Beyond the Event Horizon

“Yuuji Itadori, Satoru Gojo and Suguru Geto were successfully executed.” These ten words never failed to make his mouth taste like ashes no matter how many times he had repeated them in the past several days. All in all, his only consolation, no matter how small it was compared to all the pain of the events, was the fact that at least he didn’t feel like vomiting his guts out every time he tried to open his mouth. These were also the most truthful words said by Yuuta Okkotsu before the Jujutsu council on the 30th of December of 2018.

***

Nothing went according to plan. Absolutely everything that could’ve gone out of control that day, went out of control. Starting with the fact that Sukuna didn’t appear in Shinjuku on the marked day, leaving Satoru Gojo waiting for what seemed to be inevitable. Only for Kenjaku to appear on the horizon. “That wasn’t a part of the arrangement,” said Gojo-sensei then, way too calmly for the situation they all were in at the moment. Looking back, that was probably nothing but bravado shown not to make his students and allies worry too much, too early. After all, he was still alive. They only needed to make several corrections in their plan to make everything go as they needed. Yeah. Piece of cake. Just a bit of rearranging the pieces. “Technically, my little whim won’t hurt your arrangement if you still see Sukuna after this,” Pseudo Geto shrugged, smirking so easily, as if everything was as it should be. That was his first mistake on that day. “You know, to a certain degree, I should be blaming you for this. Who would’ve known that you left that much of an impression on this body for me to inherit his will to see you for the last time? Truly an astonishing effect. Makes you think, huh, Satoru?” Far from everyone present on that day fully understood the depth of the insult behind the minute parody blurted out by Kenjaku. Absolutely everyone who was watching the scene could physically feel the change in the air around them. Gojo was already apprehensive by the time he had headed for Shinjuku, fully prepared to jump straight into fighting the very moment he caught a glimpse of Sukuna. Fully prepared for the possibility of leaving his student beaten within the inch of his life just to have the smallest chance of victory and bringing Megumi back. In other words, the moment when he suddenly appeared right in front of Kenjaku, making the roof of the building they both were now standing on go in cracks from the force of his cursed energy output, should’ve been expected, To some extent. “Don’t you dare,” Gojo whispered already behind the other sorcerer’s back too quietly for anyone else to hear, purposefully looking in front of himself and pointedly ignoring what his Six eyes saw to keep his last bits of sanity in this moment. “Don’t you dare even try to sound like him.” “Hm,” Pseudo Geto only smirked in response, tilting his head to get a better look on his face, And in the moment when their eyes inevitably met, all thoughts Satoru had about fighting Sukuna left him for the shortest moment. “Interesting. All while I’m actually talking to you in the way his memory tells me to. Wanna tell me what I’m doing wrong, hmm?” That moment was enough to leave Shinjuku in utter chaos in mere moments after that. Because everyone who knew Satoru Gojo long enough, unfortunately, agreed on one thing among others: Suguru Geto was an extremely sore topic for him, which was probably made many times worse on the anniversary of his death. And Kenjaku pulled just the right thread to make him mad just enough to get distracted from the mission for a moment and attack him instead.

***

“Satoru Gojo engaged in the fight with Suguru Geto the moment they entered each other’s fields of view.” Yuuta did everything in his power to make his voice sound as evenly as possible, fully ignoring the fact that he was now standing before all new people. The council members who offered to repeat Geto’s execution were all murdered somewhere between the notice and the day of the fight, but that didn’t mean that now he had any right to relax in front of them. Ah. He was starting to get sensei’s idea behind toying with the thought of murdering them all. That really helped with the nerves and the hatred boiling in his heart. He was curious if he also felt like that all those years. “The fight ended with them both severely injured, which allowed the following events to happen.”

