CHAPTER FORTY-SIX: WAR, PART TWO
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Geto was surprised by the Queen of Curses' power.
Not once. Not twice. But repeatedly, consistently, with the kind of escalating disbelief that made his laughter spill out of him in uncontrollable bursts—HAH. HAHAHA. HAHAHAHAHA—between parries and dodges and the desperate summoning of first-grade curses to stabilize the situation.
SHINK. SHINK. SHINK.
Each of Rika's strikes carried enough force to crater concrete. Each of her screams rattled windows in their frames. Each time Geto's borrowed spirits intercepted her claws, they dissolved with wet, pathetic SQUELCHes, their borrowed existences extinguished in fractions of seconds.
Geto was enjoying himself.
It had been so long since he'd faced something that actually required his full attention. Years of hunting curses, years of swallowing filth, years of patient, meticulous preparation—and now, finally, a worthy opponent.
His laughter echoed across the ruined courtyard as he redirected a summoned spirit to intercept Rika's charge. His movements were fluid, almost lazy, the economy of motion that came from decades of实战 experience. He was buying time. Stabilizing the engagement. Letting Rika exhaust herself against his seemingly endless reserves of disposable soldiers.
Meanwhile, his attention pivoted to the boy with the sword.
Yuta's technique was good. Geto had to acknowledge that. The kid's blade work was precise, his cursed energy control exceptional, his instincts sharp. He moved like someone who had been training for years, not months.
But good wasn't enough.
Good had never been enough.
"You," Geto said, and his voice carried across the chaos with that terrible, patient calm, "why do you do all these evil things?"
Yuta's blade paused mid-arc. His eyes widened. His jaw tightened.
Evil.
I do evil things.
Geto laughed. The sound was genuine this time, warm with genuine amusement at the sheer, crystalline stupidity of the question.
"You don't know anything, child," he said. "You can't possibly understand what happens in this world that's infested with these monkeys. If the monkeys are successfully eliminated, the world will live happily."
Monkeys.
Yuta's eyes went very, very wide. His grip on his sword shifted—not loosening, tightening, his knuckles bleaching white against the wrapped hilt. His breathing changed, became something sharper, more focused.
Recognition.
The boy recognized what that word meant.
And then, with a scream that was equal parts rage and grief, Yuta moved.
FWOOOOSH.
A beam of concentrated cursed energy erupted from his outstretched hand, arrowing directly toward Geto's chest with the kind of velocity that made air itself scream in protest. The attack was fast. It was powerful. It was—
SHUN.
—completely, utterly, perfectly evaded.
Geto's body flowed around the beam like water around a stone. His feet barely seemed to touch the ground as he repositioned, his robes billowing behind him, his expression one of mild, almost paternal disappointment.
Speed. Experience. A decade of hunting curses that moved faster than sound and hit harder than freight trains.
A few months of training couldn't bridge that gap. Not even with Rika's power.
Not even with those strange eyes helping him.
Yuta's gaze flicked sideways. Just for a moment. Just long enough to register the figure positioned at the edge of the courtyard, half-hidden in shadow, crimson eyes tracking the battle with predatory patience.
Obito.
Obito, who had been handling his own swarm of curses but wasn't moving now. Wasn't fighting. Wasn't doing anything except watching.
One second passed. Maybe less.
And in that fragment of time, Yuta understood.
Keep him occupied. Long enough. I'll help you at the right moment.
No words exchanged. No signals given. Just a single glance, a single meeting of eyes, a single shared understanding that passed between them faster than thought.
Yuta's blade rose again.
"Rika!"
"YUTA!"
She was there before the name finished leaving his lips, her form solidifying behind him, her claws extending, her infinite hunger for his protection focusing into something sharp and deadly and directed.
Geto didn't notice the exchange.
Geto was too busy laughing at the Queen of Curses' beautiful, terrible power.
---
Unfortunately for Geto—and fortunately for literally everyone else—what he didn't notice was far more dangerous than what he did.
