Kenjaku

His true original form is lost to time, because the only constant by which Kenjaku can be recognized is the surgical scar ringing the top of whichever body he wears. Those stitches trace the operation that relocates his brain, the single genuine piece of him, into a fresh host, and that brain is studded with teeth rather than built like a normal one. Inside Suguru Geto's corpse, he matches Geto's look on the day of his death exactly, with the lone exception of the stitched ring circling his head.

Through centuries and a parade of borrowed names, Kenjaku has held onto a steady core self, now and then sliding into the habits of whomever he occupies, as when he noticed himself acting like Geto. Cool, methodical, and almost never flustered, he is a schemer who keeps intricate plots in motion with whole scenarios charted well ahead. He can read as cheerful, playful, even charming, but a manipulative and intensely self-centered mind sits beneath it, one ready to sacrifice anyone to push his aims forward. While inhabiting Noritoshi Kamo he gained a name as the most evil sorcerer ever to live, his experiments so monstrous that the Meiji era destroyed all record of them.

He adores hearing himself talk, drifting into lengthy monologues and stretching out idle chatter with friend and foe alike, swinging between casually lecturing people about the world's condition and gloating over his opponents. That condescension wears even on his own side; Uraume, a comrade of long standing, cannot stand him. Real skill underpins his arrogance, yet he is clear-eyed about it, knowing full well Gojo could kill him effortlessly and staying glued to Sukuna across the month between Gojo's return and the final duel for exactly that reason. Rather than fear, he steers people by appealing cleverly to what they want, persuading them their goals match his or, where no shared enemy exists, inventing one, as when he tricked a foreign military into walking, soldiers and all, into the colonies of his Culling Game.

Underneath it all churns a bottomless curiosity. Centuries on, he is still captivated by what cursed energy might become, eager to learn its potential embodied in a living thing and convinced that unleashing pure chaos will reveal it. He cast off the Death Paintings the instant their outcome bored him, and he freely told Choso that he means to fuse Japan's population into one being purely because the idea entertains him, likening himself to a toddler clutching a crayon over a blank sheet. Once a friend of Tengen, he now writes the recluse off as a shut-in, despising every structure or worldview rooted in passivity and preserving the status quo.

A thousand years of stockpiled jujutsu lore leave Kenjaku's command of sorcery all but unrivaled. As Noritoshi Kamo he authored the Death Paintings, and he alone grasps the means of turning a dead sorcerer into a cursed object, a method that escaped even Sukuna in the Heian era. He stands as the second-finest barrier user behind Tengen, and because he possesses other sorcerers he can deploy their techniques next to his own. Geto's body lets him handle Cursed Spirit Manipulation with masterly precision, having gathered a roster of cursed spirit familiars that includes the special grade Smallpox Deity, and he turns the technique not only against enemies but toward his plots, absorbing Mahito to claim Idle Transfiguration and absorbing Tengen to drive his designs ahead.

His gifts stretch well past sorcery. A superb hand-to-hand fighter and an unequaled mastermind, he engineered two of modern history's largest jujutsu disasters, and each ran almost without a hitch. The plan in Shibuya sealed Gojo away while Kenjaku slipped off untouched with the Prison Realm, after which he set the Culling Game running through an elaborate lattice of binding vows and colonies raised atop Tengen's barriers. He proved his fighting ceiling by overcoming Yuki Tsukumo, a special grade, together with Choso and Tengen single-handedly, showcasing his most advanced feats, among them the uncommon trick of expanding a domain without sealing its outer shell, which only he and Sukuna can manage.

His brain transplant technique slides him into any body, corpse included, granting the host's cursed energy, techniques, and memories so thoroughly that not even the Six Eyes can detect the impostor. The binding vow attached to it leaves the unhealable forehead scar, and unstitching it lets him lift away the top of his skull to bare his original brain. He keeps access to prior hosts' techniques, such as Kaori Itadori's Antigravity System, though his brain has a ceiling before it overloads. Rounding out his arsenal are Maximum: Uzumaki, which merges his amassed curses into a single ruinous strike while drawing out their techniques for one-time use; reverse cursed technique for healing; and his domain Womb Profusion, an open-barrier pillar of cursed spirits whose certain hit gravely injured Yuki. His careful intellect, his patience across ages, and his preference for outwitting rather than overpowering opponents eventually carried him through even Fumihiko Takaba's logic-defying power, until Yuta Okkotsu executed him, by which point he had already passed Sukuna both his will and the power to set off the Great Merger, keeping it as a failsafe.