Ann: inspired by jjk 0 but with a twist I thought about today. Also I absolutely do not get any notifs from this site anymore for some reason?
In general, thanks for your interest!
To Guest from 3rd November: I explained in a separate review, I hope it's clear now
To LoneWolf427: thank you! This is set roughly before the Shibuya Incident, probably right before that (except I decide that I want Junpei in here? Idk yet)
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Now, Denji was used to being thrust into unknown situations. It didn't matter whether it was getting onto the black market to sell his body parts or a hunted devil's body parts, or some job outside the place he was living in. It was just part of his life.
Usually Denji hadn't known what to expect of such a job beforehand, but he got through by three principles - one, as long as Denji had a head on his shoulders, he could rely on his brain to solve problems his way. Effectively or not depended on the situation.
Two, the only other Denji could rely on in this world was Pochita because Pochita never left his side. Even now, in this new form, Denji could feel Pochita in his chest and knew he could still rely on him. They still had dreams to fulfil.
And three, everything could be turned into money. The question always was, how much?
That's how Denji had been getting through life. He didn't see a reason to change that now. So, when Gojo said that Denji was to rely on Toge as his senior during this mission at the hospital, Denji shrugged, buried his hands deep in his trousers, and walked on ahead without waiting for the other. It was so whatever - if something needed killing, Denji would kill it. If there was any problem, Denji would see how he'd solve it. A job done cleanly would bring him back to the dorms more quickly.
"And good luck! I'll be waiting right here behind the veil if you need me!" Gojo shouted after them in raised voice and got an exasperated "Tuna mayo …" from Toge who hurried to close up to Denji.
Yeah, exactly - "tuna mayo". What Gojo had forgot to mention in all of this was that Toge couldn't talk normally and stuck to speaking in rice ball ingredients. Maybe that's why Gojo paired the two of them together in this mission - so that Denji couldn't ask the guy about all the important details.
Denji threw a glance over his shoulder past Inumaki just in time to see some gooey stuff run down from heaven which blocked Denji's line of sight on the outer world. This gooey stuff stretched up and was shaped like a dome and high above the hospital building in front of them as well. Denji confirmed by putting his head back so far that he almost fell over backwards.
Were they locked in?
"Sigh …" Denji tilted his head to look at Toge next to him, who flapped his hands in direction of the hospital repeatedly, doing a little dance. He looked ridiculous.
"Yeah, yeah," Denji said and followed along, dragging his feet, hanging his head. At his feet, he noticed rats scuttling along and made a face.
If only Gojo had at least paired him with the glasses-girl, Maki. Maki had a sharp and angry temper, maybe because of how Denji had reacted to Panda during their first meeting, but at least she was a girl. Girls over boys anytime. Plus, Denji could be okay with bossy if she was nice to him as well, he was sure of it. With some time alone, they could work around the bad first impressions, right?
(On the other hand, luck always came at a price and Denji didn't know the stakes yet.)
Now he was stuck with Toge on this mission while Panda and Maki were somewhere on the other side of the hospital. And because Toge only spoke in ingredients on their way up to the entrance, explaining devil knows what, Denji was starting to feel very hungry again as well. Curses.
"We just get in, kill whatever's inside, and leave, 'kay?" he asked, but Toge shook his head with his pointing fingers crossed into an X in front of his chest. He pointed to the hospital entrance, and Denji was taken aback when he saw people at the reception. His eyes automatically snapped over to where Gojo had disappeared behind the veil thingie, but apart from a handful of rats hurrying around, the outside world was gone.
What in the devil's name was going on with Jujutsu Sorcerers? Why did they lock in a bunch of devils with some second-years and a hospital full of humans? Did they not know how dangerous that was?
Unless … unless they wanted to test them. To see if they could keep some humans alive. Kill the threat before it killed someone else.
Stupid.
Denji pushed open the glass doors to the hospital entrance and walked through, taking a look around. This area seemed pretty standard even though Denji hadn't been to a hospital before because he didn't have the money for that. All injuries he's ever got were tended to by black market doctors who in return only claimed some of the profit Denji had made from the parts of his body he'd sold. The question had always been, "how much?"
"Tuna tuna." Toge touched Denji's elbow lightly and pointed down a hallway, getting his attention. When Denji strained his eyes (how unusual to have two of them again), he noticed with a start that an eye was staring back at him from the end of that hallway. Its pupil was glossy and ugly, and the eye was widened and obviously watching them with interest.
