Work Text:
By the time Maki hit the hallway, she was sprinting.
The air whistled behind her as she accelerated, boots slamming against the floor as the hotel blurred around her in streaks of light and shadow. She just ran, ignoring the way her ribs and spine screamed in protest, ignoring the pull of half-healed muscle and barely-bound wounds.
She hit the double door exit at the end of the corridor without slowing, the impact nearly ripping them from their hinges as she stumbled out into the street.
The outside air hit her face, and she stopped, her breath hitching— the mask of composure collapsing all at once.
Her first inhale came too quick and too shallow, lungs not dragging in enough air and leaving her lightheaded. The second followed even faster, even more useless, and her chest tightened as though the oxygen wasn’t reaching where it needed to go.
“Oh my fucking God,” she repeated under her breath, the words barely forming between each frantic exhale, “Oh my God, oh my God—”
Maki’s hands came up without thinking, clutching at her sides, fingers digging into the bandages around the worst of her injuries. The pain flared immediately, sharp and electric, but it barely cut through the flood of something far worse rising up through her system.
“Kids,” she wheezed, the realisation looping over itself. “They’re kids, they’re all just—”
Her breath stuttered, then fractured again. “You— you’ve gotta do something,” she told herself, her feet carrying her down the street—except, the motion felt disconnected, as if her body had split into two halves moving independently of one another. One side walked, the other fell apart at the seams. “You have to- you, you’re the adult—you gotta—”
The wind whistled across the empty boulevard.
“...They have a plan,” she insisted to herself hoarsely, “They’ve got—they’ve thought this through. Yeah. Help with… just help with the plan, do your part and—”
The thought twisted halfway through.
“The rest of us would go to help with the, uh… Sukuna situation.”
Sukuna? Them?
Was that right? Was that okay? They were too young to have to—to throw themselves into something so mortally dangerous, so—
—Her vision flickered at the edges, dark creeping inward in uneven pulses.
“That’s not their job,” she gasped. “Worrying about that—that’s not their— that’s—that’s—”
“We got adult supervision!”
Her body began to shake.
No, that wasn’t their job. It was hers, wasn’t it?
Her fingers curled tighter around her sides until the pressure made the fabric beneath them darken, her breathing escalating— each inhale coming quicker than the last, her chest rising and falling in sharp, uneven jerks that did nothing to actually fill her lungs.
…Should she run away?
Absurdly, suddenly, she thought of two faces. Maki. Mai. The two of them, younger than her, trapped in a life that had never given them the chance to just… be. She’d wanted to do right on the atrocity she’d committed, on the life that she’d taken away.
She owed them at least that much. But now…
“I don’t know what to do,” she admitted to the wind, the words raw and unfiltered. “I don’t… I don’t know how to be the adult.”
The pressure had been bad enough when it was two children on her conscience. Now—now there were fucking four more??
Her vision spotted, white flickers bursting across her field of view, her perception narrowing as the world seemed to tilt.
What was she doing? There wasn’t time for her to be wandering around, making faces at the air. She needed to… she needed to…
A pair of feet appeared in the peripheral of her vision.
Her breathing stuttered again, catching in her throat as her focus struggled to lock on the pale, almost iridescent flesh.
Slowly, mechanically, she lifted her head—
—and he floated there.
A pair of hakama pants rippled in a gust of wind that seemed to gather unnaturally around him, the fabric twisting and turning to a breeze that Maki couldn’t feel. His upper body didn’t look solid— there was a translucence to it, a subtle warping at the edges, like a heat haze or something not quite physical.
It took her several more seconds of staring before her addled, discombobulated mind registered that she was staring at the man she’d killed several days ago, and the curse she’d thought was vaporised less than an hour ago.
Naoya Zen’in, bare except for just his lower robes, hovered a few inches off the asphalt, his posture relaxed in a deliberate sort of way, his hair still sewage-blonde even in death, shifting slightly as he tilted his head to the side.
“Well,” he drawled, his voice dripping with a disdain that was quickly becoming as familiar as it was fucking unbearable to listen to, “Would you look at that.”
Maki stared at him, the words flying in through one ear and exiting out the next.
Adult, adult, adult. She was an adult. She was an adult.
Naoya smirked, the expression sharp and cruel, perfectly in line with how she remembered it, back on the clan grounds.
“You said to come find you.” He continued, his tone lilting with mockery. “But look at you now. You look like you’re about to fall apart. Did you lose your nerve already? Can't say I'm surprised.”
