A Glimpse of a Reflection.
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Glory to my chief Proofreader; Solare for he is the one who points out mistakes and acts as my favourite wall to bounce ideas off of.
Anyone know some good back stretches? Cuz that shit is starting to get annoying to deal with everyday. I'm still 18 Damnit! Back pains are for Old People!
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An Hour Later…
"What the hell were you thinking?!" Shoko demanded in outrage. Beside her lay Megumi with his eyes still open yet in perfect condition due to his Nue Incarnation granting him enhanced eyesight and protection, he was laying on a bed with the same expression of horrified surprise and resignation.
"But he's the one that used his Domain on me first, I only used my own to counter his! Besides, it was a good lesson for the other two…" Satoru reasoned, he was sitting on the ground as he was being berated for his idiotic choice to use his admittedly overkill Domain Sure-Hit against his student.
"Don't you dare try to deflect this by mentioning your students you dumb brat, what about Fushiguro-kun huh? Do you have any idea what I now have to deal with thanks to this mess? What the hell do I tell the higher ups when they ask why a Special Grade that is under my watch has suddenly gone AWOL with no explanation?" Principal Yaga chastised the white haired in a fit of annoyance.
"Not to mention the political hellfire the Zen'in clan will light under my ass when they hear that their fucking Heir's teacher has put him out off commission during a teaching accident?! You're the fucking clan leader of the Gojo to boot, this is a fucking nightmare! Do you even know the implications of this to those damn elders-" He went on to dig into Satoru, rambling on and on.
"I know how to fix your problems." Maki interjected, causing everyone in the room to swerve to look at her in surprise as they didn't sense her getting inside the room due to her Heavenly Restriction. She was standing behind everyone in the corner of the room with her back leaning against the wall, next to her was a rather large window.
"Oh Maki, didn't see ya' there. Go on, tell us your plan before Yaga-sensei over here blows a gasket and starts rearranging the geography of Satoru's face, amusing as that would be." Shoko said, gesturing to the titular man with a sly smirk as she watched him grimace slightly.
"Yeah, no one usually does. But anyways, Megumi n' I thought of a fix for an eventuality like this in case he was indisposed or otherwise out of the picture for a bit." Maki revealed with a similar smirk. Reaching over to her side, she then proceeded to slide open the window before snapping her fingers as seemingly nothing.
"Akane, come're." She ordered.
Immediately as she gave her order, a figure formed and coalesced from the shadow of a nearby tree branch. The figure was perched upon the edge of the window, ready at attention after being summoned. They were dressed in an all black Shinobi attire without any markings upon them which covered their entire body from head to toe.
"Yes, Lady Maki? What are your orders?" The voice of the figure was that of a mature woman, approximately in her early 20s.
"Oh, it's that spy that hangs around Megumi that he told me to not worry about a while back!" Satoru recalled when Megumi told him about her back when they were training in preparation for the Parade.
"The what?!" Yaga shouted in outrage at the information that was held from him.
"Has she been following and watching him all this time, what about the rest of us?" Shoko questioned.
"First of all, lose the 'Lady' part will you? Makes me feel like an old hag or one of those posh whores from a clan that think they matter 'cuz they shit out a son with an okay Technique and are happy being glorified baby ovens. Just Maki is fine." The black haired woman ordered, feeling herself almost gag from the image of her being in that position.
"Second of all, this is Akane Zen'in. She is a Zen'in Spy placed on Megumi turned Double Agent, she's helping us give the Zen'in clan misinformation about things regarding a few different things. Which includes when Megumi or I are indisposed, kinda like he is now." Maki explained.
"Goddamn! I don't like that this has been hidden from me for so long, but atleast the two of you are more sensible than this dumb brat and thought ahead." The principal conceded but not before he threw another dig at the white haired man sitting in front of him.
"Hm, good idea from you two, wonder how you managed to turn her. Although I imagine it wouldn't be too hard, considering the Zen'in clan n' all. Also get in here Akane, I doubt it's comfortable or good for your back to stay in that position for too long." Shoko commented, knowing full well of the acts of the titular clan.
"What is her Technique by the way? I could barely sense her at all before she appeared again, it was more like a sense of deja vu or like a gut feeling though..." Satoru muttered, trying to deflect attention from him and also answer a curiosity of his.
The double agent entered the room after a bit of hesitation, she stood by Maki's side and looked around the room. She paused after a moment and shivered as she desperately held in a laugh when she spotted Megumi's frozen form.
