Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

And in 3, 2, 1…

The door to the Agency office opens with a creak and Dazai walks through, heading straight for the couch. Ranpo doesn’t even need to look up from his game to tell; everyone else is already here, and Dazai is always the latest. Not only that, but there is this horrible sound. It’s part of his routine, dragging his feet on the floor when he first comes in. The sound of his feet scraping on the Agencies tile bugs him and makes him physically cringe, but he’s learned that saying anything about it won’t make him stop. He hears them fall onto the Agency's couch with a sigh, and that’s where they’ll likely stay for the rest of the day.

It’s not like anyone else is doing any more than Dazai is. Today is Sunday, and even for the weekend, it has been a uniquely slow day for the Armed Detective Agency. The sun is nearly in the middle of the sky which is muted and dull, just like everything else today. The end of Fall is normally really depressing, because Ranpo always gets super cold and refuses to wear those big winter jackets because of the material and the sound it makes whenever you move. But today is especially depressing. Ranpo’s deductive abilities haven’t been requested at all by anyone. In fact, none of the others have even been suggested for a small, simple case. Normally, there’d be at least one case; like a murder or even a bombing. Or maybe the Mafia would be up to something and Ranpo would have to figure out what. Though so far, there’s been nothing; nothing that requires the Agency's special skills at least. There hasn’t been much crime, and the Mafia's been quiet ever since the incident with the Guild. Ranpo thought –that after the Guilds’ leader was presumed dead and most of the members were left stuck in Yokohama– maybe some of the Guild members would be up to something, but no. 

The most surprising part about that is that he hasn’t even seen Poe, his irreplaceable rival: Poe’s words, not his. Ranpo thought that he’d be back by now to challenge him with some new riddle or to show him his new novel, but he hasn’t talked to him in the longest time! Well, he had seen him at the party, which was a little under 2 weeks ago, but still! It’s not like he’s busy with friends, he doesn’t have any (besides that pet of his, if you count that). At this rate, it’s probably going to be another 6 years until he sees him again. 

He doesn’t really even need to come with a novel, just seeing him would be nice. Him and that cute raccoon that sits on top of his tall form, his “brown” hair that looks like the color of ripe plums still hanging on the branches and the curly strands that frame his face. His eyes that are a calm color of lilac, annoyingly hidden by his lengthy bangs. And his hands. Like most of his body, his fingers are long and thin, but precise. He watched as they held an ink-dipped pen and let it flow beautifully across the page with control. Poe is normally so timid when it comes to other people, always stammering and failing to find anything to say. Though when he’s writing, he’s a confident master of words. On the page, his brilliant –and slightly messed up– mind comes out, and Ranpo loves to see it. 

He should really stop thinking about Poe. It’s making his heart beat much faster than normal. Weirdly enough, he can’t stop smiling, either.

Kunikida is probably the one who's the most upset about this sudden lack of work. Kunikida tried earlier to find an old, unsolved case in their files, but had no luck. All he ended up finding were dust bunnies, which, again, was Ranpo’s doing. That man has been looking for something to do all day, yet hasn’t found a thing. His precious schedule is probably completely empty. 

The only thing that was really “interesting” about today was his socks. The weird line of stitching or whatever at the toe was, for some completely ridiculous reason, pressing against his big toe in an uncomfy way. Not only that, but one of his smaller toes kept getting stuck in one of the socks holes; which would be uncomfy on its own, but was even worse when the leather started rubbing against his foot. So naturally, he took them off, including his shoes, leaving him barefoot. Having the material rub against his feet might even be worse than those socks. Even when that stupid little sock line isn’t out to get him, he still hates them. What’s even the point of that stupid thing, anyway?! To tell you where the toe goes?! Any half witted mouth breather could figure that out without that stupid little thing, whoever designed socks was an absolute idiot!

“Uhm, Ranpo, why are you taking off your shoes?” Atsushi had asked him, cluelessly.

“It’s because my socks hate me.” Atsushi looked at him like he told him that the sky was green.

He throws his head back and groans. Can’t there at least be one easy case today?! Ranpo supposes that this was bound to happen eventually. With a master detective like him in the agency, it was only a matter of time before they ran out of things to solve. It’s not like that fact makes him any less upset about it. Sure, at first he didn’t really mind sitting at his desk snacking and playing on his console; though he’s been doing it for so long now that it’s starting to get boring. Right now it feels like his brain is full of thoughts that are uncontrollably running at 300 miles per hour and if they don’t find something to do they're going to break open his skull. At this point he’d do anything, besides paperwork or sitting through a long meeting or anything else boring. Seriously, where was all the crime that was so typical for Yokohama?!

He’s been playing the same platform game for a while now. One that has many levels and rarely has save points. There’s this one part that he keeps getting stuck on; a part with multiple enemies and a hard jump. He’s been trying to get past it the whole morning only to die every time and get sent back to the last save point. This time around, he manages to get past the part. He smiles. It’s something small but it’s something that’s new. He’s closer now to another checkpoint, so all he needs to do is get there and he won’t have to repeat all of that again. He rapidly presses the buttons, trying to get to a higher platform and ends up falling. The words game over flash on the screen as the console beeps. He huffs, leans back in his chair and tosses the game onto the desk. There's no way he’s going through all of that again. 

He looks around the strangely quiet Agency. It’s like the world has stopped. Maybe if he gets off his game for a moment, something will start to happen. His leg starts to bounce up and down like he’s pedaling a bike, as if somehow that’ll make the universe recognize his impatience and then they’ll get a case. He sticks his hand in one of the bags of chips, it rustling as he does. All that’s left in there is crumbs. He groans as he grabs the bag and throws it towards the closest trash can.

“Hey, Kunikida!” He yells. He doesn’t get an answer. He leans over to the left, “Kunikida?”

Kunikida, like most days, is standing over Dazai as he lazes about on the couch; in a position that Ranpo is sure is going to make him have severe back problems in the future. 

“Damnit, get off your ass already, Dazai,” he scolds him. At least this is still happening today, “Just because the day is slow doesn’t mean that you get to lay around the whole day.”

“Come oooon,” Dazai whines, over-dramatically and slowly turning himself around so his head faces Kunikida’s eyes, “There’s not a thing happening today. What would you even have me do?”

Kunikida looks at them like this is a ridiculous question.

“Well you could…” He trails off. He seems to search his mind for a while, looking for something that he could say.

There has to be something to be done, he can practically hear him think. There isn’t. If there was, that would be exactly what Kunikida would be doing right now, and he knows it. He eventually gives up and growls, walking away from Dazai in defeat. 

 Instead of heading back to his desk, Kunikida walks over towards Ranpo. “What was it that you wanted Ranpo?” He asks.

“Could you go get me some more snacks?” He says, shaking the bag, “All of my stash is gone.”

Kunikida sighs, taking off his glasses and rubbing the bridge of his nose, “Sure. I could go get you more snacks.”

He puts his glasses back on and proceeds through the agency door. Normally, Kunikida would say something along the lines of him being far too busy, or that going shopping isn’t at all on his schedule, or have some other excuse not to. He guesses that Kunikida is just that desperate for something to do. The door to the office closes, and Ranpo is still left with nothing to do. He goes back to his console and tries to get past that one part of the platform game all over again. Part of him wishes that they would randomly get raided just to make today a little more interesting. 

From the sound of the footsteps, it’s Atsushi’s turn to go over to Dazai. The young man sits himself on the little spot of the couch that’s free and lets out a long breath of air.

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I sort of miss how things were when we were fighting the Guild.” He says, “Sure, the whole giant whale ship almost crashing into Yokohama was kind of a lot, but at least we had something to do.”

He’s quiet for a quick moment, and Ranpo thinks that he might have been looking around the office because he asks, “Where’s Kunikida?”

“He left,” Ranpo replies, getting closer to the part where he always dies, “He’s gonna go get me some more snacks.”

Again, he doesn’t say a word for a bit. Ranpo can hear him shuffling around with the little couch room that Dazai is leaving him, probably looking at him now.

“There really is nothing happening today, huh?” He asks. 

“Uh huh! Absolutely nothing!” Dazai replies, giddily, “I don’t even need to bother Kunikida today! The universe is doing it all for me.” 

He can hear a sudden and single clap, followed by Dazai saying, “Thank you, universe, for this gift!”

Ranpo hears Atsushi sigh and shift on the couch again, probably rolling his sunset eyes at him.

Dazai’ll get bored of this eventually, he thinks. 

He hears them sigh, “I feel like I could just wrap myself in a cozy cocoon! One that hopefully falls from the tree and gets squished by some hikers!” Or maybe not. He frowns. Honestly, no one really understands that person, so he shouldn’t be surprised.

