Especially kids this young. They deserved at least one chance.
"By the way, I never caught your na."
Gojo turned to the girl.
"ili."
Dragged back a second ti with nothing to show for her escape attempt, ili didn't look particularly rattled. No sulking, no panic. That mischievous glint still danced behind her eyes, as if she hadn't given up in the slightest.
"ili. Alright, you're coming with us for now."
Taking her wasn't optional. Compared to the Royal Capital, this place was remote. If they left ili unhandled, the villagers would remain in danger. What ca after, whether it was a stern lecture or handing her over to the capital's guard, could be sorted out later.
"You know, I'm starting to notice a pattern." Gojo scratched his cheek. "First Felt, then Betty, now ili. And if we're really counting, Emilia, Ram, and Rem probably qualify too."
He'd caught the dip in Subaru's mood and steered the conversation sowhere lighter on purpose.
"Yeah... I guess so."
A faint, distracted reply. But it was sothing.
The group gathered the children and started back toward the village.
Then it happened.
They were walking a narrow trail worn through the forest by animals when a sound, barely a whisper, split the air.
A violet blur erupted from the trees.
The speed was inhuman. Subaru couldn't process it. Beatrice couldn't process it. Neither of them understood what was happening until the gleam of a blade materialized directly in front of them, and every instinct they had scread danger at once.
"Well, well. Fancy eting you here, Miss Elsa."
Gojo's voice cut through the mont, calm as a greeting between neighbors. In the sa breath, the blade stopped dead.
The Bowel Hunter. Elsa. Kukri in hand, halted mid-strike.
"You?!"
"You're supposed to be dead!"
The words tore out of Subaru before he could stop them. His pulse hamred. Back in the Slums, he'd watched Gojo fight this woman with his own eyes, watched the attack that should have erased her completely. There hadn't been a shadow left. Gojo himself had said she was finished.
And yet here she stood.
"What a unique way to say hello." Elsa regarded Subaru's shock with a soft laugh, the tip of a crimson tongue tracing her lower lip.
"Though..." Her gaze slid to Gojo. "You don't seem surprised at all."
Of everyone present, only one person held her attention. Only one demanded her caution. The last ti they'd fought, she'd felt his strength with painful clarity. Without the Curse Doll's regeneration, she would have died for real.
That Curse was extraordinary. Even total destruction of her body couldn't stop it from pulling her back together. In so respects, it rivaled Gojo's own Reverse Cursed Technique.
That first encounter in the Slums was precisely why he'd misjudged her. He'd assud no one could survive what he'd dealt, and written her off. If he hadn't stumbled across Roswaal eting with Elsa in a previous loop, he might never have guessed she was still alive.
He'd been waiting on the Knights' Order to pay out her bounty, after all. The silence had been his first clue.
"Of course I'm not surprised." Gojo shrugged. "Do you know how long I waited for that bounty? Not a single word back. So I started thinking maybe you had so kind of special trick that let you survive."
"I see. How disappointing for you that I didn't stay dead."
Elsa smiled. Sothing shifted behind those dark, fathomless eyes, a pressure building beneath the surface.
"Not at all." He matched her smile with one of his own. "You've hand-delivered the opportunity right back to ."
He passed the child he'd been carrying to Subaru, then handed ili off to Beatrice with a look that said watch her.
Elsa's eyes narrowed to slits, tracking his every movent like a viper waiting for an opening.
Gojo laced his fingers together, turned his palms outward, and began stretching. Right there, in front of her.
"Let's make this quick. We've got places to be. Any later and we'll miss dinner."
Curiosity humd beneath his composure. Two things about Elsa fascinated him.
First, her regeneration. His Reverse Cursed Technique granted him remarkable endurance in battle, but it had a hard ceiling. If an attack obliterated his entire body in a single instant, no amount of healing could bring him back. At his current level of mastery, the most he could manage was restoring his head after it had been destroyed, and only if he'd braced for it in the exact mont of impact. The timing had to be flawless.
Elsa's injuries last ti had been far worse than that. By his estimate, the better part of her body had been reduced to dust. And she'd still co back. That kind of resilience was worth studying. If he could understand even part of it, it might push his own abilities further.
Second, there was the matter of Roswaal. He was genuinely curious what the man had bargained with Elsa for, and what drove him to do it. Capturing her might answer every lingering question at once.
"Confident as ever, I see."
Mid-sentence, Elsa's form dissolved into the forest. Like a drop of water vanishing into the ocean. Soundless. Even the rustle of wind seed to die around her.
Trying to track her through observation alone would have been a fool's errand. As an assassin, Elsa's technique was every bit as refined as her raw power.
Gojo stood in the center of the trail, still stretching, making no effort whatsoever to search for her. With the Six Eyes granting him a full three-hundred-sixty-degree field of awareness, it didn't matter which direction she ca from. He'd react before the strike landed.
