Chapter Twenty-Four: Return to Combat After Death
Obito was unaware at this moment as he was looking at the sky.
He had been sitting on the dirt of the training field, lost in the dark calculus of forbidden techniques and survival, the sky a pale, indifferent blue above him. His guard, physically and mentally, was at zero. The factory was a wound; Yaga's office was a puzzle. He hadn't considered the present, immediate danger.
That a shape quickly flashed and rushed towards him, cutting the distance to reach behind him in the blink of an eye.
It wasn't a sound first, but a displacement of air—a sharp whoosh that his ears barely registered. A shadow fell over him, blotting out the sun for a fraction of a second.
"What's going on?"
He began to feel pain in his back before his body was thrown. The question was a reflexive gasp, born of confusion more than fear.
He began to feel pain in his back before his body was thrown.
The impact was a concentrated, brutal force applied just below his left shoulder blade. It wasn't a blunt impact; it was a precise, piercing strike, like being hit with the butt of a spear. THWACK! The sound was a sickening crack of wood against flesh and bone.
The blow was in a blind spot, and there was no way to avoid it.
He'd been facing the open field. The attack came from directly behind, from the direction of the school buildings. He hadn't sensed any cursed energy, any hostile intent—just the sudden, violent reality of physics.
His cursed energy moved before that by a fraction of a second to protect him.
His subconscious, the part forged in the factory's hell, reacted before his conscious mind could. A thin, desperate layer of cursed energy surged to the point of impact, a last-ditch, autonomic defense.
Unconsciously, he activated the Sharingan at the same moment.
SNAP.
The world flooded crimson. The pain in his back became a bright, localized point of red-hot agony in his visual field. But more importantly, time seemed to slow, and the chaotic information of his tumbling body became a series of solvable equations.
His body, which flipped backwards, flew several yards before spinning several rotations on the dirt ground before stopping.
The force of the blow launched him forward and up. He was airborne for a disorienting moment, the world a spinning blur of blue sky, green trees, and brown dirt. He hit the ground shoulder-first with a heavy thud-roll-thud-crunch, a tumble of limbs and dust that carved a shallow trench in the training field's earth.
—
Obito redistributed his weight well before standing on the tips of his toes and looking, while in a state near falling to the ground, at the long hair of the girl with glasses.
Even through the pain and the red haze of the Sharingan, his mind processed the new threat. He ended his uncontrolled roll in a low crouch, one hand braced on the dirt, the other held up defensively. His eyes, burning red, lifted.
Her hair was close to green and black, and her eyes were light green. Her glasses were almost purple-framed with clear lenses.
Maki Zenin. The name and image slammed into his brain with the force of a second physical blow. He knew her. Of course he knew her. The glasses. The athletic build. The simmering, palpable rage that seemed to warp the air around her.
But that wasn't important. The girl was carrying an angry expression before she said, screaming towards Obito:
She stood about ten feet away, having landed from her leaping strike in a perfect, balanced stance. She held a long, polished wooden pole—a training spear—in a tight, two-handed grip. Her face was a mask of pure, unadulterated fury.
"You! What are you doing in this place, you dirty rat?! Do you want to die?!"
Her voice was a venomous shout, sharp enough to cut through the ringing in his ears.
Obito was shocked; he recognized the girl in one moment. The clothes, the shape... it was Maki Zenin standing in front of him.
The Clan Exterminator. The one who stood beside Itachi Uchiha in the world of anime and manga power rankings. The physically gifted, cursed-energy-less monster who had, in the story, slaughtered her entire clan. And she was here. Now. Looking at him like he was something she'd scraped off her shoe.
Maki had returned accompanied by Panda, who was walking happily while eating some light nuts, while Inumaki was moving silently beside her.
From the edge of the field, two more figures came into view. Panda, the panda-cursed corpse, paused mid-snack, his expressive eyes wide with surprise. Inumaki, his mouth covered by a high collar, made a soft "Salmon?" sound of confusion.
