Sorry for the wait. This is a longer chapter and I'm not saying that makes up for it but I hope you enjoy it. I had to a small bit of math for Shohei's speed while flying because I just wanted to provide a scope of how well and fast he flies. I enjoyed kind of getting creative with Gravity Conductor in a way that you'll see. I also condensed several episodes into this one chapter since a lot got cut since Shohei wasn't there, but there is a lot of action packed in here still. What's going on in the Veil while Shohei's been thrown from it? Let's see.
"What the hell?" Shohei cursed, pouncing on the obsidian curtain with a crash of gravity in an attempt to break through.
A wave of dread and puzzlement washed over Shohei, shattering his static facade of ditzyness. He was just engaging the special-grade curse before something dragged him out of the curtain.
The curse had just registered Shohei's attack when he was dragged out, so there was no way that it forced him out of the curtain. Shohei would've sensed the cursed technique.
The thought of the special-grade now all alone with Megumi, Toge, and Noritoshi dwelled heavily on Shohei, as he, the strongest one present, was no longer there to fight the curse with the other's help.
With all four of them, they possibly could have stalled the curse indefinitely, if not beat it before a capable, adult grade-one or special-grade Sorcerer showed up, like Satoru. Being the most offensive Sorcerer between the students, they were significantly weaker without his presence. They might not all be capable of escaping untouched without Shohei.
"Shohei!" a voice called from below the gravity suspent Sorcerer.
Satoru, Principal Gakuganji, and Utahime were gathered together at the base of the dome, seemingly cut off in their pursuit on entering before it fully formed.
Shohei hurriedly flew down to them and looked amongst the three for answers.
"What's happening?!" Gakuganji asked fretfully, his eyebrows casting deep shadows over his eyes. He held a case with some sort of weapon or cursed-tool inside.
"Someone's set up a veil obviously. We discussed that on the way grandpa," Gojo said mockingly, not looking at the elderly man, but at the veil. "Since it's down now, I just need to break it."
"Then hurry dude," Shohei said in an unusual tone for him, distress. "Fushiguro, Inumaki, Kamo, and I were just attacked by a special-grade curse. I got ejected out of the veil just when I was engaging it. It's probably attacking the others now, so hurry!"
"Are you not rather renowned for your range of sensing in your clan?" Utahime asked Shohei, anxiety shaking her voice as well. "How could you have not seen the curse coming?"
"It's like it blended in with the forest. It was unnatural for a curse," Shohei explained. "It doesn't matter right now! Just break it down, Satrou."
"I think I know the curse you're talking about," Satoru told Shohei, rubbing his chin and looking up, milling through his memory while the boy panicked. "Was it white with black markings and had little eye trees?"
"Yeah. When did you run into it?" Shohei asked, surprised but thrilled Satoru knew the threat at hand.
"A month or so ago," Satoru said offhandedly. "I was attacked by a different special-grade curse and the one you're talking about saved it. It's a slippery bastard. It managed to blend into the forest and even my eyes couldn't find it. That's probably how it got through the barriers of the school and onto the grounds. I was going to tell you, but we've both been busy. I did manage to tell Megumi about it though, so he should know how dangerous it is."
Satoru looked back to the curtain, finally deciding to try and break it. He held out a hand and placed it on the dome, but almost immediately, black flame and electricity sparked to life and jared the man, making him wrench his smoking hand away in minor pain.
Ignorantly, but curiously Utahime stuck her hand toward the dome, and rather than making contact with it and being attacked, she sunk her arm wrist deep into it.
"Hey," she said to Gojo, making him look up from his smoking palm. "Why are you being kept out while I'm able to enter?"
Shohei tried this as well, but a surge of cursed energy sent black flames and lighting at his hand as well, making him flinch and retreat.
"I get it now," Gojo said simply, a small grin marking his face as if he solved a cute riddle on a kids menu in a restaurant. "Utahime, Gramps, you go on ahead. This veil is a barrier that allows all others to go in and out in return for denying Satoru and Shohei Gojo entry."
Shohei understood his cousin's reasoning.
Either of the Gojos were possibly some of the greater threats to anyone wishing ill on Tokyo High, and removing them both would do wonders in opening up doorways for bad intentions.
Sure, Shohei was only a student, but he was trained by the strongest Sorcerer and several other stupendous Sorcerers, and he had the destructive combat abilities that even some of them lacked.
"Where is principal Yaga?" Shohei asked, wondering why the principal of the school wasn't present for the emergency.
"He's checking on master Tengen," Utahime answered, before entering the veil. " Mei Mei is still in the facilities, attempting to monitor the students inside further. Can you sense Tengen or any others on the grounds?"
"No," Shohei said, not sensing any Sorcerers in his span of notice. "I'm too far to sense much, but Tengen-sama's barriers interfere with my sensing anyway. I can't sense much around his location or anything that he's protecting with them."
"Okay then," Utahime nodded, sticking an arm and leg through the barrier. "We're off then." Then she and Gakuganji disappeared, sinking through the black mound.
