Leafing Through The Pages, I Found You
An Ability traps the ADA certain PM members in an illusion that shows them Dazai's life, before and as he became the man they know today.
14-15yo
Dazai wasn't entirely sure how he felt when he woke up after his suicide attempt.
He was cold, his chest hurt with each breath he took and the bandages were scratching his skin. He also had a bit of a headache, something he rarely experienced, and the beeping sound of the machines helping him breathe and hydrate him were only making it worse.
"Good evening, Dazai-kun," an unfamiliar voice said from the side and Dazai's one uncovered eye followed the sound to the source of it, finding the same man he'd glimpsed at the bridge before jumping. He was still unfamiliar but Dazai didn't need the Book to spell out D-A-N-G-E-R for him to realize this man was shady and dangerous. There was an intelligent glint in his eye unable to cover his cruelty and it had Dazai scanning him from head to toe while he introduced himself as Mori Ougai, Dazai's 'physician' at this 'hospital' where he was 'brought in' because of a suicide attempt.
'Accustomed lair, very intelligent, in his thirties, probably early thirties, 32-33 years old, skilled, trained but discredited doctor, for moral and ethical reasons rather than actual skill issues. Ability user, all ranges, best in close to mid range. Trained in combat ... A military doctor then, probably participated in the Great War. The way he holds himself suggests he's accustomed to holding some sort of authority and is comfortable with making life-altering decisions ... A leader-type, then. The set of his mouth and eyes suggests incredible capability for cruelty, a torture and interrogation expert? Well, you should know never to anger someone who knows how to put you back together, since they also most certainly know how to take you apart ... Sadist but can take a hit ... Recently divorced? No, not quite ... But something ... something similar ... '
"I guess calling our fallout a divorce isn't too incorrect," Fukuzawa mused, an embarrassed flush to his cheeks.
Mori, on the other hand, was both observing and cataloging all the things Dazai had deduced of him upon their first meeting as well as hiding behind his hair lest the others see his own blush, too. He has a feeling he knows what might be shown in these visions and for once, it's not even about how he'd acquired his position.
Dazai knew way more of his far more embarrassing secrets than his treacherous rise to power.
'Ambitious, cunning, patient ... Impatient at the worst possible time ... Manipulative and abusive as the situation calls for it ... At least five small blades and a gun, so armed at all times ... Most interestingly enough, an information broker ... Right from this clinic ... How intriguingly clever.' He paused, thought about it, before deciding. 'The type that is both fascinated and unnerved. But he's the paranoid type ... He'll kill it if he can't control it.'
"I wonder if Dazai-san analyzed all of us like that when we met?" Kyouka wondered and Atsushi just nodded.
Higuchi, Tachihara, Tanizaki, Naomi and Kunikida were all gawking at the ease with which the fourteen year old deduced so many things, despite three of them seeing Ranpo at work almost constantly.
Speaking of the detective, he was giggling to himself at how well Dazai could read the world that so rare few people besides the two of them and a few other unfortunate individuals could.
"There's Soseki-san," Hirotsu said, drawing everyone's attention to where he was pointing out the cat lounging on a windowsill on the street across from Mori's clinic. It looked not unlike any other cat, but they knew how to distinguish the shifter from other felines now.
"So he's always just watching over this guy? Isn't that a bit creepy? Especially when he was a kid?" Tachihara asked, scratching his head.
"I'm honestly more surprised someone like Dazai Osamu hasn't confronted him about it," Higuchi commented to herself but the Akutagawas, at least, nodded in agreement.
"Dazai-kun, if you help me with one little thing, I promise I will teach you how to mix medicine that will give you a painless death," the Mori of the past vowed and Dazai, spotting several lies but knowing he can't show his true cards just yet, faked excitement. "Wow, really?"
"However," Mori interrupted this 'celebration'. "Whatever happens next will be strictly confidential. I need your word not to say anything."
'Is he looking for an alibi? ... This just got interesting ... An ambitious, cruel man, an information broker with leadership skills, an expert manipulator and liesmith, a former military doctor elbow deep in the underground's business, looking for a child to give him an alibi? No, it's not that I'm a child ... It's that I don't mind if I die. He needs an easily disposable witness ... A suicidal kid is easy to dismiss. Fascinating.' "Yup, I promise~!"
