"What the fuck?"
Ren said it without even thinking. Before him stood someone he had never even heard of.
'Clot? Who the fuck is Clot?' His eyes dropped to the suitcase for half a second.
'No, forget it. A bomb isn't enough to stop me.'
Ren moved fast. His finger drew a single kanji in the air between them.
無 - "Nothing!"
The moment the kanji formed, it shattered apart, and Clot's face drained of colour instantly. His eyes went blank, like every thought inside his head had simply vanished. He stood there, perfectly still, holding the open suitcase and staring at nothing.
Ren was already flying past him.
Then a ball came screaming from the side and hit Ren hard — and the Ren that got hit dispersed into nothing.
Ren smiled and muttered, "Foxflame Mirage: Fox decoy."
Behind him, Rika twisted and dodged Yuki's swing, then brought one massive hand down in a heavy claw. Yuki pulled back just enough, eyes sharp.
'What? A flipping decoy?!'
Yuki's mind moved fast.
'I knew he could fly; that's why I opened the domain the second I saw him. But decoys? And that technique he just used on that man, that wasn't cursed speech. Is he using multiple techniques? Different applications of the same one? I don't know, but none of this was in his file. Not a single word of it. Where the hell was any of this information?"
On the other side of the compound, Ren was already close. Haruta didn't even see him coming.
Ren grabbed him and smiled. 'Ha. Caught you, you fucking rat. Shit, where is Rika? I should just tell her to eat him right now!'
"PLEASE, SIR, LET ME GO!"
Haruta screamed at the top of his lungs, thrashing in Ren's grip.
"I AM A GOOD MAN! I HAVE A WIFE AND FOUR CHILDREN WAITING AT HOME!"
Ren wasn't listening. He looked back just in time to see Rika take a full hit from Yuki and then get ripped apart by Yuki's punch!
Yuki was already sprinting towards Ren at full speed!
'Shit. Shit, shit. Ok, calm down. I need to deal with these idiots first. Rika will reform in a minute; I have time…'
Ren grabbed Haruta by his neck, and Ren grabbed Juzo Kymiya by his leg and flew up fast and threw them both.
"Fly away."
WHOSH!
Cursed speech carried both men sailing through the air, all the way across to where Mei Mei was standing. Ren watched Mei Mei's crows catch them mid-flight, wrapping around both bodies to slow their landing, and Mei Mei was already moving, pulling them away fast.
Ren watched her go.
'She didn't run, eh?'
He let that sit for a moment.
'That attack, all those crows crashing down at once… It seems like someone has been getting stronger without making much noise about it. If she hadn't broken the domain when she did...'
'I might have actually died…' A strange feeling settled in his chest, something he didn't quite have a word for.
"Mei Mei. I might actually do something with you after this for real..." Ren smiled and muttered under his breath…
He let out a slow breath and looked down at Yuki closing the distance below.
'Ok. How do I deal with her? I've only got four minutes left... Should I just leave? No, that Clot guy is still there with the bomb, and on top of that I need to sort out this misunderstanding before Yuki decides to use that domain on me every single time she sees me… Or worse…'
'She turns into a black hole…'
A chill ran straight down his spine.
'Yeah. No. Let's fix this now.'
From below, Yuki had stopped running and was now jumping up and down on the ground, yelling upward with absolutely zero restraint.
"AYO!! IF YOU HAVE THE GUTS, THEN COME DOWN HERE AND FIGHT ME LIKE A MAN! ALL YOU KNOW IS HOW TO RUN! I BET THAT'S HOW YOU WON AGAINST TODO TOO, YOU COWARD! "
Ren stared down at her jumping up and down on the ground.
'You know what? I'll talk to her after I beat her up a little. She did almost just kill me. Besides, she should not be able to use her domain for a few minutes at least, and her needing some time to get rid of Rika is proof that her cursed energy output is lower after she used her domain…
And she won't turn into a black hole or something like that because we are in Japan; she won't risk something like that. If we were in Tengain's barrier, though... that would have been another topic...'
But as Ren's thoughts flowed, a slow smile crossed his face.
'This is actually a perfect chance. I haven't used red stitch without restricting it because of my low cursed energy pool, but now I don't have to hold back on my cursed energy output. Let's see exactly how strong red stitch really is...'
He moved his finger and descended.
落 — "Fall."
Gravity itself bent downward inside a ten-metre zone.
Yuki felt it immediately, something she had never felt before, a weight pressing down through her entire body from above. Her knees hit the ground hard. For a second she stayed there, teeth grinding, and then with sheer force of will she pushed herself back upright.
Across the compound Clot toppled clean off his scooter and hit the floor.
Ren landed, pointed at Yuki, and spoke in a calm tone.
"I didn't kill Todo. So we really don't need to be doing this."
A pause happened. Yuki's eyes went wide, but before she could speak, Ren cut her off!
"But you just try to kill me."
He raised one hand, wrist forward.
From it, a massive surge of red thread erupted all at once, shooting outward in every direction like something alive, spreading and branching and crossing itself until it had covered the entire ten-metre radius in a dense, burning crimson web. It moved fast, faster than it looked like it should, wrapping around Yuki before she could react and catching Clot on the other side of the zone at the same time.
"Red Stitch: Spider."
Ren pulled his hand back.
Yuki was ripped off the ground, swung up into the air, and slammed down into the floor with a sound like a thunderclap.
BOOM.
At the same moment Clot, still bound in red thread, was wrenched away from his open suitcase and sent rolling across the ground to the far side of the clearing, away from the TNT, away from the bomb, spinning slowly to a stop in the dirt.
Red threads hung everywhere. Crossing the air, wrapped around rubble, trailing from Ren's wrist back across the whole radius like a web someone had strung between the ruins of a building.
Ren stood in the middle of it.
Covered in crimson.