A/N: Yo! Hope you all have a good day today(or night, but I do recommend getting enough sleep to face the busy day ahead of you!), I just wanna drop by to quickly apologize for the late upload, I've just recently started playing basketball again, and I was having trouble fitting it into my schedule. Still, I hope this finds you in good health and spirits and I hope you enjoy. Ajax… out!
It took a while for Kira to remove himself from the slump he'd gotten himself in. And it took a little longer than that to get up and dust himself off.
"Hai… What did I have to do again?" He frowned, but after a minute or so just playing around with his thoughts, he gave up and kicked the stray feeling to the back recesses of his mind.
Checking his wristwatch, Kira's eyes slowly began to widen to the size of saucers as he realized the depth of his errors.
9:45 AM.
'Shit! I forgot breakfast!' Faster than he could think, Kira rushed out of the room and down the stairs, silently praying to himself that if there was a god, that they'd take pity on him and leave his food alone.
And then it dawned on him.
'Fuck! I completely forgot about Kars! Shit shit shit, Dio's going to— wait he's already here?' Just as he was going to turn back around and head for the gymnasium, Kira's mental soliloquy was cut prematurely when the subjects of his considerations, Kars, appeared before him in all his mostly-naked-but-not-really glory enjoying some breakfast(swiftly approaching brunch) with Dio and Doppio.
"Oh! Hello, Kira-san! I hope you're okay now!" From the opposite side of the room, Doppio greeted him with his usual chipper tone.
He stared numbly at the boy, still mightily confused at what exactly was going on. Thankfully, Dio was there to inform him:
"I went ahead and retrieved Kars for you; Doppio said you weren't doing so well," Kira nodded and turned to give Doppio a thumbs up. He smiled in return, looking like the cat that swallowed the canary.
"In any case, sit down and eat or the food will go cold. And for your information, I will not make you another one; I hate doing muda things," He growled before taking a sip from his mug.
Kira acquiesced and sat, taking the utensils offered by Kars and began to chow down.
As he ate, however, he began to notice something strange:
"..."
"..."
It was their idle conversations, or rather, a lack thereof.
"..." Kira inwardly frowned, he could've sworn they'd be making a fuss over his failure to fetch Kars. Yes that's right, he remembered it so clearly now; Doppio would be unceasing in his worry, flamboyantly hovering over him overprotectively. Kars and Dio, on the other hand, were far more discreet in their care, seemingly chatting with one another, but not once did they fail to keep an eye on his condition. Not once did they take their hawkish attention off of him, as if he would collapse if they so much as fathomed the idea.
And yet, there was nothing of the sort to greet him as he sat.
'Could I have… remembered wrong?' No, no that couldn't be! It played out so acutely in his head, so distinctly crystalline it felt more and more like someone had forced him to bear witness to the exact same scene for years on end, so much so that he wanted to puke even at the mere thought of it...
But the straw that broke the camel's back; the final, most damning piece of evidence that proved to him without a shadow of a doubt that something was truly fucked up here… was the food.
'What in the world is this?!' He gagged, glaring at the red strip of bacon that lay innocently on his plate with pure, unadulterated disgust, 'They're too goddamn salty!'
He spat out the piece of bacon in his mouth before gurgling the water that had been on the table. All the while, Kira glared at Dio.
'Did he do this to fuck with me?!' He hypothesized, but shook it away soon after, 'No, he isn't the type of person to do that; he would've known my reaction, and he hates wasting food. And he knows that I don't like my bacon too salty... so what would—'
Kira stilled himself then, as the scattered puzzle pieces in his brain abruptly clicked together, and its full picture was revealed to him, he finally realized why everything here felt so wrong:
'This… This!' Kira jerked and shook, his entire being filled with so much rage, fury— bloodlust that unintentionally, his inner thoughts began spilling out of his mouth, "This was a goddamn illusion the whole time!"
He rose with a ferocity, kicking and thrashing at whatever was in front of him at the time: tables, chairs, hell, even the illusions of his friends weren't safe. Anything he could move, he would snap and break, and anything he couldn't, Killer Queen would get the job done for him.
