A/N: I really like Kadota. He's nowhere near as flashy as most of the cast members, but makes up for it in being the only one with an ounce of emotional maturity. =D

Chapter Thirteen

Since Masaomi wasn't letting Mikado out of his sight, agreeing on a place to meet up before heading to the meeting of the Dollar was unnecessary. They wound up hanging around Mikado's apartment after school, and the teenager grew increasingly nervous and fidgety as the day dragged by. He had purposefully decided to make the meeting fairly late, mostly because he knew a lot of the Dollars had school or jobs and wouldn't be able to make one in the middle of the day.

Anri had tagged along with them after school, although Saki was tucked back away at her own apartment and had faithfully promised not to go within a mile of the proposed meeting place. This was not only to assuage Masaomi's protective instincts; it was also for the simple purpose of keeping her cover story intact. If this went wrong, and they still needed to be able to feed Ceallach false information, it wouldn't do for him to see her with the Dollars.

Even Mikado wasn't able to really concentrate on his homework, and none of them were really hungry for dinner. About an hour before the meeting, Mikado said, "Do you want us to walk you home on the way, Anri-san?"

Anri didn't look up from the math homework she was pretending to concentrate on. "Of course not. I'm going to the meeting."

Mikado hesitated, squirming in his seat. "It might not be safe . . ."

At this, Anri did look up, and pinned him down with a stare. "Might I remind you that I am more than capable of protecting myself? Anyway, I'm in the Dollars. I belong there."

Masaomi was a little startled at Anri's tone. He knew she was right, but she was hardly ever so forceful. He also knew that Mikado could be incredibly stubborn. It was time to disarm things, so he plastered the most overboard expression of wistfulness on his face that he could manage. "Mikado, our little Anri's all grown up and ready to kick ass. How time flies."

Mikado rubbed a hand over the back of his head. "I know that, but . . ."

"Besides, if I didn't go, and something happened to you . . ." Anri was clearly thinking of how she had been walking with Mikado right before he had been abducted by Ceallach's men. "I just don't want that to happen."

"She'll be fine." Masaomi gave a huff. "Hell, she's probably safer than the rest of us."

Now both of them turned and gave him identical unamused looks. "You had better stay safe," Mikado told him.

"And you'd better help me keep Mikado-kun safe," Anri added.

Masaomi leaned away from them. "Whoa, what's with the scary looks?"

Mikado sighed. "He's really oblivious, isn't he."

"Totally," Anri agreed, with a fond little smile.

Masaomi pouted.

Mikado rolled his eyes. "C'mon, let's go," he said, and with a slight blush, he wrapped an arm around Anri's waist. "Thanks for looking out for me."

Her cheeks immediately flushed pink. "Uhm, no problem," she said.

Masaomi considered whistling, but thought that if he embarrassed them, they'd stop. So he just put his hands behind his head and walked ahead of them. He worked at seeming to be perfectly relaxed, but it was difficult. It wasn't the threat of violence that bothered him, but simply the place they were going. He had hoped to never see this warehouse ever again. He knew it was a logical place to hold this meeting, but so many bad things had happened there. He had nearly been beaten to death there, his gang had been taken over by one of the people he hated most in the world. His gang, which really hadn't been his at all at the time, had nearly caught Anri and who knew what would have happened because he certainly hadn't been in control.

After Masaomi was quiet for more than fifteen consecutive seconds, it became clear to the other two that something was amiss. They exchanged a glance, then took a few extra steps so they could walk side-by-side, with one on each side of him. He blinked and dropped his arms as they fell into step beside him. "What?"

"Nothing," Anri said, grabbing his hand and lacing her fingers through his.

He curled his fingers around hers. "Liar."

"You're brooding," Mikado said. "It's unnatural and we don't like it."

". . . What's unnatural about it? I brood all the time." Which was true, although less since Mikado moved to Ikebukuro.

"Well, we still don't like it," Mikado said firmly.

Masaomi laced his fingers through Mikado's. Then, with a grin, he swung his arms so the three of them were walking along like little kids off on an adventure. Anri laughed and the tense expression on Mikado's face eased somewhat. They managed to keep the levity up until they actually reached the old warehouse. Upon seeing how many people were gathered inside, Mikado nearly went into apoplexy. "Didn't they see the part about how it would be dangerous?" he hissed, having peered through the door and then quickly retreated back into the ally so he could hyperventilate in relative privacy.

Masaomi peered in as well, firmly refusing to remember the last time he had been there. "Oh, they saw. And they eat it for breakfast."

