Sukuna is on a journey.
He set up a very nice tomb for himself, an island domain that reminded him of his most precious memory, when he traveled with Sayuri once, far into the untarnished wilds of the north. She was still quite young then, and he accidentally fell asleep in a field of soft grass.
When he awoke, he panicked for a moment, and was about to go search for Sayuri, but found she had covered him with a blanket and then laid down to sleep beside him.
Sukuna watched her sleep for a while, under a sky full of stars, on a warm summer night with a cool breeze that lightly rustled the wild-flower dotted grass, the sounds of the sea and insects quietly whispering in the background.
It was a perfect moment.
His happy place—not a pool of blood with a throne of bones.
The beauty of the tomb is a reminder of how much he was somehow able to let go in the end.
Sukuna could have stayed in that place, watch his reincarnation live his life, and rest peacefully. Death was fine; he chose it and accepted it and all that, but he had unfinished business and remained a restless soul.
So he made a boat inside of his domain and placed it on the water to begin his trip, unsure of what would actually happen.
The ocean was unfriendly, and filled with strange creatures, like little golden-scaled fish, which would come to the surface and speak to him, trying to make him doubt himself and turn back to his tomb. The questions started off small:
What if you sail forever, and there's nothing?
What if you can't accomplish anything?
What if this is pointless?
As he sailed on, the waves became more unfriendly, and stranger creatures appeared. Divine creatures, but he thinks they seem like they are similar in some peculiar way to cursed spirits.
One day snatched one of the golden-scaled fish out of the water and eats it, using its scales to reinforce his boat.
After he did this a few times, his spirit felt quite strong, but the little fish stopped swimming to the surface to annoy him.
Good.
Sukuna could see larger creatures swimming deeper, and as his journey continued, made himself a bone blade, lining it with the golden scales. It was sharp and imbued with divine energy, and once complete, he plunged into the sea in pursuit of bigger game, killing a monstrous fish almost the size of him and dragging it up onto his boat.
Starting over and learning how to use a new kind of power was interesting to him.
And while he journeyed across this ocean, filled with divine creatures, he fought, he ate, he sat on his boat with scales and fins and found ways to make weapons he could use to fight even larger monsters.
On this random day, after a nap, he awakens to find illumination on the horizon, an island that seemingly has a city.
When he arrives, there is a dock, and there are people around, all wearing what he assumes were things that were normal in their time and culture. It's very mixed, but they're not even real clothes, just the shape of the outside of the soul, so it doesn't matter.
Sukuna chooses to live barefoot in hakama and he doesn't care what any of these other spirits think about him or his boat, which is now adorned in scales and bones, and the skulls of divine sea creatures he slew and ate.
Everyone seems to be staring at him in horror or maybe fear, and since he can tell how much karma they have, he assumes they can either see his astronomically high karma, or they can tell he's been powering up by eating the local wildlife, or maybe both.
Sukuna has no idea how things work in this world, but other people are here too, so it seems he is not the only one who decided to make this journey.
Sukuna wonders what the purpose of this is, what the benefit of wandering around this strange land is over staying in the tomb and sleeping?
Is it boring to be a spirit?
Maybe there are things to do, but traveling alone is such a bore. He hates it, actually.
While he wanders the city, which seems maybe like a very nice version of any city he's ever been to, it's sort of boring.
After looking around for a full day, he is approached by a man who calls him by name and begins talking to him.
Sukuna doesn't recognize this man at all, but he drones on about how he feels like his death wasn't in vain because ultimately such great redemption was achieved.
He's dressed like he came from the Heian Era, and despite the minimal efforts Sukuna dedicated to this effort, he can't remember who this person is.
"Did I kill you or something?"
He points to himself. "You don't remember me?"
"No."
"It was in Jinku Village."
"Don't remember that either."
"I was walking down a path and was perhaps called you a wretch because of your…you know. You killed me."
Sukuna thinks for a moment more and says, "I remember now. I ate your body and left the rest of you to the crows. You were rude and you tasted like shit."
"I-I just want you to know that I forgive you."
Sukuna just stares, and says, "…okay. I don't remember apologizing."
"You could. This is our opportunity for reconciliation. Me, a grieving soul and you, my killer who has been redeemed."
With a sigh, the King of Curses answers, "I wasn't redeemed, I'm not sorry about anything, and the only thing I feel right now is slight irritation. I don't think we can die here, but I do think I can hurt you, so unless you know where the bosses of this place are, step aside."
"Aren't you even going to ask my name?"
"No."
He wonders how this imbecile made it across the ocean but finds out on his second day that everyone else had a bell to ring for a ferry and Sukuna did not, and he finds that personally offensive. It almost seems like whoever placed him in the ocean didn't want him to come to this city.
On the third day, he finally makes his way to a massive temple that seems to go on forever.
Spirits aren't supposed to just walk up on this place, but he has absolutely no reason not to do so.
The gods that rule this place are evidently giants, and walking around kind of reminds him of when he tunes in to see what his reincarnation is up to. To Ryokun, the floor is just sort of his domain, and he lives in a world filled with giants that he loves and menaces according to his whim.
They all look so odd, some like humans, some like animals, some like plants or mushrooms. There's one that floats around that looks like a huge jellyfish, and he walks around the enormous halls, which are lined with enormous white stones with writing he can't read.
There are other humans scurrying about trying to not be stepped on as well, but they seem to be employees?
Sukuna can't imagine dying as a salaryman and then deciding to do that in the afterlife too. He's never had a proper job in his life and he's not planning on having one in his afterlife.
Suddenly, Sukuna sees the Eye that determined his post-life judgement and sees the Eye's whole body, discovering that it is literally just a giant eyeball attacked to two long, skinny black legs and enormous feet.
"That's what you look like?! How did you get a job judging others when you look like that?" he calls.
The Eye, the height of a five story building, bends its long black, pliable legs over to peer at who dares to insult them and finds it is Ryomen Sukuna, with his eighty billion karma.
An arm and hand suddenly appear on the god, sticking oddly out of the bottom of the eyelid, and Sukuna is suddenly snatched off the ground and carried to a chamber containing the pitch black domain where he faced his judgement before.
The eye itself glows, but the rest of the body doesn't, so Sukuna had been unable to see that it was bending over to glare at him with its enormous, tall absurd body before.
The Eye says, "You are not supposed to be here. We all agreed that we wanted you to go to sleep at your tomb. That's why we put it in the middle of the Sea of Tribulation. I know you did not have bell. No ferry would have gone to that place to get you."
"I sailed."
"What do you mean you sailed? On what?"
Sukuna takes a long, deep breath, and says, "On a boat I built."
"Since when do you know about boats? What is that power in your body? Did you eat some of the spirits?"
This meeting is so different than the first one, where the Eye seemed like some all-powerful force, very serious and official and calm. Now it seems kind of human in a way, a bit stressed out that that Sukuna has appeared before it.
Sukuna says, "It seemed like the natural thing to do."
"Because you're Ryomen Sukuna?"