***

In the corner of his mind Gojo understood that he was doing a wrong thing by already tapping into Utahime’s energy source so early, but that suddenly didn’t matter anymore when his fist connected with Suguru’s Kenjaku’s face, making him fly back for a few feet. And that bastard had the nerve to laugh at that. In the corner of his mind Gojo was thinking through the possibility of this whole thing being a trap set up to waste all of his cursed energy before he even caught a glimpse of Sukuna. Under any other circumstances the thought would’ve made him stop at least for a moment and think about how doable this was at the moment. This time he had to think on the fly because Kenjaku was already attacking him in response. At least he had the decency not to use Suguru’s favorite curses against him. Or maybe he had already used them up before. In this case, details weren’t important to Satoru. Back to the more pressing issues. His chances against Sukuna were about 70 to 30 in his favor. Suguru was far from Satoru’s level at this point, especially with all the extra steps in the form of amplifying his cursed energy output or dancing and chanting in his techniques, but then again, he was a special grade sorcerer and he would’ve at least slowed him down. And he potentially didn’t see the whole picture of his skills and techniques Kenjaku stored, if everyone else didn’t make him show all his cards in these two months. In other words, Satoru’s chances of winning with taking going through him into the account suddenly went down from 70 to… 45, maybe 40 percent? And that was with the positive outcome of things. That meant brute forcing it. Not that it was his first time, but… “You know, I rarely ever get to bury someone twice. And I was definitely not planning on pulling that with Suguru. Kinda inconvenient, don’t you think?” But that wouldn’t be really Suguru this time around, would it? He had already proved it in Shibuya. Six eyes were lying to him. With this one he could do whatever the hell he wanted to and there wouldn’t be any guilt following that. At the very least, Satoru really wanted to believe that as he finally started attacking his enemy at full strength, and the first Purple charged by 200 percent shook the buildings in Shinjuku.

***

“Satory Gojo had clearly lost his mind in the time spent in the Prison realm as he began to attack even his former students who entered his line of sight. It is quite possible that in that moment it didn’t really matter to him who exactly he was trying to kill.” Of course, describing the entire baggage of all the things they’ve endured in these two months with a simple excuse of one losing their mind was easy when the entirety of Japan was still in the state of chaos even after they got rid of the reason for this. Nobody is going to notice a few details not adding up when nobody but the selected few sorcerers really knew what happened on that day and why. They were all extremely lucky that not everyone lost the council’s trust by that time.

***

“We should intercept Sukuna before he gets himself involved.” Itadori’s calm voice tre Yuuta from the state of aimless staring at the battle on the screens. Not to say that seeing Geto’s face again, no matter who owned the body at the moment right now, like this when he attacked Gojo-sensei without a hint of remorse, shook him up that much… Oh, who was he kidding. In a sense, it was almost scarier to face the real Geto a year ago, and that’s considering that he had every chance to get killed back then. But that wasn’t the real Geto and, what’s more important, he wasn’t their only problem in this situation, even if the original plan assumed that it was Yuuta who was supposed to face him instead. Itadori was right. They still had a second target. “Yeah… yeah, we really should get going. Gojo-sensei still has his own backup if he can’t take Kenjaku in the end,” he breathed out, blindly grabbing his katana and getting on his feet. How many of these has he broken in the past several months? Not really important. If they pull this one correctly, he won’t have to break any more. “So, you really can’t hold back against him at all?” “Yup. Even if we manage to almost kill him, Sukuna won’t let Megumi die permanently. Spent way too long trying to get him and all that,” Itadori frowned, instinctively scratching his cheekbone where he had Sukuna’s marks not too long ago and now only had faint scars. “It’s gonna be a problem if he decides to run for Gojo-sensei anyway while we’re trying to attack him,” Yuuta added, sparing the last glance at the screens the majority of them were still watching. “You sure we shouldn’t get everyone else on the Sukuna duty in the plan as well?” For a moment, Sukuna’s former vessel stopped, looking over them and holding a minute gaze on Choso. The latter, having been watching his younger brother ever since he moved in the exit’s direction, only nodded wordlessly and turned back to face the livestream. Yuuj answered him with a weak smile and shook his head. “No need. They will know if we need their help anyway.”

