Chapter Text
“In the ADA,” Kunikida snapped, “torture is not a viable method of information extraction.”
He shoved Dazai off the victim–ah, the… poor individual who thought he could hide information from Dazai of all people, only to learn that not everyone in the Armed Detective Agency makes it their sole mission to be nice. “Is Kunikida jealous because I got answers and he didn’t?” Dazai asked, rhetorically, of course, although he knew Kunikida would respond.
“No,” Kunikida lied, glaring. “I’m angry because not only do you completely undervalue your own life, you also make it your life’s purpose to destroy everyone else’s lives too. Including–” he jabbed a figure at the whimpering body on the ground–“suspected criminals.”
“I got the information,” Dazai said dismissively. “If you have a more efficient method, I would love to hear it.”
Kunikida did not have a more efficient method. Dazai knew this because if there was a more efficient method, he would have discovered it by now.
And then Kunikida said a sentence he would never utter again: “The point isn’t efficiency, Dazai.”
Honestly, people should write these things down. Put it in the record books. Attention, all: Kunikida said that the point was not, in fact, efficiency. Incredible. Dazai would applaud, but Kunikida would likely respond poorly to that.
“The point is morality. Look, I don’t know where you came from and I don’t care, but here in the ADA our priority is always helping people, even people who undoubtedly have committed crimes. Do you understand?”
Dazai shrugged. “If you feel so strongly, I suppose.”
Kunikida, predictably, glared at him. “It’s not–” He cut himself off with a sigh, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose with two fingers and holding them there so they pressed into the spot between his eyebrows. He must have given himself a headache. “I can’t have this conversation right now. Take it up with the president, for God’s sake. I’m getting this guy to Yosano. You can find your own damn way home.”
“Excellent,” Dazai said, nodding. “I’ve been meaning to scout out the rivers around here. Do you know of any deep enough to die in?”
“No,” Kunikida snapped, hauling up the half-dead criminal and marching off. “Please refrain from telling me if you find any.”
“I’ll give you a detailed list!” Dazai called cheerfully after him, but Kunikida steadily ignored him until he was fully out of sight.
The moment he had gone, Dazai let his uncaring facade drop and examined the alley thoroughly. The criminal’s blood was in a misshapen puddle on the ground, obscuring the concrete. He had been, Dazai was relatively certain, one of the lower members of the Port Mafia, although that was all over for him now, given how much he’d just revealed. Regardless there wouldn’t be much to deduce from the area. He gave it a thorough search anyway and found only a Mafia-issued gun and a slip of paper with an address. Dazai memorized the address, checked the paper for hidden codes, and burned it. No use leaving something like that out.
He supposed he should head back to the office, lest Kunikida think he actually had found a river to drown in and went hunting for him. Dazai wasn’t going to look at rivers today, both because he already knew all the best ones in the area, and because today didn’t feel like a good day to die. That urge came and went. Today he was curious about their mission, and so he wanted to finish it. Dying would completely ruin that.
But he didn’t particularly want to meet with the ADA again just now. People never understood him the way he hoped they would, and the ADA had been just another addition to a long list of disappointments. When he’d first joined a few months ago, Yosano took one look at his bandages and hinted that she could remove the scars. It was evident that Fukuzawa wondered actively, although he never said it out loud, whether Dazai was in fact human at all. And Kunikida worried altogether too much.
There weren’t many things Dazai missed about working with the Port Mafia, but the things he did miss were incredibly potent. For example, he missed easy methods of information gathering. No one cared about a little torture in the Port Mafia. In fact, it was encouraged! Dazai himself had endured several of their torture techniques and had found them to be quite effective, although they never succeeded on him, of course.
The other benefit of the Port Mafia was they not only accepted extensive trauma, they encouraged it. People didn’t ask questions like, “How are you feeling today?” or “Why did you just take all your neverending rage out on that random civilian?” It was just understood that you were feeling like shit, and you needed to put your rage somewhere , so why not on a nearby pedestrian?
But in the ADA, there was none of that. These crazy people cared for each other. It was horrible. Dazai didn’t want people to ask him questions about his choices, he didn’t want them wondering about his deep, dark backstory, and he didn’t want them to pretend to understand how he was feeling. No one could understand how he was feeling. Not even Dazai could understand how he was feeling.
No one could since Oda.
But thinking of Oda always left a wrinkled pit in his stomach, one so uncomfortable it must have come from a sour peach or plum. Ugly and deformed. Dazai had been avoiding addressing that feeling for over a year now, ever since Oda’s bloody hands had dug into Dazai’s hair, ever since he’d made Dazai promise…
But Dazai didn’t want to think about any of that. As far as he allowed himself to remember, he had spent his entire life alone, and he would quite happily continue that. Oda had nothing on him. Dazai had never cared for anyone or anything, and so he had nothing to mourn.
