Mordo lunged before the words had even fully left Satoru's mouth. The Staff of the Living Tribunal ignited, splitting the air with a hum of raw Eldritch power.
"If you're that eager, I guess I can't help but play along," Satoru said, his grin widening. "But don't say I didn't warn you. Impatience is a terrible look for a Master."
Just as the glowing head of the staff was an inch from his nose, Satoru finally pulled his hands from his pockets. With a casual, crisp clap, he brought his palms together.
After a rapid shifting noise, he dodged it.
To the students watching, it looked like a glitch in reality. Satoru didn't jump or dive, he simply stopped being where the staff was and started being three feet to the left. Mordo's weapon whistled past its trajectory, hitting nothing but empty air.
Before Mordo could even process the miss, Satoru's hands were already back in his pockets.
"Is Master Gojo... teleporting?" Rintrah whispered from the sidelines, his large green ears twitching as he leaned forward.
"Not exactly," a senior apprentice replied, eyes glued to the ring. "He's not moving fast either. He's essentially making the distance between two points disappear before the strike can ever cross it."
Rintrah blinked, his bovine features twisting into a look of genuine confusion. "I'm not really getting that. Can you tell me more? How can space just... vanish?"
The senior disciple offered a small, knowing smirk. "Don't sweat the physics yet, big guy. You'll learn soon enough under Master Gojo's tutelage."
Mordo didn't pause to admire the technique. Having sparred with Satoru dozens of times over the past few years, he was already pivoting as soon as he felt the air shift.
He twisted the staff, the wood segmenting into glowing orange chains as it transformed into a flail.
He swung it in a blinding horizontal arc, then snapped it forward like a whip, targeting Satoru.
Satoru didn't run. He just blinked.
Every time the whip was about to make contact, the space around Satoru warped. He appeared a yard away, then behind a pillar, then back in the center of the ring. Mordo was effectively fighting a ghost, his combat relic slamming into the stone tiles and sending sparks flying, but never finding his target.
"You're getting faster, Mordo! Almost had my sleeve that time," Satoru teased, his voice appearing to come from three different directions at once.
Mordo let out a growl of frustration, putting everything into one massive, overhead vertical strike. He overextended, the weight of the flail pulling his momentum too far forward as it shattered the stone floor. In that split second of imbalance, Satoru vanished again.
Mordo froze as he felt weight on his back. Satoru was sitting on him with one leg over the other. Satoru looked down at Mordo.
"My students are watching. I've gotta show off a little, right?"
As Mordo let out another grunt of frustration and picked himself off the ground, Satoru bounced lightly in place to pivot. When Mordo began to turn, he was met with the blur of a leg.
Satoru delivered a perfect, arcing kiick that caught Mordo square in the jaw, sending the Master stumbling back across the ring.
Satoru landed lightly on one foot, hands still tucked away. He looked over at his disciples with a wink.
"See that?" Satoru said, ignoring Mordo as he scrambled to his feet behind him. He turned toward his students, walking backward with his hands still in his pockets. "Some of you might think a fight is about who hits harder like their life depended on it. It's not, it's about managing your pace and knowing your enemy. Master Mordo overcommitted when he swung because he might've thought he had a window. Once I wasn't there, his own momentum became my best weapon, granted I spilled some words but that's to rile him up with another attack."
He stopped, looking over the rims of his glasses at his students, who stood attentively. "In a real fight, the moment your opponent thinks they've won is exactly when they've lost."
"Hmm?" Satoru picked up movement behind him. He didn't bother turning around as Mordo used his other relic, the Vaulting Boots of Valtorr.
"You're wide open, Gojo!" Mordo yelled. Using the boots to kick off the empty air, he launched himself into a series of rapid, mid-air jumps, circling Satoru with impressive speed.
He descended from a blind spot, putting the full weight of his momentum into a diving punch aimed at Satoru's jaw.
Satoru let out a long sigh.
Just as the fist was an inch from his face, Satoru decided not to warp space this time to dodge. He didn't even move.
Mordo's knuckles hit Infinity and stopped dead, the kinetic energy of the dive dissipating into a ripple of distorted light.
Satoru turned his head, eyeing the dark bruise forming on Mordo's cheek.
"Yikes. That's gonna need some ice. Or a really thick scarf," Satoru teased, wincing sympathetically. "You know, if you keep leading with your face, people are going to start thinking you're doing it on purpose."
Satoru didn't wait for a reply as he decided to end it.
In one fluid motion, he stepped inside Mordo's reach. He didn't use a spell or a ripple of energy. He used a simple, devastatingly efficient palm strike to Mordo's solar plexus.
Mordo gasped, the air leaving his lungs in a sharp wheeze as he was sent skidding back across the stone tiles. He tried to vault away using his boots, but Satoru was already there, appearing in his blind spot with a simple leg sweep that sent the Master crashing onto his back.
Satoru stood over him for a second, then offered a hand. Mordo promptly ignored it at first, but then he let out a resigned sigh. He grasped Satoru's forearm and let the younger man pull him up.
"You rely too much on these... tricks," Mordo muttered, though the edge was gone from his voice. He brushed the dust from his robes, wincing as he touched his bruised cheek. "One day, you will face an enemy who doesn't care about it."
Satoru grinned, adjusted his sunglasses, and gave Mordo a light pat on the shoulder. "Maybe. But until then, you should get better."
Mordo huffed, but didn't argue. He'd lost enough spars to know when an insult was actually a tip. He gave a stiff nod of acknowledgement before retrieving his staff and walked away.
Satoru turned back to the crowd of disciples.
"Last thing for today," Satoru said, his voice carrying easily across the courtyard. "Don't get obsessed with the 'right' way to cast a spell or throw a punch. If you spend the whole fight thinking about the rules, you'll never see the million other ways to win. Combat is not stiff, it's a battle of wits. And if you're the one doing all the talking, make sure you have something worth saying."
He gave them a lazy clap. "Class dismissed."
The students stood and bowed, a low murmur of conversation breaking out as they began to digest the spar between masters they'd just witnessed.
Satoru didn't wait for them to clear out. He turned around and tilted his head back, looking up at the balcony.
"So!" Satoru shouted, cupping his hands around his mouth again. "How was the show? I think I deserve some sweets, don't you think?"
The Ancient One chuckled lightly. She leaned slightly over the wooden railing of the balcony.
"Your finesse remains as distinctive as ever, Satoru," she said. "But keep your feet on the ground for a moment. I have something I wish to discuss with you before you decide to go wandering again."
Satoru blinked. "A discussion? Don't tell me I'm in trouble for the floor tiles again. I'm telling you, it's all Mordo's."
"The tiles are a secondary concern, but that isn't why," she replied serenely. "And rest assured, Mordo has already received his share of the blame."
The Ancient One turned and began walking towards the inner part of Kamar-Taj. Wong and one other master followed behind her.
"Besides," she added, her voice trailing back with a hint of a challenge, "I think you'll find this particular problem far more interesting than a bakery run."
Satoru raised a brow, adjusted his glasses, and followed them, his curiosity piqued.