Jujutsu Kaisen — Chapter 101 - Two Simultaneous Special Grade Alerts!

The door to the principal's office swung open.

Toji Fushiguro walked in bare-chested, his knotted muscles smeared with black ash.

He held a bundle of charred rags in both hands and moved with heavy steps to Masamichi Yaga's desk.

"Principal." Toji's eyes were red, his voice unsteady. "It died in the line of duty."

Masamichi Yaga was holding the long needle he used for wool felting. His fingertip twitched.

"This is a casualty of Youth!" Toji slammed the lump of charcoal onto the desk and bellowed with absolute conviction. "One million yen! I'm applying for full reimbursement for the sacrifice of my limited-edition, breathable, anti-static battle robe!"

The veins on Yaga's forehead throbbed.

He drew a slow breath and shoved the wool felt into a drawer.

"You took three new students on an unauthorized off-campus training exercise." Yaga kept his voice level with visible effort. "You burned a mountain bald. And you have the nerve to come to me for a clothing reimbursement?"

Satoru Gojo sat cross-legged on the sofa and took a bite of his Kikufuku.

"Yeah, gorilla."

"Weren't you supposed to be physically invincible?" Gojo's tone was light, almost cheerful. "How'd you manage to lose a shirt?"

Toji whipped around to glare at him.

"What the hell do you know about Youth!" Toji's fists clenched. "To push those kids to their limits, I was fighting while standing in two-thousand-degree magma!"

Outside the door, Megumi Fushiguro rolled his eyes.

If this bastard of a father hadn't insisted on lying in the crater playing dead, hadn't insisted on putting all three of them through that little ambush, the shirt wouldn't have burned in the first place.

"Enough. Cut the crap." Yaga shut down the farce, his expression going flat and serious. "Business. The Window's observation report flagged a Special Grade burst of Cursed Energy at Mount Okutama. What happened?"

Toji picked at his ear and jerked his chin toward the door.

"Megumi, you brief them. I need to mourn my combat suit."

Megumi sighed and walked in.

"An unregistered Special Grade Cursed Spirit."

His words came fast and clipped. "Volcano for a head. Capable of controlling magma and ultra-high-temperature flames."

Satoru Gojo stopped chewing.

"The critical part." Megumi paused. His tone shifted. "It had full human intelligence. It could hold a conversation. And it deployed a complete Domain Expansion."

Yaga went still.

Most Cursed Spirits were rabid dogs running on instinct.

Something that could talk, think tactically, and open a Domain, that wasn't a Cursed Spirit in any traditional sense.

Toji dropped the dazed, grief-stricken routine. His eyes went cold.

"Maximum Technique: Meteor." He rubbed his chin. "That damn teapot dropped a magma ball 50 meters wide. If I hadn't opened the Sixth Gate, those kids wouldn't have had ashes left."

Satoru Gojo rose to his feet.

Behind his sunglasses, his pale blue eyes narrowed.

"A talking Special Grade." A cold smirk pulled at the corner of his mouth. "Never seen the type before. Someone is quietly collecting these disaster-class monsters, and whoever it is, they're aiming specifically at Toji."

Rapid footsteps echoed from the corridor outside.

"Principal! Gojo-senpai!"

Yu Haibara blew through the door like a gust of wind, face lit up, one hand still clamped tight around another man's arm.

The man he'd dragged in wore a crisp beige suit and protective goggles.

Everything about him radiated overworked corporate employee.

"Settle down, Haibara." Kento Nanami peeled Haibara's hand off his arm and straightened his slightly wrinkled cuffs.

"Nanami!" Gojo's face instantly split into a grin. He spread his arms and lunged. "You finally quit that soul-crushing company and came back to the warm embrace of Jujutsu High!"

Nanami sidestepped. Gojo hit empty air.

"Please don't describe the miserable choice I made between two piles of garbage as though it were something touching."

Nanami adjusted his goggles.

The "Corporate Slave Domain" Megumi and Yuji had somehow conjured up at his company a few days ago had given him all the clarity he needed.

"Rather than rot away inside a company where a high-pressure need for control could spawn a Special Grade Cursed Spirit at any given moment."

His voice was flat. "I'd rather be here. At least Jujutsu High keeps its lunatics visible. I don't have to guess."

Something close to relief crossed Yaga's stern face.

Then the phone screamed.

The red internal secure line on his desk lit up, flashing rapid and urgent. That phone only rang when something had gone wrong at a city-wide scale.

Yaga snatched the receiver.

2 seconds of listening. His expression dropped. He hit the speakerphone.

The Jujutsu Headquarters liaison's voice filled the room, slick with cold sweat.

