#sorcerers get hit on

[rahuratna]

Love Thine Enemy

The JJK sorcerers find themselves faced with a slippery customer - a cursed spirit with the worst pick-up lines imaginable ...

CW: Suggestive and explicit language.

Characters: Ijichi, Nanami, Ino, Kusakabe, Gojo, Yuuta, Miwa, Rika.

Genres: Crack, humour.

It was Ijichi who encountered the cursed spirit first. He was, in fact, probably present for the series of events that had birthed the unfortunate being into existence.

The exorcism he was assisting on was currently taking place in a well-known photography studio, known for its high production value photo shoots of models, actors and sports stars. Somehow, this place had become a breeding ground of negative energy. Ijichi could feel it, soaking into the very fabric of the building, saturating it until it came flooding out in a sickly, sour-edged aura.

The exorcism had gone successfully enough, with Ijichi producing his well-practiced veil, covering the area in a dense, impenetrable curtain. It was when everything was seemingly over, when the grade two sorcerer, Kiryu, had spoken in crackly fashion into his ear piece, that Ijichi felt it.

That sly, barely perceptible winging of cursed energy just within his radar. Spinning on his heel, Ijichi scanned the area where he stood, just outside the building. Something was here. He had no doubt. He'd felt it, and he trusted his instincts.

Warily entering the small alleyway where he'd felt the presence, Ijichi knew that Gojo would have his head on a platter if he knew the risk that he was taking, but he couldn't very well leave without investigating fully. What if there had been something the sorcerers had missed?

That something was eerily evident when he felt it coalesce in the alley behind him. Before Ijichi had any chance to react, something brimming and fetid with cursed energy brushed his ear, and a voice whispered to him.

"Hey, cutie. Want me to fog up those glasses of yours?"

Ijichi, who had been preparing for a quick getaway, froze in place.

"Wha - "

"You heard me. Hmmmmm. I like that little pocket organizer. Got something else in your pocket for me?"

"Are ... are you - "

"You're stuttering right now, but did I? Don't think so. What're you packing, hot stuff? I like my men skinny, timid and begging for a spanking - "

There comes a moment, in everyone's life, when their most primal survival instincts kick in. There is a shutdown of unnecessary bodily functions as a fight-or-flight response asserts itself, lending unnatural speed or strength.

This was one of those times for Ijichi. The discarded newspapers in the alley fluttered gently in the aftermath of his very speedy exit.

Ijichi did report it, of course, being the stickler for proper mission protocol that he was. Thus it was that the next unfortunate encounter with the dastardly 'flirting curse' occurred with none other than Kusakabe.

The curse had moved on from the photography studio, to some hotel in an upmarket area nearby. Not good for business, obviously. Atsuya thought it would be excellent practice for the students, however, and so had brought Miwa along. While Ijichi's experience told him that the spirit hadn't been particularly dangerous, evolution was a possibility, and so he intended to stick close by.

Prowling through the airy, marble floored corridors, Atsuya unwrapped a lollipop and stuck it between his teeth. This hunt was taking a little longer than expected. The spirit was good at remaining concealed. Yawning a little, he linked his fingers and stretched his arms overhead, hearing a satisfying crack.

"Sensei!"

Miwa's warning shout was entirely unnecessary, as Atsuya's sword was already unsheathed, glinting menacingly as he faced off against the dark cloud that descended from the ceiling, adopting a vaguely feminine shape. The voice that spoke was indeed an evolution, sultrier, with a husky cast.

"My my. I do love a man in a suit. I bet that lollipop takes the shape of your tongue, just like my pu- "

"Cut the crap," Atsuya growled. "Miwa, stay alert."

"Easy, tiger. You're a little rough around the edges. Are you rough between the sheets too, big boy?"

Miwa let out a surprisingly martial yell, springing forward and slashing at the fog-like miasma. Her attack was true, but the spirit was obviously talented at evading.

"Stop harassing sensei, you cow!"

A hushed giggle reached their ears.

"The kitten has teeth. Wonder if you bite too, my Trenchcoat Tomcat. Wanna get to the nice, creamy centre of my lollipop?"

