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Chapter 23: NO. 23 - Hard-Hard Way

Rubbing my face with my hand, I looked over at Twice from the couch we were sitting on with tired eyes. The two of us were playing the latest installment of Call of Duty. I looked at my score and saw that I was going negative while Twice was on the top of the scoreboard.

Fucking try hard.

"Perhaps you\'ve been taking on too many hours at work? Nah! He just needs to drink more coffee, is all!" Twice\'s fingers clicked on his controller with rapid speed and skill. The man was racking up kill after kill with effortless ease.

I\'ll give the man this: he\'s a god-tier gamer.

"I guess that\'s part of it," I muttered as I tapped away on my controller. I cursed when my character was sniped from across the urban map we were on with a perfect headshot. "Damn you, NoobMaster69. It\'s always you!"

"Oh yeah, that guy is pretty good. He\'s nothing compared to me! The scrub!"

I smiled lazily as Twice and I continued playing through several more matches. As we did, my mind melted away into what I\'d been up to during the past few weeks.

My newest roommate and friend, Himiko, had quickly settled in with me after our little talk. It didn\'t take long for her shy and reserved personality to melt away into a more happy and playful one, similar to the one her main canon counterpart had.

As a welcome home present, I took her out incognito to one of the nearby shopping centers so she could buy some clothes and fill out her room with whatever she wanted. She was hesitant to take advantage of my money, but I waved that away. At this point, money wasn\'t a big concern to me with all my sources of income.

After receiving the green light, Himiko went absolutely crazy on her shopping trip. She went from store to store, picking and choosing everything that looked cute to her. Don\'t even get me started on how many hours we spent clothes shopping.

My poor wallet sure took a hit that day...

Despite the hit my finances took, Himiko\'s bright and free smile somehow made it worth it.

From there, the two of us lived together as any two good roommates would. We each had our fair share of responsibilities and tasks to help around the house. Himiko even offered to take care of our meals. Something about not wanting to be a complete free-loading sponge.

Despite her much happier disposition now, I knew she couldn\'t continue living like this. I didn\'t want her to constantly look over her shoulder for police, private investigators, or even heroes, worried that she might be arrested for the crime she committed.

That\'s not the life I wanted her to live. I wanted her to be free to do what she wanted.

This meant I would soon have to enact that plan to ensure it happened.

Moving on from my blood-obsessed blonde friend, Mei had begun to move on from her large projects to much smaller, more focused inventions. These were more in line with the support gear heroes would use in their line of work. Which meant I was up for several more hours of testing each new brainchild of hers.

Some of which exploded in our faces.

Inventing and testing weren\'t everything Mei and I did together over the weeks. I had decided that she needed to get out of her workshop more, so I took her out to explore the city more often, much to her annoyance. Thankfully, it didn\'t take that long for her to forget about her babies and ease into having fun with me as we traveled around.

I can still remember her ecstatic expression when I took her to the yearly Tokyo Inventors Convention. She was like a kid at a candy store, going from stand to stand, peppering the overwhelmed inventors with thousands of questions.

Thankfully, when it came to hanging out with Izuku and Keiko, they were a welcome break from the craziness of my pink and blonde-haired friends.

My time with the two hero-obsessed nerds was spent focusing on their training. Keiko with her quirk and Izuku with his physical/martial arts training.

Keiko\'s proficiency with her quirk was slowly but surely improving. She now had little issues using her typically defensive quirk in an offensive style. Her barriers were even able to hold back a low CE-enhanced attack from me for a few seconds.

Izuku\'s progress was impressive. His body was slowly gaining more and more muscle from my carefully planned exercises made for him. It wouldn\'t be much longer for his body to resemble that of a professional young athlete. Along with his athletic build, Izuku\'s martial arts were steadily improving.

His ability to take in a new technique was an odd one. Izuku wouldn\'t learn what I taught him the way I wanted him to; no, he would instead take the technique I wanted him to learn and internalize it in a way only he would understand. While I\'m glad it worked for him, it did slow down his rate of learning, which was fine with me.

At this rate, I had no doubt he would be a little monster when he got All For One in a few years.

The largest contributor to my lack of energy was my nightly excursions through Japan as my alter ego, Sukuna. The King of Curses himself.

Thanks to all the chaos and interference I\'ve been running in Japan\'s underworld, the name Sukuna was slowly but surely becoming a well-known name.

