GloryHound(Worm/Jujutsu Kaisen SI) Chapter 13

Kaiser: Deceased.

Purity: Deceased.

Stormtiger: Deceased.

Hookwolf: Deceased.

Crusader: Deceased.

Cricket: Deceased.

Victor: Deceased.

Fenja: Deceased.

Menja: Mutilated, but alive.

Rune: Mutilated, but alive.

Othala: Mutilated, but alive.

Krieg: Last seen fleeing Brockton with his family in tow, barely twenty minutes after being unmasked.

Alabaster: Tentatively presumed dead—last visual confirmation was of him being gleefully devoured by Kurourushi.

New Power Unlocked: Cursed Spirit Manipulation: Kuchisake-Onna Summoning.

New Power Unlocked: Granite Blast

New Power Unlocked: Wind Scythe

New Power Unlocked: Chain of a Thousand Miles

New Power Unlocked: Ten Shadows Shikigami: The Well’s Unknown Abyss

New Power Unlocked: Sound Amplifier

New Power Unlocked: Inverse

New Power Unlocked: Tool Manipulation

New Power Unlocked: Unkillable Mode

Error: Multiversal Counterpart Not Found

Error: Multiversal Counterpart Not Found

The Empire Eighty-Eight’s collapse had nearly torn a hole in Brockton Bay, but for him, it was an unexpected windfall—a catastrophic event that offered him both answers and ammunition.

Kaiser granting him Kuchisake-Onna had been… odd, but made a twisted kind of sense. Kaiser's ability allowed him to generate and control metal constructs—primarily blades. The Cursed Spirit Kuchisake-Onna favored oversized scissors and enforced a deadly question-answer mechanic inside her domain. It was a stretch, but the symbolic link was clear. He might’ve hoped for something as broken as Malevolent Shrine, but he wasn’t going to complain about domain-denial and high-tier spirit summoning.

Purity had been more predictable. The Granite Blast technique was exactly what he’d expected. She could flatten a city block with her light-based power, and now, so could he—albeit with more precision and a different flavor. A raw, kinetic shockwave of condensed energy that punched through steel like it was paper.

Stormtiger had gifted him Wind Scythe. A versatile, ranged technique—albeit one that required a conduit to shape the wind into something lethal. A sword, a stick, even a rod of rebar would do. It was his first power reliant on an external focus. Not ideal, but manageable.

Chain of a Thousand Miles, gained from Hookwolf, was more unexpected. The weapon was strange—allowing a chain to extend indefinitely so long as the end remained unseen. He wasn't entirely sure how to weaponize it yet, but it had potential: transportation, binding, maybe even reconnaissance.

Crusader had triggered The Well’s Unknown Abyss, a Shikigami-style summon that caught him off guard. He’d assumed Crusader might offer some spectral body-duplication ability—but apparently, the nature of the man's ghostly clones had deeper parallels. Then again, Spree had given him Rabbit Escape, so perhaps the system made thematic connections more than literal ones.

Cricket had passed on Sound Amplifier—predictable, but useful. He’d fantasized about getting Cursed Speech, but that had been a long shot. Instead, he now wielded a technique similar to Principal Gakuganji's: devastating bursts of vibrational force, capable of crumbling bone or bursting eardrums.

Victor and Othala, however, had been disappointments—yet instructive ones. Both returned the same error: Multiversal Counterpart Not Found. That answered one of his longstanding questions. In Jujutsu Kaisen, there were no canonical cursed techniques for knowledge absorption or ability-granting through physical touch. So the system didn’t give him a power if there was no viable analog to map from. That ruled out his hope of farming random parahumans for unknown techniques. If he hadn’t seen it in the manga or anime, it didn’t exist for him.

Fenja’s gift had been Inverse. That one surprised him. It inverted the strength of attacks—weak became strong, strong became weak. Fenja herself had been a giantess who absorbed proportionally reduced damage the larger she grew. Thematically, both abilities dealt in damage mitigation, but Inverse came with tactical trickery. He liked it.

Rune had given him Tool Manipulation—a major upgrade. Instead of her old broom-based levitation, this allowed him to telekinetically control any single object he designated as a “tool.” Sword, stick, shovel, stapler—it didn’t matter. More importantly, he could now channel Wind Scythe through these tools at will. Mobility, utility, and lethality in one package.

And then… Alabaster.

