NSFW Creative Writing[NSFW] What doesn't kill you (Mahoraga SI) Thread starterbornsinner Start dateFeb 23, 2026 Tagsaction / adventure big raga the opp stoppa daddy mahoraga jujutsu kaisen mahoraga satoru gojo self insert sukunaCreatedFeb 23, 2026StatusIncompleteWatchers2,608Recent readers3,169Threadmarks4You know the saying, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. I didn't expect the saying to be quite literal.ThreadmarksStatistics (4 threadmarks, 11k words)ThreadmarksReader mode RSS Chapter 1Words 1.8kFeb 23, 2026NewChapter 2Words 3kFeb 25, 2026NewChapter 3Words 2.9kMar 2, 2026NewChapter 4Words 3.5kYesterday at 11:16 PMJump to newIgnoreWatchThread ToolsThreadmarksView contentThreadmarks Chapter 1 View contentbornsinnerI trust you know where the happy button is?Feb 23, 2026Add bookmark#1Life.
Death.
They were simple concepts. Beginning and ending. You lived, then you died. That was all there was supposed to be. The sum total of a human's existence was so short that it was inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. There were the remarkable few who, even in death, had their names immortalized, etched into the annals of history. In a world where the human population was north of 8 billion, I was not one of that infinitesimally small group of people.
I lived as anyone would have, my life a boring slog of monotony, barely propped up with the few brief glimpses or flashes of fun. My first bicycle ride, the first time I had sex, when I got admission into the university, the first time I held my nephew. Oh, there were a couple more, dozens at best, but in all my twenty-four years of existence, those brief moments barely counted, because they were all overshadowed by one dark moment. My death.
Luckily for me, it came quickly. Going back home from a supermarket, AirPods in my ears, groceries in my hand, and an overspeeding drunk driver that thought the roadside pedestrian walkway looked pretty good that particular evening.
I didn't even hear it happen because of the AirPods in my ears. Bright beams behind me had made me turn back to spot a man with bloodshot eyes hidden behind his windscreen, and that was followed by something hitting me with enough velocity that other than a brief spike in pain, it pretty much just faded.
I was dead. Now, why this long drawn-out musing? Because somehow, despite dying, I was still aware, and in the unknown time period where I had drifted aimlessly in this dark void of nothingness, I'd grown bored. Bored enough that I think I was beginning to hear things.
"Sacred treasure swing and ring, ring."
Anyway, my brief romp through oblivion continued, and I went back through my memories. They were beginning to fade, which probably spoke to just how long I'd been drifting in this empty void. Yet I didn't feel the slightest hint of panic at losing some of the essential things that made me me. Instead, I thought about just what kind of life I had lived. An uneventful one. If I had another chance at life, I would've loved to live a more interesting one.
A wolf's howl echoed in this empty void I rested in, and if I had a brow to raise, I would've raised one. It seemed like I was still hearing things as what began as a simple wolf's howl multiplied, and the sound grew, echoing from one canine throat to what felt like a dozen. If the wolf's howl didn't make my brows rise, the follow-up sounds would've.
There was the continuous and annoying croaking of bullfrogs, and hidden beneath those persistent and loud two was a lower canopy of noises.
I couldn't be sure, but I was pretty certain there was a trumpet from an elephant, a hoot of an owl, the great hiss of a snake, and lastly the roar of what seemed like a lion or a tiger. The remaining noises were indistinguishable owing to my ignorance of the vaguer animal sounds. Regardless, the animal calls were loud.
If I thought I was simply hearing things before, then this sudden cacophony of noise ended that delusion, for with those calls came the sudden strange pressure I felt, which was very real. It was peculiar, suddenly feeling things for the first time after an eternity of nothingness. I felt like I was in a womb unrealized, a never-born fetus trapped in the bindings of its own aborted umbilical cord. I was bound tight, with anchors to stop me from drifting even as the calls continued and strange words echoed.
"Eight-Grip Sword, Divergent General."
It took me a long time before I realized the calls were not random. Some part of me, a part I was not aware of till a split second ago, understood what they were. They were an exultation, a divine symphony that none but I understood, a request and a plea, a proclamation and a declaration of my existence.
I could not say the particular act that weakened my bindings around me. It could be the strangely familiar chant, or the cacophony that continued now. Regardless of the particular reason, for the third time since I was trapped in a void of fading memories, there was a change. My bindings loosened around my mouth and I did something I never thought I would be able to do again.
I let out a breath.
"MAHORAGA"
Like the proverbial drop in the ocean, my simple act of exhalation loosened the rest of my bindings, and I could feel my tethers, the unknowing things that had pinned my bound form to the spot, loosen. With that loosening came the revival of atrophied senses that sought understanding.
I could see once more.
Yet to call it sight was a simple misnomer, for I could perceive. Yet before I could make do with the sudden introduction to existence, my body jerked. A body bound was slowly being freed as the restraints, the umbilical cord of my existence, slowly loosened around my neck, around my shoulders, my waist and my legs and fell to the ground, dissolving before they dropped onto the broken and wrecked road I stood on.
I felt a sudden weight on top of my head.
However not even the sudden return of feelings in my limbs could compare to the strange scene before me. Someone stood in front of me, with his back turned to me. He was small, barely reaching where I assumed my belly button would be if I had one. His hair was black and scattered, and his clothes were torn and ripped in multiple places where he leaked what I recognized as blood.
I could already tell that with the amount of injuries that littered his form, he would be dead in minutes unless he received medical attention. Yet instead of that, the boy looked at another figure, this one with familiar features. Blonde hair tied up in a strange hairdo. Tattoos beneath both of the pair of wide and terrified purple eyes. He was also missing a ridiculous amount of teeth, leaving his mouth a wide, bleeding, and gaping mess.
"Hey, you bastard."
The boy in front of me called out to the blonde-haired man, who was too busy staring at me with wide eyes and clear terror on his face to do any more than draw breath through his nose and exhale it through his mouth.
"I'll be dying first."
The boy finished and stretched out his hands to the side and waited.
The silence stretched out for three seconds before the boy turned to me, his movement wooden, like he didn't understand what was going on. His confusion was clear in his black eyes and his furrowed brow. He was like a director looking upon an actor in confusion at the sudden change in a planned scene. Like I was a performer that had somehow decided to spurn his directions, and as I looked upon the tired and weary features of Fushiguro Megumi, I suddenly understood.
My eyes, or at least the four wings resting where my eyes should be, finally interpreted things enough for my still confused brain to understand. I looked at myself from an outside point of view. It was a strange thing, viewing myself from a remote perspective as I observed my body in a 360-degree angle with an ultra-clear vision of my bulk.
