Chapter Text
Makochi is something of a checkpoint for traffickers of all sorts. Ever since Bofurin was formed, they quit being so brazen and tended to keep to themselves, skirting around their territory and Shishitoren’s, only slithering their way through it if necessary. Most of them know not to stir up trouble.
But every so often, the more ignorant or bold ones attempt to do their dirty business in town. They are usually caught and punished by Bofurin. Less often, such criminals attempt to involve Furin students in their activities.
Those would be lucky to be caught dead instead of alive.
Tonight’s offenders are organ harvesters, and they are not scared to play dirty.
The harvesters are vultures, opportunists, searching for the most palatable among a selection of easy prey. They work away from prying eyes as much as circumstance allows.
It is shortly past midnight. Sakura is lying in his futon, awoken by an unpleasant dream, and only further irked by the plentiful moonlight streaming into his room. It caresses his eyes and tries to tease them open. He begrudgingly considers Kotoha’s suggestion of acquiring curtains, because at this rate he’ll be going to school on a mere two hours of sleep.
A shadow comes over him and shuts out the sky’s opal-soft glow. It is too dark to be a passing cloud. It lingers too long to be harmless.
Sakura feels a familiar twist in his gut: the sensation of being watched. He tenses against his will. When the moon reaches his face once more, he surrenders to its nagging. He gets up and checks the window. There isn’t anyone there- not anymore.
Now more awake than ever, he throws on his uniform. Then he walks outside of his apartment, ready for confrontation. When he finds none, he settles for a patrol along the entire street, the one that leads from his residence to his school.
(The first mistake is made here. The harvesters choose Sakura as their target.)
He seeks out the scavengers he knows are lurking nearby. The street is quiet, save for the intermittent chimes; Makochi’s residents are sleeping in their houses, unaware of the peace that is about to be broken. Sakura gets as far as Cafe Pothos before the harvesters make a move.
Three of them lunge out of an alleyway. Sakura has suspected as much, so he deals with them easily- he ducks under their blows and counters with a solid trio each of kicks and punches. They’re on the ground instantly, caught off guard by the boy’s speed and strength. Hidden weapons fly out of their pockets. Needles, nails, and little knives. The sight makes his skin crawl.
What are these creeps planning?
He glimpses a fourth silhouette, one that darts into the alleys and begins carving an erratic through them, hoping to evade successfully. Seeing a flash of silver that could not have been a trick of the moonlight, Sakura follows. He’s intent on apprehending his pathetic assailants, and he doesn’t believe that the chase will last longer than several minutes.
The person is good at weaving, but their footsteps are terribly heavy. Tailing them is no chore. They flee into a clearing, under a railroad, through an archway marked by graffiti and black swirls. Straight into Shishitoren’s turf.
(This is their second mistake.)
Sakura is aware of the change in scenery. His mind hesitates even if his steps do not, and in the end his instincts win. The prospect of letting an armed attacker escape into the territory of their rivals-allies just doesn’t sit well with Sakura.
It takes another minute but he finally catches up to the evader, who has paused, perhaps to catch their breath. He is ready to tackle them to the ground, but then he sees them reach into their breast pocket. This time, the shine is onyx-harsh.
His heart plummets into his stomach. Only thanks to quick reflexes does he manage to lurch down and sideways right as the person’s arm whips outward. It’s a pistol in their grip. They fire.
(This is their third mistake.)
(The fourth mistake is not made by the harvesters.)
The sound cracks across the clearing like a lightning strike. Sakura feels the bullet whiz past his shoulder, hears it ricochet off the concrete.
Bad. That is bad.
Even back in his hometown, Sakura was lucky enough not to encounter guns on a regular basis. But he has enough experience with them to know two things.
One, people who use guns are overly reliant on them. The moment they lose their weapon, they flounder from the loss, and it’s that moment which Sakura must take advantage of. That method has always worked for him.
Two, if he doesn’t disarm his opponent soon, he is going to get shot and beat up. Dirty as the trick may be, it’s one that is fast and dangerous, and works for as long as it’s active.
Sakura’s mind is in free-fall. The person seems surprised that he dodged the first bullet, but they start to re-aim. Not wanting the risk, he swivels and kicks the pistol out of their grasp. It goes flying across the pavement.
They curse. Sakura immediately clocks them in the face, hard enough for a knockout. He exhales steadily and remembers that he’s supposed to report something as severe as this to Umemiya. He hesitates to take out his phone to call or text at so late an hour.
Click- click- click.
Sakura freezes. He sees two more people slide out from the void of the side streets, both equipped with revolvers. They’re several steps in front of him. They have their weapons raised and ready. He weighs the potential consequences of compliance against what would happen if he attempted to force the guns out of their hands. It might have worked if there was only one of them.
He worries they might be trigger-happy. One sudden movement and his brains would paint the road.