"…because I am Japanese, you dumb donkey. Every Japanese person is born with the instincts of a violent, sea-faring adventurer. This instinct can only be controlled by tormenting us with the power of the sun."
The Eye stares at him, wondering what he is actually supposed to do about this menace. There is almost nothing that Sukuna respects, and it had been everyone's hope that he was a spirit who would decide to settle down for a restful eternity.
And yet he is there. Not only that, but he has also absorbed divine energy by eating the guardians that were supposed to keep him from making this journey.
The Eye asks, "Is there something you want?"
"Yes."
"You dare to come ask the gods?"
"The scary deity voice doesn't work on me now because I've seen how stupid your body looks."
The Eye really wishes it could simply step on Sukuna and destroy his spirit form, but as long as Sukuna has his eighty-four billion karma, he has to treat him like the greatest saint among humans.
Sukuna isn't sure how time works in this place, as it seems to be flowing identical to what's going on in the mortal world in 2018. If he tunes into his reincarnation to see what that little menace is up to, he sees things as they are happening. He assumed he would be in 2035, but it is clearly 2018 in the mortal world. The Eye seems to know what happened in the alternate future. He doesn't know about the other gods.
It's all very mysterious, but he's not sure that he cares. He doesn't really want to know the ins and outs of how all this works. It's not interesting to him. In the end, he doesn't care about any of this shit and just wants to complete his unfinished business.
He honestly wonders what the job of the gods is in the first place. It seems like if they were really all-powerful and were benevolent guardians of humanity, Sukuna would have met them much, much earlier.
Sukuna theorizes that they are limited in how much they can intervene much in human affairs, maybe only determine the conditions of who enters the mortal world.
The Eye knows Sukuna is just incredibly difficult as a whole being, and asks, "What do you want?"
Sukuna says, "I think you probably can't do anything about what's going on in the mortal world except when someone is entering. You erased me at the moment my reincarnation entered. Alghera was born, Sayuri came with Limitless Six Eyes. You control the human world through who is added to it."
"You dare underestimate the gods?"
"Literally watched 99.9% of the population of earth die in six months, you were either unable to do something about that or you didn't want to."
The Eye asked, "What do you want?"
Sukuna answers, "Uraume."
"Uraume. What about her?"
He answers, "I assume she's going to die in the mortal world soon. I want her tomb to be on the same island as mine, so she doesn't have to look for me. And I want her to remember me when it happens. I also want you to reincarnate her so that my reincarnation and hers will find each other. To Yuji and Yuko."
"Due to certain conditions that I cannot discuss with you, she can only be reborn into the same family."
That was certainly weird, but Sukuna assumed those freaks probably had something to do with these stupid giants. Six Eyes was just a really suspicious ability, and since Sukuna knew a lot about it, he's sure it's not some ability that spontaneously evolved in them.
Sukuna says, "Then give her to Satoru Gojo and his golden canary."
The Eye answers, "Six Eyes has sent a petition to the gods to not have any more children."
"This isn't about what Satoru Gojo wants. If he asked you not to do it, you should give him at least five. Anyone who has ever prayed knows that's how it works. I would be a much god than you."
Yes, Sukuna decides that this is a really good idea. Sukuna learned only within the last day from Ryokun climbing all over Gojo's wife that she is not pregnant with anything but a pillow, which explained why she appeared in this timeline and not the other one. He understands her fake pregnancy is essentially a baby laundering operation, similar to how people who engage in illicit activities create legitimate businesses that are mostly fake to clean the money.
Sayuri will be raised as a proper clan princess and child of the marriage, and then Uraume can be the little sister. If Sayuri has the same personality as the first time and Uraume's reincarnation is similar to her the same way his own is to him, Uraume might be quite shy and quiet. Sayuri was the opposite of that, always wanting to go on adventures.
Sukuna has uncomfortably warm and wholesome thoughts of his two favorite people getting to be together, with those parents who will take good care of them.
Gazing down at Sukuna, the Eye considers the audacity of this immortal, even when banished to the Sea of Tribulation, and given no bell to come to this land, he still showed up, having devoured divine guardians along the way. Now, he has demands, and there's an air of threat about him, like if he doesn't get what he wants, he'll find a way to make it everyone's problem.
The Eye asked, "Are you confident that things will actually turn out how you wish, despite the complications that have occurred in the human world?"
"Yes. I'm confident. Yuji will handle it."
For a redeemed soul, Sukuna is not much?
He's not sorry about the mountain of death left in his wake, and he doesn't voice any regrets or make any excuses for anything that happened.
He didn't even really end on good terms.
Sukuna wasn't trying to save everyone when he met his end, only the one person who mattered the most. A long life spent amassing power ended with the revelation that having all the power in the world wasn't as great as living peacefully with a loved one.
The Eye finds it odd that Sukuna has come all this way for Uraume, as it appeared he did not care for her the way he cared about Sayuri. Maybe it's the fact that he should have, or that he reevaluated his feelings, or that he was able to understand why he should treasure her, or maybe he honored her loyalty.
"Why do you want this one?"
"Does the reason matter?" Sukuna asks.
"It matters if you want me to grant your request."
Sukuna answers, "I wish to travel around this world and look around. Adventuring alone doesn't suit me."
"Are you going to cause trouble?"
"I don't know how you could even accuse me of such a thing. I saved the world, you know. Look at all of my karma."
The Eye answers, "I will grant your request. I will send Uraume to make her tomb alongside you and allow her to reincarnate alongside your reincarnation. And give Satoru Gojo five children."
Sukuna forgot about that last thing and realized the god didn't understand facetiousness. He started to correct the god to say he didn't mean it, but after a moment of consideration, he thinks this is a hilarious outcome, a true comedy of errors.
He also thinks Gojo will be the most loving goofy parent imaginable once Sayuri is born anyway.
After watching Sukuna break out into laughter for no apparent reason, the god adds, "I do not wish to see you again. Please make an effort to avoid my presence in the future."
"Looking like that, I'm not trying to see you again either."
Sukuna lingers in the city briefly, and then sails back to his tomb to wait for the arrival of his companion.
He wishes he could speak to her just once.
Living in a strange body is an odd sort of hell, every day a constant reminder that your soul is piloting an unintended vessel.
When Sukuna was young in his own era, and facing his own mortality, he viewed death as a kind of defeat. And maybe in some cases it was, but it was also a victory. Uraume was like him, someone who had been cursed by the cruelty of their world, so much that they took over the cycle and cursed everyone else even more.
Death was an all-powerful process that broke every curse and nullified all the accumulated resentments and hatred and pain, separating the spirit from the soul that had grown it. This form suited Sukuna; he felt so light and free without his soul, which had gone on to reside inside of Ryo Itadori.
Sukuna didn't believe the world had anything to offer Uraume that would make her happy. Even if she attached herself to Ryokun, they were different people.
If he was standing in the mortal world, it would seem cruel to say, but he hopes that she does die soon, so that she can be free from her cursed form and her cursed life.
