Ch.1: Birth Of The Cool Part 1

'An ambush?!.'

'Didn't expect to find some kid was behind all this.'

'You were sold out.'

'There are no laws here that will protect scum like you!'

'…I don't care if you end up losing a leg.'

'You'll be answering my questions this time.'

'When and where did you find out about that world? How is it even possible to steal another's heart?'

'…Start from the very beginning.'

Bruno Buccellati jolted awake, his eyes darting around his surroundings, looking for any sign of danger in a panicked daze. Until it finally registered that he, in fact, was not in any danger whatsoever and was just seated in a crowded train cabin headed to Shibuya. One whose passengers were starting to give the teen worried looks at unexpected outburst.

Letting out a groan Bruno covered his eyes trying both to shield them from the sun that'd begun streaming in through the windows, while also attempting to rub the remaining sleep from them.

He was no stranger to nightmares throughout his time in Japan, but ever since his night in jail they'd unfortunately been getting more and more common. Most were amalgamations of the events leading to his arrest, and the murders he'd committed to save his father's life. Merging and blending the two worst nights of his life, into one.

But this one, he couldn't even remember what'd really happened in it. All he could recall were the feelings of pain, fear, and despair dancing all along his body that still lingered even in the waking world. Along with the strange, muffled voices that made him feel as if he were trying to have a conversation underwater, and what few words he could make out were already beginning to fade from his memory.

Needless to say, he hadn't exactly gotten a good night's rest. And if this became a regular staple on his list of recurring nightmares, he didn't think he'd be getting any for a long, long time.

Trying to take his mind off the unpleasant dream, he focused his gaze on the towering skyscrapers of Tokyo that sped by right outside the train's windows, along with the more distant buildings that crawled across the horizon. He'd seen the city before in pictures and movies of course, but actually being here? Seeing them tower over him, up close with his own two eyes? The feeling it'd given him was a hard to describe mix of awe-inspiring, and more than a little intimidating.

'So, this is Tokyo huh?'

He spent the next few minutes just staring out the window and watching the city go by, along with occasionally listening in on the snippets of conversation he could pick up from his fellow passengers. The strangest of which must've been when he heard two girls around his age say something about a mental shutdown. Bruno mostly just wrote it off as probably just some online hoax, but he'd be lying if he said it hadn't at least sounded interesting.

"Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for riding with us today. We will be arriving in Shibuya shortly…"

Sadly, as the train neared his destination Bruno was pulled from his somewhat relaxing distractions, and back to his obligations.

He grabbed his bag and stood up, gripping the railing as the train came to a gradual halt, and once the door opened stepped out into the heart of Shibuya.

After exiting the station and following the directions on his phone that'd lead him to the place he'd be staying for the next year for a couple minutes, Bruno encountered another common sight of the city that'd take some getting used to: crowds. Massive ones

After spending nearly all his life so far in small towns, seeing the sheer mass of what must've been hundreds of people all gathered at the crosswalk was enough to elicit the same mix of awe and anxiety in the Italian teen that the skyscrapers had.

Shaking off his reservations, Bruno decided to try and ignore the crowd for now and simply focus on his phone while wading through the veritable sea of people. Trying his best to follow the directions on his maps app, until what looked like a strange red and black pop up add with a star pupiled eye in it's center obscured most of his screen.

Bruno raised an eyebrow. 'Strange, I don't remember downloading anything like this… Don't tell me it's some sort of virus.' After a few seconds of tapping on his phone, fruitlessly trying to close the strange app, Bruno narrowed his eyes. Focused on trying to find a way to get rid of this damn thing before it bricked his phone or something. He started to feel the world go silent around him as he stared intently, a little too silent now that he thought about it…

Looking up and away from his phone, he saw that the entire crosswalk around him had frozen in place. People, cars, even the air itself felt completely still. He seemed to be the only exception, alone in this world of stopped time. He gripped onto the shoulder of the nearest person and was about to try and snap them out of it somehow, but before he could even wonder how he would do that his eyes spotted something in the center of the intersection that made him stop dead in his tracks.

A human looking silhouette made of swirling blue fire hovered a few feet off the ground and stared directly at him. The upper half of the figure's face was covered by what looked to be a helmet with a column of short spikes running down its center, while its forearms seemed to be covered with a pair of padded gauntlets.

