Chapter Text
“There are cryptids everywhere in the world, which only makes sense, when you consider ‘cryptid’ means ‘science doesn’t know about it yet.’”
—Antimony Price,
That Ain’t Witchcraft
Deep in a forest, hunting things that hunt people
Takashi is eighteen years old when everything he’s ever known about the world changes.
It's not the existence of monsters. Takashi has known about those since he could crawl. The Shirogane clan can trace its lineage back for generations to ancient Japan, where his ancestors had defended humanity from the encroaching, hungry yōkai. The creatures were real, and not something out of myths and legends. They were creatures that could, and would, trick and connive, kill and consume. Creatures that would eradicate humanity if given a chance.
Takashi had been raised on bedtime stories of the heroics of his family and the terrifying creatures they’d faced. He’d been trained in countless techniques passed down from warrior to warrior. He’d studied for hours on end, to learn the weaknesses of each of those things, that in turn thought humans were weak. He had been eager to earn the right to fight alongside the rest of his family and their allies in the Covenant of St. George. To truly earn the name Shirogane, and the duty and honor to safeguard ordinary humans from things that simply weren’t.
No, it's not the existence of monsters that stuns him. It's the fact that maybe, this entire time, not all of them have been evil.
It happens at night, during one of his first solo missions. At eighteen, Takashi has been combat capable for years, and permitted on missions for the past two. But this is one of the first times he’s ever been allowed to split away from a seasoned veteran to continue a hunt on his own, and he’s eager to prove himself.
He’s one of the brightest, most skillful trainees the Covenant of St. George has to offer. ( No surprise there, many of the higher-ups often say, he’s a Shirogane, they’re born and bred for this). But even so, he still has to earn his keep. A name and a family reputation mean nothing for an unproven cadet, and cockiness can still get him killed, no matter how good his family is supposed to be at this.
So he puts everything into his hunt. But even so, he’s surprised he finds the troll first. Especially when someone is screaming for help, and the call carries so far, even through the dense trees.
It’s not an easy opponent. Protocol says he should wait for backup, at least one or two other agents of the Covenant, before engaging. But the troll is rabid and ruthless, and there’s a human curled up in the loam with their hands over their head, quaking in fear. Takashi can’t wait.
This is what he was meant for.
The troll is a difficult opponent. It’s enormous, strong, far faster than it looks, and it’s armed with a club that’s actually half a tree, which gives it a frightening amount of range.
Takashi is armed as well, but the sidearms won’t do much against a troll of that size, and neither will the throwing knives. Getting close enough to use his sword nearly kills him. He takes a nasty slash to the face that should have cut out his eyes and just barely misses. The troll’s club connects with his right arm savagely enough to break it in two places.
It’s a dangerous opponent, but Takashi is more agile, and clever, and he’s trained for this. He knows how to fight an opponent so much larger than he is, and how to turn its size to his advantage. It’s a hard battle, but it ends with him hamstringing the troll, and when it collapses, severing its head from its body.
Takashi gasps, and he hurts, but even so, there’s a fierce, wild pride in his chest. He’d defeated a creature singlehandedly that should have taken three agents, while protecting a civilian, with no casualties. He has earned the right to his surname. They won’t be able to keep him as a junior cadet much longer. They’ll have to offer him his trial to become a full member of the Covenant after this.
But when he turns to help the civilian he’d rescued, he freezes. The young man that had been curled up in the dirt and begging for help is sitting up now, staring, eyes wide.
He isn’t human.
There’s no doubting it, now that Takashi can get a closer look at him. He’s human- like, but his skin has a grayish pallor that’s not natural, and his entire body—especially his arms and legs—are too long to be normal. There are too many joints in his fingers.
Bogeyman, Takashi identifies, after a shocked moment.
They’re dangerous. All monsters are dangerous. But these ones are attributed to spreading plagues in human populations and preying on human fears for sport.
He’s a monster. He has to die.
Even now Takashi is in danger, with his right arm uselessly dangling at his side, and no backup. A bogeyman is much smarter than a troll, and will know how to use Takashi’s vulnerabilities to its advantage. Takashi has to fight back now.
With years of instinct and training guiding him, he shifts his sword in his left hand, preparing to strike or defend, and takes his first step forward.
