Chapter: Walk on the Edge
Summary: To find answers, sometimes one must trust someone else's expertise. Too bad the price to pay for those answers is the fate of the world.
Rating: M
Warning: Canon-typical violence.
Hiroshima is, funnily enough, pretty similar to a human city. In the way Victory is pretty similar to Sendai, that is. So, taking into account it has even kept the name, not that surprising.
More surprising is that Satoru and Sukuna didn't get 'lost' in the Link, with Satoru's track record.
"Nothing?" Sukuna asks just in case, a hand still holding tightly to Satoru's sleeve, before he shakes his head as answer. "So, if you're with someone, there's no displacement. Good to know."
"I don't need a chaperone," Satoru huffs, glaring at Sukuna under his new—newer—bandages, but since he doesn't bother lowering his voice, Sukuna rolls his eyes.
"Yes, you do."
"Sukuna-sama, Satoru-sama. Welcome to Hiroshima," Angel interrupts before Satoru can do more than open his mouth, gliding calmly over their heads before they touch ground. "How may I be of assistance?"
"I would like you to take a look at something," Sukuna answers with a simple shrug – and yet Angel's peaceful smile immediately vanishes.
"Come with me."
They do. Satoru also uses the chance to look around, but really, this place isn't all that different from Victory, and whatever silent conversation is going on between Angel and Sukuna has him far more curious.
He knows why they are here. After telling Sukuna of what little he remembers of his latest 'trip' to the past, and the new scars on his face, Sukuna thought best to get a second opinion. Angel, as one of the oldest curses still around, is the best one for the job.
Satoru keeps forgetting about the trips. He knows he has been there, but the details get blurrier the more time goes by. Did he actually kill Kusakabe Atsuya, or is his mind playing tricks on him? Did he blow up the Tokyo Jujutsu High Vault with flecks of Red and Blue and Purple? Is that even possible?
He doesn't know. He's not sure what he actually knows.
Other than, of course, Daddy Dearest's last agonizing minutes. He's both disturbed and delighted, and he's not sure how to feel about that.
It felt great, but the old fool was still his flesh and blood, and he knew, unlike the first 'trip', that he was truly dealing with humans then.
Not that this distinction matters much, but Satoru has the feeling that it should. Maybe that's why the lack of care bothers him in the first place.
There's a tall structure in the center of the city, more tower of bone shrine-style than the actual Orizuru Tower was, but it is nonetheless their destination. There are no doors or stairs, but that's not a problem for any of them. Angel flies up, Sukuna clears the distance with a set of powerful jump-and-grabs, and Satoru pushes himself to the top floor with Limitless.
Once there, though, it's as if the whole city has disappeared. Satoru looks back and down, and the few trees that had grown in the streets suddenly hide every single structure in the city.
From below, Hiroshima is a prosperous curse colony. From above, it's a strong and healthy forest.
"Impressive," Satoru commends with a grin, which Angel answers with a grateful nod, before Sukuna clears his throat to redirect their attention.
"Show them," he orders, and while Satoru scoffs and rolls his eyes, he nonetheless pulls his bandages off to reveal the new scars. "Anything new?"
"Not even some itching. Are they still there?" Satoru asks, rubbing a finger over his eyes—his only current pair, that is—to feel the scars of the other pairs, which, yes, are still there.
"What caused those?" Angel asks softly, frowning gently, with their tail twitching in what Satoru chooses to believe is amusement.
"Eyes."
Satoru strengthens Limitless before he can consciously realize he's done so, but in his defense, the way Angel has stiffened and the spike of their cursed energy betrays nothing good.
"Angel," Sukuna warns with a snarl, and the other Special Grade practically flinches back at the voice. "What do you know."
"Nothing factual," they eventually answer, though they stay on their toes, tense and ready to either bolt or lunge for Satoru's throat. "Only a terror that comes from the depths of my core. Something primal. Something older than my self."
Sukuna stiffens, eyes wide in realization, before he turns to analyze Satoru with a piercing gaze.
"Be more specific, Angel. I want facts, not feelings."
"The only other time I felt such crude fear was on our first meeting, Sukuna-sama," Angel answers instead, and yet Sukuna scowls in a way that tells Satoru that those feelings are good enough to be treated as facts.
"Makes sense…"
"Would anyone care to explain?" Satoru interrupts, leaning on a foot while crossing his arms against his chest with a pout.
Hopefully, the expression will help Angel relax. And get him some answers, too. This all makes no sense.
