LADY AOKI || JUJUTSU KAISEN

十三

This boy. 

He looked exactly like Aozora Akinori. 

A spitting image, maybe not as tall or the same hair style, but they had the same face, the same quiet expression, and when he raised his katana it was almost as if the swordsman himself were standing in his place.

Anzu was dumbfounded. Her cousin was dead, he had died for sure, for sure for sure. She had seen his dragon fly off into the sunrise, no longer bound to a human vessel.

And yet...somehow, here he stood glaring at her, with the eyes that had spotted an enemy.

"What's your name?" She blurted out nonetheless, her stomach churning.

The boy's guard remained high and sturdy as he answered carefully. "Okkotsu. Yuta."

Okkotsu. That wasn't a name belonging to a sorcerer family, but before she could say anything else, a voice interrupted her.

"You can have tea time later come on! They're gonna try to collapse their floor to prevent the curses from getting out!" Mahito's body morphed, swelling in grotesque size until he seemed to fill every corner of the hall. He writhed and struck, bringing down part of the ceiling in a shower of sparkling lightbulbs and dust as he grabbed her wrist and darted away.

"Inumaki!" Anzu heard Yuta yell, and her mind reeled.

That man, who claimed he had Zenin roots.

Okkotsu Yuta.

Inumaki.

The thought was weird. Anzu, once the youngest of their group, now ended up being the only person of her generation still walking the Earth. 

Yuta and Inumaki were chasing after them, tailing them tightly in the narrow halls as she and Mahito ran past curses writhing in cells and labs filled with sinister-looking equipment. 

Out of the corner of her eye, Anzu spotted Inumaki unzip the collar of his jacket, and she whipped around to confront them. If this boy was in fact from the Inumaki clan, there would be a chance that he was a cursed speech user, and Anzu had spent enough time training with Shinjiro to grasp an idea of what he could be capable of.

Facing off against a spell-caster was a battle of strength, not stamina. The more powerful the opponent, the less they will be affected by a command, but every second they would be under the influence was a second they were rendered completely defenceless.

Anzu had seen, numerous times, when Shinjiro effortlessly took out a third grade curse just by telling it to burst. Though, like most shikigami users, these sorcerers weren't accustomed to close combat and could be overtaken once their stamina ran out and they were no longer able to use their cursed speech to protect themselves.

So she had two options: get out of range, or take him out before he could speak.

Anzu chose the latter. 

"Keep going and get out." She told Mahito, who had absolutely no issue leaving her behind and ran off. She didn't take it too personally though, they weren't friends and they didn't owe each other anything. In fact, she would have done the same had he not helped her regenerate.

"Don't m-AUGH!"

Anzu struck the minute Inumaki opened his mouth, cutting off his words by darting forward and kicking him in the throat, not hard enough to break his neck but enough to knock the wind out of him and possibly guarantee a bruised, sore larynx. 

Kill him, kill them both. The curse in her bared its teeth. Leave their bodies behind and flee, before he chooses to intervene.