Sukuna walked into the clearing, but this time his smile had reduced a fair bit, and Toji was certain it had something to do with the corpse at his feet. Sukuna came to a stop and stood unmoving, eyes narrowed, lips curled with slow-flowing blood in the corner, and focused on Toji, his smile just as thin.
Toji stared back at him, his grin all teeth. If neither of them was going to attack first, then he would take the breather for what it was. He forced his body into control, tightening muscle over muscle. Pinching torn flesh together with sheer will where Sukuna's invisible slashes had cut him was a skill that took practice and experience, something Toji had in droves.
It was a trick born of pain and practice, brutal discipline that let wounds close where others would bleed out.
The process was annoying and, depending on how fast-paced the battle was, difficult, but with the breather, he took the time to pinch the muscles together tightly enough that they slowly began to heal as his body recognized it. The hardest was the cut that had torn into his back, nearly kissing his spine. It burned like a live wire every time he shifted.
Still, he grinned.
The tense and quiet standoff broke the moment Kenjaku walked out of the forest behind Sukuna. Toji allowed his eyes to move from Kenjaku to Sukuna, and only then did he notice a difference. Sukuna was still bleeding from his lips.
Compared to the damage that he had inflicted on the incarnated King of Curses, the injury was negligible, yet the fact that it was there told him something. Sukuna's output had been affected. With the special-grade curse tool, Playful Cloud, multiplying the damage he could inflict as well as inflicting cursed energy damage as opposed to simply physical damage gotten from his fists, it had finally accumulated enough.
"You never told me," Sukuna said, his voice a low growl that carried across the clearing, "how much fun Toji Fushiguro would be. Even this brat only knows the name because his son is friends with him." He spoke to Kenjaku, yet his eyes were on Toji.
Kenjaku's response was a dainty shrug, incongruously delicate against the ruin around them. "Toji Fushiguro was not supposed to be a threat. He is the predominant sorcerer killer and mercenary of this era. I had plans to pay him off to stay out of this fight, but those plans seem to have gone awry. Now we can hardly let him go, not after he has seen you. Your return is supposed to be a secret after all. That's what all the suppression barriers are for. It's a good thing Uro caught him when she did…"
Kenjaku's words slowed when his gaze dropped. His eyes took in the mangled heap behind Toji, the naked body of Uro, broken, her limbs twisted into a mockery of what they once were. The woman who had led one of the most deadly units during her era, a woman who had bent the sky itself, now lay ruined in the dirt, blood soaking the grass black.
Not for the first time, Kenjaku's calm cracked, however slightly. His head tilted. His stitched mouth pressed thin. "Not a single one of my plans has gone on track. Although, I suppose not even I could've factored in the sorcerer killer. You've proven to be both useful to me, yet like a double-edged blade, you cut both ways. With Yorozu's death and now Uro's loss, the Culling Games are out of the equation."
"You brought back that pest?" Sukuna questioned and turned back to Kenjaku, annoyance written on his features.
An opening. Toji's grin widened. Yet it was not one he was going to take. He knew a poisoned apple when it was handed to him on a platter. He could tell that despite their banter, meant to draw him into a lull, they were ready to spring to action if he took the opening.
"I needed powerful sorcerers if the ritual was supposed to hold. Your annoyance at her existence aside, she was powerful. Till the Gojos got their hands on her, just like they did Uraume, and unlike her, I do not know if Uraume still lives."
Sukuna tensed, then frowned in silence. Kenjaku turned from the reincarnated sorcerer and back to Toji, and in a conversational tone, he said, "I'm certain Uraume was the one to give up our location, which means she most likely still lives. Yet, just like Yorozu, I expect she's being held somewhere safer than the Gojo clan, and the only place to do that is the school. So tell me, Toji Fushiguro, are you interested in a job offer?"
In his defense, Toji thought about it for only a second as opposed to the minute or two he would have given such an offer. In the end, his silence was his answer, a silence that grew heavier as Kenjaku realized he was not suddenly going to switch sides.
