Fire.
Pyromancy.
Big boom…
A primal desire for destruction which arises from the depths of the human soul, given form into raw flames, is one of the oldest and most sacred forms of appreciating death and destruction and the art that blooms from it.
And as explained, everything starts with an…
Explosion!
#BOOM
The wall beside my head evaporated into a cloud of plaster and splinters, and I felt the heat of it graze my cheek as I threw myself sideways through a doorway that may or may not have still had a door attached to it.
"For god's sake, stay still…
"—for FIVE SECONDS."
Another explosion, further back this time. My ears rang from the last one, the high-pitched whine drowning out half of whatever this random explosion dude was screaming at me from down the hall.
[Self Trade — decrease weight, increase mobility.]
I hit the ground rolling and came up sprinting, bare feet—when did I lose my shoes?—skidding across busted tile as another chunk of the corridor detonated behind me, close enough that the shockwave shoved me two extra feet forward like a hand at my back.
"Son of a…" I had to cut my curse short since I saw another projectile rushing towards me and had to move.
"Okay, that one actually would've taken my head off," I muttered, ducking through another doorway into what used to be a guest room. Well, I hoped it was the guest room. I didn't wish to think of the other possibilities by how there were big sofas all around and… "Are those leather straps?"
I'd been fighting this guy for 2 minutes. More like running away from him for a straight 2 minutes after the motherf*cker blasted my entire back off with that sneak explosion.
'I just wished to get something to eat. Did he really have to come just when I was making myself some sandwiches?'
After checking out the malls and other food courts, I knew those were the first places to be raided by others. Either genuine motivation to hoard all the food or they thought that would automatically kill off others when the ration supply was cut off. I'm unsure what it was, but whoever looted those places clean of all the food supplies was one nasty ass*hole…
Out of options, I had to break into buildings and abandoned homes to get something, anything, to replenish myself.
And that's when I met this explosion head… He caught me completely off guard with the explosion. I'm lucky I didn't lose an arm or two by how ridiculous that blast was.
Blasted off a good section of the building for certain.
So I ran… ran and tried to figure out what his deal exactly was. Cursed technique and all that jazz before I tore his ass apart for setting my own on fire.
And that's how it started, more or less. Two minutes, and I still had no idea what his technique actually was.
Something related to explosions, of course, but how it worked—was it something like whatever he touched turned into a bomb or something?
Honestly, the bastard was causing so much havoc that I couldn't even observe his movements through all the explosions and smoke, let alone the nuances of his technique.
But from what little I saw of him, he was basically a topless blond with extreme pyromaniac tendencies.
I'd also seen him throw something small and white at me twice now—I thought it was debris the first time, until it detonated with enough force to punch through a load-bearing wall.
Miniaturized bombs?
Definitely some kind of stored explosive.
However, it wasn't until now that I got a good look at the object that I realized, mid-dive, that he was missing another tooth.
"...Oh, you have GOT to be kidding me."
He was throwing pieces of himself.
"Masochist bastard…" I pressed my back against a bathroom wall, chest heaving, doing rapid math I didn't have time for.
Teeth. He's throwing teeth. Explosive teeth.
'What kind of ridiculous technique turns one's teeth into bombs? Who came up with this shit?'
I shook my head. 'No… it must just be an application of the said technique.'
I risked a glance around the doorframe. The blond stood at the end of the hall, grinning wide with a visibly gapped smile, working something loose from his own eye socket like he was popping out a contact lens.
'Did he just take his own damn eyeball out?' I blinked. Suddenly the earlier accusation of masochism wasn't looking that far off.
And then the explosion maniac hurled it at me.
I yanked back just as his own eyeball detonated against the far wall hard enough to cave in a support beam.
Okay… not just teeth.
But body parts.
By how he divided the cursed energy inside his body and then poured it into that eye, it was most likely his cursed technique that let him explode his body parts.
'Why not hair or blood though? Wouldn't that be much more convenient? Or is it that he can't?' My brain started to dissect the technique and create a plan.
'And seeing how he isn't a self-mutilated cripple if this is how he fights… that could mean only one thing.'
"Reverse Cursed Technique," I breathed.
That was even more troublesome.
