Nanami was walking through Shibuya Station.
Half his body was charred. One eye gone. Suit destroyed on the left side. Sword in his right hand, barely gripped. He was thinking about Malaysia. A house on a beach. Books he never read.
He'd cut through a dozen transfigured humans on autopilot. Grade 1 muscle memory doing work his mind had clocked out of ten minutes ago.
Then Mahito appeared in front of him.
The cursed spirit stepped out from a photo booth he'd been hiding in like a gremlin. Hand already reaching for Nanami's chest. Grinning.
"We go way back, don't we, Nanami?" Mahito said. "Want to chat?"
Nanami didn't respond. He looked to his right. A vision — Haibara, his dead friend, pointing down the corridor. Nanami followed the gesture.
Yuji was there. Just entered the station. Running toward them. Eyes wide. Already horrified.
I don't want to curse this boy with my final words, Nanami thought.
He smiled.
"Itadori. You've got it from—"
Mahito's hand pressed against Nanami's chest. Idle Transfiguration activating. One second from detonation.
A hand grabbed Nanami by the back of the neck.
Not Mahito's. Not Yuji's. A hand that came from NOWHERE — appearing behind Nanami between one frame of reality and the next, fingers closing around his collar with the casual grip of a man picking up a jacket off a chair.
Nanami vanished.
Mahito's hand closed on empty air. His fingers touched nothing. The chest that had been there — the target, the kill, the finale — was gone.
Mahito blinked.
"...What?"
Yuji, mid-sprint down the corridor, stopped dead.
Both of them looked to the right.
Sebas was standing ten feet away. Full drip. Cape. Both boots. Holding Nanami by the back of his collar like a cat someone had picked up by the scruff. One arm extended. Not even looking at Mahito or Yuji. Looking slightly upward. At nothing.
The cape was doing the thing. The invisible wind thing. In an underground station with zero airflow, the fabric rippled outward in slow, dramatic waves that had no source and no explanation.
He wasn't moving. Wasn't speaking. Just standing there, arm out, holding a grown man by the neck, radiating the kind of energy that made the corridor feel like a photoshoot.
Behind a support pillar — because they were STILL HERE, they had been following Sebas through Shibuya like wildlife researchers tracking a rare animal — Piccolo and Gohan watched.
"Gohan," Piccolo said. "Did you see that?"
"He grabbed him mid-death scene," Gohan whispered.
"A mid-combat auradynamic grab. Do you understand how difficult that is? He teleported, snatched a man by the collar, repositioned ten feet sideways, and landed in a pose. Not a SINGLE point of aura was lost during the transition."
"That's... possible?"
"Most practitioners lose forty to sixty percent of their aura during rapid movement. The jog effect. The scramble. The panic repositioning. But this man—" Piccolo pointed at Sebas "—executed a combat teleport while holding another human being and came out the other side looking like a magazine cover."
Gohan was scribbling in his notepad. "Aura retention during teleportation... one hundred percent..."
"He's not even looking at them," Piccolo continued. "He's holding a man like a shopping bag and giving the camera an angle. There IS no camera. He's giving an angle to the CONCEPT of being watched. That's auradynamics operating at a theoretical level."
"Can I learn this?"
"Fuck naw"
Vegeta, leaning against a wall further back, nodded once. "Hn. Flawless entry."
Sebas finally looked at Nanami. The man was dangling from his grip, one remaining eye wide, brain trying to process what had just happened.
"Yo," Sebas said. "You the suit guy?"
"...What—"
"You walk into a warzone in a full suit. You fight curses in a TIE. You got your body burned to shit and you're still walking around looking for your students instead of getting healed."
Sebas set Nanami down.
"You valid as fuck, cuh."
He flicked his fingers.
Nanami's body lit up. Every wound closed. Every burn reversed. Both eyes back. Suit repaired. Three seconds. Done.
Nanami stood there. Fully healed. Both eyes blinking. Suit pristine. Feeling better than he had since before Shibuya started.
"...Who—"
"Don't worry about it lil bro."
Sebas turned invisible.
Mahito stared at the spot where Sebas had been.
Yuji stared at Nanami.
Nanami stared at his own hands.
Nobody understood what had just happened.
"NANAMI!" Yuji closed the distance. Eyes wet. The boy looked like he'd been through seven kinds of hell.
"I'm fine, Itadori." Nanami flexed his hand around his blade. No pain. Full strength. Whatever that man did was beyond anything he'd ever experienced. He looked at Yuji. Then at Mahito at the end of the corridor.
