Author's note:
To Ace Degenerate: Kugisaki herself will use a hammer, but the gun (which I will be calling Sakura) is a separate entity. It has a similar personality which might be what caused some confusion. However, Yuji will be able to use Sakura as a hammer at times by holding onto the barrel and hitting someone with the handle.
--
Chapter 4: A Blazing Flame
"What kind of type?" I ask. This didn't really seem like the time, but I might as well answer the guys's question, weird as it is. "You kinda have to be more specific."
That seems to stump the guy for a moment as he tries to puzzle out what I meant before giving up. "How can a man have multiple types?" he asks, his voice tinged with distaste. "That goes against the sanctity of the idea. Do not tell me that you truly believe that a man can have more than one type! I really thought we could have have been friends."
What? Why is the guy actually crying sadly?
"Um, I just meant if you were talking about physical type or more like personality," I say. "Wait, should I include hobbies too?"
The other guy just seems lost at this point. "Are you saying that I have been deluding myself for all of this time by allowing my focus to become diluted?" he mutters. "Have I truly been so blind in my hubris? Has my childish foolishness clouded my mind from the truth?"
As he talks, he looks up towards the sky with tears streaming down his face. A ray of sunlight comes down to illuminate him in his realization as the tracks of tears glisten in the radiance.
Okay, now I am confused. What did he even ask me again?
"I thank you for this, brother," the man says, a look of serenity and enlightenment on his face. "No longer will I go through life with such shallow convictions. I can now live a live that Takada can truly be proud of."
"Sure," I say slowly. "Can I go? I was kind of in the middle of something."
"Not until you answer my question," he says. "I must understand the depth of your spirit if we shall truly be friends and brothers. Yuji Itadori, what is your type?"
"Oh yeah, that's what you were asking me about," I say as I remember. "Physically, my type is tall girls with a big ass. Like Jennifer Lawrence. Personality wise? Hmm, let me think."
I think back to all of the women who seem to enter my life in a significant way and I come up with an answer.
"My other type is older women who scare me," I say as I nod my head seriously.
If I look at Sally and Ms. La Rue, the main things that they seem to have in common is that they are older than me and I constantly live in fear of them smacking me. This even carries over to Ms. Dodds to an extent because she really threw off those dommy mommy vibes.
The guy is crying even more after my response like he had just learned that he had won the lottery and the prize was being delivered by Santa Claus himself.
"You are a true man amongst men, brother," he says, tears pouring down his face dramatically.
"Thanks?" I say, not really sure what the correct response is to a buff guy who just kicked my head a bunch crying and calling me brother.
Wait, am I hallucinating all of this? That would explain why none of this makes any sense. Until my brain clears up enough to make heads or tails of what is happening, I will just go with the flow and not upset the crying guy.
"Now that I have the measure of your soul, I must take the measure of your body," he says before he bursts forward into a rush. I barely cross my arms and brace myself before his fist crashes into my defenses.
The impact into my crossed forearms sends me skidding back as I manage to keep my footing. My shoes dig into the ground and leave furrows in the soil as they help to slow me down. My arms throb from the impact as I open and close my hands to test if anything was broken. Shockingly, I am in the clear. I just have to be sure not to take any more direct hits like that.
I dodge under a kick that he sends hurtling towards my head before I try to counter with a left hook. He blocks my hit with an arm that felt like it was made of steel and grins. He grabs onto the sleeve of my jacket before gripping my collar and judo throwing me into a tree.
I flip in midair, land in a crouch on the tree, and then leap off as I close the distance and deliver a haymaker to his jaw. It rocks his head to the side as he stumbles back a step. He reaches up and brushes a drop of blood from the split lip I gave him and looks at me approvingly.
"Not many can manage to draw blood from me, even if I am not using my Cursed Technique," he says. "I would expect no less from my brother. But why do you not use your Cursed Energy? Do you believe you can best me with just your physical might? If so, you are mistaken."
"Uh, what are you talking about?" I ask as I scratch my head. "What's Cursed Energy again? Gojo mentioned it, but I was kinda zoning out with the whole Titan vessel thing."
"It is the power we inherit from the gods and godesses we are descended from," he says. "It is fueled by negative emotions. Those with the power to wield it are known as sorcerers. Among those, some are even gifted abilities passed down from the gods and engraved into our souls."
As an example, he claps and we suddenly switch spots.
"As a son of Hermes, I gained one of his Cursed Techniques that grants him unrivaled mobility amongst the Olympians," he says. "It is likely that you will gain Kronos' techniques in time, but that is far from now. The first step is to tap into your Cursed Energy. It still appears to be dormant. Most sorcerers can call on it to some degree reflexively, but some are like you and have to undergo a stressful enough experience to unlock it within themselves."