She was at this moment preparing to go to the training field to train using the spear, but before reaching there, her eyes from afar, thanks to her physical ability, managed to see a shape that made her body tremble a little before anger ignited in one second.
She'd been walking with her classmates, discussing nothing important, when her sharp eyes, enhanced by a lifetime of physical conditioning and combat awareness, had picked out a lone figure sitting in the dirt. The black Kyoto uniform. The slump of the shoulders. The profile of the face as he looked up. The memories had hit her like a truck.
One jump from her cut the distance, and she reached directly to his back.
Without a word to Panda or Inumaki, her body had moved. A explosive push from her legs, a streak of motion so fast it was almost a blur, and she was behind him, her training spear already in motion for a punishing, non-lethal but incapacitating strike to the spine.
The young man's body, clothes, and face—these things she recognized from her memories.
The bully. The weak, sneering boy from the Zenin compound who had tormented her and Mai when they were younger, who represented everything she hated about the clan's hierarchy and casual cruelty. Obito Zenin. The talentless brat who picked on those he deemed weaker, which, to him, had included the twin sisters with 'flawed' genetics.
"This bastard... how dare he exist here?"
The thought was a white-hot spike in her mind. He wasn't just here; he was in her school's training field, looking contemplative, as if he had a right to be there. The audacity was an insult.
She didn't wait a moment and enhanced her physical and bodily strength in less than a second by compressing her breath.
She didn't need cursed energy. Her body was her weapon, refined to a supernatural degree. A sharp, controlled inhale, a coiling of muscles that could snap steel cable.
She struck directly using the stick to his back in a very short moment, causing a bang sound.
The strike had been perfect. Or so she thought. Aimed at a non-vital nerve cluster, enough to knock the wind out of him and put him on the ground, writhing, for the confrontation she intended to have.
His body flew and fell several yards before stopping while he was breathing heavily and looking at her with disbelief.
*But he wasn't writhing. He was crouched, red eyes glowing, looking at her with shock but also a frightening clarity. He'd taken the hit and was still conscious. Still moving**.
But she was surprised while anger controlled her.
—How was he able to stay conscious? I made sure my strike was precise enough to make him lose consciousness.—
—How was he able to stay conscious? I made sure my strike was precise enough to make him lose consciousness.—
Her confidence in her own physical mastery was absolute. For a normal person, even a low-grade sorcerer, that strike would have meant a nap on the dirt. This... this was wrong.
Of course, she couldn't see the cursed energy that was wrapping around the part she wanted to hit.
Her lack of cursed energy perception was her one true blind spot. She couldn't see the last-millisecond, instinctive reinforcement Obito had conjured, the thin, desperate shield that had absorbed a critical percentage of the impact's force.
The feeling of approaching death, in addition to the experience of survival he had undergone several times, had created an instinct that made cursed energy transform to the place that could be exposed to the blow.
His body had learned. The factory had been a brutal teacher. The neural pathways now associated 'sudden attack from behind' with 'deploy reinforcement to point of impact.' It was a conditioned reflex, faster than thought.
Which made him reduce the force of the blow.
It wasn't eliminated. The pain was still immense, a throbbing, fiery ache that promised a spectacular bruise. But it wasn't a knockout blow.
Nevertheless, Obito was breathing heavily and had turned a pale color while looking at the girl whose face was red and her eyes were shooting sparks towards him.
He was pale from pain and shock. She was flushed with rage. They were a study in contrasting distress.
"Maki! What are you doing?!"
Panda's voice, full of alarm, cut through the tension. He and Inumaki had jogged over, stopping a safe distance away. Panda's snack was forgotten in his paw.
Panda, in addition to Inumaki, had arrived and looked at the scene and were surprised by Maki's action.
Inumaki's hand was raised near his collar, a cautious, ready posture. "Bonito flakes?" he murmured, a question aimed at Maki.
