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Rating:
Mature
Archive Warnings:
Graphic Depictions Of ViolenceMajor Character Death
Category:
Multi
Fandoms:
Parahumans Series - Wildbow呪術廻戦 | Jujutsu Kaisen (Manga)
Characters:
Gojo SatoruTaylor Hebert | Skitter | WeaverVictoria Dallon | Glory Girl | AntaresAmy Dallon | Panacea | Red QueenBrockton Bay WardsHannah | Hana | Miss MilitiaColin Wallis | Armsmaster | DefiantEmily PiggotSukuna | Ryoumen SukunaEmma Barnes (Parahumans)Kenjaku | Fake Getou Suguru
Additional Tags:
CrossoverCrossovers & Fandom FusionsFix-ItAlternate Universe - Canon DivergenceReincarnationSoul BondAlt-Power Taylor HebertWard Taylor Hebert | Skitter | WeaverHero Taylor Hebert | Skitter | WeaverGojo Satoru is a Little ShitGojo Satoru Being Gojo SatoruSmug Gojo SatoruSix Eyes (Jujutsu Kaisen)Overpowered Taylor Hebert | Skitter | WeaverGojo and Taylor are OneSlow Burn
Language:
English
Stats:
Published:2025-12-06Updated:2026-05-30Words:60,746Chapters:5/?Comments:714Kudos:1,617Bookmarks:672Hits:48,384
The Strongest
TheSmilingFox
Chapter 2: One, Two... Six Eyes
Chapter Text
1/The Strongest, Again
One, Two… Six Eyes
Beautiful.
It was all so so so so so so so so so so beautiful.
The word fluttered uselessly in my head. Beautiful. Suffocating, radiant, needle-sharp beautiful.
Everything shimmered. Everything pressed in. A physical weight of splendor that made my skin crawl and my teeth ache.
"Hah… hahahaha!"
A sound I couldn't name scratched its way up my throat. It felt like it wanted to tear me from the inside.
Beautiful. So beautiful it was terrible.
An itch bloomed beneath my skin, a million invisible ants marching in a gorgeous, synchronized parade. I scratched, scratched the sensation away, my translucent nails dragging over skin the color of bone and morning light. It was my skin, and it was glinting faintly, I realized, as though lit from behind. Red welts rose, angry flames over colorless flesh, and then smoothed out before I could admire them.
Every scrape only fed the itch. Made the shimmer brighter. The beauty deepened, became its own exquisite symphony of pure, hellish sensation.
"Hahahahahahahahahahahah! Oh God! Haha… Hahaha! Hahahaha, mom! Haha…. Hahahahahahahahahahaha…!"
That sound again. What was it called? I couldn't couldn't couldn't tell.
The world doubled, tripled, swam. My face felt light. I wanted to vomit the beauty out of my body, let it fizzle out outside. But I couldn't it was trapped inside me and it wouldn't get out and I was melting
"Hahahahahahahahahaha! Hah! Hahahahahaha!"
I couldn't breathe. Tears streamed down from Eyes that didn't need to blink. No glasses. That was strange; I never needed glasses. I had the best Eyes in the world. Six of them, wide open, staring out of one skull, drinking in a world that had dissolved and gone beautiful and terrible.
"Hahaha! H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H—"
The world pinched inward, collapsing into unbearable clarity. And every single thing screamed for attention.
Dust mites perched on my arm like tiny, spinning kingdoms. Deeper, just beneath the too-white skin, crawled living, breathing geometry, muscles sliding over each other in delicate patterns within patterns within patterns. And even deeper than that, the dance of cells, with crimson, crocheted hooks drifting through capillaries no deeper than breath, and ivory snowflakes pulsing pale and luminous in the river of my bloodstream.
I looked deeper.
The leftover bacteria in me were shredded apart under invisible blades. The throbbing powerhouses of mitochondria unfurled their ribboned folds. Microtubules twisted into elegant ladders of DNA. The double-helix itself flickered open, colorless, impossibly small.
A shiver clawed up my spine. Not from cold. Something older, something buried. A memory of a feeling.
Was it from the womb, that perfect, comfortable dark? Or maybe the moment I opened these Eyes and saw the scaffolding of a world I didn't even know yet? Or was it the day they told me I'd have to live with it and the fact it would never hide from me, no matter how hard it tried?
I vaguely felt my face move. My jaw hung slack. Awe? Horror?
What did those words mean, anyway?
The atoms of my hand flickered next. They weren't neat spheres, never spheres. Textbook lies. They were pale, shifting little suns, their edges wavering like heat mirages. Of course they were. It clicked inside me in some distant, mathematical way. They were too tiny to care about shape. Too compact for anything but motion. How could light define something smaller than itself?
Another silent convulsion. The world skinned itself open again before me.
Smaller still. Clearer still.
Electron clouds, probabilistic ghosts. Nuclei wound tight with desperate forces like snapping rubber bands. The confinement range of gluons, the trembling of bosons and mesons, the—
"H-H-Hah."
—Absence. Presence. Something beneath substance, beneath time.
A fundamental broth. The bland, impossible soup of existence itself. Or was it a haze? A collection of strings thinner than thin?
I could no longer tell. Words felt tiny. Limited, when trying to describe something that I knew was everything and also nothing at all.
I just knew it was more than beautiful.
I knew. I understood. And that was enough. And it was not.
And… there it was.
A stain. A violent, incongruous smear of color that was neither defined by light nor Eye, not anymore. It was a deep, rotten blue, wriggling through the base substrate of everything.
Cursed energy.
A white-hot spike drove through my skull.
I clutched my head. My fingers scratched at my scalp. Reality sluiced out between my ribs.
Too bright. Too close. Too much.
It hurt.
It was glorious.
"Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!"
I was breathing it all in and it hurt. Drowning, I was drowning, drowning in the soup and the blue. I blinked and it hurt even more. I couldn't blink it away. I couldn't shut it out. The soup writhed behind my eyelids no matter how hard I squeezed them shut—
—Ooooookay, no. No.
What the hell, man? What was going on? Worst wake up ever. This was weird, even for me.
Remember. Baby steps. Small steps. The clan caretakers always muttered riddles at me when I was little. Their oh so 'sacred' advice, which really just were sermons dressed up as wisdom. It was useless as any string of pretty words could be. But somewhere in the mess of metaphors was the trick they meant for me to find.
'You are not the forest; the forest makes way for you'.
In Satoru's Dictionary of Simplified Jujutsu: pull your head out of your ass.
And so I did. I let the world shrink to the size of my body.
I pulled inward. Always in, never out. I felt the blood in my veins, not the quantum foam. I listened to my heartbeat, not the strong nuclear force. One by one, the simpler sensations piled up as more than theoretical facts about what my body was supposed to be doing. The wet fire of my Eyes, the flutter of breath scraping down my throat, the clinging of damp fabric on oversensitized skin…
The world reassembled itself in layers. From formless soup to monochrome static to grain to shape to image…
…Still vibrating. Still too much. But manageable.
Reality, mine again.
Six overlapping worlds gently clicked into one.
"Taylor."
The word was soft. The voice, softer.
A hand on the shoulder of the universe.
"Haha… hah."
I gasped.
A man leaned over my bed, fingers curled tight around the railing. Glasses. Ruffled brown hair and a patchy attempt at a beard. A shirt wrinkled with worn and worry. Concern etched into every line of him. His eyes were wet.
My face smiled. I didn't will it to but it smiled. Then the warmth filled my chest, and my Eyes stung. Tears overflowed and I didn't move to stop them.
