Chapter 68

The memory ground to a halt with a rough screech, like a recording that someone had roughly slammed the stop button on before ripping out the plug from the socket, tearing the tape loose, and breaking it with a sledgehammer. 

Yet, it didn't stop the image they both saw, Nozomi Gojo staring Jiki right in the eyes. 

"I don't suppose that happened originally?" Jiki asked without much fanfare, returning the time-locked woman's stare with ease. 

There was a long pause as Tengen gathered its thoughts. "This is not a memory I go back to often, but I wouldn't know." 

"She saw us… saw me," Jiki noted clinically as he continued to stare at the woman. Cut her hair a bit shorter, add a few inches to her height, and bulk up her build the slightest bit, and she was an exact replica of Satoru. 

"That should be impossible. These are two different time zones. She's just a memory…" Tengen trailed off, looking both interested and worried at the same time. "Yet this is the Six Eyes in question. Its visual prowess is only matched and surpassed by your own eyes. Factor in the fact that the barrier I'm using to share this memory is one of the four major barriers that surround Japan, and with how I tied the Six Eyes into the fate of Japan…" 

"It doesn't matter." Jiki finally turned away from the ancient Gojo and to Tengen. "You offered a seat earlier. I would have it now." 

Tengen stared at him in surprise for a moment, then she interpreted his reply for what it was—an outstretched hand. Then, she smiled in response. "Of course." 

And with those words, the memory fragmented, hexagonal panels flipping over, changing from part of a scene and reversing into a plain white panel. 

Revealing the seats, the low table, and the tree. Without any pomp, Jiki allowed himself to sink into the seat, then he turned to face Tengen as she sat opposite him and poured them both a cup. 

As the tea flowed from the kettle to the pot, Jiki realized this was the second time he was having tea with a sorcerer as old as sand. Yet, unlike with the head miko, this particular sorcerer had been hiding from him for years. 

As he took a sip of the tea, he took the time to replay the memory he had just viewed in his head. With the aid of the photographic ability of the Sharingan, he didn't miss a single detail, and his prodigious mind went to work. 

"This was not the last time I faced Kenjaku alongside a Six Eyes user, but this set a tone for every other fight, till he stopped bothering to come. I thought… I hoped he had discarded those plans and moved on. It seems I was wrong if he is truly on the move again." 

Tengen spoke, but he was not listening. Not truly. He heard the words and compartmentalized them to deconstruct later, but in the present, his mind was unraveling another puzzle. 

Kenjaku was older than Japan. Which meant, besides raw power, he was the most experienced and most likely the most skilled sorcerer on the planet. But as Gojo Nozomi displayed, in the face of raw power on the magnitude they played with, simple skill was not enough to surpass that. 

The man was very much aware of that, especially with Satoru running about. That was why he was being overly overt. Only attacking in the wake of others and slipping past others' attention. Yet, for someone that had been active for centuries yet had remained quiet, he was suddenly making a lot of moves during the past couple of years. What changed? 

Seeing he was going nowhere with that, he changed angles. 

Another troubling fact, Kenjaku was very much aware of the barriers, yet he had not touched them, which meant his plans were still ongoing. That was less troubling than the fact that he also had a way of using multiple innate cursed techniques even with a single body. The man said he changed bodies, so did he carry over techniques from the bodies he used? 

Most likely, but he could not say for certain. Even if he did, there had to be a limit to it. After over a millennium, he should've changed bodies more than a hundred times. Jiki found it hard to believe not even one of those bodies had a counter for Infinity. If Jiki was woken up from sleep, he could immediately call out at least three ways to get past his cousin's invulnerability. 

Yet Kenjaku had only used two techniques against Gojo Nozomi, which meant that he didn't possess the full repertoire of techniques. This meant he either had the ability to keep a couple of techniques or, more likely, he retained the techniques of the last couple of bodies he used. 