"There was a sorcerer in the early days of the fall of humanity who went by the name of Angel," Sukuna explains with a calculating glance at the other two. "She was what gave rise to our Angel, here. You know, classic Imaginary God birth."
Angel whispers something under their breath, shuffling a step back when Satoru turns to them. It almost sounds like the beginning of the Ryaku Haishi short prayer. Confused, Satoru turns to Sukuna – who has pulled his clawed hands out of the sleeves of his yukata and is snarling at the other Yagami.
"Don't you dare, Angel!"
"Sarutahiko, Great Bright Being, sweep the impurities from my being and purify my spirit; grant me protection, grant me happiness; restore brightness to my soul—" Angel prays, ignoring Sukuna's threat or the way he slashes at them, evading with a flap of their wings as the antler-crown on their head is set ablaze— "—and give me guidance!" they roar, a blade of pure cursed energy erupting from their hands—
Limitless vanishes – and Satoru's eyes open wide as the world goes red.
Angel is blown out of the building as Red erupts out of Satoru's outstretched hands. So is Sukuna, also caught in the blast. And Satoru himself.
And, oh, the whole top half of the building.
Satoru crashes into the street after some personal encounters with a few trees, shouting in pain as his arm pops out of its socket, Limitless completely unresponsive. A tug of his arm, a flash of pain and reverse cursed energy, and the arm situation is fixed, alongside the slashes all over his body. But Limitless still doesn't come to call, no matter how hard Satoru focuses on it.
"What just happened?! What was that?!" he shouts, looking around at the panicked curses and the debris on the street, dust just beginning to settle.
The world is too red to be normal, and a poke at his cheek immediately reveals one pair of eyes too many. He closes them, and the red sheen disappears from the world. There's no blue one to replace it, and a gentle tap on his forehead reveals that those eyes didn't come back.
The sound of flapping wings is the only warning Satoru gets to roll out of Angel's dive, and though there's no flaming crown or sword of light this time, the snarl on the Yagami's face is no less terrifying.
"What are you doing?!" Satoru shouts, trying and failing again to call on Limitless.
"Begone from my colony, foul beast!" Angel roars, lifting two fingers like a sword— "Sarutahiko, Great Bright—"
Satoru snaps his red eyes open and pushes – and the air explodes again, though Angel managed to get out of his way this time.
That won't do.
But against a Special Grade of Angel's age, experience and speed, and with Limitless somehow out of service, Satoru has no choice but lift his right hand, curl his heart finger over his index—
"Domain Exp—"
Whiteredbluepurple—
Satoru blinks and coughs, dust threatening to choke him as his cheek smarts from the chunks of rock pressing into his face and chest and the palm of his hands as he tries to sit up—
Something carves the ground open way too close to his feet, and Satoru flinches and scrambles out of the way. When he finally stumbles to his feet, it's to see Sukuna slice both of Angel's wings off with a slash of clawed hands, cursed technique so charged that Satoru sees the wave of blazing red-and-black even without his extra eyes.
"You dare disobey me, Angel?" Sukuna asks almost conversationally, voice low and even despite the murder in his four eyes.
"That beast will destroy everything we've built in the last millennium!" the Yagami spits out after they push themselves off of the floor, the stumps on their back bubbling to stop the bleeding but not immediately regenerating the wings.
"I will kill him myself if he dares try," Sukuna snarls back, shorter than Angel yet standing tall and proud and powerful in a way that makes him look much taller.
"You couldn't do it before! Else he would not be here now!"
Sukuna's eyes flash – and Angel's halfway to fully regenerating wings are slammed in the rubble without mercy, the Yagami gasping in pain before they wrap their hands around the claw Sukuna has pressing down on their throat.
"You dare question me, Angel? My power, my judgement… You dare even question my history? This is my world, you little fool. Don't forget your place," he hisses almost kindly, and when he finally releases the no longer twitching Yagami, the skin is blistered and peeling on Angel's throat, face, and hands up to their forearms. "Does anyone else have an opinion?" he asks, louder this time, looking at the few terrified curses who are still hanging around to observe the spectacle—
The moment his four eyes meet Satoru's, it's as if Fushiguro Toji's ghost appears in front of him to bury his knife in his head again.
Satoru grabs his head to keep it from splitting in half, trying to push it back together, expanding Limitless outward as hard as he can to get rid of whoever is still pressing the knife in further and further—
Strong hands grab onto his forearms and his left eye burns—
And it ends, hands gone, head-splitting pain gone, extra eyes gone, as droplets of something warm enough to burn slide down his hands and face and… and why are his hands black?
