EVENT #5: SOVEREIGN CITIZENS (GODSBLOOD)

[aionmods]

Sovereign Citizens

GODSBLOOD

At the height of the Sovereign's moon, Vaeka Lovenskol's execution is announced. Outside of the City Hall, a dignitary of Achamoth is flanked by an entourage of Kenoma, reading the words of Regent from an unfurled letter: Vaeka stands accused to conspiring against the Regent and abetting the fugitive menace known as the Pleroma. Though the details are not made public, rumors spread quickly, some far more wild than the actual truth. The full truth, after all, is something only the Regent's agents and the Pleroma themselves know, and even to them the manner of her exposure is unclear.

Though losing a proud daughter of an influential family, there seems to be little that the people of Godsblood can do besides accept it. After all, they are still a city of the Regent's empire, and for all the freedom they've enjoyed, there are limits. If she was truly aiding the Pleroma, the sworn enemies of the Regent - and in an organized manner, if the rumors are to be believed - can they truly object? Or would challenging the Regent's claim simply invite more death?

As with many things, the families of Godsblood are torn. Tensions are thick for the five days leading up to Vaeka's appointed execution by hanging, with everyone having an opinion and few wanting to go on record talking about it too loudly. As such, the people's frustrations come out in other ways. Bloodites are uncharacteristically unfriendly to strangers in this time, keeping to their own and treating everyone else with overt skepticism.

Those that have arrived as part of the Regent's official envoy, or seen guarding Vaeka, will receive a particularly icy reception. No longer are the Kenoma curious wanderers on personal business. Now, they are here as the hands of the Regent; few of the Godsblood citizens are foolish enough to challenge them outright, but they are ever an honest people.

Early on, the Kenoma and the rest of the Achamite contingent sent with them will be able to take over a jail in downtown Godsblood to hold Vaeka until her execution, clearing out all other Bloodite prisoners and employees in the meantime. This means they have a relatively secure position to guard their prisoner from, which is a good thing; after all, the Regent did outright invite the Pleroma to stop them, and Pleroma are nothing if not stubborn.

EXECUTION DAY

After five agonizing days of waiting and several high visible conflicts between the Pleroma and Kenoma, finally the hour of Vaeka's execution arrives. A gallows is set outside of City Hall, ready to welcome its newest victim, and a massive crowd has gathered in an spirit of anxious anticipation. Some worry that violence may break out in the streets, even without the Pleroma's agitation, but gradually the minutes tick by and the gallows remain empty.

First one minutes passes. Then five. Then fifteen. Slowly, it becomes clear to the people of Godsblood that Vaeka will not be arriving. Are the rumors true? Has she been saved? Have the Pleroma been successful, despite all odds?

As the hours pass and the crowds disperse, Vaeka Lovenskol is not officially reported as either living or dead. Fortunately, Godsblood is a place where information has a way of getting around, whether those in charge like it or not. Some are saying that she was seen being whisked away as if by powerful magic, following a bloody fight at the jail in which she was being held. Where did she go? Maybe her supposed connections to the forest people did her good, some surmise.

The days following Vaeka's failed execution carry a strange and uncertain energy. Where before there was tension and distrust, Godsblood now finds itself in a surreal reality where the Regent's word is apparently not absolute. Then again, do they really want a repeat performance?

QUESTIONS

What is the best way for Aions to travel to Godsblood?
For Pleroma, this is very easy, as they are likely to either already live there or be able to easy take Greentruth's portal. For Kenoma, they may come directly from Achamoth by boat as part of the Regent's envoy or arrive via Eustace's portal which is set up in a shed a fairly long jaunt outside of town. Once there has been some time to get established, Misa will be setting up another portal leading straight to the prison where Vaeka is being stored.

Are the Kenoma permitted by the Regent to kill other Godsblood citizens?
Though the Kenoma are authorized to kill any Bloodites that try to physically fight them, they are expected to keep things clean. The Regent prefers to only punish the guilty, and having the lines be clear will create less of a hassle in the future. Generally, Godsblood is not in a state where physical resistance is likely to happen unprovoked.

