Juchu Kaisen Chapters 27-29 (Patreon)

Chapter 27

Hibana Teira was simultaneously everything that Satoru was expecting, and completely outside of his realm of expectations.

He had heard from the clan that she generally looked rather grotesque: sheet-white skin, black orbs for eyes, and an antennae-like hairband that lended her an insectile aspect, and also had the feel of cursed tools in their own right.

Seeing her up-close, Satoru couldn’t blame those old fogies for missing some key points.

The antennae were cursed tools, yes.

They were also lodged inside of her brain, through her skull, where they had taken root somehow. Numerous tiny tendrils of black had anchored themselves to her brain to the point that the tools felt a part of her, and not just separate objects.

It was the same with the orbs inside her eyeholes—they were cursed tools, as well. And they were also a part of her. Why? Because the contours of her soul included them. Both the eyes and the antennae.

That and some weird… inert, tumorous growth at its core. Like there was some more soul inside of her, waiting to pop out at any moment. Not a cursed technique, of course—this was far from being Jujutsu.

Perhaps… even more cursed than Jujutsu.

Something was really, really fucking wrong with her, and Satoru loved it. What an absurdly interesting body she had! With his Six Eyes, he could see how her cursed energy interacted with her body, and he could make inferences on the statistics of her body as a result. He could also make out the contours of her soul for additional information.

Well-developed musculature, bones dense with a near-constant infusion of cursed energy, and a wellspring that was truly above the average amount for sorcerers, by a fair margin. People’s cursed energy generally stopped growing in magnitude altogether near the end of childhood, once physical development had reached its peak, around the ages between fifteen and twenty. She already had a body to rival any seasoned sorcerer at only fifteen. Satoru could only imagine how much more physically dominant she would become given a few more years. Her body was incredible!

Of course, it couldn’t really compare to his own physical conditioning. He had the inherent advantage of being born male, and his cursed energy infusion into his body was perfectly efficient. What was more, he had maintained this perfect infusion for so many years, all throughout puberty even, that he had artificially forged his body into an even more efficient conduit for the powers of cursed energy. Without the Six Eyes, such an act would have been impossible.

Still, he’d give her points for getting this far without the Six Eyes.

In any case, Hibana Teira didn’t need efficiency, when there were several millions of threads of cursed energy beaming her more power at any given moment. She had a functionally infinite amount of cursed energy to play with. The Juchū technique was a remarkable shikigami technique in the sense that the bugs were permanently formed, and could phase-shift from metaphysical to physical without any additional cursed energy cost.

Unlike the fabled Ten Shadows technique of the Zen'in clan, Teira could easily and nigh-instantly summon any of her Juchū, from even a single solitary one to even the giant merged ones, without actually expending any more cursed energy. The only expenditure required was when the Juchū depleted their own local stores of energy due to over-exertion and needed replenishment.

Luckily for her, her Juchū were able to parasitize energy directly from cursed spirits everywhere, all across Japan—except for Hokkaido, of course—, allowing her to replenish at will.

In summary, she had infinite cursed energy, as long as her network held. Of course, she could have an infinite amount of cursed energy to the power of infinity, and it still wouldn’t get past his Infinity. Mere power was not enough for that.

Satoru threw his thumb over his shoulder, pointing towards the hole in the windows. “Let’s take this outside, ladybug.”

“Cute,” she summoned two grass-hopper like shikigami the size of grown men, with two sets of arms—ones with hands and fingers, and another with blades. Then she opened up a portal on the ground, through which the grasshopper shikigami pulled out—

Panes of glass.

She then walked past him, jumping out of the broken window, summoning another shikigami beneath her while she herself grew enormous, several-meter long butterfly wings from her back.

That one was cleaning up the shattered glass outside. While the one inside the classroom was going to replace the window.

Ugh. Straight-laced to a fault. How boring.

Satoru joined her outside.

Mob one and mob two had just about regained consciousness from their sudden flight. Their uniforms had survived, but they looked slightly scraped up. Dogshit cursed energy infusion would do that to you.  

Satoru and Teira landed in front of them. “I’ll ask you both kindly to leave while we fight,” Teira said.

“Are you joking?” Sa… Sa something shouted. Wait, his given name was Ren, right? Well, Ren shouted.

The girl version of Ren growled. “I’ll get you back for that!”

Satoru noticed as Teira snuck two Juchū to the backs of their necks before nodding. “Okay.”

Instantly, the pair of them stiffened and fell down. Teira summoned more large shikigami, the grasshopper-workmen type, to carry the two away.

“Poison,” Satoru said.

“A paralytic. It’ll wear off in a few minutes—it’s extremely fast-acting but also extremely weak. It requires that I inject them directly in their cervical spine to work.”

What Satoru couldn’t quite wrap his head around was how toxic she was being. Seriously! Just because her cursed energy felt like the extracted essence of a spider’s poison didn’t mean that she had to carry that all the way to her attitude.

“You know, I don’t dislike you or anything, right?” Satoru tilted his head. “I just wanted us to meet and talk, from one young special grade to another. They did rank you a special grade, right?”

She scoffed. “Of course they did.”

“What class?”

She raised an eyebrow.

“It’s on your student ID,” Satoru explained. “They added a new classification after the mess in Okinawa. Special Grade has subcategories, now. Class Zero is for unrealized Special Grades who have raw potential, but no fundamentals. Little kids and total rookies, basically. There’s four of them in our generation alone. One here in Tokyo and three in Kyoto. Class Ones are rookies in Jujutsu with some grasp on fundamentals. They’re not helpless, and they’ve learned to leverage the power of their technique. Still, a good-enough Grade One could take them out. Class Two puts you a step above even that. Excellent fundamentals and skills in Jujutsu that isn’t directly tied to the use of their Innate Technique. A team of Grade Ones would have to work together to maybe have a chance, and even then, they’d take heavy losses. Victory is, of course, not a guarantee at all. Class Threes are basically invincible. No one except for a Special Grade could conceivably take them on. I’m Class Three.”

Of course, Satoru himself didn’t really care about what silly details that weaklings kept trying to attach to his strength. Still, it was fun to see how they quibbled about it. Class Three. All but telling him that he could just do whatever he wanted.

The Gojo clan had pushed for the formation of this rating system, and the Big Three had hoped for it to be able to create pressure on Hibana Teira to reveal her own strength, so they could maneuver her into place or whatever. Some dumbass weakling crap.

“Fascinating,” she said dryly as she reached into her kosode, pulled out her card, and put it back in her kosode. She wasn’t actually reaching for a pocket, but a portal. An extradimensional storage space hidden from normal view.

How in the hell did that connect with her Juchū technique?

…It didn’t.

She was hiding something in her cursed energy.

A cursed tool?

No. The portals felt like they contained a living intention.

…A cursed spirit.

Satoru put a pin on that, refusing to let it take him by surprise should it become relevant.

“Class One,” she said. Huh?! “I expected as much. Alright. Let us begin.”

“Start slow and go from there?” Satoru asked.

“What do you suggest?”

“No innate techniques. No Juchū or Infinity. Just my body against yours.” Of course, he couldn’t turn off his Six Eyes even if he wanted to, but neither could Teira turn off the cursed trait that allowed her to become such a standout among her clan.

Infinite multitasking, no doubt.

“I’ll allow you to keep your other Juchū out, of course,” Satoru said. “The ones siphoning power to you. I don’t care if you have infinite cursed energy.”

She grinned. “Are you sure you want to do this? I consider my body to be quite a potent weapon.”

“It’s the only way you’ll have a chance to not embarrass yourself in front of the entire school,” he pointed his thumb at the school building, where he could see so many faces peaking out through the windows. “You won’t look totally helpless before I put you on the ground. Consider it an apology for winding you up all those years ago.”

She grinned. Then giggled.

And then laughed.

Satoru laughed with her. Good, good! Let the confidence flow through you.

“You really are a good-for-nothing, thrill-seeking, piece of shit child. That’s okay. I don’t hate impudent brats like you,” she said. Every word of hers was laced with such a potent miasma of toxicity. Such an ability to curse without holding an ounce of vitriol back. “On the contrary, I always relish the opportunity to discipline the unruly. Very well. Let us not use our innate techniques.”

Then, her face changed.

Markings extended from the sides of her lips horizontally, curving in a right angle towards her cheekbones before disappearing behind her ears. She grew black mandibles like fangs jutting out from her chin. Then, insectile eyes popped up on her forehead, eight in number.

She opened her mouth, revealing the lines to actually be extensions of her mouth, showing a horrifyingly wide cavern of blackened, needle-sharp teeth the same color as her eyes. She licked her upper lip with a freakishly long, purple tongue, as if savoring the idea of the incoming melee.

The most dramatic change, however, occurred in her spirit.

