While it looked like the humans were poorly matched against their opponents last week, the tables are gradually turned here in one battle after the other. While Kyouka takes on the Unihorn, Tenka finds that Yuuki’s sister (her sister-in-law) moves so fast, all she can do is flee by teleporting; there’s no time for an attack of her own.
So Tenka, who can teleport 666 times in a row, just keeps playing defense, counting on Kyouka to eventually defeat Unihorn and help her out. As she teleports away again and again, she’s also learning Aoba’s movements. That’s the DDF Commander Difference: extra attention to detail and above all, patience.
When Coco reveals that she’s super slimy and her trusty dog is nigh invincible, Shushu and Sahara switch it up. Instead of being huge, Shushu shrinks to the size of a baseball, and Sahara launches her into the dog’s mouth. Then she grows to huge size again, and the dog explodes in a grisly cloud of gore, bone, and fur.
This, of course, it’s the largest plot hole in Avengers: Infinity War: Ant-Man could have easily gone up Thanos’ **** and blown him up from the inside. Anywho, Sahara grabs one of the dog’s teeth and uses her highest-level Sheep power to launch herself at Coco, slashing her across the abdomen. Great creativity and teamwork from the muscle-heads here.
How does Yachiho deal with Hinami suddenly being choked out from behind? By simply rewinding time. Every time Naon and her spider show her a move, she’s able to go back in time and counter it. When she needs a rest, Hinami protects her in kind, by among other things sprouting a hundred guns from her hair and firing them in all directions.
When some of the bullets hit Naon hiding in the wall, Yachiho rewinds time and targets her directly. While they’ll alway be a little hostile or competitive with each other, it’s more than clear that Yachiho and Hinami love each other dearly and will always have each others’ backs—literally in this case.
That brings us back to Tenka vs. Aoba. She’s gotten into such a repetitive rhythm of dodging attacks and teleporting that Aoba is totally caught off guard when Kyouka breaks that rhythm with her katana. She makes it possible for Tenka to finally use her attack for offense. But when she has Aoba right in her sights, she hesitates.
Aoba strikes her down with a direct hit, and asks her why she hesitated. Tenka’s answer proves her love for Yuuki: she didn’t want to make him upset by killing her. Aoba assures Tenka she didn’t need to go easy on her, but she also beams as brightly as we’ve ever seen her as she thanks Tenka for thinking of her brother’s feelings. She’s decided she likes Tenka now.
Mind you, that doesn’t mean she wants Tenka to marry Yuuki, but in her battered, possibly concussed, yet mostly lovesick/horny state, Tenka can’t help but hear Aoba’s words and start visualizing a life with Yuuki as her husband and Aoba as her sister-in-law.
It’s quite simply sweet as hell, and if it brings the battle to a screeching halt and serves as a momentary truce of sorts, so what? Battles are fun, but character stuff like this is fun too, and really deepens my connection with the characters. This isn’t good vs. evil. These battles only even started because hotter heads prevailed.
Turns out it’s a good thing everyone stops whaling on each other at this point. As soon as Naon and Coco appear before Aoba with Shushu, Sahara, and the Azuma sisters in tow, the two “godlike” humanoid Shuuki Shikoku and Jouryuu blast a hole in the cave ceiling and descend.
To the humans’ surprise, these two are not on Aoba’s side; in fact, they consider Aoba and her friends to be “mutts.” Shikoku introduces them as the “Eight Thunder Gods”, leaders of the Shuuki. One stomp from Jouryuu sends everyone flying, and when one of Shikoku’s snakes bites Unihorn, it turns on Aoba.
Clearly, these two are extremely powerful, possibly more powerful than Aoba, Kyouka, and Tenka, especially when they’re already extremely beaten up and fatigued. But that mighty wind Jouryuu kicks up? Aoba shields Yuuki and Kyouka from it, and when she’s down on the ground and Unihorn is about to deliver a critical blow, Kyouka comes between them—while riding a freed Yuuki.
If Coco can get herself and everyone healed and they find their second wind, I’ll take all of them plus Yuuki working together against anyone, any day. It’ll be an uphill fight for sure, but it looked that way for the humans last week. A lot can happen in twenty minutes, and Shikoku’s naked arrogance might be something that can be exploited.
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