A/N: this chapter is going to seem kinda like an MHA Overhaul arc knock off, but it's a genuine theory of what else Fyodor could have done to try and get rid of abilities if he wasn't so obsessed with The Book.
Dazai POV
With all of the commotion of the night before, the next day at the Agency was relatively calm, more so than it usually was as the office felt the lack of its usual as everyone snuck glances as if I didn't know that they were doing so. For detectives, none of the eccentrics within the office were exactly subtle while doing anything. It seemed that being connected to a terrorist in such a way was a step too far even for them.
And the thing was, I didn't even blame them. I would be distrustful as well of anyone else with a history even shadowing my own. That alone was why I tolerated the assessing gazes, the ones that seemed to seep into the cracks in my mask as if trying to pry it open for all to see.
It felt as if I was just giving pieces of myself away when there was a knock at the Armed Detective Agency's door, something purposefully timid in a way that I knew that it wasn't at all. Timid knocks didn't have little patterns to them, and they certainly didn't have the sort of patterns that I knew by heart after months of them sounding on my cabin door in the dead of night when sleep eluded us both.
Atsushi pushed to his feet quickly and bounded over to the door, the boy being one of the more friendly faces for any prospective clients to meet, typically putting most at ease in a way that Kenji was unable to with his cluelessness to social skills.
Having Atsushi answer the door also allowed for Ranpo and I to watch it and study the clients coming in, something that the other man seemed very interested in doing just about now.
The figure stuck out like a sore thumb as he walked into the office, his skin too pale and clothes too dark and western to be anything but, as anxious fingers twisted a skull ring on his other hand, one that I knew turned into a sword when he willed it to.
I thought that maybe Nico would say something, interrupt the white haired detective's endless ramblings as the teen led him father into the office, but the little shit only smirked as he broke away from Atsushi and sauntered over to my side, sitting down on my desk, much to Kunikida's protest.
"I am going to have to ask you to stand and state your name and purpose in being here," the blond detective all but screamed as he kept a tight grip on his ideal book, clearly waiting for an attack to come in some form. The last person that had sought me out was still fresh in everyone's minds, enough so that Kenji was putting down his chips and Yosano was reaching slowly for a scalpel as if she thought that she would ever be able to land a hit on the kid.
"Osamu," the teen greeted, being one of the only people that I let call me by the name that the doctor had ruined when I was fifteen.
I noted with a hint of surprise as the other demijgod's words came out in a perfect - if a little accented - Japanese, something that the boy hadn't mentioned learning through the letters that we had been exchanging over the past two years. The letters that I had used to explain some of the more fragile things about my life after leaving camp the first time, one of those things being the name that I had taken on as if it were my own while I was here.
The teen's smirk deepened as he reached up to his throat and pointed at a bead that seemed to be made of jade instead of clay as all of the others usually were. There was small writing in gold on the stone as well, but it was too small to read. It didn't take a genius to understand that this was some sort of play on the device that Beckendorf had made for Chuuya back when we were sixteen. A gift from the Hecate cabin to the questors no doubt.
"Nico," I said back, looking up at the boy with a flare gaze and ignoring the stunned gazes of the gathered detectives as they watched the scene unfold, never having seen someone else use my first name before, other than the Port Mafia boss but that bastard hardly counted. There was a slight tension among, but that was to be expected after my last 'guest', "to what do I owe the pleasure, cousin dear?"
"He's your cousin?" Kunikida asked as his grip on his ideal book loosened while looking between the pair of us, clearly still uncertain of if the stranger at my side was a threat or not. He was, but only to those of a godly nature at the moment.
"Of course," I sing - songed while looking up at the other detective with wide, innocent eyes, "can't you see the family resemblance?"
The sad thing was that the blond detective most likely could. Apollo knows that neither of us got enough sleep for the pair of us to look anything close to healthy, even as both of our skins have regained something of a healthy coloring over the past four years.
"I-" the man stuttered but I was no longer listening to him
"Lunch," the younger demigod said simply, drawing my attention back to him. "We're getting lunch before I have to go back to the states, and you're paying."