Despite Miwa's impressive efforts, Atsuya was growing increasingly annoyed with this spirit. Couldn't it just shut up? Discreetly, he let a near-invisible slash from his sword reach the end of the room. Part of the wall crumbled; gilt wallpaper sliced to shreds. The spirit was now on the other end of the hallway, that irritating cackle now echoing, elusive.

"Oh goodness. What a hairy temper. Wonder if you're hairy everywhere, huh? I like a bit of manhandling from a big, hunky - "

"Ewwwwww!"

Miwa's horrified scream was a tad juvenile, but Atsuya couldn't really blame her. The curse evaded them this time, escaping through a nearby window, leaving him with the strong desire to scrub himself clean. He almost didn't unwrap another lollipop.

Inexcusable.

And that was how Nanami and Ino ended up dealing with the flirting curse next. At this point, it had become a running bet in the grade one sorcerer group chat as to who would run into it in their upcoming mission.

Gojo would win some cash. Not that he needed it.

Ino was the first to come across it. They'd found themselves in a country club of sorts, the kind only present in this kind of affluent area. Out near the pool and suana, Ino had tugged off his shirt, diving into the water and performing a rapid check for traces on the pool floor. Finding nothing, he'd re-emerged and climbed out, water dripping down his bare chest, when he heard it.

"Damn, sugar. You got me so thirsty on a hot day like this."

There was a woman seated on one of the poolside chairs, shaded by a parasol. She hadn't been there just a few minutes ago. Ino tensed, fists bunching at his sides. Unperturbed, she pulled down her sunglasses, her dark, dark eyes tracking the droplets of water as they made their slow pathway down the young man's abs. She licked her lips.

"Want me to dry you off, honey? Or make you ... more wet? I bet I can show you a thing or two."

Ino opened his mouth to retort, but at that moment, the woman's eyes widened, and she vanished in a wisp of smoke as a powerful slash of electric blue energy bisected her chair and destroyed the wall behind her. Nanami strode out of the wide glass doors, rolling up his sleeves, blonde hair gleaming in the sunlight. If Ino didn't know any better, he'd say the stoic sorcerer looked annoyed.

Nanami straightened his glasses and inspected the ghostly movement of the spirit with predatory menace.

"I'll thank you to leave my colleague out of this. Now why don't you take a more corporeal form so we can see how ... appealing you are."

A soft shriek of laughter reached their ears.

"And what do we have here? A real daddy, looks like. Coming to protect your cub? I'll let you fill me up so much. I bet I can give you ten more cubs like him."

"Unfortunately for you, unprotected sex with cursed spirits is not one of my preferences. Now stay still, please."

Nanami was undoing his tie, and Ino saw this as his cue to make a hasty retreat to the entrance, because things were bound to get dangerous. The spirit hadn't received the same signal, because it was still speaking.

"I can be a human for you. Heck, I can be anything you want me to be. Why don't you tie up my wrists and make me feel how hard you can - "

"How hard? Here, let me show you."

The sheer power of the blast sent bricks and mortar rocketing across the paved driveway beyond the wall of the pool area. Ino gave silent thanks that they'd evacuated the building first. Nanami wasn't usually this reckless with his strength, but something about this spirit was obviously pushing his buttons.

In the chaos that followed the settling of dust and rubble, the spirit had made a hasty escape once again. Sighing, Nanami re-did his tie, making his way over to Ino. The younger sorcerer eyed him curiously.

"You good?"

"Yes."

Nanami's angry mumbling wasn't fooling anyone however. Ino caught the tail end of his complaint.

" ... as if I didn't have to deal with harassment at my other job. And here we are, having to listen to this drivel. Didn't even have the decency to introduce itself ... "

Lips pursing tightly, Ino hid his amusement as he followed Nanami back into the country club, snatching up his shirt as he did so.

Gojo was not a good match-up for the spirit, when he inevitably did encounter it. Unlike the other sorcerers, he couldn't be bothered to take it seriously. The spirit registered as a bothersome house fly in his periphery as he stalked bigger prey through a deserted shopping mall, one that had been evacuated due to Jujutsu Tech's influence.

