Chapter Text
“Cat is drawn to running water, not because he hopes to catch a glimpse of his own reflection but out of instinct – because he is inseparable from liquid.”
Yu Yoyo - Invisible Kitties
Satoru Gojo was a problem of millennial proportions; people as irritating as he simply didn’t come around every century.
Since he had been born, the lives of honest curse-users had become a fresh kind of hell, and the longer he lived, the harder life became. Sorcery had once been a crafty, lucrative business with no shortage of patrons. Everyone from politicians to mob bosses to downtrodden housewives had once come crawling before them, begging for favours and ready to pay in their own blood to receive them. They had been the dark wielders of humanity’s grief and rage - power that earned them respect and dread and, above all else, wealth.
Then that monstrous bastard had been born, and instead of ushering in a new age of sorcery supremacy, he’d turned it into a civil service. Now a fucking high school teacher had wiped out an industry of curse-work that had been holding up great houses built upon selling the seediest deeds for centuries.
All that was left were the cockroaches that had gathered in this grim, grimy hall beneath shady pachinko parlours and brothels - the remnants of the shattered houses that had refused to bend to the ‘Society’ that now asserted the authority to rule over them all. An authority enforced only by the hapless idiot with the Six Eyes. They were fewer in number now than ever before. The culling games had wiped out most of their number, but they had been an endangered species even before this. The Akagi family: gone. Genji Hamade: eradicated. The Juba siblings: picked off one by one. They were hunted by a smiling blue-eyed monster that none could stop.
“We tried killing him,” said one curse-user, whose evil deeds went as far back as the days when he had been a member of the cult that paid Toji Fushiguro to kill a bunch of teenagers to speed up the apocalypse. “It didn’t work.”
“None of us have the ability to kill someone like that,” said another curse-user, who had watched the live-streamed showdown in Shinjuku between Ryomen Sukuna and Satoru Gojo and had been very let down when the latter had ducked and lived.
“Trapping him didn’t work either,” said a third curse-user, whose family had been instrumental in the procurement of the very same cursed prison realm that had been sold to Kenjaku. It was the only object in creation that could theoretically hold a beast like Satoru Gojo, and it had contained him for no more than a month.
A fourth curse-user, who rarely spoke up in these meetings, finally put himself forward. “If we cannot kill him and we cannot trap him, then there is only one solution remaining to us,” he said. “He must be transformed into a more vulnerable state - and in doing so we can then trap and kill him much more easily.”
And so he revealed to his comrades a cursed object even more feared than the prison realm or even a finger of Ryomen Sukuna. The others looked upon it and shuddered, sensing the terrible calamities this object had unleashed - and what it had yet to inflict upon the world.
Yes. Surely this would be the downfall of the world’s worst sorcerer.
“What on earth…?”
Utahime gazed down in consternation at the little plastic object that had fallen from Gojo’s desk with a clatter the moment she had dumped the new timetables atop the rest of his abandoned paperwork. It looked like a PEZ dispenser, topped with the figure of a stereotypical ‘lucky cat’. She bent to pick it up, an eyebrow raised in disbelief. Bending the little cat’s lucky paw spat out one piece of chalky candy, square and pink, and then another.
She shouldn’t have been surprised. There were all kinds of bric-a-brac crap in this man’s office. Gakuganji might have asked her to drop off the new timetables to her colleague (not her primary duty, but she unfortunately happened to be in the area with no other work on her hands), but she could see the timetables from last term were still there, untouched and gathering dust beneath the latest stack.
Unwashed coffee cups were collecting in a concerning leaning tower at the edge of the desk, and his school planner - which didn’t seem to have been opened even once this academic year - was being used as a stage for a number of tiny Gachapon.
It seemed that ever since taking over Yaga’s office as the new principal, Gojo had assimilated some of the old man’s hoarding traits. He’d never even bothered to properly remove the old stuffed bears and other unidentifiable creatures lining the shelves on the walls. She sighed, making a mental note to chew Gojo’s ear off later. It wasn’t right for any man to be keeping his office in the state of some kind of archaeological experiment.
She popped the PEZ candy in her mouth and tossed the dispenser back down on the desk.
Two steps back toward the door and she stopped, paralysed by the hideous taste that flooded her mouth. It was bad. Like burnt sugar and vomit - urgh - it was getting worse! Utahime bent and retched, cursing Gojo for keeping dangerously expired sweets in his office. It felt like her stomach was inverting, reacting to invasion, forcing her down to her knees with a mewling moan. She clutched her throat as the bad taste transformed into an indescribably awful texture that made her tongue feel thick and sharp.
No. Wait! This wasn’t just rancid sugar - this was poison.