Her fingers tightened even further against her sides, white-hot pain cutting through the foggy haze.
Adult, adult, adult.
Naoya’s voice just kept fucking going; needling, relentless. “Honestly— it’s just fucking pathetic to watch,” he went on, scoffing lightly. “All that noise, all that effort, and here you are, shaking in the street like some useless bitch. Did I really lose to this?”
Her vision tunneled, narrowing further, the edges of the world dissolving into static until—
Those kids, despite how fucking terrifying their circumstances were, they were trying. They were planning, they were working towards a way to fix everything.
And what had she done, other than hoped for someone else to take away the burden of action? What had she done other than run?
…Adult. She was the adult.
She had to be the responsible one here.
”—Destroy everything… All of it, you hear? Big sis?”
Maki’s hand snapped downward, her grip finding the hilt of the Soul Split Katana, as she forced her eyes wide open. Her stand dropped low, feet scraping against the asphalt as she forced her breathing into something resembling control, even as her chest heaved and stuttered from the remnants of the panic attack.
Maki had brought Naoya here to Sendai. To those kids behind her, inside that building. Him, a Special Grade curse.
Her grip tightened around the hilt until her knuckles whitened, the leather of the grip creaking under the pressure as something sudden and protective surged up through her chest, overriding the panic.
She bared her teeth. “You in a rush to die again, you fucking neolithic piece of algae? Didn’t hurt bad enough the first time?”
Naoya’s smirk disappeared immediately.
“Well, you know how it goes,” he replied flatly. “Twice, or it’s luck.”
Maki didn’t see him move. There was no transition, no movement, no distortion in the air, just after he’d finished his sentence—
—Stars exploded across her vision.
Her body spun violently through the air, the world flipping end over end in a blur of shattered perspective as her balance was ripped out from under her. For a split second, there was nothing but disorientation, nothing but the sharp, disjointed awareness of motion without control—
—then, instinct took over.
Maki’s muscles fired all at once, overrode the chaos as her core tightened, her limbs snapped outward and fingers grasping the air to warp and slow her trajectory, until she twisted midair with a violent correction that bent her around just enough to—
—slam her boots into the side of a building, cratering the wall beneath her feet; concrete buckling and fracturing outward in a spiderweb of cracks as she absorbed all the force into her legs. The shock reverberated up through her battered frame, pain coming alive, sharp and overwhelming, but she forced past it, her head snapping downward as she searched for him.
He was gone.
The street below was empty, silent for the briefest second as her eyes narrowed.
Maki blinked, reading the air pressure, and then—
—he was there.
Right next to her, standing horizontally on the wall beside her as if gravity had turned 90 degrees.
Her body moved toward the promise of movement, on sheer reflex, but he was faster—
—She didn’t even register the strike itself, only the aftermath, as her body was ripped free from the wall and sent hurtling through the air again, even faster this time. The first building gave way around her with a deafening crash, glass and concrete exploding outward as she tore through it like an artillery shell, only to smash through the next one with no less resistance.
Debris followed in her wake, a cascade of destruction trailing her air path as she soared through structure after structure, each collision sending fresh spikes of agony through her frame, her ribs screaming, her earlier wounds tearing further under the strain.
She snarled through it, forcing her arms up before kicking off the air downward— Her boots hit solid floor just before the katana came down in a brutal arc, the blade biting into the ground.
Sparks screamed into existence as steel met concrete and asphalt, the edge carving deep into the ground and anchoring her trajectory as she escaped a row of buildings and emerged into the open road. The friction tore at her arms and shoulders, her entire body screaming as she dragged herself to a halt.
Then, she finally stopped, having left a deep gouge in her wake, the world steadying.
Maki’s head snapped up, bangs flying, and she spat a globule of bloody saliva to the side.
Her grip tightened as she raised the katana, eyes flicking left, right, desperately scanning for movement as she angled the blade against her forearm.
He was faster than before. He was so much fucking faster. And she didn’t even have the time to think about how shedding his cursed womb form had somehow made him even quicker until he’d just—
—materialised in front of her.
Not appearing, not running, no. One moment the space at her flank was empty, and the next, the incorporeal form of the vengeful spirit belonging to Naoya Zen’in snapped into place, his fist already extended for a punch that would’ve shattered her ribs from the side.
