Chapter Text
Sophia swung her legs, dangling off the pier at the lake. In her hand, she held a meat skewer. There were a couple more in the basket next to her, with this outing meant to be their entire lunch.
Or, well, her lunch.
“You sure you don’t want any?” Sophia asked Hakushaku, holding out hers.
He pushed her hand back to her. “Enjoy it. I’m good with this,” he gestured with the nutrient jelly packet he held in his grip.
Sophia pouted. He never ate anything else. Why have all those fancy chefs?
Not that she was going to complain much. She hadn’t gotten to spend time with Hakushaku in forever. And now she got to hang out with him all day. Or, for as long as it would take for Hakushaku to get tired and fall asleep. It was going to happen soon enough. They’d been tramping through the Valentine grounds for an hour at least.
“Uhm. Sophia,” Hakushaku said, playing with the straw of his packet. His voice was weird.
“Yeah?” she asked, swallowing hard to answer.
“I know I said that we’d get to hang out more after I graduated high school?” he asked. Sophia tried to look at his face, but he was looking down at the lake.
“Yup,” she said again, looking at the lake waters as well. That was now, wasn’t it? There was a big party and everything. People were so proud of the boy count of House Valentine.
Hakushaku yawned, rocking slightly. Sophia almost worried that he would pass out and fall forward. He wasn’t supposed to be falling asleep outside of his coffin. A thread of concern stretched tight in her mind. Until he blinked a few times and straightened up, looking far more awake.
“Things changed. I’m going to have to go away for a bit,” Hakushaku said. He was still staring hard at the lake. “Sorry for going back on my promise.”
“Go where?” Sophia asked, trying to think. “…College?”
A soft huff of laughter. “Nope. And it’s nothing for you to worry about. Just- do you think you’ll be fine here without me?”
Sophia bit her lip. Hakushaku had been the reason she’d been adopted by the Valentine household. He was always helping her and playing with her. Out of everyone, even when he had to bury himself in his studies, Hakushaku was the one to spend the most time with her.
His voice had hitched when he was speaking. His grip around his jelly packet was tight.
Sophia took a deep breath and acted brave. “Yeah, I’ll be okay.”
Hakushaku released a breath, turning to finally look at her, beaming. “That’s good to hear.”
When he left, the thread within Sophia stretched taut, almost to its breaking point.
Her dreams were lonely, after that.
“Jyugo-kun… Thank goodness… you’re safe. … I’m glad you didn’t end up like this.”
“Why are you always only looking out for me?! I tore you apart and devoured you! I did this to you! Why are you still worrying about me?!”
“Why wouldn’t I? You’re… similar to me. Not the same- you’ve always been better. But just similar enough that I wanted to protect you. I couldn’t… leave you alone. How pathetic, huh? To make another person – a complete stranger – my reason to live.”
“Don't say stuff like that. Makes you sound like you're giving up. The medical team is coming, and we're still competing to find ourselv-”
BANG.
Kaazu Agent 5 (because she was nothing else while on the field) looked at the remnants of the scene. At the chunks of meat and bone, mixed with shreds of white, scattered around the place.
By her feet lay one dismembered forearm, torn from the elbow and missing its hand, only being held together by its casing of red and silver metal.
A Togabito Hunter had just been neutralized. She didn’t think it could be done.
Of course, no normal human could manage it. For all its ferocity, the Hunter truly was a pale imitation – it stood no chance against the true destructive potential within Number 15.
… if the whelp was put up against this, how quickly would he fall?
There were many scenarios playing out in this world. And many variations of those scenarios further out from this world.
It was easy to wax poetic about this point. Of the god-like being that might have passed by a bar without looking back and saved the lives of three pairs of siblings. Of the heir that might not have taken that specific staircase that day. Of the sprinter that might have not landed his foot in just the exact way to tear his ACL. Of the togabito hunters that might have all died when the project was shut down. Of a boy leeched of life that could have just been weighed down by a lack of motivation, instead of the silver bands welded to his wrists, ankles, and neck.
Going over useless hypotheticals wasn’t exactly the style for the person this was leading into. Too much of a hassle, as he’d say.
Nagi was the type of person who wanted to live a simple life requiring as little effort from him as possible. Uneventful. Boring.
If someone was to ask, that was how he had been living his life for as long as he remembered. Which was true – somewhat. If you took into account that his memories only stretched back to midway through his first year of high school.
All signs pointed to his life before then being far more eventful. And he had no intention of finding out what those events were. No matter how much Reo shook his shoulders and tried to tell him that the shapeshifting silver cuffs on his limbs and neck were not normal and they needed to get to the bottom of this. Nagi had managed to get him to drop it eventually, but it had been stressful while it lasted.
He didn’t care about the bands. Or the spikes and ribbons they turned into. Or the missing memories. Or the tattoo above his eye. Nagi used to want an uneventful life – but after Reo found him, he decided to shift that a little. He wanted to play soccer with Reo, for Reo. And the bands really didn’t have a space for that.
Not that they were playing soccer at the moment. They were on a short break after winning against the U-20 national team, and he still refused to have space for the bands.
Nagi was planning to spend it alone, soaking in as much rest as he could manage before he was being dragged to Blue Lock's pentagonal hell. Hoping that Reo might call him – which he hadn’t so far.
Now if people would stop blowing up his phone and forcing him to socialize.
At least, that's what he would say if someone asked him what had dragged him out to Shibuya. Hey, five messages and two calls from a handful of different people might as well be an avalanche of human connection for him.
Still nothing from Reo, though.
Sleepily making his way to (and then through) Shibuya, Nagi felt a strange prickling at the back of his neck. Was someone watching him?
His eyes caught on a magazine rack displayed at a kiosk. The Blue Lock XI team was on the cover of some sports magazine – meaning Nagi's face was there, too. So strange.
For as far back as he could remember, Nagi had been unnoticed and isolated. No one spared a glance towards him. Some people thought he was straight-up cursed and took steps to avoid him. And he had liked it that way. He had.
Blue Lock had changed all that. The U-20 match had brought the eyes of country onto him – or at least the small chunk that was obsessed with soccer.
