Ten Shadows in the Heian Era

"I somehow don't think that will help me much," Narauko says with a smile, tucking his hands into his sleeves from where he stands opposite her.

Only, right as she is about to respond, it is only her eyes warning of him making a hand sign in his sleeves that allows her to avoid the great serpent that launches out of his shadow with such speed that she barely even notices it until it is fully extended.

Its mouth snaps shut mere inches away from her skin, the displaced air of its movement brushing against her hair, and her heart almost leaps out of her throat while her eyes widen in shock.

Shikigami is-

Her eyes are cut off when a tremendously heavy blow lands on her side, snapping her upper arm in half and sending her tumbling across the floor, pain flaring up every time her broken arm slams into the ground like hot fire shooting through her bones.

By the time she manages to stop her rolling, she is biting her lip hard enough to draw blood. The extra pain is preferable to the humiliation crying out would bring.

She leaps to her feet as fast as she is able, preparing herself for an attack that never comes. Instead, all she sees is Narauko standing right where she was a moment ago, the Shikigami nowhere in sight.

"So your Technique isn't just complete invulnerability then," he says ponderously. Looking at her as a scholar might look at a particularly interesting puzzle. "You led Divine Dog around for a bit before using it, so maybe it's a timing thing? You need to either be in combat with, or hold within your eyesight, my Shikigami for a set amount of time in order to become an immovable object and unstoppable force when interacting with them specifically? Doesn't seem quite right. Though, I suppose if it were a timer type of thing then it would be a good idea to bring Divine Dog back out to see if the timer resets. Unfortunately, you did a little bit too much damage to him, so he needs to rest for a bit. Good thing I have eight others then, ne?"

...It seems she might have been underestimating him just as much as he has been underestimating her.

He is obviously not right with his assumptions, but he doesn't need to be right. He just needs to be close enough.

Though, if he believes that he can keep each Shikigami out as long as the dog was before her Technique can take effect, then that is a misunderstanding that she should try to exacerbate.

A low breath leaves her lips as she calms her beating heart, feeling the thrum of challenge in her bones and sharpening her focus to the extreme.

As she pours one part of her attention into using Reverse Cursed Technique to fix her broken arm, a plan starts to form in her mind.

Without even consciously realising it, she only now starts to take Narauko as a genuine threat to be treated with caution.

The plan is simple. Allow him the delusion that her Technique works on a timer and let him quickly cycle through his Shikigami, not knowing that now that she knows they are built around their Techniques that she will be able to understand them with but a glance.

She can't be obvious about it though. She doesn't think baiting him would work, whether she tries to do so through a lie or a truth. So the better option is to simply speak of something else entirely.

"So you do not need to speak your Shikigami's name to summon them," she comments, and his lips quirk slightly with pride.

"Uhuh. It diminishes them though. Strength for speed," he casually reveals, his smile turning into a knowing smirk, "You are familiar, no?"

Has he figured out her Binding Vow? It doesn't really matter if he has, but it also doesn't make sense how he could have.

Intuition? That's pretty absurd if so.

"Are you just going to talk, or are we going to continue to fight?" She asks after a moment of staring at one another.

"I could ask the same," he counters, but she just scoffs.

"You have the advantage of range over me. As a Shikigami user you can keep your distance, while I fight in close quarters. We are a good distance apart, so you have the initiative."

"Nice lie," he calls her out, "But wouldn't it then make sense for you to make the first move, so as to deny me my advantage?" He asks, an infuriating smirk on his face. "Or is it perhaps that you are hesitant to close the distance carelessly now that you know I have such a fast Shikigami while not knowing what shape my hands are in?"

Ah, she sees it now, the gamble he's playing.

He is not wrong. That snake Shikigami is unbelievably fast. If she is too close when he summons it, it will hit her before she can either dodge or understand it enough for her Technique to activate.

However, she is not going to fall for the bait he is leaving either.

His hands are in the shape of a bear right now. He intends to use his words as a double bluff. He is pretending that he thinks he can convince her that he is intending to summon the snake, while knowing that she will see through it.

However, he thinks that she will see that his hands are in the shape of a bear and assume that is the length of his bluff and attack, assuming she is safe from the snake. But she is not stupid. If he can Subtract the need to chant his Shikigami's names, then it is likely he can do the same for the hand sign.

Meaning that if she fell for his bait and attacked, thinking he would only summon some kind of bear Shikigami, then she would end up getting hit by the snake.

It's a good tactic. Unfortunately, even after having seen through it, it hardly matters when she is simply out sped by the snake anyway.

Luckily, she has her own advantages too.

