"Hey, Yuji, I'm not so sure this is such a good idea."
"Huh? Sasaki-san, this was your idea."
"I know," cried. "Why didn't you stop me?"
There was precious little that Itadori Yuji was afraid of.
The school stood like a monolith of boredom. Even the magic of twilight couldn't change much about Sugisawa Municipal. The same greying facade, the cuboid, uninteresting blocks of building arrayed like a set of dominos. Sometimes he wished somebody would just knock them over, or at least, cut them into more interesting shapes.
With the dying of the light, the shadowed trees which stretched into darkness were the closest the scenery got to 'creepy'. He looked back at Sasaki, but she didn't seem to share those sentiments. Her timbers were shivered.
"We could go back if you're worried."
"Wo—worried? Me? About what? You—you think I'd make you do this if I thought it was dangerous?" she stuttered, pulling herself together. "No. Whatever's in there should be worried about me."
She stood tall now, puffing her chest with the exaggerated swagger of a silverback gorilla. That bravery. That tireless pursuit of the occult. This was Sasaki Setsuko. This was his club captain. Yuji felt his respect for her grow three sizes—
"Besides. You could just grab me and run, right?"
"..."
"You could just grab me and run, right?" she sputtered, eyes swimming behind her glasses. Yuji just sighed and made his way to the window they'd had rat boy leave open. "Oi. Itadori, you'd grab me and run, right?! Itadori."
***
Really let my anger show. The song spilled into her ears through the headphones.
Her mother had been a massive fan of ABBA, to the point where she had become fluent in English, just to understand the lyrics better. Most of the cassettes in their house had been ABBA songs. Yuriko was dancing through the hallways—or that's what she thought she was doing. She couldn't remember the last time she had danced.
It's just like taking candy from a baby, and I think I must be.
She had barely had time to grab the tapes for Angel Eyes, Slipping Through My Fingers, Dancing Queen and the song she was currently humming. It fit the moment perfectly because she was currently—
Under Attack.
An indescribable lump of 'whatever' tried to slam into her, but it painted the walls instead. "I'm taking cover..."
Creatures looking like three dimensional Rorschachs surrounded her, as did the corpses of the first few brave, or eager, enough to assail her. For her part though, Yuriko kept humming. Along with her academic record, her voice was one of few things about herself that she felt confident in. She could really hold a note, and she supposed that was just another thing she and Accelerator had in common.
Yuriko let the beat dictate her steps; she let the synth take over. She couldn't remember the last time she had belt out notes with such abandon. Had it been middle school? In the choir club? Had it been when Tadaka-chan made her debut? Whenever it had been, Yuriko imagined she must have felt as free then, as she did now.
The song began to die down as she made her way to her classroom. She wanted to test how long her barrier would last. She knew the calculations themselves could hold indefinitely—they barely registered as a strain in her mind— but she could feel that bizarre store of power ebbing over time. A problem an esper's AIM dispersion field definitely didn't share. They didn't wear out; they didn't get used up; they just were.
Before the plot had happened, Accelerator never had to consider the possibility that his 'barrier' going down. That didn't seem to apply to her; at least, not for now. She estimated that she'd be out of juice in about an hour assuming she made no further active use of her ability. The drain didn't even have the courtesy of being negligible. So, while she had sixty minutes to kill, she would also be killing all the things that lowered the quality of her sleep.
Yuriko was already unfolding a blanket (she stole from the laundry room) by the time she made it to classroom 3-1. She let her senses expand and felt static. Apart from the two new signatures—the two weak signatures—this was shaping up to be her quietest night at Sugisawa.
Most of the bizarre creatures had ruined themselves against her reflection field. It was a shame she couldn't stay here much long—her senses swept over the western courtyard, and it was business as— what the fuck was that?? She recoiled from her surveillance as the nastiest presence she had ever felt invaded her senses. It was that same malevolence she felt on Monday, but now without the low-level disruption caused by the creatures around her, she could feel it in higher definition.
How had she missed it; how did it evade her senses? The eyeball? That creature that attacked her in the park? Inadequate didn't even begin to encapsulate the difference between them, and whatever this was. It felt like a knife against her throat. Her sleepiness deserted her. It felt like her brain was being cut into pieces; a literal splitting headache. She had an urge to check the still functioning west facing cameras, but logic won. Cameras couldn't record it anyway. The best course of action was to just leave—
Two sets of footsteps. One light, one heavy. She wouldn't have missed them under normal circumstances, but their presence had been drowned out by the thing in the west. Yuriko sat up, disoriented. Voices. Human. She couldn't tell if she would have to fight or explain herself, so she braced instead for both.
***
"This would be the hallway," said Yuji. His hands sat in his pockets, the perfect picture of nonchalance.
Nothing unusual so far, not that he really expected much. He wasn't entirely sure if Sasaki or Iguchi even believed in the supernatural. The occult club was mostly just another way they could hang out after school.
