Chapter Text
Narration → Normal text
Speech → "Text"
Noise → *TEXT!*
Emphasis → Text
Thoughts/air quotes → ‘Text.’
Modulated/Inhuman voice → "Text."
Text read → <Text>
Text read out loud → "<Text>"
Spell Cast → Text
Music → -Text-
“Alright, mom. I’m headed off for school!” David Martinez called out, grabbing his bag.
At sixteen, David looked every bit the Arasaka Academy honor student—or at least, he wore the skin of one. His formal black blazer was sharp, accented with red panels and the crimson collar that marked his status. On his left breast, the yellow Arasaka patch—a stylized red tree—glowed under the flickering apartment lights. He ran a hand through his dark brown hair, ensuring the spiky quiff top and the stylized lines of his undercut were still crisp.
“Okay, make sure you don’t get into any trouble,” his mother replied from the couch.
Gloria Martinez looked like a woman who had spent the last twenty-four hours dragging the city's dead back to life. Her yellow EMT jacket was slumped over her shoulders, and her brown eyes, marked with two red squares beneath the right lid, were glazed with pure exhaustion.
To the rest of Night City, she was just an overworked medic. To David, she was being eaten alive.
A small, unnatural shape clung to the crown of her head. It looked like a jellyfish—a translucent yellow bell with two cartoonishly large, bulging eyes. Its short, orange, needle-like tentacles twitched rhythmically, burrowing into her scalp with every pulse.
David watched as a tentacle poked deep into her temple. Gloria didn't see it, but her jaw tightened, and her expression pinched in a sudden, sharp spike of discomfort.
Monsters.
That was the reality David Martinez lived in. While others saw the neon decay of Night City, David saw the world for what it truly was: an infested hive.
When he thought of "monsters," he didn't mean the psychos or the corporate sharks. People were just people—some cruel, some kind, but mostly just predictable. Monsters were something else entirely.
Ever since he was a child, David had watched them. Grotesque, twisted shapes that roamed the cracked streets of Arroyo. They were the shadows that crawled between alleys, the things that lingered where the streetlights flickered, and the voices that whispered where the air felt thick and heavy. Most were content to wander, but the worst of them latched on.
One of those things was feeding on his mother right now.
The strangest part wasn't the monsters themselves, but the silence of everyone else. No one screamed. No one ran. Over the years, David had learned to master the most important skill in Night City: pretending he didn’t see a thing.
But ignoring them didn't stop the damage. The way the jellyfish-thing on his mother’s head pulsed, and the way her face winced in response, told him everything. It wasn't just sitting there; it was a parasite, a physical weight on her soul that manifested as a brutal, unrelenting headache.
If he could have ripped it off her, he would have done it years ago. But he couldn't. To David, the monsters were like ghosts—completely intangible. His hands would pass through their hideously textured skin as if they were made of nothing but smoke.
He could see the horror, but he couldn't touch it.
“No promises,” he said, backing toward the door.
“You'd better promise right now, young man!”
“Sorry, what?” David called back, slipping out the door with a cheeky grin. “Can’t hear you! Too busy not promising!”
Gloria didn’t have the energy to give chase. The willpower to stand up simply wasn't there. Instead, she surrendered to the couch, letting her head sink into the cushions as she slouched. “What am I going to do with that boy?” she sighed to the empty room.
To call Megabuilding H4 a dump was a massive understatement.
The hallway outside his apartment was cluttered. Men were slumped against the grimy walls—three were dead to the world, one sprawled directly on the floor in a chem-induced stupor. Another stood alone, leaning into the shadows and smoking.
David could see the monsters gnawing away at them, invisible to everyone but him. The smoker was the worst off: a hulking, gorilla-shaped creature was wrapped around his torso, its massive, grey hands gripping the man’s ribcage so tight it looked like it was trying to squeeze the breath out of him.
This was life in Arroyo
To distract himself from the personal hells on display in every doorway, David reached for his interface. He needed to drown out the silence. He needed a different frequency. And music played.
-Insert SPECIALZ Jujutsu Kaisen Op 4-
With the music as his shield, David began his descent through the Megabuilding.
He moved through the hall. Every resident he passed was shadowed by something unique and ugly. Some were small, twitchy things that skittered behind heels; others were large, grotesque masses that hung off shoulders like wet cloaks.
A sudden flutter echoed through the concrete corridor. A flock of winged, multi-eyed creatures burst from a nearby ventilation shaft, scattering in a panicked frenzy. They swept toward him, a cloud of filth passing right through his body. David didn’t even flinch. One of the things dived straight through his chest, leaving nothing but a faint, oily chill that vanished in a second.
He was used to the cold.
When he reached the staircase, he found it predictably choked with overflowing trash bags and discarded industrial scrap. Without missing a beat, David hopped over the railing. He plummeted several feet, landing with a practiced thud on an even larger pile of refuse below.
He and his mother lived in Arroyo, a district built on the bones of half-finished dreams and corporate leftovers. The skyline was a jagged mess of rusted cranes, skeletal remains of unfinished skyscrapers, and derelict robot factories. The air here was a thick cocktail of oil and ozone, a constant reminder of the Petrochem power plants and logistics hubs that hummed nearby.
