"Not me, I'll totally spend all day reading manga, being in one is so boring in comparison."

Snort.

"Heh. Careful, keep saying things like that, and the plot will pick up."

And then he gives a little wave and heads out.

Log: July 2018
West Tokyo City
Eishū Juvenile Detention Center
In the sky above the exercise yard

Unnamed apparition of potential special grade. Its cursed womb was witnessed by several non-jujutsu sorcerers. Due to the emergency nature, three Jujutsu High first-years were dispatched to the scene, and one died.

    "Our window verified the cursed womb three hours ago," says Ijichi Kiyotaka, assistand director at Jujutsu Tech, to debrief the students. "Once ninety percent were successfully evacuated, a call was made to seal off the center. Citizens within a five hundred meter radius have been evacuated as well."

"...cursed womb? That sounds like a plot-relevant term," says Itadori.

"I've actually never encountered one," admits Hayashi, frowning. "Don't they tend to become special grades?"

"Not all of them," says Fushiguro. "But the ones that change shape and grow often do."

    Ijichi nods at Fushiguro, looking nervous. "It is as Fushiguro-san says." He faces the three of them once again. "At present, five detainees remain in Block 2 with the cursed womb. We do not know if it is one of the wombs that can metamorphose, but you should proceed with the assumption that it is."

Itadori raises a hand. "Question, Ijichi-san."

    "Yes, Itadori?"

"What's a 'special grade'?"

"Oh no, we haven't explained it? I have been a bad senpai, I'm sorry. Classification system for curse strength. Short answer is that special is above our pay-grade. Long answer is that for conventional spirits, on a scale, four is the weakest, one is the strongest, and special is unconventional and breaks the scale. They need to be handled with extreme care and taken on a case by case basis. So. Potentially extremely bad news."

"Like Sukuna."

"Yes. So... why are we here? I'm a grade 2."

"And I," says Hayashi, sounding like this is a bit of a sore topic for her, "am grade 3. So. Yes, why are we here?"

"Wait, sorcerers get grades, too?"

    "Yes, Itadori-san. Sorcerer grades depend on what they can beat; a grade 2 sorcerer is meant to be strong enough to beat a grade 2 curse, but not a grade 1 curse."

"So how come Hayashi-senpai's lower than Fushiguro-kun? He has the cool summons, I get it, but I have seen her fight, there is no way they are not evenly matched by now, unless I don't really understand the ranks."

"It's fine," she says. It is clearly not fine. "The ranking system for sorcerers requires recommendations for promotions. A lot of my work has been hunting down sneaky curses that had flown under the radar instead of being on hand for conventional assignments that get officially graded, I'm not well connected in comparison to Fushiguro-san, and I did kind of directly upset a lot of available sorcerers that could have put in for my promotion by coming to Tokyo's jujutsu sorcery school."

And then she crosses her arms and - yep, she's pouting. That's a pout. "It's fine," she repeats.

"Her gender will not have helped, either," says Fushiguro. "They have old-fashioned standards, like that."

"...that is bullshit and I want to punch someone about it."

"Ask Gojō-sensei for permission first."

    Ijichi looks entirely uncomfortable with this line of conversation and clears his throat to draw attention to himself and the assignment once again. "Unfortunately we are constantly short-staffed in this business, so it is not uncommon for you to need to take on missions beyond your power." He swallows dryly. "This situation is abnormal even by these standards, though. You must not engage under any circumstances. If you encounter a special grade curse, your options are to either run, or die. Listen to your instincts and fears. Your mission here is not to defeat the curse; it is to verify whether there are any survivors and rescue them if you can, but not at the cost of your own lives."

"And it's... definitely just five people?" verifies Hayashi, her brow furrowed. "Is one of them a, a VIP, the kid of someone powerful, or something?"

"...no, not as far as I know," says Ijichi, furrowing his brows.

    "Excuse me! Excuse me, please!" cries a voice from behind them where a few Jujutsu Tech employees have set a perimeter for civilians. "Is Tadashi there? He wasn't evacuated—"

        "Please stand back, ma'am! It's not safe!" says one of the employees.

    "Is—is my son Tadashi alright?" she asks, voice wavering. "Please, I must know—"

        "Ma'am, please, it's dangerous there—"

Ijichi watches this, his frown deepening, and tells the students, under his breath, "She's a guardian who was here for a visit." Then, turning to the woman: "Please step away. There's a possibility that someone has spread poisonous gas throughout the center." The woman covers her mouth with her hands, eyes widening. "We cannot share any more details at this time," adds Ijichi.

    "No..." she says, falling to her knees and covering the rest of her face, although the tears now falling free are evident anyway. "Why? Why is this happening?" she asks, before breaking into openly sobbing.

Hayashi looks at the woman with an impassive expression, then looks away.

"I don't like this," she says, very quietly. "At all. Three young and vulnerable sorcerers for five detainees? The ratio's wrong. Maybe we impressed somebody with the crocodile curse opener? But I still really don't like this. ... That said, if we are going to go in, we need to do it sooner rather than later, and make this as fast as possible."

Nod.

    Ijichi leads the way to the appropriate block and says, "Be careful." He raises his left hand to eye level, thumb, index, and middle fingers pointing up, ring and little fingers folded down. "I'll put up my veil." He shuts his eyes. "Emerge from darkness, blacker than darkness. Purify that which is impure." As soon as he finishes talking, a dome of darkness emerges from above the entire facility, turning the rainy afternoon into a rainy night.

"Oh, like the one from the other day," says Itadori, looking up and out at it. "What does it do, exactly?"

"Draws curses into the area, then keeps them from getting out," says Hayashi, in a clipped, businesslike tone that is a far stretch from her usual perkiness. "While at the same time warding ordinary people away. Also lets us know when the curses inside have been killed, it's sort of - magnifying their badness over the barrier itself. So if there's nothing to magnify, it breaks."

She fidgets with her fan and looks apprehensively at the cell block, and is not quite brave enough to be the first one to go in.

"Demon dogs," says Fushiguro with the appropriate shadow pupet gesture, and the white dog emerges from his shadow. "He'll let us know if the curse gets close," he adds, and then steps in following the dog.

Itadori follows on his heels.