Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Wrong.
 
Something is wrong.
 
Everything comes back in pieces.
 
The first sense I regain is my hearing. Too loud, and simultaneously too quiet.
 
Touch. And then sight. Overwhelming and underwhelming all at once, a cruel dichotomy that sends me reeling as I open my heavy-lidded eyes; greeted with the sight of thick foliage and greenery towering above me, shielding the night sky from sight.
 
Grass tickling my skin. Wind gently rustling branches.
 
A moment passes. Or maybe more. I take in the calm scenery, and experience what can only be described as a sensory overload of catastrophic levels.
 
It takes a long while for me to gradually attune myself to the utter wrongness that encompasses the perception of my surroundings. The feeling still lingers, even after I finally grasp my bearings.
 
Then– something else.
 
The world wasn’t the only thing that felt wrong, my body did too. Skin that feels stretched too tight over my bones, the lack of movement from anything inside of me, the unnatural stillness of my body.
 
It feels like...like I’m dead. An animated corpse.
 
No pulse. No nothing.
 
My body– it feels squashed, compressed, similar yet not.
 
I lift my hands and–
 
Why the hell do I have jaundice.
 
The muddy yellow limb stretches out in front of me, moving smoother than any organic item could hope to. And my fingers. I only have four. Like the Na’vi.
 
Oh god.
 
I’m missing a finger.

And the rest of my body–
 
Panic drives me forward, and I’m standing on oddly shaped legs before my mind even has a say. My legs too– glancing down only confirmed it, they too were fundamentally different, more like an animal's hind legs than any human’s.
 
My mouth was where I felt my nose should be, face crumpled and smushed together in some abomination that surely spat on whatever a human visage should look like.
 
And– the extra pair of limbs on my shortened back. On instinct, they give an alarmed flutter, responding to my panic.
 
Wings.
 
Nothing between my legs either.
 
Everything is so wrong.
 
This has to be some sort of A grade drug trip, or something, because...what the hell.
 
Despite how amiss every movement i make is, I rapidly accustom to it. It's not like i have any other choice. Instinct drives my motions, along with muscle memory that shouldn't exist.
 
I move forward, on my hind legs first, mostly out of a habit of the mind. Memories of being human. Of having longer legs, skin that rests normally upon my frame, of skin that’s a comforting, healthy shade, and not my unhealthy, mustard pallor.
 
Walking is fine for a couple moments. Then my body acts on it’s own, guiding me to use the extra limbs behind me. They start flapping before I even register that I was doing it. Natural. Probably the most natural anything’s felt so far.
 
Small mercies.
 
This is the weirdest thing to happen to me all week. Or month. Or just– my entire life.
 
Or atleast, I think it is?
 
My memories are...patchy. For the most part. Events, things that happened, knowledge– all still there, thankfully. I can still recall trivia, my favourite shows, the recipes for my favourite meals. In better clarity than before, too. But other things blur. When it came to people, figures and names, I draw blanks. Parents? Their faces come to me smudged and I can’t even tell if they actually are my parents. I remember more in the sense of my feelings, rather than my memories.
 
All i garner from thinking of family is just a vague sense of something that might’ve been love, and a far more overwhelming sense of sadness.
 
Searching my scrambled memories doesn’t help me at all. From before I’d come here (wherever here is), the most I could remember was...well, nothing out the ordinary. I was pretty much anyone. The last full day i could remember– well, the most interesting thing that happened that day was that I’d spilled my morning brew.
 
Just anyone. Going to sleep one utterly unremarkable day. Only remarkable in how unremarkable it was.
 
And next thing– waking up here.
 
Unless there’s more that happened after I went to sleep that i can’t remember, but I could theorise possibilities forever and not gain anything. For now...my goal is just to figure out how I’ve ended up in the middle of nowhere. In a body that definitely is not mine.
 
My wings were still faithfully carrying me forward. They look like an angel's wings, really. Am i some sort of evil fae??

The forest stretches forward for what almost seems like infinity, and I’m honestly unsure how long I’ve been meandering forward. I’m about to change my tack when I finally come across something slightly different. A thick, overgrown wall of verdant bushes blocking my path. Being as small as I am now gives me an advantage, being just the right size to squirm my way through a gap roughly my size. And then–
 
Pine green gives way to an expanse of rippling navy.
 
