5 Curses/Pain
"Ow ow stop!" Naoko yelped.
"You're strong, but you need to get stronger if you want to beat me." Maki said as she held Naoko in a tight chokehold.
"It's not my fault you're a monster." Naoko protested while wincing.
"You can say that again." Mai said while leaning against the wall of the gymnasium.
Maki only grinned in reply while releasing her from the choke.
"So, who wants to go again?" She asked.
"Leave me out of it please. I'm no fighter." Mai said.
"We can see that."
"Pft!"
Naoko tried surpassing a laugh, to no avail.
Mai frowned and looked ready to pounce on both girls at the same time. Though she awakened a cursed technique, she had no desire to become a sorcerer.
"Say, Naoko." Maki muttered, ignoring her sister's death glare.
"Hm?" Naoko turned around to look at her.
"Try using your cursed energy while fighting. Just this once."
Naoko frowned at the request.
"You know I can't." She shrugged. "You can't protect against the fire even if you do take the cursed energy."
Maki's face showed obvious signs of disappointment.
To prove a point, Naoko snapped her fingers and summoned her flames. They danced around her arm in neat spiraling patterns, with her palm as the center.
She then clenched her fist and enclosed the fire within it, snuffing every flame out.
"That's always gonna be cool, no matter how many times I see it." Maki said, engrossed in the pretty flames.
"It gets old quick."
Naoko flashed a sad smile while playing with her cursed energy.
'I wish I could share her enthusiasm. But with the amount of pain these flames have caused me, how could I?'
Over the past 12 years, Naoko had done nothing else besides train her mind, body and cursed energy control just to be able to handle her own cursed energy. A whole twelve years spent with the Hei undergoing training so brutal she couldn't even begin to comprehend the horrors that awaited her.
Before joining the Hei, the Zenin family's elite squad composed of members possessing powerful cursed techniques, she was completely clueless about any and all things to do with sorcerers. Curses themselves included.
So, the first time she was faced with one went horribly.
*
"Hey Ranta. Where are we?" An eight year old Naoko asked while looking around the forest surrounding the Zenin estate.
"I'm sorry Naoko, I really can't tell you." Ranta coldly said, doing away with his usual cheerful and naive personality.
'Naoya is an asswipe. You tell him his cursed energy output is too low and he sends you to a dark forest. What a nice older brother.' She thought.
"Here we are." Ranta said.
"Here?" Naoko looked around, it seemed like an ordinary part of the forest.
"I'm really sorry, but I have to go. This is all for your training, remember that." Ranta hurriedly said.
"Training? What is?" She asked but Ranta was already a few hundred feet away. "Hey! Stop running. What the hell?"
Looking around again, she saw nothing out of the ordinary. But, the forest looked nice, with its trees sporting bright red leaves in preparation for winter.
She took a deep breath of the crisp forest air.
'Ah, this is nice.' She thought while getting on her back and making snow angels in the fallen leaves. 'Wait, what about the training?'
Just then, a cold shiver ran down Naoko's spine. It felt like she was being watched, but a lot more sinister.
She shot up from the ground and scanned her surroundings, her eyes eventually landing on a grotesque and misshapen thing the size of a basketball near the base of a tree.
'The fuck's this?' She approached the round being with eyes all over its body. 'One of them curses. How vile.'
She simply snapped her fingers in the direction of the curse and after some delay, its cursed energy ignited, and since curses are made of cursed energy, the whole thing started burning to a crisp until it completely vanished.
"That was easy. That should've been a grade 4 or something, from what I've heard. Was that it though?"
It was not.
A guttural yell echoed through the forest causing Naoko to spin her body around to face the source of the sound.
She couldn't see it, but she could hear its heavy footsteps rapidly stepping on the crunchy autumn leaves.
The footsteps got closer and closer until eventually, the two meter tall being was standing a few meters away from a frozen Naoko.
The misshapen creature's mere presence was enough to make her feel like her legs were made of lead.
'A grade one? No, semi special grade? Fuck I can't tell, this is the second curse I've ever gone against. Damn you Naoya.'
Naoko kept her eyes firmly on the anthropomorphic creature in front of her. It looked vaguely human but… too uncanny. Its large head was perfectly round while the rest of its body was skin and bone with the end of its fingers being sharp talons.
'Not only does it look hideous, but its cursed energy makes me want to spill my guts out.'
Naoko only blinked for a split second. That's all the creature needed to disappear from her sights and reappear behind her, its claws aiming for her head.
Sensing the attack coming, she ducked under the creature's horizontal swipe and dashed away.
'Combust.'
She snapped her fingers at the creature and a small particle of cursed energy shot out towards it, igniting its cursed spirit upon contact.
However, unlike the grade four cursed spirit, this one only burned for a split second before its cursed energy overwhelmed the fire and snuffed it out.
'Combust.'
A split second was all Naoko needed. She condensed a large amount of cursed energy and sent it to the soles of her feet. Cursed energy doesn't like being condensed into such small areas, so it was itching to burst. Naoko tensed her thighs and with a thought, she released all the built up pressure, coating her feet in flames and sending her barreling towards the stunned opponent.
The curse didn't even have time to react as the small fire coated child flew towards it at a speed it couldn't track.
Leveraging her momentum as a weapon, she lined up her elbow and infused it with her flaming cursed energy.
The elbow pierced the curse's abdomen and ignited its cursed energy again. Unfortunately, the curse's body did little to kill Naoko's momentum, sending them both flying a couple hundred meters before harshly crashing back to the forest floor.
'Damn it.'
Naoko jumped backwards and observed the half charred corpse laying down on the ground.
