Chapter 1: An Ending and A Beginning

My breaths come shallow as I try and keep still. Every movement caused the rebar lodged through my chest to send a new wave of agony through my nerves. The metal must have hit my spine because I couldn't feel my legs at all.

The air is choked with dust from the building's collapse. A faint touch of light reaches down to me from the surface, but I am buried so deep that it barely lets me see anything. I look down at the blood pouring down my chest from the jagged rod of metal sticking out of me. There probably shouldn't be that much on the outside of my body. At least, I don't think so. Amy would probably know better.

"Yuji, are you okay?" a voice says before I look up to see Victoria. "You don't look too good."

"Hey, Tori," I mutter before I cough up a little blood. "You hang around here often?"

"Hang on," she says, looking over my injuries. "The heroes should get here soon. If you just hold on until then, they can fix you up easy peasy."

"I don't think I am going to make it, Tori," I say with a sad smile. "I am just happy I got to see you one last time before its over. I wish I could have seen Amy too, but I know I don't deserve to see her again after everything that happened."

"Of course you do, Yuji," Victoria say. "You totally saved that kid from the falling building. You didn't even think before pushing them out of the way. Amy would be proud of you."

"I think she would probably just get angry at me for getting hurt doing stupid stuff like Protectorate heroes," I say with a chuckle that causes me to wince as the rebar shifted too much. "She always got annoyed when they needed to get healed after doing something risky."

"She would just be worried about you, dummy," Victoria responds. "You know she cares about you."

"Just not the way I wanted," I say. "I really am selfish for trying to fix things when I just made them worse in the end."

"You didn't want to hurt her, Yuji," Victoria says. "There's nothing wrong with that.

"I would have liked to tell her sorry," I reply. "I never did apologize to you both after leaving like I did."

"You can tell us after you get out of this," Victoria says. "You can come back to Brockton and it can go back to how it was. All three of us can hang out like friends again."

"That sounds nice," I admit as I pull a small photograph out of my pocket. I look down at the photo of Victoria, Amy, and I after we had all gone to a carnival out of town one time. Me and Victoria had wide grins as we looked into the photo booth's camera lens while Amy was rolling her eyes in exasperation. Even in the dim light, I could see the edges of her lips pulled into a small smile. It was one of my favorite memories. "It would have been nice to have more time."

"Then just hold on," she says. "I can hear the heroes searching up top. They should get down her any minute now."

"When Gramps died, he told me that he didn't want me to die like him," I say, almost to myself. "He wanted me to be surrounded by people who cared about me when I finally kicked the bucket. I guess I let him down. I don't even have a real person with me in the end. Just a memory."

My eyes drift close as I feel my lungs finally stop pumping air. Everything turns to black as I see Victoria's worried face right before I see nothing at all.

--

The search and rescue team finally reached the life sign detected by their tinkertech sensor right after it disappeared. When they uncover the last piece of debris, they find a young man with short pink hair and a chunk of rebar coming out of his chest. A cut had sliced its way down between his eyes and across the bridge of his nose while another gash had cut the side of his mouth.

"Shit," one of the men said. "We must have just missed him."

"Damnit," another agreed. "He is just a kid."

The men begin to pack him away in a body bag when one of them picks up a bloody photo that had fallen out of the kid's hand. He was about to drop it into the body bag as well when he sees the brunette girl in the photo. "Oh shit," he whispers. "Uh, guys? I think we have a problem!"

"What is it?" his coworker asks. "If it's money, just pocket it if you want. You know that it is finder's keepers."

"Not that, you idiot," he replies. "Look at this fucking photo!"

"Oh shit," the second man says. "Not it."

"What do you mean not it!?" he asks.

"I am not going to be the guy who has to tell the boss that we failed to rescue someone who is apparently best buds with fucking Panacea!" the other man shouts. "That's like saying you fucked up saving one of Jesus' disciples! Screw that and screw you if you think I am doing that!"

"Fuck," the first man says. "Well, we could just say that we never saw the photo. Let someone else take the heat when they realize there is a connection. We were just the ones to find the body."

"Only way that we don't get fired or worse," his colleague agrees as they shove the photo in the kid's pocket. "None of us saw a thing, got it?"

