Her hands found his face, squishing his cheeks like a non-Newtonian fluid.
"You're back."
"I'm back," Yuji said. Yuji, not Sukuna. His tone of voice was different. The way the syllables fell off his tongue. Yuji, not Sukuna. It was his voice, and—a quiet part of her mind was horrified by it, but— it was his cursed energy too. Enflamed, larger than it had been in the morning, but unmistakably Yuji.
She let her hands fall, and with them the concave metal construct.
Tension was easing out of muscles Yuriko didn't even know she had. And now it didn't matter that she was bleeding, and that her throat had almost been slit. They were going to be fine, now. All of them. Iguchi had a fighting chance with the ambulance on its way, and the cuts were so clean, too. Replantation should be possible. Doubly so, if Satoru's white mage could work the magic he had once bragged she could.
Despite everything that had happened, everyone was going to be fine. But that begged the question.
"What happened?"
Yuji palmed the nape of his neck, answering with a chuckle riddled with fatigue and something approaching—but not quite bearing—the name of guilt. "I don't really get it either, but I think that robe guy knocked me out and put a finger in me."
Huh?! A quirk in her expression must have given away her perplexion. For what must have the second time—at most—since she'd known her, Sasaki Setsuko of all people was the one to clarify.
"He had two," she said like that was an answer. "Negi-sensei hit Itadori hard and fed him one. I think Sukuna ate the other?"
Yuriko's brow knitted. Darkness muddied her cursed energy, like someone had left a block of manganese to sit in water. Eat anything funny, recently? "That bitch. Kaori?"
Sasaki nodded.
Her molars were grinding now. Sukuna and the louse were the only presences she'd noticed. Kaori wasn't here. Of fucking course, she wasn't. Too content to hide behind her unthinking pawns. But the other one. Crawling to the school. Injured. Vulnerable. Weak. He would do nicely as a stain on the ruined grounds.
"Yu—yuriko..."
"Woah!"
The pressure receded, "Sorry," Yuriko sighed, lifting her fringe from her forehead. "This is fine. Probably. Is he still in there?"
"Sukuna?"
"Yeah."
Yuji nodded. Fuck. "And you're just...holding him back? Does it hurt?"
"Yeah, and not really?"
Hm. "Just for, say, half a second... would you hypothetically be able to bring him back out?"
"Probably. I think I just have to—"
"Stay right where you are—" Huh? "You're no longer human." Is that a fact? "Itadori Yuji, u-under Jujutsu regulations, I will now exorcise you as a cur—."
No.
Yuriko regarded Fushiguro for the first time, and in the same way a person might regard a patch of faecal matter hanging on the edge of their shoe.
Dark hair, like her father's; dark hair like Kaori's, like Mimiko's and all the little shits in middle school who had pulled on her hair for not looking quintessentially Japanese. They had posited that she was inhuman too. As soon as the words slipped from his mouth, Yuriko decided she did not like Fushiguro Megumi. The boy squirmed as the weight of her attention pressed against him.
"Say that again? I don't think I heard you."
"You—" His pupils widened. "You can't be serious. That's Sukuna. Don't you know who that is?"
"No," she lied, slapping the boy's hands apart. Astonishment erupted on his features, like he hadn't considered someone could do that. And Yuriko knew she had made the right choice.
No, absolutely not. She could still feel the pressure that had run across her neck. The inexorable touch of Sukuna's sure-hit effect. She was so certain he had cut her. And that too at the low-low cost of clasping his hands together... Hell no. Any hand signs a sorcerer made now registered as a legitimate threat in her mind. Fushiguro tried to cross his fists over each other again, and once again, she slapped them apart.
"His name is Itadori Yuji."
"What if he comes back?! We need to—"
"Who the fuck is we?"
"—report back to Jujutsu HQ."
"The same 'HQ' you said'll treat him like a curse? Fuck that. Maybe your focus should be on that ugly bastard sneaking through the bushes." She could feel the curse user tearing away— or what was left of them.
