Chapter Text
Something like an earthquake shakes the building, the couch underneath Chuuya shifting and sighing. He blinks almost-awake, sleepily surveying the room. The trembling abates just in time for him to fall asleep again.
What could be hours or minutes later, someone mumbles his name. “Chuuya-san. Chuuya-san, is that you?”
Chuuya makes a soft, muffled huff, and sprawls his arm out over the side of Kouyou’s couch, heaving himself up into a sitting position. He faces the voice—ah, the boy. He’s got a newsboy cap on and a cute little vest. Chuuya rearranges his expression from annoyed to neutral, but by the way the boy flinches, he’s not sure he succeeds.
“Chuuya-san,” the messenger goes on, voice stronger but with a slight waver, “Mori-sama has requested your presence at his office in fifteen minutes.”
Chuuya yawns, jaw-cracking, and wonders if Mori’s summons has something to do with the earthquake. Was there even an earthquake, or did he dream it? “That’s strange,” he says. “I wasn’t due for… well, anything.” He lifts his hat from Kouyou’s mahogany coffee table and tips it to the boy. “Thank you.”
The boy bows quickly and vanishes from the room.
Chuuya stretches out his fifteen minutes for as long as he can. He takes a few minutes in Kouyou’s huge marble bathroom to make sure he’s presentable enough, smoothing out wrinkles in his clothes and tamping down stray hair. Then he straightens out everything in her room—she’d kill him if he made a mess—and after throwing on his coat, heads up to Mori’s office.
The door’s ajar, letting the rise and fall of two distinct voices drift out. Mori's one of them, of course, but the second is… Either a younger boy or a woman, judging on the pitch of the voice. Light spills out from within, bright afternoon sunlight sliding through the floor-to-ceiling window in Mori's office and pooling in the hall.
Chuuya slips in quietly. In the brief moment before he kneels, he catches a glimpse of Mori's tall figure sitting opposite to that of a teenager's. No sign of Elise, though.
"Chuuya-kun," Mori says. "I'm sure you're wondering why I've summoned you." He sounds more serious and terse than normal.
Acknowledged, Chuuya lifts his head and takes in the stranger. He’s pale, maybe fourteen or fifteen years old, with a medical mask and a headband that slips down to cover his left eye, shoulders bowed in a slouch. He wears overlarge jeans belted tight around his waist and a t-shirt with a cartoon dog.
"This is Hatake-kun, Chuuya-kun. Hatake-kun, this is the one I've been speaking of." Mori almost looks… annoyed. He’s speaking quickly, almost without care for the words coming out of his mouth. Probably because Elise isn't here—but if she's not here, where is she?
"Pleased to meet you." Chuuya stands and shoves his hands into his pockets.
"Pleased to meet you," Hatake echoes, lone eye firmly fixed on Chuuya’s face.
"Hatake is an Ability user who can control his personal gravity; the gravity solely around his body." Mori crosses one leg over the other and leans back. "Chuuya, I am assigning him under your care until you believe him independent and responsible enough to escape it."
Chuuya winces, then flattens his mouth into a line. "Yes, boss."
Mori’s mouth pretends to smile. “Good. Do you remember the Crawlers?”
“Believe so.”
“Their payment was due last week. Look into it.”
Chuuya winces again. He understands assigning the new guy to something so easy and routine, but an executive? To handle something so… below him? But Mori has reasons for everything, so he bites his tongue and says, “Yes, boss.”
“There have also been rumors of a new organization popping up. One of their members was seen near the Crawlers’ hideout. See what they know.” Mori stands and sweeps his way over to his desk. “Send in a report.” It’s a curt dismissal, toneless and unfeeling. Chuuya meets eyes with the boy and tips his head towards the door. The boy rises fluidly and follows him into the hall.
Chuuya hits the button for the elevator. Gratefully, Chuuya notes that the boy's piercing gaze has shifted from him to the inner workings of the elevator, visible through its glass walls. He studies the lifting mechanism with the bland interest of someone who has nowhere else to look.
“So,” Chuuya says. He flexes a gloved hand, clenches it, listens to the leather creak. “Hatake, was it?”
“Yes.”
“How old are you?”
“Eighteen.”
Chuuya squints at him. The boy is on the smaller side if he’s eighteen, maybe five or six centimeters shorter than Chuuya. He supposes the mask could be hiding a more adult-looking face.
“What about you,” the boy says flatly. He obviously could not give less fucks.
“Twenty-two.”
“Okay.”
The elevator stops with a cheerful ding.
“Wait, Hatake-kun,” Chuuya says, though Hatake had made no motion to step in. “How good are you at controlling your gravity?”
“What do you mean?”
Chuuya steps back from the elevator. “From how high could you survive a fall?”
“Any height, I suppose.” Hatake’s gaze flicks from Chuuya to the window at the end of the hall. For the first time there’s a hint of emotion in his voice: surprise, uncertainty. “Are you…”
Chuuya smiles. “Come on.” He eats up the distance to the window in quick, long strides, then draws back the curtains and throws it open. Once his eyes adjust to the midday light, his grin widens; they are so very high up.
"I'll wait at the bottom," Chuuya says, and steps out without waiting for a reply. Wind shrieks in his ears and a breathless laugh is swept away by the breeze. "For the Tainted Sorrow." He plummets, pale energy enveloping his body and pushing down, faster and faster. The city below him grows bigger and bigger.
A few feet above the ground he slows, then stops right before touching down on the Port Mafia's front steps. He switches off his Ability and drops to the ground with his hands in his pockets. It's easier to just drop hard and fast—reinforcing his body along the way—but the last time he cracked the stairs Mori took it out of his paycheck, and a few hundred thousand yen besides.
Hatake falls, then pushes off against nothing towards the Port Mafia building, springboards off it, and lands, catlike, in a crouch at Chuuya's feet. Wind buffets at Chuuya’s hat and tangles in his hair from the landing.
“Nice.” Chuuya brushes orange strands from his face and pulls at a knot in his hair. “Can you weaponize it?”
