Naoya Zenin
Every breath he took in was like he was dragging raw glass across his windpipe, and every one he let out was like sandpaper, and yet his lungs continued to work, pumping in oxygen and letting out carbon dioxide.
Naoya was exhausted.
It was in his posture, his stance, the way he supported his upper body by resting his hands on his knees. The way his eyes blurred for a moment a side effect of his technique. One he was not even aware of, some level of vertigo.
He didn't blame himself, not completely at least. No Projection Sorcery user had ever been pushed this hard before, which, considering he and his father were the sum total of users, made sense that they had never seen its limit.
And the reason he had just discovered the limit of his own technique lay in the white behemoth that stood meters away from them. Unmoved, unscathed, and seemingly unaffected by physically moving as fast as his cursed technique.
It should've been impossible.
No body should be able to endure the stress of moving that fast without a technique to automatically buffer it. Even Naoya depended on his technique, and he was out of breath, and there the monster stood, steam slipping off its body.
The Divine General Mahoraga.
The shikigami was an unknown figure outside the clan, but a legend behind the walls of the Zenin. No single child had grown up without an idea of the shikigami known to have defeated a Gojo of the same caliber as Satoru Gojo.
He had played games as a child where he acted the role of the wielder of the inherited technique and ran rampant in the world with it. Every child born of the Zenin cultivated that fantasy, yet as they grew older, age showed them the truth. They were able to read behind the simple tales to the truth.
Mahoraga was no ordinary shikigami.
It was a weapon of destruction, a blade without a hilt that had killed its wielders without fail. So why, why, and why and why was this damned monster so different? What had Megumi Fushiguro done right that dozens of his pure-blooded ancestors had done wrong?
Staring at the behemoth of hulking muscle, pale flesh, inhuman features with wings for eyes, and that ever-present grin that reminded Naoya of a cat playing with a mouse, Naoya suddenly had an idea of why his father had called Megumi in for the reading, even discarding the fact that he had an amendment in the will.
His father had known this would happen and had expedited it by making the boy present, knowing they would challenge him.
This fight was a carefully orchestrated plan to solidify Megumi's role as the clan leader, and, judging by the dozens of cursed energy signatures he could feel scattered around, watching the fight from a distance, he knew his role here.
A stepping stone.
Was he going to allow that?
He stood upright, his breath easing the slightest bit.
No.
He was going to fight, and he was going to win.
With Jinichi, the odds of that had been slim. His eyes trailed the distance to where Jinichi's body remained. A broken body that spoke a single truth. Close combat against Mahoraga was a death sentence.
He turned to the shikigami. It stood in place, distinctly unbothered, and even without eyes, Naoya knew it was watching them, waiting for them to make the first move.
It irked him to be looked at with such weakness, but his pride had no place here. Not against the figure that had made the Zenin clan what it was today
Naoya's eyes turned to Ranta and Chojuro. With those two at his side, his odds of victory were higher compared to just Jinichi. All they had to do was play it right.
Ranta's technique had been able to immobilize even him if it managed to catch him, and Chojuro's technique was strong and malleable, versatile enough for crowd control and rigid enough for straight offense. Coupled with his speed...
He looked down at the straight short blade in his hand.
There was no time to feel ashamed of wielding a weapon.
He looked back at Mahoraga and spoke in a low tone to his partners.
"We are no match for it. Even if we fight together, we're only going to get one chance to surprise it. Chojuro, go for his legs. Sink the ground beneath his feet, or hold on to it. Ranta, you're the key in this fight. He's going to break out of Chojuro's grip, and that's when you hold him in place."
He rolled his neck to the side as he continued.
"Your technique should be enough to surprise him, and from there, I only need a second. I'll kill him with one well-placed strike to the head, empowered by both speed, momentum, and my cursed energy."
He turned to give them one final look.
"No shikigami can survive that, not even the Divine General." He hoped.
Ranta glanced at him and gave him a nod. The black-haired sorcerer was just a few years younger than him and deferred instantly.
The problem, Naoya realized, was going to be Chojuro.
The older, hunched man had a frown on his face as Naoya laid out his tactics. His eyes were thin slits, and his brows were furrowed.
There could be no disagreement if this plan was to work, and Naoya had the feeling the shikigami was getting bored and tired of waiting as it suddenly shifted, moving its weight from one foot to another.
"Spit it out, Chojuro."
"You plan like a simple child and not a sorcerer," Chojuro said in a raspy tone that reminded people of his age and experience as a sorcerer.
The older man continued, his attention drifting from Naoya to the Divine General and finally to the distance where the clashes could be heard from Ogi and Megumi's fight.
"Have you forgotten? The best way to beat a shikigami is to kill its summoner."
Those slits Chojuro called eyes cracked open, revealing murky black eyes like the depths of a swamp.
