Reina rushed back into the bar, looking for a sexy hammer and sexy book.
A man suddenly grabbed her, drunk, "well Sister, Halloween's at Saitama this year!"
She pushed him off in disgust.
Finally she spotted the two dancing, she frowned, somewhat in contempt for them not upholding their promise to stay in the booth.
"Dance party! Dance party!" Hinata slurred. Nana scrambled to keep Hinata from anymore daft moves. Reina felt bad for feeling contempt. She resolved it would be okay to enjoy the chaos. So, she danced. Where was the harm?
The only problem was that she kept bumping into curses, purifying them along the way. No one else seemed to notice. The only tell was the increasingly morbid expression on her face.
Who knew parties this intense could happen so early in the evening?
They hopped to another bar, Hinata barely noticed her cover torn from her costume, Nana missing a stuffed toy hammer, and Reina lost her habit.
8:30 PM
In the middle of dancing, Reina felt an excruciating burning in her chest. Nana immediately noticed her friend's exponential suffering.
"I need some air!" She yelled into Nana's ear. They followed Reina out to an alleyway between bars.
The night sky was an unusual orange color, the smell of smoke and burning metal inundated the air. Nana looked at the weather, and the state of her two friends.
"Let's go home. Everything is too freaky here."
Reina was still dealing with the pain, and breathlessly said, "Nana, send Hinata home. Get home safe, please."
"You don't look good Reina, you sure you don't wanna join us?"
She shook her head. "Trust me, just be safe in your homes, please, you two." She gave a stern gaze to Nana, sending cursed energy towards her. Nana, as though hypnotized, took Hinata by the hand and left Reina on her own.
Reina checked her phone, still no bars. She disappeared into the crowded street, holding her phone up to get service, hoping to call and get an explanation from Gojo.
There was a shop selling flat screen televisions, and plastered on them was the death count. Reina stopped to watch in horror. A few people joined her. Footage of the scene blasted on multiple screens, then it turned to static.
A rumble emerged. A wave of panic hit the crowd. Reina stood still, dazed. It was sudden, as though a huge part of her disappeared. This was different to a panic attack. This felt like utter heartbreak, or heart-wrench.
People ran for cover, as a gust of wind blew. Reina, still as a statue was taken by the static on the screens. A wave of cursed spirits the size of locusts came barreling through like a storm above the crowds. Most couldn't see them.
The curses spoke in unison:
Gojo Satoru is no more.
Chaos Reigns.
The unpleasant din of the voices in unison rang through her mind. And she shook the ringing of her ears out, the static on the TVs ended, displaying the following:
WELCOME TO THE GAME.
WILL YOU PARTICIPATE?
...
Mieko was already home when everything descended into further chaos. She completely lost track of Reina and Yuki, now worried sick.
The rules of the game now plastered all over town, Mieko felt utter relief she had such little cursed energy to even count as a participant. Her little sister was on a different boat. Reina likely didn't even realize the curse she harboured, encased in some blessed energy like a fragile glass jar.
Mieko felt horrible over those forced to participate in this game. Maybe she could use the Priest's song to purify them. After all, wartime soldiers still needed entertainment.
These rules were complicated, and as far as she knew, she wasn't in a colony, nor eligible for curse removal if she didn't participate. She could see the domes form in nearby areas from afar.
...
Reina was at least half an hour away from her home by car. Her feet ached slightly in her intentionally slutty tall boots. The streets now bare from life. People hid from things they could hardly see.
She moseyed around the scene in a daze. The pain from purification and sudden loss of Gojo made her feel she was only capable of crawling. Emotions weighed her down by what felt like a ton. Not to mention, her last major curse-related breakdown was about a month ago.
It was all too much.
Gojo was gone.
And now, literally, the world was on fire.
She wasn't even that crazy over him.
All she wanted to do now was get to her apartment and get changed.
A chill wind appeared out of nowhere. Reina shrank into her heels, curling into a ball. A white haired person in a plain robe appeared in front of her.
"Sukuna says if you eat a priest, you have to prepare them a certain way, or you'll get sick. Like pufferfish." They muttered.
A wave of cursed energy in the form of Arctic wind blew stormed towards her. She blocked it with the spell she recently learned. The pane of blessed energy turned to shattered glass before her feet.
The white haired person was clearly perplexed, "since when do priests use techniques like this?"
"They've evolved." Reina replied, teleporting behind the being and gently placing a hand imbued with her blessings. The white haired monk froze in shock, feeling the blessings paralyze them.
"Your name is Uraume, you prepared humans for Sukuna to eat. Gross." She whispered in their ear, "not really pious of you, should you really be in those robes?"
The rhetoric gave her time to process the poor soul's traumas. One thousand years of living brought up all at once was quite a bit in her mind.
"The real question is, why try to get rid of me now and not before all of this? Maybe I'll purify all your participants," She threatened, "I could foil so much- more than you could ever anticipate." She taunted, again, buying more time to try and purify them.
Relief plastered over Uraume from the blessing, "we never thought of Priests as threats." They replied.
Reina removed her hand, leaving the purification incomplete. Uraume cried out in pain. Incomplete purification was an incredibly painful experience for a curse. Reina could feel her own limits, anymore and she'd go into a full panic attack.
