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Though he was only a few hours in, and this was far from the worst state he'd ever been, Makoto felt somehow weaker than normal. He was drifting in and out of sleep and knew it wasn't just from the drugs he'd been given on his way over. It wasn't just because of the lack of food they'd provided. One of the times he'd come back into his head, he wondered if it was enough. There was no clock on the wall in the makeshift walk-in cooler they'd all been tossed into. Something like that would've been too kind.
But he knew at the very least the kid that had been there the longest had been there over a week. They could've been moved, they could've been transported, they might not have even been so cold before the boy on the ground had died and they needed to keep the body as fresh as possible for whatever evidence they were talking about when Makoto could hear them enter the room, rubbing at his hands with something he was too sleepy to recognize.
Makoto could tell he was tied together with someone, light hair and frail build. He wriggled still, as though he would be able to tear himself away, but eventually the struggling subsided. They had to only have been there hours, not even a day, when he could no longer keep himself silent.
"Hey..." he started, not recognizing his own voice behind the hoarse scratch. Makoto reached to kick at the boy with black hair, but he was far too weak to reach him properly. "You. You're a vampire, right?"
He closed his eyes, trying his best not to fall asleep. The cool air was really getting to him, the stress was too much, the sadness in his heart from seeing the death so close to him and the heavy feeling of lost hope choking him. "I... think. I can get us out of here."
Ritsu couldn't bring himself to pick his head up.
The teacher that had been tied to the body of the now-deceased youngest Knight had been doing his best to advise people to avoid looking at the body of one of Ritsu's closest friends, but unfortunately for him, telling people not to look didn't mean that Tsukasa wasn't dead. And still in the room with them, no less. Because what was a little bit more psychological torture piled on top of the rest of it, really? What difference did it make to them? They shut up the one kid that had been doing his best to attempt to keep their spirits high in this shit hole. Of course they wouldn't care that they were forcing his friends to sit with his dead body as it decayed, as blood trickled out of the gunshot wound in the back of his head and stained the floor with the same red as his head of hair.
Being sat so far away from Arashi made Ritsu feel helpless.
He couldn't console her as she wept.
He couldn't save Tsukasa.
He couldn't do
anything.
So he didn't pick his head up. He didn't look at the body. He didn't acknowledge the scene before him, instead sitting in the world behind his eyes, unmoving and still and wishing for peace he was fairly certain wouldn't come.
Until his shoe was knocked into.
The newer boy they'd grabbed. The one they'd only thrown in a few hours ago, tied to the blonde guy that ran the sex shop. It took a minute for Ritsu to comprehend what he'd said, and even then, he found himself extremely skeptical. How did this guy think he was going to get them out, exactly? He'd been here all of five minutes. What did he think he had to offer that the rest of them hadn't already tried?
Maybe it was the small, far-fetched hope that he was telling the truth that made Ritsu answer.
"... Yeah." None of his usual playful lilt, long since crushed into dust. "How?"
"If you hurt me... my shadow will come." Makoto wasn't about to mince words, nor was he going to sugar coat it. He knew there wasn't much strength in him, he knew there wasn't much time, he knew it was torture especially for those who he overheard say they knew the dead boy on the ground.
"I have to be really hurt. And all of our hands are bound, and... I don't know if I could hurt myself enough."
His... shadow.
Ritsu wasn't going to pretend to understand what that meant. Different things meant different things to people from all walks of life here. He wasn't about to try to decipher what the hell that would entail when he was powering himself solely through willpower and the knowledge that losing two friends in one sitting would kill Arashi.
He simply blinked at the blue haired boy as he put together the pieces of what he was insinuating.
"... You want me to bite you?"
"...yeah." Makoto made a poor attempt to get the hair out of his eyes, but it still remained over both of them without the help of his hand. "Were... any of you guys here last Halloween?"
There was one thing he had to warn them about, though, and he wasn't about to do this without letting them know. If he got hurt and Ryoji flew in thinking they were all to blame for his poor state, it could be ugly, but hopefully he could hang on for that long. "The guy who did all of that. You know, all of it. That's my shadow.”
The guy who nearly wiped this place out of existence was this guy's 'shadow'? Well, fuck, Ritsu hoped that someone with power like that would be strong enough to get them out of a fucking warehouse. If he had the strength to collapse buildings unknowingly, lord knows what he could do intentionally.
Ritsu sighed.
He wanted to get them out of here. God, he wanted to get them out of here. He wanted to put this entire experience in some ugly corner of his mind and forget about all of it. But his stomach swirled with a feeling that he couldn't quite place. Some weird mixture of excitement and disgust, if he had to name it. He far from loved this idea, but a primal part of him... didn't. Which would be concerning, had he the energy to be concerned about it.
If it got them out, it got them out.
"... You're too far away for me to reach."
