The jutsu was familiar. His ocular prowess erased the need for any hand signs, and it sprang into existence like an unwanted child finally shown love for the first time.

Amaterasu was a beautiful jutsu. Effective at both attack and defense, at his peak, if he so desired, he could've rendered almost anything to ash in seconds. Yet he was not at his peak, not even anywhere close. It was that and the fact that whatever rank the cursed creature was, it was smart. Or had enough instincts to mimic it.

It went from an arm outstretched, to jumping back the moment the black flames began to blossom. He had aimed for the head, yet its reflective flinch back at the activation of a cursed technique saved its life.

It went from a sure kill to an obvious drawn-out fight. The heavenly illumination blossomed on its right hand and black flames spread along its blue skin like liquid fire. His sheer hatred for the creature fueled its unending fire.

It let out an unholy screech while sending out its other three arms in a bid to crush him. He felt the noticeable loss in his cursed energy, enough to make him stagger back at the cost of the technique and shut his left eye immediately.

Even in his former life, it was not a technique he used lightly, and never at the beginning of a fight. It was a hammer of Kami, meant to destroy any hope of victory.

The predictive nature of the Sharingan saved him. Where he had barely noticed the curse move as a blur, this time he saw the grotesque fist move for his head. He tilted his head back and allowed his body to follow, almost falling flat backward before previously unused core muscles stopped him halfway and whipped him back up after the curse had withdrawn its fist.

He twisted to the side to dodge one massive fist the size of his torso, cursed energy moving through his body and reinforcing both muscles, bones, and nerves. With his familiarity with chakra reinforcement. He took to it like a fish in water.

He took a step to the side to dodge an overhead blow that cratered the ground and sent shrapnel at him and dust into the surroundings. A simple cursed energy-enhanced leap back took him out of the cover of the dust.

He had barely gotten to his feet before a tail swipe flew out from the dust cloud. The curse was using one of the best techniques at hand in fighting an inexperienced sharingan user by sheer dumb luck.

The dust covered the movement of the tail long enough for him to be unable to react fast enough to dodge. For all his proficiency with Chakra reinforcement, this was a body using the technique for the first time, young, malleable, and soft. It could not bear the strain of heavy reinforcement.

Especially with his use of Amaterasu. Six seconds into the fight he could already feel the ache in his muscles, the creak in his bones, and the strain on his brain, forcing a mental acuity he could not keep up with.

The blow hit him like a ton of bricks, slamming into his midriff and folding him along the width of the tail. He could hear his ribs creak at the blow, idly noticing one snap, but this was not going to be the end.

He held onto the tail and followed the momentum of the attack before releasing it mid-air. High above the sky, he stared at it for a second. The dust cloud was dissipating. The creature had lost a hand and was in the process of losing another while the flames climbed up to its neck.

It kept thrashing and rolling on the floor in a futile attempt at putting out the flames. But the black flames stuck close to it, its ever-hungry flames consuming and growing. Slower than if he had consciously nurtured it, yet faster than any natural flame had a right to.

His blood-soaked hair whipped around him, pulled out of its carefully crafted bun due to the short yet intense high-speed combat. He fell back towards the creature, ready to risk it all. His left eye was open once more and bloodshot, with another Amaterasu on its way before an oversized axe slammed into the creature fast and hard enough to send out a shockwave and sent it flying into a car with guts and visceral spilling out.

He was caught mid-air by a calloused hand that folded his small body into a ball as he felt the impact of the person slamming into the pavement at bone-rattling speed, even with reinforcement. He looked up at his savior and noted the young face stuck in an empty scowl of the driver.

The suited man kept his focus on the curse, watching it crawl out of the wreckage of the car. Its unholy screech unabated as the black fire consumed more of it.

For Jiki, the stench of burning meat was familiar to a man who spent half his life in war. The driver seemed surprised at the sight before acknowledging that it wouldn't be moving to him.

When his eyes met Itachi's, he almost dropped him at the sight of his eyes. Itachi shrugged a bit, and he was let down to stagger for a second, while the driver kept a hand on his shoulder to stabilize him. He sensed the second person and turned his head to look behind him. "Mau Mau, you Gojo sure are breeding terrifying monsters this generation, Takumi-san bill is definitely going up," the light blue-haired woman said with a soft smile and squinted eyes as she walked up to them, axe on her shoulder.

The edges of her long black skirt were splattered with blood. The driver's grip on his shoulders intensified. "What terrifying eyes on such a beautifully crafted face. How would you like to model and make us some money, eh?" He kept up his stare as the woman dropped to a squat to stare at him with a big smile on her face, ignoring the driver beside him.

A gasp for breath broke his focus on her as his Sharingan flicked to the crumpled form of Aoki. He made to stagger towards her in shock before a blur went past him to the maid and checked up on her. He had thought her dead.

The sheer relief that single gasp of breath brought him could not be put into words. A soft smile had begun to break out before he heard the damning words. "She's not likely to survive such wounds." The blue-haired woman pronounced after looking at Aiko. She turned to the driver, "We are barely twenty minutes from the Gojo clan, correct?" The driver agreed with a nod, an even deeper frown on his face as he had an idea of where she was going with her questions.

