Chapter 7

A hitched breath and an aborted movement to grasp at his cousin were all he remembered as he stared at the body for longer than he knew was wise, especially when the killer was still out there.

Red eyes imprinted the image of white hair soaked in blood into his brain.

The original shock had swiftly turned to horror, horror to rage, rage to wrath, and wrath to cold apathy. He would've had time to grieve. That time was not now. Detaching and suppressing his emotions behind the doors he learned to form during his time in black ops.

He analyzed the bleeding form on the ground.

A loud explosion of sound and pressure shook the earth, drawing his attention from Satoru for what felt like the first time in days.

The continuous explosions and vibrations forced him to tear his eyes from the body and turn towards the inner parts of the school.

With a stomp of his feet, he moved, leaving the body behind for Nanami and whoever came after to deal with. Geto's cursed energy acted as a beacon to his location. A location where he knew his cousin's killer was present. He had blood to reap.

xxxx

He's too late to stop the first swing of the sword. He could only watch. His eyes caught the blur of steel as it cleaves through Geto's chest at inhuman speed. The splash of blood covers his attacker's view for a split second, yet he swings the blade a second time, knowing the perfect angle to cut and eviscerate him.

He's not too late this time.

He bursts into the falling corridor and stomps on the falling blade (a katana, he notes) with his left leg, diverting it and forcing it into the wooden floor. With a twist of his hips, he spins and slams his right shin into the surprised man's face, hard enough to crack skull and pulp brain, sending him rocketing back out of the falling corridor and into the ruin that used to be the Tombs of the sky corridor.

With one swift movement, he picks up Geto and leaps out, landing a few meters away from the collapsing structure.

"Huh, what is this? The little monster is present too," waving off the dust, the muscular man walks out of a hole in the building he was buried in, cracking his neck as he eyes him up.

He scrutinizes his cousin's killer with cold empty eyes. Black hair and eyes, a scar at the lip, approximately 6ft tall with a physique that screams unbridled strength. Durable enough to take a hit without flinching. No cursed energy emission or residual. Feet are spread out in a casual way that seems languid.

He remembers the speed that almost bisected Geto into two. The resilience that allowed him to survive a reinforced kick to the head and a trip through multiple buildings without a scratch and concludes.

Close combat against him would be suboptimal. A glance back at Geto's bleeding form reinforces that fact. Yet he didn't have a choice.

"A quiet one? Or does that have something to do with the dead body of your cousin you passed?"

Hate.

Blazing red eyes meet placid black set in a face with a sharp smile that is all teeth. He sends his cursed energy through them. Few genjutsu are as good as the one in his right eye. And he has enough hate to fuel this with sheer brute force.

Tsukuyomi.

He feels his eye split and morphs into its Mangyeko form. Visceral illusions at the tip of his tongue. The cursed energy slips into the man, and when it finds nothing to hang on to, it leaks back out of the man faster than it slipped in.

No cursed energy instead of absolute control? How. He accepts the impossibility of the situation, adapts, and moves on, still looking for a weakness to exploit.

With a step forward, the man continues unaware of how easily this fight could've ended. "I'm not here for you, brat, move aside."

"You killed him, didn't you?" He didn't realize he had spoken till the man gave him a surprised look. It had not sounded like his voice. That tone, devoid of all inflection. When last had he been heavy with such anger that he was forced to shut down his emotional responses? Shusiu's death.

"Revenge, then?" The surprise transitioned into amusement. "Valid as any reason, I guess." With a shrug, the man moves. He is forced to admit he had underestimated the scarred man's speed. With a blink of his eyes, his vision is covered by a forearm.

Fortunately, the man had also underestimated his eyes.

The sharingan predicts an opponent's movement by reading the flow of chakra/cursed energy and the subtle twitches in muscles and body language. The man's lack of cursed energy makes it harder to predict his movements, but not impossible.

He sees the Lariat coming, but even with his vaunted speed and reinforcement, it takes all he has to dive beneath the outstretched forearm.

Rolling to his feet, he spins and unleashes a left hook into his opponent's back, but the man has stopped his momentum with a disgustingly powerful feat of strength and resilience. Slamming his right foot hard enough into the ground to crater it, he twists his hips and lashes out with a kick of his own with his left.

