71 Shibuya VI

'Man this is a bother.' Thought Kusakabe as he listened to his enemy, followers of Geto ramble about their will and goal of achieving a world without normal humans. 

He was half-listening, half-daydreaming about just going on a trip and forget all this incident. Being a sorcerer was way too stressful for his own good.

Beside him was Panda who was not a panda but looked like a panda yet spoke unlike a panda but had the behavior of a panda. That was Panda. What was Panda? He didn't even know himself but all he knew was that he was not a panda.

Just thinking about this made his brain want to twist in itself.

Though at least he enjoyed the company of said non-panda. Panda acted more human than he did, but he also kind of felt a bit naïve. If a puppy could be reborn as a puppet panda with the ability to talk and have its own ego than that was what Panda was.

"So, do you two surrender? I don't like indecisive men."

The woman on the enemy side said to the two of them."

"Welp guess I don't count since I'm a panda."

Didn't he say before he wasn't a panda? Questions for later.

'Huh? It's over already, normally it takes around 20 minutes to talk about this, no? Anime's really are misleading.' Kusakabe thought before sighing. 'Still... a group of sorcerers of this level. Oho I'm going to enjoy my time here and avoid any special-grade.'

Kusakabe smiled as he spitted out the lollypop in his mouth and unsheathed his katana.

"Oh!" Panda exclaimed excited to see him in action.

[New Shadow Style: Evening Moon Sword Drawing!]

"... is that your answer?" The man in front of the two said as he looked at them like they were fools.

Right when the tension was at its peak, they all felt the ground shake and an explosion occur. 

"What the?!"

"The hell?!" 

Everyone was shocked as they saw the scale of the explosion. It was massive as it engulfed an entire building and two figures came out of the smoke.

"Don't run away now! The fun is right here!" Sukuna yelled.

Arai paid no heed and formed a cyclone of wind in his hands sending it at Sukuna at full speed. The blast hit Sukuna who blocked it with his arms and pushed him away to another building. 

Arai landed at the ground and took a deep breath. Right now, Sukuna held 15 of his fingers. That would mean he would of consumed 11 fingers at this time since he already had 4. Itadori lost control since the amount of fingers he consumed was too high for him to handle. But that only meant it was temporary, with enough time Itadori would regain control.

Control over his body.

This meant one thing and one thing only.

'I need to fight Sukuna and keep him busy until he losses control.' Arai thought and was convinced in what his role was. He needed to duel the King of Curses by himself.

"Kusakabe, what are you doing?" Arai said as he turned to Kusakabe, Panda and the other sorcerers who looked at him with fear. They knew who he was.

Kusakabe sweated and was nervous and cleared his throat. "Ahem! I was fighting these sorcerers." 

"Then finish it, Sukuna is here so no one is safe." Arai said before turning his attention back to the fight.

Arai looked to where Sukuna was and saw a slash coming at him. He narrowly dodged it due to his danger sense. 

"You're a lot weaker than I thought." Sukuna said as he landed in front of Arai. "Your mind was a bit stronger when we fought. The disparity between the two is normally in reverse yet here you are actually stronger in your soul than your body."

"Your point?" 

Sukuna smiled. "My point is that this is going to be a lot less fun than I thought."

"Risking your life is never fun and neither is talking to you." Arai said before bursting out a cyclone from his position. The cyclone went all the way up to the sky and created more tornados.

"Emerge from the darkness that which is blacker than the dark. Seal that which is evil and undesirable." Arai chanted and a veil was formed, but unlike the other veils placed in Shibuya. This one was quite a bit smaller only ranging to be about 150 meters.

That is because it held only one purpose, to hold in Sukuna.

Sukuna walked up to the barrier and tapped it. He then threw a rock at it but it passed through. "A barrier to trap me and only me in? I bet you also put a pact making it stronger since you, the one who put it up is inside. I can guess your plan, trap me inside until the brat wakes up and takes over while you take away my attention."

Sukuna looked around but saw Arai nowhere to be seen. He had long disappeared in the group of tornados now running in the field.

"If you think you can actually trap me, then you'll regret it."

