Chapter Two: Cages of Our Own Making

Kento Nanami spun in a tight circle, his cloth-wrapped blade carving an orbit around him as he struck at the bird-adjacent abominations with swift and brutal efficiency. Six waxy heads were parted from pale necks, drawing an impressed whistle from Sakura Kyouko as she darted towards another group, flame gathering along the tip of her spear.

All too quickly, though, Nanami noticed a problem. The six bird creatures that had been decapitated were undeterred by their injuries. Indeed, no blood or bodily fluid of any sort had been spilt, and despite their lack of heads, the Curse-like beasts lurched towards Nanami. Their necks flailed wildly like fleshy whips even as the corrupted music pulsing from their speakers echoed ever louder.

"Headshots don't work!" Nanami barked to Kyouko, even as a wave of nausea rolled over him. He was off-balance for only a fraction of a second, and though the demonic chickens scuttled forward and tried to capitalise on this opening, the Jujutsu Sorcerer was faster. Cursed energy flared as he leapt up and backwards, feet briefly pressing against the rainbow-brick walls before he came back down, his weapon falling like the blade of a guillotine.

This time, he struck only one creature, cleaving it in twain from throat to abdomen. The abomination quivered, crab-like legs scrabbling against the brick floor as the halves of the monster's body toppled to either side. Within, Nanami absently noted, were neither flesh nor blood, but twisted metal wires and plastic. The cacophonous chorus filling the room lessened ever so slightly as the sounds coming from that particular creature ceased, taking a small measure of nausea with it.

The five remaining headless Curse-beings wobbled back and forth around their cohort's corpse. The music coming from their speakers swelled with mournful strings as they bobbled around in a strange parade, paying no attention to the man who'd dealt the mortal blow.

The sound of metal piercing flesh drew Nanami's attention from the bizarre little ceremony to see his unusual ally making short work of her share of the creatures, each thrust of her spear tearing wide holes in the creatures' abdomens. Even in the few circumstances where her attacks landed only glancing blows, the sheath of flame surrounding her weapon would catch the monsters alight, torching them to ash with unnatural swiftness.

Nanami let out a huff, half mollified and half annoyed, then turned back to his own targets. Sakura Kyokou clearly had her half of the battle well in hand; now he just needed to mop up the stragglers of his half. He closed his eyes briefly, then opened them wide with wild intensity.

Thirteen segmented lines were drawn vertically across thirteen corpulent abdomens, visible to his eyes only.

The ex-salaryman allowed his cursed energy to blaze brightly, propelling him forth with gale swiftness. His sheathed blade was a blur as he darted among the monsters, striking at a precise point along the lines created by his cursed technique. First he carved apart the five he'd already wounded, then he passed between eight others, turning as he struck. He cut them down with fluid, easy grace; not a single foot was out of step and not a single movement was wasted.

By the time he came to a halt, Kyouko had rammed her spear through the last monster, and once her flame consumed its body, the room was mercifully silent. Judging from the way his nausea had disappeared in tandem with the music emanating from the creatures, Nanami absently surmised that their music had been a Cursed Technique of some sort.

As Kyouko strolled over to him shaking ash off the tip of her spear, the Sorcerer refocused on the situation at hand. The redhead twirled her spear with a flourish before casually resting it on her shoulder, her free hand disappearing into a side pocket and emerging with a box of Pocky. As the Magical Girl crunched down on one of the cookie sticks, her gaze swept the aftermath of Nanami's battle and she remarked, "Not bad—", before adding with a fanged smirk, "—for an old guy."

The Jujutsu Sorcerer passed a hand over the cloth encircling his blade, as though brushing away imaginary dirt, and replied, "You're not bad yourself...for a cocky brat." He let his blade fall to his side and adjusted his goggle-like glasses.

Kyouko barked a laugh, and Nanami gave the barest hint of a smile. All too quickly, both of their moods sobered as a wooden door appeared in the center of the garish room's far wall. From behind it, Nanami could very clearly sense the Curse he was pursuing, as well as the strange, not-quite-Curse signature that he could only assume was the "Witch" Kyouko had mentioned.

Sorcerer and Magical Girl exchanged a wordless glance, and then nodded to one another. All that remained now was to cut down their respective prey.

-x-x-x-

The final room was tall and wide, a bell-shaped brick tower devoid of windows, doors or any ornamentation. Indeed, the only thing breaking up the monotonous brick pattern was a small dip in the floor at the center of the room. It was a very shallow basin, barely even an incline at all, and in that space crouched the Curse.

It was quadrupedal and impossibly thin, with rail thin forelegs ending in grubby human hands, and unguligrade rear legs that ended in cloven horse hooves. Its pale, emaciated torso terminated in a wide, triangular head not dissimilar to that of a mantis, and a pair of bulbous eyes resembling those of a chameleon. A whip-thin tail curled and uncurled behind it, covered in gooseflesh.

