By the time Adam comes to, they're just over 10 minutes away from Jujutsu tech's Tokyo campus. The instant his eyes open, he winces in pain as a pulsing pain in his arm flares; the same one the curse had punched earlier. "Don't you have something that can heal me? Like a salve or something?" The boy looks at Gojo in the front seat, who laughs before shrugging. He can sense Ijichi glaring at the man, and Gojo finally relents.
"There is such a thing; it's called reverse cursed technique. I'll cover it in our lesson today. For now though, I'll just tell you that it doesn't work nearly as effectively on other people, and I personally can only use it on myself. The school's nurse, Ieri Shoko, would be able to heal you, but I don't think it's necessary with such a small injury." Gojo glances back at the boy with a nod, and Adam replies in kind to signify his understanding. "Good; it's only a bruise anyway, your awakening to cursed energy seemed to have an odd effect on the injury, since I believe it was a hairline fracture before. Your torso is fine as well."
"Do you think…" Ijichi begins, before Gojo gives him a glare.
"No, I don't." Gojo finishes, shaking his head slightly. "Anyway, you know where we go from here right, Adam?"
"Uhh, we go report?" The boy reangles his head into a more comfortable position, which happens to be staring at the ceiling. Judging by the extremely faint trace marks across it, he can tell that Ijichi did indeed go and deep clean the car again.
Gojo swings his arms around to form a circle over his head, "exactly! It's incredibly stupid, but we do need to keep track of it so people can be paid and for statistics and such."
"Statistics?" Adam echoes questioningly.
"Things such as the frequency of curse appearances, the average strength of cursed spirits, the average intelligence or cognitive function of said spirits, etc. We're fighting against a constant enemy here, so we have to try and keep on top of things as much as we can." Ijichi explains, flicking his indicator to turn into the Jujutsu high campus as he does so. "We're here. I'm going to go park, so you two get out and head over to the report room." Gojo somehow teleports out of the car, supposedly having reached the end of his patience for the mission. He reappears a few seconds later with Adam's golf bag over his shoulder, standing outside of the boy's door.
Adam groans while shuffling over to the door, wiping his eyes with his non injured arm. He opens it with care so as to not annoy Ijichi, and begins to follow Gojo towards the pagoda in the middle of the campus.
No matter how many times he passes through it, Adam doesn't think he'll ever not be amazed by the architecture of Jujutsu tech. The Torii gates arching over staircases, the well kept forest surrounding the buildings and campus exterior, the maze-like walls leading to all sorts of different facilities, it's like one big labyrinth of Japanese architectural history. "What's got you so starstruck?" Gojo asks, shoving his hands in his pockets childishly as he walks.
"I don't think I'll ever get used to this place." Adam answers back, "it's nice and all, but far too different to what I'm used to."
"Hmm? Well, whatever." Gojo walks through the gate leading to the pagoda courtyard interior; Principal Yaga is sitting on the deck area with a doll in his hand, as Adam had come to expect from the man.
"Satoru, you're back." Yaga says, not bothering to look up from the doll he was stitching together.
"Yes we are!" Gojo replies in a cheerful tone. "Good news first, we vanquished the curse!" Yaga narrows his eyes, putting the doll to the side while beginning to glare at his student.
"And the bad news?"
"There is no bad news, silly!" Yaga groans harshly and picks up his doll, continuing the stitches. "I will be extending my lesson plans to reduce my students' free time though. Adam over here barely knew what cursed energy was when he arrived!" The principal looks at said boy, who shrugs as a response. "Anyway, I'll have the report emailed to you tonight; for now I need to teach this fella here what cursed energy is!"
"I know what–" Gojo is already dragging the boy away before he can finish his sentence; the last audible thing from the principal being a groan of resentment.
It isn't long before Adam finds himself sitting in a desk chair with Gojo at the front of the classroom, holding a large stick in one hand and some chalk in the other; A comical sight for anyone other than the one suffering through it. "Megumi will join us soon, so I'll go over the basics since he already knows them." Gojo flips around, placing his stick up against the wooden podium while he scrawls out some kanji across the blackboard. "Cursed energy is a phenomenon created by the negative emotions of humans. We, as sorcerers, use this energy to fuel our jujutsu, the techniques we use to exorcize curses."
