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The forest Akutagawa is sent in to find the white tiger is overgrown and disgustingly large. He expects to spend ages sending men to comb through the underbrush and trees before finding the tiger. 

Luckily, or rather unluckily, they do not need to find the white tiger, as it emerges from between the trees all on its own within two or so hours of arrival. 

It’s larger than what Akutagawa thinks a tiger should be and hints of blue shimmer along the edges of its coat; the Boss’s theory of it being the Ability user that’s worth so much money is likely correct. 

The tiger roars, foolishly announcing its presence to about twenty mafioso. They spin on their heels, gun’s safety already flicked off. Akutagawa has just enough time to think that it’s all over before the real hunt even thought to begin before bullets are violently ricocheting off of its massive form and his men are being thrown left and right by a snarling beast. 

Akutagawa pulls back, unsure if Rashomon could keep up with protecting him from that many bullets. He ducks into a tree, waiting for the tiger to finish so he has less obstacles in his fight. 

The tiger pauses when it completes it’s mauling of Akutagawa’s unit, and… changes. In the places of the white, man-eating tiger Akutagawa had been sent to retrieve is a boy in too small strips of blue-ish cloth that may have once passed as clothes but look pathetic on him now. The most jarring part is that the tiger fore- and hind-legs are still there, long and thick and muscled, and they look so jarringly wrong and distinctly beast-like that Akutagawa doesn’t even bother to reassign the beast the title of ‘human’ in his own mind. 

The weretiger looks stupidly pleased with himself, crouching to sniff and prod at one of the unconscious forms of the men on the ground. The few that are still lucid begin to attempt to crawl away, but the weretiger quickly gathers them up in his massive arms. Akutagawa, using Rashomon as an assistant, follows him and watches in interest as he takes a few trips, depositing a few bodies near the river at the end of the forest before going back for more. He lays them out on the ground, not in a pile the way Akutagawa thought he would, but shoulder to shoulder. 

He paces in front of them on all fours, as if unsure of his next course of action. He then exhales and turns to what Akutagawa only assumes is his territory. Akutagawa strikes then, when his back is turned and safety is assumed. 

He takes the weretiger’s leg, Rashomon slicing through flesh and fur that deflected bullets with ease and violence. The weretiger howls in pain, instinct dictating that he crunch defensively over his wound and lash out at whatever attacked. Akutagawa descends from his tree, somewhat pleased. Less of a hunt and more of an ambush, but nothing too tedious. 

Rashomon is halfway on her journey to slither around the weretiger when he disappears. Akutagawa sees him once more, eyes scrunched in his fearsome snarl, before blinding agony rips up his left arm. 

“Interloper,” the weretiger growls, voice like gravel and sandpaper. 

Snarling, Rashomon shoots to the weretiger, attacking at his back, and manages to throw him off Akutagawa before his arm is ripped from his body. 

The weretiger roars, the sound vibrating Akutagawa down to his very bones, and pounces. Rashomon, for all that she devours space and bullets, is not a defense. Akutagawa is sent hurtling back, over his useless men and into the rushing, unforgiving cold of the river. He gasps and flounders but ultimately loses the fight again to the tide. 

____

“I’ll kill you,” Akutagawa promises. 

The weretiger huffs a breath in Akutagawa’s face. He is heavy, ten times as heavy as he is in his human form. He pins Akutagawa to the grass and forces the breath from his lungs. 

“Slowly. Painfully.”

The weretiger shifts his weight and suddenly it’s a little easier to breathe. 

____

Everything is a blur around Akutagawa. His shoes slide on the gritty tarmac of the road as he ducks into another alleyway, his coat fluttering behind him. 

He is being hunted. He feels the presence at his back like a heat seeking missile aimed right at him. No matter how many twists and turns Akutagawa takes, the predator on his trail is not shaken. Rashomon rattles her bloodlust in his ear, but Akutagawa knows that to turn and fight means that he has lost. 

In his hurry, Akutagawa had chosen a dead end. He skids to a stop, Rashomon readying herself to haul him up the building when he approaches. 

Nakajima is in his halfway form. Not truly a beast but not without animal savagery to him either. His clothes are ragged and his limbs as long and jarring as they always look on his smaller human torso. 

He pounces and Akutagawa allows it, for he has lost this match of whatever animalistic game Nakajima has made up. 

Nakajima is strangely gentle when he rolls Akutagawa out on the concrete. He sits atop his stomach to stare at him instead of laying on Akutagawa like he expected. 

“I got you something,” Nakajima says, somewhat breathlessly. He reaches into his belt and pulls out a dark bundle. It unravels and Nakajima is pulling Akutagawa up by the collar of his shirt to wrap it around his neck. 