Dad. Danny. My Dad.
The familiar shape of him slotted into place, heavy with clumsy love and awkward devotion.
The warmth curdled for a second.
Danny?
I never met my father.
"… Gh – Hahahahahaha!"
The laughter ripped out of me. It was a broken, breathless thing now. There was no air left, my lungs were crumpled paper bags, but my body kept convulsing with it. It was the only pressure valve I had and it just insisted in coming out, reflexive and cruel.
The alternative was to claw my ribs open and scratch the itch directly. The itch that wasn't an itch but a billion crawling, caressing sensations blooming in my flesh, inside the marrow of my bones, through the empty spaces between my thoughts.
"Hahaha… Hah! Hahahahaha!"
I had escaped the undefinable beauty. The bright nonsense. But even now it was all so much.
My nails raked my neck, my scalp, the backs of my hands. It was as pointless as when I first tried. Heat flared wherever I touched. I clutched my head, fingers digging into my temples, as if I could physically compress the fuzzy hell inside my skull. The mere pressure of hands on skin made it worse, sent fresh shockwaves of that beautiful, terrible sensitivity radiating outward, then spilling out.
I hugged myself. It was a feeble attempt to hold my body together. To keep it from unraveling into the light-and-string-and-primal-soup that was the world, that was me, that was all.
Light tugged at the edges of my vision. Threads. Currents. A sense of scattering in the air.
"Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha—!"
"Taylor! Look at me. I'm here!"
The world lurched. No, not the world… hands. They landed on my shoulders again. Solid anchors in the sensory storm. They shook me once, lightly, then held firm.
Dad, yes. Dad. He was still there.
His hands were warm anvils on me. The tiny hairs on his arms pressed into the thin hospital gown with the precision of microscopic scalpels. It was still too much sensation, but… it was grounded. No, not just that…
…Gentle. Yes. He was gentle.
A gentleness that felt alien. A tectonic pressure applied with perfect care.
The word didn't fit me.
I could be precise. I could be efficient. I could be devastating.
Gentle?
If I'd ever learned how to be gentle, then maybe… maybe Suguru wouldn't have left me—
"—Hah! Hahaha…!"
"No, none of that," he said, cutting through the static. "Baby, look at me. Feel my hands. Focus on my face."
I tried.
My fingers slid up to his wrists and locked there, holding onto them like they were the only solid things in a universe of liquid light.
My face ached from the rictus grin. My throat felt raw. I swallowed dry anyway.
I saw his eyes behind the glasses, the subtle tremor in them. To my Eyes, it was like watching the foundation of a building stress and groan. He was primed to shatter. And yet… he held, bearing up a weight he couldn't even see.
For this. For me.
Where had this man been all my life? I could have used a father like this!
But… he was my father. Wasn't he? He was Dad. No. This girl's Dad. This girl…
…I was a girl. This girl. I was Taylor. Always had been.
"Heh… hehe… D-Dad."
The word felt foreign on my tongue. A familiar flavor from a forgotten meal.
His grip tightened on me, just a fraction.
"Yes, Taylor. It's Dad. I'm here. I'm holding you. You're okay now. Breathe with me…"
Almost obediently, I hitched in a breath. He mimed it for me, in through the nose, out through the mouth, as if I were a toddler who'd forgotten the basics. Maybe I had. If he stopped now, I'd dissolve back into the laughter and choke on the marvelous, suffocating light.
I hated this.
Hated the vertigo of imbalance. Hated the desperate, clawing need for support. I could accept a hand up. I could accept a gap in my knowledge. But this? This utter reliance? This terror that if he let go, the pieces of me would scatter too far to ever recollect?
I wasn't supposed to fall apart like this.
I was…
…I was the Strongest.
I was the one who put the world back on its axis when it tilted sideways.
I was the bulwark. The end of the debate. I fixed the broken and crushed the ones who broke.
So why?
Why was I so scared of his hands leaving my shoulders?
"D-D-Dad," I tried again, the laughter a tremor in my bones. "Haha… hahaha…"
"Dad, yes," he said. "Danny. Do you remember me? Do you remember what I do for work?"
Job. My father's job. I'd never known. A jujutsu sorcerer, perhaps, though most of the Gojo clan were leeches on ancestral wealth, too proud to work, too arrogant to look anyone in the eye unless it was down the length of their nose.
"U-Union, hahaha," the answer bubbled up. "U-U-Union wor… worker. Dock… worker…"
"Yes, exactly. I'm with the dockworkers. Do you remember, uh… Randy? Thick beard, built like a mountain?"
I nodded jerkily.
"Hah… he… he f-fixed my… my flashlight," I forced the memory out. It felt like pulling teeth. "Years… hahaha… years ago. I was, ah, s-scared… the dark. Scared of the dark."
Danny, Dad, nodded back at me.
"Good. And, and… your mother. Your mother's name. Can you say it?"
Mother.
No dice. If I dug, I could recall… lavender scent, the warmth of a silk kimono in a sunlit room, a lullaby that was older than this country.
Mother. Mom.
Or had that been one of the clan's nursemaids? They never told me. I never cared to ask.
But the name rose anyway. A ghost on my lips. A truth that wasn't mine.
"A… Annette," I murmured. "Annette Rose Hebert."
It sounded like a spell. Had it always felt so magical? Or did it gain that power in the vacuum her death left behind? Or was it just the simple, crushing weight of having had a mother, and knowing her, and remembering?
I couldn't say. But the name settled into me like something reclaimed.
Dad chuckled.
"Attagirl. Good job."
I nodded, another wave of hysterical mirth threatening to become laughter. I clamped it down into a smile that felt carved on my face.
His hand rose, cupped the side of my head. His touch was careful. It was then I saw the movement behind him. My Eyes darted. Dad didn't turn, but he caught my flickering gaze. He shushed me softly, his own body tensing a bit.
I realized it was a woman. She was upright, still.
"Mister Hebert," she said. "If you would… please take a step back. Right now."
Dad didn't turn. His smile didn't falter.
"My daughter needs me right now."
That was all. He offered nothing but a stupidly simple fact.
I felt something like pride inside me. Or perhaps a connection.
The strong protect the weak. Teachers guide their students. Fathers shield their daughters. The universe still had rules, even if this particular one felt like a costume I was wearing backwards.
I just… had no idea what to do, being the one shielded for once.
"…Of course," the woman conceded. "Then, may I speak to Taylor from here? You don't need to move."
Dad hesitated. The smile held, a monument to paternal stubbornness.
"She just woke up. She still needs lots of rest."
I laughed, a short, sharp bark, and squeezed his hands. Managed to wrestle words out.
"It's… hahahahaha… hah… f-fine. It's fffine."
Dad looked like he wanted to argue. The woman a few paces behind went perfectly still for a second. The dark-green clothes, the flag over her face, and the sidearm at her hip… it all gave her a certain gravity I couldn't explain. She looked like a cosplayer but I knew she wasn't. Knew that this wasn't a game.
I met Dad's gaze, tried to project a semblance of calm into my own shuddering Eyes. I gave a trembling nod of my own.
The woman—Miss Militia, my brain supplied, the name arriving without a passport—breathed in.
"Taylor," she began. "I'm Miss Militia. A hero. You've been through a lot, but you're safe now. Can you tell us how you're feeling right now?"
I stopped.
How was I feeling?
It was such a small, stupid question for the cataclysm inside me.
How was I feeling?
How was I feeling?
I…
…was cleaved in half by Sukuna.
No.