He wasn’t even sure how to describe the surge of elation when Unkillable Mode unlocked.

It didn’t come with Hakari’s domain — no handsigns, no rolling the dice on probability or timing. This was clean, raw, brutal efficiency. Plug-and-play invincibility. Four minutes and eleven seconds of total immunity: full auto-healing, superhuman strength, a regeneration engine that reset his body faster than it could be damaged. Whether it was him, Yuta, or Todo using it, it was a game-changer. A mid-battle cheat code.

Focusing on that gift — on the possibilities it offered — was the only thing keeping him from collapsing under the weight of his emotions. The only reason his hands weren’t shaking with rage as he worked, healing person after person.

Yuta had finished the job. The E88 were done. Permanently. It had taken nearly the entire day to lure, bait, and push them deep into ABB territory, where they could be closed in and cornered — but the job was finished. They’d done what the canon timeline hadn’t. No days-long campaign. No drawn-out death toll. Purity wouldn’t go unpunished for leveling apartment complexes in her grief. There would be no rise of Fenrir’s Chosen. No “The Pure.” Hookwolf would never graduate into a monster in the Slaughterhouse Nine.

A majority of them had paid. With their lives.

But that didn’t mean the streets were clean. The ground was still soaked in blood. Bodies still lined the rubble.

And it was still too late for too many.

This was easier than the aftermath of Bakuda’s bombing campaign, at least. There were no transmutation accidents, no ticking flesh mines. No exotic chemicals or cancer seeds still blooming behind the eyes. These were just injuries — broken ribs, torn skin, shattered legs. Wounds that Idle Transfiguration could actually work with. He’d repaired crushed limbs, reset spines, grown back muscle and bone. Four hundred and fifty-eight people saved by his hands tonight.

But seventy-one had still died.

He’d seen numbers like this before. He’d faced even worse during the bombing. But this… this hit different. Maybe because this time, he had more power. More skill. More preparation.

And still, people were dying.

_________________________________________________________________

“It’s okay,” the woman said softly, breaking the quiet. Her husband lay cradled in her lap, his lower half gone — just gone — the rest of his body growing colder by the second. Blood soaked through her jeans, sticky and dark, pooling beneath them.

He could have healed this. Idle Transfiguration could’ve done it, could’ve forced the blood to flow again, rebuilt his bones, regrown the missing flesh. It wouldn’t even have been a challenge.

But time had made the decision for them. There had just been too many screams. Too many crushed buildings. Too many people in need.

Too many places to be.

“We got to say goodbye,” she said with a bittersweet smile, brushing her husband’s hair back from his ashen forehead. “That’s more than most people got today. He told me to stay here. Said one of you would find me. That one of you would make sure I was safe.”

She looked up at him, eyes rimmed red, a single tear tracking down her cheek.

“He believed in you,” she whispered. “In all of you. In heroes. We even prayed for you every week in church. He… he died believing the world had protectors. That someone good would come.”

He had no words. None that felt like enough. He wanted to say he was sorry. He wanted to promise that he would’ve saved him if he could. But the truth was, it didn’t matter. He hadn’t.

Her voice dropped even lower. “Please don’t stop fighting.”

He looked up, meeting her eyes.

“I know it’s unfair to ask,” she said, “but please… make sure that what he believed in wasn’t a lie. Don’t stop. Not until the world is safe enough that no one else has to die like this again.”

What else could he do but nod?

_____________________________________________________________________

Armsmaster's voice was clipped, final. "You're done for the day."

Mahito turned to him, incredulous. "The fuck? No, I’m not."

"Yes, you are," Armsmaster said, tone steely. "In fact, you’re done for the next two days. Back to base. Get some rest. Now. You’ve gone far over your two-hour limit—"

"Are you fucking kidding me?" Mahito snapped, loud enough that a few emergency workers nearby turned to look. His voice rose, raw with disbelief. "You’re bitching about my time limit now? After everything? Who the fuck cares if I went an hour or two over?"

"Eleven," Armsmaster said flatly.

Mahito blinked. "What?"

"We started operations and healing at six p.m. yesterday. It is now five a.m. today."

He pointed at the sky, its deep indigo hue steadily giving way to the warm glow of sunrise.

