"They must have underestimated the power of the object, even with as long as it has been most things would not have managed to so thoroughly corrupt it this quickly."

"Centuries" and "this quickly" should not go together, in Tōkan's opinion, but fine, whatever, he'll buy it.

"Shortcut this way," he says, veering off the street to jump past some fences through a park. He's sure Mr. Plot Device will be able to follow despite not having super strength.

Fushiguro may not have super strength but he keeps up well enough. Maybe he has super agility? Who knows.

The school grounds are visible from a fair distance, but as soon as they get closer Tōkan starts feeling uneasy, and 

no

w r ong

st o p

what time is it

des pair

clock hand at eleven

hu n g er

And he has to stop, or he does stop because his body stops obeying him, or something, but regardless he is not running anymore and is instead just staring at the school—are those smoke clouds or is his vision darkening...?

"Tch," is Fushiguro's immediate reaction. He stops, too, but it seems substantially more volitional in his case. "Idiots. They've released it." He turns around to look at Tōkan. "Stay here."

Yup, sure, he'll just stay right there and not—

—no. No he will not. He takes a step past this invisible barrier of, of wrongness, and then another, and—yeah, he can move. He can ignore his brain telling him to stay away and focus on helping his friends, his stupid friends from the Occult Club who decided to mess with something that shouldn't by rights exist anyway.

"What did I just say."

"They are in danger!"

"And you will be, too, if you try to follow." Fushiguro jumps onto the school fence in a totally anime-like way, and looks at Tōkan again. "They might not die if I save them. If I have to worry about you, too, you will all die. Stay. Here."

And with no further ado he turns around again and jumps down from the fence into the school to run after the two kids who are probably already dead by now.

...fuck.

He might be right. Is he right? Tōkan feels slow again, like moving his muscles through a wall of molasses.

What is he afraid of? Is he afraid? Is this fear, or is it—a curse, magic, whatever? Is he hesitating because he wants to hesitate, or is this messing with his head or—what?

Fushiguro runs up towards the main building Itadori told him their club room would be and up one, two flights of stairs before he sees the first curse, a disgusting misshapen mass almost as tall as he is with numerous eyes all over its body and a single mouth along its left side, tilted clockwise and going from where the middle of its head would have been down to below where its ribs would end. It makes a distorted, warbling noise that is simultaneously incomprehensible and clear in its meaning: "Slurp."

"Slurp on this," he mutters, mostly to himself—a curse of that level is not strong enough to be able to actually understand speech in any meaningful fashion—before clapping his hands together, palms at a 90 degree angle from each other, and squatting down as he presses his arms forward. "Demon Dogs," he growls, and two enormous dogs emerge from his shadows, one black and one white, pouncing in unison at the curse as soon as they form.

The dogs make short work of that curse, but it's only the first of them. Fourth floor, Itadori said, and the closer he gets to his destination the more curses try to bar his way. They're almost all of them too weak to pose a real challenge to his dogs, and the handful that manage to slip past them find that Fushiguro can still pack a mean curse-laden punch, himself. Monster by disgusting monster is disintegrated, and in a few minutes he reaches his goal.

He can tell it's his goal because there are five—maybe more? the mess of limbs, human or otherwise, makes it hard to tell—curses on top of each other, holding onto two teenagers and trying to compete to see who will eat them first. Of course, neither of the kids is their true prize, as Fushiguro quickly spots the strings of cloth that were once encasing the cursed object coming out of the girl's jacket's pocket.

His dogs stop, barking and yapping and growling, awaiting instructions, and he has to make a choice. If he attacks the curses, there is an extremely high chance that he will also hit the teenagers and they will very likely die. If he waits, they will definitely be eaten and die, and whichever curse manages to consume the object will then eat the others and become much too powerful even for him.

The choice—seems obvious, but he hesitates—

—and the window into that hallway shatters from the impact of one Itadori Tōkan's foot from outside—

—(how in hells did he jump all the way to the fourth floor, he has zero cursed energy, Fushiguro checked)—

—before the boy quickly uses his own momentum to pivot, holding onto the top of the window frame to land another kick, this time onto the mass of curses holding his friends hostage.

They are as surprised as Fushiguro, and Itadori manages to release both teenagers from the curses' grasp and pull them away.

Which frees Fushiguro to just straightforwardly kill the curses with his dogs.

Tōkan lands safely and carefully places his friends on the floor. After checking they're okay—bruised and battered, a little bit, but both seem alive and breathing, if unconscious—he turns to look at Fushiguro again, then past him at the dogs killing the disgusting monsters. He wrinkles his nose but doesn't say anything.

"I told you to stay there," snaps Fushiguro, grabbing Tōkan's attention again. "...but good job."

Tōkan is about to snap back when he notices the dogs... eating the curses. "The dogs your friends?" he asks instead.

"My shikigami," says Fushiguro, looking over his shoulder at them and the curses' corpses. "So you can see them. Unexpected."

"—people normally cannot see curses, of course, that explains it."

"Not unless they are on the verge of death or in special places like this," nods Fushiguro, looking at Itadori again. "And even then, you... have no cursed energy in you. At all."

"'Cursed energy'," he quotes, adjusting his friends on the floor so he can stand up again. As he does, something slips out of the girl's pocket—a finger, thick and red, with a fingernail so black and long it may well be called a claw. Tōkan grabs it and inspects it. "Guessing this is the cursed object."

Fushiguro nods. "Ryōmen Sukuna's finger. Be thankful none of the curses swallowed it. You would have had a lot more trouble with them otherwise."