I could feel a noose tighten around my neck as an imaginary clock slowly ticked down.
"W-what is going through that head of yours?" Megumi wondered aloud, his hand reaching out to touch me, but my reply was silence. I was not even sure I could speak, and I didn't feel the sudden urge to do so. Instead, I was left doing something more important.
Thinking.
My summoning was a ritual. A ritual that was supposed to bind me to Megumi's will if he somehow managed to beat me. Simply losing to the teenage boy and letting him take complete control of me was out of the books, as was killing him. Megumi's death here would be the first step to bringing an end to the ritual an act that would force me back into the Ten Shadows Technique.
Which was not in the books for me, so this brought for the question, does the ritual need to end in the first place? As long as the ritual continued, I was going to remain myself in all the ways that mattered.
My knowledge, my experience, my thoughts, and ideas powered and fueled by Mahoraga's body and technique. The divine general had been a special-grade threat even as a simple, mindless shikigami with only a single-minded thought for destruction, and he had been a unique kind of enemy, the kind that you were forced to kill in a single move or not at all. I was not that simple, Mahoraga, so what could I do with this new body of mine, without any external will to shackle me? My lips twitched.
If I had another chance at life, I would've loved to live a more interesting one.
That was my last wish before I was pulled from empty oblivion and given form, a body that could feel pressure, and now... Now I'd been given another chance at life, a chance to fulfill my wish. An interesting life. My lips widened as I let out a massive grin that revealed teeth. Megumi took an instinctive step back in response, drawing my attention back to him.
The fulcrum of my existence.
There were two major things in the way of my continued state of being. The first were the numerous injuries that littered his form, especially the big hole in his stomach, Toji's parting gift to his son. The longer he stood there without activating the suspended animation technique, the more likely he was going to bleed out. The second was the more worrisome threat. Sukuna.
I could feel him coming. My presence was a challenge he had sought right from the moment he was incarnated, and Megumi had almost summoned me months ago.
The wings that served as my sensory organs flickered like a tongue tasting the air. I don't know how the original Mahoraga had missed it. My only assumption was that it was because of the single mindedness of the shikigami, as it sought to finish the ritual that kept it tethered to the mortal world. But I could feel him race his way here.
Sukuna was the second problem because he would come here seeking a fight, one that I could feel at the depths of existence. My body ached for combat, my form was one built for brutality and chaos, a malleable body that got stronger, faster, bigger the longer it fought against an enemy as it adapted, and yet even with all that, Mahoraga had lost owing to his sheer single mindedness.
I was not that Mahoraga.
So while Sukuna was the greatest threat, Megumi dying on me was the most important factor to my well-being, which meant I had to rectify that first. My entire musing and thought process had barely taken a second, and Megumi's second foot touched the ground as he was still in the process of backpedaling from my grin, but the weight of his injuries meant weakness, and at once he stumbled. Before he could fall, my pale hand snapped up and caught him by the shoulder, stabilizing him.
"W-what?" the black haired boy stammered in continued surprise, and my grin widened in response. Somehow, he understood what was about to happen, I could see his features contort into horror. A heartbeat later I had him beneath my armpit, his limbs flailing about as he struggled to escape my grip, but if he had the strength for that in the first place then he would not have summoned me to fight a sorcerer that was barely first grade.
I had not forgotten about Haruta.
I gave the blonde haired confused boy? man? a look, which was enough to force him to fall on his ass. I could kill him. I found that whatever moral compass that would've previously made that observation or thought a horrible one had been discarded in the void where I had lost memories. So I contemplated the thought of killing him. It would be quick, not the drawn out thing the original Mahoraga had done, but it would still take a second, a second wasted on someone whose continued existence meant that I lived even longer.
It was a wasted second Sukuna could use to catch up to me.
I turned away and I crouched. The muscles in my calves and thighs compressed, the increased weight and power forced the ground beneath me to crack, and I held myself tight like a spring compressed to the tightest limit. My sensory organs flapped in the wind, perceiving near everything around me, including the wind flow, the sound of Haruta's heart pounding in his chest, the splatter of blood against the earth, the movement of a figure as he increasingly tore his way through every obstacle in a straight line for me, cursed warbling of transfigured humans, till I finally heard what I was looking for.
Human voices.
My grin widened and with a single effort of will, I released the tension, and my body exploded into motion as I jumped. The ground beneath me exploded as I hurled myself up and away, leaving nothing but a crater and a sonic boom behind me, one that flung Haruta away, knocking him unconscious as he slammed his head into a building.
__
Megumi
Megumi had read more than a dozen accounts on the most powerful shikigami in his arsenal, all of them second hand, and yet one thing all his ancestors before him had forgotten to note was its speed.
