Hi guys, author here! Please share your thoughts in the comments and reviews. And if you like it, don't forget to drop some stones — they're a great motivator!
--------------------
Later that day, Satoru arrived at the Zenin estate, ready to pummel Naoya.
The servants tried to stop him and inform the clan of his arrival, but Satoru ignored them entirely and headed straight for Naoya's room.
"I'm here, you bas— What the hell?!" Satoru yelled, only to freeze the moment he saw the cursed energy pouring out of Naoya.
"Yo!" greeted the young Zenin, but the Gojo heir simply stared at Naoya.
"What happened to you? What's with this amount of cursed energy? Are you okay?" asked Satoru as he approached Naoya and started checking him out from all directions.
"Like I told you. Stuff happened, and now I have this much cursed energy that I can't control. I am not like someone who has magic eyes that let them control any amount of energy."
"Hey, don't feel bad. Not everyone can be as amazing as me. So you are now back to rookie levels of control?" asked Satoru and patted Naoya's head.
Naoya smacked his hand away in response, only for Satoru, who didn't have his infinity active, to be blasted into the wall.
"Ah!"
"My bad! My bad! You okay?" asked Naoya in panic.
Satoru got off the wall and looked at his palm, which was now swollen and looked at Naoya with disbelief.
"F*ck rookie, your control is worse than that! Shut off your reinforcement," complained Satoru and showed his hand to Naoya.
Naoya inturn summoned Senzu to heal the white-haired boy and sighed.
"If I did that, then the cursed energy would start damaging me from the inside. It is acting very aggressively, and I have no passive control over it at the moment. I am trying to expel it as much as possible, but it is a very slow process."
"Hmm...." muttered Satoru and checked Naoya carefully with his [Six Eyes].
"Damn, it's way too messed up inside you....and this is not your energy entirely either. Something is mixed in with yours..." concluded Satoru.
"I will be fine, right?" asked Naoya, wondering if his decision to help his grandpa was correct or not.
"You should be fine; the cursed energy is slowly matching your wavelength, but the rate is slow. Better expel a lot of it and have it be generated within you naturally again. I have the perfect idea how to do that!" said Satoru with a smile.
Naoya looked at the excited smile on Satoru's face and smiled back.
"We beat the crap out of each other?" asked Naoya.
"We beat the crap out of each other!!!" replied Satoru.
The two of them chuckled at their ideas and suddenly looked towards the room's door.
"Satoru Gojo," spoke Naobito seriously.
He arrived as soon as possible once the servants relayed the news to him.
"Sup, Uncle. Long, see no time?" greeted Satoru with a smile.
Naobito was already feeling his blood pressure rising.
"Father, can we borrow a training ground... possibly one quite far away from the clan and the clansmen?" asked Naoya.
"Why?"
"We were planning to have a spar. You won't like the estate or the people to be caught up in our fight, would you?" asked Satoru with a smile.
Naobito looked at Naoya, wondering if this was true, to which Naoya nodded and stood up as well.
"Satoru said that it would be better for me to have this excess energy expelled first. I need to learn to control it as well. Where would I find a more durable dummy than this guy?" replied Naoya and slapped Satoru's back, only for his hand to be stopped by Satoru's infinity.
"Dummy? Me? I will show you within minutes who out of the two of us is the real dummy," replied Satoru with a smirk.
Both of them glared at each other. Their competitive spirits were rising by the moment.
Naobito looked at the scene in front of him and wondered how to make sure that this confrontation would be discreet.
'Whom am I kidding. Two Special Grade hot-headed kids....it will cause quite a lot of disturbance,' thought Naobito and facepalmed.
.
.
.
"Both of you. Make sure you two don't destroy the estate."
"No promises. I don't have control right now," stated Naoya.
"Restraint? Me? You know me well enough to know that is not my strong suit," said Satoru.
Naobito had veins pop up on his forehead. He wanted to give a piece of his mind to the two kids, but knew well that either of the kids was stronger than him.
'How bad is the future going to be for kids this young to be so strong....' thought Naobito.
"I will raise the curtain now. Father, please move away for your safety," said Naoy.
Once Naobito was far away from their location, Naoya erected the curtain barrier and strengthened it as much as he could.
