Chapter 146 - The Natural Disaster Enters the Field

The deathly silence on the Fukutoshin Line platform did not last long. Outside the surface shopping district of Shibuya, the ground was slicked with the shattered green slime of broken Locust Cursed Spirits. Yuji Itadori wiped the blood and grime from his cheek. He turned to sprint for the underground station, and stopped. A faint buzzing was closing in fast.

He tilted his head and reached out to grab it. His hand froze in midair. It was a mechanical insect drone, roughly the size of a thumb nail. Its casing was covered in crude patchwork seams where different chunks of metal had been welded together. Kokichi Muta's miniature puppet hovered half a meter in front of his face. Still. A tiny lens flipped open from its abdomen.

Fzzt.

A cold blue holographic projection hit the shattered glass door of the convenience store beside him. The footage was short. Barely seconds. Heavy signal interference cut through it like static snow. A black cube rolled upward through the frame, its surface bristling with thick, blood-engorged spines.

The man with white hair, the man who represented the highest combat power in the modern world, was sealed inside without a gap. The cube slammed shut. It crashed onto the blood-soaked platform floor. The projection flickered twice. Then went dark. The drone let out a thin wisp of smoke, tumbled from the air, and hit the pavement in pieces.

Yuji Itadori stared at the empty glass door. Gojo-sensei was sealed? Kokichi Muta would never joke at a time like this. This was a death message. Intelligence delivered at the cost of his life. Something had gone catastrophically wrong.

Yuji grabbed the micro-communicator at his ear and screamed into it. "Hey! Megumi! Nanamin! Teacher Geto! Can you hear me!"

Only static answered. Kenjaku had cut all Cursed Energy communication bands across this sector. Mechamaru's Cursed Corpse communicators were with the squad leaders. Not with him.

"Damn it!"

Yuji cursed under his breath. Communicator dead. Fine. He'd use the oldest method there was. He spread his feet and dropped his center of gravity. The Cursed Energy that had been sitting dormant in his body reversed through his meridians and slammed violently toward his brain and heart.

"Eight Gates Released Formation, First Gate — Gate of Opening!"

BOOM.

Deep green flames erupted from the surface of his muscles. The asphalt under his feet caved inward, punching out a half-meter-deep web of cracks in every direction. He launched off the ground. One leap. The rooftop of the seven-story department store beside him. Two hard kicks off the edge, the concrete parapet shattering under his heels.

He landed on top of a high-voltage transmission tower nearly one hundred meters above street level. The turbid evening wind of Shibuya pressed against him from all sides. Yuji cupped both hands around his mouth. He emptied his lungs completely. Every ounce of Cursed Energy in his body poured into his vocal cords.

The sound that detonated from the top of that tower was more than ten times louder than an air-raid siren.

"Gojo-sensei — HAS BEEN SEALED!"

The raw physical shockwave exploded through the high air. Every glass window in the buildings across three city blocks below shattered at once. The sound wave punched through the layered architecture of Shibuya, tearing across the entire war zone. At the Meiji-Jingumae Station exit. Mei Mei's giant black axe had just split a three-faced Transfigured Human clean open.

The muffled thunderclap reached her through the ventilation shafts. Her axe blade veered half a centimeter. The broad face of the axe smashed into a load-bearing pillar and threw a spray of sparks.

"Oh my." Mei Mei studied the notch in the blade. "That is genuinely terrible news. Well beyond the price of this contract."

In a back alley of Dogenzaka. Maki Zenin flicked her wrist. The long spear shed its blood in a single arc. Beside her, Nobara Kugisaki kicked a chunk of rubble out of her way and dragged a hand through her short orange hair.

"Ha? What is that idiot screaming about? Satoru Gojo got sealed? Are you kidding me!"

She kept cursing. But the hand holding the nails went tight. Outside the New South Gate. Megumi Fushiguro was crouched in the ruins. Divine Dog: Totality had just torn out the throat of a Semi-Grade 1. Megumi's fingers locked up. The half-formed Shikigami hand sign dissolved before he could close it. Yuji would never use Satoru Gojo's life to grandstand. Never. In the B3F passageway.

Suguru Geto drove his heel down and crushed the skull of a deformed Cursed Spirit lunging at him. Dark purple Cursed Energy churned through the air around him. Satoru had been sealed. Kenjaku had assembled every condition needed to activate the Prison Realm. On the Jujutsu High encrypted channel, barely held together by weak short-range signal, everything detonated at once.

