6 Frightening/Heat
Naoya merrily hummed as he leisurely made his way through the white corridors of the underground.
'Look at the time.' Naoya looked at a wrist watch that wasn't there. 'Lets hope she isn't dead.'
As soon as he arrived in front of the large double doors, he imbued his hands with cursed energy and pushed them open with a big smile on his face.
"Sist-" His sentence was interrupted by a presence so dark and twisted that his insides began to churn. His body temperature began to rise as his heart began palpitating.
'Special grade?' He thought, eyes shifty.
His eyes scanned the empty, bloodsoaked room until they met the figure of a small girl. In tattered clothes and covered in blood, she laid down in the middle of the pit which hundreds upon hundreds of cursed spirits used to inhabit.
Through her disheveled black hair, her gaze met Naoya's. He stood there, unmoving for a while as he held eye contact.
"I was waiting." She said, startling and making him jump.
'What the hell happened here?' He thought, eyes rapidly shifting looking for an explanation to the scene. Unfortunately, they found none.
Naoya cleared his throat.
"If you were done, you could've opened the door yourself." He said.
She remained quiet, letting her brother's shifty voice fully echo through the room before speaking.
"I can't do that without burning them to a crisp. I know how much you people value your treasures." She said.
The cursed doors required cursed energy to open. Unless someone with abnormal strength forced them open, they would stay closed until supplied with cursed energy. Meaning that Naoko couldn't use the mechanism without burning it to the ground.
Naoko slowly got up from the floor, keeping her eyes on Naoya throughout the whole process. Then, she coated her feet in flames and amplified them to propulse herself towards the exit.
In a second, the 20 or so meter gap between the center of the pit to the doors had been effortlessly cleared.
"See you later." She said while simply walking past a still frozen Naoya.
When she was finally gone and around a corner, Naoya could finally take a deep breath.
'What the fuck was that? Who does she think she is to talk to me like that?' He thought while clicking his tongue. 'But that speed, it's nothing special. She still stands no chance against me.'
After a while of staring at the pit with a weird expression on his face, he too walked away after closing the doors.
'Scary brat.' He thought.
The feeling Naoya had towards Naoko wasn't anything new. In fact, it wasn't the first time he had experienced such intense hatred for someone. Though, he could only hope that his feeling was wrong.
Meanwhile, Naoko was dealing with a difficult problem of her own.
'Who do I need to talk to about fire-proof clothes? What would happen if I covered my whole body in cursed energy? Would all my clothes burn off? Damn, being a woman is hard.' Naoko thought as she made her way back towards the Hei training grounds.
*
2 years later.
"Alright, you can start now!" Ranta yelled from across the training hall, signaling to Naoko it was time to begin her training.
While her fire doesn't burn her own body, that distinction stops at her clothes. Unfortunately, finding a material which could be used to create items of clothing impervious to her flames was proving difficult. Cursed objects or materials would not work, because if they have any amount of cursed energy within them, Naoko would just burn them like with everything else. Finding a normal material that could withstand her flames was a downright herculean task, as her flames were hot enough to burn through virtually anything.
This, unfortunately, left her in a precarious situation. A problem she couldn't solve without some creativity.
Lacking that creativity, she decided to buy as many clothes made of Aramid, the stuff firefighter suits are made out of, and just replace them when they burn.
'Let's see, these burn at 500°C so I'll burn through one in about… fuck.' She thought, remembering her flames had passed that threshold as soon as they manifested. 'Should've done research.'
"Ranta!" She yelled out. "I'll have to practice by myself, these won't hold."
She held up one of the clothes and released cursed energy, instantaneously combusting it and turning it into ashes.
Ranta sighed as he approached.
"Sure, just make sure not to burn anything down. Man, and I wanted to see this fireproof flooring in action." He sighed.
"They'll melt too."
He sighed again.
"I thought you could control the heat of your flames by now." He said.
"I can, that range of control extends from 1000°C to 10000°C. Anything more or less is by chance."
