Satoru is 15 and the end of his first year at Jujutsu High is coming to a close.
He and Suguru wander up and down a hill outside an old village, looking for a reported 2nd grade curse that had been harassing the locals.
Satoru has his glasses on, and the crystal clear, perfect blue late-winter sky is only visible in his periphery, muddled by the ever present miasma of curse energy that hangs over the area. Beside him, Suguru trudges along. They had been scouring the hill for over an hour and he was starting to wonder if villagers and window alike were wrong about this curse. He asks if Satoru can sense the cursed spirit at all yet, shouldn't his six eyes be able to find it easily? they often could -- and Satoru whines about how this whole area was actually an old and buried battle ground and the long lingering curse energy was making it hard to see anything clearly.
This is a lie, of course. Satoru has been leading them casually around the cursed spirit's web of influence since the moment they arrived. Not because he had any particular concerns on how the battle would go. But it was a nice day. The school year would end soon and Suguru would go back to visit his parents, and so he thought it was only fair if steal some of Suguru's extra time now.
It can't last forever, though. Satoru tries to distract with musings on what place in the village looked good to eat, and Suguru says they can't eat anything until they finish the job and releases a small swarm of bug-like curses to make a ruckus in the surrounding woods in hopes of shaking the curse loose.
Suguru is always fascinating to watch when he uses his technique. When he arrived at Jujutsu High he'd been a dense cloud of shimmering gold energy, powerful but empty. Now with every mission, bands of roiling colors are added to his own. If Satoru gets close and focuses, he can make out the snarls and curls of each individual curse. But most of the time Satoru sees all of it together, an energy signature unlike any other, that grows more complex and beautiful with each mission. After almost a full year of this, it reminds him of those pictures of Jupiter, with it's colorful swirling clouds, so dynamic even when completely unmoving.
Suguru manages to entice the cursed spirit and it rages after them. Satoru's blood gets going as the dark wave of crackling energy pours toward them. Suguru grumbles about curses always being gross and Satoru briefly looks over his glasses to see that it is some kind of giant centipede with human arms for legs. But to him it's a tapestry of unified energy that moves like a whip in slow motion. He bounces off the ripples of it. He would've liked to put the fight off a little longer, but he enjoys it when it comes.
They win. There was never a doubt. At some point the cursed spirit tries to eat him, it's front half splitting in two and reforming into a jagged maw of what probably looked like teeth or glass or something, and tries to snap closed around him. It fails, of course, the attack unable to pierce Infinity. Satoru stands amid a tight weave of curse energy that that pulses with strength as it tries to reach him, and grins as he sees this has put him quite close to what could be considered the most vulnerable nucleus of this thing.
As Satoru prepares to attack it and end this -- already adding another tally to the score he keeps against Suguru -- distantly he hears Suguru call his name. There's a strange tone to it. And before Satoru can call back, a flash of pure lightless curse energy cuts through the spirit, punching it so far into itself that it collapses. All the energy pinching the air around Satoru seems to go limp and then curl away, faster and faster as it swirls all that power into a smaller and smaller space, that eventually rests in Suguru's hand.
"Tch, I almost had him." Satoru complains reflexively, mentally adjusting their tallies. But Suguru doesn't respond right away, just stands there, revealing nothing.
Impassive silence usually means disapproval.
He changes the subject. "That was your first black flash, right?" And Suguru seems to shake himself, says something other about how Satoru should've been more careful.
They head back to the village, Satoru makes a point to watch the moment Suguru eats the curse.
In their first few missions together he had stubbornly exorcised the curses instead of letting Suguru get to them -- being a little shit, he could admit it now -- but now he never does. He's too invested in seeing the small change in Suguru from each one. The weak are hard to track but anything second grade or higher adds a new stripe, swirl, or fascination to the other sorcerer. He can see Suguru's curse technique peel the cursed spirit apart in layers and store it away. He finds himself curious, wondering what Suguru will look like next year, and the year after that. He briefly thinks of taking a picture, but knows it doesn't work like that. He'd have to hold it in his memory instead.
