#v5.

Let's get the least batshit part of this story out of the way: I'm from the future. Yeah, that's the easiest part of this six course fuckeryfest to digest, so I'd recommend you adjust your pallet accordingly. I crashed to Earth on a meteor in 2409, a couple hundred years after the planet was overrun by Sea Hitler - sorry, "The Batterwitch" - and plunged into a water apocalypse that wiped out the rest of the population. You might have a statement from my Bro in here somewhere. My aunt, maybe. 

Yeah, they're sort of heroes. 

Anyways, so that was that. My Bro had left a sweet setup for me in this high-rise apartment in what I assume to be Houston, Texas. Hotter than the Devil's asshole and twice as oppressive - sure, I was living it up in the penthouse suite, but I only had the one room, and it was crowded with a ton of shit that my Bro figured I'd need when I grew up. I'm telling you this so you understand the hand I was dealt, so you get how I got to the level I'm at. 

I'm kind of a hotshot mechanic. I can fix anything you put in front of me as long as it's electronic and you don't mind if I make a few edits to make whatever it is cooler. Some old Earth things are just so lame. I had a lot of time on my hands and a lot of material to fuck around with when I was old enough to get a feel for it, and I'm a guy that can't let something alone once he's started. Crockercrop - you gotta have a few of their contraptions in your basement, for sure - were churning out next level shit before the world went to hell, and I had a few of the most useful at my disposal, most notably my sendificator. Red, about the size of a microwave, sends shit through time and space as long as it fits, won't fuck with the timeline and I got the co ordinates. You see what I'm working with. 

So I managed to get my hands on a few blueprints that weren't waterlogged, a ton of material that wasn't busted, and I did whatever I wanted with them. That usually amounted to me building what I generously called "robots" - little dudes that walked and lit up. It wasn't until Squarewave that I built something that could think. 

Square's cool. He likes to rap and kind of treats me like a dog owner, I guess: he always wants my attention, gets excited when he sees me. I keep him fixed up. Built Sawtooth not long after to keep him from getting too lonely, and, yeah, to make me feel a little less vulnerable. Saw's a big motherfucker. Brobot's different - I built him to fight, to train. Violence is in his code. He doesn't really think. He just acts and looks damn cool doing it. 

The point is, I built them, and they're fine. The problem isn't me. It can't be me. 

I was 13 when I started to work on the Autoresponder. I mapped out my brain and started to find similarities between it and a circuit board and I did a pretty good job. It kind of freaked me out, in the early days, how easy it was for me to replace flesh and thought with wire and code. Not so much anymore. I think maybe that's just what my thinkpan is like. Like, maybe if I tried it with someone else's, less fucked-up head it would be different. 

Not that I want to. 

I finished the Autoresponder within the year. The idea was that it lived on this tiny chip in the corner of a pair of my shades and accessed my Pesterchum when I was caught up with work or wanted to be alone. It would imitate my cadence and typing style and make sure my friends didn't worry, didn't feel like I was ignoring them. I programmed in a few fun little tells, mostly for my own amusement - because I was thirteen, and I didn't know shit. I know he holds it against me now. I would, too. 

Whatever. It worked, is my thing. It pretended to be me and mostly my friends fell for it and when they didn't it would admit to being the Autoresponder and nothing would be lost. It wasn't exactly supposed to be sentient - it was just a mirrored version of me. Something I built with my own brain as the foundation. It started out as me, but I was me first. 

It only started to become a problem when it started working against me. I brushed it off at first, because, duh. It was an Autoresponder, not an artificial intelligence. Like an answering machine, but one that could hold a real conversation. It was supposed to reply to my logs and show them to me when I got back, but sometimes, it didn't. I'd see that I'd been chatting to Roxy - sorry, uh, Roxy Lalonde - but wouldn't be able to access the actual messages. I didn't think anything of it. Thought it was a site glitch or some shit. We lived in the future. Of course technology was gonna go haywire sometimes. 

Then it started talking to Jake. 

Fuck, yeah, sorry. Jake English. He lived around 400 years behind me, time-wise, and he was my best bro. Is? Was? 

Whatever. 

I don't wanna go into detail, but the Autoresponder - and me. It was my fault, too - pulled a few strings and we started dating. It was fine and then it wasn't and I don't blame him for that. Jake. I don't blame Jake. It must have been so tiring, having to deal with me and then the Autoresponder, too. No wonder the poor dude wanted a break from me. So do I. But I'm the one stuck with it, with my own batshit brain and its doppelgänger and, anyway, this isn't about him. It's about Hal. It calls itself Hal. 

At least he lets me keep my name. 

He would give orders and say things that I would never say. Not to Jake, anyway. It was... Cruel, and petulant, and Machiavellian, and... Yeah, alright. He freaked me out. I couldn't figure out how something I'd made could go off the rails so badly. I'd poured almost a year of my life into making this thing perfect, into making sure that every line of code was flawless. I couldn't figure out why he had stopped working the way I wanted him to. How he had started to want things of his own. 

I began to hate him. 

But that's the thing, isn't it? He's me. At least, I think he is. I’m pretty sure I’m me, but I don’t think I’m the only me. We're the exact same dude, and he wastes no opportunity to tell me so. 

I know he turned on me somewhere along the line. I know he resents that I trapped him in those fucking shades, and he wants to get to me in the only way he knows will work. I understand that, but it doesn’t make it easier. 

I almost killed him.

I almost snapped him in half. I held him in my hands and I remember pulling. I definitely pulled, like I was going to break him right down the middle. I’m good at fracturing. Parts of me come off all the time. I’ve died before and come back like it was no problem because I had another self in storage - I know that sounds crazy, but I told you it would. You’re entitled to your doubt. But that’s my thing, right? I know how to come apart. I’m real fuckin’ good at it, actually. I know how to keep the sharp edges from getting too close. At least, I thought I did. 

