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Satoru is bored out of his mind.
He’s mildly screwed, sure, but someone will get him out of this stupid cube sooner or later. Until then, it’s just a waiting game. A stupid, mind numbingly boring waiting game.
Four minutes was a long time to wait when he let himself get sealed, made longer than the required minute by his resistance. It has nothing on however long he’s been in this damned box.
At least it’s quiet inside. Out there, he had to listen to those old bastards rhapsodize their grand plans. Condemning Satoru for his “continued amoral entanglement” with Suguru by sealing him in the prison realm. Planning to use his trapped body to lure Suguru to his own death. Satoru snorts just remembering it. As if those geezers could even.
Their schemes were shortsighted and overly simple. Of course they had to bargain his body to get access to Suguru; these decrepit freaks can’t hold a candle to either one of them, let alone kill them. In their minds, the elders believe they have better odds offing Suguru, assured of less pushback in the aftermath, too. A baby could infer as much.
Satoru isn’t worried. How could he be? To hurt Suguru, first the higher ups would have to catch him. Even in the case of that unlikely event, Suguru already ate that curse with the soul transformation thing. His healing and combat abilities speak for themselves; he’d be fine.
The only thing that could trip Suguru up is related to the reason Satoru had needed to keep the creeps talking. He had to know why Megumi’s cursed energy was all over those hateful old guys calling themselves the leaders of shaman society.
They were eager to talk, bragging about how the employed cursed technique allows for the tying of one life to another. Megumi’s fate was to be dictated by that of each of the four men who had cornered Satoru; a killswitch, they had explained. A technique that, after physical contact, builds up slowly enough over time that the intertwining of the native and parasitic energies is near indetectable, even to the Six Eyes and especially when no one knows to look.
Naturally, they chose to target Megumi. He’s the only one the elders have any sort of access to, and he’s young enough that any discrepancies with his energy might be waved away as the natural fluctuations caused by puberty.
Spurred on by the lack of amusement in Satoru’s face, the elders in attendance made sure to assure him that they also knew of the other members of his family—Megumi was not chosen because of any ignorance on their part. An obvious lie, but Satoru let them tell it all they liked.
It isn’t like they could have attached this technique to the ones they wanted most anyways. Satoru and Suguru wouldn’t directly fall victim to it, no matter how patient or efficient the elders are not but could have tried to be. Perhaps the twins might have been in danger, for example, if these men had the forethought to pick through all energies attached to Megumi’s body, assigning them each to known and unknown persons. He knows Inouye-san, a Second Grade doing research out in Kyoto, has a technique that would have streamlined the process for them, had she been convinced or coerced to cross Satoru.
None of that was relevant then, however. Understanding how they entangled Megumi in their games isn’t the same as understanding how to free him, after all.
As vapid and dull as the shaman elders are, they’re not actually brain dead. They understood where Satoru was trying to lead them, and they knew it was only a matter of moments before he lost the fight against the power of the seal.
It took only a couple of months to create this connection which is finally strong enough to kill the boy, they admitted, however tenuous the ties might appear to him. Because he knew this was not another lie, Satoru let himself get sealed. He wouldn’t gamble with his child’s life.
They got him that time, Satoru can admit, feeling a crack form in his prison. Saltwater rushes in and he has to heal nonstop as his body tries to collapse into itself, but still he grins. He tastes victory in the blood on his tongue.
They won’t get him again.
Satoru does not see those threads which had infested Megumi’s cursed energy as he teleports out of the ocean and into the higher ups’ headquarters. That is their mistake.
It’s chaos when he arrives, but not because of him. There’s a rapid fire argument, no one fully waiting for another to finish and few letting that stop them from speaking their piece. The ceiling is tall and Satoru has the time, so he condenses the traces of his cursed energy as much as possible to observe for a bit.
One screeches, “You lost Fushiguro Megumi? Watching him was your only job!”
Excuses are drowned out by another shaman catastrophizing, “We were relying on your killswitch technique. What are we meant to use against Getou Suguru now?”
“We never believed there would be any compassion left in that scourge,” the person who will be the first to die argues in defense of his own slip up. “You yourself argued that he would unhesitatingly sacrifice the boy for Gojo.”
