Chapter Fifteen: The Third Mission, Osaka Factory Part Three
The curse that was inside the room moved with great speed.
Its massive, revolting body, a fusion of industrial waste and swollen flesh, should have been slow, ponderous. Physics, however, was merely a suggestion in the world of curses. It defied its own bulk with a terrifying, lurching agility.
Its body was huge, but after appearing, it possessed an unnatural speed.
One moment it was a pulsating mound; the next, it was a blur of rust and malignant intent, moving with the sudden, shocking lunge of a predator that had been still for too long.
So, in one moment, it formed and extended its cursed energy to hurl several metal projectiles that were scattered on the ground towards the team of three.
The debris littering the floor—rusted bolts, shattered gear teeth, chunks of pipe—levitated in a crackling aura of violet-black energy. They hung in the air for a split second, vibrating with a high-pitched bzzzt, before being launched like shrapnel from a cannon.
—
Kasumi, being the most capable of movement and in the center, was the fastest to respond thanks to the experience she possessed.
While Obito was still processing the horror-show physics, and Mai was swiveling to cover the entrance, Kasumi was already a blur of motion. Her reactions were honed by countless near-deaths, a muscle memory of survival.
Where Obito retreated a step back from the shock.
The instinctive flinch of a civilian facing a sudden explosion. His body moved before his mind could catch up, a stumble backwards that saved him from a spinning piece of shrapnel that embedded itself in the floor where he'd just stood with a sharp thwack!
While Mai directed her attention around the curses that were coming from the other side.
Her focus was split, a dangerous necessity. The screeching horde at the door was a tangible, immediate threat. She tracked them in her peripheral vision, her pistol's barrel a constant, subtle adjustment between the boss and the mob.
The speed of the movement was very fast.
Everything was happening in a compressed, chaotic slice of time. The shrapnel cloud spread. Kasumi moved. Mai tracked. Obito flinched. All in less than two heartbeats.
Kasumi drew her sword.
The sound was a clean, definitive shing that cut through the cacophony of screams and screeching metal. It was a declaration of intent.
And her cursed energy formed to cover the tip of the sword in one moment.
A ripple of pale blue energy, cold and sharp, raced from the hilt to the tip of her katana, sheathing it in a deadly, humming aura. The air around the blade crackled faintly, like static before a lightning strike.
"Cursed Technique: Cleaving Arc."
Her incantation was short, efficient. She didn't waste breath on theatrics, only on focusing her power. The name was a descriptor, not a boast.
Her cursed energy enhanced her physical strength.
The blue aura flared around her entire arm for an instant, muscles coiling with supernatural force. It wasn't brute strength, but a precise, explosive augmentation of her own lethal skill.
She struck every projectile and sent them flying away.
Her sword became a whirlwind of precise, economical motions. Not wild swings, but sharp, angled deflections—clang! clang! clang! ting!—each impact a sharp, ringing note in the metallic symphony of combat. She didn't try to destroy the shrapnel; she redirected it, like a master fencer parrying a hail of bullets.
The place was narrow, but every strike aimed to throw the projectiles in random directions away from her team.
Chunks of metal ricocheted off walls with loud pings! and cracks!, embedding themselves in rusted machinery or shattering against the far wall. The room became a deadly pinball machine, but the three of them were, miraculously, not the targets.
Then she said to Obito, "Zenin! Focus your attention now. Stop being distracted!"
Her voice was a whip-crack of command, sharp enough to slice through his panic. There was no patience for shock, no time for awe. There was only the next move, the next threat.
Obito's appearance was clearly pale, but after these words, he activated the Sharingan, which was already active, but this time with greater cursed energy.
He'd been running it on a low-grade scan. Now, he poured fuel on the fire in his skull. A fresh wave of energy surged into his eyes. The three tomoe spun into a frenzied blur, and the world sharpened to an almost painful degree of clarity. Details he'd missed before—the individual rust flakes on a flying bolt, the micro-twitch of the giant eye's pupil—snapped into focus.
He was able to detect the cursed energy coming from the curse that let out a bestial scream.
The scream wasn't just sound; it was a visible, rippling wave of distorted energy emanating from the central mass. His Sharingan traced its propagation through the air, a roadmap of pure hostility.
It sounded as if it were a word—I will kill you—to Obito.
His brain, desperate to anthropomorphize the horror, translated the raw scream of malice into a language he could dread more specifically. It was probably just psychic noise, but the message was clear enough.
But at this moment, he didn't focus on this matter.
Dwelling on the death threat would only get him killed faster. Analysis was a luxury for the safe. He had to act.
Instead, he used the Butcher Knife in his hand and rushed towards the curse.