He could easily refuse to go back after the break was up. Go back to his sedentary peace. Unfortunately, after Reo’s enthusiasm, the cheering of the crowds, the adrenaline of a hard-earned win, he was well and truly addicted. Guess he’d have to shoulder the annoying things alongside the good.
See? Character development. Maturity.
His skin crawled with the pressure of eyes. Restlessness sparked through him. He needed to escape.
For the five years that had followed Hakushaku’s departure, Sophia had sent a letter every month – the maximum that was allowed. Two months ago, on New Year’s Day, Sophia had gotten to go to Nanba Prison and speak with him and his cellmates for a precious hour.
And then-
Then-
“Sophia-sama, if you come with us then you can meet Number 89489-”
The ferry. The men in the suits and hats. Jumping into the ocean. Ram and the assassin and-
“S-Sophia? Are you okay?” a caring, deep voice asked.
In the here and now, beyond the memories swirling in her mind, her hands, the straw, the ground in front of her, had all begun to look blurry.
Ah.
She was crying again.
“Nice going, Oya-ji, the stuff you gave her tasted so bad, she’s crying,” a younger one snapped.
“It can’t have tasted bad; it didn’t taste like anything! And she asked me to get it for her!!”
Sophia stared down at the packet in her hands and sniffled. The squabble fell silent.
“I’m never going to see Hakushaku-sama again, am I?”
Akua and Uoza looked at her with wide eyes. The former broke his gaze, unable to deliver the words Uoza bluntly threw in her face;
“No.”
She didn’t flinch.
“Is he dead?”
“… … Probably,” Uoza said, more carefully now. “And if he isn’t – maybe they’re going to take another crack at creating a Togabito Hunter, now that they’ve trashed the old model. If that happens… he’s not going to be like anything you remember.”
Since leaving Nanba Island, Sophia had been thrown headfirst into an avalanche of information. Something about a soul bond, and being half of the Togabito of Night, and having the power to change the structure of the world. Sophia didn’t care much about that, other than the fact that it was keeping Hakushaku away from her.
His face all those years kept flashing through her mind. When she watched him walk into the car and waved as if he would come back the next week.
If she had thrown a fit, cried and screamed, would he have refused to leave? Hakushaku always catered to her.
She sniffed, wiping at her face. How embarrassing.
Akua grumbled for a second. “Well, there’s nothing we can do to change things, so… let’s take your mind of it. Just stop crying,” he took her wrist and began walking down the street. “Oya-ji, I’m taking her to an arcade.”
Sophia had never been to an arcade.
Uoza glanced at his phone, a frown tugging at his mouth, which he switched to a smile when he looked up. “Yeah, go do that. I need to secure the area and go discuss things with Ram. Handle Akua, young lady,” he winked at Sophia. She giggled through the lump in her throat, and Akua rolled his eyes beside her.
The arcade Akua took her to was loud and dark and yet filled with lights and colors. A lot of children were rushing about and laughing. There were basketball things, and pool, and darts, and crane machines. Sophia hesitated, unsure of where to start or what to do. Her Japanese reading wasn’t good enough for some of these things, either.
She shuffled closer to Akua and gripped onto his arm. “Where do you wanna go?”
“…Seriously?” he asked, and she worried that he was upset. But then he was pointing out one of the boxy machines with a gun mounted onto it. “This one looks easy enough for you. Want me to show you how to play?”
She nodded, biting the inside of her cheek.
As the togabito hunter 7146 – known to the public, and himself, as the soccer player Nagi Seishirou – walked through the streets of Shibuya, twenty meters behind him, two offenders of humanity followed diligently.
They were saddled with many names, titles, and numbers. One was firmly Ishal. The other had settled on being D.
"You think that's him?" D asked, angling his head down to look at Ishal.
The togabito of stone's eyes glowed pink in the heavy gloom of the overcast sky. "Yes. Absolutely. Another hunter of togab–" here, she forced herself to an abrupt stop, clearly having learned from her previous altercation. "Another hunter."
D's memories of his own attack were garbled, much like any recollection he'd had before that point. Ishal, however, had gotten the hunter's presence seared into her mind and had been seething on it for years now. He would trust her to be able to pick out one of these even without sight.
Imaginary petrichor and ozone tickled his nose. The white hair and gray eyes. The spiked arms. "Do we kill him?"
"In broad daylight?" Ishal returned, unimpressed.
"We're abominations enough, aren't we?"
"And what about all the people like us who tried that on the other one?"
"If we don't trigger the Hunter programming, he'll be easy for the two of us to put down."
The two of them were part of a select roster that could theoretically change the structure of the world, weren't they? They could handle a temperamental, subpar clone of their own kind.
(Ignore that the only other one of this project had already handily defeated them both, and ripped through legions of their ilk. That one wasn't a problem anymore.)
Ishal did not respond immediately. They both trailed after the hunter – 7146, this one’s number was – for a bit until she finally settled on saying; "Let's leave him be."
The togabito of magnetism buffered.
"What?"
As one of the few surviving victims of the loose cannon that was the togabito hunter 396, they had a joint hatred for the creatures. Others in Shiki treated it like some joke to toy with and bait using other hapless people. D had thought that Ishal would know to take this seriously, to learn from previous mistakes and wipe out the threat they were now aware of. But instead, the togabito of stone just tilted her head away, the glow in her eyes receding.
"As far as we know, he hasn't done anything. Those magazines all make it sound like 7146 was monitored for months without any noticed outbursts, so maybe he isn't like the other one. We shouldn't expect him to take responsibility for acts he hasn't committed."
Right. Her obsession over honor and responsibility and debt. A strict moral balance in a world that refused to play by those rules.
"Who knows, maybe he's just lying in wait for prey to walk by," a third, new voice interrupted them. The imaginary scent in D's nose was no longer simply hallucinated.
Ikkaku was standing beside them, smug. The suddenly overcast sky thundered above them.
For a second, none of them gave a greeting, only exchanging dry glances. Ikkaku broke first with a huff, hunching dramatically to look at the stray togabito hunter, still strolling without a fear. "So, that's the other one, huh? Weird – there was only ever one report of a violent escape from the project. You think 7146 was pathetic enough that they thought it would be a waste of resources to put him down?"
