Yuji's face was grim, not because he felt a particularly large threat from Mahito, but because of all those people Mahito absorbed to do that.
It meant Mahito killed countless people, each defenseless and weak. He wished he were around to save those people so that maybe they all could have had good deaths instead of dying needlessly to a freak like Mahito.
"Speechless, are you?" Mahito raised an eyebrow.
"Don't worry, soon I'll kill you three and merge with your bodies to further perfect myself."
Mahito extended an arm towards Yuji, and in an instant, it burst forth like a cluster of limbs. Yuji's pupils shrunk as he crossed his arms in front of him, blocking as the impact slammed into him, launching him backwards.
Hurtling through the air, Yuji spun, pointing at Mahito as a dismantle was released, cutting off the arm. Mahito merely regrew it, the severed limb in the ground becoming a snake and slithering towards Mahito, fusing with him once more.
Ding!
Nobara used her hammer, hitting a nail towards Mahito's head as the curse ducked it before running at her.
However, halfway there, he jumped back as Nanami cut through the space he was once standing in with his cursed tool, shattering the ground.
Mahito turned the moment his feet touched the ground, forming his arms into dense shields to block a heavy straight punch from Yuji that sent him sliding across the ground, his feet carving trenches into the earth.
"Soul Manipulation: Severed Heaven!" Mahito muttered as two of his arms became barbed whips that rapidly sliced at everything in front of him, destroying all the structures it came into contact with.
Nanami stood in front of Nobara, parrying as many of the slashes as he could long enough for Yuji to use dismantles to cut through the attack and close the distance.
"Ha!" Yuji threw a punch that slammed into Mahito's face, blowing his cheek off, but the soft smile on Mahito's face never faltered as he used one of his lower arms to try placing a palm on Yuji's stomach.
Yet before the hand reached even halfway, a dismantle from Yuji removed the arm entirely as Yuji wound back his other fist, slamming another punch into Mahito's chest, sending the curse soaring.
In the air, Mahito healed, regrowing himself as he made one arm into a whip, grabbing onto a building and slingshotting himself back at Yuji in a drop kick that made a shockwave powerful enough to shatter every remaining window in the area.
"You're really amazing, Yuji-kun~" Mahito smiled, purposefully distorting his face as Yuji looked at him unfazed.
"Just shut up and die, you monster!" Yuji pulled Mahito by his ankle and slammed a fist into his head, driving Mahito into the ground with a boom, the impact launching debris into the air like a bomb going off.
"It won't be so easy!" Mahito, despite his legs still being visible on the ground in front of Yuji, had burst from the ground behind Yuji, having stretched his body under Yuji for a sneak attack.
All four arms became scythes that cut through the air where Yuji once was.
Yuji had ducked into a split before placing his hands on the ground and flipping, slamming both heels of his feet into Mahito's chin with another shockwave bursting out.
Crack!
Mahito felt his skull shatter from the force, yet he simply retracted his body and held his face, which was sagging off his neck, slowly reforming.
"How cruel, Yuji-kun~" Mahito, who was distracted, smiled just as a ratio appeared on his back.
Nanami, still working overtime, found the best opportunity to attack the distracted Mahito, landing a perfect hit on his ratio!
BLACK FLASH!
Mahito felt his back burst open as his spine was severed, yet in an instant, the bone fragments in the open wound turned into jagged spikes, nearly piercing Nanami's head.
With the combination of Overtime and Black Flash, Nanami, who was in the zone, used Ratio to destroy these spikes and make distance once again.
Ding!
A nail hit by Nobara stabbed into Mahito's arm as he turned to see her smug look.
"Soul Resonance." She snapped her finger, and instantly Mahito's arm on his soul and real body burst into paste, dealing true damage to the curse as he winced.
"Soul Manipulation: Grotesque Wave"
Mahito's chest burst open, dozens of grotesque arms flying out towards Nobara like homing missiles.
"Too fast!" Nobara thought as Yuji landed in front of her, and with the wave of both hands, a net of dismantles countered the attack with ease.
Blitzing forward, Yuji appeared in Mahito's guard like a ghost and unleashed a barrage of punches that shattered the bones in Mahito's body every time they landed, making Mahito vomit blood, his flesh sagging.
"D-Domain Expansion" Mahito spoke from his loose jaw, but Yuji's fist was already a millisecond from impact—no, it was...
"BLACK FLASH!" Yuji shouted, slamming his fist into Mahito's face, blowing all the flesh and half of Mahito's skull from his body as Mahito lay embedded in the wall.
It took ten seconds for the shockwave of the punch to manifest into reality as the deafening bang rang out like a thunderstorm.
Black sparks flared from Yuji's still extended fist every few seconds as he narrowed his eyes at Mahito.
Without a word, Yuji fired a net of dismantles at Mahito's supposed body, and immediately Mahito moved to dodge, forming an arm into a whip once more as he landed a second from death and swung, cutting through everything 59 meters in front of him.
Yuji caught the whip before it could reach Nobara and Nanami, ignoring the damage to his hand as Nanami took the chance to use his technique again.
The ratio formed on Mahito's leg, and with flawless execution once more, another Black Flash landed, severing the leg.
