In all his working life, Togami had never once imagined that he'd be forced into such a cramped, minuscule office. Small offices are for the damned, the nobodies of the world with naught but a snivelling, slovenly child to their name, if that. Small offices are for those who don't work enough—who sit and pause for a break because their fingers are a little sore, who spend fifteen minutes in the morning without fail greeting every single colleague and unfulfilled burnout, cockroach and rat they pass on the way, who work merely up to their quota, never beyond, and consider it a good day's work—and Togami is by no means anywhere near deserving of such injudiciousness.
There's a desk, a chair, and a screen in the corner. The woman with him—she calls herself his guide, he calls her a pest—calls it cosy. He'd be cosier lying down to sleep next to a dead slug.
"If you head out of the door and turn left, there's a coffee machine at the end of the hall." she says, so rudely interrupting his train of thought as if she'd not known that he was too busy chewing on bitter thoughts to bother paying any attention to her. She'd said something most interesting, however; it isn't that he cares about any of what she has to say, but her phrasing is… off. Confusing.
"A machine?" he asks.
"Yeah. At the end of the hall." she repeats, like she somehow thinks that Togami's brain is so clotted with lead that he requires the simplest of instructions to be repeated, drilled into his skull; that he would more likely accept such a bizarre concept and simply ask where rather than what the hell a coffee machine is, quite frankly, baffles him. Most peculiar. Perhaps the term 'coffee machine' is common slang for a kettle.
It's later in the day, when he takes his first sip of a coffee made not by man, but indeed, by a machine, that Togami understands her goals—she'd intended to poison him, to singe his tongue and mar his tastebuds beyond what is recognisable as human—as he rates the tripe a miserable zero out of ten. How anyone can stomach it is beyond him; scepticism leads him to ask is it even edible?
Togami decides that no, there's no way this devil's brew is fit for consumption, and laments the very existence of the person who would dare say otherwise as he lifts the machine from its resting place and brings it to a nearby dustbin, before letting it fall to its wasteland doom.
He works his way through the ranks during his time as an underling—which is an alien experience to him, as one who had originally been exalted just once, from fodder to singularity—and the one thought he cares to acknowledge until the day he's assigned a hacking gun and a team for fieldwork is that this is all too easy.
There's a certain coworker—nauseated is he to imagine such a word, to imagine that someone could be working with him, on the same level as him—whose name he cares not to remember, who is only ever assigned the simplest of missions: deliver a message, deliver supplies, assist in exfiltration… Because of this, he seems to believe that he is exempt from the troubles of the world, that he cannot be touched, or killed, and that it's not really as bad as people are saying, how could it be?
Togami passes him on the way to pick up his new weapon. His greeting in passing is absolutely vexatious; he asks how he is. Togami ignores him, and continues walking.
The device rests between Togami's clavicle and the nape of his neck, top-heavy plastic barrel pointing to the ceiling as he examines the soon-to-be victim of his target practice. The function is set to Move, which he's been told serves as a sort of basic on/off switch for any piece of equipment, so long as it's electric. If that's the case, he thinks, lifting it from his shoulder and bringing it to eye level, this should go swimmingly.
There's a new coffee machine at the end of the hall; it's about to meet its maker.
When Togami pulls the trigger the first thing he notices is green. It's a green so luminescent that it forces a blink out of him—this thing is absolutely useless for stealth, then—and by the time his eyes are open again, before the momentum of the kickback has yet to settle, Togami can hear the grating whirring of the coffee machine as it's brought to life, an instrument used for a human's job. He supposes it's only fitting, then, to use an equally worthless machine in order to turn it on.
"So this is why the shots are named kotodama..." he mumbles to himself, pushing back his glasses with his forefinger as the inedible slop dribbles from the machine's chute like water from a stalactite, "They hardly seem sacred."
It's an interesting design, he'll give it that much. Such instruments come with their uses. He seeks to employ each of them perfectly. Even standing behind the barrel, however, poses its own threats; on a much larger timescale, admittedly, but with equally gruesome results—if not more so.
Concentrated blasts of electromagnetic waves burns the cells like an apartment complex on fire. A direct hit from such waves must surely be excruciating; if only Togami had the clearance to use the gun on humans, he would gladly test it on a certain lab rat that follows him around. Still, he has no reason to worry himself over something so insipidly dull as the threat of being hit. No, the threat of prolonged exposure is what truly concerns him. Tumours, mutations, infertility, cancer—the more one uses such a weapon, the more of themselves they sell to it. He may as well hook himself up to a drip and slowly bleed himself dry; it'd essentially lead to the same pitiful ending.
And to top it all off, the thing looks ridiculous. Togami's scowl is vicious as he keeps it trained on the coffee maker. What he's holding is officially recognized as a weapon; a child's toy is what he'd call it.
