Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There is a new girl in town.

The girl said her name was Koshishi, and would always order a black coffee and sandwiches. She has quite a closet of different skirts, jackets, hats, boots, and shaded glasses, but never in a uniform. She loves to comment on the cafe's choice of background music, coffee brew, and regulars, but she would never speak up if there are any customers around. Kotoha has an impression that the girl seems to turn invisible whenever there is a crowd, not unlike a ghost. She has a suspicion that this Koshishi had even left without paying sometimes, but the girl is so good at it, Kotoha lets it slide.

Once, when there was only Kotoha and Koshishi in the empty Cafe Pothos, she tried prodding for some information. Granted, she isn't Nirei and is definitely not as good at intel gathering, but - she had thought - it is only reasonable to get to know something more than her closet and usual order, because the girl has been here for more than a month yet nothing significant has happened in her wake. Does she own a shop? Is she part of a gang somewhere?

"Say, Koshishi-chan," she began, "How old are you?"

"Fifteen," Koshishi stopped her MP3 player and shifted her gaze to the barista, "Oh, and I'll have you know that this thing is good. Ever considered opening a restaurant?" she gestured to the empty plate of omurice, "You'll make a good business, I'm sure. Much better than those scammers with no appreciation for good music and sympathy for empty stomachs."

Koshishi seemed to enjoy music a whole lot, though that's no big news, as she tends to include a remark or two about other people's tastes in her comments.

"No thanks. Running a cafe is already a handful as-is. There's no need to expand the trouble," Kotoha laughed, "Glad you enjoyed it."

She was about to asked something else - if she had permanently moved to Makochi, or if she was going to any school - when a loud noise from outside caught both of their attention. There was a sound of shattering glass and a lot of shouting. Even if they were a distance away, Kotoha could tell that they were but another gang daring enough to stir trouble on Bofurin's grounds.

Koshishi remained in her seat, but a small incline of her head revealed that she was listening in the situation.

Bofurin sure takes their sweet time today, she had thought, worriedly, that they might be caught up in another fight somewhere, when the gang approached Cafe Pothos and started messing with her storefront. Frowning, she rounded the counter and opened the door.

"Hey! What do you think you're doing!?"

She might not be able to fight, but she refuses to stand and watch they destroy Makochi's property, and especially hers.

"So what? What can you do, huh?" one of the guys leered, "Even Bofurin can't save you now. With them on our side, we'll be–"

A punch straight in the middle of the face cut him off his rambling. Kotoha cringed at the sound of his nose breaking before he dropped to the ground with blood on his face. Koshishi stood with her right hand bailed in a bloody fist and her left on the strap of her backpack, as if she was merely taking a stroll. She scowled.

"So what? Still think they can save you now?"

Kotoha watched in horror as nearly a dozen men pounced on one petite girl, yet once again she was surprised to see Koshishi dodge them all with graceful ease. A high kick - despite her very short skirt - took one out, a punch to the stomach finished off another. It was clear that Koshishi was used to fighting, vanishing and reappearing in combat like a mirage.

"Finally, you show up," she muttered as the last one fell, barely audible. Koshishi crouched down and started searching the fainted bodies.

"Koshishi-chan, what are you doing?"

Kotoha's question fell on deaf ears. Koshishi searched with meticulous care, turning out pockets and patting around their chests and stomachs for good measure, and only stopped once she found a wooden box. After taking a peek of its content, she hastily shoved it into her backpack.

"If anyone asks," she addressed Kotoha, "Tell 'em they screwed themselves up."

Koshishi left without paying again.

The other gangs are getting more and more relentless as they are bold, and it's starting to become a big problem.

Nirei thinks as he flips another guy off his feet, panting heavily. Despite both his strength and stamina having improved greatly thanks to his training with Suo, engaging in a third fight within a day proved to be way too much. Still, he persists. This is nothing new. He had first noticed the growing invasive activities nearly two months ago and it has only worsened since. In order to better tackle the situation, Class 1-1 had to rearrange their patrol line-up. Sakura leads a different group - as are Sugishita, Tsugeura, and Kiryu, the class' powerhouses, while Nirei sticks to Suo's team.

In all cases, Nirei doesn't regard himself as a good detective - that is an entirely different aspect from intel gathering. However, he cannot help but notice a few details in Suo's body language: an occasional twitch in his brow, a brief falter of his ever-relaxed smile, a tension strange in his shoulders, and the way his eyes tend to wander more than usual, as if he has been searching for something in the shadows. Something is clearly bothering him. Naturally - because Suo has done so much for him, Nirei gently prods him for his woes, hoping to be of help.

