Chapter Three: More Training
Location: Courtyard, Fujikawa Academy, Kanazawa City
Date: May 25th, 1994 | Time: 11:41 A.M.
POV: Satoru Fujinuma
Lunch break at Fujikawa Academy wasn't quiet. It was a symphony of student chatter, bento boxes cracking open, and the occasional shout from the sports field.
Our usual spot? Beneath the sakura tree by the northeast wall. Out of sight, mostly. The tree gave enough cover that no teacher dared wander too close—especially after Kokichi rerouted the security camera's visual feed to loop an empty bench.
I leaned against the tree trunk, shading my eyes as I watched my siblings.
Yuki had already bent gravity again. Her lunchbox floated exactly 8.4 cm above the ground—she measured—while she picked the carrots out with practiced disdain.
"Gravity's pushing weird today," she grumbled, side-eyeing the ground like it had insulted her.
Megumi sat beside her, a quiet shadow curling beneath his feet. His dog, shikigami-style, flickered into view for just a moment to snatch a stray rice ball before disappearing again. No one noticed. Except Yuji.
Yuji, still in the lower grades, was sprawled out on the grass with his sleeves rolled up and his bento wide open. He was mixing curry and natto—again. His fingers pulsed faintly with blood, aura twitching every time he picked something up.
"Does your food always try to escape, or are you just bad at eating?" I asked, watching his chopsticks snap at a rogue bite.
"It's part of the challenge," he said with a grin. "Dinner and a fight."
Yuta was sitting across from him, calmly flipping through a light novel with one hand and offering Rika a piece of onigiri with the other. Most of the time, only we could see her, but sometimes she let out a little hum loud enough to turn a few heads. Yuta just smiled awkwardly and pretended he was talking to himself.
Kokichi had plugged something into the tree again. A cable snaked out from his backpack and disappeared into the bark. I gave him a look.
"It's a tree-sensor," he said, like that explained anything. "Trying to read if natural aura has memory. Might be useful for forest scouting."
"You're going to electrocute a bird."
"I added safety features."
"You said that last time and the squirrel's still bald."
Kinji was lounging nearby with three sticks of pocky in his mouth like cigarettes. He'd turned calculating gacha odds into a club-approved math project and somehow roped in four teachers as advisors. One of them was now gambling their lunch schedule on Kinji's aura-stabilized dice.
Higuruma showed up late, as usual. He sat cross-legged on the grass, wearing his blazer even though it was almost 20°C, and quietly opened a thick legal tome. Didn't say a word—just glared at Yuji's natto curry like it had committed a crime.
"It's a war crime," Higuruma finally muttered.
"No," Yuji countered, "it's cuisine."
I sipped my tea and let the moment hang in the air. This was normal now. Controlled chaos. Seven kids, all reincarnated monsters in their past lives, now just trying to make it through elementary-to-junior curriculum without exploding a teacher.
Well. Mostly trying.
A group of older students passed by and whispered, shooting glances. Some respectful. Others wary. We weren't exactly subtle anymore. Even with our powers suppressed, our presence was like static in the air—noticeable, even if they couldn't explain why.
I glanced around the group. Aura flowed differently now. Stronger. More refined. Even Yuji, the youngest, had sharper edges in his movements. They were growing fast—too fast.
I tapped the tree with one knuckle. "We'll need a new training schedule soon."
Yuki groaned. "Why? I already maxed out my gravity field last week."
"You maxed out the school's gravity tolerance. The nurse had to treat three kids for nosebleeds."
"...That's fair."
Lunch ended too quickly. The bell echoed across the courtyard. Groans rippled through the group.
Sachiko had packed us all matching lunches today. She called it "family unity." I called it a tactical curry supply chain.
Yuji stuffed the last bite in his mouth and stood up with sauce on his cheek. "Alright, who's ready to pretend to be normal again?"
Everyone raised a hand.
Except Megumi. His dog did it for him.
Location: Fujinuma Private Compound, Kanazawa City
Date: March 9th, 1994 | 5:14 P.M.
POV: Satoru Fujinuma
The ground cracked before the first hit landed.
Fujikawa Academy had ended for the day, and while most students rushed home to cram or play, we gathered at the compound—a stretch of land hidden behind a wooded bluff outside the city. No government registry. No prying eyes. Just trees, stone, silence, and us.
Sachiko made it possible. Not with power, but precision.
She wasn't a fighter—never needed to be. Her Nen worked through intuition and creativity. It flowed into her manga drawings, sharpened her mind like a scalpel, and made her a near-prophetic planner. She'd scoped this compound years ago. Pulled permits, rewrote zoning documents, paid in cash, all while working on four serialized stories and raising seven gifted reincarnates.
Now she just dropped us off, gave us bentos for later, and reminded us to "try not to flatten anything permanent."
So here we stood. No teachers. No limits. Just potential.
I raised one hand, letting my aura flare just enough to flatten the tall grass in a twenty-foot radius. "Begin."
Yuji vanished.
There was no hesitation, no windup. One instant he was there; the next, he was already halfway across the field, streaking forward with blood-clad fists. His aura was pulsing red, each heartbeat syncing with Flowing Red Scale. His muscles bulged with perfect rhythm, speed and strength doubling.