Criminals and low-lives feared it, while heroes and the police abhorred it.

Those pesky little heroes and boys in blue sure tried their best to catch me, but a quick use of Rabbit Escape left them scratching their heads in frustration.

I wasn\'t too sure how they saw the technique; I theorized that as the rabbits swarmed around me, their cursed energy had the effect of covering me in a sort of CE blanket, causing me to go invisible for a brief time. But I wasn\'t too sure if that was the case. I wasn\'t a normie, after all.

Back to the Sukuna stuff, going off the way, some hoodlums screamed my name in fright as they ran off with their tails between their legs at the mere mention of my name. I would say that the name Sukuna was quickly becoming a household name.

Which was great. It was my duty to spread the name of the lord. The name Sukuna would be known and praised by all in this world!

"Hah-hah! Tactical nuke, incoming! Run! Run like the roaches you are!" Twice yelled, and the screen became a hazy yellow when he activated the highest kill streak available in the game. Killing everyone in the game.

Thankfully, I was able to truly relax whenever I hung out with my bro, Twice. I didn\'t have to act like the responsible, sorta adult with him, unlike I did with the others. I could truly sit back and be myself when I was with him. A fact that I told him, which caused him to fall into silence. He didn\'t have to say it, but I knew my words had touched him.

Playing video games, watching movies, and making fun of tourists were just some of the few things the two of us did. It was fun and relaxing. Unfortunately, the two of us couldn\'t hang out more than just twice a week. I wasn\'t sure who he rolled with, but they\'ve been really busy making big-money moves lately.

How did I know it was big money? One look at his vastly improved apartment was an easy way to tell.

It was no longer a run-down place with little to no furniture. It was now full of several personal items and cool stuff. Not to mention the sizeable OLED TV he got us to play games on.

With the match over and done with, Twice grew uncharacteristically silent as he placed his controller down on the coffee table.

"Hm? What\'s up, Twice? Cat got your tongue?"

[+10 SP]

Twice rubbed the back of his neck for a few seconds before slowly taking his mask off. I raised a brow at that as Jin turned to me with a regretful look.

"Uh, listen, Souta." Jin started. "My... job is getting pretty busy. They\'re going to fly us out to Kyoto for a big job. Yeah... They need some more hands to help out with repairs after a big villain attack. Yeah... So we won\'t be able to hang out for a while."

Throughout our time together, Jin had told me he worked for a construction company in charge of repairing the destruction caused by villain attacks. At least, that was his cover story. Despite how close we\'ve gotten, he couldn\'t bring himself to tell me what he actually did.

I didn\'t mind it. The guy didn\'t owe me his secrets after all.

"I see," I grinned at the man and patted his shoulder. "No problem! You gotta do what you gotta do to get your bread, my guy. Just let me know when you get back, I\'ll be sure to finally kick your ass in Street Fighter."

[+15 SP]

Jin looked visibly relieved by my reaction and smiled. He nodded at me before he quickly slid his mask back on.

"You wish, you scrub! Train hard, and I\'m sure you\'ll beat me!" Twice said as the next match was about to start.

"Now I\'m definitely kicking your ass. Just you wait."

"You can do it! Dream on!"

x x x

As Nue, Zaiko, and I glided through the vast, inky expanse of the night sky, the city below came alive in a dazzling display of twinkling lights. Skyscrapers pierced the darkness, their windows shining like stars fallen to earth, each flickering light telling a story of lives in motion.

The air was crisp and cool, brushing against my skin. As Nue banked to the left, the iconic Tokyo skyline came into fuller view, silhouetted against the darker shades of the night. Neon signs flashed in vibrant colors as if winking cheekily at the vastness of the universe above.

"Hah... I ain\'t feeling it tonight." I muttered as I laid down on Nue\'s ample back. My jujutsu uniform flapped in the wind as we cut through the sky. "Nue, take us home, boy!"

Nue roared and banked right towards the direction where my home was located. As we flew, my eyelids began to fight me. They were urging me to fall asleep to get some much-needed rest. Before I could be seduced by lady sleep, several bright flashes of blue popped in the distance.

"What\'s that?" I asked while looking at the now fading lights. "Nue."

With a powerful flap of its wings, my Shikigami sped off toward where the blue lights appeared.

