LADY AOKI || JUJUTSU KAISEN

八

The morning air smelled of fresh apples, clean and crisp.

Roosters crowed and birds chattered to each other happily as the sounds of horse's hooves thundered through clusters of sparse woodland, heavy and impending.

"Steady!" Anzu yelped when her mare suddenly shook itself, nearly throwing her from the saddle as it snorted at her. The girl grasped her reins tightly and reached out to gently soothe her horse's agitation.

"Anzu!" A male's voice yelled, and Touya soon followed, sitting tall on a large gray stallion.

Anzu's mare huffed and trotted over to greet him, the shikigami raised its nose to nuzzle at his outstretched palm.

"Where's Shinjiro?" He asked, setting off in a canter through the grassy fields in the outskirts of their land. They were split up into teams, the students and teachers of Jujutsu High, in an assessment to hunt down and exorcise a pair of rogue cursed spirits. Alongside that, the mission would be lead by none other than Anzu herself, as part of the second-grade sorceress' assessment. She would have her schoolmates' help, but Touya, Akinori, and Haia were to merely assist and ensure that (according to the latter) "no one gets disemboweled in the process."

"He's up ahead scouting, oh and Haia's up there if you're wondering." Anzu pointed through the trees, towards the sky where a tall woman sat upon the back of a great aquamarine dragon. With both legs hanging freely over the side of its neck and her long white hair streaming freely about her heart-shaped face, she looked far more carefree than Anzu ever would've personally felt a hundred feet up in the air.

"Gross." Touya made a face.

"Haia's so pretty, Aki's lucky to have her." Anzu sighed, envious of the young woman's ethereal beauty. Having formerly boasted the name Gojo, Haia sported her family's defining trait: icy blue eyes that seemed to hold all the sky's splendeur in two crystalline pools. The sight of them together made her smile for them. Haia was a bit like her mother, stubborn, short-tempered, "brazen" as her father would say. Haia told her once her father used to scold her for her attitude, saying that no man would want a defiant wife, but Akinori never seem phased by it. Perhaps he did despise her, she said, but was too polite to correct her. Or he was used to it, Anzu had added with a cheeky smile, Akinori did grow up the oldest of four chaotically energetic children.

"Kamo's lucky to have you too." Touya replied quietly.

The mood dampened at his words. Had Anzu's father not cut ties with the Zenin clan, she might've been engaged into his family, and he wouldn't have had to separate from Akinori, his best friend and brother in combat.

"There's Shinjiro!" She said quickly, urging her mare ahead as they rendezvoused with a slim, lanky boy whose violent-indigo eyes widened at the sight of them, he had a harpoon strapped across his back and heavy iron combat chains around his waist. He waved to them cheerfully and pointed down the hill where a beast frolicked through the tall grass.

"It's a semi-first grade." He said. He had the snake and fangs sigil of his house inked into his bottom lip.

The curse had the head of a human, with unhinged drool-slicked teeth and greasy black hair. Limbs sprouted from random areas of its body, each ending with a clawed hand, and its dumpster-like body dragged in the earth, flattening everything in its path.

Touya snickered. "Imagine waking up to that thing in your futon, that's probably what Haia would've had to suffer if Akinori couldn't control his transformations at night."

"Touya that's disgusting!" Anzu cried, covering her eyes with both palms while he barked a hearty, psychotic cackle.

"There." Shinjiro used the tip of his spear to point across the valley where another figure emerged on top of the hill, flashing light signals with the flat of his blade: Gin.