…was rotting in a locker stuffed with filth and blood.
No.
I was…
…Who?
How?
A final, deafening click echoed in the vault of my skull.
I giggled.
"I feel like a dream."
Dad went rigid. The fear in his eyes was instantaneous, smile now a frozen mask. I saw Miss Militia's posture shift into something… ready. Coiled.
My gaze drifted past him, locked onto the fabric covering the lower half of her face. The stars and stripes. To my Eyes, the colors weren't just vivid; they were vibrating, the reds screaming, the blues a bottomless depth, the whites not white at all.
A calm settled over me.
Something sweet and electric jolted my brain. Then I raised a trembling finger, pointing at Miss Militia's face.
"Your, uh, scarf," I said, biting my lip hard enough to taste copper, fighting the laughter that wanted to become a scream. "L-Looks real itchy. Want me to fix it for you, soldier?"
"I was, hahaha, I was in the locker! They p-put me inside!" I bit out, words tumbling out, the grin hurting my face. "They shoved me inside and, and – oh my God, Dad, look! Look at the wall! It's melting! Hehehehe, no wait, it's not melting. It's breathing."
Dad's eyes flicked to the white expanse I was pointing at. To him, it was just a wall. To me, it was a living, vibrating plane, its paint a seething canvas of microscopic life and chemical leftovers.
The doctor, an old man with glasses that had probably seen a good many years of human nonsense, scribbled furiously on his clipboard in a corner of the room. Miss Militia stood closer to Dad, a statue of patriotic vigilance.
Neither face nor posture gave her feelings away. But everything else did.
Her pulse was a rapid drumbeat in her carotid artery. Skip, speed up, stop, start again. And her body, it was conducting a silent war against the heat of her own stress response, radiating faintly from her skin.
Amateur.
I giggled again.
Right. None of them could see those things. I was the only one with Six Eyes. Poor them, missing out on the ultimate light show. No cosmic bloodline lottery for the masses.
And yet…
I wasn't supposed to have this ticket either.
The last version of me I remembered fit neatly into the background. Mousy, miserable, quiet Taylor. Not special. Not a cape. Certainly not a jujutsu sorcerer.
Definitely not the Strongest.
The denial quickly tasted like ash.
The miracle of existence threaded through my Eyes then pulsed as if questioning me further. Are you sure about that?
…I'd been force-fed 'destiny' and 'legacy' with my baby formula. It was the same ol' story all the time, the same grand speeches about fate, about inevitability. Always delivered by the people who'd never lifted a finger but liked the sound of their own importance.
Pretentious clan propaganda. Shiny cages to keep their weapon in line.
The boring lectures had one kernel of truth, anyway. I was special.
It was a fact. At some point, it became a law of reality. There was no one else like me. I could revel in it or whine about it and, honestly? Being special was a blast.
I didn't argue with gravity. I didn't argue about the color of the sky.
I wasn't arguing with this either.
…What?
Me? Special?
Since when?
The memories that used to feel enormous shrank, folding inside me. Mom died and the universe didn't blink. Emma traded me in for a tougher model, as if I were last season's doll. I screamed, and screamed, and screamed until my voice broke, and everyone else turned up the volume.
All of it drifted back, as if it had happened to another girl.
Now… it felt so pathetically small. So trivial.
The ensuing clarity was obscene.
I was alive. I was…
…Satoru Gojo? Taylor Hebert?
I was me. Whoever 'me' was. And I had the Six Eyes.
Fate, it seemed, had double-dipped. And as a teacher, I kinda hated picking favorites. We're all just star-stuff and cursed energy in the end. Let's be real, though, some people's star-stuff is just lumpy clay. Mine?
Mine was a supernova.
…That sounded embarrassing even in my mind.
Come on, get a grip, Hebert. Gojo. Whoever.
I refocused. Three pairs of eyes were nailed to me. They stared as if I'd sprouted antlers. Or like I had turned into a unicorn.
A magnificent unicorn.
"Hahaha! I, hmm, pfft… sorry!" I wheezed, rubbing at my Eyes. "Just remembered a joke! Right! The locker. They filled it with… rotten things. Gross things. Maybe blood? Who knows! Hahaha! Makes my skin crawl just thinking 'bout it."
Dad's fingers tightened around mine. He didn't squeeze hard, but his pulse hammered against my palm, frantic, demanding. He was gentle anyway. He always was.
"I see," Miss Militia said. "Do you remember who put you in there, Taylor? Anyone at all? This is a serious crime. If you can give us a name, we can make this right."
Make this right.
"Hah… Hahaha!"
The sheer, breathtaking absurdity of it sent me into another gale of giggles.
Months. No, no, a year and some more of systematic humiliation. My first year of high school, poisoned. My best friend, now a ringleader. And nobody lifted a finger. Teachers looked past, doors closed, and by the end I was struggling to breathe, when I should've been studying, or painting my nails, or talking about boys.
"Hahahahahahahaha!"
What I felt in that locker was a single, muted note compared to the symphony of overwhelming sensation the Six Eyes conducted now. It had been so horrible it circled back around into something perversely beautiful.
But that wasn't the point. The horror wasn't in the scale.
It was in the petty cruelty of it. The small-minded meanness.
The Six Eyes didn't choose to be. They were another fact. A glorious, overwhelming burden I never asked for, but one that was simply, inextricably me.
Those girls, though… they chose.
I smiled.
"Hehe… hahaha, hah… Didn't get a good look," I forced out between tremors. "B-But, heh… I think it was… S-Sophia."
Miss Militia's eyebrow lifted a millimeter. Dad's breath caught.
"Sophia?" he echoed, the name strange on his tongue.
I nodded, giggles bubbling up like acid. "Y-Yes! Hahaha! Hess! Sophia Hess!" I covered my mouth as laughter turned into raw coughing. "Gah… ah… my age. Athletic. Track team, I t-think."
She rose in my mind uninvited, crisp as a photograph. Those hunter's eyes. Hands that could be gentle but chose to be rough. Her smile…
"Heh… hehehe…"
…A kitten, baring tiny teeth as if they were fangs.
I'd dealt with her type a thousand times over. Curses that pretended to be gods. Sorcerers who thought power was a license. And if I could make the King of Curses sweat cold… then Sophia couldn't be more than a gnat now.
And Emma?
A speck of dust beside the gnat.
"…They, haha, they burned my homework!" I wrenched the memory out, trying for indignation and producing only manic glee. "A-And they took Mom's flute! And they d-d-did so much… for months, Dad! Months! Hah!"
I dragged a hand down my face, as if I could wipe the grin off. It stuck, a permanent fracture.
Dad's comforting facade had finally crumbled. He wasn't smiling anymore. He'd hunched forward, as if trying to cover me from the shrapnel of my own story. Trying to atone for every silent dinner, every missed cue. It wasn't his fault. I was the one who hid it. I was supposed to handle my own problems.
I'd handled worse, hadn't I?
Miss Militia's reaction was more compelling. Her muscles corded. Her fists clenched. The anger was there, yes, but the why was fascinating. The chemical cascade in her brain, the flush of stress hormones… this wasn't just professional outrage. This was intimate.
A remembered pain? A personal disgust? I didn't read minds. I just read bodies. And her body was screaming in a language I understood perfectly.
I liked her a little more for that.
She marched up to my bed and leaned in, careful not to touch my Dad. Her voice was clear, firm. Even muffled by the scarf, it carried an edge of urgency.
"Taylor. What happened to you was serious. I need you to focus. You're safe now."
