Ugh, the pressure. This time Mahiru was truly beside herself with worry.
Everything had been going so smoothly. Mahiru had figured out a way to link a phone from the "modern world" with a phone from the "past world," letting Mai and Maki talk with her.
Mai had thumped her own chest and declared that no one understood her younger self better than she did — "convincing myself to become a magical girl" would be a piece of cake. Mahiru, at a loss for words, saw how eager Mai was and just let her go for it.
But then she looked away for one second, and the next thing she knew, the young Mai and Maki were somehow, inexplicably, about to die on the spot.
Are you kidding me?! This is absolutely outrageous!
Who dragged my precious little Maki and my precious little Mai into the domain of a Special Grade Cursed Spirit?!
So Mahiru descended straight from the sky, domain and all.
This time she was genuinely panicking. Ever since she'd crossed over, she'd witnessed all kinds of "butterfly effects," but this was the most serious one yet. She really hadn't expected the timeline to diverge this much, dragging little Mai and little Maki into such danger.
Thank goodness Mai had made that phone call in time.
When she'd found out about it, Mahiru had still been running her domain, using little Kaori's body to chat with Mai in the future world.
Mahiru didn't even bother to close her own domain — she simply hauled the entire thing over and dropped down from the sky right here.
The moment that Special Grade Cursed Spirit lifted its head, it discovered an Open Domain slamming down onto its face, and it was utterly dumbstruck.
A tiny little Special Grade Cursed Spirit — how could its domain possibly compare to Mahiru's?
The Cursed Spirit's domain was like ice meeting molten lava, melting away in an instant.
Mahiru, carrying the hymn of the Angel, tore through the darkness, filling little Mai's field of vision with golden hues.
"See? I told you," the grown-up Mai chuckled over the phone. "She's really strong."
Little Mai gazed upward, mouth open, unable to make a sound.
Up in mid-air, Mahiru saw that Mai was unharmed and let out a breath of relief. Then she turned her head to scan the rest of this melting domain, searching for Maki's figure.
She found Maki quickly.
The girl had collapsed to the ground, wounds on her body, her clothes stained red with blood, unconscious.
Mahiru used her domain to suppress every action of the Cursed Spirit, preventing it from hurting the two girls. She found the Cursed Spirit. It was pinned down, curled up in place and trembling.
Her eyes ice-cold, Mahiru raised her hand. Countless golden lights transformed into longswords that rained down from the sky, and the Special Grade Cursed Spirit was instantly shredded, pierced through until it looked like a hedgehog.
She flew down to Maki's side, bent over to examine the girl's body, and used Idle Transfiguration to heal all of her wounds.
Then she immediately noticed Naoya Zenin and the others. Those guards and the young Naoya had no ability to quickly find a way out of a Special Grade Cursed Spirit's domain. When Mahiru glanced over, they were all curled up in a corner too, suppressed by her domain until they couldn't move.
Mahiru frowned.
She didn't really feel like dealing with these people.
The moment she'd sensed Naoya and the others' presence, she'd concealed her own face to keep them from seeing it. She scooped up Princess Maki and slowly walked back over to Mai.
"Want to try running away from home?"
Mahiru looked at Mai, meeting the young girl's eyes, gazing at her battered, wounded little body, and couldn't help the tender, pitying expression that crossed her face: "Come with me... With me around, no one will ever be able to hurt you again."
Little Mai looked at Mahiru, her eyes full of wavering hesitation.
She was just a child right now; her mind couldn't process this much information in time.
What did it mean that the person on the other end of the phone was "the future me"?
And what was the cursed technique this person in front of her was using? She had never witnessed this kind of power and technique on anyone before. The girl was bewildered.
But in that same moment, from the person before her, she felt an incomparable sense of safety.
Suddenly she burst into loud, wailing sobs.
She stumbled and ran toward Mahiru, wrapping her arms around Mahiru's leg.
"Save me, save Maki..." she cried, pouring out all her grievances and fear. "I'll do anything, please, I'm begging you, save us..."
A girl so used to being bullied and oppressed still couldn't quite believe that anyone in this world would save them unconditionally.
The suddenly-appearing Mahiru was without a doubt her life-saving straw, yet at the same time she was afraid that Mahiru, like those people in the Zenin estate, would abandon her for being useless.
In order to secure a lasting salvation, she kept on pleading.
And Mahiru bent down too, gathering little Mai into her arms, stroking her head over and over to comfort her.
"It's okay, you don't need to do anything, I'll protect you..."
The trauma the Zenin estate's rotten environment had inflicted on these children would take a very, very long time to slowly heal.