She twisted around, catching the blow with the katana at the last microsecond, and the force of it was catastrophic against her forearm.
Her entire body shuddered under the blow, the katana vibrating violently as it took the brunt of the strike, the kinetic energy transferring through steel into bone and muscle, before finally reaching the concrete she stood on.
The ground shattered, buckling and collapsing outward in a monstrous pressure wave, the building behind her disintegrated in the wake of the sheer power behind Naoya’s strike. The structure folded in on itself, collapsed into a ruin of failing debris as Maki held the block, her arms trembling under the strain, her teeth gritting so hard her jaw ached as she forced her broken body to endure.
Then, Naoya withdrew, flickering out of existence as if he were never there.
She snapped her head to the side as he reappeared several meters away, hovering just above the ground, his body suspended as he spread his arms slightly.
“You know,” he began conversationally, his expression sliding back into that infuriating, self-assured smirk. “I just had a thought.”
Maki’s eyes tracked him intensely as he drifted weightlessly across the street around her, keeping her body fully facing toward him, the Split Soul Katana raised, forcing her arms not to shake. Eating that blow messed her up, jolting her already damaged skeleton far beyond what was healthy. ‘Shit. There’s no way I can block more hits like that. Not after the fucking morning I just had.’
“The thing about growing up, is there are all these things you couldn’t do as a kid,” he continued, his tone almost reflective. “Things that were just impossible to do. And then one day, you just… can.”
He vanished, and Maki spun, her eyes springing wide open as her senses screamed with feedback.
A streak of motion ripped across the horizon, an ethereal blur that left the city block entirely, existing at the edges of her perception as it crossed perhaps several districts in less than a blink—
—before it then came back from the opposite direction.
Maki barely got the katana up in time as she twisted, catching Naoya’s outstretched fist against it once more.
The impact broke her footing instantly this time, her boots carving deep into the asphalt as she was forced backward through a continuous trench, pushing down the entire length of the block. The buildings on either side of the street crumbled under the force of the shockwave, the monstrous pressure of Naoya’s attack ripping apart infrastructure as though it were paper.
She came to a grinding stop, her shoulders shaking under the aftershock, her vision doubling briefly from the sheer vertigo.
He was gone again before she finished turning her head up.
His voice came inches behind her ear. “This is sort of like that.”
Maki didn’t manage to turn in time before Naoya’s fist drove into her kidney.
Her breath left her in a strangled gasp as the force lifted her off her feet, body arching over the impact before she was sent flying once more— The pain blinding her for several seconds. This time, the agony was too all-consuming to allow for focus; her path immediately becoming an uncontrolled trajectory as she slammed into one building, rebounded off it into another, then another, each fresh concussion rattling through her already battered frame.
She bounced, skid, and tore through the remains of urban structures until the final impact drove her through the front of an abandoned supermarket, the glass entrance exploding inward as she crashed into the interior, and finally came to a stop amidst the wreckage.
Her ears rang as her body lay there for a fraction of a second, unmoving as the debris settled around her in a slow cascade.
Then, she gasped, slamming a fist into her diaphragm to reset her breathing, before she kipped up onto her feet.
Her vision doubled, and every bone in her body screamed with the effort of it. She was really starting to hurt now. The pain hadn’t gotten this bad before, not even back at Mt. Fuji. Maki could only compare it with the unimaginable damage she’d taken at the end of the first day.
She clenched her jaw, planting her feet as her head turned towards the obliterated entrance.
…It didn’t matter. She brought this problem here, it was her responsibility to—
“...What the heck?”
Maki snapped her head around, immediately locking eyes with Ryu Ishigori, who stood several meters away, a first aid kit hanging awkwardly from one hand. She looked down at herself—finding that her trajectory had obliterated a fruit stand.
For a second, her brain refused to process the image. Then it did, and her jaw dropped.
“Y-you—” Her mouth fell open and closed, like a fish as she tightened her grip around the Split Soul Katana. Wait, no, what was he doing here? He was supposed to be back in the hotel with the others! Naoya was—shit, this kid was in danger! “—What’re you doing here?! Get—get out! Go back home!”
Ryu spluttered as he gestured to the kit in his hand, eyes darting in every direction save towards her. “I mean, you looked— well, I felt like you could do with— you were really—”
He groaned, knocking a hand against his skull to cut himself off.