When she finally makes it, he will be waiting.
Sukuna is looking forward to telling Uraume all about how he raised a child, and that it didn't actually go that bad—how he actually had fun, but he thought often that if she'd been there, she would have laughed at him often.
He suspects that the strange imprint of his heart on Ryokun's will cause the boy to be happy, growing up alongside both Uraume's reincarnation and Sayuri.
As for him and Uraume, he hopes they will adventure in the spirit world and watch over their new selves walk a different path.
While he waits and reflects on these things, the brat shows up again.
Sukuna isn't sure why it happens, but occasionally when this child sleeps his soul visits this place, probably unintentionally. He doesn't think that the toddler remembers any of it when he wakes up, so it doesn't matter.
"You again."
"Look."
Ryokun pulls a blade of grass and holds it up, and it is suddenly sliced to bits.
"Good. Very good."
XXX
Yuji and Megumi share a knowing glance as Nobara and Yuta trail along behind them, arguing.
Since Gojo called Yuta home, his primary assignment has been to bodyguard Nobara anytime they leave the campus out of the fear that at some point, Mahito and Nobara are going to meet.
Gojo didn't explain the purpose for this, but it's not a comfortable situation for anyone.
Nobara has a strong personality and she's quite aggressive, which is useful in a battle, but it takes a certain amount of patience socially.
Megumi and Yuji are fine with it, but Yuta finds her quite 'pleasantly stressful,' whatever that means. It's probably the closest Yuta can get to insulting someone who isn't a mortal enemy.
Yuji thinks there is a joke he doesn't know how to make about Yuta liking women who yell at him. But whenever he figures out how to make it, he's going to laugh and then he's going to get his ass beaten by Nobara and Maki.
They meet another man at a park, a tall dark-skinned man with piercings.
Yuta introduces them to Miguel Oduol, explaining that when he was overseas, he had been sent to train with Miguel.
They continue on to meet with Gojo at a third location, a rented motel room.
He gives each of them a packet and says, "Thanks for coming. If you're worried about getting in trouble with the higher-ups, now is your last chance to avoid it. But if you do end up in hot water, I'll be right in it with you, so it'll be fine."
Miguel answers, "How does this involve me?"
Gojo says, "Miguel, just to bring you up to speed, we've had two incidents where special grade cursed spirits acting as a team with defined goals under clear leadership attacked strategic targets."
"That seems unbelievable."
He explains the Disaster Curses and the two incidents where they've been encountered, first kidnapping Tore Reksten in Hamamatsu and then when the nature curse took part in the failed attempt to grab Ryokun.
Then, Gojo adds, "I don't have any positive confirmation of this right now, but I spoke to Tengen earlier about a certain clue that I was gifted by an unlikely source. It is very possible that their leader is a one thousand year old curse user named Kenjaku.
"Kenjaku is a special grade menace who has a technique that makes him virtually impossible to catch. He possesses the bodies of other sorcerers and becomes indistinguishable from them. He can even possess a body that is dead."
Miguel crosses his arms and asks, "Why did you summon me here from Africa like I work for you to deal with some Japanese freak?"
"To see that great African physique, of course."
Miguel puts a hand on Yuta's shoulder and says, "Please tell this racist White Walker that I am strong because I train hard and not because I am African. Unless he wants to talk about stereotypes about Japanese men."
Gojo answers, "All lies. Being big and muscular is a cool stereotype. Having a small imagination isn't."
"I worry for these children."
Nobara says, "Hey, lay off our teacher. Even if he's a racist idiot, he's still our teacher."
"Since when am I a racist?"
Idly swinging her hammer around, she answers, "I heard you saw a black man during that big deal on Christmas Eve, stopped everything you were doing, and chased him around beating the crap out of him."
"Oh, that was Miguel. I feel like that retelling leaves out a lot of important details," Gojo answers.
Nobara answers, "Trying to overexplain everything is exactly what a racist does."
Yuta and Megumi slowly back away from the conversation in embarrassment, while Yuji stands a bit bewildered.
Gojo says, "Anyway, we're here for serious business. This body-switching demon is probably in the body of Suguru Geto."
Yuta asks, "How can that be?"
Gojo answers, "I have a basic understanding of how custody of the body was lost, but that's not important right now."
Yuji asks, "So what is important right now?"
Yuta's face is twisted with the empathy he feels, knowing this is all probably very difficult for his teacher. But Gojo is being professional about it despite that, and that almost makes it worse.
Miguel looks both concerned and angry that Gojo lost the body, but a person who is honest with themselves even as one of Geto's former loyals knows that Geto and Gojo were very special to one another and whatever happened, this is a horrible outcome for Gojo too.
Gojo says, "Kenjaku is a little like Rumpelstiltskin; half of the threat he poses comes from the fact that he's able to move through the world without anyone knowing who he is. Right now, he's occupying a very powerful body, and there's probably some explicit purpose for that. Unfortunately, Kenjaku may have already switched bodies or is planning to switch to the body of a man named Tore Reksten.
"Reksten is a foreigner who came to Japan to cause trouble—Tore himself also isn't important. What's important is that his technique essentially allows him to 'consume' a person's soul and take their technique. This is deadly, of course. One of the techniques that Reksten has stolen is extremely rare and exotic…he has the ability to bend time.
"There are a number of incredibly risky and dangerous outcomes that can occur right now."
The students are supposed to be training for the exchange event, but instead, they are here.
Gojo knew from the panic on Master Tengen's face and in her voice that Kenjaku's sudden presence is probably foundational, perhaps even the driving force behind Yuji's apocalyptic visions.
Even though Gojo was unsure if Reksten actually died after getting hit with Infinite Void, he was sure that whoever took him wouldn't be able to do much with him. Human brains were delicate, after all. Finding out that Reksten could have died and been equally useful to Kenjaku as if he was brain damaged or healthy causes intense worry for Gojo.
Reksten could only consume techniques he could earn by subduing enemies, so he was limited. On the world stage, he could only have this or that, little dishes, but if he wanted a big steak, he had to use his sister.
According to Tengen, Kenjaku can probably eat any dish at the banquet except for Satoru Gojo, he is that dangerous—not just in his raw power, but in his ability to set traps and manipulate enemies into vulnerable situations.
Tengen also knew Kenjaku had the Prison Realm, so that has become known to Gojo.
Gojo opens his packet and starts reviewing with them.
"Hazards into the stratosphere: he's got Geto's body and technique, may move to Reksten, but Master Tengen says there is a nonzero chance that he will find a way to put Reksten's technique in Geto's body, which is basically just a gigantic container for holding curses.
"Reksten's two limitations are that he has to subdue an enemy to take their technique and his body can only hold so many. If he finds a way to adapt it into Geto's body, both of those limitations will be removed.
"He has a priceless cursed object that can seal someone away regardless of their strength level, can't imagine who that might be for.
"He's also likely the leader of a group of at least three special grade curses, each of which could cause a mass casualty event. They're highly intelligent and each time we've seen them, they used our hesitancy for collateral damage to limit our movements.
