"Stay away from Yuta!"
Rika's enormous body fully manifested, surging out from behind Yuta Okkotsu like a black mountain thrust up from the ocean floor.
She blotted out most of the sky, her shadow swallowing several students and half the training field in darkness.
Roars rolled from Rika's throat, shrill and savage, like a blade tempered over and over again, each cry hotter and fiercer than the last.
She charged, her massive claws plowing two deep furrows through the ground. Turf curled up, dirt flew, and the entire field trembled faintly beneath her footsteps.
"You're nowhere near Mahoraga," Kashimo said, watching the enormous black shape hurtle toward him, "but you'll do to relieve my boredom."
He pushed off with his feet, his body swaying like a bamboo stalk in the wind. With his spine as the axis and his toes as the pivot, he made a tiny turn.
Rika's claws scraped past his side. The wind from their tips tore a small scrap from the hem of his clothes, but that was all. Her enormous body barreled between him and Yuta Okkotsu, her momentum carrying her several more steps before she barely managed to stop. Kashimo had already used the momentum of his turn to rush toward Yuta Okkotsu.
Yuta Okkotsu brought his wooden sword down. He had seen Kashimo's trajectory and judged where he would land. The blade traced a precise, decisive arc through the air without a moment's hesitation. But the instant he swung, he knew he had missed.
His blade passed through nothing but air. Kashimo had stayed in that spot a fraction of a second less than he had predicted, and that fraction had turned a hit into a passing swing.
Then he saw a shadow.
Not Kashimo's, but Rika's. At some point, her enormous body