But the girl didn't look at them and said with a severe threat while raising her weapon:
Her gaze never left Obito. The red eyes unnerved her, but they only fed her anger. A new trick? A stolen technique? It doesn't matter.*
"Get ready for me to beat you to death!"
She declared it not as a hyperbole, but as a simple statement of intent. She took a step forward, the training spear held low and ready.
Obito didn't need to hear more. He realized he couldn't say anything that would stop this girl.
Words were useless here. This wasn't a misunderstanding to be cleared up. This was a historical grudge meeting present opportunity. The past Obito's sins had come due, and the collector was a human wrecking ball with a very good memory.
There was anger to the limits coming out of those two eyes, and her body was tense to the maximum extent; she was ready to beat him to death.
Every muscle in her athletic frame was coiled, humming with suppressed violence. She wasn't posturing; she was a spring loaded and released, with him as the target.
But certainly, he wouldn't allow her to do that.
Survival instinct overrode fear. He couldn't beat her in a straight fight—he knew that from the story. But he couldn't just stand there and get pummeled into paste either.
He put himself in a fighting stance and looked at her and said:
He rose fully from his crouch, wincing as the movement pulled at the fresh injury on his back. He settled into the basic stance Kyoshi had drilled into him—knees bent, weight centered, hands up. The Sharingan's tomoe spun, tracking every micro-twitch in her posture.
"I don't want any trouble. Please stop."
Even these words he said while trying to make himself polite while enduring the pain weren't enough to stop the girl.
Even these words he said while trying to make himself polite while enduring the pain weren't enough to stop the girl.
Politeness was a language she didn't speak with bullies. To her, it sounded like weakness, like the sniveling apologies he might have given after his past torments, empty words meant to avoid consequences.
She disappeared from her place.
One moment she was ten feet away. The next, she was a green-and-black blur closing the distance with terrifying speed. No cursed energy enhancement, just pure, explosive physical power.
But the Sharingan had been activated in the next moment with more precision.
His world was already red. Now, it became a grid of predictive lines. He saw the ghostly after-image of her movement before she completed it. He saw the trajectory of the training spear not as a line, but as a fan of possible angles.
Her attack, which was already fast, slowed down relative to Obito, who moved easily and avoided the blow that was in the form of a horizontal strike from the stick.
He didn't dodge backwards. He stepped inside the arc of the swing, a minimal, efficient movement that let the wooden shaft whistle past his chest with inches to spare. Whoosh! The displaced air ruffled his hair.
But Maki was more physically strong than him, even with enhancing cursed energy and his precision in controlling it.
His reinforcement made him faster, tougher, but it didn't close the fundamental chasm in their raw physical stats. She was a Ferrari; he was a go-kart with a nitro boost.
The girl's shape was almost like a ghost, where in the next second she sent a punch by raising the stick slightly and bringing it back.
The missed horizontal swing didn't end her combo. Using the momentum, she reversed her grip in a fluid motion, bringing the butt of the spear around in a short, devastating jab aimed at his solar plexus.
She had changed the path of her strike in less than a fraction of a second.
It was a feint within a feint. The horizontal sweep was the setup; the reversed jab was the real attack. A technique born of countless hours of sparring against opponents faster or stronger than her.
Her fist was about to hit Obito's chest, but the latter didn't allow that.
The Sharingan saw the shift. The predictive lines reconverged on a new point—the center of his chest. He had a split-second to react.
He transformed his cursed energy with precision and built a weak wall of cursed energy but concentrated, which blocked the blow.
*He couldn't move his body out of the way in time. Instead, he focused. He pulled cursed energy from his core and compressed it into a dense, disc-shaped shield right over his sternum. It wasn't visible, but it was there**, a spiritual pad.
But it made him slide backwards several meters, stopping after that while letting out a breath resembling a scream.
FWOOM—SCRAPE!