In Arroyo, every project that failed became a tombstone of concrete and rebar. The projects that survived, like the Arasaka manufacturing plants, were guarded by private armies with orders to shoot on sight. And if the Corpos didn’t get you, 6th Street would. The gang ran the district from scrapyards and abandoned warehouses, ruling over the desperate and the forgotten using patriotism as an excuse.
David stepped out of the Megabuilding’s shadow, the sun striking him like a physical blow. He squinted against the harsh glare, his eyes adjusting to the heat haze rising from the asphalt.
Suddenly, a massive shadow swept over him, offering a brief, cool reprieve.
David looked up.
High above, a colossal creature drifted lazily through the smog-choked sky. It circled with the patient hunger of a vulture, its wide, tattered wings blotting out the sun as it soared.
David stared at the monster for a long moment, then let out a heavy sigh. He looked back down at the cracked sidewalk and kept moving. There wasn't anything he could do about a giant, fuck-you-monster anyway.
So, he kept walking.
He broke into a light jog as he hit the crosswalk. Not because he was late, but because a few yards away, some poor gonk with a budget cyber-arm was being held at gunpoint by a shotgun-wielding psycho. It was just another Tuesday in Arroyo, but it was definitely time to delta out of dodge.
David squinted at the shooter as he passed, trying to make sense of the mess. The psycho had greasy, curly hair tied into a chaotic bun, a green tank top that stopped well north of their navel, and a sun-bleached tennis visor that had seen better decades. David genuinely couldn’t tell if he was looking at a man or a particularly hideous woman, but he wasn’t about to stick around to verify.
A few meters down, a group of kids sat on the curb and played. David offered them a quick, practiced greeting, but his stomach did a slow roll.
Unbeknownst to the children, long, centipede-like beings were draped across their small faces. The creatures’ many legs twitched, skittering over the kids’ cheeks and even treading directly over their open, unblinking eyes. David forced his expression to remain neutral, masking his revulsion. He didn't want to hurt their feelings or make them wonder why he was staring with such a reaction.
Further down the block, a few degenerates were slumped or twitching along the low walls, their Mr. Studds hooked up to portable toys the size of Slurpee cups. Their eyes were rolled back, lost in a braindance while the machines did their work.
The people walking by didn’t even look. They didn't acknowledge the shooter, the kids, or the freaks. In Night City, if it wasn't currently killing you, it wasn't your problem. David was no different. He kept his head down and his music up.
Eventually, David reached the NCART service point.
The Night City Area Rapid Transit was a behemoth of a system, a web of public transportation run by Night Corp that supposedly connected every district worth visiting. There were always rumors of expansions "in progress," but in a city built on broken promises, no one actually expected a new line to open.
Every station had its own distinct brand of misery. This one reeked of stale, cheap noodles and the flat, metallic tang of recycled air. They say you don’t truly know Night City until you’ve survived the NCART, though they usually forget to mention the ghouls, mercs, and scavs who treated the transit tunnels like their own private hunting grounds.
High on a walkway above, a woman leaned over the railing and heaved. Her back was dominated by a grotesque parasite, a cross between a bloated frog and a thick, pale snake that had coiled itself around her spine. Its throat sac expanded and contracted in sync with her retching.
The vomit splattered onto a vending machine on the lower level, a thick, sour ooze that dripped down the plastic casing before splashing onto the shoes of an unlucky man just trying to buy a snack.
The man let out a howl of disgust, but the woman just staggered away, wiped her mouth, and kept moving. She was oblivious to the man, the mess, and the coiled creature digging its claws into her vertebrae.
David boarded the train. As the cart hissed and began speeding through the city, he leaned his head against the scratched window, staring out at the urban hellhole he called home.
He never saw the city's outer beauty that everyone else saw.
The city was a Pandora’s box. Its allure was strong. Fueled by greed, pride, and the image of greatness. But David didn’t have to open the box to see its horrors.
All he ever saw was horror.
Half the city was populated by horror.
It was better this way. Better to stay silent and be thought of as just another brooding teen than to be locked in a psych ward for preaching about invisible, untouchable monsters only he could see. David had tried to find answers once. He’d scoured the deep-net forums, digging through occult sub-levels and "schizo-post" threads, but all he found was fictional bullshit. It was all armchair experts and communities of nerds arguing over folklore that didn’t match the cold reality he saw every day.
The piercing wail of sirens suddenly cut through his music.
David pressed his face to the glass as two Trauma Team aerodynes, heavy urban assault vehicles, screamed past the transit cart. Their turbines kicking up a storm of grit as they raced toward the skyline.
Raising his head, David followed their path. A few blocks over, a luxury high-rise was hemorrhaging black smoke, the upper floors choked in a blooming orange fire. An explosion. In Night City, that was practically a weather report. Probably a corporate hit or a lab leak. Nothing new.
“I wonder what the requirements for joining Trauma Team are,” he mused to himself, watching the AVs disappear. “Maybe I can make it to the top of Arasaka Tower by hoping some poor gonk with a plan gets near-zeroed up there.”
The joke died in his throat.
Before he could finish the thought, his eyes nearly bulged from their sockets. He wrenched his neck to the west, every instinct screaming that something was wrong.
Not just "wrong." Overwhelming.