Obito's Sharingan was analyzing.
Not just watching. Not just predicting. Analyzing. Every twitch of Geto's muscles. Every fluctuation in his cursed energy flow. Every micro-expression that crossed his face when he was about to attack, defend, summon, retreat. Obito was building a map of Suguru Geto—not the legend, not the monster, but the man. His habits. His tells. His weaknesses.
The map was depressingly sparse.
But it was growing.
BZZZZ. BZZZZ. BZZZZ.
Obito's phone vibrated against his thigh.
He answered it without looking away from Geto. His blade continued its deadly dance with the encroaching curses—SHINK. CRUNCH. THWACK—even as he pressed the device to his ear and spoke in a voice so calm it bordered on surreal.
"Yes."
Naobito's voice crackled through the speaker, as dry and matter-of-fact as if he were discussing rice prices.
"You're aware that curses are currently appearing throughout Tokyo, as well as various other regions of Japan."
Obito decapitated a second-grade curse. Its head tumbled across the courtyard with a wet, bouncing THUD-THUD-THUD.
"That's very obvious, sir," he said. His tone was the particular flavor of polite that circled back around to insolent. "But are you noticing that there are things happening here right now? When does the plan begin?"
His mind was running at full capacity—no, beyond full capacity, operating in the red zone where split-second decisions meant life or death. He needed Naobito to send Zenin reinforcements. Needed them now. Needed extra bodies to throw at Geto, extra blades to distract him, extra sorcerers who wouldn't hesitate to kill a special grade threat with extreme prejudice.
The Zenin weren't gentle people. They wouldn't hesitate. They wouldn't moralize. They would simply eliminate the problem and go home.
Six months. He'd spent six months carefully, patiently, delicately maneuvering Naobito into position. Six months of conversations that weren't conversations, warnings that weren't warnings, suggestions that floated through the Zenin clan head's office like poisoned butterflies.
He'd never mentioned the future. Never spoken of Kenjaku or Shibuya or the Culling Games. He'd focused entirely on the present danger—Geto's ability to control curses, his capacity to reveal jujutsu to the outside world, the inevitable geopolitical shitstorm that would follow if foreign governments discovered that Japan was literally farming monsters from its citizens' negative emotions.
Curses will be exposed to the world. The people living in Japan will become targets for every external organization. This isn't prophecy. This is logic.
Naobito, pragmatic bastard that he was, had understood immediately.
"Tch."
A pause. The sound of papers shuffling. Naobito's dry, ancient voice:
"Naoya is on his way. A contingent of Zenin sorcerers as well. They'll arrive to assist you shortly."
Another pause. Sharper this time.
"Be careful. You need to eliminate him completely."
Obito's lips curved into something that wasn't quite a smile.
"Of course, sir," he said. "I'll do it precisely."
CLICK.
The call ended.
Obito allowed himself exactly one second of satisfaction—the Zenin are coming, the Zenin are coming, this might actually work—before an explosion from the opposite side of the courtyard shattered his concentration.
BOOOOOOM.
The shockwave hit him like a physical wall. His feet slid across broken concrete—SCREEEEECH—before he caught himself, his Sharingan spinning as he tracked the source of the blast.
Rika.
Rika had just fired a Love Beam so powerful it had carved a trench three meters deep and fifteen meters long through the academy grounds. The air above the impact site shimmered with residual heat. Cursed spirits in the immediate vicinity had simply ceased to exist.
Obito made a mental note: never be on the receiving end of that.
And then his attention snapped to Yuta, who had just activated Inumaki's cursed speech technique.
"CRUMBLE."
CRRRRRRRACK.
A swarm of approaching curses—two dozen, at least—simply fell apart. Their bodies separated at the seams, dissolving into black mist before they even hit the ground. Yuta's throat worked convulsively. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. But his blade never stopped moving.
SHINK. SHINK. SHINK.
Good, Obito thought. Good. Keep him occupied. Just a little longer. The Zenin are—
Where are the Zenin?
