Work Text:
Naoya swallowed his annoyance as he walked into the forest behind Tokyo’s Jujutsu Tech.
Nanami Kento: That was who he was set to fight.
He’d been looking forward to this event since his first year; the chance to crush the supposed “strongest sorcerer” in combat had been a driving force since he was a child. How poetic, for it to be a Zenin that would take down a Gojo.
And if Naoya lost control and killed the Gojo heir? A tragic (and convenient) accident. How irresponsible of the principals, to not consider that Naoya’s cursed energy might be too great for him to maintain control of.
He had planned this. He would rise to the top of the school, as was his birthright. He would prove himself to be incredibly competent and powerful. He would engineer moments of ‘lost control’, so that the Gojo heir’s execution would read like an unfortunate accident.
And evidently, he had done too good of a job.
The Kyoto and Tokyo principals, the snivelling cowards they were, announced that both the Gojo heir and his man-bun-wearing friend were special grade, and therefore “too powerful ” to fight the rest of them. That instead, the duo would fight each other.
That Naoya, heir apparent to the Zenin clan, would fight a nobody from a family of non-sorcerers.
On the plus side, it meant he could really show off. His decimation of the Nobody they paired him with would serve as a great practical demonstration of his prowess. The principals would see that they were fools.
Naoya had seen the boy they paired him with: tall, gawky, with bleached blonde hair that fell into his eyes. Even more insulting, the boy was timid and soft-spoken, listening to his blabbermouth classmates without adding much of his own, standing in the shadow of the boy with the bowl cut.
Not only had they paired him with a nobody, they’d paired him with a pussy.
Naoya stopped. The clearing was up ahead, some of the students were already milling about.
His opponent was one of them, again sticking close to the boy with the bowl cut.
“The guy you're fighting is supposed to be super strong,” Bowl Cut said. “Are you worried?”
His opponent shrugged. “There’s no reason to be.”
Naoya was struck by his voice. It was lower than he’d expected, and even in timbre. Confident.
“I win or I lose,” the boy continued. "I’ll live either way. The only difference will be what Gojo harasses me for.”
Naoya’s lips pulled back from his teeth. Perhaps there would be a tragic accident today after all.
The one-on-one fights were normally held on the school’s campus, in the courtyard. But apparently, the principals wanted the two special-grade students to be able to let loose and show off, without incurring the resulting property damage.
But they weren’t the only ones who could show off.
Naoya focused on the spot right between Bowl Cut and his opponent.
He charted his sixteen frames: where he’d place his feet, his hands, what his end position would be. Then, in a flash, he completed them, coming to a stop between the two boys.
Bowl Cut squeaked in surprise, but his opponent still looked blissfully bored.
He slung his arms around them. “You don’t care if you win or lose?” Naoya said. “How disappointing. I was hoping for a real fight.”
“Zenin,” his opponent acknowledged.
“Lighten up, man,” Naoya said. “What’s the point of fighting if we’re not having fun?”
He held out a hand to Bowl Cut. “Zenin Naoya, grade one sorcerer and son of Nabito.”
Naoya didn’t have to say what that meant.
Bowl Cut’s eyes widened, then his face split open in a grin. He took Naoya’s hand. “Nice to meet you, Zenin,” he said. “I’m Haibara Yu! Grade two sorcerer and uh”—he scratched his head with his free hand—“son of Yumiko.”
Naoya’s lip curled. “Your mother?”
Bowl Cut nodded. “Dad died when I was a kid. And this is Nanami Kento!” He gestured to his friend. “Grade one sorcerer, and your upcoming opponent!”
“I’m well aware,” Naoya drawled. “You must be quite the fighter to have gotten paired up with me.”
“He is!” Bowl Cut said. “He’s gotten me out of tight spots more times than I can count.”
“Tight spots you wouldn’t have been in if you took a moment to think before acting,” his opponent said.
Bowl Cut laughed. “You do enough thinking for the two of us,” he said. “I know you’ll be there to bail me out.”