But the moment he moves, the bogeyman crawls backwards several feet, long, spider-like limbs and hands scrambling awkwardly in the dirt. He watches Takashi, wide-eyed, and rasps, “Please. Please don’t. I just want to go home to my family.”
With a pang of shock, Takashi realizes this monster is scared of him.
It’s a trick, his training warns him, fierce and suspicious. Bogeymen were known to be excellent mimics. They could throw their voices with alarming skill, and were excellent manipulators of emotions...usually fear. This one was probably preying on his exhaustion and pain, trying to turn the situation to its advantage.
But even as long years of training caution him to be wary, Takashi’s instincts say otherwise. There’s no way to fake the expression in those wide eyes, or in the shake of his limbs. This monster is terrified. Of him.
Maybe that’s supposed to be a good thing. The monsters that prey on humanity should fear the Covenant of St George. They should fear the name Shirogane. They should know humanity has protectors, ones who aren’t so easy to hunt or kill.
Maybe it’s supposed to be a good thing. But there’s a twist of uncertainty in his stomach that nauseates Takashi, for some reason.
“Please,” the bogeyman repeats, still scrabbling backwards. “I just...I don’t want trouble. I just want to go home.”
He’s injured, Takashi realizes suddenly. One of his unnaturally long legs is bleeding and swollen. He’d probably been injured by the troll. He can’t escape quickly, and he winces every time he puts his weight on the injury. He’d be easy to kill.
He could be the same age as me, is his next thought. He’s not sure, exactly. He doesn’t know how one tells, with a bogeyman. But if his limbs were the right length, and his skin wasn’t so gray, if he didn’t have too many joints in his fingers, his face looks like one that could belong to another Covenant trainee. Messy, brownish hair, skewed glasses crookedly hanging over his nose, goofy T-shirt with a science logo on it.
And he’s terrified. Of Takashi.
Takashi’s hand tightens on the sword hilt for a moment, so hard his knuckles turn white.
He knows his duty. He knows what he’s supposed to do. The oath he’d sworn demands that he cut down this...this monster here and now. Eighteen years of training concur. Who knows what this...thing could do, if it escaped.
He could make it painless. As merciful as possible. But better to end it now.
Except, as he stares down at the frightened maybe-a-teenager and sees his own reflection in the bogeyman’s eyes—covered in blood, sword in hand, staring down like an executioner—he can’t help but wonder who the monster in this situation really is.
He turns his back on the bogeyman, and without a word, he walks away.
Stupid! His training screeches. Even his instincts balk at the idea of leaving his back exposed to a creature he’d been taught would gleefully strangle him in his sleep.
He does it anyway.
He makes it to the other side of the clearing, on the other side of the dead troll, and glances back one last time. The bogeyman has managed to haul himself to his feet, using a tree as support. But he hasn’t tried to attack, or chase, or come any closer. He just stares after Takashi, wide-eyed, shocked.
“Why?” he asks, after a moment. He’s twenty feet away, on the other side of the clearing, but Takashi hears him as though he’s standing next to the creature. It takes every ounce of restraint he has to keep from flinching. “Aren’t...you’re one of them, aren’t you?”
Not even an hour ago, Takashi might have taken vicious pleasure in the bogeyman speaking of the Covenant like they were the frightening creatures in the night. Now it makes his stomach flop uncomfortably again.
He doesn’t answer that question. Instead he says, “There’s more of them here. They’ll come soon. If you want to see your family again, you’d better get gone.”
There’s a sharp intake of breath right next to his ear, and twenty feet away. Takashi looks away again, and heads further into the woods alongside the clearing. When he glances back again, the bogeyman is gone.
His training screams that this is bad. A bogeyman out of visual range is potentially deadly. But Takashi has a feeling he won’t be hassled by this particular bogeyman again.
Physically, anyway.
Mentally, whether or not the bogeyman had even realized it, he’d left behind a vicious wound that was already starting to fester. Takashi goes to make contact with the rest of the Covenant agents on tonight’s mission, to report his kill to them and—maybe, just maybe—to stall them a bit, just enough for the creature he’d protected to get away. But as he does, he turns the question over and over again in his mind.
Who had been the real monster here tonight?
He’s benched for nearly two months, while his broken arm heals.
“I’m impressed you got out of a fight with a troll with just a broken arm,” the Covenant physician says. “Shirogane indeed.”
