Hakari's steps through the battlefield were unhurried. His goal was stationary, in his sight, and none of this fodder could do anything against him. Bullets missed or bounced off his reinforced skin, melee weapons were treated much the same way. Wood, steel, anything they were made from shattered against his casual counterattacks.
'About two minutes left.' Hakari thought, mentally keeping track of his jackpot. It wasn't like he had a clock, or he kept time well, but he could tune in to the music and guess about how far through it was. 'I guess I should pick up the speed.'
Of course, it was with that thought that the attacks started becoming more frequent. Shifting to outmaneuver incoming melee attacks lead to bullets hitting more solid marks across his body, even if his reinforcement held up regardless. Getting shot in the face was annoying, even if the bullet never got deep enough to matter.
A lady in a pair of thigh highs swung her leg around, aiming a roundhouse for Hakari's head. He dodged it easily, leaning backwards as if doing the limbo, only to see another woman with a hammer swinging downward, aiming to crack his forehead open with the blow.
The hammer blow resounded through the immediate space, bouncing off as if it struck an anvil. The only thing that stalled Hakari's counterblow was that the hammer wielding lady was grinning like she had just won. Deciding to trust his instincts telling him that he had just fucked up, Hakari chose to simply try to make it to the portal.
He took three steps.
Hakari's path was blocked after that, a circle of these red spear-like scales encircling him, each as tall as him but only as wide as his wrist. They wouldn't let him approach, and stayed in place around him, defying gravity. Before he could think of a way to get out of this, a yellow tinged dome formed over him, just slightly taller than him.
They were trying to seal him again. He looked for who was performing the technique, noting how several people seemed to throw paper seals, which stuck to the dome. His view was then taken, putting him in darkness. He couldn't tell if something had covered the dome faster than he could see, or if a technique had been used to make him blind.
'These fuckers…' Hakari seethed, clenching his teeth. Even after everything, they would put him in a fucking box! Hakari moved his hands up, making the hand sign for his domain.
He could probably try to stress the barriers with his output, but he couldn't afford to try and possibly fail, not before his jackpot ended.
He couldn't use his preferred techniques while benefiting from the upped output, and he didn't have a technique that would really help at this moment.
Hakari would simply have to make a new, nameless technique then.
He envisioned the effect. An omni-directional wave of his cursed energy blasts. A tsunami of destruction centered on him, flowing outward. The idea was sound. Binding vows were used to make sure it worked, even if only once.
'Getting a little comfortable with the one time tricks' Hakari reflected, idly. To make sure this worked, he needed to do one more thing. He had to give it an incantation.
The words came easy.
The wheel stops,
Cage, become crucible
Even sealed, it spins
Hakari didn't get to see what became of the effect. It was a moment of heat and light and sound that made black become white and the quiet turn to the soft tone of tinnitus. It was only the feeling of his automatic reverse curse technique activating that let him understand that the release of power was less a wave and more of an explosion.
Hakari moved before his vision was fixed, his view coming in to see that he had broken free of the bindings again. He was also in a shallow crater, tatters of clothing, broken weapons, and countless gristle littered the ground.
Even as Hakari moved towards the portal out of Mato, he couldn't stop the regret. It sucked that they thought they could stop him, this could have all been avoided.
His eyes narrowed as, from the portal, three fast moving objects left, traveling towards him. Jeeps. They were driving Jeeps. He couldn't help but feel that it was…kind of pedestrian, wasn't it?
The rear of the vehicles each had a mounted machine gun, with a woman manning it. Hakari kicked off the ground to clear the distance as they barreled towards him, the thumps of bullets hitting around him, kicking up the dust, echoing out. Energy built up in his hands, forming these egg-shaped swirls of cursed energy as he fired at the two on the periphery of the attack.
The two beams fired, digging their own furrows into the dead earth. To the left, the driver of the Jeep was able to react in time, pulling some Hollywood move to drift into the outside of the beam's path of destruction. To the right, the beam hit the Jeep's front, tearing through it. The husk of its frame moved on only a few more feet before combusting in a fireball, its momentum carrying the wreck forward.
The Jeep running Hakari down was not deterred.
It was the only vehicle left that was moving towards him, its gun firing more accurately as he neared it. Hakari once again relied on his reinforcement and automatic reverse cursed technique to keep himself up. Neither of them was slowing down.
