What doesn't kill you (Mahoraga SI) 22

I looked down at the still corpse of my summoner. In the gloom created by the darkness of the day, the heavy clouds that rolled above us, and the heat and smoke created by the cackling of the still burning vehicle.

Maki had his head on her lap, and she stared up at me in confusion. Her usually apathetic eye was as wide as a saucer, lips partly open in shock, uncomprehending and incapable of understanding how I remained present, after all my summoner was dead.

Megumi almost looked peaceful, lying there on her lap, if not for the copious amount of blood pouring from his eyes, nose, ears, and mouth. Poison, a coward’s weapon, some would say. I was not some; I did not care about the method my enemies used; a weapon was a weapon. My wings twitched, the only thing moving other than my still body.

I could almost see the cogs working in Maki’s brain as she tried to explain away my presence, and when she couldn’t she began to find a way to clarify how I was still present. I could tell the moment she got close. Her eyes snapped away from me and returned to Megumi.

“H- He’s not dead?”

She was wrong, and also right. Megumi was dead. At least he would’ve been if I had not created a contingency. A contingency named Haruta Shigemo. I had spared the annoying cursed user for this exact reason. As a participant drawn into Mahoraga’s summoning, his continued survival meant that whenever Megumi was killed or hurt badly enough to die, he was sent into suspended animation.

I had given Megumi a sort of pseudo-immortality.

One that nobody had known about. Megumi had been assassinated. The culprit was so obvious it was nearly physically painful, the same as their plan. This was why nobody stood against the higher-ups, other than Gojo Satoru, of course, because at the end of the day, sorcerers were human. They needed to sleep, to breathe, to drink, to eat. There were fundamental weaknesses that, no matter your power, were unavoidable, with the exception of hax.

Limitless and the Six Eyes granted Satoru a level of protection that the elders just could not counter, not after he destroyed the last threads of Miguel’s black ropes, and the Inverted Spear of Heaven.

The same could not be said for Megumi. I was powerful, with Gojo Satoru sealed, and Sukuna suppressed, I was the strongest creature walking these lands, with no competition. So they had done the smart thing; they had gone for my summoner using poison.

I had not expected them to be this stupid, but in hindsight was it stupid? Reckless for certain, but not stupid. If not for my contingency, Megumi would be dead now. Unfortunately for them, he wasn’t. This demanded a response, an overwhelming one.

I had thought them cowed, but once again I was reminded of the saying: a cornered animal would bite back... There was some irony in the quote, because an animal weak enough to be cornered would not survive the retaliation such a bite would invoke.

But first things first.

I shifted to a knee beside Maki and took Megumi from her hands. He didn’t have a pulse; there was no heartbeat to be heard or felt, but I saw more than the physical and biological now. My wings twitched, and I focused my vision on what lay underneath, and there it was, the sole proof of Megumi’s state.

His soul lay curled within itself, stopped from slipping out of its poisoned vessel by the ritual that brought me to existence.

I didn’t have the time to waste.

I stood up and turned. I never actually considered what would happen after... In canon, Megumi had almost died; Sukuna had appeared in time to partially heal him, but that was it. He did not do the full, complete revival job. I knew someone who could. I would be visiting Shoko Ieiri for the second time. A hand gripped the hem of my hakama. I looked down at Maki.

“Take me with you.”

__

Nanami

“Alright, try stretches.”

Nanami followed Shoko’s orders to a T. He moved from the bed to the mat they had placed in the center of the room and began to go through the motions. His movements had a stiffness to them that they lacked a few months ago, but that he was able to make the movements alone was a far cry from his state two weeks ago. He came to a stop after going through the motions, only slightly out of breath.

Shoko did good work.

“Alright, the skin is taking easily. You were lucky enough to only suffer superficial damage to the muscles. Your nerves are mostly fine; the only thing that might force them to act up or twitch is in response to the unresolved psychological pain.” Shoko peered over the report in her hands to look at him. Eyes heavy, dark, and rimmed. Glasses only partially hiding her perpetual weariness. “Unfortunately, there is nothing I can do about that, same as your… eye.”

His hand moved automatically to the gaping hole where his eye used to be. Calloused fingers reached up to caress the skin on the side of his face. The bandages had been loosened, and the skin Shoko had grafted, then used the reverse cursed technique to heal to ensure no rejection had taken smoothly. So smoothly, it almost felt like his own skin, but as Shoko had explained it, the damage caused by the cursed spirit flames resisted traditional healing with cursed energy.

His short blonde hair had grown out, kissing the tips of his fingers as he touched his cheeks. That was another miracle by Shoko. He did not know how she did it, how she had ensured his hair grew back despite the damage, but he was thankful regardless. His fingers moved across his face till they got to the gaping socket where his left eye used to be.

