Chapter Text
To the Benefit of Only One - Chapter 1
Shifting Balance - Chapter 1: Twin Guiding Jewels, Mirror of the Depths
The beginning of the life of the one who's birth swayed the balance of the world in equal measure as Satoru Gojo, who was second in talent only to the two Strongest Sorcerers to ever walk the face of the earth, wasn't like that of any other. His childhood stained with blood and bathed in the world's foulest shadows.
A boy who bore knowledge no one should know and cursed with the legacy of his blood.
Jewel of Plenty . Jewel of Turning Back on the Road . Mirror of the Deep
Before the sun crested the horizon, 9th December 1991. The living room of a One Floor suburban home
Today wasn't a particularly auspicious day, for most it was one like any other, however for one Kage Adachi -a freshly minted two-year old, as of two days ago- it was, in fact, a day that was very much out of the ordinary.
He held a regular life on the outskirts of the city, his home a single floored house with a small attic and basement, where he lived together with his mother and father; the Adachi family, was for all intents and purposes, exceedingly ordinary. However while that may be the appearance from the outside, there was something slightly strange on the inside.
Kage, the only child of the two parents, held a few peculiarities about him that children his age often didn't have. For one he would be unusually adept at everything he did on the first try, be it walking, talking, writing or drawing, he took it like a duck to water.
A sensation the boy would liken to riding a bicycle after not riding for years. Not that the boy had ever ridden a bike, being two and all, but that would be the closest comparison he'd think of.
However, this strange titbit about the boy went unnoticed by all those around him, written off unconsciously as the boy simply being rather talented at whatever he tried. After all, what else would his predisposition to know how to do most things before he was introduced to them even mean aside from him being rather smart for a child?
So for most of the boys life, despite these inconsistencies, he lived as normally as any other child. That was until today of course.
Laid out on the couch in the living room, his head shoved under a pillow he'd dragged through from his bedroom, he watched through a small -slither like- gap in order to watch the TV. A large and blocky thing which shone brightly in the pitch black room.
Something had changed in the boy, not that he -or anyone- knew. Something which had laid dormant until now, fully expressing itself and making itself known.
It was before five in the morning, the sun was yet to rise, and the boy was wide awake.
"Fuck..." the boy muttered to himself, as he tried to block out more of the Tv's light with his pillow while also leaving just enough to read to subtitles at the bottom of the screen.
Kage was also, it'd seem, cursing like a sailor.
The two year old had, a few hours prior, woken from his slumber in his room to find himself victim of the most painful headache he'd ever experienced. A migraine which blurred his vision and stabbed through his temples with white hot agony.
It took him hours to get himself upright and, when he did, the oddities truly began to show themselves.
At the young age that he was, the infant had -for the entirety of his life- been forced through his morning routine largely at the behest of one of his parents. In other words, should one of the Adachi's fail to walk the child through every step of getting ready for day-care, then he simply wouldn't get ready.
However, the moment he'd been able to fight back the migraine enough to see the world as more than a smear across his vision, he'd began -on instinct- to get ready.
He made his bed, he'd changed out of his pyjama's and into his thick winter clothing before he'd then eaten his breakfast. On instinct, the boy had done everything that he'd had to been dragged through every day previous in his life.
This was the first peculiarity the boy showed on this day.
The second being his choice in entertainment.
After he found that he was awake before everyone else in the house, Kage had sought something to distract himself, something to take his mind off of the stabbing pain of the migraine. Which was when he'd taken to watching the television. Yet what blared across the screen wasn't the usual cartoons he'd watch on any other day.
Instead it was the news...
In truth, Kage wasn't watching. He'd simply turned to this channel for something to occupy his mind with -even if he took none of the information in as he did so- however it was the boys first instinct to seek out this broadcast about economics, tragedies and international relationships instead of the cartoons with bright colours and happy characters.
Whatever had unconsciously changed, Kage was undeniably different than he'd been when he fell asleep ten hours ago.
Though the boy failed to notice this, as he was so wracked with pain that his strange behaviour didn't even register to himself. And so, ignorant of this even further deviation from normalcy than his regular abnormal behaviour, Kage continued to try and waste away the morning.
As the morning wore on, his parents had woken up, at seven his mother and father -in their preparations for work- had found him huddled on the couch and tried to coax out what was the matter from the child. Who, having somewhat recovered over the hours, insisted that he was fine (another abnormality from a child who had, previously, been completely bankrupt of the thing called 'shame').
His parents had adapted their schedules rather admirably so that the both of them would take later shifts to be able to drop Kage off too day-care while the other would have an earlier one to pick him up after the fact. At the moment it was his mothers turn to drive him in and his fathers to pick him up once he was off from his work.
He'd been ferried down the drive, his hand in hers as she waved off his father (who was cycling to his job as he often did when it was his job to have the earlier shift) and picked up and placed gayly in the booster seat in the back of their modest car.
The drive was restless, head in his hands, nursing the small remnant of a migraine which remained from the early morning, he could see his mother glance back at him through the rear-view mirrors, her brown eyes meeting his green whenever they caught the other looking.
His mother was worried about him, which was why she was checking on him so often, and the boy himself was ashamed of having her worry for him, the reason behind his own constant glances. The strange distance the sudden shift in Kage's disposition created was palpable.
So, instead of confronting the issue, Kage instead thought about everything he could aside from that.
For example: Kage didn't really know what his parents did for work. He knew that they both did different things, from his fathers jumpsuit he'd guess it was in some field involving utility, but if it was plumbing or electricity, he didn't know. His mother, on the other hand wore suits, ties and long skirts or pants which spoke to a much more office oriented position.
...For the 90's, was it normal for Women to work in Japan? He didn't really know the state of the Economy, but he did know that it wasn't that bad compared to what it'd be in the future, especially 2008. Did that mean that they weren't well off? No, it was likely just his mother, she was really head strong and responsible, so she likely insisted to work even if there was some kind of social stigma arou-
'2008'? 'Social Stigma'? 'Economy'? What the fuck was he even thinking about?
