The difference between Hora Shoji and his students will never be more apparent than it is in the immediate, near-instant aftermath of the special grade's appearance.

"Well. It is good to be recognized."

Faced with that power, that malice... that sheer and undeniable monstrous presence that Tamamo-no-Mae Incarnate's very existence radiates, he can do nothing more than freeze, his spine turning to ice and his heart hammering against his chest

A single, pitiful thought plays out across his mind in a desperate loop as the fear roots him in place, consuming all sense and will in its way.

'But she's supposed to be sealed.'

Even to himself, it's pathetic.

In sharp contrast, Satoru and Percy don't balk. They don't gawk.

They don't even look at each other, much less take a second to speak.

They just lunge, fists drawn back and coated with cursed energy right from the get-go.

Just the initial movement is so fast that he almost loses sight of them - but Tamamo-no-Mae does not.

The cursed spirit soars back out of range as his students fling themselves at it. Percy throws out his hand as the distance between them grows, and a stream of rushing water shoots forward to pierce through it. It weaves aside to avoid the attack and inadvertently floats right into Satoru's range, which kicks out at its head with gleeful relish.

"Head's up!"

The impact is brutally rattling, and it sends it hurtling toward Percy's following uppercut. Shoji hears a sound akin to ceramic shattering as that impact sends the curse spiralling upwards, a spider-web of cracks spreading through its grotesque lower face before it suddenly stills, momentum dying as it hovers above his students and the field of its victims they'd stumbled into amidst their pursuit.

The fight suddenly lulls.

"How rude." It purrs, its voice echoing across the cavern in triplicates. It sounds unconcerned by the damage it's taken, and Shoji's stomach drops as he watches the cracks on its mask seal shut and vanish as if they never were. "To trespass and attack me in my own demesne and not even introduce yourselves beforehand."

"Fair enough." Satoru grins up at it, just as. "I'm Gojo Satoru. That's Percy Jackson. You must be the local eyesore!"

"It's absolutely terrible to meet you," Percy adds in his own bit, because of course, he must.

His students are suicidal and have no sense of self-preservation - Shoji almost laughs hysterically through his fear.

"Such insolence!"

He's not sure who moves first - it's all an incomprehensible blur - but the result ends with Percy and Satoru on either side of a lunging Tamamo-no-Mae. Their fists lash out as they close in on either side of it, but the curse contracts with a sickening popping sound, its frame folding like an origami figure to avoid the blows.

"What-?"

Percy's fist alone still graces its misshapen arm, but the closeness leaves him open to the savage kick that connects with his chest at an angle no living being could have managed, and sends him soaring back with the wind knocked out of him, his flight ending as he slams into the cavern wall so much force that the entire structure seems to tremble.

In the same motion, the curse ducks low to the ground, crouching as its body unfolds and a clawed six-fingered hand emerges out of the right hem of its kimono before it leaps for Satoru's throat -

"Gotcha!"

- and immediately freezes when it flies head-first into the waiting embrace of his Infinity.

"Thanks for that. I'm never letting him live that one down." Satoru grins over the curse's shoulder at Percy, enjoying the sight of his friend digging himself out with a put-off look on his face. He even leans into it close enough that the very tips of its claws are poised right over his left shoulder, supremely unconcerned by the possible threat. "But it's all for you, though. Sorry!"

Shoji's blood pressure has never been this high.

"Is it?"

Satoru blinks.

"You are mildly impressive, six-eyes." The Gojo scion's face twists in indignant outrage at the description, and he opens his mouth to speak. "But I have witnessed both of your cursed blessings at their best. You are not the strongest of your kind I have ever met, and you are certainly no Sugawara Michizane."

There's inexplicable confidence and meaning in the centuries-old curse's words - and it sends a fresh jolt of dread racing through Shoji.

Before he can so much as get a word out, the unimaginable happens.

"Domain Amplification."

Satoru's eyes widen in shock as Tamamo-no-Mae moves despite his active Infinity, its free hand lashing out toward him in a wide but blisteringly rapid arc.

He scrambles back in a way that's entirely unlike him, retreating for what had to be the first time in years, but it's too late.

Its talons shred through his jacket and the shirt below, and Shoji sees the bloody rents that have been torn into his student's flesh as he flings himself back in pained disbelief.

"Satoru!"

Percy descends down on the curse from above, but Tamamo-no-Mae is already flitting away before he lands feet-first with enough power to pulverize the stone beneath him, first blood successfully drawn.

She arcs back in the air to loom over them, arms spread wide in the ominous declaration.

"It is time for all of you to suffer."

