call me when they bury bodies underwater

[potentialman]

who: Megumi and whoever. Maybe you??
what: Canon updating.
when: Immediately after the December event/TDM, over the first few days of January.
where: Dreamscape + Columbia University dorms.
warnings: Gore, drowning, and suicidal ideation. Spoilers through the end of the Jujutsu Kaisen manga, also.




Part of Megumi's canon update is leaking into the dreamscape in Sleephattan, so characters may find themselves dreaming a nightmare that doesn't belong to them, for the first few days of January.

The bath is a room in the Zenin compound (think rich as balls traditional Japanese estate, although this particular room is kind of nasty) that's been filled with the blood and viscera of a large number of cursed spirits. Cursed spirits are formed when high concentrations of negative human emotion coalesce together, so it not only looks disgusting — it feels disgusting, because it's like taking a soak in every nasty thing humans are capable of feeling.

For Megumi, who gets dunked once he's been possessed by the King of Curses, it's enough to force his soul into a catatonic state, but since his circumstance is pretty specific, and canon is pretty vague, it might affect other characters very differently. Do what you want, I'm not the boss of you. This is basically just open if anybody wants to take advantage of it to aggravate their character's own trauma...or, like, have a pool party in a literal bloodbath, if they're too evil to be fazed.

I'm containing Megumi's own stuff in top level comments. If you want to go forth and do horrible things, you're welcome to start your own threads and mingle.

Comments

[potentialman]

[ If Megumi is learning one thing from the Culling Game, it's that no matter how bad things seem, there's always still room for them to get that much worse.

Shibuya erased from the map, Tokyo becoming a war zone, and Tsumiki awakening only to be forced into a death game is bad. Tsumiki not really being Tsumiki is worse. Ryomen Sukuna taking over Yuji's body again barely gets a brief well, what else can possibly go wrong somewhere in the back of his head as he's already starting the incantation, Mahoraga stirring —

— and then Sukuna is forcing a finger down his throat and Mahoraga stills as Megumi is abruptly shoved into the backseat of his own body, and all he can do is throw every fiber of his soul into throttling back his body's cursed energy output, even if he can't control what Sukuna is using it for.

This must be what it feels like to hit rock bottom, right?

All it takes to disavow him of that notion is one toe in the bath.

He's barely a step into whatever hellish concoction of blood and viscera Uraume has put together before the spiritual pressure is overwhelming, four arms wrestling him into the pool, shoving his head under the surface and holding him there.

Sukuna and Megumi entered that pool and submerged, but only Sukuna breaks the surface and emerges.

As Sukuna's soul rises with his (their, now?) body, Megumi's sinks.

The breath he's been fighting to hold finally escapes him, his lungs filling with water (no, blood), except it's not liquid, it's malice and it's despair and it's hatred and it's every shitty, petty, horrible piece of humanity that ever crystallized into a cursed spirit and wrecked havoc, eating him alive from the inside out. The fight goes out of him.

The pit he's sinking through goes on far, far deeper than the physical room. There's no light, no sound, only darkness so deep that even the Ten Shadows feel bright in comparison.

He's not sure how much time passes there. He's not sure he cares. The brief flashes of awareness Sukuna allows to reach him are still worse than being alone in that void (Tsumiki's body, bloodied and broken; Gojo cleanly bisected at the torso, killed so suddenly his bottom half is still standing).

There's nothing left for him. Nothing but pain and misery and the knowledge that everything he cares about is being destroyed with his own hands and his own power. There's —

It'll be so lonely without you.

— still one person he

(loves?) ]

[potentialman]

[ His eyes snap open and he sucks in a sharp, panicked breath, blinking in the light (that feels blinding even though it's not even that bright, by any normal standard). The ceiling is (still too damned bright) — a dorm he recognizes, but not the one at Jujutsu High.

Columbia. Manhattan. But if he's here again, then all of that —

Is Sleep just messing with him?

He tries to push himself up to sit, but his elbows buckle and he only makes it halfway before dropping back to the mattress with a thump. How long was he out for? It felt like there were weeks in there even before Sukuna, and then he lost track, but —

One hand goes to his face, to push his hair away from his eyes, but he stops dead and his blood runs cold when his fingers meet rough, scarred skin. Scarred where his flesh split to make way for Sukuna's eyes.

That happened.

That happened, and everything it entails.

Megumi rolls onto his side, curling into a ball as a small choked noise escapes him. Everything that happened. Everyone who died.

Staying dead to the world would've been easier. ]

[sorte]

[ Aventurine had caught glimpses of the nightmare, maybe even experienced some of it, but even acknowledging such a thing to himself rolls off his shoulders like rain on rubber.

Instead, he's ever silent, having been hovering around Columbia the past day or two, always careful to avoid anyone else that might be concerned and checking themselves including any of his roommates.

He knocks gently on the door, but he's become used to no answer, so he's already looking in to see if the teenager is awake (although he's come to expect he very well may not.) He does notice Megumi has moved since he last saw him, though, and so he'll approach the bed, voice hushed as if afraid it might break something by being too loud. ]

Finally awake...?