"What do I have to do to unlock it?" I ask him.
"Try not to die," he says before clapping. He is promptly replaced by the robot guy who unleashes an energy blast from his hand.
I twist out of the way in time before I summon my gun from its ring form and fire at full strength. Several rounds punch into the robot, but they were embedded shallowly since it was so durable. I could probably do more once I can actually use Cursed Energy, but that's okay. Annabeth told me about an ability that my gun seemed to have inherited in some capacity from the dryad who gave the wood for it. Apparently, it was one of those Cursed Techniques that guy also mentioned.
"Let's do it, Sakura," I say as I call out my gun's name. Like it knew what I meant, it transforms back into a ring and sucks up more energy before it warms up cheerfully in confirmation.
"Cursed Technique: Spring Blossom."
I snap my fingers and the bullets lodged in the robot suddenly sprout and tear into its mechanical body. The sudden bursts of wood do a good job of ripping it apart, but it gets even worse when the chunks begin to grow and spread roots throughout the bot. These seem to wind down through its legs before bursting out the sides and into the soil. Once it has fully planted itself, it starts to grow upwards and form branches that reach into the sky. Small buds form on the branches before blossoming into pink and white flowers that cover the now fully grown Japanese cherry tree.
The only trace that it was once my enemy is that the robot's head and right arm are still exposed from the tree trunk. I don't think that it liked being turned into a modern art display about nature reclaiming the industrial world of man. My clue was the hand laser that it starts charging up.
I don't give it a chance though. I dart forward as I spin Sakura in my hand until I am holding onto its barrel. It drains more of my energy before the handle ignites in blue flames. I bring it down like a hammer on the robot's head, blasting it clear off its neck and sending it flying into the woods. The neck hole sparks for a second before the body seems to go slack as it looses power.
The newly grown tree seems to suck the robot's body inside once the thing finally dies. I guess the energy in it might be tasty?
As it stands, it just makes me appreciate my new gun even more. I really need to stop calling her an it. Sakura is too awesome to be an it.
"You are such a good gun, Sakura!" I coo as I rub my cheek on the wooden pistol. "I couldn't ask for a better one!"
From the pulse of warm and the happy vibration, she is happy with me too. Yes! I am going to get her whatever wooden nature spirit guns like after this!
Wait, what do wooden nature spirit guns like? Sunlight? Fertilizer? Organic plant-based cleaning oil?
My thoughts on proper gun care were distracted by dodging a series of arrows and gunshots. The annoying part was that the arrows seemed to track my movements even after I dodged. They hunted me down like heat seeking missiles until I took them out with a couple shots from Sakura.
I was close to landing from an evasive jump when I see I was in the reach of the blue haired girl with the katana. She was in a quickdraw stance, so I return Sakura to her ring form in time to draw Slaughter Demon and parry the lightning fast iai slash that she performs. I use the momentum to spin above her before sending a spin kick into her head.
She reacts in time to throw up an arm to protect her head, but the power of my kick was enough to still send her flying off of her feet despite the block. I was also thankful she had put up so much resistance because it helped to push me out of the way of a wind blade that the broom girl sends at me.
The girl with the spear follows up with a series of strikes that I parry with Slaughter Demon or deflect with my forearms and legs. A vicious grin lights up her face as I put up a fight.
"Has anyone ever told you that you look hot as hell when you fight?" I ask, causing her to freeze in surprise for just long enough that I manage to summon Sakura and unload half a dozen nonlethal rounds into her gut. She curls up in pain and embarrassment at falling for the ruse midbattle.
Normally, that idea never would have occured to me. However, Ms. La Rue said that it works almost every time. For some reason, she said that I should definitely do it if the girl in question seems really strong and likes to fight. She seemed pretty serious about it, but who knows why?
One reason, the main reason to be honest, that I used the secret technique is because of who I was fighting. She is tall, she has a big ass, and her willingness to hurt me is pretty scary.
For lack of better words, she is my type.
I preferred to end the fight with her as peacefully as possible, so I shot her in the stomach. You know, peacefully.
My victory was cut short by a fist barreling towards my face. I deflect it to the side as I recognize my attacker as the archer guy. He was different than before with a red X mark across the skin around his left eye and his punches fly faster than I expected. It was almost as fast as Man-Bun, but it was almost like he wasn't quite used to the speed if the flawed timing of the attacks was anything to go by.
I pivot around an uppercut he unleashes before I return the favor with a left hook into his ribs. My hand collides with an unyielding surface of what felt like stone. It was even harder than Man-Bun's muscles, but it didn't feel normal. It was almost like I hit something else instead.