He was bent forward, fingers reaching for his toes, when several gleaming needles burst from the dim forest and scread toward him.
"We've done this dance before. You'd think you'd have picked up so new moves by now."
He didn't bother dodging. The needles sailed in and stopped dead against nothing.
Hidden among the trees, Elsa ignored the taunt entirely. If anything, the barrage intensified. More needles, faster, from shifting angles.
And not all of them were aid at Gojo. Beatrice, Subaru, ili, the children... she targeted everyone.
"Tch."
Attacks against him were aningless. Attacks against the others were not.
Gojo moved to intercept, but before he could, sothing small arced out of the forest. Egg-sized, tumbling end over end. It didn't fly toward anyone. It struck the ground between them.
The detonation was instantaneous. Thick smoke erupted outward, swallowing Gojo and the entire group in seconds.
"Hm?"
He stood inside the billowing cloud, a faint smile tugging at his lips.
"So that's what this is about."
His figure vanished from the smoke.
Beatrice, anwhile, had her guard raised. She'd deflected the earlier needles with magic and hadn't relaxed for a mont since. Her attention split between the unseen enemy and the Mabeast Tar standing right beside her.
"Hey, can you let go of now?"
ili's voice floated up through the haze.
Beatrice's brow creased. "I'd advise you not to move. I'm not nearly as patient as that man..."
Before she finished, a blade flashed toward the hand gripping ili.
Beatrice's pupils contracted. She released ili on reflex, magic already gathering to strike back into the smoke.
But a figure materialized between them, scattering the haze with the force of his arrival.
"All that fuss, and it was about ili the whole ti."
Gojo stood between ili and Elsa, that sa easy smile in place.
Elsa didn't hesitate. She threw herself backward, and in the sa motion, cracked the spine of her Kukri against sothing on her body. Another eruption of smoke consud her.
"Elsa!"
ili lunged after the retreating figure, but Gojo caught her by the collar.
The pieces clicked into place.
He'd been wondering what exactly Roswaal had contracted Elsa for this ti. Now it was obvious. That man hadn't just sent Elsa after Emilia. He'd gone further, striking a second deal. ili was Elsa's partner, planted inside the village to manipulate the Mabeasts against the villagers and Subaru alike.
Though if Gojo had to guess, Subaru had simply blundered into the crosshairs on his own. Roswaal's real target had always been Emilia. Every ti, Subaru had just been the one absorbing the blow ant for her.
"Looks like you two are pretty close."
He watched the last wisps of smoke where Elsa had vanished, then glanced down at ili.
Caught red-handed, the girl offered an awkward look over her shoulder. "I an... not that close. She did just leave behind, so..."
"Abandoning a friend? That's terrible. Don't worry, I'll go drag her back for you."
ili's expression froze in bewildernt. Before she could respond, Gojo was gone, swallowed by the smoke.
"You were about to run just now, weren't you?"
The instant he left, a voice, low and cold, slithered into ili's ear.
She turned. Beatrice stepped out of the thinning haze, face utterly devoid of warmth. Sothing about the sight of this blonde girl with twin tails and murder in her eyes sent a chill straight through ili's chest.
"Wh... what are you going to do?"
"Betty may not be fond of that man, but letting you nearly slip away was a failure on her part." Her stare bore into ili like a blade. "And Betty does not tolerate her own failures."
Elsewhere in the forest, Gojo closed the distance.
Elsa had made her decision the mont she saw ili in captivity. If the rescue failed, she wouldn't linger. She'd retreat without a second thought.
Having "died" once at Gojo's hands, she understood one thing with absolute certainty: she could not beat him. No amount of effort would change that outco. The fundantal problem, how to so much as wound him, remained unsolvable. In their first fight, she couldn't have landed a scratch even by trading her life for it. Not unless he'd allowed it.
So the instant ili's extraction failed, Elsa ran. Staying alive ant future chances to retrieve ili. Dying ant none at all.
But even with that pragmatic calculus already factored in, she'd underestimated him.
When she saw the figure streaking toward her through the sky, she stopped running. She planted her feet and waited.
"Done already?"
Gojo descended, tone light, as if catching up with an old friend.
"I don't waste effort on pointless things," Elsa said. She brushed a strand of hair from her face, composed, unhurried, despite standing before an enemy she knew she couldn't defeat.
"What a coincidence." A grin spread across his face. "Neither do I."
"So let's talk about Roswaal."
Elsa tilted her head. "Who's that?"
He chuckled. "Co on. Professional loyalty is cute and all, but we're a little past that, don't you think? I already said his na. That ans I already know."
She shrugged, Kukri still loose in her grip, entirely unmoved by the invitation.
Then she attacked.
"Honestly, I'm not that hard to talk to."
Gojo watched her co, sothing close to genuine exasperation crossing his features.
Elsa flickered. One light push off a tree trunk was all it took. She materialized in front of him in a blink, Kukri carving downward with everything she had.
...
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