Chapter Text
Your POV
You remember glaring down at the club application sheet a month ago, hand clenching around your pen in thinly veiled disbelief, as if it was the first time your eyes would do the pleasure of deceiving you.
Occult club. A research club aiming to uncover occult, supernatural, or otherwise suspiciously inexplicable phenomena. Club activities will include…
It had felt too good to be true.
And yet… it wasn’t.
A successful application had you dubbed the fourth member of the occult club, alongside Setsuko Sasaki, Takeshi Iguchi and Yuji Itadori, and the first club meeting of the year had gone down like a treat. The trio were beyond ecstatic to have another member, especially one as dedicated to the activities as you. And they were even more thrilled when they discovered why you’d always been such a self-proclaimed loner.
You could see ghosts.
You think that’s what they are, at least. Sure, they didn’t exactly resemble any of their depictions in media, but they could drift through walls, floors, and you, whenever they wished, entirely uninhibited. As if they didn’t exist, not on your lowly mortal, corporeal plane. Nobody but you seemed capable of seeing them.
And if your fellow occult club members believed you, demanding you divulge every detail of every spirit you’ve seen — to describe their appearance, their sighting location, their behaviour — then surely you weren’t insane. Or you all were.
Either way, you fit right in.
It was about time.
“Ready to go? What do you say? Sasaki? Iguchi? L/N?” Itadori asked.
The other two hummed in affirmation, and you followed suit, despite the glaring absence of any ghostly presence or supernatural vibe. But you weren’t about to kill the atmosphere, not with your new friends’ contagious enthusiasm infecting you.
“Okay, go! Spirits, spirits! Which creature is the student council president weaker than?”
The ouija board marker moved, but certainly not because of a spirit. The other three gasped as it slid around, eventually spelling out ‘sea angel’. You all burst into laughter.
“A sea angel’s tougher?”
“How embarrassing!”
The door slammed open, and the laughter quickly dried up in your mouth. The president really had immaculate timing, didn’t he?
“Occult club!”
“Hey, Plankton President!”
He ignored Itadori. “As you were previously informed, a research club with no real activities must forfeit its club room. So vacate now!”
“You really ought to be more careful not to underestimate our members, President.”
At Itadori’s words, you rose and pulled out a folder, the most recent (and sole completed, thus far) activity report of the club, penned by you and Sasaki. You slammed it on the table for expertly timed dramatic effect, the sound ringing out.
“And what is that?” The President questioned, prompting a fresh rush of mirth in your mouth.
You fought it down to reply, smug smile tugging at your lips as you spoke. “You’re aware of the school’s rugby field being closed off, aren’t you?”
“Yes. Some of the students who got sick actually had to be hospitalised.”
Sasaki responded this time. “You don’t find that alarming? Strange? We’re talking about some tough rugby players here!”
“The players reported hearing mysterious sounds and voices emanating from the field before they felt sick,” you contributed, flicking through the research to point to the evidence you’d recorded yourself. With your two recent sightings of the sizeable six-limbed blue spirit omitted, of course.
“And then,” Sasaki continued, taking the folder from you, “we found this newspaper article from thirty years ago. It talks about the disappearance of a certain Mr Yoshida, who worked for the construction company. It says he was last sighted here, at Sugisawa Third High School during its construction.
“Yoshida was struggling to make ends meet, so he turned to loan sharks. And those organisations went after him.
“Which means! The whole mysterious disaster at the rugby field was caused by the vengeful spirit of Yoshida, whose body is buried there!”
“No, actually it was caused by ticks.” With a single sentence, the energy in the room plummeted. How did this buzzkill manage to be elected as student council president? “Hard ticks to be exact — large bloodsucking bugs. If one bites you and infects you with SFTS, it can be fatal. So be careful.”
“So what if it was ticks?” Itadori argued, though the enthusiasm was unrecoverable. “The occult club is trying to uncover occult activities so it’s still a valid club activity report!”
You cringed. The President’s patience was running dangerously thin. “This is not some kind of kids’ game! Besides, the biggest problem is you, Itadori! You’re registered with track and field, not with the occult club. The club is encouraging prohibited behaviour — unapproved absences from compulsory educational activities!”