(Where had he heard any of those before?... where had he ever heard the word 'fuck' before?)
This was the moment where Kage, for the first time, noticed that something had changed within himself on a much deeper level than a simple migraine.
For a long moment he simply considered what the hell was going on. In retrospect he'd been acting weirdly all day and now he'd just though a bunch of random words that he -at least thought- he knew the meanings behind.
'Economy' being one he especially shouldn't know, with the two years old boy's thoughts on the matter being -it is the rate of which a nation or region produced and consumed goods and services and the stability and value of their currency- which he definitely should not know.
There was no way that he'd picked this up from a single morning of watching the news (which he had barely done) and this unexplained knowledge upset something deep in his stomach... he had to prove if this was at least real, that he had just randomly thought something that actually had meaning...
(The boy, at least part of him, hoped that it was just the delusions of a child)
"Hey Mom, what does 'Economy' mean?" the boy said into the silence of the car. She glanced at him with baffled look over her shoulder for a second, sitting as they where at a red light, before she chuckled to herself.
Shaking her head she said "News got you confused?" assuming his silence came from his early morning watch of the news and him not understanding it, "It's just how much money is worth, and how much stuff it can buy. Think of it like that,".
While much less technical in her explanation (likely due to the fact that she was describing it to a two year old) her words matched quite closely to his own.
Kage bit his top lip, what did it mean that he suddenly knew a bunch of things that no one had told him.
The boy was silent for the rest of the ride.
Parking the car outside the small strip of shops along one of the backstreets of their neighbourhood, businesses who's bottom floor was the storefront and the upstairs and apartment, Kage was led inside by his mother. Through the bakery they went, past the smell of freshly baked bread, and too the back door which led upstairs.
Once they climbed up the steep and narrow staircase, they found themselves inside day-care. The parent who's apartment this was, a woman who's husband and oldest son worked the bakery downstairs, greeted Mrs Adachi -who then left after giving Kage a quick peck on the cheek- and he was left to be taken care of for the day.
There where around seven other children at the day-care, all given a little cordoned off section of the apartments living room -with colouring pens and toys galore- while the woman looking over them would duck in and out of the room as she busied herself with housekeeping.
While not exactly a professional set up, Kage thought, it was understandable considering the family was running this operation out of pocket - only running the day care because she was close friends with all the parents who's children she was looking after.
It was routine, at this point, as Kage walked over to the other children, yet something was different.
Whatever had changed within the boy, whatever let him know things he shouldn't, was now proving to be a rather firm hinderance to his socialization.
Kage realised, in retrospect, that before now he'd spoken in shorter sentences and thought with far less eloquence than he was today, and while -for whatever reason- he'd suddenly gotten much more adept cognitively, his peers weren't as fortunate.
So as Kage sat amongst the children around him, he found that it was frustratingly difficult to talk, play or even interact with them. For a reason beyond him, just trying to level with them felt strikingly immature.
(He was a child, he'd thought, why did he care about being immature. Thoughts like these would have never crossed his mind before, what was the matter with him).
And so, after some time (barley fifteen minutes, Kage felt far too embarrassed to try more than that, his cheeks and ears blushing bright red as he tried to fit in with a group of infants) he decided that it was a lost cause and abandoned his friends to sit alone in the corner.
It was a decision that was reciprocated by the children who, while likely not aware of it themselves, had noticed something was different about him and how awkward he'd become, avoiding him and his newfound strangeness.
And so, that was how the middle of Kage's very strange day went, sitting in the shadow cast by an arm chair, in the apartment of a family friend who may well have been a stranger.
Yet it was during this long, some hours into his drawn out stay, did he come to discover something...
Playing with a transformer and a power ranger -sound effects coming out the corner of his mouth as he played- he'd muttered something that he'd never heard of before to make bumblebee's punch cooler, tossing the red range back quietly as to not draw attention to himself.
Once again, without any thought, the child said something he shouldn't have known.
"Black Flash!" he muttered under his breath.
Picking up the figure, he continued to play and, embarrassingly in hindsight, it took him about thirty seconds to ask the all important question.
What's a Black Flash?
The application of Cursed Energy of a physical blow within one trillionth of a second of contact, Cursed Energy can flash black, raising the power of the strike by the power of 2.5.
'Cursed Energy?' the boy thought, confused, but in that moment the boy's mind became clear as something seemed to reveal itself behind his eyes.
And then followed the deluge.
Knowledge within overlooked memories availed themselves and Kage gained access to memories of all aspects of the intellectual property known as 'Jujutsu Kaisen,'.
The boy was flabbergasted. For whatever reason, his mind was flooded with information about the manga, anime adaptation, mobile games and light novels that wasn't due to be released until almost thirty years into the future.
And so the boy spent a good deal rest of his time at day-care, simply confused with the information going through his mind...
It wasn't until the end of this pivotal day in Kage's life that he truly figured out what was what inside his head. Since the moment he'd woken up it'd been oddity after oddity, with no breaks to catch his breath in-between. But now that he was lying in his bed in the early afternoon, he collected himself and drew his conclusion.
For the entirety of his life he'd been able to do most anything he'd tried to do with no effort, like it was something he'd done before.
This morning he'd woken with a migraine and had began to act differently. His mind no longer though like a two year olds and he'd gone through his morning routine with little issue -something he'd never done before.
On the way to school he'd learnt that he somehow had access to accurate general knowledge (which itself was dated somewhat to the future) that he'd never been taught.
And finally, not only did he stop having the instinct of the child that he was, but he also had gained complete memory of this 'Jujutsu Kaisen' -from it's manga, to it's gacha games- that he could remember in near perfect detail.
What could Kage conclude from this?...
First conclusion was obvious: he was insane.
However, considering that the general knowledge he had was accurate (at least the definition of the words he now knew, he couldn't really prove his 'future knowledge' before the events he remembered occurs) this conclusion seemed unlikely. If he was crazy, his delusions wouldn't be right.