*The impact wasn't a crack this time, but a deep, concussive thump. The concentrated cursed energy shield held, but the sheer kinetic force behind Maki's strike was transferred through it. His feet left the ground for a moment, and he skidded backwards through the dirt, leaving two parallel grooves, before stumbling to a halt. The air was knocked from his lungs in a pained "OOF—!"
His painful chest, which was beating strongly, while the girl was looking at him with an unbelieving look.
He bent over, hands on his knees, gasping for air. His chest felt like it had been hit by a sledgehammer. The shield had prevented broken ribs, but the bruising would be epic.
"Impossible! How were you able to stay conscious again?!"
Maki's voice was no longer just angry; it was laced with genuine, frustrated confusion. She lowered her spear slightly, her brow furrowed behind her glasses. This wasn't going according to script. He should have been on the ground after the first hit. He should have been wheezing after the second. Instead, he was standing, red-eyed, and had just perfectly parried a technique that should have flattened him.
The girl didn't realize the severe difference between the person in her memories and the person standing in front of her at this moment.
Her memories were of a cowardly, clumsy, spiteful boy who relied on his clan name and picked on easy targets. The person in front of her moved with an economy of motion he shouldn't possess, had reacted to attacks he shouldn't have seen coming, and had a calm, assessing look in those weird red eyes that spoke of experience, not panic.
She expected that she would have knocked him down tens of times in her memories; he wasn't even able to avoid a weak move from her.
In the Zenin compound, their 'confrontations' had been one-sided affairs where she, even as a child, had often ended up overpowering him through sheer ferocity, only to be punished later by adults for daring to fight back against a 'proper' clan member. He had been all bark, no bite, and zero skill.
But at this moment, he was able to avoid her strikes. How could she tolerate that?
The cognitive dissonance was infuriating. This… this imposter was using skills he had no right to have. It felt like a mockery.
That bastard who insulted her and her sister... how could she stop without making him suffer a humiliating beating?
"Stop now. I don't want any trouble."
This tone, simply a word he wanted to say to stop the matter... he didn't want to fight.
This tone, simply a word he wanted to say to stop the matter... he didn't want to fight.
He was trying to de-escalate. It was the smart move. The only move. Fighting Maki Zenin was a guaranteed loss, school rules or no school rules.
He felt his body was still weak. He didn't want his short stay to turn into a personal issue with Maki, especially since the school principal and Doctor Shoko told him not to cause any problems.
He was a guest. A patient. Picking a fight (or more accurately, being forced into one) with a Tokyo student, a future Special Grade in physical combat, was the fastest way to get thrown out, or worse, have his recovery cut short by new injuries.
—I don't want any trouble.—
Maki thought, her face dark behind the glasses. The cold light of her gaze reflected on the pair of clear frames before the stick began a full circle.
Maki thought, her face dark behind the glasses.
The words, meant to placate, had the opposite effect. They sounded like the whining of the boy she remembered. They ignited a fresh, colder fury.
She released a wave of wind towards Obito, who was forced to protect himself by raising his hands.
She didn't charge. Instead, she spun the training spear in a full, vicious circle beside her, building momentum. Then, with a final, whip-crack motion, she thrust it forward, not to stab, but to displace air. The result was a visible, concussive shockwave of compressed air that roared across the distance between them.
FWOOSH—BANG!
It was like being hit by a solid wall of invisible force. Obito crossed his arms in front of his face, reinforcing them with cursed energy. The impact was still tremendous, shoving him back another few feet, his shoes scraping through the dirt. Scrape-scrape-scrape! Dust and small pebbles peppered his arms and torso.
The wave of wind was very strong, as if from a helicopter and not just from a girl.
Maki's physical strength, when applied with proper technique, could generate effects that mimicked low-grade cursed techniques. This was pure biomechanical prowess turned into a weapon.
The girl's physical strength exceeded his by multiple folds, as if she wasn't human at all.