You gasped, palm colliding with your forehead, so outraged you chided him with his nickname. “How illiterate are you, Pink?!”
“I’m sure I wrote occult club!”
“I’m the one who changed it!” A man dressed in a green tracksuit appeared at the door. Apparently knocking was quickly becoming an endangered act.
“Coach Tagagi?” Itadori cried. “What for?!”
“Because the track and field team needs you on it!”
Not this again. Poor kid had been pestered by the coach, stubborn and unshakeable, since the first day of the school year.
“How many times do I have to tell you that I’m not joining the team?!”
“You are!”
“No, I’m not!”
“However I’m not some demon. So if you can defeat me, I’ll excuse you from the team,” the coach continued, curling his hand into a fist so tight you heard his bones scrunching in protest. “And we’ll settle this fair and square by competing!”
“That’ll work!” Itadori exclaimed.
You sighed. Sport people were weird. Weird, and indecipherable.
It didn’t take long before a large number of students, yourself included, had gathered on the field to watch the competition play out. The coach, with assumedly perfect form, threw the shot-put fourteen whole metres. You weren’t sure you could even run that far before you’d get a stitch and keel over, prepared to die. It would make you a good sacrifice, in a zombie apocalypse or the like. If you weren’t such a screamer, that is.
Then it was Itadori’s turn. A chorus of cheers rang out, the students around you chanting his name as he stepped forward.
“Is Pink famous or something?”
Iguchi leaned down to whisper to you and Sasaki. “It’s just a rumour, but I heard he beat all the stages of Ninja Warrior. That, or he’s the reincarnation of Mirko Cro Cop.”
“But Mirko’s not even dead yet?” Sasaki, just like you, was confused and incredulous.
Iguchi shrugged. “It earned him the nickname ‘Tiger of West Middle’.”
“That’s lame.”
“I prefer Pink.”
There was barely a moment of wind-up before Itadori’s throw. You blinked, and the shot-put had already crashed into the frame of the soccer goal, leaving both a distressing dent from the impact and the tape-measure students standing awkwardly in awe. It might not have been the correct technique, more of a baseball pitch than anything genuinely shot-put related, but it had flown over thirty metres regardless. What kind of vitamin supplements did the kid take?
“Kinda more gorilla than tiger.”
“Or panther. Y’know, for the pink.”
The pair rolled their eyes at you as Itadori strolled over, a satisfied, contented smile curling his lips.
“You’d do really well in a sports team, Itadori,” Sasaki said with a smile of her own. “Don’t force yourself to stay in our occult club.”
“Huh? Really? Even though you love scary stuff, without me you could never go to haunted places.”
“But we like being scared,” you and Sasaki pouted.
“School rules demand I have to be in some club, and I could never keep this up.” Itadori gestured from the coach and back to you four. You remembered how Sasaki had told him that he could be a ghost member, attending two clubs at once, and chuckled. Yeah, he didn’t exactly have the brain capacity to multitask like that.
“Besides, I want to be able to go home by five. So if you three don’t mind, I’ll stay. I really like being in your club. It has a great vibe.”
“Well, in that case,” you said, flattered just as much as the pair beside you, warmth blooming in your cheeks. “We’re happy to keep you.”
“Woah, it’s already half-past four! Later guys, and later coach, I’ve got stuff to do!”
You didn’t even have time to bid him farewell, to express your hope that the rest of his day would be deservingly wonderful and bright, as he was already sprinting away.
Sasaki coughed, gathering your attention. “We’re going to open up that object tonight, right?”
☆——☆——☆—★—☆——☆——☆
Later that day, 10:58pm
“I can’t get it open,” Sasaki mumbled, struggling to unwrap the object from its paper prison.
“Did we really have to sneak into the building for this?” Iguchi asked through nervously gritted teeth. He pushed his chair back from the table, moving to stand up. “I’m going to turn on the lights.”
“No, don’t,” Sasaki requested. He sat back down with obvious reluctance. “We need some atmosphere. Enjoying the thrill is part of occult club, isn’t it? It’s not like anything’s going to happen, anyway.”
