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Useless.
Not only without a cursed technique, but moreover, her strength was barely of note compared to even the lower classes of the Zenin clan's sorcerers. The Special Grade Cursed Object that everyone was so concerned about had put it best—any hierarchy not based on strength is boring.
Thoughts like that circulated smugly through his mind as he walked away from the soon-to-be grave of his two daughters—although, he wasn't sure he'd like to call them that. Filth. That was a more accurate term, he decided.
Then, it seemed all the cursed energy in that room—that of the cursed spirit's, his second “daughter's,” and the meager amount that his first “daughter” possessed—suddenly vanished. He could sense the most infinitesimal, trace amount of energy dissipating into the air… like an exorcized curse. He jerked his head back around.
The cursed spirits are gone! Spat his thoughts, How—
Then he saw movement in the corner of his eye. His first daughter, in her infinite repugnance, stood over the corpse of her sister, setting it down gently.
A familiar sensation enveloped him—it was typical of a sorcerer to have a presence about them, for their cursed energy to ripple throughout the air, but for some reason, hers—what little she had—was gone. He could feel only his own. The utter lack of power that he sensed from her evoked a distant memory.
His body remembered, but I tried so hard to forget…
Then she looked up.
…this fear.
He couldn't deny the fact—the cowardice that he'd spent so long beating down, trying to control—it showered over him in cold horror.
Immediately, he raised his sword, the blade already red hot under the effect of his technique. Artificial bravery poured into his veins, not of self-discipline that steeled his resolve, but rather, of Blazing Courage. His cursed technique lived up to the name, he might've explained.
“Very well!” He began, taking a stance, “Let us fight, my worthless child!”
Him and his unit surrounded her. She held two cursed tools, maybe having stolen them from Ogi. They didn’t know how she’d killed him, if he was asleep or what, only that their mission was to kill her.
She was just as unmoving as his unit was, as they waited for the order to attack.
And so that order came.
Suddenly, she exploded into motion, ripping through the brains of three fighters before he could even ready his stance. She was fast—faster than he could even keep his eye on, let alone fight.
He watched wide-eyed as the upper third of two men’s skulls were cut cleanly off of their head and sent flying, then as she stabbed one in the throat, proceeding to drag the crumpling skin and flesh that was caught on her sword all the way up through his skull, splitting it in half.
More blurs followed. He watched as she lagged in mid-air for a moment, having kicked another right in the head, snapping his neck instantly.
He ran over. The man was dead, gurgling, a noise like bubbling blood escaping his mangled throat.
She was a hurricane of motion, latching onto another’s neck with her calves and puncturing his brain in four places before leaning all the way back, legs still wrapped around the corpse that hadn’t even had the time to fall over yet, stabbing another of his men twice right in the intestines.
The poor bastard’s stomach spurted blood as she dropped to the ground, her movements like a crazed animal, as she took off his ankle and crippled him.
He hadn’t had a good look at her yet, but he could see her smile as she stomped on the face of the dying man. His head literally splattered into a gory mess of red with pink chunks, the floor crunching under her heel.
And so she took a moment to look around. Seeing if that was it—if anyone was left.
Her eye stopped at him.
Casually, she smashed through the stone hands that clasped around her, keeping a tight grip on Mai—noticing two more members of the Hei. A creepy old bastard, and some other uninteresting dude.
She tossed Mai up into the air and ripped their throats out, both at once. She took a moment to flick the fleshy bits off of her fingers, but didn't really care to try and get the blood off.
Then, her whole body froze with a jolt. She wasn’t able to catch Mai, infuriatingly.
Her movements were slow, as if the air had suddenly become molasses, but she could move—if only scarcely. She looked to the side to discover the source of this annoyance.
“Jinichi!” Cried some other member of the Hei—she’d never really bothered to get to know all of her cousins. She knew she’d be back one day, so there wasn’t any point.
“Keep holding her, Ranta!” Came a response, probably “jinichi,” if she had to guess. Annoyed, she started to press against the limiting confines of whatever cursed technique this was—immediately, she could feel it already beginning to yield under her new might. It was so satisfying, the way that this new body seemed to be able to crush them so easily.
