Every Cursed Technique holds the possibility of reversal, because conceptually, every Cursed Technique has a "leaning."
Take Jogo's technique. Jogo's technique uses fire — conceptually, high temperature. Reversed, it would likely become low temperature.
Every Cursed Technique carries some degree of directional bias, and the more pronounced that bias, the higher the chance of reversal and the lower the difficulty.
Mahiru's Idle Transfiguration, at its core, used a technique to touch another being's soul and reshape it. Conceptually speaking, its leaning was not strong at all.
How was a technique like that supposed to be reversed? You couldn't even picture what a reversed "Idle Transfiguration" would be. Reversal was harder than hard.
But now, inspiration had found her.
Her soul felt as though it had sunk into an ocean. Countless threads of information wound through her mind and dropped her into something close to a state of no-self.
Cursed Technique Reversal, huh… She sank deeper. Deeper still. The girl felt as if she could see it plainly — the arrow of her own Idle Transfiguration.
Her eyes went hazy. She stretched out both hands.
"?" Across the battlefield, in Satoru Gojo's field of vision, the technique in the blue-haired girl's hands was changing.
The deep blue glow was being infected by another color, and the pale white wings faintly outlined behind her were staining black, as though dipped in ink. Her Cursed Energy was shifting toward something utterly unlike what had come before.
From her palms spilled a chaotic black light.
What was that?
Gojo faltered for a heartbeat.
If what the girl had been throwing around until now could still be called a "Cursed Technique"… then this light, even under the Six Eyes, felt wrong in a way he couldn't name.
Was that… a Cursed Technique?
Forget it. Whatever it is… I'll destroy it!
Gojo raised his hand into the snapping gesture and took aim at Mahiru.
"—Red!"
Crimson light blazed. The air was torn apart, and the appalling destructive force carried by Red's imaginary mass was on top of Mahiru in an instant.
Mahiru didn't dodge. Something moved in her instead, and she followed it, pushing that half-formed smear of chaotic light forward to meet it.
Black struck red.
Ting—
A clear little ring, like a fork tapping a dinner plate.
Under Gojo's baffled stare, his Red had been stopped.
The overwhelming force of imaginary mass poured out, no question about it — and yet the moment it hit that black halo in Mahiru's hand, it could not advance a single inch further.
Boom!!!
The shockwave rolled outward and dust boiled up in every direction.
Pff…
Red's attack fizzled, and the black light in Mahiru's hand popped like a soap bubble. Only then did she snap awake, ripped straight out of that state of no-self.
"?"
Had she just… actually pulled off a Cursed Technique Reversal? Seriously?
She looked up at Gojo. "Hey. Did my Cursed Technique Reversal just work?"
Gojo, still dazed himself, heard the question. "?"
You're asking me?
"How the hell would I know?"
"Tch, useless. Don't you have the Six Eyes?" The blue-haired girl was trying to recall the sensation, studying her own hands, nose wrinkled. "So did you feel anything just now or not? Why did your attack vanish?"
"?"
Is this thing seriously asking me?
"How could I possibly know?!"
The sheer flakiness of the girl in front of him left Gojo with nothing to say.
And he wasn't joking when he said he didn't know. He genuinely didn't. His Six Eyes could observe the faintest ripple of Cursed Energy, but in that single instant, inside that smear of darkness, all he had seen was absolute stillness and silence. Nothing else.
You really are asking me, and I really don't have an answer.
"Tch." Over on her side, the girl's face soured with frustration.
She'd caught a sliver of inspiration, and succeeded a sliver's worth. But only a sliver.
She had felt it too — a reversed "Idle Transfiguration" might become a technique unlike anything that had existed before. The thought thrilled her.
But inspiration comes and goes in a blink, and she couldn't reproduce that feeling now no matter how she reached for it.
The girl smacked her lips.
"You've got something stronger, right?" She looked at Gojo.
Gojo: "Huh?"
"Your hidden move." She planted one hand on her hip and thrust the other out, palm up, like a beggar demanding payment, and even hurried him along. "Come on, quick, bring out the hidden move."
The hidden move meant Hollow Technique: Purple, obviously.
Watching Red had given her inspiration, but not enough of it. So the girl was asking for something more vicious.
Gojo's face said he understood none of this. He couldn't work out how she knew a secret of the Gojo Family, and for a moment he honestly couldn't decide whether to blow her away with Hollow Technique: Purple.
"Hurry up." The girl was getting impatient. "Time waits for nobody, big guy."
And then, one second later.
"I'm finished. Stop playing with him." Kenjaku's voice arrived at Mahiru's ear. "Time to withdraw."