D had no idea how that system worked. Ikkaku was far more informed, but he could just as easily be lying out of his ass to mess with them.
Even with the background D had, first with the group home and then with Nanba Prison, it still felt unconscionable to do that to what at least appeared to be a child. Realizing that limits did not exist in this world was a difficult pill he had to swallow upon leaving Nanba Prison.
"He certainly seems to be weaker than the other one. Weaker than the base version, even," Ishal concurred. "The shackles seem to be distinctly stunted."
"Oh, absolutely. 396 had these massive spikes on his, like a proper hunting dog. And what does this one get? Barely noticeable chains. How boring," Ikkaku had a sadistic gleam in his eyes even as he mourned this fact. "Well, we can't toy with 396 anymore, so this one will have to do. Wanna see what kind of weapon he's hiding?"
"No," both Ishal and D declined in tandem.
Ikkaku snorted. "You guys are too cautious. It'll be fun, I swear," he looked towards Ishal in particular. "You're soft, you know. Equal responsibility and debts like you're playing hero – don't give people, or lab-grown monster killers, the benefit of the doubt.”
All of them craned their necks over to glance at where the subject of their conversation was walking down the street.
Or, not walking anymore. 7146 had taken a quick turn all of a sudden. Not along a street turn – abruptly into a building. An arcade.
“This is the first time he’s left that shoebox den of his since he got back there, right?” Ikkaku said, grinning slyly at them. “I know you two’ve been watching.”
D bristled. It was only an appropriate amount of caution, after what the other togabito hunter had done.
“I’m just saying. You should wait just a bit longer, and he’ll break that facade. Or are you looking for an excuse to be soft, Ishihara?”
Ishal gritted her teeth. “Fuck off. And you know my name.”
Ikkaku’s smile only grew wider. But instead of hounding Ishal more, he was looking across the street. Where a man with dark blue hair and matching traditional clothes stood. Making similarly heavy eye contact with Ikkaku.
“Friend of yours?” D asked.
“He’s Zodiac Police.”
Ishal and D both bristled, awaiting a fight. No way the hunter was non-functional if they were sending Zodiac Police after him.
Not that Ikkaku seemed concerned. He simply cracked his knuckles. “I guess you guys can go after 7146. I’ll deal with him.”
Nagi’s fingers danced over the buttons and twisted the joystick intently. He’d forgotten how… exciting an arcade machine was. His phone wasn’t nearly this immersive.
This game in particular, he’d played it a fair bit on the way back from school. That had been replaced by Reo and soccer, which he didn’t mind, but surely a little bit wouldn’t hurt. His high score had slipped completely off the leaderboard. It was unacceptable.
He was overtaking the fifth highest score now, and the targets were beginning to blur from the speed. But he could do better. Just-
His phone buzzed, making him press the wrong button. Immediate death screen. Fuck.
Nagi pulled out the device, cursing the person who had contacted him. Ah, it was stupid Isagi. Wondering where he was. Oh, yeah, he’d come out to the city to meet him and a few of the others. He forgot about that.
stopped @ arcade. will come soon. he typed rapidly. Picked out a sticker and sent it as well. Then, he turned off the vibrate, cracked his knuckles, and got to work.
The eyes were back. They felt distinctly different now, for some reason. He tried to ignore it, hunching over the controls of the machine.
An arm suddenly slung around Nagi’s neck, catching onto his collar. Nagi froze, his hands burning and itching, but his body determinedly still.
“Asshole, yer gonna lose yer friends!” Karasu’s voice blared in his ear.
Oh.
Friend.
That was the presence he was feeling.
“Mm. Getting there was a hassle,” Nagi mumbled, unable to make himself move or shove him off. He felt like how he did when he and Barou had gotten into an argument during the Team V and Team X match. And like when he and Reo had talked outside of the baths in the Second Selection. If he broke this stillness- he wasn’t sure what he would do.
Raucous laughter went around the group now crowding him. He squinted at them all. Isagi was standing at his right, laughing. Chigiri was with him, as was Bachira. Those two were the ones he was meant to be meeting. Where did all these other guys come from?
Outside of Karasu, there were also the ninja and the model from the Third Selection’s Top 6, Numbers 2 and 3 from the Second Selection, and-
Reo.
He looked good, laughing as Karasu aggressively messed up Nagi’s hair. Everyone moved on quickly from there, spreading out to look at the other games. Nagi began to shake out the numbness that had seeped into his body. Before he could stumble forward and try to talk to him, Bachira was pushing Nagi towards the dartboards.
Danger, something pinged in his head, paranoid.
Right before a dart whistled past his cheek, embedded into the dartboard he had been placed in front of.
“This is your punishment!” Bachira cheered. Somehow, it was comforting.
“Okay, now you’re getting it!” Akua hyped her up, taking his hands off the controls and letting her handle it properly. Sophia leaned forward, eyes glued on the enemy spaceships that were circling around her.
Dodge here. Attack there. Roll, roll, roll.
At the edges of her awareness, she felt Akua shift next to her. The game chimed and the score clicked up with every passing blink. Then, a wild meteorite slipped behind her while she was focused on the actual spaceships-
Game Over.
“Aw,” Sophia pouted. “Akua-nii, can I try again-?”
She looked up, and found him staring intently at some spot. Following his gaze, she found a bunch of high school boys shoving each other around and playing ping pong. His eyes were scrunched up like he was thinking hard.
“Do you know them?” she asked.
“Huh?” Akua jolted down to look at her. “Oh, uh, no.” Then what was up with that face? Before she could ask, Akua tapped her shoulder; “Let’s get out of here, Sophia.”
He was doing the thing again, where people directed her around without telling her anything.
But the last few times that had happened, they were being chased by scary people with guns trying to kill her – Sophia decided that she would trust Akua and let him guide her to the far side of the wall, steering clear of the boys who really looked so normal.
A slight pause, then Akua clicked his tongue in annoyance. “There’s no angle where they don’t have a clear view of the exit. Hold on, I’m gonna try to reach the other two.”
They retreated further back. Sophia was starting to pick up on the fact that they weren’t just avoiding all those highschoolers – it was the people near the ping-pong table, their hair bright red, white, and purple, sticking out from the otherwise mostly black-haired others.
