"Welcome to Colony Number 2."
A voice rings out from beside me as I fall. Unlike Tsumiki's, my Kogane has something of a flat British brogue, like a valet or a butler's. Smooth, yet with a whiff of something else.
There had been no transition. I had taken a step, a single one, yet where I'd been expecting a road, I was met with air as the barrier chewed me up and spat me out in the middle of the sky with only the beautiful clouds for company. Yet, I was not particularly worried. I had considered it, of course. It had happened to Itadori Yuji, and he survived it. If I died to a stupid fall...
The wind breezed past me as I dropped like an anvil in water, gaining speed and momentum every second.
Feathered sensory organs twitched, cycling through senses for the best optimal part of my fall. I could do things the easy way; I had a body built out of pure spite, multiple adaptations, and more cursed energy than most sorcerers could boast of in a single limb. Falling was not going to be a problem; it was the ground below me that was going to suffer the consequences of physics disagreeing with me.
The wheel above my head hummed.
That was if I didn't suddenly grow wings before then, but my winged sensory organ twitched again, and I caught sight of what lay below me.
There's a building beneath me, mid-renovation I noted from the looks of it. Plastered but not painted, with scaffolding hanging off it like a matador with a half cape. To the side of it, and dangling slightly above the building was a crane, and dangling beneath a great amount of chain as thick as my forearm was a curved hook. Good enough; at least now I won't have to announce myself to the entire colony with a fall that would've probably obliterated the entire street.
I angled my fall to bring me closer to the crane, then my hand snapped out, and I snatched the chain out of the air on the way down.
The chain groaned under the sudden weight, as my velocity was forced to halt. The crane shrieked, metal pulling like gum to its breaking point, but it held, at least long enough for my next acrobatic feat. My fingers tightened around the links, depressing them like clay, and I let my momentum carry me in a wide arc, using the swing to kill my fall speed and redirect it sideways, and just before I ran out of chain I let go, sailing clean off the arc and straight toward the glass face of a skyscraper on the other side of the street.
I let out a laugh with zero intention of slowing down, as I blew through it at once, glass obliterating in my wake, but my momentum was not done, and physics was not to be denied. My feet snapped out, pale tree trunks propelling me as the ground cracked beneath my feet as I ran through what looked like an abandoned office space at a glance; then I was through, crossing the entire floor in a breath to burst out of the other side of the skyscraper and this time into the brick side of another skyscraper.
I slammed into it hard enough to shake its foundations, but whatever structural reinforcement the building had undergone held it steady. My fingers dug into the side of the building on impact, stone and steel groaning under my grip, and I hung there for a second, five deep gouges buried clean into the wall, with my feet to brace.
Then I finally take a second to actually look at the place I've landed in, but not before that British brogue comes up beside me once more, with a puff of smoke and dispelled cursed energy.
"Player, Eight-Handled Sword, Divergent Sila Divine General Mahoraga. Confirmed."
Was I registered separately?
I turn to the Kogane, its wings fluttering to keep it in the air without a hint of stress; it continues.
"Would you like to hear th-"
"Leave me."
I dismiss it at once in one terrifying rumble that silences it. It bobs in the air for one extra second, looking displeased and reinforcing my worry that this culling game was a bit different from the canon one. Before I could think more about it, the Kogane disappeared, leaving me to shift my attention to more interesting things.
Colony Number 2 was big.
I didn't have a good enough idea for scale, but it had to be one of the biggest colonies, sprawling out in every direction my winged eyes could sense, swallowing up a huge chunk of the city. I could sense people, and cursed spirits as well, but no particularly powerful ones were in my range. Megumi and Itadori had the right of it with the original plan, but there would be no diplomacy here.
I was not looking for weaklings, and curses didn't add to points. So I focused my senses, past the rooftops, past the smoke rising off a building burning a few blocks over, and found it. There on the horizon. I could not sense people or cursed energy that far away, but I could see in a different way. Over there, on the horizon was the clear silhouettes of cranes and containers, looking more like ants than the giant structures I knew them to be, then past them was scattered dots that could only be ships, anchored in the blue shimmering sea.