"Good luck with that," Yosano grumbled, earning some nods from the other detectives that knew just how little I liked to pay for any sort of food.
But today was different.
"Come on," I decided, poking the son of Hades's side with my finger hard enough to make the boy tilt as I pushed myself to my feet, purposely doing so slowly as I was still supposed to have a stab wound, "there's a McDonald's not too far from here, Death Breath," I said, doing my best to sound exasperated with the younger demigod. I wasn't and Nico knew it.
The pair of us walked to the door with godly weapons on our persons, concord from mortals, the blades within reach in a way that still felt natural. I'd never admit it out loud, but it was nice to be around another that had to constantly think of the threats that lurked in the shadows. Just because no monsters have attacked in the years that I have been here doesn't mean that they wouldn't soon with my powers slowly returning to me as they have been for months now. Maybe longer.
"The fuck?" I heard one of the detectives ask to the likely still stunned room, but the now closed door muffled just who it could have been.
—-
"Hazel wanted to come too, but Annabeth figured that three children of the big three would be too much," Nico explained as he all but inhaled the burger that I had placed before him.
"Makes sense," I admitted, as I reached across the table to grab one of the other demigod's fires, receiving little more than a slap to the top of my hand like some sort of fucking cat for my troubles. "Brat."
"Learned it from you," the son of Hades shot quickly back as the pair of us fell into an easy conversation about how things were at camp.
Apparently there had been a rough patch after Apollo had been made mortal, one bad enough for a good number of lives to be lost on the Roman side of the states. I wasn't as surprised as I should have been, demigods were made for war, there would always be another battle waiting in the wings to claim its victims. It was rare for anyone born from a mortal and a god to make it into adulthood
"Such a wholesome site," a new voice said as a pale hand landed on my shoulder, the touch holding a chill to it that was both settling and treating all at once. "I had almost forgotten that you knew how to be so kind."
"Careful there, Feyda," I warned, my tone jovanial even as I looked across the table at the younger demigod and shook my head no when he reached for his sword, the boy's eyes wide with something that I didn't quite know and didn't have the time to place just yet, "someone might think that your stalking my if you keep showing up like this."
"Not stalking, no," the older man said, his finger tapping against my shoulder in the way that it often did when the other was thinking too hard, a habit that I had tried my best to help him break when we were younger. "Just want to have a little chat is all, Dazai dear."
There was a threat in the other man's words, so I stood, a hand slipping into my pocket where the switchblade still was after all of these years.
"I'll be just a minute, Neeks," I assured the younger demigod with a false smile, placing some Yen on the table before the kid before the other got a chance to respond, dark eyes stained on the man behind me as if he knew that the other was a threat. As if he knew of the blood that clung to both of our skin. He probably did, but this wasn't a demigod matter. "That should be enough for ice cream if you want it."
I turned to the other ability user for the first time today, something dark in my gaze that hadn't been there since the first night that we had met over four years ago. "Touch the kid and there will be a knife in your tarot before you even have the chance to remove your hand," I threatened, my voice barely more than a growl, but it got the message across to the other demon.
It was a line in the sand and Fyodor knew better than to cross it.
"I wouldn't expect anything else," the man said with an all too satisfied grin. Like a cat that had gotten the cream.
"Good. Now how about that talk, love?"
The other man nodded and slipped away, leaving me to follow him into an alley only a street or so over from the restaurant.
The alley was thin, leaving little room for one person, let alone two grown men, but Fyodor and I stood opposite to one another within it with our knees brushing and our backs against opposite walls, each waiting for the other to stubbornly speak first.
"I have a proposition for you," the Russian said at last, likely knowing that I was about as stubborn as one could get, and likely having other things to do today other than stare at a former lover.
A brow raised as I looked on with falsely brown eyes that shined with interest as they met violet.
"Oh?" I asked. "And what exactly could the great Demon Fyodor want from me?"
I thought that I knew, but hoped that I was wrong. Nothing good ever came from me being right these days.
"Your ability," the other stated simply as I fought the chance to growl, knowing that I had been right.
