A modern bullet is made principally of four distinct components: the case, usually in brass or copper, contains all the other parts inside of it; the gunpowder, a chemical mixture that converts to an expanding gas when ignited; the primer, the "fuse" of the bullet and the actual projectile.
The bullet has evolved alongside the rifles which eject it, passing from being a small sphere of iron shoved inside a barrel with a stick to being packed inside mags by thirty. Together they had brought war to a new level of gruesome horrors, whoever crossed their path was granted a swift death without even knowing where it came from the majority of the time.
Although it has lost its edge in favor of more precise and destructive weaponry, the bullet has written some of history's bloodiest yet glorious pages and the gun still was the best tool for self-defense that an ordinary citizen could afford to wield.
Mai found an immediate connection the first time she was handed her revolver. As her fingers curled up in its handle and adjusted to the weight of the firearm, the girl was satisfied by it. Quick, almost effortless, but most of all, efficient. Paired with her ability to create anything out of cursed energy, it was the weapon for her. Ideal to swiftly dispose of cursed spirits from the safety of distance, not a single drop of dirty blood shall ever come close to her.
Then how? How did she catch the projectile with her bare hand?
The answer was easy. She was kinda like the opposite of Mechamaru's heavenly restriction, trading cursed energy for superhuman physical capabilities. A skill shunned by their family, and an ability she simply didn't possess. After a brief altercation, both by hands and tongue, Mai sat under the tree's shadow defeated, her big sister disappeared into the endless maze of the woods after she eliminated her from the game. By herself, her knees held close to her chest as she mulled over the fight. It wasn't fair, it wasn't fair at all. Yet, she was the one who lost complete control of her life, the "normal" twin as the clan labeled her. She hated them, and she hated Maki and her arrogance.
Dry leaves crunched not too far from her, Mai looked up to see nothing changed around, she was alone and her revolver was still a few paces away. She put her head back to her knees, even if it was a hostile curse ready to jump her, the gun was just as useless as her hand-to-hand combat skills without ammunition. She heard the thing get closer, strangely enough, Mai felt at peace where she should be terrified, not feeling the usual dread that cursed spirits bring after. She glimpsed through a gap between her legs once again, this time a person was staring inches away from her face.
Mai backed off startled, hitting the hard wood with the back of her head.
"You scared me to death, you idiot!" She shouted at them, glaring at the stranger as she massaged the sore spot. At that moment, dark green eyes gazed into the turquoise eyes of a slightly worried exorcist. Once she recognized the foreigner, Mai broke the eye contact with a certain bashfulness.
"What are you doing here? Have you come to mock me?" The girl said.
Gabriele crouched down to her eye level, the revolver was in his right hand with the middle finger hooked around the trigger guard as he made it swing back and forth. "I was scouting around this area on the teachers' behalf to take care of a small nuisance." He told her a white lie, not wanting panic to spread among the students.
"I heard gunshots from far away, so I flew here to check." The exorcist looked at his surroundings, the first-grade curse wasn't too distant, he had feared for the worst when he heeded the firearm going off.
Mai gazed at him in confusion, in her mind sounded a voice but his lips weren't moving ever so slightly. She found herself bothered by the lack of mobility, not even a trace of life except for those minuscule tugs that you would easily miss if you weren't paying attention. Gabriele snapped his fingers twice, bringing the girl down to earth with him. At that moment, Mai became aware of what she was doing, she had zoned out for who knows how long while she gawked at his mouth. Not only that, but to her horror, he was aware too.
"Everything alright? Can you stand up?" He said as he put a hand over his mouth, even though he wasn't sure why.
The gunslinger blinked at the question as Gabriele stretched out his hand to help her up to her feet. Mai smacked it out of the way in response trying to appear indifferent, not that the foreigner expected any different reaction. "I'm fine, preacher. There's no need for you to worry about anything." She then walked past him, the man's eyes couldn't help but drop on the narrow bruise on her neck peeking out of her lightly worn-out uniform. Maki really went down heavy on that blow.
