Uraume side stepped a downward swipe of Mahoraga's blade, a small crater being punched into the ground as Uraume jumped and wrapped their much smaller hands and arms around the shikigami's head, using its shoulders as footing. Uraume blew on the back of its head while applying their technique with their hands, freezing the head solid.
They snapped the head to the side, breaking it clean off before crushing it in their grip as they pushed off the beast and flipped away. Its headless body turned at a speed that would give normal sorcerers whiplash, cutting through the air.
Uraume caught the blade in both hands before freezing it near the base. They jumped as they broke off the blade, narrowly dodging a palm strike from the shikigami's other arm. They flipped and spun in mid air as they flew over the beast, planting its own blade in its newly regenerated forehead before kicking off its back once more.
"Frost calm." Uraume said, turning with a palm full of mist before blowing it towards the creature, freezing most of its body in a flash.
"Icefall!" Uraume chanted once more, crouching while flaring their technique. Ice in large amounts flew into the air, giant blocks of ice the size of small buildings forming in the sky before shattering into sharp shards, each the length of a bus twice over.
They all smashed into the frozen shikigami, making the ground appear more like a jar teachers would hold all the classes pencils in more than a city street. After a beat, one only small enough for Uraume to get a single breath of rest-bit, the ice shattered and a blade came careening towards Uraume like a throwing star. It was the same blade Uraume had broken and stabbed into it moments earlier.
The blade froze as it neared them before striking their chest, shattering harmlessly into a fine powder which floated upwards, as did all the ice Uraume created once it was broken. A rumble ran through the battlefield as the towering spikes of ice were toppled, Mahoraga making way without too much trouble.
And above the generals head, the great wheel trembled before turning 90 degrees, glowing a faint golden for a brief moment before fading.
——
A new moon covered the night sky in its cold embrace, an equally chilly wind blowing through the desolate countryside of northern Japan.
A small child slept alone in a formerly warm and inviting hut, an abode now reduced to a cold and lonely room. The kid wore a simple white robe, their form covered in frost and ice, every surface within 20 meters of them suffering the same fate. Surprisingly, they did not seem to mind this frost.
The two corpses next to the child were not so opinion-less on the ice. Their skin purple, their mouths and eyes frozen shut, they made their displeasure clear to any that may look. Not that anyone did. Not yet. Not until their child woke and discovered the results of their uncontrolled sorcery.
——
Mahoraga threw back a heavy haymaker, their fist the size of a motorcycle as it wound itself up. Uraume froze it solid before it could actually be thrown, diving towards the creature and ripping off the arm in the next instant.
They spun and threw the arm towards the shikigami, buying time so they may ready another frost calm. But before they could, the arm was thrown back at them, sending them flying through a nearby window, through a small hallway, and out an open window on the other side of the small apartment.
Uraume rolled to their feet before dashing to the side, dodging Mahorgaa who'd leapt over the building and came crashing down on the monk, a car gripped tightly by its roof in its right hand.
Uraume blasted a wave of chilling mist towards the shikigami only for it to crash into the car which it used as a shield. It then dropped the car before kicking it in mid air, launching it towards Uraume. They wounded up a punch before meeting the car, shattering its icy form.
As they continued their constant back and forth, a certain instant played back in Uraume's mind. How did its arm not shatter? It was frozen solid, it should've shattered as soon as the shikigami tried to catch it or hit it back? Uraume had done similar things to it already to more success. Had it done something?
It was no matter. This fight would conclude soon either way. Uraume's maximum technique was almost ready.
——
Uraume, not nearly of age, only about 6 or 7 years, sat on the cold, barren ground. Their form covered in frost, their white robe somehow clean. Around them sat three frozen corpses, people who'd taken them in only the night before. When Uraume woke up, they were dead.
They felt a presence suddenly, no noice accompanying it. It just appeared. Uraume looked up only to find a monster of unimaginable might. Towering over Uraume stood a man, if they could be called that.
7 feet tall, 4 arms, 4 eyes, 2 mouths. A demon had escaped its realm and now appeared before Uraume. They figured they were dead, such a creature surely had no good intentions with them.
"This is?" He asked, his voice gravely and menacing.
"I don't know. It's always like this, when I wake up everyone around me is cold. Father and Mother died like this, because of me." Uraume explained, excepting their fate.
"Come with me, child. Yesterday, I accidentally destroyed my ice house." He said, his voice lighter than a moment before, his tone amused.
——
Uraume slipped a punch, flew through the air at Mahoraga, elbowed it in the face, then spun in mid air into a kick to the face. Their head whipped to the side suddenly, blasting Mahoraga's right hand away with a breath of chilled cursed energy, freezing it to a nearby white van.
The shikigami swung its arm anyway, forcing Uraume to retreat away and out of its range. The beast with its ever present grin ripped the van from its frozen arm before throwing it effortlessly at Uraume. They dodged to the left, only to be met with the blade of the shikigami.
They leaned away just in time to prevent a lethal blow before blowing a great deal of cursed energy onto the ground, nearby vehicles, and the shikigami itself. The cursed energy blasted everything back before its temperature dropped and froze whatever it had launched to whatever it was launched into.