"Thought you hated abilities, Feyda," the reply was an easy one, a dig for more information that the other ability user seemed all too willing to give.
Too confident.
Not even cautious.
That was the moment that I knew for sure that something was seriously wrong, something more than the usual plots and plans that spilled from each of our lips as we moved others like chess pieces.
A deadly game that we hadn't completely designed this time.
Fuck.
"I do," the other man confirmed, drawing me out of my thoughts, out of the spiral that they had taken as he had so many times before, "but it is a necessary evil if I can use yours to get rid of them all."
My blood, I realized, he wants to use my blood for some sort of 'cure' for abilities, to nullify them.
"Thought you wanted you wanted the Book for that," I countered tonelessly, not letting the other know how unsettled the idea of mortals running around with demigod blood running through their veins made me. How much damage I was sure that it would cause.
"I wouldn't need the book if you were to join me," the Russian said surely, "and besides, treasure hunts are for children."
Hasn't stopped you before.
"And why would I join you?" I asked, my voice holding a light snarl as I thought of a white haired boy, an Agency doctor, two former assassins that sought to become better, a gravity manipulator that I still loved more than myself even after all of this, and a man that could see that past that I didn't hate quote as much as I thought that I might have. "I don't have a problem with abilities, that's your issue, love."
"No?" The Russian asked as he stood up straight, moving impossibly closer just by doing so. "It was your ability that tainted you, made you even less human than your dear cousin out there," the man said as he placed a hand on my shoulder once more as I fought back a flinch at the reminder. "It was your ability that drew you to this city and opened the way for everything that happened after," he continued. "Why would you want to keep it? Why would anyone?
"Abilities are taints on what was once a pure balance; half mortal, half god. Even your gods think that abilities are abominations of nature, a mutation that should not have occurred," the older man continued ruthlessly, "so why keep them? What good has having one ever done for you?"
"You don't know shit," I growled, knowing how weak a counter it was.
"Don't I?" The other demon asks. "Weren't you used as a weapon, as something less than human because of your ability and your intelligence since the age of fourteen? Why help them now?"
"I've been used as a weapon since I was twelve," I reminded the man, "are we going to kill the gods next?"
Thunder shook in the distance, but we both brushed it aside and ignored the implications that it held.
"But the gods aren't the ones that have hurt you most for their own personal gain," the demon asked, drawing a line between the gods and the mortals, "now are they?"
A hand brushed along my neck where stars were scattered like snow, covering up track marks that I hadn't put there, as another went to the mess of scars at my hips that I had carved up as if it could erase his touch.
Anger swelled within me as glee filled the other man's eyes. It was the look of someone that knew that they had won.
"I get to kill Mori," I told the other bluntly.
"I wouldn't have it any other way."
—-
When I got back to the Agency after dropping Nico off by the woods that the demigods had been camping in with multiple assurances that everything was fine - complete bullshit and the kid knew it, but there was nothing that I could do about that - there was another visitor already occupying the detectives' attention.
The woman was beautiful, long black hair falling in front of her face, that revealed delicate features beneath. Her eyes were the color of coal when she looked up, but seemed to shine in the way that I had seen onyx do in the summer sunlight from the Hades cabin. Her skin was pale in a manner that showed every flush that the young woman suffered from having the full attention of the Armed Detective Agency focused on her alone. Her traditional Japanese clothing giving the woman a modest appeal. She was the sort of natural Japanese beauty that man had called Gin when I had taken the Akutagawa siblings out to buy clothes when they were still teens and growing like weeds after finally receiving full meals regularly.
It was all artificial, fake and unsettling in the way that divinity often was to those that held it as well. To those that knew better.
"I was only walking down the street when they came and grabbed me," the woman said, her voice holding a strange chatter to it that the other detectives either didn't care or didn't find as telling as I did. "I'm sure that I would have been taken if it wasn't for the detective here," the woman said almost meekly, her voice still holding that chattering noise to it as she looked up at Kunikida who was standing behind the stranger with a comforting hand on her shoulder, something that was strange in of itself.
