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Akutagawa twists his fingers together, looking out of the window. Dazai, who is the one driving, completely ignores him. Akutagawa has half a mind to ask where they’re going, but the other half doesn’t want to risk upsetting Dazai even more. So, he stays quiet. It’s dark enough outside that there isn’t anything to look at, but he keeps his eyes glued to the window.
Dazai’s driving far too fast for Akutagawa to keep up with where they are. He only knows that they’re in the car for roughly half an hour before Dazai slams down on the breaks. Akutagawa’s hands shoot out to stop his head from slamming into the dashboard. His eyes are wide and focused entirely on Dazai. Dazai turns to glare at him, looking angrier than he has in a while. Akutagawa maintains eye contact until Dazai reaches out to smack him. He flinches.
“Get out of the damn car.”
Akutagawa climbs out, looking around. They’re surrounded by trees, and it wasn’t even an actual road that they were driving on.
“What’s going on? Where is this?”
Dazai doesn’t answer, he just throws a backpack out of the car, then backs up. Akutagawa frowns, and leans down to pick up the bag. Dazai drives away, and Akutagawa opens the bag. There’s a file in there along with a flashlight, a thumb drive, and a lock picking set. Akutagawa uses the flashlight to read the file which details a mission. It requires someone to sneak into a facility and download all of the stuff on the servers in the facility. The main issue comes in with the fact that they don’t know where the facility is, only that it’s in…
“The woods. Of course he got mad at his assignment, and dumped me with it in the woods. Ok, so I need to find this place, download what I need, and then try to call someone?”
Akutagawa pulls his phone out of his pocket, but he has no bars.
“Wonderful, abandoned in the woods with no service. I guess I’ll have to walk until I get service to call someone. Dazai isn’t likely to come back before someone comes looking for the data that I’m supposed to collect, so it would be easier to get myself out of the forest.”
Akutagawa sighs, and starts walking further into the forest. He looks for any sign of people that can potentially point him in the direction of the base. It takes a few hours of searching in the dark, but he manages to find tire tracks, and he follows them even further into the forest. His body is sore and tired by the time the sun has started to come up. Though it is easier to see, and he’s able to see the building before he’s right on top of it.
There isn’t a lot of light getting through the trees, just enough to see, so Akutagawa has no problem sticking to the shadows. People are milling around outside of the building, doing different tasks. Akutagawa watches for a while, also giving himself a chance to rest. The people outside are mostly just unloading the truck that made the tire tracks Akutagawa was following. They’re all dressed in casual clothes, and they don’t look like they’re unloading anything nefarious. It mostly just looks like food, and the building itself looks suspiciously like a compound.
What are they doing, preparing for the apocalypse? What could we possibly need from these people? They don’t even look like they’d have computers here.
Akutagawa darts forward once they’re all surrounding the truck again, or waiting their turn to grab something. He slips through the first door he sees as quietly as he can, and looks around. The room itself is lit with floodlights. Akutagawa blinks, trying to clear the spots from his vision from the sudden and obtrusive lights. He managed to open the door without it making any noise, so no one noticed him coming in.
He slips behind a stack of boxes to get a better look at the room without being spotted. This room looks like a normal warehouse. It even has heavy lifting equipment dotted around the room. Ones big enough to pick up the crates with ease, and without having to unload them. None of the people there look like they have abilities either.
Who are these people? Is Dazai messing with me again?
There are a few doors he can go through, but he decides to go through the vents instead. He’s going in blind, so it’s a lot slower, but eventually he finds a room with two computers. There’s no one in there, so Akutagawa just climbs out of the vent once he’s sure that there aren’t any cameras dotted around. The computer looks incredibly old.
“Wow, this thing is a dinosaur. I don’t even know if I’m going to be able to download the information off this thing. I’ve checked everywhere else though, and there are no other computers. So I’m going to do what I can.”
Akutagawa ends up working on it for at least half an hour before he climbs back into the vent. Someone comes in less than a minute after Akutagawa is out of the room. She takes one look at the room before reaching for a radio on her belt.
“Someone is here. I bet the government is on to us. Lock the building down. We can’t let them take this compound!”
Akutagawa freezes, more confused than he already was. He climbs through the vents back into the main room that he came in through. There are people guarding every exit now, and they’re all armed. It’s still just with guns, and if any of them do have abilities, they don’t look like they’re planning on using them. Akutagawa grabs a stray nail off of the floor, and throws it. It attracts most of the guards’ attention.
So, he smashes the last two guards’ heads together before starting to pick the lock. The other guards start to come back over right as Akutagawa gets the door open. They all start shooting, and Akutagawa slams the door shut as fast as he can. He hisses through his teeth, looking down at the blood seeping out of the bullet wound near his knee.
“Shit.”
Seriously, my leg? How am I supposed to walk out of this forest with a wound like this? Though my first priority should be getting out of this clearing without leaving a blood trail.
Akutagawa wraps Rashomon around his leg, biting his lip as Rashomon starts to take off the outer layer of skin. Even he’s not immune to the destructive effects of his ability if he wraps it too tightly around him. Though it is enough to stop the bleeding, he gets to the treeline as quickly as he can. He keeps going as far as he can until his leg collapses underneath him.
Sweat pours down his face, and his vision whites out as soon as his knee bends and collapses. Once he can see again, he pulls himself into a sitting position, and brushes the dirt off of his face. He pulls his phone out of his pocket, but he still has no signal though it does look like he’s close to where he started following the tire tracks.
So, he pulls himself up using a nearby tree, and limps along, trying to keep as much weight off of his leg as possible. He follows the tracks in the opposite direction for at least two more hours. Then his phone finally has enough signal to call someone. So, he just hits the button for the last person he called, and puts it up to his ear. Gin’s voice comes through the phone.
“Hey, Ryuu, what’s going on? I thought you’d be at work by now.”
“I am. Can you get someone to pick me up if I send you my rough location? I’m not completely sure of where I am.”
“Yeah, of course I can do that. Are you alright? You sound like you’re in pain.”
“I’m fine, Gin. I’m going to text you where I am, and then just get someone out here as fast as you can. It’s not too big of a deal though.”
“Ok, well, I guess I’ll see you when you get home. Love you, Ryuu.”
“Love you too.”
Akutagawa hangs up. He barely manages to send her all of the information that he has before he passes out. He wakes up in the mafia’s clinic. Gin is sitting beside his bed, holding his hand.
“Hey, how are you feeling?”
Akutagawa takes stock of his body, then hums.
“Fine, I guess. What happened?”
“Well, they found you passed out in the woods. I got filled in on some of the mission details.”
“Do you know who those people were? My file didn’t say, and the whole thing was really weird.”
“Apparently they were conspiracy theorists, and they’re convinced that they’re going to need a fully stocked compound in the near future. They’re also hoarding information though so Mori wanted to see what they had.”
“Nice.”
“Yeah, I thought so too. However, Mori has what he wants, and you have some time off of work until your leg heals.”
“Great, I have to take time off.”
Gin sighs, but pulls his hand up so she can kiss the back of it.
“You’re ridiculous.”