Anri looked in over his head, standing on her tiptoes to be able to see. She nodded. "It looks like everyone who showed up is ready for a fight," she said, which was true. Though the turnout was fairly generous, it was predominantly male, and almost entirely made up of people between eighteen and thirty. A lot of them looked, to put it kindly, like thugs. There was a smattering of yellow scarves through the group, but no other consistent splashes of color.

"I guess," Mikado said, rather reluctantly.

Masaomi bumped his shoulder. "They all know what they're getting into. Come on."

Mikado took a deep breath, suddenly nervous. He had called a meeting of the Dollars before, but that was back before anybody knew who he was. He had been just another face in the crowd, then, and he certainly hadn't been expected to say anything. This, he knew, was different. As soon as he walked into that warehouse, everything was going to change.

Masaomi looked Mikado straight in the eye. "You'll do fine. You aren't alone."

After a few moments, Mikado nodded. He took a deep breath. His hand was on the handle of the door when a voice behind him called out, "Hey, it's Taichou!" It made him jump, as he spun around to see Kadota and his friends approaching, with Karisawa waving cheerfully.

He managed a startled greeting, then nodded to Kadota. "Thanks for helping me set this up."

Kadota grinned and laced his hands behind his head. "I hate to tell you this, Taichou, but I didn't do a damned thing."

Mikado blinked. "What?"

"Seriously," Kadota said, "not a thing."

"All grown up!" Masaomi joked.

Mikado blinked at the warehouse. "They all came into a dangerous situation like this . . . just because I asked them to?"

"Got it in one," Kadota told him.

"But you aren't allowed to get all weird and feel guilty about," Masaomi said firmly.

"I just don't get it," Mikado said, frustration coloring his voice despite his best efforts. "It doesn't make any sense. None of this makes any sense! There's no reason for any of you to call me Taichou or give me fancy phones or follow my orders. I just . . . it doesn't make sense and I hate things that don't make sense."

Kadota sighed and tucked his hands behind his head, leaning against the warehouse wall. "It's not that complicated. You just overthink things. You formed the Dollars. That's why we're here."

"But it wasn't a big deal," Mikado argued. "Everyone treats it like it is, but it wasn't. It was a joke. We were just playing around. Anybody could have done what I did."

"Anybody could have," Kadota said, with a nod of agreement, "but nobody did. Except you."

"It wasn't that special," Mikado said.

"It wasn't that difficult," Kadota corrected, "but it was that special, at least to the people standing in this room. You gave these people a place to belong. We're all different types of people, but we're all outcasts in one form or another, or we wouldn't have joined the Dollars to begin with. You took all these people who had nowhere to go and said 'come join my group, I won't give you orders, I won't ask your real name, I just want you to be part of something'. You did it because you didn't have a place that you felt you belonged. So we're all kindred spirits, in a way."

Mikado was quiet for a minute. "It wasn't my intention," he said.

"Here's something to remember, Taichou – no one in that room gives a damn about your intentions. All they care about is the outcome. And this," Kadota waved a hand to encompass the warehouse, "this is the outcome. Think about who you've got in this group. Shizuo, Izaya, Celty. Do you have any idea what would happen if one of them tried to join a color gang?"

At this, Mikado looked up, applying logic to the question. "It would throw everything off," he said. "The group would be too powerful."

"Exactly. Color gangs . . ." Kadota shook his head. "A lot of what they are is tied up in how they appear. Think about when the Blue Squares got into it with the Yellow Scarves. Do you know how that actually got started?"

"No," Mikado said. He gave Masaomi a sidelong glance, seeing his friend stiffen, but the teenager kept his mouth shut, sensing that Kadota was making some progress talking sense into Mikado. "Masaomi doesn't really talk about it."

"Well, he probably doesn't know either. Neither do I. I don't think anything really did happen to get it started. I think the Blue Squares just felt threatened by the existence of another color gang near their territory. So think about that – that a bunch of adults felt so threatened by a group of junior high school students that they felt the need to try to pound them into the ground – then try to imagine what would happen if somebody like Shizuo tied a yellow scarf on." Kadota shrugged. "To be fair to the Squares, if we have any interest in being fair, it probably would have blown over if Izaya hadn't been behind the scenes, fanning the flames."

"Or a bunch of the Scarves would have wound up in the hospital," Mikado said.

"Probably not. Izumii was a bastard, I won't argue that, but all he really wanted was to prove that he was superior. He might have roughed up a couple people and then let it go. What really pissed him off was that the Scarves were winning, and it was Izaya that was helping them do that." Kadota waved a hand. "I got sidetracked. My point is that people like Shizuo, even people like me after that whole thing, can't really join gangs like that anymore. But that doesn't mean we don't want to."

"But everyone knows that Celty and Shizuo are in the Dollars," Mikado pointed out.

"But the Dollars aren't a color gang. So it's okay."