One moment, Megumi had been stumbling backward, blood leaking from too many wounds to count, watching his supposedly mindless shikigami grin at him like it understood some private joke. The next, he was tucked beneath an armpit that smelled faintly of... he couldn't place it, not while his limbs were flailing uselessly as Mahoraga crouched.
He didn't even have time to scream before the world exploded.
If he didn't die, it was a near thing. Perhaps this was how Mahoraga preferred to kill the sorcerers stupid enough to summon him while bleeding out from near a dozen injuries. The sonic boom hit him like a physical thing, rattling his already abused bones as they rocketed upward. Wind tore at his face, his scattered hair whipping back as buildings blurred past in streaks of concrete and shattered glass. His stomach dropped somewhere around the third skyscraper, and he would've vomited if his body had anything left to give.
What the hell is happening?
That was the single question that had been ringing in his head ever since he had summoned the shikigami. Mahoraga shouldn't, couldn't, act like this. The ritual was absolute and simple in its complexity. Summon the shikigami and it kills everything in sight starting with the summoner, rinse and repeat until someone finally tames it or everyone dies. It was simple, a brutal technique, and an effective deterrent. It was a WMD he always carried in his back pocket just as his ancestors before him had. A suicide technique that however ensured that the enemy stupid enough to force the user to activate it would die alongside him.
Except Mahoraga had not killed him. The shikigami had even gone as far as to prop him up after he stumbled.
If the jump had been bad, the landing was somehow worse. Megumi's teeth clacked together hard enough to draw blood and crack enamel as Mahoraga touched down in the middle of what looked like a warzone. Shibuya was a smoking mess, and where they had landed was a perfect representation of it.
Shattered storefronts, scorched pavement, and blood.
There were the transfigured humans, too. At least a dozen of them, their bodies warped into grotesque mockeries of the human form. They surrounded a group of exhausted sorcerers who looked like they'd been fighting for hours.
Megumi barely had time to register the scene before Mahoraga dropped him.
He hit the ground hard, belly first, and flopped like a fish as pain, flaring white hot, tore through his ribs, and he gasped for air that wouldn't come. Through blurred vision, he watched the shikigami step forward, its feet cracking the ground with every step, and from somewhere in the back of his scrambled brain, he understood what was about to happen.
The shikigami made a flick with its wrist and a blade extended from the wraps around its right wrist with a disconcerting sound.
One transfigured human was in the process of turning around when Mahoraga finally decided to act.
What followed wasn't a fight inasmuch as it was a slaughter.
The first transfigured human didn't even see it coming. One moment, it was turning around, elongated head making a chittering noise as it sensed the intrusion. The next, it was falling in two halves, red blood spraying in an arc that painted the cracked pavement and the side of the building. Mahoraga appeared beside it, and looked down on the creature in something that approached curiosity. Megumi could not tell; their bond was a strange thing.
The shikigami watched the dead body for a single second, which was enough to finally clue the rest of the transfigured humans as to the monster in their midst, but before they could turn to face him, whatever curiosity the shikigami had was sated and he was already moving again, its massive frame blurring with speed that shouldn't be possible for something so large.
Another transfigured human died before it could so much as blink. Then another. The blade sang through the air, lashing out with a precise and brutal blow that severed the head of a transfigured human with surgical efficiency, then Mahoraga slammed his feet into the headless body, sending it flying into another transfigured human. The two bodies slammed into each other hard enough to outright explode into gore as blood was sent flying once more.
Before the rest of the transfigured humans could react, Mahoraga moved once more, like a shark in bloodstained waters.
Four seconds. That's all it took.
Four seconds, and what had looked like two dozen transfigured humans were reduced to twitching parts on the ground, their red human blood pooling beneath Mahoraga's feet as the shikigami finally came to a stop. Megumi spotted dozens of thin lines on Mahoraga's form. The transfigured humans had managed to land some blows? How? Mahoraga had ragdolled them. The only reason the shikigami would've been hit was if he wanted to be hit and somehow took on their flailing nonsensecal blow, which didn't make sense... Did it?
The wheel above Mahoraga's head turned and spun once before stopping in place with a dreadful click.
The injuries closed up a second later, and in a blur of motion, Mahoraga disappeared. A heartbeat later, Megumi felt a pressure behind him.
Megumi craned his neck to look up at him. The shikigami's pale skin was drenched now, viscera dripping from the blade at his wrist, and blood slipping off its form, then there was the grin.
Megumi felt his skin crawl, but he turned away. If the shikigami had not killed him yet, it wasn't suddenly going to kill him now. Instead, he turned to the rescued sorcerers.
The two women and one man stood frozen, faces pale, cursed energy flickering weakly around them like dying flames. Megumi recognized the look. It was the same look he had on his face the first time he had watched Gojo Satoru fight.
One of them, a woman with brown hair and burns on her arms, took a stumbling step backward. "What, what is that?"