He really is just a lazy idiot sometimes, isn’t he?

—☺—

It’s been 34 minutes now, and Kunikida still isn’t back yet. Not the biggest surprise seeing as the grocery store is around a 15 minute walk from the agency, but he still wishes that he was being faster.

 He suddenly stops focusing on his game. His character in the game stops right in place as his face shoots up from the screen. He doesn’t know why, but he got a sudden chill that went up and down his spine. The room is perfectly warm; the AC isn’t even on. It feels like something important just happened. He looks around the room, though it’s the same sight as before: Dazai and Atsushi on the couch, Kenji sleeping on his desk, Yosano balancing a scalpel on her desk with her finger and Kyouka eating something that is either a late breakfast or early lunch. Neither of the Tanizakis are here today, both of them somehow got sick. Ranpo remembers hearing Junichiro's weak and tired voice on the phone when he called the office. His coughs were crunchier than chips. He sounded kinda pathetic, though that’s to be expected from him. The president's office is empty. He left around an hour ago to go meet with people from the Special Division for Unusual Powers. Something about dealing with the Guild and what they left behind and blah, blah, blah. Stuff that Ranpo could never sit through. 

Even though everything is normal the weird feeling doesn’t go away. It’s like someone flicked a switch and made everything feel… weird . He turns over to look out the window, though is interrupted by a slam and he snaps his head back around. Kunikida comes back through the agency doors carrying two plastic grocery bags. He seems to be in better spirits than before he left, Ranpo can tell because of the way he’s walking. He heads over to his desk and tosses the bags in front of him.

“Alright,” he says, digging through the bag, pulling things out, “I got you more bags of chips, more lollipops and-“

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll look through it myself.”

He blinks at him, “Alright, well,” he grumbles, “Do you need anything else-?”

“Nope, you’re being kind of annoying,” he states, “And weird.”

He looks at him for a second, groans and then walks back over to his desk; while Ranpo pulls out one of the lollipops and pops it into his mouth. It’s a strawberry one, the most basic and boring of any flavor. This time he starts bouncing his whole body in his chair. His brain feels so crowded and loud and if he doesn’t get out of this chair right now and go do something interesting he feels like he’s going to explode.

“Hey, Ranpo–” Yosano pulls out a deck of cards from her desk– “Do you want to play something with me?”

“I’ll join!” Atsushi screams. Both him and Yosano give him a look. “I-If I’m allowed,” he retreats.

She looks at him for a moment. “Why not?” Yosano shrugs, “The more people, the better.”

His demeanor lightens up, and then looks over at Dazai, who’s still lying in that same position, “Do you want to join, Dazai?”

Their voice is muffled by the couch cushions, “I must rest Atsushi. If I don’t, then I might risk releasing the great evil that slumbers within me.”

He gives Dazai a skeptical look and sighs. “Alright then,” he mutters.

“I could join as well, if you want more players,” Kyouka suggests.

“Sure,” She chirped, “This’ll be your first game as an agency member, won’t it?”

Kyouka nods and her mouth curves up slightly, which is probably the closest they're going to get to a smile from her.

“You wanna play, too, Kunikida?” Atsushi asks.

To Ranpos’ surprise, he’s writing in his book. He guesses that he must be planning his schedule for a future day, but for the love of everything good (like candy and proving how stupid people are). Kunikida could afford to take a break from work at least once in his life. 

He looks up and at the deck that Yosano is holding, “Really? Cards? In the middle of a work day?” 

“What work?” Ranpo scoffs, “In case you haven’t noticed, it’s deader than it’s ever been in here.”

He stammers. “Well-” he huffs, “Well, I suppose it’ll be alright for a while.”

Yosano smirks, and then looks back over to him, “Ranpo?”

“Eh, alright,” He gets out of his chair and hops to sit on the top of his desk, “As long as you guys are all okay with losing desperately at cards.”

Yosano starts to shuffle the deck, and as the cards flap in between her fingers she grins darkly, “How about we set up some stakes for this card game-?”

“Or!” Atsushi interjects, sweating, “Or, hear me out: we could just play without having to worry for our safety?”

Everyone in the room nods immediately and quickly, including Ranpo himself. Yosano glances around at everyone and sighs, continuing to shuffle the deck of cards, “Alright, sheesh. Forgive me for trying to make today a little more interesting.”

The agency members end up playing the game on the floor. Kunikida was certain that someone was going to walk in on them and how that would make them seem unprofessional, but of course, not a single person walked in. As Ranpo had predicted earlier, he beat all of the Agency members every single time. He knows all of them too well which makes it so he’s able to deduce their every move and how to counter it. He’s happy that Yosano suggested this, he can’t help but grin and laugh every time he wins like a lucky gambler who somehow never loses their streak. But, after a while, it starts getting repetitive and boring to the point where even Ranpo gets ready to stop. He can’t believe it, but this day somehow made winning boring.

Though eventually, Dazai joins and things start to get more interesting. At the start of the 7th game, they finally get their lazy ass off the couch and onto the floor with the rest of them, asking Yosano to deal him in.

“Aren’t you at risk of releasing that great evil of yours, Dazai?” Ranpo asks, playing along with his earlier bit.

“Yes,” he says, feigning drama, “but perhaps it will be willing to let me play a joyous game of cards in peace, just this once.”

He laughs like he’s the villain in some cliche movie, “You absolute fool, your hubris will be the end of you Dazai.”

“No Dazai!” Atsushi basically screams in Ranpo’s ear which makes him want to tear it right off, “You shouldn’t risk it!”

Ranpo gives him the closest thing he can get to a “look” with his eyes closed. “You do realize that we're joking, Atsushi,” he snaps, “And don’t yell right in my ear, even an idiot would know not to do that.”

The weretiger shrinks, “Well, yeah but I was also…” he frowns and gets out of Ranpo's face, looking at his cards. No one says anything, but Kunikida seems to be holding in a sigh. He flinches a little when he notices. Ranpo wasn’t even that harsh, was he? He frowns and puffs up his cheeks. He doesn't like that Kunikida seems angry with him, but he doesn’t get why he would even be upset. After all, someone needed to tell Atsushi he was being annoying, right?

The first game that he played in, Dazai ended up winning, even against Ranpo. After that, it started to become a game of him vs. Dazai, and everyone else was just the spectators. Yosano even started making bets with the other Agency members on who would win; Yosano betting on Dazai more often than him and always winning. For a lot of the game, Ranpo was sort of distracted. That weird chill he got earlier is still stuck in his mind, and he still has this annoying feeling stuck in his chest that just won’t get out. It’s almost like while he’s sitting here having fun and being safe, there’s a storm waiting right outside the building. He hasn’t told anyone about it yet, and refuses to. Could you imagine? A master detective being worried over a random feeling that he got even though there hasn’t been a thing happening? They’d all probably laugh at him. 

He’s also been focusing a lot on Atsushi. His gaze is sort of empty, sort of like he’s staring intensely at something that no one else can see. And he’s still participating in the game, but not in the conversation. Dazai had asked him a question and Atsushi didn’t even seem to notice. Every movement seems sort of like a video game character mindlessly following a command. He’s so strangely out of it, and Ranpo can’t tell why. It’s annoying him, kind of a lot, but doesn’t feel like putting his glasses on right now to try and figure it out. 

After Dazai started winning, Kunikida became set on beating him: mostly due to the fact that Dazai wouldn’t stop bragging about it to him over and over, but also because they made a bet where Kunikida has to do all Dazais’ work if they win again. Ranpo knows he isn’t going to win. It’s kind of funny to watch him try to, though.

“You’re never gonna beat him, Kunikida,” Ranpo insists for the third time during one of Kunikidas’ turns; the lollipop still in his mouth.

“Yes I will,” he insists back, “I’m getting close this time.”

He finishes his turn, and then it goes over to Kyokas’ turn. The whole game, she hasn’t been involved much with the conversation, however she does seem to be having a lot of fun. It goes to Yosanos’ turn, then Kenjis’, then it’s back to Dazai. No surprise to Ranpo, their turn ends up with them winning the game once again. Ranpo huffs; if only he had got to go before him, then he would’ve won. Kunikidas’ jaw is hanging from his face, and his eyes dart back and forth, looking at the cards he played while Dazai giggles like a child. Kunikida growls and throws his cards onto the ground. 

“God damn you, Dazai!”

He gets off the floor and marches back over to his desk, fuming. Yosano groans and goes to pick up his cards.

“Alright, I guess we’ll have to stop now.” That causes Ranpo to groan as well. 