Her aura had multiplied in strength. Her cursed energy output had doubled, no, tripled. And it kept growing with each second, revealing additional depths to her power.

“Do you need a count?” Teira crooned, her voice smoky and filled with darkness. “Or should we just… get right down to it?”

Satoru giggled silently, eyes as wide as he could bring them. “Nope! Whenever you’re ready.”

This is going to be so much fun!

That was the last thing he thought before he saw Teira hit a Black Flash against the ground, appearing right in his face to punch him.

With the force of a thousand speeding cars.

000

The only reason why Yaga Masamichi had given the final green light for Gojo Satoru and Hibana Teira to share a classroom had been due to one thing: the brief conversations he had had with each of them.

Both times, he had come to determine that arrogant to a fault as they both were, they were fully capable of setting their egos aside for a greater good. Even people as powerful as them were beholden to the strict judgment of a responsible adult.

That was why he fully expected their inevitable showdown to not turn into a disaster for Tokyo Jujutsu Academy. They would stop before any major property damage or collateral injuries occurred. They were foolish children too hopped up on pride and ego for their own good, but they had a spark of righteousness each that was difficult to ignore.

That didn’t make it any less of a headache as he stomped through the hallways of the school. “You there! Go inside, now!” he barked at a few seventh-graders who were still milling about in the hallways. They immediately jumped to attention and rushed into their classrooms as if to escape a horrible monster. Yaga hated shouting at children, but the protections inside each of the classrooms were extra sturdy. They would be safer inside of them than outside.

An Assistant Manager ran up to him. “Sir Yaga! We’ve activated all three protective barriers around the main building, including the single-use Special Grade barrier.”

“Good,” Yaga said. There would be hell to pay once this was said and done. In terms of money. The Hibana and Gojo clans would owe HQ for this to cover up this embarrassment to their names.

The Assistant Manager, Joichiro, followed him as Yaga made his rounds. “S-sir… why aren’t we stopping them from fighting? One word from HQ—“

“And they’ll just find some other place to duke it out,” Yaga said tiredly. “In the woods, while no one is watching, and then one of them might really die.” Dammit. Yaga hated feeling this helpless. “No, this fight was inevitable. It’s been in the making for years, ever since the head of the Hibana clan threatened to go to war against Jujutsu Society should they allow Gojo Satoru to locate the hidden Hibana clan compound. At least this way, what little shame they have will keep them in check.”

For years, they had tried to enroll them to different schools. Gojo had seen through all their attempts and had put his foot down time and time again, shattering all opposition. He had pursued this meeting with Hibana with a single-minded, and quite-frankly manic dedication for several years.

The reason was simple to anyone who understood the psychology of children: he needed a peer.

This was how they would bond. For better or for worse. To become friends or rivals. Nevertheless, this would form the basis of their connection.

And rather than futilely try to stand in the way of this collision of two irresistible forces, Yaga would rather dedicate his efforts towards protecting that which he could.

000

As the two craziest people Shoko had ever met in her life jumped out of the hole they made in the window—from blowing away two people like they weighed nothing at all—with one of them growing the wings of a butterfly to fly away…

Shoko took a moment to blink to cut short her train of thought, as it was becoming increasingly confusing by the second.

Instead, she latched onto one island in an ocean of weirdness. She focused on the white-haired guy—Gojo’s friend. She also ignored the grasshopper workmen quickly working to clean up the mess and replace the broken windows.

“What did he do to piss her off?” She asked him.

He was still staring out the window. “No clue. Just met the guy.”

Shoko laughed. “No kidding! I just got adopted by my psycho not one hour ago.”

He turned to her with an expression of mild disbelief. “Satoru… was quite insistent that we become friends. I simply went with the flow.”

“That’ll do it,” Shoko nodded. “But I mean, she seems nice, honestly. I like her.”

The guy cracked a grin. “My… psycho… well, he seems nice, too. Despite everything. Geto Suguru. You?”

“Ieiri Shoko.”

“Pleasure.”

He seemed… delightfully normal.

She wondered if they could all become friends—at least, if Teira and Gojo didn’t kill one another. She skipped up to the windows to get a good look at the fight.

000

As expected, I couldn’t land a Black Flash on Gojo directly. As I reached him, I both grabbed him by his jacket and punched his face, ensuring that he wouldn’t escape my reach. In the split second before I managed to make contact, he dampened the power of my blow by reinforcing his face with the precision of a surgeon, wildly cutting the energy transferred.

I stomped the ground and unleashed a second Black Flash, using it to propel my punch. This one, Gojo blocked with his bare hands. I still managed to make his hands hit his face.

I stomped the ground again, unleashing a third Black Flash through my foot, and transferring that energy to my fists.

Striking was a full-body movement. Half the energy came from your lower body. The other half, from your upper body. I had learned very early on that I couldn’t hit a Black Flash at will against a target whom I didn’t have an overwhelming understanding about—a target that I couldn’t recognize easily as an object no different or separate from the world itself.

To get around this glaring weakness, I decided to give up on hitting them directly entirely.

By using the ground as a target, I could hit a Black Flash without any impediment. Using the power gained from this explosive force, I could twist my body and throw a punch that managed to conduct most of this energy.

Before I could land my fourth punch, Gojo had already wrested my hand away from his jacket, and he ducked it.

Before I could reposition my own body, he struck. I met that strike with enforcement, funneling a great percentage of my cursed energy output towards the place that he intended to strike.

I rendered the strike entirely harmless while focusing another substantial portion of my energy on my footing—

Black Flash

—and my fist as it collided into Gojo’s face.

This time, he did fly back, skidding against the field, his face steaming and his expression twisted into manic glee.

I caressed the part of my face he punched, and started sucking each of my fingers sequentially, before kissing all of them. Yum.

Gojo cut the distance.

He was fast. Or, at least, he thought he was. Unfortunately for him, my senses were so keen that he might as well have mailed me a detailed breakdown of his choreography a week in advance.

Not that it mattered to me one bit while I was in this form.

My senses were obviously the most powerful aspect of me, but my body seemed forever fated to lag behind them.

Still, while he was physically faster, that didn’t mean I was helpless.

He directed a punch to my body. I reinforced the spot and countered with a punch aimed at him as well. I couldn’t move my body fast enough to dodge his blows, but I could move my cursed energy fast enough to invalidate their impact. And each time I made contact, I could feel Gojo recoil. I could hear all the thousands of capillaries under his skin bursting. I could make out the beginnings of bruises that would form in a scant few hours.

Those bruises became promised sooner and sooner as I added to the network of breakage on his body.

He was losing the battle of attrition. Could he even sense it with his Six Eyes, or was energy all he could see with those eyes of his?

In that moment of realization, one fact crystallized: I had figured him out.

I stomped.

Black Flash.

And I hit him in his chest. And from my fist, black sparks of lightning bloomed like a flower of pure, divine power. The air cracked and I fed my fist into the impact as hard as I could, screaming shrilly as I did. “BLACK FLASH!”

I pointed my fist downwards, blowing him to the ground—

—burying him under the soil.

Crack, crack came the silent, but assuring sound of several of his ribs fracturing in hair-thin lines.

I pulled my fist back for a second punch, but I sensed that I would be too late to strike him again.

He was ready for his own punch that landed harmlessly against my chest, pushing me away and giving himself space to right himself in the crater I had dug him into.

His smile was gone.

All that remained on his expression were wide eyes.

Scared? Hahahahahahahah!

Why wouldn’t he be? This was the first time he had ever faced off against a curse capable of challenging him! I widened my grin as well, revealing all my needle-thin teeth, hoping to add to his mental horror.

“You’re a genius,” Gojo said to me. His lips quirked upwards. He looked like he had cracked already. “I’ve never seen the like! Very well. Prepare your—“

I rushed him instead.

Before my punch could land, I already sensed the combo he had prepared for me. He deflected my punch and rained down over a dozen blows on my face in one second, each of them blocked by cursed energy during their exact points of contact.

He kept my body physically stunned, easily dodging away from my range of motion before continuing the rain of blows, having somehow grown faster.

He pulled one blow back a fraction of a fraction of a second before making contact. I had brought my cursed energy to bear at exactly that particular spot over my abs in order to block that attack.

Gojo had shattered the rhythm.

A feint. How could I be so—

The hit went through. My first true bit of substantial damage, though it wasn’t much at all. I tried to counter-attack. He deflected the blow and rained down more strikes on me.

He feinted again, this time on my shoulder.

Ah… I see. This is the game now.

I didn’t wait for a third data-point—the third time he would throw a feint and throw off my rhythm of blocking his strikes. He had moved far beyond my ability to predict him, now. His movements had become more erratic—tighter as well. He no longer threw wide, winding punches, but short strikes akin to kung fu.

No. Wing Chun.

How the hell is he making that showy bullshit work?