Strictly speaking, it isn’t just the broken arm. He’d gotten bruised up pretty badly in the fight, and his ribs are a little sore. The gash across his face is deep enough to leave a scar, and probably will; he’s lucky he didn’t lose an eye, or his life. It’s uncomfortable and pulls tightly at his face, sometimes, and it’s sore and sensitive while healing. Breathing is sometimes difficult. But he can live with it.
Most of the other Covenant agents treat it like a badge of honor. “A troll, defeated single-handedly,” they exclaim, impressed and awed. “At only just barely eighteen! He’s not even a full member yet. Blood shows.”
He is reprimanded for fighting the creature solo, of course. He wasn’t supposed to fight one without backup; there was a very real possibility that he could just as easily have been killed. He doesn’t dare tell them about the bogeyman, either, so he can’t claim that he was rescuing a civilian. There hadn’t been one, when they’d gone to examine and burn the body of the troll.
But the punishment is a light slap on the wrist compared to what might have happened. They’re too impressed. Even his father and mother, both seasoned veterans in their own right, admit as much after finishing with their lecture. They were concerned about him being too reckless, but they were proud of him for what he’d done.
Everyone’s proud of him. They’re already lauding him as a new champion for the Covenant. Two days ago he’d have been thrilled by it.
Their pride makes him sick to his stomach, now.
So it’s not like Takashi minds being taken off active duty for the duration of his healing. That encounter with the bogeyman had been...unsettling. He’s not sure he wants to go out killing more monsters just yet. Not until he’s had a chance to think.
His right arm is bound in a cast and he’s stuck around the main complex in the English countryside, reduced to light exercise to keep from getting out of shape, but not permitted to push himself too hard. Normally, that wouldn’t bother him. He can still stay active, and the English complex is pretty, funded by old European blood on old European plots of land, with plenty of open space to roam and train. He’s been to a fair few of the complexes around Europe, and his family hails from Japan, but he’d probably consider this particular location the closest to ‘home’ that he’s ever known.
But now he can’t help but wonder just how much these walls are drenched in blood, and how many of the killings that this place stood for were just.
All his life, he’s been taught to defend the innocent. The weak. The helpless. He’s been raised on horror stories of monsters slaughtering defenseless humans, humans that hadn’t even known they existed, and hadn’t known how to protect themselves. He’s always believed in the cause. He’s always known what he was doing was right.
But time and time again he thinks back, to that terrified face on the bogeyman, and his pleading to just be allowed to go home. He’d acted so...human, even if he wasn’t. So vulnerable. And the longer he looks at it, he can only identify that monster….no, that person... as someone who was just as innocent, and just as unable to protect himself.
Takashi doesn’t like the thought that maybe he’s the predator.
He tries to seek justification. For his own actions. For the people he’s known his whole life, who he’s talked with, laughed with, trained with. The people who have saved his life against dangerous creatures. They can’t be monsters, can they?
Not all the stories can be wrong. He’s been attacked by monsters on his training missions. Lindworms and ahools, or the werewolf infestation that had spawned down south. The troll he’d killed had been wild and uncontrollable. There are things out there deadly to humans, and humans need to be protected from them.
The stories aren’t all wrong.
But they’re not all right, either.
At the very least, everything he’s learned about bogeymen could be wrong. The one he’d met hadn’t tried to manipulate him, or strike when he was wounded, or take advantage of his vulnerabilities. He’d just wanted to go home.
Two days before his cast comes off, Takashi comes to a realization. Despite eighteen years of training, he simply doesn’t know enough. Not about monsters. Not about anything.
And if he doesn’t know enough, and the knowledge he’s been taught is wrong, and they’re indiscriminately killing innocent victims who might not be as dangerous as the stories would imply…
Then he’ll have innocent blood on his hands. He probably already does, and the thought makes him so sick to his stomach that he can barely eat.
His coworkers, the Covenant, they have innocent blood on their hands too. His family, its vaunted duty and honor for generations upon generations, their hundreds of stories about deadly foes vanquished and precious lives saved... all of it may have come at the cost of innocent lives murdered.
The name Shirogane might very well be so stained in blood it will never be clean again.
Takashi knows enough to know he doesn’t know much of anything.
But he does know that doesn’t sound like justice to him.