Satoru returned to examining the veil closely, having a hand hover over it's surface and staring deeply into it through his blindfold.
Gojo hummed a curious note and backed away rather quickly to smack Shohei on the shoulder and cackle.
"So here's the plan, buddy," Satoru began, resting his elbow on Shohei's shoulder and leaning heavily onto him, rolling his head on his neck. Their bangs and blindfold made heavy "eye contact" and returned to looking at the veil.
"The veil before us is not your typical curtain. It's is almost two in one, each restricting either of us," Gojo told his younger relative. He pointed a long finger at the dome and said, "I know you don't have my eyes, but you have some of the best sensory skills, so take a deep look at the dome. Doesn't it look almost layered?"
Shohei followed Satoru's finger and gazed at the veil, attempting to almost peel the technique back and examine it like a dissected cadaver or frog.
The continuous, stationary flow of the veil's cursed energy revealed itself to Shohei as he studied it intensely, attempting to recognize what Satoru was talking about.
The cursed energy was positioned and flowed like if the water inside a snowglobe was also sandwiched against the outside glass by another layer of glass underneath. The forest and students inside were like whatever image the globe was made to display.
The "glass" or layers of the veil were not identical. The outermost layer was barely a third as dense and powerful as the under layer.
The curtain must have been made with thought out conditions and seals and then laid down by others if it had the goal to keep Gojo and him out. The special-grade must have allies helping it.
"I see the layers," Shohei said, understanding the curtain's composure. "Could you break it?"
Satoru nodded, proud the boy accomplished what he wanted while also answering the question.
"I can, but if you break your layer, the outside one, you should be able to get in there before I do," Satoru explained. "The layer below, the layer restricting my entrance, has more power diverted to it. I know curtains can't be typically broken with force, but those are general purpose curtains. This one is directly and physically opposing use, so in a contest of strength we both should be able to pry into a momentary weak spot of the veil."
"How much force would it require for us to break through a weak spot?" Shohei asked.
"For me, I should be able to pour enough cursed energy into a certain spot I've already noticed for long enough to break through," Satoru waved in a direction on the dome, unconcerned. "But you," Satoru jabbed a finger into Shohei's chest, "won't be able to pour enough cursed energy into such a fluctuating small spot for as long as I could to break through."
"So what do I do if you want me to get in there earlier than you do?" Shohei asked, waiting for the man to get to the point and tell him what he should do to get through.
"Well, you've got your Shooting Star kanabo right?" Satoru asked.
Shohei nodded yes and said, "I think it's up in the upper thermosphere."
"Well, after you've found a spot that has a repeated moment of hesitance or lul of power, you're going to hone in on the spot while after you've called down Shooting Star, returned into somewhere in an upper atmosphere to double its stored power again, and come crashing back down onto the veil," Satoru explained, grinning at Shohei's concentrated face attempting to fully fathom the plan before trying to play it out. "That should be a sudden and powerful enough crash of cursed energy to rend open your layer. With your layer gone, you can hop into the mix and my layer should be able to break as well."
Shohei came to the conclusion that this plan was adequate enough. He didn't want to spend more time trying to devise another plan.
"Sounds like a plan," Shohei admitted and took flight.
He slowly hovered all over the surface of the veil, pausing several times to inspect and consider different locations in the surface layer that had stutterings of thin cursed energy for several brisk seconds, but never deeming any place better than another.
His short attention span and the uninteresting mundane flow of cursed energy did no favors for Shohei in his attempt at discovering a weak point.
Shohei returned to Gojo's side, disheartened, after almost ten whole minutes of fruitless searching.
"I can't find any particular point that has a relatively large moment of thinning or one with a consistent small lag," Shohei muttered, running his hands through his hair, flashing his bright and dark eyes before his hands fell back to his sides and his hair continued to stab downwards.
"You don't say?" Satoru chirped, his cheery voice out of place in the stressful situation. "If that's the case then just pick one in a convienting spot for smashing. You'll need a good angle of attack anyway if you're coming in like a crashing satellite with Shooting Star."
Shohei's heart rate hadn't lowered a single digit since he was launched from the veil and he was beginning to feel the beating in his throat and ears. He was suddenly aware of how uncomfortable he was in his own clothes with his elevated body temperature.
Shohei hunched over and placed his hands on his knees and began attempting to take large breaths.
"Don't fall to pieces on me, Sho," Gojo said, patting the boy's back reassuringly. "You never have before. It's not like you."
"I know, I'm sorry," Shohei croaked, still facing downward at the stone pathway. "If it was just me fighting the cursed-spirit, then I wouldn't worry, but Megumi and my friends are in there. I felt how strong that curse was and most of them can't handle it."
Shohei took a large breath and said, "I'm wasting time." Shohei stood up straight and held out a hand to the sky. "I should be hurrying up."
A wave of hesitance crashed over Shohei again as his kanabo, Shooting star, tore down from the sky like a lightning strike and into his outstretched grasp. Seemingly literal shooting stars streaked across the onyx surface of the club, indicating its large degree of stored cursed energy.