The other men gave a chorus of affirmatives before they all packed up the body bag and moved on.

--

The plane was waiting near its hangar as it prepared to fly from Chicago to Brockton Bay with its load of cargo. Deep in the bowels of the plane was nestled a single coffin surrounded by the other items being transported. Inside the pine box rested the deceased body of one Yuji Itadori.

The plane's ramp was still down since the crew still needed to complete the full inventory before takeoff. However, the plane and hangar were currently empty since the crew was on break for the moment. This means that there was no one around to witness when space began to twist and condense before a rift tore open in the air. A pair of men dressed in white cloaks fell out and crashed to the ground.

"We need to find someplace to hide them," one of the men says. He was wearing a blue mask while his companion possessed a red one. "They cannot be allowed to find them."

"You think I do not know that?" Red replies. "We can stash them on this plane. It will throw off our pursuers when they try to backtrack where we hid them. Hopefully, we will shake them off so that we can retrieve them."

"Fine," Blue says. "It needs to be something that would obscure the Cursed Energy residuals."

The two search through the aircraft until they come across the coffin. "This is perfect," Red says. "It is practically radiating Cursed Energy. Whoever died must have had a shitload of regrets for it to be this concentrated."

"Get it open," Blue says as he works on the straps tying the coffin down. They unlatch the restraints before prying the coffin open. They look inside to find a pink-haired boy's body resting in the white inner lining of the box. "Sucks to be you, kid. We need a safe place to hide these and you are our only chance. Sorry."

Blue pulls out a small knife before lifting up the shirt on the body. He slices into the stomach before grabbing a wooden cylinder from inside of his cloak and pushing it into the boy. After they cover up the hole and seal the coffin again, they strap it down and rush out of the plane. With another warping in space to form a rift, they jump through and disappear.

--

Inside of the deceased body of Yuji Itadori, a peculiar occurrence was unfolding. The wooden cylinder was one that contained two dried orbs that were once eyes. These two eyes were classified as Special-Grade Cursed Objects due to the massive amounts of Cursed Energy that they possess. For all of their existence as Cursed Objects, they had never reacted in any shape or form and chose to stay dormant.

However, upon entering the boy's body, the Cursed Energy inside of them came to life and began to concentrate. It folded in on itself to turn negative energy into positive and used this burst to break the wooden casing containing them. Upon achieving contact with Yuji's insides, they immediately dissolved into Cursed Energy that began to flow through his body.

Changes appeared as the foreign energy coursed through the teenager's body. The cut in his stomach healed after the wooden fragments were pushed out. The stitched cuts on his face and cheek sealed shut with only scars left behind. The pigment in his hair seemed to disappear from the roots up, his pink hair turning pure white. Finally, two lines appeared between his eyes and cheekbones.

Once the energy finished cycling, the boy's eyes shot open. Unlike previously, he now had four eyes since the new lines opened to reveal an additional pair. The color was different as well since his eyes, formerly a soft brown, were now a luminescent blue that gleamed in the darkness of the coffin.

With a ripple through the fabric of the universe, the balance of power had permanently shifted. Cursed Energy awakened where it had before lied in hibernation. The roiling emotions of the world now concentrated into beings of negativity that embodied the darkness of the human heart. Individuals with abilities engraved into their very soul found their potential finally rising to the surface.

The new age of Curses and Jujutsu sorcerers had begun.

--

(2 Years Later)

A convoy of vehicles drove down the highway as they began to approach the outskirts of Brockton Bay. Multiple cars followed in front of and behind a single semi-truck as they traveled down the road to the city. The contents of the truck were dozens of captured women who were being transported to populate the ABB's newest brothel. Their futures were bleak as the ABB was not known for being kind to the women they hold prisoner.

Inside of the truck's cab, two of the men were talking amongst themselves. "Do you have any idea why we need this much security for a simple transport job?" the driver asks. "I have done this more times than I can count, but I can't remember ever needing tinkertech rifles and power armor to feel safe. It's never been this bad, even when we are at war with the Empire."

"You really haven't heard?" the man in the passenger seat asks in surprise.

"Of course not," the driver responds. "Why do you think I am asking, numbnuts?"

"Jeez, calm down, old timer," the passenger says. "It is because of that vigilante in the city."

