Chapter Text
“Suguru, you two get her to Master Tengen,” Satoru insisted, waving off the concern of the other boy despite the stab wound through his chest that he didn’t understand how to heal. One of these days he was gonna have to force Shoko to explain Reverse Cursed Techniques to him using actual words.
He wasn’t looking at Suguru as he said it, but he could hear the pause and feel his hesitation. They’d always been fine on their own, but it was undeniable that they were strongest together. He’d said as much the day before when he convinced Suguru that they should stay an extra day in Okinawa for the sake of Riko. He’d been awake for two days straight without ever turning off his technique, and now he’d been stabbed–something that he’d never experienced before and the sight of it had to have Suguru extra worried–but he still knew the mission: protect Riko.
Satoru was the strongest. He could hold off this man while Riko got to the safety of Tengen’s barrier. If there was more danger along the way she would need Suguru, the next strongest, there to protect her. They could handle it.
“Be careful,” Suguru told him, the instruction forceful but worried all the same–like he didn’t realize who he was talking to.
Satoru scoffed at the notion that he should ever need to be careful, staring at where the mysterious man that lacked cursed energy was currently residing in a curse’s stomach as he sensed his companion’s cursed energy fade into the background as they raced to safety. Slowly he pulled the sunglasses off of his face, his other hand in his pocket nonchalantly as he stepped closer to the man even as he killed the curse that Suguru had summoned to attack him.
It was obvious that Suguru had intended to use the curse more as a distraction than a weapon, so the ease with which the man killed it didn’t concern Satoru in the slightest.
“I’m offering you one chance to walk away, which is more than you deserve after stabbing me. The bounty on her head is over, killing her would be pointless,” he snapped, a sneer on his face as he glared up at the black-haired man, taking in the ugly purple worm-like curse that was now wrapped around his torso and over his shoulder. He had a strange cursed tool in his hands.
The almost-stranger laughed and sneered right back at him. “I took it down, you prideful bastard. I wanted to give you a false time limit–keep you on edge only to drop your guard, and your technique, the moment that I wanted you to.”
“That so?” Satoru asked, launching a blast of Blue at the man while talking to use the conversation as a form of distraction. His opponent dodged the blast easily, but it taught Satoru two crucial things: he was fast, and the reaction time and lack of cursed energy had to mean he had a Heavenly Pact of physical prowess.
The man launched himself through the trees at an inhuman speed, clearly trying to have Satoru lose sight of him. That part of his plan technically worked. Satoru couldn’t keep up with how fast the man was moving, but he could still sense where he was because of the curse on his shoulder as well as the cursed energy on his sword. The black-haired man sprinted at Satoru from behind, cursed tool primed to strike at him.
Satoru sent another Blue at him, turning towards him after the attack had already pushed him far away from himself–crashing through multiple buildings, leaving a trail of rubble in his path. He didn’t doubt that the man was virtually unharmed from that despite the carnage it caused their surroundings. “I’m sure that cursed tool is at the core of your plan. Sorry, I’m not dumb enough to let you near me with that!”
The man was unphased by the attack, back to his dance from foothold to foothold, using the trees and the buildings and the rubble to never be in one spot long enough to be attacked. He was so fast that Satoru couldn’t keep up with him, even with the curse and cursed tool on his person. How the hell was someone this fast? He shook his head, frowning. If I can’t keep up with him, I’ll just have to get rid of all his cover so he can’t surprise attack me again.
He concentrated his cursed energy in his palms and them over his head, Blue starting to pull up the ground and rubble around him. With practiced ease he directed the orb of energy into an arc around him, completely clearing out everything in the vicinity. No more sneak attacks.
The cursed energy gathering behind him was alarming and confusing. There was so much of it, but all of it seemed to come from hundreds of unique sources. He turned to see what was the cause only to see a massive swarm of Fly Heads coming in his direction. Did he hide them inside that curse of his, the same way that he was changing and hiding his weapons? There were so many of the nasty little things that it was impossible to sense where the man and his worm were. He was using them as cover. Satoru could use Blue again to get rid of them, but he was after Riko before and–
He was behind him. A cursed tool in his hand. Satoru turned, Infinity up to protect himself as he raised a hand ready to blast the man away from him.
The cursed tool sliced through his barrier. He reacted too slowly to stop it with Blue. Blood was everywhere as the blade sliced through his throat–pooling out of his mouth and down his chest. Weakly he reached for the blade, trying to hold it in place, trying to stop more damage from being done to him, trying to survive, but the shock of the injury made his limbs weak. The man forced the blade downward, tearing open his chest. Satoru’s body reacted on instinct, trying to fight back still even as his mind was collapsing in on itself.
