Chapter Text
Sigma didn't take their eyes off Fyodor, even as blood soaked his uniform through and he slumped to the floor. He didn't feel anything as the man writhed like a fish out of water, the tiles now stained red.
With a look of immense disdain, Danny stepped over Fyodor and held out a hand towards him. Sigma didn't think this would work. At least, not the way Danny wanted. There were so many ways this could go wrong.
But there wasn't time for gloating, and there certainly wasn't time for second guessing.
So Sigma took Danny's hand, crouched to touch Fyodor's forehead and
felt
his world
drop away
and they thought
no more
Danny didn't expect Fyodor's mind to be so... empty. Blank. He'd been alive for so long, surely his subconcious would have a more corporeal form than a white void?
"You kill me, then decide to mock how my mind works in my last dying moments? I am hurt, truly."
And there stood the rat bastard himself, sat on the floor criss-cross-applesauce and clutching his bullet wound. Not that it would do him any good.
"I ought to say worse," Danny huffed, stepping closer. His footsteps echoed strangely. "Shibusawa, Hawthorne, Stoker, Fukuchi, none of these plans have worked, Fyodor. Are you sure you aren't going senile in old age?" Fyodor just smiled through gritted teeth. "I would disagree on Stoker. You see, the vampirism has proceeded just as intended."
"Oh, so you meant for the guy who can control metal to be there?" Danny nodded in faux contemplated, really wanting to rub salt in the wound. "I suppose your thought process is beyond my comprehension."
Fyodor gave up on pretending to smile and resorted to bearing his teeth in a grimace. "What do you want."
It wasn't a question, but Danny was going to answer it like one just to drive him up the wall. "I want you to bleed out in slow agony and know that all you've worked for has been for nothing. The atrocities, the killings, the manipulation, the Book. You'll die, and you won't come back this time, and I want you to suffer."
Danny kicked out, knocking Fyodor onto his back. The blood was spread enough to form a halo around the man's head. Heh. The irony of it all. Fyodor's God could not reach them here, and would not be saving him.
"I'm not usually a cruel man." His voice was cold, his words hanging frigid in the air. "But you threatened my children, Dostoevsky. You should have learnt by now the lengths people are willing to go for their children. So I am going to kill you with my bare hands, watch the light fade from your eyes and know that my children will be waiting for me when I leave here."
"You'll only doom yourself."
"Being in here when you die?"
"Killing me. You know how my Ability works, don't you? It's a fight between souls--"
Danny knelt to the ground beside Fyodor's rapidly paling soon to be corpse and grinned. "Nah, I'd win."
And with that, he wrapped his hands around Fyodor's neck. That startled a reaction into him, his own hands clawing at Danny's. But he'd already lost so much blood, and Fyodor was hardly known for his physical prowess. Danny could feel him trying to swallow, trying to gasp for a breath that would never come. He knew he should feel disgust, revulsion, but only felt determination as he tightened his grip.
Fyodor's eyes rolled back into his head and his pulse faded away. The mindscape began to splinter around them but he could only smile.
Danny had fulfilled his promise of killing Fyodor Dostoevsky with his bare hands.
When Danny 'woke up', so to speak, he opened his eyes to the ceiling of Anne's Room. He was spending a lot of time in here, apparently. "Oh thank god you're okay!" A voice exclaimed beside him, and he turned his head to find Sigma sitting beside him, anxiety painted across every feature.
"What did I miss?" He asked, tongue feeling strangely tacky, like waking up in desperate need of a drink. Sigma scrunched up their face, looking like they'd eated something unpleasant.
Danny followed his gaze and blanched.
The clown was dancing with the rat's corpse and Lucy was feeding Nathaniel Hawthorne to her Ability.
Not a sentence I'd ever imagine thinking, Danny thought to himself whilst simultaneously wishing for brain bleach and wondering when Lucy had caught Hawthorne. "Are you feeling alright?" Danny's head jerked up at those dulcet tones.
Dazai was still covered in his own blood, but he looked better than he had immediately after the elevator crash. When had they time to patch him up? "How long have I been out?" Danny asked Sigma, ignoring Dazai's question and the inevitable whine that followed. "Not long, only twenty minutes or so." Danny let out a sigh of relief and let himself drop back onto the floor. He was exhausted. Or would fatigue be a better word?
His mind was sluggish, and his hands ached from the death-grip he'd had Fyodor's neck in.
His breath stuttered.
If he still had control of his own body, that meant Fyodor was well and truly dead.
He had killed a man twenty minutes ago. A terrible man, but a person all the same.