"And yet he babbled in front of half of the Agency and the entire command of the Black Lizard," Mori lamented with a sigh. "Still, not only his testimony, but his skills more than ensured my accession to the position of Boss. But now that I know the old Boss is his grandfather ... It makes me question quite a bit of things. Why did he do it? Why didn't he betray me later? Why did he cleanse any and all traditionalists who stubbornly supported the Tsushimas' resistance to my leadership?"
"It's simple," Ranpo replied. "He hated them, as much as they hated him."
"Dazai doesn't hate," Chuuya corrected. "He can't muster up the energy to bother with it. He does, however, hold grudges. If you cross him, your fate is sealed. That's it. But I don't know anyone whom Dazai might actually hate."
"I think Dostoevsky might actually be a candidate," Kunikida suggested, pushing his glasses up higher on the bridge of his nose.
"That's Dazai hating himself," Chuuya waves him off while Ranpo nods in agreement. As if either of them thought that was a perfectly normal answer to give in any situation.
"Mind elaborating that," the blond half-demanded, but Chuuya just rolled his eyes and even glared at him a little.
"You're his partner at the moment, you should know this by now."
"It's why Soukoku is superior," Mori cooed to Fukuzawa faux-sweetly, making the older man's eyebrow twitch in annoyance. Mori was (unfortunately) spared from being strangled by a fast forward rewind of the visions, showing Dazai's recovery under Mori and then the visits to the Port Mafia, Dazai now being introduced as Mori's assistant. "Ah, this is a month before it happened." He paid great attention to the whispers going around this time as some of the higher ranking subordinates seemed to have recognized Dazai as the missing Tsushima.
"Is that ... you know, him?"
"He's actually still alive?"
"I thought he was a myth!"
"Damn, the kid really do be having soulless eyes!"
"I can see the resemblance-"
"Shh! Don't say that, you idiot, do you want to get us both killed!?"
"Someone actually managed to capture him?"
"Nah, it can't be him! I was there when he ran away! Ain't no way anything human could catch that little demon!"
"I agree; he's got Gen'emon-sama's genes. That shady doctor wouldn't be able to capture him."
"I don't know ... Something's fishy about that guy ... If I were to cross him in hell one day, I'd rather stick with the devil."
"Fuck both him and the devil, just keep me away from that brat!"
"But is it really him? The missing Tsushima?"
" ... Guess we'll find out real soon, huh?"
The old Boss definitely recognized Dazai. Having been obsessed with his deceased favorite daughter and her husband for the past four years, the second those feverish, sickly yellow eyes settled on the fourteen year old boy going by Dazai Osamu, the old man perked up. For a couple of days, his good mood managed to overcome his sickness and he even managed to leave his bed for a bit. Even his decisions seemed more rational. This convinced everyone that Dazai was indeed Tsushima Shuuji. Some of the traditionalists, hardcore supporters of the Tsushima Boss even came up to Mori to individually thank him for his services. Dazai had a lot of fun watching how the doctor struggled not to twitch at inadvertently shooting himself in his own foot.
Still, Mori got a lot of recognition and credibility from managing to bring back the missing Tsushima, even without realizing it. Dazai just kept quiet, letting Mori think the recognition was caused by his medical skills improving the old man's health. He could not keep quiet, however, when a couple of the traditionalists approached him, bowed to him and addressed him by the name he no longer used, wishing him a warm welcome back to a place he would consider hell if he could be bothered with it.
He was polite when speaking with them. He knew making them angry or suspicious now would only cause unnecessary problems down the line. "I wish to be addressed as Dazai Osamu from now on. My birth name causes me too much pain by remembering my parents and aunt." For years later, he wasn't sure if these people were that gullible or if they were just that eager to kiss his ass since it was clear the old man won't last for that much longer and his will had long since declared Tsushima Shuuji to be the successor to the Mafia.
"I'm sorry, what!?" Kunikida, Higuchi and Tachihara exclaimed with jaws hitting the floor.
"Ah. That would explain why the traditionalists listened to Dazai-kun's testimony as something reliable and credible, at least long enough for me to ascend to the position of Boss before realizing I had no intention of following in the old Boss' footsteps," Mori mused. "It's not that I had a kid as a witness, and kids are bad at lying, but because I had that particular kid as my witness. Anyone other than Dazai-kun would have probably landed me with three bullets to the chest a long time ago."
"Seems like you owe Dazai more and more as the days go by, Ougai."