Yeah, that was a problem. Makoto couldn't really see the guy tied up with him, nor was he wiggling much anymore, so... "I'm not very strong. Can someone push us? Can you help me get over there?"
That's all he could really say because there wasn't much else to say. The guy would have to find his way over or he'd have to get the other one to roll with him. And Makoto wasn't sure how well that would go, or how long it would take. Especially considering they seemed to be checked on pretty regularly.
From his place tied together with Narukami, Shu released the pinky he'd laced with hers. They'd lingered in their state of sorrow for long enough, as it were. If there was a chance for them to get back out into the light again, if it meant getting home to his husband and to her best friend, he was going to place himself into the situation and finally be brave for once. "You. Brute. Kick him over there before those monsters come back."
He wriggled Arashi so that she knew it was her he was talking to.
Good thing she'd been wiggled. It wasn't like Arashi was paying attention to anything going on around them. She was doing her best not to, after all -- looking at Tsukasa-chan's body for longer would wreck her, and she was far from up for idle 'pass-the-time-in-this-dungeon' chitchat right about now. She blinked herself back into brain and mustered up the tiniest, Arashi-esque pout at being called such a name.
"I can try." The voice that came out of her was foreign, the sound of it alone making her stomach twist uncomfortably. One of the men that'd been thrown in here had a phobia of women, she knew that much, and she'd been limiting her speech as much as possible so as not to trigger a panic attack in him. Squirming forward to the best of her ability, she nudged Ritsu with her foot, shooting him an apologetic look as she did so.
It worked, though. She hadn't closed the gap completely, but they were a little bit closer now.
Ritsu could almost hear the guy that he was tied to groan in protest, but if he was annoyed by Arashi's kicking, he didn't say anything about it. In fact, between the two of them (her insistent nudging and his likewise attempts to scoot them forward,) he was close enough now to bite this kid and get the fuck out of here.
God, he didn't want to. He really, really didn't want to. And he really didn't like the voice in his head that was so eager to do this, despite his own, logical hesitance. Ritsu had only ever bitten -- and drunk from -- Mao, and the two of them were close enough to where Mao would push him off if he didn't like the way that it felt anymore. This guy looked like he had no life left in him to begin with. He'd have to be super careful, he'd have to be super delicate, he'd have to ignore that fucking voice that felt like it was only getting louder.
"You're positive this'll get us out."
"Yeah, positive. He can tell when I'm hurt." Makoto leaned to let him for a moment, then let out a long sigh. It was painful enough knowing what he was about to do, but there was one other thing he had to voice. "...this might kill me, though."
Makoto sat there, silently, then breathed out another, heavy sigh. "It's fine."
He was going to die soon anyway, likely in the next couple of months, so he may as well throw the rest of it out for people that didn't deserve to lose theirs. Especially those who had to witness the death of who apparently was a really strong, sweet guy. Makoto was sure he'd seen him around before. Maybe at the school. Maybe that Tsumugi guy had pointed him out on the big screen one of the times they hung out, he couldn't remember.
He didn't want to look at him long enough to figure out who it was.
"If I do die... it's not your fault."
Then I'm not doing it. I'm not killing somebody. I'm not letting someone else die while we're in here. I can't. I'm not going to. I refuse.
"Okay."
Ritsu leaned forward, shook his hair out of his face, and bit down.
He balled one hand up into a fist, certain that the man tied to him could feel the way that it shook as it tightened. He resisted his urge to suck for as long as he could, even with the taste of blood flooding his mouth, but the instinct was too strong to hold him back for forever. The metallic taste he hadn't even known he'd been yearning for lit up a sense in him that he'd tried, clearly fruitlessly, to bury. All he had to do was hurt him. He didn't have to continue to feed from him, but he didn't want to stop, he needed to stop-
-
Makoto.
Something was happening to Makoto.
Something was hurting him, he was injured, something was wrong-
Ryoji sat up so fast in bed that he practically gave himself whiplash. It didn't take him more than two seconds to be clamoring out of bed, to be reaching for his shoes that wouldn't touch the ground, to be adjusting the long scarf he rarely ever took off around his neck. He explained to his husband as he paced, collecting things he was sure he wouldn't need, wings unfurling from his back as if they hadn't simply materialized out of his back seconds earlier.
"Makoto's hurt." That was all he needed to say, really. He was certain Shinji would understand his urgency from his movements alone. "I'm going to see what's happening. I'll let you know when I know."
-
Dying wasn't so bad. It felt like he was just falling asleep, even if it hurt a hell of a lot more. His heart was beating painfully in his chest, as though it was giving up, his blood pulling through his veins like it was made of slow-oozing lava.
