Floating amongst the stars, his vengeance taken on the special-grade disaster curse Jogo, Shohei readied to exit his Domain Expansion and face death.
"Well…" Shohei sighed, the high he earned from killing the curse and standing up to Sukuna was fading. "Who dies a peaceful death as a sorcerer. At least I saved a few people. Maybe gave Maki the chance to live. Megumi was alive last time I checked. He is tough. Yuji treats him right. Even if Sukuna is running loose right now, maybe I can amuse him till Yuji takes over. It's been a while since he ate the fingers. And Satoru. I'll never see him again and the last thing I did was ignore him."
Shohei admired the beauty of his Domain, the closest he'd ever get to seeing the stars like he dreamed about as a child and lowered the barrier.
The crumbling and smoking ruins of Shibuya came crashing back around Shohei, an all too familiar and chaotic sight. Smoke rose from the city, into the sky, and through the Curtain.
Shohei raised his eyes from the rooftop floor to meet Sukuna's, ready to give it all in his final struggle, but Sukuna was nowhere to be seen.
Shohei glanced around the rooftop where he stood, not a single soul to be seen. Shohei reached out to search for his staple terrifying signature or any signature surrounding him.
It wasn't Sukuna's signature that terrified him, but instead Fushiguro's. Shohei's best friend's life was hanging on by a string, and his trump card was revealed, about to take another's life. To make things worse, Sukuna was barreling towards the disastrous scene.
"Megumi!" Shohei screamed, the severity of the scene connecting in his mind. Shohei exploded into flight towards the boy, leaving the rooftop crumbling from his launch.
Shohei poured nearly his maximum output into Gravity Conductor's flight and Gravity Field erected around him, tearing a hole through buildings and structures as he b-lined through them all.
Shredding through a building's outer wall, all came into view. Fushiguro was unconscious and bleeding severely from the head, slumped against a dented mechanic's wall that he crashed into. The blonde curse user that had attacked Ijichi had the final shikigami of the Ten Shadows bearing down on him, about to be crushed like a bug by the untamed monster.
Before Shohei could do more than gasp, Sukuna already was sweeping up the curse user before he had his skull sandwiched against the pavement, advertently saving Fushiguro. Sukuna dragged the man to Fushiguro's side and stood guard over them.
"Huh?" Shohei muttered incredulously, baffled at the scene as he floated. "Sukuna saved someone's life?"
Sukuna suddenly raised a hand to Fushiguro. Despite Sukuna standing over them, Shohei raced to his friend's side in another flash.
"Excuse you," Sukuna muttered, not even glancing at Shohei. Shohei was aiming his most powerful technique at Itadori's heart, kneeling between the King of Curses and his dying family.
"Huh?" Shohei muttered again, nonplused. Sukuna's hand was bathed in positive cursed energy. He was reaching to heal Fushiguro, not hurt him further.
"I can't let him die. Either you will or you can move aside," Sukuna demanded, not turning from the shikigami, but glancing down at them.
Shohei lowered his left hand and dismissed the technique to destroy everything remaining in Shibuya except Shohei and Megumi's body behind him. He shuffled to the other side of Fushiguro, kneeling beside him as he watched the glowing black and white energy wash over the boy.
Fushiguro's breath seemed to steady again and the blood stopped flowing from his skull. The apparently large lacerations across the boy's back also seemed to close, blood no longer pooling underneath him.
"Don't die on me," Sukuna demanded calmly of Fushiguro, still examining the hulking shikigami. "There are things I need you to do for me."
"What is happening?!" the curse user cried, tears and sweat flowing from his face. He had apparently been in an altercation or two since Shohei saw him last. He had several missing teeth, he was bleeding steadily from his nose, and the mysterious marks under his eyes were all gone.
"Be quiet!"
"Silence."
Both Shohei and Sukuna demanded of the weakling before them. Sukuna was simply demanding lesser beings than him. Shohei was at his limit with stressful situations turning into the worst situations possible for the night, and what Sukuna just said worried Shohei more than anything yet to happen.
