Chapter 23

Jiki dreamt.

He knew it was a dream because his earliest memory was of walking.

He traveled down familiar pathways, sandaled feet sliding on wooden floors.

The movement of the cold night breeze gently shook the Sakura blossom trees she had planted a few years before his birth, and the fall of those pink leaves signaled the end of an era.

The smell of a recently finished meal mixed with the iron tang of blood was heavy in the air. He didn't need to look at himself to know he was covered in a copious amount of that life-giving liquid.

He knew where he was after all.

He could feel the armor that protected his chest suddenly multiply in weight. His shin guard felt loose and hampered his movements.

The matching pale white forearm guard seemingly itched fiercely and he had to strangle the sudden urge to recheck if he secured it well. He did.

He was just feeling something few would believe he was familiar with. Uncertainty.

His keen ears picked up the shuffle of movement in the room he was heading to, and he turned his head at it.

His ponytail hits something behind him. The implement of his upcoming murder. He does not even make an attempt to sway the scenario playing out. It was one of his own making. A culmination of fate, chance, and his own decisions.

Was it flawed? Yes. Yet it was the only option left to him, to take on the sins of his lineage for the greater good. All in an attempt to stop a coup that would've weakened the leaf enough that another war was certain.

One the leaf would not survive. Not with the rapid loss of hundreds of active shinobi. Not with the loss of their Jinchuriki. And especially not with the loss of their Hokage.

No. The leaf was weak. Weak in a way few people realized. The illusion of strength the third Hokage projected was just that. An Illusion. Yet one that the other villages were not ready to risk. That was partly because of the amount of covert ops the Anbu and Root had accomplished in the dark. If the plan went through, the Uchiha would succeed in their coup, easily in fact.

So he agreed with this flawed counter plan.

His steps brought him to the sliding door his parents were lurking behind, and just like every other time he had this dream, he stopped at the door.

"Come in, Itachi, there are no traps."

Itachi

He had almost forgotten his own name.

He slid the door open to face the straight backs of his father and mother.

They were dressed in more formal wear. He could see the discarded Jonin jacket his father must've worn earlier and the mesh shirt and battle armor that would've accompanied it in the corner.

If they had fought, he could not honestly claim victory. Not when his father had the same eyes as him with more experience using it.

Including his mother, a former jonin of the hidden leaf, and he would've certainly lost.

Yet here they were, sat in seiza with backs to him and necks bare. A damned pose.

"I do not want to participate in a death match with my own son," his father called out, voice low.

"Yet I want you to promise me one thing, Itachi. Promise me you will take care of Sasuke." That was all it took to break him all over again.

He could feel hot tears drop past his cheeks even as his hand stretched behind him to unsheathe his standard-issued ninjato.

Just like every other time he found himself here, he remembers with uncanny clarity the way his mother's hand shook, even as she squeezed them tight against her thighs.

His sharingan was both a curse and a blessing, but he would not spare himself of his sins. He allowed the memory to burn itself into his brain once more, even as his hands swung automatically, the last words that echoed out from his fathers lips were, "You truly are a kind child."

 ...

He opened widely spinning eyes slowly, ignoring the clarity of the dream, for it was not one to fade off with awakening. He stared up at the wooden roof above him.

It was almost reminiscent of how he woke up in this world for the first time, he realizes with a smile. But without the comfort of Aiko knocking on his door for the first time.

He moves to stand, smoothly transitioning to his feet. The mirror ahead shows he had let his hair grow out. Over the past couple of months, it had grown out somewhat, reaching far enough to go down his neck.

He observes his morning absolutions quickly; a bath, brushing, and finally tying his hair into a bun with two bangs falling to the side of his face, just like how he carried it in his past life. He slots in the black dangling earrings at the same moment the door slams wide open.

"Are you ready?"

He ignores the over-enthusiastic yell of the cursed puppet and stretches his hands for a quick fist bump with the accompanying cursed speech user, "kelp."

Toge lets himself fall into the closest seat while Panda jumps on the bed to continue his rambling.

