NEW ICHIRAKU RAMEN

Mahito’s first thought was that this was taking longer than it should have.

Naruto still held his wrist, and maybe he should have been more concerned, especially since his technique had failed in the first place due to the man’s grip. But none of it truly mattered as long as he maintained the shape of his soul, so he remained confident in his odds.

What unsettled him more was that neither of the strangers seemed inclined to attack. Even the woman, Hinata, still stood behind the counter. She looked ready to act, yet intentionally held herself back.

That was unexpected.

Mahito followed her line of sight and found himself staring at a row of very stiff, very silent humans. The customer whose shoulder he had grabbed was barely breathing now, eyes wide and unfocused, trembling in a way that had nothing to do with physical pain anymore.

The woman inhaled sharply.

“Naruto!”

Ah.

Mahito’s lips twitched.

Sentimentality. That explained it. They were hesitating because of the humans, because they cared, and because they did not want to cause collateral damage in front of their fragile little audience and mistakenly hurt them.

It was endearing, in a way. Also painfully predictable.

How easy that would be to exploit.

Mahito began to consider how much fear he could twist this into, how long he could drag it out before breaking them, when golden light erupted from the man’s entire body.

Mahito’s perception fractured as multiple figures tore themselves free from Naruto in a flash of the blinding light, and one moment the customers were there, and in the next they were gone.

Every single one of them.

The space they had occupied snapped with residual force, chairs rattling violently and bowls shattering against the floor as the air itself seemed to recoil from the sudden displacement.

Mahito barely had time to register that before Naruto moved and a fist filled his vision.

There was no dramatic buildup accompanying the punch, no shouted technique, or surge of cursed energy that he could sense or analyze. Just a simple, direct impact.

And yet, it was utterly catastrophic. 

Mahito felt his body fold around the blow before his mind could even register pain. The shop vanished, the world smearing into streaks of light and noise as he was hurled across the city, tearing through rooftops and concrete alike, structures collapsing behind him in a chain of destruction he could not track.

The ground rose to meet him.

He crashed into an abandoned district, skidding across cracked asphalt and twisted steel, carving a deep trench through the earth before coming to an abrupt halt in a crater formed entirely by his own momentum.

For a moment, Mahito lay still, more surprised than anything else.

Then he laughed, breathless, and pushed himself up.

And that was when the sensation caught up to him. 

He immediately knew something was wrong.

Very wrong.

The damage had not corrected itself.

Mahito froze.

That was impossible.

Sorcerers could strike his body. They could exhaust his cursed energy reserves. They could even destroy his constructs and manifestations.

But they could not touch the shape of his soul.

And yet—

He looked down at himself, and his mouth fell open as he finally noticed the copious amounts of blood on him.

It wasn't a trick of perception.

It was real.

“How…?” The word slipped out before he could stop it.

Naruto appeared in front of him, so suddenly that Mahito had not even felt him approach.

The man stood quietly, eyes fixed on him, expression unreadable in a way that made Mahito’s skin itch.

He tried to laugh again. The sound came out strained. So he reached inward, deeper than before, toward the core of his very existence, toward the place where his technique and sense of self were inseparable.

And felt the damage.

His gaze snapped back to Naruto, eyes widening as that unfamiliar itch tightened into something uncomfortable in his chest.

Fear.

“How?” Mahito asked again, his voice quieter than he intended. “How did you do that?”

Naruto did not answer.

He did not move either, not even to adjust his stance.

He simply watched.

Mahito frowned, confusion bleeding into unease.

“Are you afraid now?” he asked, forcing lightness into his tone. “Is that why you’re hesitating?”

The question rang hollow even to himself.

The human had demonstrated overwhelming superiority. He had struck Mahito in a way no sorcerer ever had, bypassing his physical defenses to directly damage his soul.

In every meaningful sense, Naruto Uzumaki was his natural enemy. He should be pressing the advantage, attacking, pushing, trying to destroy him while he still had the chance. 

So why was he waiting?

The answer arrived from behind.

A strong impact slammed into the back of Mahito’s head, snapping his vision white and sending him lurching forward. He barely had time to register Hinata’s presence before he was airborne again, momentum carrying him straight into Naruto’s waiting cocked back punch.

And then there was no space left for thought.

Naruto caught him and drove a punch into his body, reversing his trajectory.

Hinata struck him mid-air, her palm glowing purple as she sent him flying back.

Naruto intercepted him before he could hit the ground and kicked him sideways through the walls of an abandoned building.

Hinata was already there when he emerged, her blow redirecting him again.

Up became down. 

Forward became backward.

He lost all sense of direction, of time, of even his own body. Every attempt to reshape himself failed, his technique being interrupted as every adjustment was met with another intrusion, another strike that landed on something far more fundamental than flesh.

He was not being fought.

He was being manhandled.

Played with.

The city became a pinball machine and Mahito was the ball.

His consciousness fractured under the repeated assaults, fading in and out as the world dissolved into incoherent flashes of sensation and damage that no longer made sense within his own understanding of things.

And yet…

Ah… what fresh inspiration this is.

Even as his body continued to break, Mahito’s lips curved upward and his eyes rolled back in pure delight.

Is this… death?

Within himself, he seized the shape of his soul, manifesting dozens of hands, forming the necessary seals even as his vision swam. With a breathless moan, he intoned the one technique that every jujutsu user regarded as the pinnacle of jujutsu sorcery.

“Domain Expansion…”

Mahito enforced his will upon the world itself. As a result, enormous grayish-black hands emerged from a rapidly expanding void-like black space, clasping together to form a grotesque, flower-like structure around both Naruto and Hinata.

“…Self-Embodiment of Perfection!”