I hope you're excited as I am! This is the final chapter of the my little Clan Hostage Arc. I loved writing this and if you didn't notice I put a lot of time into this chapter. Please do enjoy.
As Hanami lowered their Domain to prevent Mahito getting torn to nothing by the sure hit technique, but Shohei fell victim to the massive wooden spears and razor sharp flowers as well.
Shohei fell harmlessly to the ground rather than into a patch of blender-like flowers sure to shred him apart as he was riddled with spear branches. The one branch that had pierced fully through his stomach had dissipated with the Domain, leaving a hole the size of his palm to leak hot blood down his stomach and legs.
The spear had thankfully missed his spine, letting him agonizingly crawl to his feet, or rather, foot. Shohei's right foot had its achilles sliced, preventing him from putting any degree of weight on it, less his leg shiver in pain.
"Damn it," Shohei cursed quietly into the night, sweating in a flood of anxiety and pain. He had never been damaged so critically in a field mission and was not a gold star student when studying how to administer first aid.
Shohei swiftly did his best to treat his own wounds, tearing off the scraps of his shirt left dangling around his waist. Taking the time provided by Hanami cowering over Mahito's ravished body, Shohei strangled his leg with the cloth at the knee to prevent more blood training from his ankle and firmly pressed the remaining cloth against his stomach.
Hanami was assuridly more distressed than Shohei, as what remained of Mahito resembled a shuttering and gorey piece of swiss cheese. He had been punctured from every angle, leaving holes of empty space where his arms, right leg, left eye, and generally torso should be.
"It's all my fault!" Hanami shuddered. "I should've known the automatic effect could target you."
"No use talking to a pile of dead meat, Hanami," Shohei said, watching the curse mourn across the courtyard.
"Who are you calling dead meat?" a voice not of Hanami responded.
"No way in hell," Shohei muttered in a state of disgust, fear, and pure incredulity. Mahito's remaining blue eye rolled to meet his own gaze while lying on the ground in the mangled pile of blood and flesh. He had survived.
"Mahito!" Hanami cried, in as much disbelief as Shohei.
The flesh began pulling itself back into a solid lump of mass. As the discolored blob of flesh and hair rolled into a lump, it then stretched and stood up, properly shaped once again. Mahito stood up, not a scratch on him once again.
"You can't," Shohei whispered. "You can't be alive after that. You can't be allowed to live after all this."
"I really must thank you, Hanami," Mahito said, taking his ally by the hand and bringing them to their feet as well. "If you hadn't shut down the Domain as soon as you did I probably would be dead. Actually, if the Domain ever hit my brain more dead on rather than through my eye and off to the side, I know I'd be dead. Once out of the Domain, I had my own technique returned to me immediately and could focus my efforts on restoring my partially damaged brain."
"No way in hell!" Shohei screamed, his voice echoing across the empty courtyard and breaking in a fluctuation of distress.
"Mad aren't we?" Mahito jeered once again as if he had not been on death's door. "Come Hanami," Mahito said, readying for battle once more. "If we can survive all that we just endured, we can kill this impudent child."
Hanami took heart in their restored comrade. They puffed their chest and turned to Shohei, their goal for breaking into the estate back in mind. The odds were in their favor. Despite Hanami not having a drop of cursed energy left, they were roused and passionate. Mahito had his own energy carved down to even less of what Shohei currently had, but was unphased from his pain like always. Shohei had not one, but two critical injuries limiting his movement and his hopes of killing Mahito easily dashed.
"Fine," Shohei growled, raising Iguana Talon and taking his muay thai stance with his injured leg off the ground. "I'll kill you with my own two hands instead." And backed into a corner, Shohei activated Stygian Void as a means to level the playing field.
"But can you kill her with your own two hands?" Mahito asked, confusing Shohei.
Too late, his mother was upon him. Her long freakish arms were wrapping around Shohei as she leaped toward him, free from Gravity Stockade. She was lunging for his throat, clamping down on it with her twisted maw.
Shohei didn't even have the passing thought to deactivate his technique or flee, distracted by passing thoughts. He had dismissed the thought of her in the face of an enemy Domain. He had neglected the fact she surely would be freed from Gravity Stockade if his technique was nullified in the Domain.
Knowing it was too late Shohei closed his eyes, already swelling with tears as his mother was consumed by his technique. The disfigured woman was torn apart into virtually nothing by the little black dot forming on Shohei's body. The misshapen woman who was just attacking Shohei had entirely disappeared before him and the two curses in the blink of an eye.
"What?" Mahito questioned, his haughty facade fractured once again by confusion.
