Jujutsu High, Kyoto. POV: Zenin Naoya
"Ow, ow—watch it!"
"You utter fool! I thought you made me proud, for once!"
Naoya pushed his father's arm off him. He didn't need a reminder. How was he supposed to know that there'd been a Special Grade at that school? Geto Suguru had a lot to answer for; now he looked like a fraud, and his father—the frustratingly-sober Zenin Naobito was making that his problem.
The taste of petrichor was in the air, as blades of grass, and leaves alike scattered the early light with dew—is something some soppy fuckwit would say. Instead, Naoya glared hatefully into the morning, with its soggy leaves and wet-smelling dirt. It had rained the night before. Not heavily, but heavily enough that the light humidity was making his cast sweat.
He hadn't been here since...since...Shit, had he ever been here? Kyoto's Jujutsu campus: where ordinary sorcerers studied to become...more ordinary. Of course he hadn't attended as a student. What clan heir would debase themselves like that?
Gojo Satoru had.
Noritoshi Kamo was currently doing so. Naoya saw him, from where he and his father sat in the stands. Kamo was going through routine stretches; popping his shoulders, rolling his back. The blood manipulator. Once upon a time, that technique would have been worthy of respect. As Taira no Masakado was to the Zenin, and Sugiwara no Michizane was to the Gojo; Emperor Sutoku was the onryō associated with the Kamo clan's vaunted technique.
The three great vengeful spirits of Japan.
But observation does away with mythology, and understanding proved to be the furthest thing from awe and admiration. Years of study and bitter competition had stripped the technique down to its strengths and critical weaknesses. What became abundantly clear with the shifting times, was that no Kamo could ever be what Sutoku had been. Not as a 'human.'
Naoya watched Noritoshi Kamo prepare his traditional bow and dismissed him entirely. Ordinary.
The Zenin heir raised his eyes and found no one.
"It's just a grade assessment," he scoffed. "We don't have to be here."
"We, maybe. You're here to learn to a little discernment."
"Tch."
Beside Naoya, his father shook his head then returned his sights to the arena. Clearly, the geriatric knew something he did not, so he followed the line of sight. Discernment? Did father think he was an idiot? A grade assessment? Conducted like this? Foolish. Sorcerers existed to fight curses. Grade One sorcerers could reliably put down Grade One curses, and so on. The only reason they would ever test a sorcerer against another would be... To determine the threat level of the sorcerer in question.
And the sorcerer in question... A no-show from the looks of it. Too chicken shit to take on a potential Semi-Grade One? Someone like that wasn't going to be a threat to anyone.
Naoya's eyes darted to his father's face. The sheer intensity of his gaze, the hardness of his jaw. Naobito's cursed energy stood like a frozen lake. Still, calm. Not because the man himself was calm, but because external factors necessitated his stillness. Does he think...? But then Naoya dismissed the idea. Because he remembered where he was. Pffft. No way. This was Kyoto. The only thing worth seeing here was him.
A weight dropped in the seat adjacent to his, "Yo, mind if we sit here?"
"Whatever, Satoru."
"Satoru?" The man's voice rang like a raised eyebrow. "Look man, I don't even know you like that."
"..."
Wait a minute.
"Gojo Satoru!?"
"Brat, I said discernment!" A familiar palm struck his shoulder where sling met cast.
Naoya winced as the words caught up with the pain. Discernment. There he sat with his megawatt smile. The man who beat Toji-san; the strongest sorcerer of the modern age, and the only person in the world who could sit behind him without any shame.
If every Kamo who had ever wielded blood manipulation was an artifact that disproved the myth of Sutoku, then the Special Grade—one of only four—was a mural, no, a first-person account. A living, breathing synecdoche of Suigwara no Michizane. He was the curio that turned legend into history.
Naoya basked in his presence; in that look, in his eyes that harkened back to Toji-san's. And it was then that Naoya knew that Gojo Satoru could see world as it had appeared to his idol. To the man he had killed.
Gojo Satoru was power incarnate. Gojo Satoru was a rival. Gojo Satoru was a goal within reach.
