Japan

Leaving the corner store of a busy street, Hector opened up a new pack of cigarettes. Quickly peeling away at the coating of plastic in a polished manner, he had the pack cracked open and hit the metal foil in no time.

Tearing out the foil, he pocketed the waste as opposed to scrunching it up into a ball and throwing it away in some alley. The people in Japan go fucking nuts for littering and he honestly couldn't be bothered with someone pulling him up for it, sticking the rubbish in his pocket will save him the unnecessary hassle.

With the contents of the pack finally revealed to Hector's strangely coloured eyes, he picked one of the white filtered cigarettes out, placing it between his lips and sticking the deck in his jacket pocket.

None of the pedestrians gave Hector more than a second glance and a frown as he lit up the cig with a beat up, tartan zippos lighter that looked to be on its last legs. On the first clip of the flint, a spark was generated which instantly gave birth to a small flame, putting the head into the fire, being extra careful not to light the roll of bandages that were wrapped around his arm and hands.

There were small sizzles as the tobacco leaves inside the rolling paper burned. Taking a deep inhale, he felt the smoke enter his lungs before the toxins and heat were funnelled into his system by his cursed energy.

The exhale was cold, slightly bitter and tasted mildly of coconut. Not a flavour he'd find in cigarettes back home, and something he was still getting used to.

Now that he was smoking the people on the street gave him a wide berth, opting to avoid the stifling smell as they passed the older looking boy.

No one explicitly called him out on smoking, despite being two years underage… well four since you need to be 20 before being able to legally smoke in Japan. Plus he was in the Roppongi district, a place full of nightclubs, bars and the like.

His height that has been steadily approaching six feet and the fair bit of stubble that was growing on his jaw made him look a passable age. Puberty hit him hard, and early, and he's got the deep voice and hair to prove it.

Plus people in Japan aren't really a fan of facial hair, almost always having a clean shave. This just made Hector look even older compared to the baby faces that surrounded him.

All in all, he looked like a pretty normal guy, albeit out of place. His looks were a solid seven, an eight at a push, even if Hector himself disagrees and vehemently thinks himself an elven.

The only part of him that was on the weirder side, was his eyes. He had a rare condition called segmental heterochromia, which meant his irises were made up of two colours instead of the typical one.

To put it into perspective, think of his irises as a clock, on his left iris, one to seven o'clock was a shade of light green with the remainder being a sea blue. His right was mostly blue but he had a small segment of green in the five to seven position near the bottom of the iris.

Their not even related to cursed energy or anything, just a bit of fucked up genetics causing them to have mixed colours.

Talking about genetics, he hit the jackpot for hair colour. Ginger hair that was more inclined to red than luminous orange some of his fellow compatriots are landed with, was tied in a low ponytail.

In fact scratch the eyes - his hair made him stand out more than anything else. It wasn't a big deal in Scotland, plenty of people had the same hair as Hector there. Other countries, not so much, even dyed red hair was a scarce sight.

The evening was gradually dimming into night, the street was bustling with groups of people out for an after work drink with colleagues. Hector never really had a destination in mind, so he was just casually strolling around while observing his surroundings.

There were whispers about a certain fight club, where sorcerers would be pitted against each other, and bet on by the spectators.

Hector was looking for this place, but never had any leads on it. So he started off his search by looking through a Red-Light district in Tokyo. As far as he's concerned, the clubs not here, nevermind curses - which there are surprisingly little of in this area - he's not even found a jujutsu sorcerer yet.

Might as well strike this place off the map.

"This is gonna take fuckin' ages man" He moaned in annoyance, a pure scottish accent coating his words.

His Japanese is alright, not great by a long shot, but he knows enough to live in Japan that's for sure. There's quite a few Kanji-based Jujutsu where knowing the language is necessary, like talisman for example. Back when his clan was still around, he was taught both skills by his mother, the clan head.

He's been brushing up on his rusty Japanese lingo ever since he got here though, he's not used it in ages and needs to up his skills so he can enlighten the local chicks on his charming personality.

On large, he still speaks in his native tongue even though it's mostly to himself.

Learning languages is a pain in the ass, but he needs to do it anyway, or else how's he supposed to get in on this Jujutsu Gambling ring. Not like he can just swagger in and wow the place with the sheer coolness his scottish accent emanates.

Not like they'd understand a word he's saying anyway, if he goes all in and exaggerates a bit, an native english speaker would struggle to comprehend the words that spill from his mouth.