Mikado huffed out a breath. "It still doesn't make any sense."

Kadota clapped him on the back. "Like I said: you overthink things. You gave us a place to go without asking anything in return. You gave us a family of sorts, as corny as that sounds. We're grateful, no matter what your intentions were. You don't have to understand it. Just accept it."

"I'll try," Mikado said.

Masaomi raised an eyebrow. "You ready?"

"No. Uh, yes." Mikado let out a breath, put his hand on the door, and pushed it open.

oOoOo

In the interest of meeting in a neutral location that hopefully would result in both Shizuo and Izaya actually showing up for this endeavor, Celty texted them both a message asking to meet at the park about an hour before the meeting of the Dollars was scheduled. Since they had both gotten Mikado's mass text (though odds were only fifty/fifty that Shizuo had actually read it), she presumed that they both knew approximately what was going on, and didn't include much detail.

Neither of them were there when she arrived. This didn't bother her; she assumed that disaster would fall if both of them beat her there and were left alone together, so she was about ten minutes early. She settled down to wait. Izaya showed up first, skipping along as blithely as a first-grader on a field trip. He greeted her with his usual smirk.

'I see you and Shizuo didn't manage to actually maim each other,' Celty said from where she had settled comfortably on her favorite bench.

"Not for any lack of trying," Izaya said, without a speck of remorse.

'You two make me tired.'

Shizuo strolled up then, hands in his pockets and a lit cigarette between his lips. He stopped in front of them and took the cigarette out of his mouth. "Izaya-kun." It came out as growl. "Celty." His tone was much more pleasant.

"Heh. Why bother to greet me at all, if you're going to be like that?" Izaya asked, tucking his hands into his pockets, where one was undoubtedly resting on his switchblade.

Celty promptly stood up between the two of them. 'There needs to be a cease fire for the next couple of hours.'

Izaya shrugged. "You know as well as we do that even if we promise, ten minutes from now we'll just be at each other's throats again. Why bother pretending?"

'Because I need you to try.'

Shizuo sighed and put his cigarette back between his lips, then turned partly away. Not looking squarely at Izaya would help him keep his temper. After a long pause, Izaya shrugged again and took his hands out of his pockets.

Celty considered this. 'Good enough. In about an hour or so we need to go get that Mask. To do that, you'll have to work together.'

"Which is great, since we don't even know what we're doing," Izaya pointed out. "I guess we're just going to go down there and wait to be shown the light or something. Together." A beat. "Can't imagine a better way to spend my evening."

Shizuo started to make a disgruntled noise, but cut himself off. Celty needed them to not fight. "What's going to happen to the Mask after we get it?" He thought that was much nicer than what he wanted to say, which was, 'How do you plan to keep it away from Izaya?'

'I'll put it somewhere safe until I can find the real owner.'

"Nice of you to decide that all on your own," Izaya said, giving a languorous stretch and then tucking his hands behind his head. "You two don't trust me, is that it? I thought we all had to trust each other to get the Mask in the first place."

'To be fair?' Celty typed rapidly. 'I don't trust anyone. Including myself. That's why I want it gone. I would destroy it if I could.'

"But Shizu-chan wasn't talking about you," Izaya said, his cold gaze staying fixed on the blonde. "Shizu-chan was talking about me."

Celty sat down and patted the bench next to her. She couldn't help but think that Izaya's feelings might be hurt. Just a little. She also couldn't fault Shizuo's logic. 'Yes, but I bet if asked he wouldn't want anyone having it. And you are the person who most loves to have information.' She thought Mikado and Saki would be tied for runner up. 'I think most of us would take advantage. Even me.'

"What do you say, Shizu-chan?" Izaya asked. "You think I'm stupid enough to try to ask the magic mirror who's the fairest of them all? Maybe I'd get an answer before it sucked my soul out."

"Tch." The cigarette was stubbed out on the bottom of his shoe. "I never thought you were stupid enough to wear it."

"Oh, so you think I'm enough of a bastard to make somebody else wear it."

"Yes," Shizuo answered, and paced over to the near by trash can to throw away the cigarette butt.

Izaya gave him a long stare. Then nodded. "Yeah. I kinda think so, too. Fortunately for you and the good of mankind, easy answers aren't my gig. It wouldn't be any fun if I could just know everything. The fun is finding things out, making trades, going digging. I thought about it a lot since we found out about the Mask. I might use it in an emergency, but to tell the truth I don't really want it long-term."

They were both a little startled by Izaya's honesty. "Huh." Shizuo gave this some deliberate thought. Since he couldn't come up with a legitimate argument, he kept his mouth shut.