Togami reaches for the paper cup once it's full and raises it to his mouth. The drink tastes terrible. A mere one and a half.
He switches the function to Break with the coffee still at his lips and fires with little thought to it; this time a vivid orb of blue lights up the coffee machine as it's hit and it shudders backwards, sputters, crackles and sighs out its last breath of a thin wisp of dead smoke.
Still, if he must use it, there's little other choice.
What an annoyance...
Hostage retrieval. Togami Byakuya, of all people, has been assigned to hostage retrieval. On the authority of an anonymous tip! His teeth clench together. This is ridiculous.
Togami's skills lie in finance, in management; the world would be at his feet in a matter of seconds if his talents weren't being wasted for something as insignificant as a petty rescue mission. The economy is a shambles at its very best—the gatekeepers of the future are incompetent, useless fools—the weak and frail want nothing more than to have him contained so as to keep him from usurping their ill-earned power. This is the conclusion that he's reached; only bulbous raptors who keep him beneath their thumbs could maintain their status as world leaders for so long without having a clue what they're doing. It's blindingly obvious—how else could they have failed to notice the presence of persons of interest confined for so long within their own prize city?
Though this comes as little surprise to him, just as he's unsurprised that he's been assigned to such a dreary mission, there's something to be said about the fact that of all the reasons that the Future Foundation could have become aware of the helpless, incarcerated souls, they found out via anonymous tip. Such negligence is a disgrace.
Loathe as he is to do work that bores him, though, he'll complete the assignment perfectly. To do anything less when the stakes are negligible is out of the question; he is destined to overcome each and every obstacle in his way flawlessly, and this doesn't even count as an obstacle.
When Togami is informed of the name of the hostage he's assigned to he can't help but roll his eyes. Naegi Komaru, huh. She must have inherited some of his luck to have the privilege of being rescued by none other than Togami Byakuya.
Togami Byakuya stands in an elevator with a team of five men behind him, unamused.
An apartment complex, of all places. It's so… lacking in subtlety that he's actually disappointed. In the culprit, in the police, in just about everyone wrapped up in this ridiculous ordeal. Whoever's been keeping someone locked up in here for over a year and a half must have at least a reasonably strong hold on the city to have gone undetected for so long—which raises questions, questions that simmer in his stomach and in the hollow of his chest. Who is responsible for this?
Who is responsible for the riots outside? How have they occurred here? For what reason?
Why Towa City? The steady hum of the ascending elevator plays host to each and every question he has—lets them hang in the air around him as he asks them—but answers none of them. More surface with each passing second. Why is Towa, the prize city of the Future Foundation, serving as the playing grounds for what's left of despair, of the mutual killings? Why has the Towa Group been allowed to survive when Togami's family—which was absolutely superior in every way, from its history to its focus to its heir—has crumbled like chalk? How? Anywhere else would have been credible—anywhere but Towa, anywhere but the most highly regulated city he knows of…! It should surely be impossible for even the bumbling, incompetent dogs running—ruining—the Foundation to miss the presages of something of this nature, this scale, to allow riots to break out in such an abrupt, egregious manner. So, why?
They're safe in the elevator, at least, as it hauls itself past floor after floor. Togami sets aside his concerns, lets them simmer in his stomach for the time being, and glances to the spare hacking device sat unclaimed in the corner of the room, to the previously written memo he'd attached to it. Bringing a spare from the helicopter was a good—no, perfect—idea. Perhaps now, at least, she'll be able to make herself useful.
It feels like too long before the slow ascent heaves to a stop, and the doors slide open with an all-too-jovial ping.
The first thing he sees is that there's a girl in front of him, quite obviously desperate for the doors to open faster than they can—impatient or afraid, he doesn't care to work out. This girl... The hair, the eyes, the surely vacant brain space—it wouldn't take someone of Togami's brilliance to know that this gawping, quaking buffoon is a certain idiot's close relative—this must be Naegi Komaru.
This is Naegi Komaru, the girl he was sent to retrieve, and she's in his way.
A certain something behind her catches his eye—so, they're here too—and with no time to spare or explain, Togami lowers the device so that it's eye level with her, and charges a shot. That should get the point across. And as she falls back onto the floor like the sorry, snivelling idiot she surely is, Togami watches the blue wave of hacking code curl and crackle towards the robotic assailant. The question of whether or not such a weapon is capable of destroying such a sophisticated piece of machinery weighs the air around him for just a moment before the wave makes contact, straight in the beast's mouth. He'd almost be proud of such an excellent shot, had he expected anything less of himself. When it topples over and comes apart completely, Togami looks down to the girl who's shamefully allowed herself to sit helplessly while he did all the work. His men run ahead at that point, which allows him some time, if nothing else.