No, not black, a really dark tan, spreading up his wrists almost to his elbows, creeping up his veins and nerves to leave the break looking almost beautiful.
"I told you…" a broken and raspy voice hardly recognizable as Angel's speaks into the silence that makes Satoru's ears ring.
They're still lying on the destroyed path, throat and hands burnt into a mess of blood and mangled flesh and boiling sores. In front of Satoru, Sukuna is on his knees, two of his arms slowly regrowing while the other two hover in the air, caught between reaching for Satoru again or keeping his distance.
Like Satoru, Sukuna's eyes are on his blackened hands.
"Angel, what did you do?" Sukuna whispers, and when he reaches for Satoru this time, he's finally conscious enough to not attack him—did he?—again.
"I can't use Limitless. Or my Domain," Satoru supplies in the thinnest and quietest voice he has ever heard come from himself. "And these things, I can't, I don't know—"
"Hush," Sukuna whispers, one hand covering Satoru's single pair of Six Eyes with just enough cursed energy coursing through it to keep Satoru blind at last.
He feels like a puppy. Or a parrot. Don't they put blankets over parrot cages, so the parrots will shut up at last and go to sleep? Because that's what Sukuna's hand is doing for Satoru, keep him mute. No, wait, ignore the parrot comment, replace it with a hunting hawk, that's definitely cooler than a parrot. Even if Satoru feels like barely more than a parakeet now.
Limitless is gone, and he has two pairs of extra eyes and he keeps getting lost in the Link to end up in maybe-the-past and—
"Angel-sama! Sukuna-sama! Message from Fuwa-sama!" the chirpy voice that can only belong to a Kogane cuts through Satoru's thoughts, and after a second for his breathing to hitch in surprise, Satoru carefully pushes Sukuna's hand away.
Effectively, there's a Kogane there, tiny antlers growing from its head and with its tail ended in an arrowhead, waiting patiently for an answer.
Sukuna glares at Angel, who is still sprawled on the ground, burns not healing but open eyes avoiding Sukuna's, before he turns to the Kogane.
"What's the message?" Sukuna asks, but rather than answer, the Kogane stretches to reveal some sort of canvas on its stomach – which turns on like a TV, of all things. "Ah, not a message, then," Sukuna grumbles the moment Fuwa's face appears on the screen.
Fuwa blinks in surprise, opens his mouth – and lets out a high-pitched whine-like sound, like feedback from a mic, eyes bulging, when he finally sees Angel on the ground.
"What happened?!"
"Someone needed to be put in their place," Sukuna answers, threat in his voice, and Fuwa's jaw snaps closed with a loud gulp.
"But Angel has always been your most loyal… Uuuuh, is that what I think it is…?" Fuwa asks, voice high-pitched once more as his eyes land on Satoru this time, finally back on his feet.
"Which 'that' would that be?" Satoru tries to joke, and when Fuwa points at his own hand, mute in horror, Satoru can only look down at the dark skin and swallow the new stab of fear that threatens to choke him. "Ah. That. I don't really know myself," he confesses, lifting his hands to call up a sphere of Blue on his right and another of Red on his left, before he presses them together into a smaller Purple so intense that it looks almost black.
"Careful with that," Sukuna warns, though there's wariness in both his voice and eyes when Satoru glances at him. "Is it even safe for you to manipulate those without Limitless?"
"No," Satoru answers simply, looking down at the very old and pale lightning-like scars all over the inside of his arms.
"… Am I the only one seeing that?" Kouhai's voice whispers, and when Satoru looks up again, Purple still cradled in his hands and pulsing like the heartbeat of a newborn kitten, he sees the 'tummy-screen' has split into a grid to show all the other Yagami just as dumbstruck as Fuwa.
"You mean Angel half-dead on the floor at Sukuna-koutei's feet, or Satoru-kakka bearing the marks of Angel's Cleansing yet still alive and capable of using his cursed technique?" Dabora recites, all puffed up and wide-eyed.
"Both."
"Then, no, you are not the only one."
Purple flickers – and Satoru throws it away with his best pitch a second before it destabilizes, completely erasing whatever was left of the curse version of Orizuru Tower where the whole mess started.
"Satoru!"
