She found it hard to believe, but his spiky white hair was unmistakable. The only difference in the picture was that he wore sunglasses to cover his eyes as opposed to his usual blindfold, however, there was no mistaking that it was still him.
That meant only one thing.
Gojou Satoru knew about the Codex.
Mina placed down her coffee and rubbed her eyes tiredly. Before when she'd asked him about the Codex, she thought he looked nervous. However, what doubts she had in assessing how much Gojou knew vanished upon seeing him in the picture.
The sly bastard lied to me.
A small seedling of distrust grew within her as the thought of the jujutsu sorcerer who had deliberately concealed this from her.
At that moment the bell door to the cafe jingled, and the devil himself strolled in. the special grade sorcerer had spotted her glaring at him from her table in the corner and strode over, grinning.
He sat down only to be met by Mina's now lukewarm coffee being thrown at his face.
It bounced harmlessly off him, not even touching him. Mina tsked and placed the cup down, glaring at Gojou Satoru.
"Mina, I'm five years older than you so shouldn't you respect me as your senior?" he joked playfully. He noticed her gaze turn frosty.
"Why are you mad?" he asked cautiously.
"You knew about the codex?" she asked flatly.
"I'm not sure of what you are referring to," he lied. Mina slammed a hand on the table, causing the other customers to jump and stare.
"Don't bullshit me Gojou, I know you found it a few years ago, so where is it?" She pressed on, but Gojou shook his head.
"I'll tell you eventually, but there are more pressing matters at hand," Gojou said, leaning back in the chair and observing her. It's barely been 3 weeks, but she's lost weight, he thought, noting the purple smudges under her eyes.
"Is this a game to you?" she asked quietly. Gojou blinked as he felt the temperature of the room drop as she glared at him angrily. The spilt droplets of coffee on the table crystalised as they froze.
"No, not really," he replied, continuing to survey her carefully, on guard should her disposition change for the worse.
"What pressing matters?" Mina asked, not noticing Gojou's probing gaze.
"Pressing matters such as your death." Mina blinked.
"Let me clarify. To the jujutsu world, you died alongside Itadori Yuuji that day."
"Cool," she replied, bored. She closed the laptop and placed it in her bag and headed for the door.
"The higher-ups wanted you both out of the picture, with Yuuji being Sukuna's vessel and you being a 'hostile' foreign entity, it was like killing two birds with one stone," he continued as they walked down the street.
She remembered that Geto had said something similar, and nodded.
"That's irrelevant, I could not care less about you and your damn sorcerers, just tell me where the codex is."
Gojou waved his hand dismissively, ignoring her glare.
"All in good time, but first, I have something to show you."
** ** **
"What is it Gojou?" Mina asked irritably. Gojou had wrapped a blindfold around her eyes and dragged her off somewhere. The exhaustion of the past few weeks were beginning to catch up to her, and she wanted nothing more than to find a bed and sleep for a week.
"Ohhh wait, let me guess. Are we going on a blindfold date?" she asked sarcastically. She heard Gojou cough and smirked at his discomfort.
"Don't worry, you aren't my type," she sneered.
"I have a surprise for you," he said, pushing her towards the door.
"Whatever nonsense you have planned, I hope for your sake it's important otherwise I'm going to punch you and trust me, it will connect," she warned. She heard a door open and then close, then the sound of excited footsteps running towards them.
"You can take the blindfold off now."
Rolling her eyes at the ridiculousness of the situation, Mina pulled the blindfold off and found Yuuji standing in front of her, grinning sheepishly.
"A...Are you a ghost?" she stammered, paling. She elbowed Gojou.
"Do you have ghosts in this world?" she whispered. Gojou merely chuckled at Mina's shocked expression.
"I kinda came back to life," said Yuuji awkwardly, scratching the back of his head, unsure of what to do in this situation.
"You... you're alive?" she walked over to him slowly, checking to see if he was okay. Yuuji smiled at her as she reached forwards-
-and slapped him across the face.
"OW! What was that for?" he pouted, holding his now reddening cheek.
"That's for going ahead and getting yourself killed," she muttered, but both Gojou and Yuuji could tell that she was happy to see them.
"It's good to see you again Yuuji."
Yuuji smiled.
"Me too Mina."
** ** **
"Okay so we both are legally dead," Yuuji confirmed.
"So Megumi and Nobara don't know we both are alive?" Mina asked.
"You both have targets on your backs, so I decided it would be best if you both remained dead for now until you both can look after yourselves properly," Gojou told them as they sat on the sofa in the TV room.
"Gojou, a word." She pulled him to the side and out of Yuuji's earshot.
"I have no desire to involve myself in your world's affairs, so back off."
"No."
"Do you wanna die?"
"I'd like to see you try."
Mina seethed. Just what was Gojou Satoru playing at?
Seeing how Mina looked like she was about to commit bloody murder Gojou raised a hand.
"Let's make a deal. I'll tell you where the codex is in return for letting me train you."