…cursed energy, of course. With cursed energy, one could transcend the limitations of biomechanics. Boxing and mixed martial arts no longer became the dominant doctrines of hand-to-hand combat. Not while we were operating under the realm of extreme reaction speeds and sensory capabilities.

His body, oriented perfectly straight, seemed to eschew the force that he might gather from his legwork.

This is why I’m being pushed back. He’s reading my body, too.

Rather than wait for a third feint, I adopted his style, intercepting his blows where they arrived, eschewing sensible fighting arts and my training in the PRT for something wholly nonsensical out of context.

Then—

He tried to feint me. I struck him on his liver. He dampened the blow with cursed energy, as it was a debilitating hit.

Leaving his groin undefended against my rising knee.

Gojo’s expression twisted into shock and disgust at my nakedly psychopathic tactic, but I didn’t care. I widened my snake grin and threw my elbow at his jaw. He dampened the blow as well and was slow to return the hit. Spiritually, his cursed energy was moving fine, but physically, the lowblow had crippled his movements for the time being.

What part of a fight is meant to be pleasant, Gojo?

Remember. You wanted this.

This was not a manga.

This was the real world.

In the end of this fight, Gojo Satoru would hate me.

I wanted nothing more than that.

I would teach him, in no uncertain terms, the meaning of weakness, of defeat. Not because I hated him. I didn’t hate him at all, really.

I hated what he stood for. ‘The Strongest’.

The ultimate authority of the modern world. And yet, he was a child. Predictably, a child that thought he could get away with anything that he wanted. I would nip this behavior of his in the bud, for while I could forgive a child with delusions of grandeur and entitlement…

…I was far less patient about a grown man maintaining such principles. 

The next generation of Jujutsu Sorcerers could grow up to be righteous, egalitarian individuals should they look up and see shining examples that didn’t embody chauvinism, or supremacy.

After injecting in him raw pain from being hit in the nether-regions, I pushed my advantage, compounding it until I had a free shot.

And then I, Hibana Teira, landed my second Black Flash.

This one hit him on the left side of his ribs, further aggravating his prior injury and causing new ones to form as he blew away.

I stomped, creating a Black Flash on the ground, propelling myself so quickly that I floated above the flying Gojo, both of us horizontal, though only my fist was cocked back.

Black Flash.

Again in the ribs, sending him crashing into the grass where he dug a six-foot deep trench twenty feet long.

How much pain had Gojo Satoru ever conceivably felt in his short life? How much pain did he ever allow himself to feel?

He dug his way out of the trench and got up on two shaky legs, panting in exhaustion. Every breath was agony from his cracked ribs and bruised intercostal muscles, though the bruises weren’t nearly as distracting to him as those that were forming in his face, pinching facial nerves and causing him agony with every beat of his heart putting pressure on them.

Gojo had slacked in his training.

He hadn’t enforced deeply enough to disperse the shock of my attacks, even the ones that landed ‘ineffectually’ on his face. Instead, they had travelled deeply, hitting the flesh surrounding the sensory root of his trigeminal nerve.

And any second now.

“Urghk!” he clasped at his face.

“Hahahahahahahahaha!”

I laughed so much that I almost forgot to attack!

No worries. I can multitask.

Though my breathing was shot from my uncontrollable cackling, I still managed to land another punch to his face, smacking him down on the ground. It could have been a Black Flash, but my sheer amusement at his agony had gotten the better of me. He kneeled on the floor. I stomped his back, causing him to land flat on his stomach.

“Go ahead, you worthless embarrassment! Turn on Infinity!”

He balled his fists.

I felt a surge of cursed energy within him. His technique?

No.

But..

A binding vow?!

Before I could stomp him down again, he curled up his body against the ground and sprung, hand-standing and directing a kick at my face, one that I immediately blocked. My foot was still up in the air from my second attempt at stomping him, and he took advantage of that by yanking my ankle and making me fall on the ground.

Smooth as an oiled snake, he immediately straddled my chest and started raining blow after blow on me. I tried to block, and then he focused all his power on grabbing my wrists and pinning them down.

Then he drew his head back and sent it crashing into my face.

He was grinning like a maniac as he did, his spirit remaining stubbornly unbroken. All that suffering hadn’t mattered in the end, had it? This boy had overcome it all, just to get right back into the dirt to fight another day.

That kind of spirit…

…didn’t belong on some brat with delusions of grandeur.

He headbutted me again.

No. This kid was exhibiting something else entirely.

He headbutted me again.

I snapped for his face with my mouth, but he dodged away without even taking a moment to consider the fact that I had almost torn all those pretty features of his off in one bite.

He barely even saw a monster in me.

How in the world did a kid like him, grown carefully behind garden walls, obtain this kind of spirit?

He headbutted me again.

This time, Black Lightning flashed from our contact, and I did everything that I could to preserve key areas of my brain, leaving the rest of the damage from the concussion to be healed later.

This wasn’t just raw talent and a luck of the power lottery at work here.

Gojo Satoru had the mindset of a monstrous fighter in his own right.

Strip him of his innate technique and trait, and he would still be a monster.

Only a fellow monster could fight with such ferocity.

I must punish him. I must break his ego and shatter that wild spirit of his.

“That sobered me right up!” I screamed.

Just as he tried to headbutt me again, I grew two extra arms from my sides. Both my new hands shot towards Gojo Satoru’s face, intent on ripping his eyes out from his skull.

He threw himself away from me in the nick of time, but not before, in a fit of shock and a sudden surge of cursed energy, he managed to shatter my wrists—the ones he had pinned down, of course.

Still, though I failed to reach his eyes, my newly grown palms managed to catch his fingers.

And on those palms grew twin mouths rowed with razor-sharp, black teeth.

They bit.

He ripped himself free from the maws, leaving behind the skin and fingernails of the four fingers he had on each hand.

I quickly jumped to my feet as well.

Gojo looked at me with true shock in his eyes. “That’s… not an innate technique. It’s your soul!”

“This?” I asked, looking down at my arms. “You’re right. It isn’t. I’m just expressing my true self. This isn’t even my ultimate form, really.”

I could taste his blood and flesh on my hand-mouths.

It didn’t taste as revolting as I had expected. If I had to, I could swallow those inverted flaps of finger-skin and fingernails whole without flinching. It would be fun to see Gojo’s reaction to that.

My cruelty warred with my inner mercy. I meant to discipline Gojo, not irreparably wound his psyche.

With that in mind, I let go of the inverted finger skins and retracted my hand-mouths.

Gojo grinned in raw fascination, even as his degloved fingers bled. Meanwhile, I used my new arms to throw my haori and obi off and remove my kosode from my upper body, tying the sleeves around my waist. My upper body was only covered by a modest black sport’s bra, but it allowed my new arms to stick out better.

My shattered wrists snapped into place from a wisp of the Reverse Cursed Technique.

“Ah, that’s cheating,” Gojo grinned widely. “The Reverse Cursed Technique is a Cursed Technique! It’s in the name!”

I chuckled. “Sure, little boy. Would you like for me to re-shatter my wrists? Keep things fair? Alternatively, we can take off the training weights and finally get serious.”

I didn’t want him to start thinking that the only reason I was beating him was because he wasn’t using his innate technique. I had meant to soften him before he inevitably activated it. Then I’d work to counter it while he was weak from all of the damage he had accrued. It was practically a fool-proof plan.

Gojo chuckled. “I thought you’d never ask.”

Then I felt it. I heard it. I all but saw it.

Numerous tiny cracks across his ribs fusing together. Burst capillaries restructuring, flesh reabsorbing the blood from the internal bleeding. All his bruising, all his contusions, disappeared by the second.

It took me barely an instant to realize with growing frustration that Gojo Satoru had the Reverse Cursed Technique.

--

A/N: I don’t want to hear anything about Teira not having anticipated that Gojo had RCT. As far as she’s concerned, it’s a generational talent that literally no one ever gets, and she herself unlocked it at the age of 26. She has no reason to believe that Gojo at 15 is anything more than his Limitless and Six Eyes. Talented beyond measure, although not necessarily skilled in the philosophical implications of cursed energy (how it transforms into positive energy).

Remember: you’re approaching this from a position of perfect knowledge of Gojo’s powerset. Teira does not have that. The best she can do is infer and make reasonable assumptions. Unfortunately for her, Gojo is completely unreasonable.

Chapter 28

It was funny how that, for Gojo Satoru to beat me, he only had to be a halfway competent user of his Limitless technique.

But for myself to beat him…

…I had to bring to bear every tactic of Jujutsu Sorcery that there was.

Even at the highest level if need be.

But Jujutsu was not just about power levels. Only a child, like Gojo, would assume such a thing.

I knew better.

Time for Plan A.

“Arthropodal Aspect,” I chanted, my lower hands tied up in a Flying Lotus mudra. “Grasshopper. Southern Cross. Broken World. Rain.”