The decision felt suicidal even as he made it. His legs moved almost against his will, propelled by Kasumi's order, by the screaming need to do something, and by a strange, newfound clarity granted by his hyper-active Sharingan.
This step was not a step Obito would ever want to take, even in his dreams.
In his dreams, he was usually running away from giant flesh-eyes, not towards them. This was a nightmare subversion he did not appreciate.
But at this moment, he felt that the angles of his vision had become easier and more dynamic.
The Sharingan wasn't just showing him the present; it was showing him glimpses of the immediate future. Faint, after-image trails of where the curse's tentacles would move. The best angles of approach. The lethal zones to avoid. It was like playing a video game with a subtle, blood-red aim assist overlay.
He was able to see the movement of the curse better.
Its lurching, seemingly random spasms now had a pattern, a rhythm of cursed energy flow he could anticipate. It was still horrifyingly fast, but it was no longer incomprehensible.
—
In truth, Obito was unaware that the Sharingan at this moment had increased in power due to Obito's fear and his desire to live.
Desperation was a potent catalyst. His will to survive, a white-hot spark of pure no, was funneling directly into his inherited technique, supercharging it beyond its usual passive capabilities.
The effect of that was clearer on his body than his self-awareness.
He didn't think he was moving faster; he just was. His muscles responded to visual cues his conscious mind hadn't even fully processed yet.
Where, in one moment, the cursed energy in his body rose, and the condensation became able to increase his speed noticeably.
A surge of adrenaline-like power, but colder, sharper, flooded his limbs. It was the cursed energy equivalent of hitting the nitro button. His feet left the gritty floor with more force than he intended.
So that in one moment, even Kasumi, who was about to attack the curse, was surprised by Obito reaching her side and surpassing her, even reaching the curse in less than a blink of an eye.
Kasumi had been a heartbeat away from launching her own assault, a calculated strike at a tentacle root. Then, a red-eyed blur shot past her peripheral vision with a whoosh of displaced air. She barely had time to register the shock, her own attack momentarily aborted. He moved? Like that?*
"…"
Her silent astonishment was a testament to the impossible speed. The kid who flinched from shrapnel was now moving like a seasoned close-combat specialist. The disparity was jarring.
The curse opened its giant eye wide when it felt the attack coming from the front.
The vertical pupil dilated, the wet mass of the eye bulging slightly as it focused on the suddenly much-closer threat. A sense of surprise, alien and cold, seemed to radiate from it.
Obito's knife was on the verge of cutting one of the curse's giant tentacles that was about to attack the team.
He saw it—the trajectory was perfect. A thick, pipe-like tentacle tipped with a sharpened flange was coiling back to strike at Kasumi's undefended flank. His rushing strike, guided by the predictive trails in his vision, would sever it at the joint.
But before this attack could succeed, Kasumi intervened and pushed Obito away.
Just as his blade was about to connect, a firm, unyielding hand planted itself on his shoulder and shoved him sideways with considerable force. He stumbled, his perfect strike turning into a wild, off-balance slash that cut nothing but air. Swish!
The latter didn't know why Kasumi did that and said with some confusion, "What's going on?"
The words were a breathless, frustrated yelp. He'd been so close, he'd had the shot, he was finally doing something right—and then she'd ruined it!
Before he could continue his words, he heard a gunshot come beside him.
BANG!
The report was deafening in the enclosed space, a sharp, concussive blast that made his ears ring.
It could have hit him, but it passed by him easily and with accuracy, hitting a giant tentacle that would have struck Obito if Kasumi hadn't pushed him.
A split-second later, the tentacle he'd been aiming for jerked violently. Where its tip had been, a hole the size of a fist now smoldered, leaking a foul, blackish smoke. The cursed construct shuddered and recoiled.
Only then did Obito know the reason she pushed him.
The realization dawned, cold and humiliating. His 'perfect strike' had been a trap. While he focused on the obvious attacking tentacle, another, thinner one—almost invisible against the shadowy machinery—had been snaking along the floor, aiming to impale him from below the moment he committed to his attack. Kasumi had seen it. He hadn't.
"You idiot! Don't only focus on the curse. It's very clever."
Kasumi didn't say that out loud. She was too busy spinning to deflect a hail of smaller debris the curse now hurled. Ting! Ting! Ting! But the sentiment was etched into the brief, searing glance she shot him—a look that lasted a fraction of a second but conveyed volumes: Wake up. This isn't a game. It's smarter than you.*
—
At the same time, Mai had taken a deep breath because of her creation of the bullet that had hit that tentacle and cut it.