The wind was a little warmer than it should have been, partly because the forest was burning. A drop of water fled the realm of sky, finding refuge on her cheek. Irrelevant details, if not for the fact that feeling was a telltale sign that time was running out. Her final attack had taken the proverbial wind out of the not so proverbial sails that were her barrier. And beneath it, she could feel the agitation stirring the murky waters of her dwindling reserves. Fushiguro was Satoru's student. Yuriko was rooted to the spot, but in her head, she was already crossing the Rubicon of their flesh and blood. Her calculations were complete, and if she just fed them cursed energy, the little she had relative to herself, a projectile would resolve the issue that both the curse user and Fushiguro posed. But Satoru cared about Fushiguro. Thus, Fushiguro needed to live.
"He can keep him supressed," she groused through gritted teeth.
"We don't know that!"
"Let's find out, then. Yuji, let Sukuna out. Half a second. I'll spot you."
"No!"
"Got a better idea?"
Yuriko could see the gears shift behind the boy's eyes. A subtle creasing around his lip. A soft inhale, denoting comprehension. He was listening now, assessing the situation. Assessing her, no doubt. No doubt, would be changing his tactics; no doubt he would levy a lie in his favour. Yuriko's nose wrinkled, and no sooner had she come to that conclusion did Fushiguro—
"You're right," he said. And she took the easy admission for what it was. Bait. Her eyes narrowed a nano-angstrom. "You're right. It's not his fault. He fought the curse user with me, and it wouldn't be fair if..." get to the point. "But still, it's Sukuna. Just in case, you should get Itadori somewhere we can seal—"
And there it was.
"Fushiguro while I'm grateful for your help..." She was. She really was. The boy had made an adequate meat bag of himself, and for that reason alone, she hadn't kicked his teeth in yet. "You are not putting him in a goddamn box. You, or your cabal. If any of you so much as try, I'm enlisting you all into the air force."
"Uhm, Yuriko..."
"Not now, Sasaki."
"Look, you weren't here. They came for him specifically. They came prepared to feed him two of Sukuna's fingers." "Itadori, they're targeting you because they somehow knew you could host him without dying." Then he looked back at Yuriko, though he clearly never really let her drift from his view. "They'll be back. This will happen again."
"And I'll stop them, again."
"Like you stopped them this time?"
Her lips pursed. Yes, she didn't like Fushiguro one bit, but that didn't mean she was blind to the sense of what was said. They had planned around her schedule; they could likely do it again. Even in this case, had it not been for Nobara, Yuriko would have been at some derelict establishment eviscerating curses... She might not have even checked her phone.
"He's getting away," she deflected.
"He won't get far."
"Oh?"
"Gojo's on his way," he said. "You know who that is, right? Gojo Satoru?"
Oh. Convenient. Saved her from doing it herself. In hindsight, she should have called after receiving the S.O.S. An involuntary twitch found her lip, tilting them upward, before the movement inverted on itself and collapsed into a frown. The curse user was coming back. Still limping, still weak. Why?
"He called while you were fighting." Fushiguro elaborated, probably mistaking the nature of her expression. "As long as that guy's still in the city, he's not getting away."
Of course, the implication that went unsaid was a 'you won't, either.' She would have laughed under different circumstances.
"Sasaki. Pull Iguchi behind me."
***
Negi Tohihisa was still having a bad day. A bad couple of months, really. A bad life if he really stretched the definition. Everything was so much more uncertain without Geto-sama. He had turned monotonous struggle into purpose; the endless horde of curses into resources.
The curse user lifted his free hand. Fingers found a socket, snaking around, and digging, and digging until—pop. Power, pain. A new binding vow clicked into place the very instant the sensory organ was dislodged.
Tohihisa still remembered the first time a curse had come for him. Barely a fledgling of a sorcerer himself, unable to mask his presence, he might as well have been holding up a torch in the night.
And it was in the night that his first 'family' had been butchered. Too used to little Tohihisa crying about the things that weren't there, they ignored him as they always had.
A claw had ripped the life from 'dear mother', and a mandible left his 'sister' completely unrecognisable. And 'dear father?' His end was so pathetic, that Tohihisa wished he had killed him himself. 'Dad' had tripped down the stairs and cracked his skull upon the landing. All to a curse he would later learn could not have been higher than a Grade Three.