"It seems your brute strength can't break through my Flowing Red Scale, titan spawn," Archer Guy says. "My Blood Manipulation won't be defeated so easily."
"You should hurry up!" I hear Man-Bun call out. "Don't you remember what my father said when he delivered the orders from Zeus? After the vessel is killed, you are supposed to go after the daughter of Poseidon."
At the words, everything goes red as my rage takes over.
--
I remember when I first met Penny. My dad and her mom had been dating for a bit and they finally wanted their kids to meet. I was eleven and she was still three years old.
"Who are they?" Penny asked, peeking out from behind her mom's leg.
"You have already met Jin," Sally says. "This is his son, Yuji. You don't have to be scared. Think of him like a big brother."
"A brother?" she asks in amazement before waddling at me in a rush that sends her crashing into my stomach. She grabs onto my hoodie and seems to hide her face in it for a moment. Then, she looks up at me with sparkling green eyes and a happy smile. "Big bro Yuji!"
People always talk about their world changing in a single moment. It sounds nice, but still kind of fake. I mean, how can your life just go from empty to full all at once?
At least, that's what I thought until I met Penny. It was like a piece of me that I didn't even know was missing was finally back in place. I was a little more me because I had her now.
The idea that these random fucks were going to take her away from me set my blood on fire in a way that I had only ever experienced once before.
Back when Ms. La Rue still only ruled Manhattan, a bunch of the gangs from the other boroughs got together and wanted to take her down. Their best idea was to try and strongarm her assistant into helping them kill her. That assistant happened to be me.
Since I was already a known threat even at seventeen, they tried to control me with leverage. On one night, they broke into Sally's apartment and kidnapped both of them. They tried to use them as leverage to make me kill Monica myself and threatened to kill them if I didn't cooperate.
Monica figured it out before I had to make that choice. She told me that I could either get them back myself or they would be killed after I listened to upstarts. In the end, I listened to her instead.
I crushed every gang that joined together to oppose Ms. La Rue. I raided each base and broke them until they pointed me in the direction of the next. They never got the chance to phone for help because I didn't give them a single chance to recover once I descended on them like a beast.
I always said that I didn't really remember how many gangs I crushed in that single night. It is a lie. I remember every one of the twenty five gangs I erased in my crusade. It was only at the final base that I found Penny and Sally.
The only reason those criminals were still breathing when I left is because neither of them was hurt. If they had hurt Sally or touched a hair on Penny's head, I wouldn't have been able to stop myself until the wannabe criminals were a pile of cooling corpses in my wake.
Still, I doubt any of them will walk properly again, if they ever walk at all. No one touches my family.
In that night, I cemented myself as the right hand of the Iron Maiden, the Tiger of the West Side. For people in the know, I was usually the pick for the #2 worst person to cross in New York, after Ms. La Rue of course.
As my fury at the threat to Penny blazes in my chest, I remember what Ms. La Rue once told me.
"Yuji, someday you are going to come across someone you can't beat," she says. "Someone too strong for even your muscles to punch through."
"What do you mean?" I ask as I sit up on the mat covering the ground. I had just been flipped on my back during a sparring match with Ms. La Rue as she helped me train in her usual gym. "I mean, you are stronger than me. If I need some help, then I can just call you."
"One day, you won't be able to," she insists. "The only thing that will stand between a bad guy and something precious to you will be whatever strength you can call on. You will need more than just some strong punches."
"What can I do then?" I ask. "I got it! Brass knuckes! If I wear those, my punches would probably get even stronger!"
"No, Yuji," she replies with a sigh. "What you need is in here."
She taps me on the chest and I am a little confused before she continues.
"If you are ever up against the wall and too weak to stop someone, then you need to think about something you love and could never bear to lose," she says. "Then think about fighting someone who is trying to take them away from you. Feel that fire burning in your gut and make it ignite every cell in your body. Once it is burning like the sun, push it through your arm and into your fist. Then, once you have built up as much as you can, blast it out in a punch that blows through whatever stands in your way."
"You kinda lost me," I admit as I sheepishly scratch my head.
Ms. La Rue just chuckles. "You will understand it one day. Now, enough slacking around. Let's go another round."
I think I understand it know, Ms. La Rue. Grab onto this fire and use it to blast through anything in my way. I won't let anyone touch Penny while I am still breathing.
I have been known by a lot of things in my life so far.
Yuji Itadori, the son of Jin Itadori and stepson of Sally Jackson.
The Tiger of the West Side, the second in command of Monica La Rue, the Iron Maiden of Manhattan.
