Chapter Text
Toji stared up at the child in front of him.
He was relieved to hear his wife’s name come out of Megumi’s mouth. And satisfied that even after death he could still make that white-haired brat dance to his tune.
But mostly he was just relieved.
His life had been beyond rough. Toji had known even back then that he wouldn’t have been able to give his child the life he needed, had been willing to bite back his own pride and pain to give Megumi a chance at a better life when Toji died, but as he had sat in the rubble in front of that six-eyes brat, Toji had been for just one singular moment unwilling.
Unwilling to lose, unwilling to let go.
Toji had known by then that the best way to protect something was to not want it. Misdirection was the man’s best friend. The more Toji wanted something, the less he could have it, lest someone else use it against him. Growing up like that would have made anyone turn apathetic to everything in the world, so he drifted through life making money and spending it. No friends, no family, no reason to exist.
And then one day he fell in love.
And then eventually like all things the scarred man treasured, it left him.
But Megumi had given Toji a reason to keep going. The tired man had longed over and over to just end it all, but the proof of his wife’s wishes had needed him. So, Toji picked up his weapons and created a terrifying tale. One that the man hoped would be enough to stop anyone and anything that would come for his son.
Even if that meant throwing his son away in the process of it.
The money in his profession was good. Toji made sure that monetarily his son would never have to struggle, stained his hands with more and more blood to build a chance, but he didn’t have the heart left to be there. Leaving his son with Tsumiki and her mother had been an easy choice to make for the man who couldn’t stay.
Toji couldn’t take the risk of drawing attention to his lone bargaining chip.
Not from the enemies he was making and not from the enemies he already had.
Toji couldn’t admit to himself that he couldn’t stay because it hurt too much to stay. Every snaggle-toothed smile brought up painful memories the man couldn’t deal with.
Selling Megumi had been a two-for-one deal. It got the Zenin off his back, bought him the time to build skills and money to grab the brat and run if Toji chose to continue on. It also gave Toji the option to stop. To toss the kid at a better place of living and finally let Toji rest if his latest mission went poorly.
At that time, Toji was so ready to just stop.
Only a suicidal person would have been willing to take a mission against the Gojo heir. The Time Vessel Association had tried to hide who would be involved, but Toji had gone into the negotiations knowing more than they even knew. Who the vessel was, who the guardians were, how to get into the school. None of it escaped the Sorcerer Killer’s attention. Even before he accepted the mission, Toji already had a plan in mind.
And knowing he would probably die if even one variable went sideways, Toji still took on the mission.
Already had multiple reasons to take it beyond his own longing for death.
If Toji could kill the Gojo Heir, then even the Zenin would hesitate to confront him. Toji would have such a solid reputation, Megumi wouldn’t have to spend his whole life on the run or fearing the oppressive clan’s teachings. Toji could force them to treat the boy well. If not, well, Toji had already set Megumi up with the Zenin. The brat would be raised with all of the privileges and pressures of an heir and Toji knew his brat could handle it.
But sitting there, choking on his blood and slowly feeling the absurd pain of missing half his body turn into numbness, Toji for just that one second had been unwilling. His one last regret haunted the exhausted man, images of a frowning brat with a missing tooth floating through his head.
So, he had thrown out one last sentence, one last half-hearted manipulation to make the blue-eyed brat dance to his tune one more time, and then Toji finally, happily allowed himself to stop.
And then suddenly he wasn’t dead anymore.
Life chained him down again, stuck neither dead nor alive, but still unable to continue resting. Toji had been pissed. The technique chaining him down urged him to kill and it was just perfect that the offender who pissed him off was right there. So, he killed the old bitch and was prepared to let go of it all again, before he caught a glimpse of a familiar kid rushing somewhere.
The dead man was slightly curious how things turned out, so he stuck around for a bit longer.
It was nice to know that Gojo Satoru had indeed done as Toji hoped the young brat would.
Toji resisted the quiet urging of whatever technique had brought him back, content to end it all again, but a quiet whistling of air had him pausing for a micro-second. To most, like his son in front of him, a micro-second was beyond their understanding. Toji wasn’t most though.
In that micro-second, Toji had noticed the sensation of the blade aimed at Megumi slicing air.
Toji turned his motion of impaling his own head into a thrust over Megumi’s shoulder.
A clanging rang out as the broken chain-staff collided with a sword.
While the blond man was surprised, Toji used the moment to put himself between his brat and the blond idiot who attacked him. The blond was shouting, asking him how he noticed, but Toji didn’t bother wasting his words. He threw himself forward, shoving the blade away and aiming a devastating punch at the annoying man’s face.
The blond froze, but rather than getting punched, he tripped backwards and ended up just barely dodging.
Megumi watched, stunned to see this stranger defending him. The boy didn’t understand the man’s previous words. He didn’t know why it was good that his name was Fushiguro. What else would it have been if not Fushiguro? In mere moments, the stranger had gone from trying to kill Megumi to trying to kill himself to protecting Megumi. The injured teen was kind of getting whiplash from the rapid changes going on around himself.
