He woke up with a gasp, the sound wet and raw. Black eyes blinked open, and the light above him burned its way through his retinas, leaving spots in his vision. He forced his body to turn, muscles spasming in pain as he twisted and folded in on himself. The sound of his own movement, cloth on skin, the ruffle of the bedsheet beneath him, was like a knife drawn across glass.
He was overstimulated; every single sense he possessed was raw, like he was a newborn baby. He didn't know how long it took, seconds, minutes, before everything began to die down, before he began to acclimatize to everything once more, and by then, he had grown a headache, a splitting pain that came from the nape of his neck and followed a path known only to it before terminating somewhere inside his skull.
His breath came in shallow bursts as he remained twisted and folded up in the bed he found himself in. What happened? He tried to think through the ache in his head. He had been in his bathtub, resting after the fight. Maki had come to speak with him, they had decided on how they wanted to move forward, and he had called Ijichi to come and pick them up. Someone else had replaced Ijichi... He remembered the man's last words, mid-drive.
"I'm sorry."
Then the air became fire in his lungs, and that was it. His breathing began to stabilize. He was still confused, still stimulated, but there was one reason why, despite the panic and fear he had woken up with, Megumi had not hyperventilated. He turned slowly, the pain in his muscles subsiding to a dull ache. His neck twisted, and he opened his eyes partially. The light didn't suddenly feel so bright anymore. Still, he squinted, and he looked into the corner of the room, the part that the light did not fully reach.
Just like his vague connection told him, Mahoraga stood there. His form was vaguely distinguished. He would've been impossible to notice if not for the connection Megumi shared with it, leaving Megumi once more to wonder how the Shikigami did it. He shook his head. It didn't matter. The Shikigami was here, and for that sole reason, Megumi felt safe.
His ears picked up the murmur of voices coming from outside, but it was the sound of the doorknob turning that finally drew his attention away from the Shikigami and to the door. The door opened, revealing Maki, Shoko, and a vaguely familiar woman with blonde hair and brown eyes. The strange woman was dressed in a Chinese sleeveless shirt, a pair of jeans, and brown boots.
She was the first person to notice he was awake while Shoko and Maki were deep in their argument. Her warm brown eyes moved to him, then a heartbeat later they snapped to the corner where Mahoraga stood, and they remained there.
"-are certain that was the best? Involving yourself in it. The Divine General, I understand. Barring Satoru, who is still sealed, there is nobody brave enough to disagree with the Shikigami to his face, but you-"
Maki interrupted the older woman. His upperclassman had her features twisted into something like a glare; her sole eye shone bright with a fevered madness. He had never seen her this angry. Never. She usually had a reserved demeanor laced with apathy. His headache spiked for a minute as he remembered Maki had been in the car with him. She had to have known what happened. The brief distraction meant he lost the first few words she said.
"-matter. They did not just move against someone they saw as a rogue student; they moved against a clan head. My response was in line. The news has reached the Zenin clan already, they're preparing for-"
Shoko Ieiri was the second person to notice he was awake, her eyes widening slightly as she silenced Maki with a wave of her hand, cutting the younger girl off and gesturing at him.
"Fushiguro Megumi," the healer called out, "I hear this is your second near-death experience in 48 hours. I fear you've gotten the worst of Itadori Yuji's traits." She eyed him up. "Unfortunately, unlike your classmate, you might actually die permanently if you keep this up."
Maki rushed to his side, ignoring the older woman's words as she tried to get him up, helping him to sit up and propping his back up against the bedrest. She should not have bothered. Moving didn't hurt that much anymore; his mind was focused on Shoko's words. Some part of him caught the way the strange woman leaned against the door, uncaring for the discussion. Instead, her lips twitched upward, she tilted her head to the side, and her focus remained on the dark corner.
"D-die permanently?" he forced out of his dry throat. He looked from Maki and the barely hidden worry on her face, to Shoko and the unlit cigarette she had in her lips, and finally at the dark corner where Mahoraga stood in silence. "What happened?"
Maki and Shoko exchanged glances. There was a disagreement there, but Maki turned away from the older woman and looked him in the eye.
"They tried to assassinate you."
Megumi blinked in confusion, which was the signal for Maki to continue.
"They screened the call, stopped Ijichi, locked him up, and sent us another driver with a car rigged with poison. We had given the clan grounds some distance, and we were too far away to ask for help. That was when the driver released the poison from the A/C vent. They didn't expect me to be in the car with you. The driver caused an accident, and coupled with the poison... You should have died."
Megumi's eyes widened as Maki told the story. "W-w-what do you mean I-"
"The girl is wrong. You were dead," Shoko interrupted, still chewing on the butt of the unlit cigar, this time with a frown as she stared at the back of Maki's head. "At least in every way that mattered, yet for some reason, your death was... suspended, for lack of a better term. Put on hold, pending some condition that I'm not aware of. Luckily for you, we were able to remove the cause of your death, which revived you."
