Chapter Text
I fiddled with my Full-Armor Gundam, trying to get it to stand upright on the table. The HG Thunderbolt kits were pretty great, considering their age, but the Full Armor just had too many sub-arms and shields to stand up without the help of a special base. In fact, this kit did come with its own base – an oddity, among HGs – but for my needs, I’d been forced to leave it behind in my room. I could have used my cursed technique to make it stand up on its own, but that felt like cheating. The beauty of a model was in the way its lack of movement suggested an infinite range of potential motions.
“Are you paying attention, Kamo?” Maki snapped.
I looked up. All six of us had been crammed into a tiny little room on the edge of the grounds for the Goodwill Event. It probably would have been fine normally, but Panda alone took up twice the normal space. Itadori and Fushiguro looked at me in concern; I wasn’t normally very airheaded, but I was stressed out and I tended to fiddle when stressed.
“Sorry,” I said. “I’m listening. And don’t call me Kamo.”
I gave in and used my technique to animate the model kit. Life surged through its plastic joints. It settled on the table, knees bending slightly under its own weight. Strictly unnecessary, since my cursed energy was doing the actual animating, but a little verisimilitude never hurt anyone. The sub-arms rotated pleasingly, as if testing out their range of motion.
It was a pretty nice day out, for September. Chilly, but I liked it when it ran a little cold. The sky was clear, too. In just a few hours, it would be covered in a barrier. On the plus side, no one was supposed to die today, unless I somehow screwed things up.
“Itadori won’t lose in a fight without cursed energy,” Fushiguro said. “And Matsuno is best at a distance.”
“He can handle Todo, then,” Maki said. “And Matsuno can deal with the broom girl, to keep her from scouting out the cursed spirits.”
I looked down at my phone, eagerly hoping for a message. Come on, Kamo Clan. Surely you weren’t going to leave everything up to the Kyoto kids, not when you’ve got an agent right here in Tokyo. Just one little message…
“Are you okay?” Itadori asked me.
“Yeah, yeah,” I replied. “To be totally clear, I think Fushiguro should handle the witch.”
“But Fushiguro has the best chance of stopping their Kamo,” Panda said.
A minor disagreement broke out, and I looked back at my phone. Come on… Just send the order. Please, please tell me to kill Itadori. My phone buzzed, and I pulled the phone close to my face in excitement. A new message, from Nobumasa Kamo:
“Ensure that Sukuna’s Vessel does not survive the group stage.”
Yes!
“They’re going to try to kill Itadori!” I blurted out.
When everyone turned to look at me in shock, I turned my phone around. Fushiguro and Maki leaned in to read it, but Itadori scrambled forward and grabbed it out of my hands.
“Whoa!” he said. “They really are!”
He passed my phone off to Inumaki, who showed it to Panda. Itadori, who was standing in the middle of the room, got his legs kicked out by Fushiguro and dropped back down to a kneeling position.
“We should all stick with Itadori,” Maki argued. “If they aren’t going for points, then our priority is keeping him alive.”
“Noritoshi will try to kill him for sure,” I said. “But we don’t know if everyone will go along with it. Is Todo the type to follow orders?”
My question brought Maki up short. I knew the answer, of course, but I couldn’t say it. I had to hope that she would draw the correct conclusions.
“Let’s let Itadori and Todo fight it out,” Maki said. “We probably can’t stop Todo anyway. Instead, we go on the offensive: beat the shit out of those losers from Kyoto before the can do anything.”
“Salmon,” Inumaki said, and the plan was settled.
“One request,” I said. “I have to be the one to fight Noritoshi.”
“You told me yourself that you’ve never beaten him,” Fushiguro said. “Will you be okay?”
“He’ll be expecting me to go at him with the Bone Blood Samurai,” I said. “He doesn’t know anything about my new tools. Besides, even if I lose, I think he’ll be shocked enough to stay out of things.”
“Really?” Maki asked. “He’s semi-Grade 1, you know.”
I flexed my metal arm, feeling its joints click. My Full Armor Gundam floated off the table and came to rest on my shoulder.
“Oh, I’m sure,” I said. “After all, it’s been a whole year since he’s seen his innocent, darling fiancée. I’m sure he’ll want to catch up.”
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