Megumi clenched his hand on his bleeding side harder, hissing quietly at how it made his wound throb, and kept his eyes on the man in front of him who twitched when Megumi made a noise.
“Wahooo! That was close!” Haruta Shigemo shouted out, dodging Toji’s leg aiming to crush him into the ground. The blond was feeling lucky, having run into someone easy to bully unlike the blond man who had fought him earlier. It was a little strange that the monstrously strong corpse puppet the boy had been fighting had been in the process of killing himself, but it had been a good chance to take a shot at the sorcerer teen.
It was unfortunate that Shigemo had been noticed, but the corpse in front didn’t seem that interested in continuing the fight with Haruta. No, the jujutsushi boy had drawn the puppet’s attention again. The black-haired man had stopped attacking and dropped his stance, letting the pole slide down in his loose grip.
Toji turned slightly to face Megumi again, arm swinging the pole in an arch at the boy. The black-haired teen gritted his teeth and dodged back towards the alley wall, raising his hands for another summon. Blood dripped down his cheek from the new scratch adorning it.
Haruta hummed happily at the sight. He knew that these corpse puppets basically just went after whatever moved, so the jusoshi knew that he was in the clear as long as he didn’t draw any attention.
“Ne~, it must be my luc-” Haruta started to mumble to himself before he coughed, blood spilling from his lips. The blond glanced down in surprise at pole buried in chest and followed it back up to the puppet who had thrown it.
“How- urck,” the blond tried to ask.
Toji glanced dismissively at the idiot.
Lucky or not, technique or not, people who let their guard down in a fight died.
And misdirection was Toji’s specialty.
The Sorcerer Killer moved forward and pulled his pole out of the dying man’s chest, taking one last swing to pierce the idiot’s head for safe measure, and then he turned to face his son. Megumi was still bleeding from the wound on his side. Toji had hoped the boy would have the sense to book it for the nearest medic during the short fight or at the very least take the time to try to stem the blood flow, but no.
His boy was still gaping up at him like an idiot.
Megumi stared at the stranger cautiously. The man looked completely disinterested, now that there was no fight going on, but by now the boy knew enough that that could be a ruse like earlier. Megumi refused to let his guard down only to get stabbed again. He was still bleeding from the first time.
Whatever the hell was crossing the black-haired man’s mind, Megumi didn’t know what, but the man sighed aloud. He shifted to lean largely on one leg, moving the sharpened leftovers of Playful cloud to rest on his shoulder casually.
“Oi,” the man stated, “Where the hell’s your medic?”
---
Masamichi Yaga had known that this night would be largely unpredictable.
A surprise attack, countless unknown enemies, non-sorcerers everywhere. There were endless amounts of possibilities that could occur. Still, the man holding a bloodstained weapon and standing casually in front of him wasn’t one he expected.
The corpse puppet looked disinterested, but Yaga saw the sharp look in the man’s eyes as he watched Ieiri tend to Megumi’s injuries.
And Yaga was likely one of the only people here that knew why.
Ieiri Shoko hadn’t been a part of the Vessel Mission, so she wouldn’t know. Mere stories didn’t do Zenin Toji justice after all. Yaga, though, had met the man in passing at some clan gatherings. A glimpse the cursed puppet user hadn’t registered till photos accompanying the reports of the failed mission jogged his memory.
This man in front of the principal was Fushiguro Megumi’s father.
And for some unknown reason he wasn’t dead.
Under normal circumstances that would be less than ideal, but Zenin Toji had always had a way of throwing a wrench onto people’s plans. And right now, Yaga Masamichi really needed a wrench.
Itadori Yuuji’s shouts had been loud and effective at warning everyone what the goal their enemies were aiming for was: sealing Satoru Gojo. It couldn’t be allowed to happen and the answer to that had just marched in, dragging his bloodied-up son with him.
The tall man coughed drawing Toji’s attention. The Zenin glanced at him boredly.
“I have a request,” Yaga stated.
Toji raised his eyebrow in response, giving a bored questioning hum.
“Go save Satoru Gojo.”
Toji scoffed at that, saying “Why should I? I don’t care what happens to that brat.”
“No,” Yaga frowned at his answer. “He did kill you after all, but someone else does care. Someone under that brat’s protection.” Yaga risked a glance at where Megumi was being healed by Shoko in the distance.
Toji frowned at that, eyes darting back to the boy as well, but it didn’t seem like it was enough leverage. Seeing that the man still wanted to reject the request, Yaga sweetened the deal.
“Fifty million yen, all to your son’s account and my guarantee that even if you fail the Zenin won’t touch him.”
Toji’s frown deepened. This was the very reason the man didn’t ever let himself grow attached to things. They could only ever be used against himself.
“Alright,” the corpse puppet huffed unhappily.
“Take this,” Yaga said, tossing a small round earpiece towards the man. “Mechamaru will direct you to where he is fighting.”
Toji clicked his tongue unhappily, placing the Mechamaru-pod on his ears and moving out. They both ignored the curious looks from Shoko and Megumi.