Naoya scoffed. “Your plan is to rely on your friend?” he asked. “No wonder you can’t progress past grade two.”
Bowl Cut laughed again, brushing off the insult. But beside him, Naoya’s opponent bristled.
“I guess you’re right,” Bowl Cut said easily. “But I only do it when Nanamin’s around. He’s so serious, sometimes I worry that he doesn’t even like me!” He nudges Nanami. “It’s nice to see him worried about me—it reminds me he does care.”
Naoya rolled his eyes. He leaned back, removing his arms from their shoulders. “Well, I think I’ve had enough.” He turned and grinned at his opponent. “I’ll see you soon, Nanamin .”
Before his opponent had time to reply (and part of Naoya thought he wouldn’t have, even if given the time), Naoya darted off, clearing the courtyard in a second.
When he turned, he found that Nanami’s eyes hadn’t left him.
Naoya’s gut twisted. Nanami didn’t need time to relocate him—his eyes had tracked Naoya across the court.
His opponent’s eyes dropped from his face, turning back to Bowl Cut.
“That guy’s a dick,” Naoya overheard Bowl Cut say.
Naoya swallowed his unease.
So Nanami had good dynamic vision. Big deal. That didn’t mean shit if he couldn’t keep up.
Naoya stared at his opponent from across the clearing. The other boy stood, clutching a cloth-wrapped shortsword in his hands.
So he was a weakling after all: Relying on tools and swords to do what technique should.
The Kyoto principal walked out between the two of them. “You know the rule,” he said. “No killing each other.”
Naoya palmed the tanto hidden in his hakama. No promises.
Both boys nodded.
“Commence.”
Nanami crossed his arms. “This is going to suck.”
Naoya smiled. “Already worried about losing? You should be. I’m part of a line of—”
The boy ignored him, turning to one of the instructors. “Yaga-sensei, how am I supposed to not kill him?” he asked. “I use a knife. Even when I use the non-sharpened side it slices through limbs.”
Naoya sputtered. “Why you little—”
“Can you sheathe it?” the instructor asked, also ignoring him.
The boy shook his head. “It still cuts clean through.”
“Oi! Nanamin!”
Naoya and Nanami turned to find the white-haired golden boy himself, Gojo Satoru grinning down at them. The sorcerer materialized in the clearing.
The roiling wave of cursed energy rolling off the Gojo heir made Naoya nauseous. So this was the result of a Gojo inheriting both Limitless and Six Eyes.
His opponent, meanwhile, seemed unaffected.
“I got you something!” Gojo chirped, flinging an arm around Nanami’s shoulders. “I figured you wouldn’t want to commit murder, so I pulled something from the family home.”
“You really shouldn’t have,” Nanami said, his voice flat. Naoya got the feeling Nanami meant it.
Gojo pinched Nanami’s cheek. “Nothing but the best for my favorite underclassman,” he said, earning him a disgruntled “hey!” from Bowl Cut on the sidelines.
Nanami rolled his eyes. “Trust me, Haibara. That’s not a title you want.”
“You’re so mean,” Gojo said. He handed a small box to Nanami. “Open it,” he urged.
Nanami slipped off the ribbon and opened the box. He pulled out a pair of brass knuckles. “I could have just held the blade and hit him with the handle.”
The white haired teen smiled. “I can take them back.”
“No,” Nanami slipped them onto his hands. “You’ll never use them anyways.”
Gojo traced his fingers over the brass knuckles. “Those look nice on you,” he murmured.
Nanami sighed, unimpressed. “You’re going to hold this over me, aren’t you.”
A statement, not a question.
“Of course, Nanamin,” Gojo said with a grin.
Naoya blinked. What was happening?
He coughed. Loud. The two turned to look at him.
“If the two of you are done,” Naoya said, “can we begin?”
The Gojo heir smirked, and grabbed the shortsword from Nanami. “By all means.”
