#in which a third year shiki lands in liyue at a certain point in time prior to the shibuya incident

[yuesya]

Satoru-niichan is going to laugh at her when he finds out about this.

… Shiki is perfectly aware that it’s not exactly the right time to be entertaining such inane thoughts, not in this moment. Dark clouds of heavy smoke curl up around her, accompanied by the scorching heat of hungry, crackling flames that she does not feel. But although Shiki remains untouched by the hellish inferno, the same does not apply for the other humans around her; the sounds of terrified screaming and horror-struck pain are deafening amid the ongoing destruction.

Three minutes. At a rough estimate, Shiki arrived here barely three minutes later than the Special Grade curses did, and it already looks like the village is on the verge of being burned into the ground. She shouldn’t be surprised. Special Grade cursed spirits are harbingers of chaos and destruction –malicious ones that revel in human suffering– so it’s not surprising. But… 

If this continues, they’re all going to die.

… Her cousin is going to laugh at her. To think that a simple assignment to investigate the Kyoto school’s ‘Mechamaru’ had somehow escalated into a fight against four Special Grade curses… and then she’d even gotten herself caught in some trap that seemed to have teleported her out of the country entirely?

Shiki sighs, flicking her wrist. The corpse of the water-natured cursed womb slides off from the end of her blade with a wet squelch as it falls.

“DAGON!”

Shiki raises an arm, brushing aside a fiery projection launched at her head. The ground under her feet rumbles dangerously, and she leaps into the air just as a gaping crevice opens up in the earth beneath her.

That’s one curse down, the weakest of the four of them. Three full-fledged Special Grade curses remain, and Shiki takes a moment to reassess the situation.

The circumstances have changed. They are no longer fighting out in a secluded, remote area, where there is no concern of collateral damage aside from environmental restructuring. Not-Geto had done something earlier, and now Shiki and the Special Grade curses had been suddenly, collectively transported somewhere else instead. She doesn’t know where this is, exactly, but it’s obvious that they’re standing directly in the middle of a populated village right now. A rural village whose inhabitants are all running about in panic, with no Windows anywhere in sight to help evacuate victims or minimize damages.

Quite the conundrum.

Because going by the rule book, in the event of an emergency a sorcerer’s first priority is to exorcise, rather than save. But it’s also a sorcerer’s purpose to preserve the lives of regular humans when they’re being threatened by curses.

… The sooner Shiki kills all of these cursed spirits, then the sooner the inhabitants of this village would be safe. If any of these Special Grades were allowed to run loose, then they would only bring disaster and ruin in their wake. She also needs to hurry, especially given that she’d also expended a significant amount of energy in the previous altercation, including her–

An earthen spike lances up from the ground, intent on goring her through… only to shatter harmlessly against her body. Shiki turns towards the corrupted nature-turned-cursed spirit whose hand is still extended in her direction.

“I’ll start with you, then.”

It attempts to keep her away by summoning more earthen spikes, interspersed with wooden tendrils. Even a few strange, strange flowers with sharp, gnashing teeth, but it’s useless in the end. All of it falls apart easily beneath the sharp edge of her blade, and–

“Hanami! Use Domain Amplification–”

Shiki swings her sword.

Whatever this ‘Domain Amplification’ is, the cursed spirit doesn’t manage to use it in time. With its cursed energy as depleted as it is from the earlier battle even before the mass-teleportation, and with the series of techniques it had just deployed against her, the cursed spirit is just a touch too slow in escaping.

Six misshapen lumps fall to the ground, oozing purple-black blood. Two down, two more to go. Shiki whirls back around and–

Several buildings farther down the street, the patch-faced cursed spirit wearing a human shape smiles at her. There’s a wild light glittering in its eyes, half-madness and half-fear, underscored with manic glee. Anticipation curls the edge of its lips in a slow, wide grin.

“Wow, you’re so strong! Think you can cut this into pieces, too?”

The cursed spirit lifts its hand. It’s holding an unconscious young boy, pale-skinned and dark-haired–

… Mechamaru. That’s the Kyoto student whom Shiki had been asked to investigate, on suspicion of colluding with the school’s enemies.

Stitch-marked fingers tighten around the boy’s nape.

“Idle Transfiguration.”

Mechamaru convulses, then groans. His body swells. First his head, then his shoulders, all distending to ridiculous proportions. Regular human skin darkens to a sickly green-grey and eventually stops being human skin at all, hardening into a substance that’s almost reminiscent of armored plating. The end result is a monster –an uncanny caricature of one of the robots that the boy is prone to piloting as an extension of himself among his classmates, but made from flesh rather than metal. More suited to crawling on the ground than standing upright, if the way that it drops down is any indication of things.

Shiki remembers seeing reports of this ability. This cursed spirit could transform human bodies at will, conditional upon physical contact with the desired target. The resulting shock and stress of this technique upon the human body was fatal.

Mechamaru would rampage mindlessly for a few minutes, then die. But Shiki’s assignment was to bring him in alive for questioning.

There’s only one thing to do, then.

Break the arms and legs; prevent him from moving. The only sleeping spell that Shiki knows is specifically designed for humans, and… she doubts that it would be effective on Mechamaru at the moment. She needs to immobilize him right now, and then she’ll deal with him once everything is over.

“White,” she whispers. This would keep him alive, while she–

Shiki leaps into the air, instincts urging her to move. Searing flames scorch the ground where she’d been crouching in; this is the work of that fire-natured cursed spirit, no doubt. It’s a clever one, circling around her and trying to stop her from getting close, while its companion starts unleashing more of its hideous transformed humans as literal meat shields.

She’ll need to cut through all of them in order to reach those cursed spirits.

Wait. No, only that fire cursed spirit was there. Where–?

“MAHITO! NOW!”

An uninvited hand lands on her shoulder.

“Idle–”

The cursed spirit’s voice breaks off with a sharp, startled yelp. 

Then, the hand vanishes –sliced clean off. But it’s not Shiki’s work. Her blade had only sliced halfway through its wrist, before another blade had intervened to cut off the cursed spirit’s entire arm.

… No, not blade. A spear –one that looks to be of a rather unique shape and make. An elongated weapon of green intertwined with gold, held in the hand of a stranger who’d appeared out of nowhere. 

Shiki… hadn’t sensed their arrival at all. Was this another teleporter? … Since when was teleportation something that became such a common ability?

The new arrival tips their head towards her. Beneath the fanged, snarling mask that they’re wearing, it’s difficult to intuit what they mean by this gesture. The ensuing string of words spoken in a language that she does not understand doesn’t exactly help things any, aside from giving Shiki a basic idea of the identity of the person behind the mask. Young, male.

… It definitely becomes a lot easier to understand his intentions once he brandishes his spear, then proceeds to take off towards the patch-faced cursed spirit in a burst of dark wind.

Shiki lifts her gaze as she turns back towards the fire-natured Special Grade, who’s suddenly looking a lot less confident under the weight of her undivided intention. “… I guess that leaves me with you, then.”