The air was fresh with the smell of the soft grass beneath their shoes as the two made their way through the underbrush. Birds sang morning melodies above their head and the sun sparkled down from up above, illuminating the woods in a gentle glow.

It would have been beautiful if not for the circumstances that had placed them there. So instead of enjoying the nature around him, Chuuya was absolutely pissed.

They'd been walking for what felt like hours and despite his fast-paced healing, Chuuya was beginning to feel exhaustion set in, after everything that he'd put his body through. Not that he'd tell Dazai that. That piece of shit would probably just use his suffering as another way to make fun of him. The situation was already bad, so giving Dazai more ammunition for his stupid jokes was pretty much the last thing that Chuuya wanted to do right now.

Regardless, they surely had to come across a village or at least something at some point. Yet, as the three hours bled into five which bled into eight, Chuuya was beginning to give up hope. Next to that, it's not like they could stop to take too many breaks with the relentless patrols that they were just barely managing to keep off their tail.

He wished he could just close his eyes and magically end up back in his bed in Yokohama.

"If I don't see any signs of civilization within the next hour, I might have to take you up on a double-suicide."

As Chuuya expected, Dazai didn't miss a beat, his nose crinkling in disgust.

"A double suicide with you? Yeah… no thanks. Hard pass. I'd rather go back to Mersault."

"Fuck you too, Dazai."

A few more hours went by and Chuuya was only growing more and more irritated by their current circumstances. Even worse than that, he had no idea how this whole situation had even started on his end.

He cast his mind back, again trying to remember what had happened. Yet all he could remember was being on a mission for Mori before his mind felt void where there should be memories. He couldn't even remember what the mission had been for or whether or not anyone else had been with him. Something had happened on that mission though. Something that had gotten him involved with Bram Stoker that had left him under a vampiric state up until Mersault, where he'd awoken only to almost immediately succumb to drowning and corruption.

After everything with the lab, the thought of more missing memories and what that could imply terrified him.

So lost in his thoughts, Chuuya almost didn't notice when Dazai stopped in his tracks in front of him. His whole body was tense and he was staring into the distance as if he saw something.

"Dazai? What is it?"

Chuuya barely had time to react, as Dazai spun around and shoved them both behind a tree. Bullets pelted the ground, where they'd been standing only seconds prior.

"Shit," Chuuya hissed, as a couple of his still-healing wounds were jostled by the impact.

"There's a sniper twenty meters ahead of us." Dazai eyed him worriedly, surely wondering if he'd be able to keep up with everything his body had been through, but all this did was manage to somehow irritate Chuuya further.

"Stop looking at me like that. I'm not a piece of fucking glass!"

Chuuya pushed past Dazai, making sure to slam his shoulder into his side as he passed him. Now, knowing what he was relatively up against, Chuuya stepped out from behind the tree.

"Hey, asshole! What are you waiting for? Light me up!"

After everything that had happened, Chuuya needed an outlet for his frustrations with the world. So, this poor sniper would just have to pay the price.

Chuuya expected the sniper to light him up immediately, as was suggested, but then logic suddenly flooded his mind, as he realized they probably knew his ability. If they did, then they weren't going to shoot. Which meant…

A cry of pain sounded behind him.

"Dazai!"

He raced back behind the tree to see a young woman plunging a syringe into Dazai's neck. He then proceeded to watch in horror, as Dazai's eyes rolled to the back of his head and he slumped to the forest floor. The faint rise and fall of Dazai's chest was the only thing reassuring him that he was still alive.

Energy crackled at his fingertips. If he was irritated before, he was enraged now. Arahabaki whispered words of destruction and chaos in his ears.

"What did you do."

The woman scoffed, casting the syringe to the side. "It's only a paralytic, nothing to get so worked up about."

Why wasn't she afraid of him? She should be afraid of him.

Chuuya dashed forward, twisting his body into one of his signature high kicks. However, as soon as his shoe collided with her face, sending her flying to the ground, something felt off. He just couldn't quite figure out what it was however until suddenly, he realized that Arahabaki was usually quiet.

Nullification?

She was just like Dazai.

The thing was though that she wasn't touching him anymore, so theoretically, he should be able to use his ability again. Testing the theory while the woman was still grounded, Chuuya attempted to make himself hover over the ground. A simple trick. Something he should be able to do.

It wasn't working. Why wasn't it working?

"Surprised?" She picked herself up off the ground, rolling her shoulders and spitting some stray blood out to the forest floor. "I thought you might be. Jean and I actually made a bet about whether or not you would be."

Jean?

Who the fuck was Jean?