"You have been awake and working for eleven consecutive hours. I have watched you regrow legs, reattach arms, repair shattered skulls, restore ruptured spleens—hell, you even fixed a degloving incident and regrew someone’s jaw. You haven’t eaten, haven’t rested, haven’t taken a single break."

Mahito opened his mouth, but Colin pressed on.

"Part of that’s on me. I should’ve done what I did last time and helped establish designated healing stations to rotate you through. But Velyra should’ve also—"

"Don’t blame her!" Mahito snapped, fury igniting behind his eyes. "I’m not a fucking child. You don’t pin my choices on someone else. And you definitely don’t get to stop me from doing my job!"

Colin’s voice hardened. "There are no more critical injuries. No more fatalities. Everything else can be treated at the hospitals."

Mahito’s voice broke as anger and frustration warred in his chest. "And let those hospitals squeeze out the last of their money? These people lost their homes! Their families! If I can’t give them food or shelter, then I can at least give them their health!"

"We. Are. Done." Colin’s halberd clicked slightly as his grip tightened. "Everyone is exhausted. We’re all stretched thin. But you—we need you alive. Coherent. Capable. You pass out mid-healing, or you make a mistake because you’re running on fumes—that’s how this turns tragic. And I won’t let that happen."

Mahito’s body began to shift—growing taller, his muscles stretching and bulging with power. His eyes gleamed, and his canines lengthened.

"Make me," he growled.

Colin’s stance shifted, one hand already on his weapon, tension crackling like lightning in the air.

Then, a soft voice cut through the growing storm.

A hand landed gently on Mahito’s shoulder. He turned, breath heaving, to find Velyra there, her yellow, slit-pupiled eyes filled with concern.

Surprisingly, he was looking down at her.

"No fighting," she said softly, but firmly. "Please. Let’s just… go home."

The fight drained out of him as quickly as it had come.

And for the first time in hours, Mahito realized just how tired he truly was.

The anger and desperation that had fuelled him dissipated and he sighed in exhaustion.

Maybe…maybe some rest wouldn’t hurt.

________________________________________________________________

Angel hair pasta, delicately coated in a lemon-carbonara sauce and crowned with a perfectly broiled lobster tail, sat steaming on the plate before him. It was a gourmet meal—rich, fragrant, artfully arranged—and utterly wasted on him.

Not because he couldn’t taste it. His senses were as sharp as ever, his appetite technically intact. But every bite felt mechanical, as if he were going through the motions of being human without actually being present. The food sat heavy in his mouth, not due to poor preparation, but because of the weight in his chest.

This wasn’t physical exhaustion—his physiology didn’t allow for things like lactic acid buildup or muscle fatigue. No, this was something deeper. A mental fatigue. A soul-deep weariness that came not from action, but from tension. From guilt. From silence stretching too long between people who were supposed to have each other's backs.

From them.

The Protectorate.

The table was quiet save for the clinking of silverware and the low hum of canteen chatter, but the tension was palpable. Everyone felt it—especially Assault, who, predictably, took it upon himself to break the ice with all the grace of a sledgehammer wrapped in a joke.

“You know,” he said, with exaggerated solemnity after cutting into his steak, “I think we should leave the unfortunate things said on the battlefield… on the battlefield.”

Battery stiffened beside him. “Assault,” she warned under her breath, her tone sharp with practiced restraint.

But Assault pressed on, lifting a forkful of steak and gesturing with it like a philosopher mid-soliloquy. “No, no, Puppy, listen—sometimes we get stressed. We get angry. This job? It breaks you in places you didn’t even know existed. And in those moments, we might say or do shitty things. Things we don’t mean. In the heat of the moment.”

His eyes flicked across the table, pointedly landing on two people: Armsmaster, who had yet to touch his food beyond one frustrated bite of his cheeseburger—and him.

Armsmaster didn’t respond. Instead, he took another savage bite, chewing like the burger had personally insulted him, and stared stone-faced at the wall. The cold edge in his posture made it clear: no forgiveness. Not yet.

He didn’t blame him.

Despite Assault’s clumsy attempt at diplomacy, no one at the table really believed a joke and a half-hearted nod toward emotional complexity could repair what had been strained. Too much had happened. Too much had been said. The air was still thick with tension.

“...He does have a point,” Velocity said after a long pause.

All eyes turned to him in an instant.