You pressed your lips together. “I- I don’t know about that. I’m getting awful vibes from it.”
“You get awful vibes from everything, L/N,” Sasaki quipped, still fumbling with the paper. It didn’t seem as though it was glued or anything, but you didn’t want to approach the object for a closer inspection. “But can you see any spirits?”
“No,” you answered despite the unease building in your stomach and the pressure growing behind your eyes. The air in the room was suffocating, and the nausea was beginning to get the best of you.
“I’m going to call Itadori. I feel terrible for excluding him, especially now,” you said plainly a few moments later, getting up to leave the room.
The pair mumbled something in response, barely looking away from the object as you exited, sliding the door closed behind you. With a sigh, you fished your phone from your pocket, scrolling through your contacts before finding his. You hesitated a moment before calling the number, wondering if he might be sleeping, but he picked up just a second later.
“Hey, Pink,” you began, voice cracking, unsure what you were supposed to say to someone who’s grandfather just passed without sounding conceited or insensitive. You thought you’d have an extra second to collect yourself. “I just wanted to tell you that if you need a distraction from… uh, y’know… you can come to the club meeting right now. Sasaki is getting close to opening it, I can feel it.”
“I’ll be there soon, L/N,” he replied, though his voice sounded strained, and you heard faint thuds of footfalls and the chirps of nighttime bugs. Was he out running? At this hour? Maybe he was working through his grief, as sports people do? “Wait up for me, please?”
You hummed, calmer now, relieved he was feeling up to attending, and moved to return to your friends, sliding the door open with your phone sandwiched between your cheek and shoulder. “Can do. I’ll tell Iguchi and Sasa–“
The building trembled as you stepped through the doorway, rocking on its foundations. The candle died out, plunging the room into darkness, and you froze, heart pounding wildly in your chest.
You heard the thud of your phone when it fell to the floor. You heard Itadori shouting something through its speakers. And you heard Sasaki and Iguchi gasp, chairs scraping on the floor as they leapt into adrenaline fuelled action, but it all sounded so distant. Muffled, almost like cotton shoved in your ears.
You tried to collect your thoughts, but your brain felt impossibly fuzzy. Almost like it was made of cotton.
And when you tried to move your feet, to back away, to dash after Iguchi and Sasaki, your legs almost gave out — weak as tufts of cotton. At least before your own adrenaline finally decided to kick in.
For resting in the cavity of what used to be the ceiling, reduced to a writhing mass of eyes and hungry maws, was a… a thing — you weren’t sure you could call it a ghost, or a spirit, or any name, really, not when none of them felt like accurate descriptors this time.
You screamed.
☆——☆——☆—★—☆——☆——☆
Megumi’s POV, 11:01pm
Itadori and his friends are idiots.
Stupid, brainless, dumb fucking idiots.
The sentiment applied to one of them in particular. You.
Itadori’s phone chimed, interrupting Megumi’s explanation. The ringtone was disgustingly, insensitively cheery, and Itadori fumbled for it in his pocket as he ran, all while maintaining a breakneck pace.
“Hey, Pink,” he heard you say as Itadori switched the call to speaker. “I just wanted to tell you that if you need a distraction from… uh, y’know… you can come to the club meeting right now. Sasaki is getting close to opening it, I can feel it.”
Damn it. He wasn’t going to reach them in time. They were going to die.
Megumi shot a pointed glare at Itadori, whose face betrayed nothing more than simple concern and naïvety.
“I’ll be there soon, L/N,” Itadori said, somehow managing to sound happy, with a pleasant smile plastered over his face. “Wait up for me, please?”
“Can do. I’ll tell Iguchi and Sasa-“ Your voice cut off with a hushed gasp.
The silence that followed was deafening, punctuated solely with the thuds of their racing feet, which sent Itadori into a downwards, anxious spiral. “L/N? L/N?! Y/N are you okay?! Y/N?!”
A second later, Itadori’s phone speakers exploded with a scream.
