Choso
Nobody understood the bond of blood like one of the Death Paintings. And among the Death Paintings, none understood it as deeply as he did. Choso was the older brother, the first of a mutated group, not quite human, yet not quite cursed spirits. They were a mixture of the two.
They were a result of Noritoshi Kamo's twisted and unforgivable experiments with their mother. To think he had hated the wicked man with every fiber of his being, and yet, he had sat in the same room as him, drank together, laughed together, joked, and conspired together.
It had taken too long to click. Even back then, there had been something familiar in those dark eyes, some twisted sense of humor, like he knew a joke or secret Choso had not known. It had taken Choso almost beating his brother to death before he realized the cosmic joke of his existence.
Brother pitted against brother.
Noritoshi Kamo might have been the one to create them; he might have supplied them their inherited yet various twisted forms of the same cursed technique, but not even he understood the true bonds of blood, not the way they did.
Itadori had ducked a jab, only to be folded by a kick to his chest that cracked ribs. Choso had felt a pang of pain he did not understand. However, the boy was stubborn. He juked back, then shot forward into his guard to launch rapid blows at him that he easily weathered with Flowing Scale. He had remained still like a tortoise slinking into its shell to weather his blows, until all of a sudden, he spotted it. An opening.
He rushed in, deflecting an overextended blow and burying two sharp haymakers into the same spot he had buried his feet a few seconds ago, and this time the surprisingly strong ribs had no choice but to break inwardly with a sickening crack. Itadori Yuji was flung back immediately, vomiting a mouthful of blood, and for the second time in their fight, Choso froze at the sensation of sympathetic pain.
Then he stood still, watching as Itadori Yuji lay bleeding out and injured before him, and he suddenly understood. The understanding was a sharp, revealing sensation of enlightenment. The only time he had felt sympathetic pain was when one of his brothers was about to die, and looking at Itadori bleed out before him, he finally recognized him, finally recognized the blood that lay splattered on the ground, the crimson liquid that stained his fist red.
Choso looked at Itadori Yuji and realized he was looking at his brother.
He sat hunched beneath the staircase and rocked in place as everything suddenly became clear. The snide remarks, the funny looks, the dark eyes that held so much amusement, the utterly intelligent mind, and aged wisdom hidden behind young features, that startling sense of familiarity.
Kenjaku was Noritoshi Kamo.
Noritoshi Kamo was Kenjaku.
He had been such a fool. It was startlingly obvious in hindsight. How Kenjaku had known so well about them, about their creation, and the optimal method to incarnate them once more in this modern era. Kenjaku had sent his younger brothers on a crash course to face Itadori Yuji and the rest of Jujutsu High on purpose, so he could watch with sick joy as brothers killed brothers.
He had been surprised that Choso had been able to tell when his brothers were dead, even with the distance of miles separating them, but he had taken it easily, recovering from it like it was not far fetched.
Kenjaku was Noritoshi Kamo.
Choso stopped his rocking as he remained in place, as that insidious thought and realization continued to hammer at his head. They had promised each other, the three of them, Choso, Eso, and Kechizu. They were the only three with actual sentience, enough to truly understand and communicate even while in the jars. The rest of their six brothers were aware, but their awareness was a dim existence.
They had all promised themselves that if, for any reason, they managed to come back, they would take revenge on the man who did this to them, to their mother. They would take their revenge on Noritoshi Kamo, and yet, when they had been incarnated, it was too late. A whole hundred and fifty years later, Noritoshi Kamo's name had been struck out of the Kamo clan's history. He had been erased for his crimes and atrocities, leaving only a blank space and a whispered name.
Choso, Eso, and Kechizu had been too late to take their revenge. That was what Kenjaku told them, an amused look in his dark eyes, and a soft smile to soften the blow.
Kenjaku was Noritoshi Kamo.
Choso gritted his teeth as grief quickly transitioned into anger and rage. His jaws flexed, and his enamel cracked from the force he was using to bite down in his rage. Kenjaku must have looked at them like fools, manipulating them right from their birth until their death. But Kenjaku had made a mistake. He had underestimated Choso, underestimated the love he had for his brothers.
His brothers were dead now, Eso and Kechizu, but as Choso sat hunched under the stairway in the destroyed Shibuya train station, he began to hallucinate better times.