"His other technique," Hanami said. "I saw it briefly once before when we last fought. It shields him by absorbing whatever is fired at him. It apparently works on attempted contact too."
"Well," Mahito sighed. "I guess that's it for tonight."
"What?" both Hanami and Shohei asked.
"There is no competing with that right now," Mahito explained to Hanami. "I'm out of transfigured humans and you're out of cursed energy, leaving us with no means to wear away his cursed energy while he is using that costly technique."
Shohei examend his reserves, seeing that defending from his mother did consume a sizable chunk from the dwindled reserves. Despite casual uses of Gravity Conductor probably using as little cursed energy as Idle Transfiguration, Shohei would be at risk of running out of cursed energy in barely more than a dozen attacks defended with Stygian Void.
Mahito didn't have enough cursed energy to cast a Domain and had no humans around to make use of, unless he could recycle the masses of flesh that were the fired off Body Repels still littering the courtyard.
"You're not leaving!" Shohei demanded, switching to Gravity Conductor and blasting the two curses with a downward crash.
As soon as Mahito was slammed to the ground, he changed his body. He appeared as a worm as thick as his own leg and began rolling away from the pinning force.
Mahito returned to his normal shape and formed his arm into a drill. He fired it as Shohei and the boy deflected it with a swipe of gravity.
"Shohei!" Noritoshi Kamo bellowed, entering the curtain and emerging from the tree line across the courtyard.
"Perfect," Mahito cheered, taking off in a dazing sprint towards Kamo. "Run while you can Hanami. Even this new brat can finish you off as you are now," Shohei heard Mahito warn as he passed Hanami.
Hanami took the advice and jetted off in the opposite direction of Kamo and Mahito, aiming for the treeline where it could disappear in an instant.
"No!" Shohei demanded helplessly. Shohei pinned Hanami to the spot where they were running and flew after Mahito as best he could.
"Fool!" Mahito screamed as they twisted on the spot, feinting his charge on Kamo. Mahito's outstretched hand basically had Shohei fly into it as he had taken off after the curse.
A surge of cursed energy rippled through Mahito's hand and Shohei felt something very wrong deep within him. It was like something even deeper than Shohei's bones and gut was touched by the curse and pulled in every which direction.
In a fleeting moment of desperation, Shohei swung his bloodied leg out and kicked Mahito away. As though the curse's touch literally lingered on Shohei, he felt his skin crawling from the touch of foreign cursed energy.
"Maybe you're not weak enough to be transfigured in one touch, but you should've left your previous technique's defenses up!" Mahito lectured as his hand came rocketing back towards Shohei's chest.
In Shohei's mind fogged with pain and racing thoughts, Mahito's words cut through it all like a lighthouse. Shohei did as he said, activating Stygian Void.
Shohei was vaguely sure Mahito's hand did touch his chest, but his technique activated all the same. A black dot was conjured into existence between Shohei's chest and Mahito's hand.
Shohei was falling to the ground unconscious due to Mahito's attack and the added damages received all night finally catching up to his body. As Shohei fell and laid on the ground, he managed to glimpse a series of things.
First, there was a flash of a blade near Mahito as he was supposed to be getting erased. Second, there was the scent of blood in the air, hopefully from Kamo's attacks rather than further injury. And finally, he felt someone touching him and his wounds and even moving his body.
After vaguely seeing what happened before passing out, Shohei did indeed sink into a dreamless period of sleep which felt as though time had been erased all up to his awakening.
Shohei jerked awake, jolting upright. He raised his arms in defense, but all before him was an empty room. Still uncomfortable, Shohei examined the room.
The room was small but well built and kept, wood paneled, and simultaneously foreign but distantly familiar. It must have been a room still on the Gojo estate. Shohei was lying on a musty futon with a thin blanket draped over him. There was an untouched handrag and bowl of water at his bedside. Two sets of extra gauze and bandages laid unused by him as well.
Shohei tossed the blanket aside and studied himself. He was dressed in a rather nice robe much too small for him. There were layers upon layers of bandages and a splint suspending his foot in a ninety degree angle, but failing to prevent more blood loss as they were bled through. He also had a packing of gaze wrapped neatly to his large stomach wounds, still dying the gauze solid red from remaining on too long. The bandages surely failed to be replaced.
Deciding there was nothing left of interest in the room, Shohei gingerly levitated himself upward and was on his way out when he felt how tight his jaw was. Shohei opened and closed his mouth to yawn and stretch, but it was almost painful to do so. Shohei felt his chin and what met his hand did not feel like his own flesh. Shohei lunged for the bowl of water on the floor and peered into it.