His next one was much more out there: He'd been reincarnated... or inherited the memories of someone else who'd lived somewhere in the future.
It was the only conclusion that he could think of that could explain how he suddenly changed in both disposition and knowledge (and have underlying traces of said change for his entire life before it occurred) that actually covered all of the information he'd found out...
Why'd he been able to do things on the first try? It wasn't his first try, just this life's first time. How'd he get knowledge he shouldn't know and why'd his disposition suddenly change? He'd -just this morning with the migraine- gained full access to his 'reincarnation' (or something).
The only thing the reincarnation theory didn't really explain was the memory of Jujutsu Kaisen. However, he'd guess that it'd just mean that his past (future? His memories and knowledge did indicate that his memories took place at least in the late twenty tens) life was a little obsessed with the show.
Sighing and rubbing his arm over his eyes, only one thought echoed in his mind once he was convinced he'd found his answer to his very strange day. 'Why'd his reincarnation have to be useless?' the information he had was either too vague to take advantage of, or a manga that was going to be popular once he was in his thirties...
"Fucking hell," Kage rolled over and shoved a pillow over his head, what a waste of time. He was going to catch up on the sleep he'd lost to this shit.
And then years passed him by, life falling back into a set routine -a familiar rhythm- with Kage's newfound revelation in tow.
At the age of four, Kage was enrolled in a local elementary school, having lost any connection with his peers due to his shift in demeanour, his relationships where further burdened with the transition into a new institution.
Under the understanding that, should he try to inform anyone of his situation regarding his new found memories, he wouldn't be believed, Kage began to take his memories for granted. It was a simple fact of life that was neither good nor bad, simply being.
But soon, three years after his influx of memories from his past life, Kage would again be confronted by the supernatural, assailed by a second revelation -not born from his rebirth, but instead his lineage.
Jewel of Plenty . Jewel of Turning Back on the Road . Mirror of the Deep
Midnight, 15th December, 1994. Kage's bedroom
Silence hung in Kage's bedroom, the boy laying flat on his back amid his sheets, pillows and blankets as he staired blankly up at the ceiling. His room, once a relatively clean and ordered space, was now a monument to chaos, dirt tracked across the carpet and stationary strewn across the floor alongside sheets of messily scribbled upon pieces of paper and card.
To the layperson, despite the young boy being all alone, the room was alive with motion. Crayons rolled about the floor, papers crumpled under unseen weight and a glass of half drank water rattled off of his bedside table to the floor with a jolt and clatter.
The boy paid it no mind, after all, he wasn't the only one in his room.
Kage's second bout against the world of the unseen was much more confronting than some simple memories unfortunately and it was also something that was existentially damning.
Cursed Spirits.
It was a concept within 'Jujutsu Kaisen' -a story who's author likely hadn't even been born yet- where the titular 'Cursed Energy' congealed over time into beings of concentrated negativity. Curses on the world, who's bodies where formed through that wholly negative energy.
They where also the monsters he was now able to see stalk the city he lived in.
Grotesque forms availed themselves to the young boy a few hours before, in the afternoon, with a sudden burst of clarity. One moment, Kage sat alone on the school's playground and the next he was seeing half a dozen creatures floating across his vision like some kind of macabre zoo.
His reaction, he thought, was appropriate to the school yard suddenly being filled with monsters.
Kage -who had been busy sitting alone and staring up at the sky- had been appalled by the sight, recoiling in disgust, but survival instinct had quickly overtaken his shock and he'd ran to go inside.
Only for his panicked sprint to be blocked by one of the teachers.
They'd asked him if he was ok, reminding him that if he wanted to go inside to use the restroom that he should inform one of the teachers before hand -the school being small enough that one or two teachers could oversea all of the children from kindergarten to Grade-5 without much issue, thus knowing if they where all there or not- as if putrid monsters weren't infesting the grass field like they where in some twisted facsimile of pokemon.
It had thrown him through a loop to such an extent that he found himself sitting back down in his corner wide eyed, observing the thirty or so children from ages four to eleven as they played and socialised amongst themselves as if the giant blobs of flesh and drool weren't hovering over them.
They couldn't see them. It was the only conclusion that made sense, that or he was seeing things, but when one such creatures brushed it's bulbous form past his leg, he dismissed the notion.
Retrospectively, Kage now knew them to be curses (certain circumstances in the present made it obvious) but at the time he'd obsessively tried to figure out what the hell was going on -incensed as he was by the existence of actual monsters that other people apparently couldn't see.
There was about five Curses across the playground, the smallest being about the size of a small dog and the largest twice his own size; he dared not look at any of them directly and instead only sent furtive glances out of the corner of his eyes.
(Kage thought, knowing now that these where the creatures that Gege Akutami depicted, that the man -through no fault of his own- failed to capture the pure malignance of their existence. He would liken the pallor of their skin to a corpses and the shape of their forms to bulging tumours. Everything about the Curses where revolting).
Recess soon ended and he was again in his classroom, but no matter how hard he tried, he was now no longer able to hold his attention on the subjects at hand, distracted by the small creatures that ducked in and out of the room at their own leisure.
His gut was filled with dread through those remaining hours, the sight of a creature the size of a large hound phasing through a wall, chewing on the side of the teachers leg -causing her to try to rub the limb lethargically- before then phasing back out was disturbing beyond all measure.
Was he hallucinating? He desperately reconsidered the option.
If not, then what where these creatures? The idea that this repugnant and clearly malicious (one particularly small fly head hadn't stopped it's lone quest to gnaw through the side of one of his classmates heads, causing the girl to massage her temple in pain - definitely malicious) had surrounded him without him knowing was deeply perturbing.
Worst of all, there was nothing that Kage could do.
And so for the rest of the day he sat in his seat near the back of the cramped classroom ignoring the low level curses as they came and went.
