Sukuna looked at the six Paths of Pain with a slightly bored look on his face. One downside of knowing everything about this world from a god's perspective, like someone who had read both the original manga and seen the anime, was that there wasn't much which made you curious.
A very good thing when you're weak; the last thing you need are surprises. However, when you're as strong as him, it's just boredom. His mind already knew what all the powers of all six Paths had. How to handle them, and that essentially made the entire upcoming fight rather boring.
Even if he pretended he didn't know anything, that would practically be acting like a retard. Why intentionally handicap yourself in a life-and-death battle? That's stupid.
'Sigh, there isn't much which really excites me in this world, and I'm not insane enough to let that old ghost Uchiha get revived just to have a good fight.' He grumbled to himself and uninterestedly looked around, away from Pain, who most likely was waiting for him to act first, playing the role of the almighty god in his mind.
Surely, that dismissive attitude irked him. However, Sukuna wasn't focused on him as much as he was on how the others' fights were going.
'Naoya vs. Konan, did that misogynist intentionally choose the only girl in the entire Akatsuki?' Sukuna honestly wanted to know.
Shifting his eyes, his eyes went to the fight of the century, Kiyomi vs. Itachi. Irritation immediately rankled inside him. He still had lingering resentment towards Itachi, but he just snorted his eyes away from there. No matter how unreasonable his petty ego was, even he knew that Kiyomi deserved to end this fight more than him.
And of course, the last fight was between Izumi vs. Kisame. That might be the most uncomplicated fight on the entire battlefield, besides his own, of course.
He already seemed to know how everything would most likely go. Besides Itachi, who might essentially commit suicide for his little sister by himself, neither Naoya nor Izumi could fight off their opponents, at least not until they used their domains. So sooner or later, it would all come down to the domain.
Simple enough.
In front of him, all six Paths of Pain had already arrived in formation, and upon seeing the boy ignoring them all like they didn't exist, finally even the aloof self-proclaimed god couldn't keep his calm.
"You will regret that arrogance," the Deva Path said, voice flat, layered oddly with five others speaking in near-perfect unison a half-beat behind.
Sukuna's eyes finally darted back, as if saying, 'Oh, finally starting, huh…'
"We'll see." He grinned and took his fighting stance, and the next second vanished from his place, rushing at all six Paths of Pain alone.
He didn't bother opening with curse technique. Didn't need to yet.
Knowing all six powers of all six Paths is one thing, and pinpointing out which Path has which power is something entirely else.
Just as mentioned before, even when he wants to have a good fight, that doesn't mean he will start acting like a retard. Knowing that among the six Paths of Pain, there is one who can revive others, even a child could tell that that son of a bitch has to go first.
Sukuna had to figure out which Path had which power to at least take that one annoying prick before acting like a stupid fuck to get some excitement out of this fight.
So, this is what he did. He went ahead to fight them, just using his fists and Taijutsu. No curse technique or fancy binding vow. Act like you're not worth considering until Pain starts aura farming.
And when he does that, it would be Sukuna who takes the yield instead.
The Asura Path met him first, mechanized limbs unfolding from its torso with a metallic shriek, extra arms bristling with blades and cannon barrels. Sukuna slipped inside its first swing, drove a fist into its chest hard enough to crack the metal plating, and immediately catalogued the result. Honestly, this one he didn't even have to test out. Out of all these Paths, it was the most obvious besides the Deva Path himself. It's hard to miss him with him having six arms, after all.
Seeing Sukuna's physical power, more Paths came rushing in. The Human Path was next, reaching for him with open palms, clearly intending contact. Sukuna read the intent in the posture alone — there are arguably only two Paths who might try physical contact, period.
And neither of those he was after. So he just skipped past him.
The Animal Path summoned something enormous and clawed mid-exchange, a beast lunging from a smoke-cloud seal. Sukuna filed that away, eyes locking onto the only female figure among the six Paths of Pain, which was the Animal Path.
