Guys. You don't understand how much fun I had writing this chapter. Portraying the action and choreography we saw in the anime adaptation was tough putting to words, but the conclusion of this chapter was one I've been waiting for. A final and possibly successful battle with one of the disaster curses and even a Domain Expansion from Shohei. I've got some more to share at the end of the chapter, but enjoy.
Shohei crashed to the ground, ears ringing from the blow. Shohei crawled to his knees after being struck across the head and blasted through the building he just was before Sukuna in. Blood was already spilling from his head and dust peppered his already ragged uniform.
"Dammit," Shohei cursed. "I knew he was strong, but I didn't expect this big of a gap!"
Jogo was now sent flying through the air behind him, crashing through the building wall they were just through.
Sukuna was bearing down on them both in no time at all, cackling in petrifying glee. In a flash of movement, Shohei saw Itadori's innocent face contorted into a disgusting grin.
Sukuna shoved a palm into Shohei's chest, jarring his heart and lungs. He was shoved into a building wall across the street, clamoring to his feet.
Sukuna leapt back into the air, so quick and controlled it was like he could fly, kicking Jogo higher into the air like nothing more than a soccer ball.
"I can't let him keep the pressure on me," Shohei gasped, trying to steady his breathing and suck in his air. "I've got to get off the back foot."
There was no getting off the backfoot against Sukuna. The King of Curses crashed from the air in front of Shohei. Again, he kicked at the boy's chest.
Catching the glimpse of his attacker, Shohei activated his defenses.
"Maximum Output: Gravity Field!" Shohei chanted, his unruly cursed energy pouring it's all into the technique.
The force would have shredded or at least parried the strike of any opponent Shohei previously fought at the contact with the swirling invisible force around Shohei, but Sukuna was left unphased. Not even Yuji's shoe was scuffed from Sukuna's flawless cursed energy reinforcement.
Sukuna kicked Shohei in the chest, knocking him into the wall behind him again. The wall was turned to dust at the contact with the swirling Gravity Field.
Sukuna jeered, "Like a turtle hiding in its shell."
Shohei stuck to his word, trying to go on the offensive, and shoved the air between him and Sukuna with both hands. Sukuna sidestepped the attack like it were a toddler lashing out, tossing its vegetables in protest.
Gravity turned on its side, amplified, barreling through stores, stations, and restaurants on the Shibuya Streets. Buildings' foundations crumbled and crashing debris echoed in the empty streets.
"Now there's some initiative!" Sukuna cheered, whipping back to Shohei. "Even if it's as slow as the same damn turtle. Glad to see you might live up to the name of being the most destructive child this day and age."
Sukuna raised a clawed hand to carve through Gravity Field and across Shohei's face, but Jogo emerged on the scene again. A raining wave of fire crashed down on Shohei and Sukuna.
Shohei barely caught sight of Sukuna racing down the street to avoid the attack. He himself jetted off down the other end of the street, Gravity Conductor whipping him off in flight.
Jogo, now the object of Sukuna's attention, got battered around in open air, punches and strikes stunning him and throwing him from rooftop, to alley, and back to rooftop.
"He's playing with me. That kick could've caved my chest in. I don't think Toji was holding back or playing with me like he was Dagon, but his movements were precise and lethal enough to kill me. I can tell from just Sukuna's bottomless well of cursed energy and his output that any one of his strikes could kill me if he wanted. What can I do here?!" Shohei growled, frustrated at the impossible odds before him.
Shohei took off into the sky to gain a physical view of Sukuna and Jogo zooming around. Shohei saw flashes of fire or blurs of combat, but didn't catch sight of them at all. Shohei instead fell back on sensing their massive amounts of cursed energy, and in turn tracking them like two fireflies in an empty black room.
"I want to try to close this gap in hand to hand, but I shouldn't activate Tunnel Vision."
With the curse and curse incarnate crashing around, and all three of them firing off destructive or massive attacks, the electricity of the city was failing city block by city block. Street lights flickered or failed, and some whole buildings went dark. There was no tracking his opponents unless Shohei watched their signatures unless they were battling him or right in front of his face.
Shohei cast aside his jumbled thoughts and fell back on a simple strategy. Shohei would keep Gravity Conductor firing on all cylinders, his reinforcement counteracting the physical restraints of it but still bolstering his durability. Combined, hopefully the both would be enough to cushion Sukuna's attacks and probably defend from almost all Jogo could throw at him if he tried splitting his attention.