***

“Among other things, Sukuna, who at the time had hijacked the Zenin clan leader Megumi Fushiguro’s body, has tried to interfere with the battle. Yuuji Itadori, no longer classified as Sukuna’s vessel, did not allow this to happen, instead localizing his attack and preventing him from approaching Satoru Gojo.” Yuuta easily left out the part where he went after Sukuna with Yuuji at that moment. To be honest, he started to notice that lying to the council into their screens was getting easier with each said word that day. Of course that wasn’t the first time when he wasn’t telling them everything, but… now this didn’t have any follow-up fear of them finding out. And what were they going to do if they did find out that he shamelessly lied to them? Execute him? The last person capable of that died before his very eyes. If Yuuta wanted that, he would’ve easily killed off everyone in the room and nobody would be able to do a damn thing to stop him. Besides, almost every sorcerer capable of some things and who still had a single ounce of common sense would have probably even applauded him for being the one to finally take out these assholes. “Sukuna and his vessel were destroyed afterwards.”

***

“You know, you’re really starting to bore me out, brat.” Yuuta lost count of how much time they’ve already spent in this mess, playing cat and mouse with Sukuna. Getting on his nerves proved to be way too easy for a sorcerer who’s been waiting for a battle with a different man for over a month. One thing was very clear from their little pleasantries exchange: Kenjau’s interference wasn’t planned on their side either. Not that it helped in their situation, but good to know that he annoyed absolutely everyone if he wanted that. Even if his whims included hunting him and his allies. Speaking of annoyances… “Still counting on your stronger friends even with your new toys? It’s like you’re just asking me to kill you one more time!” Sukuna’s exclamation was punctuated by a terrible crash of another building sliced through with just one hit. Yuuta was slowly getting used to the noise, but he still couldn’t help but flinch every time literal tons of concrete and glass fell to the ground, raising clouds of dust around. It was one of those hits that separated him from Itadori several minutes ago, but somehow the first year quickly found him again if he could hear him now. Hiding his presence proved to be a difficult move with his amount of cursed energy and Rika, whose patience was thinning in a geometrical progression. But Itadori had a plan and she and Yuuta needed to wait for the better moment to put it into action. Considering that they were now only separated by a couple dozen feet of smoke and dust, the moment was approaching quickly. “Now!” Yuuji shouted, running in his direction with his bloodied hand on the wall when he was already ducking out of his hideout with one hand in the air and the ring on his finger. “Come on, Rika!” Between Rika’s manifestation, a megaphone appearing in his hands and a sudden smell of ozone and copper soaking the air when he met Sukuna’s eyes, less than a second passed. That wasn’t enough to put up his defenses. “Don’t move!” The smell of copper and ozone followed the ton of concrete sent in the direction of the frozen enemy with Itadori’s punch. Yuuta successfully ignored the fact that some of the blood stuck to his jacket as well — possibly precisely to find him more easily in the chaos next time. Itadori didn’t stay put even for a couple of seconds, immediately running for Sukuna buried in the debris, fearing that this time he would take them seriously and begin to attack them at full force. Yuuta followed him, watching the cursed energy spiking in the direction of Gojo-sensei’s fight from the corner of his eye. And he was clearly having some problems there. They needed to make this quick to help him if the others weren’t useful enough. “Itadori! Can you hit him like that again?” “Not now! Spent too much cursed energy on this amount of blood,” Itadori shook his head, dodging a piece of a wall thrown in his direction. Sukuna didn’t stay down there for too long. “Besides, he’s probably not gonna fall for the same trick twice.” That was… an issue. Throughout the year Yuuta has only copied a limited amount of techniques and not every of those would’ve worked against their opponent, unless he was caught off guard, which was getting harder by the minute. And he didn’t have time to get Itadori’s new technique right so that they would both use it. That meant they’d have to use the old methods. “Then store up the energy now,” Yuuta told him, resting his hand on the handle of his katana he didn’t get to use today yet. “Me and Rika will buy you some time.” And, if they’re lucky, some time for Gojo-sensei as well.

