"So, Mr. Geto... did your trap finally get ready, or do you need a few more minutes?"
Geto, who was right in the middle of enjoying his dramatic villain monologue, froze dead in his tracks. The serene, superior smile on his face completely stiffened, transforming into a dazed, blank expression.
Silence stretched across the abandoned house for two awkward seconds before Geto suddenly let out a low, breathless chuckle. That chuckle quickly spiraled into a genuine, amused laugh that echoed off the rotting wooden walls.
"Hahaha... incredible. I constructed this specialized barrier array with extreme precision so that no sorcerer could possibly detect its cursed energy signature. When I learned Gojo might be coming along with you, I made sure the concealment was absolute. So tell me... how on earth did you see through it?"
"Wait, what?!" Gojo's head snapped around like a startled owl. He pulled his black blindfold up slightly, his bright blue Six Eyes darting frantically around the dusty room, scanning the floor, the ceiling, and the peeling wallpaper. "A trap?! Where?! When?! I literally checked this whole area down to the atomic level before we walked through the front door! I didn't see a single damn thing wrong with this place!"
Megumi looked back and forth between the panicking Six Eyes user and the monologuing villain, letting out a tired sigh.
"Oh, I didn't actually see anything," Megumi said, giving Geto a completely flat, deadpan stare. "I just figured a crazy villain like you would obviously set up a trap instead of trying to convince someone with a boring speech."
Geto's amused laughter abruptly cut off. His mouth snapped shut, his expression dimming into a cold, irritated scowl.
"Ha... so that's how it is," Geto muttered, shaking his head in disappointment. "I really overestimated you for a second there. In the end, you're really just a naive six-year-old kid trying to act clever. Instead of warning me out loud like an idiot, you should have silently activated your technique and struck first."
Geto raised two fingers, snapping his hands into a sharp, singular seal. "Because to answer the question you just asked... yes. My trap is indeed fully ready."
FLASH!
The moment those words left his mouth, blinding arrays of glowing red runes flared to life across the entire room! The dusty floorboards, the cracked ceiling beams, and even the rotting doorframes erupted in a sudden grid of harsh, crimson light.
Megumi stood right in the center of the glowing circle, blinking calmly as the ambient light illuminated his small face. He didn't feel any immediate pain or physical weight, just a bright glow that made the room look like an underground rave party.
"Hey, what is this stuff?" Megumi asked, squinting his eyes slightly. "Are you planning to blind us to death with cheap lighting, or—"
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
Before Megumi could even finish his sentence, an ear-splitting, blood-curdling shriek exploded right behind him!
Megumi whipped his head around, his eyes widening in pure shock.
Gojo Satoru was clutching his head with both hands, his fingers digging frantically into his white hair as if his skull was about to burst open from the inside! His mouth was open in a silent scream, his teeth grinding together so hard they made a sickening crunching sound.
And then, before Megumi could even process what was happening, the tallest, strongest sorcerer of the modern era completely collapsed.
CRASH!
Gojo's knees buckled violently, sending him crashing face-first onto the dusty, splintered floorboards. He didn't even land gracefully. His body crumpled into an awkwardly folded lump, his head planted squarely in the dirt while his butt stuck straight up into the air in the most humiliating, ungraceful posture imaginable.
Megumi stood frozen, his mouth twitching wildly as he stared down at the crumpled figure on the floor.
Are you fucking kidding me right now?! Megumi screamed in his head, his soul practically taking flight out of second-hand embarrassment. This is the strongest sorcerer in history?! The pinnacle of the jujutsu world, constantly hyped up in every single chapter and glazed by the narrator himself?! He just got blue-screened and dropped like a sack of rocks, pointing his ass right at the ceiling?!
Forcing his facial muscles to stop twitching, Megumi slowly turned his head back toward Geto. "You... what the hell did you just do to him?"
Geto stood on the porch, looking down at Gojo's unconscious body with a deeply satisfied smirk. "Nothing too violent, don't worry. I simply overloaded his brain with a massive, endless stream of useless information. Did you honestly think that in the last thousand years, not a single sorcerer ever bothered to develop a countermeasure specifically designed to fry the Six Eyes?"
Before Megumi could even process that piece of ancient anti-Gojo lore, Geto's fingers blurred into another rapid hand sign.
HUMMMMM!
A second layer of intricate, heavy seals lit up across the air, floating like translucent, glowing geometric patterns around Megumi's body.
The moment those seals activated, Megumi felt the atmospheric pressure in the room shift drastically. A cold, heavy sensation washed over his core, feeling as though a thick, solid iron lock had suddenly snapped shut over his soul. The natural, fluid flow of cursed energy inside his body went completely stagnant, refusing to budge even a single millimeter no matter how hard he tried to stir it.
His access to cursed energy was completely locked down.
Geto let out a long, relaxed sigh, brushing off the dust on his monk robes. "Honestly, I have no idea why you just stood there like a complete idiot and let me cast this seal without making a single move. But regardless... I have to thank you for your wonderful cooperation."
Megumi didn't panic. He didn't even shift his footing.
The reason he had stood there stupidly without moving wasn't that he simply didn't believe Geto possessed the high-tier barrier knowledge to pull off a complex, multi-layered trap like this entirely by himself.
There was definitely someone else pulling the strings behind the scenes.