"And curses are being created by that energy, right?" Adam assumes, earning a thumbs up from his teacher.
"Spot on! Normal people can't control their cursed energy, unlike us, so they constantly leak it on a daily basis until it eventually coalesces into a cursed spirit." Gojo scribbles a picture of a stick figure emitting some sort of gas; the streaks slowly mix together, representing how a cursed spirit is born. Cursed energy doesn't only exist in humans however; as I'm sure you can tell by your cursed tools." Adam nods along, glancing at the bag containing said tools shoved into the corner of the room. "Now I'll move onto cursed techniques. The way I like to explain them are as appliances that need electricity; your cursed energy being that electricity of course.
There are two ways of operating your cursed technique, lapse and reversal. Lapse is what you'll mostly use, since it's the easiest way to output cursed energy into your technique so you can use it. Reversal is for way more advanced sorcerers like me or Okkotsu. I'll explain reversal when you actually come into contact with it."
"So, lapse is like pushing energy into the appliance to turn it on?" Gojo nods and begins his explanation anew before Adam interrupts. "And who's Okkotsu?" His teacher smiles fondly and flips the chalk in his hand.
"Okkotsu is a second year here. He's uber strong, like special grade level. He's over in Africa right now for a trip, but he'll be back in November." The pale haired man explains, before catching his chalk for a final time. "Oh! I forgot to explain grades. I'll do that afterwards.
Back to cursed techniques; there are several different types, but I'll be sticking to just 3 right now. Innate techniques, the stuff you get from your bloodline or family, extension techniques, special techniques created by the user using their innate technique, and finally non innate techniques.
Starting off with innate techniques–" Fushigoro slides open the door with a scowl, holding up his phone towards Gojo.
"Tell me we have class the day before; and tell me where it'll be. I was out having coffee when you messaged me." He explains, pocketing his phone while Gojo laughs heartily.
"Glad to see you're having a nice day." The pale haired man laughs before repositioning his chalk on the board. "We were covering innate techniques before you arrived, Megumi."
"Hah? You don't even know that?" Fushigoro turns to Adam with an angry/shocked look on his face. Gojo frowns at the remark and tries to continue before Megumi interrupts him. "Did you think you were so much better than us that you didn't need to study? People's lives are on the line here, you idiot!"
Adam narrows his eyes, "shut the fuck up, you don't know anything about me."
"What don't I know? You were sent here by your family to gain honor and show us up. You don't even want to become a sorcerer, and aren't even trying to become better. You can't control your cursed energy, in fact you can barely use it, but you're still arrogant enough to tell me to shut up? You need a serious ego check dude, and I'd prefer it if you got that from your cushy clan instead of where people serious about saving lives learn." Megumi ends his tirade with a finger pointing to the door, and Adam glares at the boy before slumping down and leaving the room.
"Adam, wait." Gojo begins, trying to stop the boy; but by the time he moves from his position at the podium, Adam is already through the door and walking back to his dormitory.
By the time his footsteps disappear, Gojo is already glaring daggers at Megumi. "That's your classmate, you know? The person you're supposed to entrust your life to?"
Megumi crosses his arms defiantly. "He should've learned all of this stuff from his family, but he didn't, so now we have to waste our time shoving the most basic of knowledge into him."
Gojo runs a hand down his face, his normal smile dropping into a frown. "I can't share what exactly went on, but just know that he isn't like Inumaki or you, who grew up with instructors for jujutsu. He's been placed here with nothing and is being forced to become a sorcerer; and he doesn't have a choice."
Megumi unfolds his arms and sighs, "I think you're misunderstanding sensei; I'm not saying these things because I hate him, I'm saying them because he's just wasting his life away trying to become a sorcerer when he has no potential. He's basically committing suicide in front of me, and I won't stand for it."
Gojo's normal smile returns as he picks up Adam's golf bag he'd left behind and opens the door. "I think you're wrong on that front, Megumi." He steps outside and closes the door before vanishing, leaving Megumi alone to his thoughts.
"I wasn't that hard on him, was I?" The boy says out loud, looking at the palms of his hands. He slowly grips onto them with a frown, "no, I'm just trying to stop him from killing himself." He hops out of his seat and swiftly leaves the room, determined to get some training in before Gojo springs some random class or mission on him.
