Hokkaido was colder than Tetsuya expected.
The city block was already cordoned off by the time he arrived. Yellow tape, uniformed officers directing foot traffic away, the usual song and dance.
A gas leak, they'd said. Standard Jujutsu society cover story.
Evacuations complete. Civilians clear. The stage was set.
Tetsuya stood on a rooftop three buildings away, adjusting the large scroll strapped to his back. The blue fabric wrapped around the massive cylinder shifted slightly as he moved, the weight familiar and grounding.
His cloak billowed faintly in the wind, dark and unassuming. Just like before, the cursed tool was drawing energy from him and hiding his presence, so to speak.
Worth every yen he paid. God bless the Zennin money.
His eyes locked on the target below.
There.
The curse was vaguely humanoid. Tall, maybe three meters, with too many joints in its limbs and skin that looked like wet clay. Its hands were oversized, fingers long and precise, moving with the delicate care of an artist at work.
And it was working.
On a person.
A man. Middle-aged. Sobbing. Screaming.
The curse had him pinned against a wall, one massive hand pressed to his chest, fingers sinking into flesh like it was putty.
The man's body was changing.
His left arm extended, bone cracking and reforming, muscle stretching grotesquely. His torso widened, ribs pushing outward. His legs thickened, joints reversing.
He was still alive. Still conscious. Still feeling every second of it.
The curse tilted its head, studying its work with the focus of a sculptor refining a masterpiece.
Tetsuya's jaw tightened.
He pulled out his phone and sent a single text.
Now.
A moment later, cursed energy surged from a building two blocks away.
A massive veil formed, spreading outward like a dome of shadow, enclosing the entire city block in darkness.
The curse's head snapped up, eyes glowing faint yellow, body tensing.
But it was looking in the wrong direction.
It was looking up, confused about the weird thing that covered the area around it.
Not toward Tetsuya.
He moved.
Silent. Invisible. The cloak bending cursed energy, wind currents, and everything around him as he dropped from the rooftop and crossed the distance in seconds.
His right hand reached back, gripping the scroll.
His left hand rose, fingers forming the sign.
Two fingers extended upward. The rest clasped together.
The veil hand sign.
The curse finally sensed something. Its head started to turn.
Too late.
As Tetsuya's feet landed right next to the curse, he yanked the scroll free and unfurled it with a sharp snap of his wrist.
The massive blue parchment unrolled mid air, revealing lines of sealing script written in black ink, pulsing with dormant cursed energy.
The curse's eyes widened.
It tried to move.
The scroll activated.
Five separate wrappings peeled away from the parchment, each one covered in the same sealing script, glowing bright violet as they shot forward like living things.
They wrapped around the curse's limbs, torso, and neck, binding it in layers of sealing paper.
The curse shrieked, thrashing, trying to break free. It probably would have, if not for what transpired moments later.
"Emerge from the darkness, blacker than darkness. Purify that which is impure."
Cursed energy exploded outward.
A second veil formed. His own.
Weirdly enough, before it could increase, it snapped into about twenty meters in size, before starting to shrink.
Tetsuya could feel the Binding vow forming in his mind, sharp and clear.
Of course, Tetsuya hadn't slacked off in refining other parts of being a sorcerer.
The condition went something like this.
'For the two day duration of the twofold seal, or until it is unsealed, I forfeit three fourths of my cursed energy.'
Immediately, his reserves plummeted.
Almost all his cursed energy gone. Just like that, bound by his own words.
But the barrier was amplified immensely. Not only that.
The sealing paper glowed brighter, tightening around the curse like iron bands.
'I sacrifice the size of this veil. Until the seal is broken or unsealed, I forfeit my ability to form any other kind of barrier, as well as said veil's size.'
The twenty or so meter veil shuddered.
Then it collapsed inward.
Faster and faster, shrinking from twenty to five, to two, to one, and even further beyond(heh).
The curse screamed, body compressing with the veil, forced smaller and smaller as the sealing paper wrapped tighter.
Before long, twenty meters became nothing more than a palm sized sphere.
The curse, the veil, the sealing script, all of it condensed into a single point.
A small, white ball, with the sealing paper wrapped tightly, and with black smoke faintly shifting from the small gaps the paper had. Warm to the touch.
Tetsuya stood there, breathing hard, the weirdness of his cursed reserves a first for him.
Inside, the curse was trapped.