Shoko shook her head, then she gave a glance at the shadow, the unspoken elephant in the room. Megumi was reminded that Mahoraga unnerved the healer. "I don't know the details of the technicalities, but something tells me that your Shikigami does. Regardless, you died, and you were brought back."
Megumi was left reeling at the information, his hands rising, fingers spreading wide to cover his face as his brain went to work. He had been dead, or close enough that the difference was a technicality. Who, and why? He didn't have any enemies. The only people he had any disagreements with recently had been... He turned to look at Maki, and gone was the worry, replaced by apathy as she looked at him.
He already had an idea of how that happened, of how he survived. Mahoraga's subjugation ritual. He had pulled that curse user into the ritual hoping Mahoraga would kill both of them, but the Shikigami had not. Instead, it had flipped everything he knew about it.
That was the beginning of the change. Megumi remembered how the Shikigami had reacted, the brief hesitation it showed looking at Haruta that day before finally deciding to ignore the curse user and take him away in search of a healer. Had the Shikigami known even then? Had he planned for this contingency? Just how far did its awareness go?
Megumi looked at the corner of the room and called out, "Mahoraga?"
The Shikigami was silent for a moment, long enough that Megumi thought it was ignoring him. Then it took a single step forward, then another, each step enhancing the foreboding and innate menace the Shikigami held, till it was out in the light.
Blood. So much blood was splattered across the Shikigami's pale skin. Its hands, from fingers to forearms, were dyed red. Even its feet were painted a gruesome red, like the Shikigami had walked in an ocean of blood that reached his thighs.
"The higher-ups?" he found himself asking even though he knew the answer. The next words came from the last person he expected to speak.
"Dead."
Mahoraga's voice was a deep baritone that shook his bedframe and forced everybody in the room to tense up in worry. Other than the woman, whose eyes lit up as she pushed herself away from the door and catwalked to where Mahoraga stood. A grin stretched across her face as she came to a stop inches away from the Shikigami and stretched her neck up to look him in the face.
Her features suddenly clicked. The part of his brain that recognized images and put names to them suddenly came to life as he realized he was looking at the oldest and most experienced special-grade sorcerer.
Yuki Tsukumo.
"So you really can speak now! That means you owe me an answer, boyo," Yuki said, a laugh in her voice as she looked up at the Shikigami. "I don't care for how you resolved that particular problem with the higher-ups. You had enough casus belli, I guess, what with your summoner and head of the Zenin Clan being assassinated. It even allowed me to walk about without worrying about dealing with them."
A shark-like grin spread across her features as she took one step closer till her breasts pressed against Mahoraga's rock-solid abs, and something about the act must've been thrilling to the woman because her eyes widened, her pupils dilated, her breath came in quick, and her grin somehow grew wider as she looked up at Mahoraga, her lips parting.
"But you still owe me an answer. What kind of girls are you into?"
There was a tense silence in the room. Megumi and Maki let out equally surprised blinks at the direction the conversation had gone. Shoko let out a sigh that spoke volumes, and Mahoraga... Mahoraga took a single step forward, closing the distance between them, making Yuki's breasts press deeper into his abs.
Megumi's face flushed, almost as red as a tomato, as Yuki looked like a child who had been given free rein of a candy store. But before everything could devolve even further into a mess, Mahoraga's head snapped to the side, to the open window, and to the figure who appeared there a second later in a crouch, naked sword in hand. Dark eyes, partially hidden under dark bangs that hung low on his face.
Okkotsu Yuta's cursed energy was as unnerving as ever. The sheer volume of it made him a dark stain in the world, and the boy let the full brunt of his cursed energy loose on them, filling the entire room with dreadful malevolence as he spoke.
"What happened here?"
__
Yuta sat on a chair beside him, an embarrassed and abashed expression on his face, with a very visible bump on his head from where Tsukumo Yuki had buried an elbow into the crown of his head, for, as she put it, "spoiling the mood."
"Sorry, I didn't mean to be all that scary. It's just that I heard what happened with Gojo-sensei, then I remembered the last message he sent me, so I ran over only to find the higher-ups had been slaughtered," he explained while rubbing the top of his head. A miniature version of Rika spun around his head, blowing air on the injury and glaring at Yuki every two seconds.
Megumi looked up at the ceiling and wondered how this entire scene was real. He turned and gave a glare at Mahoraga, somehow blaming the Shikigami for everything that was happening. The Shikigami turned to him, and its lips twitched. Megumi let out another sigh as Maki explained everything, catching the erstwhile upperclassman up to speed.
"An assassination!" Yuta gasped, turning to him, worry on his face. "Are you okay, Megumi-kun?"
Megumi let out his fifth sigh in less than five minutes. "I'm fine. Woke up like I had been hit with a truck, but everything feels better now."