Akua had gotten his cheap phone out, holding it to his ear and whispering, “Oya-ji. That guy – a togabito hunter. He’s in the arcade I took Sophia.”
Togabito hunter? The phrase sent a chill up her spine. For obvious reasons.
“-not sure if he was already there or he followed us in. … … what do you mean they’re outside? Shiki’s working with these things now?” Akua was whispering into the phone. Sophia burned with the urge to be in on the secret. “No. Fine. I’ll… confirm and then deal with him. You handle Shiki outside.”
He hung up, then pinned Sophia with a stern look. “Stay here. Got it?”
She nodded. Akua turned on his heel and rushed away, leaving her to fume on her own. There was a thud, and the kid on the fighting machine closest to her slumped over, drooling on the controls.
Whoops.
Sophia took a deep breath and tried to calm down.
“Reo, your turn!” Tokimitsu passed the box of darts over to him.
“Good luck outdoing Yukki!” Aryu gave him a thumbs-up. Reo snorted and began to take aim.
His attention was dragged away as he saw an unfamiliar boy around their age walk out of the crowd. Messily tied-up blue hair and a star-tattoo on his shoulder, nearly a head shorter than most of the people in their group. He was making a beeline straight for Nagi, not a glance spared to the others.
A… football fan? This had happened with some of the others while they were out at the cafe. But seeing it directed towards Nagi rankled him.
“Reo? You need to look this way to throw the dart,” Yukimiya said, just a bit condescending. Reo didn’t respond, too busy listening in.
“Hey, you Se-i-shi-rou?” the guy asked, enunciating the name strangely.
“Uh. Yeah,” Nagi replied lazily, looking down at him with half-lidded eyes. “But you should call me Nagi.”
The guy pulled his arm back. Then slammed his fist into Nagi’s face.
“Woah!” Isagi, who was closest, lunged forward to put himself between them. “What the hell?”
Nagi stumbled back, hands clutching at his nose, yet voice as frustratingly steady as always, only barely strained. “Why would you do that?”
Sensing trouble, everyone from their group started gathering up around the altercation. Reo glanced towards the management, who seemed to have caught on as well.
“You don’t know what you’re protecting!” the assaulter snapped at Isagi. “Don’t be used as cover!”
“Okay, jackass,” Chigiri said, putting a hand on the assaulter’s arm, pulling him back. Warning bells began ringing in Reo’s ears.
A flash of blue, and Chigiri was tossed back, slamming into a crane machine. The assaulter stood in place, now a blue, arching shield covering half his body. It rippled and squirmed, as if made of water.
Aryu dived to check on him, while Bachira struck at the unprotected side of the assaulter. He was batted away easily, the assaulter rolling his eyes. “I don’t care about you, so fuck off. I’m only here for the killer.”
For some reason, Nagi still hadn’t moved. Still hadn’t said anything to refute these claims. He was just stuck in place, hand covering his nose, making no attempt to stand up for his friends or back away from the fight. The accusations must have left him paralyzed with shock.
Where was management? Reo shoved Nagi behind him, away from the assaulter. “You’re insane!”
Nagi, a killer? Sure, he was a little out of the realm of normal people, but this guy was being ridiculous-
“And you’re all enthralled!” the assaulter yelled, a tiny flare of light appearing in his hand, and being thrown into the air just as quickly.
It hit a smoke detector. Alarms and water began pouring down, electronics sparking with it – who would even put that in an arcade??
The water now swirled around the assaulter, encasing him in a full shield.
“Seriously. Clear out. Now,” he told the rest of them. “That’s a togabito hunter. And he needs to be put down.”
What was this? Reo didn’t understand what was going on. His head was swimming. It had to do with Nagi, didn’t it? Well, this guy couldn’t have him.
Something sharp and heavy collided into his side. Sweeping him out of the way and onto the ground. From behind him.
Reo looked up. Nagi had finally been jolted into action, now marching past Reo and towards the assaulter.
Except there was something off.
It was his hands, Reo’s eyes said. The hands which had transformed into those conical, engraved spikes Nagi had shown him only once and never again. Out in the open like this. It was the clear silver metal, reaching up to cover his face. It was his shackles coming to life. That was what was off.
Nagi’s entire being hadn’t become wrong.
D and Ishal hovered on the sidelines as Ikkaku and the Zodiac Police member sized each other up. Crowds were wandering past them, uncaring of the danger they would soon be in.
“Fancy seeing you here. In this random street,” the ZP member said casually. “Were you perhaps looking for something?”
“Just browsing,” Ikkaku replied. “Where’d your gloves go?”
“Oh, I decided to quit.”
D hesitated. So was this an enemy or an ally?
“I would rather nobody be killed in a prison,” the former ZP member said, crouching down into a martial arts stance. “Or in a mass extinction event. Which is why I’m not letting you into that building.”
… What did that have to do with the togabito hunter?
There had to be something more going on here.
Apparently, Ikkaku didn’t care much for finding answers, as he hopped on the back of his feet, once, twice, and then exploded into a shower of lightning sparks.
Crowds scattered. Screams broke out. A car fishtailed and rear-ended another.
The former ZP member paid no mind to the chaos, an arm already extended towards where Ikkaku was traveling. Around that arm swirled an array of thin, metallic wires, ready to hook and tear, yet so fine that only D’s magnetic field allowed him to sense them.
Ishal had begun heading to the arcade, fighting against the stampeding crowd. With how that former ZP guy was talking, D wasn’t sure if he knew that the togabito hunter was in there or not. But he sure made it sound like something else was.
There was only a matter of time until police were called in to deal with this. Before that happened, they had to deal with the togabito hunter and whatever else was hiding in that cesspit-
His only warning was the pinging in his magnetic field. D stepped back, just in time for a bullet to embed itself into the floor. He only registered the gunshot after, it already been covered up by screaming and crying as people gave the arcade’s entryway a wide berth.
As people who had been otherwise leaving pressed inwards, Ishal slipped away into the chaos. Leaving D to stand off against the man in the dark blue suit, pins shaped like goat horns on either side of his temples and his eyes covered by his hair.