After all the sealing paper was the same kind that was made to contain Sukuna's fingers.
Not only that. His sneak attack, combined with his own compressed veil and two binding vows stacked on top of each other?
The curse never really stood a chance, as close as it was to being a special grade.
Tetsuya exhaled slowly, staring at the sphere. But Tetsuya wasn't fully focused on it.
Rather, Tetsuya was focused on his cursed energy.
Or rather, the semi absence of it.
Three fourths of it was gone.
But it wasn't gone gone.
He could still sense it. Like a phantom limb. Present but untouchable.
Despite the emptiness in his reserves, until the seal was broken, he would be unable to regain cursed energy.
"Huh. Looks like I'm late."
Tetsuya's head snapped up, and to the side.
A man stood about ten meters between two apartment complexes, hands shoved in his pockets, broad shoulders, scarred face, black hair tied back loosely, and a purple worm on his shoulder.
'Toji Fushiguro!? What the hell is he doing here!'
"Uh...Nice to finally meet you, uncle." Tetsuya spoke, voice steady despite the sudden spike of adrenaline and nervousness.
Toji's eyes narrowed.
"Uncle? Am I getting that old?" He spoke as he took a step or two closer.
Then he let out a short, surprised sound.
"Oh." He stepped closer, studying Tetsuya's face. "You're Jinichi's kid, aren't you?"
Tetsuya nodded, slipping the sealed sphere into his cloak.
Toji's presence was strange.
On one hand, Tetsuya's cursed energy senses just... slid off him. Like trying to grab water with bare hands. There was nothing there. No cursed energy. No signature.
On the other hand, he felt strong.
Dangerously strong.
The kind of strength that didn't need cursed energy to kill.
"Sorry, Uncle Toji." Tetsuya said. "I kinda need this cursed spirit. Do you mind?"
Toji tilted his head slightly, then shrugged.
"Would be best if you just gave it to me, kid. Killing kids leaves a sour taste in my mouth now."
Tetsuya met his gaze evenly.
"How much did they pay you?"
Toji paused.
Then smirked faintly.
"Fifty million."
Tetsuya pulled out his phone without breaking eye contact.
"What's your bank account?"
Toji blinked.
'No hesitation? Damn. Should have upped it by ten more.'
He rattled off the numbers.
Tetsuya typed, confirmed, and hit send.
Toji's phone buzzed a moment later.
He glanced at the screen.
Fifty million yen. Deposited. Just like that.
He stared at the number for a moment, then looked back at Tetsuya.
For half a second, he considered mentioning that the original job was only forty million.
Then he decided to just go home.
"For Jinichi's kid." Toji said, pocketing his phone, "You're pretty strong."
He turned to leave.
"Also. You arrived too late, and I had already dispatched the cursed spirit. Got it?"
"As long as you promise to spar with me once, then I'm all for it."
Tetsuya replied, testing the waters.
If somehow Toji was alive, then it meant his wife was alive too. And if that was the case, then he might be a little softer than canon.
Toji stopped, glanced back over his shoulder. He stared at Tetsuya for a long moment.
Then he shrugged.
"Maybe when you're older, kid."
He walked off without another word, disappearing between the buildings and beyond the veil.
Tetsuya stood there, watching him go, then pulled the sealed sphere out of his cloak and stared at it.
'I met Toji Fushiguro. The Sorcerer Killer. OR maybe, Ex Sorcerer Killer now. And he's alive.'
Tetsuya smiled for a second at meeting another of the main cast, then calmed himself.
'Toji being alive means the timeline really has gone off the rails.'
'The hidden Inventory arc didn't happen the way it should have. Considering my contacts have found nothing about Geto's cult or Geto himself, Geto is probably dead.' Tetsuya thought, the wheels spinning in his mind.
'But that doesn't make that much sense if I remember the timeline right. Gojo probably never awakened fully in that case. Or maybe he did somehow. I have no info on that.'
Tetsuya's fist clenched as he pocketed the sealed spirit in his cloak.
'I have no idea what else is different. Was Megumi born with the ten shadows? So many questions.'
Tetsuya put those thoughts aside for the excitement of what would happen next.
Juzo. The workshop. Turning this curse into a tool.
If everything went to plan, and the tool worked like he wanted to, His arsenal would expand. But more importantly.
A False Heavenly Restriction.
"God, I'm such a genius sometimes. My intellect can be...Frightening."