Jujutsu Kaisen: Tickless

Timeframe: Two weeks after the temporal invasionLocation: Tokyo Jujutsu High, Main Training Grounds

The sky above Tokyo Jujutsu High was unusually still — no birds, no wind. The world, in its silence, seemed to hold its breath.

Yuji Itadori grunted as he landed from a backflip, sweat flying from his brow. The wooden pillar he'd been ordered to dodge shattered behind him with a cursed blast. Across from him stood Panda, arms crossed, observing.

"Again!" Panda barked.

Yuji spat blood. "This the part where I get a break?"

"Nope," Maki cut in from the sidelines, spinning her staff. "You're still hesitating when you hear certain cursed signatures. You freeze. That hesitation is death. Again."

Beside her, Megumi summoned a scaled shikigami, eyes narrowing. "We're building instinct. Not just strength."

Yuji nodded — weary but listening.

After Kyoto and Tokyo turned into massacre zones, things hadn't calmed down. The Goodwill Event? Cancelled. Students? Shaken. Renji Inomaki from Kyoto? On life support. And even with the curses gone, their fear still lingered.

The Tokyo students had drawn up a recovery plan — a personalized training arc, not some cookie-cutter exercise.

Yuji Itadori focused on battle pacing and high-speed endurance, working under cursed pressure for extended periods. His goal: to act under duress without blacking out like before. He was also running silent sparring drills with Nanami at night to refine instinct-based movement — "No CE flares, no breathing tells."

Megumi Fushiguro trained his domain expansion stability — still incomplete, still unreliable. With Gojo's remote guidance and Shoko's CE suppression chambers, he'd been able to get two minutes of stabilized Shikigami control within partial domain space.

Nobara Kugisaki shifted tactics. Instead of just resonance, she started experimenting with delayed pain curses — attaching straw-man damage triggers to thrown needles instead of nails. Her control improved, but every success came with backlash: her wrist was bandaged from yesterday's miscast.

Maki went harder than anyone. With her Heavenly Restriction, she pushed the others too. Sparring with cursed weapon amplifiers, hunting lingering curses in abandoned Tokyo wards, even throwing herself into cursed toxin testing. She claimed it was "for durability." It was also a way to not think about who they lost.

Panda? Logistics. He was organizing movement drills and teaching Yuji group synergy in three-man combat — essential for upcoming joint missions. Even Gojo admitted it was starting to show.

And all the while…

They avoided one name.

Akira.

Elsewhere — Tokyo rooftops

Gojo stood silently, reading a folded wax-sealed notice.

Yaga was behind him. "You saw it too?"

Gojo didn't answer.

The paper read:

Subject: Rensetsu AkiraStatus: Rogue Entity. Temporal Instability. Personality Fracture.Recommended Action: Observe → Terminate.Execution Order: Pending Approval by Directorate.

"...He's not gone yet," Gojo said, folding the paper.

"Maybe not," Yaga replied. "But he's not whole either."

Meanwhile — Kyoto

Renji Inomaki's condition had worsened.

Shoko had done what she could: cursed splints on his spinal cord, memory suppression seals to ease cognitive spikes. But his cursed mark pulsed irregularly now — the command technique destabilized from internal echo feedback during Dagon's last wave.

Momo watched him from the window, holding a scroll on red thread theory.

"Fractured minds can't anchor themselves," she murmured. "But maybe we can stitch a soul across timelines… if we bind it fast enough."

Temporal Sinkhole

Akira meditated again. The temporal sinkhole hummed in sync with his pulse.

His new cursed weapon — the Regret Stake — pulsed beside him like a metronome. Not yet solid. Not yet loyal.

He was learning to move before the second. Training split-second reactions, stake summoning conditioning, and mental silence under echo interference.

But the price was growing.

He no longer remembered how many versions of himself were inside him now.