Musou no Hitotachi
Whether it was Conan's proverbial protagonist's luck at work or something else, he and Hattori Heiji, after spending a moment studying the rhythm of the lightning strikes, simply charged straight ahead — weaving left, darting right — and somehow didn't get hit by a single bolt.
More than that, they noticed a pattern: the lightning was concentrated around the perimeter. The closer they drew to the Takahashi mansion, the fewer bolts came down, until, upon reaching the estate's outer wall, there was nothing left to dodge at all. It was almost as if the storm's sole purpose was to keep everyone away from the vicinity of the Takahashi house.
Heiji and Conan both let out a breath of relief.
Even though they had made it to their destination without incident, the lightning crashing down all around them the whole way had left them wound tight, nerves strung taut, not daring to let their focus slip for even an instant.
Now that things were somewhat safer, they allowed themselves to relax a little. After a brief rest, the two of them turned to look up at the Takahashi mansion.
Raiden Ei's gaze flicked, almost imperceptibly, toward the spot where the two of them stood. She found it mildly surprising that they had managed to break through the lightning barricade and get this close, but she didn't pay it much mind — things like this had happened in Inazuma before, after all.
Besides, what she was about to do next was something no one could stop. Whether a couple of outsiders were nearby hardly mattered.
She could only hope their luck held, and that they didn't get caught in the crossfire.
With that thought, Ei cast the distractions from her mind and turned her full attention to the matter at hand. She closed her eyes and steadied her breathing, slowing her heartbeat until she slipped into a state of perfect stillness. When her eyes opened again, lightning flickered within them. She was ready.
Then she began to draw upon her divine power. Energy surged through her body like a raging flood, and a faint violet light spread across her skin, enveloping her like a mystical shield. In her hand she gripped her naginata, its blade shimmering with blinding lightning, as if at any moment it might unleash a devastating force.
Above, the storm clouds sank ever lower, pressing down upon the world until it grew hard to breathe. Lightning flashed through them with growing frequency — silver serpents coiling among the clouds — and now and then a bolt tore free of the veil, illuminating the whole earth in a single, blinding instant.
It was at this point that the Takahashi mansion's servants and bodyguards finally realized something was deeply wrong with their surroundings — that the clouds and lightning overhead were not merely an ordinary change in the weather.
Sensing the suffocating atmosphere, nearly everyone showed signs of unease. The Takahashi butler did what he could to calm them, then hurried off to report the situation to the head of the family.
The family head's expression darkened. At first he'd assumed the butler was simply making a mountain out of a molehill — getting worked up over nothing more than a change in the weather.
But as the butler stepped out of the room, he was greeted by the gloomy sky, the lightning strikes raining down at intervals, the scorched greenery and shattered buildings — and it finally struck him that this bizarre weather had escalated into something resembling a natural disaster.
He whirled around to give the butler at his side some order — and stopped. The man was staring upward, his face frozen in shock, mouth hanging open, finger pointed at the sky as though he were witnessing something beyond belief.
Leaning on his cane, the family head followed the butler's gaze upward. There, standing atop a rooftop not far away, was a woman in a purple kimono, a naginata in her hand, violet lightning coiling about her body, her long hair streaming in the wind.
He understood at once: this inexplicable catastrophe had to be her doing.
He had no idea how she'd managed it, but if a person was responsible, then it stood to reason that a person could be stopped.
The family head frowned, about to say something — but before he could open his mouth, her eyes met his.
His mind went blank. Under the pressure of her gaze, his hand clenched hard around his cane.
The moment he came back to himself and realized he had just been frightened by nothing more than a woman's stare, a flush of humiliation and anger flashed across his face.
High above, Raiden Ei had spotted the family head. Her target for today had finally shown himself.
She looked down at him with cold, empty eyes, utterly unmoved. Her gaze drifted idly over the man, fixing his position, and then slid away from him as she turned her full attention back to the naginata in her hands.
Her fingers curled lightly around the hilt, feeling its weight, its texture, until blade and wielder became one. Her eyes grew steady and sharp, and she set the immense divine power within her turning, gathering it all into the blade. As the power flowed in, the naginata began to radiate a blinding light, as though it had been granted a life of its own.
Ei drew a slow breath and raised the naginata. Every movement was graceful yet immense, each subtle motion pregnant with boundless force. And when the blade stood high above her head, she unleashed it in one decisive stroke, slashing down toward the Takahashi family head.
A colossal pillar of violet lightning erupted from the blade, splitting the sky as it tore toward the man with the momentum of world-ending ruin. Like a roaring dragon it bore down on its prey, and in its wake the very air ripped apart, shrieking with a deafening thunderclap.