"So what?!" Satoru snarls in Sukuna's face, clenching shaking hands into fists at his side. "I had to throw it somewhere! Would you rather I had shoved it into their chest?! Because I can easily remedy that!" he shouts, pointing at Angel's prone form, Red and Blue crackling threateningly under his skin as his eyes snap wide open—
Whiteredbluepurple—
—and turns away with a scoff that immediately becomes an angry roar, one hand holding onto his head to keep it from splitting apart while the other prepares another sphere of Blue—
One of Sukuna's hands tugs him around, another pair pulling his own hands away from him or anything he could damage – and the fourth shoves a silky long cloth right into his face.
"Cover those things up already, you fool!"
Satoru obeys without delay, hands shaking – and slides down to the ground with a tremulous sigh of relief, holding onto his head this time not out of pain, but panic.
Limitless is gone.
Or is it? Maybe now, with those stupid extra eyes closed at last, he could try again…
"What happened?"
"Don't ask. Fuwa, why did you call us all?"
Nothing. Not even the slightest tingling over his skin. Satoru forces himself to breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth, and to push away any and all thoughts.
"Oh, yeah, that. Uh, well, you know, the barriers are gone. But while we're all very… happy… that they are… maybe… Well, the Holy Wing migration is about to start. Ideas?"
Gone. Limitless is gone, his priced technique, the one that made him the Strongest, the Unlimited, the precious Gojo Clan technique, gone gone gone gone. All gone, all lost, and yet he can still feel and call upon Blue and Red and Purple and Infinity is everywhere but how can he call upon it and manipulate it when his technique is gone—
"Stop that!" Sukuna shouts, grabbing him from his collar to pull him to his face, and Satoru snaps his eyes—the one real pair—open under the obi now wrapped around them to be met with a scowl. "I'm going to need you for this, so focus!"
"Focus…?" Satoru repeats, and the hands that were until a second ago shaking with fear now shudder with the rage that twists his face into a snarl. "Focus?! What do you think I'm doing?! I've been focusing all this time, and what for? Nothing! There's nothing I can do now! Thanks to your little friend, now I'm nothing!"
"I don't care! If the Holy Wings migrate like every year, with the barriers gone, then this whole world will die!"
"Let it!" Satoru shouts back, ripping Sukuna's hands out of his collar as he pushes into his face. "Isn't that what they said? That I would bring about the end of this world? Well, thanks to their damn technique, now it's happening! What do you expect me to do when I've lost my own technique?!"
Sukuna snarls, the sound animalistic, fangs bared, as he pushes right back into Satoru's face, his breathing hot on Satoru's chilled skin.
"Use your head! You think a technique makes you who you are? That's not what you taught the brat!"
Taught the—
Itadori Yuuji's delighted face appears in his mind.
"Oh, I figured you'd be the best person to train me, so I'm just happy. I'm weak and I couldn't save anybody. Worse, I almost killed Fushiguro. As I am now, I won't be able to face them. I want to become strong. Teach me to be the strongest."
An innate technique is 80% of a sorcerer's strength. Everything else is training. That's how the world works.
And now that Satoru has lost his technique…
"We would still have the barriers if it wasn't for him," Angel gurgles from the ground, still injured, still immobile, and yet they stay unfazed when all the attention lands on them again. "I didn't want to believe it. For you, Sukuna-sama, I di—"
Sukuna flicks a finger, and Angel's throat is cut cleanly open, his words swallowed by the gurgling of blood in whatever a curse has for a larynx.
"Know your place," Sukuna rumbles, threat and dismissal somehow blending together in those three simple words. "This world was dead as it was. Stagnant. Unchanging. Unable to grow. Even with all the dangers we have been exposed to now, this is still better. We are no longer prisoners paying toll for the chance to leave the colonies and get the food we need. And this new Link is ours, it's something we've created together, a victory that belongs to no one but ourselves. We have pushed past our limitations by facing the threats that we had chosen to ignore before, content in our fish bowls. And we will get through this new one too, no matter how hopeless it seems now."
"If the world truly is better off by changing, then I should challenge you for the title of Emperor," Sakura huffs, straightening proudly in her screen, and Sukuna grins.
"And I will welcome such a challenge. But let's wait until after we are done with this, shall we?" he answers, ignoring the way Sakura's jaw—and Kouhai's and Mahoraga's—hits the floor.
Satoru takes in a deep breath, hands no longer shaking. And another, just in case.
When he speaks, his voice is steady.
"What's a Holy Wing and how can I help?"
JUJU STROLL! (Suggested by aurxenith: The daily commute on those living trains from the first couple of chapters)
It's a rare day when Satoru gets to walk around Victory unaccompanied. So rare, in fact, that it hasn't happened yet.