***

“At some point during the Culling game Yuuji Itadori appears to have acquired the Blood manipulation technique, which confirms his relation to the Kamo clan.” Yuuta didn’t notice that in the heat of the battle, but Rika pointed out an interesting fact after it was over: Yuuji’s blood smelt like cursed energy, which only happened with curses’ blood. In any other situation it would be easy enough to get the blood off his clothes enough to get rid of the smell enough for her not to lose her mind over it. He didn’t have the heart to get rid of the jacket, knowing that it was the last reminder of Itadori’s very existence. In the week that the jacket stayed with him Rika finally stopped reacting to the smell, which he couldn’t feel mad about. “Considering Sukuna’s reaction to the attack, that was not his innate technique, which would’ve been noticed by him in the period of him possessing Itadori’s body. The nature of him acquiring a new technique remains unclear right now.” In reality, he had a theory about this after a conversation with Choso and Utahime. He honestly already forgot by that moment that Kenjaku had stolen not all of the Death paintings but only three of them, including Choso himself. The eldest brother didn’t outright confirm anything then, but considering the nature of Itadori’s lineage… yeah, the idea of him consuming the remaining brothers and getting their techniques didn’t seem that crazy anymore. Especially when he saw the similarities between his technique and Noritoshi Kamo’s and Choso’s Blood manipulation in person… Still, that just seemed extremely… weird. “Nonetheless, that allowed Itadori to hold Sukuna off in a limited area for long enough to weaken him and combine his fight with the one between Satoru Gojo and Suguru Geto.”

***

An especially strong spike of cursed energy coming from behind was almost enough to make Yuuta lose his footing when he and Rika fought off another of Sukuna’s attacks. She only had two more minutes and Itadori still didn’t restore enough energy for a new attack, considering that he didn’t get the signal yet. And despite that a new blood attack was sent off in Sukuna’s direction, again, not from the side where the first year remained. So then what?.. “Choso, catch!” Itadori shouted, running towards them with a new wave of blood which was sent behind Yuuta’s back and quickly united with another one and compressed for another attack with an already familiar noise. Oh. He didn’t pay that much attention to Yuuji’s training with his new technique, and that’s why he never noticed how his cursed energy… changed. That was more obvious when he watched Noritoshi and Choso spar with each other, but telling two users of an identical technique by their energy proved to be harder than he thought. But telling Yuuji apart from Choso like this was even harder, because not only did they share a technique, they were also brothers and happened to be full-on half-curses/ Under any other circumstances that would’ve interested Yuuta way more. For now he was simply thankful for the reinforcements and an opportunity to recharge Rika. “Just in time, brother!” Itadori smiled as he finally reached them, wiping off the dust that stuck to his sweat and blood with his hand. “I wasn’t even sure we could combine our blood, haha!” “I couldn’t just leave you there,” shook his head Choso, watching the situation at the side from the corner of his eye while Yuuta took a breath after using so much cursed energy with Rika, The next energy spike didn’t belong to Choso. “Gojo-sensei,” he breathed out, turning in the direction of Gojo’s fight with Kenjaku in rising panic, which attracted the brothers’ attention. Two domains opened at the same time… and he didn’t sense their teacher’s domain anymore. But that didn’t mean that he was dead. Not yet. If they make it in time. But Sukuna… “Do you think we beat him up with buildings hard enough to chase him to Gojo-sensei and not kill him in turn? I think he might be in trouble and this guy is taking his time with getting up,” Itadori suggested, looking back and forth between the pile of concrete still containing Sukuna and the other end of Shinjuku. “We should be able to if he keeps saving energy with us… but for how long?” Yuuta hummed thoughtfully. “And would he even follow…” Yuuji beat him to it. Before he even finished the thought, the first year has already climbed on the least damaged piece of a nearby wall just in time to see the pile of concrete start moving and brought his hands to his mouth, folding them in the shape of a megaphone. “Ayo, Sukuna! I know you can hear me! Bet you can’t beat me to Gojo-sensei?!” “Brother…” “Itadori,” Yuuta sighed at the same time. And then Sukuna broke through the remaining parts of walls above him, baring his teeth in their general direction. And considering how they both looked in the same direction of the fight, he was at least considering the challenge. “This bastard is mine,” Sukuna growled,getting up on his feet with an unhinged grin. He didn’t stay in one place for much longer, bolting towards the fight in seconds. “We’ll see about that!” Itadori yelled to his back, jumping down to follow him and leaving Choso and Yuuta behind, if only for a moment. And Yuuta was starting to understand why Gojo-sensei liked this first year with every enemy encounter. They both never heard of the self preservation instinct. And then the ground under them shook with the force almost strong enough to make even Sukuna fall.