Shohei looked down at his club with a weak frown and asked Gojo without looking up at him, "Satoru… what if after all the time I spend trying to break through, something terrible has happened inside because we couldn't stop it?"
"Then hurry up," Satoru said simply. "Get to gunning it up to about the mesosphere and crack this veil open in one go."
Satoru put a hand on Shohei's shoulder again and turned him face to face with himself. He donned a reassuring and confident smile and said, "We Gojos are an unstoppable force. You know I always say your limits are boundless and all it's gonna take for you to reach them is putting in some effort. Go get it done."
Shohei felt emboldened by his good friend and close kinsman's words, and with a roused smile, took off into the sky.
Shohei resmeled a small rocket or missile taking flight. He soon resembled a dot to any onlooker from the ground.
He cleared the troposphere, the layer of the sky where most weather occurrences took place, and entered the stratosphere, where planes and jets flew in no more than thirty seconds.
The air around Shohei would typically be harmful to breath if a person were capable of reaching such a latitude because the ozone in the layer of the sky is so abundant, but Shohei was unfazed.
In the invisible force around Shohei was the healthy and breathable air from the troposphere.
The cursed energy manipulating the gravity somehow allowed oxygen to remain in it's sort of bubble if the shell of said gravity was always getting folded back into itself or just typically directed inward. It provided Shohei with a nice personal pocket of air to breathe.
Shohei made the discovery of the helpful skill when he had perfected his cursed technique Gravity Conductor, and both could fly with it and have a mastered shield surrounding him.
Shohei had gone fluttering through the blue vastness on a free day of his and got lost in the blissful experience. After casually soaring directly upward for about ten minutes straight, he found himself in the upper thermosphere, gasping for air when had exhausted the oxygen in the reserve he didn't know he had.
Thankfully Shohei had gathered himself and made a meteoric dive back to the surface of the Earth before he lost consciousness and came plummeting down like an actual meteor.
Shohei had finished his trek through the stratosphere and felt a jolting temperature change, entering the mesosphere, the coldest layer of the sky. Shohei's field kept him relatively warmer than should be expected in the mesosphere. In the portion of sky, water vapor freezes into clouds called noctilucent clouds. The silvery blue clouds could be seen almost at the same time the brightest stars could be viewed.
Shohei crashed through the brisk atmosphere and small accumulating ice crystals, Shooting Star in hand, hanging loosely behind him. Shohei figured it appropriate to begin his descent and come crashing back down on the veil, directly when he felt himself attempting to breathe the lessening oxygen deeper and more erratic.
Shohei glided to a stop at the peak of the mesosphere, bordering the thermosphere at about eighty-seven kilometers high in the atmosphere. He had finished his minute and a half flight after tearing through the atmosphere at about 5,220 kilometers per hour or 3,244 miles per hour.
Shohei delicately turned in the air, turning from facing the approaching mass of darkness known as space. He glanced at the edges of Earth that resemble the view of the edge of the sea when standing on the beach, and faced the massive expanse of quilted cloud cover obscuring his view of ground. The teenager floated on the spot, raised Shooting Star over his head, and with a boom of resonance in the wide, open air, he was plunging towards the planet at the literal speed of sound.
The wind could be heard, tearing past Shohei's barrier like never ceasing lashes of whips and belts, cracking and tearing over its outline Shooting Star roared out in a sort of robust, bellow of a hum, gaining volume and intensity as it approached it's maximum cap of storable cursed energy.
Shohei breezed through both mesosphere and stratosphere in mere moments, the wind almost powerful enough to reach through his gravity field and tickle his uniform. Shohei zipped through the cloud cover, dragging the clouds behind him in a sort of tailing that resembled the contrails of a speeding jet.
The Mountains that Jujutsu High resided in came into existence, then the forests atop the mountains, and then the school amidst the forest, and then the Veil, still erect and ominously swallowing the bulk of the woods the Exchange Event was being held in.
Shohei almost had no need to realign his course of attack, as he was damnear directly above the dome, Shooting Star in hand brimming with its maximum amount of power. Its blazing white meteoros were so large that the once black surface of the club had turned perfectly bleached in rippling white flames.
Shohei almost missed his most opportune window to swing the lethally overflowing cursed tool he was coming in so fast, but he did manage to smash the club downard, all in his window of opportunity from traveling from the mesosphere down onto the veil in about .0704 seconds. This was his fastest time he ever traveled when attempting to land an attack, and Shohei thought it was a miracle he hit the nail on the head, so to speak.
Shooting Star pummeled down onto the crown of the black veil, releasing a shockwave of cursed energy and pure concussive power that hurled Shohei askew and back into the air, Shooting Star tearing away from his grip and flying off into the forest in the rebound of force.
The pouncing spear of cloud cover that had dove after Shohei when he pierced through it was countered by and clashed with the tsunami of force, dispersing it throughout seemingly miles and miles to come.
Tree's outside of the now semi-dismantled dome whipped and cowered in the force, whole tree limbs and branches tearing off of some. Birds that had taken flight at the initial sound of contact tumbled and rolled in the air when the gale came underneath their wings and overturned them.