My left forearm transformed into the rough wing casings of a grasshopper, while my right forearm grew the pegs of a grasshopper’s hind legs.

I crossed both forearms and ripped them against one another.

The movement produced an ear-piercing chirping sound that travelled directly towards Gojo Satoru’s smug form. The sound, when directed, could shatter an entire cliff face’s depth by almost a foot.

A second later, he dug into his ear with his pinky. “Kinda loud. Try again, maybe?”

Dammit. Alright then, Plan B.

I ejected hundreds of large shikigami from my body just then. Fireflies in the hundreds, whose shine were piercing.

Then I released winged silverfish, with carapaces so reflective that they acted as mirrors.

Plan C.

While I set the attack up, I released some of my pressurized canister bugs. They were beetles with distended, circular bodies holding onto poison fumes by the very skin of their teeth. From this distance, none of their fumes would reach the school.

I released all five canister bugs around Gojo.

A halo of pristine air surrounded Gojo, from which no poison could enter.

That much was expected.

I was intending on keeping his surroundings poisoned until he ran out of air. It was—

I sensed him drawing in fresh air from the poison cloud.

His Infinity was automatically doing the work of keeping his aura well-ventilated, replacing old air with new, still letting no poison enter.

Dammit. That plan goes out the window.

And he still hasn’t moved. He was just taking it all on his Infinity, patiently waiting for me to break.

Trying to induce true despair, are we? I grinned. I liked his style.

 My fireflies and silverfish had finally finished setting up my Archimedes’ death ray.

The light struck Gojo head-on with a thin beam that was thousands of degrees hot.

Some of the light got through, but most of it couldn’t penetrate. Clearly. He wasn’t burning in the slightest.

“My Infinity detects all methods of attack that might threaten me, and acts accordingly,” he explained. “This is done in conjunction with my Six Eyes, which, aside from granting me superior sensory capabilities, basically turns my brain into a computer of a sort. It’s running a software protecting me at all times.”

What absolute bullshit.

And then he had the nerve to reveal his hand to me. I wondered how effective that would be since I already knew the basics of his technique. Though not its extended applications.

I watched as his aura of Infinity grew even as his cursed energy output didn’t increase. Well played, Gojo.

Alright, screw this. Time to face the facts: this is an all-or-nothing defense, exactly as I suspected.

Even the Khepri’s Judgments waiting at the edge of my natural two-hundred mile range could do nothing at this point. Worse, if any of them missed, I would destroy the entirety of campus.

And much of Tokyo, really.

There just wasn’t any getting through with my cursed technique.

In my seven years of staying inside a kodoku jar filled to the brim with the purified essence of poisons secreted directly from my Juchū, I had of course filled many such vessels with an equally powerful blend of noxious liquids in which I marinated over a thousand different tools throughout the years. Some, I bathed with directly, though it didn’t make a difference in their strength.

No, the only tools that had truly become one-of-a-kind due to this proximity to myself were my eyes—and only then, because I had also made them a part of my soul.

Still, out of all the different tools, ninety-seven of them had engraved Innate Techniques, making them Special Grade cursed tools according to how Jujutsu Society classified them.

That didn’t make them as powerful as a Special Grade sorcerer, of course. Such a thing would be inconceivable.

Indeed, over the months that I had been training my body using a variety of our Special Grade tools, I had learned the true use of a cursed tool: to be in the hand of a master of fundamental cursed techniques—preferably one without an innate technique to their name.

The cursed tool’s main role was to make the weak strong.

And to allow a certain degenerate to perform jujutsu to his heart’s content.

It didn’t take me long to swallow the fact that before the might of Gojo Satoru, I was indeed ‘the weak’, in need of this strength.

I gave away all these Special Grade cursed tools to the clan’s strongest fighters, holding back only the ones with ‘Trump’ capabilities.

That was, abilities that affected other abilities. Engraved innate techniques whose activations could affect cursed energy output or the orderly function of a cursed technique in various ways.

“I sense that you harbor a lot of hatred for me,” Gojo said. “I don’t really get why. I know that my clan told me to consider you an enemy. Told me all sorts of stories about what your clan were responsible for in ancient history. I never really took any of that crap to heart. I just wanted to see what you could do. Always have.”

I paused, finding my words slowly. “I… find your way of being to be insufferable. I carry an immense burden to improve the lives of everyone I’ve taken responsibility for. My own clan, and the children of this school, most of whom I located with my Juchū. My intention is to reform the customs of Jujutsu Society that I find to be regressive. I do this by cursing myself indiscriminately in order to bless the world. You… haven’t demonstrated an ounce of such a resolve, or initiative, or really a belief in anything. And yet you are the strongest. Don’t you find that to be a waste? An injustice?”

The more I had waited to prepare for my inevitable clash with Gojo Satoru, the more reasons I had found to view him in a less than charitable light. The strongest sorcerer of the modern era was a carefree child.

He ought to be a carefree child.

But not the strongest. Not at the same time.

I couldn’t allow that to be the case.

Gojo blew a raspberry. The cloud of noxious gases finally dissipated completely. “There you go, assigning meaning to strength, like any old weakling would. Girl, I just happen to be strong, alright? I don’t need to be anything else but that if I don’t want to.”

“You can just… shake off the weight of all the lives that hinge on your actions?” I said. “You can do that without flinching?”

His expression flickered slightly. He frowned, eyes slightly contrite. He scratched the back of his head. “I don’t normally go in for oldie politics-chatter, so if you can just—“

“You can either be a carefree child, or the strongest,” I said. “It’s one or the other, dammit. I won’t let you choose both.”

“Let me?” He grimaced in pure, unbridled disgust. “What makes you think I need your permission to do any damn thing?”

“The law of Jujutsu,” I said. “Where the strongest rule.”

I mentally transmitted to Michiko to open up a portal. I shoved all four of my hands into it, retrieving a quartet of daggers. I used my Juchū to immediately spin a circuit of temporary spider silk onnecting all four of them, and jumped before releasing them all around Gojo.

One done.

I retrieved a sharp dagger and shoved it into my chest, stopping my heart.

Two done.

Then, I retrieved one final item: a blacksmith’s hammer.

I let a centipede crawl out from my palm, wrapping it around the hammer’s handle.

“Hm,” Gojo watched the entire process dispassionately. “I shouldn’t be surprised. You are a monster.”

The formation around the tied-up knives lit up, creating a barrier that immediately lowered the output of whoever was inside the barrier by half. Now, Gojo wouldn’t have the resources to use his extension technique.

The Binding Vow inside the knife I had stabbed into my heart allowed the user to sacrifice their heart in exchange for one sure-hit attack. Usually, that sacrifice meant more, but with the Reverse Cursed Technique, it didn’t matter.

And the hammer? Once its innate technique was activated, it could only swing in a downwards arc, and it would not stop until it hit the ground.

Gojo would try to dodge this one. I was sure of it.

I wouldn’t let him.

A few of my pre-prepared shikigami flew down from the sky towards Gojo.

They were not my kamakiri—I didn’t employ those against enemy sorcerers anymore, not after what Toji had done to them. Instead, I preferred to use a different model that I had dubbed Reaper Ants.

The Reaper Ants were four-limbed creatures with two arms and two legs. They were covered in a black carapace, and in their hands, they wielded Injector Swords. These were a merged Juchū shikigami that took the shape of swords. These swords could be infused with cursed energy from the Reaper Ants, and also had their own stockpile of cursed energy.

The real secret was the substance contained inside the length of the swords—a purified, magnified version of a poison that could erode cursed techniques.

Both of the ants flew towards Gojo.

I grew an additional two arms, and twisted four of my hands into a complex multi-joined mudra. A mouth opened up on my throat, and then another between my collarbones. They chanted streams of incantations at the same time, allowing the Reaper Ants to work to their fullest potential.

It typically wasn’t possible for me to add more than two million Juchū and change to a shikigami like the kamakiri without just making them bigger. And bigger was better for many purposes.

For the purposes of anti-personnel combat against highly skilled targets like Toji and Gojo Satoru?

It wasn’t nearly enough.

By combining handsigns and incantations, I could finally compress several tens of millions of Juchū into a smaller frame, creating monstrosities that could keep up, or even outspeed monsters like Toji. All it required was keeping my mouth and hands full with incantations, which would usually prevent me from holding weapons—but that’s where the extra arms came in.

My torso elongated slightly to accommodate the extra growths, and I began to swing the blacksmith’s anvil over my head like a lasso, using the ever-increasing length of my centipede shikigami growing out from my palm as a rope.

Gojo looked surprised at the speed of the Reaper Ants and my transformation, though none of it mattered enough that he felt the need to protect himself any further. Infinity had shrunk in size, but it was still easily protecting him.

The Reaper Ants released the cursed technique toxin.