“I can’t—I can’t stop her!” Ranta cried, the struggle and pain obvious in his voice. She almost found it cute—they were all so weak, now. What ever happened to “don’t be like maki”?
So she pressed a little harder. The technique splintered and shattered around her.
Ranta shouted something about “don’t falter, jinichi!” and something else including that “Toji” guy that Naobito had mentioned. She might’ve had some interest in that before, maybe to find out more about his lack of cursed energy, but now she figured she had nothing to learn from him. Something else caught her ear—“we must kill her!”
She might’ve grinned—they were so pitiful—but she was interrupted by a massive block of solid cursed energy raining down onto her head. She never made out their full scope, but they were actually fists.
…
SHNK!
Everything was black—he’d literally overworked himself blind—but he could make out that distinct sound. Thankfully, Jinichi must’ve managed to disarm Maki, and finally killed her.
“You did it, Jinichi!” He gave a weak cheer.
Then the bleeding—he could feel it pouring from his eyes, drooling from his mouth, dribbling down his chin. He’d used his technique far too long, at far too high an output—but it was okay now. He gave Jinichi the opening! He saved them.
She tossed his head into the water. It made a satisfying little splash. She smiled, wondering if she could get a few other heads, wondering if this new body was strong enough to make them skip.
Probably, she decided.
That fucking scum stood over the little pond, just a little ways away from Chojuro’s training grounds. Jinichi’s head (fucking weakling—naoya always knew he'd die embarrassingly) sank into the waters. “How cruel,” he taunted, “Don’t you have a heart?”
“No. She took it with her.”
He sped towards her, not really caring what that scum’s answer was anyway. Quickly, he set out a flurry of punches, and his Projection Sorcery traced along that guide at breakneck speed.
She counted each strike as her filthy, burned arms parried him each time. Just her voice was so god damn infuriating—he decided that her voice box would be the first to go. He’d take her lungs, too, right through that nasty fucking whore chest of hers. He’d make sure she could never say “no” again.
He’d punch through her at top speed.
He snatched her arm, encasing her in a frame, causing that cursed tool of hers to drop out of her now two-dimensional hands. He grinned wide, winding up a heavy kick—the force of which sent both of them flying, blasting her through several rocky formations as they flew into the training grounds.
He met her halfway, kicking her back in the other direction, sending her flying into a cliff. The impact created a huge crater, where she laid, still counting.
He scowled. She was about to get up, and that was when he sent her flying again. Tossing around that fucking failure was surprisingly fun.
He raced after her, grabbing her ankle in mid-air and smashing her into the ground.
An imposter. That’s what she was. She wasn’t Toji—she could never understand strength like how Toji did, like how Satoru did… like how he did.
The sin of the insignificant is the ignorance of strength. All he knew was that the strongest sorcerers, nobody could understand—but she—that fucking filth—she was like a wounded animal, operating pitifully, solely on instinct—on the selfish, animal desire for the world to be fair.
You’re not him. He assured himself of that.
He grabbed her ankle and threw her into a boulder. It was obliterated by the impact, shards of rock flying through the air.
Unfortunately, Projection Sorcery meant that he couldn’t stop a path until it’d been completed, so he wasn’t able to smack the shards of rock out of the way and clear his sight. The scum raced forward, unharmed, somehow. How fucking stupid. She was only giving him more time to accelerate, to build up speed.
He blew past her, punching unceremoniously into her cheek. It irritated the cuts she’d already had from Ogi, but didn’t seem to deal any damage. He’d have to get even faster.
The one to stand with them—with him—
Satisfyingly, he heard an ear-piercing “FWOOOSH” explode around him, and so he knew he'd gone supersonic.
—is me.
She took a stance, and it seemed like she said something, but in her typical dumbass fashion, she must've not realized that if he was moving faster than sound, then it was almost impossible for him to hear. It seemed she’d given up on trying to keep up with him, and was simply trying to counterattack when he came in to deal a hit. Fucking. Stupid.
