Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

In theory, his grandfather’s dying wish had been simple. “When it’s your time to go, make sure you’re surrounded by people.” Clearly, he hadn’t anticipated that the people Yuuji would be surrounded by were criminals. Unfortunately though, being orphaned only a few years away from adulthood had that effect on people. At 18, Yuuji was already a wanted man. But this job, if they were able to do it, would pay off his bounty and then some. 

He stood behind the castle of Corona with Patchy and Sideburns Stabbington. The latter of the brothers was swinging a grappling hook round and round. 

“Once we get this up, you go,” Patchy said. 

“Alright,” Yuuji agreed, eyes on the portion of the wall the hook would land on. With a grunt, Sideburns hurled the hook, and Yuuji watched it arc. He flinched at the loud clang, but there didn’t seem to be any alarms ringing off. With a quick tug, Yuuji made sure it was secure and started climbing up. 

He’d always been physically gifted, all the way from a young age. As such, the climb took only a few seconds for him. He checked the secluded section of wall for guards, and signaled the brothers up when he saw none. 

Once they were both up, Sideburns took the lead. He picked up the grappling hook and let it fall on the opposite side of the wall, down to a grate on the other side. In hurry, the three descended into the shadows. 

“Hey, kid, you’re the scrawny one here, so you’re the one going down there. Do you remember what you’re looking for?” Sideburns asked. 

“Uh, it’s the creepy box with the finger in it, right?” 

The brothers glanced at one another. “I mean, that about sums it up,” Patchy said. Yuuji smiled at the praise, but dropped it the moment the two brothers looked back at him with matching frowns. 

“This’ll lead down to a tunnel that runs under the room. You pop up through the grate, snatch the box, and come straight back, then we go for the crown,” Sideburns explained. 

“Why are we stealing an old finger again?” Yuuji asked. 

“I dunno, I just heard from… reliable sources that they’d pay a fortune to get it back. Maybe not as much as the crown, but close enough. No more questions. Let’s get this over with before we get spotted.” 

With a group effort, the three pried the grate from the ground. Then, Yuuji descended it. It was narrow enough for him to brace himself against either wall and slow his descent. He didn’t see the bottom until the shaft opened up, and he could see the faintest bit of light glistening off of moisture. 

He dropped down into the tunnel. Then, he froze. He looked up and saw the two Stabbington brothers staring down at him.

“Which way?!” Yuuji asked. 

Patchy facepalmed. Sideburns emphatically pointed the direction opposite the one Yuuji was facing. “That way, idiot!”

“Okay! Thanks!”

“Get on with it!”

Yuuji stepped off into the tunnel, nose wrinkling as the smell of long stagnant moisture hit him. Thankfully, the tunnel wasn’t a straight up sewer, but it wasn’t too far off. 

After about a minute of walking, he saw light streaming through the ceiling ahead. As he approached, he could see metal bars breaking the light. He wasn’t fully sure if it was the right room, but he wasn’t about to walk back to where he entered and ask. 

He took his own personal grappling hook off of his belt. Then, he tossed it between the openings of the grate so that it caught against the bars. He made sure it was solidly lodged in before he started to tug with all he had. 

The metal of the grate groaned as it bent beneath Yuuji’s strength. Then, with a snap, it popped out of the stone holding it. 

Yuuji frantically stepped forward to catch it before it could clatter against the stone. Once he caught it, he gently set it against the wall before he stepped back beneath the now open hole. He swung his grappling hook to latch onto the stone edge so he could pull himself up into the room.

The moment he was in, Yuuji knew it was the right one. There was only one true door in or out, and it had been neglected for so long that mold was growing in the gaps where it met the walls. The room itself was lit by candles, which somehow still burned. The eerie light illuminated thousands of prayer scrolls, so long that they stretched across the walls and ceilings. Each of them was held up by countless stakes hammered deep into the stone. In the center of the room was a dais with a box whose writing was vaguely reminiscent of the prayer scrolls, neither of which Yuuji could recognize. It certainly wasn’t from anywhere near. 

He delicately took the box off the dias, and a shiver went up his spine. When nothing happened, he opened it to look inside. The object wrapped within was mummified in prayer papers, so there was no way of truly knowing it was the finger, but it was definitely the right size and shape. Besides, Yuuji wasn’t going to check what the finger looked like after several hundred years, that was just gross. 

Realizing that the brothers’ patience was probably running out, Yuuji took the finger and hopped back down into the tunnel below. Then, he began jogging back towards the daylight opening. 

Behind him in the darkness, something moved. He whipped around, but all he saw was pitch black, unbroken save for the candlelight of the room where the finger was kept. The only sound was his own breathing. 

Yuuji shrugged and continued until he was back beneath the Stabbington brothers. “I got it!” he called up, proudly showing his prize. 

The brothers tossed down a rope for him to get up, and he was able to climb it without issue. Then, they put the grate back where it belonged. 

The second part of their plan went into motion. The three used the grappling hook to get up onto the roofs, leaping between them until they got to the main hall of the castle, where the crown lay guarded. 

As they leapt onto the final roof, Yuuji was taken by the view. Below them, the entire village surrounding Corona was visible. So was the bay beyond with many ships drifting upon the water. Beyond the bay was lush green forest that stretched all the way to the mountains, which formed the horizon. 

“Whoa, look at the view!” Yuuji called back to the brothers.

“Once we sell the finger and the crown you can buy your own pretty view. Now get over here!”

“Okay, coming!” Yuuji said, stealing one final glance before he joined the brothers. 

Patchy popped a panel of the ceiling with his sword. Then, the two of them tied a rope around Yuuji’s waist and lowered him into the room. It was grand, decorated with the most luxurious tapestries the land could afford. Somehow standing out among it all was the crown, which was supposed to belong to the princess who had been lost eighteen years prior, around when Yuuji was born. 

As the crown drew within arms reach, Yuuji delicately plucked the it off its pillow, feeling distinctly unworthy of even touching the thing. Not even the king and queen had claimed it as their own, and here he was putting his thieving hands all over it and hiding it away in a plain leather satchel. 

One of the guards sneezed. 

“ Gesundheit ,” Yuuji said. 

“Thank you,” the guard replied, turning around and giving Yuuji a nod.

Then, the guard processed what he’d seen and turned around again. The distinctly pink haired young man he’d seen was completely gone. When he looked up, he saw figures in the window.

“Wha- Wait! Hey, wait!”

The three criminals made their escape. Yuuji wished he could run faster, but he wasn’t going to leave the brothers behind. Sure, they were mean, but he wasn’t going to let them be put in harm's way.

“We got them both and we’ve still got the rest of the day!” Yuuji cheered as he ran, glancing back at the Stabbington brothers behind him. “You know, I’m really gonna miss that view…”

This might be it. Once they sold off the two items, Yuuji would have enough money to pay off his bounty and finally stop living life on the run. For now though, running was something he very much needed to do. 

As the three made their daring escape into the woods, a young woman in a far off tower dreamed of her own…

Chapter Text

Rapunzel amassed her courage. She was ready, she’d prepared, she was doing this. 

“I’m not getting any younger down here!”

“Coming mother!”

Rapunzel slung her hair over the hook and let all of its length tumble over the side of the tower. When she felt the familiar weight of Gothel stepping on, she started to pull her up. I’ve got this, I’ve got this. 

Soon, her mother was stepping through the window, casting off her hood. “Ugh, Rapunzel, how you manage to do that every single day without fail, it looks absolutely exhausting darling.”

Rapunzel felt her cheeks grow warm with a proud blush. “Oh, it’s nothing,” she said dismissively. 

“Then I don’t know why it takes so long!” her mother replied in a sing-song voice. There it is, Rapunzel thought. 

“Oh darling, I’m just teasing,” Mother said, stepping past Rapunzel. It hurt a little, but Rapunzel laughed it off. This was just business as usual, mother-daughter chit-chat. 

She began to lead up to her question, giving her mother context for what she was about to ask. But then, before she could finish…

“Rapunzel, look in that mirror, you know what I see? I see a strong, confident, beautiful young lady.” Rapunzel felt her blush return, derailing her previous train of thought. 

“Oh look you’re here too.” And just like that, the feeling was gone. Still, Rapunzel wasn’t giving up. When Mother stopped talking, she started her script again. Only, she was also cut off again . 

Her mother asked her to sing, so she arranged the furniture in its usual position and started to sing, trying to impatiently get through it as fast as she could; she was tired of things cutting her off. 

Finally, she was able to get through her preamble, but when she had to actually ask, she resorted to mumbling, and then her mother left, completely losing interest. 

It took Pascal urging her onward to finally ask. 

“I wanna see the floating lights!”

Rapunzel couldn’t read the way that Mother froze in the middle of what she was doing. “What?” Mother asked. 

“Oh, well I was hoping you would take me to see the floating lights,” she said. 

“Oh, you mean the stars,” Mother said, going right back to what she was doing. 

“That’s the thing.” Rapunzel knew they weren’t stars. She’d seen stars every night from her window, but she’d only seen these a limited number of times in her lifetime. She’d counted every year down to the day to check they were on her birthday, she’d charted the stars to see if they behaved the same way. Every sign pointed to them being significant. 

“I need to see them, mother, and not just from my window, but in person. I have to know what they are.” 

“You want to go outside , oh, why Rapunzel…”

And the doors slammed shut.

~

The trio of thieves could hardly slow down. The guards were pursuing them on horseback. They had to leap over ledges and cut through bushes in order to stay ahead, all of which felt like cheap tricks which would only work for so long. When their danger was out of sight, Yuuji risked leaning against a tree to catch his breath. As he did, a few familiar posters caught his eye, nailed into the bark. 

“Are you kidding me?” Yuuji asked, prying one of the papers off the tree. 

“What is it now ?” Sideburns asked. 

Yuuji ignored the comment. “They can’t get my hair right and they still think my name’s Eugene!” On the poster, his head looked like a mushroom, and his name was written as “Eugene”. Someone must have misheard it, and since then, it had stuck. 

To make matters worse, there was a short note written on the poster, right below the “WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE”. 

“If you see any man with pink hair, report him to authorities immediately,” he read aloud. His expression soured. He loved his pink hair, but having a one of a kind feature and being a wanted criminal didn’t go together well. 

“Who cares,” Sideburns said. 

“Hey! They didn’t mess up your hair,” Yuuji countered, crouching down to look up at the Stabbington’s wanted poster. Each of them was inked on perfectly, all the way down to their signature scowls. 

The whinnying of a horse made him look back to see the palace guards at the top of a short cliff. 

“Oh, gotta go,” Yuuji said, taking off running with the brothers close behind him. The trees flurried past them, forcing Yuuji to duck under whipping branches as the brothers ahead of him shoved tree limbs aside. Quickly, they ran into a big problem. Rock walls cut off all directions ahead of them, and they didn’t have time to retrace their steps. 

“Uh, what are we gonna do?” Yuuji asked, glancing between the brothers with apparent panic. 

“Here’s what we’re gonna do. You two are gonna boost me up, and then I’ll help you after,” Sideburns answered. 

Yuuji raised his hand shyly like a kid in class. “Would it make more sense for me to be-”

“Do as he says!” Patchy interrupted. Reluctantly, Yuuji nodded and stood at the base of the cliff, crouching down to get Patchy up on his shoulders. He grit his teeth as Sideburns climbed on top of both of them, and he was forced to bear all of their weight despite being the smallest. 

He began to sweat as he heard the distant sound of hoofbeats getting closer. Come on, hurry, he wished silently. 

Patchy was pulled up thanks to Sideburns’ help, leaving Yuuji alone at the base of the rock. 

“Toss a rope down and I’ll be good!” Yuuji said hopefully. 

“Sorry kid,” Sideburns said, a smug expression sitting on his face. “If we hand you over to them, they’ll stop chasing us, and we’ll have plenty of time to sell off the crown.”

“But what about the finger?!” Yuuji asked, holding up the box he still had on him. 

“We’d have to risk our necks ransoming it back to them. No one else wants to buy a creepy old finger. It’s nothing personal, Eugene.”

“It’s Yuuji ! A-and come back!” Yuuji begged as he watched the Stabbington brothers disappear, laughing as they betrayed him. 

Yuuji reached for his grapple hook and tried to cast it over the side, but the ledge was too gradual for him to grasp on to. A nearby whinnying reminded him of just how close he was to danger. 

Yuuji’s next decision, completely made out of spontaneity, would change his life forever. 

He took the finger out of the box and chucked the container up onto the cliff, completely out of sight. Then, he thought of places he could hide it on his person, somewhere the guards wouldn’t look. 

And he got the idea that they couldn’t look inside of his stomach. 

So, he tore off the paper and swallowed the thing like a breakfast sausage, never mind how he would even get the thing out so he could actually ransom it for anything. 

It tasted bitter and waxy, and it was far too big to comfortably fit down his throat. Okay, now I just have to argue that I’m innocent and they’ll go for the brothers instead. His logic was sound, at least to him. The “WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE”  poster he’d stuffed in his pocket earlier argued otherwise. 

The palace guards ground to a halt, their position pinning off any chance that Yuuji had of escape. 

“Arrest him!” the guard captain commanded. Two of the guards hopped off their horses and approached Yuuji. 

“I don’t have it!” Yuuji said, raising his hands. He tried to look them in the eye innocently, but he was struggling to stand. The finger felt… weird, almost like it was moving in him, squirming to get a hold of him. 

“Liar! He’s hid it somewhere. Search the perimeter.” In response to that, more of the guards got off their horses. Now, Yuuji crumbled to his knees. 

And in an instant, his body was no longer his own. 

A guard tried to lay a hand on his shoulder. His hand shot back out, grabbing the guard by the neck and throwing him out of sight. 

The guards moved to draw their swords, but Sukuna was faster. In the blink of an eye, he was at their sides, grabbing them and hurtling them into the nearby walls. 

“Retreat! Retreat!” The guards began to frantically mount their horses, some not even making it into the saddle before they urged their animals onward. 

“That’s right, run back to your safe castles, where your women and children crawl like maggots!” Sukuna called after them. They paid his words no heed as they fled. “This’ll be fun, I haven’t gotten a chance to murder in a long time…”

“Hey, no , I’m not killing anyone,” Yuuji said. 

“What? You’re controlling me?”

“Well, yeah… It’s my body.” 

“That can’t be right,” Sukuna surmised. But, before he could theorize any further, his control was completely overtaken by Yuuji. 

The young man stood there for a long time, listening to the trees and breathing in with his body. He could still hear whatever was in him, speaking in the back of his mind. 

“Did I just get possessed?” Yuuji asked. 

You’re possessing me , the presence within him countered. 

“Uh, no, my body, remember?” Yuuji asked. The strange voice gave him no answer. 

It had to be the finger. Something about that room and that paper and that box was all creepy. Plus the fact that it was worth a lot of money but no one knew about it. Then again, that might have just been something the Stabbington Brothers made up, seeing as they betrayed him. 

As Yuuji was left to process what on Earth happened to him, he left the scene to wander the forest alongside his own thoughts, as well as the thing that now called his body home. 

~

Rapunzel watched Mother disappear from sight, head resting in her arms. As terrifying as plagues and animals and men with pointy teeth sounded, she still wanted to go see the lights. She still didn’t know why she couldn’t go with Mother. Wondering was pointless, because she wouldn’t know. Mother clearly didn’t want her asking. 

After the light in the sky began to change, Rapunzel decided to go back inside to the only place she’d ever known. Every crack in the floorboards, every color she’d painted on the walls, every detail of the tower from top to bottom. Every last bit of it was memorized. She was just… tired of it all. None of the very limited people she’d read about ever lived in towers. They’d always lived in houses or cottages or castles, whatever those were. 

Ting!

Rapunzel’s head shot up. “Pascal? Did you hear something?” she asked, reaching over her shoulder and scooping her chameleon off of it. He nodded his head. 

Ting! 

Now she was certain, she wasn’t hallucinating. It was coming from outside. She scurried to the edge of her window. 

Ting!

Down. She looked and immediately had suppress a gasp. Climbing the wall was a person. He was a young man with fluffy pink hair, climbing up the wall with metal stakes. 

She ran back inside to her painting of her looking up at the stars. She pulled the curtain aside so Pascal could hide there. He didn’t need any instruction for what to do. 

Rapunzel, on the other hand, desperately wished someone could tell her what to do. She wasn’t ready for this! She was supposed to wait and wait and then eventually go out into the outside world. The outside world wasn’t supposed to come to her ! 

Ting!

The sound was so close now. She needed something, fast. Where can I find a weapon? She wondered. Mother probably had weapons, but she didn’t tell Rapunzel where she kept them. She hadn’t bothered trying to look for them, that would definitely make Mother mad. 

Then she remembered that she had a whole kitchen and ran over. She quickly dismissed the knives, deciding that she was not going to try to kill the man climbing the tower. Her eyes instead landed upon her ever familiar frying pan that she used to make her meals every day. 

It was comfortable in her hands, heavy, and hard. As far as weapons went, it was her best bet. She took it off the stove, ran over to her mannequin, and hid behind it. 

The sounds drew ever closer, rhythmically hammering into the sides of the tower. Then, they stopped as the young man grasped the wooden lip of the window and pulled himself through. 

Rapunzel had never seen anyone else besides herself and mother, so everything about this new person amazed her. He was taller than her, with fluffy pink hair vaguely reminiscent of a mushroom making him look a little taller. His eyes were wide with wonder, punctuated by slitted markings under them. 

Rapunzel had also never seen clothing like his before, as she’d only ever seen dresses in her lifetime. He wore a somewhat similar color scheme to Mother. His pants were black, as was the clasp fronted jacket he wore over a hooded jacket, leaving the hood bundling around his neck like a scarf. The statement pieces were the bulky red boots the man wore, which were almost as high as his knees. 

“Wow, this place is clean for an abandoned tower,” he remarked, glancing away from Rapunzel. 

Bong! 

“Ow! What was that fo-”

Bong!

The second hit finished the job, and the man hit the ground like a sack of potatoes. Rapunzel squealed and hid behind the mannequin, holding out her frying pan in a way that was supposed to be threatening. The man on the ground didn’t move. 

Trepidatiously, she crept forward to investigate. She prodded the stranger, and he didn’t react. Glancing at Pascal, he merely shrugged his shoulders. 

She tilted his head so she could get a better look at his face. Immediately, she was enthralled. He was… pretty. Given, she hadn’t seen enough people to build a very robust image of what pretty even looked like, but this man had to fit the bill. 

From the corner of her eye, she saw Pascal imitate a vampire’s fangs and turn red. So, slowly, Rapunzel peeled back the man’s lips. 

He did not in fact, have sharp teeth, a fact she found to be quite shocking. Maybe they haven’t grown in yet, she surmised. 

Regardless, she had to hide him. Then, maybe, if Mother came back and she showed her that she was capable of handling herself, she’d finally be let out into the world. 

First though, she had to hide him. Looking across the room, she saw the empty closet as an immediate candidate. 

Hide him, tell Mom, convince her I’m not unprepared, then go to see the floating lights. Simple, easy, done, she reassured herself. 

Her first step proved to be very simple in thought, and very challenging in practice. The man did not want to fit in her closet, no matter how hard she tried. Eventually, after poking his fingers through and barricading the doors with a chair, she decided that he was safely stowed away. 

She looked at her reflection in the mirror. 

“I’ve got a person in my closet… I’ve got a person in my closet! ” she laughed, relief flooding over her from the intensity of trying something new. “Too weak to handle myself out there, huh Mother? Well.” Rapunzel flipped the pan in her hands and began to spin it once she caught it. “Tell that to my frying-”

Bonk!

“Ow,” she said to no one in particular. 

“Rapunzel!”

“Oh!” Rapunzel snapped to attention at the sound of her Mother. She quickly wheeled the mannequin back to its usual place and put the frying pan back in the kitchen. 

“Let down your haaiiir!”

“One moment, Mother!”

“I have a big surprise!”

“Uhhh, I do too.”

“Ooh, I bet my surprise is bigger!”

Too quiet to hear, Rapunzel whispered to herself, “I seriously doubt it, hehe.” What, did Mother manage to fit a person in her basket ? Anything short of that wouldn’t have been a bigger surprise. 

She helped Mother through the window, and she was immediately abuzz with chatter. “I brought back parsnips, I’m going to make hazelnut soup for dinner, your favorite. Surprise!”

“Well, Mother, there’s something I wanna tell you-”

“Oh Rapunzel you know I hate leaving you after a fight, especially after I’ve done absolutely nothing wrong.”

“Okay, I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said earlier and-”

“I hope you’re still not talking about the stars…”

“Floating lights, and, yes, I’m leading up to that.”

“Because I really thought we dropped the issue, sweetheart.” The pet name put Rapunzel a bit on edge, because Mother didn’t use them often, but she persisted anyway. 

“No Mother I’m just saying, you think I’m not strong enough to handle myself out there-”

“Oh darling I know you’re not strong enough to handle yourself out there,” Mother interjected. 

That’s fine, keep going, she still doesn’t know. “But if you just-”

“Rapunzel, we’re done talking about this.”

“Trust me, I know what I’m-”

“Rapunzel!”

“Oh, come on!” Rapunzel begged.

But Mother had clearly had enough. 

“Enough of the lights, Rapunzel! You are not leaving this tower, ever !”

For a moment, all was silent as the words spoken sunk in. Rapunzel’s hand slipped away from the chair holding back the doors. She’s… she’s not compromising. 

“Ugh, great, now I’m the bad guy,” Mother complained, flopping down into the chair as though she hadn’t delivered a heartbreaking ultimatum moments before. 

Rapunzel glanced at her painting, the one of herself beneath the lights, beyond the tower. Her Mother wasn’t going to let her have it, she wasn’t going to back down. 

But Rapunzel couldn’t back down either, not about this. 

So, she tried a new tactic. 

“All I was gonna say Mother, is that… I know what I want for my birthday now.” She’d be exactly what Mother wanted her to be, at least to her face. 

“And what is that?” She obviously wasn’t happy, but she wasn’t actively angry. 

“New paint, the paint made from the white shells you once brought me?” Rapunzel asked, quietly, non threateningly, not demanding of anything.

“Well that is a very long trip, Rapunzel. Almost three days time,” Mother argued. 

“I just thought it was a better idea than the… stars,” Rapunzel countered. She hadn’t been able to get her wish, at least, not with permission. But, she still knew how to negotiate with Mother. 

She sighed, standing up from her chair and stepping up to Rapunzel. “You sure you’ll be alright on your own?”

“I know I’m safe as long as I’m here.”

As they parted from their embrace, they fell into a familiar, intimate routine. Mother put her cloak back on, and Rapunzel assembled several days’ worth of food for her. Most of the exchange happened in silence, at least, up until the moment that Gothel was about to depart, Rapunzel’s hair already slung over the hook. 

“I’ll be back in three day’s time. I love you very much, dear.”

“I love you more.”

“I love you most .” 

She stayed at the window and watched as her Mother left for her journey. As long as she was nearby, Rapunzel stood no chance at achieving her dream, not this year, or any year after that. 

For the first time, her ambition rivaled her caution, and now she had a trump card, something she could use to take on the world without Mother’s help. 

She went back inside and prepared to retrieve the stranger from her closet. Whether he liked it or not, he was going to be her ticket out of here.

Chapter Text

Yuuji awoke with a start, the world exploding into awareness as itchiness welled from inside of his ear. He tried to raise his hand to do something about it, but something stopped him. In a rush, he blinked the blurriness from his eyes. 

Several things became clear at once. Firstly, he was inside the room of the tower he’d come across, rather than in some dungeon. Secondly, while he wasn’t in a dungeon, he was restrained. He was tied to a chair by something that was functioning like rope but looked more like… hair?

Thirdly, the itchiness was a lizard’s tongue lodged firmly in his left ear. As soon as he tried to shake the lizard off, it immediately got the message and leaped away in terror. 

“Uh… hello? Is anybody there?!” Yuuji called out, his eyes trying to follow where the rope-hair led off into the shadows. 

“Struggling… struggling is pointless!” a voice called back. 

“Oh! Hi! Who uh, who are you?” Yuuji wondered, trying to find the other person who was in the tower with him. Huh, that’s why it’s clean, because it’s not actually abandoned. But then… How is this person alive? There aren’t stairs or anything like that leading up here. 

A shape leapt down within the shadows, drawing Yuuji from his thoughts. “I know why you’re here, and, I’m not afraid of you!” the voice called out. 

“Wait, you know about me getting possessed?” Yuuji asked. 

There was a long stretch of silence before Yuuji heard footsteps approaching. The shape in the dark took on the clear form of a person, and finally, they stepped out into the light. 

She was a young woman, likely around his age if not exactly the same. She wore a simple purple dress, brandished a frying pan like a weapon, and had striking green eyes that were trying their best to be intimidating. What stood out about her the most was her hair. It was a stunning golden blonde that stretched all the way to her feet, then off into the dark… 

That was when Yuuji realized what was restraining him. It was hair, her hair. It snaked across the ground, dangled over ledges and awnings, and securely fastened him to the chair in a complicated series of loops. 

“Whoa,”  he muttered. 

“Who are you, and how did you find me?” she asked. 

“Oh, yeah, uh, I’m Yuuji! Yuuji Itadori. I found you by accident, honestly. I got tired and tried leaning against a wall but I fell through it. It was just ivy that looked like a wall. So, I looked inside, saw a cave, and then followed it until I saw your tower,” Yuuji explained. 

The stranger stepped closer and held her frying pan out towards him the way someone else would hold a sword. “Who else knows my location, Yuuji Itadori?” she interrogated. 

“There’s uh… there’s a guy in my head. Anything I know, he knows. But again, he’s in my head, so he’s not like out there telling everybody, you know?” Yuuji asked. 

She seemed far less perturbed by the idea of someone being in his head than Yuuji expected. She didn’t question it at all, instead favoring moving straight on to her next point. 

“So, what do you want with my hair?” she asked. Huh? Yuuji thought. “To cut it? Sell it?”

“No, no no no I wouldn’t do that! You’ve clearly been growing it out for a while, I would not cut it, promise . Also, who buys hair?” Yuuji wondered. 

His response visibly caught her off guard. She’d clearly been prepared for someone who wanted to cut and or sell her hair. 

“You… don’t want my hair?”

“No, I don’t! I mean, you’re definitely hair goals, but I don’t think I could pull the look off. I mean, my current style isn’t really the best because everybody seems to think it looks like a mushroom but I still like it,” Yuuji explained. 

“You’re, telling the truth?” she asked trepidatiously. 

“Mhmm,” Yuuji replied, nodding enthusiastically. 

A lizard poked its head out from underneath her hair and crawled down her arm all the way to the tip of the frying pan. From there, it glared at Yuuji. 

Suddenly, a mouth opened on his cheek. “That looks tasty,” the voice remarked, its tongue flailing out towards the lizard. Immediately, the thing squealed and scurried back. Yuuji shoulder checked his own cheek to get the thing to go away. 

“What was that?!” the young woman asked. 

“That’s the guy who lives in my head. He’s stuck in my body, but he uh… does that apparently.” It was the first time Yuuji had ever seen it, but it sounded exactly like the voice that would sometimes speak in the back of his mind, so he knew who it was. 

The woman poked his cheek with the pan, but shrugged her shoulders when the voice didn’t pop out again. Then, she took her lizard away from Yuuji and held it up to speak. He couldn’t quite make out their conversation from the chair. 

“I know I need someone to take me,” Rapunzel whispered. 

Pascal gave a few affirmative squeaks. He’d almost been eaten by the person living in Yuuji’s head, but Yuuji himself seemed to be trustworthy. 

“I think he’s telling the truth too.”

A few more squeaks. 

“Well, his actual mouth doesn’t have fangs.”

Pascal gave her a few interrogative squeaks. 

“But what choice do I have?”

Pascal made it clear that his answer was the same as hers. She had no way of navigating the outside world. She didn’t know where to go, what to do, or how to deal with a world where you could just pick a direction and keep walking. Mother, who had a lot of experience with the outside world, wouldn’t help her. Yuuji on the other hand could be persuaded to. He didn’t seem nearly as uncompromising as Mother was.

“Okay, Yuuji Itadori,” Rapunzel said, spinning back to look at an innocent looking Yuuji. “I’m prepared to offer you a deal.”

“Deal?” Yuuji wondered. Rapunzel walked past him and with her hair tried pulling the chair to make him look where she wanted him to look. Rather, the chair just ended up getting pulled off balance. 

“Ow!” Yuuji cried out as it fell on its side. 

“Do you know what these are?” Rapunzel asked, pulling back a curtain to reveal a painting. It was of a night sky with lights floating up into it from a single point, a girl that looked like Yuuji’s captor looking up at them from the corner. 

“Oh! Oh! Yeah, I know what those are! They’re the lanterns that go up tomorrow! There’s a whole celebration and party and they make these really good pastries if you can get into the village near Corona, it’s so fun.” Fallen down sideways in his chair, Yuuji kicked his feet excitedly, but found that his restraints kept him from doing so. 

“Lanterns? I knew they weren’t stars,” Rapunzel admitted proudly. Then, she turned back to address Yuuji. “Well, tomorrow evening, they will light the sky with these lanterns …”

“Mhmm.” Yuuji nodded enthusiastically. 

“If you want your freedom, you will act as my guide, take me to these lanterns, and bring me home safely. That is my deal.”

“Sure!” Yuuji replied. Rapunzel was taken aback. Wait, it’s that easy, she thought. 

“I really wanna go, so I’m happy to bring you with me. Oh, I haven’t been in years . I’m a wanted criminal… that’s okay, I can probably just sneak past the guards. So, uh… wait, I never actually got your name.”

“Rapunzel.”

“ Rapunzel . That’s a cool name! Anyway, yeah, I’d be glad to take you!”

“Really?!” Rapunzel asked enthusiastically, jumping down and running up to Yuuji.

“Yeah, really! I wanna go too, remember?” 

“Okay, okay, I’ll let you out!” Rapunzel pulled up the chair with her hair and started to undo all the loops and wraps holding Yuuji in place. She worked with jittery speed, and Yuuji felt pins and needles erupt in all his limbs when he finally got up. He’d been out for a while, by the look of things. 

“So uh, are you ready?” Yuuji asked excitedly. 

“Ready for…”

“To go see the lanterns?” Yuuji asked. 

“Oh! Uh, give me a sec!” Rapunzel said. Immediately, she ran off into the tower to get her necessary preparations put together.

It was then that Yuuji could finally get a good, long look at the place. As he’d previously observed, the entire place was kept in almost perfect shape. Everything was organized, the floors were polished, and nothing had dust piling on it. It didn’t feel new, though. The tower itself was old, centuries at least if the ivy growing up the sides or wearing of the roof was anything to go by. Something about it also put Yuuji on… edge? He could feel something there, but not with any of the five senses he was used to. 

Basking in it made Yuuji want to get out of this tower. When he’d come in, it had looked like a perfect place to find shelter for the rest of the day and for the coming evening, maybe even as a base of operations moving forward. But now he wanted little more than to be free of it. 

“Alright, everything’s ready!” Rapunzel said as she flicked off the lever to close the sky window. With her, she had a satchel that had her frying pan sticking out, but beyond that Yuuji couldn’t tell what was in the bag. 

“Do you have a way of getting down? I can help,” Yuuji said. 

“I’ll be okay,” Rapunzel replied. 

“Okay, see you at the bottom!” Yuuji said. He strided over to the window, swung over and back around the lip, and started planting his stakes in the tower once more as he climbed down. It was scarier to climb down than it was to climb up, but that was a fear he’d been forced to conquer long ago. 

Rapunzel, on the other hand, was experiencing far more trepidation. She’d seen the view countless times, but she’d never seen it with the intention of actually going down into it. The tower was tall, a place where no one was able to get to her. 

Except Mother, and somehow Yuuji, Rapunzel realized. Come to think of it, she didn’t actually know how Mother got down before her hair was long enough. Rapunzel had been using her hair to get Mother up for years, but she never actually remembered her coming in or out before then. 

“Are you sure you don’t need help?” Yuuji asked from below. 

“No! I’m coming!” Rapunzel called back. She looked up at the sky, the cliffs, the grass, leaning out towards it all. 

“Look at the world so close, and I’m halfway to it.

Look at it all so big, do I even dare?

Look at me there at last

I just have to do it

Should I?

No. 

Here I go.”

Golden hair tumbled from out of the tower, and Rapunzel came swinging with it. 

She was out, and she was free. 

Chapter Text

Mother Gothel slinked through woods that she knew like the back of her hand. She had lived long enough to watch every tree grow from a sapling several times over, and every time the forest changed she gave herself years again to memorize it. She moved quickly and quietly, wanting to get her journey for paint over with as soon as possible. 

These days, she’d have to hurry. Three days was now a long time to be without the flower’s power. Maybe though, it would give her time to encounter some other magic. She wasn’t stupid, she could feel the time she could be away from the flower’s magic dwindling. Once upon a time, she’d been able to go a few months without it. Then that had shrunk to once every few weeks. Now, she could feel herself aging over the course of a single day. What was next? Hours? Minutes? Seconds?

Suddenly, she heard a rumbling. It didn’t sound like anything natural, so she slipped into the shadow of a bush, paying close attention to where the sound was coming from. 

Bursting through the trees was a frantic stampede of horses and palace guards, shouting in fear and alarm at one another with words Gothel didn’t bother trying to pick out. 

Palace guards… What are they doing here? She wondered. Why were they going back towards the kingdom so frantically? What kind of thing would make them-

Gothel turned around and began making a beeline for the tower. What if they’d found Rapunzel? Then, she’d have to get Rapunzel out and get her to go to the cottage she’d lived in before the tower. It would be harder to contain her there, adolescence was already making Rapunzel more restless than ever. Annoyingly so, in Gothel’s opinion. 

No matter, all that mattered was making sure that her flower was still there . 

She burst through the ivy wall and ran towards the tower. The familiar falls poured over the idyllic scene, the tower itself having beautifully stood the test of ages. Like the flower, it had been an incredible find of hers, a strike of good fortune that she could rely on well. 

She ran to the base of the tower, suspended in its shadow as she called up nervously in her usual, sing-song voice. “Rapunzel! Let down your hair!”

There was no response.

“Rapunzel?”

Still nothing. Gothel wasn’t going to bother calling up again. She charged around to the back of the tower and ripped away the plants covering her secret entrance. Then, she desperately tore away the rocks covering the doorway. It had taken her ages to form the secret entrance, but that was something she could worry about later. 