Ah. Time's up.
"This is all your fault," Mahiru said, hands on hips, sighing enormously. "Dawdling around. Now there's really no time."
Kenjaku had Tengen packed up, which meant they were pulling out.
As much as Mahiru wanted a taste of what flavor Gojo's Hollow Technique: Purple came in, it would have to wait for next time. Watching it was no guarantee of inspiration anyway.
Next to the matter of Tengen, everything else was secondary.
"Game over. I'm leaving," the girl said.
Gong—!
As her words fell, a deep, far-off bell tolled out of the Tomb of the Star Corridor.
Gojo started, and turned toward it.
From that direction, a surge of Cursed Energy spread out like a shockwave riding the sound of the bell, sweeping across the earth.
Gojo's head snapped down.
His Six Eyes could observe the flow of Cursed Energy. Right then, straight through the ground, he saw them: buried deep below, several strands writhing like a web of spider silk — the Culling Game's [Passages].
"What is that?"
Those blood-colored [Passages] had been flowing.
But as the bell swept over them, they froze like rivers turning to glacier ice, every one of them locked motionless — and bleached a uniform white.
A long, rolling rumble—
The Barrier of the Tomb of the Star Corridor collapsed, and an enormous white butterfly beat its wings and rose out of the ruin, as though it had only just torn free of its cocoon and been reborn.
Slung beneath that giant butterfly hung a flower basket, and inside the basket were a figure draped in a black robe and a small, delicate white-haired girl shut inside a flower cage.
The Mahiru standing before him smiled, lifted her hand, and gathered a sphere of white light at her fingertips.
"Your Lord Tengen. I'll be borrowing her."
Still grinning, the girl hurled the [Husk] in her hand.
Gojo blocked with Limitless, and white light swallowed his entire field of view.
When it faded, the girl was gone. So was the giant butterfly in the distance.
The butterfly had already flown to the far edge of the sky.
They had left.
Chasing them now was pointless.
"She…" Gojo stood where he was, watching the huge white butterfly shrink into the horizon, his eyes full of incomprehension. "…what the hell is she?"
Even now, he had no idea why they had abducted Tengen, and no idea whether the disasters erupting all over the country had anything to do with them at all.
His phone rang again.
He picked up.
"Was it you two who stopped the disaster?" The Assistant Supervisor on the other end was beside himself. "The tides of Cursed Spirits gushing out — they've stopped, all of them, every single one… was that you? That's incredible!"
Gojo went blanker still. "No. If anything, it's the opposite…"
It hadn't been him. It looked much more like the work of that blue girl.
They kidnapped Tengen, and the Cursed Spirit Tides stopped because of it — what exactly was going on?
…
"???" Over in the world of the future, Kenjaku's phantom listened to what Sukuna told him, and his eyes went enormous. "The me of the past is helping that blue-haired Cursed Spirit??"
Kenjaku was stunned stupid.
What kind of development was this?
No wonder the other side knew every one of my passwords and every scrap of my intel… son of a bitch, I sold myself out!
Hold on, why? Isn't everyone supposed to act in their own interest? Why is the past me making life hard for the present me?! Is a version of myself in another timeline somehow not myself?!
Damn it. Creatures like Kenjaku really are rotten to the core.
Every Kenjaku in existence deserves to die, honestly.
"Haah… what a nuisance…" The phantom Kenjaku rubbed his brow against the headache — then, abruptly, laughed. "But it's pretty fun, too."
After less than three seconds of protest, our Kenjaku had successfully empathized with the other Kenjaku.
He had to admit it really was entertaining — if he were in the other one's position, he would probably want to talk back, muddy the waters and trade blows with the version of himself from another world, too.
What he still couldn't work out was what method that blue-haired Cursed Spirit had used to talk another version of himself into working for her this devotedly.
Had she gotten hold of some vital weak spot?
But it wasn't as though he had one.
Fun was fun. Trouble was trouble.
Kenjaku knew exactly how hard he himself was to deal with.
In the barrier clash just now, he and the version of himself from the other world had each won and lost something.
The other side had successfully snatched Tengen away in the world of the past, and had created a blank administrator account, burying an enormous threat inside their system.
The Culling Game's progress in the past world had been suspended because of it.
But at the same time, the other side could not take one step further.
The Culling Game system processes in the modern world and the future world lay beyond that past Kenjaku's reach.
"We need to find out what exactly that blue-haired Cursed Spirit did." The phantom Kenjaku stroked his chin, thinking. "And… heh. Come to think of it, no matter how much they thrash around, they aren't worth worrying about."
Sukuna had been off to one side, idly toying with the golden holy light in her hand out of sheer boredom.