He dashed up to her and smacked her on the shoulder so as to freeze her again, already arcing back around to punch through the frame that he’d trapped her in. This was it—he’d be the last of his clan, but at least that meant he’d be the head by default. He planned on having plenty of children anyway, so whatever.
Then she moved.
She. Fucking. Moved.
She turned around and put out her fist. “It’s twenty four times, right?”
It didn't make any sense. Nobody (except him, of course) was fast enough to fulfill the twenty-four frames rule.
“I thought something was off,” she continued through her stupid fucking voice, "This body can finally see that."
You want to know what the worst part was? He was so much faster than her. He should've been able to dodge. But Projection Sorcery’s nature—the fact that he couldn’t change directions—meant that he had to sit there, staring at her knuckles, like a bitch.
“YOU!” He screeched, “IMPO—!”
She smashed his head into the ground, putting a fist-shaped indent in his skull. The earth shattered beneath the impact.
You want to know the second worst part? It didn’t kill him. He just had to sit there, unable to move, as he felt his neurons dying from the blunt force trauma, and his lips drooling blood.
At the hands of Maki.
“Sorry. Could you repeat that?”
He might’ve cried if he could’ve.
She brushed the door open. “Hey.”
Yuta jerked his head over at that voice.
”Maki! O—Oh my god!” He rushed up to her.
She was covered in blood, her uniform soaked, red staining her pretty hair. Rubble and dirt was smeared across her scarred skin, mixing in with some of her own dried blood.
“What happened?!”
“I… had some trouble, when I went to get cursed tools from the Zenin clan,” she explained, her tone casual as if she wasn't literally dripping little bits and pieces of her cousins onto the carpet.
“Did they hurt you? Are you okay?” He hugged her, not even stopping for a moment to think of his poor white jacket that would probably never get the blood stains out.
She patted his back reassuringly, not quite returning the hug, a little tired herself. “You should've seen the other guy,” she said simply.
“You're okay?”
She nuzzled her head up into his neck. “Mhm.”
“What about mentally?”
She kissed his cheek. “Mhm.”
“It's okay to not be okay, Maki…”
“It's even better to actually be okay,” she said with a weak grin.
“Okay… is any of this blood yours?”
“Little bit.”
Yuta's big, stupid eyes suddenly hardened. “Who.” His tone lowered to a snarl.
“Don't you worry your little head,” she cooed, petting his hair like the puppy he was as she refused to leave his arms, “He was the first to go.”
“A—And all this dust on you? Did one of them have a technique about that? Or…”
“I got thrashed around a little. Into rocks and stuff. But m’fine.”
She could feel his cursed energy pulse and ripple.
“You wanna know who, right? You wanna save your damsel in distress?” She teased.
“You know I’d do anything to save you…”
She waited.
“…if you'd allow me.”
She pecked his cheek. Attaboy. She’d never liked it when he felt like he had to interfere with her fights, her business—especially now, with this “body of steel”—she decided he wouldn't need him… not in the sense of fighting, anyway. Naoya in particular—that was her kill.
“It was Naoya, but he's dead too.”
He pulled his head away from the hug they were sharing. “Maki, h—how many did you kill?”
“Yeah,” she said simply, a hand on the back of his neck pushing his head back into the hug. She'd always been one to express things physically.
“Is that a lot?”
“That’s all of them.”
He pulled his head away, again. “You killed the entire Zenin clan.”
“I killed the entire Zenin clan.” She pushed his head inward, again, holding him in place.
“That's a lot of people, Maki…” She reeked of murder, of loose flesh and chunky blood. Yuta thought it was pretty cool.
“Mai told me not to miss a single one.”
“Is she okay? Mai, I mean.”
Maki sighed quietly, removing her hand from his neck to squeeze the handle of her new sword. Are you there?
The katana hummed. Always.
“…sure.”
xxace123xx Sun 17 Nov 2024 07:39AM UTC
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Sor (Guest) Mon 03 Feb 2025 07:02PM UTC
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