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Three nights in Tokyo in some shitty low-class undercover hotel shouldn’t have been an issue. It wasn’t like Chuuya hadn’t spent the first seven years of his remembered life in Suribachi city— three of them alone, rain soaking the cement under his body so often he thought the dampness would wrinkle his skin forever. Even now, he sometimes woke with a phantom wetness playing against his back; expensive sheets didn’t erase the past. Still.
Why suffer anything now, if it wasn’t necessary? Chuuya would eat every luxury under the sun and wake hungry for more. Monsters had no grace— only desire.
As it was, his back was tight and his body fucking sore. It'd been raining on and off all weekend and he’d barely slept more than a few hours before he was back in the hotel’s measly conference room with a bunch of corrupt, silver-haired business executives, suffering through the second hour of a particularly stale merger between two companies the Port Mafia had significant stake in financially.
Chuuya hated board meetings, as a general principle. They were always full of all-talk, no action elites with sticks up their asses. Chuuya wasn’t there to participate in the negotiations so much as to ensure they went properly, and so he sat at the back of a wide conference table, shoes propped on the table, fingering his cigarette tin until it was ostensibly late enough to signal for lunch.
“I won’t sell my shares and pave the way for you fuckers to push me out!” Chuuya’s gaze narrowed as he considered the man who’d shouted from the other corner of the table. Mori’s cool voice spoke inside his head.
“Aki-kun is the more volatile player, he must be watched. You should be able to predict the next course of action an enemy will take.”
Chuuya closed his eyes and drowned out the noise around him, thinking. Predictions had never been his specialty. Reaction. Unshakable, unstoppable response, that was where Chuuya had carved his unholy name into the streets of Yokohama’s underground.
“Give it a try.” Mori would have said, ever the teacher, no matter if Chuuya was fifteen or twenty-five. If Aki resisted the buy out and walked out, he’d be pissed beyond measure. The man would also likely take a few company employees and board members with him back to the upstart gang they came from— which would endanger supply and stability in the area they bought and sold their illegal wares in. Yokohama.
“Well done.” Mori’s unpleasant, yet somehow reassuring smile painted itself into the darkness behind Chuuya’s eyes and the path forward was clear.
Got it, boss.
Chuuya plucked his hat from the table and put his effects in order, walking around to the business side of the conference room. “Sell your fucking shares, Aki.” He stared up at the man from across the table.
“Are you supposed to be the mafia goon sent here to threaten me?” Aki spat back at him in response, and Chuuya tracked the ugly vein twitching erratically against his forehead. “What are you, 140-centimeters tall?” A pause for his own irritating laughter. “Taneda please tell this guy to get the fuck out of here, I’m not selling. If we're going to be bought by some corrupt organization the least they can do is send the boss here. Not some bite-size fucking—”
Chuuya took out his pistol and shot the man between the eyes mid-rant and watched his body drop to the floor, silent beneath the echo of the gunshot.
“I am the boss of the Port Mafia.” He thumbed a cigarette from the tin inside his coat pocket, shoving it desperately into his mouth before adjusting Mori's wine-red scarf more firmly around his shoulders. “Let’s take lunch.”
Five of the eight remaining members of the board immediately offered him a light.
~.~.~
Two hours later saw Chuuya three cigarettes deep and working through a disgustingly cheap vending machine coffee alone on the steps of the hotel. He texted the mafia cab driver currently on-call to come for him just as it began to rain again, letting the raindrops miss him by a hair’s width as he slid out his phone to answer another incoming call.
“Hirostu.” Chuuya clocked a black van on the edge of the road and angled for it immediately.
“Your driver should be there presently.” The old man’s calm voice fell over the line.
“Yea, I see him.” He slid into the backseat, checked the driver's ID and drew up the partition.
“You’ll be coming home, then?” Hirotsu asked.