Gojo slides open the door to Adam's room with caution, being prepared for a potential assault or annoyed face. He isn't met with either however, and is instead met with the boy sitting on his bed staring at the open air. The pale haired man stands there for several seconds as the boy's eyes flick around something he doesn't see; he only makes his presence known once the technique has been 'swiped' away. "Are you alright?"
The boy lets out a soft grunt in response, barely tilting his head to look at his teacher with anger filled eyes. When he sees Gojo not making any attempt to leave, he sighs. "What is it?"
A smile sparks on Gojo's face as he holds up a finger, "we should go on another mission!" His smile drops when he sees the fury reignite in Adam's eyes.
"Why don't you take Fushigoro, he's much more suited to this. He belongs here, right?" Each word is stressed with so much anger that Gojo can't help but wince. "It's been a day, not even 24 hours, and he's been on my ass about not belonging here the entire time." The boy throws his arms up in the air, "he hasn't even given me a chance!"
"In all fairness, he doesn't know–"
"In all fairness my ass! He shouldn't be going around making assumptions like a mop-headed, broody, wanker!" Adam crosses his arms, finishing off the tirade that'd slipped into English half way through. The boy stands up in a huff, grabbing his bag from Gojo and walking away. "Come on Blindfold, we're going to go kill a curse." Gojo snickers at the nickname and happily follows behind the boy.
It isn't long before they find Ijichi with a handheld vacuum going over the window guides on his car. Hearing footsteps, the man turns around to see his two passengers from earlier heading towards him. "Yo, Ji!" Gojo chirps happily.
"Please don't call me that." The man solemnly replies, before his gaze falls on Adam. "Did something happen?" The boy grumbles something inaudible and hops in the back seat of the car.
"Don't worry about it, he's just a bit cranky." Gojo waves him off with a laugh.
"Go fuck yourself." Adam murmurs in English.
Ijichi blinks in confusion before looking at Gojo. "So, did you need something?"
"We're going on a mission!" Gojo teleports into the front seat, leaving Ijichi blinking owlishly at the air.
"Twice in a day!? He ducks his head into the driver's cabin, looking at Gojo, who had his classic smile on his face; on the other hand was Adam, who was inspecting his weapons with a scowl. "A-Are you sure?" Adam nods without looking, while Gojo has already whipped out his phone and is inputting a destination.
"Go here; I'll explain on the way." The special grade sorcerer orders. Ijichi hastily gets into the car and starts the ignition; barely adjusting his mirrors before he speeds off towards the Tokyo residential district.
"I described how cursed spirits were formed before but I didn't tell you about the different types. Today, we'll be fighting a special classification of cursed spirit called a vengeful cursed spirit; A spirit formed after a human dies with rage and anger in their bodies, and a certain amount of cursed energy. They usually don't have much of a mind of their own, and only follow after the desires from which they were born. In this case, reports are that a man committed suicide after catching his girlfriend cheating, and subsequently turned into a vengeful spirit after death. Chances are high that he was probably infected by a curse before dying, and that's why he transformed despite not being a sorcerer; or he was a window." Gojo explains, resting his arm on the door while he watches the buildings pass by.
Adam stares at the tip of his weapon before looking at the seat in front of him. "Would cursed energy be able to form weapons?"
"If you mean like your spear, no; cursed energy alone can't do that. But if you wanted to make a needle out of cursed energy or something like that, you should be fine." Adam hums in acknowledgement.
Suddenly, the car stops and Adam is almost thrown into the back of Gojo's seat, only for an invisible force to stop him. "You alright?" The pale haired man asks.
"Yeah, but what the hell is Ijichi doing?!" The boy's head snaps to the driver, who is massaging his eyes in an annoyed fashion.
"If they'd just tell the public…" A man wearing a hazmat suit holding a stop sign knocks on Ijichi's window. "Hello sir."
"Hey, you know this area is off limits, right?" Ijichi sighs and looks to Gojo, who tucks a hand into his uniform, pulling out a small white card with blue kanji scribbled over it. The worker takes it for a moment before nodding and letting the group pass.
"What was that?" Adam asks.
"Something special provided to special grade sorcerers." Gojo explains, "it allows me to go anywhere and everywhere I please. Of course, that extends to the people I'm with as well." Ijichi slowly parks the car next to the curb, turning off the ignition with a sigh.
