The moment the verdict landed, the world dissolved around it — the courtroom bleeding away into darkness, then reforming into the same half-collapsed theatre stage I'd started in.
What happened? The domain was gone and we were back, what was the point of it ultimately?
I didn't get to actually ask that before Higuruma was already moving.
His gavel came down in a clean overhead arc, and I threw myself sideways off the bathtub's edge purely on instinct and felt the wooden stage crack under the impact where I'd been standing a half-second earlier.
'Right. A guilty verdict must come with some kind of penalty phase.' my mind gave the most obvious answer, because ultimately this was a Shonen anime world, fighting was at its core.
I reached instinctively for the familiar hand sign, wondering whether my domain could cancel out his domain's effect, god knows what it did... but found nothing there. No response. Death Trade simply refused to answer, curse energy sitting inert and useless where it should've flowed freely.
"...You've got to be kidding me."
"When found guilty... after the court session, the subject's cursed technique will be confiscated until the punishment has been delivered." Higuruma said, already resetting his stance, the gavel shrinking smoothly back down to a more manageable size in his grip. "I'd assume the same applies to whatever you're carrying."
'So that's what the technique does... he takes away powers from the enemy...' The déjà vu just hit harder this time...
Is this how others feel fighting me in my domain?
A pit started to form inside my stomach seeing my main technique, which was always there for me, not responding. I didn't even know why, but it somehow even affected me on an emotional level.
But just as fast as that feeling came, I shook it away. So what if my domain is unresponsive? I'm not the Yami from Shibuya anymore. I have grown stronger... I no longer am reliant on my domain for everything. That was the entire idea of taking the harder option and not using my domain against everyone else whom I fought since I came into this colony this morning...
It's fine. I'd done this before, mostly out of choice rather than necessity. It's just the other way around now... I'll be fine...
"Just do your best..." I motivated myself.
"Maximum Effort."
His gavel came at me again, and this time it grew mid-swing, doubling in size right before impact — I caught the shift and rolled under it instead of meeting it head-on, close enough that the wind off the blow actually stung.
"That thing keeps changing size. Is that some sort of cursed tool?"
"Sentencing adjusts to the severity of the crime." He swung again, and this time the gavel split — one, then two, then three identical hammers converging on me from different angles like they had minds of their own. "Yours, apparently, warrants quite a lot of adjustment."
I ducked one, caught the second on a raised forearm hard enough to feel my bones protest, and used the opening to close in fast on the third, driving a fist straight into Higuruma's ribs before he could recall the weapon back to his hand.
The gavel came to him anyway, just appearing in his hands out of nowhere, there was no beating that thing in terms of speed. It was teleporting.
Higuruma defended with the gavel, but still the punch packed quite a blow with all the increased output and explosiveness it carried, the gavel being sent flying back out of his hands from the impact and even Higuruma himself was staggered back multiple steps. He was more surprised than hurt at this point.
And such, the next moment, when he regained his balance, the gavel snapped obediently back into his palm a heartbeat later, like it was tethered to him by something more than gravity.
"You're much stronger than you look, no wonder you amassed so many points," he said, breathing a little rougher now.
"Had a good teacher." I closed the distance again immediately, refusing to give him room to reset. "And I told you... I wasn't killing people left and right as you might think..."
He swung low this time, and the gavel's head expanded right before contact — I felt cursed energy detonate off my own forearm as I blocked it, the explosive trait doing exactly what it always did, turning a block into a shove that sent him skidding back several feet.
"...That," he said, glancing at his own numbed arm with something like genuine professional interest, "...your cursed energy is different somehow..."
"Yeah... some people have a particular trait to their cursed energy... mine is a bit explosive in nature."
"Interesting..." He hummed, filing that intel away, and came at me again.
The gavel returned to his hand as smoothly as ever, and I realized, mid-exchange, that the thing was the problem. It was annoying, adaptive, relentless — with how much higher my current output was, my reinforcement was just that stacked up, so a blunt attack from that thing at best wouldn't crush a few bones. However, as long as it stayed by his side, he had something to defend my attacks with.
And as I already tested, I couldn't outrun that hammer.
Tsk... might as well take that hammer out of this equation first.
I caught his next swing mid-air, wrapped my free hand fully around the hammer's head before he could yank it back,
"I hope this works..."
Reverse cursed energy flared around me and I directed it into the only other cursed technique I had in a working state...
Curse Technique Reversal... Contractual Recreation.
If burning a receipt turned paper into an object, there was no reason the reverse couldn't work too, given the right push.
The gavel flickered, resisted for half a second, then dissolved entirely in my grip — collapsing back down into a single slip of paper, fluttering harmlessly to the stage floor between us.
Higuruma's hand closed on empty air where his weapon should have been.
"...What in the," his face perhaps for the first time showed genuine emotions of shock.
"Your technique should be confiscated..." He asked in utter shock.
"Yeah, it is... you got me good with that one..."
Without the gavel, everything changed. He was fast, disciplined, clearly self-taught to a genuinely impressive degree — but self-taught only got a person so far against someone who'd spent the last however many days getting personally, repeatedly, brutally corrected by Maki Zenin on every possible mistake a body could make in a fight.