“Yea, it's been handled.” Chuuya paused for breath, not that he thought he was about to surprise Hirotsu, pragmatic dog that he was. “Aki’s dead. Send Gin up for closure in the area, I'm fucking tired of being diplomatic.” He finished, cracking the window briefly to toss the remains of his last cigarette into the street.
“You shouldn’t have gone by yourself, Chuuya-san.” Hirotsu chided gently. Well, as gentle as a stoic old man with an offensive ability like Falling Camelia could ever be, anyway.
“I know that.” Chuuya growled, running a hand through his hair. “Fuck— I thought it would be a measure of respect. No one wants to go undercover in goddamn Tokyo right now.” He sighed, leaning back into the seat and clenching his fingers at his sides to syphon off the rising tide of anger within him. We’re all still grieving.
“Least of all you, boss.” Hirotsu replied, and Chuuya let the sentiment hang between them in silence, staring out the window as the lights of one more city he didn't belong to streamed by. Least of all.
Chuuya had never been the least of anything, for better or worse.
“I know you want to take everything on by yourself, but running the mafia doesn't mean running every mafia job.” Hirotsu continued, because he was an ancient, cocksure, insubordinate fucker and Chuuya loved him dearly. “Let us do what we've always done. Let us support you.”
“Trying to take my job?” Chuuya challenged, more than half-kidding.
“Absolutely not.” Hirotsu coughed emphatically, the connection distorting briefly. “I’d like to retire soon.” Chuuya let himself laugh out loud at that, some of the tension from the day’s events spilling into the air, softening the line of his shoulders. Talking with a human being he cared about— or had decided to care for — drained the monster out of him like sand from an hourglass. Grain by grain.
“Shame you’ll be too busy for that now. I’m putting the Black Lizard on the Takimura job, handle it within three days.” Chuuya pitched his voice to let Hirotsu know the call was finished.
“Of course.” The call ended and Chuuya dropped his phone onto his lap and closed his eyes briefly, leaning against the window in the back of the car for the next hour and watching the rain drop over the city like a dream, making puddles in the streets. In his mind Chuuya could see another puddle, the one of blood that had formed a scarlet halo around Aki’s body on the conference room floor. A strange thought crawled in through the shutters of his mind.
Was this how Dazai felt? Dead mentor, new coat, a thousand potential wrong decisions with nowhere to turn. Empty.
He laughed, a bit for frustration and a bit for the wisdom that came with sorrow. Regardless, the Yokohama skyline was beautiful as they rode across the bridge.
~.~.~
After checking in with almost everyone in the organization at the mafia’s main building for the next several hours, Chuuya finally took his bike back to his apartment in Yamate, tossing his helmet in the trunk and sliding the keycard into the door for direct elevator access. He spent the rest of the night stress cooking, pacing, and staring out at the city from his window until the sun crept into view on the horizon. Pathetic.
Chuuya was not generally a creature that second-guessed. The past was the past, regrets were for things that hadn’t been done, not whatever obstacles had been faced head on in the moment. Yet, Chuuya had also always preferred working as part of something to belong to— not the fucking head of it. He stumbled into the master at dawn only half undressed, letting the weight of this still-green responsibility bury him in a bed of stone, the tapping of the rain against his window becoming a steady rhythm to drown in.
His dreams were dark.
~.~.~
Chuuya’s body was eight years old— standing naked and alone in a crater. He was a hundred, a thousand, his anger spanned the edges of life itself. He was fourteen, and human enough for a family.
“You’ll protect us, right?” Yuan pulls at his arm, fingers digging into his bicep.
“Of course.” He says, like he has so many times before.
“Because you’re strong.” She whispers into his ear confidently, hair tickling at the side of his neck like silk.
“Yea.” He turns his head away from the sensation. Too hot.
“So it’s your responsibility, like you said, right?” Yuan’s hand tugs harder, pulling him back into that brush of damp silk.
“Yea.”
“But are you strong enough, Chuuya?” Yuan’s childish laugh fills the air, her form growing into a dark, threatening shadow. Chuuya’s body is twenty-five now, and he takes out his pistol and shoots.