—☺—

Everyone is now back at their desk, or at the couch doing very little of anything. Ranpo is leaning back in his chair, surprisingly still sucking the same lollipop. It feels like enough time has passed for him to go through at least 6 of them. The game of cards might as well have not even happened. The sky’s still gloomy, everyone's still doing nothing and Ranpo is still bored. His games console is now sitting dead at his desk, Ranpo right beside it in a similar state. Everyone probably assumes that it’s because he’s bored, and it partially is. Though it’s also because he still has that strange feeling that he got earlier. Today's been slower than a snail, yet he still feels like something is going on that they should be worried about. But, again, he has no evidence, and everyone would probably laugh at him.

He sucks the candy till it's brittle in his mouth and then bites it off the stick. Some of the paper peels off and brushes against his tongue and the roof of his mouth and his taste buds. It makes him quickly pull out the stick and stick out his tongue in disgust.

He grabs his hat and jumps off his chair, “Okay, I’m done with this.” 

“But Ranpo, you can’t just-” Atsushi begins as he passes him.

“Nope, I don’t care,” He interrupts. He’s half out the door when he calls back, “If nothing interesting is going to happen here, then I’ll go find something to do myself.”

He shuts the door behind him, and no one follows after him. He walks down the stairs, swinging down using the railings on the last few steps. Sunlight spills into the floor when he opens the door to outside. It’s close to the middle of December, so a chill brushes past him; the sound of autumn leaves rustling in the air. His cheeks and the tip of his nose already feel frosty. Most of the leaves on the trees have already turned orange or fallen off. Considering the chill of Fall, Winter is bound to be freezing. 

He puts on his hat and pulls it down so it fits in over his black hair, which he’s cut himself for most of his life. He breathes in the cold air, and the ghost of a cough tickles at the back of his throat. Ranpo walks on the sidewalk for a while, jogging every once in a while to shed all that unused, pent up energy that he has and letting his hundreds of thoughts run wild. The walking and the running is somewhat helping, but he still needs something for his brain. Maybe he’ll find someone who has a family member gone missing. Maybe even a family pet if he was especially desperate, and at this point he is.

Then he realizes the state of everything around him and feels like he just walked into the storm.

 It's strangely calm out here today, wherever here is. He’s completely lost. Again. Usually by now, someone would’ve run into him, late for work and start yelling at him for being in the way even though it’s entirely their fault. Nothing like that has happened yet, and on any normal day, he’d be thankful. The road is so empty that there isn’t any point walking on the sidewalk. In fact, the sidewalk is almost void of people as well. Actually, scratch that, there’s no one on the sidewalk. There’s no shadows in the buildings windows either. Ranpo hasn’t seen a single person since he walked outside. There’s only a few cars parked on the side of the road. 

His stomach starts to feel funny. The day isn’t just slow, there’s something else going on. He remembers seeing a few people when he went into work this morning, if anything, there should be more people out. The wind kicks up dust from the concrete and blows into his lungs. He can’t help but sneeze. It’s like a ghost town; a tumbleweed might as well roll through the street. 

Seems like he’s found his mystery.

He reaches into his pocket and grabs his glasses; flicking them open and putting them on as he opens his harsh green eyes. Information begins to flood his brain and his hundreds of thoughts fall into place to make a single, cohesive stream.

This has to be an ability.

And not one that he or the agency has seen before. Although Lucy' s ability can trap people in her room, it can’t trap this many people. And even if she could, why would she trap civilians instead of the agency or the mafia? The same goes for Poe. He might want to do something like this, he’d probably think it a good mystery, but he simply couldn’t have. Although he can trap probably as many people as he wants, that would take time. This happened in a matter of 1 or 2 hours, maybe even shorter. Maybe even when he first started getting that weird chill. 

It’s eerily silent: No people driving cars, rushing because they're late or even the sound of footsteps. It makes his skin feel like there’s bugs crawling underneath it. His eyes go wide. It’s a horrifying notion, but what if someone managed to find the book? He shakes his head as if to get the thought out. No, no, that doesn't seem all that possible. The Guild tried to destroy the city twice trying to find it. If someone had found the book, then he would’ve known a long time ago. He deduces that it must be the work of a foreign skill user; and not one from America.

In the desolate street, something moving rushes past his feet. Something small and something furry that brushes past his bare ankle quickly. Walking outside without shoes or socks on probably wasn’t the best idea. Up ahead, sitting on its hind legs, he spots a creature with a bushy tail and a black mask of fur making it look like a little criminal. The critter looks at him, tilting its head to the side and making a little squeak. He blinks at it, the thing standing out in the empty world. Ranpo mirrors him, tilting his head as well.

“You’re P-”

SMASH!

He whips his head around at the sound of shattering glass. It echoes through the empty street; a sound that could make someone's eardrums burst. He hears a loud squeak from behind him and turns to see the raccoon quickly skittering away into one of the allies.

“Aw, dammit!” He groans

His footsteps push himself forward on the concrete swiftly. Under most circumstances, he’d rush after his lead; he might not be able to again anytime soon. Yet, he finds himself running in the other direction as quickly as he can, kicking up even more dust from the sidewalk. He’s running as fast as he possibly can because the Agency is completely unprepared for an attack.

At least I got my wish, he thinks.

The Agency gets attacked and raided regularly, and he normally isn’t phased by it. It’s practically routine for them. However, this time, Ranpo wasn’t there to figure out that it was coming and warn them; and nothing had been happening all day, so they’ll likely be caught completely by surprise. Paired with the strangeness that’s happening in the street, it can only be bad. Every normal human being seems to be gone from the face of the earth. He frowns. Every normal human except for him.  

He reaches the Agencies building and doesn’t need to look up to know which floor the now broken window is. Still running, he notes that the streets are void of glass, so he knows that it was broken from the outside.

That means that everyone likely just got and is still inside the building. 

He slams open the door and rushes up the stairs, skipping a few steps. The sound of struggling and gunshots can be heard on the higher floors. He hopes that those gunshots aren’t coming only from their unknown enemy.

He bursts into the room of the Agency and isn’t all that surprised by the fact that the room looks like swiss cheese. The desks have been thrown over and used as cover, and they’re full of bullet holes. There’s a group of men and women dressed in all black wearing helmets so you can’t see their faces, and all of them are carrying guns, regardless if they have abilities or not. Ranpo can tell immediately that most –if not all– of these people are able to use skills. That would be the only reason the Agency would be struggling so much. Kenji is trying helplessly to punch, or kick, or even just touch one of the skill users. However, the person manages to keep teleporting out of the way over and over again, narrowly avoiding his wildly strong blows. Kunikida is trying to shoot one of them with his ability created gun, yet somehow all the bullets are phasing through him like he’s some shared hallucination. 

The people in black are loud. They’re shouting demands at each other and it’s like he’s in the middle of a fireworks show. There’s people rushing all over the place and he can’t keep up with it all. His head starts to hurt. Not like a light ache, but a sudden jolt on the left side of his head that almost feels like he got shot. And why is the pain only on the left side? It makes him feel like he's off balance and about to fall from the tightrope any minute. 

There’s suddenly a click close to his ear . He finds the barrel of a gun pressed right against his head, the mask of a faceless man behind it. Its cool metal feels like an ice pack. 

“Be careful with that thing, dumbass,” he snaps.

He growls, “You’re the one who should be careful you-“ He’s cut off with a grunt, suddenly knocked down by a sharp red heel. He falls to the ground and the heel presses against his chest, keeping him pinned to the floor. 

“Ranpo, you shouldn’t have come back!” Yosano shouts over the chaos of the room, “My ability can’t revive you if you're dead, and the-!” 

A bullet whizzes past her and she cries out. It slices through her shoulder and draws dark blood that stains her white shirt. She grips the wound and rushes to cover from the bullets charging at her like a furious stampede. Most of the Agency is cornered or forced to hide behind a desk. His eyes dart over to Kunikida who is still managing to stand his ground against one of the skill users who has dropped her gun. He reaches into one of his back pockets, and his hands rest on a single sheet of paper.

Even if all of the people in this room were ability users, the Agency has been able to hold their own against groups of ability users before. They must have some other advantage; that advantage being that they already know all of the Agencies abilities. Whoever these raiders are must have done research on the Agency before they decided to attack. Ranpo doesn’t really get why some of their enemies don’t do that. Logically, it doesn't make any sense just to attack without knowing anything about them, especially considering their track record. He groans out loud. He wishes that these people were as stupid as everyone else; because they're leaving him with only one option that he really doesn’t like. He sucks it up.

“Kunikida!” —He snaps his head around to look at Ranpo “—Bright out!”