"You may hate it, but you sure speak like a sorcerer." Mai stopped thereafter, anger flowing directly to her fists, clenched so tight for the knuckles to lose their colors. "How much have you heard?" She asked while still facing the opposite side.
"Enough." He said.
She turned on her heels with a peeved manner and paced back until the two were face to face again. "You can't keep your hands off other people's affairs, can you? Always meddling in things that do not belong to you like the Church you serve." She spat venom, squaring off the taller man before her. "When you are a woman in the Zen'in clan, you're either a perfect being or you're relegated to a life of servitude at the bottom of the hierarchy, and the bar is so unrealistically high that the former is almost unachievable."
"And what does Maki have to do with it?"
"She did this to me!" She took the exorcist by surprise, her frustration escaped altogether with one shout. "If it wasn't for her stubbornness to become a sorcerer, I would be back home living a normal life like I wanted to, instead of fighting monsters not knowing if I'd be alive the next morning." Mai continued on her vent, fighting back the urge to break in front of him, the enemy. Gabriele refrained from commenting, afraid to make the matter worse.
"Run away then." However.
"What?" She scoffed, initially thinking it was an inappropriate joke until he locked eyes with the foreigner. His glance was directly staring at her soul for how intense it was, almost reminiscent of the ones her father reserved for her and Maki.
"It's clear you're being held here against your will. I can arrange a couple of things and give you the normal life you yearn for." He said all of the sudden, it wasn't an easy task to bargain with the Church but, with his status, he could pull off a safe house far from the claws of her family clan. Disappear from their radar for as long as it takes.
"I won't tell anyone, even Maki will stay in the dark. All you have to do is-"
She muttered under her breath, quietly so that the exorcist was taken off guard because he couldn't hear it. A loud smack came soon after, a stinging pain washed over the young man's face as he understood he had poked the bear one too many times. "How can you be so pretentious?! You think you can come into my life and solve everything with a wave of your finger?!" She yelled at him with tears forming at the edges of her eyes, "I'm no pawn for you or anyone else to play with."
"Good." He grabbed her wrist, twisted it, and put her revolver on her palm with resolution. Mai watched the rapid succession of events completely puzzled and immediately looked at the exorcist in front of her for an explanation of some sort. She was met by the most sincere and warmest smile, something she thought he was incapable of doing. "You're stronger than you give yourself credit, Mai, no one survives a year by pure luck in this crusade. Nonetheless, the proposition still stands, so let's keep in touch, shall you reconsider." Gabriele told her as he walked a few steps backward, his vibrant wings starting to materialize behind his frame.
"May God spread your wings to eternal freedom."
He then launched himself into the high sky, graciously gliding through the mighty currents of the cerulean mantle. The exorcist looked back once where he left off, his thoughts immediately went to the girl with dark green hair. People like her, trapped in the middle of this unholy conflict, are the reason that reminds him of what this was it all for.
It was awful of you to test her like that
'Perhaps, at least we can scrap her from the list of suspects. It was a pleasant conversation all in all, I'd be glad if I had another chance to talk to her.' A few moments passed in silence.
You still remember that mantra
'Why would I forget it? I thought it was the coolest thing when I was nine.' the mantra was an old relic of his childhood, in his mind played old memories back when he was learning to fly, despite having little to no control of the essence yet and his wings barely poked out of his shoulders. He would recite it just before jumping off the tallest branches of the trees around the orphanage, let's say it resulted in him eating the dirt countless times, with broken bones every now and then. It gave him the strength to overcome his fear, and he hoped it would help Mai as well.
It sounded lame then, it sounds lame now
'Be quiet.'
Meanwhile, the girl stood there awestruck as the winged man flew out of her sight, images of his smile vividly present on her head, together with a new glint that lit her eyes up. He could have chosen a less awkward way to phrase it, but certainly, his words had unraveled a deep feeling of warmness the gunslinger thought she had lost time ago.
Sleep.
Inumaki held the phone Megumi's demon dog had gently brought close to his ear. He listened to the victim falls under his cursed technique in a matter of seconds, he closed the phone call once he was sure she was now fast asleep. The cursed speech user then patted the head of the shikigami in recognition of its hard work, a quick command and it returned to its owner. With one less opponent to deal with, his team had a clear path ahead to win the group battle.
