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The trio was scattered across the floor of the main room, controllers gripped so tightly their knuckles were white. The television screen flashed with thw neon madness of Mario Kart.
"Move, move, move! Out of the way, dattebayo!" Naruto yelled, leaning his entire body violently to the left. "I am the future Hokage of Rainbow Road! You can't stop me!"
"Naruto, you're literally driving into a wall," Mimiko said. "You've been driving into the same wall for a whole lap. It's sad. Even the little digital spectators look embarrassed for you."
"I'm building up momentum!"
"That's not how physics works. Or the game," Nanako chimed in, aggressively tapping her drift button. "And honestly, your making a weird clicking noise every time you get hit by a green shell. Stop doing that with your teeth. It's distracting me from my path of absolute destruction."
"My teeth are fine! What's not fine is this cheating game! Who threw that blue shell?! Mimiko, did you throw that? You have the devious eyes of a blue-shell thrower!"
"I didn't throw it. But I wish I did. I wish I could throw a real one at your forehead."
"I hope I'm not interrupting."
A voice sliced right through the digital sound effects.
"Geto-sama!"
"Yo, Geto-san?! Perfect timing! Look, Nanako is screen-peeking and Mimiko is using dark magic to make me crash. Take a controller. Let's see if your weird curse stuff can handle the raw power of Bowser's Castle."
"Thank you but I don't play things created by monkeys."
"Mario Kart was created by monkeys?" Naruto asked with a gasp.
Geto nodded.
"Wow, this world has really talented monkeys," Naruto muttered as the twins snorted.
"Anyways, the three of you are with me for a mission."
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[ September 9th, 2014 ]
Aogashima Village was unlike anything Naruto had seen. The outer ring of volcanic cliffs rose straight from the sea, with the inner cone of Mt. Maruyama sitting inside the bowl. The village itself had been built on the elevated plateaus along the northern ridges overlooking the crater.
But the closer they got to the village, the destruction became readily apparent.
The first thing Naruto noticed was the handprints.
They were massive depressions, shaped like hands and feet driven deep into the ground with tremendous force. Something had moved through the village. And its path could be traced by the destruction it had left behind. Houses had been violently torn apart, their roofs and upper floors crushed beneath something impossibly heavy. Trees had been snapped like toothpicks at varying heights, leaving splintered trunks scattered along the creature's path.
The worst was what had happened to the people.
The twins made disgusted faces at the horrific sight of the corpses scattered across the trails. There were headless bodies, dismembered limbs, corpses with holes, half-eaten remains, and charcoal-burnt figures frozen in their final moments. The twins looked away after seeing a corpse protecting their dead child. The monk remained indifferent to this massacre. Naruto clenched his hand so tightly that his fingernails drew blood.
"Naruto, can you check the village for any survivors?" Geto asked.
A dozen clones fanned out through the ruins without speaking.
Minutes passed.
One by one, the clones sent back memories of destruction and death. There was no life left in the crater. The overwhelming sight of so many people suffering in their final moments just added to Naruto's burning anger.
"Geto-sama, could this be the work of a special grade curse?"
The monk nodded.
Entire villages being wiped out weren't unheard of in the long history of jujutsu. Ryomen Sukuna's rampages left massive gaps in the historical record as whole communities had simply ceased to exist overnight. But in the modern era, this scale of death was going to attract a lot of attention.
"Why do curses hurt humans?" Naruto asked, his voice shaking in anger.
"They are born from human negative emotions, Naruto," Geto explained calmly. "Therefore, their core nature is inherently malicious and destructive toward mankind. They are a reflection of humanity's own filth."
"But why kill all of these people?!"
"If I had to take a guess, the special grade curse might have a cursed technique that requires it to cruelly eat people," Geto reasoned. "At the moment of a violent death, humans create a great amount of cursed energy. To a spirit, it's a feast."
"Can at least I bury them, Geto-san?" Naruto asked. He picked up a blood-stained sickle from a corpse on the ground.
"Girls, help Naruto with the burial while I check something out."
The twins nodded as they watched Naruto cross his fingers. Fueled by his intense emotions, he easily summoned a hundred clones.
"What can we do to help?" Nanako asked, stepping forward with her phone in hand.
"You two can go back."
"Why would we go back?!"
"So you two don't get hurt," Naruto said, his grip clenching the wooden handle of the sickle so tightly it groaned.
"Yeah, right! We aren't weak like these people," Nanako bragged. "We're sorcerers."
"Yeah. Don't look down on us," Mimiko added, summoning a doll into her arms.
The doll had multiple stitches and a noose around its neck.
Naruto frowned. He wasn't really thinking about the girls' words or their pride; his mind was entirely consumed by the crushing weight of the corpses his clones were dragging back.
"I'm not calling you weak," Naruto muttered, pausing as more bodies were brought back. "It's just that... I... am... scared."
"Hey, what's there to be scared about? Geto-sama is right here with us. We'll be fine."
That seemed to ease some of the boy's anxiety.
"Boss! Look at what we found!" two clones suddenly yelled, breaking the tension. They came dragging a massive iron ship anchor between them.
"Where did you find that?"
"The beach," the clone explained. "I guess some people tried to escape by boat and that got destroyed. The whole dock was burned to ash."
Naruto bit his lip so hard it nearly bled. He wanted to make this curse pay.
"Why did you bring it here?" Nanako asked.
"We are gonna smack that curse with this anchor! He isn't gonna know what hit him. Isn't that right, boss?"
"Dattebayo," the original Naruto said, a furious spark burning in his eyes. The boy also wanted to add items to his chain to make them more useful in combat. Though he didn't envision using a giant ship anchor.
"Kids, I have good news and bad news," Geto announced as he landed gracefully near them.
"What is it, Geto-sama?"
"The good news is that the curse hasn't left this island," Geto said. "The bad news is that it is hiding."
"Let's drop a curtain to draw it out," Naruto suggested grabbing the anchor. It was alot heavier than he thought.
"That is simple to say, but we need a barrier that can cover the entire island," Geto replied. "And special grade curses are smart enough to not be drawn out by a simple curtain. We need bait."
"Let's use Naruto as bait? He is loud."
"Hey!"
"No," Geto chuckled softly. "We need to perform a ritual that can attract the cursed spirit out of hiding. Something that provokes its core nature."
"Oh! In that case, I can boobytrap the entire area for the curse while you do the ritual," Naruto offered, immediately grabbing a rock.
"We are ready to help!" Nanako and Mimiko suggested in unison, stepping up to look over his shoulder.
Geto smiled serenely as he watched Naruto sketching out a rough map on the ground and pointing out chokepoints for his traps. The kids were getting along splendidly, exactly as he had hoped. He turned his gaze back toward the forest.
I hope you can bring out more of what Naruto can truly do, Gashadokuro.