He quickly nods and yells, “The Matchless Poet! Flash Grenade-” The woman in black (and also red, interestingly enough) tackles him to the floor. He hears Kunikida's body scrape against the floor and he wants to scream. She brings him to the floor with a shout —jeez, why is it so hard for them to just be quiet! All of the Agency's forces besides Ranpo seem to be brought to defeat, all of them shutting their eyes and covering their ears. His eyes are sealed shut and unblinking. The woman, using her weight to keep Kunikida grounded, moves her masked head around.

“Where is the…?”

He raises his hand, the one that used to hold a small piece of paper, but now holds a cylindrical grenade with the pin pulled. With his heart beating fast with anticipation, he throws it right into the center of the room and covers his ears and shuts his eyes along with all of the other Agency members. Though he doesn’t close his eyes in enough time. The blinding white light finds its way behind his eyelids, his ears picking up the sound of the loud bang. It’s making him wish that he didn’t throw the bomb. His ears start ringing and he groans in pain. The bright blinding light and the noise make the headache worse. Actually, worse is an understatement; it makes him feel like his head is going to split in two. His heart speeds up. Too fast. It’s way too much. The noise is too loud, the light is too bright, way too bright! His breathing somehow gets so intense that he can hear it over the bang.

Come on, just calm down– why is it still so bright?!

Breathe, breathe– don’t go fast.

It’ll be over in a second– it’ll– it’ll be over, just stay calm.

Darn it! Just calm down already!

The light completely subsides. The Agency members all open their eyes, though most of them are still a little disoriented. Not as bad as the people in black. Some of them can’t keep their balance, and one of them is holding their hands out walking, which looks really stupid. Ranpo would probably like laughing at it. Some of them are yelling at each other, having a miss-matched conversation, trying to regroup.
“Is everyone alright?” Kunikida asks snappily, his blue eyes darting around the room. 

Atsushi opens his eyes and his hands that were cupped around his ears are now at his sides. “I think so,” he looks around the office, “Kyoka, are you alright?”

The 14 year old blinks her eyes open, confusion clear on her face, but she looks toward Atsushi and nods. All the Agency members seem to have regained their footing.

“Ranpo?”

Ranpo is now crouched on the floor, burying his eyes in his legs. His eyes are still squinted shut, which might leave him with lasting wrinkles , and his fingers are plugged deep into his ears. He’s like a rolly polly when it’s threatened. He notices that the strain of the light on his eyes is beginning to subside, and he raises his head. He stands up and takes his fingers out of his ears; grossly enough, he got some earwax on them. The moment that he does, conversation begins to flood his ears. His heart is still drumming in his chest and he still has a raging headache and none of what’s happening is helping. The lights in the Agency office have never seemed so bright before and people keep scraping their damn feet against the floor and everyone keeps talking and talking all at once! 

“Ranpo, are you feeling alright?”

“Can everyone just shut up!” He screams, stress bubbling up as aggression.

After he lashes out, he notices that everyone is staring right at him. Atsushi is right beside him, startled, mumbling something which is most likely an apology. Yosano is looking at him with surprise and concern and even Dazai seems to be somewhat shocked. He wants to go back to being a rolly polly. 

“Don’t just stare at me, you idiots!’ He yells. He points his finger at the disoriented enemies, “Deal with them!”

Some of them –including Atsushi– just keep looking at him with their eyes stupidly wide as if they’re all deaf. Though Yosano is quick to listen. She walks right over to one of them, her heels clacking against the floor, and she punches him right in the jaw.

—☺—

The Agency office is filled with the sound of groaning. Kunikida is scribbling things in his notebook, as usual, mumbling annoyed gibberish under his breath despite the fact that they were the ones who won. Dazai doesn’t seem to be phased at all. They’re acting like nothing happened at all and are listening to music on the bullet hole filled couch. Most of the people in black (most of them being 5) are currently video game ragdolls that are scattered across the room. 3 of them actually managed to escape, including that woman with red on her uniform. 

One in particular keeps groaning and Yosano gives him a light kick. “Oh, quit it already–” then she mumbles– “you big baby.” The man says something, but because his face is on the floor and his voice is slurred, it sounds like nothing but gibberish. The childish part of him wants to laugh at it, so he does. Laughing at the stupid man makes him feel lighter. 

Yosano’s shoulder is still bleeding out, staining her shirt further, and Ranpo is sure that she’ll either need stitches, or to use her Thou Shalt Not Die skill. Though it’s not a fatal injury, in fact most of the Agency members' injuries are only minor. Ranpo doesn’t have any, as he was smart enough not to suffer a single injury. Honestly, with Yosanos’ ability, I’d be better to tough out whatever minor injury you have instead of getting “care” from her. Though her ability is a double edged sword. Everyone in this room would be buried by now without her.

None of them have mentioned what happened earlier. He’s both grateful and curious as to why. None of them seemed to have that severe of a reaction to the intensity of the people in black and to the flash grenade, so he feels like they’d want to know why he did. He’s not really sure how he’d answer that. Things like that –bright lights and a lot of noise– are just way too much for his senses. He’s guessed before that it might be one of the drawbacks of his deduction. Taking in so much also means that he also ends up taking in too much.

“I wonder who these strange people are?” Kenji wonders out loud. He walks over to one of the people in black and crouches right next to them. “Excuse me, sir! What are you and all your friends doing here?”

He doesn’t answer; likely because he was knocked out cold. Kenji shakes him once by the arm, “Sir?” No surprise to anyone, he doesn’t move. “Hmm, he must be sleeping.”

“Kenji, you are dangerously clueless,” Ranpo states. It’s honestly a miracle, sometimes. 

He looks up from the body and at him. He smiles and laughs, “Well I guess I kind of am! City life is truly very different from country life!”

That explanation is stupid, too. Ranpo grew up in the country, and he isn’t clueless like Kenji is. Maybe about things like trains and buses, but those kinds of things are a pain, anyway. You’d think that after doing this job for a while, Kenji would’ve started learning more about city life. 

Ranpo feels air on the back of bare neck from the broken window. Thinking about both his parents' deaths still makes his heart ache, but there were at least two good things that came from it. One, he got to start the Agency with Fukuzawa, and two, he got to cut his hair as short as he wanted.

“Ranpo, do you think that the Guild hired someone else to come after us?” Kunikida asks him as he pushes one of the desks off its side.

“No,” Ranpo says immediately, “In fact, they probably hired the Guild. ”

“What?” Atsushi asks with scrunched eyebrows. There’s still something a little off about him, likely the same thing that was off during the game of cards, but Ranpo can’t describe what so he decides not to mention it.

“The last time that we saw the Guild, you and that emo boy took down their main base and supposedly killed their boss, Fitzgerald.–” he notices that Atsushi frowns at the word ‘killed,’ but he nods– “Because of this, the rest of the Guild members were left in Yokohama, left with no boss, no orders, and most importantly, no money. So, they were forced to find some way to survive here.” He goes over to his desk and sits himself on top of it, naturally with the aim of eating some of the candy bought with Kunikidas’ money. Sugar helps him think.

“So… you're saying that the Guild is–?”

“Now a different organization? Wrong again!” Atsushi blinks at him in confusion. Ranpo groans, “How many times am I gonna need to explain this for you to get it?” Again, Atsushi frowns. He sighs, “Think of it this way,” he says, pulling out a piece of pink coated chocolate, “when a group of ants find a large amount of sugar, they stay around it for as long as they can. But let's say that suddenly, this source of sugar got destroyed–” he eats the candy, waiting until he stops chewing and swallows– “Do the ants just give up there? No. They scurry away and go find a new source of sugar.” 

He takes another one of the chocolates, this one blue, and eats it, this time not bothering to wait until he stops chewing, “Only this source of sugar already has ants.”

He feels as though that was strangely uncharacteristic of him. What even was that he had just said? Was it a metaphor? That seems to be much more Poe’s thing. Maybe some of his language started rubbing off on him.

He did give me chills when I first met him.

He internally groans, Ah, jeez, am I gonna start talking like that idiot now?

Atsushi seems to be turning around what he said in his head. “Well,” he begins, testing the waters, “do you think that maybe the Port Mafia is the one who hired the Guild members?”

He eats another piece of his candy, the outer shell breaking with a satisfying crunch in his mouth. If Atsushi’s trying to solve this before him, then he’s doing a horrible job. Besides, Ranpo obviously already has it solved, so it’s pointless. “No,” he says once he swallows, “Even if the Port Mafia did approach them, I don’t think that most of them would agree to join. This is the work of another foreign organization.”

