Gabriele walked mindlessly across the hallway behind Gojou. Since he wasn't part of the exchange event, the exorcist wasn't allowed to preside over either of the teams' meetings, forced to stay in a room full of old sorcerers for the remainder of the day which he wasn't particularly keen about. They turned left again, ahead of them there was yet another long stretch of corridors, the angle of his eyelid gave away a hint of irritation. Gabriele wasn't certain before, but they had been walking circles for seven minutes now and his patience was running thin.
"Can I help you?" Gojou looked over his shoulder, sporting a complacent smirk that presaged him nothing good.
"Well, I figured you'd prefer to stay away from that room as much as possible. So I thought a little detour wouldn't hurt, don't you think?" He said with a friendly tone as he strolled down the hallway with his hands in his pockets. The exorcist followed the teacher always three steps away from him, eyes trained on the back of his head.
"We hadn't had any chances to have a one-on-one talk, had we?" He attended for Gabriele to answer back, the Italian simply limited himself to staring. Gojou thought for a moment, then the metaphorical light bulb switched on. "I got it!" He brought his fist down on his open palm, "How about we play a game of 21 questions? Once per turn, I'll ask you a personal question and vice versa, so we'll get to know each other better by the end of it."
Gojou pointed at a small wooden bench placed in front of a row of windows, gesturing for the foreigner to sit next to him. Albeit with much hesitation, Gabriele shortly joined him in the seat.
"You go first, you can ask me whatever comes to your mind." He spoke with a cheerful tone.
Gabriele took his time to elaborate on a question, why was he agreeing to play a stupid game with the most dangerous sorcerer around, he had no idea. But if the exorcist played his cards well, he might get some useful info out of it.
"Who was the guy inside the box?"
"That doesn't count! I've said personal questions." Gojou whined petulantly but decided eventually to let it slide, he knew it would have been brought up sooner or later, better to just rip the bandaid off. "Well, his name is Itadori Yuuji, but I imagine Kugisaki and Fushiguro have talked to you about their not-so-deceased classmate extensively, so that's not what you wanted to know, am I right?"
~ 18 minutes earlier ~
"Hey! OPP!" Itadori sprung up from the box exactly as Gojou told him to, he had waited so long and trained so hard for this moment of reconciliation that he almost forgot to bring new oxygen into his lungs. He listened to his sensei reintroduce him to his friends, they must be in lack of words or crying or barfing, because he couldn't hear anything coming from them.
He opened his eyes, and there was no joy, no tears, no vomit-stained clothes. Only petrified expressions and a guy catching on fire.
'Huh?! They don't seem happy at all!' His confidence in Gojou's plan began to waver, this was not the triumphant welcome back celebration he was promised to. "Okay, everyone from Kyoto. This is Sukuna's vessel, Itadori Yuuji-kun." Gojou-sensei turned the cart around to face the Kyoto students, at least they should show at least some signs of surprise, right?
'They're too absorbed in their souvenirs!' Itadori mentally screamed, the plan was a complete failure and he will now have to deal with this cringe recurring memory that'll haunt him every night for the rest of his life. "Sukuna's vessel?! What's the meaning of this?" The old man cried out, Gojou waved at him, leaving the cart with an embarrassed Itadori to his demise. Gabriele watched the pink-haired guy confused by the rapid succession of events, fortunately for him, Nobara acted out before he could by kicking the cart Itadori was standing in.
"You got something to say?" Megumi waved at him to get closer to them as Nobara questioned the teenager. After subsiding the divine essence overflow, the exorcist approached the group and stood next to the girl. Both he and Megumi noticed she was visibly upset despite her attempt to look angry.
"I'm sorry for keeping quiet about being alive." Itadori then glanced at Gabriele, "Are you my replacement? Gojou-sensei never told me about you." The Italian kept a neutral face, not knowing if he felt relieved that the guy was oblivious of his presence at Jujutsu High or incredibly pissed off. However, as he was about to answer, something was obstructing him.
"Aren't you a peculiar one?" A deep voice invaded his mind, startling the exorcist out of his concentration. An eye and a mouth emerged from Itadori's right cheek, staring at him with glee, "Trying to rearrange my thoughts to communicate? The lengths which humans take to go around their problems are admirable. And your cursed energy is nothing I never felt before." The creature smiled at him.
"I've got my eyes on you, stranger."
~ present ~
"Is that so?" Gojou asked him, and Gabriele nodded once. It was easy to understand why Sukuna would be interested in him. During the golden age of Sorcery, the time in which the King of curses was alive, the Holy Church was still consolidating its influence on Europe, so he was probably the first exorcist he ever saw. New foes with new powers and new lands to burn to ashes, with the demon's sadistic concept of excitement it could only feel like finding your presents on Christmas morning.
