Chapter Text
Yuuji and Nobara crept down the stairway to the underground tunnel as quietly as they could, pulling the face masks they got from Megumi up to cover their faces. They didn’t know how many people might have been down there to see them, so they hugged the wall to their left as they went on.
Thankfully, there wasn’t anyone near the entrance, allowing Yuuji to make it all the way to the bottom. Before they continued, he planned to peer around the corner and scope out the safest path. He made sure to move slowly, not wanting to draw attention to himself as he remembered the first night Megumi took them out for this kind of work. Yuuji had been too ambitious, and he swore to himself that he wouldn’t repeat that mistake.
Except as soon as he got one of his eyes around the corner, Yuuji jerked back behind the wall and pressed himself even further against the railing that dug into his lower back. His heart raced from the shock that went through him. He looked down at Nobara, who shook her head softly in confusion, her brows knitted together.
He had expected to spot Junpei easily whenever he went to scout, but he hadn’t expected the underground tunnel to be empty except for Junpei standing in the middle of the space. He had been staring directly at where Yuuji and Nobara would have had to emerge, his jacket pulled tightly around him.
The two just outside the tunnel continued to stare at each other silently, their quickly morphing expressions holding an entire conversation on their own. But they mirrored each other whenever Junpei’s laugh echoed off the walls of the empty space, and he called out, “Come on out! I know you’re there. So just hurry up and show yourselves.”
Another silent conversation in a matter of seconds, wide eyes staring into narrowed ones.
“What, are you playing hide and seek?” Junpei taunted. “Come on, you fuckers!”
All of a sudden, Junpei’s laugh and voice weren’t the only things cutting through the quiet of the night. Multiple sets of boots stomped across the sidewalk above them, and Yuuji and Nobara looked up to see that there was a group of men dressed in all black at the top of the stairs. Yuuji instantly locked onto the fact that a few of them were carrying various weapons such as metal pipes and bats.
“Shit,” he muttered under his breath, quickly wrapping a hand around Nobara’s wrist and pulling her further into the underground tunnel.
The intent was to run straight ahead to the other set of stairs that the two of them were able to see. It was the shortest path to an exit he assumed wasn’t blocked. Yuuji assumed wrongly, though. They only made it to the bottom of the stairs before they spotted another group of men descending. If they stayed at this end of the tunnel, then they were trapped and outnumbered.
In his panicked state, Yuuji could only think so far ahead. His next course of action was to drag Nobara down the length of the underground tunnel toward the side that Junpei stood on. He was more than certain that he could handle Junpei along the way.
Yuuji didn’t account for two more groups to pour from the stairs at the other end as well.
Nobara yanked him to a sudden stop whenever she noticed before him, and she collided with his back as he finally relented his pace. At least twenty to thirty men surrounded them on all sides. She spun around so that she could press her back up against Yuuji’s, and together the two of them began to slowly rotate in a small circle without moving their backs away from the other. Their eyes flicked over each enemy in sight as they instinctively slipped into defensive stances, fists raised in front of their faces. They also tried to find any glimpse of an escape that would save them from this fight, but there was none.
None of the men made any move to actually attack the two of them, instead doing their best to get them worked up by lunging and smacking their weapons on the ground. There were tons of insults and jeers thrown their way, and a few even spit at them.
This was going to be a fight to escape with their lives. Both Yuuji and Nobara had no way of denying it. They panted behind their face masks, adrenaline already starting to pump through them. Nobara ripped her mask off and threw it to the side, her upper lip raised in an angry snarl, and Yuuji tucked his into his pocket for the time being. She made direct eye contact with a few of the men, excited to show them the mistake they had made in messing with her and Yuuji.
The two of them slowed their rotations whenever they realized there was no ‘best place’ for either one of them to start, and that was when Yuuji saw him. In the crowd behind most of the men that Yuuji faced, the man with the pale hair — the one that had been in Gramps’ shop that night — watched in rapt attention, his eyes widening whenever they locked with Yuuji’s own.
His attention transformed into recognition the longer he stared at Yuuji, and there was even a flash of what Yuuji swore was fear. Instead of smirking or reacting smugly at the fear he evoked, Yuuji’s face turned so cold and hard that his expression could have been carved from stone, dark shadows cast across his normally bright eyes. As the pale-haired man took a step backward, Yuuji shook his head once. It didn’t stop the other man from turning around in his fancy dress shoes to storm toward the staircase nearest him, Junpei not far behind him, a dog at heel to its master. Yuuji wasn’t surprised in the least that neither one of them was going to fight their own battles.
Behind him, Nobara bounced back and forth on her feet, shuffling until their shoulders were pressed together instead of their backs.
“Come on,” she said lowly, only intending for Yuuji to hear. “Let’s fucking do this.”
The movement of her lips seemed to be enough to agitate the men who faced her because they finally moved into action. One of the men holding a metal pipe tried to swing for Nobara’s head, but she ducked with more than enough time. Yuuji threw a punch over her to connect with the guy’s jaw, sending him stumbling back.
No matter how quickly they had handled the first guy, it didn’t matter. Not when he was replaced by another as soon as he disappeared. Yuuji and Nobara spent more time dodging punches and swings than throwing hits themselves. They did their best to make each dodge a strategic one, though, trusting the other enough to separate for the time being. With how many enemies they were up against, they needed to move as freely as possible.