"Blood Edge."
He twisted at the last moment, aura forming a curved, bladed gauntlet that cleaved through the air. A shimmer of force—he wasn't just aiming at a target. His aura instinctively dissected what it understood. Structure, weakness, density. That was the essence of his Cleave—judgment manifested as violence.
Kokichi's aerial drone banked left to dodge, but Piercing Blood caught it mid-turn, driving a compressed beam of blood through its chest like a sniper round.
"That was Unit 06!" Kokichi yelled, his Iron Man-style Nen puppet rocketing in from the side, arms glowing with emission-grade stabilizers. "You owe me three micro-puppets and a reinforced arm joint!"
"I owe you pain!" Yuji shouted, spinning into a roundhouse.
Megumi intervened.
The shadows under Yuji's feet twisted—Divine Dogs leapt out, jaws locking onto Yuji's gauntlets mid-swing. Rabbit Escape burst upward next, not as distraction—but terrain disruption. Dozens of conjured rabbits stampeded between fighters, knocking Kokichi off balance and kicking up cover.
Nue descended, striking the ground with an electric wave. The water from Max Elephant spread it instantly, short-circuiting Kokichi's long-range support.
Then the air shifted.
I felt it before I saw it—Yuta.
He entered quietly, as he always did, aura masked by that absurdly efficient signature suppression. It didn't matter that Rika floated behind him, glowing like a wraith. He still moved like a ghost. He didn't copy flashy abilities anymore—he'd learned to steal utility.
A pulse of his Nen disrupted a ten-foot zone around Kokichi's puppet—breaking the control thread momentarily.
That's new, I thought. A jamming ability?
Yuji took the opening and closed the distance. He and Yuta collided mid-field, blood and blade clashing. Rika blocked a follow-up attack from Megumi's Toad with one arm and slapped away a second conjured shadow-beast with the other.
Yuki joined the fray from above.
Gravity folded.
It didn't drop—it inverted. The battlefield warped around her like a lens, compressing mass at a single focal point. A small hill collapsed in on itself. Trees bent. Garuda floated behind her in four rotating configurations—chakram, halberd, chain, spear—each phasing from one to the next seamlessly.
"Garuda—mass lock, third shift!"
She directed a spearhead of conceptual mass-enhanced gravity through the air like a railgun shot.
Megumi dodged—barely. His form melted into the ground, traveling as living shadow. Great Serpent shot up in his place, fangs wide, but Garuda sliced it in half mid-pivot.
Kokichi launched another puppet—this one loaded with a wide-area smoke bomb filled with Nen-suppression tags. It burst near Yuta.
Didn't matter. He redirected the smoke.
Another new trick—his aura created a rotating spiral that deflected incoming projectiles without blocking them. Yuta stepped out of the cloud without a scratch.
He's building a style, I thought. He's not just copying anymore. He's becoming a strategist.
At the edge of the field, Higuruma observed, arms crossed. Judgeman hovered over his shoulder, gavel glowing. A domain circle flickered underfoot, but he didn't trigger it. He was waiting. Watching.
Then he moved.
He stepped into the fight and raised one hand. "You're all guilty of violating Article 3-21: reckless endangerment."
The gavel flashed.
A wave of enforced aura discipline slammed down like a judge's final verdict. Yuji froze for half a second. His aura resisted but hesitated. Higuruma was learning how to manipulate intent, bind reactions before they finished.
Then Judgeman threw the gavel.
It struck the ground between Kokichi and Megumi, creating a shockwave of Nen that dismissed Megumi's current summon and briefly overrode Kokichi's remote control signal.
"Your clause layering's getting better," I noted.
"Not good enough," he muttered. "Still can't force submission without the domain active."
Hakari walked into the clearing next, dusting off his sleeves.
"Five jackpots today, that a new record" he said. His aura shimmered, time-locked and invincible. Around his fists, transmuted Nen twisted into rough, ragged patterns—serrated, unstable, hungry. He'd been working on this for weeks.
"Let me try something."
He dashed toward Yuta, aura serrating the air itself. Yuta met him with Sound Edge—a copied ability that converted aura swings into sonic slashes. Hakari grinned.
Serrated aura met vibrating blade. The air split in overlapping waves.
He kept swinging. Kept healing. Kept evolving.
It was beautiful.
And me?
I moved.
Teleportation activated. I reappeared behind Yuji just before his next punch. "Too predictable."
Infinity flared. The strike stopped an inch from my face.
Then I flicked my fingers.
"Red."
The compressed space orb ripped past him and obliterated a boulder forty meters away. No sound—just vacuum collapse.
Everyone paused.
"Time," I called.
Silence.
Yuki floated down, Garuda disassembling back into the aura. Kokichi dismissed his suit. Megumi crouched in the dirt, panting beside his dogs. Yuta stood calmly, Rika hugging his back. Higuruma's circle faded. Hakari dropped out of jackpot.
"Same time tomorrow."
They all nodded.
Because the world wasn't ready for us yet.
But it would be.