"Isn't the surface temperature of the sun somewhere between those values."
Naoko simply shrugged.
"I guess. Anything higher than 2000 hurts really bad though, while anything higher than 5000 is debilitating."
Ranta whistled.
"Even if my technique isn't as strong as Naoya's, I wouldn't trade it for your cursed energy. It sounds like a pain." He said. "Literally."
"Don't worry, as long as your opponent isn't a monster, they won't break through."
Ranta shifted his eyes downwards upon hearing those words of consolidation. He felt like he didn't have a place amongst the Hei, his cursed technique, despite being good for offering support, wasn't very powerful as it only allowed him to stop an enemies movements by looking at them. The downside was, that if they broke through, his eyes would suffer major strain and he'd go partially blind, needing a reverse cursed energy user to heal his injuries.
He paled in comparison to Naoya, someone with an extremely powerful cursed technique, or someone like Naoko, who kept getting stronger day by day since she was three years old. Her incredible growth rate, impeccable control over cursed energy and special cursed energy made the fact she was lacking a cursed technique completely irrelevant. At least in Naobito's eyes as he easily accepted her and did anything she'd ask.
Still, Ranta hadn't seen or even heard of cursed energy with special properties before, so he thought Naoko's flames must've been an innate technique she wasn't aware she was using.
That hypothesis was, however, wrong. Special attributes did exist and Naoko was certainly not the only one in possession of one.
"Well then, I'll be on my way. Be careful with the training hall." Ranta said as he took his leave, giving Naoko the privacy she needed to practice.
With him gone, Naoko let out a sharp exhale. Instantly the temperature of the room shot up dramatically. A deep breath and the temperature returned to normal.
Finally, she coalesced all the curse energy she could muster into her upper half and released it all at once.
The flames only being 1000°C, the exercise was a mere warmup before the heat really started to crank up. Naoko had gotten used to her default cursed energy temperature of 1000° C. She wasn't sure what it was, maybe her nerves were so damaged that she didn't feel it anymore, or the pain was there and her brain chose to ignore it. Either way, it was the only temperature she could use for extended periods of time without being in a world of pain. It was also the only temperature she could properly control as anything that involved pain would throw her emotions in disarray, creating volatility.
Slowly increasing the temperatures, she tried keeping the shroud of flames tightly around her body to improve her cursed energy manipulation. However, when the temperature reached 2500°C, the flames started to slightly dance around free of Naoko's will.
At 3000°C, the scorching pain was back.
4000°C, more pain.
5000°C, she grit her teeth as hard as she could to control the spread of the flames, preventing them from running amuck in the training hall.
At 6000°C, she started losing control as the tame flames turned into a blazing inferno, with Naoko at the center.
It felt like being burned alive at the stake, but instead of a stake, the executioner used magma straight from the earth's core. Yet, no matter how much she suffered and squirmed, her flames always refused to kill her. The pain, too, refused to kill her. It was like standing on the surface of the sun, but instead of being instantly incinerated, you were left there to burn for all eternity. To Naoko, it was the closest thing to hell.
At the 8000°C mark, she passed out, her flames snuffed out along with her consciousness.
'Nope, can't pass out.' She thought, simply refusing to go to sleep in the middle of the training hall with her kimono completely incinerated. 'I'll get my hands on those fireproof clothes if it's the last thing I do.'
And so continued her daily exposure training.
*
2 years later.
"Do I have to?" Naoko asked.
"As the leader of the-" Naoya replied only to be interrupted.
"As the leader of the Hei, I deem this mission necessary for your training." She mocked.
"I was going to send Ranta and Jinchi with you, but I changed my mind. I'm coming with you."
"What? I don't trust you enough to watch my paint dry, I definitely don't trust you'll help me."
'Who taught her to talk like this? I bet it's those useless women again. Instead of focusing on sorcery, they should just fall in line. Any woman who cannot walk three steps behind a man deserves to be stabbed in the back.' He thought.
"Well, too bad, put a suit on. This one's at a fancy place."