“Someone else from America?” Kunikida asks.

He pulls his glasses out of his pocket and puts them on; the arms of them fitting familiarly around his ear. Atsushi and Kunikida look at him with curious anticipation.

“Germany.”

That causes all of the Agency, even Dazai, to turn to him, “Germany?!”

Wrestling the gun out of one of the guys hands is easy; people knocked out on the floor don’t usually give you any trouble. The problem for Ranpo is holding it properly. Although he is in the Armed Detective Agency, Ranpo never uses a gun. Why would he ever want to? It’d weaken his greatest weapon of all, his deduction. He holds the big gun awkwardly, the Agency members looking at him with concern, and raises it to his eyes so he can see the brand name. He told the Agency that the brand of all the guns the people in black left behind would be the same, so he told them all to check them for proof.

“Yep! Just as I thought,” He says while reading, “ HK, abbreviated from Heckler and Koch, a German gun manufacturing company.”

Atsushi picks up another one of the guns and studies it. His eyes go wide once he reads the label. Everyone else studies the other ones, and none of them report the gun brand being different then HK.

“Hmm,” Yosano murmurs, “impressive.”

It isn’t even all that impressive. Earlier, he saw the name of the gun brand when that idiot in black pointed his pistol at him. So, he deduced that the organization they were in would supply all of them with the same brand of guns. Simple as that. He still can’t help but grin at the praise.

“That doesn’t necessarily mean that the organization using these guns is German, however,” Kunikida claims, “It could easily be an American organization that’s trying to throw us off, or one that simply has a taste for German guns.”

Ranpo takes another piece of candy, this one flavored like Ramune. Surprisingly enough, he’s never had these before. He savors the flavor of it, lemon-lime fizzing in his mouth. It tingles his tastes buds and the top of his mouth the same way that a soda would. He reaches into the bag for another one once it’s disintegrated. Kunikida does have a point. Just because the guns are German doesn’t mean that the organization is. Though Ranpo wouldn’t make such a claim with only that bit of information to back it up. 

“True, but their leader was also German,” he states.

Yosano raises her manicured eyebrow, “Their leader?”

“Mhm,” he nods. He takes another piece of the Ramune candy, once again letting himself savor it before speaking again. He might have a new favorite sweet. “The woman with the uniform that had some red on it, she had a German accent.”

Kunikida seems to be considering this for a moment, almost like he doesn’t agree with Ranpo despite the evidence that he’s given. He seems strangely competitive today. Maybe he’s still angry about losing to Dazai in that card game or something. Dazai is great at getting stuck in peoples heads and staying in there; he’s like a brain tumor. Kunikida is definitely decently smart, though even if he comes up with another counter argument, Ranpo could find a way to poke a hundred holes like the lid of a jar holding an itty, bitty bug. If anyone could actually come up with a decent counter argument, Dazai would have him beat again.

“Why are you so convinced that this isn’t the work of a group that we’ve seen before?” Kunikida counters.

“Because I have better deductive abilities than you do, and they used abilities in battle that we’ve never seen before,” He says, like it's a basic fact because it honestly is. Considering his grimace, Kunikida now realizes that too. He looks like he wants to slap himself. “The question you should’ve asked is this,” Ranpo says, as he gets off of his desk, “Why isn’t there a single person out in the street?”

Kunikida blinks, “What?” Ranpo walks over to the window, the one that isn’t broken. One of the people in black is ragdolled on the floor in front of it. Ranpo uses his back as a step stool. “See for yourself.”

All of the Agency members follow behind him to look out the window, Atsushi peaking right over his shoulder. Dazai is still laying on the couch, but he’s positioned himself in a way where he’s hanging over his arm so he can see out the window. The height of the building gives all of them a clear view of the world outside, a world that is completely empty. There’s no cars, no sounds, and no people. The winds seem to have gotten harsher, and the dust that Ranpo breathed in before is now swirling in the air of a deserted Yokohama.

Dazai marvels, “Wow, so everyone in the city just got turned to dust by some ability?” Ranpo hasn’t even brought up the fact that this is likely the work of a dust related ability, and he wanted to be the one to reveal it. Considering that they’re the only ones that haven’t been turned to dust, it seems clear that everywhere except their Agency was targeted. This means that the president is likely already dust blowing in the harsh wind. The notion of that makes his chest tighten. Ranpo pouts as Dazai sighs, “Man, it’s such a shame my ability cancelled it out. Turning to dust might be one of the most appealing ways to die.”

Atsushi’s face is dotted with droplets of sweat, and once again he seems to be . Kunikida has his arms crossed, his fingers making the sleeves of his shirt wrinkle. Ranpo grunts and turns around to face Dazai. “You say it like everyone in Yokohama is gone forever, when you out of all people should know that we can undo all of this, easy peasy.” Ranpo puts his hands on his waist, acting like he’s some kind of superhero. “With my Ultra Deduction, I’ll find the organization, in fact the exact person, that’s responsible–” He points to Dazai– “And their ability’ll be canceled in less than three days.”

Atsushi gaps at him as he jumps down from the back of the man, a breathless grunt coming from underneath him. He’s still barefoot from taking his shoes off earlier, so his feet are starting to hurt as he walks across the room.

“What!? Less than three days!” Atsushi blurts, “Ranpo, are you sure? We don’t even know what these people want from us! Much less who they are!”

“You might not, but I already have a lead.” He turns the handle to the door and it creaks open.

“Ranpo, where are you going?”

He smiles and tugs his hat down by the brim, “I’m gonna go chase down a raccoon.”

Were Kunikidas’ eyes dark blue or light blue? Or were they perhaps green? I can’t seem to remember… 

Chapter Text

Yokohama should never be this empty. Never. 

But somehow, the city is so deserted that Chuuya is able to stop and park his motorcycle in the middle of the street. The engine dies down as he skids to a halt and those two sounds are almost deafening. With his foot planted on the ground like a kickstand, his eyes quickly survey the area like blue cameras. They spot tall skyscrapers and office buildings, cars and bikes locked to bike racks but there isn’t a single human in his line of sight. Not a soul mulling about in the buildings or scolding him for parking right in the middle of the street. Besides the bastard he had chased all the way out here, he’s not sure if there’s anyone left in the city.

He needs to go over what happened today. Earlier, he, Gin and a few other members of the Mafia were out on a mission. It should’ve been easy; it was only one enemy and even though Chuuya was the only ability user in the team, they were all still high ranking Mafioso. They had been spread out, the sound and smell of the sea coming from below the port. Metal crates were like the walls of the maze as they split up and prowled. Splitting up had the potential to be dangerous considering at the time seeing as they had no idea what they were dealing with. It was either a small group of smugglers planning to sell their imports to a buyer in the black market, or a massive organization supplying themselves with the Mafia's weapons. The port's cameras hadn’t shown them any evidence of either, which at least tells them that they’re dealing with yet another rival ability user. That fact is giving Chuuya a headache. Seriously, wasn’t that bullshit with the Guild betraying them enough? 

Chuuya was all on his own in this maze of metal. He could easily handle himself alone, though he had made the others have at least three in their group. If they spot anything, they’d signal him with a specific whistle and he’d fly over like a bullet ready to send them packing. His ears were as alert as a guard dogs’.

A metal door nearly got ripped from its hinges as gloved hands peeled it open. Chuuya studied the contents of the shipping container expectantly. He found an array of guns, all still sleek and black, seeming to have been completely untouched. There was no sign of anyone besides him ever being in here. His foot repeatedly tapped against the metal and it echoed like a mocking child. He hadn’t heard anything from the others and there was way too little happening. He turned from the crate with a frown. He didn’t know what he had been expecting, considering it was the same with all the other shipping containers before this. Maybe he had been expecting to see a bandaged teen, one eye covered and the revealed one reading Thomas Shelling, their quick tongue teasing and inviting Chuuya inside. He scoffed at the thought.

Hands in his pockets, Chuuya kept walking through the abandoned maze of crates. It was quieter than a morgue out there. He found himself lazily kicking a stray stone that he had found on the docks just to keep himself entertained. There was no perpetrator in his grasp or even in sight, and was ready to pack up and accept that this mission was a failure. Then he heard a shrill whistle coming from somewhere in the port. His heartbeat excited, cueing his body to shoot into action and rush over to the sight of the sound. He pushed himself off the ground, Arahabaki making his body lighter than a feather as he flew like a bird over the metal crates. He spotted the ant-sized image of his team with his bird's eye view in only a few moments. He dropped like a weight and the ground cracked the moment that he landed, spider webbing.

Chuuya, somewhat confused, didn’t see anyone besides a few members of his team. “What the hell's going on here, did you find someone or what?”

