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It’s been a long few days. At this point, all Gojo wants to do is sleep for a year, but he has cute students to teach tomorrow, so that’s not an option. He sighs mournfully, unlocks his apartment, and swings the door open.
There is a man in the living room.
This is sort of weird, because Gojo definitely didn’t invite him over, and he doesn’t know him at all, but the guy doesn’t seem to be robbing him, or anything. He’s just sitting on Gojo’s couch, poking at a tablet. He doesn’t look up when Gojo comes in, but he has the feeling that he’s taken note of his presence.
He doesn't have any cursed energy. Gojo won’t write him off as an assassin just yet, but Gojo knows that he’s strong enough that even if the guy is trying to kill him, he won’t stand a chance.
“What’cha doing?” Gojo sings, as annoyingly as he can.
“Waiting for you,” the man looks up, just a hint of disdain crossing his face before it smoothes into something far more friendly. His yellow hair falls over his right eye. Gojo decides to call him Blondie.
“Aw, little old me, huh?” Gojo preens. “Why’s that, I wonder?”
“Well, you’re a Jujutsu Sorcerer, aren’t you?” Blondie asks, tilting his head slightly.
“Maybe,” Gojo says. “How’d a little guy like you find out about something like that?”
“Haha, well!” Blondie says, face curling into a practiced smile. “I just took a little peek into the government’s records. It’s all perfectly legal! As a major weapons manufacturer, I’ve got a few connections.”
“Huh,” Gojo rocks back on his feet. “And… you’re not here to kill me, right?”
“Oh, I doubt I could,” Blondie titters. His posture… isn’t threatening, per say, but something about him is off. “I’ve had enough experience with the supernatural to know that I can never surpass it. I’m just an average human, after all.”
“Okay…” Gojo says slowly. “Then what are you here for?”
“I just have a few questions for you,” Blondie says, lifting his head to meet Gojo’s gaze. He doesn’t shy away once he meets the blindfold, which is unusual. “If you’ve got the time, I’d love to ask them now.”
“Eh, sure, why not,” Gojo shrugs fluidly, and grabs some sugary drink from his fridge and settles into a chair across from Blondie.
“Great,” Blondie stretches out further onto the couch, legs and arms spread languidly. “Yeah, I’m just wondering… how strong are you, exactly?”
“The strongest,” Gojo replies with practiced ease.
“The strongest…” Blondie repeats lightly. His eyes track Gojo’s drink with a dull curiosity- the most interest he’s shown since Gojo entered his own house. “Your mastery of Infinity… the six eyes… the reversed cursed technique… those are the notable ones, yes?”
“I guess they’re the important ones, yeah,” Gojo says, unsettled. The Japanese government does not have access to that information. They get the barest of essentials of information in exchange for funding- they do not get the names of techniques.
“You’re sure there’s nothing I’m missing?” Blondie presses. “Anything that would really make you the strongest?”
“Nothing comes to mind,” Gojo shrugs half-heartedly. Even if it did, there’s no way he would let it slip to this guy.
“A shame,” Blondie sighs. “You wanna know why I’m really here?”
“Sure,” Gojo replies indulgently.
“My brother is the real strongest,” Blondie says confidently. “I wanted to know if you measured up to him in any capacity. Your Infinity is the only thing he doesn’t have, and if I’m being honest, all the powers he has that you don’t more than make up for that.”
“Oh?” Gojo says carefully, taking another sip of the sugary drink.
“You see… he’s basically a god among men,” Blondie says, voice too light for the topic to really be casual. “He could destroy the world with a single thought, if he really wanted.”
“That so?” Gojo says.
“Mmh,” Blondie smirks slightly. “As his older brother… it’s my responsibility to keep the world safe from him. What do you think would happen if he got bored?”
“Who knows?” Gojo replies. “Maybe he’d off himself.”
“Oh, I doubt it,” Blondie is quick to reply. “Maybe eventually, but I don’t even know that he’s capable of dying, and it certainly wouldn’t be the first thing he’d try.”
“Okay…” Gojo says.
“No, we’ve got to keep him entertained, for humanity’s sake,” Blondie says. “He’s like a tiger, ready to break out of his enclosure, and I am the zookeeper responsible for providing him with pumpkins stuffed full of meat for enrichment.”