His 'father's' omamori—mundane faith, removed from Jujutsu—had only been good for clarifying splatter patterns. His 'mother's' athleticism hadn't delayed her death. It was Tohihisa, the fledgling sorcerer though he was, who had stopped it. He had been the only one with any agency in that scenario. The only one whose choices really mattered.
Weak. The Negis had been the perfect antithesis to him, and to all the sorcerers above him. Let alone to Geto-sama, for Ryoumen Sukuna and now to the girl, misguided though she was.
As Tohihisa watched the insects crawl over their cooling bodies—with the wound on his face that would accompany him for life—he had decided then that they had never been family. They hadn't even been human.
The recollection stung him deeper than the pain of the empty socket, and before he knew it, Tohihisa had thrown a punch into the kidney of his hostage.
Mr Stupid let out pitiful whimper and nearly toppled over in his hold. But Tohihisa was not so injured and depleted as to lose a contest of strength against a—
"Monkey," Tohihisa spat, weighing the word on his tongue. After his time at the school, and the events that occurred today, it was too light. Too generous.
They were less than that. Geto-sama was far too forgiving. Insect, he thought watching the teacher go slack in his grasp. Equally repulsive, but a better representation of the gap in agency between the two species.
The bug's knuckles went white from how hard it gripped the kitchen knife. Like that would do anything against his reinforcement. That was one act of defiance Tohihisa permitted.
He dragged his quarry across the clearing, and then he saw them: the girl with blood in her eyes, the vessel with the demon in his, and the Zenin with the potential to stand amongst them.
All fighting for the wrong purpose. Tohihisa scowled. "Here's how this is going to work."
Yuriko was livid. Angrier than she had been in a while.
"I'll do it."
But something warm was rising through the rage, like magma cutting through cracks in the lithosphere. It felt like the validation of a theory, like predicting rain on a day with clear skies, but it could have only been pride. He was kind, so unwaveringly earnest that the feeling fed right back into her anger.
"Yuji, don't."
"Seriously, don't," said Fushiguro and a flicker of shame crossed his face. "You're making a mistake."
When the curse user had returned, dragging Mr Tanaka in tow, it was apparent before he had even spoken that he wanted an exchange. But when he asked for Itadori Yuji, instead of a guarantee of his safety, well... If Yuriko had any doubts as to whom the mastermind of the operation was, they were dead and buried. It wasn't as if Negi knew, but Satoru was inbound. There was no way he could hold Yuji for long, but even the scant few minutes—at best—of custody over her friend were still a risk neither Yuriko nor Fushiguro were willing to take.
"He's made his choice," Negi sighed. "And as stupid as it is, there's no such thing as a 'mistake' for a sorcerer. Geto-sama taught me that."
"How asinine. You're making one now. What's stopping me from stopping you?"
"I'll kill him," Negi said. And to validate his threat, he let his already bloody fingers trail along her teacher's neck. The faintest spark of cursed energy on the ends of his digits. But it would be enough.
The sound Yuriko made was caught somewhere between a scoff and a guffaw. "You'll what? In front of me? How?"
"Don't act like you care. Don't act like you're willing to put in the effort to save this insect. I know damn well that the only one you actually care about is crawling behind you."
"You haven't answered my question."
"See no evil."
A wave of nausea crashed onto the shore of Yuriko's perception. The sky stood at her feet, hurling rain from below, and the ground soared above her head. She heard the other four groan, and the distinct sound of a Sasaki Setsuko slumping, before reflection snapped back into place. Her senses returned, but the barrier wouldn't hold for—
"Ah, ah, ah! Drop it. If I sense even the slightest flicker of output from you, I'm ripping his throat out."
Hadn't he just surmised that she didn't care? Did she? Yuriko looked at Mr. Stupid. At his fear-stricken eyes, and battered body so utterly cowed and radiating shame. It was a stretch to say she felt nothing, but what else could she say? If he lived, he lived. If he died, well... That wasn't her fault either. What had he done for her beyond spouting his inane brain teasers? She didn't owe him a thing, and she was about to say as much before she realised that Negi hadn't just been talking to her.
Yuji stepped beside her, and that sidelong glance might as well have been an open book on the chapter of his mind. One word stood out in bold. Please. But why? What did Itadori Yuji owe Mr Tanaka?