Gojo was hunting a rogue curse user, one that had plagued the market district at night, consuming his victims in alleyways he had dragged them into. A real piece of work.

When he eventually found the curse user, holed up in a frozen meat section, sharpening his tools, Gojo did take note of another brief, flitting presence that wove in and out of his perception. Another curse. But one unrelated to his current mission.

With his usual power, flair and panache, Gojo dispatched the curse user, dodging and weaving gracefully around the other's lightning fast strikes and dealing a concussive blow to his opponent's head. Someone in the background was cheering for him.

"Oh, God damn, aren't you just in a different league? That hair, that face, that body. Mmmmm hmmmm. Whip his ass, boss man. Show him who's in charge. Make him crawl. Make him beg."

Gojo turned slightly towards the direction of the voice, smile simultaneously pleasant and flippant.

"And who are you, pretty gal?"

The curse, for the first time ever, faltered.

"Uh ... I'm ... well, I'm me. Your number one admirer. Ahem. Yes. You sexy beast. So tall. I'll bet you're really long everywhere."

At this, Gojo's lips curved into a cocky smile and he flicked his wrist, sending the curse user careening into a nearby wall, smashing into the bricks with force, head lolling as the pain of consciousness was given up for blissful darkness. The crystalline flame of Gojo's gaze danced with flickering intensity in the shadow of the dimly lit storefronts.

"Hell yeah. Didn't know you were kinky like that, babes. I got a pretty sizeable monster, right here, behind this zipper. Wanna come see?"

The spirit laughed, but something about it sounded nervous, uncertain.

"And what's in it for me, big boy?"

Gojo spread out his arms, grin growing more feral by the second.

"But sweetcheeks, I thought we had an understanding. I was gonna try out my new technique, that's all. The one where I turn my cum into tiny bullets and fire them right into your mouth so you explode."

There was a brief silence.

"E - explode?"

"From pleasure, of course!" Gojo let out an unconvincing giggle, rubbing the back of his head. "Yeah. Can't believe I forgot that part."

Needless to say, Gojo didn't hear anything more from the curse. Its presence had disappeared from his perception fairly quickly. Tapping his chin, Gojo reflected on the fact that Nanami was right. This was one slippery customer.

The young man hadn't seemed like much from afar. Just another sorcerer on its trail. It had escaped all the others, including that powerful one in the deserted mall, so the curse now had a healthy dose of confidence in its ability to exit the stage.

Of course, even astute cursed spirits, like the Flirting Menace, faced their Waterloo at some point. Sometimes fate favours spirits, enabling a series of evolutions that render them more powerful. Sometimes, they pick the wrong victim entirely.

Slipping out of the laboratory at the medical centre it had been recently inhabiting, the curse took on the voluptuous form of a technician, her sizeable cleavage all but spilling from the low cut shirt she wore beneath a lab coat. The young man turned slowly, shadowed eyes taking in the shape of his opponent. The spirit spoke.

"Now you look like a treat, little lamb. Wanna come sit in my lap? I bet I can show you all kinds of things with my probe and pipette."

The response was certainly not one the spirit had been expecting. There was something in the sorcerer's eyes that was kind, pitying almost.

"Oh, there you are. How about you give up now and come quietly. It'll probably make things easier."

The spirit dissolved in a fit of giggles.

"Me? Come quietly? Baby boy, I have a much better idea. How about I discipline you with a paddle on your naughty, naughty, tight little ass until you obey your mistress? Even good boys need some discipline from time to time."

The look on the sorcerer's face had shifted to something like pained expectancy. He sighed and grimaced.

"If you stop doing that, she might not get so agitated, you know."

"She? Oh my. Don't tell me you're already taken. I mean, she's probably nothing compared to me - "

The spirit's words cut off abruptly as something large, vast and powerful, moving with ferocious speed, shot from inside the boy (how was that possible?) and coalesced in the middle of the foyer. Spiny white and purple flesh, an eyeless mask of menace, a presence that filled the building with sheer dread, the lesser cursed spirit could recognize an apex predator when it beheld one.