"We all owe Dazai-kun more than we are aware of, Yukichi~"
Regardless, they would stick to tradition, expecting a Tsushima heir and following a Tsushima's orders and rule for a while, so he didn't care much for them. Ultimately, they would be Mori's problem.
However, even if most of the traditionalists were content to just leave him and Mori be as the old Boss soon lost the energy boost he got from having his obsession back in his reach again, the Tsushima family and their closest supporters hoping to put their own favored Tsushima on the Mafia throne were far less willing to let fate play out without dipping their disgusting fingers into some pies.
It's why, one day, Dazai returned to the clinic where he and Mori lived under siege. Not too unusual, all things considered; Mori was an information broker and an underground doctor. Sometimes, people thought that they could force that scummy man into doing what they want. Usually, Mori and Elise dealt with it before it escalated to this level but as Dazai approached the building on almost soundless feet, he noticed the men guarding the place were wearing protective gas masks and No Longer Human lit up around him when he got within range.
'An Ability spread through the air, capable of knocking people out,' he presumed, sighing as he started patting himself down. The coat Mori gave him was a convenient place to store all sorts of crafty, handy little tools, including bladed weapons. He thinks hiding a gun would be easy, too, but Mori hasn't given him one yet despite having taught him how to shoot from one.
"You taught a fourteen year old to shoot from a gun?" Fukuzawa asked with heavy disapproval.
Mori gave him a deadpan stare. "I drafted two fifteen year olds into the Mafia and drafted an eleven year old into the Great War. Do you really think I care about a fourteen year old knowing how to shoot a gun? Well, actually, I did care. Dazai-kun was to be my witness! I could not afford to let him die~"
"You basically sent him to his death during the Arahabaki case," Chuuya deadpanned and Mori sweatdropped at how unimpressed the ginger seemed.
Dazai took stock of what he had at hand as he analyzed the situation at hand. He could easily just leave Mori here to die at the hands of no doubt Dazai's own greedy relatives, but Mori was actually interesting. As much as Dazai hated to admit it. He was the first person whom Dazai had met who seemed to actually match Dazai's mind. Not in intelligence; Dazai had a feeling Mori's experience was the only thing keeping him level with the fourteen year old. Mori definitely wasn't as intelligent as his father or Masaoka-
"Hey!"
"Shut up, Ougai/Ougai-dono."
-but there was something dark and wicked within that man which spoke to something deep within Dazai. It both disgusted him and intrigued him. Not only that, but Mori seemed invested in challenging Dazai's own intelligence, insisting on teaching him various skills and other things. He'd given him proper medical training and seemed rather delighted how Dazai didn't flinch away from blood and how incredibly steady his hands were when holding a scalpel. He was intrigued by how quickly Dazai sucked up all the knowledge from his medical textbooks - far more detailed than the ones he used in the library to help med students study, actually, so he not only reviewed his own knowledge but learned many more new things along the way - and the few times they'd played chess after Mori realized he knew how to, Mori had been almost manically gleeful to find that they've both won, lost and tied with each other an equal amount of times, mostly based on how bothered Dazai was to play.
In short, living with Mori had proven to be more or less interesting, though not enough for Dazai to say he was attached to the doctor. Mori was unlike anyone he'd given half a scrap of his attention to so far and not in a good way. Had Dazai wanted to die any less, he would have run the other way as soon as possible, but since he was looking for a painless way to die, sticking around to raid Mori's medical cupboards was for now the best option.
If nothing else, Mori was going to help him avenge his aunt. Maybe even his whole household, even his parents, depending on how useful he turned out to be. But for now, Mori was planning a coup against Dazai's grandfather and the Tsushima patriarch had it a long time coming.
'This is why I don't trust adults to do a good job at anything,' he thought with a sigh as he settled on a plan and finally took action.
"You never mentioned Dazai saved you, Ougai-dono," Kouyou accused but Mori looked as perplexed as the others did.
'But first,' Dazai thought, taking out the phone Mori had given him and looking through the pathetically small list of contacts Mori had installed in there as the people he trusted with Dazai and whom he trusted Dazai with. Dazai hadn't even met many of the people on the list, but there's no way he was going to call the Colonel. He'd be a good supporter for Mori's takeover but Dazai has a feeling he might just slit his throat if he had to see him right now. Instead, he chose the contact of a lowly grunt with a powerful Ability, Randou. Dazai had a feeling he'd come in handy. He hadn't met him yet, either, but something was telling him he ought to be interesting.