Comments

> yuuta & amos

[recursive]

( for just a second, yuuta is frozen in place, eyes flown wide from what he'd just seen. having never really seen that particular capability of johnny's abilities in action... wow! it was crazier than even the craziest cursed techniques he's seen!

but he can't waste any further time. for just a few paces he runs alongside syrlya until they as well vanish, teleporting through an open window and into the building; he continues to blaze a path along the side of the building and towards its entrance, all the while sketching out a mental map of distances so he could make judgments once inside on where to go in order to join them. if the scene around him descends into chaos, yuuta doesn't pay it any heed — any guards posted around the building can be readily dealt with by caitlyn and akua as they provide ranged support. if rand is also closing in on the entrance, he doesn't immediately see him. all he sees is a closed, barred door — but not for long.

it wouldn't be strange if one raised an eyebrow when they saw yuuta, a thin and wiry scrap of a kid, barreling at the prison's door as if he could bust his way through them. one might even laugh or begin to raise their voice in concern when he raises one leg to kick at it. but when that kick connects, it's not necessarily the force from his heel so much as a wave of cursed energy he puts into it that rocks the door and blows it open, going so far as to splinter the wood and damage the masonry that it was connected to. from the inside of the building it would've looked like an artillery shell blew the thing open, but the first thing that runs through the door is...

a teenager.

yuuta begins to race through the building in the rough direction he knew vaeka's cell to be in, eyes scanning with surgical precision as he does so to try to locate any Kenoma threat that he can keep locked down here and not bursting into the cell to further complicate matters over there. the one that he finds is amos, and then he makes a beeline for him. if the dead severity in his eyes isn't a giveaway for his intention, it's hard to mistake once he draws the falchion from the sheath at his side, leveling it as he runs. )

[baltimores]

[ It isn't a surprise that the Pleroma are making an assault. It isn't even a surprise that they've waited this long to do it. But everything still feels chaotic, the suddenness of this attack, and Amos isn't in the fighting shape he was a few days ago.

Oh, he'll still do it; that's why he's up and running towards all that noise, the sound of a door getting borderline demolished catching his attention first and foremost. Ciel is with Vaeka; she'll be fine handling things on her own there. He needs to tackle other threats as best he can.

Which might be something of a tall order considering how he's now down a couple of fingers; considering how he lost a lot of blood when his throat got cut just a day ago. But. What else can he do, right? This is his job. This is all he's really good for, so he's ready to face what smashes through that door head on. He has to be.

... He is not expecting a teenager.

He is not expecting a teenager with that kind of look in his eyes, and the second it takes Amos to register both Yuuta, the telltale Pleroma clinging to him like a disease, and the fact that he means business is enough for Yuuta to get the jump, coming at him probably a bit faster than he can handle. (And fuck, is he fucking tired of swords.) He's got no weapons on him — it's just him and some light armour, prepared at least that much for the occasion. And as much as he'd prefer to not fight someone so young, well... that choice has been made for him, hasn't it.

Amos' lips curve into a snarl as he rushes forward to meet Yuuta, slower than he should be, weaker than he should be, but ready to give everything he still has. He knows better than to underestimate anyone just because they're small.

He'll do his best to block the falchion with his armour, though there are gaps in it, so of course he's vulnerable; takes a swing right for Yuuta's head, though. Knock him out, capture a Pleroma, provide additional backup is basically the goal. ]

[recursive]

( seventeen years old, and this isn't the first time yuuta has faced down another person with the very tangible reality being that he would have to kill them — or at the very least try to.

the first time he had crossed that threshold had been over a year ago. one of the most powerful curse users alive, getou suguru, had specifically targeted him to get to rika's curse, so he could use her prodigious strength for himself, and the ones that had suffered for it had been the people closest to him. walking out onto the school grounds and seeing panda's broken form, maki twisted and bloody, and toge scarcely able to croak out a plea to run... an anger had possessed him, hot enough to boil his blood and call rika forth with the intent to kill the man that had hurt them, just so he could get to him.

he hadn't been the one to kill getou, but he had defeated him, and since then he has occasionally been called upon to bring down curse users — sorcerers that went rogue from the jujutsu society and used their abilities to harm people and for their own selfish gain. he had never liked those assignments, but he had taken them without complaint, because curse users are very dangerous... and he is only one of four sorcerers powerful enough to be considered "special grade."

yuuta doesn't know amos, but as he run towards him, he can't help but wonder about him, even as he tries his damnedest to keep his mind empty and clear. perhaps it's a line of empathy drawn between them as individuals of the same Legacy. perhaps it's because he's still working through his feelings about fighting against those in the same situation as him but twisted towards a different, darker purpose. why is it that he's here? what is his personal prerogative in this? would he have agreed to do so under different circumstances? does he even really want to hurt yuuta either? he's only a few feet away from amos when a vulnerability hidden deep within the mechanics of the young man snaps. he doesn't want to kill him. hell, he doesn't even really want to hurt him — he will if he has to, but he just wants to keep him busy. so in a gesture so quick it could be easily missed, he does something fantastically foolish: he flips the falchion over in his grasp. there were no katanas for sale on the streets of godsblood (obviously), but he had picked this weapon because it felt as close as he might get. a single-bladed weapon, one that would make the most sense with the way he'd learned to wield a sword. held this way in his hand, he would bring its blunt edge against amos, not the one keen enough to cut through flesh and bone.

