『Felix Karl Grimm』
The Finger Bearer.
A "Special Grade" Cursed Spirit. Special Grade is in quotations because they were incredibly weak for being special grades, and very unskilled too. Especially this one because it was a newborn. But the fact still stood, they were an incredible danger regardless.
I pondered while in the car that the Assistant Manager Ijichi was using to drive us to the location of the Cursed Womb.
What were my chances against this Cursed Spirit?
Honestly speaking, they were not all too bad.
Megumi was able to take down a Finger Bearer of greater strength later on. I definitely had the tools defeat it. Mainly the wings of my Seraph Tracers. And even if I couldn't, I could almost certainly escape it.
There was the option of blurting out my meta knowledge and telling everyone to not go inside, but I was looking forward to the ticket I could get for defeating the Finger Bearer or at least saving Yuji's from getting hoodwinked by Sukuna.
We got out of the car as we approached the detention center under the light rain. I could see several emergency vehicles escorting people out of the area. Mr. Ijichi, our assistant manager, a rather wiry man in a black suit and glasses explained the situation more clearly.
The curse was spotted roughly 3 hours ago, and it was inside block 2 of the Detention Center. A 500-meter area around the detention center was already evacuated citing a gas leak. According to reports, there were 5 people left in the building with the cursed spirit.
We stood before the gates of the detention center cordoned off by the police. The heavy cloud and light rain created a rather gloomy ambiance as Ijichi-san gave a once over of the mission, giving us all a grim look.
"If this Cursed Womb is the type that metamorphosizes, we anticipate that it will turn into a Special-Grade curse. Your job is strictly the verification of survivors and the cursed spirit. If you encounter a Special-Grade, you will run, or you will die."
Megumi and Nobara looked visibly shaken at that while Yuji raised his hand with a confused and lost expression.
"Umm, what is a Special-Grade? Nobody explained what that means to me."
Megumi sighed as Ijichi gave a quick rundown of how the categories worked, grade 4 meant that even a regular person had a good chance against it while Special Grade meant even a military group was almost certainly fuck out of luck if they encountered it.
To Yuji's credit, even when faced with this information, his enthusiasm did not falter. However that enthusiasm did falter with what happened next.
"Tadashi! Please, answer me! Is my son Tadashi alright!? Please!"
A distraught mother was being held back by a line of men in suits, shouting her sons name with tears in her eyes. I let out a soft sigh, I could see Nobara was slightly distressed while Megumi seemed rather unphased. Yuji on the other hand was the one who was hit the hardest.
As for me? I felt a bit bad. But that was about it. I had seen plenty of people mourn and cry for their loved ones in Night City, but this was a different thing, in that place, most people have already internalized the fact that death may be around any corner. But not here, her fear was more... visceral.
I put a hand on Yuji's shoulder.
"Calm down, the best thing you can do right now is stay focused on the goal. Being worried won't help."
He turned and gave me a look before taking a deep breath and nodding. With a shaky smile he cracked his knuckles to hype himself up.
"Yeah, you're right. We're going to save him!"
Nobara put her hands on her hips and nodded.
"Of course we are."
But Megumi seemed less than enthused about the whole ordeal.
"Uh huh."
Meanwhile I just decided to stay silent. I wasn't really in the mood to dash their hopes at the moment. Because those guys were 1000% dead, deader than dead.
✧―✧―✧―✧「」✧―✧―✧―✧
『Felix Karl Grimm』
After we walked into the compound and in front of Block 2, Ijichi-san set up a veil for us that covered the entire school to hide whatever was going to happen inside this place. After that, he walked away and let us to our jobs. Megumi, the smart cookie that he was, immediately made a hand sign and summoned his shikigami.
"Divine Dogs."
His shadow bubbled like liquid before a dog with pure white fur and a red marking on its forehead emerged, looking up at Megumi expectantly like the good dog it was.
"He will let us know if there is a curse nearby."
Man, I wish I had a familiar that was that convenient, but unfortunately, Giffany was back in Night City. Still, deciding to make myself useful, I summoned 4 Black Knights, and they immediately took position around us.
"And these guys will keep watch and jump in to block an attack if they do get close."
"Woah! So cool."
"Good doggy! Do you want a treat doggy? I wish I had a treat to give you."
While Itadori was busy fanboying about the Black Knights as anyone should, Nobara bent down and started petting the wolf, much to Megumi's chagrin.
"Alright, enough of this, let's move in, we are wasting time here."
I spoke out and the other agreed, opening the door to the block and stepping inside. Only, we were not met with the dorms one might expect but instead with a brutalist architect's wet dream.
The inside of the building was a non-Euclidean mess of concrete buildings and rusty fixtures towering over us. The smell of blood and rust dominated the air as Yuji and Nobara looked around.
"What the hell is this?"
"An Innate Domain, the Cursed Spirit is manifesting an incomplete domain. We are in its world now. ...And the door is gone."
We all turned around to see the entrance we came from nowhere to be found, instead being covered by a mess of pipes and rubble. I hadn't even sensed it warping away.
""What do we do!?""
Megumi rubbed the bridge of his nose.
"Demon Dogs still has the smell of the entrance memorized. We should find the victims and get out as fast as possible."
Yuji and Nobara immediately jumped from panic to praising and petting the dog vigorously while I shook my head and summoned 2 more knights.
"I'll leave behind a knight every 10 meters so we can know when the domain shifts. I can sense the location of each one, so I'll know where they go, and they will alert me if they see the cursed spirit."