Raising both hands in mock surrender, he added, “Hey, look—I’m just saying. In the military, if someone screws up on the field, you ream them out, yeah. But once it’s over, it’s over. You don’t carry the grudge around like a second skin. People make mistakes. You hold them accountable, but you don’t bleed them for it every day.”

Armsmaster—no, Collin, when he was like this—grunted. A neutral sound. Not agreement, not disagreement. Just... something.

Even Miss Militia weighed in.

“Sometimes friends fight,” she said gently, pushing roasted chicken around her plate. “They yell. They disagree. It can get heated. But at the end of the day... they’re still friends. That has to count for something.”

The silence after that was broken by a voice no one expected.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

It wasn’t Armsmaster.

It was him.

“I shouldn’t have challenged you on the field,” he continued, voice steady but subdued. “It was disrespectful. Insubordinate. You were right to call me on it. I let my emotions take the wheel after everything we lost today, and I took it out on you. That was wrong.”

He wasn’t one for public apologies, not really. But something about today had pushed everything too far.

Collin looked at him—really looked at him. No mask, no HUD, no pretense of being just the cold, calculating leader. Just a tired man who’d lived too long on the front lines.

And then he did something unexpected.

“...I apologize as well,” Collin said gruffly, the words like gravel. “I should’ve pulled you aside. I should’ve explained myself instead of barking orders. I let myself get caught up in the moment. And maybe I took your challenge too personally.”

He paused, swallowing something hard.

“I just... I always had this vision. Naïve, maybe. But I imagined a day when we’d finally push Lung and Oni Lee out of the city. Drive the Empire into the ground—not with blood and fire, but with skill. Precision. Justice. In my head, we’d win. Cleanly. Publicly. And this city—our city—would finally see what heroes could do.”

He shook his head, the bitterness rising.

“Instead... Lung got eaten alive. We drugged him and shipped him to the Cage before he could wake up. Oni Lee switched sides and is now working with one of the worst serial killers we’ve seen since the Butcher. That same killer took down the Empire in one day. The Empire. Gone. Just... erased.”

He looked down at his hands, curling them slowly into fists.

“We never even got to fight them. All those battles, all that pain—and we didn’t get to be the ones to stop them. We had to rescue Othala, Menja, and Rune from a lunatic who killed the rest like they were nothing. And I’m convinced they only survived because Fester has some twisted respect for heroes.”

He exhaled, slow and ragged.

“Everything we worked toward... it’s being dismantled by a teenager with a vendetta. The city’s getting cleaned—yeah—but it’s in blood, not justice. And there’s not a damn thing we can do to stop it.”

The silence around the dinner table wasn’t charged anymore. It wasn’t tense or waiting—it was just heavy. The kind of quiet that settles in after everyone realizes the situation isn’t going to get better any time soon.

Just weariness.

“Not like we can actually do anything,” Assault muttered, breaking the silence with a half-hearted shrug. “Fester hit the jackpot. Drew a power that lets him wreck whatever the hell he wants. Got that cockroach titan, picked up a flying goddamn dragon straight out of Chinese mythology, and now I’m hearing whispers that he’s got some summoned monster woman who’s been punching Empire thugs’ heads clean off. Like, literally. One punch, one kill. Who knows how many more he’s got tucked away. Could have a whole menagerie waiting in the wings.”

Across the table, Triumph rubbed his temple with two fingers. “You guys heard what the ABB’s started calling him?”

There was a pause. A few tired glances.

“Yōkai no Kami,” he said. “God of Monsters. They're not just following him anymore. They’re worshipping him.”

Velocity leaned back in his chair, arms crossed. “To be fair… he’s not exactly acting like your typical gang boss. He’s not shaking down corner stores or extorting protection fees. He’s not even carving out turf or getting into shootouts with the Empire anymore—not since the early weeks.”

He tapped the side of his mug, thinking. “From the reports we got, it’s like he surgically cleaned out the ABB’s worst. Career criminals? Gone. Human traffickers? Missing. Probably fed to his cockroach abomination. He doesn’t sell drugs, doesn’t run guns. All he seems to do is… remove the problems. Monsters. Criminals. The non-parahuman scum. It’s like he’s trying to become a myth instead of a warlord.”

“Great,” Armsmaster said, his voice clipped. “A vigilante monster king who’s too big to detain, too terrifying to reason with, and too focused to predict. But wait—it gets better.”

Everyone turned to look at him.

“We’ve got a copycat.”