“Enjoy the show,” Nanami said, his voice still flat.
“Oh I will.” Then, in a blink, Gojo was gone.
Nanami rolled his neck. “You’ve got the projection technique, correct?”
“You’ve heard of it,” Naoya said. “Then you know how out of your depth you are.”
His opponent tilted his head. “You split a second into discrete frames, then advance to a set frame, cutting out the middleman. This allows you to move faster than your body should allow. I’ve seen your father fight. Twenty-four frames, was it?”
Naoya stayed silent.
“I see. You haven’t reached twenty-four yet.” Nanami shifted. “Still, your ability does not just give you speed, touching your opponent forces them to think in frames. If they fail, they’re frozen into a flat frame for a second.”
Naoya realized too late what his opponent was doing. He’d taken away the ability for Naoya to reveal his hand.
Nanami’s lips turned up, just a hair. “Have I gotten everything?”
Naoya surged forward, but Nanami, anticipating the move, had stepped out of the way before Naoya had started down his charted path.
“I suppose since I know your technique, it’s only fair that I share mine,” Nanami said.
Naoya turned around to find Nanami perched in one of the trees, his chin resting in his palm.
Naoya cut down the tree before Nanami even finished his sentence.
“I can draw a line along any length, divide it in ten, and force a weak point at 7:3.” Nanami walked down the trunk as it fell then jumped off of it into the foliage, leaving Naoya to slice through the falling tree to avoid being crushed. "I choose where the line starts and stops. I can draw a line across a body, limb, or extremity, though I am not limited to living things. I can also extend this to inanimate objects, such as cars or walls."
Naoya bared his teeth in frustration. He could feel the foreign cursed energy swell around him as Nanami revealed his hand, but the sorcerer eluded him. What use was speed if he couldn’t see his opponent?
“I saw how you looked at my knife.” The voice echoed from above.
Naoya strained to track it.
“You think I rely on it to finish fights.”
“Don’t you?” Naoya called out. “You stopped the fight when you didn’t know what weapon you were going to use.”
A rustle behind him.
“I did.” The voice was right on top of Naoya. “The reality is, Geto gave that knife to me because I was too brutal without it.”
Naoya whirled around, slicing vertically through the tree.
His opponent dropped in front of him. “We learned if you punch a forced weak point with your fist, it rips through it like a hollow-tipped bullet. Extra carnage without added efficiency.” He raised his hands. “I’ve learned to control how much I put into blows now, but I’ve grown fond of the knife.” He cracked his knuckles. “I’ll be sure to spare your face.”
Naoya bared his teeth. “Is this a game to you?” he asked. “Is that why you were playing hide and seek?”
This brat thought he was powerful? Naoya would show him power.
He jetted past his opponent, again, and again, and again, blazing through the trees around his opponent, his momentum kicking up a wind current. Nanami’s hair blew around his face.
All Naoya had to do was touch him, and the fight was over.
“You think you’re strong?” Naoya said into the wind.
He was on Nanami’s left. Then right. Then behind him.
“I am Zenin Naoya, heir apparent to one of the three great clans,” he said. He increased from eight frames to sixteen. “You are a nobody.”
He stopped in front of his opponent and tapped his chest.
Naoya smiled, victorious. “And don’t you ever forget it.”
He raised his right fist to slug the boy in the face—
And got kicked in the ribs by a still-unimpressed Nanami.
Naoya attempted to stagger back, but Nanami caught his collar, smashing Naoya’s chin onto his knee.
His breath jackknifed in and out of him, shaking. Spirits, that hurt. But more surprising:
“You...moved in frames?” He’d only met one other opponent who was capable of that: his own father.
Nanami raised an eyebrow. “What, like it’s hard?”
Bowl Cut cackled from behind them.
Before Naoya could respond, Nanami flung him into a tree, his back slamming into the trunk. His head snapped back, and he collapsed on the ground.
By the time he got up, Nanami was gone once again.
But the tree on the far side was rustling.
