(Look, Mahoraga sure is broken as hell so i don't think Toji would even need to use him that much. But if you want, i can try. So, we move to ss3 now, about that Wiene monster. Ss3 is about how intelligent monster are treated by society, so, i'll replace Bell with Toji, well... kind of. Toji is someone who carefree, don't give a fuck about rules and do whatever he want, kill whoever in his way, even if they're gods, quite fitting right?)
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The night dragged on, the stars slowly bleeding across the sky in thin, cold rivers of light.
Toji Fushiguro trudged through the broken wilderness, each step sending sharp shocks of pain up his legs, each breath a low rasp in the back of his throat.
The earth still stank of the battle, a heavy mixture of burnt cursed energy and scorched stone.
His clothes were in tatters, blackened with blood, mostly his own.
Cuts ran down his arms like angry cracks.
His ribs shifted with every shallow breath, not broken cleanly, but splintered deep enough that he felt the bone grinding wetly under his skin.
He should've collapsed already.
He didn't.
He kept walking.
Somewhere along the way, his cursed energy stirred of its own accord, a slow tide rising inside his core.
The Ten Shadows Technique, still humming weakly after the brutal summoning, answered instinctively.
Round Deer emerged from the shadows.
The creature was tall, almost absurdly so, with a heavy white mane and dull, thoughtful eyes.
Its hooves barely touched the ground, gliding toward him with an ancient, solemn weight.
Its horns shone faintly, twisted into elegant spirals like a crown.
It looked at him without judgment.
Toji, gritting his teeth, dropped to one knee.
Round Deer dipped its head slightly.
Cursed energy flowed from it like water from a cracked dam, saturating the air around them.
It didn't ask permission.
It simply touched the top of his bowed head with its massive snout.
The healing from reversed cursed technique started slowly.
First, a dull warmth that filled his cracked ribs, smoothing the splinters back together, knitting the broken pieces with aching slowness.
His muscles unclenched, the bleeding from his deeper cuts staunched itself.
Flesh pulled together, scars forming rough and imperfect over the worst of them.
It was not pleasant.
It felt like having hot iron poured into his veins, burning the injuries closed from the inside out.
Toji didn't flinch.
He endured it the way he endured everything: without complaint, without drama, because pain was the only coin he'd ever trusted.
Minutes dragged by in silence.
When Round Deer finished, it faded back into the earth, its duty fulfilled, leaving Toji alone with the soft sounds of night insects and the distant rustle of wind in broken trees.
He sat back on his heels, breathing heavily, staring at the blood-streaked dirt.
His body was whole again, mostly.
But the exhaustion in his bones wasn't something Round Deer could touch.
That hollow ache went too deep, carved out by years of violence, by a life spent running on borrowed time.
He flexed his hands slowly, feeling the residual tremor in his fingers. Not fear. Not hesitation.
Just the natural toll of surviving what should have killed him.
He stood, unsteady but functional, and turned toward the faint lights of Orario glittering on the horizon.
He didn't get far.
A voice, small and urgent, called out from the darkness.
"Toji-san?!"
His head tilted slightly.
Not surprised.
He had sensed her approaching clumsily through the woods, tripping over stones and roots, cursing under her breath in a high, breathless whisper.
Lefiya Viridis burst into view, her robes disheveled, hair a mess, face pale in the dim light.
She skidded to a stop when she saw him, her blue eyes widening in horror.
"You're—, you're hurt!"
She ran to him without thinking, her hands reaching instinctively for his arm.
Toji let her.
She grabbed him gently, half-supporting his weight, half-frantic as she fumbled at her belt for a healing potion.
He smelled the sharp, acrid scent of the potion before he saw it, expensive stuff, reserved for emergencies.
Lefiya open it with shaking fingers and pressed it toward him.
"Drink—! Please, you're—you're bleeding still—!"
He glanced at the potion, then at her panicked face.
For a moment, he considered refusing.
His body was healing well enough.
He didn't need it.
It was a waste.
But Lefiya's hands were trembling.
He took the potion wordlessly and drank it down in two swallows.
Bitter and burning all the way down.
Lefiya sagged in relief.
She pulled a scrap of cloth from her satchel and started fussing over his remaining wounds, wiping the worst of the blood from his face, tying rough bandages where the potion couldn't reach fast enough.
"You're reckless," she muttered under her breath, her face scrunched in anger and worry. "You're absolutely insane. Summoning something like that—!"
Toji grunted softly.
"I killed it."
"That's not the point!" she snapped, tightening a bandage around his forearm. "You could've—" Her voice cracked. She swallowed hard. "You could've died, idiot."
He tilted his head, studying her.
Her hands were deft but careful.
She had patched up her Familia members before, he realized.
Countless times.
She knew what broken bodies looked like.
She knew the way wounds seeped, how skin refused to knit unless it was forced.
But she was still so soft inside.
Still untouched by the truth of it: that sometimes survival wasn't worth the price you paid for it.
Still believing people could be saved just because they fought hard enough.
He envied her, in a strange, dull way.
"...Wasn't planning to die," he said finally, voice low and rough.
Lefiya glared up at him, her cheeks flushed with anger.
