The room was quiet. It was a quiet that lasted long seconds, as everyone present, in their own way, tried to comprehend my sudden appearance. While they were shocked and dumbfounded, I was left to listen to the echo of my own voice.
I did not think it would work. This harebrained plan of mine.
Adapt to any phenomenon.
Heh. Gege did not realize what he did for me with that simple sentence. I had been waiting for Megumi to return from his stroll when the letter came. I was the one to pick it up at the door, and the sight of me had been enough to send Ijichi scurrying away. Then I waited and waited, knowing the Culling Game ritual had already begun, judging by the pulse of cursed energy I had felt shortly before Yuki rode away.
Another thing I had to take care of if I wanted to live long enough to meet the Alien magic punching sorcerers.
Listening to Megumi read the summons aloud had been amusing. The boy was slowly getting used to my presence, but by the sheer virtue of my existence, he would always be left thinking, left wondering when I was going to resume the ritual. I did not have the capability to tell him never.
Until now.
Instead, I had come up with a plan, the bare bones of one at least. Leaving my wheel with Megumi and entering his shadow. It was a gamble, hiding my presence and leaving him to bear the brunt of the adaptation, much like Megkuna had, but the difference was that Megkuna had done it on purpose while in control of Mahoraga.
Mine had been a risk, yet a risk that had come out well enough. After all, I was gambling on the higher-ups triggering my adaptation, and they did. With every lie, every twist of words to push an agenda, my wheel had vibrated in Megumi's hands, even if he was unaware of everything that was happening, unaware of the reason I had suddenly dipped into his shadow and gestured at my wheel.
I had been adapting because false allegations were an attack. Not a physical one, of course, but it was an attack on my person regardless, and my adaptation had responded in the perfect way by giving me a chance to fight back.
The sound of a gulp drew my attention as I focused back on the present. My lips tilted up as I smiled, then I took my time adjusting my tie.
It was a small gesture, but I was aware of the effect it produced, which was the specific discomfort of watching something that should not be capable of small gestures perform one with complete composure. I straightend my suit, marinating in their fear and silence as the wheel above my head turned once in its slow revolution before settling. The light caught it and threw eight shadows outward across the floor, highlighting the multiple people present.
My wings twitched, and I looked through the doors.
That was another thing I had adapted to. Whatever the seal work that covered them and stripped cursed energy signatures cleanly and blurred the silhouettes into something unreadable was, it could no longer block my sight.
Another twitch of my wings, and I was able to read the room the way they always read everything, without permission and without preference, translating everything into information that I could understand. There were fourteen of them, arranged in an arc, the scattered geometry of people who had designed the room to throw off anyone invited into it.
It was clever.
I filed the positions away and looked at Megumi instead.
He was still standing in his hooded sweatshirt with his hands in his pockets, and while he tried to hide it, he was just as surprised as the rest of them. The only difference was that, at this point, he was used to my surprises. So he simply shook his head in exasperation and turned away from me and back to them.
I followed his gaze and spoke once more.
"Is this an attack, Fushiguro?" one voice rang out, near shrill in tone, before another spoke after, more measured.
"You should know that activating your cursed technique in this meeting is in violation of rule 348, under section 57 of the Jujutsu regulations, and the penalty for such an occurrence is-"
"I object," I stated again, silencing the speaking man while using the opportunity to savor the thrum of my voice as it rang out, the sheer bass shaking the sliding doors before they finally settled again.
The silence stretched as those who had assumed my first words were a fluke realized it was not, while those who had heard me the first time stiffened their spines. I could feel their cursed energy come to life as everyone present prepared themselves for a fight, but stupid as they were, they were wary enough to know a fight was not for the best, for their continued living at least. I also did not have any particular interest in killing them. Why deprive Gojo of what he wished to do from the first time he walked past these doors?
"A shikigami that can talk. Ha!" a voice called out, this one a woman in shrine maiden attire.
Then the annoying voice, the one from the man who looked and dressed vaguely like a Zenin, called out. Unlike earlier, his tone had acquired a quality it had not possessed before my arrival, a careful and very controlled version that told me he was still deciding on how to engage with something he had not prepared for.
"This is," the man began, then stopped, then began again. "The shikigami is..."