---
Naoya Zenin was having a fantastic day.
His father had finally given him a mission worthy of his talents. Not curse extermination—beneath him. Not guard duty—insulting. No, this was assassination. The elimination of Suguru Geto, special grade curse user, traitor to jujutsu society, target of the highest priority.
Naoya was going to kill a special grade.
He was going to do it.
He was going to claim the glory.
He was going to prove, once and for all, that he was the rightful heir to the Zenin clan, superior to that worthless failure Toji and his worthless progeny and every other worthless sorcerer who thought they could compete with the Twenty-Four Frame Style.
Naoya was smiling as he led the Zenin contingent toward Tokyo Jujutsu High.
And then the world became very, very cold.
WHOOOOOOSH.
Naoya's instincts—honed by decades of combat, sharpened by the constant pressure of Zenin clan politics—screamed at him to move. He moved. His body twisted in mid-air, his blade clearing its sheath with a high, clear SHIIIIIING, and the ice attack that would have bisected him passed so close to his face that frost crystallized on his eyelashes.
CRACK. CRUNCH. THUD.
Behind him, the other Zenin sorcerers weren't so lucky.
They didn't scream. They didn't move. They simply stopped, their bodies flash-frozen in whatever position they'd been standing, their expressions preserved in eternal surprise. Six sorcerers. Six corpses. Six more names for the Zenin clan to quietly erase from their records.
Naoya's smile became something else entirely.
He tracked the trajectory of the attack to its source. A figure in traditional robes, pale hair catching the fading light, face utterly expressionless behind an elegant folding fan.
A woman.
A woman had just killed six Zenin sorcerers.
"You whore," Naoya hissed. His voice was very quiet. Very controlled. The quiet before a storm that would level mountains. "Who the hell are you to stop me?"
Uraume didn't answer.
They simply raised their fan again.
FWOOOOSH.
Another wave of ice, this one shaped into a dozen spear-like projectiles, each one aimed at a different vital point on Naoya's rapidly moving body. He flowed between them like water—SHUN-SHUN-SHUN—his Twenty-Four Frame Style reducing the world to a series of freeze-frame images through which he moved faster than perception.
Image one: Uraume, fan raised, ice forming at the tip.
Image two: Projectiles in flight, trajectories calculable, vectors predictable.
Image three: Evasion. Counter-attack. Victory.
Naoya launched himself forward.
SHING.
His blade met Uraume's fan. Ice crystals exploded outward—CRACKLE-CRACKLE-POP—and the impact sent shockwaves through both their bodies. Uraume slid backward across the frost-covered ground, their robes whispering against frozen grass with a sound like shhhhhhhhikt.
Naoya pressed his advantage.
SHINK. SHINK. SHINK.
Three strikes. Four. Five. Each one faster than the last, each one aimed at a different angle, each one calculated to slip past Uraume's defenses and find the warm, wet flesh beneath those traditional robes.
Uraume blocked. Evaded. Deflected.
Their fan moved in elegant, economical arcs, each motion redirecting Naoya's blade with minimal effort. They didn't speak. Didn't taunt. Didn't even breathe heavily. They simply... defended.
And the ice kept spreading.
CRRRREEEEAK.
Naoya's foot slipped on suddenly frozen ground. His next strike went wide—by millimeters, but wide—and Uraume's counter-attack nearly took his head off. He felt the wind of its passing against his cheek, cold enough to burn.
Who is this woman? Why is she attacking? Is she with Geto? How did they know we were coming from this direction?
The questions spiraled through his mind even as his body continued its lethal dance. But underneath the questions, underneath the rage, underneath the humiliated fury of a Zenin heir being held at bay by a woman—
A cold, creeping realization.
This isn't going to be as easy as I thought.
---
Back at Tokyo Jujutsu High, Obito's face had gone very, very pale.
