Chapter Text
“Arata, are you sure you don't want me to go with you?” Akari asked, hands on the wheel and eyes ahead, though not much could be seen aside from fog.
“No, we don't need more help. You heard them, this spirit isn't strong!” Arata argued, as Nobara stood silent in the backseat, eager to jump in to say that she very much appreciated the help.
Mimiko meanwhile wasn't listening to a single thing, her face scrunched up in anger that she was going on a mission without her sister. Geto specifically requested as such so she couldn't exactly feel mad at anyone in particular but her lack of enjoyment was evident
“The spirit isn't strong but you know, you're not a combatant, you didn't even take that fancy new sword you got!” Akari scolded, while Arata crossed his arms and sighed. “We're here.”
One could just barely confirm Akari’s words. A thick fog covered nearly every inch of the town of Shiotsuki, with houses being able to be seen at its very edge, and yet not a single soul was outside despite the evening hours.
Another aspect of the town was its noise, or lack thereof. Nobara lowered her window to check and very clearly not a sound could be heard, the humming of the car being the only thing that ever reached her ears.
This curse wasn't subtle, but it was hard to find. Due to its long ranged abilities, whatever they were, finding where the curse was to exterminate it was hard enough as to where it simply wasn't worth it to send someone stronger than the three.
Nobara was the one that needed to be here. If the spirit, for whatever reason, split itself, she could damage it using Resonance. While unlikely, there was nothing she stood to lose by being here anyway, as the spirit didn't seem to be very powerful.
As the trio unboarded the car, they faced a small hotel, which would be their place to stay. Because of the curse’s sly nature, the likelihood was that the mission would take more than a day.
It was nothing luxurious, appearing closer to a really big house than anything else. The three entered the place with a small handbag each, having both their clothes and their tools. In order to not aggravate the spirit, the three weren't in uniform, wearing plain, civilian outfits chosen for the cold.
As they entered, a single person was inside, a man at the counter, and while there were armchairs and tables in this room, much like the outside, it was barren.
“Good evening.” The receptionist had a deep, guttural voice that was regardless extremely clear. “Do you have a reservation?”
“Oh, yes, yes we do” Arata grabbed onto his pocket, pulling out a receipt, and handing it to the man, who then inspected it.
“If I may. Why have you traveled here? Shiotsuki has no tourist attractions, or anything interesting to see.” The man turned to grab their room key. Arata noticed how every single room was empty, he really wasn't lying that this wasn't a popular tourist spot.
“Oh, we just wanted somewhere quiet to chill out before our classes start over” Nobara lied, knowing Arata wouldn't be able to act well enough. The man shrugged, handing Arata the key, but not before he had something else to say
“Mr. Fog hates liars, you know?”
The man didn't say a single other word, and turned to go to the back room. Arata and Nobara looked at one another, rather confused as to what the man was trying to do.
His last line was spoken exactly like the rest. Only a perceived intensity increased by on his own, the man maintained his tone level and wording clear. The three walked up a flight of stairs into the second floor, where relatively tight, dark corridors were the only paths. Their room was near the perfect center of one, with the corridor ending in a 90 degree turn into another.
Thus, the trio waited to see if anything would make noise, if anyone was approaching. Packing just their most basic tools, which were Nobara’s nails and some rope for Mimiko, the rest was left behind as the trio would go out into the town to investigate. Their bedroom was quite small, roughly the size of a single dormitory in Jujutsu Tech, albeit its one advantage was a bathroom directly connected to it, but it wasn’t very large.
No discussion was held over ‘Mr. Fog’, for the simple reason that there was a high chance they were being watched. It was best to simply act as if they only considered the receptionist’s words as some type of cooky tourist garnering strategy.
“It's so empty out here” Arata commented, looking around in the fog as he felt mildly uncomfortable with even speaking, given the silence.
“Small towns. They tend to be” Nobara replied bluntly, she too thought the state of the town was questionable, but she couldn't appear to be on edge quite yet.
“Still… Too empty.” Mimiko affirmed, her eyes trailing from side to side even though her head didn’t move an inch. “And this fog…”
Their steps through concrete were the only thing that could be heard, until what was possibly a lucky event occurred. Arata's shoelaces came undone, and whenever he lowered himself to fix them, the noise of footsteps seemed… Suddenly very distant.
