The days leading up to the Eishu mission had been a rare bridge of normalcy for the first-years. Between the brutal training sessions, the four had fallen into a comfortable, if chaotic, rhythm. Nobara had taken a liking to dragging Ren through the neon-lit streets of Ginza, using him as both a fashion consultant and a silent deterrent to annoying scouts. She noticed that when Ren walked beside her, the frantic energy of Tokyo seemed to settle—people didn't just move out of his way; they subconsciously avoided his "orbit."
Megumi, ever the strategist, had spent his evenings trying to decipher Ren. He watched the way Ren moved—or rather, the way he didn't move. During a hand-to-hand sparring session, Megumi noticed that no matter how fast he or Yuji lunged, Ren was always exactly two inches out of reach, his eyes fixed on something miles behind them.
"You're not even looking at us," Megumi had noted, wiping sweat from his brow.
"I'm looking at the space you're about to occupy," Ren replied, his glasses reflecting the gym lights. "The body follows the soul, Megumi. If you want to hit me, you have to move your soul first."
The Arrival at Eishu
The car ride to the Eishu Detention Center was a stark contrast to their usual banter. Outside the gate, the air felt ionized, thick with the "pressure" of a Special Grade in the making. Ijichi stood trembling by the car, delivering the briefing with a stutter.
"Our mission is simple," Megumi said, his face a mask of steel. "Check for survivors. Do not fight. If it's a Special Grade, we run."
"Got it," Yuji said, though his heart was hammering against his ribs.
Ren leaned against the brick wall of the entrance, his hands deep in his pockets. He looked up at the "Veil" as it descended, a curtain of liquid shadow. Through his goggles, the 12-Tomoe Rinne-Sharingan saw the prison not as a building, but as a distorted knot in reality.
"I'm going to hang back," Ren said lazily, yawning. "I want to see if you three can handle a 'knot' on your own. I'll be slacking in the courtyard—don't make me come in and finish your homework."
"Tch! Stay out here and get wet in the rain for all I care!" Nobara snapped, though she gripped her hammer tighter. "Come on, boys. Let's show the Insurance Policy we don't need a premium!"
Nobara's Stand: The Basement Pit
Inside, the building's layout shifted like a Rubik's cube. Space folded, and with a sudden whoosh, the floor beneath Nobara's feet vanished. She plummeted into a dark, flooded basement—the "gut" of the Innate Domain.
"Yuji! Fushiguro!" she yelled, but the walls had already sealed.
Suddenly, dozens of small, insect-like curses began crawling out of the pipes. They weren't strong, but there were hundreds. Nobara didn't panic. She smirked, pulling out a handful of nails.
"You think a few bugs can scare a girl from the sticks?"
She moved like a whirlwind. Clang! Clang! Clang! She hammered nails into the concrete, her Straw Doll Technique: Hairpin detonating Cursed Energy like landmines. Curses exploded into purple mist, but for every ten she killed, twenty more emerged.
The basement began to fill with a thick, suffocating miasma. A larger, Grade 2 curse—a bloated, frog-like thing—burst from the water, its tongue lashing out and catching Nobara's ankle.
"Let go, you freak!" She slammed a nail into its tongue, but the curse yanked her hard, slamming her against a rusted pillar. Her hammer flew across the room. The swarm of insect curses began to dog-pile her, their tiny mandibles clicking near her throat.
Nobara gritted her teeth, reaching for her spare nails, her Cursed Energy running low. 'Damn it... not like this. I haven't even gone to that new cafe in Shibuya yet...'
The Spectator Enters
Just as the frog-curse opened its maw to swallow her arm, the air in the basement screamed. It wasn't a sound, but a vibration—the sound of space being forcibly torn open.
"Technique: Kamui (Spatial Breach)."
A swirling vortex of black and blue light manifested in front of Nobara. Ren stepped out of the rift as casually as if he were walking into a convenience store.
"I told you the shopping bags were better training, Nobara," he said, his voice echoing with a divine chill.
The frog-curse lunged at him. Ren didn't even turn his head. He simply looked at it with his right eye—the Tenseigan.
"Output: 5%. Shinra Tensei."
An invisible wall of absolute repulsion erupted. The frog-curse wasn't just pushed; it was flattened against the far wall with such force that it turned into a thin smear of gore. The thousands of insect curses were instantly vaporized by the shockwave.
Ren reached out and caught Nobara's hammer mid-air, handing it back to her.
"You did well," Ren said, his heterochromatic eyes glowing behind his glasses. "But the 'big one' just cut off Yuji's hand upstairs. I need to go deal with a King who doesn't know his place."
Nobara leaned against the pillar, gasping for air, looking at Ren with a mix of fury and genuine awe. "Go... just don't let that idiot Itadori die."