They were finally here. The arcade was before them. Satoru regretted the time he had wasted letting his pursuers catch up to him. He could already sense someone staring at them, but no matter; it was time for the waiting game.
The arcade, Taito Station, hovered over them with a massive space invader logo on its sign. Its gaze pierced Reimu like an alien god. So, too, did the massive advertisements around Akihabara conjure a similar effect on her. To her, these billboards were a million acts of worship, showing that the outside world was a world of idolatry. But to Satoru, it was like a theme park. Compared to the drab wooden mansion on the outskirts of Tokyo, the bright colours and bombastic ads were a feast for the eyes—a glimpse into the desires of normal people. He once played with the idea of running away, becoming a farmer or a salaryman. But these were the impossible daydreams of a kid. It could never happen; he loved being a sorcerer too much. And even if he did achieve some sense of normalcy and live amongst non-sorcerers, the things he'd see would make a quiet life a far-away dream. As he felt a tide of curse energy wash over him like lapping waves, Satoru knew that no matter what happened, he'd always come back to the Jujutsu world. There was no point in leaving it.
He looked to Reimu, wondering how she felt at the presence of what could be considered a special-grade volume of energy. He could see a miasma cling to her, mixing with whatever malevolent energy still stained the shrine maiden. These things put pressure on the soul, a great spiritual weight. Weaker sorcerers, like grade 3s or 2s, would sometimes be unable to fight certain cursed spirits at all. The pressure exhibited by their cursed energy could prove too frightening to resist.
Reimu just seemed mildly annoyed.
The shrine maiden scrunched up her nose. Her dumpling-esque features transformed into a rictus of disgust. "I exorcise this curse, and I get money?"
Satoru sighed. The fact that she had asked that question told him she was being exploited. Doing a service and getting paid for it should already be a given, but apparently, she had to subsist on "donations". When he becomes a higher-up, Satoru vowed to legislate new child labour laws. It was getting ridiculous.
"I'll make sure you'll get cold hard cash," He motioned Reimu to follow him to the arcade, "you'll even get all the credit, too. It'll make the higher-ups forget all about you hitting one of their sorcerers. Perfect plan, right? Better to make it up before meeting them rather than saying sorry outright." Reimu followed him into the arcade, taking small and careful steps onto an escalator leading down, "anyways, this cursed spirit here is pretty nasty," and whose energy will prevent any sorcerers from chasing after them, "I'd tell you to put your guard up, but you're with me." Satoru smiled to himself. This was an easy way to spend hours in an arcade and disguising it as a service. All the better since it'll help break the ice between him and little miss country bumpkin. He planned to leave the cursed spirit alive for as long as possible, special grade or not; he doubted it was a threat to him, especially with another strong sorcerer beside him.
The escalator seemed a marvellous invention to Reimu—stairs that could take you up and down without needing to move. If the Hakurei Shrine had it, her donation box would be awash with coins. Accessibility was the issue holding back the shrine, she was sure of it. Her foot nearly got caught at the bottom of the escalator as she entered the underground floor.
The entrance above wasn't much to behold; neither was the city, in all honesty, other than its familiarity with the one in Makai. The same city she clumsily helped to destroy. But it was once she arrived underground that the atmosphere started to overwhelm her. Muffled vocals were screeched out by black boxes hanging on the ceiling, singing an upbeat tune. It was electric, backed by instruments she could not name. The song's lyrics were the only thing she could comprehend.
Big and bigger, biggest dreamer!
Dreaming is the start of it all, I'm sure that it's the answer!
I'll show that I can fly farther than anyone else.
Around her were a variety of metal booths singing out an eclectic cacophony of sharp, unnatural sounds. There were these screens on each of them, filled with digital illusions and flashing lights. What's worse was that the curse's spiritual pressure grew the further down she went, coupled with the warm air from the crowded floor meant there was little room to breathe. In short, the outside world seemed like a world of constant noise. Her eyes scanned for this building's cursed spirit, but Satoru called out to her.