***

“By the time Sukuna has reached Satoru Gojo and Suguru Geto, their fight has already escalated enough to bring the damages in Shinjuku to catastrophic levels. It is assumed that Geto utilized Uzumaki and extracted a technique from an unregistered curse to make this level of destruction possible.” Yuuta still didn’t know why Mei had stopped the livestream for the most the very moment Kenjaku reached their field of view, but in the end it played in their favor. A big part of what he was saying right now could’ve been easily proven wrong by the council had they seen the recording. But Mei burned all the bridges even with them after that day and the council hadn’t heard from her ever since the incident in Shibuya as it didn’t benefit her to have any business with them. There was no Uzumaki. And they even knew the technique he used. Now they did. It was even mentioned in the archives. Yuuta had already forgotten Kaori Itadori’s maiden name by that time, but Gakuganji found the recording about one of her relatives who had attended Kyoto high a few days ago. He was positive that it was a good thing that Yuuji never found out that the technique that killed him belonged to his mother. From what he knew, Itadori has already suffered enough with his family to add this revelation to his baggage. To a certain extent, it was even ironic that Kenjaku was probably not intending to kill his child that day. Maybe he had already served his purpose in his eyes and would probably be useless later on, but one couldn’t deny that he treated Yuuji slightly better than Choso even after Sukuna took over Fushiguro’s body. To a certain extent, Yuuta almost enjoyed the moment when he saw the minute fear in the eyes of the ancient sorcerer before the darkness consumed everything.

***

“What the hell is going out there?” Yuuta shouted into his phone, once again realizing that putting Maki’s number on quick access before this whole chaos was a smart decision. He definitely couldn’t have even found her number like this on the run, much less punched it in by memory. “We don’t know,” came her voice from the other end with the indistinct chatter in the background. “Mei lost the crows closest to the fight, we only have the view from about 300 feet away now. Kenjaku used some new technique, something accumulative from the looks of it, and Satoru is still recovering from Domain expansion. Kashimo has already headed there in case he doesn’t restore the technique in time.” He definitely didn’t have time to be surprised about their teacher pulling another impossible stunt and learning to restore a temporarily disabled technique after a Domain expansion. Good for him. They had bigger problems right now. For instance… “We’re leading Sukuna to them,” he laughed nervously after a brief pause. Sukuna has slowed significantly halfway to Gojo, and for some reason it worried Yuuta almost as much as the sudden feeling of heaviness that only grew the closer they got. “What? Have you lost your minds there?!” Maki hissed in return. “The whole plan was to kill them separately!” “In our defense, he’s been decently beaten up with buildings from our end and at least used plenty of energy on reversed technique. And Itadori has a chance to hold him off now, especially if I swap with Kashimo on arrival.” The edge of the battlefield finally became visible behind the rubble and Yuuta barely stopped a couple feet away from the cliff, nearly falling down as he was caught by Rika for good measure. From the edge of his sight, he saw as the rest also reached the edge to watch the middle of the crater from their ends. And the picture they saw didn’t look good for anyone. “Maki,” he breathed out, cautiously taking a few steps back. “Does this technique have anything to do with gravity by chance?” Heaviness. They felt heavy from the very moment Kenjaku recovered from his Domain expansion and just a couple hundreds feet away they all felt how they were almost pressed into the ground. And the closer something was to him, the stronger was the pull. “Mei did say something about the crows falling… Yuuta, what is going on?” “We need to get Gojo-sensei out of there. Right now.” Yuuta didn’t know how he managed to sound so calm right now even though every particle in his body froze in fear of what was forming before his eyes. Heaviness. Gravity. The blackest darkness, expanding from Kenjaku’s body in Gojo-sensei’s direction and already having an effect on him, weak from the distance, but already tangible. And Satoru goddamn Gojo didn’t rush away from it. On the contrary, Yuuta already felt the flow of cursed energy restored in him, possibly enough to charge another Purple while the enemy’s technique only gained power in front of him. “He’s making a black hole.” And Gojo-sensei would only make it stronger.

