Chapter Text
Poet walked down the stairs followed by Dazai. The stench of blood and screams quickly filled the air as they walked past subordinates looking better than ever. Instantly they saw Caterpillar sitting on some crates of pristine and expired medical supplies still as a stone gargoyle.
“Caterpillar!” Dazai cheekily waved, “What’s this little get together for?”
Caterpillar simply held a finger out as if to signal wait a minute and then pointed towards a curtain where the screaming was the loudest followed by the sound of a chainsaw.
“Oh,” Dazai’s eye widen innocently, “Angel is in the zone.”
Poet paused to look through the opening of the curtain before sighing. Suddenly he pulled it back to where a man had his guts out and Angel eagerly held a bloodied chainsaw with a manic look.
“You really enjoy this don’t you?” Angel looked at the whimpering man while saying in a crazed whisper, “You enjoy seeing people cut open so much! It just means you want to be too. To be cut open, to be injected with all kind of vile substances, to be strapped down just like this, to be ignored while pleading for your life. For mercy.”
“Angel!” Poet called, “He was supposed to be healed an hour ago!”
Immediately Angel grabbed the man’s head and cradled it close to her, “No! You can’t have my patient! Don’t take my patient!”
The man looked at Poet with clear fear in his eyes, a desperate want to escape the hell she was putting him through.
Poet groaned and marched over to begin to drag the body. Angel reached out and snatched his hands, “Don’t… Don’t you dare.”
“Angel,” Poet began, “It’s me, and your patient needs to be healed.”
“You don’t want Mori to have to be his doctor, do you?” A haunting voice said from behind Poet. Caterpillar had moved from his perch and stared at Angel with a soulless gaze.
The doctor silently shook her head.
“Then heal him.”
The butterflies slowly emerged and engulfed the man’s body while Angel murmured repeatedly, “I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.”
The other three youth stood unaffected by her anger knowing how unstable she was during her procedures. How prone to saying the cruelest of things due to how her ability had warped.
They said that in her youth before the war, her ability could heal anyone, no matter the severity of the wound. After Mori brought her to the war front though, her ability came connected to the state of those she treated. Treating men with dangerously fatal wounds so regularly with no alternative injuries proved to be costly. It became like her ability forgot how to heal basic wounds.
However even after all that, there was a pure and sweet angel in the Angel of Death. One that genuinely wanted her patients to get better despite all it had changed her and how laborious it had become. It still hurt to personally harm others just to heal them and allow them to get stuck in the never ending cycle. So Angel needed a new way to help perform her duties as a doctor and healer.
She moved to the next injured and began to cut open the woman. Immediately the patient’s screams filled the air.
There was really only one man Angel wanted to hurt. To keep in this torturous cycle. The one man responsible for all this is the first place.
Beginning to peal away the flesh Angel let her insanity shine through, “I’m so glad to be your doctor here today, Mori.”
At the moment all Jouno felt was pain and anger. If that fool hadn’t betrayed him he wouldn’t be stuck in this cell specially designed to contain him. It was a laughable attempt in all honesty. The second there was a tear in the metal Jouno would be free and burn this place to the ground until all that was left is the ashes of the pathetic director that Taneda is. The thought was welcoming and gave Jouno the smile he needed for the day.
“Jouno,” a man’s voice spoke through the intercom of his metal cage.
Well speak of the devil…
“Taneda,” Jouno grinned, “To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?”
The intercom gave that annoying crackle, “How would you feel about exchanging prison time for community service?”
There was a pause before light chuckling, “You want me to use these hands that slaughtered and tortured so many to what? Help grannie walk across the street and plant some flowerbeds in a garden?”
“We’re actually planning on a job that is a little more active for you, if you’re interested.” Taneda began to explain, “There’s this detective agency run by a man named Fukuzawa—“
“Is that so?” Jouno smiled, “A detective agency, you say? You want me to use all my skills and knowledge of killing and committing crimes to catch others?” Jouno tilted his head, “I’m surprised you think so low of me.”
“You’ll be able to arrest those who got you locked up in the first place.”
Jouno stilled a moment before laughing, “Taneda! At this rate you’re doing them a favor! You think what I have planned for them is a fair trial where in the end they sit in a cell? Do you really think I’ll give them that mercy?”
Yet Taneda spoke in an aggravatingly calm voice, “Very well then. Good luck on your vengeance plan, Jouno.”
Air freely hissed in his cell and Jouno didn’t need to be told twice as the doors opened. Immediately calling forth his ability he slipped through the opening. Once he had made it out Jouno immediately felt something was wrong. There were no new passages and was instead like a slightly bigger version of the previous cell.
The stupidity of these actions, Jouno thought and began to realign himself back into a psychical form. However as he tried to, parts of his form failed to come together, particularly around his eyes where his regular form had been slightly altered. Anger surged through Jouno at his failure to rematerialized. He had known he had always needed to be careful. Turning into micrscopic particales only offered a limited range of senses. Because of this Jouno always had to stick close to himself and to know his surroundings beforehand so he didn’t reform in a position or area that left him vulnerable.