Hatake straightens up. “Mostly close-range.”
Chuuya draws his eyebrows together and tries to remember what it was like being seventeen. “Do you want something long-range, then?” The offer is tentative and a bit awkward.
Hatake says, simply, “Yes.”
Chuuya’s boots thud against the pavement satisfyingly. His coat whispers against his pants. He hums tunelessly. On the flipside, Hatake is quiet enough that every-so-often Chuuya needs to glance around and make sure he hasn’t lost the boy somewhere.
“This way.” Chuuya turns sharply into a side street, then another. Buildings grow closer and taller, taking to leaning against one another, rows and rows of dilapidated dominos on the verge of falling. The neon of construction sites increase, too, entire swaths of land being renovated all at once, making way for shopping centers and highways and parking lots.
“Who are the Crawlers?”
Chuuya shoots Hatake a surprised look—the boy has said next to nothing unprompted. “They’re a gang.”
“And?”
“There’s a ton of gangs in Yokohama. Hm.” Chuuya squints at a street sign and tries to recall the way. “If they agree to form an alliance with Port Mafia, we extend protection from other gangs over them. In turn, they give us a cut of the money they get from the people they protect. They can still maintain their territory and blah blah blah. It makes it easy to recruit and gives us eyes in most places.” The street sign doesn't change no matter how much he stares at it, so he makes an executive decision that yes, it is the right street, and turns onto it.
“They haven’t sent in their payment.” It’s a question, not a statement, but Chuuya nods anyway. Hatake thumbs the metal in his waistband. “Are we…” Clears his throat. “Are they dying for it?” Are we going to kill them, is the unspoken question.
“Nah.” Chuuya kicks at a rock. “They’ve been good, so a warning will do. Not a big gang, anyways, so it’s not a lot of money lost.”
Birds caw. Trees rustle. A cat, sprawled indolently in a pool of sunlight, turns slitted eyes up at them as they pass.
Chuuya asks, “Why’d you join the Port Mafia?”
Hatake studies the concrete under his feet. “There's someone who… took my home away," he says slowly.
“Revenge, then.”
Hatake shakes his head. “Just righting a wrong.”
They walk together, quietly. The sun bears down on them. Five minutes go by; then ten, fifteen.
“Chuuya-san,” Hatake says slowly. “We’ve passed this apartment building twice already.”
“We are not lost,” Chuuya snaps.
“I never said we were.”
“You just did!”
“I just made a statement about the building.”
“Shut the fuck up or I'll kill you," Chuuya growls, and almost means it. “Fuck, all these stupid fucking houses look the fucking same.”
“Chuuya-san,” Hatake repeats, patience obviously waning. “Do you think the place we’re looking for could have CRAWLERS HQ graffitied onto the side of it?” Chuuya follows his gaze.
“Oh, fuck you.” Chuuya glares at the neon letters splashed across red brick and sucks in a harsh breath. “Fuck, probably.”
As they approach the house, Hatake remarks, “It smells like death.”
Chuuya takes a deep breath. It smells like… pot and cigarettes.
But he begins to understand what Hatake meant by death as they ascend the stairs. There’s a slow, permeating odor of something rotten, something terrible and rank that only gets worse the closer they get.
The door swings half-off its hinges. The smell gets worse.
Corpses are strewn all along the room. Chairs are toppled, tables cracked, wood splintered, furniture upturned. Glass glimmers on the ground, from broken bottles and phones and shattered light fixtures. Blood spots the floorboards and paints the dull green wallpaper in an ugly, dried maroon so dark it’s almost black. Flies dart around the room like vultures over carrion. Above it all is the terrible, rancid smell of bodies left in a hot, enclosed room.
Chuuya waves away something buzzing near his ear and swears again, surveying the mess. He steps further in, though he’d honestly rather not. Hatake trails behind him, taking in the whole of it. The door swings creakily in the breeze.
Chuuya can almost feel the moment Hatake tenses up.
“Someone’s been here,” the boy hisses. “Recently.” He sees Chuuya’s confused face and curses to himself. “Can’t you see it? The bodies are positioned irregularly—laid out in a row, there—but there are no bodies near the entryway. It’s indicative of someone laying them out, then bringing them outside, yet there are no blood trails on the ground. So they died, then someone came after the blood had coagulated and rigor mortis set in and all the regular stuff, then dragged them out…”
Chuuya ignores him. He steps forward, over someone’s arm, and wonders who or what could have caused so much damage. Judging by the sheer scale of death—it almost had to be an Ability user, unless someone out there was able to manufacture a weapon that could do such damage in such a short time. Maybe even more than one, judging by the sheer scale of death and the varied weapons used to kill them. Throats slit, bodies charred and decapitated, almost everything but torn limb from limb.
“...should get out of here before they return and assess the situation from a secure position,” finishes Hatake, snappy and angry. He looks frustrated that Chuuya can’t pick up on the thousand tiny details he catalogs automatically in that tiny brain of his. Chuuya’s almost nostalgic—it reminds him of Dazai, when they used to be a team, how Dazai’s brain was always going at a hundred miles faster than anyone else’s. He says as much.
Hatake pauses. “Dazai?”
“Osamu,” Chuuya supplies helpfully.
Something flashes across Hatake’s face, gone as quick as it came. “There’s no time for reminiscing,” he says, quick and brusque. “We need to go.”
Hatake’s right, though. Leaving is the most logical course of action, but Chuuya’s never been ruled by logic. “Nah. We can take them.” He glances at the boy beside him, visible eye set in a hard line, coiled tight as a spring. “Or, ah, I can take them. What's life without a little risk?"
Hatake exhales harshly. “Fine. It’s on you, Port Mafia’s best martial artist.” It’s mocking, provoking, and normally Chuuya would rise to the bait, but he’s long since tuned the boy out.
Chuuya squats down, careful not to get blood on his nice pants, and pries a gun from the grip of a dead man. He ejects the magazine and finds it full. “They didn’t have enough time to shoot.” The Crawlers never stood a chance against whoever killed them. The only wounds on their bodies are their deathblows, nothing to suggest a fair fight or even a fight at all. It was like they sort of… keeled over where they stood.
