There was only silence for a while.
Reiji allowed himself to be guided as the woman continued speaking casually, as if the two of them were merely acquaintances strolling through the evening.
Though the initial shock had rattled him, cold logic began to return.
'She's taking me somewhere isolated.'
Her grip over his shoulder was firm, not crushing, not overtly threatening... but absolute.
She continued rambling.
"So, the shopkeeper wouldn't give me a discount, right? So I had to… well, let's just say he learned a valuable lesson."
Reiji barely registered her words.
His gaze lingered on her face instead.
Above her eyebrow, he noticed a thin metallic piercing, barely visible in the fading light.
His eyelids drooped slightly.
Akame had been silent at first.
But when his arm had refused to obey him earlier… It had tingled.
There had been the faintest pulse of cursed energy. Subtle and surgical rising from her gut to her brain.
'That must be her technique.'
And judging by how closely she kept him tethered,
'It likely requires physical contact.'
He had been staring at her with drooping eyelids, intensely, for several seconds before she finally noticed.
"Whoa, whoa… easy there," she laughed lightly. Then her eyes drifted to his face. "Have you been using makeup or something, kid? Those dark circles are wild."
Reiji's expression didn't change.
His hands slowly tightened into fists.
"Aww. You're no fun."
Soon they reached an abandoned shed.
The structure was old, walls cracked, metal rusted, no houses nearby. There would be no witnesses.
She pushed the door open with her free arm. It creaked inward slowly.
They stepped inside.
The shed was vast and hollow. Only scattered vehicle scraps and twisted metal lay across the floor like skeletal remains.
The door shut behind them with a dull thud.
There were no windows. Darkness swallowed everything.
Reiji stood still.
'No…'
He wanted to move.
But once again… His body refused.
'That again,' he realized.
In the darkness, Akame sharpened.
Again, he faintly perceived cursed energy flowing from her abdomen upward through her spine and into her skull, thin threads like invisible wiring.
A moment later, her arm slithered off his shoulder.
Instantly, Akame's night vision flared to life and Reiji had to close his normal eye to avoid distortion.
He could see clearly.
She walked forward toward the center of the shed.
Her steps were deliberate and relaxed.
She left no residual cursed energy signature save for a tiny bit that remained in her piercing.
It was likely a cursed tool meant to enhance her senses.
Her energy suppression was so flawless that Reiji doubted even Gojo could track her easily.
She turned toward him, unbothered by the darkness.
"So it was true…" she said casually. "That eye of yours really is a cursed relic, huh?"
Her gaze met his through the dark.
Reiji exhaled slowly.
He hadn't expected it to escalate this quickly.
He thought he still had time.
"Your elders want it back after I'm done with you, y'know?" she continued. "Now that I see it though… maybe I'll sell it instead."
She giggled softly.
"What is your name, lady?" Reiji asked calmly.
She began unbuttoning her jacket.
"My name? You don't need that, young man."
She tilted her head.
"Oh? Were you asking me out?"
Reiji remained expressionless.
"That's cute. I'll let you choose, then. As a reward."
She opened her jacket fully and presented to him, his 'options'.
Inside, two razor-sharp daggers rested at her side.
Strapped carefully along the inner lining were rows of throwing blades, slim and perfectly balanced.
Reiji let out a dry, unexpected chuckle.
She blinked.
"Huh? What's so funny? You should always appreciate the options life gives you."
Reiji's laugh deepened slightly, low and rough.
"Not at all, lady."
Her eyes flicked downward.
"…You're bleeding."
Blood trickled steadily from Reiji's palms onto the concrete floor.
He had been compressing it within his fists the entire time.
"Care for a dance?" she asked gleefully.
Reiji did not answer.
He widened his stance and cupped his hands.
The sphere of blood he had condensed pulsed once in his palm.
"Piercing Blood."
The chant was quiet and the release was violent.
A ferocious beam of hyper-compressed blood tore through the air at unimaginable speed. The pressure distorted the space around it.
It crossed the shed in an instant.
The woman barely moved, she had almost no time to react.
The beam struck her abdomen… And splashed.
Reiji's eyes sharpened.
There was no penetration… No wound.
The blood slid down her clothes as though it had struck reinforced steel.
'She used her technique again didn't she?'
Her voice echoed softly in the dark.
"That's not how you dance. You're supposed to start slow."
Her body stiffened subtly as she reached into her jacket.
With delicate precision, she drew three throwing knives between her fingers.
The way she held them was elegant yet extremely lethal.
She flicked her wrist.
The blades cut through the air with surgical silence.
Reiji reacted instantly.
He condensed some of the spilling blood and hardened it along his forearms into reinforced armor.
Then the knives struck.
Clang.
Clang.
The first two knives deflected cleanly.
But the third… twisted mid-air.
Its trajectory bent unnaturally.
Not because she had thrown it that way.
Because something had altered its path.
It curved like a hooked serpent toward his throat.
Reiji's pupil contracted.
'She can alter trajectories after all.'
The woman's crazed laughter echoed through the hollow shed as Reiji struggled to respond.
The warped blade screamed toward his throat…
'If she can change it once then she can change it again.'
At the last possible moment, Reiji abandoned the idea of full interception.
Instead, he protected his vitals.
He raised both arms sharply, crossing them over his upper torso and face.
The twisted blade whirred past him like a hunting hawk.
It didn't stop.
It began circling him instead.
A shallow cut opened across his ear.
Another across his shoulder.