They're standing in front of one of the crates, the door cracked open and from what he could see, the crate was completely empty. He knows all the Mafiosos by face and by name, and none of them answer him. It’s odd how still and quiet they all are. Gin is the only one that acknowledges him, her green eyes boring severity into his. She jerked her head towards the crate and Chuuya, his brow furrowed, followed the motion inside. It felt like his soul left his body the moment that he entered. The silence was deafening and the walls felt as though they were going to crush him. 

Jesus, calm down, it’s just a crate.

There’s some sunlight coming from behind him, wind tickling at his back, the smell of the sea making the smell inside even worse. There was nothing to see at eye level, though when he looked down he saw a floor stained in red so dark that it looked black. Lying there in the center of the stain was a woman's dead body. Chuuya almost threw up. 

From first glance, it would seem like someone drowned her. Though that didn’t make a lick of sense considering the massive amount of blood. He guessed that she was killed by some sort of blow to the head, probably a bullet wound. The smell of metal was so overwhelming and somehow the puddle that she was drowning in looked even bigger than when he first saw it. As well as that metallic smell, there was something else that was much more prominent. The hell was it, fish? He gags. 

The manner that she was killed in I wasn’t necessarily horrible or disgusting, really, and Chuuya didn’t even recognize the woman (though that’s mostly due to it being so incredibly dark in here). He’s a Mafia executive, for god's sake, he’s used to things like this. But still, there’s goosebumps unwillingly pricking at his arms. It wasn’t her death, it was something about the woman herself. Her hair was slick, the strands stuck to her head and body like long, thin black leeches. Her clothes were darkened with liquid and stuck to her body the same way that her hair did, a body covered in water droplets that looked like spider eggs. That horrible smell earlier –the smell of the salt and of fish– was clearly coming from her. The body hasn’t decomposed enough to smell of death yet, and if it had the smell of the ocean would cover it up like a shitty perfume. The pool of blood mixes with ocean water, the red color swirling and spreading throughout the metal of the crate. Chuuya felt like she would suddenly rise from the floor and start choking the life out of him at any moment. He swears that he sees her chest rising up and down.

“Creepy, is it not?”

Chuuya almost jumped and shot through the solid roof. He seethes, “Shit, I nearly pummeled you, Iwao.”

A man with tinted sunglasses and a suit —a man who looks incredibly put together— stands above him from behind. He bows, the top of his head at the bridge of his nose, “Apologies, sir, I didn’t intend to startle you.”

Chuuya can barely keep his eyes on him. He kept glancing back at the body, and his skin crawled every time he did.

“She the one who was stealing our supplies?” He asks.

Iwao shakes his head. “No idea, sir. We just found her like this.”

He huffs a breath and shoves his hands in his pockets. He’s never desperately wanted to leave a shipping container more than now, “Anyone recognize her? Maybe she had some I.D on her or something?”

He only shakes his head again in reply. He might as well be Gin because he sure as hell isn’t telling him much. 

“Damnit,” he scoffs. He forces himself to look down at the ground and scan the body for some sense of familiarity.  The only person it reminds him of is the female Akutagawa sibling, and she’s standing outside the crate at this moment. “Do we know anything about this woman? I mean, what the hell is she doing here, dead?”

“Actually, we do know one thing about the woman–” He holds his head down and his hand towards the wall of the crate– “her last words.”

Chuuya scrunched up his face at the man in the suit. He decided to follow the gesture deeper into the crate that somehow seemed to get even darker the closer that he went in. How the hell was that smell getting worse? It was like someone left a whole ocean of dead fish out in the sun. He tiptoed around the body, the bottom of his shoe stepping in the surrounding puddle as some of it sticks to the heel like gum. Somehow through the darkness, he was able to see the woman's dyed finger extended towards the wall. For a second he could see it twitching.

No, no she can’t move, goddamnit.

He looked back toward the wall, but of course the sight wasn't better than the body. There was a part of the wall darkened with a nearly black red. It was a message. Written messily on the metal was the single word: REPENT. The inside of the crate was horrifically quiet.

He seethed, Christ this is ridiculous.

There was an explosion that broke the silence and the metal wall in front of him. A bullet hole of light beamed through the wall and Chuuya snapped his head around towards the open entrance of the crate. There he could see the barrel of one of their own handguns in the hand of someone unknown. His adrenaline clouded his view like a smokescreen leaving only the man with the gun to be seen but he didn’t need to see the others to tell that they were in the same boat as he was. 

More gunfire rang out in his ears like church bells at a funeral hopefully for none of the Mafioso. The current mystery person was struck by a look of panic and in an instant they disappeared. They hadn’t run off, if they had then they would’ve seen them moving or at least a blur but there was nothing. They had completely vanished as though they were the volunteers in some cliche magicians act. A flurry of excited shouts echo inside the walls of the crates, none of them the shout of the person who had just vanished. Well, now he had an explanation for why they didn’t see him on the cameras; the person had an ability that made them invisible.

Chuuya ran out of the crate to men in suits flailing their guns around the area that a once person stood and Gin had her knife in a white-knuckled grip; in the silent silver of the blade there was a shriek of dark red. He furrowed his brow at the sight. Gin had yet to draw blood, so why had it showed up on the blade? His eyes had darted around the shipyard for any sign of the apparent invisible man, not a single bit of evidence suggesting that he was ever there. While he did, a thought struck him like a punch to the face: what if he wasn’t invisible, what if he was just gone? A teleportation ability wouldn’t have been all that far fetched.

Through the panic, he barely noticed a thick drop falling to the port's dock. Once he spotted the shriek of red on the dock something clicked in his mind and he lunged right for that area, his weighted fist catching the invisible form of a man knocking back a good 20 feet. The area beneath them slowly got stained from two injuries completely out of their sight, but they slowly became visible in flickers. It was as though his body was waving a white flag in defeat. He might as well have painted a target on his back.

Chuuya rushed over to slam his face into the ground with his foot before he could even consider getting back up. He let out a strangled squeal like a dying pig as though this is the worst thing that they’ll do to him. The man's face that was being crushed was swollen with the punch and his shirt stained with the bullet that had grazed his shoulder in the earlier flurry. 

“So you're the thieving bastard who’s been stealing all our weapons, eh?”

He replied in turn with a cough that stains the ground even more paired by two hands that wrapped around Chuuya’s ankle trying to force it from his head. He would have had better luck trying to lift a car. He scoffed a laugh.

“Y’know, I thought you’d be a lot more of an issue,” he taunted, “but you’ve gotta be the weakest idiot who’s ever dared to ever steal from us.”

The man struggled to speak, his voice barely a breath, “Well, good thing I’m not alone.”

Chuuya raised his brow at him. It was a doubtful statement; Chuuya wouldn’t know anyone who would willingly work with this guy and not get sick of him vanishing the moment danger comes. Still, the words triggered his neck to crane and his eyes to dart around the port. It was still the same sight: the stacked metal walls of the shipping containers, the ocean’s waves trying to claw their way onto the port and the few members of his team that were looming over the man, having looked like a firing squad. There was a ping of doubt in his chest, a sudden thought that wouldn’t leave him, but what if he was referring to one of them? What if one of the men and women aiming their guns at them was secretly aiming at Chuuya? He banished the thought in an instant. That couldn’t be the case, they were all members of Black Lizard. If there was a mole in that group, then they would’ve already been snuffed out by now.

“I think that we both know that isn’t true.”

“Sir!” A man screamed from behind. “Sir, something's happening to Gin!”

The rare panic in the voice reeled his attention away from the man like he’d been caught by a fishhook. Although he’s turned around, what exactly happened to Gin remains a mystery because she’s completely vanished from his view. Though he was able to guess what happened based on the way that the other members of his team were turning to dust, being blown away by the intense ocean air.

“What in the hell-!”

He nearly face planted to the dock as something scurried away from him beneath his feet, having pushed his body that was no longer exerting as much force away. The image of the man running away flashed in his eyes but only for a moment. As much as he knew he should run after him, his feet don’t want to move. He was stuck watching as his team became nothing but a nuisance that would tickle someone's lungs; he never even got the chance to see their faces when it happened. They were just gone. For a good 30 seconds, he stood there with his mind submerged in denial. 

The moment of silence for his team had passed and afterward, he had started booking it in the other direction. The perpetrator shouldn’t have gotten too far and Chuuya… well, he’s Chuuya. Jumping from crate to crate was as easy as jumping over rain puddles on the sidewalk. With the view rivaling that of a bird, he was able to spot a dot running through the metal maze and to the road. He reached the street before Chuuya could touch down and started bolting down the sidewalk in a shameless, fearful flurry. 