probably for the best, because amos will realize very quickly that this is not your average, everyday, garden-variety teenager.

he will receive the physical evidence of this when the force of the sword, even if it is the blunt edge driving into the side of his armor, it strikes with the force of a jackhammer. put on a blunt edge, that force spreads out over the surface area of the armor, lessening the immediate damage, but it feels like the one swinging that sword is ten times stronger than the puny-looking scrap of a young man that amos faces now.

yuuta's typical method of fighting is deceptively simple. blessed with a prodigious amount of cursed energy, unsurpassed by any other sorcerer, so he uses that energy to reinforce his body, making him stronger, faster, and more durable than a normal human's capabilities. with so much of this resource at his disposal, he typically tries to overwhelm his opponents with incredible force, able to tank hits others might try to avoid because he could just use reverse cursed energy to heal through the damage. with this instinct in mind, still not shorn from his mental tactics, he doesn't even try to move out of the way of amos' blow. the man's fist connects solidly, and though it does rattle his brain and thoroughly bruise his jaw, shattering his vision into fragments and stars and bringing the copper taste of blood to his tongue, amos would also notice that this kid is a hell of a lot more durable-feeling than the average person. not quite like punching a cinderblock, but on the way there.

what he's forgotten in this moment is that... reverse cursed energy doesn't seem to be as potent here as it was back home. he starts using it on reflex, exhaling a huffed sigh of dull blue energy that begins to repair damage to bruised flesh and bone, but it's slow. too slow. he needs to be more careful. that, and if he's too brazen with his cursed energy (because manifesting rika a distance away also drew upon that same resource just as much as he did to reinforce himself and his weapon), he'll run out, and then he will just be one (1) garden-variety teenager against a man with what felt like supernaturally-enhanced strength.

ironically, they both arrive at the same conclusion: try to end this fast. temporarily on the back foot after the blow to his head, yuuta recovers with a fierce determination in his dark blue eyes and resumes his assault; he trades brute strength for speed, lashing out with the unsharpened edge of the sword in a flurry of swipes that don't have the power of the last one, but that he hopes might be enough to confuse amos' guard so he could get in a more decisive blow afterward. )

[baltimores]

[ He doesn't like that Yuuta is so young.

Amos has been wrestling with Yuya's presence here since the beginning. Something about it has always sat wrong with him; wouldn't, if they were on the same side, but since Yuya hadn't obliged him in that request... And now the Pleroma have someone else; a little older, still, but—

He's getting conflicting messages here. From the way Yuuta hits him with blunt force rather than piercing. It's almost certainly going to leave a bruise, but it's not lethal. Maybe he can even downplay it to an annoyance at best. (He can't; when this is all over, he's certainly going to have at least one thing to remember Yuuta by.) From the emotions he's picking up from their shared legacy, the way Yuuta does not have that killer instinct.

But then the fact that Yuuta clearly knows what he's doing. Has been in this kind of confrontation before, even though his youth shows on him. In any other scenario, Amos would feel for him; here, he takes it as permission, because he does have a killer instinct. Has had it since he was younger than Yuuta presently is.

Amos had taken his first life at fifteen without much thought. It seemed like the right thing to do, so he did it; quick and easy, someone unsuspecting, a shotgun up close against the chest. The second and third lives he took mere days later had been much more brutal, and he'd taken his fair share of damage along the way. But he'd also learned what it was to be a wild animal, to chew off the foot caught in a trap not so he could escape but so that he could lunge at his attacker and end his life with nothing more than his hands. If he could do it at that age, then surely Yuuta can do something similar at this age, even if he doesn't seem to want to.

Which works to Amos' advantage. So. That's one decision made, then.

Amos brings his arms up to try to block Yuuta's blows, effectively pinned; speed is not in his repertoire. Not like this. He is nothing more than a talented amateur with no filter and blessed with exceptional strength. It's reminiscent of his time in space, which is probably why he'd developed it as an Aion — Belters grow up in lower gravity. Their bones, their muscles, their cardiovascular system, their bodies are all weaker. Unless he ran into someone else from Earth up there (and even then), any time he got into a fight he always had the upper hand, never had to develop anything more. Which is turning into something of a problem here, because it's clear Yuuta outskills him, but when you're born down in the mud you learn to use that to your advantage. Take your blows, because you can take anything; hit back harder than anything they've ever thrown at you.

