Chapter Text
“It’s not here” Rash words echoed to the other side of the line, a teenage girl, whose age was acceptable when seeing the environment she was sent to investigate. Sugisawa Town’s 3rd High School. “No, it wasn’t in the outdoor thermometer”
She tapped her foot in the ground angrily as a shrill voice rang out laughing at her and the general objective. Despite being a teenager in a high school, she didn’t attend such a place, nor was she supposed to be there at such times in the middle of the night. She was looking directly inside the wooden thermometer, and inside it was merely air
At least it was in quite a remote position, and there seemed to be no cursed spirits directly around. The grass she stomped on was dying at a rapid pace due to her anger, but it’d grow back.
“I’m seriously gonna punch you” Maki replied to the man she unfortunately had to call ‘sensei’. “Yes, the box was empty. Not a single thing inside”
The man on the end of the line laughed a bit more, before making quite an unfortunate suggestion that only got on her nerves even further
“Then send someone else dammit! WHAT DO YOU MEAN?” Maki barked, irritated at the man’s final say. She’d have to stay there until she found the godforsaken Cursed Object that had been entirely missing from the thermometer. “I know sending Okkotsu is dangerous, I’m not talking about him.”
“Aw c’mon, you’re the most responsible one here and you know it” The unwarranted praise only served to annoy the already incredibly irritated girl. What sort of staffing was that where students were the only ones that could actually accomplish anything? “Tell you what, I’m heading there, but since I’m all the way here in Fukuoka, you’ll have to at least try until I get there”
“Alright.” Maki sighed. Whether she liked it or not, at least the absolute bastard that was her professor, resident strongest being alive, was the smallest bit considerate. She shouldn’t sleep, curses were usually more aggressive during the night.
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As morning rolled around, Maki merely had to sit around and pretend to be a student, occasionally hiding behind trees and shade to avoid the school staff finding her outside during class hours.
The school really was nothing special. Tall, gray, with uneven heights in its buildings, a grassless field in the back, where a multitude of sports fields lay. Maki, as much as she tried, couldn’t find anything remotely interesting to gawk at. That is, in exception to one thing.
It was a boy, with pinkish hair. His appearance itself, other than the hair, was unremarkable. What truly caught Maki’s attention was what he had just accomplished.
He had been put in a silly ball throwing game against the coach, or that’s as far as she understood from the outside perspective. Regardless of the context, what he had just done was a work of insanity.
He had thrown the iron ball with such force that it easily flew past the markers on the ground, and it only stopped because it struck one of the goals in the soccer field. Furthermore, it bent and broke the pole. He had launched it 30 meters with a single baseball pitch.
Could it be that he was just like… No, surely not. That was a curse only her family carried.
The boy didn’t brag nor did he seem all that impressed by the prowess. This was average to him? What a gorilla… Almost like the Grade 1 student in Kyoto. But not even that one had this level of physical prowess without training.
“What in the world is that boy?” Maki commented to herself, this kid might actually be stronger than her, this random student in a regular high school. Insulting as it was, she needed to dig a little deeper, be it curiosity or strategy that drove her.
Her idea to investigate this boy further was destroyed when he ran home right after talking to his friends. Oh well, it was a plan.
Maki proceeded to sit down again without really having any ideas as to how to proceed other than waiting for her teacher to arrive. Someone like her had no such ability to detect Cursed Energy other than through her vision. She was quite possibly the worst person to send to this mission, and yet, who else would substitute her? Inumaki?
Her classmates were all so weird… Why couldn’t she have normal people like her sister? Noritoshi, Momo, Miwa, all were competent enough to complete missions for her but Maki had a gigantic zombie plush panda, a guy that couldn’t speak in actual sentences, the two weirdos that had homicidal tendencies every few days and THE Cursed Child was… Well… Cursed.
What an annoying predicament. The almost non-sorcerer was the only one competent enough to be sent to retrieve this. Why couldn’t a faculty member do it? They have two Special Grades on their payroll, it can’t possibly be that hard to get them to show up. Hell, one of them was coming right now.