It dissipated into the Infinite distance between the tips of the blades and his skin, not coming into contact with anything.

Dammit.

I had somewhat expected this.

The cursed technique poison worked to destroy cursed techniques by targeting the ‘weave’ of cursed energy that enabled the technique’s effect.

Infinity protected that weave with… well, an infinite distance. And in that infinite distance, there was no weave of cursed energy to be found, enabling this ability.

Fuck. Whatever. Time for Plan E.

I released the hammer in a wide over-head arc, adding more and more slack to the centipede rope to prevent it from releasing early.

Right when the arc coincided with a path to his head, I sent cursed energy through my Juchū, into the blacksmith’s hammer.

“Alright, that’s enough,” Gojo drawled.

He raised his hand, intent on meeting the hammer.

Big mistake.

The hammer’s Innate Technique activated, becoming an irresistible force of downward descent.

Gojo turned his opened hand into a finger gun.

A flash of red, and the hammer exploded. Red. No, forget the color. That was Positive energy channeled through a technique.

Had this been his Cursed Technique: Reversal?

He then grabbed one of the Reaper Ants by the throat before punching its head clean off, doing the same to the ant behind him.

He ripped the barrier technique off the ground with contemptuous ease and then directed a palm at me. “Maximum Output: Blue!”

I ran away.

A ball of searing blue light that acted as a black hole for my purposes chased after me, ravaging what was left of the field with contempt as I ran every which way to avoid it.

Gojo grinned with glee and malice as he chased me down without having to move a finger.

“What right do you have to lecture me?!” Gojo shouted over the sound of the world being destroyed by his own power. “None of you can dictate my path! It’s mine to choose as I please!”

I really hoped it wouldn’t have to come to this.

Rejecting my earnest plea for him to take his role seriously. Rejecting the call of responsibility. Wanting the benefit of his status as well as the benefits of being a child…

I had killed so many people in my quest to bring about a fairer world, for myself and those in my generation. Committed unspeakably heinous acts for the sake of a more just tomorrow.

Gojo Satoru… did not have the qualifications to stand besides me.

Once he let go of his Blue, I clasped all of my hands together and grew two extra mouths. As I did, all the Juchū floating above us in the air took the vague shape of a dome, helping me better picture the Barrier Technique.

Gojo’s eyes widened in abject horror.

And mine, as well as my mouth, widened in pure glee.

Oh? What’s that, little boy?

Did someone fail to unlock their Domain Expansion before our big fight?!

 All my mouths synched as one. Five voices, four of which should have belonged to my sisters, spoke as one, twisting reality into the shape of our inner souls.

Plan… F.

“Domain Expansion: Scarab-Faced Goddess’ Necropolis!”

000

From the moment that Geto Suguru had laid eyes on that girl, Teira, he’d felt a chill grow up his spine. She hadn’t seemed human at first. Not on account of her looks at first.

No, Suguru saw it in her movements. She seemed supernaturally still at all times, her motions measured and smooth, like she was going through life at… a higher framerate than others. It didn’t seem like she belonged.

Owing to his cursed technique, he had of course pondered a question: was she, too, a cursed spirit? Suguru could sense them better than he could sense other sorcerers. To him, they almost lit up in his senses like food, which was ironic considering how bad they tasted going down. Still, something in his spirit always urged him towards them.

Teira, however, did not feel like a cursed spirit.

Nor did she feel entirely human.

Suguru was new to this world of curses and sorcery, even though he had spent the better part of a year hunting down cursed spirits in his hometown during his spare time. He didn’t actually know what was sacred and what wasn’t. He had been worried that his own technique might be construed by more advanced sorcerers as blasphemous, or something similar. After all, he was taking in the power of cursed spirits.

Teira, too, was doing something similar, for certain. Suguru could sense it. Something about her evoked the nature of a true cursed spirit.

And as he watched the savage battle occurring on the field outside of the window to homeroom, he felt more and more sure that Teira was skirting the ‘line’ far closer than he could.

The more she transformed, the more monstrous she became to his senses.

Was it right to fear her?

Was it wrong to accept her?

Suguru looked to the side, where the two resident delinquents of the class had been carted back by Teira’s shikigami. Their paralysis had worn off some minutes ago, and now they were staring at the fight in open-mouthed terror.

“You know,” Ieiri said airily. “I always used to root for the monster. In those superhero shows we all watched as kids. Though I only paid attention to the dumb fights.”

“Which one’s the monster?” Suguru remarked. Teira for… everything. Or Satoru, for not immediately running for the hills upon facing her.

In fact, he was beginning to push her back now. His shield was on and nothing she tried could get through.

“She’s actually nice,” Ieiri said. “She likes old-timey American music from the 50s to the 70s, and she keeps talking about anime even though no one asks. If you ask me, I think Gojo started it.”

Suguru laughed slightly.

“Who the hell is she?!” one of the girls in class asked. She was very pretty, and she had modified her dress into a cheongsam of some kind.

“Hibana Teira,” one guy said. Suguru looked to him. He had glasses and wore a neatly pressed trench coat customization of the standard uniform. “One-hundred and third clan head of the Hibana clan. It took a moment for me to recognize her. I believe, however, that many of us in this school have already encountered her—through her shikigami.”

“No way,” Ieiri said.

“What, you mean the moth woman?” The girl replied.

“Ah, yeeeah,” a hoodie-wearing guy with dreadlocs grinned. “She’s bug girl? You sure?”

“I’m positive,” the guy in the trench coat said.

“Shit!” Satoshi Ren cursed up a storm. “She’s—she saved my damn life!”

“Wha—me too!” Suzuki Yui shouted.

One mousy girl raised a hand. “Me… me too.”

“Who the hell’s the other guy?” Satoshi asked.

“You’re the one that said his name,” hoodie guy said.

“I just heard from the teacher that he was the strongest. Asked him in my interview is all,” Satoshi replied. “But seriously. Who is he?”

“Gojo Satoru, supposedly,” a tall and fat guy said. “It was said as if it was meant to speak for itself.”

Suguru put the dots together. “None of us are from sorcerous backgrounds. That’s why we don’t know him,” Suguru said. “But yes. Supposedly, he’s well-known in this world.”

And for good reason.

“…I have a thousand on Teira winning,” Ieiri said.

“Hibana is for sure winning,” Suzuki said.

“Nahhh, it’s Gojo!” Satoshi shouted.

That’s when a giant dome of darkness swallowed up the field.

000

A statue appeared behind me, made of many bronze figures of superheroes twisting together into a pyramidal mound to hold up a statue of myself, one-armed, wearing a jetpack, wearing the same costume as I had all those years ago.

And around us grew a city littered with insect-riddled corpses, flooded streets and destroyed buildings. The sky above was choked with bugs, and the golden sun behind the sky was barely visible.

As my Domain expanded, Gojo Satoru made two gestures.

He pointed his index and middle finger over his shoulder with his left hand. With his right, he held back two of his fingers with his thumb, intent on flicking something towards me.

The purple light that developed on his hand told me exactly what it was.

He had combined the Blue, and the Red light into something unreasonably powerful. Something that would kill me should it be released.

But it was too late. A scarab Juchū was already in his throat, blocking his airways. What was more, it was fully Fertile.

Just one flick of my will and it would immediately begin to cannibalize his soul, turning his airways into eggsacs.

My thought process grinded to a halt as I realized that Satoru had already released his ray, taking off three of my left arms cleanly. No muss, no fuss.

The technique continued past me, striking the barrier from within and destroying it utterly.

I got the message clearly. He had aimed to not kill me on purpose.

The fight was over.

And I did the responsible thing by commanding the fat Juchū to crawl out of his throat. He spat it out, furrowing his eyebrows at me. “A Domain Expansion? How absurd can you be?”

“My bugs do soul damage,” I said as I healed back my three left arms. “Are you well-versed in addressing that sort of injury?” I asked. I had Michiko open some portals, and some bugs go in to retrieve my haori and obi as I intended to dress up again.

“…No,” he said.

“I bet also,” I said as I ripped the knife out from my chest, restarting my heart, “That you don’t know how to oxygenate your own brain, either, as you worked to try and stem the damage. I assume you’d try to rip your throat out, bug and all, before it could Reproduce, but I assure you, that wouldn’t have worked. I had more time to attack than you. Even if attacking would have meant my death.”

“So then it’s a draw,” he said. “I wouldn’t have needed my throat to release my final attack against you. Obviously.”

I retracted my arms and started putting on my uniform. “I’m aware,” I said quietly. I sighed. A disappointing outcome, but I wouldn’t act the child by trying to litigate it. I had held back on some options. I could have used my ultimate Arthropodal Aspect technique to increase my speed enough to maybe dodge the purple attack and keep asphyxiating Gojo until he lost consciousness.

