Sukuna threw a right hook at Jogo.
The zombie stepped in front of it.
Sukuna's fist crunched into the Netherite chestplate and the zombie slid back two feet.
Jogo came OVER the zombie — one foot on its helmet like a stepping stool — and swung a magma fist at Sukuna's jaw.
Missed by an inch. Magma splattered across the street.
Sukuna glanced at the zombie. Then at Jogo standing on it.
"Keh. Using your pet as furniture now?"
"Uuuuuuuhhh," said the furniture.
The 2v1 shouldn't have been working. One fighter was a cursed spirit on borrowed power. The other had a single braincell dedicated entirely to "stand near volcano man." Zero communication. Zero strategy.
But because the zombie was ALWAYS between Jogo and danger, every attack Sukuna threw hit the zombie first. And every time Sukuna dealt with the zombie, Jogo had a free window.
Sukuna slashed. Zombie tanked. Jogo countered.
Sukuna blitzed. Zombie body-blocked. Jogo flanked.
Sukuna tried to be clever. Zombie did something accidentally stupid that cancelled out the cleverness. Jogo capitalised.
The ugliest waltz in combat history.
Sukuna aimed a Dismantle barrage — fifteen slashes in one second. The zombie walked through every single one of them and reached Sukuna.
It threw a punch.
The punch connected with Sukuna's chest with all the devastating force of someone gently resting their hand on your shoulder.
Sukuna looked down at the fist.
Said nothing.
Didn't need to. The look was enough.
While Sukuna was looking at the zombie, Jogo fired a Dai Funka from behind — a magma fist the size of a car.
Sukuna sidestepped. The fist deleted a building.
"Tch."
Then Sukuna did something nobody recognised.
No hand sign. No warning. He simply opened his palm and the air in front of him FOLDED. A ripple spread outward — and the ground in a thirty-metre cone in front of him turned to dust. The molecular bonds just gave up.
The zombie was standing in the cone. The wave hit it. For the first time all night, the zombie slid back FIVE feet. The chestplate cracked — then healed.
Jogo's eye went wide.
"What... was that technique?" Jogo whispered. "That wasn't Dismantle. That wasn't Cleave. I've never seen—"
Sukuna was already looking somewhere else. Bored.
That technique shouldn't exist anymore, Jogo thought. That was something from the golden age of jujutsu. Something from the Heian era.
Sukuna appeared in front of him.
Jogo barely dodged. Went liquid. Reformed ten feet back.
Sukuna didn't pursue. He just stood there, hands in pockets, looking at Jogo the way a cat looks at a mouse that's been running for too long.
"You're still not using your domain," Sukuna said.
Jogo said nothing.
"Keh keh. Spoken like a true loser."
Jogo circled. Fired magma from both arms. Sukuna walked through the gap between the streams without changing pace.
The zombie closed from the right. Jogo attacked from the left. Pincer. The only "strategy" that accidentally worked — two things coming from two directions because neither of them knew what the other was doing.
Sukuna dealt with both at the same time. Kicked the zombie sideways — it flew thirty feet and started walking back immediately — and caught Jogo's magma arm with a Dismantle that scattered it into globs.
Jogo reformed the arm. Came again. The zombie was already back.
Sukuna sighed. The sigh of something that was being mildly inconvenienced and didn't enjoy the sensation.
He formed a hand sign. Old. WRONG-looking. The kind of sign that belonged to a dead era.
The ground beneath the zombie didn't collapse. It INVERTED. A perfect cube of earth flipped upside down, dropping the zombie into a pocket of reversed gravity that should not have been physically possible.
Jogo watched. His brain tried to process what he'd just seen. He couldn't. That technique didn't have a name. It was something from so far back in jujutsu history that the records of it had rotted away centuries ago.
And Sukuna had used it to put a zombie in a hole.
"Uuuuuuuhhh," said the zombie, from the hole.