Once the entrance fell away, she ran in and up the stairs that she hadn’t needed in years. She passed through her cellar of magical items she’d picked up over the centuries, the familiar chilling presence of the magic settling over her. It was nothing like that magic in Rapunzels’ hair, which was nothing but warm and welcoming. 

She pounded against the floor panel that opened up into the main room of the tower to get it free. Oddly, no light poured through when it began to open. 

When the panel was finally free, she pulled herself up and into the tower, only to find it dark and empty. She ran up the stairs to Rapunzel’s room, just in case she was asleep. 

“Rapunzel?!”

She tore away the sheets, revealing pillows stacked beneath the blankets. She ran down to the closet and tore open the doors. Nothing there either. 

“Rapunzel!”

She even tore the curtains clean off, which had been shuttered closed. Cold light filtered in through the glass of the windows, making the whole tower feel gray and lifeless. It reminded Gothel of what the tower had been like before Rapunzel had come to live in it. She hadn’t minded; she wasn’t in the tower much. 

Rapunzel. Rapunzel was clearly gone. She would have responded to calls for her name. Once upon a time, when she was thirteen, she’d decided to be a bit rebellious and ignore Gothel when she called. Her discipline was getting exactly what she wanted. She was ignored. She didn’t get new food or attention or any fragment of the outside world brought in for weeks. She didn’t make the mistake of ignoring Gothel again. 

Where could she be? Who could have taken her? Gothel could hear her heart pounding. If she couldn’t find Rapunzel, she only had a week left to live, most of which would be lived as her ugly, aged self. She looked around. There were no clues about where the kidnapper had gone or how they’d gotten in. It was just… empty, abandoned in a flash. 

Gothel sighed. Since she was desperate, and the cellar was open, it was the obvious place to go for help. She walked over to the floor panel that had been pulled aside and stepped down the stair ladder. 

Her cellar was filled with centuries’ worth of oddities. Ever since the flower, she’d had an eye for things that contained magic, and more than enough time to find them. There was a jar of fairy wings that had yet to be pounded into dust, a dagger that could hurt the countless minor demons that infested the world, and a handful of specific items, some of which she had no way of understanding. 

She took the dagger, as many of the minor demons, however dangerous, could be communicated with. Having a weapon would give her leverage against some of the weaker ones. 

What would really help her was one of the more powerful artifacts in her possession. It was a small, black leather tome with a metallic stylus that sheathed into a pouch on the cover. The first few pages were the questions and answers of prior people who had written questions into it. Only around the forth page did her experiments and questions begin. She had only used the artifact a few times. 

It worked very simply. The stylus punctured skin to draw blood, and with that blood, Gothel would write a question in the book. Then, depending on the magnitude of the question, it would either ask for more blood or reach out into the world to find an answer. It gave vague, unhelpful answers at every opportunity it could, so that any carless reader would keep writing more and more. Gothel knew that despite its downfalls, the book would help her get a lead on Rapunzel. 

She took the stylus out of the cover and held it above her own skin. Thanks to her previous attempts, she knew that she had to be very careful about what kind of question she asked the book. If she made any assumptions or showed any blindspot, the tome would jump on the chance to keep taking blood from her.  

With her blood, Gothel wrote, Who is with Rapunzel right now? She knew that the girl would never leave on her own, even if she wanted to. Even she could see how woefully unprepared she was. She wouldn’t do it unless she had help. 

The question didn’t disappear, thus showing that the book accepted the question, offering her a direct answer right away. Yuuji Itadori. She’d never heard of such a person, and, if the book was giving it to her directly, it would be deceptively difficult to figure out who it actually was. At the very least, she had a name to go off of.  

Just as she was about to leave, one of her other artifacts caught her eye. For some reason, she had a good feeling about it, as though it could be helpful. While some of the other artifacts she had outright looked menacing, this one seemed more innocent. 

It was a mortar and pestle, made from a dark gray stone, with writing inscribed on the outside of the mortar, reading…

Ābrec þone ġecynd

Ācweorr hit

Ond āfinst þone edhwierft to se gegaderung

Gothel had seen many dialects and languages in her time, and this matched none of them. Still, it took up hardly any room in her bag, so she took it. 

Then she made her way down the tower and back out into the world, magical items freshly in tow. She would find this Yuuji Itadori, kill him, and get Rapunzel back to where she belonged. Gothel had already lost her flower once. 

She wasn’t going to let it happen again.

~

Far away and far underground, the room that had contained Sukuna’s finger lay desecrated. The door was broken in, the prayer scrolls were shredded, and the box itself was entirely absent. Two people stood in the room. One of them had vibrant white hair that drooped forward to hide the blindfold tied over his eyes. The other, barely a grown man, had spiky black hair and a perpetually grumpy look on his face. The two of them wore matching black cloaks whose only unique feature was a brassy button with a spiral pattern embossed upon it. 

The elder of the two, Gojo, found it funny that most of the damage was done by the guards, rather than the actual thief. The only damage done by him was to the grate in the floor, which was now a direct drop into the tunnels below. Why there were tunnels conveniently running right underneath where the finger was kept, Gojo had no idea. Whatever the case, it was mostly his job to keep it from being a problem. How much of a problem it would be, he was completely unsure. A lot of that depended on how quickly they could find the thing. 

They of course, meaning him and Megumi, who looked around the room with an unimpressed expression on his face. 

“Why would normal people even steal the thing anyway?” Megumi asked. 

“Well, who knows whether or not they’re actually normal people,” Gojo pointed out. Megumi specifically decided not to give his teacher a reply. 

“Do we at least know who stole it?” Megumi asked. 

“Oh, yes!” Gojo rummaged beneath his cloak through a satchel and retrieved two sheets of paper. With one in each hand, he unfurled them. “These are the thieves!” he declared. 

“The Stabbington Brothers and… there’s no way his hair actually looks like that,” Megumi said, looking at the almost impossible mushroom of straight hair he saw on the poster in front of him. 

“Probably not, but they wouldn’t lie about him having pink hair, so Eugene shouldn’t be too hard to track down. Besides, the three were last seen together, so it’s more than likely they’re still together now,” Gojo pointed out. 

“We’d better start looking,” Megumi said. 

“Wait,” Gojo said, scanning the room. “We need to find out what we can here, while the blood is still warm.”

As anyone proficient in magic could, Gojo was able to sense its presence in the room. He could feel the trace of the artifact itself. What he wanted to know was if he could sense anything else. 

He looked for the signature of another magic user, possibly another jujutsu sorcerer, even. But no, nothing he felt suggested that. Whoever had stolen it had gotten in without any form of magic. 

In spite of that, there was something else. It was some form of connection, significance that even Gojo’s expertise couldn’t place a finger on. All magic was a strange thing that didn’t follow logical rules. Curses were amalgamations of human emotion that solidified with the capability to hurt people, for example. As such, someone who could sense curses could also sense places where human emotion had pooled, so to speak. 

Whoever came through here was connected to magic, not through actual power but through meaning , much like the word “parent” carried weight regardless of whether someone had conceived their child or not. 

Whatever the case, it made things far less troublesome. These people weren’t after the finger’s power, but probably wanted to sell it for ransom instead. The only concern there was a powerful curse murdering all of them before the finger could be retrieved. 

Megumi was right. It was best for them to start looking. 

“Let’s go,” Gojo said, turning with a flourish and exiting the room. Startled from thought but quickly regaining focus, Megumi followed him. 

The two made their way up through the castle, the guards paying the two of them little mind as they progressed upwards. However, as they approached ground level, they began to hear shouts.

“Let’s see what’s happening,” Gojo said, quickening his pace and forcing his student to keep up with him. 

As the two of them exited from the base of a tower, they looked out into a broad courtyard whose stones were lit up by the bright noon sun. A small band of horses and guards had just returned. Even from afar, Gojo could tell they were rattled by whatever had just happened to them. 

The sorcerers approached the band. One of the guards immediately turned to them and held a hand out. 

“This doesn’t concern you,” he said sternly. 

Gojo rolled his eyes, which nobody saw, thanks to the various layers covering them. “The crown doesn’t, but those thieves had something with them that is our concern. This was the party you sent after them, right?”

“Y-yes,” the guard replied. 

“Then we need to know what happened,” Gojo said. 

“Look, it’s… sensitive information, we can’t just hand it out to strangers.” The guard was obviously trying to keep it covered up. Losing the crown was an embarrassment, and any discussion of the finger would inevitably lead to discussions of magic, which was generally taboo in this land. 

“If something say, unexplainable, happened, we would need to know,” Gojo said. 

“Yes, yes, that’s one way to put it,” one of the guards who’d actually been in the party said, stumbling over. “It was Eugene. We were about to capture him, but then all these marks on his skin appeared, a-and he looked at us with four eyes. He tossed Hans and Arved like toys. Eugene’s a strong boy, but not that strong, and he’s never done… that .”

Gojo was silent for a long moment. Then, he put a hand on the guard’s shoulder. “Thank you for telling us, I’m sorry that happened to you,” he managed to say solemnly. Then, he turned away and started walking off, with Megumi speeding up to follow.

“What do you think happened?” Megumi asked. 

Gojo smiled. “I think we’ve got a vessel on our hands,” he said. 

“A vessel? Of Sukuna?!” Megumi shouted in disbelief, drawing a few eyes from the surrounding walls of the castle. 

“Well, who else? I would have been able to tell if a sorcerer had walked into that room,” Gojo explained. This explained what Gojo had felt back in the room, it wasn’t sorcery, but for some reason Eugene was someone who Sukuna’s finger could manifest through. “Besides...”

When they were beneath the walls, out of sight from all the guards, Gojo rounded on Megumi with a wide smile. “I would much rather track down a vessel of Sukuna than one of his errant fingers, wouldn’t you?”

Just barely visible in the relative stoicism of Megumi’s face, his lips perked ever so slightly upward in a smile. 

“I guess I would.”

Chapter Text

Rapunzel sat upon a mossy rock, head in her hands as she sobbed. Yuuji stood by as a helpless onlooker, having no idea of how to help. For the past hour, she’d gone through rapid mood swings of wanting to go back and being happy about leaving. As such, they’d meandered through the forest, no closer to their destination. And, clearly, what they were doing was distressing her. 

She’s absolutely pathetic, the voice in Yuuji’s commented. 

Will you just shut up? No one asked you! Yuuji shot back, also within his own thoughts. Before he could think about how he could even raise his voice in his own head, Yuuji remembered the task at hand. 

Nervously, he walked over to her and sat down next to her, careful not to step or sit on her hair.  

“Uh, Rapunzel?” he asked quietly. 

Rapunzel lifted her head from her hands and turned to face him. “Hmm?”

“You… you seem to be struggling with the decision to leave the tower. Do you… wanna talk about it?” Yuuji wondered. 

“I…” Rapunzel ended up just shaking her head. 

Yuuji did his best not to take it personally as he continued. “Well, in that case, is it okay if I talk about a time I had to make a hard decision?” 

“Sure,” Rapunzel asked, curiosity obviously igniting as she fully turned to face him.    

Yuuji steadied himself for what he was about to say. It was a difficult story to process, even for him. “I… before I lived with my grandfather, I lived with my parents. I don’t remember much about them, but I do remember this,” he began. Glancing at Rapunzel, he could see that he had her rapt attention. 

“My Momwas never around much. She’d always find some excuse to not talk to me or stay away. Sometimes she’d just tell me to go away. So, for my sixth birthday, I wished for a full day with both of my parents where neither of them left. She claimed she couldn’t do it on my actual birthday, but that she could do it a couple days later.”

“The day went alright. We went to all the bakeries in the village and there was this person doing magic tricks for all of us. My Dad was excited about it, but my Mom was just there. Still, I was just happy that she was there, at that point.”

“But then, she ended up breaking her promise. I don’t remember this next part very well, but I remember crying, and then her telling me something like, ‘stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about’. Then, there was some arguing, I was still crying, and then she… she ended up hitting me.” The words were simple but something about making them real was difficult. It was almost like Yuuji knew how bad it sounded, but there was a part of him that still wanted to defend her and make her look better, and the easiest way to do that was to just not say what she’d done. 

Clearly, it did sound bad, Rapunzel’s eyes widened in alarm. Whatever struggle she was dealing with on her own was temporarily forgotten. “That sounds awful,” she said. 

“Well, I’m not finished yet. After that, we let her leave. Dad took me out to a lake that was near our village, and he talked about me moving in with his own dad, my grandfather. And, when that happened, I didn’t want to leave, but Dad was encouraging me to go, and Mom didn’t really try to make me stay.” 

“My Grandpa was… he was cranky on a good day. But he never hit me. He never threatened me and, whenever I needed him, he was there. I didn’t want to go initially, but in the long run, it ended up being better for me,” Yuuji explained. 

“So… you’re saying that even though it’s hard, it’ll be better in the end?” Rapunzel asked. 

“Yeah… yeah! Exactly!” Yuuji agreed. 

Rapunzel slowly got up, and Yuuji ended up getting up with her. “This is hard, but it’s better for me,” Rapunzel whispered to herself. 

“Mhmm. Now, let’s-” 

Yuuji was interrupted by his own stomach loudly grumbling. Right, he remembered. His last meal had been breakfast. Since then, he had stolen priceless items from a castle, been possessed, climbed a tower, and already embarked on another adventure. 

“Oh! I should have something in here…” Rapunzel began rummaging through her satchel. Yuuji put a hand on her arm to stop her. 

“That’s okay. I think…” he looked at the woods around them, seeing if this was the right part of them. “If I’m not mistaken, there’s lunch pretty close by. Have you ever been to a restaurant?” Yuuji asked. Rapunzel shook her head. 

“Well, I think this is a pretty good one. It’s called The Snuggly Duckling,” Yuuji explained. 

“I love ducklings!” Rapunzel piped up. 

“I do too! Now, let’s go find it!” 

He hadn’t been there a little while, months at least, so it took him a little while of meandering through the trees before the familiar path came into sight. Sure enough, when he turned, he spotted the Snuggly Duckling. 

Ahead of it swung the sign with the cute illustration of the duckling that had originally drawn him to the place. As for the building itself, it looked like it would fall apart at a moment’s notice. Entire sections of it were tilted and malformed thanks to the burgeoning tree above it. However, based on the establishment’s patrons, Yuuji knew that the place had to be more than a little durable. Parked outside of it were five horses, signifying that the place was probably filling up for lunch. 

“There it is!” Yuuji said. He turned to Rapunzel. “I just know you’ll like this place. The people there are a little rough around the edges, but they were nice to me when no one else was, so I promise that they’re good.”

“Okay…” Rapunzel replied with the slightest hint of hesitation. 

The two approached the door and stopped in front of it. Yuuji straightened out his outfit, made sure his hair was sufficiently spikey, and decided he was ready. 

“Let’s go!” he said, shoving the door open and stepping inside. “Greno! I’m back!” he called out. Rapunzel stepped in right after him, her face falling as she tried to get a read on the dark room around her. She gasped when she finally did. 

Every single scary image she’d ever imagined for the words “ruffian” and “scoundrel” was sitting in this room. People with sharp teeth, sharp weapons, sharp clothes, sharp everything , really. Immediately, she raised her frying pan defensively. 

“It’s alright,” Yuuji reassured her, taking her gently by the shoulders and leading her forward. “As I was saying, they look a little bit scary. I know fifteen year old me thought so, but trust me, they’re really nice once you get to know them. Most of them just leave you alone, I’m serious.”

Rapunzel yelped as she felt someone grasp her hair. Immediately, she bundled as much of it as she could closer to her and backed away from the person holding it. 

“That’s a lot of hair,” the burly man commented. 

“Hey! You can’t just grab someone’s hair like that. Wait, is that blood in your moustache? How long has that been there?” Yuuji wondered, leaning closer to get a better look. 

Rapunzel bumped into someone sitting at the bar, and the man sitting there straight up growled at her to get her away. 

“Look, look, it’s gonna be okay, we’ll just get a table, grab a quick bite, and be on our way as soon as we can if you don’t like it,” Yuuji reassured her. For a moment, his mind jumped around how awful he was for letting this be one of her first stops outside of her tower. He didn’t have time to think about it though, because the door to the tavern slammed shut. 

The person who’d done it was none other than Vladimir, someone who Yuuji had chatted with a few times. As far as people went, he was… alright. He seemed nice enough, at least by the standards of this place. 

“Is this you?” the man asked, hand splayed over a wanted poster that Yuuji recognized as bearing his likeness. He gulped and approached Vladimir. Then, he noticed that his finger was covering the part of the poster where Yuuji’s hair would be. He tugged it down to see how they’d drawn it. 

It looked like a plate. A straight up plate upside down on his head, made of hair. 

“Aww, now they’re just being mean,” Yuuji complained. 

“Oh, it’s him alright,” Hook Hand interjected, brandishing his signature hook and giving Yuuji a malicious, delighted grin. “Greno, go find some guards!” 

From his periphery, Yuuji watched the door open and then rapidly close. Oh no… Hook hand grabbed him with his hand and held the hook up against his throat. 

“That reward’s gonna buy me a new hook.”

Yuuji felt himself yanked from Hook Hand’s grasp. “I could use the money!” he heard from next to his ear, muffled by a metal helmet. 

“A-Attila? It’s uh, good to see you?” Yuuji asked. 

Completely ignored, Yuuji was then pulled from Attila’s grasp. “What about me, I’m broke!”

Suddenly, it was a free for all. Everyone descended upon Yuuji, determined to be the one who turned him in for the reward, even though many of them had bounties of their own. Some of them, because they had bounties of their own. 

“Please, stop!” Rapunzel protested, but her words were drowned out in the crowded tavern. 

“Wait, wait, wait! I know I haven’t been here in a while but I’m one of you! Right?!” Yuuji cried out. 

“Hey! Leave him alone!” Again, Rapunzel was seeing that her words were completely unheard amidst the clamor. 

“There is no way I deserve this!” Yuuji protested, his own far greater than average strength giving many of the people around him a hard time in pinning him. 

You know, if you let me, I could break you out of this in no time, the voice interjected

Oh, shut it! I’ll uh, I’ll figure something out, you’ll see! Yuuji had no idea if he’d actually figure something out before Greno came back with the guards. 

“Give me back my guide!” Rapunzel shouted, swinging her frying pan at the person in front of her. “You ruffians!” she added, making one more futile swing. One thing was clear though, if she was going to be listened to, she was going to have to speak their language. 

“We’re gonna have to knock him out! He’s too strong!” a voice called out from the crowd. 

“I’ll take care of it,” Hook Hand said, winding back his fist as one person took each of Yuuji’s limbs and Vladimir took care to hold his head in place. Even then, every individual person had to fight with all they had to keep Yuuji still. 

It gave Rapunzel the time to sling her hair over a rafter and around a piece of the massive tree that was poking through the walls. She pulled her hair back, yanking the entire branch out of position, poising it to swing downward. 

“I like my nose! Please don’t break it!” Yuuji begged as he saw Hook Hand’s fist winding even further back. 

THWACK!!!

Rapunzel could swear that she felt it reverberate through the whole room. For a moment, everyone was quiet, utterly stunned by what they’d seen happen. 

“Put him down!” Rapunzel commanded. Every eye in the room turned to look at her. 

“Ugh, okay… I don’t know where I am and I need him to take me to see the floating lanterns because I’ve been dreaming about them my entire life! Find your humanity! Haven’t any of you ever had a dream?” Rapunzel asked. 

Yuuji was placed on a coat hanger, too invested in what was happening to free himself. Hook Hand drew his axe and lumbered up to Rapunzel, forcing her all the way up against the table behind her. Then, he stopped, and stared out into space. 

“ I had a dream, once,” he said. Without even looking, he tossed his axe right above the head of a musician chained to a ball, who sat on a tiny little stool next to the fire. Terrified, he began to play a tune. 

“I’m malicious, mean and scary

My sneer could curdle dairy

And violence-wise my hands are not the cleanest.”

“But despite my evil look

And my temper and my hook!

I’ve always yearned to be a concert pianist.”

“Can’t you see me on the stage performin’ Mozart,

Ticklin’ the ivories ‘till they gleam?”

“Yep I’d rather be called deadly

For my killer show tune medley!

Thank you! ‘Cause way down deep inside I’ve got a dream!”

“He’s got a dream!

He’s got a dream!

See, I aint’ as cruel and vicious as I seem!”

“Though I do like breaking femurs, 

You can count me with the dreamers!

Like everybody else, I’ve got a dream!”

For a moment, everyone sang together incoherently with the various instruments. To Yuuji and Rapunzel, the scene was rather sweet. 

Then, another person jumped in. 

“I’ve got scars and lumps and bruises, 

Plus something here that oozes, 

And let’s not even mention my complexion!”

“But despite my extra toes,

And my goiter, and my nose,

I really wanna make a love connection.”

“Can’t you see me with a special little lady

Rowin’ in a rowboat down the stream?”

“Thought I’m one disgusting blighter

I’m a lover, not a fighter

‘Cause way down deep inside I’ve got a dream!”

“I’ve got a dream!

He’s got a dream!

I’ve got a dream!

He’s got a dream!

And I know one day romance will reign supreme!”

“Though my face leaves people screaming

There’s a child behind it dreaming

Like everybody else, I’ve got a dream.”

“Toll would like to quit and be a florist. 

Gunther does interior design.

Urf is into mime,

Attila’s cupcakes are sublime!

Bruiser knits, Killer sews, Fang does little puppet shows,

And Vladimir collects ceramic U-ni-corns!”

Hook Hand turned to Yuuji, still hanging on the wall. “What about you ?”

“I’m sorry, me?” Yuuji asked

“What’s your dream?” 

“I-I’m sorry but uh, I don’t sing,” Yuuji admitted shyly. Clearly though, quitting wasn’t a choice, because a dozen swords were instantly at Yuuji’s throat. Oh, okay, guess I’m doing this, he realized. 

“I just want one thing, real frankly

One tiny ask, just for me

I just hope the universe will hear my plea.”

“I just wanna be unknown

And without a single loan

With innocence and guiltlessness aplenty!”

Rapunzel then shot in. 

“I’ve got a dream!

She’s got a dream!

I’ve got a dream!

She’s got a dream!

I just wanna see the floating lanterns gleam.

Yeah!”

“And with every passing hour

I’m so glad I left my tower

Like all you lovely folks, I’ve got a dream.”

“She’s got a dream!

He’s got a dream!

They’ve got a dream!

We’ve got a dream!

So our differences ain’t really that extreme,

We’re one big team!”

“Call us brutal,

Sick,

Sadistic,

And grotesquely optimistic,

‘Cause way down deep inside, we’ve got a dream.”

“I’ve got a dream!

I’ve got a dream!

I’ve got a dream!

I’ve got a dream!

I’ve got a dream!

I’ve got a dream!”

“Yes, way down deep inside, I’ve got a dream!

Yeah!”

For a moment, everyone laughed as they relaxed and went back to their drinks. As the crowd broke apart, Rapunzel and Yuuji were able to find one another. 

“That was amazing!” Rapunzel cheered.

“Yeah, you… you did that,” Yuuji said. He’d thought he was done for. Everyone wanted a piece of his bounty and in an instant Rapunzel had changed all of their minds about it. 

“Mhmm, I totally did. Now, we were here for food, right?” Rapunzel asked. 

“Oh, yeah, right!” Yuuji said. That was when he realized who was missing from the room. 

The Snuggly Duckling didn’t have anything that resembled a manager anymore, but the closest thing it had was Greno. He was the one who did the cleaning, most of the cooking, and all of the money management, among other things. 

Suddenly, Greno burst back through the front door. “I found the guards!” he declared. 

Yuuji felt his heart drop. He turned to Rapunzel. “We’ve gotta go,” he said. 

Rapunzel simply nodded and the two of them scrambled for the back of the tavern. Hook Hand put a hand (and a hook) on each of their respective shoulders. 

“Come with me,” he said. 

A crowd formed around the door as the guards entered, their gleaming armor shining brightly even in the low firelight of the tavern. 

“Where’s Eugene, where is he!” a voice called out. 

Hook hand pushed a lever that looked like a duckling, and a passageway opened into the floor. 

“I know he’s in here somewhere, find him! Turn the place upside down if you have to!”

Hook Hand urged them forward. “Go, live your dream,” he said. 

“Mhmm,” Yuuji replied. 

“I was talking to her, I can’t even tell what your dream is,” Hook Hand said. Yuuji’s shoulders slumped, but he didn’t have much time to feel bad because he knew he had to get out of there. He started crawling down into the tunnel. 

“Thanks for everything,” Rapunzel said, giving Hook Hand a kiss on the cheek before going in herself. 

Then, the entrance to the passage closed behind them, leaving them in relative darkness. There was a lantern hanging on a nearby wall that was easy for Yuuji to get lit. Once that was done, the two of them kept walking. 

Every footstep echoed through the long hallway ahead. The place had clearly not seen much use over the years. The mineshaft-like constructions holding the tunnel up looked older than the Snuggly Duckling, which didn’t exactly look new and pristine itself. 

“Rapunzel?” Yuuji asked. 

“What is it?” Rapunzel replied. 

“Thank you for saving me. I owe you one for that,” Yuuji said. 

“No, not at all! When we see the floating lights, consider all debts you owe me paid,” Rapunzel said. 

“Really?” Yuuji asked. 

“Really.” 

“I think I might have said it already, but you’re amazing. It took me months to earn those guys’ respect, and you did it in a few minutes! And then you were an amazing singer and just… wow.” 

Rapunzel was looking at him with wide eyes. “You really mean that?” she asked, more timid than Yuuji would have expected. 

“Yeah! Why wouldn’t I?” Yuuji wondered. 

“It’s just… someone I… know, someone I know likes to say things like that and then take them back right away. She never really means it,” Rapunzel said. 

“That’s awful! I don’t know much about her, but I’d say she’s an idiot,” Yuuji remarked. 

“An idiot?” Rapunzel asked, shock visibly apparent. 

“An idiot!” Yuuji repeated, listening to his voice echo down the hallway. Rapunzel chuckled, a big smile left on her face. 

The hallway continued, onwards and onwards, for several minutes worth of walking. It slowly snaked its way through the earth, with no way out yet apparent. Ominously, a skeleton was sat against a wall, pinned there by a scimitar. 

“So, Yuuji, what did you mean when you were singing about your dream?” Rapunzel asked. 

The young man froze. “Oh, uh, I’m uh…”

“It’s okay! You don’t have to tell me yet!” Rapunzel quickly interrupted. Yuuji slowly nodded, taking the chance to not yet finish his thought. He wasn’t even sure how he’d even begin to explain his predicament. As such, he continued, and Rapunzel followed.   

A light appeared ahead. The rest of the tunnel slowly became brighter and brighter, all the way until it opened up into the world once more. 

What the two of them saw was a rocky canyon. It was massive, stretched down and out before them. Looming above them was a massive wooden wall, which Yuuji recognized as a dam. 

Yuuji was taken by the sight of it all. Where are we? He wondered. 

“Uh, Yuuji?” Rapunzel asked nervously. 

“What is it? What do you need?” Yuuji asked, immediately walking over to Rapunzel. Her gaze was elsewhere, and she nervously raised her hand to point. 

“Who are they?” she asked. 

Standing within the canyon were two figures wearing dark cloaks. One had spiky black hair that went in all directions and a grumpy expression. The other was taller, with white hair obscuring most of his face, save for the confident, cocky smile. 

“I don’t know,” Yuuji replied. Something about them put him on edge. He could feel something like power radiating off of them. They were strong in ways he couldn’t understand, far more capable than they looked. 

It was then that the two of them also heard rumbling. It came from behind them, the tunnel that they had just emerged from. Rounding the corner were torch bearing figures, whose gleaming armor shined brightly, even in the torchlight. 

Ahead of them were ominous strangers. Behind them were the guards. Yuuji and Rapunzel subconsciously stepped closer together. Beneath Rapunzel’s hair, Pascal changed his colors to match her dress in fear. 

Both of them mentally prepared themselves for the encounter that was bound to happen. 

Chapter Text

“Quickly! Down that ladder!” Yuuji said, taking Rapunzel’s hand and leading her to a rope ladder that dangled to the bottom of the canyon. She ran over and started working her hair over one of the rungs to swing straight down. She stopped when she noticed Yuuji wasn’t following her. 

“Aren’t you coming?” she asked. 

“I’ll cover you, don’t worry about me,” he said, shooting her a confident smile and a thumbs up. 

“At least take this,” Rapunzel insisted, tossing him the frying pan in her satchel. He caught it easily, then immediately raised an eyebrow as he gave it a double take. 

“Wait, didn’t you knock me out with this?” Yuuji asked. 

“Uh… yeah.”

Yuuji twirled it in his hand. “Whoa,” he said. As the guards made it out of the tunnel and out into the light, he turned to face them with his new weapon. Rapunel finished casting her hair over the rung, after which she descended downwards like she had from her tower. 

“I’ve waited a long time for this,” the guard captain mocked, drawing his blade. “Be careful, we don’t want a repeat of last time,” he said to his men. 

“Uh, yeah! I’ll uh, beat you real good again!” Yuuji chimed in, trying to be intimidating. 

Clearly, it didn’t work, because the guards proceeded to collapse upon him. 

He dodged a thrust and swung his pan, immediately taking one guard out of the fight, With another, he was forced to deflect instead, quickly swinging a counterattack that swept the guard off his feet. The third put up a better fight, managing to flail his sword more than once before Yuuji knocked him out cold. Finally, the guard captain stepped forward, going in for a stab that Yuuji dodged around, using his opponent’s opening to finish the fight. 

He stared at the frying pan in his hands with enraptured awe. “This thing’s amazing ! I gotta keep one with me!” 

He heard a confrontational neigh, and turned towards it without thinking. What he saw was a large white horse with a sword in its mouth staring him down with incredible intensity. 

Uh… He didn’t have time to think as the horse charged. Immediately, he was put in the defensive, struggling to find an opening where he could counter. The horse put its full weight behind every attack. Even though Yuuji was exceptionally strong, overpowering a warhorse was out of his pay grade. 

So, with one swipe, the horse completely took the pan out of Yuuji’s hand. It flew through the air, over the edge of the cliff, and down out of sight. The ears of the horse perked up when it eventually clattered against the stone below. 

“Gotta go!” Yuuji said, darting towards the ladder as quickly as he could. 

Most people wouldn’t have gambled on outpacing a war horse, but Yuuji Itadori wasn’t most people. 

Far below, Gojo and Megumi watched the spectacle with great interest. 

“It looks like Eugene is the one in control right now,” Gojo observed. 

“How do you know we shouldn’t just kill Sukuna now, while we still can,” Megumi asked, hands clasped at the ready to release his demon dogs. 

“It’s that girl he’s with. Her magic doesn’t look like that of a curse user, yet Eugene seems to be protecting her. Sukuna would have jumped on the chance to tear apart an innocent life,” Gojo explained. 

“Okay, so what do you propose we do?” Megumi asked. 

Gojo smiled. “We make things a little more interesting, see if Eugene can actually keep Sukuna under control,” he said, raising a hand up towards the dam. 

A single one of his fingers lifted towards the sky. Above that alit a glowing red globule, no bigger than a coin. 

“Cursed Technique Reversal: Red.”

The technique hurtled towards the dam faster than the eye could see and ruptured it. Even against the weight behind it, it buckled from the sheer repulsion of Gojo’s technique. For several seconds, both wall and water were pushed back. Then, as the pressure of the magic subsided, everything began surging back. 

“Gojo! That’s headed straight for us!” Megumi shouted, instinctively taking steps back. 

“Oh, we’ll be fine, but let’s see how Sukuna’s vessel fares...”

“Yuuji!” Rapunzel cried, eyes darting between him and the incoming cascade. Only trusting himself to be fast enough, Yuuji swept her off her feet and kept running. “Don’t worry, don’t worry, don’t worry,” he muttered, both to Rapunzel and to himself. 

The ground shook as a titanic pillar of rock was shattered by the oncoming water. Yuuji watched its shadow pass over him, but he didn’t dare look back. All he focused on was getting himself and Rapunzel into the tunnel he saw ahead that maybe led out. 

Rapunzel used a strand of hair to snag her frying pan from the rapidly approaching water behind them. She barely pulled it back in time before the rock pillar slammed over the entrance, sealing them in darkness. 

It wasn’t sealed tight enough to stop water from rushing in. 

They could only see the world around them as shadowy forms, but they still scrambled forward in the tunnel. By the time they realized it was a dead end, the water was already up to their ankles. 

Yuuji frantically tried pulling rocks away from the wall, but his hands found no purchase. Instead, he recoiled as an unseen sharp edge cut into his hand. 

“Is there another way?” Rapunzel asked. 

“M-maybe? Let’s keep looking!” Yuuji answered, wading through the now knee deep water to see if there was something, anything that he’d missed. 

Did I just trap us in here to die? He wondered. 

Yes, but I could help you, the voice interjected. 

Ignoring it, Yuuji kept looking. He paced the tunnel back and forth, but he couldn’t see anything that looked like a way out. Desperately, he rammed his shoulder against the pillar that had sealed them in. Of course, it did nothing. 

“Damn it, damn it! It’s no use,” he admitted. He shivered as the water started to pass his waist. 

Rapunzel sniffled. “Th–this is all my fault, I shouldn't have left. I’m sorry, Yuuji.” 

Yuuji could feel his own tears welling up. I don’t wanna die. No one did, but not many people had to face it like this. He was supposed to die a proper death, surrounded by other people. He wanted it to be in a bed, like his grandfather. 

The water was now up to his chest, and quickly approaching his shoulders. Under the water, he reached out for Rapunzel’s hand. When he found it, he gripped it tightly. 

I could get you out, Yuuji, the voice promised  

I don’t want you to hurt her , Yuuji argued back. 

“Wait,” Rapunzel murmured, a realization suddenly hitting her. After taking a breath in, she began to sing. 

“Flower, gleam and glow, 

Let your power shine.”

Yuuji didn’t blame her for losing it and singing to herself. Not even a day after she’d left her tower and he’d gotten her into deep enough trouble to kill her. 

How about a deal then? A pact, if you will. I get to be free when I wish, and I promise to never hurt her.

“Make the clock reverse,

Bring back what once was mine.”

How do I know you won’t hurt her, Yuuji wondered. Now, the water was too deep for either of them to stand, forcing them to start treading water. 