“You’re not getting close to her,” this new guy snapped.
Who was her???
Still, this asshole had tried to shoot D. Whatever he was raving about was irrelevant.
He brought his hands up, green and blue swirling around him in response. “You think that gun’s going to do anything against me?”
Hands were wrapping around him. Helping him up and dragging him to the side.
Reo blinked through the water from the sprinklers, his whole body shaking.
“You good?” Yukimiya said, talking as if to fragile glass even as his voice frayed from the stress.
He looked around. The ping pong tables had been upended to form almost a shield. Karasu and Tokimitsu were also here, as well as a couple other people who had been in the arcade, now cowering and sobbing under the downpour from the sprinkler system and the carnage from the fight.
“Nagi,” he gasped. “What happened to Nagi?”
Karasu grimaced. “Who knows what happened to him. He’s- he’s gone berserk after that guy. His arms turned into spikes.”
“He wouldn’t hurt anyone,” Reo babbled, heart thudding in his chest. “That guy must’ve done something to him – he never brings out the spikes.”
His ears were filled with the sound of gushing water, screaming people, and metal screeching against metal. Somewhere towards the entrance, gunshots managed to cut through the din.
Much closer, a hand slammed onto the tipped over table. Karasu’s eyes were boring into Reo’s.
“The hell you mean he ‘doesn’t use the spikes’. He’s had those things before this?!”
Reo gulped. Nodded.
“What the fuck-” Karasu was cut off by the sound of metal screeching and tearing, barely meters away. Peering over the tables, they could see the blue-haired boy in the water orb and Nagi – still concealed under that steel mask – clashing against each other.
The boy had caught an arcade machine within the flow of his orb, and sent it careening towards Nagi. Reo’s friend blocked it with a spike, which had then rotated, breaking the machine into pieces and letting him charge forward to scrape against the watery shell.
Nagi had never told him the spikes could move.
Yukimiya glared towards Reo. “You will be hearing about this. Afterwards.”
“Assuming we’ll have an afterwards,” Tokimitsu whimpered, head between his knees.
“Let’s try and get out,” Karasu decided, wincing slightly as more crashes and gunshots came from the front of the arcade – nowhere near the fight Nagi and this boy with the water orb were having. “Proper entrance is out. There’s gotta be some sort of maintenance or fire exit, though.”
Reo took a deep breath. Then another. Forced himself to think. “What happened to Chigiri? That guy hit him too.”
“He seemed fine. Aryu had been helping him, last I saw,” Yukimiya said.
Chancing another look over the table, Reo was just in time to see a large display tipping over onto Nagi and the other guy, momentarily hiding them from view.
“I’ll start looking for an exit,” Karasu decided, his face both green and ashy at the same time.
Reo followed his example and pulled himself together. “I’ll find the others and try to bring them to one place.”
Yukimiya nodded. “I’ll do that, too.”
Tokimitsu looked close to a panic attack. No help from his part.
Reo timed his escape carefully. Stuck close the walls and crawled behind collapsed machinery as Nagi and that other guy fought.
What was happening? That guy had called Nagi a killer. Which was ridiculous.
But…
Reo cast another look at where his friend stood, face covered with a mask that only had thin slits over the eyes. Standing tall and alert, for once not appearing to be held up by puppet strings.
The spikes had gleamed in the light, catching onto the grooves that spiraled over their expanse. Reo’s blood had sung with excitement.
"Do you think it can cut something? How strong are they? You've definitely never tried to figure out the limits of these things. Hey, we should test things out, superhero origin movie style—"
"Reo, superheroes are a total pain. I don't ever use these things anyway. What would I use them for?"
Nagi looked at him with wide, scared eyes. And Reo had promised to never speak of it again.
But did that guy have a point?
The basketball machine he was hiding behind suddenly lurched to the side, as a white pillar shot out from the ground below it.
Reo yelped and scrambled back as the pillar rose and rose.
Was that marble? Where had it come from? Definitely not Nagi, nor the boy in the orb. Someone from the fight near the entrance?
A figure in green and white descended, then. More marble columns jumped up around Nagi and formed a cage. Those spikes tore through it without any effort.
The stone hadn’t been controlled with any technology, unlike the orb and even Nagi’s bands. It was a whole new level of impossible.
“Not even going to talk, Hunter?” the stone-controller snapped. Met with no response, she clicked her tongue. “Better this than the ravings of the other one.”
The other one?
What had they done to that one?
“Who the hell are you?” the boy in the orb snapped at her. They weren’t working together?
“Ishal,” she replied. “You Zodiac Police?”
“Ex. The name’s Akua. And I need that Hunter dead before he hurts someone I care about.”
“That’s exactly what we came here for.”
Two different groups were trying to kill Nagi. And they had just decided to team up. Reo felt dizzy.
Despite discussing Nagi’s death right in front of him, Reo’s friend hadn’t responded at all. Just stood there. Calculating. Then spun over to Akua and lunged once more.
Akua acted quick, water arcing around him, latching onto Nagi’s foot and trying to throw him into the air by his feet. Nagi landed on a pillar and bounced right back, his feet leaving deep gouges into the stone.
“Seriously, you’re not going to go after the togabito?” Akua asked. “You’re really defective.”
Ishal paused slightly. “Did you the world ‘togabito’ in front of him a little while ago? Before he went nuts?”
“Uh. Yeah. I was calling him out on it.”
Ishal growled, deep in her throat. “Don’t do that! Never do that! He would’ve been normal otherwise!”
“Shit, my bad. You want me to turn back time and try again?!” Akua rolled his eyes.
They weren’t working well together. That was- that was good, right? They could get Nagi away. They could… calm him down. And everything would be as it should.
Defective.
The word rang in his head.
What was Nagi? Some kind of… machine? Could Reo even help him?
D picked up a plastic standing signboard and threw it at the ex-Zodiac Police member, who dodged and let it fly right past him. When the man readied another shot, D pulled the signboard back towards himself, trying to catch him by surprise.
No dice. He dodged again. This man was exceptionally aware of his surroundings, even though his hair covered his eyes entirely.
