I slid into what felt like a fighting stance—right hand by my chin, left pushed forward slightly. My right leg took a half step back, the heel of my left lifting off the ground. A bastardized Muay Thai form that instilled way too much confidence, especially after landing that punch on Mahito.
The curse seemed to grasp what I was doing. Its left eye, bulging and bloodshot, started to water and drip tears. Its "hand"—closer to a claw, really—stretched toward me slowly.
"Mnnnegg… GRAAAA!"
The moan became a roar as the claw rushed at me. The transfigured human exploded forward in a burst of acceleration that shouldn't be possible for its size.
My eyes widened. I jumped back with everything I had—a meter, maybe two at most.
The bright, multicolored claw slammed into the concrete where I'd been standing a millisecond ago, collapsing the balcony floor under the force. My leap gave me just enough distance to avoid dropping through. The thing had overcommitted in its first charge and fell face-first into the hole it just opened.
I paused for half a second, tilting my head at how stupid the transfigured human was. "Okay, so either-" I stopped dead, throwing my head to the side where I'd seen movement out of the corner of my eye.
The swarm of curses and transfigured humans had fully initiated their assault, running or hobbling in my direction. And while yes, this was terrifying,
What was more concerning was the big one.
Ten meters tall, titan-looking, with the entire left side of its head indented and pressed inward, almost appearing inside out. Its right arm was the size of its whole body, holding another transfigured human like a baseball, winding up like he was going to throw-
'FUCK,' I thought as I launched myself to the other side of the hole the previous transfigured human had made. The projectile came careening at where I was just standing, obliterating the glass on the front of my neighbor's apartment.
'Can this get any worse?!' I thought with genuine spite at my situation as I stumbled to my feet, resuming my desperate dash out of the complex. My hair flowed in the wind behind me at the speed of my sprint, and it was because of this that I felt something rush past my head. Fast.
But no crash accompanied it. No sound other than the moans and screams of the curses below and my own ragged breathing.
'Nope, fuck that,' I thought as I pushed my legs faster than I thought possible, and-
tuk tuk
It was beside me. If that clicking sound was to be believed, at least. My head swiveled to my right, and time seemed to slow. In front of my eyes was what could only be considered a crude cross between Gandhi and an ant. It had a wire-thin humanoid form, but it was stretched—really stretched. It had mandibles on the side of its stretched exuberant smile and an exoskeleton surrounding its head, save for the upper right portion, which was a human scalp with brow hair that fell over the top of its huge, ant-like right eye. It was the color of dull crimson, which contrasted sharply with the bright white human teeth in its mouth.
The sight horrified me, but as I saw its right hand—only four bony fingers—swing toward my body, I braced my side with my right arm and braced my right arm with my left. Its hand accelerated at me and, as if on pure instinct, my entire right side went alight with cold, translucent silver and black fire.
The impact rang true as I was launched away from the punch.
'Huh, weird,' I thought in a kind of shocked calm as I went sailing toward the previously mentioned titan-looking curse. 'That kinda hurt, but not much. I think I just used reinfor—'
My thoughts were abruptly halted by my body colliding with the left side of the curse. The crash proved devastating for us both—I impacted its left shoulder and went right through it. Its relatively tiny left arm detached from its body with a ripping squelch. I, however, did not come out of this impromptu shoulder bump unscathed as a searing pain erupted in my left shoulder, and I felt a popping sensation.
I flipped mid-air, bounced off the concrete, then slammed back-first upside down into the side of a car, denting it inward.
'Oww, now that, that reaaaaally hurt,' I thought dully as my whole body ached and my arm felt like it was about to fall off. Resting for a moment, I stared upside down at the lopsided titan-thing as its huge muscular right arm clutched at its missing tiny arm.
'Geeze, how lonely can a curse get?' I was broken from my thoughts about its right arm by its howl of agony that sounded closer to a dog whistle than a beast's roar. I winced as the sound washed over me and cracked the only remaining glass of the side-view mirror.
"Okay, time to run," I said softly to myself as I peeled myself off the car into an awkward roll. My body protested, and the roll landed me on my back instead of on my feet like I wanted. I stared at the night sky above. There weren't any stars—too much light pollution in the city—, but it felt awfully sardonic.
I wish I could just lie down here.
My whole body ached, and I was gonna have to outrun all of those curses, and god damned Mahito of all people.
I think it might be better to just lie here and die; no one would know, or care, for that matter, because the guy who was in this body before me is dead. I wasn't fighting for control; there was no other presence inside me, so that guy was gone.
'I erased him,' I thought, the weight of it sitting heavy in my chest. 'He had to die for me to be here.'
Ehh, doesn't matter much to me.
Dog-eat-dog world and all that, so it sucks to be that guy, but that's not really my problem.
'Not like I could do anything about it anyway, so no point agonizing over it,' I thought to myself, basking in the feeling of letting go.
But somewhere deep, deep down, a feeling emerged.
'I don't know my name, do I?'
It was a weird thought, but it's just now striking me that I didn't.
I was going to die here, alone.
Without even a name for myself.
No mark on the world, not remembered by a single thing.
I hated how that felt.
An all-consuming anger washed over my being.
Anger at these curses and transfigured humans for doing this to me.
Anger at Mahito for awakening me in the middle of this shit storm.
Anger at the world for not giving me enough time to even learn my name.
An unyielding tremor in the very core of my being took hold as pebbles beside me started to rattle.
The ring in my eyes started to quake, and my golden yellow eyes shone as the translucent flame from earlier flickered on and off again on my whole body.
'I get it now,' I grinned and started to get up. 'That wasn't reinforcement.'