You don’t know, Yuuji. You’ll just have to trust me, the being said. The thought made Yuuji shiver. He had no reason to trust this thing. It had manifested in his mind after he’d eaten an ancient finger sealed beneath a castle. The moment it had broken out, it had violently attacked people. If Yuuji let it have control over him, it would hurt others. 

“Heal what has been hurt,

Change the fates’ design.”

What other choice did Yuuji have? He’d gotten Rapunzel into this mess, so it was his responsibility to get her out. Getting her to the lights was a job he couldn’t afford to fail. 

“Save what has been lost,

Bring back what once was mine.”

The ceiling was close now, barely a foot above their heads. Still, the water welled up from beneath them, pushing them closer. 

Last chance, Yuuji Itadori. I can afford to lose you, you know, the entity chimed in. 

“What once was mine.”

Both Rapunzel and Yuuji gasped for the last breath they could before the air pocket closed completely. It hit Yuuji then that the rest of his life would be lived on what he’d just breathed in. 

Unless…

Fine, I-

And then Rapunzel’s hair started to glow. The golden light of a sunset streamed through each strand, working its way from her scalp all the way to the tips. It shocked Yuuji so much that he had no thought left to give for sealing the pact.

As the glow reached the end of Rapunzel’s hair, it was now visible that part of it was being drawn by a current towards a pile of loose rocks. Rapunzel swam towards it and began prying stones loose. 

When he got over the shock of what he’d just witnessed, Yuuji clawed his way through the water and began to vigorously pull pieces of the pile away. The current grew stronger as he did, enough so that both of them could feel it. 

Neither of them could feel the stone cutting up their hands, only the growing burn in their lungs as their air began to run out. The threat of drowning pushed them onward. For all they knew, the loose rocks could go on farther than they could live. 

Then, Yuuji’s hand broke through, and he felt the caress of the breeze on his hand. There was air on the other side; they had a chance of surviving this. Rapunzel seemed to realize it too, as her own efforts were invigorated. 

Then, the stones gave away, and the water streamed outwards with them in it. The duo fell out into the open before they splashed into a river. With whatever they had left, they fought for the surface, gasping when they finally had air. 

Yuuji helped Rapunzel to climb up onto the shore, where the two of them promptly collapsed. As the adrenaline faded, they could feel the stinging in their palms and the soreness in their heads from having held their breath for so long. It hardly mattered, because they were breathing now . 

I almost died, both of them thought, in one way or another. Rapunzel hadn’t faced the idea of death as often as Yuuji; her life had hardly begun in her eyes. Still, she was now very aware of how terrifying the outside world could be. 

Late afternoon began to shift into early evening. The crickets began to sing, the sky started to change colors, and light began to leave the world. The two of them had sat down facing the stream, watching its slow, peaceful flow. 

Yuuji spoke first. “Your hair glows.”

“Yeah. It does,” Rapunzel said shyly. 

“That’s amazing, how does it do that?” Yuuji wondered, leaning closer to hear her explanation. 

“I… I don’t really know, it just… does.” It was a completely new concept to Rapunzel, but it stumped her too. Where did her powers come from? She knew that her magic was something to be protected, something rare, so clearly it wasn’t common for people to have it. 

But what about that person who’d shattered the dam? At least, she was almost certain that’s what she’d watched happen. A little light had appeared above his hand, and then it had flown into the dam, breaking it instantly. Was that magic too, or was it something else?

“Huh, that’s really cool though,” Yuuji said.

“Thanks,” Rapunzel replied. 

For a moment, Yuuji just smiled at her. Then, he pushed himself up to his feet. “I’ll get the things we need for a fire. Do you have any food in that satchel?” Yuuji asked. 

“I should have some, but a lot of it got wet,” Rapunzel said, pulling out a waterlogged loaf of bread. 

“That’s alright, once we have a fire we can cook the water out of it,” Yuuji said

“Do you need me to do anything?” Rapunzel asked. 

“No, that’s alright, I’ve done this plenty of times,” Yuuji answered, shooting her a signature thumbs up before he continued off into the forest. 

Rapunzel took out all of the food she’d packed. The apples would be fine, but the bread had to be cooked right away. Thankfully, it didn’t take long for Yuuji to get back and start setting up a fire, something that she’d never actually seen before. She’d always started fires with matches or flintstones. Yuuji knew how to do it from just sticks. 

From there, the two were able to cook the food that Rapunzel brought with her. It wasn’t much in the way of dinner, but it was enough for them to not feel desperately hungry. By the time their meal was over, darkness had settled over the forest, leaving the fire in front of them as their sole source of light. 

When it was quiet for a while, Rapunzel decided to speak up. 

“You know, glowing isn’t the only thing my hair can do,” she said. 

“Really?!” Yuuji asked, eyes lighting up. “What else does it do?!” 

“I’ll show you,” Rapunzel said. She took her hair and began to wrap it around his hands. All the while, his feet bounced excitedly and his eyes never left what she was doing. Once she’d fully wrapped his injuries and rested her hair on her own hands, she began her incantation. 

“Flower, gleam and glow

Let your power shine.

Make the clock reverse,

Bring back what once was mine.”

In the dark, her magic was even more striking. It was like she was summoning a piece of the sun back into the world for only her, Yuuji, and Pascal to see. 

“Heal what has been hurt,

Change the fates’ design. 

Save what has been lost,

Bring back what once was mine.”

As Yuuji felt it over his hands, it was warm and soothing, nothing like that magic that now rested in him. 

“What once was mine.”

As her voice faded, so did the glow, as well as the feeling in Yuuji’s hands. Without a word, Rapunzel leaned forward and began to unwrap them. When they were fully untied, he looked at them to see if anything had changed. 

They were unblemished, perfectly healed over so that not even a scar was showing. The sight made Yuuji speechless. It was a miracle, plain as day. 

He searched for something he could say.

“Rapunzel, you have a really pretty voice,” was all that managed to come out. 

“Thank you,” Rapunzel said, looking away from him bashfully. 

“And your magic, it’s amazing too,” he added. 

Rapunzel nodded. “I know, Mother doesn’t say it, but that is what she thinks. She tells me that, when I was a baby, people tried to cut my hair so they could keep the power to themselves.” She pushed back her longer locks of hair to reveal a single brown strand, barely longer than Yuuji’s own hair. 

“When it’s cut, it loses its power and stops growing,” she said, letting her hair fall back down. “A power like that needs to be protected, so… she never let me… why I never left…” 

It took a moment for Yuuji to realize what she was referring to. “You never left that tower?” Yuuji asked. Rapunzel shook her head in response. 

“Not even once? Not on a trip or… anything?” 

“Nope. This is my first time ever. You’re the first boy I’ve ever met. I hadn’t seen one before. The Snuggly Duckling was the most people I’ve seen in a single place. What happened with the water and the…. Well, that’s my first near death experience, I guess,” she said. 

“I promise you, they don’t happen that often,” Yuuji reassured her. 

“Still, it’s just… it makes me feel like Mother was right.”

“Right about what?” 

“Me not being ready. For the world and all that.”

“Rapunzel, can I tell you something?” Yuuji asked, reaching out and taking one of her hands in his. 

“Yeah?”

“I wasn’t ready for the world either, for a long time. When… when I had to go out into the world after grandpa was gone, I wasn’t ready for anything. The Snuggly Duckling, heists, all that, I didn’t know how to do any of it. But, even if you’re not ready for something, that doesn’t mean you can’t do it,” Yuuji explained. 

“So it’s like this for everybody?” Rapunzel asked. 

“I don't know if it's exactly the same but, pretty much,” Yuuji answered. 

Rapunzel looked off into the night, repeating Yuuji’s words in her mind like a mantra. She’d never slept outside in the dark before. Images of all the scary things Mother had told her about in forests ran amok in her mind. Now, there was no tower between her and them, nothing to protect her magic from all the people who wanted it for themselves.

Mother had been right about the world being dangerous, but she’d failed to mention how wonderful it was. Rapunzel had gotten the chance to meet Yuuji and then all the people in The Snuggly Duckling, whom she’d originally dismissed as ruffians. All of them seemed wonderful, as far as she was concerned. 

So, on her first night out in the open world, on the ground and out in the open, Rapunzel had no trouble finding rest.

Chapter Text

Outside of the tower, morning was bright. Rather than being blocked by walls, the sunlight could stream into the world freely. It glowed against the faint wisps of fog that still hung above the ground, flooding every corner of the woods with light. 

To this, Rapunzel awoke. In the tower, birdsong had usually been only one bird, maybe another in the far distance. Here, a whole chorus sang boldly. There could have been one on every single tree for all she knew. 

She glanced to her right, still laying on the ground. Yuuji lay there, soundly asleep. At some point during the night, he’d pulled Rapunzel’s satchel closer to himself to use as a pillow. Even in sleep, he had a hint of a smile. 

Now that Rapunzel had seen other men, she was confident that he was beautiful. His pink hair, his smooth features, the unique marks beneath his eyes. Before, she’d been entranced because he was a new person who looked different from anything she’d ever seen. Now, she wasn’t sure. 

His smile faltered for a moment as he shivered. He’s cold. The morning was crisp. Rapunzel guessed that if it were just a little bit colder, she’d be able to see her breath in the air. She sat up, took some of her hair, and slung it over Yuuji like a blanket. Instantly, he relaxed, and his slight smile returned. 

Rapunzel had no conception of the way that made her feel. The closest word she had was comfortable, for the serene satisfaction that came from helping her guide. 

“Well, good morning!”

Rapunzel screamed at the unfamiliar voice, immediately waking Yuuji. 

“R’punzha?! Whas’ wrong?!” He asked, struggling to get his eyes open as he clumsily scrambled to his feet. Rapunzel yanked her hair off of him and reached for her satchel, retrieving the frying pan from within. 

Her eyes darted wildly around for the source of the voice. Shaded by the thick canopy above were two familiar figures. The taller one with white hair leaned against a tree without a care in the world. The other, whose hair had previously been spiky, now had all his hair hanging in his face. He was violently shivering, and still dripping wet. 

“Yuuji!” Rapunzel called out. 

“What is it?” Yuuji asked, now standing at Rapunzel’s side. With her hand that wasn’t wielding a frying pan, she pointed. 

“We can take ‘em if we need to,” Yuuji said, settling into a fighting stance. 

Rapunzel leaned over and whispered into his ear. “No, we can’t, I saw one of them break the dam.”

“What?”

“Yeah, he just exploded the whole thing.”

“Which one?”

“The one with white hair.”

Yuuji gulped. 

The two figures were now approaching. The one with black hair ran ahead and held his arms forward. 

“Step away from him! He’s dangerous,” he shouted at Rapunzel. Judging by his voice and overall appearance, he looked to be about Yuuji’s age, maybe off by a year at most. 

“What are you talking about?” Rapunzel asked. 

“Uh, I’d like to know too,” Yuuji added. 

“He’s a cursed spirit. By protocol, I’m supposed to exorcize him,” the black haired boy answered. Now, his hands were held in a particular way that was clearly deliberate, but didn’t have any discernible purpose. 

“Demon-”

Rapunzel decided that she didn’t like what was going on. She cast a strand of hair around the boy’s wrists and yanked him forward, interrupting whatever he was about to do. Then, as he stumbled toward her, Rapunzel wound her frying pan back and brought it forward to intercept him. 

“Whoa there!” the older man said as he suddenly appeared between them, holding each of them back with a single hand. “No need to get rough, I’m just curious which one is in control right now,” he said, looking at Yuuji. That wouldn’t have been strange, save for the fact that he not only had his hair covering his face but also a blindfold. 

“What do you mean?” Yuuji asked. 

“Are you Sukuna or Eugene right now?”

“My name is Yuu ji , not Eu gene !” Yuuji shouted, indignant over the mispronunciation of his name. “And who’s Sukuna?” Yuuji asked. 

The white haired man was about to answer, but Yuuji suddenly cocked his head. 

“ You’re Sukuna? Why haven’t you told me before?” Yuuji asked. After a small stretch of silence, he spoke again. “You’re literally in my head now, I have a right to know!”

Rapunzel glanced at the boy with black hair. He’d parted his sopping wet bangs to get a better look at what was happening, as though he too needed to check it was actually real. 

“Okay, well, then it’s me, Yuuji , in control. Not Sukuna,” Yuuji said. 

“Yuuji… not a very good fake name,” the white haired man said.

“That’s because it’s my real name. Someone just heard it wrong and now all my wanted posters say Eugene. That is how you know my name, right?” Yuuji asked, realizing he may have accidentally outed himself as a criminal. 

“Yup. Well, since I now know who you are, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Satoru Gojo, but everybody just calls me Gojo ‘cause it’s catchier. Now, Megumi, you go,” Gojo urged on. 

Megumi crossed his arms, his bangs hanging back in his face again. “I’m Megumi,” he said. 

“Well, you two know that I’m Yuuji Itadori and maybe sometimes Sukuna,” Yuuji said. 

Then everybody looked at Rapunzel. “Hi everyone!” she said. “My name’s Rapunzel. I don’t have a second name or anything, it’s just Rapunzel.”

“Great! Now that we have introductions and pleasantries down, let’s get down to business,” Gojo said. “We were originally called here to Corona because Sukuna’s cursed finger went missing. Then, we heard about you getting possessed and that piqued our interest even more. Now that I see you can control Sukuna, even under pressure, it’s obvious that we have an unprecedented opportunity,” Gojo said. 

“Opportunity for what?” Yuuji asked. 

“Well, I was getting to that. See, Sukuna is… let’s just say bad. Very bad. He’s called the King of Curses, which are beings made of humanity’s negative emotions pooling together and manifesting. He was strong enough that they couldn’t kill him, they had to divide him up into twenty fingers and scatter him across the world, hoping that it wouldn’t become a problem.”

“How does he have twenty fingers?” Yuuji wondered. 

“He had four arms, from what I hear,” Gojo answered. 

“And two faces,” Megumi added. 

“And two faces. Good job Megumi! You really are listening when I give history lessons!” Gojo said, ruffling Megumi’s hair, which just ended up matting it because it was still wet. 

“Mhmm,” Megumi replied. 

“Now! Where was I? Oh! Yes, so, we couldn’t kill Sukuna in the past, but we might be able to do it now thanks to you!” Gojo said, pointing both fingers at Yuuji. “Since Sukuna is manifesting in you, if you die, whatever part of him is in you also dies. So, if we get you to eat all twenty fingers and then kill you, Sukuna will be vanquished forever!” Gojo declared excitedly. 

“Kill me?!” Yuuji cried. 

“You are not killing Yuuji!” Rapunzel shouted, immediately putting himself between Gojo and Yuuji. 

“Oh… that’s right… you don’t know that’s good news. Well, do you know what Megumi tried to do just now?” Gojo asked. 

“Something about ‘exorcizing’,” Rapunzel answered. 

“In this context, that just means kill, he was trying to kill you,” Gojo said. 

Yuuji turned towards Megumi. “Hey!” he shouted. 

“You definitely deserved to get hit by this!” Rapunzel added, brandishing her signature weapon. 

“Anway, yeah, you can all get revenge on him later, but what’s important is that I’m the only one in the know who doesn’t want to kill you now ,” Gojo explained. 

When nobody found a word to say, Gojo continued. “The greater jujutsu world, if they knew you were the vessel of Sukuna, would jump on the chance to kill you. Every sorcerer seeking a promotion would undertake the mission, which is pretty much every sorcerer, by the way. But, if we get all twenty fingers, we can actually make it worth something, and give you more time to live in the process. It’s a win win!” Gojo said. 

“Th-that doesn’t sound like a win-win,” Yuuji pointed out. 

“Yeah… Honestly, it really isn’t.”

Birdsong filled the silence left by their absent words. Rapunzel walked over to Yuuji and embraced him. Yuuji leaned his head on top of hers and looked at the two newcomers. 

“There’s… there’s no other options for me?” Yuuji asked, already knowing the answer to the questions. 

“You could try running. But, running from sorcerers isn’t the same as running from the guards. And, in that case, I would be chasing you too. I have nothing against you, Yuuji, but when you swallowed that finger, you caught yourself in the crossfire of something bigger. Now, this is your life, and those are your choices.” Gojo’s voice had turned serious now as he sensed the weight of his own words. 

“It’s a good thing you can control it. If you couldn’t, a lot more people could have been hurt by now,” Megumi said. 

He was right. Sukuna wanted to hurt people. This wasn’t about Yuuji, but rather all of the people that Sukuna could harm with his body. 

“I’ll be honest, I almost lost it back there,” Yuuji said. Gojo raised an eyebrow and Megumi leaned closer. 

“We were trapped in a cave yesterday, one that was filling up with water. We were both going to drown, and the voice, Sukuna, said that if I gave up control, he would break both of us out and not harm Rapunzel. He called it uh, pact or something like that. I didn’t trust him but… when the cave filled all the way up, I almost just did it,” Yuuji explained. 

“Almost?” Gojo asked. 

“Rapunzel, she saved us. Her hair lit up and showed the way out,” Yuuji answered. 

“Ah,” Gojo said, turning towards Rapunzel. “I was going to ask, I did feel some form of magic coming off of you.” 

“Well, my hair glows and heals people when I sing,” she said. 

“Could you show us?” Gojo asked. 

Feeling a little bit awkward, Rapunzel began her incantation. Rather than wide eyed amazement, Gojo and Megumi observed her power with something more akin to curiosity. 

Then, it came to an end. Gojo was looking at her, nodding to himself. Megumi, on the other hand, was staring intently at Yuuji’s face. 

“Rapunzel, can you do that again? I think I saw something,” he said. 

“Uh, okay,” Rapunzel said. She said all the same words and let the power flow through her hair once more, Megumi tapped on her shoulder and pointed at Yuuji’s face. 

It took her a moment to spot what he was referring to, but once she did, her singing completely stopped. 

Yuuji’s markings had vanished. But, as her singing stopped and the power waned, the markings faded back into view beneath Yuuji’s eyes. 

“What is it?” the pink haired boy asked innocently. 

“Where did these markings come from?” Megumi wondered. 

“I… I don’t really know, actually. I only noticed them yesterday, though.” Megumi looked at Gojo. 

“That is interesting. Those markings are probably from Sukuna, if you haven’t noticed them before yesterday,” Gojo speculated. Then, he turned to Rapunzel. “But your magic seems to make them go away. I wonder if Sukuna’s presence is counteracted by your power.”

“If so, maybe I could do something about Sukuna without hurting Yuuji?” Rapunzel asked. 

“Maybe, but if it is possible, which I’m not sure it is, it would take a massive effort to kill him. Maybe enough effort to kill you . If we knew where your power came from and found another source of it, that could be used to kill Sukuna, but at that point it’s just speculation. I do want to look into that though,” Gojo said. 

“Well, maybe you can. I’m taking Rapunzel to see the floating lights ceremony. We have to go to the capital of Corona for that, and I’m sure they’ve got a library or something like that,” Yuuji said. 

Gojo and Megumi looked at one another. “I guess it couldn’t hurt,” Megumi said. 

“We’d be going with you anyway, so yes! Besides, I think we all need a bit of fun after hearing that, don’t we?” Gojo asked. 

Megumi didn’t respond, but Yuuji and Rapunzel both nodded their heads. 

“Should I lead the way?” Gojo asked. 

“Sure,” Rapunzel replied. The other two didn't give him any objections. 

“Let’s go then!” Gojo declared. So, the group of now four people started off towards the capital city of Corona. 

Rapunzel’s plans had been completely wrecked. She was still going to see the floating lights, obviously, but everything after had been changed. She’d been tentatively planning to go back to the tower, but there was no chance she was doing that now. She couldn’t leave Yuuji. She had to help him after all he’d done for her, for risking his life back in the canyon on her journey. 

Besides, if her power could do something about Sukuna, maybe she was the key to making sure he made it out okay in the end. 

Chapter Text

As they approached the capital, Gojo and Megumi made the decision to split off for the day. When they were gone, the thought briefly crossed Rapunzel’s mind to just run and never look back, to save Yuuji all the trouble he was now in. 

Realizing it wouldn’t actually save him, Rapunzel dropped the thought and focused on the road ahead, which was now paved stone rather than the deer trails and dirt paths she’d become familiar with. 

“So, are you excited to see it?” Yuuji asked. Rapunzel nodded enthusiastically. 

“What about this? You close your eyes, and then you’ll open them when we’re in full view,” Yuuji said. 

“Sure!”

Rapunzel closed her eyes  and Yuuji began leading her down the path. 

“Can’t you go any faster?” she asked. 

“Sorry, sorry! I will!”

After a few moments of awkward shuffling, Yuuji finally stopped. “You can open them,” he said.

Rapunzel forgot to breathe when she saw what lay before them. A grand bridge of solid stone stretched across the channel in front of them, outfitted with tall lamps that currently lay unlit. It vanished into the village of charming homes that formed a mosaic of red and blue roofs. Crowning it all was the castle. Smooth, pale stone stretched into the sky, almost as tall as the massive hill beneath it.

Without a word, she began running towards it. She heard Yuuji’s footsteps quickly catch up to hers and match her pace. 

“Whaddya think?” he asked. 

“Wow,” she replied. Suddenly, she stopped so she could see it from closer up. Then she started running again without warning. She wanted to watch it forever. She wanted to go in. She wanted to climb all over and see everything. She wanted to see what one of the ships in the channel around them was like. 

She ran through the front gate, and the world was made anew once more. Streets, apparently, were rivers of people. Market stalls crowded the sides, growths of flowers and garlands of violet flags hung above, and everyone’s energy seemed to be almost as excited as Rapunzel’s own. 

Suddenly, a cart wheeled past her, forcing her to stumble back, which bumped her into someone. Trying to get away, she almost trampled a troop of geese, which then only led her to hit someone else. 

A sudden yank on her hair also stopped her in her tracks. Glancing behind her, she could see people stepping on it. The streets were too crowded and her hair was too long for people to actually avoid it. Yuuji was quickly trying to bundle up her hair, and she joined him in getting it off the ground. 

Once he had enough of it, he ran over so all of her hair could be in one place. He started looking around for a solution to their problem. 

Rapunzel was the one who spotted them. There were four young girls with vibrant red hair (people could have red hair?!) who were giving each other braids and quickly running out of room. It reminded Rapunzel of painting in her own tower, having to find creative ways for herself to have any space at all. 

“Hello!” she called out. They all looked over, and Yuuji held up the bundling of her hair. All of them gasped at once, realizing the opportunity they had. They all got up and one of them, who looked to be the oldest, took charge. 

“How do you have so much of it?” she asked. 

“It’s been growing since I was born, and it’s great! But, would you be okay braiding it for me? Right now it’s so long people are stepping on it,” Rapunzel said. 

“No, no, I’d love to! Let’s uh, let’s find a spot,” the girl said, looking around for a place they could go. 

“The cracked courtyard should be empty right now,” another sister said. 

“Alright, we’ll go there!” 

Rapunzel and Yuuji were led through the streets by the excitable sisters, who clearly knew the place far better than Rapunzel and even Yuuji. Then, as they got to the aforementioned courtyard, the girls sat Rapunzel down and began joyously braiding her hair. 

~

Far away, almost on the other side of the capital, was a massive library. It didn’t advertise itself as such, so it was hard to find. Only people in the know knew it was there at all. Once Gojo and Megumi had gotten there, they’d found the esoteric section completely locked. As such, they’d had to convince the librarian to let them in, all the way down to showing her they knew far more about magic than the average superstitious traveler.

The esoteric section of the library was only lit by windows high above, so that nobody could look in on them. Almost every one of the tomes there was old. Only about one or two esoteric works came out in a year, and this library had hundreds of them. Centuries’ worth of knowledge from around the world rested here. Some of it was in languages Gojo could read, but most of it wasn’t. It left him wanting to learn the languages that used Arabic writing or to memorize the myriad of characters in Chinese. But, that would have to wait for another day. 

Most of the books were about specific things. Some were about curses, others were about specific magical items. Those weren’t useful to him. What finally looked promising was a book called The Breadth of Magics , which he opened and started looking through. 

“Gojo,” Megumi said. 

“What is it?” Gojo asked, not looking away from the book in front of him. 

“Do you really think Yuuji can control Sukuna?” Megumi wondered, pulling up a chair to sit next to Gojo at the reading table. 

“He’s seemed capable so far,” Gojo answered. 

“What about the pact he almost made?”

“He didn’t end up making it. Rapunzel was able to help him out. Also, a pact is a choice. That was a special circumstance; they almost died. Can you imagine it, drowning in complete darkness, trapped underground. It’s why I broke that dam. I put them in that circumstance, and they made it out the other side, no control lost,” Gojo explained. 

“I’m not scared about threatening him. I’m scared about Rapunzel. If someone threatened her, he’d definitely make a pact,” Megumi said. 

Gojo stopped reading. Megumi was right. From what he’d been able to discern so far, Yuuji would make a pact to keep Rapunzel safe. The quickest way to do it would be to threaten her. “We’ll just have to keep her safe,” Gojo said. 

When Megumi had no reply, Gojo continued his reading. 

Magic in this world, I think, is far simpler than people make it out to be. From what I’ve observed through arcane artifacts, magically gifted individuals, and magical creatures, I believe magic to exist along a spectrum of two extremes. 

The first extreme can be called außenmagie. This is magic that is drawn from beyond the world, from places like the sun, moon, and stars. Despite great distance, these things are visible to us. 

The opposite extreme is innenmagie. This is magic drawn from the deepest parts of ourselves, closer than physically possible. In spite of this, it is invisible. The normal eye cannot see emotion like anger. 

There is no pure form of either, but there are things that exist far more prominently as one than the other. As far as extremes go, these forms of magic tend to cancel one another out. When one waxes in power, the other wanes. 

The book then went on to list various examples of magical forms cancelling one another out when they were clearly more defined as one than the other. 

It was an interesting way to look at magic. Gojo was probably more familiar with innenmagie, seeing as cursed energy was drawn from negative human emotions, and curses were the accumulation of them. 

In that case, Rapunzel’s power had to be a form of außenmagie, if it warded away the mark of the King of Curses. 

What was most interesting was the fact that Rapunzel’s theory had been given credence. Since extremes of magic cancelled one another out, a powerful enough source of Sukuna’s opposite could be used to kill him. 

The only question left was how they used außenmagie, and what source of it could be powerful enough to kill Sukuna. Whatever the case, Gojo was checking out the library book, he needed to take a look at the rest of it, and it was much longer than a single day’s reading. 

“Did you find anything?” Megumi asked. 

Gojo smiled. 

“It turns out Rapunzel might be right.”

~

For the first time in longer than she could remember, Rapunzel’s hair was short enough to not drag along the ground. Her hair had been wound into a single braid, woven into itself with flowers interspersed throughout it. 

She gave it a spin and turned to Yuuji. “What do you think?” she asked. 

“Oh! Uh, it’s uh, it’s great!” Yuuji said, a strong dusting of pink on his cheeks. 

“Thank you so much!” Rapunzel said to the girls. 

“No problem!” the eldest replied. 

“It was fun!” another added. 

“Here,” Yuuji said, handing a few coins to the oldest one, enough for the siblings to spread around. 

“Thank you,” she said, staring at the money with amazement. 

“Thank you too! Have a great day!” Rapunzel said, waving at the girls as she grabbed Yuuji’s hand and dragged him into the rest of the city. 

She stopped at everything, quickly sorting through the merchandise. Then, something else would catch her eye and she’d keep running, leaving Yuuji to handle whatever chaos she left behind. 

Then, she smelled the familiar aroma of baking and followed it. What it led her to was a bakery whose windows displayed a small assortment of what lay inside. 

“You want to go in there?” Yuuji asked. Rapunzel nodded, and she led him inside. 

The workers at the bakery were running around, trying to keep up with the line that stretched almost all the way to the door. The smell was even stronger inside, enough that Rapunzel’s mouth instantly watered. Since leaving the tower, she’d only been eating what she’d packed, and she hadn’t eaten breakfast for the day yet. 

She bobbed between her heels eagerly as the line gradually grew shorter. Finally, after far too long in the torture of smelling food that she couldn’t eat yet, the two made it to the front. 

“What would you like?” the baker behind the counter asked. 

“Uh…” It was that moment where Rapunzel realized she hadn’t actually decided what she was going to eat. She turned to Yuuji for help. 

“Huh, what is it?” Yuuji asked. 

“I don’t know what to get,” Rapunzel whispered loudly. 

“Look, if you’re not gonna get anything, please go to the back of the-

“Cupcakes!” Yuuji blurted out, hands pointing at something in the display case. 

“How many?” the baker asked. 

“Two?” Yuuji wondered, looking at Rapunzel. She nodded. 

“Two.”

Getting a pair of cupcakes wrapped up for them didn’t take long. Soon, they were out the door with their sweets and back into the busy street. 

“Oh, crap! Rapunzel, we gotta go,” Yuuji said. 

“Why? What’s wrong?” she asked. Yuuji pointed to a set of guards walking down the street. 

Quickly, he led her into one of the side alleys and into a doorway that was set in the stone wall. He glanced out a few times to check where the guards were, finally breathing a sigh of relief when they were fully past. 

“That was close,” he said. 

“Do you think it’s safe to be in town like this?” Rapunzel asked. 

“I should be. You’re drawing most of the attention, and I can run fast if I need to. We’ll be okay,” Yuuji reassured her. 

“I’m drawing attention?” Rapunzel asked. 

“Of course, you look stunning,” he replied. 

Feeling her cheeks growing warm, Rapunzel held up her cupcake. “I’ve seen it in a book once where they did a toast,” she said. 

“They usually do that with drinks,” Yuuji said. Rapunzel shrugged her shoulders, and Yuuji held up his cupcake. 

“What are we giving a toast to?”

Rapunzel thought about it. Right, they did do it to something when I read about it. 

“The floating lights?”

“That works,” Yuuji said. 

“To the floating lights,” they said together, tapping their cupcakes together. Rapunzel eagerly peeled off the paper and shoved the whole thing in her mouth. 

It was sweeter than anything she could bake back home. There, she had to ration her sugar and ingredients because Mother would only bring so much from the outside world. These bakers had no such reason to hold back. The fluffy cupcake was topped with tart icing that balanced it perfectly, plus a literal cherry on top. 

“You can have mine if you want,” Yuuji said, holding out his cupcake. 

“Oh, no, it’s fine,” Rapunzel said. 

“Are you sure?” he asked. 

She wasn’t. She accepted the cupcake happily and gobbled it down just as quickly as the first one. 

“Thsh ‘er sho good,” she said through a mouthful of cupcake. 

Yuuji laughed. “I’m glad you like them.” He glanced back out into the street one more time. “I think we’re clear of guards, let’s go.”

Once Rapunzel took Yuuji’s hand, the two entered the main thoroughfare once more.

Chapter Text

Rapunzel was once again swept up in the excitement of being around so many things she’d never imagined. The idea of the world Mother had given her was being shattered. Parts of it were just as scary as she told, but the complexity had all been trampled. Mother hadn’t mentioned that the brigands and bandits had dreams, or that most boys didn’t seem to have sharp teeth, or that most people didn’t even know what her hair did. 

Of the many things that caught her eyes, one thing managed to hold them. It was a sign that read “Schreiber Public Library” . Another thing Mother had told her about the world was that books were hard to come by. One thing Rapunzel had learned was that libraries were places that had books you could borrow. 

“Can we go in there?” Rapunzel asked. 

“The library?”

“Mhmm!”

“Uh, sure.”

Rapunzel skipped up to the door and tentatively tried it, seeing that it was open. Then, she stepped into the library itself. 

The first level contained more books than Rapunzel had imagined existing in the whole world. Shelves higher than her head were crowded with books of all colors and sizes. At the front desk was a librarian with graying hair and a slightly receded hairline. He gave Rapunzel a nod, and Rapunzel eagerly nodded back, which confused him slightly. 

The door opened again as Yuuji came in behind her. 

“Yuuji! Look at all the-” he held a finger over his mouth. 

“Oh, sorry!” Rapunzel loudly whispered, glancing back at the librarian. “Look at all the books!” she whisper screamed. 

“Yes?” Yuuji replied. 

“There’s so many!” she said. 

“This is a library,” Yuuji pointed out. 

“Mother said that books were rare, that’s why I only had three,” Rapunzel said, walking closer to one of the shelves. That was when she spotted the stairs on one side of the circular room which spiraled up into a second story. 

“Are we allowed to go up there?” Rapunzel asked. 

“Of course, feel free to peruse the library at your leisure,” the librarian responded. Rapunzel took her chance to eagerly run up the stairs and see what was there. 

It was another room lined with bookshelves that were full of books. This one had more windows, letting more natural light into the space. It was like a brighter, book-ier version of her tower, but that one that she could easily come and go from. 

“Rapunzel?” Yuuji asked. 

"What is it?" Rapunzel replied. 

“I haven’t eaten yet and I’m starting to get hungry. Is it okay if I leave you here while I go get food?” Yuuji asked. 

“Oh, sure thing, go ahead,” Rapunzel said. 

“See you in a bit!” Yuuji said before going down and out the door.

With that, Rapunzel began to pull books from shelves of any title that sounded interesting. It was weird looking at pages and seeing words that she hadn’t seen before. She had to pay more attention to the words on the page to see what they were actually saying, rather than simply relying on memorization. 

Within moments, she was lost within it. Her eyes flew over pages detailing the life cycles of trees, the various different breeds of dog that existed in the world, stories and fairy tales about mermaids and witches and fairies, books about architecture and many different ways that people constructed buildings around the world. 

By the time Yuuji came back, she had already worked through dozens of books. Some had been neatly put in a row, others still lay open where they were, halfway finished even in the relatively brief time he’d been gone. What Rapunzel then had in front of her was a book of maps. 

What she had in front of her was a somewhat local map, detailing all of the kingdom of Corona. Yuuji sat down next to her on the ground. 

“Whatcha lookin’ at?” he wondered. 

“I’m trying to figure out where my tower is,” Rapunzel said. She placed a finger on the capital city. “We’re here, and it took us a full day to get here from the tower, but we went on a detour to the Snuggly Duckling so I’m not sure.”

“It’s closer than a full day’s journey,” Yuuji said. 

“Really? How do you know?” Rapunzel asked. 

Yuuji gulped, trying to figure out how to explain the fact that he was a criminal to someone who’d only just seen the outside world the day before. 