"He may have other curse users, and some of Geto's loyalists attached to him as well."
After laying out how dangerous the situation is, the question lingering in the air is what exactly Gojo wants to do.
Gojo says, "I know what you're thinking! What are we going to do about it? There's something that concerns me that will not concern the higher ups when it's time to plan our strike."
"What is that?" Yuji asks.
"On the security tapes of the incident with Ryokun, two teenage girls were spotted. They're probably the scouts that were watching for an opportunity to nab him. Mimiko and Nanako Hasaba.
"When it becomes known to Geto's inner circle that Kenjaku is just living in Geto's corpse, they're going to turn on him. Kenjaku obviously trusts these girls and keeps them close, but once his cover is blown, anyone who was doing anything for him becomes a tremendous liability. In other words, as soon as Kenjaku knows that we know about him, he'll probably kill them."
They all begin to understand what it is that Gojo wants to do.
The Jujutsu Society will only have the advantage of surprising Kenjaku with the fact they know about him one time. That's it. Once he knows they know, the situation will be permanently altered. They could use it to stage a massive offensive, to try and disarm Kenjaku.
Gojo wants to spend this currency of surprise not on managing the threat, trying to reduce Kenjaku's power, or targeting the special grades.
No.
He wants to spend this priceless one-time gift on saving Suguru Geto's girls.
To Miguel, this is objectively one of the most batshit crazy things he's ever seen anyone actually plan on doing, especially a person in such a high place. Of course the higher up are going to be mad, this is a bad thing that they should not be doing. Tactically stupid, insane, risky, dangerous, burns an advantage they can never regain for two girls who only escaped being tried for murder because Gojo already stuck his neck out for them.
To his students, Gojo is doing what Gojo does.
Miguel has, of course, heard from the others that Geto is still alive, but he kept his mouth shut about it. For some reason, he'd kind of assumed that he might still be alive but legally dead because Gojo let him go, but it seems that is not the case.
This situation is clearly incredibly distressing to Gojo, which might be why he is making this horrible decision to save Geto's girls instead of using the strategic advantage more responsibly.
Gojo's plan is to extract Mimiko and Nanako by having someone from the old group bring them to a place where they can be intercepted.
"Those girls are bad, Gojo. They're not only bad, but they're not going to believe us when we tell them the truth," Miguel says.
Gojo opens a box full of spring-loaded syringes. "We don't need them to believe us. We just need them to take a nice nap. Straight onto a private plane and to Africa, where you can lovingly guide them and look after them."
"No way you're going to assign me childcare again."
"You're so good at it! Besides, if they're on the ground in Japan, you know they'll probably go right back to him even if we tell them that's not Geto. Geto would be grateful. If you want to get the rest of your people away from that monster, this is your chance to do it."
The plan is simple enough, and if nothing goes wrong, there shouldn't be any violence.
But if something goes wrong, it could probably go very wrong.
Gojo has accounted for that in his plan, and explains the plan, which largely relies on Miguel, who really wishes he could just be done with the whole cult thing.
Miguel decides he will do this one last thing as a final favor to Suguru Geto.
They travel via SUV to a ryokan in the mountains, which is completely empty except for a couple of staff members that are actually Gojo clan members. It seems well out of the way, on the side of a rocky mountain. It's far to the bottom, and the nearest town is further still.
Gojo bought the place just for this one mission and cancelled all the reservations.
Miguel was supposed to get someone to invite the girls to this ryokan, but he is disturbed to find out from Suda that everyone in the group already knows something has stolen Geto's body and they've been willingly following him anyway.
According to Suda, the girls already knew Geto isn't Geto and they're just going along thinking that they can save him that way, which is…really sad and somewhat delusional.
Miguel has to make a certain appeal to Suda and remind her that they joined Geto as adults and the girls were children he raised, so their situation is different.
Suda has no intention of turning the girls over to Gojo, but when Miguel tells her that he'll be taking them out of the country for a while, she finally relents and agrees to participate in this operation.
When she hangs up the phone, she composes herself and sends 'Geto' a text that she wants to go on a little overnight trip to unwind and take the twins. He doesn't have any issues with it; it doesn't seem out of the ordinary in any sort of way.
At the ryokan, the students and 'staff' prepare for their two guests, while the higher-ups think Gojo has taken his students on a team-building trip to the ryokan.
Everyone involved has been warned that this operation will either be entirely uneventful, or it will be a huge shitshow.
If they successfully save the girls without incident, that's a win.
If they accidentally pull Kenjaku or curse users or special grades, that's also a win because there is no one around, the sorcerers would be uninhibited.
While Gojo wants the incident to go smoothly, politically, it will be best if they accomplish something else because the Jujutsu Society's Elders are going to come for him over this matter.
It was possible they'd get really lucky too.
Or really unlucky.
When Suda reports to the cottage where Kenjaku plots alone now that Uraume has left him, he asks a couple of questions out of curiosity. She wonders what is behind a locked door, but can hear the occasional beeping of what sounds like medical devices.
Kenjaku looks the name of the ryokan up on his phone later and finds the pictures serene. It's a legitimate place, two hundred years old, with rich natural hot springs, and according to reviews, incredible food.
He mentions to the disaster curses that he wants to visit when he regroups with them later that day, and since Hanami is actually in rather poor shape after getting clobbered nearly to death by Yuji Itadori and Aoi Todo, Jogo suggests that instead of recovering in the sewers, Hanami would do better surrounded by nature.
And so, they decide to go to this place, although Kenjaku orders the curses to stay out of sight and not cause trouble so they don't disturb his stay.
While they are travelling, preparations are underway at the ryokan for the operation.
Yuji, Megumi, and Miguel are responsible for getting Mimiko and Nanako to the private airstrip in the valley no matter what else is happening. Nobara is still required to stick with Yuta, but to keep some safe distance if anything happens.
When Suda arrives with Mimiko and Nanako, the first and most ideal outcome is for them to listen to reason, so Souta Gojo checks them in and they join Miguel for a conversation. The girls have no ear to listen to him and are quite pissed off by the idea that they should leave Japan.
Miguel actually has no patience for kids despite being cursed to deal with them now twice by someone who was never even an ally, so he resorts to Plan B right away, and drugs them.
He opens the door to the hallway, where he calls for Yuji and Megumi, who pick up the sleeping girls.
Megumi carefully cradles Mimiko while Yuji throws Nanako over his shoulder, letting her dangle.
"That's not how you hold a woman, Yuji."
"That girl isn't going to remember who held her like you just got married, and if she does, she'll probably be pissed. Miguel said these two were rude as hell."
Miguel answers, "Enough chit-chat, let's go. I'm trying to get out of this country right away, because everything that happens here is crazy."
Suda follows, because certainly, after betraying whatever is inside of Geto, she needs to stay somewhere out of his reach for a while. She saw how he raged about Uraume sabotaging the other mission.
Inside, there is relief that the result of this operation has been the 'nothing' route.
A whole lot of nothing, which was the best outcome.