The lake is breathtaking, a stretching sheet of black tinted glass, unnervingly calm but still alive in that way nature always is. The wind present earlier has all but disappeared, leaving an eerie silence in it’s place, but it doesn’t deter me for a moment from admiring the beauty of the scenery. Moonlight spilling down from above, reflecting off of sparkling water, uncontained and endless. Reeds border the edges of the lake, ghosting the banks and marking a path of an aquatic ecosystem undoubtedly thriving beneath the surface.
 
Beyond the banks and the trees, I can see the distant glow of light pollution in the sky, signalling the presence of civilisation. So that crosses being in a historical manwha off the list. Surrounding the reseviour on all fronts are looming mountains in the distance, natural skyscrapers of mother nature. They border the night sky, which is still remarkably bright despite the glow of city lights. Finally, in the centre of the picturesque scene, hovers a full moon. It stares down at me, and I stare back, relaxing minutely. It's nice to see a familiar face (even if it's an abiotic mass orbiting the earth). A sigh leaves my lips, out of habit more than anything else. I don’t need to breathe anymore, but my chest still rises and falls, a cruel mimicry of life.
 
I fly forwards, landing near the edge of the bank, soft grass tickling my feet– no, paws? Are they even paws?
 
A few steps forwards and–

I stare into the water.

Something peers back at me.
 
Oh man, this is even worse than I thought it was.
 
And it’s now that I finally put together exactly what I am. And where I am.
 
A freaking flyhead. Specifically, a lookalike to the one that Yuji carried with him when he was meeting Junpei for the first time. From the hit anime Jujutsu Kaisen. The isekai gods have to be laughing their asses off at my expense because…what. The. Hell. Who took one look at my life and decided to make a mockery of me like this? Sure, I can't fully recall my past life, but I'm pretty sure nothing i did could warrant this. Sure, I might've cursed out Gege, but what good jjk fan hasn't?

I could’ve been reborn in any anime. As any character. Even a minor one would have been a million time better than this– Miwa, Ijichi– hell, I'd go as far as to say that even Naoya (slimy, sexist bastard he is) would have been miles better than this.
 
The one thing that is fortunate is that fly heads are so weak they’re unranked on the grading scale Jujutsu sorcerers use, so I doubt any sorcerer worth their meat is going to go out of their way to kill me...but still. I've literally ended up as the most useless character in the series. I'll die of boredom before I die from a sorcerer.
 
I look absolutely horrendous too. Repulsive, icky, loathsome. Whatever words you want to use. Curses are ten times uglier in reality. I've never been vain in my life, but...damn. Anything would be a step up from this. And to top it off, my genitals. Gone. Nada. I died a virgin too, so i can only mourn the lost chances to lose that V card.

I'm rapidly accepting this new reality, almost alarmingly quick. If anything, it’s probably shock fending off panic. I have little doubt that, give or take a few days, I'll probably suffer through an existential crisis, but I'll take that when it comes.
 
Fate has dealt me the shittiest card in existence. I fall to my knobbly, yellow knees dramatically, in a puddle of cursed spirit angst, groaning at my shitty luck.
 
I'm in the middle of contemplating trying to drown myself in the lagoon in hopes of going back to my life, or being reincarnated again as something better, when I'm flashbanged by the sudden appearance of something blue. Something blue, 2d, glowing very brightly, and floating midair.
 
[Hello, USER. Welcome to the world of JUJUTSU_KAISEN. You have occupied this body for:]
[5 DAYS, 8 HOURS, 34 MINUTES AND 19 SECONDS]
 
The number of seconds creep up before my eyes.
 
I blink, poor cursed eyes adjusting to the bright light. Dang. Cursed spirits (or at least flyheads) have exceptionally poor eyesight in bright conditions. I'm forced to squint, and whatever this system is seems to respond (artificial intelligence?), dimming it’s display.

I smile, or as much as a cursed spirit can smile, at this good fortune.
 
A system.
 
Maybe I'm not as screwed as I initially presumed.
 
Maybe the isekai gods heard me cursing them out.
 
The system stays stock still for a good twenty seconds despite me patiently waiting. Eventually, my patience runs out. I jab a disgusting, mottled, mustard finger against the display, and it finally moves on.

[USER’s previous body passed away while asleep. An incident regarding another USER from your previous world incurred this, and as repayment, USER has been given a new life in selected world, JUJUTSU KAISEN.]
 
Well, that’s something to take in. So, I'm evidently someone who’s been blessed with a system thanks to some bozo from my old world. I have questions. A lot. Is this world of Jujutsu Kaisen the same as I remember in canon? When did I ‘select’ this world? Are there other users in this world, too? Who killed me?
 