Shohei wouldn't collapse his senses, the range to track his opponents was too key to forfeit. Rather than engage in hand to hand combat, which he surely would be trounced, Shohei would blast away with Gravity Conductor, Sukuna seeming to be amused by his destructive capabilities.
"Is that all you've got, cursed spirit?!" Sukuna howled into the night as Jogo was ragdolled further.
The curse thrust his smoking hands in front of him as Sukuna hurdled towards him in the sky, a hunk of rubble in hand.
"Not at all…" the curse tried to counter, but his whole arms were soon diced into red hot meat as Sukuna outstripped his vision and loomed behind him.
Sukuna pitched the rubble at Jogo, spiking him into some office building.
Shohei aimed to crash into Sukuna mid air, hopefully barging into him with Gravity Field tacking on some damage while he encroached on mach two speeds, but Sukuna caught Shohei's grasping hands. The maximum speed of swirling gravity did nothing more than rattle Sukuna's clutching hands.
Shohei was flipped in the air, Sukuna kicking him in the gut right where he threw Jogo.
Shohei rolled to his feet in the office building, Sukuna falling out of his view from the hole in the wall, unable to pursue with no platform in the air.
Shohei turned, seeing Jogo flee the sight of the two through his rigid bangs. The curse fired an off handed blast at Shohei over his shoulder, his hand newly regenerated, before he crashed through a window.
Shohei exploded in flight from the spot where he stood, avoiding the flames. Shohei crashed through the level of the office, desks exploding into splinters and computers shattering, eventually creasing through a window.
Suspended in the air, Shohei caught sight of Jogo's signature and rounded the corner of the building in a flash. Shohei saw the curse being carried through the air by half a dozen small, purple, insectoid shikigami clinging to his clothes.
Jogo faced Sukuna still falling through the air, but was blindsided by Shohei crashing into him, a literal flying elbow taking off his jaw in a spurt of purple gore.
Shohei then swatted two insect shikigami into mush, their corpses exploding as they descended to the ground. Shohei kept a grip of the curse by the collar in an attempt to throw him in a devastating crash through a building and to the ground.
Jogo interrupted Shohei's advance with a ball of fire ready to explode in the palm of his hand, rushing to erupt by Shohei's face.
Shohei parried Jogo's hand, but the ball exploded, the flames engulfing them both.
Before the flames could even begin to disperse, Jogo was steadily hovering to the surface aided by his shikigami, unscathed by his own attack. Shohei was also steering away from the flames in a much quicker escape.
"Clever bastard," Shohei hissed, tearing off the left sleeve of his uniform on fire and patting down his smoldering shoulder and hair. Shohei's left arm was only slightly burned despite the fire the curse produced being hotter than any measly gas station explosion.
"He used such an all encompassing attack to get me to let him go knowing he could resist his own attack almost perfectly unscathed. I should've been able to block that little bit of damage that reached through Gravity Field by reinforcing."
Shohei's cursed energy was at its all time highest with the previous days of unrest and discord, the overall chaos of the night, and the tragedy of Maki, but his control of it was sloppy. Control of one's mental and emotional state was key to cursed energy control and efficiency, and Shohei was losing a grip on both.
His physical strikes were fully powered, but excess cursed energy was being wasted. If his energy surged to block an attack, again, excess cursed energy was wasted and the lack of control didn't defend from all the damage. Shohei couldn't afford to lose all that key energy in either a battle of attrition with his two most powerful enemies yet, or a battle of explosive intensity where one wasted move could mean death.
On his descent, Jogo fired a barrage of anti-aircraft level firepower at Sukuna and Shohei suspended in the air.
Even while Shohei dodged all the attacks, the heat from Jogo's fire made him sweat up a storm. The Autumn night felt like an arid, blistering hell in the desert where it hurt to breath such dry air.
Sukuna bent and twisted like a wild cat in the air, avoiding the attacks despite his vulnerability. He soon finished his massive descent and clung onto a tower like a fly on a wall. He kicked in a window and threw himself in, ducking out of their line of sight.
Shohei tore through the sky, avoiding all fire, perfectly in his element while flying in the open air. Shohei veered through the air, avoiding the suppressive fire from Jogo while he tracked Sukuna. Sho sensed him stalking through the hallways of the tower on a casual stroll while an inferno sprouted up from Jogo.
