Flashback, POV: Gojo Satoru.
Insects scuttle in and around the hallway.
He is several months removed from the present—in a dilapidated apartment complex, somewhere in Sendai.
Reports of unusual noises. Missing pets. The works.
'Okay!' Satoru says. 'You feel that?'
'Mm.'
'Places like these—like your school too—they're breeding grounds for low-level curses. Sucks for the residents.' He flashes her a smile. 'For you though, they'll be perfect for learning—' how to fight— 'how to manage your reserves better.'
She shrugs, and they walk in silence. A platoon of ants line the floor.
Under his soles, they are befuddled momentarily, before safely resuming their marches.
Under her soles, arthropodal bodies warp, and contort beyond the stopping power of her weight.
He watches her between each footfall, and the next. Gliding along like no force in the world could ever slow her down, let alone stop her. The resemblance is…
'Turn it off,' he says.
'Huh? Why?'
'You'll be performing these exorcisms without your technique. You can handle that, right?'
She glowers at his tone, but her answer is—
Present day
"—Sure!" said Satoru.
Dark clouds were prowling overhead, their soft, loafy forms ponderous with the promise of precipitation. None had covered the Kyoto campus yet, but they encroached. He was sure he was the only one who paid them any mind. Just as he was sure he was the only one who noticed the encroaching embarrassment in Yuriko's expression. She had a surprisingly honest face—even when it wasn't flushed. Her eyes widened like a child so accustomed to asking, but never receiving. Which… yeah.
Yuriko trembled. He saw the ghost of a genuine smile haunt her face, before the moment passed and she exorcised it with prejudice.
"Good," she mumbled, lowering into a crouch.
"Well, I can't say I remember your moth-Mmmph—"
As the head of the Gojo clan, there was some decorum that was expected of Satoru. As the man everyone else was too weak to keep in check, his fingers snapped out and pinched Naobito's lips shut.
"Time and place," he hissed.
Luckily, the bulk of Yuriko's focus lay elsewhere.
"Suzushina!"
"Oh, shut it, Kugisaki."
Both girls were glaring at each other. Nobara, more so than Yuriko. She was also looking at him. A concoction of expression that was four parts shock, six parts condescension. Ouch.
Nobara knew who he was. Unlike Yuji. Unlike Setsuko. She knew, at least in the broad strokes, what it meant to challenge Gojo Satoru.
"This is just like the river—" Nobara lectured.
"I said shut it..."
"—You think you're gonna float!"
"River this, river that." Yuriko guffawed. "If you miss that fucking river so much, maybe you should just go back to where you came from?"
Silence. But it was mostly permitted because Satoru's free hand shut forward and clamped Zenin Naoya's jaw shut before he could speak.
Yuji and Setsuko exchanged a look before clearly deciding it was none of their business. Smart. And Nobara? Her jawline hardened. Her glare became… It was still a glare, but its focus had changed. Its scope broadened. She wasn't looking at Yuriko anymore, she was looking around her. Whatever she saw made her sigh.
"Fat chance," Nobara finally scoffed. "My idiot cousin still needs someone waiting on the bank."
Yuriko's nostrils flared, and she turned her head back to Satoru. "See you down there in five…And," she said pointing at Yuji. "Don't let him watch." Then she vanished without another word.
A solitary raindrop landed where she had been.
"mMMmphuck."
Five minutes became ten, and then twenty as the spectator pool ballooned. First it was the higher-ups, and their stooges, filtering through the stands like water through a colander. No doubt they were there—at least in part—for schadenfreude. They hated Satoru, true enough. They hated the implication of Yuriko even more.
And then it was a rare call from Hakari. Mei Mei's crows patrolled the sky, recording, again. A partnership: wider viewership meets higher quality footage.
By the time Satoru had made it on 'stage', he was sure that most of the Jujutsu world and a little beyond would be tuning in. It was time to make his student look as cool, and as scawy as he possibly could! Even if that was only his secondary objective.
The rain had begun in earnest. A gentle drizzle against the backdrop of the moment. It was picking up. Gaining weight, greying out the sky, until all he could taste was earthy petrichor—if he allowed himself to.
None of it touched him. And none of it was touching her, either.
Yuriko stood on the other end of the glade. Her hands were fidgeting with something tucked away in her pockets. Droplets fell towards, and then fell away from her wholesale.