A scarf , Akutagawa realizes belatedly. 

“Why?” Akutagawa asks. 

“Because.” Nakajima shrugs. 

Instead of hunkering down for a nap while he has Akutagawa, Nakajima rises and flees from the alley, leaving Akutagawa on his back. 

Later on, Akutagawa will brush his fingers on the warm material of his scarf and wonder if the weretiger was flushed pink. 

____

“You’ve broken the vase!” 

“I did?”

“That vase was 800,500 yen!”

“That’s a lot for something that looks like… that.”

Chuuya watches with vague amusement as the low rung scammer for the Port Mafia grows redder and redder in anger. Some skinny teenager is standing in front of him, the smallest, most perplexed frown puckering his lips. 

Chuuya had been sent to investigate the happenings of gang activity in this area and to touch base with some of the mooks in his ranks as an executive. This was rather telling of the overall competence of this particular branch of lowlifes.

“You have to pay for it! Or else!”

He blinks. His face is so inscrutable that Chuuya honestly can’t tell if he’s just humoring this guy or genuinely buying the con. Come to think of it, doesn’t Chuuya know him…?

“What? What will happen?”

Maybe he’s humoring him? But on the other hand, he does sound actually curious. 

“I’ll report this to the police.” A bad bluff if Chuuya’s ever heard one. 

“But I am the police,” he says, tilting his head to the right. “Or I’m with an Agency?”

Well, shit. 

That’s the weretiger that was recruited by the Agency. Akutagawa’s newest beau (or whatever he wants to call it) that he won’t stop hunting down on the streets when he’s not on assignment. The weretiger Akutagawa swears Dazai allowed himself to be captured by the Port Mafia for. 

“That’s enough for today,” Chuuya says, capping the mook on the shoulder, because god dammit if Dazai is investing in this kid then Chuuya wants nothing more than to be far, far away. 

“Na-Nakahara-san!”

Chuuya waves him off. “Go ready the report for me.”

The mook runs off to do just that and Chuuya rounds on the teen. He can see it now that he’s looking. The teen has two-toned eyes, a single black stripe in his hair, and the lean stillness of a predator. Chuuya narrows his eyes. 

“You, weretiger. Stay away from here. This is Port Mafia territory.”

The weretiger is looking at him with that cat-like slant of his lips. “But what about the yen?”

Chuuya grits his teeth. “That thing probably costs about 2,500 yen. Get lost.”

“Oh. I guess I owe you one then.”

And the weretiger just drifts out. Chuuya very carefully does not destroy the entire shop. 

____

“Your tiger kid doesn’t seem… all there.” Chuuya notes, only a fraction of his attention on Dazai as the rest fastened onto the giant white tiger fucking frolicking with the blond boy from the Agency and Kyoka in the middle of a park. 

Dazai hummed, relaxed in every sense of the word. “He doesn’t, does he?”

It is impossible to discern that sentence as an affirmative statement or a question. Chuuya, quite pointedly, refrains from strangling Dazai. Chuuya himself is the one who stopped to observe the scene causing so much ruckus, and this new Dazai is not something Chuuya knows anymore, not as he had known Dazai before. Caution is needed on this particular issue, in case Dazai decides that Chuuya’s careful prodding is an intrusion or a threat. 

“You find him that way?”

(Did you make him that way?)

Dazai shows no hint of registering the undertone of the question, but Chuuya knows he caught it.

“Hmm.” Dazai seesawed his hand. “Hard to say. Atsushi-kun has definitely gotten better since he joined the Agency. He brought me a dead goose, once.”

Chuuya’s jaw slackened for a second. “Dumbass, I meant insane.”

“Oh.” Dazai nods. (And dammit if Chuuya isn’t used to that. Dazai never took him even a stone throw from seriously and Chuuya doesn’t know how to deal with anything else.) “You mean simple.”

Chuuya doesn’t flinch, but it’s a near thing. Dazai’s noncommittal smile takes on the glint of a familiar edge. 

“Atsushi-kun is far from simple.”

“I said insane and I meant it.”

“No, no, Chuuya,” Dazai croons, making Chuuya’s fists clench. “I heard you.”

“The hell you did!”

“Did you know that Atsushi-kun conned me?” Dazai grins at the raised eyebrow Chuuya gives him. “Wrangled my own death right out of my hands.”

Chuuya does not pale. He doesn’t. It’s just that, while Dazai is far from a god— Chuuya is the one with something ‘other’ sewn into his skin— his suicide attempts are… untouchable is the word Chuuya will graciously use. To hear that the weretiger that was almost tricked by a run of the mill scam took that away from Dazai is sort of… unnerving. 