The two attacks hit simultaneously. Where his blow sends the scared man staggering a step back, the kick sends him flying back in an ironic reversal of what happened barely a minute ago.

Idly noting the bruised rib, he flips mid-air and lands, then lashes out with an instinctive kick that forces the man to block in surprise. He had gotten too close too fast. This close, he moves into his opponent’s guard, burying two cursed energy-enhanced blows into his left kidney, before sending a knee strike at his groin.

The man takes the hit stoically with a grin, before using well-muscled thighs to block his knee. Transitioning into another style that is better suited for how close they are, the man sends an elbow at his head.

He raises his forearms to block, ready to bear the attack before it hits him like one of Lady Tsunade’s blows. But this time it sends him skidding backward toward the remains of the corridor where a sword hilt stuck out of a wooden floorboard with heavily bruised and fractured forearms.

The strength of the first attack was not a fluke.

The man is slower to react as he expected him to go flying, but he had learned from the first attack. This time he sends cursed energy into the ground to anchor himself.

Blocking another attack like that would render him useless; he idly takes note of his shaking hands. He forces his hands to stop. Pain is an illusion, locking it up in that deep hole in his psyche. He would've time to feel it. After he left his opponent choking on his own blood. His attacks had enlightened him on the sheer resilience of the man’s physique.

Since hand-to-hand is out, he reaches out and grasps hold of the hilt, drawing the sword and holding it two-handed. He goes through the hundreds of sword forms in his head and finally settles on one.

His left shoulder ahead blocking the view of the sword, his stance low, and his lead foot bent while the back foot is outstretched. Sending his cursed energy into the sword to reinforce it, he releases a heavy breath and settles into the stance.

Dance of the mad four-armed God.

Form 9.

His opponent looks at him with a tilt of his head before blurring forward again and an even wider smile. A blurred kick is deflected with the side of the blade faster than his opponent expected.

Form 7.

With his opponent off balance for the first time, he takes a step forward, blade singing in his arms. He swings down aiming to cut the leg at the knee. A palm sends the sword to the side, leaving only a shallow gash on the thigh. His foe had recovered.

Form 4.

He deflects a blow that sends a crack down the blade and bruises his wrist, and pirouettes around the follow-up elbow strike, moving to his opponent’s back before swinging the blade into his neck.

The man, in another disgusting feat of strength and flexibility, twists his neck fast enough to grab the blade by his teeth before biting down. Enamel against steel should’ve been no competition even with reinforcement. Steel broke.

He skips back and notes his now shortened blade. A tanto style then. This time he doesn’t think as much. He shifts his form into one he is very familiar with.

Leaf-style willow.

Form 1.

xxxx

Against his cousin's killer, there is no time to think. No time to plan. Against his inhuman speed, the only tools at his disposal are his eyes, instincts, and the broken blade in his hand.

The fight is a whirlwind. His opponent's movements were too unpredictable for him to use Amaterasu. His attack pattern is relentless. His stamina, even after going through two previous battles, seems untouched, and even with his eyes on his opponent, all he can do is react.

A blow sneaks past his guard before burying itself into his rib. The pain of the originally cracked two breaking from the impact fuels his resolve to bury the blade into the overextended arm in a desperate bid at cutting the forearm.

His exertions force only a wince from his foe as inhuman muscles flex and stop the blade from going in further than an inch while gripping it at the same moment.

He releases it and rolls backward, dodging a kick that would’ve sent his head off.

He has started flagging. For all his immense cursed energy, his body is just too young. Unlike chakra, cursed energy is too volatile. It is not as suitable for a still-developing child to stress.

He looks into his opponent's eyes and the bright grin on his murderous face as he ducks under a fist and lashes out with a kick to his diaphragm that sends him into the air. He realizes something.

The man enjoys the fight. The thrill. The pressure of a life lived on the knife edge. The bloodlust. The opportunity to indulge in combat for the sake of it, and for a second he sees a familiar blue-skinned man in his place.

It resolves back into the black hair and black eyes of his opponent with a blink of his eye. The kick had propelled him into the immense tree that lay at the center of the Tombs Of The Sky Corridor, and the man had dug his hand into the tree to keep himself aloof.

This is the first true respite he got since he stopped Geto from going the same way as Satoru and that is all he needed to slow down his perception enough to think.