But nothing else explained the self-harm. That explained why he fought like every part of his own body was a grenade with the pin already halfway out.
If you can regrow what you throw, there's no cost technically. Just an endless magazine of explosive shrapnel that used to be your face.
And if this is how he usually fights, then expecting his Reverse Cursed Technique to be very efficient wouldn't be out of the question either. Meaning I couldn't turn this into an endurance battle that easily.
"My cursed technique's called Explosive Flesh, by the way!" he shouted cheerfully from down the hall, already working another tooth loose.
"I can turn my flesh into explosions. Won't work with hair or blood though, strickly flesh…"
I closed my eyes, sighing to myself, irritation rising.
"Figured I'd tell you before you figure it out yourself. That's what you're doing, right?!" he grinned.
As for why I felt irritated, it was because revealing his technique gave him a boost to it. I was most likely fighting an experienced sorcerer here, unlike those two back then…
"Real generous of you!" I shouted back, and before I knew it another tooth was flying towards me.
I barely dodged.
Okay. New plan.
If every piece he threw cost him nothing, I couldn't out-turtle this fight. I couldn't out-range it either—I'd seen the throws arc, seen them curve slightly toward me even from bad angles, which meant either good aim or some tracking property I didn't have time to test.
The technique doesn't make sense with a tracking ability if it really was about flesh explosions. But again, you can't take anything at face value a sorcerer tells you.
Which left one option for me.
Close the distance. Make every throw a liability to him too.
"I gotta get myself a long-range technique, sigh… If only I had Jojo's technique right now, even Dagon's water would've done wonders," I grumbled.
I stepped out of the bathroom instead of running from it.
The blond explosion lord blinked, mid-tooth extraction. "…Oh, not running anymore."
"Nah. It's not like it's gonna help me much anyway, now would it?" I rolled my shoulders, as internally I used my technique for what was about to come.
[Self Trade — decrease weight, increase mobility.]
Instantly the feeling of the trade settled light and loose into my bones—built for speed, not for eating hits. Bad idea to tank this guy. Worse idea to keep dodging blind.
He grinned, spat the tooth into his palm, and hurled it.
I was already moving before it left his fingers, ducking low and cutting sideways, using the extra mobility to eat ten feet of hallway in a blink. The tooth detonated somewhere behind my shoulder, more noise than damage.
"Wha—" His eyes tracked me, surprised at the sudden speed. "I see… finally using your technique, are you? Good. Make it fun." He grinned harder.
"Fun, huh… sure. I don't mind, as long as getting kicked in the balls is something you like, though seeing you so far, I doubt you'll mind." I closed another five feet.
He didn't reply to the taunt, just yanked another one of his own eyeballs loose—I really needed to stop being surprised by that—and threw it point-blank. No room to dodge this time.
I could switch the trade conditions. However, if I flipped to durability now, I'd be dead weight for a full second while the trade resettled, and a second was more than enough for this guy to finish me off.
However, I had something far more fun in mind…
In an instant my hair morphed into helicopter blades and screamed as I forced the current backwards instead of forward, air folding in on itself into a tight, violent vortex right in front of my face.
The eyeball hit that wall of air and just… stopped. Hung there for a heartbeat, spinning, caught in the reverse draft like a fly in a fan.
The explosion artist's grin froze.
"…F*ck—"
Before he could even complete that line of cursing, I redirected the vortex with a twist of my neck, and his own eyeball rocketed back the way it came, faster than he'd thrown it.
It caught him square in the chest.
BOOM.
The explosion that was supposed to turn my skull into confetti instead turned the blond bastard into a very surprised projectile, launched clean off his feet and through a half-collapsed wall.
"…Huh… even I'm surprised it worked..." I stood there for a second, genuinely impressed with myself.
'Note to self: give yourself a candy treat. You deserve it.'
I didn't waste the opening.
The self trade was still in effect. I closed the last of the distance at a dead sprint before the explosive bastard could even get his bearings back, and drove a fist into his ribs the moment he peeled himself out of the rubble.
Bone cracked. Not mine, for once.
However, he wasn't as damaged as I thought he would be, so either he had very good reinforcement and later healed himself, or his own technique didn't do much damage to him.
I was leaning toward the latter, much to my dismay.