The minor ballistic occurrence reverberated and echoed throughout the mountainsides, and Shohei found himself hovering over the veil again, basking in the scene of his accomplishment. Joyful with pride wasn't nearly accurate enough to describe Shohei's ecstaticness that he had succeeded in one try. He was now able to reenter the fight and help save his classmates and friends.
Satoru was right in believing that Shohei would succeed, but rather than seeking out Gojo outside the veil, Shohei decided to immediately head into the veil and attempt to stop the special-grade curse that he failed to exorcize many long minutes ago.
Shohei dove toward, through and into the veil with no resistance or blockage whatsoever, but his immediate sensing of cursed energy signatures cut his joyful success short. It was a mess.
Unidentified curse users roamed about the grounds. Injured or incapacitated students riddled the area. Principal Gakuganji was in combat with a curse user, and so much more were all present in his orbit of discernment.
His classmates and fellow Sorcerers were of extreme importance to Shohei, but two specific signatures had his utmost urgency. Maki and Megumi.
Shohei hunted down the odd, nature-like signature of the special-grade and found it amongst the two signatures he wanted nowhere near it.
The curse was standing in a winding creek, slithering through the woods, and had Megumi on his knees, cursed buds sprouting from his stomach several feet away. Maki was closer to the curse, her arm pinned to her neck and getting choked by a root sprouting by its side.
Shohei's heart dropped into the pit of his stomach and thumped like a seaside thunderstorm in the peak of Typhoon season.
The curse was looking up at him with it's branch eyes, undoubtedly noticing the massive effort it took him to break through the veil.
The curse would've been undoubtedly marked atrocious at cursed energy sensing if it didn't feel the looming force of outraged and catastrophic cursed energy issuing from Shohei's silent and still body, floating in the sky like a static cloud on a windless night.
It did however sense the malicious aura, alongside Fushiguro. Maki even was looking skyward, feeling a terrible anger rolling off Shohei in the sky, but unable to legitimately sense the cursed energy.
A crooked grin split across Maki's face as she saw the reinforcements.
Shohei's hair was released from the weight of its gravity field and stood on end, like an alley cat's hair rising before it let out a shrill hiss to echo through the streets.
In a blur, Shohei plummeted towards the curse in a flash of black Jujutsu uniform and polka dotted hair, disappearing from its view and materializing behind it.
Shohei was not the only Sorcerer that had appeared in a flash around the curse, providing Maki and Megumi with all the support they could've hoped for.
Todo and Itadori appeared alongside Maki, scooping them up in their arms or tearing away the root, choking them.
"You good to go, my friend?" Todo asked Itadori who was still posing in the stroke that destroyed the root.
Itadori put up his balled fists, ready to fight. He simply grunted, "Yes."
Before Itadori could engage the curse himself, Shohei formed a similar attack that he originally intended to attack the curse with.
Swirling force of force and cursed energy, similar to a massive drill, gathered around Shohei's flattened hand and arm.
The boy threw the jab into the small of the curse's back, blowing a volleyball sized hole in it's midriff and making the curse leak massive amounts of purple blood from both the hole and it's lipless mouth.
Shohei proceeded to leap into a large kick and boot the curse in the side of it's head with his foot, launching it into a tree to the side of the creek and away from the group of Sorcerers.
Hustling over to the kneeling Megumi and followed by Todo and Itadori, Shohei first slightly crouched down to look closely at Maki's face in Todo's arms.
She had been stabbed in the shoulder and struck hard in the face. Even her inhuman durability didn't protect her from a large welt that would soon turn to a bruise. Her glasses that let her see curses had been lost, knocked off somewhere into the stream or forest.
Shohei turned to Megumi, now standing on his feet with Itadori's help. He had blood leaking from his lips and sprigs of cursed buds stabbed into and sprouting from his stomach. Their wicked roots had punctured and spread throughout Megumi's stomach. He needed immediate help from a trained Jujutsu Sorcerer with extensive healing knowledge.
"Shohei!" they both muttered, nonplussed and stunned at the boy's dramatic measures to subdue the curse and theatrical arrival.
Maki abruptly looked humiliated to be looked down at by Shohei and in Todo's large arms. She made a quick movement to fling herself from his arms, but stumbled when landing on her feet. Shohei caught her, gripping her arms firmly.
"No need to be so stoic," Shohei weakly scolded, helping the girl stand straight before she tore her arms from his grip.
Maki's face was painted a small tint of red from her frustration and defeat despite being rescued, but she didn't speak to the boy.
Shohei understood Maki's pride was somewhat hurt by his saving of her, regardless of her rescue. She and him had a somewhat fiddly relationship that only got more shaken when they competed against each other, even if it was official missions and Jujutsu business.
Maki was sure to be grateful of not dying by the curse's hands thanks to Todo, Itadori, and Shohei, but she might as well choke on a whole apple because she would do no favors or give any thanks to the three if it meant swallowing her pride as a Sorcerer.