“Well, yesterday, when I found you, I was here in the morning. Then, when guards chased me and a couple of other people away, we had to run through the forest. Somewhere in the forest, I fell through a wall of ivy and that was what led to your tower,” Yuuji explained. 

Rapunzel nodded. “So, it’s only a few hours away…” She looked down at the scale of the map. The whole kingdom was only around three meiles across. It wasn’t a unit of measurement she’d seen before, so she didn’t know what it meant. 

“Do you know where The Snuggly Duckling is?” she asked. 

“Oh, it’s somewhere… here, I think,” Yuuji answered, circling a section of the map with his finger in the Northern region of the kingdom. She could see where the dam was marked, so she knew where the underground tunnel was. Beyond that, she had no point of reference for where the tower could be, besides a hesitant guess that it was somewhere in the central parts of the kingdom. The map was filled with unfamiliar village names and landmarks that she’d never seen before. 

“Is there anywhere here you haven’t been?” Rapunzel wondered. 

“No, I think I’ve been everywhere, at least everywhere that’s marked. I haven’t had a reason to go down to the mountains, though,” Yuuji said, gesturing to the mountains in the Southern region. 

“Have you been outside?” Rapunzel asked, pointing at the wall that bordered the Eastern extreme of Corona. 

“A couple times, but I never really went far. It was only for smuggling jobs, which I don’t do very often,” Yuuji explained. 

Rapunzel nodded as she turned the page to find a much bigger map, one that encompassed all of Afroeurasia. 

“Whoa.” 

Lines crossed over the entire map, and almost none of it was labelled. The only distinguishable features were the color coding of continents and various red marks spread across the world, most of which resided in the smallest of the three continents. 

“What is this?” 

“It’s a world map. The lines are longitude and latitude, but I forget which is which. The continents are Africa, Asia, and Europe, plus a few others. We’re in Europe,” Yuuji explained. 

“Where?” Rapunzel wondered, flipping between the Kingdom map and the Afroeurasia map to try and recognize the familiar shape of the kingdom. 

“I don’t know,” Yuuji realized. The two of them tried to search for it in the many coastlines within Europe, but neither of their eyes were able to pick anything out. 

“Where do you learn these things?” Rapunzel asked. 

“Uh, mostly the orphanage. I kind of gave up on a lot of it because I was behind and got distracted a lot, but I picked up a bit of it.”

“Orphanage, orphan… What happened to living with your grandfather?”

“He couldn’t live forever,” Yuuji said, his eyes growing distant. 

“I’m sorry, I won’t bring it up again,” Rapunzel said. 

“No, no, may as well. I haven’t actually told anyone all of it yet,” Yuuji said, back in the moment and smiling as before. “So, orphanage. It was fine for a few months, but quickly got bad because nobody adopts teenagers. I had to hang out in all the ‘shady’ spots because the regular ones didn’t like a street urchin like me. But then… someone… I don’t even know actually, the guards just kind of came for me one day acting like I’d done something bad. Then, they tried to arrest me, I ran, and I’ve been running ever since. It’s been… a long time. And yeah, that’s all,” Yuuji explained. 

“That sounds awful,” Rapunzel said. 

“It’s not all bad. I get to meet people like you,” Yuuji said, giving her a wink. The gesture made Rapunzel smile. 

Her eyes were suddenly drawn out the window as she heard a few people laughing merrily outside. 

“Do you want to go?” Yuuji asked. 

“Sure, let’s go back out,” she answered, immediately going to pick up the books. It wasn't as easy as cleaning up back home, because she wasn’t quite sure where everything belonged, but within ten minutes or so the duo was back out the door and into the town. 

Rapunzel was still excited, but a lot of her energy had been spent. Now, she took more time to appreciate the overall scenery of the city rather than looking at every particular detail. Her quest to do… things she would rather not think about, it would probably take her far away, maybe even beyond the borders of Corona. 

One thing that she saw was a small boy with a backpack full of the flags that hung over every street, selling them to a few passersby. 

“Can we get one?” Rapunzel asked. 

“Oh, sure!” Yuuji said. 

The two went over, and Yuuji crouched down to pay for one of the flags. Once he had it, he handed it over to Rapunzel.

“Thank you,” she said.

“No problem!”

Rapunzel held the flag up, comparing it to all of the flags that hung above. The shape was far more complicated up close, and Rapunzel was able to appreciate other things, too. She could feel the material of the flag, see the stitching that held the pattern to the background, and better appreciate how the purple and yellow contrasted. 

Then, she continued moving down the street, determined to see more of what the day had to offer her. It didn’t take long for her to find something else. 

In a large courtyard, she could see a few kids using blocky chunks of color that marked the stone below. She took Yuuji’s hand. 

“Can we do that?”

“You don’t have to ask, you know.”

So yes, Rapunzel thought with glee, striding over to someone who held a whole box of the color sticks, a middle aged woman who wore her hair in a large, poofy bun. 

“Hello young lady, would you like some chalk?” the vendor asked. 

“Is that these?” Rapunzel asked, pointing to the blocks of color. 

“Yup. Would you like some?” the vendor repeated. 

“Sure, how does it work?” Rapunzel wondered.

“It’s uh, it’s kind of like painting, but you don’t have to wait for it to dry, and it’s harder to mix colors. Do be careful though, it smudges everything, and it’s much harder to get it off of clothes than off the ground.” Rapunzel nodded, remembering the times earlier in her painting career where she’d ruined many dresses by getting paint all over them. 

“How many can you take?” she asked, 

“As many as you like, within reason. It’s a celebration, no need to charge for it,” the vendor said. 

“Thank you so much,” Rapunzel replied. Oh, I have to think about what colors I need, she realized. In the tower, her paints had always been limited, and that’s what had driven her to be creative as an artist. Now that she could have whatever color she wanted, she wasn’t sure what to do.

“Yuuji, can I see that,” she asked. Yuuji held out the flag for her, and she looked at it. 

“Good choice, here, I’ve got the colors you need for that,” the vendor said, quickly finding both violet and vibrant yellow. Rapunzel accepted them with a nod. 

“Could I also have these?” Rapunzel asked, pointing to other variations of the colors, plus a stick of white. 

“Sure.”

Rapunzel struggled to carry all of her colors with her as she found space. The latter task wasn’t hard because there was more room in the courtyard than in her whole tower. 

After a few moments of planning in her head, Rapunzel got to work. She’d have to start with the center and work her way outward, and that comprised the yellow of the sun. She laid down the yellow before she began to move on to the highlights and shading. Because she didn’t have to wait for it to dry, she could get to it all right away. She could also get to the purple straight away, and began forming the background. 

Time flew as it always did when she painted. Everything else became irrelevant. The sounds of the city, the people, and even Yuuji’s constant presence were all forgotten in the face of her work. 

Working in inspirations onto the symbol became natural. She began to work in the plants and florals that she always did in her painting, as well as various people that she’d seen throughout the day. Couples with young children, groups of friends, lovers both young and old, all of them made it into the piece she was making. 

It felt like only a moment had passed before she’d completely run out of chalk. She approached the vendor for more. 

“I’m so sorry but uh…”

“Take it,” the vendor said, handing Rapunzel another stick of the colors she’d already been using. Her eyes were locked in amazement at the artwork that Rapunzel was laying across the ground. 

“Thank you!” Rapunzel said, taking the colors and going straight back to work. It became so big that she had to run from place to place just to keep adding to it, letting it expand more and more as she added more details. 

Finally, she began finishing up the edges, highlighting in the plants that would extend outwards beyond the artwork’s borders. 

When she was satisfied, she stood up off of sore knees and wiped the sweat off her brow with her forearm. She looked at the remnant of chalk in her hand. 

“Do you think that woman’ll let me keep it?” she asked. She didn’t get an answer. “Yuuji.”

Yuuji was looking between the flag in his hands and the chalk in front of him, eyes wide with awe and disbelief. 

“Yuuji,” she repeated. 

“What?” 

“Do you think I’m allowed to keep the chalk?”

“Oh uh, I’m not sure. Maybe give it back, you have used a lot,” he pointed out. 

“Alright.” Rapunzel skipped over to the vendor. 

“Here’s the leftover. I got a little carried away and used a lot. Thank you so much!” Rapunzel said. 

“Where did you learn to make such beautiful art?” the woman asked. 

“Oh, I taught myself at home. I found a few paints one day and started messing around. Haven’t stopped,” Rapunzel explained. 

“You must be a natural then, it looks beautiful,” the woman commented. 

She likes my work! Oh gosh, what am I supposed to do with that? “Th-thank you!” Rapunzel replied bashfully, handing over the chalk and scampering away excitedly. 

“Yuuji, Yuuji! She likes it! She said she likes my work, can you believe that?” Rapunzel asked excitedly. 

“Of course I can! It’s great! I didn’t even know you could do all that with chalk,” he said. 

“It’s great?” Rapunzel asked. 

“Yeah it is,” he answered, putting his hand on her shoulder and turning her to face the artwork. “You made it like… not flat, I don’t know, there’s probably a better word for it, but whatever it is, it’s great.”

In Rapunzel’s mind, it was just the sun pattern on the flag with a few extra details. From above, one could see all the patterns laced into the colors, the shading on the edges of the shapes comprising the sun, and the seven little scenes depicting groups of people illustrated entirely in shades of purple. All of it had been done in a matter of a couple hours.

She shrugged her shoulders. “Anyways, I’m done with it. I should probably wash it off my hands,” she said, rotating her hands to see that they’d been dyed purple. 

“You could probably find a fountain or something to do that,” Yuuji said. 

“Let’s go!” Rapunzel said. 

“Wait,” Yuuji replied. 

“What is it?”

“Can I… just look at it a little longer?” Yuuji asked, shyly pointing at the art piece. 

“Sure.”

Yuuji went from staring at the artwork to glancing at the flag in his hands. He did it for a full minute. It was long enough that Rapunzel was wondering what was going through his head, what the art was making him think. Then, without a word, he looked to Rapunzel. 

“Alright, I’m ready.” So, the two continued. 

It was late afternoon by then. Rapunzel could feel the anticipation around her mounting, building with her own. It was getting closer to night, when the lanterns ceremony would happen. Even so, people still had plenty of other things on their minds, as they were still lining up to market stalls selling all sorts of goods. 

“Rapunzel?” Yuuji asked. 

“Mhmm?”

“It’s getting a little close to when the stalls close, I think we should get some food,” Yuuji said, pointing at a stall that was selling cheese, potatoes, and other foods that were good for the road. 

“Good idea.” The duo got in line, which moved at about the same pace as the bakery. As Rapunzel waited, her eyes began to wander. 

She spotted a massive mosaic over four times her height. In colorful tiles were illustrated the royal family. The king and queen both had dark brown hair, the one difference between their features being their eye color. In their arms was a baby whose green eyes matched those of the queen, but had brilliant blonde hair. 

At the foot of the mosaic was a mother and two children. 

“It’s for the lost princess,” the elder of the children said, placing a blue flower at the base of the mosaic. There were a number of other flowers there, freshly placed that very day. Rapunzel thought back on the flags and flowers and stalls. 

Was today's celebration, which happened on her birthday, all for the lost princess?

Before she could think about it, she caught her feet tapping out a tune. Her head turned towards the music’s source, a band of three musicians walking down the street. Realizing how much room the square gave her, an idea came to Rapunzel’s mind. 

She ran after the musicians and stopped them. “Can you play me a tune? Uh, something to dance to!” she requested.

The three musicians glanced at each other, then silently counted off before they all began playing as one. Finding the tune, she began to twirl. She saw onlookers, and she bounded over to them. 

The first person she pulled in was a young boy, who was urged on by his parents to go ahead. The two of them spun around together back into the center of the square. 

Rapunzel’s next victim was one in a pair of men who were watching them. The closest one put his hands up, but she didn’t give him a choice and dragged him into the square anyway. 

The next to join took a couple others with him, forming a chain of people that spiraled into the center. 

Finally, Rapunzel linked arms with a young woman, the two nodded to one another, and then laughed as they bounded into the square. 

After that, people didn't even need Rapunzel’s help, they just found room to join the dance. 

People clapped in tune to the music as the dancers formed a chain that circled around the sun pattern formed in the ground. Then, they broke off into their separate dances. 

Rapunzel locked eyes with Yuuji and beckoned him to join. He pointed to himself as though he weren’t sure. Rapunzel rolled her eyes, skipped forward in tune to the music, and took his arm. 

“You’re joining!” she decided. 

“Okay!” Yuuji agreed, handing off his groceries to a nearby couple that was watching the dance. 

The two were swept up into separate sections of the dance as people linked arms and skipped in circles together. Besides Pascal, Rapunzel never had any proper dance partners for the music she had to make all on her own. To have someone else making it and to be able to simply dance was amazing. 

Rapunzel and Yuuji locked eyes and skipped towards each other, but random strangers swept the two of them up into separate circles. What Rapunzel had started was now far beyond her control. People wove through and around each other, never breaking from the rhythm of the song that just kept on going. 

They leapt and spun and twirled and danced. Rapunzel had never been so consumed by music in her life, had never been able to listen to real music in her life. The experience wasn’t something she’d known existed. It had been completely outside her comprehension and yet here she was, having led it and being a part of it.

Even as townsfolk began to tire, she didn’t. She could do it all through the rest of the day and through the night if she really wanted to. But, she wouldn’t, because she could hear the music rising to a crescendo as she was left as one of the final participants, twirling and skipping and gliding over the stones.

The music rose and rose and rose and suddenly she collided with Yuuji, the two linking hands and stopping in sync to the crash of the music. 

For the slightest hint of a moment, they gazed into each other’s eyes in silence, out of breath and utterly enraptured by one another’s gaze. The onlooking audience erupted into enthusiastic applause. Still, the spell didn’t end. 

Only when a voice called out did the two look away from each other. 

“To the boats!” 

Chapter Text

The moment the announcement had been made, Yuuji had started leading Rapunzel somewhere, much faster than any of the people around them. Trusting him, she hadn’t decided to ask any questions. 

At least, not until the two of them sat in a boat that Yuuji started paddling away from the docks. 

“Where are we going?” 

“The best place to see the floating lights,” Yuuji answered. 

Rapunzel nodded and then stared out at the water. The sun was setting, painting the still waters the color of fire. As Yuuji paddled them out further into the channel, the sun shifted from orange, to red, to then being gone. When they’d finally made it out far enough, stars had begun to appear in the night sky. Everything was still, and the city was still dark. 

As Rapunzel leaned against the edge of the boat, she could feel herself shaking. 

“Are you okay,” Yuuji asked, scooting closer to her. 

“I’m terrified.”

“Why?”

“I’ve been looking out a window for eighteen years, dreaming about what it might feel like when those lights rise in the sky.” Her eyes were locked on the city. She’d counted the days exactly, accounting for every leap year there was. Not a single year had gone by where the ceremony was off by a day or where it was skipped. It was going to happen. 

“What if it’s not everything I dreamed it would be?” she wondered. 

“It will be,” Yuuji reassured her. 

She sighed. “And what if it is? What do I do then?”

“Then you get to do it again, it happens every year,” Yuuji answered. 

I get to do it again, she thought. But what about Yuuji? Would he be there next year? Would he even be alive next year? With everything that she now knew about him, and how the world felt about him, Rapunzel wasn’t sure. 

That’s not a now problem, she decided. This night was hers. She wouldn’t let anything on the horizon cloud it. 

She began to pluck flowers from her hair and gingerly place them on the water’s surface. Yuuji began helping her, letting her take the flowers from his hand instead of her own hair. Each of them floated off like little boats of their own. 

But then, something disturbed the dark water. A reflection, a light. It was too warm and bright to be a star, and it moved. 

All those days, watching from the windows.

Rapunzel looked up, and saw a floating light above the castle, slowly drifting up into the sky. 

All those years, outside looking in.

She scrambled to the end of the boat, rocking the whole thing as she climbed upon one end of it to be just a little closer to what she was seeing. 

All that time, never even knowing 

Just how blind I’ve been. 

Countless lights now followed the first, drifting from the courtyard of the castle. 

Now I’m here, blinking in the starlight

Now I’m here, suddenly I see.

Lights rose from everywhere. The village, the bridge, the boats. 

Standing here, it’s oh so clear

I’m where I’m meant to be.

Wide eyed with wonder, Rapunzel watched as the floating lights overtook the whole sky, glowing brighter than stars could ever hope to be. 

And at last I see the light

And it’s like the fog has lifted.

Every last moment of waiting had been worth it for this. Every struggle she’d encountered to get here was worth it too. 

And at last I see the light

And it’s like the sky is new.

With every second, the world grew grander. Even with all she’d witnessed, Rapunzel still couldn’t believe that what she was seeing was possible. 

And it’s warm and real and bright,

And the world has somehow shifted… 

Rapunzel rested her head on her hands, looking up as the lanterns only rose higher and higher. They danced together, weaving and bobbing to form a beautiful tapestry of light.

All at once, everything looks different

Now that I see you.

Out of her periphery, Rapunzel saw a nearby glow. She turned around and saw Yuuji. He held two of the very lanterns that had set the whole sky alight. 

Rapunzel stepped down and sat across from him on the boat. “You got lanterns?”

“Of course, it’s more fun if we do it too.”

“Thank you,” Rapunzel said, looking at Yuuji as though he’d gifted her the sun. 

“It’s no problem at all, really,” Yuuji said, offering it to her. With a wide smile on her face, she looked at him and gave him a nod, and the two let their lanterns float into the sky. 

All those days, 

Chasing down a daydream.

Rapunzel was watching the lanterns, but Yuuji was looking at her brilliant smile that never faded. His surprise had worked. She was happy, and that made him happy too. 

All that time, never truly seeing

Things the way they were.

Yuuji then looked up, watching their lanterns circle each other and dance as they joined the countless constellations of floating lights above.

Now she’s here, shining in the starlight.

Now she’s here, suddenly I know.

Rapunzel was leaning over the boat, looking at Yuuji and excitedly pointing over to a lantern that was floating over to them. She caught it before it touched the water and pushed it back into the sky to join the others. 

If she’s here, it’s crystal clear,

I’m where I’m meant to go.

Yuuji took her hands in his gently, and the two gazed into each other’s eyes. Together, they spoke.

“And at last I see the light.”

“And it’s like, the fog has lifted.”

“And at last I see the light.”

“And it’s like the sky is new.”

“And it’s warm and real and bright,

And the world has somehow shifted.”

“All at once, everything is different,

Now that I see you.”

The two leaned closer to each other. Yuuji tucked a strand of hair behind Rapunzel’s ear. Just slightly, she leaned into the touch. 

“Now that I see you.”

Holding Rapunzel’s face gently, Yuuji began to lean in and close his eyes for a kiss. Rapunzel leaned in too. Whatever hesitation or uncertainty either of them would usually have was gone. If this was going to happen, it was going to be here and now. 

But, before they could, when they were only inches apart, they heard shouts from the harbor. Instantly, the two of them sat up, the enchanting sense of intimacy completely gone. 

“Does… that usually happen?” Rapunzel wondered. 

There were more shouts, a rapidly growing number. Then, through them all pierced a terrified scream. Rapunzel felt all of her limbs go rigid at the sound. 

“No, no, this isn’t normal,” Yuuji said, grabbing the oar of the boat and paddling it around. 

“Something’s wrong.”

Chapter Text

Megumi sprinted to keep up with Gojo as they headed straight for the screaming. One moment, they had been at the floating lights ceremony, the next, they were charging towards fearful screams. 

As they rounded a corner, both of their fears were confirmed. Crawling over buildings like rats and hounding people like predators were curses. Most of them seemed to be fairly low level, dangerous, but not to the level that either of them were threatened. 

Regular people however, had no defense against them, and no way of even knowing what was wrong. 

“Megumi!” Gojo called out. 

“Gojo?!”

“Take care of these lower level curses, save as many people as you can. I’m heading for whoever’s leading them. They wouldn’t just choose to work together. There have to be curse users involved somewhere.”

“Right,” Megumi replied, forming his hands into a familiar formation. “Demon Dogs.”

The two forms manifested from the signature shadows of Megumi’s cursed technique. Just before they all leapt into battle, Megumi glanced around to see Gojo sprinting straight for a column of smoke that dimmed the many lanterns still floating around in the sky. It had to be the center of the chaos. 

Good luck, he thought. Then, he turned to his own battle and began ripping curses apart one by one. 

~

Yuuji’s arms were on fire. One oar had been enough to get them out onto the channel but it wasn’t enough to get them back quickly. The dock was close now, and they were so close to the rest of the town that they could pick out words amongst the screams. 

“Dieter, Dieter! What’s wrong!”

“Where do we go?!”

“Mom! Mom! Mo-”

The last voice, belonging to a child, was quickly and ominously cut off. 

“Hurry, hurry,” Rapunzle muttered beneath her breath. Finally, the boat collided with the dock, and she immediately ran to the front of the boat and leapt onto the dock, holding her hand out to help Yuuji out. 

He gladly accepted the help, but stopped Rapunzel before she could go any further. 

“I’ll go in there, you-”

“I’m going with you, Yuuji.”

Yuuji nodded, knowing that she wasn’t going to be dissuaded. “Okay, let’s go.”

They ran across the docks and up the steps that led into the town. Once they rounded the top of the steps, they saw what was wrong. 

Strange… demons? Creatures? Whatever they were, everything about them was wrong. In shape and color and behavior, they didn’t resemble any human or wild animal, but they were clearly alive and very ravenous. They pursued any person they could see, trying and often succeeding in butchering them where they stood. Strangely, people didn’t seem to react to them, at least, not until they ripped someone apart. 

“Look out!” Rapunzel cried at a man that had one of the creatures behind him. He turned all the way around, looked straight at the thing about to kill him, and looked back at Rapunzel like she was crazy. 

And then, for the first time in her life, Rapunzel watched as someone not only died, but was brutally ripped limb from limb. 

Yuuji ran forward with fists raised and started assailing the creatures, beating them away from innocents. 

Rapunzel felt like her entire body couldn’t do anything. But, she was just barely able to open her mouth and return to something that was familiar to her. 

“Flower…”

The moment her hair started to glow, every one of the abominations immediately looked up from what they were doing to stare dead at her. But, rather than descend upon her, they ran away, scrambling to stay as far away from her as possible. 

Shocked by this, Rapunzel stopped singing, and the glow in her hair dissipated. At the same moment, all of the creatures turned back around. 

They’re like Sukuna, Rapunzel realized. Her hair and its power had to negate them, and so they tried to stay away. If they wanted to stay away from her, that meant she could help people.

She immediately started singing the incantation and ran back to the man on the ground. Her hair broke free from its braid, flowing along the ground as its length unraveled. But, even in the proximity to her power, nothing happened to the pieces of the man. He was too far gone. 

Rapunzel forced herself to look away and kept running. Where’s Yuuji? She wondered. 

Yuuji charged at a creature with two legs and six arms that was reaching out for two women that clutched each other for dear life as they looked at everything happening to the people around them. He sprung out and drove his fist into the thing’s face, turning its head so quickly that the neck snapped, and it burned away like every other that he’d killed. 

“Are you two alright?” he asked. 

“W-what’s happening?” one of the women asked in return. 

“Something’s attacking everyone. Do you see them?” Yuuji asked. 

“I don’t see anything attacking, it has to be a curse, witchcraft of some kind,” the woman answered. People can’t see anything. 

“Uh, just run then, away from the city! The docks weren’t being attacked last I checked. Get on a boat if you can find one and go!” he said. 

“Okay, thank you!” Rather than waiting helplessly, the two picked each other up and started fleeing. 

Yuuji’s head turned when he heard maniacal laughing. He turned around towards the sound and saw a human-like figure moving towards him. He had deep scars running across his face that made it look stitched together. In spite of having gray hair, his face was youthful. What made him feel off was his disposition towards what was happening around him. He looked at the violence and mayhem with an expression of pure, child-like wonder. 

He looked straight at Yuuji and cocked his head curiously. “Oh? You’re looking right at me,” he noted. 

“Yeah, I am,” Yuuji said, approaching with clenched fists. 

The man gasped excitedly. “You hear me, too! You’re not like these other people then,” he said, reaching towards a bystander and placing his hand on their face. 

In an instant, the person’s form swelled and morphed into something that no longer resembled a human. Even so, it felt different from the monsters that were attacking people. Notably, people saw it and immediately began running away. 

“The name’s Mahito, what’s your name?” the man asked. 

“Yuuji Itadori.” He ran forward at the man. I just need to not get touched by him, that’s all. 

Then, the creature leapt in between him and Mahito. It wasn’t strong, hardly difficult for him to punch it aside and send it flying into a nearby building in a heap. 

“Wow, you’d treat a fellow person like that, just because they look a little different?” Mahito wondered. 

Yuuji froze. 

“P-please,” a weak, distorted voice whispered out. The voice came from the thing, no, person , that Yuuji had just tossed aside. One of their swollen, crimson arms reached out towards him weakly. “Help.”

Yuuji didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t kill a fellow person in cold blood. What they were now and what they were doing couldn’t be their fault. It was Mahito. He’d done something to them that had caused this. 

“You really need to pay more attention,” Mahito said, his voice inches from Yuuji’s ear. Somehow, in the time Yuuji hadn’t been paying attention, he’d gotten right behind him. 

Both of his hands rested on Yuuji’s shoulders. 

~

You have to be in here somewhere. I’m not climbing into that castle again. It had been fortunate that this particular library had been left in a hurry, because it had an esoteric section that was completely filled with tomes. One of them was bound to have the information that Gothel needed. 

She hadn’t been able to find Yuuji Itadori, but she had consulted the book one more time. She’d guessed that Rapunzel was in the city, sneaking off to see her floating lights ceremony, and the book had been able to confirm it. Even so, she hadn’t been able to find the girl. 

So now she was gambling on finding another flower. 

She looked at each title, tossing out any that were either incomprehensible or irrelevant. When something was promising, she’d flip through it, but often those ended up being tossed aside as well. 

When she heard claws tapping on the wooden floor of the library, she drew the magic blade she’d taken with her and spun on her foe. It was a demon, the ones that other people didn't see. It crawled on four legs like a wolf but was violet, with a face that looked alarmingly human. The flickering of the lantern Gothel had lit only made it look worse, more haggard and hungry. 

It shied away from the dagger. Gothel ran forward with whatever strength her currently aging body could manage. This demon wasn’t smart enough to do anything but run directly away, thus quickly finding itself impaled on the blade. In a burst of purple light, the creature disintegrated, and Gothel was left in peace. For now. 

She didn’t put the blade away as she kept looking. The screams from outside told her there were plenty more where the demon had come from. More and more books were tossed to the floor, to the point that Gothel was struggling to find space to walk. Finally, one book titled Magical Manifestations of Cosmic Events caught her attention, because laid out across its pages was a perfect illustration of the flower she’d found centuries before. 

In spite of the very conspicuous screams beyond the walls of the esoteric library, Gothel took the time to look closely at the book’s words. 

This is a sundrop flower, the result of a rare cosmic phenomenon in which a “drop”of the sun falls to the earth, immediately springing into a flower. These flowers are a wellspring of magical power, and can therefore be drawn upon in many of the usual methods, such as consumption or integration into a magical focus. There are rumors of other ways to channel their power, but further investigation into the subject is necessary. 

Far less is known about the cause of the cosmic event that brings about sundrop flowers. What is certain is the fact that it happens every few centuries. Some have linked these events to the weakening of magical enchantments. One case points out how the moment a powerful magical enchantment faded, a flower was spawned near the site. However, most are skeptical, as powerful enchantments fading is far more common than the sprouting of a rare sundrop flower. 

Deciding that it was worth closer inspection, Gothel stowed the book away beneath her cloak. Checking to make sure the demons weren’t immediately nearby, she left the library and snuck out into the demon infested city, easily blending into the chaotic night.

~

Rapunzel’s voice was already hoarse from her incantation. Her hair accompanied her like a river of sunlight in her wake, carving a path through the creatures that had infested the city. 

Rapunzel spotted a survivor clutching his heavily bleeding stomach. She ran over and pressed a strand of her magical hair to the wound, and watched as all the life returned to the man’s eyes. 

“My goodness,” he said in amazement. 

“Are you alright? Can you get up?” Rapunzel asked. 

“Yeah, I- Look out!”

Rapunzel didn’t have time to turn around before something slammed into her back, sending her rolling forward across the cobbles. She heard a noise that sounded vaguely like a growl from behind her. I stopped singing, she realized. 

“Flower…”

Before power could properly flow back into her hair, claws dug into her back. It felt like a burn traveling deep beneath her skin, yet another unfamiliar part of the outside world. 

Then, she was wrenched from the ground to face the creature. It was an eyeless biped with long arms and wicked claws. With one of its hands, it grasped her neck and lifted her into the air. 

Rapunzel tried to breathe in to sing, but her throat was being held tightly closed. Her hands immediately travelled to her neck, trying to pull it away, but it was very clearly stronger than her. 

So, her eyes started looking around the street. On one side was a toppled market stall. Hanging against the walls were broken garlands. One of the buildings had a balcony. 

That’s it. With a free hand, Rapunzel took a strip of her own hair and whipped it out towards the railing, wrapping it firmly. Then, while she grasped the strand with both her hands, she kicked out with her legs. 

One kick didn’t work, but the second one dislodged the creature, and it had to let go of her throat. 

She gasped in a breath and then immediately moved on to the next stage of her slapdash plan. As quickly as she could, she began to sing her incantation. 

The creature tried to lunge at her, but it had lost the element of surprise it had depended on before. She was able to run too far away for it to hit her. As the glow of her magic traveled from her scalp to the end of her strands, it began to back away. 

Quickly undoing the strand that had been tied to the balcony, Rapunzel hurled it towards the creature, wrapping it around one of its feet. Then, with everything she had in her, she pulled to try and get the creature closer. 

It easily overpowered her, and she was the one being pulled, but it was slowed down to the point the magic was able to reach it. It twitched as the magic physically touched it, but then suddenly vanished. It didn’t even seem to die like Rapunzel would have expected, it just ceased to exist, almost anticlimactically. 

She took a moment to catch her breath. Her lungs were burning from having sung it so many times. However, her strain wasn’t just physical. Rapunzel remembered when she first started exercising in her tower and how it had made her whole body sore. What she felt was a similar feeling, one also caused by exertion. Yet, it didn’t only strain her body. It was almost like her mind and her very personhood were experiencing it as well. Never before had she used her power for so long, or for such a dire task. 

Feeling her back, the deep scars had healed over with ease, but her back was still sticky with the remnants of blood, and the back of her dress was utterly ruined. 

After taking a brief moment to catch her breath and mourn the state of her favorite dress, Rapunzel continued onward through the darkened streets. They were crowded with confused people that knew they were in mortal danger, but had no way of seeing what was actually doing it. What Rapunzel would do was entangle creatures in her hair before then using the incantation to get rid of them. If she simply kept the magic going, the creatures would run away from her to cause problems somewhere else. 

As she was running, she felt the ground suddenly shake. Then, she heard an ear splitting roar rock the air from behind her, making her clutch her head in pain. Still, she amassed the strength to face what had just made its presence known. 

This creature stood on three legs. At a glance, Rapunzel could spot almost a dozen mouths. Extendings outwards were countless appendages, each producing its own sound: crickets chirping, the crunching of leaves, the creaking of wood, and more. 

“Hello, strange foe,” the thing spoke from several mouths at once. 

“You can talk?!” Rapunzel cried. 

“Of course, the demon of sound would be strong enough to speak. You humans are scared of every little sound that comes from the dark.”

Suddenly, everything about the creature before her made much more sense. Its volume, its size, its ghastly form. Rapunzel had never seen anything so horrific in her whole life. None of Mother’s fear mongering could have done this monster justice. It was a nightmare come true, standing right in front of her. 

“Well, I’ve got something for you to listen to!” Rapunzel shouted back. Then, she began her incantation. The massive sentient creature drew back at seeing her magic. Some of its appendages grew more quiet, and its legs grew wobbly beneath its swollen body. 

“Ritsune will not be scared by cheap light tricks!” The massive body teetered forward with terrifying speed, and Rapunzel began running. 

“Flower gleam and glow,

Let your power shine

Make the clock reverse…”

The incantation sounded more like a prayer, frantic and desperate as she ran from the terror behind her. 

“Sound Stream!” Ritsune roared from behind her. One moment, Rapunzel was running, the next she was on the ground. 

Crickets, owls, wood, screams, waves, whispers, wind, voices, worlds , all of the sound put together easily took Rapunzel off her feet. She was left in a fetal position on the ground, her ears ringing loudly from what had just hit her. Is it over? Is that thing still doing… whatever it just did. 

She felt something grab her hair, hard . She grit her teeth as she was lifted off the ground by the hair by only one of the creature’s massive arms. 

“Whatever cursed technique you used did a number on me. That should have killed you instantly,” Ritsune explained. Rapunzel shuddered at the thought. She did not want to imagine how sound alone could kill her. She didn’t know sound could knock someone to the ground. She wasn’t happy to know this new thing about the world. 

“I think I’ll kill you now. You’re very afraid, but not of sound, just of dying. May as well get it over with.”

Every mouth on the massive beast opened, every appendage used for other sounds was silent. Rapunzel could only imagine they were doing something similar. 

“This’ll kill you very fast. At least, it usually does. It might take longer now that I’m weaker.”

I saw the lights, Rapunzel thought. She’d watched them illuminate the entire sky, starting one at a time but then becoming a tide of light rising into the night. She’d seen the kingdom they came from, through taverns in the forest to the very capital city. She’d learned that the world was a much bigger place, one too big for any one person to ever know. 

She had her dream. Whatever was happening now, however painful it had been, she had already had her dream. 

But, what about Yuuji-

That train of thought was interrupted by a scream from a very familiar voice. Suddenly, the monster was screaming, but clearly not in the way it had meant to be. 

“You will die before you lay another finger on her!” Mother shouted, shanking the monster with a dagger. It must not have been a normal one, with how profoundly the creature recoiled with every single hit. Its legs crumbled out from underneath it. 

Mother finished it off by climbing atop its body and stabbing between its two eyes. Rather than vanishing like by her own magic, the beast seemed to burn away with fire that gave off no heat or smoke. For a moment she stood there, breathing heavily with a knife in her hand. 

Rapunzel felt happy tears sting her eyes. “Mother.”

Mother whipped around. “Rapunzel!” she shouted, making Rapunzel flinch. Then, she must have registered something, because she sighed, letting a relieved smile play out across her face. 