Dad finally tore his eyes from me to process her. He swallowed, wet his lips, and nudged his glasses higher on his nose.
"She's right," he said quietly. "Sweetheart… you don't have to laugh. Or pretend. Just let it out."
The giggling died mid-breath.
I stared at him. Held his gaze, unblinking, long enough for my Six Eyes to map the frantic dance of neurotransmitters in his prefrontal cortex, to trace the grief and fear firing along well-worn neural pathways. Then I shifted my gaze to Miss Militia. I looked at her star-spangled scarf, the tactical gear. The ensemble looked even more absurd now. A costume meant for wars and monsters, now talking awkwardly about vandalized lockers and teenage cruelty.
She couldn't possibly understand. No one could.
Let it out.
How many times had I wanted to? After Mom died, I'd cried until I was hollow. After that, there was quiet. Dad was drowning in his own silence. Emma was sharpening her knives. Later, I learned which feelings were permitted and which earned disapproval.
'Letting it out' was a luxury. It didn't exist in Brockton Bay, and it sure as hell didn't exist back in Japan. The clan caretakers had called a five-year-old's grief 'unbecoming of the future head'. So I swallowed it whole.
I'd only cried twice as an adult. A decade apart. Both times because of the same person.
I probably shed a tear when Suguru left.
I definitely shed a few after I killed him.
"Ah."
The sudden, stupid symmetry of it cut deeper than any cursed technique.
Across two lives, two worlds, I couldn't keep my best friend. This time, I didn't even get the chance to try.
Something sharp tore loose in my chest. It took me a second to recognize it as sound.
My face collapsed. The manic grin melted, muscles going slack before retensing into something uneven, animal. I felt the tremors in my lips, the electrical storm of distress signals firing down ancient, autonomic pathways. A reflex older than sorrow itself.
The Six Eyes, ever efficient, turned their gaze inward.
Appraisal. Limbic system engagement. Amygdala: threat detected, not physical, but emotional. Hippocampus: flooding with associated memories. Two graves, two worlds apart. Conclusion: This matters. This is loss. It is not funny.
Integration. Prefrontal cortex acknowledges data. No fabrication required. The sadness was pre-existing.
Body Recruitment. Hypothalamus activated. Signal cascade through autonomic nervous system. Parasympathetic increase. Heart rate: deceleration, then a painful, thick-thumped acceleration. Chest cavity: constriction. Not panic. Weight.
Chemical Shift. Neurotransmitter adjustment in real-time. Serotonin: dip. Dopamine: withdrawal. Cortisol: spike. Prolactin: rise. A trickle of endorphins, the body's pathetic peace offering, saved for after the disaster.
My face reconfigured itself in response to the internal coup. Medulla oblongata to facial nerves. Corrugator supercilii: contract. Depressor anguli oris: engage…
…A sound punched its way out.
Not a laugh. A sob.
It startled me. The force of it. How little choice I'd had.
The parasympathetic system finished the job. A command to the lacrimal glands.
The stress-rich compounds were evacuated… in the form of tears.
"Gh… hah…"
A violent shudder wracked my frame. I couldn't stop the hitch in my breath, the involuntary squeeze of my eyelids. I was just… crying. It felt bizarre. Mechanical.
When I opened my Eyes again, everything looked softer around the edges. Through the blur, they registered the subtle unraveling of the three adults.
Dad? A wave of relief so potent it altered his bio-electric field. Not happiness at my pain. Relief that his daughter could still feel pain. That I wasn't completely shattered.
Miss Militia? A similar release of tension. A crisis temporarily averted. Her body eased a fraction.
The doctor? A slump in his shoulder muscles, a decrease in respiratory rate. Universal human signal. Thank god, now we know how to deal with this. Something like that.
I sniffed.
"Ah… hah…"
I sniffed again, wet and gross.
"Gah… pfft…"
Then I snorted.
And the laugh that followed was different. It wasn't hysterical. It was… mine.
"…Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha!"
I scrubbed my face harder, swiping away tears and snot with my arm, blinking fast. The grin came back, stretching my cheeks into their familiar ache.
I could feel the goosebumps rising on the doctor's arms without even turning my head.
I couldn't unsee it. It was so funny.
Dad's expression curdled into something between heartbreak and confusion. Miss Militia's posture rammed back into code-red readiness.
I shrugged.
"T-There," I said. "Catharsis. You're welcome."
Then I pivoted in the bed. With a twist, I snatched the plastic cup from my bedside table.
I heard the click at Miss Militia's holster as soon as I moved, the spectral sigh of something that was not the mechanism of a normal gun. I didn't give her the chance to get all dramatic with me.
"Now… look at this juice!"
I lifted the cup high, as if offering a toast to the skies. The juice inside wasn't just orange. Through the grey plastic, I saw a swirling nebula of sucrose and citric acid, carbonation bubbles exploding like miniature supernovae, pigments fluorescing under the light.
Liquid sunshine. Bubbly with sugar and promise. It hummed faintly against my senses.
I smiled at the orange juice. The orange juice smiled back.
"…So, yeah. That's the sitch, Miss Second Amendment," I said, letting my smile sprawl as it pleased. "Crappy year, people laughing when it wasn't funny, the whole 'bullied teen girl' starter package. They even topped it off with the oldest prank in the book! Personally, I'd have gone with… with sweets! Fill the locker with syrup and cocoa powder. Imagine the epitaph—"
I raised my free hand and traced invisible words in the air.
"—'Here lies Taylor, a sweet girl who met a sweeter end'. More thematic, y'know?"
Dad flinched. His hand around mine became a vise, knuckles bleaching.
"Taylor, no," he whispered. "Don't say that. Ever. Not even as a joke."
"Your father is right," Miss Militia cut in.
She'd inched closer as my laughter settled into something quieter, more manageable. Her professional stiffness was gone, replaced by anticipation. The fingers at her hip twitched with the urge to act.
How? I didn't know. I just knew it wouldn't be pretty. And I was kinda curious if she'd go through with it anyway. But I held back from provoking her. Mostly.
"I understand the impulse to deflect, but humor is unnecessary," she declared. "What you've described isn't just bullying. It's a coordinated campaign. Verbal abuse, sabotage, theft, destruction of property… each of those is actionable. And the locker incident crosses the line into a felony. Aggravated assault, to be specific."
She leaned over the bed rail. The scarf swallowed half her face; her eyes didn't blink.
"Are you absolutely certain," she asked, slow and careful, "that Sophia Hess was the primary instigator? And that she's the one who physically put you in the locker?"
I grinned.
"Well, I didn't keep a ledger. 'September 3rd: stole my history text. November 14th: called me an oxygen thief.'" I tapped my temple. "But yeah, I remember her greatest hits. 'Waste of life.' 'Motherless slut'. You can't say she's uncreative, haha!"
I let my head fall on my shoulder as I kept smiling.
"My personal favorite? 'Worm.' It's got a… an elegance to it, y'know? Really captures her philosophical stance on my entire existence." I leaned forward conspiratorially. "Between us? That girl's a powder keg of issues. So much rage, so few worthy targets. She could at least learn to aim better. Use her energy for something more productive."
Dad muttered a curse, looking away, his thumb moving in frantic, soothing circles on my hand. Miss Militia didn't move, but the tension in her shoulders climbed another notch.
"I see," she said, more to herself. I could see the calculations firing behind her eyes as she quieted before speaking anew. "The locker. This is critical. No jokes now. Did you see her push you in? Was she there when the door closed? Did you hear her voice?"