Naoya levied a smirk as challenge.
"Is... Is he okay?" Then a voice cut through his ruminations. High-pitched, soft. Feminine. "He keeps staring is he..."
"Whatever you think of him, aim a little lower," Satoru responded, facing his head away from Naoya.
In the same moment, the Zenin heir noticed that there were three seats beside Satoru that were also filled.
The one who had spoken appeared to be a high school girl with blue eyes, black hair styled in a bob, and clearly no scruples if that stupid look on her face stood for her personality. Ugh. On her right was... He knew he had seen that face somewhere before, but the memory sat in some irritating region of his brain, and the longer he tried to locate it, the more irritating it became to do so; so, he dismissed the shapes her face was conjuring. All that mattered was that her hair was brown, and her body was—
"Keep looking at me like that," she said, all the world's disdain in every inflection. "And I'll gouge your eyes out."
Naoya rolled said eyes, after a look from Satoru turned the girl's threat into an unspoken promise and focused on the last one. A boy with pink hair, an even dumber face than the first girl. This one gave him a little pause. Now he knew he had seen him before. Relatively recently, even.
"Mr Bird?" the boy asked, and as a favour to the head of the Gojo clan, Naoya restrained the urge to backhand the ornery brat. Not that he knew why he decided to call him that.
The trio were likely his students; they were likely new students. How did he know? Their demeanours. Embarrassingly, of the three children, only the impertinent girl with brown hair carried herself like a sorcerer. The other two filled their seats with a nervous excitement that was unbecoming of anyone with any prior level of access to the world of Jujutsu. No clans? They cast glances his way with expressions that were polite enough but lacked the deference that was common in those that had learned with their bodies, with their senses, where they stood along the hierarchy: below him and Satoru. Hell, below his drunkard of a father, who at best was keeping his seat warm.
Naoya caught a flash of motion, and this time he was able to swat Naobito's palm away with his uninjured hand. "Discernment, boy."
"Tch," Naoya groused. "What are you doing here, Gojo-san?"
The man took a half-second in which his eyes, flittered down before answering.
"I just never get tired of watching my adorable students steamroll Utahime's."
A cup shot up from the seating area below, striking the inviolable threshold around Satoru. It spun for a moment, then came to what most would perceive as a complete stop, spewing its steaming contents into the air. Satoru chuckled.
"Fucking—" some of the piping tea had soaked into Naoya's sleeve, but he maintained his dignity with a flare of reinforcement, and by progressing the conversation. Students Satoru had said. The only student he had worth a damn was, "Okkotsu-kun?"
That didn't make sense. Hadn't they already reinstated his grade?
"Any second now," Satoru responded. But he wasn't looking at him.
Those blue eyes lit up like twin supernovae, but none of their light had set a course for Zenin Naoya. Satoru hadn't returned the challenge in his smile. He hadn't acknowledged the presence sitting next to him. But, those eyes, those faraway eyes had laser focused on the grassy glade where the Kamo stood like it was the most fascinating place on earth.
Naoya's expression darkened. Nothing—no one else—was worth seeing besides him—
But then a spatter of white intercepted the green.
White hair. Two sets of white. Two sets of feminine figures. He recognised the adult amongst them; she had done her fair share of business with their clan, glutting her wallet full of Zenin money.
Mei Mei. A Grade One Jujutsu sorcerer. Ordinary.
But the girl. The girl he had seen from the rooftop. The girl who had battered his pride with a glare and had shattered his body in the space of a blink. She was looking at him now, her head steering her gaze the way of his cursed energy as her lips quirked up. Pure condescension layered her teeth in place of enamel.
His father gasped, but it wasn't the kind of gasp a person made in surprise. Naoya ignored Naobito's reaction, because all that mattered were the pools of blood that had deigned to look him in the eye at that moment.
And then she spoke. It didn't matter that she had done so softly. It didn't matter that they were quite a way apart when her lips moved. He heard her; he, and visibly nobody else. [With the sole exception of Gojo Satoru.] Like she had paddled a boat beside him and whispered a message down his ear canal.