[The images of the events are below, but for understanding this scene from Gojo's perspective there are some important points:
1. Gojo's sunglasses are fully opaque, they actually literally create a giant blind spot for his normal vision as he primarily sees the world through curse energy. This can be imagined as a mix of 'seeing the matrix' and viewing the world through a thermal imaging camera. It contains a TON of information, it is frankly more advantageous for Gojo to see like this over normal human sight, but it does mean he does not see anyone's expression in this scene. He is operating entirely on tone of voice and vibes. 2. Suguru looks like a roughly human shaped photo of Jupiter, bright and colorful and full of roiling stripes of different energy. when he goes to summon a curse Gojo can see exactly what is happening, it does not look like it 'came otu of no where' to him it looks like something ejected itself from Geto's body and grew larger and took on a more defined shape. 3. The girl (Shoko) is cloudy purple grey energy and is obviously much weaker than Geto 4. The teacher (Yaga) is solid red/brown energy 5. He can see the shape of things around him mostly because of the way there is always at least some curse energy in the air and he can see how it moves around objects. 6. Stuff also just seems to kind of move weirdly slow. (Gojo's brain operates at a higher FPS than a normal humans) 7. Viewing this memory WILL give you a headache unless you have some kind of brain designed to be able to handle way too much information. 8. Gojo is deliberately and knowingly riling Geto up, they have had this argument before. Gojo is kind of neutral negative on 'protecting the weak', mostly it sounds like a pain and he resents having to do something tedious just because other people aren't as strong as him. But he doesn't hate the idea as much as he claims. 9. Gojo is fully having fun. Riling up Suguru until Suguru wants to fight is one of his favorite activities.]
1. Gojo's eyes are bandaged. He fully sees this scene via his Six Eyes, which show him curse energy. This can be imagined as a mix of 'seeing the matrix' and viewing the world through a thermal imaging camera. It contains a TON of information, it is frankly more advantageous for Gojo to see like this over normal human sight, but it does mean he does not see anyone's expression in this scene. He is operating entirely on tone of voice and vibes.
2. Yuta and Rika look like a thoroughly entangled massive mass of intense red and black energy, like a knot where you cannot tell where one starts and the other begins. Their silhouettes are roughly the same as seen in the memory, though.
3. Maki (the girl with the naginata) looks like a hole in space, she has no cursed energy and can only be detected the same way Gojo see's inanimate objects, by the way the cursed energy moves around her. (However the naginata she carries is cursed as shit, looks like naginata shaped energy).
4. The boy in the scarf looks like infinite interlocking circles of white energy in the shape of a boy.
5. The panda is a mass of three different energy signatures, each with a distinct nucleus. One is brighter and more dominant than the rest.
6. Stuff also just seems to kind of move weirdly slow. (Gojo's brain operates at a higher FPS than a normal humans)
7. Viewing this memory WILL give you a headache unless you have some kind of brain designed to be able to handle way too much information.
8. Gojo is pretty excited to be introducing Yuta, genuinely. He fully did forgot to mention that this was curse school cuz like obvs where else would it be.
9. He was absolutely pranking his students when he let Yuta into the room without warning them, but it was also a kind of supervised test. Would Rika try to kill his students? Would his students try to kill Yuta? He would've intervened to stop either but it's better to see what happens while he's watching.]
[SOME IMPORTANT NOTES ABOUT GOJO'S PERSPECTIVE DURING ALL OF THIS:
1. While Gojo's eyes are blind folded, he fully cannot use his normal human sight. He sees this scene via his Six Eyes, which show him curse energy. This can be imagined as a mix of 'seeing the matrix' and viewing the world through a thermal imaging camera. It contains a TON of information, it is frankly more advantageous for Gojo to see like this over normal human sight, but it does mean he does not see anyone's expression in this scene. He is operating entirely on tone of voice and vibes.
2. Jogo (mt fuji monster) appears to gojo as a solid dark blue mass with cracks of pink energy that periodically flashes or smokes out.
3. Everything Jogo does is similar in energy to his core signature look, just roughly shaped like his various attacks/summons.