She sighed, adjusting her ponytail before sitting down behind a tree. In a few moments’ time, Maki fell asleep. He was coming either way, so there was really no need to spend her day searching through the entire school while blind to the Cursed Object’s position.
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By the time night came, Maki was beginning to regain consciousness. She checked her pouch to see if it was still there, and luckily, the Cursed Tool that the better professor lended to her was strong enough to deal with whatever was on her way, was also there, inside of the similarly enchanted bag.
Maki looked back at the school, perhaps he had already arrived, and was looking for her. Or at the very least if there was something to see nearby, it’d be in the main building. And oh did she find things to look at.
Gigantic animalistic creatures crawled up the walls of the building, scurrying to get inside amidst the chaos. This plenty of curses should have been drawn from all around town, and it became evident that the Cursed Object was indeed inside.
Maki wished that no one was inside. Judging by the amount of threats in her way, there was no confirmation she’d be able to find them alive.
The girl rushed towards the building, pulling her weapon out of the pouch, and unveiling a red, three-section staff, each of these sections connected via chains. Playful Cloud, a Tool that adjusted its power to the user’s physical strength, and a brutal weapon in Maki’s hands
The girl vaulted up to one of the larger curses, a greenish, rotund six-legged creature that tore through the concrete, but was unable to enter due to its size far superior to the hallways and classrooms. Maki’s first blow struck it in the ‘belly’, launching the creature far away, and knocking a few other curses as it fell to the ground. Those crushed under its weight were splattered like bugs, but the bigger one seemed to still be alive
Maki chose to first find the object, using the curses as a way to find one of the twenty pieces of the Cursed Object ‘Ryomen Sukuna’.
Of course, from the moment she stepped on the school’s hallway, she could already see a plentitude of curses on both sides. A big, mole-like creature to her left, which luckily didn’t seem to have noticed her, while another one was a black leg with a multitude of eyes. She grimaced at the sight, but chose to destroy the latter first.
Lunging at the beast, Maki sped through the hallway and struck the creature with the furthest end of Playful Cloud. The sheer force expelled with the weapon was enough to cleave the creature in half despite the lack of an edge. Judging by how weak it was, it should be Grade 3 at best.
Now the mole. The creature seemed to have noticed her, given that it already turned its heavy body to her direction. Just the sheer scale of this creature covered the entire hallway. It’d be difficult to find an opening other than simply tearing it apart from the inside out. But without a bladed weapon, a curse of this level wouldn’t simply be torn in half like the leg.
Maki adjusted her glasses, taking a stance to bait the creature into believing she’d attack. If she came from behind while it was in the hallway, she should be able to strike it down without much issue. In this standstill, she’d wait until it made the first move, and then, she’d outspeed it with her considerably nimbler body.
The creature lunged, dashing to attack her, and before she could react…
The same pink-haired boy from before broke the window and drop kicked the creature, forcing it against the opposite wall, and break into an empty classroom
“Who’re you?” Both asked in tandem, in different levels of bewilderment. The boy seemed just confused, while Maki seemed outright angry
“I saw you earlier! You gorilla!” Maki pointed, angry at the boy's ridiculous athletic prowess, displayed once again by daring to dropkick a lot of that size.
“Eh? Why are you mad at me?” The boy asked, a tad confused. “What's even all this?”
“So you came in guns blazing without even knowing what you're fighting… On the third damn floor” Maki facepalmed, before suddenly striking with all her might at the window, where her intuition proved correct, and a curse had attempted to enter “These are cursed spirits. Creatures formed from deceased human souls or a collective of random cursed energy. I don't have the time to explain the mechanics of it, just leave.
“No! My friends are here! Somewhere!” The boy argued “Name’s Yuji Itadori! C'mon, let me help you find them”
“How many.”
“Two,” Yuji raised his fingers forming a v-sign.