"Oh, for fuck's sake," Chuuya cursed and at this point, no one even asked. The visions were clearly going to show a lot, most probably including something that would explain Chuuya's reaction.
Mori, Kouyou and Hirotsu, on the other hand, just shook their heads and marveled at how the strings of fate intertwined and tangled, connecting human lives whether they like it or not.
After calling for backup, Dazai finally approached the building. Having lived on the streets for so long, Dazai knew all the best ways to blindside someone, to take advantage of their surprise and the fact that people underestimated kids. These people here were lowly grunts, they wouldn't immediately recognize him as either Mori's assistant Dazai or the missing Tsushima Shuuji come back to life to haunt his treacherous relatives. They'd probably think he was an injured kid looking for treatment, given he was cover from head to toe in bandages, as far as the eye could see, anyway. So affecting an injured gate and making a face depicting pain, the bandaged boy approached the standing guards.
"Who goes there!?" One of them immediately demanded and Dazai 'whimpered', shying away in 'fear'.
"It's just a kid, give it a rest," the other snorted, clearly bored of guard duty. "Probably a wimpy street rat. What's got you so spooked, huh?"
"The King of the Sheep is a 'kid' and a 'street rat' and I don't see you itching to pick a fight with him," grumbled the first guard and Dazai did his best not to perk up at this. Information about the Sheep, especially their 'King' was mostly based on rumors, but they were a juvenile group acting as a gang and taking up the territory of the slums in Suribachi City, a settlement built in the crater Dazai had been retrieved from about six years ago, now. He thinks one of the Sheep actually approached him to join, at some point during this last year, but Dazai had been content with living with the old man, tutoring kids and young adults, reading books and doing parkour with the group that was now long gone. So was the library and Masaoka. If they asked now ... No, he'd probably still say no. He himself was still a kid, for all intents and purposes, he had no intentions of babysitting other kids.
This King of the Sheep, however, was rumored to have a very powerful Ability. Gravity manipulator, they called him. Capable of flight and coming out unscratched from any gunfight he entered. A kid Dazai's own age with very distinguishable features, though no one could point out what these 'distinguishable' features were. Lazy gits couldn't even get such simple information right, too scared of the 'tenfold payback' the Sheep, or their King, were known for.
But that isn't important right now. He'll deal with that some other time.
"Well, well, well, would you look at that," Yosano teased, sending Chuuya a shit-eating grin. "For once, Dazai put you second."
Chuuya glared at her. He said nothing of all the times he came second to another redhead who had stolen the centerpiece to Dazai's heart and took it to the grave with him, leaving a shattered mess for Chuuya to put back together, if only Dazai would have let him.
"Is Mori-sensei in? My wounds really hurt and the bandages are itching. I really need him to change them and give me meds," Dazai asked, making his eyes look huge, being sure to keep his face turned away from the light so his pupils will dilate. He wonders if these idiots would mistake him for a junky. He was skinny and pale enough and had pretty big eye bags to pass for one. Not that it matters.
"Sorry, kid, no one's allowed in or out," the second guard said casually, taking out a cigarette and lighting it, only to get scolded by the more anxious guard. As the two squabbled, Dazai took out the scalpels he'd hidden in his sleeves. Guided by Mori's teachings and his own readings, he jumped up a little to reach the paranoid man's neck, grabbing him in a headlock and swiftly slicing the sharp blade over the soft skin and tendons of his neck. The blood splashed the other guard in the face, blinding his eyes and he began to panic, but Dazai was on him just as swiftly, letting the first guard fall to the ground as he threw a scalpel to embed it in the other guard's throat. He also fell to the ground, still alive, choking on his own blood and Dazai took mercy on him, slicing to end his misery.
The Armed Detective Agency members, for the most part, looked sick at such casual violence from the child version of their coworker, despite having seen him do similar things before. Fukuzawa and Kyouka were taking it the best, though the little girl looked a bit queasy to be reminded of her own unfortunate past as an assassin. Yosano, on the other hand, had refused to look at all. She bet Dazai greatly regretted letting Mori live these days.
The Port Mafia, on the other hand, were just surprised this happened at all, since Dazai had never taken any credit. It seems that the only one who had any idea of this event had been Randou and he'd taken this secrete to the grave like many others.