So if he was being optimistic, Kenjaku had three, an extra he had not bothered to use, knowing they were useless against Nozomi Gojo. If he was being pessimistic, Kenjaku had five techniques. Now the question remained, was it the same techniques? Or could he somehow switch them out and replace them? 

All questions he would've been better poised to answer if he knew how the sorcerer was storing the techniques in the first place. 

"I can almost physically feel you think." 

Jiki raised his head and stared at the four-eyed creature that used to be a beautiful woman. Yet, she didn't seem bothered by his stare and attention for a second. 

"There's an air of intensity about you, lethality in its purest form. Human. It multiplies whenever you focus on something. Interested in sharing your thoughts?" 

Jiki dropped his now-empty cup. "How does he store multiple techniques in the same body?" 

Tengen frowned as she thought before speaking. "I don't know for certain. I've seen him fight before, and even when pushed, he used a single technique." 

"So his ability to store techniques is not innate, then," Jiki concluded. "It was something he got centuries after you met him." 

"Ah, that theory has some weight. Kenjaku was a pioneer of science and the scientific method in general. Yet his experiments were usually grotesque and without much care for their participants." 

Just like Orochimaru, Jiki muttered to himself. "Now, my next question is simple." He stared at Tengen. "Why." 

Tengen looked confused for a bit before replying. "Why what?" 

Jiki continued to stare at the creature. Silent, yet judgmental. 

Like the head miko had said, Tengen and Kenjaku had been friends. A friendship that would've damned Tengen. Yet Tengen had opened her memories to him in a way that not even Jiki could ever share, and they had been her memories. Pure and undiluted, with no mix-ups, no edits. He was the premier on illusions, he would've known if the memory was tampered with.

Which meant that Kenjaku had truly tried to kill Teng— no, it wasn't death by the literal definition. It was a metamorphosis, whereby whatever came out as a result would not necessarily be Tengen but something more than a sorcerer. 

That unattainable height that sorcerers sought—deification. An Imaginary God. 

It didn't take long for Tengen to decipher his question itself. "Ah, you're wondering why I don't talk about him." Tengen let out a self-deprecating chuckle. "I guess it's because, in the end, he remained my first and only friend. Even after his attempt, it didn't change that, and I had found a way to stop his plans in their tracks permanently with my manipulation of fate." 

Jiki shook his head in response as his prodigious mind started to fill in the gaps. "You had a stopgap measure with no backup plans. A stopgap measure that has been rendered void, hasn't it?" 

Tengen smiled at his realization. "I knew you'd realize it soon after watching my memories. Yes, the moment Amanai was killed by the one that fate had no hold over, fate shattered." 

Jiki continued, the answer to one of his questions lining up and taking shape. "A Star Plasma Vessel was killed before you could merge. You have lost your humanity, evolving into something other. The first step of Kenjaku's plan had been achieved, and all he had to do was wait." 

That was why he only started moving now. One part of a puzzle had automatically resolved itself, the most troubling part in fact, and Kenjaku had already begun to move, which meant the immortal had planned for this. Planned for when fate broke, planned for gods know how long. Meanwhile, Tengen had been content to sit on its laurels. 

"Your enemy has been plotting for centuries, waiting for this perfect chance, and you've done absolutely nothing in reply?" Jiki put his thoughts to words, an incredulous tone staining his voice. 

Tengen turned to the side, unwilling to face Jiki. 

"You have no countermeasures, no plan B—" 

"I have Gojo Satoru." 

"My cousin might be the strongest sorcerer in the modern age, but he is not infallible. Kenjaku has been beaten by the wielder of the Six Eyes before, he would be prepared for it!" Jiki hissed out in annoyance, his composure breaking as he was met with a level of stupidity and nonchalance he could not fathom. 

"That is where you come in," Tengen continued. "It is one of the major reasons why, even though I have kept you at arm's reach, I have always been a vocal supporter of yours." 

"Then why didn't you tell this to us?" Jiki asked, his anger turning to confusion. "You believe we are your allies, yet after fate broke and your original plan was destroyed, you didn't come to us to talk about all of this. We could've hunted him down early, before he had the chance to put whatever schemes he planned into work. Instead, it took me threatening to call down a god's wrath on you before you decided to speak." 

