it comes to her antics. She can either be stubborn, stay here, work to improve her self-control and suffer the consequences if she fails, or she can be mature and remove herself from the situation, recognising that she needs some space between herself and her brother. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink, kids. Either she has to recognise that doing the same thing over and over again is pointless, resulting in her moving out then, or she recognises that she wants Minato as a woman wants a man, which might get the brat to break down and admit that."

Shiina and Oriha looked at one another at that, both of them unsure about the possibility of their mistress becoming her brother's lover. As was obvious from the case of the twins, it wasn't out of the question that sibling-Sekirei would have the same Ashikabi, and Sekirei were fairly uncaring about things like incest so long as their Ashikabi was involved somewhere in the equation, so it wasn't an entirely unexpected development. Still, they didn't like the idea of their Ashikabi being intimate with someone other than them (or any future Sekirei that she Winged).

"Then you two need to man and woman up and throw her into bed to make her forget about Minato in that way." She said not unsympathetically. "It isn't as if there's a shortage of rooms with beds in this place."

That had faces blushing around the room, which made the woman start to cackle.

The Next Day, Early Morning

Kitchen, Sahashi Sibling's Residence

As Yukari hobbled into the kitchen, she muttered every curse under the sun in the general direction of those damned twins. Her ass felt like it had gone seven rounds with Lennox Lewis!

"The morning after the first time you try out being the 'M' in S&M is one heck of a wakeup call, isn't it?" Takami asked from her perch on a stool by the counter. "Sit down and have a cup of coffee."

Eyeing her mother warily, Yukari did so, though not without wincing as she tried to gently lower herself into her seat.

"Yeah, they did overdo it on you." The older woman commented, eyeing the slightly red buttock that she could see nearby. "I'll tell them to keep it a bit more restrained next time."

"Kaa-san…What. The. Hell?" Yukari asked flatly. "You gave those two permission to turn me into their personal whack-a-mole!"

"When was the last time you actually paid attention to what I told you, Yukari?" Takami said instead of answering her daughter's question. "To my knowledge, it was back when you were twelve, just as you were on the cusp of puberty. The next time I saw you, you'd become a complete teen brat and barely listened to a word I said, something which only got worse once I told you about how you felt about your brother."

Yukari started to stand up angrily, only for her mother to glare at her and point down firmly. Slowly, the younger Sahashi sank back down with a scowl and another wince.

"Good. Now, here's the thing." Takami said calmly. "I am in charge of holding that idiot Minaka back from doing god knows what to the Sekirei. That means I haven't the time, energy or inclination to deal with you and your temper tantrums regarding your brother. I am officially leaving your own fate up to you: either stay in this house, learn to control yourself and take your punishments like a woman, or leave here to somewhere else, whether it's Izumo Inn or somewhere else, I don't really care. You have MBI VIP cards, you can use them. One way or another, you are going to stop kicking up a fuss in your possessive jealousy."

"He's my brother!" Yukari hissed when she found her voice again.

"Yes…not a Sekirei or someone unrelated to you." Takami stated firmly. "Your anger is coming from you denying your feelings and how a part of you is rebelling against those feelings. Until you sort yourself out and either fully suppress those feelings or accept them, you're going to be an even bigger walking mass of anger and resentment than I was at your age."

Yukari blinked. She knew that back when her mother was her age, women were not taken seriously in the field of science, especially women as beautiful as Sahashi Takami had been and still was. That was one reason why Takami kicked ass and took names; she had forged herself into someone who took no shit from anyone, for any reason, and forced people to respect her talents and intellect.

Secretly, she had admired that about her mother and had striven to emulate her…but she didn't understand…

"Why are you willing to let me be punished for acting like you?" Yukari asked, finally.

"Because you have no reason for it." Takami answered immediately. "When I was studying to be a scientist and researcher, the medical field was full of many, many men and precious few women. I was looked upon as a quaint curiosity at best and an upstart who didn't know her place at worse. I could have soldiered on quietly in spite of the criticism, I could have chosen to give up…instead, I became aggressive and blunt, forcing them to acknowledge that my skills and my research were more than worthy of praise. You…don't have to do that. While there still aren't as many women as men in the science field, the balance between them is a lot more even than it was when I started, and the respect you have to earn is more based on the quality of your work rather than whether you have breasts or not."

The idea of someone, anyone, deriding her mother simply for her gender almost made Yukari feel sorry for them for a moment; the few times that someone had verbally or non-verbally looked down on her mother in Yukari's presence had resulted in said person being punched into a wall. And then The Boot Was Put In.