The shadow becomes a corpse at his feet, becomes six of them. Six friends— and how had he been allowed such things? The shadow looks back at him from the ground with his own face, torn apart with a violence as terrible as the ache in his chest.
But are you strong enough?
He woke with a gasp.
~.~.~
After a few hundred push-ups, three Katas and a cold shower, Chuuya came into the foyer of his apartment and noticed a small, red envelope had been slid under the door. Inside it were photos and details surrounding last month’s assassination. Photos of Mori— alive— staring out the windows of the main office. Photos taken from the scope of a sniper.
Dammit.
Chuuya sent a text to the mafia's most trusted information broker and waited for more clarity, smoking through half a pack of Dunhill’s in an effort to keep himself from blowing a hole in the fucking ceiling.
Forty-five minutes later Chuuya had a strong cough and the location of the assassin and their organization’s headquarters in his phone, along with a photo and a time for when that individual would be in a meeting room somewhere in Yokohama.
Eichi Kimura. Ammunitions-related ability. Leader of the White Lion gang, if the information Chuuya received was true. He texted a few more contacts to verify the ID before making the vaguely unhinged decision to enact a Mafia-style vendetta solo. He needed to blow off some steam and this was honestly nothing he couldn’t handle, however fucking personal it might be. Chuuya sent a final text to Kouyou and Hirotsu out of respect and immediately locked his phone and took his bike into the streets.
The weather was beautiful. Yokohama was beautiful. Chuuya would stay here as long as he could.
He swooped into the district the broker had confirmed with him, blazing through red lights and thinking vaguely about Mori, betrayed by someone— someone he might’ve trusted at the end of his life. He thought about Sheep, as well, and how they had all betrayed him for fear of his strength. For manipulations and misunderstandings. Was that what had happened? Would it, again?
Chuuya arrived in front of the building's address, but of course it was a fucking skyscraper, and he had no way of knowing which meeting room he needed.
Let us support you.
Regrettably, Chuuya knew from where help might come most efficiently at this moment, so he pulled out his phone to call Dazai. The line rang seven times before picking up.
“Hey,” he opened gruffly.
“Chuuya~! I’ve been waiting for your call~!” Dazai’s annoyingly chipper greeting cracked across the connection.
“You know where I am, right?” He said, stepping off his bike and throwing his helmet over the mirror.
“37 Kotaru street!” Dazai sang back.
“A big fuck-off green tinted skyscraper in Honmaku district.”
“That’s the one!” Dazai laughed and Chuuya nearly crushed his phone in his hand.
“You knew I was coming. Did your people clear it?” He asked, walking up to the entrance, scanning the lower-floor windows for civilians. Finding them.
“All civilians are beneath the fifth floor, so as long as Chibi doesn’t collapse the entire building—”
“Fuck you, why couldn’t you clear the whole thing?” Chuuya interrupted, clenching his fists.
“Hmm…" Dazai's voice faded out briefly, it sounded like he was talking with someone else. "Things needed to look normal enough for your friends to take the elevator up to their own level.” He finished, and he was right. Chuuya hated that Dazai was always right.
“Which is?” Chuuya pressed, tilting his head back to stare at the building. The windows were sleek, modern. What a shame, really.
“Is Chibi honestly planning to take the natural way up?” Dazai asked.
“I can count windows, shithead.”
“So unprofessional, Mr. Port Mafia boss. Your friends are on the 38th floor, street side. Good luck~!” Dazai laughed at him again.
“Don’t need it.” Chuuya ended the call, annoyed and riled up as only Dazai ever could get him. He made another to his subordinates, directing them to his current address, reporting the situation and requesting they have the entire building cleared within the next two hours. Chuuya could hold the first ten floors stable for that long, at least.
He ran up the side of the building, counting stories in his head until he reached the proper floor and shattered the window, dropping into another fucking low-class conference room.