“Someone’s coming,” Hatake snaps, sort of a I told you so, and leaps upwards, higher than any normal person could achieve, vanishing into the rafters.
Maybe he should do the same. It’s too late, though; someone shoulders open the broken door and trudges inside. He raises the gun almost without thinking and tucks the magazine in his pocket. “You,” he says, for lack of anything better.
The late afternoon sun is blinding to his dark-adjusted eyes, but the figure in the door freezes upon seeing him, giving him time to acclimate. Once they do, he studies her. She’s short—petite—with a head of full, dark hair. She wears a frilly pink dress that, upon closer inspection, is bloodstained at its hem. Chuuya guesses late teens or early twenties.
“What do you want,” she says, flatly. She straightens up like standing taller will erase the tremor in her voice and shoulders.
Chuuya flounders. “Um, I… ah…” He can almost hear the disappointed sigh from up high. “Did you kill the Crawlers?”
She reels back if struck. “Did I? Was I the one to kill every one of my friends and family?” She laughs, mirthless and breathless. “Not in a million fucking years.”
“What happened?”
She narrows her eyes at him, setting bloodstained hands on bloodstained hips. “Drop the gun and I’ll tell you.”
It clatters, hollow, against the ground. Chuuya leaves his hands by his sides and smiles disarmingly. It’s not like he needs a gun to be dangerous—besides, that one wasn’t even loaded.
She relaxes, if just a bit. “You from the Port Mafia?”
“The one and only.”
“Fucking finally.”
“So what happened?”
She sighs. “Let’s go outside. It reeks.” Her eyes stay on him, always, and she never puts her back to him—makes him walk in front of him all the way to a park close by. It’s smart, if useless for someone as skilled as Chuuya.
There’s no sign of Hatake, but the boy will be fine alone for fifteen minutes. Probably.
They find a patch of grass shaded by a tall oak, near a play-set of swings and slides and elevated platforms. Chuuya sits down and stretches out his legs. Her skirt pools around her when she settles, a wrinkled circle of pink-red.
She picks at the grass beside her. “I ‘spose you’re here for the taxes?”
“Yeah.”
“Damn. Not even a blip on the radar.”
Chuuya hums noncommittally.
“Happened maybe two nights ago,” she says. “Normal night. We were all together ‘cause it was little Yuna’s birthday. Cake ‘n everything.” She snorts. “Dead now, I guess.”
Chuuya pretends to not notice the way her shoulders tremble. He casts his gaze out, past her and to the colorful plastic playground where a little girl sits on the ground and plays with figurines, laughing and making sound effects. A little boy clambers up a rope and tumbles down a slide, shouting all the way down.
“It’s hard to explain.” Grass tears between her fingers. “The world sort of… twisted. He wasn’t there and then he was.”
“What did he look like?”
“He wore, ah… a… green vest. With a ton of pockets. And a headband with a metal plate on it. Some sorta design, don't remember what. Black or dark brown hair. Ah… big nose.”
“And then he just killed everyone?”
“I couldn’t fight back,” she whispers. “I was just so fucking scared. I was gonna die ‘n he was gonna be the one to kill me and there was nothing I could do about it. Uncle was the only one who could move—he fired off one shot into the man’s leg and then he died.”
“Uncle?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m sorry,” Chuuya says. He is, really. Nobody should have to go through something like that, and he cringes a bit, because he's killed people like that, with people watching and begging. But it was always because he had to, so…
She sniffle-laughs. “Anyways. Uncle shot him. He killed Uncle with um, lightning. From his fingers. And then still nobody could move and it was so fast, y’know? I blinked and almost everyone was dead. He threw these little knives and every single one hit a target. If you didn’t get a knife you got a little sliver of wind so quick it took heads from shoulders, easy as pie. If you didn’t get the wind you got fire, or lightning, and soon enough everyone was dead except me.”
Chuuya watches the little girl in the playground. Her mom sweeps her into a hug and kisses her on the forehead, then spins her ‘round. The mom’s black hair comes undone with the force of the spin, and her laugh carries. The little boy has sat himself on the edge of the park, near them, and digs around in the dirt. "Except you? Why?”
“I have an Ability.” Her fist slams into her open palm. “I didn’t even think Abilities were fucking real until that motherfucker teleported in and killed everyone with—with—what amounts to magic!” Her voice rises at the end. Breath comes to her in quick, heavy bursts.
“Your Ability?”
“It’s called Forget Me Not,” she says, and—
Chuuya blinks. What is he doing on the ground? Where’s Hatake? The boy must’ve run off; and he’s here to rest a moment before resuming the search. Shaking his head briefly, he stands. It would be best to leave quickly—there's nothing worth seeing here. He takes a step forward and there’s a girl sitting in front of him, maybe late teens or early twenties. She wears a pink, frilly dress stained with blood and Chuuya shakes his head again, more violently, in an attempt to clear the fog.
“Shit,” Chuuya says. “Damn.”
“I can’t keep it up for too long,” she admits, “but it sort of… activated on its own, I guess, seeing something so… scary.”
“Most do. Did you see where he went?”
She shakes her head. “Couldn’t have gone too far, though. Injured leg ‘n all.”
They rest together for a few minutes in silence.
She stands, finally, with a mirthless smile. “Is that everything, then?”
Chuuya heaves himself up. “Yep.”
“I need to get back to clearing the bodies.” She sighs and drags a dirty hand through her tangled hair. “Dug a huge fucking hole to put them all in. ‘S not what they deserve, but I don’t think I have enough strength to put ‘em in separate graves.”
“Come to the Port Mafia when you’re done. They’ll make good use of you and Forget Me Not; you’ll live comfortably.”
“Maybe,” she says.
They go back. At this point she’s given up keeping Chuuya in front of her.
Hatake’s waiting on the sidewalk in front of the building. “Took you long enough,” he says when they arrive. “Let’s go.”