Then he said the words that stamped his fate.
"If we want to win, we kill the boy first."
Naoya knew that was the worst sentence that could have left his lips because all of a sudden, there was a change in the air.
The atmosphere turned heavy at once.
Every single breath took marginally more effort, and Naoya looked away from the older man, his cat-like eyes drifting to the towering behemoth of muscle, gristle, and cursed energy, who was suddenly still once more.
His eyes drifted up to its inhuman face, fear and worry filling him as a sudden realization hit him.
The Divine General was no longer smiling.
It had heard them.
Heard Chojuro.
Naoya activated his cursed technique immediately, and that was the only reason he witnessed the following moments.
The Divine General twitched into motion.
Muscle propelled him so fast that even in the depths of his technique, the shikigami was a blur of white and the dull gold of the wheel upon its head.
Then it hit the older man. It was not a blow, not a kick, the Shikigami simply slammed into Chojuro with such force that the older man simply exploded.
His body detonated like a withered bag of blood, bone, and flesh coming in contact with a trailer moving faster than the speed of sound.
Time resumed at its normal pace, and all that was left of the sorcerer known as Chojuro Zenin, all the accumulation of his over fifty years as a sorcerer, and all he had to show for it was a red stain that splattered the ground he had once stood on, the wall behind him, Ranta, who remained wide-eyed and confused, and the shikigami, who had half his body painted red.
Then the sound wave hit.
"Ranta!" Naoya called out.
The boy tried to move, but the accompanying sound wave that had been left behind after the shikigami moved slammed into him, and if he was fortunate, that's where it would've ended.
Ranta was a sorcerer, a special grade one sorcerer, and he was made of sterner stuff. The force would've lifted him off his feet and thrown him about, but he would've survived.
But the shikigami had other plans.
Its left hand snapped out, massive fingers opening like a blooming flower before clamping over Ranta's head, covering his eyes and rendering his technique useless.
It would've taken a second to crush it, and the moment Ranta died, that was the end.
All that planning, all that calculation, and everything ended the moment Chojuro opened his stupid mouth, and the shikigami decided to stop playing with its food. There was never any true chance from the beginning, but still he cursed Chojuro under his breath.
"Stop!" Naoya called out with his hands raised.
The shikigami obliged him.
It turned deceptively slow, like it had not broken the sound barrier a few seconds ago. It turned to look at him with its four-winged gaze, focused on him.
So he let out a confident smile that was wholly false.
"You win. We give up. Megumi Fushiguro, now Megumi Zenin, will be accepted as the 27th Clan Head of the Zenin Clan."
Naoya held his breath.
He was giving up because there was no other way to win. Not because he particularly cared for Ranta, but forfeiting now would give him breathing room.
If the shikigami went ahead and killed the other boy, he could simply leave. Run away.
The shikigami was somehow able to push its body to physically match his movement in combat, but Naoya doubted it could do that in a straight race.
The Divine General waited in place for a second before its palm opened and Ranta fell, coughing and spluttering as he landed on his ass, crawling backwards.
Naoya did not blame him. The past few seconds must've been a blur to him. This was why Naoya rarely fought alongside others.
The shikigami turned its attention away from them, then crouched, and Naoya braced because he knew what it was about to do.
It hurled itself upward a heartbeat later in a monumental jump that broke what was left of the ground, cleared the dust in the air, and sent it flying toward where Megumi still fought Ogi Zenin.
If they were lucky, Ogi would kill the boy before it got there. Naoya fell on his ass and shook his head.
He doubted they were lucky.
He put his hands on the ground to brace himself as he looked up at the blue sky, pale white clouds drifting lazily above him. The world moved on with zero care. He had lost the battle for the clan head, but it didn't matter.
It could've been worse. That bitch Maki Zenin could've been the clan head.
He laughed at the impossibility of it, ignoring the way the recovering Ranta looked at him like a madman.
__
Megumi Fushiguro
Megumi rolled his shoulders in anticipation as his eyes locked on Ogi Zenin.
The older man stood across from him in the ruined courtyard, posture lowered, weight shifted slightly off his left leg, where Mahoraga had driven the broken remains of his sword deep into his calf before abandoning him here. Blood had soaked the fabric of his hakama and stained the stone beneath him, but Ogi's expression had not changed.
If anything, he looked calmer. Those black eyes simply stared at Megumi in a way that told him the older man was the most dangerous person he had fought, bar Sukuna himself.
Between them, the courtyard of the Zenin estate looked like a battlefield already owing to Mahoraga, at least before he relocated his fight further away. Cracked stone, collapsed walls, splintered wood, and the remains of what had once been a walkway torn apart by cursed energy and brute force.
Megumi tightened his grip around the hilt of his short blade.
