A/N: We're back. Please excuse any errors. Can anyone see this?
Do let me know. Site keeps glitching out and resetting profiles. That said!
Every review really does help, large or small...any feedback is better than nothing at all.
...we return. The ending of JJK drove me and the lads away for a good long while, but now Dark -my new co writer- and I are back. He's helping me out these days, allowing me to revisit old stories and give them a much needed touch up.
Update schedule is a bit scuffed again, sorry. After the last chapter of Welcome to Heaven, Dark and I determined that story needs more time in the oven. Its still being updated, but we want it to have quality chapters with actual plot, not a madcap menagerie of madness no one understands.
Additionally, I'm off the next few days -doctor stuff- but I'll endeavor to update Thursday.
So here we go. The fate of this story depends on you, the reader. Your feedback determines the fate of this tale, and many others. I'm just a humble author trying to make his way in this wild world, one word at a time. Time and feedback will determine if this remains a story. Simple as that. In other words...its up to YOU, the reader. Do let me know~!
As ever, we own no references, quotes, themes, or memes.
They're tributes, one and all!
"There is an ancient saying passed down through eternity.
It has taken many phrases and forms over the years.
A warning known by mankind and curses alike.
To paraphrase it reads as follows.
Fuck about and find out."
~An Old Man.
Wanna Find Out?
Riko Amanai wrinkled her nose and subsequently pinched it.
"You smell like a crime scene."
Naruto — no, he reminded himself, Naoya now — glanced down at himself. A breath escaped him, not quite a sigh, not quite a chuckle. Just… recognition.
Ah. Right.
Blood. Viscera. Bits of bone, some his, some not. They clung to his clothes like ivy, woven through fabric and flesh alike. Something older, fouler than just death lingered on him too — a scent that didn't come from any man. Ancient. Wild. Wrong. The kind of smell that made animals howl and made curses pause.
Even hours after the fight, bark clung to his collar, smeared into drying crimson. His right arm dangled slightly lower than the left — dislocated, still stubborn despite his earlier attempt to wrench it back into place. The bruises were blooming deeper now, speaking their own language of effort and exhaustion.
Riko tilted her head, her expression caught somewhere between amusement and concern. "Do I want to know?"
Naruto mirrored the motion. His golden eyes gleamed — not with pride, not even mischief. Something softer. Calmer. Resigned.
"Only if you've got soap and time."
Behind her, Suguru Geto stilled.
It wasn't dramatic. Just a flicker — the smallest pause, the faintest narrowing of the eyes. But Naruto noticed. Of course he did. He noticed everything now.
The cursed spirits behind Geto rippled, uneasy. Not because they feared him. Not just that.
They'd seen the aftermath.
They'd smelled the copper and dust and finality clinging to him.
They knew.
For the first time, Geto truly understood that Naoya Zen'in — whatever he had been before — was something else now.
"…Is it done?" Geto asked, voice brittle. Like a thin shard of glass held at the edge of a blade.
Naruto nodded once. "Handled."
That was all he gave. No elaboration. No glory. No details about what it took, or what it cost. Some truths were heavy. Not meant to be passed around like coins.
As far as he was concerned, Toji Fushiguro was gone. He wouldn't trouble them again. That was enough.
No need to tell him he'd taken his uncle's eye and let him live.
Suguru could ponder the matter in the meantime.
How? That stayed between him and the forest floor where blood still soaked the roots. The ground would remember. His body certainly did.
Geto held his gaze for a moment longer. Then exhaled. Just once.
"…I see."
He didn't ask again.
Naruto turned towards Riko, eliciting a questioning noise from her.
He bent at the knees, lowering himself just enough to meet her eye to eye. Not towering over her. Not demanding.
Listening.
The air shifted around them. Not cursed. Not divine. Just… quiet.
Like the moment before a coin lands.
"Well?" His voice was low, but steady. "Your choice. You still want to die for their plan?"
Riko flinched.