"His output for even his average attacks might be higher than mine!" Shohei huffed, swerving through the air, puffing his collar as he sweated more and more.
Jogo landed on a building top swirling his hands to amass a massive attack. While he conjured up a monsoon of fire to destroy the building Sukuna was in, three more purple insects emerged from the small volcano atop his head.
The new and remaining insects hurled themselves at Shohei, their dagger-like proboscises aimed right at Shohei's curtained eyes.
Shohei didn't bother conjuring up any further defenses of his own, and instead bolted in a mad crash for Jogo. Gravity Field combined with his speed tore through the shikigami like bugs on a windshield. Their mangle bodies already behind him, Shohei sped past the explosion of their remains harmlessly.
Jogo launched the massive attack at the building, but then Shohei was upon him, dragging his head across the building top like a cheese grater.
Jogo's fists glowed white hot with flames as he turned to counter attack, his face still stitching together his cheek. Shohei held his wrists at bay, Gravity Field mangling them in his swirling grasp.
"Idiot human!" the curse bellowed, his voice croaky and panicked. "Leave me be before he kills us both!"
"Go to hell, you ugly frog bastard," Shohei cursed violently, shoving Jogo into the building tops as they crashed from one to another. "You killed my friends and shoved however many of Sukuna's fingers down Yuji's throat. You're the reason we're here in the first place."
"If I'd known you were alive while you laid there choking on your own blood, I would've killed you while I blew apart those other damn humans!"
Shohei roared again, swinging the curse around, throwing him through the open air, but then Sukuna, not even his collar singed, leapt from the freshly destroyed building and swerved around Jogo.
Sukuna delivered a devastating superman punch to Shohei's chin, splitting it open and knocking him out of the air.
Sukuna landed over Shohei's stunned body as he crashed into a roof and immediately took off after Jogo, intercepting him in the air.
Jogo reached out with his two glowing hands, blasts aimed point blank at Sukuna's face, but his arms were turned into minced meat again.
Not forfeiting the point blank range, Jogo ducked his head and fired a massive column of flame from his volcano head, burning a hole through a tower. Its glass windows turned molten as the blast continued to stretch across the city sky, but Sukuna was nowhere to be seen, escaping Jogo's grasp.
"He's kind of right," Shohei admitted, his chin dripping with blood. "Sukuna's the real issue. I can't get revenge if my head gets diced to a dozen pieces because he got bored toying with me. Hell, he hasn't even targeted me with his cursed technique."
Sukuna reappeared, zooming behind Jogo. He grabbed the curse by the collar and threw him to the ground, skipping across the asphalt like a pebble on a pond. Jogo crashed through street lamps and road signs before even slowing to a stop.
Sukuna prone in the air again, Shohei tried to capitalize on the opening.
The sorcerer conjured up the same slicing attack that split Dagon in half, set to fall right over Sukuna's head. As the technique fired, the King of Curses was behind Shohei, kicking him over the head and to the street level.
Shohei tore through the streets like his own stone on the pond, even crashing into Jogo after tearing through several stop signs of his own.
"You…" the sorcerer and curse hissed in sync as they readied to attack one another.
Sukuna interrupted their clash by hammering them each over the heads, spiking them through layer upon layer of underground structure and flooring of Shibuya.
Shohei swore his head was split open and his brains were painting the concrete he laid on, but he stirred, semi-conscious in the rising heat of Jogo's counter attack beside him.
As the two victims of Sukuna lied side by side underground, Shohei was the first to get up, the more resilient of the two.
Shohei rocketed from the hole, suspended in the sky with both hands aimed at Sukuna looming over the partial grave he just dug for them.
Unopened soda cans nearby exploded from the rising heat as Jogo emerged from the hole on a flooding sea of lava.
A well of gravity exploded into creation, puncturing the street below where Sukuna once stood in a force of crashing weight. The caving streets were then filled with conjured lava pouring forth from Jogo, standing atop a manhole cover, surfing his own sea of flames.
Sukuna appeared before his two toys down the street, seemingly engulfed by a wave of lava washing over him, but then stood unharmed as the open air sliced and carved around him, leaving him a section of open street to remain standing.
Jogo reached out again, individual columns and spears of lava hurling towards Sukuna. Again and again the man sliced apart the attack or leaned his head just enough to avoid the flames like they were nothing more than a spritz of water.