"You—" he wheezed, already yanking a finger loose out of pure reflex. "—stay BACK—"
He threw it at nearly point-blank range. No dodging this one. No redirecting it either, not from this close.
#BOOM~
The entire building rattled under the huge explosion.
The explosion was dead on… I was violently thrown back…
However, by the look of his wide eyes, not nearly enough to say it was a success.
"H-how… how did you tank that?" For the first time the blond man looked truly taken aback seeing I had minimal damage on me…
I wasn't unscathed by any means… the explosion was strong. It didn't feel like nothing. My whole left side lit up in white noise and heat, cloth burning off my arm, skin screaming underneath.
However.
"Domain Amplification…" I replied with a grin.
To my utter irritation, instead of looking shocked the blond bastard looked confused…
There goes my aura farming… sigh.
"Never heard of it, I take it? Huh… figures."
Can't expect everyone to know about a high-level technique like that after all.
"Basically it's a technique which is used to nullify others' techniques." I gave a rough explanation. Didn't have to, but at this point I could use that little boost from revealing my hand rather than keeping the technique a secret. He'd figure it out mid-fight anyway.
Of course, the technique is not perfect. There is a limit to how much it can nullify, so it still hurt.
"Damn it hurts…—" I staggered, ears still ringing from the aftermath of the explosion.
The instant Domain Amplification dropped, I flipped straight back into speed mode and closed the gap before he could reset his stance, before he could even finish his very satisfied little grin at seeing me burned.
That was the only problem with Amplification. One can't use it together with one's innate technique.
My fist caught him under the jaw.
Not a Black Flash. Just fast, and mean, and close enough that he didn't have room to throw anything without blowing off his own face along with mine.
"Get OFF—" He tried to yank back, tried to get range, tried to pull another tooth loose with his off hand.
I didn't let him.
Every time he reached for a piece of himself, I was already inside his guard, already moving faster than he could commit to the throw.
"Sorry, but I'll be the only one here who's breaking teeth from now on. And they sure ain't gonna be mine."
Every time he actually managed to get one off, I ate it with Domain Amplification, took real damage doing it—blistered knuckles, a strip of skin gone from my forearm, ears ringing worse with every blast—and closed the distance again before the smoke cleared.
Earlier suspicions were spot on. His own explosions did surprisingly little damage to himself. So he had to resort to old-school hand-to-hand combat from now on.
He was breathing hard now. Missing fingers. Missing an eye that hadn't fully regrown. More like I wasn't letting it.
His Reverse Cursed Technique was good, but it wasn't infinite, and I was making him spend it faster than he could keep up.
Not everyone is Satoru Gojo after all, able to use both cursed energy for reinforcement and Reverse Cursed Technique for healing at the same time.
He could try healing, but I'd do more damage in that time than he could possibly restore.
"You're not—" he coughed, blood in his teeth. "—who the f*ck are you—"
"Yeah, I get that a lot." I planted my feet.
Maki's voice, somewhere under the ringing in my skull. Get inside their range. That's where techniques get awkward.
He was more than awkward at this point. He was cornered, bleeding, and out of pieces to throw that wouldn't cost him something he actually needed.
I also had to be on guard. His kind usually had a self-sacrificing technique or an ultimate move. If he decided to pull a 'Vegeta' on me here then even Domain Amplification might not help me avoid losing a few limbs.
Good to know that he didn't pull something like that. Getting caught by someone self-destructing wasn't high on my life goals, at least not this early in my day.
However, it seemed that he had given up on healing altogether by how desperately and sloppily both his hands went to his own jaw like he meant to rip out a tooth and his own mandible with it.
For once even I had to think about the level of masochism on display… and it was coming from a man who held Mahoraga just to kill the damn Shikigami with a freaking meteor.
"Oh no…I won't let you."
My fist moved faster than even I knew. Before I realized it, I was throwing a punch right at his ugly face.
For one perfect, silent instant, cursed energy and impact aligned into something cleaner than either alone.
Space seemed to bend and tremble under the pressure created when my fist connected with his jaw.
Black lightning broke, and the feeling was unmistakable.
This was…
Black Flash.
xXx
A/N : I somehow feel that we gonna have a lot of fighting in this arc... like a lot.
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