They stared at each other for what felt like minutes before the fire that made up the figure's head shifted and swirled, rearranging itself until it was his own face staring back at him, the only difference between them being it's golden eyes that stared into his own with an intense, almost defiant look on its face.

Before Bruno could even wonder what the hell was even happening, he blinked and the silhouette vanished. The rest of the intersection also sprang into motion, the entire world continuing on as if nothing had even happened. Bruno was left standing there, gaping at nothing like an idiot while the world moved on around him.

'Was that all just a hallucination?' He thought to himself. 'It had to have been, right? There's no goddamn way any of that was real.'

Bruno shakily brought his smartphone back up, trying in vain to move on and pretend like nothing had happened, before he spotted the same red and black app from earlier still right in the center of his screen. His eyes narrowed at the icon as a thought formed at the back of his mind. 'This all started right after this thing just popped up onto my screen, could this have caused it all somehow…'

His mind entertained the thought for a second before smacking it right back down. 'Goddammit Bruno listen to yourself!' He mentally chided, 'A hallucinatory app? You're starting to sound like those gossips on the train talking about mental shutdowns.' Shaking off those ridiculous thoughts, Bruno was finally able to drag the app into the recycle bin and delete it for good.

As he continued down the crosswalk, Bruno let out a sigh. 'First that strange nightmare, now this? Honestly, forget surviving the year. At this rate it'll be a miracle if I can make it to the end of the week without being thrown into a padded cell.'

Sojiro Sakura sat at the bar of Leblanc, his small coffee shop tucked away in the back alleys of Yongen-Jaya, staring down in deep concentration at the crossword section on his newspaper. Today, like most days, the café hadn't been to terribly busy. Hell, he'd only had four customers so far and two of them were still in their booth, watching intently at whatever crappy news station he'd thrown on the TV as background noise. But he didn't mind.

He liked the peace and quiet not being busy afforded him, and he still had enough regulars trickling in throughout the weeks to keep him in business. Really his biggest problem at the moment, was the damn word for eleven down that was still eluding him.

'Our top story for tonight: A public transit bus was driven down an opposing lane with its customers still inside! How can our citizens possibly live in peace if this keeps up?'

The news anchor's fuzzy voice drifted out of the boxy old tv, and while Sojiro might not have been paying attention to it, his elderly customers seemed deeply disturbed by it.

"How awful…" The woman said. Her husband rubbed inquisitively at the slight stubble on his chin. "Didn't something similar happen just the other day?" His wife let out a somber and disappointed sigh. "I swear, there's something wrong with this city. It feels like things are getting worse by the day."

Sojiro caught snippets of his older regulars' conversation but was too engrossed in his puzzle and honestly didn't really care enough to bother hearing most of it. Neither did he hear the sound of Leblanc's door creaking open, nor the footsteps of someone from the outside coming in.

"The name of a shellfish used for farming pearls…" he mumbled, wondering aloud. 'Clams?' He asked inwardly. 'No, that's not long enough... Mollusks? Can't be that either, doesn't fit the other words…'

"I think the word you're looking for is, Oyster."

Sojiro raised an eyebrow at the suggestion, thinking about it for a second before plugging it in.

'Well I'll be damned, it fits…' He thought to himself, feeling satisfied at having solved yet another section, before realizing that the voice he'd heard hadn't come from the either of the elderly couple. He looked up from the paper and saw a young man standing before him.

The man had tanned skin, blue eyes, a chin length bob cut, and was dressed in what looked to be a standard Shujin Academy uniform. He also had what looked to be an old duffle bag strung across his left shoulder.

Sojiro stared at him for a second, wondering why he looked so familiar, before the realization came to him. 'Oh, right.' He thought unenthusiastically.

"The nineth already, eh?" he said as he closed his paper and began to get up. As he did so, his two remaining customers mimicked him. Getting out of their booths and leaving the money for their drink on the table.

"Thanks for coming." Sojiro said, ignoring the Italian teen for the moment.

"At least this place is safe, there's no way a car would be able to crash all the way into the back alleys." The older man said, trying to comfort his wife.

Sojiro's eyes narrowed in confusion. "A what now?" The old woman shook her head in dismay. "There's been a string of rampaging car accidents happening all around the city, I just hope that nothing like that happens around here…"

Sojiro just shrugged his shoulders, not seeming too worried about the news. "Well, that's none of my concern."

After saying their goodbyes and telling him to stay safe, the old couple finally took their leave and Sojiro let out a sigh. "They were nursing that one cup of joe for almost four hours now." Finally turning his attention to Bruno, Sojiro pushed up his glasses and gave the teen an unimpressed look.