Not from the blood. Not from the lingering horror of the boy before her.
From the memory.
Of what they called her. What they wanted her to be.
Not Riko.
Not a girl.
Not even a person.
A solution.
A vessel.
A key.
A tool in a very old lock.
Riko looked at Geto. Then back at Naruto.
A small almost tremulous smile bloomed across her face.
"I want to live," she whispered.
Naruto exhaled through his nose, slow and even, as though he'd been holding that breath for hours.
His own smile was late in arriving. But when it came, it was warm — not dazzling, not heroic. Human. The kind of smile one could believe in.
"Good," he murmured. Despite the dull throb crawling up his shoulder, he reached out and ruffled her hair. Gentle. A motion meant not for ceremony or comfort, but connection. A promise, sealed in motion instead of words. "Then let's make sure that happens."
And for a heartbeat, the world held still.
A simple moment.
A quiet one.
Which, of course, meant it wouldn't last.
Because the earth shifted.
Not a quake. Not yet. But the ground beneath them gave a shiver, like something ancient had just turned in its sleep. The air followed — a sudden breeze that wasn't a breeze. It carried the scent of ozone and something sweet. Burnt sugar.
And something more.
Cursed energy.
Raw. Unfiltered. Wrong.
It scraped against the skin like static and left a taste of iron and violet light on the tongue. Like a lightning storm was trying to take form. Like a sorcerer was about to shatter into radiance or madness — and hadn't yet decided which.
A figure stumbled into the courtyard.
Drunk? No. Reeling.
His uniform hung scorched and half-burned from one side, revealing bloodied skin and cracked ribs that pulsed faintly beneath. His hair, once soft and snow-colored, had turned chaotic — spikes jutting every which way like lightning strikes frozen in time.
One eye glowed through shattered lenses.
The other was glassy, half-lidded. But burning.
Gojo Satoru.
Alive.
Barely.
And grinning.
"…Found you…" he slurred, voice somewhere between triumph and delirium.
Geto's cursed spirits recoiled without instruction — instincts overriding command. They shrank from that glow, from him, the same way animals shrink from wildfires they don't remember learning to fear.
Naruto stood.
No weapon drawn. No stance assumed.
But every fiber of his being shifted, slow and deliberate — the weightless, easy tension of a predator who'd just recognized another. Not an enemy.
A rival.
A challenge.
He tilted his head.
"Yo," Naruto said, voice light but grounded. "You look like you got hit by a train."
Gojo snorted, coughing smoke and what might've been laughter.
"Feels like it." His tongue ran across a cut on his lip. "Might've been you."
"Not yet." He tilted his head, considering him. "Are you for real?"
Gojo giggled, a merry sound of madness.
Oh, dear.
"Ohhh, I'm for real real. I'm alive and kicking!"
He looked to his wounds, or rather, where they should've been. "Reversed cursed technique, eh?"
"Exactly~!" Satoru sang, swaying drunkenly on his feet. When that bastard stabbed me through the throat, I gave up on counter-attacking and poured all my focus into the reversed cursed technique. Cursed energy is negative energy. While it can enhance the body, it can't regenerate it. So you multiply that negative energy against itself to create positive energy. That's the reversed cursed technique!
"I'm well aware...
His senpai only laughed louder.
"Easier said than done! It might be easy for you, but I could never do that till' now!"
An evil shiver shot down his spine. 'Something's off with him, he's blabbing on and on. Is he high...? '
Sukuna -fragment though he was- sneered in his soul. "Well, well, well. You don't disappoint, do you, brat? Switch with me."
And miss out on this?! "Nah, lemme cook...
"Spoilsport...
Gojo was still gabbing on as he came back to himself, arms spread wide. "I finally grasped it on the verge of death. The true essence of cursed energy! This feels amazing! The reason that bastard's gonna lose is because you didn't chop my head off! And because he didn't used that cursed tool when he stabbed me in the head!"
