Noriko Kamo hummed to herself, twirling the sacred ink brush between her fingers as she ascended the narrow staircase within the abandoned home. Her vision was awash with colour and glowing lights as she ran her eyes over her surroundings - cursed energy, and a lot of it. Something tragic had happened here. It was evident by the dark navy haze that hung in the air. The wooden stairs creaked from under her feet as she took further tentative steps.

"Oh, Mr. Curse - or Mrs. - or non-gender-or-title-specific curse, come out, come out wherever you are~!" Noriko called out as she glanced around the second floor landing, pausing when she caught an eerie feeling emanating from one of the doors across the way. Having been raised at the shrine and baring witness to all kinds of spirits, curses, exorcisms etc., she wasn't really that afraid of it all anymore - in fact, she was probably less intimidated by curses than she was other people (namely the head Kamo family). However, she was aware that Tokyo curses would be on a whole other level than the ones she'd seen before, so still kept her guard somewhat up.

She readied her hands - her left to flick open her ink canister and her right moving the calligraphy brush towards it.

Kneeling down, she dipped her paintbrush in the ink, waiting till it was thoroughly saturated until she began to write on the ground. She made her description plentiful (ensuring it would be sufficiently strong):

'"Come, Izanami's hounds, rise from Yomi, the polluted lands, and bare your forsaken presence down on this mortal passageway", cried the human,' - the ink began to seep into the floor and disappear - 'two hellhounds sprung out of the darkness. Beasts of the afterlife with inky pelts - blacker than any nightmare - and huge snarling maws ready to consume the godless energy formed upon this desolate place.'

A few seconds passed before Noriko felt hot breath on the back of her neck. Glancing over her shoulder, she nodded to the two large black dogs slinking out of the shadows. Their coats sunk into the deepest black she'd ever seen, drawing whatever light there was into them. Huge and imposing - a pretty strong manifestation, Noriko commended herself, before dipping her brush in her canister again. She wrote another passage, which shortly seeped into the floor, and then resurfaced in a brilliant white glow, which illuminated the landing.

Noriko reached a pale hand down, retrieving a sword from the light. She tossed it between her palms, satisfied with the cold, metallic touch and substantial weight of the physical object. Clipping the canister lid closed, she slipped her brush into the same holster. She straightened herself up, turning her gaze to her target - the door.

The hallway was silent, just how it had been from before she began, however, her own breathing was accompanied by the staggered breath of the two hell hounds behind her. She locked eyes with the fantastical beasts - their red eyes boring into her dark ones - as they waited for her command. Settling the sword into her right hand, she made a slow move forward, gesturing for the dogs to follow her.

The door was still emitting a dark blue glow, and as she got closer, Noriko began to feel the steady pressure of cursed energy build up between her ears.

Grade 3... or maybe, a Grade 2, she commented to herself; whatever it was, it was her first Tokyo Curse.

Reaching out her left hand, she pushed open the door, stepping into the inky void ahead of her - her canines following at her heel. Cold... cold air began to circle around her ankles as a draft hit her. Whatever it was, it wasn't quite creating a Domain. The room was a pitch black, blurring the seam between the floor and the walls. Within the void, her vision was useless as the whole room was just a haze of blue and she was unable to precisely determine the curse's location.

The door slammed closed behind them, causing the dogs to jolt in surprise and begin to growl.

Noriko slowly reached down her left hand, pulling her still damp brush from it's holsters and sketching on the skin of her thigh. She didn't look down. The ink absorbed, like it had the other times, and a few seconds later, the familiar glow began to light the room.

As the room was bathed in gentle glow, Noriko found herself the audience of a thousand eyes.

In her surprise, she paid no heed to the floating balls of light flittering from her leg and further illuminating the room. She slipped her paintbrush back into it's leather slot. The large eyeballs covered every inch of the wall and ceiling space, all containing identical red irises trained on her form.