"I didn't see the perpetrator," the blond detective started, his voice off, as if he were speaking through some sort of fog, "but I did see Yuika here being pulled into an alley by someone. By the time that I got there, the man was gone and she was on the ground."
"Probably ran off when he realized that you were coming," Ranpo said, his voice holding the same fog as Kunikida's. If I hadn't known that something was going on before then this would have been enough. Ranpo should have already been spewing facts about all of the obvious things wrong with the woman's story, nor gojng along with it as if he believed it.
"Right," I said with a clap, announcing my presence to everyone else in the room, causing more than one to flinch as they finally noticed that I was there. "It seems that Ms. Yuika here has had a hard day, why don't we all call it an early day and walk the young lady home?" I proposed, knowing that if any of them had been in their right minds, then there would have been an objection of some sorts that so many detectives were not necessary for such a small task, especially when there was still a good two hours or so before closing time. But all hope was lost as the President walked into the room and nodded along with the suggestion as if it were a sane one.
It wasn't.
"Thank you," the woman said, her eyes too bright as the colors seemed to shift to a more red shade.
"Of course," I said easily, with a too sharp smile, "it just wouldn't be right otherwise."
The woman smiled and I fought the urge not to flinch at the sickly feeling running down my spine. The stranger had fangs as sharp as needles. Even after so many years, needles were still not something that I was the biggest fan of.
Fucking doctors.
Yuika held onto Kunikida's offered arm all the way down the stairs and the familiar streets of Yokohama as she led the group of us towards the Agency dorms, an almost secluded place that was close to the Agency building itself and that the President had bought out the entire building of to give his employees some privacy and convenience since stectives didn't make much.
My unease only grew more and more with each step.
"Thank you all so much for walking me here," the woman said as she stopped outside of the dorm building, "I'm sure that it will make a great nest."
"Nest?" Kyouka asked, seeming to break from whatever hood that the woman had on her, if there was one at all. The youngest detective would have likely been reluctant to move against the wishes of the entire Agency for fear of being kicked out. She had a hand firm on her sword even as everyone else just stared blankly as if there was nothing wrong with the idea.
"Yes," the woman confirmed, the chatter in her voice growing even stronger. "I've just changed you see, four hundred is a big number for my kind, so I need a new nest to go with this change. The prey would be spooked even in this state-" the woman explained as she tapped Kunikida's arm lightly, almost affectionately as he just took it with a too blank look, "if I took them to the woods."
Four hundred... shit...
"Let them go!" The former assassin growled as she drew her sword, pointing it at the woman without so much as a plan in mind.
"Kyouka, no!" I screamed, but it was too late.
The girl moved quickly, slashing at the woman, but where the woman's shoulder had been only a moment before there was only empty space and a thud as Kunikida was dropped to the ground.
"Foolish mortals," the woman chattered, four insect legs unfolded from her back. Suddenly the woman, the monster, was about nine feet tall with her spider legs holding her off of the ground like some sort of avenging goddess. "They always think that they can kill just because they're bigger. But my kind are more dangerous, you know."
A leg moved quickly, slapping the young girl to the side. She didn't stand back up, but it was enough to break the others out of their trance as the blond detective slowly pushed himself to his feet.
Yosano ran quickly to Kyouka's side, even from here I could see the blood on the ground and knew that it wouldn't be long before the doctor could use her ability on the child. A hit like that against the ground caused too much damage too quickly for anything else.
The President drew his sword as well, as Kunikida began to write furiously in his ideal book, pulling out an object that I couldn't see from so far away. Kenji quickly grabbed a street sign, a look of pure anger on his young face, as Atsushi's arm transformed into that of the tiger's. The Tanizaki siblings disappeared quickly behind green pixely snow, but I knew that they weren't running, just buying Naomi enough time to get somewhere safe.
And I stood there and waited.
