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Chapter Forty-Two: The Warning & The CalculatedLie
Damn it.
The thought was a clean, cold spike, a railroad nail of pure, undiluted what-the-hell driven straight into the meat of Obito's brain.
The car, a sleek metal coffin on wheels, had just rounded the final, suffocating bend in the forest road when the world outside the windshield decided to have a complete and utter aesthetic breakdown.
Tokyo Jujutsu High wasn't just under attack; it was being swallowed, digested, and about to be excreted by a metaphysical nightmare.
A swirling, churning maelstrom of curses—hundreds of them, a clearance sale on grotesquerie—coiled around the school's protective barrier like a living, malevolent nebula. The air outside the car grew thick, a soup tasting of ozone, rotting meat, and existential dread. The sky above the campus was a bruise-purple tapestry, stitched together with flapping leathern wings, writhing tentacles that seemed to wave 'hello,' and shimmering, malformed bodies that violated basic geometry.
Screeeech… Hsssss… Awoooo…
A dissonant choir of the profoundly unnatural, a soundtrack for the end of the world, filtered through the soundproofed glass, proving that no amount of luxury trim could keep out pure, concentrated evil.
The car lurched to a halt, tires crunching gravel with a sound of finality. Inside, Kiri's knuckles were a stark, bloodless white on the steering wheel, gripping it like it was the last life preserver on the Titanic.
Obito didn't speak. He didn't gasp. His eyes were already narrowing, the world beyond the glass sharpening into a cruel, high-definition panorama of impending disaster. With a thought as simple and automatic as blinking, crimson spirals bloomed in his irises, painting his vision in shades of threat-assessment and violent intent.
Sharingan. Active.
The scene didn't just clarify; it exploded into hyper-detail. He could see individual curses like they were posing for portraits: a winged serpent with a bouquet of too many blinking eyes, a lumbering behemoth made of moss-covered stone and bad intentions, a swirling cloud of insectoid things that moved with a single, hive-minded spite. The school's barrier hummed a visible, strained gold, flickering under the pressure like a bad fluorescent bulb in a horror movie.
He turned his head, the movement crisp, mechanical. His voice, when it came, was flat, devoid of the usual sarcastic, world-weary undertone. All business. All survival.
"You can leave. I'll go in there alone."
He didn't wait for a reply, a debate, a 'be careful.' The car door flew open with a sharp, protesting crack, and he was out, the cool, tainted air—smelling of pine, decay, and spiritual violence—hitting his face like a wet slap. He took one last, sweeping look at the apocalyptic postcard before him, a look that catalogued every flying atrocity, and then launched himself forward.
Shwip.
Cursed Acceleration propelled him from a standing start into a streaking, ground-eating blur, leaving Kiri staring at an empty, slightly warm passenger seat and a door that swung shut with a definitive, lonely thump.
---
At the epicenter of the storm, the atmosphere was less panic and more a tense, frozen tableau, as if everyone had decided to hold their breath simultaneously.
Suguru Geto stood atop his massive, manta-ray-shaped curse, a picture of serene, apocalyptic charisma. He looked like a cult leader who'd just won the lottery. The wind from the swirling curses above played with his long, unbound hair in a way that was probably practiced. Behind him, his motley crew of followers—human and otherwise—huddled, their faces a perfect mix of fervent belief and bowel-loosening fear.
His gaze, warm as a hug and as disgusted as someone stepping in something unspeakable, swept over the defenders assembled on the ground. It lingered on Maki Zenin, who stood firm, her simple spear held so tight her knuckles were pale little islands of bone. Her jaw was clenched so hard Obito, from a distance, could almost hear the enamel stress.
"Look at these monkeys," Geto said, his voice carrying a theatrical, pitying sadness usually reserved for damaged artworks. "Always so disgusting. So useless."
Maki's eyes burned with pure, unfiltered rage, the kind that could melt steel. But she held her tongue, a volcano meticulously capped with sheer, trembling will. The air around her vibrated with suppressed violence, humming a silent, deadly note.