A moment of deep, existential fear gripped the flirting spirit as the young man addressed the spectre that had come from inside him.

"Rika?"

"Yuuttaaaaaa. I'll kill, kill, killkillkillkill. Don't look at Yuta. Don't talk to Yuta. Don't exist near Yuta!"

The nightmarish voice lashed through the foyer like a whip, buffeting the smaller curse with such malice that it was blown back.

Oh boy. Now this was ... unexpected. Time to beat a hasty retreat ...

As it had done countless times before, the cursed spirit slipped through a handy crack in the nearby elevator doors, seeking out the grate above through which it could ...

A sudden, white-hot pain lanced through its form, rendering it immobile. Panicking, the spirit glanced back, perceiving the hideous talon that had shot with unnatural speed across the space, through the doors, and speared its 'body' in place. In this incorporeal form, nothing should have been able to hold it down, besides ...

The elevator doors suddenly buckled under extreme force and the spirit found itself tugged back across the glossy tiles, towards the sorcerer and his ... companion. Slowly, surely, the spirit was dragged towards the jagged teeth of that gaping white maw, horror and finality warring as its brief existence flashed through its own memory.

The sorcerer was smiling now, the corners of his eyes crinkling in charming helplessness, such that the spirit could discern (too late) the terrifying and implacable steel behind those sweetly curving lips.

"I'm awfully sorry. You're kind of cute, for a spirit but ... Rika? Take care of this, would you?"

And so, the brief, but bright career of the Flirting Menace faded slowly from the memory of the sorcerers it had tormented. It had been unique, after all.

Even with their packed schedules and the increasing tension now permeating Jujutsu society, there were still occasions when Kusakabe would glance at the creamy centre of his lollipop with distaste, when Nanami would remember with fondness what it was like to destroy a millionaire's poolside aesthetic, when Gojo would wonder how much money he could have won if he'd just bet on Yuuta in the first place.

As terrible as those pick-up lines surely were, they had found a rightful place in posterity.

And in the mysterious depths of Rika's stomach, of course. 

[astaroth1357]

I just learned that Solomon is the root cause of Mammon's gambling addiction, thanks I hate it-

[moonlitcomet]

a collection of recents

[haemosexuality]

@lesblizzard-ultradyke astarion is a horrible horrible person being mean about shadowheart's name is one of the tamest things hes done

also!!! youre always liking bg3 posts and i keep forgetting you dont really know these guys. so here im introducing them to you

this is lae'zel, shes a githyanki (theyre like. aliens) and a fighter. shes incredibly blunt and militaristic and violent. and its so funny

shadowheart, shes a half-elf cleric of shar. shar is the goddess of loss and darkness. she tries really hard to be rude and mysterious but shes really not. the fandom calls her shart. because SHAdowheaRT

astarion! elf vampire and rogue. he sucks so bad. hes genuinely a bad, selfish, self centered, rude, power hungry person. he had imo the most tragic backstory in the game and im obsessed with him. white hair and trauma

gale, who is a human, wizard and atomic bomb. hes like a book nerd and very verbose and also mysterycats best friend shes his favorite

wyll, human warlock. hes a really good guy, very hero-y, and also he has a pact with a devil

karlach!!! you know her youve drawn her. shes a tiefling and a barbarian. she also has a bomb on her chest kind of except its more of a malfuctioning heater. astarion has the saddest backstory but she had the saddest in-game story (again in my opinion) also shes very kind and energetic and i love her so so much

halsin. human (and sometimes bear) druid. hes there ig

minthara! my favorite evil girl. shes a drow (theyre like underground elves) and a paladin. shes an antagonist who you originally could only recruit her into your group if you killed an entire village but now you can follow some steps and get her even if youre not evil. the other day she told me she didnt understand a city turning away refugees when they could be used as slaves instead and i kind of just sighed and left the dialogue

[gayestcowboy]

oh my god cazador’s legendary action is NASTY i’m never actually attempting true honor mode because i could not possibly survive this in one try