This timing is too perfect to be an unfortunate coincidence… Must he encounter these things every time he meets a member of the Naegi family?
After a brief period of conversation with her (along with the confirmation that, yes, she is an imbecile), Togami hears a yell—evidently more of them have infiltrated the building—and takes it as a cue to fetch the spare device from the elevator. She'll need this if she wants to stand so much as a chance out there.
If he's any judge of how quickly the suited monkeys with him are letting themselves be slaughtered, Togami estimates about a minute before they come after him—and, by extension, after Naegi Komaru. He sends her off, then, to remove her burdensome presence and prying intuition before she truly becomes an inconvenience to him, before the halls are suffocated with smoke and saturated with steel claws.
They're harder to hit when they're moving, clawing at flesh and pawing clumps of it into their robotic mouths, catching sight of him and leaping, ecstatic to tear his skin from the rest of his body. Even with both hands steadying the device his aim grows shaky under the pressure. There's nothing for it but to leave as soon as possible.
Togami tries to call the elevator back once he's certain that she must be out of the building, even though it means turning his attention away from the threat for just one second—which is plenty enough time for them to attack, to strike. They're slow and awkward, but they fill the hall like a swarm, and all it takes is one well-aimed strike to fell him; Togami's head hits the wall as he falls.
He comes to with his cheek pressed to a cold, dusty floor, wrists tied at the small of his back and legs splayed out like he'd been trying to crawl on his stomach, like he'd been trying to escape from something before. Before what?
A lopsided wince (which accentuates itself on those of his features which are flattened against the floor) crumples his face in a twisted discomfort; his legs are numb. There's white noise where his hands should be, and his strength is pooled around him, his muscles are seeping into the floor, his bones are bleeding out of him like ink through tissue. His eyes open slowly to a clouded world of double-vision—where the hell are his glasses?—and he lolls his head further onto its side, greeted by the sight of a pair of trainers. They're off-white, scuffed, muddy. Togami's head won't move any further without exerting effort; a resource that he soon realises has been completely depleted. A man?
"What…?" is all Togami's able to say—his lips are heavy, the light is roaring at his pupils. He was on a mission, wasn't he…? The trainers stand motionless and proud, and he feels an overwhelming sense of foreboding before something sounds above him, shrill, like a siren.
"Kehehehe!" A boy. He's been captured. "Wow, you put up a fight! Or tried to, anyway." Riots. There were riots. "But you were no match for us!" he pauses then to snicker to himself, and Togami can't comprehend the bulk of the boy's words—he's been tipped over the edge of a waterfall, fallen into the froth, and his mind has yet to resurface.
"...'Us'...?" Togami utters, though he hadn't been aware that he cared. Whether one person or one thousand—what matters is what they're capable of collectively.
"That's right! We're the Warriors of Hope—we're going to kill all the adults in Towa City, and I'm going to lead them!" Amateur. Dangerous.
"Why?"
"For our greatest paradise!" he says it like it's obvious. It isn't. Togami is no believer of the concept of utopia but what he remembers of the city is far from it. "By the children, for the children! I'm going to be the hero that leads the city! Aren't you impressed?" No, he isn't. The sentiment of it all makes him want to vomit; the inebriation does little to help. Togami takes the time to gather his next words—allows them to sit in his mind for long enough to construct them properly. Watery thoughts slip ceaselessly through his fingers but a response, nevertheless, is crafted.
"The streets are covered in blood. This is no more than senseless violence." he mumbles, and even to his obtunded senses, a change in the air is evident. He's evoked a reaction. Good. He musters as much of a smirk as he can manage as the legs before him finally move from his sight.
Moments later; a thud. His torso recoils from it.
"What would you know about it? You're just a shitty demon with no dick!" yells the boy in a flurry of rage—there's something wrong with the accusation, but Togami can't put a finger on it—and the rage is matched with an equally frantic flurry of dull thuds to his side.
The boy leaves soon after that; he never did catch a name from the so-called 'leader' of the city.
Stone cold and flushed in grey, the room around him imposes a sense of discomfort in his gut; perhaps it's the low, hollow murmur in the air, the not-quite-silence which he finds displeasing. Perhaps it's the temperature; his shirt taken from him and the damp, overbearing cool in the room, Togami is left with goosebumps. Or perhaps it's the object that catches his eye across the room—it appears to be a waterwheel, which by all means should be unobtrusive and even mildly pleasing to see were it not for the total absence of water to immerse itself in and the fresh, gleaming scarlet spattered across the floor beside it.
No. What he finds most uncomfortable is the knowledge of what has yet to come—and the restraints which bind him face-down to a padded doctor's seat, reclined to the point of forming a flat surface, a table. He feels like a slab of meat.