A ripple of murmurs passed around the table.

“Another vigilante?” Miss Militia asked.

“Yeah,” Armsmaster confirmed grimly. “Operating in the Dockworker areas. Nothing official, but we’ve picked up enough scattered reports to start connecting dots. Targets Skidmark’s people, Squealer’s runners, and any unaligned dealers moving product on the docks.”

“And what’s their power?” Triumph asked warily.

“Bug control. Very different scale, though—this one’s range is a lot more limited. Block radius, maybe two if she pushes it. But more variety. Not just cockroaches. Full insect kingdom—spiders, wasps, beetles, the whole works.”

Assault raised an eyebrow. “You’re saying she bites people?”

“Hard,” Armsmaster said. “Hard enough that most of her victims end up in the ER.”

His heart stopped, literally.

A bug controller, less range than Kuroruoshi, and more varied to boot…

Well, it looked like he found out what Taylor was doing these days.

_________________________________________________________________

He and Velyra rode the elevator in silence, heading to their quarters a floor above the Wards' dorms. Since they'd already grabbed dinner in the PRT cafeteria, there wasn’t far to go now. One of the quieter perks of being lumped in with the kids, he supposed—less hassle, fewer logistics, no need to trek across town to collapse in bed.

Still… the Wards.

He needed to talk to them soon. Check in. Make sure they were okay—if anyone in this line of work could be.

Even though he technically outranked them now, he still thought of Aegis as a friend. The boy scout had earned that title, fair and square. Persistent. Noble. The kind of person who didn’t let you walk away from your potential. Hell, Aegis had probably done more than anyone to set him on the path of heroism. The least he could do now was check how he was holding up.

Vista, though… Vista was something else.

She didn’t seem to need comforting. She didn’t flinch when she talked about villains. When Bakuda came up, she didn’t sound scared or angry—just certain. Like she already knew the world didn’t play fair, and had decided to play by its rules before they broke her.

It was easy, before all this, to think the Wards were supposed to be sheltered. You read the stories, the fics. You saw the glossy recruitment posters. Thought they were kept in the background, learning, training, maybe helping evacuate civilians while the adults handled the real threats.

But Armsmaster had pulled them out of their beds mid-salvo. Right in the middle of Bakuda’s reign of terror, he’d dropped teenagers into the heart of a warzone.

That was… sobering.

And Vista had been there, helmet under her arm, waiting quietly for orders like it was just another Tuesday.

Clockblocker and Kid Win—he didn’t know much beyond the canon profiles. Power summaries, wiki blurbs. He hadn’t had the chance to get to know the people underneath yet. That was something he needed to change. Soon.

Sophia? Well… he knew her better than most. But that didn’t mean he could do anything about it. Not yet. They’d barely spoken. And with her being who she was—both in and out of costume—it wasn’t a door he could kick open carelessly. That kind of confrontation needed timing. Leverage. Control.

Browbeat, though… that one was interesting. His soul was unique. Wild, in a good way. He radiated potential, even if the guy didn’t see it himself. But knowing the shape of someone’s soul wasn’t the same as knowing them. And if he really wanted to help, he needed more than a gut feeling.

So many threads to follow. So many lives tangled up in a war most of them didn’t even understand yet.

And not enough time. Never enough time.

His thoughts turned dark, heavy, spiraling toward the worst-case scenario.

At this point, I have half a mind to charge Echidna now and see if I can force Eidolon to show up—

NO.

The thought snapped off like a trap closing.

That path was a mistake. A trap disguised as a shortcut. A gamble that would cost too much, too soon.

He exhaled slowly, steadying himself with practiced patience.

Not yet.

He couldn’t afford to get ahead of himself. The timing had to be perfect. First came Leviathan—inevitable, catastrophic. Then the Slaughterhouse Nine, a walking archive of cursed techniques and living weapons, ripe for the taking. After them, Yuta would kill Coil, igniting the chain reaction. Echidna would spiral into chaos, fully unleashed, and Eidolon would arrive—alone, desperate to challenge himself, desperate to fill the bottomless well inside him.

That… that was the finish line.

If he moved too soon, if he provoked Echidna before everything was aligned, then there was no guarantee that Ignis Fatuus would be born. And that clone—that damned, volatile clone—was the keystone of their entire strategy.

Everything hinged on him.

The elevator gave a soft ding as it reached their floor. Velyra’s voice broke through the hum of his thoughts.