I was massive, heavily built, and muscled. My sheer bulk was somewhere around nine feet, and my weight was somewhere north of a thousand pounds considering the fact that I could feel my feet in the ground. My tail. The long appendage connected to the back of my head swished behind me, and I could instinctively tell that the appendage had something to do with balance and growth.
There was a slight ruffle in the air, wind blowing and bringing to life the ornaments implanted into my chest as they moved with the wind. My lower body was covered by a black hakama and a white gi, while my wrists were wrapped with a single blade hidden beneath the wraps of the right one, but my most important feature was the wheel hovering above my head.
If I somehow did not recognize the body I was inhabiting after this many clues, then I was either living under a rock, a hater of good fiction, or my stint in oblivion had robbed me of what I felt was a vital part of my memory. Luckily for me, all of that was wrong, so I recognized and understood the position I was in at once.
I was Mahoraga in the middle of the Shibuya incident.
"W-what is wrong?" The blonde-haired man finally called out as he observed the face-off between Megumi and me. I vaguely remembered his name was Haruta, or Hinata. Whatever his name was, it wasn't actually important. The sole important thing and person here was the boy before me. My summoner, and the boy with a potential to rival that of the greatest sorcerer of the modern era.
Megumi's face was still scrunched up in confusion as he looked up at me. I tilted my head to the side to match his look of confusion, then I focused on his injuries. The bruised and broken bones from where Toji had used him as a brief punching bag, to the stab wounds that littered his form.
If I remembered correctly, he was supposed to activate some technique that would put him in a state of suspended animation after Mahoraga hit him. But I was not that Mahoraga, and more importantly, I did not want him dead, especially not when I did not know what it meant.
A return to that oblivion, or a more permanent darkness.
I could not die, not again, and it was with those thoughts running through my head that I was left staring into the eyes of a boy with more suicidal attempts than anyone I ever knew, and I was burned with the knowledge that a monster, one that was perhaps greater than even me, was making his way here.
Whatever decision I was going to make, I had to make it fast. Otherwise, Shibuya was going to see a real incident.
A/N: In my defense, I had no plans to start something new, not with how swamped I already am. Then I spoke to a patron that suggested this and committed the grave sin of watching the first episode of JJK Season 3. Those two events got under the sheets together and gave birth to something unholy, and this story came into existence. It practically crawled out of my head, Athena-style.
Like ReplyReport Reactions:Monsterofend, jamie96969, Shiroya and 838 othersbornsinnerFeb 23, 2026Add bookmarkView discussionThreadmarks Chapter 2 New View contentbornsinnerI trust you know where the happy button is?Feb 25, 2026NewAdd bookmark#78I could feel a noose tighten around my neck as an imaginary clock slowly ticked down.
"W-what is going through that head of yours?" Megumi wondered aloud, his hand reaching out to touch me, but my reply was silence. I was not even sure I could speak, and I didn't feel the sudden urge to do so. Instead, I was left doing something more important.
Thinking.
My summoning was a ritual. A ritual that was supposed to bind me to Megumi's will if he somehow managed to beat me. Simply losing to the teenage boy and letting him take complete control of me was out of the books, as was killing him. Megumi's death here would be the first step to bringing an end to the ritual an act that would force me back into the Ten Shadows Technique.
Which was not in the books for me, so this brought for the question, does the ritual need to end in the first place? As long as the ritual continued, I was going to remain myself in all the ways that mattered.
My knowledge, my experience, my thoughts, and ideas powered and fueled by Mahoraga's body and technique. The divine general had been a special-grade threat even as a simple, mindless shikigami with only a single-minded thought for destruction, and he had been a unique kind of enemy, the kind that you were forced to kill in a single move or not at all. I was not that simple, Mahoraga, so what could I do with this new body of mine, without any external will to shackle me? My lips twitched.
If I had another chance at life, I would've loved to live a more interesting one.
That was my last wish before I was pulled from empty oblivion and given form, a body that could feel pressure, and now... Now I'd been given another chance at life, a chance to fulfill my wish. An interesting life. My lips widened as I let out a massive grin that revealed teeth. Megumi took an instinctive step back in response, drawing my attention back to him.
The fulcrum of my existence.
There were two major things in the way of my continued state of being. The first were the numerous injuries that littered his form, especially the big hole in his stomach, Toji's parting gift to his son. The longer he stood there without activating the suspended animation technique, the more likely he was going to bleed out. The second was the more worrisome threat. Sukuna.
I could feel him coming. My presence was a challenge he had sought right from the moment he was incarnated, and Megumi had almost summoned me months ago.
The wings that served as my sensory organs flickered like a tongue tasting the air. I don't know how the original Mahoraga had missed it. My only assumption was that it was because of the single mindedness of the shikigami, as it sought to finish the ritual that kept it tethered to the mortal world. But I could feel him race his way here.
Sukuna was the second problem because he would come here seeking a fight, one that I could feel at the depths of existence. My body ached for combat, my form was one built for brutality and chaos, a malleable body that got stronger, faster, bigger the longer it fought against an enemy as it adapted, and yet even with all that, Mahoraga had lost owing to his sheer single mindedness.
I was not that Mahoraga.
So while Sukuna was the greatest threat, Megumi dying on me was the most important factor to my well-being, which meant I had to rectify that first. My entire musing and thought process had barely taken a second, and Megumi's second foot touched the ground as he was still in the process of backpedaling from my grin, but the weight of his injuries meant weakness, and at once he stumbled. Before he could fall, my pale hand snapped up and caught him by the shoulder, stabilizing him.
"W-what?" the black haired boy stammered in continued surprise, and my grin widened in response. Somehow, he understood what was about to happen, I could see his features contort into horror. A heartbeat later I had him beneath my armpit, his limbs flailing about as he struggled to escape my grip, but if he had the strength for that in the first place then he would not have summoned me to fight a sorcerer that was barely first grade.
I had not forgotten about Haruta.
I gave the blonde haired confused boy? man? a look, which was enough to force him to fall on his ass. I could kill him. I found that whatever moral compass that would've previously made that observation or thought a horrible one had been discarded in the void where I had lost memories. So I contemplated the thought of killing him. It would be quick, not the drawn out thing the original Mahoraga had done, but it would still take a second, a second wasted on someone whose continued existence meant that I lived even longer.
It was a wasted second Sukuna could use to catch up to me.
I turned away and I crouched. The muscles in my calves and thighs compressed, the increased weight and power forced the ground beneath me to crack, and I held myself tight like a spring compressed to the tightest limit. My sensory organs flapped in the wind, perceiving near everything around me, including the wind flow, the sound of Haruta's heart pounding in his chest, the splatter of blood against the earth, the movement of a figure as he increasingly tore his way through every obstacle in a straight line for me, cursed warbling of transfigured humans, till I finally heard what I was looking for.
Human voices.