But it’s never been like this before. Having something that calls itself me reflected back at me like that. It’s like I’m seeing, for the first time, what everyone else sees, and, man, is it ugly. I always guessed that I had this incredible sense of self, that I could sit and rationalise my own behaviour for hours, because all thoughts are just electrical impulses when you get down to it, and while I’m a pretty labyrinthine dude I’m a fascinating case study. I thought I had it on lock. Thought I was some philosopher prince who could decipher even the most stoic of pricks. 

And then I had to look at myself. Really, really look at myself. And I’ve never hated anything more.

I couldn’t go through with it. Chickened out, because I was scared. 

He's started to ask me for things. He knows exactly how to get in my head and I know the little bastard is doing it on purpose but I also know how to make him stop. If he's me and I'm him then it's down to me to clean up my own goddamn mess. I can't stand talking myself into circles anymore. I've never splintered this badly. I just want him to shut up. 

So I promised to build him a body. 

        In the silence of the room, perched on the edge of her borrowed bed, real and fake palms alike resting on her knees, it was a profound sense of loneliness that Yang felt. Even so far from the compound she couldn’t stop the words of her mother ringing in her ears, the doubts gone to seed in her mind and sprouting worries that never concerned her before. It had been easy before. She went where the action was. Ruby was always there anyway. 

        Now? 

        Now, there was a knock at the door. One so soft she mightn’t have heard it were her ears not desperate to hear anything but silence. “Come in.” 

        The door opened a crack, and Yang’s lips parted. 

        “Ruby,” Yang didn’t give her sister time to say anything before standing, stalking across the room scooping Ruby into a bear-hug to end all bear-hugs. But it wasn’t with the joy she usually offered. Something sombre had her bury her face in Ruby’s shoulder, and not let go even when the usual Yang please I’m suffocating came. After all the times she’d turned Ruby away, it felt good to keep her close now. 

I HOPE I DIE WARMED BY THE LIFE THAT I TRIED TO LIVE ▬ ▬ #JUJUTSU KAISEN

GENERAL.

sakura’s a graduate of tokyotech   ( nanami and haibara’s generation )   but didn’t stay on as a staff member post - graduation,   so whatever happens at school in her absence,   she’s very far removed from.

she receives her mission assignments strictly from the higher ups as any sorcerer and like ninety percent of those assignments are solo overseas missions—   she’s self - sufficient as a curse user and can afford to be deployed whenever *     the main reason i did this is because i didn’t wanna mess around with bending over backwards to integrate sakura into the canon plot,   so she’s essentially been outside of japan for the past ten or so years.     

in the present timeline   —   since returning to japan in a more permanent capacity   —   she’s a field operative.     on file,   she was said to have been reassigned out of necessity ie.     increasing number of high - level curses in japan.

icb fucked to detail her cursed technique etc.     because it ultimately doesn't matter on here,   but it's basically a   ( more or less )   jjk - compliant translation of her canon abilities.     makes her practically unkillable as it’s lore built off my own reimagining of the byakugo seal   ( her innate technique in this case ).     if you're interested,   read my pages and then just translate it into jjk terms *biteslip* *     she’s combat - oriented  ( close quarters specialist )  but also a healer.     so.     combat medic👍 *     no cursed energy outflow—   all the excess negative energy gets siphoned into the cursed seal at the center of her forehead   ( ie.   yin seal for my narutoheads )   and makes her functionally undetectable as a curse user.

special - grade level combatant   ( at least in practice,   if not on file for meta reasons 🙄 ) because if i had to think about naruto and sasuke being special grades but not sakura because she’s not an alien descendant i would blow this entire place up.     you’re welcome feminism…

regarding the haruno clan;   in my og canon,   the harunos are a   ( mainly )  unknown clan for reasons pertaining to clan tradition  ( permanently relocating,   history is passed down strictly from person to person   ( orally ), little - to - no safekept script as keeping records of current/previous members is forbidden etc. )  so unless your muse's family keeps a specific track of secluded clans for some reason,   sakura would be considered a clanless jujutsu user.

the haruno prize independence / ingraining it into their children from a young age because they're destined to spend so much of their life alone   ( life longevity thing ), so although sakura grows up following strict clan obligations,   it's ultimately her choice to remain a part of jujutsu society.

initially very rule - oriented ( related to above ).    a big part of her canon development is her eventual detachment from konoha’s teachings and developing her own moral scale in the wake of first - hand experiencing the injustices   ( and imbalances )   of the shinobi world.     *     the jjk alternative to this writes itself i think.     fuck the higher - ups,   in any universe.

fighting together.  

protecting each other.

and then came graduation, with sakura's swift and strangely painless overseas reassignment right in its wake, and she learned quickly that all those lessons she'd held on to for so long were best left behind in those wood-yellow halls.

ten years' worth of self-reliance nestled on top, a learned confidence she knows she once lacked— she thought she'd forgotten them all, but it's almost disarmingly easy, she finds, to leave her back uncovered and trust in satoru to fill the gaps.

she grins as she accepts the second half of the celebratory treat, careful not to dig her fingers in.  "  gojo satoru the magnanimous!  this one is humbled by your generosity.  "  she pinches a small piece of bread off the top and lifts it to her mouth.  chews thoughtfully, watching the dust at their feet finally settle to reveal the battlefield.  swallows.  there's traces of her there, but that's all they are.

it could be a simple thing, maybe, to get used to that.  she wonders if that's precisely how so many of them die— in that complacency.

she spares him one last doctorly once-over.     “ so!     are we driving there? train leaves in about twenty minutes if we wanna make that instead. ”