The monster didn't so much as flinch when the President and Kunikida attacked it, only moving one of its legs leisurely to the side as the hits did nothing at all to the creature. The tiger's claws didn't leave so much as a scratch, and I figured that Tanizaki's attack must have failed as well, as suddenly the kid was visible once more, passed out on the ground as the President held back a raging Naomi. Kenji's attack rattled the creature, but she kicked the kid so hard opposite from the apartment building that I was sure that he would be dead if it wasn't for his ability.
And suddenly I was the only one left.
—-
3rd Person POV
The detectives didn't know what to think as they watched Dazai - Dazai who had been standing a good distance from the chaos with a cold look on his face, a calcutive one as he watched them all fail to harm the woman that they had thought was their client only a moment before - walk towards the woman as if he had nothing to fear from her. As if the crafted that had just taken them all down was hardly a threat at all.
And then he smirked and they figured that they were all doomed to hell.
Dazai withdrew his hands from his pockets in a casual manner, meeting the monster's red eyes with eyes of his own that seemed to shine the same demonic color as its.
No one noticed until later that a familiar pen was in the man's hand, not until it changed into a sword unlike any within Japan. Not until the monster screeched at the sight of it alone.
Dazai twisted the blade in his hand as if it were natural for him to hold it, something that none of the detectives had ever thought that they would see from the strange man.
"I read somewhere that your kind don't like holy weapons, those blessed by divinity," the man said as if there was such a thing. He seemed to think so. "This is celestial bronze from the time of Heracles. Other than a gods' own weapon of power, this is about as close as one can get to a divinely blessed weapon, Jorogumo."
A few of the detectives flinched as they recognized the term, but didn't want to believe the stories to be true.
"Let's see how it works, shall we?"
"Little godling," the creature chattered like a curse, but the subject of her words wasn't listening.
Dazai ran forwards quickly, more so than the detectives had known that their coworker could as he jumped high in a way that should have been impossible, sword raised proudly in his hand as it shined like gold in the slowly dying sun.
The sword hit one of the legs and the monster howled as the hit damaged it, the leg breaking in two as each half began to slowly decay as if the creature had been dead for thousands of years instead alive for a few hundred.
The detective skidded to the ground and moved quickly to the next leg, cutting it at the bottom and laughing as the monster tilted to the side with a cut off shriek as the blade ran cleanly through the monster's heart.
Yellow dust floated down around the man, dusting his skin in a way that could almost be described as beautiful as the man moved through it, his sword disappearing just as fast as it had appeared before. Only a kamino was left behind as evidence that anything had happened at all.
"What the fuck?" Yosano asked for the second time that day, turning to Ranpo who had come to her side during the fight so that he was out of the way, only to find a surprised look on his face.
"I don't... I don't know," the man said slowly, but it was a lie, he did know he just didn't want to believe it to be true.
"You killed her," Kunikida said slowly as he looked at his partner with dulled horror in his eyes. "Wha-?"
"That," Dazai said, gesturing to where the woman had been only a few minutes before the world had divulged into chaos, "was a Japanese spider monster that takes the shape of a beautiful woman to lure in their prey and kill the slowly with poison," the man said bluntly as he wiped some of the dust away.
"You're joking right?" Atsushi asked, not wanting to believe it either. A lot of things were real in a word with ability users, but monsters...
"You didn't think that ability users were the only thing out there with gifts did you?" The man asked the group with a voice that he had never used on any of them before, but suddenly made the tiger feel a lot more sympathetic towards Akutagawa. It was the voice of someone that thought that everyone before them was an idiot, spoken in a harsher way than Ranpo ever did. "Ability users are only the newest thing," Dazai continued, "mutations from something that isn't even quite the original," the detective said vaguely.
"And what are you then?" Ranpo asked, finding his voice at last.
"Something more."
Dazai turned to leave, but was stopped by a phone ringing in his pocket, the ringtone one that he hadn't heard since he was twenty. He felt his gut drop as he realized that Chase was calling.
He answered the phone quickly, pressing it to his ear without caring that he might be overheard. Nothing good could be happening if the daughter of Athena would risk calling a child of the big three.
"It's the others," the girl said quickly, "they've been taken."
"Fuck."