"....What?"
"Why would you want to train me?"
"Because you lack a refined control of your god-like powers that it will eventually end up resulting in your powers consuming you and costing you your life."
"And how would you know that?"
"Because the same thing almost happened to me once," he replied coolly.
"So, show me what you can do." Gojou had left Yuuji watching the movies to develop his cursed energy.
He stood opposite Mina as she sat cross-legged on the ground, watching him coldly. Without a word, she pulled a katana out of the shadow that hovered by her knee and levelled it at him. Gojou looked back at her, unimpressed.
"What else?"
He blinked and all of a sudden Mina was no longer sitting on the floor, but had materialised behind him and tapped him on the shoulder. He whirled around to face her and found himself surrounded by multiple copies of her, each the exact same copy. He went to touch her shoulder and found his hand pass through empty air as the image in front of him flicker before smacking his arm with the hilt of her katana.
"Guess again," the dozen Minas chorused, grinning amusedly.
"So how does this work considering you are still able to inflict damage, yet your opponent is unable to touch you?" he asked curiously, carefully surveying the remaining Minas.
"Each of these replicas holds a small fragment of my consciousness and power, so I'm able to direct how each of them move and attack," the Minas chorused back at him, which he found unsettling.
He sent out a wave of cursed energy, causing the Minas to shudder slightly from the impact, with all of them flickering except one.
Got you.
He levelled his attack at his target and struck, causing her to flinch at the impact. With her focus broken, the rest of the Minas dissolved into shadows on the floor which were absorbed back into Mina's shadow.
"You saw me using a barrier before. I used it again when Megumi, Yuuji and I were in the cursed domain. It works well and is impenetrable when I'm focused. I also have this technique that I discovered when fighting Sukuna. It was more of improvisation but I siphon cursed energy from others when they are using it. But if they stop using cursed energy, the connection is broken and the technique becomes useless. It's also annoying because it only works on cursed energy, so if I went up against someone like Asl-" she stopped suddenly, realising she'd said too much. Gojou looked at her curiously but thankfully didn't ask questions.
He saw how Mina looked distracted, clearly lost in a memory, and noticed the floorboards shaking slightly.
"Do you realise you have a habit of making things move when you're anxious or stressed?" Gojou asked. Mina blinked and looked at the ground.
"Oh yeah, that happens a lot. Watch this." With that, she raised a hand and a few floorboards creaked and groaned, peeling away from the floor as if made from butter and floating in the air. All of a sudden they stilled, before shooting towards him in a fraction of a second. They splinted as they came into contact with the barrier around him, but he was nonetheless impressed.
"tsk." Mina was annoyed by that annoying ability of his and flicked her wrist, causing Gojou to smack into the wall. It wouldn't hurt him but she still got some gratification out of throwing him about like a ragdoll.
"What about what you do with your mind? How can you do that?" Gojou asked, disengaging himself from his imprint in the wall. He'd known of physical attacks, but mental attacks was a completely new field to him. To his mild surprise, he noticed Mina's nervousness.
Considering the last time she forced her way into someone's mind, it didn't go all too well, which she'd ended up confessing to him.
Gojou nodded thoughtfully.
"Try to enter my mind again as you did with Sukuna," he told her. She nodded before closing her eyes.
Gojou watched her as she appeared to be doing nothing but stand.
That's when he felt the pressure building up in his skull which he had no means to defend against. The pressure grew stronger and stronger as his vision slowly dimmed before going pitch black as he felt as if he was thrown into a black hole.
He was surrounded by inky darkness, floating in nothingness.
"Mina?" he called out into the darkness, but there was no answer. He looked around before trying to move again. To his surprise, it worked this time and he was able to move. He kept moving through the darkness which began to get lighter, slowly turning into a dark grey colour.
He felt like he had been moving for ages when he came across a reinforced cage made of some material of which he was unfamiliar. The cage oozed menace and a frosty cold which felt like it would freeze his very bones The bars were so thick he could barely see what was inside.
Gojou peered closer and tried to decipher what he could in the darkness. He vaguely felt that there was something inside the cage but couldn't make out what it was.
Who is there? Came a voice through his mind, making his blood run cold. The voice sounded as cold as the temperature of the cage, and he couldn't say for sure, but something about that voice told him that he was in danger, grade one sorcerer or not.
Someone is there, aren't they? Come closer human. Let me see you.
The ancient presence he felt within the cage made him shiver, which he suppressed as he hurried away from the cage, the entity within the cage left unanswered. The area around him grew quiet again, with the only sound that could be heard being that of his own breath.
"Mina, where the hell are you?" Gojou muttered, fearful of what he just countered and eager to leave.
From the corner of his eye, he suddenly noticed something flickering in the distance. In the absence of Mina's presence, he wondered over to it and found what appeared to be a thin tendril of blue light stretching infinitely upwards. Curious, and against his better judgement Gojou reached forwards to touch it.