Chapter Text
“That girl in the back! She’s getting away!”
Chuuya whipped around to see that his men were right — one of their assailants was an ability user, and she was using her power to escape.
Shit.
Mori had been painfully clear when he’d assigned this mission. He expected no survivors.
Chuuya dropped his ability’s hold on the six or seven people around him, then kicked off of a nearby wall to propel himself at the girl. She was slowly dissipating into light, vanishing upwards into the ceiling, but before the edge of her coat could vanish Chuuya shot by like a dark bullet, reached out, and just barely grabbed it.
The Port Mafia was attempting an ambush. It was a high risk assault, and Chuuya was at the forefront of it. Their target was a group called Echo, which had been systematically hunting down and killing the mafia’s men for weeks. Chuuya had lost close friends, and he refused to lose any more.
The struggle, though, was that no one knew the exact size of the group. They still didn’t know, even as they sent in some of the mafia’s most valuable men to Echo’s central hideout. Mori, of course, assured the members he sent on this mission that they’d come out victorious. He claimed he always knew exactly how many men to send into a fight, calling it his special power. Scheming mastermind that Mori was, Chuuya didn’t think even he could’ve expected this.
When the mafia reached the parking garage that Echo was operating out of, they’d approached silently with death on their lips. They’d planned to drop in and eliminate the threat without bloodshed on their side. But Echo had known they were coming.
In the garage, they were met with guns blazing and special abilities they weren’t prepared to face. Akutagawa had grappled with an ice user that was arguably more powerful than most mafia members. When Chuuya saw that the two of them were fairly matched, he’d realized exactly how deeply in trouble they were. The mafia had sent in nearly sixty of their finest. But Echo had a hundred.
Against all odds, the fight had turned in the mafia’s favor, probably because of how much Echo had underestimated Chuuya.
So now, as Chuuya gripped the coat of the Gifted woman who was attempting to escape the fight, he knew the tide of battle was in his hands. He couldn’t let her escape to call in Echo’s reinforcements. (The mafia had disrupted cell signals in the building, but who knew where this girl was teleporting to)
Chuuya stretched gravity away from his enemy, a red glow illuminating from his hands as he pulled her down into the ground with intense force.
She should’ve crashed into the ground, unconscious. But instead she didn’t budge, and the light that she was vanishing into spread onto Chuuya’s hands, still grasping her coat.
“What?!”
Chuuya watched as the light trickled down his arms, and he too was pulled upwards into the ability’s halo.
He pushed himself away with the full force of his gravity manipulation, but it was too late, and a dim whiteness spread over his vision. The sounds of the fight receded too, the voices of his companions fading away, until he could sense nothing at all.
———
Chuuya awoke on the slick ground of the parking garage, his senses distorted and the world around him covered in a thin haze.
“What the hell just happened?”
He attempted to stand up, only to knock his hat on the side-view mirror of a car, causing him to stumble forward. Slowly, he realized that he was precisely where he’d been before the teleportation ability had swallowed him. Only now, the garage was silent, the night peaceful. He couldn’t feel any serious injuries, so he had no idea how he’d been knocked out. He stood there for a moment, letting the world come into focus. He felt dizzy, as if he’d been drinking, but without any of the pleasant buzz.
He pulled out his phone, looking for any new messages from the boss or his teammates, but found nothing. No signal either. He couldn’t even make a call.
Something was off.
Chuuya wandered the building. There was no sign of the fight. A wall that he was sure he himself had crashed through was fully intact, and the garage was filled with cars that hadn’t been there minutes ago. Echo’s facilities and men had completely vanished. And so had the Port Mafia.
Had everyone left? Or had that ability done something much more serious than teleportation?
And—wait a minute—did his men really leave him passed out on the ground between two cars?! They were as unreliable as that asshole, Dazai!
He needed to report back to Mori and find out what had happened. And probably give Akutagawa a piece of his mind.
Flipping gravity’s pull, Chuuya leapt to the ceiling and walked over to a window for a better vantage point.
It had taken him years to fully master his ability. He’d never tell anyone this, but when he was first with the Sheep, Shirase was the one who’d helped him get a handle on his powers. Shirase had been the one to suggest he put his hands in his pockets if he felt his power slipping out of control. The Port Mafia, Mori, and even Dazai for that matter had only really seen him use his powers when his abilities were already honed to a fine blade, a weapon. But long ago he’d practice jumping onto walls and ceilings late at night and learn a thousand ways not to use his ability. He would land on his knees, or deactivate his ability while still on the ceiling and land headfirst onto his makeshift bed. Once, he’d even had some nightmare about darkness and beasts and awoken on the wall, his pillow still floating next to him. And of course, he’d never truly mastered Corruption, and he didn’t believe he ever would. That part of his ability was too dark and wild for him to ever fully wield it.
At least, not without Dazai to reign him back in.
He reached the window, his boots scraping its rough concrete edge. Since he was standing in the large gap where the window met the ceiling, there was no railing. But he had no fear of falling. Not with a power like his. Trying his phone again, he quickly realized he still couldn’t make any calls. Maybe the teleport had fried it. He gazed out over the glow of the city, the sky and its near full moon below him, looking for the mafia’s skyscrapers so he knew which direction to leap in. He could’ve sworn this was the garage’s eastward facing wall, but he saw only an empty skyline. So he ran up the building’s outer edge to reach its roof. At the top of the parking garage, he was left in shock.
The mafia’s skyscrapers were gone. Torn from the skyline. It was as if they’d never existed.
———
Chuuya dashed across scattered rooftops as fast as his ability would allow, heading for a safe house that he desperately hoped was untouched by whatever the woman’s ability had affected. Lights from windows whipped past him, and wind lashed at his face. The quiet city around him had an uneasy, unsettling air. Or maybe that was just his creeping dread.