"What the shit," Denji breathed, goosebumps running over his arms. He followed Toge down the hallway towards the eye but before they could reach it, the eye disappeared back into the wall, no trace of it found anymore. Instead, further down around the corner, now two eyes appeared, crescent as if laughing at the boys.
Denji clenched his hand into a fist, broke into a run and punched the eyes with all his might - but his knuckles only met solid stone, and sharp pain shot up Denji's arm in response, making him hiss. Where the eyes had been, an indent in stone was left behind. Some mortar crumbled down.
"Show yourself, freaky eyes!" Denji exclaimed and turned around to see where the eyes would appear next, only to notice how two patients seated in front of a room stared at him in disbelief. And above their heads … Did they not see it? Four eyes, shaking in laughter.
"Watch out!" Denji approached in a haste, getting angry at being played with. Once again the eyes disappeared before he could reach them, and the two patients screamed out in panic at Denji, fell off their seats and tried to scramble away from Denji, still screaming. Did they think that he wanted to attack them?
"N-no, wait, I didn't mean -" Denji began, but a voice from behind interrupted him.
"Calm down!" At the sound of the voice, a wave of pure pressure rolled past Denji's shoulders and over the patients, whose panicked faces slackened immediately. Peacefully, they got up from the floor, gave Denji and Toge a funny look as they passed by completely calmly, and returned to their seats as if nothing had just happened.
"Huh?" Denji stared at them, then at Toge. "Was that you?"
"Salmon." Toge stuck his chin back into the collar of his pullover, hiding the strange tattoos he had around his mouth. With a blank face, he picked up walking and tugged Denji with him, away from the patients and the spot where the strange eyes had appeared in the wall. As Denji was pulled along, he kept staring at Toge, realization dawning on him.
"You can tell people what to do? Like, for real?" he asked, getting excited again. That didn't sound like something that regular humans could do, but then again, regular humans couldn't see through blindfolds either. Maybe that was a jujutsu sorcerer thing.
"Salmon," Toge agreed again, and a crease appeared between his eyebrows.
"Yoooooo!" Denji laughed, freed his arm from Toge's grip and pressed his fingers against his temples, not trying to keep his volume down anymore. "Imagine you'd curse? Like, you stub your toe and you go, 'SHIT!' - would everybody around you just shit themselves?"
"… Salmon." Toge buried his head deeper into the collar of his school uniform and shot a disapproving glance to Denji, who doubled over in laughter, thinking about all the possibilities that curse words brought with themselves.
His amusement was cut short when he saw eyes on the floor past the tears in his eyes. With a screech, Denji stepped onto the eyes, missed, and tumbled against the adjacent door, which happened to be unlocked, gave in, and opened against Denji's weight. Unceremoniously, Denji fell flat on his back into the room with a grave Uff!
"Mustard leaf?" Toge stuck his head through the door, then whistled. As soon as Denji stopped seeing stars, he felt why - the devil energy in this room was so high that every hair on Denji's body stood on end. He couldn't help but think that if Pochita wasn't in his chest, Pochita's fur would be ruffled because of the devil energy. Now that effect had gone over to Denji's body.
"It's hiding somewhere here." Hard to believe, to be honest. This had to be a staff room if not a broom shed because apart from the windows in the opposite side, all walls were covered with archive shelves, drawers and cleaning supplies. Unless the devil was really small and hid in the drawers, Denji couldn't see how it could be here. But would Jujutsu High send four people here for a small devil?
Hm.
"Tuna." Toge pointed at Denji and one side of the room and walked off to the opposite side, where he began pulling open drawers and going through their contents in order to find clues, the devil, something. Denji scrambled to his feet and imitated the other, inhaling sharply at the treasures he found in the first shelves. He had to sneak a peek, unbelieving. No way a hospital had these kinds of magazines?!
Denji checked whether Toge had noticed anything of what was happening here (he hadn't). Then he rolled one of the magazines together into a roll and quickly thought about where to put it so that nobody could see him pilfering this one. Denji ended up pushing it into his trousers so that the belt held the magazine in place. As there was enough space for another goody, Denji filled that too. No opportunity lost.
"Hm?" Toge made a questioning sound, and Denji, thinking he had been caught, turned around with a sheepish grin, only to see that Toge's attention was on something else entirely. Toge had pulled something strange out of one of the drawers, something slimy green with three black holes in it, constantly moving like heartbeat in Toge's grip.