What do they want? Revenge?
“Hands.” One of the gunslingers orders sharply. The word, growled barely loud enough to warrant a single echo, cuts across the thick silence between them.
Sakura’s rage simmers. He takes a deep breath, thinking it might be worth the injuries if he goes for disarming them. Then he remembers hearing three clicks, not two, and- panickedly- instinctively tries to turn his head to the side. Sloppy, pathetic, should’ve checked the shoulder earlier-
He feels cold metal press against his neck.
Dammit.
Togame wakes up to a sound like lightning. He knows for a fact that it isn’t storming.
He jolts upwards, immediately feeling something frozen claw at his ribs. He and several other Shishitoren members had fallen asleep lying across the armless seats on the lower floor of Ori; he gets up and sees them waking, too. A few murmurs of what was that noise and did you hear it too bounce around them.
Togame has a bad feeling. He smooths out his uniform and heads to the door, cracking it open. He’s hit with a mild chill. It’s the dead of night; there’s scarcely a cloud in the sky, letting the moon shimmer in all its glory. Seems peaceful.
But that iceberg under his skin isn’t appeased.
Choji lifts his head, eyelids fluttering sleepily. His hair is tousled- clearly he’d had the privilege of a good dream, one that he is still partly wrapped in. “Kame…? What was that?”
He doesn’t say he believes it was gunfire- not yet. “Let me check.”
“Sounded pretty close.” Kanuma frets.
Togame dares to take a step outside. His eyes check the rooftops, the spaces between buildings and abandoned boxes. All is still. He hears the others shuffle and stand. Sako squeezes around him to comb the area, moving like an alley cat on the hunt, steps feather-light despite the eerie quiet. Even this late in a town as small as Makochi, there should be birds cooing, rats scuttling, foragers digging in the trash.
They must have been scared off by the shot.
You don’t know that for sure. Who would have even fired it, and why?
Togame really doesn’t want to find a body. Not of Shishitoren, of Furin, of a civilian. Not now. Not ever.
Arima and Kanuma follow Sako, though they aren’t as stealthy. Each clack of sole against street feels like another layer of protection peeled from their skin. Choji’s head bobs into Togame’s peripheral vision, and he looks down at the boy.
Choji is smiling- he rarely isn’t- but there’s a worried crease on his forehead, nearly eclipsed by his mussed up bangs. “That sound was pretty loud.” He has the presence of mind to whisper.
Togame resists the urge to fix his friend’s knots. Sako vanishes around a corner, the other two in tow, so he goes after them with Choji close. He shuts his eyes and listens.
The footsteps of his teammates, each a different gait. He tries to stretch his ears further. Aha, not too far. Is that cloth, or metal? Rustling, scraping? Whispering?
There are definitely other people awake.
He hears them stop walking, so he does, too, and opens his eyes. They’ve walked to one of the more open clearings in Shishitoren territory. Sako, brow furrowed in concern, has paused to kneel on the ground. He picks something up. It clinks, glimmers between his thumb and index, and the moon is generous enough to show them that it is a bullet fragment.
They murmur and curse, scanning their immediate surroundings for the perpetrator. Sako pockets the bullet piece with a frown.
“So it was a gun,” Choji remarks. He taps his chin. “Hm…I don’t think anyone is watching us, so…?”
Togame’s gaze flicks to the road. He sees more flaked metal nearby, then identifies the crack in concrete where the bullet had likely struck. This is far too close to Ori for my liking, crosses his mind, but really, a gunshot that even a single soul in Makochi can hear is too close for anyone’s liking.
The starlight is so bright and pale that he nearly mistakes the blood on the ground for black paint. There are two sets of splatters, spaced close to one another. It isn’t a lot of blood. Still he feels his arteries stutter.
Togame would hate to find a body, yet he also doesn’t think that confronting someone with a gun that was clearly fired is…well, he knows it’s not a good idea. But he also wants to teach the moron a lesson.
“They might still be around.” Kanuma offers weakly.
“Stay quiet.” Togame advises, then starts to walk a little ways away from them. He knows he heard voices. The perpetrators are still around. They have to-
(The harvesters make the fifth mistake.)
He hears the clatter of a trash can being toppled, and a startled shout. The others lift their heads. Were they cats, their ears would be swiveling. Togame picks up the pace. It has to be there- several houses down the street, in an alley on the left side. They come up on the scene, slowing down, and Togame presses his back against the wall as he approaches the corner. He hears the angered whisper-shouts, the hushed argument. Sounds like three people talking, but there is a lot of moving cloth and heavy limbs. At least one person is incapacitated.
“-cking kicked me, what was I supposed to do?”
Clink. Metal and glass.
“You’re lucky if you didn’t wake the whole neighborhood!”
Clink. It sounds…heavy? What is it?
“There, done. Keep the mask on, he won’t be waking up anytime soon.”
