16 Pride and Power

The volcano spirit's smirk stretched wider. "This is fun for you? Can't you taste it, Satoru Gojo-" the sweet tang of death in the air?" It tilted its head, molten lava dribbling from its fiery crown. "No sense for danger, have you?"

Gojo felt a twitch of annoyance but kept his face carefully neutral. This wasn't just some rampaging beast. It was calculating. "He picked a deserted spot on purpose..." Gojo murmured, not to the spirit, but to himself. "Fewer eyes, no potential backup..."

The curse spirit didn't let him analyze for long. With a flick of its wrist and a guttural incantation, a swarm of Ember Insects erupted from the volcano's crater. Tiny, buzzing bodies blackened the air, a relentless cloud aimed straight for Gojo.

He raised his left hand, fingers splayed in a precise gesture. The insects slammed into his invisible barrier, a thousand frantic impacts reverberating through the air. Trapped, they circled uselessly.

For a moment, Gojo simply watched them. "What happens if it strikes..." He trailed off as a single insect shrieked, a terrible, high-pitched sound that clawed at his ears despite the barrier. Understanding flashed across his face. "Ah. Sound."

In the blink of an eye, the trapped swarm exploded. The earth shook, trees whipping back from the shockwave. And through it all, Gojo soared, leaping backward with a dancer's grace.

He landed, unharmed, already analyzing his opponent's technique. "Sound, then a follow-up explosion... smart."

The fiery creature didn't give him long to admire its technique. It lunged, a flaming left hand catching his face for a terrifying split-second. Then the heat was gone, and the curse was already cackling, delivering another blast that swallowed Gojo whole.

"Overestimated the weak, did you?" The curse's smugness echoed over the roar of its own flames. "Turns out humans today are a sham-"

"Won't you ever learn?" Gojo's voice cut through the sudden silence. The smoke cleared. Gojo stood, completely unharmed, and the surprise in the curse's single eye was almost comical.

"What-?" 

"Simply put," Gojo said, strolling towards it with deceptive casualness, "you missed me."

"Liar!" the curse shrieked, flames erupting around it. "I know I touched you, killed you-"

"What you touched was 'Infinity'," Gojo explained, his voice a chilling parody of a patient teacher. He doubted the creature grasped the concept, and that was just fine. Disorientation was a powerful weapon. "The Infinity between us."

"Infinity-" 

"I'll explain," Gojo offered, holding out his right hand. "Put your hand here."

The curse took a cautious step forward, then extended its own hand. It stopped just centimeters from Gojo's skin.

"I cannot touch him!" Its eye widened in sudden realization. "My hand...it stops!"

"Not really stopping," Gojo corrected, his voice still deceptively gentle. "More like slowing. The closer you get, the slower it goes. Now, what should we do next?" His enjoyment of the situation was barely contained.

"Hold hands?" he suggested, a flirtatious note slipping into his voice. The curse snatched its hand back as if burned. Yet beneath its anger, a flicker of fear now danced in its eye. Perfect. 

"I refuse!" It tried defiance, but the words rang hollow. Gojo simply tilted his head, pouting slightly.

"Aw, don't be a spoilsport. I'm starting to feel hurt now." His hand shot out, closing over the curse's.

Brutally, he drove his fist into its gut. Surprise turned to agony, a shriek echoing in the clearing. The curse's body jerked back, but their hands were locked. Gojo pulled the creature closer, delivering a relentless series of blows. It was a brutal symphony of cracking bone and desperate gasps.

With a final, vicious yank, he hurled the creature away, sending it spinning into the trees. It left a ragged, bloody trail behind it.

"Infinity's supposed to be everywhere," Gojo lectured, strolling towards the broken form. "My technique, it just makes it real again." He raised two fingers. "Convergence and Divergence. Guess what happens when they touch?"

A sphere of crimson energy crackled into existence between his fingertips. "Technique Reversal: Red." Pure destructive power lanced out, blasting the curse back through a cluster of trees, leaving a trail of splintered wood.

The curse hadn't even hit the ground before it was scrambling, mind racing. Direct attacks were worthless. It spotted Gojo blurring towards it, then unleashed a torrent of flame in his direction.