It jumped out. Landed right back in front of Sukuna.
Sukuna's expression didn't change. But his jaw tightened by a fraction.
The fight had been going for several minutes. In the original timeline, Jogo lasted two or three before Sukuna got bored. This version — magma body, backup zombie — had pushed past five.
Sukuna wasn't in danger. But he was being INCONVENIENCED.
He stopped moving.
Jogo stopped too. When Sukuna stopped, you stopped. That was instinct. That was a thousand years of fear hardwired into cursed spirits.
Sukuna raised one finger. The fire arrow condensed at the tip — the technique he'd used earlier. The one that erased city blocks.
Except this time, something was different. He formed a second hand sign with his other hand WHILE the arrow was charging. Something layered on top of something else. A technique stacked on a technique.
Jogo's eye went wide.
He can layer cursed techniques simultaneously? That's — that's what Gojo does with Blue and Red. That's supposed to be exclusive to the Six Eyes. How is he—
Sukuna released both at once.
The arrow flew at Jogo. The second technique hit the GROUND — and the ground beneath Jogo's feet became frictionless. His magma legs couldn't grip. He slid. The arrow corrected course to follow him.
The zombie stepped in.
Took the arrow to the chest. The explosion ripped across the street. Dust. Debris. Crater.
The zombie stood in the middle of it. Scratched. Healing.
"Uuuuuuuhhh."
Sukuna looked at the zombie. Four eyes. No expression. Then he turned away from it entirely. Done acknowledging it. It was beneath him. It couldn't die and it couldn't hurt him and therefore it didn't exist.
He focused on Jogo.
"Enough," Sukuna said.
One word. The temperature in Shibuya dropped ten degrees from the intent behind it.
He disappeared.
Reappeared behind Jogo. Inside the zombie's guard. The one blind spot — the half-second gap between the zombie turning around and Jogo reacting.
One hand on Jogo's face. The arrow forming in the other. Point blank.
"Stand proud," Sukuna said quietly. "You are strong."
Jogo's eye widened.
Hanami. Dagon. I—
Sukuna released—
And the zombie was there.
Nobody saw it move. The distance didn't explain it. The timing didn't explain it. One frame the zombie was behind Sukuna. The next frame it was between them. Arms spread. Netherite catching the light from the arrow.
But it didn't block the arrow this time.
It threw a punch.
The same nothing punch. The same wet noodle hit. The same attack that had been bouncing off everything all night like a tennis ball thrown at a mountain.
The fist connected with Sukuna's jaw.
And every ounce of cursed energy that had been soaking into those ten rings all night — hours of Dismantles, Cleaves, fire arrows, shikigami, cursed flames — discharged at once through the zombie's knuckles at the exact millisecond of contact.
BLACK FLASH.
Black lightning split Shibuya in half. The sky inverted for one frame. The sound was reality having a coughing fit.
Sukuna went flying.
Through a wall. A second wall. A third.
The zombie stood in the street. Fist extended. Rings crackling with fading black electricity.
"Uuuuuuuhhh."
Silence.
Jogo — arrow dodged by a miracle, one eye wide, body barely holding together — stared at the zombie.
From the rubble, four eyes glowed.
Sukuna stood up. Rolled his jaw. His expression hadn't changed. But he touched the spot where the fist had connected.
He looked at the zombie.
The zombie looked at him.
Sukuna said nothing for three full seconds. Three seconds of the King of Curses processing that a braindead creature in armour had just landed a Black Flash on his face.
Then he laughed.
"Keh keh keh."
Low. Genuine. The laugh of something that hadn't been surprised since the Heian era.
He cracked his neck.
The zombie raised its fists.
--------
Behind a half-melted building.
Sebas was trembling.
"My son," Sebas whispered, voice shaking. "My beautiful, stupid, braindead son just Black Flashed the King of Curses. Thkuna himself."
He looked up at the sky.
"THAT'S MY BOY."
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