“You looked real injured, big man—” He paused, squinting at her for a second before he amended, “—woman, I wanted to make sure you don’t pass out or anything. No pressure to come back, yeah? Just didn’t really want you to die out here from something stupid like blood loss. I mean… actually, you look even worse now. The hell hit you?”
The Cursed Energy Discharge user looked around in confusion. “Wait, were those explosions just now—” He gestured vaguely toward the direction of the devastation she’d just carved through the city, “—from you? Are you in a fight right now?” His gaze sharpened as his posture stiffened, looking around for a cursed energy signature.
“You're pretty hurt, I’ll help fight you ‘em off!”
Maki’s mouth opened to yell at him to leave, until her awareness detonated.
Her senses screamed at her, without any visible cue or audible signal— Just a sudden, overwhelming spike in sensation that something was tearing towards them at impossible speed—information fed to her by the world itself.
Maki’s head snapped toward the obliterated entrance, her eyes widening, before her body moved.
“GET DOWN!” She screamed, the words ripping out of her throat as she shot forward and dive tackled the taller man for the second time that day; arms wrapped around his waist as she drove into him with full force.
Ryu let out an ‘oof’ as the air behind them distorted—
—and Naoya arrived.
The pressure wave hit the space they’d occupied a second prior, tearing through the entire building with a violence so catastrophic the entire structure collapsed. Shelves disintegrated, the walls imploded, glass and steel shattered into a storm of fragments as the building gave way under the sheer kinetic energy of Naoya’s charge.
Then, he was gone, and the building was coming down on them.
Maki twisted off of Ryu, getting to her feet the moment they hit the ground and surging upward immediately, throwing her arms up to meet the avalanche of destruction raining down. Concrete slabs crashed toward them, and she caught one with a grunt, shoving it aside and letting it crash past them. A twisted beam followed, and she swatted it away, dust and debris filling the air as she kept the cascade away from the two of them.
“Was that the fucking misogynist?!”
“That—” her gut twisted as she intercepted another chunk of falling structure, hurling it aside with a sharp, painful twist of her damaged torso. “—It’s my fault! God, it’s my fault! I—I brought him here!”
Ryu grunted as the worst of the destruction finally passed, Maki grabbing him by the arm and hauling him to his feet with a strength that bordered on savage, not giving him time to regain his bearings before she dragged him up through the settling rubble and out into the open air, atop a bed of debris.
They stumbled out together, the remains of the supermarket settling beneath them.
“Whaddya mean your fault?” He asked, his head twisting around to try and follow the line of destruction Naoya had created. He whistled at the scale of it, a continuous trench that carved not just the supermarket, but a dozen city blocks on either side of it.
Shit, Naoya hadn’t been that busted in the anime or manga. Was it ‘cause he failed to finish the guy off? Man, it was just screw-up after screw-up today.
“Damn, I really thought I got ‘im back there!” Ryu brought a hand up, pinching between his brows as he shook dust off the shoulders of his jacket. “If anything, that’s my bad!”
Maki turned on him, her expression twisted, the earlier rage replaced by something far more vulnerable. Blood from Naoya’s earlier attacks ran freely from her hairline, cutting down her face in thin, uneven trails, making the look of concern on her face look nigh-manic.
“You—you have to go back!” She barked, reaching out and gripping his arm tighter than she meant to, fingers digging into the leather. “It’s—it’s dangerous! Please, you can’t be out here! I brought him here, I’ll take care of it!”
Her voice cracked at the edges, the strain of the last several few days showing through despite her attempt to keep it together.
“This… this isn’t your fight,” she added, her breath hitching somewhat as her gaze flicked past him, searching for the next sign of movement. “You need to get back to the others, now.”
Ryu just tilted his head down, really having to crane his head to meet her eyes because—well, as imposing as she looked and acted, Maki was kind of… super short. Compared to him, at least.
“No way man,” he shook his head, before gently pulling at her hand that gripped his jacket. “Have you seen the state of yourself!? You’re completely messed up! C’mon, we can take him down together.”
Telling by the way her face dropped, the words hadn’t been quite reassuring, so he rushed to try and make his case.
“Look, we’re not helpless, ‘yanno?” A strand of hair fell down from his pompadour with the wind, and he flicked his comb out of his jacket, fixing it in one neat motion. “You’re not even that much older than us, all things considered. We’re all in this together, so you should get used to us being in the line of fire right with ya!”
