Jiki watched the strange woman with a raised brow.
Her pitch-black hair was cut short, with the front part parted to the side, revealing a familiar scar that Jiki had seen once. But that was it. That was the only thing vaguely familiar about the woman claiming to be Itadori's mother.
"I do not know you. Have we met before?" the woman asked him with a thin smile. Jiki allowed his head to tilt as he studied the woman. She was dressed plainly, so plainly she could've been mistaken for a regular civilian, especially coupled with her low cursed energy output.
However, judging by the body still imprinted into the ground, Jiki's eyes drifted to Todo's unconscious form before drifting back to her. It couldn't be farther from the truth, which meant he was dealing with someone well-versed in the control of their cursed energy.
"We've met before," Jiki stated matter-of-factly as he stared down the woman. "Yet we haven't."
He knew how paradoxical that statement was, and judging by the way the woman's thin smile eased into something more natural, she knew just as well.
"I fear I have never seen you before in my life," the woman said with the sincerity of a monk. A Sharingan was an easy tool to pick up lies. The increase in heartbeat, the diluting pulse, the little drops of perspiration, the rougher flow in breath.
Involuntary responses the body makes while it lies - things that a seasoned user of the Sharingan could easily use to pick up liars. There was a reason why the Uchiha were very effective as a police task force in Konoha. This was simply one of them.
Yet, all these things that indicated a lie were absent in the woman.
"You're avoiding staring straight into my eyes, yet the first time we met, you did not know enough about me to avoid such." Jiki stood to his feet and took a step forward, dropping from his perch.
Her brows furrowed in faux confusion. "I'm afraid I still do not—"
He appeared in a blur beside her and lashed out with a kick that she was forced to block in a hurry. Still, there had been little time for her to brace, and the blow had sent her tumbling into the opposite wall with an explosion of stone and dust.
"Jiki?"
Itadori asked as he took a step forward in confusion, so Jiki turned to face the boy. "That might be your mother's body, Itadori-kun, but the person wearing it isn't your mother."
The boy's innocent brown eyes widened, but something else drew his attention. The sound of clapping.
The woman clapped as she walked out of the dust her introduction to the wall had created until she revealed herself in truth. "Bravo, bravo, Gojo Jiki. I'm curious, how did you know with such certainty as to strike to kill?"
Gone was the confused expression and innocence of the falsely accused. Instead, a self-serving grin had replaced it. It was a change that he had expected. The woman he had launched into the rock had appeared timid, but the one that sauntered out acted with such confidence that it couldn't be misplaced.
"We finally meet, Kenjaku. But this is not the first time, is it?" Jiki asked rhetorically as he took slow steps forward. During his run to the school, he had allowed his anger to simmer down. His face was the definition of serenity. Calm and tranquil, yet the truth could not be hidden if you knew where to look.
The Uchiha were more emotional than most understood or believed, yet the greatest truth in the statement lay in their eyes, and the requirements to unlock them as well as the more powerful variants. Someone completely closed off and truly ascetic could never unlock the Mangekyō Sharingan, which meant that if you truly needed to know how empathic an Uchiha was, that information lay in how early the Uchiha unlocked his Mangyeko.
Few were as empathic as Uchiha Itachi, or Gojo Jiki.
"Ah, you recognized me because of the similar scar pattern then. I suppose I overplayed my hand by walking up to you that day, but I simply couldn't hold back on my curiosity."
Kenjaku admitted, shrugging dainty shoulders. Jiki did not deem it fit to correct him. The matching scar was simply one of the clues, yet one that could simply be shared injuries. The true source of his certainty was the lump of his own cursed energy hidden in Kenjaku's brain.
A genjutsu.
It was a habit of his. There was always a contingency in the work. He always had a plan and a reaction for almost every scenario, which meant that everybody who locked eyes with him could always be a threat, so he had gotten into the act of implanting a genjutsu into everybody he looked at. It was a technique that saved him when Danzo had ordered his teammates to kill him in another life.
It was a technique he had done on the owner of the brain he was speaking with, yet he had never seen this particular woman before, which meant she had switched bodies. So, however Kenjaku switched bodies, he carried his brain along.
They had barely exchanged any blows, yet Jiki was already breaking down his technique as easily as he breathed air. Not that he was going to correct the old sorcerer in a young woman's body. It was a trump card he was going to keep close to his vest.
"I'm going to kill you," Jiki noted without any real heat in his voice. He said those words like he was simply stating the time of day. It was not a threat, barely even a promise. It was simply a statement.
Kenjaku smiled and stared into the distance, the same direction he felt Satoru's cursed energy. Whoever his cousin was fighting was turning out to be a fun challenge for him. When Kenjaku's attention returned to him, the sorcerer shifted into a stance.
"I'm in no particular hurry to face you, yet I find it hard to believe you will simply let me go alongside my son."