What was he going to do? Having yet to figure out the truth behind the monsters he now saw, he had no path forward when it came to their presence and so he was left gaping - with a deep sense of unease and weakness eating at the bottom of his gut.
On the drive back home at the end of the day, that inadequacy he felt would explode out in fruitful fashion.
Winding through the streets of the neighbourhood, Kage lost in his own world in the back seat. Soon the, halfway home, they stopped at a four way intersection.
Once the light turned green his father began to accelerate the car and just at that moment, a large curse -the size of cow he'd say- with six legs and puss draining from great cysts across it's form, walked from the sidewalk and into the road.
Kage, seeing the creature with dozens of teeth and emanating a revolting musk he could smell through the windscreen, feared for his life.
"Stop-! Ghh!" Kage tried to call out to his father before they lurched forwards into the gross amalgam of limbs and sinew, but he was too late in his warning.
The Curses Cursed Energy reserve was so low that the car had drove through the creature as if it wasn't there, the Curse choosing to become intangible instead of indulging in being hit by a car - even if it would do no damage to it. But to the boy, all he saw was the monster's bulk blurring towards him until it filled his vision with it's form (and his nostrils with it's miasma - it smelt really bad).
In that moment of panic and shock, thinking the monster would hurt him, his hands had flown up on instinct and something deep within his gut (his Cursed Energy flowing from passive reserves throughout his body and into active output in his naval) as he activated his Innate Cursed Technique for the first time.
The patriarch of the Adachi family spluttered slightly, looked in the rear-view mirror as he accidentally stalled the car -ignoring the sharp honking from cars behind him- and snapped around to look at his son in the back, who had suddenly screamed for absolutely no reason.
"Wh-! Are you 'lright? Kage you good?" twisting in his seat, his father tried to make eye contact with him.
Yet his effort wasn't reciprocated by Kage, who's body was pressed back into the back of his seat, his eye's locked onto a patch of empty air in the backseat.
Or, that is what it appeared to Kage's non-sorcerer father, to Kage, who's hands had flown together into the shadow puppet of a dog's head on primal impulse, was now locking eyes with a pair of twin dogs. Liquid Shade dripping from their fur from the shadow -his shadow- that they'd just emerged from.
One white and one black, red symbols across their foreheads and about the size of a wolf, the two canines panted at Kage with excitement. The white one moving to lick his face and the black -having been summoned on the edge of the seat and jostled by the cars sudden stop- was flat on it's back and rolling about presenting it's stomach for patting.
Needless to say, white's tongue slobbering over his face, Kage didn't give his father a response quickly.
Right now it was... Kage rolled to his side and looked at the blue clock mounted on his wall... around eleven at night and he was still not any closer to getting any sleep as he was when he'd first gotten home. And, in all honesty while his existential crisis was the main reason, these two menaces weren't helping him any.
The two Dog Shikigami (because that was what they are, he can't believe this is real) hadn't been unsummoned since he'd first called on them, mostly because he was so staggered by what was going on that he hadn't thought to try. And, as a result of his unresponsiveness, they had taken to finding their own means of entertainment.
Which was unfortunate due to them being just as invisible as the Cursed Spirits.
When he'd gotten home, they'd jumped out the backseat and trodden on his dads feet, they'd dashed around the front garden like they owned the place and, once his mother came home at around six, they had tried to eat his food off of his plate at dinner. Even now, they where the cause of the mess across his room.
Well, the Black dog was, the White Shikigami dog was currently laid out across the bottom of his bed -it's head rested across his thighs- while the black one tore across his room in great circles. It bumped into this and that, bounding here and there while panting with it's pink tongue flopping this way and that as it ran.
Kage laid his arm over his eyes.
The moment that he'd laid his eyes on the animals he'd recognised them, Gyokuken, Demon Dogs of the Ten Shadows technique, a power from the fictional setting he remembered from this 'past life,'. A pair of twin dogs -one black and the other white- with a red tri-point symbol across their forehead which emerged from the shadows... it was essentially a perfect match to Megumi Fushiguro's technique.
And that was the problem. Now that he knew that he had the Ten Shadows, that explained the monsters that he saw. They where Cursed Spirits.
Perfectly sound logic, if he had one thing from JJK and another thing looked and acted like another thing from JJK, it was probably that thing... that wasn't his issue. His issue was that any of this existed in reality in the first place.
The Ten Shadows, Cursed Spirits, Cursed Energy. That was all fiction, it wasn't real, it was causing him no end of mental anguish trying to reconcile his own existence now that all three had proven themselves to exist.
What did it mean from him if he existed in a world he thought was only a story? Was he real? What even where these memories that he had lived mostly pathetically with for the past three years?
...
Kage's frown deepened, and Gyokuken white's face shifted from his thighs and onto his stomach, the canine nudging it's head under his hand and looking up at him out the top of it's eyes.
Sighing and indulging the dog with a scratch under the ear, he decided it'd be best if he just slept on it, he wasn't going to be making any progress any time soon anyway.
When he woke the next morning, the dogs where gone. Though the traces of their existence where still obvious in their absence, a large indent in his mattress right next to him from where white had laid itself and the chaos that black had left in it's wake.
After cleaning up after his dogs mess, Kage went through the motions and, once again, found himself in that very same school yard.
Curses, born from the negative emotions of the students and teachers of the establishment coiled around the children like monstrous barnacles, distasteful parasites. Kage had, for his part, tried his best not to think about the recent developments in the... unnatural he'd been having, but -once he again was left with nearly forty minutes to waste away- he decided to try out his new found abilities.
Frowning to himself, Kage wrapped his right hand over the top of his left, forming a dogs head before muttering "Gyokuken...".
A gust of wind blew through the grass, ruffling his hair, nothing. Kage blinked down at his hands... maybe it was his mittens, it hadn't worn them in the car when he'd summoned the dogs yesterday, where the heater had been on full blast, so maybe they where getting the way.
With his mittens now off, Kage huffed out a breath to concentrate -the respiration sending a plume of fog into the winter air- before he again chanted "Gyokuken".