"You bugs are annoying!" Mahito grimaced.
His torso swelled before bursting into a torrent of black spikes in every direction like high-caliber sniper rounds.
Nanami and Nobara tried defending themselves, but unlike Yuji, who tanked the attack with minimal damage, bursting through and rushing Mahito, Nanami had his arm and leg injured, effectively taking him out of the battle. Nobara was pierced in the abdomen, taking her out too as she fell to a knee.
"Now it's me and—" Yuji punched Mahito, then using that momentum, he spun into a heavy kick that launched Mahito backwards, knocking the air out of his lungs.
"Gugh!"
"Nanami, Kugisaki, you two get out of here to recover. I'll handle things," Yuji spoke, yet never took his eyes off Mahito.
The bastard wasn't that strong, only tricky to put down for good.
"Then I'll leave everything to you, Itadori," Nanami said, putting Nobara on his shoulder, using cursed energy reinforcement to stand on his injured leg.
"Don't die, idiot!" Nobara shouted as Nanami ran off.
He didn't want to leave a battle like this to a student; it was irresponsible of him, and he wasn't Gojo. However, he could tell that Yuji was held back by their presence and it was doing them no good.
"Finally, now I don't need to conserve my energy. We can curse each other to death, and I get to watch your naive ideals crumble in person."
"You see, I've been watching you, Itadori, and your desire to save everyone since you arrived in Shibuya. I wish I had hostages here so I could watch you squirm trying to save them from me. I wonder how you'd have reacted if I got my hands on that Junpei boy you lot took in at Jujutsu High."
"Shut your yapping. Now that I can focus on the fight, I'll kick your ass worse than before." Yuji rolled his shoulder and ran at Mahito.
Mahito, understanding it was a real threat, let everything loose. His four arms all split into dozens of tendrils lined with hooks that sliced through everything in front of Mahito. Yuji swatted them away or cut them with cleave as he dodged and weaved through the attacks.
Bang! Yuji punched Mahito, sending him back a step as his head snapped to the side. Mahito quickly shifted his arms to normal, punching Yuji, who tanked it, the fist not making him budge as another punch from Yuji landed.
This time Mahito let the force carry him back as he crossed his arms, then spread them, launching more spines at Yuji. They were all shredded by dismantle midair as Mahito found his arms and legs ground to pulp.
Thanks to being a curse, his body reformed at the cost of cursed energy, and he formed wings, soaring into the sky. Once he was a dozen or two meters over Yuji, he shifted again, forming a giant hammer fist that slammed down on Yuji, who raised one arm, blocking it even as the force dug him into the asphalt, forming a crater.
Mahito reformed his four arms, leaving the heavy mass of flesh on top of Yuji. He stood, more annoyed than anything.
Mahito hated how this human looked down on him, just as Sukuna did. His technique was absolute; he controlled the soul after all. He was the future strongest!
Landing his mad four drill arms, he leaped at Yuji.
Yuji, for his part, used cleave to atomize the flesh mass and wound his fist back. If one looked closely, drool fell from Yuji's mouth; his mind was on nothing but the fight.
As Yuji's fist met the drills, another Black Flash burst forth, shattering Mahito's attack and blowing off his arms.
'What do I do? This brat is way too strong even without Sukuna, and worse, he won't let me get anything meaningful off. I need to find an opening to use my domain.'
As Mahito was thinking, he grew his arms back and took out some of the few spare compact humans he kept on hand, forming a massive mouth that instantly slammed shut on Yuji.
The teeth shattered against Yuji's cursed reinforcement, but it wasn't meant to harm him; the flesh burst into long fleshy ropes that twisted around Yuji's body, attempting to restrict him.
'NOW!'
"DOMAIN EXPANSION: SELF EMBODIMENT OF PERFECTION!"
Mahito laughed; this was his victory now! The barrier closed around him and Yuji in 0.2 seconds. He had spent so much time perfecting his domain, and it was easy. The domain was one's innate self, their soul in Mahito's eyes. Learning about his own soul was easier than breathing; the real challenge was trying to make his domain an open barrier, but he hadn't managed it just yet.
"This should be enough..." Mahito closed his eyes; Yuji was at his mercy for certain.
That's when Mahito felt an ominous sensation, one that felt eerily like... DEATH!
Opening his eyes, he saw Yuji in a sword stance, a blue circle surrounding his body canceling the effects of his sure-hit effect, and beyond that, a massive buildup of cursed energy filled Yuji's body.
"Dismantle!" Yuji fired the attack as his simple domain was crumbling slowly.
Before Mahito could blink, it all faded to black for him.
In the real world, Yuji stood as his massive net of dismantles annihilated everything 300 meters in that direction. It took most of his cursed energy, but Mahito's body had been shredded on an atomic level—or at least so finely he couldn't regenerate from his soul any longer.
The shattered fragments of Mahito's domain fell, scattering like black ash.
"You can't hurt anyone else, bastard..." Yuji stood, breathing a bit hard at the energy expense before shaking his head and slapping his cheeks.
"I gotta go check in on Megumi's group now; they should be on the other side of Shibuya."
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