In the timeline where Mahiru wasn't present, Mai and Maki had been strong enough to keep a healthy set of values within the Zenin estate. But right now the two of them hadn't grown up yet — they were still children.
So they showed more of their fragility.
But... it didn't really matter. Here, with Mahiru, they would have a whole lifetime to feel warmth, to feel what it was like to be protected.
Just like little Itadori and little Fushiguro, Mahiru bundled little Maki and little Mai back to the Kenjaku household and signed them on as magical girls too. But before bringing the pair back to Kenjaku's home, Mahiru used a bit of Cursed Speech to slightly alter the two girls' memories — after all, during the rush of the rescue, Mai had let a few things slip.
So Mahiru had preemptively erased the memories in their heads that could expose information to Kenjaku.
Say what you will, but Kenjaku — that thousand-year-old monster — was surprisingly good with kids.
Mahiru brought little Maki and little Mai back to Kenjaku's home, and in less than half a day Kenjaku had gotten the two little girls cleaned up spotless, even specially arranging a dedicated living area for the two sisters.
Kenjaku was basically a total mom.
Meanwhile, over at the Zenin estate, once they discovered that Maki and Mai had been abducted by Mahiru, they were immediately furious and began pressuring the sorcerers below through the upper echelons of the jujutsu world, ordering them to bring Maki and Mai back at all costs.
That's just how the Zenin estate is.
Although Maki and Mai weren't important to the Zenin estate, having family members abducted was still a blow to the Zenin estate's face.
In the end, the task of retrieving Mai and Maki got passed around and around, and ultimately still landed on the heads of Satoru Gojo and Suguru Geto.
"Whoa, seriously? She even abducts the Zenin's kids?" Satoru Gojo remarked upon hearing about it. "Is the next one gonna be her coming to abduct me?"
People had no idea that what Mahiru was doing was actually a good thing.
All they could see was Mahiru abducting the Zenin estate's children.
This incident was extremely damaging as far as the jujutsu world was concerned.
Although Mahiru hadn't caused any large-scale destruction, she had already become the great enemy of the entire jujutsu world. Her standing now was just like Suguru Geto's in the original work, the man who orchestrated the Night Parade of a Hundred Demons.
Every single Jujutsu Sorcerer unanimously recognized her as the villain, and they all, without prior agreement, set down the tasks in their hands and turned instead to hunting for Mahiru.
The great machine of the jujutsu world began spinning at full speed.
After this, the space in which Mahiru could move freely would grow smaller and smaller.
But this was exactly what Mahiru wanted to see.
The entire jujutsu world was hunting for that mysterious blue existence?
Haha, then Mahiru could exploit that opening to do other things. For instance...
"Hello! I'm here to report in!" In an office, a tall blue-long-haired girl picked up the file in her hand and passed it over, her voice ringing out loud and clear. "Thank you, sir, for giving me this opportunity!"
Mahiru was seizing the chance to infiltrate Jujutsu High.
This step was part of the girl's plan.
Because she wanted, during the later Tengen incident, to invade Tengen's domain and kidnap Tengen.
She needed a sufficiently convenient and suitable identity to get involved in the events.
There were many options, and in the end Mahiru chose to join Jujutsu High as a student.
Every Jujutsu Sorcerer knew that the blue existence was mysterious, sacred, and extremely powerful.
And if, at this time, Mahiru disguised herself as a rookie student with a completely different technique type and a completely different impression, would the sorcerers connect Mahiru to that blue existence?
Absolutely not.
To infiltrate Jujutsu High, Mahiru made various preparations.
On one hand, Mahiru didn't choose the Tokyo Metropolitan Jujutsu High where Satoru Gojo was — she chose the Kyoto Metropolitan Jujutsu High in Kyoto, because the latter was easier to slip into.
On the other hand, she also relied on Kenjaku's help to fabricate a false identity for herself.
"Miwa Ran...?" Principal Gakuganji looked at the résumé. "A Grade 1 Sorcerer right at enrollment? Heh..."
That's right. This time Mahiru went straight to the Miwa household and borrowed the identity of "Miwa Kasumi's aunt who's been studying abroad for years."
She used a bit of Cursed Speech to slightly alter the memories of Miwa's family, then had Kenjaku forge her identity documents, so no one could spot anything off about her background.
At the same time, she also changed her body type.
Originally she had a little girl's build, but now, imitating Miwa, she transformed herself into the figure of a high-school girl — still with long blue hair, still youthful and radiant.