“Rapunzel,” she said, with far more gentleness. She walked over and embraced Rapunzel. The young woman eagerly accepted the familiar gesture from her protector, the whole world forgotten. 

“Mother, I… I-I’m sorry,” she sobbed. 

“The apologies can come later, right now we need to leave,” Mother said, taking Rapunzel firmly by the hand. 

“Wait!”

“What is it?!” Mother shouted back. In the face of her anger, Rapunzel felt an ever familiar fear. This was her Mother, the one who protected her from all the world’s wickedness. Who was she to talk back to her?

“Mother, it’s just, what about the people?” she wondered, gesturing to the city around them. The innocents had no way of defending themselves, unable to perceive the things that were hurting them. 

Mother sighed. “Whatever this is, the people have brought it upon themselves. And your power Rapunzel, these demons are afraid of it. Surely, they’ll want to take it for themselves.”

Rapunzel numbly nodded along. “It’s just…”

“No. We are leaving. Now .”

Rapunzel didn’t protest as Mother led her out of the city, past the streets filled with terrible creatures terrorizing innocent people that needed her help. 

When they made it out of the city and across the bridge, another thing occurred to Rapunzel, one that stopped her in her tracks, forcing Mother to stop as well. 

What about Yuuji? She turned back and looked towards the city, now bright thanks to the fires that had been set alight within it. The stars above were now choked out by the smoke, alongside any remnants of the light show Rapunzel had dreamed about all her life. It had been ruined within a matter of minutes, but she was just happy it had happened at all. 

But what about Yuuji?

“Rapunzel, I’m not going to ask again.”

She nodded and forced herself to look away, the simple act making her break into sobs all over again. All she could think about was the sweet, loveable person that she’d left behind to deal with the trouble all on his own. Even if he beat this challenge, he still had numbered days ahead of him. 

But now, Rapunzel’s dream was over. The whole reason she’d even gotten to know Yuuji had passed. 

Although she couldn’t understand why, Rapunzel knew that she was meant to live out the rest of her days back in her tower. It should have been easy, she had what she wanted, after so many years of waiting.

But as she remembered the sound of his voice and the vibrance of his smile, Rapunzel couldn’t help thinking that she wanted more. 

Chapter Text

The smell of smoke grew thick enough to sting Gojo’s nose as he breathed. The night grew hotter as he ran towards the wellspring of cursed energy ahead, a shining star of innenmagie. 

It had to be a special grade cursed spirit, something that only him and a handful of other sorcerers were equipped to handle. 

Between him and the energy’s source was a line of buildings. In a hop, Gojo cleared the roofs and landed on the other side. 

The cursed spirit stood at the center of the open square, raging fire blooming from his hands. Surrounding him were over a dozen cremated bodies, the poor people who couldn’t escape from him in time. The minor cursed spirits gave the place a wide berth, sensing that it was too dangerous for them to engage. 

The cursed spirit immediately leapt on the chance to claim another victim. Long before the violet beam could hit him, Gojo raised a fraction of infinity to protect himself. Not a single hair of him was singed, even when the houses behind him were instantly reduced to nothing. 

I’d better end this fight quickly, there’s innocents nearby. Luckily, everyone behind him had already run away, but there were still many people he could sense nearby. This curse, with his wide area attacks, was certain to hurt them. 

The cursed spirit leapt at him, raising his hands above his head to smash Gojo. He simply dodged the hit, letting a crater be created where he’d been moments before. 

“You’re fast, I’ll give you that,” the curse said. He’s capable of advanced speech, Gojo noted. Most curses that could talk could only use very simple sentences, and even then their pronunciation was clumsy. This curse spoke just as clearly as any human being. A curse this powerful should have been someone that Gojo at least knew the name of. 

He charged at Gojo, letting an inferno consume one of his hands. Then, he engulfed the sorcerer’s head in flames. Planting his free fist against the man’s stomach, he called up cursed energy for another beam. 

Gojo simply took the hand and popped it off, spilling purple blood that he made sure to not let touch him. With his other hand, he swatted away the fire around his head. 

“You’re not very bright, are you?”

“I’ll wipe that smug look off your fa-” a hand grasped his face, stopping his sentence halfway. 

“I would love to gloat, but there are other lives at stake here. Frankly, I don’t have time for you,” Gojo said. I do want some information, though. With a flick of his wrist, Gojo tore the curse’s head off and held it up in his hands so they two looked straight at each other. 

“Who sent you here?” Gojo asked. 

“Curse you!” the curse screamed in response. 

“You can’t hurt anyone like this, you know,” Gojo said, observing how the rest of the curse’s body was crumbling away. Even so, the head gazed at him with its singular eye furiously, its black teeth firmly gritted in a silent snarl. 

“Don’t want to talk?” Gojo inquired. The curse’s silence answered his question. “In that case…” 

Gojo raised his other hand, letting a light gather above two fingers. Two opposing forces began to merge themselves into one above his head, forming one of the most powerful attacks that he knew. 

Before he could, the world was overtaken by beautiful flowers. Roses, cornelias, poppies, lotuses, every kind of flower he could think of and more surrounded him in a beautiful display of nature’s glory. 

“Wow, that’s pretty,” he murmured. 

Wait. 

He slapped his own face, and the reverie ended.  The fiery curse was gone, quickly being carried away by another of similar strength. 

He sighed frustratedly. Maybe another day I’ll exorcise you, he thought. Right now, there were more important things to worry about. So, Gojo left the special grade curses to flee, and moved on to saving the civilians. 

~

For the briefest moment, Yuuji had time to wonder what it would feel like? Would it hurt? Would it be numb? When he was younger, he’d wondered what it was like to be a dog, to lose most sentience and inhabit a different form. Maybe, his question would (partially) be answered. 

He closed his eyes, anticipating the feeling, but nothing happened. What, what’s he doing?

“You dare try to touch my soul?” It was Sukuna’s voice, the first time in a while that Yuuji had heard it. 

He couldn’t hear any other side of the conversation, but he could feel Mahito’s hands shaking where they rested on his shoulders. 

“I’ll let you off, because hurting you right now would be a bother, but don’t try it again.”

The stranger recoiled, and Yuuji spun around to face him. The strange man’s eyes seemed haunted, as though he’d seen far more than he looked for. Then, a manic smile crossed his face. 

“So, you’ve got another soul inside yours? That explains why you can see me,” he said. 

Yuuji raised his fists before running forward. The man was fast and nimble on his feet, but one of his strikes was able to connect. 

Yuuji’s teeth gritted. It felt like his fist was hitting stone. He pulled his hand back and tried for a kick at the same time, something that would hurt less to do to a hard surface. This time, the flesh seemed to part like puddy, becoming liquid so that Yuuji’s attack couldn’t find any purchase. Dissatisfied, Yuuji pulled back. 

“Even if you could land a hit, it wouldn’t harm me . You have no idea what to do with cursed energy.”

“What is that?” Yuuji wondered. 

“It’s what allows me to do what I do,” the stranger answered. “I am a pooling of humanity’s worst emotions, born from the hatred that people have for each other. I will not age, and will only grow stronger as the world grows. You, on the other hand, will either die a painful death, or be overtaken by the far superior being inside of you.”

“Sukuna, you mean?” Yuuji asked. 

“Yes. Him…”

“Well, he hasn’t done it yet!” Yuuji sprung forward with all his speed, impressive for a human, and brought his fist slamming into his enemy’s face. This time, he didn’t react fast enough, and the hit properly connected, sending him stumbling back. Immediately, he repaired his own body. 

“I told you, your attacks won’t do anything. I do not know why Sukuna bothers with you, you are stupid ,” the man taunted. 

The sound of scrambling footsteps distracted them both. A mother was charging out of a building with her baby in her arms. She had checked out the door for danger, and all she had seen was Yuuji, and not the very dangerous cursed spirit.

“Don’t worry Yuuji, I’ll give you something you can fight.”

With a frenzied smile, the cursed spirit charged at the woman, reaching her in a heartbeat. While she couldn’t see him, she could feel him, and her eyes widened as the invisible danger terrorizing Corona came to claim her, too. 

Mahito could already imagine the shape of what he would make. He would merge the souls of mother and child together, so that Yuuji would have no choice but to punch a baby. He seemed like a good kid, so it would break his heart. 

“Idle transfiguration-”

Mahito gasped. He wasn’t touching the mother anymore. His hand lay on Yuuji’s chest. 

She’d been several buildings down the street. He was a cursed spirit that could change his soul to become the fastest form possible. It had taken him only a fraction of a second to come up with a form, and only a moment for him to speak the words that helped give his technique shape. 

For Yuuji, that was more than enough time to pursue him and get the woman out of the way, putting himself in the way of the technique instead. 

The rebuke from Sukuna was swift and merciless. 

Mahito felt two strikes in the shape of an X cross his back, striking both his body and his soul, an impact that actually hurt him. Pain, danger, these were concepts that didn’t apply to him, that his technique freed him from. He could end a fight with just a touch, he could reform himself into whatever he wanted with relative ease.

He wasn’t used to the feeling of pain. 

Some day in the future, when he was more ready for the new experience, he would fight Yuuji again. Hopefully by then, he actually knew how to use cursed energy, so the two of them could have a proper fight, rather than Sukuna bailing out his vessel. 

“We’ll meet again, Yuuji!” Mahito shouted, altering his form to be like liquid before he flowed away into an alley, reforming without injuries to regroup with the others. 

Yuuji looked around for any other signs of danger. Then, he turned to the woman. 

“Are you okay?” he asked her. 

“Y-yeah, it’s uh… you can see what’s doing this?” she asked. 

“I can,” Yuuji answered. 

“I’m so sorry, you’ve already saved my life, but I need your help again. I can’t see what’s doing all of this, but I want to make it out, for both our sakes,” she explained, looking down at her baby. “Can you help me out of the city, take me through whatever routes are safest?”

“Of course! Follow me,” Yuuji said. Then, he started to jog through the streets at a pace she could keep up. When she got tired, the two would take a quick breather before moving on. A couple streets down, Yuuji had to beat up an invisible creature that was trying to murder an injured man. He ended up joining them. 

Then, around a corner, Yuuji saw a familiar face. 

Megumi was surrounded by action. Countless of the smaller invisible creatures surrounded him, but some were fighting for him. There were two large wolves, one black and one white. Another was a winged creature whose wings sparked with electricity. Another still was a massive serpent that slithered over the top of buildings, ensnaring the smaller creatures in its mouth and killing them in one bite. He fought right alongside the allied creatures around him, dispatching enemies with far greater ease than Yuuji. 

“Wait here, but call out if you need help,” Yuuji instructed. 

“Alright,” the woman replied. 

Yuuji ran straight into the carnage right alongside Megumi, happy to fight opponents that he could actually take on himself. 

“Are you doing okay?!” Yuuji called out, grabbing one creature by the arm, wrenching it over his head, and slamming it back down into the ground. 

“Alright, thankfully!” Megumi called back. 

“Good to hear!”

With Yuuji’s additional assistance, Megumi was able to bring the battle to a decisive end. With both of them moving through the city together, none of the smaller creatures put up much of a fight. Often, Megumi’s own summons were able to deal with them before Yuuji even had a chance to do anything himself. It was just as well. It gave him more time to deal with the victims of the attack, whether they were inside buildings or injured in the street. 

This night had gone awry, but it looked like something would wind up being okay. 

~

Not far outside the city and standing on a rocky shore across the channel was the form of Suguru Geto. He watched large swathes of flame take over one section of the city and large growths of wild forest take over another. While he couldn’t see Mahito’s handiwork, he was sure it was there, littering the streets of the otherwise pristine kingdom. 

The lantern festival of the lost princess had been the best time to attack. Everyone in the capital and from everywhere nearby had congregated in the city. Crowded and off guard, it was perfect to attack them.

Besides, the lost princess, carrier of the sundrop flower’s power, didn’t look like she would be coming around anytime soon. Someone with that kind of power had a chance of ruining his fun. Thankfully, the magic of the stars and sun was otherwise rare in the world, and not many people were ever born with it. 

He was drawn from his thoughts as he saw a familiar duo crossing the bridge. It was Hanami, who was carrying Jogo’s head…

What happened there?

“Gojo!” Hanami called out. 

Geto’s eyes widened. Gojo Satoru? His body and mind found themselves in a brief conflict as he struggled to figure out what to do with this information. 

“That’s not good. I’m impressed you two are alive. Where’s Mahito?” 

On cue, Mahito’s form came slithering through the water as an eel before he rematerialized above water. He looked haggard, far more hurt than Geto would have expected. 

“What happened to you?” Geto wondered. 

“Some kid named Yuuji has Sukuna inside of him.”

Another revelation that took him by surprise. Two in the same night. He was going to have to rethink a lot going forward, knowing how many big players were nearby. 

“Did Sukuna hurt you?” Geto asked. 

“After I tried to touch his soul, yes. But not before that, before then it was just that Yuuji kid.” 

“Geto, what are we gonna do?” Jogo asked. 

“Oh! Jogo! What happened to you?” Mahito wondered, walking over and crouching down to be at Jogo’s eye level. 

“Gojo Satoru, that’s what. I swear I’m gonna kill that bastard the next time I see him!” Jogo roared, becoming hot enough that Hanami had to drop him. 

“OW!” he shouted as he hit the ground eye first. 

“You’re not fighting anyone like that, Jogo. We need you to heal up first before we’re ready to do anything,” Geto said. 

Jogo quietly grumbled, but he wasn’t devoid of common sense. He knew when he didn’t stand a chance. 

“What’s the move going forward?” Hanami wondered. 

Geto looked towards the city. Gojo’s there, he thought. His body tensed at the mere thought of the man’s name. He would have to keep his mind off of him, if he wanted to maintain any sense of control here. 

“We’re going to have to be more careful,” he said, walking back into the trees. His curse companions followed him, all of them vanishing from sight. “But, if we are, our plan will go smoothly.”

“Are you sure?” Hanami asked. Geto’s mouth was forced in an unnaturally wide grin, something that his body wasn’t used to. 

“I’m certain.”

~

Every enemy had either been slain or driven out of the city. Much of the town was still relatively intact. Whatever massacre had been planned out for this night had failed. 

Looking around, all Yuuji could see were the victims. There were families openly crying over the people who hadn’t gathered with them. There were kids helplessly wandering for their parents. There were people who simply stared off into space, corpses that could still breathe. 

None of this felt like a victory. 

Sitting next to Megumi, he felt like a mess. The other young man was an ideal portrait of stoicism, not so much as trembling in the face of what was happening. 

“H-how are you holding up so well?” Yuuji wondered. 

“Hmm?” 

“Look at me.” Yuuji was shaking, even though it was barely cold. His mind had become a hurricane of various thoughts and worries and regrets. Everything felt awful. 

“I’ve seen cursed spirits before. I know what they do to people. It’s never been this big, though,” he explained. 

“That’s what the creatures are called? The ones people couldn’t see?” Yuuji asked. Megumi nodded in response. 

Cursed spirits. It certainly seemed an apt name for the things that he saw. 

Megumi and Yuuji looked up when they heard Gojo’s familiar voice in the distance. He was walking down the street with a group behind him. Various people were leaning on one another. Some were caked in dust. Others were very obviously burned. The various people who had gathered in the square approached the group, trying to find familiar faces and family members among them. The few that were lucky openly rejoiced. 

Gojo walked over to Megumi and Yuuji. 

Yuuji stood up from where he was sitting. “Did you find Rapunzel?” 

“No,” he said. 

Yuuji’s heart fell. An armada of all the worst things that could have happened to her invaded his mind. How could he have lost her in the chaos? How couldn’t he have protected her?

“But, we know she’s not here, which means she’s probably not dead,” Gojo added. 

“Huh?” 

“Gojo can see a lot more than the average person can,” Megumi explained. 

“With someone as magically distinct as Rapunzel, alive or dead, if she were in the city, I would have found her. Since I can’t see her, it means that she’s left somehow,” Gojo added.

“She wouldn’t have left, she was fighting alongside me. At least, before we got separated,” Yuuji said. 

“We can’t be certain what happened. I found writing that confirms her theory, meaning that having someone like her with us would be an undeniable asset. We will help you look for her, Yuuji. Do you have any idea where she might have gone, assuming she isn’t kidnapped?” Gojo inquired. 

He thought through all of their conversations and all of the places that she could end up. Yuuji gasped as a thought came to him.

“I know where she is.”

Chapter Text

Rapunzel sat on her bed, back in the tower that had always been her home, head held low and eyes closed. The day had long progressed onward, and light had flooded back into the space. She didn’t want to see any of it, didn’t want to admit that any of right now was real.

Mother wasn’t helping. Rapunzel felt the last braided strand of her hair fall free as the last flower was plucked from it, all the girls’ work unceremoniously gone. They had done it with boundless joy, while Mother meticulously undid every last bit of their work, taking hours upon hours. 

“There, it never happened,” Mother said. Rapunzel couldn’t tell if she was trying to be reassuring or snappy. Either way, it didn’t matter. It had happened. The attack, the floating lights, Yuuji…

“Now, wash up for dinner, I'm making hazelnut soup,” Mother said in a sing-song voice. Rapunzel opened her eyes, but she didn’t look up. 

Mother sighed. “I really did try, Rapunzel. I tried to warn you what was out there. The world is dark, and selfish, and cruel. If it finds even the slightest ray of sunshine, it destroys it.” She closed the curtain, and left Rapunzel in privacy. 

Rapunzel slowly unfolded her hands, revealing the kingdom flag she’d been hiding within them. She unfurled it, letting it display its sun symbol in the dismal room. It was her only physical proof of any of it. A part of her could have dismissed it as a dream, but with the fabric, she knew she’d been out there. 

She fell back against the bed and clutched the souvenir to her chest. It let her look up at the paintings, her past attempts at escape, the only kind that Mother allowed her to indulge in. She saw herself amidst surreal dreamscapes that might have been real, for all she knew. Even with all the time she’d spent outside, she now knew how vast the world really was, and just how much of it she hadn’t seen. 

But then, something felt… odd? Familiar? Rapunzel had looked at these paintings hundreds of times, but only now that she knew more was something sticking out about them.

She unfolded the flag once more and held it up in front of her. She looked at the paintings, then the flag, then back again. 

Her eyes found it, the part of the painting that was holding her gaze. She put the piece of fabric aside and rose from her bed to peer closer. The image was a flock of birds amidst a light purple ocean of stars. The feathers and wings and symbols unfolded from one another. 

All in the shape of a sun. The sun on the flag. The sun she’d found in the kingdom she’d never seen before was here, in her tower. 

In another painting, another section of the wall, she found it again. Another sun, another just like the first. 

Another lie within a painting of leaves.

Another lie within a painting of herself, light and magic shining outwards.

All around her room was the same sun, etched into every one of her paintings. She’d woven it into every image with ease, with comfort, with familiarity. 

Rapunzel stood up. Where did I first see it? She had painted these before she left the tower, before she’d ever seen the kingdom of Corona and its signature symbol. But somehow, she knew it already. Had it been from Mother? Had she brought something over from the kingdom? No, it had never been anything with the symbol.

But what else had she seen before, other than what Mother brought her?

She thought back on all the images she’d seen, all the things she’d learned in the outside world. Only now that she’d been away could she see this, this strange quirk that appeared in every single one of her paintings, one that felt so natural for her draw.

She was remembering the symbol from somewhere. 

From before Mother.

She’d been looking up at it, a brassy sun symbol hanging above her. She’d looked next to it and seen two shapes, two figures, two people. She’d seen them before too. No, she’d seen them now. 

In a mosaic. They were the king and queen, bearing the same royal garment and the same crowns. In their arms was a lost princess, a baby girl with long blonde hair and green eyes belonging to her mother. 

A girl who they commemorated every year, with thousands of lanterns set free into the sky. 

Lanterns that flew on her birthday, that she’d felt were for her. 

For the lost princess.

For her.

For her, the lost princess.

The entire world swayed as she stumbled back and slammed into her dresser, knocking a stool to the ground and a host of other objects clattering. Pascal scurried to her side to offer her comfort, visibly unsure of what was happening. 

The realization made sense, it was true. There were a lot of things that Rapunzel didn’t know, but this wasn’t one of them. She was the lost princess, the daughter of the king and queen of Corona

But then..

Who’s Mother?

“Rapunzel!” Mother(?) called out. “Rapunzel, what’s going on up there?” 

What do I do what am I going to do what do I do? Her thoughts were running a meile a minute. She didn’t have time to think, she didn’t have anyone else to act on. It was all on her now to figure out what was happening, what she was supposed to do?

“Pascal, get on me,” she instructed. The chameleon leapt onto her and crawled into a safe position. Still shaken, Rapunzel stumbled to the curtain and pushed it open.

“Are you alright?” Mother(?) wondered. 

“I’m the lost princess,” Rapunzel said.

It must have been quieter than she wanted it to be, because the response she got was, “Please speak up Rapunzel you know how I hate the mumbling!”

“I am the lost princess, aren’t I?”

Mother(?)’s eyes were wide, every inch of her frozen and rigid. 

“Did I mumble, Mother? Or should I even call you that?” Rapunzel wondered. 

Mother(?) quickly pulled her veneer back up, a wide smile on her face. “Oh, Rapunzel, do you even hear yourself?” She was walking up the stairs, her arms opening to give Rapunzel a hug she didn’t want. “Why would you ask such a ridiculous question?”

Rapunzel had seen this move far too many times, and now she’d seen far too much for it to work. Now that she’d seen Gojo’s smug confidence, she could easily spot a failed attempt at it. Now that she’d seen Yuuji’s smile, she knew what a fake one looked like.

Now that she’d seen the real monsters of the world, she could spot the one standing right in front of her. 

She shoved Gothel away. 

“It was you! It was all you!” Gothel might not have been saying it, but she could guess what had happened. Her real parents hadn’t wanted her gone, but they hadn’t had a choice. Gothel had somehow gotten her into this tower, and made sure she stayed there so that she couldn’t find her parents, so that she couldn’t see anything that would reveal to her what was happening. 

“Everything I did was to protect you,” Gothel insisted. 

Why would she take me from my parents? Rapunzel almost scoffed at herself. She didn’t know why she was asking a question she already knew the answer to. 

She shoved past Gothel and started descending the steps, ignoring the woman calling out her name. “I’ve spent my entire life hiding from people who would use me for my powers…”

“Rapunzel!”

“When I should have been hiding from you !”

“Where will you go?” Gothel interrogated. “Yuuji won’t be there for you. You saw what was happening to that city, do you really think he could survive that?”

Maybe not alone… Rapunzel had no idea how Gothel knew Yuuji’s name. Even so, Gothel definitely didn’t know about Gojo and Megumi. As long as they were near Yuuji, Rapunzel had to believe that he was okay. 

“But it’s alright, listen to me, you’ll be okay, now that you’re here. Everything is as it should be,” Gothel tried reassuring her, reaching her hand to pat Rapunzel on the head. 

But how could it be alright, if she wasn’t sure if Yuuji was okay? How could it be alright, if she wasn’t there to help protect, to use her power for something she wanted to do?

She grabbed Gothel’s hand. 

“No! You were wrong about the world!” Gothel had made the entire world seem like a horrible place, but Rapunzel had seen the parts of it that were wonderful and kind.

“And you were wrong about me!” Rapunzel had been told all her life that she was no match for any of the world. In part, that was true, there were things in the world she wasn’t ready for. 

But it’s not like she was alone, the way she was in this tower that was no longer her home. 

“I will never let you use my hair again!” she shouted. Desperately, Gothel pulled away from her, bumping into the mirror and knocking to the ground, shattering it into thousands of fragments across the floor. 

Rapunzel’s eyes glanced towards the window, whose curtain had been fully torn off. I have to get out of here, she thought. 

“You want me to be the bad guy?” Gothel asked. Rapunzel’s eyes darted towards Gothel, who slowly crept closer. 

Any veneer of cheeriness was gone. 

“Fine, now I’m the bad guy.”

And Rapunzel believed her. 

She grasped a strand of hair and whipped it towards the kitchen. It wrapped around the handle of a knife, which she pulled back to herself and caught in her free hand. She brandished it at Gothel threateningly. 

Gothel just laughed, not even slowing down as she got closer. “You wouldn’t,” she said. 

As much as Gothel was a liar, she was right. So, she tried a different tactic. She held the knife up to her own hair, poised to sever all of it in a single stroke. 

That made Gothel stop. 

That stop was time. 

Rapunzel dropped the knife and ran for the open window, bundling her hair closer to herself. With only one deep breath to steady herself, she leapt out. 

For a fraction of a second, she was in free fall, suspended above certain death by her own momentum. She spun around and slung the tip of the gathered strand at the pulley she’d always used to pull Gothel up, trusting her aim with her life. 

Her hair landed true, wrapping itself around and giving her an anchor. She used it to slow herself as she plummeted to the ground. Even so, she hit the grass hard enough to cry out in pain. Her knees and ankles throbbed but she could heal them soon. 

First, she had to untie her hair. 

She performed the familiar flourish that she’d learned over years of practice, but something was in her way. Her hair wouldn’t come undone. 

Gothel stood in the window pulling on her hair so she couldn’t leave. “You won’t get far like this, Rapunzel!” she called out mockingly. 

Rapunzel yanked frantically, but Gothel had more purchase on the ground than she did. Between the slippery grass and her hurt feet, Rapunzel was losing ground on Gothel, up in the tower. 

She was so close to freedom, but she couldn’t make it.

~

The woods in the kingdom of Corona were tranquil. They were deep and wild, filled with undisturbed nature but very rarely dangerous to travelers. The forest was a clandestine place, but it was still brightly lit by daylight. 

All of it was disturbed by Yuuji Itadori, stumbling through it in a sleep deprived haze. The moment he had realized where Rapunzel could be, he had set out for the very tower he found her in. Only, he’d initially stumbled upon the place by accident, and the night had left him retracing his steps in pitch darkness. 

He hadn’t slept because he couldn’t sleep, not until he knew she was safe. 

But now, after running up and down the full length of Corona calling out her name, he was tiring. Adrenaline could only keep him going for so long. 

His legs were numb. His clothes were drenched with sweat. His throat was raw from a full night of gasping for breath and shouting. When he tripped over a tree root, he didn’t even register what had happened until the ground hit him, the impact reverberating in his head. 

Rapunzel, where are you? 

You’re never going to find her, Sukuna said. 

Yuuji tried to think of a retort, but couldn’t. The cursed spirit was right. Even if he could find her tower again, there was a chance that she wasn’t there. It was a possibility he’d refused to consider, but he could only keep it at bay for so long. 

He braced his palms against the ground to push himself up, and his arms shook from the effort. He only managed to push himself up so that he was kneeling on the ground, the idea of standing proving too daunting. 

And, even though he desperately needed water, he cried. He was too weak to sob properly, only managing a slow trickle of tears that did nothing to abate his despair. 

He’d lost her. In the chaos of the previous night, he had lost her, and now she was gone. This was his fault, his problem, his to fix. 

And he couldn’t even do that. 

“Help!”

The voice was faint, far. Yuuji had to hold his breath to hear it more clearly again. 

“Help! Someone help! Is anyone there!” 

Is that… 

It sounded like Rapunzel.

Yuuji leapt to his feet and frantically followed the sound. With every scream, he came closer and closer. 

Until he rounded a bend, and he was staring at a familiar rock wall covered by ivy. 

He charged through it, half expecting to simply slam into stone but instead coming into the cave that led to the hidden vale where Rapunzel’s tower rested. 

At first, he was greeted by the same thing he’d seen the first time he’d been there. Massive cliffs towered on all sides, a grand waterfall pouring from between two of them. Verdant greenery stretched across the base of the tiny valley, clustered around the steady stream running through it. In the center of it all was the tower, whose sides were wreathed in thick, ancient ivy. 

Rapunzel stood at the bottom of it, her hair all hanging from the window above. She was pulling with all her might, but she didn’t budge. 

“Rapunzel!” Yuuji cried out, running to her side. 

“Yuuji?!” Rapunzel shouted back, the briefest bit of a smile crossing her face before her scalped was yanked upon once more. “I-it’s Mother, well, not her but, she’s not… I’m stuck!” 

“I’ll help!” Yuuji said, grabbing onto her hair and pulling with her, holding the hair so that her scalp wasn’t being stressed upon. Even with his strength, Rapunzel wasn’t gaining any ground. 

“Yuuji, do you wanna try something?” Rapunzel asked. 

“I’m open to ideas!”

“I’m going to move closer to the tower’s wall. Then, with the slack, put your feet against the tower instead of the ground and use that to pull. This grass is too slippery.”

“Alright, uh… tell me when to go,” Yuuji said. 

“We move together. Now!” Rapunzel commanded. 

In a sudden motion, she ran closer to the tower. Yuuji used his own brute strength to make sure “Mother” didn’t gain any of the slack. 

The stones of the tower were rough. More importantly, some of them jutted out. Grasping Rapunzel’s hair, Yuuji walked a few steps up the tower. Then, leaning back, he braced his feet against the bottom of one of the jutting bricks. There, he finally had the leverage he needed. 

He walked his hands up Rapunzel’s hair, using his feet to keep him firmly in place. Slowly but surely, Rapunzel started gaining ground. 

Whoever Yuuji was fighting against was strong . For some reason, they were putting up a far better fight than he would have expected from one single person. In spite of it, Yuuji didn’t slow down. For Rapunzel’s sake, he couldn’t. 

Then, he hit a wall. Rapunzel’s hair stopped budging entirely. Instead of pulling hair back, he found himself being pulled up. 

He leaned even further back until he was almost all the way upside down, his heels bracing against the couple inches of brick sticking out of the rest of the tower. His arms were starting to burn from the effort. 

All of a sudden, Yuuji’s opponent gave in, and all the weight on the other side disappeared, causing him to fall. A couple seconds later, he was showered in wooden shrapnel as an entire closet impacted the ground a few feet behind him. Rapunzel’s hair had been tied firmly around one of the legs. 

Before she got to work freeing herself, Rapunzel helped Yuuji get to his feet. “Are you okay? Flower gleam and glow-”

“I’m fine! Let’s go!” Yuuji shouted. Reluctantly, Rapunzel nodded and freed herself. The moment she was untied, Yuuji took her hand and the two two of them took off running. 

Neither of them thought about where they were going, they just went. Without a word, the two of them sprinted through the trees until the adrenaline drained from their bodies and they were left with no energy to go further. 

The two of them collapsed in a flowerbed, not letting go of each other’s hands. They breathed in the fresh afternoon air and reveled in the feeling of being by each other’s side once more. 

“I’m sorry,” Yuuji said. 

“What?”

“I’m sorry, b-back in the city I left you and-”

“Yuuji.” Rapunzel’s voice was firm enough to give the young man pause. “Don’t apologize. I’m okay now, thanks to you. You don’t have to apologize. If I’m being honest, when she showed up, I kind of just left with her. I didn’t want to go but there was just too much happening and I forgot to say no,” she explained. 

“She’s your mother, right?” Yuuji asked. 

“Well… I thought she was, at least, until today,” Rapunzel answered. 

“What do you mean?”

Rapunzel sighed. “I’m the lost princess, the one that they set lanterns for. That’s why the ceremony happens on my birthday. That’s why I remember being a baby and looking up at them, the king and queen. And… that sun, the one in all the banners, I saw it in all my paintings back in the tower. I’d seen the symbol before I ever saw… Mother, who isn’t my mother.” Even knowing the truth, the idea of calling her anything other than Mother felt wrong. That’s what she’d been called all of Rapunzel’s life, even if it was all a lie. 

“You’re… you’re royalty. That’s great! We need to get you back! They’ll be so happy to see you!” Yuuji said, helping Rapunzel up to her feet. 

“No,” Rapunzel said. 

“ No ?” Yuuji wondered. 

“I’m not leaving you,” Rapunzel said. 

“But-” Rapunzel put a finger over his mouth. His eyes looked at the finger, and then looked at her. 

“Yuuji. If you hadn’t shown up, I would still be in that tower, and I would still think that she was my real mother. I still wouldn’t know what boys look like, or what dogs are, or that people don’t all live in towers. You literally gave me the world , Yuuji. Now, I want to share it with you. I want to get to the bottom of this Sukuna curse business so you can live, so that I can keep going with you, for always.” 

Yuuji had believed her, without even a shadow of doubt. He didn’t make her feel bad about herself or pick her apart with his words. He didn’t try to use her differences or powers for his own gain. He didn’t force her to mentally prepare herself any time she knew he was coming. 

“Rapunzel, it’s dangerous. If you get hurt, I’d… I’d feel horrible.”

“It would hurt to not go with you. My parents have waited eighteen years for me. They can wait a little longer.” The words stunned her as she said them. They were the ones who’d started the lanterns that had been her dream for so long. 

It almost made her want to laugh. Just a few days before, she was dreaming about the lanterns. Now, her life was so much bigger, now it had actually begun. 

“I’m not going to convince you, am I?” Yuuji realized. 

Rapunzel smiled. “Never. I’m going with you. And…” Her eyes widened as she reached an epiphany.

Yuuji cocked his head. “And what?” he asked. 

She looked him in the eye, her gaze determined and true.

“Going with you. That’s my dream, my new dream.”

“Your new dream is coming with me?” Yuuji asked. 

“Yeah, so… are you gonna make it come true?” Rapunzel wondered. 

Yuuji gave her a brilliant smile. 

“I will. Promise .”

Chapter Text

Within the next half hour, the two of them heard footsteps. For a brief moment, both of them panicked, but when Gojo and Megumi rounded a tree, they instantly relaxed. 

“Hello, guess what we found?!” Gojo asked. 

“I don’t know what you were looking for,” Rapunzel answered, turning to Yuuji for guidance. 

“Food?” he asked. 

“No! Well, kind of. Here!” Gojo drew an object from his pocket and presented it to Yuuji proudly. 

It was a finger, exactly the same as the first Yuuji had consumed. 

Rapunzel screamed and scrambled away. “Eww! What is that?!” she shouted. 

“One of Sukuna’s fingers, the reason that Yuuji here has a problem to begin with,” Gojo said. 

“You had to swallow that?” she asked disgustedly.

“Yup,” Yuuji said, taking the finger from Gojo. “It tastes just as bad as it looks.” With a shrug, he popped the finger into his mouth and swallowed it, visibly struggling to force it down. 

Rapunzel had never seen the tattoos that suddenly appeared in Yuuji’s skin, nor had she seen the marks on his cheekbones fully open into the eyes that they were. Yuuji began to double over. 

