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the death of small gods

Summary:

Godhood then, must begin and end with love.

Notes:

the anime came out and the hidden inventory arc had me by the balls all over again. please enjoy my humble offering <3
format inspired by crescenttwins' 'select all that apply', do give it a read if you enjoy code geass!

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

1. (5 points) Your name is Getou Suguru. Who are you?

a. You’re just a boy.
b. You swallow curses, you have always been able to.
c. You’re a jujutsu sorcerer and a student at Tokyo Jujutsu Academy.
d. You believe your responsibility, as someone that’s strong, is to protect the weak.
e. In your own right, you’re a small god, growing.

2. (2 points) What do curses taste like?

a. Like nothing has ever tasted worse.
b. Like every human wound given form.
c. Like the excrement of the world, all shit and vomit.
d. Like your tightly held morals.
e. Like desperation.

3. (2 points) You meet him for the first time. He’s as tall as Principal Yaga beside him who introduces the both of you. He has on the most ridiculous pair of sunglasses. What’s his name?

a. He’s irreverent and more bored than interested, you can tell. From the jut of his hip to the slant of his shoulder, he has only the slightest expectations of you.
b. He’s arrogant, with the way he looks at you over his sunglasses, and he has good reason to be because
c. He’s changed the very structure of jujutsu society. He’s a small god, in the most obvious sense, and
d. He might be as strong as you, or rather, you might be as strong as him
e. His name is Gojo Satoru and you cannot breathe when he looks at you like that over his sunglasses. You cannot breathe.

4. (2 points) You go to all your classes with him and all your missions too. He doesn’t smoke, so you eventually stop too. Sometimes you share the terrible vending machine coffee with him when he’s in the mood. Sometimes you wake up with his hair in your mouth and sometimes you both reach for the same slice of orange and your hands touch. What do you think of him now?

a. He’s still irreverent and arrogant, but he’s no longer bored. He’s never bored around you and this too you can tell, but you keep it to yourself like a secret.
b. He doesn’t see the world like you do. Doesn’t see his duty as you do, all that responsibility. It frustrates you, sometimes.
c. He’s as strong as you, and you’re as strong as him. You’re both the strongest. The strongest, and you’ve only got each other.
d. He’s your best friend. Your one and only.
e. He’s —

5. (2 points) Principal Yaga tells the both of you about the Star Plasma Vessel. What decision do you and Satoru come to? What happens next?

a. To call it off. If the vessel, no — the kid who’s the vessel — refuses. After all, Principal Yaga had called it an erasure.
b. You might have to fight Tengen-sama, but you’re not scared.
c. It’s hard to truly feel fear now, the mortal kind, with Satoru beside you.
d. You meet Amanai Riko next, all teenage spitfire. She gives you a stupid nickname, and she reminds you of Satoru, almost. All vessels are people before they’re vessels, after all.
e. You make her a promise you can’t keep.

6. (2 points) You make it to Okinawa safely. The weather is perfectly agreeable. What happens in Okinawa?

a. You retrieve Kuroi safely, and Amanai is ecstatic. You watch Satoru chase Amanai with a sea cucumber and hide a smile behind your hand and it’s a mission, but it feels a bit like a holiday.
b. Satoru wants to stay in Okinawa for another day. He says there’ll be fewer curses, but you know he’s doing it for Riko-chan. Everyone knows of Gojo Satoru’s genius, his brilliance, but few know of his heart, soft as it is.
c. You’re concerned. He’s been using his technique all day, and he might have to use it all night.
d. He reassures you. He knows you’re there too if anything should happen. He knows you’re there, for him too.
e. In Okinawa, you dream. A short-lived one, but it’s beautiful, nonetheless. It glimmers, all illusion. In Okinawa, you can be anyone.

7. (2 points) What happens after Okinawa?

a. He appears. You don’t know who he is at first, but you find out later: Toji Zenin.
b. He stabs Satoru. Within the barrier of the Academy, within the confines of Satoru’s ability, or rather, its dwindling reserves.
c. For an instant, a split-second, you’re shocked motionless, stunned. You see a blade emerge from Satoru, you see him bleed. You cannot breathe, you cannot breathe, you cannot breathe.
d. He says he’s fine, he looks fine. He leaves Riko-chan to you, and then:
e. Everything that can go wrong proceeds to go wrong.

8. (2 points) What happens to Riko-chan?

a. Riko-chan is taken to her tomb when you’d promised to take her home instead.
b. Killed:
c. by the hand of Toji Zenin, of a gunshot to the head.
d. Of a kindness she could never receive, a hand she could never reach.
e. Of a stolen childhood.