"I can see you and the others put a dent in this thing's cursed energy reserves. It's been healing left and right hasn't it?" Shohei changed the topic, seeing her agitation with being defeated then rescued. "You too Megumi. Good job," Shohei added, giving the boy a bubbly thumbs up and not showering Maki in misread pity.
Megumi ignored the gesture and looked at Itadori who had gone back to squaring off against the curse who had risen to its feet and healed its wound. Megumi grunted, "Stop, Itadori. That's not something we can han-" and was cut off by a messy fit of coughing.
Panda emerged from the treeline, having followed the commotion of battle and stood over Fushiguro.
Todo and Shohei grabbed Maki under the arms and helped her make their way over to Panda.
"Panda," Todo said, handing off Maki to Panda.
"Yo," Panda replied.
"Take those two and exit the veil. According to Nishimiya, this is an anti-Gojo Satoru veil, so we can come and go without issue," Todo informed.
Shohei looked to the sky and reached out with his sensing, seeing Nishimiya sluggishly dragging along Inumaki and Kamo on her broom towards the remaining barrier's edge.
He was glad he was stopped from incompatitating her in the beginning of the Curse Race.
"Wait," Megumi interjected. "Even you can't-"
"Fushiguro," Itadori interrupted politely. Itadori dropped his fists and turned to Fushiguro slowly. Itadori let out a genuine and calm grin and said, "It's okay."
Fushiguro had a flicker of apprehension and some other emotion that was not common to see on Fushiguro's face that even Shohei couldn't place.
The swirling frustration in Shohei's mind had been significantly quashed from speaking with Maki and seeing Megumi interact very genuinely with another person. He stepped back calmly and watched his long-term friend make peace with a personal struggle of his, not being a stoic, lone hero at every turn and letting others help.
"Looks like you've noticed it," Todo muttered softly to Megumi and Shohei. "Nobody is allowed to touch those who have started growing wings," Todo said, very sagely. "And that's exactly where Itadori stands right now."
Shohei understood Todo's oddly wise words. They shouldn't interfere with Itadori as he squared off against this seemingly insurmountable threat in front of him that will test his mettle as a Sorcerer.
If there were a worse time for Shohei to want to be proactively attempting to exorcize a curse, it would be then, because it was a key time for Itadori to try himself as a Sorcerer after being hidden away and trained.
If he was to survive being Sukuna's host and both curses and Sorcerers wanted to kill him for such a reason, he needed to grow into a strong Sorcerer himself.
Shohei had seen his growth in cursed energy and change in his demeanor when battling, but he wanted to see Itadori be confronted by real, life threatening action.
The nature-like curse tramped into the shallow creek, facing the small group, and waited patiently for an enemy to approach it.
Fushiguro grunted at Todo's words and groaned to Itadori, "If you die again, I'll kill you."
Panda hunched down and scooped Fushiguro over his shoulder like Maki, saying, "Okay, let's go."
Panda began his hasty sprint through the forest and called out "Pandash!".
He was heard by Todo, Itadori, and Shohei, the only remaining and capable Sorcerers free to fight the menacing special-grade, patiently standing as still as a rock, waiting to battle.
Todo and Shohei looked away from the forest as Panda disappeared into it and toward Itadori, stretching.
"Well," Itadori muttered with a small grin, rolling his shoulders. "Guess I can't afford to die now."
Todo stepped from the creak and dragged Shohei by the arm with him.
"I won't lift a finger to help," Todo called. He turned back to Itadori and crossed his arms resolutely. "Neither will Sho-kun. Itadori, not until you land a Black Flash. If you can't land a Black Flash, then I'll watch you die and force Shohei to too, no matter what happens to you."
Shohei quickly turned to look at Todo, stunned at his harsh words and plan to test Yuji.
A Black Flash was a phenomenon in Jujutsu Sorcery that amplifies a user's cursed energy in one millionth of a second during the contact of physical strike. It was tremendously rare for a Sorcerer to pull off and literally impossible to force happen. It was akin to a critical hit in video and roleplaying games.
Shohei knew Todo was a brilliant teacher to some degree, as when they had partnered up for a mission, Shohei had made several advancements in his hand to hand combat from Todo's instruction.
Shohei's only time ever landing a Black Flash was on that very mission with Todo, but he doubted he taught Itadori, who was a relatively inexperienced first-year, how to execute a Black Flash more accurately in their hour or so of knowing each other.
Shohei understood his own cursed signature and energy better than anyone else knew their own because when you zoned out as much as he did, it was more productive to look inward and study himself and his cursed energy signature, and still couldn't force the anomaly to happen. Satoru couldn't even force a Black Flash to happen, and he was the strongest Sorcerer alive.
"Are you sure about this Aoi?" Shohei asked the boy hesitantly. "He might be a wicked good fighter, but he's only a first-year. He doesn't particularly excel at cursed energy control on one hand and a special-grade curse isn't the best test subject for experimental training either."
"Have I ever led you astray, Sho?" Todo asked.
Shohei shook his head no, knowing full well that every encounter with Todo of his was successful to some degree in some matter. Even Todo beating up Megumi led to Megumi striving to be a little stronger.