4. Everything in the fight seems to move weirdly slow to Gojo, he is very leisurely throughout the entire fight.
5. When Yuji appears, he looks oddly foggy but with an undercurrent of bright dangerous bloodred energy. Gojo can sometimes see eyes peering out at him from Yuji's figure.
6. When removing the blindfold Gojo just sees with both his eyes and this is SO MUCH WORSE actually. Seeing from Gojo's POV will give you a headache unless you have super human brain processing but it will double give you a headache if you are trying to deal with Six Eyes and and regular sight at the same time.
7. Gojo never feels any animosity toward the cursed spirit, not while humiliating him and not while ripping his head off. He is fully comfortable with everything happening and in no way mean spirited, just the fact that this guy is gonna die is fully inevitable to him.
8. When Gojo decides to pull in Yuji it is fully with the feeling of wanting to show someone something aspirational in hopes they will also want to be able to do this cool thing and maybe will one day be just as into your interest as you are.]
A young Satoru walks atop the rail of a large, private boat. It's night and the stars are bright. The ocean is a black sheet to his two eyes, but to his six it's lit and striped with long strings of curse energy that show the currents the boat cuts through.
He likes being out at night like this, with no one around, when it's too dark for his two eyes to see well. So he snuck out of the cabin in the wee, early hours to have some time to himself.
And for a while, that is alright. His ever present headache dims, the brisky cold sea air keeps him awake even though he feels a bit tired from a long day of training -- even on vacation, even on a yacht -- and he allows himself to hang upside down from the railing carelessly, watching the the various sea life move past him as multihued shadows against shadows.
All of the usual disclaimers of this memory will give you a headache apply, but it is a short memory and while Gojo is not using his glasses he is mostly just focused on some mochi so it's not too bad.
This is a memory of Gojo learning to make mochi in this style.
The memory itself is quite short, comprising of about two minutes of the old man slapping and turning the mochi while a nine year old Gojo smacks the mochi with a mallet. But it comes with a lot of information, such as:
The old man is Old Man Yamatori, Gojo has been visiting his little traditional mochi shop since as long as he can remember. Every spring and fall his family comes to this island because the estate here has a particularly beautiful and well manicured garden, and this is the best place in Japan to get mochi as far as a nine year old Gojo knows.
Gojo and Yamatori do not get along, their relationship has only become more antagonistic over the years. A typical interaction when Gojo and a small flock of servants show up to get mochi (usually enough for the whole household, and extra for bochama) is for Yamatori to mutter about nobles and brats and for Gojo to more and more loudly suggest that maybe old men should just die and pass the store off to his kids already. (This always results in servants and Yamatori's grandchild apologizing to each other in embarrassment and threatening the old man with his daughter and the child with his mother in almost exactly the same helpless tones.)
But this year and THIS time Gojo had the audacity to suggest mochi making is not even that hard and he could do it fine, after Yamatori had said something about how a rude kid like him would grow up to have no skills. So naturally they ended up in a battle to see if the unskilled child could keep pace with the man who had been doing this daily for decades.
Naturally, Gojo can. He's seen old man Yamatori do this plenty of times and by this age he has no trouble controlling the mallet swing, timing it perfectly, hitting it perfectly. He uncharitably contemplates giving the man a smack on the hand a few times but he knows that would mean his loss, because only an amateur would make that mistake. The 'fast' technique the old man was so proud of feels tediously slow to him.
But something about it, the rhythm set up between the two working together, the bounce of one yelling 'hah!' and the other matching 'hah!', the way the mochi changes noticeabely in density and stretch as the seconds tick by. The fact that Yamatori realizes Gojo is keeping up effortlessly and starts to get a bit faster, and faster, pushing himself to go as fast as he can fearlessly and Gojo never misses a beat, until at the end he is making mochi faster and harder than he has in decades -- something about it is a little fun.