“No… I…” Maki’s eyes burned. No, this was… this was her fault, the only reason Naoya had lived, never mind reached the Sendai colony, was because she’d gambled on Yuta being able to deal with him. She’d thought the utterly unpleasant experience of allowing him to live just an hour longer was worth making it to Sendai on time.
She’d made a stupid call, and this was the consequence. Naoya had died immediately after shedding his cursed womb in the manga, so the original Maki never got to deal with whatever the extent of his fully realised power was after the domain. But here… Now…
…This was all because of her!
Her grip loosened on Ryu’s sleeve, her fingers numb at the weight of that realisation, the words caught in her throat.
The rubble around them began to shift as a low, grinding tremor rolled through the street, debris from the collapsed supermarket vibrating as something far faster than what could be visible cut through the far, far distance.
Maki’s head snapped away from Ryu before she peeled away from him, the Soul Split Katana rising into a defensive stance, her feet pivoting across broken concrete and twisted rebar. Her senses flared outward, searching at was circling them at speeds that boggled the mind.
There. Far, far away, skimming the outer edges of the colony, was a trajectory going impossibly fast.
She turned with it, rotating slowly at first, then faster, tracking its path as it looped the colony through the buildings beyond their line of sight, lapping wide around them in revolutions that made her skin crawl.
“Uhh… What’re you doing?” Ryu queried, his voice suddenly uncertain as he watched her turn, a brow quirking upward.
“I’m sorry!” Maki cried suddenly, not taking her eyes away from Naoya’s unseen path as she circled around Ryu. “I’m—I’m sorry for hitting you! And for threatening you! I didn’t know! I swear I didn’t know!”
Ryu stilled at the apology, suddenly looking awkward. “H-hey! No need to remind me! It’s uh, it’s okay. You should’ve seen what Uro did to me when we first met— though, I guess I kinda treated them the same. Apology accepted, you don’t need to do the… Uh…” He circled his wrist, his lips sucking in as he gestured at her, “crab dance ritual, or whatever.”
“C-crab dance? That’s—no, he’s coming!”
He jolted at that, the awkwardness and hesitation dropping away almost instantly as he snapped into action.
“O-oh! Oh! Alright!” He barked, cursed energy surging visibly through him as he planted his feet. “‘Kay then, let’s do this!”
Heat gathered before his head, the air warping faintly as cursed energy condensed within his pompadour, the beginnings of a Granite Blast building with a low, rising hum.
Maki’s eyes flicked over her shoulder for just a moment as she remained between Naoya’s position and Ryu, instinct screaming at her to tell him to run, to get out, to leave while he could—
—but it was too late. Naoya’s speed, at this point, was inescapable. The safest place for Ryu right now was…
“Get behind me!” She shouted, the words coming out harsher than she’d intended.
“One step ahead of you! Or— behind you, I guess! I think you’ve got a better grasp of where he’s at than I do!” He shot back, hovering behind Maki and matching her as she pivoted around, the energy at his head intensifying. “So just let me know when to fire!”
Before Maki could say anything else as rebuttal, Naoya’s path shifted; the looping arc that’d been circling them snapped inward, collapsing into a direct line that fired straight at their position.
Concrete exploded outward as Naoya came through the buildings before them like a railgun projectile, blasting through multiple structures in a straight line, his form barely visible beneath the distortion of his own speed as he came into her immediate sightline.
Less than a second.
Naoya had crossed the entire Sendai colony in the span of a heartbeat.
But, she’d managed to turn toward him in time.
His arm came forward in a stabbing knifehand, the edge of his fingers slicing through the air directly for her centermass. With a scream, she brought the katana down to protect her midsection; steel meeting curse-flesh, and—
—A shockwave of pressure ballooned outward from the impact, vaporising everything in the immediate vicinity as the force of the collision tore apart the street. Maki was forcibly lifted off her feet, the impact ripping her backward, until something caught her.
Her back slammed into Ryu’s chest as he stepped in behind her, arms bracing instinctively and catching the full momentum of the strike with a heavy grunt, his feet grinding into the powdered rubble below them as he held them both upright.
Ryu leaned forward against the shockwave, his voice cutting through the sound of pressure as he faced Naoya—whose arm was still outstretched.
“Man,” he muttered breathlessly, “You really don’t know when to stay down, huh?!”
Granite Blast erupted point blank, a column of concentrated cursed energy surging forward; engulfing Naoya completely. The beam tore through the already destroyed street and reduced what little remained to dust and vapour.
“Nice! I got him!”