My grin widened and with a single effort of will, I released the tension, and my body exploded into motion as I jumped. The ground beneath me exploded as I hurled myself up and away, leaving nothing but a crater and a sonic boom behind me, one that flung Haruta away, knocking him unconscious as he slammed his head into a building.
Megumi
Megumi had read more than a dozen accounts on the most powerful shikigami in his arsenal, all of them second hand, and yet one thing all his ancestors before him had forgotten to note was its speed.
One moment, Megumi had been stumbling backward, blood leaking from too many wounds to count, watching his supposedly mindless shikigami grin at him like it understood some private joke. The next, he was tucked beneath an armpit that smelled faintly of... he couldn't place it, not while his limbs were flailing uselessly as Mahoraga crouched.
He didn't even have time to scream before the world exploded.
If he didn't die, it was a near thing. Perhaps this was how Mahoraga preferred to kill the sorcerers stupid enough to summon him while bleeding out from near a dozen injuries. The sonic boom hit him like a physical thing, rattling his already abused bones as they rocketed upward. Wind tore at his face, his scattered hair whipping back as buildings blurred past in streaks of concrete and shattered glass. His stomach dropped somewhere around the third skyscraper, and he would've vomited if his body had anything left to give.
What the hell is happening?
That was the single question that had been ringing in his head ever since he had summoned the shikigami. Mahoraga shouldn't, couldn't, act like this. The ritual was absolute and simple in its complexity. Summon the shikigami and it kills everything in sight starting with the summoner, rinse and repeat until someone finally tames it or everyone dies. It was simple, a brutal technique, and an effective deterrent. It was a WMD he always carried in his back pocket just as his ancestors before him had. A suicide technique that however ensured that the enemy stupid enough to force the user to activate it would die alongside him.
Except Mahoraga had not killed him. The shikigami had even gone as far as to prop him up after he stumbled.
If the jump had been bad, the landing was somehow worse. Megumi's teeth clacked together hard enough to draw blood and crack enamel as Mahoraga touched down in the middle of what looked like a warzone. Shibuya was a smoking mess, and where they had landed was a perfect representation of it.
Shattered storefronts, scorched pavement, and blood.
There were the transfigured humans, too. At least a dozen of them, their bodies warped into grotesque mockeries of the human form. They surrounded a group of exhausted sorcerers who looked like they'd been fighting for hours.
Megumi barely had time to register the scene before Mahoraga dropped him.
He hit the ground hard, belly first, and flopped like a fish as pain, flaring white hot, tore through his ribs, and he gasped for air that wouldn't come. Through blurred vision, he watched the shikigami step forward, its feet cracking the ground with every step, and from somewhere in the back of his scrambled brain, he understood what was about to happen.
The shikigami made a flick with its wrist and a blade extended from the wraps around its right wrist with a disconcerting sound.
One transfigured human was in the process of turning around when Mahoraga finally decided to act.
What followed wasn't a fight inasmuch as it was a slaughter.
The first transfigured human didn't even see it coming. One moment, it was turning around, elongated head making a chittering noise as it sensed the intrusion. The next, it was falling in two halves, red blood spraying in an arc that painted the cracked pavement and the side of the building. Mahoraga appeared beside it, and looked down on the creature in something that approached curiosity. Megumi could not tell; their bond was a strange thing.
The shikigami watched the dead body for a single second, which was enough to finally clue the rest of the transfigured humans as to the monster in their midst, but before they could turn to face him, whatever curiosity the shikigami had was sated and he was already moving again, its massive frame blurring with speed that shouldn't be possible for something so large.
Another transfigured human died before it could so much as blink. Then another. The blade sang through the air, lashing out with a precise and brutal blow that severed the head of a transfigured human with surgical efficiency, then Mahoraga slammed his feet into the headless body, sending it flying into another transfigured human. The two bodies slammed into each other hard enough to outright explode into gore as blood was sent flying once more.
Before the rest of the transfigured humans could react, Mahoraga moved once more, like a shark in bloodstained waters.
Four seconds. That's all it took.
Four seconds, and what had looked like two dozen transfigured humans were reduced to twitching parts on the ground, their red human blood pooling beneath Mahoraga's feet as the shikigami finally came to a stop. Megumi spotted dozens of thin lines on Mahoraga's form. The transfigured humans had managed to land some blows? How? Mahoraga had ragdolled them. The only reason the shikigami would've been hit was if he wanted to be hit and somehow took on their flailing nonsensecal blow, which didn't make sense... Did it?
The wheel above Mahoraga's head turned and spun once before stopping in place with a dreadful click.
The injuries closed up a second later, and in a blur of motion, Mahoraga disappeared. A heartbeat later, Megumi felt a pressure behind him.
Megumi craned his neck to look up at him. The shikigami's pale skin was drenched now, viscera dripping from the blade at his wrist, and blood slipping off its form, then there was the grin.
Megumi felt his skin crawl, but he turned away. If the shikigami had not killed him yet, it wasn't suddenly going to kill him now. Instead, he turned to the rescued sorcerers.
The two women and one man stood frozen, faces pale, cursed energy flickering weakly around them like dying flames. Megumi recognized the look. It was the same look he had on his face the first time he had watched Gojo Satoru fight.
One of them, a woman with brown hair and burns on her arms, took a stumbling step backward. "What, what is that?"
Megumi opened his mouth to answer and coughed up blood instead. It splattered across the pavement in dark drops, and his vision swam and he staggered once more, but before he could face plant, a palm caught him across the shoulder and propped him up.
A sound rumbled from Mahoraga's chest. A low guttural growl that vibrated through the ground and set Megumi's teeth on edge.
The shikigami moved, and for one horrible moment Megumi thought his weakness had finally annoyed the shikigami. This was it, the ritual reasserting itself, Mahoraga finally doing what it was supposed to do. But instead of a blade, he got a finger. Massive and pale, pointing down at him with clear intent before jabbing toward the sorcerers.
Megumi did not need a class in sign language to understand what the shikigami was pointing at. His injuries. Mahoraga was looking for help for him.
Help him now, the gesture said. Unless.
"He's," Megumi wheezed, tasting copper. "He's trying to, communicate."
The woman's eyes went impossibly wide. "That thing is a shikigami?"
He didn't have the time for this. They were shell shocked, and he doubted the three semi-grade one sorcerers had mastery of the reverse cursed technique. "Where," Megumi coughed again in another attempt at speech, his lungs burning. "Where's Ieiri-sensei?"
He had delivered Ino to the healer a few minutes ago, but considering their original tactics had to do with the healer not staying in one place, to disrupt the enemy and ensure she was safe, the best way to find her new location was by asking around.
"Ieiri-sensei?" A man this time, younger, with a bandage wrapped around his head and one arm hanging useless at his side while his second held a katana replied to him. "She's, she's at the fallback point. The old elementary school, about six blocks east." He pointed with his good arm wielding the sword, the gesture was trembling. Megumi was not the only person dying. "But it's... there's transfigured humans between here and..."
