After arriving, Mahiru spent a moment checking whether Dabura carried Black Rope on him. What made Dabura so troublesome wasn't just his formidable strength and knack for learning, but also the fact that in later arcs of the story, he would eventually wield Black Rope as a weapon.
Black Rope and the Inverted Spear of Heaven were the two most broken cursed tools in Jujutsu Kaisen. Black Rope could disrupt Cursed Energy — not only letting him casually break through Satoru Gojo's Limitless technique, but also posing a serious threat to Mahiru.
Fortunately, Dabura wasn't carrying Black Rope this time, and right now he hadn't even awakened Cursed Technique Reversal or Domain Expansion yet.
"Haha."
"Too bad you don't have Black Rope."
"But I'm about to bring out the Inverted Spear of Heaven!"
"—Remains!"
A shocking, menacing light of heat, thick with Cursed Energy, condensed right in front of Dabura's face and burst outward, making his eyes go wide with shock.
The Cursed Technique he'd used to force her back had been outright dismantled by some strange thing she wielded.
His confidence in the strength of his own Cursed Energy defenses wavered too, shaken by the terrifying amount of Cursed Energy leaking out of her attack.
Boom—
The blast detonated directly above his head.
Dabura was sent spinning through the air as if struck by a heavy blow.
Off to the side, Satoru Gojo stood there dumbfounded. None of this was what he'd expected.
Of course he recognized Mahiru as the "Blue Existence." That was exactly why he'd just been so startled.
Mahiru had once given him a thorough beating, and the scars it left on his psyche ran deep. Even now that he'd grown stronger, he still felt he couldn't beat her.
In that situation just now, with Mahiru showing up, he'd have been dead for certain — whether or not Dabura kept pressing the attack.
But fortunately, things hadn't gone that way. And it looked like...
"You're... helping me?" Gojo asked, his face full of surprise.
Mahiru turned to look at him. "What, did you expect me to come beat you up instead?"
"Uh..."
"Enough chatter." Mahiru turned back toward Dabura, who had steadied himself in the distance, Cursed Energy gathering again in her hand. "Help me out. This bull-head is a pain to fight alone."
A pain didn't even begin to cover it.
She didn't actually believe she could beat Dabura without opening her Domain.
But opening her Domain here would land her in a whole different kind of trouble.
Not far away, Dabura frowned deeply.
In a sense, this was the first time he'd fought an enemy from Earth.
Right now, he felt exactly like a country bumpkin stumbling into a grand estate for the first time.
A defense he could never break through — the Limitless — a cursed tool capable of slicing straight through Cursed Techniques, and the bizarre aura of both the technique and the raw Cursed Energy the blue-haired girl had just used...
These were things a country boy like him had simply never seen before!
It was like a tribesman still rubbing sticks together for fire suddenly running into high-tech electronics.
So even though he judged that the two facing him didn't quite match his own presence, Dabura didn't dare press forward recklessly, at least for the moment.
Both sides settled into a standoff in the air.
Then, the next second—
BOOM!!!—
Mahiru whipped her head around. In the distance, a mushroom cloud from an explosion was rising into the sky.
"That's..."
That was... the direction of Jujutsu High!
Jujutsu High was under attack???
Jujutsu High... weren't there other Jujutsu Sorcerers guarding the place? Tengen had been kidnapped, sure, but the old defensive Barrier should still be standing. An ordinary Cursed Spirit rain shouldn't be able to break through it — let alone trigger an explosion like that from inside Jujutsu High itself.
What was going on??
Dabura had seen the explosion too. His eyes narrowed slightly. "...So it's finally done?"
Mahiru's fist clenched hard. "What? What do you mean?"
"...I have no interest in fighting you two to the death. Besides, my task here is finished." Dabura looked at Mahiru and spoke slowly. "So please, don't come after me."
Mahiru had no patience left to deal with Dabura — she'd already realized what the phantom Kenjaku was after...
What else could it be?!
Tengen was no longer inside Jujutsu High — the only thing left in the school worth targeting now was Riko Amanai!
She had no idea what they wanted with Riko Amanai, but there was no way Mahiru would let the girl be taken!
"He's yours!" Mahiru shouted at Gojo, and without looking back, she shot off straight toward the smoking ruin of Jujutsu High.
But by then, it was already too late.
By the time Mahiru arrived, Jujutsu High was nothing but wreckage. She used her Cursed Technique to heal an unconscious, wounded Jujutsu Sorcerer at the scene and asked what had happened.
"Riko Amanai's been taken! And the underground cursed prison too... a batch of prisoners was taken from there as well," the sorcerer said, his face full of anguish. "I couldn't beat that enemy. His Cursed Technique... none of us could even see through it..."
So she really had been taken.
And the prisoners had been taken along with her.
"Which direction did they go?"
"I— I don't know..."
"Tch."
Kaori Kenjaku had also gotten in touch with Mahiru. She hadn't noticed the intrusion at Jujutsu High either.
The explosion had just been a signal that the enemy was leaving.
Their infiltration had been utterly silent.
After all, Jujutsu High's Barrier was extremely solid, and more importantly, Kaori Itadori had long since placed watching seals around the school's perimeter. How had the enemy even gotten in?
Unable to get a direction out of him, Mahiru turned and began searching the scene for traces of Cursed Spirit energy.
Then, her eyes trembled.
She understood.
Because she'd sensed, at the scene, an eerie presence — unfamiliar, yet strangely familiar.
"Chaos and Har—"
No wonder...
Whoever had broken in here was one of the twin brothers who wielded the [Chaos and Harmony] Cursed Technique.
If it really was Chaos and Harmony, then everything that had just happened made perfect sense.
"How's it looking...?" Gojo landed behind Mahiru. "Sorry, I... I couldn't stop him..."
Gojo, at this moment, had completely lost the confidence he once had.
The Blue Existence, the mysterious bull-headed man, and whoever had infiltrated Jujutsu High with such inscrutable methods...
Caught in the middle of all of them, he felt utterly powerless.
He hadn't even managed to stop the bull-headed man. The instant burst of speed had been like a beam of light, and in a flash, Dabura had vanished into the sky.
"Riko Amanai's been taken." Mahiru's voice was flat, unreadable. "Do you want to save her? Since they took her instead of killing her, they must want to use her Star Plasma Vessel body for something — so she shouldn't be in any immediate danger."
But just how short was "immediate," really?
And how was she supposed to find where they were hiding?
"Heh..."
By rights, anger and anxiety should have been the only things she felt right now.
But instead, she felt a flicker of excitement.
Chaos and Harmony — this maddeningly troublesome Cursed Technique — was, without question, something she'd have to confront if she ever hoped to defeat Kenjaku and Sukuna. It was bound to be the greatest obstacle in her final battle.
And now, in his bid to seize this past world, Kenjaku had actually sent someone bearing that very technique here.
If she could catch them before they fled back to the future world and claim the Chaos and Harmony technique for herself, she could turn the tables significantly in this fight.
This time, Kenjaku had gotten careless. This might just turn into their most fatal weakness.
____
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