Gojo Satoru floated in the space between, a spot of impossible calm in the chaos. His blindfold was on, but everyone present could feel the weight of his gaze, a physical pressure on the back of their necks.
"What do you think you're doing here?" Gojo's voice was light, almost conversational, which somehow made it ten times more dangerous. It was the tone of someone asking about the weather while holding a live grenade.
Geto's smile widened, beatific and utterly, charmingly mad. "What do you mean? Weren't you a student at this place? True, I've already graduated, but I still like to come and visit sometimes."
The joke landed with the grace of a lead balloon, sinking into the tense silence without a ripple. He knew it wasn't funny. He didn't care. The smile remained, a permanent, unnerving fixture on his face.
"You'll never graduate."
The new voice was like gravel grinding together at the bottom of a deep well. Principal Yaga had stepped forward, a mountain of a man placing himself squarely between the threat and his students. Panda, Inumaki, and Yuta stood behind him, a ragged but defiant line. Yuta's face was a mask of confusion and dawning horror, his eyes wide as saucers.
"You're just a failure who left and didn't return to the right path," Yaga finished, each word dropping like a tombstone into mud.
Geto just chuckled, a soft, dismissive sound that was somehow louder than the curses' screeching. He opened his arms wide, a messianic gesture towards the grotesque heavens he'd brought as a party favor.
"I don't care about any of this talk," he announced, his voice rising to address the entire clearing, the trees, probably the universe. "Because I came here to make an important announcement."
As if on cue from a demented stage manager, the swarm of curses surged. They spiraled, dove, and shrieked in a choreographed display of terror that would put any fireworks show to shame. The air currents they kicked up whipped dust, leaves, and small regrets into frenzied cyclones, battering the defenders.
WHOOOOSH.
Finally, after letting the spectacle hang for a perfect, dramatic moment—the kind of pause you'd use before announcing a lottery winner—he spoke again, his voice cutting cleanly through the din.
"I will attack every place in Tokyo. And I'm here not to hide this time from you, but to directly inform you of the time I will attack."
He then proceeded to lay it out. Times. Dates. Specific districts in Tokyo—Shibuya, Shinjuku, you name it. It was a tour itinerary for the end of the world, delivered with the calm, precise cadence of a man reading a grocery list. Eggs, milk, existential dread, 8 PM in Roppongi…
Throughout it all, Gojo was statue-still. His head was tilted just so, a slight angle of predatory focus. No one could see his eyes, but the air around him grew several degrees colder, a pocket of winter in the chaotic spring afternoon.
When Geto finished, Gojo drifted forward a few feet. The casual lightness was gone, stripped away like a cheap veneer.
"And why do you think," Gojo said, his voice now firm and flat as a steel plate laid over a pit of lava, "that after such an announcement, I'll allow you to leave? Do you think I'm still your friend?"
Geto threw his head back and laughed. It was a rich, genuine, belly-shaking sound that seemed utterly obscene in the context, like laughing at a funeral. A your own funeral.
"We can fight now, and I'll be happy with that," Geto said, wiping a non-existent tear of mirth from his eye. "But I think you have to think about your dear students, right?"
His gesture encompassed the hundreds of curses still circling, a living shield and a promise of catastrophic collateral damage. The math was ugly and instant. Gojo had calculated it in the space between two heartbeats, the numbers scrolling behind his blindfold in a grim, final tally.
Gojo's silence was his answer. It was a silence that vibrated with furious, impotent energy, a thunderclap trapped in a jar.
Smiling that same tranquil, unnerving smile, Geto and his retinue stepped back onto the winged curse. They boarded with absurd, leisurely calm, as if catching the last bus home after a long day of sowing terror.
FWUMP-FWUMP-FWUMP.
With powerful, slow beats of its vast, membranous wings, the curse lifted off, kicking up a final, debris-laden gust of wind that smelled of sulfur and victory.