"Emergency alert! 2 Special Grade warnings triggered simultaneously!"

"First: Fukushima Prefecture chemical plant. The Window has detected severely distorted Cursed Energy fluctuations inside the underground sewage system. It's expanding fast."

"Second: West Tokyo Eiju Juvenile Detention Center. A Special Grade Cursed Womb has condensed above the facility. Ryomen Sukuna's distinct Cursed Energy resonance has been detected inside. Confirmation nearly certain — Sukuna's second finger is on-site."

The line went dead.

Two Special Grade incidents. At the same time.

Every trace of ease left Satoru Gojo's face.

"Fukushima and West Tokyo. One east, one west." His voice was cold. "We just uncovered that someone behind Unbounded Technologies has been brainwashing the executives, and now they hit us on 2 fronts at once. Trying to run us ragged?"

Yaga moved without hesitation.

"Nanami just got back. He stays at Jujutsu High on standby, ready to deploy as mobile support."

He turned to Megumi.

"Fushiguro. Take Yuji and Kugisaki to Eiju Juvenile Detention Center. Confirm survivors. Retrieve the finger."

His tone left no room. "Your own safety comes first. If it's beyond you, call for backup immediately."

"Understood." Megumi was already moving.

"Fukushima." Yaga's brow pinched tight.

Too far. Situation unknown.

"Send Yuta." Gojo cut in before Yaga could finish. "Take Maki and Inumaki with him. That kid's been put through the grinder lately. Good time to see what sticks in a real fight."

---

The next day.

Fukushima Prefecture. The outskirts of Okuma Town.

Between the nuclear accident and years of chemical plant runoff, this place had long since hollowed out into a semi-abandoned dead city.

The air reeked, sharp, acidic, industrial.

Three figures moved fast across cracked asphalt.

Maki Zen'in had her large naginata resting on one shoulder. She waved the air away with open disgust.

"This place's stench is truly something else." She tilted her head toward the young man on her right.

Yuta Okkotsu carried a katana wrapped in white cloth across his back. His gaze swept the surrounding ruins, alert and steady.

The months of intensive training had changed him. He'd filled out. His uniform pulled tight over muscle that hadn't been there before, and something sharper had settled into his eyes.

"Yuta." Maki looked him over. There was an edge in her voice she wasn't quite hiding.

"What kind of freak constitution do you have? That green-skinned gorilla hasn't even drilled you for 2 years, and you're already touching the threshold of the Third Gate?"

She curled her lip.

"Add Rika on top of that shikigami power of yours. Give it a little longer and you'll be the fourth Special Grade."

Toge Inumaki pulled down the collar covering the lower half of his face and gave a solemn nod.

"Salmon."

"Senpai, please don't tease me."

Yuta scratched the back of his head, cheeks going faintly pink.

He glanced at his own palm. The calluses had thickened across every line.

His muscles did carry explosive power far beyond what he'd had before, several times over, at least. But he wasn't a pure physical specimen like Yuji.

"I rely on Rika's enormous Cursed Energy to force-flush my meridians," he said, perfectly earnest. "It's basically cheating. If we're comparing raw constitution alone, I'm not even half of what you are, Senpai. Besides, you've already reached the Third Gate yourself, haven't you?"

Maki rolled her eyes.

He called it cheating, a training method that meant enduring your meridians being shredded by Cursed Energy while simultaneously forcing your body to hold the line. A training method that should have broken him.

Soft on the surface. Completely out of his mind underneath.

"Stop trying to make me feel better." Maki tightened her grip on the spear. "Mine is pure time investment. Six full years to get here."

BOOM!

The explosion tore out of the chemical plant's core zone 2 kilometers ahead and hit them like a wall.

The ground lurched.

The asphalt beneath their feet buckled and rolled like water, splitting apart in thick jagged lines.

From behind the plant, a toxic cloud billowed up, a sick, ghostly green, churning and climbing until it punched into the sky.

The gale that followed carried the stench with it and swept through the entire street in seconds.

"Cough—" Inumaki choked and clamped a hand over his mouth and nose.

Yuta ripped the white cloth off his katana in one motion and reversed his grip on the hilt.

A dense, enormous wave of Cursed Energy rolled over them like a tide.

The air filled with it, a smothering hallucination of thousands of voices screaming in despair, all at once.

"Something's wrong."

Maki's eyes locked on the churning green cloud. Her spear rotated half a turn in her hand.

Her gaze went ice cold.

"This isn't an unhatched Cursed Womb."

"Whatever was inside — it's already broken out."

➤ Next: Lethal Spores and the Unknown Cursed Womb