[After your conversation with Yaga ended, you caught up with Gojo and Geto as they headed for the mission site.]
[Gojo spotted you coming and tossed a can of cola your way without breaking stride.]
["Oh, thanks."]
["What'd he want? Keeping you behind like that."]
[He popped his own can and took a swig, watching you sideways.]
[You didn't bother hiding it. Just tweaked the phrasing a little.]
["He said Shoko can't handle this one, so I'm filling in for her. Support role."]
[It tracked. You were the only person besides Shoko who could perform Reverse Cursed Technique on others. Neither Gojo nor Geto questioned the arrangement. They had absolute confidence in their own strength, but if the Star Plasma Vessel died, the mission failed regardless. Yaga's decision wasn't overkill. And after more than a year together, the two of them had grown used to you cleaning up after them the way an Assistant Manager would.]
[Gojo sank his empty can into a trash bin with a flick of the wrist, then shifted topics.]
["Come to think of it, Q wanting her dead makes sense, but why would the Star Religious Group go after the Star Plasma Vessel?"]
["Because what they worship is Master Tengen's purity," Geto explained. "To them, the Star Plasma Vessel is contamination. They refuse to allow that kind of impurity to merge with Tengen."]
[You took a couple swigs of cola and couldn't keep the thought to yourself.]
["But doesn't Tengen need to assimilate once every five hundred years? That means from their perspective, Tengen's already been 'impure' before. So why draw the line now? Unless they know something specific about this particular girl and decided she's unworthy? Doesn't the whole thing seem off to you?"]
[Gojo clearly hadn't been listening. His expression said it all: Why are you still talking? We're the strongest. Their reasons don't matter.]
[Geto, though, had caught every word. He turned the question over before answering.]
["Maybe because they're a relatively new sect. Their history doesn't stretch back five hundred years. Or maybe they see this as some kind of correction?"]
["Maybe..."]
[Cross-referencing what you knew from your last simulation, something about the Star Religious Group's involvement still felt forced.]
[Even after learning that Jujutsu High was dispatching two Special Grade sorcerers as escorts, they still insisted on killing the Star Plasma Vessel. That kind of conviction reeked of something deeper.]
[A thought took shape. If they knew about Tengen's need to assimilate, did they also understand the consequences of failure?]
[Or was the talk of purity nothing but a front? Was what they truly wanted the outcome that came from preventing the assimilation entirely?]
[But nothing from your previous simulation's memories supported that theory. The assimilation had failed, yes. Your intelligence ended there. No follow-up, no aftermath.]
[You filed it away. Something to investigate as events unfolded.]
["Quit overthinking it. Me and Suguru are the strongest, that's exactly why Master Tengen handpicked us. End of story."]
[Gojo had zero interest in the thread you'd been pulling. In his eyes, lingering on it was a waste of time.]
[Geto gave him a complicated look.]
["What?"]
["Satoru, I've been meaning to bring this up for a while now."]
["Bring what up?"]
["You should really stop referring to yourself as 'the strongest'"]
["Huh?"]
["Especially when meeting superiors. We might end up face-to-face with Master Tengen, and when that happens, you should at least say 'I' like a normal person. It comes across warmer. And besides, you'll scare the kid if you talk like that."]
["Ugh, what a pain. No way."]
[The Star Plasma Vessel was staying on the twentieth floor of a hotel. Gojo decided that fetching one girl didn't require all three of them, which was really just his way of saying he didn't feel like making the trip. So you split into two groups.]
[You and Geto would head up to retrieve her, while Gojo waited below.]
[A few minutes later, the elevator doors opened on the top floor.]
[Following the information Yaga had provided, you found the room. Geto double-checked the number, then knocked.]
[A girl's voice came from inside.]
["Coming."]
[Then, from somewhere you couldn't place, a low hum reached both your ears.]
["Hm?"]
["What?"]
[You sensed it before you understood it. A violent surge of Cursed Spirit energy pulsing from inside the room. The next instant, the explosion it triggered detonated.]
[Geto reacted on instinct, summoning a spherical Cursed Spirit that wrapped around you both like a shell.]
[The blast hurled the orb several meters down the corridor. While your head still spun from the tumbling, Geto had already dismissed the spirit, realized the explosion might have reached the Star Plasma Vessel, and charged into the ruined room.]
[That was when footsteps approached from down the hall.]
[A man in a white military-style uniform, face hidden behind a black mask, walked toward you. Dragging behind him by one arm was an unconscious woman in a maid's outfit.]
[Glass shattered somewhere inside the room. The man glanced at the wreckage, then spoke with an eerie calm.]
["Don't blame us. Blame Tengen."]
[His words. The strange uniform. The Cursed Energy radiating off him, identical in signature to the Residual Cursed Energy from the explosion. All of it confirmed what you already suspected: Q.]
[His gaze shifted to you, landing on your clothes.]
["That uniform. You're a Jujutsu High sorcerer, aren't you?"]
[Your answer was Asakirimaru, already hurtling toward his throat.]