It was as if he were suddenly sensing every monster in the city at once, all of them compressed at a single coordinate. The presence was suffocating; imaginary fingers seemed to tighten around his windpipe, and a wave of raw, unfiltered negativity washed over him like a tsunami.
“Wh-what the fuck?!” David stammered. He slammed his back against the metal wall, recoiling from the direction of that birthed darkness.
‘This shouldn’t be possible,’ he thought, his chest heaving. ‘With that much power, the thing should be Kaiju-sized. So where is it? If it’s this powerful, what’s going to happen to the city?!’
The cart hissed as it reached its stop. David didn’t wait for the doors to fully retract; he shoved through the crowd, desperate to get into the open air.
“Hey!”
“Watch it, kid!”
“Yo, what the hell is your problem?”
David ignored the shouts, his eyes darting frantically across the street. He froze. Dozens…no…hundreds of monsters were surging past. They were running, flying, and leaping through the air, all drawn toward the source of the pulse like iron filings to a magnet. In all his years, he had never seen them act with such singular, terrifying purpose.
‘Where are they all going?’
Suddenly, a lizard-like monster the size of a luxury sedan barreled toward him, charging like a bull seeing red. It wasn't even hunting him; he was just in the way of its destination. Its speed was impossible—caught off guard, David braced his legs to bolt, but the creature was already on him. Its jagged claws were inches from his chest.
David would usually just ignore such a creature bolting at him, but in a state of panic, he forgot that that these creatures were literally untouchable to him.
He squeezed his eyes shut, his entire body tensing for the impact that would surely tear him in half.
But it never came.
Instead, there was only a soft, wet *thud-thud-thud*.
Opening his eyes, he saw the monster frozen mid-air. A split second later, it erupted in a spray of purple blood as its body fell apart in perfectly sliced cubes. All around him, the other monsters suffered the same fate, turning the street into a butcher shop of geometric remains.
“Holy shit…” he muttered.
The cubes began to steam, dissolving into a foul-smelling mist before they even stopped rolling.
David looked around, his breath hitching. It wasn't just the lizard. Every monster on the street, in the sky, and every parasite clinging to the panicked pedestrians had been processed into the same purple confetti.
The monsters. They were dead.
For sixteen years, David had lived with the belief that these things were eternal, untouchable ghosts. But something had just proven they could be killed.
Then, the realization hit him like a physical blow. The tsunami of darkness, the epicenter of that terrifying pulse... it hadn't just come from the west. It had come from the heart of Arroyo. It had come from the direction of his home.
The image of the yellow-belled jellyfish burrowing into his mother’s scalp flashed in his mind. If that pulse was a weapon, and if his mother was in the middle of it...
“Oh shit,” David breathed, his face going pale. “Mom!”
Yuji Itadori had lived an "interesting" life—though that was putting it lightly.
Once a seemingly average kid with superhuman strength, he’d been dragged into the hidden world of Jujutsu Sorcery after swallowing his sort-of uncle’s mummified finger to save a stranger. Now, fifty-seven years later, he was an unaging sorcerer wandering the globe. After decades of exorcising Curse after Curse, the spark had faded into a dull, repetitive ache.
‘Is this what Sukuna felt all that time?’ Yuji wondered. ‘No wonder he turned into such a prick. There’s literally nothing new under the sun.’
At seventy-five years old, trapped in a twenty-five-year-old’s body, Yuji sat on a cramped bus bound for Night City. He wore a red nylon jacket with the hood pulled low, shielding his scarred face from the other passengers.
He leaned his head against the vibrating glass of the window, staring out at the wasteland.
‘Apparently, Night City has been short on Sorcerers for a while,’ he mused. ‘I can sense the Cursed Energy from here. It’s thick. Might even be a few Special Grades rotting in the center of all that.’
A few moments later, the skyscrapers and Megabuildings of the City of Dreams finally pierced the horizon.
Even from this distance, Yuji could see massive Curses soaring above the skyline like flies over a carcass. And the city stank like one, too.
‘Jesus,’ Yuji gasped internally. ‘I can see them from all the way out here. They’re swarming the place like moths to a neon light bulb.’
The bus approached the outskirts at a moderate pace, but to the former vessel of Sukuna, every second felt like a lifetime. The wait was agonizing.
“Uuuggghh…” Yuji groaned loudly. He didn't care who heard him, but in a place like this, no one even bothered to look in his direction. Seconds felt like minutes; minutes felt like hours—and hours felt like a never-ending high school lecture.
*DING!*
The bus chime finally rang as it pulled into a terminal.
"We have arrived at: Night City, Santo Domingo, Arroyo."
“Finally!” Yuji nearly yelled in relief.
He moved with a blur of speed, faster than any of the other passengers could even process. In the blink of an eye, Yuji was standing on the pavement outside the bus. He threw his arms up and stretched, his sling bag shifting on his shoulder as he worked the stiffness out of his joints and got his blood flowing again.
“Alright! First order of business, find a way to reduce the amount of Curses…in broad daylight…in a very populated city…”
Maybe he should have called the mayor or something and had the city evacuated. Whelp, he already arrived, and who knows how long an evacuation would take.