[pennamepersona]

yeah the classic durge run has been going great why do you ask

[alteredsilicone]

me, with almost 600 hrs in BG3: ok time to look up how cantrips work mechanically

and I found an answer to my question

SHs fire bolt is shitey because it's a race-based cantrip and calculates damage from INT bc its a wizard spell, however, SH is a Cleric (WIS based) so.... its a shitey cantrip for her (aside from using it to melt ice or light candles or burn down wooden doors)

meanwhile if I use a feat on Gale to learn Eldritch Blast it will calculate damage from his class-based ability (INT), even if Eldritch Blast is a Warlock cantrip-

vatafak

[fore-seer]

it occurs to me ive never finished a real playthrough of awakening that wasn’t like. for the support log or constructing a main file where i cap everyone’s stats and break the game. i’ll admit all the grinding was kinda fun for me but i’m very excited to experience this game without doing all that

[parkerthewaterbender]

my current lotr daydream is to be Gandalf’s apprentice and smoke the herbs he likes, while Lady Galadriel looks at us with disapproval in her sharp eyes.

[polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup]

I was reading sea glass gardens for like the 8th time in a row (listen I was praying to the gods for a fic focuses on Megumi & Yuuta, for a fic that shows Megs dynamic with the Zenins more, and for a fun little gojo adopts the fushiguro siblings and forced his friends to play aunt and uncle. You checked all my boxes. I am in debt to you now.) and its the way I'm still seeing the little details that should've been so fucking obvious to me —

Megumi and Tsumiki fucking around and adopting some of Gojo’s habits and sayings? I know he was so proud that his children is becoming mini versions of him. Toji is crying in the depths of hell while Mamaguro is happy as hell in the pearly gates.

“It’s a garden” it took so long for me to peep that this was his domain. Like tfw when your domain is fucking you up. I pray that Gege shows us his completed domain. Actually I PRAY GEGE LET MEGUMI SHOW OFF HIS FUCKING POTENTIAL. But alas Gege is a coward.

THE NICOTINE PATCH? Oh Shoko my beloved. I get her. I fucking hate cancer sticks but if I had to spend time with corpses, being forced to converse with the higher ups, and having to be friends with Gojo and Geto AND witness their divorce. Well. I would’ve smoked something too. Like goddamn these bitches should’ve been at the club.

The little callbacks to the playbooks? How petty the sorcerer world gotta be for them to have cheat sheets on their enemies. Is that not crazy? Is this who they are? Petty bastards.

toji pulling up to get married in sweats. megumi killing curses at such a young age for his sister? toji giving megumi shit to get him to stfu? oh megumi you dodged a bullet with toji.

BUT WHAT I REALLT WANTED TO WAS THE BATHHOUSE. Megumi needs to go feral as a threat cause imagine how humiliating that must’ve been. A bunch of assholes & such watching you like some fucking cult. I really hope that Megumi and Gojo have some type of reassuring talk about his time at the Zenins.

(Yaga and Gojo going at it while Panda in the room is so funny to be but…it’s also kind of sad. Like imagine seeing your dad figure basically be okay, well not okay but not willing to fight back, about the higher ups and everything.)

Obsessed with the fact that I can toss up what seems to me to be a random niche interest and find a community of people who wanted exactly that. I’m thrilled I checked off your boxes.

The bathhouse was designed to be humiliating by nature. I talked about it more on another post (but fuck if I know where it is), but the point of including that whole bit was that I really couldnt think of any better way to emphasize that megumi wasn’t a person to them.

On its face, the private bathhouse with servants tending to it could be a sign of status. It’s kind of an old world nobility thing to have? Which fits with the Zenin, who are very traditional and value Megumi as their most treasured person to be born to the clan in centuries. He would be presumptive heir if Gojo hadn’t intervened. So they’d easily be able to cast this in their own minds as a good thing, as a way they’re taking care of him. He’s not subjected to the communal bathhouses or small private bathrooms like the majority of the clan—they’ve given him his own private facilities and servants to care for him in it.