The girl tosses Hatake a slanted, suspicious look, but continues to the building.
“Wait,” Chuuya calls. “Do you want… ah, help?”
She hesitates at the door. Considers it, Chuuya thinks. “Thanks,” she says eventually. “But you don’t want to, so shut the fuck up 'n get a move on.”
Hatake's already walking away. Chuuya glances back one last time and chases after.
"Where are you going?" Chuuya catches up and slows his pace to match Hatake’s.
The boy closes his eye for a moment, then breathes in. "This way," he says, and turns left down a road.
"This way?”
"I can smell him," Hatake says.
Chuuya laughs.
Hatake doesn't.
"Wait," Chuuya says, "you're serious?"
Chuuya does his best to explain the conversation between him and the Crawlers girl as they walk. He mostly fails, but Hatake seems to get the gist of it.
"You said—a headband, right? With a metal plate on it?"
"And a design on the plate," Chuuya adds.
Hatake considers this very seriously and very carefully. Then, finally, he says, “We need to go up.”
Chuuya squints. “Okay?”
Hatake points to the top of a nearby apartment building. “He went up.”
“Probably with the wind aspect of his Ability,” Chuuya says to nobody, because Hatake has leapt upwards with the force of a meteor, cracking the pavement underneath where he was standing. Chuuya wrinkles his nose and follows suit.
They land one after the other, Hatake softly and silently, Chuuya crashing into the concrete. Together, they clear a few more buildings and blocks, until they reach one where Hatake warns Chuuya to be quiet. So they leap towards a building, half-demolished and surrounded by neon construction signs and scaffolding, and Chuuya aims for the one unbroken window and smashes right through it as loudly as he can. Cries out, too, for good measure. Hatake rolls in a half-second later. They’re both primed and ready for a fight, but the room’s empty.
Tension uncoils from Chuuya’s shoulders. “There’s nobody here,” he says. “Let’s go.” The room is so bare and empty.
“No,” Hatake says, then whispers something under his breath Chuuya can’t make out. He reaches into his waistband and pulls out the gun Chuuya had given him, perfectly new and shiny.
“Let’s go,” Chuuya insists. Why can’t Hatake see that the room’s empty? There’s nothing of interest here. Just the bare walls and floor.
The bang is almost deafening in the enclosed space. Once, then twice, Hatake shoots, unflinching even through the gun’s recoil.
Reality falls apart to show a full and occupied room. Futon in the corner, bucket beside it, green vest tossed carelessly aside, medical kit torn open in the middle of the room. Upon closer inspection, the bucket is filled with watery vomit.
Glass from the broken window crunches as Hatake moves towards—towards a man lying prone on the ground who hadn’t been there a few seconds ago, same as the scattered objects in the room. Hatake rolls the man from his front to his back, and the mess of his legs are exposed. His kneecaps are shattered with the force of such a close-range shot. In the meat of his left leg an infected wound oozes pus and blood, as swollen as it is red, which is to say: very. He groans softly—alive, though he probably wishes he wasn’t.
Hatake, calmly, tucks the gun away. Chuuya looks at the boy. He knows Hatake could have just as easily killed the man; he’s got that look, you know?
“Found his headband,” Hatake says, and picks it up. Chuuya glances over his shoulder. There’s four squiggly marks on it, evenly spaced apart in a square. There’s also a slash through the middle of it all, crude and ugly, at odds to the neat craftsmanship that forms the rest of it.
Big nose, check. Green vest, check. Headband, check. “I guess,” Chuuya says slowly, “we take him to Mori?”
It’s quiet for a while as Mori fixes the man right up, then breaks him and fixes and breaks him over and over again. He emerges a few days later, victorious, with a story that makes absolutely zero sense.
Chuuya blinks at Mori, who’s busy cooing at Elise. Elise is busy pretending she doesn’t care for the attention. “You’re telling me that he’s from another universe,” Chuuya says.
Mori grins, bright-eyed and delighted. “Why, I do believe so! Isn’t that right, my darling Elise-chan? Isn’t that right, Elise-chan, my darling wife?” My darling wife, says the forty-year old man to the girl who can’t be older than eleven.
Elise, sitting prim on Mori’s desk, smoothes out her red dress and shakes her long blond hair. “Shut up, Rintarou! I want a lollipop.”
“Of course, sweetest,” Mori says, rummaging around in a desk drawer and producing a red lollipop. He hands it over to the child with star-struck eyes.
Chuuya would rather be anywhere else right now. He supposes the reason why Mori had been so closed-off and standoffish when Hatake and Chuuya met was due to Elise’s absence. Still, it’s disgusting if he thinks about it more, so he resolves not to.
“That mean boy took you away from me,” Mori’s saying, “and I’m so happy you’re back, Elise-chan! Perhaps you’d like to do some shopping later?”
Elise grins, and though the suggestion obviously pleases her, she still glances away, and says, coyly as a child can, “Maybe.”
Chuuya, carefully, clears his throat. “He’s from another universe?” he prompts.
Mori shifts his attention. “Right, that. He says he’s from somewhere very wildly different from our own reality. He’s not the only one, in fact; I’ve been getting an influx of reports, lately, about strange Ability users out and about. I’ll give you all the information we have currently.”
“Right,” Chuuya says. “And he’s not—lying?”
Mori tilts his head and laughs. “No, no. I’ve… persuaded, let’s say, a few others that the Port Mafia has found, and their stories all match. Interestingly enough, though, these aren’t the first interdimensional beings I’ve met.”
Chuuya blanks. “What?”
“A year or so ago… maybe two… there was a sudden rise in unknowns. We presumed it was a new organization, and sent out feelers, just as now. Managed to capture one of them and it turned out she was a pirate! They were all pirates from another dimension. She managed to escape, though, and stole half the valuables from this place as she did so.” Mori flashes a slightly terrifying smile. “Don’t worry, though. Our little shinobi is trapped away safe and sound, much more secure than our darling pirate was.”
Chuuya’s eyes widen. “He’s a ninja?”