“Would’ve preferred to save that for the clinic.”
“You should’ve hit him harder.”
“I didn’t wanna kill him! We need it as fresh as possible!”
Clink. Togame glances at his friends. They look confused, but mostly angry. They want to fight. So does he. He leans forward, daring to peek at the scene.
He sees five figures, four moving and clad in dark fabric. One of those four is pressing a reddened cloth to their swollen cheek. Clearly they were given a violent bash to the face.
The fifth figure is limp as a ragdoll, unconscious, wearing a familiar black and green uniform. The realization hits Togame like genuine lightning. Bofurin.
“I have no problems slitting his throat right now, but here we are. Come on, let’s go.”
The speaking figure stands. Togame sees that they are holding some kind of canister, connected to a tube, connected to a breathing mask…worn by the Furin student, a head of black and white.
He sees red.
The first thing he does is lunge. His fist connects with the speaker’s nose, making a satisfying crack, louder than a storm. They collapse in a heap. Choji darts into the alley, then Sako, Arima, and Kanuma. The other perpetrators scream in shock. They are swiftly silenced by Shishitoren’s swift and brutal assault. One of them is knocked out by Choji in a single strike. Assured by his friends’ presences, Togame decides to continue wailing on the speaker since they are still awake and he’s still pissed off.
Sako drops the one with the injury on their cheek. Suddenly he sees the split-haired victim and gasps in recognition, “Wait, the Sakura kid?”
The injured one takes advantage of his shock. They scramble for their pocket, take their pistol, and fire at random.
(Six.)
Lightning strikes Togame’s arm, zips off the brick wall, and lands under a dumpster.
“Kame!”
Togame hisses unintelligibly- some curse mixed with a pained noise escaping through his teeth- and recoils from his now-unconscious opponent. Such a light touch, a brush with flying metal that barely sliced his skin, yet it bleeds profusely and looks far worse than it is.
Choji’s expression has flared into wrath and fury. He is at the shooter’s side in an instant.
“That’s the last mistake you’ll ever make.” He snarls, right before delivering a ruthless spinning kick to their uninjured cheek, followed by a downward stomp between their shoulders. He’s about to beat them further.
Then onyx flashes in Choji’s eyes, and he sucks in a sharp breath before pivoting.
Another shot goes off. It does not ricochet.
Arima’s opponent has a revolver, too. Apparently his colleague’s actions inspired him to copy despite the solid pummeling he’d been given: blood is streaming down the guy’s head and into his right eye. Must have been his dominant eye, with how inaccurate his aim is.
Togame sees the moment that the person who shot him dies.
They don’t make a sound. They shiver, only once, having already crumpled from Choji’s attack and unable to fold further. Blood begins to pool quickly from their head, where the bullet is lodged and never to exit. Their brain loses control of their muscles, which twitch and spasm, before finally stopping for good.
Togame can barely feel his injury. He hears Sako and Arima incapacitate the new shooter, confiscating the gun. They move to secure the other two people who are still alive. A jittery Kanuma checks on Sakura, gingerly removing the mask and kicking away the canister and tube. Choji stares blankly at his feet. The blood nearly reaches his shoes; at this hour, it looks like ink.
Togame really, truly did not want to see a body tonight.
“Are you okay, Kame?” Choji asks, carefully neutral.
He steps around the puddle, putting his free hand on his friend’s shoulder. “It only grazed me. I‘ll live.”
Choji sighs, looking at that still-warm figure. His gaze is cold, internally justifying the outcome through icy reasoning. “What an idiot. You don’t use guns here. This is what happens.”
Togame hums in agreement. “They brought this on themselves. If they needed firearms so badly, they should have expected an accident like this to happen.”
Choji seems to feel better. He briefly flits away to tear a substantial piece of cloth from one of the incapacitated people, which he then uses to staunch the cut while chirping promises of giving it proper treatment once they return to Ori. Togame sighs deeply, checking the sky. Nothing’s really changed. It hasn’t even been half an hour.
And there are far too many questions that need answering. The wheres, whys, whos, and whats.
“How’s Othello?” He settles for asking.
“Breathing,” replies Kanuma as he anxiously nibbles at his nails. “I-if I had to guess, they pistol-whipped his head to knock him out, then fully sedated him with the gas canister.”
“Let’s alert his upperclassmen.” Togame says, glancing wearily at the ground. “Umemiya especially.”
“I-I have Hiragi’s number.” Sako volunteers, shaking as he pulls out his phone. “I’ll make a call.”
Choji watches with vague concern for both parties as Togame scoops up Sakura into a princess carry. He’s never been shot before, so the pain is new…but bearable. “How does meeting him at the train crossing sound?”
Choji nods and motions for Arima and Kanuma to haul the perpetrators with them. Then he takes the lead and walks ahead.
Togame withholds another sigh. It is going to be a long night.