Their brief period of peace ended when the mole curse lunged out of the classroom it had been thrown in, barely missing Yuji and launching itself out of the building on accident
“Heh, good reflexes. My name is Maki… Just follow me, I guess” She could really use some help, and given that this kid knew the school better than her, she should probably let this chimp of a man lead the way.
“So… Where do we go first?” Yuji asked, surprisingly nonchalant
“Well, lead the way! You know this school, not me!” Maki would usually take the lead, if not outright throw Yuji out of the building to paradoxically keep him safe. However, in the specific condition that he was an absolute monster, it became hard to not even try to rely on him
Yuji shrugged, despite knowing his way around, he didn’t have the faintest idea of where his friends could be, though with a (perhaps overly lengthy) time to think, he had a guess.
The duo bolted to the one place Yuji’s friends should be. An unassuming club room, which was entirely void of life, or rather, anything curse-related
“But what even are these things attacking the school?” Yuji asked, before returning to a sprint. Maki sighed at how he didn’t even warn her he’d go off running again, considering she didn’t hear half the question, but could understand the context
“These are cursed spirits, formed from cursed energy, something everyone has to some degree. When average people die, or fear something, they naturally expel their Cursed Energy without knowing.” Maki explained “A sorcerer like me… Should have more Cursed Energy than the average person, and therefore, can perceive curses.”
“So… How can I see them?” Yuji didn’t stop to actually make any of the many questions he had which could be deemed as redundant in Maki’s eyes, such as if curses were equal to ghosts, or why she specifically said ‘should’ have more Energy or whatever.
“When an environment is heavy in Cursed Energy, or when a normal person is in danger, they will be able to see Curses. This case is the former” Maki’s explanation was surprisingly simplistic, and Yuji, regardless of his less poignant questions, didn’t become all that confused at the concept, regardless of how subpar he considered his own academic knowledge to be. “By the way, kick and punch all you want, you can’t kill curses without attacking with cursed energy”
“But I can still damage them, right?” Yuji asked, casual to a level that Maki found to be almost unsettling
“Yeah, pretty much”
Their running through the halls yielded no results as of yet, as the duo rushed past curses rather than stop to kill them. Two people were in danger, and going out of their way to clear empty halls would stall them too much.
However, their desperate trekking reached an end. Before the duo was a fat, bloated curse, with strange, centipede-like creatures bursting through its fetid skin, and crawling along its surface. The hopefully merely unconscious bodies of Yuji’s friends laid on its blubber, potentially being absorbed in the moment.
“Shit!” Maki cursed, lunging forward far before Yuji could even perceive. Using Playful Cloud, Maki unloaded a powerful blow on the creature’s supposed chin, slicing through its head despite the blunt weapon, and seemingly exorcizing it fully. It wasn’t very strong, she noticed.
“Maki! You saved them!” Yuji exclaimed, only now reacting to what just took place. He wished he could have been more useful, but either way, Maki handled herself very well. “What… Are you doing?”
“Here it is! Goddammit I figured!” Maki’s foul mouth went unnoticed given the strange item she held. It looked like a darkened, mummified finger. It was also quite large, roughly the width of a big toe combined with the length of a middle finger.
“What’s that?” Yuji asked, approaching to hold his friends up on his shoulders. The boy was significantly taller than Yuji himself but the pink-haired monster carried them both with ease
“What I was looking for, and the reason for this whole thing. It’s a Cursed Object… Or rather a part of it. It attracted curses since its seal has been torn off. Ryomen Sukuna.” Maki explained to the best of her capacity
“This wasn’t our fault, right?” Yuji didn’t quite understand what was going on, or what the finger was, but he found it to be gross. The finger itself made his stomach churn and he even felt quite dizzy merely looking at it
“Kind of, yes. It was for taking it out of the thermometer but not for the seal, at this point it was no better than a regular paper sheet.” Maki explained, and unfortunately, potentially due to the overpowering energy coming from the object, she didn’t notice she had been snuck on.
