Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Suzushina Yuriko opened her eyes to a familiar ceiling. Her room, she evaluated, with greater lucidity than anyone at shit-fuck o’clock should ever have. The same bare, moulding walls with their garish-yellow wallpaper. Mottled curtains that should have been changed years ago were bleeding sunset, and a globe spun on her desk with the steady draft from an open window. Her room. The only one she had ever slept in, and yet it wasn’t the same room.

Something in the air had changed. No, something in the everything had changed. Everything had changed, but it was the same? There was a humidity that wasn’t humidity to the early December air. A new form of pressure was exerting itself upon her. It didn’t feel natural. Her body shivered under her thick quilt as she pulled the fabric closer. Then, from the world beyond her window, a gust of wind rippled the curtains. It brushed past her, lingering like an insult and the illusion broke. The illusion that the world she experienced could only be seen, heard or smelled. That touch was the only way to know how fast the air had flowed around her form. She could taste the numbers of last night’s meal, blinking like stars against her tongue. Her breath hitched as information travelled to her lungs. I invite you to imagine you are suddenly aware of all the capillaries and all the veins and all the arteries in your body; that you could feel and know the acceleration of your own blood in every stratum of your being.

Yuriko could tell that her weight pressing on her mattress, and she could feel it pushing back. Truly, feel. Force, counter force rationalised as arrows and equations. She shot to a sitting position, and then she felt that too. Perhaps it was some long-forgotten appendage that her brain had finally reconnected with. Perhaps it was a parasite that wormed its way into every cell in her body. The feeling sat restlessly in her gut, twisting hot, like rage. It was every mewling promise that was ever broken; it was her father, eyes hard and militant. It was alive, and just as confused as she was, moving to the tempo of her thoughts. Whatever this — was it too soon to call it energy — thing was, it certainly hadn’t been there when she went to bed.

BEEEEEEEEP.

It was ingrained instinct. An impulse. Her hand went flying a little faster than she would have liked. She expected pain. This wouldn’t have been the first time she had hit her alarm clock a little too hard. Like stubbing a toe on a low table. She really did expect pain, but when her palm struck the snooze button, it burst. Like air rushing out of a balloon. The same way a slug scatters from a shotgun. A particularly loud number accompanied its destruction, then abruptly split off into smaller units. Arrows ran along plastic debris and with a sense of dread that was signed, sealed and delivered on time, she could tell where the shrapnel was heading. There has been a moment in almost anyone’s life. A casual kind of moment where they would reach out to the world and hope to change an outcome with their well-wishes alone. The kind lady at the market still fell. You still dropped your phone down the toilet. Dragon Ball Evolution was still produced.

No. Suzushina Yuriko cast that thought into the ether, and for once it responded. A shard of plastic, sharp enough to pierce the world, swerved unnaturally around her globe and embedded itself into a wall.

“Huh,” she said, looking down at her uninjured hand. “Wicked.”

Chapter Text

Minimalism becomes less of a fashion statement when luxury stood beyond the household income. The Suzushinas, party of two, lived in a sparsely decorated apartment in the Miyagi prefecture. In the centre of the living room was a round dining table, bearing enough seats for three people. Naturally, at dumb-fuck hours, they remained empty, but place prominently on the table (in front of one of the chairs) was a picture frame. A man, ruggedly handsome in the same way a gorilla was sat next to a woman who radiated kindness, on a short half-life. There should have been a child between them. Little limbs, soft arms and legs; there was even some hair. But the back of the picture frame sat where her face was supposed to be. A tatami crinkled underfoot as Yuriko tiptoed through the dark. It took a lot to wake up her father, but it didn’t hurt to be cautious.  

First came the morning essentials. It was a Saturday, so all she was looking forward to today was cram school (she wouldn’t need her uniform). Wait, no! The fan meeting was today as well, wasn’t it? She had come to Sendai. So, after showering and brushing her teeth, Yuriko dressed in casuals. She collected the debris in her room and made her way to the kitchen. Only one half of the Suzushinas ever cooked. It was always the same half. The duty of the other half was to complain, and whinge and moan. ‘Too hot’ he would say about her hotpot and her ice cream sundaes were always too cold. Regardless of any of this, her father would never touch anything in the kitchen. That had been her mother’s job, and now it was hers. 

Yuriko prepared two servings of steamed rice, miso soup and tamagoyaki with a practised hand. After eating, she made sure to leave her father’s servings on the dining table. She supposed the complaint today would be ‘too cold’, followed by even colder conversation. The girl pulled on her sneakers, opened the front door, then stepped into the cold. It was 5AM.  She would deal with the fallout as she always had. 

*** 

Even at the twilight hours of the day, the city of trees was full of life. And life was movement. Today, Suzushina Yuriko experienced Sendai in velocities and momentums. Displacements fell at her feet as she covered ground on a pre-trodden path. She knew exactly how far she was from home; she could hear how fast (fifteen km/h in the opposite direction) the cyclist on the other pavement was based on the clanging from their rusty chain. Sure enough, when she looked, the metal was discoloured. She couldn’t make it stop. The information flowed unbidden. And as her frustration bubbled, the energy within her roiled. 

