Bandages and Salt (PJO X BSD AU)

Chapter fifty-six

We watched silently as Sakaguchi carefully looked over each of the items that we had brought to him carefully before writing something on a notepad after the times seemed to have passed his inspection of sorts.

What a funny bloke, using his ability in such a way.

"What are you doing?" Odasaku asked, his curiosity seemingly having gotten the better of him as we waited and watched aimlessly.

"How many times do I have to ask you to be quiet?" Sakaguchi all but growled. I was tempted to pipe up and say at least once more, but I wouldn't deprive Odasaku of his answer. "Isn't it obvious? I'm creating logs, of course," the other man lied guiltlessly.

"I see," the former assassin said calmly, taking the newcomer's words at face value as he did with everyone that he spoke to, even when that was the last thing that he should do.

"Tell us your name!" I insisted loudly, loud enough that I knew it would grate on the older man's nerves even more. I already knew the other man's name and I was sure that Odasaku did too, but you would put no one at ease by saying things that you shouldn't know too soon.

"Ango... Sakaguchi," the man choked out, likely knowing that we were as likely to listen to him as a bunch of school children.

A laugh ripples through my chest, something dark that seems to put off the other two men in the room as they look at me as if I've grown a second head.

"...What's with the nauseating laugh?" Sakaguchi asked once he'd seemed to have regained his voice.

"You're quite the interesting man there, Ango," I decided as Odasaku looked between the pair of us with a lost gaze. "Doing that isn't going to make the boss happy, you know. In fact, it will probably just end up costing more money and creating more work in an already strained time. It definitely won't help you move up the ranks."

Sakaguchi's eyes went wide as the man leaned back in his chair, seeming to instinctively look for more room to be placed between himself and the demon in the room. It was a good instinct to cultivate. "You mean to say that you know what I'm doing?" The man asked, his voice holding more than a hint of surprise to it.

"You're making records of the lives of the dead," I guessed, though it wasn't really much of one. "Am I right?" I asked because I knew that I was.

The way that Sakaguchi looked at me in that moment felt as if he was finally realizing that I existed at all. As if he finally was starting to understand that there was a demon that he had allowed to enter his office.

The Port Mafia is full of monsters, he should learn now how to identify them before we decide to kill him where he stands.

"When did you peek at my logbooks?" The older man asked, his eyes still wide with shock.

"I didn't," I answered coldly. "It was obvious what you were doing."

And truly it was. Looking at the man and his behavior, I was even reasonably sure as to what the stranger's ability was. I was sure about a lot of things pertaining to the newest Keebler of the Port Mafia, none of them were reasonably good, but they were all interesting enough to grasp my attention for long enough to not kill the man where he sat now.

Walking over to Sakaguchi with no regard once so ever for the man's visceral reaction to my drawing nearer, I peered down at the papers that the man was taking such care to write.

"The more violent this war becomes, the more the deceased start to just look like numbers on a page." My mind went to the bodies strewn across the streets of Manhattan, the faces of which some of them I had known for years before, but yet felt nothing of the grief that had plagued the others at Camp so immensely. "The lines begin to blur until those fighting become no more than the gun that they hold. And yet you're fighting back against that. Could you read us one?"