Zoro
What followed was genuinely anecdotal.
The erasure bullet was dodged with Soru.
Entry into the factory: straight through the roof. With due care for the children, obviously.
Then the curse user launched into his villain speech. The usual content — no chance of surviving, the children were the key to his ascension, the future was his, destiny had chosen him, and so on and so forth.
'Seriously, what is it with these people and children?'
Nearly every mission carried out so far had involved children as victims in one way or another. It had become consistent enough to raise a genuine question about whether this was actually Jujutsu Kaisen or some kind of Type-Moon crossover that nobody had warned about.
The tirade kept going. And going. At some point, the patience simply ran out entirely.
Beheaded him mid-sentence.
Anecdotal, as stated.
What came after was the part actually worth discussing.
---
Standing alone in the dilapidated factory, the only living thing upright in the room, staring at the immediate situation and working through what needed to happen next.
About fifteen children lying across the ground, all unconscious. All under thirteen. All orphans, from what the curse user had mentioned before his final moments.
'They've been through genuine hell. Feel terrible for them.'
Not!
Step.
Step.
Step.
Moving slowly toward the exit, keeping every footstep as quiet as the floor would allow.
'They're going to be considerably harder to manage if any of them wake up before this is sorted.'
At the gate, the lock was worked open and the door nudged forward just enough to slip sideways through the gap.
KRIIIIK!
The rust had done serious damage to the hinges over however many years this place had been abandoned. The creak carried. Loudly.
'SHIT.'
Spinning around immediately to check on the room. Fifteen children, still completely motionless. Not one of them stirring.
'Phew.'
A genuine breath of relief. Out through the gap and into the open air. Less than an hour had passed since the hunt began — the moon was still sitting comfortably high in the sky.
'Need to find a phone booth.'
A slow walk through the surrounding district while turning the options over. City center, so the search didn't take long at all.
'Perfect. One call to the police and the role here is finished.'
110 dialed — the Japanese police emergency line. Emergency numbers don't require coins. Convenient.
"Ahem. Ahem."
Throat cleared while waiting for the pickup. What was about to happen deserved at least a moment of preparation. This was going to be a performance worthy of Shakespeare, frankly.
A few seconds, then the line connected.
"Kyoto Police, how can I help you?"
Female voice. Professional.
'Here we go.'
"H-Hello! Please help us — we've been kidnapped."
Playing a terrified child. Embarrassing in a way that defied easy description. Completely necessary regardless.
"Calm down, little one. Take a breath and tell me everything from the beginning."
Gentle but firm. Good instincts.
"I-I was at home in Osaka with my family when a man broke in. He… Sniff… he killed my parents right in front of me before knocking me out."
"I'm so sorry, little one. You're going to get through this, I promise."
The sympathy in her voice was genuine. Audible in every word.
'Honestly too skilled at this. This is genuine art.'
The performance continued without losing momentum. "When I came to, I was inside a rundown factory with other children. Sniff! We were kept there for days at a time. He only ever came back to bring food, water, and more children. Sniff! The only reason I managed to escape and call was because the others helped me create a distraction."
"Is the kidnapper still at the factory right now?"
"N-No. He said he wouldn't be back for several days at least."
"That gives us room to work with."
The sound of muted movement on the other end of the line. Someone taking notes.
"Give me the exact location of the factory."
"O-Okay. It's in the city center. There's a supermarket nearby and an apartment building right beside it. All the front windows have been sealed with cinder blocks."
"I know exactly where that is. We'll be there in less than fifteen minutes. You were incredibly brave, little one. Leave everything else to us now."
Click.
Line dead. Act concluded entirely.
"Good. One thing properly handled."
The mood had settled back into something comfortable and even a little satisfied.
"The hunt is done. Back in the Jujutsu world properly now. Priority: find the right contacts."
And there was already a very clear idea of exactly where to start looking.
---
???
"Wake up."
(…)
"Hey. Wake up."
(…)
"ARE YOU GONNA GET UP OR NOT?!"
"ARGH!"
Consciousness arrived alongside pain — distributed evenly between the body and the ears.
Everything around was blurred and without definition. Thoughts refused to arrange themselves into anything coherent. Slowly, gradually, the edges of the room sharpened enough to make out the figure that had woken me up.
The face wasn't readable yet. But the silhouette had come through.
Small — a child, almost certainly. But three large shapes jutted out distinctly from the hip area.
A second look: not shapes. Objects. A third: katanas. Three katanas.
'Something familiar about this. Can't pin down what exactly. And why is the body in this kind of state to begin with?'
Recent memory surfaced reluctantly and in fragments.
'A man from the Kamo clan. He came looking for a bodyguard. He was taking children — whatever the reason behind it wasn't my business. The assignment was simple: guard the base.'
The gaps that mattered most were the ones that resisted hardest.
'One night. On duty, same as always. Heard something coming directly toward me at speed. Dodged it. Wrapped in cursed energy before the next breath.'
Reaching for what came immediately after sent a spike of pain straight behind the eyes.
'Turned around. Saw the silhouette of whoever had attacked. Nothing that stood out. Nothing distinguishing. Except—'
It landed all at once, the way realizations do when they've been waiting just out of reach.
"Three swords." The words came out before the thought had finished forming.
"IT'S YOU!"
The silhouette standing in front of me matched exactly — the same shape, the same three katanas at the hip, the same proportions of someone far too young for what they were clearly capable of.
"Took you a moment. I hit hard, but I held back — you weren't supposed to be in this bad a shape. How exactly did you manage to run through your entire cursed energy reserve to the point where you couldn't even maintain basic protection?"
Something about the question unlocked the rest. Everything else that had been missing came back in a single rush.
"What do you want from me?" Keeping the voice professional while looking directly at the person responsible for the current situation required more effort than it should have.
The reply came back immediately, and with obvious amusement behind it.
"Name's Roronoa Zoro. And something tells me you and I are going to become GREAT~ friends."
The way he said it did absolutely nothing to inspire confidence.
'Damn. What exactly did I walk into here.'