Yuji Itadori POV
It takes all of my effort to not throw up.
Kenta, Hiroshi, and Daisuke were all dead, I was too late I thought as I ran at a slower pace for the other kids to keep up with me.
Twenty-three of them that's how many I managed to count while running.
Twenty-three kids who weren't my friends, who I didn't know, whose names I hadn't learned yet, and they were all behind me running.
Some of them barefoot and some of them crying too hard to see straight.
Not again.
Not again!
"Don't stop!" I called out without turning around, "keep moving all of you don't look back-" I was cut off by the sound of something wet hitting the ground behind me.
I turned.
Kenta was there.
Except it wasn't Kenta anymore I could see it with my eyes.
Whatever the hell that thing was had killed Kenta already.
It's not him, not him, don't call it him.
Suddenly something from his left forearm, pressed outward against it's skin like fingers against a membrane.
Something was trying to get out.
"Don't look!" I barked at the other kids behind me "eyes forward, move!"
The thing wearing Kenta's face opened his mouth and the sound that came out wasn't a voice. It was what a voice leaves behind after everything human has been scooped out of it.
Behind it both Hiroshi and Daisuke chased after their owns forms wringling as something tried to escape from their skin.
"MOVE IT, MOVE IT!" I screamed "GO LEFT take the left passage, GO!" I repeated sensing the incoming danger.
.
.
.
The alley system beneath this part of Fuyuki was a maze and I was grateful for it, because it meant the three things behind us couldn't simply run us down in a straight line.
They had to think and choose.
Whatever was piloting those bodies was still learning them which gave us some.
A hand grabbed my sleeve.
I nearly threw whoever it was before I caught myself.
It was a girl around my age, she had dark braids that were pulled loose, and eyes so wide I could see white all the way around her irises.
"They're right behind us," she gasped.
I looked back.
Daisuke or rather the thing in Daisuke had taken the same left branch we had.
It was faster than the other two, finding its footing quicker, and the tentacle that had been pressing against his forearm had breached the skin now, glistening and dark
'Oh no you don't' I inwardly thought.
"Keep running," I told the girl and turned around to a full stop.
I let the other kids stream past me and planted my feet.
I called up on that instinctive feeling again.
A cut was made again at the tip of my fingers before rapidly closing and the blood floated up as I carefully shaped it into a sphere.
The thing wearing Daisuke's face locked eyes with me.
'I am so sorry...I couldn't save you' I cried inside.
"Piercing Blood!"
Compared to the first time, the beam of compressed blood shot out at a faster pace.
It struck the thing right though it's tentacle first, severing it cleanly at the base, and then landing at it's chest blowing it wide open to reveal multiple tentacles inside.
The loud shriek that came out of Daisuke's mouth wasn't his voice, wasn't even close to his voice. The body stumbled back against the alley wall while clutching at its chest as though in burning agony.
Blood spilled out from its eyes and mouth.
Blood that I suddenly felt connected to, I made a squeezing gesture, and with a silent scream of pain the creature exploded into a fine puddle.
I vomited after that.
I couldn't stay around though I needed to catch up with the others I thought while wiping my mouth.
I ran and quickly caught up to the back of the group within a minute, falling into pace beside another boy running with his arms pumping and his face set in a determined grimace.
The girl with the dark braids had moved to the front of the group somehow, directing the younger ones through the branching alley system with a steady authority that surprised me.
When I pushed up beside her she glanced over without breaking stride.
"There's two left," she said.
She meant the things wearing Kenta and Hiroshi.
"I know," I numbly replied
"You killed the last one somehow," she continued.
I understood what she was asking me.
Can you do it again?
"Yeah I did," I finally said with a determined voice.
.
.
.
-One Day Before-
"You should stop bringing flowers brat there only being wasted," my Grandfather grumbled before I had even set them down by the window.
"Yeah well I didn't get them for you Gramps, they're for the nurses," I cheekily replied before going over to sit beside his bed.
He looked at me with one eye open, glanced at the flowers again, and closed his eye.
"You seriously brought flowers to my hospital room for my nurse?" Gramps skeptically asked.
"Hey, someone has to appreciate her. She deals with your grumpy attitude every day," I say with a smile.
The sound he made was almost a laugh but it costed him.
I could see it from the way his chest painfully heaved.
Outside his window the afternoon moved through its ordinary paces.
Fluffy white clouds crossed the sun.
A pigeon landed on a nearby ledge.