Too late, Utahime tried to spit, but already the PEZ had fully dissolved. She sank down further to the floor, hacking and hissing, as heat streaked beneath her skin in flashes.
The office stretched around her, looming large as her vision swam and dimmed. The heavy, stately desk became a sheer, towering cliff - and suddenly there was a blanket rushing over her. It was so endlessly large that no matter how she twisted and scrambled to escape it, she could no longer see the light. She crawled one way, found herself in a hollowed dead end, then tore the other way and ended up in some white tunnel of stiff linen. She blundered on, forcing her way through the terrifying tube until suddenly she was free.
“Heck!” she shouted, and raced for the door.
Whereupon she thumped into the wooden panel and looked up to see the door handle was a good few metres too high up for her to reach.
None of this made sense.
Utahime crouched and quivered, panting frantically to herself. It seemed to make sense to keep still right now. Something had attacked her! Probably that big pile of clothing in the middle of the floor. She hissed faintly at it, but not too loudly, in case it noticed her and came at her again.
Footsteps in the hallway outside. Her ears jumped. Electric zig zags raced up her spine. The door behind her opened, sending her flying like a pachinko ball, and in stepped-
A whole ass giant foot.
Utahime, in her terror, turned into black lightning and vanished in a flash through the door.
“Hm?”
Gojo was sure that had been a little black cat just now, slipping between his ankles to race out of his office. He looked up, acknowledging that he’d left the window ajar again. Well, that was probably his own fault - if he excavated the leftovers of his breakfast, then he would probably attract less wildlife in his office.
Whistling to himself, he went to slide the window shut and turned to assess what, if any, damage this little intruder had wrought.
His gaze fell immediately to the pile of clothing in the middle of his office floor.
“Wait…” he muttered softly, approaching it incredulously, but with the mounting delight of anyone who had found something quite strange and one of a kind.
These were, after all, Utahime’s clothes. He would know that prim little white and red outfit anywhere, that still bore the soft strains of her perfume and moisturising anti-wrinkle day cream. He lifted the kosode up with a careful finger hooked under the collar, and was a little astonished to see that even her underclothes were here: the thinner white robes and even a traditional style kimono bra.
And - Mother of All Gods - even her panties were here. Gojo held them up in revelation.
There were men who had spent their lives hunting for such treasures as the holy grail, and if they had ever succeeded, their delight would not have compared to what Gojo felt in that moment.
It was finally happening.
Utahime Iori had to be hitting on him.
Or she was streaking.
Either was a great option.
Or, cautioned his sense of reason, which was a little slower than his other reactions, this was a stitch-up. No doubt Gakuganji would come storming through that office door shortly, tipped off that Gojo had been stealing Utahime’s clothes. Again. Utahime Iori liked to put on the good shrine-maiden act for others, but only he knew she had a little devious streak. She always lit up with a smile when she found new ways to get him into trouble.
In retrospect, this being a trap was the most likely scenario. With a disappointed sigh, he folded up the clothes into a neat pile and went to stick his head out of his office door. A passing Window flinched at the sight of him.
“Hey, you!” called Gojo, startling the man even further. He must have been new. Outside the school, Satoru Gojo’s reputation was a creature that took on a life of its own, but once people had been here for a few weeks, they began to settle down and realise that Gojo could safely be ignored. This Window was still in the oh-god-is-he-looking-at-me stage of Gojo’s professional acquaintance.
“M-me, sir?” stammered the new Window.
“Yeah. Take these to Utahime Iori. Thank her for the gift, but I’m sure she’ll be feeling a little chilled without them.”
The man’s horror only seemed to triple as Gojo approached him and dumped the armful of clothing into his possession. Whether it was the proximity to such a legend or the prospect of approaching Utahime Iori to hand back her bra, the man’s fear was palpable.
“Chop, chop!” Gojo barked, noticing how the Window’s knees nearly folded with each syllable. Then he went back into his office with a laugh and slammed the door.
Something terrible had happened to the world. It was full of giants who moved as if wading through treacle. They were slow and lumbering and their voices boomed unpleasantly. She ran and ran, her belly close to the floor as she slithered along the edges of walls and searched for somewhere to hide from the alien noises and harsh lights that bloomed around her.
For a while she thought she’d found safety in a half opened box of old prospectuses. It was dark and somewhat warm, and none of the giants lumbering by seemed to notice her there, giving her precious time to think.
And also to sleep, because it was dark and warm and she was quite tired.
The next thing she knew, her hiding place jolted. A giant had come along and picked it up. She burst out in a panic, startling the giant who looked a lot like Takuma Ino, and dashed away again.
