Jadoku thought his heart was going to jack-hammer its way out of his chest, and was infinitely glad for his ability to see heat signatures in the dark. He had come far too close to becoming a 'human' pincushion, and though he was loath to do so, he was seriously considering summoning scales to coat his torso 24/7. If he hadn't been able to move as quickly as he had (inhumanely fast, Himitsu called it), even being able to see his attacker (would-be killer) wouldn't have been enough.

He did feel a twinge of regret as he watched the form on the ground fade from the fluorescent orange light to darkness; it still wasn't light enough outside to see normally. Spitting the mixed blood out of his mouth, Jadoku switched the light on from his phone and inspected the body, fearing it was someone he had known. He didn't even recognize this man, well... corpse, so either he had been from out of town or was new on the streets.

That would also explain why he'd thought it would be a good idea to try to... what had he been trying to do, exactly?

Slipping his phone in his pocket, Jadoku pushed his red bangs back off of his face as he walked past the body and towards the safe house he had been travelling to when he had been... interrupted. He tried to sort through his thoughts and figure out what exactly had just happened.

There had been no shouting, no demands, no drunken stumbling... if anything, it just seemed like he had wanted to kill him outright.

Jadoku shuddered, and not from the early morning air. That was a bit... jarring. The parallel slices on his tongue throbbed in time with his heartbeat, and he strongly opposed the idea of swallowing, letting the blood accumulate in his mouth until it was enough to spit out again. The thought of swallowing any amount of someone else's blood made him want to throw up.

His hair-trigger fangs were coming in handy more and more often. The blood they drew from his tongue could be easily injected into a potential opponent by biting, though he tried to avoid it if at all possible. He just didn't always have time to reach for the laced knives, and sometimes his hands weren't free when he needed them to be.

Jadoku rolled his shoulders, feeling the pull of the scales that had covered his upper back when the man had shoved him against the wall. He'd had a fraction of a second to process what was happening and strike before the knife could come down on him. The sound of pierced flesh reverberated in his mind, and he felt bile at the back of his throat as he shuddered again.

...better him than me, though.

Glancing up, he noticed that he had reached his destination, and he pulled a small silver key on a chain from around his neck and unlocked the front door. This was one of the nicer safe houses on the mainland, with actual bedrooms and a stocked kitchen. 'Perks of being a badass,' as Himitsu'd called it.

It was separate from the island, allowing for a bit more freedom of movement, and it would spare him any curious stares that lingered, regardless of the months he'd spent there. A very limited number of people had the specially magnetized keys, so it was one of the better places to crash if you were injured or too tired to sleep lightly enough to defend yourself from another at a moment's notice.

Jadoku smirked slightly as he shut the door behind himself and heard the automatic lock click into place.

Safe... as long as you don't piss off someone important.

That was easier said than done, and Jadoku liked to have a bit of insurance by sleeping in the same room as someone who he at least partially trusted... or who needed him alive for their own self-interest. He had his own room... technically... but he was still working on getting a lock on his door that couldn't be easily picked, similar to the one on the front door.

"Ne, Jadoku! Back already?" Himitsu greeted him without removing his eyes from the screen. Jadoku flopped down on the couch, listening to the sound of rapidly clicking keys as he glanced at the screen that Himitsu was so focused on. He couldn't make heads or tails of it, but it looked important.

"Hmm." Jadoku felt the pull behind his eyelids, coaxing him to sleep. He'd already gone 28 hours without sleep, and the adrenaline rush and crash from the recent attack left him so tired he didn't even feel like making it all the way to the bed. He'd certainly slept in worse places. He yawned, wincing and hissing a bit as the cuts on his tongue pulled at the movement. The typing paused.

Himitsu turned in his chair, giving him a questioning look.

Jadoku sighed. He just wanted to sleep. "It happened on the way back when some idiot attacked me. I didn't use them on the job." This had been a very specifically 'no kill' task, like most of the ones he was assigned. He was ironically one of the only field workers that had a kill count below triple digits, and he'd like it to stay that way.