Shohei properly examined the scene with his more dire concerns addressed for the time being. Megumi must have been on his last leg after fighting Toji, which was nowhere to be seen, and summoned his trump card against the blonde curse user as a final attempt to lessen the number of threats in Shibuya.
Fushiguro's trump card stood across the street from the four of the mismatched group. The strongest shikigami of the Ten Shadows technique was named Eight-Handled Sword Divergent Sila Divine General Mahoraga. Mahoraga for short.
A part of the Gojo clan with access to the history of jujutsu and many critical events of the past, Shohei knew how dire of a situation he and Megumi were trapped in.
The shimmering white, towering, muscular humanoid summon was no less than twelve feet tall and three times as wide as any normal human. Four wings protruded from its would be eye sockets and a tail like appendage curled from the back of its head. Looming behind its head as well was a large, golden, eight handled wheel. The dharmachakra key feature to the shikigami's technique.
Mahoraga was dressed in nothing more than black hakama bottoms, a white sash around its waist to cover most of its lower body, decorative ritualistic jewelry embedded in his chest, and wrappings around his forearms from which the Sword of Extermination sprouted from. The Sword of Extermination was constantly enveloped in positive energy, acting as a lethal weapon to exorcise any curse at first contact.
To their left was Sukuna, the King of Curses and the most powerful being to exist, whose only contention for the title of the strongest was Satoru Gojo. Across the street from them was the one shikigami in the history of the Zenin clan and their Ten Shadows' technique that has never been beaten in a ritual fight and subjugated by its summoner.
Mahoraga was so difficult to fight, that during a spectated bout between the head of the Gojo and Zenin clans hundreds of years ago, both were killed when their fight spiraled out of hand and Mahoraga was summoned. The Gojo leader had both the Six Eyes and Limitless.
Much like that Zenin clan leader, Megumi must have summoned Mahoraga in a ritual that would typically be used to try and defeat it on his own and gain control over it. Instead, Megumi entrapped the curse user in the ritual, making him a part of the necessary death to complete the ritual. Either the curse user and Megumi had to die, or Mahoraga needed to, and not once had he ever been defeated in the ritual.
"Saving that piece of trash was the right move by Sukuna," Shohei thought, confused but thankful that the King of Curses did what he did.
Sukuna finally left their side, stepping into the street to square off with the hulking shikigami.
"Time for a tasting, then."
"These two monsters are gonna fight?!" Shohei gawked at the sight. "They both could destroy all of Shibuya over and over again."
Shohei sat crouched beside Fushiguro, shocked, but fully aware Mahoraga needed to be dealt with first and foremost. Sukuna may be just as if not more dangerous, but he wasn't threatening Fushiguro's life.
"Well?" Sukuna spoke up again.
Shohei sat, confused by the man. Shohei even looked over to the curse user, still stunned into silence too.
"I imagine you want to save your friend," Sukuna continued, glancing back at Shohei. "I'm still hungry and you promised to show me your all. That's the only reason I'm letting you live. Now's the time. Or you could have lied to me and now die where you grovel."
Maki's call to action resonated within him. Megumi's life depended on him. Shohei, further stunned by the total enigma that was Sukuna, rose to the occasion.
"Do you want to see the fruits of my labor as a sorcerer poured forth all at once, Sukuna?" Shohei asked, a secret well within him stirring.
The man tilted his head in what could only be described as plain curiosity. Shohei took that as a yes.
The teen raised his right hand in front of him, clutching his fingers closed tightly, bracing his elbow with his left hand. The white polka dots of his hair were swallowed by the black hair surrounding them all, each hair being weighed down life gravity intensified all around him and him alone. Shohei's star-like left eye faded into a minisual glow purely in his pupil as his right eye overwhelmed it, sinking into further darkness. His pitchblack iris and pupil spread to every corner of the whites of his eye, leading into an endless pit expanding beyond the inside of the miniature black hole.