Whatever it was, it hit its brakes the moment Arata perked up, identifying that they were being trailed. Trying to follow their stalker was pointless, if this was a spirit or anything of the sort, it'd be able to run away easily. The girls stopped to wait for him, but by now whoever was trailing them had long stopped walking
A tense shock ran through Arata's body as he was suddenly struck with the prospect that he had no way to communicate the steps to the other two without alerting someone. It was obvious by now that they were under constant vigilance and he had no manner of signaling to them the current events.
Growing stiff, Arata rose back up, his detection of Cursed Energy was already subpar and this fog, that by now was surely related to the spirit, smudged the tracks. At this moment, he had to trust that the girls happened to perceive the sound like he did, or else, the weakest fighter of the group was the only one capable of reacting to a surprise attack.
Once more he flinched, but not alone. Steps, heading in their general direction, to a left side. Ignoring the surprise, the group continued to walk, as what was a single set of feet revealed themselves to pertain to a group of people.
Nearly randomly assorted, but regardless, all adult men with generally level heights, the men walked forward, in an almost strategic formation, but most unsettling of all was the manner at how they did so.
Their movement was perfectly synchronized, each step pressing onto the concrete at the exact millisecond, their arms stiff, but low. Their gazes were distant, but always ahead. Not a single one of them uttered a word, or made any noise other than their footsteps, even their breathing seemed so weak, it couldn’t be perceived.
Keeping their gaze away was difficult, as only Mimiko was capable of such, but solely after caving for brief moments. This was undeniably the work of the spirit… But what exactly was its ability? Mind control felt possible at this moment, but there were rarely abilities with that sort of range and potency. The fog extended throughout the entire town
“I’m feeling hungry, let’s find somewhere.” Mimiko ordered, knowing she had to take the lead. It didn’t take long for a small, family owned restaurant to come into view. Perhaps convenient, though eating was far from their priority at this moment.
Its humble outer shell was a perfect display of what the restaurant was. Small, only a few tables and a tv at the top. Oddly, the TV seemed to be stuck in extremely loud static,to the degree that it would be better to keep the device turned off. On another hand, there were no other customers.
A single woman stood on the counter, unmoving as she watched the trio enter, and sit down on a table picked nearly randomly. The one compromise is that they were to sit somewhere with the smallest amount of blindspots. It took some long seconds for the woman to realize her own work, and in a slow, painful pace, with rigid legs as her knees bent just the slightest necessary for her shoes to leave the floor before smashing down again, she walked toward the table. A smell of iron grew ever closer as a low, crackling noise came clearer every time her sole plopped itself onto the tiles.
The woman handed the three a menu, and stood in utter silence to wait for their orders. Whatever compelled this woman to act, it seemed like the baseline of what customer service was to be, without any level of nuance or even personality. It was similar to how something entirely non-human would perceive to be that type of work by only a vague description.
“We’ll… We’ll get a portion of large french fries.” Mimiko ordered, figuring out of everything, that was the one that was the least likely to have something unexpected in them. The woman grabbed the menu again, and smashing her heel onto the ground, with a loud, crackling noise and a sudden burst of an iron-like smell, she turned, and left, with the same slow, rigid pace as before.
Just like the men outside, her expression was entirely blank, which was also seen in the hotel receptionist, but by that point it hardly seemed like a concern compared to the repeated examples. Furthermore, her arms were stiff, but lowered. They only seemed to bend whenever she handed the menu, and then picked it back.
The resounding, albeit entirely silent agreement within that small table was that the woman, however she was, was bleeding, profusely at that. No average explanation would produce such a stench, and as horrid as the idea seemed to be, the crackling noise in her steps painted a clear picture. The woman’s shoes were filled with shattered glass.
Nobara and Mimiko looked at Arata, who clenched his hands into fists as he weighed his options. Should he blow his cover, and use his Cursed Technique to, at least for a while, prevent more damage to her body. While Nobara only glared at him with a neutral expression, genuinely wondering what he would do, Mimiko was tense, she knew they shouldn’t risk it. It simply wasn’t worth it.