He leaves an opening for Yuuta, clear as day, in trade for making a grab at the arm controlling the falchion; his other fist pulling back in preparation to nail Yuuta with a worse blow than his first one. Beat him into submission.

It's worked before; as long as he can find a way to sustain everything Yuuta is hitting him with now — and that's not exactly an easy task, but it's one that he thinks he's up for, has no choice but to be up for — then he figures there's no reason it shouldn't work again. Seventeen; a grown adult when he'd been fifteen — in this moment of battle, there's no difference to him. ]

[recursive]

( misfortune will find you, regardless of the age, regardless of how preventable it might have been in the grand scheme of things. yuuta had been ten years old when his closest friend, the girl that he had promised to one day marry, had been hit by a car. her tiny form had crumpled to the pavement like an inanimate object, her skull crushed, and the slow and steady crawl of blood toward his shoes would haunt him until the day he died. there hadn't been any maliciousness in the accident, but there hadn't been any reason or sense, either. sometimes tragedy simply happens. sometimes people cause it intentionally, and sometimes they do it without knowing — like the person who had killed her, and like yuuta, who had so violently refused to let her go that he had cursed her immortal soul to him for the next six years.

the jujutsu society does not shy from using children in their operations. realistically, they can't; there are so few jujutsu sorcerers now to stand against the rising tide of powerful cursed spirits that yuuta is in the field more often than he'd been in a classroom. he's seen the horrible violence and death that those monsters can mete out, and he's put down a non-insignificant number of human curse users himself. age doesn't factor into it. when you are only one of four special grade sorcerers in the world, you do what you're told, for the greater good.

it's not that he's without a killer instinct — he just needs a reason to access it. amos hasn't raised a hand against any of his closest friends. just a few months prior to yuuta he had hatched out of one of the same chrysalises in the same shrine as he had, and all the events that had led them down their separate paths since then had led them to blows here. no, in this instance, he doesn't have that killer instinct. he doesn't want to kill the man, even if he knows it wouldn't be permanent unless he shattered the stone that held his soul. he just — doesn't think it's necessary. not now. they're not even in the room with the prisoner; if they were, and amos was trying to hurt or kill her, he likely wouldn't have made the decision to flip his grip on his sword. if amos wished to paint with a broad brush and assume he lacked the capability to kill entirely, well, he was welcome to, but it would likely be a mistake in the long term.

amos' defense is solid. yuuta is a skilled fighter, but he lacks years of experience that many others had — which even his classmates had all had in spades over him. it has less to do with how quick and powerful he is and has more to do with how keen his eye is. he can't read as easily as toge or maki might have that amos' straightforwardness and tenacity belied the canniness of life experience. they might have been more wary of the obvious gap left open in his defenses, but yuuta falls for it, perhaps too eager to find a way to end this and rush to the side of his companions.

a foolish mistake. he won't make it again.

amos' hand closes like a vice around his swordarm, yanking him just off his center of balance enough that he takes another whalloping blow to the head. he sees stars, though they tear off to red and black; more blood fills his mouth, and he can feel it dripping from his nose. he instinctually gasps in a breath and exhales a cloud of reverse cursed energy, but it's still far too little, far too slow. he forces his eyes open — one already swelling near-shut from the blows — and he does something odd. he drops his sword, instead twisting his arm to grapple amos' arm just as the man had done to him. with his left, he does the same, locking them into a one-on-one wrestle. one that probably looks hilariously one-sided to an outside viewer, given amos' size against yuuta's skinny teenager frame, but he draws more and more cursed energy to augment himself to match him. against amos' super strength, he can hold his own — though it hadn't been his intention to try to wrestle the man to the ground.

no. instead, he rears back and attempts to headbutt him, not only with strength and force granted to him by the energy reinforcing his body, but by a surge of cursed energy that he forces through the impact. it would hit amos like a shockwave after the initial blow, forceful enough to knock over several pieces of furniture within several feet of them. )

[baltimores]

[ In almost any other situation, in almost any other world, Amos would feel for him. To experience tragedy that horrific when you're that young. To be taken and used, no matter the justifications those in charge say to tell themselves that what they're doing is for the greater good, whether a kid gets to be a kid or not. He would have a problem with it. Would want to protect Yuuta from it.