WHOOSH.
And just like that, the architect of the coming storm departed, leaving behind only his poisonous announcement and a sky beginning to clear of its monstrous inhabitants, like party guests who'd been told the fun was over.
---
CRUNCH. THWACK. SQUELCH.
Obito was a moving detonation, a one-man cleanup crew with a serious attitude problem. He moved through the school's outer grounds like a vengeful spirit who'd just missed the main event and was taking it out on the stragglers. The Sharingan painted the world in slow-motion threats and glowing weak points.
A curse shaped like a giant, fuzzy moth with delusions of grandeur tried to blind him with a cloud of prismatic, probably carcinogenic dust. He ducked under the sparkling cloud, came up inside its guard—smelling mothballs and evil—and drove his fist, wrapped in crackling, blue-white cursed energy, straight into its fluffy thorax.
POP-SHATTER.
It dissolved into a satisfying puff of acrid smoke and metaphysical disappointment.
A trio of smaller, dog-like curses with too many legs and not enough brains swarmed him from the bushes, yipping with high-pitched malice. A spin that kicked up dirt, a low kick that snapped the lead creature's front leg with a sickening, dry SNAP, followed by two precise, almost surgical jabs to the others' cores.
Puff. Puff.
Two more gone, their forms unraveling like cheap yarn.
—Damn it. There should have been more time. How did he get here so fast? Did he take a cursed-speed bullet train? I really hate these narrative curveballs… And what the hell is this? A clearance sale on Grade 2s? Did they have a coupon?—
Each one was strong enough to require focused energy to dismantle. It was exhausting, precision work, like defusing bombs that were also actively trying to bite you.
Then he saw the big one. An insectoid curse, a good five meters tall, was methodically uprooting ancient, probably historically significant trees at the forest's edge, tossing them aside like matchsticks with the casual disdain of a toddler in a sandbox.
CRACK-RRRIP.
Obito didn't break stride. He charged straight at it, a red-eyed speck against a mountain of chitin. It turned, mandibles clicking a furious Morse code, and spewed a steaming stream of acidic goo that sizzled through the air.
HSSSSSS.
He accelerated under the stream, the acid burning a smoking, bubbling furrow in the earth right behind his heels. He planted his foot, pushed off against a tree root, and launched into the air, his fist pulled back like a piston.
The curse reared up, a looming shadow that blocked out the bruised sky.
Obito's punch connected not with its bulbous head, but with the precise, glowing point under its jaw where its cursed energy was thinnest—a weak spot only the Sharingan's cold, analytical gaze could have pinpointed in the heat of the moment.
BOOOOM.
The creature's head didn't just explode; it vaporized in a spectacular shower of black mist, iridescent chitinous shrapnel, and existential goo. Its body teetered for a second, a headless monument to bad life choices, before collapsing like a felled tower, shaking the ground with a mighty, final protest.
THUD-DDUUUSH.
Obito landed in a crouch, not bothering to watch the fall. He was already moving again, a red-eyed comet streaking towards the main campus clearing, leaving behind a trail of dissolving curses and profound confusion among the local wildlife.
He arrived just in time to see the tail end of the spectacle—Geto's massive curse becoming a shrinking, ambiguous dot in the darkening sky, the swarm beginning to disperse like roaches when the kitchen light flicks on.
His Sharingan tracked it, memorizing the shape, the unique, oily energy signature, filing it away under 'Future Problems.'
—That's him. Geto. Wanted a front-row seat to the madness, but it seems the main act just left. Punctual villain. Annoying. Very poor hosting skills.—
The residual cursed energy in the area was already thinning, the psychic pressure lifting like a foul fog burning off under a noon sun. But there were still stragglers, the cursed equivalent of guests who didn't know the party was over. He dispatched two more bird-like curses with sharp, efficient chops to their screeching necks.
Snick. Snick.
Two more heads, metaphorically rolling.