However, once you take away Megumi’s consent, it becomes an absolutely humiliating and degrading experience that only happens for the Zenin’s comfort and not his own.

I spoke about this in the other post in more detail, but I tried to imply that this wasn’t the first time the Zenin had done this to him. And there’s two points that kind of implicate that—when Maki’s talking to Yuuta about how it used to be when Megumi was a kid, she says the first thing that they would do when he arrived in the clan was hand him over to the servants to make him presentable. She also talks about how viciously he hated the way they’d make him look in the clan, including stomping the clothes they’d make him wear in the mud. When Megumi himself is talking about the bathhouse, he says he was given over to the servants like when he was a kid. This wasn’t a new experience for him. They weren’t doing this to him for the first time. They did this to him when he was a kid, and he’s reliving all of that trauma anew.

In my mind, it was a product of how selfish the Zenin’s love for megumi is.

He’s their favorite doll. He’s a possession. They want him to look and act exactly the way they expect from him, and they despise any divergence from what they want the ten shadows to be. And they hate it when they’re reminded of how Gojo took him from them.

They don’t want him dressed in modern clothes. They don’t want his hair styled in a manner similar to Gojo’s. They want him to look like the Ten Shadows they always wanted, and one surefire way of controlling that is to simply do it themselves, whether or not megumi is on board.

And the thing is? It is such a fundamentally minor thing to let someone bathe and dress themselves. It would have cost the Zenin so so little to let Megumi do it. Even if they were still dictating what clothes he wore and how he styled his hair (which would still rob him of his autonomy on its own, they could have at least let him do the actual act of bathing and dressing himself. They could have violated him a little bit less than they already were. The biggest inconvenience it would have risked to them would be him doing something not to their exact standards and losing a few minutes to making him redo it. But on Megumi’s end, it symbolizes a huge source of autonomy and comfort. Letting Megumi bathe himself really does impact so little for them, but for Megumi, it could have saved him from lasting trauma.

The Zenin do it to him anyway because they value their minor conveniences over his very bodily autonomy. They don’t even recognize that as a genuine concern. He’s a possession to them. An object. They don’t actually love him, and the love they think they have is actively dangerous to him. They will violate him in a very fundamental way just so they can make sure he looks how the ten shadows is supposed to look, and they won’t care.

Being forcibly bathed against your will is just humiliating, especially at Megumi’s age, and it’s one of the things that hurt him the worst out of everything the Zenin just did to him. I think Megumi takes physical pain better than he does humiliation. Having to be exposed and vulnerable the way he was with other people watching was a more effective torture than locking him in a room with curses for days.

But there’s extra layers to it if you consider 1) this is something the Zenin have done to him before and 2) this is something that he could have stopped.

When Megumi was six, he was definitely at the age where he was already bathing himself. Some parenting books say parents should still be helping at that age, but his parents were completely checked out well before then. He had already been handling all his hygiene needs on his own. Having strange adults force him to let them do it for him was a traumatizing and infantilizing experience that represented one of the many ways the Zenin robbed him of all control over his own life when they had him.

But now it’s happening again.

And megumi probably didn’t think the Zenin would do that to him again, walking into this. He probably explained it away as them doing that to him because he was still a little kid at the time. He told himself it happened because he was six, and he’s not six anymore.

Having it all happen again was a very visceral reminder of how helpless his abusers used to make him, and immediately kicked him back down to that level with a very potent reminder. It’s trauma reawakening trauma. He felt like he was six again. He probably told himself for a long time that it would never happen again and it still did.

The other thing is that he’s a lot more capable in a fight than a six year old. He’s a grade two jujutsu sorcerer. He’s a fighter. And he’s being manhandled by servants who don’t have a lot of cursed energy, if they’re even sorcerers at all, and aren’t meant to be combatants. These are people he should be able to defend himself against easily. He should be able to stop them from doing this to him again.

For whatever reason, he couldn’t.