“Mahito?”

He blinked, snapping back to the present. “Hmm?”

“What are you thinking about?”

He considered lying. It would be easy. She wouldn’t press him too hard.

But he didn’t want to lie. Not to her. Not anymore.

“...A lot,” he said, his voice quieter now. “Mostly, future plans. Contingencies. Ways to make sure this city doesn’t keep repeating the same cycle of monsters and mayhem. I want to stop it. All of it.”

She tilted her head slightly, concern in her expression. “That’s a lot to take on your shoulders. Even for someone like you.”

He gave a small shrug. “Yeah, maybe. But I think I can manage it. I’ve got the tools. Some of the knowledge. Enough leverage. Politicians, billionaires, media moguls—they all want a piece of me. Favors, introductions, protection. I can use that. Make them invest in Brockton Bay. Not just as a battlefield or a playground for power, but as a city worth rebuilding.”

He paused, his voice turning thoughtful.

After all, what’s the point of wiping the filth clean if they didn’t lay new foundation? If they just left rubble behind? Coil had the wrong methods, but he wasn’t wrong about trying to shape the city’s future. He just wanted to control it, choke it into submission. Mahito want to build something better.

There was a beat of silence between them as they stepped into the hallway, the sound of their footsteps echoing softly.

Then Velyra cleared her throat, clearly working herself up to say something. Her tongue flicked out to wet her lips, eyes darting toward him before glancing away again.

“...Do you… I mean, if you’re okay with it—” she hesitated, then squared her shoulders and dropped the hesitation.

“Come to my room with me,” she said firmly. “Stay the night.”

Mahito paused mid-step.

He was incredibly thankful in that moment for the absolute control he had over his body. Because if he didn’t—if he had even a sliver of typical teenage biology ruling him—his face would’ve lit up like a red star.

And somehow, out of all the chaos he’d been juggling—the monsters, the collapsing city, the war looming on the horizon—this, of all things, was what truly caught him off guard.

“Uh… buh… wha?” was the eloquent reply his stunned brain managed to produce.

She didn’t laugh. She didn’t tease him. Instead, she stepped closer, eyes steady and voice clear with quiet intensity.

“I don’t want to pussyfoot around this anymore,” she said. “I like you. I want you. I’m tired of pretending we’re dancing around some ‘will-they-won’t-they.’ I want to be honest—about how I feel, and about what I want.”

The elevator doors opened, and they stepped out together. Her pace was slower now, more thoughtful. She let out a breath that seemed to weigh down the entire hallway.

“So many people died yesterday,” she said softly, the weight of it still fresh in her voice. “For no reason at all. They didn’t even have a chance. No warning, no way to run. Purity, Hookwolf, Crusader, Kaiser… they just murdered them. Cops. Civilians. EMTs. It didn’t matter. They were just… gone. In an instant.”

Her hand brushed his as they reached the door to their room. She turned to face him, eyes glinting—not just with sorrow, but with urgency.

“You know what the stats say?” she continued. “Less than ten percent of capes ever get to settle down. To have a family. Armsmaster is one of the oldest capes I’ve ever met, and I think he’s only thirty-something. He started right after college. The only ones older than him? The Triumvirate. And they’re in their forties, maybe fifties. That’s it.”

She took his face in her hands, gently, reverently, like she was memorizing every line.

“I don’t want to die regretting that I never did this,” she whispered.

Then she leaned in and kissed him.

It wasn’t his first kiss—well, it was his first in this life, but definitely not in the last. But it was the first one that mattered. Soft, sure, and yet demanding, like she needed something from him that no one else ever had. It was more than affection. It was hope. It was connection. It was...intimacy.

When she pulled away, her eyes were shining—not from tears, but from something deeper. Something unspoken.

“Stay with me,” she said. “Tonight. Every night.”

He didn’t say anything right away. He didn’t need to.

He just nodded.

Her expression softened. Her slitted eyes crinkled at the corners as she smiled—a real, radiant smile that burned itself into his memory. One he would carry with him through every battle to come.

And that night, they didn’t just share warmth.

They shared a promise.

______________________________________________________________________

“I want him in a cell,” Legend hissed, his voice low and dangerous.