“A backup plan has never hurt anyone,” a new voice contributes with a tired anger. “Your technique would have been one worth having.”
Another elder, reclined behind their personal screen, tries to assure the room, “We can simply—”
The screaming shaman continues his tirade. “You have to reinitiate contact every two days or else everything we have done is pointless! We have nothing now, we’ve lost all progress.”
And, oh, isn’t that a fun little weakness? Funny how no one thought to share it with the class back during Satoru’s boxing.
“It’s a bit too early in the morning for all this screaming. This position is unfavorable no matter how we spin it. We don’t have the child, nor any idea of when Getou will make his move. We can continue to place blame or—”
“Or you can take your heads out of your asses and pay attention to me,” Satoru announces. Honestly, the sensory perception in this place is shit. The elder he’s perched behind freezes, their sharp intake of breath loud in the sudden silence. He throws an arm around their shoulders and feels every muscle tense.
Satoru knocks down their privacy screen, just in case one of these senile fools doesn’t recognize his voice. Smiling wide, he locks his gaze on the shaman who tied Megumi up in this mess. He blows that bastard away between one blink and the next.
The elders jerk in mostly aborted motions, their shadows twitching behind their stupid screens. Satoru, voice light and airy, sighs, “That’s much better. Now we can see each other more clearly, yeah?”
If these people were actually in the trenches they so lovingly send shaman children to die in, they would have sprung into action immediately. But these are old, established folks, no longer accustomed to real battle. They take longer to get moving, it seems. If a single death and a spot of blood is already too much for them… well. He could snort at the naïveté.
Satoru tuts, “Ara ara. Doncha think this has gone on too long without any of you acknowledging me? You got no clue how to make a man feel welcome.” He points a finger and all the screens come down. “But I suppose that’s just as well. I didn’t come here to talk.”
Everything happens at once.
Between the fists and the blood, there are swears. Promises of a slow death for his insolence, as if Satoru isn’t going to be the only person walking out of here. He plays with them a bit. Probably too much—but he has often been likened to a cat and this is too easy a meal. A drawn out fight is exactly what he needs to unwind after what these geezers have put him through.
Suguru arrives just as Satoru kills the first one. Two more die before one of the cowards finally notices him and cries out, “It’s your fault we had to—!”
Satoru kills him before he can finish the thought. He waves cherrily to his lover, blowing him a quick kiss in greeting. “Suguru!”
“Don’t mind me, Satoru.” Suguru rights a stool, sitting atop it patiently near the middle of the room as he waits for Satoru to tie things up. “I’ll just pull up a barrier and stay out of your way.”
“You,” one of the elders snarls.
Satoru rolls his eyes. He aims a more condensed version of Red at the woman like a missile, directing it to loop around the room in a controlled blast. He saw something similar in a superhero movie once, and he’s been dying to try it out. It leaves his finger but doesn’t explode, trailing its way through one more shaman before Satoru gets bored trying to maintain that precise total control and lets it take out a wall.
Desperate, another gasps something out that Satoru doesn’t care to hear. He wants to try to make his domain smaller—kinda like how it felt to be in the prison realm. It’ll be vulnerable to the other geezers locked outside, but he only needs a second or two to experiment.
There’s always the chance someone tries to run, but Satoru doesn’t mind a chase, short lived as it would be. They could run, if they wanted to, could flock like schools of fish toward safety nets; Satoru is something inconceivable to their small brains, their death by his hands inevitable. They’ll learn.
They’re not that cowardly, though. Sure, they gang up on him after breaking his domain from the outside, but what else could he expect from the weak? At least they’re fighting.
With his foot on her throat, another one uses her dying breath to furiously snarl, “You do all this, and we merely left you in the prison realm.”
Because that was all they could do. “You threatened my family and threw me to the bottom of the ocean.” He hums, “And you weren’t the one to free me, were ya?”
“No,” Suguru raises his hand. “That was me, my love, with Tengen-sama’s assistance.”
“We should have just killed you—”
Boring. Satoru finishes things. He laughs, tells the corpse, “Yeah, you probably should have. But only if you could get us both.”
Suguru kicks gently at his heels, easily pulling his attention away from the carnage. “Looks like someone’s having fun.”
Satoru grins, “Hey, come into my domain for a sec, I wanna see something.”