Togami notices the felt of a thick marker against the area of his back where shoulders protrude and fat is scarce, where skin is stretched thin, where he knows that pain tolerance is low and healing is poor. A name. The boy's name. He doesn't need half the intelligence he boasts to guess what comes next.
"J… A… T… A… R… O… Does a U come after that?"
Togami's muscles tense as he awaits the inevitable.
Get it over and done with, he thinks. To panic would be to expose weakness, imply the misguided thought that perhaps there's some way out of this.
As he feels a thin line of cold metal pressed tentatively where the marker had been, a slight adjustment to ensure the perfect cut (it's moved just slightly to the left, then down), in the seconds before the first incision is made all he can hope for is that it's sterilised.
A tap of the hammer sends the chisel down—god—! Flesh parts like butter and his fingers stretch outwards, curl like they have something to hold onto—and he wishes they did, wishes there was a sensation other than the blade in his back, muscle and nerves shrieking as it's pulled back out. Togami bites his lip to keep himself from making a sound; it isn't enough to stop the sharp hitch in his breath, nor does it conceal the way he twitches, the way his muscles contract as if they're trying to retreat.
It can't be more than a few millimetres, he assures himself, or it would be going through bone, too. Perhaps he'd marvel at the craftsmanship, the steady hand if he was in another position; if he was reading it from a file as he so often has before, detached and entertained.
One cut in and this is already unbearable.
The boy giggles as he works, asks questions, chants joyful and hysteric but Togami smothers his face in the padding before him—he doesn't want to hear. He doesn't want to. If only the blood pooling at each and every injury site the boy inflicts was enough to drown him in, soak that stupid leather mask red as the life inside it meets its sorry end.
(He hears a cry of "Do you hate me now?" and by God does he wish he could say yes with the composure and ferocity it deserves.)
Togami counts each one, each violation and act of treason against his body, family, heritage. It doesn't ease the pain. Not one bit.
The chisel slips at the eighteenth incision, bringing a half-feral cry from the hollow of Togami's chest as the blade lurches to the side and separates skin from flesh—uproots it. His breaths are a desperate wheeze, and his attempt to appear nonchalant is lost beneath the raw agony of being bested by such a ghastly child. He hates this. He could kill him, gladly...!
"Oops. Guess I'll have to start over." Togami hears a smile in his voice. He wishes he could leave his body.
The boy pulls the chisel back—slowly, so as not to be gentle but rather to prolong this, to remind him that he has no power here, that his power was lost long ago. He pulls at his restraints like it could make any difference.
Long after he's given up trying to count the wounds, a girl's voice is what rises Togami from his pain-borne stupor—it's lackadaisical in tone and pre-meditated in quality. Somehow he finds himself hating her already.
"Huuuuh? We don't have another broadcast scheduled for an hour!", she says, and the boy with the chisel startles away from him. Good. "Isn't that odd? I must be smelling the leftover dinner Servant tried to feed us."
"Aah… Kotoko-chan." he says, a response much too sheepish for one who could just as easily drive that chisel of his through her skull. Togami wonders if, in that case, the threat she poses is even more daunting—perhaps. It certainly doesn't seem out of the question.
"Naughty, naughty! Extracurriculars like this are a no-no, remember?" then he isn't supposed to be doing this. He isn't allowed to do so much as lay a finger on him, but he did so anyway, and he did so much worse…! "Shingetsu-kun will tattle to Dai..." she pauses, cutting herself off as if she's realised something, "—Himself! And then he'll bawl to Monaka-chan, and where would your sticky fingers be, then? I could feed them to a Beast Monokuma, one-by-one! Serve them with pureed vegetables and they might almost look like sausages!"
More daunting indeed. Implicit or not, these children have established a hierarchy. And to think that the boy with the mask falls at the lower end of it.
The girl steps closer to him and he turns his head to her; she's so laden, sodden with pink that it makes him want to vomit—and the weapon in her hands is equally as nauseating, confusing and far more ridiculous than his own. Just as his eyes narrow she pulls its trigger—a pair of dentures are launched into the back of his neck—why dentures?—and Togami's glare instantly loosens as his muscles go limp.
Ah. They must be lined with sedatives.
Time is stagnant in the cell of Togami Byakuya.
He's grown accustomed to this feeling, of a locked, oppressive metal door and no windows. The inability to leave. The inability to accept it. This time there's no escape and by now he's almost used to it. It's almost more familiar to him than the act of ruling, of sitting at the throne of the world and knowing that he belongs there—
Togami refuses to acknowledge such a thought. He resents it.
Instead he busies himself with the various boxes stacked haphazardly across the shelves in search of any information which could be of use to him; most of it is blank paper. Useless. He moves on.