Instead, I had kept what little cards I hadn’t revealed close to my chest, thinking that just the Domain Expansion alone would have been enough. I had accounted for every technique but the last one.

And it was a technique whose sheer velocity utterly outstripped my own reaction speed.

In my boundless confidence, I hadn’t considered that anyone could possess such an absurd power. Would Arthropodal Aspect even have helped?

Maybe not while the purple attack was already formed and in transit. But now that I knew what to look out for, he would never take me by surprise again.

“Even if I was able to get through your Infinity, we never decided on a win condition. With the Reverse Cursed Technique in play, only the one who first ran out of cursed energy would lose, and you seem unable to spend your energy to such an extent in the first place. You have perfect efficiency.”

“And you have a pipeline of infinite cursed energy coming to you from all over the country,” Gojo spat. “Even if I tried to cut you off from the source using Infinity, I’d be drawing your physical body way too close to me for comfort.”

I wondered why he hadn’t tried to do that. I had to assume that the neutral application of Limitless, the Infinity technique, had a range limit. And the only way around that was to pour more energy into his technique in order to utilize its extension, ‘Blue’, or the ball of gravity. 

Although a mutual tie was disappointing, I did have another card up my sleeve, one that I was glad I hadn’t revealed just yet.

And…

‘What did you learn from his Limitless, Michiko?’ I transmitted to my partner spirit.

‘More than I could have possibly imagined.’

‘You think you can get through?’

‘Need more… I need to see more of it…’

I sighed and nodded.

Eventually, she’d have enough data to work with. Michiko’s technique allowed her to bend time and space, though it mostly ever extended to expanding space in small spaces, and accelerating time.

“You really are a demon,” Gojo remarked at me. “Like, there is something seriously, deeply wrong with you.”

“Thank you. I try,” I smiled.

He returned the grin. “Well, I can’t say this wasn’t a disappointment.” He approached me, hand outstretched. “Let’s take it easy for the time being. I’m sure we gave Yaga a huge scare.”

My shikigami had me redonning my uniform properly. I noted that despite the intensity of our battle, Gojo’s shirt had not a scratch on it. That was cursed spider silk for you. Incredibly strong and cut-resistant, and it even did a fair bit to limit shock as well. Thanks to my contract with the schools, all the uniforms were made of them.

As I summoned more Juchū to help even out the ground of the savaged field, filling the holes and otherwise clearing away the evidence of our incredible battle, I looked at Gojo’s outstretched hand. “You’re not who I thought you were,” I said. “You’re somehow better,” in that he wasn’t some snot-nosed nepo-baby that coasted by on pure talent. He had the mindset of a ferocious fighter. “And yet, worse.” Because he used these qualities to inadvertently prop up a corrupt Society through his sheer presence.

In the end, I simply had to accept that he was a child, and that this sort of an attitude was his prerogative. For the time being. I took the hand. Just to give the onlookers a more positive view that they could aspire to. I also receded all my facial changes, packing it all tightly into my soul. “You have time to grow up. Take your time, but do grow up. And if you ever get in my way, Gojo Satoru—”

“Yeah, yeah, I get the gist, psycho.” He seemed a little concerned as he said so.

“Good,” I nodded.

I mentally prepared for a reaming as I sensed Yaga finally exist the main building and stomp over towards us. The teacher had all but given up on stopping us from fighting, and was instead planning on punishing us for our blatant breach of the school rules. He intended to make a public example out of us.

For the sake of my political ambition, and for the children who no doubt had quite the fright watching us fight, I decided that I would submit to his discipline. That would reduce some of the tension, make the kids believe that the administration had anything under control.

“Are you two knuckleheads quite done?!” the man roared.

Damn. I need a drink.

Chapter 29

Dojima Hatori, the principal of Tokyo Jujutsu Academy, was deep in the throes of a passionate speech to the entire high school student body consisting of about a hundred people.

My freshman year wasn’t divided into more classes, so really, there were only twelve freshmen all in all. There would have been more, but I was guessing that the administration had decided to send those candidates to Kyoto instead, leaving the Tokyo School with fewer students. And they had likely done this because they knew that Gojo and I would be going to the same school.

I wasn’t seated at the back of the row of chairs alongside my other classmates. No, I was standing in one corner of the large ceremony hall, facing the wall. Gojo faced the adjacent corner. And we were at the front, where all the students could see us.

Yaga’s idea of a good punishment.

I let a small Juchū with a human mouth crawl over to him along the walls, unseen to the crowd. While principal Hatori waxed poetic about the sacred mission of sorcerers, I whispered to Gojo.

“This is all your fault, you know.”

“My fault?” He hissed. “You were all for fighting!”

“You wanted a fight,” I said. “I just met your challenge without flinching. Now look at us.”

“I don’t know how many times I’ll tell you this, but I never wanted to fight you all those years ago. I just wanted to talk.”

“And then fight,” I said. “Say it true.”

“…Fine. Fine! Whatever. Yeah, maybe. If I’d known you were an honest-to-god psycho, maybe I would have… hmmm… nah. This was fun,” he giggled. “I’ve never in my life felt that scared while fighting before. Did you know that? It was a freaking rush! What the hell is wrong with your soul anyway? Seriously?”

This wasn’t working.

Gojo Satoru was completely unflappable. Nothing I tried spooked him. I regretted not eating those finger flaps in front of him. Maybe then, he would have walked away with some lasting psychological impact to facing me. As things stood, I was extremely dissatisfied by the outcome of our battle.

“…When did you learn the Reverse Cursed Technique?” I asked him instead, wanting to dig up more info on this rival of mine. “I was under the impression that it’s an extremely rare skill.”

“Not so rare for users of the Six Eyes and Limitless technique,” Gojo freely surrendered that information. “We do have perfect cursed energy control after all.”

“But the Reverse Cursed Technique—“

“Is about enlightenment, not just control. Yeah, I get that. But you do need control. That’s where most people fail, I’m pretty sure. Anyway, I was thirteen. I was busting my ass trying to catch up to you. Since you didn’t want to talk to me, I got, uh… desperate. I got the feeling, somehow, that the enlightenment had to be gained on the edge of death.”

“Why? That wasn’t it for me,” I said. Neither was really an element of ‘enlightenment’ to be sure. It was more of an epiphany really. A deep understanding of cursed energy that went beyond just being able to control it. It was the understanding of its philosophical implications, therefore allowing one to invert it via a carefully orchestrated reaction. A self-collision of energy, but the formula had to be just right.

Nothing religious figured into my epiphany. It felt more academic than anything else.

“Why, you ask? It’s because… I don’t discover new heights unless I’m inspired,” Gojo explained. “Inspiration comes from human experience. I’ve lived… a really blessed life, all told.” He said those words with an air of maturity that I really hadn’t expected from him at all. “I’ve allowed those experiences to inspire me, and it’s been helpful, but… as you can tell, it skewed my Jujutsu Sorcery somewhat. Positivity is only half the picture of life, right? A full life, with all the ups and downs, should provide more inspiration. That was my theory at least. And the worst I ever got was butting heads with the clan elders and having my video games confiscated. Even then, they made sure not to punish me too harshly, or I might rebel even more. All in all, my life’s been a total cakewalk. Probably compared to yours, too.”

All his life, no one had ever really been able to control him. Or exert authority over him. To me, that sounded like the most blessed existence imaginable.

I envied it.

“But I knew that familial drama wasn’t going to cut it if I wanted to learn the Reverse Cursed Technique,” Gojo continued. “So you know what I did?”

“Let me guess: you attempted suicide to try and save your life in the nick of time.”

“Wha—“ He started. “The hell? That’s where your brain went to instantly?”

I blinked. “Seemed like the natural conclusion to things. So. How’d you do it? Bleeding out?”

He didn’t say anything for a while. Then… “Cursed spirit in the middle of the woods, far away from civilization.” Explained why I hadn’t seen it. I only really had eyes in cities and towns. “Let my Infinity fall so it could get some good hits in. It was strong. Never got to finish it off, even.”

I nodded. “This must have been important to you, unlocking the Reverse Cursed Technique. I wonder why.”

“…You wonder why?”

“By your own admission, you’ve lived a blessed life. Therefore, I wonder why you’d ever pressure yourself to such an extent just for power. Blessed children don’t try so hard. Thus, I wonder why.”

“Heh. I don’t know, actually,” Gojo said. “It wasn’t like I was depressed or really all that inconsolable. I was just curious. And yeah, a little desperate to get stronger. But I wasn’t upset at all, really. And I guess that’s kinda the scary part. I almost killed myself without actually feeling even a shred of desire to die. Then again, I guess it wouldn’t have worked if I hadn’t clung to life so dearly. You know… I’ve never told anyone this before.”