Gathering Cursed Energy, he bolted. He moved at a speed far beyond human limits; to any bystander, he was nothing more than a sudden, violent gust of wind, but in reality, he was a blur of God-like athleticism.
He scaled the side of the nearest Megabuilding, his boots barely touching the concrete as he reached the roof virtually unnoticed. Standing atop the massive residential spire, he closed his eyes.
It was time to flare.
He reached deep into his gut, pulling on every painful memory, every agonizing loss, and every life stolen during his youth. He called upon the faces of the fallen: Junpei, Nanami, the thousands in Shibuya, his brother, his teacher—even the shadow of Sukuna himself.
He compressed every drop of that raw, negative emotion and forced it outward, concentrating the output into a singular, piercing beacon.
The beacon became an irresistible siren song that would draw every Curse from the slums of Pacifica to the jagged edge of the Badlands.
Hundreds—if not thousands—of Cursed Spirits emerged. Those hiding underground burst through the pavement. Those tethered to specific humans detached themselves to join the surge. And the ones high above plummeted toward him like suicide bombers.
By acting as a lightning rod for every Cursed Spirit in Night City, Yuji ensured that none could remain hidden in the city's dark, unreachable corners. For his next move to work, he had to be the absolute center of their universe. Since Curses are slaves to high concentrations of negativity and Cursed Energy, obtaining their attention was effortless for the veteran.
*SKREE!*
*RAGH!*
*GRRRR!*
The cacophony of the damned rose as hordes of them clawed up the side of the Megabuilding. Squinting, Yuji saw the lead pack—monstrous, bird-like Curses—diving toward him at breakneck speeds.
They were his signal. It was time for part two.
He brought his hands together, fingers locking into the Dharmachakra sign.
“Touch the invisible.” To focus on what is unseen by the ignorant.
“Neglect the physical.” To ignore the world of steel and flesh.
“Destroy the spiritual.” To kill Cursed Spirits.
The air around the rooftop vibrated.
“Dismantle: Slash That Cuts The Cursed.”
He flung his arms outward, unleashing a radial wave of invisible force in every direction. The technique’s reach was staggering, surging toward the far edges of Night City and towering higher than the peak of Arasaka Tower.
Every Curse within the massive radius was instantly diced into small, uniform cubes.
The Curses climbing up the building became showers of purple blood.
Using a refinement of the logic behind Sukuna’s Slash That Cuts The World, Yuji had created an evolved Dismantle that perceived only Cursed Spirits.
Because of that, a binding vow was made. In exchange for losing the ability to harm a single brick of a building or a single strand of human hair, the technique gained the power to thoroughly exorcise almost any Curse caught in its attack, even the most resilient Special Grades, in a single stroke.
It’s a move he knew he couldn’t pull out just randomly, for it cost a notable amount of curse energy, more so than a Domain Expansion.
“There. That was easier than expected.” Yuji clapped his hands together, as if dusting off filth from his palms. “Now, I wonder if there are any good places to eat in this Mega.”
“...This is the worst living condition I have ever seen,” Yuji muttered, his voice flat with disbelief.
He had expected the Megabuilding to live up to its name as something grand, or at least functional. Instead, H4 was a monument to failure. There was no good place to eat. There were no good places to rest. In fact, there didn't seem to be a single good square inch within the entire structure.
It was just filled with poverty: poor hygiene, poor lighting, and a pitifully low standard of human dignity. Everyone here looked broke, both in money and spirits
Yuji stood in the middle of the hallway, feeling a familiar, heavy guilt churning in his gut. He pushed it down. He’d spent decades traveling the globe, but this was his first time in Night City. Every country he’d visited had its scars, but he had never stepped into a place so spiritually toxic that he felt forced to exorcise the entire city the moment he arrived.
The former vessel of Sukuna knew his Slash That Cuts The Cursed was only a temporary fix. Night City didn't just have Curses; it was a factory for them. With the sheer volume of malice and despair the city bled every second, he knew the spirits he’d just erased would be replaced in a matter of days.
He glanced at the mountains of refuse piling up in the corners. The sheer amount of garbage in this building alone could be compared to Yuta’s Cursed Energy reserves—limitless and overflowing.
The "food" being sold at the nearby kiosks looked arguably worse than the trash. Yuji wouldn't have been surprised if the surrounding waste was the secret ingredient.
“Holy shit,” Yuji cursed under his breath. “I’ve heard stories, but I didn’t think it would be this bad. America’s in worse shape than I thought after the Unification War.”
The Unification War, or Metal Wars, as some called it, had left the continent hollow. The conflict between the NUSA and the Free States—backed by the corporate giants Militech and Arasaka—had technically ended in 2070, but the "peace" was a thin veil. Night City had stayed independent, but it had paid for that freedom with its soul. Both megacorps had lost billions, and it was clear who was footing the bill to earn that money back.
“Seems like they had to make a lot of cutbacks to recoup those losses,” Yuji remarked.
Right as the words left his mouth, a man nearby doubled over and vomited. The sour mess hit the floor inches from Yuji’s boots. He didn't even flinch; he just stared at the puddle with a tired, pitying expression.
“Yeah. A lot of cutbacks.”
*Thud! Thud! Thud!*
“Mom!”