It's when he hauls a high-up box from the shelf and finds inside a set of accounts obviously made by some sort of lowly intern from years ago—twenty years!—that he hears the mechanical drone of some sort of motorised transport along with the carefree hums of a young girl as they approach his cell.
He feels cold. The drone comes to a halt.
"Isn't it sad that nobody is coming to save Togami Byakuya-san—?"
What…? "Or, rather… Monaka picked someone unobtrusive like Fukawa Touko-san to come here because I thought she wouldn't get in the way." she says, mock-sadness crawling through her voice and making him seethe. Togami would rather pop his own eardrums with a needle than listen to her for any longer. But what she's saying sounds like information far more useful than old, meaningless accounts; begrudgingly he pays attention. "Say, wouldn't it be terrible if she actually succeeded in trying to get Naegi Komaru-san to leave the city rather than bringing her here like Monaka wants? If that happened, there'd be no reason to keep Togami Byakuya-san alive anymore."
She's trying to unsettle him, obviously. Such arrogance… To prod at him like some sort of caged animal…! Togami's teeth grit as the hairs on his arms stand on end. He doesn't say a word. He loathes the very thought of giving her more to use against him.
But she continues all the same. "Hmm… I wonder how it must feel." Shut up, he thinks. Pleads. "...Knowing that you're only alive because you were chosen to be?"
"...What…?!" he speaks before there's so much as a chance to stop himself—nausea returns pools in his stomach and the paper in his hand crumples as his fist clenches, trembles around it.
Chosen…! She... has no idea what that word means…!
"Ufufu…" the motorised drone starts up once more with a click and her giggle fades—he wants to kill her.
Silence perpetuates.
They don't visit him anymore—the one with the leather mask and jarring laughter, the one who cried "leader"—his only guest over the past few days has taken the form of a small, chair-bound girl and in her recent absence, he's left with a room of boxes and cool air. An optimist might call it a blessing. Togami calls it boredom.
He's tired. His head aches, bemoans the lack of caffeine pulsing through his veins and his eyes, though wide they may be, feel like dry, cracking leather. Vision fazes between blurred and focused on a single spot of the floor, gritty and unclean as the rest of it. Basic utilities have been withheld and Togami considers how disheveled he must look, stubble pushing shyly through his skin, sweat stains at the armpits of his shirt and blood stains at the back. His jacket, at least, conceals the worst of it.
Togami sits on the floor because he's sure there are insects living in the bed—and wonders about the state of the city.
The throbbing in his head chimes like a bell tower.
When the rumbling starts he doesn't notice it at first—credits it to his lack of sleep. But then the earth lurches, throws him up like a bad meal, forces him forward and down with no warning whatsoever—! As the air is wrung out of him, his cheek and torso colliding with the concrete floor, Togami winces and is embraced only with the roar of what sounds like an earthquake—or worse.
What… the hell…?!
He lays still until long after the earth stops shaking—which, shockingly, is over as suddenly as it started—before wearily pushing himself up, standing briefly on shivering legs to dust himself off. He still has his dignity, after all. The least that can be done is maintaining how he presents himself in whatever way remains possible.
Togami sits back on the floor once that's done and swallows himself in apathy. No answers are coming.
Or so he thinks, and rightfully so, until no more than ten minutes later he hears the yelling of familiar voices echoed through the hallway. Lifting his head slowly, Togami narrows his eyes.
They're here.
Before he can get the paperwork out of the way (and there's a lot of it) there are a plethora of medical tests waiting for him to tackle; they drag on for hours, like there's enough substance to them to somehow warrant being a total waste of time (though he knows that each one lasts no longer than a few minutes). The results soon become clear: Togami Byakuya boasts health in all ways but one.
The wounds on his back are infected. Typical.
With clean dressings applied, he returns to work with all the pride of knowing that one of the nobodies of the world have likely taken the day off, would have abstained from any and all work because their back was feeling a little sore.
He returns from all the nonsense to a still-broken coffee machine. Little does it matter; his throat is sawdust and for once his cravings lie in something cold, refreshing. A glass of water would more than suffice.
When he finds out that water comes not in a glass, not even a paper cup but one made of plastic, Togami can do little but scoff. Of course. Foolish of him to expect better.
Time after returning from Towa City passes with little incident, until now.
The Future Foundation has secured a group of fourteen refugees, who claim to be survivors of Hope's Peak Academy. This is what Togami gathers from the file perched neatly in his right hand, paper cup of the now-familiar bile claiming to be coffee secured in his left. Honestly, how anyone could have survived sans himself is a mystery.
"Look who it is!" says a familiar voice. A colleague with all the mannerisms of a chimpanzee, with all the impertinence to treat him like a friend. Togami, pointedly so, takes a sip of coffee and continues to address his full focus to the file.
