"This is getting annoying…" I felt like forming the hand sign and saying the magic words.
But I didn't. I calmed myself down, gave it an honest thought as to why he kept running away. Did he really wish not to fight or… was he trying to get intel out of me?
I looked at him, and yes, there it was. While he seemed to have that mocking smile on his face, he also seemed to be observing me keenly before the distance between us became too large and he took a turn.
I mindlessly ran behind him while contemplating his strategy. Everything pointed to only one thing.
He was fishing for intel, most likely my technique. That had to be it. According to him, I hadn't used my technique yet…
'So, he doesn't want to commit to a drawn-out fight until he knows what kind of technique I have…'
By the time I caught up to him, I finally caught a decent visual on him again three rooftops later, standing at the ledge, one hand already lighting up another receipt — and this time what came out was less an item, more an arsenal: a full construction-grade nail gun, which he immediately infused with curse energy to make more lethal, naturally, and turned on me at a range he clearly considered unsafe.
Unsafe for me, that is…
The nails fired right at me, and I was almost caught off guard… almost.
Just as those nails were ready to make a porcupine out of me, my hair shifted, turning into the familiar blades and started to rotate at their fastest velocity, creating a shield of sorts in front of me as soon as I tilted my head forward.
All the nails were shattered by the rotating blades before they could even reach me, but that wasn't it. The acceleration was so fast that I went flying right at Reggie.
His eyes widened — genuine surprise, finally, the first real crack in that infuriating composure.
He acted just in the nick of time though, using his technique to create a giant soft toy in front of him to stop my blades from reaching him just long enough that he could get out of the way.
"Damn it, you almost got me off guard with that one, Akindo..." He said it almost politely, like acknowledging a mistake in a business meeting while panting after the sudden evasion. Even he felt like death was centimeters away this time around.
"But I have to say, of all the things, I was expecting something grander from you. A technique like this, no wonder you don't use it often." He mocked.
Part of Reggie felt relief. It showed in his eyes that he was concerned about my technique by the way he now sighed and let his shoulders loosen just a tad bit, or I could just be looking into things.
However, something just didn't add up. 'His technique and curse energy trait don't match up…' Reggie was from ancient times, he had seen many sorcerers, among them a few even had curse energy traits as well, however, almost all the time it was related to their curse technique.
This here… there didn't seem to be any connection?
He didn't have much time to think about it though, because I swung the moment he was even a bit out of focus.
He barely twisted out of the way, my knuckles catching only air and a scrap of paper sleeve, and in the half-second that bought him, he shoved a fistful of lit receipts against my chest.
Whatever he'd meant to summon there never got the chance to fully form — the moment I felt curse energy building against my skin, I grabbed his wrist and yanked, throwing his balance off before the item could manifest and then poured more curse energy, the explosive kind, to stagger him back.
"Not this time."
"Worth a try." He wrenched free, and just as I reached for another swing, the entire fistful of paper in his hand flared and reverted — whatever half-formed weapon it might've been, it was unmade before I could touch it.
"Oh, come on—"
"You didn't think I'd let you get free hits on me with my own created weapon, did you? Anything under my Contractual Recreation, I can revert back to just paper just as easily. Otherwise I would have been foolish to throw away dangerous items like I usually do, wouldn't you agree?"
"Tch… annoying." I grumbled.
"Thanks, I try…" He smiled and kicked off the ledge, putting half a rooftop's distance between us again, one hand already diving for another receipt. "You know, most people just run out of steam by now. Give up. Beg a little."
"I just might if that meant I don't have to chase you until you're out of those papers. Please tell me you're wearing something underneath. I'm not interested in fighting some nudist."
"Pity. Would've been a nice change of pace."
Oh yes… he was annoying, alright.
Another flash — this time a full stack of shipping pallets assembled mid-air into a makeshift barricade between us, and behind it I heard the telltale crinkle of at least three more receipts igniting at once.
"You're going to run out of curse energy eventually," I called out, circling the barricade instead of wasting energy smashing through it.
"You'd be amazed. You might wanna ask that useless woman you took a fancy to, she might have a thing or two to say about my stamina…"
A tick mark formed on my forehead. It was obvious he was trying to rile me up, and even though my relationship with Remi wasn't close enough to get angry enough on her behalf to lose my cool, the bastard sure was getting on my nerves now.
Seeing no visible reaction from me to the rage bait, he internally clicked his tongue and popped up from behind the pallets with what looked, absurdly, like a leaf blower, and the gust that came out of it wasn't wind — it was ball bearings, hundreds of them, screaming toward me at a velocity that turned the air itself into a hazard.
The ball bearings screamed in low and wide, and I did exactly what he wanted me to do — my hair shifted to blades, spinning up into a shield in front of my face, deflecting the storm of metal in a shower of sparks.
