"No! Look over there!"
"Over there? Whoa!"
Shinnosuke turned to look where Granny Moon was pointing, and what he saw stopped him cold!
"An Eight-Armed Panda!?"
There, right in Shinnosuke's line of sight, stood a panda with eight arms!
Just how big was the thing? A good five meters, easy.
It was the size of a two-story shack, a great black-and-white bear of a beast.
Those thick arms numbered eight in all, each tipped with claws grown long and wickedly sharp.
Chiho gasped at the sight.
"Come to think of it, Kan'ei-ji Temple had a panda gifted from the Ming..."
Indeed, a black-and-white bear had once been sent to the shogunate, and Kan'ei-ji Temple had been charged with its care.
It seemed the poor creature had turned yokai somewhere along the way, and in the process sprouted eight arms.
Where it had gotten them nobody could say, but the beast now wielded two enormous wooden mallets, and its bloated size alone made it a monster to be reckoned with.
Yasutaka, dazed as he was, managed to raise his voice.
"Shinnosuke... the guy up there... scatters sleep sugar... we gotta get out from under the roof..."
"Right... whoa, hold on!"
Shinnosuke frowned as he sized up the Eight-Armed Panda.
It stood exactly where it would pin them against the temple, cutting off any escape.
Once things had come to this, there'd be no slipping out from under the roof without cutting the beast down first.
And it looked, for all the world, like that was precisely its plan.
"...Is this thing actually smart?"
Shinnosuke studied the panda with a cool, appraising eye.
"Chiho! Get those two inside the temple, now!"
"Got it!"
Chiho lent her shoulder to both Yasutaka and Mōha and hauled them into the crumbling ruin of the temple.
Meanwhile, up on the temple roof...
"Tougher than I figured..."
"This is troublesome."
Fighting on unstable roof tiles, Mani-hime and Granny Moon were struggling.
The sugar the Sugar Man scattered negated hōjutsu, leaving most of Mani-hime's spells useless, while Granny Moon's club strikes were deflected time and again by his jar.
But then Granny Moon spoke, quiet and calm.
"It's about time now. Please step back, my lady."
"Understood."
So saying, Mani-hime withdrew, watching the surroundings warily.
Granny Moon readied her club once more.
"Well then... let's bring this to an end, shall we."
With that, she raised her club high and charged the Sugar Man!
Fwip...
As always, the Sugar Man raised his jar and took up his usual defensive stance, but...
CRUNCH!
Granny Moon's club came down not on him, but on the roof beneath his very feet!
Crack...
The roof gave way, and the Sugar Man's lower half sank straight through the hole!
Worse still, the fall left him holding the jar high overhead, wide open and useless!
Granny Moon raised her club again and said:
"Still not quite there, are we..."
SPLORTCH!!!
Granny Moon's horizontal sweep sent the Sugar Man's torso flying clean off!
Pop... and it went rolling, rolling...
"Oops..."
Granny Moon bent down and picked up the Sugar Man's head.
"Can't let the head go to waste, now can we~"
Yokai heads fetched good money, after all, and on that score Granny Moon never slacked.
Meanwhile, down below...
Whoosh!
The Eight-Armed Panda's swung mallet cut nothing but air!
Shinnosuke dodged the panda's blows with breezy, unbothered ease!
His blade blazed bright with ri-power, its edge sharpened keener still by the qigong arts.
By now the Eight-Armed Panda was really just an oversized panda.
Six severed arms already littered the ground, and Shinnosuke's face wore an easy, confident grin.
"Man, this thing's got some grip!"
SLASH!
"GWOOOOAAAAH!!"
Struck by Shinnosuke's blow, the panda lost yet another arm!
It let out a howl of pure, wordless agony.
Thud, thud...
The great mallet it had been holding dropped to the ground.
"GRAAAAH!!"
With a small roar, the panda reached for the mallet with its one remaining arm, but...
SLASH!
"GROOOOOAAAAH!!"
Shinnosuke's merciless blow took its right leg clean off!
No amount of size could help it now. It could only writhe and howl in agony.
But that lasted only a moment. Blood poured from where its eight arms had been, and the sheer volume of it soon left the beast unable to move at all.
"Guess I'd have won even without me around."
Saying so, Shinnosuke lopped off the panda's head!
SLASH!
Thump...
The panda's head fell cleanly away and rolled across the ground, lifeless.
"Phew..."
Wiping the sweat from his brow, he glanced up. Looked like things were settled up there too.
Shinnosuke made his way back into the temple.
"Whoa..."
The inside of the temple was packed wall-to-wall with Kuzuyo!
Meanwhile, Yasutaka and Mōha were...
"Damn it..."
"This'd be nothing on a normal day..."
Dazed as they were, they kept fending off the Kuzuyo closing in around them.
As for Chiho...
"Rapid Thunder Vow!"
KRZZZAKT!!
She too was clearing out the Kuzuyo by the dozen.
Noticing Shinnosuke had come in, Chiho let out a shriek!
"It's over!? There's no way I can take any more of this!"
No matter how weak each one was, enough of them together courted real disaster.
And Shinnosuke was not a man to overlook that.
"We're good now. Let's get out of here, quick!"
With that, Shinnosuke gathered up the other three and made his escape!