I paused, let the silence stretch. Let her sit in it, watching the minute telltale signs of her discomfort, such as the slight increase in her blink rate, or the subtle shift in her stance.
"Nope!" I said at last. "Opened my locker, heard footsteps, and BAM! Welcome to your new, aromatic coffin and the cheapest horror movie you'll watch in a while."
I shrugged, a laugh trying to claw its way out.
"I guess that gives dear Soph plausible deniability and me a lifelong souvenir. I suck it up, the world moves on… yeah, love that for us. It's cool. Very cool."
"It's a serious accusation," Miss Militia said evenly. "The consequences would be severe. It will be investigated. But—"
"—But without a smoking gun, it's just my word against hers. And I don't have any solid proof," I finished for her, biting the inside of my cheek to keep a giggle down. "And my word is coming from a girl who laughs at walls which are, apparently, breathing. I get it. It's unfair, it's messed up, and legally, it's also a dead end. Do I at least get an emotional support teddy bear out of this? I'd love me a teddy bear."
She didn't argue. She didn't have to. The truth was a stupid thing, but it was the truth.
Dad's heartbeat, a frantic drum against my palm, spiked. He turned to her.
"This can't be right."
"Mister Hebert..."
"You said it was a crime," he cut in. "Did you see that locker? Did you see how they left my daughter? I thought… I thought she was dying. And now you're telling me there's nothing to do because she didn't get a good look?"
Miss Militia closed her eyes for a second. A brief, professional retreat.
"I share your frustration, Mister Hebert. I know exactly how the gears of the system turn. Even with PRT jurisdiction due to Taylor's potential parahuman status, we operate under the law. A judge or jury would need certainty, and without corroboration, no court will rule decisively. Especially given Taylor's…"
She trailed off. Her eyes flicked to me. Dad's followed.
"…Taylor's current condition."
I raised my eyebrows, let my jaw drop in exaggerated offense.
"Wow. That's, like, so rude," I said. "Guys. I'm groovy."
"""No, you're not,""" Dad, Miss Militia, and even the doctor said in ragged unison.
The room went quiet. I snorted.
"Sheesh! So much for victim agency. Speak for me, why don't you?" I sighed, giggling now, rocking slightly on my bed. "C'mon, M&M. Can't you just punish the big, bad bully for me? Pwetty pwease? I'm totally stable. See? I swear, I'm just a traumatized wee lil' thing. I crave justice, and happiness…"
I let the plea hang, saccharine and thin. Then I leaned in, puckering my lips.
"…And I wouldn't say no to damage compensation, either," I added, before dropping my voice to a stage whisper aimed at Dad. "Help me sell it, old man! Weep a little! With the settlement we could fix the porch and go see Honolulu!"
He looked torn between a sob and a laugh, settling on a weary sigh as he ran a hand over his patchy beard. Miss Militia ignored the vacation planning entirely.
"Is there really no way?" Dad asked softly.
"There will be a thorough investigation," she repeated, the phrase a bureaucratic tombstone. "But any additional information would be crucial. Other names. Collaborators. You implied it was a group. Anything extra would help, Taylor."
Both of them looked at me.
I kept my smile right where it was.
Emma's name sat behind my teeth. Her betrayal had cut deeper than any locker prank, and mentioning her here would just break Dad further. Not to mention that getting her into this mess would mean Alan Barnes was going to intervene in favor of his daughter. Getting a lawyer involved, one who was buddy-buddy with the school that turned its back on me?
No. This was a mess already. I didn't want to make it a legal knot too.
Besides, I'd spent a lifetime dealing with convoluted, ancient politics. Playing by someone else's rules on their crooked board was a sucker's game.
I didn't play along. I preferred to flip the goddamn table and watch the pieces fly.
Emma would get a visit, sure. But not from the law, or the heroes. From an old friend. And then we'd solve it ourselves.
I finally shook my head.
"Nope," I lied. "That's all I've got. One devil's name and the bad luck of a saint."
We stalled there, all of us.
The hero had run out of comforting lies because, in the end, what was there to say? Her hands were tied by the same dull pragmatism that bound every enforcer, from jujutsu sorcerers to beat cops. Miss Militia was a cog. A well-intentioned, sharp-edged cog, but a cog nonetheless. She could only grind along the grooves the machine provided.
I didn't blame her. She stood where people like her always stood, between what was right and what was allowed. Sorcerers wore it better, maybe, dressed it up with fate and lineage, but it was a collar all the same.
No one asked them if they wanted to wear it. No one asked them where they wanted to go.
I felt a faint pang of guilt for lying to her and Dad, just… not enough to matter.
Playing by the rules held no appeal. Rules hadn't prevented Taylor Hebert's worst day. They hadn't let Satoru Gojo reshape a rotten world. Change only ever happened when someone decided to step over the line. And I had some very aggressive stepping over lines to do… just as soon as I got out of this hospital.
A throat suddenly clearing snapped me from my thoughts. It was the doctor.
"I hate to interrupt," he said, already stepping closer. His coat whispered as he leaned against the rail of my bed, fingers worrying a penlight like it might escape. "But something's been bothering me."
He peered at my face.
"Taylor, why are your eyes closed?"
The doctor was already reaching for my face, fingers poised to pry an eyelid open, when I caught his wrist without looking and gently pushed it away.
"Oh," I said. "This?"
Another giggle escaped me before I could stop it.
"It's all good, doc," I explained. "Everything's just a little… shiny. This is less distracting."
The doctor shot Miss Militia a glance. A silent message, most likely, before turning his attention back to me.
"Neurological overstimulation," he mused, mostly to himself. "Or persistent sensory hallucinations. Photophobia is a possibility. Given the presentation, we may have been premature in ruling out an autoimmune cascade affecting the ocular tissues…" His voice firmed. "Taylor, can you open them for me? Just for a moment?"
I shook my head.
"Really. I'm fine."
Before he could argue, I lifted my hand and crooked a finger, beckoning Miss Militia closer. All without turning my head or opening my Eyes.
She hesitated. Then, after exchanging another look with Dad, she stepped closer. Leaned in.
"…Yes?"
My hand darted up casually.
"Boop."
I tapped the bridge of her nose with my index, right through her scarf.
She jerked back as if zapped. The doctor sucked in a sharp breath. I grinned wider.
"I can see you all perfectly well. Better than well," I explained, waving a dismissive hand. "What, does it creep you out a little? And before you ask, yes, I can see your underwear. And beneath your underwear too. Heh."
Anxiety in the room became an active scent, a shift in electrical charge, a symphony of quickening pulses and cooling sweat. Miss Militia, to her credit, recovered first, maintained her composure.
"…If you don't mind me asking," she said softly, "how well can you see?"
"How well?" I pursed my lips, letting the absurdity of the question linger. "You know how you see things when your eyes are open?"
A slow, cautious nod from her.
"Okay." I splayed my fingers in the air, sketching invisible, useless diagrams. "Take that. Multiply it by… 'Busy Beaver'. Then you take that and multiply it by God. And then you throw a cute little rainbow in the mix and stir it all inside a pot-shaped quasar on a low flame."
I paused.
"The rainbow's mathematically important, by the way."
Silence. Bewildered silence. For the first time, Miss Militia's steady gaze fractured into genuine confusion. The doctor looked lost. Dad just looked heartsick.
I shrugged.
"Is this question your sneaky way of avoiding the real elephant in the room, M&M?" I asked lightly. "Because if so, I gotta say… I'm disappointed."
Her brow creased despite herself.
"Disappointed?"