“Stop messing around with that. I left it fresh on purpose to ensure what’s left of the optic nerves and tissues remain alive long enough for you to get a transplant at least. Keep shoving a finger in there, and you will get an infection instead.” The tired woman barked at him, forcing him to obey.

He gave her a small lopsided smile, his lips parting to say his thanks when he saw her eyes widen from behind her glasses, the way a shadow leapt to cover his and obscure the little light that could be seen from outside. His black orbs narrowed in focus, and he spun on a single foot. The motion was smooth and fluid, then he buried an elbow into the chest of the person who had snuck up on him, only to hit a boulder. A boulder made of pale white flesh that did not so much as flinch.

Was this how Haruta had felt when he kicked him?

Mahoraga looked down at him. It was hard to tell emotions on the Shikigami’s face, but its wings were narrowed, and the tail behind its head twitched to the sides like an annoyed cat.

“Move.”

The words hit him almost like cursed speech, and his body was moving before he could send the commands. He shifted out of the way, only partially wondering how something this big had sneaked into the room through such a small window.

“Lay him on the bed immediately,” Shoko ordered. Gone was the shock and surprise that alerted him in the first place, and Nanami was left wondering what she was talking about as she moved to the bed he had vacated when he saw the Shikigami had not come in alone.

The Shikigami dropped Megumi Fushiguro on the bed, and the state the boy was in... He had dried blood on his lips, the sides of his eyes, and crusted across his nose. Nanami’s sole eye widened... Poison. He had seen this before. The boy was dead; he could not hear a single heartbeat, and yet the Shikigami stood silent like a statue, with... Maki beside him. How had he missed the girl?

Maki stood beside the Shikigami, her body a tapestry of burnt scars. Her Heavenly Restriction had reduced the amount of damage she had suffered, her innate toughness insulating her from the damage of the cursed spirit flames more than even his, yet the same Heavenly Restriction that had ensured she survived when Naobito did not, rejected the grafting of another skin. Healing her alone was a chore, according to Shoko; her body fought against her reverse cursed technique. It was a good thing the other girl did not care much for the burn scars.

“He’s not dead,” Shoko announced, slumping slightly as she took her hands off Megumi. The healer turned to Mahoraga. “I suppose that should be obvious considering you’re still around.”

“H-How?” Maki asked, and Nanami noticed the blood on her lips. She had been exposed as well. He was not the only person to notice it; Shoko glared at the girl.

“Come over here, kid. I would very much prefer you didn’t hide the fact you were poisoned too.”

Maki hesitated for a single second before Mahoraga shoved the girl towards Shoko, and with a sigh, she walked to Shoko and sat down on the floor beneath her. Shoko put her hand on her, and they began to glow, and when she was done, Maki coughed up a cupfull of black blood, and Shoko had a hint of perspiration on her face.

“Alright, that explains things a bit,” the healer said with a sigh, as everyone turned to look at her. “Megumi is in a state of suspended animation. His heart has been slowed to a stop, and I could not find any sign of brain activity. For all that matters, he is clinically dead. I assume he was poisoned?”

“We were heading back here to see...” Maki turned to make sure nobody was eavesdropping; when she was certain she continued. “Yuki and Master Tengen. Megumi called Ijichi for a ride, but instead of Ijichi we met another manager. We were halfway into the trip when the man apologized with tears in his eyes. I didn’t understand why until Megumi started to bleed from his eyes. That was when the car crashed.”

Nanami stared in shock. Manipulation of the managers, a suicide attack using a familiar poison, it could only be one person, or rather, one group. The higher-ups. His eye drifted to Mahoraga where the vaguely humanoid Shikigami stood in place, the only sign of its displeasure the vague hint of its canine showing from its near snarl.

“Alright, that tracks,” Shoko said with an understanding nod, unmoved by the story. “I don’t know the mechanics of how he got into the suspended animation in the first place. I suspect you’ll have to ask the scary brooding Shikigami over there for details.” She gestured at Mahoraga with her chin, then continued, seeing nobody was brave enough to actually ask the pissed-off Shikigami any question. “However, I have a good enough theory on how to solve this. I believe the suspended animation was triggered by his death, or his body sensing death arriving. If I can deal with the source, take care of the trigger itself, then the suspended animation should probably end.”

“How do you do that?”

“Healing Maki showed me how. I would need to neutralize the poison, repair the damaged organs, restart the biological functions, replace the poisoned tissue... It is not going to be easy, but I’m the best healer in the world for a reason,” Shoko replied with a tired shrug. “But all of that would not matter, because even if I resuscitate him, I cannot do anything about the true source,” Shoko said with a very pointed gaze at the Shikigami.

She was talking about the higher ups.

The Divine General let out an audible snarl that sent the hair on Nanami’s neck rising as the Shikigami sneaking into the hospital ward suddenly made sense. The Shikigami knew. Nanami didn’t know how it had deciphered it, but it knew the higher-ups were the cause, and this time he was not sure the Shikigami was inclined to resolve this with just words.

