'I don't know who this guy is, but he's bad news...' Megumi thought, his stance lowering into a tight, battle-ready crouch as his eyes locked onto the stranger.
The man moved with an eerie, unnatural fluidness, stopping beside an abandoned sedan on the rain-slicked asphalt. Without a single word, he bent down, dug his bare fingers directly through the steel frame, and tore the vehicle off its axles. In a blur of motion Megumi barely registered, the man hurled the multi-ton car straight at him like a baseball.
Reacting instantly, Megumi crossed his forearms as crackling golden voltage erupted across his chest. Fusing with Nue's attribute, a pair of feathered shadow-wings unfolded behind him, and a concentrated arc of lightning blasted from his core. The sedan detonated mid-air, showering the street in melted glass and burning scrap metal.
Before the wreckage hit the asphalt, Megumi burst through the fire. With Nue's raw electrical acceleration behind his stride, he swept his hand forward to form a short blade of condensed lightning, slashing directly for the man's throat.
The stranger didn't even flinch. His reaction time was inhuman. Leaning back just enough for the lightning blade to singe the air, his hand shot out like a steel vise, seizing Megumi by the wrist and slamming him hard into the pavement.
The impact cratered the street, sending shockwaves through Megumi's spine. Ignoring the sharp pain, Megumi discharged a massive, wide-range lightning storm directly over both of them. Bright white electricity illuminated the alleyway as the stranger leaped backward to avoid the current. Megumi stood up unharmed inside the discharge, his Nue fusion granting him total electrical immunity as the arcs grounded harmlessly into his boots.
Slamming his palms together, Megumi re-formed his lightning blade and charged. The stranger met him head-on, ducking cleanly under Megumi's high horizontal slash. With terrifying speed, the man drove a heavy right hook directly into Megumi's ribs. The sheer kinetic force shattered the window of a nearby storefront, sending Megumi tumbling through glass display cases and deep into the building's interior.
Inside the dark store, Megumi pushed himself onto one knee, coughing up a spatter of red. 'His raw physical strength is off the charts... he isn't even using Cursed Energy.'
From the dust, Megumi raised his hands and unleashed a dense, pressurized beam of lightning through the broken window frame. Outside, the stranger casually grabbed a commercial delivery truck by its bumper, dragging it in front of himself to act as a shield. The lightning bolt tore straight through the engine block, erupting into a violent explosion that blasted the man backward down the main thoroughfare.
'That should hurt him enough to slow him down...' Megumi stepped over the empty window frame, his lightning blade crackling at his side as he walked back onto the street.
'Or not...' Megumi tilted his head instinctively as a kitchen knife, flung from deep within the smoke, cut through the air where his face had been a fraction of a second earlier. The blade embedded itself past the hilt into the concrete building behind him.
'How strong is this guy?' Megumi launched into the air with a sudden burst of shadow wings, soaring upward as more sharp debris rained through the smoke cloud like shrapnel.
Woosh!
The atmospheric pressure shifted violently behind him. Megumi turned mid-air, his eyes widening as he saw the stranger already hovering above him, his face twisted into a wild, thrill-seeking grin. The man delivered a brutal, downward axe-kick directly onto Megumi's chest, sending him rocketing straight back into the concrete below.
BANG!
The street shattered on impact. Rolling frantically through the dust, Megumi avoided a follow-up heel stomp that pulverized the pavement where his head had rested an instant before.
The Nue armor around Megumi began to flicker, melting back into pure shadow. Megumi wiped a smear of blood from his jaw, frowning. "Tch, already out of time..."
Swapping forms, a bone-white rabbit mask materialized over his face. Instantly, his speed multiplied as he split into dozens of identical shadow clones, scattering across the intersection.
The man's eyes widened slightly before a low chuckle escaped his throat. His leg muscles tensed, and he vanished entirely, moving so fast he created sonic booms as he tore through the swarm. Clones vanished into bursts of smoke as he punched and dodged his way directly toward the original Megumi standing near an overturned bus.
Reaching the real Megumi, the stranger wound up a heavy fist, driving it with full force straight into Megumi's face.
Yet there was no bone, no blood. The Megumi he struck dissolved into pure, viscous shadow, spraying across his arms.