“I’ve been reading too many light novels,” but even as she said this it rang hollow. Light novels didn't make alarm clocks explode. “Not enough light novels, then.” 

The path led to and exceeded a gate. Beyond it stretched a verdant park. Locked. As it should be at this time. Yuriko climbed over the fence and dropped. A crime was only a crime with witnesses, and this was a victimless crime. What was the worst thing a judge could do to her? Community service? Any time spent outside the house was time well spent to her. 

Sendai Port Park was her happy place, and a mouthful. There was something about the air. It didn’t quite reach a certain memory she had of pastoral fields, and farmers plucking weeds from their crop, but it was as close as got in a major city. There was something about the bird song that brought her a little closer to the days when she woke up looking to seize the day. There was something about reading at the crack of dawn that evened out the wrinkles in her brain. This was all to say that she really did love the park. 

“Morning, Mr Hokaze,” she shouted. 

Whether or not the old jogger was there, it had become a habit to greet him. The grouch preferred the park to be pedestrian free, so he wasn’t averse to a little fence-hopping either. She wouldn’t ruin his peace if he wouldn’t ruin hers. When she heard a series of barks, instead of a “shut up, brat,” Yuriko decided she was alone. Almost alone. That sounded like the stray that frequently snuck in the park through a crawl space. Try as he might, not even Mr Hokaze could hate the friendly puppy. 

The Suzushina girl found herself at the base of a tree facing the horizon. She kicked a patch of disturbed dirt and began the process of unearthing her reading material. It was nothing scandalous, and in fact, she had already found the novel on a torrent website and caught up to its latest volume. She just kept things that were important to her outside her home. They tended to be safer that way. 

Time has taken a lot, but it has saved for her the clarity of this memory. She is back in the kitchen, years away. She is not the only soul in the room, but she is alone. One, two, three. Her trading cards become confetti in his hands. One, two, three. Her doll loses its head, plastic turning into slag on the induction stove. She wants to look away, tries to, but a hand drags her by the head until she can watch again. There is laughter; hollow, disinterested laughter. She sees his smile through her tears. 

 Yuriko blinked the recollection away. ‘Not this’, she thought, looking at the novel in her hands.  

Volume three of A Certain Magical Index came loose from the soil, still in its resealable laminated sheath. The ‘Sisters’ arc. The same volume her favourite character was introduced. She had peeled a little money away from her emergency savings to buy it.  

As the morning sun baptised the park in its rays, she beat the dirt off the laminated sheathe. It was the kind of sun a gun slinging cowboy would ride into the distance on. It really was a lovely sunrise. Lovelier than it had been in recent memory, so perhaps Yuriko could be forgiven for not noticing that the park was a little redder than it should have been. 

Ping. 

There it was again, that blistering resentment. That rage, that envy, spitting heat like a thermite reaction. There it was again, that effervescent sadness. That woe with lungs. And then it spoke, in a singular voice that Staccato'd.  “Bird—crap!” 

  “Bird! Bird? Bird?!!” 

In a cartoon, it might have been funny. The hulking mass — was that flesh — that bubbled against its frame, like it didn't know which state of matter to belong to. The creature stood quadrupedal, but it wasn’t a dog, and it wasn’t a cat. It wasn’t a bear and wasn’t a deer. It wasn’t anything she had ever seen or heard of in the animal kingdom. And though it stood without fur, the very last thing it could have been was a man. Purple skin, with a texture near human, stretched tightly around its bulk; it contoured in regions where one might have expected muscle. The creature radiated power: like it could exert more force than its musculature suggested. But what drew Yuriko’s eyes the most were its teeth, all canine, and dripping red like they had been clamped on the throat of the horizon. No, an actual throat. A dog was whimpering to death in its maw. Besides the fading pup was a wizened man laid prone against the grass. There was a bleeding stump where his left leg used to be. 

“Bird...” spoke the thing, and when it turned to face her, it stared her down with two sets of eyes. There was little intelligence between all four of them, but just enough pattern recognition to see her for what she felt like in that moment. Prey. 

Chapter Text

Yuriko’s heart exploded in her chest. Real. This was real, and she wouldn’t be taking any gambles to prove the contrary. ‘Oh shit’ meters per second squared was her magnitude; the direction? Anywhere but here. Nope. She shouldn’t have gotten out of bed. Shouldn’t have left the house. She hit her stride clumsily and her form corrected as she gained speed. From muscle memory, she knew this was as fast as she could run. Itadori Yuji.  The star ‘athlete’ at her school. What was his top speed again? 100 meters in 11.5 seconds? A velocity of roughly eight point seven metres per second. The numbers! She baulked. Even now they wouldn’t stop. 

