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“…Oi, oi, oi. Am I that scary?”
With hands on his hips, Chuuya squints at the man in front of him. Man… well, currently a tiger. Said tiger is currently shivering with his full body. It’s like he’s physically restraining himself from jumping and hightailing it from here.
Thankfully, Chuuya is a lot more patient when it comes to juniors, even if they’re protégés raised by a fish. “That shitty Dazai said that you wanted to have special training with me. You shouldn’t chicken out before we even start, right?”
More shivering, followed by the sound of the floor cracking under the tiger’s pressure.
A sudden whoosh. It’s fast—not fast enough to outdo Chuuya, but he remains rooted in place, because he’s too bewildered. Plus, harming his juniors isn’t his style, even if they’re being unreasonable.
Thankfully, his instincts have always served him well. He trusts that being an Agency scrub means that the other party is too much of a goody-goody, that he’s not a threat to his safety.
Chuuya just ends up speechless for the next few minutes as he realizes what’s going on.
He watches Atsushi’s tiger form succumb to instincts that must be universal amongst all cats, big and small. The white tiger steals the hat from his head. Specifically, the tiger steals the hat so he could bat and play with the chain dangling on the side.
After the speechlessness, Chuuya silently raises his phone so he could capture a video of the big cat being distracted by the shiny metal chain. After all, he may have absolutely no good words to use to describe Dazai, but they’ve been partners for a long time. Their interests in teasing people could be said to have some overlap.
Once he’s had his fun, he finds an embarrassed Atsushi who has reverted back to his human form. A lot of his clothes are torn, but given that they’re under Port Mafia’s special basement that Chuuya uses for his gravity manipulation training, it’s not as if anyone’s going to walk in on him in this barely-dressed state.
A beige coat flies in the air and lands accurately on top of the sheepish Atsushi’s face.
“Atsushi-kun, if you show off your tall body in front of a slug, you’re bound to make him jealous,” comes the singsong from an uninvited guest.
Chuuya rolls his eyes and makes shooing motions. “I sent that video so you’d see it while staying far away from here.”
“Oh, but isn’t the circus better appreciated live?”
Lightly, “Sure, but my hand might slip regardless of the truce and end up ending your life.”
Atsushi clears his throat and makes an obvious attempt at dispersing the brewing tension. “Um, can we start training, Chuuya-san? I really wish to improve my tiger form’s fitness.”
Chuuya’s usual training is mostly going through exercises to make sure that all of his muscle groups are in top shape. Rising to the Executive role means that he spends a lot of time behind his desk, so he has to ensure that none of his muscles are at risk of atrophy. Aside from that, he believes that nothing could replace combat when it comes to staying in shape.
“Then I won’t wear my hat,” he says, his snickering echoed by the busybody Dazai behind him. “Like I told you earlier, let’s spar so you could see which specific parts of your tiger form need improvement.”
“Boo, Chuuya, why are you sounding like a serious little man!”
“Ignore the peanut gallery,” he tells Atsushi. He makes a gesture that would usually make his opponents tremble in fear. “Be serious in sparring, I don’t want to accidentally kill you.”
“Boo, stop trying to sound cool—”
“—shut the hell up, oi!”
Atsushi transforms to a tiger once again, and they exchange several blows. It’s going well, as long as Chuuya ignores the loud grumblings from the trespasser.
…At least, for the first few moves, things are going well.
Then, it becomes… strange.
The tiger’s movements are somewhat too predictable and too bewildering at once. When standing on its hind legs while stretching its paws, the tiger is a lot taller than him. Bulkier too. One of the best choices of attack would be to use the size disparity to Atsushi’s advantage, but he doesn’t do that.
His tiger form keeps on trying to stand on its hind legs, and its paws keep on stretching for Chuuya’s head, and then… swatting down.
Their sparring turns into a strange chase, where Chuuya hops around the training room in increasing bewilderment.
“Oi, what the hell is wrong with your protégé,” he asks Dazai—who’s surprisingly quiet for the past few moments.
When he makes the mistake of turning his head to look at him, two things happen at once. First: Atsushi’s paw reaches the top of his head, and then… kneads his hair. Second: Dazai ends up coughing his lungs out, apparently unable to contain his laughter.
He really shouldn’t have agreed to this. He should have known that nothing good could ever come from someone from the same Agency where Dazai is!
The tiger then crowds against Chuuya and continues rubbing his hair. Dazai has an arm over his stomach as he’s laughing to the point of tears.
In-between his wheezing, Dazai says, “You know how cats like those laser pointer toys?”
“……Yes?”
“Now that you’re not wearing your hat, you probably just look like a tiny red dot in Atsushi-kun’s eyes.” More wheezing. “You really are so tiny, chibikko.”
Chuuya takes a deep breath, and throws a dagger towards Dazai’s neck.
Atsushi finally manages to extricate himself from his tiger form’s instincts, and reverts back to his human form, also nearly in tears as he apologizes for trying to swat his hair.
“So I actually look like a tiny red dot in your eyes?!”
Atsushi may not have learned much as to how to increase his tiger form’s fitness today, but he has learned not to flirt with danger. He calmly takes five steps back, stays quiet, then hides behind his mentor the moment Chuuya blows up.
Immediately after, Atsushi ends up running away from the training ground, because he surely doesn’t want to hear his mentor coax the angry Chuuya about how he’s as cute as a button, whatever the hell that means.
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