A roar shook the street.
The shop windows on both sides exploded.
The green figure moved.
No Cursed Energy residue.
No cursed technique fluctuations.
None of those flashy energies at all.
The muscles in Toji’s legs swelled a full size in an instant, veins rising like coiled rope under the skin.
He stomped one foot into the asphalt.
BOOM!
The road surface cratered, a spiderweb of cracks two meters wide blasting outward in all directions.
Debris still flying, Toji rode that terrifying recoil straight up like a green intercontinental missile.
He didn’t fly.
He ran.
Under the genuinely baffled stares of Satoru Gojo and Suguru Geto, Toji sprinted directly up the apartment building’s glass exterior wall, ninety degrees perpendicular to the ground, in complete defiance of every law governing how human bodies are supposed to work.
If Newton were alive to see this, he’d have sat up in his coffin, wept, and personally torn his three laws of motion into confetti.
One stride: a pane of tempered glass exploded underfoot.
The next: the wall surface cracked with a deep, structural groan.
He was running on pure muscular force and the friction of his soles, grinding gravity face-first into the pavement.
Up in the air, Riko had her eyes squeezed shut, tears whipping sideways off her face.
The wind pressure was sandpaper on her cheeks.
This was it.
This was how it ended.
“No!
I haven’t even been in love yet!
I haven’t tried that new crepe place yet!” she screamed into the wind.
“Haven’t been in love?
That’s nothing to worry about!
As long as you don’t give up, the door of youth is open to you any time!”
The voice hit like a temple bell swung by someone who had never learned the concept of indoor volume.
Riko’s eyes snapped open.
The next second, she landed in an impossibly solid pair of arms.
The bone-shattering impact she’d been bracing for never came.
What arrived instead was a wall of male hormones, sweat and something that could only be described as protein powder, potent enough to have its own gravitational field, wrapping around her completely.
Riko’s brain went offline for half a second.
Then the nausea hit.
“Ugh — what is that SMELL!” She was nearly knocked unconscious by the stench alone, all fear of falling instantly forgotten.
She shoved against that iron-wall chest with everything she had.
“Let go of me!
You creep!
You sweaty old man!”
CRACK!
She swung and connected, a full-force slap right across Toji’s face.
Her hand immediately went numb.
It hadn’t felt like hitting a face.
It had felt like slapping a slab of granite.
The smile on Toji’s face didn’t move a millimeter.
He actually gave her an enthusiastic thumbs-up.
“Plenty of spirit!
Excellent!”
Riko stared at him.
Is this man made of iron?
Toji tucked the flailing Riko under one arm, fired his core, and twisted hard in midair.
His free hand shot out, fingers splayed like steel claws, and clamped onto the concrete lip of the fifteenth floor.
The laughter upstairs stopped.
K’qen’s grin had frozen solid on his face.
Because the muscle-bound lunatic in the green spandex was now hanging on the outside of his wall, and still calmly holding onto a struggling Star Plasma Vessel like she weighed nothing.
“Wh — what kind of monster are you?!” K’qen’s voice cracked on the last word.
“Me?” Toji’s grin stretched wide.
“The Blue Beast of Konoha.”
The hand gripping the wall exploded with force.
His entire body hit the room like a battering ram.
BOOM.
The wall came down.
Before K’qen could process any of that, a hand the size of a dinner plate locked over his entire face.
“Littering from a height — fine, maybe you only hit a few flowers and shrubs.
But if you’d hit a kid down there, you’d deserve a lot worse than this.”
BAM!
Toji drove the back of K’qen’s skull into the floor.
The man went out like a light.
“Trash disposal complete.” Toji dusted off his hands, re-secured Riko against his chest, crossed to the shattered floor-to-ceiling window, and jumped.
BOOM!
Clean landing.
Two fresh cracks split the concrete under his feet.
Explosion.
Wall sprint.
Catch.
Window breach.
One-hit knockout.
Ground landing.
Less than a minute, start to finish.
Suguru Geto hadn’t moved.
He was still holding his hand seals, expression doing something complicated.
The Rainbow Dragon he’d summoned completed one deeply awkward loop in midair and quietly dissolved.
Satoru Gojo lowered his hand.
The knot of space-warping Cursed Energy at his fingertips came apart.
He wasn’t rattled the way Suguru Geto was.
Instead, he pulled his sunglasses down.
The azure Six Eyes locked onto Toji and stayed there, and the corner of his mouth pulled into a curve that was equal parts dangerous and delighted.
“Ha.” A low, quiet laugh.
“Zero Cursed Energy?”
He shook his head slowly.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.
This monkey… Find the original chapter at g.com.
is actually kind of interesting.”
Toji set the still-wriggling Riko down.
“Hey!
Who even ARE you?!
What is wrong with you!” The moment her feet touched the ground, Riko jumped back three meters and leveled a finger at his nose, face red enough to stop traffic.
“And that OUTFIT.
It’s disgusting.
Did you escape from a circus?!”
“A circus?
No.” Toji puffed out his chest without a trace of shame and patted his pectoral muscles.
“This is the battle robe of youth and sweat.”
He turned toward Satoru Gojo and Suguru Geto with a broad grin.
“See that, you two greenhouse flowers?
That is what consistent daily training produces.
Work hard enough, and you can get there too.”
“Who asked to be like you.” Satoru Gojo clicked his tongue, stepped forward, and gave Toji a long, deliberately provocative look from head to toe.
“Hey.
Muscle-for-brains.
Not bad.
But protecting people is the strongest person’s job, that’s me.
I don’t need you swooping in and stealing the scene.”
Suguru Geto pressed two fingers to his temple.
His stomach had started to hurt.
He was genuinely beginning to think that the biggest threat on this entire mission wasn’t the Star Religious Group.
It was the three people on his own side, not one of whom appeared to be operating within normal psychological parameters.
One street away, while the four of them sized each other up, a black sedan sat parked in the shadow of an intersection.
The window was down halfway.
Three pairs of eyes watched Toji’s group in cold silence.
“Clear view?” The driver’s voice was a low rasp.
A deep knife scar crossed his left eye.
“Clear.” The woman in the back seat turned a short blade over slowly in her fingers.
“The intel was wrong.
Toji Fushiguro…
looks like he’s changed.
No Cursed Energy, but his physical output exceeds every file we have on him.
That kind of explosive force isn’t something a human body should be able to generate.”
“The Star Religious Group didn’t pay us nearly enough to go after something like that.” A lean, wiry man leaned forward out of the shadows.
“Then they’ll pay more.” The scarred man’s smile had no warmth in it.
“The Shadow Mage clan has never left a contract unfinished.
Doesn’t matter how strong the body is, it’s still a mortal shell.
We wait for the right opening.” His eyes stayed fixed on the retreating figures.
“Then we take out the girl and the green freak.
Both of them.”
The engine turned over, a low, quiet growl, and the sedan slipped away into the Tokyo night without a sound.
➤ Next: A Cold, Cool Older Guy?
No!
A Youthful, Hot-Blooded Older Guy!