The world went white.
The blast of Maximum: Uzumaki tore through the street, a vortex of compressed curses detonating with enough force to peel stone from the earth. Entire buildings split like paper, glass and bone alike reduced to shrapnel. When the energy finally collapsed in on itself, silence fell over the ruin.
Geto lowered his hand slowly. The curses he had sacrificed for the spiral were gone forever—his army diminished, his "family" thinned. It was always a bitter cost, one he accepted only when necessity demanded it. He looked at the smoldering crater where Kishibe had stood.
Ash. Smoke. Silence.
Geto turned, already dismissing the fight. "Even remarkable monkeys cannot outrun inevitability."
"—hnnh. That what you call it?"
The voice was hoarse, bleeding, but alive.
Geto's eyes sharpened.
From the edge of the crater, a figure dragged itself free—Kishibe, body shredded, coat in tatters, knives still clenched between trembling fingers. His skin was split open in a dozen places, blood soaking his clothes, yet his eyes burned with the feral clarity of a man who refused death.
"Ugly trick," Kishibe rasped, spitting blood. "But I've seen uglier. Devils who eat your guts while whispering sweet nothings. Makima's hounds. Hell's kitchen doesn't scare me."
He staggered to his feet, legs shaking but unbroken.
"You don't kill me with one shot. You fight me. Hand to hand."
Geto's calm mask didn't break, but inside he felt a flicker—irritation? Amusement? Respect? Kishibe had survived something that had annihilated armies of sorcerers back in his world. That made him dangerous, unpredictable. And Geto knew better than anyone the cost of underestimating a fighter like that.
"Very well," Geto said, loosening his robes. "Then you'll see a truth few live to tell. I am not bound to my curses. I am stronger than any who hide behind them."
The curses that remained hissed, parting to give their master space. Geto stepped forward, calm and precise. His stance shifted—low, balanced, measured. A martial artist's stance.
Kishibe blinked, then chuckled raggedly.
"Good. Been a while since a priest came down from his pulpit."
They collided.
Geto's palm strikes hammered like iron. A single chop cracked a lamppost behind Kishibe's head as he dodged. His counters flowed seamlessly into kicks, knees, and throws. This wasn't just brawling—it was refined, surgical violence honed alongside the strongest sorcerers of his era.
Kishibe met it with raw brutality. His knives flickered, seeking arteries, tendons, gaps. He fought like a drunk with nothing to lose—ugly, dirty, unpredictable. Where Geto struck clean, Kishibe clawed and stabbed, twisting steel between ribs. Where Geto aimed to disable, Kishibe aimed to kill.
For long minutes the alley rang with steel and bone. Blood spattered the cracked stone.
"You're skilled," Geto admitted, parrying a knife thrust and slamming his elbow into Kishibe's jaw. "But you waste that brilliance on survival. Sorcerers should aim higher. Kingship. Domination. A new world."
Kishibe wiped blood from his mouth, grinning through broken teeth.
"I'm no king. Never wanted to be. Just a man who kills monsters. And right now, priest—" he drove a knife into Geto's shoulder, twisting until the blade snapped—"that's you."
Pain flashed through Geto's body, but his calm never faltered. Instead, he seized Kishibe's wrist, twisted, and slammed him into the ground with enough force to crater stone. Kishibe gasped, ribs cracking, vision blurring.
And still, he laughed.
"Go on then. Preach. Show me your world. But you won't break me. Not today."
Geto stood over him, blood running down his robes from the embedded knife. His aura darkened, eyes cold and resolute. Kishibe was not just an opponent—he was proof of human stubbornness, of the "monkey" will he despised. Yet perhaps, Geto thought, that very will was what made them worth erasing.
The priest raised his hand again, curses stirring behind him.
"This was your chance. Now you'll drown in inevitability."
But as the air thickened with cursed energy, Kishibe pushed himself up once more, coughing blood, eyes wild. He wasn't done. He never would be.
The battle was far from over.