"H-heeee … lll …" the thing groaned. It was alive. Whatever it was, it was alive. "Hhhhheeee …. llllpp …"
"Is that … ?" Denji stepped closer to Toge, feeling that with the appearance of whatever that was, the room's devil energy had multiplied. But he couldn't feel devil energy coming from that thing, meaning that it was no devil. No, the surge of cursed energy Denji felt that moment came - from underneath their feet!
"Caviar!" Toge exclaimed and no words of translation were needed for that when the floor underneath their feet opened, and a big mouth swallowed them in one bite. Denji and Toge fell a long way down, screaming as they did. They landed hard and abruptly against what felt like a big, slimy tongue. Not the best feeling in the world, really.
Getting up as if burned, Denji coughed and spat out several times, trying to get the taste of it out of his mouth, accompanied by a string of curse words. In that moment he was glad that Toge wasn't cursing, or else Denji would … no, no time to think about that.
"Hey, Toge? Toge, can you hear me?" Denji tried looking around, but the inside of the mouth was dark as life in debt and without girlfriend - and also, Toge was strangely quiet. Had something happened to him? "Heeey?"
Still no answer.
What the shit. Okay well, nothing new - Denji could work with situations like these. Just make the best out of it.
Denji's hand wandered to his chest, eyes scanning the darkness uselessly. Whatever he was going to do, he had to do it quickly because who knew if the devil wasn't going to swallow them deeper (assuming that there was a 'deeper' than the mouth). And Denji really didn't want to find out the answer to that. Shit, why did the devil have to be merged with the hospital itself?
Denji's pointing finger automatically hooked into the noose of Pochita's tail and paused. If he let out Chainsaw Man right now … that could be dangerous. He needed to see where Toge was first, get him out of the way. The senpai couldn't have fallen far away from Denji, right? And if Denji hadn't almost puked in the first moment, trashing about, he might've even remembered in what direction to search.
"If not for the goodies I hid in my pants …" And if I let out the Chainsaw Devil I will make a mess out of myself, won't I?
Grumbling, Denji went on feeling around in the dark, when he heard a faint: "Hhhhhheeeeellll … pp … mmm ….. eee."
Ah! The slimy thingies! Some seemed to have fallen into the devil's mouth along with them. Hah, lucky.
"Toge?" As Denji followed the groaning, multiplied by what felt like tenfold, Denji really did find the other boy lying on the floor, unconscious. He was breathing as far as Denji could tell - good. But how were they going to get out?
Denji looked up and by now, his eyes had grown used to the relative darkness so that he could see teeth high above. That's probably where the archive room had been. If Denji remembered correctly, the front teeth had been facing the window, but it was kinda hard to tell because he and Toge had fallen in so quickly.
So … in what direction did Denji have to cut to get them out of here?
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Gojo knew that the moment he'd step through the veil, the higher-ups in Jujutsu High would declare Denji's challenge as failed, the condition as not met, and Denji's life as over. Gojo also knew that the mission he'd chosen shouldn't be too difficult: the pupils only had to take out a low-grade curse without killing any of the humans inside the hospital.
As the curse was known to keep away from humans, nobody would be alerted as well, so the mission would go smoothly. And when the mission went smoothly, the higher-ups would be content and allow Denji to live like Yuuji and Yuuta. Because then he would've proven that Denji wasn't a "risk factor" as the higher-ups had believed.
Everything easy-peasy lemon squeezy. And everybody was content and happy and grateful to Gojo.
Well, Gojo had thought so until he noticed the rats scuttling around the veil. One rat wasn't something to pay attention to. Two rats were quite a common sight in Tokyo. A group of rats was already cause for concern.
Gojo pretended like he didn't notice. He also didn't avert his head from where he expected Denji and Inumaki to emerge from behind the veil again any moment until he heard heeled footsteps approach him from the side, dominant against the pavement. Only when the red-haired woman stood right next to him with one of her polite smiles did Gojo turn to look at her.
"Oh hello there!" Gojo exclaimed in fake surprise and clapped his hands together with a widening smile. He didn't push off the car he was leaned against. "What brings us the honour of Public Safety on site?" Public Safety, recognizable by their business outfits but the aura of cursed energy hugging their skin, was a different institution responsible for incidents in Tokyo; but they usually didn't cross Jujutsu High in their line of work.