"Mr. Gojo has been sealed? Hey, hey, did I hear that right?" Juzo's voice came out dry.

"Where is that idiot Yuji yelling from! Someone go confirm it!" Nobara's voice was pure fury.

"If we don't find a way to free him fast, the Cursed Spirits mutating from panic out there are going to slaughter every civilian in the area." Megumi Fushiguro's cadence had come apart.

Suguru Geto kicked the crushed Cursed Spirit corpse aside.

"Everyone. Shut up."

He spoke directly into the mic. His voice cut clean over every other sound on the channel. The radio went silent.

"Will screaming pull Satoru out of that box?" He moved fast toward the stairs leading deeper underground. "One Special Grade Jujutsu Sorcerer gets sealed. The sky is not falling. This is not the moment to be shocked."

"Megumi, Nobara, Yuji, the three of you regroup right now. Take Mei Mei and clear the Transfigured Humans off the surface. Get the surviving civilians to the safe zone. If every hostage dies, everything Satoru is buying time for underground means nothing."

"Nanami, take Juzo to the New South Gate. Back up Naoya."

"Kusakabe's squad links up with me. We keep driving Boundary Markers deeper underground. As long as we crack that turtle shell targeting Heavenly Restriction, this game is not finished."

Orders delivered. Suguru Geto's tone left no opening for argument. "Reply if you understood."

"...Yes." A few hollow acknowledgments came back through the channel.

Then a rough male voice forced its way into the encrypted line.

"Hey, hey, hey. You brats. What's with the funeral voices?"

Everyone on the channel went still. Toji Fushiguro, on standby outside the Barrier perimeter. His voice was buzzing with energy.

"That pretentious bastard Satoru Gojo actually face-planted? HA! I told him! I told him, skip your squats and your legs go out when it actually matters!"

Toji stood on the rooftop of a high-rise on Shibuya's outer edge. One hand was yanking at the green spandex bodysuit stretched across his chest. He looked down from above at the dark red Barrier sealed hard against the ground below. The grin that split his face was nothing short of fanatical.

"Put your jaws back and hold those tears in. Have you all forgotten? The top-ranked Blue Beast of Tokyo is right here, warming up outside the arena!"

Toji jabbed his thumb into his own chest.

"Don't lose hope just because one blindfold-wearing punk got put in a box! You smash me a hole in that Barrier, and I will personally show every rat skulking inside what a true bond of youth looks like!"

"Listen carefully. Before my fist swings — the sky does not fall!"

The raw, hot-blooded declaration rang through the channel. Yuji jumped from the tower and landed clean on the rooftop. The panic in his eyes drained away.

"Roger that! Toji-sensei! I'll smash that Barrier and every monster's head along with it!" He roared into the communicator.

"Idiot. Stop stealing my lines." Megumi Fushiguro's voice came from somewhere in the ruins.

His hand signs came back together. Steady. Deep in the underground passageway, Suguru Geto listened to the noise on the line and stepped down onto the next flight of stairs.

BOOM!

A violent earthquake tore through Shibuya without a single second of warning. The entire district heaved. Sewer water reversed, surging up through every drain and grate. The stench hit instantly, high-concentration sulfuric acid mixed with the rot of dead sea life, thick and corrosive enough to taste. On the rooftop, Yuji swung his head toward the southeast. The sky had turned a sickly dark yellow.

Raindrops hit the concrete and ate into it on contact, leaving thin threads of white smoke rising from the pavement.

"HRRRAAAAGH!"

A howl ripped open the night sky from the direction of Makuhari Beach. A sound that had no place in modern biology. A sound that had no place in this century. Outside the Barrier, Toji went still.

An ancient, grotesquely mutated beast was bearing down on the district, crushing every building in its path. Over a hundred meters long. Its body was covered in glowing bone spurs. With every step, nuclear waste liquid seeped from its hide and pooled across the ground. Its bulk hit the elevated highway bridge on Shibuya's outer edge and toppled it like cardboard.

Tens of thousands of tons of heavy industrial contamination. Pure killing instinct in a body the size of a city block. It stepped into the battlefield. A true deep-sea catastrophe had arrived.

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