“Weird metaphor, but okay,” says Gojo.
“You were on my list of meat pumpkins, but you’ve been completely underwhelming so far,” Blondie says, poking at his tablet.
“Uhuh,” Gojo says. “That’s… an inaccurate assessment. I could probably destroy the world too, if I wanted to.”
Blondie levels him with an unimpressed stare. “You’re an average human, nothing more. Don’t you dare compare yourself to him.”
“Right…” Gojo says. He pinches his forehead. Some weirdo, obsessed with his brother to the point of… whatever this is just spells trouble. He hopes the brother doesn’t have a god complex, too. That’d be a pain. He should probably take care of this before it spirals into something bigger, like revealing Jujutsu Society to the rest of the world. “I’m not sure I believe you, to be honest. Someone stronger than me? I’d love to meet the guy, but it just seems impossible.”
“Well, I was lying about the pumpkin part,” Blondie says. “My last therapist said that my brother didn’t seem like he had any destructive tendencies, and that I was the tiger who needed a pumpkin for enrichment. I don’t know if I really believe that part, but it’s true that Kusuo’s way is too boring to do something like blow up the planet on purpose.”
“...you weren’t kidding about him being a powerful sorcerer, though?” Gojo throws back his head and laughs. “Why would you lie about that part? Wait, what?”
“Psychic,” Blondie corrects him. “It was funny. You fell for it hook, line, and sinker.”
“Well…” Gojo frowns, trying to unwind whatever Blondie is feeding him. “If you don’t need help entertaining him, why did you track me down?”
“He might still blow up the planet by accident!” Blondie says cheerfully. “In fact, that’s looking more and more likely by the day, so I figured I’d poke around in powerful places to see if anyone was even capable of matching him.”
“Well, hey now,” Gojo protests. “I’m
the strongest.
I think I could take him. At least let me meet him.”
“Well, I suppose it couldn’t hurt,” Blondie allows. He pulls out a fancy business card and flicks it over to Gojo. Saiki Kusuke. It’s a name that Gojo’s heard passed around before, at parties and board meetings. “The address is on the back. I’ll meet you at 5 tomorrow. Bring coffee jelly.”
“What? I’m a busy guy, you know-” Gojo starts to protest. Blondie- yes, he’s going to keep calling the guy the nickname that is 100% superior to his real name- pulls a thin remote out of his sleeve with a flourish and activates a hidden pair of jetpacks. He launches himself out of the window (the one that’s already broken, probably from the guy’s entrance) and Gojo could stop him, but he’s a little too dumbfounded by the display to do anything.
Gojo glances down at the address on the business card. It’s a good distance from his usual haunts, but with his teleportation, it’s no real issue. On the off chance that Blondie’s brother does end up being something special, he should probably check him out. He’s got some form of power, most likely, and even in the (most likely) case that he doesn’t hold a candle to Gojo, he could cause problems for other sorcerers down the line, and it’d be best to nip that in the bud.
He sighs. Looks like he’ll have to pick up some coffee jelly tomorrow.
Gojo shows up at 5-ish, obscene amounts of coffee jelly in a bag at his side. He’s admittedly never paid much attention to this particular kind of sweet, but the more he brings, the more he’ll inevitably get to eat when Blondie and his brother ignore it, which will make the whole business worth it.
Blondie pokes his smug face out of the door and makes a show of looking around for Gojo, even though he definitely saw him before he came outside. Gojo makes a show of jumping up and down and waving around in return, and the two of them make fools of themselves for a few minutes before Gojo finally comes into the office building.
“Wow, good to see you!” Blondie says, attempting to pat Gojo on the back. His hand stops an inch away from contact. “Hah! What a neat trick. Did you know that Infinity doesn’t stop Kusuo from reading your mind? He heard you coming and got all grumpy with me- grumpier than usual, anyways. I assume it’s because thoughts are radiated out, and Infinity is only a one-way barrier, because your light-waves and sound-waves and all that constantly penetrate it.”
“Telepathy?” Gojo repeats. “Now that’s a nice party trick.”