There.
“Ratio Technique: Collapse.”
Naoya heard the words while he was already locked into his path. The cursed energy surged, the ground at the base of the tree began to fissure, and Naoya was heading right towards it.
The brat had lured him into a trap.
He closed his eyes.
Naoya felt himself jerk back as he was plucked from the air by his collar, careening backwards towards the ground. He collided with something solid midair.
His opponent—because that was who had grabbed him, as if Naoya needed another reason to hate the bastard—wrapped his arm around Naoya’s throat, locking him in place.
They hit the ground. Nanami wrapped his legs around Naoya’s, immobilizing them.
Bastard. Bastard .
“Yield,” Nanami said against Naoya’s ear.
Naoya groped for his tanto.
Nanami tightened the hold. “Don’t even think about it,” he ground out. “You stab me now, everyone will know.”
Naoya continued to struggle.
Nanami grabbed Naoya’s hair with his free hand and pulled his arm in, tightening the hold even more.
“I won,” Nanami said. “Everyone knows it. Accept your defeat with grace. Struggling will only embarrass yourself further.”
Naoya’s head was spinning from loss of blood flow, his ribs were still on fire, and his ears had yet to stop ringing.
He went limp. “Fine. I yield.”
The students from both schools erupted. Bowl Cut was screaming at the top of his lungs, hopping up and down, using Man Bun’s shoulder to propel himself higher, the gloomy girl with the short brown hair was grinning, and the Gojo heir whooped.
Nanami released his hold, and extricated himself from under Naoya. He stood, offering a hand to his defeated opponent.
Naoya glared up at him.
“Fine,” Nanami said. “Good fight, even if you are an asshole.”
He turned his back on Naoya, and greeted the Tokyo students.
“Great work, Nanami.”
“Thank you, Geto.”
“Are you all right?”
“Yes, a few scrapes, but nothing to worry about. Your talents are needed more elsewhere.”
“Holy shit, where did you learn that hold, Nanamin?”
“I wrestled and practiced judo in middle school.”
“Can you use that hold on me?”
“Absolutely not.”
Rage and embarrassment swirled in Naoya’s gut.
He reached into his hakama for his tanto, slipping it into his palm.
Nanami was a nobody. Naoya was a Zenin. His family could make this go away.
Naoya fixed his eyes on Nanami’s back, right where the ribs began. If the bastard was so fixated on the 7:3 ratio, Naoya would make sure to honor that obsession.
He drew his wrist back, then released.
See if he could hide from this.
A blur, then the knife clattering to the ground, and—spirits, was that a dragon?
Then, a foot on his chest.
Man Bun glared down at him. “Want to explain what the hell that was, Zenin?”
Again, Naoya’s stomach turned at the sheer cursed energy pouring off the figure looming above him.
Naoya glared back up at Man Bun, who was currently grinding his foot into Naoya’s injured chest. “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re implying, the knife must have slipped.”
Man Bun snorted. “Slipped, sure. And I’m having an affair with Headmaster Gakuganji.”
The Gojo heir hooted from behind Naoya’s head. “I didn’t know you were into GILFs, Geto,” he said. “Daddy issues finally get the best of you?”
Man Bun smiled. “If we’re looking for daddy issues, I’ve got a prime specimen right here.” The foot on Naoya’s chest beared down on him. He gasped. The pain in his ribs, which had dulled to a throbbing ache, reignited, searing through his lungs.
“I think he’s gonna pass out,” Man Bun noted.
The Gojo heir crouched down above Naoya. “Shame you won’t get to see Geto and me fight,” he said. “Too bad you tried to murder our underclassman.” He drew his finger back and flicked Naoya’s forehead, and Naoya was sent careening into oblivion. The last thing he heard was the white haired bastard’s laugh.
Naoya awoke to ringing ears and a full body ache. His eyelids felt leaden, so he did not try to open them. He took a moment to catalogue his body.