Literally, and often with very long, very sharp, heels

Several times at that.

"There is another reason why I am very upset at you for this incident, Yukari." Takami said softly, and the girl was shocked to see the shine of unshed tears in her mother's eyes. "You attacked a Sekirei, a Single Number Sekirei at that. Do you have any idea how easy it would have been for Akitsu to have accidentally killed you? She could have responded to your attack by freezing you in a block of glacial ice, or thrown a handful of ice spikes at you...those are any one of a dozen or so other things I know she could have done with her powers. You are so, so amazingly lucky that she is naturally calm and level-headed and was able to recognise who you were rather than lashing out blindly. I could have lost you yesterday, Yukari…"

And now Yukari felt like a complete heel. Her mother was completely and utterly correct. She had been very stupid and had vastly underestimated her opponent. The Sekirei around her were so unlikely to attack her that she had partially forgotten that each and every one of them could physically end her with little to no effort. And, in her anger, she had fully discarded the possibility that she could be harmed or killed by them. So stupid.

"I promise I'll try harder, Kaa-san…but why let those girls do THAT to me?" she said gently.

"Well…honestly, it's more their idea than mine, but I am honestly out of ideas about what to do about you, Yukari." Takami admitted before smirking. "And stop trying to sound as if you didn't enjoy it; according to the girls, you had at least two orgasms under their ministrations."

"Gah." Yukari managed to keep from choking on her own tongue. Discussing getting a kinky spanking from her brother's first wives was not something she thought she'd ever have to do with her mother.

"W-well…i-it was…kinda nice." She muttered, her face feeling as if it were on fire from the massive blush that she had. "B-But it won't be happening again!"

Spotting the knowing, smug grin on her mother's face made the girl want to curse. She just knew that her mother was going to use her admission to tease and prod her for years to come, she just knew it.

Later

Streets of Shin Teito

Akitsu hugged her Ashikabi with a soft smile on her face. Her Ashikabi…that was a phrase she had thought was so far beyond her reach that it was reaching for the stars from the gutter. Now she could feel her Ashikabi with her mind, and it was something that she luxuriated in

Minato chuckled nervously. The only clothes that Akitsu had to wear were donated from his other Sekirei, and she had one of the most…voluptuous figures that he had ever seen, with only Musubi among his Sekirei having a bigger bust than she did, so there was a bit of strain in the chest department, because Musubi didn't like to wear bras if she could help it, so she had none to lend Akitsu.

All of this added up with the fact she was hanging off of his right arm like a limpet and the fact that Yashima was hugging his left arm and Yomi was throwing mildly jealous looks in his direction meant that the male element of the people in the streets were sending death glares at him, while the female half was torn between being disgusted at someone who was 'obviously' a playboy and wondering if he was some kind of rich kid.

Yes, he was getting MUCH better at reading females; having a psychic link to just under a dozen women, alien or not, was having a number of surprising benefits. Thanks to the fact that all of his wives were ones who reacted to him, and the fact he was openly accepting them and deepening his bonds with them, that understanding was coming quicker and better every day. It wasn't so much of 'women in general' as it was 'the particular women who were his wives', but he could apply what he learned to women outside of his wives with a modest degree of success.

It didn't work on his mother though; she was every bit as big a mystery to him as she had been before he had Winged Hikari and Hibiki. Maybe it was a mother thing?

Mentally shrugging at the possibility, Minato was taken aback when the sound of shouting made him look around, his wives following his lead. Just then, a cat streaked out of a nearby alley and leapt onto Minato's face, clamping its lags around his head and digging in with its claws.

Screaming at the pain from the unexpected 'facehug/deathgrip' attack from the cat, Minato staggered free of his surprised and worried Sekirei and tried to pull the ferocious feline from his face, to no avail.

"H-Hey! Damned cat!" Yomi shouted indignantly. "Get off of Minato-sama, dammit!"

Akitsu glared at the cat, wanting to freeze the pest, but her control wasn't precise enough to turn it into an ice sculpture without risking harming her Ashikabi-sama.

Yashima was trying to get ahold of the beast, but with Minato's desperate flailing and her inability to user much of her strength without risking harming him in the process it was proving to be a difficult struggle.

"Where'd that damned cat go?!" a male voice that was vaguely familiar to Yashima shouted. Looking around, she saw the same scruffy man that the twins had shocked when Minato-sama had rescued and Winged her come tearing out of the alley, looking around frantically until he spotted Minato wrestling with the cat attached to his face.