Just a few months after he turns eighteen, Takashi runs.
It’s not his first choice. When the cast comes off, he begs time off to retrain, get his broken limb in working order again. It’s not a total lie—it does twinge uncomfortably sometimes, deep in his bones, if he pushes himself too hard.
But mostly he doesn’t want to go back on duty. Not if it means he has to kill again. Not without knowing if the blood on his hands is justified. Not until he knows if what he’s doing is right.
He tries to research it. To read between the lines of the accounts in the library. But there’s nothing to find. Stories about dozens of kinds of monsters killed are there in droves, but it’s always justice, always deserved. They were always evil, cruel, conniving. The Covenant is always right.
Except Takashi knows they’ve been wrong at least once. Which means they might have been wrong before, and they could be wrong again.
Running isn’t his first choice, but he plans for an exit anyway, just like he was taught. And a few months after the cast comes off, when he can’t avoid going on missions any longer, when he will be on a mission to eradicate a nest of ghouls discovered in London, he enacts that plan.
It’s almost disgustingly easy to disappear. He drains one of the family’s financial accounts, converting some to cash and shifting the rest to safe, unknown personal accounts for later. Steals an ungodly number of jewels and silver from the Covenant complex, things easy to smuggle but worth a great deal to the right sellers. He’s trained in concealment, disguise and stealth his whole life, in order to discreetly enter countries, deal with whatever problem was discovered, and leave. A fake identity and passport are easy to create. He knows how to cover his tracks, create false leads, and hide his own trail.
He disappears in the middle of the night from the Covenant complex, and he never looks back.
He flees to America. The Covenant has footholds in most other countries, especially in Europe and Asia. But they’ve had a harder time breaking into North America, despite their many attempts. The Covenant had always been disgusted at the odd acceptance some parts of the country had for monsters, or at how easily it was for them to hide in the enormous populations or wide open landscapes. They could never maintain much of a foothold there, and only had a few spies at best.
Takashi wants nothing at all to do with them, so America it is. It won’t take them long to realize he’s gone absent without leave, and when they do, he needs to be so firmly hidden they’ll never find him again.
Getting set up in America is shockingly easy, with the amount of money he has at his disposal.
As soon as he touches down on American soil he dumps his first false identity, just in case, and picks up a second. He takes another flight, at random, to another huge city on the east coast called Garrison. He’s only vaguely familiar with it. It’s not one of the well known cities like New York, which is one of the first places the Covenant will look for him, but it’s still large enough he can get lost in the population.
Once in Garrison City, he dumps the second false identity—he’s being paranoid, but he’d rather be paranoid than dead—and creates the third. This one, he’ll use for longer than a few minutes.
In his head, he’s still Takashi Shirogane, loathe as he is to be attached to that surname now. But to everyone else, he’s Ryou Tanaka, freshly moved to the USA for some travel experiences before going to university.
He gets a two-bedroom apartment, fully furnished, in a reasonably defensible area. He’s still being paranoid, but he knows what the Covenant are capable of. He doesn’t know what they’d do to traitors, because there haven’t been any in centuries. But he knows it won’t be good, whatever it is. He’ll still have to be careful of innocent civilians living in the building, but he has at least six ways to get out of the apartment and enough decent cover that he can defend himself in the event of an attack.
Once he has a base of operations, he arms himself to the teeth. He hadn’t been able to smuggle most of his weapons on the plane, but it’s almost depressingly easy to rearm himself with any number of firearms and throwing knives, two well-honed swords that weren’t merely for display, a set of brass knuckles, two collapsible police batons, a garrote, a crossbow and bolts, and a machete in short order.
It’s not nearly his old arsenal back with the Covenant. But then again, he reminds himself, that arsenal had largely been for hunting monst— cryptids. He’s not doing that. Ever again. This is only to protect himself, and only if he absolutely has to.
Even so, he’d been taught never to go completely unarmed. And he might not want a fight, anymore, but he’s not naive enough to believe a fight won’t still come to him. Not with his family’s reputation, and not as a fugitive of the Covenant. As soon as he has some access to his weapons again, he makes it a habit to always have at least one concealed firearm, a dozen throwing knives, and one of the batons on his person.
Just in case. You never know when they’ll be needed.
He certainly hopes they won’t.