Mahoraga turned away.

It did not sneak out the way it had come in. It did not bother with the window it had used to enter; this time, the Shikigami walked to the door instead, opened it, stepped out of the room in a crouch, and began to walk. Nanami did not see it, but he could hear it clear as day as his footsteps echoed down the corridor announcing him.

Maki followed without being asked, and Nanami watched them go.

He stood there for a long moment after the sound of the footsteps faded, listening to the silence that came from the absence of noise. Already, that silence was being disrupted as voices began to ring out in low tones. People had noticed.

“This is not how Satoru wanted it.”

Shoko did not look up from Megumi. Her hands were placed on his chest, brows narrowed in focus at the faint glow of reverse cursed technique building at her fingertips as she began the work of healing him.

“Satoru’s not here,” she said. Her voice was not unkind. It was simply accurate, in the way Shoko’s voice was always accurate, stripped of everything that was not the essential fact. “And things have changed. They attacked a clan head. If his Shikigami decides to retaliate, there is nothing we can do.”

Nanami did not have a reply, so he moved and sat down on the bed beside Megumi, and watched her work. His eyes drifted back to Megumi, at all the dried and crusted blood, and he found himself admitting that if Satoru was present, perhaps he would’ve done the same thing.

The screaming started barely five minutes later.

Nanami let out a sigh as he turned to where the sound was coming from, the direction of the administrative wing of Jujutsu High, from the specific location where the higher-ups convened when they wanted to convene behind their sealed doors.

Then an explosion rang out, one that shook the ground.

Nanami looked at the window, then he looked at Shoko, who had not stopped working, who had not even acted like anything had happened over the last few seconds.

“Go on,” she said, without looking at him. “I have this.”

He slipped out of his medical gown and put on a pair of his trademark straight pants and office shirt. He didn’t bother with a jacket; he simply wore his shoe and left.

The path from the medical wing to the administrative corridor took him through two hallways and a courtyard crossing. He crossed the courtyard, a final hallway, and came to a stop in front of a corridor, his foot leaving an imprint in the blood that stained the ground.

Maki stood at the far entrance to the corridor that led to the meeting chamber.

She had both hands on the blade buried in front of her, the bone white of it catching the light from the fires that were visible through the windows above. A special grade cursed tool. At her feet, she had drawn across the ruined stone a line that was perfectly straight, a groove cut into the hallway. It was almost hidden by the blood that leaked out of the door behind her, and by the two bodies that lay on the wrong side of the line.

Nanami recognized them both. Two grade two sorcerers. Solid experienced sorcerers, but also men who had occupied their positions through loyalty to the council. They must have been stupid enough to attempt a crossing. The same could not be said for the others, because Nanami was not the only one to have found his way here. Ahead of him stood a smattering of sorcerers, almost ten in total, and among them was the surprising figure of Usami Kento.

The grade one sorcerer had found his way here before he did, but stood still, arms folded into his kimono, his expression one of apathy, as he simply watched the girl while three men argued with her while standing outside the line.

Usami’s black eyes moved, like he could sense his presence. He turned to face Nanami, and despite the fact that there was no long-lost friendship between them, the man greeted him with a serene nod, and Nanami came to stand beside him.

“Why haven’t you stopped her?” Nanami found himself asking, as more people began to gather, confusion reigning supreme. Usami was strong, perhaps stronger than even him. He could definitely beat Maki in a fight.

Usami was quiet until a scream rang out, a gut-wrenching scream that almost made Nanami squirm, just imagining the physical pain its owner was going through.

“Because of that,” Usami answered, gesturing to where the scream was coming from, the ruined building housing the elders.

The scream cut off, and there was silence for perhaps four seconds, then it started again, and this time it had a tortured cadence followed by horrific sobbing.

“How long has it been going on?” Nanami said.

“Since before I arrived,” Usami said. He did not look away from the windows, not even when they were suddenly and violently splattered with blood and what looked like the flayed face of Ougi Zenin. “I don’t know exactly.”

They stood there in silence as more and more people gathered around the entrance, and the birth of a rumor started. Some said the higher-ups had finally bitten more than they could chew, others whispered Megumi had gone rogue and was trying to rule over Jujutsu society. The rumors grew outlandish with each breath.

“I assume they attacked the boy,” Usami asked, his voice low enough to be a whisper.

“They did.”

“If the Shikigami is here, it means they failed... A pity. They should’ve committed seppuku immediately. It would’ve spared them this.”

Nanami found himself nodding despite his feelings about the man. What Mahoraga was doing... he did not simply come here to kill them; he came here to make a warning and collect a debt, and what a debt it was, because the sounds did not stop for a long, long time.