They were in a park. The sun was bright, slipping through the branches of the tree the whole group was seated under and having a picnic. Kechizu had happily opened the picnic basket with childlike wonder and happiness, and Eso simply stood in the background, a chef's apron across his chest. Eso had taken up the culinary arts shortly after his incarnation, with the vague hope of cooking professionally, one of the occupations where he would not have to turn his back to people.
Kechizu quickly spread the food on the ten plates available, even though only three people could eat. The remaining six were more symbolic for their brothers in the jars. Even if they did not quite share their awareness, they had enough awareness to know what was happening.
Then the final plate.
A voice called out, and they all turned to see Itadori Yuji walking up to them with a nylon bag in hand. "I got drinks!" their brother called with a smile as he sank into his own seat. Choso smiled at a family made whole.
A rough shake of his shoulders jerked him out of his delusions.
"Who, what?" he asked in confusion as he turned and viewed a strange man.
"Are you alright? I'm with the emergency services. Do you feel any pain, any discomfort?"
Choso simply looked at the man with confusion. Then he looked past him to see dozens of men and women dressed like him. They were lifting dead bodies and putting them on stretchers before walking away with them.
A finger snapped before him, and when he turned to look, a light was shone into his eyes. His reflex came to life, and he slapped the torch hard enough to send it flying. The man jerked back in response, scrambling back at the sudden violence.
How long had he been here, Choso wondered. Hours? Days? He did not know. He did not know what to do anymore. His brothers were dead, the others were safely stored, but he was alone. He blinked in realization. No, he was not alone. He still had a brother left, a brother that needed his protection and guidance.
His job was not done yet, and like a fire that had been lit in his gut, Choso shot up to his feet, and without sparing the still shocked man a glance, he began to walk, his feet taking him forward, past confused and surprised men and women as blood once more called to blood.
_
It was not often they met in this particular chamber. The elders of the Jujutsu society preferred the ritual formality that hid their identity behind wooden slides. It was a simple formality because in truth, they knew the identity of each other.
Today, that formality was discarded due to the seriousness of the issue at hand. The door opened up to a simple room at the heart of Jujutsu High, revealing a table lacquered black, long enough to seat fourteen, and tonight every seat was to be filled.
They had no formal leader; instead, they simply sat as they cared to. The moment they had all arranged themselves, doors were sealed, and for a short moment, silence was all that remained.
Yoshinobu Gakuganji was the only one standing. He held a strange position. He was not quite an official elder, but he was respected and honored enough to stand among them.
To his left sat the representatives of the great clans. The Zen'in elder, Ougi Zen'in, the father of Naobito Zen'in. He was a wrinkled old man whose eyes had the flat quality of someone that lacked basic human decency. Beside him, the Kamo elder, straight backed and correct in the formal robes that the clan had worn to council proceedings for four hundred years. The Gojo clan seat was occupied by a man named Arata, silver haired, in his late seventies. The former clan head had held the position for eleven years since Satoru had taken his position, and he spent most of those years being the most feared person at this table until today.
Gojo Arata had brought documents tonight. He had placed them before him, and in clear view of everyone. Gakuganji was not sure how useful it would be, but it was not his place to speak, so he simply shifted his weight to lean more on the reinforced case of his guitar.
The Shinto priestess, Shizuru Mori, sat with her hands folded in her lap and her eyes slightly lowered. Her posture was one of subjugation, but not a single person thought the near ancient woman was submissive to them. The Divine Maiden beside her was younger, perhaps fifty, which would mark her as the youngest person here. The Buddhist elder, a bald man built like a mountain despite his age, was called Daishin and occupied his chair, his form near spilling out while his prayer beads moved between his fingers in a slow, continuous circuit that had not stopped since he entered the room.
The remaining seats held the aged leadership of organizations whose names appeared in no public record, but with influence nonetheless.
Ougi Zen'in spoke first.
"Shibuya."
He let the word sit there alone for a moment, because it deserved to, then he continued.
"The casualty figures have been compiled. The cursed spirit activity has unfortunately gone out of hand. The curtains did not hold long enough to limit civilian awareness to a level that our standard suppression protocols can address. To say nothing of this ritual Master Tengen has warned about." He unfolded a single sheet of paper before him, glanced at it once, then set it aside. "The Shibuya incident was not a natural occurrence. It was orchestrated. The evidence for this has been reviewed by three independent assessors, and their conclusions are in agreement."