But here it's completely irrelevant, and he will kill him if he has to. It's not a great feeling, but it also isn't one he'll shy away from; when this is done and over with, when he's left to lick his wounds and reflect on everything that went wrong over the course of this operation, Amos will have to come to terms with the fact that he was willing to end the life (temporarily or not) of someone so young just because they were going against the Regent.

... He's not going to have a problem with it. He doesn't need a reason to kill, ever. Never has, never will; but at least here, for all the difference it doesn't really make, he has one. He would say it's good that Yuuta doesn't have a killer instinct for multiple reasons — it advantages him, it means Yuuta's still a good person.

Hell, he's probably still a good person if it turns out Yuuta does have one and it simply isn't always active. Except for the telltale aura of the Pleroma contradicting that, explicitly identifying Yuuta as a bad person, so. Here they are.

He'd been starting to pull his fist back to hit Yuuta again when he'd dropped the sword; that had been all the moment of pause that Yuuta would need, give him a clear opening to nail Amos, send him straight to the ground, winded and bleeding from his nose, his mouth, from the deep cuts on his palms reopening (and it's not as though from the past day he has a lot of blood left to spare). He has strength and not endurance, and any semblance of the latter he feels burning under his skin, longing to come out and take over, is so far away it might as well not actually be there.

Amos groans from his prone position, forcing himself to stand back up; coughs up blood, spitting it on the ground as he gets back to his feet, staring at this.

kid.

still just a kid, and he does not care.

There is almost certainly internal damage. Amos stares at Yuuta, expression unreadable, face completely blank, devoid of anything that could possibly be going on upstairs.

And then he bares his teeth and lunges straight for Yuuta's shard, aiming to rip it from his body if he can. ]

[recursive]

( from yuuta's perspective, there's nothing to necessarily criticize or judge amos for. it's not as though any cursed spirit has ever stopped itself from preying upon a human being just because they were young — the universe was cruel and vacuous in that way, thoughtless and uncaring in the way that people could be towards one another. he had been sixteen years old, only freshly discovering a personal purpose and reason for living after having tried to end his own life before being accepted to jujutsu high, and getou suguru had targeted him specifically, believing if he could merely kill the cursed human that she was bound to, that he would be able to take rika's limitless power for himself.

in that way, he can almost respect amos. he might be coming at him with lethal intent, but at least he was trying to kill him as an adversary, not to simply get at something (or someone) else that was linked to him. there's a bizarre sort of respect inherent in something like that... or perhaps yuuta's just got a skewed understanding of people trying to kill him.

the blow is a relief, both in that it connects solidly with his opponent but also because it saves him another crushing blow to the face (he's certain if he got one or two more of those, he'd be out like a light regardless of what supernatural energy he might have swimming through his body). there's an uncharacteristic moment when amos is crumpled to the ground that yuuta... hesitates. what do I do? if he had been an enemy curse user, he certainly would have picked up his sword — he would have plunged it unswervingly into his heart, or perhaps attempted to lop off his head with one clean swing. or perhaps he would have forsworn his sword entirely and tried to wrap his arms around the man's neck as he tried to get back up, twisting until the vertebrae were all shorn apart. but he doesn't know how to do what he wants to do, which is just incapacitate him. he can just hit him again — he'll just hit him again, and it's when he makes this decision, cursed energy pooling around a raised and clenched fist in a ghastly pale aura, that amos takes advantage of his pause to get back up and lunge at him, less like a human combatant he's ever fought before and more like a pouncing tiger (the urge to write descending bear here was very strong, but I mostly resisted it).

when set opposite him, yuuta's reinforced strength can match amos', but throwing himself at him bodily like this — cursed energy can do a lot for him, but it can't make up for mass. he tries for a valiant moment to hold his ground and go back into a grapple with the man, but he ends up getting bowled over and sent crashing into the ground. the impact forces the air out of his lungs, stunning him for a moment — or, at least, a moment that lasts long enough for him to realize that the man is going for his shard, as brutal and straight-forward as an animal going for the throat of its prey. an instinctual, existential horror grips him; he's not sure he's felt afraid like this, not in months and months. it's enough to force his breath out of him again in a hoarse whine, desperate; he strikes at amos, pushes at him, trying to put enough force and cursed energy into the attacks to get him away from him, but he doesn't seem to be able to —

sensing his real distress and fear, the invisible, spiritual line connecting yuuta and rika goes taut. this whole time yuuta has been imploring her to stay where she is and do as he asked for her to, but now the programming left to her by the original rika overrides his commands; the cursed spirit leaves the room that the fight for vaeka is taking place in, flying at top speed to where amos wrestles yuuta to the ground, teeth and claws having torn through layers of clothing running red with blood to try to get at the shard that rested just above his heart, having just started to prise it free — )

YOU!!