Maybe it was slow? An ambush hunter. Maybe it was still eating the dog and —oh god, that was Mr Hokaze. She pressed on. The fence wouldn’t be far now. Her breath became laboured; each lungful was poison, but she couldn’t afford to care. Couldn’t stop. Couldn’t be weak. It didn’t matter. 

With an ease almost contemptuous, the creature blurred behind her. Her pupils shrank as the acceleration hit her mind, then she soared as it hit her body. In her tumble, her eyes caught the tree, her favourite reading spot, splintering behind her like drywall around a hammer. The creature still in motion, was smirking. Yuriko rolled through mud that was mercifully wet, feeling her momentum seep into the soil. Dirt caked her bone-white hair. Unreal. The largest number she had felt since she awoke. It was too fast for its size. It was too fast for Yuji, let alone her. This wasn’t something a human could outrun.  

I should be dead, idle thoughts supplied, why aren’t I —. The part of her brain that demanded survival made her body crouch. Wind roared, and another number sailed over her head. Roll. A thick claw slammed into the space she had occupied. Stand. If she couldn’t run, then she would fight. This wasn’t a choice the girl had consciously made. Two red eyes met four inhuman pupils. It wasn’t even her only option. She could lay on the ground, protect her vital organs. Hope against hope, that help arrived. But it never would, a fact experience taught her. So, if not there in the ‘comfort’ of those four walls, she would fight here in the mud and in the open. 

Yuriko picked up a branch as she rose and swung it with all her inconsiderable might. To no effect. The creature moved and once again she was airborne. This time she was caught in its palm before she could hit the ground. Pressure grew around her as it squeezed. Pathetic. It didn't even see fit to use both its arms to end her. 

What was it she had wanted today? A little leisure? A fleeting moment to kill time?  Now time was killing her. 

It’s funny how small it all seems. Hope. Ambition. Memento mori is the freedom from such delusions. Remember that you will die. Remember, that at any moment a quadrupedal, purple Michelin Man could turn you into a statistic. And from that perspective, the things we value do not seem to matter. Every person is a universe in and of themselves, but heat death is inevitable. So why forge stars out of dust, why place nebulas in the inner landscape of the world that is you? What do your little victories mean if they decay within your cradling arms? 

Pain. Blistering pain coursed through her veins as the creature clenched harder.  

Except they hadn’t been delusions. Not to her. This park. That light novel. The time she had before her dad woke up. As small as it all seemed, these were all experiences she had gained through her own efforts. Even if they would get her killed today, they had made her happy for a while. Experiences were among the few things that she truly owned. Yuriko went to cram because it got her out of the house on the weekend. She read because it would get her out of her mind for a moment. From fiction to scientific journals. The top student in all of Sendai, was a title achieved through pure escapism. Not that it mattered now.  

She had dreams, didn’t she? Aspirations to finally own something concrete. That hope wasn’t small. Not to her. It would have taken time, sure, but she would have done well at college, coasted off scholarships and saved money. She would have gotten a good job and moved to a good, quiet, neighbourhood. She would have had bookshelves full of literature, both academic and otherwise and no one could set the pace she went through it all. She would never have to be anywhere, or anyone, she didn’t want to be. 

Yuriko saw his smile in the creature’s teeth, and the contrast — damn, it’s almost the same. Despite herself, she began to laugh. A full blown, full body sort of laugh that rattled her bruising ribs. A manic grin cracked her face open as her eyes caught the dawn. They both felt it. She could tell when the creature shuddered. Her mercurial wrath. Formless energy rose to the surface like a drowning man breaking free of the waves. Yuriko willed it into her arms and pushed hard. Strength she never knew she had. Power, beyond humanity, surged into the motion. The hand that held her was warped against the sudden force.  

This time Yuriko’s shoes met the ground with a crack. 

“BIRD!” Fluid began leaking from its eyes. Its mangled digits slumped onto the ground. 

She moved her rage to her foot and stomped on the hand that was once large enough to contain her. The mud rippled with the force.

“You know,” she said, as her laugh tapered off. “Whatever you are, you're dead.” 

The creature began to writhe under the pressure of her foot. So, it felt pain? Fear? Good. It swung its arm with desperate aggression, and she sprung back; the strength spreading to her legs. Even damaged, the entity was every bit as fast as it was when it first attacked, but she could track it with her eyes now. Its numbers made it even more predictable. Lean. She wouldn’t risk getting in its range again. Jump. Maybe if she stalled it for long enough it would tire? Drop. A wide swing made her jump further back than she had planned. She found herself skidding and sliding until the next thing she found was her footing. Yuriko immediately knew a mistake had been made. Whether or not it was hers remained to be seen. The creature placed all four limbs on the ground again, and with a cocky “bird”, it blurred again. Energy flared through its muscles as it gathered momentum quicker than it ever had before. The space between was closing as the air burned. Her legs weren’t cooperating. She couldn’t dodge in time. 