Hakari's pace was slowed only slightly as the rounds flattened across his body. It was slowed less when he reached within a few feet of the vehicle, as the mounted gun couldn't angle properly to shoot him. His eyes locked with the driver and passenger. Both were agape, noiselessly screaming in the interior of the Jeep. The passenger was lifting a gun.
It was all so slow, Hakari realized.
Time seemed to crawl as metal met flesh.
Hakari's legs pushed through the hot metal of the engine, the hood of the vehicle crumpling across his abdomen. The windshield shattered, dancing across the two women as Hakari spread his arms out. He caught both in the neck, stifling them with a lariat each.
The bones in their necks snapped, the skin and muscle tore. Hakari kept moving through the Jeep, his shoulders hitting the one manning the gun, her legs mangling against his upper body. Hakari exited the other end of the Jeep in less than a second after he entered from the front, its rear bumper half wrapped around his thighs.
His hand drifted down to pull it away, which was a momentary lapse in judgement as a woman came flying in, blonde hair billowing behind her as she punched Hakari in the chest.
Hakari felt the blow kinect, but even through the reinforcement, he felt like it had been far too light. His hand came up to bat her aside, but she lunged backwards, hands coming up in a boxing stance.
Hakari took her in. Her form was good, steady, ready to move. She wasn't dressed any differently than the other ones.
Just more fodder. He moved after her, fist coming up in a swing.
He felt something touch his back, and Hakari's vision shifted. What was up was now down, his body somehow having been rotated so his head was just touching the ground. From his new position, he could see up the stocking clad legs of a woman with straight black hair in a hime cut.
A kick from the blonde to his ribs had him roll off the top of his head, turning his body to land in a controlled crouch. He didn't notice the club coming for his face until his feet had actually hit the ground.
Hakari felt his nose recess into his face as he flew back from the blow, sliding on his back a few feet before rolling back up onto his toes.
Three of them, working in tandem. He huffed a breath through his collapsed nasal cavity, blood rocketing over his lips as his automatic RCT undid the damage. The third girl was a redhead, the same tint as red bean paste. Her outfit was slightly different, the skirt swapped out for a pair of shorts that didn't even reach half way down her thigh. Her club was a heavy thing, fully metal, resting up against one of her shoulders. Its surface was studded with spikes, catching the meager light of Mato off its dull sheen.
Hakari's eyes shifted across them as they advanced. Blonde had a gimmick, she was hitting like this was a contact spar. The redhead was pretty self explanatory. The black haired girl was what worried him. She could force him to move. Like Todo.
Forceful movement was always a pain in the ass to deal with. At the very least, hers wasn't nearly as good as Todo's. She needed to touch him, and it didn't seem like it could move him very far, if at all.
He could just fire a few cursed energy blasts, but it wasn't necessary. Even as his jackpot reached the last 90 seconds, he couldn't think that these toddlers could actually stop him. The redhead swung, and Hakari ducked the blow, sending a punch to her exposed abdomen. He felt his knuckles slide over her abdomen, a feeling he never had before. His cursed energy was naturally rough, acting like sandpaper.
Was her blessing to be slippery? A feather light kick to his jaw knocked him from his musings. The blonde got two more hits, both punches to his chest, both equally light, before he retaliated with his own right. She weaved past it, and so they exchanged rapid fire blows. Hakari, focused entirely on trying to hit her, fumbled as she fainted and moved past his blows, those same light taps hitting along his arms, chest, and face.
Hakari couldn't help the frustration that was building in his chest. He had gotten this far, and now some no names are gonna jump him? The one with the club came in with a wide swing, and as he backpedaled from it, he felt a hand on his back again.
Vision shifted, and he was staring up at the sky. He felt gravity start to pull him down before a massive impact hit the middle of his spine, hard enough that his abdomen was shredded as his spine broke and ripped through the flesh, sending him careening in an arc until he hit the ground again.
The automatic RCT was already realigning his crushed vertebrae when a feather light swipe of a shin met the side of his head.
'the fucks happening?' Hakari thought, the seconds ticking down for his jackpot as the trio descended on him. 'these kids, are they this good?'
It clawed at his intuition. Something wasn't right. They had obviously trained together, but none of their training could compare to his experience. He was no powerhouse like Yuji, but he wasn't anything to sniff at either.
So how? How had he gotten so thrashed? He evaded a club strike to his head, scampering back across the dust as he looked around.