'Shouldn't it be disappe-'
A sharp talon-like finger coming from her flank interrupted her thoughts. She leaned backwards just in time to avoid getting her brain pierced, but her nose bridge received a deep cut.
Regaining her footing, she snapped her head in the direction of the attack only to notice a dismembered hand peeking out of the dirt.
"What the fuck?" She said as she looked at the spirit's corpse. Two of its hands were missing.
"Shi-"
Unlike last time, the attack came from her blindspot and pierced through her stomach, rupturing a few organs on its way.
After completing its purpose, the hand attempted to retract out of her and back into the ground, but Naoko wouldn't take it lying down. She grabbed the arm with both her hands while wearing a sinister smile on her face.
"COMBUST BITCH!"
She manipulated a massive amount of cursed energy and released it through her hands, igniting them and the cursed arm. The flames wouldn't burn her, but they would burn her enemies. The hand twisted and squirmed, anything to get away from the pain, but with her strength enhanced by cursed energy, it had no chance of escaping from Naoko.
The arm burned to a crisp and then to ash. But it didn't stop there. The fire followed the cursed energy linking the arm to the main body as well as all the other scattered body parts and swiftly incinerated them. Marking the end of the fight.
Warm blood flowed from her nose down to her mouth, another wound that would leave an ugly scar.
"Haaaaa." Naoko sighed as she crouched down. "If only I didn't have this hole in my stomach."
Then it all faded to black. Thankfully, Ranta was still observing her and noticed that she had passed out, managing to deliver her to the infirmary before she died of blood loss.
*
Two years later
"You're shitting me right?" Naoko asked.
Naoya only smirked.
"As the leader of the Hei, I deem this exercise necessary for your training." He said.
"It's a pit. Filled with grade 2 cursed spirits."
"Yes?"
"I am 10 years old."
"The disciplinary pit does not discriminate."
"Someone should discipline you." She muttered.
"Alright, since you're so eager."
Naoya activated his projection technique, the same as his father's, and carried Naoko all the way to two ominous metal plated doors in a pure white hallway somewhere underground. The whole journey only lasted a minute or so.
Naoya imbued his arms with cursed energy and pushed open the doors. He then picked up a frozen Naoko and threw her in. Like a brother would.
"Have fun!" He said while brushing his hands off. "I'll come get you after 30 minutes, stay alive until then."
The projection technique's freeze timer ran out and Naoko was able to move again. Now, she found herself in a mosh pit composed entirely of bloodthirsty grade 2 cursed spirits.
The oversized curses loomed over Naoko and produced a slew of groaning sounds.
Then, as one they all pounced on her.
A snapping sound was the last thing the first few curses ever heard before being burned out of existence.
Snap. Snap. Snap.
Curse after curse ignited, shrieking sounds overran the pit.
Snap.
Naoko's powers were simple. Her cursed energy had the properties of fire, that is to say, her cursed energy was perpetually on fire. A byproduct of this special trait is that the flames she produced would not only burn people and objects, but cursed energy itself.
Thus, whenever cursed energy exits her body, it assumes the properties of flames. These flames do not burn her, however she feels the pain of being burnt. This pain takes the shape of a double edged sword as one one hand, she feels as though she's constantly burning whenever her cursed energy is manifested, but it is that very pain and the negative emotions associated with that pain that increases the effectiveness of her flames.
One technique she developed as a result of experimentation is [Combust]. It takes advantage of the property that her cursed energy can burn other people's cursed energy by shaping a small sphere of flames and releasing it at a target with the snap of her fingers. The projectile travels nearly instantaneously, but the ignition process can take up to two seconds. The sphere is invisible to the human eye, so unless the opponent knows it is coming or somehow senses the trace amounts of cursed energy, it is a sure hit. Of course, the sphere only holds a small amount of flaming energy, so if the opponent overwhelms it with their own cursed energy, the flames can be snuffed out.
Alternatively, by coming into direct contact with an opponent, Naoko can supply an opponent with a massive and constant amount of cursed energy, effectively ensuring her opponent's incineration.
She can also normally infuse her body with flaming cursed energy like any other sorcerer would, with the added benefit that her kicks and punches burn opponents.
Snap.
Nearly twenty grade 2 curses were vaporized in a matter of seconds. The majority of the survivors followed their primal instincts and attempted to run away from the madwoman after seeing curses much stronger than them die at her feet.
Of course, there were outliers.
A large cursed spirit positioned behind Naoko was getting ready to attack while his prey was too busy swinging her arm around like the director of an orchestra.
Ready to attack, it thought now was the best time to do so.
Sensing the beast behind her before it even thought to attack, she slightly turned her head and gave the creature a death stare before disappearing from its sights and reappearing on top of its head, legs fully imbued with flaming cursed energy.
"Burn."
Placing one leg forward, she amplified her cursed energy and released it all at once as a concentrated burst of flames from her foot to swiftly burrow a beach ball sized hole through the curse's head.
The spirit had no time to even lament its death.
'IT HURRRTS!' She inwardly yelled.
Manipulating her cursed energy to amplify the flames below her feet, she effectively used them as mini jet engines to propel herself around the room. Of course, the pain from being burned by a jet engine accompanied the skill.
She would land on a cursed spirit and burrow a hole through its head, then before that very same cursed spirit could fall to the ground, she'd snap her fingers three more times, killing three other spirits.
After two minutes, the room, Naoko and her clothes were dyed in a dark shade of red. Her hakama pants were burned off up to the shins by her own flames while her kimono was burned up to the elbows.
'I need fireproof clothes.' She thought, plopping down on the floor with her hands supporting her weight behind her. 'Am I actually stuck in here for 28 more minutes?'
She remained stuck in there for a full hour.