'It doesn't matter in the end,' Celty told them. 'I'm going to get rid of it as soon as I can. Because when that kind of power is available, ones' idea of 'emergency' tends to change.' That was the problem with power.

"Fair enough," Izaya said. With a nod to Celty and then, grudgingly, one to Shizuo, he said, "Shall we go?"

Shizuo pulled out and lit another cigarette. He thought he was going to be chain smoking them until this was over. He nodded.

Celty stood. 'Thank you. Both of you.'

The walk to the subway station passed in silence. Both Izaya and Shizuo seemed to have agreed that they got along better when they kept their mouths shut. The streets were fairly quiet, but they took back alleys whenever they could, to avoid the gawking stares that the three of them as a group were sure to get. By the time they reached the entrance to the subway station, it was about fifteen minutes before the meeting of the Dollars was due to start.

'We'll have to wait and then be very careful,' Celty said. 'He'll most likely gate there, so we won't see anyone leave.'

"If he's going to gate, then they won't leave by the door," Izaya pointed out, "so it would be safe to sneak down the stairs until we can hear what's going on."

'Fair point.' She held out her hand and her scythe materialized, because there was no point in not being fully armed. Then she opened the door slowly. Izaya shrugged out of the glamour, knowing that his hearing would be better in his fae form. Then he arched his eyebrows at Shizuo, as if to ask why he couldn't do the same. He was smart enough not to ask the question out loud now that the door was open, but he did find himself curious.

"I'm fine the way I am," Shizuo said in a very low whisper. He did take a second to note the differences in Izaya. The pointed ears, the slight gain in height, and the fact that even though he seemed a little bit more slim, which should have made him seem almost fragile, he actually looked more dangerous.

Izaya smirked at him but did not reply, staying on Celty's heels as they descended the narrow staircase. Though he never would have admitted it out loud in a thousand years, he was a little nervous. The first time he had come here, it hadn't gone well for him. He wasn't looking forward to revisiting that incident.

When they neared the bottom, Celty held out a hand to stop both the men. She didn't hear as much noise as she had expected she would, so after a moment she took off the helmet and held it out for one of them to take. Shizuo grabbed it before Izaya could, which made Izaya let out a quiet little snicker.

She gave a smoky sigh and then eased down the rest of the staircase, pressed to the wall. When she reached the bottom she intended to carefully look around the corner. Sometimes there were advantages to having no head. But when she tried, she hit the wards and felt them pull at her uncomfortably. She crept back up the stairs. 'I forgot about those damned wards.'

"Let me look," Izaya said, easing past her. He didn't wait to hear any assent from the other two, but peeked around the corner quickly, then went back several stairs to where the others were standing. "Only four or five guys still there. The rest must have left already."

"What did I miss?" Shizuo asked, perplexed.

'There are wards, a magical barrier, on the door. It saps power.' She wiped the screen clean. 'Not too bad for Izaya, but not so good for you and very bad for me.'

"Well, to be fair, it's not like I want to go all the way through them," Izaya muttered. "But I figured a quick look would be okay. Since they already seem to have left, I guess we're good to go."

Celty felt a slight shiver. 'I don't know what it would do to me. I can't believe I forgot about them.'

"What would happen to me?" Shizuo asked quietly.

'You'd be about as strong and durable as a normal human. Something you haven't felt for years.'

Izaya laughed. "Now that would be a sight to see," he said, and stepped down to the bottom stair. After a few moments, he drew a symbol with one finger and then started plucking at the air, as if he were pulling strings out of a weave. "Fortunately," he said, still in an undertone, "some of us didn't forget, and some of us didn't want to get stuck here again, so some of us thought ahead."

Celty took her helmet back from Shizuo and put it back on. She didn't need the Nights knowing her head wasn't with her. She moved to stand near Izaya. 'Some of us are far too smug.' After a moment of watching him, she added, 'But I am impressed, and thank you.'

"Thank me when we see whether or not it'll work," Izaya said, though he was still paying attention to what he was doing, as well as keeping a sharp eye on the few fae that had been left behind, all of whom were involved in what looked like a dice game. "I read about it on the internet and I managed to build and take down my own, but that's a far cry from what I'm trying to do here."

Celty remained silent and Shizuo peered over the top of both of them to see whatever it was that he could see. It was only a few more moments before Izaya stuck his hand through the empty space, then grinned and gestured to the large underground room. He had his mouth open to say 'ladies first', but then a sentry walked out of one of the other tunnels and began to observe the dice game. Izaya stiffened. "That little prick is wearing my jacket."

Shizuo and Celty looked at each other and then wordlessly stepped out of Izaya's way.

"I'll be right back," Izaya said, sauntering into the subway station with both hands in his pockets.

oOoOo