Bloody turquoise eyes | JJK x OC

Canto XXII - To A New Dawn

~ 10 minutes earlier

"Kusakabe, haven't we checked enough of these buildings?" Panda pointed out to the grade-one sorcerer. The senior shivered a bit, the two were perlustrating the area in front of the Shibuya Stream seeking survivors to escort to the safe zone, but truth be told the coat-sporting swordsman was doing everything in his power to stall and keep the cursed corpse occupied so that they wouldn't go to the Fukutoshin line, which entrance was literally around the corner. The reason was very simple, Kusakabe did not want to die at the moment, and he knew that down in B5F there were only powerful curses whom he had absolutely no will to go up against, so he kept making excuses, relying heavily on Panda's poor sense of direction to buy himself some time. The problem is, the fewer people were around the sharper the corpse's nose became, it was only a matter of minutes before he might find the entrance and accidentally go to B5F by himself, something that the sorcerer wanted to avoid as well. The reason was very simple, Kusakabe did not want to be left alone in Shibuya at the moment.

"They might be still in the curtain, but thanks to Inumaki the civilians are somewhere safe. Shouldn't we go look for Satoru already? Toge confirmed his sealing too, so we better hurry up..."

"Gojo... isn't the only person that matters, you know?!" Kusakabe retorted, shocking the pseudo-bear. "What if a schoolgirl is hiding somewhere and we didn't find her? We might as well be accomplices to the ruination of a bright future full of promise." The reasoning had its effect on Panda, who got back immediately to searching once he was told so, leaving no stone unturned as the adult said. Kusakabe could now let out a sigh of relief, his gaze landed on the fairly new building, he had a look inside, the place was disseminated with carcasses of transfigured humans left and right, whoever's done that must have been a force of nature. Right as he looked upwards, the night sky was momentarily illuminated as if it was daytime by a blinding light, shielding his vision with his left hand he could make up the contours of a large fire pit burning on the roof of the building. Kusakabe had the tendency to ignore whatever could potentially be deadly, but there was a limit where his cowardice ended and his courage started, and those white flames were too much of a warning to let it slide.

"Panda! Come back here! We're getting inside!" He yelled.

"Huh?! Again?! But we already went through the place or do you humans have short-term memories?!"

"There's no time for complaining, just get in there!" As soon as he expressed his order, the light died out as quickly as it appeared, the sudden lack of light attracted their attention upwards once again. What followed was a rapid succession of the loudest explosions he heard in a while, the windows shattered under the blast pressure, the shards now raining down on the two. 'The hell is happening up there?' The sorcerer thought as he rushed into the Shibuya Stream.

~ back to the present

Gabriele coughed up blood, palming over the fresh wound Romulus had just inflicted on him, he mentally cursed at the warm and viscous sensation at the touch, at the way the old and new blood were blending and staining his body as a macabre symbol of his failure. He couldn't accept it, this way of succumbing, outclassed by his opponent without putting up much of a fight, tears tinted in crimson came naturally into his eyes while his breathing became more and more ragged, also due to the agony of the injury. The Empyrean was talking, but the words hardly reached his ears as his heart pounded so loudly in his skull, his conscience slipping in and out of total darkness with each beat. All he could do was gaze at the paladin's back, pacing away from the landing pad, at least he could die aware that everyone could still save themselves.

In his blurry vision, however, he caught a glimpse of something twitching on the ground, a small bird, or rather half of it giving its last signs of life. But Gabriele could tell that something was wrong by how the guts were splurging out toward West, following the imaginary line with his gaze he soon found the head of the unfortunate bird. 'That's strange, it looks like it was grabbed by each end and pulled apart.' he thought.