"This is great. Our first fight with cursed techniques included as well. This time, it is your turn to be defeated," said Satoru.
The two of them had fought before, but at that time, they had limited themselves to the use of cursed energy and not their techniques, and without his broken technique, Satoru was defeated by Naoya. Turns out, fighting someone who has been on a constant beating session from someone like Toji, and has survived those as well, was quite an unfavourable scenario. Satoru knew that firsthand.
"So? What all is allowed? Cursed energy, cursed technique, cursed tools?" asked Naoya.
"No tools. Our goal here is to make you expend as much energy as you can. I don't want to break your cursed tools because of our serious fight. Let's limit ourselves to our techniques only," said Satoru.
Naoya stretched his body and nodded. He knew that apart from his [Inverted Spear of Heaven], no other cursed tool would work on Satoru anyway, and he was not in the mood to reveal it just yet. Not to mention, for now, his priority was to get back control of his energy and test out his new technique.
Satoru was done stretching as well and took off his glasses.
"No holding back from here on, Naoya," said Satoru.
"No fatal attacks though," added Naoya.
"Obviously. Though I hardly believe that without the intention to kill, you would be able to even touch me," said Satoru.
"What do you know? I was thinking the same thing."
"Heh. Being the great Satoru Gojo, I give the first move to you," said Satoru and gestured for Naoya to attack.
"Alright. Let me check out some new stuff."
[Cursed Technique: Solid Shadow]
"New shikigami?" asked Satoru.
Naoya didn't respond; the shadows around him gathered, and with a single gesture, the mass of shadows launched towards Satoru.
[Black Wave]
The shadows crashed into Satoru, destroying everything in their way, though Naoya could feel that the shadows near Satoru were stopped while the rest of them continued to raze through everything in their path.
Naoya deactivated the technique, and as he expected, Satrou stood unscathed and admired the destruction caused by Naoya's technique.
"Wow! A new shadow attack! Too bad. Doesn't touch me," replied Satoru.
He then proceeded to raise his hand as a floating mass of blue cursed energy gathered in his hand.
[Cursed Technique Lapse - Blue]
Naoya stared at the massive ball of cursed energy that attracted everything towards itself and used his technique as well.
Shadows near his feet gripped onto him and merged with the land, making Naoya counter the attractive force from Blue.
"Acting tough? Take this!" exclaimed Satoru and launched Blue at Naoya.
The moment Satoru launched Blue at Naoya, the Zenin in question blurred from his spot using the [Projection Sorcery] and was already standing in front of Satoru.
[Solid Shadow Crush]
The mass of shadows, released from Naoya's hands, surrounded Satoru and trapped him within a jet-black, shadowy barrier.
Naoya then proceeded to crush Satoru within the barrier by making it smaller and smaller.
Satoru, on the inside, saw the barrier trying to crush him and used his infinity to blow the barrier away, only to see that the shadows weren't budging an inch.
Naoya, on the outside, felt his barrier being pushed away and increased the force with which he was crushing the man inside.
The [Solid Shadows] technique was, as they were named, just solidified shadows. Naoya's shadows, though, were different, and now he had mixed his shadows in this new technique. Once enclosed completely, the entire space occupied by the shadow's boundary became part of the shadow dimension, and in the shadow dimension, there was no concept of space, meaning the outside was isolated from the inside.
Satoru, who was manipulating the remaining space within the barrier, could not do so for the space outside the shadows because the shadows separated them.
With enough power, the boundary could be broken, but because of the potential increases from Naoya and his own cursed energy that was overflowing into the barrier. It was quite difficult for it to be broken down now.
Naoya knew quite well that Satoru's spatial techniques wouldn't push away the shadow barrier. He had worked quite some time on finding a potential way to neutralise Satoru if he were to be 'Majin Vegeta'd in some way. One such way was dragging him into his shadows, but now that he had this new technique, he could mimic the effect of his shadows. It could be broken, but it won't be that easy.
Both of the Special Grades continued to push each other's techniques away, but nothing significant was happening at all.
Though Satoru was at a disadvantage here because he had limited air inside the shadow barrier.