1. Gojo's eyes are bandaged. He fully sees this scene via his Six Eyes, which show him curse energy. This can be imagined as a mix of 'seeing the matrix' and viewing the world through a thermal imaging camera. It contains a TON of information, it is frankly more advantageous for Gojo to see like this over normal human sight, but it does mean he does not see anyone's expression in this scene. He is operating entirely on tone of voice and vibes.
2. Yuta is clearly possessed by a fucking monstrous haunted mass with a giant grinning mouth, and the two look like a thoroughly entangled knot of intense red and black energy.
3. Maki (the girl with the naginata) looks like a hole in space, she has no cursed energy and can only be detected the same way Gojo see's inanimate objects, by the way the cursed energy moves around her. (However the naginata she carries is cursed as shit, looks like naginata shaped energy).
4. The boy in the scarf looks like infinite interlocking circles of white energy in the shape of a boy.
5. The panda is a mass of three different energy signatures, each with a distinct nucleus. One is brighter and more dominant than the rest.
6. Stuff also just seems to kind of move weirdly slow. (Gojo's brain operates at a higher FPS than a normal humans)
7. Viewing this memory WILL give you a headache unless you have some kind of brain designed to be able to handle way too much information.
8. Gojo is pretty cheerful in this memory and Maki being mean to Yuta and Yuta being a fucking doormat honestly only cheers him up more. Not because he takes pleasure in the the cruelty he just sincerely is like 'yeah this what kids do, this is how bonding works, yay bonding!'. He likes all of them a lot and genuinely thinks they will probably be great together.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
[End of First Year]
He and Suguru wander up and down a hill outside an old village, looking for a reported 2nd grade curse that had been harassing the locals.
Satoru has his glasses on, and the crystal clear, perfect blue late-winter sky is only visible in his periphery, muddled by the ever present miasma of curse energy that hangs over the area. Beside him, Suguru trudges along. They had been scouring the hill for over an hour and he was starting to wonder if villagers and window alike were wrong about this curse. He asks if Satoru can sense the cursed spirit at all yet, shouldn't his six eyes be able to find it easily? they often could -- and Satoru whines about how this whole area was actually an old and buried battle ground and the long lingering curse energy was making it hard to see anything clearly.
This is a lie, of course. Satoru has been leading them casually around the cursed spirit's web of influence since the moment they arrived. Not because he had any particular concerns on how the battle would go. But it was a nice day. The school year would end soon and Suguru would go back to visit his parents, and so he thought it was only fair if steal some of Suguru's extra time now.
It can't last forever, though. Satoru tries to distract with musings on what place in the village looked good to eat, and Suguru says they can't eat anything until they finish the job and releases a small swarm of bug-like curses to make a ruckus in the surrounding woods in hopes of shaking the curse loose.
Suguru is always fascinating to watch when he uses his technique. When he arrived at Jujutsu High he'd been a dense cloud of shimmering gold energy, powerful but empty. Now with every mission, bands of roiling colors are added to his own. If Satoru gets close and focuses, he can make out the snarls and curls of each individual curse. But most of the time Satoru sees all of it together, an energy signature unlike any other, that grows more complex and beautiful with each mission. After almost a full year of this, it reminds him of those pictures of Jupiter, with it's colorful swirling clouds, so dynamic even when completely unmoving.
Suguru manages to entice the cursed spirit and it rages after them. Satoru's blood gets going as the dark wave of crackling energy pours toward them. Suguru grumbles about curses always being gross and Satoru briefly looks over his glasses to see that it is some kind of giant centipede with human arms for legs. But to him it's a tapestry of unified energy that moves like a whip in slow motion. He bounces off the ripples of it. He would've liked to put the fight off a little longer, but he enjoys it when it comes.
They win. There was never a doubt. At some point the cursed spirit tries to eat him, it's front half splitting in two and reforming into a jagged maw of what probably looked like teeth or glass or something, and tries to snap closed around him. It fails, of course, the attack unable to pierce Infinity. Satoru stands amid a tight weave of curse energy that that pulses with strength as it tries to reach him, and grins as he sees this has put him quite close to what could be considered the most vulnerable nucleus of this thing.