Rapunzel tried to step forward to catch him, but Gojo held her back. Reluctantly, she relented. 

Yuuji started laughing. Then, he threw his head back. 

“That’s nasty!” he laughed some more. “So gross it’s funny. I’ve gotta do that eighteen more times, and that’s the best case scenario.”

“I am never watching that again,” Rapunzel decided aloud. 

“You’re welcome, Yuuji. I almost had to die to get that finger for you,” Megumi interjected. 

“You did?” Yuuji asked. 

“It was only a small boulder, nothing he couldn’t handle. Now, we won’t get much further today, but starting tomorrow, we’ve got places to be,” Gojo declared, drawing a map from under his cloak. 

He set it out against the ground, and the group of four all crouched down to look over it. It looked much like the map of Corona that Rapunzel had seen in the atlas, only it was larger, allowing more details and labels to be scattered across it. 

“Our third finger is going to be in these mountains, inside of a shrine at the top of the waterfall. Where in the mountains the waterfall is, we don’t know! So, figuring that out and getting that finger is going to be our next step. Also, it gives us time to get off the map while the devastation of the capital blows over. A lot of sorcerers are going to be coming over to investigate, and the farther we keep Yuuji away from them, the better. Are there any questions?”

The plan was simple, so nobody had anything further to ask Gojo. 

“Now, let’s find a campsite.”

 After an hour of walking, the four decided to set down in a calm meadow just out of earshot of a nearby creek. Above the trees stood the mountains they had to explore, taller than anything Rapunzel had ever seen. The moment they had set down, Yuuji had completely passed out, exhausted from his all nighter. Gojo had vanished away to go get food. 

That left Rapunzel and Megumi as the only conscious people in the clearing. The two of them found the same large rock to sit upon as they watched the moon slowly rise above the treetops.

“Sooo… Megumi,” Rapunzel said.

“Hmm?” Megumi replied. 

“Gojo seems to drag you into trouble a lot, doesn’t he?” Rapunzel inquired. 

“Mhmm, he does,” Megumi confirmed. 

“And your personalities are very different,” Rapunzel pointed out. 

“I guess,” Megumi agreed. 

Rapunzel’s shoulders slumped. Wow, he is not easy to talk to. Still, she wasn’t going to give up. If things went well, she was going to be travelling with him for a while; she had to get to know him. 

“What brought you two together then?” she asked outright. 

“I…” While Megumi’s answers had been terse before, now he seemed to think about what he was saying.

“It’s okay if it’s a long story,” she reassured him. 

“He raised me for most of my childhood. So, I guess he’s sort of a father to me, more than my actual father was, anyway,” Megumi answered. 

“Where’s your ‘actual father’?” 

“Dead.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry! I-I’ll stop talking!”

Megumi shook his head. “No, I don’t really care about him, he’s been dead for over ten years, and he wasn’t a good father before that. Gojo is… he’s Gojo, but he’s much better. He doesn’t know how to be a normal parent, but he’s made me strong. I would never have learned to use my power if it weren’t for him.”

“That’s good. I wish I had that, my uh… the person who raised me, she never taught me how to use my power besides that one song. I know it heals, I know it reverses aging, I know it loses its power if cut, but I don’t know anything else,” Rapunzel replied. 

“I don’t know if Gojo could teach you. His powers and mine are all cursed techniques. Your magic is something different. I think you’ll have to learn on your own.”

Rapunzel nodded solemnly. She wished she could have someone to guide her, but doing it alone was okay too. All on her own, she’d learned how to make candles, bake, and paint. Magic had to be something she could learn by herself too, if she set her mind to it. 

Rapunzel yawned, the late hour and action of the past day starting to catch up to her. “Megumi?” she asked. 

“What is it?”

“Outside of magic, is there anything keeping you with Gojo?” 

“Well, I respect him too. He helped me and my sister when no one else could. He’s had nothing to gain from helping us, but he did it anyway.” It made Rapunzel think about what was happening then and there. Gojo could have done what other sorcerers would have done and finished off Yuuji, but he’d found a way to keep him alive longer. When Rapunzel had suggested finding a way to keep him alive outright, she hadn’t been dismissed. 

Still, she didn’t want Megumi to be like her, trapped with someone who made her feel terrible. 

“Well, I think that if Gojo puts you in too much danger, you should tell him to stop,” Rapunzel said. 

“What do you mean?” Megumi wondered. 

“Well, earlier, you said that you almost died and Gojo brushed it off,” Rapunzel answered. 

Megumi sighed. “I guess that’s true. I don’t like it, but I need it. I need to be strong for…” his words trailed off for a moment, and his eyes alighted with an epiphany. “Someone you remind me of, who you might be able to help. You said that your hair can heal, right?” 

“Yeah!”

“And it made Sukuna’s mark on Yuuji go away.”

“It also made those weird creatures during the attack vanish instantly when my hair touched them. They all wanted to keep away from it,” Rapunzel added. 

Megumi nodded. “Rapunzel, I haven’t known you long, but can I ask a favor?”

“Of course!”

“My sister was put under a curse that I’ve been trying to break. Do you think that, once you’re better at using your power, you could heal her?” Megumi requested. 

“I’d be glad to help you!” Rapunzel said. 

“Thank you. It means a lot.” For the first time, Rapunzel saw the faintest hint of a smile on Megumi’s face. Maybe talking to him isn’t so hard, she thought.  

It was around then that Gojo appeared out of thin air with baskets full of food. Delicious smelling breads and pastries and fruits were piled high. 

Rapunzel hoarded enough food for both herself and Yuuji, putting whatever food she saved for him in her satchel. Her hunger made everything taste better than it was, and Gojo had taken his time to find the finest goods that he could. In her haste, Rapunzel finished her food early. For a few minutes, all was silent as the others savored their meals. Then, when Gojo was finished, he addressed her. 

“So! I wanted to say this to both you and Yuuji, but it looks like he’s down for the count. Besides, it’s more important for you to hear.”

Rapunzel sat up straight and leaned in to eagerly listen. In response, Gojo withdrew a book from his person. It was thick, old, and yellowed, far denser than anything Rapunzel was used to reading. On the leather cover, barely legible in the firelight, she could see the title as being, The Breadth of Magics. 

“You were right about your magic. It is probably possible for you to eliminate Sukuna without harming Yuuji. The problem is, to do that, you would have to produce a source of your power equal to or greater than Sukuna. I don’t mean to be rude, but you are not as strong as Sukuna, and whatever power you call upon when you sing probably isn’t your full strength,” Gojo explained. 

“So, we can’t do anything?” Rapunzel asked. 

“Not yet. If we knew where your power came from, we could figure out how strong it is in comparison to Sukuna’s. With cursed techniques, it’s very easy to figure out, but I haven’t seen magic like yours before,” Gojo answered. 

Rapunzel nodded. It made sense, they figured out what made her power, they figured out how powerful it was. 

“Wait, what do you mean that my singing isn’t my ‘full strength’?” Rapunzel wondered. 

“Great question! Rapunzel, do you know why your power flares only when you sing?” Gojo asked.

Rapunzel had no idea how to answer the question. She sang, magic happened. That’s how magic was. 

But that wasn’t how all magic was. Neither Gojo nor Megumi had to sing to call upon theirs. 

“No,” Rapunzel realized. She’d lived with her power her whole life, and she had no idea where it came from or why it worked the way that it did. 

“It’s because of the words spoken aloud,” Gojo answered. Rapunzel cocked her head, and Gojo took that as his sign to continue. 

“Megumi and I do it too. Megumi, show her your demon dogs,” Gojo requested. 

Megumi nodded, glancing at the position of the fire. Then, his hands settled into a position in front of him. “Demon dogs!”

From the shadows cast by his hands, two large dogs, one white and one black, formed. Rapunzel gasped and walked over to them, immediately scritching the two of them behind the ears. While they’d come into the world snarling and at the ready, they quickly nuzzled against her hand and began wagging their tails. 

“They are so cute! Megumi, can you bring them out more?” 

“No.”

Rapunzel’s shoulders slumped. Even after that conversation with him, some things didn’t seem to change. 

“I do it for some of my magic as well, but I won’t do it here, you saw what it could do back at the dam,” Gojo said. Rapunzel gulped. She was reminded that under his cheerful demeanor, Gojo was terrifyingly powerful. 

“When you speak, or reveal the nature of your power in a fight, it becomes more effective. It’s easier to picture and manifest. No one quite knows why, but it is well observed. The reason you’re not operating at full power is because you only have one set of words. Both of us have multiple sets of words we use to manifest our techniques, depending on the situation,” Gojo explained. 

“So… if I make another song, I might be able to call on stronger magic?” Rapunzel asked. 

“Maybe. I wouldn’t say stronger so much as better for the situation. Your incantation, from what I remember, was great for healing, but it might not be so good for something else,” Gojo answered. 

Rapunzel nodded. It made sense. Recently, she'd needed her magic to fight as well as heal. Maybe, if she made another incantation, she’d be better at fighting. Besides, what if her magic could do something else entirely that she didn’t know about? 

“Can I have that book?” Rapunzel asked. 

“Yes,” Gojo replied, handing the book over to her. “I might ask to borrow it from you a few more times, but I’m largely finished with it.”

The book was heavy with a thousand answers. It had answered her question before Gojo had given it to her. Maybe there was something in it that he hadn’t seen, he was wearing a blindfold after all. How does he even read? she thought.

After putting the basket of saved food next to Yuuji, she began to read by firelight. Her mind was abuzz as it tried to rework the incantation she’d known her whole life to say something different. 

Only when the fire faded to embers and her head began to bob did she close the book and head off to sleep. While Gojo and Megumi had their own sleeping packs, her and Yuuji had nothing but the ground. She lay by his side, using her hair like a blanket to keep the two of them warm. With him so close to her, she had no trouble finding rest. 

Chapter Text

Near the base of the Southern Mountains in the kingdom of Corona, Rapunzel was having second thoughts about this whole quest thing. Those second thoughts were a result of the towering wall of rock in front of her. 

It wasn’t as tall as the cliffs Rapunzel remembered surrounding her back home, but it still managed to stand at over twice the height of the tower. 

She had to climb it .

“You’ll be okay, Rapunzel. Gojo’ll be here,” Yuuji said, enthusiastically gesturing to the man in question. 

Rapunzel looked up at the cliff for the thousandth time. “Are you sure?”

“Yes!”

“ Totally certain?”

“Mhmm!”

When neither of them said a word, Pascal climbed out of his hiding spot to stand on top of Rapunzel’s head, levying a judgemental gaze at Yuuji. After he’d finished his inspection, Rapunzel took the chameleon off of her head. She cocked her head in a quiet question, and Pascal gave her a nod. 

“Okay,” she said, nervously approaching the line of the grappling hook affixed to the cliff’s climax. 

“I can go first, if that’d make you feel better,” Megumi offered. 

“Wait! I’ve got a better idea!” Yuuji interjected. He stepped up to the hanging rope and crouched. “Get on my back,” he suggested. 

“Are you sure you can do that?” Megumi asked. 

“I don’t want to make things harder for you,” Rapunzel added. 

“No, it’ll be fine,” Yuuji said, shooting Rapunzel a thumbs up. 

Rapunzel relented. She climbed onto Yuuji in a piggyback position. Then, little by little, he started scaling the cliff. 

He progressed much faster than she would have expected him to, but it was still slow going. After a minute, she had to squeeze her eyes shut to temper the temptation to look down.

When the wind blew, it rocked the rope, sending the two climbers bobbing back and forth. Rapunzel ended up having to hold her breath in order to avoid screaming out in panic. For the entire rest of the climb, she didn’t inhale once. 

After an uncomfortably long time, the two rounded out over the edge, and Yuuji was able to stand upright. “All clear!” 

Rapunzel gasped for air, her head having hurt from holding her breath so long. With shaky limbs, she dismounted back onto her own feet. 

The small plateau at the top of the cliff was mostly bare rock, with the exception of a small tree. Yuuji leaned against it, staring out into space. Rapunzel followed his eyes, and her jaw dropped. 

Before them was Rapunze’s whole known world. Between climbing foothills the whole morning and then scaling the massive cliff, nothing was tall enough to obscure the view. Forest stretched out for over a meile , only ending at the ocean which stretched beyond the horizon. Far to the left, Rapunzel could see the island which the castle sat upon, looking so tiny where before it had felt utterly towering. Far to the right were other villages that Rapunzel had never been to before. 

“It’s cool, right?” Yuuji inquired. 

“Yeah,” Rapunzel agreed, breathless in her amazement. “Do you know what that is?” she asked, pointing at the villages. 

“That’s Old Corona. Right past it is the border wall, which separates Corona from the rest of the world,” Yuuji answered. 

“What’s it like there?” Rapunzel asked eagerly. 

Yuuji shrugged his shoulders. “Kind of boring, actually. There’s this one cool guy who has good apples, but that’s about it.”

“What about the rest of it?” Rapunzel wondered, gesturing to the whole horizon in front of her. She had never seen any of it. While she’d been in the forest a lot and also the castle, it was clear that there was far more in Corona for her to see. 

“That village is Nordbucht, which is where I grew up,” Yuuji said, pointing to a village at the very edge of the kingdom, right next to the border wall. It’s so tiny, Rapunzel thought. 

Then, he pointed at another village, barely visible through all the forest. “That one’s called Grünershtrand. It’s where all the criminals are, if they’re not at the Snuggly Duckling,” Yuuji explained. 

“Is it nice there?” 

“Yeah, it’s nice. It’s also where all my jobs came from so I kinda had to be there a lot.”

From there, Yuuji could only gesture to vague locations, such as where the Snuggly Duckling was or a few places in the woods he’d been on jobs. It was amazing to see his life out in front of her, to hear the little stories and anecdotes about the places she saw. Her eyes kept drifting to Old Corona and the border wall. Knowing that there was more beyond it intrigued her. Yuuji had only seen the other side a few times, and even then, he hadn’t gone far. 

However, before she could wonder for too long, Megumi made it up, quickly followed by Gojo. They pulled up the rope, unhooked the grappling hook from the groove it had caught in, and kept moving forward. 

There weren’t any more sheer cliffs. Sometimes, it was steep and Rapunzel had to be careful, but it wasn’t anything that she couldn’t handle. The four made rapid progress upwards, eyes on the lookout for any waterfalls that could house a shrine at the top of them. Not knowing what a shrine was, Rapunzel pointed at every waterfall she saw, causing several false alarms. 

Just in time for lunch, Megumi was the one who spotted it. The waterfall wasn’t nearly as tall as Rapunzel had envisioned. Still, she wasn’t disappointed, because the structure next to the top was unlike anything she had ever seen. Her closest comparison was a house, but one she knew wasn’t being lived in. After a quick break to eat, the group hiked to the waterfall’s base and scaled the adjoining cliff. 

Something about the shrine felt off . It wasn’t a feeling Rapunzel could quite put a finger on, but she could sense the abnormality of the place. 

“Do you feel that?” she asked the others. 

“Yes,” Megumi said. 

“Ah, good, you can perceive cursed energy,” Gojo remarked. 

“What?” Yuuji asked, looking at all of them like they were crazy.  

Rapunzel didn’t want to get closer, but this was where they had to go. This was definitely a creepy fingers kind of place. So, she steeled her courage and forced herself to approach alongside the others.

The entire structure was made of dark gray stone, some of which had grown moss over untold ages. The only exception was an open entrance, which led into pitch darkness. That was the first tangible thing that Rapunzel saw as wrong. The sun was high in the sky, barely half an hour past noon, but none of the sunlight managed to make it into the chamber. 

“I’ll go in first,” Gojo said, marching into the dark without hesitation. Rapunzel gasped when his form completely disappeared, and she startled when she heard his voice a moment later. 

“Come in!” he called out. Yuuji stepped in first, quickly followed by Rapunzel and Megumi.  

Rapunzel expected the inside to be pitch black, but it wasn’t. Instead, what she saw was a strange tangling of stone hallways that turned in impossible directions. She felt like the place she was in was infinite, but it also felt like everything was uncomfortably close by, trapping her. 

“Where’s the way out?” she asked. 

“There isn’t one,” Gojo answered matter-of-factly. 

“Wait, what?!” Yuuji cried out. 

“Why did you bring us in here, then?” Rapunzel wondered. 

“We can’t walk out, but if we kill the cursed spirit making this… incomplete domain, then everything will fall apart and we’ll be left inside of a normal shrine. It’s easy,” Gojo explained. 

“Let’s just get this over with,” Megumi said, summoning his demon dogs to stand beside him. 

“Follow me!” Gojo said. 

The band walked aimlessly through the illogical highways, all of them keeping their eyes peeled for the cursed spirit. Rapunzel kept an eye on Yuuji, constantly making sure that he was okay. They wandered, then wandered, then wandered some more.

“I’m tired of waiting for this cursed spirit to show itself. Rapunzel, how about you activate that hair of yours?” Gojo requested. 

“What do you think that would do?” Rapunzel asked. 

“This domain is made with cursed energy, innenmagie. Your power, außenmagie, acts as a direct counter. It’s the best way for us to easily damage the domain without exerting effort,” Gojo explained. 

“Oh, right!” Rapunzel replied, remembering his explanation from the previous night. She took a deep breath and began her familiar healing incantation. 

Immediately, the entire miniature world began to shudder. Distant hallways began to vanish and the space began to contract erratically. The light flowing through Rapunzel’s hair flickered, fighting as it too was countered by the powers around them. Megumi’s demon dogs whimpered, and he ended up having to dismiss them. 

All at once, a creature seemed to apparate in front of them, emerging from whatever magical facade it had used to hide itself. The next instant, Rapunzel was in a different place, with Gojo gripping her tightly, the cursed spirit in the spot she’d been mere moments before. 

“So, it emerges,” Gojo commented. Rapunzel had stopped her incantation the moment she’d been moved, but the creature still seemed to be enraged. 

Megumi’s demon dogs moved in to attack. Yuuji also began his assault, coming at the creature with kicks and punches. It didn’t seem to do anything. It just stood there and laughed. 

Finally, Rapunzel could get a good look at the thing. The form was similar to that of an abnormally large person, but the skin was alabaster white. The only facial features that stood out to Rapunzel were multiple sets of eyes set into the being’s forehead. With the moment she had to look at it, she could tell that it was the source of her unease. This cursed spirit had created this unnatural world. 

When it was satisfied with mocking its opponents, it backhanded Yuuji. The hit sent him flying, and he hit a stone wall hard enough to leave a crater. 

“Yuuji!” Rapunzel had no time to process, because the cursed spirit quickly turned on Megumi as well. One of its hands shot for the white dog, and it immediately held the animal’s neck. In one squeeze, the demon dog’s neck was snapped, and it was obviously dead. 

Rapunzel turned to Gojo. “Why aren’t you helping them!” 

“I need them to be strong, for when I’m not there,” he answered. However, he seemed to be defending Rapunzel, sticking closely by her side. It made her blood boil, knowing that she was safe in his presence while her friends weren’t. She needed to help.

But how?

The cursed spirit stalked towards Yuuji, who was starting to get to his feet. 

“You need to use cursed energy!” Gojo called out. 

“What?”

“It’s what Megumi and I use to cast magic. With Sukuna’s fingers, you have it too!” 

Yuuji barely evaded a swing that dug deep into the rock of the wall, a hit heartbreakingly close to being lethal. “How?” he cried out. 

“It comes from emotions. Take your feelings, turn them into a weapon, and imbue your body with that power,” Gojo instructed. 

What can I do to help, Rapunzel wondered. Her mind defaulted to using her power, but that would only weaken the world around them and maybe the cursed spirit itself. The fight in front of her was moving too fast for her to heal, so her only choice was to attack. 

If words shaped magic, then that meant that the song she’d been singing her whole life was best for healing, as well as reversing aging. It wasn’t ideal for this. 

So do I just… invent new words?

Megumi summoned a flying creature whose wings buzzed with electrical charge. It swooped in on the cursed spirit, knocking it off balance. Yuuji tried to run and take advantage of the opening, but the spirit recovered quickly enough to kick him away. He rolled across the ground, only coming to a stop when he hit a wall. His entire body shuddered, and blood was starting to leak from within his mouth. 

Rapunzel realized needed to help him. Now . 

She took a deep breath. 

“ Power , gleam and glow…”

Immediately, she felt the difference. Where the light of her magic usually flowed serenely, now it seemed to flare to life, jolting awake from slumber. 

“Let your glower shine.”

As the cursed spirit’s head snapped towards her, distracted from Yuuji. She had to strike. 

“Make the clock reverse,”

She took a strand of her hair and threw it at the cursed spirit, trying to wrap it around a leg. It scrambled back, anxious to not be touched. 

“Unmake this evil shrine.”

Her hair began to lift from the ground by its own volition, the magic within it noticeably more fiery than usual. It drew itself towards the walls, and wherever it touched them, the unnatural distortion of the world deteriorated further. 

This clearly wasn’t the cursed spirit’s plan. It rushed Rapunzel, moving with incredible speed. Then, it picked her up. It wasn’t as strong as she would have expected, weakened by its proximity to her magic. I have to keep going. 

“Burn all that which hurts.”

Rapunzel suppressed the urge to cover her ears as the spirit screamed, her magic  now intent on directly harming it. Whatever loose hairs touched it left noticeable burns behind. It frantically threw her away. 

She flailed in the air, but couldn’t find any way to brace for landing. She hit the ground on her side, hearing a brutal crack. All of her bearings were lost as she rolled across the cold stone. 

She had to hope that it would stay away, because she was in no shape to fight back. 

“Change the fate’s design.”

The line was choked out, her magic flickering as she struggled to hold her focus. Craning her neck up, she could see that the cursed spirit hadn’t closed in on her, yet. 

“Let bad things be lost,

Unmake this evil shrine. 

This evil shrine.”

As she finished her slapdash incantation, light poured into the now open shrine. The incomplete domain of the cursed spirit had been completely undone by her magic, allowing access into the outside world. 

“That’s it, Yuuji! You’re doing it!” Gojo called out. With her arm that didn’t throb in pain, Rapunzel pushed herself up to see what was happening. 

Yuuji was back in melee combat with the cursed spirit. Something clearly magical drifted off of him, vaguely resembling teal, glowing smoke bordered by vantablack. Every strike he made now had a tangible impact where nothing had happened before. 

“Get away from her!” he shouted, eyes watery with angry tears.

 The creature drew itself back, one long, clawed arm summoning magical power into a glowing orb. Then, it threw the condensed energy forward. When it hit Yuuji, it erupted, throwing him back against the wall once more. The power he’d amassed went out, all of it spent on keeping him from being annihilated. 

Megumi stepped in to defend him. Now, he’d summoned a massive serpent to help him as well, and he’d drawn a dagger from beneath his cloak. The creatures alternated their attacks, making sure the cursed spirit had no time to collect itself. 

Yuuji didn’t get up to help. The magic he summoned was slowly building around him once more, but physically he wasn’t doing well. He was bleeding heavily, and his eyes seemed… unfocused, as though he couldn’t quite see everything in front of him. 

Rapunzel dredged up her strength and managed to stand up. Then, clutching her side, she ran for Yuuji as quickly as she could. 

When she made it to the other side of the room, she collapsed to her knees. “Yuuji, it’s okay, I’m here, I can heal you.”

“No,” he said. “Use it on yourself. I need to-” he coughed up a few drops of blood onto his hand. “I need my own magic to fight. You’ve done enough, keep yourself safe now.” With magically empowered strength, he pushed himself to his feet and leapt back into the fray. 

The cursed spirit crossed its arms over its chest. Then, it opened them as magically energy blasted everything backwards. Megumi, his creatures, and Yuuji were all thrown about the room like ragdolls. Even Gojo needed to brace himself on his back foot. 

What do I do!? Rapunzel didn’t have time to sit back and heal herself, she had to help now, whether by healing someone else or by attacking the curse. Either way, she would have to be careful about Megumi’s summoned animals, because they too were weakened by her power. 

But he can get them to back up, right? They can stay away from my magic and stay safe.

Rapunzel limped towards the fray. “Megumi! When I stop using my magic, tell your animals to attack!” she called out. 

“Okay! I’ll pull them back when you start!” he replied, his flying summon already swooping away. With him speaking, the curse’s gaze was locked on him. 

Rapunzel used the opening to wrap her hair around the spirit’s leg. 

“Power gleam and glow, 

Let your glower shine!

Let your glower shine!

Let your glower shine !”

The power struggled to maintain itself, as though it lost efficacy with each repeated line. Even so, the creature screamed as it was forced to bear the full intensity of her magic. It tried to yank the hair off, but the strength it used was comparable to that of a human, not nearly enough to be impactful. As Rapunzel found herself out of breath, she yanked as hard as she could on the curse’s leg, freeing her hair in the same motion. 

“Now!” she called out. 

Megumi, accompanied by his summons, charged forward once more. Freshly weakened by Rapunzel’s incantation, the curse stood little chance against his onslaught. 

The remaining demon dog knocked it off of its feet, and Megumi lunged onto its chest, his dagger raised. 

It went still when the knife plunged deep into its chest, purple blood leaking out from the point of impact. 

In a swirling of violet and blue fire, the creature disintegrated, its form leaving no trace as it was killed. Pinned beneath Megumi’s knife but not at all punctured was another finger of Sukuna. 

We did it, Rapunzel realized. She didn’t give herself any moment to feel good about her victory; her first priority was helping Yuuji. 

The young man in question was lying on the ground, the blood leaking from his mouth beginning to pool around his head. Rapunzel wasn’t sure where the injury was, so she covered most of his body with her hair, just to be sure. 

As she recited her more familiar incantation, Yuuji regained his strength, and his eyes no longer had that unsettling glaze of near unconsciousness. “R-Rapunzel? Are you okay?” he asked. 

“I’m fine, better than you were,” Rapunzel said, cupping one side of his face with her hand. He leaned into the touch, and sighed in contentment. His comfort made her smile. She never wanted to see him hurt again. 

But I’ll have to, she realized sadly. This was only a single finger. Megumi had almost been crushed by rocks acquiring the previous one. This would have to happen many more times before their quest was over, if they could even make it to its completion. 

Megumi walked over, the finger in his hand. “Do you think you’re ready for it?” he asked. 

“With what Rapunzel just did… yeah, I think I am,” Yuuji said, reaching out for the finger as he took a breath to brace himself. 

Rapunzel looked away. Yuuji eating old wrinkly fingers was another thing she never wanted to see again. 

Gojo approached her. “Good job today, you did great in adapting your incantation on the fly. But, you’ll need to come up with something reliable, more different than what you use to heal people,” he explained. 

Rapunzel nodded in agreement. What she’d come up with was only temporary. Maybe she could keep the structure and tune of the original, but the actual words would have to change. “Why didn’t you help us?” she asked. 

“I need you three to be able to stand on your own. I initially protected you because I wasn’t sure what you could do in a fight. I’ll have to start training you and Yuuji, so you can be better prepared for what we’re going to face.”

Rapunzel nodded. She didn’t like it, but Gojo was right. She did have to be stronger, not just with her magic but also in a fight. Both Yuuji and Megumi had been able to run with weapons drawn and fists raised. All she had was her magical hair.  

Gojo turned to Yuuji, and so did Rapunzel. By the disgusted expression on his face, he’d already swallowed Sukuna’s finger and absorbed its power. 

“I’ll need to teach you to use cursed energy. You were able to summon it, so you know how it feels, but it was erratic, with too little focus. We’ll have to change that soon.”

“Yes, Gojo,” Yuuji replied solemnly. 

The rest of the day was spent in recovery: Rapunzel healed herself and Megumi, Megumi grieved over the loss of his demon dog, and Gojo started teaching Yuuji how to use cursed energy. 

Near dusk, Rapunzel sat above the waterfall, letting her hair down into it so all of the blood from the battle could be washed out. In her lap was the book Gojo had given her, which she was reading as she tried to come up with a new incantation to use for the future. 

She couldn’t focus, for as tranquil as her surroundings now were, there was a hammering she heard that just wouldn’t stop. It could have been a mile away, it could have been just behind her. Whenever she looked around, she couldn’t find the source. 

Whatever it was, it just kept hammering, over and over and over again…

Chapter Text

“Will you stop that damn hammering?!”

“Look lady, this is what you hired me to do!”

Gothel rolled her eyes. This girl had to be some kind of scammer. There were plenty of them that ran through the Snuggly Duckling. She didn’t have time to fall for scams. And yet, through her strange talent, she could tell that there was magic at play with this girl hammering a nail into a doll.  

While she’d been in tug of war with Rapunzel, a singular hair had torn off. Gothel had sung to it, just in case it still had magic left, but predictably that did nothing. Still, there was a chance she could find it useful now, as this girl she’d hired had wrapped a section of it around a straw doll, and was now hammering a nail gently into various parts of the body. 

“Why isn’t it working?” Gothel asked, not entirely sure what “working” was even supposed to look like. 

“It’s like… It’s like the echo’s coming back underwater or something, I can barely hear a thing, much less which direction it's coming from. Has this girl you’re trying to find always been resistant to magic?” the bounty hunter asked. 

“I haven’t tried using magic on her before,” Gothel answered. 

“Maybe if you had, you wouldn’t have lost her.” 

Gothel felt her fists clenching. “Do you want your payment or what?!” she snapped. 

“Maybe if you shut up and quit whining I’d actually be able to hear something. Stop acting like the world’s ending.”

Well, maybe the world wasn’t ending, but Gothel considered dying to be pretty dire stakes. 

After yet another round of hammering, the girl huffed and tossed her hammer to the side on the table. “This isn’t working. Do you have anything on you that might help?”

Gothel rolled her eyes and unloaded her bag carefully onto the table, but kept her blade and money inside. What wound up laid out was her food, some of her basic travel supplies, and a couple of the magic items that she carried with her. 

The bounty hunter’s bright brown eyes widened, and she immediately zeroed in on the book and the mortar. It was yet more evidence that this girl did wield magic, or was at least knowledgeable with it. 

“What does this do?” she wondered, pointing at the book. 

“I already tried using that. It didn’t give me anything useful,” Gothel answered. She’d written “Where does Rapunzel plan on going?”, and the book answered “A cursed shrine above a waterfall.” That wasn’t anything she knew how to follow. As for the mortar and pestle, she still hadn’t tried using it. 

“What about this?” The bounty hunter picked up the mortar and pestle. 

“I have no idea. Do you?” Gothel asked. 

The bounty hunter squinted her eyes and peered at the inscription. “Nope, looks like nonsense to me. I’d say your best bet is trying this and seeing what happens, it’s not like we have any better ideas.”

No, we don’t, Gothel agreed, but she wouldn’t dare say it out loud and give this insolent girl one inch of ground. “Well, I hired you , get to it,” she demanded. 

The girl shot Gothel a glare, but did as she was asked. She unwrapped the section of hair from around the straw doll and tucked it into the bowl. Then, she picked up the grinder and began to mash the hair. 

Immediately, the artifact reacted. The inside of the bowl and the inscription lit up with teal light, and as the bounty hunter continued, an aura resembling black smoke began to emanate from within the cup. Gothel couldn’t see it, but she could smell something akin to burning. 

“How long do you want me to do this for?” she asked. 

“I don’t know, do you think I’ve ever ground up a strand of hair?” Gothel countered. 

“I do now,” the girl answered, lifting the pestle from within the bowl. Then, she peered over to examine the contents. Clearly, they must have been finer than she expected, because powder drifted into her nose. 

She immediately recoiled. “Eww!!! What the hell?!” she cried. She started violently coughing, even though she’d barely breathed in any. “Euggh, it smells like that guy that makes glue!” she complained. 

Her disgust quickly turned into panic as that teal energy alit around the magical artifact, and around her. Gothel could feel the magic just as much as she could see it, the sheer power that had been awakened. Whatever this was, it was equally as powerful as her book, if not more so. 

“What’s happening?” the girl cried, looking at her hands now entombed in magical power. Gothel stepped away, determined not to get any of the influence herself. 

Suddenly, the power flashed. Gothel looked away and heard the girl scream. Then it cut off, and the whole room was silent. Gothel looked back, and the girl was completely gone. Her hammer and straw doll were still laid out on the table, as well as the rest of her magic supplies. As was the artifact that had done it all. Every trace of the girl was gone. If the thing had killed her, it had done a damned good job at cleaning up. 

A knock came from the door of the back room, Greno, if Gothel was guessing correctly. “What the hell’s goin’ on in there?!” he shouted. 

“Nothing, nothing at all, you can come see for yourself,” Gothel called back. 

The door opened and Greno stormed in. Gothel calmly backed up to let him inspect the room. When he saw nothing amiss, he doubled on Gothel. “What the hell happened?!”

“That girl got frustrated. Whatever she was doing here didn’t work, then she shouted and stormed off. God knows where she is now,” Gothel lied offhandedly. 

Greno sighed. “Well, she’ll turn up soon enough.” He eyed Gothel suspiciously as he exited, but had no evidence that she’d actually done anything wrong. In all fairness, she really hadn’t. Using the artifact had all been the girl’s idea, so it was her fault that it had gone… wrong?

All things considered, Gothel still had no idea what it did, but she did know how to use it. Her mind immediately jumped to the worst case scenario, that the bounty hunter girl had been killed by the thing. Even in that case, an artifact that could kill and leave no trace was still very useful to her. 

Maybe she wasn’t closer to finding Rapunzel, but at least she got to keep her money. 

~

Rapunzel breathed a sigh of relief as she was finally able to read several pages without the hammering distracting her. She wondered what had caused it, whether it was a sign of sickness or simply an aftereffect of the battle she’d just experienced.

Just when she was starting to get into the reading, she heard a strange crackling noise. She shut the book and put it on the ledge beside her. What is it now, she wondered. 

Suddenly, a teal flash made her turn around. Materializing right there was a figure, a girl who looked to be around Rapunzel’s age and height. She wore a navy blue jacket over a white button up blouse, and a belt held up her navy blue skirt. Beneath the skirt were a pair of pants, alongside knee high black boots. Her hair was shorter than her shoulders, and her face was white with fear. She took in her surroundings briefly, and then took in Rapunzel. In an instant, her face shifted from fear into an almost manic grin. 

“It’s you! Ha! Gotcha!” she shouted, pointing an accusing finger at Rapunzel. 

What did I do, Rapunzel wondered, hopelessly confused. 