Jiki's reply was a crack of his neck to the side as his scarlet eyes remained focused on Kenjaku.
Kenjaku smiled. "Fine." Then he blurred forward, his hand already forming a claw as he aimed straight for his throat. Jiki didn't move. Not right away. Taijutsu. He was nearly disappointed.
In that breathless moment before impact, time slowed. His spinning Sharingan accelerated just slightly, and then he turned his body half a step, not dodging the blow but guiding it past him. Kenjaku's fingers grazed him, leaving behind faint scratches, but that overextension cost him.
Jiki spun and, using a combination of Kenjaku's momentum and his speed, he drove his elbow backward, catching Kenjaku square in the ribs. The sound of bones cracking echoed louder than the wind bursting from his lungs.
Kenjaku staggered back, but Jiki was already there. He saw the attacks before they came. A palm strike to his sternum to make distance between them. He ducked low, hand to the ground, then he spun, burying his shin into her knees.
He frowned in disappointment when he didn't hear the crack that heralded the breaking of bones. Kenjaku twisted in midair, using the momentum of the blow to flip, feet crashing down toward his head in a devastating axe kick.
Jiki didn't bother with a block; he simply rolled to the side and flipped back to his feet to meet the next blow with a single palm, one foot sliding back across the ground from the force as his brows furrowed.
Kenjaku's strength, even in this smaller form, was monstrous. But that was to be expected. He wasn't fighting a random woman. He was fighting a parasite using Itadori's mother like a puppet, and with the physical contact between them, he could feel it now - an undercurrent of cursed technique running like blood through her muscles.
Kenjaku was not simply using cursed energy reinforcement, but something else to bolster the weaker physical attributes of an untrained woman. He spread his palm and gripped the fist tightly, then jerked his opponent forward. Kenjaku only had a single second to widen his eyes before Jiki buried his hands into the chest.
Pressure weighing down on him, hard enough to bruise flesh and make bones creak. Enough pressure to make even him immobile. Then death.
The Sharingan spun, and instead of the original blow Jiki planned, he spun on his feet and flung Kenjaku away in one smooth and continuous motion. The next second, he felt it. The attack the Sharingan had warned him about, as it read the rapid change in Kenjaku's cursed energy flow. A sudden increase in pressure all around.
But his last-minute effort to put distance between them had worked well. He was unaffected, outside Kenjaku's range, and could only feel the barest amount of it. A few seconds later, it let up, and Kenjaku slowly dragged himself to his feet.
Six seconds?
Jiki stared down at the woman before him. His gaze was dispassionate. He had not pushed his eyes this far in a physical confrontation in a long time. Focusing so heavily on the predictive abilities of his eyes because of the caliber of the sorcerer he was facing.
"I knew that facing you would be different from simply using pawns to test you and watching your reaction from afar, but this is just ridiculous," Kenjaku said with a laugh as he wiped blood from Kaori's lips.
Brown eyes looked up and stared back at him. Even after the beatdown, Kenjaku didn't seem scared, not even worried, which meant that there was something up her sleeve that she expected could take Jiki down. The question shifted: what was it?
Domain expansion? Jiki was not worried about that, but there was the faintest tingling at the base of his neck. How strong and refined was the domain of a millennial old sorcerer?
"How far into the future does the predictive ability of your eyes go? A second?" Kenjaku asked. "Five? Can't be more than ten; otherwise, it won't do well for combat precognition, you'll be stuck in a loop of what could happen if you struck a single blow."
Other than a Domain expansion, what other cards did Kenjaku have to play
Jiki didn't say anything, but he allowed his eyes to drift. He took in his surroundings. Yuji had pulled an unconscious Todo from the ground and was looking back at him. "Take him away."
"No. Todo is fine, simply unconscious. I need to understand what's happening," Yuji replied as he continued to watch them.
Jiki felt more than he saw Kenjaku's smile. It was the smile of satisfaction. Of effort bearing fruit. How had they missed it? Kenjaku getting close to Yuji. Or the fact that Kenjaku was wearing his mother's body. What did that say about Yuji? And how much did it explain the two most unnatural facets of his being?
His inhuman physique and, more accurately, his ability to suppress Sukuna more than any other vessel. Yet it also made things complicated. Yuji's presence right now was a vulnerability to him, especially since he didn't know how deep Kenjaku had sunk his twisted paws into the boy.
He could not allow such a wild card to remain, which meant he had to take it off the board. He glanced briefly at Yuji, then sent a genjutsu package into him via eyesight. A flex of his will saw it activate, and the boy slumped immediately.
For a second, Jiki and Kenjaku froze on the spot, there was the slightest possibility that, with Yuji knocked into unconsciousness, Sukuna could take over and puppet the body. Jiki had put it into consideration and had decided that he could take them both on, but only if he was expecting it.