His technique ready, Shohei muttered the incantation, "Stygian Void Maximum Technique: Bountiful Horizon." And outforth from the black chasm poured seemingly endless cursed energy into Shohei's body.
Sukuna's four eyes twitched in slight amusement before his hand reactively rocketed above his head, blocking Mahoraga's devastating strike that shattered the ground beneath them. The force rippled from the contact of blade on arm, his sleeve shredded to tatters, shattering the glass of surrounding buildings.
Leaping from his unconscious brother's side came Shohei, kicking Mahoraga in the chest. The shikigami was knocked back, disentangling with the King of Curses.
Sukuna flashed from his crater, appearing behind the Mahoraga and Shohei, chanting, "Dismantle."
A slash rocketed from Sukuna's pointing fingers, gouging Mahoraga's chest open with the several slices and carving stone from the wall beyond Mahoraga. Shohei had been caught in the crossfire, the slicing attack racing up the side of his extended leg all the way to his shoulder.
Shohei landed from his flying kick and retreated from the scuffle, readying a counter attack. Sukuna landed himself, only to be greeted by Mahoraga and Shohei's counterstrikes.
Sukuna clashed with the two's strikes with a slash of Dismantle, and the three's attacks resulted in them all flying back. Sukuna and Mahoraga crashed through respective buildings either across or beside Fushiguro's body, and Shohei was sent tumbling down the street.
Shohei rolled to his feet, his black hair unruffled as it stood pinned downward.
"Okay," Shohei blurted, his mind flooding with cursed energy, invigorated like an all time caffeine rush, fueling his typically scatterbrained mind to consider all possibilities. "In a hesitant clash to feel each other out, no one is particularly outclassed. Sukuna is leagues faster than me or Mahoraga, able to swoop up that curse user and block a surprise attack. Sukuna's vastly stronger than me and so is Mahoraga. Me and that pasty bastard should be able to keep up with whatever punishment Sukuna can dish out too, but I can't as long."
"Brat," Sukuna called down the street, emerging from his building first. He swayed out of the theater he crashed through with a box of popcorn and soft drink in hand. "Since when can you heal?"
Sukuna sipped his straw and stared down the street at Shohei's unscathed leg that surely had been gushing blood just a moment ago. In fact, no inch of Shohei seemed to be injured. His left arm that had its sleeve burned off was glistening in unscathed flesh and even his cut open chin was reduced to a small slit of a scar.
"Do you know what happens to someone when more cursed energy comes flooding into their body than their body can output all at once?" Shohei asked, facing Sukuna but not taking his eyes off the hole Mahoraga was blasted through by Megumi.
"So you feel the need to reveal your cards to keep up?" Sukuna asked, looking at his soft drink distastefully before tossing it over his shoulder.
"Why fight fair when I can fight to win?" Shohei rebutted. Sukuna let a small grin slip through. "So you know?"
Sukuna remained silent, allowing Shohei to continue as they now both watched Mahoraga stir in his building.
"The body reflexively performs reverse curse technique while refueling its reserves when fed excessive cursed energy to prevent itself from breaking. Ultimately, even if in my mind I don't understand reverse curse technique, my body can still heal all it needs to when I'm brimming with all the cursed energy of every attack I've ever absorbed. Now I can move and fight at maximum output at all times."
"That's nothing like the gravity technique you've been using to zip around all night or the attack you threatened me with. So you have more than one technique?" Sukuna commented, not just amused, but intrigued.
"You would know about having more than one technique, wouldn't you?" Shohei countered. "A flaming arrow is nothing like your two types of hacking and slashing techniques. Dismantle was it? And another different kind of slash." Shohei rattled off, almost vibrating as he spoke. He had beaten Sukuna to the main point of his technique, hoping to take some fuel from the possible fire if Sukuna revealed his cards.
