Chapter Text
Atsushi didn't remember what had happened last night. Well, that wasn't entirely true, he remembered pain. A lot of pain. A pain he was now being reminded of as his headmaster struck him repeatedly. They had been at it for half an hour. Atsushi had woken up in the jail cell that the orphanage staff called his room. Whether this was to keep up appearances or to ease their own guilt about how he was being kept, Atsushi wasn't sure. There was however something different about his cell today. Two big differences, actually. The first one had been behind him when he had woken up: a large machine that seemed to resemble a chair. The second one, far more alarming to the twelve year old, was the body of a man with long white hair who was laying in a pool of his own blood. Before Atsushi had time to conclude that, for some reason, his gut was telling him not to be too sad about this mans death, the headmaster had come in. This was different from the other times he had been angry. The man's abuse had always felt planned before, like there was an intention and greater meaning to everything that he did or made Atsushi do. This was different. As the man's fist struck his face, he could feel that the headmaster was panicking. He scolded, he always scolded, "You insulant child, the world will never have a place for you, you're a monster." That was standard, but some of what he was saying was new. "You've proven it now. You idiot, he was going to fix you." According to the headmaster, Atsushi had proven he was a monster. Looking at the body that still lay on the floor beside him, he could guess why.
The guilt was sinking in now, he was a killer. He looked at the man laying on the floor next to him and everything his headmaster and the other staff had said to him sank in. By nature Atsushi was a plague on this earth, bringing destruction with him, cursing whoever was close. They had been right. The headmaster had been saying as much when the door to the churches' basement flew open. Not flew in the metaphorical way that was often used to describe a fast opening door in the books Atsushi read but flew as in, it levitated itself of the hinges, to the other end of the staircase and crashed down on the floor. The headmaster paused his beating to identify the culprit and Atsushi found himself doing the same. At the entrance where the door had once been, two teenagers stood. An angry looking ginger with his foot in the air and a bandaged brunette only slightly taller than the boy he was stood next to. The latter spoke first.
"Chibi" He extended the ee sound at the end of the name in a high pitched, over dramatic tone. "This was supposed to be a stealth mission."
The shorter boy ignored the other, marching towards Atsushi and the Headmaster, down the stairs and swinging open the cell door. "Where do you get off on talking to little kids like that huh?" The boy had grabbed the headmaster by the collar and pulled him down to his height. Every bone in Atsushi's body was still. While the beating had been bad, this was the most terrified Atsushi had been all morning, no one had ever talked to the headmaster like this. He wanted to warn the ginger but he could not find it in himself to move, speak or even shake his head to signal 'no, it's not worth it'. He was frozen.
The headmaster, on the other hand, did not let his surprise get the better of him. "Who do you think you-" The teenager punched him. Atsushi had definitely never seen that happen before. He had envisioned it many times but of course he had never acted on it. Partly because he was twelve, and even then he had been informed he was small for twelve and would likely perform poorly in a fight against a grown man and partly because he did not want to prove them right about his violent nature. Although there wasn't much use to that now. "You don't ask the questions here you bastard, now what the fuck is wrong with you?"
As the headmaster started scrambling, trying to break free of the boys grasp, the other teenager slowly made his way down the set of stairs. "You'll have to forgive my associate, he's easily triggered recently, a lot of dead friends, and that little monologue you were giving to this-" the boy glanced at Atsushi with his free eye "Kid, seems to have hit a nerve." The ginger gave the brunette a dirty look before rolling his eyes and releasing the man, throwing the headmaster off his balance, resulting in him falling to the floor, next to Atsushi. The man had never seemed so small before.
"Why are you here?"
The taller teenager played along to the mans question, all though Atsushi got the feeling that if he didn't want to answer, he wouldn't. "We were looking for Shibusawa Tatsuhiko, he's caused a lot of trouble for us in the Port Mafia recently and our intel said he was here so we came to do what the Mafia does to it's enemies." The mafia? They looked too young to be mafiosos. If these boys really were from the mafia should the brunette really be telling the two of them all this. Would they need to kill them after? If Atsushi had killed the same guy the mafia was after, did that make him just as bad as them? He felt himself gulp as the boy knelt down next to the blonde mans' dead body and pick up his head to check his face. After a moment he continued "But it looks like thats already been taken care of. So now our mission is to find who was powerful enough to kill the man who's been giving us so much trouble." Atsushi gulped again.
There was a certain disdain in the headmasters voice when he talked, one that was rarely used, even on Atsushi. "Why? So you can make him one of you?"
The boy smirked "Why, what ever do you mean?" Atsushi felt like he had missed something. Had this boy already concluded that he was the killer? Then how did the headmaster know he knew?
"I know about you at the Port Mafia, you and your abilities, Atsushi's not going to be like that." The headmaster speared him a glance for a second. "I've worked far too hard on him for you to just undo it all now. That boy is not a thoughtless killer. Not if I have anything to say about it." Atsushi's brain grew foggy. The headmaster was contradicting himself. All his living memory he had been told he brought misfortune so why on earth was the Headmaster defending his innocence?
The taller boy chuckled, "Care to explain this then." He was turning the body onto it's back, revealing claw marks across the mans face. Atsushi flinched when he saw it, whilst he had gotten used to his own, he had never liked seeing other peoples injury's, especially when the injury was a face in shreds. The ginger boy spoke again "What the fuck happened here?"
Usually if a child swore at the orphanage they would be scolded and have to skip a meal, if Atsushi swore he would have to skip three meals. It did not seem like the headmaster would scold these boys though, instead he did something that Atsushi had never seen him do before and bowed his head. "He said he'd fix him."
The teenagers glanced at each other. Again it was the ginger who spoke up, "What do you mean, fix him?"
