notes: i read somewhere that atsushi was supposed to be a girl that akutagawa falls in love with. if you thought for one second that i was gonna let sleeping dogs lie, you are wrong. i'm a grave robber digging up the unexplored possibilities. let there be life.
disclaimer: definitely not. also, this is kinda canon-divergent a bit.
x
it was like a time bomb set into motion
i.
He thought that, given the name of their target, Nakajima Atsushi would be a man.
Because standing there, petrified and trembling like a weak nobody, is their target. Who is, by the way, decidedly an 18-year-old girl.
Higuchi hadn't warned him. She had gone to the Armed Detective Agency's Headquarters and hadn't bothered to say a thing. Nobody at the Port Mafia had said a damn thing.
Gender means nothing to Akutagawa, however, and he has never shown mercy. It will not begin today, either. Not with the pathetic being cowering before Rashoumon, terror flooding her eyes. She is frozen in time, a fossil encased in fear, gaze locked onto him. He heard once about the psychological human conflict of fight or flight when one is faced with a traumatic situation. He's seen it, too, sometimes. But all of the targets that he is assigned to always seem to do something else entirely. They neither fight nor run. They simply freeze at the sight of Rashoumon, and that is how they die.
He supposes that fear is a normal emotion that people experience when they witness one of their friends and co-workers being impaled. Akutagawa doesn't give a shit, though, because fear is a sign of weakness.
And he cannot stand the weak.
It would be better if they were to be purged from the world entirely. Weak people only depend upon others and therefore drag the strong down, which drags society down. The weak do not survive on their own. They feed off of others. It's despicable and even laughable. They served no purpose other than to be bottom feeders of society.
"Take the weretiger alive?" she repeats his previous words, fingertips brushing the ground. "What are you after?"
"My target has always been you and you alone, weretiger. Your fellow agents lying there just got caught in the crossfire."
Her eyes go wide, expression contorting. "This is because of me?"
Nononono, Atsushi thinks, eyes flickering to the two siblings lying unmoving in the ground.
"Indeed," Akutagawa replies. "That is your karma for being alive, weretiger. You will cause everyone around you ill, just by being alive."
Seven billion yen for a weak little twig of a girl who was nothing but a coward. She was garbage.
When she does gather whatever shreds of courage she has within her to fight, he takes her leg. Her blood is thick and red and splatters like walls like a mural. The stench of iron permeates the alleyway as she bleeds out. The walls echo with her screams, and screams, and screams.
Coughing, he stands there in a puddle of her disgusting blood and watches as she writhes in the grime.
You're nothing. It would be better for you to just in a ditch somewhere.
She knows she knows she knows.
He thinks that, perhaps, hopefully, she will die and be erased from this world. Her screams of agony are beginning to get on his nerves, and he wishes that Rashoumon would swallow them whole so he could have some peace and quiet.
He grits his teeth and prepares to strike for the kill. Rashoumon was not intended to be a gentle gift. It was savage and steeped in carnage, much like himself.
But Nakajima Atsushi does not, in fact, die.
Instead she transforms into an enormous white tiger and attempts to tear him to pieces. The worst part is that she even manages to regenerate the leg he had torn from her body. Then Dazai shows up and everything is over.
Akutagawa tells him that the weretiger will be the Port Mafia's eventually, but he also makes himself a promise in that alleyway.
He's going to kill the weretiger.
And he always keeps his promises.
tbc.
notes2: atsushi screaming is such a mood. i feel. quality will improve. that is my sorta promise to you. blessed be the anthology.