She slowed eventually when she reached the echoing well of the old stairs. She stood at the top, ears swivelling, startled that she seemed to be able to hear everything on every floor all at once. The laughter of students in the classrooms on the middle floor. The cleaners smacking their mops around the floorboards on the ground floor. The whispering of mice in the ancient walls.
No, something was not wrong with the world.
It was wrong with her.
But who was… she?
The cat huddled on the top step as she tried to recall the slippery minnows of her memory that were darting out of reach. She couldn’t be sure, but she was certain that her ears weren’t supposed to swivel. Her hands were not supposed to be round and stumpy and covered in soft black fur. She was not supposed to be followed around by a long black snake of a tail that swung and twitched in response to her agitation. She turned to regard it distrustfully, and swatted it a few times to make sure it knew who was boss.
A loud clunk below preceded the thunder of footsteps climbing the stairs toward her. Her instinct was to flatten, but she forced herself to sit up and peer down, to catch sight of the oncoming giants because there was something familiar about the pitch of those voices.
“...but I said to him, right, that it has nothing to do with me. He can go if he wants, but Utahime-sensei will absolutely blow a fuse if she finds out…”
“Right, he’s just asking for trouble.”
Utahime. Yes, of course. That was her name. How could she have forgotten? And the two girls coming up the stairs now were her dearest students.
“Miwa!” she cried. “Momo! I’m so glad you’re here - you have to help me!”
Momo and Miwa went still at the sight of her, staring in astonishment.
“I think I’ve been turned into a cat!” she explained.
“Aww,” said Momo, a smile breaking out across her face. “How cute!”
“It’s not cute! Listen to me - this is serious! We have to get the school leaders together and figure out how to change me back!”
“What do you think she wants?” Miwa wondered, cocking her head. “She’s very noisy.”
“Noisy?!” Utahime yowled, and then proceeded to go on a tirade about the lack of respect that students had for their teachers nowadays, though it might have had more of an impact on her students if they had heard anything but, “Myaaaa! Nreoww! Kekekekek.”
“Here, kitty! Pretty little kitty!” Miwa bent to twiddle her fingers toward Utahime, making nice little squeaky noises with her mouth that - Utahime had to admit - were quite compelling. She sidled forward for a better look at the fingers but recoiled with a sniff.
“Enough! Take me to Gakuganji,” she commanded her students.
“She’d look good on your broom, Momo-senpai,” said Miwa cheerfully. “Who do you think she belongs to?”
“I expect it’s just wandered in - I don’t see a collar,” said Momo.
Utahime shrank further back. Of course. No collar. No clothes. She was in fact completely naked. “Oh, heck,” she trilled.
“C’mere, Kitty, let’s take you outside,” cooed Miwa.
But Utahime was too swamped with embarrassment and frustration. She avoided the hands that reached for her - they were so slow, after all - and shot down the stairs. Each step taller than herself, but her new slinky legs seemed quite strong. She bounded along in little hops and leaps that would be unthinkable normally - and she tried not to think normally, because when she remembered that she was supposed to be walking upright on two long legs, her current legs seemed to get confused, and then she would stumble and sprawl like she couldn’t walk at all.
Ahead, she spotted a welcoming black gap where a door had been left ajar. A perfect hiding spot. She belly-crawled toward it, intending to merge and become one with the shadows inside, until the pungent odour of another giant wafted out. She froze. This hiding spot was already taken…
“I’m telling you, the trap already triggered, but it didn’t catch him,” said an urgent, whispering voice inside. “I don’t know - some woman. I think she must have eaten the cursed cat candy instead of Satoru Gojo.”
Her whiskers twitched. She remembered the office. She remembered the PEZ. She remembered the awful taste of the sweets dissolving on her tongue moments before everything had gotten so large and scary.
“I don’t think he saw it, we might still have a chance to trap him.”
Utahime snuck a little closer to the open door. Ordinarily, it would be too dark within to see anything, but right then she had a clear sight of a stranger pacing fretfully within the small storage closet, a phone to his ear.
“As long as she stays a cat long enough…”
Her hackles raised.
“It should be fine. The curse won’t break easily… she’d have to be in proximity to a much stronger form of cursed energy for her to turn back into a human.”
Hope bloomed in her narrow breast. It was a curse, and it could break. All curses were weak to stronger curses, of course, and the most potent form of cursed energy in all of Japan was right here in this school!
“No, don’t worry. I’ll kill any cats I find, just in case. Satoru Gojo will take the bait soon enough. That idiot loves sweet things, after all.”
Utahime hissed quietly to herself and scurried off, committing the vile scent of this traitor to memory. She had to find Gojo and warn him. And then she had to stick with him, because it seemed clear to her now that he might be her one hope of breaking this curse.