Danny didn't know how to feel. Neither, apparently, did Sigma. "He was my creator, abuser, saviour and tormentor. I don't know what to do without him," he admitted in a guilty whisper. "The Sky Casino no longer serves a purpose, and I am a mere discarded pawn."
"The Agency would take you."
Dazai gave him an amused look. "My, Motta-san, how forward of you, inviting him to the Agency so soon. And speaking on our behalf too!"
Danny just stared right back, dead-pan. "I'm on the pay-roll, you took in Kyouka-chan no problem, you quite literally dragged Atsushi-kun in off the streets. I mind-melded with this person several hours ago, I think I'm the best person to determine whether or not he's suitable. Besides, Fukuzawa-sama's never been able to resist a stray." Danny added, trying to lighten the mood upon catching sight of how Sigma's eyes had gone watery. "You'll have a home and a purpose while you take the time to figure out what you want out of life." "A family." Sigma admitted, not looking at either of them. A now familiar warmth spread across his chest; a mix of empathy and fondness. He really was dealing with a lot of traumatised children recently. (Was Sigma a child? He was three years old, and had been isolated by Fyodor. Their mental faculties seemed to be intact, but they hadn't experienced the world. Not innocent or naive by any means, but with a strange childish melancholy hanging around him.)
"I think you'll find that that's what the Agency is in everything but name," Dazai laughed, a rare glint of joy in his eyes.
"There you have it. Welcome to the Armed Detective Agency, Sigma-san."
Ryuunosuke woke to blood in his mouth and a warm body beneath him.
The weretiger (Atsushi, his name was Atsushi, he'd been given permission to use it) was on the ground, bleeding out from a vicious wound in his neck. Ryuunosuke tasted the copper staining his teeth - sharp, too sharp, his teeth had never been his sharp - and knew at once that he was the one responsible.
"Jinko?" He whispered hoarsely, moving as quickly as he could to untangle their limbs and apply pressure to the wound. His joints ached and his lungs protested, but he fought back a barrage of coughs in favour of lifting Atsushi into a sitting position. The moron (his moron, his his his) finally opened an eye and smiled weakly. "Oh, Aku... You're okay." "You are perfectly capable to holding your own against me, why did you succumb so easily?" Ryuunosuke asked, shirking off his coat to lay over Atsushi. He was getting cold, and the tiger should have healed the bite marks in his neck by now. What was taking it so long?! "Kyouka-chan got hurt, and you got the jump on me," he explained, and snuggled happily into Ryuunosuke's hold. "'M glad you're not a vampire anymore." He mumbled sleepily, and Ryuunosuke could only blink in confusion. Vampire? What was Jinko on about? Delirious from blood-loss, perhaps? "Don't fall asleep, Jinko," he reprimanded instead of questioning him further. "You need to stay awake. Your father swore to kill me if anything happened to you under my watch."
As Atsushi grumbled halfheartedly, Ryuunosuke took a chance to look around and gather his barrings.
His first instinct was to assume they were in a war zone. His second glance registered the place as an airport, but the third sweep agreed that it was a war zone. There were corpses and strewn concrete everywhere, and people in similar positions to himself and Atsushi. They were positioned behind a counter with that red head girl from the Guild, Elise, Q, Kyouka, Edogawa, another red head child, Tachihara and a man with no arms or legs who was impaled on a sword. Quite the motley crew. He should have expected nothing less from the Armed Detective Agency. To his surprise, he noticed that Chuuya was also present, along with the blond farmer boy from the Agency. They were moving rubble and helping injured civilians. Oddly enough, that man who Motta was living with, the one from the Guild, was present also and picking a book from the ground. Had he used his Ability to capture whatever threat had caused this?
He was shook from his observations when the sounds of wheels on tarmac filled the air. The children around him stiffened, and he was filled with the inexplicable urge to hide them behind himself. Jinko and his father were making him soft. Chuuya, however, looked relieved, and walked to the hole in the glass wall to greet whoever it was.
Ryuunosuke shook his head and returned to making sure Atsushi didn't get himself killed by his own idiocy. The wound was finally healing, the flow of blood halting and the wounds beginning to shrink and scar over. (He didn't have any scars from the countless times he'd been amputated, why did he have scars from this? How could Ryuunosuke face his love ever again and not be reminded of how he nearly killed his lover whilst lacking control of his body?) Atsushi frowned, and bapped Ryuunosuke on the nose. "You're making that face again." "What face?" Ryuunosuke scoffed, leaning back when the weretiger tried to do it a second time. "The 'I'm an emotionless lawnmower who doesn't care about anyone or anything except getting the job done' face," he replied confidently. "You say the strangest things, Jinko." Ryuunosuke tutted, shifting his weight so he could sit with his back against the wall beside his partner and still keep an eye on how his healing progressed.