The same mole curse from before burst through the ground, flinging Maki past the ceiling and into the rooftop. She managed to at least block the blow using Playful Cloud, but the Finger flew out of her hand, and to her lack of fortune, it fell right between her and the curse.
“You pest-” Maki insulted, rushing forward while readying a powerful blow with Playful Cloud. She was, however, too late. Yuji got there first.
He had followed the two into the rooftop, and grabbed the Object before the curse, or the sorcerer could. Maki sighed, she wasn’t exactly confident on her ability to outspeed a curse with six legs in a straight race.
“What are you still doing here?” Maki complained, though she didn’t scold him too hard, at least he was helpful. “Take your friends out of here!”
“This was what caused the whole thing, right?” Yuji asked, good question, bad time
“Yeah, why?” Maki paced from side to side, merely watching as the curse too inspected its opponents to strike as quickly as possible. This standstill allowed for a short conversation
“Why do they want this?”
“They want to eat it and gain more Cursed Energy quickly. We can’t let a single one eat that, or else it’ll become too strong for me to deal with alone” Maki explained, but Yuji seemed to have another idea
A loud gulping noise told Maki what Itadori had done. She couldn’t believe her ears.
“YOU DIDN’T JUST EAT IT?” Maki turned back, looking at Yuji who, for the most part, seemed fine. In his mind, it made sense. If he ate it, he’d prevent the curses from eating it, and he’d get enough strength to exorcize all the curses around alongside Maki.
“What’s the matter?” Yuji asked, confused
“IT’S A DEADLY POISON-” Maki shouted, but the words fell on deaf ears as the mole curse lunged at Yuji. Given that he was about to die, the curse would ingest the finger by proxy, and…
Yuji slapped the air, and the curse was instantly, silently, and invisibly, sliced in half.
The gigantic green beast had a deep cut running through its entire body horizontally, while its upper half, from sheer momentum, was launched back with a gross, meat-adjacent noise. Maki stood dumbfounded, unsure of what to do, what had happened, or what any of this entailed
“Heh… Hee hee… AGHH HA HA HA HA!” ‘Yuji’ burst into laughter, with a voice much deeper than the teenager’s own. Maki noticed how strange, tattoo-like markings sprouted through his visible body, though such became more evident as ‘Yuji’ tore off his own jacket, “Light feels good on the flesh!”
Maki said it was a poison, but that wasn’t the whole truth. She instead only considered that option since otherwise would have been a one-in-a-million scenario. This Cursed Object was unlike others. It wasn’t merely a leftover of Cursed Energy from a powerful sorcerer. It contained a piece of its original wielder’s soul
“A Curse’s flesh is no fun! Oh, I was about to ask, but there’s a woman right here.” The one who proclaimed each word with a painful grandiose, a sickening glee and delight, was not Yuji Itadori. It was Ryomen Sukuna.
Sukuna slapped the air much like before, this time in Maki’s direction, and the girl knew better than to believe she stood a chance. It was over. Yuji made a poor decision that, granted, no one could be blamed for. Maki didn’t warn him indeed, but she wasn’t exactly full of time, and no one sane would make the choice Yuji made.
However, rather than feeling her body be sliced into a myriad of pieces, or perhaps just two, something else was struck by the attack. A strange sort of brown, oversized bird?
“Shit.” Complaining onto a telephone was a boy, standing on the head of a gigantic serpent, looming over the duo. He wasn’t wearing a Jujutsu High Uniform like Maki, rather, he donned a simple white kimono, with a black haori. Strange as it was, his father was no less odd in outfit choices. His hair was messy, and he looked like he just woke up. “Yeah, no, a kid ate the damn thing”
“Megumi?” Maki asked, while Sukuna stood almost compliantly, interested in the newcomer, meanwhile the girl was merely confused as to why he was here, his appearances were sparing, and therefore, showing up here, with an interest on the finger was a brow raiser. “Why are you-”
In response to her, Megumi lifted a finger, continuing to hear whoever on the line, before he shut it off, pocketing the phone and nonchalantly turning to Maki
“How did you let this happen?” Megumi accused, scowling as he pointed down at her. “You’re lucky I’m here to save you from him”
“Him?” Sukuna asked, humored as he scratched his chin, he hadn’t seen such lack of care for his presence since he was a child. “You’re a wielder of the Ten Shadows, aren’t you?”