"His ability, he said he'd get rid of his ability." What were they talking about? Atsushi had heard about abilities before sure. He heard the other kids whisper about them to each other but he had not truly believed they were real. Kid's made stuff up all the time so why was the headmaster now implying that he had one.
"Is that so? And what is this young boy's ability?" The headmaster just stared at the brunette boy for a second. Refusing to say anything, that was until the teenager pulled out a gun and pointed it straight at the older man's head."I'd advise you to answer my questions, as you said, you know all about us mafia types."
There was another beat before the headmaster caved. "It's called Beast Beneath The Moonlight, he turns into a vicious tiger at night." Atsushi did what? No he couldn't. He would know. Surely he would know. How could he not know? It certainly explained the claw marks on the corpses face but no. Surely Atsushi was misunderstanding this. They weren't actually talking about him were they? The Headmaster continued, "It won't be useful to you, he can't control it, he doesn't e-"
This time it was the taller boy who hit the man. Atsushi hadn't even seen the boy move across the cell but after hearing the thump, he did see the brunette standing above the man, his gun in the air, it seemed like he had used the it to hit the headmaster in the face. "That's not for you to decide."
Then something very odd happened, something Atsushi would think about for years to come. The man who had hurt him, who had told him he was useless, a waste of space, had hammered a nail into his foot and held him under water whilst he screamed, all with a stone cold face, started to cry. Not just cry but beg. "Please no. If you take him now it was all for nothing. You can't! Atsushi isn't like you. Not re-" and then a bullet met his head. Then again. Then again. Three times. Atsushi didn't make a sound. He didn't understand anything that was happening but he knew, just as he always had, that he did not want to die. Getting on this mans bad side, being his enemy would certainly be unfortunate if he was to achieve this goal. Historically, Atsushi's mere existence had upset those who had power over him so he decided to be very still. To not react. To act as if he was not human. He simply stared at the floor waiting for the next course of events listening to the older boys argue.
"What did you do that for?"
"Eh, he was getting on my nerves, what can I say?"
"And that gives you the right to blow his brain out?"
"Now you're getting it."
"Why you- we could have used him for information."
"Now, now Chuuya, I think we have everything that we need right here." Atsushi felt a hand on his shoulder, he didn't dear look up. "What was your name? Atsushi? Is that what that annoying man said?" The mans tone was so casual, almost playful. It didn't match the rooms atmosphere at all. Atsushi, despite his nerves, did not let his voice tremble when he answered. He had not let himself mumble since he was six. "Atsushi Nakajima" his eyes were now locked onto the pair of black loafers in front of him. "So Atsushi-kun, what exactly happened with Shibusawa." The young boy panicked for a second. Who was Shibusawa? Had they mentioned him earlier. By process of elimination he concluded that they were referring to the corpse with tiger scratches down his face. Then terror struck him again as he realised that he could not answer the question. "I'm very sorry, I don't remember. The headmaster said I killed him. I don't remember that though." This wasn't enough. He had to make himself useful to these men to ensure his survival. "All I remember is, last night I was in a lot of pain. It was all over me, everywhere in my body." The older boy seemed to sit with this for a minute, making a hmm sound. Then took his hand off Atsushi's shoulder and walked over to where the machine was whilst the other boy took a seat next to Atsushi.
There was a moment of silence. Atsushi's mind tried to figure out what was going on but every time a thought started going anywhere he just felt himself asking "why" in his brain. Why had he woken up with a dead body next to him? Why were these teenagers here? Why had the headmaster cried? Why did he say all that stuff about him? Why? Why? Why? His spiral was interrupted by the taller teen again. "I'd bet Shibusawa was after the kids ability but needed to trigger it, hence the electric chair, although I'm guessing the tiger wasn't a fan of the 3000 volts running through his veins. Classic Icarus story for Shibusawa, kind of underwhelming considering how much trouble he gave us but what can you do?"
"3000? Then how on earth is the kid still alive, yet alone in pretty good condition?" The boy next to him sounded concerned, almost worried about Atsushi. The fact that a boy from the mafia seemed to care what had happened to him shocked Atsushi so much that he broke his eye contact with the floor. He looked at the boy, who was a lot closer to him than he had realised. His eyes were heterochromatic which for some reason made Atsushi like him. It wasn't a conscious decision but the fact that him and this boy shared the fact they had mismatched eye colour made him want the boy to like him. He couldn't explain or reason it but something about this boy felt safe. Atsushi had never thought a person felt safe before. Against everything his brain told him to do he shuffled himself closer to the older boy who, on instinct it seemed, wrapped his arm around the younger boy's shoulders.
"Well aren't you two cute." Atsushi had now found the confidence to look up at the brunette, who was sporting a mocking grin.
"Answer the question you damned mackerel." Unlike his counterpart the ginger did not seem to find anything about this situation humorous and he did not keep the calm, nonchalant demeanour of the other boy either. They seemed to be opposites.
"I'd guess it's to do with his ability. For Shibusawa to go to so much trouble for it, I doubt turning into a tiger is all there is to it." He turned to look at Atsushi for a second. Unlike his friend who's eyes exuded warmth, there was nothing behind this boys' eye that Atsushi could see. It did not look human. "Not that that won't be useful." Won't be? so they planned on keeping him around?
"Are we gonna take him to the boss then?"
The boy in bandages scoffed. "If we didn't it would practically be treason." The man walked towards him, then looked down at him. He planted a hand on his silver hair and ruffled it for a second. Atsushi did't know what to do. How did he even react to such a thing. The mans touch felt cold, again, nothing like the gingers'. So he did not react, he simply let the man pet him like a dog. "He's gonna love you."