"Vigilante?" the driver asks. "The only vigilante that's been in town for a while was that Shadow Stalker chick and last I heard she had joined the Wards."

"It's this new guy," the passenger says. "Real violent. He makes Shadow Stalker look like a kitten in comparison. I heard about him on PHO. He has a habit of going from city to city and trashing any gangs he can find. There was some video I saw and it was nuts."

"So he is a cape?" the driver asks. "That's not too special."

"This guy once took out a gang in one night, capes and all," the passenger emphasized. "He hit them when they were having this big meeting before starting up a gang war. This one guy was able to get the security camera footage and edit it together so that you can follow what happened. He blew through them like tissue paper in a hurricane. It was as one-sided as most Behemoth fights."

"You serious?" the driver asks. He didn't believe there was any way it was that bad.

"I shit you not," the passenger confirmed. "He had this ability to enhance his guns so that a .22 pistol round hits like a .50 caliber from a rifle. Apparently it gets worse the more he dislikes his opponents. Some guys were just beat to hell by the bullets while others had holes the size of baseballs in their heads. He is also supposed to make bullets appear out of nowhere so he never runs out."

"He isn't a problem as long as you take his guns," the driver scoffs. "It's not like he is as strong as Lung."

"The crazy thing is that he doesn't need his guns to mess people up," the passenger assures the driver. "He is some kind of Brute. At one point in the fight, he holstered his pistols and started to beat up the guys with his fists. They glowed with this blue fire or something and he was sending dudes through walls and shit. He even has some extra hit move that lets him hit you again after the first punch. He used that to beat up the gang's leader, a Brute who could turn himself into stone. They say he pulped the guy's head to finish him off."

"What's this guy's name?" the driver asks. "He has to be called something if he is so well known."

"He never gave himself a name," the passenger admits. "The one that people know him by came from PHO. They call him Curse because he is like a curse on any gang he sets his sights on."

"Why did he decide to come here?" the driver wonders. "Most people try to leave this town as soon as possible, not come here. With the Empire on one side and Lung on the other, the bay isn't exactly the nicest place to visit."

"I wouldn't be surprised if he got too cocky and wanted to take on the Dragon of Kyushu," the passenger says with a chuckle. "I doubt anyone could manage it without dying in the process."

"You got that right," the driver agrees with a laugh right before the truck gets rocked by a massive impact that strikes the side of the engine. The driver struggles to keep the truck under control and manages to stop the swerving enough to brake to a halt. When he stumbles out of the car to see what hit them, he sees what happened. A large hole was punched clean into the side of the engine compartment, though the engine itself, and out the other side. The driver sees the passenger looking back at him from the right side of the truck through the hole after investigating as well. That's why the driver can see the other man's face pale as he mutters one word, "Curse."

Immediately after the word slips out of his mouth, the man's head bursts into a spray of gore as a bullet strikes him. The other cars had already ground to a halt as men raced out of them with an array of guns to combat the threat. They fired off their tinkertech rifles in the direction the bullets came from in the hopes that the lasers from the weapons might strike him. However, they ended up just providing more targets for the unseen gunman. Many went down with missing heads or gaping holes in their torsos while a select few just collapsed with a concussion. The driver recognized them as the men who did the bare minimum in the gang to avoid being killed. He also realized that he could not count himself among their number. In a desperate attempt to save his life, he crawled under the trailer and cowered until the gunshots died down.

Eventually, the only sound in the night was the gentle rumbling of the idling cars left abandoned by their drivers. The truck driver looks around, wondering if this is his chance to escape. However, it does not come to be as he hears the sound of boots striking the asphalt as someone slowly walks towards the truck. They stop next to the truck before he hears a voice ring out in the night. "Get out from under there or I will kill you while you hide."

The driver crawls out from under the truck and looks up to see the man above him. He whimpers as his eyes meet the vigilante's, the pair glowing with pulsing blue and black energy as they gaze down at him. The driver notices the way the man's white hair seemed to glow in the moonlight, the gleam of the black rebreather mask, and the way that the golden button on his leather jacket seemed to shine as well, but he can't bring himself to look away from those terrible eyes.

"Tell me, are you a good person," the vigilante asks. "Don't bother lying. I will know."