The vessel of Kronos, whatever that means, and the guy who will have to die to kill the ancient titan.
But the only thing that I have ever cared about being is Penny's Big Bro Yuji. I don't care if I have to fight men, gods, or monsters.
No one is hurting my little sister.
--
(Aoi Todo POV)
While uncommon, there were some sorcerers like his brother who required an additional kickstart to access their Cursed Energy. Often, they were happy and friendly people who could not call on the negative nature of Cursed Energy since it was a largely foreign concept to them. After all, they drew their strength from positivity, not the turmoil that generates Cursed Energy.
However, that does not change the fact that they possess Cursed Energy. It was just buried and hidden beneath their positive emotions, waiting to be awoken.
To access this slumbering power, they had to be confronted with the darkness in the world and themselves to be able to tap into their latent potential as a sorcerer. Their core emotions might remain positive, but they will be able to protect their light with the power of their dark.
His brother was one such person.
Kamo tried to throw punch at the distracted Itadori, but his brother caught it in his palm without even looking. When his brother did turn his gaze upon the Blood Manipulation sorcerer, the boy's brown eyes now swirled with blue and black as Cursed Energy billowed throughout his body like a raging bonfire.
Yuji's fist lashed out like a bolt of lightning as it buried itself in Kamo's side. Even from this distance, he could hear the sound of Kamo's Flowing Red Scale begin to crack beneath the force of the blow. The confusing part was that it did so little even with his brother's Cursed Energy unlocked. There were signs of reinforcement in the punch, but the strength did not match what he had expected. Did he raise his hopes for his brother too high?
No, his brother had just exceeded them without his notice. As Kamo was still experiencing the force of the punch, a surge of Cursed Energy shot down the length of his brother's arm before firing from his fist like the bullet from a gun. The second impact of pure Cursed Energy shatters Kamo's Flowing Red Scale along with the ribs beneath as the son of Apollo coughs out blood from the internal damage he just received.
His brother does not let the sorcerer go so easily. He rains down a series of titanic blows that rock Kamo's barely conscious body as he was beaten to a pulp beneath the onslaught.
Serves the boy right for having a boring type like short petite girls. While Kamo's affection for his younger sister Momo could be respected, the boy's inherent taste in women could not. His personal fondness for his little sister could not outweigh his obligation to judge each man on his type alone.
Anything less would render him unfit to honor Takada any longer.
As his brother releases one final punch which craters Kamo's head into the ground, the blast echoes through the forest as silence reigns. Yuji's eyes blaze with blue fire as he rises to his feet and his hands ignite with the azure flames of Cursed Energy.
It might have been a trick of the light, but for a moment, it was almost as though a tiger could be seen prowling behind Itadori. It snarled in warning to any would-be challengers before disappearing as though it never existed.
"Who's next?" his brother growls, his fists clenched in preparation for the next contender in this trial by fire.
While some might have seen his brother's defeat of a Semi-First Grade monster as a fluke of luck, he knew better. A random roll of fate could not explain his brother's victory over a Semi-First Grade sorcerer within moments of unleashing his Cursed Energy.
No, his brother was just a different breed of sorcerer than the world was used to. Mark his words, his brother would one day stand alongside Gojo as one of the strongest this world of gods and monsters had ever seen.
--
(Satoru Gojo POV)
Ah, man!
It was just getting good when he got the text. Apparently, his bud's business trip had ended early so he had come back before any camp funds could be 'misappropriated again'. He was still same wet blanket that he was when they were teenagers.
What were you supposed to spend the money on besides a hot tub heated by the lava from the rock wall? It's not like they buy anything since they are given anything they needed through the free use of the Hermes delivery catalog.
But oh no! The profits from the strawberry fields were supposed to go to the 'college funds' so the campers could go to 'college.'
Why did they need any higher education? He didn't have any and he turned out great in his humble and unbiased opinion.
"We have to table the Yuji vs. Todo title match until next time," he sighs. "The grownups are here."
"I was wondering when the fun police would get back," Dionysius groans.
"Yeah, Nanami sures knows how to be a buzzkill," he agrees.
--
(Yuji Itadori POV)
"Who's next?" I snarl as I hold my ground and wait for the next asshole to appear.
"That would appear to be me," a man says as he walks out of the trees. He was dressed in a blue dress shirt, a white suit jacket and pants, polished leather shoes, and a leopard print tie. The man glances down at his wrist to check the time on his silver watch befre adjusting his glasses with a sigh. "I was hoping to clock out for the night, but it appears I will be cashing in on a touch of overtime today."
"If you want to get to my sister, you have to go through me," I warn him.