The cursed spirits weren't stopping. They weren't even slowing down. Every time he cut one down, two more seemed to take its place, crawling up from the fissures in reality that Geto had torn open across Tokyo. His cursed energy reserves were still adequate—barely—but his stamina was flagging. His arms ached. His breathing was coming harder than he liked.
Where are the Zenin?
Why haven't they arrived yet?
What's happening?
He wanted to call Naobito. Needed to call Naobito. But every second he spent on the phone was a second he wasn't cutting down curses, wasn't protecting Yuta's flank, wasn't watching Geto for the perfect moment to strike.
The academy was in ruins around them.
Buildings that had stood for decades were now nothing but rubble and shattered timbers. The cherry trees—the same trees that had bloomed so beautifully in spring, their petals drifting down like pink snow—had been reduced to splintered stumps. The ground was cratered, scorched, stained with the black residue of dissolved curses.
And still, they kept coming.
THWACK. CRUNCH. SHINK.
Obito's blade moved on autopilot. His body remembered what his mind was too busy to process. But underneath the mechanical rhythm of combat, his thoughts were spiraling:
Why aren't they here? What could possibly delay them? Did something happen? Is there another force helping Geto? How could they be late—I planned this so carefully, I accounted for every variable, speed was supposed to be the determining factor—
He didn't know.
He couldn't know.
Because the person fighting Naoya Zenin at this very moment wasn't part of Geto's forces. Wasn't part of any force Obito had anticipated. Wasn't even supposed to exist in this timeline, not yet, not for another—
CRACK.
Another curse fell. Another hole in reality remained unfilled.
Obito's face was very, very pale.
---
Naoya was furious.
This woman—this whore, this bitch, this worthless piece of female garbage—was holding him at a distance. Refusing to engage in close combat. Refusing to rise to his taunts. Refusing to do anything except stand at optimal range and pelt him with ice attacks that grew more precise, more devastating, more annoying with every passing second.
"Are you deaf?!" Naoya snarled, deflecting another spear of ice with a spray of frozen shrapnel. "I called you a whore! A whore! Respond, damn you!"
Uraume's expression didn't change.
They raised their fan. Another wave of ice formed at its tip. Another salvo of frozen death arced toward Naoya's position.
WHOOOOSH. CRACK. CRUNCH.
Naoya's Twenty-Four Frame Style kept him alive—barely—but even his prodigious speed wasn't enough to close the distance. Every time he thought he'd found an opening, Uraume would simply... retreat. Not panicked. Not desperate. Just a few measured steps backward, maintaining the exact distance that made their long-range attacks lethal and his close-range attacks useless.
Ice javelins. Area freeze. Frost wave projection.
Her technique is either ice generation or temperature manipulation. Possibly both.
The ground around her is completely frozen. The air temperature has dropped at least fifteen degrees. If she touches me, even for a second, I'll be slowed—and if I'm slowed, I'm dead.
Naoya's jaw clenched so hard his teeth creaked.
I need to close the distance. I need to get inside her effective range. I need to—
He launched himself forward, his blade extended, his entire body a missile aimed at Uraume's throat.
SHIIIIIING.
Uraume's fan met his blade. Ice crystals exploded. Naoya's momentum carried him past her guard, inside the range where her long-range attacks were useless—
And Uraume simply... stepped aside.
Not fast. Not desperate. Just a single, economical movement that positioned them exactly where Naoya's strike couldn't reach.
SHINK.
Their fan opened. Ice formed. And Naoya found himself staring down the barrel of a technique that was about to turn him into a Zenin clan popsicle.
CRACK.
He barely escaped.
His retreat was not graceful. It was not dignified. It was the desperate scramble of a man who had just realized he was outclassed and was currently too busy not dying to care about appearances. He slid across the frozen ground—SCREEEEECH—and came up in a crouch behind a tree that was rapidly accumulating frost.
His breathing was ragged. His perfect hair was disheveled. His pristine white haori was stained with ice melt and his own sweat.
And Uraume was still standing exactly where they'd been, their expression unchanged, their fan raised in perfect form.