"I'm assuming you didn't tell Principal Yaga that you're here?" Gojo laughs, leading to another groan of annoyance echoing from Ijichi's throat. "I'll call him now while setting up the veil." Gojo nods and pats Adam on the back, pushing him towards the large apartment building they'd parked in front of.
Before they even enter the building, Adam sees an ash coloured curse with a deformed lower body crashing through the place like a coked up baby. "Does this curse have a name? Something that'll get its attention?" Thinking tactically, the boy turns to Gojo after asking his questions; he sees the man smirking as he pats the boy's head.
"Good work. Vengeful curses like this one often respond to things with a lot of importance to them, like their names. In this case though…" Gojo puts out a hand and the glass doors swing open due to invisible force. "Arasaka Haru!" Adam guesses that's the name of the cheating girlfriend from the way the curse snarls before its entire body flicks in Gojo's direction. Sharp yellow teeth and two piercing red eyes glow through its mouth; the size of it allows the only real comparison to be that of a pit.
"I'm guessing if it closes its mouth, it'll be blind?" Adam theorizes out loud. Gojo shrugs, pushing the boy forward slightly towards the curse. "I'll go grab any civilians still in here." He subsequently vanishes, leaving Adam alone against the curse.
The boy throws his golf bag to the side, quickly taking his spear out of it mid-air. "I'm glad Blindfold knows how to relieve stress." With a quick twirl, Adam sends it around his body before positioning the spear tip towards the curse.
The curse's head, which happened to only be its jaw, with the eyes located at the back of its throat, roared before rushing forward. One of its two clawed hands, decorated with white blotches and sharp prongs jutting out of every joint, digs into the ground as it flies forward. Adam dances out of the way with ease as it tears the ground asunder. With a thick of its bulging biceps, the curse throws its claws upwards to create a cloud of dust and rubble; unwittingly contributing to its own blindness.
"Idiot." Through the dirt, the tip of Adam's spear flies towards the curse's body; the spear is barely stuck in before the curse is sent hurtling into the wall. "My spear's cursed technique, 'To Touch The Gods', sends anyone who touches the tip hurtling backwards with speed equal to that of the strength of my attack multiplied by a factor of 2.5 times." The spear of longinus, Adam's signature weapon, is a special grade cursed weapon with the innate technique to send anyone hit by the tip flying backwards with speed equal to the physical power put behind the attack multiplied by 2.5; equal to the power of a black flash.
The curse howls in an otherworldly voice as pain racks through its body. Adam throws the blood from the tip of the spear off with a scowl, trying to hide the wince of pain caused by moving his bruised arm so much. With the dust finally settling, Adam notices the girl in the room that he hadn't before; a short one with twin blonde pigtails. Next to her lay a man wearing a suit, bisected at the waist. She sniffles loudly, and Adam notices the curse immediately turn around and pounce.
The boy huffs and throws his spear with a single hand, skewering the curse on the tip of it before the weapon's technique takes effect and it's thrown across the room. Adam watches in satisfaction as a web of cracks is formed around the impact point.
With a howl, the curse tears the spear from its body, leaving three puncture holes in its torso to leak blood. It throws the weapon to the side and attempts to go for the girl again, but Adam is already there with a silver sword in hand.
As the curse swings towards the boy, he parries its claw with the edge of his blade, swiftly spinning around before stabbing it through the chest and kicking it away. 'If only I was this good with my hands.' The boy sighs mentally, slightly regretting how he spent his early years only training with tools. 'Not like I had much of a choice anyway; 'no cursed technique, nothing to teach', as they said.' With the words of his family ringing in his mind, the boy quickly races after the curse, leaping into the air and slashing downwards.
The curse snaps its head up before swiping the sword to the side and trying to snap its jaw closed around Adam's neck. Adam quickly leans backwards away from the attack, flicking his foot up to kick the curse in the chin. Adam is about to finish off the curse, before he is launched into the wall with enough force to crack his ribs.
He quickly looks back to see the woman he was protecting holding the spear with tears in her eyes. "Y-You can't kill him!" She shouts belligerently, ignoring the curse next to her quickly recovering from the attack, "I love him!"