Kage could see tumble weed bouncing along in his minds eye...
What the hell was he doing wrong! Kage grit his teeth in frustration (sending a quick glance up and -yup, curses where still there, he definitely hadn't imagined them) why weren't the dogs coming out his shadow?
Frustration bubbled and settled in his gut.
That was it, Kage thought. It was because of his lack of control of Cursed Energy. Yesterday, in the car, he'd followed his instincts by accident in a moment of fear and everything had fallen into place, but now he had to do everything himself, he had to actually try and use his reserves.
In that moment, Kage's quest changed from 'Use Cursed Technique,' and into 'Use Cursed Energy,'.
For the next ten or so minutes, Kage fooled around, crossed legged on the cold winter grass, trying his best to feel for some kind of esoteric energy within himself, his eyes closed and legs crossed. Ironically, none of the meditation esque strategies worked to achieve this goal, and instead it was when he was on the cusp of shouting in frustration when he first successfully accessed his output at will.
Something warm spluttered out from his gut and was shoddily guided into his fists -stopping and starting on it's slow and far from fluid journey. A spark of orange-ish energy fluttered around his fists as he eye's snapped open from their scrunched closed state.
He watched in awe as the energy coiled around his fist, the emotional use of his energy staining it an unstable orange hue (hadn't that happened to Yuji... that was anime only right?) but as he focused on keeping it a consistent middling level, it soon calmed from twin raging bonfires and down into two stable blue flames.
Jarring, it was jarring. At least at first, the sight of blue fire, which were coated in ink like black highlights around the edge, looking exactly like it did in the show but around his hands?
A fly head landed next to him and that jarring feeling gave way to giddy excitement.
Kage raised an open hand over towards the curse, it was barley a foot away from him, and supported it with his other hand coiled around his wrist like he was aiming his palm like weapon. Imaging what Gojo did to that can in season one (as well as the Detention centre Curse) he tried to fling out his Cursed Energy in a ranged attack.
A woosh and a pop, his Cursed Energy lanced out in a wave of blue light, the bolt of eldritch energy crashing through the curse a gouging a small hole out of the dirt behind it.
Now he could work with this, a grin spreading across his lips as he marvelled at the splattered form of the curse -bleeding foul smelling purple blood- turned to dust and floated away.
And like that, Kage gained the greatest fulfilment he'd every felt in his short life. For as long as he explored the depths of Jujutsu, the loneliness he felt deep in his hear born from his unnatural being would be warded off.
So he began to explore, to experiment and to pry into the deepest confines of his Technique and his Cursed Energy. He came to love curses.
Jewel of Plenty . Jewel of Turning Back on the Road . Mirror of the Deep
Two in the Morning, Mid February, 1995. The Back garden of Kage's Home
Months had passed since he'd gained knowledge of his existence within the world of Jujutsu Kaisen -or one which simply operated somewhat similarly to it- and Kage was hitting a brick wall... both literally and figuratively.
In many regards, the boy had made a lot of progress in terms of Jujutsu, using his knowledge from the show to make leaps and bounds others likely wouldn't in his situation. Which was par for the course, he had a wellspring of knowledge describing the highest level of Jujutsu in explicit detail, it'd be a bit embarrassing if he couldn't manage this much.
(Despite the boys own thoughts, it wasn't a forgone conclusion he'd make as much progress as he had. It was a testament to his own talent that he was able to translate the written word of a manga into practitioner Jujutsu as well as he had; talent surpassed only by the likes of Gojo Satoru or Hiromi Higaruma).
The source of his frustration -which was burning bright enough for him to be up at two in the morning, in the freezing air of their back garden in nothing but pyjamas, trying to punch holes through the brick wall of his house- was rather easy to explain.
So far, Kage's pursuit of Jujutsu could best be explained as a game of Locks and keys.
He'd find a problem, shuffle through his memories of the source material, try different solutions like trying different keys at a lock, until one finally worked.
However, his most recent pursuit had been a frustrating chain of failure which had lasted for the better part of two weeks.
When he'd first been starting out, before he had tried to reattempt using his Cursed Technique, Kage had prioritized refining the use of his Cursed Energy. It taken a couple of days, but soon enough he was able to call upon it at will, the reservoir of power flowing through him being channelled through his gut and into active use.
However, predictably, he hadn't perfected the craft -that took years to do apparently- and while he could now call on his energy whenever he wanted, he couldn't control the output of it. Yes, he could coat his hand in Energy at will, however said coating fluctuating from around 5% his max output to 100% based purely on his emotions was far from acceptable.
The solution to this was simple, movie training, just like Yuji had done.
It was simple, if you could keep your chosen level of Energy consistent despite you feeling a range of different emotions, then you have gained control over your output. However, there was an issue in this plan, he needed something to check if he was keeping a consistent output.
So then he had reattempted to activate his technique.
He'd succeeded, his newfound ability to use Cursed Energy actually allowing him to summon Gyokuken, and he'd started to use them as aids as he trained.
(In other words, he'd spend most of his time the week following their return sitting on the coach a channelling a chosen level of CE into a blanket while both the dogs lay spread across his lap -their standing orders being to bite him if he deviated too far from his chosen output
Sol, his name for Gyokuken white -or 'Sun' if you weren't pretentious- was the one who laid with him actually, whenever he summoned Stella, Gyokuken Black -or 'Stars'- it'd indulge mostly in running around the room whilst panting wildly. How it'd manged to get a paw print on the ceiling, he didn't know, but it gave his father a great deal of confusion).
And just like that, after a month or so of training, he was able to control his use and Output of Cursed Energy at will.
It was like this that he'd progressed. Trying to do one avenue of progress, while using others as aids as he did so.
None of this explained why he was punch a wall with his bloodied knuckles however.
Through his little private training arc, Kage had made a ton of progress early doors. He'd succeeded in controlling the activation and Output of his Cursed Energy, gained the ability to activate his CT at will and had began to experiment with his techniques limits.