The system responds to my thoughts and I shiver. Creepy.
 
[World JUJUTSU KAISEN is accurate to canon, with liberties taken only where there is no context provided in canon. For USER’s sake, laws of the universe and history are largely the same as the universe USER departed from.]
 
[USER selected this world after passing. It is normal for USERs to suffer disconnects and/or gaps in their memories where it would only cause excess mental strain.]
 
[USER is the singular USER in this universe. It is customary to only have one USER at a time in a world.]
 
That answers some of my questions, but not all. In fact, now I'm thinking wider, what is the system? Is there a higher entity at play? Is the system going to give me any actual benefits?
 
[SYSTEM is an integrated, artificial intelligence system designed to aid Universal aSsigned Entities of foRtune, aka, USERs, in fulfilling their dying wishes before passing on.]
 
[USERs are handpicked by Admin_FATE. USER is not chosen by Admin_FATE, but USER was killed by a selected chosen, and has such have been given a second chance as an act of goodwill.]
 
[If USER is finished asking questions, this SYSTEM can get to finalising integration to this world, along with USER’s abilities.]
 
I ponder for a couple moments. This is a hell of a lot to take in, but by the looks of it, I've basically been given a second chance at life. I don’t remember too much of my old life, but i do remember feeling unfulfilled. Like there was something missing. I had spent a long time pushing that feeling away by consuming media like no tomorrow, reading, viewing, consuming, all of it. I'm not naïve enough to think that i'm the only one to have experienced feelings like that, but if I make the best of it, this could be a good thing.
 
I still have some questions floating about, mostly revolving around this unknown entity– FATE. Who are they?
 
I blink upon seeing the system tweak out.
 
[Program_Directive (Admin_FATE inquiry). USER clearance level (read; CL) = 1. IF CL <= 10: Bypass = FALSE. USER lacks required CL. Resolve before asking again.]
 
Dang. Oh well. I shrug before gesturing to the screen. That was really my only other question for now, and I’m not great at coming up with stuff on the spot, so…

[SYSTEM loading…finalising USER_IDENTITY in world JUJUTSU_KAISEN. SYNC progress 50% halted, reloading program USER_IDENTITY…50%...51%....52%...]
 
I watch as the progress crawls up, and it reminds me of waiting boredly for my PC to finish it’s Windows update. I slump back on the grass, my cursed ass meeting the ground. I rest my elbows onto my knees. The more the progress creeps up, the less that feeling of wrong is present, fading further and further. Once the percentage hits 100, it’s just a memory. Nothing has drastically changed upon reaching the milestone, but I do feel more at ease in the body I inhabit. A shiver racks my frame at the thought of the system being able to tamper with my mind.
 
[SYSTEM loaded successfully! SYSTEM booting up program USER_INTERFACE…18%...56%...88%...100%]
 
[Profile]
[Skills]
[Quests]
[Inventory LOCKED]
[Shop LOCKED]
 
[Don’t worry, USER. SYSTEM cannot interfere with USER’s mental state, despite having the ability to read USER’s thoughts. Only Admin_FATE has such an ability, and it has only been used once upon USER’s arrival to world JUJUTSU_KAISEN.]
 
I blink, absorbing the info. Made enough sense, I supposed. Another brush of my cursed skin against the HUD opens the Profile section.
 
[Profile]
 
Name: [UNKNOWN]
USER may choose a new name.
Age: 16
Species: Cursed Spirit (Flyhead)
Titles: Transmigrator (legendary), USER (legendary) , Cursed Spirit (uncommon), Ungraded (common)
FC bal(ance): 0 FC
 
Level: 1
0/100 exp
 

+ CON: 2
CONstitution: Your body’s composition. Vitality, fitness, health, and stamina.
+ DEX: 10
DEXterity: Your ability to move. Agility, reflexes, balance, and fine motor skills.
+ STR: 4
STRength: Your body’s power output. Force, workload, muscle mass, bodily power.
INT: 15
INTelligence: Your mind’s knowledge. Trivia, memory, reasoning.
WIS: 10
WISdom: Your ability to use knowledge. Intuition, common sense, experience.
PER: 1
PERception: Your ability to sense the world around you. CE sensing, fifth sense, detection.
 
Free Points: 2
2 have been given as a show of good faith.
 
Similar to DnD, I note, but not quite the same. Charisma is missing from the stats, for some reason, and perception is new. That’s usually lumped in with wisdom, but I guess thanks to the presence of cursed energy it’s now separate? My stats are kinda lousy, but then again, I am a flyhead. Can’t expect too much from a creature so weak that sorcerers don’t even bother grading them.
 