The desperate shout cut through the low hum of the Megabuilding, followed by the frantic, heavy rhythm of boots hitting grime-slicked concrete.
Yuji turned toward the noise. Bursting through the halls was a teenage boy, his Arasaka Academy uniform rumpled and his dark brown quiff messy from a dead sprint. The kid’s eyes were wide, darting around with a raw, jagged fear that Yuji recognized all too well.
But it wasn't the boy’s panic that caught the veteran’s attention. It was his signature.
Yuji’s eyes narrowed under his hood. Even from a distance, he could sense the energy radiating off the boy. A dense, unrefined aura of Cursed Energy that far exceeded that of a normal civilian.
‘Huh,’ Yuji thought, his brow furrowing. ‘That’s more than just a high ceiling. This kid has the talent to be a one strong sorcerer.’
It was strange. Usually, sorcerers not born into a clan were scouted and brought into the Jujutsu Society long before their 15th birthday. Finding a sorcerer with this much potential in a place like Night City was a statistical anomaly. Then again, the world wasn't what it used to be. Ever since the many wars the world suffered in the past century, the barrier between the mundane and the spiritual had become paper-thin, and the birthrate of non-clan sorcerers had spiked alongside the world's rising misery.
‘Hold on,’ the veteran sorcerer corrected himself. ‘That’s right. Officially, Jujutsu agents are prohibited from even entering Night City.’
The ban stemmed from an incident decades ago involving a Special Grade Cursed Object, an event that had soured relations between the Jujutsu authorities and the Megacorps who truly owned the city. The only reason Yuji was walking these grimy halls was that he held a Special Grade ranking that allowed him to operate off the grid.
The boy’s eyes suddenly locked onto him.
“Get the fuck out of my way!” The kid barked, his voice cracking with urgency.
Yuji didn't take offense. He simply stepped aside, letting the teenager barrel past him.
‘Geez, how many potential sorcerers are in this city?’ Yuji wondered. ‘And just how strong are they?’
In the world of Jujutsu, nature demanded an equilibrium. When Satoru Gojo was born, the sheer power he brought into the world forced Curses to evolve and grow stronger just to maintain the balance. Night City was the inverse, a place so saturated with filth and malice that the world should have birthed a legion of powerful sorcerers to act as an equalizer.
The eternally young sorcerer remained entirely off the grid. It had been years since he’d made formal contact with the Jujutsu high command. In his self-imposed exile, the non-urgent news of the Society rarely reached him. To the world, Yuji Itadori was a ghost.
‘I should probably get in touch with Megumi and the others soon,’ he thought, a flicker of melancholy crossing his face. ‘I have not been caught up.’
“Mom!”
David hit the door at a dead sprint as he burst inside. His chest heaved, lungs burning from the dash through Arroyo, his mind already racing through a dozen different nightmare scenarios.
But the scene waiting for him was one he never expected.
Gloria was still on the couch, but the tension had vanished from her shoulders. She was sleeping deeply, a faint, genuine smile playing on her lips.
David froze, his eyes scanning her face with frantic intensity.
The jellyfish. It was gone.
The creature had been there for as long as he could remember. He had watched it poke and prod at her for years, adding a layer of agony to her already grueling double shifts. He had hated that thing with every fiber of his being, yet he had been powerless to even touch its bell.
To see it gone was surreal. It was as if a stain had been scrubbed off his and his mother’s lives.
The air in the room felt lighter, the pressure he usually associated with home replaced by calm. A wave of relief, so strong it made his knees weak, crashed over him.
The corners of his lips twitched upward. For the first time in sixteen years, his mother looked like she was actually resting.
*Knock! Knock! Knock!*
The sound was sharp, cutting through the newfound quiet of the apartment. David flinched. Usually, a knock at this hour meant a debt collector or a landlord looking for eddies they didn't have. He glanced at his mother; she hadn't stirred. She looked so light without that yellow bell anchoring her to the couch.
He walked to the door, his palms feeling a bit damp.
He opened the door.
It was the man from the hallway. Up close, the hoodie was worn and covered his eyes, and the fabric frayed at the cuffs. He didn't look like a scavenger or a psycho. His face was hidden by his hood, but his mouth was partially seen.
David swallowed hard. In Night City, telling a stranger to "get the fuck out of the way" was a gamble with your life, and looking at this man, David realized he had just bet his entire hand on a losing pair.
“Uuuuhh…” David started, his voice cracking slightly. “I’m sorry for telling you get the fuck out of the way?”
He stood there. He looked exactly what he was: a sixteen-year-old kid in an expensive school blazer, standing in a cheap apartment, trying to figure out if he was about to get zeroed by a man who looked intimidating as hell.
“You see them, don’t you?”
The man’s voice was surprisingly calm. David blinked.
“Huh? I... I don’t know what you’re talking about,” David stammered, his eyes darting to the hallway. He tried to summon his best 'innocent student' face, but it felt like paper against the man's heavy gaze.
“The creatures,” the man clarified. He didn't move, yet he seemed to take up the entire doorway.
David’s heart skipped. He felt a cold sweat prickle his neck. “I... look, choom. Whatever scam you’re pulling here, it ain't working. I don’t have a single eddie for you, so move along.”
“You sensed it earlier,” the man continued, ignoring the dismissal.
