Second Wave (JJK/Percy Jackson)

[Firewillreign]

Ya'll know the drill! This isn't a new fic, but it could be

Currently just an old drafted one shot that I thought was fun and wanted to see how you guys feel about it. Needed a brief break from my other fics because my brain was cooked!

---

Percy Jackson lives a hard but good life. A great life.

A hero's life

Then, he dies.

...

Only, he lives again.

Blinking his green eyes open in realization, a four-year-old Percy tilts his head as his memories finally reaffirm themselves in his psyche (and a little deeper than that), and all the important bits more or less come back to him throughout a single night as he lies in his cot in his orphanage bedroom in Shinjuku, Tokyo Japan.

Huh.

Strangely, he's not so torn up about it.

There's a certain level of disconnect there, and he'll realize it eventually. He remembers his life as the son of Sally Jackson (Mom) and Poseidon the Earthshaker (Dad),

He remembers friends

Grover, Tyson, Thalia, Nico, Jason-

The names stretch on.

Annabeth.

But it's all fuzzy. When he considers them, there's no sadness, no grief, even though he knows with soul-deep certainty (literally) that he'll never see them again.

There's just... warm nostalgia, the kind you get when you reminisce over happy memories, and a serene acceptance no ordinary four-year-old should have.

But ordinary was boring, and Percy had never been ordinary, and never much wanted to be, even though it would have probably made his life a lot quieter.

Previous life, anyway.

This one was a clean slate. He's kind of curious about how it'll turn out, actually, given that he's also certain that he's not a demigod.

(There are no more gods. Not like before - this he knows)

Something in him is fundamentally different - but not quite ordinary.

Should be fun to figure out.

Then he turns over, fluffs his pillow a bit and slumps to sleep.

...​

The first conscious years of his second go at life aren't half bad, if Percy does say so himself.

Not everyone would agree with him, though.

He'd spent one childhood being a problem child - ADHD and smelling like catnip to mythological monsters that stalked every nook and cranny would do that - and despite an honest effort on his part, he doesn't quite manage to escape the label this time around either.

Part of it is that growing up in an environment in Tokyo is nothing like Manhattan. There are different societal norms, different ways of life, and just different ways of functioning that diverge right from the orphanage-mandated preschool and up.

He's a tad too independent - he likes to do things on his own, mainly because he knows he's perfectly capable, but everyone around him either doesn't get or doesn't care for it and he earns a reputation as a troublemaker right from the get-go.

The fact that he's a foreigner and he looks like it both helps and doesn't - he doesn't quite fit in, people know it, he knows it, and being clearly non-native is as good an excuse as any.

The second big reason is that, contrary to his first belief, this world isn't nearly as devoid of monsters as he'd thought - and yeah, hoped.

Hah. Not even close.

They're everywhere.

Small, blobs of darkness weighing, twisted malformed creatures trailing after unsuspecting victims, or even worse abominations hiding in the shadows, in nooks and crannies where they could bide their time and wait to pounce.

Percy figures out pretty quickly that not only is he the one person in the world around him who seems to realize they exist, but that acknowledging them is just like pouring kerosene on a fire.

At the slightest hint of eye contact, the ugly things quickly go from eyesores to nuisances.

They start coming after him like they have a grudge.

Percy naturally responds to this threat to his bodily integrity in the most reasonable way he can possibly manage.

He starts punching the crap out of everything.

Seriously, it's downright cathartic.

His fists burst the monsters like balloons, and even the larger - one had been the size of a car, and he'd barely been eight - barely phased him.

As soon as he figures out the game, Percy develops quite the taste for hunting these things down and clearing them out of existence.

Probably a holdover from his demigod days, and it wasn't as if anyone was complaining. The more he eradicated the clearly malicious things, the lighter the folks in the surroundings they'd stalked and infested seemed to grow, the happier and healthier and safer.

After he made that connection, there was just no stopping him.

And hey, if he immediately started missing curfew, sneaking out and giving his caretakers continuous heart palpitations on his impromptu quests to clear the surrounding neighborhood of all things foul and grossly squishy, then needs must.

...​

There's something missing, he realizes along the way.

One day, he looks down at his fists one day and acknowledges that there's an odd wrongness that overcomes him when he fights.

It almost feels like he's doing it all wrong, but for the life of him, he just can't figure it out.

Not quite yet.

...​

It all comes to a head a few weeks after he turns fifteen, on a dark and lonely night.

Only, this night is different.

He's just snuck out to go out on another impromptu pest control mission when it happens.

It's as his walking past a particularly shoddy lane that he senses it, and it makes the hair on the back of his neck rise up in warning.

Monster.

Only this one was different.

Much, much stronger than the bog-standard runts he dealt with his whole life. He wasn't sure how he knew, exactly, but he could feel it in his teeth.

Powerful, dangerous and deadly.

And coming right at him.

The moment he makes that realization, something absolutely enormous bursts out of the nearest alleyway with an unholy screech.

Now, Percy's seen ugly.

But the mutated, half-humanoid and half-horse-like creature that slides to a stop before him and rounds on him with three grotesque and mismatched heads has got to be a clear winner.

It stands on four legs, its flesh is veiny and bulbous, and dark purple to boot. It's flank is long and wretchedly twisted, and there are additional limbs and eyes riddling it like they'd been sewed on. It's three maws drip streams of drool, and it smells like a skunk's ass crossed with an old gas station restroom.

Truly horrifying stuff.

"He's going to leave me!" The thing screams and advances on him, and he crouches down at the ready. "He's going to forget me!"

Before Percy can respond to that - mainly by recommending some freaking therapy in whatever afterlife he's about to send it to - a figure in black flies out the alleyway and rams into the thing with force and a strange that makes Percy's spine stiffen in instinctive recognition.

He's like me.

Percy stares at the tall, broad-shouldered man as he knocks the thing away with enough power that the impact generates a burst of air that blows back his hair, and he keeps staring in stunned surprise as he immediately notices him and pales.

"Run!" The man went to roar, and he made the deadly mistake of turning his back to the thing he'd just toppled.

It's just for a second, but the creature immediately surges to its feet, stretching out arms tipped with bone blades ready to cleave the man in two-

And Percy-

He doesn't think. He doesn't hesitate.

He just moves.

The power swells and erupts erupts in a way it never had before even as he erupts off the ground, the concrete quivering and splintering beneath his feat as he rockets forward.

Not on his watch.

The man's eyes widen, but he doesn't have a chance to move - he can't - as Percy all but soars past him and cocks back his fist to strike.

...​

In any and every life, Percy Jackson is and always will be a hero at heart.

...[/CENTER]

When his fist meets monstrous flesh, it's not just an impact.

It's an explosion.

His vision whites out, and then is, for an instant, consumed by a shower of black and red sparks, and the monster just dies.

Its body breaks apart even as it's blasted off its feet and straight up, and by the time it lands across the street, it's already half-dissolved into nothingness. The stench and presence of it fade beneath a far superior power.

It's in the aftermath of those brilliant sparks of black that he reclaims the first piece of his power.

He only notices it when his chest stops heaving and the adrenaline and power stop surging through his brain in a current that's far superior to any drug-induced high imaginable.

Absolute clarity eventually fades, and when it does, Percy realizes that he's standing in a puddle of water that hadn't been there before.

He goes still in shock.

Surely not.

But it is exactly what he thinks it is, and he knows even before his nose picks up the faint and achingly familiar scent of sea salt. Acting on instinct, he raises a hand.

At his feet, the puddle shifts, and the water rises at his command.

His soul sings, and Percy grins.

"Hell yes!"

That's about the point where he remembers that he's not alone.

...​

All the while, First-grade sorcerer Masamichi Yaga stares up at the boy who'd acted to save him, still half-petrified from the sheer ocean of cursed energy wafting off him in waves so thick he fears it might drown him.

He just punched out a first grade, and did it by landing a black flash.

All in one move.

And then said boy seems to realize that he's still very much there, because he rounds on him, A half-nervous, half-wary smile on his face.

Foreign, Yaga realizes dimly as he meets that face and those sea-green eyes.

"Evening, stranger-san." The boy rubs the back of his head sheepishly, seemingly just as lost as he is. Still, there's something downright thrilled in his tone. "Wild night, eh?"

Yaga blinks.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

And then something in his mind snaps.

What in the absolute f-!

And it begins.

...

Yaga, already pre cognitively getting vibes of the sheer bullshit Percy is going to put him through:


View: https://imgur.com/vhVqzUL​

As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it, please be courteous.

If you feel like it, please consider supporting me on Ko-fi: Firewillreign

 

[Firewillreign]

Still not a story! - I'm probably going to end up writing a mini prologue arc and seeing how that goes over before making a final choice.

In the meantime, voila!

---

Here's a question for the real go-getters in life.

What do two total supernaturally inclined strangers do when they've just fought and vanquished a monster that looked like it just crawled out of the third act of a particularly trashy horror flick?

Obviously, they go to the nearest seven-eleven for a late-night snack.

No, seriously.

Half an hour after Percy lands his first Black Flash (not that he knows what that is yet) and awakens his innate technique (doesn't know what that is either, but the sea is roaring in his veins, a primordial siren call straight from the soul, and he freaking revels in it) he finds himself sitting across from the man whose kill he'd stolen.

The man- Masamichi Yaga, apparently - cradles a steaming cup of coffee in his own grip and stares back at him the same way somebody would stare at an unexploded pipe bomb.

Oh, his expression is more placid and neutral than worried, but Percy isn't blind to the undercurrent of tension running through his frame, or the way he can just about sense his apprehension like it's a tangible thing.

The man is clearly wary of him - It probably has something to do with his own recently awakened power - or the fact that he can barely stop himself from grinning a little too maniacally for comfort.

His having smoked the mutant abomination right in front of him probably plays a big part in it as well.

Percy tries to smile, all polite and reassuring, but it doesn't help much given he only gets a barely perceptible frown in return.

"Are you a curse user?"

He blinks when Yaga finally speaks.

"Excuse me?"

"Are you a curse user?" The man says again, gravely and with heavy intent, before his face goes flat when Percy answers him.

"I have no idea what that is."

…

"What?"

"I have no idea what that is," Percy repeats, entirely truthful and even adds a little shrug for emphasis.

Yaga seems to take a solid five seconds to process that, and then his expression starts to flicker, just a little.

"A clan-born sorcerer, then? Or affiliated with one?"

"Sorceror?"

The fresh heck was this?

There's something incredulous to the rise of Yaga's brow when he sees Percy's genuine confusion. When he goes to speak, some of the quiet apprehension he's been trying laces his voice - only Percy gets the impression that it's suddenly there for an entirely different reason than before.

"Do the words Jujutsu Sorcery mean anything at all to you?"

He sounds desperately hopeful for a positive answer too, so naturally Percy crushes said hope into teeny, tiny little fragments with all the grace of a bulldozer.

"Should they?"

If he had to label the expression that monetarily flashes across Yaga's face at that answer, it'd probably be something along the line of 'oh god no.'

Then he tips back his head and pinches the bridge of his nose. Percy just knows that he's withholding the urge to start cursing like a sailor.

"Right." The man straightens and looks back at him, something determined. "I wasn't planning to sleep tonight anyway. From the beginning - Let's start with the curse you just exorcised."

"Huh?"

The what now?

...​

By the time Percy gets the down low on shamanism, modern jujutsu sorcery, curses, and the true nature of this new world of his - and man, wasn't that some Harry Potter-flavoured nuttery right there - it's well past midnight.

For lack of anything else to argue with, he accepts it all at face value.

Yaga had seemed plenty relieved when he didn't panic and lose his cool halfway through his explanation, probably pinning it on his clear experience in dealing with curses before that, and Percy didn't bother correcting him - he was half-right anyway.

Besides, why would he even freak out?

Secret societies, mostly invisible and undetectable monsters, and a whole hidden world?

Please.

That's just business as usual.

Still, it's not all sunshine and rainbows.

The cashier who'd been sitting in his booth and dedicatedly ignoring them both with a pair of headphones over his ears is dead to the world by the time they're, head lolled back in sleep, Yaga doesn't look far off from that either.

Moreover, he looks a little miserable.

Or maybe that's just him what the... jujutsu sorcerer, apparently - is like when he's fully burned out. He radiates an aura that all but screams how utterly done he is with everything, like the archetypical salaryman who's realized how bleak and soulless the next twenty years of his life are going to be.

Rough stuff, that.

"You've been exorcising curses since you were a child."

"Yeah."

"On your own, with no instruction past your instincts."

"Yes."

"Why?"

Percy shrugged again.

"They made everyone sick and hurt, and I'm good with my fists. Do I need any better reasons?

"...I see."

He sounds so tired, Percy's actually starting to get a little worried.

"Is that a problem?"

"No," Yaga grumbles. "But the report I'll have to make to headquarters and the inevitable interrogations that'll follow very much will be."

"Interrogations?"

"Nothing to be concerned about."

Given that he looks like a man being sent off to the gallows, Percy thinks it's absolutely something to be concerned about, but he chooses not to argue the point.

"Do you have to report me to your higher-ups?" Percy asks, honestly curious. "I don't think I've done anything that goes against your way of doing things, so why bother?"

And what would that mean for him, he thinks but doesn't ask. Yaga seems to peak up on what goes unsaid anyway.

"I have to." The man frowns again. "Your cursed energy... it's like nothing I've ever felt before. Almost fathomless, far more than any other active sorcerer or student I know of bar maybe one, and he's the heir to a major clan. That's where that kind of innate potential is most often found. It's a wonder none of the Windows assigned to Tokyo have picked up on you yet, but that won't last, and your very existence is going to garner much attention... and not all of it good."

Well.

Wasn't that ominous?

"In any case." He continues brusquely. "I assume you're not going to stop hunting curses after tonight?"

"Of course not."

Exterminating the things was basically a public service at this point. Now that he knows they're literally made up of all emotions foul and dangerous, he's going to redouble his efforts to stamp out every last one in sight.

It's a matter of personal ethics - and also, he admits to himself, a damn good rush.

"I thought so. Then it's for the best that I submit your registration personally. It'll help streamline the process."

Percy blinks at the non sequitur.

"Ah," He says, then he processes what was just said and leans back a little. "Sorry, Masamichi-san, but what was that about registration?"

"Registration for your enrollment in the Tokyo Metropolitan Curse Technical College, of course. If you're going to be exorcising curses, then you'll learn to do it the right way." Yaga fixes him with a stern look. "Pack your bags. You're going to school."

Percy pales.

Ah, hell.

...​

By the time Yaga gets matters sorted, it's two days later and between them and missions that can't be sourced elsewhere, he's managed a collective eight hours of sleep.

His wife is going to murder him, assuming the stress doesn't do him at first.

Just as he'd expected, submitting Jackson's initial assessment to headquarters had gone off like a grenade in a house made of matches.

The powers that be were furious at this apparent oversight: How had a boy of no respectable origin with so much apparent power managed to float under the radar for fifteen years?

Answer: Who the hell knew?

Such staggering cursed energy and potential going undetected was an operational disaster that lives would be ruined for in retaliation - and the overbearing clans hadn't even gotten involved yet, though no one was holding their breath on it staying that way.

Of course, as soon as the higher-ups are done raging at their grunts for general incompetence, they rounded on Yaga for not bringing the boy in immediately to be sealed until such a time as an investigation was launched and a decision was made.

Because kidnapping was clearly the best solution here, never mind the fact that Jackson could manipulate his cursed energy with enough proficiency that, despite the significant gap in skill, Yaga would have had to struggle to corral him without significant collateral.

No, he had better hills to die on.

Yaga had taken the boy's number, marked down his address after escorting him home, and impressed on him the importance of staying put until Yaga personally came to pick him up.

No point in risking other elements getting their hands on him - Overzealous sorcerors, clan representatives, or god forbid curse-users.

He'd only gotten a carefree grin in return.

"Hai, Masamichi-san"

The gesture is entirely amicable, the intent behind it honest, and yet...

Yaga knew right then and there, with a certainty that he could feel deep in his very being, that Jackson was going to be trouble.

...​

A month later, Percy Jackson is enrolled, joining a class of first years, and Yaga dares to breathe a sigh of relief in the confines of his office.

There. His duty is done.

He can wash his hands of the matter until the next year over for the most part, substitute classes he'll be forced to supervise notwithstanding.

Maybe he'll even take a vacation to commemorate the success.

That resolve lasts for about an hour before the first-year teacher Hora Shoji bursts in without so much as a knock, disturbing him mid-cursed corpse creation and destabilising the entire process. The cursed energy that had been building in the straw puppet loses structure and disperses.

He growls at the failure - and then turns to the glare at the fool, who looks like he's just sprinted across the grounds to reach him.

"What?"

"It's - It's..." He takes a wheezing, steadying breath. "The Jackson boy and the Gojo Heir!"

Yaga pales.

He follows the frazzled second grade back to his classroom at a dead sprint, sliding to a halt only long enough to throw the sliding door open and fling himself inside.

Just as he'd feared, It's an utter shitshow.

There are four first-year students present this year.

Geto Suguru - blessed with a never-before-seen ability to absorb and tame curses ad infinitum, and control them with startling efficiency.

Ieri Shoko - No innate technique, meager cursed energy, but a genius at using the reverse-curse technique she'd somehow harnessed as a child.

The two of them are positioned like spectators at a baseball match, staring wide-eyed at the confrontation going on just a few feet away from them at the center of the classroom.

There, Percy Jackson and Satoru Gojo stand so close they're nearly chest-to-chest, cursed energy roaring between them, and each looks about five seconds away from going for the other's throat.

"You're sure you want to get your ass kicked this early, weakling?" Satoru taunts with false-cheer, teeth barred and six-eyes gleaming behind his sunglasses.

"'Get my ass kicked?'"

Jackson's answering smile is every bit as fierce, and Yaga feels his blood pressure skyrocket at once.

"Nah. I'd win."

...




Percy and Gojo first impressions:



View: https://imgur.com/AGRGBxs​

As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it, please be courteous.

If you feel like it, please consider supporting me on Ko-fi: Firewillreign

 

[Firewillreign]

One more prologue chapter to go, and then I'll decide what I want to do with this potential fic.

---

The first time Percy Jackson meets Gojo Satoru, he knows that he's going to end up decking him in the face.

And his day had started off so well too.

Well... more or less.

He'd woken up in his new room in the Jujutsu High dorms - it was only his second day out of the orphanage - and realized that he had about five minutes to put on his uniform and get to class before he was late.

Exactly three minutes later, he was bolting down the stairs - idly noticing the name tag on the door across the hall and realizing distantly that someone had probably moved in the night before - before sprinting to the classroom Yaga had shown him when he'd dropped him off a couple of days ago.

He had no delusions about being a model student or anything - in this life or any other, honestly - but showing up late on the first day was just downright pitiful.

"Sorry, I'm late!"