I have a hella nice intelligence stat tho.
 
It seems I'm able to improve my stats (I wonder how improving intelligence is meant to work in real life?) by allocating free points to whatever section I please.
 
More importantly, it’s implied that I can change vessels. So I might not be forever condemned to the fate of a flyhead.
 
A cheerful ding pierces through the prior silence.
 
[USER has been gifted a [Starter Pack x1] for new USERs. Open?]
 
[YES]          [NO]
 
I select yes by auto. Its a free starter pack. Emphasis on the free. No point delaying my sweet, succulent free rewards.
 
[USER has gained: General Skill Spoken Japenese Lv. 5, Innate Skill Misdemeanour and Retribution Lv. 1, Innate Skill Inspect Lv. 1, Innate Skill Fourth Wall Lv. 1, and 100 FC. Message: ‘Good luck, new USER!’]
 
Neat. Free stuff. I guess i'll probably find out more about those under the Skills section.
 
Now...before i get sidetracked, my name.

Trying to recall my actual name yields no results except a slight headache from thinking too hard, so that’s a bust.

A name…what name could i choose? Maybe a subtle reference to being a transmigrator. Preferably gender neutral for added mystique. I am a curse now, after all. I have achieved prime gender neutrality, at the cost of being forever a virgin. Unless i switch to a vessel capable of...actually, maybe im fine like this. No more gender wars for me. I can’t recall what i was before death anyways.
 
A name.
 
Something related to the stars? I stare upwards. Towards the heavens. My old world might be out in one of the universes up in the sky. It’s an odd feeling, thinking that I'm likely trillions upon trillions, probably even more, miles from my home. Perhaps the star I'm looking at now homes my Earth. Unlikely. Still– wishful thinking never hurt anyone. My home is probably beyond the visible stars, if I'm now in a different universe. Even with my improved eyesight at night.
 
Beyond the stars.
 
Kanata, some part of me whispers. Sounds Japanese, i think in reply. I'd never learnt it beyond gaining some very minor knowledge through osmosis. Through inhaling content. In fact, now that I'm giving it thought, I find myself suddenly realising that…yeah. I have knowledge of the language. Basic conversation, I'd probably be capable of doing. Romaji fills my head, and I blink to express my shock. Well, it’d be useful for communication, at least. If I ever attempted that.
 
I had often wondered what isekai protagonists do in fiction when they’re isekaid into some random fantasy world that's supposed to speak Japanese while readers still read the fic in English. Obviously it might make reading the work a bit hard if they actually spoke Japanese because…well, I couldn’t understand Japanese before all this, but I did often find myself pondering that as a brain worm when I'd gotten bored of the story, or just distracted in general.
 
I tap the Name section of my profile, and a 2d keyboard in a similar style to the blue HUD pops up. I type in my chosen name. Kanata. I can probably change my name again later if I get bored anyways, and as of current, there’s nobody to be told my name. If nobody knows my name except me and i die, am I then nameless or am I still named? Thoughts.
 
I decide not to apply the Free Points just yet– after all, there’s no reason to rush into that decision for now. Hindsight is better than foresight, and I don't wanna waste those points.
 
I exit out the Profile area, before selecting the option just under it. Skills.
 
[Skills]

 
Innate Skills:
Misdemeanour and Retribution Lv. 1

Inspect Lv. 1

Fourth Wall Lv. 1

 
Vessel Skills:
Flight Lv. 10 [MAX]

Cursed Vision Lv. 10 [MAX]

CE Manipulation Lv. 5

Basic Combat Lv. 1

Reverse Cursed Technique Lv. 1

 
General Skills:
Skilled Reader Lv. 10
Spoken Japanese Lv. 5
 
A lot of these Skills are pretty useful.

I side-eye the ripped-off Crime and Punishment skill. Is the system implying i should become a villain like Kenjaku and Fyodor?? Yeah, as if i have that in me. Man, that's something else to worry about. Kenjaku alone is a whole can of worms i don’t want to open now that I'm in this universe. Still…a new vessel would be top tier, and probably not too hard to get if I managed to piss off some special grade curse.

 
Fourth Wall also sounds pretty useful...and is likely part of the reason I haven’t started crashing out yet over this new-reality shtick.

If I'm Kim Dokja In this scenario, is Kenjaku, Gojo or Sukuna my Yoo Joonghyuk?
 
Moving on.
 