Waiting.
Waiting.
This woman is not just strong, Naoya realized, with the cold clarity of absolute fury. She is patient.
She is willing to stand here all night, killing Zenin sorcerers and freezing this entire forest, until either I die or Geto completes his objective.
And there is absolutely nothing I can do to stop her.
The realization tasted like poison.
---
At Tokyo Jujutsu High, Yuta Okkotsu was running on fumes.
His body screamed at him. His muscles burned. His throat was raw from cursed speech techniques, and the coppery taste of blood had become a constant presence at the back of his tongue. Even with cursed energy reinforcement, even with Rika's power flowing through him, even with Obito covering his flank—
He was tired.
And Suguru Geto was not.
Geto moved through the battlefield like water flowing downhill. Always in the right place. Always at the right time. Always one step ahead of Yuta's blade, one breath ahead of Rika's claws, one thought ahead of whatever strategy Yuta desperately cobbled together.
He's been fighting for longer than I've been alive, Yuta realized. He's killed more curses than I've ever seen. He's survived battles against sorcerers who would crush me without effort.
How am I supposed to beat someone like that?
"You're angry," Geto observed. His voice was calm, conversational, the voice of a man discussing philosophy over tea rather than exchanging lethal blows with a child. "Good. Let yourself feel it."
SHINK.
Yuta's blade glanced off a summoned spirit's carapace. Geto didn't even bother to dodge—the spirit absorbed the strike and dissolved, and Geto's counter-attack nearly took Yuta's arm off at the shoulder.
"But in the end," Geto continued, "I will obtain that curse. I will obtain the power I need to do what must be done."
The monkeys. The ordinary humans. Everyone who isn't a sorcerer.
Everyone who didn't ask to be born into a world that hates them.
Yuta's grip on his sword tightened until his knuckles cracked.
"You're insane," he said. His voice was raw, scraped clean of politeness or fear or anything except pure, undiluted fury. "Fuck you. You're actually insane."
Geto's smile widened.
"Perhaps," he agreed. "But insanity and righteousness are not mutually exclusive, child."
He attacked.
FWIP. FWIP. FWIP.
Three strikes. Three summoned curses. Three vectors of attack that Yuta barely managed to deflect, his blade tracing desperate arcs through the air as Rika screamed and clawed and fought to protect him.
And through it all, Geto's expression remained calm.
He's not even trying, Yuta realized. Not really. He's just... playing with me. Waiting for something.
Waiting for—
For me to exhaust myself. For Rika to weaken. For whatever backup he's arranged to arrive.
Waiting for the moment when resistance becomes impossible.
Yuta's lungs burned. His vision blurred. His arms felt like they were made of lead.
I can't keep this up much longer.
Senpai... what's taking so long...?
---
Obito watched.
His Sharingan recorded everything—Yuta's deteriorating stance, Rika's increasingly desperate attacks, Geto's patient, methodical pressure. His mind processed data at inhuman speed, calculating trajectories and probabilities and the precise millisecond when Geto would be most vulnerable.
Where are the Zenin?
Why aren't they here?
What went wrong?
He didn't know. He couldn't know. All he knew was that his carefully constructed plan was crumbling around him, and the only thing he could do was watch it fall and wait for the moment to strike.
Just a little longer.
Just a little more.
Just—
Yuta's blade slipped.
It was barely a mistake—a fraction of a second where his grip loosened, where his stance shifted wrong, where Geto's summoned spirit found the gap in his defense. But against an opponent of Geto's caliber, a fraction of a second was an eternity.
SHINK.
Blood sprayed across the courtyard.
Yuta's sword clattered against concrete with a sound like a funeral bell.
CLANG. CLANG. CLANG-CLANG-CLANG.
And Suguru Geto—smiling, always smiling—reached out his hand toward the boy who had finally, finally stopped moving.
"Now," he said softly, "let's see what makes the Queen of Curses so special."
CRACK.
Obito moved.
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END OF CHAPTER.
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