"Next time," she said, her voice teeming with a dark mirth. "Mind the windshield."
***
POV: Noritoshi Kamo (no, not that one)
"We do not expect you to succeed," is never an answer a person wants to receive from their elder.
The unwilling heir to the Kamo clan blinks, "Her technique? How strong is she?"
"Bah! The impertinent girl would not say. Only the name: Accelerator. We do not know what it does, only that it did allow her to endure Special Grade threats." The nature of the threats remain unspoken. Noritoshi knows not to ask. "With luck, that is all it does. Defence. You will make that clear. As for her strength... the only discernible aspect was her cursed energy pool. Do not let it intimidate you; she wields less than Okkotsu Yuta who you have faced in combat before."
Internally, he sighs. Indeed, failure appears a foregone conclusion. "Beyond figuring out what she can do, is there anything else required of me?"
The elder hums in thought, "Suzushina claims no relation to the three great families, and yet... Her technique, as nonsensical as it sounds, if you write it in kanji, it becomes 'One-Way Road'. You understand, no?"
"Road... Like the kanji for Michi in Michizane?"
"Good. You too see her for what she is. Not merely an ignorant outsider, but a blasphemer. Like Tsukumo, she is actively caustic to our ways!"
Noritoshi does not see it that way, yet he nods his head. It is a minor concession.
"As the inheritor of our clan's technique, you carry not only the pride of the Kamo clan, but a millennium of history on your back, Noritoshi. We do not expect you to best the girl, but we do expect you to embarrass her for her many offences. Is that understood?"
***
That was Ui Ui's technique. It had to be, with the boy's sister teleporting into the arena with his opponent. Mei Mei smiled at him politely, before ambulating off to the stands. Noritoshi might have imagined it, but he could have sworn he heard the sound of bank notes rubbing together.
And so, with a forest to his back, and expectations on his shoulders, Noritoshi examined the opponent before him.
He did not immediately know what to make of the girl. Superficially, Suzushina resembled a member of the Gojo clan, but the lack of stiffness or formality in her posture made for jarring contrast. A contrast that was further enhanced by her casual clothing. She had come wearing a white cardigan over a black inner t-shirt. Jeans fell, light grey, from her hips to her ankles.
She hadn't dressed for a fight. She had dressed for a showcase.
Noritoshi shut down the line of thought. He couldn't let his elder's words colour his perception of her. The higher-ups knew best. It was what he told himself, so that for as long as he needed to play their game, he could retain his sanity. Deference was the only way to survive until he became strong enough that he could carve a place in the clan for his mother. But they were underestimating her, and he wouldn't be swept up in that mindset. 'Less than Okkotsu' was just a way to avoid saying 'more than Gojo Satoru.'
She held his gaze, her mien a finely brushed portrait of boredom, but she failed to hide it; the curiosity that burned behind her eyes. Noritoshi opened his mouth, then closed it again when her head inclined toward the audience.
Oh.
The hairs stood along his neck; the stench of the wet grass intensified as her lips pulled apart to reveal her teeth.
Oh, you're crazy.
"Suzushina-san?"
"Hm?" The humour in her face evaporated.
Dammit. "Good morning." Noritoshi bowed. Not too deeply as to disgrace the clan behind him, not so shallow that it would exude insincerity. "I am Kamo Noritoshi. I hope we can learn from each other."
"Hm..." Her face softened. The boredom lost a bit of its contrivance, and she bowed her head in return. "Yuriko, and likewise."
He settled into a stance, arms raised between Suzushina and his torso. And she... awkwardly—was she copying him?—settled into a stance of ̷h̷i̷s̷ her own. Noritoshi tilted his head; she flushed, but surely, he had imagined that. The time for talking was brief and well and truly over.
All that was left was the blood roaring through his veins, and the pounding of his heart, and the light bouncing off the dewdrops.
Principal Gakuganji's distant voice sliced through the moment like an arrowhead.
"Begin!"
He dropped his bow. Flowing Red Scale.