“Atsushi-kun is intelligent in strange ways,” what the fuck, what the fuck, whatever that fond look on Dazai’s face is, it needs to die a terrible death right now, “so most people don’t see it at all.”

Chuuya was all set to interrogate Dazai more, to really grill this smug son of a bitch, but then approximately two tons of fur and muscles flew through the air to land on Dazai. 

Of course, the weretiger shifts to human immediately on impact due to the nature of Dazai’s Ability, but Dazai is still knocked over. 

“Dazai-san,” the weretiger says from where he sprawls on Dazai’s chest, either not noticing or not caring that Dazai’s breaths are coming in wheezes. “You said today was your treat.”

“Yes, yes,” Dazai says, patting the weretiger’s sides. “You’ll get your lunch, Atsushi-kun.”

The weretiger nods as though this were a promise signed in blood and of utmost importance before flouncing off to continue his weird game of death tag with the other kiddies. 

It’s only when the Agency members are long gone and Chuuya is at home that he wonders if the reason the weretiger tackled Dazai was to interrupt the flow of their conversation. 

____

“Oh. Hi, Chuuya-san.” 

Chuuya knows, objectively, that he is a bad person. Even so, he had thought he’d washed his hands of Dazai when the fucker quit the Port Mafia. To have to suffer through him again and his annoying pseudo-son is a punishment Chuuya feels he has done nothing substantial enough to deserve. 

“Ah ah, Atsushi-kun,” Dazai sing-songs. “That’s another ice cream cone I’m not buying you.”

The weretiger sighs as though Dazai is the singular bane of his short existence. Chuuya can relate. 

“What the fuck is up, Chuuya-san?”

Chuuya would really like to walk back down the street. He would really like to just throw himself above the atmosphere and never come back down. Or better yet, he can lift the chunk of concrete the weretiger and Dazai stand on and throw them above the atmosphere. But Kyoka is next to them (Ane-san will kill Chuuya if he hurts Kyoka) and Chuuya has no real excuse to use his Ability in broad daylight, so he is efficiently trapped. Damn you, Dazai. 

“You look just as fucking shitty as the last time I saw you, you rat-assed bitch,” the weretiger intones as though reading off a list. Kyoka pulls one out of the sleeve of her kimono and crosses a few things out. “Get tired of rubbing your inbred horse dildo of a nose in your bastardized grapes?”

Kyoka nods and scribbles out more things as Dazai smiles and pats the weretiger’s head approvingly, forcing the freaky as hell tiger limbs and ears to morph into regular human ones. (Chuuya will not thank any of the gods for that, because it was solely Dazai’s doing. Fuck that guy.)

“What. The fuck.”

“Oh!” Dazai beams as though Chuuya had asked for the weretiger’s baby pictures or something. “I’m teaching Atsushi-kun to swear! He promised to get through my whole list today and not say a sentence without swearing!”

“You’re forcing me you goddamn dog-faced, small-cocked, hypocrite bastard son of a weasel and a whore. I didn’t promise shit.”

“Ah,” Kyoka exclaimes quietly, scratching out at least four different things, “that’s half of the list now.”

“Now, now, Atsushi-kun.” (Chuuya might actually barf if he is forced to continue to subject himself to Dazai’s lovey-dovey cooing. Or maybe off himself.) “It’s my responsibility as your senpai in the Agency to make sure you have proper formative experiences.”

The weretiger doesn’t say anything, only looks at Dazai with mournful disdain and morose disgust. Dazai tuts disapprovingly.

“I had to tell you what sexual intercourse was.”

“You tried, you incompetent fuck-llama. Yasano-san was the one who taught me instead of just talking out of her ass.”

The weretiger turns to Kyoka expectantly. She shakes her head. 

“Already used those.”

The weretiger kicked at a stray pebble. 

Has Chuuya mentioned that he’d rather be anywhere other than here? Because he would. He’d cut off his own hand to be at home with a glass of wine. Or even in the middle of a battlefield and on the verge of death. 

“So mean to me, Atsushi-kun! I did my best, but it’s not my fault you needed a medical professional to help you understand.”

The weretiger sniffs. “The orphanage was Catholic; that sort of stuff wasn’t in the books there.”

“That’s another ice cream cone,” Dazai says cheerfully. The weretiger groans. 

(But Dazai’s eyes linger on the weretiger, absorbing the throwaway sentence like it was water and he was a man dying of thirst. His eyes darken and his mouth tightens imperceptibly, but Chuuya spots it. Chuuya doesn’t want to know what Dazai has planned for whatever orphanage the weretiger came from.)

