(A/N: Blub blub blub... blub)
"Would you hurry it up!" Kugisaki yelled back when she saw that Itadori and Matteo weren't following him.
"All right, all right," Itadori said, following Kugisaki.
"Coming!" Matteo said, trying not to be left behind.
As the three students walked into the building, Itadori and Matteo quickly looked around, checking for curses, while Kugisaki strode forward without giving the area around her a second glance.
Seeing that there were no curses on the first floor, the three students began to make their way up to the second floor.
"What a pain in my ass," Kugisaki complained as she walked up the metal grate stairs, "I come all the way to Tokyo, and I still have to deal with curses," she complained.
"Huh? You didn't come here to exorcise them?" Itadori asked.
"Let's save some time," Kugisaki suddenly said, "Let's split up, I'll start from the top and investigate floor by floor; you two start from the bottom," she explained.
"Hold on a minute, let's take this seriously," Itadori responded. "Curses are dangerous, you know," he explained.
"If you go up there, you're going to be cornered by a curse that's taken a hostage," Matteo explained.
"I don't want to hear it from some weirdos who last week were clueless normies!" Kugisaki exclaimed, ignoring Matteo, "Now get moving!" before marching up the stairs.
"I warned you," Matteo said, watching Kugisaki walk up the stairs.
"You're an out-of-control rollercoaster of emotions today!" Itadori exclaimed.
"This is why girls don't like you!" Kugisaki yelled back.
"Are you even popular enough to talk? Bitch," Itadori said under his breath.
Before either of the two students could say anything more, a curse from the ceiling used its knife-like hands to slice up Itadori.
Though before the curse could do anything, Itadori drew the Slauter Demon and sliced one of the curse's arms before backflipping away from it.
'Unnecessary but sick' Matteo thought while backing away from the curse.
The curse fell from the ceiling and landed on its four crablike legs.
"Do... you need.. a receipt?" the curse said, turning to the two students.
Then, the curse lunged at the students; as it did, Itadori dodged the curse's strike while getting beneath it, using the Slauter Demon. Itadori stabbed it into the curse's stomach and dragged his knife along its stomach as he slid behind the curse.
The curse then began to move towards Matteo now that Itadori was out of the way. But as it began to move, Itadori sliced each of its legs off and stabbed it in the head.
"Man, have I got moves or what?" Itadori said.
"Yeah, yeah you do," Matteo replied while feeling absolutely useless.
"Now, we've cleared this floor, right?" Itadori asked as the curse began to dissipate.
"Maybe we should give it one more-"
The noise of a child crying began to echo throughout the first floor.
Hearing this, Itadori quickly looked around.
'Is this the kid Kugisaki saved? No, he's on the top floor' Matteo thought, 'Itadori didn't save any other kid, it's probably a curse' he realized.
"Matteo, we need to go," Itadori said, turning to Matteo.
"Go, if it's a kid, me slowing you down could risk their life," Matteo replied.
'I'm not going to get a kid killed because I'm slow' Matteo thought.
Not wanting to waste any time, Itadori bolted to where they heard the crying.
"Now, let's test my luck," Matteo said looking around.
It was then that Matteo heard a creaking above him.
Looking up, Matteo barely had enough time to dodge out of the way of an extremely obese curse dropping on top of him.
"Damn it," he cursed.
———————————————————————
"I think I'll go in too," Fushiguro said as he started to get up.
"Don't push yourself, you're still recovering you know?" Gojo reminded.
"But someone needs to keep an eye on Itadori right?" Fushiguro asked, siting back down.
"Yes, but the person we're testing this time around is Nobara," Gojo explained, "That Yuji, some screws are loose," he said tapping his hand on his head, "By now you've seen plenty of jujutsu sorcerers, and you've seen them give up because they could conquer their fear or disgust right?" Gojo asked.
"But Kugisaki has experience, right?" Fushiguro asked, "So it's a little late for that now," he pointed out.
"As we know, curses are born from human minds, so their strength and numbers grow in proportion to the population," Gojo explained, "Do you think Nobara understands that Tokyo curses are on a different level than those in the countryside?" he asked.
"But, if were testing Kugisaki, why didn't you give Matteo a weapon?" Fushiguro asked.