Even if they didn't find anything, it was still a little fun that they were somewhere they weren't supposed to be. At least, he thought so.
"You'd grab me and run, right?"
"No sign of anything here," he said, as he swivelled his head about like a sprinkler. "I wonder which class we should check first."
Almost as soon as he said that there was a chorus of thumps. He counted them, or, tried to after missing the first few. Twenty-something. Like all the desks were lifted off the floor and dropped one by one. The sound was coming from Class 3-2.
"Oh! That one!"
Yuji was mid-step when Sasaki grabbed his sleeve.
"Are you really going to fall for that?" she managed an incredulous tone by drawing from a wellspring of audacity. "I-If it's a vengeful spirit, we need to be careful. It's probably a trick."
"Fuck."
Sasaki chuckled nervously. "I don't think I've heard you curse before, and you really shouldn't; it's no big deal. If it's resorting to tricks, it can't be that dangerous. Let's head over to 3-1."
"That...wasn't me." Yuji narrowed his eyes. He had heard that voice before, recently even.
Before he could think of when, Yuji's arms suddenly got a little heavier. About fifty kilograms heavier. Like someone had looked up the average weight of a teenager and dropped it onto his upper body. That was odd, it was—Sasaki. It was Sasaki. His fearless captain had jumped into his arms like they were a saddle. She started putting at the drawstrings of his hoodie like they were the reins.
"Yuji. The secret technique. Use the secret technique right now."
It was no good. Iguchi had opted to stay at home instead of joining in. Without him, Yuji didn't have a clue what she meant.
That was when a cacophony sounded like a orderly march of military boots. One desk smacking into the floor, and then the next. Bang. Bang. Bang. This time, it was coming from both classrooms; it was shaking the walls, it was shaking the floors. It was shaking the halls. And suddenly, Yuji didn't need to understand.
They were flying through the corridor. His sneakers leaving shallow potholes in the flooring. Sasaki had to tuck her face into his uniform to stifle the whiplash. Yuji bounced off walls like he had done earlier that day. He rode a banister downwards like it were a skateboard screaming down a half-pipe. Where was he going? Wherever here wasn't. Part of him, the part that wasn't carrying his friend, was curious. Wanted to take a walk past both the classrooms, and record whatever was happening on Sasaki's phone. The greater whole looked down at his friend and kept his feet moving.
***
"Sometimes, my own genius." Yuriko lifted her fringe off her face with a palm. "It's almost frightening."
She mentally revaluated her prior projections. If at first, she had had an hour of invincibility, it had been ruthlessly cut down to five minutes. She knew intuitively that she had been wasteful—was wasteful the right word— with her ability.
It hadn't been her calculations. Those had been easy, and like Accelerator, she didn't really have a large margin for error. On Wednesday, she had run her finger under a tap and tried to make the water flow upwards. But she'd forgotten to account for the vectors of the bubbles (of all things) in the slightest, and that slight deviation in her maths had caused her power to fail her. It didn't seem fair.
Though, now that she thought about it, it wasn't like reality had a large margin for error, either. Thus, the problem had to be with that temperamental substitute for AIM. She couldn't have been using it efficiently. No, she certainly wasn't. By her own guesstimations, she had pumped out at least five times as much of it, as that thing in the park had had. And all she had accomplished was scaring who she could only assume were aspiring ghostbusters.
Well, she would deal with the inefficiency later, but at least her plan had worked—part of it, anyway.
Static again. Whatever presence she felt in the western courtyard faded from her mind, like an obvious lie under scrutiny.
Staying at the school was never a great plan, she was truthfully just making it all up as she went along. If she'd gone to sleep even five minutes before they'd— that was Itadori and...who— shown up, that would have been it. Humans didn't register in her mind as strongly as the creatures did; they might have caught her unaware.
Which was why she started diverting her focus back on to them. Itadori could really move. It was insane to her that nobody ever questioned that. She could feel his presence settle somewhere below her, the east wing to the first-floor girl's bathroom. There was a window there that closed but was too damaged to lock properly. It would explain how they'd gotten in so quietly.
Yuriko herself had been making religious use of it this week. It should have been just as easy for them; just as effortless to leave the building the way they came. They could have been like tangents drifting into other ends of infinity after meeting once. But that's when Murphy reared his lawful head.
PING.
Over pouring sorrow. Torrential sadness. Yuriko felt power like she had never felt before. Controlled, condensed, mechanically precise power. She felt grief, regret in the form of a woman, no, a girl, splinter off as the whole entity flickered away. She felt the new creature stretch its limbs; felt its form contorting impossibly. She felt what must have been a head snapping in the direction of the only other humans in the building.
"Will you walk into my parlour?" said the Spider to the Fly.
Itadori and whoever were headed right toward it, every bit as oblivious as Mr Hokaze had been.
Five minutes of invulnerability...It appeared that Suzushina Yuriko had a choice to make.