Atop Megumi's forehead was 3 crudely drawn wieners, each one more and more detailed than the last with the biggest one having the initials 'N.Y.S' written in the middle of it. It seems they were drawn with a permanent marker if the wet and stained tissues next to him were any indication.
"You cool with explaining it, Akane?" Maki asked, not wanting to spill info she would rather keep quiet.
"A-Actually, Lad- I mean Maki-san, I am forbidden to release any information regarding mine or any other Zen'in clan asset, Cursed Technique or otherwise." Akane revealed, trying to hint them forwards.
"Oh? Under a Binding Vow I presume?" Shoko deduced as she caught on to her word's hidden meaning.
"Yes, I am only to speak of Zen'in Clan assets to a Zen'in Clan member otherwise my soul will be ruptured." The double agent guided with a demure smile, bowing slightly with one hand on her chest.
Following her words, every other person in the room quietly turned and looked at Maki with expectant grins. The titular woman progressively got more and more annoyed at this before her annoyance turned into simmering resentment which then became resignation.
"Ughh, finee. Whatever, come're Akane."
The shinobi came forwards and whispered into Maki's ears for a moment, before stepping back and awaiting her next orders.
"Her Cursed Technique is called 'Shadow Cloak', she can basically hide herself completely in a sort of crack or fissure in space while being covered by a shadow, Cursed Energy and all." Maki explained begrudgingly.
"Huh, interesting. Must be why I couldn't sense her properly but Megumi could without issue, her Cursed Technique must be a weaker offshoot of his own which could give him a connection to her Technique due to their compatibility." Gojo analysed, satisfied with finally knowing the answer.
"Well, anyways. 'Gumi should be up in a day or two, thankfully it looks like he thought ahead and knew that he was gonna lose, so he used his Deer's Reversed Cursed Technique to charge up his body with Positive Energy prior to the impact of the idiot's Infinite Void." Shoko explained as she placed a hand on Megumi's forehead to sense his temperature before moving it down to close his eyes.
"I said I was sorry, okay! But huh, never thought of precharging your body with Positive Energy to prepare for damage when you can't use Reversed Cursed Technique. Smart…" Satoru mumbled, slipping the idea into the back of his mind to experiment with later.
"Mhm, doing so negated a decent amount of the brain damage you inflicted on him. But with me healing him consistently, along with unique biology thanks to his Perma-mutations and the mitigated damage from his own RCT, he should be up and running in about a day or two instead of the week or two it would have usually been." The doctor stated as her hand was burning with Reversed Cursed Technique while she passively healed Megumi's brain damage.
"Y'know what to do then, don't ya' Akane? Go tell the Zen'in bastards that he's out of the country on an emergency mission over in America or somethin'. Anything that'll keep his bedtime nap hidden as it were." Maki ordered dismissively, not caring much for the politics but knew that Megumi would.
"Very well, I will be sure to misdirect the clan for Megumi-sama. Farewell." Akane announced before she jumped backwards out of the room and through the window, she fell under a large tree's shadow before disappearing into the forest.
"Well Goddamn! Atleast that's taken care of for now. As for you Satoru, you better not be feeling any relief. Because until he wakes up, you are still on my shit list! Who knows what kind of unspeakable horrors he's undergoing from this brain damage…"
…
A day and a half later.
Megumi was currently sitting in the middle of his Innate Domain, beneath him was a vertebrae of the spinal column that made up the core and base of his Domain of absolute Darkness. He held in his hands a bucket of popcorn with a soda on the side.
In front of him was a TV which was playing horrendous renditions and takes on his world and has been for 24 hours, at some point he had managed to recover his mind and soul enough to pull his consciousness into his Inner Domain as a sort of refuge to help him recover.
It took quite a bit of effort but he had somehow managed it and was now resting inside his Innate Domain while waiting for his physical mind to heal enough for him to take back control of his body.
Coming here had also allowed him to block out all of the remaining information that was beamed into his brain, although he had eventually chosen to sift through it to pass the time.
"Ugh, I know I started watching this again from pure boredom but honestly, this shit is pure trash. How the hell would a Harem between Yuji and the rest of the women in our world even work? I couldn't even imagine Nobara and Yuki being into Yuji, much less being willing to share him with each other." Megumi sighed out as he ate his somewhat bland popcorn.
"Well, I guess I'm not that good at creating food from nothing in here. Surprised I was even able to pull this much off, doesn't really make sense if I'm being honest. Eh, whatever. I think my brain has healed up enough by now, so I should be waking up soon enough." He commented as he threw away the popcorn he made and fell backwards to lay down straight upon the vertebra of his Domain.