Reality exists as a kind of clockwork. We experience triumphs and the clock ticks on. We endure tragedies, and still it ticks. Indifferent. We watch the clock hand move regardless of our pain, regardless of our joy, and sometimes it makes us forget that we are the gears. That without us, there is no clockwork. No reality. But there will come a time in every person’s life when they reach out with all of their fear, with all of their good intentions, with all of their hope, to try to change an outcome with their willpower alone.  

“No!”  

Yuriko, thrust her hands into the world as she bellowed. For the second time that day, it responded. 

Minus one. Every arrow of force she could feel pointing at her from the creature. Minus one. Every intent it had of harming her. Minus one. All its momentum. Displacement. Velocity. Acceleration. Every vector, transformed by minus one. 

To say the creature exploded would be an understatement. Its vaunted strength; its snapping jaw. The power in its limbs. Everything that was once an agent, instantly rebelled against it. It didn’t fly back. It wasn’t injured. It couldn’t even react. The creature simply ceased to be under a display of force rivalling ordnance. The blast wave dug a furrow along the ground, plucking out the grass as it went. What it didn’t have in depth, it made up for in width; like a wave of photons diffusing from their source. An observer in the sky would have said the blast originated from her, but she knew better. Yuriko lowered her eyes to her shaking palms. 

“Wicked.”

Chapter Text

“I try. I really do, you know that, right?” 

Yuriko could say nothing as her father examined her. Muddy hair, muddy shoes. Blood made modern art of her shirt and trousers. When Mr. Hokaze had heard the sirens, he warned her. Whether it had been the ambulance she called, or the police, galvanised by concerned residents in the area. Run, he said. They’ll never question a crazy old man and his dog. So, she ran. Emergency services would have questions, and she wouldn’t have the answers. A notoriously bad combination. How could she explain what had happened, when she herself was lost? A crater deep enough to bury her future, and she had caused it. She couldn’t fathom how anyone would assume that was her fault, but she knew that it looked bad. Even in her shock she could tell. And no one would think twice before pointing fingers at the creepy little albino girl. It didn’t matter how she behaved at school. People took one look at her dead eyes and her scarred arms and came to their own conclusions. So, yes, she ran like a coward and left a freshly baked amputee to his fate. She even had the nerve to take the novel too. Her stomach turned. 

“I try so hard to love you. Do you know how fucking hard that is?” Mr Suzushina lowered his face to hers. Contempt tugged at his lips; disgust creased his eyelids. “Do you know how hard you make it?” 

Diminuendo. Adrenaline still reverberated in her brain but was growing quiet. The percussion of her heart no longer reached her ears. Her pulse was simmering to adagio. Yuriko’s hands were shaking. She could almost breathe. Whatever that was, it’s over now. But was it? Yuriko set her mind once again on the power that wriggled beneath her skin. It’s over, she tried again, but it whispered no. 

“Look at me when I'm talking to you” his fingers found purchase around her cheekbones as he jerked her head up. 

Yuriko met a set of eyes that were so unlike her own. Brown, clear irises. Eyes that belonged to a collective. Earnest. Expressive and beautiful. Not other. Not inhuman. They took in her expression, her fear, and for a moment they softened. His countenance decayed. 

“What happened to —” then cement set in his features. “No. What did you do?” 

“I...” but just as she was finding her voice, his other fist found the wall. 

“No! You think I'm fucking stupid, don't you? Don't tell me shit. I won’t be done for whatever the hell you did. Get out!” 

“Dad...” his fingers dug deeper into her cheeks. 

“Haven't seen him.” 

“It hurts.” 

As the words fell, power rose like heat from her gut. It spread through her body like air diffusing through a room until it reached an equilibrium. She could feel her cheeks inflating with energy, as the pressure her father's digits exerted was rendered insufficient. Mr Suzushina’s fingers pried themselves off her face. 

If the man noticed what had happened, he gave no indication, but there was a shift in his daughter’s perspective. As she stood there watching confusion bloom in her father’s eyes, it became clear to her that for the first time, she had the man at a disadvantage. He hadn’t been through what she had. He couldn’t do what she had done, either. To her alarm clock; to the ground; to the creature. In her position, he would have been ripped to ribbons in its jaws. Since the moment her eyes opened, and the world became bizarre, the physical scale of power had been tilted irrevocably in her favour. And the shift emboldened her. 

“I'll leave, but I'm taking some clothes with me first.” 

“You think you’re in a position to make demands here?” he almost scoffed as he said that. The ghost of a smile playing at his lips. 

“I think I'm in a position to plant evidence.” 

The smile dropped. He made an attempt to speak; it came out as a stutter. A sigh. Then a slap. She saw it coming — watched his hand crawl towards her in a well-worn trajectory. But this was no apex predator. The motion, for all the intent behind it, carried the weight of a paper tiger. She let it strike her to prove a point. To him, or to herself, she didn’t know. The force rang uselessly against her face, as a crisp thwack shook the apartment imperceptivity.  