Nobara managed to get to the other end of the tunnel, splitting at least half of the men away from the previously crowded huddle in the center. Along the way, she threw quick jabs and sharp elbows where she could, keeping her main focus on surviving as long as possible. If she let her instincts carry her, Nobara could almost pretend as if she were in the ring with a single opponent. One far outside her skill and weight class, but just the one opponent.
She could manage just the one.
Yuuji found himself in a similar predicament, dodging weapons and punches to the best of his ability. Every punch of his own that he managed to throw in the process did considerable damage to those around him. Already, three men who had tried to attack him lay on the ground either unconscious or clutching their bloodied faces.
But then Yuuji got distracted by fighting one of the men. To the point that he had to throw up his left arm to block the swing of a bat headed straight for his head from another opponent, the violent vibrations sent straight to his bones. He cried out and clutched the arm close to his chest as he used his right fist to jab straight into the batter’s throat. That stunned his attacker for long enough that Yuuji could split his focus to the other men around him, making quick work of subduing them until everyone surrounding him was hunched over in some way — at least for the time being.
With a hiss through his clenched teeth, Yuuji shook out his left arm until the tingling sensation finally went away, rolling his neck as he scanned the area for his next fight.
On the other side of the tunnel, Nobara was still surrounded by several men twice her size, and she did her best to dodge all of their punches, left with fewer and fewer opportunities to throw in her own frenzied jabs. She ended up corralled with her back to the solid wall, ducking down whenever a pipe swung for her head again. The metal clang of it hitting the concrete wall reverberated in her ears, and Nobara snarled out, “Alright, alright. Fuck it!”
Then she launched herself at the guy closest to her left, wrapping her legs around his waist and yanking his head back by his greasy hair. As quickly as she could, Nobara attacked him in rapid succession. His nose, his mouth, his throat. Punch, punch, punch. A feral noise close to that of a growl escaped her the whole time, only choking off whenever she felt the blunt hit of one of the other men’s weapons across her exposed back.
The man she had jumped on dropped to the ground beneath her and tried to shove her off, but Nobara was already rolling to her feet as fast as she could. Her speed was hindered by one of her hands pressed against her now aching back. It had been a risk she had to make to progress with the enemies around her, but the man still on the ground was also her reward alongside the jolt of pain up her spine.
Another man lunged at her, and Nobara ducked under his grasp and pushed him hard enough to send him into the wall. She kicked in one of his knees and cupped the back of his head with none of the kindness the motion usually showed, instead slamming his face as hard as she could into the concrete wall. Without even waiting to see him drop, she spun back around to look at the rest of the men around her. They seemed both surprised and staggered by the display they just witnessed.
Good, Nobara thought to herself.
She moved before they regained their composure, her mind returned to the ring for a few more moments. There was only one opponent that she had to take down, and that opponent was standing still for the time being. If she was faster, then she could take them down. Nobara was always faster.
Except moving faster didn’t matter whenever her opponent could attack her from behind while still standing in front of her.
After another hit to her back while she was punching someone, Nobara stumbled and snapped out of her visualization again. As her vision cleared, she noticed that one of the men had dropped a pipe that a lot of these thugs seemed to love. She snatched it from the ground and whirled around with it extended. By pure luck, she managed to land a hit on one of the guys who had charged at her, and it sent him careening away from her instead.
Nobara waved her newly acquired weapon through the air a few times to keep the others at bay, blood slinging from the end of it in the process. She had already proved she knew how to wield it successfully enough to leave a man spitting out one of his teeth.
Even with the pipe, it didn’t stop them from surrounding her again. When one of them managed to land a punch to her gut before Nobara could retaliate, her mind started drifting through the possibilities. Such as the possibility that all of this was just a waste of time, a way to prolong their inevitable, painful deaths. Because the two of them against so many enemies? There wasn’t a chance in hell the amount hadn’t been to ensure their deaths.
“We’ve got him!”
The shout of victory was loud enough to catch Nobara’s attention, and her honey-brown eyes searched desperately for a flash of pink in the swarm of black. She had to keep fighting and dodging in the process, frustrating her to no end when she still hadn’t seen Yuuji.
Then she spotted him — still standing and doing just fine. So Nobara honed her focus once more.
At the other end of the tunnel, Yuuji had to physically shake his head to get his frustrations out. He always disliked whenever opponents celebrated too early, and it only revealed a lack of experience. One should never claim victory unless their opponent truly showed no sign of getting back up, and even then there was still a chance. There was always a chance.
He lunged at the man who had called out as if to prove that point, his fist connecting rapidly in three strong bursts until the guy crumpled to the ground. Another tried to come at Yuuji from the side, but he was easily shoved away with the brunt force of Yuuji’s shoulder. Another came from the opposite side and swung a pipe at him, forcing Yuuji to block another hit with his left arm. Another shock of pain that left him gritting his teeth to hold back any cries of pain.
Another, another, another.
It was a never-ending flood of attacks from all directions, and Yuuji was fighting as hard as he could just to remain upright.
There was barely enough time for him to wrap his arms around the middle of the guy that charged at him. Before Yuuji realized it, he was tumbling alongside his attacker. He managed to twist the two of them on the way down so that instead he landed roughly on top, jamming his elbow upwards as hard as he could into the other man’s nose. Yuuji jumped back to his feet with the unwillingness to allow himself to be piled on.
His unwillingness only got him so far, though.