Looking back at Shohei was surely himself, but with a newly deformed chin, lower lip, and jaw. It looked like the flesh itself had been taken in hand ripped apart and lightly pressed back together like it were wet clay. Shohei's face was peculiarly wrinkled and scared from when Mahito had grabbed him. If one just looked at his face the boy could have almost passed as someone else if it had not been for his signature eyes.
Not knowing what else to do other than remain dumbstruck by his own reflection, Shohei took up his goal of leaving the room. Shohei glided to the sliding door and was blinded by the flooding sunlight.
Shohei emerged further from the room and saw the strange sight before him. Still on his Clan estate, was the entire populace of his clan seemingly performing their everyday life. All manors of the clan were busy with their own devices as the beautiful sun shone on them all through a cloudless sky.
The largest age group of the clan, the elderly, were lounging about, strolling, sipping tea at little tables, or pestering others for assistance.
Any able bodied adult was tending to the elderly, occupying themselves with meaningless labor like polishing bird feeders or organizing the pebbles of tree soil to pretty patterns when mass destruction was still present all around them. A grown man had been bold enough to step through the hole left in a Body Repel attack as a short cut rather than walk around to get to preen the cherry tree in the courtyard.
The smallest age group of the Gojo's, the children, were seen doing real labor and tasks. About half a dozen kids could be spotted zipping around the grounds with wheelbarrows of debris, arms full of cleaning supplies, or simply frazzled expressions. Most of the children were flowing in and out of the kitchens, chalked full of delicious scents and buzzing laundry rooms, preparing breakfast for the clan or replacing laundry that was dirty from the night time hike through the mountains.
Sho was stunned they all had returned to relatively normal life after they all could've died. Shohei expected them to have seeked refuge in a safe location in Jujutsu Society until the estate was, which it couldn't have been already as it seemingly was only late morning.
And what is even further perplexing to Shohei on top of the eager need to return to normalcy, is that not a single soul has noticed him, let alone speak to him.
Shohei floated towards individuals who passed him trying to inquire about different things. Person after person had him in their sights or had walked past him when he approached, and not one had stopped to give him a second look, like he was some homeless begar on the streets.
Shohei eventually soared over to a boy and grabbed him lightly by the shoulder after wasting too much time being shunted to the side.
"Excuse me," Shohei said, an apparent drawl to his voice courtesy of his bottom lip feeling weighed down by a brick and his feeling as brittle as a saltine. "Has any support come in for last night's attack? From sorcerers or otherwise. Or can you tell me where Noritoshi Kamo is, the man who entered the estate earlier last night. He might've ran into you all on the mountain side."
The boy had no response for Shohei other than a leer of disgust and an unapologetic scoff as if he couldn't believe Shohei would waste his precious time with such stupid questions.
The boy tore his shoulder forcefully from Shohei's slack grip and hurried off to his duties. As we went, Shohei recognized him as the young boy he had saved from Hanami. The same boy that was closer to death than anyone still alive on the estate.
Before the boy turned the corner into the kitchers he called over his shoulder, "The Kamo sorcerer should be patrolling. He insisted he do so until you awakened."
Shohei examined the grounds with his sensing and glided to the borders of the estate and treeline where Kamo paced like a hyper diligent guard dog. Shohei should've done this from the beginning rather than getting degraded by a child.
"Kamo-kun," Shohei called.
"Shohei?" Noritoshi turned around from his robotic pace around the treeline and ran to Shohei's side. "How are you feeling?" the boy asked as he examined Shohei up and down with a polite franticness. "I patched you up as best I could, but we really should get you to Shoko Ieri. Your stomach wound is pretty severe and you've lost too much blood."
"Slow down Noritoshi," Shohei chided slightly, but smiled fondly at the familiar face. "I appreciate the panic compared to all the Clan's nonchalant attitudes, but you've gotta calm down. I'll survive until we get to Shoko, but for now I have some questions."
"More nonchalant than if comfortable," Kamo commented, and coming from him who was rather cut and dry, Shohei found that remark to speak leagues on what he was seeing. "I was worried they wouldn't tend to you when I left. That seemed more worried about the damaged courtyard."
"Forget about the courtyard. Did the two curses get away?" Shohei asked, a fire lit in his eyes.
Kamo seemed shamed to the bearer of bad news, but he said, "They both did. The big black and white managed to slip away when you and the patchwork one were having that last little tussle. When you used your technique on the patchwork one his arm seemed to keep extending and extending to not get sucked into the black hole, but he eventually sliced his arm off to get free. He seemed really run down after that, probably on his last leg. I attacked him and he didn't want to fight in his condition, so he sprouted wings and flew away."
"Dammit," Shohei cursed, running his hands over his face. Both curses who just put him through hell were still alive.