Mr Suzushina looked Yuriko in the eyes, and for the first time he saw her. Red like a warning. Red like danger. Unique wherever in the world they could go. Beautiful the same way a yawning chasm was. They stared at him with all the indifference of a stranger, and he blinked. 

“In fact, just by coming home, I already have,” she pulled out the rolled up light novel she had tucked at the back of her shirt. “This was at the scene, oh,” she looked down at the dirty tatami mat “and so was all this mud I'm tracking in. That’s crazy.” 

“You...” 

“And you’re looking like an accomplice with your DNA on me. A loving father cradling the criminal’s face for a job well done. We'd been planning that for weeks, after all.” 

“Bullshit.” 

“But it’d make a great story, don't you think?” 

Neither spoke for a moment as the light reflected uselessly off the family portrait. Between Yuriko’s absence in the frame, and the moment in the living room, there was little evidence of the girl she was supposed to be. 

“I take a bag. I leave through the window. You didn't see me.” 

And with his nodded assent, Yuriko found herself homeless at the age of fourteen. 

Chapter Text

From horseback to mechanised vehicles. Boats to aeroplanes. They had witnessed the progression of humanity. They had watched Shoguns boast of eternal empires, only for them to fall as empires were wont to do. Villages become kingdoms, become nations, become ash. Maps redrawn ceaselessly as the world became less, and more, strange. The French revolution had been a particular highlight from the literature it spawned alone.

So naturally, even in the insular Jujutsu society, change — they looked down at their hands, shaped almost exactly the way a human’s weren’t — was inevitable. A fact Tengen had long come to terms with. Some change was even welcome! Like their barriers, for instance. That had been a master stroke of genius. Maybe the world could have adapted to the increasing volume of sorcerers, and cursed spirits. Maybe the world would have changed even faster, developed certain wonders sooner, solutions sooner, and Tengen could have been considering real estate on Mars instead of putting out this current fire. Or maybe nukes would be running on cursed energy. Yeah, it might not be worth the coin toss. Mice and their mousetraps, Tengen supposed.

As the oldest living steward of the dirt beneath their feet, Tengen felt a certain degree of responsibility towards the world. It had clothed them, fed them, held their friends in its loving embrace when the time came. So, if it all it wanted in return was balance that was just a little quid pro quo.

At Japan’s expense, Tengen had balanced the world. It had cost them friends, their freedom, and now in recent years, their humanity. Fushiguro Toji had been an unwelcome change, but while that remained true, his actions didn’t come without their benefits. They could feel it now. The world around them, permitting, forgiving and barring everything that happened within it. They could feel the lengths it went through to keep itself spinning.

When the Zenin girl was still forming in her mother’s womb, Jujutsu had given her a twin. Another being to bear the weight of her heavenly restriction so that neither could wield the full extent of their own power. Perhaps it had known what Toji would become. What he would do to the world when he became strong enough to do it. Perhaps it decided that was enough ‘Toji’ for one generation?

Now the world was roiling. Tengen could feel it surge and seethe like the restless tide. Then earlier today, at precisely 4AM, it had jerked away from its battered shore. Away from Sendai, like it had been struck. Like it was about to respond with a tsunami.

“This must have been how it felt when Satoru was born.”

The ebb and flow as existence desperately tried to counterbalance what — or whoever the hell had shocked the system. They could feel it even now, the shifting scales beneath the world.

“What lengths will it go through to balance you?”

Tengen could only ponder and brace for impact.

Chapter Text

Suzushina Yuriko looked the part. She wore a face mask, a pair of sunglasses — even though it was winter — a thick hoodie, which she stuffed her hair into, and some fresh, bloodless, snow boots. She had been aiming for ‘innocent bystander’, perfectly aware that her irregular features would attract attention. A sick fashionably challenged teenager, though? As common as the cold. Black jumper, white stripes; black thermal tracksuit bottoms, simple.  So, after dousing her old clothes in ammonia, and leaving them in the tub, she slung her go bag over her shoulders and climbed through her bedroom window.

Her boots hit the pavement with a faint crunch. Yuriko didn’t even want to think about how frigid the cram classroom would be. Cheapskates never turned on the heaters, even though she was paying them out of her own pocket. Not that she planned on going anymore. Instead, she would spend the rest of her Saturday going to all the places a domestic terrorist (in her humble opinion) wouldn’t. If today would be her last day before she was hounded by the police, then they would have to earn her custody.

Birds sang. Sunlight caught dewdrops that hung languidly from leaves. She could hear movement in the flats around her. The world — Japan was waking up to a fresh wound on one of its greenspaces. Yuriko let her mind slip into autopilot, and her legs began moving.

Soon, she found herself at the second closest local library. The first, after all, was only a stone's throw from the park, which she suspected had already become an active crime scene. One volume wouldn’t be enough anymore. Yuriko didn’t think she could calm down until she'd reread New Testament in its entirety. The light novel, not the Bible.