Lava surged again, trying to wash over him, but the man appeared atop a building, where Shohei was waiting for him to flee.
"You are too smart not to escape upwards from all that mess!" Shohei grinned at his feeble, but minor prediction, already bringing down a crashing force to tear the building down top to bottom.
Sukuna stood, utterly surrounded by attacks and enemies. The streets gave way as buildings sank below the surface of the lava. Debris and smoke parted in the air as the crashing wave of gravity was barreling down on the building.
Swarms and swarms of insect shikigami buzzed into flight as the building Sukuna was once standing on was engulfed by an eruption and smothered by gravity.
Off in the distance Sukuna clung to the sides of another two parallel crashing towers, racing up their side as shikigami dived to their death. They died from the force of their crash or from being sliced into chunks by Sukuna ceaselessly.
The almost instantaneous and uniform deaths of all the shikigami resulted in simultaneous explosion of their corpses, masking Sukuna in smoke.
Sukuna dove into the building to escape the explosion, and emerged back into the air, right between the two towers.
Lave surged in mass from the streets below, sculpted into two gargantuan hands, gripping the two towers entirely. In a mirrored grip, Jogo clamped together his two hands in a strained wail, smothering the two buildings together in a glass shattering, earth shaking crash.
Hovering above Jogo, avoiding attacking the curse for once in the fight, Shohei readied an attack. As almost a cherry on top in an attempt to utterly bury the King of Curses, Shohei gathered up his largest output of cursed energy yet.
Shohei raised his grasping hands above his head, and brought them down on one another as he chanted, "Maximum Cursed Energy Output: Gravity Conductor!"
And from as far as the eye could see up above into the sky, even past the curtain over Shibuya, a dozen waves of crashing gravity like a meteor swarm rained down, smothering the several city blocks engulfed by lava and the two crushed towers.
As the towers were berated and melted by the combined attacks of Shohei and Jogo, the crashing debris was parted in a few massive slices.
Set alight by the flames scattered below and behind him, Sukuna floated unscathed in the hellfire, basking in the fruitless efforts of his attackers.
In a surge of smoke, Sukuna disappeared from his basking light, and Shohei's heart dropped into his stomach once again.
"Our combined efforts of all that weren't enough?!" Shohei managed to cry out in his head before Sukuna dragged him out of the sky and slammed him down onto Jogo below him.
Sukuna threw, kicked, and dragged the two through an unscathed tower, a good distance away from the few city blocks they just destroyed.
Soon, the three of them were suspended over the more unscathed sections of the city. Where exactly? Shohei couldn't even guess after being dragged around all over Shibuya.
Prone in the night sky, Sukuna loomed over Shohei, an axe kick raised like a guillotine over the boy's face. The blow fell across Shohei's chin and Shohei was struck from the sky like an angel out of heaven.
Shohei crashed through a tower below, barreling through the roof, slamming through desks, plummeting through levels after levels, until he fell still in the middle of the entire tower.
Shohei laid splayed over some cubicle desk. His head hung off the side and both his arms and legs still and bent in odd angles.
Shohei was in and out of consciousness, the world rattling kick landing on his already decimated chin.
Not all there in the head, Shohei thoughtlessly reached out to examine the damage. Shohei fingered his chin clumsily, shifting through all the leaking blood and destroyed tissue, and felt exposed bone.
"That's not good," Shohei murmured groggily, surprised to find his jaw thankfully wasn't dislocated. The rest of his body however was no better.
The sting of touching his injury brought back that sudden memory of the attack. Shohei in the nick of time gave a second surge of energy into Gravity Field and directed all its efforts into opposing the blow. Shohei had recognized the sign of overwhelming speed before a critical blow he had seen in Toji and Sukuna before, and cushioned the blow enough to not take his head off.
However, Gravity Field countering the kick left Shohei defenseless as he crashed through the building, devastating his back that spearheaded his descent.
The back of his head ached and he felt unaware of his surroundings like when he had a concussion not even an hour ago. His back was screaming at him to stop his pointless death match after smashing his way through no less than twenty floors, chalk full of desks, monitors, and staplers.
Shohei wasn't sure he could feel his arms or legs as he laid on the desk. His lungs burned from not just exerting himself, but from the dry air he was forced to breathe thanks to Jogo's heat.