After he was sure the guards were dead, Dazai took their guns and extra magazines before heading into the clinic itself. He knew his way around fairly well so he was careful of the spots where the floor creaked and knew just how wide to open any doors before they made a noise that could alert his opponents of his presence. The first floor was stupidly unguarded, but the fact that the stairs to the second floor had two guards kind of made up for it. Dazai was lucky the stairs didn't directly face the entrance doors. It would have made things unnecessarily difficult. As it was, he just took out the gun from the bored grunt from before. It seems he was smarter than you'd think; his gun had a silencer.
Dazai took careful aim and just as one of the guards shuffled, restless, he fired, shooting him in the ankle, causing it to give out. The guy fell with a grunt of pain and as his colleague called out his name, he fell down the stairs, taking a nasty fall. Even from several meters away and in this darkness, Dazai could make out the ugly, unnatural angle his neck and head were in and he could see that he was not breathing.
"Shit!" The other guard cursed, carefully coming down the stairs, afraid he might fall, too. Thankfully, the dead guy's arm had also had an open fracture so there was a lot of blood everywhere, so the other guard didn't even notice the shot ankle. "Shit! Of all the things-" He didn't get to finish, as Dazai carefully threw another scalpel to slice his mask open. He was unconscious on the ground in seconds. To be sure he won't be coming back to bother him, Dazai slit his throat, too.
After doing one last check of the first floor, Dazai started climbing the stairs, counting the rooms and calculating the probabilities of where Mori might be held right now. He decided the most likely probability was Mori's own office. It only had one entrance and one window to defend and the least dangerous equipment that is easily accessible. Now that he was out in the open, with No Longer Human still actively repelling the air-transmitted Ability and giving off its glow in this darkness, he had to be extra careful. He figured each room was guarded, so he took some coin he had in one of his pockets and let it roll down the hallway. With how quiet it was, even such a slight sound attracted someone's attention.
"Go see what it is!" Someone barked the order and someone else came out of one of the rooms at the very back,grumbling. This pleasantly surprised Dazai - his opponents were apparently idiots who only guarded the front and the back. Meaning all the other rooms were empty. Dazai suddenly had much more to work with. Still, he waited until the grunt came closer, carelessly 'inspecting' everything.
"There's nothing here!"
"Just take a fucking look!"
"Oh, for fuck's sake, fine!"
'Lack of proper communication,' Dazai observed, even as he readied the gun with the silencer. 'They're uncoordinated, unaware four of their people are already dead and that there's an intruder already inside. Pathetic.'
"Well, now we know why Dazai-san always gets so angry when someone doesn't report in despite being perfectly capable of it," Gin commented and her brother grunted in agreement.
Once the grunt called out once again that there was nothing, Dazai shot him in both his knees when he was close enough, before cushioning his fall so he could slit his throat before he can scream. He was unlucky with this scalpel, as it somehow got stuck in the man's throat.
"T-that can happen?" Tachihara asked uneasily and both doctors present in the watching group gave grim nods. The ginger with the band aid gulped.
Luckily for his depleting supply of scalpels, this guy had a knife on him, increasing the number of knives in Dazai's collection to three. With the two guns and additional ammunition, it ought to be enough.
He was able to lure out two more grunts who were sent out to see where the one he'd just killed had disappeared off to and he made quick work of them, too, knives aiming for the heart instead of the way he'd used the scalpels before. These two were lucky shots. They had machine-guns. Dazai would not have survived an encounter with those.
"Jesus Christ on a motorbike!" Tachihara wheezed, earning himself disgusted looks. "What!? It's kinda cool. But are you all seriously going to ignore what's going on here?" He asked, gesturing to where two more grunts came out of one of the rooms, definitely having heard the commotion this time, shooting more machine-guns and forcing Dazai to hide in one of the empty rooms he'd managed to reach. Looking around, his eyes glinted in victory as he spotted an oxygen tank Mori rarely used for any of his patients unless they were exceptionally useful. Like in Dazai's case. A quick tap against the metal surface confirmed that it was one of the full ones and Dazai quickly brought it over to the door. He shot a couple of times at the grunts with the gun without the silencer, making them duck and cease fire for a moment, the moment he needed to throw out the tank, take aim with the other gun and hit his mark.
Immediately, the pressurized oxygen exploded outwards and the continued attempted shooting actually just set the grunts on fire in the ensuing even bigger explosion. Dazai covered himself in his coat as the heat spread through the hallway, some flames even almost licking his clothing before all that excess oxygen burned out. Poking his head around the corner found three dead grunts and another heavily injured one; backup, most probably. The injured one probably won't live for long; the mask was damaged so he'll definitely be going to sleep and with the blood-loss, he'll either go into shock or straight to death's door.