Megumi had half a mind to think you deserved it as his ears bled — because whoever didn’t have enough braincells to leave a goddamn special grade curse alone warranted whatever consequences were coming for them — but the thought was chased from his brain when they arrived at the school.
“Woah, what is this pressure?” Itadori asked, walking forward with a frown. Megumi pushed past him, hand on his shoulder to tug him a step backwards.
“I’ll handle this,” he informed, voice firm, and scaled the gate in one swift movement. “You stay here.”
“Oh no way,” Itadori argued, and Megumi paused on the gate, crouching. “I’m coming with you! I might not know those three that well, and it might’ve only been a month, but… but they’re friends! I have to help!”
Megumi rose, shooting Itadori one last stay-put-you-fucking-idiot glare, before growling instructions to match. “Stay here.” He leapt from the gate and without a moment’s hesitation, raced into the school.
He had almost made it to the fourth floor before familiar shrieking filled his ears, and he summoned his two divine dog shikigami in preparation, throwing himself up the final few steps. Then he saw you, with a wild look of terror on your face, as you threw yourself around the corner.
Your scream never let up, even as you barely righted yourself after the turn, even as you barrelled down the hallway towards the stairwell, and even as you caught sight of him and let your feet falter. The slight decrease in speed knocked you off balance, sending you tumbling forward down the steps.
Megumi was too far away. He couldn’t catch you, even if he wanted.
You slid, shriek finally catching in your throat, with the momentum from your sprint carrying through. You had no way to stop, to avoid his shikigami. His white divine dog was too close and had no way to avoid you, either. The collision was going to be bad—
You went right through it.
You… “What th-“
You hit the floor at the foot of the stairs and Megumi watched, his mind still reeling, as you sat up with a groan, clutching your head. Then you had the audacity to look up at him, mouth agape, and act surprised.
“DUDE YOUR DOG IS A GHOST!”
Megumi leapt down the stairs, taking three with each stride, cursing the entire way down. He didn’t have time for this. Didn’t have time for… for whatever that was. “Where is it?!” He grabbed your arm, dragging you to your feet.
“Where’s what?” You blinked at him, eyes glassy with concussion. “The massive ghost thing? It’s back up there–“
“No!” Megumi hissed, cutting you off. “The special grade cursed object!”
“The… do you mean the finger we opened? I- I tried to grab it from Sasaki, but it fell through my hand. Uh, literally. I’m pretty sure she still has it.”
He loosened his grip on your arm, but didn’t let go. You looked like you were on the verge of keeling over. His divine dogs whined impatiently at the top of the steps. Gritting his teeth, he began leading you back up. “Do you know where they are now?”
“S-Sasaki and Iguchi are back up there! With the big ghost!”
Damn it.
Megumi released your arm fully now, starting to sprint away. It might already be too late.
“H-hey, wait up Mr Sea Urchin Head!” You shouted. He heard your lungs wheezing, desperate for air, yet you still ran after him. For someone who had just shrieked relentlessly for a full few minutes, had sprinted away from a curse in absolute unadulterated terror, and was still a bundle of trembling, frightened nerves, you had an awful lot of spine. Or a death-wish.
“By the way,” you panted, diligently following at he burst through a door. “There’s a smaller one up ahead!”
Megumi nodded, both to you and his shikigami.
“Go and feast!”
His shikigami tore through the mono-legged curse, and you gagged behind him.
“Ew.”
“The curses are growing in number. It’s close!”
A few more corners and a few more insectile, mushy centipede-like curses devoured by his divine dogs was all it took before you and Megumi came face to face with the curse.
“Sasaki! Iguchi!”
“There you are.”
The curse had clearly grown, the smaller bug curses separating off from the main mass of the body. A dozen hands of varying sizes sprouted across it, writhing, grabbing at the two unconscious students. The monster’s primary mouth began to close over the girl’s head. Was it trying to swallow the cursed object and the students all at once?
Crap!
The window beside the curse shattered, glass spraying into the air. Itadori crashed through the window. A forth floor window.
Hand curling whilst still airborne, the boy came down on the curse, punching it with that freak strength of his. The conglomeration of hands all released their grip upon impact, gargling, and Itadori gathered up the two students from its reeling body and maw and leapt away.