"That doesn't matter," Shohei declared in a whisper, casting aside what his body was screaming at him. "You haven't landed a hit on that bastard once. If that ugly ass curse can keep going, so can you."
Shohei rolled off the desk and clambored to his feet. He sucked in the dusty, but cooler air of the abandoned office, somewhat sobering him up.
"Don't stop when you've got more in the tank," Shohei demanded of himself, slapping his legs and arms, some sensation returning. "All this effort is to stop those terrible forces of nature from hurting more people like the poor citizens trapped here. It's to stop them before they maybe reach Megumi. It's to stop him from using Yuji as a puppet. It's all for Maki."
Hearing Maki's name come out of his own mouth, Shohei felt as clear in the head as he could, but then a massive flash of light grew in intensity outside the office windows.
Shohei stumbled to peer outside, and the building immediately across from the one he was in exploded in flames. Windows were blown out, bottom to top, flames sprouting from where Jogo and Sukuna's signatures resided at the bottom.
The explosion didn't stop after the flames reached their peak, and instead, the smoke, flames, and debris began to swirl. They began to combine and rise into a swirling mass, consuming the whole building and soon other material around it, only growing in size and mass.
The sphere of flame and molten steel began to sway and move, its creator chasing down Sukuna with the attack in toe.
"Holy shit!" Shohei gawked as the attack sucked up more cars and debris from below. "That bastard is pulling out a Maximum Technique."
The meteor was reaching its peak as the shadow of Jogo was illuminated by the glow of its raging fire.
Sukuna was swerving and racing through the streets, dodging the rising fuel for the attack and approaching a small group of sorcerers near the soon to be blast radius.
Shohei gasped, recognizing two of the signatures, "Kusukabe! Panda!"
Shohei broke through the window and jetted off down below to the streets. Shohei raced underneath the meteor and skirted to a halt, Jogo's form soaring over the rooftops.
Sukuna was right between the two jujutsu sorcerers. Most of the remaining curse-users in Shibuya were also in the blast radius. They all seemed to be either stunned or commanded into stillness by Sukuna. Either way, unless they could dodge the massive hit box of the attack, they all would surely be killed.
"I can't absorb that and still have enough steam in the tank to fight these two, can I?" Shohei pondered the use of Stygian Void to absorb the attack.
He couldn't destroy or counter it quick enough with any typical attack from Gravity Conductor. It was too close to the surface to slow down or parry either.
The meteor was bearing down upon the sorcerers. It was about to blast them all to smithereens. It could destroy everything in at least a couple hundred meter radius around its crash point.
"That's it!" Shohei gasped, an idea coming to mind.
As Jogo was surely about to let the attack fly, Shohei reached out. He reached out as far as he ever could with Gravity Conductor, and took hold of Shooting Star.
Shohei summoned the kanabo to his hands, and in a flash of onyx steel and a flutter of purple ribbon, the special-grade cursed tool crashed through the meteor in an exploding force like two thunderstorms crashing into each other, shattering it into small, flaming rubble.
Shooting Star had pierced the Maximum Technique and dispersed the attack. Smoldering pieces of rock and metal still crashed across the city, but it didn't result in the devastating explosion bound to happen if Shohei did nothing.
Shohei rose up from the street and perched on top of the tallest remaining building in the area, Shooting Star fading in power after releasing it all to counter the attack.
Sukuna had disappeared from near Kusukabe and Panda's signatures, who also seemed to be unharmed, but now in a scuffle with the curse-users. Jogo was also unseen, not where Shohei last thought he saw the curse.
After a second take, unable to miss the two massive energy signatures, Shohei spotted Sukuna and Jogo appearing on a distant rooftop. Shohei squinted to see the two, and as soon as he blinked, Sukuna was nowhere to be seen.
"You spoiled the big light show, now didn't you," Sukuna muttered, right beside Shohei. The man was staring down at where Sho was just looking. "I was toying with your little sorcerer allies down there, and you go and suck the excitement right out of it all."
Shohei hadn't noticed himself getting in a fighting stance, but when he did, he felt silly. Sukuna could have taken his head off before he noticed he was there.
Sukuna seemed to notice Shohei's wavering confidence and grinned a mysterious grin Shohei couldn't decipher.