Toaru Majutsu no Index and its spin-offs had been losing global significance in recent years, but in Japan? It was a monolith. Boasting a total of thirty-one million approximate sales, even with its sub-par anime adaptation, only three other light novels performed better on the market. So, imagine Yuriko’s surprise when—

“Sorry, a certain magical what? Are you looking for books on the occult?”

The lady at the reception was young, couldn’t be older than twenty-five. She was dressed casually and sported circular rimmed glasses. Her jaw was working the leftover flavour out of her chewing gum. She would have been in the target demographic when the story was kicking off. Even if she hadn’t read or watched the story, she would have heard of it. It was everywhere. She had an incredible poker face, if she was joking. Yuriko tried again.

“A Certain Magical Index. You know, Railgun. Imagine Breaker?”

Yuriko had seen the expression the librarian made. A long time ago. It was the same kind of look her mother had given her when Yuriko had caught her putting presents under the tree. The face an adult made when they were about to shatter a beautiful illusion.

Keys clacked across the keyboard. She typed like a maestro with practised poise. The light from her computer reflected off glasses as the web page changed. With flick of her wrist, the screen was now facing Yuriko. Nothing. There were no relevant search results. No Touma. No Misaka Mikoto. No Accelerator.

“Sorry kid,” she said, though not unkindly “I’m not sure that story exists. Also, sunglasses in doors? Sweetie, you're scaring the Ho’s.”

She gestured to a pair — a boy and a girl — with similar features. Siblings, most likely; employees for certain. Yuriko squinted at one of their name tags. Ho Yamanaka. Oh. They shuddered when her head spun to meet them.

“Are they okay?”

“Yeah, they had a run-in with someone last week. Covered his eyes too. He was here for a rare Digimon manga, or something.”

***

Arahama beach crunched underfoot. Yuriko let the dying sun prickle heat into her bare face. Her lack of pigmentation meant she burned easily, but today she didn’t care. She had walked the whole journey since her second outing.  Had needed to. Now, her thoughts were more populated than the city she lived in. Numbers. Where would she sleep tonight? Numbers. Her favourite story didn't exist? What? The stint with the library computer hadn’t been enough to convince her. The numbers. She had spent most of the day being a menace to the general public: spouting references at random to strangers hoping to catch one of them out on this elaborate prank they’d all decided to play on her. At this point, it was clear to her that the police weren’t looking for anyone matching her description. So many people had seen her face today, but none of them had reacted like they recognised — THE FUCKING NUMBERS!

Fluid anger whipped around her and the air exploded. She felt a little bit of that power leave her. Sand blasted towards the shore with the momentum of a railgun. Sea water performed a stunning reverse dive, as it doused a nearby family. That considerable display of force caused just enough of a splash that it knocked an ice cream cone out of the child’s hand. Yuriko dove behind a boulder while the little bit- boy began to tear up. Who goes to the beach in the cold, anyways? Oh.

The numbers. Breathe. Count to ten. One, two... by twenty, her anger was back under control. She focused on them now. The little equations of possibility. Sand shifting under her weight. Her weight itself. She zeroed in on the wind cresting along the waves, then dancing across the sediment. In her outburst, she reflected, she had somehow pushed numbers into the sand. Then it reacted. She allowed her mind to sit on the implications.

Maths. It wasn’t just numbers, she was instinctively completing formulas, tabulating, defining the world around her as a series of stores and flows. That...shouldn’t be possible. She recognised some of the operations as more complicated versions of problems she had learned in a classroom. Problems she would have needed a calculator, or at least pen and paper to parse. Now they split open and revealed their secrets to her like an etherised patient under a scalpel.

Y values gossiped about their Xs; Zs greeted her like they were colleagues. She knew pi. All its digits came to her on demand. She let out a chuckle despite herself. It was all so absurd; it was almost as though she was an—

“Wait!” she shouted, startling a sea gull. The bird squawked its indignance before flying off to hell, where it belonged.

In a flurry, Yuriko began dumping the contents of her bag onto the ground. Clothes free fell, money too, as did a Walkman (it had been her mother’s) but within the clutter two rectangular objects were also dropping. Without looking, she snatched the heavier — judging by the arrow of its weight — object with her freehand. The portrait, liberated from its spot on the table for the first time in years. That too without his explicit consent. Her mother, sickly but bright. The body language of the girl expressed happiness in absentia of her face. Feet dangling, hands blurred from excitement. Even her father was smiling. In a far-flung future, when they did archaeology on the fossil that was now her family, this would be the curio. The gestalt of their once harmony. Ah, the palaeontologists would say, they were happy once.

She set the frame aside almost reverently, but it wasn’t the subject of her interest. Instead, she lifted the light novel she hadn’t had the chance to read because purple gym bro Baymax had decided she was a workable sacrifice for his gains. Unless she was going mad; unless she had been hit in the head a little harder than usual and this was all some coma induced flight of fancy. This would be irrefutable proof of something she was sure existed.

“Screw you, Mandela,” she muttered, and for a second, she was allowed to believe the effect it would have on her would be clarity. “What the fuck?”