***

“The technique extracted from Uzumaki created a black hole in the middle of Shinjuku. Powered up by Satoru Gojo’s counterattack it has gained enough density to destroy everything in roughly 300 feet radius, including himself, Suguru Geto, Yuuji Itadori and Megumi Fushiguro with Sukuna in him.” Speaking of it now, it was easy to imagine everything happening in a single second and killing all of them with one hit. Looking back, Yuuta couldn’t help imagining scenarios where he could’ve saved at least Yuuji who was closest to him and farthest away from the black hole. Where he could’ve let Rika recover earlier to use Cursed speech again and make Gojo-sensei get away before he decided to attack Kenjaku one last time and cancel his technique. Looking back, Yuuta could think of many ways to minimize the damages that day, but the truth is, now they couldn’t do anything about it, only live with the consequences of their mistakes. And continue lying, if only not to make the survivors of the massacre take the hit too.

***

Everything else happened too quickly and took too much space for Yuuta to be able to do anything alone. One moment Kenjaku was just charging his black hole, holding his gaze just on Gojo-sensei, and then he was suddenly in a battle stance, the air filled with familiar smell of ozone, signaling of his technique’s recovery, and getting ready to hit the enemy again when Yuuji suddenly appeared. One moment Satoru Gojo was fully convinced that this attack would be successful and that it would be at least enough to force the other sorcerer on the defensive, and now his face was twisted with the horror of realization that his actions made things worse. One moment Sukuna happily jumped almost to the middle of the crater, intending to kill Gojo while he was distracted with Kenjaku, and then he was turning back to get away as quickly as possible. One moment Itadori was standing on the edge, frozen from the view before him, and then he was jumping straight after Sukuna not to let him escape the attack and fully ignoring the fact that if Ryomen was scared of it then he’d die in mere seconds. One moment Choso took off to prevent his brother from dying such a stupid death, and then Yuuta grabbed him by his scarf, using Rika’s help to get them as far away as possible, as fast as possible. One moment Yuuta thought that they had a chance to turn the tide of the battle in their favor with Sukuna and Kenjaku weakened and several powerful sorcerers backing Gojo-sensei up, and now he barely could look in their direction, only hearing Choso’s desperate screaming and Rika’s growling. The last Purple charged by 200% connected with Kenjaku’s black hole. For one painfully long second, nothing happened. Then everything became deafeningly loud, silencing the screams of agony which everyone caught up in the middle probably died with. And then the cursed energy levels spiked again and Yuuta forced himself to look back to see what caused it this time. In the middle of it, bracing itself against the edge, was a curse that made even Rika scared. And even without trying to check anything about it, Yuuta knew: just a minute ago it had the name Satoru Gojo. He turned away just as quickly, quietly asking Rika to take them further from the battlefield as his world broke before him. On 24th of December of 2018 the special grade vengeful spirit Satoru Gojo manifested in Shinjuku for 42 seconds and disappeared without a trace afterwards.

***

“Can you really call it an execution if they ended up killing each other?” One council member asked with a smirk. “I stayed within visible distance throughout the fight. If they didn’t kill each other themselves, I would. That was just a luckier outcome for us,” countered Yuuta calmly, hiding his hands in his pockets. Seriously, just remembering the day’s event was already bad enough, not to mention reshaping them to feed to these geezers. “Does it really matter what actually killed them if that technically followed the rules and I witnessed their death?” “Hm. Perhaps, it really doesn’t,” the other laughed. “Good job, Okkotsu. Maybe you’re really not like your teacher and will listen to others.” He called for all of his self control not to reach for his katana at that moment. They talked about it as if it was a compliment, completely forgetting the fact that Yuuta was alive thanks to Gojo-sensei, hell, all of them were alive only thanks to Gojo-sensei killing both Sukuna and Kenjaku in one go, even if at the cost of his own life and of two of his students. It wasn’t fair. They had no right to talk about any of them like this. They had no right. “You’re free to go, Okkotsu. Stay in touch, we’re far from restoring the order in the country after what these nutjobs did.” He would happily tear them to pieces. “Of course.”