"Trust me," Todo chuckled, clapping the boy on the shoulder. "If I made it possible for you to land a Black Flash when you were almost hopeless at melee combat, I'm sure I can make a prodigy like Yuji execute one."
Shohei feebly shrugged and settled back on the stream's shore to watch Itadori, trusting his friend Todo wasn't taking the issue at hand for granted and expecting too much of Itadori.
The curse just proceeded to stand still and stagnant, possibly examining them all if it was intelligent enough, which previous actions of it like heading off Shohei and the others or possibly working with curse users supports.
The curse spoke, muttering to itself in non-random speech but not out loud either. First it seemed like it's word were entirely backwards, but they soon after translated in Shohei"s mind as coherent. It lifted its unswaddled hand at its side and a wicker ball sprouted from each of its fingertips, weaving into existence.
"You can talk?" Itadori asked coldly, his frame and back stone still, facing Shohei. "There's something I want to ask you."
Shohei alone witnessed Itadori's cursed energy curdle and bulge with a wave of malice and ill intent. Some negative experience from Itadori's time playing dead must've crossed his mind, because Shohei never saw such strong and hateful feelings in the boy before.
"Are you allied with," Itadori muttered, his eyes obscured by his hair, "a humanoid cursed spirit who has a patchwork face?"
Itadori looked up, a manic ripple in his eyes and his curse energy flexing again.
"And if I say I am?" the curse responded, unfazed by Itadori's rage, indirectly answering yes.
Itadori screamed a battle cry and smashed his first into the ground below the stream, splashing a large shroud of water, obscuring the view of him from the curse.
Large rocks from the steam bed were pitched from Itadori's shrouded position. They bounced harmlessly off the curse's durable shell, as they were not reinforced by a lick of cursed energy.
The fact that the rocks did no damage was not an issue, as the move demonstrated Itadori's battle intellect. He wisely chose not to close the distance immediately in a basic covering of his immediate appearance, but even before all the water splashed back down into the stream, Itadori had pounced on the curse like an ambusing tiger.
The curse made a wild swipe to its right, launching its wicker ball past the boy, attempting to counter Itadori's strike.
Itadori dodged the ball, proceeding to launch a heavy kick to the curse's jaw, unencumbered by the failed attack.
Shohei was amazed at Itadori's speed. He had seen glimpses of him and Todo fighting, but never fully put to use like then. If Maki's strength from her Heavenly Restriction was more powerful and strong and Shohei's strength from his Gravity Field training was heavily explosive, then Itadori's was an exact medium between the two. His attacks and actions were less intense than Maki, but possessed more brawn than Shohei.
The curse was dazed, still leaning back from the impact of the kick as it tried to register Itadori's speed and power. It's torso was wide open as it's arm dangled pointlessly to its side, and Itadori saw this opening.
Itadori crouched, springing back his arm far past his shoulder, his cursed energy whirled in a small flash of emotion brought by thoughts or memories.
Shohei and Todo's eyes flashed wide in shock and their skin crawled with anticipation, as the perfectly aligned movement was sure to land a Black Flash. Itadori's massive strike connected with the curse's abdomen, and disappointment rent the air.
Itadori bashed the curse with his fist and sent it skidding on its feet through the water, splashing some water into the air, but no anomaly of cursed energy occurred.
Itadori recognized that the perfectly aligned strike had gone to waste as he eyes lit with disappointment, but were shunted back into battle focus as the curse summoned a large root to sprout from the ground.
It crashed and stabbed at Itadori, who hopped backwards and bounded away, back onto shore near Todo and Shohei.
"My friend," Todo said.
Shohei looked at his side and Todo had disappeared and was now standing at Yuji's shoulder.
Yuji turned his focus away from the battle and looked to Todo, only to be clapped across the face by a meaty hand.
"Anger is an important trigger for Sorcerers. Sometimes they can be taken down purely because they accidentally angered their foe. And the opposite is also true," Todo spoke, wise words spilling from his lips, unworried by the powerful curse who again politely waited for the two to talk. "Sometimes they lose because their own anger disrupts their cursed energy, so they can't exercise their abilities."
Anger lashing out, unchecked, was what clouded Itadori's strike. Shohei saw a stir in Yuji's emotions when he was preparing to strike, and that was the natural thing to occur with cursed energy when attacking, as negative emotions were directly aligned with cursed energy.
"Your friend has been wounded," Todo continited. "And worse yet, they've rained on your honeymoon with me, your best friend, so I can really understand why you're boiling with rage."
A thought raced across Shohei's mind concerning why Todo had been calling Itadori his best friend every time he saw them together after he had first left them to battle. As Shohei stared at a rather shiny rock in the water, mauling over his thought, he realized that Itadori must've answered Todo's taste in women question with a perfect answer.
Todo seemed rather erratic and unchained in everything he does at first glance, but if someone got to know him to any degree, they could find that he was rather simple, especially when it came to the question about women. Shohei had answered Todo with a response that wasn't Todo's exact taste, but it satisfied his curiosity and they had proceeded to become rather good friends and worked well together on their mission.