Just as he was about to disappear for the night, and maybe look for a burd to bang he was alerted to the presence of cursed energy on the other side of the street. Cocking his head to the right, he easily found the source in the form of four people walking in a group.

Three of them seemed to be around his age and they all wore the same uniform, with slight variation from person to person.

The boy with spiky dark blue hair bordering on black was scrolling on his phone, walking slowly behind his two friends who were emotively discussing something in front of him.

The lone girl in the group had short orange hair that seemed dyed, the uniform that she was wearing was tailored for a girl, having a skirt as well as a short jacket that was pushed outwards due to her considerable assets. She was currently jabbing at the last boy's stomach, a little too hard for it to be playful, as could be seen from the boy's expression.

Those two seemed to have a decent bit of cursed energy but that wasn't what alerted him, those two had fine control of their energy and reeled their auras in, unlike the final boy. His cursed energy was running rampant, there wasn't a lot of it but it was wildy untamed . It seemed like he had no idea that it was leaking out either, neither did it seem like he had any control over it.

That instant he looked over the last boy, his skin crawled in discomfort, it felt like something was watching him… something absurdly strong.

He realised that the tall blindfolded man was looking directly at him, in the short moment they locked gazes, Hector could see the total anomaly that was his cursed energy. All of it seemed to move around perfectly, not one bit of energy wasted, and that was a testament in itself considering the massive amount the man held.

He was strong.

Without debating it a moment longer, Hector ran. Fast.

Cursed energy coated his body, as he accelerated to speeds that should be impossible with the human body. The crowd of people around him never even noticed his disappearance, all that was left of him on the street was the gust of wind generated from his movement.

Hector blitzed through dark alleys, sprang over the roofs of buildings and took sharp turns at random corners. He had no doubt that if he fought with that man he'd lose.

Jumping into an abandoned building site, he reached into the inside of his jacket and pulled out a yellow-papered talisman. Sending a thread of cursed energy through it, the talisman glowed golden and from it sprang a curse.

The curse gave off a low guttural growl as Hector pried its maw edged with serrated teeth open, and plunged his arm into its shadowy insides in search of his cursed tools. The mimic made incomprehensible sounds and shivered on the spot as Magnus pulled out a drik - a long bladed dagger - and a medium sized small circular shield.

Hector wasn't taking any chances, so far he can't sense any of their cursed energy nearby but he'd rather be prepared to fight should it come to that.

He must've jinxed himself because as soon as the mouth of the Shikigami closed, he felt all four of their signatures appear behind him.

"Huh? Gojo-sensei, why'd you bring us here?" The pink-haired boy questioned as he whipped his head around the area, somehow failing to notice both Hector and the evil chest curse not far from him.

The other two… students? Reacted differently though.

One pulled out a hammer and a handful of nails, the other made a hand seal causing his shadow to ripple into the shape of an animal.

With a wide grin planted on his face, the sensei clapped his hands together and said "Well my cute little students, think of this as a sporadic lesson from your teacher. It'll be on Curse Users th-"

Before he could finish speaking, Hector had ripped the bandages off his arms. Exposing a series of wide open gashes that ran up his arms, loosely resembling hood vents on cars.

A sea of thick smoke rushed from the slits, rapidly spreading everywhere like a smoke bomb, preventing anyone from seeing more than half a metre in front of them.

Hector launched the dirk outside of the cloud, cutting through the smoke and giving off the illusion of someone running away. At the same time he mutely moved himself to the upper levels of the abandoned building, planning to hide as they took his bait.

Running away isn't an option anymore, the sensei cunt moved so fast it might as well have been teleportation. The only chance he has to escape is to hide and wait for them to leav-

"Found you" a terrifyingly upbeat voice said from behind him.

Hector acted before thinking, from his crouching position he threw a spinning back heel at whoever the person was. The kick sailed through the smoke aimed right for the man's jaw, only for it to be dismissively batted away.

Using the momentum of the block, Hector spun around and went for a low kick to try and sweep the man off his feet.

Again the man avoided the blow, stepping over Hector's leg and bringing it crashing back down onto the floor beneath them. Spider Web-like cracks formed across the concrete, before the floor beneath then completely blew open, sending Hector down a few levels of the building.

