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“Oh, there you are, Kaitou.”
Daiki tenses at the sound of his name and it does not become less of a logical reaction when he turns around to find an unfamiliar man with the strangest hairstyle and an outfit of… black and pink leather? What?
And a nearly bored expression. It’s a strange one to see on a man maybe, what, one year younger than Daiki himself?
By his age, everyone not to seem bored of others. It’s rude —
No! Daiki shakes the thought off. Because maybe that’s wrong, too. Maybe everything is.
No. Definitely everything is. He’d sold out his brother to the monster who rules the world and just… run away.
“You know, for this world’s only criminal, you sure are underwhelming,” the unfamiliar man continues. “Kaitou Daiki… is that what you did?”
“No,” Daiki says quickly. “I mean, no, but yes.”
He’d stolen because he had to. Since he used to work with them, he knew how to avoid the roaches, as well. And it was just a little bit of food.
(The Riders hadn’t even done that much, since Daiki’s brother could provide supplies legally. How had he ever thought he was doing the right thing.)
“I thought I was helping people, but I wasn’t,” he says, and, actually, why is he even saying this? “So I left.”
The man’s eyes widen just slightly in that way that Daiki will one day recognize in interest, saved exclusively for the subjects of heroes and photography and occasionally for the people caught up in his orbit.
For now, this is the very first moment Daiki finds himself spinning around this impossible magenta sun.
The man says “you should come with me”, and, before he knows it, Kaitou Daiki is free of his world.
Kadoya Tsukasa makes Fourteen seem almost benevolent, but he comforts Daiki in his openness about it. He doesn’t pretend to be good, he simply wants something and takes it because he can.
Daiki doesn’t, however, quite know how to feel about being “something”
“You’re a monster,” he tells him one day. Tsukasa smirks.
“On my spawner’s side,” He replies, and Daiki truly has not been able to figure out whether or not that statement is a joke. He’s kind of terrified of the answer. “But in the metaphorical sense… I wouldn’t say so. I simply take what I want.”
“That’s horrible,” Daiki says. Tsukasa shrugs.
“Endless forced kindness sounds worse, Kaitou,” he says. “You should join me, try things out before you decide you hate my world.”
Daiki doesn’t know why he agrees after a month of stubborn refusal.
He doesn’t think it matters.
…so it turns out he really is good at thievery. A natural knack for it. Tsukasa takes to calling him “my Kaitou” after that, for obvious reasons, and Daiki let’s him.
He feels trapped in a different way now that he’s allowed to roam the base in his new Shocker uniform. And yet… he also feels some strange form of free.
The more he helps Tsukasa, the quieter the guilt over his actions, past and present, becomes.
He doesn’t know how to feel about it. He doesn’t feel like stopping the change when the nightmares of his brother’s screams have faded.
“Kaitou,” says a familiar voice, though Daiki doesn’t bother to react, turning around calmly.
“Great Leader,” he says with a mocking he once would never have imagined he had in him. “What can I do for you?”
“I want you, my Kaitou,” Tsukasa says. Daiki blinks.
“What?”
Tsukasa walks up to him and kisses him. Oh.
“You should really buy me dinner first,” he says without thinking. Tsukasa blinks, slowly and like an animal enjoying watching its prey struggle.
“I should?” He asks. “Well, what do you like?”
Daiki blinks, fast and confused. Did Great Leader Kadoya Tsukasa just ask what he wanted?
He’s so surprised he almost defaults to what he’d been taught all his life, at that.
“Whatever you like,” he says, and then, because he refuses to stay that way. “Do you like… sea cucumber?”
“It sounds disgusting.”
“You should still try it, Great Leader.”
Tsukasa leans in closer, somehow.
“Maybe you can convince me,” he murmurs. Daiki shivers.
Daiki really should accept it by now. He is hopelessly trapped in Tsukasa’s orbit.