“You’re probably realizing by now that something is wrong with you ability,” Taneda’s voice echoed, “You see Jouno, my ability allows me to understand yours perfectly. When you were betrayed much of your body suffered multiple burns from the explosion. It physically altered your body in a way you haven’t grown used to yet. This change of form has essentially confused your ability. To put it in simple yet poetic phrasing that’ll probably make you want to bash my head in, your ability cannot understand how to rebuild your physical form at the moment since you don’t understand your new form yourself yet. After all, you’ve been trapped in this tiny cell that didn’t allow any movement and you’ll find the world is much different than you’re used to now since you’ve become blind.”
I will rip your head off. Jouno thought enrage, I will cut you into a thousand pieces. I will not only blind you, Taneda, but I will tear off your nose and ears. I will get vengeance for putting me through this.
“Of course your blindness will eventually not affect your ability. In fact it might even help it. You’re simply not used to it,” he heard Taneda sigh heavily through the intercom, “Jouno, I do not enjoy seeing you suffer like this. No ability user should feel limited by their gift. So I have a purposal. Join Fukuzawa of the Armed Detective Agency. He can help you remaster your ability.”
Jouno could not respond in this form, only able to imagine that Taneda could feel his boiling rage. Jouno swore a long time ago that he would never need anyone again, certainly not some man running a detective agency.
“And I believe you have a right to know this as well,” Taneda finally said, “An alternative occupation had been brought up to you. I am unaware if you know them but there was an elite group called the Hunting Dogs during the war. They’re still around today and are tasked with eliminating high level gifted threats. However when you join the Hunting Dogs, routine procedures are required, procedures that are borderline inhumane in my opinion. Once the first set is completed though, your body will require them to be able to function. You’d be tied to the Hunting Dogs for the rest of your life. A weapon forced to respond while being painted as a hero.”
You’d be tied to the Hunting Dogs for the rest of your life.
Suddenly Jouno felt a tightening in his chest he swore he would never experience. Fear. How could a man with the ability to move the stability of his body be confined to a single life? And all this under the guise of being a hero? A good man? Force to smile and tolerate the idiocy of those before him. Force to behave like a perfect ravenous dog on a leash who sits, stays, and rolls over on command.
That would not be his life.
But becoming a detective? Being able to integrate others, watch them squirm under his gaze, would be a nice luxury to retain. But Jouno doubted that this Fukuzawa would allow him to use his normal techniques.
And even then his control of his ability would rely on this man. However Jouno figured he could play the helpless victim, pretend to be guiltily ashamed just so the man could teach him to control this glitch in his ability. Jouno wanted to laugh. Him? An innocent victim of circumstance? A small voice in his head asked what an innocent person even is or acts like. But if Jouno truly wanted to get his vengeance on those traitors and Taneda for putting him through this patheticness, he’ll need Fukuzawa’s help to regain mastery of his ability. Something that Jouno is confident he can accomplish quickly.
Though he supposes desperate times call for desperate measures.
They had to wait a hour before Angel was finally finished. An extra two for her to snap out of her thousand yard stare and regain the loose control of her sanity she usually had. Sometimes things blurred back to when she was younger and in the war. Treating people who she cared about. But Angel would never let that happen again, a key reason she was so distant from her subordinates and the rest of the mafia. She couldn’t start caring for her patients on a personal level again.
So Angel found herself a new group of friends. Friends who actually stood a chance in fights. Friends who didn’t need to be healed every day. Friends who could take care of themselves.
Stretching his arms above his head, Dazai began, “As much as I love our little meetings as the boss’ favorites, I have to kick Chuuya’s ass at the arcade in a hour.”
“Since when do you care about being on time?” Poet huffed.
“Since it gets him out of things,” Angel smirked, “Though I do have a meeting with the boss soon so let’s wrap it up.”
“Why are you in such a rush to see the boss?” Dazai rolled his eye, “You’ve been seeing him for the past few hours.”
“Enough,” Caterpillar finally said, “We need to talk about him.”
“About who?” Poet raised an eyebrow, “The boss?”
“Have you noticed it yet?” Caterpillar quietly told the group, “The way the boss has been acting lately? The way he keeps on taking up our time to be stuck with him. The frequent meetings and appointments.”
“The boss always wants to hear from us,” Dazai sighed blissfully as if remembering a fond childhood memory, “After all we were his witnesses all those years ago.”
“Besides with all we’re in charge of, he’ll naturally need to speak with us,” Poet checked his watch, ready for this nonsense to be over.
“We do control quite a lot in the mafia, don’t we?” Caterpillar admitted, “Meanwhile Mori recognizes this and sees it. He sees our close bond. The reason why he has so many one on one meetings, why he holds us back well after the day has ended, is because he wants to split us up. He wants us to form a stronger bond with him so we’ll just be competing for his attention. He wants us to turn on each other and he’s slowly planting the seeds.”
Angel narrowed her eyes, the only option clear in her mind, “Then what are you suggesting?”
Dazai nodded, a lopsided grin slowly forming, “The four of us combined have more respect than he does. The mafia knows who built this empire.”
“Is it respect or is it fear?” Poet narrowed his eyes, “To some we’re just his pet monsters that only he can keep tamed.”
Caterpillar just sighed as if he was done with the slowness of those around him, “We’ll just do what we’ve done before,” he leaned forward, “We’ll just have to kill the boss of the Port Mafia.”