He was still trying to catch his breath when another man charged at him just as the last had. The man was much larger than him, and combined with Yuuji’s unpreparedness for the rush, it was easy for his feet to lift off the ground. His back slammed into one of the concrete pillars, and his head followed the same fate but with much more force, left swimming with thick clouds from the impact. Yuuji tried to blink it away, knowing distantly that he had to focus, but then he realized he couldn’t move yet.
The man who had slammed him into the wall was still holding on tight around Yuuji’s waist, effectively pinning him solidly in place. He was trapped for one of the others to land a punch straight across his jaw, and Yuuji’s head snapped to the side and hit the concrete pillar once more. While the first impact had left him dazed, the second cleared some of that away. At least enough for Yuuji’s years of training to kick in. He raised his arms to protect his head and face from the flurry of blows that were aimed at him, tucking into himself as much as he could.
Nobara wasn’t in much better circumstances, not with the circle of men around her getting tighter and tighter, no escape in sight. She was breathing faster than she ever had before, and this was the moment that she would remember if she somehow made it out alive. There had been plenty of times in the past that she felt like a trapped animal. None of them compared to this one.
Her lip was split open, blood dripping down her chin. Chunks of her hair were a mess and hanging in front of one of her eyes, almost all of the color blotted out by her pupils. They darted around the circle frantically as Nobara prepared herself for whatever awful beating was going to be issued to her.
Instead, her eyes went impossibly wide from the surprise of the guy closest to her stiffening up and shaking ever so slightly. He was stiff as a board before he went flying across the circle from a punch to his face. Nobara snapped her head to the source of the blow, finding Megumi panting just as hard as she was. In one hand he clutched his taser — what he must have used to stun the guy before punching him — and the other flicked out a collapsible baton.
All the communication they needed was shared in a brief look before they worked together to take out the goons around them.
Fighting alongside Megumi was much different than fighting alongside Yuuji. Where Yuuji’s punches did the most damage with each hit, Megumi relied on both the tools he brought with him more than his own fists. She almost envied the baton’s padded grip as her hand began to ache from vibrations of the pipe, strike after strike landed against the men around her.
Megumi, on the other hand, had to adjust to fighting alongside any ally at all. There were moments when he cracked the length of his baton against one of the men’s faces and would turn around to go after the closest person to him. But where his instincts told him a target stood, he found Nobara instead. Megumi had to reign in an attack or two before he finally stopped turning on her, even going so far as to turn his back on her completely in the heat of the fight.
Soon enough, the two of them weaved around the other as naturally as the wind danced between the trees, working their way to the center of the tunnel. Megumi’s arrival, while a welcome and life-saving addition, still didn’t change the fact that they were outnumbered.
Both of her hands gripped tightly around the metal pipe, Nobara swung wildly to keep the three men around her backed away. Whenever one of them got close enough, she knocked his knee out of place with a satisfying crunch. As he dropped, she immediately followed her first hit with a backswing across his face. Every blow of hers that lifted her spirits with satisfaction was hastily beaten down by someone landing a teeth-chattering blow on her.
“Motherfucker!” Nobara screamed out, her free hand trying to grab at the spot on her back that flared with pain. Her spine couldn’t take many more hits such as that without leaving her seriously limited in the rest of the fight.
Her yell caught Megumi’s attention for long enough that the guy he fought managed to land a punch, resulting in Megumi dropping his taser. It went sliding across the concrete floor, too far out of reach for him to pick it back up. He growled in frustration and whirled back on the guy to hit as many of his weak points as possible, dodging the punches thrown in retaliation.
He had to trust that Nobara could handle herself. He had to trust that she would call out for help if she needed it. He had to trust that she would fight to help him if he needed it.
When Nobara stood up straight again, she was the one to notice Yuuji across the tunnel, still pinned against one of the concrete pillars. She realized he had no way to get free on his own, and her rage intensified at the sight of the blood that flew from Yuuji’s mouth as he took another hit. She roared with all her might as she rushed forward. She kicked one of the guys in her way as hard as she could in the stomach, cracking him over the head before she kept going.
The next guy wasn’t worth the effort to take down, so she ducked under his arm and allowed his momentum to send him tumbling right into Megumi. In a rare show of skill, Megumi managed to land a blow that knocked the guy out cold.
And the two of them kept going.
Within moments, Nobara and Megumi were behind the guys ganging up on Yuuji, ripping them away and knocking them out with their weapons. The distraction finally gave Yuuji an opening to throw a punch instead of being repeatedly hit. The force of it knocked out a tooth of the recipient, blood and spit flying through the air. Yuuji threw his elbow into the back of the guy holding onto his waist, his own knees buckling some whenever the guy started to pull down as he collapsed.
Megumi received a kick square in his chest, causing him to fall backward. The same guy kicked him again, this time landing a hit on Megumi’s jaw. His head was snapped violently to the side, ricocheting off the ground, and his vision went wobbly and fuzzy from the blow.
I’m going to have a concussion, Megumi thought, squeezing his eyes tightly to try and get them to recenter in their sockets.
Nobara was there in an instant, jumping onto the guy’s back and pressing the length of her steel pipe against his throat. Then she leaned all of her weight backward to both pull him away from Megumi and cut off his air. She could only assume she was successful in the latter whenever the guy started to claw at the metal pipe in an attempt to remove it.