Gojo materialized out of thin air. “Ha! Gotcha!” he declared, placing a hand on the girl’s shoulder. 

She whirled around and tried to slam her elbow into his side, but she seemed to slow down and stop before she could touch him. “What the hell?!” she shouted. 

“Sorry, that won’t work. Now, you’ve got ten seconds to explain what you’re doing here before I murder you. Go!” Gojo shouted, shooting the mysterious girl finger guns. 

“Wait! Gojo, we don’t have to do that! We can just ask her, no murdering,” Rapunzel said. 

“Mhmm, yeah, I like her idea,” the new girl said, nodding along. Then, she turned to face Rapunzel. “You are Rapunzel, right?” she asked. 

Rapunzel froze. “H-How do you know my name?” she stammered. 

“This old crone was looking for you. Said her name was Gothel or something. I dunno, I kind of forgot.” 

“Mother?!” Rapunzel exclaimed. 

“She’s your Mom ?” the new girl asked, looking Rapunzel up and down. 

“Well… not really-”

“I figured, you’re way prettier than she is.” Rapunzel felt her face get flushed, as she had no idea what to do with the complement. According to Gothel, Rapunzel was ugly, so to have someone say otherwise caught her off guard. 

“Three…”

“Wait,  you’re still counting?!” the mysterious girl shouted. 

“Yup, so you better explain quick,” Gojo replied. “Twooooo…”

“Okay, okay! My name’s Nobara Kugisaki I was hired to find Rapunzel by some weird old Gothel lady and I’m here because of a creepy artifact which ground up Rapunzel’s hair and I accidentally breathed it in and now I’m here and I have none of my stuff with me so please don’t kill me okay thanks!” 

“Thank you for explaining yourself Nobara. Now, who was it you said hired you to find Rapunzel?” Gojo asked. 

Rapunzel interjected. “It’s… Mother, Gothel, I don’t know anymore. She kept me in a tower my whole life up until a couple days ago when Yuuji helped me to escape. She took me back recently, but I realized I was the lost princess that they did the lanterns celebration for. Then she still tried to keep me in the tower, so I guess she’s still after me.”

“You’re the… huh?!” Nobara cried, making Rapunzel face her. She looked at Rapunzel’s features again, from top to bottom. 

Meanwhile, Rapunzel could hear two sets of footsteps quickly approaching. Turning to look, she could see Yuuji sprinting towards them, followed by Megumi far behind. Yuuji immediately ran to Rapunzel’s side. 

“Who’s this?” he asked, putting himself in between Nobara and Rapunzel. 

“Nobara Kugisaki, and don’t worry about Rapunzel, I’m not after her anymore. Anyways, can you tell me where the nearest village is or something, I just need to get back in familiar territory so I can get my stuff,” Nobara said. 

Gojo shook his head. “I’m afraid I can’t do that. We need to keep what we’re doing top secret from the rest of the world. You might not carry a button, but I can tell you have a cursed technique. You’re either a jujutsu sorcerer or a curse user, and I can’t have you telling others about us,” Gojo said. 

“Are you serious?! It’s not even my fault that I’m here!” Nobara argued. 

“Nope, but you’re here now, aren’t you?” Gojo asked, a cheeky smile on his face. 

“You are so lucky I can’t hit you with whatever magic you’ve got going on,” Nobara threatened, narrowing her eyes at Gojo. 

“Yup! Anyways, I’ve started figuring out where we have to be going next, so, I’ve gotta talk to you about all of that,” Gojo began. Then, he began going off on an explanation of their route that Rapunzel was certain she would have to hear another time. 

Nobara didn’t seem very happy to be here, but Rapunzel was just glad that she might be of help to them and to Yuuji. From what it sounded like, the group would need all the help it could get in the quest to come. 

Chapter Text

The group tensely made camp that night, and Rapunzel was somewhat shocked that Nobara was still there in the morning. Based on the glares that she kept shooting at Gojo, it was clear who’d kept her from leaving. 

Rapunzel had found the climb up into the mountains exhausting. Somehow, the climb down was worse. Every time they encountered a cliff, she had to dangle over the edge and slowly rappel herself down a line that looked way too thin to support her. On top of that, they had to take a different route going down than they did going up. That was because the location of the next finger was beyond Corona’s outer border. The quickest way to get across the border while also avoiding settlements was to cross the entire mountain range. 

They ended up camping for the night in a meadow in the foothills. At this point, they were still high enough to have a good view, but low enough that it would take barely an hour for them to be rid of the mountains entirely. 

Sat in the grass, Rapunzel stared out at the border wall that stretched past Old Corona and all the way to Nordbucht, where Yuuji had been born. The land on the Corona side and the land on the other side looked identical, so she silently wondered what had ever caused the two to be divided. She turned around as a pair of footsteps approached her. 

It was Nobara, who eyed her with a silently judgemental yet still curious look. One thing that Rapunzel had noticed about Nobara was how expressive she was. Throughout the entire descent, she had been giving voice to all of Rapunzel’s own complaints. It felt good knowing that someone else didn’t enjoy it. But what did she want right now?

“Do you wanna sit down?” Rapunzel asked, gesturing to the ground next to her. 

“Sure,” Nobara said. She walked over to Megumi’s pack, yanked out his sleeping tarp, and laid it on the ground next to Rapunzel so she could sit down. 

“Whaddya wanna talk about?” Rapunzel wondered. 

“You being the ‘lost princess’,” Nobara answered. 

“Okay… What’s there to talk about?” Rapunzel asked. 

“The King and Queen have been looking for her since before I was born and they didn’t have any luck. What makes you think it’s you ?” Nobara interrogated. 

Rapunzel felt her fists clench. It had taken her a long time to finally learn who she was, and she wasn’t about to let a near stranger doubt her so easily. 

“I saw a mural of her, she looks exactly like me-”

“There’s a lot of people-”

“Don’t interrupt me!” Rapunzel shouted. She remembered the way she could never express anything to Mother without being cut off. She wasn’t about to let it happen again. 

“Okay, okay, sorry. Make your case,” Nobara said, rolling her eyes. 

“As I was saying , I saw a mural of a baby with her parents that looked exactly like me. Then, when I got home, I noticed that in all my paintings, I’d been able to paint this symbol,” Rapunzel explained, retrieving the flag that never left her side. 

“The kingdom crest?” Nobara asked. 

“I made those paintings before I left the tower. I’ve never left the tower in my life, not since I was put in. When I noticed the symbol in all my paintings, I remembered something from when I was a baby. I remember this symbol, hanging above me, shining. Standing above that were the king and queen. Not only that, but that lantern ceremony, the one that happened three days ago, that always happens on my birthday,” Rapunzel explained.  

“And then there’s your hair,” Nobara said. 

“Yes… what about it?”

“It’s the only reason I vaguely believed you at all. Everyone goes on about how the lost princess had beautiful long golden locks so long for a baby and well… they’re right,” Nobara said, gesturing to Rapunzel’s hair that was spread out in a stream across the meadow. 

“Why were you so intent on knowing for sure?” Rapunzel inquired. 

Nobara was silent for a long moment. “Because if you are who you say you are, then there’s something I need you to do, when you become queen.”

Rapunzel felt her stomach drop. She’d made the connection that she was the lost princess, but she’d never thought about the fact that she would have to be a queen someday. I can’t do that! I’ve only been in the world for, what… five days?! “O-okay?” Rapunzel stammered. 

Nobara shrugged her shoulders. “Good enough. I think you said something about never leaving a tower, right?”

“Yeah it’s uh… I hadn’t seen any of the world until the day before the lantern festival.”

“Wow, that’s uh… anyways, are you familiar with the villages of the kingdom?” Nobara asked. 

Rapunzel’s eyes lit up. “Oh, oh, there’s the village around the castle, there’s Old Corona, there’s Nordbucht where Yuuji grew up, and then there’s the crime place.”

“ Grünershtrand.”

“Yeah, that one.”

“That’s not all of the villages in Corona.”

Rapunel cocked her head slightly. There’s more? Those four places were the ones she’d been able to see with Yuuji at the top of the cliff, and as far as she could tell, they were able to see most of the kingdom from up there. 

“There’s another village on the very tip of the kingdom called Kronenpunkt, that’s where I’m from. My Dad moved us there before I was born because he’s a high ranking guard or whatever, made enemies and whatnot. Because of that, the three families there were able to be nice to us,” Nobara explained. 

“Only three families?” Rapunzel asked. 

“Four if you include ours. I’m not surprised you haven’t heard of it because a lot of people who’ve actually lived out in Corona haven’t heard of it either ‘cause there aren’t any roads leading to it. Even so , Saori decided to move there for some reason. 

She was just a hard worker who couldn’t make it anywhere else, but her Dad wasn’t some high uppity guard, so the people hated her. They were… they were awful.”

Even in the waning light of day, Rapunzel could still see the tears building in Nobara’s eyes. 

“One day she got sick of it and ran. She left a note for me saying that she’d gone back to the capital and that she was going to try and figure things out there. So, Rapunzel , here’s what I need from you. I need you to make a kingdom that doesn’t do that to people. I need you to make a kingdom that doesn’t treat people terribly like that, that doesn’t drive people out of their homes looking for work, that doesn’t let its people become pricks. You got that?” 

Rapunzel just quietly nodded. Then, she scooted closer to Nobara and hugged her. 

“I got that. I’ll do my best when… when I become queen.”

Nobara gently nudged herself out of Rapunzel’s embrace and wiped her tears. “Thank you,” she whispered. Then, she got up and walked away. She walked out of sight, but Rapunzel had a feeling that she hadn’t gone far. If Gojo had anything to say about it, she still couldn’t. 

Rapunzel looked back out at the kingdom. Everything left of the wall in front of her would one day be hers. She would no longer be a princess but a queen . Rapunzel hadn’t been exposed to many fairy tales, but she didn’t know a single one about a queen. What was a queen supposed to even do? How was she supposed to do what Nobara asked?

Am I even capable of any of that? She couldn’t help wondering. 

She must have been more out of it than she thought, because she didn’t even hear Yuuji coming back with a whole load of firewood. 

“Hey Rapunzel!” he called out. 

“Hey,” Rapunzel called back weakly. 

Yuuji walked over and plopped himself down next to her. “Is Megumi letting us borrow his sleeping bag for the night?” he asked eagerly. 

Rapunzel chuckled. “No, Nobara just took it from his bag and sat on it.”

Yuuji’s shoulders slumped. “Oh, alright.”

Rapunzel leaned her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes, letting herself relax in his presence. She didn’t see the way he beamed, but she did feel every last bit of tension leave him. 

“Are you excited to go outside the kingdom?” Yuuji asked. 

Now it was Rapunzel’s turn to smile. “Yes! And we’re not just going right on the other side, but actually going somewhere too. Where do you wanna go?” Rapunzel wondered. 

“Outside the kingdom?” Yuuji asked. 

“Mhmm!”

“I haven’t really thought about it,” he said. 

A mouth sprouted beneath his eye. “You don’t really think about anything,” Sukuna pointed out. 

Rapunzel froze. She’d never heard Sukuna’s voice. It was deep and intimidating, commanding her attention with just a few words. At the sound of it, Pascal immediately knew to scamper out of her satchel and hide in the nearest place he could. 

“That’s rude!” Yuuji snapped, slapping his own face. 

“Does he… do that?” Rapunzel asked nervously. 

Yuuji sighed. “He has a couple times since I swallowed the third finger. I think it makes it easier for him to poke out, like he did when he tried to eat your… What is your pet?” Yuuji wondered. 

“He’s Pascal, he’s a chameleon,” Rapunzel answered. 

“Oh!” Yuuji exclaimed. “That reminds me! There was uh, I forgot where I saw it, but apparently there’s this place called the Amazon. It’s a jungle in South America.”

“Where’s that?”

“I don’t know, but I wanna go there.”

Rapunzel knew even less than Yuuji did about the Amazon, but now she wanted to go there too. Anywhere she didn’t know was great, especially if Yuuji got to be there with her. 

“What about you, Rapunzel, where do you wanna go?” Yuuji asked. 

“Everywhere,” Rapunzel answered. 

“Oh c’mon, there’s gotta be one place you wanna go a little bit more than all the others.”

Rapunzel thought about everything she’d seen on the map. She remembered it pretty well, but she wished she could look at it again, just to be sure. 

“I guess Europe? I want to know where we are. Maybe once we get past the wall we can get a bigger map, or maybe one that has Corona on it,” she said.

“Or maybe we can ask someone what kingdom we’re in on the other side and we’ll be able to know,” Yuuji guessed. 

“Exactly! That’s what I want to know right now, more than anything else.” 

“But what about after you learn? What do you want to see most then?” Yuuji asked. 

“I don’t know. I don’t know if we’ll get to see it,” Rapunzel answered sadly. 

“We will. Maybe if we get the twentieth finger, I can keep it with me and we can just go all the places we wanna go,” Yuuji said. 

Rapunzel smiled sadly. “Yeah, I think I’d like that.”

~

It was the brightest hour of the morning by the time the group was making their way out of the mountains. Rapunzel was more than happy to finally be travelling on flat ground, even if that flat ground included no form of constructed path. Gojo had to constantly check to make sure that they were headed Eastward, which led straight out of the kingdom. 

He still hadn’t told them much about the place where they would find the next finger of Sukuna. The whole morning, Rapunzel traded guesses with Yuuji, since he was the one who’d found the very first one, after all. Apparently, creepy rooms were the norm, but the two couldn’t figure out what kind of creepy room it would be. Would it be someone’s basement, the highest room of a tower, or something more akin to a natural cave? With no idea what lie beyond the kingdom, any guess was plausible. 

“Yuuji, I don’t think they would put one of the fingers at the bottom of the ocean,” Rapunzel said. 

“But it would be the perfect place to hide them, who’s going to be able to get it out of there?” he challenged back. 

“Well, someone might have a magical power that lets them breathe underwater, and then there might be an evil curse that also has the ability. Then, they can just swim down, get it, and become super powerful,” Rapunzel pointed out. Gojo had started teaching her little hints about magic that weren’t included in the book. She needed to know more about it all, if she was going to try and help Yuuji. 

“But then the fish curse thing would stay in the water and wouldn’t bother us,” Yuuji said. 

“What about fishermen, or sailors, or people swimming at a beach?” Rapunzel asked. That question stumped Yuuji into silence. 

In his pondering, he accidentally walked into Gojo in front of him. Or, more accurately, into Gojo’s magic. “Oh, sorry!” he said. 

Rapunzel was about to ask why Gojo had stopped, but then she leaned to the side to take a look past him. 

Through the trees was a clearing, and on the other side of the clearing was a massive bridge over a vast chasm. The distant sound of crashing waves let Rapunzel know what was at the bottom. As intimidating as the bridge and the emptiness it spanned across were, that wasn’t what had stopped Gojo. Rather, it was the five figures that stood on the bridge. 

One of them was a robustly built man who wore no shirt. Another was a robed man who kept his eyes closed, vaguely reminding Rapunzel of Gojo. The remaining three were women. One was a tall woman with short black hair, another was a short blonde woman with a witch’s broom, and the third was somewhere in the middle, with blue hair, something that Rapunzel had never seen before. 

“Who are they?” Rapunzel asked. 

“I don’t know,” Gojo answered. 

“Are they friendly?” Yuuji wondered. 

“Only one way to find out,” Gojo said. Leading the group, he made his way through the clearing and out onto the bridge. The man with closed eyes stepped forward, singling himself out as the de facto leader. 

“That’s far enough!” he shouted. 

“I’m afraid not. Where we’re going is on the other side,” Gojo countered. 

“You’re free to go, on one condition,” the leader called out. Then, without looking, he pointed straight at Yuuji. 

“You give him up to us.”

“That’s not happening!” Rapunzel interjected, putting herself in between the stranger and Yuuji. 

She heard Yuuji whisper to her. “Rapunzel, it’s okay, I’ll be fine.” 

She shook her head in response. “What would they want with you?” she asked. 

Gojo’s curiosity mirrored her own. “What do you plan on doing with him,” he asked cautiously. 

“That’s none of your concern. Just hand him over to us, and you’ll go right on through. You’ll have four others left safe and sound,” the tallest woman said, joining the leader. 

“I’m afraid that is my concern, seeing as he’s under my protection,” Gojo countered. 

“What kind of sorcerer does that make you, if you’re protecting him ?” the man with closed eyes asked in response. 

It was only then that Rapunzel noticed something. On both the man and the woman who had stepped up, she could spot a piece of matching jewelry. It was a button embossed with a spiral pattern. For some reason, it was immediately familiar. 

Her eyes widened. It was familiar. For the last few days, she’d been looking at the exact same thing on Gojo and Megumi. And Gojo calls both himself and Megumi “Jujutsu Sorcerers”. Does that mean they’re the same thing? She wondered. 

As a red light illuminated above Gojo’s hand, Rapunzel was pulled from her thoughts. 

“A sorcerer who’s braver than you.” 

Rapunzel heard a loud clap, and Gojo was gone. Instead, he’d been replaced by the hulking man who’d been standing behind the rest of the odd other group. Gojo, who now found himself far away on the bridge, ended up flinging his technique into the woods on the other side. The trees were swept off the ground and flattened like pieces swept off a game board. It was impressive, but it had missed its intended target. 

This was fighting. They were fighting over Yuuji. These people wanted something with him. 

Whatever it was, Rapunzel wasn’t going to let herself get separated from him again. 

Chapter Text

Yuuji needed to get this man away from Rapunzel. He had Gojo’s towering height but was built like a wall. It wasn’t hard to guess how he would fight.

Glancing behind him, Yuuji could see that Megumi was leading a charge against the opponents on the bridge. For a moment, Rapunzel seemed torn on whether to stay with Yuuji or go with them. 

“Help them! I won’t lose you!” Yuuji called out. Tentatively, she nodded and joined the people ahead of her. 

“So…” the man’s resonant voice snapped Yuuji back to the moment, and he fell into a defensive stance. 

“Yuuji Itadori.” Yuuji immediately tensed. Somebody got my name right? They really are after me…

“Tell me, what kind of woman is your type?” 

Yuuji’s mind ground to a halt. Is this some kind of distraction? He looked around him, seeing if someone was lying just out of view. But no, it was just him and this new opponent, who hadn’t actually thrown a single punch. 

“Why’s that important?” Yuuji wondered. 

“A person’s taste tells you a lot about them. The others want you dead, but I haven’t decided if I want to kill you yet. So, hurry up and answer,” the stranger demanded. 

“Wait, they want me dead ?” Yuuji asked. 

“Yeah, something about you being a half-curse, I didn’t care about it. Now, answer the question.”

“Well…” 

The other man scoffed. “There’s no way you don’t know, unless you prefer men, that’s fine too. If it helps you, my type’s a tall woman with a nice ass,” he said. 

“I don’t even know your name, how am I supposed to talk about that stuff with you!” Yuuji argued. 

“Okay. My name’s Aoi Todo, introduction over,” he answered matter-of-factly. 

He really wants to know. In another life, Yuuji would have said that his taste was the same, that kind of woman did sound attractive. But now…

“Well, blonde hair’s pretty cute. Uh, I guess I also like green eyes…”

“Blondes, huh?” Aoi asked, glancing behind him at the very obviously blonde girl now fighting on the bridge. “Let me guess, you also like long hair?”

“Yeah! How did you-”

Aoi pumped slammed his fists together. “Have some damned nerve! What kind of girl is going to take a man who can’t even admit he’s into her!” he shouted. Almost faster than the eye could see, he lunged forward. 

Yuuji moved to block the strike, but it had enough power to lift him off his feet and send him flying. The wind was knocked out of him as he slammed into a tree and hit the ground in a heap. 

The moment he lifted his head, Aoi was there. He rolled away, but a foot still connected with his stomach, sending him rolling again. 

By the time he had stopped, he was staring up at the sky, head completely spinning. The arm that had directly taken the force of Aoi’s first punch throbbed. Yuuji distinctly felt like he was going to throw up whatever little breakfast he’d had after the kick to the stomach. 

Dizzy and dazed, he could still see Aoi looming above him. The towering man raised his foot and stomped directly down on Yuuji’s forehead. The younger boy’s eyes squinted shut as he felt blood pour into them from where the skin had broken on his head. 

Come on, think!

Another stomp, this time eliciting bright colors behind Yuuji’s closed eyes. 

I’ve gotta do something!

Another hit, now his entire head was pounding like the inside of a bell. 

I can’t think through this. 

Blindly, he caught the foot above him and pushed back. “Quit busting up my head like that, you’re gonna make me dumber than I already am!” he shouted. 

“Takada always said that guys are perfect just a little dumb,” Aoi replied. 

“Who’s that?” Yuuji asked.

“A travelling songstress of unparalleled beauty,” Aoi answered. 

“Who’s tall with a nice ass?” Yuuji guessed. 

“The nicest ass,” Aoi said with complete conviction before he flipped backwards, taking Yuuji with his foot. The smaller of the two was slammed into the ground, taking the wind out of him once more. 

Yuuji forced himself to roll to the side, jump to his feet, and open his eyes just in time to see Aoi flying forward. 

He dodged to the side, the easiest thing for him to do at that moment. But, defensive fighting wouldn’t last him long, not against an opponent with Aoi’s overwhelming power. 

As Aoi went for another attack, Yuuji dropped his stance lower and tucked his arms in. With one hand, he pushed the oncoming fist just far enough to the side for it to miss. With the other, he went in for a strike of his own, backing it up with cursed energy. It sent Aoi stumbling back, but his smile hadn’t wavered. 

“So, that girl on the bridge is your type, huh?” he asked. 

This again? “That’s what I said, right?”

“Yes, but would she usually be your type, if you didn’t know her?” Aoi interrogated. 

“I… I guess not. I’d still find her pretty, though,” Yuuji said. 

“So, what about her are you into?” Aoi asked. 

Yuuji paused. Where do I even begin? He wondered. Before he had time, he saw Aoi surging forward. 

“Hey!” He caught the oncoming fist with both his hands, then launched a kick to send Aoi back. This didn’t deter the bulkier man, who came back with an uppercut that hit Yuuji’s chest and took him right off his feet. 

Yuuji contorted himself to land back on his feet and spring back forwards to meet Aoi’s offensive head on, clocking the man across the face. He whirled back around as Aoi stumbled forward and prepared himself again. 

“Have you figured it out yet, Yuuji?” Aoi wondered. 

“How am I supposed to think with you punching me like that?!” 

“If you’re really into her and want her, you’ll fight for her. If you don’t feel strongly enough about her to know why you want her, then you won’t fight hard enough to win and make it out alive. Simple as that,” Aoi explained. 

Almost faster than Yuuji could see, Aoi came surging back. He struck at Yuuji several times a second and each time with enough force to knock down a boulder. Every ounce of Yuuji’s fighting talent and prowess with cursed energy was required for him to keep up. He wasn’t even sure if this other man was using cursed energy, or if he had a cursed technique at all. 

Then, Yuuji made the slightest mistake. As he caught Aoi’s fist with one hand, the other dropped slightly, too tired to be held up. 

Aoi’s other hand slammed into Yuuji’s throat, shattering his fighting form and cutting off his ability to breathe. 

Not giving him a single chance to recover, Aoi bear hugged Yuuji’s midsection, lifted him off his feet, and slammed him headfirst into the ground behind him. 

Yuuji’s vision exploded with stars, and he felt most of the strength of his limbs instantly give out. Unless he allowed Sukuna to possess him, he would die. He was going to die here. 

He wouldn’t get to hear Rapunzel’s vibrant voice ever again. 

Aoi’s foot came down on his stomach, and he heard ribs crack.

He wouldn’t get to share her wonder as she discovered something new, and was forced to look at the world a little differently, forced to find more beauty in it all. 

The next stomp hit his chest, and darkness instantly flooded the edges of his vision. 

He wouldn’t get to look into her eyes, surrounded by lantern light, wondering what it would be like to feel her lips on his. 

Another stomp to the head. His body twitched, and he no longer felt any power over it. 

“You’re a strong kid, so help people.”

Was Aoi still attacking, or was that just throbbing?

“When it’s your time to go, you should be surrounded by people.” Yuuji remembered the way that Rapunzel had enchanted a whole room with her voice, with her conviction to her dreams. When she became a queen someday, thousands of people from all around would love her. She’d help them without needing to be thanked in return. 

Maybe Yuuji had wavered in the shadow of his grandfather’s dying wish, but Rapunzel had risen to the challenge without even knowing it. She was living a proper life, in his grandfather’s eyes. 

He’d been forced to stoop to crime to get by within months of the man dying. He’d had to do job after job after job that he wasn’t fully comfortable with. Years after his grandfather’s death, he still couldn’t find anything in himself to be proud of. Whatever the man had wanted for him, it couldn’t have been this. 

He wanted to see the world with Rapunzel.  He wanted to know how brilliant she could be when she had time away from her tower, when she had the other great minds of the world to draw from. He wanted to fight alongside her and help her however he could in mastering her power. 

He wanted to love her, and to live life alongside her. 

Because that was a proper life, one that ended with the proper death his grandfather had written out for him years ago. 

The blurriness that had completely conquered his vision was swept away by a tempest of cursed power rising from within him. Every churning emotion rose to the surface, radiating off of him in waves of magical power. 

He kicked Aoi off of him with ease, slamming him with cursed energy while he was still midair. Then, he jumped to his feet. 

Aoi  hit the ground hard, but seemed to take it in stride. “So! Did you figure it out!”

“I want her because her voice is beautiful!” Yuuji shouted, rushing to meet his opponent. With a knee to Aoi’s stomach, he sent his opponent into the canopy. 

“I want her because she does good things!” he added. He launched himself up and sent Aoi slamming back into the ground with another magically infused kick. The earth cracked under the sheer force of the impact. When he landed back on the ground, he approached Aoi. For once, the man hadn’t been able to get up right away. 

“I love her, because she’s everything I want to be and more,” Yuuji admitted. He tensed his fists, ready to keep fighting for his life. 

When Aoi got up, he made no move to strike. Instead of the ferocious grin he’d been sporting, he now gave Yuuji a gentle, sincere smile. 

“ There he is. Now, you’re clearly worth keeping alive, but the others wanted you dead.”

They did. Yuuji suddenly remembered why he was in this situation to begin with. 

“Let me teach you a thing or two about cursed energy.”

~

Now was not a good time for a family reunion. Given, Megumi never wanted to see the Zenin clan or any of its members, but to find one of them now of all times. 

At least it was someone weak. 

“So, Megumi, it’s odd seeing you here,” Mai said, withdrawing her revolver. 

That might be a problem, Megumi noted. “I wasn’t planning on meeting family today. What are you doing here?” he asked. 

“Well, it’s good to see you too. I’m here to exorcize a curse. The real question is, why are you travelling with him?” she taunted. 

Curse? Him? Oh… Megumi felt his teeth clench. He immediately looked around at his surroundings. The others were busy fighting behind him, so he was on his own. Gojo was fighting up ahead, so he didn’t have much space on the bridge to work with. 

Thankfully, the sun was high, so that his form cast stark shadows on the stone beneath him. From them leapt rabbits with small wings, each the color of fresh fallen snow. 

“Have you lost your mind?! He’s dangerous, and if you’re fighting with him, that makes you dangerous too,” Mai said, raising her gun. 

“He’s a good person. I don’t know what they told you about him, whoever sent you here, but they’re wrong. He’s not a threat, Gojo made sure of it,” Megumi explained. 

“Ha! Nothing’s a threat for Gojo. That man is keeping Yuuji alive so he can lord the kid over all the other higher ups and show off how powerful he is. None of that surprises me. What I wonder is why you bother staying with him? Do you get it from your father, abandoning your family?” 

“He’s irrelevant, I don’t care about him.”

Mai smirked. “That’s not what I was asking.”

Megumi took a moment to prepare himself further, settling into a more combative stance. He realized that none of this was about him or his father. That was just Mai being Mai, trying to get under his skin. 

“I don’t care what you’re asking, I’m not letting you kill someone who’s done nothing wrong.”

Mai narrowed her eyes at him, realizing that talking was getting her nowhere. “If you’d rather help Sukuna than side with your own flesh and blood, that’s fine by me.”

Megumi took off the moment her finger started moving towards the trigger of her revolver. 

First, distance. If he made it up close, Mai’s gun was useless. He sprinted forward, leaping in zig zags and using his rabbits to confuse her aim. She fired, and the bullet skidded off the stone ground. 

One, Megumi counted. Mai had easily caught on to his tactic and started sprinting away. She was stopped by a massive blue orb floating above the ground, drawing any loose debris towards it. She was yanked closer, but it moved away before she could be drawn in because she hadn’t been the target. That was the poor soul who had the misfortune of fighting against Gojo. 

It gave Megumi the opening he needed to get in close. Mai lashed out with a dagger, and Megumi was knocked off of balance. 

She raised the gun again. 

A rabbit took the short for him. That was sloppy, he chided himself. Nevertheless, that was a second missed shot. 

She decided to push her advantage, immediately firing off two more rounds. While neither of them hit, the onslaught didn’t give Megumi a moment to recover as Mai ran straight at him, dagger swinging. 

He drew his own and the two clashed in melee combat. Each of them had specialized training that would send most opponents running. Against each other, their skills were closely matched. What Mai didn’t have was Megumi’s reserve of cursed energy for bolstering his physicality. Where she grew tired, he didn’t waver. 

Desperately, she fired two more shots, bringing her to six total. With more effort than before Megumi pushed to conclude the fight. He wasn’t worried about himself and Gojo, but he had no idea how powerful the other enemy sorcerers were. Not to mention, he hadn’t even seen Nobara in a fight. He needed to help them as soon as he could. 

Finally, he found his chance to end it. For a brief window, her flank was wide open. Sweeping his leg in a grand kick, he aimed straight for-

Bang!

From her six round revolver, Mai fired a seventh shot. It felt like a punch to the right side of his stomach. Only, as he stumbled towards the railing of the bridge to lean on, he could feel warm, wet blood seeping into his clothes. How did she do that?!

A kick easily knocked him to the ground. None of his focus was left on defending himself. Did she hit something vital? Should I bring… No, I’m doing that, only Gojo could fight that. 

“Well, look at this,” Mai gloated as she planted her foot right on top of his wound. Intense pain exploded through the entire right side of his body, and he couldn’t help groaning in pain. 

Mai felt obligated to continue. “The family’s favorite punching bag beats the rebellious upstart who sided with a curse. It’s gonna be hard getting them to believe it, dontcha think?” she asked. 

I have better things to do than honor that with an answer. He wasn’t going to be able to fight hand to hand in this state, so his cursed technique was all he had. But, she was pointing that gun near him. He’d been gambling on there only being six rounds, but she’d clearly fired a seventh. He knew he hadn’t lost count. 

“Only thing I don’t believe is how you fired seven shots out of that,” he strained, pointing weakly to her gun. 

“Oh, that? That’s my technique, lets me create things from nothing but cursed energy. That bullet in you’s never gonna go away, you know,” she bragged. 

A technique that creates matter from cursed energy which never goes away. That sounds… hard. Even I wouldn’t be able to make much with that. With her cursed energy…

He looked her dead in the eye, and made sure she was looking at his face. “I wouldn’t be so sure of that.” With his hands, he’d made the sign to summon Nue. 

From Mai’s shadow, Nue emerged. Caught off guard, she was taken completely off her feet. Megumi used the time to call forth another one of his summons, that being Gama, the frogs summon. 

Mai held her gun in one hand and her dagger in the other, and she swung at Nue to keep it from hitting her again. One of the summons shot its tongue out for her gun, and it was wrenched from her grasp. Another shot for her arm, wrenching her knife hand away from Nue and leaving her open to more attack. Having to fight two combative summons quickly overwhelmed her, especially with her trump card now gone. 

On the fifth Nue attack, she collapsed, her muscles spasming as she lay on the ground. “Damn you, Megumi!” she screamed. 

Megumi turned away and started limping, calling off his summons from the fight.  

“Don’t you turn your back and walk away! We’re not done here!”

He turned around. “I’m sparing you! I have better things to do than kill my own flesh and blood, Mai !” he shouted, twisting her own words against her. Whatever she shouted after, he didn’t bother hearing. 

The Zenin clan knows about Yuuji. If they do, then so do the others. So does the whole Jujutsu world, Megumi realized. Whatever secrecy Gojo had been trying to secure for them by staying away from settlements hadn’t worked. 

This fight was just a taste of what was to come. 

Chapter Text

The moment Gojo saw cursed energy taking on the familiar shape of a Kamo Clan technique, he knew he was going to have fun. He couldn’t resist the chance to take a hit at the sorcerer clans. 

He easily stepped aside from the cursed arrow that flew his way. “So, Kamo! What might your name be?” he called out. 

The Kamo Clan sorcerer nocked another arrow upon his bow. “Noritoshi Kamo, and you’re Satoru Gojo.”

“The one and only!” Gojo decided to show off when the next arrow flew his way, catching the wooden shaft and snapping the thing in two. 

“Do you really think that’s going to work?” Gojo asked, genuinely curious. 

“I don’t believe I can beat you. Only a fool would,” Noritoshi responded. 

Then why are you fighting? Gojo wondered. He could already take a good guess, but it never hurt to know for sure. 

“Ah, but you already have beaten me. I was trying to stay out of the clans’ sight, but they seem to have found me anyway,” Gojo said. When Noritoshi fired another arrow, he sidestepped the shot, his gazes still following its cursed energy as it curved back around behind him. 

Noritoshi didn’t respond, instead opting to back up towards the bridge behind him. Gojo decided he didn’t want that. He raised his hand to be parallel with the ground. 

Above the bridge, the more basic form of his technique was called into being. Blue light swirled into itself, quickly becoming a well of gravity that few could escape. Gojo dragged the technique across his sight line. Stones were unearthed beneath it and the air above was whipped into a gale. Noritoshi scrambled away from the singularity, and even Mai Zenin in her own confrontation with Megumi was forced to fight its pull. 

As Gojo had wanted, Noritoshi walked right into his reach. Gojo grabbed the hand that was holding the bow. 

“Would you  mind telling me how, despite my efforts, you were able to find him?” Gojo requested, squeezing his hand until the bones in Noritoshi’s wrist began to grind together and his bow clattered to the ground. 

The Kamo sorcerer grit his teeth together against the pain. Then, he shouted,  “Blood Manipulation: Crimson Binding!”