Then the front door slides open, and a man walks in, with long hair, and monk's robes.
Souta Gojo is working at the front desk alone, and he doesn't show any signs that he can even see the curses behind him. To them, he's just an old man working at the family business.
Since this establishment had a famed family recipe and was well-known for its fresh, local cuisine, Kenjaku was looking forward to having a good soak so he could consider his next moves. He is still a little pissed off the mission to capture Ryo Itadori went so poorly, and that Uraume has left him.
Souta Gojo takes Kenjaku's money and name, and Kenjaku gives a different, irrelevant third name.
"Please allow me to give you a tour."
The old man has a peculiar limp and shows Kenjaku around the property after providing him with a yukata and slippers.
As they pass through an interior courtyard, the man casually presses his hands together and says, "There's a small shrine if you wish to pray."
Kenjaku was just about to thank him for the tour when the old man smacked his hands together with such explosive force that the unsuspecting special grades were thrown through the building and in different directions, separating them from each other and from Kenjaku, who managed to resist the attack.
Kenjaku can't sense any cursed energy coming from the man even after the attack, which can only mean that at some point, he stepped into a very clever barrier that conceals the presence of cursed energy.
He assumes the old man's hair did not grow white with age.
When Kenjaku turns to the old man, he's gone.
Instead, a blindfolded man is standing with his hands in his pockets.
Kenjaku feels his stomach turn; he can't remember the last time he felt such a sense of shock or dread.
So calls the sorcerer's name, softly. "Satoru."
According to Gojo's estimations that were based on nothing, there was an eighty percent chance that nothing would happen. As for the other twenty percent, who even knew?
He answers in a tone that is just as gentle, "Kenjaku Tanashiro, third son of a forgotten Heian Era warlord. Mad scientist, lunatic, murderer, body-snatcher…got his start bodysurfing and assassinating warlords to cause armed conflict and then profited and reveled in watching people murder each other for no reason.
"Apparently you've had a really long career that consists of arcs where you cause a bunch of stupid shit and then one of my predecessors beats the shit out of you for it. It must be my turn, huh?"
The thing is that Kenjaku can't figure out how this possibly could have happened?
Of course, Tengen knows about him, and he has indeed had numerous unfortunate contacts with the Gojo clan. But it doesn't matter if they know who Kenjaku is as long as they don't know which body he is in at the moment.
Geto's former groupies clearly understood he was someone else, but didn't know who that someone else was, so that knowledge never mattered. Even if they told someone Geto had been possessed, it wouldn't mean that he as Kenjaku was responsible.
The only currently living person who knew his identity and that that he was in Suguru Geto's body was Uraume, and she couldn't tell anyone due to a binding vow. And when he's in a body, it's impossible even for Satoru Gojo to tell the difference.
Somehow, Gojo had found out not only that Geto's body had become possessed, but who had done this.
There is no element of surprise, Gojo is not emotionally disturbed, and even if he was, the Prison Realm is sealed in a locked vault a hundred kilometers away.
He can distantly hear the unmistakable shriek of Rika in the distance, in the direction that Hanami was hurled. Since Hanami is in poor condition, this means she might be in serious danger of being exorcised.
How is he going to get himself out of this?
Gojo asks, "What is it that you were planning to do to me at Shibuya?"
Kenjaku isn't even sure if he's mentioned that he intends to seal Gojo at Shibuya. Maybe the curses know the date, but do they know the place? As he tries to piece it together, he realizes that trying to figure out who told Gojo is irrelevant at the moment.
Satoru adds, "And then after, something worse. All the sorcerers die, right?"
AND THE CULLING GAME?
It's impossible, really.
Kenjaku's mind starts to race with how crazy all of this is, and there's no way. There's just no way. If he assumes every single person that he has interacted with in the last one hundred years told Satoru Gojo everything they knew, he still shouldn't know about the Culling Game. That's information no one had, something a secret only in his own mind.
Kenjaku says, "Don't tell me…there's someone in the Jujutsu Society with a mind-reading ability. They'd have to be able to read the minds of people they don't know, without knowing their location. Surely that would be impossible. No, that's not it. It's something else."
"You'll never guess."
"Some sort of foresight?"
"Wrong again!"
Sorcerers were liars, after all.
After acquiring Tore Reksten, Kenjaku was in such a good position. He had plans.
Things were going well.
What is happening now shouldn't be possible.
So why is it happening?
Gojo pulls his blindfold off, and Kenjaku bitterly reflects on what a joke all of this is. He'll fare better in a one-on-one against Gojo in this body than any other he's possessed, but every avenue to victory requires the other sorcerer to make a serious mistake.
Kenjaku knows he will escape from this predicament; he always has a backup plan. The only question is what price he will have to pay to do it, and what he will lose as a result of this mistake.
Out the back, where Miguel was getting ready to take his hostages to the air strip, Mahito suddenly crash lands, having been thrown away from Kenjaku.
There are sounds of fighting in the distance; Rika's shriek, this guy, at least one other fight.
When Mahito stands up, he dusts himself off, still a bit confused about what it is that threw him so far.
In Hamamatsu, when they encountered Gojo, he had a very light touch, so getting blasted a hundred meters up and away is dumb. Stupid. He hates it. Humans suck. He'll find that old man and see how well his shriveled old soul tolerates a new shape.
Something in the air suddenly makes him turn, and Yuji is standing there, eyes wide, as if in a trance.
Without blinking, without breathing, without moving, Yuji sees a series of flashes. In the same way that he saw moments of joy when he saw Yuko again, imagines run through his mind.
This monster killed his friends, killed his family!
This is the largest and most complete part of his memory, and as the pieces fill themselves in, he just can't move at all.
Yuji doesn't snap out of his trance until Megumi tackles him and pushes him out of the way because Mahito ran for him with his hand out, causing both of them to narrowly miss being touched by him.
"What are you doing? Snap out of it!"
Megumi has no idea what's really going on with Yuji, but his little dazed periods where he zones out or freaks out have happened on several occasions. Megumi's fear will always be that one will happen at a time when it's dangerous.
Like now.
The Patchface Curse, Mahito, is special grade, known to be extraordinarily dangerous, and it was no time to be distracted. The instructions from Gojo were to flee from this one no matter what and leave him to Gojo or Yuta because he could probably only be killed by obliterating his entire body in one single instant.
Miguel can tell there is violence starting up everywhere, but he has done what he said he would do. This conflict between the Japanese sorcerers about Japan is not his concern.
Suda calls his name, and he says, "We're going on. You kids need to get away from that thing."
"Yeah, thanks!" Megumi calls sarcastically.
Yuji collects his thoughts as the car speeds away and he stands. "Fushiguro, you can go help someone else. I can take this guy."
"We can't hurt him."
Mahito mockingly says, "You should listen to him. Humans are so cute in their weakness, trying to help each other. How pathet—"
Yuji flicks his fingers and a cleave attack erupts from the end of his finger and hits Mahito right in the mouth.