Most likely Kenjaku—that ancient, body-hopping brain freak who literally took backshots as a woman just to birth Yuji Itadori. Megumi had intentionally stood still like a clueless target, waiting to see if Kenjaku himself was going to step out of the dark so Megumi could wipe that creepy brain out right here and now, saving himself from dealing with a massive headache in the future.
Megumi crossed his arms, looking at Geto with a dry, unimpressed expression. "Hey, buddy... are you going to reveal your partner in crime now, or is he hiding out in the woods?"
Geto chuckled softly, shaking his head. "Partner? No, don't worry about that. But you will meet him soon enough. He possesses a rather unique, perfect cursed technique that can make absolute, flawless use of your body once you're gone."
Yep, Megumi confirmed internally, his face remaining totally deadpan. It's definitely the backshot taker. Man... as utterly disgusting as that guy is, you really have to respect his sheer, terrifying dedication to the craft.
"Ughhhhh... what the actual fuck..."
A groggy, pained groan echoed from the floorboards. Gojo slowly stirred, his long limbs twitching as he pushed his face out of the dust. He rubbed his temples violently, blinking his bright blue eyes in utter confusion. "Hey... what just happened? Did someone hit my skull with a steel beam?"
Geto smiled warmly, looking down at his former best friend like a fond brother. "Gojo. Welcome back."
Gojo stumbled up onto his feet, swaying back and forth like a guy who had just consumed ten shots of cheap vodka on an empty stomach. He glared furiously at Geto, his voice raspy. "You bastard... what did you do to my head?!"
"Nothing much," Geto replied casually, raising his hands in a harmless gesture. "I just fed your Six Eyes a few billion gigabytes of useless garbage data until your brain threw a fatal system error and shut down. Although the countermeasure is actually stupidly simple—all you had to do was close your eyes—it seems to be remarkably effective the first time around."
"You piece of shit!" Gojo snarled, his face flushing with pure rage. He flared his posture, stepping forward to beat Geto black and blue, but the moment he tried to channel his power, he froze.
Gojo looked down at his palms in complete disbelief, flexing his fingers over and over again.
"Wait... what the hell?" Gojo muttered, his voice dropping into a confused whisper. "My cursed energy... I can't feel it! I can't channel anything!"
"Don't waste your breath," Geto said smoothly, his tone dripping with calm arrogance. "I didn't do anything crazy. It's just a specialized, high-tier barrier technique that completely blocks and suppresses cursed energy within its domain. It's ridiculously difficult to set up, mind you—the target either has to stay completely still inside the array of their own free volition, or be unconscious. But our little six-year-old friend here cooperated wonderfully! He didn't even try to summon those little shadow monsters of his."
Geto turned his gaze back toward Gojo, offering a fake display of generosity. "Anyway... since you let me leave once in the past, Gojo, I'll let you walk out of here alive today. I only need your little friend's body."
"Hey! You bastard!" Gojo barked, his knuckles turning white as he gritted his teeth. "Touch him and I'll—"
"Hey. Stop bickering like an old married couple," Megumi interrupted loudly, rolling his shoulders with a heavy, irritated sigh.
He stepped forward, looking up at Geto with a deadpan expression. "So... you're really not planning on capturing me alive, huh?"
Geto shook his head gently, his eyes cold and unfeeling. "No. We just need your physical vessel. Your little soul can go rest peacefully in the afterlife. Leave the rest of the world's problems to the adults."
"Ugh... what a massive waste of time," Megumi mumbled, shaking his head in sheer disappointment. "And here I thought I could bait out your secret boss and wipe out all my future trouble in one go."
"What are you rambling about—" Geto began, frowning at the kid's strange reaction.
He never got to finish his sentence.
Megumi didn't bother trying to force his locked cursed energy through his pathways. He didn't need to use cursed energy to activate his cheat code.
Instead, he directly triggered his innate Absorption ability.
VUUUUUUUUM!
An invisible, terrifying gravitational pull erupted from Megumi's small frame!
The massive, dense reservoir of hostile cursed energy that was actively powering the glowing red seals across the floor, walls, and ceiling didn't just flicker—it was violently yanked straight out of the barrier structure! Like a massive river being sucked into a black hole, every single drop of red cursed energy in the entire house roared toward Megumi, surging directly into his chest!
CRACK! BANG!
Without a single drop of energy left to maintain its form, the high-tier suppression barrier instantly shattered like cheap glass, dissolving into thin air!
The heavy iron lock suppressing Gojo and Megumi's energy cores shattered in less than a second, allowing their cursed energy to surge back through their veins like a roaring flood.
Geto's jaw dropped straight to the floorboards. His eyes bulged out of his head in absolute horror as he stumbled backward a step, pointing a trembling finger at the kid.
"What... WHAT?!" Geto stammered, his brain completely short-circuiting as he stared at the destroyed barrier. "How the hell... how can you activate your technique when your cursed energy is completely locked?!"
Megumi casually stretched his neck, letting out a satisfying pop as his black hair swayed in the sudden breeze.
He looked up at Geto with a deadpan, thoroughly unimpressed stare.
"Hey... don't look at me like I'm the crazy one," Megumi scoffed softly, throwing his hands into his pockets. "If I needed to use cursed energy just to absorb other cursed energy... wouldn't that make the whole ability completely useless?"
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