Gojo can’t sense any cursed energy. In fact, the only thing notable about the office building is the unusually low amount of it, and that’s not weird enough to set off any bells in Gojo’s head. The building seems empty, and places without humans don’t tend to attract curses or sorcerers.
The entire lobby is completely empty, in fact, except for Gojo, and Blondie.
“Look again,” Blondie says in a sing-song voice, apparently noticing Gojo’s miscount. Gojo takes off his blindfold, ignoring the assault on his senses it brings, and finds himself staring at a teenage boy with bright pink hair, lime green glasses, and absolutely no signature of cursed energy.
“Huh,” Gojo says. “You’re a little weird, aren’t you?”
What a pain, the teenager says. Just give me the coffee jelly and get out of here. I can’t believe he told you about my powers.
“That’s… telepathy?” Gojo guesses, noting how the kid’s lips remained still. “Too high and mighty to talk like a human?”
The kid’s face twitches slightly.
“Kusuo doesn’t talk much in general,” Blondie says airily. “He’s the shy, bashful type, you know.” Behind him, a chandelier falls to the ground.
“I see,” Gojo observes. “Whatever he’s using, it’s not cursed energy. That’s kind of cool.”
“I told you, he’s a psychic,” Blondie says, a note of exasperation entering his voice.
He’s not going to be any help, Kusuo says unprompted. He doesn’t know anything about technology. How would he be able to help fix them?
“That wasn’t the point!” Blondie huffs. “I just wanted to see you claw off his stupid face, to be honest, because he’s annoying.”
Kusuo stares at his brother- even though he doesn’t say (project?) anything, Gojo can hear the judgemental accusations of hypocrisy.
“Well, I brought coffee jelly~!” Gojo sings, passing the heaping bag over. “Hope you enjoy!”
Kusuo’s eyes widen, and he takes the back cautiously. He looks overwhelmed by the amount of jelly, but not in the funny, exasperated way Gojo usually gets to watch when he goes overboard on the sweets.
“Oh no,” Blondie says. “He’s going to like you now.”
You should come again, Kusuo says, looking into the bag with awe. You should come every day.
“You can literally aport yourself as much coffee jelly as you want whenever you want,” Blondie complains. “Why are you so easily bribable?”
Kusuo sits down on the floor, unwraps a plastic spoon, and starts eating.
“Wow,” says Gojo, staring down at him. “A kindred spirit.”
“Anyways,” Blondie says loudly, shooting Gojo a dirty look, even though he was the one who told him to bring the coffee jelly. “Kusuo’s limiters have been on the fritz ever since he tried to get rid of his powers.”
Gojo raises an eyebrow. “Yeah? You tried to get rid of them? Why’s that?”
Kusuo, busy eating, does not respond. Truly, the kid is fickle.
“His powers function… sort of like an immune system,” Blondie tells Gojo, pulling his tablet out to show him a helpful diagram. “When we tried to suppress them permanently, they evolved to break through the suppressant in about a week, and after that the limiters he was using previously to keep them within manageable levels started exploding randomly and losing overall effectiveness, probably because of their similarity to the suppressors.”
“Fun,” Gojo says. “How many powers does he got?”
Blondie smirks at his brother. “Care to demonstrate, Kusuo?”
Kusuo opens another cup of coffee jelly.
“Fine, whatever,” Blondie says. “Kusuo can teleport, aport, astral project, time travel, shapeshift, fly, turn invisible, alter memories, turn people to stone, predict the future, use pyrokinesis, hydrokinesis, electrokinesis, cryokinesis, hypnosis, clairvoyance, psychometry, psychokinesis and thoughtography, rewind time on specific objects, alter DNA and human perspective on a planet-wide scale, change size, turn any drink into a carbonated liquid, create matroshka dolls from the palm of his hand, summon a large murder of crows, create matter out of nothing, upgrade a computer to Windows 10, and then of course he has telepathy and everything that comes with that, and super strength and speed and x-ray vision. He’s probably got more than that, but he doesn't experiment much, since he’s a baby, so those are the ones we know about.”
Kusuo continues to sit quietly on the ground and eat his coffee jelly.
“That’s…” Gojo trails off, because, loathe as he is to admit it, the kid does sound stronger than him. It leaves a bad taste in his mouth.