“If any of you keep talking,” Chuuya growls, massaging his temples, “I’ll kill you where you stand.”

But they ignore him, the bastards, and stroll right past him, Dazai and the weretiger still bickering. Only Kyoka glances back at Chuuya. 

Chuuya is getting so, so drunk tonight.

____

It’s rather nice to see Kyoka in good hands. 

Kouyou doesn’t actually know if those hands are capable at all or loving, but they are good. Even if they are tiger claws more than half the time, they are good. 

That being said, Kouyou did not expect to see the weretiger again, much less have him accost her on her weekly stroll under the cherry blossoms. 

He’s entirely human this time, thank the gods, and eyeing her not unlike a real tiger would a particularly plump peafowl. 

“Kouyou-san,” he intones gravely. Kouyou lowers her parasol to firmly grip the handle of her sword. “I have to ask something of you.”

“Is Kyoka…”

“Yes,” the weretiger nods, sunlight refracting off his silver hair. “I need your help.”

Eyes darting around the garden, Kouyou straightens herself to walk briskly towards the weretiger. 

“I’m afraid I won’t be much help. With Mori-dono here, I—”

“Kyoka-chan’s hair is getting really dry.” Kouyou freezes. “She doesn’t want to cut any of it off, but it’s getting unhealthy. What should I get her?”

Kouyou does not pinch the bridge of her nose or slaughter the weretiger where he stands, no matter how she is tempted to do both. 

“Child.” She says after a long, long pause and more than a couple deep breaths. “What hair products do you buy currently?”

The weretiger shrugs. “Nothing. Kyoka gets herself whatever’s on sale.”

Kouyou is very glad she never implied to anyone, not even herself, that the weretiger is competent. 

“You will take this,” Kouyou says, pulling her checkbook from the purse inside of her kimono sleeves. A good mafioso always has money on them. “And you will buy Kyoka the proper hair care products. Starting with moisturizing shampoo, conditioner, and a dry spray, and then face wash and feminine products. This is for Kyoka and Kyoka only.”

The weretiger nods. In the sunlight through the cherry blossom trees, he looks… fetching in a way. If he had been successfully recruited by the Port Mafia, Kouyou would not have minded taking him under her wing the way she had Kyoka and Chuuya. She definitely would have fixed the disparaged, orphaned child look he had about him, at any rate.

In a moment of what Kouyou later calls insanity, she rips off another check. “Get yourself a better haircut. What you have is disgraceful.”

The weretiger tips his head to the side. “I… can buy a haircut?”

Kouyou’s lips thin out into a flat line. 

____

“What’s love, Kouyou-san?”

Kouyou drops whatever it is that is in her grip. She’s forgotten it now, no matter what it was. 

The weretiger blinks in that long, slow way of his that makes him seem entirely clueless. He doesn’t even breath before continuing. “I’ve been thinking about it, lately. I don’t actually know what it is

Kouyou’s nails dig into her palm. (Did he tell Kyoka he loved her? Did he dare draw the breath to say such a falsehood? The weretiger had lied. He had drawn Kyoka further down his selfish path in the light, so Kyoka’s ebony blossom would wither and crumble in on itself. He had lied to her. Lied about something he knows nothing about.)

“I read about tigers, you know.” The weretiger says congenially, as though Kouyou’s sword is not seconds away from splitting his arteries open. “Tigers are solitary animals, with the exception of mothers and their cubs. I… was solitary. I liked it.”

(Kouyou knows that song and dance. Knows it as though she composed it herself, for she too danced along to it.)

“I wouldn’t call the Agency a pack. But they're all mine. Kyoka-chan is mine. And I like her best. Except for Dazai-san. And maybe Boss and Yosano-san. Do you think I love them?”

(That soothes the fingers that twitch for her blade. The weretiger will not betray. It is not in his genes, his code, his atoms. He will rise and fall with the Armed Detective Agency, through dark, destructive waters and cool oases, Kyoka with him as he does.)

“Child,” Kouyou says tightly. They’re in a store. As a proud assassin, Kouyou cannot expose herself within the view of so many witnesses. “I know nothing of love. You would do well to never speak of it again.”

Why had she allowed herself to invite the weretiger on an educational journey for hair-care? Why had she even thought to care? This is nonsense. Foolishness.

“I don’t know who else to ask, though. Akutagawa would try to kill me, Chuuya-san would throw me off a building again, Dazai-san would jump off a building to distract me, Kunikida-san would talk about his Ideal, Yosano-san would cut off my tail, and Poe-san would just talk about Ranpo-san, and Kenji-kun would—”

Kouyou makes a sharp slice through the air like she’s cutting through the weretiger’s words with her hand. 