While the distant sound of a truck reversing somewhere below could be heard.
"Brat," he suddenly called.
I looked up but his eyes were still closed and he had turned on his side now.
"About your mother and father-" he tries to say but I cut him off "I already told you gramps I don't really care about them and I don't want to hear you bringing it up again. So just save your energy."
"Hmmph kid's these days no respect for the elderly I tell ya," he grumbled under his breath.
There was silence again then he spoke up again "Yuji," he said in a serious tone this time.
"You're a strong kid, special from others," Gramps paused, "so use your strength to help people when you can. But don't let it swallow you whole, Yuji don't make helping people the only thing you are," he stopped.
Inhaling a slow careful breath he continued "you'll break and I don't want that to happen to you."
The pigeon outside left the ledge flying into the distance.
"Live your life," he said "all of it. Every stupid embarrassing ordinary piece of it. Live it fully," something moved across his face something I couldn't name "it goes faster than it looks from the beginning."
I didn't say anything.
I didn't trust my voice.
"And at the very end," he said in a slower pace, the words coming from somewhere deep and certain, "make sure you die surrounded by people. Friends and family. Die better than me, Yuji die with a full room."
The machines suddenly began to rapidly beep.
I shakily reached out and put my hand over his.
"I promise gramps," I said, feeling a prickling sensation gather up in my eyes.
"Good..." his voice trailed off as his body went still.
The machines flat-lined and I proceeded to cry.
Grandpa was dead.
.
.
.
-Present Time-
The shriek that tore through the alley ahead of us wasn't Kenta's voice.
It certainly had Kenta's pitch but it was nothing more but a monster now.
The thing wearing Kenta had taken a parallel branch and cut us off.
It stood blocking the alley exit thirty meters ahead, its head tilted, and tentacles pressing against the interior of both forearms now.
Much like Daisuke I could see its truest form and it was something beyond any human comprehension.
I put myself at the front between the rest of the kids
"When I move," I told the girl with the braids, "you take them right. There's a gap in the wall about fifteen meters down, I saw it when we came through. It's tight but the others and you can make it. Go for the street."
She looked at me "what about you?"
"Don't worry I'll be fine," I flexed my fingers the skin splitting causing blood to fall again "I'm strong after all."
Something in her expression said she wanted to argue but she knew there wasn't enough time.
"Don't die," she calls running.
"Not planning on it!" I exclaimed while stepping forward and planting my feet in ready motion.
The thing wearing Kenta's face opened its mouth.
'I'm sorry my friend,' I thought.
'I'm sorry I wasn't faster and I'm sorry I couldn't get to you in time and I'm sorry I have to do this.'
The blood flowed up into a concentrated sphere gathered at my fingertips.
"Piercing Blood!" I screamed.
The beam punched through its right shoulder and it stumbled sideways.
The tentacle that had breached from its forearm recoiled.
The wound it attained sizzled like burnt food but it didn't go down like Daisuke's did.
It instead adjusted and lurched back toward center. I heard the kids scrambling behind me along with the girl's voice directing them.
'Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen,' I counted footsteps without turning.
The thing wearing Kenta charged "NO YOU DON'T!" I roared.
I landed a hard shoulder tackle to its midsection, driving my feet into the ground and pushing upward.
The impact was so enormous that it drove the air from my lungs and we went into the alley wall together hard enough to break right through it.
The tentacles lashed at my back and found purchase and pulled.
I felt something tear along my shoulder blade but I didn't care.
I grabbed its wrist, found the connection between my blood, and forced it to crystallize from the inside out.
Different from the way I did it last time where I boiled the entire body of blood to result in a violent burst.
Spikes of solid blood erupted impaling the monster from the inside out before it finally died.
I didn't look, I was already turning.
'Twenty,' I counted.
Twenty others through the gap.
Three still in the alley.
The thing wearing Hiroshi was right there.
.
.
.
It was faster than the others.
Hiroshi had been athletic, quick, and played soccer since he was five years old. Naturally his body still remembered all of it.
The tentacle caught me across the face.
The world tilted sideways and I tasted copper.
The alley floor came up and I caught myself on both palms and the three remaining kids were right there, frozen, and staring.
"WHAT ARE YOU THREE STILL DOING HERE GO!!!," I snarled at them, "NOW!!"
They ran.
I stood back up.
The thing wearing Hiroshi looked at me with his blank eyes.