Of course he would say no - Suo has been mysterious that way, and that sets an uneasy weight in his stomach which he knows would be difficult to dispell. If his years of being bullied has given him anything, that is a newly developed sense of danger. His heartbeat would accelerate, his entire body freeze up, and his instincts would scream to flee. As of late, that sense has been very, very loud.

Therefore, he has to turn to his second option: investigate.

It takes him a good week, though, to finally obtain his first clue in the form of Inugami Teruomi, who claimed that Shishitoren had encountered crazed men in strange black masks more times than one, blabbering about concepts he couldn't understand. With a little more digging, he found out that they belonged to one of those gangs that had also been invading Bofurin's territory as of late. Tomiyama Choji added a little more to the picture with vivid descriptions and animated body language: those who donned the black masks had a strange way around a fight, more feral, more reckless, as if they were turning into animals.

It must mean something beyond his wildest imagination if Shishitoren, of all people, would make comments like that, and Nirei didn't expect to see it in person so soon. As he was heading home after his interview with Shishitoren members, he was met with a group of shady young adults, most of them having knives, some had clawed fingers and - he widened his eyes - guns!? Standing opposed to them was Bofurin's Suo, his eyes void of its playful glint and his posture tight. Nirei gulped. He was down to a serious fight, and considering it was only starting, he knew that the situation was grave.

The person leading them was wearing a black mask.

Black masks... Continuous assaults and the surge of lesser gang activities in the area... Suo's uneasiness... Nirei hoped he was wrong, but the pieces fell into place so seamlessly that he couldn't bring himself to doubt. Normally, he would be ecstatic to get a peek into what Suo concealed, yet now it only filled hom with dread. Because if this investigation was truly going somewhere, it wouldn't end up anything nice.

Suo fought more mercilessly that day. Still with light footsteps and moves akin to a dance, he plowed through the waves of enemies without breaking a sweat, swift and angry.

...angry?

Anger and Suo doesn't come in one sentence, and the wrongness of this whole situation unsettled him. Even when he won, Nirei barely felt the relief of a fight well fought.

"Suo-san," he asked, "Do you know them?"

The taller boy's eyes darkened for a fraction before widening in surprise, as if he just realized his presence for the first time despite his last-minute aid (which didn't contribute much, but he was also he didn't get in his way). The pause was longer than usual.

"Hm, what if I do?"

There was something, then, about his friend-teacher that made him scrambling for an impossible answer.

"A-anyway, we should report back to Sakura-san and Umemiya-san. This is already the twentieth attack we encountered this week, it's way too much!"

Suo's single eye landed on the sole masked invader for a second too long before nodding, and Nirei took it as his cue to to fish out his phone.

He missed the way his friend warily scanned their surrounding for one last time.

Chapter Text

It has been more than a month since communication was completely cut off, and the situation keeps getting worse in Makochi.

She fixes the strap of her bag one last time.

How annoying.

For a long time now, Sakura has known that he is not human.

It isn't in the same sense as when people once berated and isolated him for his appearance, but more like an instinct as when he learned how to fight, telling him that he truly doesn't belong.

There is something inhumane that thrums inside of him, begging to be let out. For most of the time, he ignores it. After joining Furin, he lives with it as it eases down. He finds that being in the presence of his vice captains helps the most - why those specific guys, he doesn't know, and dwelling on those thoughts hurts his head more than it should, so he simply accepts it. Having a place to belong unconditionally is everything he could ever dream of, and he has soon learned that many of them do the things they do just because.

That's why, he was confused when that thrum suddenly turned louder when he engaged in that one fight.

He was leading a small team without Suo or Nirei, having agreed on a rearrangement plan in order to distribute the class' strength more effectively in the face of a new issue - courtesy of his vice captains, when they caught a group vandalizing a wall. Their task was supposed to be easy: drive them away, then repaint the wall. Sure, the black and blue symbols they were scrawling sent chills down his spine, but it would be the first time.

Except they weren't just a bunch of show-off troublemakers. They moved with intent, though in between staggers as if mindlessly, stroke with remarkable strength, and their screams reverberated his skull a horrendous cacophony. The one donning a black mask resembling a pair of hands over their eyes even possessed greater combat abilities, so Sakura took it upon himself to take them down.