“I. Know nothing. Of love,” Kouyou intones through gritted teeth. 

“Okay,” the weretiger says, peering up at her guilelessly. “But can I ask one more question?”

“No,” Kouyou replies shortly, striding for the counter. She will not have had to endure the weretiger’s irksome company and childish conversation only to leave empty handed.

“Do people have to feel the same way for it to be love?”

Kouyou freezes in her tracks. The weretiger slides to a smooth, graceful stop beside her, eyes so child-like and innocent, Kouyou can almost forget the squads of mafia men and yakuza this boy has destroyed without effort. 

“No,” Kouyou answered in spite of herself. “Not at all.”

The weretiger’s face does not shift an inch, but the tipping motion of his head and subsequent huff ring as particularly mournful. 

“I thought so.”

(Kouyou understands. Understands because she’s seen that feeling in the mirror as she drowned in tar-like darkness that crept through every orifice and tear in the skin. Seen it in Kyoka and Chuuya and many of the others she’s pulled to her. Seen it and lived it and loathed it.)

They are silent as they part ways.

____

In Hirotsu’s opinion, the less said about the weretiger’s frequent storming of the Port Mafia, the better. 

“Ah, Hirotsu-san,” the weretiger calls, striped limbs coiled gracefully where he crouches. (He seems to be less ‘half beast’ today and more ‘quarter human’. The tiny snub nose in the midst of the tiger fur and fangs is rather… disorienting.) “Is Akutagawa here?”

Where else would he be, Hirotsu wants to say. The only reason he leaves is to find you, and you’re here.

“How are the new recruits?” Hirotsu asks instead. 

The weretiger tips his head to the side, and would you look at that? The uncouth, safety scissors haircut is gone. The bangs are still choppy and slanting to the left of the weretiger’s face, but it’s overall much more pleasant to look at. (Or, Hirotsu imagines it to be. He’s rather resolutely avoiding looking at the weretiger’s face.)

“Yosano-san is going to be mad. She’s been wanting me to wear this shirt for ages.”

The newbies are too trigger happy. 

(And may be in danger in the next confrontation with the Armed Detective Agency.)

Hirotsu nods. “Akutagawa-san is with Gin.”

A breath of air and a white tiger is springing nimbly down the hall. 

Hirotsu resigns himself to writing the report. 

____

Gin thinks the weretiger is rather… cute. 

(Not in the sense that her brother probably thinks he’s cute. The weretiger has one Akutagawa after him, and one is more than enough.)

It’s strange how cuddly he is as a tiger the size of a horse. How he’ll chase her brother around the city only to release Ryunosuke as soon as he catches him. How he’ll blink long and slow at her, human form or tiger form or otherwise, before snatching Ryunosuke. 

Gin has never really been one for cats, but she thinks she can see the appeal now. The weretiger is weirdly adorable, when he’s not being some sort of natural abomination that sends all of her assassin’s instincts into overdrive. 

He is so cute, sometimes Gin just really wants to pet him, which would be a terrible shame that Gin would have to carry for the rest of her life.

So for her own safety, and the safety of her brother’s wits, she endeavors to avoid the weretiger. Unfortunately, the weretiger isn’t a person of humility and sacrifice.

And so Gin is forced to suffer the cute black tufts of hair that stick out from the tops of his tiger ears in absolute silence.

____

“Jinko,” her brother snarls, because he has no sense whatsoever. (He’s lucky the weretiger seems to have even less sense.)

It’s pathetic in the smallest of ways, because they are shopping right now. They are not in uniform or under any obligation to be anything but civil to one another. They happened upon the weretiger, outside of his almost bi-weekly hunts for her brother and conflict in their respective jobs. This should be a stroke of luck to her brother. And yet, he uses it the same way he always does. 

“Akutagawa,” the weretiger says with that blandly curious face of his. He turns to Gin and blinks very slowly at her. Gin nods in return. 

(It might be because he doesn’t actually know her name.)

“Oh, what’s this?” Dazai is right behind the weretiger, because of course he is. “Akutagawa-kun and Gin-chan. Such a surprise.”

Ryunosuke tenses. 

Dazai smiles widely. All Gin can see is how he very carefully puts a hand on the weretiger’s shoulder, in very clear view of her brother. Oh wow. 

“Dazai-san,” her brother responds, the short, involuntary cough that always follows his words slightly deeper than normal. 

Gin nods to him as well. 