"Ah, Jackson-san." His new teacher - Hora Shoji, Percy remembered - greeted him from his desk near the door. "You're not late. We were just running through introductions."

Percy had angled his head around the room, and caught sight of his two new classmates seated side by side.

The boy with bangs was the first to lift a hand, a polite smile on his face. "Geto Suguru."

The brown-haired girl beside him pointedly didn't smile, but she still gave a half-hearted nod in his general direction. Her eyes had bags under them like she hadn't slept all night. "Ieri Shoko"

Percy grinned and waved back at Suguru and Shoko both, utterly undeterred by the lukewarm greeting.

"Jackson Percy."

"And I am Hora Shoji, and I will be your instructor through your first year at Tokyo Jujutsu High. You may address me as Shoji-sensei."

"Hai, Shoji-sensei" The three of them echoed back dutifully, and Percy slipped forward to take a seat."

The man nods back firmly. "Now then-"

And that's when the door slid open, and Gojo Satoru stepped into the room.

It might be a little mean-spirited, but Percy can't help his first thought at the sight of him.

What a douche.

The Gojo Clan's prized heir struts into their midst with all the confident flair of a peacock and the attitude of somebody who's already clocked the fuck out a good long while ago and would rather be anywhere else.

It makes for a grating mix, but Percy doesn't exactly think much of it. He doesn't know enough of him to form an opinion, not even by reputation - but that ambivalence only lasts until the white-haired, blue-eyed late show lowers his sunglasses (indoors, really?), takes a dismissive look (that lingers a second longer on him, Percy notices) and then opens his mouth to speak.

"This is what I have to put up with for the next four years?"

Charming, eh?

Shoji-sensei clears his throat loudly.

"Gojo-san. It's a pleasure for you to join-"

"Let's count them off." Satoru ignores their sensei entirely, which is rude - Percy's done worse, but it was the principle of the thing - and starts taking a pickaxe to Percy's opinion of him by pointing to Suguru first. "That one eats curses."

Suguru doesn't flinch, but it's a near thing. Percy's mood begins to sour.

Then Satoru points at him.

"That one's got some nice cursed energy, great, but the most boring cursed technique I've ever heard of."

"You'd be surprised," Percy answers flatly, but he's promplty ignored, and Satoru on Shoko in the next breath.

"And this is the one who doesn't even have a cursed technique." He pauses. "But you did figure out the reverse cursed technique, though. Allegedly."

"Allegedly." Shoko agrees dryly, supremely unbothered by the white-haired boy's clear judgment.

At least at first - Because Satoru doesn't shut up there.

"Eh." He shrugs at last. "Almost useful. If only you had the technique to go with it, you'd actually be half-what impressive."

Shoko flinches.

Really, it could barely be called that. If the reaction was any more muted, it wouldn't have existed at all.

But just for a moment, Satoru's barb - Almost useful - had landed, and Shoko had flinched.

Percy wouldn't have noticed it if he hadn't been looking for it like a hawk, but he was and he did.

That's it.

The next second over, his ordinarily flexible sense of patience snaps like a twig, and his curse energy rises up and up and up like an inexorable tide.

The effects are immediate.

Shoji-sensei gasps and almost topples over. Shoko nearly face-plants onto her desk, and Suguru stiffens noticeably.

And Satoru blinks, shoulders twitching almost imperceptibly before he slowly turns to stare at Percy. Celestial blue meets sea green, and Satoru almost immediately grins.

"Well, well."

He looks thrilled, and not in anything resembling a good way, and his cursed energy comes roaring up out of nowhere in an invisible burst to clash against Percy's own.

"Did I hit a nerve?"

Their power makes the room tremble. The walls shake and the windows rattle in their panes, and Percy distractedly notices Shoji-sensei quickly slipping out the door, face pale and beaded with sweat.

Neither of them backs down or pays his retreating form any attention, though Satoru does scoff derisively.

"Not really." Percy says, eyes narrowing pointedly "But you're sure putting a lot of effort into trying, Gojo-san. That's pretty mean-spirited of you."

"It is? Well, it's not really fair to blame me for that." Satoru answers back with false nonchalance., something endlessly sharp in his eyes. "You'd be cranky too if someone told you you'd have to spend the next four years and beyond carrying the next generation of deadweight."

He pauses and makes a show of thinking deeply, turning his head this way and that, before smiling nastily.

"Oh no, hold on, you wouldn't. Because that's you."

Percy matches his unpleasant grin with one of his own

Deadweight? Him?

"Really? That's a bit uppity of you."

Satoru smirks, and his eyes seem to glint that much more. "I'm never wrong."

Again, what a douche.

"And you'd bet your life on that one?"

There's something in Percy's words there, an implication he doesn't bother hiding, and Satoru's grin grows so wide it has to border on painful as he closes the distance between them until they're nearly chest to chest.

"You're sure you want to get your ass kicked this early, weakling?" Satoru taunts with false cheer, teeth barred and six-eyes gleaming behind his sunglasses.

Right to the fight, then?

Good.

"'Get my ass kicked?'"

Bitch, please.

"Nah. I'd win."

And that's the scene Yaga arrives to.

"Enough!"

...​

"Contemptible conduct! I'll never see its sort again, do you hear me?!"

Credit where credit is due, Yaga's resulting lecture borders on legendary. The dressing down is on point, the disappointed ranting inspiring - truly, this is his true calling.

Though the veins Percy can spy bulging in his neck as he roars at them probably don't mean anything good for his future health, but he isn't about to point that out.

It's a little odd that their class teacher isn't the one chewing them out, merely standing in the background like a forgotten ornament and occasionally nodding in half-hearted support like it's a reluctant afterthought, but Percy kind of gets the impression that the man is a bit of a pushover - the type to leave the discipline and the messy bits of teaching to someone else whenever he could get away with it.

The fact that he and Satoru are both significantly more powerful than him probably plays a part too.

And speaking about the resident prick, he looks utterly bored if anything at all, whereas Percy is at least pretending to be ashamed.

He isn't, though.

He really, really, really isn't - he didn't even get to throw the punch that Satoru was just about begging for.

"Get out of my sight." Yaga finally finishes sternly, and Satoru manages to shoot him a bemused parting glance that turns into a smirk in Percy's general direction the moment the man is out of earshot.

"Later, weakling."

Percy glowers back at him.

What a jackass.

...​

They disperse a little while after they get back to class. Satoru turns the corner without a single glance back - apparently, he lives off-campus - and Shoko rushes in the opposite way with a hasty, quiet goodbye.

Percy finds himself walking back to his dorm side by side with Suguru.

"That was pretty intense, Jackson-san"

"Percy."

Suguru blinks.

Percy shrugs.

"Use my first name. I don't mind."

"Ah. Then please, call me Suguru."

I was already doing that in my head, Percy thinks with some amusement, but he extends his hand anyway. Suguru takes it solidly.

"Done." They break apart. "And yeah, it was, but Gojo just... sort of rubbed me the wrong way, I guess."

Which is the understatement of the century-

"You mean he was an asshole."

- and Suguru clearly knows it.

Percy almost misses a step and trips forward, a surprised snort escaping him all on its own before he glances. Suguru raises an amused brow.

He chuckles "Yeah, he really was."

That's why he'd been so quick to jump up against him, and why he'd almost thrown caution to the wind and nearly started duking it out with him right then and there.

Gojo Satoru might have been a big shot in the Jujutsu world, but it took him five minutes to prove that he was a generic hot-shot jerk. Hugely arrogant, massively self-absorbed, and liable to step on anyone around him if he finds no pushback that forces him to back the hell off.

It's been one class, and Percy kind of hates him already.

That's honestly a little impressive.

Still, he doesn't feel like ranting about all that now - Suguru seems to be the calm sort and it'd be liable to get awkward fast - so he scrambles for a way to change tracks.

Wait, hold on-

"What he said about your cursed technique - you... uh, absorb curses?"

Percy is very careful not to say eat, and he is genuinely curious.

Suguru's expression still falls a little.

Which is fair enough, really - eating curses sounds like an absolute shit time for anybody, but Percy would rather he literally stab himself in the foot than say that aloud.

"Yes. If I defeat a curse, I can subjugate it with my Cursed Spirit Manipulation and call on it later." The other boy hesitates features hooded. "It's not that different from calling on Shikigami - only I have more than most, and there's no limit to how many I can add, I think"

Percy blinks.

"None?"

Suguru shrugged. "I haven't found one yet, and I've been at it for years now."

On second thought-

"That sounds incredible."

He's not even lying - curses or no, an army at your beck and call is still an army. Percy would know - and it must show because Suguru's expression brightens noticeably.

"I suppose." He says quietly, but pleased nonetheless. "And your technique-"

In response to the obvious prompt, Percy lifts a hand. A brief flicker of cursed energy, a familiar tug in his gut, and a spinning orb of water condense into being a few inches of his skin.

It still feels like something else entirely to be able to do this again.

Suguru hums appreciatively.

"Cursed Water Manipulation," Percy explains - unimaginative, but it does the job. And he knows he can do a lot more with it than most anyone can first imagine. "I create and control water - and I'm pretty sure I can control water I don't create as well, though it takes a little more effort."

Barely any, in theory, but that he doesn't share. It's good to keep a few cards up your sleeve, and he has plenty.

"I see." Suguru stares at the orb curiously for a few seconds more.

Then he looks up at him and smiles warmly.

"That sounds pretty cool too."

And just like that, Percy makes a friend.

...​

The next week and a half passes with its ups and downs.

Percy and Suguru get to know each other - great. He learns that his new sort-of roommate - they don't share because there's plenty of space to go around - is studious, neat, an only child and the only sorcerer in his family.

He also learns that he prefers savory foods over sweet - horrifying - that beneath the polite facade is a seriously more laid-back and paradoxically judgemental smartass determined to match Percy tit for tat - awesome - and that dragging him out of bed before eight on a weekend to train their cursed techniques results in truly breathtaking levels of resting bitch face syndrome and ends with him siccing a flying manta-ray curse on Percy the size of a school bus.

Freaking hilarious. He swears he's going to do that once a month for the rest of their lives just to laugh at the look on Suguru's face.

Maybe once a week.

On the other hand, Percy and Shoko do not get to know it's other. The only girl in their year group - and there aren't that many to begin with across all of Jujutsu high, and certainly none he knows well enough to speak to - isn't unapproachable or anything, perfectly cordial even, but she doesn't put much effort in conversing with anyone bar the bare minimum and Percy gets the impression that trying to invite her into his and Suguru's conversations is only going to annoy her.

He still occasionally does it anyway, because he lives to be contrary and occasionally self-sabotaging like that and he owns his compulsiveness like a champion.

And on the other, other hand, Percy and Satoru absolutely do not get to know each other.

For a week and a half, the two seem to silently and aggressively agree to ignore one another's existence. In class, they take the farthest seats available from one another. Neither looks at the other, neither speaks to the other - heck, Percy hasn't seen his face in full since that first day and vice versa.

The passive-aggressive 'I'm ignoring your very existence' energy between them could probably manifest a special-grade curse all on its own.

"It's like watching my in-laws get together and pretend to play it cool." Suguru leans over and whispers to Shoko once, which actually nets him a startled laugh. "It's so dumb."

Percy scowls at them both and discreetly flips Suguru off.

...​

The impromptu ceasefire between him and Satoru officially comes to an end the next day.

"Next week, we begin physical conditioning and hand-to-hand spars," Shoji-sensei explains after a lecture on the very basics of curtains, and then seemingly hesitates. No one misses the way his eyes flicker between Satoru and Percy "With rules, of course."

"Naturally." Satoru drawls loudly.

"Perfectly clear." Percy smiles agreeably.

Shoji-sensei doesn't look assured.

Smart man.

Suguru just sighs, and Shoko looks like she wants to get to bed.

"You're all dismissed."

The three of them are ambling their way back to the dorms, Suguru having successfully lured Shoko into a conversation on the basics of her technique - the fact that healing was something that potentially anyone could learn was something Percy found very interesting - when Satoru quite literally dropped out of the sky in front of them.

"I said it before and I'll say it again." The smarmy showboater shoots a smirk at them as he stands to his full height, stretching his arms up and popping his shoulders like he has all the time in the world. "Reverse Cursed technique is something, but it's useless without an innate counterpart. One half-decent grade two curse and you're history."

"That might be true." Shoko seemingly agrees, only this time there is something in her tone.

Impatient and weary and just a little teensy bit angry.

Percy would applaud her for it if he wasn't too busy glaring at Satoru to notice.

"What do you want, Gojo?"

"A fight."

What?

"What?" He and Suguru ask at the same time

Is he serious?

Even Shoko looks surprised.

"I don't like your attitude." Satoru declares, and Percy's jaw drops even as Suguru actually begins to choke on air. "I've decided to do something about it."

His attitude was the problem?

"You want to fight me?"

Satoru grins. "Scared?"

No, actually. He's freaking thrilled - Just imagining the feel of Satoru's nose against his fist when he breaks it is giving him the warm and fuzzies.

"Tomorrow, after hours so no one gets in the way. Right here in the training grounds." Satoru sounds as excited to put him in his place as Percy knows he feels. "And hey, since I'm feeling extra generous, I won't even use my curse technique. Hand to hand, enhancement only. That way, you have half a chance of actually landing a hit before I make you regret ever being born."

Really?

Percy's just about to tell him exactly where he can shove that condescending crap, only Shoko decides to jab him in the ribs and steps up on his right, smiling in that practiced, unbothered way of hers. "I'll referee."

Suguru leans in on his left, arms crossed his chest. "And I'll keep a lookout,"

And that should be the end of that.

Only, Percy notices something strange.

There's an odd look that flickers across Satoru's features when his friends step up on either side of him, backing him up, and it's feather-light and fleeting but not any less real for it.

He doesn't rightly recognize it, but when he sees it... Percy feels his excitement dim, though he can't quite put a finger on why.

In the end, the oddness passes, and Satoru stays only long enough to let out an oddly toned "Good" and smirk at him - but even that familiar gesture feels a little off now.

Then he turns and walks away.

...​

"Take the handicap."

Yeah, that's exactly how his and Shoko's first non-class-related conversation starts.

"What?" Percy asks, and she looks to make sure that Satoru is really gone before turning back to him with as close to a determined look on her face as he's ever seen.

"Take the handicap."

He frowns.

"I'm not worried."

"You should be. What do you know about his cursed technique?"

"Basically nothing." He admits, a tad sheepishly.

"Yeah, I figured." She says, before pinching the bridge of her nose and letting out a tired sigh. Yeesh, that was an almost Suguru post-rude-awakening level of exasperation. "It's called Limitless."

...

Seriously?

"Is everything about this guy pretentious?"

Behind him, Suguru laughs.

Shoko's lips pull upward. "It's an inherited technique, and it's not something anyone can just fight willy-nilly - even a cursed-energy monster like you. It gives him the power to play with space itself like putty, and one of its applications gives him the closest thing to complete invincibility that could possibly exist. There's maybe one or two cursed tools in the Japan and two ultra-rare, near impossible-to-master techniques that can get through it, and there's no way you're going into this with any of them."

He frowns as he takes that in - invincible, huh? He's seen something like that way before and still managed - and she must sense the thought as soon as it forms because she actually gives him a stern look.

"Trust me, take the handicap. You're going to have a hard enough time putting up with his six eyes as it is."

"His what now?"

"His eyes. They're not a technique, but they're an intrinsic inheritance that compliments his. They let him see cursed energy and different vectors of perception ordinary scrubs like the rest of us flat out can't."

"And that's a bad thing?"

She nods.

"The six eyes are famous for being the ultimate jujutsu bargain bin cheat code. They let him see his cursed energy with such detail that he knows how to use it with maximum efficiency. You've got more than him - you've probably got more than anyone, period - but he can still use less to do more."

Ah.

"That is bad."

"No shit" She drawls dryly. "You're still new, even if your stats are so high you're doing things you have no business doing. You can't control your cursed energy past the bare minimum - We've all felt it - and if you go against Gojo passively bleeding so much of it off, he will outlast you. Hell, he'll probably outlast you either way, but if you can get a better grip on your output you'll at least stay in the ring long enough to put up a good fight."

"That sounds great." Percy smiles at her and does his best to radiate his complete confusion outwards like a wave. "How the heck do I do that?"

"Meditate before the fight?" Suguru offers from behind them, and Shoko shrugs.

"Probably won't hurt, but it's not likely to make some world-changing difference. These things take time, and you're going to be duking it out tomorrow. With as much energy as you have, you at least won't embarrass yourself too badly even when you do lose... Maybe."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," Percy says dryly, but his mind is already whirling a mile a minute.

Everything she's seeing is gold-tier advice, he can recognize that much. And as much as it grates on him, if Satoru's six eyes do give him that kind of an advantage and he's even a little competent, then she's not wrong about Percy's odds either.

The thing is, he really wants to kick Satoru's ass. Which just begs the question-

"Hypothetically speaking, how could I master cursed energy control in twenty-four hours?"

Shoko laughs in his face.

And see?

That's a challenge right there.

...​

The next day, the three of them wait just they're sure that Yaga and Shoji-sensei have left the grounds to make their move. It's almost dark out by the time they head for the training field.

Satoru is waiting there, standing ten feet away with his hands in his pockets and looking like his birthday has come early.

"You showed up."

"Sure did." Percy agrees.

"I was beginning to think you'd chickened out.

"You wish."

There's a sigh, and then Suguru gestures and summons his Manta-ray curse to act as a sentinel. The giant of a curse circled the air above them twice before it soared higher and took up guard duty.

There. All ready.

There's a silence after that, thick with tension.

Percy stares at Satoru, anticipation thrumming in his veins.

Satoru stares back.

"So." Shoko raises a hand. "Do you two need a countdown, or-"

Without another word, their cursed energy explodes and they lunge for one another full-tilt.

Percy takes the first move, swinging for his opponent's head, Satoru sidesteps the blow and grins. The force of it sends a wave of wind and pressure outwards that smacks against the nearby trees and makes the wood groan tellingly.

Satoru's left fist shoots for his face, and Percy rears back and tries to kick him in the ribs with vicious force, but his right arm raises in a guard and he takes the impact without flinching. Before Percy can throw another hit, he suddenly snakes behind him faster than he can keep him in his line of sight, and Percy immediately throws himself forward, tucking and rolling right before his opponent's foot connects with his head.

"Not half-bad." Satoru's smile is all teeth. "Now let's have some fun."

A minute into the fight and it's blatantly obvious that Satoru is more skilled. Percy's no slouch in hand to hand, and he's spent a childhood scrapping with curses, but Satoru's movements are the kind of refined grace that speaks of years of practiced work and effort.

Fair enough - He's still not going to lose.
.
Percy ducks under his next blow and immediately growls in frustration when he realizes that Satoru absolutely let him dodge that strike solely to gloat down at him with that smug look on his face. Instead of rising to the bait in a leap, he drops down and kicks out with a sweep trying to topple him.