"Y-y-yes," the driver says before he stumbles over his words in the attempt to convince the man in front of him. "I don't drink or do drugs. I donate to charity. If you let me go, I will leave Brockton Bay and start over. Please don't kill me! I have a family!"

"I wonder if the girls you forced yourself on begged like this," the vigilante says. The driver's blood turns to ice as he realizes there is no hope for him. No mercy can be found in this man's heart. "I told you I would know. Just like I know how much you enjoyed taking your turn when the ABB was breaking new girls and turning them into merchandise. How you delighted in your power over someone who couldn't fit back. It made you feel strong, didn't it?"

"Please, don't kill me," the driver whispers, horror filling his soul as he stares at the white haired man with such haunting eyes.

"But in the end, you are not strong at all," the vigilante says. "You are a bottom feeder who latches onto others to feel powerful and takes pleasure in pushing down anyone else you can manage. I will show you true strength."

The vigilante raises his hand with a finger gun pointed at the driver. "Bang," he says.

A blast of force shoots from his fingertips and strikes the driver directly in the head. He doesn't even have time to think before his head explodes and paints the truck and asphalt red.

The vigilante just walks over to the back of the truck before wrenching the lock off. He was about to open it up right when the door is sent flying off. The vigilante shifts his head out of the way just in time for the piece of metal to sail by and ruffle his hair. He turns back to see that there are seven men in armored suits that begin to climb out of the truck where they had been riding along with the women. The suits were all black and gently hummed from the technology laced throughout its design.

The gangsters in armor rushed forward in a burst of speed as their mechanically augmented forms closed the distance in the blink of an eye. The vigilante danced between their attacks as their punches tore through the air with gusts of wind and their kicks cratered the surface of the road. Each hit was just deflected or avoided with seemingly no effort as the vigilante dodged between their hulking forms.

"You really should have ended this quickly," the vigilante says in between movements. "My technique allows me to create an impact of energy that I can chain with a blow. I can only activate it six times before I have to wait for it to reload. I had already wasted one, so I would have been able to use it on less of you."

"You shouldn't talk so much when we can still beat you," one of the armored men growls through his suit's speakers.

"If I explain the technique, that means it gets stronger as a trade off," the vigilante admits. "It also has the added bonus of increasing the reload speed. You've all run out of time."

A gangster rushes in to try and land a hammer blow down at the vigilante when his fist lashes out for the first time, blue and black energy blazing across it. The punch crashes into the suit and crumples the metal inwards right before the vigilante says, "Cursed Technique: Six-Shooter - First Round."

The secondary blast of energy pierces through the man to create a hole through him and the back of his power suit. The other men are shocked at the sight of blood spraying from the hole punched out of the high-end tinkertech power armor. The surprise doesn't last as they all attempt to kill him in an act of desperation.

The vigilante just stands his ground as he faces their charging forms without any concern.

"Six-Shooter - Second Round."

Another strike hits a man's helmet and proceeds to crush his helmet before turning his skull into a burst of bone fragments, metal shards, and meat.

"Six-Shooter - Third Round."

This strikes a man in the stomach and folds his body to the sound of screeching metal. The secondary hit left a gaping wound that revealed his spine and left the man's insides leaking out.

"Six-Shooter - Fourth Round."

The quick duo of blows sends the next gangster to the ground screaming as his shoulder was blasted to pieces and his arm was sent flying from his body. He dropped to his knees from the agony as blood gushed from the ruined shoulder.

"Six-Shooter - Fifth Round."

His uppercut sent another of the suited men off of their feet before the delayed second impact sent his head off of his shoulders as well. The body fell to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut.

"Six-Shooter - Sixth Round."

The criminal was sent flying by a front kick before his chest was imploded by the following energy blast. His suit crashed into one of the empty cars, crushing the engine and causing the horn to blare in the background.

The vigilante was then grabbed by the final gangster who held him in the air with his gauntlet around his throat. "You are all out of your fancy punches," the man says to the vigilante. "Any last words?"

"Just because I say that I activate the technique doesn't mean that I actually do," the vigilante says. "I can just delay my normal energy flow to simulate it. It's a handy little trick that I used to use called Divergent Fist. Also, I never said that I had to use it after a punch. I just said that I could use it after a punch."