"So, you must be Bruno eh?" The younger man gave a weak nod before replying. "And you must be Sakura-San, correct?" Sojiro raised an eyebrow. Now that he'd gotten a decent look at him, he had to say he was not what he expected some kid with an assault charge against him to look like. He'd been expecting some kind of pompadoured delinquent with a bad attitude and maybe even some mock yakuza style tattoos for good measure.

But the boy before him seemed fairly polite and well put together, minus some eccentricities maybe, (What the hell was up with that hair?) But even with that in mind, Sojiro would still make sure to keep his eye on the kid. After all, looks could be deceiving…

"Correct. I'm Sojiro Sakura, you'll be under my custody for the next year." Sojiro let out a huff, "I was wondering what kind of unruly kid would show up, but you're the one, huh?"

Sojiro thought he saw a twinge in the younger man's eyes at the word 'unruly', but he couldn't quite tell what it was. It didn't look like anger or fear, it almost looked like… shame? He brushed it off as Bruno asked him a question.

"So, how exactly did you come to be my guardian? No offense, but you don't really seem enthusiastic enough to have volunteered."

The older man gave a small glare at that last comment, but decided to just let it go for now, as he couldn't exactly tell the teen he was wrong. "They didn't tell you, eh? Well, one of my regulars used to work with your dad back in… what was it, Morioh? And he asked me to house you as a favor."

Sojiro shook his head. "Anyway, that's the gist of it." He turned and started heading to the back of the café. "Come on, follow me."

After heading up a small flight of stairs at the back of Leblanc, Sojiro pulled open the door to the room he'd be staying in for the next year, and immediately started coughing and swatting at the air in front of him as a cloud of dust came rushing out to meet them.

'That's… not a good sign.' Bruno thought to himself, and indeed after stepping into the room it was about as messy and disheveled as you could expect.

"So…" Sojiro began, still letting out small coughs here and there as he got the dust out of his system. "…This is your room." He looked it over and winced a bit at the bare, stiff looking mattress in the corner.

"I'll at least give you sheets for your bed." He turned and saw apprehension on Bruno's face. "Got something to say?"

He gave the room another look over before speaking "It's… a bit cluttered isn't it?" Sojiro chuckled before responding "Yeah, well it was even worse before I spruced it up last week. It's on you to clean the rest up. Got it?"

Bruno raised an eyebrow, trying to picture this place in even worse condition than it was, before giving a quiet "Yes."

"Good, now I'll be leaving after I lock up each day." He pointed at the teen before continuing "You'll be alone at night but don't do anything stupid. I find out you snuck out and caused someone trouble your ass is on the curb within the hour."

After a nod of confirmation from Bruno, Sojiro put his hands in his pockets. "Now, I got the gist of your situation. You protected some woman from a man forcing himself on her, he got injured, then sued you. Am I right?"

Bruno gave a nod of confirmation, wondering where he was going with this. "Now I'm sure you had your heart in the right place, but there's a difference between doing the right thing, and doing the smart thing. And kid, what you did was really fucking stupid."

Bruno shot his guardian a harsh glare. "And what was I supposed to do? Just sit there and watch someone get sexually assaulted, or worse?"

Sojiro returned his glare and shot back, "No, what you should've done is go find a police officer and let them handle it instead of charging in there and ruffing the guy up. Now you have a mark on your permanent record, and I have to babysit you for the next year all because you wanted to play vigilante."

Bruno's glare softened. He wanted to say something, to defend his actions and say that he did the right thing, but he couldn't. Not after all the grief that night had caused him and his father...

A defeated look crept onto the teen's face as Sojiro continued. "This is your last chance kid, you start causing any more problems and you'll be sent straight to juvie, got it?" Bruno gave a weak nod, and Sojiro noticed the shame and defeat that'd started forming in the kid's eyes.

The older man huffed and moved to leave the room, turning back to Bruno as he opened the door. "Make sure you clean up and get some rest, we'll be going to Shujin Academy tomorrow morning, and I don't want you dozing off while you introduce yourself to the staff."

He didn't even wait for Bruno to respond as he closed the door behind him, and made his way back down into the empty café.