Satoru honest to god laughs as he leaps over the kick and lands behind him, and Percy has to scramble to throw himself up before a foot cracks down where his head just was. Below, the earth splinters and caves in around it.

"What did I tell you?" The Gojo heir taunts. "Weak."

And on and on it goes.

It's about five minutes later when Percy comes off his initial adrenaline burst and recognizes firsthand the difference in efficiency Shoko had warned him about.

He's not flagging, and he's not running out of cursed energy anytime soon, but Satoru is still outpacing him with less output. He can sense the difference, the same way he can suddenly feel the power that wafts off of him unnecessarily with every other movement.

No matter how far Percy pushes, drawing on his near-limitless cursed energy, Satoru draws in just the same way and somehow still stays two steps ahead.

More tellingly, Percy hasn't managed to land one truly solid hit. Not one.

It's dumbfounding. It's infuriating.

But it forces him to think.

Cursed energy - He's losing so much and he needs to stop it.

Right, how would that work?

... Yeah, he has no idea. Beyond the basic 'negative emotions equal power' - and he's channeling plenty of them right now - Percy knows nothing.

He barely deflects another punch, and discards that useless line of thought for another even as Satoru crows one thing or the other...

Cursed energy is power. It's what lets him make himself faster, stronger, more durable.

It's also what fuels his cursed technique, what lets him control or create more water, however much he wants.

And... there's something there. A connection he's not quite seeing.

He throws another jab at Satoru, knowing it's not going to land, but this time he doesn't mind. He's barely even focusing on the fight anymore.

Percy feels like he's on the verge of a breakthrough.

From the top - his cursed energy gives him water, making it his to create or shape or control.

If you really boiled it down...

Cursed energy was his power. But his power was also water.

(Water is his birthright. Water is his soul)

... Water is his to command.

And therefore, in a really roundabout way, so is his cursed energy.

Click

He can almost hear it when the pieces snap into place. His cursed energy is suddenly there, just as copious and overwhelming, but also far more malleable.

It's just water.

And Percy knows water, from the very soul and up.

It's akin to being a leaky faucet. He's the faucet, and he's been leaking all this time without ever being aware of it.

So he plugs the fucking leak, through sheer force of will.

And it works.

The next time he throws himself at Satoru, the air itself threatens to burst around him. He catches sight of those widening blue eyes as he's propelled forward, and Satoru only just manages to lift up his arms to defend against the wild haymaker that comes his way.

"Wha-!"

It hits him like a freight train, and Percy hears his half-stunned, half-hurt gasp as it lifts him off his feet and blows him back some twenty paces in a blink. The cursed energy that lingers in his still-clenched fist feels like he's cradling a sun - some of it tries to leak away, to escape his grip, but Percy pulls most of it back in immediately, imagining every mote, focusing on every drop, building back into a stream and cycling through his fists.

And wouldn't you believe it?

The cursed energy heeds his command.

Isn't that something?

Percy cackles, and leaps up into the fight, snapping all of his attention back into his goal.

Smacking the smugness out of Gojo Satoru!

He soars up with the force of his jump, farther than he'd intended now that his strength is far more responsive than ever before before, and then he descends just as quickly as he rises.

This time, Satoru doesn't duck or weave or dodge with his easy grace -

No, this time he outright throws himself out of the way, and only just manages to avoid Percy as he descends fist first and drives his fist into the ground.

He's not going to lose!

Impact!

The ground shatters. The air explodes.

For the second time in as many weeks, his vision whites out, replaced with a cornucopia's worth of black and red sparks. His cursed energy, tamed just seconds-before, sings, and his brain promptly ascends to another level of roaring existence.

This feeling... it's the absolute peak of everything.

When it fades, an eternity and an instant later, he finds Satoru gaping at him like a fish out of the water. Somewhere behind him, Suguru and Shoko are doing the same.

Percy smiles at him - and only him - like a shark that's caught the scent of blood. He slowly draws his arm out of the ground from where it's been buried halfway up to the elbow, utterly focused on the mix of uncertainty and sheer delight Gojo Satoru is starting to regard him with.

"Let's try this again."

And he lunges.

...​

NEXT CHAPTER: THE POWER OF THE SEA VS THE LIMITLESS! Percy and Gojo unleash their techniques!

Percy's being an idiot savant at Cursed Energy:



View: https://imgur.com/lN98rnL




Gojo's mood at the end:



View: https://imgur.com/BUpxhmv​

If you feel like it, please consider supporting me on Ko-fi: Firewillreign

As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it, please be courteous.

 

[Firewillreign]

I divided this chapter into two because it was getting a bit too lengthy! One more to end this prologue arc, and then the fate of this story will be decided!

---

Ending a fight with a Black Flash is one thing.

Landing one, and then continuing to fight is another matter entirely.

It feels like riding a rollercoaster with no restraints straight off the edge of a cliff and into the event horizon of an expanding black hole - and that sounds stupid and doesn't make a lick of sense, really, but if Percy had to describe it somewhere down the line, he'd still probably go with it.

Because really, there are no right words fit to describe the state that he's in as he and Satoru slam into one another and go absolutely batshit insane.

In the wake of that one-in-a-million chance impact, with his mind locked into the acclaimed 120% performance boost and his cursed energy rip-roaring through his veins, Percy feels the most dangerous he's ever felt ever.

He celebrates this breathtaking achievement by breaking past Satoru's guard, blocking an overhead blow with a wide arcing swing of his left arm before burying his right fist into his gut with enough strength to almost fold him in half. It's the first blow he manages to land, but his left fist quickly shoots for Satoru's face as he gasps in pain, and Percy finally fulfills his first goal of decking the Gojo heir in the face.

Perfection.

He cocks back to raise his tally to three for three, but the next thing he knows, he's being grabbed by the bicep and the forearm as he goes to jab and finds himself hurled in a spinning loop that somehow ends with Satoru's fist cracking against his jaw and sending a jolt of what feels like fire lancing through his skull and neck.

The force of it is no joke, either. He has to make himself slam down onto his knees to break the momentum in place of getting driven face-first into the ground like a rag-doll in a car crash commercial.

"That's more like it!" Satoru yells gleefully as he kicks him so hard he just about freaking skips along the dirt and off to the side. It'd be almost comical if it wasn't very much real and very much painful, and at least one of his ribs is likely to give out in the aftermath of it. "Show me what you've got, weakling!"

And that taunting right there is a prime example of why people are told to be careful what they wish for.

Percy leaps to his feet, ignoring the raw scrapped skin of his side and face and spits out a wad of dirt, not in the least bit deterred.

After all, even though he's never been much of a battle junkie in either life, he's actually having fun.

"I'm going to make you eat those so bad."

Satoru's answering grin is wide enough to be painful, and well on its way to ending up on the wrong side of unhinged.

Neither of them gives a shit. They lower their heads and charge.

Things get a little fuzzy after that.

Percy gets tossed over a shoulder and slammed down hard enough to leave an indentation in the earth. Satoru gets kicked in the face. Both of them end up slamming their foreheads against one another in a vicious headbutt, and on and on it goes.

It's a blur of flying fists and limbs and half-maniacal flashes of teeth that can barely be called smiles, a wild dance that is refreshingly equal with each of them giving just as good as they get - and he's not sure whether it's the fight or the power that he revels in, but revel in it he does.

Maybe a bit predictably, it's Satoru who truly escalates first.

At some point, Percy manages to kick out his knee from under him and seize him by the backs of his neck and shirt, before heaving up and away... only he doesn't come back down.

No, the preening lunatic actually rises up, twisting in mid-air to look down at him with gleeful superiority.

Because of course he can fly.

He points a hand down, and it's only Percy's well honed survival instincts that save him. The hairs on the back of his neck rise, he gets a looming premonition of doom, and he wastes no time leaping to the side just as the air, the ground - the very space in the world he'd just been occupying implodes with a sound like a landmine going off.

Percy could have called foul - It was Satoru who specified no cursed techniques - or bitched about the attempt at a cheap shot. He could have even called time out, because things were clearly getting out of hand.

Hah!

Since he's never been that smart, he does none of that. Instead, he grins right back, lets his cursed energy roar out in a nearly overwhelming burst, and sends a tidal wave three stories high up and at him. It accelerates forward with so much force, and in the distance, he can see rows of trees that Satoru is hovering over getting ripped out of the ground like toothpicks.

"Okay, nope!" He hears Suguru yell and spies his manta ray curse descending from above to carry him and Shoko off to safety, but he doesn't so much as look their way.

Instead, he focuses on the way Satoru cackles and throws out his hands.

"Blue."

The world lights up and tints in hues of sapphire, an orb of something confusing but deadly appears a few feet in front of Satoru before he fires it to his left, and then what should have been an inexorable attack gets rendered useless. The rushing wave collapses, its form sucked into the spatial distortion even as it gets sent rocketing away, and by the time the ridiculous technique collapses and the water bursts back out again, it's too far away to do a damn thing.

"Missed me!" Satoru crows and goes to attack again, and Percy hisses.

That power is such a hack - but he's dealt with worse.

He takes off sprinting in a zig-zag to throw him off, mind already clocking the way the next application of Limitless hits behind him. The ground is nearly pulled out right from under him as an attractive force he can barely outpace sucks it in relentlessly, following him as he bolts just out of its range and drawing closer beat by beat, and it takes him some three seconds to clock Satoru's game.

He's trying to force a surrender by taking out Percy's footing.

Credit where credit is due, it's a good plan. A great one, even, and it would have worked with just about anyone else.

But with Percy?

Honestly?

Fuck the ground. He can make his own damn footing - and he does

The momentarily slack-jawed look he gets from Satoru as he wills water to erupt into being beneath him and go so solid at the surface that it lets him sprint up its surface is going live rent-free in his head forever.

Running up his impromptu water bridge and closing the distance between them, he throws out a hand to throw another wave at him when a flash of sudden inspiration hits - he can feel his cursed energy better than he ever has before, and that suddenly comes with ideas.

Instead of creating another unilateral wave, he seizes it before it can coalesce, condensing it into a swirling sphere the size of a basketball. The same amount of power, but focused. Refined.

Compressed.

Percy waits until he can feel it reach a dangerous threshold and get ready to blow, before he leaps up, bursting over Satoru as he tries to twist space around him into a pretzel again and aims straight for his center mass.

Satoru evades the resulting explosive jet by the skin of his teeth, and it shoots past him and straight down like a bolt of lightning. Percy's intense focus almost wavers when he sees and feels it gouge and drill through solid rock like a hot knife through butter.

Yikes. Too much power.

The moment of hesitation costs him. He starts falling before he can make himself another platform, and Satoru rockets up to meet him. Percy manages to clench his fist, waiting just until that shock of upside-down white hair is mere feet away before he throws-

"Nope."

He freezes.

As in, he literally freezes, upside down, fist outstretched and caught inches away from Satoru's solar plexus by an invisible force.

"Infinity." Satoru declares pompously, and it sounds like he's declaring his victory. In his mind, he probably is. "The strongest defense - the space between the two of us is divided infinitely and without end. Your hits will never land."

So this is what Shoko had meant.

"Ah," Percy says sagely, still struggling despite it. He can almost feel what it means - He can still feel the momentum of his fist traveling, but he's not going anywhere. "I call bullshit."

"Isn't it just?" Blue eyes gleam, and his cursed energy swells menacingly. "Now here's to getting even."

And then his fist slams into Percy's gut like the wrath of armageddon, and it's like he's dying and his body is getting the memo one violent internal explosion at a time.

Frankly, the fact that he doesn't cough up a lung because of it it is nothing short of a miracle.

"Payback's a bitch, isn't it?"

He's still reeling from the first one, which means he doesn't even see what direction the second punch comes from before he finds his skull rattling and his eyes registering the sight of the ground coming up as he hurtles down like a meteor.

If it wasn't for his enhancement, he'd have probably broken his neck. As it is, his brain still almost short-circuits from the rough landing, and by the time he heaves himself out of the literal crater he's been driven into Satoru is already descending from above, haloed by the orange light of the sunset and radiating the absolute confidence of someone who knows they're unstoppable.

Of course, the blooming black eye, the bruises across his face and Percy's absolute lack of shits to give take away from the effect somewhat - as does the fact that he still looks genuinely elated.

"That wasn't half bad, you know?" He even sounds happy, and Percy's surprised at how much more of a tolerable human being it makes him sound like. "I don't think anybody's landed that many hits on me since before I hit the double digits."

"Stand still and I'll land plenty more," Percy says as he pushes himself back, shaking off the dirt of his arms as he straightens. "Or did you think that I was done?"

Satoru looks surprised for a second before it melts back into that stunned delight he's been radiating since Percy nearly ruined his year with his Black Flash - like he couldn't believe that he still had the nerve to step up to him again but was going to shamelessly enjoy it anyway.

"Then bring it!"

He fully intends to - He never did like quitting, and he's ready to keep going even if it means he'll keep bouncing off that barrier like a rabid badger on steroids for the foreseeable future- he'll figure out a way around it somehow, apparent invincibility be damned.

In the meantime, though...

Time to run back the classics.

His cursed energy swells, and Percy draws on more of it than he's ever had to pull forward at once. He imagines a wave worth of water, then a lake, then an ocean, and he keeps on going, visualizing the truly ruinous flood he's about to unleash onto the world.

Satoru's eyes must pick something up, because he laughs loudly and stretches out his arms. The blue glow of his technique lights up again in reparation for the coming cataclysm.

The tension swells, their energy crackles, and-!

"What in the ancestor's names is going on here?!"

Percy's concentration promptly pops like a soap bubble and his cursed energy falls back with an anticlamatic failure.

Both of them turn.

Shoji-sensei stands there, feet ankle-deep in a puddle of water - Percy's handiwork - and stares at the two of them like they're nightmares that have come to life. His pallor is somewhat hidden by the growing darkness, but he's probably gone stark white.

"Uh..."

"What-?" The man is at an absolute loss for words, eyes so wide they're about to pop out of his skull. He looks at them, then up at a where Sugure and Shoko are hovering and playing spectator. "How... why?"

Percy takes in that tone, finally registers the sheer amount of destruction he and Satoru have managed to sow - the training grounds they'd started on and what looks like half a forest's worth of greenery are either levelled or underwater - and acts entirely on instinct.

In his defense, he's never liked explaining himself to his teachers - not since the pre-algebra one that went from a metaphorical hag to a literal demon from hell - and this whole situation would need a talk and a college-grade essay to explain, so he promptly decides that discretion is the better part of valor and does what he has to.

"Time to go."

"What?" Satoru sounds befuddled, still lost at the sudden change in atmosphere, and Percy throws a glare over his shoulder.

"Move, Gojo!"

Then he crouches down, channels his energy to his feet and leaps straight up. Suguru lets out the beginnings of a startled yell when Percy lands on top of his curse and latches onto him, ignoring the way Shoko shrieks as the thing shifts to compensate for his weight.

"Floor it!"

"What?"

"Fly, you fool!"

His friend looks at him like he's insane and pointedly doesn't move, so Percy points down at Shoji-sensi, who has started yelling at the top of his lungs. It seems that a copious amount of property damage can help the man overcome his aversion to chewing them out.

Good to know.

"Do you want to go down there and explain this to him?"

"Me?" Suguru asks incredulously, the curse bucking at his emotional whiplash. Shoko throws him an absolutely murderous glare over his shoulder - it's sort of great. "Why would I have to explain?"

"You let me fight Gojo!"

Never let it be said that Percy couldn't talk out of his ass like a professional - hell, he's spent a lifetime refining the principle into an art form.

"Let you!?"

"Enabling my terrible life choices makes you complicit in the inevitable consequences!" Percy yells right back "Now either deal with it or floor it."

"Yeah, curse-boy!" It says a lot about the urgency of the situation that they barely blink when Satoru lands next to them. "This is all your fault, so hit it already!"

It's probably his presence that does it - the sheer shock value of seeing Satoru and Percy agreeing on something that overwhelms his higher reasoning and gets him to fold to their whims.

"You are a horrible influence!" Suguru roars, and, well, Percy's never denied that.

Still, he can't help but join Satoru and even Shoko in their borderline hystrical laughter as the Manta ray curse whirls in place and soars higher into the air, and the four of them disappear into the night.

…​

It's probably a good thing that Yaga is halfway buzzed in his favorite Izakaya bar when he gets the news, because otherwise he'd have probably blown a blood vessel of three.

"What?!"

As it is, he still comes damn close. Some of the older drinking buddies even stop to give him startles looks.

Shoji sounds about as dead inside as he feels as he relays the news, the man having somehow tracked him down hours after the fact because it was either him or the principal, and the latter would make his life a living misery.

Yaga can't blame him for choosing to interrupt his night - he still hardly believes the utter lunacy he's listening to.

"Even ignoring the issue of the outrageous damages," He shudders to even imagine them, actually. "Why would they run away? They live in the dorms - they're just going to have to come back tomorrow?"

What was the point?

"I don't believe that any of them were thinking that far ahead," Shoji says dryly.

Ah.

That makes a depressing amount of sense.

Good gods, their first years weren't just disgustingly powerful potential sorcerors.

They were disgustingly powerful idiots.

"That's not all."

Oh, the hell was it now!?

"I was looking for Jackson-san before I stumbled on their fight for a reason. He's received... well, it's best that I show you."

Yaga watches with growing wariness as Shoji reaches into his pocket, and his stomach falls as he quickly realizes what he's staring at.

"Letters. Inquiries. Even offers." The other teacher declares gravely, placing the stack of sealed envelopes thicker than his wrist down between them ."From various minor sorcery clans and interested parties."

Then Shoji reaches for his pocket again and pulls out two more missives, distinct from the rest, and places them down before Yaga with as much delicacy as a career soldier handling a live grenade.

"These two are from the Ze'nin and Kamo clans respectively."

...

"... I see."

Yaga calmly puts down his glass, flags down the waiter and demands the entire damned bottle.

He was much too sober for this shit.

...


Percy on dealing with his problems responsibly:



View: https://imgur.com/cWpOlCV


Yaga coming back to work after only a few hours break:



View: https://imgur.com/6QVfSWr


Percy when Yaga thinks it can't possibly get worse:



View: https://imgur.com/wCw60Gr

​

As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it, please be courteous

If you feel like it, please consider supporting me on Ko-fi: Firewillreign

 

[Firewillreign]

Voila! The final prologue chapter.

I've set the scene for this story if I decide to continue it - I'll get back to you on that soon - and I'll give you a warning.

I believe in canon divergence! If that's not your thing, tell me why below!

In the meantime, here's this ending.

---

How the hell they end up in a McDonald's of all things after hightailing it from school, Percy doesn't exactly know, and yet here they are anyway.

At least it wasn't a seven-eleven this time, he thinks with some amusement as he drains his coke and reaches for a handful of fries.