“Funny, it seemed to me that you controlled metal by manipulating magnetic fields, using yourself as a center point,” said the ex-ZP. His words were clinical, the same as all those doctors at the institution. Of course – they were of the same cloth, no matter what reason had been this man’s breaking point.
D gritted his teeth. “Your eyes are shit, then. It goes more than that. I can magnetize anything I touch.”
The gun the ex-ZP carried wasn’t magnetic, immune to D’s control. But all he needed was one tap – on the gun, on the man, anything – and the battle was his.
The ex-ZP didn’t look too concerned about this, still thinking out loud – “Togabito abilities are very unique. Some of them, we try to leave the door open for replication. But being able to magnetize non-ferrous materials with a touch is so specific. Say, are you from the Signary Institute?”
D faltered. How did he know? Was this man involved in that? He strengthened his resolve and the intensity of his field. “What do you know about that?”
“Not much. It wasn’t in my jurisdiction, and I only heard of it through rumors and backdoor sources,” the ex-ZP said. His gun was still being held up, but his finger was now off the trigger. Not that D trusted this modded gun to not have some trick hidden behind it. “But V-senpai has history there, so I felt it was my business to know. Even a little bit.”
Of everything he could have said. Of all names he could leverage. This wasn’t what he had expected.
“You know my brother?” D asked. ‘Senpai’, at that?
The ex-ZP nodded, looking a bit perturbed. “Were you that close? Sorry, I don’t have descriptions of the people within the place, and V-senpai barely ever spoke of it-”
“If it wasn’t through the institute, how did you know him?” D pressed.
“Undercover work,” the ex-ZP explained. “Or, well, I was sent to do undercover work. And he worked for the Valentine family while I was there – I’m not sure if either he or the family knew about the togabito side of things.”
D had no idea who the Valentines were, but that seemed to mean something to this guy. At some point, V must have switched over to Nanba Prison. Why?
When D had reunited with his foster brother, his memories were still locked away after his encounter with togabito hunter 396. He didn’t know to ask these questions. Didn’t understand who the weird guard who was constantly trying to thank him was. All the time – wasted.
“V, my foster brother,” D said carefully. “What was he like?”
The ex-ZP’s shoulders slackened a bit. “He was… loyal. Caring. I could always rely on him when I was adjusting to the work – things were tense with Hakushaku insisting that Sophia-sama be named heir, but V always put Hakushaku’s likes before the Valentines.”
That… sounded like him. Not in a good way.
“Is he still as obsessive as always?” D asked warily. The ex-ZP was suspiciously silent.
“… He looked like he was doing better, last I saw?” he offered, finally. “Didn’t talk down to himself at all.”
Yeah, now that he thought about it, V hadn’t threatened himself when he was spending time with D’s amnesiac self. But it had been ages since he had seen V before the New Year’s Tournament started. He couldn’t pick apart the little details he had overlooked.
“Tell me more,” he coaxed.
The ex-ZP tilted his head, deep in thought, “Well, the last time we spoke, he…”
“Reocchi, don’t just sit there!” Bachira’s voice called, and the boy landed next to him. Behind him, Isagi followed.
Reo sucked in a breath. “Oh, good, I found you guys. While we look for an exit, all of us are grouping together over there-” he tried to gesture in the direction he had come from.
“What? No,” Bachira cut him off. “We’re not running away! That blue-haired bastard hurt Chigirin and Nagicchi! We need to fight back!”
“Have you gone insane? Look around you!” Reo cried. Then caught onto a detail; “Is Chigiri okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, he’s fine. Just some really bad bruising,” Isagi said quickly. “But that still doesn’t make it okay. Bachira and I have been trying to tip over things to try and catch them off guard but with that marble freak-”
Stone cracked loudly from the center of that fight. A column had risen up and slammed Nagi into the ceiling. The concrete caved, and Nagi’s body fell to the ground, limp. Reo’s breath caught in his throat, until Nagi jumped up again, showing no sign of injury or pain.
This was nothing like the Nagi he knew, and Reo was so, so happy for it at this moment.
“Oi, dumbasses. Don’t go on some revenge spree for my sake,” Chigiri snapped, approaching them from between the smoke. Yukimiya was hovering not too far behind, Aryu looming over him as well. “I’m not dead!”
“It’s the principle of the matter!” Bachira insisted, shifting from foot to foot. “You’re just going to take this attack lying down?”
Arms looped around Bachira’s elbows and dragged him away. Once the bumblebee was reigned it, Isagi also got the hint to follow quietly. With all the marble structures now scattered on the ground, they had more cover to hide from the fight. Still, Reo couldn’t help but keep looking up to see Nagi. Blank. With no sign of effort or hesitation, he went through the motions of each strike.
This was Nagi?
At least the gunshots had stopped, Reo’s mind latched onto the one shred of positivity.
Tripping over loose rubble and pools of water, they got back to the corner where Reo and the others had first retreated to.
The heavy pool table had also been dragged over to add to the barricade, as well as twisted and burnt pieces of other game machines. Tokimitsu was still there, rocking back and forth now. Karasu was back, too. With Otoya in tow.
“Most of the fire escapes are out,” Karasu reported. “There’s somethin goin on in the street, people are sayin. Storm kicked in out of nowhere and there’s all this lightning. We’re just gonna get caught in more shit.”
How did this keep getting worse?
“But some employees opened up the door to the back. There’s an exit through there, away from the main street,” Otoya added. “People are stampeding a bit, but we can get out through.”
And leave Nagi behind?
Even though that was why he’d been looking for the others, Reo’s eyes stung at the idea. No. He couldn’t. They hadn’t been on good terms for months now, but he wasn’t going to let it end like this.
“You guys go,” Reo decided. “I’m not- I can’t leave without Nagi.”
“Dude, are you sure that’s even Nagi?” Chigiri asked. “He could’ve- could’ve been bodyswapped over the break!”
“Chameleon knows what he’s talkin about. Been keepin really important secrets from the rest a’ us,” Karasu glared.
“What?” Otoya looked at Reo, as did everyone else who hadn’t been present before.
“Can we shout at each other about this when we’re not about to be crushed to death?” Yukimiya asked, looking up at the ceiling, which looked more and more fragile with every hit it took.