The shot had required immense concentration. She hadn't just fired a bullet; she'd crafted it in the nanosecond before firing, imbuing it with a specific shape and cursed-energy payload designed to disrupt and destroy cursed-flesh constructs. The mental strain was a sharp headache behind her eyes.
She had controlled her cursed energy to be able to create this bullet.
Blue sparks had danced around her pistol's barrel as she focused, molding raw energy into a physical, cursed tool. The process was silent, internal, and draining.
At the same time, she was angry.
A hot, bitter anger simmered in her chest. She didn't want to protect Obito. The very idea was galling.
She didn't want to protect Obito because she hated him, but she realized that this situation required the team to work together above all else, otherwise they might die here.
The grudges of the past were heavy, but the weight of imminent death was heavier. Survival was a great motivator for temporary, bitter alliances. She'd saved him not for him, but for the mission, and for her own chances of getting out alive.
—
Because of this action she took, she didn't realize that her back was exposed.
In the micro-second of supreme focus required to craft and fire that precise shot, her awareness of the immediate space around her had narrowed to a tunnel. The horde at the door was a blur of noise and motion she'd been monitoring, but one had broken from the pack.
Therefore, one of the curses that had emerged from the other side rushed towards her.
It was a low, scuttling thing, more like a frenzied cluster of sharpened scrap metal than a humanoid form. It moved with a disturbing, skittering click-clack-scrape along the concrete floor, using the chaos of the main fight as cover.
The matter was quick, and the girl was helpless until the last moment.
Her senses screamed a warning—a shift in air pressure, a new skittering sound too close. But by the time her brain processed it, it was already too late for her body to react fully. She was locked in the aftermath of her shot, muscles committed, balance slightly off.
She felt something coming behind her, but in this short moment, she had no time to turn around or react to the attack coming from behind.
Time seemed to slow, yet move too fast. She could almost feel the cold, sharp points of the curse's form aimed at her spine. A cold sweat broke out on her neck.
"Dammit! What should I do?"
Her thoughts were a frantic, rapid-fire calculus of survival. Dive forward? Risk the boss's tentacles. Twist? Might expose my side. Create a shield? Not enough time to focus the energy…*
She was thinking of several conclusions she could use to handle this matter.
Each option played out in her mind's eye, and each ended with a painful, likely debilitating injury. The curse was too close, too fast.
But when she thought in this short moment, she realized she would sustain an injury immediately; no matter what she did, there wouldn't be a sufficient way for her to avoid this attack.
It was the grim acceptance of a sorcerer. Sometimes, you couldn't dodge. You could only choose how you got hit, and hope you lived through it.
—Or so she thought.
The resignation was already settling in her gut.
Because before that curse could strike her, it had been cut in half.
SCHLICK!
The sound was wet, decisive, and horrifyingly close to her ear. A spray of cold, oily ectoplasm flecked the back of her uniform.
Obito, who had escaped death, had his Sharingan eyes working at their maximum possible capacity.
Having been saved by Kasumi's push and Mai's shot, the shame and near-miss had ignited something in him. His fear hadn't lessened; it had been refined, sharpened into a hyper-vigilant rage. His Sharingan was drinking in every detail, every movement in the room, processing it at a breakneck speed.
And took a deep breath.
It was a gasp, really. A lungful of foul, metallic air that fueled his next action.
And fortunately for him, or fortunately for Mai, he saw the curse as it approached the girl's back.
His panoramic, enhanced vision caught the scuttling motion in his peripheral field just as Mai fired her shot. While everyone's attention was on the bullet's impact and the boss's recoil, he saw the real, immediate threat.
So he rushed without stopping.
He didn't think. The Sharingan supplied the trajectory, his body supplied the speed fueled by panic and a sudden, fierce determination. He wasn't playing the hero; he was correcting a tactical error. A hole in their formation.
Not only to save the girl who hated him, but because he realized, like her, that it was better to cooperate in this situation, otherwise they would die.
The irony was not lost on him, even in the moment. We hate each other, but we hate dying more. Fine. Let's be professional about our mutual disdain.*
The action was very quick, and his strike was precise enough to turn the curse into shreds.
He didn't slash wildly. He dropped low, his Butcher Knife held in a reverse grip, and executed a single, upward slicing motion as he passed between Mai and the curse. The blade, guided by the Sharingan's predictive lines, found the weak point in the curse's scrabbling form—the core of cursed energy holding the scrap metal together. It parted with a sickening crunch-tear.
"Watch your back!"
He informed her in a low voice as he rose from his crouch, already turning to face the next threat. There was no gloating, no 'you owe me.' Just a terse, necessary warning. They were even now. One save for another. The ledger was balanced, and the interest was still accruing.