Tengen remained quiet. 

Jiki stared at It, incredulity etched into every line of his face. For the very first time, his carefully maintained facade of apathy was utterly destroyed. The sheer stupidity of Tengen's silence breaking through it. Slowly, though, he forced himself to regain his composure. 

His features smoothed out until he was staring back at the four-eyed sorcerer with total apathy. Then he stood up, turned away, and began to walk. 

"Where are you going?" 

Jiki called back over his shoulder without turning. His voice was soft but sharp. "You've left me no other choice, Master Tengen. If you want salvation for this world, it will not come through blind faith in the strongest. It will come through action. Mine." 

And with that, he walked out, leaving the immortal sorcerer to Its thoughts. 

...

It had been a while since he was this relaxed. He had sat down under the tree long enough for its pink leaves to begin to settle on his shoulders. He looked out at the field ahead of him and felt the memories play. 

Maki sparring with a more naive Yuta. Toge and Panda, laughing at something the furred cursed puppet had said, while he sat under the tree, a fair distance away from them as he meditated on his control over Amaterasu and its variant, Kagutsuchi. 

His nostalgia ended with the soft whump of displaced air that heralded Satoru's arrival. 

"The school is still standing, so I assume you were able to talk to Tengen this time," Satoru began as he stood above him and slightly to the side. An ever-reliable and solid presence. Jiki had wondered what would happen if he had been forced to go through with his promise. Would Satoru have stopped him, or just sat and watched with a bottle of soda and a kimchi in hand? 

In hindsight, he already knew the answer to that. 

"More or less. I found out a lot of things about Kenjaku. Enough to make me worried." While Kenjaku might not be Orochimaru, or he might be a parallel version, just like the many similarities Jiki had noted already, they were close enough that Jiki had a model of the man. 

Orochimaru with over a thousand years of preparation and experimentation was not something he wanted to think about, considering what the snake did with barely a decade. 

"Huh?" 

"I think you should sit down for this." 

Satoru gave him a weird look that was only partially hidden by his eye wrap but finally acquiesced to his wishes and dropped beside him. With that done, Jiki told his tale. A tale where he didn't bother to leave a single thing out, his photographic memory recalling every detail. And from the very beginning, when he revealed the approximate time that Kenjaku was supposedly active, Satoru froze in shock. 

The more he continued, the more he could almost feel Satoru's disbelief, a disbelief held back by the simple fact that Jiki was the one telling the tale. 

"I read about her," Satoru interrupted him halfway. "Gojo Nozomi. But in her journals, she made no mention of Kenjaku, only about her refinement of Limitless." 

Jiki nodded as he continued his tale. He was not the slightest bit surprised. The woman didn't seem like someone who cared about scholarly pursuits. The look she had on her face during the fight was one that Jiki had seen once—when Satoru killed Yorozu. 

Like all things, his tale came to an end, and Jiki looked up to realize the sun was down. In the next hour or two, it would be night. The two of them sat in long silence as Satoru digested his words. 

"Are you sure I can't go back and kill him?" Satoru asked with all seriousness. 

Jiki didn't bother to ask who his cousin was talking about. The one that fate had no hold over. Toji Fushiguro, whose complete and total lack of cursed energy freed him from the shackles of fate. The person most like Jiki, yet for different reasons. 

"I doubt Kenjaku was behind that. If he had a hand in it, then I doubt it would've been successful considering Tengen's working. It was just bad luck, and Kenjaku was simply prepared for the possibility of something like that happening." 

"Fine, fine. Anyway, I've had him training Toge, so it would be weird to go killing Toge's substitute teacher so soon." 

Jiki's eyes widened at that information, and Satoru smirked in response before dropping another statement. "Maki fought Sukuna too. Held him down with minimal collateral damage and no loss of life, long enough for Yuji to regain control." 

