Inori smiles and reaches for her hand to squeeze it. "We can turn the water against it. It's one of the more powerful shikigami so it's also smart, but it's still not a person, so maybe if it gets itself wet Nue's lightning attacks will help. I'm thinking I'll have Nue, the enhanced frog, and the enhanced dog out from the start, too, no reason to only summon them after the fight starts."

She returns the smile and the hand squeeze. "Works for me. Giant pit, maybe with a thin false floor, and a momentum trap with a giant tree to help knock it into the pit? Anything else we want?"

"Wire traps? Probably all over it, I should be the one to curse them like you mentioned but the fewer steps it can take without taking damage the better."

"Mmmm, it's tricky to get the cursed energy exactly right to make them slice instead of just harder to break, so I don't think you should expect that to slice like what I can do. But yeah, sounds good."

"No, slicing is probably beyond me, yeah," he agrees, nodding. "I want to give myself space to hit it, too, if the traps don't do the whole deal."

"Yeah, definitely. Oh, since we're getting access to Maki's weapon stash I should look through it for anything that can be easily launched, I bet the school can get us a crossbow or something that can launch small cursed objects. You'd probably have to trigger them, but I bet I can reload and reset anything for you."

"I could probably just set strategic shadows, too," he says, sounding pensive.

"That will launch things? Okay, all the better, even if I'm going to be bouncing on my heels desperate to find something useful to do while you're fighting."

Inori nods. "Cheer me on, watch me be dashing and badass," he suggests, looking down at his knees with a blushy smile.

"Absolutely," she agrees, and she leans forward and gives him a kiss.

The second years are indulgent enough to help them with setting up the traps ("This time," clarifies Maki, "if we have to bail you out we're not going to keep hovering to help you with your setup."), and soon everything is in place. They turned out to need Maki's super strength for setting up the trap with the tree battering ram, because trees are heavy, but everything else is very straightforward. If, in the case of the pit, tedious and exhausting.

And soon enough, everything is ready.

The shadow puppet is two-handed and fairly intricate, but Inori has enough practice with the gestures in combat that he can do it right on the first try as he cries "Banshō!" to summon it.

Even with his practice at summoning shikigami more quickly, Banshō is big and requires a lot of cursed energy, time, and space to be summoned. His shadow extends in front of him, and from it emerges the pink elephant adorned with gold decorations all over its body. He jumps away from the shikigami as soon as it's fully formed, avoiding the traps and putting a lot of space between himself and it. It takes a second to acclimate to existence, then immediately spots its quarry and makes for him.

It... doesn't fare well against the traps.

Inori and the others have spent two days setting them all up, plus one extra day making sure they're all appropriately cursed, and then he had a full night's sleep (or he tried to, anyway, although he was perhaps a bit too jittery to get full use of it) before the battle itself. He is fully recharged, ready for the shikigami, and he has three of his own to counter it—the enhanced Demon Dog is actually straightforwardly better at dealing direct damage than even the elephant, too.

But it's overkill. After being hit by the first couple of traps and losing its balance, the elephant tries to be more careful in its charge, and it's still not enough. It sinks into their trapped hole, raked and impaled by the cursed weapons in it (mostly spears), and when it tries attacking at range with its water Nue is ready to electrify it. It's stronger than the bird-like shikigami, and manages to almost kill it with a point-blank water jet, but Inori withdraws Nue before that can happen, and the frog and werewolf respectively further entrap and straightforwardly maul it as it struggles.

And when it finally manages to step free of its hole there are more traps.

Inori barely has to fight, really. It's so hurt and weak by the time it's gone through their preparations that all the boy needs to do to finish it is a few hits with his bo staff at specific locations.

It dissolves into shadow, and Inori waits.

Then he relaxes and turns around, grinning at Akiho, who is far enough away he has to raise his voice to call, "It worked!"

Almost immediately, he has a happy girlfriend in his arms, embracing him and grinning. "I saw! Congratulations, Inori-kun!"

He holds her by the waist and twirls her around, laughing in relief. "I was, was half-expecting it to fail, because you all helped me and, but no, it just worked, I can feel it—"

"Well clearly it doesn't discount using weapons that someone else made, so!" She kisses him on the cheek. "This was just that but on a larger scale!"

"Congrats, Inori. And now we'll get lost so you can kiss your girlfriend in peace, yeah?"

"Salmon."

Inori blushes only a little but he's long since decided he has no patience for Maki's antics so this seems like a good moment for some PDA with his girlfriend.

Okay, proper kissing, sure! His girlfriend is willing to go with that, even if she's a little bit embarrassed.

"Fish flakes," admonishes the tiny judgemental seventeen-year-old before sauntering off.

This causes her to break the kiss, to instead burst into helpless giggles against Inori's chest. Being judged by the phrase 'Fish flakes,' is just incredibly surreal!

"Congratulations on your victory," says Panda, who is not at all bothered by teenage public displays of affection, but leaves them to have them in peace anyway, because he's nice like that.

Inori laughs, too, and waits until they're all gone to pull her into a kiss again.

...but a couple of minutes later they're interrupted again, by the sound of slow clapping coming from a shaded part of the woods. "Congratulations, Fushiguro-kun," calls a voice whose owner should have been dead.

Akiho goes completely still and silent, too stunned to make any kind of reply.