"You always say that."
He smirked faintly, not arguing.
When she finished patching him up, she sat back on her heels, breathing hard, arms resting on her thighs.
The forest was silent around them.
She didn't ask what he had fought.
She didn't ask why.
Maybe because she already knew he wouldn't answer.
Instead, she stared down at her bloody hands, her fingers curling tightly into fists.
"Just... tell me next time," she whispered. "If you're going to do something that stupid again. Tell me. So I can be there."
Toji stared at her for a long moment, something heavy and unreadable moving behind his eyes.
Then he rose slowly to his feet, his body moving smoother now, the worst of the damage sealed.
"Maybe," he said.
He turned and started walking, expecting her to stay behind, to go back to the city, to the safety she still believed in.
But after a few seconds, he heard her footsteps behind him, hesitant at first, then stronger.
Following.
Not leaving him alone in the dark.
He didn't tell her to stop.
Didn't tell her to leave him.
He let her walk beside him, back toward Orario, back toward the city lights, the ruins of the night slowly fading behind them.
And in the distant corners of his mind, where cold and blood and death usually lived, something unfamiliar stirred.
Something not quite hope.
Not yet.
But something that remembered.
...
The Dungeon air was thick with mist and the iron scent of blood.
It had been a normal day for Toji Fushiguro, if his days could ever be called normal.
He moved like a blade through the stone corridors, every sense finely tuned.
Monsters fell to his cursed tools with brutal efficiency, their bodies crumpling like discarded cloth.
Another day. Another hunt. Another payday.
He stepped into a clearing, dust swirling around his boots.
A figure hunched against the far wall caught his eye, a monster, weak, small, injured.
Easy prey.
His hand shifted smoothly to the hilt of a dagger.
No hesitation.
The killing blow was already in motion before conscious thought even needed to catch up.
But then...
A sound.
Not the hiss or roar of a beast.
Not the mindless fury he was used to.
It was... crying.
The dagger stopped, a hair's breadth from the creature's throat.
A soft, broken sob shook the small body before him, something so raw, so human, that for one brief second, it cracked through the armor of instinct that had wrapped around him his whole life.
Orange, tear-filled eyes looked up at him from a trembling form.
The thing, no, the girl, shrank against the stone, her claws clutching at her arms, blood dripping from fresh wounds.
She didn't bare her fangs.
She didn't attack.
She just cried.
Toji stared at her, cold and detached, mind whirring.
He could kill her now.
No one would blink an eye.
In fact, the gods and the people of Orario would probably pat him on the back for it.
But something... twisted in his chest.
Not guilt. He wasn't so noble as that.
It was something closer to... disgust.
At the thought of snuffing out something so defenseless, so clearly terrified, like squashing a baby bird.
"Tch..." he clicked his tongue. "The hell am I doing..."
He knelt, sighing heavily as if the action was a burden.
He extended one hand, fingers crackling faintly with cursed energy.
Round Deer shimmered into existence behind him, a spectral figure of antlered grace, pooling gentle reversed cursed technique into his palm.
The girl flinched, expecting pain. Instead, warmth spread through her battered body.
Her wounds closed slowly under his rough, uncaring touch.
Her huge eyes widened, full of confusion and desperate hope.
Before he could finish, a rough shout tore through the corridor.
"Oi! That's one of 'em! A Vouivre!"
"Kill it!"
A group of adventurers barreled into the clearing, weapons drawn, faces twisted with hatred.
They didn't care that the creature was injured.
They didn't care that it was cowering at his feet.
They saw only a monster, and blood to be spilled.
Toji rose to his full height with the slow, deliberate movement of a predator.
No words.
Just a subtle shift in his aura, like the rumbling of tectonic plates before an earthquake.
Divine Dogs: Totality burst into existence beside him, the massive black-furred beast snarling low in its throat.
The air went heavy. Thick.
The first adventurer stepped forward, mouth open to demand Toji get out of the way.
He didn't finish the sentence.
In a blur, the Divine Dog lunged, jaws clamping down with a sickening crunch.
Blood sprayed across the stone floor.
The man's body hit the ground, twitching once before going still.
The others froze.
Stared.
Their courage bled out of them faster than their comrade's lifeless body.
Toji shifted his weight, looking at them as if they were less than insects.
"If you're so eager to die," he said, voice low and bored, "try it."
No one moved.
They backed away, trembling, faces pale.
And then they ran.
The Divine Dog rumbled deep in its chest before flickering and vanishing, duty done.
Toji turned back to the girl, to Kuro, he decided silently, a monster this young probably won't have a name, and he's too lazy to think.
He sighed again, scratching the back of his neck.
"Shitty day," he muttered.
Kuro just stared at him, wide-eyed, as if unsure whether to cry or cling to him.
"Get up," he said gruffly, nudging her with his boot, not unkindly, but not exactly gently either.
"We're leaving before more idiots show up."
She stumbled to her feet, still trembling.
He didn't offer his hand.
He wasn't good at that sort of thing.
But he waited.
Made sure she could walk.
And without another word, he turned and started walking.
She followed.
Because somehow, even though he looked like a monster worse than any she had ever seen.
He seem safe.