A hand slips into a fold of her kimono and retrieves a throwing knife, and she doesn't allow him any time to consider the implement before launching it at his head and dashing right after it.

Narauko's smile widens as he tilts his head enough to avoid the knife.

"Great Serpent." He intones, as she expected he would.

However, her eyes saw what would happen before it did, and she is already in the air by the time the Shikigami is summoned.

The snake spears forward underneath her so fast she still barely sees it move, even knowing it was coming, and that is all the time she needs as she watches the Shikigami beneath her immediately dissolve into shadows.

Cursed Technique extends body. Only so fast upon summoning.

The latter part explains why Narauko would dispel it right after summoning it twice over now, but is hardly important in the face of the fact that she now understands the Shikigami.

Two down.

Still, Narauko's grin doesn't falter as she comes back down, and the reason is evident a moment later when a great white bear emerges from the ground right in front of him, the temperature of the room dropping several degrees in the process.

But her eyes have already seen this coming too.

Cursed Technique controls ice and cold.

Time seems to slow for her as she reaches the ground. Ice starts to spread from the paws of the giant bear. Fast enough that it will encase her less than half a second after her foot touches the ground.

She can admit to being impressed by the feat of timing.

However it is irrelevant.

Her foot touches solid ground for barely one tenth of a second before she kicks herself back into the air, just in time to avoid being encased in ice and not a full second later she lands with both of her feet on top of the cold.

Her muscles scream at her as she pushes them further, moving even faster to slide under the bear, ignoring the slow swipes of its claws.

She is back up on her feet almost before she has even finished passing the bear, and then her mind jolts as Narauko comes back into sight, smiling and looking her right in the eye with his hands shaped into the head of a serpent.

No vocalisation is given, and even with her eyes telling her what is about to happen, she simply doesn't have the time to dodge, so she gives up on the plan of avoiding contact with his Shikigami until he has cycled through more of them.

Decision made, she doesn't even try to dodge and just renews her sprint.

The snake must have erupted from his shadow, but she honestly barely can tell. All she sees is a brief flash of white slam into her before immediately falling apart into a liquid black as the serpent shatters against her body.

She doesn't slow down at all as she steps into Narauko's personal space, throwing a punch straight at his face that is avoided by a hair's breadth by Narauko leaning to her right.

Almost in the same movement, Narauko's hands snap up to grab her extended arm and shoulder respectively. But her eyes see it coming and she drops into a crouch, half spinning to deliver the heel of her left foot to his ribs.

The hit connects and Narauko uses the force to propel himself further away, a single hand snapping out to the ground to flip himself around and back onto his feet.

She goes to give chase, but a wall of ice crashes towards her and she has to leap away to avoid it, but when she turns to look at the source, she only catches sight of a collapsing puddle of liquid black.

That's fine, she's already understood that one anyway.

Once more, she finds herself standing at a distance from Narauko, neither of them making an immediate move.

It's only the fact that this is a spar and not a true fight to the death that she can excuse his lax attitude.

However, that isn't to say that the previous exchange wasn't fruitful, as both of their eyes glance to the pool of red on Narauko's side, a small tear in his clothes.

Narauko's eyes move from his wound down to her feet, and he lets out a short laugh when he sees the blade sticking out of the back of her heel.

"So, not a timer then," he says, conversationally. "I have two theories. Either your Technique treats the entirety of my Technique as one, rather than differentiating between my Shikigami and you only dodged Great Serpent earlier out of reflex. Or, your Technique is something more about understanding what you are up against, and that after you got a read on Divine Dog it became trivial for you to do the same with the others. It doesn't really matter which is true, but what I am wondering is if it is understanding that triggers your Technique, then how did my punch break your arm? Surely you should understand Cursed Energy well enough to be immune to it, or does your Technique only affect other Techniques?"

"Humans aren't such simple creatures to understand," she snaps at him. He's already figured her Technique out enough that there's no real benefit to playing with any pretences otherwise.

"Are you an idiot?" Is Narauko's immediate reply, and the most annoying part is how genuinely sincere he sounds asking it.

However she isn't given a chance to answer him as he abruptly dashes forward, moving almost as fast as she is able to despite her Vow.

Still, even with the suddenness of the attack, she doesn't fail to act, deflecting his opening fist to the side and sliding a knife into her other hand while bringing it up, aiming right for his jugular.

He dodges, as she knew he would, which is why she lets go of her blade, letting it fly the extra distance needed to embed itself into his throat.

However, despite taking the hit, Narauko's grin doesn't falter and her eyes warn her of danger a second before it comes.