As Kyoko and Nanami looked on, a four-forked tongue slipped out of its beaked mouth and cleaned its eyeballs, each eye fixed independently on the individual combatants.

Of the Witch, though, there was no sign. Or, rather, it would be more accurate to say that the Witch's energy was entirely diffused throughout the room, making it impossible to tell just where it was.

Kyouko let out a low whistle. "That's a Curse, huh? Damn, that thing's ugly."

As though in response, the spindly mass of negativity opened its maw wide and let out a warbling screech. Even as it did so, it began to back away from the duo, its skin visibly growing clammy as it moved.

"Ugly or otherwise," Nanami said, loosening his tie and cracking his neck, "this Curse is an annoying one. It always seems to stay just out of reach, no matter how fast I go." He adjusted his glasses before shifting his feet into an active stance. "I'm almost certain that it's using a Cursed Technique."

"Well," Kyouko said with a grin, spinning her spear, "let's see if it can play keep-away from two people at once, eh Old Guy?"

Nanami gave a thin smile. "You read my mind, Brat."

The fiery Magical Girl blew a raspberry at him before exploding into motion, almost literally. A mantle of flame followed in her wake as she launched herself at the vaguely reptilian Curse, descending upon it like an avenging angel. Simultaneously, Nanami blurred into motion, azure cursed energy wreathing his form as he circled to the beast's back at a dead sprint.

Each of the Curse's eyes swiveled independently to track both assailants. Whatever limited intelligence it had allowed it to determine that Kyouko would reach it first, and the eye fixed on her flashed. Just as her spear's tip was about to pierce its skull, it managed to evade by the skin of its teeth—no, that wasn't right. From the point of view of an observer, Nanami could see what had actually happened.

The Curse hadn't dodged at all. Instead, the space between Kyouko and it had stretched an infinitesimal amount, just enough that the thrust fell short of its mark. The brief instant of surprise that Kyouko experienced when her weapon failed to bite flesh was all the time the Curse needed to spring backwards, landing upside down on the wall and giving another hiss.

That, of course, was the moment that the Witch chose to wake up.

The power that had been suffusing the entire room abruptly congregated in a single point, and in the next instant erupted. Twisted tines of steel burst from brick, tearing through pale flesh like paper and splattering dark crimson across the ground.

The Curse let out a rattling gasp as wire-thin fangs set in a gaping maw of fired clay closed around its body, very nearly swallowing it whole in one bite.

The Witch that emerged from the wall was large, much larger than the Curse that it was devouring. Its shape was vaguely corvine, a bloated raven with outstretched wings of crumbling brick and mortar quite literally ripped from the wall it had been hiding in. In place of its head, though, there was nothing but that maw, ringed in thin pillars of metal like some kind of twisted birdcage. In place of feet, it balanced precariously on a pair of too-small metal hooks, not unlike ones one might hang a hat or coat on.

With a final shriek, the Curse was torn asunder by the cage-maw, scraps of flesh tumbling into the Witch's gullet even as Nanami felt the brick bird's already impressive not-quite-cursed energy swell.

"Shit," he muttered for the second time that day, and in the very next moment, he and Kyouko were moving. Despite its size, the Witch was fast, going from perfectly still to diving directly at them in less than a second. It was a damn good thing that Kyouko was as skilled as she was, or he suspected her head would've been taken off by the damn thing's wing.

As it passed between them with a hair's breadth of clearance, both combatants tensed in preparation for it to turn and strike at them, but to their naked shock, the Witch continued its dive unabated, slamming into the brick of the floor and exploding in a shower of clay and mortar. As the dust settled, alarm bells blared at the back of Nanami's neck and he threw himself forward in a roll, and not a moment too soon.

The Witch had erupted from the wall directly to his right, ripping the bricks from the walls and forming them into a new body even as it swooped for his head. Nanami glanced between the twin holes in the wall and the identical brick of the floor and immediately drew an unpleasant conclusion.

A conclusion that would quickly be proven correct, as once again the Witch shattered itself, this time against the far wall, this time reemerging from the floor and tearing a massive hole in it as the monster spread its wings heavensward in triumph.

Despite the floor literally having been torn from out under both combatants, though, the Witch's celebrations were quickly proven premature. Both Nanami and Kyouko had found their own means of avoiding a plunge into the abyss below, the former merely reinforcing his fingers and boot-toes with cursed energy and plunging them into what wall remained. The latter, though…

Kyouko had once more impressed Nanami, drawing up a complex barrier of chain-like strands of cursed energy, weaving them between the holes in the wall like a spider's web. Atop one such chain she perched like a tightrope walker, brandished spear pointed low and ablaze with a vicious flame.

The crimson Magical Girl bared her teeth in a manic expression that barely qualified as a smile, and lunged. Her spear bit deep into the Witch's fired clay breast, causing it to shriek. The shriek was not one of pain but one of affronted anger, as Kyouko would come to realise, quickly and painfully. A wingbeat of brick wings flung the redhead into the wall with a painful sounding crunch, causing Nanami's eyes to narrow and his lips to pull into a snarl. A snarl that only widened as the brick bird perched itself where Kyouko had been standing and let out a croaking laugh.