No matter what I said or did, he just couldn’t help himself. He just had to hobble up to me like a lost puppy drenched in rainwater for a shred of understanding and camaraderie from someone else that he viewed was in his bracket of power. That was what all this was. I understood that from the moment he first started obsessing about me.

And it had pissed me off for several reasons.

Although most of those reasons had boiled down to a lack of understanding of Gojo Satoru’s character. Now… I felt considerably less bothered. Especially after this particular revelation. He wasn’t really a company boy at all. Just a kid going through the motions of his immense talent, trying to live his own life.

“You said there was something deeply wrong with me,” I said. “I can say the same, you know. About you.”

“Hah. Yeah. I get it. But hey, would you mind… not telling anyone about that? Or actually, let me word it differently: if you tell anyone, I’ll just… never bother with you again. I’ll know where you stand.” He seemed so… vulnerable. Like he had just lowered his Infinity.

To me of all people. Was he fucking insane?

I grimaced. “You’d challenge me to expose your words said to me in confidence so that you’d stop hassling me?”

“Heheh. I guess so.”

“You’re being really quite pathetic,” I said. “And it’s not a good look. That aside, I simply see no reason to stoop so low if you feel so guilty about mere risky training.”

Seriously.

“I knew you’d understand,” he said. “I mean. What I did was probably child’s play compared to whatever you got up to. Seriously—how’d you get your soul to be that way? Were you born like that? And what’s with your multitasking?”

“I almost ate your finger skin,” I said to him. The hell is wrong with you? Stop talking to me.

I could just take my talking Juchū away from him, but then he’d just have a one-sided conversation with the wall that I couldn’t help but listen in on.

“Yeah, I was meaning to ask. You ripped my fingers up before you even knew I had the Reverse Cursed Technique.”

“And?”

“You know what? I won’t even question it. Anyway, talk to you at lunch, alright? My new best friend.”

I could get rid of him by just airing out his dirty laundry to everyone. Then I’d be no different from a petty high school bully.

Overwhelmed by frustration, I crouched low, and pressed my forehead to my knees, humming in agony.

I really, really, really need a drink.

000

My first day in sorcerer high school was… a contentious one.

As Shoko and I enjoyed two boxes of strawberry milk while seated next to one another in our classroom in between classes, she stuck her desk to mine and leaned close to me. I could easily smell the scent of cigarettes on her. She had smoked a day past, and had taken two showers in-between that session. One in the evening and one in the morning. Her scented shampoo also masked the scent to anyone with conventional senses.

We had just gone through several conventional lessons, mostly going over the syllabus, as well as our schedule. Our final period would be Jujutsu in the field that Gojo and I had turned from grassy to an absolute wasteland of upturned dirt.

“I gotta ask, and don’t turn into an Asura and bite my fingers off if I piss you off about it,” Shoko said, and I giggled. I’d given her a play-by-play of the entire fight, including some details that she had been too far away to see. She had reacted with more fascination than disgust, which was really quite interesting. It boded well for our friendship, definitely, if she could tolerate this much. “But do you… and Gojo… have a thing?”

I groaned. High school, how I’ve missed thee. “Yes, because when one girl and one boy are overly involved in each other’s affairs, that’s the natural conclusion. Even though you saw me savage him in over half a dozen different ways. In fact, I almost killed him. And I don’t mean that as an exaggeration.”

“Eeeh, hair-pulling and all, you know?”

“That’s a patriarchal myth,” I said. “And even then, it only applies for boys. No, Shoko. The answer is a lot more boring, actually. It’s just politics. Gojo doesn’t see or believe that, not really. That’s because he’s… immature to say the least. I did what I did in order to try and establish a power dynamic between the two of us, which would set the tone of all my future communications with Jujutsu HQ.”

Shoko blinked at me. “…who exactly are you?”

I explained to her as well as I could, who I ‘was’. With relation to Jujutsu Society, of course. I gave her a brief rundown on my family’s history, though I made no mention of my childhood. Only that I rose to clan head at an early age and ‘worked hard to turn our image around’.

That also involved essentially bringing in ninety-nine percent of the new generation of sorcerers. Including Geto Suguru and Ieiri Shoko, both of whom had just been given the letters. On my recommendation, of course.

“Oh,” Shoko said, bowing her head. “That’s… incredibly boring, I think.”

“Huh?”

“I thought you were star-crossed lovers, but this is way more boring. Why can’t you just be star-crossed lovers?”

“At this rate, I will nibble on your fingers.”

Shoko giggled at that. “That sounds so pervy, you know?”

I retrieved a big water bottle not filled with water from inside my kosode, took a quick swig and returned it. “Can you do me a favor, though? And not bring that up again? I’m sure we have more interesting things to talk about. Actually, this is quite funny, but I’m currently having one of my shikigami teach the elementary schoolers a nursery rhyme mocking Gojo. They’ve taken to it quite well, if I do say so myself.” Heheheheh.

“You’re not beating these lover allegations, Teira-chan,” Shoko grinned.

“Granted, I am overly concerned with him, but that’s mostly because I just want to hurt him,” I said. “That’s not any love I’ve ever heard of.”

I could hurt him where it really counted now, but…

…that wasn’t nearly as funny to me.

“Oooh, maybe I should poison his food or water?”

“I’m… starting to see your point,” Shoko said. Finally. “Also, do you think it’s a good idea to pick on the quote-unquote strongest?”

“Who in their right mind would pick on the weak?” I asked. “That’s not nearly as fun. And he’s not the strongest,” I said.

000

“I mean, she is strong,” Satoru explained patiently to Geto while he watched Satoru move some sports equipment back to the shed, on Yaga’s orders. Punishment for the morning’s shenanigans. Teira had a shikigami do her work for her. Absolute cheater. “But not really the strongest.”

“But can you beat her?”

Satoru hummed. “Her regeneration is stronger than mine by miles. She can easily keep up without even a functioning heart. Though I bet if she wanted to go full-on physically, she’d need her heart to function. Still. That’s better than me. But the question is, can I beat her, right? I could. But if I did…”

000

“I’d have to kill him.”

000

“I’d have to kill her.”

Suguru blinked. “And… that’s not an option. Right?”

“Course not. She’s my friend!”

000

“He’s a huge pain in the neck,” I said. “But I don’t want him dead. He’s far more amusing to me while alive, and I no longer believe our differences to be irreconcilable. But I do enjoy the thought of humbling him. I think it’s good for him. You know, he showed me a sniveling, pathetic side earlier, during the entrance ceremony.” I cracked a grin, shaking my head. “You should have seen how he all but whimpered and mewled as he bared his soul to me in an attempt to bond. I won’t give you the details, of course. It’s my own little private plaything of a memory.” In retrospect, it was funny, though it hadn’t been at that moment.

“Man. Jujutsu sorcery romance. Not even once.”

I snorted. The more I protested, the more she’d just dig her heels down. It just wasn’t worth it.

Instead, I listened to the nursery rhyme I had made a bunch of kids memorize, to the tune of Fighting Dreamers.

Gojo is a loser
He’s the biggest fraud in school, a
Big, fat loser
No one likes his dumb white hair, a
Big, fat loser
No one likes dumb black shades
Oreoreore, he should go away!

000

Gojo Satoru had made good on his promise to meet me during lunch. He found the place where Shoko and I were sitting in the cafeteria, and brought along his friend Geto Suguru as well.

Interrupting our conversation, too.

“What were we talking about?” Gojo grinned as he put his tray of food and drink down, sitting next to Shoko, who sat across from me. Geto gave me a nod of greeting.

“May I?” He asked. He had manners. That was good. I gave him a nod.

“Of course,” then I turned to Gojo. “And we were talking about—“

“Nothing at all, really,” Shoko interrupted. Actually, she looked far more energized right now than during our discussion about the life and times of Ikeda Riyoko-sensei, the author and illustrator of Rose of Versailles, and her experience in the Democratic Youth League of Japan, the youth wing of the Japanese Communist Party. My intention had been to lead that into a brainstorming session about my brainchild, the Jujutsu Women’s Union, which I intended as an organization that would be the seed of a future, honest-to-god, Jujutsu Labor Union. It would, of course, be a unisex organization, but just the fact that it would carry over the existing structures and organizational culture of the Women’s Union would do wonders for workplace equality as a main agenda.

“That’s not true,” I pouted. Why would she dismiss our important conversation like that?

“I’m sorry,” Shoko said, her eyebrows furrowed in consternation. “I just… I tuned out, okay?”

Huh. “I should have noticed that.”

“It was some kind of shojo manga, I think,” Shoko said to Gojo—

Oh my god. “If you’re not even going to—“ I cut myself off before ranting. “What do you want, Gojo?”

“I just wanted to share some lunch with my new good friends Ieiri Shoko and Hibana Teira, the mysterious mystery woman of the Hibana clan, of course!” he said. “And also because I think it would give the higher-ups a conniption if it got out that we were friends now.”