---
Satoru Gojo was screwed.
Whatever plans those curses had cooked up had worked enough that they made that creepy looking box open. His eyes couldn’t see through it, sending danger signals flying through his body. The box was expanding rapidly to envelope him, and he moved to dodge but a familiar voice rang out. One the man had long thought he would never hear again.
His head turned at the happy greeting, the realization that he had fucked up setting in, and Satoru was enveloped. Now there he was trapped in flesh bindings and without cursed energy. Trapped by a brain piloting his own dead friend’s body.
It was game over.
Not-Geto stopped chattering over at the curse shape-shifting curse.
“Heeey! Let’s just get this over with. This is uncomfortable,” Gojo griped from his bound position. “I’m not enjoying looking at you two, either.”
Not-Geto smiled over at him.
“I’m enjoying the view myself, but I suppose you’re right. Can’t risk something happening.”
The fake began to make a hand seal, intending to close the box, but a pole cut in from above, slamming down and piercing through the flesh of one of the extensions of the box and locking it to the floor.
Everyone froze at that, eyes locked on the man standing with his foot forcing the remains of Playful Cloud deeper into the floor. Toji glanced up at the opponents surrounding him, taking stock of the situation while he made sure that whatever the fuck this flesh box was, it wasn’t closing on the brat.
Gojo was frozen in place, his little friend at a distance looking even more surprised. Toji moved his eyes from them, noting that interestingly enough the two were on opposite sides this time around, and focused in on the three others surrounding him.
One of them seemed like a member of the Kamo clan, a blood-manipulator, and the other two he couldn’t actually see so those were definitely curses. His senses and what he saw from his observations was that one used fire, so the other curse must be the one that was making all of those creatures Toji had obliterated on his way down the station.
They had been rather disgusting looking and Toji had wondered how it was that he was seeing a curse in the first place, but he now knew that they apparently were made from humans. The fire curse was a minor problem in comparison to the one that could make those things. Same for the blood jusoshi.
“You!” Jogo shouted out, “Who the hell are you?”
“More interestingly is how did he get in? Ne~ Geto,” Mahito cut in, moving excitedly to stand ready to fight this new opponent.
Toji huffed a mocking laugh at the curse’s excited movements and turned to look at the Gojo brat bound at his side. The box was decently locked around the kid, but Toji was quick to reach down for a piece of it. It really was just like flesh. Toji pulled it a bit, testing the resistance.
“Seems like it’s just a good time for the dead to gather?” Geto commented lightly, assessing this unknown factor.
Kenjaku knew this man distantly from Geto’s memories. He had soundly beaten the boy in the past, resistant to all cursed energy because of his own lack of it. An interesting specimen that was supposed to be long dead. It explains why the man could enter the barriers freely. They couldn’t react to what didn’t exist, and Zenin Toji was a ghost.
Summoning him was a miscalculation.
“Oi, six-eyes brat, who am I fighting here?” Toji asked, to make sure the brat wouldn’t bother him over his friend when Toji killed him.
“What?” Gojo asked, thrown by the nonstop surprises.
Toji glance down at the Gojo brat like he was an idiot and said, “Your teacher hired me to rescue you, so get your shit together and start fighting.”
Gojo laughed disbelievingly at this unexpected outcome. Yet another dead person was walking around but now they had swapped sides. Old enemies were now allies and old friends enemies.
Irony at its finest.
Gojo shook his head to refocus himself and straightened up from where his binds were forcing him to bend. Toji’s curious tug had loosened the box significantly.
“Before that, you can start by getting this thing off me.”
“Too weak to do it yourself?” Toji questioned nonchalantly.
“It’s sealing my cursed energy,” Gojo answered tersely, shifting to keep Toji between himself and the two curses behind himself. His eyes stayed locked on the body-jacker and Mahito.
“Never stopped me,” Toji mocked back, shifting to leverage another tug against the parts bound to the ground. The box writhed almost happily in his grip and yielded to Toji’s pulls easily like he was just taking off a shirt. He noted that anytime the Gojo brat tried to struggle free himself, the box tightened stubbornly and stuck on harder.
Gojo frowned unhappily at being tugged around, but he could only sigh in relief once Toji got the box off. He wasn’t happy to note that that box had sucked up most of his cursed energy. Gojo would have to fight the snatcher at less than half strength while he waited for his energy to build back up.
The white-haired brat stretched in place, casually buying himself time to recoup. The fire curse took a step forward at the kid’s arrogant behavior, but Toji was quick to shift into the curse’s line of sight. It made the fiery energy pause in place.
Toji pulled his pole up out of fleshy strand it impaled and the whole structure returned back into a compact box, so the man casually picked it up and gave it a toss. This made the fire curse’s energy writhe in anger as it shouted more shit Toji wasn’t listening to.
At his back, the Gojo brat tensed at his handling of the box and that micromovement was all Toji needed to kick off the fight. The black-haired corpse puppet darted off, aiming for the blood user.