Then, Ryu’s head snapped violently to the side as Naoya’s fist slammed into his cheek from behind, the impact sharp and brutal and sending a splatter of blood onto the ground as the larger man staggered back from the blow.
Maki screamed, the sound raw in her throat as she spun around and brought the katana in a tight, lethal arc aimed for Naoya’s throat—
—but he was faster, his other fist swinging sideways to drive into her jaw before the swing could complete, the impact snapping her head away and sending her skidding backward, her vision doubled for a split second under the power of the blow.
Ryu recovered fast, straightening with his teeth bared as he fired again, a continuous stream of cursed energy blasting forward.
Naoya suddenly took to the sky, becoming a blurry streak of colour as Ryu twisted his head to and fro, following the blindingly quick smear across the sky with the sustained Granite Blast. The beam followed Naoya’s flight as the curse disappeared through the window of a building, Ryu’s beam carving the structure in two as it passed.
Then, suddenly, next to his ear—
“Did ya get him?” Naoya asked, leaning casually against Ryu’s shoulder, elbow propped against his jacket as if the two of them were skygazing together; his eyes tilted upward in mock curiosity.
Ryu’s eyes widened as he twisted toward the late Zen’in heir—
—before a blinding barrage of fists rained upon him, snapping his head side to side and forcing him to sputter and step back as each strike landed with precise, brutal force; the punches stacking on each other faster than the eye could follow while Naoya gently floated forward with the volley.
Maki lunged toward Naoya’s side, her katana cutting through the air with a metallic shing, only for Naoya to flicker away from existence; Ryu collapsing onto a knee following the brief, but devastating barrage.
She could only blink at his absence, before he reappeared in front of her just in time to backhand her across the face.
The strike sent her flying into a nearby wall, the structure cracking and crumbling under the impact as she slammed into it, and slumped forward with a haggard gasp.
Naoya floated forward, bare feet inches from the ground.
“Honestly,” he drawled, shaking his head slightly, “this is just embarrassing. For me, not for you. Knowing I struggled against something like this before. What was wrong with me?”
Maki’s vision swam, her vision swimming as she looked down at her empty hands. She’d dropped the katana— It lay several meters away, discarded where the impact had ripped it from her grip.
Naoya kept talking.
“—cause really, you’d think I’d—”
“Hey.”
Naoya paused, his head tilting slightly as he glanced to the side.
Ryu stood there, battered but upright, his finger extended towards him as cursed energy gathered before his head once more. Blood trickled down from his hairline and nose, a stream of it running down the side of his face, but his expression was calm.
“Yeah?” Naoya replied, almost amused.
Ryu’s lips twitched into something faintly resembling a smile.
“Let’s larp,” he said.
Then he fired.
The Granite Blast was weaker this time, thinner, less stable—but it still roared forward, screaming through the air toward Naoya.
The Projection user didn’t even bother to dodge, raising an arm and swatting the beam aside like an inconvenience, letting the energy disperse against a wall.
“Seriously?” He scoffed, rolling his shoulder. “That’s it? Got no juice left?”
Ryu exhaled deeply as his pompadour collapsed, the glorious hair-do falling apart into loose, unruly strands that hung over his face; steam rising from them. His face broke apart into a wide, triumphant grin, teeth stained pink from his blood.
“Nah,” he replied, his voice easy despite everything. “That was it. Every last drop.”
Naoya snorted, already turning back around. “Disappointing. Your technique’s about as impress—”
Maki’s arms wrapped around Naoya’s waist; firm and unyielding, and Naoya jolted, his words cutting off as he looked down in sharp surprise.
She clung to him tightly, broken fingers locking over her own wrist despite the blood slicking her fingers, her arms trembling with the effort of holding him there.
His fist came down immediately, knocking against the top of her head with a crack.
“Stupid bitch,” he snapped. “The hell do you think you’re gonna do without cursed energy?”
She looked up at him against the press of his knuckles, blood running down her face, matting her lashes, her amber gaze steady despite the damages.
“Congratulations,” she rasped, “You’re officially the first Jujutsu Kaisen antagonist to go 0-3. Fucking bitch.”
Naoya blinked. “What—” then his eyes widened, his head snapping upward—
—high above them, their silhouette almost lost against the sky, Uro hung suspended; their arms extended forward at the end of a throwing motion, their entire body twisted with the strain of what they’d just bent down.
