Sonzai Fukusu wanted a superpower.

Like every kid, he had grown up with stories of superheroes and supervillains, heroes and monsters. Like every kid, he had wished and wished for some kind of special power, one that made him unique and powerful and strong.

However, unlike every other kid, Sonzai knew exactly what he would do if he got a superpower, and while it might not sound like the most heroic ideal in the world, it was something that Sonzai wanted very much.

If he ever got a superpower, he was going to help save his mother Hikui and himself from the hell they both lived in whenever he was home. When he got a superpower, he was going to become an awesome superhero…

By killing his father.

It was a simple goal, made harder by his father's knack for seemingly being everywhere. It was spooky, how he could show up at any place at any time… But everyone swore he was somewhere else when it happened.

It was this talent for seemingly being in two places at once that stopped Sonzai's father from being caught by the police when he first started committing crimes. It was this talent that stopped every attempt at escape from the house that Sonzai had ever made.

Whenever he got a beating for trying to fight back against his father during his drunken rampages… It was this talent that made it feel like it was coming from two people at once.

He knew that his father was a rotten, no-good criminal who hurt people for both the money and the kicks. He was fairly sure everyone around them knew… But Sonzai's mother had still begged him not to do anything rash like report him, because how could he do it and not have the man who could be everywhere find out?

And so he didn't. He hadn't reported him, if only to protect his mother, and endured. Endured every beating, endured the yelling and the screaming, endured the constant visits by police officers looking for anything, anything they could to pin a crime on his father but somehow never getting anything to stick.

His father always had an alibi and was always seen somewhere else by someone else. No matter how much money they had that month, or how many new, shiny weapons or items covered in the weird Blue Fire appeared in their house, the police could never catch his father.

And so Sonzai stayed patient. At 8 years old, he had realised that he wanted to kill his father. At 10 years old, he had started actually planning the how to. And at 14 years old, he snuck into his father's room, having stolen one of the Blue-flame-covered knives his father kept, and readied himself to strike…

Only for his father to not be there, for the first time in almost a decade.

And he wasn't there the next day. Or the week after that. His father, the man who was everywhere… Was suddenly nowhere to be found.

It had been shortly after the realisation that his father wasn't coming back that Sonzai had started to figure it out.

The glowing Blue Fire that surrounded some of the things that his father had brought home… Only glowed in his eyes. His mother couldn't see the Fire. None of their neighbours could either, even if Old Man Sasaki seemed to shiver whenever he brought one of the flaming tools near him.

That had been his first hint that he was special. Without the oppressive, horrific presence of his father around every corner… Sonzai had started to notice things. Things like the tiny creatures that seemed to be drawn to the Blue flames around the tools… And the Fire he could sense within himself.

How had he never been able to feel it before? Had he truly been so focused on killing his father, that he had somehow missed the energy within him, the power that sat beneath his skin? Yes, he could believe that.

But now that his father was gone? Sonzai could feel it. He eventually figured that he could draw it out to his hands, summoning Blue Fire around his hands. Fire that lit up the room around him without heat.

And then, one day… He felt something tingling in the back of his mind. And when he pushed the Fire towards the feeling… He was suddenly looking back at himself without a mirror in sight, a perfect copy of himself standing in his bedroom with him.

It was then that Sonzai realised that he didn't just have the minor ability to see spirits, or to summon Fire only he could see… He could create copies of his body and mind and control them with his thoughts, like a duplicate.

Sonzai had a superpower.

A sigh escaped his lips as he stomped another one of the spirits to death, Blue Fire surrounding his leg.

They had started to show up more and more around his house as he got older and older. Small creatures that his mother couldn't see, never any bigger than a cat, but seemingly able to harm her all the same.

So when he realised that swatting them normally didn't work, but that grabbing them and crushing them underfoot with the Blue Fire did, he made it his mission to protect her. Everything he had ever done was to protect her.

And with his Multiplicity, the name he had given to his superpower, it was easier than it ever had been before. Even now, as he patrolled his home while his mother prepared a special dinner for his 16th birthday, he was doing more than his bastard of a father had ever done to support her.

It had been three years since he'd discovered Multiplicity, and in those three years, he felt like he had done an excellent job at perfecting it. There was a duplicate at school, working with machine-like precision to keep his grades at a respectable, but not too high, level.

But he was well beyond just having one duplicate by this point. His current limit was five, and he had grown his reserves of the Blue Fire enough that he could keep them up pretty much all day, only recalling them when he slept.