***

Yuuta allowed himself and Choso to go back to the battlefield only minutes after the black hole died down and there was a connection to call Maki back. This time everyone shouted over each other in the background while he could only focus on the boots hitting the ground and Itadori’s name being constantly yelled out as his friend clearly left the room for some quiet. “What happened?” She asked quietly, but commanding the moment Yuuta reached the new edge of the crater, watching Choso who already reached its middle. “All crows suddenly died—” “Gojo-sensei hit the black hole with Purple. It destroyed everything here.” He patiently ignored the lump in his throat that grew by a second with every step he took. He pushed the growing panic away persistently, which was only amplified by the sight of Choso falling on his knees on the scorched ground. “Maki… they’re gone. All of them. The black hole destroyed everything.” A beat. “You’re lying.” “Choso is with me. He would feel if Itadori was still alive and he was the farthest away. If he didn’t survive with his resilience, nobody had the chances. Especially considering that Gojo-sensei became a curse. I think Kenjaku tried to use him for protection, but didn’t make it.” Yuuta forced himself to tune out the cries before him, instead focusing on the noise on the other side of the call. He forced himself to tune out the unnatural emptiness around them, but catch every smallest spike of the cursed energy from his last ally here. “We also don’t know how’s Kashimo,” he suddenly remembered, trying to distract himself from the situation. “Screw Kashimo,” Maki cut him off. “He needed Sukuna. We don’t have Sukuna anymore. He has nothing to do with us now.” “Yeah… guess you’re right.” They both fell silent for a moment, waiting for the other to say something. Maki gave up first. “Go back. I’ll break the news to others in the meantime.” “Yeah… we’ll come.” And then Yuuta finished the call, but didn’t move forward for a while, still watching Choso’s quieting breakdown when he suddenly had a stupid idea. Yuuji’s blood was still on his jacket. This wouldn’t ever compare to bringing his brother back but… it was at least something of him, to an extent. With this exact thought Yuuta reached him in several steps, throwing his jacket over his shoulders. It was terribly cold in just a t-shirt in the end of December, but that seemed like the smallest of his problems right now. “We should head back to the others,” he said quietly, leaving his hand on Choso’s shoulder and looking to the side to give him at least a bit of privacy, yet remaining close. “I know it really won’t fix anything but… I’m really sorry it happened like this.” “It’s not your fault,” he answered dimly, instinctively reaching behind his back to pull the last source of familiar warmth closer. He never noticed it before with all the created blood used in the attacks, but apparently it stayed warm even after exposure to the air. “He was right in front of me and I still allowed him to die,” Choso whispered barely audibly, screwing his eyes shut not to let any more tears fall down. “I couldn’t save any of them…” Yuuta didn’t say anything in response, only sparing a glance at him when he pushed himself from the ground and got to his feet, putting the jacket on. They exchanged a long glance and nodded to each other before heading away from the crater, to the others. Yuta has only known Itadori for a couple months. Choso has known Gojo-sensei for even less. To an extent, they understood each other’s pain only vaguely, it wasn’t too close to them. And at the same time they understood each other probably better than anyone else in that moment, feeling not just personal, but shared pain amplified by the fact that only they saw their deaths that day. Yuuta never returned his jacket until they returned to their friends.

***

Jumping straight into the crater, Yuuji had only two thoughts that pushed him forward: Sukuna shouldn’t get out of this alive. And that Gojo-sensei was too valuable to die there. The first thought led him to the fact that before Sukuna even tried to get away when he realized his mistake, Yuuji’s claws already pierced his neck and the momentum from his fall and Piercing blood gave him just enough force to hold him down for exactly two seconds before any movement away from the epicenter became useless. The second thought, though… that was a little harder. He didn’t even realize that Gojo-sensei could’ve died before him. Right until the moment when something cut off Sukuna’s head right in front of him, but Yuuji felt only the very familiar presence of his teacher beside him. For some reason, even in the face of inevitable death this presence, despite it being a curse’s, brought him peace. They said that no sorcerer died without regrets. At that moment Yuuji couldn’t fully agree. He did his job as a sorcerer that day and helped exorcize two sorcerers who had brought so many deaths. Though he did regret, to some extent, that he couldn’t have done it earlier. But then again, he’ll take a win for what it is. With this thought Yuuji allowed himself to close his eyes in peace and let the darkness consume him, feeling Gojo-sensei’s hand resting on his back in the last moments of his life. For a fraction of a second, he thought that he still heard his voice. “Good job, Yuuji. You can finally rest now.” Ah… guess he was really just hearing things.