"His name is Ryomen Sukuna. Legends say he was an imaginary demon with four arms and four eyes who lived in the Heian era. After his death, he became a cursed spirit whose body was nearly indestructible, so the sorcerers of the time severed and sealed away his 20 fingers. Itadori-kun just happened to have found and eaten one of those fingers."
"He ate one of those fingers?" The Italian physically cringed, who would be dumb enough to eat a thousand-year-old rotten finger?
"Three of them, actually." He stands corrected.
"He grows more powerful with each finger he consumes. We plan to feed him all 20 fingers and then eventually execute Itadori, should he lose his hold on the curse beforehand I'll personally cut his life short." Gojou casually explained to the exorcist, who gazed at him with concern. The cursed energy that the demon radiated was immense already and he wasn't even at one-fifth of his full potential. Could he really square up with him?
"Why are you telling me all of this?" The shaman chuckled which sent all kinds of alarms going off inside Gabriele's head.
"Because you're smart, exorcist. So I prefer telling you and being aware of your knowledge than you finding out on your own without me knowing." he began taking off his blindfold, light blue irises locked onto his turquoise ones with a glare that promised certain death.
"Are you satisfied with your question?"
Gabriele broke eye contact and averted his gaze to the floor, arms crossed over his gut. This info weighed on his stomach as if he had just gulped down a boulder. The heathens were grooming a dangerous curse that could potentially destroy an entire city by itself. This is... is... perfect. His body started to spasm under Gojou's watchful eye, estranged by the worrying sight. Suddenly his torso sprung back to position, he sported a menacing smile as wide as it could be while he side glanced at the stoic expression on the adult's face. Was he... laughing?
"I should thank you, Gojou Satoru. If a piece of information like this one should ever reach the ears of his Holiness the Pope, he'll have no other options but issue a total cleansing of the Jujutsu world. " He told him with no care of masking his animosity towards the sorcerer. "Don't worry, I'll put my word as part of the Seraphim choir to spare the students while all the others shall be purged."
Gojou scowled at the exorcist, the truce with the Church was frail enough that a small accident with the right pretext could cause the conflict to ignite again. Killing Gabriele was out of option, an unjustified execution will result in a casus belli. He also sends out letters regularly, a sudden decrease in the influx might mean trouble as well.
"It looks like my hands are tied, can't say I didn't walk myself into a trap." The sorcerer put up his hands in defeat."Sadly though, you're eligible for execution."
The smile on the exorcist's face disappeared little by little, turning into an apprehensive frown. "You're bluffing." Gojou noticed two things, first, the Italian has no control over the sound of his voice inside his head, and second, it changes based on how he perceives him as a person. And right now, Gabriele sounded like a child caught with his hand inside the cookie jar.
"I'm afraid not, my dear preacher. You see, you exorcists are all the same. Having booked a lifetime stay in the depths of Hell pressures you to not waste your life, always chasing the bigger fish to not regret your decision to throw away your ticket to Heaven." Gojou began by taunting the young man before him."Dandling the alluring prize in front of your nose is just enough to show your true colors. But you fail to see the nylon string attached to it." Gojou firmly grabbed the startled exorcist by the shoulders "I believe it's my turn now. So here's my question..." then he whispered in his ear.
"The curse you brought behind... is it a dead friend? Or a long-gone relative?"
Gabriele swatted the man's arms away from his shoulders and jumped far from the bench, out of Gojou's reach. The exorcist then channeled all his divine essence he could master, and white flames went ablaze in response to his opponent. "Oh my, has the curtain finally dropped. That old-school exorcist attitude doesn't suit you at all, trust me." He got up on his feet, hands strictly confined in his pockets.
Gabriele, GET AWAY FROM HIM
"I inadvertently caught a whiff of death as I was going to sleep. Can't be more of a third-grade cursed spirit, which amazes me how you haven't gotten rid of it yet." Gojou gradually closed the distance between the two, for each step forward he took, the intensity of the flames grew stronger.
"They're harmless." He hissed.
"It can be the most peaceful spirit we have ever come across, but a curse is still a curse in the end." The sorcerer retorted, now standing right in front of the flaming fists, his palm an inch away from the exorcist's face as he stared directly into his turquoise eyes. "And the only good curse is a dead one. Isn't that how you preachers always say?"
Gabriele was petrified, his body couldn't react to his command because of the fear-induced paralysis, he let his guard down in a place where the minimum mistake could be fatal. His mind instead was in pure turmoil, voices telling him to move, to flee the place while he still had time as if he could run away with his life. Others, the most radical and indoctrinated of all of them, told him to burn this school to the ground, to take as many as he could down to Hell with him, to severely damage the Jujutsu world and put all humanity a step closer to breaking the vicious cycle of death and despair the cursed energy perpetuated for centuries. What to do? What to do? What to do?!