Then he turned, letting the crimson spirals fade from his eyes, and there was Yuta, staring at him with wide, shell-shocked eyes, looking like he'd just been told the world was flat and also on fire. Obito mastered his breathing, letting it come in slightly ragged, believable pulls, the picture of a man who'd just fought his way through a minor apocalypse.
"What the hell is going on?" he asked, his voice pitched with natural-seeming worry, laced with just the right amount of breathless confusion. "Who was that?"
Yuta took a deep, shuddering breath, as if steadying himself to recount a bad dream to a disbelieving parent. He explained. The sudden arrival. The overwhelming swarm. Geto's declaration of war on Tokyo, on all non-sorcerers—the 'monkeys.' The specific, chillingly timed threats.
As Yuta spoke, Obito's face was a masterclass in reactive acting. His eyebrows knitted in confusion. His lips turned down in dismay. A flash of authentic-looking fear widened his eyes for a second. All perfectly timed, a symphony of 'Oh no.'
Inside, behind the performance, his mind was a cold, churning engine, spitting out calculations and contempt.
—He's actually doing it. The grand, genocidal tantrum. Does he genuinely think wiping out hundreds of millions of 'monkeys' will usher in a sorcerer's paradise? Has he never heard of geopolitics? Or nuclear weapons? Or, I don't know, other countries?—
—If Japan suddenly becomes a nation run by openly supernatural beings who just committed a mega-massacre, every other country on earth isn't going to send congratulatory fruit baskets. They're going to see a resource. A threat. They'll want their own 'special humans.' The kidnapping, the experimentation, the proxy wars fought with cursed teenagers… and I, as a registered Japanese sorcerer, become a prime specimen. A lab rat with a glowing target on my back. No. Absolutely, unequivocally not.—
Yuta finished his explanation, his own voice trembling slightly. He noted, with a distant part of his mind, how quickly Obito's initial panic seemed to solidify into a tense, icy calm. It was impressive, and slightly unsettling.
"What did Gojo-sensei do?" Obito asked, his voice now steady, analytical, shifting seamlessly from scared student to tactical observer. "Did he say anything, or did he fight?"
"The teacher couldn't fight," Yuta said, frustration and helplessness bleeding into his words. "That bastard had an army. He threatened everyone. Sensei said a fight with that many curses… it wouldn't be a joke."
Obito nodded slowly, gravely, as if processing the grim, ugly truth of the tactical reality. He saw the turmoil on Yuta's face, the guilt, the fear of being a burden. He placed a hand on Yuta's shoulder, a firm, senior-like grip meant to convey solidarity and a slight push towards safety.
"You should go inside," Obito said, his tone leaving no room for argument, the picture of concerned, take-charge seniority. "Wait for news from the higher-ups. They'll definitely know what to do about this." Or they'll panic and make everything worse, he didn't add.
Yuta nodded, grateful for the direction, for someone telling him what to do when the world was falling apart. He turned and headed towards the main building, his footsteps slow and heavy.
---
Alone for a moment in the suddenly-too-quiet clearing, Obito's mask of concerned seniority dissolved, melting away to reveal the pensive, calculating scowl underneath.
His mind raced through scenarios, a chess player staring at a board that was not only on fire but was also complaining about the temperature. Killing Geto was the obvious, elegant, final solution. But how? The man was a walking arsenal, a Special Grade curse manipulator with a literal army in his pocket. Obito was fast, getting stronger by the day, but he was still, realistically, knocking on the door of Grade 1. Charging Geto head-on was less a battle plan and more a fancy, dramatic form of suicide.
He needed a better weapon. A bigger trap. Something with more teeth.
He was still deep in this lethal calculus, his brain whirring like an overheated computer, when he saw Principal Yaga walking back from the forest's edge. The man's shoulders were squared with duty, but his face looked ten years older, carved from granite and quiet, bottomless despair.