“Don’t insult me!” Maki complained, angry “Itadori’s the idiot that ate the damn thing!”
“Itadori? You mean him?” Megumi entirely ignored Sukuna, only really there now to communicate with his supposed aunt for a bit before leaving once more “Also, that’s mine, give it back”
“It’s not yours! My teacher handed it to me!”
“After he stole it from my father” Megumi flatly replied “And what about you?”
“Oh, finally paid me mind?” Sukuna calmly remarked. He was intrigued, it was odd for anyone to ignore him, let alone continuously so.
“I’m gonna have to let you off” Megumi warned sternly, surprising Sukuna once again “I got paid to not touch you”
“He almost killed me!” Maki complained, yeah, Megumi’s morality was quite an odd thing to unpack but she could at least expect a family feud… From the small bit of family that gave a crap about her, and furthermore was still alive.
“And I saved you on my own volition!” He barked back “So stop complaining, I got paid.”
“Heh… You’re strange, Megumi” Sukuna pondered, he’s seen plenty of sorcerers, but one so religiously tied to the amount of cash they received, or lack thereof to a degree that he was willing to let someone as dangerous as him skirt by…
“Fushiguro.” Megumi corrected. But surprisingly enough, Sukuna didn’t have the power to bark something back. His hand grasped at his own neck, stunning the man, and Maki, who was actually paying attention to what was going on.
Maki and Megumi both stood back, confused on different levels. Especially Maki, who saw the entire ordeal from beginning to now, and the amount of twists and turns that this singular night took was enough to give her a heart attack
“What?” Sukuna asked, but only half of his face moved
“Hey! It’s my body, give it back!” Yuji complained, his voice resounding loud and clear, significantly more mellow and thin, it was a relief to hear such a tone.
“How are you even alive, let alone moving?” Sukuna asked, purely confused, he didn’t even seem mad at the sudden loss of control.
“Well… It’s my body, you know?” Yuji replied, and with this, their short discussion ended. The body marks dissipated, and Yuji had fully returned to his own
Megumi took a glance at Maki, almost expecting her to have the slightest idea of what had happened, but she was even further lost than he was.
“MAKI! How have things been going? Did you find the thing?” Stunning her with the speed, and sudden appearance, an arm was draped over her shoulder, and an annoying, shrill voice rang out into the night, only until it suddenly lowered, and a purposefully condescending tone overtook it. “Oi, Fushiguro, what are you doing here?”
“Oh, it’s you” Megumi scowled, and Maki sighed, disappointed in herself for being relieved that he was here. Only such a wild night could even come close to inciting such a feeling in her.
A tall, white-haired man with a blindfold distinguishing his face. He carried a little bag that he almost stuffed into Maki’s hands. He took a step forward to inspect Yuji further, but didn’t really react at first. The pink-haired boy only looked at the man with a raised brow
“He… He ate it” Maki sighed once more, a bit ashamed to admit she failed magnanimously
“And he didn’t die! That’s awesome!” The man beamed, surprisingly happy with the whole ordeal “Hey, kid, what’s your name?”
“Yuji Itadori, sir”
“Did anything happen after you ate the finger?” The man questioned, turning a bit more professional, but also he seemed a bit angry at the raven boy’s presence “And Fushiguro, what are you still doing here, huh?”
“I’m here to safeguard Itadori.” Megumi replied “It wasn’t the original mission but my contract makes it so he needs to make it out of here alive”
“Oh don’t worry about that, I’m not gonna kill him.” The man waved off, feigning his usual nonchalant style, but Megumi’s very sight made his skin crawl “Why don’t you just run off to the mole hole you and your pops live in?”
