The mission briefing had been routine. A small rural village in the mountains of Nagano Prefecture was reporting unusual curse activity—children exhibiting strange symptoms, livestock dying under mysterious circumstances, and a pervasive sense of wrongness that had settled over the community like a shroud. It was designated as a potential Grade 2 situation, well within the capabilities of a single Special Grade sorcerer, but Yaga had assigned both Geto and Ryouta to investigate. A precautionary measure, he'd said, given the remote location and the possibility of complications.
They arrived at the village in the late afternoon, the autumn sun casting long shadows across the narrow mountain roads. The settlement was ancient, the kind of place where traditions ran deeper than the roots of the surrounding forest, where superstition and reality blurred at the edges. The village elder, a wizened old man with calculating eyes, greeted them with excessive politeness that felt somehow insincere.
"We are honored that the great jujutsu sorcerers have come to aid our humble village," he said, bowing deeply. "The affliction has been most distressing. Please, allow us to show you to the affected areas."
As they walked through the village, Ryouta's Primordial Omniscience, which he kept at a low background level to avoid overwhelming himself, began picking up dissonant notes. The villagers' emotions were strange—not the fear and worry he expected, but a mixture of guilt, resentment, and something darker. Hidden. The children they passed looked malnourished, their eyes hollow and haunted. The atmosphere wasn't just oppressive; it was poisoned.
They were led to a small shrine at the edge of the village, where two young girls—twins, no older than ten—were being kept in a cage. Not a metaphorical cage, but an actual wooden structure, like one might use for animals. The girls were covered in talismans, crude binding seals that were actively draining their cursed energy. They looked up at the approaching sorcerers with eyes that held no hope, only a dull, broken acceptance.
Geto stopped dead in his tracks. His cursed energy, usually so controlled, spiked violently. "What is this?" His voice was low, dangerous.
The village elder's obsequious demeanor cracked slightly. "Ah, yes. The twins. They are the source of our troubles. Born cursed, you see. Their very existence attracts misfortune to our village. We have been... containing them. For the safety of everyone."
"Containing them," Geto repeated, his voice flat. He turned to fully face the elder, and Ryouta saw something frightening in his friend's eyes. "They're children. You've caged children like animals."
"They are cursed," the elder insisted, and now there was defensiveness in his tone. "Their parents died under mysterious circumstances. Crops fail when they're near. Illness spreads. We had no choice but to isolate them for the good of—"
"The good of whom?" Geto's voice cut through the explanation like a blade. "Did you ever think that maybe the 'curse' is your own cruelty? That these children are suffering because you've decided they're monsters?"
Ryouta's omniscient awareness was screaming warnings at him. He could feel the weight of Geto's philosophy shifting, teetering on a knife's edge. This was it—the moment from the manga, or a version of it. The catalyst that would push Geto over the edge. He could sense the villagers' hidden hostility, their entitlement, their complete lack of remorse. And he could sense Geto's rage building like a pressure cooker about to explode.
The elder's expression hardened. "You sorcerers don't understand. You come here with your power and your judgment, but you don't live with the consequences. These things—"
"Don't call them things," Geto interrupted, his hand moving toward his side where he kept his cursed spirits sealed. The air around him began to shimmer with barely restrained power. "They're children. Human children. And you've tortured them."
Ryouta saw it in his omniscient perception—the branching paths of the next few seconds. In one path, Geto's rage would overflow. He would summon his curses. The villagers would panic, would say something even more inflammatory, and Geto would make a choice he couldn't take back. The village would be a massacre, and Suguru Geto would cross a line from which there was no return.
But there was another path. A narrower one. And Ryouta had seconds to take it.
"Geto," Ryouta said, his voice calm but carrying an authority that made his friend pause. "Step back. I'll handle the investigation."
"Ryouta, you can't just—"
"I said, step back," Ryouta repeated, and this time there was steel in his voice. He activated his Veil of Unbeing slightly, allowing his presence to take on a weight that made the villagers unconsciously step away. He walked past Geto, directly to the cage.
The two girls looked up at him. Through his omniscience, he could perceive the truth of them. They did have cursed energy—more than average for children their age. But they weren't cursed. They were sorcerers. Young, untrained, traumatized sorcerers whose uncontrolled power had manifested in ways the superstitious villagers had interpreted as malevolent. Their parents' deaths had been accidents, tragic but not supernatural. The crop failures and illnesses were confirmation bias, natural events attributed to supernatural causes because the village needed a scapegoat.
Ryouta knelt before the cage, his silver-gold eyes meeting the girls' frightened gazes. "My name is Ryouta Gojo," he said softly. "I'm here to help. Can you tell me your names?"
The girls were silent for a long moment. Then, the slightly taller one spoke, her voice barely a whisper. "Nanako. And this is Mimiko."