Obito intercepted him, falling into step beside the larger man. "Sir," he began, his voice respectfully urgent. "What's happening now? Will Tokyo really be attacked?"
Yaga stopped, his heavy boots scraping on the gravel. His eyes, usually so sharp, focused on Obito with a visible effort, as if pulling himself from a deep, dark well. His voice was the calm of deep, soul-crushing exhaustion. "No need to worry. You stay. We'll handle the matter. This doesn't concern the students." He said it like a mantra, a promise he was desperate to believe himself.
—Oh, Principal. You beautiful, tragically wrong, well-meaning man. It concerns us more than anyone. We're the ones who'll have to live in the hellscape, or die preventing it.—
Obito knew the brutal, scripted truth. The promised city-wide attack? A feint. A spectacular, bloody, attention-grabbing diversion designed with one purpose: to pull Gojo Satoru, the one-man deterrent, away from the school. The real target, the prize, was right here, looking lost and heading inside: Yuta Okkotsu and the apocalyptic queen permanently attached to him, Rika.
The words bubbled up in his throat, bitter and urgent. He could blurt it out. 'It's a trick! He doesn't care about Tokyo! He wants Yuta!'
But then came the inevitable, deadly follow-up questions, delivered with suspicious stares and probably a binding vow or two. How could you possibly know that, Obito? What's your source? Are you in league with him?
He had no proof. No intercepted communications, no spy reports. Only foreknowledge from a story he shouldn't know, etched into his memory from a previous life. Any attempt to explain would paint a target on his own back far brighter and more immediate than any curse's.
So, he did the only smart, infuriating thing. He nodded, crafting the perfect image of a reluctantly trusting student, burying his certainty under a layer of obedient worry.
"I understand, sir."
He stepped back, a subtle shift of weight, letting Yaga pass. The principal's heavy, weary footsteps echoed down the polished hallway as he retreated to his office, likely to field a thousand frantic, screaming calls from the Jujutsu Council. The office door closed with a soft, final click that sounded like a lid sealing on a coffin.
The guilt on Yaga's face had been palpable, a physical weight. The star pupil he'd nurtured, the boy he'd shared meals with, now a genocidal cult leader announcing the end of days. Any teacher would be shattered. Yaga was just better at holding his pieces together with sheer will and duty.
—But Yaga's strong. He'll bear it. He has to. He'll follow the protocol, marshal the resources, try to protect the city. Meanwhile, I need to play a completely different game. A dirtier one.—
As if summoned by his treasonous thoughts, his phone buzzed in his pocket. A sharp, insistent vibration that felt like an angry hornet trapped against his thigh.
Bzzt. Bzzt. Bzzt.
He pulled it out, the screen glowing ominously in the dimming light. The caller ID made his eyebrow twitch, a purely involuntary tic of deep-seated irritation.
Naobito Zenin.
He placed the phone to his ear. The voice that came through was dry, imperious, and utterly lacking in any form of human sympathy or concern. It was the voice of a man discussing a mildly interesting stock fluctuation.
"Hello, you troublemaker." The greeting was an accusation. "What's happening with you? A lot of news has arrived about the attack that will happen. The administration and the Jujutsu Council seem about to explode. And that Gojo seems to be in the middle of this matter."
Obito could practically hear the old man sipping expensive, smooth sake through the phone, could almost see him lounging in his study while the world prepared to burn. A flash of pure, hot irritation heated his blood. He wasn't in the mood for the clan head's detached, political games.
But then… the gears in his mind, already spinning at breakneck speed from the crisis, meshed with a new, beautiful, terrible idea. It clicked into place with an almost audible snick.
—This… this is an opportunity. A golden, dangerous, potentially career-and-life-endingly backfiring opportunity. I can use this. I can use him.—
The plan began to form, not as a complete picture, but as sharp, calculated fragments—a lie's skeleton. He needed the best lie. One woven with just enough truth to be irresistible, seasoned with speculation so sharp it could pass for intelligence.