This needed to win this fight. He needed to prove to himself that he was strong, strong enough to enter the Culling Games, strong enough to save Tsumiki. The Shikigami had not said as much, but Megumi had inferred adequately. He could not depend on Mahoraga for everything. This was his chance to prove himself to the shikigami.
The first step to doing that and escaping the shackles of weakness and unused potential that tainted him was putting Ogi Zenin in the ground.
Ogi exhaled slowly.
"You've changed, child," he said, voice low and even. "You had softer eyes when you were younger."
Megumi frowned. Ogi Zenin had known about him as a child?
Ogi adjusted his stance, fingers tightening around what remained of his broken blade.
"You should have stayed soft. It would have made your death cleaner. Now you will struggle, and your fate will remain the same. Even injured, without your shikigami here, your death is certain."
Then he moved before Megumi could find a response.
Fast.
Despite the injury, Ogi exploded forward with the kind of speed that reminded Megumi the man was a special grade one sorcerer with the experience to match.
Steel flashed for his throat, and Megumi stepped sideways and raised his blade to deflect it, the impact ringing up his arm hard enough to numb his fingers. Ogi's follow-up came instantly, a knee aimed for his ribs.
Megumi allowed the attack to hit, pain flaring white-hot as he felt a rib crack, then dropped his elbow and pinned the limb with his left arm, twisted, and drove his own blade toward Ogi's throat.
Ogi leaned back just enough that he missed. Megumi swung again, making a shallow cut in the older man's shoulder, and he saw it in those black eyes of Ogi Zenin.
The older man was surprised.
Good.
Megumi had been training to react faster against Mahoraga himself and had not managed it once. In comparison, Ogi was nothing.
The older man twisted his leg and pulled back, pulling Megumi closer, too close for even Megumi's short blade, but not too close for him to work with his broken katana. Megumi immediately released the foot and tried to duck back, but the foot came down right on his own feet, pinning him in place as the blade swung for his throat a second time.
He dropped his short blade and made a hand sign.
Rabbit Escape burst into the courtyard in a flood of white fur and motion, the shikigami swarming from his shadow and exploding between them, pushing them apart and disrupting sightlines for half a second.
Megumi used that half-second perfectly.
Another hand sign, and Divine Dog lunged low from his feet, slipping into Ogi's blind spot, black fur and fangs cutting for the injured leg. Megumi felt an immense strain holding onto two, no, three shikigami at once.
Mahoraga still counted even without Subjugation. He let the rabbits sink back into his shadow, and the vice around his heart eased.
Ogi reacted more on instinct than knowledge.
His blade came down and caught the dog mid-lunge, but Divine Dog caught it with its teeth, and Megumi slipped into the gap in Ogi's defense.
His fist slammed into Ogi's jaw with enough force to snap the older man's head sideways, and before Ogi could recover, Megumi drove his knee into the wounded calf.
The older man grunted in pain and staggered, and Megumi followed immediately after with another kick to the knee. Divine Dog lashed out with a claw at Ogi's neck, and the old man took that as the greater threat. He blocked it only for a blow to the throat, courtesy of Megumi, to land, then an elbow to the forearm that almost disarmed him.
There was no hesitation, no doubt, no wasted movements. Mahoraga had beaten all of that out of him over the past few days.
However, Ogi did not just stand and watch. The older man ducked a blow in a shuffle of his feet, avoided a high kick by rolling back, and by the time Megumi closed the distance, Ogi twisted inside his guard before Divine Dog could attack, then slammed the hilt of his broken sword into Megumi's face hard enough to split his lips.
Megumi stumbled back with a raised guard, and then the world shook.
A thunderous boom split the air somewhere deeper in the estate. The earth beneath his feet shook like it was going to flip, and a crack spread out from further away, crisscrossed the distance, and found its way to them. The last time he witnessed this, Mahoraga was fighting against Sukuna.
Megumi's eyes flickered toward the distance where Mahoraga fought for one fatal second.
That mistake was more than enough for an experienced sorcerer to make use of.
Ogi's expression changed as he went into a stance he barely managed because of his injured leg, broken sword shifting into its scabbard.
Falling Blossom Emotion.
Megumi felt it just before he saw it, that subtle shift in cursed energy, the defensive stance, the circle of blue cursed energy he found himself inside. His eyes widened in terror as Ogi moved, drawing the broken blade in one furious movement. His cursed technique ignited alongside it, coming to life as fire across the blade.
Lengthening it.
The strike carved across Megumi's side before he could fully react, fire and steel and cursed energy ripping through flesh, cutting him from waist to head before Divine Dog pulled at him and twisted. The shikigami took the brunt of the remaining attack, and Megumi dispelled him before it could kill him.
Pain detonated through his body as his shikigami's throw sent him skidding across broken stone.
He hit the ground hard and rolled, blood already soaking through his uniform.
Ogi stalked forward.