"Yeah!" I perked up. "And by 'elephant', I mean your choice of underwear. No stars-and-stripes undies? How's a girl supposed to believe in America if her favorite hero doesn't take the mission all the way to the bedroom?"
I saw it. The minute, instinctive flinch of her abdominal muscles, the subconscious urge to cover herself that was ruthlessly suppressed half a second later. Her heartbeat spiked, then flatlined into forced calm.
I smiled, counted this as a victory, and filed the reaction away for later.
Miss Militia, with a restraint that bordered on the supernatural, didn't dignify the comment with further questions. She exhaled through her nose, the fabric of her scarf shifting minutely.
"Taylor, the evidence strongly suggests…" She stopped herself and shook her head. "…No, there's a certain likelihood that you are now a parahuman. You have abilities. Powers. The fact you can perceive your surroundings without using your eyes is an indicator. It is not…"
Miss Militia stopped again. Then, with a careful voice and a not so careful choice of words, she said…
"…Normal."
I felt my lips curve upwards again.
"Careful," I said. "Say 'normal' like that and it might get offended."
Her jaw tightened. Dad shifted beside me, his knee knocking softly against the bedframe.
"This has implications," she went on. "For you. For your father."
"Whoa, whoa, let's not use my Dad as emotional hostage. He already looks like he aged five years today." I tilted my head. "I mean, he's right here… but that kind of cheap shot doesn't really work on me. Give it to me straight, yeah? Okay, I've got superpowers. Neat. So what's the deal? Do I get sedated? Dissected? Maybe a societal pariah status on top? Wait, no, don't tell me…"
I tapped a finger on my lips, which smiled again, almost automatically.
"…Society loves me now, right? Everyone thinks I'm awesome, and so I get, uh, parades! And commemorative mugs! And a lifetime supply of ice cream~"
A muffled, choked sound escaped from behind Miss Militia's scarf. It sounded suspiciously like a laugh she'd immediately tried to strangle.
"It's… somewhat the opposite. See—"
"No ice cream?!" I gasped, cutting her off. "This is an outrage!"
"—Ice cream is permissible," she continued, undeterred. "I'm referring to societal integration. There are laws for parahumans, Taylor. Rules. Designed to maintain balance and safety for everyone. While certain fringe elements hold prejudices, the Protectorate can offer you support, stability. A pathway back to a normal life."
"Aaaaaaaaaaand… you lost me," I responded, huffing out a laugh.
Dad suddenly looked anxious, caught between two currents.
"Taylor, please, just listen. Miss Militia… she's with the good guys."
I didn't call him on the doubt that laced his own words. I just shrugged.
"Sure she is. But 'back to normal'? That life was a dumpster fire. I'm not interested in pretending I can crawl back into that skin. Support? Safety? That's what health insurance is for. I want the cool stuff. If everyone just wanted me to be normal, they'd have sent… I dunno, a therapist, not a soldier."
I bounced a bit on my bed, turned my head away. My Eyes were still closed, but I still wanted her to know I wasn't interested in that.
"It all sucked," I said. "And nobody showed up with a flag and a gun when it did. Funny how that works. Save your 'normal' for someone else."
Dad's expression tightened, pleading. He looked to Miss Militia for backup. She provided it, her posture easing a fraction as she did.
"'Normal' is a subjective term," she conceded. "And often an unhelpful one. But having a stable foundation isn't a negative. However… you're right. We should start from a place of clarity."
She turned to the doctor.
"Doctor Schmidt. Do you have a mirror?"
The doctor glanced up from his clipboard, then at me, features twisting slightly. "Ma'am, given her state, I'm not sure that's..."
"On the contrary," Miss Militia interjected smoothly. "I believe Taylor would appreciate directness. She wants something 'cool.' We can provide perspective. Mister Hebert? Do you approve?"
Dad wrestled with it. I saw the tendons in his neck cord, the instinct to say no.
I placed my free hand over his and smiled, my Eyes still shut.
"It's okay, Dad. I wanna see how pretty I am."
Whether it was the smile, the words, or simple exhaustion, he relented with a defeated wave of his hand. Miss Militia nodded, took the small mirror the doctor reluctantly offered, and passed it to me.
The plastic was cool, smooth. To my fingers, its surface was a topography of microscopic seams and vibrations. I took a breath, willed the Six Eyes to dial back from perceiving the atomic lattice of the reflective coating, and opened them.
Light broke… and I saw me.
The troublesome thing about a once-in-five-hundred-years phenomenon is that the records about it are less documentation and more devotional art. Full of awe, short on useful biology. The elders hadn't needed a medical explanation; they'd needed a symbol. And my body had basically become a billboard for destiny.
The hair was the most blatant change. Neither Taylor's thick black mane, nor Satoru's stark shock of white. Not yet. This was a new growth, a soft, snowy fuzz claiming my scalp inch by inch, as if still unsure of itself. The legends within the Gojo clan called it 'purity', the emptying of the vessel so it may be filled with great purpose. The rest of the jujutsu world, less hinged on myth but still as superstitious, called it 'perfection'.
My Six Eyes instantly cross-referenced the poetry with the pathology.
'Purity' was a prenatal stress injury. The Six Eyes' activation in the womb had triggered a sustained fight-or-flight response. There was a flood of norepinephrine, a hijacking of melanocyte stem cells in developing follicles, and a depleting of the source of pigment before it could even establish itself. The new hair would grow without color. Permanent biological damage.
The 'perfect,' doll-like pallor of my skin was the same story. Melanin production had been sacrificed to the overwhelming stress caused by the Eyes, a deficit then permanently enshrined by the passive filter of Infinity. Exposure to electromagnetic radiation would become selective, and often unnecessary. I had become self-sufficient to the point I didn't even need sunlight.
Funny.
A human body, struggling under a cosmic burden it was not meant to carry, and a culture that called its compensation divine.
Taylor Hebert had not been born divine. She had not been marked at birth like Satoru Gojo. And yet… the signs were there, undeniable.
It was a kind of terrible beauty. Like a car crash rendered in exquisite glass.
The face in the mirror was Taylor's. The large eyes, the shape of the mouth, they were legacies from Danny and Annette. But they'd been… calibrated. Fine-tuned to bear a third, unwelcome tenant. The white lashes and brows lent a false fragility. The lips seemed softer.
The longer I looked, the harder it became to recall the original girl. My vision picked at microscopic shifts. Muscle fiber density, nerve pathways subtly rerouting. It was like watching erosion in fast-forward.
The Six Eyes blinked. The irises were a captive, azure cosmos, their crystalline swirl a lie that hid the furious, real-time deconstruction of reality happening behind them.
They blinked again. The girl in the mirror blinked back.
For a moment, she looked confused. Then, she looked focused. Adorable, perhaps, in the way a startled deer could be adorable.
I stared.
"Hah…"
Then, I smiled.
"…Man," I whispered, then let my voice ring out. "I. Am. Hot!"
I blew a kiss at the dazzling stranger and winked.
"Better call the fire department, 'cause I'm about to turn up the heat in here!"
Dad and Miss Militia didn't share my aesthetic assessment.
I caught the flicker of their shared glance. It was another silent, worried message. Dad was the one who gave it voice.
"You're… not scared?" Dad asked. His thumb brushed the back of my hand, once. "Not even a little? Your hair. Your eyes. They're—"
"—Perfect. Are ya kidding?" I replied, tracing a fingertip along the skin beneath my Eyes. "Dad, I've been personally blessed by the patron saint of complexion. Look at this! I'm basically prom queen already! I don't need fear. I need a tiara."