"Eight-Handled-"
I cleared my throat cutting him off, then stared at him. It took him a second to get it, to interpret what i was passing through the thin link we shared, and he blinked in confusion before shrugging."
"I present to you, the Eight-Handled Sword, Divergent Sila Divine General, Barrister Mahoraga," Megumi said, gesturing towards me and taking a step back. I took a step forward in response, and the men and women scrambled an inch backward in fright.
Oh, I was enjoying this.
"This is deeply irregular," a different voice said from somewhere to my right. An older man with a full beard, monk robes, and beads around his neck.
"It is not. Article 37 of the Constitution of Japan permits my... client to an attorney in a criminal dispute. This is a criminal dispute."
Everyone blinked.
"You claim my... client is responsible for the destruction of Shibuya," I began in that room-shaking baritone.
"P-partially," a slim man in a suit called out from behind his own screen.
"Semantics," I replied in a tone that made him swallow. Prior to now, I knew little about defending people in general. I could argue as much as anyone else, but words were coming to life in my brain in ways they had not before. Suddenly, I knew words, terms, grammatical structures, and phrases that I had been oblivious to a day ago.
"You were making an argument about proportionality."
There was no response, so I continued.
"I want to be clear about that. Your argument about proportionality is flawed on the basis of heavily biased investigators, afterall, you were not there and cannot bear witness to the occurrence at Shibuya. To say nothing of the framework for oversight, and the question of whether a summoner bears responsibility for the actions of the summoned." I paused. My lips had been moving, I had been saying the words in that same gravelly tone, but it was like my brain was working faster than I knew. "I would address those points directly if the council has no objection."
It was almost like a courtroom. Was that what my adaptation had based this on? I had been expecting to be judged. In fact, I had been thinking about Higuruma's domain right before the adaptation. Was that what influenced this? Could I influence my adaptations? A question for another day when i was not raking the highest authority in Jujutsu society over hot coals.
The higher-ups, who were serving as the council in this particular facade, apparently had no objection. Or if they did, no one was brave or ready to voice it in the current circumstances, which amounted to the same thing.
My mouth began moving once more, drawing my attention back. "My client," I started, gesturing at Megumi, "did not direct my actions in Shibuya. He summoned me. The distinction is not a minor one. A sorcerer who summons a shikigami and then directs each of its actions bears a different relationship to the outcome than a sorcerer who summons a shikigami that then acts on its own judgment. Fushiguro Megumi belongs to the second category."
I let that sit for a moment, waiting for someone to fall into my trap, and it took only a second before someone was stupid enough to.
"S-so, Fushiguro san, summoned a rogue shikigami and set it loose. That is j-just as worse." The man stuttered out in a rush, and scrambled back the moment i bared my teeth.
"Ah, but according to Jujutsu regulations 587 under subsection 7 and coexisting beside subsection 92 of the Shikigami accords, signed by the Fujiwara, Abe, and Sugawara clans, a shikigami that acts of its own accord is no longer considered a simple technique. I am not just an extension of Megumi Fushiguro's will. I am a separate entity with my own capacity for decision and action, which means the question of his responsibility depends on whether he wants to bear that burden or not."
If my presence had not been enough to stun them, then my rebuttal and quotation of regulations that predated the clan of every single person here was more than enough. I had read no law books, but I was slowly coming to the realization that I knew everything, every loophole, every obscure regulation and amendment made over the centuries. I knew it. I knew the convoluted regulations more than any single person here.
The prayer beads that had been moving somewhere by the will of the monk stopped as even he opened his eyes to stare in shock, while the man that had spoken early turned paler than his wrinkled skin already was.
An amusing chuckle could be heard in the background, and despite my senses flaring out, my wings feeling the air, I could not pick out where the sound had come from, so I focused on what I could do. I focused on the prey before me.
"The damage assessment," the Zenin man finally said, recovering some of his earlier steadiness. "Your engagement with Sukuna caused significant structural damage to-"
"Sukuna caused structural damage to Shibuya," I noted. "I fought him in Shibuya. According to section 58 of the Japanese Code of Civil Procedure 1962, there is a difference between those two statements, one that your assessor's report appears to have found inconvenient."
I did not give him the grace to turn towards him. Instead, I turned to the others. "The alternative to my presence in Shibuya was Sukuna continuing his activities in Shibuya without opposition," I stretched out my hand in a dramatic flourish, "and I would invite the council to estimate the structural damage assessment for that scenario and compare it to the one they are currently attempting to assign to Fushiguro Megumi."