The story was right. She was a freak of nature. A biological masterpiece honed by hatred and relentless training. Facing her was like facing a force of nature—a very angry, very focused hurricane.
—What the hell is going on?—
Panda, unaware of what was happening, knew the person being attacked because Principal Yaga had told him they were hosting someone for treatment, but he didn't know why Maki was now trying to fight him.
Panda, unaware of what was happening, knew the person being attacked because Principal Yaga had told him they were hosting someone for treatment.
He'd been told: A Kyoto student, Obito Zenin, is recovering here. Be polite. He hadn't been told: He is also Maki's personal nemesis from a traumatic childhood.*
And the word 'fight' was just a symbolic word, because the girl was as angry as a Cathar; she wanted to kill him if the matter continued.
"Maki! Stop!"
Panda shouted again, his voice more forceful. He took a step forward, but Inumaki placed a restraining hand on his arm. "Mustard leaf," Inumaki said quietly, his eyes serious. It was a warning: Danger. Don't get between them.*
The girl didn't listen to Panda's screams but focused directly, her muscles, and disappeared from the place again.
Maki was in a tunnel of rage. Panda's voice was a distant buzz. Her world had narrowed to the red-eyed boy who represented every humiliation, every unfairness, every moment of pain she and Mai had endured from the Zenin clan. He was here. He was vulnerable. And he was daring to not fall down.
But this time, Obito had activated another part of his Sharingan's cursed technique.
After the ability of deceleration, he activated the ability of prediction. In that moment, the attacks and points of attack became exposed relative to Obito.
After the ability of deceleration, he activated the ability of prediction.
The two functions worked in tandem. The world moved in slow motion, and within that slow motion, faint, red ghost-images showed him where Maki's next three moves would be. It was like having the controller input readout in a fighting game.
To the surprise of Panda and Inumaki, the ghost moved and blocked most of the stick's strikes.
Maki became a whirlwind of violence. She closed the gap in a blur, and her training spear became a storm of strikes—high, low, thrusts, sweeps. But Obito was a leaf in that storm, bending but not breaking. He didn't block head-on; he parried, deflected, and slipped the strikes by the narrowest of margins.
Every strike was close to a hit, but it only touched the edges of his shirt in addition to his pants, but it didn't cause damage.
Swish-thwip-tap! Swish-tap!
The sound was a rapid staccato of wood cutting air and glancing off reinforced cloth. A sleeve tore. A pant leg was grazed. But no solid hit landed. He was using the absolute minimum movement necessary, guided by the Sharingan's perfect foresight.
On the other hand, Maki's breathing became more dangerous with every moment.
Her attacks, fueled by fury, were incredibly taxing even for her superhuman stamina. Each missed strike, each time he flowed around her like water, cost her not just energy, but psychological capital. Her certainty was crumbling.
—How does this weakling avoid my strikes? How did he become stronger? He wasn't this strong before.—
The thought was a poison in her veins. The Obito she knew couldn't have lasted ten seconds in this exchange. This one had been going for nearly a minute, and he wasn't slowing down; if anything, he was adapting.
She could only watch her strikes that tried to reach Obito's head to hit him with one blow capable of splitting his head in half, and they were useless.
She aimed for knockout blows—swings at his temple, thrusts at his throat. But each time, his head would tilt a centimeter, his body would shift a few inches, and the weapon would whistle past, close enough for him to feel the wind of its passage.
While Obito's body moved with flexibility as if predicting the location of each blow, one after the other.
It was a bizarre, almost beautiful dance of violence. She was the aggressor, a powerhouse of destruction. He was the reactor, a precise, red-eyed algorithm of evasion.
This matter continued for a full half hour without stopping.
The sun shifted in the sky. Dust hung in the air, stirred up by their movements. Obito's initial pain was buried under a layer of frantic focus and adrenaline. Maki's face, once flushed with anger, was now set in a grim, determined mask, but sweat beaded on her brow and her breaths came in sharper gusts.