“Well, whatever. It doesn’t matter what secrets were being kept,” Bachira jumped in. “We’re not running away from this!”
Their paltry shield was thrown away, pushed aside by a marble snake that reached higher than all of them. The screech of breaking wood and tearing metal rang out, but Reo couldn’t afford to wince from it.
The person controlling the stone – Ishal – was looking down at them, standing on top of the snake. Her eyes seemed to glow from the intensity of her stare. Maybe they actually were glowing. That really wasn’t the most shocking part of this situation.
She knew that Nagi was important to them, Reo’s mind immediately realized. She knew and this was leverage against Nagi.
In the state he was now, would Nagi even come to save them?
“You’re the only ones left not making an effort to get out,” she said finally. “Leave. You’re going to get hurt.”
That… wasn’t what he had been expecting.
Still, the argument he had been making just now sprung to mind. “No! Not without Nagi!”
Ishal’s eyes were blank as she thought on this. “Is that a friend of yours? I haven’t seen anyone else in this place left behind. I’ll keep an eye out, but he’s likely left. So should you.”
“You attacked someone and don’t even know his name?” Isagi scoffed. “Fuck you.”
“Oh. 7146,” she realized. “Usually they pick out number transliterated nicknames,” then she shook her head. “That’s not your concern now. Nagi isn’t really your friend. If he seemed like it, he was only hiding behind a secondary persona. That’s a Togabito Hunter and they are dangerous.”
A Togabito… Hunter?
This was ridiculous. It was Nagi.
“Whether you like it or not, that’s the truth,” she said, her face and tone stern, even as her words were sympathetic. “That Akua idiot triggered the Hunter programming, and now that he’s out… I thought we might have a chance, since he’s underdeveloped, but – the shackles remain impossible to penetrate. We can’t kill him, so all we can do is stall for time until there aren’t any innocent bystanders he can hurt.”
Reo could feel a chasm stretching below him.
But he didn’t move. The others looked startled and conflicted.
She sighed. “With these many people on their shit list, the Zodiac Police are sure to show up. Maybe they got some crucial data when they saw the genetic base pry through the shackles. If that happens – it’ll get… gory. I was there the last Togabito Hunter was killed,” she almost spat with frustration at them. “They had to scrape chunks of him from the ground! And because you see him as a friend – you shouldn’t have to see that.”
“That supposed to make us leave, ya sick bastards?” Karasu said, resolve steeling.
They had no idea what they were gonna do. How to solve this. But Reo wasn’t just going to turn his back on Nagi.
Tokimitsu had reached a point where he was now nervously clawing at the side of his face and sobbing openly. “Oh, god, we’re going to die. I’m going to be crushed to death and no one will be sad for me. My parents will probably be happy-”
Even Ishal looked perturbed. As if she hadn’t been the one trying to scare them.
Abruptly, the panicking boy fell limp. His head smacked against the marble serpent, with no reaction. In the wake of his crying, there was eerie silence.
“Oh, god, he’s dead,” Isagi gagged, leaning close to Tomikitsu’s body then jerking away. Caught between checking and not.
Reo covered his mouth, trying to keep his coffee down from the cafe he had been at. Just a few hours ago. With Tokimitsu.
What happened? There was no fallen debris nor vicious blade. No water that drowned him.
He just… dropped.
“What did you do?!” Bachira grabbed at Ishal, who kicked him down from her safe perch on the marble snake.
“That wasn’t me!” she insisted, more annoyed than sad about the boy that had just collapsed.
“Panicking helps no one,” Aryu counseled, being the one to have gathered the courage to touch Tokimitsu’s prone form. He had a few fingers over Tokimitsu’s pulse point. “He’s alive. Just… seems to be unconscious.”
Oh. Whew.
“Still wasn’t me,” Ishal clarified, now frowning as she looked back to where Nagi was still fighting Akua – the instigating boy was now on the back foot, moving defensively as Nagi’s spikes tried to pierce his watery shell. “None of the other guys can do something like that. Especially not to one person…”
“I’m sorry,” said a brand new voice, in soft, heavily accented Japanese. “I didn’t mean to upset people more! He just looked scared and I wanted to calm him down.”
Another freak had entered the scene.
From the point where the narrow gap left by the marble snake to give them room to leave – presumably for the back room – now peeked in a new figure.
It was a young girl. Maybe in the tail end of elementary or beginning of junior high. She had large red eyes peering out from behind long blue-gray hair, blinking innocently.
Everyone stared. Then at Ishal; the only person who had a chance of knowing her.
“Who are you?”
So that was a bust.
“I’m Sophia Valentine,” she waved. Half the crowd of footballers waved back, nonplussed. “Sorry, I’m not supposed to say what I can do to strangers. Can you pretend you didn’t see any of this?”
What could she do? Who was this?? A simple name didn’t answer anything.
Reo had no idea what this entire fight was about, how it had started, what everyone was doing within it, how many people were even involved. The fundamental laws of reality had just been turned on its head, and he had no time to grasp these new rules. And yet-
“Sure,” he agreed through quaking teeth. “But do you think you can do that trick again?”
The last dregs of water from the sprinkler system were scooped up by Akua’s shell. Right in time to block a swipe from the Togabito Hunter’s drill. He rolled away, putting more distance between them as his weapon rippled and threatened to lose its form.
Akua was losing.
And apparently, he’d brought it onto himself.
He hadn’t known about the trigger conditions. Not until that Medusa woman had shown up to explain it to him.
Chances were high that the boy playing games with his friends was simply here for that. Sophia and Akua’s presence was a complete coincidence.
It was only a matter of time before the Hunter had been triggered, in his opinion. Leaving him alive wasn’t an option.
But he couldn’t kill this thing. Ishal couldn’t, either. No blunt force trauma, no sharp edge, not even asphyxiation stood a chance against him.
If this was the defective, weak model, how had they managed it with 396?
Akua considered trying to lead the Hunter out to where Oya-ji was. But that would mean giving it space to turn around and go after Sophia.
For some reason, when Ishal had split from this fight, the Hunter hadn’t followed her, remaining fixated on Akua. But he couldn’t trust that enough to give him that opening.