“Looks like it,” Mori says, pleased as the cat that caught the canary. Having information others don’t is probably a turn-on for him. He ruffles Elise’s hair—she endures it for two, three seconds, then slaps his hand away viciously.
“What happened to the pirates?”
“Oh, someday the sightings just stopped. They all vanished, though we were never quite sure how.”
“And now ninjas are turning up.”
“Correct!”
“And now it’s my problem,” Chuuya says, resigned in his dread.
“Also correct.” Mori smiles, slow and creeping. “If this is an Ability user with the power to summon interdimensional beings… then they will be very useful indeed, won’t they? I’ll get you all the information collected from the pirates and send you on your way, hmm?”
Chuuya straightens. “Yes, boss. Thank you.”
“One last thing.” Mori tries to kiss Elise on the forehead, and she jerks violently out of the way. He pouts as he crosses over to the other side of the room, where a plastic bag sits innocuously. “Take this with you.”
Chuuya wanders through yet another hall. A messenger turns down the hall and hurries in Chuuya’s direction, newsboy cap pulled low over his eyes.
“Excuse me.” Chuuya reaches out and taps the boy’s shoulder. He stops but keeps his gaze lowered, head downturned. “If you see a boy about this height with black hair wearing casual clothing a medical mask and a headband over one eye can you let him know I want to see him please,” Chuuya says in one go. He sucks in a breath. “Thanks,” he adds as an afterthought.
The messenger nods, unflinching despite the sudden barrage of words, and continues down the hall.
Chuuya keeps walking. Ten seconds later, he’s cursing under his breath, turning around, and chasing after the messenger. “HATAKE-KUN,” he bellows. “COME THE FUCK BACK!”
He chases the boy down a hall, then another, through the weapons room, and then probably-Hatake just… vanishes. Chuuya slams his fist into the wall hard enough for plaster to shiver and fall.
“Yo,” says Hatake. “What are you doing?”
Chuuya whirls around to see Hatake behind him, hands tucked neatly into the pockets of his overlarge jeans, cartoon-dog shirt hanging flimsily off his shoulders. Actually, to think about it, Chuuya’s not sure Hatake owns any other clothes.
“I’ve been looking for you,” Chuuya says lamely.
“I’m here.”
Chuuya explains the situation.
Hatake puts a finger to a masked chin and says, hm.
They go to Kouyou’s room to sit down. Chuuya loves it—the plush couch, mahogany coffee table, adjustable lighting, cute kitchenette… It’s very wonderful. Very comforting, very warm. Which is what he needs right now: no more stress, no more interdimensional beings… just him and the couch.
“Can I see the files from the pirates?” Hatake perches on the edge of the couch like it’ll bite him if he relaxes into it.
“Oh,” Chuuya says. “Yes. But also, speaking of…” He grabs the plastic bag Mori had given him earlier and upends the contents on the coffee table. Headbands tumble out, maybe six, seven. “Mori gave them to me. Said maybe they would help, though I don’t see how. I think he was just trying to get rid of them…”
Hatake doesn’t even look up. He’s busy rifling through the headbands, looking briefly at the different designs on each plate before discarding it for another.
“Okay,” Chuuya says. Huffs out a breath. “Here’s the file. Go wild. There's stuff about the ninjas in there, too.” Chuuya drops the folder by Hatake and leans back into the couch, reveling in the way he sinks into it. “Ninjas.” Truthfully, a part of him still doesn’t believe it—the notion of other dimensions is dizzying, to say the least. But Hatake seems to take it in stride, like the fact that there could be an infinite amount of other worlds out there means nothing.
A few minutes go by in silence. Maybe longer. Chuuya thinks that he could drift off, overhead lights flickering in and out of view as his eyelids grow heavy.
“Hey,” Hatake says. “Hey! Chuuya-san. Wake up. Do you have something to write with?”
Chuuya gives his middle finger an introduction to Hatake’s face.
“Chuuya-san,” Hatake says, almost scolding.
Chuuya stands, bones popping and aching. “I’m too old for this,” he says, and rummages around Kouyou’s room until he finds a red pen. After tossing it over, he collapses back into the couch and examines the mess Hatake’s made of Kouyou’s place.
A map of Yokohama is laid out on the coffee table. Chuuya slants his eyes over buildings and roads he’s known all his life, compressed and flattened out to fit on a single piece of paper. Along with the map, reports and eyewitness testimonies are scattered like snow around the room. Some are lined up; others are tossed to the wayside, a few fanned out at Hatake’s side, all in no discernable order.
“Wait.” Chuuya squints and shifts closer. “Where’d you get the map from?”
“Unimportant,” Hatake says, uncapping the pen. “Look here.” He makes little crosses for a few minutes, cross-referencing various scattered sheets of paper. “I’ve made crosses for every initial sighting of ninja and pirate we have.”
“Okay,” Chuuya says. He has absolutely no clue where this is going.
“See how the crosses become denser in this area? If I draw a circle around them all, excepting a few outliers”—he draws a large circle that encompasses all of the crosses, then puts an X dead center—“every one of the initial sightings are within roughly a half kilometer of here." He taps the X with the butt of the pen. “We’ll find our person here.”
It’s a cloudy day outside. Chuuya wraps his coat tighter and keeps his hands in his pockets. “And you’re sure this is the right place,” he says for the millionth time.
Hatake doesn’t reply, just speeds up his pace as if to leave Chuuya behind. Chuuya lengthens his stride to match, then Hatake speeds up, and so does Chuuya until they’re almost running, still in silence. It’s sort of ridiculous. After another few minutes of this, they arrive at a small little house squished at the end of the lane. Blue paint flakes off its walls and a rocking chair creaks gently on the porch.
“We’re near the Crawlers hideout,” Chuuya remarks, surprised.
Hatake shoots him a look that says You’re a fucking idiot, then he says, “Obviously. Did you not hear my spiel about initial sightings?”