“If your name isn’t Eichi Kimura get the fuck out of this building before I bury it.” Chuuya growled, stalking into the chaos he’d created and grabbing his sputtering target by the collar while the rest of the room cleared out at the sight of him. He must have looked quite the monster. He didn’t care.
“What the hell is this about?" Eichi gasped as Chuuya slammed him against the nearest wall.
“Mori Ougai. Your work?” Chuuya asked, although it clearly wasn't necessary.
“Yes.” Eichi's expression darkened before he coughed and spat when Chuuya's grip tightened.
“Why?” He asked.
“That man was a menace to the city, you know how many people wanted him dead? I made a killing.” Eichi laughed. “It’s about time the Port Mafia lost its grip on Yokohama anyway, make some room for the rest of us.” Challenge and arrogance shone in the man’s eyes, even while he faced his own death.
“Like your shitty gang?" Chuuya scoffed. "You ran initiations last week and slashed over fifty people in the streets— an old woman died. Your organization is making a fucking mess of the city.”
“What do you know about Yokohama?” Eichi argued, breathing heavy with the strain of Chuuya’s arm against his chest. “I heard you’re a foreigner.” Eichi uttered his last words as Chuuya threw him against the opposite wall, knocking him unconscious before turning to jump back out the window he’d crashed in from.
“Oh, you have no fucking idea.” Chuuya muttered, letting Tainted spill down the edges of the building as it finally collapsed under the weight of his anger— though he was careful to keep corruption inside its cage. He dropped through the sky, hit the ground and sank into a crater that fell below sea level immediately. Tar and soil and mud slid up to meet him at the knees, but the wreckage of the building stayed above the fifth floor.
Two hours.
Chuuya took a deep breath, digging his heels further into the wet soil as people poured into the streets, screaming.
He should’ve taken his gloves off.
~.~.~
“That was too much, even for you, Chuuya-san.” Higuchi caught him by the shoulders when he all but fell into the van that came to collect him after, the ruins of 37 Kotaku smoking behind him. Higuchi helped him to a seat as Akutagawa slid the door closed and ordered the driver back to the main building.
“I can fucking handle it.” He spat, bracing his hands atop his knees in a fight to stay upright. To stay conscious.
“You’re only human.” Higuchi replied.
“Am I?” Chuuya asked darkly, before succumbing to a series of strong, wet coughs which he allowed Akutagawa to press a handkerchief into. They were both staring at him like he’d gone mad before Chuuya remembered himself. Neither of them knew, of course— so few actually did.
Mori had known. Dazai. Those government assholes.
Suddenly, stupidly, Chuuya wanted to tell them; watch them digest his inhumanity face to face. Mori may have been a leader with a demon at his shoulder, but Chuuya was something entirely more dangerous. Would they follow calamity willingly?
“Yes.” Akutagawa answered, shoving the handkerchief, scarlet with blood into his face like evidence in a courtroom, and it took Chuuya longer than it should have to realize he wasn’t responding to the question he’d asked inside his mind.
~.~.~
After, Chuuya spent about four hours asleep in his apartment and another two retching his insides out over the shower drain. Even calling on Tainted to slide around his frame and help him stand caused waves of dizziness and an unbearable sense of strain in his core. He’d definitely stretched the limits of his capabilities with the skyscraper. It was nice, though, finding where they were again.
The door to his apartment clicked open.
“Chuuya?” A familiar voice called from the entryway, and Chuuya groaned with pain and fatigue even as he stood up and threw on a pair of joggers to step into the main room.
“I don’t need to be looked after.” He growled, throwing himself onto the living room sofa and digging half-heartedly into the cushions for the pack of cigarettes he remembered shoving in there about a week ago. The voice laughed at his petty struggle, footsteps drawing nearer as Chuuya found the pack he was looking for and tore it open like an animal.
“You don’t, but—” A lighter, held out beside his chin. “May I?”
Chuuya looked up at his lover.
You’re only human.
“All right.”