"You sure drink a lot of that stuff, huh?" he continues, "Good thing they finally fixed that coffee machine!" Togami sighs, and sets down his cup. He hates his coworkers.
A hand meets his back as the chimp speaks. Togami recoils—shoulder jerks a fraction of an inch away from the offending hand. He pushes his glasses up; the skin on his back feels hot.
"...Hey, is everything okay?" he continues, and Togami wishes he could throttle him. "You look tired. Get some rest!"
It's the last straw. Togami's hand clutches the file a little tighter, before snapping it shut. He rises from his seat silently, smoothly, towering over over the babbling primate in an assertion of all the power that he still lays claim to. His pupils are thin.
"You have ten seconds to vanish before I stretch out your tongue and make a dartboard from it." says Togami.
Surprisingly enough, he's swiftly left alone again. And with just enough time to finish reading before he goes to investigate these newfound survivors of the Academy.
Togami learns that the survivors are frauds. Naegi approaches him with a most interesting plea. Magnanimously, he accepts.
Good grief…
It was bound to happen eventually; perhaps even destined. They're dealing with a virus of innovatory qualities—how it infiltrated the program in the first place is beyond him—and it comes as no surprise that the first victim has been claimed already.
The monitors alone make it obvious it's a gruesome murder. More than ten points of entry across the torso—the first of which through their larynx, denying them the ability to scream—and the ones that followed all thrust erratically, desperately through their body until finally, one last puncture to their stomach accentuated with a twist of the skewer, pushing it in deeper and deeper as if the last sevenimpalements didn't do a thing.
Togami winces. It's hard not to when the victim looks like that. Like him.
There's something to be said about their motives—clearly they have the intelligence to understand that lesser beings are fodder, that someone so useless as the one they saved could have died easily without leaving so much as a scratch on the world in which he lived. Naturally, under any other circumstances their own death would be all but completely unimportant—they, too, are truly nobody—but this death is personal. This is a death attributed to him. Togami's nails press into his palm.
They wear his face and dare to have the tenacity to sacrifice their life for another—one without an iota of talent, at that!—and Togami can only watch with a grimace on his face for they are slandering his name, giving him a bad reputation.
What a terrible fake they are.
His chest feels hollow and there's a pocket of air clogging his throat. The skin between his eyebrows forms tiny crevices as it's pressed together, his eyes closed tight for a brief few seconds as he takes in a breath.
The waters are calm. The ferry ducks moves against the waves calmly, at a steady pace. The sky is totally devoid of clouds, and the sun is shining. It's, quite literally, clear sailing. And yet he can't stand it, can't stand the sheer turmoil it rises in his stomach, the dizziness, the headache. The sooner he touches dry land again, the better.
Togami's eyes open just a fraction and he can see a certain idiot in the room. Behind the eyesore, the island of Jabberwock grows increasingly distant. An island resort to serve as a prison, open-spaced confinement and, most importantly of all, a chance for the irredeemable to redeem themselves. Togami doesn't buy into it for one solitary second. But, it's none of his concern. This was Naegi's choice, supported by Togami simply for its interest value. The one whose shoulders carry the weight of hope like it's his own invention, who promised, in all of his mediocrity, to dive straight in whenever he saw the slightest of dangers... How far his luck extends and how long he can keep up this ridiculous farce of making a difference... he owes a debt of gratitude to Naegi's sister, but to him Togami can offer naught but limited—and waning—interest.
He would have let them die.
He would have delivered them straight back to the Future Foundation.
He would have ensured minimum costs and maximum efficiency.
Without argument, Togami's way of operating is vastly superior. Still, he thinks, this way did serve to entertain him—if only for a little while.
Togami keeps a stash of luwak coffee for the particularly trialling days, the days when machine-made slop just isn't enough to quell him. He finds the mug—the smell, the stale and flat taste to which only the most refined beings can find an appreciation—to be familiar to him. This is how it should be, he thinks, fingers looped through the mug's worn handle.
He'd acquired this particular coffee from Hope's Peak Academy, a gift from the idiot. Goodness knows how someone so incomprehensibly common, so dull got his hands on something of this calibre. That Togami is unable to find any more himself is infuriating.
Allegedly, the gift came from some crude sort of machine in the store—as if he buys into such a ridiculous concept.
The incident claimed victims across the world. No country—nor the life in it—has been left unravaged. And though Togami cares not for the lives of the mediocre, their sudden absence coupled with the crumbled world economy spelled devastation for businesses everywhere. That devastation is still felt elsewhere, everywhere—his tongue burns between each sip—luwak coffee was a niche product already before despair had come to roost. Now, the farmers can barely spare a hand to collect the beans left behind by what few palm civets still roam the wild—production of luwak coffee has come to a halt.
The world cannot afford luxuries.
And Togami has just used what was left of his stash.