Sukuna simply answered, "Cleave."
Mahoraga stirred in the building, the Sword of Extermination glowing faintly white in the darkness before it emerged. The banter about techniques was cut short as Shohei readied for action again. Sukuna stood as nonplused as before, sampling his popcorn.
"Tastes awful," Sukuna sighed, spitting out the food and sending two other devastating slashes in Mahoraga and Shohei's direction.
The slash sent Mahoraga recoiling from the force alone, and seeing Sukuna flick his fingers, Shohei countered the gorey impact with his own technique. All night he had been outclassed in speed, and he was catching onto Sukuna's antics and attacks now his mind was working overtime.
"Secret Art: Falling Blossom Emotion."
The anti-domain technique was not just for countering the sure-hit effect of a Domain, but any technique. Firing on maximum energy output, Shohei gave the technique enough fuel to counter the strike completely.
After Sukuna's off handed attack, the three exploded into action. Popcorn littered the air as Mahoraga leapt at and dragged Sukuna up a building while Shohei flung himself onto Mahoraga's back, attempting to rip off some of its wings.
Mahoraga tossed Sukuna across the street to another building and spun to try and fling Shohei off of him.
"You wanna go?" Sukuna challenged, cushioning his impact with the building.
Shohei sandwiched himself between the building and Mahoraga, kicking the shikigami into Sukuna's clutches, the force shattering the remaining glass windows on the building. Mahoraga used Shohei's shove to throw a massive flying punch to where Sukuna was perched on the building side.
Sukuna backspringed away from the strike, scaling the building as Mahoraga repeatedly dove into and emerged from the building, attempting to squash his target.
"Good," Shohei cackled wide eyed, leaping off the building side where he hung. "Don't worry about me. Go ahead and rip each other apart."
The two of them arrived at the building top, Mahoraga slamming his meaty fists down where Sukuna stood atop the rooftop. Sukuna avoided the crushing strike and scaled the creature's large arms, kicking it across the face, spilling its blood.
Shohei bounded up the building side in one leap and came soaring his way over Mahoraga's large frame. Shohei used Mahoraga's large face as a springboard to lunge at Sukuna, a massive punch reared as the villain reared from his kick, but the shikigami caught him by the ankle and flung him away.
Shohei, thankfully escaping the oncoming assault of slashes, landed atop a nearby roof. Mahoraga attempted to throw Sukuna once more too, but as soon as he got his clutches on Itadori's uniform hood, his arm was cleaved into neat slices and his leg was severed at the knee.
Mahoraga gained some breathing room by shouting with such force that the expelled air sent Sukuna spiraling across and through several buildings.
Shohei came crashing back into Mahoraga, dragging it across the rooftop by his strange head tail and hurling him back along the path it just launched Sukuna.
"If I can keep Mahoraga and Sukuna busy with each other, I can kill time until Itadori hopefully returns. It's been a while since Sukuna gained control. I don't want to kill Yuji, but I can't hold back with these two slugging it out across all of Shibuya. Playing any form of waiting game with Mahoraga is dangerous. I want him to adapt to Sukuna's technique, but not mine, so I should play defensive against it and offensive against Sukuna by directing the big bastard at him. I'll prevent it from attacking me or sampling my techniques while it gets sliced to ribbons. Mahoraga is too dangerous for Sukuna to ignore to just go after me, and Mahoraga will attack whoever is standing in its way until it can be free to kill the curse user and Megumi. In a perfect world, I can get these two to nearly kill each other, and maybe I can take care of them both in one fell swoop."
Sukuna threw away a finger of Mahoraga's lodged in his hood before the angelic monster slammed into the building Sukuna clung onto.
Shohei bounded across the Shibuya skyline in pursuit of the fight with a supercharged leap. He threaded his way through the hole where Mahoraga plunged Sukuna through, following them.