Before he hit the ground, Hector produced more smoke from his arms, controlling it so that two cushiony clouds formed beneath his feet. Using them as foot holds, Hector was able to bounce off to the side and roll to his feet.

A quick glance around told him that he was back on the same level he started on. The three students were now fully ready for battle, each one of them in a different guard stance prepared to pounce on him.

Just for them to be held back by their sensei who decided to continue his lesson while standing mid air, "As I was saying, Curse Users. Evil Jujutsu sorcerer basically." Doing air quotations with his fingers at the word 'evil', "Typically we have information on them so they can be easily identified, but in some cases we have guys like this, who seem to appear out the blue"

As he was speaking, Hector tried multiple times to attack the students and gain a hostage, but every attempt hit a rock hard wall in the form of a white haired sensei.

"By Jujutsu law, we as sorcerers are obliged to eliminate any we come across. I was thinking about putting you guys up against this one for some practice but-" blocking another attack from Hector with a dismissive palm, he continued "-he's a bit too feisty for you, as you are right now."

All of the students had different reactions to the information. Spikey seemed like he'd head if all before, the girl never seemed bothered about the potential prospect of murder but constantly looked between her sensei and the barrage of attacks he was stopping.

The last guy just looked plain dumb, but there was an underlying horror for the thought of murdering someone everpresent in his eyes.

Speaking for the first time since their meeting Hector shouted, "Fuck you geezer!, I ain't no Curse User. I'm a fully fledged Jujutsu Sorcerer and what you're saying is straight bullshit" flipping him off with his free hand, but otherwise not letting up with his attacks..

Letting out a light hearted giggle, the sensei states "Oh my apologies then, you must have just been a completely random sorcerer that happened to be watching over my students from a distance. Totally not anything suspicious."

"Damn right it's not suspicious, I've got better things to look at than your ugly mug." Hector spat springing in to slice him with a sword made of smoke.

Surprising Hector, his downward strike was caught between the tips of the sensei's index and middle finger.

An oppressive feeling suddenly pressed down all over his body, his movement hitched as he matched gazes with the man's single eye that was now uncovered. Even worse than that of the special grade curse, he'd felt years prior.

"Are you calling me, Satoru Gojo, a lier?" He imperiously stated.

Shit.

Hector now realised how totally, and thoroughly fucked he was. Everything made sense now, the anomalous cursed energy, the teleporting, the flying.

Fuck, he wanted to kick himself in the ass for not noticing the signs before, even his general look was a huge red flag. Everyone, including him, knew what Satoru looked like, as well as his cursed technique and six-eyes.

With his imminent demise thoroughly cemented, he was at least going to go out with a bang.

The oppressive feeling completely disappeared as Gojo scratched the back of his head and laughed once again, "Or then again, maybe I am wrong. Hey Yuji! What do yo-"

Hector put an abrupt end to his sentence by slamming his shield into his chest and sending him crashing into one of the supposed beams of the building.

The reason he was able to bypass whatever bullshit 'Limitless' does is due to the ability his highland targe is imbued with. It allows the wielder to move anywhere within twenty metres of themselves, though the ability has a reset timer.

Therefore Magnus used the ability, and moved himself and the shield within touching distance. Though only the shield was touching Gojo's chest and impacted, the rest of his body went through the weirdest sensation he's ever felt in his life.

It was like his body was being held in pace but at the same time not. Like his skin and bones were being stretched apart while staying stationary, the feeling was removed when Gojo was batted away though, restoring Hector's movement in full.

Ignoring the dumbstruck expressions of Gojo's students, Hector prepared to launch the most powerful technique in his arsenal, one that would surely end in his death.

The same technique his mother used to kill the one and only special grade curse he has ever seen, "Maximum technique - Self Destruct"

All the smoke he had stored was released from the gashes in his arms. Every single particle was rapidly compressed into a miniscule while sphere that pulsed with energy, every instant Hector refused to undo its bindings and pushed it further to destruction.

"An asshole maybe, smoker definitely, but a won't let any cunt talk shite aboot me till a die!" He yelled in pure english, not giving two fucks if they understood him of not.

With his last words said, ones that would never be carved on his tombstone, if he even got one. Hector released his hold on the violently beating sphere, fully ready to embrace his death, when a palm strike chopped down on his neck robbing him of his unconsciousness.

Unknown to Hector, Gojo Satoru, the man who knocked him out, quickly cupped his hands around the Maximum Technique, holding back the explosion's explosive outburst.