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CHAPTER START---
---April 12th, 2014…
"No wonder this place has Cursed Spirits, it even looks haunted," Taiyo says as he and Kusakabe approach a cemetery late at night.
Surrounding the cemetery were suburban homes and a few taller buildings, many of which had their residents' relatives buried there.
"So what the hell even happened?" Taiyo asks.
"Some punks decided to throw a rave or something in the cemetery, now a few low-level Cursed Spirits are in there."
"What, they don't like partying?"
"More like the people who have loved ones buried here believe they were disturbed by the brats, and that Negative Energy gave rise to some Cursed Spirits that lurk here."
Kusakabe stops at the entrance and looks into the cemetery, seeing a field of headstones but nothing out of the ordinary.
"Are you not coming?" Taiyo asks as he hops over the barricade.
"They're Grade 3, you can handle it. Just remember, sense before you see."
"Yeah, I'll keep that in mind," Taiyo says as he walks a bit farther into the cemetery before raising his hand, leaving his pointer and middle finger up toward the sky. "Emerge from the darkness, blacker than darkness. Purify that which is impure."
With those words, a Barrier of Cursed Energy emanates from high above the cemetery in the middle of it before spreading down to form a dome around it.
Taiyo looks back to see Kusakabe nod before the Curtain separates them, and blocks all communication signals.
Taiyo then turns back to the cemetery and closes his eyes, focusing on that unsettling feeling, like a chill flowing up his spine.
Then the tingling at the back of his head, gnawing at him, pulling his attention to his left.
Turning to his left, he sees one of the graves releasing black sludge-like energy as a malformed childlike Cursed Spirit rises from it, begging for its mother not to leave it.
Taiyo raises a brow at this as all around him, Cursed Spirits begin to rise up.
Drawn out by the Curtain, they couldn't help but reveal themselves, but if anything, this sight helped him relax.
"Like humans, weak Cursed Spirits group together. The bigger the group, the weaker they are," he mutters while looking around.
'That one,' he lifts his hand, making a fist, and aims at a grotesque Cursed Spirit with three arms and two mouths, dragging itself toward him, almost half his height. 'You're the strongest one here, almost Grade 2.'
Taiyo's fist glows blood red for just a moment before he fires a beam of super-heated Cursed Energy at the Cursed Spirit.
The beam punches a hole through the Cursed Spirit, instantly killing it and causing the others to swarm.
'I need to work on my control with those,' he frowns, seeing the small hole in the cobblestone path behind the corpse.
Where the heat beam hit was instantly made into molten rock.
A moment later, all the Cursed Spirits are closing in on him, so he points with one finger and releases a much thinner heat beam, swinging his hand to the left and slicing the weak spirits in two.
A few headstones are cut in half and fall to the ground, but Taiyo is too busy enjoying the fight to care.
Punching and kicking Cursed Spirits away before firing single shots of his heat beams at them, causing them to die away from him to keep his clothes clean and unburnt.
Not even a minute later, as Taiyo is finally getting warmed up, the Curtain above him breaks, signaling that all the Cursed Spirits have been exorcised.
"So boring," Taiyo mutters as Kusakabe walks over to inspect his work.
"What part of 'secret society' don't you understand?" Kusakabe asks while pointing at the destroyed headstones. "This is the 3rd mission in a row."
"Who cares about that? The Cursed Spirits are gone, job done," Taiyo dusts his hands and begins walking back to the car.
"And then you wonder why the higher-ups don't like you," Kusakabe says as he falls into step beside him.
"Oh, I've never wondered that. The only thing I wonder about is why you think I'd ever care. I'll be strong enough that nothing less than Satoru Gojo can kill me for them, and we both know he'll never listen to them."
"You aren't the only one at risk here," Kusakabe says. "Jujutsu Society is about passing on knowledge and traditions from mentor to students. If you do something too stupid, I could get punished for not teaching you better, and I'd rather not die."
"If they do that, I'll just kill them all," Taiyo says with a shrug. "But really, I don't plan to do anything that would make them execute you. It's just a bit difficult not to melt things with my Innate Technique."
"Then take my advice and use a sword," Kusakabe says as they get back into the car.
"What? So I have to carry that thing around everywhere. That sounds like a pain in the ass."
