Chapter Text
Shoko spends more time on campus than anyone except Yaga-sensei, so she knows where he keeps his keys. She also knows that he works on his felting in the lobby two buildings over when he's stressed and waiting for someone, so right now, he's probably sitting there making nineteen new dolls while he waits on the mortician. If Shoko's right, he'll be there a while, which means she can break into his office.
It's not hard. All those hours using scalpels and sewing needles had given her some incredible finger dexterity, and she's a good lockpick. (Learning how was Suguru's idea, but Satoru was so on board he'd actually begged, and how could Shoko say no to those two, one with a coy little grin and the other with pretty, pleading baby blues?)
The first thing Shoko grabs from Principal Yaga's office is the report on the whole situation. The manilla folder sits there, boring and bland in color but open on his desk to reveal all its horrid contents to the world. After a quick skim, she tucks it into her uniform, folds her arms, and drops down to sit against the edge of the desk with a thump.
There's no residuals from either location of the bodies except for slight traces from whatever cursed object sliced her boys to bits. There's nothing from the footprint on Suguru's cheek, but there's clear echoes of a cursed weapon in the wounds left over his chest, and similar ones in the sword wound through Satoru's back and throat. The areas where the bodies were found were chaotic at best, flyheads swarming a demolished courtyard and dozens of buildings in the Tomb were shattered. Where did the flyheads come from? Why did the killer use so many weapons, and why did their footprints not leave residuals? Shoko's no Six Eyes, but her entire job is analyzing death by curse, so she can see echoes that most can't, even the ones from her talented boys.
Pairing the absence of the Plasma Vessel girl’s body with the residuals of several powerful cursed tools in most of the wounds on her boys, it's highly likely that the killer was drawn in by the bounty, or maybe even hired separately. They're a professional killer, whoever they are, and smart, with access to at least one rare and powerful weapon that somehow got through Infinity. There's only one set of unknown footprints, and only one trail of residuals. The killer had acted alone, but was still able to outspeed and outmaneuver both her boys, which means they might have something like Projection Sorcery or some other kind of motion enhancement, because to run circles around the Six Eyes like that, they'd have to be unbelievably fast.
Fast. Smart. Prepared. Alone.
The Plasma girl’s body is absent, and the trek up the mountain isn't an easy one. If this had been a normal curse user going after an anonymous bounty, they could have just taken a photo of the body instead of carrying it all the way back down, right? Maybe that's just Shoko's penchant for selfies with her friends influencing her thought process, though.
God, her friends. Her classmates. Her stupid, reckless, overconfident, narcissistic, idiot pair of boys. How is she supposed to tell Haibara? How is she supposed to find who did this to the strongest sorcerers in the region when she can barely manage a thought without the wave of their absence flooding her mind? She's never going to hear their voices again, and how is she supposed to deal with that?
She's stuck, but she promised she'd find whoever did this. She wants to scream, wants to rip her hair out and press a lighter to her skin and throw Satoru's stupid classes at a wall so they shatter because she sure as hell can't break down yet when she has so much to do—
Wait. Satoru’s glasses.
Items connected to a powerful enough sorcerer can become cursed tools and objects, even if the sorcerer in question wasn't consciously imbuing it with their Energy. She doubts this is the case with the glasses in her hands, but there's potential in the idea.
Hell. This might be stupid. Especially if her confrontation with the mysterious killer murderer goes poorly.
It doesn't matter. If she can see Energy as clearly as Satoru does did, she can hunt his and Suguru's killer down. She only has one thing that Jujutsu sorcery values, and if she has to offer that up in order to find out what happened, so be it.
Shoko takes off the sunglasses, clutches them tight, and whispers into the air, “If you give me the sight of the Six Eyes — not the abilities, not the Infinity or the Limitless or the power, just the sight — I will sacrifice my RCT for ten days. For every additional hour I require, another five days compounds upon the previous number. It'll compound. Ten days for one hour, fifteen more for the second, twenty more for the third, and so on.” She squeezes her eyes shut, and her voice wobbles a little. “Please.”
Seven agonizingly slow seconds tick by, and then something shifts. Nothing in the physical world changes — the glasses are still cold, Shoko's boys are still gone, her cigarette is still dying — but something, somewhere, tangibly slots into place. She feels like she's cradling Satoru in her hands.
She tries on the glasses, and then immediately takes them back off. “Ow.”
She forgot Satoru also boasted about being able to see in borderline X-ray, as well as ultraviolet and night vision and every other ridiculous wavelength outside the human spectrum of sight, and that he did so all at once. Looking through the glasses and seeing through his eyes feels like looking at a neon smoothie of colors, blinding and bright and overwhelming. She'd always half thought he was joking. No wonder he never went anywhere without sunglasses, if this was how he saw shit without them. She ought to start taking his bitching about the migraines more seriously, or start making him some tea or taking him out for pastries or something on the days when they hit him particularly hard—
Right. Ha. Fuck.
Okay. Focus.
While Shoko's not here to sightsee, this is her first time on this side of Yaga-sensei's office desk, and when she goes around to open the drawer she knows the keys are in, her eyes catch on two photo frames she's never seen the contents of. The first photo is of a woman, probably Yaga's wife, and the second… Shoko recognizes that one, actually. She remembers her teacher taking it six weeks ago, a picture of her and her boys and her underclassmen all smushed together next to a doorway. Shoko had demanded a copy for herself, and later, so had Satoru.
Shoko knows that Yaga-sensei takes almost as many photos of them as she does, but she didn't know that he framed them. Fuck. Her teacher's a big softie, and he's gonna miss the boys too, isn't he?
Dammit. She’s getting sidetracked. Shoko’s on a timer now, so she shakes her head harshly and grabs the keys to the storage bunker from the bottom drawer of the desk. It's time to go steal some school property, because if she's hunting down the person who’s ensured she's gonna be the only graduate in the class of 2008, find the person who stole the subjects of Haibara-kun’s idolization and who took students away from Yaga-sensei (a man that always tried so hard to make sure that they all still got to be teenagers, insisting they try every sport under the sun and awkwardly trying to offer them some of his cutesy little handmade Jugai dolls)—
Well. Shoko's not a walking nuke the same way her boys are (were, dammit) famous for being, so she's gonna need a weapon.