Riko skittered behind Geto. "Scary...
Said student gulped. "Satoru...there's no easy well to tell you this, but that assassin...
"He's already taken care of." Naruto stepped between the two of them -just to be safe- and jerked a thumb into his jacket. "I handled it."
Gojo slumped in surprised, then blinked, briefly taken aback. "Huh, is that right?" Rather than retort, he only laughed again. "You could be right! You're so right! You're strong, Naoya!" Giggling, he slapped a palm to his bloodied forehead and doubled over as a fresh paroxysm of mirth shook his shoulders. Although...
Without warning, Gojo's grin… changed.
It honed.
Became sharper now. Edged like broken glass, glittering with something more than madness.
And all that insanity, that delirious high, that fresh awakening...
...fixated on him.
"Say, Naoya," Gojo rasped. "I've been wondering...
His spine cracked as he rolled his neck, shoulder twitching violently before snapping into place with an audible pop.
...Just how strong are you, really?"
He knew that tone of voice.
Sukuna started laughing.
"I mean, that guy got the drop on me, you know?" Heedless of the mounting peril, Gojo took a hand from his face and staggered forward, nearly tripping over his own two feet as he stumbled towards him. "Me!" The word burst out of him with another incredulous laugh. "He took me out. I'm not happy about that. But then you managed to up and off him, somehow? How'd you pull that off?"
He planted both hands in his pockets and stood his ground. "I have my ways."
"Sure, sure, sure." Satoru sang the words out like a drunken lullaby, utterly delirious. "But you still haven't answered my question."
Leaning forward, he loomed over him, practically pressing his forehead to hiss.
"How. Strong. Are ya?"
Yup. He'd seen this coming a mile away.
Naruto closed his eyes inhaled sharply. Exhaled once.
When next he opened them, they gleamed gold.
"Strong enough."
Gojo grinned. "Let's find out."
And just like that, the courtyard shattered.
(...Elsewhere...)
Mai shrieked as a kunai sliced past her cheek — so close it kissed skin and drew blood without breaking bone.
She stumbled, the sharp sting blooming across her face like fire, and ducked behind the crumbled remains of a garden wall.
"We're children!" she wailed, voice high and raw. "Are you crazy?!
"Then shoot like you mean it," Maki snapped, yanking her sister down with her. Her fingers were caked in dust, nails cracked. She slung her makeshift javelin from her back — a broken curtain rod, sharpened at one end, scorched black on the other.
The air reeked of ash and copper. Cursed energy hung like humidity — thick, sour, and crawling across the skin like oil.
"Naoya taught us better than this," Maki growled.
"He also said to run if we were outnumbered!" Mai shouted, pressing a trembling hand to her cheek. Blood trickled between her fingers.
Shukaku cackled somewhere out of sight, the tiny tanuki smothering a man with sand. Matatabi's feral hiss echoed it as she set another a blaze. Little though they were, they were fierce. But there were still...
So.
Very.
MANY!
"Well," Maki said, low and grim as she rose to a crouch, "we're bad at listening."
Three masked figures closed in from the far end of the alley — silhouettes half-swallowed by the fog, their shapes flickering, cursed tags sewn into their cloaks like scripture written in malice. Not just assassins. Sorcerers. Their energy screamed it.
One of them flung a net streaked with charms.
Maki didn't hesitate.
She twisted, caught it mid-flight with her javelin, and flung it back with a roar.
The cursed tags ignited mid-air.
The explosion tore through the alleyway with a thunderclap of violet light. Stone shattered. Dust rose in a choking plume. Shards of gravel pelted the ground like hail.
Mai didn't flinch.
She'd seen worse.
She was worse.
As the smoke flared upward, she surged from cover. Her gun rose like second nature — wrist firm, breathing short.
BANG.
One figure jerked and fell. A clean shot. Through the chest.
BANG.
The second shot rang hollow. A cursed shield shimmered, catching the bullet mid-air and deflecting it into the wall.