Across from him, Shoko is unabashedly enjoying her ice cream sundae, Satoru is still cramming down a downright concerning number of chicken nuggets and Suguru is on his third Big Mac.

Yeah, third.

Which isn't really all that extreme, Percy's probably going to at least reach that threshold too after the spar he's just had - and what a rush even remembering that is - but at the speed he's going...

Apparently, his friend is a stress eater.

That should not be as funny as Percy finds it, and yet-

"Why?" His friend complains morosely, staring down at his half-eaten burger like he's begging it to reveal the answer to all his woes. "Why are you like this?"

See?

He tries not to laugh "C'mon, Suguru, It wasn't that bad."

Suguru stares at him incredulously, because yeah, it kind of had been. Percy can totally acknowledge his mistakes.

In hindsight.

Eventually.

"Does the concept of excessive property damage not mean anything to you?" Suguru asks, and beside him, Shoko looks like she's on the verge of laughing herself. Come to think of it, she's probably the most at ease Percy's ever seen her, and it does wonders for that usually tired slump she has going for her. "They're going to need ages to clean up the mess the two of you made, and we're all in for so much crap when we get back for ditching."

"Please." Satoru sprawls backward against his seat, limbs stretching out in comfort as he finally polishes off his meal. He snorts dismissively when they turn to him. "What are they going to do, expel us?"

He says it like the very idea is ludicrous - and considering who he is in the Jujutsu world outside the fact that sorcerers are in much too high a demand to ever be expelled over something so relatively minor, it probably is.

Not that Suguru acknowledges defeat.

"We're not all high and mighty untouchable clan heirs, Gojo. Just because you're used to getting off scot-free doesn't mean the rest of us would be so lucky."

Satoru snickers smugly.

"Sucks to be you then, peasant."

Suguru glares at him half-heartedly.

"Piss off."

Normally, this would be about the point where Percy would step in, only... he doesn't think he has to.

They're both heckling each other, but he can tell that there's no real heat or bite to it. Suguru's not nearly as aggrieved as he's trying to sound and he's only digging his feet in to prove a point, and Satoru's answers are missing that certain edge that used to graduate them from annoying to unbearable - like he's no longer wired up to the eyeballs on his own self-importance, or at least not actively channeling that pig-headedness at the moment.

The difference is like night and day, really, and Percy has to hide a smile when he clocks in on it.

Not so insufferable after all, then.

"-Make me, curse boy."

"Gojo, I have enough curses to fill up an auditorium and I am not afraid to use them!"

"I repeat: make me."

...On second thought, maybe he should step in. They're not alone, and while he knows full well that nothing short of an apocalypse would convince Suguru to unleash his curses in the middle of civilians, he also knows that beneath that wavering calm and zen facade there's enough repressed stress to see him leaping across the table and making a mess quite happily.

Satoru had been winding him up like a cuckoo clock for a week and a half, after all, and Percy knew from experience - very, very limited experience - that being the bigger person was exhausting - Zero stars, would not recommend.

"What do we do now?" He asks somewhat hastily when he sees Suguru's fingers beginning to twitch. Never a good sign, that. "We can't stay here forever, and we're going to have to face the music eventually."

And by music, he means Yaga's inevitable verbal evisceration to come - that's going to be just wonderful, he can already tell.

"It is getting pretty late." Shoko agrees, looking down at her wristwatch watch "We could start heading back."

"Boring." Satoru drawls immediately, and Suguru rolls his eyes.

Percy's inclined to agree, honestly. Just because they're going to get back eventually doesn't mean they have to rush, but there's only so much to do in the meantime.

So he turns and side-eyes Satoru curiously "Do you have a better idea?"

The grin he gets in return is positively, almost dangerously gleeful.

"Oh, don't I ever."

Then he tells them, and Percy finds himself lighting up in delighted surprise.

This actually sounds like fun.

Even Suguru looks interested, and Shoko seems more bemused than anything - as usual.

...​

It takes Satoru only a single phone call to one of his lower-ranked clan members - who also happens to be an active Window - and a five-minute wait to get them an address.

Fifteen minutes more on top of Suguru's ever convenient manta-ray express - seriously, Percy's never been one for flying but even he's getting a little jealous - they drop out of the sky in front of a dilapidated, run-down office building in the end of the city he's never been before, and he immediately thinks that this place would be the envy of serial killers and asylum escapees alike.

It's a small, five-story place that was abandoned a couple of years ago for shoddy construction - apparently, but he wouldn't know - but it looks ancient. The walls are a bleak grey, the signs and the one billboard present are faded beyond all recognition, and not a single window isn't chipped or outright shattered from the ground floor and up.

It's also definitely cursed out the wazoo, the miasma of cursed energy almost thick enough that you could cut it with a butter knife. There's even a certain smell to it, like putrid decay and dead dreams - Percy's not sure whether that's an actual thing or just his own senses translating the foreign cursed energy to his brain in a way that he'd understand, and he doesn't much want to know.

"This is great," Percy says, staring up at the almost visible cloud of bad juju running through the place. "I mean, it sucks, but it's also great. Good job, you big-shot clan heir. You can actually be useful."

"Bite me, weakling." Satoru snaps back, but his answering smile is pleased as punch. "It was either this or we find somewhere nicely quiet and out of the way so I can keep kicking you around like a football."

Percy snorts.

"You wish it was that easy, you cheating hack. If it hadn't been for that technique of yours you wouldn't have lasted five more minutes."

And he's still going to figure out a way past that shield, one way or another. Infinity has nothing on the thickness of his skull.

"Excuses, excuses." Satoru crows mockingly. "Someone's a sore loser."

Percy's brow twitches, and he rounds on him with a sharp smile.

"You want go for round two right now?"

Satoru's eyes gleam, blue fractals betraying his excitement at the thought. Percy's not blind to the fact that he seems to want the fight even more than he does - and he's not exactly satisfied with their last bout himself.

"Maybe I do-"

"You two aren't actually going to have this out here, are you?" Shoko interrupts, sounding bored. Behind her, Suguru looks just as unimpressed, his foot tapping against the concrete impatiently.

The two of them stop to consider that for a second, before turning back on each other.

"To be continued?" Percy offers

"Done!"

They nod firmly and turn back to the utter eyesore of a building. Suguru steps up to stand next to them, and for a second, they're all shoulder to shoulder.

"I can't believe you talked me into this." So he says, but even he's not hiding the determined lilt to his tone. "I must be as crazy as you are."

"Absolutely." Percy agrees, before nudging Satoru with his elbow. There's nothing to stop him from making "Any rules? Besides no techniques outside an emergency?

After all, it was him who'd suggested they spend the night exorcising curses, and that's familiar enough a routine that Percy had immediately jumped on it.

"Hell no." Satoru answers, sounding downright skippy as he crouches and begins to stretch his legs "Get inside, find any curses and beat the shit out of them. The higher the grade, the higher the points, and the winner gets to choose their prize."

"Within reason," Suguru says at once, shooting him a suspicious look.

"...Right - reason. Sure." Satoru shoots Suguru a thumbs up, and Percy's sure it's exaggerated just to piss him off. "Whatever you say."

"Right then. Ready?"

Percy crouches, and Suguru tenses next to him.

"Set."

Their curse energy begins to rocket.

"Go!"

They burst into motion, cackling and hollering respectively as they rocket for the door. Satoru - the freaking prima donna that he is -actually kicks off the ground and leaps a story up, bypassing the door entirely as he blasts through the broken window and sets off on his own rampage.

Shoko is left standing in their wake, staring after them with a curious look before she sighs and turns around. The cold night breeze ruffles her hair as she pulls her pack of smokes from her pocket and goes reaching for her lighter.

(In another life, something like this would be the start of it. The Strongest charging on ahead and leaving her trailing so far behind in their shadow that she's eventually swallowed and forgotten within it.

In another life, she would have even grown used to the fact.

In this one, though,-)

"Oi, Shoko!"

She startles, turning back to stare at the building.

Percy is standing there by the doorway, having sprinted back a little and stopped to eye her impatiently and wave furiously.

"Do you need a private invitation or something?" He hollers, "Put that crap away and get the hell in here!"

For a long moment, she just stares, completely stunned.

Then she smiles.

"Suguru's right. You're all nuts."

She takes off after him.

...​

It goes like this:

Satoru wins - just barely, but between fly heads and second-grade curses, he manages to eke out a victory.

Naturally, neither Percy nor Suguru accept this, and Shoko comes in at fourth place and is seemingly content to just laugh at them.

So they call Satoru's contact, get the next address down the line and set off there.

Then they go to the next - Suguru manages to get ahead.

And the next - Percy this time.

And the next.

By the time the sun rises and they stumble through the front gates of Jujutsu High, the three of them are flagging, Shoko is outright about to black out but is also somehow more content than she's ever been before, and everyone's stopped keeping count a while back.

They're so collectively out of it, in fact, that the sight of an utterly furious Yaga waiting for them beside a nervous Shoji-sensei doesn't do much more than make them blink and wave warily.

"In our defense," Percy decided to take one for the team and call down Yaga's full attention on him, and yikes, was that thing ticking across his forehead a vein? That can't be healthy. "We just wiped out, like, every curse for a mile in every direction. Doesn't that make up for the mess we made, just a little?"

The vein starts ticking.

"Going on unsanctioned exorcisms without reporting them up the chain of command? No, I think not." Yaga growls, before he actually smiles.

It's not a nice smile.

"But don't worry. You'll certainly be making up for your mess."

And suddenly, Percy is afraid.

...​

"I hate you." Suguru groans as he hefts the tree trunk up. "Truly, from the bottom of my heart."

Yaga is forcing them to clean up the mass deforestation catastrophe Satoru and Percy had made of the grounds. They have to dig out all the uprooted trees, move them across the grounds for disposal, and actually cut them up into pieces small enough for firewood themselves to help with said disposal.

The bitch of it is that they can't use any cursed energy beyond the very bare minimum because Yaga had sicced a small army of - get this - cursed puppet plushies on them, and the things start attacking and reporting back to him if they sense them using any more power to cheat.

Percy turns around, stares at how much work they have left to do and how little they've done comparatively despite being at it for hours, and he sighs. He and Suguru and Satoru and Shoko were taking it in turns, but at this rate it'd take them a year to finish up.

"Yeah, I think I hate me too."

"Shut up and lift, Jackson!"

...​

Percy would have probably slept for a week after that, but he wakes up early a few days later when he hears a commotion in the hallway.

Blearily, he stumbles to the door and peeks his head out, before blinking at the sight of Satoru dragging behind a suitcase in one hand and carrying a cardboard box under his other arm.

"Satoru?" He yawns tiredly. "What are you doing here?"

It was a weekend, after all.

"I'm moving in!"

"...Huh. Cool."

"Right? Here."

Percy blinks again as Satoru forces the box into his arm.

"What's this?"

Satoru trades back with a question of his own.

"What do you know about the Kamo clan?"

Percy stares.

"They're... a big deal?" it ends up being a question more than an answer.

See, he remembers Yaga talking about them in his general explanation of Jujutsu, but he hadn't really registered all that much beyond them being vaguely important, along with the Ze'nin and Satoru's clan too.

Satoru actually laughs like a hyena when Percy tells him that.

"I'm so taking you with me to the next interclan meeting. The looks on their faces will be priceless." He grins and points to the box. "But that's for later. See, the Kamo clan has this prized technique - blood manipulation. A little too icky and weak for my taste, but they get by with it, and the Gojo clan has a nice little catalog of all the expressions and sub-techniques of blood manipulation they've encountered over their history. I took a few copies for you to read up on."

"But my technique isn't blood manipulation."

And he wouldn't want it to be, either.

"No shit, but your Water manipulation's got a few overlaps. That cutting water jet you shot at me when we sparred got me thinking." It did? Would wonders never cease? "It reminded me of a couple moves some of my stuck-up tutors used to describe, so I went looking. Your technique is new and fresh, totally undocumented - that means you don't have any training wheels to fall back on. That should help you come up with some tricks to keep up."

Oh.

Percy looks at the box, a little dumbfounded - and not just because Satoru was calling someone else stuck-up- before staring back up at him warmly.

"This is... Thank you, Satoru."

He means it, too.

"Don't get sappy on me, this is just an investment." Satoru snaps, which would be a lot more convincing if he could do anything at all to hide how pleased he sounds. "You and Geto might be the only two sorcerers who'll ever be able to spar with me without boring me. I don't want you falling behind and being a real weakling."

Right.

"Don't worry about me falling behind," Percy smiles menacingly "I've already started looking into ways to get past that infinity you're so proud of."

Or rather, Shoko had, once he'd begged for her help.

In Percy's defense, he had tried to go at it solo, but when he'd looked for answers on his own, he'd come out of it with one more headache and a ton more questions.

The heck was a 'domain amplification' anyway?

"Perfect defense or not, I'll be trouncing you soon enough."

That's the point where Suguru finally stumbles out of his room, trying to look for the source of all the commotion.

He freezes when he catches sight of them.

"Gojo. What the hell are you doing here?"

"Hey, buddy. I live here now!" Satoru sings, an unholy glee suffusing his tone. "We're going to be roomies!"

Suguru pales and stumbles back at once. "No."

"Uh, Suguru-?"

"No."

He keeps stumbling back until he's crossed back into his room, then he promptly slams the door shut and double locks it. From inside, they hear the sounds of things being knocked around and clattering to the floor.

Percy sighs. "So dramatic."

"I know, right?"

He and Satrou exchange a look, both perfectly straight-faced.

Then they start laughing.

...​

Later that day, after the four of them are done trying to work through Yaga's punishment and decide to tap out for now, they end up sprawled out in the grass.

"This going to take forever," Satoru complains loudly, and Percy ends up laughing despite himself when he catches sight of the dirty glare Shoko ends up shooting him.

It's the first time he's ever seen her angry, and it's so far out of the left field that it's utterly hilarious.

"Next time we fight, we'll take it someplace else," Percy promises, and Satoru raises his fist in agreement.

"If you don't, I'm going to have my curses eat you. Here, Shoko."

A shadow falls over him, and Percy turns to look up at Suguru. His friend stares down before crouching down and handing him a soda can, and he grins.

"Thanks."

"Oi! Don't I get one?"

"Silence, Antichrist!"

Still, he tosses him one anyway and Satoru beams.

They don't do anything after that. The four of them just sit there, drinking their sodas and watching the sunset in the distance - but it feels a little more meaningful than that.

It's a great way to end the day.

...​

Elsewhere, the news of a third potential special grade enrolled in Tokyo Jujutsu High begins to make waves.

Across Japan, the clans begin to sit up and take notice.

In the shadows of society, curse-users and other slinking threats begin to ponder.

In their base of operations hidden from all but a scant few, a figure with dairk hair and a line of stitches running across their forehead begins to plot, rearranging the pieces on their board.

And behind all of this, the tapestry of fate began to unravel.

...


Gojo giving Percy valuable clan resources and trying to play it cool:



View: https://imgur.com/qmsAVow


Percy:



View: https://imgur.com/FGQiVEp​

As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it, please be courteous

If you feel like it, please consider supporting me on Ko-fi: Firewillreign

 

[agus12h]

Percy is like:
..... whatever help you sleep at night bro xD.

 

[Firewillreign]

Okay, so this is now a story.

I'm weak, I know.

Don't expect super regular updates though, especially not in the coming future. I'm sick, studies are ramping up and I write for fun first and foremost. Deadlines are the opposite of fun.

Other than that, here we go!

---

Prospective Sorceror Jackson.

On behalf of the venerable-

"Eh, another one?"

That's all the warning Percy getsbefore the letter is yanked out of his hand by an impatient Satoru, who spares the words on the page a glance, a derisive snort and an eye roll before he promptly spares him the effort of shredding it by doing it himself.

Just like he'd done for the last - oh, half a dozen or so.

"I was reading that, you know."

"Like you weren't going to do the same."

Percy just ends up staring at his unrepentant friend for a long second before sighing and collapsing onto the couch across from him.

"Still. That was my letter."

"I'll get you a phonebook, and you can read that instead. I'll bet you an entire platter of daifuku that it'll be less of a waste of time."

The thing is, he's not wrong.

It'd been the same song and dance ever since Yaga had shown him the first handful of missives a couple of months ago.

The way his not-sensei - Really, the man is weirdly involved in their lives for someone who wouldn't even be their teacher for another year - had explained it had been pretty straightforward: Percy's enrollment - read: existence - in Jujutsu High had caused waves across the lake that was shaman society, and several parties had ended up looking for the source of the disruption and looking for a way to address it once they'd found it.

Or, as Satoru had put it about five seconds after the fact - Percy was a new, shiny and unclaimed bauble in the political mess that was sorcery outside of eradicating curses left and right, and many - the clans in particular - were either swallowing lemons, ignoring him entirely or desperately trying to drag him into their corner to milk him for every advantage and benefit they could possibly get.

Honestly, most of the lecture had ended up flying over his hide, but he'd gotten the gist of it. The attention was bad news and he should ignore it until it went away - in as much as it ever would.

Which was fine. Great, even.

Yaga really shouldn't have wasted his breath - Percy's default state of being involved not paying attention to his problems unless the situation around him was actively going to shit, and then powering through it anyway - because he was awesome like that.

This was, is, and would be more of the same. Clearly rinse and repeat was the way to go.

Still, the amount of snobbish invitations, thinly-veiled offers of wardship and guidance and even outright demands to show himself for what basically sounded like interrogation at their earliest convenience he'd gotten was downright unsettling. Some of them were iffy enough that they'd nearly given him stranger-danger vibes, and he hadn't really had to worry about those for a literal lifetime.

They'd only gotten worse after Percy's sorcerer ID had finally arrived last week - Grade 1. The same as Suguru - the same as Satoru, courtesy of their romp through Tokyo on that second week after they'd gone at it and ended up hightailing till the next morning over.

That had really poured the kerosene onto the fire, despite the fact that, since he was technically a ward of Jujutsu High, the most anyone could presently do was badger him with more letters till they went blue in the face.

Not that Percy would have cared either way, mind you - he did his own thing, always, and becoming somebody else's prized show pony was currently at the very top of his 'When hell freezes over' to-do list - but the downpour of borderline-stalking he's still being subjected to had gotten old and dull, fast, and it hadn't been any fun to begin with.

"Think they're going to quit anytime soon?"

The look Satoru gives him for that one is flatter than paper, and Percy sighs.

"Yeah, I figured."

Someone laughs behind them, and they both turn around just as Suguru drops onto the couch across the room, carrying a bag of groceries in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other.

"Terrible, isn't it?" His other friend murmurs in commiseration, and Percy tips his head back again his seat in silent agreement.

Suguru would know, too. He sure as heck wasn't being spared clan attention either. Not with a cursed technique like his.

Potential sorcerors of Percy's caliber didn't just show up, after all - and to be fair, they still didn't. He and Suguru were the exceptions, not the norm, and for wildly different reasons - and both of them were going to be hot commodities for the considerable future.