If Itadori, who was more similar to Todo than Shohei was, answered the question by saying he liked tall women with large butts, then Shohei was sure that Todo would elect Yuji as his best friend.
Shohei looked back at Itadori who was wrapping up the lecture from Todo with another slap to his cheek and believed without any justification, beside a poster of a woman that he saw him hang in his room, that Itadori seemed like the type of guy to like taller women with big butts.
"Are those stray thoughts gone now?" Todo asked Itadori with a friendly smile.
Itadori stood straight up after the slap and returned a small smile and said, "Yeah, not a single one left." having received the lecture well.
Itadori slammed a clenched fist into his other palm and said, "Thank you so much, best friend!"
Itadori marched back into the water where the curse stood patiently and raised his hand, squaring off.
Shohei had become a little excited at Itadori's slight raise in confidence, hoping to see a skilled showing of a Black Flash.
If Itadori managed to pull off a Black Flash, he would gain a drastically renewed and magnified understanding of cursed energy that before he landed it. He would even enter a mindset of heightened cursed energy awareness akin to athletes being in "The Zone" when performing particularly well in their sport. Processing and manipulating cursed energy in this state felt as easy as breathing and led to a moment of fluidness in combat that was like the user was putting in 120 percent of their effort and the skill they developed from the experience would hone their skills for ages down the line.
Shohei understood the momentous occasion and would be thrilled to fight along with Itadori if he pulled it off and Todo who was a great team fighter with or without implementing his cursed technique. Shohei was sure they'd exorcize the curse if Itadori successfully executed a Black Flash.
In his fighting stance, as still as a stone on the ground on a windless day, Itadori entirely focused on the curse before him so much so that a dribble of spit came leaking from his lips. His eyes seemed as vacant of a thought as a plain, but as dialed in as a scope on a soldier's rifle.
The curse readied for the continuation of combat as well and took up its own fighting stance, reading it's one free arm.
A teardrop of drool dropped from Itadori's chin and he and the curse lunged at each other, the curse manifesting cursed roots all around them, dangling wickedly and dangerously overhead.
Itadori's fist coiled into a sleeve of stored power, his cursed energy disotring and seemingly vanishing into nothingness in Shohei's onlooking eyes.
The fist rocketed forward, pounding into the curse's abdomen again, but this time with a wave of lightning patterned cursed energy exploding out from the strike and into existence again, engulfing the two combatants in a dance of dark sparks.
The exuding force of enhanced cursed energy rippled out, destroying the roots surrounding Itadori and causing the curse to lift off the ground by several inches, hunched back and winded. It managed to block the strike from hitting it's stomach, but it's arm had been obliterated in the process.
A well pleased grin decorated Todo's face and a cartoonish gasp of amazement escaped Shohei as they played witness to Itadori's act of power, skill, and luck.
"He's grown," Todo muttered like a proud older sibling seeing his younger brother ride his bike without any help from him or training wheels.
Itadori was inspecting his own radiating cursed energy like he had never seen it so clearly before while the curse was standing in shock, regneterting its arm with a small consumption of cursed energy.
"That was… Black Flash?" Itadori asked no one in particular, staring at his hands shrouded in blue energy.
"Hot shit Yuji-kun!" Shohei cheered inappropriately like a rowdy, tipsy parent at a childs little league football match.
"Now you understand the taste of cursed energy," Todo informed, sauntering over to Yuji with Shohei by his side. "Up until now, you've been just throwing an ingredient you've never tasted before into a pot and boiling it without knowing why."
Todo cupped his hands gently, and raised them to Yuji, like presenting a drink of life saving water.
"But after experiencing Black Flash and understanding the taste of your ingredient, your cursed energy, you stand on a completely different level as a chef than you did three seconds ago. Congratulations, brother. You can become strong."
Shohei felt like he couldn't share any wiser words than Todo did and felt like he had nothing more to say that couldn't be summed up with a large smile and larger thumbs up.
Itadori smiled back at Shohei, appreciating the simpler gesture, but still receiving Todo's words appreciatively.
"It can heal?" Itadori asked shockingly, having seen the curse's arm bubble atrociously and replace the limb's loss mass.
"Yes, it can," Shohei said. "A cursed spirit's body is made up of cursed energy. They don't need a reversed cursed technique to heal. They only need to spend some of their cursed energy to regenerate."
"An injury like that is nothing to a special-grade," Todo added. "It's pool of cursed energy is rather large. But there's no doubt that it shaves away it's cursed energy, and if you crush their head, it's game-set."
The three took up a matching fighting position. They staggered themselves, shortest to tallest, standing from left to right going Yuji, Shohei, then Todo. Their left arm stayed pinned behind their body and their right arm raised bent, across their body, and fingers splayed open. A battle ready glare decorated Yujis face while laid back and giddy with joy expressions showed on Shohei and Todo's.
"Now, shall we get cooking?" Todo asked his two good friends.
In response to the well coordinated and flamboyant battle pose, the curse seized a handful of the cloth binding its left arm.