Just like that, within half an hour, Naoya felt his shadows budge in, and soon the shadows took the shape of Satoru, fallen on the ground.
Naoya deactivated his technique, and indeed, the boy was knocked unconsc-
"SIKE!!!" yelled Satoru, and in his excitement, punched Naoya as hard as he could.
The moment his fist touched Naoya....Satoru messed up.
Already expecting such a move from Satoru, Naoya was not surprised at all and let the boy punch him.
The moment his fist connected, Naoya activated his [Projection Sorcery] and Satoru got trapped in a frame.
Naoya immediately took a stance and stared at the frozen frame before punching the frozen boy away with as much restraint as he possibly could at that moment.
In the frames, all active techniques ceased to work, meaning that no infinity barrier would stop Naoya's blow from connecting.
Once the fist connected, Satoru's body flew away at a rapid pace, crashing through several trees and destroying anything that came in Satoru's way.
The boy himself was coughing up blood. Despite Naoya's restraint, he was not able to hold back enough because of the rampant cursed energy within him, and Satoru was not durable enough to remain unscathed.
"Shit! I hit him too hard..." muttered Naoya.
At this point in time, Satoru didn't know RCT, so the injuries were going to remain until Naoya heals him.
"You okay, Satoru?!" asked Naoya with concern.
Satoru, who had his infinity reactivated, was lying in the middle of debris and was looking at the sky with a pained look on his face.
"Am I okay he asks. Who the hell does so after hitting like that?" complained Satoru and lifted his shirt to see the ugly bruise where Naoya struck him.
"A few ribs probably cracked...." muttered Satoru and stood back up.
He looked at Naoya, who was quite far away, though thanks to [Six Eyes], he could see him clearly.
"The bastard is genuinely worried. What the hell is with techniques? It seems to be tailor-made to counter mine. Is that how it worked in ancient times?" muttered Satoru.
"Cmon dude, you are Satoru Gojo. You can do it. Reverse Cursed Technique Activate!" yelled Satoru and tried to use RCT.
.
.
.
Nothing happened.
Naoya was now walking towards Satoru with worry. He was now able to see the bruise where he struck him and the blood coming out of Satoru's mouth as well.
"What the hell are you doing?! Lie down!!!" yelled Naoya and called out Senzu to heal Satoru.
"Who the hell hits their best friend like that?!" asked Satoru in anger and smacked Naoya.
Naoya tried to strike back, but was blocked by the infinity.
"Heh."
"Let me touch you, Satoru."
"My My~ Naoya want to bad touch me. Kyaa~" replied Satoru.
"I will release the infinity. I will bad touch the hell out of you," said Naoya with seriousness.
"No, no, no. No touching until the 3rd date."
The two argued with each other for a while. Senzu, who had already healed Satoru, got back into the shadows, not wanting to stay for the boys' banter.
After a while, once they were done arguing, the two started fighting once again, though now that both of them knew about each other's tricks none of them was getting caught off guard, and neither of them was getting damaged.
Satoru kept a distance from Naoya and refused to straight-up punch him.
Naoya tried to trap Satoru, who kept running away the moment he tried to capture him.
He was faster than Satoru, sure, but Satoru himself was fast enough to dodge before he could be fully trapped or could just take control of a large amount of space before Naoya could bind him within the shadow barrier.
Just like that, the night arrived, and Naoya's reserves were finally in managable levels, which made the perfect time for them to stop.
"...I never knew fighting with my technique could be this boring...." said Satoru and looked at Naoya with annoyance.
"Tell me about it. I mean, just fight me without your infinity active! It would have been over a lot sooner if you were manly enough to take me on."
"Huh? Are you suspecting my manhood? You are the last person who should be suspecting me! You have seen it multiple times!!!!" yelled Satoru back.
"NOT BY MY CHOICE!!!!!"
"YOU STILL SAW IT!!!"
"YOU HAVE SEEN MINE TOO! AND YOU DID THAT INTENTIONALLY!"
"I TOTALLY DID! I THOUGHT I WOULD BE HUMBLING YOU!!!"
Hearing that, Naoya blinked in surprise and then smirked.
"And? Who got humbled?"
"Damn it!" yelled Satoru and stomped his feet angrily on the ground.