He'd found that his technique was rather simple in core concepts.
For one, his technique was a three step process. First you choose the Shikigami you want to summon and summon it where it is then created in your realm of shadows. Then open a breach into said shadows for them to leave through and finally, they leave and enter the real world where they can be used by you.
Opening a 'breach' into his shadow was actually only a partial activation of his technique, where he activated his CT without selecting a Shikigami, and as a result only the shadow opens up while nothing else happens.
He'd experimented with the rules of his technique first and foremost, finding how it worked being his upmost priority. Openings into his shadow, for example, could only be opened in shadows in/touching his own shadow and being in a range of around three feet around him.
Additionally, dismissing his Shikigami actually had a time lag -which made sense, if it didn't then Sukuna would have dismissed Mahoraga for it to dodge Gojo's Hollow Nuke- with them disappearing into liquid shadow near instantly when they where next to him and it having upwards of a few second delay when they where further away.
Also, should he loose focus on them -like, for example, going to sleep or getting knocked out- his Shikigami would be dismissed forcibly.
All of these rules where found back to back in less than a week of testing.
Which was why Kage was frustrated with two and a half week long stall in progress, he had found that -with only Gyokuken to play around with- he was no longer able to simply placate himself by trying to test out the rules of his technique and instead tried to create some of the additional applications.
Namely, partial summoning and ability summoning.
The first also being called 'unstable Shikigami' or something like that, where you summon a Shikigami in an incomplete manner, allowing you to summon a multitude of them to do a more AOE attack and have multiple instances -which wouldn't loose you the Shikigami should they die- that, in exchange, couldn't act independently from the user.
The second being much more straight forward, being the ability to summon a Shikigami's abilities without actually summoning the Shikigami. The most obvious examples which come to mind being the times Megumi borrowed rabbit escapes cloning ability in his domain, or Sukuna's piercing water.
Both where very advanced applications of the Ten Shadows, and he'd failed to achieve either.
To be fair, he hadn't really tried the first, considering how little experience he has with the intricacies of Shikigami summoning due to him only having one Shikigami, he had decided to leave it for when he had more experience.
Be that as it may, he did try and achieve ability summoning, and he'd been failing badly.
What he'd been trying to achieve was the recreation of Yuuka Okkotsu's (Yuta's granddaughter in JJK Modulo) 'Savage Jaw Strike,'. It was the ability summoning of Gyokuken, where you make you hands act the claws/jaw of the dogs, which -in practice- made your nails and Cursed energy sharper and more crushing.
Meaning in both slashing and two handed blows are greatly buffed. Essentially allowing you to have you finger nails act as deadly weapons.
Sol, barked over to Stella who had snuck through a cracked wooden board in the wall of the Shed and was now -from what he can tell- was hunting rats. That fucking guy.
No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't draw out the ability of his Shikigami, perhaps because he simply was familiar with the process or the mindset, but nonetheless, the failure was upsetting.
Kage again brought his hands together into the hands sign of his dogs, chanted "Gyokuken," prepared to strike, and unleashed regular punch onto the brick wall.
He felt his fingers crack under the impact.
Again, he made the hand sign, chanted, readied himself and struck.
And again, and again.
This was the one thing he was good at, the one thing he had fun doing, why couldn't he-
Biting his lip, rubbing his eyes, the child again made the hand sign, chanted and struck.
Objectively, the young prodigy's progress was unprecedented. Only the most talented of Sorcerers could progress so quickly, yet none as young as the boy. Only two months since his awakening as a Sorcerer and his Cursed Energy reinforcement equalled that of some Grade-2 Sorcerers. His advancement through his technique was, similarly, absurdly swift.
However, to the boy who only had his family and his new pets alongside his technique, it was not enough; especially considering when he had the progress of the strongest Sorcerers in the modern era pictured clearly in his head to use as his measuring stick. Simply put, the only thing the boy could think to fend off his building isolation was the pursuit of Jujutsu.
His parents growing concern over his lack of connections be damned.
And so, as he failed to make any more progress, the boy decided to go for drastic measures.
Jewel of Plenty . Jewel of Turning Back on the Road . Mirror of the Deep
Midnight, End of February 1995. Kage's Bedroom.
He'd had enough.
Kage was at his wits end. Perhaps he should have focused more on reinforcing his fundamentals before going into more advanced applications of his technique, but no. No he wasn't going to do that. It didn't matter that it might not be the right move, he'd spent so long on it that, at this point, it was much more personal than just what was the smartest move.
There was no world where he'd move on from this before he got savage jaw strike.
However, despite that, his lack of progress was eating away at him. For a while this (loneliness) frustration bubbled under his eyes, but he'd then thought of a way to kill two birds with one stone.
He'd just subjugate one of his Shikigami.
Guaranteed progress alongside the perfect opportunity to learn a new application of his Cursed Technique, what wasn't there to love? Perhaps going into live combat wasn't the smartest idea considering that he was still five and had been a Sorcerer for a shorter time than end of season 1 Yuji, but what could you do?
It was just a frog anyway, the list of Shikigami shown after the Megumi V. Todo fight in the chapter extras showed it numbered at #2, so he was going to get it first. Gamma was pretty small against the inverse guy -only about waist height- and the largest it ever had been was about five foot during the detention centre arc where it was used to retrieve Kugisaki from the curses attacking her... it was easy pickings.
So, when Kage was sure that his parents where asleep, he crawled out his bedrooms window as quietly as he could and into the back garden, ready for a fight.
He'd thought about arming himself, perhaps with a knife from the kitchen or something like that, but that would defeat the entire purpose of the exercise, so he instead entered this combat empty handed.
"Gyokuken," hands clasped together and taking deep breaths, Kage made the hand sign and summoned his two loyal dogs, who flanked him on either side. "Support me," was his short command, and the two dogs hunched into combat readiness, baring their teeth as they to readied themselves.
