Holding back

Emboldened by his Awakening, Ito turns away from his encouraging friends and faces the wraith, now looking at it without fear and with an instinctual understanding that what it is: simply a putrefied soul that had spent too much time festering inside this place. He challenges it once more, punching his chest with his free hand and yelling at the monster.
-“I told you I was your opponent, didn’t I? You spider-shit!!” 

The wraith reforms itself after partially losing its shape from the crash and erupts with a chilling scream- it’s not only enraged, it’s also afraid of facing a newly-created Awakened, the thing it had been avoiding on purpose since it gestated.

The wooden sword starts emitting some of the golden wisps Ito is emanating himself and he feels it as an extension of his body, allowing him to assume a kendo stance that he never practiced, but feels like second nature.

Ito is now the wraith's priority beyond any doubt, as it utilizes the web it had begun spinning right after trapping Atsu to try and immobilize Ito. The young man sees the mass is several times his size and could engulf him like it did with Chou, but a quick vertical slash from his weapon divides it in two and destroys it, dispersing the substance into golden smoke. Ito instantly realizes the full extent of the assault, with the wraith having launched itself right after the webbing in order to mask it's real attack. The spider charges with it's full body in order to overwhelm Ito with its mass, but the delinquent is not caught unaware. Just after the wraith becomes visible, it is smashed by Ito’s fist, putting his whole body into the strike to inflict maximum damage, bashing the monster like a gigantic hammer and making it bounce on the ground by the sheer counterforce of the blow.

Ito then quickly dives his hand into its face and whacks it flat on the ground, while his sword-hand winds up for an attack, which then ends up slicing half the eye-holding hands. The destroyed parts also fade into golden smoke, but the sight of this phenomenon doesn’t even register as unnatural to Ito, who now begins striking and slicing the wraith with the bokken repeatedly.

With each strike making a thunderous explosion, the wraith is severely punished, losing more of its spider-like form the more hits it takes, until it’s fully reduced into a withering mass of black arms and desperate hands. Each strike had been incredibly taxing on the wooden sword as well, however, as Ito’s uncontrolled strength went beyond the resistance of the wood, even if it was hardened by his awakened power. With the last hit, the bokken snaps in half and practically explodes on impact upon losing contact with Ito, but at that point, the wraith is mostly a formless pudge of black matter. A satisfied Ito smirks, but then notices most of that black puddle is under his legs as well, and several arms grab him from the back, hugging his chest.

-“Accept I’m beating the shit out of you, stupid spider!” Ito's confidence doesn't waver, and since insult pairs well with injury, Ito grabs back at this new nuisance. He grapples each arm around him one by one, snapping them like twigs, all the while kicking the wraith for good measure.

However, the wraith continues sprouting new limbs at a faster rate Ito can destroy them. Without his weapon and unable to move freely, he is slowly overpowered, and the wraith manages to sneak two hands high enough to wrap around the delinquent’s face.
“That’s cheating, you--- Ack !” Ito's instinct is to bite that grasping appendage while his hands are occupied and manages to tear it, but that causes him to recoil. The feeling in his mouth is so horrendous that it actually gives him pause and saps part of his surge of power, making even his soul nauseous due to coming in contact with this corrupted substance so intimately.

That moment proves crucial as it gives the wraith a chance to exert strength for the first time since Ito awakened, pulling him away towards a close wall, then many other hands grab him by the wrists and several others simply press him against the wall to keep him away, as the main body slowly reforms. Then the hands on Ito’s face move toward his neck and start pressing.
With his increased Awakened toughness, Ito won’t simply be choked, but his inexperience controlling this power makes it all be redirected into resisting harm, weakening his now-grabbed arms. Despite him avoiding lethal damage on his neck area, the effort causes his arms to lose a lot of the power they were exerting minutes before, leaving him functionally defenseless.

Chou finally manages to be free after a combined effort from him and a recently-recovered Baku, who then moves to help Atsu stand up.
Chou is about to run towards Ito to at least distract the monster, but something feels extremely out of place, enough to divert his attention for a second.
-“…Mitsuki-san…? Ah!”