It's a good while before the extraction of Naegi Komaru and Fukawa Touko from Towa City becomes a feasible plan of action. Togami's word, however, is absolute and he has not yet forgotten his debt of gratitude to the two of them, no matter how begrudgingly he admits such a thing.
Togami promised their swift retrieval. And as the city crawls peacefully into view on the horizon, Togami stares from his seat in the helicopter. This promise is just about fulfilled. And it's a good thing, too. Of all the derelict cities in the world, he'd rather not see this one again.
From where he's seated the city looks calm, quiet; a second thought decides that dead is a better way to put it. No pulse, no breath. No smoke rising from the skyscrapers. Perhaps it's for the best, but...
His gut feels heavy. A sickening deja vu.
They're to land in the same park as before. The threat the city held only months ago has been more or less neutralised, thanks to the combined efforts of a certain pair of girls—there is nothing in this place worth worrying about any longer. Closer still does the helicopter approach the rendezvous point and further still does the weight in his gut pull towards the floor. It's an ugly city.
Before long and Togami can begin to make out the matchstick figures of the two he's here for—dots on the landscape, truly minor beings. He could crush them beneath his thumb from this height.
Soon enough he can make out facial expressions, posture—his former classmate grabs the wrist of the other girl and stands proud as she waits—he can already tell which one is out today.
The helicopter lands. He's eager to leave already.
The door is opened for him, and he steps out. Their hair is windswept, their looks disheveled. Togami never has seen a citizen here who knew how to look acceptable—it must be some sort of a fashion statement here to look like the very concept of washing is nonexistent.
Still, Togami is here as promised, his debt is exempt; after this he's free to leave them to their own devices, free to leave them to leave him alone.
The returning flight is considerably louder with the extra company on board, and not a minute goes by in which Togami doesn't lament the knowledge that his obligations prohibit him from hauling the both of them from the helicopter, watching them fall to the rocks below. If there is just one reason for him to feel grateful, it's that Naegi Komaru is sat between himself and her, the girl with wild eyes and teeth bared—Genocider Syo. It makes his time just a little less unbearable—if only in the slightest of fashions.
"—B-But! Hagakure-san said that you ran!" says the idiot's sister.
"Sure did! He tucked his tail between his legs and sped off before I could even bat my eyes and give him a good morning kiss! I even dressed up for the occasion—" and her elbow butts into the other girl's ribs, as if her insinuations weren't unsubtle enough, "—performance anxiety, Darling?" He wishes he didn't understand her implications, vulgar and repulsive.
"Shut up." Togami says, and looks out of the window. Her response to such a command, of course, is to lean over and continue to play her silly game of catchup where she knows her voice is inescapable, mouth all-too-close to his ear and leaning over the other girl in order to achieve such a feat.
And so she continues to speak, impurities flowing from her mouth like sewage.
There's a lull in her speech eventually, a pause while she conjures up a new and equally as dreadfully obscure topic to make his spine crawl when Naegi speaks up—immediately does he wish that she hadn't.
"Does… she normally… oink when she sleeps?"
There's a tension in the air, a taut steel wire between them in the second after she speaks. These words take a surprising amount of time to process when he knows exactly what they mean, exactly what they imply—this isn't the first time this has been brought up. And yet, with all the context in mind, all the knowledge that this is a very specific question, all his eloquence and articulation comes down to just one word in response—
"...Oink…?!"
A snort from the former classmate. His eye twitches—from a solitary snort always comes more, and soon she fills the helicopter with her loud, obnoxious, unpalatable laughter. She cackles, even, and his disdain shows in the colour red across his forehead, the veins in his hands pushing against the skin which binds them as his fingers clamp down into his palm.
"Never mind! Forget I said anything!" says Naegi, flailing her arms wildly in a mortified attempt to diffuse the situation; Togami's outrage only increases.
Togami hates her laugh.
He hates the way it hugs the wall and fills every indent in the cement between the bricks—the way it hits his ears like a caterwaul, how he couldn't ignore it if he tried.
Her smile is equally as tepid—festering thoughts lie behind her lips, pressed beneath her tongue.
She doesn't usually have a hammer.
She looks at him like he's a piece of meat and he knows that she's wanted this for so long, wanted to see the royal blood of Togami Byakuya spill out from him like she's sticking a pig. He tries to move but his muscles are pure lead—her hand reaches beneath her skirt and out come a pair of scissors, razor-sharp and glinting in the evening light.
This isn't happening. Not this, on top of everything else. To disrespect him so blatantly, has she completely forgotten who he is…?!
...No. Of course she remembers. That's the very reason he's in this situation.
Togami pulls at his arms but they're held back by God knows what—nothing is keeping him in place but he can't move, can't think of anything beneath the cold stare of her grin other than that he wants to live. He will not be just another file in the investigation report, he refuses to be just another victim...!
