บท 2: Cursed tools

"Slow poke!" Fuji yells as he pulls ahead by a long shot.

"Get back here asshole!" Kinji yelled while trying to keep up, only to fail.

"Come on man, do you even work out?!" He answers, a grin on his face as he continues to pull further ahead. "This is just a light jog man!"

"Shut the fuck up and slow down!"

"Only if you buy me dinner tonight." Fuji calls.

"Hell no! You eat a shit ton! My wallet can't support you!"

"Ah, I call bullshit! I know you make bank gambling! I've been going gambling with you since we were like eight! You remember the time we did the trench coat trick? Or that time we beat your drunk of a father in cards, winning you the ownership of the mansion? Those were the times!"

As the conversation dies down, they arrive at the location, an old and empty schoolyard playground. Rusted swings, broken slides, monkeybars and anything else you could think of. It was all here. Not to mention, the sun going down left a glare that made this area rather eery.

"So this is it…huh, looks like a shithole." Kinji observes as he walks towards it. "Alright, let's find this little shit, kill it, and steal this area for the club." He says as they step onto the park gravel, Kinji puts his hands behind his head as they walk through the abandoned playground.

Fuji pats his shoulder to feel for the cursed inventory his father owned.

"Hey there little guy. How ya doin'?" Kinji asks as he watches the spirit vomit out a pistol.

"Heh. Now we're talking." He says with a smirk, and cocks the gun.

"Man, that spirits ugly as shit." Kinji says as he looks at the spirit, smiling at him with its sour smile. "Gives me the shivers sometimes, just looking at it." Kinji says as he walks past a small swing set when suddenly the swing grows teeth and a mouth trying to take a bite out of Kinji.

BANG BANG

Fuji fires two shots at the swing set. "Watch out, we're within range of the curse. Let's exercise it quickly and get out of here. It's giving me chills.'' Fuji says as he continues walking.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever man." He says as his cursed energy starts to swirl around him.

"You know, I can't see cursed energy, much less feel it, but from first hand experience, it feels like you have an aura of sandpaper around you whenever you use your cursed energy." As he finishes his sentence, a curse, this time one being a large slide, jumps at them. Kinji just raises his hand and delivers a good backhand slap imbued with his Cursed Energy.

"You sure this is a Second Grade Curse? It's like super weak." Kinji says as he starts to flex his cursed energy around him, an attempt to get a general feel for where the remaining curses are. "Alright, got the location of the big guy. Let's beat him. Once we do, the littles should disperse and we can claim this area in the name of the Gachinko Fight Club." Kinji says, watching Fuji put his gun back into the curse, before pulling out a katana with a fur guard.

"How do you even use a sword that big? It seems super impractical." Kinji says while watching his friend swing the sword around effortlessly with one arm.

"Learned a lot from my dad, how to fight, how to use weapons, how to get women, etc."

Kinji just elbows him in the side, "Follow me, the curse is over here." He says as they walk under a staircase going up to a slide, approaching a set of monkey bars. Once they get closer, it begins to speak.

"Don't leave me here maaaaa… I promise I will be goooood!" It starts to yell, "Don't leave me here! I prOmIse tO Be GooOD!" It cries out, starting to get bigger and more hostile.

Fuji stabs the sword in the ground before clasping his hands together behind his back, stretching them out while leaning forward. After he's done with his stretch, he picks up the sword and lets out a sigh. "Alright, let's do this." He says as he and Kinji launch at the cursed spirit.

Kinji instantly closes the distance and hits the spirit with a mean left hook towards Fuji, who slices it down the middle, only for it to pick Fuji up by the leg and throw him at Kinji. Fuji curses at how annoying this is, having been sent flying through the air, is not a fun experience, nonetheless, right before hitting the ground he turns upright and stabs the sword down, stopping his flight and sleeping himself down enough to kick toward the spirit again. He slides under the spirit, stabbing his sword up and cleanly slicing through the underside while Kinji crushed its skull.

"Well…that was anticlimactic." Fuji says in deadpan before they start to clean up the little curses remaining. As they finish, Fuji brings the sword back up to his shoulder, it slowly disappears into the curses mouth. Once the cursed inventory finished it's meal it slowly slithered down Fuji's arm.

Kinji cringed as he watched Fuji swallow the curse once it reached a small enough size, remembering the words his friend said to him a couple years ago, when he brought up the subject before.

"Dude. How the hell are you even able to get past the barrier with that cursed spirit?" A younger Kinji asks while looking at Fuji, his hand on his hips as he leans against a wall.

Fuji looks up and thinks. "Well, as someone with no cursed energy, I'm like an invisible man. Though the problem from not having an ounce of cursed energy is that, as soon as I hold a cursed tool, the cursed energy from it makes me visable again. You see, that cursed spirit I got can store objects. So I use it to carry my father's cursed tools." He pauses from the look on Kinji's face, as Kinji opens his mouth to speak, Fuji interrupts.

"I already know what your thinking. "Shouldn't the cursed energy from the spirit make me visable"?" He holds the curse in his hand, not being able to see it, he can still feel it in his hand from the abnormal invisible weight. "This little guy shrinks by storing himself in his own body. Then, I just pop it in my mouth and swallow it." He paused as he brings the curse to his mouth before swallowing it. "Blech… So in essence…an invisible man, is gonna have invisible guts, right?" He smiles. "That's why I can move through barriers with cursed tools without being found out. Pretty fancy, huh?"

Kinji shudders, 'Christ…that's disgusting.' Kinji walks towards Fuji before a voice interrupts.

"Yo, What are you doing...you remember that you're suspended, don't you…Hakari?"