Hmm.
A port. I could not remember a port in Yuta's fight with Uro and that one sorcerer that blasted cursed energy from his hair, which meant I was not in that colony. A pity, that's was where I had been hoping for, but my cursed technique was not adaptation for nothing. I wracked my brain, going through rough memories of what I remembered, and something finally clicked as I gave the world my trademark grin.
A port; there had been only one port city shown in the manga, and it had held one of the more interesting sorcerers. A reasonable one for how rare they were. If my memories were correct, and this was truly where Hakari and Panda had stumbled into, then Hajime Kashimo was here.
"Kogane."
The Shikigami appeared on my right and replied with his polite British brogue. "How may I help you?"
"Show me the person with the highest amount of points in this Colony."
"Scanning..." The Kogane replied and began to hum and vibrate on the spot, stretching out to give me a screen that I ignored before the sounds came to a stop and the Kogane replied.
"Hajime Kashimo. 155 points."
My grin would've blinded anyone who looked at it. That monster had gotten an additional fifty-five points already after spending a hundred.
Out of everyone Kenjaku's little Culling Game managed to rope in, Kashimo was the one who had shown an ability to be reasonable. Easy to work with, even. He was also not hiding. There would be no scheming from the shadows with him, no working with Kenjaku or even other curse users and sorcerers. Kashimo was a very simple man with a very simple need. A desire to fight, a lightning-obsessed maniac who wanted to throw hands and didn't particularly care who he did it with; he only had one true wish: to fight Sukuna.
I could work with that, easy. If Hakari was able to strike a deal with him, then it should be even easier for me. I had a lawyer adaptation already, which meant I could convince a fish to jump into a frying pan filled with oil and persuade it, it was good for its scales.
I eyed the distance. I was right beside the black curtain that trapped us all in here. A block or two away, in fact, which meant I was far from the docks and had to make it there double time. I push off the skyscraper, brick cracking where my fingers tear free, and I drop into a controlled fall toward the street below. If I was lucky, Angel had checked her Kogane and realized Megumi was in a colony and had begun to make her way here, but I was not leaving it up to luck. It was time to find the strongest sorcerer of the Edo period.
---
Megumi
Megumi took a step forward and stumbled his way into a street that was too bright for him. The sudden change in height and dimensions of the ground jarred him, and he staggered to the side for two full steps before he caught himself in the alleyway. He reached out at the wrong angle, the force from Mahoraga's nudge pushing into the wall, his breath knocked clean out of him. He straightened slowly, glaring at the empty space beside him where a certain overgrown shikigami had, until about four seconds ago, been standing.
"Ridiculous overgrown menace," he muttered to himself, dusting off his jacket with more force than necessary. "It's a surprise he's not killed me yet."
He huffed, features twisted into a frown, but he knew that he was simply redirecting his anger to the wrong person. It was not Mahoraga's fault that Tsumiki was still in the game, or that the game was glitching at her presence. Shoko had the right of it; they needed to free Gojo-sensei, and Mahoraga had done enough for them already. He whispered an apology to the empty alleyway and waited, a second, another, five, and yet the Shikigami did not appear beside him.
""Welcome to Colony Numbe-" An annoying whine called out from beside him, but he shut it off with a wave of his hand, and the Kogane was nice enough to shut up and disappear. He didn't have the time to entertain it. He had a job to do. He waited for an extra minute before coming to a conclusion.
"Same entrance point, but it looks like the exit is scattered."
He reached out to the connection he had with the Shikigami. It was far away. Leagues away at least; so far away that the connection was thin, but he was active and moving, hopefully towards him. Good, he didn't have the time to sit on his hands. He began to walk. The alleyway he had been deposited into was dirty and filled with discarded refuse, bloodied cloths, and liquids he preferred to ignore.
The street he stepped out into was quiet, the road bare but with empty cars, some burnt-out husks and shells, others pristine and simply abandoned. Megumi looked at the shops that lined the side of the road. They were shuttered, except for the few that still looked okay. A convenience store on his right had its lights still on, but there was no one behind the counter, and there was a drag mark, with blood creating a trail into another alleyway.