—-
3rd person POV
"Explain," the detectives heard their coworker say harshly, something in the man's voice that they hadn't quite heard before.
Desperation.
"Nico thought that he recognized the man that you spoke to at lunch and called me to say that he was going to follow him," the other demigod said hurriedly, hearing the dangerous note in the other's voice as clear as day. "I told him not to go, but he's never liked listening to me since his sister died and went anyways," the woman pressed on. "When he didn't answer, we all went to go and find him. We got separated and now I can't find anyone else and no one is answering their phones."
"Where did this happen?" The man asked quickly, his mind already running through the possibilities and figuring that he wasn't the only one to have received some sort of visitor today.
"An abandoned shipyard by the harbor."
Port Mafia territory, the demigod knew.
"I'll be there in ten."
"Hurry," was all that Chase said in reply before the line went dead.
Dazai's didn't need to be told twice.
The detectives ran after their coworker as Dazai jogged to the apartment building, confusion and concern plaguing each of them as his steps became more hurried, foreign curses falling from the detective's lips all down the hall.
By the time that the other Agency members caught up, the man had already changed into a dark pair of pants and had his shoes kicked off, chest bare of everything but the bandages the always lined it, revealing the scarring that it couldn't cover. The sight was enough to make more than one of them feel ill.
"What the hell is going on?" Kunikida asked, feeling more concerned for his partner than he would currently like to admit given the things that he had learned of the man over the past two days alone.
"My cousins are in trouble," the man said shortly as he pulled a black shirt on over his torso, hiding the bandages and scars once more.
"So you're changing clothes?" Kyouka asked with a frown, not understanding the other former mafioso as much as she usually did, as he sank to the ground and began to slip on a new pair of shoes.
"If he's fighting more of the things from before than detective clothes wouldn't be exactly practical," Ranpo said with an understanding voice, still not holding as much information as he would like and hating himself for it. For not knowing everything.
For not being enough.
The former assassin nodded as the former mafia executive pushed to his feet, tennis shoes on them now, and resumed his brisk pace, pushing past them all on his way back to the street without so much as another word.
The members of the Armed Detective Agency didn't hesitate to follow.
"What the fuck are you doing?" The man asked once he noticed that the others were following him, anger and something else lacing the ability user's tone as he looked upon his colleagues.
"Helping you, you idiot," Yosano said shortly as she pushed past the younger man and kept walking the way that he had been jogging only a moment before, uncaring about waiting for those that she knew would soon follow.
"You won't be able to do anything if this is what I think it is," Dazai porotested, the frustration clear in his voice for all to hear. Not that any of them were listening as most followed the doctor's lead and continued to move despite the man clearly not wanting them to come. "You don't even know my real name," he protested at last, his voice soft and defeated.
"You're Dazai," Ranpo said simply, as if that was all that there was to it, as if it was enough. (It wasn't) "You're slacker on your worst days and only pretend to be one on all of the others, and get under Kunikida's skin to help the man remove the stick from his ass. What more do we need to know?"
A lot, they both knew, but neither said. They both knew that now wasn't the time or place.
The detectives file into cars that the President had bought after the man found out the his employees had stolen one during the Dead Apple incident a few months back, only Fukuzawa himself and Ranpo staying behind in case this was some sort of elaborate scheme.
It was, just not the sort that the man thought.
Dazai didn't stay still the entire ride to the abandoned shipyard, his fingers drumming against a bouncing leg, constantly looking from window to window as if the man had expected to find something new to see, typing away on his phone as he made plans that the other detectives didn't know, and twirling a familiar pen between his fingers as if it would save him. They had never seen the man so stressed before, and for how much it made sense to the other Agency members for him to be so, they almost wished that he wasn't.
When they arrived at the strange location, the Agency members went stiff at the familiar figures already waiting for them, but Dazai left the car as if it was natural to be calling upon Port Mafia members to help them. Being slower to approach the two mafiosos and the former one, the deceived only caught the end of the brief interaction, only saw Nakahara grab Dazai's hand as if it were natural to do so before slipping his own back into the pockets of his dress pants.