"I blame Gojo Jiki, fascinating yet annoying child that he is," Kenjaku muttered in annoyance.
Toji let out a brief laugh as he rolled his shoulders. On that, they were in agreement. The atmosphere had grown light, yet despite the conversation, Toji's eyes had never left Sukuna, which is why he noted when Sukuna stopped his fake musing.
Sukuna looked back up at him, the blood on his lip drying, the thin smile never going away. Instead, it was slowly widening as Sukuna slowly realized he was no longer leaking blood like before.
"It seems your tactic has backfired on us, Kenjaku. Toji Fushiguro was not stupid enough to take the bait, and while he might not have the Reverse Curse Technique, it looks like his body is supernatural enough to partially close his own wounds. Uro's death was a waste."
Kenjaku's head tilted a fraction in acceptance. They were not even trying to hide it again.
Toji snorted at the look on Kenjaku's face. Rolling his shoulders, he shifted his stance, knowing what he wanted. The inventory curse opened its mouth wide, and he slipped the Playful Cloud in, as well as the Inverted Spear of Heaven. "She must've regretted that in her last moments," he said, his voice low, carrying amusement and venom in equal measure. "Allying with you."
Sukuna chuckled, the sound rough and piercing. "She was no ally. Only a pest I allowed to remain in my presence longer than the rest. In the end, she was weak, and the weak are wont to die, are they not? What do her regrets matter?"
Kenjaku's eyes flicked between them, between the monster he'd unleashed and the anomaly he hadn't accounted for. The air had been slowly charging with a violence too heavy to sit still. He eyed the weapons Toji had kept, and the new ones he had brought out: a bandolier that he wrapped around his chest, alongside a hook placed on a chain, a black hook of burnt and tortured metal.
Toji adjusted his stance, muscles taut, body low to the ground. The clearing was a tinderbox, and someone was about to strike the match. Kenjaku decided he would be that person.
"That's enough playing around, Sukuna." His voice cut the silence. Toji tensed at the words, and Kenjaku stepped back, careful, hiding his unease behind a straight face, though a chill still ran down his spine. "There's a very real possibility that Toji Fushiguro kills us here. He killed Gojo Satoru once, and while you're burning cursed energy faster than you can recover it, Toji…" his eyes flicked back to the man tightening his bandolier, "Toji doesn't burn anything. He only takes."
Sukuna ignored his words, a slowly widening smile on his face. Instead, the strongest sorcerer in history, even weakened as he was, smiled in joy. Gojo Satoru, Gojo Jiki, Maki, and now Toji Fushiguro. The first he had promised to kill the next time they met, the second he held a deep fascination for, the polite boy who had refused his presence, denied him his will, a boy obviously touched by the very gods he had discarded and devoured. Maki, a strange girl with an even stranger curse technique, and finally Toji Fushiguro, a never-before-seen monster.
"Truly, what a wonderful era you've reincarnated me into, Kenjaku."
Sukuna's laugh was low, rumbling through the clearing like distant thunder. "A wonderful era indeed." His fingers flexed, and the air around him seemed to shimmer with barely contained malevolence. "Gojo Satoru, you say? The man you believe is the strongest sorcerer of his time?" The King of Curses tilted his head, studying Toji with more interest. "Tell me, sorcerer killer, what did it feel like? To watch the strongest of an era fall?"
Toji's grin was all predator. "Like Tuesday." He adjusted the chain hook in his grip, the metal singing softly as it moved. "And guess what today is?" He shot back with his ever-present grin. He could feel his injuries lessen—lessen enough that breathing was no longer a pain. That was enough for him.
The casual dismissal, the threat, the attitude, everything about Toji Fushiguro made Sukuna's smile stretch wider, more genuine now, touched with something approaching respect.
Kenjaku's unease deepened. He suspected that Sukuna was dragging this out on purpose. He understood the man enough to tell. He was giving Toji a chance, a chance to heal even the slightest, without it being obviously insulting. Was he having that much fun?