"You get used to it, and you get a special permit so you can carry it anywhere within Japan."
"I'll leave the modern samurai cosplay to you," Taiyo says. "I have Jujutsu, and some brawling. That's all I need."
"Sure you won't change your mind?"
Taiyo leans back in his seat and considers it for a moment. "Well, there was this one Cursed Tool Gojo mentioned, and it would be pretty useful for actually capturing people."
"What, is it a pair of handcuffs?"
"Something like that," Taiyo says. "But, I really can't be thinking about that right now. I still can't beat you consistently up close, and I won't have my enhancement and reinforcement advantage against Gojo like I do against you."
"You also haven't started practicing Domain Amplification yet, and you've only scratched the surface of your Innate Technique."
"Ugh, and I need to figure out that Simple Domain of yours…I'm almost tempted to join the New Shadow School."
"I still fail to see how that's essential against Gojo, it won't protect you from anything he has, especially not Unlimited Void."
"Don't worry, I have a plan. I just need to learn everything that's required for it within the next six months."
"Then fight the most powerful thing in the world with it…good luck with that."
"You know, you really aren't encouraging, especially for being my teacher.".
"I do encourage my students, but I won't feed into suicidal delusion, and that's all challenging him can ever be," Kusakabe says.
"Yeah well, we'll see…"
---The Following Day…
Wearing only a pair of shorts, Taiyo is sitting on some lush grass beside a river on campus, legs crossed and palms together as if praying.
While focusing on his Cursed Energy, he could feel it flowing perfectly through him.
Forming in his gut, then flowing up to his brain where it splits apart and flows into different parts of his brain.
After which it's directed and molded to form Jujutsu, or in this case, directed to flow throughout his body to practice reinforcement and enhancement.
With his eyes closed, he tuned out everything, even the feeling of wind on his shirtless body and the sounds of the river nearby.
After a few minutes of this, he changes the circulation of Cursed Energy within his body, visualizing currents of energy much like his veins running along and atop his body.
Then he adds more currents, directly beside the previous set.
And with a thought, he overlaps them at certain points, causing the streams to crash into each other and become chaotic.
His entire body trembles as he feels his Cursed Energy fluctuate, but with a few deep breaths, he steadies his mind and adds another layer.
This time, a third current took the chaotic flow into it, like a river filled with hundreds of whirlpools flowing all throughout his body.
With another thought, he focuses on his left hand, visualizing the whirlpools growing and overflowing within his body, and feels a relaxing sensation overtake his hand.
He opens his eyes for a moment to see that his hand is still completely normal, not cloaked in positive energy like he intended, still leaving his Reverse Curse Technique within his body, unable to heal others.
Closing his eyes and taking another deep breath, he visualizes the currents of energy across his body differently, now adding a layer above them to represent his skin.
But before he can visualize the pours for his positive energy to flow out of, he senses an immense Curse Energy slowly moving toward him.
'Gojo?' he wonders, then shakes his head. 'No, Gojo's control is too perfect. I'd never be able to sense the depths of his Cursed Energy, especially not from this far away. This person wants me to notice them…'
He continues his meditation, while keeping focus on the Cursed Energy signature approaching on the other side of the river, directly opposite him.
Ready to move as soon as he senses any fluctuations in their Cursed Energy, only to be completely thrown off guard when the person greets him with an energetic feminine voice.
"Hey boy! What's your type?!"
Taiyo is so confused he opens his eyes, only to see a tall and slim blonde woman, standing at 185cm -6ft2-, wearing jeans, a black top, and black leather boots.
But what interested him the most was the fact that she was walking over to him, across the surface of the river.
She was performing the feat of Cursed Energy control Kusakabe spoke of, and casually at that.
"Wow," Taiyo mutters as she reaches his side of the river and steps onto the grass.
"So, what's your type?" she asks again.
Taiyo looks up at her for a moment before rising to his feet, "The type to politely introduce herself when she meets people. I'm Taiyo Daburu."
"Oh, right," the woman rubs the back of her head. "Sorry, I'm Yuki Tsukumo, but you've probably heard a bit about me, right? Anything juicy?"
"Just that you're the 'Special Grade Delinquent'," Taiyo says.