Hearing that, she crushed the glow between her fingers with a sharp snap. "And why aren't they worth worrying about?"
"Because we hold an absolute advantage." Kenjaku smiled and walked to the window of the room.
Beyond the glass lay the vast dark of space, and one immense blue planet.
"Our Culling Game system carries the backing of the Chaos and Harmony Cursed Technique. By now it has essentially put down roots in all three worlds — that is an absolute advantage."
He brimmed with confidence. "And if that blue-haired Cursed Spirit wants to beat us, she has to shut down the Culling Game in all three worlds. She holds one Tengen. That isn't enough."
Sukuna made a small sound. "Oh? What makes you so sure she won't come to this future world and bring your whole arrangement crashing down?"
Kenjaku laughed. "Because if she dares come here, she dies."
"Why?"
"Because in this world, she is the single most hated thing alive." The phantom Kenjaku's smile turned nasty.
This was the Future Arc, sixty-eight years after the original story.
On this world line, there was no Mahiru.
There was only the [Mahito] of the original story.
Mahito had killed Itadori's best friend. Mahito had killed the senior Itadori respected most.
He had slaughtered civilians at will in front of countless Jujutsu Sorcerers, playing with the souls of ordinary people like toys.
He took joy in human suffering — the vilest, most sickening villain there was.
Even sixty-eight years after Mahito's death, in the eyes of the sorcerers who had since become the elders of the jujutsu world, Mahito remained the thing they loathed above all else.
Mahiru was genuinely nothing like Mahito. But their techniques were the same, and so was their scent.
All Kenjaku had to do was change faces here and put the word out in advance — say that Mahiru was Mahito resurrected —
and the instant Mahiru set foot in this world, every master of the jujutsu world would converge on her and hunt her down.
And make no mistake: in the future world, the caliber of a Jujutsu Sorcerer was not merely double or triple that of the timeline she'd come from.
Mahiru might swim like a fish in the past timeline, but here she couldn't beat Yuji Itadori, couldn't beat Dabura — she couldn't even beat Yuka, who had inherited Yuta's Ring.
To say nothing of the Sukuna who had crossed over into this world!
Even if Mahiru could manage time travel, she could probably only move herself, and no one else.
So as things stood, this future world was a trap for Mahiru: come here, and die.
"So you've concluded she won't dare come?"
"If she comes, she's dead, so it makes no difference either way. Put like that, I'd almost rather she did come." Kenjaku's eyes crinkled with amusement. "And I have an idea for going on the offensive, besides."
"Going on the offensive?"
"Through those two brats' techniques, I discovered that this world's Mahito is still alive. Or rather — can still be brought back." Kenjaku smiled. "So do you follow me?"
Mahiru is far too much of a cheat!
So… let's go fetch "Mahito" and set him on Mahiru, shall we?
Kenjaku had no idea what this world's Mahito was like, or whether he'd be as absurd as the Mahiru of that other world.
But even if he wasn't absurd, the two shared an origin, and Kenjaku figured that with a little reinforcement from the Culling Game, Mahito ought to be able to threaten that girl at least somewhat.
After all, nobody understands an enemy better than that enemy himself.
The phantom Kenjaku felt a confidence he had never known before.
This [Chaos and Harmony] really is a free ride, good grief.
In the world of the past.
"Reporting in, teacher!" The little pink-haired girl stood at attention in front of Mahiru and shot her hand up. "A whole bunch of monster nests broke out today! Fushiguro and I protected a ton of civilians!"
Mahiru went straight for a head pat. "Amazing!"
She awarded each of the two girls a little red paper flower.
Little Itadori was thrilled and went bouncing off.
Little Fushiguro rolled her eyes, asked whether her sister was in the bedroom, and, once she got a yes, walked back that way.
"We should move houses," Kaori Kenjaku said, rubbing her chin in thought. "This place doesn't have a basement."
The reason she wanted a basement was that there was nowhere to keep Tengen.
The two of them had carried Tengen home, and now had nowhere to put her.
They could hardly shut her up in a bedroom.
With the two kids running in and out, how bad would it look if they saw?
The effect on adolescents would be incalculable.
"Let's find a house out in the suburbs," Kenjaku said, still stroking her chin.
Mahiru gave her a long look.
Kenjaku blinked. "What is it? Something you want to tell me?"
"Yeah. So come outside with me for a bit." Mahiru jerked a thumb toward the door. "And I get the feeling… you've got something you want to discuss with me too, don't you?"
After everything that had happened, Mahiru figured it was time to settle a few things properly.
Namely, the terms — and the possibilities — of taking their partnership one step further.
____
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