"Our first real mission. Not like the first one we had during our introduction wasn't a real one. But this is going to be our first real mission. An actual semi-grade one-"

Panda seemed happy.

A semi-grade one mission should be more than what a couple of first year students should be sent on.

Yet Satoru had approved it with a grin. A test of his leadership then. This would be the first mission Jiki would be actively participating in with his classmates.

He straightens his clothes before turning to face them.

"Ready?"

"Salmon."

"We'll have the chance to-"

With seeming agreement, Panda's rambling aside, they stepped out of his room together.

Tokyo Metropolitan Jujutsu Tech served as both a school and headquarters for Sorcerers who needed a place to lay low. It was extensively renovated and had the same capacity as most old clans.

That is why it took them almost ten minutes of walking down passageways, gazebos, fanged statues, a little pond, and the cursed armory before they finally found their way to the classroom, where they found the waiting forms of Maki and Emi.

The green-haired girl was performing a quick warm-up exercise consisting of lunges and stretches as they walked up to them. While the brown-haired Emi sat cross-legged still attempting to figure out her innate cursed technique no doubt.

"Finally, I thought you guys decided to ditch us or something."

Jiki shrugged in reply.

"Bonito flakes."

"Our walk was longer," Panda grumbled.

"Hi, guys!" Jiki noted the lack of stutter and almost smiled. An improvement if nothing else.

"Hey Emi-chan, at least we don't get any tongue-lashing from you," Panda replied with his regular fanged smile.

"Tongue lashing? I'll have you know that-"

"That's enough."

The sudden intrusion into their daily banter halted the conversation and put them on edge.

Jiki, of course, noticed the man coming a mile off, yet what warmed his heart was the subtle almost unconscious positioning that occurred the moment he spoke.

Maki shifted to the side, the same moment Panda set his heavy bulk in front of Emi while giving enough space to the side for Toge.

The only one outside of that formation was Jiki.

He was not even sure they knew what they just did. It was something he beat into them so often, that they had started flowing into the position instinctively.

The man noticed it with a weird look on his face, before turning to meet Jiki's eyes.

That brief moment of eye contact was enough for the man to snap his eyes away.

Atsuya Kusakabe.

He was a big man. Almost taller than Satoru, with sharp brown eyes and a lollipop perpetually stuck in his mouth. His well-muscled frame was hidden behind a black suit and an even bigger brown overcoat.

Jiki had read and even made more comprehensive files on all the noted characters in the world of jujutsu.

So a civilian born without the aid of a clan that managed to reach the peak of regular jujutsu sorcerer classification said something about him. That he reached that point without an innate technique said even more about the tall man.

"You're the first years yes?" Kusakabe asked rhetorically.

"I've not had much contact with the lower years, but I'm Atsuya Kusakabe; the instructor for the second years," the man continued, "I've heard about your disastrous meeting with them. Sorry about that."

He finished with a frown and a side look at Jiki.

Disastrous was an overstatement. Yet their introduction to their seniors had not been the best.

With that introduction, the group relaxed and gave their greetings. The older man continued after the formalities.

"Satoru should be here, but he was sent off. Something about retrieving one of the Disgraced ones finger from a cult down in Australia." The big man had muttered that last part to himself but Jiki had heard it. He let a brief frown cross his face as he thought on those words. Something about that name had a weight to it.

"Anyway," the man continued with a scratch of his head. "I'll be the one taking you to your exorcism. The location is a residential area so you'll need someone to set up a strong barrier. That's where I come in. So get ready, we leave in five minutes." With his part said, he walked off towards the motor pool with a back wave at them.

"He's the one without an innate cursed technique right?" Emi asked from behind, drawing him from his thought as she stared at the man walk away.

"Yes," Jiki finally spoke, his eyes on the brown-haired demure girl. "Although I believe he already has an apprentice," he said gently in an attempt to let her down as softly as he could.

"It's okay," she answered with a shaky smile.

"Don't worry, Emi-chan, you'll soon get your technique down. It just takes a bit of time, that's all."

Jiki refused to comment on the fact that the only reason it takes time is so the technique can etch itself into the growing body and soul of the user.