Mahito touches the blood dripping from his mouth. "What a lucky shot."
It's followed by three more, and Megumi watches the monster bleed.
Yuji says, "Please go, Fushiguro. You can use your technique to help someone else. This one is for me. He is always for me."
As far as Mahito knows, this is their first meeting, and he has no idea what sort of lunacy this teenager is spouting. Yuji can clearly hurt him, which is inconvenient.
"Yuji, you're not making any sense!"
"Please go."
Megumi decides to trust him, but warns, "If you die, I'll kill you."
As Fushiguro leaves Yuji with Mahito, he simply confused about what is going on with Yuji.
Mahito watches him go and asks Yuji, "How exactly can you do that? Do you know the shape of my soul?"
Yuji flexes his fists and says, "It's not that I know the shape of my soul. It's that I know the shape of yours."
"And why is that?"
"You don't need to worry about it. You wouldn't understand if I did try to explain, because in the end, you're not a person. You're just a container filled with everything humans hate about themselves, wishing you could be one of us."
Mahito smiles a bit. "You're kind of pissing me off, talking to me like you know me. What can a foolish human ever know about a superior creature?"
The cursed spirit has heard that eyes are windows to the human soul, and Mahito thought that was silly, but the eyes set on him are not the innocent eyes of a child.
Itadori rushes and carefully dodges Mahito's hands, landing a bone-shattering blow that reverberates through Mahito.
That's right, Yuji thinks.
Yuji's soul came from a time where everyone had been taken from him. Not just taken from him…killed before his very eyes in most cases. In an unaltered story, it is his fate to watch every single person he will ever care for be cursed to death. All of them, without exception, without mercy, without hope.
That process begins with this monster, and it never ends until everyone has died.
His friends, his family.
This fusion of old memories and knowledge about himself sorts itself neatly into his mind as he lands his first ever Black Flash—at least, according to this timeline.
Yuji knows this monster has already killed countless people and will continue until he finally dies. So 'finally' has to be right now; he has to kill this monster. If he wants to break the cycle, he has to break it now.
No, killing won't work.
He has to do worse than that.
Is this not the monster who took his family from him? His friends? Kugisaki? Nanami?
In an undisturbed timeline, Mahito and Yuji pushed each other along until Mahito achieved his domain expansion and eventually evolved into his final and most disgusting form in Shibuya. Because in that scenario, they were both 'young' and inexperienced with their powers.
Right now, Mahito is getting pounded into the ground by someone with twenty years of intense combat experience who has been transferred to a pristine young body in prime condition.
They are not fighting; Mahito is being tormented by a monster he doesn't know he helped create. He doesn't understand why Yuji is able to hurt him, but sometimes he slices him up, sometimes he attacks with his blood, sometimes he just hits him so hard he thinks his soul will simply shatter.
It's almost like Yuji is under a spell, muttering now and then.
When humans fight curses, they sometimes say absolutely crazy nonsense, but in this case, Mahito is having his skull caved in every three seconds by someone who whispers little things under his breath like 'never again,' like they've met before.
Every time Mahito reaches out for him, Yuji cuts his hands off, or if that doesn't work, simply rips them off instead.
One the other side of the resort, Yuta and Nobara are racing down the side of the mountain in pursuit of Hanami, who just got pummeled by Yuji and Aoi Todo a few days before.
Yuta can tell the curse is still weaker than it would be normally.
His first duty is to protect Nobara, but watching her race down the mountain with a hammer, shouting obscenities at a special grade curse who is now full of nails, Yuta wonders if perhaps this young woman does not require his protection. One could argue that there are perhaps those who need to be protected from Nobara, in fact.
Nobara is hurdling down a steep incline in shoes that have a heel, with the strange dexterity of someone who someone who isn't from the city. Yuta doesn't know how to explain it, but people from cities run really fast on flat surfaces, and country people seem to be more used to running around on natural terrain.
In that regard, Nobara is not unlike a mountain goat: nimble, fearless, aggressive, and stubborn, always ready to butt heads.
The time they've spent together has been unpleasant because of her personality, but he's learned that the best sorcerers have the worst personalities. Perhaps being courteous is a sign of mediocrity in their kind?
Yuta thinks that Nobara can close the deal on this cursed spirit, so he chases, but he doesn't interfere, because he thinks it's what Gojo would do.
This spirit was already weak, and it never had any choice but to flee from them because he was there. These spirits have clearly been warned about who to fight and who to run from, which is interesting.
The only thing that matters is that the further Hanami runs, the more relentless Nobara becomes. It's trick to try and eliminate her instinct to fight worked briefly on Yuta and even Rika, but it didn't do anything to Nobara because she's just that aggressive.
Nobara can practically taste the victory in her mouth as she runs, dodging a barrage of roots and branches. She really didn't know that she could move like this either, but there are frustrations that have slowly been building. There are three first year students, but if all the sorcerers were asked to name them, she'd bet half of them wouldn't know her name.
There was Megumi, with his special legendary technique that everyone thought was so important.
Then there was Yuji, with all of his power and all the strange mysteries that had even Gojo interested.
That left her, her, being assigned a bodyguard like she was a fragile baby.
Every day that Yuta had been hanging over her, she felt he was like a dark cloud that reminded her that no one looked at her and saw enough potential for her even to survive.
If Gojo thought so little of her, why had he even helped her get into the school in the first place?
There was a disconnect between the actual Satoru Gojo, who thought she was so precious that he assigned his strongest knight to protect her from having her future cut short by an abomination, and the Satoru Gojo that existed in her mind, who was perhaps disappointed in her, and thought she was so weak that she needed to be guarded.
And so, angry at a figment of her own imagination, she pursues her victory.
She almost runs directly into a stream of lava blasted across path because she can't stop her momentum.
As Yuta gasps and reaches for her only to find she's just out of his reach, the lava is repelled toward Jogo by another concussive blast as Souta Gojo joins the fray.
Jogo is dangerous and at full power, and this forces their group to split, with Yuta and Rika moving to split Jogo away from Hanami, leaving Nobara with the old man. It's violating Gojo's order, but Jogo can just burn people up. If he keeps Nobara with him and she gets burned, that would be worse than keeping her with him.
Megumi and the other second years converge at Dagon, who is still in womb form, sitting still in the woods where he has been hurled.
"What should we do?" Megumi asks.
Panda says, "This is likely something akin to a special grade curse womb or a curse who has a technique it is reluctant to use. It seems to be willing to not attack us if we do not attack it. Considering the situation, it may be best for us to wait for Gojo before we force the situation to change."
Maki says, "If we stay, that makes us useless. If we split up and it evolves, then what?"
Inumaki and Megumi have no idea what they should do either. Attacking a curse womb is a gamble. If they assault it and it's close to being ready to emerge, it'll do so prematurely and won't be lacking much of its intended power. If it's not done establishing its form, it will be easy to defeat and might die from the mere act of having its womb opened.
