Fighting Sukuna.

"Nobara! Where the hell are you?!" Keito yelled, obliterating another curse that tried to sneak up on him. That must have been the fourth in the last five minutes.

The four classmates, Megumi, Yuji, Nobara and Keito were finally sent to a mission together. They were supposed to investigate the traces of a dangerous Cursed Spirit that haunted the slums of Tokyo.

But it turned out that the situation was much more complicated than initially believed. As soon as they stepped foot in the building where the spirit was supposed to be, Nobara vanished without a trace.

Right after, the three remaining students were swarmed by countless grade three Cursed Spirits. Those weren't hard to kill, but they were a good distraction for the real grade one spirit to catch Yuji and flee without facing them.

After that, Megumi and he travelled together and they found the place where Yuji had been taken. There, to their horror, they found a finger bearer, the real boss of the place.

As he had already beaten one in a previous mission, Megumi volunteered to fight it with Yuji. Keito was tasked with finding Nobara. He gladly accepted.

Minutes later, and Keito found Nobara in a secluded room. She had been knocked **** by the aforementioned grade one spirit who had been preparing to eat her.

After a tough battle, Keito managed to kill it and he woke up Nobara. They were swiftly moving through the hallways until they felt a deeply malevolent and powerful entity below.

Fearing for the lives of Megumi and Yuji, Keito blasted the floors between them to get there as fast as he could. What he and Nobara saw once they arrived was completely unexpected.

Ryomen Sukuna had managed to take over Yuji. Or rather, Yuji had let him take control for whatever reason. The finger bearer was dead, cut in pieces, and Megumi was knocked out on the floor, bleeding from the head.

The King of Curses spared them a glance, and something inside Keito told him that he was going to die right now. He caught Nobara by her uniform and threw them to the floor, right as the wall behind them was nearly cut in two.

Before they could revover, Sukuna appeared next to them as if he had teleported. He kicked Nobara in the chest, breaking most of her ribs and sending her crashing through a wall.

"NOBARA!" Keito yelled, angry, not taking his eyes off of Sukuna. Bringing his hands together, a very bright flash of light blinded everyone present at the scene.

As the light died down, Sukuna realized that he was surrounded by ten Keitos. He quirked an eyebrow at the sight, lightly smirking.

The small army of Keitos raised their hands and threw countless small orbs at him. With great precision, he sliced all of them to pieces and they harmlessly passed by him. The orbs hit the surroundings walls and blew them apart, bringing down the ceiling on everyone in the room.

Flicking his hand forwards, Sukuna sliced all the rubbles present including the crashing ceiling. The slashes rained down on the light clones, destroying them instantly. Keito wasn't spared either, and he found that he lost four fingers of his left hand!

"Is that all?" Sukuna asked, crossing his arms. Keito stared at him in shock and terror, feeling the blood gushing down from his wounds.

Gritting his teeth, Keito used Cursed Energy to stop the bleeding. It felt terrible to see his friend's face, usually so kind and empathetic, now staring at him with the complete opposite.

"Wavelength. Luminescence. Supernova." Keito chanted, feeling less and less afraid as time went on. Instead, he felt more and more angry. A rage he had never felt before in his entire life.

Sukuna felt the attack coming rather than seeing it. He brought up his arms to block and suddenly there was an intense explosion on top of him. Enough to destroy the entire building. The shockwave sent the three students flying, but Keito managed to catch Megumi and Nobara's **** bodies mid-air. The trio were now back in the empty streets outside.

His blood boiled when he saw Nobara's state. Unlike Megumi, she looked like she was on the verge of ****. Her face was unrecognizable under the blood and debris glued on it.

He quickly hid the two just as Sukuna stepped out of the building. The hoodie that Yuji had been wearing was blown to bits, but he seemed unharmed otherwise.

"That wasn't bad." He remarked, before he dashed forwards at an insane speed. Keito could only widen his eyes before the King of Cursed separated his neck from his body...

Or would have, if it hadn't been a clone. Sukuna's eyes narrowed. He could feel over a dozen Keitos around the area, as well as the bodies of Megumi Fushiguro and the woman.

He smirked, "I don't mind hunting rabbits." and disappeared from his spot. He went for the closest one, standing inside a nearby building. With a hand gesture, the upper layer of the building was shredded alongside the Keito in it. Since the others clones remained, it must have been a clone.