My...Vessel Skills’ levels are pretty low if they’re out of a hundred. The fact that a few of them are already maxed at 10 implies that being a flyhead is preventing me from getting them any higher. I'll have to experiment with levelling up my other skills instead.
 
Reverse Cursed Technique is something I definitely want to improve, too. That’s pretty op. I'm not sure what a flyhead's Innate Technique is, exactly, but I might also be able to experiment with Cursed Technique Reversal.

Just in general...I probably want to improve everything.
 
I stretch my spindly limbs out, missing the feeling of relief that would usually accompany a nice stretch. People aren’t wrong when they say there can’t be good without the bad. There's no comfort of the feeling of a good stretch without the discomfort of sitting prone for too long.

The light is starting to peek over the horizon, sparking my thought trail to go veering off to another thing. The whole 'cursed vision' stuff is going to majorly suck during the day. If I get attacked, I might be fried and not even see it coming until the last moment. Buuut...as long as I don’t go attacking sorcerers willy nilly I'll probably be all fine, and i doubt any other curses will get me.

I haven’t seen any other curses, surprisingly, but it only takes me a moment to tap into that special sight mentioned by Nanami that allows cursed energy users to see residuals. It allows me to pinpoint a few curses of low grades nearby. My cursed radar, as i'm hereby dubbing it, isn’t very good. It roughly extends about a 20m radius around me. It probably links into that perception stat.
 
Despite my earlier misgivings about this vessel…it might actually benefit me yet. No sorcerer is going to go out their way to attack me thanks to how weak I am, provided I don’t attack them or some poor random citizen. I'd like to assume other curses wouldn’t bother with me, but I wouldn’t complain if something killed me. Anything might be an upgrade from a flyhead (even if being one provides me mild protection from sorcerers).
 
The sun really is starting to crest over the horizon now, and predictably, my eyesight is getting worse. I pinpoint the direction of where I saw light pollution earlier– civilisation– and begin meandering forward. The system screens travel with me.
 
I select the final heading that’s available.
 
[Quests]

Main Quests:
 You have none.

Daily Quest:
[Target Practise!] Hit something with CE ten times (0/10)
Reward: 10 exp

Side Quests:
You have none.
 
So…assigning myself quests is possible? Sure, the system has to approve them and all, but I probably want to get onto that so I can get stronger. Strength means a lot in the sorcerer world. Aka jjk.

In that case, I might as well get to brain storming. Depending on where i am in the timeline, i need to decide if I'm going to get involved in the plot. Would it be worth changing the whole Star Plasma Vessel arc? Saving Riko would be fine, i expect, because Tengen's merger fails anyway...but going about that is a different matter. One that needs strength, and a lot of planning, especially if I'm trying to stop Toji Fushiguro, of all characters.

Just imagining trying to get in his way gives me a headache. Unstoppable force meets extremely moveable object.

Ding!

[New Side Quest: [What Year Is It?] Find out when and where you are currently (0/1)
Reward: 20 exp, 10 FC]

[New Side Quest: [Gains] Improve your Strength stat by 1 (0/1)
Reward: 20 exp, 10 FC]

I tap back into my profile instantly and assign one free point to strength, swiping away the 'Quest Complete!' Notification. Sweet rewards.

So getting quests is as easy as thinking about it. Nice. However, i meant strength more broadly than just increasing my strength stat...

[New Main Quest: [Free From Ungraded Prison] Gain a vessel of Grade 4 or above (0/1)
Reward: 50 exp, 20 FC]

Yeah, that also works.

Trudging forward, with my slowly deteriorating eyesight, i continue mulling over my plans for the future. What-ifs and what-to-dos about the doomed plot of jjk.

I love the story. I love the characters.

Do i love them enough to risk everything i have now?

The answer comes quick. Yes.

I dodge under a particularly low branch hanging off an evergreen oak.

I don't really have anything else. No memories of the people of my past, no names or faces...but i remember this. This anime. Jujutsu Kaisen. The characters i loved, lost and mourned. I remember them more than my own family, and that's a sobering thought.

Everyone who died, that could have possibly been prevented. Riko, Junpei, Geto, Nobara, Megumi, Nanami, Gojo...and so many more.

And I'm the only one who knows what's coming.

My resolve strengthens.

I'm not human anymore, but...I really would become a monster– no, a curse, if I allowed them all to die and did nothing. In a weird way, they truly are all I have. I will save them. Perhaps, even if it costs my life.

I'd already died once.

A second time wouldn't hurt.

(Hopefully.)