“Atsushi-kun,” Dazai says, turning to the weretiger without a second glance to them. “We should get back before Kyoka-chan starts missing us.”

The weretiger slowly turns from his weird staring contest with her brother to, somewhat reluctantly, it seems to Gin, nod at Dazai. 

Ryunosuke takes a tiny stumble of a step forward, and oh, would you look at that. He’s wearing the scarf the weretiger gave him today. 

(Not that he’s ever really not wearing it.)

“Nakajima,” he says, slowly and quietly, like he’s half hoping the weretiger doesn’t hear him.

Unluckily for him, the weretiger has sharp hearing even when he looks entirely human. He turns back, eyes on her brother. Dazai does not tug on his arm, but Gin thinks it’s a close call. 

The weretiger smiles very, very slowly. Gin can do very little but blink in astonishment. When the weretiger smiles that way, every muscle pulling up deliberately and warmly, it’s easy to forget the nausea and terror his half beast form gives her. It’s actually making her a little lightheaded. 

(Her brother is affected much more drastically.)

“Call me Atsushi, Akutagawa.” His smile puckers to a small, thoughtful frown. “Outside of work.”

Ryunosuke doesn’t say anything. Gin doesn’t think he’s entirely capable. But the weretiger— she should really start calling him by his name (what did Ryunosuke say? Nakajima? How did he find out? Actually, Gin is fine not knowing how.) since, if her brother plays his cards right, she’s going to be seeing more of him. 

“Atsushi-kun,” Dazai whines (perhaps rubbing the use of the name in Ryunosuke’s face), tugging on Nakajima’s arm. “I’m hungry.”

(Wow, calling him Nakajima is weird.)

Nakajima nods as though Dazai is a particularly insistent child, casting them one more look over his shoulder before trotting off. 

Gin thinks Nakajima is cute, but if he keeps rendering her brother completely speechless and infunctional in the middle of the street, she will need to take steps. 

____

“Nakajima,” Gin begins tartly, “why is my brother on the ground.”

(She hates speaking to anyone who knows of her work. Her voice is soft and feminine and the antithesis to what she is trying to present in the midst of the Port Mafia. Only, Nakajima isn’t intimidated by anything, and Gin has really been trying to not be a commander of the Black Lizard at all hours of the day, including after work.)

If she were to tip her head to a certain angle and mildly squint, the expression on Nakajima’s face could be described as sheepish. 

“Naka wanted to meet him.”

Naka looks to be just short of a kilogram, the dingey white of it’s fur stark against the pressed white of her brother’s shirt. Her brother is also sprawled out on the tarmac in the middle of the street, kitten on his chest. 

“Naka,” Gin says slowly, raising a single brow. “The kitten.”

Nakajima nods. “Boss named her after me. I found her.”

At times like these, Gin wonders if Nakajima is genuinely obtuse or bullshitting her with the highest cunning achievable. 

(She thinks it may be a part of his charm. She honestly hasn’t decided yet.)

____

Water, cotton, spotty dots, anything and everything was clouding his head, his vision, his ears, his nose. The sharp smell of fog and wet is faint, the contrast of red, red-orange, red-brown, and brown bricks blur at the edges and fold together. He can’t hear the murmur of nightly commuters outside, can’t hear the faint rumble of vehicles. He is senseless. Blind and deaf and anosmic. 

Although he had bolted up from his futon bare moments ago, Atsushi staggered. He tips left and hits the ground, stunned and nearly catatonic. The tatami mats feel inordinately rough against his skin. 

“Atsushi!” Kyoka is immediately at his side. 

“It’s gone,” Atsushi murmurs to himself, to Kyoka. He can’t feel the shift, the promise of power and strength. He can’t allow his tail or ears or claws to bubble up from inside of himself. He can’t feel the predatory pressure within him. “It’s gone.”

(Atsushi has never minded his human form, no matter how powerless it is. Because he hasn’t ever really been traditionally human. He is a tiger and a human. He is both. Both.)

(So why is he trapped as one?)

Teeth clenched and body shaking, Atsushi rises from the floor to peek out the door. Fog is coiling about the street, dark and abandoned. Atsushi’s senses hadn’t been making up the lack of cars and commuters. The people in the cars and walking just… weren’t where they were a minute ago. 

“What do you mean,” Kyoka asked, hand placed worriedly on his arm. 

“He’s done it,” Atsushi says, still unbalanced. “Shibusawa has made his first move. I can’t… I can’t change.”

Kyoka blinks, dazed. “You can’t… you don’t…?”

(His tiger isn’t an Ability. It’s another form for Atsushi to inhabit at any time he pleases. It’s another set of organs and limbs and appendages, all for Atsushi to mix and match as it suits him.)