Adam grunts while getting up to his feet, using his sword as a cane to stand properly. The hand that isn't on the end of the sword is pressed tightly on the new wound in his side, caused by the window in front of him. He begins to panic, but quickly calms himself down with a deep breath, something he often does when he needs to realign his thoughts. 'So she's a window, or became one due to the amount of negative emotions inside of her creating cursed energy. Since she says she loves him, I can assume this is the cheating girlfriend.'
The girl drops the spear and turns to the curse. "I'm sorry! Please!" Tears stream down her face as she bows to the thing her boyfriend turned into. The curse looks at her and opens its mouth, preparing to strike. Adam sighs and holds up his hand, commanding his cursed energy to swirl into existence in his palm. A string quickly forms, which eventually spins into a rope of cursed tendrils. Adam launches it around the bowing girl and tugs towards him, pulling the girl out of the way of the girl's gaping maw right as it snaps together.
"Stay out of the way, moron." Adam commands, hopping up to his feet and walking past the fallen girl. His cursed rope quickly untangles from her body and dissipates into the air as Adam gets into a stance. "Are you ready?"
The curse roars in response, flying forward with a claw poised to strike. Adam weaves past it, slashing downwards with his sword and missing when the curse floats backwards and spins around for a backhand. Adam quickly puts up his sword, blocking the pronged attack before being forced backwards by the pressure behind it.
The boy rushes forward again, swinging his sword and twirling around when it is parried to attack again. The curse continues to bat away the slashes with no small amount of difficulty; occasionally attacking with a wild haymaker or two.
Arasaka tries to get off the ground in order to grab the spear, hoping to stop the violent teenager from attacking her boyfriend; She barely gets to one knee before a pale haired man in a black uniform appears in front of her. "I would advise against that, lady." He doesn't even face her while talking, instead watching the dozens of blows being traded between the curse and the boy. "Who do you think will win?"
"Kotaro will, obviously!" Haru replies back in defiance. The pale haired man hums, whether in agreement or disagreement, she can't tell.
Adam swings diagonally across the curse's body, only for his sword to be slapped into the ground by one of its hands, the other already flying forward for a punch to the boy's torso. Suddenly, Adam thrusts his hand upwards, releasing a tendril of cursed energy into the ceiling that lifts him out of the way of the fist, allowing him to kick the curse in the face. He quickly drops back down and pries his sword from the ground before attacking again.
'Due to the curse's grade, he's done barely any damage besides the original attacks from his spear. Since vengeful curses are graded differently from normal ones, it's hard to tell what grade this one would be. Maybe upper semi-second grade?' Gojo mentally theorizes. When Adam attaches himself to the roof, the man's eyes visibly widen at the ingenuity on display. 'If he picked up the spear, he probably could've ended the fight by now. Is he waiting on something?'
Adam sighs in bliss mentally while slashing towards the curse's arm, only for the attack to be parried. 'Wow, fighting is such a great stress reliever. It gets even better when I imagine Fushigoro's face on this thing's ugly mug.' Despite the pain racking his body, the boy only felt happiness as he continued to attack.
The curse quickly floated back, slamming its fists together where Adam's head used to be before he ducked and slid forward in order to uppercut the thing. Adam immediately followed up by stabbing his sword into its torso and dragging it along the curse's body, splitting it open in a shower of toxic purple blood. It wails spectacularly before beginning to turn to ash, Adam standing over it triumphant.
"Ahh, that felt good." He sighs, stretching his arms to the air in satisfaction. Adam slowly turns around to where the girlfriend was, only to see Gojo standing above her. "When did you get back?"
Gojo tilts his head comically, "well there was no one else in the building, so I just sat on that couch over there until you finished." He gestures over to an unturned couch with torn up red fabric.
Adam sighs before shrugging and walking towards his spear to pick it up, "well I'm glad you had fun, I guess." The boy pats where the blood is leaking from the side of his torso; and Gojo only now realizes that the hand is bandaged together. "I desperately need medical treatment however."
Gojo watches as the boy packs up his bag before collapsing on the floor. 'He seems a bit calmer now at least. Hopefully that's not just because of the blood loss however.' The pale haired man picks up his student and slings the golf bag over his other shoulder before turning to the window. "I'll have one of my colleagues come through and remove the excess cursed energy from your body. So sit tight, okay?" Gojo teleports from the building, and the girl suddenly faints.
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