I clapped my hands compressing multiple droplets of blood to however much I could and launched them making sure they surrounded Hiroshi.
"Super Nova!" I called the new name for my technique.
The droplets exploded violently.
The thing wearing Hiroshi's body screeched so loudly that it bounced between the alley walls and came back to me from three directions at once.
I stood in the alley alone with my shoulder bleeding, my hands shaking, and something wet on my face that I was choosing not to identify.
'Twenty-three children,' I counted.
Then I counted again.
Then I heard the first sound from somewhere in the dark to my left.
A small cry that was cut off too quickly and my stomach dropped through the floor.
I ran toward the sound but the alley branched and I took the wrong branch and then corrected and by the time I found the right one.
The kid-sized shape on the ground was still breathing but its back was arching.
"No," I said with dawning realization "no-"
I dropped to my knees beside them.
It was the same boy I had been running beside earlier.
I grabbed his shoulders and his skin was already wrong.
Already that terrible not-quite-temperature and something bulging outward from beneath his collarbone in that horrible membrane-stretch.
The glowing orb located at his heart was rapidly fading and replaced with an all too familiar abomination.
I couldn't do what I'd done to the others.
He was still there.
Somewhere behind the thing colonizing him he was still there.
Something grabbed my ankle.
I looked up.
There were two more kids.
Other kids I'd been running with thirty seconds ago, kids I'd been counting, kid's I had counted, and they were both now going through the same process.
Further behind them in the branching dark I could hear even more, could hear the sounds they made as the things took up residence inside of them.
Twenty-three.
Twenty-three.
"Ah..." is the only sound that manages to leave my lips.
I could see the creature on the ceiling it's mouth having bitten them.
There was a fourth one before Hiroshi, Kenta, and Daisuke.
I failed every single one of them.
They all died.
The thought landed on me like a punch to my face.
All twenty-three were gone just like that.
Something inside of me broke.
I could feel it happening, could feel something in the center of my chest developing fractures the way ice develops fractures.
The shapes on the ground around me were rising now, rising with that same lurching puppet-movement, and there were a lot of them this time.
I was bleeding from my shoulder and my face.
I doubt I could take them all on by myself.
"Die surrounded by people."
"Die with a full room."
'No..I can't die yet, not tonight,' I thought.
I ran.
Not away though there was no away, they were all around me, a maze of alleys, and things that had been other kids filling up the branches.
Instead I ran at the pace that a normal kid shouldn't be capable of.
My body was special like that with abnormal strength, speed, reflexes, and flexibility.
A tentacle came at me but I ducked, my arms pumping forward, the water underneath me parting, and the wind hitting my face like how someone sticks their head out the car.
The rate of my heart wasn't even racing and I didn't feel exhausted one bit.
A hand came up this time but I twisted past it.
Something with too many fingers tried to grab me and I hit it with my elbow and kept moving.
The alley opened.
A dead end.
I hit it at full speed and climbed out of pure instinct.
The things below reached up their fingers, scraped the sole of my shoe and found nothing.
I pulled myself over the top of the wall and landed on the other side in a crouch on a normal city street.
There was traffic and lights.
A salary man looking at his phone, a convenience store that was still open at this time of night, a taxi driving past with music faintly audible from inside it.
I ran past the street of cars.
I am not sure how long I ran for but I kept myself moving until I tripped and fell on grass.
I stayed there face buried in the dirt.
My hands trembled as they ripped away at the grass "ah! AHH! AHHHH!! IT'S MY FAULT! MY FAULLLLLLLTTTTT."
I was now fully crying while laying on the ground.
'I promised.' I thought at my grandfather, 'I promised I'd save them and I-I couldn't.'
My stomach twists again as I begin to start throwing up whatever was left in my stomach.
"DAMN YOU! DAMN YOU! GILES DE RAIS!!!!!" I yelled at the top of my lungs while clawing at the ground.
[You are my SpecialZ~]
-end of chapter one-
So...this Yuji get's his trauma early on but hey I promise we'll still see some cheery moments from him...maybe...possibly so.
Also don't forget his blood is poisonous as well which is why the character/thing wearing Daisuke died off so violently. It's a sensation like being burned, boiled, and eaten from the inside out.
At the point in the Fate/Zero timeline we are currently on the same night in which Giles decides to attack the Einzbern mansion.
He'll get to unlocking Sukuna's special power later on.
Giving stones and postive comments/feedbacks serves as excellent motivation for me to get chapters done sooner.