“What the fuck are you even talking about?”
“The wave. The negativity. You felt it. That’s why you ran all the way here just ten minutes after I exorcised the Curses.”
David froze. The breath hitched in his throat. He took a sharp step back, his eyes wide with a mixture of awe and genuine terror. ‘He called them Curses... and he said he exorcised them?’
“...That was you?” David whispered.
He glanced back over his shoulder at his mother. She was still smiling in her sleep. He couldn't risk bringing this chaos inside. Stepping out into the hallway, he closed the door shut behind him with a soft *clang*, putting his back to the metal as if he could shield her with his own body.
“Okay,” David said, his voice dropping to a low, jagged hiss. “What the fuck are you? And what the hell did you do to the monsters?”
“First off, what school do you go to?” the man asked, his tone surprisingly casual, as if they were just two neighbors chatting about the weather.
“Umm, Arasaka Academy?” David answered, his brow furrowing.
“And that is… where exactly?”
David gave him a look of pure confusion. To live in Night City and not know where the Tower was... it was like living in the ocean and not knowing where the water was. “At Arasaka Tower. Corporate Plaza. Why?”
“Shouldn’t you be in class or something?”
“Yeah, well, after that thing you did, I got worried and had to check on my mom,” David said, his eyes flicking to his internal HUD. The neon numbers bled into his vision; he was cutting it dangerously close. “And right now, I’ve got maybe five minutes before the first bell and—”
Before he could finish the sentence, the man’s hand shot out. He grabbed David by the back of his blazer collar, lifting him nearly off his heels.
David gasped, ready to thrash, but a strange, electric sensation suddenly surged from the man’s grip. It flooded David’s nervous system, warming his skin and settling deep into his bones. It was a bizarre and heavy feeling, yet stabilizing. For a fleeting second, he felt like he could walk through a hail of bullets and come out without a scratch.
“Hold on tight,” the man said.
“Wait, you’re the one holding meEEEEEEEE-”
The rest of the sentence was ripped out of David’s mouth and scattered into the wind as he stood on the rooftop of Megabuilding H4.
Suddenly, the world didn't exist anymore, only a deafening roar of air and a kaleidoscopic smear of neon. They were moving at a velocity that defied every law of physics David knew, a speed comparable to a bullet train hitting top gear.
To any bystanders on the street, they weren't even people anymore. They were a momentary glitch in the light, a blur of red and black that moved so fast the kiroshi registered it as a flicker in the frame.
‘Don’t vomit! Don’t vomit! Don’t vomit!’ David screamed internally, his eyes squeezed shut as the G-force tried to flatten his face.
It felt like being strapped to the outside of a rocket. It was an extreme amusement park ride, the kind he’d only ever seen in vids, but with none of the safety protocols. Every time the man’s feet hit a rooftop or a ledge, the impact felt like a controlled explosion, yet that bulletproof warmth Yuji had injected into his collar kept David’s neck from snapping like a dry twig.
High above the slums of Arroyo, they soared over the city, the massive gap between the districts closing in a matter of seconds.
David squeezed his eyes shut, his stomach doing somersaults as his inner ear tried to make sense of the impossible momentum.
Three seconds.
That was all it took. Three seconds of agonizing, high-speed stillness before the roar of the wind vanished, replaced by the hushed, expensive hum of Corporate Plaza.
David opened his eyes. He wasn't in the grimy halls of Megabuilding H4 anymore. He was standing directly in front of the monolithic shadow of Arasaka Tower. The air here was filtered, chilled, and smelled of nothing at all.
“B-but... how?” David stuttered. He looked at his feet, then back toward the horizon where Arroyo was. His brain simply couldn't bridge the gap between there and here.
“Get going, kid,” The hooded man said, his voice returning to that deadpan, casual tone. “We’ll talk later.”
The man began to saunter away, his hands stuffed back into the pockets of his frayed hoodie.
“Wait!” David called out, stepping forward. He didn't care about the confused stares from the high-status students nearby. “How did you do that? How do you know about the monsters? How did you send that wave earlier? How did you kill them?!”
The rapid-fire questions hung in the air. The man stopped and turned, a slight smirk playing on his lips.
“We’ll talk after school,” Yuji replied. “I’ll be right here.”
“But—”
“Kid,” The stranger interrupted, his expression softening just enough to show he wasn't being cruel. “This looks like a Corpo school, and I know you’re poorer than dirt. Your mom probably worked her ass off to get you through those gates. Don't waste her time. Go.”
…David conceded. But only because he wanted to, not because of the stranger that may or may not hit where it hurt.
Yuji remained where he was. Hours bled into one another as he watched the sun track across the surfaces of the Corporate Plaza.
‘Arasaka, huh?’ he mused. ‘Japan’s worst representatives.’
Arasaka was a global titan, a megacorporation with few rivals and even fewer morals. It was led by people who were, in Yuji’s estimation, simply rotten to the core. At the top sat Saburo Arasaka, the Emperor. The man was a visionary, a genius, a demon, and a god all at once. To a sorcerer like Yuji, Saburo was a Curse in everything but flesh.