He couldn't remember this small detail from the original story. If he knew, he would have avoided her from the beginning. He intentionally let the beast attack him, tanked the blow, but the blow sent him off course towards another Path of Pain.
The Preta Path tried to grab him, and he knew this was the other Path from that earlier duo list. Meaning?
Ignore.
He did just that, blasted a smoke bomb in his face and got away in time.
That left two he hadn't engaged yet — obviously, one was the Deva Path, still busy playing god, so it wasn't a rocket science question to figure out which Path was the one he was after.
Sukuna's eyes narrowed slightly. To the only Path which had stayed still out of combat so far.
'Naraka Path.'
He stopped mid-running, confusing others who were still rushing towards him, his hands stretched towards where exactly the Naraka Path was standing, and it turned out that was enough to make Nagato figure out that the pink-haired boy was gunning for his healer from the very beginning.
How he even knew that, he had no idea, but he acted immediately.
"Shinra Tensei," the Deva Path shouted, and a terrible gravitational eruption exploded from his body directly at Sukuna.
And then…
Nothing.
Sukuna didn't even look like he felt that attack. Kamui was a blessing, honestly.
"Dismantle."
The slash came too fast for any of them to track on a first encounter, a shadowy blade cutting clean through flesh and chakra pathway alike.
Unlike the others, the six Paths of Pain and Nagato saw the attack with their Rinnegan; however, they weren't fast enough to react.
The Naraka Path dropped where it stood, cut cleanly in two, within a heartbeat of Sukuna launching the attack.
"Meh… too easy," Sukuna said, with a sigh. "Fine, which one I want next?" He honestly gave it some thought.
Something shifted across all five remaining faces at once — the same flicker of recalculation, five separate bodies processing the same singular alarm through Nagato's shared consciousness.
"You— you knew…" the Deva Path started. He would be an idiot to not figure out that somehow this pink-haired boy knew about his powers.
"Don't bother," Sukuna cut in. "No one secretly backstabbed you. I have my own ways to gather intel," knowing what he might be thinking.
And then he stopped holding back entirely. Though, to say he was holding back earlier would be wrong; that was just strategic allotment of strength. Yup, that's what he would call it.
"YOU…" the Deva Path growled.
Gravity surged from the Deva Path the instant that five-second cooldown time was over—Shinra Tensei, a wave of repulsive force wide enough to level a full city block, tearing through rubble and rain alike toward him with the kind of raw output that should have ended any normal fight in a single exchange.
Sukuna simply wasn't there when it arrived.
Kamui pulled him half a step sideways out of reality, and he reappeared already inside the Deva Path's guard, Cleave already swinging. The Deva Path barely managed a defensive lurch before the slash caught its shoulder, curse energy chewing through flesh that should have theoretically been protected by whatever passive defenses Rinnegan bodies carried.
"It doesn't take a genius to figure out that you have a cooldown to use that technique, you know…" Sukuna said, already moving again before the Deva Path could recover.
The Asura Path lunged in from the side, mechanized arms unfolding into a full barrage of blade strikes and cannon fire. Sukuna was faster. Before those bullets and bombs could even properly leave the safety zone of the Asura Path, slashes faster than them arrived, cutting all those projectiles mid-journey, exploding them right in his face.
He sent another slash at the growing black cloud of explosion for good measure, just in case that explosion didn't do the job.
That apparently was enough time for the Deva Path to recover from his cooldown. Before he could use it, Sukuna was gone. This time, Flying Thunder God.
He reappeared behind, right next to him, having earlier left a Hiraishin mark on the Deva Path. If this was any other enemy, he already would have been dead, but the Rinnegan had that one cheat which made catching a Rinnegan user off guard almost impossible: the puppets had shared vision.
Before Sukuna could so much as even twitch, a gravitational push from all sides pushed him away. Since it was done in extreme hurry, the power wasn't much, so he was barely thrown a few steps back.