Megumi didn't hear the rest because he could feel Mahoraga's intent once more. The blasted shikigami was moving again, and this time he grabbed two people. Megumi found himself tucked under one arm like a particularly bloody sack of rice, while the bandaged sorcerer got scooped up under the other with a yelp of surprise.
"Wait, what, I can't..."
"Don't," Megumi managed, his voice barely a whisper. He doubted the man could dissuade Mahoraga and while the shikigami had seen fit to rescue him, Megumi had a feeling Mahoraga didn't care much for anybody else. "Don't worry... Much. Just, just guide us."
The man's face had gone the color of old paper, but he nodded jerkily and raised his good arm again, pointing into the distance where smoke still rose from burning buildings.
Mahoraga's head tilted, those four wing appendages where his eyes should be fluttering in the breeze, the tail protruding from his skull swaying like a flower in the wind. His sensory organs, Megumi realized even in the depths of his pain. The shikigami was tasting the air. Reading the environment.
Then the shikigami went still.
Completely, utterly motionless. Even that ever present grin seemed frozen on his face. The only movement came from the wings and tail, twitching and flickering like antennae picking up a signal.
Something pooled in Megumi's stomach. Fear. Some part of him wondered how many things could make Mahoraga worry?
"Mahoraga?" His voice came out smaller than he intended.
The shikigami's head swiveled, not toward where the sorcerer had pointed, but south. Toward Shibuya Station. Toward where the fight that had lit up the whole of Shibuya had happened. Where Itadori Yuji was last spotted alive, and finally, where previously there had been an explosion of cursed energy, so malevolent it could only be one person.
Sukuna.
A sound escaped Mahoraga's throat. Not quite a growl, not quite a grunt, but something that Megumi's battered brain interpreted as annoyance. Like a man being interrupted during an important task by an unwelcome phone call.
The muscles in those massive legs compressed again, that same coiling tension from before, and Megumi barely had time to think before they were airborne once more.
The sonic boom was louder this time. Buildings cracked. Windows shattered. The bandaged sorcerer screamed something that got lost in the wind, but Megumi barely heard it because his mind was racing, thoughts tumbling over each other in desperate succession.
Why?
Why heal him? Why save those sorcerers? Why run from Sukuna instead of charging in like every account of Mahoraga said he should?
He only had a vague answer to the last one. If Mahoraga fought Sukuna, with him present, then Megumi was certain he was not going to survive it, yet that thought process contradicted everything he knew about Mahoraga. Everything the clan had recorded.
The shikigami was supposed to be mindless. A force of nature bound by ritual and instinct. But mindless things didn't grin. Didn't calculate. Didn't show annoyance. Didn't communicate clear requests.
Blood leaked from Megumi's mouth, and as they hurtled through the air above a burning Shibuya, tucked under the arm of an impossible shikigami that refused to follow any of the rules, one thought crystallized with absolute clarity in his head.
"Something is wrong with Mahoraga." Then, a quieter voice whispered, a voice that sounded suspiciously like his optimistic sister Tsumiki. "Or perhaps something is finally right for once."
A/N: One early release chapter, just because i love the interest shown so far.Last edited: Feb 25, 2026 Like ReplyReport Reactions:Ergy, Monsterofend, ezfijezdizezoedk and 999 othersbornsinnerFeb 25, 2026NewAdd bookmarkView discussionThreadmarks Chapter 3 New View contentbornsinnerI trust you know where the happy button is?Mar 2, 2026NewAdd bookmark#164I was getting used to my body.
Sailing through the air, hundreds of feet above the ground, the sensation was almost unreal, because I could feel everything. The wind pressure, telling me the way the wind was blowing. The glow of the moon casting my shadow across the city. The thudding hearts that my passengers carried in their chests as I once more landed on top of a skyscraper, uncaring of the collateral damage. Again, I hurled myself forward, obliterating the first two floors of the building behind me.
I was strong. The concept of strength was a curious one. In my past life, I had not exactly been weak. I'd gotten into more than my fair share of squabbles as a teen and had come out on top more than once, yet there was something so viscerally different between the two bodies. The strength of my limbs, for example. I already knew Mahoraga was powerful. I'd watched him fight Sukuna and saw the damage they brought to the city from a front row seat, and yet piloting the body truly put things to scale for the first time.
My fight against the transfigured humans had been my first test of my capabilities. Unfortunately, the gap between the transfigured humans and Mahoraga was so large that I could not gauge just how powerful I was. A Polymorphic Soul Isomer should prove a better challenge and let me know where I stood better, but that was dependent on finding Mahito first and scaring him enough to pull that out.
There were other enemies I could challenge to test myself without going straight to Jujutsu Satan. Kenjaku was somewhere here. He should still be protecting the Prison Realm that was adjusting to Gojo Satoru, which meant he was somewhere beneath me. Unfortunately, those two were the only real threats that could face me for now, and that was because I'd not decided on a counter for their domain expansions yet.
Hanami was dead, as was Jogo. The rogue curse users should have been rounded up in total by now, while Mei Mei should have put an axe through the smallpox deity too. Considering Megumi was here, Toji should have also committed suicide, which brought down my list of viable opponents to a measly three.
"Down there!" My second passenger yelled as he pointed to the ground ahead of us.
The building was old, even in the darkness of the night and barely lit by stubborn street lamps that refused to die in the face of the calamity happening in the district. The building was also surrounded by cursed corpses. There were at least eight of them, and they all turned at once, with strange synchrony, to me, even though I was still hundreds of feet in the air.
Principal Yaga.
It made sense. The higher ups of Jujutsu society were stupid, but you did not need a noteworthy IQ to know that your healers should not be left undefended. My grin widened as I began my descent. I almost overshot and crashed straight into the roof of the building, but I wanted to avoid killing Shoko and Yaga, which meant I had to change direction. Angling my body sharper, my descent tilted as I slammed into the courtyard in front of the building.
The ground beneath me cracked, stone and debris turning into fine sand as the following shockwave blasted forth, sending everything away and revealing my form. My skin was pristine white again. The blood that had stuck to me had been shrugged off due to the sheer speed I'd been moving with.
I took a step out of the crater I found myself in, idly noting that I was going to have to control my strength better. Destroying everything in sight every time I jumped was going to get annoying fast, for others at least. On my third step out of the crater, my wings twitched, and I bared my teeth in response. I flung my passengers upward at once, and a second later, three cursed corpses burst out of the dust cloud I'd thrown up.
The first was built like a rhino and led the charge from the front. Its footsteps matched my own as it cratered the ground with its charge. A flick of my wrist sent the extermination blade back into the shaft. It would be useless here, and I did not need to kill the cursed corpses. I blurred into motion and met it midway.