"Don't worry, runt," the man dismissed in a subtle chuckle to himself, pacing around on the rooftop. "I've already told the cursed spirit. I'll keep playing along with you till you can't anymore. I knew that last blow felt off, but good for you. I expected you to have your jaw blown off just like you and I both did that cursed spirit. And that was some show from you both just now, but I want to see a private display from each of you."
At the mention of a "private display" Sukuna dropped his casual tone and employed that commanding demeanor of his that left no room for disobedience.
"Now sit here and watch."
Sukuna disappeared from the rooftop and Shohei breathed again. Sukuna did indeed reappear at the rooftop with Jogo, who had not moved from that spot.
Soon, after the two combatants were evenly spaced out across the roof from Shohei, flames lit up in the distance, but not from Jogo. From Sukuna.
"What?!" Shohei muttered, not knowing he was talking out loud. "I thought Sukuna's technique was two different kinds of severing and slicing."
Shohei then was blindsided as the ribbon of flame danced in Sukuna's palm.
The two began to form their respective attacks. Jogo molded his most powerful fireball yet, its power only shy of his Maximum Technique. Sukuna grasped the ribbon of flame and shaped it in hand, drawing it back like an arrow knocked in a bow.
Shohei gasped, Shooting Star clattering to his feet in shock. Gravity Field fell away from his body as his concentration broke. "Wait! He can't. He'll lose."
Shohei saw how visually the two attacks had a gap in refinement, and their two owner's skill was obvious, but the power Shohei sensed all the way across the building tops was beyond just pronounced. The fire arrow outclassed Jogo's fireball by leagues, and if they were gonna clash, Jogo would be eradicated.
But what could Shohei do? Sukuna already commanded him to remain put, and Shohei had seen what the consequences for even displeasing Sukuna was.
But vengeance for Maki by his own hands was slipping away before him. If Shohei didn't stop this secluded clash, Jogo would lose, and then Shohei would be next to die in a obviously doomed to fail clash with Sukuna. Another one of the disaster curses would escape his grasp.
He had two options. Obey and have his life spared for no more than a few more seconds, or stop listening to what his superiors commanded of him.
Shohei didn't think twice after that. In his mind, Satoru and any student he taught wouldn't. Maki sure as hell wouldn't.
The fire arrow was loosed. The ball of fire lurched. Jogo's exorcism was imminent. Jogo would not die by Shohei's hands.
That was until Shohei stepped off that ledge, and every glass window of the building he stood on shattered, and he tore through the night air at supersonic speeds no slower than mach three.
In a blur that his own eyes almost could not comprehend, Shohei reached out wildly, and grabbed hold of a collar. The boy followed through his dive with Jogo in hand, and in his blurring peripheral vision, he saw the fire arrow shred through the ball of fire like it was less than nothing.
Shohei and Jogo screeched to a halt on that same roof top, both hanging off the edge, gasping for air. One because they were on the brink of death with life probably flashing before their eyes. One because they just moved at speeds they had never reached before.
"Hey…"
Shohei's heart stopped beating on a dime, the consequences of his actions rearing their ugly head.
"What did I say?"
Shohei, not feeling his heart that had been racing all night, stood up. Why, he did not know, but he got to his feet, and turned to face his superior.
Sukuna's face was obscured by the shadows cast over him from the raging fire that was the entire building Shohei was just standing on. The fire arrow had soared past where Jogo stood and engulfed the whole building in an instant roar of flame.
"I don't care," Shohei's voice trembled suddenly.
Jogo looked up from his heaving, gasping mess. Sukuna's four eyes pierced the shadows draped over him like a dagger.
"This bit of filth is a scourge on my life." Shohei pointed down at Jogo, driven by forces unknown to him. "He and his sick, twisted little family turned my world upside down. They broke into my old home. They killed my parents. They ruined any idea of what I called family. They drove away my best friend and brother. They killed my allies and endless innocents. They left the love of my life on her deathbed."
Shohei did not turn away from Sukuna once as he spoke. His voice rose from a quaver, to a squeak, to a firm cry. Hitting his stride, Shohei had either the bravery or suicidal desire to shout out whole heartily.
"And during and after all of that, each and every one of them has the gaul to try and kill me themselves. To bash my head in. To twist and mangle my flesh. To tear me apart. To burn me to ash. And each and every one of them has slipped through my fingers only to keep on hurting people, or die at the hands of someone besides myself."
Shohei looked back down at Jogo, still on his knees, stunned by Shohei's revolt to Sukuna.