The clone, along with every surrounding copy, collapsed into a wide, pitch-black shadow pool that wrapped around the stranger's boots like quicksand. Megumi, standing twenty feet off to the side, had opened his shadow storage and dropped a heavy semi-truck directly into his shadow realm, using its massive weight to create immense gravitational drag on the puddle holding the man down.
"I'll admit you're faster and possibly stronger than me, but I've picked up a few tricks recently for dealing with opponents out of my weight class," Megumi said, his steps weightless as he glided across the dark surface. "Like my shadow transference. I lent you my shadow so you can share my burden, so to speak. It doesn't last long, but... it's enough."
Leaping high above the skyline, Megumi swapped mid-air from Nue into his Max Elephant armor. Heavy, dense plates of hardened shadow enveloped his legs, multiplying his mass by several tons.
Dropping like a falling meteor, Megumi drove both knees straight down onto the stranger's head with a deafening crash that shook the surrounding city blocks.
The ground caved in completely. Dust and debris billowed outward, clearing slowly to reveal the man pinned in the crater. To Megumi's shock, he wasn't dead. His forehead was bleeding heavily, but he was merely unconscious, his chest still rising and falling steadily.
"What a freak. What is this guy made of?" Megumi muttered, letting his shadows fade and releasing the vehicles stored in his realm back onto the street.
"I'll admit, you caught me off guard."
The voice echoed directly behind Megumi's ear. Every nerve in Megumi's body went cold. He froze.
"I haven't been hurt like this since I fought that Gojo brat."
Turning around, Megumi found the stranger already inches away, his bloodied face grinning savagely. The man pulled his fist back and drove it deep into Megumi's stomach, pinning him directly into the ground.
"I'll take this seriously now!"
Before Megumi could even process the pain, the man picked him up by his collar and began a relentless, brutal assault. Heavy, precise blows rained down on Megumi's ribs, shoulders, and head, each punch landing like a sledgehammer before a sweeping kick sent Megumi skidding hundreds of feet down the avenue.
Megumi crashed through a storefront with a loud bang, but before he could catch his breath, the man was already waiting inside the dark shop. Grabbing Megumi by the face, he used him as a human battering ram, sprinting full speed through three adjacent brick walls.
Coughing up blood, Megumi desperately summoned his Max Elephant armor, channeling every drop of his remaining Cursed Energy into raw physical reinforcement just to keep his skeleton intact.
"Come on, kid! You were doing better than this a second ago!"
The man leaped into the air, caught Megumi by the ankle, and slammed him into the steel support beam of an overpass before tossing him skyward.
Mid-air, Megumi pointed his palms downward, firing a high-pressure torrent of water to push himself away. The stranger simply jumped straight up through the rushing current, ignoring the immense force, and brought both fists down in a heavy double-axe handle onto the top of Megumi's head.
Megumi plummeted, crashing through three separate floors of an abandoned office building before hitting the basement level.
"Dammit!" Megumi pushed himself up shakily, his vision swimming as his entire body burned with severe trauma.
He had landed heavy blows, that much was clear, but it hadn't even slowed the man down. Looking up through the ruined ceiling, Megumi noticed the deep bruises on the man's face were already fading.
'Okay then. I just need to regroup with the others so we can deal with him together.'
Shifting back into his Rabbit Escape form, Megumi produced a dozen clones that scattered in every direction through the rubble, while his true body sank quietly into the shadows beneath the concrete.
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"Where'd that kid go...?" Toji muttered, landing on a high-rise rooftop with his arms crossed in minor annoyance.
Spotting a figure running through an alley below, Toji grinned and blitzed toward his target. With a heavy thud, he slammed into the running figure at full speed, realizing instantly it was a decoy as the clone dissolved into harmless shadow upon impact.
Moving like a gale force, Toji darted across the district, smashing every clone he could locate, but the distinct physical presence of the real boy had vanished entirely from his sensory radar.
'Damn, did he slip away? Guess I'll head toward those absurd presences in the center of the barrier,' Toji thought, shrugging his shoulders as he set his sight on the massive energy signatures clashing in the distance.
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'He left?' Megumi thought, observing silently from the shadow cast by a nearby structural pillar.
'That saves me the trouble. He's heading straight toward Sukuna's presence, and Gojo-sensei is over there too. Oh well, that's his funeral. Time to regroup with Yuji and the team.'
Sinking completely into the shadow realm, Megumi deactivated his transformation and glided safely away toward the outer perimeter.
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