"Unfortunately, Yuji doesn't currently have a cursed technique, before eating Sukuna's Finger he wasn't a sorcerer and he can't use cursed energy, so he needs a weapon," Gojo began, "But Matteo? He has a cursed technique, even if he doesn't know what it is yet," he explained.
"Then why didn't you tell him that?" Fushiguro asked.
"Because I have no idea what his cursed technique could be," Gojo responded while putting his arms behind his head.
"Wouldn't he have his mother or fathers cursed technique?" Fushiguro wondered.
"That would make sense, unfortunately his bloodline doesn't make sense," Gojo replied, "Now tell me, if his mom can shoot out her fingernails, what can her father do?" he asked Fushiguro.
"Shoot out fingernails?" Fushiguro answered unsure.
"Nope! He can turn his body into string," Gojo explained.
"What?" Fushiguro responded.
———————————————————————
Matteo dogged out of the way of the fat curse. Though, thanks to the curses immense size and the limited space due to the walls around him dodging wasn't an easy feat.
Looking at the curse as it turned around to charge at Matteo once more, he thought about what he could do.
He could just wait for Itadori to come back, but there's no telling when he would get back.
So, the obvious solution was to kill the curse. Unfortunately, Matteo had no idea how to kill the thing in front of him.
Fighting this curse, Matteo felt like there was nothing he could do. That no matter what he could do, he would die here.
He hated that.
He didn't hate the fact he was going to die; he hated the fact that he couldn't do anything about it.
The hate bubbled inside of him, he could feel it, the cursed energy. Something was trying to form.
Holding his hand out as the cursed began to charge, Matteo used his cursed technique.
And on the tip of his finger, a bubble formed.
After forming, the bubble quickly floated over to the curse and popped on the curses stomach, taking out a small, no very small, no it took out a tiny piece of its skin.
The curse slowed down, more confused than anything, and attempted to feel where the bubble popped.
After a moment of searching, the curse gave up and just looked at Matteo and laughed.
'When life gives you lemons' Matteo thought looking at the laughing.
Holding up his hand, Matteo shot more bubbles at the curse. However, it did so little damage that the curse was actually healing as faster than Matteo could harm it.
Though as he fired, Matteo felt like something was missing. He wasn't good at cursed energy manipulation, so he shouldn't be able to shoot the bubbles out for too long, especially due to him firing a bubble every second.
But as he shot, he didn't feel anything. So, he came up with two theories.
Either Matteo had so much cursed energy that no matter how many bubbles he shot he wouldn't run out, or the bubbles took almost no cursed energy to fire.
Whichever one was correct didn't matter to Matteo, they both meant that he could be doing more than he was.
And so, Matteo started to shoot two bubbles every second.
The bubbles still did almost nothing, so he shot three every second.
At this point the damage was matching the healing of the curse, but still no damage. So, he started shooting five every second.
The fat curse then began to feel itself slowly getting hurt, so in response it charged at Matteo, so Matteo began to fire every second.
As Matteo fired the curse started getting closer and closer, but Matteo did not move. He simply started shooting eleven every second.
Thirteen every second.
Seventeen every second.
Nineteen every second.
Twenty-three every second.
As the curse got closer and closer Matteo just continued to increase how many bubbles, he was shooting at once.
The curse began to slow down as it got closer and closer, for every step it had to deal with hundreds of bubbles coming at it.
Fat which once protected the curse began to be stripped away little by little by the onslaught of bubbles.
By the time the curse was within arm's reach of Matteo, there were fifty-nine bubbles shot every second.
The curse reached its hand out to smack Matteo, but before it's arm could reach it was torn to shreds by the bubbles.
There were so many bubbles that Matteo actually lost track of the curse. So, Matteo stopped making bubbles and jumped back
But as the bubbles cleared, Matteo only saw the back of the curse, for the rest of it was gone. It was like the curse had gone long wase into a cheese grater.
Taking a deep breath in, Matteo regained his composure and turned to go meet up with Itadori as the curse dissipated behind him.
Running down the halls, Matteo ran into Itadori running back to where he was.
"Curse?" Matteo asked.
"Curse," Itadori replied, "Curse? he then asked.