Once at the bar top, his mind went back to the look he'd seen on Bruno's face 'He looks like he's taking this whole thing pretty hard, was I too harsh on him?' Sojiro thought. He shook his head. 'No way, it's not my fault the little brat can't handle the consequences of his own actions. Besides, just because I'm housing him doesn't mean I need to be nice to him. Long as he has a roof over his head, he's in no place to complain.'

Still, at the back of his mind, there was still a small voice saying that he should've been at least a little bit nicer to the kid. Sojiro sighed and ran his hand through his receding hair.

This was going to be a long year…

Bruno collapsed onto his, thankfully now clean, bed. He was exhausted, as he'd been doing almost nothing since his conversation with Sojiro but clean. And while he still wasn't quite finished, the attic was now at least livable and didn't look like it'd been abandoned for the past decade and a half. He'd even impressed Sojiro with its (relative) cleanliness when he came up to check on him before closing the store.

But now that it was nearing ten at night, all Bruno wanted to do was sleep. He'd changed into a set of pajamas, which consisted of a black long sleeve shirt and dark blue sweatpants, and laid his head onto his pillow, staring up at the now cobweb free ceiling. As he started drifting off, his mind began to wander. 'The strange nightmare on the train, the hallucination at the crosswalk, that suspicious app. It's hard to believe it all happened in one day, and that's on top of all this probation business.'

He yawned, and was about to let himself drift into a (hopefully) peaceful rest, hoping tomorrow wouldn't be so eventful, when…

*BZZT-BZZT*

He was snapped out of it by his phone buzzing in his pocket. He groggily dug his phone out to see what'd caused the notification, and the sight that greeted him jolted him wide awake.

There, sitting in a row like any other app, was the strange red and black icon that he'd seen before his hallucination. It's dark red eye staring into his own.

'This can't be right, I deleted this thing hours ago… Didn't I?'

He quickly wrote it off as not having been properly deleted last time, despite his own memory saying otherwise, and deleted it as fast as he could. Not wanting to stare into the sinister looking eye any longer than he had to.

After triple checking that it was gone for good this time, Bruno put his phone away and once again let sleep take him, without any interruptions this time.

He was stirred awake by the sound of his chains jangling. For a second, he simply turned in his bed and ignored it. Trying his best to fall back asleep, before his mind noticed something was off.

'Chains?'

With this realization his eyes flew open and took in his worrying new surroundings. His hands were bound together with black chains, and his pajamas had been replaced with a worn and scratchy black and white prison uniform. While the attic he'd fallen asleep in had been replaced with a small, dark purple colored padded cell. With the only other things of note in the room being the uncomfortable cot he was laying on and a basic toilet in the corner. He sat up on the bed and began fiddling with his chains, seeing if he could somehow squeeze out of them or find some way to break free, when he heard chuckling come from outside his cell.

He got to his feet, nearly tripping when he realized his feet were shackled as well, and made his way over to the bars. As he did so, two small girls dressed in what looked to be prison-guard uniforms stepped into his view from opposite sides. The one on the right, with an eyepatch over her left eye and her hair in buns on the side of her head, looked at him with what looked to be a mix of anger and haughtiness. While the girl to his left, with an eyepatch that covered her right eye and her hair in what he guessed was a braided ponytail, almost looked like a robotic husk with no emotion to be found.

He staggered forward and grabbed at the bars of his cell, his progress impeded by the literal ball and chain weighing him down, as he shouted at the girls. "Oi, who the hell are you two?! Where have you taken me?!"

The two little girls didn't respond to him, only parting to reveal an old thin man with an impossibly long nose and pointed ears sitting at a desk in the center of what Bruno now realized was a prison. His balding, grey hair flowed down onto his shoulders, and his bulging red eyes stared directly into his own.

"Welcome, Buccellati…" The man said to him, in a voice much deeper than Bruno would've expected. "…To my Velvet Room."

Bruno just stared for a second, made speechless by the strange man before him, before the girl to his right spoke up. "So, looks like you finally come to, inmate."

Her expression changed to a snarl as she grabbed her baton. "HEY! No grabbing the bars!" She yelled as she whacked Bruno's exposed fingers. This snapped him from his daze as he pulled his hands back with a yelp, nursing his hit hand only for the pain to never arrive.

"Your physical form is currently fast asleep, what you are currently experiencing is a dream. And thus, you are unable to feel physical pain…" The emotionless girl on the left informed him before he could voice his confusion, giving her fellow guard a sideways look. "…Much to my colleague's disappointment."