"Aw fuck…" Seo Kaoru groaned and started walking towards the increasingly anxious and angry Sekirei. "Sorry about this…stupid cat."

"This…feline…is yours?" Yashima demanded.

"My target." The scruffy man corrected her. "I've been hired to retrieve it for the owner."

"Then why isn't the blasted animal in a cage instead of trying to maul my Ashikabi?!" the usually timid Sekirei asked in a hissing tone.

"The blasted thing's a regular Harry Houdini!" the scruffy man protested. "It's like some kind of super cat! It wrecked the lock on the cage door!"

Pulling a bag off his back, he pulled out a cage and pointed at the latch at the front that should have kept the feline secured with the door shut. Instead, it flapped uselessly, the plastic sliced through from the inside.

"How…?" Yomi blinked in shock.

"The Idiot in the Cape's been experimenting on cats for some strange reason." Seo growled out in annoyance. "Something about 'building a better cat is a better idea than building a better mousetrap' or some other inane crap. Apparently cats need unthinking aggression on the level of a shark and claws as sharp as razors to be better mousers."

Yashima and Yomi exchanged equally baffled looks with one another. It was evident that either Minaka was directly responsible for that cat or someone had snuck one by the insane man to create this mangy moggy…but that wasn't important right now!

"Get. That. Cat. Off. Of. Our. Ashikabi!" Yomi said slowly, menacing Seo with her razor-sharp Death Scythe, the point tickling his chin.

"Yes, ma'am!" he gulped. And here he'd almost forgotten he'd been dealing with Alien Amazons.

Reaching for the cat, Seo pulled a syringe from his pocket and injected it into the back of the cat's neck, then waited. In less than a minute the feline had flopped bonelessly from Minato's face, completely sedated by whatever drug that Seo had injected it with.

"Ow…" Minato reached up and felt the parts of his scalp that the cat had dug its claws into. Yup, he was bleeding. Just perfect.

"You'd better have those cleaned." Seo advised him as he stuffed the feline into the carrier and began to secure it shut with a bike chain, followed swiftly by another and then several padlocks. "Cat claws are bad enough, but who knows what this little bastard's been exposed to in MBI? I honestly wouldn't be surprised if they found a way to make the damn thing venomous."

"Aren't you that man who Hikari and Hibiki electrocuted a few weeks ago?" the Ashikabi of the North asked warily, finally recognizing the man after getting a look at him without a face-full of angry, genetically-engineered feline.

"Guilty as charged. Sorry about that." Seo said with an unconcerned shrug. "I was a bit drunk from getting fired from MBI and wasn't as…eh, sanguine about the girls choosing you rather than me. Like I said, sorry. Pass that on to the twins for me, willya?"

"Er…O…K?" Minato wasn't sure what to make of this very strange, very scruffy man.

"Man though…how many Sekirei do you have?" Seo eyed him speculatively. "I can smell the power coming off you…lessee…Matsu from Izumo Inn…Uzume from the same…the twins and these three, of course…but there's a few more."

"I have eleven Sekirei in total." Minato replied with a twitch of one eyebrow. "Err…why are you sniffing me?"

"Ah, well…Asama Akihito, Asama Miya's husband, used to be a scientist at MBI before he died, and he kinda used me as a guinea pig a time or two. Ended up giving me the ability to smell the Sekirei that an Ashikabi have Winged." The man explained. "Let's see you get out of that, you little devil…so, anyway, that's why I was sniffing ya. Not bad kid, eleven of them? You'll be kept up late once you've gotten them strong enough."

Minato and his Sekirei all blushed at the thought, especially Akitsu. She would have gladly given her body to Minato last night had he wished it, but her new sister-wives explained that he wanted them all to be as powerful as possible and the reason why he wouldn't sleep with them, so she had abstained.

"Water Celebration!"

A massive wave of water descended upon them without warning, but Akitsu was quick to react, waving one hand and stating, "Ice Age!"

In an instant, the water froze solid and shattered when Yashima smashed it with her hammer. Yomi's scything winds shredded the ice that dared to come close to her Ashikabi.

"I have found you, impudent monkey!" a loud voice declared from the top of the building next to them. Minato swivelled his head up to look at the person he was looking for.

Sekirei Number Nine, Tsukiumi the Water Sekirei, was an exceptionally beautiful woman, with an hourglass figure, a regal aura around her and waves of immaculate blond hair cascading down her back. It was little wonder that she was nicknamed 'Gorgeous Tsukiumi' by MBI. The look of rage in her eyes was disturbing though.