"I'm sorry Shohei. I tried shooting him out of the sky, but you were looking really rough and I didn't want you to die if I could've stopped to help you. I didn't know how to treat that jaw wound from the curse though. I'm so sorry."
"Well at least the ruble is cleared off of the courtyard," Shohei sighed and changed the subject before he got further frustrated, showing his wounds. "You were right to worry. The towel and water were untouched and my bandages needed to be replaced."
"Those lazy ungrateful…" Kamo began with an upstart, wrinkling his nose toward the whole estate.
"Don't worry about it," Shohei interrupted. "It's not a big deal. I don't care," he lied.
"It is a big deal. They haven't done a single thing for you," Kamo retorted, indignant. "I had wrapped your first set of bandages. The least they could've done was set the towel on you for the night."
"They must have been busy," Shohei countered, not wanting to believe the obvious truth. "They've got a lot of cleaning up to do. They haven't even scratched the big piles of flesh still lying around. I think they expect someone will do that bit of heavy lifting for them."
"Well even if the adults were doing something worthwhile they could've helped me with the bodies," Noritoshi scoffed with his own uptight leer. "I dragged all the corpses of those misshapen bodies into the already damaged storage area and cleaned up the one clan member's body before going on patrol. "
Shohei's stomach curled at the thought of his father's corpse. Shohei was too late to block the images of his mother's deformed body flooding back into his mind too.
"There should be one more tranfigure human that should be cremated too," Shohei said, freshly reminded. "She was a clan member too."
Shohei then remembered that there was nothing left to be cremated. He had accidentally erased his mother's entire body. Before he could do more than turn away from Kamo, Shohei threw up, hunched in the air and against a nearby tree.
"Careful," Kamo warned, putting an arm around the boy and grabbing his arm. "You might be nauseous from the blood loss. I'm guessing you could've lost around almost forty percent with that stomach wound and no fresh bandages."
"I don't think so," Shohei said, waving off Kamo as he floated upright and wiped his mouth.
What really drove Shohei sick was both the thought of his two parents suffering horrible death's and the realization of his "family" being awful people.
"I just need a moment to be alone," Shohei said, taking off in flight as Kamo warned him against going off alone at that time.
Shohei sped through the mountains and quickly chose a random spot to land. It was a patchy spread of adolescent trees near the peak of a dwarfish mountain.
The air was cold despite the sun shining down on Shohei, leaving his breath able to fog the air. It was bitterly cold, but refreshing when coupled with the natural silence the rustling trees and bird song provided.
Shohei sat with his legs hugged to his chest on the dry grass atop the mountain, chin resetting between his knees. The sun crept across the sky from late mourning to afternoon as Shohei gazed aimlessly. The vast mountain range, more motionless than any corpse or twisted body that raced across Shohei's mind, would typically be a comfort to the boy, but in every branch, twig, and leaf he saw the curse that he failed to kill. The same curse that came up with the plan to use his family to kill him because he would interfere with their plans. The same plan that got his parents killed before he could ever speak to them again.
Satoru Gojo flashed into existence beside Shohei in the blink of an eye. Shohei didn't so much as react to the man's presence, but instead stared off into the mountains that reminded him of his failure.
"It was a fake lead," Satoru broke the silence as he stared through his blindfold at the range alongside Shohei.
Shohei did not respond. He let the man stand there with his words dangling pointlessly between them.
"I understand why you don't respect them," Shohei finally responded. "I get why you told me not to give the idea of pleasing them a second thought."
Satoru did not respond just as Shohei did not. Shohei continued.
"I can't wrap my mind around how they can be so disjointed from reality. How they are unfazed by the disaster that just plagued them. It could have ended infinitely worse, and even then they aren't even mourning the two family members they just lost. They have no gratitude or even any degree of care for me after I just spared them all from a horrible death. I am their family. That should mean something. Worse than airheads, all of them. And I'm related to them, but I guess I know where I get it from now."
Satoru had nothing to say while he stared off into the distance as well. Shohei suspected he may have wanted to say "I told you so" to some degree, but thought it the wiser.
"Deep down I expected to be a tool of theirs like you," Shohei sniped, a foreign tone of bitterness in his voice that even he didn't recognize. "A means to a luxurious and isolated end where they'd never have to raise a finger or give me a second thought as long as I represented them properly."
"You're right," Satoru agreed, remaining standing at a small distance. "They see us as tools. You and I are the only real sorcerers in that family. They are such because they gave all the reins of responsibility to me the moment I was born, and saw the same opportunity when you developed Limitless. They view us as tools to carry on the oh so great Gojo clan."