But what were the other four duplicates doing then, if he was here and one was at school?

'Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding!'

Sonzai grinned to himself as his phone pinged with the notifications from his bank about all 4 of his job's paychecks coming through into his bank account. Opening the bank app, he sectioned off the money into paying the rent, water, and electricity bills again, before throwing the rest into a savings account that he had barely touched for the last year and a half.

Approximately 700,000 Yen stared back at him.

With 4 jobs he could get his duplicates to work, and few, if any, personal expenses other than the occasional new game… Sonzai had been able to save up a lot of money.

It meant that his mother was better off than she had been in almost two decades, and that was all that he had ever wanted… But he knew that he could do better. And so he sat down in the lounge room of their apartment, a different one from the one his father had blackmailed his way into getting, he focused on the Blue Fire within himself, and attempted to meditate, to refine it further.

His only reference for how to grow the Blue Fire was a plethora of cultivation novels and superhero comics, and that meant that progress was slow… But he had seen progress. He was fairly certain that he might be able to get a sixth duplicate into the full-day rotation sometime within the next month or so.

"Sonzai! Come set the table, dear!"

His eyes snapping open at his mother's shout, he rushed to his feet and darted into the kitchen. "Sure, mother. How is dinner coming along?"

She hummed, tapping a wooden spoon against the pot of food she was making a few times, and bobbed her head side to side for a moment. "It's going pretty well. Another five to ten minutes, I'd say."

Sonzai nodded and grabbed two small bowls and some cutlery and placed them across from each other on the dining room table, sitting himself down in his chair. He is only sitting there for a moment or two when he hears a shout from the kitchen.

"Gah!"

He is on his feet before he knows it, running to see what has happened with his mother, only to freeze as he enters the kitchen and comes face to face with another one of the weird creatures that hang out around his house…

Only this was the size of a large dog, like a husky.

It had the head of a bird, the body of a fish, and two stubby little human legs. It is also pulling its head out of one of their cupboards, having caved the door in and destroyed many of the pots and pans within, which was likely what it had done the first time to cause his mother to jolt.

"Ah, Sonzai! Is it another one of those things? I can't see it but it broke my cupboard!"

He nodded, Blue Fire appearing around his fists as he de-summoned one of his duplicates, the one that was walking home from after-school study club. He hummed as the memories of the school day flooded into his mind as the Blue Fire that made up the duplicate's form returned to him and immediately left him again to re-summon it in the kitchen as well.

"It is! Get up on the counter!"

As his mother hopped up on the counter, out of reach of the fish-bird-monster-thing, both of his bodies in the kitchen rushed the weird monster, hands ablaze with Blue Fire, and threw the best punch Sonzai could at it… Only for their fists to land with a dull thud and nothing else.

"Huh?"

Sonzai felt a sharp stabbing feeling in the back of his head as the monster used his moment of distraction to bite into his duplicate, and it evaporated. He winced and grabbed his head, having never felt one of his duplicates be destroyed before.

"Shit, that hurts!"

He immediately regretted saying it as Hikui's worried voice reached him. He never wanted to make her worry. "Sonzai? Are you okay? What happened?"

Sonzai ignored her for a moment and dodged out of the way of the monster's teeth as it tried to bite him too, not wanting to be on the receiving end of something that could destroy his duplicate in one bite.

He also hopped up onto the counter next to his mother, now out of harm's way as the monster couldn't climb up onto the benchtop. It was slow and seemed pretty stupid, but it felt like punching a reinforced brick wall!

None of the other little monsters he'd killed had ever taken more than punching them with the Blue Fire, and now this one, the biggest he'd seen yet, had just not only survived one but two attacks at the same time.

"Sorry, mother. This one is stronger than the usual critters..."

His mother still looked worried, reaching up and grabbing his cheeks, moving his head from side to side. "You clutched your head just then, you didn't hit it on anything, did you? I saw that… Second you vanish, as well. Has that happened before?"

Sonzai shook his head, a frown on his face as he watched the little monster trundle around the kitchen, bumping into the cupboard doors and the island bench. "No, to both. It bit my duplicate and destroyed it, and it felt like a sudden headache all at once. I've never had them be destroyed, only de-summoned them on my own."

His mother looked concerned about the whole situation, but luckily instead of panicking over him she just frowned, her line drawing thin. "I… See. But you're alright, yes?"