Huh! He made a good point! “Alright then.”

“What, just like that?” Shoko asked, grinning widely. Just then, a couple thousand Juchū started surrounding us, concealing us from view. “What the—”

“I really only just have a problem with the old guard,” I said to her as I reached into my kosode, retrieving four porcelain cups, each of which I placed carefully in front of everyone. “To me, Gojo—“

“You can call me Satoru.”

“Gojo was less of a person and more of an extension of their will. I’ve determined this to be false. He’s either far worse or far better. But it would be more productive to keep you as a friend.”

“So that you can manipulate me,” Gojo said. Indeed. What use were lies before the power of the Six Eyes anyway? “Perfect!”

He was confident he couldn’t be manipulated, as expected. His overconfidence would be his undoing.

“Uh, Hibana—“ Geto said, looking down at his cup.

“Call me Teira. I don’t like being referred to by the clan name.”

I put down a water bottle that contained no water in the middle of the table.

“What’s with the cups?”

“To sanctify our friendship, of course,” I said as I opened the bottle and powered a measure of sake into each one.

I raised my own cup. “As Jujutsu Sorcerers, our lives are likely to be short, and they will end in agony. Anyway, before that point, let’s try to provide to each other a bastion of vitality and stimulation.”

“Vitality and stimulation?” Shoko wrinkled her nose.

“Not necessarily comfort or joy,” I said. “Just… keeping each other on our toes. We’ll have each other’s backs, of course. Fight for each other’s lives, but we don’t have to be all sappy about it.”

“Yes!” Gojo grabbed his cup.

“Is this really…?” Geto looked down at cup in real concern.

I pulled it away from him, remembering myself. Geto seemed like a normal person. Maybe this was too much from him. “You don’t have to—“

“No,” he shook his head as he reached for the cup. “I’ll take it. Just this once.”

“Alright,” Shoko raised her own glass. “To, uh, vitality and stimulation.”

“Let’s curse each other to our heart’s extent!” Gojo cried.

“Let’s… just be friends instead?” Geto asked, trying to delude himself into thinking that he wasn’t entering into a devil’s sacrament.

But his earnest plea for mercy… would go heard. Geto was… legitimately rather adorable. I’d take it easy on him in particular.

“Alright. Kanpai!” I raised my cup. The others did the same.

We drank.

All three did a spit-take. At each other. Geto’s aimed at Gojo, but Infinity blocked the few droplets that got past their mutual collision of sake beams.

I had a wide beetle Juchū manifest in the nick of time to block Shoko’s beam aimed at my face.

“What the hell?!” Shoko shouted. “That was really—“

“What did you think it was, water?” I asked. Why would I pour them shots of water?

“You’re crazy,” Gojo wheezed. He was having trouble even breathing.

…Wait.

I looked at the bottle.

Ah.

The undiluted one-eighty proof stuff.

Shit.

000

Using his Coward’s Dance, Jun approached all the upperclassmen that he could—the ones least likely to pose a threat to him, even in the social sense. They had filled him in on a lot of the background information regarding this world of sorcery, including the political situation as of late.

The situation that involved the Gojo clan’s birthing of the fortuitous user of the Six Eyes trait and the Limitless cursed technique—a combination not seen in four hundred years. And the situation that revolved around the recent breakout clan of the criminal underworld, trying its best to rehabilitate its image and become righteous sorcerers: the Hibana clan, whose information network had been responsible for the headhunting of almost every single student that went to this school.

Kobayashi Jun’s opinion that the Juchū that had met him had been directly controlled by Hibana Teira. He had spread that opinion as though it were the truth, simply because his Coward’s Dance had indicated such.

The upperclassmen disagreed. They claimed that the Hibana clan itself pooled its strength to send out their ‘Ambassador Juchū’, as those moth women were called by the mysterious higher-ups of Jujutsu Society.

They all had very similar stories, however. Ambassador Juchū had descended from the skies to exorcise the curses plaguing their local community, before giving them a quick rundown on how to control cursed energy in order to prevent the attraction of additional curses.

That the reason why their communities were so riddled with curses in the first place was because these people lacked control, didn’t go unnoticed by Jun.

Coming here… had been the right choice for him. Purportedly, it also hadn’t been a real choice for many of the children who had lost their parents and guardians to the threat of cursed spirits.

During lunch, Jun had debated on going to a roof or someplace high to eat, where he could continue adding to his aura of mystique. He had decided otherwise, as doing so might make his act too blatant.

So he had come to the cafeteria like everyone else, picking out an empty table early on—the table that Hibana Teira was not seated. Despite… everything he had seen, he didn’t have a negative opinion on the girl.

No, his opinion was informed by pure uncertainty. She was a math problem like none other—and boy, was he shit at math. He would simply watch her from afar, observing her until they had any reason at all to interact.

As for Gojo Satoru, who along with Geto Suguru, sat with Hibana Teira…

He just hoped that they would take their fight outside once again, should they fight.

Although Hibana seemed like the conscientious type, given how well she had cleaned up after herself. The field’s grass was a mess, but it would grow back in time.

A most curious contrast of order and chaos.

Unbidden, one of his classmates came to sit next to him. “Hi, there!” It was Ishikawa Takumi, the very tall and heavy-set boy who never seemed to have a moment in which he wasn’t smiling guilelessly. He had a calming aura. “Don’t mind if I do!”

He had taken a large portion of food as well. Several wings of karaage chicken, three onigiri, and quite the helping of cabbage. The portions seemed like they were almost about to spill out from their little compartments in the tray.

“Help yourself,” Jun said, giving him a nod of acknowledgment.

That, unfortunately, had opened the floodgates for more of his classmates to sit by him.

Across from him? The irate Satoshi Ren, still sporting some bruising from his unfortunate flight out the window. Just the fact that he had survived at all indicated that he did have some skill in sorcery. “The hell are you plotting, four-eyes?” Satoshi asked. “I swear, people like you give me the creeps.”

In any mundane situation, Jun’s character would have given regular classmates a cause to view him as an inscrutable threat. In the world of Jujutsu, it seemed that no one was put off by fears of the unknown. After all, they were hunting cursed spirits for a living.

Jun ignored him and continued eating.

“Got nothing to say, huh? Typical.”

Satoshi didn’t push any further, however. That was good. Jun had been scared that he was about to play chicken with this guy. He wasn’t an unbeatable threat, but Jun hated the idea of fighting on his first day.

This was really all too stressful. He just couldn’t wait for this day to be over. He just wanted to hug his briefcase.

He resisted reaching out to the handle next to him. It made no sense to hold it while he was eating. And there were too many eyes on him. Dammit.

More students arrived.

The hip-hop aficionado known as Nakamura Daiki. He bumped his head to some music in his headphones as he sat next to Satoshi, eating his food. He had rolled back his sleeves, revealing his tattoos.

That was all the boys in their class accounted for.

The girls sat on another table. The beautiful Takahashi Hana, whose sheer radiance was a threat to Jun’s act. Then the quiet, mousy Ito Aoi. Suzuki Yui sat with them, too, but the atmosphere seemed slightly contentious. Made sense. Suzuki was a contentious person.

Where was Aomori Sakura, the girl who had been quietly keeping to herself?

On a table on the corner, eating with one hand while writing with the other. Odd. Though maybe there was a serious unspoken threat to her. Her range was still massive after all, even if said range was benign.

“How the hell did you get tattoos?” Satoshi asked Nakamura, who flashed a grin at him.

“Wouldn’t you like to know, MC Hammer?”

“What the hell is that?”

Nakamura clicked his tongue. “Damn, son. You don’t know your classics. Listen, boy: I came from the trenches. You don’t got the stripes for these tatts.” The tattoos weren’t the usual yakuza style, but looked more like tribal tattoos from overseas.

“You ain’t got no clue what I can do,” Satoshi glared. “Gojo’s a special case apparently, but I’m still confident I could beat everybody’s ass. Except bug-girl. Ouch,” he slapped his neck. “Something bit me. Ugh, whatever.”

“That’s some weak-ass shit, homeboy. Keep your eyes peeled in the jujutsu lesson, aight? Imma show y’all how it’s done.”

“Show us what?”

“I’ll beat Gojo’s ass black and blue, and that’s on Big Buddha Brand.”

That was an incredibly delusional claim to make. On a whim, Jun reactivated his Coward’s Dance.

The first time he had done it, the feedback had returned an ‘average’ threat level. Jun hadn’t felt threatened enough to analyse it further.

Upon a closer look, however…

His hands were orange. Good enough skill in hand-to-hand.

His throat? Red.

In fact, his entire face was red.

Nakamura Daiki opened his mouth to shovel some rice into it—revealing a tongue so dark red that it was almost black.

And right then, Jun finally felt the physical feedback like a punch to the gut that winded him.

This… might prove interesting.