By the time Megumi started to get to his feet, he was faced with the same problem that they continued to run into — there were simply too many enemies for only the three of them to fight. Their stamina wasn’t unlimited, even when fueled by the adrenaline of fighting for their lives. So when the last guy was replaced by the next guy who became the last guy and so on, the endlessness became disheartening. But if most of Megumi’s life up until that point had been disheartening, what was one more fight?
A fight that he wasn’t fighting for just himself, either. He was fighting for Nobara and Yuuji, for Satoru, for all of the helpless people who didn’t have the strength to fight back.
So when the knees of the next guy that approached him were at eye level, Megumi was at the perfect height to mirror Nobara’s move of knocking it out of place with his baton. When he was fully standing again, Yuuji had just launched a heavy-hitting punch into the stomach of the guy that Nobara was still latched to. Megumi watched as he dropped and Nobara jumped off his back. She reared back her pipe like a golf club, swinging through the guy’s head as if his body was the tee for her ball. Yuuji continued to throw punches to keep everyone off her, but he didn’t see the man who tried to charge Nobara from behind.
Megumi did, though, and he rushed forward with a yell and a punch so hard that he felt the nose break beneath his knuckles.
“Goddammit, Yuuji!” Nobara yelled out in frustration, and Megumi whirled around to see that in a matter of seconds, the pink-haired man had gotten himself surrounded again. He wasn’t pinned like last time, but for every two punches he landed meant that the third guy had the opportunity to swing back.
Nobara only got two steps before more of the men returned to swing at her, most of their weapons left discarded on the ground at that point in favor of just their fists. None of the trio knew how they were still standing after how bloodied and bruised and beaten they were. Satoru had told Megumi that he would send help, that they just had to stay alive until then, but that possibility was becoming more and more bleak as time went on.
As he sucked in a laborious breath, Megumi threw another punch with all the strength he could muster, managing to knock out another combatant. He had to accept that this was the result of choosing to go against Satoru, and the time to rely on the older man had long since passed. But Megumi refused to let Yuuji and Nobara pay the price for his mistakes.
Out of the three of them, Nobara would most certainly earn the title of the frenzy fighter, even within the confines of the boxing ring. But the state the Megumi allowed himself to slip into, a burst of crazed laughter spilling from his lips with each punch he threw and each split of skin across his knuckles, put even Nobara’s frenzies to shame. He worked through the men around them faster than he had before, and he swiftly moved around any punches thrown his way before responding in kind.
Bloody teeth bared in excitement, Nobara vibrated within her skin at seeing Megumi fight in such a way. He had truly let go of himself to fight on pure instinct, and it fanned the little embers of energy that Nobara had left.
All three moved in sync with their actions and movements. If an outside observer were to step into the room, they would have been under the impression that the three young fighters had trained together since they were children seeing their first set of boxing gloves. They couldn’t have been more wrong, even as the evidence proved otherwise.
Whenever one of their enemies landed a punch that knocked Nobara to the side, Yuuji was there to throw three hard punches of his own. As a guy swung a pipe at Yuuji’s back, Megumi was there to kick in his knees so that Nobara could break his nose. And eventually, the next guy started to slow his appearance.
Not all of the thugs were unconscious, and some were trying to find the strength to keep going. But Yuuji, Nobara, and Megumi were grouped together without any immediate threat, the stairs just to their left with a clear exit. They were still vastly outnumbered, making this possibly their only chance to escape.
“Let’s go!” Yuuji said through his heaving breaths, grabbing Megumi’s hoodie and pulling him along. He knew that Nobara would follow because she knew from boxing whenever a fight was actually lost. This was not the encounter to test whether or not Megumi had ever learned that same lesson, and he didn’t let go of Megumi until the three of them were at the top of the stairs again.
Back in the cold air of the night, they took a moment to catch their breath on the sidewalk. Nobara pressed her fingertips to her cheek, wincing whenever pain blossomed from the point she touched. All of them had taken a beating, and they needed to tend to their wounds far away from this place as soon as possible.
Megumi picked up his pace to an almost light jog as he led the other two to the car, and Yuuji spoke up loud enough for him to hear, “Thank you for coming, Megumi.”
“You act like he saved us from getting a beating,” Nobara jokingly complained.
“He saved us from getting killed is more like it,” Yuuji shot back, coughing and grabbing at his ribs from the pain of them being jostled. “God, that hurts.”
“I said I was going to regroup with you,” Megumi pointed out. “Besides, this is my fault.”
“What?” Yuuji asked, his eyebrow pushed up high.
“Satoru told us to leave it alone, and I didn’t listen. Now look at us.”
Yuuji scratched at the scar on his lower lip, ignoring his still fresh wounds in favor of the one he had formed a habit with. He was unsure how to respond to Megumi. It wasn’t as if they had learned any new information, either. They had just been beaten with the intent to kill before managing to escape with their tails tucked between their legs.
No one said anything else the rest of the way to the car or on the drive back.
* * * * *
Shoko Ieiri stopped smoking a long time ago.
At least, that was what she told everyone to keep them off her back about how it was a nasty habit that would kill her. As if she didn’t already know that. As if she hadn’t been force-fed pamphlet after pamphlet about the effects of smoking on her body and second-hand smoke on others. She couldn’t help that she had picked the habit up back in high school, and now the addiction had dug its claws deep into her. It was a comfort that she sought in some of her more stressful times.