They were now trapped between the giant curse inside the room and the curses that would come with the passage of time.
The horde at the door, momentarily cowed by Mai's shot and Obito's intervention, was regrouping. Their numbers seemed endless, a seething mass of shadow and malice in the corridor, held back only by the bottleneck of the doorway. And the boss was recovering, its giant eye now blazing with a focused, intelligent fury.
—
"There is a way to end this."
Kasumi's voice cut through the din, calm and strategic. She had been analyzing the flow of the fight even while deflecting and dodging.
She avoided a tentacle that was very large and precise, moving like snakes.
Not one or two, but dozens of these tentacles were rushing towards her. They wove through the air like a nest of metallic serpents, striking from multiple angles. Whoosh! Thwip! She danced between them, her katana a blur of blue light—shink! shink!—severing tips and parrying blows.
With that, her voice was clear with calm breathing that harmonized with the movement of her sword, which was cutting the tentacles with surgical sharpness.
Her breathing was a controlled rhythm: inhale during a pivot, exhale on the cut. Each precise shink of her blade was timed with the release of her breath, a deadly meditation in motion.
At the same time, as she spoke, "Eliminating this curse is the top priority now."
She stated the obvious, but it needed to be said aloud. It was the anchor point for their next move. The mob was a symptom. The boss was the disease.
After that, she informed Obito, who was also looking at her while destroying one of the curses that was entering.
Obito had positioned himself between the door and the main fight, a frantic, red-eyed sentry. His Butcher Knife was a whirl of desperate motion, deflecting claws, ducking under lunges, occasionally landing a solid hit that made a curse dissipate with a puff of black smoke. He was holding the line, barely.
"You must stop the curses that are entering."
Her order was direct, assigning him a clear, critical role: hold the door. Be the dam. It was a terrifying responsibility, but it was a defined one. He could understand 'stop them from coming in' far better than 'help me kill the giant eye monster.'
Her body was in the air, as she jumped and used a pile of metal that was beside her as a platform to jump farther to avoid an attack from the curse in the form of an explosion resembling a short-range bomb.
The giant eye had pulsed, gathering a dense ball of swirling, black-red energy in front of it. Kasumi saw the buildup in the energy flow and didn't hesitate. She planted a foot on a rusted gear assembly and launched herself backwards just as the energy ball detonated with a concussive BOOM! Shrapnel and chunks of concrete sprayed the area where she'd just been.
Where her voice was scattered while saying, "Mai and I will take care of this curse."
She landed in a crouch, her words slightly breathless but unwavering. The division of labor was made.
She had divided the team precisely.
It was a classic pincer/guard formation. Two focused on the high-value target. One held off the minions. Simple. Brutal. Their only chance.
She realized in a simple moment that Mai couldn't create many bullets to protect them so that she and Obito could take care of this giant curse.
Mai's technique was powerful but had limits—ammunition was literally crafted from her own cursed energy reserves, which were finite. She couldn't spam bullets to clear the doorway indefinitely.
And especially since she felt this curse possessed a lot of intelligence.
Its attacks were adapting. It was learning their patterns. It used the lesser curses as distractions. It feinted with its larger tentacles while striking with smaller, faster ones. This wasn't mindless rage; it was tactical predation.
True, it didn't possess cursed energy that put it at Grade One level, but it was infinitely close to reaching that grade.
A semi-Grade One. A curse on the very cusp of an evolutionary leap. The most dangerous kind, hungry for the power to push it over the edge, and smart enough to know how to get it—like by absorbing three Jujutsu sorcerers.
And that was a great danger to them, so even she wouldn't be able to face a Grade One curse of this level.
Kasumi's confidence was real, but so was her realism. If this thing leveled up mid-fight, they were all dead. The clock wasn't just ticking; it was in its final seconds.
—
"But—"
Mai was about to say something, a protest perhaps about leaving Obito—the weakest link in her eyes—to hold back an entire horde by himself.
But Obito shouted towards her quickly, "Go! I will take care of these curses!"
His voice was a raw, desperate roar, surprising even himself with its force. It wasn't bravery; it was the terrified understanding that the boss fight was where he was most likely to die instantly. The doorway, for all its terror, was a problem he could maybe, possibly handle.
He pushed Mai towards the entrance while he turned and looked at the curses that were entering, numbering in the dozens.
The push was rough, almost a shove, meant to break her hesitation. She stumbled a step towards the center of the room where Kasumi was regrouping. Obito planted himself squarely in the doorway, his back to them, facing the sea of screeching shadows. It was the most heroic and stupid pose he'd ever struck.