"I'm out!" she hissed, ducking again.
Maki didn't respond.
She was already moving.
She dropped the javelin — it had served its purpose — and grabbed a discarded metal pipe from the rubble. It was rusted. Bent. But it would do.
She charged.
There was no elegance in her sprint. No trained stance. Just a girl covered in ash and blood, sprinting with the singular fury of someone who refused to die.
Not like this.
Not like their mother.
Not in a dirty alley, buried under fear and expectation.
"For Naoya!" Maki roared.
She struck.
Steel met cursed blade.
The scream of metal-on-metal tore through the alley. Sparks burst, casting shadows like monsters onto the broken walls.
The masked sorcerer snarled something in a tongue not meant for mortals.
Maki didn't care.
She pressed forward, pipe slamming again and again, every blow a question carved into the world:
Is this enough?
Am I enough?
(.0.0.0.)
Gojo moved.
Not like a human.
Not like a curse.
He bent space.
No, more than that — he was space. The air around him didn't resist; it obeyed. Gravity seemed to pause to watch him work. Angles twisted as he stepped, the path from one footfall to the next folding like paper in the hands of a god.
Naruto dodged.
Not through reflex. Through instinct. The kind honed in blood. The kind that knew the sound of a man whose presence rearranged the world. Each step was a thread-width from destruction. Every twitch of Gojo's fingers rewrote the laws of proximity.
He didn't use his spheres.
No Creation of All Things. No manipulation of existence. Not yet.
This was raw.
A test.
He wanted to know what Gojo Satoru was like, fresh from the brink of death, unhinged and unfiltered — a man whose soul refused to quiet.
And what he found was...
Fun.
"You fight like a blender on steroids," Naruto muttered, twisting beneath a wide, spinning roundhouse that curved at an impossible angle midair.
Gojo laughed.
Sharp. Breathless. Honest.
"You punch like my grandma."
"I like your grandma."
They collided.
Fists crashed. Elbows cracked. Knees snapped forward like hammers. The courtyard echoed with the clash of motion too fast for the air to process. Each blow sparked — not light, but pressure, rippling in waves that made the dust on distant windows dance.
Neither of them flinched; neither of them slowed.
Behind them, Geto cursed, dragging Riko away as the ground itself began to protest — stone tiles buckling, roots beneath the earth splintering like kindling. The world didn't want this fight.
Too late.
Satoru's expression shifted — just for a breath. Something passed behind his glowing eye, something measured.
"You're holding back," he said, low and curious. Not accusing. Wondering.
Naruto's grin spread — wide, slow, and predatory.
"So are you."
Their cursed energy flared.
Not outward.
Downward.
Into the stone.
Into the bones of the earth.
The courtyard groaned. Then howled — not with sound, but with pressure. Space buckled, rippling like disturbed water. The stone beneath their feet crumbled to dust, crushed under the weight of opposing realities.
A single breath passed.
Then they moved again.
(...Elsewhere Again...)
Mai rolled.
The blade missed her eye by inches, but not her braid. Hair fluttered in the air like shed leaves, severed clean.
She didn't scream.
There was no breath left for that. Just the crackle of her lungs, the burn in her thighs, and the kind of exhaustion that sat deeper than bone.
And beneath all of it — rage.
Not loud. Not wild.
Just a steady no.
Maki lay sprawled in the gravel behind her, one leg torn open from hip to shin. Blood leaked from the wound in slow pulses, forming a lazy red halo beneath her. Her spear lay snapped nearby, a broken promise.
They were losing.
The masked attacker stepped forward, blade gleaming, posture sharp with certainty.
Mai didn't blink.
Her fingers moved to her belt.
One bullet left.
The bullet.
The one Naoya had handed her months ago. Quietly. Without explanation. She'd asked what it did. He'd only said, "You'll know when you need it."
She knew now.
Her hand shook as she chambered it. Not from fear. From adrenaline trying to carry too many burdens at once.