"Kon," Narauko intones, his voice wet from the knife in his throat, and she barely avoids losing a leg as a giant fox's head snaps out of the ground where she was a moment ago.

"Your eyes aren't so good when there aren't any visual cues to build off of, huh?" Narauko says, and not a second later she feels an impact slam into her back.

Rolling across the ground, she glances back to see what hit her only to see a pool of liquid black dropping to the floor.

"Kon."

She doesn't even get to finish rolling to her feet when she has to kick herself to the side in order to avoid being bitten in half, and even then she only gets to her feet in time to bring her arms up to block Narauko's fist, the force of the blow sending her flying backwards.

"Why can I hit you, Kiyohara!" Narauko abruptly shouts out after her, and her eyes warn her of another attack barely in time for her to spin around and avoid a bird Shikigami by dropping to the ground, pulling out a knife to score a cut on the thing as it passes.

And then her solid ground is washed away in a tide of water, disorienting her as she struggles to get enough leverage to jump on top of the water.

Her foot barely manages to touch the floor and she kicks herself up, landing on top of the raging waves freshly generated and using her Cursed Energy to stand on top of the ocean.

Yet still, she gets no time to breathe as Narauko appears in front of her once again. She can barely even think as attack after attack drowns her as surely as the waves.

She sees his punch coming and throws a punch of her own at his inner elbow before it can fully extend, following up by bringing her other hand up to his throat, fresh knife in hand.

It's only the fact that she is working almost entirely on instinct that she does not hesitate to listen to her eyes.

Narauko does not slow down at her attack, instead he speeds up, slamming his own neck into her blade and attempting to close the distance and close her into a grapple.

However, her eyes saw it coming a moment earlier and she ducks under his closing arms, throwing a low kick at his ankles and then-

The water explodes beneath them and she feels something break as a heavy impact slams into her and launches her to the side, leaving her dizzy as she barely keeps from sinking under the waves.

"Why can I still hit you!" Narauko's voice once more shouts out from behind her, giving her no time at all to even think!

She's never been so pressured before in her life, not even when she fought Yorimitsu. She just needs a moment to think, to plan, but she doesn't get it as Narauko throws a combo of punches at her, each barely avoided even though she is supposed to be one of the fastest around.

Her Cursed Energy boils beneath her skin, raging in a way it hasn't before. She can feel it answer her call more easily than before, as if what once took intent now only needs instinct.

"You think too much!" Narauko says, another fist barely avoiding her face followed by a leg sweep that she avoids by jumping and kicking his chest with both feet.

She doesn't even think about moving her Cursed Energy to enhance the blow, but it moves anyway, a ringing impact sounding out as Narauko is forced back a step, but only one.

"Better!" Narauko yells, his excitement clear, "But you can go even further!"

She doesn't know when it started, but a pressure in her cheeks tells her that she's smiling.

Why?

Her left hand slaps away a probing punch and her right foot kicks his leg before his own kick can even get started, causing him to falter enough that her other hand can bring a knife across his throat once again.

Why is she smiling?

Blood spurts from the wound only for a moment before it closes again, and she lets go of the knife a moment before his head snaps forward to catch it between his teeth.

Why does she feel so good right now?

Her body moves without conscious thought, ducking to the side exactly far enough to avoid her own knife spat out of his mouth. His punch that follows is avoided the same. A slight twist that has his fist graze her clothes but avoid her skin, and her hands snap up to catch the arm, turning and throwing him over her shoulder and into the water with enough force that the water becomes as hard as steel.

She looks down and her Eyes lock onto his as he smiles through his injury.

Is happy. Wants you to keep improving. Wants to see how much you can grow.

She cuts her eyes off and slams her foot down on his face, but he has already yanked his hand out of her grip and rolled to the side, ignoring how the churning waves should get in the way of both of their movement.

A knife leaves her sleeve right as he throws himself to his feet, embedding itself in his heart with perfect timing, but he barely even seems to notice, his grin just growing even wider as he turns back to her, fist cocked back to deliver a devastating punch.

But despite what should be a difference in strength between them, she doesn't even think about using her usual style of fighting and avoiding the blow to hit a quick counter.

In fact, she isn't really thinking of anything at all beyond the adrenaline pumping through her veins.

Her own fist cocks back just like his own, and for one frozen second, they become a mirror of one another, smiling wider than she has in a long time.

Their eyes lock.

He believes in you.

A single tear leaves her eye as a half strangled laugh leaves her throat and lightning dances around her fist.

"BLACK FLASH!!"

The world cracks. 