I tilted my head, watching the light fracture in my irises. I winked again.
"Hear that, 'Baby Blues'? You're headed for the cover of Vogue. Yes, you are~" I cooed at the mirror. "They're gonna be clawing each other's eyes out for a piece of you. You're gonna slay. You're gonna make empires fall. And you're gonna look absolutely fabulous while you bankrupt them."
Dad made a small, wounded sound.
Miss Militia simply cleared her throat.
"Positivity is… good," she began, "but it's important you fully understand the implications, Taylor. These changes are likely permanent, not just cosmetic. And as I said, not all of society is… comfortable with parahumans. It isn't all glamour or power. It can be harsh. It is dangerous. That's why structures exist. And that's why the Protectorate tries to facilitate a safe, integrated transition for people like us."
"Yeah, not interested," I chirped, making a fish-face at the glass.
She pressed on anyways. "Please, listen to me. I understand how you feel..."
"Shhh!"
I raised a single finger. Her mouth snapped shut, a reflex of discipline. I let the silence stretch, savoring it.
"See, that's your first mistake, M&M," I said slowly, turning my head to pin her with my smile. "You don't have the faintest, foggiest clue how I feel. You can't comprehend how hollow words like 'support' and 'safety' ring after you've spent a year being treated like an existential error."
Or three decades being treated like a divine relic. Expected to play the part without ever taking a single, selfish joy from it.
I kept that part to myself. I let the mirror tumble onto the stiff hospital blankets.
"Your whole aesthetic," I said, gesturing lazily at her uniform. "It screams duty. Chain of command. I bet you're the type who trusts the system, who boxes up her doubts and files them under 'for later.' I'm sure you're a decent person underneath the tactical webbing. But when it counts, you defer to that nice, clean abstraction called 'authority.'"
She stared back at me, unblinking. I held her gaze as I sank deeper into the pillows.
"Wanna know what 'authority' has ever done for me?" My grin widened. "No, scratch that. Let's quantify it. We're talking a solid zero-point-zero-zero-zero-zero-zero-zero-zero-zero-zero-zero-one on the scale of meaningful intervention. And that generous one? That's for the courtesy of pretending to listen before forgetting I existed."
I held up my hand, palm out. My fingers flexed slightly.
"Upperclassmen laughed when my bag got stolen. Teachers watched my books disappear and asked me to replace them. I went to the principal once. Her brilliant solution was to send the girls to 'sensitivity lessons'. I never spoke to her again."
I turned my hand over. Focused my senses on my nails.
Then I spread my arms wide, a mockery of an embrace.
"And before you trot out the classic 'why didn't you keep asking', ask yourself this instead. Where's the logic in cruelty? Why should I be the one paying for other people's mental conflicts?"
I saw the words form and die behind her scarf. The slight tightening around her eyes. She was running the calculations, the justifications, and finding the architecture shaky. Of course she was.
"I'll let you marinate on that," I said, retrieving the mirror and tracing the arc of a snowy eyebrow. "But here's the bottom line: I don't accept scraps. I'm not bending to accommodate shitty people or broken systems. Not anymore."
I took in a breath through my nose. The air felt clean, cleaner than ever. And so did my thoughts.
"Starting today, the world adjusts to me. And there's not a single compelling argument you have that'll change that."
I smiled at the girl in the glass. She was all fierce words and fiercer Eyes. I felt pride swell inside. For her? For me? The distinction was already collapsing, leaving only the raw, triumphant feeling.
"Now, if you'll excuse me, I have the new beauty standard to admire," I said, my grin turning wicked. "If you want to negotiate, come back with a better offer. A yacht is a good starter. Or that all-expenses-paid trip to Honolulu."
A full minute of silence passed. I just studied my reflection, amplifying the quiet with the sheer weight of my disregard. In my peripheral vision, Dad and Miss Militia held their silent vigil, a cocktail of apprehension, frustration, and dawning helplessness.
Dad kept stroking my hand. He'd blame himself. I'd have to correct that later.
"…Very well," Miss Militia said slowly. "You've made your position clear. I can't, in good conscience, ask you to trust a system that's already failed you so completely."
She turned to Dad.
"Mister Hebert, may I speak with you outside?"
Dad looked at her, then at me. The sigh that left him seemed to deflate his entire frame.
"…Yeah. Okay." He leaned over, pressing a dry kiss to my forehead. "I'll be right back, kid. I'm… I'm glad you're back."
I offered him a small, genuine smile.
"Yeah, Dad. Me too."
They left. The door clicked shut.
I was left alone with the doctor, who was now performing a masterclass in pretending to be fascinated by his own clipboard.
I went back to blowing kisses at the mirror. Smiled at the girl within it.
She looked flushed now, Eyes bright, grin a little wild around the edges. She was a little mortified by her own audacity. The other one, the sorcerer, he was pleased he'd drawn a line in the sand, even if it was just words for now.
Both were smiling. And both, in perfect, terrifying unison, thought the same thing.
It's good to be back.
After another minute, I let the mirror sink again onto the sheets. Then I raised my palm and stared at it. The next thought wasn't a confident statement, but a question, to myself. And for the first time since I woke up in this room, I could genuinely wonder…
...What does it mean to 'be back'?
Reincarnation? There was solid precedent in the world of jujutsu. The more precise term, transmigration, drifted up, tasteless and academic, and I remembered I'd seen worse explanations made flesh.
There was that sick bastard Kenjaku, who'd perfected the art of corpse-hopping across centuries via brain transplant. And there was also Ryōmen Sukuna himself, who'd split his soul into twenty indestructible fingers. The Six Eyes themselves were cyclical, appearing, vanishing in the Gojo bloodline alongside Limitless on a schedule only fate understood. It was indifferent to the era or person so long as the genes were right.
Maybe this was a… a new variant. A binding vow on a cosmic scale. A Heavenly Restriction with a sense of irony.
Patterns existed. I'd lived inside them.
Memory did not.
My fight against Sukuna ended mid-thought. I didn't remember the transition. There was victory. Then there was a flash…
…No, a slash. It had looked ordinary until it wasn't. Had that psycho hidden a new technique within his Dismantle, something not even Infinity could parse?
It was possible. But I couldn't name the trick. There was the separation and… nothing.
I tried to dig for memories, but there was nothing else. Just the void between dying there and waking here.
The fact still made my spine crawl. I was a sorcerer now. The sorcerer.
They'd stuffed a girl into a locker and she'd woken up as the axis the world turned on. I was the Strongest and now I was here, wearing something fragile. And yet, I was still important.
The real question now was… how much?
I blinked.
The Six Eyes logged the flow of cursed energy in my hand.
It slid beneath the skin in clean channels that overlapped, but were not, veins and nerves. Perfectly contained; perfectly obedient. It flowed throughout a network of pure negativity, a faint blue lapping against the red of my insides like a river that'd been taught manners. Every fluctuation was reported. Every infinitesimal loss was accounted for.
Then I realized my body wasn't just holding it. It was being rewritten by it. The cursed energy was reshaping my cellular structure in real time and my Eyes watched the edit happen.
My gaze quickly snapped to the doctor. He was pacing, again.
He had zero cursed energy.
He walked back and forth, shoes whispering against the polished floors, a man-shaped absence. There was no residue, no leakage, no ambient stain clinging to him at all.
Dad had been the same. Miss Militia too. Empty, like someone had drained the color from the concept of 'curse' and left the outline behind. They were walking, breathing voids. Blank spaces in a world that should have been thick with human misery.