Makoto closed his eyes, not making a single sound as the bite went too deep, as the loss of blood became too much. It wasn’t this guy’s fault for blood being too good or whatever, he had already confirmed he was a vampire. And Makoto could feel somewhere deep within that Ryoji was on his way. Help would arrive soon, but he had to keep holding on until he saw him... Ryoji deserved an explanation at least. So when the shadows seemed to get darker in one of the corners of the room, he reached out weakly to it.
It didn't take long for Ryoji to find where Makoto was.
He slithered his way through the shadows. He flew through open plains of land where there was nothing to cast shadows. Wherever he'd gotten off to, it was about as far off the beaten path as physically possible. Somewhere as far away from civilization as it could possibly be. When he arrived at the warehouse, seated comfortably on the border where the two bubbles met, the pieces that Ryoji'd been picking up clicked into place.
Makoto had been kidnapped.
The tether with him had been tugging all day, getting uncomfortably far as the night had been coming to a close. He had tried to ignore it. He had tried to figure that Makoto was taking a trip, and that he hadn't responded to texts because he'd fallen asleep on public transport, or something to that effect.
He had been wrong to ignore it. But he'd make up for that now.
As he took form in the small room, Ryoji let out a demonic screech, eyes immediately fixated on the boy attached to Makoto's neck.
Ritsu's eyes went wide.
He didn't know what to expect when this kid had described his 'shadow', but he didn't expect whatever the hell was staring at him like it was about to cut him in two. The fear was enough to knock him out of the dazed enjoyment that this disgusting feast had been bringing him, enough to make him attempt to scramble away from the scene of the crime that he was clearly the criminal in. The sounds of his own hyperventilation barely reached his ears, even less so with the cacophony of sounds that erupted around him from the other clearly-frightened captives littering the room.
He didn't know what to do. What the fuck was he supposed to do?!
"...don't hurt him," Makoto croaked, barely a whisper, just enough for Ryoji to hear him. He was fading, bleeding onto the ropes connecting him and the man he was attached to, but the tether that brought Ryoji and himself together was tied somehow even tighter.
The sorrow of having to leave him again was worse than the way he felt himself slipping, but it was almost comforting knowing he would be done with whatever the hell drifting he was doing in this world. Knowing he was done being a damsel in distress. That he was done having to stick his neck out, and that he finally was able to see the fruits of his labor. At least Makoto could die knowing he did save them, at least partially.
"...please." He wasn't sure when he was disconnected from the blonde, or how Ryoji got him out of the binds so quickly, but he was somehow in his arms the next time he was able to open his eyes. "...save..."
Oh, Makoto.
So self-sacrificial. Always so self-sacrificial. He'd give his life a million times to save the life of just one other person. That was the way he was meant to be, wasn't it? A person like him wasn't meant to last in any world. He was too good for all of them. Ryoji should have known that this had to be his idea; of course he'd come running the second that his innate alarm bell began to ring. Screaming at the kid he'd used to aid him probably didn't serve to do anything but tack something else onto the list of traumas he'd surely been accumulating. Ryoji'd apologize for that later.
It took mere seconds for him to unbind him from the blonde man he'd been tied to, and only a handful more for him to scoop Makoto's fading form into his arms. He pressed a gentle kiss to his other half's forehead, and he ignored the tears that stung his eyes.
"I will." God, how he wished he could be more tender. How he wished there wasn't a time limit imposed on them. This wasn't how this was supposed to go. Not in this world, not in any world. Deep within him, he wished they'd meet again, in a world where things maybe wouldn't turn out like this. "... I love you. Thank you for being the hero you're always meant to be."
Hifumi wasn't about to get in the middle of this... love.. fest? Whatever this was, between this demon and dying boy. They weren't about to ask. They really didn't want to know. So, with a nod of thanks to the... whatever this creature thingy was, he scurried off as quietly as possible. One by one, he visited each pair, freeing them from their binds just as he'd been freed.
He didn't know what was going to become of them, but with all of them untied, at least they'd be able to fight back.
With another gentle kiss to Makoto's forehead, Ryoji gently laid him to rest on the ground. He'd revisit him in a moment.
As much as he wished to shelter him, there was a bigger task at hand.
The guards were filtering in again. They shouted, they screamed, they cursed. They pointed their weapons at the group of human beings who far from deserved any of this kind of treatment. They threatened to shoot if the now-freed group didn't comply with their demands, one of them in particular asking if "they'd all like their heads blown open like that little fucking friend of theirs."
Ryoji waved his hand, materializing a force field around the kidnapped.
This had gone on long enough. He was tired. They were tired. He wasn't about to drag this on for longer than he had to. It wasn't as though these shitheads deserved any kind of hearing out, anyway, and he didn't have the time nor the energy to fuck around with them.
One Almighty attack was all it took to blast through them. They deserved far worse, and he knew that -- but atomizing them would suffice, and blowing a hole in the structure they were contained in was convenient.