"Think of it as a shrine; coins go in, entertainment comes out." He gestured towards the metal booths occupied by other children, his spindly fingers splayed out like a web.
"To what gods?" Reimu asked.
Satoru shrugged, a small smile threatened to burst from his lips, "All kinds, Bandai, Nintendo, Capcom…myriad!"
"Right…" Reimu looked around, clearly sceptical, "So when do I exorcise this curse?" She brought her gohei up, causing some to stare.
Who brings a gohei into an arcade? Was she a cosplayer? Some of the kids in the arcade thought.
"Calm down, Reimu. It's clearly a cunning curse if it hasn't killed everyone here. We need to lure it, take our time with it." Satoru looked around the arcade, noting how normal its geometry looked. Special grades tend to form an innate domain around the area after coming out of their cursed womb. The fact that the Taito Station seemed untouched was strange. Either this cursed spirit had the intellect not to bother humans so much, or it's been alive for quite some time—or both. Whatever the case, they don't need to go guns blazing straight away. "Maybe playing some of the games here would bring it out. It'd be like springing a trap to kill the trapper. A trap to entrap! Man, I am such a wordsmith."
"You're a word butcher," Reimu replied, deadpan. "Entrap is redundant."
"Have you ever seen Kennedy's speeches? He used repetition to emphasize." Satoru smiled. "Em-pha-sise, do you know what that means?"
Reimu grimaced, already seeing where this conversation was going. "Whatever, so we play some games then?" She scratched her cheek in thought; there was some merit to the plan. Certain curses she'd exorcised came out of hiding by appealing to their fundamental nature. En'enras were smoke spirits that could be lured out by starting a fire next to you. Presumably, this cursed spirit worked on similar rules if Satoru was to be believed. And believe him, Reimu did. She looked around, ignoring the metal booths until her eyes rested on a strange table. Most of the games she knew happened on a table, so she approached it, hoping it might be something familiar. It wasn't.
"Air hockey, good choice," Satoru nodded. He couldn't help but compliment himself; he had become the hero he'd always needed, showing Reimu the wonders of the modern world outside her conservative prison. After explaining the rules to her, he hooked three fingers on the rim of the air hockey mallet while Reimu grasped the top nub. As he inserted a coin, which Reimu paid very special attention to, a hockey puck was shot out onto the table and drifted to Satoru's side.
1-0
Satoru scored within a second of the round starting. The puck had flown from a blue-enhanced strike straight into the goal. The boy bore a wolfish grin, mocking a confused Reimu. It didn't matter that she was a newbie; the onus was on her to keep up, not for him to slow down.
"The goal is too big; how am I supposed to protect it?" Reimu grumbled.
"If it's so big, how come you haven't scored yet?" Satoru asked.
Reimu dug out the puck and placed it down, feeling it move on the table. It had an airy quality to it, as if willed to float. Frictionless.
Probably where the name came from. She thought.
Instinct guided her hand. The mallet she wielded was no mallet but a gohei, and the puck was her yin-yang orb. With a wide sweeping motion, Reimu struck.
Kaori Itadori sat on a bench in a rooftop garden in Ometesando, neighbouring the late Emperor Meiji's shrine. She had connected herself to several surveillance shikigamis in the centre of Tokyo in search of Ran's missing girl. The Hakurei shrine maiden had been seen flying with the Gojo heir towards the city centre, but without further reports, Kaori could only monitor the cursed energy aggregate within certain areas of the city: Shibuya, Akihabara, Ginza, etc. It was all she could do without an innate technique to create ones that could identify specific types of energy. So, Kaori sat and waited for a change in volume while her eyes roamed around the Shibuya area. The search for Reimu looked bleak, but that was why Ryouka sat next to her, binoculars in hand.
She was one of the few people within the Jujutsu administration clued in on the Gensokyo conspiracy. For a double agent hired by curse users and the government, she was exceedingly reliable. This was quite the miracle to pull off, considering she cultivated a reputation as an oversexed, degenerate gambler. But it was that reputation that allowed cursed users to lower their guard with her and spill whatever information Ryouka wanted to know. She knew people, how they worked, how they ticked, and how to track them.