Space distorts around them as a single moment seems to last a dozen, black and red lightning arcing from the point of impact and instantly boiling any water it touches into steam.

A thunderous sound shatters her eardrums. An impact cracks her shoulder, and only then does she feel her fist impact Narauko's own shoulder, and then all she sees is light and blurred colours as she is launched backwards, flipping over herself half a dozen times.

Her feet catch on the water and the violent waves beneath her flatten out into a perfect calm the moment she comes to a stop on them.

Her broken shoulder barely has the time to be broken as her Cursed Energy inverts itself and fixes the injury faster than she can even think to do so.

She feels amazing.

If the last time she experienced a Black Flash left her feeling as if her Cursed Energy is as easy to manipulate as her limbs, now it feels as if her Cursed Energy is no different from her organs. Like she doesn't even need to think to use it. A natural action.

Her eyes find Narauko once more, in time to see his own shoulder finish regenerating from where it had been reduced to mush and mist.

"Kiyohara-san," Narauko calls out, and in her state of floaty bliss, she has no problem listening to him for now. "Do you need to count every leaf on every branch to know you are looking at a tree?"

He smiles at her, and for a moment she sees Murasaki's face overlap with his own. The same smile she wore when she was able to teach her.

"Don't overthink things. You know what Cursed Energy is." He says, and she understands.

No gesture or cue is given, but Kiyohara turns her head regardless, and the moment she looks behind her, a giant bird-like Shikigami bursts out of the waves.

She doesn't so much as blink.

The bird crashes into her and finds itself wanting, parting around her like a river around a rock.

Her attention turns back to Narauko to see him barely a step away from her.

He is Narauko. His Curse is Love.

Narauko's fist shoots forward, but still, she does not move.

His fist hits her on the chin, an attack that would have been devastating a mere minute ago, but still, she does not move.

Her lips curl into a smile that reaches her eyes, a smile that he returns.

"I win," she says.

"Do you?" He counters, his smile turning into a smirk.

In the next instance, the entirety of Narauko's Cursed Energy disappears deep beneath his skin, and white fire that does not burn bursts out, covering his form entirely and blazing from his eyes.

She barely has the time to widen her eyes in shock when Narauko spins low and kicks both of her feet out from under her, and this time, she does move.

His kick knocks her almost horizontal, and she sees the follow up punch coming, so a hand snaps out at the water below, Cursed Energy flowing through the sea to allow her to grasp it as if it is solid and pull her forward.

She uses the momentum of his own kick to add to her own and spins up and over his punch, landing on her feet and dodging yet another punch with barely a twist of her body, and then her own fist lashes out with her counter to his gut.

"Black Flash!"

Blood forces its way from Narauko's lips, but she grabs his Kimono before the force of the attack can throw him away and she sees what he is going to do before he does it and meets his headbutt with her own forehead.

"Black Flash!"

Narauko goes cross-eyed from the blow and she feels blood start trickling down her own face at the same time, but she is feeling too good to care right now as the hand not holding Narauko swings up in a vicious uppercut.

"Black Flash!"

The force of the blow leaves him suspended in the air for a moment, and she lets go of his kimono and spins on her heel, delivering a solid roundhouse kick right into his ribs over his heart.

"Black Flash!"

With no grounding or hold on him, the kick sends Narauko flying to the side, skidding over the water like a skipping stone. She doesn't hesitate to chase after him, laughter trailing after her and eyes wide as her Cursed Energy flows like the blood in her veins.

Narauko recovers enough during the flight to flip himself upright and the look he sends her way is nothing short of joyous, and she hates how much the pride in his eyes means to her.

As his feet drag trenches into the surface of the water, his hands take a new shape.

"Reflective Tortoise."

Following his intonation, from the depths of the lake beneath them, a giant tortoise rises, its shell shining like diamond.

She doesn't so much as slow down.

Shikigami's Technique reflects non-physical attacks.

It doesn't matter. Shikigami can no longer touch her.

Her fist meets the shell of the tortoise and lightning arcs for the sixth time in a row, a new record.

"Black Flash!" 

The tortoise explodes, liquid shadow flying every which way and leaving her with a clear path to Narauko.

She grins at him. He grins at her, his hands set in the shape of a serpent's head.

A bluff. Snake Shikigami is temporarily destroyed. Is not bluffing.

Her mind halts for a fraction of a second at the contradictory information provided by her eyes, but a second later her confusion is somewhat answered as a moment of time seems to last an eternity.

Narauko's eyes unfailingly meet her own.

"Extension Technique: Snake of Eden."