This was spiraling beyond his control. Sukuna was stronger, of that he had no doubt, but he was also incomplete, fighting against a monster like Toji Fushiguro who operated outside the rules, a man who existed in the spaces between jujutsu society. A monster who had managed to kill one of them despite fighting three on one.
"Sukuna," Kenjaku tried again, his voice sharper now. "We should—"
"Quiet." Sukuna's command was absolute, his eyes never leaving Toji. "I'm having a conversation with someone interesting for once." He took a step forward, and the ground beneath his feet cracked. "You are fascinating, Toji Fushiguro. Tell me, how does it make you feel to kill a sorcerer like Uro? Weak as she was, at one point, in another atrophied era, she was one of the pinnacles of strength."
"She was strong," Toji acknowledged, rolling his neck until it popped. "Yet she thought her strength and curse technique made her invincible. Then she underestimated me. 'What can a monkey do against my technique?' It's the same mistake most sorcerers make." His grip tightened on the chain.
"Strength, eh." Sukuna's four eyes gleamed. "And you? If not technique, what do you think strength means?"
"Survival." The word came out flat, final. "Everything else is just noise."
The King of Curses laughed again, this time with genuine delight. "Perfect. Absolutely perfect response." He raised his hands, and the air began to hum with gathering energy. "Show me then, Toji Fushiguro. Show me what survival looks like when it's pressed against the wall that is me."
That was as much breathing room as he was going to get, so he acted at once. Toji's arm turned into a blur. He removed one of the grenades attached to his bandolier and threw it straight at Sukuna with his free hand, but if the incarnated King of Curses was surprised by the movement, he didn't show it. Instead, he remained standing still, his previously wide arms folding simply in front of him.
"Dismantle."
An invisible slash shot out a split second later, ripping the grenade in two before it could hit Sukuna. Yet instead of a concussive explosion filled with fire and force, he was blasted with an explosive amount of smoke that immediately filled the clearing, choking the air. The atmosphere turned poisonous, and vision was reduced to nothing.
Like a shark in water, Toji thrived.
Through the chaos, he moved like a ghost made of violence. The Chain of a Thousand Miles sang as it extended, its links stretching impossibly through the smoke toward where Sukuna was standing. Coming from the front, Sukuna expected it, so he went low, letting it miss and sail above him. But he was never the target, and the surprised grunt from behind Sukuna told Toji everything he needed to know.
The chain coiled around Kenjaku's shoulders until the black hook found flesh on the opposite side, biting deep into him and spinning the ancient sorcerer around. The grunt shifted into a scream of pain as blood sprayed in an arc and Toji yanked the chain, reeling the wounded sorcerer toward him through the gray smoke like a fish.
Toji was not content to simply let Kenjaku come to him. Instead, he blurred forward, moving from a completely different angle than where he threw the chain. He materialized from the smoke with a standard Ka-Bar knife in his free hand. There were certain parts of a sorcerer that, no matter how well you reinforced them, would always remain weaknesses. One of those parts was the eye. Toji shoved the sharp end of the blade forward and it pierced the bulbous organ, forcing Kenjaku to let out another scream of pain.
"Sukuna!"
Before the knife could hit brain, Sukuna was already moving, using Kenjaku's scream to pinpoint their location. He called out, accurately measuring the thin gap between the two of them despite the smoke that partially clouded his vision.
"Dismantle."
The invisible slash carved through the air where Toji had been, cutting cleanly through the knife, leaving half of it implanted in Kenjaku's eye and forcing Toji to abandon his attack and leap back with his chain. Kenjaku collapsed on the spot, his free hand clutching his face, pain written across fine features as they gasped for breath.
"Irritating," Sukuna's voice echoed from everywhere and nowhere within the smoke. "I can't see properly in this mess."
Toji didn't respond. Sukuna's words were part truth, part lie. While his vision had been reduced, the fact that he was able to accurately save Kenjaku meant that it was not as bad as he made it sound. Even if his sight was compromised, his ability to sense cursed energy was on a completely different level compared to any other sorcerer.