Fun, that.

"Oh, Shoji-sensei is calling for us, by the way."

Huh?

Percy sits up a little.

"Now? On a Saturday morning."

Their sensei generally made a rule of not approaching outside of class hours unless it was to assign them missions - and even that was rare. Part of it was probably professionalism, and another part of it was likely-

"The hell does wimpy-sensei want?"

-that.

Suguru frowns half-heartedly. "You really shouldn't call him that, Satoru."

Satoru didn't care for Shoji-sensei.

Not that he's said anything to the man - in fact, Percy doubts they've exchanged more than a few minute-long conversations in class, and definitely none outside of them - but sometimes silence speaks louder than words, and Satoru's irreverence is plenty obvious.

Percy honestly has no idea how to deal with it - if he even wants to, really. It's not like the rest of them are that much better.

Which is a little unfair - Shoji-sensei knows his stuff, and he's a competent sorcerer who's diligently teaching them plenty (on the technical side of things, at least), but their relationship is about as 'bare minimum' as it can possibly get and there isn't much reason for that to change.

Eh. Problems for later.

"Yeah, yeah." Satoru rises from his seat, hands sliding into his pockets and already looking halfway bored. "Let's go get this over with."

...​

"The five of us have been assigned a mission."

Shoji sensei announces the fact the second the three of them stroll into class. Shoko is already there, and she spares them a low wave as they walk in one after the other.

"All of us?" Suguru's eyebrows rise. "Together?"

Percy gets it. Sending the four of them on a mission tends to be... overkill.

Hilariously so.

Heck, they'd gone on two missions as a team in two months, and one of those had just involved Shoji-sensei demonstrating his use of curtains to ward off civilians.

The curse lasted about three seconds after that.

Shoji-sensei hesitates.

"Yes. You'll have to pack for an extended trip." The man clears his throat. "We will be traveling to Genji village, out in the Akita prefecture."

Out of the corner of his eye, Percy sees Shoko go ramrod straight. He turns to stare at her in confusion, but she doesn't even look at him. She doesn't look at any of them, actually.

Her eyes had gone wide, her jaw tense, and her hands had closed into fists almost entirely of their own accord.

It's the most emotion Percy's ever seen from her.

She relaxes a second later, shoulders dropping and face going blank, but it's the kind of false-casualness that someone puts up when they know they're being watched, and no one misses it.

He exchanges a confused look with Suguru, and even Satoru seems caught by surprise.

"-hours by train." Shoji-sensei continues to explain, either missing or choosing to ignore the reaction and what it might mean. "Several civilians have been cursed, and standard exorcism procedures have failed. The head of the local sorcery clan has requested Ieri-san in particular in the hopes that her reverse-cursed technique will achieve better results. We will, technically, be her escort, and we'll investigate the source of this curse with haste while she works."

He clears his throat and turns to pass his eyes over the four of them.

"Any questions?"

You could have heard a pin drop in the following silence.

Suguru is frowning, Satoru is still looking bored - and vaguely irritated - and Percy is caught glancing at Shoko's downright eerie stillness in poorly disguised concern.

"No? Good. We leave tomorrow."

...​

The five-hour bullet-train ride out to Akita station was an experience, and not in a good way.

It was the first time Percy had left Tokyo in this new life of his - it should have been fun. The early summer air was great, and Satoru had used Shoji-sensei distraction to buy a truly terrifying amount of snacks from the station before they'd set off.

He'd even stocked up on Percy's favorite brand of blue jelly beans.

It should have been great.

The operative words being 'should have'

It isn't.

Instead, Percy spends the entire trip worrying about Shoko.

There's something wrong here, something that he's missing. An undercurrent of wired tension that turned her usual companionable silence cold, and a dullness in her eyes.

He can't even ask her about it - the moment they make it through the station and onto the train, she takes the window seat next to Shoji-sensei, pulls a black sleeping mask out of her pack and clocks right out - or at least pretends too well enough that Percy can't do a thing about it.

Suguru and Satoru pick up on it too - they've all figured it out from the start, really - though there's not much they can actually do but brace and wait for the cause of... whatever reaction this is to show itself.

And Percy has a feeling it won't be too long now.

...​

Naturally, he's right.

...​

The situation with Shoko doesn't change when they arrive at Akita Station. It doesn't change when Shoji-sensei leads them to the Window, some lady whose name Percy doesn't even try and remember, and it doesn't change over the drive across the countryside that follows.

By the time they reach Genjiro village, it's been hours and the most he's managed to coax out of her was two words, and that had been a 'thank you' for handing her a water bottle.

Still, progress is progress, right?

And then said progress goes right to hell in a hand basket.

They don't stop along the way - Genjiro village is a quaint little place, all traditional with worn stone paths winding through the entire thing and surrounded by a cedar forest that gives it character, but it's dark out and none of them are in a mood to be paying attention to the sights anyway.

Instead, they drive up until they reach the elaborate gates of a sprawling, enclosed estate, and they're barely out of the car when the other shoe drops.

They find two figures standing outside of what had to be a main house of some kind and clearly waiting for them.

One of them is a short woman in a plain blue Kimono. Her hair is tied back in a bun, her face is drawn with visible stress, and something about her is immediately familiar.

Standing in front of her was a tall, greying man with dark eyes and a gleam in his eyes that Percy instantly mislikes. He tilts his head in what could generously be called acknowledgment as they walk over to them.

"First-grade sorcerors Jackson Percy, Geto Suguru, and Gojo Satoru." His words linger on the last name meaningfully, for blatantly obvious reasons. "Second Grade Sorceror Hora Shoji. Be welcome."

"Karasu-sama."

Shoji-sensei bows - but none of the rest of them do. Not even straight-laced Suguru.

Then his gaze turns, lands on Shoko, and his lips immediately curl into an ugly, disdainful sneer.

"And I see you've brought my recalcitrant wretch of a granddaughter."

What?

"Yo, Kiyohira-sama." Shoko tosses him a peace sign, complete with the deadest smile Percy had ever seen from anyone ever. "Long time no see."

"Oh." Satoru makes a sound of understanding and nods. "See, that makes sense."

What?

...


Shoko, when it's her backstory exposition time:



View: https://imgur.com/ryVTvct


Me writing it all out:



View: https://imgur.com/OS3oP7K

​

As always, leave your comments and ideas, and if you don't like it, please be courteous.

If you feel like it, please consider supporting me on Ko-fi: Firewillreig

 

[Firewillreign]

Me: No More Fast Updates

Also Me, because I have no consistency: Updates One day later.

---

So.

Shoko's grandfather is a dick.

It's only been about five seconds, and that much is already immediately clear. Percy can tell that it's not just an off day or bad circumstances behind it - not just from the arrogant way he seems to dismiss the four of them in favor of glaring at Shoko, and not even from the insult he's just thrown in her face in front of all of them.

It's the look in his eyes that clinches it - anger and contempt, bordering on hate.

It raises Percy's hackles at once, and Suguru stiffens at his side. Satoru's posture doesn't change much, but he's paying just as much attention as either of them.

"'Recalcitrent wretch', huh?" Shoko says dryly, but there's no inflection in the flatness of her voice. Not an iota. "The first time you see me in years and that's what you come up with? Classy."

Kiyohira's nostrils flare with his outrage.

"Insolent-!"

"Father," The woman at his side interrupts, which is really for the best because Percy is one word more away from punching the guy in the mouth and moving on, no backstory or explanation needed. "This is not the best time for-"

"Do not interrupt me, daughter!" The old man thunders and the woman falls silent and lowers her head. He turns back to stare at Shoko, and Percy's cursed energy is already surging under his skin, ready to explode out in a wave, when he abruptly turns away. "But very well."

The sudden segue throws them all for a loop, and Percy finds himself blinking in surprise when Kiyohira begins to march up the path to main house with a furious gait, leaving the four of them and his flustered daughter behind.

"Apologies." The poor woman bows to them and gestures to Shoji-sensei first. "If you would follow me?"

Shoko snorts humourlessly "Lead the way, Kazuha-obasan"

Oh. The pieces click into place.

That's why she looks so familiar - This is Shoko's aunt.

Still on edge and more than a little bewildered in the worst of ways, the five of them end up following the clan head's daughter into their home.

It's a large, looming kind of place. All traditional and expressively opulent, with tatami floors and engraved shogi doors and a hundred other subtle construction details that someone who was even mildly interested in internal decor would have probably found fascinating, but to Percy, it just seemed excessive.

He'd never be comfortable living like this.

"In here."

They step into a wide, long-stretching room, lit by torches that bathe it in a dull, orange glow. There are talismans and sigils rife with sealing script hanging down from the rafters and candle holders, and the air is rich with the scent of incense, candlewax, and something else that was sharply unpleasant - to say nothing of the faintly perceptible weight of cursed energy.

Kiyohira is already in there and waiting for them, and he waves an impatient hand as they catch sight of him.

"Behold - your mission."

On the ground before them are six sorcerers of varying ages. The youngest of them is probably only a few years older than Percy and his friends, but the oldest looks like he could give Kiyohira a run for his money in the age department, and all of them are pale and sallow-faced - unnaturally so.

If their skin looked any more unhealthy, Percy couldn't honestly say that he'd be able to tell it apart from the washi paper Yaga likes to keep stocked in his office.

"Kiyohira-sama." Shoji-sensei steps in carefully, drawing the old man's attention. "Perhaps it would be best if you were to explain the situation at hand."

"Finally," Satoru mutters boredly, and their sensei's fingers twitch like he desperately considers turning around to silence him but thinks better of it. It's Suguru who ends up driving an elbow into his side and clearing his throat pointedly.

Franky, Percy wouldn't have bothered.

"These are six of our clan's active sorcerers." It's Kazuha who steps in to explain hurriedly, eyes flickering between Satoru and Kiyohira like she's afraid the old man will blow a gasket if he hears Satoru's increasingly annoyed muttering - which would only end horribly for him, but oh well. "They have been reduced to this state for well over a week now. A strange residual of cursed energy lingers on them, some manner of effect we've not seen before, and any attempt to exorcise it and awaken them has been met with failure."

The woman wrings her hands nervously, gesturing to the closest first.

"We continue to care for them in their... present condition, but they are wasting away. It was our hope that Sho-"

She pauses, her eyes closing heavily. Shoko doesn't so much as twitch.

"- that my niece could attempt to waken them with her reverse-cursed technique."

"I see."

Shoji-sensi nods slowly and turns to Shoko.

"Well, Ieri-san?" He asks gently, as if wary of setting her off.

Scratch that. He's definitely wary of setting her off, that much is obvious.
Their sensei isn't an idiot - none of them have missed the rising tension in the room, from Kiyohira's disdain to Kazuha's fretful panic and Shoko's apparent apathy to it all.

"Yeah, sure."

Shoko's voice would be agreeable, but there's something in the way she deliberately pauses and turns to stare at her grandfather. Whatever it is he sees there has the old man coldly raising his chin and staring down his nose at her in a way that has Percy's urge to punch him in the face growing exponentially.

Except his classmate - who still doesn't know him wholly but clearly knows him enough - turns to stare at him pointedly and Percy realizes without her needing to say a word that she wouldn't appreciate the effort, no matter how entirely deserved it would be.

Fine.

He forces his jaw to unclench as Shoko kneels down beside the sorcerer nearest to her, a middle-aged man with short-cropped hair, and places a hand on his forehead.

"Let's get this over with."

There's a swelling in the air as Shoko's cursed energy does something, and then her hands light up with a pale, ghostly white glow. Percy feels his anger dim a little in place of a little reluctant fascination.

There's no visible effect that he can see beyond the muted light show, but he already knows that what's happening is no less impressive for it.

Reverse-used technique. Positive energy.

Being able to heal others was such an incredible power. Once upon a time, he would have killed to be able do to the same- heck, he still would.
Finding out that water doesn't heal him the way it once did a lifetime ago had been one hell of a rude awakening there.

He's distracted from that frustrating line of thought when Shoko frowns. The sorcerer she's tending to hasn't shown anything in the way of a reaction, but she must be getting something because she raises her free hand and presses it against his chest, the glow slipping past the blankets and the coverings over him and seeping into his flesh.

The minutes drag on.

"Well?" Kiyohira demands, arms folded across his chest. His tone is utterly dismissive as he looks down at Shoko in a way that is just terrible for Percy's self-control and his future health prospects.

Shoko frowns in return, not looking up from her work.

"It's strange. My energy is doing something, but it's not affecting him." her frown deepens. "It's like I'm healing a wound that's not even there."

"And what exactly is that supposed to-?"

And that's when the sorcerer's eyes snap open and he shoots up with a horrible, agonised scream.

...​

Half an hour later, Kazuha ends up guiding the five of them to the guest house across the estate, bowing as she stops before the door.

"Allow me to apologize for the circumstances-"

"Please, Kazuha-san, there's no need-"

While Shoji-sensei busies himself reassuring the woman that none of them have taken offence - and they have, for reasons that are plenty obvious - Percy exchanges pointed looks with Satoru and Suguru.

The three of them none too subtly turn to Shoko, who seems content to ignore them and the rest of the world with all the apparent patience of a saint.

Honestly, it's a little disturbing.

Then again, what else was new tonight?

After the sorcerer - Kenji-san, apparently - had woken up, things had descended into chaos very quickly.

The man had been hysterical, screaming and wailing and clawing at his face in such a deranged panic that he'd nearly gouged out his own eyes before Shoji-sensei had restrained him.

Even then, he'd kept roaring at the top of his lungs and thrashing in their sensei's hold like an animal fighting for its life.

"She's coming! Gods help us, she's coming!"

Whatever that had meant - and it was nothing good, hysterical delusion or no - no one could tell. Eventually, Shoji-sensei had needed to knock him out because he'd bitten threw the inside of his cheek, clean through his tongue and started spewing blood everywhere.

It was exactly as ugly a scene as it sounded, and Kiyohira had ended up storming off in an unimpressively impotent rage, furious at the state of his clansman and the complete lack of rhyme or reason for his breakdown.

The fact that he didn't even thank Shoko for staying behind to heal the damage the man had done to himself meant that his score with Percy was well into the negative triple digits by now, and he had a pretty good feeling it was going to sink even lower before all was said and done.

"Shoko." All of them turn to stare at Kazuha, and the woman looks like she's about to quail at the attention even as she tries to focus solely on her niece. "If you wish... If you'd like to... I can prepare a room in the main wing-"

"No need. I still remember where my old room is." Shoko raises an eyebrow. "Unless you've had it boarded up or converted into a storage closet or something? I wouldn't be surprised."

Kazuha flinches like she's been stabbed.

"No. It... it remains as you left it."

There's a lot to unpack there, but Shoko doesn't hesitate to leave it at that.

"Great. See you all in the morning."

Then she whirls on the spot and marches off into the night without a single glance back.

"Well," Satoru says, voice eerily cheerfully in the silence that follows. "I think that went well."

Suguru closes his eyes. "Satoru..."

"What?"

They both turn to glare at him.

"Just... get some rest." Shoji-sensei sighs tiredly in their general direction, before turning back to Kazuha. "I'd like to ask you some questions regarding this mission, if it's no trouble at all?"

The woman hesitates before she nods slowly.

"As you wish."

Percy gets the sense that none of them will be sleeping well tonight.

...​

The next morning is a tense affair that kicks off right as the sun rises.

Before Kazuha or one of her comes to invite them over to breakfast, Shoji-sensei herds the three of them into a conversation. Percy takes one look at him and blanches.

"No, seriously, did you get any sleep last night?"

His teacher regards him with a dead gaze and eyebags that have eyebags.

"As a matter of fact, Jackson-san, I did not." He looks at them gravely. "We have our work cut out for us. Kiyohira-sama did not provide ample information when he filed the mission request. It's more than just six sorcerors who've been incapacitated by this... effect."

Suguru frowns. "It's bad, isn't it?"

"Very much so. There have been reports of civilians from the village exhibiting the same symptoms - dozens at least, and likely more. There's also been a string of disappearances and an excess of third and second-grade curses congregating and sowing chaos among the civilians who aren't cursed by this technique - if it even is that."

"It's something like that." Satoru agrees, startling them all. "I can't tell what it is, but my eyes can see foreign cursed energy just fine and the stuff that was inside all six of those sorcerers definitely came from the same source."

Percy turns to stare at him. "You couldn't say anything yesterday?"

Satoru shrugs. "Would it have made a difference?"

... Probably not, actually. Not if they still didn't know what was causing this.

Shoji-sensei seems to agree.

"We need to investigate this further. The Karasu clan's attempts to handle this situation have been..." Shoji-sensei seems to struggle to find the right word, before sighing in defeat. "Utterly abysmal."

"If things are so bad, why not call people in sooner?" Suguru asks in disbelief. "Why did they wait so long to ask for help?"

Satoru rolls his eyes.

"Isn't it obvious? Pride. They kept deluding themselves into thinking they could handle it like total idiots until it blew up in their faces and they realized that they couldn't. I'm guessing something big must have happened, more than just that handful sorcerers dropping like flies, right?"

"Yes." They all turn to stare at their teacher expectantly. "Karasu Kota, the heir to the clan, has fallen under the same affliction. He's being attended to in a separate sealing chamber."

Satoru snorts. "That tracks."

Shoji-sensei gives him a look that Percy thinks is meant to be stern but comes out exhausted instead.

"He's two years younger than you all - only a child."

Fair enough, but it still makes an icky kind of sense.

Civilians were acceptable casualties. Sorcerers were a much bigger problem, but the heir to the clan himself?

Absolute disaster - it's no wonder why Kiyohira had momentarily swallowed his pride and called for help.

... Percy hates politics.

"Regardless of the circumstances, we must begin. Gojo-san and Geto-san, you'll be coming with me. We need to look into the abundance of curses in the village proper. Jackson-san?"

Percy blinks in surprise.

"Yes, sensei?"

"Find Ieri-san." Shoji-sensei smiles wearily. "I have a feeling that leaving her on her lonesome wouldn't be in anyone's best interests."

...​

In the end, Percy manages to find Shoko through sheer dumb luck.

He catches sight of her marching across the grounds as he makes his way up to the main house, and he bolts in pursuit.

"Oi, Shoko!"

She glances, spares him a look and what might be a muttered greeting, and then turns right back around and continues marching.

She probably wants to be left alone.

He still ends up following her regardless, because the one thing he does best besides fighting is ignoring any potential good decisions in favor of gut instincts and split-second impulses, and then working his way out through whatever fallout he inevitably lands in next.

Besides, what was the worst that could happen?

...​

By the time they stop walking, Shoko's led them far out of the Kurasa clan estate and deep into the cedar forest that Percy had spotted a glimpse of the day before.

They walk most of the way in companionable - or something close to it - silence, and that doesn't change until they step into a grassy clearing and Percy finds himself staring at the sight in front of him.