The television suddenly connected to some sort of signal, as the static, once droning onto the already aching heads of the students, changed into a news program
‘In the small town of Shiotsuki, near the shore of Fudai, a teenager by the name of.’ A wave of static cut off the reporter, whose gender was nearly unidentifiable from both the warped visuals and poor sound. ‘Was accused of committing sexual assault onto a teenage girl. The event resulted in that boy getting beaten to death. Due to compounding evidence by multiple testified citizens of Shiotsuki, he was declared guilty. It is quite surprising how easily a lie can become as worthwhile as truth. I thought it was made clear. Mr. Fog hates liars.’
The students were left stunned as the woman returned, carrying their desired dish, albeit the spirit evidently didn’t care for any level of subtlety any longer. The woman displayed numerous open wounds, all done with a haphazard rush, ironic as was, a lack of care for the wound itself to be consistent, many gashes that should be linear proved to be considerably larger than what was probably intended.
The smell of iron, that previously was nearly an afterthought given how subtle it was, and previously only needed to exist for the trio’s theory to be given credence, now overfilled the cramped environment with a sickening, rotting stench of active bleeding and, through whatever method or logic, a decaying carcass.
“Holy sh*t!” Nobara exclaimed, as Arata, without thinking, activated his technique, performing the extensive hand sign and lightly touching the woman
Pain Killer
The woman did not react to a single one of the previous events, setting down the tray of blood-covered fries onto the table and leaving in the same rigidity of before, broken glass crackling inside her shoe.
Neither one of the three was able to emote. Arata looked at the palm of his hand, dirty with the woman’s blood. He trembled as he tried to cope with the sight of the woman, covered in her own blood and open wounds, utterly unable to express the agony she must feel, if at all. The level of consciousness each individual in this town possessed was questionable.
“We should… Go back to the hotel.” Mimiko suggested. While it was a cramped environment, it was one they were mildly more knowledgeable on. The three paced faster than before on their way back, however this time, the roads weren’t empty. A number of people, of all ages, genders and sizes stood outside on the sidewalks. As odd as it all seemed, the crowds, perfectly spaced, and ordered with a millimetrically symmetrical distance between one another, were entirely silent, and utterly neutral.
Their poses were also default. Arms stiff, albeit lowered, nothing in a single one of their hands. Not one of them was like the woman from the restaurant, as they didn’t appear to be wounded at all.
Entering the hotel, the man in the reception now didn’t speak, but differently from the crowd outside, he did move. His head slowly tilted whenever the three moved, following them closely with his gaze, all too distant to be focused but never leaving their direction. Ascending the flight of stairs and into their room, they would need to think. Some type of strategy… Anything, for that matter.
Mimiko hurriedly opened the doorway as Arata, the last to enter, could see something leaning from the angular entrance to another hall. It was a girl, roughly their age judging by her size and build, but without a doubt she was physically afflicted by the curse.
Her face had been mutilated, to the degree Arata couldn’t even begin to consider what might have caused such damage. One of her eyelids had been torn off by pulling force, said eye already dry and reddish, entirely useless. Her mouth had multiple cuts, which weren’t healed, and made her lips incredibly unequal. Her nose was twisted, broken and one of her ears seemed to be just barely hanging on. Her visible hand, gripping the wall, was missing a finger.
Entering the room and slamming the door shut behind him, Arata locked it and pocketed the key, while Mimiko shut the windows, and then the blinds. Nobara looked around to see if anything could be used as a means to block any outsider’s entrance, but they didn’t seem intent on such quite yet.
From underneath the doors, both to the bathroom and outside, a dark gray smoke began to enter the room. It slid past the cracks and piled onto the floor of the bedroom. Nobara rushed for the window, but it now seemed glued shut, probably the spirit’s work. Arata rushed for the front door, unlocking it and finally using all his weight to just barely get it to move an inch.
Something was blocking the door from the outside. It wasn’t something solid like a wardrobe, or other sorts of furniture. Whatever was holding it caved, but then bounced back to its original position, just barely different from the one morphed by pressure. It was flesh.
Judging by the weight of the flesh in question, Arata surmised that what was holding the door shut wasn’t a single person or much less few people. A pile of men, haphazardly thrown as a means to block the trio and keep them inside the room, where the gas eventually piled up, as Nobara feverishly attempted to break the walls and floor to see if anything caved but the room seemed to have been artificially strengthened by the spirit and the smoke was evidently weakening her
In a matter of minutes, all three faded to black.