"I will take care of stopping these curses. You two go purify that curse over there!"
He didn't look back. He couldn't afford to. He just shouted the plan into the chaos, hoping his voice didn't crack. He was committing to his role: the sacrificial pawn, the speedbump. The guy who dies first in every horror movie. But maybe, just maybe, he could buy them enough time.
The scene was horrible for Mai.
She saw him standing there, silhouetted against the seething darkness of the corridor, his skinny frame looking utterly inadequate against the tide. The Butcher Knife in his hand looked like a toothpick.
True, all the curses were Grade Three, but their quantity was very large for a person as weak as Obito, at least that's what she thought.
Her assessment was based on the Obito she knew—the talentless, cowardly bully from the past, and the nervously quiet stranger from the train. In her mind, he was a liability, not an asset.
But in truth, after extensive training with Kyoshi, in addition to possessing the Sharingan, Obito felt more confident taking care of these curses than going and facing a giant curse that possessed tentacles that almost killed him a moment ago.
The math was simple, in a twisted way. The boss was an unknown, intelligent, overwhelming force. The horde was a known quantity: numerous, but individually predictable, and most importantly, dumb. His Sharingan was perfectly suited for handling multiple, linear threats. It was the difference between fighting one brilliant tactician and fighting thirty mindless berserkers. He'd take the berserkers every time.
Even if he was prepared to fight, his feet were trembling, even if he was hiding that by standing in front of Mai.
The tremor in his calves was a violent, involuntary vibration. He locked his knees to try and stop it, his grip on the knife's handle so tight his knuckles were bone-white. The façade of confidence was tissue-paper thin, but it was all he had.
But he was aware that it was better for them to fight Grade Three curses than to fight that curse that he was now—
He made the cold, selfish, tactical calculation. Let the professionals handle the boss monster. He'd handle the trash mob. It was the best chance for his survival, which, in this moment, felt incredibly important.
—I will fight this group of weaklings while this team finishes fighting this Grade Two curse. This is the best way.
He repeated the thought like a mantra, a justification for what looked like either supreme bravery or terminal stupidity. Weaklings. They're just weaklings. I can do this. Probably. Maybe.*
—
Mai didn't know what to say.
Her protest died in her throat. There was no time for debate. Obito had already turned his back, a clear dismissal. Her jaw clenched.
She turned around quickly and went towards Kasumi, who had taken a different stance this time.
Kasumi had switched from pure defense to a low, charging stance. Her sword was held at her side, energy condensing along its edge in a continuous, humming stream of blue light.
And had converted her cursed energy into shapes resembling cutters in the air to injure the curse with damage.
With a sharp exhalation, she made a horizontal slash. The cursed energy didn't just follow the blade; it extended from it, flying through the air like a crescent-shaped blade of solidified force. It shrieked as it cut through the air—Shriiiiek!—and slammed into the curse's main body.
But all her strikes were useless due to the physical strength possessed by this curse.
THUD! CRUNCH!
The energy slashes carved deep gashes into the curse's flesh-metal hide, spraying foul ichor. But the wounds began to close almost immediately, the surrounding material flowing like molten wax to seal them. The curse shuddered but didn't falter. Its sheer mass and regenerative ability made direct damage inefficient.
"Dammit! This situation is getting worse."
Mai's curse was a whisper of shared frustration as she joined Kasumi's side, raising her pistol. She fired twice in rapid succession—BANG! BANG!—aiming for the giant eye. The curse simply shifted, allowing the bullets to crater its armored flank instead.
The giant eye seemed to smile, its vertical pupil narrowing to a smug slit.
It was toying with them. Testing them. And with every passing second, more screeching, scraping sounds—skree! skraa!—echoed from the corridor behind Obito, announcing the arrival of fresh waves.
Obito, standing in the doorway, took a final, deep, shuddering breath.
The scent of rust, ozone, and decay filled his lungs. The red world of his Sharingan highlighted every twitch, every lunge of the dozens of cursed forms pressing towards him.
He raised the Butcher Knife, its plain edge looking pathetically small.
But in his enhanced vision, he could see their energy flows. Their weak points glowed like bullseyes. Their movements left ghostly trails he could follow.
"Alright, you ugly bastards," he muttered, the words lost in the general din. "Let's get this over with. Just… don't let the tentacle monster finish first."
He braced himself.
The sound of skittering claws on concrete grew louder.
Click-clack-scrape. Click-clack-scrape.
And from behind him, the thunderous BOOM of another cursed energy explosion shook the room.
It was, Obito thought with a strange, detached hysteria, going to be a very long few minutes.
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End of Chapter.
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