I’m gonna die I’m gonna die I’m gonna die, Suguru isn’t gonna be able to beat this guy, I have to learn reverse technique right now or I’m actually gonna die, fwoo hyoi fwoo hyoi fwoo hyoi.
The blade was pulled out of his chest only to stab into his thigh once, twice, thrice, four times. Satoru couldn’t fucking breathe, everything was just blood. He was choking on it, drowning in it. A leg swept his own out from under him as if he’d been able to stand upright for much longer.
The man pulled another, smaller, blade from the mouth of his curse. This blade wasn’t cursed, but that didn’t matter much as he planted a foot onto Satoru’s slashed chest and leaned down to get in his face. “These eyes of yours are a fucking menace,” he muttered, crouching down to get a better look at Satoru face as all the boy could do was glare up at him and choke on his own blood as it dribbled down his cheeks and jaw, pooling on the ground around him from his various wounds. “I’m not much of one for trophies, but I’ll make an exception for you, Six Eyes.”
Satoru sputtered as the man held his head still with his left hand, using his thumb to lift one of his eyelids, the knife dangerously close to his eye. The boy fought with what little energy he had left but it was pointless. His limbs didn’t obey him, and even if they did the man was stronger than he was and wouldn’t have been more than inconvenienced.
His heart was pounding, spilling his blood onto the ground even faster. The man grinned down at him as the knife slipped into his eye socket, cutting through the orbital nerve behind the eye and popping the entire thing out with brutal efficiency. It was like lava was poured into his eye socket and melting away at his brain. All coherent thoughts left Satoru as he writhed in the dirt, trying to scream but only managing a choked gurgle through all of the blood.
He squeezed his other eye shut by reflex, trying to protect it, only for an insistent finger to force the eyelid open anyway. Everything went black the moment the knife sliced through the optic nerve with more precision and ease than that first time, like he’d learned from doing it once. Satoru remained half conscious past the sheer agony of it all, the empty sockets in his skull burning and pooling with his own hot blood.
The foot left his chest, though it didn’t help him breathe any better. “I could kill you now, but if you somehow survive this without bleeding out–which I doubt will happen–you’re not gonna be able to come after me like that. You can’t use Limitless without your Six Eyes, and you can’t use Six Eyes without eyes, can you?”
Satoru couldn’t hear if the man walked away, the pounding of his heart in his ears too loud to hear any receding footsteps. He fought to stay conscious, some primal part of his brain screaming that if he passed out here then he’d never wake up again.
He was there for so long. It was impossible to tell how much time passed, but the blood continued to pool around him, taking the warmth with it even as he fought for air past the blood in his throat.
He would have been shivering if he had the energy left for it.
There were footsteps rapidly approaching. He must have come back to finish him off, after all. There was nothing Satoru could do about it.
“Satoru!” someone screamed. The voice was higher pitched than the man’s had been, feminine, familiar, and probably the last trick of his dying mind. Cruel that his mind’s last attempt at bringing him peace before he died wasn’t even Suguru. “Oh fuck, Satoru! Oh my god, what the fuck happened, holy shit!”
He breathed in, choking on blood and cigarette smoke and letting the unconsciousness he’d fought against finally drag him down as hands grabbed his wrist and pressed against his pulse point.
* * *
Suguru stared at the corpse of Amanai Riko, ears ringing from the gunshot as he watched the blood pooling around her head.
“Riko?” he murmured, stunned. His voice sounded far away, he felt like he was no longer in his own body.
“And now the job’s done,” a man’s voice said, the nonchalant tone only serving to make the scene feel more like a dream. “You’re free to go.”
The teen turned slowly, eyes wide as he stared at the same man he’d left Satoru to deal with. “Why are you here?” he asked, voice quiet but laced with venom.
“Huh?” the man asked, the answer to the boy’s question obvious–he was here to kill the Star Plasma Vessel, and he’d succeeded. Yet something about the Jujutsu Sorcerer’s eyes said that wasn’t really the question he was asking. “Oh, I get what you’re asking.” His mouth stretched into a grin, smirking at the boy before him. “I’m here because I killed Gojo Satoru.”
Suguru froze, trembling just slightly. He’d already known it from seeing this man here before him, but seeing him gleefully brag about it filled him with rage unlike any he’d felt before. Portals started to open behind him, spilling out his most powerful curses. “I see,” he snapped, glaring at the man with such intensity it was starting to make him feel like he was once again inhabiting his own body. “Die.”