As he zipped the uniform all the way up again, his mind was still fully committed to the game. Although in a hypothetical advantage, the Kyoto team still had Toudou running loose in the forest judging by the screams that echoed from the distance not long ago. The man was capable of singlehandedly carrying his team to victory, they could not afford to let their guard down now that they were close to the finish line.
An awful stench of death rapidly flooded deep into the nostrils of the teenager, triggering his survival instinct in an alarming manner. Excitement mixed with fear took hold of his body as he swiftly scanned through the area, such an amount of cursed energy, it must be the cursed spirit boss. It simply had to be.
Then he saw it, slowly revealing itself to him from behind its hiding spot. A monstrosity like many he had seen before in his short time as a sorcerer in training, and yet something felt very wrong about it. Its face was frighteningly human-like, with long dirty black hair coming down the side of it, a distorted jaw which in no way could have fitted the extremely long tongue it sported, and pair of glossy eyes that penetrated his being. the viscid aberrancy moved closer to the sorcerer on its hind legs, Inumaki his hand ready on the zipper to unleash his technique on the creature.
"Kelp." He greeted it with caution, the curse responded with a guttural growl and clicks coming from the set of teeth on his scalp. It was abnormally large for a second-grade, instinct told him to turn his back and leave, but ultimately opted to hold it back and wait for reinforcement to arrive.
Its tongue wobbled around as saliva drenched the ground below, an action that reminded the sorcerer of how snakes taste the air while seeking prey. At this point, it wasn't even looking at him anymore, rather strange behavior for something that dives at the first glimpses of food.
He cautiously zipped his collar open, gradually to not alert the oblivious beast. Just as he was about to curse it, something crashed down heavily over the cursed spirit, and chaos soon ensued. The creature shrieked and squirmed, trying to pry himself free of the unwanted burden that Inumaki identified almost instantly by the huge wings on his back.
Gabriele struggled to keep the curse at bay with his entire body weight, he had to act and exorcise it quickly.
The exorcist laid down a palm over the curse's nape with difficulty, the second mouth came close to biting his hand a couple of times. 'Burn to cinder.' He then concentrated much of his divine essence into the palm, pressure built up against the monster's membrane.
'Arcane chant: Exsecutio'
An impressive ball of fire ruptured through the creature's thick throat and burst into a tall pillar of bright flames. Hopping off its back, the exorcist watched the curse contorting violently to the immense pain as its carcass progressively broke down into dark ashes blown away by the wind.
'We got here just in time.' He gave a short check thorough his uniform, still intact despite the close encounter with a curse-fueled firepit. Maybe these uniforms weren't so bad after all.
"Are you okay?" Gabriele asked.
"Salmon."
"Salmon is yes, right?" Inumaki nodded. The foreigner let out a sigh of relief, happy that he managed to destroy the threat before it could hurt somebody. Too bad he had to use a great amount of the essence he had stored to neutralize the first-grade curse in one shot, now he was running on fumes. Not that it mattered anymore, the mission was brought to completion and he could simply walk back to the school facility.
'Better report to Gojou.' He reached for his phone which was safely kept inside the zippered pocket.
Just as he went to write a fast message, the device rang loudly with the teacher's ID flashing on the screen. Gabriele rolled his eyes, convinced the blindfolded idiot was probably waiting for a snack that'll never come, sure he wasn't going to bring it to him if that's what he thinks. He pressed down on the open call option but got a glimpse of the firepit before his thumb could swipe up entirely.
The fire was pretty much alive when it should be extinguished by now.
"Tuna." Inumaki caught his attention by pointing ahead of him. That's when he saw it, all his nightmare scenarios coming to culminate into one hellish being as all the flames pointed towards it.
"?sevlesruoy yb llA .ym, hO"
In the meantime, Megumi exchanged blows with a doped Noritoshi in a narrow corridor of an edifice not too remote from where Inumaki and Gabriele were. Jabs, parries, and hooks happening in rapid succession made the fight so incredibly ferocious, with neither of them pulling back any punches. The heir of the Kamo clan pushed him away with an open palm strike, putting the dispute to a momentarily halt.