She spins the scissors on her fingers just once before dashing towards him with a shriek. His eyes widen in a terrified fury—no, no, no—and she brings the blade of her scissors crashing down, just short of his right wrist.
She makes eye contact. There's still a sneer stretched wide across her face; it's revolting.
"You know, Darling…" she says, and somehow he can already hear the words coming. "The world is comprised of ups and downs! Tops—" and she takes the time to snort at her own crass humor, "and bottoms!" Another step brings her closer and closer, her shadow overlapping with his, consuming it. "Innings and outings—I came in, and now there's only one way you're getting out!"
Togami responds; his words are inaudible.
She grins wider at that and lifts the hammer. He'd spit on her if it would change anything.
She lingers on the moment and he's running out of time—it's the same as before, it's happening again—a tap of the hammer drives the scissors down through flesh and bone and this time he's screaming, voice grating against his throat like sandpaper. Togami's hand convulses and his fingers twitch under the cacophony of his strangled gasps—he wants to look away but he can't, it won't change anything, his body is going to grow cold and he'll be nothing more than a piece of art.
This is not how he's supposed to die. This is not the path destined for him.
She hammers a second blade into his left wrist before he can even begin to grow accustomed to the first—as if that's possible in the first place—eliciting a second convulsion and a wheeze of a sob with it.
There's a hiss in the air between her teeth and she looks a monster. Togami tries to bring his hand into a fist, tries to reach out to grab her throat and snap it in two, but when the skin of his wrist stretches and rips around the steel blade lodged into the wall behind him his face shrivels under the pain.
She cackles.
There's blood rising to the wound and trickling out like it's been begging to be released; she's been waiting for the same thing, he can tell. She's loving this.
"You've been keeping me waiting for soooo long! I don't know how I'm gonna top this one, Darling—I might have to quit while I'm ahead!"
She brings a third pair arched upwards to his head and presses them to his temple with a smirk; his eyes follow her like a painting. Whatever depravities flutter through her mind must be overflowing—he can practically smell them, hidden in the copper in the air, buried under every cry he tries to stifle.
She's going to give him a crown. She's going to bludgeon it into his skull.
Togami's eyes won't close no matter how desperately he tries, no matter how dry they are, and they watch her every movement with a voyeur's intensity.
He needs to stop her.
Panic rises as she lifts the hammer once more and he's sweating all over—he cannot die, not like this…!
When the first blade is pummeled into his head he expects to lose consciousness. The second by far breaches the worst pain he'd thought imaginable; the third only proves him wrong again. By the time the twelfth is lodged in he wishes he wasn't conscious.
From her pouch she produces one last pair of scissors—made of gold, the pièce de résistance—and lets the blade trace a taunting line up his stomach. When it comes to a stop at the left side of his chest the look on her face is more full of excitement than he's ever seen before. This must be the climax, the finishing blow.
He can't die.
He doesn't—want—
Swathed in a cold blanket of sweat he shudders into consciousness—and wishes he hadn't, wishes the room would stop suffocating him, wishes his lungs would let in the air he's trying to breathe, desperately, over and over and over. The room around him feels like a swamp; he swears the walls are pulsing.
His hand reaches to feel his chest and he's almost surprised to find that he can move it at all, that his arteries remain intact and unpunctured, that he remains very much alive. Togami exhales. His back is damp, and his pyjamas cling to him. He feels disgusted.
With sleep but a fading memory, Togami reaches for his glasses and gets out of bed. He wants coffee.
As he dresses himself the pain from before is all but gone—the only thing that remains is a dull ache in his chest. That's all it's ever been.
Togami isn't one to care about laying claim to materialistic dross beyond what is necessary to live. Possessions, money—they are mere side-effects of power, and a lack of either is more than acceptable so long as that power, that control remains.
That said, he isn't stupid. Work equates to pay. It's a tradeoff of time for sustenance. The level of pay is dependent on factors such as skill, responsibility, danger—all three of which are present in his current work. Really, he should be living comfortably by now, working in tailored suits rather than hand-me-down scraps and an office rather than a closet.
So far he's given to this job a week of his freedom—to the snotty brats with concepts of hope so warped that really, it's no wonder their struggles ended so horribly—and with that week he's given every marred, raised line across his skin forming a signature like it's art, a name on his back twice written. He's given months more after that to an island in the middle of the pacific surrounded by company that the devil itself would frown at. He's had his future remoulded and his past stolen away into a chasm of his mind that refuses to recall itself. The Future Foundation has been benevolent enough to restore some of that stolen past to him, but at what cost? Togami Byakuya's time has been spent like a shopping spree.
His nose flares in a silent rage as he brings the paper cup to his lips; he really isn't being paid enough.