My left hand snapped up and caught it by the horn, my palm flesh digging into the surprisingly hard material, cursed energy reinforcing the doll. Then I dug my feet into the ground, halting its charge and forcing the puppet to come to a painful halt. My second foot shot out to better brace myself before my free hand lashed out, burying a disastrous haymaker into the side of the puppet's head, enough to completely rip it off and send it flying.
The cursed corpse remained still for a second, confusion fueling it, but the remaining two were already moving. If they were surprised by how quickly I had dispatched their leader, they did not show it. I tilted my frame to the side, dodging the second cursed corpse shaped like a four armed monkey, then my hand shot out and grabbed it by the tail. I spun on the spot at once and used the screeching cursed corpse to whip the third and final opponent into the ground in a single blow.
Before any of them could recover, I stomped down hard on their forms, burying them further into the ground, just in time for my hands to snap out and catch Megumi and the second man. Fushiguro glared at me from an awkward position as I held him dangling from a single leg, while the second man looked like he had been knocked unconscious.
"Be more gentle, you bastard."
I dropped the obnoxious boy in response, and he must have learned from the last time because he was smart enough to land and brace himself with his hands first. He staggered his way to his feet and braced against my form before looking up at me, and I could see the beginning of a tirade forming until the doors to the building before us opened and a solidly built man stepped out. His clothes matched Megumi's dark blue, and his eyes were hidden by dark shades.
Principal Yaga stepped out of the building ready for a fight, his knuckle dusters in hand and five, no, six extra cursed corpses of different sizes and shapes surrounding him. Then he stopped at the scene before him. I could not tell what was running through his head, so I simply dropped the second man and nudged Megumi.
"Fushiguro san? Is that really you?"
Megumi gave me a half hearted glance for a second before he turned back to the principal and gave a nod. "It's me, Principal. I need to see Ieiri san." He finished, gesturing to his pale features and the hole in his stomach.
Megumi
The silence in the emergency ward was thick with tension, and it was only partially due to the white behemoth half hidden in the corner of the room.
Shoko worked with practiced skill, her hands glowing with the soft green light of reverse cursed technique as she moved them over Megumi's torso. Healing others with reverse cursed technique was slower than healing yourself. Still, Shoko was not called the best healer for nothing. The worst of his injuries, the puncture wounds that had been leaking blood at an alarming rate, closed first. Then came the broken ribs, the internal bleeding, the countless bruises that painted his skin in shades of purple and black.
It was quick and painful and felt like fire ants were crawling beneath his skin, rebuilding tissue that had been torn apart. Megumi gritted his teeth and endured it, because the alternative was bleeding out, and he'd already come far too close to that tonight.
The room itself was small and was lit by a single flickering light overhead that cast weak shadows across the room. The bed he lay on smelled of antiseptic and blood, both his own and from the dozen other injured sorcerers who had been evacuated the moment Mahoraga landed in the courtyard.
Outside, Megumi could hear the low murmur of voices. Sorcerers who had been pulled back from the front lines, some wounded, others simply exhausted. They had scattered the moment Mahoraga appeared bearing them. Apparently, the principal had begun evacuating them, including Ieiri, while he had stepped forward to sell his life dearly if needed.
Fortunately, there had been no need.
Unfortunately, that meant Mahoraga was still here.
The shikigami remained in the corner of the room, motionless as a statue. The visible part of his pale white form almost glowed in the dim light, while the rest was hidden in the darkness. His massive frame took up far too much space, those broad shoulders nearly touching both walls. Mahoraga was a strange shikigami, considering the wheel and the tail at the back of his head, but it was the wings that unnerved everyone the most.
The four appendages, where eyes should be fluttered occasionally, twitching in response to sounds or movements. You could not tell who Mahoraga was looking at. The shikigami could be staring at you, or past you, or at nothing at all. That uncertainty created a constant pressure at the back of Megumi's neck, an animal awareness that something dangerous was watching.
Shoko had not said a word since she started healing him, but Megumi could see the tension in her shoulders, the way her jaw clenched every time Mahoraga shifted his weight. Principal Yaga stood near the door, arms crossed, his cursed corpses dismissed but his knuckle dusters still on. The man's face was unreadable behind those dark shades, but his posture screamed wariness.
They did not know of Mahoraga. The principal was vaguely aware he had a powerful shikigami in storage, but other than the Zenin, the only other people aware of the Divine General were the Gojo. Yet even without any knowledge of the pale shikigami, his presence alone was enough to put everyone on edge.
The quiet stretched on until finally Shoko pulled her hands back and let out a long breath. "You'll be fine, kid. I've taken care of the worst of it. You'll need rest and some real food, but you won't die. You definitely came out of this better than that classmate of yours. What was her name? Maki."
Megumi blinked in surprise. Maki was here? The last time he saw her, they had just escaped Dagon's domain.
Shoko slipped out a stick of cigarette from her overall, her dark brown eyes questing for a lighter when they stumbled upon Mahoraga again. The healer flinched before scowling as she glanced back to Megumi.
"Can you desummon your shikigami now? He freaks me out."
Megumi shifted his focus. If Maki was here, then whatever injury she had must have been healed by Shoko already. He flexed his fingers, testing his newly healed body. The pain was still there and would likely take minutes or hours to fully fade, but he could move without feeling like his ribs were going to puncture his lungs. So he sat up slowly, swung his legs off the cot, and met Shoko's eyes.
"I can't."
Her expression did not change, but annoyance flickered in her gaze. "Why not?"
"Because I don't control him," Megumi kept his voice level. "The ritual I used to summon him was one of subjugation, and it hasn't been completed."
"What are the conditions?" Yaga asked from his position by the doorway.
"I need to beat him, or he needs to kill me. As long as those conditions aren't met, he stays."
"And if you dismiss the technique anyway?" Yaga continued.
Megumi turned to face the principal. "I don't know. The records don't say, but I don't think it's possible, not without completing the ritual at least."
The principal's jaw tightened, but he nodded. "Then we work around it. If he hasn't attacked you by now, he's probably not going to attack you anytime soon. I was worried he'd attack after your healing, but he's been content to remain standing there. Now onto important matters. Fushiguro, I need you to listen carefully. Nanami is missing."
Megumi straightened, ignoring the protest from his still healing muscles.
"Gojo Satoru has not been sighted since, so we can only assume he hasn't been recovered from the Prison Realm yet," Yaga continued, his voice grim. "We don't know the exact location of this new enemy that managed to trap him, but he's had time to let it adjust to Gojo's presence. If we don't retrieve it soon, we may lose our chance entirely."
Megumi listened in silence.