"Well now I refuse to fail. Now I refuse to fall short. I will have my revenge. I will claim what I want. What I deserve."
Shohei reached out, grabbing the stunned Jogo by the collar, lifting him to his feet. Shohei glared deep into his one large eye, two stars meeting one bulbous eye, daring him to move from his grasp.
Shohei turned back to Sukuna.
"You understand better than anyone about taking what you want when you want it."
Sukuna leaned forward, his face emerging from the shadows, quirking an eyebrow at Shohei.
"Well, I'll give you all you want and all I have." Shohei shook Jogo in his hand. "More than a one sided blowout this garbage could give you while he flailed around in my way."
Shohei did not wait for a response. Instead he prayed for silence.
Sukuna stood on the spot, and like Shohei prayed for, he leaned back into the shadows as Shohei went about his business.
Shohei turned back to Jogo, sucked in a shuttering gasp, and shoved the curse back to the ground.
Shohei raised his hands in front of him, crossing his wrists in an x over his chest. Shohei placed the back of his palms together, his right hand clenched in a first, and his left hand with all fingers splayed out.
His hand sign formed, Shohei chanted. "Domain Expansion!"
An orb engulfed Shohei and Jogo, sealing them off from the real world inside of Shohei's manifested Innate Domain.
"Sovereign Celestial Plateau!"
Shibuya was no longer before them. They did not stand atop crumbling buildings or stand among burning streets. Now the two were in the deepest reaches of space. Cold ever expanding darkness surrounded them, composing the very space where they floated.
Far off sparkling stars decorated the infinite expanse beyond them. Surrounding them more immediately were scattered asteroids, as small as pebbles or large as national monuments floating weightless in the lack of gravity.
The true sight before them were the two otherworldly entities.
An infinitely expanding star to the left of them roared with life, power, and heat. To their right, a just as gargantuan black hole consuming the eternally expanding matter, home to only death, absence, and the cold. The two entities were locked in a stalemate in this recess of space.
Shohei stopped examining his own Domain, captivated by its everlasting beauty acting as a reprieve from the horrors of the night. He looked down at Jogo, who had ended up facing the star and black hole in a deadlock.
He was just as captivated as Shohei was that Shohei was confident Jogo didn't notice that he was already suffering from the passive conditions of the Domain.
The moisture in his skin was vaporizing, making the curse visually swell across his whole body. While his mouth hung agape, his tongue swelled and his saliva boiled. Despite his resistance to fire, the radiation from the sun bore down on him, burning his swollen gray flesh. If he tried to speak or chant any enchantments, he would be silenced by the inability to speak in space.
Shohei spoke up, the only one in the domain able to talk normally. There was nothing but bitterness and malice in his voice. "Take in the fleeting moments of your life before this beautiful view. Thankfully it's not a view of the world you plague. You don't deserve it."
Shohei floated freely up to curse. Shohei gripped the back of his neck, his large hands wrapping around it entirely. The special-grade curse seemed to have no free will left to fight back. Whether it be from fruitlessly fighting Sukuna and being proven vastly inferior, or death missing him by a hair as he was saved by his enemy, he did not resist.
Shohei was sure Jogo would have a domain. If Shohei was right about his elderly appearance not just being for show, Jogo's domain very well could've been more refined that his own. Jogo was frail and physically weak, but his possession of a Maximum Technique, battle tactics and variety of attacks and techniques, and the other disaster curses who must've been less experienced than him having their own Domains all prove he could have one of his own.
"I pray you don't remember the gentle warmth of our sun if you are blessed with an afterlife despite all your cruel sins. Instead, engrave into your soul the bitter cold of deep space, or the blistering heat of this star bearing down on you that you ironically are soon going to die by."
Shohei droned on, spilling his heart to the curse. Whatever rose up in Shohei that made him challenge Sukuna kept the ball rolling. Shohei was finally able to say all he wanted.
"A firestorm to represent the burning hate I have for you. Not because you raised a fist to me, or because you cursed me, or because you ruined my life, but because you made the mistake of laying a finger on my one true love."
Shohei gripped Jogo's neck tighter, feeling certain things pop and crunch under his grip.
"Your dirty stain on this world can slowly be wiped away with you gone. Your goals and aspirations with your sick little faction of monsters can now be rectified. Now. Crash and burn like a nameless comet, fleetingly admired and as swiftly forgotten."