"Six people have been taken," Dazai explains, his voice much more serious than the detectives were used to it being, and yet all the more grounding. It wasn't often that they heard him like this, but not this moment it was a needed appearance. "Five civilians and one Port Mafia member," the former mafia executive continued, "though we are unsure as to how the latter came to be among the taken."
"Do we know who had them?" Atsushi asked as he moved to stand closer to Akutagawa, knowing that they would be put together and not seeing the point in avoiding such an inevitability.
"Drovostkey," Chuuya all but growled in a way that held far too much emotion for something that had so little to do with the man himself. A fact that the man was very well aware of, but didn't feel the need to justify, not when the Russian bastard was involved.
"Why would he-?"
"My cousins are the reason for the joint case between the Port Mafia and the Agency," Dazai explained, his expression cold and calculative as he spoke, not looking at any of them but the building instead. It was the same place that he and Chuuya had gone to take down Rando when he had been impersonating the late mafia boss and the god Arahabaki at the time. "Fyodor was the reason that they thought to come here in the first place," he explained as if it all were simple, knowing good and well that it was anything but.
Kunikida looked as if he were about to say something, some question or demand of an explanation, when Atsushi and Kyouka both looked at one of the neighboring warehouses, Dazai already walking towards it. The others followed without question, Chuuya moving to the bandaged man's side as if it were preposterous to think that the gravity manipulator would be anywhere else.
It was.
The group walked quietly up alongside the warehouse, stepping up on top of crates like children as they peered through the low window, more than one heart threatening to stop at the sight that they were met with, a weakness that no one in their right mind would have blamed any of them for having.
There were creatives inside of the warehouse, beings from Japanese myths and stories, spirits in kabuki masks that looked far more threatening than anything that the human imagination of them could have recreated. Demons, momsters, spirits. There was everything there that nightmares were made of, some things old enough that stories had almost forgotten them.
And Dazai had no idea why they were there.
"Chuuya," the former mafioso whispered quietly, her loud enough for some of the others to hear as well, surprising more than one of the detectives with how familiar the bandaged man was with the mafia executive, "take them to the other warehouse, I'll deal with this."
Chuuya looked up at the other man, fight in his eyes, a burning instance not to leave the other now that he was just starting to get him back again after so many years. But he also saw something in the other man's gaze - a knowing glint that he had always hated, but didn't so much now - and it was enough to make him back down.
"Alright," the mafia executive agreed slowly, heart hurting at the way that it felt as if he was letting the other slip through his fingers once again, "but if you die then I'm having di Angelo bring you back so that I can kill you myself," he growled out, knowing good and well that he would only keep half of that promise.
"I wouldn't have it any other way," Dazai said, his hand gliding down towards the other, hidden in dark if the night as bare fingers brushed across a sliver of exposed skin where Chuuya's shirt met top of his gloves. It was an innocent touch and yet lighting seemed to soar through them both, waiting for the strike.
They didn't say anything else to one another. If this were a movie then they would have, but they had established years ago that it wasn't.
"You can't be serious," Kunikida all but growled as his partner - his reckless partner that seemed to find no value within his own life, that he had adjusted his schedule for so that he could make sure that man was looked after, his partner that had clearly seen far too much for his young age and done much more (both good and horrible) - started to reach for the locks on the window with picks that they hadn't even realized that the man had.
Kunikida reached for him - for the man that he still didn't know how to feel about, how to forgive or if he even should - but was stopped from touching him by the mafia executive that knew more than he could never hope to.
"He's still hurt, Nakahara!" The doctor all but screamed, as if she forgot that they were supposed to be quiet then, too lost in her concern for the man that she had somehow grown to look at the same way that she would have a brother.
"No, he's not," Chuuya said softly, his eyes somehow as dead as his partners as he watched the other man the same way that a lover would watch their other half go off to war, knowing full and well of their mortality. "Watch."
With the window now open, Dazai stood up in the seal before turning his head just enough to send a cocky wink that somehow made the man appear much younger than he was - like a teen once more - as he tipped backwards.