The vigilante pokes his finger against the throat of the armored suit and looks into the lenses of the helmet. "I can't say I feel bad for this," he admits.

"Cursed Technique: Six-Shooter - Final Round."

The point-blank blast of energy pierces through the armor protecting the neck and busts out of the plating on the back as well. The gangster dropped the vigilante as he instinctively grabbed his throat in the attempt to stem the bleeding and survive. However, the hole was far too big and he quickly bled out while choking on his own blood.

The vigilante leaves the man to his demise and walks back to the truck. "It's okay," he tells the women inside. "The bad guys are gone. You are safe."

The women inside cower away from him as they all group together at the far end of the trailer. A sad smile flickers across the vigilante's face under his mask. He doesn't try to force them to trust him. Instead, he pulls out a disposable burner cellphone. He dials up the only number programmed into it before holding it up to his ear.

"PRT, how may I direct your call?" the receptionist answers.

"There's a truck full of kidnapped women sitting here surrounded by dead ABB thugs," the vigilante says. "You should get here before their reinforcements do."

He leaves the phone on the edge of the trailer and walks away. With the PRT already locked onto the phone's radio signal, it would be easy for them to track it down and recover the girls. He sees out of the corner of his eye that one of the women snuck forward to grab the phone before retreating deeper into the trailer. It makes him smile a little easier to know that they were all going to go home.

He waits out of sight until the PRT troops arrive on the scene. Velocity, Miss Militia, and Armsmaster reach the site soon after to help provide security against the gangs sending members to try and loot any of the tinkertech that wasn't destroyed in the fight.

Once he is sure of the women's safety, he silently starts up his bike's engine before pulling away without a whisper.

--

Upon reaching his safehouse, he collapses onto the ground shortly past the door. It is then that his exhaustion from running around all night finally catches up with him and takes him to the land of dreams. His form is soon covered by a shadow as a figure looks down on him.

"You never learn to take it easy, do you?" they say with a fond smile crossing their features. "Come on and help me get him into his bed."

"Fine, fine, I'm coming," a second person says as they enter the room. "Let's pick him up together."

The two lift him by his arms and make their way to the bedroom. At one point, the vigilante's head is rammed right into a doorway.

"I know you did that on purpose," the first person says. "You need to let go of your grudge."

"I will let it go when I finally finish rebuilding the spare bike," the second says. "He shouldn't have wrecked my baby."

"He did it taking out an Empire stash house," the first replies with a snort.

"There is a lot of ways he could have done that instead of driving it at full speed towards the front window, jumping off, and shooting the gas tank to blow it up," the second states stubbornly.

"Okay, crazy," the first says with a chuckle. "Let's jus get him into a bed for once before he spends the entire night on a hardwood floor."

The two lugs the vigilante through the doorway successfully before they team up to lift him onto the bed itself. They pant from the exertion after successfully lifting him up.

"Night, big guy," the first says before kissing the sleeping vigilante on the forehead. They leaves the room and returns to their previous task.

"Night, boss," the second says before kissing the man on his head where they just hit him with a doorway. "Sorry about that."

They turn off the light in the room before shutting the door behind them as they leave. Inside the room, the vigilante relaxes in his sleep, the tension in his body fading away as he dreams of better times when his hands weren't stained with so much blood.

--

Author's note:

Hey everybody! This is another new story idea that I am trying out. This will have Yuji Itadori being the vessel of Satoru Gojo in the Worm universe. This is my first Worm story so I will try my best to be as accurate as possible.

In case you were confused in the story, Yuji will have a Cursed Technique besides Limitless which he has access to as Gojo's vessel. I plan to reveal it in time with future chapters.

The Victoria he saw as he was dying was just a hallucination as he was bleeding out. No need to theorize about what that was all about.

Feel free to drop a review and let me know how I did. Was the fighting good? Was my characterization solid? Was the story easy to follow? I am fueled by reviews since they help give me personal feedback and keep my writing motivation up. I try and respond to any questions you bring up, so don't be afraid to ask.

If you want to keep up to date on the story, favorite and follow to get notifications when a new chapter releases.

My other stories will be getting updates after I finish with this batch of new stories, so try one of them if you enjoyed this one.

A pleasure as always,

Titan900