Reality-altering abilities were practically unheard of. The few people that possessed them were usually locked up in government facilities before they reached their teenage years. The Special Operations Division was diligent in its work, capturing anyone they thought were risks to public safety. He’s pretty sure this woman’s ability should have constituted a risk. Hell, the government had even considered Chuuya a threat and all he could bend was gravity, not fucking reality.
As the city flew by around him, Chuuya found himself wishing that this wasn’t his crisis to deal with. He should’ve been home by now, cracking open a new bottle of wine in celebration of Echo’s swift defeat. He’d never asked to get involved in some big mystery with powers and disappearances. He’d never been good at puzzles like this. If someone like Dazai had been assigned to this job, there never would’ve been a mystery in the first place. Dazai would’ve just… had the answer, from the start. But that idiot had left the Port Mafia, left him, and he was pretty certain that Dazai wasn’t about to magically change his mind.
Damn.
He’d caught himself thinking about Dazai again.
The building came up quickly in his peripheral vision. He pulled his ability to a sharp stop, his feet dragging across the rooftop dust as he skidded to a halt. From what he could see, everything at the safe house was as it should be. This was the Port Mafia’s oldest building; its original headquarters, before Mori rose to power. They’d never sold off the building, instead repurposing it as a safe house where Port Mafia members could regroup when everything went to shit. He could make out the shadow of a guard at the building’s side entrance, exactly where one should be stationed.
He let out a breath he wasn’t aware he was holding. The Port Mafia wasn’t gone. Akutagawa, Gin, Higuchi… he hoped they were alright, that they hadn’t been in the skyscrapers when they vanished.
Chuuya leapt off the roof, landing silently in an alleyway. He adjusted his gloves, then crossed the street and approached the grunt guarding the safe house’s side door. As he did, the man reached for his gun.
“Calm down,” Chuuya sighed, raising his hands in mock surrender. “It’s just me.”
The grunt still grabbed his gun, and Chuuya realized with deep annoyance that this must be one of those new recruits, the ones that think they know everything. They’re horrible sticklers for protocol who haven’t realized if an executive tells you to stand down, you stand down.
Chuuya set down his arms—and his pleasant tone—and tried again. “Look, I don’t have time to do the whole secret-code-at-the-door thing. I need to report to the boss immediately. So you’re going to let me by.”
To Chuuya’s surprise, the man pulled his gun, leveling it at Chuuya’s chest, and then said something incredibly insulting.
“I don’t know who you are, kid, and there’s no way you’re getting through to the boss. So you’d better scram.”
Chuuya bristled. KID? “You wanna run that by me again?! You’re talking to your superior, so you’d better show some respect!”
“You’re no superior of mine.”
Chuuya, shocked, stared into this guy’s face and saw no hint of recognition. He really had no idea who Chuuya was. What the hell was happening here?
Chuuya walked past the grunt, entirely ignoring his gun. “I’ve dealt with enough tonight. I’m not dealing with some idiotic low-level member who doesn’t even know his own executives. Set off some alarm, if you want. I don’t really give a damn.”
He heard the gun click as he passed the man. This fool was actually going to try and fire at him.
The grunt spoke in a low rumble. “One more step, and I shoot.” He clearly meant it.
“When I report to Mori, I’m getting you fired. Just so you know,” Chuuya replied.
Bang!
The bullet slapped into the back of Chuuya’s coat, hung in the air for a moment, then harmlessly bounced to the floor. The grunt let more shots fire, but they continuously fell to the ground as soon as they neared Chuuya. He could hear the grunt calling for backup frantically. Good. Hopefully the backup would actually understand what it meant to be an executive.
Looking around the shockingly silent inside of the building, Chuuya noticed that it seemed different than he remembered. He never really came to any of the mafia’s safe houses, because he never needed to hide. He didn’t lose, so he didn’t have to run. But he’d visited before, and the layout had changed. Doors were arranged differently, and the set up was much more grand than he’d expected. He had another sense of that unnerving, unsettling feeling from before. The building, set up as it was now, reminded him of something someone told him a while ago, but he couldn’t pin it down.
His thoughts were interrupted by a clattering in the small room to his left, followed by a young voice. It sounded like… a kid falling? For whatever reason, the sound had startled him.
He needed to go report to Mori, but this was weird, and he was oddly curious. So he went over to the side door and pushed it open.
Inside was a young boy sitting cross-legged on the ground. He was messing with… pill bottles. So this was a medical room. The boy had dark brown hair, and it was an awful mess. He was mumbling something quietly to himself about medicine.
Chuuya cleared his throat to avoid startling the boy. Which was weird — why did he even care? He needed to report to Mori. But something felt horribly wrong about this kid being in this room. He had no explanation for it.
“Hey, kid,” Chuuya asked, “what are you doing in here?”
The boy turned his head.
Chuuya’s stomach dropped, and he was falling, falling, because this was impossible.
The boy was unmistakably Dazai. He couldn’t be more than ten.
Suddenly, everything clicked.
The safe house looked exactly like how Mori had described the mafia’s old headquarters. It WAS the mafia’s old headquarters. And the skyscrapers were missing from the skyline because they hadn’t been built yet.
No one knew who he was because at this point, he wasn’t in the mafia. In fact, he was probably still in the lab.
This… was the past.
And there is, of course, the saying that you shouldn’t mess with the past. That even the little things could lead to a ripple effect that changes the future in unimaginable ways.
The butterfly effect. How a single flap of a butterfly’s wings could cause a storm.
Meeting someone when they’re a child, years before you’re supposed to, as an adult rather than a teenager, was not a single flap.
Chuuya was in fucking trouble.