Public Safety's area of responsibility was either leagues smaller or bigger than Jujutsu High's, so they didn't interact with each other.
"Business," the red-haired woman with yellow eyes said, smile unchanged. She had her arms joined behind her back and looked almost cute if not for the threatening aura that poked daggers at Gojo's mind. She was no one to be played with. Not unless you knew the cards you were dealt with would win against her.
"All business is currently being taken care of," Gojo said lightly. If he wasn't mistaken, this woman was the leader of Public Safety's Special Division 4, a division filled with curses. Where Gojo was only fighting to spare the lives of teenagers who were in contact with curses, Special Division 4 went one step further - they employed them without any regard for dangers to their life. If any of their workers fell out of line or died, they were simply replaced.
Gojo disapproved of that.
The woman laughed, but the laugh never reached her eyes.
"We have reports about a special grade curse in the vicinity," she said with a simple gesture at the veil, standing proof that Gojo didn't aid Denji during the mission. Nobody but Denji was allowed to pass through, or the condition would count as failed. "I'm here to tame him."
She wasn't talking about Denji, was she? Could it be that Public Safety had developed an interested in him this quickly? But why? They had never cared about Itadori or Okkotsu. …. Or was a special grade in the hospital that Gojo knew nothing about? Could that even be?
Gojo's finger twitched. In that moment, two people broke through the veil, causing it to dissolve, and drew the woman's and Gojo's attention to them. Denji had Toge's arm slung around his neck and dragged him along, dripping with various substances of which the most prominent one was blood.
What in the world had happened?
"Had to cut us free," Denji grunted as he approached, dragged Toge past alarmed Gojo, crouched, and dropped Toge against the car with some difficulty, groaning in the process. Actually, no … the groaning didn't come from him.
"Transfigured souls," the red-haired woman spoke up before Gojo had the chance to. Truly, hanging out from Denji's pockets (both his trousers' and his shirt's) were hand-sized curses, formerly humans, now covered in blood and slime. Transfigured humans, here?
"Did you find the devil who made them?" the red-haired woman asked while Gojo was sorting through the information available to him at light's speed.
"Huh? No. We kinda stumbled across them. Transfigured souls?" Denji shook off Toge's arm, straightened up and looked over to the still smiling woman, instantly freezing. His breath hitched and he seemed all too aware of his state because he brushed his dirty hands over his equally dirty shirt repeatedly, to no avail. His eyes never left her face.
"They were humans. I guessed that my prey was going to practice in this hospital. Six, it should be?" The woman's eyes scanned cringing Denji's getup, finding exactly six groaning transfigured souls sticking out of his pockets. Her smile deepened. "Good boy. Please hand them over to me."
"Yes." Breathless, Denji did, bowing his burning head as he reached over the transfigured souls. Every time their fingers brushed, Denji felt as if an electric shock passed through him.
"What's your name?" he asked, dying of embarrassment that this was the third time he didn't look his best in front of a beautiful woman.
"Makima," the woman said.
"Are you … from Jujutsu High?"
"No. I'm a devil hunter." Taking the last soul from Denji's hand, Makima looked up and established eye contact with Denji. Denji felt like his guts were turned over in a roller coaster twice, and he dropped his eyes to her chest, focusing on the black tie against it instead. It looked good. She looked good.
"Don't you want to be a devil hunter too?" she asked.
"Hhhhheeee … lllp … mmeeeeee" the last transfigured soul in her hand groaned. She squeezed, and the soul shut up.
"Well uuuh …" Denji looked over to Gojo, who watched their exchange without saying anything. That's why Denji missed how Makima suddenly leaned forward into his private space and lowered her voice to a mysterious whisper.
"You can be my dog," Makima said as if she was sharing a secret. Denji stiffened, but Makima had already straightened up again, hands joined behind her back again, smile unchanged. "Consider it. I'm going to treat you better than the jujutsu society."
And then she left.
Denji stared after her and he could've sworn that she disappeared into nothingness, replaced by a swarm of rats, but maybe he was just too tired to see properly.
Gojo's voice brought him back to earth.
"What happened in the hospital?" Gojo asked and stood up from where he had checked Toge's pulse.
If he noticed the two paper rolls sticking out of Toge's pockets, he didn't mention them (in truth, Denji just hadn't wanted to make the magazines dirty, so Toge held onto them for the moment).