A second turned into two and into five before Kenjaku chuckled. "That was a fine gamble, I didn't expect you to do that. There goes my plan B of calling Sukuna out."
Jiki turned back to Kenjaku, the body-hopping parasite in a woman's body. He was still unbothered and unruffled. "Why?"
Kenjaku frowned for the first time in confusion, then his face relaxed as he seemed to think on the question. "Why, what exactly?"
"Why did you attack the Gojo clan? Why the attack on the school? I know what your overarching plans are. I know what they involve. Forcing Master Tengen to merge with the population to create something new. To explore the depths and boundaries of cursed energy and to spark an era of sorcery that surpasses the Heian era. Your whole plan hinges upon a single person, yet you've not even paid her a single visit after breaching the walls of Jujutsu High."
The surprise was barely visible - that was how much control Kenjaku had over the body he wore. He had mastered the facial muscles so much that he could hide the surprise that filled him the moment Jiki's questions hit him. But there was something he could not hide, something that even his millennia of experience inhabiting different bodies could not provide: the dilation of his pupils. It was a physiological response instead of a physical one and was controlled by nerves instead of muscles.
Kenjaku recovered quickly. "Can't a mother come to see her son?" The woman's face twisted into a loving smile as she turned to stare at Yuji.
"Or you came for Sukuna."
Kenjaku turned back to him. There it was again - his pupils dilating. Which meant Jiki was closer to the mark. If Kenjaku was wearing Yuji's mother's body now, had he worn it before? And if he had, was he the one who had given birth to Yuji?
Satoru said it once after staring into Yuji's body the first time they met in that hospital. Perfect vessels like Itadori were not randomly born or seen. They were created. Kenjaku created Yuji with Sukuna in mind.
Kenjaku smiled. "I really don't like you. You're too smart for your own good. Yet I also like you because of how… unique and interesting you are. You're a paradox, Gojo Jiki. One that I hope to unravel in full today. So shall we try this again?" Kenjaku said as he shifted into a wide stance, his palms outstretched on either side.
That was enough of a confirmation. Jiki felt his priorities shift. If he could not kill Kenjaku, he had to make sure to deny him the asset that he wanted. This time, Jiki was the one that blurred forward.
His feet easily took up the pace, but already he could feel the strain and ache in his muscles from being pushed. His previous fight against dozens of those monsters, and then his run to get here. His weak grasp of Reverse Cursed Technique would help to ease that ache, but he didn't have the time. Every second he was not pressing Kenjaku was another second the sorcerer had to do something unpredictable.
He got within meters of Kenjaku when he saw the woman's face that Kenjaku wore like a meat suit twist into a smile. His Sharingan saw as the cursed energy path in her head sparked to life - just a single part of the hemisphere lighting up.
Jiki knew what was coming, the single technique he knew Kenjaku possessed. He already had a counter for it now that he was aware of it, so he didn't slow down. A meter away from entering the technique's range, Kenjaku called out as he slapped his hands together in concentration.
"Cursed Technique: Antigravity System."
Antigravity. Jiki's brows furrowed the slightest as suddenly everything within range lost weight as gravity's hold on them was immediately negated. The act created a dust cloud of sand and debris that suddenly hid Kenjaku from view, while Jiki instinctively anchored himself to the ground with his curse energy.
He was suddenly reminded of the curse that had started his journey into Jujutsu society. The way it had inadvertently used this same technique to blind Jiki's prediction, but Kenjaku didn't do this inadvertently. He knew to disrupt Jiki's line of vision.
Jiki's ears barely picked up the word "Convergence" from the middle of the dust cloud. He could feel his sense of time slow as he calculated a path. He could already see the cloud of dust begin to fall slowly, but before he could analyze what it meant, something flew out of the dust on the right, drawing his eyes. By the time it left the dust cloud, Jiki realized it was simply the top half of a kimono. Then he heard a follow-up word, a technique. "Cursed Technique: Piercing Blood."
A second ago, the only thing ahead of Jiki was dust and debris. A second later, there was a thin spike of blood inches away from his head. He could feel his Sharingan spin furiously as it overclocked itself in an effort to predict the lance of blood. The effort was enough to send forth a trail of blood leaking as Jiki was forced to dodge as a split-second decision with a body that was not in peak condition, while he had been distracted. His head tilted to the side, and the lance of blood carved a divot into the side of his head, taking the vision on that side as well.
It had been well-planned, he found himself admitting in that split second before the pain of losing a part of his vision landed as a sonic boom rang out, following the lance of blood a second later.
He could see the thought process come together. Kenjaku had time to make preparations and findings on Jiki, then tire him out by making him get to Jujutsu High in a hurry and somewhat fatigued. He knew enough about the Sharingan to know to block his sight before launching a devastating attack - one so fast it broke the sound barrier, one that was launched the moment Jiki was inches away and while he had been distracted. Not for the first time, he found himself envying his cousin's Infinity.