The very room agreed with this new paradigm. A hospital should have been humming with negativity, with fear, pain and anticipation that'd eventually coagulate into curses. Instead, there was only sterile air and glaring light.
My Eyes strained harder, searching for the hidden layer, the filter that made the lie possible.
They found none. There was only this cold, hard reality: everything was clean. Fundamentally clean.
A world without curses.
My first thought was a universal Heavenly Restriction. Had everyone traded their cursed energy for physical robustness?
No. Dad moved like a normal man. Miss Militia… whatever she was, she wasn't Restricted. Her 'power' wasn't a cursed technique.
My mind conjured the memory of the gun at her hip. It wasn't a gun at all. Gun-shaped, maybe, and even that was doubtful.
It had even looked solid. My Eyes said otherwise.
That gun… it was a dense knot of exotic energy, compressed energy, green and white and black strands coiled tight in the shape of a firearm. I could feel it vibrating from a distance, thrumming with potential violence, potential shapes. Weapons, plural, all in one neat package that I knew Miss Militia could will to change in a second.
Not a wisp of cursed energy in that thing, no matter how freaky.
I'd seen the texture of the power before, on TV, in curated clips of fights between capes…
"…Ah."
Capes.
Miss Militia's strange power suddenly seemed small compared to the knowledge of where I was.
Jujutsu society operated in the shadows, fighting the metaphysical fallout of human emotion. Here, people fought each other, as heroes, and villains, and everything in between. Human conflict had been scaled up and dressed in spandex. There were no curses. Just… people, turning their problems into public disasters.
"Hmm."
I turned my hand over, then back again.
No cursed energy. No curses. However…
…I was still here.
I was still a sorcerer.
The energy hummed inside me, a fact as basic as my own heartbeat.
It meant I wasn't just special now. I was truly unique. A category of one. I'd been there before, propped up at the summit, and power had been my birthright.
I was… alone. For real, now.
The door of my room opened. Not Dad or the soldier. A nurse. She exchanged muted words with the doctor and offered me a practiced, plastic smile as she adjusted the IV drip. I tuned her out, staring into the nothing of a wall.
My Six Eyes plunged inward.
They journeyed past flesh, past bone, to the thing that defined me more completely than my appearance or my cursed energy ever could. Seeking the birthright etched into the meat of my brain.
There it was.
Carved into the right side of my prefrontal cortex. Flesh arranged into an impossibly precise pattern, each fold a commandment older than nations and potentially more powerful that the strongest weapons humanity had ever built.
It was wrong. It was impossible.
The Six Eyes alone were absurd. A thing of destiny. This, the technique… it bordered on heresy.
Limitless was not something you picked up. It was a bloodline curse, encoded in specific genetic sequences, activated by a neural circuit that was absent in the rest of humankind. It moved vertically, from parent to child, from blood to blood.
Taylor Hebert should have died the moment this circuitry even formed inside her skull. Her brain should have melted the moment it tried to process what it was. It wouldn't have been different from plugging a toaster into a particle accelerator.
Instead…
…It answered me.
The pattern was intact. Familiar. Waiting.
The intricate scar of power glowed with malevolent promise on my brain's topography. A monument to strength.
Convergence. Divergence.
Infinity, no longer theory, no longer chalk on a board, pressed against the inside of my thoughts, asking to exist. A conceptual hazard, forced into reality.
Within the Gojo clan, Limitless had been almost mundane, common enough to disappoint. It was a loaded gun in the brain that most people couldn't aim without pulling the trigger on themselves. The mathematical complexity was a black hole for cursed energy and cognition. For most inheritors, it was a death sentence.
A gorgeous, useless weapon that incinerated the wielder. A door to a sublime world, but no key to open it.
That was wrong, too.
I had the key.
With a thought that was both alien and intimately mine, I diverted a trickle of cursed energy into the dormant circuit.
The Six Eyes screamed.
Warnings stacked faster than language.
Cerebrovascular pressure increasing. Sensory processing centers flooding. Drain, overheat, neural collapse. Blood pressure spiking, system redlining in cascading failure.
My head felt too small. Too full.
The smell hit next, hot, metallic.
Cooking meat.
And then… the ozone-rich scent of synapses exploding. Inside? Outside? Couldn't say.
Reality dissolved into vectors and constants. Forces layered over forces. Nuclear forces repurposed as spatial axioms. Space folding in on itself, refusing to be intuitive. The data was a screaming jumble of impossible physics.
Limitless unfurled inside me. My mind flailed.
Then—
—Click.
The Six Eyes engaged.
Chaos snapped into order with obscene efficiency. The torrent of data, the nonsensical noise… all filtered, sorted, compiled in a single breath. The impossible calculations followed. The automatic targeting, the force modulation, the recursive series required to stabilize the technique, they were solved instantaneously, translated into elegant, executable instinct.
Information became structure. Structure became instruction. Another life bled through me – muscle memory without muscles, skill without training.
I remembered what it felt like.
Distance crushed to nothing, like holding a collapsing star between finger and thumb. The violent rejection of space forced backwards, logic screaming as it gave way. The echo of creation reversed, not undone, but commanded.
Any other sorcerer would have died here. Infinity was not something a brain could understand. It was a concept, an abstraction, manifested through flesh and bone.
But I wasn't any other sorcerer.
Static flared white-hot again, then smoothed.
The optimization was brutal. The Eyes saw the technique's ravenous hunger, how it sought to guzzle all my energy at once in a suicidal feast. They constricted the flow, metering it out with flawless precision, just enough to ignite the effect, leaving the rest of my reserves untouched.
All that was left were calculations nested inside calculations, all running at once, all stable.
I visualized Infinity.
Not as a mathematical concept. As law.
The number one appeared in my mind.
Then one-half.
One-fourth. One-eighth. One-sixteenth. One thirty-second.
One one-hundred-twenty-eighth. One two-hundred-fifty-sixth. One five-hundred-twelfth. One one-thousand-twenty-fourth. One two-thousand-forty-eighth. One four-thousand-ninety-sixth. One eight-thousand-one-hundred-ninety-second. One sixteen-thousand-three-hundred-eighty-fourth. One thirty-two-thousand-seven-hundred-sixty-eighth. One sixty-five-thousand-five-hundred-thirty-sixth. One one-hundred-thirty-one-thousand-seventy-second. One two-hundred-sixty-two-thousand-one-hundred-forty-fourth. One five-hundred-twenty-four-thousand-two-hundred-eighty-eighth. One one-million-forty-eight-thousand-five-hundred-seventy-sixth…
The fractions spiraled inward, a series converging on a point that was not zero, but a wall. A limit that was no limit. The space between my palm and the bedsheet thickened, distorted, stretched into an impossible gradient.
The thin, invisible film finally coalesced.
Infinity settled around me, gently.
I held a sliver of divided space in my hand. Then, I lifted the covers of my bed not with my palm, but with the infinite distance between cloth and skin. The sheet looked like it was hovering, or perhaps resting on a surface invisible to the eye.
I watched the miracle for a moment.
Then the thought came to me in a flash. It was so sudden I almost laughed.
"…I did die on Christmas Eve, didn't I?"
A second passed.
I smiled.
Maybe… maybe it was Santa who gave me a second chance at life. A Christmas consolation gift, perhaps. He probably liked my face or something.
I mean, who could blame him? I wasn't the just the Strongest now. I was the Cutest too.
I bounced the bed sheet on the Infinity over my hand.
"Merry Christmas to me~"
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