His ribs were still sore, even the smallest of movements hurt his jaw, his neck ached, his back smarted.
Naoya had changed his mind. Maybe it was better to focus on opening his eyes.
So he did, painstakingly peeling them open.
His bleary eyes landed on the form next to his bed.
He closed his eyes and sighed. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Good,” Nanami (because of course it was that brat. Of course he’d come to gloat) said. “You’re lucid.”
“Why am I still in this bed?” Naoya asked. “Don’t you have any competent healers?”
“Plenty,” Nanami said. “But Ieiri asked to oversee your case. She hasn’t had the chance to come up here yet, and given you attempted to murder me, I have a feeling she will be too busy to visit you for some time.”
“Bitch.”
“Call her that again and I’ll make sure Gojo comes up to take care of you instead,” Nanami said, his words clipped. “You’ll find both his bedside manner and reversed cursed technique are much less refined than hers.”
Naoya cracked open his eyes again. “Why are you here?”
“After Geto and Gojo’s fight, I told Sensei I would keep an eye on you until you woke up,” Nanami replied. “Now that you’re awake, I’m off the clock.”
Naoya flexed his hands. “Who won?”
“Maybe if you hadn’t tried to throw a knife into my back, you could have seen for yourself.”
Asshole.
Nanami shifted in his seat. “Some advice?”
“I don’t need your advice.”
Nanami shrugged. “Your cursed energy far outclasses mine, but I still beat you. Aren’t you curious about how?”
He couldn’t pretend he wasn’t. So he lapsed into silence, a tacit invitation to continue.
“Your cursed technique is strong,” the other boy said. “It makes it difficult for people to make contact, let alone hurt you.”
Naoya sighed. “Are you here to lecture me about my own abilities, or to give me advice?”
The boy glared at him. “You could also stand to work on your patience.” He shifted again in his seat before continuing. “You’ve grown complacent. You place too much stock in not being touched and in your ability to stop opponents. It leaves you vulnerable to opponents who can think in frames and can chart out your paths.”
His voice was cool, uninterested. There was no hint of ego in his summary of Naoya’s abilities and weaknesses; he was simply stating his observations.
Somehow, that made it worse.
“I could have figured that out,” Naoya snapped.
“But you wouldn’t have,” Nanami said. “Your ego bars you from productive self-reflection. Worse, it prevents you from thinking clearly in fights. I was not impressed by you, and you let that cloud your judgement. You were more interested in ‘teaching me a lesson’ and demonstrating your technique than in finishing the fight quickly and cleanly, and it made you sloppy. You weren’t even planning for me to counter you.”
“You acted unimpressed to rile me up?” Naoya asked.
The boy shook his head. “You’ll find I am not easily impressed by anyone,” he said. “Here’s my advice for you: swallow your ego, and plan for the worst. Maybe your assessment is correct, and your opponent will not be able to keep up with you. But it is better to be over-prepared and disappointed than underprepared and caught off guard.”
Naoya gritted his teeth. “That’s some big talk coming from you. You cower behind Gojo Satoru. Do you tell him to plan for the worst?”
Nanami’s face remained neutral. “He doesn’t need me to tell him that.”
“And I do? I am stronger than you can even comprehend.”
His claim was met with cold, unimpressed eyes.
Nanami bent over, sliding his shortsword into the fabric sheath. “You’re not untouchable, Zenin.”
The boy stood and made his way to the door.
“Do you tell the Gojo heir he isn’t untouchable?”
Nanami paused in the doorway. “No. And here is the difference: you only think you’re untouchable. Gojo actually is.”
Naoya fought the urge to fly out of the bed and rip the bastard’s throat out.
“And what about your friend? The one with the bowl cut.”
Nanami stiffened.
Naoya grinned. He’d hit a nerve. “You gonna tell your friend his impulsiveness is gonna get him killed?”
“It won’t,” the boy replied. Confident. So confident. “Because I will be there.”
He walked out, leaving Naoya alone with his thoughts.