The Hunter straightened up, entire face covered with that blank mask, grey eyes barely visible through the two slits. Akua readied himself for another volley. It might just be the last his equipment could handle – better make this count.
7146 dropped like a puppet with cut strings. His drills folded back into the thin shackles they had erupted from. In the blink of an eye, he was back to being a highschooler out on a break. Now lying on his side, surrounded by broken glass and chunks of concrete.
He gave it a minute. Then cautiously nudged the Hunter with the edge of his weapon. No reaction.
Oh.
Well.
Akua craned his neck towards the spot Sophia was meant to be. The spot where she was not.
His eyes scanned the room. Most of the lights were broken, and there was dust hanging in the air from all the destroyed plaster, but he was able to pick out Sophia. Now huddled up with the teens who had been with 7146 to begin with. Further off, Ishal was also looking over them.
“Nagi!” cried one of the group, rushing over the warzone towards them.
Akua had half a mind to stop him. But watched with morbid curiosity as the purple-haired guy fell to his knees and lifted 7146’s upper body up, looking him over. The Hunter didn’t wake up and immediately maul him, so at least Sophia had knocked him out properly.
Cautiously, the entire group of teens wandered over to check on the Hunter pretending to be their friend. Sophia was still at the same spot, now talking to Ishal.
“It’s dangerous to be wandering about without anyone to protect you, you know?” Ishal was saying. “There’s strength in numbers, especially with your own kind-”
Akua bristled and hurried to their side. “You’re Shiki, aren’t you?”
He’d guessed that much with the vague comments Ishal had made, and the powerset she had lining up with one of the Nanba togabito escapees in January.
She inclined her head slightly. Sophia worriedly retreated behind Akua.
“She’s not going with you,” Akua told Ishal.
He would fight her over it. Ishal was strong, and his equipment wouldn’t hold up against her for even a few more minutes, but he wasn’t going to let Shiki get their hands on Sophia.
Ishal looked at him for a moment. Sophia hummed in agreement, nodding from her spot behind Akua’s elbow. Then she relented. “I’m not a kidnapper. You can handle yourself, Sophia.”
Was that an unintentional diss, or did she know that they had stolen Sophia away from the Valentine Household?
So where did that leave them?
The fight had ended. Looking around, he couldn’t see anyone still in the arcade bearing injuries – except for the Togabito Hunter and another of the teens still lying flat on his back. Probably Sophia’s doing. They would be far more upset if he wasn’t just asleep.
Akua’s opinion hadn’t changed. They needed to kill the Togabito Hunter. But they didn’t have the tools to do so right now.
Know when you can’t win the battle. Oya-ji had said that once. More than once, maybe.
“He’s going to wake up on his own,” Sophia told the teens still gathered around the Togabito Hunter. “Just give it an hour or two. And he’ll be all better, then!”
“Thanks!” one of the teens, bobbed hair with blond tips, who had been poking the Hunter’s face to get a reaction now gave Sophia a thumbs-up.
Everyone gave their thanks as well, with varying amounts of enthusiasm.
“And you!” the red-haired one that had tried to grab him at the beginning of this mess pointed at Akua. “What’s your excuse for starting this mess?”
“I was just stopping the threat before it could attack!” Akua snapped defensively. “Come on, Sophia, let’s get out of here. And you guys – watch yourselves. That guy is dangerous.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” muttered the one with the purple hair, staring at him with truly venomous eyes.
Sophia grabbed Akua’s arm and pulled him away. He scoffed loudly at them. “Just get outta here!”
They both limped off towards the exit, Sophia helping Akua along while he pretended he wasn’t about to keel over with exhaustion. Under the awning now ridden with bullet-holes, stood Ram. Speaking with a muscular man with small cat ears poking out from his green hair while water poured down on them through the holes.
“And then, I switched the engine on, but the connection was placed backwards-” the unknown man was explaining, while Ram nodded and made listening noises.
“You were talking this whole time?!” Ishal snapped, marching past them and to the unknown man. “Why didn’t you come help us?!”
Ram jolted over to look at them, eyes snapping to Sophia. “Sophia-sama! Were you okay? I am so sorry-”
“It’s fine, Ram. I helped!” she grinned.
Ram leaned towards Akua and lowered his voice ineffectively. “Did she kill anyone?”
“No!” both he and Sophia said at the same time.
Akua continued, “The Hunter’s sleeping. We should just leave him for now.”
Ram nodded without argument. Probably already knew that that had been an impossible “Uoza and Ikkaku are probably still fighting, too, let’s go break that up-”
They both looked out at the heavily raining street. Where only Uoza stood, completely soaked from the downpour, but no togabito of lightning in sight.
No, wait, there the hedgehog-looking freak was, talking with Ishal and D a good distance away and looking none the worse for wear. Akua kept them in the corner of his eye as he turned to harangue Uoza. “Had you lost already?”
“No, you brat!” Uoza bristled. “The actual ZP have begun cordoning off the area, so we called a temporary truce. Nobody involved in this wants to be caught by them, after all.”
What would happen to 7146 if the Zodiac Police caught him?
Considering the few reports Ram had gotten on what had happened to 396; nothing good.
Those other guys better make a run for it too, was the stray thought that passed by him for just a second. Akua didn’t actually care who got to walk free from there and who didn’t, as long as they didn’t belong to his group.
The same couldn’t be said for Ram, it seemed.
“D!” he called out to the man with the green cat ears. “Are you going to be returning to Shiki now?”
D looked in Ram’s direction, and his breath hitched slightly.
Beside him, Ikkaku the hedgehog-freak tilted his head, staring at D’s face. “Well, then? I’m not going to stop you, if you feel like heading over to the gray side.”
A muscle jumped in D’s jaw, and his eyes darted away.
“There are more than two bad options to choose from, D,” Ram tried to reason. “We’re proof of that.”
“And that’s admirable,” D said slowly. “But there’s no going back for me – Shiki’s in my blood and bones now.”
“Well, that’s that,” Akua interrupted before Ram tried to keep this conversation going. “Fuck you guys. Tell those sick maid bastard teammates of yours that I’m going to get my revenge on them someday soon. The three of us are leaving now.”