He didn't anticipate the knife. Or the gun. He didn't anticipate weapons. To be fair, the worst he had ever encountered were pipes and wooden beams, not for once had he thought of truly lethal weapons in a street fight.

In the end, it didn't matter. He still emerged victorious despite a cut on his cheek and a gash on his hand which were soon taken care of by his classmates.

As he sat out - an injured hand should rest, insisted the owner of the vandalized wall - Sakura felt his hands shaking and his heart beating faster than before. It wasn't due to stress nor the looming uncertainty he had grown accustomed to, but a strong pull telling him to let go, release, whatever that was. He couldn't understand even himself. When his fist connected to the grunt's face and the mask was broken in half, they had let out an almost animalistic cry and fell down hard on the floor, dead to the world. They weren't dead for real, but Sakura had a gnawing feeling that they would soon. Something told him the mask was dangerous, so much that Endo paled in comparison.

He couldn't help but think of yet another war around the corner.

Kotoha sighs as she helps patch up some Furin boys for the umpteenth time this month. To say she is worried is definitely an understatement: she has never, ever felt so much dread crawling up her neck, and barely anything significant has happened yet. She thinks of the doomsday movies she has watched with the caretakers at the orphanage once they deemed her old enough to join them on their 'adult movie nights' (she rarely does, really, since she prefers to go to bed early), thinks of how they described the end of the world.

She thinks she knows the gist of it now, and she doesn't like that one bit.

Sakura often arrives at Pothos bearing scratches and bleeding wounds and an agitated state of mind which she can tell from the frowns in between bites of his favorite dish. Nirei rarely stops by these days, and whenever he does, she sees him in what she has dubbed 'detective mode' with his brows pinched and normally soft eyes sharper, muttering and scribbling in his notebook before promptly leaving (sometimes without ordering anything at all). She doesn't think she has seen Suo at all this month, either, even in company with Sakura and Nirei. It isn't that Suo has been a regular to begin with, but he does enjoy tagging along with his friends. They are a trio, his absence makes them feel incomplete, even from an outsider's standpoint.

The bell above the entrance dings loudly, and she has half a mind to scold whoever is trying to destroy her door again, when the sight of Sugishita bleeding black makes all words die on her tongue. Sakura is supporting him, struggling greatly due to their height difference as he treads into the cafe with heavy breaths. Grabbing a handful of bandages, Kotoha tries her best to clean up the wound to no avail. It cannot stop oozing black, and Sugishita's condition is only deteriorating by the seconds.

Kotoha is no medical expert, and she is sure none of those present in the room is. They can patch up normal wounds and fix up a broken bone well enough to properly go to a doctor, but none of them know black, black that is inexplicably, unstoppably, sucking the life out of one of their kind. Sugishita is headstrong, he would resist even the force of nature if that means Bofurin would last, but the barista fears the worst. Everything is getting so out of hand in a heartbeat, she feels at loss.

And then she feels it - a kind of energy in the air that doesn't belong to reason. Once, she had felt it around Umemiya, before Furin, before his drive sparked a blinding flare, so distant in the past now that she has almost forgotten how overwhelming it truly feels. The others in the room stop in their tracks, too, all eyes landing on Sakura who is still wrestling with Sugishita's wound, cursing all the way. That part is nothing new, so Kotoha is confused at first before taking a closer look and realizes that his eyes are shifting. Dawn and dusk, daybreak and twilight, his left eye a brilliant mix of gold and coral and scarlet akin to a sun shying behind clouds, while his right is tinted with dark blues and violets and pinks resembling a vast evening sky.

A frown edges Sugishita's facial features, and it isn't due to pain. It's the kind of scowl she recognizes from their usual fights. Scornful, irritated.

Somebody has chosen that exact moment to kick her door off its hinges.

Chapter Text

Regulus isn't the type to dwell on sentimentality; at least, not so much, especially when she prefers to keep moving forward.

However, the moment she set foot in Makochi, she was hit with a sudden feeling - faint it might be. It was familiar, like a couple of beats from that song played in a cafe that belonged to the old London, one that she never had the chance to ask the name of. A tug in her heartstrings that almost made her falter.