It happens in seconds, and it starts with the fly heads - the maggots across the cavern abruptly warp, erupting with wings that carry them up and up in a wave of malevolent cursed energy. The swarm of them is sickening, but they don't attack - they rise until they all but blanket the air above, melding together along the stone ceiling and around stalactites as they wait for their master's signal.

It's the victims who move next - the same near-corpses they'd thought had been dead and rotting begin to rise, limbs unnaturally slack, eyes milky-white and insensate. They, too, swarm around as Tamamo-no-Mae drops out of the air and stands amidst them.

"It's her technique - they're still alive." Satoru snarls in furious disgust, eyes raging. He'd been summoning the beginnings of his blue, but the technique sputtered out and died in his grasp the moment he comprehended what it was he was witnessing. "She's pulling on their cursed energy."

Percy looks no less horrified.

"She's using them as shields."

Of course she is.

Shoji's read up on this curse, once - one of the sixteen special grades registered in the sorcerer archives.

Tamamo-no-Mae: Innate technique - Nightmare Puppetry - expressed as the ability to poison victims with cursed energy that trapped them in their own nightmares and allowed the curse itself to draw out and feed on the negativity they produced in turn, all while piloting their bodies until they wasted away beneath the strain.

It was rumoured to be capable of more, gods forbid, but that didn't matter.

Not now, because for as long as the dozens of victims she had present were alive, Percy and Satoru couldn't unleash the full breadth of their techniques.

Not without killing them all in turn.

It was a perfect trap - And gods damn it all, Shoji still can't move.

And then the curse speaks once more, and brings it's clawed hands togethere to form a mudra.

"It's over."

No.

"Domain Expansion: Malignant Sarugaku!"

No.

Satoru moves, leaping in front of Percy - and then both are gone as the dome of pure black vanishes them both from his sight.

No!

...

Oh, shit.

Percy knows what a domain expansion is - knows very well, in fact - and this was the absolute worst-case scenario possible.

The second the barrier closes around them, Satoru is already there and raising his fists up in what is clearly a practiced movement.

"Simple Domain!"

Cursed energy encircles the two of them in a single breath, creating an effect that does something he can't quite perceive - and he doesn't have a chance to try and understand it either, because he's too busy staring out at the disaster in front of them.

Just ahead, the ground had shifted.

Instead of rock, Tamamo-no-Mae stands on an elevated performance stage, four-toed feet bare against the wood. Surrounding the stage were its victims, all of them foaming at the mouth and staring them down with glassy eyes.

"You may deny my domain, for now, but a petty trick will not save you!" The curse declares, "Bring them to me!"

The former civilians react like a pack of trained hounds - they go rabid and charge right at them, their movements enhanced by the cursed energy pouring out of them.

"I'll shield us from the sure hit, you deal with that," Satoru yells, and Percy doesn't question it - not when he sounds like that for the first time since he's met him.

One sweep of his arm sends a wave roaring forward at the charging crowd, and they scatter like bowling pins, but he has to keep the pressure on as they scramble to get back on their feet almost immediately.

Fine then.

Percy glares and throws his other hand palm out right in the curse's direction, willing the full force of the ocean to surge to his fingertips as he commands the water he's already summoned to sweep aside its thralls and give him a clear shot.

One shot, and he'll take out the problem at the source.

Seeing this, Tamamo-no-Mae actually laughs. The sound of it reverberates around the domain chillingly.

"A contest of power? As you wish!"

It raises a hand up, and the fly heads it summoned before descend at once, melting into motes of cursed energy as they descend and converge on Tamamo-no-Mae palm. They rapidly meld into a twisted amalgamation of swirling power, sparking with purple and green radiance.

"Oi, Percy-!"

"I know, Satoru!"

The power between them all swells - in as much as it can in the seconds that pass - and just as it's about to reach a peak and erupt -

"What!?"

A miracle occurs.

There's a burst, and a sound of something breaking, and an opening is carved into the barrier trapping them here.

All three of them stare as Shoji-sensei drops in through the hole he'd punctured in the domain's barrier, face screwed up in red, foreign rage and sword awash with what to be just about all the cursed energy he could muster.

He lands before them with a splash of water, unharmed as the domain's sure-hit effect sputters out, and aims the tip of his sword right at Tamamo-no-Mae

"YOU WILL NOT HARM MY STUDENTS!"

No. Freaking. Way.

"Holy shit."

Percy hears Satoru whisper as the domain falls apart around them, and he can't judge him for it. His own jaw's already gone slack in disbelief.

Tamamo-no-Mae's cursed energy dissipates like a popped balloon, and even though that tragedy of a face is about as expressionless as anything can get, he sees those four eyes narrow in an unholy rage.

"You dare-!"

And then it's interrupted again.

"Hey, you twisted bitch!"