He cut off Naobito's implied demand for gossip, his own voice dropping into a low, urgent register designed to hook a predator's interest.
"I have information, sir." Flat. Direct. A verbal bait.
A beat of silence on the line, thick with skeptical static. Then, a non-committal, dismissive, "Hmph." A sound that meant 'Continue, and it better be good, or your allowance is cut off.'
"Sir, it's true the matter is real," Obito pressed on, layering his words with grim certainty. "Many curses came to Tokyo Jujutsu High. Not only that, but the ringleader was the cursed sorcerer Geto Suguru." He stated the obvious to establish credibility, the first brushstroke of the lie.
"I know that, you rascal," Naobito's voice was a bored drawl, the sound of a man flicking away a boring piece of lint. "Don't you have other information? Something the security cameras and the driver I pay for didn't see?"
Obito fought the sudden, powerful urge to crush the phone in his hand, to feel the plastic and glass give way. He forced a thick, syrupy calm into his voice.
"Yes, I have other information, sir. Honestly, it's not confirmed information. No documents. No witnesses. But I have a… feeling."
He let the word hang in the digital space between them. Feeling. For a man like Naobito Zenin, who dealt in concrete facts, hereditary power, bloodline purity, and cold, hard violence, it was a ridiculous, flimsy, almost insulting word. Which is why the prolonged, heavy silence that followed was so telling. Obito could almost hear the old man's profound skepticism warring with his innate, clan-nurtured paranoia. The silence stretched, filled only by the faint sound of Naobito's steady, unimpressed breathing.
Finally, the voice came again, colder now, sharper, like a knife pulled slowly from a block of ice: "And what could that 'something else' be? Isn't he just crazy? He'll throw these curses like confetti and cause a global crisis." A pause, then a sip of something, probably sake. Slurp. "The monkeys in other governments won't sit still. They'll see a resource. A problem. They'll come poking around our business with satellites and questions."
Naobito was right, of course. On the surface. He'd instantly grasped the geopolitical nightmare. Obito knew the clan head was already thinking ten steps ahead—the media exposure, the international panic, foreign intelligence agencies seeing every Japanese citizen as a potential supernatural resource or threat. It was a recipe for the end of the hidden world, and the Zenin's privileged place within it.
"Sir," Obito said, layering his voice now with the earnest, slightly-awed conviction of a bright student who's just connected disparate dots into a brilliant, terrifying picture. "I think that's the point, but not the whole point. I think he's using this matter… as a distraction." He let the word 'distraction' land. "Not a final attack. I think this whole declaration of war, the times, the dates… it's his way to pull Gojo-sensei away. To get the strongest sorcerer away from the one thing he actually wants."
---
In his austere, deadly-quiet study in the Zenin compound, surrounded by artifacts of a violent history, Naobito Zenin very slowly set his exquisite, probably antique porcelain teacup down on its saucer.
Click.
The sound was unnaturally loud in the sudden, thick quiet of the room.
The goal of this call had been simple, transactional: squeeze the boy for on-the-ground details his driver, Kiri, couldn't or wouldn't provide. He'd expected panic, fragmented reports, maybe a request for extraction or clan protection. Juvenile concerns.
He had not expected… strategic analysis. A theory. A feeling that walked and talked like a devastating intelligence assessment.
—A distraction? To pull Satoru Gojo, the strongest, the one-man stalemate, away from Tokyo Jujutsu High… so he can snatch the one thing there worth more than a city's chaos, more than a global incident. The Special Grade Vessel, Yuta Okkotsu, and his bound, catastrophic cursed spirit, Rika.—
The idea, once voiced, was obscenely logical. It reeked of cunning, not the frothing madness of a zealot. It transformed Geto Suguru from a ranting, genocidal ideologue into a ruthless, patient strategist. And that made him far, far more dangerous. A madman could be predicted. A strategist had plans within plans.