The chains of magically manipulated blood encircled Gojo. Most sorcerers, no matter how fast, wouldn’t be able to dodge them at point blank. Too bad for Noritoshi, his blood bags weren’t worth anything against Infinity. 

Gojo swatted the technique aside, shattering Noritoshi’s hold on the sanguine fluid. Through it all, he hadn’t let go of the man’s wrist. 

“How were you able to find him?” Gojo repeated. 

“You’re not as good at hiding people, no… curses as you thought!” Noritoshi spat as his wrist cracked. 

“Oh, so it was someone in the capital then?” Gojo asked. 

“More or less,” Noritoshi choked out. His entire body was now trembling in pain as his wrist slowly caved on itself. This is boring, Gojo thought. He tossed Noritoshi away from the bridge, letting him stumble away and regain his footing before he approached. Of course, when he did approach again, he immediately knocked the Kamo sorcerer to the ground, put a foot on his chest, and pushed down. 

“Would you mind telling me who it is?” Gojo asked gently as the man beneath his shoe gasped for breath. 

With his hand that wasn’t damaged, Noritoshi drew blood that leaked from his broken wrist. Then, he shaped it into tiny spears which he sent flying at Gojo’s chest. In response, Gojo didn’t even move. He simply put a little bit more cursed energy behind Infinity, letting the crimson spears approach almost close enough to touch him. 

“That’s not an answer,” Gojo chided in a sing-song voice, applying ever more pressure to his opponent’s chest. Just as he was considering more creative ways of torturing the Kamo sorcerer into talking, the man finally confessed. 

“I-it was a curse! A powerful one! He saw and fought Yuuji, and knew that Sukuna was living inside of him!” Noritoshi gasped. 

One of the curses from the capital? There were more intelligent ones? He’d already known that the attack on the capital was an extraordinary event, but for multiple curses of high intelligence to be there was astronomically rare. Curses seldom worked together, so that meant that some entity of greater power had to be behind them all. Someone (or something) of exceptional power whom Gojo had never seen was working from the shadows and getting special grades that no one had heard of to work together. And now, they were tipping off the world to Yuuji’s existence, all to make his ultimate goal of vanquishing Sukuna more difficult. 

Gojo let his foot off of Noritoshi’s chest. Then, with a flick of his fingers, he dispelled the spears of blood that were almost pricking at his neck. “Thank you for cooperating. Now, if you’ll excuse me.” Gojo crouched down and tapped his fingers on the sorcerer’s forehead. With some fine application of limitless, the sorcerer was down for the count. He was alive, but he wasn’t going to be a problem for a long while. 

He had what he wanted, and could plan accordingly for the future. However, that was something that would happen later. 

How are the others doing?

~

Rapunzel had one simple goal, well, technically two, but they were closely connected. Step one was to win the fight against these two opponents with Nobara’s help. The second step was to get back to Yuuji as quickly as possible. 

This was immediately complicated by the short blonde woman with the broom flying into the air like a witch from a fairytale. The second, a woman with blue hair, drew a sword that looked like a far better weapon than Rapunzel’s frying pan. 

“Do you have any other weapons, Rapunzel?” Nobara asked. 

“Uh, no, I just brought this, sorry,” Rapunzel admitted shyly. 

“It’s better than nothing. I think I should use it. Usually, I’d have a hammer, a frying pan can’t be that different,” Nobara explained. Rapunzel nodded, and gave her the hammer. 

“Should I focus on the person in the air while you focus on the woman with the sword?” Rapunzel asked. 

“Sounds good, your hair’s long enough to reach her and keep her busy,” Nobara replied. Then, she charged forward to face the blue haired opponent. 

Rapunzel looked up to the person flying above her. She was looking away and flying away, as though the battle happening right next to her was secondary to some greater goal. Oh no you don’t!

She grabbed a strand of her hair and whipped it out to catch the back end of the other blonde’s broom. She seemed to realize what was happening at the last moment, and quickly pivoted on her broom. A powerful gust of wind shoved Rapunzel’s strand of hair away, and caused Rapunzel herself to stumble on her feet. Before she could turn around to keep flying away, Rapunzel had steadied herself and was ready to do it again. 

This time, she put her familiar incantation behind it. “Flower gleam and glow!” Her hair glowed as it flew through the air. Before it even reached the broomstick, the broom rider’s magic began to falter, and she seemed to struggle to stay aloft. Focusing on not falling off meant that she didn’t blow the attack away. 

Rapunzel felt her hair securely wrap around the back end of the broomstick. She grabbed the strand with both of her hands and pulled with all her might. “Let your power shine!” she shouted, continuing the incantation. 

Rapunzel’s opponent seemed to be fighting the incantation with her own magic, as the glow in Rapunzel’s hair also seemed to flicker. Außenmagie and innenmagie cancel each other out, Rapunzel remembered. At this point, it was a tug of war of different magics. Whoever’s was stronger would prove the victor. 

As such, it didn’t take long before the broom began to lose altitude, and the one riding it was forced to concede and land on the ground. Rapunzel yanked the broom out of her hands so she couldn’t use it to run away any more. 

Her enemy simply turned around and scoffed. “That’s annoying, oh well,” she said dismissively. Then, she turned around and started running. 

“Wait, what?! Get back here!” Rapunzel shouted, throwing out her hair again and snagging the other woman around the ankle. She was stopped in her tracks, unable to go any further. 

So, she turned around and started charging straight towards Rapunzel. Slack began to build between her and Rapunzel, freeing her to move however she wished. 

As such, she had no trouble charging up to Rapunzel and clocking her in the face. Dizziness slammed into Rapunzel, and brightness flashed all across her vision. For a moment, all she could feel was shock that a person had punched her. Sure, she’d been attacked by countless horrors beyond imagination, but were threats that simply vanished whenever she used her magic. This was a whole person who wouldn’t just go away when she started singing. The only person who she’d actually attacked was Yuuji, and that was a surprise attack. 

She frantically ran from the next swing, trying to figure out what she was supposed to do. Should she punch? Was she any good at that? Should she have kept her frying pan and let Nobara fight with her fists? She would probably be much better at it. 

Rapunzel, for the moment, was stuck. 

~

This blue haired woman was up to something , Nobara just knew it. Her hand was held on her blade, her stance was wide and strong, and she looked at Nobara like she was ready for anything. 

Maybe she is, Nobara thought. Someone else might have seen her somewhat petite frame or friendly face that didn’t look capable of being menacing and underestimate her. However, Nobara had been underestimated herself countless times for similar reasons: too young, too short, simply being a woman, the list went on. She was not about to catch herself being careless. Still, the fight had to go somewhere.  

Gripping Rapunzel’s cast iron pan with both hands, Nobara charged. Before she could get in range, her opponent’s sword came swinging faster than she could see. 

Had her opponent not been nicer, Nobara could have been dead. Her weapon was almost knocked from her hands by the strength of the swing. With whatever momentum she had left, she brought her right foot up towards her enemy’s face. The other combatant evaded, but in doing so also broke her own stance. 

The two women stumbled to regain themselves before finding themselves right back where they started. Only this time, Nobara knew what not to do. 

She wasn’t going to be able to get in range before she herself was hit, if her last attempt was anything to go off of. In a full frontal assault, she was outmatched. Time to think outside the box, then. 

Nobara reared her hand back, pumped magic into the pan, and hurled it at her enemy. She got to admire the sheer precision of her enemy’s stance, and just how quickly she drew the sword and knocked the pan out of the air. 

She didn’t spend too much time, because she was running to retrieve the pan before it even hit the ground. The moment she grabbed her weapon, she whirled around ready to defend herself. 

The sword wielding woman hadn’t moved. In fact, her stance was exactly the same, the only movement being her head as she looked to see where Nobara had gone. 

Why didn’t she give chase? Nobara wondered. It was only a hunch, but Nobara couldn’t help but think that her impeccable reaction time had something to do with her stance. Now that Nobara had been looking at her long enough, she could sense the magic being perpetually channeled around her. 

Magic, stance, the thing that was in Nobara’s way. Somehow, Nobara had to get her opponent to move. 

She looked around briefly for things she could use. She saw countless pebbles in the dusty gravel around her. They weren’t much, but they would do for what she was attempting. 

She picked one up, let magic course through it, then batted it through the air with the pan. It didn’t fly as well as a nail, but it would do. Every single rock that entered near the girl was immediately carved out of the air. 

Slowly, Nobara began to approach. Now that she saw the move being repeated over and over again, she had a better idea of her enemy’s range. In her head, she could see exactly how close she could get without getting hit. 

When she reached the threshold, her move suddenly changed. She reared back her foot, put all of her magic into her leg, and kicked dust straight into her enemy’s eye. 

She cried out in pain and stumbled back, and that was Nobara’s opportunity. She leapt forward, rearing her pan back to end the fight in one blow. 

Blindly, her opponent blocked the pan with her bare hand, meeting the surface of it with her palm. She grit her teeth at the impact, but had managed to thwart the attack. Taking the time that Nobara was off of her game, she kicked out, shoving Nobara back. 

She settled into the stance yet again , eyes squinted shut from the little bits of dust that had gotten in them. Nobara attempted another assault. 

Even blind, whatever magic she was using allowed her to execute that same maneuver that Nobara couldn’t get around, and she failed to gain any ground once more. 

Nobara was stuck. She was weakened from lacking her equipment, going up against an enemy that could stop any initial attack that she made. Beyond that, it wasn’t like her enemy was exactly weak. Even without her gimmick, she clearly knew how to use her sword, and Nobara wasn’t entirely certain how to wield a pan (however simple it should have been, in theory). 

She glanced back at Rapunzel. She seemed to be dealing with her own set of issues as well. Her hair was perfect for restraining her enemy, but she had nothing at her disposal to keep her restrained. 

“Rapunzel!”

“What?!”

“I think we gotta work together and fight both of them at once. This one on one thing isn’t working!” Nobara called out. Case in point, Rapunzel squealed as she narrowly dodged a broom being swung at her. 

“I think you’re right!” Rapunzel called back as she tried to pull in the slack from her hair wrapped around the witchy woman’s ankle. She can only fly so far, Nobara realized. 

Rapunzel was coming up with ideas of her own. “What’s been your problem?” she asked, dodging yet another attack from a swinging broomstick. 

“Hold still!” her opponent shouted at her frustratedly. 

“Sorry uh, I don’t think so,” Rapunzel replied, somehow in a way that wasn’t mocking. 

“I can’t hit this woman without getting hit back, she’s got some kinda magic around her that lets her hit anything ,” Nobara called out. The sword wielder’s eyes widened. 

“How did you guess it? I didn’t tell you anything!” she said. Realizing that her jig was up, she went on the offensive for the first time. In a constant state of motion, she had no time to set up her magic, but her sword was more than enough to keep Nobara busy. 

“Is she doing it right now?” Rapunzel asked, managing to gain enough tension in the strand of her to yank her opponent off balance. 

“No! She’s gotta! Stand! Still! For it!” Nobara shouted between narrowly successful blocks. 

Alright, one final question, then I can try to pull this off, Rapunzel thought. “Do you mind losing your magic for a bit?”

“No!” Nobara replied. 

“Okay, uh, follow my lead I guess!” she called out nervously. First, she had to secure her own position. When she had to deal with yet another broomstick flying towards her face, she amassed the nerve to catch it in her hands. “I’ll join you starting… now!” she shouted as she shoved the witch woman, sending her stumbling back. 

Once she did, she dropped her strand of hair, letting all of the slack back into it so it couldn’t be yanked on as easily. Then, she whirled around and started her most basic incantation. All of her hair was set aglow when she joined Nobara. 

Two on one, they immediately forced her on the defensive. Rapunzel was nervous to get her hair near the swinging sword, so she depended on her limbs to trip her as she stepped back from Nobara’s onslaught. 

“Disarm her!” Rapunzel commanded as she fell. Without hesitation, Nobara obliged, ridding her of the blade that had been such a pain to deal with. 

“Back to her!” Rapunzel shouted again, pointing at the broom rider. She was starting to fly away, since Rapunzel’s magic had since vanished from her hair. In response, Rapunzel began to quickly reel in the slack that she’d given up so she couldn’t get far. 

Nobara didn’t need to be told what to do as her target fell to the ground. Unlike her previous opponent, this one wasn’t worth much in a melee fight. She had to take a magically empowered cast iron pan straight to the face, right before she was kicked to the ground. 

“Momo!” a voice cried. Turning around, Nobara and Rapunzel could see the blue haired woman running forward, having retrieved her sword. Rather than engaging in further fighting with either of them, she ran straight for Momo, her friend. Not wanting to get barrelled over, the two of them moved out of her path. 

Rapunzel saw what she was going to do too late. She’d practiced detaching her hair from objects for years. It used to get stuck much more, but now it could come off every single time without issue, and quickly. The problem wasn’t how quickly it could detach, but Rapunzel’s own reaction time. 

Even as she let her hair unwrap from the broomstick, the sharp edge of the blade came into contact with some of the hairs within the strand. 

“Are you alright?!” the blue haired woman cried, helping Momo get up to her feet. 

Momo spit a bit of blood onto the ground. “I don’t care how mad Mai gets at me, I’m not going to further rough up my face fighting. Yuuji’s not worth it. Let’s go,” she said. The two of them began to retreat. 

Rapunzel couldn’t appreciate that. Her eyes were locked on the color creeping up her hair. The sword hadn’t hit very much, not even half of the thin strand she’d sent out, but she’d been left with a noticeable shock of dark brown hair that would be there forever. 

“Are you okay?” Nobara asked. 

“Y–yeah but my power, it…” Rapunzel was reaching for the words but it wasn’t working. She’d been milliseconds away from losing the power from the whole strand. If she’d wound up fighting the sword wielder first, before Nobara had found out about her magic, she could have lost much more. 

“Does… does it not come back?” Nobara asked with no small amount of dread. Rapunzel shook her head. Nobara cursed under her breath and sighed. 

“We’ll just have to be more careful. Come on, they’re retreating. Yuuji’s safe from them, but not the others,” she said. 

Rapunzel gave a firm nod. She wasn’t done defending Yuuji yet. However, it seemed their fight was getting finished at the same time as other people’s. Gojo and Megumi had completely won their battles. Their opponents weren’t even in good enough condition to retreat. 

As Rapunzel healed Megumi, she decided that she hated guns. The sight of the wound made her stomach queasy, but her magic was able to make quick work of it. It seemed losing a few hairs hadn’t weakened her, so much as made her very aware of how fragile her powers really were. 

“Where’s Yuuji?” she asked. 

“I can see… oh, them now,” Gojo answered, pointing back to where they’d all originally emerged from the woods. It wasn’t clear if Yuuji had won or lost, because him and the person he’d been fighting were walking side by side. The hulking man had his arm slung across Yuuji’s shoulder, and talked to him with a wide smile on his face. This wasn’t to say a fight hadn’t happened, because Yuuji looked beat . 

“So, Brother, it looks like we have to part ways now. Good luck,” Aoi said, giving Yuuji a wink. 

“Once again, not brothers, but uh, thank you,” Yuuji said, scratching the back of his neck nervously. Rapunzel could have sworn she saw him blush, but it was hard to tell from beneath that massive bruise that was starting to form across his entire face. Rapunzel spared no time in healing him back to health. 

“What happened?” he asked, gently taking hold of a strand of Rapunzel’s hair, the one that contained a noticeable number of dark brown hairs. 

“One of the people had a sword, it clipped a few of the hairs,” Rapunzel answered. Yuuji’s eyes widened. 

“What’s this?” Gojo wondered, inspecting the strand in question. Can he see color through that blindfold? What does it even look like to him? Rapunzel wondered. 

“Her magic, there’s a few hairs it doesn’t work in now, because they got cut,” Yuuji explained. Gojo’s mouth settled into a grim line. 

“You’ll have to be careful, Rapunzel,” he said in a tone that she couldn’t quite read. But then, he quickly shifted back to his usual self. “Well! Now that those losers are dealt with and fleeing, we should keep moving! It looks like my attempt to keep this whole thing a secret fell through, so we’ll have to be on the lookout for fights like this going forward. Follow me!” he said, marching happily across the bridge. Megumi and Nobara followed immediately, but Yuuji lingered alongside Rapunzel for a brief moment. 

Something had changed in the way he looked at her. Rapunzel didn’t have enough time to think about it before he spoke in a soft voice. “Are you okay?” he asked. 

“I’m fine, I didn’t get beat up as bad as you did. What happened back there? Why was he calling you ‘Brother’?” Rapunzel asked, starting to follow Gojo. 

Yuuji laughed, and the sound felt like little bursts of sunlight in her soul. “So, it started with him asking me what kind of woman I like…”

Rapunzel didn’t quite hear the next few words. What kind of woman he likes? For some reason, it made her feel gut wrenchingly nervous. 

What if it isn’t someone like me?

Chapter Text

Rapunzel came to consciousness the next day stiff, sore, and cold. She tried to do some stretches to warm herself up, but they didn’t work. Even as the whole group  travelled for hours, she still felt like she’d awoken from a bad nap. To make matters worse, as the sun rose higher in the sky, the brightness of it hurt her eyes. Every morning waking up outside the walls of the tower had been overwhelmingly bright, but only today was it really getting to her. 

When they all stopped at midday, she had barely enough energy to pay attention to what Gojo was saying. 

“Our next destination is Nordfelder. I was planning on going alone, since this finger shouldn’t be too difficult to get, but now that the word is out about Yuuji, I don’t see the point,” Gojo explained.

“How far away is it?” Megumi wondered.

“It’s only an hour or two on foot away from here,” Gojo answered. 

“Where in Nordfelder is it?” Nobara asked. 

“It’s in a church. The clergy there are keeping it as the ‘preserved finger of a saint’. Ironic, right?” Gojo asked, looking around at the group. Rapunzel had her eyes closed, Yuuji seemed vaguely bored, and the other two listening to him were obviously unamused. Unbothered, Gojo continued. 

“Anyway, the only person I need to take with me is Megumi. The rest of you can wander the town as you please when we get there, but try not to stray far. There’s a chance we’ll get attacked again,” he explained. All anyone could respond with was a groan, with the exception of Megumi, who didn’t give any response. 

“Can we go already? I’m tired of these woods,” Nobara said. 

“Y-yeah, same,” Yuuji added. Rapunzel opened her eyes and looked at him. Having been with him constantly for over a week now, she knew that she had never seen him so nervous. His fidgeting was more persistent and more frantic than usual. Rapunzel would have given it more thought had her headache not chosen that moment to intensify, and she went right back to closing her eyes and massaging her temples. 

“Sure thing, up we go!” Gojo declared. Everyone dragged themselves off of where they’d sat and followed Gojo as he charted a course off into the woods. Only, they didn’t stay woods for very long. After about a half hour, they opened up into sprawling meadows filled with blooming wildflowers. Even in her pained state, Rapunzel was able to push herself to take it all in. She had no idea so much grass could exist in the world. The excitement of discovering something new kept her going for the remaining hour that it took to get to Nordfelder. 

It reminded her of a smaller, flatter capital of Corona. There weren’t any banners hanging above the streets, and it was clear that there was no holiday to celebrate, but it was far from dismal. Flower boxes were full and everyone seemed to be hard at work. 

Gojo and Megumi quickly split off to the church to go get the fourth finger of Sukuna for Yuuji. Nobara also went off to do her own thing, saying that she had shopping she needed to do. That left Rapunzel alone to find her bearings. 

At least, until she realized that Yuuji was standing patiently right there, holding her hair in a bundle so that it wouldn’t fall into foot traffic. 

“Oh, hi Yuuji,” she said. 

“Hello,” he replied. “Are you feeling alright?” 

“Yeah, I just woke up sore and it hasn’t gone away yet,” Rapunzel reassured him. 

“Gotcha. We’ll go get some water for you then. After that, is there anything you want to do? We haven’t been in a town for a few days,” Yuuji pointed out. 

Rapunzel nodded. The realization made her nervous, because it harkened back to what had happened last time they were in a town. She hoped the people around her wouldn’t suffer the same fate as some of the unfortunate she’d seen that day. 

“I didn’t have anything specific in mind,” she realized. 

“That’s okay, let’s just get water for now.” The two went to the center of the village, and were able to get water from the well there. Within a few mouthfuls, Rapunzel could tell it was the right decision, especially with how warm the day was. 

“Do you feel better?” Yuuji asked. 

“I do,” Rapunzel answered. 

Yuuji smiled. “That’s good. I uh, I saw… let’s find a bakery,” he said, taking Rapunzel’s hand and leading her in the town as he started searching. 

Okay… Rapunzel thought. Yuuji was definitely acting weird. If Rapunzel had to guess, he seemed nervous. 

Maybe he’s just scared to be in a town again, Rapunzel thought. If so, she didn’t blame them. The sight of locals laughing and minding her business was making her wonder when it would all shatter, when something would go horribly wrong and she would have to call upon her power to protect. 

“There it is!” he said, pointing with the hand that wasn’t holding Rapunzel’s hair. Up ahead was a bakery. As the two of them walked closer, Rapunzel could smell the mouthwatering aroma of sweets and spices. Bakery had definitely been a good decision. 

The two of them walked in, and they were the only customers. Whatever rush there had been for lunch had since died down, and even the earliest of dinners were still hours away. Rather than having to hectically choose something, Rapunzel could take her time and get a good look at all the options. It didn’t help, because there were more types of bread than she knew existed. There were all different shapes, colors, and textures. There were pastries mixed in too, none of which she knew the name or taste of. She wanted to try them all, but was unsure how much money Yuuji still had left. He clearly had something, if he’d taken them to a bakery. 

“Do you know what you want, Rapunzel?” Yuuji asked.

Rapunzel shook her head. “I have no clue.”

“How does apfelstrudel sound?” Yuuji asked. 

“I’ve never had apfelstrudel before,” Rapunzel answered. 

“I think you’ll like it,” Yuuji reassured her. Trusting him, she nodded. He ordered two of the large, log shaped pastries. She held one end near her mouth to take a bite, but Yuuji put his hand atop the strudel to protect it. 

“I uh, saw a good spot to eat it on the way in,” he said. Rapunzel lowered the food from her mouth and let Yuuji lead the way. 

The two headed for the edge of the small town, and then slightly beyond it. 

“Are you sure this is safe?” Rapunzel asked. “Gojo told us to not go far.”

“I’m sure, it’s not much further,” Yuuji answered, pointing to a spot only a minute up the stone paved path. 

It was an arching bridge over a small river, shaded by large white willows. When they got to it, Yuuji sat on the edge, letting his legs dangle above the water. He patted a spot next to him, gesturing for Rapunzel to sit as well. 

Once she got herself situated, she looked up at the view. The river lazily snaked its way through Nordfelder and off into the distance. Within the water itself, she could see glittering fish dancing, and at the edges of the water cattails and other swamp grasses swayed gently in tune with the wind. It was a peaceful corner of an already peaceful place. 

Now that they were in the spot, Yuuji took a bite of his strudel. Rapunzel took it as a silent go ahead to start eating her own. She couldn’t help sighing as she tasted it. The dough was flaky and peppered with powdered sugar. The center was bursting with warm apple filling spiced to perfection with cinnamon. All of it was still warm from the bakery. She was glad she’d waited to be here to savour it. 

For a while, the two of them sat there, silently observing the scenery. Enough time passed that Rapunzel began to make little stories for the fish she saw flitting about beneath the bridge. Maybe they were arguing about who ate the last bug, or perhaps they were gossiping about that one fish who always stirred up the mud and made the water murky when they swam around. 

She was awakened from her daydreaming when she heard movement. Her eyes followed her ears’ lead, and she spotted Yuuji scooting across the stone until they were touching as they sat side by side. This close, she could see that he was blushing profusely. 

“How do you like it here?” he asked. 

It was easy for Rapunzel to answer the question. “It’s nice. It’s pretty, it’s in the shade, it’s quiet…”

“No one else is around,” Yuuji interjected gently. 

Rapunzel nodded in agreement. “No one else is around,” she said, mirroring his words. Them being alone did make things more… just more . It was a hard feeling for Rapunzel to describe. It reminded her of one day when a storm had passed over the tower. Wind had ripped the raindrops through the air so that they smashed against the closed window; everything beyond the glass was left blurry. When Rapunzel wiped it clean, the whole world had come back into clarity. 

Being alone with Yuuji made the whole world more vivid and clear. 

“You’re a wonderful person to be with, Rapunzel,” he said. 

Rapunzel felt her cheeks grow warm. “Thanks, you too,” she replied bashfully. This close, she could truly appreciate Yuuji’s features. She saw the way his rich, brown eyes traced her form. She appreciated the way the edges of his mouth were always quirked upward, poised and prepared to be happy and smile. 

“The fight that happened yesterday… how do you feel about it?” Yuuji asked, briefly glancing at Rapunzel’s now permanent rivulets of dark brown hair.   

“I’m fine now, I just… I have to be more careful from now on. I hate to say it, but I think Mother was right about my power needing to be protected. It’s just everything else she said that was wrong,” Rapunzel answered. 

“Do you miss her?” Yuuji asked. 

Rapunzel sighed. “Honestly, even though I know what she did is wrong and I’m mad at her for it, I think I do. Anytime we eat, I miss her hazelnut soup. Any time I have to do something that I’m scared of, I just think she’s right and want to go back to her.”

Yuuji nodded, and Rapunzel was certain that even after such a confession, he didn’t see her any differently. He regarded her as the same person, the same Rapunzel. 

“I know the feeling. I wish I could know my Mom better now. It’s been over ten years but I wonder if she’d put up with me more now, since I don’t have to depend on her,” Yuuji confessed. 

Their mothers were so different, but both so wrong. It was an effortless bridge of understanding that Rapunzel shared with almost no one else in the world. Every family that she’d seen in public had been happy, with no strange walls between mothers and children. It was as though the whole world had it better than her, in that regard. 

“I’m asking about the fight because it made me realize a few things,” Yuuji said.

“Like what?” Rapunzel wondered. 

“It uh, I’ll be honest, it was a much worse fight than it looked when I walked out,” he admitted, scratching the back of his neck nervously.

“But, the person you were fighting, Aoi, wasn’t he calling you a ‘brother’?” Rapunzel asked. 

“Yeah, but he didn’t call me that until I fought back well enough for him to respect me. He wasn’t like the others there, he didn’t actually have anything against me , but if I hadn’t proved myself to him I wouldn’t be here,” Yuuji explained. 

The thought sent cold dread coursing through Rapunzel’s veins. In all her time outside her tower, Yuuji had been right beside her. The outside world had been a part of her dreams for years, but now she couldn’t imagine it without the young man now beside her.  

“I was able to fight back because of you, really.” 

“Me?” Rapunzel asked incredulously. 

Yuuji chuckled. “Yes, you. I want to be with you, so I wanted to live, and now I get to be alive. But, with Sukuna and the execution, I’m not going to be alive with you forever.”

Rapunzel’s eyes burned. If she could take Yuuji far away from all the danger, she would. She would search the whole world and find the tallest tower for him, only to keep him away from those who’d endanger him. But she knew it couldn’t be. One day, when this was all over, she had to go back to Corona to be a princess, and prepare to be a queen. Yuuji had his own sacrifice to make to keep the world safe from Sukuna. What kept her from breaking was knowing that it was far away from now, and that she still had moments like these, where she could sit with him and be at peace.  

Yuuji took her hand. He ran his thumb across her palm, a tiny gesture of reassurance. In his touch, she felt grounded, away from the future. 

“So, I want to be honest with you, Rapunzel,” Yuuji said. He reached forward his other hand and clasped Rapunzel’s own. All the tension fell from her shoulders at being further held. “You can feel however you want to feel, and say whatever you want to say. I just need to stop holding myself back.”

What’s he holding back? Rapunzel wondered. For a moment, she felt an inkling of dread. She’d had secrets kept from her before, big secrets. Finding out about them had completely upended the way she saw the world, and she wasn’t sure if she was ready to feel that way again. Still, for all the times he’d helped her, really helped her, she at least owed him this. 

In the moment before he spoke, his breath stuttered. 

“I love you.”

Love... That was a word her and Mother had used. Outside of her, Rapunzel wasn’t sure what it could mean. She wasn’t sure what part of her and her Mother the word love encompassed. According to her Mother, everything she’d done had been love, from making her hazelnut soup to locking her away from her only dream. She trusted Yuuji more than that, maybe foolishly. So, she’d give him a chance. 

“What do you mean?”

Yuuji cocked his head at her, brows furrowing. “I…” 

He didn’t seem to understand her reaction, so she explained it further.

“Mother told me she loved me a lot. She said it when she brushed my hair, and whenever she left. But she also said it when she told me I could never leave the tower, ever. That was her love. Tell me, Yuuji. What’s your love?” 

Yuuji’s eyes were wide open with fear. His hands, clasped around Rapunzel’s own, were shaking. For a moment, Rapunzel was scared that she hadn’t trusted him enough, as though she’d hurt him with her immediate doubt. But then, he gathered his resolve. 

“I’ve never loved someone like this before, Rapunzel so… I don’t know what to do, or what I can really give you. I want you to be safe, and I’ll try everything to keep you that way.”

Rapunzel flinched. It sounded too much like Mother. 

But he wasn’t finished. 

“I want to see you happy, to be someone that can make you happy. I want to live long enough to see your next dream, a-and I don’t know if I will, but even if I don’t, just seeing one of your dreams is enough.” 

His words were frantic, pulled from a part of him that was raw and vulnerable. His eyes were starting to overflow with tears and Rapunzel didn’t know what was happening and what he was saying was too important and she wouldn’t dare interrupt. 

“B-but I still want to see more. I want to find your next dream Rapunzel. Whatever you dream, I dream. That’s because my dream is you! You’re my dream, Rapunzel!” 

One of his hands reached up to cup her face, and without a thought she leaned into the touch. 

“You’re my dream, Rapunzel. D-does that even make sense?” he asked, voice shaking. 

Rapunzel met his eyes, his beautiful eyes, shimmering with tears. 

“It does to me.” Maybe she couldn’t understand love, but she could understand dreams. 

She cupped his face, tilted his head down, and kissed him. As he wrapped his arms around her to hold her close, she knew she’d done the right thing. He had made her dream come true. Now, she leapt at the chance to do the same for him. He made her feel safe, and he didn’t destroy her dreams to do it. That was more than enough for her. 

The two parted for breath, and already Rapunzel wanted more. She glanced at his lips, wondering if he wanted to do it again. His answer was kissing her. 

Her heart thundered, and the butterflies in her stomach danced. Kissing was an ecstatic feeling, like seeing the very first lights emerging over the rooftops. It was discovering a new piece of the world; a memory to be treasured forever. 

If this was what Yuuji’s love felt like, she was more than happy to give it a chance.

Chapter Text

When Yuuji received the fourth finger of Sukuna, Rapunzel covered her eyes and ears so she didn’t have to see it happening. Every time grossed her out more than the last, and even when she didn’t actually witness it, just knowing that it happened made her uncomfortable. 

Thankfully, it didn’t take too long, and no one in the group felt the need to dwell on it. 

“Can we please stay at an inn? I’m tired of sleeping in the woods,” Nobara complained. 

“Since sleeping in the woods didn’t help us hide, I don’t see why it’d hurt,” Gojo replied. 

“Do you have money for it?” Megumi asked. 

“I should. Our funds have been getting a little low, but tonight won’t be an issue,” Gojo reassured him. 

The next half hour was spent looking for a place to stay. Nordenfelder was a small place, one that didn’t see too many travellers. Even though it was right outside the neighboring kingdom of Corona, it wasn’t on the main path that led there. Thus, finding an inn was surprisingly difficult. 

What they found wasn’t even an inn. It was called “Kochen Guest House”, according to the barely legible sign that swung in front of it. The group entered, and found themselves straight in the dining room. It was a warmly lit space decorated with cute antiques and intricately carved furniture. A man wearing an apron ran out to meet them. 

“Oh, hello! We don’t get many travelers! We’d be happy to have you, but we only have three rooms,” he said, looking out over the five of them. 

“How many can go in each room?” Gojo inquired. 

“Two in each. One’s a double bed, the others are separate,” the man answered. 

“Megumi and I have shared a room at inns before to save money, we can do it again. How about we have Rapunzel and Nobara in their own room and Yuuji will get something on his own,” Gojo said, pointing at whoever he referred to. 

“Actually!” Rapunzel piped up. “I was thinking I could share the double bed with Yuuji?” she asked. 

All eyes remained on her, so she figured she had to keep talking.

“We had a conversation and I want to try loving him and I also want to share a bed with him and… yeah.”

The manager of the guest house, looking like he wanted to be anywhere else but at his job/home right now, cleared his throat. “So… will the girl with the long blonde hair and the boy with the pink hair be rooming in the single bed room?” he asked. 

“Yes,” Rapunzel said. 

“Very well, and you two gentlemen will be rooming in one room?”

“Yup,” Gojo replied. 

“And you’ll be in a room on your own, miss?”

“Yes,” Nobara said, all traces of anger gone from her eyes now that she realized she had a whole room for herself. 

“Very well, I’ll get payments arranged shortly. Dinner for tonight and breakfast tomorrow are complementary as part of your stay. Thank you for staying with us,” he said. Then, he turned around and left the room as quickly as he could, presumably to an office or document room of some kind. 

The silence left behind by his absence was obtrusive. It made Rapunzel shift uncomfortably, like she had far more eyes on her than she wanted. Thankfully, it didn’t last too long, and the manager of the guest house came back quickly. 

He led them all to their rooms, and each of them began to settle in. The room that Rapunzel and Yuuji received contained a massive bed whose rich sheets were embroidered with all manner of flowers. Quaint paintings hung on the walls and several windows let the remaining daylight fill the space well, so that not a single corner of the room was dim or dismal. Rapunzel hadn’t been in a bed for almost a week, and it was something she’d missed dearly every night. 

“Do you like it?” Yuuji asked. 

“I do. I’m going to miss it when we have to sleep in the woods again,” Rapunzel answered as she tossed her hair about the room. It hung over the backs of chairs and gently wound around tables. She didn’t want to constantly make Yuuji hold her hair when they were trying to relax. 

As she finished, a knock came at their door. Since Rapunzel was closest, she was the one who walked up to it to answer. Opening it, she saw Nobara standing on the other side, a bundle of clothing in her arms. 

“Oh, hi Nobara!” Rapunzel said. 

“Hey, is Yuuji here as well?” Nobara asked. 

“He is,” Rapunzel said, glancing at him as he approached the door.