It would be easy for Yuji to tear the tower down, but he wasn't a child anymore. He knew the cost of power vacuums. The sudden collapse of Arasaka wouldn't bring peace; it would trigger a 5th Corporate War. The concept turned Yuji’s stomach. Wars are fought not for a country or a cause, but for quarterly profits and market shares.
To the world, money made the gears turn. To Yuji, money was just the grease that made the world more cursed.
Every battlefield of the Corporate Wars had birthed nightmares. In the shadows of those conflicts, Curses fought their own unofficial wars, slaughtering both sides with equal indifference. After the Shibuya Incident, the leaders of the Jujutsu Society had realized a terrifying truth: if the world knew about Sorcery, the next war wouldn't be about shipping lanes. It would be about who had the right to harvest Sorcerers and weaponize Cursed Energy.
In 2020, they had acted. Using the massive reservoir of Cursed Energy left over from the Culling Games, originally intended to merge Tengen with Japan, the Higher-Ups of that time had pivoted. They utilized the technique of a Special Grade sorcerer capable of global memory manipulation. They wiped the slate clean. Shibuya, the Culling Games, Shinjuku, and the very existence of Curses were erased from every human mind and digital databank on Earth.
Yuji didn't know what had happened to that Special Grade. Rumor was the strain of it all had left them brain-dead.
The loud, synthesized chime of the school bell shattered his focus. Students began pouring out of the Academy, a sea of pristine uniforms and arrogant strides. A group of girls passed Yuji, throwing suspicious, judgmental side-eyes his way.
“Who’s that guy?” one whispered loudly.
“I don’t know, but he’s been standing there since this morning,” another replied.
“Man, what a creep.”
Yuji ignored the comments. They were hurtful, but he had to admit they were fair. He did look like a loiterer.
Then he spotted him. The kid walked out of the tower, his expression bored and his head hanging low. He looked like he was in a trance, staring at the pavement as he walked right past the man who brought him here.
‘This kid is just plain rude!’
Yuji reached out and snagged the back of the boy’s collar again. He didn't drag him this time; he just anchored him in place.
The kid blinked, coming out of his daze. He looked back and saw the man in the red hoodie.
“Oh,” The boy said flatly. “It’s you.”
‘...That’s it?!’ Yuji whined internally. He let out an audible huff of frustration. “At least have the decency to say hello! I’ve been standing in this spot for hours, brat!”
“Sorry,” the kid sighed, rubbing his temples. “There was a pop quiz in my last period and I’m a bit fried.”
“Ah. No, I get it,” Yuji said, his annoyance vanishing instantly. He felt a genuine pang of sympathy. He’d lived through the some crazy shit, but he still remembered the sheer, soul-crushing dread of an unannounced math test in middle school. Some horrors were universal.
“Hey,” the kid said, looking up as they began to navigate the sea of suits. “I never actually got your name.”
Yuji blinked. That was right, they’d traveled at Mach speed without so much as a formal greeting.
“I’m Yuji. Yuji Itadori.”
“David Martinez.”
‘David.’ Yuji tested the name in his head. Even after all his years traveling the globe, English phonetics still felt a bit clumsy on his tongue. He was fluent, but his accent tended to slip through when he wasn't focusing.
“Alright. Wanna walk back to your Mega, David?” Yuji asked, trying to keep the pronunciation smooth.
“Sure,” David replied. He adjusted his blazer, looking at the man in the red hoodie. “As long as we’re actually walking this time. My stomach can’t handle another commute like that last one.”
Yuji let out a short, bark-like laugh. “Deal. No shortcuts. We walk.”
They moved through the crowded streets at a human pace, much to David’s relief. The neon signs were starting to flicker to life as the afternoon sun dipped behind the skyscrapers, casting long, distorted shadows across the pavement.
“So... the monsters?” David started, keeping his voice low.
“Curses. They’re called Curses, kid,” Yuji corrected. He walked with a relaxed, heavy-footed gait, his eyes constantly scanning the alleyways.
“Where do they even come from? Are they aliens? Some kind of rogue AI projections?”
“Nothing high-tech,” Yuji said with a grim smile. “They come from people. They’re born from every bad thing people ever felt.”
“I don’t get it.”
“To put it simply, humans leak energy. Not the kind that powers your cyberware, but a raw, invisible energy made of negative emotions like fear, anger, grief, and self-loathing. We call it Cursed Energy. When enough of that filth pools together in one spot, it takes shape. It gains a will. That’s how a Curse is born.”
David went quiet, absorbing the weight of that. He thought about Arroyo—the desperation, the hunger, the rage of people living on the edge. It was a wonder the district wasn't just one giant monster.
“Negative emotions?” David whispered. “So all those things I’ve seen... the centipedes on the kids, the jellyfish on my mom...”
“Yep. You’ve been seeing them for most of your life. That’s not normal, David. Most people can’t see Curses because they leak too much Cursed Energy. They can’t see the Curses even when the things are chewing on their necks.”
“So can normal people see them?”
“Only in life-or-death situations,” Yuji explained. “When the fear gets so high it forces their brain to tune into the right frequency. But even then, in a city like this, they usually just dismiss it. They think their Kiroshis are glitching or they’re having a bad reaction to some street-tier stims.”