Percy's grin threatens to split his face as Suguru and Shoko erupt into the cavern, a small army of the former's curses flowing in behind the pair with a collective roar that could deafen the dead.

He doesn't know why they left the village undefended -apparently - but right now he's so happy to see them he can barely think of that.

"About time you guys-!"

The words sputter out at the back of his throat as Shoko bolts forward and past them, making eye contact with him once, eyes set in determination, and then keeps on going.

Right into the crowd of possessed victims, within striking distance of the special-grade curse.

And that's when everything gets really wild.

...

Then:

Percy let himself sprawl across the grass, groaning as he raised a forearm to shield his eyes against the sunlight.

"This is hopeless."

"I told you," Shoko mutters in amusement, sitting a distance away beneath the tree shade and idly flipping through her magazine. "Sorcerors spend their whole lives trying to master this - you're not going to do it just by wanting it very hard."

"Expand my soul to create ideal environment to draw out my technique?'" He complains in her general direction, utterly exhausted but just as bullheaded as when he'd started. "How do I do that? What does that even mean?"

She snorts again, and he shoots her a dirty look.

"And why aren't you trying yourself? I know you want to punch Satoru as much as I do sometimes."

"The only person who doesn't want to punch Satoru is Satoru. His mother probably had to resist the urge to deck him five seconds after he was born."

They both laugh at that one, but Percy doesn't let them segue away from the idea.

"Seriously, though? Get up here and train with me!"

"I don't have a technique, remember?" She shakes her head and turns back to her magazine - it is their free period, after all. "There's no point in it for me."

"The hell there isn't! You spent a half-hour lecturing me on all the benefits, and some of them don't even rely on a technique! You don't need one to try!"

That gives her pause - but only for a second.

"Maybe not, but it's still borderline impossible. Why bother?"

"Why not?" Percy grins and staggers to his feet "The only right way to do anything is to go in believing you can do everything until you can't, and then trying again and doing it anyway."

Shoko gives him a dry look.

"How do you function? Like, really?"

"Spite, skill, and being awesome." He replies without missing a beat, the grin never leaving his face. "Oh, and the hours of practice help as well."

He nods pointedly, and she rolls her eyes.

"That sounds like a lot of effort for what's almost definitely a lost cause."

Shoko expects to end the argument there - really, this talk is all pointless.

A total waste of time.

But then Percy does what Percy often does and surprises her again.

"No cause is lost until you give up on it, even if you only win back an inch for every mile. That's worth something - even if it seems impossible, try. Go down swinging - trust me, it feels a whole lot better than quitting, and you won't come out of it feeling like a total loser."

...

Well.

That was disgustingly idealistic. If being a sorcerer didn't work out, Percy could probably eke out a living writing a line of motivational greeting cards for grade schoolers.

And yet...

Shoko doesn't dismiss the words out of hand, despite her better judgement.

"And if you lose anyway?"

She's only mildly curious, but Percy looks delighted when he speaks again.

"You don't really. It's not over until you say it's over. And honestly, Shoko?"

...

Now:

"I don't think any of us are the type to give up easy either way, so get off your ass already!"

The words echo in her mind, along with half-formed ideas and goals that all fight for dominance - each just as important as the last.

Kazuha-Obasan. Her friends. Ending this damned mission and leaving this shitty village behind, once and for all.

Shoko doesn't let herself think beyond that - if she does, her insane plan will probably go up in smoke and she'll look like a real idiot for her last remaining moments on earth before she gets killed by the enraged special-grade curse.

Fuck. That.

So she runs.

Right out of the frying pan and into the fire, letting the puppets of Tamamo-no-Mae converge on and reach for her with mindless but decidedly murderous intent.

The curse itself seems to ignore her, face angled to stare down Percy and Satoru.

Even Shoji-sensei seems to warrant more attention.

And that, right there, is its greatest mistake - it puts the final nail in the coffin of Shoko's doubts.

Because if there's one good thing this mission has accomplished, it's reminding her that she's so very tired of being dismissed.

The first of the puppets reach her, fingertips brushing against her shoulder.

Someone yells.

And she - Ieri Shoko, who possesses no cursed technique and cursed energy reserves that are just barely above average - slams her palms together, interlocks her fingers, and achieves the impossible.

...

"With a strong foundation and a little bit of sense and imagination, it just takes the slightest trigger to change a person."

...

"Domain Expansion: Ungrudging Sanctum!"

...

Satoru getting his first taste of Domain Amplification:

View: /Vqh6NyF

Shoji getting so angry of being useless that he hulks out and actually does something useful:

View: /dNkYtzO

Shoko at the end, when she stops thinking and lets her 'fuck this I'm out' energy do the talking:

View: /me6qOfN

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