Between the place where the two were looking from afar, Inumaki and Panda were unbelieving.
They stood at the edge of the field, spectators to an impossible duel. Panda's jaw was slightly open. Inumaki's eyes were wide above his collar. They had seen Maki spar. They had seen her dominate. They had never seen anyone, especially not a seemingly frail, recovering patient, evade her so completely for so long.
Anger blinded her, but they didn't move, not because they didn't see the need to intervene, but because they had a feeling that if they intervened in what Maki was doing, they might also be in the heart of the storm of the girl's private attacks, with her immense physical strength.
It was self-preservation. Interrupting Maki in this state was like trying to grab the blade of a spinning fan. You'd just lose a hand.
—
Obito avoids the attack, but he also saw points of weakness, but he couldn't reach them.
The Sharingan showed him openings. A millisecond delay after a powerful swing where her balance was slightly off. A tiny over-extension in a thrust. But to exploit them required an attack of his own, a commitment he couldn't make.
He wasn't in a state of smart thinking; he was in a state of calm.
His mind was empty of strategy, of clever plans. It was a pure, reactive state. See the line. Move to avoid the line. That was the entire program. Thinking would slow him down. Thinking would let the pain in.
He had been hit in the back, and his body hurt a lot. He hadn't been awake for a long time, so entering a fight this way was something he hadn't imagined.
Every movement sent fresh jolts from the bruise on his back. His lungs burned. His muscles, atrophied from a month in bed, screamed in protest at this sudden, extreme demand. He was running on borrowed time and stolen skill.
But honestly, he had to think about the matter.
The calm state couldn't last. The Sharingan's drain, though less than before, was still present. His stamina was finite. Maki's was legendary. He would tire first. He would make a mistake. And then she would break him.
Maki was in this place, and unlike her sister, who had some smart ideas and respect for rules, the other girl was just a rule-breaker and had anger problems if it concerned someone who insulted her.
Mai was calculating, pragmatic, bound by the broader rules of the Jujutsu world and her own survival. Maki was a force of pure, personal justice (or vengeance). Rules were irrelevant. Consequences were for later. Now was for hitting.
And that was clear from her shape as she used the stick to hit him.
Her form was perfect, lethal, and utterly devoid of restraint. She wasn't holding back to avoid killing him anymore. She was trying to hit him as hard as she could, within the limits of using a training weapon instead of a real spear.
The strength of the stick resembled the strength of a blade; if it hit him again, he would lose consciousness directly.
A direct, full-force blow to the head or spine, even with a wooden training tool, could cause serious injury or death when delivered by someone of Maki's caliber. The only reason he was still standing was because he wasn't letting them land.
In addition to that, his avoidance of the first attack was because the girl didn't want him to die.
Her initial strike had been meant to incapacitate, not kill. She'd wanted him conscious to suffer her words, her contempt. That restraint was gone now, burned away by frustration and the shocking reality of his resistance.
But at this moment, it had become clear to Obito that the girl had gone beyond the idea that she was afraid of Obito dying.
Her attacks were no longer calibrated. They were full-force, kill-shot attempts masked as training strikes. The intent to maim, to punish severely, was palpable in the air, a miasma of violence as thick as any cursed energy.
He was running out of time. The red lines in his vision were starting to flicker at the edges. A deep, familiar headache began to bloom behind his eyes.
Maki, sensing a slight slowing in his movements, a fractional delay in his dodge, bared her teeth in a grim, triumphant smile.
She adjusted her grip, feinted high, and then drove the butt of the spear in a straight, piston-like thrust towards his sternum—the same spot as before, but with all her weight and fury behind it.
This time, the predictive lines converged with a finality he couldn't avoid. He was off-balance from the feint. He saw it coming. But his body, tired and aching, couldn't move out of the way in time.
All he could do was pour every last drop of cursed energy he had left into reinforcing his chest and cross his arms over it.
This was going to hurt.
A lot.
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End of Chapter.
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