I cannot stress enough how non-canon and low effort the following passagesare. I've barely read over/edited any of it. Some modulo spoilers ahead. Contains mild lobotomy. Not my best work, etc.
I'm still working on the actual next chapter.
A time traveller kicks a rock, thus Sasaki is unable to meet Yuriko in chapter 16(Struggler.)
Does she know?
"Achoo!"
A bed-ridden girl. A flushed face, and eyes that swam behind the glasses she forgot to take off last night. Her mother stands bedside.
"Setsuko... I did warn you to stay warm. How did you even get so soaked on Friday?"
"Hehe, self-defence rush!" Setsuko manages a smile through her delirium. She throws punches at the air like it was the reason Dragonball Evolution had happened. "Blub, blub."
"Oh, honey. You know I can't understand you when you start speaking like that," Mrs Sasaki sighs. "Well, there's nothing else for it, you're staying home today."
"But Tsundere-chan is sad," whines Setsuko. "She needs more clothes! She can't stop the Dark Reunion without them. It's too cold!"
"Sweetie, whatever you're talking about, I'm sure it's not the end of the world."
***
The world is ending and Gojo Satoru, the strongest sorcerer of the modern day removes his blindfold. Huh. Yup. We're all cooked. And he smiles.
"Eet eez, what eet eez."
***
"With this treasure I summon—"
***
Zenin Compound
It's getting warmer dramatically fast, and Naoya just knows that someone with two X chromosomes, and or she/her pronouns is to blame. He just couldn't prove it.
"Women," he croaks, and one of his attending maids spoon-feeds his coffee to him.
***
Somewhere, probably
"Bu—but I took... My evil plans..."
***
"But the doctors tell mama I only have one more birthday to look forward to..."
"And I'll be there for that one too, Hiro-kun."
The declaration makes the seconds hang by their fingertips.
"Promise?" asks the boy, and his voice toes the line between absolute trust, and desperation.
"I promise," says the star.
He smiles now. This is the first time he has smiled in weeks.
"Can you," the boy asks, as he looks down shyly. "Onee-chan, could you give me a...?"
"It will be my honour, Hiro-kun." The idol leans in closer, sitting at the edge of her seat. "Tan, Taka-tan!"
She beams, and the room finds a second way to light up.
***
Potentially
It is Tengen who feels it first. The probe from Sendai. An inquiry so small, so minute, that Tengen would have missed it had it not proceeded to grasp the macrocosm. Then comes the shift. The upset. The change triggers from an insignificant expenditure of cursed energy. By then it is all too late for their barriers to do anything to stop it.
A 4.54-billion-year legacy. In one and a half million kilometres, the only things alive would be a scant few curses, themselves, and Satoru. [To amend this, Ryoumen Sukuna undertakes another binding vow.] Tengen would have laughed if the rapid convection wasn't making it so hard to breathe. A world of only sorcerers, though not the way Suguru had envisioned. Was it Kenjaku? Perhaps it would have been prudent to inform the Jujutsu community of his existence...
"Somehow, I blame Fushiguro."
Hm, but which one though?
"Both," they decided. "But is good."
/-/
JJK Modulo What if.
I won't be there no matter what.
"I wonder what they call this technique here?"
"Fascinating." The Simurian let out a sigh of appreciation and flipped the comic to its next page. "Truly, Earth's Jujutsu is very advanced."
"Real shit," replied Mahoraga, as he inspected the document from over the alien's shoulder.
***
It had taken several adaptations, a domain clash and a few other techniques that Dabura hadn't used since right-the-fuck-now, but the Divine General had reached the final stage in his evolution.
Mahoraga had unlocked its most potent adaptation since the advent of the Ten Shadows Technique, when the Zenin clan had yet to be a thought in its founder's mind. Language. No, truly. No blade cut sharper than a tongue; no greater deterrent for conflict than well-crafted conversation. At least, when it came to Dabura—he had gone dizzy from how often his wheel had spun during their bout.
Mahoraga had arrived at that apotheosis, because quite frankly, the mods were either dozing off, or high, and didn't seem to notice that the alien was blatantly cheating. Reverse cursed technique? Fine. Sure, that was a matter of inspiration. Even Fushiguro had been able to do it.
Wait, no, he was thinking of Nobara.
But a curse technique reversal...okay that naturally followed RCT, but—Domain Expansion??
Gege! Do something! He's using wall hacks!
At this rate there would be no adapting to the allegations. He was about to be oh-for-four, the Divine fraud. That couldn't stand, not him.
So Mahoraga had instead focused the cheater's existence. That was to say, the entity known as 'Dabura Kabara.' His personality, his proclivities, hobbies and idiosyncrasies.