“So this is a curse? Not what was expecting,” Itadori muttered, and Megumi saw you dash over to him. Megumi blasted the curse with a shadow technique and his shikigami jumped onto its smouldering, exploded remains.
“Normally I’d be pissed, but good job.”
“Urchin, just say a proper thank you. Not that hard.”
Itadori sheepishly grinned. “By that way, what’re those things munching on the curse?”
“His ghost dogs!” You piped up.
Megumi sighed, the sound coarse and irritated. “My shikigami. Wait, you can see them? Normally you can’t see curses. Not unless you’re on the verge of death or in special places like these.”
“But I, uh,” you began, face scrunched with furrowed brows and a hand raised in question. “Can usually see them?”
Of course you could. Megumi was going to have to talk to Gojo about you later. And punch him while he’s at it. “But you’re not scared, though?”
You snorted. “Nah. Absolutely terrified and in a constant state of severe anxiety,” you answered, a small smile curling your lips. Megumi thought it was an awkward forced one — one of those objectively terrible coping mechanisms — but with you, he couldn’t be sure.
“What about you, Pink? Aren’t you scared?”
“Well, I was. For a little while there. But, you know, people actually die.”
“Huh?”
“So I figured that if that’s the case, I at least want the people I know to have a chance at a proper death. Not that I really understand it myself,” Itadori finished, standing up from his crouch with that girl — Sasaki, he remembered you mentioned — in his arms. Something fell from her skirt pocket and Itadori deftly snatched it from the air. “This it?”
“Yeah. The special grade cursed object, Ryomen Sukuna’s finger. It’s a miracle it didn’t get swallowed.”
You and Itadori both frowned down at the object, and you gagged again. “Ew. Why would anyone eat this?”
“Is it good?”
“Don’t be stupid. You’d eat it to gain stronger cursed energy. It’s dangerous, so hand it over.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Itadori held the finger out.
“Uhm, guys-“ you said, voice suddenly shrill with distress. Megumi gasped and his divine dogs barked, springing into action. A curse’s hand appeared above Itadori, materialising through the ceiling.
Megumi shoved you and Itadori, his dogs snatching up the unconscious boy Iguchi. “Run!”
The ceiling crashed down, but before he could be thrown by the impact, Megumi felt the curse’s hand clamp around his middle.
Shit.
☆——☆——☆—★—☆——☆——☆
Your POV, 11:06pm
Itadori swore beside you as the dust settled. “Fushiguro!”
Standing in the rubble was that sizeable six-limbed blue curse from the rugby field. Yoshida. Only significantly larger than before.
And significantly angrier.
Sea Urchin — or Fushiguro, you supposed — was trapped in its grasp for a moment before he was thrown with violent, unyielding force against the wall. He coughed up blood.
His dogs, the shikigami, melted away before your eyes. You almost screamed again, but Itadori stood up with silent determination, and so you followed him. Not so silently, nor as determinedly, but instead with trembling hands and an anxious pit in your gut. It was something, at least.
The curse charged at Fushiguro and smashed straight through the wall, sending him flying. In the dark, you couldn’t quite see where he’d landed, but your chest clenched regardless as the curse lumbered forward.
He was going to die, wasn’t he? He was going to be killed, or eaten, or whatever it was curses did to their victims.
Itadori leapt from the gaping hole in the building and you raced to the edge, watching as he landed on the curse, distracting it. Protecting Fushiguro. But what could you do? What could you do?!
In what might’ve been your greatest worst decision of your life, you started to climb down the side of the building. Your arms cried out in protest, as did the curse as it grappled with Itadori, and as did Itadori himself.
“Itadori! L/N! Your only chance is to take those two and run for it!” Fushiguro shouted, just as you finally reached the ground, every muscle in your body burning.
“You’re in big trouble yourself!” Itadori argued, flung up into the air as the curse flailed.
“Only a curse can exorcise a curse! You cannot defeat it!”
“Urchin, is that your idea of a pep talk?!” You screamed, working up the courage to run to him. Above you, Itadori shouted something about all of you dying anyway at this rate, and you thought it was pretty accurate. Also more motivational.