Megumi nodded at me.
"Right, good idea. Let's go."
We followed Megumi with the Divine Dog throughout the domain, and as expected, the geometry made absolutely zero sense. We could open a door into a balcony even through we were in a hallway before, and then jump down that balcony into a vent that led into an alleyway.
But soon enough, we reached a dark gray concrete room with...
"Yuck."
"Atrocious."
"That's... three people if I'm counting right."
Slumped against the wall was a corpse with all four limbs torn out with a blank expression, but he looked like he got off easy compared to the corpse next to him which looked like a ball of rotted dried tissue balled up into a corpse sphere. Yuji's lips trembled as he looked at the sight and approached it, taking a closer look at the name tag and seeing the same thing I saw with my eyes, Tadashi.
The son of the crying and screaming mother at the entrance.
"It's the son of that mother. His face isn't too badly mangled, we should bring his corpse back with us."
"But..." Nobara started but was cut off by Yuji who spoke in a quiet but firm voice.
"His mother won't be able to accept if we tell her he is dead, but don't bring a body. She deserves to see his corpse at least."
Megumi looked rather enraged by this and was about to grab Yuji's hoodie when I stepped in and gave him a firm look before giving the same one to Yuji too.
"We aren't taking the corpse with us."
Yuji blinked and looked at me in disbelief.
"Stop joking around, we can't come back for it, this place keeps shifting around."
I met his gaze without faltering and crossed my arms. I was already used to dealing with emotional outbursts from running with a crew during missions.
"That's not our concern. There are two more people here that we don't know if they are dead or alive, we have to verify them and get out."
Yuji clenched his fists and gritted his teeth. Looking truly frustrated.
"But his mother... how can you just abandon him like that?"
Although he said that, the moment he lifted his head and saw my blank look, he flinched slightly.
"Yuji, leave it. His mother may deserve to see his corpse, but we deserve to keep ourselves alive. We are in hostile territory, we can't afford to be concerned about someone who is already dead."
Seeing him tilt his head down, I sighed and put a hand on his shoulder.
"Look, I know it's hard, but sometimes you need to put yourself above your own emotions and think things through rationally. If we keep wasting time-"
"Huh?"
Yuji looked confused as I stopped what I was saying midway through and turned to the hallway we came from.
Two of my black knights just died.
"It's coming."
"Huh what are you talking about? Divine Dog would have sensed him coming-!"
It was only now that we noticed that the Divine Dog was no longer in the room with us. For an incomplete domain, this fucker really had some finesse in him. Megumi immediately got into a wary stance while Nobara furrowed her brows.
"What-"
"Kugisaki!"
"Tsk."
I clucked my tongue as Nobara fell through the floor like it was liquid. This situation was not looking great. Turning to Megumi I ordered him.
"Fushiguro, let's split up, go find Nobara, now."
His jaw clenched and he stared me in the eyes for over a second before nodding stiffly.
"Right, don't die. Or I'll kill you."
Cheesy boy.
I turned to Yuji to say the same thing but he shook his head before I even opened my mouth.
"No way, I'm not leaving you behind, I'm not leaving someone else behind."
My eye twitched, but before I got to rebuke him, I noticed something. In the corner of my vision, I saw something rapidly approaching, a humanoid figure with starch white skin with multiple eyes on its hair-like thing. Seeing me calmly make eye contact with it, the spirit seemed shaken as its face splitting grin faltered for a second before gathering dark yellow cursed energy in its mouth.
I opened my wings and slapped Yuji away with them before crossing them like a shield in front of me.
BOOOM!!!
"Grrrhh...!"
The impact of the cursed energy against my wings was like trying to stop a truck, but my wings were durable. Even as the cursed energy exploded against them and pushed me back, they remained unbroken. I lowered my wings and spread them while wiping the sweat from my brow and shooting a glare at Yuji.
"Run. Now. You'll die here."
I didn't have the luxury of paying him anymore attention as the cursed spirit crashed down in front of me and rose to its full height. I was not exactly short, but this bastard was one large fish. It did a little jiggle and I saw into the hole in its chest. Or more specifically, the suspiciously finger shaped object inside.
"Heh, hihihihi!"
It giggled while holding onto its head and I tilted my head. Apparently it judged me as no threat after I struggled to block its cursed energy shot. Not wasting the free shot it was giving me, I bent down in an Iai stance, my wing deformed and wrapped around my body, storing energy for a moment before I slashed.
'Seraph Flash!'
Schwing!
"He?"
The cursed spirit leaned out of the way at the last second, but still lost his hand as my Seraph Flash cut through it like a shoot of bamboo. As the hand fell to the floor it looked at it with a blank expression before turning its eyes to me.
"Grrrrhieeeeee!!!!!!"
I blinked as it released extreme amounts of cursed energy and regrew its arm while trembling from sheer rage. I could feel the vast quantity of cursed energy wash over me almost like a physical wave, making me sweat.
...It seems I've made a mistake of some kind.
A/N: The entire group is kinda hard to write I'll admit, but it can lead to some fun, Yuji and Grimm clash nicely. Well, not exactly clash but Yuji really has some things to learn from Grimm. His way of treating the whole ordeal is definitely far different from the other three due to his breadth of experience as a merc, I hope you guys enjoyed the scenes between the squad.
The Finger Bearer is here, and the JJK will really start to diverge from here. And Felix is in for a fight in a half, he has never fought such a formidable foe before and that definitely led to him underestimating the finger bearer. Even he is not safe from the insidious killer of overconfidence.
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