One moment Gojo was there, the next he wasn't. A flicker of movement, then a heel slammed into its side, sending it crashing into the nearby lake. Water splashed, and the creature sank, bubbles marking its struggle as Gojo perched on the shore.

"Ah," he murmured, seemingly to himself. "Should probably bring them here."

Beneath the water, Jogo was realizing how very wrong he'd been. Geto's warning, "Fine, but you'll die," echoed in his skull. He'd been ready to ignore it, all bravado and arrogance. Now, struggling for breath, Jogo chuckled grimly. Geto hadn't even been exaggerating.

Gojo was a monster. But Jogo was a survivor. If direct attacks failed... "Can't hit him," he gasped as a burst of water propelled him to the surface. "Then I'll open my domain." Desperate times, and all that. But first, where was Gojo?

Kaito's POV: 


I scrolled through streaming options on my phone, half-hearted. Even with Gojo's strict instructions to take it easy for a few days, boredom clawed at me. Something mindless, something with explosions...that's what I needed.

A sharp knock startled me from my endless search. Weird. Gojo usually just barges in, and Kugisaki... well, let's just say her knocking style was more a test of door durability. I stood up and padded to the door, swinging it open.

My jaw almost hit the floor. Gojo stood there, all casual smiles, holding...a guy. One unconscious, his body limp in Gojo's effortless grip. But the bright pink hair... that was-

"Itadori?!"

Before I could process this, Gojo gave me that infuriatingly cheerful grin. "Surprise! And we're going on a trip." Then my world got dizzyingly blurry as Gojo grabbed me too. I felt a surge of his cursed energy and a flicker of his Infinity technique... then everything snapped into focus again, but we weren't in my dorm.

"Where the hell...?" I started, but then Itadori registered in my vision. He gave me a sheepish wave.

"Oh hey, Kaito."

"Wait, Yuji? You're alive?" I asked, dumbstruck. I- I saw him-"

"Sorry, were you waiting long?" A voice cut through the confusion, snapping my attention back to Gojo and the fiery curse dude a few feet away. They were locked in a tense staredown, a silent conversation I had zero context for.

"That's Sukuna's host?" the curse asked, eyes wide. 

"This is Yuji Itadori and Kaito Murakami," Gojo's voice, deceptively carefree, filled the space. "They'll be observing this battle."

Observing...what? That sounded distinctly ominous. My gaze flicked between Gojo, the volcano, the now alive Yuji... and this was where my brain just gave up.

"Yeah," I managed. "Observing..." 

Yuji apparently found his voice a bit faster. "A minute ago we were at the college, how'd we get here?" he asked, echoing my own thoughts.

"Ah, we flew," Gojo replied cheerfully, like this was the most normal thing in the world. I had a sudden, vivid image of him grabbing us both and soaring through the air while whistling a jaunty tune. I choked back a laugh, the absurdity of the whole situation threatening to bubble up.

"You brought these brats here to act as a shield?" The curse narrowed his eyes, looking not only pissed, but suspicious. Well, fair, honestly. This whole thing was beyond weird.

"No, no," Gojo waved a dismissive hand. "They're just watching. In the middle of training, you know? So don't mind them, okay? Let's continue our fight."

The curse's lip curled into a sneer. "Two extra burdens? How foolish."

"It'll be fine," Gojo shot back, and I almost flinched. There was a razor-sharp edge under the playful tone. "Because you're that weak."

The volcano-creature erupted. Literally. Flames roared up, the air sizzling with sudden heat. "Do not underestimate me!" it roared. " I'll make you swallow those arrogant words!"

My heart kicked hard against my ribs. If this was "weak", what in the hell had I been fighting these past few weeks?

And then, because life was apparently a comedy right now, the bear chose that moment to break character. It swatted at me, a punch I blocked easily, but the annoyance flared.

"Seriously?" I sighed, my cursed energy twitching in response. It figured. More training. Guess I wasn't allowed ten minutes of normalcy.

"It'll be fine," he said, a quiet reassurance that was a lot more effective than it should have been, considering the circumstances. "Just stay close, okay?"

Before I could dwell on the strangeness of Gojo being, well, nice, the curse unleashed whatever fresh hell he'd been cooking up. "Domain Expansion: Coffin of the Iron Mountain!" he bellowed, and there was a grin on his face I really, really didn't like.