(He’s not whole without it.)

(Some part of Atsushi is still lying on the floor, wailing with his sobs. He is inconsolable, heartbroken at his own weakness. Devastated in his complete grief. He wants it back back back back back, give it back, please give it back, not again, never again—)

(But it won’t be given back. Atsushi has to go get it. So he stands up.)

“No.” Atsushi says, taking small steps out the door. “But I’ll get it back.”

Kyoka nods fervently. If she stands a little too close to his side to be completely casual, Atsushi doesn’t say anything. 

____

Demon Snow and his tiger are collaborating. That is the only explanation for the absolute farce in front of Atsushi’s very own eyes. 

Kyoka is quick and her knife is deadly. But she lacks power in comparison to Demon Snow, which is just as quick as her. She struggles, and when she tries to move in close to Atsushi, she is pushed back. 

(Atsushi had taken one look at his tiger and almost keeled over once more, this time in relief. Not gone, he tells himself. Not gone.)

His tiger is prowling around him, circling closer and closer. Atsushi plants his feet. He is the predator here, not the facsimile of his tiger. 

And yet when the tiger strikes, he is the one fleeing. 

Why, Atsushi calls to it as he dodges the gleaming claws of which he was so proud. Why won’t you come back to me? 

(You should. You should come back, you need to come back, you have to, just like the last ti—)

Atsushi had a gun, the one Kunikida had hurriedly pressed into his hands before disappearing, drawing out his own Ability for Atsushi and Kyoka’s safety. For all that it was given to him as a token of luck and worry, Atsushi can not bear to raise the gun to the beast that ripples through the fog and moonlight. It clatters harshly when it hits the pavement. 

Kyoka pulls him into a car, blasting through the street much faster than Dazai ever did, but Atsushi is too shaken and distraught to enjoy the ride. 

____

Akutagawa is a much needed breath of fresh air at the same time that he is completely damning, what with the magma-lit wraith that is Rashomon nipping at his heels the same way Atsushi and Kyoka’s pursuers are. 

Despite that, Atsushi is inclined to forgive him because Akutagawa is what saves them both, though Kyoka does seem a little miffed that she herself hadn’t thought of the so-called emergency passage. 

“So that’s Kyoka’s Demon Snow, your Rashomon, and my…” Atsushi chokes. Unclenching his hands from the fabric of his shirt is a trial, a supremely arduous endeavor, but he manages. “My tiger.”

Akutagawa is oddly stiff as he nods. 

“We know where the enemy base is,” Kyoka says. “And who we’re fighting. Who are our allies?”

“Everyone at the Agency is… busy,” Atsushi winces. “Dazai-san is… out.”

Not at all fazed, Akutagawa nods. “The Port Mafia is similarly occupied.”

“Then we storm the castle.” Kyoka says simply. “But first…”

“The matter of our Abilities.” Akutagawa finishes. “All that needs to be done is defeat them.”

Atsushi slowly regains his white knuckled grip on the hem of his shirt. 

(I can’t. He wants to say. I can’t hurt it. Me. It’s mine and me and I can’t hurt it.)

(But Atsushi knows what needs saying and what doesn’t.)

“Alright,” he rasps. “Let’s go.”

____

Akutagawa draws Rashomon away. Kyoka resumes her fierce dance with Demon Snow. Atsushi once again stands still, prey being stalked. 

He tries, tries so hard to gather strength, the old fear and rage. He tries to ball his hands into fists, to stand firm and tall and meet his wayward tiger head-on. 

For all that he seethes internally, overturns the loathing and anguish of old, Atsushi can’t. 

(You are not strong enough for what is beyond that door, the Headmaster had murmured in the haze of Atsushi’s dream, the pearl gray doors beyond even more menacing than him.)

(Maybe he’s right.)

He doesn’t hate the tiger. The tiger is him, a piece melded to his insides and dripped like a wax coating over his heart. 

So when the tiger creeps close on silent paws, Atsushi let’s it bowl him over. His shoulder hits the ground first, jarring uncomfortably, and his head hits last. Eyes screwed closed, Atsushi hisses a breath between clenched teeth. 

A gory death is most likely. One with torn up tissue and blood spilled across the street, leaving Atsushi a lifeless puppet lost in the roiling fog.

Atsushi tenses, waiting for the sensation of teeth to rip through his jugular. 

All that he feels is hot breath blooming against his skin. 

Glowing eyes more vividly yellow than the sunset painted clouds, than lemons, than the pointed petals of a sunflower stare at him. His tiger isn’t white like this. It is almost completely translucent and glimmers in shades of blue and green. It hurts to see. 