Toji moved, body slipping through trees and broken logs, fast enough that Sukuna was forced to focus to pinpoint him as he repositioned every second, using the concealment to his advantage. He slowed down long enough to whip out the chain again, but this time it went wide, far beyond the clearing's edges. He could feel it extending through the forest, wrapping around tree trunks, using the massive oaks as anchor points. Round and round it went, creating a vast web of metal that encompassed the entire field.
"There you are," Sukuna's voice came from directly behind him.
Toji spun, bringing up the chain defensively just as Sukuna's fist connected with the links. The impact drove him backward, his feet carving furrows in the earth, but the cursed tool held. Barely.
"Fast reflexes, yet slower than before," Sukuna noted, then disappeared in a blur, already pressing his advantage. He appeared to the side of Toji, and it took everything he had to react. His body screamed in pain as he twisted to face the incoming punch aimed at his head. Toji ducked under it and drove his elbow toward Sukuna's ribs.
The King of Curses deflected the blow and lashed out with a kick that looked to decapitate him. Toji tilted his body back, and this time the pain was excruciating. The still-healing cut that Sukuna had carved into his back screamed at him. Still, he ignored the pain long enough to dodge. He whipped himself back and struck out with a blow, but the pain and accumulated damage slowed him down enough for Sukuna to catch his arm.
Sukuna twisted the limb and threw him toward a cluster of trees. He blasted through the first, his body breaking wood and sending debris everywhere, while he continued into the second. But Toji was ready for it. He spun, ensuring he hit the trunk feet first. Sukuna widened his stance, expecting a counter, but Toji did not even spare him a second of attention. Instead, his eyes found his target, and he shot off, destroying the secondary tree with the force of his launch. His target was Kenjaku.
Kenjaku had managed to prop himself against a tree, heavily bleeding from his shoulders, his injuries refusing to heal despite his attempt at Reverse Cursed Energy—a side effect of the special-grade cursed tool, Hollowed Hooks. Kenjaku looked up, beautiful face twisted and stuck in a grimace as they saw Toji rocketing toward him. His single eye widened in shock as he immediately moved to make a gesture, to activate a technique.
"Cursed Technique: Anti-Gravit—"
Toji's palm slammed into their face first, using the head to carve a divot into the ground. The shock of the blow forced the ancient sorcerer's technique to sputter out, unfinished.
"No techniques," Toji snarled, stepping on Kenjaku's chest to pin him down.
Sukuna appeared again, his fist connecting with Toji's jaw hard enough to lift him off his feet. Stars exploded across his vision as he jerked backward. Before he could blink away the pain, a follow-up palm strike cratered his chest, snapping bones. Yet Toji had been prepared to sacrifice as much. With a twist of his wrist, a thin needle attached to the Thousand Mile Chain pierced through Sukuna's neck and burst out from his throat, freezing him in surprise.
Toji grinned at him. "That's why I don't take protection jobs. It forces you to be predicta—"
He immediately coughed up a mouthful of blood before he could finish his sentence. Then he looked up at the surprised form of Sukuna. Sukuna was still frozen, and it wasn't just out of surprise. The needle had been copiously coated with poison.
Sukuna's eyes widened as he forced his body to move, but only got a twitch out of it.
"You must be surprised. You might have sensed the chain to some extent, but you were so focused on it, the long needle at the end did not gain your attention." It was a method he used against people who trusted their ability to sense cursed energy more than their mundane sight.
A technique that had worked on both sorcerers who had been called the strongest.
Sukuna must have thought he still had a split second to dodge the chain, not expecting the spike at its end. Sukuna remained silent, eyes wide with fury at the method Toji had used to incapacitate him.
The botulinum-derived neurotoxin he had smeared on the blade was the fastest-acting in his arsenal, and with the amount he had applied, it was enough to kill more than a hundred men in thirty seconds—or enough to stop an absolute monster for a few seconds.
Toji took a staggered step forward, the accumulated damage turning his body into lead.