“Because I’m not the sort of idiot that believes in a guy like you, Gojo.” Megumi frowned “I could kill you if I wanted, you’re aware”
“Aha! You could try, urchin. Play with kids your age.” Satoru Gojo barked back, laughing all the while. “Take your cheap copy of Spirit Manipulation out of here”
“You’re lucky I don’t want to see your ugly mug either, but not before one thing. You promise to not hurt Yuji Itadori? ” Megumi’s tone shifted, and his voice seemingly echoed with a strange sort of spark, different from a regular volume or a mere timbre.
“ I promise. ” Gojo replied, a bit serious. He had no reasons to avoid the contract, hurting Yuji was never in his plans anyhow. He just wanted this kid gone. The binding vow was set.
“Alright, Maki, I’m gonna let you keep it because you’re family, but my dad might not be nice like me.” Megumi turned to the girl before leaving, but of course, he wouldn’t do so without a bit of a spectacle. “Great Nue.”
At the top of the taller tower of the school, a gigantic creature was spawned, with brown feathers, and a stone-like scowl for a face. It had a large, serpentine tail, and despite the darkness of the night, the sheer wingspan of the creature was enough to produce a massive shadow over the four.
Megumi leaped a height nigh-impossible, at a speed even Yuji was stunned by, and in one second, the sorcerer was off, being taken away on top of his monumental Shikigami.
“Show-off” Gojo scoffed, turning to the side while his mouth formed a gross sort of smile that only a face like his could make look remotely good.
“You’re no different!” Maki shouted, ignoring hierarchy, mostly due to the boiling anger at her teacher for taking too long to arrive, and even then, only doing so when things were already ‘solved’ and simultaneously far too late to be fixed
“And you, Itadori, what happened after you ate the finger?” Gojo reiterated, ignoring Maki’s outburst, especially since he knew for a fact anything he replied to her would only further her annoyance.
“Oh… I guess I just sort of fainted, after Maki screamed something like ‘that’s poison!’ and then I just went to sleep!” Yuji replied, also half imitating Maki’s voice when he quoted her. While the girl herself felt insulted beyond the natural realm, Gojo’s roar of laughter indicated that she didn’t have much of a dignity to save by arguing
“And when did you wake up?” Gojo turned back serious, before immediately breaking this stance by sitting mid-air, to what vaguely appeared to be an invisible chair
“Oh, I woke up just now, when Fushiguro was arguing with the other guy” Yuji replied nonchalantly, not yet grasping that there was someone else in his body
“Well, the other guy is Ryomen Sukuna! The biggest asshat in history!” Gojo introduced “Everyone hates him and because of that, we sealed his fingers and kept them separate, or else he’ll reincarnate!”
“Too late” Yuji shrugged
“I know, but look, kid, you’re special. Like, a special among specials. Eating a Special Grade Cursed Object and surviving is enough of a feat, but overpowering the guy? That’s insanity! We didn’t even think it was possible!” Gojo commented, beaming while ‘looking’ dead at Yuji with his blindfolded eyes “So, can you switch with him? Just for a few seconds?”
“Are you sure? He seemed kinda… Dangerous” Yuji argued, but Gojo only snickered in response, his bright white grin growing larger
“Don’t worry about that kid, I’m one of the strongest, after all.” Gojo ‘raised’ himself from his ‘chair’ and began stretching in potentially the oddest way Yuji ever saw anyone do so, keeping his legs wide open as he seemed to only really stretch his waist “And it’s only gonna be for a few seconds, it’ll be fine”
“But the binding vow!” Maki finally raised her voice again, and Gojo stopped, yeah, he didn’t consider that maybe by hitting Sukuna it would automatically count as hitting Yuji.