Pushing open a section of the gate that rings their property, Hatake goes in, Chuuya on his heels. It’s a cute little place, everything considered: chipped white fence, dark blue curtains visible through windows with flower pots on the sill, a scraggly garden of weeds pushing their way through the path.
Hatake goes right up to the door and knocks, firm and confident. Chuuya hovers behind him and hates how it definitely makes him look like a worried mother.
“Coming,” calls a woman’s voice. The door rattles ajar a moment later, held fast by a length of gold chain. “Hi,” she says.
“Hello,” Hatake says to the sliver of her face peeking out from behind the door. “We’re here regarding an Ability user able to summon people from different dimensions.”
“You can’t just say that,” Chuuya hisses.
Hatake turns a blank stare onto him. “Why not? Either she’ll think we’re crazy or she’ll know something about it.”
The woman shuts the door on them.
“Great,” Chuuya mutters. For the Tainted Sorrow flares around him, grounding him and solidifying his bones in preparation for kicking the woman’s door in.
“Stop,” Hatake says. Good thing he does, too, because she’s unlatching the chain and opening the door fully, revealing a tall figure in a floury apron. She looks almost familiar. Chuuya studies her—plain features, wavy black hair…
“I’m Sayaka,” she says. “You two are?”
“Hatake,” Hatake says. “Chuuya.” He waves a hand listlessly in Chuuya’s direction.
“Why don’t you two tell me more over some tea,” Sayaka suggests. “It’s cold out here, and not very private.” She casts a meaningful look over to her neighbors. A curtain twitches in the house over.
Chuuya hesitates. “Are you sure that’s alright, Sayaka-san?”
“Please,” she says, smiling a smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “I insist.”
They follow her in. “Thank you kindly,” Chuuya says as he toes off his shoes. Hatake echoes him.
She smiles, this one more real, and says, “Of course. I’ll just get started on the tea, and if you don’t mind latching the door behind you…?”
Obligingly, Chuuya locks the door behind him and follows her into a living room filled with couches and cushions and chairs.
“Just a moment,” she says, and vanishes into the kitchen. A few minutes later she emerges carrying a tray with cups on saucers and a teapot. After setting it down, she pours them all a cup of something steaming and fragrant. “I apologize if you’d prefer coffee or milk in your tea, but ever since my husband left I haven’t had any need to keep stock of it.” A bowl of sugar cubes clinks down beside the teapot. “Please, help yourself.”
Chuuya takes sugar. Hatake doesn’t.
“So,” Sayaka says, once they’re all settled in. “What’s this about dimension travelling?”
“There are ninjas being summoned from another dimension,” Hatake says bluntly. “We have reason to believe that the Ability user who is summoning them resides in this household.”
Chuuya winces and sets his tea down.
“Before it was pirates,” Hatake adds, like an afterthought.
Sayaka sips her tea. Sets it down on its saucer. “And what reasons do you have to believe an Ability user lives under this roof?”
“I’m afraid at the moment we aren’t at liberty to disclose that,” Hatake says, startlingly diplomatic.
“Who did you say sent you, again?”
“We didn’t,” Hatake says, eye curved into an unsettlingly pleasant mimicry of a smile.
“We’re from the Port Mafia,” Chuuya says before Hatake can dig them a bigger hole. “All we want to do is protect the Ability user and keep them safe.”
She sighs, draining the rest of her tea. Pours herself a new cup. In a moment she has aged forty years, hands shaking, forehead creased, gaze downturned. She opens her mouth, then her attention flicks past Chuuya and Hatake to the entryway where a small child stands. A star-patterned blanket drapes around her shoulders and drags on the ground. Her cheeks are flushed, hair mussed, eyes fever-bright.
“Mama.” She coughs. “Mama,” she says plaintively, “I’m hungry.”
And Chuuya remembers where he’d seen Sayaka before. At the park, when he was speaking with the Crawlers girl. Sayaka and her child were playing together. He remembers the child’s laugh, Sayaka’s smile, how wonderful of a time they seemed to be having.
Chuuya glances towards Sayaka. How her gaze shifts from them to the child, how she stiffens, how she grits her teeth and levels her voice and says, sweetly, “Why don’t you wait for Mama in your room? Rest a bit more and I’ll make you some soup, okay?”
The child hiccups, then coughs again. “Okay, Mama.” She trudges away, a star-patterned blanket dragging against the hardwood floors.
“I apologize,” Sayaka says, standing abruptly, “for making you leave so soon, but I must attend to my child.”
“She’s the Ability user,” Chuuya says. “Isn’t she?”
Sayaka doesn’t reply.
“We will not harm her,” Hatake adds. “You have my word.”
“I don’t know you,” snaps Sayaka, fists clenched. “How good can your word be?”
“Very,” Hatake says, unflinching. “Every power has a toll. This is hers. Was she sick when she summoned the pirates?”
Sayaka slumps back down onto her couch. She isn’t a small woman by any means, but suddenly it’s as if Sayaka is the child and Hatake the adult. “Yes,” Sayaka says finally. “But not so bad. She was able to go out and about, still. And I don’t know how it ended. Just one day after an outing she was feeling better and then the pirates were gone and I don’t know how it happened.” She buries her face in her hands and takes a gasping, shuddering breath. “But now it’s only getting worse and worse. She’s declining more and more rapidly. Soon she probably won’t be able to get out of bed.”
"We can help," Chuuya says. "But only if you want to be helped."
Sayaka looks up. Her voice hitches, but her eyes are dry. "How?"
"She can't turn it off, right?"
Sayaka shakes her head.
Chuuya physically cringes at the thought of seeing that man willingly. It would be for the first time in a long time… but it would be for something important. “Okay.” He sighs. “I know someone who can help. He’ll be able to turn it off.”
“Really?” Sayaka straightens up, eyes wide. “Are you sure?” She visibly steels herself. “I understand if it may not be possible,” she says tightly. “What would you ask from me for something like this? Will it harm her?”
Chuuya flips open his phone and starts scrolling in his contacts. It’s a sad thing that he doesn’t have to go very far. “I don’t need anything. It won’t hurt.” He smiles tightly. “You’ll have to endure a bastard, though.”