It was quite the novel usage of their technique. Delaying the effects of their ability to freeze their cursed energy so they got the benefits of both pure cursed energy and its chilled state.
Uraume tsked as they examined their chest and the cut running from around their left armpit to their right shoulder. That blade was nothing to play with and was one of the sharpest Uraume had ever seen. They focused their cursed energy for a moment before walking forward again, their wound now fully healed.
The frozen shikigami simply flexed its muscles, forming crakes all over the ice before simply walking forwards as well, the ice crumbling away in thin sheets. That was worrying.
Normally, Uraume's ice froze you to the bone, making it impossible to move without shattering yourself. Uraume's technique had worked on the shikigami that way, too, for a while. But then that wheel above its head spun 90 degrees twice. Now, Uraume's technique only froze the out layers of skin unless they put a truly substantial amount of cursed energy behind an attack.
Meaning the ice no longer did nearly lethal damage every time. The shikigami could just move anyway, as was the case with its arm being frozen to the van. But it shouldn't matter much, Uraume's maximum technique was almost ready, the exponentially increasing mental strain of forming it becoming more and more distracting by the second. All she had to do was make sure the shikigami was still when it was finally unleashed.
"Maximum Output: Frost Calm." Uraume said, channeling as much cursed energy into their palm as they could afford.
It was common for sorcerers to hold back the power of their techniques. Not because it was good for them to have drawn out fights but because of how draining it was to go full power all the time. Sorcery was an art of subtraction and a good sorcerer was able to subtract as much cursed energy from their techniques as they could while still getting the desired result.
If you needed to get somewhere in 5 minutes, their was no need to sprint from the get go and get there in 3 when it wasn't necessary, just like you didn't want to walk the whole way and get their in 7. A large amount of sorcerer training was dedicated to finding a balance between power and energy saved. Even the most powerful sorcerers such as Ryomen Sukuna, the King of Curses, revisited the subject from time to time, even if he only got a little better over the span of years.
Uraume had mostly found their own balance as everyone's was different, even if they were small differences. But sometimes it was best to just throw balance out the window and pump as much cursed energy into a single technique as possible, such was the case here.
Channeling as much cursed energy as they could muster in the few seconds they would be afforded into Frost Calm, a technique coming just short of becoming their supreme art, Uraume blew forward just as Mahoraga neared them.
In a flash of light blue, everything in that direction was frozen solid. It was a general fuck you to anything and anyone within 100,000 square feet. Luckily Uraume made sure they were facing away from the kid when they did it.
Uraume's technique, Ice Formation, froze stuff, obviously. And when these things were shattered, the ice would break into thin shards and be carried away by the wind. But with no small amount of effort, Uraume was able to continue to manipulate this ice.
In doing so, they gathered it all into a single ball of ice. With every single use of their technique, the ball grew. With every piece broken, the technique became more deadly. Until eventually, Uraume was unable to keep so much ice floating in the air and their control gave out, forcing the ball down to earth. It was similar to how a rain drop escaped a cloud. All Uraume could do once it fell was control the general direction it went.
Looking up through the ice it was frozen in, all Mahoraga could see was a bright blue star in the sky.
"Maximum Technique: Blue Comet."
——
It turned out, demons were not good cooks. And, fortunately, they liked eating good food. Even more fortunately, Uraume had found some hidden talent in cooking. It was unintentional but upon feeling an extreme hunger after not eating for days, Uraume cooked up some ox the demon, Master Sukuna, had slain.
"That's not bad." The king said, his bottom two arms crossed over his stomach, his right top arm holding a skewer rid of any meat.
"I cooled the red meat at a low temperature and dried it out by blowing wind at it." Uraume explained, sitting on a log by the fire, looking up at the shadowed demon.
"Who taught you this." Sukuna asked, scratching his jaw in consideration.
"No one really, I was bored so…"
"Can you butcher humans? It depends on the person but… it's kind of a delicacy." Sukuna asked. And despite what Uraume thought they should believe, they were not solely apposed to the idea.
——
Uraume stood, pretty much unscathed by their own technique as they stared at the ball of ice in front of them. It was nearly 3 Uraume's tall, and that was just the half not imbedded in the ground. It was blue, like crystal clear water or a Safire.
Just off a brief glance, any idiot could tell the comet was heavy but that was not the half of it. It was huge, sure, but it was even more dense. Like how snow could be compacted into snowballs to increase their force when thrown, Uraume was able to do the same with their ice shavings.
If the ice making up the ball suddenly expanded to the normal density of Uraume's ice, it would be about as big as the mountain of ice created by Uraume's maximum output Frost Calm, if not a bit bigger. It was a good technique to be sure, plenty fast to. If anything in Uraume's arsenal was going to put down that hard to kill beast, it was this.
Uraume turned and walked away from the huge ball of ice, its ice so pure and beautiful it even reflected Uraume's own visage back to them. They wanted to find that kid and bring him before their master. Then, maybe, they could make some progress. They might even be able to cook up Yuji Itadori. Now that would be something.
But before they could make it very far, the ground rumbled for a long, almost impressive, moment. Before a cracking sound was heard. Then, in the next moment, the entire top half of the comet was blown to pieces, returning back to mere ice shavings. And under their falling forms, a giant rose from the ground turned ice, its wheel spinning once more.