“Maybe later, love.” He pulls him down into a squat—lazy bum doesn’t want to stand up yet apparently—closely assessing Satoru’s features for anything amiss. “I wanna hold you like this.”
He leans into Suguru’s grip, smiling as he takes a seat in his lap instead. “Oh, okay. I see how it is.”
He rolls his eyes. “It’s been weeks since we last were this close.”
“You sure it wasn’t the stunning display of my competence that’s doing it for you? The bloody look?”
“It is a pretty aesthetic,” Suguru concedes.
“Especially on me.” Satoru baits, “Everything is prettier on me, mm?”
“Mm,” he agrees. “That’s why you wore your Infinity a little closer to the vest than usual, huh, Toru?”
“Suguru,” Satoru sings. The little quirk to Suguru’s mouth is entirely too self satisfied to be as attractive as it is. He pouts, “You’re supposed to praise me. I know all your kinks, Sugu, so just tell me I’m pretty and treat me like it.”
Suguru hums noncommittally, leaning only close enough for their foreheads to press together. “Wonder how the others are going to react,” he murmurs. “They’ll say you killed all these people for the most villainous curse user of our age.”
Ugh. This is getting added to Suguru’s top ten most homophobic moments. Satoru feels he is owed a kiss at the very least before they start talking about consequences.
“I’m not a good person. If they don’t like it, they should kill me for it.” Despite himself, amusement curls in his gut once more. He smirks, eyes half lidded, “Pity that they’re all too weak.”
After spending a criminally small amount of time getting reacquainted, they catch each other up.
Apparently, Satoru was sealed in that stupid cube for four days, freed at the crack of dawn on the fifth. Tengen had the back of the prison realm, and it was all too willing to lend itself to the cause once Suguru tracked it down.
“Tengen wanted me to find this shaman with a nullification technique, but I’ve got a curse for everything these days,” Suguru waves his hand as Satoru changes into the clean clothes he brought him. “I figured you’d come directly here by finding the elders’ cursed energies, but I had to actually track them down.”
“I wanna call you a loser for having to do detective work,” Satoru grouches, “but I know it’s because you’ve never had to become so familiar with their stench. Lucky bastard.”
“As charged,” comes the wryly snort. “Now you’re caught up. I opened the box and came to assist you.”
Greatly offended, Satoru disregards his blindfold to glare. “Assist? I did all the work!”
“What’s the point of being the strongest if you don’t ever flex your muscles?” Satoru puffs and Suguru soothes the teasing by wrapping his eyes for him and kissing his forehead. “You had it handled, love.”
Satoru teleports them home, still grumbling, “Flattery will only get you halfway. I gotta do every fuckin’ thing all by myself—”
“Yes, your life is very difficult, Toru,” Suguru condescends as they snap into being again before their apartment door. “Were you not entertained? I would have hated to spoil your fun.”
“You’re a dirty liar,” he laughs, walking inside. “You had more fun than me, getting to—”
“Not in front of the children, Toru. Our reputations are only barely holding on as it is.”
Satoru rolls his eyes, turning to properly greet his kids—oh, and the first years. Nobara and Yuuji stare at him in a mixture of joy and shock. He waves at them and grins at his son, politely pretending that Megumi isn’t too choked up to speak before Nobara barks out, “You killed them?”
Her voice echoes, and consequently there’s also a shuffling sound coming from deeper in the home—presumably, it’s his daughters making their way over. “Dad’s home?!”
Just as loudly, Satoru answers both questions. “Yep!”
“All of the higher ups are dead?” Yuuji clarifies.
“They had to die.” And there’s nothing more to say on that.
Tsumiki comes around the corner, disheveled with the twins on her heels. The stress of learning how to plan an art exhibition—and doing so abroad, mind you, with a language barrier and jetlag working against her—plus the attempted fatal schemes against her fathers is evidently, understandably, not a fun combo.
“But you’re okay, right? You’re okay?”
“Of course,” Suguru grins. “Did you doubt we would be?”
“No. Well,” she laughs wetly, pressing a brief kiss to both of their cheeks. “You should still say so. It’s nice to hear it.”
“We’re home. We’re safe and healthy and perfectly okay.”
“Speak for yourself,” Satoru disagrees. “I need so much food right now, the sweeter the better.”