The names hit Ryouta like a physical blow. Nanako and Mimiko. In the original timeline, these were the girls Geto would "save" after murdering the entire village—the children who would become his most devoted followers in his crusade against non-sorcerers. This was the event. The breaking point.
But history wasn't going to repeat itself. Not if Ryouta had anything to say about it.
He stood and turned to face the village elder and the small crowd that had gathered, his expression cold and utterly devoid of mercy. "These children are not cursed. They are jujutsu sorcerers. Untrained ones, whose power manifested due to trauma and fear—trauma and fear you inflicted on them." His voice carried across the clearing, each word precise and damning. "You have violated the most fundamental laws of jujutsu society. The abuse and imprisonment of sorcerer children is a capital offense."
The elder's face went pale. "We didn't know—"
"You didn't care to know," Ryouta interrupted. "You made a choice to cage children. To starve them. To torture them with binding seals that are slowly killing them. Ignorance is not an excuse."
He could feel Geto behind him, could sense his friend's barely contained rage warring with shock at Ryouta's uncharacteristic cold fury. This wasn't the quiet, supportive twin they knew. This was something else. Something that had been hidden beneath the surface.
Ryouta continued, addressing the crowd. "Here's what's going to happen. These children are coming with us. They will be enrolled in Jujutsu High, where they will receive proper training and care. This village will be investigated by the Jujutsu High authorities. If any further evidence of abuse is found, you will face trial under sorcerer law. Am I understood?"
The villagers were silent, cowed by the absolute authority in his voice. The elder, desperate, tried one last appeal to tradition. "But the misfortunes—the accidents—"
"Were accidents," Ryouta stated flatly. "Correlation is not causation. Your crops failed because of soil depletion. Your livestock died from disease. Your misfortunes are the natural consequences of living in a harsh environment. But it was easier to blame helpless children than to accept responsibility for your own poor decisions, wasn't it?"
He didn't wait for an answer. He turned back to the cage and, with a single, precise application of his Primordial Divergence, separated the lock from its mechanism. The cage door swung open. The girls stared at him, uncomprehending, as if freedom was a concept they'd forgotten.
"Come," he said gently, offering his hand. "You're safe now."
Nanako, after a long, trembling moment, reached out and took his hand. Mimiko followed her sister. As they stood, the crude binding seals began to fall away, their power severed by Ryouta's subtle manipulation of concepts. The girls collapsed, their bodies weak from malnourishment and abuse, but Ryouta caught them, lifting them with ease despite his slender frame.
He turned to Geto, who was staring at him with a complex mixture of emotions—shock, gratitude, confusion, and something that looked almost like awe. "Let's go," Ryouta said simply. "We're done here."
They made camp a few miles from the village, in a clearing far enough away that the girls wouldn't have to look back at the place of their torment. Ryouta had used his cursed energy to heat stones, creating a warm area where the girls could rest. He'd given them food from their supplies—simple onigiri and water—and watched as they ate with the desperate hunger of those who'd been starved.
Geto sat across the fire from Ryouta, his expression troubled. He'd been silent the entire journey, processing what he'd witnessed. Finally, as the girls fell into an exhausted sleep, he spoke.
"I was going to kill them," Geto said quietly. "The villagers. I had my curses ready. If you hadn't stopped me..." He trailed off, the weight of that almost-action hanging between them.
"I know," Ryouta said simply.
"How did you stay so calm?" Geto asked, and there was genuine desperation in the question. "How did you see that and not want to... to make them pay?"
"Who says I didn't want to?" Ryouta replied, his eyes reflecting the firelight. "I wanted to erase that entire village from existence. The only difference is that I didn't let what I wanted override what was right."
"But they tortured children," Geto said, his voice thick with emotion. "They deserve—"
"Justice," Ryouta interrupted. "They deserve justice. Not vengeance. Not massacre. There's a difference, and it's a line we can't afford to cross." He looked at his friend, his silver-gold eyes holding Geto's dark ones. "The moment we start acting as judge, jury, and executioner, we become tyrants. We become the very thing we're supposed to fight against."
"But the system is broken," Geto argued. "You saw it yourself. Those villagers won't face any real consequences. The higher-ups will sweep it under the rug to avoid scandal. The cycle will continue."
"Maybe," Ryouta conceded. "Probably, even. The system is broken. It's rotten to its core. But burning it all down and building something new on a foundation of corpses isn't the answer. You can't create a better world through genocide, Geto. You just create a different kind of hell."
Geto was silent for a long time, staring into the fire. "Then what's the alternative? We just... accept it? Keep fighting a losing battle?"