The world...shifted. No, it warped, the edges of reality blurring and twisting like a funhouse mirror gone wrong. One second we were on a mountainside, the next...

We were inside the volcano.

Heat slammed into me, an almost physical force. The air tasted like ash, each breath scorching my lungs. Lava flowed past like a glowing river, the popping bubbles somehow both soothing and deeply unsettling. Molten rock spattered around us, and the ground beneath my feet was hot enough to burn through shoes.

And this was just the scenery. The whole space was enclosed, jagged rock rising up and disappearing into a haze of heat towards the top. It wasn't the vastness or the danger that hit me first, but the sheer craft of it. 

For just a second, I was almost...awed. A glimpse at some twisted corner of the world, a testament to the raw power of jujutsu sorcery.

Then terror slammed back down like a falling wall. Yuji stumbled beside me, a muffled curse escaping his lips.

"What... what is this?" he stammered, eyes wide, scanning the fiery wasteland around us.

For a moment, Gojo just stood there, a flicker of amusement in his blindfolded eyes. Then he strolled forward, the picture of calm amidst the chaos.

"This," he announced, "is a Domain Expansion."

Yuji blinked, but I could tell his brain was a few steps behind. Mine definitely was. "Yuji," I gritted out, eyes darting around us, "don't touch the lava. It's real."

Yuji, hand outstretched towards a glowing river of molten rock, coughed sheepishly and pulled back. "Go on, sensei," he muttered, the embarrassment in his voice almost funny in the circumstances.

"Cursed energy," Gojo continued, and there was a hint of a lecturing tone in his voice now, "used to construct a domain. A technique that spans a surrounding space."

My mind snagged on a memory. "Like that dorm at the reform school?"

He shook his head. "That was incomplete. Without a technique imbued upon it. If it was a proper one..." he trailed off, and the silence was a chilling punchline. "All of you would likely be dead."

I nodded slowly, dread settling in my stomach.

"It takes a lot to make a domain," he went on, "but it's powerful. Stat boost for the caster, like a video game buff." With a flick of his wrist, he indicated an approaching boulder.

It burst upon impact, showering the landscape with harmless fiery pebbles. The curse clicked his tongue, clearly irritated.

"Also," and Gojo grinned, the expression wickedly boyish, "your technique, if you expand a domain... it hits. Guaranteed."

My brain, and Yuji's, gave up at this point.

"Guaranteed...?" We both parroted, disbelief thick in our voices.

"Yup," Gojo chirped. "Guaranteed." And the way he smiled...well, it wasn't reassuring.

"So...how would we defend against one?" The question slipped out before I could fully process it.

Gojo shrugged, nonchalant. "Take the blow with cursed energy. Or...escape the domain. But that's almost impossible."

He didn't get a chance to elaborate. The curse cut in, voice tight with an unfamiliar strain. "If I neutralize that 'Infinity' thing in a domain with even greater density... my technique will hit you too, right?"

"Sure thing," Gojo agreed, and I saw something in that casual confirmation that made my stomach clench. "It'll hit."

The curse's expression twisted, frustration warring with...something else. Fear, maybe. Or maybe just rage. "I did come here partly just to play," he thought, and I got the sense it was the truth, however warped. "Figured even if I couldn't kill him, it wouldn't matter. But..." The thought fractured, the confidence gone. "The difference between us...dammit. My pride, as a curse, as a human, can't take this!"

Gojo turned to me then, his smile fading into something far more serious. "Best way to counter a domain is your own," he said. "When two domains clash, the more refined one wins. That's why I'm making you work on your control, Kaito."

"NOT EVEN YOUR ASHES WILL BE LEFT, GOJO SATORU!" The Curse's enraged scream ripped through the air. The ground beneath us trembled as his fury erupted.

And with the same eerie calm that he'd used to explain domains, Gojo took off his blindfold. Slowly, he moved Yuji and me beside him, an island of cool amidst the lava flows and curse's rage. Then, crossing his fingers:

"Domain Expansion: Infinite Void."

I held my breath. We were about to find out just what kind of monster Gojo Satoru really was.