"Let's go," Jiki spoke up again drawing their attention.

 ...

"This is the place?" Maki asked as they stepped down from the bus.

The feeling he felt from the building was a familiar one. It reminded him of the first time he was forced to interact with this world.

The first time he stopped viewing the world from the lens of an outsider and a bystander.

The time he was forced to act. Unleashing the black flames of Amaterasu in this world. Yet it was not the exact same, it felt… different in a way.

The building itself was seemingly harmless. A white-painted hospital with a large Red Cross sign at the top of its prodigious height.

With the sun glaring down on them, determining the contents of the hospital was hard. The only notable aspect was how empty and quiet it was.

"Emerge from the darkness, blacker than darkness. Purify that which is impure."

They all looked up at the liquid-like substance that manifested above. The black oily cursed technique spread out above them before curving inwards forming a dome shape and trapping them inside.

Ring Ring.

He took his phone out of his pocket, flicked it open, and picked up the call.

"The barrier is set," Kusakabe said through the speaker.

Jiki looked through the curtain at the brown haired man. It was not the pitch black curtain he was familiar with, this one was opaque enough to see through even if it seemed to block sounds.

He turned his attention around to the suddenly dark hospital. The lack of sunlight highlighted and changed everything.

The pale building stood as a looming sentinel in the darkness the curtain created. its windows formed black eyes that stared back at them, waiting for them to stare and walk into that abyss.

Shadows danced eerily across its white-bricked facade, imitating monsters and horrors, creatures of the past.

The curtains mimicry of nightfall triggered whatever was hiding in the building and he could suddenly feel the cursed energy emission increase.

His classmates hesitated at the sudden change in the atmosphere, with the only person that didn't seem to care much or even notice being Maki. The Zenin spun her long polearm to the side and rested her amber eyes on him. Waiting, watching, judging.

So he did what Satoru had set him up to do. Lead. His feet made zero sound as he walked, the only sounds that echoed were the footsteps of his classmates following behind.

"Stop," he called out, as they got to the waterfall in front of the double doors that lead into the hospital. Half-lidded red eyes remained at the entrance to the hospital.

"What's wrong?" He heard Maki ask.

"They're coming."

Like an activation trigger, seven curses sprang out of the ground directly in front of the waterfall immediately after he spoke.

Grade three curses, his quick readings of their cursed energy informed him. But these were smarter than your regular grade-three cursed spirits.

They were smart enough to form a rudimentary ambush and abandon it when it was not viable. That said something about the caliber of curses that waited for them inside.

They emerged from the ground like a fish slipping out of water. Something about curses allowed them a level of intangibility when they were not actively in combat.

The seven Bipedal curses wore stitched-up skin that spread out obscenely over muscular bodies. Putrid bile seeped out of the stitches and they wailed out as one.

"wE cANt hElP iM sOORy, ITs tErMinal."

The first three charged at him while the remaining four curses leaped over him to engage the rest of his classmates.

Smart enough to know he was the bigger threat or was that just instincts?

He ignored the four that moved to his teammates with the certainty of their victory. Instead focusing his attention on the three that gently galloped towards him. Hungering maws were stretched wide and leaking spittle and bile.

"teRmiNal ANapHyLAxIs!!"

The one in the middle screeched out but he ignored the words. Curses were known to draw words from a diminished vocabulary.

Words they had perceived with some great degree of familiarity in life. Words that had stayed with them long enough not even they knew their meaning, but those words had left a mark on most of them.

He stared at the charging monstrosity and noticed it had eyes. A thought crept up that he found hard to discard. So he focused on it. He raised his right hand into the ram sign to focus his cursed energy before looking at the curse in its single green and all to human looking eye and finally whispering.

Demonic Illusion: Inverted Allegiance.

His cursed energy slipped into the oblivious curse, and it took a split second for him to set the cursed energy to go with the monster's own cursed energy flow, and when it did, it stumbled for a second lagging behind the other two. A split second later it regained it's balance before leaping on its fellow curse.

The betrayal was sudden and lightening fast. Fanged maw ripped and tore stitched skin to ribbons. While clawed appendages eviscerated its fellow curse with the unnatural madness and hunger every curse carried.