"Shikigami users who can fight this well in close combat are precious." Noritoshi commented, "You've improved. I'm happy."
"What is this sense of fellowship you keep throwing out?"
"I'm sympathizing. Someday you'll be one of those supporting the major clans." He responded. Megumi was not yet fully convinced by the bloodbender's sweet-talking, what was he even trying to accomplish here?
"I intend to kill Itadori Yuuji."
"On Principal Gakuganji's orders?"
"No, it's my personal decision. As a member of the Kamo clan, one of the three major clans, I believe that's the right call." Noritoshi said. It wasn't a choice, to begin with, he was the heir of his clan and as such he had to behave like it. For his mother's sake, he'll do anything whatever the cost. "You should be able to understand that, too. You and I are the same."
"No, we're not." Megumi cut him off, he was getting tired of him spouting some scary stuff all of sudden, he should spare those remarks for Maki-san and see how well that goes.
"I no longer have any connection with the Zen'in clan. Besides, I don't believe I'm "right", or better yet, I don't care if I am or not." He openly admitted as he glanced at his hand.
Everyone couldn't help but point him to who the enemy was. He couldn't stand it but he didn't condemn them for it, good and evil are strictly human concepts that don't exist in nature. A lioness can be both the villain by killing a zebra in cold blood and a hero by bringing the game back to its starving cubs. The only thing that changes is how we perceive the story, and morality is purely subjective, cannot and should not be imposed.
After all, every object casts a shadow when put under the light, but all loses its meaning when the light is out.
"I save people according to my own conscience. If you would reject that, then..." Megumi stretched his arm towards his opponent, his cursed energy steadily flowing throughout his body.
"We'll just have to curse each other."
A shikigami smashed through the decorative panels behind Noritoshi who immediately turned around to face a new threat. Just as it was to jump him, the shadow dissolved before his eyes. Confused at first, the Kamo heir soon realized that the shikigami was just a decoy to buy more time.
"This one burns through cursed energy, so I can only use it by itself." Megumi said, his hands tangled in an intricate sign, "I only recently tamed it."
"Max elephant."
A giant pink elephant took shape from the hands' shadows, golden embellishments ornated the shikigami's robust body. It was a big target, Noritoshi knew he had to attack first, but got run over by an immense wall of water before he could even think to do so. The impetus current quickly inundated the entire hallway and dragged the helpless bloodbender against the wall.
After four endless seconds, Noritoshi felt the solid barrier collapse under the sheer water pressure before being thrown out the courtyard beneath.
From above the building, Gabriele and Inumaki had the chance to witness the unusual spectacle of an indoor waterfall flowing out of a building.
"Is someone down there?!" The exorcist asserted while he adjusted his grip around the cursed speech user's torso. The muscles in his arms were pleading for a moment of mercy, even though he wasn't really that heavy. It was already exhausting enough to fly on your own, let alone have to transport a person with you. They gonna have to work this out when this will be all over.
"Tuna mayo!" Inumaki pointed down to the roof of the edifice.
"You want to land there?! He is right behind us!" he argued, but ultimately decided to comply, his arms couldn't bear the weight anymore. After not the smoothest of landings, their attention was caught on a bird-like creature gaining altitude to then nosedive out of their gazes. "Isn't that one of Fushiguro's shadow puppets?"
"Salmon." Inumaki shortly replied as he jumped down on top of the walls that surrounded the place, with the exorcist following him behind. Now sprinting over the structure's dark blue tiles, the two had a better view of the courtyard below them and with that, they recognized the presence of a familiar black spiked-haired teenager.
Then, out of nowhere, a gargantuan mass of woods climbed over the same walls they were running on, drastically growing at an insane pace and threatening to sweep whoever was unfortunate enough to get in its way.
Megumi and Noritoshi instantly looked over their heads, with the former noticing the two people above as a simple command reached his ears.
"Run away."