In the enrollment exam, she was directly ranked as a Grade 1 Sorcerer.
Turns out she was a genius beauty.
"Grade 1 right at enrollment? I don't buy it." Old man Gakuganji was secretly delighted inside, thinking that our Kyoto school had finally welcomed a genius. But outwardly he still kept a stern face. "Those idiots in the assessment department must have something wrong with their heads to rank you Grade 1. I'll assess you myself."
"Yes, sir! Principal!" Mahiru suddenly replied at an enormous volume, nearly giving the old man a heart attack. "Please assess me!"
"Can you please stop being so jumpy and loud?!"
"Ah... sorry, Principal," Mahiru stuck out her tongue. "I'm just so excited to be able to enroll."
The old man, exasperated, kept reading the résumé, then raised an eyebrow: "This technique of yours is called... [Re-Contract Manifestation]?"
"Yes!" Mahiru suddenly went ultra-loud again, nearly startling the file right out of the old man's hands. "That's right, [Re-Contract Manifestation]! A technique that can re-enact a [Contract]!"
Mahiru had earlier obtained Reji's cursed tool from Kenjaku. Because of that she'd learned Reji's technique, and disguised it as "Miwa Ran's" innate technique.
This technique really was quite fun.
When Gakuganji brought her to the training ground and had her shoot at a target, Mahiru simply pulled out a firearms invoice from who-knows-where, activated her [Re-Contract Manifestation] technique, and as the technique took effect, the flames of cursed energy burned the invoice away.
The girl tossed the invoice into the air and shouted loudly: "Come forth!"
And so, from the sky, a massive steel coil came crashing down in response. BOOM!! —— It smashed straight into the target, sinking two or three meters into the ground, sending a pillar of smoke and dust bursting into the air, leaving the old man utterly dumbstruck.
"What is this?!"
"It's a steel coil!"
Re-Contract Manifestation could use the technique to re-enact the contents of all sorts of contracts. An invoice, being a "purchase-of-goods contract," once re-enacted, could manifest the purchased item.
And depending on the choice, the manifested content also carried cursed energy, capable of harming Cursed Spirits.
Mahiru had capped her cursed energy output at the level of a Grade 1 Sorcerer, so what determined her combat ability now was the type, quantity, and quality of the invoices in her hands. So what invoices were most convenient for combat?
Perhaps it should be modern weapons and munitions, but in reality firearms weren't all that useful. And they weren't all that easy to obtain either.
"What on earth did you just conjure up?!" Gakuganji shouted.
"Reporting, Principal — this is the optimal combat method I discovered after a long period of real-combat research!" Mahiru stood at attention before Gakuganji. "I call it... the [Civil Engineering Technique]!"
Mahiru had gone straight to Kenjaku for help, sourcing all kinds of civil-engineering and infrastructure contracts and invoices. For wide-range AoE, she had contracts for blasting mountains, blowing up buildings, and demolishing tunnels.
For precision strikes, she had invoices for all sorts of steel coils and giant cement mixer trucks. What to do when you meet a Cursed Spirit?
Sorry — what's in front of you right now is a national highway.
Not only that, but Mahiru here had many, many different kinds of invoices, each capable of giving the enemy a different experience. She just couldn't be bothered to show them all to the old man.
It had to be said: with Reji's technique, there was nothing you couldn't do — only things you couldn't think of.
In the original work, Reji could only dig through supermarket trash cans for little junk receipts himself. But Mahiru was different.
Mama Kenjaku's amazing connections reached in every direction.
Just like Doraemon, whatever you wanted, you could find it.
Now Mahiru carried a little satchel, stuffed full of various combat invoices. While other sorcerers were still using traditional fighting methods, Mahiru had already achieved the modernization of jujutsu — she could even, mid-fight, apply a McDonald's spicy chicken thigh burger invoice to herself to satisfy a craving.
In short, it was just a lot of fun.
"Huh? Is that... the new transfer student?" Not far off, a girl in miko robes saw Mahiru and Gakuganji testing abilities on the training ground and curiously poked her head out. "...Wait a second, what is she summoning? Is that thing a shikigami? A truck shikigami??"
This was the young Utahime, a student of the Kyoto school.
"Ah, that's probably Miwa, the new student." Beside her stood another tall, big-sister-type girl — the young Mei Mei. "I've heard about her. A Grade 1 Sorcerer right at enrollment."
"She's that impressive?!" Utahime was astonished, then clenched her fist and let out an excited "YES!" "Now we've got a genius girl too! From now on, let's see how that Satoru Gojo keeps acting so smug!"
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