That technically was enough, though, for the Deva Path to create further distance and wait for the cooldown to pass. Sukuna didn't wish to give him that time, however. The Human Path was already next to him, still hunting for contact, still trying to close a gap Sukuna had no intention of letting it close.
Sukuna let him. Some might think that was dangerous, but for someone who knows the shape of his own soul, protecting himself from a soul-based attack wasn't that hard. At least no son of a bitch was one-shotting him with a mere touch under a few heartbeats.
The Human Path immediately felt the resistance, which rattled Nagato more than anything until now, even more than the fact that the boy seemed to know about his Rinnegan powers.
Sukuna wasn't idle, of course. The enemy touching him also meant he was touching the enemy, and that's a very dangerous thing after he learned how useful Cleave is at times like this.
Lines ran across all over his body, and then it crumbled into small pieces.
"That's three… man, almost halfway done. This is boring."
"Enough…" the Deva Path roared and sent a powerful gravitational force towards him, but he was already gone. This time, not going for the Deva Path, knowing already that the moment he did that, the other Paths would be camping for him.
Instead, he went after the Preta Path. Aka, the absorber.
Not for any major reason; he was just the closest to him.
Fun fact, the Preta Path didn't try to absorb chakra from him. Nagato seemed to figure out that close contact was dangerous, so instead he backed off as quickly as possible.
"Tch… annoying." He put his hands together and inhaled as much as he could before exhaling out.
"FUGA."
Fire roared out at him, and his run stopped midway. There was no way he was outrunning a two-story flamethrower any time soon.
And as long as it wasn't physical contact, he wasn't that afraid. Arguably, the Preta Path's entire gimmick was absorbing techniques and chakra.
Unfortunately, this wasn't a normal chakra-based attack.
"That's the fourth." Sukuna didn't even bother looking back, already knowing the outcome. Two more left.
The Animal Path so far was the only one which wasn't able to perform well since most of her summons were too big and slow to capture Sukuna, not to mention they might have injured other Paths as well.
Seeing four of the six Paths already gone, she finally started to pull out everything she had stored up in her arsenal, almost frantically now, throwing beast after beast into his path — a multi-headed dog, something armored and hulking, a swarm of smaller creatures meant to overwhelm through sheer number.
Sukuna tore through all of it without breaking stride, Dismantle scything wide arcs that reduced each summon to falling debris before it could even complete its charge, until the Animal Path itself stood exposed, out of options. Since the Paths were fast enough to dodge his slashes, but not the animals.
Before she knew it, a kunai was aimed right at her neck. She dodged it easily enough, of course, but she couldn't dodge the next attack, which suddenly arrived from behind her. Somehow, the pink-haired boy teleported there before she could even register when.
'That's the fifth. Okay, I'm officially disappointed now.' He didn't say it out aloud, of course, just grumbled internally.
None of this fight felt like when he faced Raikage for the first time. Technically, Pain should be stronger than Raikage, but the problem was with him. He had gotten a lot stronger since then that it felt a little too easy to enjoy himself.
'Meh, still a better problem to have than the other way around, I guess.' He shrugged.
Nagato piloting the Deva Path felt anger brewing inside him, and it was completely visible by the way gravity seemed to be bending around Deva Path, like begging to be released.
And that's what he was planning, a powerful Shinra Tensei. Powerful enough that not repositioning wouldn't save the boy.
However, the next, both of their eyes connected and the Deva Path's visible twisted. One second he was standing there gathering chakra to release enough power to erase half of the village and next, he could only see darkness.
His entire upper body ended up twisting into a vortex and snapping out of reality, pulled into another dimension.
"Long-Distance Kamui Application. Hope you liked it. Took me hours of training to make it actually usable in battle." He grinned. And this was the truth. Even while having both Kamui, his offensive application of Kamui was terrible, just like his Cleave when his focus was more on Dismantle and the more defensive part of Kamui before facing Raikage.
After facing Raikage, he had started to actually put effort into improving both Cleave and the offensive version of Kamui to a workable state. And here it was, finally being used on a battlefield.
xXx
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