When he looked up towards the skies of his domain he spotted a Branch of the Anchor of his Domain, the Spinal Column that served as the core of his Domain sprouted hundreds, even thousands of different Branches made by an amalgamation of Bones and Void.
And at the end of each one was a 'fruit', another manifestation of technique, another example of his almost infinite Potential for Growth. Another Merger between Monster and Shadow, another being under his will, another entity born of Curse and Void.
The one he currently looked upon seemed to be a merger between the Great Serpent, Funeral Tiger and Rabbit Escape. And despite the unconventional mix of shikigami, something in his soul told him it would be powerful enough to match and even overwhelm a First Grade Sorcerer.
He laid there for a few minutes as he tuned out the remnants of the stream of information that was forced upon him by Satoru's Infinite Void, he started considering his plans for the future and what he was going to do when he finally woke up.
"I guess it wouldn't be fair for me to blame Satoru for this, considering that I used my Domain knowing this would happen. Still kinda pissed though, he's beaten me 879 to 0." He groaned, remembering the almost countless humiliating losses he had suffered.
"You'd think I could be getting close to winning but I still can't catch up to the smug bastard. Domain Amplification or not, even with the Inverted Spear of Heaven, he's still beyond me." Megumi lamented.
He covered his face with both his hands while groaning in annoyance, before he willing the vertebrae he was laying on to sink into his abyss and take him along with it.
"What the hell am I missing? Is training for so long and so vigorously simply not enough, is Mahoraga truly the only way I can beat him? Have I really surpassed my past self if I can't match the truly strong without needing to rely on him?" He questioned as he sunk deeper into the bottomless well that was his Innate Domain.
"No matter how much I train and work to become stronger, the gap between myself and his back just seems to become wider. Is this really all that I amount to?"
Megumi Fushiguro sank deeper and deeper until all he could see was shadows while contemplating his path in life and why he had chosen to become strong in the first place.
In his past, Satoru once spoke of Absolute Strength, and the Loneliness it brought. That despite being surrounded with people that you love and care about, that still didn't clog the empty hole he could feel in his soul.
The sullen words he read that old summer day still reverberated in his mind a Decade later.
'You can make a flower bloom, you can admire it, but you can't tell the flower "I want you to understand me"'
They shook him to his core even now, because even after all his hard word for the past Decade of nonstop training in Jujutsu, Nothing scared him more than the chance that he would feel empty by the end of it.
Despite all the Blood, Sweat and Tears he had shed throughout the years. Would it even matter to him at the End?
Would he feel Hollow? Lonely?
What is it all for?
Is becoming the Strongest Truly what will fulfil him in the end?
These questions and dilemmas stayed in his mind, as he stayed there within the very depths of his Domain for what seemed like days with nothing to occupy him but his own thoughts.
Eventually he could feel a pull on his soul and a blinding light appeared at the very top of his Domain. That pull got stronger and stronger as he was pulled out of the endless sea of his shadow upside down, he even started getting feeling back in his physical body again which told him that he was finally waking up.
"Looks like it's finally over, back to the ol' grindstone I suppose. I wonder how the proceedings with the Amago Clan went, I need to debrief with Rin when I can- Huh, the hell's that?" Megumi's thought process stopped as he laid his eyes on something he couldn't have expected.
Deep beneath him, inside the very end of his paradoxically bottomless abyss, he saw… himself.
His past self if his appearance was any indication, his body was much thinner and shorter from what he could see which led him to believe it was his previous form.
The other Megumi was sitting down at the bottom of their Domain cross legged, as if he was waiting for something or someone to arrive and sit in front of him.
The simulacrum slowly looked up at his fading form for a moment before shaking his head and looking back down, almost as if saying it wasn't time yet.
"What the fuck?"
Megumi didn't have time to consider or comprehend what he saw before he was pulled backwards even faster as within a second he flew out of the Sea of Shadows, past the Spinal Column that held his Innate Domain together and into the blinding light which swallowed him whole.
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Author's Note:
When our Protagonist stared into the Infinite Abyss within his soul, something Stared Back.
I wonder what this means for the Future?
Those that have Reading Comprehension or have just read the Manga should be able to figure it all out but who knows…
BUT ENOUGH ABOUT PEAK STORY TELLING!
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ONLY 300 LEFT TO GO, SEND ME POWER STONES!
I SHALL BRING ABOUT THE AGE OF POTENTIAL!
…
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Next Chapter Title: The Divine Guard.
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