"I'm only barely good enough to stem her wounds with my reverse cursed technique. We take her there, and Takumi-san should be able to-"

"The clan leader won't be bothered to break his isolation, just to tend to a maid, not even off the bloodline." The blue-haired woman made to say something before he interrupted.

He would not lose her, anybody but her. He won't lose that one person he had grown to finally care for once more. "He will," he stated with certainty. His soft voice breaks into the conversation. They both stared at him, so he continued. Sharingan blazing in an uncontrolled spin, his voice cracked this time. He could not say what it was that caused it, Anger? Sadness

? Joy? Fear? He was uncertain.

He had gone through more emotions today alone than he had in the past two years. "I will make him," he said it with the certainty of a man who knew the sun would rise every day.

The blue-haired woman gave him a smile that, for some reason, he could tell was more genuine. The sound of sirens in the background broke the moment as the driver made a decision, sweeping him off his feet and moving swiftly to their car which looked remarkably untouched despite the destruction that surrounded them. He barely glanced at the ashes that were all that remained of the curse before he was deposited in the back seat, and the blue-haired woman followed him in.

The drive back to the compound was a blur. The driver rode like a man possessed, swapping lanes and breaking speed limits that he knew for certain would have consequences. Yet he couldn't bring himself to care, not when Aiko's head rested on his lap and grew colder with every passing second.

Their arrival at the clan gates was announced with a kick that blew off the car door. The blue-haired woman took Aiko out and matched up the stairs into the compound, him and the driver following behind. The driver made to carry him once more, but he refused, instead staggering beside him. Formally dressed clan members walked by and stared with varying degrees of surprise and sadness. It must not be a new scene. People walking into the clan compound hurt and broken from the monsters they went to hunt and rid the world of.

A couple stepped in to help as they headed towards the manor in the middle of the clan, only to find a white-haired teenager standing at the door. Startling bright blue eyes stared at him, and out of reflex, he sent the minuscule cursed energy he had left into his own eyes.

The flinch he got as a response was unexpected, and the bright smile that followed after was even more so. The teen made to speak before the door suddenly swung open behind him. He shut his mouth with a reluctant frown and an exaggerated pout, before stepping aside. He knew who he was even without a word spoken between them. Gojo Satoru. Clan heir, sole inheritor of the clan dojutsu, and all-round prodigy.

He walked past him and stepped into the building as fast as his broken body would let him. This time there was none of the ceremony and fascination that surrounded his first visit. The moment he stumbled into the room, he immediately collapsed on the futon spread out opposite the old man.

Blazing, swirling Sharingan set in an exhausted face clashed with neutral eyes set in a face that might as well be formed from granite.

"Heal her," he grasped out. His tone was commanding, certain, sure... pleading.

"You're injured for someone that went to peer at the outside world,” the monotone voice replied while his eyes stayed stuck on his red spinning ones.

"I'm not the one bleeding out and dying right this moment, old man," he let out in a grunt so against his nature, so unfamiliar to him, he nearly recoiled back. The old man said nothing and stared at him. He was about to crack before he finally spoke, "So are you," he continued after an uncomfortable silence, "Yet you somehow managed to use your cursed energy to brace yourself in an act of curse energy manipulation I would never have expected from a child of six, and I don't need the six eyes to see that. This time a raised eyebrow broke the uncaring facade.

"I can't lose her," he whispered out.

"That is no reason why should I bother with a mundane instead of focusing on you?" The serenity in his words and his lack of hurriedness almost brought him to anger once more, but this time he held his emotions in check. Despite what he looked like, he was not a child. He was not prone to emotional outbursts even in his past life as a child, so something else must be fraying his nerves, causing him to lash out.

Cutting the flow of cursed energy to his eyes and reducing his usage to nearly nothing, he stared at the clan head. The words could not form. What reason could he give a sorcerer at the pinnacle of the world to bother with a mundane woman whom he cared nothing for?

The old man knew nothing of her radiant smiles or her boisterous personality. He knew not of the way she made sure to check up on him twice a night to make sure he was okay. How she always sneaked in sweets for him during his lunches after she discovered his sweet tooth.

No, an appeal to emotions won't work here. The clan head was not necessarily wicked or cruel. He was just unfeeling toward the mundane. How many dead and dying people had he seen? Why should he care about one more? What was one more death of a mundane maid to the hundreds of people who died every day?

He knew the kind of experience that led to that thought process. He was intimately familiar with it. Yet he could not accept it here. Not when he finally found a reason to be happy. His nails dug deep grooves in his thighs as he looked at the clan head. His resolve solidified. He knew what it would come down to despite his efforts to convince himself otherwise.

He was ready to sell his life once more. Ready to put everything on the line on the altar of sacrifice just for the opportunity of seeing a loved one spared a terrible fate. The old man saw the resolve in his steel-gray eyes and gave a sharp smile. He was asked a question that they both knew had only a single answer. “Do you want to be a sorcerer?".