***

The next time they went to the crater in Shinjuku, Yuuta was followed by everyone who watched the battle from the distance or was supposed to assist in some way. Initially they weren’t planning on going there at all, not really wanting to remind themselves of a honestly shitty day more than necessary, but both him and Choso agreed on a weird observation they failed to notice before, but went back to it later, trying to gather as many details as possible. The cursed energy. Or rather, its complete absence. Yuuta was slightly less receptive to the energy spikes around him, blinded and protected by Rika from lesser curses to a certain degree, but even he felt the weird sense of emptiness that was left after the black hole’s disappearance. Under the normal conditions, the energy not used to power up the attack further would’ve been spread in the air, leaving a noticeable residue. An almost simultaneous death of two sorcerers and one curse, all three being special grades, should’ve left the residue that even the beginner sorcerer with no experience would’ve seen. At the very least the technique itself should’ve left traces after Kenjaku used it. The crater didn’t have a single trace of the cursed energy of the people consumed by the black hole. “So… you did see it right,” Utahime concluded, walking around the middle of the crater. In the end she stopped on the piece of land where Gojo should’ve been in the last moment of his life, if the retelling of the two and the footage from the crows before they were all killed are to be believed. “I don’t feel a thing here.” “Told you so,” Yuuta scoffed, hanging his legs over the edge. “I felt it. Choso felt it too, plus he could’ve tracked Itadori any time. Rika confirmed it in the first few minutes after we collected ourselves, and she didn’t blind herself. Whatever technique Kenjaku pulled in the end, it didn’t just kill them all…” “It erased them from existence entirely, even the traces of their cursed energy,” Ieiri finished for him, walking up to the group. “Damn, that’s just their kinda thing to bring even mutual murder to such an extreme…” “And we can’t even throw the fact that it should be impossible into this because Gojo-sensei has done several impossible things before everyone’s eyes,” he continued, remembering the recording of the piece they missed where he clearly used reversed technique to recover not his body, but his technique. “I still don’t get why he threw a Purple at that thing,” said Panda, sitting beside Yuuta. “That looked dangerous from afar, surely it looked even scarier up close?” “Maybe he hoped to overpower it like this,” Ieiri shrugged as she helped Utahime back up. “Or bet on killing Kenjaku before he released the technique. Would’ve been in his manner.” There was a tense silence between them after that with everyone processing what they heard and making their conclusions. After all, now they had no way to prove whatever happened aside from what they saw themselves or heard from their friends just a day ago. And that didn’t matter either, now that there was nothing left of them. To a certain extent, they were expecting this very outcome. They were planning to get rid of Sukuna and Kenjaku on the same day and they assumed the possibility of Gojo-sensei’s demise. Even Itadori was a part of these plans, prepared to fight Sukuna personally. Their deaths were expected considering who they fought against. Mission accomplished, with all its sacrifices. And the amount of pain they had to endure that day didn’t matter in the bigger picture. They were sorcerers, not heroes. Nobody but themselves cared about each other’s deaths. And still, Yuuta felt bad that he let Gojo-sensei kill his best friend again. And he promised to help. “You know guys, there’s a theory that black holes have the other side. The white holes,” Yuuta said suddenly, remembering a random science podcast he half listened to before meeting everyone. “Maybe it’s stupid, but I wanna believe that Gojo-sensei and others are just… in a different place, y’know? That they found that other side. We just can’t see it because we didn’t take the same route.” Nobody answered to it immediately, either not willing to crush the fragile hope or just not finding any points for or against it. The truth is, they knew way too little in this situation to have any serious theories other than the vague they destroyed each other. Maybe he was right. Maybe that was just a stupid dream of their loved ones surviving it somehow. Who knows. “I like this theory,” Choso said at last, sitting beside Yuuta, still wearing his jacket. “I want to believe that Yuuji survived this nightmare and can be happy out there with his friends.” Yeah… what a good dream it was.