Behind the trio, a sudden burst of energy occurs, and they bear witness to a masculine figure that is no less than two meters tall and with a long white mane. Despite looking somewhat human for the most part, its demonic features make it appear quite dangerous.
The newly-arrived Jagasaki simply looks at the scene, piecing together all the events with ease once he gets to see the partially-recovered form of the wraith.

Chou is perceptive enough to tell this is a powerful being, despite knowing nothing of what he is or what he can do, and is again the first and only one to speak, before Jagasaki walks past them
“… Are you here to help?”
-“Boss was beating that thing, he was fighting for us!” Baku adds, stumbling, trying to approach Jagasaki once he is a few paces away from him, but the demon completely ignores them. He finds that the wraith is beneath his notice, and the three delinquents are even lower than that.

As the demon takes a last gander at the awakened Ito struggling to resist, he feels an odd pleasure at sensing his spiritual emanation. The demon sees that the now-Awakened delinquent could become quite powerful with training, and the prospect of perhaps finding a decent challenger in the future gave him the faintest of positive expectations, but not enough to change his gesture or demeanor.

Jagasaki extends his hand forward without any fanfare or hurry, simply opening his pointer finger from an otherwise closed fist, and in the moment the wraith notices Jagasaki's presence it identifies a fraction of his power. That is enough to make it start to release Ito and begin to escape, but it’s not faster than the demon’s short incantation
-“Rinkaitensouha”
By moving his extended finger towards him, half the room from where he stands gets instantly split in half, including the wraith, eradicating it. The spell’s activation was too fast for anyone but Jagasaki to see it, and Ito only got a glimpse of a circular saw shooting from the demon and cutting everything on its path like nothing was there.

With the wraith destroyed, Ito is finally freed and he can barely stand on his feet, but his attitude is the same as it always is.
-“Oi, who the…”
Due to the spiritual exertion, the delinquent doesn’t get to be rude towards his savior, immediately returning to normal the moment the wraith is completely eliminated, and falling onto the floor, unconscious.
Jagasaki knew that he wouldn’t be able to keep his awakened power active without a stimuli, so at no point he even considered looking at Ito’s general direction, simply walking towards the wraith’s dissipating remains.

Jagasaki picks up the gendama of this wraith and observes it, noting the blue hue that signaled the being's spiritual strength to be above the one found this morning. The demon gives a curt comment of how much it could have grown before unceremoniously throwing that evil marble inside his open mouth. It only deserves a moment of savoring, which Jagasaki also employs to look at the drained Ito unconscious on the ground.

Using his eyes to look at him was a pointless act, but it let Jagasaki confirm that for all that spiritual power, Ito was just a recent awakening and would obviously not be able to wake up for a while. In fact, Jagasaki has already forgotten there are three other humans in the room. He does not explain or elaborate on his own sudden arrival and leaves, vanishing from the room with a violet flash of magical energy.

The room is left in a silence deep enough that some sounds of debris from the ground floor of the building above might be heard, with Baku breaking the silence.
-“… you guys saw that too, right?”
-“I don’t fuckin’ know anymore…” Atsu is smiling before feeling his destroyed leg again, failing to stand up, and Baku helps him up. They can’t do much about the bloodied, shattered leg, but they could at least make sure their friend didn’t get hurt further.

With some hurry but without being any less alert than moments before, Chou approaches Ito and checks his pulse, while trying to ascertain the damage he took to his upper chest, which healed supernaturally and now only looked mildly bruised.

While the nerdy delinquent is impressed and genuinely wants to know what exactly happened, they all just want to leave this cursed art gallery as soon as they can. The idea of calling for an ambulance naturally surfaces as they correctly assume that without the monster they should have signal again, but the group finds out that all their phones have been either been lost or broken, with Atsu’s being in the best state – in the sense that it can be repaired, but the screen is beyond shattered and is ultimately unusable.