This is usually done in extremely controlled circumstances if there's any suspicion that something semi-grade one or above might be inside, and since the other curses in this club are special grades who have advanced intelligence and abilities, acting on the womb might add another major opponent to the battle.
While they consider this, Gojo, still standing in the courtyard, says, "You do have a backup plan, right? You'll probably let a bunch of curses go and try to flee, but maybe that would distract anyone else, but do you think you can run from me in that body? You could unleash an infinite number of cursed spirits. A million. A billion. I'd still be able to find you."
Kenjaku answers, "Smug for you to stay here when your students are in trouble."
Mahito suddenly crashes into the courtyard, bleeding from everywhere, barely able to stand, shocked, confused.
He simply goes flying out the other side when kicked completely through the chest by a feral Yuji.
Kenjaku needs Mahito.
Can't lose him.
Gojo answers, "I think my little monsters are doing a little better than yours, so I'm not worried."
Gojo is actually also very surprised both by the fact that Yuji can evidently not only hurt Mahito, but is clearly in the process of killing the curse as he charges through the courtyard with the kind of aura that would make an uninformed observer think he was the villain and Mahito was the victim.
In terms of his cursed energy, Yuji was basically a baby bird in June, but with these odd moments where he would just do stuff without his brain having any idea what his body was doing.
Now, he's in sync, which means he has remembered how to use his technique.
He can tell Hanami has just about had it on the other side too, and while they can hear fiery explosions, Yuta is where they're coming from, so it's all fine.
If his students weren't strong, he'd have to leave to go save them, an opportunity that Kenjaku was clearly hoping for.
At the very least, he has to escape in Suguru Geto's body, and he needs Mahito. If he has to eat Mahito now, when he hasn't realized his potential, that will be so limiting. If Mahito gets clobbered to death by someone who really shouldn't have that ability at all in the first place, that would be even more limiting. Having to abandon Geto's body would be even worse.
Kenjaku thought their stalemate was going to put the students in danger and Gojo would have to leave to help them, thus creating an opportunity for him, but that's not happening. Instead, every second that he uses to come up with a plan is one second closer to the students thinning out one of the special grades, which will lead to them consolidating their forces to pursue the others.
That old man is still somewhere too, capable of rearranging the battlefield if things become unfavorable, if not worse.
He can't wait anymore. He has to do something, or Yuji Itadori is going to kill Mahito, and that simply can't happen.
The cursed spirits he had saved up to use in Tokyo? He lets half of them go all at once. This is an act equal to throwing them in the trash despite their astronomically high value. Releasing them in an unpopulated area with a bunch of sorcerers that are currently chewing up special grades even without their strongest member doing anything is stupid.
It's so stupid.
Kenjaku hates it.
What even was the purpose of this operation? Kenjaku wonders if this whole stupid operation was just Gojo's way of acting out his fate as the patron saint of misbehaved teenagers, because those girls seem to not be anywhere.
As someone who does stuff like that to other people constantly, it's insulting. What's happening to him is the equivalent of someone who only tells knock-knock jokes for a living for one thousand years having his life ruined by someone who is just telling their first knock-knock joke today.
This joke isn't funny. There's no nuance. All Gojo's got going for him is a team of people who swore to laugh for him no matter how bad the joke is, and they're laughing much, much harder than anyone would have guessed they could.
Yuji Itadori is laughing so hard that Mahito might die.
And Gojo hasn't even started laughing at his own joke yet, because he is the loudest laugher of all.
When Kenjaku lets the first group of curses out, he orders them to just travel from the center in every direction.
He let the rest go in the direction of Yuji and Mahito and started making his way there, cloaked in a horde of cursed spirits.
South of the ryokan, Yuta cranes his head at the emergence of countless cursed spirits and knows he has to turn away.
Jogo is hurt; Yuta believes he will run if he gets the chance. He's not in any shape to save Hanami.
If everyone is doing fine right now, the introduction of the spirits, even if they are low grade, will cause distractions. People will make mistakes, and this isn't a situation where mistakes can be made.
His time limit with Rika is almost over, so he'll be less equipped to do wholesale curse exorcism once she retires from the battle.
Yuta uses Rika to ascend back to the resort, now being ripped apart by spirits, but sees Nobara as he passes.
Kugisaki is meanwhile frustrated to the point of wanting to explode because despite filling the monster before her with nails and exploding them with cursed energy, it's still alive and still trying to get away from her, although Hanami's movement has been significantly impaired.
While she didn't really know what it did, the way Hanami had her arm covered made Kugisaki concentrate her nails on that area. When she finally activated her technique, the cloth covering it and the flower beneath were both destroyed, and while that seemed significant, she had no idea what would have happened if she hadn't done that.
She thinks this was a genius move, but there's no proof.
But she is out of nails.
Angry and disappointed that she couldn't close on this curse with everything that she had going for her, she wants to scream until she loses her voice.
Souta Gojo stands between her and the curse with two cursed daggers he had hidden in his prosthetic legs. "Why are you frustrated, kid? We can finish this now."
"I wanted to do it myself."
"Then do it."
"I don't have any more nails."
The old man says, "Do you think that with all of your power, that should stop you?"
"You don't get it! I'm out of nails! You have no idea how much I want to exorcise this thing!"
Souta answers, "I can tell that you don't want to exorcise this curse because it is a curse, or because you hate it specifically. Your negative emotions are focused somewhere else. Killing this curse is about satisfying the negative feelings you have toward other humans, isn't it? Maybe you feel you have to prove yourself."
"What makes you say that?"
"The fact that you're a kid."
Kugisaki answers, "I'm tired of everyone thinking I'm just leftover. Fushiguro and Itadori are praised, and they get so much damn attention like they're superstars, and what am I? Just there? Even Gojo thinks I'm weak. He assigned me a bodyguard like I'm some sort of pathetic baby."
The old man answers, "I was forced to retire by the head of my clan, my brother's grandson. When I look at him, I think of him as still being a little bratty kid, following me everywhere asking me questions. He looks at me and sees an old man that he needs to take care of. Neither the child in my head nor the decrepit old bastard in his actually exists."
"You are falling apart, old man."
Souta glares but answers, "That voices in your head don't belong to those imaginary people. They belong to you. One of them is telling you how to exorcise this monster. Find it."
The old man thinks himself a sage, guiding this young sorcerer soul on her journey to discover that anything in the world can become a cursed object if she uses it to curse someone, and that she will use rocks as projectiles to finish the job.
Maybe there was a voice saying all of that wise stuff somewhere in Nobara's mind, but there was a much louder one telling her she should just beat the curse to death with her hammer since it was so close to death already.
Enlightenment: failed.
The old man watches Nobara exorcise Hanami by beating it to death with a hammer while screaming self-affirmations about how she almost stopped believing in herself, and he decides that he probably needs to leave the teaching to Satoru. He's not sure if he did a good thing here or not.
The second years and Megumi rush toward the spirits coming from the courtyard, abandoning the curse womb Dagon, which gives Jogo the ability to steal it before rocketing away from the battleground using his cursed energy.