"A side effect of the poison. Overstimulation of your senses and a severe headache, I'd guess," Shoko inquired from her place at the window. The woman had given up on resisting the lure of the cigarette and had lit it up, blowing a waft of smoke through the open window.
Megumi didn't blame her. He nodded yes, and she turned away from him.
"So, what now?" Yuta asked, turning to look at all of them.
"The plan has not changed," Maki spoke up, ignoring the way everyone's attention focused on her. "Megumi needs a way to get Tsumiki out of the Culling Games. Yuki suggested we meet with Master Tengen, who has more details on all of this, perhaps even a solution or a way to free Gojo-sensei."
"I'm not sure she would be willing to see us now," Yuki spoke up from her place resting against Mahoraga's side, uncaring of the dried blood sticking to her side from the Shikigami's body. "Especially with the indiscriminate slaughter of the higher-ups by Mahoraga. The old woman is already paranoid enough most of the time. After what just happened..."
Everyone glanced at the Shikigami, but if they were expecting the Shikigami to look guilty, they were barking up the wrong tree. In fact, to Megumi's trained eyes, the Shikigami looked... smug.
"We have to try regardless," Yuta said, a frown on his face.
Megumi let out his sixth sigh before offering up the most obvious solution. "We'll stay behind. The rest of you can go ahead without us. I'm sure without Mahoraga there, she would be more willing to speak with you guys. Then you can come back and tell us all about what you planned and agreed."
Everyone turned to look at Yuki, and the older woman frowned. "I guess that might work. We won't know unless we try, so let's get this over with, I guess."
"Finally!" Shoko let out an overexaggerated sigh. "Now all of you can kindly fuck off and give me and my patient some peace."
The group let out a laugh, then, as one, they began to move. Maki was ahead, and Yuta immediately rushed up to catch up to her, a smile on his face as he immediately began to speak to her. Yuki trailed behind them, stopping at the door long enough to give Mahoraga a wink.
"I'll be back." And then she was gone, leaving Mahoraga to slink back into the shadow, and Megumi to shift onto his back as he once more tried to find sleep.
__
Waking up the second time was easier than the first. He blinked refreshed eyes, and this time the light didn't feel like a weaponized beam. He moved to sit up without any help, stretching his back before turning to the person sitting by his bedside and scrolling through her phone. Shoko Ieiri looked as unflappable as he remembered her. Her cigarette rested on the ashtray beside her.
Apathetic brown eyes moved from the phone's screen to his face. "You're awake," the woman noted. "While you were sleeping, Maki returned alone. They were able to strike some deal with Master Tengen, and she revealed more of Kenjaku's plan and even a way to save your cute little sister, but there was a cost to it."
Shoko's gaze moved back to the phone, but she continued speaking. "Master Tengen is one of Kenjaku's major targets, which means she has to be protected by all means, and to do that she requested the aid of Yuki Tsukumo and Yuta Okkotsu. In exchange, she revealed how to open the Prison Realm and free Gojo Satoru, and also how to stop the Culling Games, which, if done in time, should release your sister... or you can always follow your original plan, but Master Tengen advised you to end the games instead."
"How? How do we free Gojo-sensei and end the Culling Games?"
"I was getting there, brat." Shoko gave him a halfhearted glare. "Master Tengen says Kenjaku made a mistake by creating a game master. Most likely the special-grade curse spirit Mahito. If you can find him and kill him, you should be able to stop the ritual that is the Culling Games. As for freeing Gojo Satoru, there's an incarnated sorcerer out there that you need to find."
Shoko stalled for a minute, reading what was on her phone before slipping it back into her pocket and standing up from her chair. She let out a short stretch before turning back to him. "How do you feel?"
Megumi moved, rising from the bed, his feet hesitating for a second before he pressed them against the cold, hard floor. The pain and aches were gone. His senses had returned to normal. Even the headache had vanished as well. He turned back to her. "Good enough."
Shoko stared at him with a judgmental eye, then nodded. "Good, because your job is to find the incarnated sorcerer known as Angel, while Maki, who has gone to recruit Itadori Yuji and Choso to join us, will go ahead to track Mahito." Shoko looked outside the window at the pale light of the moon shining through.
"We're on a clock, Megumi Fushiguro-"
He understood that. They needed to save his sister as soon-
"-and I'm not talking about just your sister," Shoko cut him off, her attention still focused outside. "Master Tengen believes there is a reason Kenjaku made the obvious error of using Mahito as the game master." She turned to him. There was a certain hollowness in her eyes. "She assumes that if we do not find Mahito fast enough, the cursed spirit will become a bigger threat than even Sukuna. I've seen what the cursed spirit has done. The idea of what it can do if it's allowed to grow even stronger... It worries me. So, find the sorcerer; you can also use that chance to rack up the points you need to get Tsumiki out."
Then she stepped out of the room, leaving Megumi with those chilling words for comfort.