Fukuda High School

Remember to join the discord, I put polls and information regarding the future of the story there so it'd be nice if yall could join and give your opinions. 

https://discord.gg/ZrWk2jqjbV (Discord Link)

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"We're here." Tanabe said after a few hours of constant travel, signaling that the trio had finally arrived in front of the High School. 

A quarantine net had already been put up around the entire sight, with a police checkpoint placed in front of it so as to prevent anyone from walking into their own untimely demise. 

"That was quite the trip."

Mei Mei heaved a sigh of relief as she no longer had to deal with Ginko's endless questioning about modern technology. Trying to explain how a phone worked to him was harder than doing so to an elderly on life support. 

"Ginko-san, Mei-san, is there anything you need to do before I cast the veil?" Tanabe questioned. 

"Let's first have a look at what we're dealing with." The both of them exited the car, Ginko blowing an impressed whistle as he looked at the scenery. "We'll tell you when we're ready."

"Mhm, that'll do a whole school in." It was hard to find even a singular square inch of the institution that hadn't been covered in the violet mist, but for some reason it refused to leave the school grounds whatsoever. 

As if there was some sort of invisible barrier limiting its area of effect. 

"Thoughts?" The older sorcerer looked at him. 

"All I can really get just from looking at it is that the miasma is pretty potent, though I don't know exactly what grade of sorcerer it can and can't affect. Other than that, it doesn't seem like an especially hard curse to deal with." 

She chuckled at his supposed brazenness. 

"What makes you say that?" 

"I've encountered curses like this before, albeit the scale wasn't nearly as big. The miasma is probably the result of a cursed spirit somewhere within the school grounds acting as its emitter, all we have to do is find it and kill it." He gingerly stretched his back, sparing no time moving towards the checkpoint. 

"Hold on." Ginko turned around with a raised brow. "We still don't have a way to deal with the miasma itself." 

"We do, just don't stand more than five meters away from me and you'll be fine." 

"Do you have some sort of barrier technique?" She hummed, oblivious both to what Ginko's technique was and his background with Jujutsu. Ginko's comment about having dealt with curses before was the only thing she had to go on. 

"Nothing so grand, now are you coming or what?" It had been almost a week since he had last dealt with a cursed spirit, which was basically a year in Ginko time. 

"So hotblooded." Mei Mei reached into the SUV, pulling out the oversized guitar case from inside. "But I guess that's to be expected of a first-year." She walked up beside him.

"Ready when you are." 

Ginko immediately stepped into the miasma without hesitation, desperate to scratch his curse-hunting itch that had been eating away at him for days on end. 

"Oh?" 

Mei Mei watched as the mist around Ginko was pushed a few meters away as the latter turned around to face her. 

"Hurry up." He snapped as she stood beside him. 

As he said, the miasma was incapable of coming within five meters of either of them. Being blocked by some sort of force every time it tried to get closer. 

"I don't really get it, but this is a pretty handy technique you have here." She gestured towards Tanabe, signaling that they were ready. 

The manager nodded from afar, putting his index and middle finger together as he pointed his hand upwards. 

"Emerge from darkness, blacker than darkness. Purify that which is impure." 

Upon the chants completion, a dark liquid-like substance started to form a dome around the school. Not only hiding their operations from un-wanting eyes, but also making it appear as if it were night to lure out cursed spirits.

"Do you know what a curtain is?" She asked, keeping her intentions sealed. 

"Obviously." 

"I see, then you must have some experience with Jujutsu prior to enrolling here, right?" He didn't answer, more interested in the matter at hand than small talk. Even though the answer pretty much spelled itself out. 

…

"This miasma has a secondary effect besides infecting, have you noticed?" He questioned, even though normally the senior would be doing the quizzing. 

"Yes, it's completely distorting my senses. I can perceive my physical surroundings just fine, but my feel for the cursed energy in the atmosphere has gone completely haywire." 

He nodded approvingly. 

"And how do you think it's causing that distortion?" 

Mei Mei frowned, clearly not in the mood for a classroom session at the moment. 

But Ginko's expression made it pretty clear he wasn't going to budge on this, for whatever reason. 

"There's probably some sort of secondary technique imbued into the mist alongside the disease."

Ginko was quick to shake his head. 

"No, that's impossible." 

"How so?" She grimaced. 

"Producing this miasma is clearly the result of a cursed technique, and you can't just imbue a technique into another technique. For that to happen the mist itself would need to be part of an innate domain, which has clearly not been deployed here." 

The mention of an innate domain alone was enough to make her recoil, the presence of such would immediately scale any cursed spirit to special-grade. 

No questions asked. 

"Then what is it?" 

"The mist has been segmented into bite-sized chunks, meaning that there are hundreds of individual pieces of mist scattered around here which are overclocking our senses into being rendered null. They're all distractions." 

Her eyes widened, having understood the implications of such a feat. 

"A cursed spirit capable of such foresight would be a —" He interrupted her. 

"Don't rush to conclusions, it's not like the mist was altered when we entered which means it's been wasting a good amount of its reserves even before we arrived. Furthermore it hasn't deployed an innate domain either, not even an incomplete one." 

Normally she'd be relieved, but something about the look on Ginko's face refused her that luxury. 

"I'm sensing a but?" 

"But." His mouth contorted into a devilish grin. "There is indeed a chance it's special-grade. It could simply be waiting for us to go where it wants us to go before deploying its domain, or perhaps a more advanced technique it has up its sleeve." 

There was a chance that the cursed spirit had set everything up as just a ploy to attract the right caliber of bait it wanted. 

And once its prey had been ensnared, well, the rest was pretty obvious. 