That night just happened to have been one of those nights.
She slipped out of her side of the bed, stretching the stiffness and stress from her body. Sleep was not a friend to her that night, so Shoko padded as quietly as she could to the dresser across the room. She pulled open her middle drawer, still doing her best to be silent, and fished around until her hands found what she was looking for: a crumpled pack of cigarettes.
There was only one left, probably stale from how long ago the pack had been bought. Shoko really needed to quit. The windowsill next to the dresser was deep enough for Shoko to just barely perch on the edge of it. She bit the cigarette between her teeth as she lightly tugged at the window to open it — in the past, only ever able to get it cracked before it stuck and refused to open any further.
At the first rusty creak that resulted from her tugging, Shoko froze in place and listened to the sounds of the room. After a second or two of silence where she thought she would have been caught, a loud snore cut through and made Shoko huff out a laugh. She glanced over her shoulder at the bed, smiling softly to herself at the sight that greeted her.
Utahime’s dark hair spread out across the white pillowcases that she insisted upon, her face completely slack of any stress to the point that her mouth hung open with drool pooling out. She continued to snore softly, unaware that Shoko was lighting up a cigarette only a few feet away. The wrinkle that seemed to be a permanent fixture between Utahime’s brows was nowhere to be seen, a sight that Shoko allowed herself to drink in as she took a long drag. Smoke drifted out of her mouth in wisps, leaking out the crack of the window into the street.
Shoko had promised Utahime she would quit smoking, and she really was trying. Tonight just wasn’t that night.
Not when her phone began to vibrate on the bedside table, causing Utahime to let out another loud snore before stirring enough to roll over onto her back. Shoko cursed quietly as she rushed to pick up her phone and get back to the window. She took another drag while looking at the screen, promptly deciding to take an even longer inhale than intended as a white cat with round, black sunglasses stared back at her with each vibration.
She forced the smoke out of her lungs with a heavy sigh at the realization that she wasn’t smoking her last cigarette for the night.
* * * * *
When Nanami received a call in the middle of the night from a contact labeled ‘DO NOT ANSWER’, he knew himself well enough to realize he was going to answer anyway. He always would.
Even if it meant that he had to get out of his warm bed while still on the edge of sleep to wander around in the cold for the right address. Satoru had Ijichi send it over to him, but Nanami was having a difficult time locating the correct building. He knew he was in the right area, but that didn’t help him much whenever the situation was so dire.
It seemed that some supernatural force, perhaps even just plain luck, was on his side for once. As Nanami rounded the corner of another unlabeled block, he spotted the exact reason he had been sent out in the first place: a man wearing a baseball cap and a mask carrying an unconscious elderly man over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. The most attention catching part of the situation was how the elderly man’s wrists and ankles were duct tapped together, though.
A frown formed on Nanami’s face, and he reached for the wrapped weapon he kept strapped to the harness on his back. Judging by only the shape of it, anyone would think it was a cleaver that he planned to use for chopping and slicing. However, it remained wrapped tightly in white bindings dotted with black as Nanami picked up his pace in reaching the kidnapper — kidnappers, he realized as another man followed behind the first. Then another.
Three, pathetic excuses for humans that couldn’t even face an elderly man on their own.
They were all so unaware that none of them saw Nanami ducking down behind a car closest to the entrance of the building. The group continued down the sidewalk without a care in the world, one of them lagging behind the rest as he pulled down his mask and lit a cigarette. Nanami certainly wasn’t one to complain about their ignorance whenever it allowed him the opportunity to sneak up behind the smoker, even moving so fast as to hit a light jog.
“Hey,” he called out quietly to the one that lagged behind.
As soon as the smoker turned around, Nanami used the blunt edge of his weapon to hit him across the face. It was a powerful strike, immediately knocking him out. Nanami’s eyes narrowed at the sight of the man out cold at his feet, and he shook his head as he moved on to the others.
They had taken the elderly man and tossed him over the hood of a car for the time being, having noticed Nanami after their friend went down. One of them still had the mask covering his face, and the other had a chunk of dark bangs hiding one of his eyes. Neither looked as if they could actually fight, which Nanami simply nodded his head once to himself about. It would be a quick fight.
Ijichi hadn’t told him very much about the task other than an address and a descriptor of the elderly man that Nanami should have been on the lookout for. That only led him to believe that these were lower-ranking hires of little importance.
“Who the fuck are you supposed to be?” The one with the bangs barked out at him, grinning cockily. He really thought he had any semblance of a chance against Nanami.
“This is so fucking annoying,” the other one muttered. He pulled out a knife and flicked it open before rolling his eyes.
That’s how it’s going to be, then, Nanami thought to himself before taking a deep breath.
He barely blinked as he slowly approached the younger man with the knife. The closer that he got, the higher the knife was raised. Nanami noticed he still had that confident shine to his eyes, entirely misplaced. That was alright; it wouldn’t be there for much longer.
The lunge at Nanami was easily avoided, and a hand wrapped tightly around the younger man’s wrist. Nanami was behind him before he could comprehend it, no time left for him to escape from the blow to his arm. There was a loud crack as a result, and Nanami didn’t have to wonder if the bone was broken or not since the man immediately dropped his knife and started to cry out in pain. Nanami side-stepped around him, launching a rough elbow backwards and into the center of the other man’s chest. It caused the cries of pain to choke through the hacking of strained coughs.