The stomachs of everyone but Chuuya himself dropped as they watched Dazai fall through the air, graceful in a way that he hardly ever was. The man's body spun quickly, rotating in the short distance of air so that the bandaged man landed on his feet. Only a moment later there was a sword in the demigod's hand, one that the gravity manipulator recognized even as the detectives and Akutugawa still had no idea where it came from.
The monsters are still as Dazai turns to them, his landing having been loud enough to alert them to him being there - something that Chuuya knows that the son of the sea gods had done on purpose just for this - and while they are startled and hesitate, Dazai does not.
The child of Olympus twists his sword in his hand and dives for the creature closest, slashing the humanoid monster on the back of its legs as the others begin to stir as well, crashing in on him only a moment later as Dazai makes a wild sweep with his blade.
Golden dust decorates the demigods skin, kissing it as the sun might, and Dazai smiles in a way that would have terrified gods.
Chuuya knows that he should look away, make everyone else move - there were still demigods that they needed to reach, and a Port Mafia member for the gravity manipulator to reluctantly retrieve as well - but watching the other man, Chuuya knew that he couldn't look away just yet. Dazai was still every storm, every harsh tide, the undertow, child of the raging sea, even as he only used a sword. A natural disaster barely contained in human skin.
Watching him, Chuuya knew now what he didn't back then, had known it for a while. He had fallen in love with the boy that he had met in New York, and had lost him to the cold seas that had invaded the teen's heart as soon as they had come back to Japan. But there he was again, a raging storm even as now water swirled around him, one that had been building for days.
Chuuya knew that he still loved the boy that he had met then, the man that he was slowly becoming once again.
A monster slashed at Dazai, a talon just barely missing hitting something vital as it tore through the bandages that lined the demigod's throat, causing them to fall to the ground like feathers from the wings of a fallen angel.
Chuuya knew then that if they stayed to watch any longer, the detectives would see Dazai get hurt and refuse to leave. He knew that he wouldn't fight them on it either.
"Let's go," the mafia executive said gruffly, grabbing a hold of the weretiger and Akutagawa as another monster turned to dust, pulling them off of the crates and ignoring their sounds of protest. "Now," he said, harsh enough to make the others follow as well.
The gathered ability users had seen a lot of things in their lives, things that should have been impossible if abilities hadn't existed, and yet the scene that they just saw - the one that they were running from - spoke of an old sort of power that they had only seen the surface of. It was the same sort of powe the rippled from the mafia executive's skin every time that he used his ability to a greater extent. The detectives tried not to think about that. Akutagawa could only look back on it in awe.
The group snuck into the abandoned building through the side room, the same one that Dazai had been sitting in with the traitor sub - executive that day that they had killed him. The window was still broken from where Chuuya had crashed through it in his haste to win.
He hadn't then and it somehow didn't feel as if he was now either.
The detectives pushed to the front, leaving the two mafiosos at the ear, Atsushi somehow making it to the door before the others. It wasn't a surprise really, the boy was eager to have part of the mission over with so that they could get back to Dazai. He knew that the other man was much more than he had originally thought, than any of them had, but he was still human no matter what he seemed to believe, and humans had their limits. That warehouse looked like one.
He made a decision as they were leaving the older detective that he would get this done as quickly as he could, that he would do what was needed to get there in time.
It turned out to be the wrong decision as he plunged ahead of the others thoughtlessly into the main room - a move that Akutagawa would have done when they had first met, something that Atsushi didn't take great pride in recognizing - but not for Dazai, but for the weretiger himself who now had a deadly hand wrapped around his arm from the moment that he crossed the threshold. A touch that would kill him should he try to do anything at all, something that not even his healing abilities would allow him to survive.
"Good," Drovostkey said as he looked upon the rest of the gathered group, a sick sort of smile spreading across his lips as he realized that everyone had come, just as he thought that they would, "you got our invitation."
A/N: Fun fact, I hate, hate, hate spiders and yet still wrote this chapter and did research on the Japanese monster for it which involved pictures. So I guess I really am an idiot.
Also, we're only looking at about two more chapters after this one.