Reggie was already moving before the last bearing hit the ground.
"Tsk… Akindo, you're becoming predictable." he said, and the next moment closed the distance instead — not into my range, never quite into my range, but close enough that another lit receipt bloomed into a length of chain, and the chain whipped low at my ankles while I was still mid-spin from the deflection.
I stumbled. Barely.
"Got you now." He grinned, already igniting the next one — a folding chair, of all things, hurled with enough force behind it to crack ribs if it landed.
I couldn't defend. I honestly wasn't thinking that he would predict my move this quickly. I got hit right at the back of my head.
For a second I felt like darkness engulfed me, my ears buzzed and pain shot out instantly.
However, just as it came, I suppressed it with Reverse Cursed Technique. I was holding back on it, didn't even heal from those earlier wounds just to not give away more of my cards, but an injury to the head, I couldn't possibly fight in that condition.
'Damn it, I messed up.'
I could hear a whistle from his side where he was standing, looking at my head wound knitting itself in real time.
"You sure are a tough customer, ain't you, Akindo. Never thought you'd have even mastered Reverse Cursed Technique… I'm almost envious." He said it in a joking tone but his face told me that he really was, not to mention even more serious about this fight now since I had something like Reverse Cursed Technique.
Before I could even finish healing, he was already burning another one of those accursed receipts of his. Something manifested in his hands, I didn't even have time to know what before he was already swinging it at me.
I didn't let it land this time though. I caught it mid-air, crushed it in one fist, curse energy detonating through the metal in a burst that sent shrapnel spraying past both our heads.
"Oh… are you finally angry now?" Reggie mocked, already backing half a step, already lighting the next combination — this time two receipts at once, fusing into something that looked disturbingly like a bear trap, which he simply flung underhand at my feet.
I jumped it. Barely.
He wasn't running around the whole rooftop anymore. He was working within a much tighter radius now, weaving object after object into my path — nets, a stepladder, something that might've been a raccoon repellent device turned into an actual repelling device — never letting me get more than half a step closer before something forced me to react instead of advance.
This fight, it was exhausting. He seemed to have an endless supply of those things on him and endless ways to use them.
Who in the first place even uses rat traps in a jujutsu fight?
"Say, Akindo, do you know why I haven't used any real weapons against you? Something like firearms…"
"Because you can't get their receipts…" I interrupted him before he could even complete the sentence. I'm not letting him have another binding boost.
"Man… you're no fun, Akindo." he childishly huffed.
"You done posturing?" I called out, ducking a spray of what looked like confetti and turned out to be broken glass.
"It's called being social. You should try it sometimes… no wonder you don't have friends." He flicked another slip alight, and a full extension ladder crashed down sideways across the rooftop between us, forcing me to vault it instead of walk through it.
"If making friends means having people like you around, I am better left alone…"
We tore across the rooftop, exchange after exchange, the floor beneath us cracking further with every explosive punch I threw and every heavy object he manifested and abandoned in my path. I kept on punching and blasting… And then my fist caught the edge of a rooftop water tank instead of him.
The whole thing burst apart in a wave, water sheeting across the rooftop, cascading down through the hole my earlier punch had already torn in the floor below, taking most of the ceiling with it.
Reggie casually manifested an umbrella like he kept one handy all the time and didn't even glance at it.
"You're getting slower," Reggie noted, dodging a punch that took out a support column instead of him.
"And you're more annoying…"
"Occupational hazard." Another receipt, another item — some kind of extendable pool skimmer, absurdly, swung at my head like a bo staff.
I caught it, snapped it in half with one hand, and closed another two feet on him anyway.
By now I was panting. My curse energy sure could keep up, I had more than enough in the tank, but this body, no matter how much I ground it out, couldn't get into shape like a real jujutsu sorcerer's in just a matter of a week.
"Face it, Akindo… you're reaching your limit." Reggie said, already burning the next paper to summon God knows what.
He was right, my body was hitting its stamina limit no matter how much I pushed myself with curse energy.
I saw the thing he recreated this time was a baseball bat. Finally, something normal.
And he was putting butter on it…
Sigh…
"Okay, fine…" I said, this was too much for me, goddamnit.
"Oh… giving up? It's a little too late for that, Akindo. You should have taken my offer when I asked you…" He grinned, this was more of the ruthless kind, the one that said this would only end with either one of us dying.
"In your dreams…" I just rolled my eyes at him.
My hands slowly folded into making a very familiar sign to me. A big grin came across my face…
"I'm done holding back…"
Reggie's body stiffened, his eyes widened as he saw the sign I was making. A chill spread all over his back… he knew the boy was good, but not this…
"Domain…
xXx
A/N : Man, this fight was a blast to write, Reggie being the tactician type, I had to make sure show enough intelligence at his core.
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