As Satoru prepares to attack it and end this -- already adding another tally to the score he keeps against Suguru -- distantly he hears Suguru call his name. There's a strange tone to it. And before Satoru can call back, a flash of pure lightless curse energy cuts through the spirit, punching it so far into itself that it collapses. All the energy pinching the air around Satoru seems to go limp and then curl away, faster and faster as it swirls all that power into a smaller and smaller space, that eventually rests in Suguru's hand.
"Tch, I almost had him." Satoru complains reflexively, mentally adjusting their tallies. But Suguru doesn't respond right away, just stands there, revealing nothing.
Impassive silence usually means disapproval.
He changes the subject. "That was your first black flash, right?" And Suguru seems to shake himself, says something other about how Satoru should've been more careful.
They head back to the village, Satoru makes a point to watch the moment Suguru eats the curse.
In their first few missions together he had stubbornly exorcised the curses instead of letting Suguru get to them -- being a little shit, he could admit it now -- but now he never does. He's too invested in seeing the small change in Suguru from each one. The weak are hard to track but anything second grade or higher adds a new stripe, swirl, or fascination to the other sorcerer. He can see Suguru's curse technique peel the cursed spirit apart in layers and store it away. He finds himself curious, wondering what Suguru will look like next year, and the year after that. He briefly thinks of taking a picture, but knows it doesn't work like that. He'd have to hold it in his memory instead.
[Once Upon a Time]
1. Gojo's sunglasses are fully opaque, they actually literally create a giant blind spot for his normal vision as he primarily sees the world through curse energy. This can be imagined as a mix of 'seeing the matrix' and viewing the world through a thermal imaging camera. It contains a TON of information, it is frankly more advantageous for Gojo to see like this over normal human sight, but it does mean he does not see anyone's expression in this scene. He is operating entirely on tone of voice and vibes.
2. Suguru looks like a roughly human shaped photo of Jupiter, bright and colorful and full of roiling stripes of different energy. when he goes to summon a curse Gojo can see exactly what is happening, it does not look like it 'came otu of no where' to him it looks like something ejected itself from Geto's body and grew larger and took on a more defined shape.
3. The girl (Shoko) is cloudy purple grey energy and is obviously much weaker than Geto
4. The teacher (Yaga) is solid red/brown energy
5. He can see the shape of things around him mostly because of the way there is always at least some curse energy in the air and he can see how it moves around objects.
6. Stuff also just seems to kind of move weirdly slow. (Gojo's brain operates at a higher FPS than a normal humans)
7. Viewing this memory WILL give you a headache unless you have some kind of brain designed to be able to handle way too much information.
8. Gojo is deliberately and knowingly riling Geto up, they have had this argument before. Gojo is kind of neutral negative on 'protecting the weak', mostly it sounds like a pain and he resents having to do something tedious just because other people aren't as strong as him. But he doesn't hate the idea as much as he claims.
9. Gojo is fully having fun. Riling up Suguru until Suguru wants to fight is one of his favorite activities.]
[But he came home to start a family]
1. Gojo's eyes are bandaged. He fully sees this scene via his Six Eyes, which show him curse energy. This can be imagined as a mix of 'seeing the matrix' and viewing the world through a thermal imaging camera. It contains a TON of information, it is frankly more advantageous for Gojo to see like this over normal human sight, but it does mean he does not see anyone's expression in this scene. He is operating entirely on tone of voice and vibes.
2. Yuta and Rika look like a thoroughly entangled massive mass of intense red and black energy, like a knot where you cannot tell where one starts and the other begins. Their silhouettes are roughly the same as seen in the memory, though.
3. Maki (the girl with the naginata) looks like a hole in space, she has no cursed energy and can only be detected the same way Gojo see's inanimate objects, by the way the cursed energy moves around her. (However the naginata she carries is cursed as shit, looks like naginata shaped energy).
4. The boy in the scarf looks like infinite interlocking circles of white energy in the shape of a boy.
5. The panda is a mass of three different energy signatures, each with a distinct nucleus. One is brighter and more dominant than the rest.