And Noritoshi moved like the spray of an open wound. In the fraction of a second his fist devoured her field of view. Her lips, smiling again. Her face still flushed. And—
***
POV: Itadori Yuji
"What? He hit her?"
Yuji couldn't claim to know what Yuriko's specific superpower was. Some days, to him, it seemed like the only things she couldn't do were the things she hadn't tried yet. Basketball? Poor form never diminished the unerring accuracy of her shots. Karaoke? She had stopped using the microphone by night two—her voice carried like the air itself was her sound system.
Sasaki-san reconstructed past events in her head, or by making holograms? Fushiguro was a Pokémon trainer. But with Yuriko, there didn't seem to be a common theme around what she did, and now with Sukuna inside him she couldn't afford to tell him what it was, either.
The one thing he knew—the one thing they had all agreed upon (Iguchi, he and Sasaki) was that you couldn't hit Yuriko if she didn;t want you to. A winter's worth of one-sided snowball fights had hammered that message home.
Kamo-san unleashed a haymaker and Yuriko staggered. He caught her arm as she flew—deading the momentum—before stepping in, seizing her shirt and slamming her into the ground.
Mud kicked into the air as the older boy rained down thunderous blows—striking the totality of her catchment area. Head. Stomach. Thighs. Kamo's steaming fists hit her everywhere they could reach.
"Eh?" Mr Bird—the blond man—let out a befuddled squawk. "Was it just a fluke...?"
"Gojo-sensei!" Yuji shot to his feet. "Something's wrong! We need to—"
Yuji had already half-vaulted over the railing when his sensei's arm swung into his path.
"Hold up, Yuji. Let her cook."
Huh?
Gojo-sensei was glowing as he watched, "Noritoshi-kun is doing his absolute best right now. Don't be rude."
***
POV: Kamo Noritoshi
He was getting tired. His elbow in her sternum. His knuckle to her jaw. There were no weak spots. No gap in her reinforcement to exploit, she had too much—way too much cursed energy to spare. Every single part of her was reinforced, and to make matters worse she was fighting back. Adapting.
He tried to throw a punch, so she struck his right shoulder. He focused his output, and the blood into his skull, so she leaned away from the headbutt. Her output rose to offset his own at the points of contact. So, little by little, Noritoshi was dealing even less than the little damage he had already been dealing. It was like chipping away at an iceberg with a toothbrush.
But it was also more than that. She must be using her technique.
Suzushina's fundamentals were non-existent. A fight without cursed energy would have already been over. He had her pinned; had her dead to rights. It shouldn't have been a battle of attrition, but somehow it became one. And as he looked into her eyes—as he watched her watching him—Noritoshi knew that was a battle he would lose.
"?!"
Her weight was shifting under him. Suzushina's leg came free, and suddenly she had enough leverage to thrust it into his stomach. Noritoshi leaned away from the kick and let the motion carry him off her.
A sound decision. He flew. Noritoshi tumbled before landing, and even then, he had to eke out his momentum into the grass as he slid, snatching his bow off the floor as he went.
Noritoshi spat a globule of blood, as he lifted his weapon.
Flowing Scale hadn't been enough to overcome her defences. She might have been resistant to blunt force but could she—three arrows whistled through the air in quick succession.
Suzushina, who was now on her feet, leaned away from the first—a mistake on her part—forcing the shaft of the second into the ground with a deft slap. She was moving to avoid the third, when Noritoshi activated his technique.
The first arrow he had loosed course corrected for her escape route. And from the look of her constricting pupils, she'd noticed. It wasn't aimed at any vital organ, but damage would be damage. At best, she could try to minimise it by tanking one, and avoiding the other.
Sorry, Suzushina. I guess this is my— "Wait, what are you doing?! Move!"
She did no such thing.
The arrow behind met her when the arrow in front of her did. Two points converging on a body—a human pin cushion. Or so he thought.
"Ah," said Suzushina. "You control blood, don't you?" The shafts splintered into the air. His ability to steer the arrows seemed to shatter as they did. Suzushina's fingers enclosed around a splatter of red that had been under his control just a moment ago but was now floating in the air around her. "Just your own, though? Not mine?"