The curse was directly in front of you, grappling with Itadori, shambling around. You squeezed your eyes shut, sucking in a breath, holding it in your lungs.
It can’t touch you. It can’t touch you. It can’t touch you.
“Yoshida, I swear if you kill me I’m going to cry! And I’m a real ugly crier!”
There was one thing you could do. One thing only you could do.
You ran.
Your stomach heaved, and your head felt thick, that cottony mess returning, but you ran. Your eyes remained clamped closed, moving blindly.
“Keep going!” Fushiguro’s voice called out, obscured and distorted, to your left. Left?
The vibrations of the curse’s movements spasmed around you, and you hesitated, his words ringing in your brain, muffled and wrong. How long had you been running for? Had you even been running at all?
“If I quit now, I’ll be having nightmares for weeks!” Itadori shouted, and you planted your feet, pausing entirely. You turned, slightly less disoriented now, in the direction the mangled sound, and began to walk.
One step, then another, and then a third.
With the fourth, the clouds in your mind cleared.
And with the fifth, you could hear clearly again, the night air punctuated by Itadori’s shouts and the noises of his fighting.
“Besides… I’m living with a rotten curse of my own already!”
You opened your eyes, finally outside the curse, and immediately bit down on your lip to prevent a scream. You’d already done enough of that tonight. A blue hand flew at Itadori, the impact sending him hurtling into the air. That cursed object, the finger, was thrown from his grip, dangling in the air.
You backed away with unsteady, trembling feet, walking back until you stood beside Fushiguro. You hadn’t thought this through. You should’ve stayed with Sasaki and Iguchi–
“What were you thinking?!” He hissed at you through gritted teeth, glaring at you for a moment before his eyes faced forward again, watching as the curse clamped several hands around Itadori.
I have absolutely no idea! I wasn’t thinking at all, actually! Spontaneous life-threatening thoughts don’t tend to be my strong suit, surprisingly enough!
“I thought I might be more useful if I was in the way,” you answered instead, with a dark chuckle and a non-committal shrug, swallowing down a little the hopelessness welling up in your chest as you hoped he’d understand the joke. “Human shield maybe? Basic sacrifice perhaps?”
“A shiel- YOU IDIOT!” Fushiguro started before he shouted, his stunned face contorting into one of intense desperation, his pupils the size of pinpricks, as he watched Itadori struggle above the curse, its jaw opening wide with a groan. “Hand it over to me or you’ll be eaten, too!”
Itadori flung his head back, the finger flying out of his mouth. “There’s a way to save everyone! I just need some cursed energy of my own, don’t I?”
“Don’t do it,” Fushiguro gasped, voice dropped down to a whisper, and his face fell. With his next breath he became animated again, enraged and frantic. “Don’t do it!”
The finger tumbled back down. Itadori swallowed it.
Rudely disregarding your earlier words, Fushiguro shoved you out of the way for the second time that night. Itadori burst free from the curse’s hold, a wave of dark, powerful energy emanating outwards. He leapt backwards, swaying in place, and the curse scrambled after him, tearing up the ground in its wake. By the time it reached him, you’d just about bitten through your lip, the metallic tang of blood seeping into your mouth, as an anxious pressure constricted your heart. But he raised a hand, the movement swift, deliberate, and uncharacteristically graceful, disintegrating the front half of the curse.
Itadori remaining standing in that pose for a moment, and both you and Fushiguro stood frozen in place, gaping in an awed stupor, and a little light-headedness on your part, and watched as black tattoos formed over his wrists, the back of his neck, and his face. His nails lengthened into pointed claws, and an extra set of eyes blinked into existence below his normal pair. Then he laughed.
A pit opened up in your stomach. That wasn’t Itadori.
“Ah, I knew it! The light feels best in the flesh!” Not-Itadori cackled, deranged, unhinged, and entirely unrecognisable from your friend, save for the ruffled pink hair. He ripped through Itadori’s staple yellow hoodie, manic laughter continuing, revealing the rest of the tattoos inked across his body.