For the first time, the man is stationary. Unmoving. Amaterasu could end this immediately. He considers it for all of zero point two seconds before discarding it. The man has leverage and a platform. With his reflex and speed, he could dodge the black fire before it finished emerging. What he needs to do is draw him close.

With a glance at the man's serene breathing pattern, he has to admit what he had suspected earlier. The man is holding back. He has seen his cousin's body. Two different blade wounds. One on his head and the one that almost split him in half. None of them came from his discarded katana.

One of the two mystery blades was what pierced limitless, especially with his lack of innate cursed energy. The how was ambiguous but the capacity for it existed. And yet when he looks at the man, he doesn't see a single weapon, other than the purple segmented cursed spirit with a baby's face that lay coiled around his torso.

"Enhanced perception and a pre-cognitive sight, those are what your eyes offer, are they not?" He looks down upon him as he speaks. "Yet you're hamstrung by a body too young and too weak to keep up. If you were ten years older, maybe this would've been a challenge."

Releasing his grip on the tree, the scarred man lands on one of the thick knots of ropes that bind the tree and stares down at him with a tilt of his head and a knowing smile that reeks of arrogance. “Yet I have to admit you’re skilled. More skilled than jujutsu sorcerers five times your age.” For all his bloodlust, the man is more analytical than he expected.

He has to buy time, both for reinforcements and for his own risky plan. He never thought it’d come to this. He had naively believed that he would never be truly challenged in this new world.

He was wrong.

He had not trained as hard as he could. He had forgotten that to protect what you want in any world, you needed strength. Now he was forced to make a choice he would rather not, yet he knew he would anyway.

All he needed was to catch his breath and start twisting his cursed energy into what he desired.

"Immense strength, resilience, speed, and reflexes at the cost of your cursed energy, how is that?"

With a raised brow, that man considers his question. "You're really a child, aren't you? To be unaware of a heavenly restriction. With the way you fought, I could've mistaken you for something else."

A groan and movement a few meters behind him drew both their attention to the limp form of Geto forcing himself to his feet. He watches as the amusement and interest bled from the man into a soft frown that sends a chill down his spine.

"I don't suppose you'll just close your eyes and let me go, would you?"

His flat-eyed stare is all the reply the man needs. With another crack of his neck, he continues. "Would rather not kill a kid barely older than mine, but you're not giving me much of a choice. An arm or a leg then. With what you've shown so far, I'm sure you'll make do." With a soft smile and his arms spread out, he continues, "My name is Toji. Toji Fushiguro. Don't forget the name of the man you're supposed to have your revenge on, you little monster."

A blood-speckled whisper came from behind him. A whisper that saved him from losing an arm. A whisper that let him know the side of his body to protect.

"The cursed spirit."

That was the only reason he looked to his right the moment Toji disappeared from his sight. The sheer speed the man had displayed earlier was ridiculous. But this, this was inconceivable. Without being able to read his cursed energy even before he moved, for the first time in both lives, his perception failed him.

Appearing mid-air in front of him while drawing a one-edge broadsword with a fur hilt from the purple curse's mouth, Toji let out a bastardized laido swing that aimed for his shoulder. He felt his cursed energy dip to dangerous degrees. Now.

The single-edged heavy sword was slowed down by the manifestation of a dark red spectral clavicle and scapula that formed above him; the swing only stopped after parting through three red ribs before finally halting a few meters from his actual shoulder.

The dispersed force of the strike turned the area beneath them into a crater, sending him to his knees and blowing the struggling form of Geto and the collapsed buildings away.

He could not say who was more surprised as he stared into shocked black eyes and could see his own expression reflected in them.

He could feel the dip in his cursed energy, even as naked muscles formed around the skeleton torso that protected him instinctively. With the drain from his Susanoo, he knew he only had enough in reserve for one last strike. The gambit had paid off. Toji was stuck in mid-air with no leverage for his immense speed.

With a whisper, he unshackled his hold on the black flames, Amaterasu. He only had a spare second to watch the flames spring up on Toji before his vision blurred with a spike of excruciating pain that traveled from his eyes to his brain before he was finally sent crashing into the ground headfirst. Yet his hearing was clear enough to hear Toji's howl of pain before he was sucked into the empty embrace of unconsciousness.