Kento Nanami prided himself on his ability to be rational, to give an unbiased and clear accounting of things and be unshaken in the face of the things Curses could and would do to people. However…

At his core, Nanami was not nearly so unbiased as he tried to force himself to be, and one of his biggest buttons had been pressed by this Witch.

Skilled warrior or not, Kyouko was yet a child in his eyes. And as an adult, safeguarding the livelihood of a child was his paramount duty.

Cold fire surged in his veins as he calmly placed his blade's handle between his teeth, meticulously took off his tie, and wrapped it around his right hand. His blade fell into his left as his cursed energy exploded from him like the Hoover Dam bursting. Two whole weeks of being on the clock almost non-stop fueled his Overtime pact to almost seven times its usual capacity, and then he vanished.

"Ratio Technique," he snarled, fist burning with enough cursed energy to level a small house, "Collapse!"

Kento Nanami's fist connected with the metal of the Witch's fangs like the wrath of an angry god, forcing them deep into the monster's body ablaze with his cursed energy. For a long moment, there was silence. And then?

And then, the air itself trembled.

From each metallic fang struck by Nanami's Extended Cursed Technique, the energy propagated further, causing the Witch to detonate, shards of clay and mortar raining down in all directions as a shockwave of cold azure power ripped the Witch apart.

As the shattered remnants of brick fell away, Nanami saw a small, heavily battered birdcage plummet out of the debris towards the abyss, pulsing with the Witch's energy, drastically reduced though it was. Before his feet could even push off of the chains to pursue what was no doubt the creature's core, there was a rattling of chains, and Kyouko's spear snaked out from where she'd been thrown and pierced the cage through cleanly, flame quickly engulfing it.

Nanami's eyes snapped over to where the Magical Girl now stood, a chain-barrier having snapped into place beneath her feet. Kyouko's spear, which was apparently an extendible segmented staff as well, quickly retracted to its original length, bringing the remnants of the Witch to her. Of far more note, at least to Nanami, was the arm not holding the spear, which was hanging limply by her side, battered and snapped cleanly along the forearm.

Kyouko, though, didn't seem terribly pained by it, save for an annoyed expression on her face, and the reason why was made clear almost immediately. A flare of what could only be positive energy ran along her arm, the mangled limb snapping back into place with a disgusting crack.

Mentally, Nanami raised his estimate of Kyouko's proficiency by a large margin. Her combat skills and tactical acumen were impressive enough on their own, but add in the capability to Reverse cursed energy and use it to heal?

Once more, the Sorcerer had to ask himself: Just what had this girl been through to make her so skilled at such a young age?!

Nanami snapped out of his thoughts as he felt the Domain—Labyrinth, whatever, collapsing around him. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Kyouko pull a small, black object from the Witch's rapidly dissolving remains and press it to the gemstone at her collarbone, not-quite-cursed energy flaring from both objects briefly before the Magical Girl secreted the object away on her person.

Yet another thing to add to his list of questions for her, it would seem. As the false reality peeled away and Nanami stepped from ethereal chains to damp concrete, he looked over at her. "Sakura Kyouko. We have things to discuss, I do believe."

Kyouko, now dressed in a worn grey hoodie, a pair of equally worn denim shorts, and a pair of extremely worn boots, looked up at him challengingly. Tellingly, though, her spear was nowhere in sight. "What's in it for me, Old Guy?"

The Jujutsu Sorcerer reached up and adjusted his tinted glasses, before replying, "In the short term? A decent meal, on me." He didn't miss how her eyes lit up at his words. "In the long term?"

Nanami gave a very slight smile.

"A job offer."

-x-x-x-x-x-

Data Files

Witch:

Tierra, the Caged Bird Witch. Her nature is one of self-inflicted imprisonment, lashing out at the cage made of her own body until nothing is left but rubble and regret.

Familiars:

Eunice, who lights the midnight candles. He flits about in swarms, hoping to save his mistress from her fear of the dark, only to end up enraging her due to her hatred of the light he spews.

Amadeus, who plays the lullaby. He lays at rest in his mistress' antechamber, waiting for intruders that might harm her. When they arrive, he and his kin play a mournful tune, both to drive out the invaders and to lull his mistress back asleep. After all, while she sleeps, she cannot harm herself.

Curse:

The Fear of Being Chased.

Semi-Grade 1, takes the form of an emaciated quadruped with chameleon-like eyes and a many-forked tongue.

Its Cursed Technique, Oni-gokko, allows it to warp space so that it is always just out of reach of a designated pursuer that it can see. This does not protect it from the actions of anybody else, but it is canny enough to change designated targets with extreme rapidity. Its eyeballs also aid in making sure it has precious few blind spots.