As Jogo speeds across the sky, he tries to calculate who might be able to follow him, but probably only Satoru Gojo could get him, and he didn't follow.
Escape is a relief, but he can sense that Hanami has fallen to that obnoxious young sorcerer girl who could never have faced such a powerful curse if Hanami hadn't already been injured.
Since Jogo is unaware of Kenjaku's true identity and is largely unaware of the human conflicts going on, he considers going back for Mahito, but that requires crossing over Gojo. If he doesn't go back, he can definitely save Dagon, but if he does, all three of them might die, so he chooses to hope Mahito is able to manage his own situation.
Mahito is not managing his own situation, of course, because he triggered the part of Yuji that is not fifteen years old, has no idea why, and is being pummeled to death while they run around in a sea of cursed spirits that doesn't seem to distract Yuji at all—he just slashes them out of the way.
Kenjaku is also using the horde of curses to make it to Mahito to consume him and hopefully secure escape, but Gojo is tunnelling through them.
Since Gojo's domain isn't particularly useful for spirits who don't have minds, he cuts through the sea of cursed spirits using Blue. He can tell Yuta is working the perimeter, making sure they don't leave the area, and that's fine.
Mahito shrinks himself to the smallest possible size in order to scurry under the cursed spirits, and as he falls to the ground, Yuji spots him and a strange compulsion comes over him.
It's an idea born from pure hatred, a desire to do something worse than killing Mahito, a fear of what happens in the future, and maybe something deeper that he didn't even understand.
Yuji catches him out of the air with his mouth and swallows.
Mahito is deeply confused, but obviously he knows he can just expand his shape and tear Yuji apart from the inside. A confusing end to a brutal and confusing battle. But it doesn't work, and his small form just continues falling until it ends in a massive place.
Expansive.
Much bigger than Yuji's stomach could ever be.
Landing in a pool of blood, he stands up and looks around. There's nothing anywhere, in any direction, except a person standing in front of him.
He looks like Yuji, but older, and his body is messed up. The corner of his mouth is scared, and all down his face, and all on one side too.
Mahito looks around. "Am I…is this the inside?"
This older version of Yuji says, "Do you know, Mahito? About me?"
"I'm just really confused about why you keep talking like we know each other, and why the soul inside of this body is clearly older than the actual body."
Yuji answers, "It's not for you to understand."
The curse wonders if he is inside of a domain expansion or if he's somehow fallen into Yuji's soul? How does he get out? If he opens his own domain?
It feels like he can't.
The liquid around his legs starts to burn and bubble, and Mahito asks, "What is this?"
Yuji's soul answers, "It looks like you all really did forget."
"Forget what?"
"That this body is a prison," he says, crossing his arms, "It was meant to restrain a curse far more powerful than you, so you probably aren't going to last long."
Mahito asks, "What do you mean I'm not going to last long?"
"Your soul is being digested, dumbass."
Outside, Yuji's consciousness has no idea what just happened, but he doesn't sense Mahito anymore and his rage starts to subside.
Kenjaku can tell Mahito is gone because the curses he sent to swarm him suddenly start dissipating, their instruction suddenly invalid.
Rising above the cursed spirits briefly, he can't see any more fiery explosions from Jogo or branches crawling above the trees from Hanami, and for a split second, he sees Yuji, who has turned his attention on the smaller curses which can only mean one thing.
He has little hope that a simple curse womb might have survived, and contemplates for one second what he should do next.
Fighting Gojo one-on-one isn't going to work at this point, and an attempt to simply leave results in Gojo grabbing him by the hair.
"Did I tell you that you can't run from me in that body?"
Kenjaku is forced to utilize his absolute last resort, the worst possible thing that he would only do if everything else failed and his sole goal was surviving.
He stabs himself in the head with a one-time-use cursed object that transposes two spaces. In this case, it swaps the space in Suguru Geto's head with the space in a backup body, in this case, Tore Reksten's.
It is an incredibly rare object, there was only one, he was only ever going to be able to use it one time, and having to do it in this circumstance is infuriating.
Geto's body falls lifeless and limp as Gojo holds it by the hair.
After activating his technique, Kenjaku awakens in the cottage in Tore Reksten's body, having been forced to give up his cursed spirit cache, Suguru Geto's body, the advantage he had over Gojo because he had Geto's body, Idle Transfiguration, and at least one if not all of his special grades.
Pulling the feeding tube out of Reksten's nose and removing his IV, Kenjaku takes a few very deep breaths.
Those teenage girls had been to this cottage on a couple of occasions, and if they betrayed him, he was sure that they'd tell the sorcerers about this place, so he hurriedly collects everything he wants to save and then burns the place to the ground.
Perhaps it is a strategic defeat on all sides that significantly weakens him and complicates all of his plans. But he always has a Plan B, C, D, E, F…or in this case a Plan V-engeance, because while he can still use his backup plans to accomplish his goals, he has a new goal.
He doesn't need Geto's body to get Gojo into the Prison Realm. Now that he can use Temporal Distortion, he can just bend Gojo's time so a few seconds seems like a minute.
Kenjaku likes to think he prioritizes his goals and maintains a clear head, but now that he has this body, he can simply amass a toolkit of techniques and kill Gojo and his students, and he will therefore be free to do whatever he wants.
That's a perfectly logical way to respond to the atrocious nature of the worst knock-knock joke of his very long life, isn't it?
XXX
The ryokan is predictably destroyed by the time things finally calm down.
The curse cleanup was a chore even for Gojo, who was kind of stunned at the sheer number of curses that Kenjaku was holding. He's not even sure how many there were, but they taxed Six Eyes to the point he was physically and mentally exhausted by the time they were all gone.
The good news was that they ended up being wasted in the middle of nowhere.
It was a good workout for his students, who had a seemingly endless stream of low-level curses to work against.
They're all alive, and all doing well, a few scrapes and bruises here and there, but Yuji is a wizard with reverse curse technique.
"The curse womb we found is missing," Maki says as they gather in the ruined courtyard.
Gojo says, "The curse womb and the volcano head got away when the cursed spirits were released. The nature curse and Patchface both got exorcised, right?"
Kugisaki sits on a broken stone bench and puts her nose up in the air. "I exorcised the tree curse."
"Really? Excellent work!" Gojo answers as he reaches out to pat her on the head, "I saw you fighting the other curses and could tell that you are on another level. You're really coming up quickly. Now that you've taken out a special grade, you've taken the next steps on your journey. I'm proud of you."
"Now can you let me live without a stupid bodyguard?"
Gojo smirks. "I think you've proven yourself. If you keep this up, people are going to need protection from you."
She doesn't want to admit that she loves being praised by her teacher, but it does feel pretty good.
Gojo turns to Yuji, "And Patchface?"
Yuji nervously laughs, "About that."
"What about it?"
"I ate that thing."
AN: Okay, so, I wrote this story before Gege confirmed that Uraume was canonically male and wanted to be incarnated in a female body. Making her female in this story isn't anti-trans or anything, I just didn't know and fully support this character as written.