At this point, Jiki barely bothered with his mask, and Satoru gave him a smile. "You've been so laser-focused, you've let everything fall to the side. Your friends included. But that's for you to sort out with the one rushing over here now," Satoru said as he stood up and shook off the leaves. 

Jiki let out a chuckle in response. He could almost feel the ground tremble as she ran toward them. It was an abuse of the gates, but he didn't have the heart to tell her that. Not when he was likely to receive a blow to the kidney first. 

"Anyway, I'll see you back at home. I heard we have a meeting with Ukitake, and I'll need to say hello to Aiko too, I suppose." Satoru turned away but stopped mid-step. "Oh, I almost forgot. The Kyoto Sister School Exchange Event is coming up in a bit. I don't suppose you've changed your stance on attending?" 

Jiki had not bothered with the first one. It felt too much like the Chunin Exams, and he was Gojo Jiki, formerly Uchiha Itachi. He had nothing to prove anymore, especially while not competing against a group of children. 

Jiki shrugged, and Satoru laughed in response. "We can bring up Kenjaku there with everyone gathered. Anyway, good luck..." The thundering footsteps had gotten closer. Satoru smirked. "You'll need it." Then his cousin disappeared, and his disappearance revealed that his body had been hiding her, as Jiki finally caught sight of a furious dark-haired girl with amber eyes. 

"Jiki!"

Maki's voice was a thunderclap, and her presence was the accompanying storm. Her amber eyes locked onto him, and Jiki swore he could feel the weight of her fury from across the courtyard. Her hand rested on the fur-hilted blade at her side, and her short dark hair swayed with each anger-fueled step she took toward him. Emi followed behind her, head bowed, hands wrung together. It wasn't hard to figure out she had been Maki's first victim. 

Jiki glanced at the nearest exit. Calculating. Too far. Amped up with the Gates as she was, she'd catch him in a straight sprint before he made it halfway. He sighed, resigning himself to the incoming storm as she closed the distance. 

"Nice to see you too, Maki," he said smoothly, his voice soft, an attempt at placating her. 

"Don't you dare," she growled, stopping just short of shoving him. This close, she was forced to look up at him, but it didn't reduce her menace in the slightest. Her blade remained sheathed at her lower back, but the way her knuckles whitened around its hilt told him she'd considered drawing it. "You disappear again without a word. You don't answer calls. You don't leave notes. And then you just show up like nothing's wrong?" 

"I've been busy, Maki," Jiki replied, his tone maddeningly calm. 

Her glare hardened. "You're part of this team, Jiki. You don't just get to vanish whenever it suits you just because you're busy. What happened to the teamwork you pushed us so hard for?" 

Jiki sighed. If he didn't throw her off now, he'd never hear the end of this. "You're right. I owe you all an apology." 

Maki blinked and took a step back, thrown off by the unexpected admission. Her grip on her blade loosened slightly, though her anger didn't dissipate. 

"Wha—" 

He quickly cut her off before she could recover. "I should have reached out at least, but the work... consumed me. I've been busy chasing leads on someone who hurt me." 

She took another step back, the fire in her eyes dimming along with her hold on the Gates. "I didn't know. You didn't tell me anything." Emi stared at him with wide eyes but remained silent, understanding that he was trying to calm the amber-eyed not-Zenin. 

"You're right, I should have said something at least," Jiki continued, his voice steady but tinged with regret. "Everyone is dealing with a lot right now. You, with your sister." Maki flinched, but he acted ignorant as he continued. "Toge, with Panda's death. Emi, with Tengen. Yuta, with trying to find a way to deal with Rika since he was unable to exorcise her." 

Maki recovered from his barrage and let out a frustrated growl, her grip loosening on her weapon as she turned sharply. "Fine. Walk with me." 

Without waiting for a response, she marched ahead. Jiki let out a breath and with a smile at Emi, he followed at a leisurely pace, hands tucked into his pockets. That went much better than he expected, but he doubted he was completely out of the woods yet. 

