CHAPTER THREE

Gojo found him in a rust-streaked alley behind what used to be a bodega, halfway between the docks and a neighborhood that reeked of bad decisions and burning plastic—the kind of place people disappeared into, or out of. 

The man was trying very hard not to look like he was running. Which, of course, made him stand out immediately.

Gray hoodie. Obvious bulge under the jacket—gun, most likely. Blood on the knuckles, dried and flaking. The kind of adrenaline-soaked gait that screamed don’t turn around, don’t turn around.

Too late.

Gojo appeared in front of him without a sound.

The man skidded to a stop, backpedaled, then reached for his waistband. He didn’t make it halfway before the pressure in the air changed—dense, suffocating—and suddenly his knees gave out. His body smacked the ground before he could stop it.

Gojo crouched to eye level, head tilted.

“Hi there.”

The man coughed, his breath catching as he attempted to rise, but his body betrayed him, refusing to obey. “Wh—who—?”

“You’ve got blood under your fingernails,” Gojo said lightly. “Your heart’s doing something interesting. And you’ve been pacing the same four blocks for the last thirty minutes like a goldfish with a grudge.” Gojo smiled. “So let’s talk.”

“I—I didn’t do anything—”

“Please.” Gojo raised a hand, and the man’s weapon lifted out of his jacket, floating lazily in the air before dropping into a nearby puddle with a splash. “You’re not even the interesting part. I’m just bored. But you might know something useful, so… here we are.”

He sat down cross-legged on the ground. Casual.

The man stared. “This a cape thing?”

Gojo’s smile faltered for just a second. “What’s a cape?”

“…What?”

“No, seriously,” Gojo said, leaning forward. “You people keep using that word. Cape. Like it’s supposed to mean something. But it doesn’t. And you keep throwing around Tinker like it’s a title, not a weirdly specific way to break physics. So.” He tapped his temple. “Talk.”

The man’s face grew blank with dawning unease. “You’re… not from around here, are you?”

Gojo grinned. “You have no idea.”

He didn’t threaten. Didn’t raise his voice—didn’t even move from his spot on the ground. But the air remained heavy, almost vibrating, like it was holding its breath and waiting for an excuse to crush.

So the man started talking.

The ABB—Gojo filed the name away—was an only Asian gang, though mostly scattered now due to some kind of internal collapse. They had parahumans. One of them, a bomb freak—Bakuda—had gone rogue and taken half the neighborhood with her. Since then, there had been raids. Arrests. 

But some of them, like the man, had slipped through the cracks. 

“I don’t know much,” he muttered, staring at the gun in the puddle like it might take him back in time. “Just that she likes building bombs that can do all sorts of things. She made one last week. Called it a curiosity. Said I was lucky to test it. And ever since, I haven’t felt like me.”

Gojo raised an eyebrow.

“I look in the mirror and I know it’s my face, but it’s like I’m borrowing it. Like I woke up in someone else’s life with all my memories—but none of the certainty. Nothing fits anymore. Not the way it used to.”

“That… sounds like cursed techniques, but replicated through technology.” Gojo’s fingers drummed on his knee. “That shouldn’t even be possible.”

The Six Eyes scanned through the man’s body: elevated cortisol. Acute fear response. But no deception. At least not the kind Gojo could detect easily. It was obvious the man didn’t understand what he was caught in.

That made two of them.

“So these powers,” Gojo said. “They’re not trained? Not studied?”

“They’re… triggers. Traumas. Something breaks, and you get powers. Or you die. No one really knows how it works—just that it does. And that the knowledge of using it is intuitive.”

Gojo frowned, deep in thought.

Trauma as a catalyst. Power as a byproduct. But not a natural process. Not in the way he understood cursed energy. These abilities weren’t born—they were installed. With conditions. 

“Who hands them out?”

“No one. They just… happen.”

That was a lie. Not from the man—but from the world.

Gojo could feel it, unmistakable. The dissonance. Power here didn’t flow from within. It was bolted on, like aftermarket parts on a dying machine. The result wasn’t strength. It was desperation repackaged as divinity.

He stood, hands in his pockets.

“Thanks,” he said. “This has been enlightening.”

The man sagged, trembling with adrenaline and confusion. “You’re not gonna kill me?”

“Why would I?” Gojo turned away, voice almost bored. “You didn’t do anything interesting.”

And just like that, he was gone.

. . . . .

Bakuda didn’t sleep anymore.

Not because of exhaustion, or fear, or even mania. She’d simply optimized it out. REM cycles were for the weak. She had stimulants, implants, and a brain that rewrote its own fatigue thresholds every 18 hours.

She stared at the schematic projected in front of her, fingers twitching as she mapped out another layer of the equation. Not blast radius. Not concussive yield.

Anchoring.

He had cheated. Or something like it. She’d built a bomb that should have folded the district into itself—should have turned air into glass, blood into ice, and liquefied organic matter. And he’d stood in it.

No burns. No damage. Nothing. 

But this wasn’t any ordinary shield. It wasn’t a barrier. It was like the universe had mandated that nothing should touch him. Like trying to punch space itself.

She opened her notes again. The file name pulsed in red: Conceptual Bypass Framework.

The flaw in conventional explosives was fundamental—they interacted with matter. Mass. Velocity. Friction. They needed contact. But contact was predictable. Limiting.

She didn’t want to touch him.

She wanted to unmake him.

What if the detonation wasn’t tied to physics at all? What if it anchored itself to something deeper—to constants that weren’t spatial, but cognitive?

Neural rhythms. Perceptual feedback loops. The mind’s internal map of the body.

A bomb that didn’t just go off. A bomb that believed its target was already within the blast radius—no matter where they stood, no matter what shield they wore. Even if that shield was an impossible mathematical space between atoms.

She didn’t need to break through his barrier.

She needed to convince the explosion it had already happened—inside him.

Her laugh cracked the silence like a match strike. Loud and unhinged. 

“Let’s see you smile through this, white-haired freak.”

. . . . .

Gojo sat on the roof of a tenement building, legs dangling over the edge.

Below, the city muttered to itself. Sirens. Shouting. Distant gunfire. A wounded animal trying to pretend it wasn’t bleeding.

But Gojo didn't care about any of that.

He was following a thread.

Not physical. Not visible. But real. A shimmer at the edge of the perception, tugging like a nerve just below the skin.

He’d seen it first on that blonde girl’s back—Glory Girl, she had called herself. It wasn't just her. The same thread wound through others, capes they called them. Some frayed, others tangled or split, connected to something else. 

Something watching.

“Rules built on scars,” he said softly. “Power built on pain.”

He leaned back, arms behind his head, staring up at the cloudy sky. 

“Well. That’s stupid.”

But intriguing.

Gojo Satoru had faced curses, monsters, gods who had forgotten how to die.

Now he was starting to suspect this broken city might be all three.