"Well, hi there," she breathed, readying her sword in her hands. She was the first to move, leaping forward to swing the sword down across the nearest eye. Her attack hit - the curse seeming to feel no need to dodge it. Dark purple blood dripped out of the deep gash before the damaged eye receded into the wall, only to reappear a second later - unscathed. Leaping back, she held out a hand to her hounds to stop them from advancing.

"Give me cover," she instructed, her mind humming with thoughts, as the room began to shake; the floor beneath her becoming unstable. The wood melded away into a long rivet, which began to fade to a flesh colour before a giant mouth appeared just under her feet. Forcing herself back, Noriko dodged the giant mouth only to have to duck under a flurry of limbs which formed from the wall. The hounds leapt into action, one of them tearing into the cursed forms, only have them dissolving into a pool of black before reforming. The walls around them began to writhe, sprouting collections of isolated body parts: an arm, some legs, a foot, an ear. "Ahh~! I see what game we're playing!"

Noriko felt a grin pull at her lips (her mind becoming quiet again) as she folded herself into a back bend to avoid another hand and ducked to roll out of the way of another. She kept moving, dodging limbs and appendages as she unclipped the lid to her canister once more, dipping her brush in. In her fast, continuous movements, she felt ink splatter down her legs, but she paid no mind. As long as she had even a drop, she would be fine.

"You've picked my favourite game," Noriko taunted, crouching down to sketch a quick doodle on her leg and then rolling to avoid a forked tongue. A familiar light illuminated her leg and the sorcerer reach down to her calf to retrieve her item. "I always win at hide and seek~!"

It was true - when playing hide and seek with the Saiin, and various manifestations or curses, at the shrine, she always won.

Noriko yanked a bottle of bleach out of her calf, flipping it upside down as she began to pierce holes in the bottom with the tip of her blade. Her hell hounds made fast work around her, tearing the forms that came close to her into pools of dark purple liquids. Once she'd done, she flipped the cleaning supply back round, leaping up at the walls to drench the apparitions in bleach and continued to do so until she reached her second wall.

There came a low, guttural screech; the room vibrated even more.

Chucking the bottle to the floor, Noriko began to scan the wall she'd just drenched, finding all the eyeballs recede into the wall - apart from one. An eyeball halfway up the wall remained present, the whites of it's eye beginning to stain a faint pink in irritation.

"Found you~!"

Bracing both hands on her sword, she shot up, bringing the blade down vertically through the wall and cleaving the eye in two. The blackness that had covered the room began to shrink into the place where Noriko had made her fatal attack until the room was back to what was presumably it's normal appearance. Once her feet touched the floor, she steadied herself again, glancing around before moving to put her hands on her hips.

"Didn't I tell it I would win?" Noriko gushed to her hell hounds, who remained stony faced and alert. One of them bent down to the sniff the discarded gallon of bleach - now leaking onto the floor - before reeling back in disgust. "Modern problems require modern solutions."

If dogs could scoff, she was convinced, in that moment, she'd seen it happen.

She pulled out her brush again, drawing a line over both canines, who's' forms melted into a splatter of ink on the floor. Doing the same to her sword, she collected herself, brushing off her skirt and walking back down the stairs to the exit.

She found Gojo sitting in the same spot she'd left him. By now the sunset was completely submerged below the line of the horizon.

"You were only six minutes."

"What?" Raising an eyebrow, Noriko picked up her handbag and slung it over her shoulder, where she returned her holster, ink and brush.

"You said you would be ten," Gojo shrugged, raising himself onto his feet, "you were six."

"Should I have taken longer?"

"Yes, probably," they began to walk back down the alleyway, back towards the station to board the Tokyo Metro, "that was a Grade 2."

"It was?"

Gojo frowned, giving her a once over for any injuries - finding none, other than a few ink splotches on her leg.

"Well, I suppose most Sorcerers don't all have a gallon of bleach lying around."