Another bout of silence. I was slowly growing to enjoy this, judging by the twitch of my lips, perhaps almost as much as fighting Sukuna.
"Furthermore," I continued in the silence, "the argument that a student operating without adequate supervision produced something dangerous implicitly accepts that the supervision structure failed. Under Article 3 of the Japanese School Education Act of 1947, which establishes institutional duty of care toward enrolled students, and Article 715 of the Civil Code, which assigns liability to supervisory bodies for harm caused by those under their supervision, which points, if followed to its origin, in a direction I suspect this council would prefer not to follow."
This time, the chuckle turned into full-blown laughter that rang through the room. If the higher-ups had been shocked before, now they were left utterly dumbfounded, speechless, and looking monumentally stupid with their inability to counter my words.
I basked in the stupefaction from them and the laughter from a voice I was already having a sneaking suspicion as to who it belonged to. I did not know how, but I was going to assume Tengen was viewing this with some barrier or something of the sort.
KLNK.
The wheel above my head turned once. I was not done with them. More Information flooded into my brain. More points to pick on, more angles to fillet them like cold fishes. I cleared my throat and moved to continue.
"As to the question of-"
"That's enough..." someone broke in, a man swathed in such heavy robes I could not even see his actual body. "Please," he added, as if he just realized who he was talking to, and who he had just cut off mid-sentence. I let out a low grow that rattled the bones in their body. My seeming politeness should not be mistaken for weakness.
"I... we apologize," the Zenin said a second later, and his face was twisted in such a way that said he would rather slit his own throat than say those words again. "We were unaware of the depth of the incidents and were about to pronounce a wrong judgment, and for that... we apologize. This case of culpability in the Shibuya Incident against Megumi Fushiguro has been dismissed... Unless anyone disagrees?"
This time, I turned. Tracking everyone and ensuring they knew i was looking at each and everyone of them. If anybody disagreed with the judgement, they were smart enough to keep it to themselves.
Megumi stared in wide-eyed surprise behind me as I did the impossible.
"With that said," the shrine maiden spoke up, clearing her throat after a quick gulp of the glass of water beside her, "there is the question of rank and designation," she noted in a careful tone. "Regardless of the outcome of this discussion, the data from Shibuya requires a formal reassessment of Fushiguro Megumi's grade classification."
I looked at Megumi, then reached out, my hand clapping over his shoulder and pushing him forward.
He glared at me, his previous shock and amazement gone, before turning to frown at the screen the voice had come from.
"The Ten Shadows Technique as demonstrated," the woman continued, "combined with the shikigami's evident capacity for independent action and reasoning, places the summoner in a category that his current grade does not adequately represent. The council's position is that an immediate reclassification to special grade is appropriate."
"I do not want it," Megumi said immediately. "You heard him, he acts by his own will."
"Your preference," the first voice said carefully, "is noted. The designation is not conditional on preference. The fact remains you summoned him. He fought to protect you. He is your problem... and solution."
Megumi frowned and glanced back at me, but I remained silent. I was not going to fight every battle for the brat.
The newfound silence that filled the room had a strange quality to it. The shocking role reversal had not quite been internalized yet. They were still going through the stages. I was certain there was more to be spoken about, but I had thrown them off their game so badly that any further conversation was going to backfire in their faces. They knew it, that as long as I was here, and Megumi was with me, there was no other recourse. They could not argue the case better than I, and they did not have the power to enforce any judgment either.
"The council will take this session under advisement. Your reclassification to special grade is effective immediately. You will receive formal documentation within the week. You are dismissed, Megumi Fushiguro."
Before Megumi could say a word, I lifted him and settled him in the crook of my arms. I had already lost interest in entertaining them, and with the farce concluded, it was time to begin what might be the most important task for my prolonged life.
Operation Potential Man No More.
I turned and walked out, ignoring the quiet relief of the old men and women behind me and Megumi's grumbling protests. He could not remain weak forever.
By the time I was done with him, the potential man allegations would be buried for good. Canon could sort itself out. My priority was simple. Make sure the brat lived a long life, if I could help it.
A/N: Up to date. Now to a more stable weekly schedule.