She raised the gun.
"Come on," she whispered. "Let's make them regret it."
She pulled the trigger.
The world shuddered.
Not with fire.
But sound.
A shriek tore through the alley — inhuman, metallic, like steel being stretched across a thousand miles and snapping all at once. A scream made of vibration and vengeance, wrapping itself around the bones of everyone who heard it.
The attacker didn't fall.
They flew.
Launched backward into the stone wall like a ragdoll in a hurricane, spine-first, arms flailing as their mask cracked and cursed seals ignited across their cloak. The impact left an imprint in the rock — dust billowing like breath.
Then—
Silence.
One figure remained. Standing.
For a moment.
Then they swayed.
And dropped like a puppet with the strings cut.
Mai's arms lowered, the gun still smoking in her grip. Her ears rang. Her legs trembled.
Behind her, Maki stirred.
She coughed once — blood flecking her lips.
"You okay?" she rasped.
Mai didn't turn right away.
She stared at the downed figures, the crater in the wall, the scorch where her bullet had rewritten the laws of force.
She exhaled harshly.
"Lucky shot,"
Maki laughed, hoarse and beautiful. "Liar."
(.0.0.0.)
Naruto exhaled through his teeth and dragged the back of his hand beneath his nose. Blood smeared crimson across pale skin — thick, metallic, still warm.
His vision cleared.
Gojo floated five feet above the cratered stone, as if the world itself had simply decided gravity no longer applied. Cursed energy coiled around him like a living storm — elegant, violent, beautiful. It flared and collapsed in pulses, forming shapes that never quite became real: fractals, rings, suggestions of infinity.
A sun in human shape. Untouchable.
"I like you," Gojo said, voice casual, almost cheerful — like he'd complimented Naruto's jacket instead of tried to crush his ribs a minute ago.
Naruto raised a brow. "You try to kill everyone you like?"
Gojo's grin turned wolfish. "Just the ones worth remembering."
That hung between them for a moment.
The air stilled. Pressure lingered — not just in their energy, but in their presence. Titans in mortal skin, playing at being men.
Naruto's fingers curled, flexing slightly, testing the tightness of a tendon in his wrist. A faint pop. Bruised, not broken.
He smiled. Not wide. Not cocky.
Genuine.
"Again?"
Gojo's eyes flashed — hair handing across his face. He pushed it up anyway, more out of habit than function.
And grinned.
Not because he needed to.
Because he couldn't help himself.
"Hell yes."
A/N: Scene~!
Would you prefer weekly updates or monthly ones? Do let me know!
As ever, reviews keep me alive. Without them, I cannot write. So...in the Immortal Words of Atlas...
...Review...Would You Kindly? Hope you enjoy the previews.
We've got some new ones and some are...intense.
They've been expanded and then some!
Read at your own risk:
WARNING! WARNING! WARNING~!
SPOILERS AWAIT THEE~!
YE BE WARNED~!
(Previews)
Most are condensed to save time and space. SKIP THEM IF YOU DON'T WANT TO BE SPOILED.
"Yuuuuuuta! Its so nice to finally meet you!"
"Humans, curses, demons, they're all the same thing in the end, really.
Everybody wants something in this life. There are no exceptions.
The key, my dear, is figuring out what that something is.
And once you've attained that knowledge...
...then the advantage becomes yours.
That is why Naoya will die.
My brother is soft.
WEAK."
"He may be, but I'm not."
"What the-who the devil are you?!"
"SUCH A POOR CHOICE OF WORDS."
Yo. I hear you need a fifth member."
"And you are...?"
The young man cracked his knuckles.
"Oi, now." his eyes began to glow. "That's my friend. GET YOUR FILTHY MITTS OFF HER."
"Listen to yourselves! Have you all bothered to think about what kind of person you're trying to curse?!
EDIT: Hope you enjoyed! Looking forward to your feedback~!
Hope you have a great day,
~Nz.