“Not gonna lie,” David admitted, kicking a loose pebble. “The glitch excuse crossed my mind more than once. It’s easier than believing in ghosts.”
“I honestly can’t blame you,” Yuji said, stepping over a puddle of neon-tinted oil.
“So, how come you and I can see them?” David asked, his pace quickening to keep up with Yuji’s long strides. “What makes us different from the guys in the suits?”
“Because, kid, we’re special.”
“Special how? Some kind of genetic mutation??”
“Kind of. Special, as in we don’t 'leak' Cursed Energy,” Yuji replied.
David stopped walking for a second, a confused scowl on his face. “We don’t? I thought you said everyone leaks that stuff. How are we the exception?”
“Because we have way too much of it,” Yuji explained. He kept walking, his hands deep in his pockets, sounding completely unhelpful to the teenager’s ears.
“...Mind elaborating on that?” David called out, jogging to catch up. “Because too much of it sounds like we should be leaking even more.”
“Okay, think of it like this,” Yuji said, slowing down and gesturing with his hands to create a visual. “Normal people have such a small amount of Cursed Energy that it doesn't have any 'tension.' It just slips through their pores and drifts away, like steam from a pot with a strainer as a lid. That steam is what pools together to make Curses.”
He turned to David, his expression more serious. “But you and me? We’re like high-pressure tanks. We have so much energy that it stays contained, circulating inside us. We don't leak it, because we control it. And because we have that energy inside us, our eyes can perceive the energy outside us.”
“You said control,” David pointed out, his mind already trying to find the logic. “Is that how you created the wave from earlier?”
Yuji tilted his head, a playful smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Which one? The ‘I feel like I’m going to die’ wave, or the ‘Holy shit, who sashimi-ed these freaks’ wave?”
David winced at the memory of the cold, crushing pressure that had dropped him to his knees on the train. “The former. But I’m definitely asking about the latter later.”
“Oh,” Yuji chuckled, looking up at the smog-choked sky. “Why, yes. That was me.”
“You did that just by... controlling your energy?” David asked, his voice low with disbelief.
“Kind of. What I did was increase my output with so much negative emotion that I basically turned myself into a beacon for Curses. Curses are attracted to Cursed Energy and anything that leaks it.”
David decided to ask the million-eddie question.
“What are we?”
“We, David, are Sorcerers.”
David stared at him for a long, silent beat. Then, he deadpanned. “...You’re kidding. That’s actually what we’re called?”
“What’s the matter with it?” Yuji asked, sounding slightly offended.
“That’s totally lame!”
“What?!”
“I expected something cooler! I don’t know... ‘Curse Controllers’ or ‘Haunt Hunters.’ Anything but Sorcerers!”
“I admit, those sound awesome,” Yuji grunted, “but we’re Sorcerers. Deal with it.”
“Oh, great. Is there a guy who summons bunnies out of a hat? Maybe a flower that spits water?” David sarcastically asked.
“Actually, I know a guy who can summon bunnies from shadows. And the thing that spits water? That’s a giant elephant!”
“There’s a fucking elephant?!” David’s eyes nearly bulged out of his head.
“Sorcery gets weird, alright!” Yuji shot back.
“How weird?”
“I once fought a guy who could turn his hair into helicopter blades.”
David paused, processing that. “...That sounds super lame.”
“Look, Cursed Techniques are a gamble. You’re either born with one or you aren’t. And kid? You probably aren't.”
“Wha—Why?!” David felt a sudden, sharp sting of rejection.
“Techniques usually manifest around age four or five. The fact that you haven’t done anything amazing by now means you don't have a technique. You’ve just got your Cursed Energy reserves—which are pretty massive, not gonna lie.”
“Maybe I just haven’t learned it yet?” David asked, a hint of desperation creeping into his voice. In a city where everyone was looking for an edge, he didn't want to be the only one without a special move.
“It’s instinctual, David. If you had a technique, you’d know how to use it by now.”
“Fuck! Then what the hell can I do?!”
Yuji’s smirk returned, sharper this time. “Wanna find out?”
“Of course!” David nodded fiercely. “All this time, I thought I was alone. I thought I was losing my mind seeing these things. If there’s a way to actually fight back... of course I want to know.”
“Good man. What day is it?”
“Friday. Why?”
“Because tomorrow morning, we start your training.”
“My training?” David blinked. “Hold on, I never agreed to that! You didn't even ask if I wanted to be a student.”
“Do I need to?”
“Yes! If that’s how enrollments work, the education system is more fucked up than I realized!”
“It’s always been fucked up!”
“Not the point!”
“For god’s sake,” Yuji muttered, rolling his eyes. He straightened his posture, his expression becoming uncharacteristically formal. “David Martinez... would you like to learn Sorcery?”
The air between them seemed to still. David looked at Yuji, then at the towering monoliths of the city skyline. For sixteen years, he had been aimless. He was a passenger in his own life, doing everything for his mother—studying for her, dreaming for her, trying to climb Arasaka Tower because it was her goal.
But for the first time, he was looking at a door that was open just for him.
To the rest of the world, reaching the top of Arasaka Tower was the ultimate dream. But standing in this dirty alley with a man who could kill monsters, David realized he might have found a dream of his own.
“Yeah,” David said, his voice finally steady. “Teach me.”