"Geto Suguru," said the Zen'in elder, without inflection.
"The individual presenting as Geto Suguru," Arata Gojo said in response. "Given the confirmed death of Geto Suguru six years prior, the question of identity is not yet resolved."
"However, the question of culpability is," Ougi replied as he looked around the table. "The Shibuya Incident and aftermath bears the same signature as the events at Shizuoka Village and the Night Parade of a Hundred Demons. The same methodology and the same disregard for civilians with the same end point of releasing thousands of stored curses on Japan." A pause. Ougi turned to Arata. "Whether the body is Geto's or not, the mind directing it has done this before."
"And Gojo Satoru," said the Kamo elder, without turning to look at anybody. He did not need to. The effect on the room was felt at once. Gakuganji almost felt pity for Arata. This was a farce. He knew it, they knew it, even Arata knew it, and yet he tried to fight it regardless.
"Gojo Satoru," Ougi confirmed, "had encounters with Geto Suguru on multiple occasions, and finally led us to believe he had been killed by the hands of his student."
A smile slipped into his voice as his attention remained focused on Arata. The two men had been at loggerheads since they were children. Age did nothing to change those feelings.
"Unfortunately, the same individual is now confirmed to have been operating freely, coordinating the largest single act of terrorism, utilizing rogue curse users, transfigured humans, and the greatest cursed spirit mobilization in recorded modern history against a city of thousands. The question before this council is whether Gojo Satoru's repeated failure to provide a permanent conclusion constitutes negligence, or something more deliberate."
Arata set his hand flat on his documents.
"I will speak to this," he said.
Several faces turned toward him with the specific expression of people who had already decided not to be moved by what he was about to say. Gakuganji shook his head at the futility of it all, at the script being played out before him.
"The framing of those encounters as failures requires selective reading of the operational reports, which I have here." He tapped the documents before passing them around. "On the first occasion, Gojo Satoru was operating under standing orders that explicitly precluded unilateral termination of a former Jujutsu High student without council authorization." A creative usage of the laws on rogue executions. The authorization had been given hours later, of course, but that did not change the fact that when Gojo Satoru met his erstwhile friend, the higher ups had not finalized a decision. Gakuganji almost clapped.
"On the second, the encounter occurred with multiple students in play. On the third..." He paused. "The third encounter was more complex, and regardless of actions, they led to Suguru Geto's death, which shows that using negligence as intent is flawed."
"The outcome is the same regardless of intent," the Shinto priestess said, not unkindly. "Shibuya happened."
"Shibuya happened because someone with Geto Suguru's cursed technique and years of preparation chose to make it happen," Arata said. "Assigning primary culpability to the man who was sealed inside a prison cube for the duration of the incident requires a degree of creative interpretation, don't you think?"
"He was sealed," said the Divine Maiden, "because he arrived. Because the entity calling itself Geto lured him there specifically, which suggests a familiarity with his movements and a confidence in the outcome that is itself worth examining."
"That is speculation," Arata said.
"Most of what we do is speculation rendered into policy," she replied. "That has never stopped this council before. To say nothing of Sukuna's actions in Shibuya, actions that should have been impossible if Gojo Satoru had followed our will by executing the boy."
The room was quiet for a moment.
Ougi chuckled, then spoke again. "The council's position, reached by majority in pre-session, is as follows." He did not look at Arata. "Gojo Satoru is to be considered exiled from the jujutsu world, effective from the date of his sealing, which is hereby recognized as a consequence of his own actions and associations rather than an act of aggression against him. His status as a special grade sorcerer is suspended indefinitely. Any attempt to remove the seal currently containing him is to be classified as a criminal act and treated accordingly."
Arata was very still. They all knew he had the words to make his case, but unfortunately not the power to enforce them.
"Furthermore," Ougi continued, "any resources, personnel, or affiliated institutions that move toward removal of the seal will be considered in violation of council authority and subject to appropriate response."
Arata looked at his documents for a long moment. Then he gathered them, slowly and with great care, and placed them inside the leather folder he had brought them in. He closed the folder. He set it aside. He pushed his chair back from the table and stood, and the sound of the chair legs on the old floor was very clear in the silence. He smoothed his kimono.