The two powerhouses stood below a few decimated levels throwing massive punches with their one remaining hand or countering them with devastating slashes and halting palms. Their clashing was tearing apart the building where they stood, slowly crashing to the ground. Shohei crashed between them, twisting his body to both kick Mahoraga one direction and shove Sukuna in the other.
Mahoraga had his flurry of punches interrupted by a foot to the chest and stumbled on his one remaining leg as he rolled across the building floor. Shohei's hands crashed into Sukuna's chest as he was sent flying out a blown out window, but his arms were turned to minced meat from a counter attack.
Shohei twisted his body to stand, and in a surge of cursed energy multiplied by itself, his arms were returned missing only his uniform sleeves.
Shohei lunged at Mahoraga crawling to his feet, sliding on his knees to duck a wild backhand thrown as he approached. Shohei twirled to his feet and threw a devastating kick to the small of his back, sending the curse tumbling across the floor again and through the window Sukuna fell out of.
A reprieve earned by his own actions, Shohei examined his stores of cursed energy provided by Bountiful Horizon. Since his development of his inherited and innate techniques at the age of five, to the present day more than eleven years later, Stygian Void had been stockpiling the energy used in the attacks it absorbed for its Maximum Technique before Shohei even knew what it was.
Shohei had never used Bountiful Horizon in his eleven years of having the technique and now had just accessed every ounce of eleven years of different attacks turned back to pure cursed energy.
But like any good thing, there were several downsides. Shohei was effectively immortal while Bountiful Horizon was in effect, but he could not use Gravity Conductor simultaneously. He did not use the two techniques in everyday life simultaneously because that was simply ineffective cursed energy conservation, but he flat out could not activate Gravity Conductor at all when Bountiful Horizon was active.
When Shohei discovered this Maximum Technique, Satoru speculated that it was because the section of the brain that jujutsu stems from is preoccupied with operating such a powerful technique. Ultimately, the brain was directing so much excess energy already that it couldn't comprehend trying to use another powerful ingrained technique. That's why Shohei could use Falling Blossom Emotion and other non-innate techniques, because they weren't hard wired in his preoccupied brain.
Another downside of the technique was Shohei couldn't stem the flow of how fast cursed energy was poured into his body. This meant that there was no rationing how much energy he spent until the pool of it was all used up. And of course Shohei didn't have eleven whole years of stored energy. He wasn't absorbing attacks every minute of every day. Shohei estimated that he had ten whole minutes of cursed energy to use since its activation.
Mahoraga streaking into and out of Shohei's view snapped his back to reality. Shohei appeared by the broken window with one large stride.
Sukuna had stumbled upon construction equipment and had entangled Mahoraga in some cables. He whipped around the shikigami over his head and through a parking garage like a ragdoll.
Sukuna readied to leap after the shikigami, but Shohei came crashing down where he stood. The King of Curses pivoted away from where Shohei left a crater in the rooftop and squared off with the boy.
"So no flying around like the gnat that you are with all this flooding energy?" Sukuna questioned, lunging at Shohei.
Shohei boxed in, rolling off the punch that would've typically blown his shoulder off.
"I'm plenty fast enough to keep up," Shohei claimed as he threw a right cross brimming with power that Sukuna blocked like nothing. "You can't fly but you're leaping all across this city like you've got wings."
"We are leagues apart," Sukuna cackled, delighted in the three way fight he was engaged in.
"If you say so, but do you want to see another trick?" Shohei asked, not waiting for a response before activating Tunnel Vision
Shohei's range of sensing collapsed and his two eyes either glowed a tint brighter or darkened deeper. All of a sudden, despite the flowing cursed energy directed by his brain filling all his thoughts, all there was before Shohei was Sukuna.
Like mass amounts of caffeine and high dosage adderall, Shohei's racing, focused mind was mismatched. Shohei's overdrive brain now was funneled purely to the enemy before him, his attention purely devoted to every twitch of Sukuna's muscle and subtle surge in his boundless cursed energy.