A third along his back.
The hardened blood armor along his forearms deflected each close pass, sparks of friction flashing in the dark.
While he held his guard, more blades followed.
Some struck his guard; some ricocheted away while others buried themselves into his legs.
"Damn it," Reiji cursed under his breath.
The woman laughed again, delighted.
"That was smart! This is gonna be fun!"
She drew both daggers and rushed forward.
'The whips would've helped', Reiji thought grimly, remembering he had left his weapons back at Jujutsu High.
'No matter.'
"Flowing Red Scale," he muttered.
Heat flooded his veins.
With precise control, he forced the embedded blades out of his wounds using bursts of blood pressure. They clattered to the floor.
The blood coating his right gauntlet thickened. Then it crystallized.
From beneath his wrists, two razor-edged blood blades extended outward like curved talons.
He infused them with cursed energy just as she struck.
Steel met hardened blood. Shards of blood erupted.
The woman giggled and vaulted backward, fluid and light.
In one seamless motion, she hurled a dagger straight at his chest.
Reiji lifted a hand towards his chest to block.
'It's a feint.' he realized.
The dagger's trajectory snapped violently at the last second, now aimed for his eye.
Reiji reacted instantly, raising his other arm.
But nothing struck him.
The blade twisted around him in a tight arc and flew back into her waiting hand.
For the briefest instant, his vision was obscured by his own forearm.
That was all she needed.
She lunged with a perverse grin, catching the returning dagger mid-spin and driving both blades toward his abdomen.
Reiji predicted this and twisted sharply.
Blood hardened around his ribs just as the blades sliced through his shirt.
Instead of piercing, they slid off the reinforced surface.
He deliberately fell backward, drawing her in deeper.
'If she overcommits, her momentum will…'
But she didn't.
She stopped; she was frozen mid-air.
As though gravity had loosened its grip.
Reiji clicked his tongue.
'Her reaction speed is absurd.'
Still—
'Even she won't be able to dodge this.'
The blood pooled beneath his sole on the floor detonated in a sudden burst.
The recoil launched him forward.
He angled his knee upward and drove it toward her stomach with the amplified force of Flowing Red Scale.
At the same time, her body jerked backward unnaturally.
As if her own falling motion had reversed.
But the impact still connected.
The augmented momentum smashed into her face.
A sickening crack rang through the shed as she was sent flying.
Reiji rolled to his feet and reset his stance.
She slid across the floor and stopped awkwardly just short of the wall.
Then she giggled.
Blood streamed from her broken nose as she snorted and stood back up.
"You're troublesome," Reiji said evenly. "Your technique, I mean."
He analyzed aloud, eyes sharp.
"You can alter the direction of motion of an object as long as it's already moving."
She smiled wider.
"That's how you defended Piercing Blood. You inverted its direction of motion… and cancelled its penetration by driving it into itself."
She wobbled slightly before steadying herself.
Reiji's reverse cursed technique activated quietly, restoring his diminishing blood supply.
'She can likely control only one object and one directional alteration at a time,' he calculated. 'Otherwise, she would've nullified my knee strike completely.'
'Now I can be sure that physical contact is required for the technique to activate. She did freeze my body only when she was touching me.'
The woman clapped lightly.
"That's right! My technique is called 'Dead Angle'."
Her cursed energy flared brighter.
"I can control the movement of any object for ten seconds after I touch and release it. Though if I can maintain contact, I can control it for as long as I wish."
Reiji narrowed his eyes.
"Figures."
By revealing an undisclosed aspect of her technique, she invoked a binding vow.
Her cursed energy surged.
The air in the shed thickened.
She moved first. And explosively.
Both daggers flashed in wide arcs as she closed the distance in a blur.
Reiji stepped in rather than back.
Their weapons collided in a violent storm of metal and crystallized blood.
Her blades were fast… fast enough to graze his side twice before he fully adjusted.
Reiji countered with a diagonal slash of his blood blade, forcing her to duck low.
She rolled, came up inside his guard, and drove her elbow toward his throat.
Reiji deflected with his gauntlet and pivoted, swinging a horizontal cut meant to sever her ribs.
She twisted mid-spin, her fingertips grazing the edge of his blood blade…
And suddenly the angle of his own slash reversed.
The redirected arc sliced toward his neck.
Reiji jerked backward just in time, the tip carving a shallow groove across his collarbone instead.
She grinned wildly.
'I can't let her touch me.'
Steel flashed again.
He stepped forward with a thrust aimed at her abdomen.
She caught the flat of the blade, redirected it, and kicked his knee.
Reiji staggered.
She lunged for his throat.
But he evaded, slipped into her guard and brutally headbutted her.
The crack echoed.
Both of them separated instantly.
Their breathing was heavier now.
She flicked blood from her dagger.
He rotated his wrists, the edges of the blood blades that had been worn down during the clashes reformed slowly, becoming even sharper.
They circled each other in the darkness.
Neither smiling.
Neither retreating.
The shed was filled with the metallic scent of blood.
Her cursed energy pulsed.
Both of them were injured.
And both were adapting to each other's unique fighting styles.
Neither gaining decisive ground, but the assassin was stacking up injuries she couldn't heal.
The air between them trembled with lethal intent.
For the first time since they had met… she stopped laughing.
Reiji adjusted his stance.
She twirled her dagger once.
And in that suffocating silence, they both understood… this would not end quickly.
But neither moved.
Not yet.
The next exchange would dictate the flow of the battle.