As prospective Ashikabi and Sekirei locked gazes though, Tsukiumi's eyes bulged out of their sockets in a mixture of shock and unwilling arousal as she met the eyes of the Ashikabi who had violated her dreams. Her legs buckled as pure lust and desire soaked through her body and she collapsed to her knees on the rooftop that she stood upon, only one hand shooting out to support her preventing her from toppling off the roof completely.

'Wh…what is this?!' the blond Single Number thought in a panic. 'Mine loins are soaked with lust and my mind hath turned foggy…is this a reaction? To a mere human?! Miyajima said nought of this sort of reaction!'

Her handler was someone who had honestly cared for her, Tsukiumi acknowledged somewhat reluctantly. She just tended to…explain things in a very much detail-filled manner…as in going far beyond a TMI situation. Unfortunately for Tsukiumi, Miyajima had focused on what happened AFTER the Winging process rather than before it, so Tsukiumi knew only the bare basics about a Reacting to an Ashikabi.

Even if she had told Tsukiumi of how a reaction should have felt though, the Water Sekirei would still have been taken off-guard, because the reaction she was having was magnified by the amount of power that Minato's soul possessed; having eleven other Sekirei, including two Single Numbers, willingly Winged to him had built up his power by a comparatively enormous amount.

And as much as Tsukiumi wanted to fight her biology, the sheer volume of the attraction that her Reaction to the Ashikabi before her had robbed her of the ability to so much as stand on her feet. Nevertheless, the blond woman was nothing if not determined and she ground her teeth stubbornly, forcing her legs to obey her as she shakily stood up again.

"Whew…she's having a strong reaction to you, kiddo." Seo observed. "You are one lucky sonofabitch, you know that?"

"She's an Ashikabi-hater who wants to beat me up for her Reacting to me." Minato deadpanned. "Your definition of 'lucky' is a bit off, Seo-san."

"Eh, maybe." The former MBI employee shrugged. "Why don't you show her how Winged Sekirei fight? Use a Norito on her and she'll have to either sit down and shut up or run with her tail between her legs."

"I am not going to Wing her against her will." Minato said, slightly appalled at the idea.

"Nah, just show her what she's missing, then maybe get a couple of your Sekirei to talk to her and tell her what you're like once she's calmed down a notch, that sort of thing." The older man replied, eyeing Tsukiumi as she glared down at Minato, even as her legs seemed to refuse to move. "Welp, as much as I'd love to watch the fireworks, I have a cat to deliver. Later kid."

With that, the man jogged off, cage in hand.

"Minato-sama, while I agree with kaa-sama, Miya-sama, and the twins that we should avoid that man, he does make a surprisingly good point." Yomi sighed as she moved to the front of the group, her scythe held at the ready. "Sekirei are creatures of battle. She won't listen to your words until she has to."

"Thou…thou hast invaded mine dreams! Violated mine body!" Tsukiumi seethed, barely managing to stay upright. "I shalt dispose of thee, impudent monkey!"

"No you won't!" Yashima growled before whirling to face Minato, her eyes ablaze with anger. "Minato-sama, bestow power on me so I can teach that woman that she cannot speak to you in such a way!"

Minato wanted to refuse, but the ardent passion and anger in Yashima's eyes wouldn't be denied, so he resigned himself to going through with it. He cupped the pale blond girl's face and smiled as she instinctively leaned into his touch.

"What art thou doing?!" Tsukiumi demanded.

"Showing you one of the lesser reasons why Sekirei choose to become Winged, Tsukiumi-san." Minato replied softly. Then, he lowered his lips to Yashima's and kissed her.

"Wha-?!"

Blue Wings emerged from Yashima's back before spreading in a flash of light.

"Wha-?! Wha-wha-wha-wha-wha-…What licentious things art thou doing in the middle of a public street?!" Tsukiumi screeched, her face bright red.

"I'm an Emerged Sekirei, and this is how we fight, Number Nine." The hammer wielder replied coldly as she stepped away from her Ashikabi and drew her hammer back. "I am Number Eighty-Four, Yashima, and this is my Norito! Oh Hammer of my Pledge! Shatter the enemies of my Ashikabi!"

A bright blue aura surrounded Yashima and the size of the head of her hammer grew tremendously.

"A Norito?!" Tsukiumi started to sweat at that. For all her distaste for Ashikabi, even she would not deny the sacred power of her people. She had never faced one before and was unsure if she could match it.

Crouching down onto the ground, Yashima leapt up with a yell, the power of her Norito singing through her veins as she sailed up towards the woman who threatened the life of her beloved one.