He could see realization dawn on Sukuna. Attacking Kenjaku the first time was to see how much Sukuna wanted to protect the ancient sorcerer. Then he had purposely hurled the chain into the distance to create multiple false trails. The slowly clearing smoke meant that it had continued to tie itself around the forest. The final blow, the mundane needle that Toji had put on the hook, replaced the special-grade cursed hook that had been used to lull them into complacency. Then all he had to do was use himself as bait, knowing Sukuna would appear again to protect Kenjaku, placing him in the perfect position.
Toji grinned as he took another step forward. The Gojos were going to pay through the throat for this. The purple, baby-faced inventory curse wrapped around him opened its mouth, and Toji reached inside to pull out the Inverted Spear of Heaven when the last thing he expected happened.
Lightning split the sky.
The bolt came from the forest's edge, brilliant blue-white death that found Toji even as he tried once more to force his body to move, but the effort was in vain. It slammed into him like the fist of an angry god, lifting him off his feet and hurling him into another cluster of trees. Wood splintered and cracked as his body carved a path through the trunks until he finally came to a halt. He blanked out for seconds, and when he came to, it was to the sight of a strange man staring down at him, a man with hair that stood on end and lightning crackling off him.
"Forgive me." The figure stared, electric blue eyes bearing a complicated emotion. "But I need Sukuna at full strength to fulfill my wish. He cannot die here." With his part said, the figure straightened up and turned away.
"Hahahahahahahahahahahaha!" Toji let out mad laughter, the sound ripping through the forest and sending any creature still stupid enough to have stayed behind scattering. What horrible luck. He truly was cursed, wasn't he?
He didn't know how long he had been knocked out, and he didn't particularly care about the strange man's ramblings. Instead, he forced his body to roll to the side after a brief pause where he gasped for air.
His hands found grass beneath him, and he used the last of his strength to lift his smoking body up. Only then did he look to the side as the sound of footsteps ended a few meters away. He turned his head, ignoring the way skin sloughed off his neck with the movement, and he looked into the face of Ryomen Sukuna, and grinned widely in response to the thunderous look of anger on the incarnated King of Curses face.
The other man gave Sukuna a complicated look, then turned away and disappeared into the bush.
Toji's lips cracked open, and only two words escaped.
"I win."
Sukuna did not say anything. Instead, he closed his hands together in front of him, and fire spontaneously appeared on them. He molded and twisted it until it focused on his fingers, then drew an arm back, the movement reminiscent of an archer pulling a bow. Only then did he call out:
"Fuga."
The sight and feeling of the flames reminded Toji of the black fire that had nearly taken his life years ago. He thought about Gojo Jiki, the catalyst that had made him embrace a different path. He thought about Megumi, the boy he had hoped to raise as a weapon to match the Gojos, yet somehow, along the way, he had changed. He cared less about his goals and more about raising his son to be strong. Strong enough to at least not require the backing of a clan that had cast him away. He thought about Tsumiki, the girl who had played a great hand in that change, in moulding him to be better.
A wall of heat and destruction came to life before him, a torrent of flame that turned everything in its path to ash. It washed over Toji in a storm of divine fire, consuming flesh and bone with equal hunger.
Yet even as the flames ate him alive, even as his body crumbled to nothing, Toji Fushiguro laughed.
It was the sound of pure, vindictive satisfaction, the laugh of a man who had no regrets about how he had lived or how he would die. It was the laugh of a man who had forced the strongest sorcerer in history to rely on allies.
The man who had made the two strongest sorcerers in history bleed, the laughter of a man who had done the impossible twice in a lifetime. The laughter of a man vindicated, his status as a simple monkey discarded.
Toji Fushiguro's laughter echoed long after the flames consumed him, long after his body turned to ash and formed a pile on the ground. Long after the hole where he had buried his inventory curse had sealed over and the curse began its long travel home, carrying his phone and everything he had learned from the fight.
x
Sukuna stood in that spot for two days, and when he finally turned away, he was a different person.