The angry one mumbled something under her breath, before pointing forcefully at Bruno. "Stop slouching! You're in the presence of our master, so show some respect!"

Said 'Master' let out a rumbling chuckle, before speaking up again in a deep voice. "Welcome. I am delighted to make your acquaintance."

He gestured to the room around him before continuing, "As my assistant informed you, this place exists between dream and reality, mind and matter."

He put his arms back onto his desk and folded his hands. "But not just anyone can come and go as they please, only those who are bound by a "contract" are permitted to enter."

He let out another chuckle that Bruno was sure was supposed to be friendly, but only unsettled him further. "Ah, but where are my manners? I am Igor, the master and warden of this place. Remember it well."

He pointed a thin spindly finger towards Bruno. "I have summoned you here to speak of important matters, matters that involve your life as well as the lives of many others."

Bruno was still somewhat in a state of shock at all the information he'd received but shook it off as best as he could as he finally responded to the man. "Alright, so you wanted to see me, but why a cell? Why imprison me and chain me to the floor?" Bruno said, getting more and more frustrated as he went on.

The man now known as Igor took a second to respond, looking around the purple panopticon he was at the center of before giving an answer.

"This room's appearance reflects the state of the summoned's own heart, I was just as surprised as you were when it took this form."

He let out another chuckle before continuing "Still, I suppose it is fitting. You truly are a prisoner, aren't you? Your heart a 'Sleeping Slave' to fate."

He solemnly shook his head, "There is no mistake that ruin awaits you."

Bruno felt his frustrations mount as he grabbed hold of the bars once more, batons be damned! "Ruin? What do you mean "Ruin" haven't I already suffered enough goddammed ruin!"

Igor let out another deeply unsettling chuckle "Now, now. Don't worry too much, there is a means to oppose such a fate. You must be "rehabilitated." Rehabilitated towards freedom…"

He interlocked his fingers and stared Bruno dead in the eyes. "That is your only means to avoid this ruin, and to awaken the Sleeping Slave once more."

Igor's gaze intensified as he asked his next and probably most important question. "Do you have the resolve to challenge the distortion of the world?"

Bruno went silent, his mind thinking through his next response. He was still trying to figure out if any of this was even real or not, and he wasn't even sure what the hell Igor had even asked him to do, but in his gut, he knew what he needed to say.

Bruno steeled himself as he gave his answer. "Yes… I suppose I don't really have any other options, do I?"

Igor's mouth twisted into a wide toothy grin "Excellent, then allow me to observe the path of your rehabilitation."

The two guards formed back up in front of his cell and Igor cleared his throat before continuing. "Ah, pardon me for not introducing my assistants. To your right is Caroline, to your left, Justine. They shall serve as wardens here."

The girl now known to him as Caroline scowled at him… "Hmph, make any trouble and you'll pay inmate! Just because you can't feel pain doesn't mean we don't have other ways of punishing you."

…While Justine seemed just as robotic as ever. "The duty of wardens is to protect inmates. We are also your collaborators…"

Though her voice and gaze did take a harder edge as she continued. "…That is, if you remain obedient."

Igor's voice rang out through the prison once more "I shall give you a proper explanation as to their roles at a later date." He checked his wrist for a watch that Bruno swore hadn't been there before, afterwards Igor completed his train of thought. "It seems the night is waning… It is almost time."

The strange looking man gave him a slow wave goodbye as the sound of an alarm bell rung out through the prison. "We will surely meet again, in due time…"

Bruno felt his eyes rapidly grow heavier and his knees start to give out as he collapsed, the floor raising to meet him, only hearing Igor's faraway sounding voice one more time.

"Until next time Buccellati, goodbye."

AN: Alright, that's the first non-prologue chapter done. Originally this chapter was going to end once Bruno got to the entrance of Kamoshida's castle, but as I kept writing I figured that would be a bit long for a first chapter and decided that here was a good stopping point. On the bright side, that means I have enough done of the next chapter that it should probably be done in time for the second anniversary of this story on the 16th next month, so look forward to that I guess.

Anyway, this chapter's name is a reference to the Miles Davis album of the same name. Who, fun fact, is canonically Bruno's favorite musician so I felt it was fitting for our first arc with him. I also found the name to be pretty solid narrative wise, as this is the birth of this iteration of the phantom thieves.

Anyway, till next time: make sure to drop a review or a fav if you liked it, and I will (hopefully) see you all next time on the 16th.