Chapter Text
Osomatsu was, in more ways than one, the main character of his personal world. The eldest that everyone followed, he always knew what he wanted and grabbed it by the horns.
Mess with his brothers? Got it. Flirt with Totoko? Absolutely. Head off to the horse races? Sure thing. Nothing was going to stop him, and that's always how it was gonna be.
Even in his own dreams.
He had noticed it after the first three nights. Dreams were more often than not random things that his mind loved to conjure, regardless of whether he understood it or not, but around the fourth night he began to notice a trend that kept appearing.
It always involved his brothers. Whether they were demons or angels, princes or princesses, all six of them were always there despite half of them no longer being in the same premises. Osomatsu would usually never remember the specific details of what happened in said dreams, but the fact that four dreams in a row involved them sextuplets together was becoming suspicious, even for him.
So as the (self-proclaimed) main character, he decided to find out for himself what was going on.
"Orson, is something the matter?"
The eldest blinked as he was called to attention by one of his brothers. They were in the cafeteria of their school eating lunch together; Juicy was eating like there was no tomorrow as Todd tried to clean up his mess. Karla was listening to a new record he found yesterday, while Itchy kept reading some occult books he got from the library.
(So this is...)
"Choromatsu."
Chorlie blinked.
"Huh? No, my name's Chorlie. Unless you somehow got a concussion from being thrown in the trash earlier by those jocks."
Osomatsu shook his head.
"No, I'm pretty sure you're supposed to be Choromatsu" Osomatsu said with certainty, the other brothers stopping their own activities to stare at him. "This is... I'm dreaming right now, aren't I?"
His younger brothers just continued to look at him, as if frozen in place.
Osomatsu grinned.
"I thought so. Now, if you'll excuse me."
It was as if time stopped as he stood up, walking out of the cafeteria, the dream's setup as he ended up in what seemed like a white void. He even removed the sweater vest that he somehow found himself in, immediately being replaced by his signature red hoodie.
(Now that's more like it), Osomatsu thought to himself with satisfaction. (But... where do I go from here?)
The cafeteria backdrop seemed to be a distant memory now as the eldest continued to walk through the endless void, hands in his hoodie pocket, whistling to himself as he tried to figure out what to do.
(If this a dream and I'm aware of it, then I can more or less control what I can be on, right?)
As he thought that, the white void slowly filled itself with colors of the familiar scenery of Akatsuka Ward, finding himself by the riverside.
"Neat."
So he can more or less control what he was dreaming about now, awesome. Just as expected.
But this isn't what he was here for, he remembered now. Knowing that he was in a dream was just the first step.
The second step was figuring out what was causing his current trend of dreams, IF there was something causing said trend. He loved his brothers, sure, but not to THAT extent where he'd dream of them each night.
He'd dream about grander things, like getting rich with minimum effort. Hey, no one said about dreams needing to be super grand! This was within realm of reason!
Still, he was getting nowhere. This was getting nowhere. He wasn't getting anywhere. But still, it was nice having some form of control here, even if he was meant to be asleep.
"Come on brain, think!" Osomatsu chastised himself, tapping the side of his head with his right hand. "You're me, and we both know we wouldn't be this sappy. How would we think such things, unless–"
He paused.
Oh god.
He knew exactly ONE person, ONE brother who would unabashedly be like this.
"Karamatsu is setting up the dreams."
The conclusion was barely logical, but it made sense. It felt like it made sense. It felt right to an idiot like him.
Karamatsu had to be behind this.
How? That didn't matter, but Osomatsu knew what to do now.
"We gotta find Karamatsu in this dream place."
Maybe he can dream Karamatsu up? He closed his eyes and concentrated, brows furrowed as he tried to materialize the second brother up.
Nothing.
"Fuck, thought that'd work."
There was a version of Karamatsu earlier, so he knows that it's possible. Was something else at play?
He frowned.
"We're gonna do this the hard way, huh?"
(Okay then, Karappi. I've got all night to do this.)
Osomatsu continued to walk down the dreamt up road, this time with conviction.
(Whatever you've got hiding, I'm gonna find out.)