It's a small, stone path, leading to a well-weathered torii gate that looked positively ancient, with a pair of Komainu lion sculptures placed on either side of it. Beyond them, a set of sight stone steps paved the way into a small, aged shrine that was only just large enough to let one person step through and looked like one strong breeze away from collapsing.

"Wow." Percy breathes lowly.

He's not much for religion in this second life - which is endlessly hilarious whenever he stops to think about it - but there's still an air to this place that has him instinctively sitting up and paying attention.

To what, he's not exactly sure.

Shoko doesn't have the same reaction.

She marches right up to the tori gate and pauses, before continuing past it. She doesn't go into the shrine, though.

Instead, she climbs the stairs and turns to sit down on the top step. Her hands go into the pockets of her overcoat, and she whips out her pack of cigarettes and her lighter.

"Shoko..."

"What?" She stares up at him as he moves past the torri gate and takes a seat next to her, eyeing "You're not going to tell me not to smoke, are you?"

"Nah." There's a time and a place, after all, and this is neither. "I was going to ask if you were okay."

"I'm fine." She lights a cigarette and takes a long, steadying puff, exhaling heavily after catching sight of Percy's skeptical look. "Completely fine. Why wouldn't I be?"

"The grandpa from hell, maybe?"

She chokes on a cloud of smoke at that and then devolves into startled laughter.

"Fair enough." She agrees.

There's a pause.

"You're not going to ask what the story is?"

Percy shakes his head.

"I don't care."

She raises a brow.

"Really," Percy stresses the word, turning to look at her wholly. He doesn't want her to doubt him here. "I just about care about you. If you want to talk about it, great. If you want to ignore it and just sit out here, that's good too. So long as you're good, I am too."

He's not going to lie and say he's not curious, but in the long run, he doesn't truly care - So long as Shoko isn't making a bigger deal of it , he wouldn't either - though he was still liable to drop-kick her grandfather if it came down to it, but that was a whole other can of worms.

Shoko looks at him for a long minute, seemingly considering that.

"You actually mean that, don't you?" she says at last.

He shrugs, and she gives him a half-hearted glare.

"You are sickeningly sincere."

"I am?"

"You are, and it's gross."

"Ah. That's bad?"

"You should feel bad."

"Okay, I do."

"Good. I'm glad."

They nod to each other very seriously.

Then Shoko's lips twitch, and they both start snickering.

When they're done, the air feels a little lighter. Shoko leans back a little and backs in the sunlight, eyes going half-lidded for a little while.

Percy stares, just a little, and wonders if that's it.

"This was my mother's favorite spot when we lived here, you know?" She offers conversationally, staring up at the torri gate in front of them. "Her place of 'ungrudging peace', whatever that nonsense is supposed to mean. Figures that I'd end up digging history up here of all places."

Another beat passes.

"It's not much of a happy story, but I guess you've already picked up on that." She begins out of the blue, taking another shot of her cigarette before fixing her gaze somewhere along the tree line ahead of them. "My father was the old man's heir. Big-shot clan heir of a not-so-big-shot clan. He met my mother in Kyoto, during the Ubon festival some seventeen years back. They went on a mission together, got along well, blah blah blah, and they ended up getting hitched."

She inhaled lightly.

"They moved back here when she got pregnant - the old man was thrilled, apparently, and gave them just about everything they could have wanted. And everything was sunshine and rainbows for a good little while."

"And then something went wrong."

"Yeah." Shoko smiles sardonically. "I was born."

Percy feels something in his stomach drop straight down.

"See, sorcery clans tend to almost always favor male heirs. My being born a girl really threw a wrench into my grandfather's dreams, and my father wasn't exactly thrilled, either."

"Shoko, that's absolute crap."

"I know that, but they didn't." She shrugs in 'what-can-you-do?" kind of way. Percy immediately hates it. "Still, I think I would have gotten away with that terrible crime if things had been a little different. I had good cursed energy reserves - nothing like you on your worst day, you absolute freak, but enough to make put up a good showing against the rest of us normal people."

"But..."

"But I didn't inherit an innate technique. Not everyone has one, you know? And my birth was difficult, so my mother had trouble getting pregnant again." Another puff of cigarette smoke rises up between them. "I still remember the collective meltdown that happened when all that came out. Lots of yelling, lots of broken furniture - it was all very dramatic. When it was over, so was my stint as the heir's heir. My grandfather stripped the title from my father and adopted some kid who's related to us by some shared ancestor six generations back as his heir."

Percy startles. "Kota, right?"

Shoko looks surprised at the name drop, so he tells her about the conversation with Shoji-sensei. By the time he's done speaking, she's laughing.

It's not happy laughter.

"So it took the precious heir being put at risk for the old bastard to remember me. And when I do arrive, he doesn't even let me see him-probably afraid I'd screw up and screw him out of his golden goose." She snorts and looks away, "Figures. Yeah, that's the brat. I've never even met him, but he's male, he's got the cursed energy to be a sorcerer and he's inherited an old, powerful technique. 'Divine flame' or some other pretentious crap like that. In my grandfather's eyes, he was the perfect backup plan"

Percy finds himself staring again.

He opens his mouth, closes it, then tries again a second later in a distinctly strangled tone.

"That's it? That's why the old bastard hates you?"

Of all the stupid, spineless-!

Shoko laughs again, in the same hollow, empty way.

"He never needed a better reason. Especially after my father raged about his lost position and moved us to Tokyo. Then he left us there."

"...What?"

A second after he asks, he thinks that he might not want to know.

Shoko tells him anyway.

"My father left us. He blamed my mother for not giving him a son and he blamed me for existing as a failure, I think, so he up and left. Kazuha-obasan was the only one from his side of the family who kept in touch and came to visit. Well," She raises her head and thinks aloud. "At least until I was twelve, and I figured out the reverse-cursed technique. Then my grandfather started sending letters to, and I quote, 'discuss the possibility of a betrothal'."

Percy chokes.

"He tried to get you married?"

"Probably? To his little chosen heir, I think." She looks amused by the way he splutters helplessly. "I wasn't paying attention, and my mother refused anyway. That's why I'm the 'recalcitrant wretch', if you were wondering."

How she manages to sound so nonchalant as she says it, Percy doesn't know. It takes effort to lower his voice to a reasonable octave when he goes to speak again.

"And what did your father say?"

"He never heard. He spent all the years after we moved to Tokyo trying to win back his heirship by becoming a great sorcerer, and he ended up getting his face bitten off going after a grade-one solo a few months before my tenth birthday."

When and where in the unholy hell does this story end?!

Percy tries to keep his internal screaming off his face, really he does, but something must slip past anyway because Shoko laughs wryly.

"It is pretty bad, isn't it?"

Bad doesn't cover it.

Percy's not often lost for words or regretful - he almost never shuts up and he's the type to own his mistakes so completely they stop being mistakes and start becoming dots in the rearview mirror, actually - but he's got nothing to say and 'regretful' doesn't even begin to describe how miserable he feels after listening to this utter freaking tragedy of a story.

He's also feeling more than a little murderous and is liable to stab her grandfather the next time he sees him - which should have all kinds of problematic downsides in the long term, but honestly, he's not seeing very many at the moment.

Luckily, he doesn't get a chance to voice any of this.

There's a change in the air, a sudden pressure that wasn't there a moment before, and a figure runs out into the clearing in front of them.

It's Kazoha-san, and she's a sight.

Her hair is strewn wildly, her breaths are heaving and painful, and her kimono is littered with dirt stains and tears like she'd just taken a tumble across the forest floor as she ran.

Percy can feel Shoko's confusion at the sight.

"What?-"

Kazuha catches sight of them abruptly, and her eyes well up with panicked tears.

"Curse-!" She manages to spit out, and then the tree line behind her explodes as the biggest reptile Percy has ever seen erupts out of it and charges at them with a bloodcurdling roar.

...


Shoko's childhood in a nutshell:



View: https://imgur.com/Ao0RGFK


Also, Shoko and Percy internally when her tragic backstory is interrupted by the plot:



View: https://imgur.com/VQqqmxI​

As always, leave your comments and ideas, and if you don't like it, please be courteous.

If you feel like it, please consider supporting me on Ko-fi: Firewillreign

 

[Firewillreign]

The absolute monster that erupts out from beyond the treeline and charges at them like a freight train with a grudge looks like the unholy prehistoric spawn of a Komodo dragon and a chameleon that got cloned back to life in Jurrasic Park, complete with rows of bristling spines trailing down its gargantuan back and along its tail, distended eyeballs hanging from its jowl like a mane, and two stacked jaws full of spearlike teeth so massive and crooked they actually seem to prevent it from snapping it's maw shut.

Both of them.

Lovely.

The funny thing is that, as far as most curses go, it isn't the most hideous of its kind Percy had ever seen - though to be fair, that bar is already so low to the ground it's practically a tripping hazard into hell.

So-

A mission that starts with a plethora of cursed victims no one can explain, a friend's childhood history that inspires genuine homicidal urges, and now a curse the size of a small house bearing down on them with murderous intent, the rotten miasma of its cursed energy near-flooring and well into first-grade level.

Yeah, Percy's week is off to a great start.

Behind Kazuha, the curse roars and rises up on its hind legs, sweeping a taloned limb through the air in a deadly arc to her fleeing back, ready to carve her into chunks.

Percy gets there first.

Trusting Shoko to get her aunt out of dodge, he slides into place just before the talons arrive. The curse hisses in palpable confusion when instead of flesh, its claws ram into and stall against the wall of water that had spontaneously risen between them.

It rears back to try again, but Percy doesn't give it a chance - he crouches down and leaps straight up, soaring above the dangling eyeballs - and wow, he takes it all back, this thing is gross - over its snout, clearing the top of its head before he kicks off another burst of water mid-air and lands on it's muzzle.

Then he clenches his fist and punches down.

Logic dictates that Percy - being about the size of a particularly large fly in comparison to this thing - shouldn't be able to do much of anything to it with just a fist.

Logic is also, in his expert opinion, entirely overrated - and likely died a long time ago.

His fist meets poison-green scales, and his cursed energy detonates like a landmine that blows even the air around them away. The curse's muzzle buckles inwards, the force driving its skull right into the ground as its forelegs legs collapse out from underneath it.

Dirt and stone are violently gouged beneath its flailing bulk as it screeches in pained outrage, but it's not out for the count yet.

"Tough bastard, aren't you?"

Percy goes to hit it again, but something moves in the corner of his vision and his instincts scream. He jumps back just as the spines lining its back burst out in a shower of messy gore and lance right toward him, curving and whipping about like violent tentacles as he bounds out of their range.

He grimaces through the splatters of purple blood as he angles himself to land away from them, hits the ground running and starts circling its flank - It's stuff like this that makes him miss his sword.

The curse's myriad eyes twitch and spin in their sockets when its spines fail to shred him before a half dozen of them seem to sharpen and focus on him in its periphery. Its head snaps up and around faster than Percy expected it to be able to move, and its lower jaw unhinges.

He spots something shifting at the back of its gullet, and his eyes widen.

"Wait, seriously-?"

A torrent of steaming liquid erupts out of it and he ends up throwing himself to the side again as what can only be the curse's equivalent of acid rains down where he'd standing a second ago. The scent of it is noxious on the nose and painful, the ground where he'd been standing begins to bubble and warp beneath it and the grass at the edges of the splash zone actually lights on fire.

Right. Finishing this now.

For a second, he's tempted to try and control the acid - giving this thing a taste of its own medicine would be fitting, really - but something in his gut violently recoils at the thought of potentially using his power on something so disgusting.

Instead, he goes another route.

He glides to a stop behind the curse, and slams his foot against the ground. His cursed energy shoots down his leg, past the sole of said foot and deep underneath the earth.

There's a half-second delay, and then the earth heaves upwards and splinters open as a veritable geyser explodes out from underneath the curse with all the pressure of a rocket achieving lift-off. The curse gets off one ear-piercing screech as it gets propelled upwards into the air, colossal bulk and all, before Percy throws out a hand palm-first and uses the same move he'd pulled on Satoru during their very first spar.

Water pools into an orb inches off his skin, the pressure inside of it builds for just a beat, and then he lets it rip as a jet that carves up through the air before it meets the descending curse and carves straight through it like a hot knife through butter, tearing it into uneven halves.

And done.

Percy lets himself smile victoriously as the remnants crash down on either side of him, already wilting away into nothingness as exorcised curses always did.

"Under a minute. Not too shabby."

He'd like to see Satoru or Suguru beat that-

"Percy!"

Shoko's yell is laced with genuine fear, and his victory turns to ashes on his tongue as he whirls on the spot.

She's on the ground, cradling a limp Kazuha's head on her lap, and at first, he fears the worst - before he notices the rhythmic rise and fall of her chest.

His relief is still short-lived, however, because it doesn't take him more than a second look to pinpoint exactly what it is that has Shoko in the most distress he's seen from her yet.

Beneath the dirt, the grime, and the myriad of blossoming bruises and scrapes she must have picked up bolting through the woods, Kazuha's skin has gone an all too familiar shade of unnatural white, and she doesn't stir no matter how much Shoko's hands tremble against her scalp.

His friend turns to stare up at him in an entirely unrestrained panic, but Percy can't do anything but stare back helplessly.

There's nothing he can do here.

Kazuha's been cursed.

...​

The clan compound hadn't been left untouched in the wake of the curse's attack.

By the time they get back to meet up with Suguru, Satoru, and Shoji-sensei, there are dozens of clan members running around desperately trying to clear up this and that, and Kiyohira himself seems to be having a fit regarding half the main wing - or rather, the complete lack thereof.

Apparently, the curse had torn through the western gate - which Percy hadn't even known existed - and rampaged across the grounds leaving poison and ruin in its wake, blasting its way into the main house and out the other side.

Then it somehow caught sight of Kazuha, for whatever reason, and left in pursuit.

The rest was obvious.

It was just bad luck that neither Satoru nor Suguru were in the compound when it happened, but that didn't matter in the slightest right now.

They don't stop to explain any of it. Percy and Shoko drop Kazuha off in the infirmary, side-step Kiyohira furious snarling and immediately get back to the others.

"We have a problem." Percy declares as they step into the room, and Shoko slams the sliding door shut behind them.

"You think?" Suguru stares flatly, then he looks over his shoulder and winces. "Shit, Shoko, We just heard-"

"Don't bother." Shoko shakes her head, eyes blank and distant. "Seriously. Do not."

Suguru grimaces and nods firmly.

"Okay."

"We've been investigating the curses in the village," Shoji-sensei explains warily, dabbing his forehead with a handkerchief. "The number of disappearances is.... worse than what I had anticipated, and we ran amok of three first-grade curses."

"It was no big deal," Satoru mutters derisively, and Suguru jabs him with his elbow.

"We tracked a few more on the far end of the village," Suguru explains. "And by the time we were done... so was the mess here. Can you not wake your aunt up yourself?"

Percy slumps - he had just asked the same question - but Suguru hadn't caught him shaking his head behind Shoko's back in time.

"The one person I woke up tried to tear his own face off within five seconds of getting up." They all wince "I'm not risking that with her."

The finality in her voice is sobering - and then Satoru pipes up.

"On that note - Kenji's dead."

...

Percy blinks and tilts his head in confusion.

"Who?"

"Yeah, that was my reaction too."

"Satoru!" Suguru snaps "Show some tact!"

"What? It's not like you remembered who he was either!" Satoru throws his hands up in exasperation and turns to Shoko - who's looking a lot less confused and a lot more panicked, if subtly. Her expression is the kind Percy recognizes as being forcefully calm and her fists are clenched by her sides so tightly that the knuckles are nearly bone white against her skin. "He's the guy you woke up yesterday. They say the curse got a handful of people, but they were just in the way."

His eyes gleam with a grim kind of interest.

"It went after him specifically. Swallowed him whole and everything."

There's a pause as they all process that.

The implications... aren't good.

"So..." It's Suguru who raises his voice next, panning his eyes "Shoko wakes the guy up, he goes insane, and in less than a day, a first-grade curse targets and kills him. Just like that?"

"And don't forget, in a clan compound too. This place isn't anything special - no offense-"

Satoru says this to Shoko, who stares back at him flatly.

"You cannot fathom how little I care."

"-But there are wards to repel curses around, and that thing ignored them entirely. That doesn't just happen." He grins meanly, in that way Percy still hasn't been able to break him out of. "This is turning out to be interesting!"

"Interesting. Riiight." Shoko's answering drawl is caustic, but it's not aimed at Satoru. It's not aimed at any of them, truly. "That's one word for it."

She glances back at Shoji-sensei.

"We need to find whatever it is that's causing this - that's the only way we figure out a way to get my aunt back on her feet and us the hell out of this shithole."

"I have an idea about that, too."

Four sets of eyes round on Satoru at once, who looks supremely smug.

"Are you seriously withholding information just to be dramatic?"

Suguru is starting to look apoplectic. Even Percy's tempted to smack him this time.

"Satoru-"

"Fine, fine. You guys are no fun." He pouts for a second, and Suguru's fingers start twitching. "I saw something, with my eyes. When we were heading back, right after we took care of the curses."

"'Something?'" Percy prods, and Satoru shrugs.

"I don't know what it was, but it was far, far out, and it looked like a flare of residual cursed energy." He pauses and nods meaningfully, "And it looked familiar, too - almost exactly like the cursed energy inside the downed sorcerers."

He points his thumb in the direction over his shoulder, and Shoko's eyes narrow like a hawk.

"There's nothing there. Just wilderness, and-" She pauses. Percy feels himself tense. "There's a small cave system that opens up over the hills. We used to go there on day trips before I left."

Satoru snaps his fingers and smirks.

"And there we go. Lead, found. The point goes to me."

"This... is promising," Shoji-sensei admits before he shakes his head and startles them all. "But we can't all head out. There's still unusual curse activity in the village, and gods forbid another attack on the compound. Geto-san, Ieri-san, you'll stay. Jackson-san, Gojo-san, you're with me."

"What?"

Shoko doesn't say a word, but Suguru's immediate indignant response is loud enough for both of them.

This time, though, Shoji-sensei's prepared for it.

"Your technique makes you the first line of defense and an invaluable force multiplier in the event of another attack - or are you willing to leave this village and the injured here undefended?"

That shuts his friend right up.

"I didn't think so." Shoji-sensei nods firmly, and. His hand instinctively goes to the katana he had slung over his shoulder as if to check it was there one last time. "Let's not waste time, then."

He strides for the door. Satoru raises an unimpressed eyebrow at his retreating back.

"He sounds all confident and righteous, but just you watch. The second anything worse than a grade two shows up, he'll be cowering behind us."

Suguru closes his eyes and bows his head, pinching the bridge of his nose. "You'll never get better."

"Nope!" Satoru agrees cheerily, and then he walks out after Shoji-sensei.

Percy lingers behind just a little and steps up next to Shoko.