"Ah, so they are still calling me that…so lame," she says before looking him up and down, not even attempting to hide it.
"See something you like?"
"Not sure if I like it, but they are interesting," she says curiously while poking the middle of his chest. "So, how do you exist?"
Taiyo just stares at her, not quite sure how to respond.
"It's ok, I don't really agree with Jujutsu Society on most things so I have no reason to tell them your secrets, but I can see and hear souls so…you're kind of a curiosity to me," Yuki admits. "Honestly, I just came here to talk to Yaga about something, but then he told me there's a new Special Grade, so…here I am."
"I, had a twin that I absorbed really late in the pregnancy," Taiyo says plainly.
"Seriously, that's it?" she asks, clearly disappointed.
"Were you expecting something else?"
"Well, you've got two souls in perfect synergy within one body so…yeah," Yuki slumps her shoulder and looks away, pouting. "You're so lame."
"If you're just going to insult me, can you just leave so I can get back to training," Taiyo says before returning to his seat on the grass.
Only for the woman to sit in front of him, staring quite literally into his souls.
"Are all Special Grades such weirdos?" Taiyo asks.
"Says the kid with two souls," Yuki taps his chest again.
This time she flows some of her Cursed Energy toward his souls, only for them both to feel the jolt through Taiyo's Cursed Energy network as the souls resonate in response.
Yuki pulls back her hand immediately before anything else can happen.
"Wow, that felt great. What'd you do?" Taiyo asks while looking at his body, feeling his Cursed Energy flowing much more efficiently before the feeling fades.
"I tried to read your souls with mine, but yours thought I was trying to attack and they resonated to help defend you," Yuki says. "The resonance must have given your sense of Cursed Energy and Jujutsu a jump start…that's pretty interesting."
"I should figure out how to do that on my own."
"I'm sure you will, but, back to my question," Yuki says. "What's your type?"
Taiyo, as thanks for what she just showed him, thinks about it seriously for a moment.
"I don't know," he says, causing her to scoff. "I'm not trying to avoid the question, it's just, my entire world flipped upside down less than a month ago. Now I have Cursed Energy and fight invisible monsters along with a secret society of people like me. Kind of changes your perspective on things."
"Well, I guess that makes sense, but, think about it for a moment. What's your ideal partner like, hmm?"
"Well, she'd have to be a Jujutsu Sorcerer, or a Curse User…I don't really care about allegiances that much once she's loyal to me. She'd have to be decently strong, so I don't have to worry about her dying all the time.
And, she'd have to share my goals, and be willing to burn the world down to get it, if that's what it takes. Yeah, she'd have to be selfish in that way."
"That's interesting, and physically?" Yuki asks.
"Well before that, she won't be the type to ask 16-year-old boys in the forest what their type of woman is."
This gets a small chuckle from Yuki, who just shrugs. "Jujutsu Sorcerers aren't normal, Special Grades even less so."
"Well, she'd be tall enough that I don't feel like I'm walking around with a kid. My dad was pretty tall so I've still got some growing to do. Then she'd have to be some eye candy. Like you."
"Like me?" she asks, curious as to where this is going.
"Yeah, but, more feminine and seductive, with more curves and a better body."
Yuki narrowed her eyes at him. "Now you're just being a jerk."
"Hey, you asked," Taiyo says. "But yeah, someone like that who's willing to build the life we want, even if it means burning everything down first."
"Well, you'll find no shortage of women like that in Jujutsu Society," Yuki says. "The problem you'll have is finding those that love you and are loyal to you above all else…actually, you're Special Grade so that won't even be a problem. Everyone wants to breed us."
"Yeah, I notice. The Zen'in and Kamo clans already sent me a list of women each and asked me to pick my favorites."
"Not your type?"
"I have no interest in women who let people dictate their lives, that's no fun," Taiyo says. "Life is competition and growth. To be stagnant is to die."
As Yuki is about to respond, they both feel a new presence above them, and look up to see Gojo standing in the air, staring down at Yuki, blindfold around his neck.
"Tsukumo, I told you to never come back here," Gojo says as his Cursed Energy flares up, giving Taiyo just a glimpse of the monster he's scheduled to fight.
END CHAPTER---
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pat.reon: Keanu_Eugene [Read ahead & support me]
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