“Smart girl” Gojo commended, but directed towards Yuji. Maki frowned, her expression dropping as her teacher almost put himself at risk of facing the harrowing consequences of a broken binding vow “Idiot didn’t even include other people in the vow. If I wanted this kid gone I’d just ask Suguru and it’d be over in a minute”
“Sensei!” Maki shouted, snapping him out of his Megumi-insulting tirade. For whatever reason, Gojo really, really disliked anything with the Fushiguro surname attached to it.
“What? I said IF I wanted to hurt Yuji! But we’re best buds!” Gojo splayed his arm on top of the pink-haired boy’s shoulders. Strangely, Yuji didn’t feel anything of his arm, as if the limb straight up wasn’t there, or at least Gojo was hovering it just above Yuji.
“They will order his execution so bad…” Maki sighed, realizing that Yuji would not have a safe life from now on, independently of whatever he was forced to live through.
“It’s FINE! What, are the higher-ups gonna go against my word?” Gojo shrugged, as relaxed as ever “And also, I can just say I made a binding vow and the kid gotta live, too bad”
Maki then fell into thought. Yeah, Gojo was especially correct about the second part, independently of his hubris, there wasn’t quite anything that the higher-ups could do about it should Gojo lie about the Binding Vow he made with Megumi. It was one made by two Special Grades, and they hypothetically wouldn’t be able to hurt Itadori unless they killed Gojo or Fushiguro prior, which would be, for all intents and purposes, impossible.
The Jujutsu Higher-Ups would simply not have enough firepower. Assuming the other Special Grade under their paygrade wouldn’t rebel against them alongside his best friend of all people, he wouldn’t be enough to beat Gojo alone. The mystery girl would also very much disagree with the idea of killing Itadori, and Okkotsu was a null point.
It is simply mechanically undoable. Gojo’s existence, and lying, shields Itadori from consequence.
“Wait… But what about Sukuna?” Maki pointed out “What if he gets out!”
“Maki, Maki, Maki, you aren’t getting the plan, are you?” Gojo asked, pointing to his own scalp “Yuji, right here, is gonna eat the other nineteen fingers! Then, when Sukuna is full again, we kill him!”
“Oh so I am set to die” Yuji replied, his entire expression dropping in dismay.
“Yeah, but not now. C’mon, you guys are just so impatient, I swear teens these days!” Gojo scoffed, as Maki held it within her to say he was the pot calling the kettle black, before carrying on “Like, Yuji you gotta understand that Sukuna is too dangerous to be allowed to live. He’s terrorized the world for decades, entirely unbeatable in his age! That happened only like, thrice in history when you count both me and him!”
“Who’s the third guy?” Yuji asked, genuinely curious
“He doesn’t matter, some dude in the Edo.” Gojo waved his hand, before sitting down in the air once more “You’re a very special case, because when you kill someone’s vessel, which you are, the person inhabiting the vessel will also die. Considering Sukuna’s fingers are indestructible, this is the only shot we have at completely erasing his existence. You do understand this is bigger than you, right?”
Maki could, for once, agree that Gojo was really laying it all out, responsibly and calmly, he almost resembled a responsible adult
“Of course, if we can find a way to split you two before we kill him, or just destroy him while keeping you, we’re gonna do it, but you gotta get into this with the mindset that currently, you’ll die either way, I’m the guy that’s gonna put your sentence on hold”
“Until I…”
“Ingest the full of Sukuna’s soul.” Gojo completed “The thing is that, even the one in a million vessel would usually be controlled by Sukuna in full, making the process significantly, and I do mean significantly harder. You got your body! That’s insane! It’ll be like, so easy to convince everyone to keep you for longer!”
“Mr. Gojo?” Yuji prompted, and the man hummed, perking up in response “Before I die… Can I help people?”
The albino, for a few seconds, stood in silence, a bit confused, but his expression warmed up soon after
“Of course!” Gojo beamed, before getting up from the air once more, approaching Itadori with slow, but nonchalant steps, and pressing two fingers against his forehead “Night night. MAKI!”
Yuji, stunned at the sudden shout, barely reacted to the wooden baton being bashed across his head, fainting him in the exact second it landed.