As they make their way to one of the exits previously covered in webbing -now slowly dissipating into dust- the four start hearing some rumbling sounds coming from the area that was destroyed by the demon, and they manage to see some debris falling into that sliced space dividing the room. Then, they hear some sounds of rumbling and pieces of brick crashing above. 

The more the group moves, the more apparent it is that something isn’t structurally stable, and by the time they reach the stairs that lead to the ground floor where they fell from, the occasional sounds of rumbling turn into a full crumpling of the cinema’s ceiling. Knowing that the Kaedekura art gallery has a first and second floor due to looking at it from the outside, it makes the destruction even more concerning, and it’s evident that it has set off a domino effect. 

Not much after they move out of the stairs, those are buried by rubble, same as the most direct path to the window they used as an entry point. After a second of thinking, Atsu points the group toward where the main entrance should be. While Chou and Baku do their best to carry their friends, and enjoying a burst of energy due to the adrenaline and the genuine danger of being entombed in place, they are still limited by their physical strength. The most physically inclined of the group were always Ito and Atsu so this was effort beyond anything they were used to do, but the thought of leaving their friends behind never even appears on their minds.

Even as the collapse speeds up, so do the delinquents, and while it looks that they might be able to reach the main entrance, Atsu looks up and warns his friends to move aside. Chou and Baku listen, and they avoid being hit by a piece of the first floor, but now the group was all on the ground, and needing to stand up again takes away precious moments of their escape.
Atsu looks up to see the same danger as before, but there’s no way to avoid it for himself or Chou, who is helping him up and sees the same Atsu does.
The delinquents close their eyes at the impending destruction, gritting their teeth. Perhaps they had been ready for the building to fall on them since they heard the first signs of structural failure moments ago.

It looks like it’s the end of the line for the Ito Gang, but the harm never comes to them.
There’s a solid minute of anticipation before the group opens their eyes to see why they haven’t been crushed yet, and the answer comes in the form of a classmate of theirs raising her hand above her head. Several pieces of debris fall upon the group hitting only a semi-visible barrier, causing the pieces of the building to hover above the group or peacefully roll away from them. 

Their savior is looking up with the other hand in her pocket, assuming the same bored posture they know her best by, and she snarks at the destruction of the place
-“Thanks for holding back, Jagasaki”
The words naturally don’t make sense to any of the conscious delinquents, but they all intone her name in unison
-“Mitsuki?!?”

Shizune finds the synchronicity to be remarkable, if a little weird, making her turn to face the delinquents almost about to question if that’s a thing they usually do. However, the reason why she’s here immediately surfaces in her mind first and her gesture unfurls into one of profound annoyance and a bit of disgust.
-“Some promises you guys make, huh?”

Even as slight as chastisement as that is, it frustrates Atsu the most, as he looks at his unconscious leader.
-“Ito was goin’ on his own… We didn’ want to leave him alone” he says, looking down. Everything that Shizune had said earlier tonight and everything he witnessed today clicked into place for him, to the point it almost felt obvious she’d be able to use some sort of power like the one she was displaying.
-“How nice of you”
Shizune’s inevitable sarcasm is as dry as always, and now that she was certain that nobody had died tonight, she could just revel in it.

Even so, Baku tries to cover for his friends, disoriented and tired as he is. He stands up as fast as he can.
-“For real, we didn’t want to break the promise, it just...”
Now that his body has slowed down, all the effort he exerted catches up to him. All the falling, all the running and all the ugly things he witnessed come all at once, so Baku vomits mid-sentence, leaning forward and releasing his breakfast, lunch and the ice cream he stole from the combini at the same time.
Shizune frowns at the display, filled with the sensation that it’d be nice if one of these days she saved someone that didn’t embarrass themselves so readily.

Feeling almost sorry for Baku -albeit mainly disgusted- and to avoid further awkwardness, she puts a pin in the topic.
-“...Yeah... how about we better talk at the hospital?”
The uncomfortable tone is so evident that not even the most braindead goon would mistake it for anything else. But above all, her classmates now understood her better, and this usually loud squad of delinquents would not be able to say a word to Shizune for some time.