You are my king, and you are my queen

Chapter 35

"Jinko I said keep cutting off the tentacles!"
"It's useless Akutagawa, it keeps regenerating!"
"It leaves its meat there jinko! We must get enough to make takoyaki for dazai san and Chuuya san's anniversary!"
Atsushi, who was only running away from the monster at first, had at chuuya's behest, and like everyone else's too, turned around reluctantly to battle it alongside Akutagawa and his very fine figure. But even akutagawa's extremely fine curved weren't distracting enough to stop him from focusing on the fact that Chuuya san had an anniversary with dazai san.
"What anniversary?"
"What do you mean what anniversary jinko, how could you not know about Chuuya san's wedding anniversary!"
A wedding anniversary somemore, Chuuya san must have conveniently forgotten to mention it to him the last time.
"Jinko! Continue slicing him up! There must be enough takoyaki to keep Chuuya san from having to eat dazai san's meat during the party itself!(cuz ppl call dazai an octopu- ok Nvr mind)"
Conveniently ignoring most of the sentence, and since Atsushi had no better plan, he settled for doing as he was told, being a nuisance to this big green tentacle clump and hacking away at its limbs. It didn't help that he was starting to develop a pounding headache, and the tiger limbs were starting to sting too, as if something was trying to claw its way out.
It seemed like they were having absolutely no effect though, only wasting effort and energy repeatedly chopping off the tentacles and holding the monster back from going after the evacuating people. If Chuuya was here, undoubtedly things would be easier, but he was still trapped in the mysterious enchanted curtain. If yosano was awake, Atsushi wouldn't be so cautious now, he didn't realise how much he had taken yosano sensei's miraculous ability for granted until now.
Splurt
The sound echoed in his ears for a second, and it seemed like time had stopped for a second, he was still soaring through the air, but suddenly on the tiger limbs that was about to again claw through the tentacle, the skin broke apart and blood splurted out. Taken by surprise as his ability deactivated against his will, he failed to catch himself or prepare for impact as the tentacle that he was going to attack slammed into his body, and this time he soared straight into the walls of the building.
"Jinko!"
Ouch. At least Akutagawa was giving him a concerned expression, who knew that seeing someone concerned for him would make him feel so happy and warm that he was so close to flying to the moon. Even if his body felt like it was made of lead and pain was sparking all over his body. It was with heavy closing eyes that he had the pleasure of having Akutagawa pull him out of the wall and carry him while fending off the tentacle monster with rashoumon. Ah, so his eyes were grey, not black...
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"Game over, Akui san."
The baby shadow creatures danced over the bleeding body of phantasm while tsujimura held a gun to akui's head. Dazai knew that behind him, standing in the shadows, Ayatsuji was there to send the message that if Akui tried to run, she would be killed by Another before she could even make it anywhere. So it turned out in his favour, and his thoughts slipped to the side for a bit to wonder if tachihara had won whether he would have been able to score this small yet significant victory.
"Hmm~not bad Dazai kun, you got me this time."
The nonchalant words tickled a frown onto dazai's face, she wasn't supposed to be this lax about her lover's death. Not when in the past she had gone absolutely crazy. The possibility of phantasm not being the real one had crossed his mind, but when tsujimura guided Akui away and out to where the government cars were probably parked, he knelt down to touch the blood, and all his senses tingled in the confirmation that yes it was real. Even the trademark scar that he knew was on the real phantasm was there, hidden beneath the bubblegum hair that he moved away to reveal the faint 'choker'.
Turning around, he noted the absence of ayatsuji before he made his way back to the ballroom. He had calculated lovecraft would be making its appearance soon, and so would the rest of the guild. Most certainly Chuuya would be the immediate target to knock out of commission, but Akui wouldn't hurt chuuya(apart from that one time in Soukoku chapters), not when arahabaki still resided in him. Even so, Akutagawa and Atsushi would be more than enough to handle lovecraft, their abilities worked together better than his own and chuuya's, buying time at the least and winning a match for them at the most.
The crashing has unnerved him, but if he knew that unless something had went wrong in his calculations, lovecraft shouldn't have activated this early, so it must have been something else. Fitzgerald perhaps, the man had a taste for flamboyant and dramatics, supposedly anyway.
That was when, dazai realised something. There was one problem with his calculation. The rest of the pieces, apart from his dear Chuuya of course, were mostly, all to some extent, expendable, but he made the mistake of betting on Akutagawa and Atsushi to defeat lovecraft. One of them wouldn't be enough, and he didn't have a backup plan this time if Chuuya really was out of commission. In other words, if one of them was knocked out, his whole plan could be unravelled. No wonder Akui was so calm earlier.
"...well, fuck."