"My bets on them being in an arcade or an anime store," Ryouka posited. "Drinks are on you if I'm right."
Kaori grimaced. One of the surveillance shikigami in Ginza had been killed. She had read that a registered sorcerer was working in the area, so it must've been them. It was one of the cons of being part of the Anti-Jujutsu Terrorism Department. The department was so secret that when friendly occurred, there was little one could do about it. Technically, such a department was redundant. Jujutsu Terrorism was handled by registered sorcerers. However, certain factions in government wanted to minimize the Three Great Clans' influence in Japan without provoking a violent confrontation. The department was a motley group of domestic intelligence and whatever sorcerer the government could find that had no connections to the clans—part of a secret reformist policy to progress Jujutsu society into the modern age. At least, that was the official reason. Kaori knew what the first steps of a power grab looked like; she had conducted many such coups before. "And if you're wrong?" Kaori asked.
Ryouka smiled provocatively, the noon sun reflecting off her dyed red mane. There were hints of mischief in her self-satisfied expression, a hidden invitation, "I won't be."
Kaori did not dignify her with a response. Instead, she looked out into Shibuya while fixing her hair, subtly flashing her wedding ring. Ryouka chuckled and looked out in her binoculars. She got the hint.
Truthfully, Kaori did not have the time for banter. She couldn't afford to come home too late. The body was fourteen days into its menstrual cycle; the uterine lining had thickened thanks to the progesterone secreted by the pituitary gland. It was prime time to create Sukuna's cage and here she was at work. If fertilised, this would be the fifth child this body had produced. The other four she aborted in the womb after they failed certain conditions. She could have left work early, but the universe conspired against her in the form of Gojo. Six-Eyes users always found a way to set her back in her plans no matter what. It was truly vexing.
Kaori's eyes widened. One of the shikigami detected a surge of cursed energy within Akihabara. Perhaps it was that special-grade curse coalescing into a solid form, ready to slaughter. The higher-ups had known of it for a while, but due to its benign nature and lack of casualties, other curses took precedence. Now, the folly of kicking the can down the road has come back to haunt them.
"You sense it, too?" Ryouka asked, to which Kaori nodded. Ryouka was using her serious voice now, exuding an immaculate professionalism. One could almost forget the kind of person she was. "Nasty piece of work that's going to be. But the fallout?" she clicked her tongue. "Good thing it's not our problem."
"Our department could still catch some flack, provided the curse's rampage was provoked by an unregistered curse user," Kaori explained.
Ryouka cursed and bit into her inner cheek, "I hope I'm wrong then."
"About what, exactly?"
"About our bet," Ryouka answered.
Oh, so it's our bet now?
A man sat at a bus stop across Taito Station. Fear of the spirit in the arcade had nearly paralysed him as he held his plastic package close to his heart. But not too close; a tight grip meant there was a chance the package's contents could spill. He was devoted to his now-imprisoned leader's cause but not so devoted as to die so needlessly. So, he doused his fear with hate and lit the match. Fury burned in his gut. The cult he was part of may have fractured in Japan, but it continues to survive in Russia and America. The men and women from those countries had become such devoted compatriots, with their arms and equipment and the refined toxin he now held in his arm as their gifts. He loved them will all his heart and hated what the government had done to his leader in prison. The subway attack was just the beginning.
The toxin was to unpeel the first seal that led to Armageddon. Death would save humanity, save it from a great merging. But should he fail, others would pick up the slack.
"Saint 3 is in position," he heard in his earbud. Multiple voices from other units rang out in the same frequency.
"Acknowledged. Buddha 1 says skies are clear."
"Christ 1, enemy tracked 500 metres north of your position BREAK. Proceed to Shibuya over."
"This is Christ 1, Wilco. Leaving Ginza, out."
The man tapped his earbud and spoke, "Saint 4 in position. What do we do about the special grade spirit? Over."
"Saint 4, this is Buddha. We wait. Once it dies, Squad Saint enters. Out."
He sighed, almost disappointed. He hated waiting.