Atsushi feathers a hand on the rough fur of its neck. 

“Come back,” Atsushi breathes into the air between them. “Come back.”

The tiger rears up, roaring it’s defiance. But Atsushi holds fast, fists clenched and teeth bared.

“You have to come back.”

Even though his fingers are numb and shaking from the strain of holding his tiger, Atsushi tightens them. 

“Because you. Are. Mine.” Atsushi growls. “Come. Back.”

The tiger’s struggle abruptly ends. There is a brief brush of fur against Atsushi’s forehead (his tiger bowing and meeting Atsushi in the middle the way it always has) and then his tiger melts back into Atsushi. Filling the hole in his chest, gluing the shattered clefts of his heart back together. 

Atsushi roars. In victory, in rage, in vengeance, and as a warning. 

Shibusawa Tatsuhiko will not survive the night. 

____

(You do not have the strength to face what is beyond this door, the Headmaster tells him once more, as looming and imperious as he’s always been.

You’re wrong. Atsushi snarls back.)

(Atsushi may have once been too weak for that. But not ever again. Atsushi is strong. The strongest tiger to ever live, no matter the circumstance.)

(Hand grasping the carved doors, Atsushi turns back to the man he hated above all else, looking him over one last time.)

(You don’t belong here. Not anymore.)

(The doors are easy to open.)

____

“Your Ability is just as beautiful as the last time I saw it,” Shibusawa sighs, dreamy and completely delusional, even as Atsushi’s teeth are lunging for his throat. “My, how you’ve grown, Atsushi-chan.”

Atsushi does not dignify him with a response. He couldn’t, even if he wanted to. A tiger’s tongue is not suited for human speech. 

“Will you thank me, Atsushi-chan?” Shibusawa coos, sounding overjoyed at the prospect. “I drew out your perfect tiger. I gave you your salvation, just as you gave me mine.”

(“Beautiful jewel,” Shibusawa-san croons, brushing a hand through Atsushi’s hair. Atsushi stands still and at attention, the way he was taught, and allows himself a dollop of hope.)

(“This world is dirty, Atsushi-chan.” Shibusawa says as he straps Atsushi’s flailing arm to the chair. “Boring. You’ll shine brighter than ever in my collection.”

For all that it will amount to nothing, Atsushi can not help but scream as electricity arcs painfully up his spine. Hope. How naive of him.)

Few sounds will ever be as remotely satisfying as the crunch Shibusawa’s spine makes when Atsushi bites down on it. 

Shibusawa’s scream before he dies is one of them. 

____

Blood is splattered across the concrete, but Atsushi doesn’t care. 

Shibusawa is dead, but Atsushi doesn’t care. 

The fight isn’t over. 

Atsushi’s rage has yet to dwindle. 

There is a motherfucking dragon tearing up Atsushi’s territory.

So Atsushi steps over Shibusawa’s remains, intent and fury rolling with his muscles. 

Akutagawa nods to him as he prowls. Kyoka gives him a grim smile. 

“Save the city, Atsushi.”

Atsushi’s roar shakes the buildings. 

____

All that happens is Atsushi gets into a brawl with Chuuya— a howling, screaming, striped Chuuya— on top of a flying building before getting bodily thrown into Dazai, who was somehow trapped in the beast’s belly. 

“At- Atsushi-kun?”

Dazai had startled awake, eyes blinking rapidly. Unfortunately, as he wakes up, the dragon disintegrates and they start to plummet to the ground. 

Atsushi snatches Dazai in his mouth by the end of his white coat, wary of any skin contact. They land—  Atsushi on all fours with Dazai safely in hand. 

Chuuya lands too, crumbling the concrete beneath him into a large crater, and charges blindly for Atsushi. Atsushi leaps to meet him. 

They romp, fight, play, whatever it is they were doing for an indiscernible amount of time. Maybe a minute, maybe an hour. 

All Atsushi knows is that when Chuuya got a hand to his throat— the gouges in his sides from Atsushi’s claws weeping blood freely— Atsushi put his fangs to Chuuya’s chest cavity. Then Dazai tackled Chuuya to the ground.

“No killing my cute subordinates, Chuuya.” Dazai huffs from on top of him. 

“Get the fuck off me you ugly son of a bitch.” Chuuya groans back before his breathing smooths out. 

Dazai clicks his tongue in a way that rings distinctly fond before staggering off of him. 

“Great job, Atsushi-kun,” he says cheerfully, surveying the wreckage of Yokohama. “You saved the city.”

He passes out right next to Chuuya.