"Let's finish this," Nanami said.
Mahito was still standing there. His grin had returned but something behind it was recalculating. His kill had been snatched from his fingers by someone he couldn't see, and now the half-dead sorcerer he'd been about to erase was standing at full health in a clean suit.
"I don't know what just happened," Mahito said, "but it doesn't matter. I'll just kill you again."
Nanami adjusted his tie.
"You can try."
Mahito lunged. His right arm morphed mid-stride into a bladed spike aimed at Nanami's throat. Nanami sidestepped left, letting the spike pass his jaw by an inch, and brought his sword up in a diagonal slash across Mahito's extended arm. The ratio technique activated on contact — the blade found the structural weak point at the elbow joint and the forearm separated clean.
Mahito didn't flinch. He reformed the arm before it hit the ground and swung the regenerated fist at Nanami's ribs. Nanami blocked with the flat of his blade, absorbing the impact with bent knees, then shoved forward to create space.
Yuji came from behind Mahito. He'd circled during the exchange — feet quiet, approach low. His right fist drove into the back of Mahito's skull. The curse's head snapped forward. His body lurched.
Mahito spun, turning the momentum into a backhanded swing with an elongated arm. Yuji ducked under it. The arm sailed over his head and crashed into a support pillar, cracking the concrete.
Nanami was already closing. He stepped inside Mahito's guard while the curse was overextended from the backhand. His blade came down in a vertical chop aimed at the collarbone. Mahito twisted sideways, letting his torso go soft to absorb the cut. The blade sank in but couldn't find purchase in the liquefied flesh.
Mahito grabbed the blade with his bare hand and kicked Nanami in the chest. The grade 1 sorcerer skidded back five feet but kept his balance. Yuji filled the gap instantly — he jumped off the wall to his left, used the height to come down on Mahito with a hammerfist aimed at the crown of his head.
Mahito raised both arms to block. The hammerfist connected and drove him down to one knee. The floor cracked beneath him. Yuji followed up with a knee aimed at Mahito's face but the curse rolled sideways, reformed his arms, and created distance.
"Not bad," Mahito said, breathing harder than before. "The two of you are annoying."
"Good," Nanami said.
Mahito switched tactics. He split.
His body divided down the middle. Two Mahitos. One real, one clone. Identical.
Clone-Mahito bolted down a side corridor.
"Don't chase it," Nanami said immediately. "He wants to separate us. The clone can't use Idle Transfiguration. The real one—"
A voice echoed from the side corridor.
"I FOUND ONE!"
Nobara.
She'd re-entered the station against orders. Because Nobara Kugisaki didn't take orders.
She'd found the clone. Or the clone had found her.
"Kugisaki—" Nanami started.
The Mahitos swapped.
One blink. The real Mahito and the clone switched positions. The thing in front of Nobara was no longer the harmless copy. It was the real one.
His hand reached out.
Nobara didn't see the switch. Nobody did.
Palm open. Fingers extended. Contact.
Nobara's body froze. Something inside her shifted. Not bones. Not muscles. Her soul.
She looked at Yuji. He was running toward her. Screaming her name.
She thought about Fumi. About Saori. About the village she hated and the school she loved.
She placed her hand over the left side of her face.
"It wasn't so bad," she said.
The left side of her face split open.
She fell.
Yuji stopped.
Nanami stopped.
Mahito stood over Nobara's body. Grinning.
Yuji's legs buckled. He hit the floor. Everything — Choso, Sukuna's rampage, and now THIS — crashed into him at once.
Mahito walked toward him. Shaped his arm into a mantis blade. Raised it over Yuji's head.
Nanami moved. Put himself between them. Blade up.
"You'll have to go through me first," Nanami said.
Mahito tilted his head. "Gladly—"
A clap.
A single, thunderous, building-shaking CLAP that made every surface in the station rattle.
Mahito's body swapped positions with something behind him. He stumbled — suddenly fifteen feet from where he'd been, facing the wrong way.
A man stood where Mahito had been.
Tall. Muscular. Hair tied up. Jacket open. Shoulders that blocked the corridor.
Aoi Todo.
He looked at Yuji on the ground. Then at Nanami. Then at Nobara.
Then at Mahito.
"The bells of the Gion monastery echo with the warning that all things are impermanent. The blossoms of the sala trees teach us through their hues that what flourishes must fade."
He cracked his neck.
"However. WE ARE THE EXCEPTION."
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Hit that collection, power stone and comment down
also join the discord yk might make +1 chapter in the discord first then here yk
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