Megumi looked away.
Further down the road came the low throat roar of a truck engine that had been left running for who knows how long. He had expected it, but even seeing it was still a surprise. Unlike the rest of Japan, the colonies had it worse. The area was even more deserted, a free-for-all battle between sorcerers.
"What a time to be alive!" Sukuna had said the first time he incarnated into Yuji's body. Megumi liked to think this was what he wanted.
He shook his head, sending out the utterly useless thought and instead exhaled slowly. He needed to get his mind in the game. There was no time to be distracted.
His features hardened as he looked over at the other side of the street, beyond the fence that separated it from the rest of the road. It was a port, and a second later, he heard a muted boom, followed by the sound of clashes, metal ringing against metal; it was a familiar sound that could only mean one thing. A fight.
He moved; where there was a fight meant the presence of people, people he could ask about this Angel, so he jumped, feet finding the side of the fence, fingers catching the top and momentum sending him over and into the port, a wide maze of containers and crates.
He kept his cursed energy signature low; he needed to sneak up on whoever he was fighting. No need to announce himself, so he didn't bother with summoning Divine Dog, the sound of the fight was clear enough that he didn't need the Shikigami's ability to track. He also needed to keep himself ready and fresh in case he actually got into a fight.
The closer to the clash he got, the more his nose picked up a scent. The specific, cloying scent of the sea, as well as wet sand. His feet took him through a path lined with containers as another smell began to enter his nose: roasted meat and blood. He crossed a corner and froze. There was a body there, hadn't been dead for long, he analyzed instantly.
The body was still smoking, features unidentifiable owing to the devastating burns that charred its skin black. Bubbling, burning blood leaked and dropped to the ground from the cracks in the skin, while the corpse itself was imprinted into the side of a container, the steel box deformed to fit its recipient.
Megumi looked around and could see traces of the fight, scorch and burn marks across the ground as well as grooves sliced into steel by what had to be a sword. His dark eyes trailed the fight to the distance, where he could still hear clashes. It was a clear path, so he followed it with little hesitation, but this time his hands were ready, and his cursed energy primed to summon Rabbit Escape if he needed.
The traces of the fight grew stronger the deeper he went into the port, and then a scream rang out, the type of scream that rendered the throat useless, the kind of scream a man let out before dying a very horrific death. Then it was quiet, but the fighting had not stopped; the clashes continued, and this close, Megumi could hear laughter; somebody was enjoying himself.
Megumi turned a corner, then threaded through two containers, one gutted by a technique, then he was free. The laughter was louder, the clashes were weaker, then there was another scream; after that was silence. Megumi slowed down as he rounded a final corner, his body forced into a crouch as he took in his environment.
The trail had led him into an open space, ringed by the burnt-out shells of what had probably been offices once; there was little blood, but the smell of burning flesh was overwhelming. It didn't take him long to spot the first body, burnt like the previous, but impaled on a light post. Megumi's eyes continued the search, half hidden as he was in the shadows of the corner, and that was when he saw him.
The man was crouched on what remained of the final man. He had his back to Megumi, hiding his features, but his dressing made it clear he was not from this century. An incarnated sorcerer, Megumi guessed. The man had his teal-coloured hair in two buns that sprouted from the side of his head like horns, with a steel staff he placed across one shoulder. He poked at the scorched corpse before him and muttered out loud, loud enough for Megumi to hear.
"You'd think they would last longer considering I allowed them to come in a group." There was a whine in his voice, annoyance etched with disappointment. Megumi considered retreating; a sorcerer capable of fighting and killing three other sorcerers at the same time was not a sorcerer liable to answer any question he had, but he froze at the man's next words.
"I hope you do better." The man called out, then his head turned; teal-green eyes that matched his hair focused on Megumi, peering straight at him, as its owner grinned. "After all, I rounded this up quickly just for us to have some time together." The man grinned at him as he continued. "Well now, come out of the shadows, boy, and let's talk... with our fists!"
Megumi turned and ran.