"We fight to change the system from within," Ryouta said. "We use our strength not to enforce our will, but to protect those who can't protect themselves. We save people like Nanako and Mimiko. We bear witness to the injustices and we speak truth to power. It's slower. It's harder. It might even be impossible. But it's the only path that doesn't lead to darkness."
Geto looked at the sleeping girls, their small forms finally at peace. "You saved me tonight," he said quietly. "If I had done what I was about to do... there would've been no going back."
"I know," Ryouta said again. "That's why I'm here. That's why I'll always be here. You're my friend, Geto. I won't let you fall."
They returned to Tokyo the next day. Nanako and Mimiko were enrolled in Jujutsu High's youth program, where they would receive counseling, education, and proper training. Shoko personally took charge of their medical recovery, her usual detachment cracking in the face of their obvious trauma.
Satoru, when he heard the full story from Ryouta, was uncharacteristically somber. "Close call," he said.
"Too close," Ryouta agreed.
"Think Geto's okay now?"
Ryouta thought about his omniscient awareness, about the threads of possibility he could perceive. "He's better. But he's not fixed. This is going to be a long fight."
"Then we keep fighting," Satoru said simply, bumping his fist against Ryouta's shoulder in their familiar gesture of solidarity.
A week later, Ryouta was in his hidden dojo, working on a new application of his techniques. He'd been thinking about the concept of "momentum"—not just physical momentum, but conceptual momentum. The idea that once something was set in motion, it became harder to stop. What if he could manipulate that? Create techniques that would become exponentially more powerful the longer they ran?
He spent hours in meditation, feeling the flow of his own cursed energy, learning to impart it with the property of self-amplification. It was delicate work, requiring a level of control that pushed even his primordial abilities. But gradually, he felt it come together. A technique that would grow stronger with each passing second, that would accumulate power like a snowball rolling downhill.
By dawn, he had mastered it. And as expected, the system appeared.
╔═════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════
║ ◇ PRIMORDIAL SYSTEM ◇
║
║ [TECHNIQUE MASTERED: Cascading Force]
║ [CURRENT MASTERY LEVEL: EXPERT]
║
║ [10X PRIMORDIAL AMPLIFICATION AVAILABLE]
║
║ AMPLIFIED FORM: "PRIMORDIAL INEVITABILITY"
║
║ Primordial Inevitability transforms momentum into fate.
║ Once activated, the technique becomes a force of nature
║ that cannot be stopped, only endured. Each moment it
║ exists, it grows exponentially stronger, accumulating
║ not just power but conceptual weight—the weight of
║ certainty itself.
║
║ ► YES - Transform to "Primordial Inevitability" forever
║ ► NO - Continue developing standard Cascading Force
╚═════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════
Ryouta hesitated. This technique was dangerous. Once activated, it would be nearly impossible to stop, even by him. It was a weapon of last resort, a doomsday option. But he thought of Toji, of the enemies still to come, of the threats he knew were lurking in the future.
[NO]
For the first time in a while, he declined the amplification. This power was too dangerous, too absolute. He would keep it in reserve, develop it naturally. Some weapons were too terrible to perfect.
That weekend, the four of them went to a summer festival in Asakusa. It was Satoru's idea—a desperate attempt to inject some normalcy into their increasingly dark lives. They wore casual yukatas, ate overpriced festival food, and tried their best to be normal teenagers for a few hours.
Geto seemed lighter, more present than he had been in months. The incident with the village had shaken him, but Ryouta's intervention had given him something to hold onto—a philosophy that wasn't just empty idealism, but a practical framework for navigating the moral complexities of their world.
"You're terrible at goldfish scooping," Shoko observed, watching Satoru fail for the third time.
"The game is rigged," Satoru protested, though he was grinning.
"Or you just lack finesse," Ryouta said, demonstrating by successfully catching a goldfish on his first try using the flimsiest paper scooper.
"Show-off," Satoru grumbled, but there was no heat in it.
They watched the fireworks from a bridge, the four of them lined up, shoulders touching. In that moment, surrounded by the laughter and light of the festival, it was possible to forget the darkness they faced every day. It was possible to believe they would all be okay.
But Ryouta, with his omniscient awareness, could feel the threads of the future pulling taut. He could sense storms gathering on the horizon. The Shibuya Incident was years away, but smaller crises were approaching. More missions. More moral quandaries. More moments where Geto would teeter on the edge and need to be pulled back.
"Whatever happens," Ryouta said quietly, so quietly that only Satoru, standing beside him, could hear. "We face it together."
"Together," Satoru confirmed, his hand finding Ryouta's shoulder and squeezing.
The fireworks painted the night sky in brilliant colors, temporary and beautiful. And for one perfect moment, they were just four friends, standing together against the darkness, believing that their bond would be enough to survive whatever came next.