6. Stuff also just seems to kind of move weirdly slow. (Gojo's brain operates at a higher FPS than a normal humans)
7. Viewing this memory WILL give you a headache unless you have some kind of brain designed to be able to handle way too much information.
8. Gojo is pretty excited to be introducing Yuta, genuinely. He fully did forgot to mention that this was curse school cuz like obvs where else would it be.
9. He was absolutely pranking his students when he let Yuta into the room without warning them, but it was also a kind of supervised test. Would Rika try to kill his students? Would his students try to kill Yuta? He would've intervened to stop either but it's better to see what happens while he's watching.]
[Cool God Powers]
[SOME IMPORTANT NOTES ABOUT GOJO'S PERSPECTIVE DURING ALL OF THIS:
1. While Gojo's eyes are blind folded, he fully cannot use his normal human sight. He sees this scene via his Six Eyes, which show him curse energy. This can be imagined as a mix of 'seeing the matrix' and viewing the world through a thermal imaging camera. It contains a TON of information, it is frankly more advantageous for Gojo to see like this over normal human sight, but it does mean he does not see anyone's expression in this scene. He is operating entirely on tone of voice and vibes.
2. Jogo (mt fuji monster) appears to gojo as a solid dark blue mass with cracks of pink energy that periodically flashes or smokes out.
3. Everything Jogo does is similar in energy to his core signature look, just roughly shaped like his various attacks/summons.
4. Everything in the fight seems to move weirdly slow to Gojo, he is very leisurely throughout the entire fight.
5. When Yuji appears, he looks oddly foggy but with an undercurrent of bright dangerous bloodred energy. Gojo can sometimes see eyes peering out at him from Yuji's figure.
6. When removing the blindfold Gojo just sees with both his eyes and this is SO MUCH WORSE actually. Seeing from Gojo's POV will give you a headache unless you have super human brain processing but it will double give you a headache if you are trying to deal with Six Eyes and and regular sight at the same time.
7. Gojo never feels any animosity toward the cursed spirit, not while humiliating him and not while ripping his head off. He is fully comfortable with everything happening and in no way mean spirited, just the fact that this guy is gonna die is fully inevitable to him.
8. When Gojo decides to pull in Yuji it is fully with the feeling of wanting to show someone something aspirational in hopes they will also want to be able to do this cool thing and maybe will one day be just as into your interest as you are.]
[but his yacht is pretty nice.]
He likes being out at night like this, with no one around, when it's too dark for his two eyes to see well. So he snuck out of the cabin in the wee, early hours to have some time to himself.
And for a while, that is alright. His ever present headache dims, the brisky cold sea air keeps him awake even though he feels a bit tired from a long day of training -- even on vacation, even on a yacht -- and he allows himself to hang upside down from the railing carelessly, watching the the various sea life move past him as multihued shadows against shadows.
[mochi battle]
[The gardener smiles and plants his seeds.]
2. Yuta is clearly possessed by a fucking monstrous haunted mass with a giant grinning mouth, and the two look like a thoroughly entangled knot of intense red and black energy.
3. Maki (the girl with the naginata) looks like a hole in space, she has no cursed energy and can only be detected the same way Gojo see's inanimate objects, by the way the cursed energy moves around her. (However the naginata she carries is cursed as shit, looks like naginata shaped energy).
4. The boy in the scarf looks like infinite interlocking circles of white energy in the shape of a boy.
5. The panda is a mass of three different energy signatures, each with a distinct nucleus. One is brighter and more dominant than the rest.
6. Stuff also just seems to kind of move weirdly slow. (Gojo's brain operates at a higher FPS than a normal humans)
7. Viewing this memory WILL give you a headache unless you have some kind of brain designed to be able to handle way too much information.
8. Gojo is pretty cheerful in this memory and Maki being mean to Yuta and Yuta being a fucking doormat honestly only cheers him up more. Not because he takes pleasure in the the cruelty he just sincerely is like 'yeah this what kids do, this is how bonding works, yay bonding!'. He likes all of them a lot and genuinely thinks they will probably be great together.