"Gravity Hammer!" she shouted, spinning around and sending the business-end of her weapon straight at Tsukiumi, who was still so overwrought from her Reaction to Minato that she couldn't move in time to avoid the Norito-enhanced hammer.

"Tsunami no Tate!" she shouted in a panic, summoning and coalescing a wall of water in the path of the hammer in mere seconds.

With a soundless thrumming groan, the hammer infused with gravity energy struck the thick shield of water. In another timeline, the Gravity Hammer had been defeated by Shiina using just his basic ability. This was due to the fact that her 'master' had been an abusive shitbag and he had forcibly Winged her. In this case, when she had an Ashikabi who loved her and she loved back, however…

Tsukiumi's eyes widened as her wall of water bent, warped, splintered and then finally shattered, sending her stumbling back. This proved to be to her benefit, however, as she was only clipped by the powerful hammer, rather than it striking her head-on. It was still enough to send her flying across the rooftop and slam into an air-conditioning unit though, making her cough out spit from the impact.

"Gah-!" she coughed out, her body full of pain. Never in her life had she ever been stuck so hard, and it had just been a glancing hit.

'I-If that had struck me head on…!' the Water Sekirei thought with a chill down her spine. 'I would have been defeated, almost certainly.'

She had sparred with Homura several times, and he was a Single Number, yet she had felt greater pressure and threatening intent from a Sekirei in the Eighties. It was a blow to her pride. She was Number Nine, a Single Numbered Sekirei! The closer a Sekirei's number was to zero, the stronger that Sekirei was supposed to be! Granted, she was the weakest of the Single Numbers, but that should have still put her head and shoulders above Yashima!

She glared at the Gravity Hammer Sekirei standing atop the edge of the roof with her hammer held ready. Rage boiled over and the Water Sekirei lashed out with one hand.

"Suiryū!" she snapped as a large eastern dragon made of water formed and threw itself at Yashima.

"Shinkū Renpa!" another voice called out and several blades of wind shot at the water construct, slicing it into shreds. Tsukiumi turned to see the scythe-wielding wench standing in a provocative pose, weapon held at the ready.

"What trickery is this?!" Tsukiumi demanded. "The rules of the Sekirei Plan state that all matches between Sekirei are to be one-on-one!"

"They also forbid Sekirei attacking Ashikabi!" Yomi snapped. "You break one rule and the rest no longer protect you!"

"…oh." The blond really couldn't honestly offer an argument to that. The idea that her target's already winged Sekirei would choose to interfere hadn't entered her mind. That they were even there hadn't really hit until the hammer-wielder had flagrantly embraced the monkey.

"Minato-sama already kissed me while you were having some airtime, so let's see you block this!" the Death Scythe Sekirei sneered as she raised her weapon above her head. "Oh scything winds that embody my pledge, reap the life from the ones who would place my Ashikabi in peril!"

With a shriek, wind started to gather around her scythe, with the winds becoming visible here and there.

"Impudence!" Tsukiumi roared, her pain forgotten as her mind defaulted to its standard response: when in doubt, attack. Water pooled in her hands as she charged her water up to respond. An enormous amount of water swirled around her as she prepared to strike.

"Death Scythe Reaping!" Yomi shouted and brought her scythe down in a diagonal slash, unleashing an enormous blade of wind at her enemy.

"Hydra Blast!" Tsukiumi roared, unleashing all of the water she had at her command. Aside from the main mass, a dozen masses of serpentine necks ending in ravening maws arched around the Death Scythe Reaping to attack Yomi.

"Flower Dance!" a voice shouted from the side. A mass of wind with petals mixed into it slammed into both attacks and managed to divert Yomi's Death Scythe Reaping, whilst also shredding the heads of Tsukiumi's Hydra Blast.

"Who the-?!" Yomi exclaimed worriedly as the mass of water collapsed in front of her and her wind cut through several A/C units before dispersing.

"Now who dares interfere?!" Tsukiumi seethed.

Minato yelped as Akitsu leapt up to the roof, one arm around his waist to carry him with her. Looking around once he had caught his breath, he gulped as he saw a cross-looking woman wearing a barely-there purple dress and carrying, of all things, a bottle of sake in one hand.

"Number Three…Kazehana, the Wind Sekirei." Akitsu said, eyes narrowed. "A former member of the Discipline Squad."

"Now that that little exchange has been neutered…" the busty beauty said faux-calmly. "Would one of you mind telling me exactly what in the name of the Maker you all are doing?!"

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Next Chapter: Kazehana, Flighty Sekirei of the Wind

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