Before he began, he ventured into the shed -navigating through the near pitch darkness with difficulty- ducking under a broken wooden board of one of the walls to bypass the locked door, to pick up a plastic tarp. Dragging back to the house, he draped it over to his parents window to prevent them from seeing what he was about to do next.
Two flash lights where then laid out on the ground amid the grass, their blades sending long and sharp shadows between the pale white light of their rays. He could see now, at least, there wasn't anymore he could do, so he began.
"With this treasure, I Summon:-" his hands weaving into the face of a Toad, Cursed Energy began to spring off of his form. Kage wouldn't call the feeling of the Cursed Energy weak, instead he'd say it was subtle, subdued even.
The shadows cast by the torch light deepened as liquid shadow began to rise from it. Ignoring gravity, thick droplets fell upwards and into a ball of shade which ebbed and waned like the ocean; soon enough Kage reached the point of no return, and the Subjugation Ritual took full effect, it would not end until he or the Shikigami were dead. "Gamma,".
As he spoke it's name, the floating ball of liquid darkness took shape, becoming a pure black statue of an immense toad which fell to the ground with a wet plop. Once it landed, it's form gained colour, and the six foot tall toad, Gamma, of the Ten Shadows looked down on him.
Pure black eyes, a dark green hide and a tan belly. A black oval sat on it's front, it's inside a bright white with a symbol depicting the 'Mirror of the Deep,' tattooed front and centre.
Did Kage expect the Toad to be six feet tall and about four foot wide? No, did that change anything? Also no.
For a long second silence reigned, Kage glaring at the Shikigami as it loomed over him some dozen feet away, his twin hounds growling as the tension built. It's giant form cast a great shadow on the fence behind it and it's deep black eyes regarded the three of them dispassionately.
Then, rather smugly (how did a toad look smug) it let out a deep ribbit and struck.
It's tongue, thick and rubbery like a bungee cord, snapped to one side of the garden, grabbing a plant pot to Kage's right before thrusting it's whole body in one great motion. The porcelain tub was thrown towards the boy and the pin dropped.
"Shit!" Kage ducked under the plant pot, his two dogs darting out to attack the Shikigami, the boys attention was instead on the pot. It was careening through the air and towards the far side of the garden, a flight that would surely break it, and with it, his fathers hard fought pea shoots.
Cursed Energy reinforced his feet and he leapt to the side after the projectile. His rather advanced level of Cursed Energy reinforcement was only one half of the equation of his base stats, the other being his physical body which was that of a five year old. So while the few strides he took were impressive, kicking up dirt and chunks of grass as he ran, it wasn't fast enough to get to it in time.
But he didn't need to get to it, he just had to get within three feet.
Kage retched his feet from under him and stretched them as far forward as he could mid stride -while the maneuverer would have him flat on his ass when gravity caught up with him- he just needed to get them as close to the landing zone of the plant pot so that it'd be in range of his CT.
And, thankfully enough his mid air acrobatics succeeded, so that just before it landed Kage summoned a breach into his shadow just beneath it, the plant falling into his shadow (and adding weight onto his back) with no issue.
While that was nice and all, Kage's body caught up with its momentum and -with his legs outstretched- he had no footing to recover with and instead rolled across the ground in a painful thud. Thankfully, Cursed Energy reinforcement saved him from anything too serious, but the rough landing did knock the wind out of him.
Darting his head up to look to the other side of the garden, where the Shikigami where busy having a fight to the death.
Kage watched the exchange as he got back to his feet and sprinted back over to them, whenever the Toad shot out it's tongue to try and grab one of them, both dogs would snap their jaws at the ribbon of flesh causing it to flinch back and revaluate.
Instead of binding them, it instead resorted to hit and run tactics. It used it's legs to jump over Stella as it lunged at it and flailed it's tongue like a whip at Sol as it did so, forcing it to keep it's distance.
But just as it hopped over Stella again, Kage joined the fight, his fist coated in a blue inferno of Cursed energy. He cocked back a punch and uncorked it -putting all the momentum behind his dead sprint into the single strike.
A ring of blue energy exploded from the strike, his Cursed Energy -used at it's Maximum Output- enhancing his limb and flowing into Gamma in a haymaker which shook Kage's bones. It skidded back, it's body skipping like a stone and crashing into the house. It's back sending a dull thwack throughout the garden before it fell forwards onto it's stomach amid the flower beds.
Gamma's mouth opened, red blood pouring out like a waterfall, the Shikigami staggering -and failing- to return to it's feet from the strike.
...well he'd expected it to take a couple more hits then that. It didn't bode well for him if one of his support Shikigami was this weak.
Both Sol and Stella where dismissed, Kage letting them fall away by purposefully loosing focus on them. Instead of them, he instead closed his eyes and focused on what he could do to achieve his other goal for this Subjugation.
(And, unknowingly, achieved the second condition to succeed in ability summoning. Using the ability of a Shikigami counted as summoning it, and as a result, the Shikigami cannot be summoned at the same time as their abilities. This was not considered by Kage, who was hamstrung by his knowledge.
Knowing Sukuna could Summon both Mahoraga and the Dharma Chakra wheel, he didn't consider that summoning his Shikigami would disrupt his attempts. As to him, ability summoning and Sukuna using Mahoraga's wheel where one and the same.
However, in years to come, the distinction between the two would become clear to see).
Kage brought his hands together into the hand sign of a dogs head, chanted "Gyokuken: Savage Jaw Strike," and splayed his fingers. His nails extended and the Cursed Energy coiling around his hands roared into the shape of two snarling dogs heads.
Grinning Kage loomed towards the Shikigami, as it tried to get to it's feet and flee. Another success.
Juju-Sanpo: 'Shadow Extension,' and the Toad of the Deep.
(GabFr: Jujutsu Kaisen Parody)
Midnight, 1st March 1995. Birth of a new routine
Unfortunately for Kage, while he'd succeeded with both his goals in the Subjugation ritual, both figuring out ability summoning and gaining his next Shikigami, he wasn't so successful with his efforts to hide the process from his parents.