Dazai almost pitied him, but he had to duck around the corner as three more people walked out of the room at the very end, Mori's office. The place he presumes the doctor is being held. He hadn't gotten a good enough look at them, so he wasn't sure if any of his useless relatives were on the scene, but he's sure of one thing he'd glimpsed: skin. A face.
He'd found the Ability user.
However, the other two were also heavily armed and one of them had some sort of decaying, touch-based Ability, based on how he accidentally destroyed a table with a pretty pricey vase on it simply by bumping into it. Mori's gonna be pissed about that; he actually liked that vase. But that's a problem for later, because more people came out of one of the operating rooms closest to Mori's office, the last unchecked room. Now there was a total of seven people and Dazai did not have enough guns or knives to finish this on his own.
The Ability users were of no consequence to him, No Longer Human would keep him safe, but he was still no less impervious to guns than a regular human.
Still, he needed to hold out until backup arrived. And he needed to take out the Ability user putting everyone to sleep.
Laying down on the floor and letting only the tip of the silencer gun peek around the corner, Dazai took a deep breath and tried to visualize where he'd seen the mask-less person; he hadn't heard any movement or shuffling of feet, just hushed whispers and some gagging at the scene he'd made with that explosion. Everyone should be in the same position he'd last seen them in. Trusting his calculations and memory, he pulled the trigger.
A thump announced a body falling to the floor, followed by surprised and frightened yelps.
No Longer Human stopped illuminating his skin.
'Bingo.' He adjusted his aim a little and still, even among all that shuffling, he managed to shoot someone. Preferably that decay Ability user. He doesn't want the whole building giving out and coming down on their heads. He's had enough of that a couple of months ago.
"In the room near the end of the hall!"
"Open fire!"
"Shoot, damn it!"
"Damn," Dazai muttered to himself as they started moving, shooting and carefully coming closer to his hiding spot. There wasn't much places to hide in this room, definitely not anything that could save him from the gunshots. He adjusted his aim and he thinks he managed to kill at least one more, but he'd also managed to hit someone somewhere non-vital; an arm, shoulder or side. Too bad it wasn't a hip; they wouldn't be able to move.
"Just kill this little shit!"
"Meow," came from behind him and Dazai whirled his head around. He found a familiar calico cat sitting on the window, watching him with those far too familiar eyes, tail lazily swishing from side to side.
"So, you've finally decided to show yourself," Dazai said to it in a whisper. "About time." He shuffled away from the doorway, hiding from direct sight as the remaining grunts finally arrived to the room, ready to open fire, only to be immediately met with only a cat.
"A dumb cat?" One of them muttered.
"You should know better than to badmouth your betters," came a man's voice before the cat was engulfed in an explosion of light, then an actual explosion, taking down half the room with it, though thankfully no walls, just the window and the cabinets and equipment Mori had kept in there. The grunts lay dead outside the room, necks and spines broken from connecting to the wall. Meanwhile, Natsume Soseki, in all of his human glory, smirked down at his late friend's only son. "We finally meet, Dazai-kun."
Dazai, to the surprise of everyone and yet no one, just gave a respectful nod. "Sensei."
They were shown no more of the interaction between Natsume and Dazai, instead the scene shifted to when reinforcements finally arrived and Mori was already close to wakefulness. Randou lead the charge, prowling through the clinic with his Ability around him as a shield. He sighed in relief when he found doctor and 'assistant' both alive and well in the trashed office, both a bit bloodied and dirty, but overall fine.
Dazai, though, zeroed in on his Ability. Those yellow squares looked rather familiar ... He just couldn't quite place his finger on where from.
"Dazai-kun, are you alright?" Randou asked, attending to the child while some other Port Mafia 'medics' checked on the Boss' personal doctor. In Randou's eyes, the boy looked awfully small, in that oversized coat and clothes a size or two too big. There was also an empty look in his visible eye that he confused for shock, so Randou, despite freezing himself all the time, took off his jacket and wrapped it around the child. Dazai blinked up at him, startled, and that just prompted Randou to wrap his scarf around him, too. "No need to worry, Dazai-kun, everything will be alright now. Can you tell us what happened?"