"I'm not making any face. Besides, that is not possible."
"It is!"
"The human face is not capable of conveying such specifics in an single expression."
"You only think that because Dazai-san was emotionally constipated!"
Their bickering distracted them from noticing that the Port Mafia and the rest of the Armed Detective Agency had arrived.
Danny stumbled when Lucy pulled them her Ability and it took everything in him not to fall flat on his face and look like a fool.
Thankfully, Dazai did, so no one noticed when Danny swayed to the side in exhaustion and relief that everyone was alive and well in front of him. Atsushi and Ranpo were looking worse for wear, but Yosano was patching everyone up so he assumed there was nothing to worry about. He was surprised to see that Bram Stoker was a shish kebab and that Edgar was happily chatting to him as though nothing was at all strange about any of this. The Agency and the Port Mafia were mingling, and Danny noticed that the Tanizaki siblings were holding a hushed conversation with... Higuchi and Gin? What? Then he realised that Akutagawa and Atsushi were sitting on the floor beside them and arguing and decided that he wanted nothing to do with whatever they were planning. For all he knew it was a repeat of that weird date his kids had set him, Ranpo and Edgar on.
Snickering as Chuuya marched over to berate Dazai, Danny took stock of the rubble and the injured civilians, and who had turned up to the airport on such short notice. Chuuya and Ranpo were here, so that meant...
"OTOUSAN!!!" Several high-pitched voices yelled at once, and Danny ended up flat on his ass as his kids barreled into him. Lucy snorted, the traitor, and Sigma just hovered there awkwardly, not knowing what to do.
Danny looked down at the children now in his lap. Kyuusaku was sobbing their heart out, Kyouka was pale and trembling like a leaf and Elise was viciously wiping at her eyes to stop the tears. "You're all okay?" He asked, tugging them close. He was too tired to care about his clothes being ruined by little kid snot. "I used my Ability," Kyuu whispered like a damning curse once the hiccuping calmed down. "Even though I promised not to." "Did you have a good reason?" Danny asked, maneuvering his hold on the children to brush Kyuu's hair out of their face. "Ranpo-san got attacked, but then I accidentally used it Kyouka-neechan." Danny's head whipped around to study Kyouka. "Are you alright?" Kyouka nodded into his chest, her words muffled. "It hurt, and scared me, but I know it was an accident."
Danny smiled and ruffled Kyuu's hair, knocking their hat askew. "No harm no foul, squirrel. You didn't mean to hurt Kyouka, and you saved Ranpo. If anything, I think they should all be thanking you." Elise sniffled and raised her head. "Atsushi-kun got hurt by Akutagwa-aniue, but he's okay now, and Ed-san got the Commander and stopped the vampires." Danny felt his eyebrows raise. "Did he now?" His respect for his roommate grew more every day.
"Ever the enigma, Motta-san." A familiar voice crooned, one that used to make his blood boil. Danny looked up to find Ranpo and Edgar making their way over. Sigma went a bright pink, looking back and forth between them before announcing: "I'll just... be over here" and scurrying away. Danny frowned, what was that about?
Ranpo happily dropped to the ground beside him, ignoring Ed's worried warnings about moving so much after getting injured. "Have you heard tales of Ed's valor yet?" Ranpo asked, dramatically draping himself across Danny's shoulder. Danny just rolled his eyes and made room for the man-child. "He single-handedly took on the man leading the vampires!" Ranpo declared, much to Edgar's embarrassment. "Really now?" Danny asked with a grin, just to see Ed get flustered and hide his face in his hair and collar. "My brave knights in shining armour, protecting my children so valiantly." The children in question let out several watery giggles and wiped their eyes, snuggling closer into his chest. He could hear Ranpo cooing right beside his ear. "You're hardly one to talk, when Dazai-san is telling everyone how you killed Dostoevsky with your bare hands," Edgar huffed, and Ranpo turned his smug gaze on him instead.
"How could you just forget to mention that!?" "We only just started talking!" Danny protested. "Besides, I had help!"
"You make no sense." Elise grumbled, squirming in his grip. "What even is your Ability anyway?"
Danny paused his argument with Ranpo to consider it. He never had named his Ability, had he? It had gotten forgotten in all the commotion, and it hadn't seemed important at the time. The name seemed to come instinctually to the Gifted, so why had he never thought about it?
It struck him then, like a bolt of lightening. Oh, it was so obvious!
What else could it be except--
"Honestly Brutal."