That's to say that the boy was now grounded and his bedroom window wired shut so it could only open a couple inches.
Was that extreme? He wasn't sure, if his five year old had made that much of a racket at the dead of night and had no excuses for it, he might have had a similar reaction.
Understandable or not, the grounding was unacceptable from the perspective of his continued growth in the realm of Jujutsu -being able to use wide open spaces at night was necessary, as attempting something like Cursed Energy reinforcement in an enclosed space like his bedroom could only go poorly- and so he'd began to make efforts to rectify it.
Standing at the front door to his house, he closed his eyes and focused on combing through his knowledge for something he could use to his advantage...
Opening a breach into his shadow had strict rules, namely that the 'breach' had to start inside somewhere somewhat shaded and that the breach was limited to being within the range of three feet. However, that did beg the question of how bigger Shikigami like Bansho or Mahoraga could exit the Shadow.
Perhaps the range limit could be increased with training? It was an option, but Kage didn't think so.
Thinking back to the Gojo V. Sukuna fight, when Sukuna used a breach to take out Gojo's footing, he did so by summoning Mahoraga underneath him. What that suggested was, when summoning a Shikigami, you could extend the range to fit the Shikigami trying to leave the realm of Shadows.
Over the past week or so, he'd been experimenting with this, using mostly Kaeru -Gamma's name, considering he was both a Frog and a bastard who sorely needed a change in attitude- to figure out what activated this 'extension,' his shadow did to accommodate larger Shikigami leaving storage.
He'd chosen the amphibian to be his guinea pig simply due to one fact, that much like the Divine Dogs sense of smell, Kaeru also had a hidden additional feature to him... that being that it could go for about five minutes without oxygen.
It could hold it's breath, how amazing.
Sarcasm aside, it made sense to him why this Shikigami was attributed the so called 'Mirror of the Deep,' as it's ability to hold it's breath -coupled with it's ability to shoot out it's tongue and drag things in- made it uniquely suited to being summoned and camping inside his shadow.
(Summoning a Shikigami and not letting it exit his shadow was a move he'd figured out ages ago, however with Gyokuken it was untenable, as not only would they weigh him down inside his storage, but they'd also begin to drown. Gamma, however, was surprisingly light for it's size and could -as said before- hold it's breath).
In other words, Kage believed that Gamma's role wasn't direct combat, but instead to be used to either extract his Shikigami from danger using his tongue or to camp inside his shadow and pull people inside to drown to death when they least expected it... pretty surprising how useful that was.
Though he didn't appreciate the added weight he gave him when he had Gamma camp inside storage. He may be light, but that was light for a Six foot magic toad, which was still pretty heavy.
Anyway, long tangent aside, because Kaeru was uniquely suited to being in Shadow storage for long periods of time, he decided to use him for his experiments into Extending the size of the breaches into his Shadow.
What he found was simple. When a Shikigami was inside his Shadow Storage -both when first summoned and when they dove in to hide in their, he'd checked both- he had the option to extend his shadow just wide enough for them to exit from it.
Now, considering the Kaeru was nearly five feet wide and long -and six tall- that was about a three foot expansion from his usual range.
However, the weakness to this was that the extension of his shadow would only occur when something was leaving his shadow. So if he had Gamma pause halfway out to try and keep the six foot long breach open for longer, he'd be forced either back in or back out by his Shadow -depending if it was more in the shadow or more in the open air.
What that meant was that his Shadow could only be extended for as long as it took his Shikigami to quickly get out from his shadows.
Which was good enough for him.
Weaving his hands into the sign and chanting "Gamma," Kage summoned his second Shikigami and directed him to exit his Shadow in front of him.
Kage's shadow extended to accommodate the large Shikigami leaving, and as it did so, it went underneath the door in front of him and outside into the open air. Kage took a deep breath hurriedly, only having a few moments before Kaeru was forced to either quickly get out or get shunted back into his shadow, and ducked into his shadow.
There was no light, no sound and no buoyancy - only ever expansive darkness for as far as the eye could see. His ear rang for a moment before Kage braced his feet against the floor at the edge of the breach like you would the side a swimming pool and pushed off it. He surged forwards, impacting the rubbery back of his Shikigami as it formed from his Shadow and moved upwards to leave.
Success.
Kage had successfully used this convenient little feature of the Ten Shadows to bypass a locked door, extending his shadow under it -entering it on one side of the door and exiting on the other.
Rubbing his eyes, Kage looked this way and that on the front porch of his house, sliding off of the back of his large Shikigami and cracking his back -breathing in a refreshing gulp of fresh air.
Kaeru was looking expectantly at him, but he didn't really have much to do with him... he'd found out all there was to know about the thing. When his family had gone out to a park a few days ago he'd summoned him in a lake and found that it was rather buoyant like in the anime and manga, floating on the surface...
Gamma was good in the water, light enough to stay in his Shadow long term after being summoned and could hold it's breath long enough to do so.
Aside from those utility purposes -and that niche strategy of drowning an opponent, that likely wouldn't even work on curses- all he really had was his rather fast (but physically weak) tongue, being large and somewhat manoeuvrable... he didn't really have much more to test in terms of abilities "Sorry buddy, I'll see you later. I'll get you some herring ok?"
Despite the disappointment clear in the Shikigami's big, round black eyes, he seemed content when offered his favourite snack.
*Whip*
Shooting out his tongue and giving him a light slap over the back of the head -bastard- Kage tumbled a few steps forwards, glared at Kaeru (it smirked -he swore it could do that !- back at him) before he dismissed him.
His six foot form collapsing into liquid shadow, Kage muttered in annoyance and got to his morning stroll.
Time to prepare for his next Subjugation... and maybe figure out if he could make up and ability summoning for Gamma... and also hunt some curses... and practice his CE reinforcement and Savage Jaw Strike.
He had a lot to do, he couldn't wait.