“You just ruined his hoodie!”
“That’s what you’re concerned about?!” Fushiguro hissed, clamping his hand over your mouth, drawn out of his stupor.
You bit his hand and he yelped, removing it from the range of your teeth. “Either I’m going to worry about that creep’s questionable fashion choices or I’m going to have a mental breakdown about my friend being possessed after scoffing down some ancient finger! I know which one I prefer!”
Not-Itadori paid you no mind, rambling in that way villains always tended to do. At least he was predictable. “Cursed flesh is so boring. Where are the people? The women?” He drawled, stepping up onto the ledge, arms splayed wide. “What a wonderful era to be reawakened! Women and children are crawling everywhere like maggots! Marvellous! It’ll be a massacre!”
Well, that monologue was certainly concerning.
Then his hand forcefully grabbed his face, squishing his mouth from cheek to cheek between his thumb and index finger. He stumbled backwards off the railing, letting out a half-choked noise of surprise. “Huh?”
“Whaddya think you’re doing with my body? Give it back!” He declared, but you were certain it was Itadori who had spoken.
“How are you able to move?”
“Uhm, it is my body, y’know?” You had half a mind to start cheering for your friend. Despite everything, he was somehow managing to… suppress the curse? And it happened to be a real powerful one too, apparently.
Megumi growled beside you, crouching, prepared to attack. “Don’t move! You’re no longer human!”
“Huh?” You and Itadori cried out in unison. Was Fushiguro blind or something? Had he not just witnessed Itadori regain control of him body, wrestled it back from a curse?! A special grade curse (whatever that meant)?!
“Under jujutsu regulations, Yuji Itadori… I will exorcise you as a curse!”
“What the hell?!” You shrieked, jumping in front of him, heart leaping up to your throat. He eyed you with with a deathly cold glare with shadows forming around him, apt for the heartless, idiotic threat he’d just delivered. “Dude, you can’t just murder him! HE SAVED US! He literally didn’t have any other choice but to eat it! And he has that thing under control!” You reasoned, the words tumbling quickly from your mouth, hands flailing about.
“Yeah, really, I feel fine!” Itadori agreed, hands raised, those tattoos fading from his skin. “More importantly, we’re all pretty beat up. Shouldn’t we go to a hospital?”
Fushiguro remained silent, his hands still clenched into fists, shadows writhing around him.
“What’s the situation?” A new voice asked, and you just about jumped out of your skin, heart stopping. You looked up, finding a smirking white-haired man wearing a blindfold.
Fushiguro was just as startled, those shadows of his dispersing. “Wha- Gojo-sensei?! What’re you doing here?!”
“Hey! I wasn’t planning on coming, but man, you’re roughed up.” The man — Gojo, apparently — pulled out his phone, snapping photos of Fushiguro with a laugh. “I should show the second-years!”
You swallowed thickly, sharing a confused glance with Itadori as Gojo scrolled through his phone, grinning. “The higher-ups wouldn’t shut up with a special-grade cursed object missing. So I thought I’d do a little sightseeing and stop by. So, did you find it?”
Itadori raised his hand. “Um, sorry, but I ate it.”
“For real?”
Fushiguro sighed, speaking in unison with you and Itadori. “For real.”
Gojo hummed, walking over and bending down towards Itadori. He seemed to be analysing him, their faces centimetres apart, and you wondered how he could even see anything with that blindfold on. Then he laughed. Again.
“Damn, it really did combine with you. That’s hilarious!”
“Anything off about your body?”
“Nah, seems okay.”
“Can you swap out with Sukuna?”
“Sukuna?”
“The curse you ate.”
“Oh… yeah, I think I can do that.”
Gojo walked backwards before stretching, limbering up for what you knew wouldn’t be just a pleasant midnight conversation with the hoodie-destroying, massacre-planning, special grade ancient curse.
“Okay! Give us ten seconds, then change right back into yourself.”
Itadori tried to argue, brow creasing. “Uh, but-“
“Don’t worry, I’m the strongest jujutsu sorcerer.” Strongest what now? You thought it sounded familiar, with Fushiguro mentioning something like that earlier whilst threatening to commit murder, but you couldn’t quite wrap your mind around it. A martial arts magician?