"Hey. It's going to be fine." He tries to put as much reassuring confidence as he can fit into his words. "We're going to figure this out."

"We'd better." She agrees after a long minute, but it's halfhearted at best. "She's the only one to come out of this clan worth a damn."

"That's not true."

She frowns. "What?"

"There's you too."

...

They stare at each other in silence.

"You're so freaking corny."

He smiles sheepishly, "Yeah, I heard it as soon as I said it."

He still means it, though, and he gets the sense that they both know it.

She sighs and shakes her head, something flashing in her eyes too quickly for him to follow.

"Just don't get killed out there, you idiot, and watch the other two while you're at it."

"Please. I've got the survivability of a cockroach, Satoru's borderline invincible, and Shoji-sensei knows what he's doing. We'll be fine."

That finally nets him a laugh, if just barely.

"If you die, I am going to make so much fun of you for that."

Percy grins.

"Duly noted."

...​

Getting to the caves as the sun set was the easy part. Sprinting the five or so miles from the village outskirts to the spot Shoko had marked out hardly counted as a light workout - not with their lifestyle.

It was navigating inside of the caves that was the real trouble.

The tunnel they started into ran deep, and it trailed down the farther in they went. The air was damp with moisture, and the stone beneath it was uneven and dangerous. An ordinary person would have had to worry about slipping and breaking their neck - the three of them had to worry about a whole other kind of problem.

"Are we getting any closer?" Percy whispers to Satoru, craning his senses in as much as he can.

There was something off here, an odd trailing down the back of his spine that he recognized as the presence of unfamiliar cursed energy, but it was muted.

Almost suspiciously so.

Beyond that, he had nothing. It wasn't him who was born with the extra-special vision.

"Close enough," Satoru answers, gaze peeled dead ahead. The blue glow of his six-eyes was almost searing against the darkness they were marching into, so bright that even the torchlight they had didn't do much to take away from it. "We're getting close - oh."

They turn around another bend, weaving around a row of twisted stalagmites, and step right into a nightmare.

The cavern alone is enormous and awash with light, a sharp orange glow radiating out from the rows of torches someone had lit along the walls. There are stalactites descending down from above, shadows shifting over them from the flickers flames, and beneath the lowest hanging of those them are the bodies.

"We found the missing victims," Percy says, a little dumbly, because what in the twisted hell is this?

There are dozens and dozens of them crammed against the cold weathered stone, and curses are growing on them - ugly, maggot-like creatures in various shades of black and purple and grey, their twisted little forms burrowing against human flash and leaving trails of slime and muck as they flowed over and piled up against the victims's skin.

The smell of it alone is something Percy's never going to forget.

"This is something else." Satoru's murmurs, a sickened kind of fascination lacing the words. "There's cursed energy inside of them... the same as the others... and it looks like it's yanking their own out and feeding it to the flyheads."

He pauses, blinks, and tilts his head back in disbelief.

"Yikes. It's like they're being farmed for cursed energy."

Shoji-sensei suddenly gasps, and Percy and Satoru glance back at him. They watch the blood drain from his face in real time as Satoru's words connect the final pieces of whatever puzzle had been running through his head.

"Gods... I know what this is."

His voice trembles and the expression on his face is the first of its kind Percy has ever seen from him - complete and utter existential terror.

"I know what's doing this."

"What?"

"That would be me."

The cursed spirit is already behind them by the time Satoru and Percy whirl around, which is a feat in itself.

It looms over them with four eyes and long back hair that extends all the way down to the back of its legs, and a face that looks like a blank-grey puppet head that'd been split in two. Its light-colored kimono shifts in an invisible breeze as it hovers down until its four-toed feet are only inches off the ground, and its hands stay behind its green hems as it spreads its arms in what can almost be called a greeting.

None of them are fooled.

"Special-grade cursed spirit," Shoji-sensei whispers in despair, and his hands go limp with despair. "Tamamo-no-Mae Incarnate."

"Well," A sibilant, raspy voice emerges from beneath the mask, absolutely dripping with malice. The way the four eyes roam over them is little better. "It is good to be recognized."

Then a wave of nigh-overpowering cursed energy roars into being, and all hell breaks loose.

...


Next Chapter: Shit hits the fan at near-terminal velocity.


The mood this entire chapter:

View: https://imgur.com/ykcXGJ1




Shoko externally:

View: https://imgur.com/BJauyFI


Shoko Internally:

View: https://imgur.com/G34ycwb​

As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it, please be courteous.

If you feel like it, please consider supporting me on Ko-fi: Firewillreign

 

[sadghost]

Thanks for the chapter!
Percy being oblivious will always be funny

 

[Firewillreign]

The difference between Hora Shoji and his students will never be more apparent than it is in the immediate, near-instant aftermath of the special grade's appearance.

"Well. It is good to be recognized."

Faced with that power, that malice... that sheer and undeniable monstrous presence that Tamamo-no-Mae Incarnate's very existence radiates, he can do nothing more than freeze, his spine turning to ice and his heart hammering against his chest

A single, pitiful thought plays out across his mind in a desperate loop as the fear roots him in place, consuming all sense and will in its way.

'But she's supposed to be sealed.'

Even to himself, it's pathetic.

In sharp contrast, Satoru and Percy don't balk. They don't gawk.

They don't even look at each other, much less take a second to speak.

They just lunge, fists drawn back and coated with cursed energy right from the get-go.

Just the initial movement is so fast that he almost loses sight of them - but Tamamo-no-Mae does not.

The cursed spirit soars back out of range as his students fling themselves at it. Percy throws out his hand as the distance between them grows, and a stream of rushing water shoots forward to pierce through it. It weaves aside to avoid the attack and inadvertently floats right into Satoru's range, which kicks out at its head with gleeful relish.

"Head's up!"

The impact is brutally rattling, and it sends it hurtling toward Percy's following uppercut. Shoji hears a sound akin to ceramic shattering as that impact sends the curse spiralling upwards, a spider-web of cracks spreading through its grotesque lower face before it suddenly stills, momentum dying as it hovers above his students and the field of its victims they'd stumbled into amidst their pursuit.

The fight suddenly lulls.

"How rude." It purrs, its voice echoing across the cavern in triplicates. It sounds unconcerned by the damage it's taken, and Shoji's stomach drops as he watches the cracks on its mask seal shut and vanish as if they never were. "To trespass and attack me in my own demesne and not even introduce yourselves beforehand."

"Fair enough." Satoru grins up at it, just as. "I'm Gojo Satoru. That's Percy Jackson. You must be the local eyesore!"

"It's absolutely terrible to meet you," Percy adds in his own bit, because of course, he must.

His students are suicidal and have no sense of self-preservation - Shoji almost laughs hysterically through his fear.

"Such insolence!"

He's not sure who moves first - it's all an incomprehensible blur - but the result ends with Percy and Satoru on either side of a lunging Tamamo-no-Mae. Their fists lash out as they close in on either side of it, but the curse contracts with a sickening popping sound, its frame folding like an origami figure to avoid the blows.

"What-?"

Percy's fist alone still graces its misshapen arm, but the closeness leaves him open to the savage kick that connects with his chest at an angle no living being could have managed, and sends him soaring back with the wind knocked out of him, his flight ending as he slams into the cavern wall so much force that the entire structure seems to tremble.

In the same motion, the curse ducks low to the ground, crouching as its body unfolds and a clawed six-fingered hand emerges out of the right hem of its kimono before it leaps for Satoru's throat -

"Gotcha!"

- and immediately freezes when it flies head-first into the waiting embrace of his Infinity.

"Thanks for that. I'm never letting him live that one down." Satoru grins over the curse's shoulder at Percy, enjoying the sight of his friend digging himself out with a put-off look on his face. He even leans into it close enough that the very tips of its claws are poised right over his left shoulder, supremely unconcerned by the possible threat. "But it's all for you, though. Sorry!"

Shoji's blood pressure has never been this high.

"Is it?"

Satoru blinks.

"You are mildly impressive, six-eyes." The Gojo scion's face twists in indignant outrage at the description, and he opens his mouth to speak. "But I have witnessed both of your cursed blessings at their best. You are not the strongest of your kind I have ever met, and you are certainly no Sugawara Michizane."

There's inexplicable confidence and meaning in the centuries-old curse's words - and it sends a fresh jolt of dread racing through Shoji.

Before he can so much as get a word out, the unimaginable happens.

"Domain Amplification."

Satoru's eyes widen in shock as Tamamo-no-Mae moves despite his active Infinity, its free hand lashing out toward him in a wide but blisteringly rapid arc.

He scrambles back in a way that's entirely unlike him, retreating for what had to be the first time in years, but it's too late.

Its talons shred through his jacket and the shirt below, and Shoji sees the bloody rents that have been torn into his student's flesh as he flings himself back in pained disbelief.

"Satoru!"

Percy descends down on the curse from above, but Tamamo-no-Mae is already flitting away before he lands feet-first with enough power to pulverize the stone beneath him, first blood successfully drawn.

She arcs back in the air to loom over them, arms spread wide in the ominous declaration.

"It is time for all of you to suffer."

It happens in seconds, and it starts with the fly heads - the maggots across the cavern abruptly warp, erupting with wings that carry them up and up in a wave of malevolent cursed energy. The swarm of them is sickening, but they don't attack - they rise until they all but blanket the air above, melding together along the stone ceiling and around stalactites as they wait for their master's signal.

It's the victims who move next - the same near-corpses they'd thought had been dead and rotting begin to rise, limbs unnaturally slack, eyes milky-white and insensate. They, too, swarm around as Tamamo-no-Mae drops out of the air and stands amidst them.

"It's her technique - they're still alive." Satoru snarls in furious disgust, eyes raging. He'd been summoning the beginnings of his blue, but the technique sputtered out and died in his grasp the moment he comprehended what it was he was witnessing. "She's pulling on their cursed energy."

Percy looks no less horrified.

"She's using them as shields."

Of course she is.

Shoji's read up on this curse, once - one of the sixteen special grades registered in the sorcerer archives.

Tamamo-no-Mae: Innate technique - Nightmare Puppetry - expressed as the ability to poison victims with cursed energy that trapped them in their own nightmares and allowed the curse itself to draw out and feed on the negativity they produced in turn, all while piloting their bodies until they wasted away beneath the strain.

It was rumoured to be capable of more, gods forbid, but that didn't matter.

Not now, because for as long as the dozens of victims she had present were alive, Percy and Satoru couldn't unleash the full breadth of their techniques.

Not without killing them all in turn.

It was a perfect trap - And gods damn it all, Shoji still can't move.

And then the curse speaks once more, and brings it's clawed hands togethere to form a mudra.

"It's over."

No.

"Domain Expansion: Malignant Sarugaku!"

No.

Satoru moves, leaping in front of Percy - and then both are gone as the dome of pure black vanishes them both from his sight.

No!

...​

Oh, shit.

Percy knows what a domain expansion is - knows very well, in fact - and this was the absolute worst-case scenario possible.

The second the barrier closes around them, Satoru is already there and raising his fists up in what is clearly a practiced movement.

"Simple Domain!"

Cursed energy encircles the two of them in a single breath, creating an effect that does something he can't quite perceive - and he doesn't have a chance to try and understand it either, because he's too busy staring out at the disaster in front of them.

Just ahead, the ground had shifted.

Instead of rock, Tamamo-no-Mae stands on an elevated performance stage, four-toed feet bare against the wood. Surrounding the stage were its victims, all of them foaming at the mouth and staring them down with glassy eyes.

"You may deny my domain, for now, but a petty trick will not save you!" The curse declares, "Bring them to me!"

The former civilians react like a pack of trained hounds - they go rabid and charge right at them, their movements enhanced by the cursed energy pouring out of them.

"I'll shield us from the sure hit, you deal with that," Satoru yells, and Percy doesn't question it - not when he sounds like that for the first time since he's met him.

One sweep of his arm sends a wave roaring forward at the charging crowd, and they scatter like bowling pins, but he has to keep the pressure on as they scramble to get back on their feet almost immediately.

Fine then.

Percy glares and throws his other hand palm out right in the curse's direction, willing the full force of the ocean to surge to his fingertips as he commands the water he's already summoned to sweep aside its thralls and give him a clear shot.

One shot, and he'll take out the problem at the source.

Seeing this, Tamamo-no-Mae actually laughs. The sound of it reverberates around the domain chillingly.

"A contest of power? As you wish!"

It raises a hand up, and the fly heads it summoned before descend at once, melting into motes of cursed energy as they descend and converge on Tamamo-no-Mae palm. They rapidly meld into a twisted amalgamation of swirling power, sparking with purple and green radiance.

"Oi, Percy-!"

"I know, Satoru!"

The power between them all swells - in as much as it can in the seconds that pass - and just as it's about to reach a peak and erupt -

"What!?"

A miracle occurs.

There's a burst, and a sound of something breaking, and an opening is carved into the barrier trapping them here.

All three of them stare as Shoji-sensei drops in through the hole he'd punctured in the domain's barrier, face screwed up in red, foreign rage and sword awash with what to be just about all the cursed energy he could muster.

He lands before them with a splash of water, unharmed as the domain's sure-hit effect sputters out, and aims the tip of his sword right at Tamamo-no-Mae

"YOU WILL NOT HARM MY STUDENTS!"

No. Freaking. Way.

"Holy shit."

Percy hears Satoru whisper as the domain falls apart around them, and he can't judge him for it. His own jaw's already gone slack in disbelief.

Tamamo-no-Mae's cursed energy dissipates like a popped balloon, and even though that tragedy of a face is about as expressionless as anything can get, he sees those four eyes narrow in an unholy rage.

"You dare-!"

And then it's interrupted again.

"Hey, you twisted bitch!"

Percy's grin threatens to split his face as Suguru and Shoko erupt into the cavern, a small army of the former's curses flowing in behind the pair with a collective roar that could deafen the dead.

He doesn't know why they left the village undefended -apparently - but right now he's so happy to see them he can barely think of that.

"About time you guys-!"

The words sputter out at the back of his throat as Shoko bolts forward and past them, making eye contact with him once, eyes set in determination, and then keeps on going.

Right into the crowd of possessed victims, within striking distance of the special-grade curse.

And that's when everything gets really wild.

...​

Then:

Percy let himself sprawl across the grass, groaning as he raised a forearm to shield his eyes against the sunlight.

"This is hopeless."

"I told you," Shoko mutters in amusement, sitting a distance away beneath the tree shade and idly flipping through her magazine. "Sorcerors spend their whole lives trying to master this - you're not going to do it just by wanting it very hard."

"Expand my soul to create ideal environment to draw out my technique?'" He complains in her general direction, utterly exhausted but just as bullheaded as when he'd started. "How do I do that? What does that even mean?"

She snorts again, and he shoots her a dirty look.

"And why aren't you trying yourself? I know you want to punch Satoru as much as I do sometimes."

"The only person who doesn't want to punch Satoru is Satoru. His mother probably had to resist the urge to deck him five seconds after he was born."

They both laugh at that one, but Percy doesn't let them segue away from the idea.

"Seriously, though? Get up here and train with me!"

"I don't have a technique, remember?" She shakes her head and turns back to her magazine - it is their free period, after all. "There's no point in it for me."

"The hell there isn't! You spent a half-hour lecturing me on all the benefits, and some of them don't even rely on a technique! You don't need one to try!"

That gives her pause - but only for a second.

"Maybe not, but it's still borderline impossible. Why bother?"

"Why not?" Percy grins and staggers to his feet "The only right way to do anything is to go in believing you can do everything until you can't, and then trying again and doing it anyway."

Shoko gives him a dry look.

"How do you function? Like, really?"

"Spite, skill, and being awesome." He replies without missing a beat, the grin never leaving his face. "Oh, and the hours of practice help as well."

He nods pointedly, and she rolls her eyes.

"That sounds like a lot of effort for what's almost definitely a lost cause."

Shoko expects to end the argument there - really, this talk is all pointless.

A total waste of time.

But then Percy does what Percy often does and surprises her again.

"No cause is lost until you give up on it, even if you only win back an inch for every mile. That's worth something - even if it seems impossible, try. Go down swinging - trust me, it feels a whole lot better than quitting, and you won't come out of it feeling like a total loser."

...

Well.

That was disgustingly idealistic. If being a sorcerer didn't work out, Percy could probably eke out a living writing a line of motivational greeting cards for grade schoolers.

And yet...

Shoko doesn't dismiss the words out of hand, despite her better judgement.

"And if you lose anyway?"

She's only mildly curious, but Percy looks delighted when he speaks again.

"You don't really. It's not over until you say it's over. And honestly, Shoko?"

...​

Now:

"I don't think any of us are the type to give up easy either way, so get off your ass already!"

The words echo in her mind, along with half-formed ideas and goals that all fight for dominance - each just as important as the last.

Kazuha-Obasan. Her friends. Ending this damned mission and leaving this shitty village behind, once and for all.

Shoko doesn't let herself think beyond that - if she does, her insane plan will probably go up in smoke and she'll look like a real idiot for her last remaining moments on earth before she gets killed by the enraged special-grade curse.

Fuck. That.

So she runs.

Right out of the frying pan and into the fire, letting the puppets of Tamamo-no-Mae converge on and reach for her with mindless but decidedly murderous intent.

The curse itself seems to ignore her, face angled to stare down Percy and Satoru.

Even Shoji-sensei seems to warrant more attention.

And that, right there, is its greatest mistake - it puts the final nail in the coffin of Shoko's doubts.

Because if there's one good thing this mission has accomplished, it's reminding her that she's so very tired of being dismissed.

The first of the puppets reach her, fingertips brushing against her shoulder.

Someone yells.

And she - Ieri Shoko, who possesses no cursed technique and cursed energy reserves that are just barely above average - slams her palms together, interlocks her fingers, and achieves the impossible.

...​

"With a strong foundation and a little bit of sense and imagination, it just takes the slightest trigger to change a person."

...








"Domain Expansion: Ungrudging Sanctum!"








...




Satoru getting his first taste of Domain Amplification:





View: https://imgur.com/Vqh6NyF




Shoji getting so angry of being useless that he hulks out and actually does something useful:





View: https://imgur.com/dNkYtzO




Shoko at the end, when she stops thinking and lets her 'fuck this I'm out' energy do the talking:





View: https://imgur.com/me6qOfN​

As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it, please be courteous.

If you feel like it, please consider supporting me on Ko-fi: Firewillreign.

 

[MaHaL]

And she - Ieri Shoko, who possesses no cursed technique and cursed energy reserves that are just barely above average - slams her palms together, interlocks her fingers, and achieves the impossible.

...​

"With a strong foundation and a little bit of sense and imagination, it just takes the slightest trigger to change a person."

...

"Domain Expansion: Ungrudging Sanctum!"​

Click to shrink...

Shoko about to slap her domain down via sheer "fuck it we ball" energy and proving why you don't fuck with the healers.

 

[Firewillreign]

"Domain Expansion: Ungrudging Sanctum!"