Volume three, or what used to be, laid in front of her like a prank. The cover was wrong. The name was wrong. There was no ISBN number. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Gone was the cover art of Misaka Mikoto and her clone. All the colours were still the same, but the line work collapsed, leaving behind a non-descript Rorschach; an image only recognisable if you had seen the original. Her fingers flew, leafing through pages like a student through a textbook seconds before entering the exam hall. Blank. Blank. Blank. Blan—words. She stopped. Muscle memory told her what was — or rather should — be happening in this part. Her favourite character should have been getting his face rearranged, and his illusions shattered, instead—

“Do you desire another world?”

 Kamisato Kakeru struck the Quickster with all the gender equality in his right hand. She disappeared on the spot, ensuring that the Brothers would be safe for the foreseeable future.

What? She read it again, and again, and again, until she was sure that this badly written paragraph was all that remained of what had once been her favourite story. What? Who the hell was the Quickster? Who were the Brothers? She realised that was easy enough to answer. The Quickster must have been some kind of stand in for Accelerator, and the Brothers for the Sisters (clones of Misaka Mikoto).

Kamisato Kakeru was an actual character in the A Certain series. He was a wielder of one of the three special right hands. The World Rejecter, which functioned as a sort of counterpart to the Imagine Breaker. Instead of nullifying supernatural phenomena, it banished anyone with conflicting desires (and their creations) into a world where those desires could be fulfilled. From a narrative standpoint, this was the same as killing them, because they would have no method of returning to the story proper. It was how a good portion of the Magic Gods had been scrubbed from the series. Not even their universe-bending power had saved them from the temptation of another world.

In this bizarre version of the novel, the Accelerator stand in, who was now unambiguously a girl had been sent to another world? That was ridiculous.

“Who the hell wrote this knockoff?” she grumbled, slamming the book shut. There...were probably more important concerns.

Yuriko picked up a pebble and tossed it across the ocean’s surface. It bounced ten times before sinking into the drink. Despite everything else that was wrong with her day, a sense of wonder took her closer to the water’s edge. She had never been great at skipping stones before. Yet somehow, she knew the perfect angle, and the perfect amount of force to throw it with to maximise its skips, given her lacklustre physicality. She stared down at her image in the water, visible despite the setting sun. Red eyes, white hair.

“A female stand-in for Accelerator, huh?” she reflected, placing a fist under her chin. Suzushina Yuriko probably looked the part.

Chapter Text

“My leg!” Mr Hokaze shouted. If they hadn’t already been driven to the edge of exhaustion by his antics, a nurse might have rushed into the room on the sheer authenticity of that scream. Neither of the other two occupants of the room even flinched. This was the third time Mr Hokaze had shouted since their arrival. 

 Everything was simply white, from the chemically clean sheets and pillows to the cue ball-smooth flooring, that reeked of antiseptic. The ceiling was white; the guest seating was white. White, white, white. Maddeningly white. He supposed that he couldn’t blame the old geezer for trying to splash some colour onto his boredom.  

They stood in an inpatient room at Touhoku Medical in Wakabayashi Ward, Sendai. Mr Hokaze was the only patient left in his ward; it had been cleared for the sake of confidentiality. What they’d been authorised to share to learn the truth of that morning. Two sorcerers, and an amputee trespasser. It sounded 

Mr Hokaze sat up in his bed, adjusting the position of his IV drip as he did so, regarding the pair with a bored look on his face. 

  “Tough crowd,” he sighed “my granddaughter loved that show.” 

He gestured at a framed portrait of what looked like a middle school girl. She sat poised as her lavender hair fell down her shoulders in ringlet coils. “Ah, Junko, my pride and joy. Only you truly understand me.”  

At the age of sixteen, Nitta Arata felt that he was already too old for this shit. Interrogating victims of cursed spirits. They were either uncooperative, or prolifically uncooperative. There was no in-between. He couldn’t even remember what his first question had been— the man had been rambling on and on. No wonder the police hadn’t gotten any useful information, either. Arata supposed he could give the man on the bed a little leeway. It wasn’t every day a non-sorcerer survived an encounter with a Grade One. But that was precisely why they needed more information. It just wasn’t done. 

“Sir—” he tried, but Mr Hokaze wouldn’t hear it. 

“Now look here. I’ve barely had time to rest.” the old man interrupted, “I'm gonna tell you what I told the cops. A damn dog—”  

“And you saw this dog?” said the other sorcerer, knowing damn well that he probably couldn’t. It got slightly easier for a regular person to see a curse the closer to death they got, but only slightly. 

Arata cast a glance to his left. Yep, he thought, that asshole finds this funny. Arata respected Todo. He did. Just not enough to forgive him for making him take the train journey from Kyoto to Sendai at fuck-you o’clock. As if that hadn’t been bad enough, they’d also immediately been alerted to a massive collision of cursed energy, so now it went from a working vacation, to just work. Work Todo couldn’t be bothered to deal with, so when they finally made it to the park and saw the crater which reeked of the remains of a Grade One, Todo just made himself scarce. Instead, they sent—not someone reasonable like Ijichi Kiyotaka— but a special Grade One asshat from one of the three great clans. He supposed they thought they needed the muscle, but he honestly would have taken even Miwa over the smug bastard standing next to him. He kept that thought to himself, of course. He quite liked his bones right where they were: nice and unbroken. 