Noritoshi recovered from his shock. Good, he had gotten her to use her technique in a way that was obvious. Now for the secondary objective.
Noritoshi readied five arrows. He would have fired them, too. Only this time, when he met Suzushina's eyes through the sights, the girl was giving him a look. It wasn't condescension; there was nothing disparaging about the emotion that swam behind her pupils. The expression she levied was a place just north of apathy, and west of boredom. And Noritoshi knew instinctively that 'more arrows' wasn't the answer.
His bow clattered to the ground, and the Kamo heir produced a blood bag from his shozoku. She can handle this, right? Noritoshi looked into the stands, at Iori-sensei who was biting her thumb. But standing at the far end of her row was the Kamo elder, and the wizened man gave a firm nod.
"Forfeit, please."
Noritoshi clasped his hands together. The bag crumpled until it could fit in the narrow corridor between his palms.
"I won't." Her voice rippled with an undercurrent of something.
Convergence.
"Then dodge." Noritoshi gave no further warning beyond the flare of his cursed energy, "Piercing blood."
The compressed beam travelled like it had always done over countless hours of practice. His signature move had cleaved through steel and put Special Grade curses on the backfoot. It had won him the right to consider a future promotion to Grade One.
Now it was slicing toward a person; a kid, three years his junior.
Noritoshi's mind wandered a split second before it fired. It wandered all the way to his mother, wherever she might have been. What would she have thought—the woman who pushed him to become a sorcerer because she believed in helping others—that he was using his gifts to harm someone for political clout? That he was gaining said clout because of her. If Noritoshi could carve a space in the clan for his mother, would she willingly step in, knowing his whetstone had been the blood and bone of undeserving casualties? How many more people would he trample on, in the name of the elites of Jujutsu society? Was this his point of no-return? He could still forfeit; nothing else in his kit could harm her anyway. He could still—
It was too late.
Piercing Blood had already fired.
Suzushina, for her part, planted her feet like the roots of some sacred tree that had not moved in millennia. The girl had put her hands in the path his own had forecast, waiting.
They had been standing roughly seventy metres apart. In point two seconds, to an observer, the spear of blood would appear to be touching her palms. Shortly thereafter, under normal circumstances, against an ordinary opponent, it would have broken skin. It would have devastated her upper body, like it had before to curses countless times over countless hours of practice. It would have ended the fight.
These were not normal circumstances. And the girl, evidently, was not an ordinary opponent.
Point-two seconds passed, and a soft peal of laughter tickled Noritoshi's eardrums.
"You named it!"
Suzushina continued to stand exactly where she had been. The only change in her vicinity was the crimson ring that now her hands like the moon orbited the Earth.
"Wha—what?"
"Sorry for laughing," she laughed. "I didn't mean to... You just reminded me of something." Suzushina clasped her hands together—a perfect pastiche to the prelude of his attack. The blood flowed into the narrow corridor between her palms. "I haven't used this technique since December..."
His eyes widened, "No way..."
"Way." She grinned. "pIerCiNg BloOd."
One, two, four... Noritoshi quickly lost track of the number of streams. They were narrower than his had been. Needle-thick as they flew with surgical precision. He tried to step back, but Suzushina had already fired.
He continued his count from the assessment of wounds. Six, seven... Twenty streams of his own blood left a tapestry of superficial wounds along his body. Never penetrating, never cutting below the epidermis. But they could have. And the thought dropped ice in his veins.
Noritoshi stood, frozen, as the girl dusted her spotless hands more out of apparent habit than anything else. She looked him in the eye again, and the indiscernible something that had been in her voice was transmitted to him visually. Excitement. Raw, unfettered elation.
"Was…was that too much?"
*******************
A/N:
一方"通"行: The Kanji for Accelerator
"道"真: The Kanji for Michizane
It's a fun coincidence that "通" and "道" both look similar, and mean similar things.
Initially wanted to write that Yuriko planted herself on the spot like a Jubokko. A yokai tree that drinks human blood, but I felt like I've already overdone this chapter, if you know what I mean?