Time comes to a stop under her wide eyes as she watches the head of a snake emerge from between Narauko's feet, the only change being that this snake now has a pair of antlers crowning its head.

Shikigami is- Is not a Shikigami. Is a Shikigami. ?.

What? She has never, didn't even think it was possible, heard her Eyes of Truth sound so... Confused? What??

However, she has no time to ponder the strange circumstance as the snake closes the distance between them in less time than she can even twitch her muscles, and then the air is stolen from her lungs as it crashes into her.

The world around her is reduced to a blur for only a fraction of a second before she is brought to a sudden stop.

Her back flares with pain as it feels like every single bone breaks at once, and then the back of her head follows suit and slams into the wall behind her and the world turns on its axis.

Her thoughts slow to mud, stars crossing her blurred vision. She barely even recognises it when the pressure holding her disappears and she falls forward.

She doesn't hit the ground however, as a pair of strong, warm arms catch her, and her concussed mind barely recognises a smile before the world fades away into nothing.

///

Narauko

///

Looking down at Kiyohara, I can't keep the smile from my face.

That was just so cool! Her Technique is awesome! Especially once she stopped being overly detail oriented.

I even got to pass on Sukuna's advice to her. Maybe that will give him some second hand karma to even out his no doubt atrocious balance sheet.

I do not know how karma works, or even how real it is in this world.

What I do know is that Black Flashes hurt like a motherfucker. Even using Touki to defend against those blows hardly helped. Well, I guess it did help, else her headbutt might have actually killed me.

I might have survived dying to Inumaki, but my head was in one piece then. I don't know if I can still survive dying without a brain, since that's where Reverse Cursed Energy comes from.

Luckily, I was on the money with my assumption that combining Generous Deer with a Shikigami would invalidate her Technique. 

I'm still not one hundred percent sure what is up with my favourite Shikigami, though I have a suspicion, but I assumed it was different enough that she wouldn't have an understanding of it like she showed with my other Shikigami.

Good think I was right, because there were only so many other cards I could have played.

Well, not necessarily. I can theoretically make a lot of combinations with my Shikigami. Even if each one could only get one hit in, I'd have been fine.

Besides, I still have my boulders in my shadow anyway. Worst case, I just throw her around until she runs out of Cursed Energy.

Shaking those thoughts from my head, I pick Kiyohara up in a princess carry and dispel my active Shikigami, causing the water that half filled the training room to rapidly drain away into nothing.

Then I just walk over to where Dōman is standing, looking at me with an expression I can't quite define.

I think he was impressed by the fight though. I certainly was. It was even more fun than I thought it would be.

I'm really glad she proved my first assumption right, the danger I felt when we first met.

If we'd had this fight back then, she definitely would have kicked my ass.

I'm still confident I would have won of course, because I am The Strongest, but it would have been a lot closer.

I'm still a little bit jealous about the Black Flashes though. I've been hit by them but still haven't experienced one myself, it's not fair. When's my turn?

"Yo!" I greet Dōman once I'm close enough to be in polite speaking distance. "Do you know where Kiyohara's room is? I think it would be rude to just leave her here."

For some reason he starts to laugh.

"I'll show you the way," he says after a moment, though his amusement remains clear to see. "That was an impressive bout."

"Thanks. You wanna fight next?"

"No. I'm good."

Shame.

///

A/N: He~llo! Dear readers!

Black flashes galore. 

I hope you guys like fight scenes, cuz granted, I wasn't really feeling this one too much for the most part, but there are gonna be a lot more to come with the coming tourney.

I should probably skip a few of them, cuz my fight scenes are pretty long and I don't think y'all want 30k words of fighting and like 2k of plot development lol.

Then again, that would be pretty JJK of me lol.

Also, next chap will be the omake prequel :O

Also also, it came up on Spacebattles comments, but I figured I'd put it in a chapter. For all of you wondering about power levels, I have made the decision to boost the fuck out of the heian era, y'know make it a true golden age.

That means that everyone is hella strong this era, and I am telling you now as the author, that no era will have the same sheer quantity of powerhouses than the current one.

To add some perspective, Ise no Tayū, the weakest of Narauko's class of first years, is ranked as Semi-Grade One and is about equal to Nanami Kento, a Grade One of the modern era.

Taira is a little bit below Zen'in Naobito, who is one of the best of the modern era, though he would beat her 9 times out of ten. Yoshiie is currently weaker than Nanami, but he's kinda like pre enlightenment satoru in that he just needs to break past a certain barrier and then he'll be about even with Zen'in Naobito.

Posting 2 chaps has put me back to 5 ahead on patreon, though I do have half the next chap written :>