"Curse," Matteo answered.
"The crying was from the basement, so I cleared that part out," Itadori told Matteo.
"Good, now I think it's now time we save Kugisaki," Matteo replied.
"We need to save Kugisaki?" Itadori asked.
"Yes, now let's go!" Matteo replied starting to run away.
Itadori and Matteo quickly ran up to the top floor. Matteo lagged slightly behind, but their destination wasn't too far away.
As they came up to a wall, Itadori heard a kid whimpering on the other side.
As fast as he could, Itadori reeled back his hand to punch through the wall.
"Itadori wait!" Matteo called back.
Slowing down. Itadori turned around to see what Matteo had to say.
"Move your hand more to the left," Matteo told him while pointing to the left.
"Got it," Itadori replied.
Moving his hand a little to the left, Itadori then ran his hand through the wall and grabbed the curse on the other side of it. Confusing the curse and Kugisaki who were both on the other side.
He then attempted to pull the curse through the wall, but the curse slipped out from his grasp.
The curse then held the kid it held in its hands and put a long fingernail to the kids neck, but before the curse could do anything Itadori sliced it's hand clean off causing it to drop the child.
Itadori then grabbed the child and kicked the curse away.
Seeing three sorcerers and knowing it had lost, the curse phased through the wall and left the building.
"It's getting away!" Itadori called out.
"No he's not! Itadori!" Kugisaki yelled, "Give me that arm!" she ordered.
As Itadori kicked over the arm, the curse had full left the building and was falling above Fushiguro and Gojo.
"I'll handle it," Fushiguro said looking up.
"Hold on," Gojo responded.
Kugisaki quickly threw a straw doll from her pocket onto the arm.
"A straw doll?" the kid remarked.
"Creepy," Itadori added.
"Straw Doll Technique," Kugisaki called out with a hammer and nail in her hand, "Resonance!" she said slamming the nail into the doll.
The curse, still falling, had nails burst out from its body leading to its quick death.
"Oh good," Gojo said, "All right, she's crazy," he concluded.
———————————————————————
Walking out of the building with the kid, the three students were rather tired.
"Good time?" Gojo asked standing up and stretching.
"Yeah," Matteo replied as he held up his hand making a bubble appear.
"Hold on, is that your cursed technique?" Itadori asked pointing at the bubble.
"Soft and Wet," Matteo said looking at the bubble.
"Pfft," Kugisaki exclaimed, "Your cursed technique is bubbles?" she asked, "So lame," she said.
"You should probably get your nails," Matteo said looking up.
"Hah! I already got my," Kugisaki began to say before noticing that her nails were gone.
Looking where Matteo was looking, Kugisaki saw her nails suspended in the air by bubbles.
"Why you," she said taking her hammer out, "Give me back my nails!" she yelled out running at Matteo.
"Say my cursed technique is cool!" Matteo replied running away.
"Never!" Kugisaki replied.
The kid the students rescued, still being held by Itadori, just watched on has Kugisaki chased Matteo with her hammer.
"Do you want to go home now?" Itadori asked.
"Yes," the kid responded.
"You heard the kid," Gojo said, "Now if we drop him off quick, we could stop by a place and get some food," he offered.
Within half a second, both Kugisaki and Matteo were standing at attention in front of Gojo. The bubbles with the nails inside had already floated down to Kugisaki.
"Itadori! Let's move it!" Matteo called out.
"On it!" Itadori replied grabbing the kid and starting to run.
"Follow him! To good food!" Kugisaki said following Itadori.
As the three students ran, Fushiguro stood still at the building watching them go.
"Children all of them," Fushiguro murmured, "Now Gojo," Fushiguro said before noticing that Gojo was gone.
Looking forward Fushiguro saw Gojo running along with the other students.
With no other choice, Fushiguro started to run to catch up to the rest of the group.
As Gojo ran, he kept an eye on Matto, specifically the back of his left shoulder. He could just barely see that something had appeared there.
It was a purple star, something that Gojo had seen on Ms. Unemi.
The star was a type of trait that appeared on the necks of a certain bloodline. It was said to give the ability to manifest their cursed technique in a physical form.
What was the name of the star?
The Joestar.