The wind blows again, but Naoya can hardly feel it—instead, the air feels heavy, potent with energy. The girl's face relaxes once more into a bored look. "So, just to be clear… You want me to knock you out like Gojo?" she teases.

Naoya smirks. "I'd like to see ya try."

"Oi, I'm not fighting you here," she warns. "Stop looking at me like that."

"I tried askin' nicely," Naoya shrugs. "Shoulda known better, once I saw what ya were. Women just have t'make thing difficult, don't they?"

"Let me make it easier for you," the girl mutters. "I'm never going to tell you anything you want to hear."

"Typical," Naoya gives a little huff of laughter. "Then show me."

He lunges for her, and she barely moves fast enough to avoid his strike. He aims low, at her torso, and she deflects his hand with her forearm but grunts in pain at the strength of it. She backs up, quick to lengthen the space between them, but Naoya refuses to let up, closing the distance with ease.

"Stop!" she growls out, almost losing her balance when he goes for her legs. "I'm not—!" She cuts herself off to duck away from the palm he aims at her face. His fist slams into the wall, leaving a crater in the graffiti-covered concrete, and finally, it seems to dawn on the girl that she can't win this fight. Her eyes are blown open in shock, and she takes three more stumbling steps away from him.

She's fast, he admits reluctantly. But she won't outlast him.

Naoya pulls back for a moment, breathing easily. "What's the problem, Yoshi-san?" he taunts, a grin sharpening his face.

Yoshi replies in rough, unintelligible English before she switches back to Japanese, "You sorcerers are crazy! Knowing my technique won't change anything!"

She's angry, yes, but Naoya can tell she's desperate too. And he likes the frenzied look on her face—she's such a gloomy girl, but now she looks alive.

"A girl like you wouldn't understand the bigger picture," Naoya tells her patiently. "It's not about knowing the technique, it's about knowing whether or not I should kill you for it."

He charges at her again, this time unsheathing the tanto blade tucked beneath his jacket as well. The steel blade cuts smoothly through the air, leaving a buzzing trail of power in its wake, and the girl spits out colorful curses in her attempts to avoid its edge. He takes a second swipe. A third swing kisses against her ribcage, slicing her jacket but not reaching her skin.

On the fourth stab, the blade is stopped just centimeters from her neck—by a wooden baseball bat. Naoya pauses for the fraction of a second, startled by it.

What?

She twists, and the blade—lodged deep in the wood—is almost yanked out of his hands. Naoya barely manages to pull it free, and he pushes himself away from her to reassess.

"That ain't a cursed tool," Naoya finds himself saying it aloud, perplexed by its appearance. He didn't see her draw it, so where did it come from?

She clicks her tongue. "Neither is that knife," she replies.

Naoya scoffs. "I don't need a cursed tool to kill you."

Yoshi holds the bat with a familiarity that comes from years of practice. Naoya would almost think she was a non-sorcerer, like those cast-offs from his own family tree. But he can still feel the heavy touch of curse energy in the air, acrid on his tongue. Unlike Fushiguro Toji, she was dripping with potential as a sorcerer.

A shame that a vagrant like her was born with such a gift, while others with better bloodlines turned out useless.

"I just thought it should be a fair fight," Yoshi mutters, holding the bat loosely with one hand. "You don't mind me evening the odds, do you?"

"The odds were never in your favor," Naoya rumbles, dashing forward.

He raises his blade again, and Yoshi prepares to counter it—

And then an unseen force blasts the two of them apart.

Naoya crashes against a chain-linked fence and Yoshi skids to a stop against the brick ledge, nearly toppling over the side of the building. She curses loudly in English again, and looks up.

"My oh my," a familiar, infuriatingly mild voice floats through the air. The wind continues to thrash around, but Gojo Satoru is untouched by the elements, drifting just a few inches off the roof. His blindfold is pulled down just a little, and he wears a soft, smug grin. "All this fuss over little old me?"

Naoya gets to his feet, his gut roiling with fury. Across the roof, the girl pushes herself up, still gripping that damn baseball bat.

"You again. What the hell doyou want?" Yoshi's gaze is firmly fixed on Gojo, as if she's forgotten all about Naoya.

Gojo starts, a frown crossing his face as he squints one crystal-blue eye at her. "You speak Japanese?!"

…Naoya is surrounded by incompetence today.

"Are you an idiot?" Yoshi demands, gesturing at her own face angrily. "I'm literally Japanese!"

"Are you? You look like a—uh, American," Gojo corrects himself mid-sentence, letting his feet touch the ground and slipping his blindfold back in place. "You live in America! You spoke in English to me!"

"You're so fucking noisy," Yoshi hisses at Gojo before her attention sliding back to Naoya. "What now? Did you give up, Zenin?"

"Shut yer trap, woman," Naoya glares back at her, but doesn't move to attack. Gojo's presence complicated things, especially if he felt any sort of sympathy for the girl. Gojo's loyalty to the jujutsu order was paper-thin. The only reason he wasn't in active rebellion against the higher-ups is because their motives aligned—whenever that changed, Gojo would make a nuisance of himself.

"Hang on, wait up," Gojo interrupts in a whining tone, jutting out his bottom lip as his blindfold slips back into place. "I'm still playing catch-up here! Naoya-kun, I didn't take you for a skirt-chaser!"

"Excuse me?" Naoya demands, brushing off his clothes and straightening his shirt out.

"Well, why else would you be sneaking off to America for a lady, hm?" Gojo teases cheerfully. "And going after my mystery girl, no less! Naoya-kun, you dog!"

"Do you ever shut up?" Naoya snaps, tucking away his tanto as he approaches Gojo. "Always yappin' away, but do you ever say anything important?"

"This is bullying," Gojo gasps, "Don't gang up on me, I didn't do anything," he whines, the smile never leaving his lips. "You have to admit, it's pretty lucky that we both got to this roof on the same day, huh?"

"Yeah," Naoya deadpans, "That girl is so lucky, she's about to jump off the roof."

"…Eh?"

Naoya glances at a spot past Gojo's shoulder. Gojo turns around and yelps. "Hey! No jumping off the roof!"

"Fuck off!" Yoshi screams back, and then she actually dives over the edge—but before Naoya can even think Good riddance to himself, Gojo disappears and returns with the girl tangled up in his arms.

She screeches in rage. "Let me go, freak!" The girl tries and fails to elbow Gojo in the face, and her dumps her onto the ground like a sack of rice.

Naoya carefully avoids letting the amusement on his face show.

"That could've been bad!" Gojo chirps, dusting off his hands. "People tell me I'm insufferable, but I've never seen a girl go so far!"

Yoshi, still on the ground, flings out her hand towards Gojo—

Thump.

Naoya blinks. He isn't sure what he just saw. Sure, Gojo was too fast for his eyes to perceive, but this girl didn't have Limitless.

Gojo stumbles suddenly. Wheezes. He's clutching his solar plexus.

Something bumps against Naoya's shoe, and he looks down. A baseball rolls to a stop beside his foot.

She… hit him?

She hit Gojo Satoru with a fuckin' baseball?

Who the hell is this woman?

Naoya activates his technique instinctively, stretching out the next second into twenty-four images. He lifts his gaze to Yoshi, just in time to see her wind up for a second pitch. He ducks, seeing the path that the ball will take and shifting around it—but then the second is over, and his technique drops away—

And the baseball smashes into chin, the pain white-hot and sickening—