After a few short minutes, we came upon an old lonely boat dock. I jumped off Nue\'s back and looked around the eerily silent dock with sharp eyes, my Shikigami melting away into the shadows.

The air around me was cool and tinged with the salty scent of the ocean, mingling with the earthy aroma of damp wood. Silhouetted against the star-speckled sky were some nearby boats.

A faint breeze whispered through the dock, ruffling the boats\' tarps and sending ripples across the dark water. Dimly lit lanterns hung from the sides of the dock, swaying slightly, their flickering flames illuminating sections of the planks with an ethereal glow.

"That smell..."

I turned to the right to see a wide open door swaying in the air that led to a large seaside warehouse. My enhanced sense of smell could pick up the scent of burnt flesh from within the building.

Curiosity took over me, causing me to walk towards the door. As I walked, I noted several black scorch marks on the concrete floor leading to the warehouse. Passing a glass window, I saw my reflection bounce off its surface.

While bathed in the shadows of my hood, one could still see the bottom half of my face. Adorning my skin were long, sharp black tattoos.

These were the tattoos Sukuna had on whenever he took over Yuji or Megumi\'s body or when he was in his original Heian Era body.

How did I have them?

The answer was easy. I had won them as a Gold-tier reward from one of my pulls several months back.

The tattoos were purely cosmetic and didn\'t offer any buffs.

That is unless you consider the boost of aura they gave me a buff.

The way the tattoos work is by applying some CE to my skin where they were located. Once they had CE flowing through them, they would quickly come to life and adorn my skin. After that, I brush back my hair and bang! King of Curses look completed.

While not the greatest reward, it was very cool looking, in my opinion.

Once inside, I moved through the quiet building and found the source of the terrible smell.

Lying on the ground were three smoking, charred bodies.

"Hmm." I leaned down and placed a hand on one of the corpses to feel its warmth. Off to the side was a burnt box with small blue

flames dancing back and forth as they tried to swallow the wood. "Blue flames... Dabi?"

Standing up, I jumped to the building rafters and looked around the warehouse. I saw no movement.

Looking over to the ceiling, I saw an open skylight letting in some moonlight. Swinging to it, I jumped onto the roof of the warehouse and scanned the roads around the area. There wasn\'t a soul to be found.

"I must have just missed him."

I sighed in disappointment and raised my hands to resummon Nue. But just as I was about to call its name, something fast sliced through the air around me.

(Something\'s coming!) Crow Maki yelled.

Clang!

I leaned my upper body back as a white and brown blur sliced the air where I once stood. Jumping back, I leaned low and watched as a rather short woman slid to a stop several meters away.

[+15 SP]

"Not bad!"

The woman had tan skin, narrowed red eyes, and long, defined eyelashes. She had straight white hair reaching her thighs with bangs extending to her face\'s left side. While slender and curvy, the woman also sported a lean, athletic, and well-defined build, especially in her arms and legs.

She wore a sleeveless white leotard with dark purple trim around her shoulders and waist, a wide yellow crescent moon design over her chest, and a single thick metal plate wrapped around her midriff. On her legs were purple thigh-high boots to compliment her leotard, with more plating around the heel and toe areas, making her feet look like those of a rabbit.

She also has a pair of thick, white gloves on her hands with long cuffs, sporting small triangular protrusions around their edges.

"Looks like tonight is my lucky night! You\'re that guy, aren\'t ya? Sukuna, right?" The rabbit-themed woman asked as she eyed me like a hungry predator, her strong legs flexing. "I\'m here to take you in, Villian. We can do this the hard way or the hard-hard way. Take your pick."

If it isn\'t the Rabbit hero herself... Mirko.

I grinned from underneath the darkness of my hood as I reached into Zaiko\'s mouth to pull out one of my newest weapon additions created by my Construction technique, the Ruyi Jingu Bang staff. The woman looked momentarily confused at the sudden appearance of my weapon before grinning wildly.

"Looks like we\'re doing the hard-hard way then. My favorite."

-

AN:

Thanks for the 2K PS!!

Unfortunately, due to all the Chapters I\'ve released this week, this will be this week\'s last bonus Chapter. Otherwise, I won\'t be able to keep up with demand! So, I\'ll leave you all with this cliffhanger.

Next time, Souta vs Rabbit Mommy-I mean Mirko!

Until next time!