Not to mention, I was better in both output and experience. Higuruma wasn't a fighter to begin with, he relied more on his technique...
I'm glad I got myself stronger outside of using my domain. It's finally paying its dividends.
I closed in, and this time he had nothing left to intercept me with.
A solid hit caught him across the jaw, cursed energy detonating on contact, and he hit the stage floor hard enough to skid several feet, gavel-less and clearly reassessing every assumption he'd walked into this fight with.
He didn't stay down, to his credit. He pushed himself back up, breathing hard, mouth bloodied and half of his face smoking.
"I have to say, you're stronger than you looked, Akindo...," he said, wiping his mouth with the back of one sleeve.
"Yeah, I get that a lot."
My eyes scanned his form closely, that one hit had shaken him. Even when I held back so as not to directly kill him, that had done damage.
I didn't give him time to adjust. I moved at my fastest speed and my fist slammed into his ribs, when he was still off balance and couldn't guard himself, partly the fault of his lack of experience that he lost his guard so easily.
Cursed energy detonated on impact, and the shockwave sent him staggering sideways, coughing blood across the stage floor.
He tried to brace, but my next strike was already there—an elbow across his jaw, snapping his head back, skin blistering under the explosive flare of my cursed energy. His suit tore, burns crawling across his chest where I'd landed a palm strike.
I held back, deliberately. Unlike others, I wasn't comfortable killing him directly. Higuruma's case was different, he wasn't bad, or cruel. He was just... complicated in terms of his goals. Killing him without at least trying to make him see reason felt wrong.
Of course, a big part of that decision also had to do with the fact that I'd lose the 102 points he had if I killed him now, my domain was restricted currently after all...
So yes, my output was enough to do lethal damage with that explosive trait my cursed energy had, but I throttled it down just enough to keep him alive. Even so, the damage was stacking fast—his arm bent wrong after blocking, his breathing ragged, blood dripping from the corner of his mouth.
He swung at me barehanded, stubbornly, but it was useless. I caught his wrist, twisted, and drove a knee into his gut. The sound he made wasn't human—wet, broken, like his lungs were tearing apart. He collapsed to one knee, coughing up more blood, skin scorched where my energy had burned through his defenses.
"Stay down," I warned, voice low. "I don't want to kill you."
But he didn't stay down. With much struggle he got up, which even had me uneasy. Not that I couldn't beat him, but beating someone who clearly refused to stay down just because of his ideals, no matter how twisted they were, at least they stemmed from a good origin, it just felt bad.
"Come on, Higuruma... don't make me do this. Just stay down." I asked again.
But he got up nonetheless. There was a kind of determination in his eyes which refused to yield.
Blood trailed down his head, his suit was half torn and burned, his output had taken a very serious dive and he could barely stay upright without the support of the wall.
And yet, he got up.
"I always wondered how they do it, I have only seen it once but it remained beyond my grasp no matter how I thought about it...
But I guess, I understand how it works at this point. How to invert the very nature of one's cursed energy to heal..."
Then it happened. To my utter amazement, right in front of me his cursed energy shifted, inverted on its own, folding inward instead of outward. I felt it before I saw it—his burns knitting closed, blood flow slowing, bones realigning with a sickening crack.
"...You've got to be kidding me," I muttered, watching him heal himself in real time. It was slow, very unrefined and the output was barely enough to heal, but it was undoubtedly Reverse Cursed Technique. Learned on the spot at the hour of urgency.
What kind of ungodly talent is that?
Even Satoru Gojo had to half die before he figured this out...
I knew he was talented, no one just collects over a hundred points in the Culling Games just like that. Good strong innate techniques of course help, one can't always rely on one's technique, and that's coming from me of all people.
So yeah, I knew he was strong, especially when it turned out he was a modern sorcerer, one who was unaccounted for by Jujutsu Tech, meaning he awakened just recently. That's damn impressive, to learn all he did until now by himself.
But this...
What kind of Jujutsu monster was I dealing with here?
That kind of talent was absurd. I literally had to die and needed a miracle on top of that to figure out how to reverse the flow of one's cursed energy and he just did it, over some lost blood and a dozen broken bones...
"It's a bit like maths... cursed energy is inherently negative in nature if I think about it, negative can't heal, so you take two negatives and multiply them to make a positive..." He said, mostly talking to himself as if he himself was uncertain he had actually done it.
I tightened my fists, ready for him to come at me again. But he didn't. He looked at me, breathing hard, and shook his head.
"You're stronger than me," he admitted, voice rough but steady. "Even with this… I can't match you."
'???'
He is giving up, after that display?
What the hell?
But no, he didn't give up, or charge at me.
Instead of charging, he raised his hand, and the world around us shifted once again. The theatre bled away, darkness swallowing the stage whole, and the courtroom snapped back into place—wooden booths, Judgeman looming, the suffocating weight of law pressing down on me again.
"This again..."
"What do you want now?" I glared at him, cursed energy flickering out inside his domain as the mutual non-aggression pact kicked in.
"We're having a retrial..."
xXx
A/N : Higuruma is really strong, and have insane talent, but his flaws are also evident, he lack any formal training, its basically like looking at and younger Yami. Do tell what you think about this...
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