"You have talent, which I can admit easily. Yet your age shows. Distraction," he said coldly, "is death. Perhaps that is something you would've learned if you had grown up here. Alas, you can only blame your father for the disadvantage of your birth and upbringing."
Megumi forced himself up, one hand pressed to his side.
Yeah.
He knew that. "Preharphs if he had been born into the Zenin clan, he would have had more drive. He would've been more like Satoru, like Maki, or even like Itadori. He would have been stronger, and yet... He would not have had Tsumiki, and for her alone, for the presence in his life... He thanked his father."
Ogi came to a stop, realizing he had not cut through Megumi completely. Instead, he shifted back into that dreadful stance.
This time, Megumi did not wait for him to finish. He wiped blood from his mouth and made the hand sign. He sent a mad grin at Ogi, the kind he rarely showed. Ogi had underestimated him; he still had enough cursed energy for one final attack.
"Ten Shadows: Max Elephant."
The shadow behind him ruptured as the red hide of the massive elephant emerged like a god being dragged from the ocean floor, its sheer size dwarfing Megumi, even if only half of it's body was revealed, the most important part had come out first. The elephant tusked head and it's trunk. Megumi laughed as Ogi's eyes widened.
His stance was not a flexible one. It was a stance built to counter and strike, not dodge, and Ogi knew he had lost, for how could a human cut the deluge of water Max Elephant sent shooting out of its trunk?
The water came like a crushing flood, shooting out with enough force to crack stone and break wood, and when it slammed into a human standing in the rigid posture that Falling Blossom Emotion required, Ogi planted himself and tried to hold.
It was a testament to his skill and strength that he lasted that long in the stance before being thrown back, crashing through a wayward tree and breaking through a building before coming out the other side as the pressure from the water reduced, leaving him a groaning and broken mess, and yet he still tried to stand up, pushing his battered body up only to come in contact with Megumi's foot as he crossed the distance with a pain-filled grimace from his injury.
His foot slammed into the side of Ogi's head before the older man could fully reset.
His hand lashed out and caught Ogi's wrist. He twisted hard, forcing the man to let go of his weapon or risk breaking the wrist. Ogi let go of the weapon, and Megumi kicked it away, then he hit him.
There was no skilled elegance, no intricate technique. Just violence like Mahoraga taught him. Violence and the ability to react quickly.
His fist crashed into Ogi's face.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Anger fueling him, igniting to life in his chest as cursed energy. He hated the man. He had not realized how much, but now that he met him, his sneering visage reminded him of some of the things Maki had let slip, some of the words he had spoken to his own daughter before she left.
Megumi bunched up his bloodstained fist and struck again.
Ogi tried to retaliate, cursed flames sparking to life off his fist, and Megumi hastily slipped backward, falling down into his own shadow, leaving Ogi's technique to tear through empty space.
There was a moment of confusion on Ogi's face as the older man stared at where he used to be before looking down at the shadow beneath his feet as it surged and came to life.
Out of the shadow came a trunk.
Max Elephant's trunk.
"Now."
Max Elephant obeyed.
The second blast of water hit the older man like a rocket.
Ogi didn't even have time to brace.
The torrent caught him full force and launched him through the wall of the nearest building, stone and wood exploding outward as his body vanished into the structure with a deafening crash.
There was silence as Megumi crawled out of his own shadow, and he remained there, lying flat for seconds before he pushed himself to his knees, where he stayed, chest rising hard, blood dripping from his fingers, his body wrung dry of cursed energy.
He knelt there, barely believing it as he realized he had won.
Then he heard clapping.
It was slow at first, coming from a single person.
Megumi turned his head laboriously and caught a glimpse of his supporter. Green-black hair, amber eyes, a capricious grin. He nearly mistook her for Maki till he saw the grin.
Mai Zenin.
Behind her, members of the Zenin clan stood watching from the broken walkways and ruined halls. Hei members. Kukuru Unit survivors. Servants. Elders too cowardly to step forward until the outcome was decided.
Mai stood with one brow raised, the faintest smirk on her face as she continued clapping.
"About time," Mai said.
Then more joined in. They were reluctant at first. Then louder, and louder, and louder till all that could be heard was a resounding applause as they looked at him in acceptance and recognition.
Submission.
Megumi stared at them, exhausted enough that the moment barely felt real. Then he felt it. A familiar, heavy pressure.
He looked up.
On the roof of one of the few buildings still standing, seated like some terrible shrine guardian overlooking the estate, Mahoraga watched him with that same mad grin stretched across its face.
Yet for the first time, Megumi did not think it looked threatening.
It looked... proud.
And from somewhere behind him, someone called out, the lawyer from earlier, his words ringing out across the broken estate.
"All hail the 27th leader of the Zenin Clan."
"All hail the 27th leader of the Zenin Clan," the Zenin clan echoed.