She remembers the island beyond the sea that took her second ship and another that she never got to see, filled with people just like this, happily going on about their lives unaware of the looming crises. She remembers what Apeiron looked like before the bombing took away its lush forests and pristine halls, how its inhabitants had been so adamant about sticking to their ridiculous rules, and how - despite the absurdity of it all - they had been so content. Fatutu, too, had told her about the legacy of her lost people and the peace that once floated from one heart to another before they were all misguided like a herd of lambs. They had been just like this, opening their doors early in the morning and retreating to their houses for cover from the night, greeting each other with yesterday's smiles.

Thirty-seven had explained, in her math-encrypted language when their group were going out for ice cream, that it had been a shared faith that bounded them to each other and to Apeiron, the glue that held everything together until it no longer could, and proposed that it might have been something similar for Meli. There were stories that circulated in the small suitcase as well, about other safe havens that either emerged or fell, the Uluru Stadium and Rayashki, the shelters regulated by the Foundation, and the secret hives run by members of Lorentz.

Makochi is everything Apeiron used to be. She would even dare claim that this place was better, because instead of the mathematics madness that haunts her nightmares, people place their bets in a group of high school delinquents, who are considered outlaws elsewhere. It feels good, it is what she imagines of freedom.

She can understand why he is so adamant on protecting this place, all in secret, too.

That brings her back to the matter at hand.

He has disappeared for well a month now. His usual excuses work like a charm against Laplace, but once Lorentz started speaking of a missing butterfly, she knows something must've happened.

Her luck must've struck, then, that he trusts her enough to have told her about the little town on the East side of the world. Sliding under the radar was the easy part. She is no stranger to stealing and hiding, having survived with little more than a backpack under her name and slowly carved out a life on the streets of London.

Regulus isn't one for subtlety, but she knows how it's done. Despite how much her fingers itch, despite the allure the town's radio station, she put her foot down. Koshishi must not be found by anyone, lest Makochi ends up in ruins.

"Who the hell are you?" The voice on the other side of the line growls.

"Don't recognize your colleague, eh?" Regulus scoffs, "Thought you'd be interested in chewing a man or two."

"Tch. Spit it out before I hang up. You're wasting my time."

Regulus huffs loudly, perfectly aware that her colleague can hear it blowing in their ear.

"Long story short, I need your help. A mutual of us is in trouble, and frankly, I cannot do this alone."

"Call the apple over, then. Or your boss, whatever. Your problem's got nothing to do with me. Have you got any idea what's going on over here while you're out there, running around playing tag? Laplace is short on people, Fish Tank is going nuts looking for his so-called Storm experiment fellow, and then he keeps bugging me for the reports you are supposed to turn in ages ago!"

"Nothing's more pressing than a crewmate in shambles," she tuts, "But he has lots of secrets, so I can only really bet on you to keep."

"You don't mean..."

"So are you in or not?"

"Wouldn't be the first time I run away."

Regulus can almost hear the wide grin that shows all canines splits across her colleague's face and the touch of insanity that sparks in their eyes whenever they come up with something particularly risky. She mirrors that with a smirk of her own.

"Get to my room in the suitcase. Mr. APPLe will show you how it's done."

"Left you man behind, huh?"

"Mr. APPLe doesn't know everything we know," Regulus sighs, "But he's my best mate, so he stays to cover for me. Now, would you just head over? Time isn't exactly in our favor right now."

She hears grumbling on the other side before the line is cut off, then looks back to the plans sprawled on the floor. She picks up a red pen and crosses off two more areas.

She is a DJ, she is a pirate, she is a researcher. She would be damned if she stops trying right now.

On the nightstand, a black butterfly pin lies next to her orange one. In her hand, a violet pin.

It takes two whole days for her reinforcement to arrive in the form of a storming teenager tearing through a bunch of men harassing a passer-by schoolgirl simply because they are in the way. The poor girl doesn't even have a chance to thank her mysterious savior before they vanish in a blink of an eye, easily mistaken for a trick of the light, had it not been for the groaning heap on the sidewalk.

Regulus pulls her colleague down the street, taking many turns around the alleys until she finds a good spot to deactivate her arcane skill.

"Explain," Medicine Pocket demands, "That guy has more secrets than my invention patents, which one are you speaking of?"

"Don't play dumb now," she rolls her eyes, "Couldn't you at least guess where we are? This is Japan! The East side of the world! What else could he be doing here?"

Medicine Pocket laughs, but it lacks their usual snark.

"This is suicide, you know that?"