He nodded, the pain in his head already fading to a dull throb. "Yeah, I'll be fine. But… I don't think I can kill this thing, mother. I can try with one of the knives Dad used to have… but they're in the other room. We'll have to wait out of its reach until one of my duplicates gets back."

She seemed to accept that as she, slightly shakily, adjusted her legs on the counter, pushing a paper towel holder away from her slightly and seemingly getting herself comfortable. "Alright, Sonzai. I trust you. How long do we have to stay up here?"

Sonzai hummed, closing his eyes and focusing on the small tethers of Blue Fire that he could feel attaching him to his duplicates. "The closest one should be about 15 minutes away at a run. It was finishing a shift at the convenience store."

Hikui nodded, pulling her phone out of her pocket and putting a smile on her face, albeit a strained one. "Alright, then. I'll just watch some videos until then, okay?"

Sonzai gave her a thumbs-up as he pulled his own phone out. "Go for it. I'm gonna look some stuff up and see if there's anything that might help get rid of this thing."

With the monstrosity unable to get to them, it started wandering their kitchen, and the house surrounding it, knocking over tables and chairs… He even heard it bust into his room and bang into his cupboard door a couple of times.

'Wait… Is it going for the knives I took from Dad's stash? Can it sense the Blue Fire?'

He didn't know, but he turned his focus away from it and into his phone as he started to search for things, even rumours and old wives' tales, that might help him kill the monster.

It took his duplicate about 13 minutes to get back home… But only about one and a half to realise that the monster wasn't going to even let it near the knives he had in his room.

As soon as the duplicate had gotten home and started moving towards his bedroom, the monster attacked, dissipating the clone and causing him another splitting headache. It had been a disappointment, but it made sense with the monster right there in his room.

"Hey, mother?"

His mother looked up from her phone, where she had been half-heartedly watching a video about a guy hand-building a hut in the middle of a forest out of mud to pass the time. "Yes? Did you get it?"

Sonzai huffed and shook his head. "Sorry, but no, it's still here. And my search online hasn't really given me anything solid to go off either. There are a lot of stories about people fighting monsters, and it makes it hard to differentiate between fact and fiction."

Hikui just sighed and rolled one of her shoulders. "That's alright, sweetie. But if you can't kill it… What do we do?"

Sonzai hummed, his eyes closed as he did his best to keep tabs on the monster by the amount of Blue Fire it had within itself… And got a vague sense that it was staying in his room. "It looks like it wants to stay near the knives I took from Dad… I could distract it with some duplicates while we run outside?"

She glanced around the kitchen with her eyes squinted as she tried, not for the first time since they started to appear, to see the monster. Sonzai didn't take offence to her caution, knowing that it wasn't that she distrusted him.

An invisible monster in the house would have him double-checking everything if he wasn't able to see it, too.

She gave up after a moment like she always did, huffing in annoyance at still not being able to see the monsters, and nodded to his words. "Well, we can't stay here… Are you sure you'll be alright if it gets your duplicates?"

Sonzai just nodded at that, shooting her a smile that was far cockier than he really felt about it. He did not want to feel that headache again, but he knew that it was either that or live up on the counter till the monster figured climbing out.

He mentally grabbed enough of his Blue Fire for another two duplicates and spun them into existence, dispelling the two remaining ones that were still on their way home, able to sense that they were hiding in alleyways nearby to the house as he intended for them to.

As their memories hit him he cocked his head to the side in slight surprise at the fact that one of them had spotted a black car with tinted windows parking across the street from their house. He mentally thanked his duplicate for the information, and as he sent the current two duplicates to distract the monster, turned to his mum and hopped off the counter.

"Alright, let's go now. But we have to head out back, there are some sketchy people parked out front, and it can't be a coincidence that they happened to show up right as the monster appeared, right?"

He held a hand out to Hikui and helped her hop down off the counter. He felt one of his duplicates die and felt its memories return to him alongside another spike of pain, but he pushed through it and ran out the back door alongside his mother.

The other duplicate was probably doing its best to play keep-away with the monster, and luckily it seemed to succeed where the other failed, giving them more than enough time to get out of their house, over their backyard, and through the back gate.

As soon as they had gotten out of the gate, he manually dispelling the duplicate that was inside, sighing in relief as its memories showed him that it had been about to die. He was glad to have saved himself from the additional headache.