When Nanami looked at the man who dropped to the ground while cradling his arm to his chest, that confident shine was nowhere to be seen. That was better. The only problem was that the younger man didn’t want to give up just yet. Nanami couldn’t understand such irrationality when there was a clear strength and skill difference. Further made clear whenever the guy pushed himself to his feet and launched a punch at Nanami with his non-dominant, unbroken fist.
It was sloppy and weak. Another attack that Nanami easily avoided, and he was less than kind the second time he grabbed the attacking wrist and wrapped around his enemy’s back. He threw the man face first onto the ground, planting one of his knees square in the middle of the guy’s back. Nanami ignored his screams as he wrenched the arm backward as far as it would go.
He had kept one hand around his own weapon through the whole scuffle. Nanami now drew it far to the side before slicing horizontally through the air and into the back of the guy’s elbow. The arm remained held for only the briefest of moments for Nanami to see the resulting damage. Resetting the bones for a break at that angle was going to be more painful than the initial break.
“Fuck!” The other guy still standing said, and Nanami’s eyes snapped up to find him.
Any cockiness that had been there before was wholly replaced by undeniable fear.
Nanami pushed himself off the guy beneath him as the guy with the bangs grabbed the elderly man from off the car hood. He took a deep breath, already realizing that he was going to have to give chase. Whatever Satoru owed Nanami for coming out in the middle of the night to handle an issue such as this one had doubled in price.
There was still the man screaming in pain at his feet to deal with first. Nanami groaned as he gave the man a swift kick to the jaw, hard enough for him to finally shut up when he was knocked unconscious. He looked up to search for the man with the bangs, and even just a few seconds of distraction had allowed him to carry the elderly man a good distance down the street. Nanami rolled his shoulders back before charging after them, his arms pumping in perfect square to his body.
The other man glanced over his shoulder once he heard the pounding footsteps of Nanami behind him, and he tried to pick up his pace as he muttered, “Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck!”
He had no way of escaping Nanami while carrying the extra weight. Not if Nanami continued to close the distance between them at his exponential pace. Watching the elderly man be thrown from the other guy’s shoulders as if he were nothing more than a bag of trash infuriated Nanami, and that was the boost he needed to catch up.
But the guy with the bangs had immediately run away down one of the side roads. Conflicted, Nanami slowed to a stop once he reached the elderly man, illuminated by the street lamp he had been tossed under. Nanami’s head snapped to the side that the kidnapper had run down, but then he looked back to the elderly man again. His chest heaving from the exertion of the fights and the run back-to-back, he knelt next to the elderly man and gently rolled him over.
Not only had his ankles and wrists been duct taped together, but his mouth had been covered with it as well. There was also a small wound across his forehead that bled slightly. Nanami couldn’t help but notice a fresh scar that was almost similar, and his eyebrows furrowed with the fury that rolled through him. It seemed that the elderly man was drugged rather than unconscious from his injuries. Neither was a good outcome, but it was better than having a brain injury.
For the time being, Nanami removed the duct tape from his mouth and tossed it to the side. “I’ll be right back, sir,” he said, then stood up and looked toward the side street.
Since it was downhill, he could clearly see his target still running straight down the same path. Every action these men took only further proved to Nanami that they lacked any kind of intelligence. Why had they been trusted with a job such as kidnapping when there were so many factors that needed to be considered for such a scheme?
Nanami pushed that thought away as he raced after the man with the bangs, his upper lip twitching whenever their eyes met. At least he knew he was prey and Nanami was the hunter who was coming for him. Running downhill was even easier than running across the flattened street had been, and Nanami caught up to the other man in half the time despite the even greater distance.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck!”
Leaning forward some as he ran, Nanami swung his wrapped, blunt weapon until it connected solidly with one of the other man’s legs. His leg went flying into the air as he lost his balance, and he fell onto his back hard enough to knock the wind out of him. Nanami slowed his momentum from running so fast down the hill, jogging as he turned around and made his way back.
“Who are you?!” The guy yelled at him from the ground.
He was given no answer as Nanami stalked angrily toward him, and he grinned whenever the other man started to crawl backward to get away from him. Instead of using his weapon as he had been for all of the fights so far, Nanami switched it to his offhand so that he could rear back his fist. It launched straight into the younger man’s face, and he fell backward onto the street clutching at his nose in pain.
Nanami walked up to his side and stomped onto his knee, pressing down even harder whenever he cried out. Pushing a hand through his blond hair, he bent down until he was close to the face covered by bloodied hands, and he noticed a beanie sticking out of the other’s jacket. After pulling it out, Nanami knocked away the other guy’s hands and shoved the beanie into his mouth.
“Shut your stupid mouth,” he bit out angrily. There was no response or attempt to remove the beanie, so Nanami threaded his hands through the long dark hair and yanked roughly. “Get up.”
Instead of allowing the other man enough time to get to his feet, Nanami continued to pull him across the street by his hair. The other guy was forced to try and crawl behind him, sometimes stumbling and crying out whenever he felt strands of his hair ripped from his scalp. The treatment continued until Nanami drug the guy into a dark alley off the street, hidden away from anyone who might have heard the commotion so far.
Exhaustion seeped into the guy as he softly cried to himself, no attempt made to get away from Nanami.