He goes outside to make the phone call. Hatake stays inside and… comforts her, or something.
The line rings. Chuuya huddles in the corner of the porch and presses the phone tight to his ear, letting the ring fill him up on the inside.
Click. “Hi, you’ve reached Dazai, the one, the only. Please leave a message at the tone and I’ll probably get back to you, or, if you’re a beautiful lady, call back immediately. Beep!”
Chuuya hesitates, half-formed words hovering in the air. “Dazai-san,” he says slowly, formally, “it’s important.” The silence on the other end of the line is thick and cloying. “I need your help,” Chuuya grits out. “Call me.”
“Aww, is that my favorite little hatrack I hear?” coos Dazai on the other side of the line. “Aww, what does my darling little hobbit need now, hm? Is it to be taller?”
“That wasn’t your answering machine?” Chuuya says, too baffled to take offense. Then the bafflement fades and he starts shouting obscenities into the receiver.
“Now, now,” crackles Dazai’s voice on the other end of the line, “there’s no need to be so vicious. Why, I’m touched you saved my number after so long!”
Chuuya doesn’t want to admit that he can’t figure out how to delete contacts, so he stays silent and lets Dazai do his own thing.
“What do you need help with, my poor, tiny mafioso?”
“Stop calling me short.” Chuuya massages his temple with his free hand. “There’s a… ah, situation. I need No Longer Human, not you. I’ll explain when you get here, okay?”
“And where’s here?” Dazai titters. “Seem to be a bit short on brains, too, hm?”
Chuuya gives the address between swearing and cursing him out. The line goes dead before he can finish, and he’s left with the slight buzz of static. Flipping his phone closed, he goes back inside to wait.
“Can we talk,” says Hatake as soon as Chuuya steps into the room. He offers Sayaka a beatific smile in the tilt of his head and curve of his eye, then shoves Chuuya back into the chilly air.
“Hatake—”
Hatake puts a finger to his lip.
Chuuya sighs and follows the boy off the porch and into a far corner of the yard. “What’s up?”
Hatake regards Chuuya, hard and unyielding. “Are you going to report this to Mori?”
“The child?”
Hatake nods, short and sharp. “The Ability user. Interdimensional beings. The child, yes, especially.”
Chuuya blinks. “Yes? Of course. He’s the boss.”
Hatake swears under his breath. “Do you believe,” he says, “this is the best course of action?” He closes his eye. “Following the rules to a T isn’t always good. You need to make your own choice here, instead of letting the higher ups do the thinking for you.” His voice softens almost to a whisper. “Sometimes the people up top are wrong; friends are more important than the mission. Sometimes a little girl’s childhood is more important than letting Mori-san have his next meal.”
Chuuya hesitates, thinking about the child, her fever-bright eyes, the youth still carried in round cheeks and star-patterned blankets. About Elise, an Ability made human for Mori’s sickly smile. “Oh,” he says. “Oh.”
“This is something you’ll need to decide on your own.” Hatake lets out a whuff of breath. “I had to learn the hard way. I hope you won’t have to.” He goes back into the house, hands in pockets, spine bowed.
Chuuya follows. The wait for Dazai is too long. After a length of time where Chuuya tries and fails to make small talk at least four times, there’s a welcome knock at the door. “I’ll get it,” he offers desperately, seeing Hatake’s stiff, uncomfortable posture, and the way Sayaka stares off into the middle-distance. Anything to escape the stifling atmosphere.
The door opens to reveal Dazai, grinning, and someone else.
“Wasn’t aware I asked for two people,” Chuuya says, coldly.
“Sorry,” the boy behind Dazai whispers, wincing. He’s not so much a boy—young adult, around Chuuya’s age with light brown hair and a smatter of freckles.
Dazai sweeps past Chuuya with a chuckle. “We’re on a field trip,” he tosses back. “It’ll be good for Nouka-kun to learn the ropes!”
Chuuya stares at Nouka for a moment, then shrugs. “Come in, then.” He steps out of the way and lets Nouka enter.
“—No Longer Human,” Dazai’s saying to Sayaka. “I am able to neutralize any Ability. Me and my partner”—here he throws out a hand towards the entryway, and for a moment Chuuya thinks he’s talking about him—“are from the Armed Detective Agency.” Nouka steps timidly past Chuuya and to Dazai’s side.
“Hi,” Nouka says. “I’m Komugi Nouka. I do illusions.” Chuuya notices Hatake sending a death glare at the freckled boy and wonders if they know each other, then resolves to ask later.
“Will it hurt?” asks Sayaka. Her hands wring.
Dazai shakes his head. “No, my lovely lady. Of course not.”
Sayaka seems to come to a decision. Her hands still and her spine straightens. “Alright. Follow me.” She leads them all down the hall and to a purple door left ajar. Inside, among a mess of toys and clothes, is the child sleeping on a western-style elevated bed with a chest at the foot of it. Her star-patterned blanket tangles around her like a cocoon.
Sayaka goes over. Chuuya and Dazai follow her in, stepping over figurines and dolls and t-shirts. Chuuya darts a look back at Nouka and Hatake standing together in the doorway, conversing in casual, stiff tones.
“Hi, darling,” Sayaka says to her. “It’ll all be over soon.” She smooths back sweat-damp hair from the child’s forehead. “Okay. Do it.”
Dazai leans over and places a single finger on the girl’s forehead, his Ability activating with a swirl of pale light. Power ribbons out from him, ethereal and absolute. A sound not unlike bubble wrap popping echoes behind them, though when Chuuya glances back he sees nothing out of the ordinary.
Then the light vanishes. The child doesn’t wake, but she seems to breathe a bit easier. “Call me if she has any complications or doesn’t seem to be getting better,” Dazai advises. Then smiles. “Or if you’re feeling lonely.” He winks and hands over a piece of paper with his number scribbled on it.
“Thank you,” Sayaka says, standing with one final look. “I appreciate all you’ve done.”