The man continued, facing Shohei for the first time with his face buried in his leg, saying, "Don't fool yourself and think they care about us for who we are. Don't forget that the people defined as our family have abandoned us in this world because we are strong, but don't think you've been left by all. Blood may be thicker than water, but Maki's skull is unrivaled."
Satrou stepped closer and bent to put a hand on Shohei's shoulder, no Limitless or Gravity Field between. Satoru said, "Chosen family is what has saved my life. Principle Yaga, Nanami, Ieri. Even my students. They've all kept me going and given me a goal in life. Once it was to be the strongest because that's all I was told when raised by the clan. When I really became the strongest in school and graduated, I saw that being the strongest meant helping others. Raising others up to their strongest so they can decide what to do with their life, not what others have already told them. So they can find comradery and support in being the strongest, rather than being alone like I once was."
"You are no different. I raised you since I was a teen to be who you are, not what the Clan wanted. The Clan says you're a clone of me, but I say you are the most brilliant and unique boy I've ever seen. You have such an independent joy in you that younger me would have killed for. You are always happy doing what you want to do, even if you get distracted or you are by yourself. What's even better is you're surrounded by other people with as much character as you. All these students you learn, train, and fight with are an indispensable family that cares for you and would die for you. These students are what family is supposed to be, not our Clan."
Shohei, bombarded by those gentle words, felt his eyes leak again, dampening his cheeks and his legs that he smothered his face into.
He looked up to Satoru, ugly with grief and a mutilated scar to ask, "Why did my parents have to die though? Why did you leave me alone? Why did I have to fail saving the seeming only two good eggs in this whole fucking Clan? One was the only man on guard for the Clan's sake and the other was the only one not cowering or fleeing. They cared about something that matters at least, whether that be the Clan's security or me!"
Satoru did not turn away from Shohei's further damnation. He removed his blindfold instead and sat with the boy, his hair falling down and his literally sky blue eyes piercing the air.
"Well, I can tell you that they were two good eggs," Satoru said, compassionately. "Your father was the youngest sorcerer pulled out of the field when I was born. The clan elders, the people in charge at the time but below me now, decided that all sorcerers would become estate security, but of course that fell to shambles when the Clan got careless and comfortable. He was the only one who'd stay out late taking shifts in the watchtower, eager to do his duty when he got shunted from field action really early. The rest got fat, old, or died, but he stayed in shape just to protect the Clan. As for your mother, she was my favorite aunt. She was the only real down to earth person in the whole clan, worrying about what matters rather than if the flowers are pruned properly. She actually saw me as a child for most of my life, rather than the strongest, and I love her for it. My parents died soon before I went to Jujutsu High and she really stepped up to ensure I still had a parental figure to go to. They were a lovely couple. I'd be so bold to say she was the only woman I've ever 'loved'."
"What about Ieri? She has been one of your best friends since school," Shohei asked, his head resting on his knees but listening keenly.
"Good point. She also knows the pressure of being relied on so much, seeing as she's the only reverse cursed technique user in the country able to heal others. She understands me a little more than others and has been through some of the pain I have. Speaking of Ieri, let's go see if she can patch you up."
"Not right now," Shohei demanded, a bleak air still hanging around him, keeping him from looking at Satoru. "I don't wanna go with you anywhere. Right now at least. I still want to be alone."
"I understand," Satoru assured. Shohei thought he sounded faintly hurt or still worried, but his ears could've deceived him. "Don't pass out from blood loss. I'll be back at the estate when you're ready."
Shohei nodded, understanding, still unable to look at Satoru. Instead he watched his cursed energy signature flare out of existence when he teleported away.
Shohei sat by himself for another hour flipping through his thoughts and conversations with Gojo just then. Had he been too mean to the man? He had been deceived just as he did. Even the strongest wasn't full proof.
Were his parents proud of him as a sorcerer? Would they still be after he failed them or if they knew he was an airhead like the rest of the Clan. No. He may be disjoined from reality sometimes but he was not ignorant like the Clan was.
Would he be viewed as a failure or embarrassment by the Clan or other sorcerers because he failed to save them all. Surely not. He did his best and saved almost all of them. Sadly the two he failed were the ones he'd surely love. Either way, Shohei shouldn't care about what the Clan thinks, but what would Maki think? Would she comfort him or would she look at him differently? Would she think he was uglier because of the scar? He already thought so himself. Could Ieri even lessen the scar left by Mahito's soul distorting technique.
Never had Shohei had so many thoughts run through his mind. Never had he been so hurt, in all physical, mental, and emotional aspects. Never had he been in such a state of unrest with feeling still resentful at Satoru for being fooled and leaving him alone on purpose.
How would he move on from here?