Then at last, after a particular bullshit flavour of attack had been charged up with a criminal degree of glee, Big Raga, for the first in his existence saw fit to speak.
"So, you like comics?"
And not a moment too soon. The death bomb veered to the left, and in a clamour like so many thunderbolts, what almost all that remained of the city below them ceased to be.
"Oh? More Jujutsu?" Dabura's countenance softened and became firmer all at once. "Put it in my veins."
And that was how they found themselves in what used to be a western comic bookstore in Akihabara.
Dabura was currently pouring over Showcase (1956), issue #4, depicting the fictional character 'Barry Allen,' also known as the Flash.
He seemed to think that 'Showcase,' meant the story was an account of real events—what, did they not have peak fiction on Simuria? It was an easy enough misunderstanding to assuage, but on account of not wanting to get blasted again, Mahoraga said...
"Real shit."
"Indeed." Dabura nodded. "It seems this Earthling has a kind of speed technique that allows him to violate general relativity. Is it possible to learn this power?"
"Not from a—wait, aren't you fast enough already?"
"Perhaps," he said. "But I want to get faster. I want to become a faster version of the person I was five seconds ago."
"I see..." He was getting a headache.
"Well, then." Dabura grabbed his hand and shook it firmly. "You've convinced me. Until I master this technique, we'll tentatively call it a draw. Let us reconvene in an hour."
The Simurian tucked the comic book under his arm and stalked his way out of the department store.
Mahoraga slumped against the wall, thinking of the child who was still sequestered in a shadow somewhere. She could stand to wait a little longer, if she could still stand that was.
"God, I miss Sukuna."
***
A minute became two minutes, became thirty, became an hour as the Divine General adapted to the stages of grief. It wouldn't be long now. He'd already accepted the additional mark on his record, once the slighted alien, upon realising he'd been tricked returned to glass the whole complex.
Instead, what he heard when the man returned made him wish he had.
"Ah, Earth's techniques."
Mahoraga's blood ran cold.
"Tell me, do you too use what they call 'binding vows?' Equivalent exchange for greater power. How fascinating."
Oh shit. Oh Buddha, oh no. Gege, stop him!
"In exchange for keeping my third eye closed every other Earth Thursday, I can temporarily—and safely—convert all the mass of my body into negative mass for one instant."
"How the hell is than an equivalent exchange?! Where on Earth is the cost??"
"I don't know 'where' on 'Earth,' I just got here."
"..."
"But on Simuria, the third eye is sacred. Closing it or even covering it up is an affront to our culture. The cost is personal. Only someone like Maru, or Cross, could transgress so casually."
"..."
"Anyway." Dabura raised his fists again. "Let's go."
"Woah, woah, woah. No! You're explaining that shit."
The alien sighed, and pulled out—was that a phone? "I consulted some papers written by the Earth sorcerer known as 'Albert Einstein.' E=MC2... Fascinating."
If Mahoraga had eyes, he'd have rolled them so far back he could watch his brain dying in real time. Brace yourselves for the pseudo-science onslaught.
"An object with mass can't possibly reach the speed of light. It would take a near-infinite amount of energy. And I don't have that...yet. Instead, I take my mass and then piss on the Higg's field using the binding vow—truly, an advanced technique."
"..."
Mahoraga was unadapting its newfound capabilities. It seemed there actually was no real benefit to discourse.
"Well said! Now we fight."
Dabura took a step forward, and the universe screamed.
Somewhere, lost in the distortion, was a single sentence spoken to the wind.
"It doesn't matter."
***
The surroundings warped and by the time his perception caught up with him, Dabura was careening through multiple buildings. It didn't take him long to find his footing, but the next thing he found as he lifted himself from the brickwork was a landscape that was all at once alien—heh—and familiar.
He looked around. The city was still in a state of disrepair, but it was broken in ways that had nothing to do with him, Mahoraga or the cursed spirits that had been running amok.
Buildings were speared through other buildings. Chunks of infrastructure were simply missing, like someone had carved out whole in an Earth dessert using a straw. Other building had been severed by something impossible thin.
But most importantly he could—
"Yowai mo!"
A slap resounded.
"Tch."
Then a sonic boom.
A shout, the likes of which sounded like it came from two mouths at once rang wrought with frustration across the city. Its source was bouncing between two curse energy signatures, like it was a ball from some Simurian sport.
Dabura reached into his pocket and pulled out the device he had only 'recently' snatched from Tsurigi's pocket mid-fight, he looked at its screen.
The year was 2018.
Dabura had taken a step forward in space and gone the other direction in time.