Dazai smiles. “Anything for my two pretty ladies.”
Sayaka startles. “Two? Oh, I apologize, Chuuya-san, I had thought you were…”
Chuuya only keeps his voice low for the child’s sake. “I am a man,” he says through clenched teeth.
Dazai raises a hand to his mouth and titters. “I apologize, Chuuya-chan—ah, Chuuya-kun. You’re just so small, I must have mistook you for a woman.”
Chuuya brushes past him and into the hall, trying to push down his simmering, seething anger. “Hatake,” he calls out. “Let’s go.”
No response.
“Hatake?”
Dazai appears from behind him. “Nouka?”
The house is deathly silent.
Chuuya and Dazai trade looks.
“Hatake, it’s time to leave!”
“Nouka?”
Dazai sighs. “Oh, I knew he was suspicious.” He goes down the hall and starts putting his shoes back on.
Chuuya grabs him by the shoulder. “You’re going to leave without him?”
Dazai chuckles. “More like he left without me.”
“Explain,” Chuuya says sharply.
“What do you think it means,” Dazai says, slow and syrupy, “that they vanished the moment I used No Longer Human on that little girl?”
Chuuya’s grip goes limp. “Hatake was a ninja?”
“So was Nouka, I suppose. I always knew he was hiding something, but I thought maybe he was an attempted infiltrator from the Port Mafia or something. Not that he was a ninja, ha!”
Chuuya puts on his shoes and follows Dazai outside. “Where the fuck did they go?” The door slams behind them.
“Wherever ninjas go, I suppose.”
“How do you think she ended up summoning them?”
Dazai shoots Chuuya a look, like Are you an idiot? “Obviously,” Dazai says, starting off down the sidewalk at a brisk pace, “it wasn’t on purpose. Did you see the figurines she had? There were boats and pirates peeking out of the toy chest. Dusty, so they hadn’t been used in a while. All the ones on the floor or on her dresser were ninja ones—all sorts of ninjas.”
“So you're saying she’s… subconsciously summoning ninjas? And before, in a pirate phase, she summoned pirates?”
“I am, yes.”
Chuuya contemplates something. “Under your president… she’d be able to control it, right?” Fukuzawa’s Ability, All Men are Equal, allowed him to regulate and suppress the Abilities of others under his command. But then, of course she’d have to join the Armed Detective Agency… and the Port Mafia would lose any chance of taking the child under their wing.
“I suppose so.” Dazai watches Chuuya’s face, deciphering his expressions and mannerisms like he’s always done, trying to figure out what Chuuya’s thinking. It’s terribly, achingly familiar.
“It would be the best course of action for her.”
“Are you asking me or telling me?” Dazai stops and stares, brows furrowing together. “Ah, my little Chuuya is all grown up! Disobeying his superiors!”
“It won’t happen again,” Chuuya says, surefooted and firm. On the inside, though, he wavers—will it? What will he do if it does?
“Hey! Hey!”
Chuuya and Dazai look back at the same time. A girl’s running towards them. She’s petite, wearing a plain blue sundress with long dark hair blowing out behind her. She’s familiar, Chuuya realizes with a start. It’s the Crawlers girl.
She comes to a gasping halt in front of them, hands on knees. “One sec,” she wheezes.
“Why, hello,” Dazai says loudly, drowning out Chuuya’s greeting. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your company, beautiful lady?
She levels him a nasty glare. “I ain’t talking to you, Agency scum,” she spits.
“You recognize me?” He puts his hands to his heart and smiles. “How wonderful!”
“Hey,” she says to Chuuya, completely ignoring Dazai. “What’s your name?”
“Nakahara Chuuya, but Chuuya’s fine,” he says automatically. “Yours?”
“Hato. Just Hato.” She straightens and puts her hand out to shake. It’s clean, unlike the last time they met. “Did you find him?”
Chuuya blanks. “Find who?”
“The man who…” She tries for a smile. “You know. With the Crawlers ‘n all.”
Chuuya brightens. “Yes! He suffered, don’t worry.”
Something seems to lift off her shoulders. She bows. “Thank you, Chuuya-san. It means a lot.”
Awkwardly, Chuuya reaches over and pats her shoulder. “It’s no problem.”
She straightens up and takes a steadying breath. “Where’s your partner?”
“I’m here,” Dazai croons.
“Hatake?” Chuuya winces. “He, uh… had to go.”
“Can you pass on my thanks?” She presses her lips together and squeezes her eyes shut. She looks emotional enough that Chuuya doesn’t have the heart to tell her Hatake’s gone and likely never coming back.
“Of course. What for?”
“You remember the bodies?” Chuuya nods. “I was moving ‘em to the grass in the backyard. Dug a shallow grave to fit them all in. But when I came back, after the park, someone had already organized the bodies outside ‘n dug the grave deep enough to fit ‘em all comfortably an’ some. There was also a headstone—no words on it, but… it meant something, y'know?”
“Ah,” Chuuya says.
“Probably had something to do with his Ability,” she goes on. “And it means a lot, yeah? So tell him thanks. Please.”
“Will do, Hato.”
“Be seein’ you, then.” She turns and practically skips back down the lane.
Dazai raises an eyebrow. “She’s cute,” he coos. “Has my little Chuuya found a woman?”
Chuuya kicks him in the shins. They go off, arguing, into the night. It’s the end of any and all interdimensional beings, at least for now. Chuuya is relieved to be rid of Hatake and the responsibility that comes with.
But although Hatake is gone, his influence isn’t. Chuuya finds himself omitting details and embellishing others in his report to Mori; then lying, barefaced, that he didn’t find the Ability user, and no, he’s not sure what happened.
Mori doesn’t even spare it a second glance. Chuuya’s never lied before—why start now?
And then it happens again. Not the interdimensional beings, but the lying, the deceiving, the letting children go free and using a gun to kill instead of tearing them limb from limb, as he ought to. The mercy in quick death instead of torture, the fake reports, the bare minimum. It starts with the children and only goes up from there.
It’s all that damned Hatake’s fault.