"I think you overestimate my desire to injure a preteen girl," he says. "My mother might take an issue with Poseidon and his children, but I prefer to judge people on their own merits instead of bloodlines."
"Then what are you doing here?" I question.
"To inform you all that the game has concluded with the Athena cabin leading their team to victory over the Ares cabin," he replies. "Any further conflict will be outside the bounds of the game and will be punished as such. It is a good thing because you seem to have run out of time as well."
"Huh?" I ask before my vision goes blurry. The blue flames on my hadns fade away as I lose control of my Cursed Energy and my balance. I stumble around as I try and maintain my footing, but everything has begun to spin.
"Cursed Energy can be unpredictable at the best of times," the man says as he walks forward, his words warped by my struggling hearing. "Yours seems to have taken a toll on your brain since you are still inexperienced in its utilization. I would advise against such a strenuous use until you have trained more. Pushing yourself like this will only have negative effects in the long run."
I don't even respond as I stumble and collapse only to be caught by the man.
"Don't worry," he says, his calm voice carrying me to unconsciousness. "We will get Shoko to patch you up with the rest of the kids. Vessel or not, you are still a camper."
I don't hear what he says after that because it all goes black.
--
(Shoko Ieri POV)
"Namami, why are their so many girls surrounding one of the bodies in my infirmary?" she asks the senior counselor of the Athena cabin.
"That is an annoyingly complex issue," he says before a certain white haired camp vice-director appears.
"I have been summoned!" Gojo exclaims. "I was called by the need for a convoluted relationship dynamics explanation."
"No one called you," Nanami sighs.
"I was wondering when you would appear," she admits. "Explain it in sixty seconds or I am out."
"Absolutely!" Gojo agrees before he wheels in a white board and starts drawing in pink marker. "Okay, so first we have Pinkie. The little black haired chibi is his sister who loves him a bunch and is waiting for him to wake up. The other chibi is my niece Hestia who is also now his little sister."
Okay, she is following so far.
"Then, you have Maki who is now horny for Pinkie after he beat her up," Gojo continues. "Clarisse and Mai are there so she doesn't jump him in his sleep. Also, Clarisse is another adopted little sister since he also works for her mom who may or may not have a thing for her dependable assistant. Also, he kind of has this thing going on with Alecto from when she was the first chibi's math teacher. But the twist comes with the fact that Alecto is now one of the people guarding Pinkie's step mom who is being held hostage by my nephew Hades to strongarm Pinkie and first chibi into finding my other nephew's sparkler so he doesn't pick a fight with my other other nephew who still has his fork while my first nephew is also missing his beanie."
Uh-huh, that makes sense.
"You can't forget about the angry cherry tree either," Gojo points out. "She had a little angry cherry tree who probably sees Pinkie as her dad, but that isn't totally established yet. Also, the first angry cherry tree will probably also have a thing for Pinkie since he said that she has really nice wood grain."
Naturally.
"And that is before you factor in that my sister Aphrodite is also probably lurking around here since there is so much romance drama focused on Pinkie," Gojo concludes. "She is most likely hiding in the rafters as she tries to decide if she wants to set him up with one of her kids or try and stake a claim on Pinkie herself."
That cleared up everything.
"That was complete nonsense," Nanami says as he gestures to the web of circles connected with lines and vague descriptions on the board. "I think he just started babbling part way through."
"No, I got it," she assures the man. "So why does Maki have the crush on Pinkie again?"
"He fits her type to a T," Gojo says with a serious nod.
"Muscular, slightly below average intelligence which makes him a terrible liar, a nice smile, the spirit of a golden retriever, and the ability to beat her in a fight?" she confirms.
"Yep, he checked all of the boxes," Gojo says.
"Oh, so this is who you gossip with," Nanami says as he pinches the bridge of his nose.
"Hey, Gojo is the premier source of gossip in camp," she says as she defends herself. "You wouldn't believe some of the stuff he has overheard with Limitless."
"What I cannot believe is that I am the only adult at a camp where even the staff are children," Nanami mutters as he walks away.
Once the blond man was gone, she turns back to Gojo. "Okay, you have earned some more time," she says. "Hit me with the best gossip you've got."
"I thought you would never ask," Gojo grins before he continues to add to his increasingly elaborate whiteboard diagram.
--
Author's note:
Another chapter done! I really wanted to do a good job for Yuji unlocking his Cursed Energy, so I hope you all enjoyed it.
Feel free to write me a review and let me know how I did. I am practically fueled by reviews, so don't be shy. I always make sure to take all reviews to heart and respond to any questions at the beginning of each chapter.
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A pleasure as always,
Titan900
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