She disappeared, leaving Uraume significantly weakened.
...
Grandmother's Realm
Grandmother's daily routine involved a ton of beauty rest. It was rudely interrupted today. Her fabricated scenery moulded by centuries of delicate shaping of blessed energy was invaded by a ridiculous amount of cursed energy.
As though falling from the (false) sky, a man in chains appeared.
Ah yes, the chains from the bones of vengeful priests. She created these chains for an intended curse to be imprisoned in this realm. So it could suffer brutally.
But this wasn't her intended curse.
It was a boyish looking man. In all black. Looking a bit beat up. He didn't seem to be in distress. But he let out a ton of cursed energy yelling, how do you like that?!, ruining her elegant garden.
She sauntered out her manufactured doorway to greet the pour soul trapped in here with her. Nearly a thousand years trapped made her quite lonely, this curse user was a blessing in some way.
He did ruin her (fake!) roses however.
A closer look, it appeared to be none other than Gojo Satoru. Laughing to himself.
"And how did you get into this predicament?" She mused.
She stood over him, covered in ornate fashions that made him look like a peasant.
Gojo turned the best way he could towards her since he was chained, "and you?"
"Well I'm not the one chained my friend," she shot back.
He chuckled, "I thought only one could be trapped in this realm or are you part of the experience?"
"I could play warden if you keep giving me this headache, settle your ridiculous powers down six-eyes, it won't help you leave. If anything, it'll tighten these chains."
Gojo winced at the bones tightening around him, "So you know who I am?"
"Everyone in this godforsaken-spiritual-practice-space knows who you are."
"But lady, I don't know who you are."
"I'm the creator of this realm. Unfortunately." She frowned.
"So you're behind my predicament?"
"I think you brought yourself here." She shot back.
"How did you end up here?" Gojo asked.
"It was stupid for a priestess such as myself to experiment with cursed energy. I was... just so angry." She lamented.
"Why were you angry?"
"My husband made a binding vow with a curse. I made this realm for him since I couldn't bear the thought of killing him."
"Ha! Love is the worst. So there's no way out?" He gave a bratty sigh.
"Not from the inside."
"You're a priestess?"
"Yes."
He grinned and let out an aura as though a beam of light passed through him. "I just learned about their existence myself," he said with excitement.
"I know, you've been trying to get on my child's good side, Miss Aoshima. Has she finally accepted you?"
He smirked, "I think so." Then furled his lips, "Wait, how do you know if you've been trapped for years?"
"I've managed to communicate with other priests since minute amounts of blessed energy can pass through the skin of the monk I used to create the box."
"What about reversed curse energy?"
"I'm afraid not."
He relaxed into the chains, "Well, the world has gone to shit, but my students are plenty capable. I think I should rest."
"What are your goals, Gojo?" Grandmother posited.
"The big ones?"
Grandmother nodded.
"Okay. One. Protect humanity. Two. Turn Jujutsu society upside down since their traditional asses can't see past themselves. Three. Retire in a hut in the tropics."
She laughed, with a snap of her fingers, the chains disappeared, "we'll get along."
...
Reina was trying to control her breathing as panic set in. She teleported as far away as her abilities could let on. She was in an empty alleyway, probably somewhere in Tokyo. There was little cursed energy in this area.
As she left the alleyway, she saw a large hospital. She would do the unthinkable: lose her nursing license.
There was a large crowd, plenty of people still in costume. Many gravely injured. Staff were scant amongst them. It was easy to enter the emergency room unnoticed.
Everyone was too busy to notice Reina slowly making her way towards the pharmacy.
The pharmacists and their assistants were busy filling as many prescriptions they could. One of them locked eyes with Reina, she smiled as best she could.
One of the pharmacists tried to instruct her to leave, but they were soon caught in her spell.
"How can I help?" Asked the assistant.
Reina was pressed "I need Haloperidol, Midazolam, some morphine... um... throw in a few triptans, maybe some stimulants too..." She pondered.
The team in a daze prepared all the medications effortlessly. The pharmacist unlocked the narcotic drawer- completely unfazed.
A pang of guilt entered her. She was guilty, no doubt. But she needed a way out of these panic attacks if she were to fight.
As she grabbed the paper bag (filled with enough to make 10 elephants go to sleep, forget about their broken legs, and wake up completely unaware of the aforementioned injuries), Reina realized the path to being a normal human citizen ended.
She entered the staff change room, the door codes were usually something simple like "1234" or the date. She guessed effortlessly. She found an open locker with spare scrubs and runners. They were a size smaller than what she'd usually wear. She peeled off the corset, boots and skirt, sighing in relief.
Even runners a size small were more comfortable than fetish boots. The scrubs were a little large on her. But that benefitted her, she hid the bag of drugs under her top.
On an inpatient ward, Reina snuck around looking for supplies- tape, scissors, normal saline- that whole thing. She figured a first aid kit would come in handy just in case, especially since her last close call with sepsis.
She left through a staff exit and paused. She wiped a few tears with the base of her palms, though her face remained cold and expressionless.
Goodbye Nurse Aoshima.