"You seem awfully nonchalant about it. Are you suggesting that you could handle such a calamity should it come to pass?" 

Ginko shot a bug-eyed look her way, chuckling shortly after.

"Of course not, we'd be killed if it was special-grade." Her shoulders slumped as he shot a thumbs-up her way. 

'Why must all white-haired sorcerers be such colossal pains in the behind?' She lamented as she followed Ginko through the mist. 

"Ah, here we go." 

After a few minutes of aimless wandering, Ginko had finally arrived at what looked to be the front entrance to the school building. 

"After you." Mei Mei held open the door, not wanting to be the first one to greet whatever lurked inside. 

Ginko held his nose, evidently perturbed by the nauseating smell that permeated throughout the hallways of the facility. "Ew." A result the putrid odor of rot in the air.

"Can't your barrier keep the smell away or something?" 

"Stop calling it a barrier, this thing I've created is too pathetic to be called that. Even a ball thrown by a toddler would get through it. All it does is keep the gas away, nothing more nothing less." 

Understandably so, she couldn't quite grasp why such a harmless comment irked him so much, but right now wasn't exactly the best time to start pestering him so she abstained from further questioning. 

Ginko walked over to one the classrooms doors, hearing distorted moans from inside as he touched the handle. 

"Well now." 

CRUNCH! CRUNCH!

Crouched down at the middle of the classroom was an awfully muscular figure with strange granite-like skin, its body was covered in blood from head to toe as the sound of crunching reverberated from its mouth. 

"Enjoying your meal?" 

A small mound of corpses stood in its wake, all with numerous bites taken out of them as if they had been mauled by a bear. 

"Ahhhhhh?" It snapped its head towards the two, revealing four pairs of eyes planted on each side of its face. 

"Ginko-kun, would you mind extending your range for a bit?" She reached for her case, pulling out what looked to be a large, light-colored two-handed axe. "I think I'm going to use this as a chance to show off a little." She smiled, slinging the weapon over her back as if it were light as a feather. 

Ginko simply shrugged in response, having no intention of interfering. 

"Haaallll… passsss?" The fiendish creature moaned, standing upright as its muscles bulged to the point where it seemed like they would pop out of its skin any minute now. 

Its eyes produced an awful squelching sound as they all focused solely on Mei Mei, observing her as the cursed energy radiating off her body started to increase. 

"Even though your appearance is filthy beyond belief, I actually don't mind if you wish to speak longer. After all, my paycheck increases the more time I have to spend around rotten existences such as yours." 

Ginko's upperclassmen leisurely entered the room, covering her palm over her mouth as she failed to restrain her yawn. 

"Then again, the smell is starting to get rather troublesome. So I'm not opposed to wrapping this up quickly either." 

"NO… HALLLLLLL… PASSSSS?" 

Multiple streams of purple sludge like blood started to pour out of its orifices, as if it had become so enraged to the point of bursting its own vessels. 

"How unsightly." 

It took off in a mad dash towards her, its feet sliding across the wooden floorboard with its fist readied like an arrow on a string. 

'That makes sense, if she's reluctant to use her cursed technique then this is probably the only other avenue she has available to her.' Ginko mused, leaning against the doorframe as he watched the battle initiate in mild interest. 'Moreover that cursed tool seems to be only capable of channeling, which wouldn't be a bad thing if her cursed energy output was through the roof —" 

BAM! 

The cursed spirit's blow collided with the blunt side of Mei Mei's axe, the impact having not moved her so much as an inch. 

Taking advantage of the brief window of opportunity, she responded with a thunderous vertical swing. Lopping off the creature's arm with little to no effort. 

"HALLL… PASSSS!" 

It quickly retreated to the back of the room, its instincts warning it that it was trying to punch way above its weight class. 

' —But it isn't. This thing is probably about as strong as a semi second grade in terms of raw cursed energy, but since all it's really capable of is throwing its body around wildly, its actual threat level is akin to that of a third grade. Her cursed energy reinforcement is impressive, but that alone won't carry her very far.' 

Ginko groaned internally as he watched Mei Mei approach the cursed spirit with the intent to finish it off. 

'When she referenced innate talent earlier, she was probably referring to cursed technique's themselves. When in actuality it refers to one's ability to use their technique to its fullest.' His lips curled into a frown as he watched the battle conclude with an odd sense of disappointment. 'Did no one teach her? Everyone has a different cursed technique engraved into their soul upon birth for a reason. It's quite literally the world's way of saying, "Hey, I think this would suit you best" yet she seems to have interpreted that as a roulette of good and bad.' 

With a single swift motion, Mei Mei's axe cleanly lopped the creature's head off its shoulders, proving her familiarity with the lethal instrument.

"Would it be prudent for me to interpret the look on your face as disappointment?" She looked towards the still brooding Ginko, curious as to what was going on inside his head. 

"You seem to have mastered reinforcing both your body and your weapon with cursed energy." He stated, expressing neither pleasure nor displeasure in his tone. 

"I'd thank you for the flattery, but it seems you have more to add?" 

"You've mastered walking, but you refuse to run. The curse you just fought could barely comprehend the existence of its own legs, but that won't be the case for all of them." 

"That —!" 

Right as she was about to interject, Ginko had already started to proceed up the staircase. Forcing her to keep up with him if she didn't want to be afflicted by the toxic air around them. 

--- 

As promised, we got some action going on now. 

I know most of yall probably wanted to see more Ginko related action, but I still think it was the right call to make sure all his classmates at this point in time are as developed as possible. 

Especially when there are so few of them, and I don't really want to add OC's to fill in the blanks. 

As per usual, if you have anything you want to tell me or need a community to chat in make sure you join the discord.