Ryu’s earlier, full-power continuous laser screamed downward like a falling star; redirected, magnified, and hurled down to the earth with devastating force.
Naoya’s expression twisted into outrage as his hands went down, trying to peel himself from Maki, but her grip didn’t budge.
“—YOU FUCKING—”
The beam slammed down, and swallowed him whole.
Incandescent blue light consumed everything as it crashed into the ground, the impact erupting into a massive whirlwind of debris and pressure that tore through the surrounding area, blasting rubble outward in all directions as the wreckage around them was reduced to nothing but roaring destruction.
Maki held on, her bare arms consumed by the blast, teeth clenching and grinding against each other as she kept Naoya planted right where he was, not relenting an inch.
Underneath the relentless pressure, she felt Naoya—this irredeemable, cocksucking, sorry bastard who’d revived himself twice through sheer power of douchebaggery— begin to crumble and dissipate, the vengeful spirit screaming one last death cry, before the last of the beam dissipated, revealing Naoya Zen’in, charred to a crisp.
Maki let go, and the vengeful spirit staggered back, completely unrecognisable, already beginning to fall apart.
“Y-YOU… YOU…!” It grabbed clumsily at the air, its arms flaking as it stumbled, until—
—the Soul Split Katana emerged from Naoya’s blackened sternum.
Behind him, Ryu leaned in, whispering in his ear as he drove the katana deeper into the back of the misogynist’s chest.
“For feminism.”
Then, less than a second after the Cursed Energy Discharge user stabbed the blade into Naoya’s chest, he pulled back, face scrunching in disgust as a low, growing noise rose from his throat.
“Gross, gross, gross gross gross—” He muttered under his breath with increasing fervor until it practically became a shout, taking a step back and wincing further as the Soul Split Katana tore its way free of charred flesh, “—Gross, holy shit, he is a yucky stinky—”
Maki blinked, vaguely registering the sound of Uro’s laughter from above.
Her eyes darted to the curse, unstable on his feet as Ryu managed to pull the blade completely free of it, and realised he was too occupied with wiping his hands on his equally dirtied pants to finish him off.
Naoya stumbled a step away from Ryu, then another. Maki forced the strength back into her legs, dragging herself before the shitstain of a beast that once called itself a man; His eyes wide, frantic, and bloodshot.
Satisfaction curled in her chest, mixing with pain and relief in a cocktail of emotion she didn’t have the energy to decipher.
Maki’s hand— her skin burned raw, less so than Naoya’s pitiful state at her feet, but still a harsh, angry red— shot toward Ryu without looking up.
“Sword,” she rasped, cutting his muttering off.
For half a second, he hesitated, blinking at her, his eyes flicking between her face and her fingers; crooked and blood-blackened. Her head turned by a fraction, amber eyes fixing on him through the crimson drying across her lashes.
“Um, I’m,” he handed her the Split Soul Katana hilt-first, eyes still stuck on the painful-looking sears mapped down her arms, “I’m… sorry?”
“Don’t be.”
Naoya, on the ground before her, lifted his head— the human shape of his face barely recognisable beneath blackened curse-skin, blistering threads of cursed energy, and flaking ash. His eyes, which had been nothing but fury just a moment prior, now held something naked and animal.
Maki kicked him in the chest.
He gasped as his ruined body bounced once, limbs twitching, and Maki was already above him before the sound finished leaving his mouth.
“What’d you say?” Maki snarled as she planted one boot beside his ribs, raised the katana, and aimed the point straight down at the center of his face. “Twice, or its luck? How’s that for three times, you fucking imbecile?”
For a second, the world was simple;
There was Naoya. There was the sword.
There was every wound he’d put into her body from the Zen’in estate to Sendai, every scream ripped out of her throat through debris and sky, every insult, every blow, every derisive look those sick eyes had given her.
There was nothing in Maki except the need to end him.
‘I’m fucking done with you.’
Just before the blade dropped, Uro’s voice cut through the air from above.
“Maki.”
The katana began to descend.
“Maki,” Uro called, closer this time, and Maki finally turned her head to watch them touch down on the ruined street, both hands raised slightly in careful restraint. “Just wait a sec.”
The blade halted an inch away from Naoya’s nose.
Maki twisted around fully, her brows pinched. “What for?”
Uro sucked in one cheek, dark eyes lowered to the half-dead Special Grade at her feet. “I caught like, the last bit of all that. Holy shit was he fast. I couldn’t keep my eyes on him, even from above. I’m not an expert in these things, but like, there’s no way that was only mach 3.”
