#akako

There wasn’t really a lot to do today. It was saturday and Akako planned for it to be a quiet day. She’d watch a few movies she’s been putting off, eat popcorn, and maybe use her crystal ball to check in on Kuroba’s heist. But during the second movie, she feels an uncomfortable pinch. A feeling she can’t explain, one she’s never felt before, but something similar to a hose being bent and the water being forced to a trickle. She scrambles from the couch, calling her crystal ball to her and waving it through her friends. Aoko is in her kitchen, humming with the news of the night’s KID heist in the background. Hakuba is running outside, fear in his eyes. Kuroba is hanging off a fence, the spike of it sticking out through his back and blood seeping from the tear in his jacket to the dirt. His hang glider is splayed out beside him, broken and useless. He is going to die. It pings through Akako, the pinch now a burn, and she knows with certainty he won’t live past this night unless she intervenes. One of his crows has finally managed to break his wings and hold him so he can’t escape. Except this crow has apparently become a shrike. Her teeth grit. Her fists tighten. Before she fully thinks of it, she is by Kaito’s side.

The first thing she registers is the noises Kuroba is making. Small whines and quick, labored breaths. The second thing she registers is a gunshot and the sound of Hakuba crumpling. The third is a large man, wearing a black fedora and trench coat. Kuroba’s unlucky shrike. When the man turns back to Kuroba, he jumps.

“Where the fuck did you come from?” He snarls, raising the pistol he’d used to shoot Kuroba and Hakuba to align with her heart. She gives it an unimpressed look.

“Hell,” Akako says, looking up at him with a smile. She’s lying, of course. Tea with Lucifer only happens on the third friday of a month, and this is the beginning of the month. The man’s lip curls.

“Akako?” Hakuba whispers, looking up, and Akako inclines her head. It was enough already to have her magic tell her Hakuba wasn’t dead. She appreciates the confirmation nonetheless.

“Then let me send you back,” he says and pulls the trigger. The bullet flies toward her, its path and their close distance no doubt allowing for great damage and most likely death. If she were normal. If she weren’t a powerful witch. (Quite possibly the most powerful red witch alive, if you ask her.) But she is not normal, and is in fact quite pissed off at this man damaging two of her favourite things, so she stands still in the path of the bullet instead of dodging so this man can see just how much damage his little toy does not do. The man’s jaw drops when all it causes is a brief stumble, the force rocking her back as the bullet clatters harmlessly to the pavement. He fires twice more with the same results, his hand shaking. One of the bullets flies slightly off course and nearly strikes Kuroba. She mutters a spell and the bullet oozes to the ground, the kinetic energy transferring to thermal and melting the iron. The man drops the gun.

“Finished?” Akako asks with a smirk, flicking her wrist to send the gun spinning toward Hakuba before the man can say anything. He splutters, eyes snapping to the gun before returning to her. When she takes a step forward he takes a step back. “Are you afraid of me? Good.”

He glares at her, angered. “I don’t know who or what the fuck you are, but you don’t know who you’re messing with. I am part of a very powerful organization.”

Akako laughs, hand over her mouth like one of those 90s villains in the magical girl animes Aoko and Kuroba like to watch so much. He flinches back a step and she takes a breath to reign herself in. Or at least reign in the laughter. There’s been enough holding back, she thinks. She’s allowed the organization to play, because she knows Kuroba likes the show and Hakuba likes the chase. Because she doesn’t make a habit of placing her hands within dishes which don’t concern her. But they have very much made themselves her problem now, and she thinks maybe she has let them play for too long.

“You think what hides in the shadows is true power,” Akako says, tilting her head. “But you’ve never witnessed it before. Never seen even a taste of what they have you chase. None of you have, but they will all learn.”

“For who I am, I am no Kaitou KID, nor am I a mistaken curse like Pandora. I am not some crow hiding in the shadows, make-pretending power.” Akako straightens, expression flat but fierce. Her eyes flash like blood, like violence, like impending doom. “I am a true magician and I do not like having my things broken. I am a descendant of Sekhmet and I take my payments in blood.”

The man pales behind the shadows of his fedora. “You don’t even have a weapon,” he spits, wavered.

Akako smiles. “Cute. You think I need a weapon.” She waves her hand and the shrike falls to his knees, hacking up black bile. Akako turns to Kuroba, and her mind stutters a moment on his impalement. Disease she can do, but healing is something the Koizumi line lost long ago. All she can do is send him to the hospital and hope they are quick enough.

“Hakuba,” Akako says.

“Yes?” Hakuba says, looking away from the shrike to her. She looks him over, checks for where the blood pools. It’s in his side. The bullet which hung Kuroba truly was simply a lucky shot.

Or, perhaps, a very unlucky shot.

“Watch over Kuroba. And perhaps tell him you found him there after a watchful eye sent a note to your own room?” Akako says. Akako asks. Hakuba nods. “We wouldn’t want him to throw a tantrum.”

“He can be quite a kid when the mood strikes him,” Hakuba agrees with a pained smirk. The way he’s only looked at Kuroba once doesn’t escape her notice. “And you, Lady Akako?”

“I have work to do,” Akako says and sends them off, only KID’s suit left behind, impaled on a spike.

The sun rises in the morning with reports of several buildings razed to the ground, leaving nothing but ash in their wake; multiple cases of spontaneous combustion; and one unlucky dead man in a highrise, face locked in pain and diseased lines of red scarred deep into his skin, all leading out from a javelin-like wound in his torso.

Later that morning a first grader gets a packet filled with several files of research with a note taped to it, telling her it’s from “one fate-breaker to another”.