The answer came to her while that warm, bitter-sweet pride rose through the cracks of her incomprehension. It was the same thing he had owed her the day Special Grade curse attacked the school.
Nothing. And yet...
Yuriko sighed, she already had another plan, anyway. "While you're holding ItadoriYuji, any attempt on my end to harm you—this evening—will result in my immediate death."
""What?""
"Oh, and I'll stop Fushiguro, too. In return, you don't hurt Yuji, my friends or Mr. Tanaka, I guess. Or you die."
"Sounds... what's the catch?"
"This is the only millimetre I'm willing to give you. Take it and die later or leave it and die now."
Negi shrugged. "The vessel first. Don't think I didn't notice. I'm only safe while I hold him. And what's my guarantee that he won't try to escape? I need a vow from him, too."
"You won't get it." Not from him anyway. "If Itadori Yuji escapes by himself—this evening—I'll knock out the sea urchin." She thumbed in the direction of an offended-looking Fushiguro. "And I'llkill myself. Deal?"
"Deal."
They all felt it: the conditions slotting into place as the arbitrary arbiter of the world observed them.
"No!" Fushiguro's outburst had a certain lilt to it. A horror that should have been absent from the face of someone who knew the ETA of the strongest sorcerer. Ah, sohe noticed. Yuriko bit the inside of her cheek. No, she couldn't laugh just yet.
"Yuriko! This wasn't what I meant! You still don't care about your life?"
Mr. Tanaka jolted in Negi's arms. His bruised face lifted as his eyes widened. The rain pressed sodden hair against skin.
"I could ask you the same thing, dumbass." Yuriko sighed so deeply she would have ruptured an organ without her barrier. "Itadori Yuji. Do you even remember what we were talking about before he showed up? It hasn't even been half a second. Sukuna was a better listener."
"Hey! I don't think—"
"Quiet, urchin." She almost had to slap his hands apart again. "Just do the swap, Yuji."
That seemed to do it. The hint that broke the camel's back, as it were. Understanding dawned on his face, the same way it had when he'd finally understood what a benzene ring was, and then he walked toward Negi without another word.
"No... No! Not for me! Children, stop this at once!"
"A little late in the eleventh hour to be the adult, isn't it?" The curse user lightly kicked Mr Tanaka toward Yuriko.
Oh. She filed that little detail away for later, as she watched the moron clamp his hand around Yuji's wrist. The presence of Negi's middling energy dimmed even further, and with it, the influence of his technique. Yuriko could practically see the myofibrils in his shoulders relax as he turned his back to her. The fucker really thought he was getting away with it.
Pick your moment, Yuji.
Yuriko, in the meanwhile pulled her energy back under her skin—Negi's posture loosened even further. How had he done it? The abominable wretch now dwelling in her friend's body. Ryoumen Sukuna. The man had pointed, and a slash had followed with barely any lag. Like his cursed energy was already there, in his fingers, waiting to be primed. But she hadn't sensed a thing.
On December 8th, Yuriko had felt her cursed energy first time: a twisting, mercurial thing resting deep within her gut. So subconsciously, she imagined her gut as an origin, and a series of vectors stemming from that point as the 'flow' of her cursed energy. It had served her well enough when dispatching unthinking entities—the Hasaba sisters included—but against Sukuna and now, embarrassingly, the curse user before her it was far too slow.
Sukuna had pointed. Cursed energy surging from his fingers, not from his gut to his fingers.The slash hadmanifested on the world.
And when he had cut his face off to break her grip, it, too, had come from his face. Was the King of Curses just that unique of an existence, or was it that for everyone—every sorcerer—everywhere was the origin? A fist clenches involuntarily, eyes harden at the advent of emotion, lips give away a lie before it is spoken. The entire body was a vehicle for cursing, so why couldn't the entire body generate cursed energy at once?
Pick it well, Yuji.
Yuriko imagined the world as a graph, with as many axes as she could quantify intersecting at an origin. And at that origin was her: mind, body and—if such an unscientific thing even existed—her soul all at once in the world. [0,0,0,0...].