"And why are we here now?" he whines, trailing after Sukuna with a slouch, hands deep in his pockets and cheeks blown into a childish pout.
"I told you, I need to meet up with some people and since this whole Barrier-less state is your fault, you should—" Sukuna explains, looking over his shoulder to see Satoru slouch so far down that Sukuna actually has to look down. "Ugh, you know what? Fine. I will deal with politics. You can go fetch us the samples of blood grass from this year's harvest."
"What's that?" Satoru asks, straightening out of his slouch and shoving away any and all theatrics in favor of curiosity.
The only 'blood grass' he knows are a kind of ornamental red clumpy grasses that he saw in gardens one thousand years ago.
"It's used to make clothing. It's a fickle plant but very good as a water-repellent, so we use it mostly with hats and headpieces. What, you thought Victory lived mostly out of air? We have our own exports, and blood grass is especially useful to trade with the northern colonies," Sukuna explains almost patiently, though the look he sends Satoru's way is at least mildly insulting. "So, while I get started on all of the very important topics that need to be covered today, you can start to learn about how to care for something for once in your life."
"Hey! I know how to take care of things!" Satoru hisses, bristling, and Sukuna lifts an eyebrow mockingly.
"I left you in charge of dinner. Remind me again what happened to the duck?"
"That wasn't a duck!"
"That's right. You blew it up."
"It was alive! I was supposed to kill it before putting it in the pot, wasn't I?"
"I explicitly told you that you had to snap its neck."
"I did!"
"You snapped the whole thing!"
"It counts!"
Sukuna huffs, hiding his face behind a hand while two others rub his temples, and the fourth points towards—
… One of the bone-like pillars of the train network?
"Take that. Fifth stop, you'll see the shop with a huge blood red flower on the sign. Tell them to give you the samples for the Merchant Guild, and come right back. I'll have someone waiting here to bring you to the Guild."
"The train?" Satoru asks, and Sukuna looks up to make sure he's actually pointing at the right thing before he turns to Satoru with a confused frown. "You want me to take the train."
"It's a lot easier than actually giving you all of the directions."
"But… I don't have an IC Card," Satoru points out, and Sukuna's face goes blank.
"I… see?" he answers slowly, frowning softly as he looks at Satoru sideways in case that could make all of the mysteries of the world come to light. "I thought it was 'I Spy'."
"What?"
"What."
"What's an I Spy Card?"
"The game? I spy a foolish thing of which I'm only going to give you its main color as a clue for you to entertain yourself listing all of the other foolish things around that happen to share that color?"
Satoru blinks behind his bandages. Sukuna blinks, two eyes at a time, with a deadpan look on his face.
"By the way, 'card' is not a color."
And Satoru cracks up as he finally gets it, laughing so long and hard that he has to hold his stomach to keep it from bursting out of his mouth.
When he finally tells Sukuna what an IC Card is—for the train, to pay for the rides!—he is not amused. Turns out there is no such thing as an IC Card in this future, or anything of the like—you just give the train something to eat and get on, and before you ask, yes, it is alive—so that explains the confusion.
So, armed with a couple tomato-like kotsuzui fruits, one per trip, Satoru climbs the stairs to the top of the tower and waits in the spacious platform for the train to arrive.
It looks definitely alive when seen up close, the head earthworm-like rather than its centipede-ish appearance would lead one to think, and with just a tiny orifice at the front to use as mouth. It also has nine long whip-like whiskers, which it uses to palp around the rail until it notices the platform – and stops short.
… The ride will be fun.
Also, feeding it is what opens the 'doors', apparently. It looks like, when it swallows the bite, the scales behind its head fluff in delight, allowing curses to climb onto its back.
Satoru is too curious not to follow, even if he dreads what he will find – and then grins.
The scales on the train's back are kept off of the skin, with the seats resting in front of each huge scute, with safety bars in front of them. The few curses already seated there look like people on a carnival ride, waiting for it to start. And judging by what Satoru has already seen the trains do…
The safety bar needs to be pulled down manually by each curse at every stop, since they jump up when the train stops and relaxes, or something. And to exit the train, you need to tickle it on the scute painted with yellow lines, so that they 'fluff' and open an exit to the platform outside.
Satoru takes note of all that – and promptly forgets about it all as the train starts doing loops, this is great, everyone put your arms up WOOOOOOOO!
Needless to say, when Sukuna has to climb the train almost two hours later to drag him out, Satoru is forbidden from ever riding a train ever again.
AN: Tick tock, goes the clock...
Welcome to the Finale. One more installment and the epilogue to go.