Chuuya landed on the sidewalk and didn’t stop moving until he reached his bike parked on the road patiently waiting. He half expected it to blow up when he turned the throttle, or at least for one of the wheels to be flat; courtesy of the man who was running away from him. When he twisted the handle, the motorcycle started speeding after the perpetrator before he could completely get his foot off of the ground, the engine exerting an inevitably useless waste of energy as he notes how strangely easy going the drive through the city is due to the lack of traffic. 

-2383-

He’s long since left Port Mafia territory, in fact he’s much closer to the station that the Military Police inhabit. The skyscrapers in the area have never before looked so foreboding; it’s like they’re the massive bars to a cage without the steady buzz of workers toiling away inside. Intertwined with the air are a thousand specks of dust covering the street in a hazy brown like it’s an old western. Small particles of dust tickle his nose and the largest of the specks thunk against his bike.

The streets of Yokohama aren’t getting any less empty, and Chuuya isn’t getting any closer to finding that thief. This is exactly the problem with invisibility abilities: you can’t catch what you can’t see. He’s tried keeping an eye out for splotches of blood, but he must have picked up on that and somehow stopped the bleeding. That piece of shit is long gone along with everyone in his team. He knows he never should’ve let himself get distracted, though what are you supposed to do when people around you start disintegrating faster than pills in water? He takes a deep, seething breath, and in that breath he can feel dust particles flying around in his nostrils. He has to grip the handle of the motorcycle. Son of a bitch, this is awful.

If he stays out here alone in the ear bleeding silence a moment longer he’s going to lose it. He twists the handle to the bike once again, swerving to circle back towards the port. The invisibility user is long gone, and even if he wasn’t Chuuya would never be able to see him, but his acclaimed accomplice might be. 

The dust keeps getting in his lungs and up his nostrils. It's likely this is caused by some sort of large-scale ability, like Shibusawa’s. While this ability is affecting the entire city it seems, it must have originated from somewhere, and the port is his best guess. He did practically tell Chuuya that the person who caused the people of Yokohama to turn to dust had been working with him and was likely there at the port with him as well. All he can do is hope that there’ll be some evidence left behind that will lead him back to them so he can beat the lights out of the fucker. 

Speaking of which, what in the hell were these people's problems? Unless this was some sort of pocket dimension like that girl with the braces had, why would they do such a large scale thing just to ruin their operation? Whatever the ability does, it doesn’t seem to be doing anything to him. Does it not affect ability users period? That man he’d seen at the port didn’t seem to be affected, and each member of his team were not ability users. It does thin out the herd, yes, but the most powerful people —the ones in control of Yokohama— all have abilities. All the Port Mafia members are, and there’s an entire faction of the government dedicated to ability users affairs. What on Earth would be the purpose of killing every weak, low position person in sight? Either he’s trapped in someone's ability with no clue of how to get out, or there’s someone who desperately wants to fuck the Mafia over.

He pulls up to the port, wishing that he had some goggles to help block out the dust for the drive. He rubs out the specks, trying his best not to think about the fact that they once used to be people. The smell of the ocean comes back to his nostrils, and he can’t help but think back to the woman dead in the crate. As much as he doesn’t want to, he’s going to have to study that body once again. The light inside the container had been so dim that he’s uncertain if her hair was actually black or if it was just the darkness tricking him. 

He finds the rock that he had been kicking around the port and continues abusing the stray stone. It skips across the port, accompanying the violent waves and the swaying, creaking ships as the only sounds. Dust still taints the air and he tries to resist the urge to sneeze, but he’s unable to stop himself. He sneezes into his elbow, and he hates that he ends up staining the sleeve of his jacket when he does.  

The body might not even be there anymore. He doesn’t know anything about the workings of this ability, so the chance of the body still being there is 50/50. Turning a dead body into dust seems to be a pointless addition to the ability, but if they were an ability user in life would they still be exempt from the abilities' effects? 

Better question, can the abilities' effects be undone?

As he walks through the port, he can see evidence from his last time here, that evidence being the torn open doors of crates showing up seemingly at random. He passes right by one of them, able to peak inside to see rows of what he thinks are German guns.

He’d take a deep breath before heading back into the crate with the body, though he’s afraid he’ll end up breathing in the dust. The door is still only cracked open, the smallest beam of golden sun leaking into the dark. With a protesting groan, the door peels back and the light pours in to illuminate the crime scene. 

It’s the same sight as before, only this time the light makes the apparently dark brown hair shine slickly in the sunlight. He startles slightly, reminding himself that this is a woman and not the mentally ill traitor that left him six years ago, But the fact that he mistook brown for black isn’t the biggest cause of his shock. The puddle around the woman —which is somehow even bigger than before— isn’t even red. In the darkness it looked black, and in the light, it still looks black. He blinks, half expecting it to turn red when he opens his eyes again. He walks into the crate to get a closer look at the puddle, one of which is still a darker shade of black than the night sky. The light doesn’t even seem to be reflecting off of it. The word on the wall is much clearer. It was like a whisper when he had seen it before and now it was screaming at him. 

If he was listing things based on how weird they were, the second on the list would be the fact that there are paw prints leading out from the crate. Cat paw prints, to be exact. They're the same color as the pool of not-blood, and they must have been soaked in the liquid because no matter how far the prints travel, the substance doesn’t thin out. Each step is as equally pigmented as the last.

Chuuya crouches down to the puddle to study it closer. He pulls off his glove and dips his finger in it. The black fluid isn't nearly as thick as blood. It’s almost close to water, only water drips and doesn’t stain your fingers. He presses the stain with his thumb and there’s no trail as he pulls them apart, his thumb only stained to the point where he can still see splotches of skin.

So it’s the dead body of a woman bleeding out ink?

The woman was (and may still be) obviously an ability user. Her “body” isn’t dust and she’s bleeding out ink. The reason why the hell that would be useful remains unknown.  But if she doesn’t have blood, then maybe she’s not dead (wow, shocker, I know). He scoffs and shakes his head. 

Seriously? A large-scale ability that turns someone to dust and one that makes the person immortal?

Right now she does seem dead, though she could be just pretending or in a resting state that is another part of her ability. He rolls the body over to face forward. His guess was correct even though it wasn’t blood covering the floor; the woman had been shot in the head. He’s jump scared by blank and unmoving eyes that seem to be staring at him widely as he moves his hand to her wrist to check the pulse. 

There’s nothing. She doesn’t have a pulse. 

Though —if Chuuya was still going with his assumption— she would be a zombie, wouldn’t she? Maybe she wouldn’t have a pulse? Zombie movies don’t exactly cover this so he isn't sure. It might be best to just face the facts: she has no pulse, and Chuuya doesn’t think that those are the eyes of someone living.  

He can’t help but frown and toss the hand on the ground. This dead woman might have been his only lead. He thought that maybe she had been in whatever organization that the weapons thief had been a part of, and that perhaps there was a dispute that ended with him putting a bullet through her skull. That or she had been someone who had learned too much about the organization and had come to kill him, only for it to backfire on her. Either way, he could’ve gotten some answers if her heart was still beating. 

The biggest question that he has right now is the paw prints. He hadn’t seen a cat by the port and he couldn’t fathom a reason why there would be one here. He could just say that it was some stray and bury his confusion forever. Though he doesn’t think that it was a normal cat. If it was, then how come the footsteps never got less pigmented? Why hadn’t they eventually stopped leaving black prints on the ground? Even outside the crate, he was still able to see them and their harsh contrast to the world around them. He wonders if the cat has something to do with this woman's ability as well. She might not be alive, but perhaps her ability still lives on. 

He stands up with his glove still in his other hand so as not to stain it with ink. He would have to find a bathroom somewhere to clean it off, or he could just plunge his fingers into the ocean outside. Either way, it’s about time that he finally got out of this crate. A crate that by some miracle still smells like the ocean if the ocean somehow rotted. 

He nearly bolts out of the ink stained metal box, mentally planning a meeting with the other Mafia bosses. As much as he’s against the idea of dealing with Mori, he’s perfectly able to hold down his disdain despite what some people think. Another unfortunate fact besides Mori was that the moment he left the crate and breathed in the scent of the salty ocean it couldn’t help but spark a memory from six, maybe seven, years ago.

-2383-

Chuuya had the misfortune of knowing Dazai for a painfully long time. Yes, it hadn’t even been a year but that was more than enough for him. Most of his time in the Mafia before he had become the youngest Port Mafia executive had been spent with Ango and Oda, even most of the time after he was an executive. But Chuuya was his partner, so the two of them were required to spend some time together even if Chuuya had been incredibly against it. 

