Chapter Text
Episode 0 : The Future Strongest
Kento would like to say he didn’t want to follow Gojo, turning Itadori’s return into a practical joke; he had no plan for that. Their shenanigans were none of Kento’s business; he was just a bit concerned with how the Kyoto school would react. Even though their mission was over, Kento still felt responsible for Itadori’s well-being. That was why he didn’t object to Gojo’s stupid idea of a surprise box.
He couldn’t believe Itadori played along with the idea. Kento had known several students of Gojo over the years, and he knew the majority of them wouldn’t even deign to listen, especially being the butt of the joke. Itadori… was a special kind of boy packed with kindness, tolerance, and optimism that softened even Kento’s hardened heart.
…And he got along too well with Gojo. Seriously, where the hell did Gojo find this kid?
He shook off the thought as he followed Gojo at a sedate pace. Kento belatedly realized from the annoyed look on Iori-senpai's face that Gojo was late again. The principals looked resigned that the idiot would embarrass them once more. As usual, Gojo never failed to meet your expectations, both good and bad. He started his convo by distributing suspicious charms from who knows where to Kyoto students; it was not cursed, but the bright pink color was looking pretty cursed in Kento’s opinion.
“As for Tokyo students, we have this!” Gojo spun like a ballerina, and Iori-senpai had the gall to glance at him as if he could stop Gojo.
The box opened slowly, and not with a bang like Gojo planned. Kento did a double-take when a hooded figure almost as tall as Gojo stood up from the box, looking around with deliberate slowness that was almost unnatural.
Gojo instantly moved, standing in front of Tokyo students while Iori-senpai did the same for hers. The principals were also on high alert; they were all frozen at the unknown that was definitely not Itadori.
“...Who are you? Where’s Yuji?” Gojo sounded oddly unsettled; he even pulled down his blindfold.
Kento and everyone else as well, because… this person was right in front of them, but his cursed energy was so tightly packed their senses couldn’t register him at all! They warily kept their distance, fanning out around the mysterious figure.
The hooded man stepped out of the box and said. “...How nostalgic… is this a new ploy by the Higher-Ups to drag me back for their demands?” He wondered out loud. “Whose cursed technique is this to recreate this memory?” He glanced at Kento. “Well, different… You weren’t there.” He sounded almost accusing.
“What are you talking about?” Principal Yaga demanded, “Who are you?”
He tilted his head to the side, “...Well, I have the time, but I’m not in the mood.” The man said, orbs of blood floated above his palm. “Piercing Blood.”
“Crap.” He heard Gojo curse, “Duck!” It happened so quickly, they dropped to the ground as Gojo instructed, and the strongest sorcerer shot ‘Reversal Red’ that scattered not one but multiple arrows of blood. Why would a member of the Kamo clan attack them?
Not wasting the opportunity, Kento rushed the unknown sorcerer before he could make another move, his cleaver aimed straight for his collarbone. It never made contact; the intruder simply caught his weapon with the palm of his hand. ‘He didn’t even budge!’
“How unpleasant.”
“Nanami, get back!” Nanami didn’t need to be told twice; he abandoned his weapon and rolled away to give distance. Another orb of ‘Red’ was shot, directly at the intruder. They expected him to dodge or be obliterated by the attack. Neither happened to their surprise; instead, the man stood his ground and punched the spherical gathering of repulsive force from its trajectory. Upon impact, the world turned black for less than a split-second as equally darkened lightning sparked from his fist.
Black flash?! Kento was in disbelief, ‘What kind of insane precision is that?! I couldn’t sense his cursed energy fluctuating at all until he made his move!’
Kamo was one of the students who regained his bearings first. “Who the hell are you?! You’re not my clansmen!”
Then the man clenched his fist; none of the traditional forms of Kamo’s heralded technique was recognized in the gesture. So it caught them off guard when much smaller piercing blood bullets were shot. Kento, Yaga, and Gakuganji were all struck by the attack while defending the students with Gojo expanding his Infinity as a make-shift shield, stopping any stray projectiles from nicking their skin as it did for the older sorcerers.
For a moment, Kento was confused by the seemingly non-lethal attack. Was it a bluff? Then he felt it, nausea and vertigo. He collapsed to his knees, as did Principal Yaga and Principal Gakuganji. Kento cursed that the only adults who didn’t get hit were Utahime and Gojo. Likely, Gojo had protected her because her talents were unsuited for direct combat.
“Urp.” So the blood was poisonous, how the hell can a human's blood be poisonous?!
“Oi! Kamo!” Toudou shouted at his classmate.
Kamo, the blood manipulation expert, was shaking. “It shouldn’t do that!”
Gojo clicked his tongue; one hand formed his domain mudra. Kento was dizzy, but he could guess Gojo was bluffing. “That’s handy… poisonous blood? We can play the same game, undo that poison, or else you get a taste of my domain.”
“...That’s a better imitation of Gojo-sensei, but I’m getting impatient…” The man said with a sigh, “A bluff, after all… If you’re really Gojo-sensei, then there’s no way you’d use your Domain with your students nearby. You’re not Okkotsu-senpai after all.”
Gojo’s bluff was called out just like that?
“Because I’m not Yuta?” Gojo, for some reason, relaxed. “Oh.”
The intruder formed a mudra of their own, one that reminded Kento eerily of Gojo’s.