He was missing something. Some fundamental truth. The only things of note close enough to matter were the two ruined Jeeps, mangled and suffused in smoke. Yet, in this single moment, Hakari swore he saw movement from the one he had run through.
Hakari stepped back into the club woman's range, aiming a straight kick for her midsection, paying absolute attention to himself. He saw, but didn't feel, the pause his leg gave right before the kick extended. A fractional moment of hesitation outside of his control was enough for her to turn and have the blow hit at an angle, slipping off her in the same moment.
Her retaliation came as she moved with her deflection, and Hakari took the blow fully, letting himself fly back, his automatic RCT healing him just as fast as the blow landed. He planned this, after all. They couldn't know until he acted that he knew there was a fourth. As he reached the apex of the arc he was knocked in, he turned his body, and saw on top of the wreckage of the jeep, there was a fourth girl. Her mangled legs meant she was the gunner that he hadn't bothered finishing.
Their eyes locked, and she stilled as he righted himself in the air to land on his feet. He didn't get even a step before the blonde was in his face, three lightning fast punches ghosting over his face and chest, just as light as the others. His hands moved in equal speed, and she in turn shifted into a full defensive position before Hakari's vision shifted once again, laying face down on the ground.
Those same stocking clad legs were just in his peripheral, the blonde pivoting her leg to kick against the side of his head, featherlight even with such a violent blow. Hakari pushed his body up and spun, but both slipped past his whirlwind kick. The added space, however, let him right himself once again, kicking off towards the car's wreckage.
The redhead lept into view, club swinging with her body in a final ploy to stop him. Hakari's knees gave out as he slid in the dirt, and the club went from taking his whole head to swiping over his face, the skin growing back in the wake of it being ripped from his skull.
His momentum carried him to have line of sight with the fourth girl. Her legs were beyond fucked, crumpled like old soda cans, and her bright blue hair was mottled with soot and blood. Her hands were out in front of her, continuously typing on some light green interface that projected in front of her.
Hakari was thoroughly annoyed by this whole situation, and lifted his hand, cursed energy coalescing in his palm. Her typing became more frantic, and he could feel the sudden strain of lifting his arm for her final blow.
She could artificially increase people's gravity? She had been using that to slow down his reactions and, if she could use the reverse, speed up her allies.
Her allies weren't close enough to stop this, and she could only make his arm so heavy it seemed, as he finally leveled it.
Right as the attack was gonna change the pace of the battle, however, the mood changed. Hakari noticed it, the quiet of Mato intercepting this bout. The energy wisped out of his hand, as if never his.
His music had stopped. The jackpot had finished.
Hakari usually wouldn't have minded. He could finish her with a well placed blow, or a reserve ball, and yet he stilled. Every instinct told him, right now, he was in danger. Movement drew his vision out of her periphery and he saw her.
The blonde, slamming her fists together, and his body lit up in pain. His mind searched for answers as he felt his ribs and sternum break, his skull fracture and jaw dislocate and shatter.
The blonde's weak hits were for later damage. Like now, before he could reactivate his domain. He felt his balance shift, and he made to catch himself on the ruined jeep. His hand slipped, and he slumped against it, looking as the redhead barreled down on him, club raised high to smash his head flat against the ruined car.
Even through the blurred vision, Hakari saw as she leapt, committing it all to finishing this.
The two train doors slammed shut on her, cutting her in half from head to taint. The blunt objects crushed the bone and meat as her two halves separated, blood splashing across the immediate landscape.
Hakari could hear screams, distant and close. He worked himself to his feet to look at the blue haired girl. Her screaming quieted as they locked eyes, and a reserve ball cracked its way through her forehead.
One of the girls spoke, sounding like she couldn't believe this, their victory stolen from them.
"How?" She nearly begged. It was the blonde. "I definitely broke bones with those delays. How the hell are you not unconscious?"
Hakari felt a tear roll down his cheek, and went to wipe it away, finding it to be blood instead.
"Guessh I'm jusht lucky, you didn' hit the right shpotsh, huh?" He said, voice slurred from the broken jaw.
So long as his brain and stomach wasn't terribly damaged, Hakari could work through the pain of a few broken bones. His hands lifted again, making the sign of his domain.
They had a good plan, they should be proud of how well they did, the four of them.
But they were a century too late to think they could keep up with him and his jujutsu.
"[Domain Expansion: Idle Death Gamble]"