"We need to mobilize. A vast majority of the civilians have luckily been evacuated," Yaga continued. "Now's the time to gather what sorcerers we can, locate Satoru, and release him. Every moment we waste is..."
"We need to find Itadori first."
Both Yaga and Shoko turned to stare at Megumi.
"Itadori Yuji?" the principal began in a neutral tone. "I understand you have a personal connection to the boy, Fushiguro, but..."
"It's not about that," Megumi cut him off, his mind racing. "Sukuna is back. I'm sure we all felt it. Itadori has the ability to suppress the King of Curses, so if for some reason Itadori is the one being suppressed now, we need to find him and return him back to normal. Sukuna is the more important threat."
"And how do you expect us to face an incarnated King of Curses without the man that serves as the cornerstone of modern day Jujutsu sorcerers?" Shoko interjected into the conversation, sending Megumi a half-lidded stare. "I understand you, kid, believe me, I do, but retrieving Satoru first would be easier than facing down Sukuna without him."
Megumi wanted to argue otherwise, but the words got stuck in his throat. Logically, he knew they were correct, and yet...
The previous silence returned, and this time it stretched between them.
Then Mahoraga moved.
The shikigami had been forgotten in the debate. He had been so still for so long that when he shifted, everyone flinched in response. That massive frame unfolded as it stepped fully out of the darkness, one foot stepping forward, then another. The floorboards creaked under his weight, and the entire building seemed to groan in protest.
Megumi's heart hammered in his chest. "Mahoraga?"
The shikigami didn't respond, didn't even look back. He simply walked, slow and deliberate, each step measured. His wings fluttered, the tail swayed, and that wheel above his head vibrated like it could sense something the rest of them couldn't.
"Where is he going?" Shoko asked.
Megumi didn't have an answer for her, so he pushed himself off the cot, ignoring the protest from his body, and followed. Behind him, he heard Yaga and Shoko fall into step.
Mahoraga walked through the hallways of the small building like he owned it. The few sorcerers mobile enough to move pressed themselves against the walls, eyes wide and their cursed energy flickering weakly around them as the shikigami passed.
Then they reached the entrance of the building.
Mahoraga stopped in the doorway, his frame blocking most of the view outside. For a long moment, he simply stood there, wings twitching, tail swaying. Then, slowly, he stepped forward and out of the building.
Megumi moved forward, Yaga and Shoko flanking him, and looked out into the courtyard.
His eyes widened because standing in the center of the ruined courtyard, illuminated by the pale moonlight and the distant glow of fires, was a familiar figure. Pink hair. A lean, athletic build. But the way he stood, the casual arrogance in his posture, the four eyes looking back at them told him a simple truth. That wasn't Itadori Yuji.
The King of Curses tilted his head to the side, a sharp smile spreading across his face. When he spoke, his voice carried across the distance, clear and mocking.
"Well, well. Look what crawled out of the shadows."
Megumi's hand moved instinctively to form hand signs, but Mahoraga raised a hand, and the motion stopped him cold. Then the shikigami took one step forward, then another, moving with that same deliberate slowness until he stood fully in the courtyard, four meters away from the strongest sorcerer in history.
"Finally," the King of Curses said, spreading his arms wide in welcome. "I was beginning to think you'd keep running away, Megumi Fushiguro, and this must be him. That sense of danger I'd felt. Oh, truly, what joy it is to experience this all once more."
A/N: So this would be the last chapter for this particular snippet. This has been a very spontaneous fic, much like AOMR. I'm immensely surprised by the traction and interest it has somehow gained, so not to worry, as long as the interest holds up, I'll continue it. I just need the time to work out a better framework, plot, SI Mahoraga counters, and his adaptation to Techniques. So by the middle or end of February, this would probably turn into Its own thing.
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quote propped up from somewhere in my head, the speaker was a blur, but the words themselves were unforgettable. Dread it, run from it, destiny arrives all the same.
In this moment, it spoke to the inevitability that was Sukuna. I'd been moving since I took over Mahoraga's body, and still he had tracked me, crossing the entire city, like a bloodhound on the loose.
This was a fight I wanted to avoid. Megumi was no longer half dead, but fighting Sukuna as I was right now risked him obliterating me with Fuga, which would lead to a scenario I had little chance of affecting. The best option was to run, to flee like a coward, yet I knew that if I somehow managed to outrun him, Megumi and the rest wouldn't survive it. Megumi might, but the same could not be said for the rest.
However, I remained for one other reason, a reason vastly superior to the others I made up in my head, a reason so powerful that any other was relegated and turned into a simple lie. I was in the presence of the strongest sorcerer in history and the sight of him lit a fire at the core of my being and without even thinking, my knees flexed into a crouch, my feet dug deep into the concrete like it was mud, my stance lowered but my back hunched like a feral beast and my lips tore open to reveal jagged teeth.
My body, instinctively, optimized itself for speed.
I was not a coward, and I wasn't one to run from a fight, but this intense desire to face Jujutsu Satan was something more. It was not a part of me, not the me from before with the vague memories of a life lived. It was an intricate part of my new form, a mechanism that pushed my body to fight, conquer, and adapt. It was Mahoraga.
I let out a single steaming breath.
Sukuna's eyes widened at my reaction, that dark and vicious smile playing out on his own face.
"Oh, you're not one for a conversation, are you?" He questioned rhetorically as he stretched his hands above his head, loosening the limbs. "Jogo was an appetizer, but something tells me that you're going to be the main dish."
I ignored his words and instead did something the original Mahoraga had not done much of. I began to think. Sukuna knew nothing about me. Unlike the Zenin or the Fushiguros, the incarnated king of curses had never encountered Mahoraga before, which in hindsight made sense.
Mahoraga was not originally from Japan. He was a curse spirit regarded as a deity from foreign lands, one that had somehow found its way into the Ten Shadows technique through means I didn't fully understand yet. Regardless, it meant that Sukuna was aware of me, but had no details of my capabilities.
Unlike Sukuna, I did not suffer such ignorance. I knew him. His abilities, his skills, his techniques, but more importantly, I understood his character, his archetype, his needs, his desires. His wishes, dreams, and goals. Fundamentally, Sukuna was a very simple creature. He reminded me of another quote.
If I want it, the heavens had better have it. If I don't want it, the heavens better not have it.
That was who Sukuna was. Everything he did was for his pleasure, and with that understanding, I further comprehended his existence and began to calculate how to actually fight him.
From my vague memories, Sukuna was fast. Even with only fifteen fingers, he was faster than any other person here, bar me. I knew how fast he was, but he didn't know how fast I was, so I was only going to get a single chance at this.
The wing appendages that acted as my eyes folded in on themselves like a bird about to dive for prey. My body tensed even further, like a spring forced into itself; muscles upon muscles were forced to compress to the limit, compress enough that my whole body was filled with pain.