"Oh? A technique, but not a traditional one?" Sukuna cooed, slipping Shohei's newly invigorated and explosive jabs.
The two continued their little hand to hand altercation. Sukuna slipped, parried, and blocked every one of Shohei's flurry of punches, but not one did he completely dodge. Shohei figured it was him holding back using his techniques, which Shohei knew he could seamlessly incorporate in his hand to hand, but he was confident Sukuna couldn't entirely dodge all his punches. Every single one he parried, slipped, or blocked. This wasn't him showboating and bending to his own self enforced rules. Shohei was contending with the man
Shohei was determined to fully strike Sukuna at least once before Mahoraga came rampaging back on the scene. Shohei threw every combination of blows he had ever learned consecutively in the fastest manner he knew how to strike.
He tried to trap the curse with hooks around his arm and head. He tried planting his foot on Sukuna's own. Shohei even pulled out Iguana Talon stashed in his belt for another wave of bladed combinations, and not a single one was a direct hit.
Giving up trying to force his way while fighting on the offense, Shohei took a step back.
"Come on," Shohei rattled, spitting at the curse's feet. "You wanted to see my all."
The way Sukuna grinned at the invitation, Shohei thought he had made a grave error.
Sukuna took a step towards the boy, but then a whole car came streaking between them.
They followed where the car came from and there was Mahoraga pitching any vehicle he could reach from the parking garage he crash landed in.
"Are you scared of some mundane old cars?" Sukuna challenged again, indignant at Mahoraga's futile attack interrupting him.
Shohei waved Sukuna on, taking his personal defensive muay thai inspired stance.
Sukuna advanced, a moving truck tearing past where he was just standing.
"Don't think about your gap in power," Shohei told himself. "Make him fight how you want."
Shohei slowly retreated backwards with his hands held high around his brow as Sukuna raised his clawed hands while advancing.
Shohei waited for a beetle to pass before he threw two lightning fast jabs to measure the distance between the two of them.
Sukuna slapped both away and threw an overhand punch that connected with Shohei's guard but plowed through, striking him across the temple. Positive energy flooded his shattered skull.
Shohei raised his front leg to faint a kick, even empowering it further with cursed energy, causing Sukuna to halt stepping forward with his mirrored leg. Shohei then used the bait to throw a one-two, the second strike nearly nicking Sukuna's cheek.
Sukuna ducked a coup sailing overhead then punished Shohei for his combo, landing half a dozen blows on Shohei's stomach and ribs. Positive energy knitted his splintered ribs and exploded organs together.
Ignoring the combination landing to his midriff, Shohei rocketed his knee forward, causing Sukuna to counter strike the knee with a palm, to which Shohei saw his first real opening. Sukuna's hand was occupied stopping his knee, to which Shohei could throw a hook to his unguarded side.
Shohei's fist was already in motion before he could tell it to, but then came a flying car, making Sukuna leap back from their display and freeing him from the punch Shohei was confident was going to land.
"That big pasty bastard!" Shohei cursed, looking back to the parking garage. He whipped his head back to Sukuna. "He saved your ass."
"Excuses," Sukuna dismissed, waving his hand aside.
"I thought it was your four eyes that made you so elusive," Shohei began, leaping over a taxi that tore across the roof. "Maybe it's just your thousands of years of stockpiled luck while you sat around sealed in those fingers."
"You're the lucky one," Sukuna said, backstepping a truck. "Born into a weak generation from a renowned ancient family with two powerful techniques and trained by the strongest of your era, but here you are. Your technique acting only as your countdown to death and no friends in sight to save you."
"My luck ran out. I'm here fighting you aren't I?"
Sukuna cackled a mad cackle as he batted aside a car coming to crash directly into him.
"Maybe you're right!" Sukuna admitted, raising his arms to the sky and shining all his pearly fangs at Shohei. "You're bound to die fruitlessly for your allies in this hellish battle, but you should be honored. You're spending your final moments amusing me!"