Chuuya snorted at the way Dazai had the European spy wrapped around his little finger just for blinking his big, pretty eye a couple of times. "To think just a year later, Rimbaud would be the first to realize Dazai has the potential to be a master torturer."
"Master what now!?"
Kunikida was ignored in favor of watching Dazai and Mori get escorted out of the clinic.
Mori tched. "It took me weeks to fix that place up and replace everything that was broken or damaged. On the plus side, though, Dazai-kun and I were instructed to live in the headquarters, making plotting a whole lot easier. The deed was done just two weeks from these events."
Even as more and more people milled all over the place, taking Mori out and inspecting the scene they'd walked in on, Dazai's focus stayed on Randou. 'Interesting,' he thought to himself and the others perked up, realizing he was about to analyze the man from head to toe. 'Randou-san is said to have been found while suffering amnesia. Even 'Randou-san' isn't his real name, but rather what we call him ... He's definitely a foreigner ... He acts in a peculiar way ... He was not a mere civilian before the Mafia picked him up. For one, he seems like someone used to keeping secrets ... A spy?'
"Dazai-san sure can be scary," Atsushi mumbled, only to be wacked over the head by Akutagawa.
"Shut the hell up, jinko."
"Screw you!"
'An amnesiac foreigner former(?) spy with a powerful Ability ... A subordinate recruited not long after the Suribachi explosion ... An Ability manifestation I am seemingly familiar with ... I see. I'll need to keep an eye on Randou-san. With all his kindness and secrets, he's bound to be very interesting.'
"Shitty mackerel had Rimbaud all figured out a long time ago, huh. I should probably use this as proof of his cheating so he has to stop calling me his damned dog for life," Chuuya grumbled without any heat. Everyone else just sweatdropped, though those less in the know wondered what the hell he was talking about.
The scene changed again, finally to an event some of them recognized. It seems to have fastforawrded to two weeks later, as they watched Mori lean over the sick Boss, who looked more skeletal than when they'd first seen him after Dazai came back. He now looked like the man Chuuya had watched take swings at his partner back when they were fifteen. He still remembered how afraid he'd been when that red scythe had seemingly struck Dazai for the second time and the relief and amazement he'd felt when the cast shattered, the scythe shattered, revealing the steel underneath that Dazai had apparently been lugging around all day.
"How are you feeling, Boss?" Mori of the past asked professionally, arms crossed behind his back in military parade rest, observing the man who'd become more and more unstable after his brief bout of good health.
"Kill them. Kill them. Enemy organizations, the Military Police ... All those who stand against the Port Mafia, kill them," the sickly Boss commanded feverishly, eyes distant, seemingly seeing something only he could, crazed and desperate and not like one of the most powerful underground leaders in Yokohama.
"That's irrational," Mori countered, tone inflation flat, but deep disapproval in his eyes at such recklessness. A waste of resources and men, not to mention that it would drag them into a war unlike any other in Yokohama's history. The Military Police would be on them in no time, something they couldn't afford.
"It doesn't matter how many people die. Just kill them. Kill them, kill them, kill them all." He kept on muttering as Mori sighed and took out a scalpel.
"Understood, Boss," the doctor said 'subserviently'. "As you wish." With a swift flick of his wrist, Mori slit the old man's throat, blood spraying and coating him and the wall nearby, before it spread over the bed and the sheets, staining it a deep red. "The Boss tragically succumbed to his illness," Mori announced as he straightened up, turning to face his companion with a crazed look in his own eyes. "He left a will appointing me to be the next Boss." They all turned in the direction past Mori was looking in now, the direction present Mori had been facing this whole time, now that they think about it, and were startled to see fourteen year old Dazai, draped in Mori's coat and bandages, only one eye still visible, the blood moon behind him making it look red and as though it was glowing, emotionlessly watching as his relative's blood soaked the sheets and painted his 'guardian's' face. "You are a witness to that fact."
Dazai did not care, did not react. He just watched the Tsushima patriarch's body grow cold and wondered if he'd had a hand in the man's madness. He'd had the same expression on his face that he'd seen on him one of the few rare times he'd caught glimpses of him after his parents' death. His maniacal need to control the world to keep the last thing remaining of Tsushima Tane and Gen'emon had caused everyone so much trouble and had led to his death.
'Good. Perhaps my family can finally rest easy now ... No, there are still people who need to pay. I can't die just yet.'
But soon, after he settles everything, he will have to.
And he'll take the Book with him.