"Tell me something new, regrets are my everyday thought." Arai's voice echoed throughout the veil with no indication as to where he actually was.

"Too bad you won't be able to think about them anymore." Sukuna said before he placed his palms to the ground.

[Cleave: Spider Web!]

The ground was slashed by Sukuna's technique creating like its name entails a spider web forming into the ground ripping it apart. Sukuna's goal was not to break the ground but to make it fragile. His eyes darted to the buildings in his surrounding being losing their balance. With the foundation unstable, they would fall. Even if it was resistant to earthquakes, once it loses its pillars it will lose its balance.

The buildings fell creating even more destruction than there already was. 

All that was left inside the barrier was rubble as not a single building survived the impact.

"■ open!"

Sukuna chanted as a phenomenon that shocked Arai happened.

Fire appeared in Sukuna's palm and danced there.

'Sukuna has more than one technique?!' Arai thought as he hid under the rubble.

And the amount of curse energy within it was dangerous to him.

"I noticed it when you fought that cursed spirit but you don't like the mix of fire and wind made of cursed energy together. Well let's make that a reality." Sukuna commented before weaving the fire into the shape of an arrow.

'That fucker!' Arai thought as he looked at the tornados running around.

"Let's turn this city into the apocalypse!" Sukuna said full of happiness knowing full well Arai could see this.

He released the arrow into the tornado creating a disaster. The windows and building caught into its vicinity were all destroyed. The tornado caught fire and exploded, this caused a chain reaction as the explosion forced other tornados to explode turning everything in the veil into burnt rubble. Though Sukuna's goal wasn't done because his true goal was to destroy this veil. The veil which couldn't support the powerful attack on all sides collapsed revealing the outside world to him. The giant cloud of explosion went into the clouds.

And out of its rubble emerged Sukuna, the burnt wounds healed as he smiled reveling in his destruction. "MWAHAHAHAA!! This is more like it! The smell of burnt flesh is as great as ever!!"

As Sukuna enjoyed his art, something ripped through the air and came right at Sukuna aiming for his face. Sukuna saw this and blocked the attack with his hand, the attack though was strong enough to push him back and rip through his hand. He pushed the attack away and healed his wound.

"And the rat comes crawling back to the surface." Sukuna commented before Arai dashed to him and appeared above him with a hammer made of clay. His body was completely covered in clay armor but gaps and burns revealed his body. No doubt it was from Sukuna's attack.

Though Arai was not in the slightest worrying about his wounds, he swung the hammer down but caught nothing as he saw nothing underneath it. The hammer quickly turned into a shield before Arai and blocked the slash coming at him.

'I can't sense his curse energy which means cleave won't work the way its supposed to. Dismantle is what I can do but it won't work. Seems like I'll simply have to up the curse energy output of cleave to its maximum.' Sukuna thought.

Arai looked around to the destruction. 'Around 5 minutes have passed and yet so much damage has been caused. I need to hold on for more time, or who knows what else he's going to do.'

Just then Sukuna put his hands to his chin taking the position of a man pondering over something. Arai frowned but remained silent wanting to buy as much time as he can. Even if it were seconds, it would be well appreciated.

But that thought soon turned to be regret as Sukuna smiled like a demon. Just seeing that face made Arai know that he was up to no good.

"All this time, you seem to be making sure I stay here. More importantly, it seems like you are turning my attention away from the station, right?"

Arai knew something was wrong, Sukuna telling him this meant something. Something very bad.

"What is so important in that station? That white haired bastard who is sealed, Kenjaku who is guarding that seal? No, you wouldn't worry about that kind of thing with me here. You wouldn't worry about that Gojo fellow either, at least not for now."

Arai's eyes widened as he realized what Sukuna was implying. Arai enforced his armor and wrapped his body in wind. He immediately dashed to Sukuna and clashed with him. All the while Sukuna  was smiling crazily as he figured out Arai's intention.

"You are protecting something... no, you are protecting... someone precious to you." 

"Don't you even dare." Arai threatened as he kept pushing back Sukuna.

Sukuna chuckled earning the reaction he wanted. "Too late for that."