This chilling conclusion hadn't come from some psychic 'feeling.' Naobito's mind, sharp as a honed katana even in his most sake-soaked hours, dissected it in milliseconds. The boy had taken publicly known facts—the brazen threat, Gojo's necessary presence as the primary responder, Yuta's unique, monstrous value—and fused them with an understanding of enemy psychology into a coherent, plausible, and terrifyingly likely theory.
The implications were vast. Either Obito Zenin, the clan's once-dud, was a hidden tactical savant with an uncanny, almost prophetic ability to read enemy intent…
Or someone with deep knowledge was feeding him this narrative, using him as a mouthpiece.
Naobito's money, against all his ingrained, decades-old cynicism, was reluctantly placed on the former. The boy had been a hidden blade since his technique awakened, surprising everyone. This was just another facet of that sharp, unexpected edge. A dangerous mind to go with the dangerous speed.
For Obito, standing amidst the lingering stench of curses, the calculus was simpler, and far more brutally selfish.
Survival. Personal, continued existence. Above all else.
He didn't particularly care about saving Tokyo's countless civilians out of sheer, star-spangled altruism. If he could save them as a convenient side effect of saving his own skin, great. Bonus points. He wasn't a monster; he'd just very much like to keep breathing, and his breathing was directly threatened by the coming chaos. Simple cause and effect.
But Geto's plan, and the even more ancient, patient, and infinitely more patient plan moving in the shadows behind it—a plan Obito alone in this entire cursed world knew of, involving a centuries-old brain in a jar named Kenjaku who liked to wear people as suits—posed an existential threat to that breathing.
Let Geto win, and Obito becomes international property, a 'specimen.'
Let Kenjaku secure Geto's body and technique,and the entire world gets put through a spiritual meat grinder in the name of 'optimization' and 'evolution.'
Both outcomes were equally, personally unacceptable.
The solution? Remove the key, immediate piece: Geto Suguru. Cut the head off the snake before it could fully coil around the world, or before a parasitic brain could pilot it.
He couldn't do it alone. Not yet. But the Zenin Clan, with its vast resources, its networks of assassins and informants, its own brand of ruthless, self-interested survival instinct… they could be the perfect, deniable ambush. They would understand the danger of exposure, of becoming global targets. They would want Geto gone not for justice, but for their own continued, shadowy supremacy.
This phone call wasn't a report. It was the first, careful move in a conspiracy. A lie wrapped in just enough truth to be digestible, served on a platter of plausible deniability to the most powerful, self-interested man he had direct access to.
The line remained silent for a long, pregnant moment. Naobito was thinking, his mind a silent whirlwind of implications, potential alliances, risks, and clan advantages. Obito could hear the faint, rhythmic tap of a finger on a hard surface—tap, tap, tap—a sign of deep calculation.
"Interesting," the old man's voice finally crackled through, dry as a desert wind over bones. "Continue your… feeling, boy. What is this main target? Be specific."
Obito took a silent, steadying breath, filling his lungs with the cool, post-invasion air. The hook was set deep. Now to twist it, to set the barb so it couldn't be pulled free.
"Yuta Okkotsu, sir," he said, the name dropping like a stone. "The Special Grade vessel. The first-year. Geto doesn't want a war with the city. He wants a war with us, the sorcerers, and he wants that power for himself to win it. He's not announcing an attack. He's announcing a heist."
He could almost hear the gears turning in Naobito's head, the pieces of the clan's future, its position relative to the Gojo, its holdings, its very relevance, clicking into a new, aggressive, and potentially profitable formation. A formation Obito, the supposed pawn, now intended to stealthily steer like a battleship, right towards Geto's exposed throat.
The silence this time was different. It was no longer skeptical. It was the silence of a predator that has just caught the scent of vulnerable prey.
"I see," Naobito said, the words final. The line went dead with a soft click.
Obito lowered the phone, staring at the now-dark screen. The first move was made. The lie was in play. All that was left now was to survive the avalanche it might trigger.
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End of Chapter.
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