They walked through the school grounds, the tension between the three of them easing slightly with every step. As they passed the training field, the sound of exertion and faint shouts caught their attention. Both turned to see Yuji, Megumi, and Nobara locked in intense practice for the upcoming Goodwill Event. Yuji darted between targets with his characteristic energy. Nobara's hammer rang out with sharp precision as she fired nails into training dummies. Megumi sat cross-legged, his shadow rippling beneath him as something tried to pull itself out. 

Maki stopped, watching them with arms crossed. "They're not bad," she admitted grudgingly. "But they've got a long way to go." 

Jiki followed her gaze. "They've got potential," he said, his tone neutral. 

"I think they're good for their age," Emi added. 

"They'll need more than potential considering what's been happening. And not to be biased, but we were better," Maki responded, her focus lingering on Yuji. 

Emi blushed at the subtle praise, which made Jiki smile again. 

"I heard you fought and held back Sukuna," he noted. 

Maki turned to him with a familiar predatory smirk, her annoyance forgotten. "I could've won if I wasn't worried about Yuji." 

Jiki glanced at her. "Want to tell us about it?" 

She shook her head. "You're not escaping that easily. There are still a couple of weeks left till the Goodwill Event. So we're going to have a get-together. All of us." She stared into the distance, and Jiki idly wondered if Yuta was going to make it. 

"Are you both planning to join them for the event?" 

"If Master Tengen deems me fit," Emi replied. 

"Of course," Maki said without hesitation. "I'll be damned if I let them embarrass us in front of Kyoto." 

Jiki hummed thoughtfully. "I suppose that means neither of you would be joining me, then." 

She turned to him, eyes narrowing. "Joining you for what?" 

"I'm going to start hunting a certain… person," he said plainly. 

Their brows shot up, but Maki was the first to speak. "And you weren't going to tell anyone?" 

"I'm telling you now," he replied, unbothered by her annoyance. 

Maki stared at him, her jaw tightening. "You're serious about this?" 

"Deadly." 

She clenched her fists, the fire in her eyes rekindling. "Then I'm coming with you." 

Jiki stopped walking, turning to face her fully. "You're not." 

"Excuse me?" 

"You're needed here," he said, his voice firm. "With neither Yuta nor myself around, someone has to watch out for the others, especially when you consider the fact that Todo would be smarting from his loss against Yuta. I heard he also exorcised a special grade during the Night Parade." 

"But—" 

Jiki silenced her with a stare, then continued. "Todo won't rest. He would've stepped up his training intensity to match a fight with the both of us, but instead, he'll be left with just you. Do you understand?" 

"He'd be displeased. So fucking what?" 

Jiki's reply was silence. Among their age group, Todo was the most threatening in his eyes. Someone who had gotten this far without a clan name or backing. Someone trained by a Special Grade sorcerer. 

The young man had plateaued for a bit, then he had his loss against Yuta while knowing the greater threat that was Jiki was still present. Maki would be stupid to underestimate him. And Maki was many things, but stupid wasn't one of them. 

"You really think you can do this alone?" she finally asked, her voice low and dangerous. 

"I've already started," he said simply. 

Maki took a step closer, her voice a venomous whisper. "If you get yourself killed because of this, I won't mourn you, Jiki. I'll just be pissed that you left me to clean up the mess." 

"That's fair," he said with a faint smile. 

"If you need me, just say it, Jiki," Emi added. He turned to face her as she continued. "I'll be there. Regardless of what Master Tengen thinks or wants." 

Jiki smiled at her, and she blushed in response. "Thank you, Emi." That said, he turned around, resuming his pace. 

They walked in silence again until they reached the edge of the training field. Jiki paused, looking back at the amber-eyed hellion. "Take care of all of them, Maki." 

She crossed her arms, glaring at him one last time. "You're still an ass." 

"I wouldn't dream of being anything else," he replied smoothly as he walked off, leaving Maki staring at his back in annoyance and Emi staring at his back in sadness.