Himitsu hummed in understanding. "...you okay?"

"Mhm. Just need sleep..." Jadoku mumbled. He felt exhaustion's hooks on his mind and hoped that Himitsu wasn't looking for conversation; he didn't know how much longer he could force consciousness.

Himitsu chuckled. "'kay. Night, Jay."

"... don't call me that." Jadoku wasn't sure how much of that sentence he managed to get out before he finally slipped into dreamland.


Peeling open his eyelids, Jadoku wasn't even certain what century he was in, and it took him a moment to register the blanket that had been draped over him. He pulled it closer, breathing in the scent that had become so familiar, though he couldn't place exactly what made it up. Pulling himself up from the couch, Jadoku wrapped the blanket around himself and made his way over to the bed in the corner, before easing his way under the covers and tucking his face into Himitsu's upper back.

He wouldn't have dared to do anything similar to this, even as soon as a few months ago, but things had changed. Near the end of January, Taishou and all of them, his little band of scientists that Jadoku would happily never see again, had successfully discovered a... vaccine of sorts to counteract his blood. Of course, it couldn't be given to Jadoku without killing him (he suppressed the imagining of all of his blood suddenly fizzling and burning), but since it was contracted from the blood of a universal blood donor

Now is not the time to think about the kid...

-it could be distributed to Jadoku's team members, and naturally to Taishou himself. He had the feeling that that had been his primary purpose for doing so.

Taishou wouldn't want Jadoku to have the power to quickly and easily end his life, or that of any of the Fujitas... or his second in command. He was still trying to get over the fact that he had known Himitsu for nearly five years and hadn't really suspected him to be anything more than one of the more successful con artists and a fence/dealer of various... things, until everything that had happened. Himitsu certainly lived up to his name.

Jadoku lightly shook his head. Whatever the reasons and motives were, he no longer had to be afraid of accidentally killing those he allowed close to him, and it made things... so much easier. But also infinitely more difficult at the same time.

Jadoku felt the form in front of him stir, before Himitsu turned around and pulled him closer, tucking Jadoku's head under his chin.

"Sorry I woke you..." Jadoku muttered.

Jadoku's sleep schedule was extremely erratic, and the lack of windows made it difficult to determine the time of day without calling on some artificial light. He felt Himitsu shake his head, sighing as one does shortly after waking.

"'s not a problem."

Himitsu's arms slipped inside the blanket Jadoku had bundled himself up in, and he pushed the tips of his fingers up under the back of his shirt, stroking the small of his back. Jadoku hummed in contentment. Affectionate touch had been practically nonexistent for Jadoku before this had all gone down, and it almost made up for the suffocating guilt that would surprise him by tying his stomach in knots and pulling a dark haze over his mind whenever he remembered the group that had basically taken him in... even though it had been based on a lie.

They didn't know what you were.

Himitsu had tried to warn him, had told him not to get attached, but how could he have avoided it? For once in his life he had been treated like he was normal... though of course it couldn't last. Though the manhunt had died down, allowing him to fade back into inconspicuousness should he freely venture out into public, it was surprising how fresh things felt in his mind. As if the fallout had been merely the week before—

"Hey…" Himitsu's touches became a little firmer as he pushed against the sudden tension that had corded Jadoku's back when he had followed that train of thought. "Come back to me." He placed his lips against Jadoku's forehead, in a motion that was not quite a kiss, but was intimate enough to bring him out of his daze.

It was a common occurrence for Jadoku to get lost in his thoughts, and considering that they were usually negative, it was good to have someone to pull him out of them before he thought himself into a mood. However, there were times when Jadoku would only be further irritated at an interruption, and that was easy fuel to spark some of their more colorful fights.

"…I'm okay," Jadoku mumbled.

He had to be, really. There weren't many other options.