“Good. This will be easier if you don’t try to squirm,” Nanami said, positioning himself over the back of the younger man’s legs. He picked up one of his feet, pulling it back with the natural bend of his knee. Then he once more reared back his weapon, just as he had several times that night, and he swung it as hard as he could right below the ankle.
Any screams that the injuries drew out were muffled by the beanie, even as Nanami repeated the process on the other leg. After that, he was sure that his victim had passed out. He didn’t stop, though, going on to break both of the guy’s arms just as clinically as he had broken the legs.
* * * * *
A sleek, black motorcycle sped down a road illuminated by streetlights before screeching into a parking space along the sidewalk. Whenever the helmet was pulled off, Shoko shook out her hair and looked around. Ijichi had mentioned something about an underground tunnel, and her dark eyes narrowed whenever she found it. She deposited her helmet onto the motorcycle’s handle for the time being.
While making her way over to the stairs, Shoko pulled open her jacket just to double-check that she still had spare weapons in the one she tossed on. There hadn’t exactly been enough time to prepare whenever Satoru had called her in such a panic, concerned about Megumi’s safety.
Satoru might have been the one who raised Megumi, but he hadn’t been the only one to watch the kid grow up. Shoko refused to let him die doing something stupid, even if it meant she had to leave her apartment in the middle of the night. She hadn’t even woken Utahime up to explain where she was going. Shoko could only hope that she would make it back before she woke up, otherwise there was going to be hell to pay. Utahime’s yelling would probably wake the neighbors.
Shoko sighed at the thought as she silently shuffled down the stairs, one of her hands tracing down the railing along the wall. She slowed whenever she reached the bottom, her other hand creeping into the inside of her jacket to carefully pull out her blade of choice — a scalpel. Her index finger pressed firmly into the back of the blade as she leaned forward enough to peek around the corner.
What she saw more than surprised her.
Not only were there at least twenty to thirty men who had already started to leave out the other end of the underground tunnel, but they were all limping or nursing some sort of wounds. Whatever fight had happened down there was over quite a bit ago, and the ones that were there had clearly lost.
A proud smirk stretched Shoko’s lips before she could stop it, forgetting for a moment how annoyed she had been at Megumi.
“Look at that,” she mused quietly. The scalpel slipped back inside her jacket alongside the others, and she took a moment to lean against the wall to observe these men.
It seemed that Megumi and his friends had been more than capable of handling themselves, and she huffed out an amused breath before turning back around to leave the way she came. Shoko had barely made it halfway up when she noticed someone coming back down. One of her dark eyebrows arched curiously at him, and she fully planned to ignore him before he shouted out, “Hey! Who the hell are you?”
“Excuse me,” Shoko said dryly, trying to continue on her way up the stairs. The guy was much larger than her, though, and he didn’t hesitate to step into her path to block her. She took a measured breath before she looked up at him with a disinterested expression. “I seem to have taken a wrong turn.”
“I asked you a question,” the man said, apparently not buying her lie. He made the mistake of twisting his hand in the front of her shirt and trying to slam her up against the railing, though.
Shoko retrieved a scalpel from inside her jacket before the man could comprehend the speed, much less have any sort of reaction to stop her. She angled it so that whenever she pulled it out, the blade sliced along the bottom of his wrist. It was unfortunate that it meant a bit of his blood got onto her shirt since he had still been holding onto it. But he quickly let go whenever the overwhelming pain finally hit him, crying out even more whenever she jammed the scalpel straight into the meat of his thigh.
His balance dropped to one side dramatically from the wound, allowing Shoko to grab him by his hair and slam his head into the concrete wall. She gritted her teeth and with all her might slammed his head a second time into the railing. When she let go, there wasn’t a sound or a twitch of a muscle from the man. Shoko nodded her head satisfactorily before pulling him by the back of his jacket until he was positioned just right.
Another scalpel was removed from her jacket, the silver of it catching in what little light from the street filtered down the stairs. She pushed aside the back of the man’s pants and his socks until his Achilles tendon was exposed to her. Shoko remained unaffected as she cut through the tendon in a clean line. The man stirred some from the amount of pain he had to have been in, so she worked quickly to repeat the process on the other side.
Once she was done, Shoko stood up to admire her work, disposing of the scalpel by simply tossing it to the ground. Her gloves were dirtied now as well, so she tugged them off and shoved them into her jacket pocket for the time being.
“Sleep tight,” she said as she hopped back up the stairs, whistling to herself along the way.
* * * * *
Back at the bookstore, a heavy tension hung in the air thick enough that one might reach out and grab it. Yuuji, Megumi, and Nobara were spread out throughout the front of the store, each tending to their own wounds. They didn’t talk to one another, and it was quiet except for small hisses and moans of pain that came from them.
Whenever they first got there, Megumi had mumbled to the other two that there was a first aid kit in the back office. Yuuji and Nobara had almost expected him to bring out something small, maybe a few bandages for the worst of their cuts. They certainly hadn’t expected the large case that he lugged into the front of the store, dropping it onto the wooden table in the center of the room.
That was where Nobara currently sat, the remains of the first aid kit scattered across the table after the trio had picked most of the meat from its bones. Large piles of bloodied gauze had been collected into one area to pick up later, and several bottles of helpful creams and chemicals were uncapped and strewn about. She leaned toward a mirror with one eye squinted closed, a tube of numbing gel in one of her hands, and Nobara squeezed it along the cut above one of her eyebrows. The moment the gel touched her exposed skin, she winced and jerked her hand away slightly.