Sighing in relief, he turned to his mother and smiled. "Looks like we're good for now. Why don't you go ahead and find us a place to stay? I kinda wanna see what the guys out front are doing, so I'm gonna sneak a look at them."

From the look on her face, she was clearly worried about him, but she nodded anyway. "Alright. But be safe, okay? If they're old associates of your father…"

Sonzai placed a hand on her shoulder and smiled. "I'll be fine. I'm sending a duplicate to spy on them and I'll dispel it if anything goes wrong. I promise."

She still didn't seem too pleased about it but nodded. She ruffled his hair -having to stand on her tiptoes to do so nowadays, which felt weird- and started to half-jog away, patting at her pockets. As she left, he could hear her mumbling. "I'm glad I hadn't put my wallet back in my bedroom, it would have been a hassle to find a hotel without money…"

Sonzai watched until she had vanished around the corner of the street and turned back to his house, his eyes going to the roof as he focused. Usually, the duplicates he spawned had to appear a maximum distance of about double his arm's length from him, but with no active duplicates and time to focus, he was able to push that further, spinning a duplicate body into reality on top of the roof.

It followed his directions and crouched down, heading to the top so that it could peak over the edge. After a minute or two, there was a moment where he heard the car doors open, and voices echoing from the other side of the house as his duplicate watched intently… Only for it to jolt suddenly in panic and throw itself backwards.

Sonzai was already running as he summoned the duplicate, his eyes blown wide as he inherited its memories.

The sight of school children, around his age, getting out of the car, followed by a crazy tall guy with white hair and a blindfold around his face… Whose head suddenly darted and pointed directly at his duplicate the second it peaked its head over the roof.

At the sight of the man, the Blue Fire inside of him somehow knew that he was out of their league. An instinctual fear that no other human would ever spark… Except for this guy, apparently.

There was even a brief moment while he ran away when he thought he saw the guy floating above the road and staring at him… But that was totally just paranoia, right? As he looked back and saw a large black dome over where his house would have sat… He wasn't quite sure it was just paranoia.

Just who was that guy… And what was he doing, getting a bunch of school kids to break into his house?! Was he one of his Dad's old friends? Was he a Yakuza guy? Whatever the case was, it was probably best that he and his mother stay away for a while…

But that was fine. He had all the money he'd saved that they could use to house themselves for a while, and he could still send his duplicates out to work. Yeah… They would avoid the house for a bit until the creepy guy and his school-aged thugs were gone, and then they could see about getting their stuff and moving out.

Maybe the monster would chase them away? That would be nice… Although it would still leave him with the whole monster problem to try and deal with…

Gojo could feel his blood pumping as he watched the kid scurry off, only half paying attention to his first-year students who were inside the veil, fighting the Curse.

It was only a Grade 2, so weak that it would have been a strong Grade 3 if it wasn't durable enough to tank one of the student's attacks before they turned up their Cursed Energy usage, so he felt confident enough that he could divert his attention and they would be fine.

But the kid that stole his attention…

He wasn't anything special, really. Or rather, he wouldn't be to anyone else. A larger than normal pool of Cursed Energy for his age, maybe, but almost no Cursed Energy Reinforcement to speak of, and what looked like base human-level speed at best.

No, there were only two reasons that he even registered on his radar. The first was that the kid definitely had a Cursed Technique, but wasn't in any registry that the Jujutsu Society had. That already put him as a target of interest as a Rogue Curse-User.

And the second… Was that Gojo remembered that Cursed Technique.

His Six-Eyes never lied to him, and although he could tell it was a different person, far too young to be the same man… A son, maybe… The sight of the same Cloning technique as the guy from the Star Plasma Vessel incident…

It sparked bad memories, setting off things that he had long since repressed.

Floating in the sky above the city as the kid ran away from what was clearly his house, Gojo hummed. It would be easy as pie to swoop down there and kidnap the kid, grill him for some information, and then go back and deal with his students, but…

He wasn't a fan of the way that seeing the kid's Technique made him feel… And what was the kinda money he had for if not to get out of things he didn't want to deal with? Flipping open his phone, he warped back to just outside the Veil one of his students had set up -sloppy but good enough for their third or fourth time building one- and hit 'dial' on one of his saved numbers.

"Yo, Mei-Mei! Good to talk again, how's your brother? Simple domain already huh? Neat! Say, how would you feel about making like 1,000,000 Yen to keep an eye on some kid for me?"