'Fuck!' He fell to his knees, the divine essence dissipated as soon as he grasped the sides of his head. Who was he kidding? How could he hope to fulfill his duty as an exorcist and bring humanity forth in a curse-free era if he couldn't get past his own curse? A hypocrite and a coward, that's what he was.
Gabriele
He heard their voice amongst the thousands, they sounded ironically angelic amid the confusion in his psyche. If it wasn't for them he would be under a pile of dirt with maggots eating his rotten corpse to the bones, Gabriele owed his life to them and he wished the pearly gates to let them through for they are not to blame for his actions.
Gojou was caught off guard by the sudden submission. Normally he wouldn't have any problems neutralizing an enemy while they were at their lowest, he saw it more as being merciful than everything else. But this time it was different, he was different.
"Live..." he said unexpectedly, "I'll let you live."
The sorcerer squatted down to Gabriele's eye level, in those alarmed turquoise eyes he didn't detect the same power-fueled arrogance preachers portrayed in an erroneous sense of superiority. "Why? After all I've said..."
"I was wrong about comparing you to other exorcists. They wouldn't spare the students under any conditions, just that makes you worth keeping alive." What he saw instead was the future, not bound by the grudging traditions of the elders and the bitter prejudice of the fools, the same he saw in all his students.
Something struck deep inside the exorcist as Gojou ruffled his black hair. He had been trained with the mindset that actions speak better than words and intentions without effort made a person worthless. Therefore, as soon as the ritual ended, he accepted missions on missions to prove his worthiness. If at first he had succeeded in his intent, rapidly climbing the hierarchy to the top, the longer he went the more persistent his impostor syndrome became. Not that he doubted his strength, mind you, but he questioned his actual impact on the world and how his work has helped in the grand scheme of things.
Empty praises were just as unbearable to him as the open wounds he used to bring back to his dorm room the morning after a mission. So why did this shake him so damn much? It wasn't even meant to be a compliment, and yet his heart felt warm.
"You're human, not a curse-killing machine." The exorcist snapped back to reality, Gojou was still staring at him with a complacent smile. "People can tell you what's good and bad so much till your own experiences dictate them for you. Their worldview will soon be too narrow, too limited, and it will be your choice to go over the boundaries or die in them." He jabbed his finger into the foreigner's forehead three times as he spoke these last words.
"Not mine. Not theirs. Your choice."
"What's an exorcist, exactly? I thought we were some sort of exorcists." Itadori asked. They were inside for the meeting, the students had to re-elaborate some new strategies to fit the newcomer. Yuuji had the time to get acquainted with his upperclassmen, intrigued by the, what did Fushiguro call him? A cursed speech user? That sounded so cool, and the talking Panda which was also so very cool. And the girl... she scared him shitless, thank the Gods above that he had the promptness to throw his sensei under the bus when she asked for the Slaughter Demon back. But of all of them, the one who remained impressed in his mind the most was the foreigner from earlier.
"Exorcists are our European counterparts, though it is quite inaccurate since they have hands almost everywhere. They fight curses as we do, but that's where the similarities end, pretty much." Megumi answered his question.
"In fact, Gabriele has a different kind of energy and techniques, and all of them share a stylish tattoo on their forearm, can you believe it?!" Nobara added, dreaming about having her cute tattoos to show around.
"That's so cool!" Itadori had stars in his eyes, now he wanted to know the mysterious foreigner, even more, living in Europe seemed to be so exciting from what he saw in those spy movies, he hoped one day they could travel abroad together to lose themselves in those narrow alleys with dozens of colorful boutiques and restaurants. If they could let him, of course, with all that Sukuna deal.
"Exorcists are not to be trusted lightly." Maki butted in the conversation, "Their primary objective is to eradicate anything related to cursed energy. Curses, sorcerers, just an overabundance of energy could make you a target." Her grip tightened around her polearm, they have no scruples for the lives they reap, no matter how good of a person they were. If Yuuta could have been here to tell them what they did to him, they would stop being this friendly to that preacher.
Memories of that day flashed in her mind, the blood-soaked grass, with Yuuta barely standing with his unsheathed katana in the middle of the battlefield supported by Rika. All around them was a shapeless mass of dismembered bodies of the exorcists, they threw themselves at him like flies to a bug zapper. Maki lost count of how many nights she had passed to hearten him from his nightmares, telling him he wasn't a monster as he laid his head over her bosom to listen to the heartbeat.
"They have no respect for life, even their own." She then left the room. Itadori now felt like a bummer for asking, he looked up as he received some pats on the shoulders.
"It's not your fault, Maki-san has a bad history with exorcists. Gabriele has a good head on his shoulders, you'll have no problem befriending him." Panda reassured him, Gabriele? Sure it is a strange name, but that made him even more interested in the exorcist.