Not a single gap.
The similarities to Infinity had never been lost on him, but this was the first time he was viewing his student as an opponent.
"Just so you know," he whispered, fully aware that she could hear him. "You win if I don't beat you in fifteen. Ya'know, so you don't have any excuses!"
"If I don't knock that shit-eating grin off your face in five," She stepped forward. "I'll take the loss."
Grin? he thought. I'm smiling? "You know what?" Lightning cut through the clouds. "Yeah. Good luck. I'm about to have so much fun, I think I'll be grinning through the week."
He took a step.
"So it's a bet then." And her expression became a reflection of his own. She stood on her toes, wind and rain responding to her mood. "What do I get when I win?"
"If. If, if you win… let's say…" He made a show of stroking his chin, and just like clockwork—
"You'll tell me what you told my da—Mayuri at the apartment."
Hehe. "Letters," Satoru admitted as generously as the sky yielded its bounty. "Your mother left two letters behind for… well." He pulled down his blindfold. "I honestly don't know the specifics." Satoru heard her breath hitch. "When I win I'll read them both, and decide if you should yet." The playful look in her eyes had begun to crystalise into focus. "If a miracle happens then..."
The only sound left in the world was the rain on the grass, and the subtle hint of rolling thunder.
"You had no right to…" Yuriko growled. "Fine, deal, and if you win—"
"When I win. You'll tell me what your technique—"
"Motion," she spat. "Heat, electricity. I can alter any kind of vector I come in contact with. If it moves, and I can calculate it, it's my bitch. All the way down to subatomic interactions."
"Huh?" His smile almost slipped then and there. That's… "Bullshit…"
Yes, but it was also the truth. He saw it in the flow of her cursed energy. He saw it in her power sharpening along its edges. The vow that was placed by revealing one's hand. He saw it more in her smirk as she met his disbelieving eyes.
"What about the uncertainty principle?"
She hand waved his question away, practically bouncing on the spot.
"Fuck Heisenberg, I guess… You know we're being recorded?"
"They won't hear what you heard." Yuriko explained. "But they will see me reap the benefits for saying it."
Ah. "...You're incorrigible."
She rolled her eyes, "We going to keep talking, or…?"
"Only if you want to." No response. "Good."
He blurred. She blurred. And the whole world screamed where their fists met.
***
Jujutsu HQ, POV: Gojo Satoshi (non-canon ahh grandfather)
Veterans of the great families, and only the most elite members of the obscurer clans. These were the Jujutsu higher-ups. Men who had clawed their way up from nothing, and distinguished themselves amongst their already distinguished families. It naturally followed that the rest of Jujutsu society would defer to their wisdom… Until the birth of—
"Gojo Satoru!" someone shouted.
"Agreed," said another. "Has he no shame? To think he would agree to… this blasted thing! They speak, and I cannot hear them! Turn it up!"
These men. These Tengu who had kept the political climate of the supernatural world stable for decades on end were… huddled around a cellular device.
Its toxic glow bathed the room with scenes from the Kyoto campus, overlaid with with an interface:
Place your bets!
Gojo Satoru: 1.00 vs Suzushina Yuriko: 500.0.
"Tch. As if it would ever be in doubt."
The former being the overwhelming favourite. The only way to turn a profit would be betting on the brevity of the bout.
Gojo Satoru will win in one move.
Gojo Satoru will open his domain.
Gojo Satoru will…
On the screen, the two converged until about two metres apart. Suzushina very much the challenger could hardly stand still as they spoke. Satoru simply dominated with his stillness.
"Gambling? The barbarity!" Gojo Satoshi glowered. "We must find the sorcerer responsible for turning a sorcery battle into… Into some secular commodity! Against the Six Eyes, no less. 'Chance of Suzushina landing a blow, 0.3%...' I would say they were making a mockery of us all if it wasn't for…"
"A mockery of you alone, Gojo-dono." The white-haired man's attention snapped away from the phone and to the intruding voice of the new speaker. A rat-faced Kamo clansman stood at the threshold of the room. He crossed over and approached. "Worried she may yet make a fool of your clan?"
He took a moment to study the wounded pride in the man's visage, before scoffing. The Zenin had ought to investigate the Kamo for lineage theft, because it seemed like the elder before him was using projection sorcery.