In an instant, Shoko's domain - and holy shit, she did it - explodes out and overtakes the cavern.

Several things happen in quick succession.

One

Percy stutters to a halt as the scenery around them changes. The rock underfoot becomes a familiar meadow of green grass, and the ceiling melts into a blue, sunlit sky.

The forest of cedar trees grows out surrounding the glade, and right in front of him is the same torri gate that Shoko had taken them to earlier, the komainu lions carved proudly on either side of it somehow more complete and less age-worn than they were before.

Beyond it, the shrine they hadn't stepped foot near is shrouded in faintly translucent white mist, and it exudes power like there's no end to it.

No.

Not power.

Percy breathes as the positive energy washes over him, and brings with it the oddest sense of peace. His cursed energy seems to shrivel and retreat inside of him, but the strange loss of control doesn't leave him feeling any weaker.

No, somehow, he feels stronger and healthier and better than he's ever felt before, a blissful warmth welling and spreading from and over every inch of him until he can't help but stop and bask in it.

Behind him, Satoru inhales sharply as the rents the curse had carved into his chest knit back together and leave smooth, unblemished skin without so much as a hint of scarring left behind. Shoji-sensei's shoulders droop and he gasps in quiet, awed confusion as the strain he'd put himself through vanishes like it had never been there at all, and even Suguru's clenched fists go slack in astonished relief he hadn't even known he'd needed.

Two

Shoko stands triumphant, head tilted back and eyes closed in the wake of accomplishing something truly magnificent. The smile that she wears is completely open and unbound in a way unlike anything Percy's seen from her before, and it pulls and pulls at her lips until she bursts into victorious, nearly deranged laughter that echoes around her domain endlessly.

She looks like someone who's fought against the weight of the heavens themselves and managed to come out on top regardless - and there are none that can deny her success. Around her, the victims of Tamamo-no-Mae that had been rushing at her collapse, instantly and without struggle, like puppets with their strings cut.

Even as they fall at her feet, their skin colors once more, bruises and cuts fade, and the oppressive residuals of cursed energy and muted malevolence are wiped off of them without a trace.

Three




"̴̢̡̭̜̭̤̹̱̻͇̯̩̙͎͉̓͜ͅN̵̲͖̬̤͙̎͒͆͂͆̐͛̅̏̌͋̃̏͛͑̔͘O̵̡̨̟̦̤̩̲̠̝̪͛͌̀͘!̸̰̯̺̎̊͂́̋̓̍̽́͑̄̄̀͗͘"̴̡̮͖̲͔͉̍͊̍̒͂̍̈́̍̐̃̔͐̃́



Tamamo-no-Mae screams.

The curse howls and writhes in the air as it lights up with an off-white glow, bucking and thrashing against nothing at all as the overabundant positive energy - the natural opposite of a curse's existence - burns at its very essence.

Suguru's curses don't do the same - they're already disintegrated into nothingness, eradicated the moment the domain had snapped into being.

Four

The domain collapses - it's something new, unrefined, and it doesn't hold for long as the barrier containing it crumbles. The landscape Shoko had conjured dissolves with it, and Tamamo-no-Mae - still flailing and screeching - soars headfirst into the cavern wall behind it with so much desperate and uncontrolled power it buries itself a foot into the stone with a spectacularly brutal impact and a shower of dust and debris.

Boom.

The curse collapses as it tries to emerge from the crater it had made for itself, and ends up crawling forwards all fours, panting and gasping in a truly pitiful display.

Percy can tell that it's weaker now - lesser than it was before.

By a lot.

It hardly reacts as the five of them close in on it, and even when it does, it chooses to focus only on Shoko.

"What have you done to me!?"

Shoko, still chuckling helplessly, takes a long second to put herself together. She glances Percy's way, cheeks flushed and eyes alight with delight, and he finds himself automatically matching her wild grin tit for tat.

"I honestly haven't got a clue. Let me get back to you on that one, you ugly sack of shit."

The curse hisses - and then shrinks back when Satoru steps into its line of sight.

"In the meantime, you can have three guesses on what we're going to do to you now," He says with a smile, and oh, that's pure halfway-to-unhinged murder in his eyes. He puts his hands together and cracks his knuckles menacingly. "The first two don't count."

"You-!"

None of them care to let the curse get in a single word more.

Satoru moves first, rushing in like a man with a grudge - and fair enough, that - and Shoko dives in after him, and Suguru and Percy and even Shoji-sensei follows, and the five of them...

Well...

There are no other words for it.

They jump the fucking curse.

Tamamo-mae howls as Shoko's wild haymaker shatters half of its mask, it wails as Satoru seizes its left arm and wrenches until the limb is literally ripped out of its socket, it gets folded over as Percy's kick flies in out of nowhere, and even Suguru gets in on the action with a savage backhand and the flings it right back to Satoru, and the less said about what happens after that, the better.

The carnage lasts only until Shoji-sensei slides in and slices its last remaining arm with the kind of vengeful relish only someone who's been pushed so far out of their comfort zone something in them snaps can muster, and then they pause.

The curse groans, half-pulverized face still trapped beneath Satoru's grinding foot, and a silent agreement passes through them with nothing but the power of eye contact.

It's downright impressive, really.

"This would be the point where we exorcise you," Percy tells it cheerfully. "But I think that'd be too easy."

"You screwed with a lot of people." Shoko agrees. "And while a bunch of them I wouldn't lose any sleep over, you messed with my aunt, ugly. You shouldn't have done that. Suguru?"

His friend sighs, brushing his bangs aside with a steady hand.

"I'm not your garbage disposal system." He grunts, but he's not fooling anyone.

Not with the way his teeth are barred and that viciously satisfied set to his face.

....Man, they're all a little nuts, aren't they?

"Wait-"

Suguru ignores Tamamo-no-Mae's last rasp with practiced ease and raises his hand out palm-first. The curse buckles, twists, and then it gives one last wail as it's pulled from underneath Satorou's crushing hold and distorted, body stretching and twisting around them grotesquely before spiralling into Suguru's waiting hand like it's being sucked into a whirlpool.

Half a second later, a marble of purple and brown cursed energy condenses and drops into his grasp, and the deed is done.

Suguru grimaces as he stares at it in the momentary silence that follows.

"Great. I've lost over a dozen curses, and this one is going to suck."

Percy winces as he watches him lift it to his mouth quickly and pops it in his mouth, swallowing it as quickly as he can manage.

"At least you get a special grade out of it, right?" He tries to console him over his disgusted coughs.

"Yeah, and it tastes extra shitty."

"I'll get you a breath mint."

Satoru makes a disgusted sound.

"The hell for? Get him something sweet - like mochi. It'll wash the taste out better."

"Is all you think about mochi? Or sugar?"

"Don't judge me, dumbass, the only snacks you'll even eat are blue!"

"Oi! There's nothing wrong-!"

"Pfffft."

The three of them stop and turn to Shoko, and her shoulders are already heaving from the effort of suppressing her laughs.

"You're all. So. Stupid."

And then she throws back her head for the second time that day and absolutely loses it.

Percy tries to open his mouth to protest, but he ends up catching Suguru's eyes and Satoru's after him in quick succession, and the next thing he knows he's on his knees from the force of his own laughter and the other two just barely manage to stay on their feet.

Because really, she's not wrong.

Shoji-sensei doesn't laugh with them, but he does pinch the bridge of his nose and let out a sigh that's just on the side of amused and, dare he say it, fond - probably because he's still in shock at being alive. - and that's a victory in Percy's book if there ever was one.

Mission accomplished.

...​

The next day and a half are hectic.

By the time they manage to awaken, corral and lead all of Tamamo-no-Mae's former victims back to the village in one piece, the sun is already rising in the distance.

By the time they reach the clan compound a half-hour later, they're greeted by the clan head and a crowd of revived sorcerors, Kazuha at their wake.

They'd woken up the second Shoko had expanded her domain - go figure.

Percy grins when the older woman rushes in and draws Shoko into a hug.

"Hey, obasan. How was the nap?"

Yeah, this is great.

...​

"You've expanded a domain."

Kiyohira looks absolutely flabbergasted, disbelieving, and just a pinch furious.

It's hilarious.

"It's not perfect yet - It still needs refining." Shoko answers, but she doesn't deny it. "But yes, I did."

And man, had they spent hours talking about that. Satoru hadn't even bothered hiding his amazed envy - none of them had.

Of course, Shoko barely being able to explain the act beyond ' I stopped thinking and just did it' wasn't that helpful, but Percy would take what he could get.

"Preposterous. Impossible!"

Kiyohira glances towards Shoji-sensei, as if trying to force him to recant his report through sheer force of his indignant self-important outrage, but their teacher's face doesn't so much as twitch.

Apparently, standing up to a special-grade makes it easier to take on uppity old men with attitude problems.

Who knew?

"You have no innate technique!"

"No." Shoko agrees.

"You can not expand a domain without an innate technique!"

"And yet... I did." Shoko's tone is absolutely placid - and somehow manages to covey self-satisfaction and insulting smugness in the same breath.

Percy's impressed, he truly is. Ten out of ten on the delivery.

Even Suguru and Satoru are visibly struggling not to laugh.

"How?"

Shoko finally smiles, and then she rises from her seat and stretches leisurely. Kioyhira follows her with wild eyes and rapidly purpling skin.

"That's my business, isn't it?"

Then she turns around and heads for the door.

"Do not turn your back on me, girl! I have not dismissed you!"

Shoko doesn't answer. Kiyohira snarls and leaps to his feet.

"You will face me when I address you!"

Still no answer.

"Karasu Shoko, you will obey-!"

Percy sees it happen in slow motion.

Kiyohira's arm reaches out, seizing Shoko's shoulder in a vice grip, and his friend responds to this in an entirely calm and reasonable manner.

She whirls on the spot, cocks back her fist and drives it into her grandfather's nose with enough force that they all hear it crunch beneath the blow. The old man's head snaps back and he tumbles onto his ass like a complete tool, staring up at Shoko in stunned disbelief.

Bloody nose and all.

"My name..." She declares in the scene that follows. "Is Ieri Shoko."

She narrows her eyes and stares at her grandfather with utter contempt.

"Don't forget it, you old bastard."

"You-!"

And then she turns and strolls out of the room, the four of them - even shoji-sensei - following in her wake and leaving a gaping Kiyohira on the ground.

"My hero," Percy tells her in genuine admiration, and they all ignore the way Shoji-sensei exhales tiredly and reprimands him for it. "I've been wanting to do that since the second we met him."

Seriously, he'd had three close calls in the last ten minutes alone.

"He does have that effect on people."

Satoru snorts "Every elder in Japan has that effect on people."

Shoko considers that, and then raises an eyebrow.

"What's stopping you from doing the same?"

Satoru's answering grin is probably bad news all around, honestly.

"'What indeed?'"

"No." Shoji-sensei interrupts, sounding panicked. "Whatever it is you're plotting, no. The post-mission report is going to be a disaster as it is."

Percy laughs with the rest of them and pauses abruptly when he catches someone staring at them out of the corner of his eye.

It's a brown-haired kid dressed in a white kimono, staring at their little group with wide-eyes.

"Oi, Shoko."

"Hm?"

He points and she turns to spot the kid, who flushes a brilliant red and makes a noise that reminds him of a steaming kettle. He bows in their general direction, lower than Percy would have expected, and then takes off sprinting and rounds the corner so fast you'd think he was on fire.

Shoko blinks.

"Huh."

"Who was that?" Suguru asks, but Percy thinks he already knows.

"That was Kota-kun." Kazuha steps into view, drawing Shoko's attention back to her. "He awoke with the rest of us after you defeated the cursed spirit. He was very much eager to meet you, Shoko, but... perhaps now isn't the time."

"Probably not." His friend agrees, before pausing in sudden thought. "How did your precious clan heir even get infected, anyway? How would the special-grade have even gotten to him?"

To that, Kazuha actually shrugs.

"He accompanied Kenji-san on a training mission. It... did not go well, clearly."

"Clearly." Shoko agrees dryly.

There was a pause.

"I heard you were leaving." Kazuha asks, somewhat hesitantly.

"Yeah." Shoko answers nonchalantly. "Just have to finish packing."

"I see." Kazuha opens her mouth to speak, and closes it again.

Aunt and niece stare at each other, and a wealth of unspoken meaning passes between them.

In the end, Kazuha only smiles, a little sadly, and tips her head gently.

"Well done on your success, Shoko. I never doubted you were capable of it. Have a safe trip home, and give my regards to your mother."

Shoko stares at her a little more, before shrugging and taking half a step back.

"Give them to her yourself. There's nothing stopping you from visiting."

Kazuha seems taken aback by the suggestion, tilting her head in thought before her smile becomes just a little lighter.

"...No, I suppose there isn't."

And then she steps forward and draws Shoko into a final hug.

...

"..."

"..."

"..."

"This is soooooo awkward."

Oh, for the love of-!

Percy and Suguru immediately pounce on a protesting, flailing Satoru and start dragging him away.

"For once in your life, don't be an ass!"

"Seriously, Satoru, be better!"

And that, as they say, was that.

...​

Miles away, a figure reclined on a chair and sighed in disappointment.

"Done already?"

Tamamo-no-Mae had been defeated - And after all the effort they'd gone to awaken the irritating nuisance in the first place.

...Oh, well.

A slow smile began to spread across their visage, wide and menacing.

Disappointing performance aside, the curse had served its purpose. There was no longer a theoretical limit to the quality of curse Geto Suguru could consume, and the powers of the Six-eyes of this generation was decidedly subpar.

Excellent.

That sorcerers would likely grow stronger and more proficient in time... but not nearly enough to get ahead in his games. Not even the third special grade and the interesting girl in their orbit would make a difference in what was to come.

Yes, Kenjaku thought with growing relish, everything is going right according to plan.

...








The class demonstrates the sacred art of jumping!:









View: https://imgur.com/sa8w9Pl








Shoko getting her long-awaited catharsis:









View: https://imgur.com/IxNtUA3








Satoru witnessing the closest thing possible to a healthy relationship in the immediate vicinity and getting grossed out by the unfamiliar feels:









View: https://imgur.com/umdsnGQ​

As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it please be courteous.

If you feel like it, please consider supporting me on Ko-fi: Firewillreign.

 

[Herofox]

With Shoko unlocking her domain expansion, the class rep as a group of monster sorcerers is locked in I think.

With 3 Special Grades and a Domain Expansion User, they're already scarier than like 80%-90% of the verse at least.

 

[Firewillreign]

Have a canon mini-chapter before I officially go on a break before Arc 3.

---

It starts with a nymph, one of five beautiful, immortal sisters, born of a river goddess and titan mighty enough to lift up the heavens themselves.

One day, this nymph meets a hero.

He's bold, and brave and charming as any - and she swiftly falls in love.

When he chooses to follow his quest and battle a beast the nymph herself had fed and raised and watched grow into a terror beyond compare, so great is her fear for her hero that she gifts to him her mother's legacy, a weapon imbued with her own immortal power, in the hopes he would triumph and return to her whole.

The hero goes - he conquers, and triumphs, and spites even her own lord father - but he does not come back for her.

She waits, but he never returns, and when he retells the story of his victory, she who betrayed her own kin for him and had been cast out for it barely warrants remembrance.

That day, the nymph learns of betrayal and treachery, and she never forgets the weight of it.

...​

Love is the most twisted curse of all - love and a broken promise makes one that much greater.

The blade that was born of such never forgets the weight of it.

...​

The nymph would go on to become a huntress, sworn to a goddess of the moon.

Millennia later, she meets another hero on her own quest to save her mistress.

She does not care for him until the very end - discovering that he now holds the blade she'd once forged, a forsaken remnant of an old, cursed humiliation does nothing to endear him to her.

She endeavours to put him out of her mind.

Yet despite all the odds, he proves himself worthier than what she'd come to expect of his ilk.

In the end, she does not love him.

Not remotely - there is nothing of such between them.

But there is respect, and a measure of reluctant admiration, and acknowledgment, and that more than anything else makes all the difference.

She dies knowing that he will wield her power, and she's content.

...​

So is her blade - it would never abandon its worthy wielder, in this life or any other.

...​

A lifetime later:

Satoru and Suguru frown and exchange confused looks as Percy suddenly freezes.

They'd been out in the training yard, trying - and failing, pretty conclusively at that - to expand their domains - Shoko's success really lit the fire under their asses - and they'd only just finished meditating and mustering their cursed energy for another go around when he'd stumbled mid-step and stopped moving altogether.

"Percy?" Suguru asks, brows furrowed in concern as their friend remains shock-still.

He doesn't get an answer.

Instead, Percy straightens, and when he turns around, he's smiling so widely the expression has to hurt.

Slowly, with a deliberate, careful motion, he reaches down and puts a hand in his right jean pocket.

Their confusion only skyrockets when he pulls out a small, non-distinct ballpoint pen - and then Percy uncaps the pen, and the very air around them shifts as it morphs and stretches and grows into a double-edged, one-handed short sword that fits into his grip perfectly.

Suguru and Satoru stare.

Percy doesn't, though.

"It's about time." He breathes, and his smile is soft and cast in the bronze-gold glow of the blade. "I missed you, Riptide."

In his grip, the blade seems to pulse with its own agreement, and the board is officially set.

...




Percy:





View: https://imgur.com/1HaUX23




Satoru and Suguru:





View: https://imgur.com/fe2Mj19




Me, peacing out until the next arc:





View: https://imgur.com/IrJtl8P​

As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it, please be courteous.

 

[Herofox]

"It's about time." He breathes, and his smile is soft and cast in the bronze-gold glow of the blade. "I missed you, Riptide."

Click to shrink...

Someone in-verse: The random sword in your ass would have been really useful in the literal last fight we were in man.

 

[JmonsterNEO]

Well...

There are no other words for it.

They jump the fucking curse.

Click to shrink...

Good to know you'll be continuing that particular JJK tradition.

"You screwed with a lot of people." Shoko agrees. "And while a bunch of them I wouldn't lose any sleep over, you messed with my aunt, ugly. You shouldn't have done that. Suguru?"

His friend sighs, brushing his bangs aside with a steady hand.

"I'm not your garbage disposal system." He grunts, but he's not fooling anyone.

Not with the way his teeth are barred and that viciously satisfied set to his face.

Click to shrink...

I mean, if I was in his position I'd be practically drooling at the opportunity to have one of the fucking Daiyōkai in my back pocket.

 

[Herofox]

I mean, if I was in his position I'd be practically drooling at the opportunity to have one of the fucking Daiyōkai in my back pocket.

Click to shrink...

I mean, if I was him I intellectually know that it's a really good tool to have.

On the other hand, my understanding is that the stronger the curse, the worse it tastes. Probably feels and tastes like trying to eat literal shit.

Granted it's 100% worth it, but still unpleasant.

 

[SecularPJ]

Can't wait for next chp man