~ Kyoto side meeting ~
Toudou dismantled the door off the wall with a kick, the meeting was a massive waste of time. Not only they declined his request again but they also threatened to pull him out of the competition if he asked one more time to let the exorcist join in. Such bullshit, he could be watching Tadaka-chan on TV instead of this useless plan briefing brought by the old geezer. All for what? To kill a first-year that happens to be a vessel of a powerful curse. What a circus.
"Come back, Toudou." His classmate Noritoshi called him just as he placed his foot outside, "The principal isn't finished yet."
"Tadaka-chan's making a guest appearance on a walking show at 11. Do I need to explain any more?" He was clear and concise, sure that he didn't leave any room for debate. They knew Tadaka-chan time was sacred and that no one and he couldn't stress it enough, no one could change his mind.
"You can record it. Come back here." The audacity.
"I'm going to watch the recording and watch it in real time! Who do you take me for?" Toudou snapped at him, the whole room was filled with a thick aura of tension that worried Gakuganji, too. He had no plans to stand idle while these people with awful taste in women plot and scheme to their hearts' content. They already denied him once today, he won't be denied twice without putting up a fight.
"That's your problem here?!" Mai intervened. Toudou felt a pang of betrayal, her of all people? Her, who accompanied him at Tadaka-chan's handshake event in Tokyo. Her, who looked at the exorcist with the same expression as him whenever he looked at his tall Idol, does she think he didn't see her? A small tear traveled down his face, he thought they had a connection there.
"Listen, all of you. I've long been disappointed in you all and your bad taste in women. I don't care about your assassination plan like you didn't care about my fair request. But If you try to order me around again, I'll kill you." His tone came out dark, plainly hinting to his teammates to not mess around with him. Then he turned his back on them and left the meeting.
To hell with all of them, he'll simply rush to the Tokyo team and face them all at once. Perhaps like that, even without the exorcist's presence, he will have some fun.
Gabriele took his seat next to Gojou in the monitor room, he had been handed a hot cup of matcha tea which he was a bit reluctant to drink. Not that he did find the green-colored tea unappetizing, he had plenty while staying here in Japan, but the woman who served him was glaring from her seat, waiting for him to gulp it down. If he didn't know any better, the exorcist would say his tea was definitely poisoned.
"Something wrong, preacher?" Utahime said, emphasizing the word preacher with a derogatory tone. In response, he just blew some steam off before taking a small sip, it was still too hot for his liking but he appreciated it nonetheless.
"Cut him some slack, Utahime. He has been nothing but helpful with the preparation of the event." Gojou defended him, which he found odd when ten minutes ago he was close to burning the school down. "Why are you mad?"
"I'm not mad, actually. Simply thought back to the time exorcists used to stir up a fuss at every given moment. At least he's quiet."
"If I had to talk every time someone glared at me, I'd get a headache." A phrase echoed inside her mind, and she immediately eyed the foreigner on the other side of the room who continued to drink his tea as if nothing happened. Gojou understood by the Utahime's startled expression that Gabriele must have said something, and whatever he said was probably right.
"Right? Such funny times they were." The man joked around, pissing the only woman in the room off even more. But now it was time to get serious. "There's someone working with either a curse user or curses at Jujutsu Tech." He told the Kyoto teacher, who quickly gazed at him in disbelief.
"Impossible!" She said, "A curse user might be one thing, but working with curses?"
"A lot of them on that level have been popping up lately, so much that the Church noticed, too. They understand human speech, and they formed a faction that's operating with a purpose. They might think they're just working with a curse user, but..." Gojou stopped for a few seconds to choose the right words.
"I'd like to ask you to handle investigating those at Kyoto, Utahime." He finished. The woman didn't give away her answer instantly as she looked at the sorcerer with matching seriousness.
"Do you want me to investigate my students as well?"
"No need, since they're all here he can also question them. With your permission, of course." He replied, catching the teacher from Kyoto unprepared. He? Who is he? Gabriele put his cup on his lap, the warm liquid settled on his stomach gave him a pleasant feeling, his eyelids closed to savor the moment. Then he whirled his head towards Utahime, locking eyes with her as soon as he opened them.
"Out of discussion." She protested, "I will not let an exorcist conduct an investigation of this matter and importance."
"He's the only one I'm 100% certain he's innocent since he wasn't even here when all of this started," Gojou stated in Gabriele's favor, who was enthusiastic about the whole deal, he finally had the purpose he was looking for, he felt more alive now than in the past three years. "Besides you, obviously. You wouldn't have the guts to do such a thing." She threw her teacup at him, a small chuckle escaped the foreigner's lips while he watched the two bicker like children.