And so, Sukuna started hunting them down one by one. The clones mostly tried to escape, and a few managed to buy some time by using unexpected tricks like becoming invisible, flying away and more.

Still, with only a few burn marks to show, Sukuna had disposed of eleven clones. Only the real one remained. During the chase, Sukuna had noticed that this one went in a far away gymnasium and did something there.

He found the real one, now standing near the bodies of his classmates. "Of course, I should have figured." The King of Curses said, watching to see what the brat would do next. That was why he had given him the chance to prove himself after all.

Not one to disappoint, Keito clapped his hands together, and despite missing nearly half of his fingers, yelled, "Domain Expansion!"

The King found himself standing in an infinite room stretching upwards. Surrounding him were countless mirrors, and 52 meters above him the brat was standing on a floating platform.

Before anything could happen, Sukuna brought his hands together and used Hollow Wicker Basket, an anti-domain technique that negated the sure-hit attack of a domain.

Despite that, Keito jumped from the platform and flew down towards him. Keito aimed a hand towards him, and a laser beam came out heading straight towards him.

But that wasn't all, more lasers were being reflected by the mirrors and trying to burn him alive. With only four fingers ingested by this vessel right now, Sukuna was hard-pressed to dodge them all.

A laser grazed his elbow, another burned some strands of hair, one blew a hole through his hand, Sukuna still kept his hands together to keep up Hollow Wicker Basket; seeing that, Keito didn't hesitate to engage in hand-to-hand.

His fists were blazing hot thanks to his Cursed Technique, and coupled with all the chaos in the domain as well as some strays laser beams, Keito got some good hits on the King.

As Keito hid behind a wall of laser beams, Sukuna felt a premonition of danger. He sharply leaped to the right, right as a light sword pierced through the laser beams to strike where his head was a moment earlier. That was aimed to kill, despite the fact that he was inside the body of this brat's friend.

"Ruthless, good. But I'm afraid I've seen all you have to offer. Someone at your level is just too boring." Sukuna calmly said, ducking underneath two lasers before he unclasped his hands.

At that moment, Keito knew he was in unimaginable danger. Either he neutralized him now or he'd likely die. Thus, since his sure-hit wasn't negated anymore, he sent everything he had at Sukuna.

The King was left standing in the middle of the domain as his body was shredded to bits by the lasers. He healed himself at the same time he was getting hurt, and brought his hands together once more in another unfamiliar handsign.

"Domain Expansion : Malevolent Shrine."

Instantly, Keito's domain exploded from the outside and the pair was back in the real world. He stared in terror at the deformed Buddhist shrine with four mouths and horns.

Sukuna smirked and prepared to shred Keito to pieces. Only then did he realize that they weren't in the same spot anymore. It seemed that Keito managed to change the Domain's coordinates, taking them far from his friends and into the gymnasium.

As the first slash rained down, cleanly cutting severing his left arm from his body, Sukuna noticed something glowing on the floor of the gymnasium. That little glowing turned into a dozen, then dozens, then hundreds.

Sukuna realized that those were probably small explosives akin to landmines, and their arrival here must have set them off. He could only glance at Keito's smirking face before the hundreds of light mines exploded.

The gymnasium was blown apart without an issue, and soon almost the entire block suffered the consequences of that last-ditch attack. Every window in a 1km radius were destroyed, the roads cracked, lampposts flew away and a large amount of dust covered the area. Thankfully a veil had been erected around the area or all of Tokyo would have felt that.

In the middle of it, Keito was lying down on the scorched earth, not even that injured considering what just happened. Still missing his left arm obviously, but not much more than that. He likened it to the fact that the explosion was of his own Cursed Energy, and thus he took significantly less damage from it.

In front of him, the King of Curses was in much worse state. Covered from head to toe in wounds, with only some bits of his pants protecting Yuji's dignity, a lot of smoke surrounded him as he healed himself. He couldn't use his Cursed Technique since he had just used his Domain Expansion. The damage he had sustained made him unable to keep up the Domain.

As he healed the damage, he spoke up, "That was a good strategy. I take back what I said, you're not boring." He stood over Keito's body, preparing to finish him off. But his heart thumped, and the tattoos disappeared.

Yuji Itadori took back control.

Keito breathed out a sigh of relief; the nightmare was finally over. He closed his eyes and fell **** as Yuji's cries fell on deaf ears.