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, I think I hate you. I think I'm gonna kill you, too.” 

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.