It wasn’t the weirdest thing you’d experienced today, you supposed.
“Megumi, hold onto this for me! And I’d strongly suggest getting out of the way, kid,” Gojo instructed to you, chucking his bag to Fushiguro.
“What’s this?” He questioned, catching the bag. You returned to your spot beside him, crouching with him as you leant over to examine the contents.
“Kikufuku from Kikusuian. It’s a Sendai city specialty and it’s super good. I recommend the zunda and cream flavour.”
“This guy went to buy souvenirs when people are out here dying?!” Fushiguro hissed beneath his breath, paper bag crinkling in his hands. You swooped in, taking it from him, protecting Blindfold Man’s mochi from his angered death grip.
“Those aren’t souvenirs,” Gojo chided, wagging a finger, and Fushiguro flinched — either because the blindfolded man apparently had superhuman hearing, or because Itadori, covered in tattoos again as Sukuna assumed control, had leapt into the air behind him. “They’re for me to eat on the bullet train home.”
“Behind you!” Fushiguro shouted to Gojo, though he didn’t move, nor shut up about the kikufuku. You braced for impact, huddling into Fushiguro’s side.
Wind blasted you from the side, dust swirling around you. You lifted your head from his shoulder when you felt the gust calm. You gasped. Mere centimetres from your and Fushiguro’s faces was Sukuna, glaring at you with eyes glowing a piercing hue of red. Gojo sat on his back, posture impossibly casual, and continued his extremely one-sided conversation about the mochi. “I think it’s the whipped cream inside that really makes the difference.”
Sukuna growled, ducking out from under him, and sprang up again. Gojo dodged, so swift your eyes couldn’t follow the movement at all. He was effortlessly fast, faster even than Itadori, and he was always likened to a car by the other students.
“Now, I’ve got an audience watching, so I hope you don’t mind if I show off a little.” You could barely process the next few moments of the fight. Gojo spun around, landing a few successive blows on Sukuna, twisting and turning all the while. The next hit sent Sukuna flying across the building with a blast of power, crashing back into the railing
“For crying out loud,” Sukuna snarled, lifting himself off the crumpled railing to sprint back into the fight. That dark power curled around his fist as he aimed at Gojo, winding up as he ran. “You jujutsu sorcerers are always such a pain in the ass in any era!”
The blow seemed to miss, the building behind taking the brunt of the force instead, leaving a large gaping hole in the wall billowing smoke. The smoke cleared, revealing Gojo standing before you, chunks of debris floating in the air.
“Seven… eight… nine… and that should be about time,” he counted.
Sukuna swayed, head drooping before bouncing back up with familiar energy. “Oh, was everything okay?”
Gojo lowered his hand and the rocks fell down, confined by gravity once more. “What a surprise! You really can control that guy.”
“Yeah, but he’s kinda annoying,” Itadori complained, hitting the side of his head. “And I keep hearing his voice.”
“It’s a miracle that’s all he’s doing,” Gojo said, walking forward to meet him. He poked his forehead with two fingers. Itadori’s eyes drifted closed and he fell into Gojo’s arms.
“What did you do?” Fushiguro asked, voicing the question before you could.
“I knocked him out. If he isn’t possessed by Sukuna when he wakes up, he might have potential as a vessel,” Gojo answered. “Now, I have a question for ya, Megumi — what should we do with him?
“Even if he is a potential vessel… jujutsu regulations demand Itadori be executed—“
You sucked in a breath, about to open your mouth, but Fushiguro turned to glare at you.
“—however, I don’t want to let him die.”
Finally, something you could agree with.
“Personal feelings?”
“Yes. Please do something about it.”
Gojo laughed, hoisting Itadori over his shoulder. “A precious student’s request? Leave it to me!”
“As for you, hello kid.” Gojo sauntered over to you, and you blinked, brows furrowed, as black spots swarmed your blurring vision.
“Can I pass out now, too?” You asked, the events of the night finally catching up with you.
“Hey, that’s not much of a greeti-“