Yuki watched from the edge of the clearing, arms folded as Mahito stepped forward into the cursed spirit's domain.
It was easy to forget, looking at him from behind, that he wasn't human. The way he walked, casual and relaxed, was almost too confident.
The way he spoke was with flippant humour, full of sarcasm and lazy charm. Even the way his hair caught in the wind, messy and golden, made him seem more like a bored delinquent than a being born of fear and hatred.
That was the problem. He felt too human.
She didn't like that.
Yuki had spent years refining her theory, her purpose. She'd wandered the world chasing a solution to the curse plague.
Her goal had always been simple: eliminate the root. Prevent the negative energy of humans from giving birth to these monsters in the first place.
She wanted a world without curses. But Mahito complicated that.
He laughed too easily. He flirted, teased, and prodded. He was curious. Even kind, in moments, or maybe it was just mimicry...
And now he sat on Gojo's side, half-free, half-prisoner, casually straddling the line between ally and threat.
It made her uneasy. Because if a curse like him could act so convincingly human, what did that mean for the rest of her belief system?
The cursed spirit ahead of them shrieked. It only created a static-filled sound that made the hair on her arms rise.
Lightning flickered again from its joints, casting jagged shadows across the blackened grass. Yuki's eyes narrowed.
That thing was nothing like Mahito.
It was a monster. No soul, no mind. Just reflexes and hatred. A spirit born of fear, untamed and unshaped. Still close to its infancy.
And then Mahito moved.
His speed was surprisingly fast.
He blurred forward with a grin, his body melting into its fluid state mid-stride. His hand stretched unnaturally long, slamming into the cursed spirit's chest before its limbs could finish charging.
The air exploded as its spine arched against Mahito's reinforced punch.
The spirit shrieked again, stumbling back, electricity arcing violently from its cracked form. Mahito twisted midair, dodging one badly telegraphed bolt of lightning, then another, each movement impossibly clean.
His body warped, segmented, stretching and coiling like a snake as he landed behind the cursed spirit.
Yuki watched carefully, not blinking.
Mahito didn't fight like a man. He didn't hesitate even when facing his own kind, and the way he could manipulate his body without flinching just felt unnatural.
His movements were graceful, but wrong. It ruined the image of the relaxed person that she had been portraying the entire way there.
His transfigurations rippled over his skin in real time, as if he were improvising mid-combat, reshaping muscle, bone, and sinew with surgical precision.
It was to the level of art, in a way. But it wasn't human.
The cursed spirit countered with a scream of blue lightning, crashing its lanky hand into the ground. Bolts spidered out in all directions, burning trees and carving trenches through soil.
Mahito's body split.
Literally. He cracked himself into three, forming jagged, humanoid copies from spare flesh. Each darted in a different direction, all laughing.
It was nightmarish.
Yuki had seen many curses. She'd exorcised more than she could count. But watching Mahito fight was unlike any of them.
It was like watching someone dance through a battlefield without fear, without weight, without regard for injury. He was a force of nature, arrogant, beautiful, and cruel.
'He is worthy of the Special Grade classification...' Many curses were placed within the Special Grade Category, despite not being as strong. It was due to the amount of cursed energy within them.
But real Special Grades stood out above all others, their techniques either destructive to their surroundings and sorcerers alike.
At that moment, Yuki was looking at two designated Special Grade Curses, but one of them was clearly dominating the battle...
The lightning-based cursed spirit tried to catch him in a cage of electricity, but Mahito dropped into the ground like liquid before turning into many snakes that slithered out through a patch of broken earth behind it.
One of his clones struck first, hitting the spirit's leg with a heavy, distorted arm, which looked more like a club.
The second clone lunged for its throat.
The third vanished entirely, popping like a bubble just as a bolt of lightning headed towards it. Mere bait, Yuki realized.
The real Mahito reappeared above, jumping out of a cloud of dust and diving down like a falcon, his fingers intertwining and forming a jagged blade.
The attack connected, and the Special Grade could barely even get the time to react due to how unpredictable its opponent was.
The poor Cursed Spirit wailed, reeling back, its chest split and smoking.
Cables burst from its body, trying to ensnare its opponent, but Mahito grinned and twisted mid-air, disassembling himself mid-motion into chunks that fell just out of range before reforming on the ground.
He stood there for a moment, smiling. Covered in scorched marks, but untouched beneath them. A wide smile was still etched on his face.
He was still enjoying it. It was because of that that Yuki came to a realisation... The elders had miscalculated. This was not an equivalent battle; Mahito had no chance of losing.
Yuki felt something cold run down her spine. Not fear. Not quite. It was recognition.
This was what Mahito really was. Not the boyish smirk. Not the charm. Not the witty deflections or sarcastic banter.
Not the wind in his hair or the way he'd leaned against her back on the ride through the countryside.
This was him. Something that should not exist. Something that fought like a monster, aiming only to rip and tear his enemies apart.
She had been right. About curses. About her goal.
Even if one of them could wear a smile and hold a conversation, the rest were nothing but death. Creatures built from sorrow and fear, bred only to spread it.
Mahito spun, driving his hand into the cursed spirit's side again. His body twisted unnaturally as he reshaped the impact point, exploiting weaknesses in the spirit's core structure.
Even so, he was not outright shredding the curse to pieces or trying to manipulate its soul. No, he was trying to achieve something else.
"Don't fall asleep on me," he called, turning his head toward Yuki. "You're supposed to be evaluating, right?"
She blinked. He was smiling again. Teeth bright. Eyes burning with chaotic excitement.
Yuki was taken aback. For some reason, she wasn't weirded out by him, nor did she feel the need to change the way she spoke to him.
"Just getting started. Don't disappoint me."
She saw him pause for a second, the grin flickering into something more thoughtful, and then he turned back to the fight.
His leg swept like a whip, sending the curse flying off, its back hitting a few trees before eventually hitting a metallic shack.
The cursed spirit screamed again. The trees shook. Thunder split the sky overhead. A storm had gathered in the yellowish sky above them.
Yuki didn't move. She simply watched.
And as she did, she caught herself wondering something she shouldn't have.
Not about the fight. Not about the outcome.
But about him. Mahito.
And while her mind was clouded, she was too distracted to notice something else.
The curse that crawled up from the rubble of that metallic shed. It was holding onto someone else. Someone that she had failed to notice.
An unconscious old man.
"We're on to taking hostages, huh?" Mahito sighed.
He didn't feel the measly cursed energy coming out of the old man due to the overwhelming intensity of the Special Grade Curse; he was sure that Yuki was the same.
Yuki herself couldn't help but scowl, feeling somewhat ashamed, but at the same time, intrigued. The old man in question was already on his dying breath, even if saved, Yuki doubted he would survive long enough for emergency services to arrive.
That meant this was a great opportunity for a test after all.
'... How exactly is Mahito going to handle this?'