"Hardly," Satoshi muttered, letting the accusation roll like water down his back. "But is it not strange? How fast everything is changing?"
"You had no right to—" Suzushina's tinny voice rang from the cellphone.
"Ugh, spare the sentiment, Gojo-dono… The world is replete with impertinent children. How is this one any more remarkable than that grandson of yours?"
"It's not sentiment," he corrected. "Does it honestly not confound you? First it was Tsukumo Yuki, then it was Geto Suguru. Then it was Okkotsu, and now..." Satoshi tapped the screen as he said that. "From nowhere. From out the woodwork. Okkotsu was, let's say, a miracle but he is tied to us by blood. A civilian sorcerer does not survive an exchange with Ryoumen Sukuna. Let alone a child. A girl."
"Your point?"
Heat rose into Satoshi's face. How myopic! How indolent!
"The skies are clear, but you don't see Mt Fuji!" he damn near shouted. "A civilian boy capable of hosting the King of Curses. A plebian curse user who brought the entirety of Jujutsu society to a standstill in December. And once again, now, this child from obscurity who threatened us with the consent of our strongest asset, and has once again conscripted the benchmark of what we consider the pinnacle—"
A Zenin clansman snorted.
"—The pinnacle of sorcery itself to be her personal show pony. Nothing is sacred anymore!"
"Satoshi…you make it sound like you earnestly believe she could—"
"My technique," said Suzushina. The room went still. "Gives me absolute control of any fluid I come into contact with. Air, moisture. If I touch it, I control it."
"Oh?"
"... That's it?"
"I see…" Kamo-dono stroked his beard. "She was just the perfect counter to…" His eyes sharpened. "If we could mix her blood with our clan, then…?"
A hand thumped against Satoshi's shoulder. "This is the child from obscurity who worries you so, old friend?"
Satoshi was sure he knew the man who had spoken, but he barely paid him any mind. He could barely register the relieved sighs ringing, or the predatory hums that rumbled the throats of the Jujutsu elite.
The men around him were studying Suzushina's words, and the way her cursed energy responded, but Satoshi looked at his grandson. His grandson whose eyes had just lit up like they had in his teenage days. Like they had when he had met Geto Suguru, and for the first time since his birth saw the promise of an equal.
Satoshi scanned the faces of his relaxing colleagues, and sighed with all of his soul.
"Well. I hardly see a way forward for the idiot girl, do you?" One said.
Fools, Satorshi mentally admonished. Fools,the lot of you.
On the screen his grandson became a flurry of pixels, and threw his fist at the girl, only to—
***
POV: Suzushina Yuriko
There were several ways forward. Several ways to circumvent a defence like Limitless. A few of them were even available to her, but for now... there was something pressing that Yuriko needed to test. Her pride as an Accelerator fan demanded it. Her budding pride as a sorcerer demanded it more.
So, she launched herself at Satoru, seeing herself reflected in the mirror of his eyes, as he cast his own strike toward her—
The end goals of Infinity and Reflection was to isolate their users from harm. Where they differed was in their methodologies.
—Yuriko's knuckles stopped just shy of his own, but Satoru… The air cracked like a returning bolt was screaming for the heavens. But it wasn't lightning that had flown, and Gojo Satoru wasn't sent careening into the sky. He had dug a furrow along the ground with body, kicking up mud, and muck as he sailed along unblemished by either. Unblemished. Displaced nonetheless.
Because the difference between Infinity and Reflection was that Infinity was downright kind. It was a threshold that placidly forgave momentum, while her own barrier did unto others what they would have done unto her. A barbed shield. Force, counterforce. If it were anyone else, their arm would have broken.
If it had been anyone else—
"The fuck?" Yuriko marvelled, appearing at his side more so than moving to it. She crouched by Satoru's face wearing what had to be the cockiest smirk of her life, as she stared him down. "What the hell are you still smiling about?"
Three things became an indelible fixture of that moment in Yuriko's memory for years to come:
The flash of lightning that set the scene aglow. The sharp drop in the barometric pressure. The deep, unrestrained howl of laughter that Satoru released from every stratum of his being.
"Lesson one," he chuckled, in lieu of an answer. "Phase."