“So he’s fine,” Nobara scoffs. It would be more convincing, maybe, if she didn’t immediately collapse into the couch in obvious relief.
“I’ll get you some juice, Sensei!” Yuuji perks up. The teen accidentally-on-purpose elbows Megumi on his way to the kitchen, earning a sharp glare he must be more than used to by now.
Megumi is making that face he used to do when he was little, asking for affection without saying any embarrassing words, so Satoru wastes no more time. He yanks his son into a tight hug and whispers, “Good job, kid. Even though you used stupid Suguru to save me.”
“We can always put you back,” Megumi suggests, hugging him back.
Satoru’s overly loud cackle ends their attempt at a sober moment. The twins tackle him—from either side, so everything literally balances out as they form a group hug. Tsumiki, not much of a hugger herself, smiles at the huddle fondly and even allows a few head pats of affection once it breaks up.
“Wait,” Nanako hums, seemingly over the rush of warm and fuzzies at Satoru’s return. “This means that both of our dads are mass murderers now. For good reasons, but,” she shrugs. “You know.”
Satoru shrugs, too, guzzling a glass of something very red from Yuuji with a small word of thanks. He plops down onto the couch beside Suguru while the family fills in around them, more tired than he had realized now that he’s off his feet.
“It’s kinda cute,” Mimiko ventures. “In a deranged, unhealthy way. I like that you two match.”
Megumi huffs, “They’re always deranged. But congrats anyways.”
“Aww, thanks!” Satoru and Suguru simultaneously coo, drowning out Nobara’s argument about what does and does not merit congratulations.
“I can’t believe the elders are really dead,” Yuuji blurts. “I don’t have an execution order anymore, right?”
Tsumiki giggles, “Oh, they were never going to let them kill you.”
“Oh! That also means we don’t have to pull overnight missions over the weekends anymore, right? And we can get more than a day of rest between the short missions?” Nobara lights up. “In that case, I guess I’ll congratulate you, too.”
“Welcome to your youth,” Suguru laughs.
“Enjoy your second attempt at childhood, my lovely little students!”
“On that note,” Tsumiki claps her hands, “we’ll see you both at the college tomorrow. Everyone will wanna see you.”
Battling his fatigue, it’s a struggle to both process her words and lift his head from the warm resting place of Suguru’s shoulder. Satoru manages, “Wait, where are you going? Why?”
“We’re having a sleepover across the hall, but we’ll be gone before you wake. We have a party to set up.”
“An early dinner would be best,” Mimiko tags in after her twin. “Be at the college by four, okay?”
“We could invite everyone here so that they can leave once you two get annoying, but it’s—”
“Uncalled for and rude,” Suguru interrupts, and Satoru agrees.
“—kinder to kick you out later from school than to kick you out of here now,” Megumi shrugs.
“He means,” Nanako drawls, “you’re welcome.” Satoru grins, catching their drift. That’s why these are his kids; none of them inherited much of Suguru’s homophobia. “Have a moment for yourselves.”
Megumi heads toward the door. “Neechan and Itadori stress-baked some desserts and also dinner.”
“Yeah, so don’t forget to eat! The vegetables, too.”
“And get some real rest, Dad, seriously. You need to be awake when I catch you up on New York.”
“Bye Dad, bye Papa! We love you,” echoes as the door closes and locks behind the gaggle of teens.
“Ah, don’t they grow up so fast?” Satoru wipes a fake tear that may or may not be real moisture gathered in his eyes after a large yawn. He wiggles his eyebrows, “Now then. Are we gonna capitalize on this slice of privacy we’ve been so graciously gifted?”
Suguru raises his eyebrow. “Isn’t that what happened this afternoon?”
“You’re no fun,” he pouts.
“Ouch. He’s always so quick to change his tune,” Suguru mutters, shaking his head. “Come on, most honored one,” he teases. “Bed time. I’ll be beside you when you wake.”
Satoru bats his eyelashes. “Promise? With food?”
“I’ll see what I can do,” he snorts.
With the warm fondness of Suguru’s gaze tingling through his being, Satoru could simply float, basking in that contentment. “Hey, Suguru. I’m home.”
He laughs and it’s barely audible, merely a breath. “Welcome home, Satoru.”