The person made him incredibly uncomfortable 24/7 without fail. He would make him sick to his stomach every time he was around. Hell, sometimes he had trouble sleeping after a mission with him. Chuuya had learned that suicide was a typical thing that one deals with in the Mafia —-people often ended their lives to avoid being tortured for information—- but somehow that bastard always made him shiver whenever they mentioned it. That and they took pleasure in making him want to break is nose and everything else every single moment they had to work together. Which is why once he had first seen Dazai’s “living arrangements”, also known as some random shipping crate in a garbage dump, he made sure that he would take every opportunity he had tease him about it the same way that he does with him. 

One hazy afternoon after a mission, Chuuya and Dazai were walking back to the crate. The air was damp and thick like the breath of a panting dog, and they both couldn’t have helped but moved sluggishly. No surprises to anyone, the two of them were arguing. Their back and forth insults and such startled away every single crow and pigeon they came across. It would have been enough to chase away all civilians if they came across any during their struggle through the back ally’s and empty roads. The topic of their fight was unclear. It had either been about Dazai letting Chuuya get hurt, or Dazai letting himself get hurt. The point is, both of them were injured, Chuuya being injured from using corruption and Dazai from what he insisted was “part of the plan” even though Chuuya knew damn well that was bullshit. Even with Dazai and their antics, he still suffered much less injuries than Chuuya had, meaning that Dazai was forced to carry Chuuya out of the battlefield.

Naturally he had made the entire walk humiliating and insufferable.

“Well, Chuuya,” Dazai had said, dragging out the a in his name, “looks like I’m still the best executive out of the two of us. You’re probably so grateful that you’re being helped by someone like me right now.”

Chuuya would glare at him, but he’s far from his field of vision and he thinks that any move to look at him would be enough to make him pass out. Grateful wouldn’t even come close to describing how he felt. Right now, he felt like he was a broken grocery bag that Dazai was just letting go empty, all while humming a happy little tune to himself and never noticing.

“Just… just shut your trap already…. And don’t act all cocky!” He sneered at him, his yelling coming out strangled and through bloodied coughs, “I… I saw you get pummeled nearly halfway across Yokohama a few seconds ago… you… how the hell was that part of your plan, huh?”

Dazai sighed as he dragged the shorter person through the dirt, clearly not caring much about whether he was uncomfortable or not. Chuuya’s shoes were now most definitely covered in mud, only to get so much worse. But he can barely see the few strands of now wild hair that have fallen in front of his face, so his shoes don’t exactly take priority right now. 

“Man, you really do just yap and yap and yap like a little dog, don’t you?” Dazai complained, “And I wouldn’t worry about me, you're so tiny that I bet even a colony of ants wouldn’t have trouble carrying you.”

He grits his teeth, wishing for the ability to punch him right in the center of the face and break his nose but he can’t even feel his fist. Thank God he can’t feel his fists because right now his knuckles are broken and peeling apart like bananas. His memories of the fight are vague, but in that mess of red rage and malice he can see a memory of him punching a man in the face over and over again without stopping. It began to do less damage to the person he had been punching and more damage to him. There’s hundreds of other injuries that he could address but between them and Dazai’s natural gift of pissing everyone he’s around off, all that Chuuya wants to do right now is rest until he’s over 30.

He’s not over 30 yet, but despite that, he wakes up somewhere with a strangely hard surface. Both his head and his back feel worse than when he had fallen asleep, but at least now he feels like he’s able to move. As his senses come to him slowly, he can feel something covering his bruised face and if Dazai wants to keep all his limbs on him it better be his hat. He lifts the cover off of his head, feeling the familiar rim and finding himself just a bit calmer. He pushes himself up, adjusting his hat to be on the top of his head and he can feel something cool and smooth like the scales on a fish. He groans as his eyes begin to adjust to the strange darkness of the area around him. It’s a rectangular room with a few beams of light seeking to illuminate it coming from cracks in the area. It’s grey and metallic, the only other material being the two other rectangular shaped objects and one that’s nothing but a black blur. Once his eyes get more used to the light, he can see that those objects are a small fridge, a table and a single chair with someone sitting in it glaring at him with blank, empty eyes.

He stumbles backward, a metallic clanking echoing in the container as he does.

“Jesus fuck!-”

The person smiles at him the same way that he thinks a serial killer would. Chuuya instinctively closes his fists and gets ready to rush them before he takes a closer look at their face. Chuuya hardly has much of a view; after all, half of his face is obstructed by a wrapping of bandages. 

Maybe he should pummel him.

Chuuya jumps off the ground and gets into Dazai’s unfazed face,“What the hell is your problem, shit for brains?!”

He hums in consideration, acting like some idiot by ignoring the rhetorical of the question, “I don’t know. Maybe it's because earlier today I got thrown around like a child's plaything and it didn’t kill me.”

He face couldn’t help but flicker from one of anger to one with wide eyes. Though as quickly as the expression crosses his face he makes sure that it leaves. Words rest on his tongue but he swallows them to stop them from ever leaving. Dazai is left with Chuuya’s face staring at him with an annoyed scowl, “You’re a total freak, you know that?”

They smirk —not with their eyes, they somehow seem even emptier— and Chuuya can’t tell if he wants to punch him or do something else, “Well at least I’m not a half sized dwarf like you are, Chuuya.”

He definitely wants to punch him. “Are you-?!” He growls, “For the last time, I’m still growing, goddamnit!”

Their stupid smirk only gets bigger and they start kicking their feet as they hang over their chair like noodles hanging from a pair of chopsticks. “No your not!” They tease in a sing-song voice, “I told you, you’re cursed to never grow an inch more in you life and I’m always right about these things!” 

Chuuya seethes through his nose like a pissed off dragon breathing smoke. He’s racking his brain for a comeback, but the only thing he has in his arsenal is a punch square to the face and his knuckles are still healing from being cracked open like an egg.  It’s the first time that he’s noticing this, but his knuckles are bandaged. They must have been changed or wrapped recently because blood hasn’t began to crust. None of the white has turned red, not even a pink. They’re clearly them same bandages that Dazai has, and something about them being around his own arms feels odd. 

He notices Dazai looking up to the dark celling of the crate with a huh. Chuuya can’t help but furrow his brow at him and Dazai answers him without him even having to ask him what. 

“I just realized that we’ll both never grow up.”

The crate goes quieter than the bottom of the ocean. For the first time today, Chuuya doesn’t want to hit him or yell at him. In fact, with the way he’s still looking at the celling with those blank eyes, he almost wants to hug him and keep him locked in that embrace until he swears that he won’t do anything; an urge that he doesn’t know how to feel about.

Dazai suddenly whines and Chuuya feels as though he’d been woken up from a nightmare only to be brought into another one. “Damn it!” Dazai moans, “I can’t believe I have something in common with the slug!”

His frown deepens and he has to force himself to take a deep breath, which hardly does it’s job of calming him down. There’s no way that he’ll spend all this time around them and not get wrinkles before he turns 18. Luckily his anger manages to subside long enough for him to finally have something to combat them besides a fist to the teeth.

Chuuya scoffs at them, “There’s a pretty simple way to fix that, you know. Come on, I thought you were supposed to be the brilliant Demon Prodigy.”

“Oh, really now?” He says, still obviously teasing and making him feel how Dazai always makes him feel: small, “And what this easy fix-“

Apparently, gripping him by the collar was the right thing to do. Dazai finally shuts his mouth and for the first time since the two of them had met, he looks surprised. He’s blinking at him and at his fist that’s bunching up his collar leaving his tie to hang loose. Chuuya’s knuckles ache from the earlier fight but he doesn’t need to bother with Arahabaki to hold Dazai centimeters off the chair. 

He glares them dead in the eyes and answers, “You die when your older.”

To Chuuya’s shock, Dazai doesn’t have any kind of reply. He’s far from complaining. The crate goes back to being as silent as a morgue and the two of them do nothing but stare at each other. For a time, Chuuya searches Dazai’s dead eyes for some kind of light, but all that he sees in them is his own reflection. 

Then for the quickest moment his eyes dart lower.

Chuuya pushes the bandaged teen back into his chair and he lands against the back of it with a oomph. He storms past the chair and to the exit of the crate, the smell of every rotten thing he can thing of combined flooding his nostrils. He thinks about who he’s in here with and decides that he’d rather deal with the smell.

Chuuya doesn’t even bother dignifying him by turning around. “Your face was creeping me out, I couldn’t take it anymore.”

“Oh thank God, I was thinking the same thing about you."