"Cursed Technique: Flowing Red Scale: Stack."
Before Jiki could recover from the disorienting loss of depth and vision, he heard the whisper. Without looking, he knew where the attack was coming from. Instinct took over - he anchored himself to the ground and raised his arms in a guard the very moment a blow lashed out from his blind side. A sneak attack from his newfound blind spot, immediately following an overwhelming assault from the front. It was exactly what he would have done.
The impact was brutal. Jiki felt the strength of the blow ripple through his skin, muscles, and down to his very bones. The earth beneath his feet cracked as he absorbed and dispersed the force, his teeth gritted against the pain. This was the strongest hit he had felt from Kenjaku so far.
Jiki raised his single working eye to meet Kenjaku's shocked expression and spoke through ragged breaths. "Satoru hits harder."
Kenjaku's plan had been to send Jiki flying, to keep him off balance with a relentless barrage before he could recover. But Jiki had stopped that plan as effectively as he had stopped the blow. Now, Kenjaku hung in the air, arm still outstretched, frozen in mid-strike.
Jiki's grin was sharp, feral. His hands snapped forward, seizing Kenjaku's arm. With a violent twist of his waist, he spun, flinging Kenjaku over his head and driving him into the ground with bone-rattling force. The impact was explosive, a geyser of dirt and debris erupted around them as Kenjaku's skull was buried into the earth. But Jiki wasn't done. He couldn't be. Not yet.
Before Kenjaku could recover, Jiki tightened his grip on the arm in his grasp. With a snarl, he stomped down on Kenjaku's head, shoving it deeper into the ground. At the same moment, he twisted the captured limb with brutal precision. Bones fractured and splintered, muscles tore and snapped, but Jiki didn't stop there.
His vison darkened under the weight of his cursed energy output as Jiki wrenched the arm upward, ripping it from its socket with a sickening crunch. The sheer violence of the motion left a grotesque, blood-slicked stump, and Kenjaku's scream echoed through the air, muffled by the dirt his face was buried in.
Jiki's bloodlust evaporated as quickly as it had surged. Breathing heavily, he took a step back, his senses flaring. The instant he moved, the blood spilled from Kenjaku's torn limb sprang to life, spearing toward where Jiki had just been standing.
Jiki had anticipated it. He was already moving, his body a blur as he evaded the blood spikes that burrowed into the ground with lethal force. He landed a few paces away, his chest heaving as Kenjaku dug himself out of the crater. Blood now floated around the sorcerer, swirling protectively as Kenjaku's remaining hand twitched.
Kenjaku's expression was an unsettling mix, not quite anger, not quite fear. His gaze dropped to the severed arm, the dainty woman's hand now resting in Jiki's grip.
"An eye for a hand," Kenjaku rasped, his jaw clenched. "A fair trade, yet can I ask why you picked an arm in particular?"
Jiki said nothing, just narrowed his eye. Unlike what it may have looked like to outsiders, this wasn't an act of mindless brutality. The moment Kenjaku had taken his eye, Jiki had known he needed to level the playing field. Without both eyes, he was cut off from his Susanoo, and if Kenjaku used a Domain Expansion now, he'd be at a severe disadvantage.
Falling Blossom was a good alternative, but it was a poor match against a Domain without the complete Sharingan. So Jiki had gambled, absorbing Kenjaku's blow to counter and cripple his opponent before a Domain Expansion could be launched. Afterall he had done his research.
Jiki's voice was steady as he spoke, raising the severed arm for Kenjaku to see. "You can't make a Domain with a single hand."
There was only one person Jiki knew who could perform a Domain Expansion with one hand, Satoru. And Kenjaku wasn't him.
"And even if you could," Jiki continued, his gaze empty, "your output's been drastically lowered by the loss of that limb."
Kenjaku chuckled darkly, the sound rasping from his throat. "Beautiful. Simply beautiful. I'd clap for you if I still had two hands." He shook his head, a slow grin spreading across his blood-streaked face. "You thought about all that, calculated it, and executed it all in the space of a split second, despite the pain and shock of losing your eye. One mistake, and that was all it took for me to lose the advantage."
Kenjaku's grin widened, his gaze locking onto Jiki's lone eye. "But do you know why I called it a fair trade?"
Jiki remained silent, jaw set, as Kenjaku pointed a shaking finger at him. "Because, Gojo Jiki… I've figured you out. I know the secret behind your eyes."
A shiver ran down Jiki's spine as Kenjaku's grin stretched, dark and hungry. "And I find that I want them for myself."
Jiki exhaled, the tension bleeding out of his shoulders as he let the severed arm fall to the ground.
Not again. Was he truly cursed with meeting such opponents?