“Felt its teeth,” Mr Hokaze replied 

“You didn't see it, but it definitely sawed your leg right off, must have been huge,” the man continued to smirk. 

“Damn big dog,” Mr Hokaze barked. “Hate dogs. Always have, always... well, not...” Mr Hokaze looked to the side like he already knew the answer. “Did he make it? The mutt that pulled the other one off me.” 

They didn’t reply. The older sorcerer rolled his eyes. 

“Damn big dog,” he sighed. 

They let the silence hang for a moment, before Arata decided to break it. 

“So,” Arata probed. “You told the police how you lost your leg, now we’d like to know about the person who saved you.” 

“Never said anyone did.” Mr Hokaze snapped. 

“You didn't have to.” Arata pointed at the foot of his bed, specifically at the leg Mr Hokaze no longer had. “Your wound. The first aid done on it probably saved your life.” 

Well, it had helped, but he’d heard chatter from the on-site paramedics. The man’s chances had been low. They wouldn’t have been able to save him if he’d bled anymore than he had already, but with a generous application of his cursed technique, Arata had delayed the would-be inevitable all the way to the hospital. Pain Killer — not to be mistaken with real analgesics — stopped injuries from getting worse after all. 

“Your shirt was found around the stump. Good knot. Kept it nice and pressured. Doubt you did that yourself.” 

Mr Hokaze looked down. Good. Arata knew he had him now. “Your phone made the call, but I doubt that was you on the line, either.” 

“Look...” he tried, but they cut him off. Like he hadn’t been through enough of that already. 

“We know you know it wasn’t a dog.” 

Arata leaned in, his voice became a whisper as he fetched his Jujustu identification card. “This is very much on a need-to-know basis, but we specialise in this kind of thing. The paranormal. Very high up secret information.” Arata cringed at the oversimplification, but he was about to cringe harder at his own upcoming bluff. The higher-ups, hated unknowns. Arata sincerly hoped his bluff wouldn’t turn out to be one. “Chances are that you were rescued by one of our agents. We’d be able to ID them from a description.” 

A thoughtful expression found its way on Mr Hokaze’s face. He seemed like he was wrestling with an idea. He looked at Arata in the eyes, taking in his face, before trailing his gaze up and down him like he was judging how tall he was. Whatever indecision he was facing had given way to dark realisation. Now he was scowling. Not at Arata, but at — from what he could tell — the idea of him. He got that look a lot. The look of a concerned adult when they realised there were child soldiers running around Japan. Mr Hokaze faced the ground again.  

“Problem is,” the other sorcerer cut in, “no one’s reported that they took care of this... dog. We’ve been on the scene. It was stronger than the average whatever, a lot of our—” the man gagged as he said the next word “agents are too weak to handle something like that. That’s why we've got me, you see? Maybe he got injured and is bleeding out somewhere. Wouldn’t surprise me. You could be returning the favour? Or maybe” he said with a chuckle, “he’s a terrorist and you’d be helping us stop—" 

“No,” the old man’s voice was firm. After a moment, Mr Hokaze put his thoughts behind his eyes and raised his face to meet their gaze. “She’s a good kid. I ain’t saying nothing.” 

You could have heard a pin drop. To his left, he could see the other sorcerer’s face warping halfway between a smirk and disgust. Arata ran through a check list in his head. All the young sorcerers were accounted for, as far as he knew, but apart from Yuta, Todo and the Kamo heir, no one their age should have been capable of taking down a curse that strong. At least, without leaving behind any evidence of personal injury. 

“Kid?” Arata mumbled. He could already feel a headache coming on. ”Kid,” he blinked, as the other sorerer in the room expressed a stronger reaction. 

“She?!” said Zenin Naoya, forming the syllables of the pronoun the same way one would drop a slur. 

“Crap. Wait!” 

As it turned out, a lifetime of mobility was pretty difficult to unlearn. Mr Hokaze tried to stand, but he currently lacked the facilities for that. Instead, they watched the old man tumble his way to the polished floor. 

“She’s a good kid,” he repeated, pushing himself up from the white. He levelled a glare at Naoya. “Don’t get her involved in... whatever this is.” 

“Uh, uhm, thank you for your time, Mr Hokaze.”  

The impulse to help him get back up was there, but Arata decided to distract the Zenin man by speaking first. He hastily made his way to the door and held it open. Naoya looked at him, then back at Mr Hokaze. Then he laughed. He laughed his way out of the ward, then he laughed his way out of the hospital. He laughed because he never had to do the paperwork. He laughed because the higher-ups would not be the least bit happy to hear about this.