Off to the side, Megumi slumped into the couch where he could watch her work. He had a mug of steaming coffee, the ache in his busted knuckles chased away by the warmth. Some of the skin had already started to scab over, but there was a napkin nearby for the few spots that kept bleeding whenever he so much as flexed his bruised fingers. Megumi prodded at the bruises that decorated his jaw, wishing the couch would swallow him whole so he could escape the pain that throbbed throughout his body.
“What the hell?” Nobara and Megumi paused what they were doing to glance over to Yuuji. He stood in front of a mirror by Gojo’s desk, his shirt tossed over the chair so that he could get a look at all of his injuries. “When did I get this?”
Yuuji whispered the words to himself, completely lost in thought. He had twisted to one side and pulled at his own skin to see even more of the purple and red that blossomed in large patches across his back. There was more bruising than there was undamaged skin, and some of them had split open ever so slightly.
The blood didn’t stop at just splatters along his bruises, either.
It dripped from the cuts on his forehead, it beaded up through the splits in his lips, it clogged up his nose to thicken his breaths. The same breaths that were already hard enough for him to take, and Yuuji prodded at his ribs, immediately understanding why that was. He continued to twist and turn in any attempt he could to catalog all of his bruises and wounds. Each new one he spotted made his frown deepen even further.
He was oblivious to the way that Nobara and Megumi continued to watch him with matching frowns.
The sudden sound of Yuuji’s phone vibrating snapped all three of them out of whatever haze they had let settle over them. He wasn’t sure who would call him so late at night — or rather, so early in the morning, at that point. His eyebrows shot up in surprise whenever he saw Gramps plastered above a picture of the two of them. Yuuji didn’t wait any further to pick up, rushing out, “Hello?”
“Yuuji,” his grandfather breathed out, the sound coming out in such a rush that Yuuji was sure he had been holding his breath.
“Hey, what’s going on?” Yuuji asked, unable to stop himself from feeling concerned. His tone drew Nobara and Megumi’s full attention once more, the two of them sharing a curious glance for a brief moment. “What happened?”
“Someone wants to talk to you,” Gramps said instead of answering Yuuji’s questions.
His fist balled at his side, and Yuuji felt as if the world might crumble around him at any moment. He listened closely as the sounds of the phone being passed along came through.
“Where are you guys right now?”
All of the tension within him suddenly faded away, and Yuuji’s shoulders slumped in relief at the sound of Gojo’s voice over the line instead of someone else’s.
Within the next half hour, Megumi was pulling his car to a stop outside the gates of his and Gojo’s home. Both Yuuji and Nobara were plastered to their windows on the passenger side as they tried to get a better glimpse of the parts of the house visible over the tall fences. Megumi didn’t say anything as he got out of the car, and the slam of his door was enough to get the other two moving.
They followed behind him silently as Megumi unlocked the gate, holding it open for them to let them pass. After the night that they had, he made sure to lock it behind them. None of them were keen to walk much faster than their slow pace, though. There certainly wasn’t a celebration waiting for them inside.
Once the trio made it into the living room, Yuuji’s eyes immediately found Gramps sitting on the couch. He wore a sour expression, and his arms were crossed over his chest. It was a sight that Yuuji was more than familiar with from his younger years — the same expression that Gramps wore whenever Yuuji was in trouble.
He didn’t care, though.
Yuuji rushed to his grandfather’s side, and he lifted one of his hands to gently touch the edges of the bandage on Gramps’ forehead. His eyebrows furrowed whenever he asked, “What happened here?”
Gramps swatted Yuuji’s fingers off his forehead and scoffed. Then he replied, “I just bumped my head into something. It’s nothing.” Yuuji had to look away as tears started to well up in his eyes. In his peripheral vision, Gramps must have caught sight of Yuuji’s own injuries, because he turned to face him fully. “What happened to your face?” He noticed Nobara and Megumi standing off to the side awkwardly, and Gramps’ eyebrows shot up whenever he realized they were all in a similar state. “Kugisaki, what happened? Your face! Who did that to you?”
One of Nobara’s hands raised to try and hide her injuries, and she refused to meet Gramps’ eyes as she said, “It’s nothing! I just… It’s just a scratch.”
Ijichi had patiently waited from one of the armchairs on the other side of the room, but he stood up and cleared his throat awkwardly.
“Gojo has been worried sick waiting for you. He’s downstairs.”
Despite his quiet manner, Yuuji was certain that there was a trace of anger that lurked beneath his words. Megumi must have sensed it as well, because he was quiet himself when he said, “Okay.”
“I’ll be back,” Yuuji told Gramps, who only waved them off before crossing his arms again.
The trio followed behind Ijichi, all of them hanging their heads the whole way down the stairs. Yuuji couldn’t help but try and sneak glances around the room whenever they reached the bottom. Gojo sat in a leather armchair next to a fireplace, his hand rubbing repeatedly over his mouth. Another small glance revealed the man from the other day at the bakery sitting on one of the couches. Yuuji didn’t know Nanami at all, but it was clear he was just as disappointed as Gojo, Ijichi, and Gramps were.
Gojo’s head snapped toward them whenever he heard their footsteps, and he barked out, “Come here and sit down!”
It was truly the angriest that Yuuji and Nobara had heard him so far, and that was when the extent of how badly the three of them had fucked up hit them.