"It would seem that," the curse spoke, tearing away the cloth. "I should take you three somewhat seriously."
It revealed a muscular arm, matching the rest of the curse's frame and build, but it's black and white colors were inverted, making the arm predominantly black with white markings. The color was the least eye-catching, as a massive flowerbud was perched on top of the curse's shoulder like a parrot sitting on top of a pirate's.
The curse took action, making Todo, Itadori, and Shohei all suck in a breath of surprise, outpaced by the curse.
It swung it's arm wildily, in a circular, somewhat artistic motion, launching a barrage of massive roots, as thick as tree trunks towards the trio.
The trio took evasive action, moving as three very differently shaped blurs, weaving through the attacks, gliding and sliding on top of the roots, parrying stray attacks of them.
As the roots progressed their massive assault, they only continued to grow and rise, taking the combat further into the air as the Sorcerers made to stay on the roots and race towards the curse who was now the origin of their conjuring, standing by itself on the ground.
The roots became a twisted and mangled minefield of danger, forcing the trio to assist each other in navigating it in a whirl of speed and reflexes. Todo had to fling Yuji up to a higher tier of branches to avoid a dense oncoming wave, and then Shohei had to thrust Todo away to a lower handing platform as he was nearly blindsided by an attack.
The three had struck a groove of fluid and non-human movement as they began to speed towards the curse again, all spiriting intandem, determination and intensity burning in their eyes as they closed in on their enemy.
Another wave of growth rushed through the plants, leading them all to come clap together and spiral into an extending spike of plantlife, but consequently providing the Sorcerers with a more direct path to their conductor.
"What a wide range of attack!" Itadori remakred,.
"Don't falter!" Todo reassured "That range means its force and speed are weaker!"
The curse disappeared from the original base of the roots, and in a show of travel speed Shohei didn't expect, it merged with the root attack, disappearing visually, but it's mass of cursed signature still showed as it glided through the roots to a position behind the Sorcerers.
"Behind us!" Shohei warned as he followed the curse's path of travel.
The roots burst open and the curse emerged, immediately firing several of the cursed buds that had disabled Megumi like bullets from it's hand.
Yuji, Aoi, and Shohei, spun past the bullets and ducked them as if they were no more than foam bullets from a toy blaster all while shrinking the already close distance from them to the curse. The curse drove the roots jutting out behind it to double back and proceed with their attack on the students.
The boys kept on with their dodging and acrobatics, spinning and hurling themselves like gymnasts and ballerinas through the obstruction of plants. Before the curse knew it, all three boy's had converged on it, carrying the momentum of their run into large punches, but the curse raised both its arms to block all three heavy hits.
It suffered little damage, but was knocked far back into its own sea of roots. The hits paled in comparison to Itador's Black Flash from moments ago, but if all three boys kept dishing out the force they did with that hit, they could surely proceed to chip away and steadily damage the curse.
"Sho, Todo!" Itadori called, lunging back into his sprint. "Let's match our timing better!"
"Yeah!" The boys called back simply, forcing themselves forward to the curse.
They all pounced on the still standing curse, but their footing disappeared in a flash from under them. The entire emassment of roots vanished from existence, their creator standing powerfully on a flying wicker ball, watching the Sorcerers fall in the air.
Shohei had been deceived by the cursed spirit again, and he was furious at himself for letting it happen. He thought the curse was manipulating the real life roots and plants in the surrounding area, but in reality it was completely materializing and manifesting attacks from its cursed energy. Shohei was so certain it was only manipulating the plants because spending such amounts of cursed energy to form such mass was far-fetched in Shohei's mind.
He had severely underestimated the curse's cursed energy reserves despite knowing it was special-grade and a threat to the others in Satoru's eyes, as Shohei had come to the impression that it was a more of a physically imposing threat with a few large attacks. After all the techniques and attack's he had dodged, he knew he was proven wrong and had to admit the curse's versatility in combat.
"Learn how great the land is!" the curse shouted calmly, coldy, and superiorly, standing above the boys as they fell.
The curse fired two stake-like branches at Todo and Itadori who were free falling above Shohei and more in the black and white spirit's field of view. It was very smart, attacking while the boy's were less capable of dodging in the air.
Itadori and Todo were prepared however, and seemingly on the same mind wavelength, called to each other, "Brother!" and stomped their feet together. They reinforced their legs with cursed energy, and kicking off of each other, sent them flailing through the sky and to the ground, but safe from being impaled by the branches.
Where Shohei should've been positioned in the air was abandoned, and the cursed spirit was perplexed by the boy's disappearance, but was even more dazed when Shohei appeared behind it.
I have to apologize about the erratic and kinda wonky indents or lack of. I type this on google docs then copy and paste it to so I suppose that's where it goes wrong. I hope the I put the fast paced action from the anime good enough down on paper for everyone to read. Todo's technique was my biggest worry with these episodes since it made everything go along so fast. Next chapter has just as much action and I hope you like it as much or more, and I'll even be flushing Shohei and his interaction with Hanami out.