Maybe Gojos theory about them having something on him was right. Or maybe he was too worn down and broken from the cursed spirits. Maybe it was something else. Whatever the reason, this is something that he would have told himself he was strong enough to stop, and then he wasn’t. He either had to let it happen or couldn’t stop it even if he tried. It’s a new level of helplessness and humiliation that it made him experience.

In short, megumi does deserve to go feral over the bathhouse, and probably needs to. He’s really not okay over it. It would probably be cathartic.

[lamiaviridis]

// Regarding the ending of Loki s2, you know how Amora manipulated reality on a multiversal scale by attacking Yggdrasil, literally ripping it apart to resurrect Skurge bc she was overwhelmed with loneliness? You know how in the comics Loki's story starts with him being trapped in a tree? That's basically the gist of my second verse: Amora trying to find ways to get Loki out of that tree and becoming obsessed with freeing him bc she never got to confess to him and she realized how much she really cared about him when it was too late. Loki being the father of her children makes the pain worse. Exiled from Asgard, separated from her children, she's lost everything and she doesn't want to lose Loki too.

[boo-moved]

anyways. *explodes*

[tunedtostatic]

I am a recovering martial class snob (lightheartedly, of course, as in "I'm glad you love arcane casters So I Don't Have To") - fighters, rogues, and rangers always felt much more compelling to me than bards and wizards. (I instinctively consider rangers one of the martial classes and what I'm getting around to talking about is why). The critrole2 wizards were of course a big part of what finally demolished my neutral lack of interest, since I was around people talking about caster mechanics in fandom for the first time.

I was talking about this with a friend and ended up talking about how like...casters' abilities in d&d represent an array of mechanical and storytelling options within the layout of the game and I respected players who kept track of All That but it never really grabbed me. Martial classes abstracted into game mechanics real world skillsets with history and weight behind them (Cool Swords, unarmed combat, wildland tracking). They had my heart easily because of that extra weight.

Thing is, within d&d phb/Forgotten Realms-adjacent settings, magic IS a skillset with history and weight behind it in-world. It's just that it's the one without a direct real world counterpart. As my friend put it, casters almost have a higher buy-in threshold (at least for people like us who think "how are swords forged" high fantasy sidequests are a feature not a bug). Getting into the cr2 funky wizards fandom very quickly made me look at somatic and material and verbal components and go OHHHH this too is a craft!! and the rest is history.

[devotedlystrangewizard]

hes rotting my brain

[vins-oc-hell]

Shoutout to the time Loki spent an entire battle cowering under some rocks. 😔✌🏻

[chunibyo-x-sorcerer]

"I see. We need to get him to a nearby hospital and after that, we need to have a talk regarding this...whatever it was." He said. Gojo smiles, "I can take care of that." He said as he went to pick up the unconscious victim.

"Reigen. I would like to talk in your office?" Nanami said. Yuria, Mob, and Taz look at each other. The three have a feeling this is going to be a serious and...interesting conversation.

As for Gojo, he is going to drop the victim off as soon as possible so that way, he won't miss the family drama. Oh, and he needs to get snacks for himself too!

Gojo and Nanami paused, hearing that.

"Did you just say that you were using of Daichi's charms?" Nanami asked, hoping he heard wrong. "The Cursed Charms?" He asked, frowning now.

"Uhhhh...Yes?" Reigen said.

"Oh dear…guess that explains the explosion," Gojo said. He could guess that Megumi got angry at Kisho and chases him off. Still…there is no sort of destructive trail between them. So it's a bit concerning.

"Yeah, we were not expecting him to have more of the charms but..he did. But We were told that Mister Reigen had some of the charms and such which explains this." he said.

Yuji and Miko still was worried while looking worried as Nobara was still worried herself.

"Reigen...are you even aware of the charms? Did Daichi even tell you?" Nanami said. Before Reigen explains, A small groan is heard as Gojo sees the victim. "Whose that?"

"Oh. He was taken hostage by the axe curse and we managed to save him thanks to Reigen's plan." Taz said.

"Plan?" Nanami questioned.

"Yeah, we had a plan to get the victim safe soooo it involves the charm after Taz distracted the spirit. But it's taken out though.." Yuji sweatdrops.