“...Yeah. It’s my fault for bringing him. Sorry you had to see that.” Maki frowned. “All the more reason to get rid of him now, while he’s down.”
Ryu exhaled, before stepping over to Maki’s other side, leaning to get a good look at the fallen curse. “About that— how’d you wind up coming here with him?”
Maki’s face twisted with guilt as Ryu continued, gingerly prodding Naoya’s bare side with the tip of his shoe. “Like, man, last thing I coulda expected was seeing you ride him like a hoverboard. Did you come with him the whole way from…”
“...Mount Fuji,” she interjected.
Uro blinked. “Mount Fuji?”
“That’s where I was when Naoya found me,” Maki answered, her words curt as she maintained the sword directly before the aforementioned curse’s face. “I wasn’t gonna make it to Sendai in time on my own. My leg was broken, I think. I had to…” She swallowed dryly, fighting back a sudden wave of overdue vertigo, “...I had to reach Yuta before tomorrow, and he was my only way here on time.”
Both sorcerers stared at her for a long second.
Maki wiggled the sword a bit, making Naoya produce a hoarse, hateful noise below. “So I put the sword to his head and told him he was taking me to Sendai.”
Ryu’s brows lifted. “And the king of misogyny actually agreed?”
“If he didn’t, I was gonna kill him,” she replied flatly. “Simple as.”
“...Huh,” Ryu rubbed a hand over his mouth, nodding slowly. “That’s… that’s pretty fucking metal, I’m not gonna lie.”
Maki squinted at him. “Okay. I’m gonna kill him now.”
“Hold on,” a hand closed around Maki’s wrist before she could perforate Naoya’s skull, and she raised her head to lock eyes with Uro, who’d gotten a lot closer now. “That… That kind of gives me an idea.”
‘...I don’t like that sound of that.’
Uro’s eyes flicked between Naoya, who’d now begun the slow, gruesome process of cursed regeneration, and Maki, before they began to explain. “So uh. You weren’t here when we were talking about this— but we sort of need to be in multiple places all at once. Our time window was short to begin with, to the point we were considering making a few narrative sacrifices, but…”
“...With that speed he was showing just now, we could get across the country in like, minutes, maybe.” Ryu finished, brushing blood off the corner of his mouth with a thumb. “I hate the guy just as much as you do, but uh… Think about it. Hoverboard.”
Maki’s fingers tightened around the hilt, and she couldn’t stop her lips from peeling back. “He’ll try to kill us the second he recovers!”
Uro cut in, their expression dead serious. “Not if we locked him under a Binding Vow.”
…A Binding Vow? With fucking Naoya Zen’in?
In that very moment, sworn nemeses Maki and Naoya Zen’in, for the first, last, and only time— mirrored each other’s expression almost perfectly when it came to the sheer shock and disgust that came from the proposition in front of them.
“Y-you’re… f-fuuck—fucking think I’ll…”
Maki’s boot dropped onto Naoya’s cheek, driving his face into the dirt and cutting off his speech. “Shut it,” she turned to Ryu and Uro, trying to keep her breath level. “Do you guys… do you hear yourselves?”
Ryu wiped his hands off on his pants, smudging them with congealed blood before he leaned in and whispered. “It doesn’t have to be a permanent arrangement, ‘yanno. Just for a few days; for the very near, very time-sensitive future.”
Naoya’s face, held below the edge of the Split Soul Katana, contorted so violently with rage that Maki almost anticipated an attack.
“You think he’d agree?”
“He gave in to you, didn’t he? I mean, it’s not like he’s got a choice,” Ryu shrugged. “It’s either a ‘yes boss, thank you boss,’ or we just kill him right here. Maybe we’ll put a consequence in the vow too, as insurance.”
“Vow— What would the vow even be?!”
Uro and Ryu looked at each other, then back to Maki, who maintained sword-point over the curse seething with hatred beneath them.
The Cursed Discharge user scratched his cheek as he tapped a shoe against the rubble.
“Well, I’ve got a few ideas, but it depends…”
Naoya seethed up at them from his prone state, charred curse-skin still smoking faintly as his eyes trembled with either unfathomable rage, humiliation, or both.
The three of them looked down at him in unison as Ryu finished his sentence;
“...You wanna die today, Naoya? Or down the line?”