9. (5 points) An invisible man with a gun stands in front of you. What do you do?

a. You believe him when he says he’s killed Satoru.
b. You don’t scream. Don’t cry. Don’t turn away. You promise murder. You break instead, all pieces, all screaming.
c. Satoru. Satoru, Satoru.
d. He slices you apart, and all you hear before he leaves is —
d. Fucking monkey

10. (3 points) You don’t die. Neither does Satoru. Who is he when you see him again?

a. When you see him again, he’s a pallbearer.
b. In the basement of a cult, among all the worst deities, Satoru is the only shining thing and,
c. You feel sick, feel the taste of every human curse at the back of your throat, for every cult member that is applauding. Every smiling face and beating hand plays a funeral dirge.
d. When you see him again, Satoru’s enlightened. He asks you if he should kill them all. You almost say yes, almost do it yourself until you realize it's meaningless. Oh, all your tightly held morals.
e. But, most of all, when you see him again, he’s alive.

11. (2 points) You live to see another year but something changes. What’s different this summer?

a. Satoru grows, even as you stumble. He becomes the strongest and leaves you in the dust. You can’t catch up anymore, you don’t even know if you want to.
b. You start to die. It’s a wound only you can see, only you can taste and it tastes like curses. You’re choking on it as you choke on the summer heat, you break your back beneath it, the burden. Your fist loosens around the neck of your morals. Tightens around yours instead. The summer is a noose tightening.
c. Haibara tells you he thinks you’re a good person. Bright-eyed, bushy-tailed Haibara tells you he thinks you’re a good person. You don’t believe it anymore.
d. What is it for? What is all of it for?
e. And then you meet her: Tsukumo Yuki.

12. (3 points) You don’t die, but you’re starting to. Who are you doing this for?

a. For the weak, you tell yourself,
b. It’s your duty, as someone strong.
c. For the weak, whose every wound you swallow, no matter how bitter it tastes.
d. But you can’t stop seeing their faces: ugly, laughing, human, and
e. You don’t know anymore, who you’re doing it for, all of this.

13. (3 points) You don’t die but you’re in the process. It’s just a part of the marathon, you know this. What’s the tipping point?

a. It’s not Tsukumo Yuki who’s playing doctor, looking for the cure. Not her, even when she doesn’t laugh at you. Not her, even when she tells you to choose.
b. You never tell her what your type is. Never mind that you’ll never see her again, never mind that it doesn’t matter, never mind that it’s only ever one person.
c. It’s not Haibara. Bright-eyed, bushy-tailed Haibara on the mortician’s table. Asking you why you’re running, asking you what’s at the end of the marathon.
d. It’s not Nanami either, more cadaver than person, who, like a child, asks why Satoru can’t just do it all. Not Nanami, breathing hard, breathing despair even as he runs, asking why his hands have to feel so heavy, asking for a break. Not Nanami who’s so tired, as tired as you.
e. It’s two little girls in a backwater town, holding onto each other because every other thing they’d touched had only hurt them.

14. (5 points) Time to say your goodbyes, do it gracefully now. Does it hurt?

a. You don’t do it gracefully at all, and it’s a pity that your parents would agree.
b. You do a little better with Shoko. She lets you light her cigarette and calls you childish. It’s almost painless, almost routine if you ignore the fact that it’s the last time you’ll see her. Almost.
c. Your worst goodbye is saved for Satoru. It’s not graceful at all. It’s more a trial than a goodbye, more a fight than a farewell. There are no winners for this one. He looks at your neck and looks for meaning in the line you’ve drawn with a noose. All those ideals you'd held so tightly they'd begun to cut you.
d. He doesn’t find it, not around your neck, not in his fingers, curled to kill. He looks at you like he’d never seen the gulf form, like he can’t understand why you never went to him, like he’s trying to kill you. He looks at you like he’s dying.
e. It hurts more than anything.

15. (5 points) Who are you now?

a. You’re not just a boy anymore, that's not enough.
b. You swallow curses, you’ve always been able to.
c. You’re an enemy of the state now, a fugitive on the run, a curse user, a martyr.
d. Your duty now is not unto the weak now but to a different world, a liberated one. One in which there are no fucking monkeys.
e. You've grown into it now, your godhood; it's death.

                 

-

                   

Extra Credit:

1a. (1 point) Your name is Getou Suguru. You loved Gojo Satoru.

a. True

1b. (1 point) Do you still love him? [Free answer]

                 

Notes:

please leave kudos and comments, i cherish every one of them <3 i love you all and thank you so much for reading! i am now going to pretend i have a functional sleep schedule. xx

 

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