“Domain Expansion: Sanctuary of Benevolence.”
And the world was repainted anew.
Kento waited with trepidation for a sure hit, and all he could stress over was how to protect the students when he was already poisoned. However, the hit never came, and the scenery that greeted them was…
“Isn’t this… our classroom?” That was Fushiguro speaking, and indeed, Kento too recognized their new environment. He even recognized the table that had Yuu’s doodle on the corner.
“It’s our classroom!” Exclaimed the other Tokyo’s first year, the girl.
Gojo lowered his own hand seal. “Ah… what a unique domain, it’s not offensive at all… but very… disturbing.” He turned to the intruder, who was sitting on the teacher’s table, frozen. “What’s with the soul probing? Yuji-kun? Isn’t that a bit too much?”
“Itadori?!” Exclaimed Fushiguro in shock.
Gojo was looking at their intruder like he was an early Christmas present. “This domain… according to my Six-Eyes, exposes the souls of both the trapped and himself; it doesn’t have a set form… that’s why it showed us this classroom.” He beamed.
Itadori (?) exhaled softly. “...I messed up, sorry.”
He pulled off his hoodie, exposing a young face of a man who was, at the oldest, in his twenties with the same dusty pink hair but longer and combed back in graceful curls, a little like Kento’s own hairstyle. His eyes were still warm brown, which relieved Kento for reasons he couldn’t fathom.
Iori-sensei glared at Itadori. “...I don’t know if you’re really who Gojo claims, but that poison…”
“I’m sorry about that, but don’t worry… I was bluffing too.” He sounded almost embarrassed, “It feels pretty bad at first, but it’s no more dangerous than a bad case of flu, a few days of rest, and you will feel as good as new.”
Was that good news that Kento was going to spend days in bed with a bad cold? Wait- how come he feels well now, no more nausea and shivering? He stood up, confused by his sudden recovery.
“Sukuna’s vessel.” Gakuganji hissed, wiping his mouth. “What’s the meaning of this? You… you even have Kamo clan’s blood manipulation and your cursed energy…”
“That’s the fun part.” Gojo beamed, “This Yuji-kun doesn't have Sukuna anymore…”
Itadori nodded, “It has been years since-”
Time travel- went unspoken, but everyone heard it anyway. Jujutsu had done wonders, terrible and devastating, so time travel wasn’t really that strange. Kento still couldn’t understand the timing. Gojo put Itadori in a box, and the kid swapped with his future self somehow?
“-I exorcised Sukuna…with everyone’s help.”
The king of curses was exorcised?! That was great news, but looking at how Itadori was behaving around them, the cost was devastating.
“Really?!” Gojo looked ecstatic. “You can do that?! As expected… I know you have the potential, but you really exceeded all of my expectations!”
“...”
Their ‘strongest’ grinned; his voice was deceptively playful. “By the way, Yuji… am I wrong to guess that you are the strongest sorcerer in the future, but you pulled a Tsukumo on everyone?”
Ah- he did say something about not being in the mood to deal with higher-ups and was about to knock them out to leave. Which sounded disturbingly like a Tsukumo thing to do.
Itadori averted his eyes from his teacher, “I… I mean-”
Gojo’s voice was tense now. “...Did I let Tsukumo be a bad influence on you? That’s very unlike me…. Ha ha ha.” The man was taking this personally after what happened between Tsukumo and Getou. “
Itadori was shaking his head. “She isn’t a bad influence; we barely talked! I think we only talked twice and-”
“That’s twice too many!” Gojo was getting very emotional, and Kento didn’t blame him because they all knew what Getou did after one talk with her. “I believed I banned her from even speaking to my students. I warned her… who let her be anywhere near you guys? Where was I when she made her move on you?”
Without warning, the white screen above the blackboard unfurled, and the projector was turned on. The room became darker, and on the screen played a figure of Itadori- the younger one they all knew, bloody and desperate- chasing something- someone.
“GOJO-SENSEI!!! GIVE HIM BACK!”
Then they saw a figure of a man they thought they had lost, holding a box with grim satisfaction on his face. And-
They couldn’t see the rest because the next thing they knew, the screen and the wall behind it were shredded into cubes with a wave of Itadori’s two fingers. “Alright, that’s enough…” His cursed energy exploded in waves, suffocating everyone who wasn’t Gojo.
“I still want an explanation,” Gojo said. He still looked manic after the glimpse they had just witnessed.
Kento moved before he could think twice, as did Yaga. His fist met the solid head of the future Special-Grade. “Huh? Na… namin?” His hand was throbbing in pain because Itadori was even more robust now.
“Ouch! Principal?!”
Principal Yaga hollered, “Behave yourself, both of you! Aren’t you both special grade sorcerers?! Have some self-awareness for your surroundings!”
They both looked sheepish, but at last everyone else could breathe, especially the weaker students. Utahime’s female students looked like they were about to pass out.
“First! Undo your domain, Itadori!”
“Huh? Oh- alright…” But then nothing happened. Itadori blinked owlishly. “Eh?” He glanced at the destruction he had caused before; the space had restored itself.
Then the white screen unfurled once again, and this time the projected image was that of Gojo- sitting backward on a chair with his infuriating grin.
“Good morning.”
It was replaying the scene of the past, and they couldn’t stop it, as Itadori’s domain was that of the soul.