He watched analytically as the wounded curse fought back not understanding what was happening but following through on self-preservation instincts that followed it from its past life.

The two inhuman monstrosities scrabbled and fought. Cracking the ground, sending sickened meat and purple blood splattering on the bare floor like mad rabid dogs.

The last one stopped a few meters in front of him, sending human-like confused glances at its fellow curses fighting before looking back at him.

Ah, he had almost forgotten how weak curses tended to group together. Another leftover human instinct. Seeking power in groups.

He was patient, so he stared at it curious to see if it would truly attack. It must've sensed something in his cursed energy as it took a fluttering and confused step back.

So they understood fear then. He tilted his head with curiosity, now would it attack like a rabid animal even knowing it was outmatched?

He would never know that answer as the sound of air splitting came from behind him.

He let out a sigh as a long bladed glaive blew past him before embedding itself deep into the curse head.

Maki tore after it, before jumping and landing hard on the polearm while gripping the other end for balance. The force of her landing dragged the embedded blade down hard tearing through the curse and splitting it into two halves.

He turned his eyes back to his first experiment, they had torn each other to shreds he noted serenely. The surviving curse was barely hanging on by a thread as it stumbled to its feet. It was the one he used the genjutsu on. The surprise attack it let had helped it come out on top in that brief bout.

It turned to them and made to move before suddenly dropping dead. So its cursed energy flow finally disrupted the technique.

Slower than it would've been on a jujutsu sorcerer especially if they were in a heightened state, but faster than it would've been dispelled by a non-sorcerer.

"What did you do?"

Maki asked him with wary eyes as she walked up to stand by him.

"Made them think they were enemies"

"How?" Panda spoke up behind them, even the cursed puppet seemed unnerved by what it witnessed.

"Genjutsu" he stated carelessly, even if he knew they had no reference for the term. It proved that Ninjutsu and Genjutsu were possible. It had proven extremely difficult considering it took him over a decade to figure it out, especially with the lack of stable chakra pathways to follow. Yet he had re-engineered it somewhat.

Now came the important question, could he teach it? Such knowledge would change the very fabric of this world. He was not certain what it would usher in. His eyes drifted to Emi standing confused with a cursed katana in hand. He noted the purple blood on the blade.

To people like her, this would mean everything.

Toge walked up to the scene with none of the wariness and shock that the others exhibited, carrying only curiosity in his eyes as he looked at the curses before looking back at Jiki with a thumb up.

Ah, he understood the sudden curiosity and lack of fear. This was something the Inumaki scion could do theoretically. Convince two curses to kill each other.

He could see the similarities. First, the way that the Special grade curse affected their perception with smell back in Aiko's village and now the way the Inumaki affected their targets with words. Olfactory and Auditory genjutsu?

"We'll it doesn't matter," Maki spoke up drawing him from his thought before spinning her glaive and sending purple blood flying. "I was promised an A if we finish this in record time. Best believe I'm going to get that A"

She started walking towards the entrance, before stopping and looking back at them. "Well, are you coming? I can't be the only smart person here."

They chuckled as they followed behind her.

 ...

His phone rang and he ignored it as he tried to understand what he just witnessed a few minutes ago.

It was common knowledge that the younger Gojo scion was an anomaly. Even among special grades, the malevolent-eyed child was different.

Eerie from birth, those eyes brimming with such negative curse energy were something inhuman. He would readily admit that he was wary of the boy.

No, not wary. In the comfort of his own thoughts, he was not prone to lying to himself. Delusion was the privilege of the strong.

He was scared of the boy. Like all teachers, he had heard of what the boy was capable of. Either while Satoru was talking his ears off or during their monthly analysis of their students.

Kusakabe had seen a lot of things in his life as a sorcerer. Yet this was the first time he had seen someone convince curses to kill each other with only a look.

Yet it was not just what he did or how he did it. It was his reactions or lack thereof.

No, the only thing Kusakabe sensed from him throughout was curiosity and the knowledge that he had found a new way to kill. What a monstrous child.