Sukuna's head tilted to the side, like he was amused, like he could read my movement, yet did not think much of it. His attention drifted for a single moment, four crimson eyes rolled in their sockets and moved to Fushiguro, then Yaga, Ileri, and the others behind me.
"The rest of you are not permitted to witness this," he started, his hand slowly coming up, readying for a swing. "Dissa—"
The ground beneath me exploded from the force of my motion.
Sukuna reacted quickly. He shifted the angle of his hand from behind me to in front of himself, then he swung it, but I was already inside his guard, a glancing cut on my shoulder the only evidence of his counter. His eyes widened, yet half of the visual organs were covered by the great white fist that held his face in a vice-like grip.
KLNK
Momentum carried me. My leg slammed into the ground once again, and with bare effort, I hurled myself forward, carrying Sukuna as a battering ram as we flew back into the heart of the city, buildings breaking against Sukuna as we tunneled our way to a place where we could fight without risking Megumi dying to a wayward slash.
__
Megumi
They all stared in silence. The past second had happened so quickly, Megumi was still slowly coming to the realization that they were gone. Mahoraga and Sukuna both. The vibration that heralded Mahoraga's taking off was still felt, as the ground tremored from where he launched himself.
"D-Did it just save us?" Ileri's voice was shaky, her hands still gripping the door of the hospital she had taken cover behind.
Megumi didn't answer. He couldn't. His mind was still trying to process what he'd just witnessed. Mahoraga had moved with purpose. With the intent to protect them from the king of curses. It had positioned itself between them and Sukuna, and then it had attacked with a strategy that spoke of intelligence far beyond what any shikigami should possess.
Megumi's eyes trailed above them, to where the invisible slash had done damage, after tearing into Mahoraga's shoulder. He imagined what would've happened if the Shikigami had been absent, and the thought brought a shudder to his body.
"Should we evacuate now?" Someone questioned from behind. But Megumi was not listening; unconsciously, his feet started taking him forward. He had been the only one to notice it, but the wheel above Mahoraga's head had turned.
The dull gold of the wheel above the shikigami's head had spun once during the brief exchange with a heavy KLNK. Just once. But Megumi had felt it, the way the cursed energy in the air had shifted, the way the Shikigami had changed in response. Somehow, he was still connected to it, even if he had zero control over it.
"Fushiguro-kun," Yaga's voice cut through his thoughts, halting his next step. The principal was already moving, his cursed corpses forming a protective perimeter around the injured sorcerers. "We need to evacuate. Now. Whatever happens between those two, we don't want to be anywhere near it."
"But—"
"No buts," Yaga said firmly. "That thing might have saved us, but it's still fighting Sukuna. You saw the aftermath of Sukuna's clash with the special grade disaster curse. I fear that when these two clash for real, everything in a kilometer radius is going to be dust."
Megumi clenched his fists. Yaga was right. He knew Yaga was right. But leaving Mahoraga alone with Sukuna, with Itadori, felt wrong on a level he couldn't articulate.
"And there are others as well. Nanami, for example, who we've still not heard from, and Satoru, who remains sealed. Your Shikigami is playing the most important part, dealing with Sukuna. Let us do what we can as well." Yaga finished with a hand on his shoulder.
The sound of distant explosions filled Megumi's thoughts as somewhere in the city, the real battle was beginning.
__
Big Raga The Opp Stoppa
A flick of my right wrist sent the sword of extermination flying from the wraps that held it hidden, then my right arm shot forward like a cannon, burying the tip of the blade into Sukuna's stomach, but that was as far as it went. His tattooed hand had caught the outside of my wrist almost immediately, and he strained as he fought to keep my hand back.
Boom.
We tore through another building, using Sukuna as a battering ram, but if tearing through the concrete structure affected him, he didn't show it, instead he twisted to look at me, baring his teeth, just like I did. I tried to put in more force into the stab, but my strength failed me. It took me a second to realize why.
The dismantle Sukuna shot in the beginning. It had ripped into my right shoulder, and shikigami or not, Mahoraga still obeyed the laws of physics and biology when he felt like it. The cut had carved deep, severing multiple muscles, thereby weakening my right limb. An annoyance, I let out a grunt, but an annoyance that would not last for long. The cut was already healing faster than it should have.
"Fast." Sukuna commented with a laugh, then he twisted in my grip, a movement more proportional to a snake than any man.
A kick to the inside of my forearm broke the limb mid-flight, and I stared into Sukuna's face as he flipped us midair. With the loss of traction, there was no leverage to apply my overwhelming strength, and I knew it even before he did, so I simply watched as he spun and flung me away, but not before I retaliated with a sideways kick into his ribs that threw him in the opposite direction instead of allowing him an upper hand.
My body flipped in the air, momentum and technique rendering skill useless as I blasted through a skyscraper filled with desks, tables, chairs, and other assorted nonsense, before finally coming to a rest halfway into another, my body held in place by the metal rebar that supported the structure.
For all of a second, there was silence. Our exchange had been brief, but enough for me to pick up a few details. I was physically faster, but Sukuna's reflexes were sharper. His combat experience was vast, measured in centuries, and it showed in how easily he'd countered my initial assault despite being caught off guard. Mahoraga's combat instincts were not any poorer; combat instincts accumulated over multiple centuries as well, even if he didn't keep whatever adaptations he gained.
Snap
I looked to the side, and at the limb imprinted into the building. The broken arm was already healing, bones snapping back into place with wet cracks that echoed through the empty floor.
Dismantle.
I ripped myself free from the rebar before the first part of the word completed, and dropped to the ground, concrete cracking under my weight. The invisible slash came from my left, cutting through three support pillars and the wall beyond, and sent the building tilting my way, but I was already moving to the side.
A split second later, I realized I'd been herded.
Dismantle.
I saw it. The wing-like appendages on my head tracked the cursed energy fluctuation a split second after the technique activated, rendering a visual image of the invisible blade in my eyes. It would have been easy to dodge, to expose my ability to see it, to reveal Mahoraga's first adaptation to dismantle. That is what the original Mahoraga would have done, uncaring of tactics.
Instead my left hand snapped out to the side, grabbing a car by its bonnet, and with a twist of my hips, I flung it ahead of me, a split second later the car was split in two, but I could clearly see that some strength, minuscule as it was, had been ripped out of the curse technique, and with that realization, the bare beginnings of a plan began to come to mind.
I intercepted the sword of extermination in the path of the slash, in a seeming random movement, that was calculated to protect my head, as Sukuna's dismantle carved a hot line of pain in my chest that dug deep enough to kiss spine. I let out a grunt of pain, but my feet dug into the ground, anchoring me in place.