"I will note," he said, to no one in particular, "that I have served on this council for eleven years, and that in those eleven years I have watched it make multiple decisions that I considered to be mistakes." He picked up his folder. "This is the last." He looked at Ougi briefly. "I am dismissing my position. Whatever comes next, the Gojo clan will not be lending it legitimacy through my presence here. You have won, old friend. Now you deal with the repercussions of your decision."
"Arata!" the Shinto maiden called, but the Gojo was deaf to her words. He simply walked out the door, and no one spoke until the door had closed behind him, and even then, the silence held for another moment. No one had ever exited the council before. No one had ever even considered it. Gakuganji looked at the others and spotted the worry on their faces. Not even Ougi Zen'in was free of it, even if he masked it quicker than the others.
Then the Kamo elder said, "Yaga Masamichi," and the council moved on.
"The question of Yaga is complicated," said an older man from a fringe organization called Tenketsu. "He might have trained Suguru Geto. He also trained Satoru Gojo. The argument for culpability in instruction is not without merit."
Gakuganji frowned.
"The argument would have more merit," the Divine Maiden said, with the careful precision of someone who realized what her words had aided in doing earlier, "if the instruction itself could be demonstrated as negligent. Geto's divergence was not a product of poor training. If anything, it was a product of training that was too successful, applied to a mind that drew conclusions the instructor did not intend."
"The distinction between negligent instruction and instruction that produces dangerous outcomes may be philosophically interesting," the Zen'in elder said, "but it does not change what Geto Suguru did, nor the fact that Yaga Masamichi was his teacher."
"No," she agreed. "It doesn't."
"Yaga also led the response coordination for the northern sector of Shibuya," Daishin said, his prayer beads continuing their slow circuit. "The casualty figures for that sector are the lowest of the four. His intervention is documented." He did not elaborate. He did not need to.
"Which is precisely why an immediate execution would be imprudent," Gakuganji finally said. It was not his place to speak, but he made a token effort of it regardless. "There are those who would frame it as punishing a man for saving lives during the crisis that is being used as the pretext to charge him." This was simply another play. Gakuganji knew they wanted Yaga dead, but it was not simply because his fellow principal had trained Geto.
There was a brief silence before the shrine maiden spoke. "The death penalty is formally recorded as pending. Its implementation is to be deferred pending full investigation. This gives us the time to manage the context appropriately."
No one objected, and so they moved on to the next topic.
"Itadori Yuji," Ougi said with an uncharacteristic grunt.
"The vessel is still alive," the Kamo elder said.
"Confirmed."
"Then the execution order stands."
"The question," said the man from Tenketsu, "is one of timing and possibility of success, not of the order itself." He folded his hands. "The Fushiguro boy."
"Megumi Fushiguro's position is irregular," Daishin said. "He is technically a Fushiguro by name, but his bloodline and cursed technique make him a Zen'in. A Zen'in with a shikigami powerful enough to stall Ryomen Sukuna for a period of time and even win." They all looked at Ougi at once.
The Zen'in elder's expression did not change, but something in the set of his jaw did. "Megumi Fushiguro is a Zen'in matter."
"Not simply, no," Shizuru Mori disagreed. "Megumi Fushiguro is currently attached to the vessel through sustained operational partnership," the Divine Maiden said, "which makes him a council matter when the vessel's execution is under discussion. Megumi Fushiguro and his shikigami have shown the power to be a deterrent to whatever decision we make on Itadori Yuji, do you see?"
"So we simply need to know where he stands before we make a decision," Tenketsu finished.
The room considered the words. Gakuganji looked at them as they slowly came to the realization that Megumi Fushiguro was shaping up to be a threat and deterrent to them in the same way Gojo Satoru was. He imagined Satoru would be laughing in amusement at this scene if he could observe, and for the first time, that thought did not fill Gakuganji with annoyance.
"We bring him in then," Ougi said finally. "Send someone to summon Megumi Fushiguro. He is to be assessed. His loyalties, his capabilities, and his current state of mind following Shibuya. We will make our determination about the vessel once we have a clearer picture of the variable that complicates it." He looked around the table. "In the meantime, send Usami Kento to investigate and draw more information from live witnesses on the actions of the... Divine General."
The rest of them had not noticed it, perhaps other than the shrine maiden, but Gakuganji had. There was a surprising emotion in Ougi's voice when he had finished his statement. If Gakuganji did not know better, he would think it was fear, which would make sense. More than any other person on the council, he was the most familiar with the Ten Shadows Technique and the feared Shikigami it held.