In her mind's eye, she was above the scene, watching. To her left, Mr Tanaka had released the santoku. Not to the floor in defeat, but in a desperate sweeping motion, the blade shot toward Negi's right shoulder with unerring accuracy. His famed 99.9% success eraser pitch. The curse user was on guard for cursed energy, not the mundane sting of a so-called 'insect'. The knife struck true.
Negi howled, and in that moment, Itadori Yuji ceased to be. Yuriko felt it. Negi felt it. For zero-point-five seconds, Negi was holding not a boy, but the King of Curses himself.
Point five seconds. Yuriko had closed the distance before Negi could react to her cursed energy. Her fingers wrapped around his face, shielding her friends from his eye. Before Sukuna could do anything—cursed energy struck Negi immediately upon his manifestation. Correction: before Sukuna could do more than severing the arm that Negi held him with, Yuriko planted her left foot into his midriff.
'More. The next time you strike me, put more curse into it.'
"Lesson one received, sensei." And she smiled with all her teeth as the foot connected. Yuriko saw it this time. As the unceasing march of time carried the moment onwards, Yuriko saw the sparks. Black Flash!
Sukuna flew and landed somewhere beyond her field of vision. His cursed energy shortly subsumed by Yuji's.
"Mpph." Negi's went wide.
Yes, Yuriko could have waited for Satoru to show up. Yes, that would have been the neatest way to resolve the issue. But Satoru was awfully tolerant, and Negi needed to die.
"Just not here."
Not with her friends watching... or Fushiguro.
***
Negi closed his eyes. Warm, he was somewhere warm. Steam clung to his robes like another layer of clothing. Sweat was dotting his brow. Negi opened his eyes.
He had blinked and the surroundings changed. The burning forest he had nearly escaped through, before greed found him as he had found the teacher. Weeks of studying Itadori had been enough to learn how highly the boy valued the presence of others. And his apotheosis hadn't changed his affection for the insects.
His body hit the ground, and he could breathe again. The air tasted of ash.
"Binding vows are just as much about their intent as they are their wording," she said, meeting his single pupil with the same level of detachment that a bird might observe the sky. "For someone so certain of his own superiority, you make a lousy sorcerer."
***
"Why..." Tohihisa swallowed. The hand that he still had was applying pressure to the phantom of the absent one. "Why are we still talking?"
She paused for a moment, as if to ponder the question.
"I'm trying to see this from Yuji's point of view. To see your intrinsic worth, or rather, what I owe you as a fellow human being. Honestly?" She tilted her head— her mien as level as a pond untouched by wind and rain. "I don't get it. Show me your humanity."
Did she want an apology? Or was this a chance for him to succeed where Geto-sama had not? A chance to make her see things his way. Suzushina was arrogant, overbearingly so. It... wasn't unearned, and completely valid in a world determined by strength. But he could work with that.
"Humanity? We aren't human, Suzushina."
An eyebrow was raised.
"We're gods!"
Silence.
"At least, compared to them. Look around!" he shouted, his voice impassioned by pain. "We did this. You did this. And what did they do? Nothing. None of their choices mattered her today."
Suzushina made a pointed glance at his bleeding shoulder.
"They don't matter. They're weak"—a stray hit sends father tumbling over the banister— "Helpless." Claws expose mother's entrails to open air. "Oblivious." His sister doesn't see it. Even as he screams, even as Tohihisa forges his every inch across the living room. He misses her by a hair. She doesn't see it until its jaws sink into her face and pull.
"They're monkeys," he spat. "Insects." Tohihisa stared into those pools of oblivion. The red bored back into him like a prophecy. "I survived; they did not. Me! Alone for years until I found my people. My strength is my 'humanity.'"
Tohihisa didn't even know he was crying until he heard a tear sizzle against the hot mud. Suzushina made no comment. Instead, she sighed. The genuine article of the sound she had made early while she was throwing her hints toward the vessel. A sound that was curt in its finality.
"I really don't see it." The girl pressed her thumbs into her temple. "A god? You? I have to say, I see more value in insects. Real insects. At least when the end comes, and the boot falls, an insect wouldn't waste my time by blustering."
"Wait—"
"Goodbye."
Her fingers flexed, and his world went crimson.