“It’s taking an active effort for him to not destroy the world as we speak, and I love my little bro, so I’m helping to ease his burden in any way possible!” Blondie says. “But like I said, I don’t think you’ll be of much help.”
“Are you really that strong?” Gojo asks Kusuo.
I’ve gotten stuck in four time loops since we started this conversation, Kusuo says. Power like this is really just a curse. If it gets any worse, I’ll probably have to just go to space and stick things out there until I get more control.
“Huh. That sucks. Sorry ‘bout that,” Gojo says.
“Can you please flip him inside out, Kusuo?” Blondie asks. “His face is stupid and I hate him.”
When have I ever done anything for you, Kusuo says dryly as he opens yet another coffee jelly. I’ll go back in time and undo it, so that you never get the impression that I’m willing to help you.
“Rude,” complains Blondie.
“I mean, I could take a shot at helping you out,” Gojo offers. “I’m pretty good at controlling my powers. How do yours work? You can hear my thoughts, right? Can any of the others break through Infinity?”
I can see your bones right now, says Kusuo.
“X-ray vision is… is that radioactive?” Blondie wonders, crouching beside his brother. “Do I need to worry about that? You obviously don’t, considering that you’re a god who can bend the world to your will, but I’m pretty sure that I can’t handle any more radiation on top of my uranium supplements.”
Don’t talk like that, Kusuo says. He turns to look at Gojo. Do you want me to try psychokinesis?
“Go ahead,” Gojo says, and then finds himself floating two feet in the air.
“Punch him,” Blondie says. “For science, not for my grudge. I want to know if you can touch him.”
Kusuo reaches out gingerly to poke Gojo. His finger stops an inch from his shoulder, but Kusuo frowns, and slowly starts moving again. He pulls away before making contact.
I could probably touch you, he says. But the built up momentum might kill you.
“Ah,” says Gojo. “I don’t know how to feel about that. I’m not sure that I’ll be of much help.”
“Like we thought,” Blondie sniffs.
You still brought him over, Kusuo points out. Also, it wasn’t a complete waste of time.
The kid’s more than halfway done with the huge bag of coffee jelly.
“I wonder if you crave sugar so much because you require more energy to upkeep your powers,” Blondie says thoughtfully. “I doubt you could starve to death- you’d probably start absorbing energy passively if you tried- but I’d bet that this is an effective way at collecting it.”
No, I just like how it tastes, Kusuo denies.
“You treat him like a god,” Gojo jokes.
“Shouldn’t I?” Blondie asks airily. “Kusuo is a god- a benevolent, boring one, but a god nonetheless. I’m just an average human. You’re a monkey.”
“This is one of the weirder complexes I’ve ever seen,” Gojo says.
“Oh, shut up,” Blondie says. “Any way you spin it, you’re beneath both of us.”
“Maybe me and Kusuo are the gods, and
you’re
the monkey,” Gojo counters.
Not a god,
Kusuo says grumpily.
“Not a human,” Blondie counters. “ Absolutely not a monkey.”
Kusuo shrugs uncomfortably.
“Who is a god, then?” Gojo asks. “What makes someone a god? If you don’t mind me asking.”
Not power, Kusuo says. Not creating something. Not knowing things.
He pauses.
I guess you’d have to be perfect, Kusuo finally says. You’d have to be able to do anything right, and feel everything right. It’s not me, that’s for sure.
“Ah!” says Gojo. “Well, that’s lovely.”
“It could be,” Blondie argues. “You could bend reality so that everyone always agrees with your decisions.”
What would be the point? Kusuo asks.
Blondie laughs, and Gojo joins him, but Kusuo just stares at his half-empty cup of coffee jelly silently. Gojo laughs, and laughs, and doesn’t think too hard about any of it, because what’s the point? He’s still the strongest- Saiki Kusuo isn’t a big fish in a small pond. He’s the pond, and he’s got no interest in eating the fish that are already in his belly. A human, a god, and a monkey sit on the floor of an empty office building- two monkeys and a god- a god, a human, and a monster- three monsters- three monkeys- two monsters and a god-
Three average humans sit on the floor of an empty office building and eat coffee jelly together. There’s no point to it- they just like it.