The pain was sharp, but brief. Supporting another theory, whatever Mahoraga was, he wasn't a creature meant to suffer pain. It was a theory I'd tested when I allowed the transfigured humans to hurt me with cuts to hasten my adaptation for the inevitable clash with Sukuna. Mahoraga didn't feel pain like people did.
Footsteps rang out as Sukuna walked through the alleyway he'd shot his dismantle from, brushing dust off his shoulders with an amused expression, then he lifted the side of his shirt and glanced at the stab I'd given him. It was already beginning to heal, his reverse curse technique going to work. "Fast, vicious, and strangely perceptive unless that block now was as lucky as it looked. You know, I'm starting to understand why that Fushiguro brat thought of you as a last option," He started but made a tut sound of dissatisfaction. "Yet this is not enough."
I didn't respond. Couldn't, really, given I lacked the vocal cords for human speech. Instead, I took a step forward, shifted my stance, then put my weight on my back foot. My shoulder had healed, returning strength to my arm, and so I brought up the limbs in a boxer's stance, waiting for my chest to heal fully.
"The strong, silent type then?" Sukuna's grin widened. "That's fine. Your body will tell me everything I need to know once I'm done with you."
He swung his hand in a lazy but well paragraphed slash.
Dismantle.
A barrage of slashing attacks filled the air between us, four invisible blades as opposed to the single one I was expecting. If I had eyes, they would have bulged in surprise, instead my body moved to dodge, yet I was the one to direct it. The ground beneath me cracked as I moved, pivoting on the spot and diving into the closest shop beside me.
I circled around Sukuna using the shop for protection. I glimpsed him, still standing in place as he swung once again in my direction, yet four slashes manifested as they obliterated the front of the store, tore through furniture, appliances, rebar and stone, before the weakened slash got to me, as the weakened dismantle carved fresh new lines into my pale flesh, suddenly I was hit with a sense of understanding. The wheel above my head began to turn.
KLNK
Understanding fed to me from my second adaptation. Sukuna used curse energy manipulation on a scale that allowed him to direct his dismantle with his fingers. The position of his fingers was the position the multiple dismantle flew in. A finger for each dismantle. If he made a single right-hand slash, it was a single overpowered dismantle. If he splayed his fingers, it allowed him five dismantles that cut from multiple angles as opposed to a single one.
Yet there had to be something more to it. I'd seen him pull off hundreds of dismantle with ease. I needed to understand it further, I needed to adapt further and to do that, i needed to be hit.
My back slammed into a wall from the force of the weakened cuts. Despite the damage Sukuna was doing to my body. I somehow knew I was resilient enough to tank more dangerous things, which was surprising, and that wide smile that had formed on my face in the beginning had not dropped in the slightest; it widened as the multiple cuts began to heal again, faster than the first groove that had nearly kissed my spine. I was adapting.
"If you don't come to me, I'll come to you." A yell rang out from outside.
My left fist shot out in a haymaker right at the point Sukuna appeared inside the building, but he raised his guard, blocked the blow, then lashed out with a kick at my injuries. I pivoted, twisting my body to the complaint of my still healing torso. The pain was sharp and immediate, but I pushed through the temporary agony and swung my right arm, sword of execution first, in a wide arc aimed at Sukuna's head. He ducked under it with insulting ease, but I'd been anticipating that because my left fist caught him in the stomach, the force of the blow lifting him up and right into the path of the sword of execution, the bladed edge dug into his side, and Sukuna let out an annoyed grunt.
Then he swung his left free hand, and this close, there was no way to dodge, even if I caught sight of the invisible slash as it manifested. His fingers stopped in front of my face. He grinned.
Dismantle.
My vision went white as I felt crisscrosses across my face. I'd ducked my head back and down in the last second, but some of the slashes had caught my winged appendages that served as my eyes, then something struck me like a cannon, flinging me away, as I was forced to explode my way through another building, then a house, and a shop before my wings healed, bringing back sight.
I spun in midair, before landing upright, with my feet digging into the ground as the force of Sukuna's blow was bled out into the groove my feet created.
"Vicious and cunning. You're no simple Shikigami, are you, Mahoraga?" Sukuna's voice rang out from the flickering streetlight he perched on a few meters to my left, and his face rested in an arm as he observed me like a particularly interesting insect.
The wheel above my head began to turn.
"What is behind those white wings of yours?" he questioned. "I know you understand me, you're following my words, I can see it. You act more like a special grade curse than a simple Shikigami." Sukuna's head tilted to the side. "Is the Fushiguro brat even aware of just what you are?"
I ignored his question, instead my attention moved to his injury, where I'd dug in the Sword of Extermination, right in the same place I'd barely managed a stab earlier.
Sukuna didn't bother to lift his shirt again; the hole the blow ripped into the cloth was wide enough to reveal the already healed gash.
"That was a better hit." The king of curses admitted with a grin, "If I were a cursed spirit, it might have even killed me, but while the blade itself is dangerous owing to its length and sharpness, the positive energy that coats it simply reduces its lethality."
KLNK
The wheel completed its turn, as if it could hear Sukuna's words and had finally adapted to respond. I showed teeth as I felt my curse energy react, the blade strapped to my wrist let out a soft hum, and Sukuna's brows furrowed, before he could realize the sudden change, I blurred forward in an explosion of movement, cutting the lamp with a single slash, but Sukuna had flipped away and shot another dismantle while upside down, confident in my inability to dodge, right until I did.
The dismantles came as four invisible blades, scattered in a messy pattern that would have carved deep lines into my chest, but I ducked the first, spun around the second, jumped over the third, and slinked beneath the fourth.
Sukuna's eyes widened in surprise, but I was already half of the way to him, and he was still upside down and midair, yet despite the clear surprise at my ability to see and dodge his curse technique, the king of curses let out a chuckle before he swung his second hand in what should have been a devastating slash.
"Too slow," I mouthed the words, and Sukuna's eyes widened in response.
A single step took me into range, and I swung down viciously with the sword of extermination, and for the first time since we clashed, it was not a chuckle or a laugh that left Ryomen Sukuna's lips. It was a scream of surprise, as the Sword of Extermination, imbued with negative curse energy, tore its way through his chest. The force of the blow enough to send him flying back.
I stopped in place, my winged appendages tracking Sukuna as he broke into a building before coming to a stop. I could feel him, see him look at me with confused eyes from where he had been thrown, so I did another thing Mahoraga never had.
I taunted him.
I brought the blade to my lips and licked it clean of the blood that had stained it. Ryomen Sukuna's blood. Then I turned back to him and grinned at him, with teeth stained by his own blood, and gestured with my left hand in the universal gesture. I beckoned him forward and mouthed the words. "Come."
And Sukuna laughed. Like ReplyReport Reactions:Maxem, john-doe, Monsterofend and 811 othersbornsinnerYesterday at 11:16 PMNewAdd bookmarkView discussionJump to newThreadmarksView content