He had faced monsters—real ones. Behemoth’s searing heat, Simurgh’s song trying to claw her way into his mind,  Leviathan’s unstoppable force. He had stared down warlords with armies at their backs, presidents with cold smiles, and tyrants with blood on their hands. He had never once faltered.

But this?

This smug bastard, sitting in their holding cell like it was just another Thursday?

He made Legend’s blood boil.

Chevalier stood across from him, arms folded, jaw tight. “It’s complicated, Legend,” he said with a sigh. “We barely managed to contain him—and I think he let us. This guy... he’s not just strong. He’s calculated. He’s a problem.”

“Then I’ll handle it myself,” Legend snapped. “Personally. I’ll fly him to the deepest, darkest cell we’ve got and make sure the damn door’s welded shut. Flechette is in the hospital because of him!”

“With a broken leg and a cracked collarbone,” Chevalier replied, his voice calm but firm. “Trust me—he was holding back. If he’d wanted her dead, she wouldn’t be breathing right now. He put Adamant through an entire department store with a single shove. He picked up my sword, Legend.”

Legend’s eyes narrowed. “Your cannonblade?”

Chevalier nodded grimly. “I made it as heavy as I could. You know how that works. I’ve only seen Alexandria herself pick up that much weight so easily. But he—he lifted it like it was nothing. And when Ursa Aurora tried to bullrush him with her bears? He shattered the projections like they were tissue paper.”

That gave Legend pause. Anyone with power on par with Alexandria wasn’t someone they should’ve been able to detain—yet here he was, lounging in an interrogation room with his chair tilted back and that same infuriating smirk on his face. As if none of it mattered. As if they didn’t matter.

Legend’s arms were folded as he stood in front of the observation window, his face expressionless, but his mind racing. The man inside the interrogation room hadn’t moved an inch. No fidgeting. No glancing around. Not even a blink. And yet… his eyes were locked precisely on the mirror, like he knew. Like he was looking through it—right at Legend.

The unease coiled tight in his gut.

“Powers?” he asked quietly, without turning his head.

“Trump,” Chevalier answered without hesitation. “Confirmed blaster capabilities—some sort of energy projection that packed a serious punch. High-end brute strength and durability. And he’s got an aura of some kind—witnesses described it as ‘musical’. Whatever it is, it amplifies his physical stats: speed, strength, reflexes. He also demonstrated regenerative ability while under its influence. And that’s not all. Prism tried to neutralize him during the fight—he fired something at her, a beam or pulse of some kind. Her powers shut down for a full ten seconds. She said it felt like her connection to her power just… vanished.”

Legend exhaled slowly. “Power nullification. One of the rarest Trump categories. Just our luck.”

“Yeah,” Chevalier said. “One of those.”

He didn’t need to name Hatchetface. The memory of that walking nightmare still made half the Protectorate flinch. Power nullifiers were terrifying because they turned the entire game on its head. All that training, all that power—and it could be stripped away with a glance, a scream, a gesture.

Legend glanced back toward the window. The subject still hadn’t moved. He wasn’t posturing, wasn’t trying to intimidate. He just watched, like a predator biding his time.

“Alright,” Legend said. “So why’s he here? If he’s that powerful, why isn’t he still out there throwing buildings?”

Chevalier shifted his stance, armor creaking faintly. “Because he stopped. Gave up mid-fight. Said he’d only talk to you.”

Legend raised a brow. “Me?”

Chevalier hesitated, then nodded. “His claim is... strange. Crazy sounding even. Absolutely ludicrous. But…he said he could sense the Endbringers. That he was made to fight them. Called them his ‘mortal enemy.’ Said he’d know when the next one was coming.”

Legend frowned. That wasn’t just strange—it was dangerously close to delusional. There were enough lunatics in the cape scene already, especially among the more powerful capes. But Chevalier didn’t sound dismissive. If anything, there was a note of genuine concern in his voice.

“You believe him?” Legend asked carefully.

“I don’t know,” Chevalier admitted. “But…he said some stuff. About them. About where they came from. It…it sounded crazy at first, but the more I think about it…you have to listen to him. Hear him out for yourself. He wouldn’t tell me too much when we booked him. Said he’d only talk to you.”

A long pause stretched between them.

“Do we have a name?”

Chevalier gave a short nod. “Yeah. He calls himself Aoi Todo.”

(Link to the main story:https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/gloryhound-worm-jujutsu-kaisen-si-fanfic.1162563/#post-101319000)