The star surged in the distance, and in a wave of heat, light, radiation, and all the star could offer washed over the curse, blasting him back in shock as he screamed and writhed in pain, silenced by Shohei in the emptiness of space.
Another flare from the star washed over Jogo, burning away his arms and legs, the exposed muscle and tissue showing all across his face and chest. His purple blood evaporated as soon as it was spilt.
Before a third flare spiked on Shohei's command, the supernova surged in all its darkness. Like a vacuum reaching out for dust, Jogo's torso was slowly stripped particle by particle from his body and sucked into the empty black phenomena.
Nothing but a skull stripped down to tatters of flesh and bone, Shohei pondered Jogo's head in his hand.
Shohei looked into the socket where an eye once was, shed a tear from the relief he felt wash over him as another terrible curse left his world, and crushed the crumbling skull in hand, the remaining ashes consumed by the endless darkness. Revenge was finally his.
So, after all that, I've got something to say. First of all, I hope you enjoyed the chapter and thought the depiction of the action was acceptable, but I want to talk about where I've been taking the story.
I started the story off with Shohei pretty strong, setting the bar kind of high, and it might seem like I've not left a lot of room for him to grow, and not done a lot with him supposedly being so strong and having as much possible influence as he does. I know several people aren't fans of that and the lack of change he's brought to the plot. I think what I was trying to portray was lost in translation. I've been wanting to establish this character as a character with strength and competency shy of those really at the top, like special-grade sorcerers and villains, then tear him down progressively. Much like the anime starting off with only hints and tones of morbidness and bleakness, but overall positive and triumphant, and as it progresses to arcs like Mechamaru's death and all of Shibuya, it starts to crash and burn in terms of positivity.
In Shohei's case, he starts off almost at the top of the world living his life with Gojo and Fushiguro, going on missions, enjoying being a student and one of the strongest around, even getting promoted to grade-one and starting to date Maki. Then along the way, he gets rattled and scared by the likes of Hanami, who's been one of the first enemies who's been up to scratch with him. Almost like a reality check, the Goodwill Event goes array, and when everything seems to be smoothing back over to typical life of going on easy missions, the Gojo clan estate is attacked and almost everything from there is downhill. His parents are killed, Mahito and Hanami traumatize him and escape, he and Gojo's relationship hits the rocks, he has a moral dilemma and seriously spirals, he distracts himself with hunting down Mechamaru and ultimaetly fails, Hanami dies by someone else's hands after showing him that curses are more than monsters, but are still capable of terrible things even if they both want to save the world, Gojo's sealed, he sees Ijichi almost die after failing to save him, letting his attackers escape, pissing of Nanami and Maki about Naobito, failing to kill Dagon, getting beat to death by Toji, helplessly dying on the ground while his allies get kidnapped or burned to death, Toji escaping freely to do whatever he wants to Megumi, Maki on the brink of death right in front of him, having a lapse in his morals as he kills Naobito, simply watching as two helpless girls die brutally, being drawn into a three way death match with two of his worst nightmares for a near impossible chance at revenge, and now being trapped between a rock and a hard place that surely means death as soon as he steps outside his domain with Sukuna waiting and who knows what else before Shibuya ends.
If thats not building up and tearing a character down, then I don't know what is. Specifically his ramble on failing time and time again against the disaster curses and finally lifting the weight off his shoulders that they've placed there. I've wanted to portray an attacker and victim's dynamic like that in my writing for so long and I've struggled with how personal I've wanted to make it. All I've known from the beginning is I've wanted to portray the feeling of helplessness through Shohei's failures to stop single one of the disaster curses, and that nearly indescribable feeling of justice one can feel when their attacker receives that justice, sadly when it can't always been dealt back by the victim in real life.
Now before these after thoughts get as long as the chapter, I want everyone reading to know that I am trying to portray some semblance of a story with Shohei even if the original plot doesn't drastically change. I like a lot of what Jujutsu Kaisen does, I am willing to change plenty about it for my story later on even though I haven't felt the need because I've written the story how I've planned and wanted up until now, but I'm not gonna flip anything on its head out of left field to get my point across without tactfully incorporating the change and writing it in.
Anyway, I hope you've enjoyed these new chapters and the new tragic episodes that've been coming out. I've got the next chapter finished and waiting to be posted next week, and after I publish this one, I'm gonna work on the one after than. Thank you for reading and goodbye!