( on either side of amos' head, two massive, pale hands appear; ghastly and large enough to perhaps wrap fully around his torso, they instead attempt to enclose crushingly around his neck and shoulders, to slowly force him back and lift him up. )

You hurt him... You—!! ( the voice is high and shrill, like a young girls, though heavily distorted.

yuuta barely has the time or the wherewithal to think about the situation, or what it might mean that rika had suddenly abandoned her mission to come save him. she had probably saved him from something terrible in the long run, regardless. )

[baltimores]

[ Being anything other than straightforward when trying to take someone else's life would be fucked up. It isn't supposed to be a whole thing. You kill someone else for whatever reason, they're dead, and you move on. That's it. That's all it should be.

That's all he's trying to do.

He would take advantage of anyone in a prone position. He would expect anyone to take advantage of him in a prone position. If Yuuta wants to open himself up to being killed by a descending bear (because I am fully ready to commit), then that isn't for Amos to question. It's for him to use. Anyone else would — should — do the same, especially in a war. Neither of them should have time to try to merely incapacitate.

But the job isn't done; not until he gets ahold of Yuuta's shard. Thanks to their shared legacy, that fear hits him, spurs him on. He'd lived through his own before. It's easy to live through that of an enemy's. The whine just tells him he's getting closer, as Amos uses his mass to keep himself on top of Yuuta, keep giving him the upper hand, let him put an end to this—

That ethereal voice strikes him with something Yuuta will probably recognize as horror. For Amos, he doesn't know what it is, other than that something is going horribly wrong.

He is left suddenly at the mercy of. He doesn't know what. Amos thrashes, doing his best to pry himself free; he needs to get out of here he needs to get out of here he needs to get out of here and he can't, forced off of Yuuta, forced upright, forced in the air, and between the terror that's unrecognizable to him and all the blood loss he'd suffered the day before, Amos is left truly, completely helpless.

He brings his arms up to try to pry at the hands on him. His legs kick uselessly. He grits his teeth and bucks and snarls like a wild animal caught in a trap, knowing that their end is near but fully intent on fighting to their very last breath. And he remains completely at Rika's mercy all the while. ]

[recursive]

( ooc: wrapping this one up if you don't mind! let me know if you want me to change anything tho )

( he does feel it. initially the rattle of fear feels like his own, but it persists and even strengthens even as yuuta's is slowly replaced with a bleed of relief that rika had come to his rescue. sure, it makes him anxious about what her absence in the fight at vaeka's side might mean, but — even after orimoto rika had left him to pass on to the afterlife, there's still a piece of her embedded in the creature which now lifts amos away from the young man she'd once had promise to marry her. it might be a rote and mechanical sense of protectiveness and defensiveness, but the reason it was still there and the reason it still acts in the way that it does is a simple one:

love. they come by their Legacy honestly and in different ways, perhaps, but it's always been both yuuta's motivating drive and the protective shield around him.

when yuuta had been assigned as itadori yuuji's executioner, it hadn't taken him very long. he had exchanged a few blows with the young man, surprised by the strength, speed, and instincts of his new kouhai, but all it had taken was for him to summon rika. with her hands at either side of him, pinning him immobile, he'd taken the broken remains of his sword and rammed it through the boy's heart. he had, of course, fixed the damage right after he'd caused it (he had to fulfill his binding vow, after all), but as the same sort of scene plays out here, he thinks about doing the same. it would be the right thing to do, right? this man clearly hadn't shown any mercy to him. why should he for him?

he... he doesn't know. he can still feel that fear shaking through their connection, a feeling of dull helplessness in the clutches of something large and unknowable.

after a moment, he gasps out, ) Rika, don't - don't kill him.

( but given how long the scene has played on, how powerful and vice-like her vengeful grasp is around his neck — she doesn't seem willing to just let him go. or, at least, not until she can feel him go limp and unconscious, and then she will discard him to the side, fully discontent that she had to do so while he was still alive.

it takes yuuta a long moment or two to pull himself together mentally and emotionally before doing so physically, getting his legs beneath him and slowly moving towards where he believed johnny and syrlya were trying to rescue vaeka. )