"RAAAAGH! How fucking dare you?! How fucking dare you trap me in HERE?!" By the end of it, the whole house was trashed. There was nothing left but the scant vestiges of a place once inhabited…
Standing laboriously amid the rubble of his own creation, Kira breathed long and hard, his vision still so clouded by wrath and the intent to destroy, he didn't even know there was nothing left to destroy until fatigue forced him to calm down.
"Huff… Huff..." Suddenly, as if all his exhaustion was coupled into one giant punch in the gut, Kira felt himself go weak at the knees.
-Thud!-
He crashed into the ground face-first, landing on the remains of his couch cushion with a hard thump.
"How… How had it come to this?" He thought it would help him feel better, destroying the illusion. Thought it would soothe his anger and sorrow and anxieties.
But he felt nothing.
Again, Kira whispered woefully to himself in his daze, "H...How?"
"..." But just as before, there was only silence.
The echoing, deafening, enraging silence...
Kira awoke from his slumber screaming in pain, his every side was beset with constant waves of agony, like he was being stabbed by an infinite number of atom-sized needles, each piercing through all the atoms that made up the entirety of his body.
He didn't know it at first, but as the hellish feeling of torment started to subside, and he began to get used to the now dull twinges of discomfort in his body, Kira realized he was laying on a hospital bed.
"Where… is this?" He slowly got up, wincing every time he put pressure on the places that hurt. And considering the fact that everywhere hurts, it would've been a shock if no one had heard him in the two minutes it took to successfully get up, and the constant groans that escaped his throat all the while.
Either way, after he stabilised himself, he could finally begin to fully take in the place where he was housed. Turning his head side-to-side(not too unlike a rigid security camera), his initial suspicions about the building being a hospital only strengthened as he breathed in the distinct smell of gauze and alcohol.
And then there were the walls, pure white, he noticed; from the bed to the curtains— even the lilies sitting placidly on his bedside table were a calming shade of pastel-white meant to help soothe any nerves patients may have.
"I see you're awake, we were just starting to get worried," Kira's skeleton jumped out of his skin at the sudden intrusion of his thoughts. Wait… he knew who that was!
"D-Dio?" He wanted to see his friend's face and instantly made to turn around, but before he could, a stinging pain around his nape acted up, forcing him to freeze up in place, lest it started hurting even more severely.
"You're injured," Dio gently admonished from behind, moving from his place at the door to Kira's bed.
"I know..." When Kira's bruise(?) started to dull, he attempted to shift his head again, careful not to agitate anything this time.
By the time he completed this endeavour, Dio was already seated next to him, a wry smirk on his face as he watched Kira struggle to perform even the most basic functions.
"Tch, wipe that stupid grin off your face," Kira, though, didn't take it too well.
Dio complied, if only because he had to inform Kira of something far more pressing. He cleared his throat, and Kira instantly knew something was up.
"Speak,"
"We've found our target," Dio started, but he knew that wasn't everything. So he waited patiently for Dio to gather his thoughts.
"Only, his situation is more complex than we initially predicted,"
"How so?" All of the sudden, Kira felt an uneasy feeling well up in the pits of his stomach.
Dio got up before signalling for him to follow. He did, "Well, it's better if I show you, yes?" He finally said after they reached the door.
Opening it, Kira was met with something he never expected:
"Hoh? So this is the guy that can supposedly explode anything eh? He doesn't look that tough Dio-san; my evil-eye can probably do him in easily!" It was their 'target' alright, but he looked nothing like the tacky orange-jumpsuit-wearing boy he saw on the mission screen. In place of his ordinary clothes, he had on a loose t-shirt that read "Yama is scared of me," and a pair of tight-fitting ripped jeans. As if to add insult to injury, his bright blonde hair was entirely switched over to a dark purple, and garish makeup lined his eyes and lips. All in all, it was a sight to behold.
Too bad Kira wasn't able to appreciate it.
"W-What the shit?! Why the hell is our naive innocent kid suddenly an edgelord?!"
"Shut up old man! Or else I'll have to kill you with my cursed fox-eye!"
Oh my god, what did I get myself into?