Suddenly, Chuuya's eyes flooded with clarity as he remembered the sniper. It was a moment too late, however, as he felt the butt of the sniper's gun collide with the back of his head. Chuuya slumped to the forest floor, joining Dazai in unconsciousness.
_

Dazai awoke to the blinding glare of bright white lights in a completely sterile room. Distantly he recalled having been attacked by some woman with a syringe, before losing consciousness. It had been a while since he'd had someone catch him off guard like that and the thought that she had done so, especially so effectively, unnerved him. He looked down to find himself tied to a chair, his bindings connected to someone behind him. That someone was Chuuya.

They were back in Mersault. Dread flooded the bottom of his stomach.

"Chuuya," Dazai hissed, "Chuuya, wake up."

If he could just get Chuuya to wake up, then they could use Chuuya's ability to get out of here, while Dazai disabled any technology that got in their way. It was a quick plan, built upon fast thinking and recklessness, but it was the only one that Dazai could come up with that could get them out of here now on short notice. Dazai knew what this place was like having been stuck here with Fyodor for so long. He didn't want Chuuya to have to experience the things that he had gone through. The thought of having to witness that made him want to throw up.

Even worse, Dazai knew what room they were currently in.

This was a torture chamber.

A groan sounded from behind him, as Chuuya slowly regained consciousness.

"Dazai, what happened? Where the hell are we?"

"Mersault." All the humor had left Dazai's voice and what remained was something more neutral, detached. "Chuuya, can you use your ability to get us out of here?"

A few beats of silence passed and Dazai could hear Chuuya's breathing pick up, which definitely was not a good sign.

"Dazai, I don't know what she did, but ever since we ran into that bitch in the woods, I haven't been able to use my ability. I mean, she's not even touching me! I don't know what the fuck is going on."

Well, that kind of threw a wrench in his plans.

The door to the room opened with a bang, effectively ending their conversation, as the same woman from earlier entered, with a stoic man in tow. From the way he held himself and his demeanor, Dazai quickly gauged that he was probably the sniper from the woods. From the familiarity the two seemed to share, Dazai also assumed that they were most likely partners, as well.

"Chuuya Nakahara, Osamu Dazai," The woman greeted, as she lifted a briefcase onto a singular table in the corner of the room. Her partner stood near the door, a pistol now being held in his steady grip, probably there for insurance in case anything went wrong.

"You speak good Japanese for being French," Dazai attempted small talk, as he tried to buy himself time to think about what they should do next, being trapped in a less than optimal situation with the loss of Chuuya's ability, "you've ever been to Japan?"

She laughed, as she carefully picked through some of her tools, until finally coming away with a simple rag. Odd, Dazai expected her to go for a knife, gun, or even a whip... not a rag. What exactly was she planning?

"I guess you could say that."

A spy then.

"Jean," the woman called out, before saying something in french that Dazai couldn't quite make out. It was the one language that he'd just never seemed to be able to get. However, where he failed in french, he'd reluctantly admit that Chuuya excelled. So, he could only hope that Chuuya would be paying attention to what they said so that he could ask him later.

Dazai was flung from his thoughts, as Jean left his place near the door and made his way over to him instead, pressing a gun to his head.

"You know what? I thought that my first stay at Mersault was bad, but this sucks. When I get out of here, I'm finding your yelp page and rating this establishment a zero out of ten!"

"The lowest you can do is one out of five, dumbass" Dazai heard Chuuya grumble out from behind him.

"Okay, fine. I'll rate you one out of five, but only because I can't rate you zero out of ten. That's how bad I rate your service. Now, what's us being in a torture chamber all about? What do you want to know? I mean there's a lot to choose from! I'm just trying to narrow it down."

The woman didn't answer, nor did she pay attention to Dazai's antics, instead she just approached Chuuya untying his bindings and promising him that if he made any wrong move that she'd have her partner splatter Dazai's brains all across the floor.

Dazai watched, as the two entered his line of vision, Chuuya now having left the chair, his bindings cast aside. The woman led him over to a stiff medical-looking bed, making him lay down flat on top of it, once again under the threat of Dazai's demise. She fastened straps to his wrists, arms, ankles, legs, chest, and neck, which more than promised to hold him down and prevent him from escaping, especially with the loss of his ability. A situation that Dazai was still trying to figure out. He knew that the woman had to have some kind of a nullification ability, but the extent to which it worked left him puzzled since she didn't have to maintain contact with Chuuya for it to work.

The woman increased the incline of the chair so Chuuya was leaning back at about an angle of twenty degrees. Then proceeded to drape the rag she'd grabbed from the briefcase over Chuuya's face and produce what looked like a hose from a small chest next to the chair, before attaching it to the spout of a nearby sink.

As kids, both he and Chuuya had been trained on how to withstand torture in the mafia, but as Dazai began to realize exactly which torture method the woman was going for, his heart sank.

"You're going to tell me exactly how you both escaped Mersault or I won't let up waterboarding Chuuya until he goes into asphyxia."