Megumi opened his mouth to answer and coughed up blood instead. It splattered across the pavement in dark drops, and his vision swam and he staggered once more, but before he could face plant, a palm caught him across the shoulder and propped him up.
A sound rumbled from Mahoraga's chest. A low guttural growl that vibrated through the ground and set Megumi's teeth on edge.
The shikigami moved, and for one horrible moment Megumi thought his weakness had finally annoyed the shikigami. This was it, the ritual reasserting itself, Mahoraga finally doing what it was supposed to do. But instead of a blade, he got a finger. Massive and pale, pointing down at him with clear intent before jabbing toward the sorcerers.
Megumi did not need a class in sign language to understand what the shikigami was pointing at. His injuries. Mahoraga was looking for help for him.
Help him now, the gesture said. Unless.
"He's," Megumi wheezed, tasting copper. "He's trying to, communicate."
The woman's eyes went impossibly wide. "That thing is a shikigami?"
He didn't have the time for this. They were shell shocked, and he doubted the three semi-grade one sorcerers had mastery of the reverse cursed technique. "Where," Megumi coughed again in another attempt at speech, his lungs burning. "Where's Ieiri-sensei?"
He had delivered Ino to the healer a few minutes ago, but considering their original tactics had to do with the healer not staying in one place, to disrupt the enemy and ensure she was safe, the best way to find her new location was by asking around.
"Ieiri-sensei?" A man this time, younger, with a bandage wrapped around his head and one arm hanging useless at his side while his second held a katana replied to him. "She's, she's at the fallback point. The old elementary school, about six blocks east." He pointed with his good arm wielding the sword, the gesture was trembling. Megumi was not the only person dying. "But it's... there's transfigured humans between here and..."
Megumi didn't hear the rest because he could feel Mahoraga's intent once more. The blasted shikigami was moving again, and this time he grabbed two people. Megumi found himself tucked under one arm like a particularly bloody sack of rice, while the bandaged sorcerer got scooped up under the other with a yelp of surprise.
"Wait, what, I can't..."
"Don't," Megumi managed, his voice barely a whisper. He doubted the man could dissuade Mahoraga and while the shikigami had seen fit to rescue him, Megumi had a feeling Mahoraga didn't care much for anybody else. "Don't worry... Much. Just, just guide us."
The man's face had gone the color of old paper, but he nodded jerkily and raised his good arm again, pointing into the distance where smoke still rose from burning buildings.
Mahoraga's head tilted, those four wing appendages where his eyes should be fluttering in the breeze, the tail protruding from his skull swaying like a flower in the wind. His sensory organs, Megumi realized even in the depths of his pain. The shikigami was tasting the air. Reading the environment.
Then the shikigami went still.
Completely, utterly motionless. Even that ever present grin seemed frozen on his face. The only movement came from the wings and tail, twitching and flickering like antennae picking up a signal.
Something pooled in Megumi's stomach. Fear. Some part of him wondered how many things could make Mahoraga worry?
"Mahoraga?" His voice came out smaller than he intended.
The shikigami's head swiveled, not toward where the sorcerer had pointed, but south. Toward Shibuya Station. Toward where the fight that had lit up the whole of Shibuya had happened. Where Itadori Yuji was last spotted alive, and finally, where previously there had been an explosion of cursed energy, so malevolent it could only be one person.
Sukuna.
A sound escaped Mahoraga's throat. Not quite a growl, not quite a grunt, but something that Megumi's battered brain interpreted as annoyance. Like a man being interrupted during an important task by an unwelcome phone call.
The muscles in those massive legs compressed again, that same coiling tension from before, and Megumi barely had time to think before they were airborne once more.
The sonic boom was louder this time. Buildings cracked. Windows shattered. The bandaged sorcerer screamed something that got lost in the wind, but Megumi barely heard it because his mind was racing, thoughts tumbling over each other in desperate succession.
Why?
Why heal him? Why save those sorcerers? Why run from Sukuna instead of charging in like every account of Mahoraga said he should?
He only had a vague answer to the last one. If Mahoraga fought Sukuna, with him present, then Megumi was certain he was not going to survive it, yet that thought process contradicted everything he knew about Mahoraga. Everything the clan had recorded.
The shikigami was supposed to be mindless. A force of nature bound by ritual and instinct. But mindless things didn't grin. Didn't calculate. Didn't show annoyance. Didn't communicate clear requests.
Blood leaked from Megumi's mouth, and as they hurtled through the air above a burning Shibuya, tucked under the arm of an impossible shikigami that refused to follow any of the rules, one thought crystallized with absolute clarity in his head.
"Something is wrong with Mahoraga." Then, a quieter voice whispered, a voice that sounded suspiciously like his optimistic sister Tsumiki. "Or perhaps something is finally right for once."