My left arm dangled uselessly from my shoulder, but I could hardly feel it. I felt a high unlike anything I could imagine as cursed energy started to flow properly inside me, like water finally finding the right channels.
'My cursed energy just wasn't flowing.' My grin became positively Cheshire as I clambered to my feet just in time to notice the big guy start charging at me with loud thundering footsteps.
'But now—' I stopped relishing in the feeling of it flowing for the first time without restraint.
It was the highest I can recall being, which didn't mean much, but I was on cloud 9.
I gave up any idea of a fighting stance and just embraced what my body wanted to do.
The titan-curse came barreling at me with its remaining arm before roaring once more, shattering the glass around us and making my ears ring, and swinging its titanic, muscular arm at me with all its might.
My right arm lashed out like a whip and swung right at the curse's outstretched fist.
The moment before contact, I felt it—cursed energy concentrating at the point of impact, denser than anything I'd ever felt before. Too dense. The air itself seemed to strain under the pressure.
My fist made contact with his, or it would have had the space between them not cracked into a blinding white light.
The world before me was unmade.
A torrent of pure unrelenting force erupted from the fissure and obliterated the titan curse, turning it into a mist of purple blood and ichor.
The ant curse from earlier that was dashing toward me, which I hadn't noticed, was similarly hit with the tremor before imploding away from me in a spray of purple guts and blood.
The gale-force winds and the wave of force that emanated leveled the parking lot in front of the complex, throwing cars into the main building before they exploded. It was ultimately pointless, as when the tremor impacted the building, it completely blew off the front two-thirds of it.
...Minimal collateral damage.
"..."
"..."
I stared dumbfounded at the damage I had done with one punch. Sure, it was a small complex, and probably nowhere near what Sukuna could do with a wave of his hands, but from what little I remember, this was way more than I could do in my old world. But this whole thing did leave me with a question.
"Where am I gonna live?"
Mahito POV
'How interesting,' I thought to myself with a grin as I changed my form to slip through and out of the rubble trapping me.
'That boy...' I thought as my grin dropped.
'Two souls, and what cursed energy—he hit me pretty far away, and I can still feel him like he's standing right next to me.' I paused to gather my thoughts a bit more as I put my hand under my chin to do what the humans called a "thinking pose."
'Also, his cursed energy is weird. It's almost like it's shaking?' I thought again, a frown etching itself onto my face. 'It's making him hard to track in this huge cloud of cursed energy. I can't pinpoint his exact location at all.' I felt myself frown harder, thinking about how much harder it would be to track him.
Before it was replaced by a wide demonic smile bathed in malevolence.
"How very interesting, show me more, quake boy!" I threw my arms wide and screamed my declaration out to the sky. "LET'S CURSE EACH OTHER, OKAY?!"
"Mahito."
I was broken from my monologue by a soft, almost kind voice. I lowered my arms and tossed my head over my right shoulder. There was Kenjaku, standing in that monk robe with that same kind understanding smile, which contrasted greatly with the stitching in his forehead.
"What happened?" He asked with false concern.
I smiled again, thinking about the grey-haired boy. "Oh, I just found someone very, very interesting," I said, turning my body to face him more.
"Is that whose cursed energy I'm feeling?" He asked again, this time all forms of kindness were gone, and instead a stone-cold demeanor fell over him.
'Geeze, why so serious?' I thought, being more put off by the change than scared.
"Yeah," I answered lamely, quickly losing interest before I had a thought. "Say, was one of the people you put a sorcerer into a small black-haired Japanese boy that smelled bad?" I said, thinking back to the boy's dual souls and Kenjaku's plan to "reestablish the golden age of sorcery."
'God, what a BORE,' I thought. 'Thank god he didn't tell me half the plan—I could not have sat through that "planning phase" any longer.'
He paused, clearly taken aback by the question, before considering for a moment. "You'll have to be more specific," he noted with a tilt of his head and finger on his chin.
I rolled my eyes. "Did you put a sorcerer in anyone from Shibuya?" I clarified.
"No," he answered immediately and sternly.
"Oh," now that certainly killed my theory.
"Why do you ask?" He asked in turn, clearly displeased by my lack of sharing.
"No reason," I responded, pausing briefly. "It's just the boy who is releasing this energy had two souls in him. So I slammed them together, and that is the result," I said, pointing in the direction I came flying from.
He stopped again. Before closing his eyes and sighing.
"Don't chase him down, focus on the plan. Keep transfiguring humans and causing panic. The barrier has been in place for about half an hour, so we should have another half hour before Gojo shows up, so turn everyone you can, then store them." He opened his eyes, and the calm facade was back.
"This new variable changes nothing; follow the plan."
Kenjaku POV
'Well, this is unexpected,' I thought, walking away from the patchwork curse.
'I didn't put that other soul there sooooo...' I stopped walking for a second. 'Who did?'
The thought should be troubling, but...
This was the kind of thing that I made the Culling Games for. A new age of sorcery and this... anomaly, whatever he was—he was new. And exciting.
My mask of a kind grin faltered as a genuinely manic smile broke my face in two.
"The modern era is just too exciting."
.
.
.
Authors Note
Woah that was a very long process. I made this chapter draft and edited it all in a single day, and I'm about to start working on chapter 3 so that I can pile up chapters in advance.
I tried to get Mahito and Kenjaku in character as much as possible, but yeah, overall, let me know what you thought and what I can do to improve in the future. I adore constructive criticism, and I think it's the best way to improve, so as long as it's constructive, I will try to take it to heart and improve on that.
Have a wonderful day, thank you for reading.