The alley was devoid of evidence or clues. He turned to leave and froze, one foot hanging in the air as he faced down a very dirty, very furious, very small cat.
“Ah.” He put his foot down. “Hello.”
The cat hissed, muddy tail slashing back and forth.
For a second Dazai pictured himself rescuing this cat only to let it loose in the ADA office. He imagined, gloriously, the chaos that would ensue. Kunikida’s precious reports flying everywhere, Ranpo’s snacks effectively raided, Fukuzawa’s immense disappointment. It would be excellent.
He would have to capture this cat.
Well, Dazai had caught far more dangerous things. He pulled off his long brown coat, silently apologizing to it for what it was about to endure. The coat most certainly would not be the same after this.
Neither, most likely, would the cat.
Careful not to make any sudden or loud movements, Dazai approached.
The cat backed up toward the alley wall, growling, every hair on its back sticking straight up. It was clearly supposed to be menacing, but with how matted its hair was, it looked just like a dampened puffball.
This would have to be timed perfectly, but timing had never been a problem for Dazai. He waited until he was a foot away from the hissing cat and flared the coat like a flag in the wind. The cat, predictably, sprung away, allowing Dazai to neatly and elegantly sweep it up into his coat.
Sadly, the process was not nearly as neat or elegant as he’d intended it to be and did indeed require him to sacrifice his pride to dive on top of the cat in the middle of the alley, dirtying his bandaged forearms. But, in the end, the cat was caught, a yowling mass trapped in his coat, which hung from his hand. The cat attempted, unsuccessfully, to get out, little legs digging into the fabric, claws poking through.
It would be, Dazai mused, a very long trip home.
Before he did anything else, he checked over the bandages on his arms, making sure no skin was showing. The bandages were badly ripped and there was a mud stain across the right one, but neither were damaged enough that it had turned into an emergency.
Pleased, Dazai walked out of the alley, holding his coat away from his body by the bunch of fabric at the top as the cat pinwheeled around inside of it, screeching in displeasure.
Since Kunikida had faithlessly abandoned Dazai in the middle of the city, taking their one and only car, he would have to navigate the train system back to the office. Ordinarily this would be fine, but as it was, he was carrying a makeshift bag with a cat inside, and as such, he became the recipient of several weird looks before he had even gotten through the turnstiles.
“You’re very noisy,” Dazai told the writhing cat while they waited for the train.
It meowed petulantly.
The train arrived with a loud screech only bested by the cat’s aggravated howling. The lady standing next to Dazai sent his coat a concerned look and pulled her kid closer to her side. He flashed her a friendly smile as the cat released an ear-splitting yowl.
The subway was crowded, but holding an extremely irritated cat had its positives, because even though there was barely any standing room in the train, Dazai and his turbulent brown coat were given a wide berth. He enjoyed the space and began plotting out ways to pretend to have a cat on the train in the future, so he could continue this luxury.
After only two stops, the cat settled down, having tired itself out, which just wouldn’t do at all. It needed to be at full energy when Dazai deposited it in the office. Perhaps taking a pitstop at his apartment would be a wise choice so the cat could regain energy and Dazai could replace his torn bandages with clean ones. In the morning, when the cat had rested and was sufficiently unhappy, he would wrestle it into the ADA office and watch all hell break loose.
That appeared to be the best course of action. After all, the best plans took time to develop, especially ones with such great potential. Maybe he could set up some cameras overnight so he could get the entire occasion on video and sell it for good money to the few Port Mafia contacts he still had.
Dazai got off at his usual stop, walked directly past the entrance to the ADA office, and instead climbed into his apartment from the window, his preferred method of entrance, since it lowered the chances he would run into any other members of the Armed Detective Agency, and also, if he were to be seen, contributed to the image of chaos he was desperately trying to keep up.
Once inside, he did a quick sweep to make sure no one had broken in while he’d been gone, and to make sure Kunikida wasn’t waiting in the darkness to give him a strongly worded lecture. When neither were true, he returned his attention to the now-quiet bag in his arms.
The cat was far too dirty to be free in his apartment, and he didn’t necessarily want scratch marks everywhere either. Thus, the bathroom was the only place the volatile thing could safely be kept.
He carried it into the bathroom, eyeing the quietly growling mass at the bottom of his coat. The cat was certainly small. And very dirty. Maybe a bath would be helpful. The last thing he wanted was for the cat to die before the chaos planned for tomorrow morning. So, a bath, and some food, and then tomorrow he would dump the cat on Kunikida’s desk, step back, and watch the mayhem.
Although the chaos would certainly be better if the cat was horribly dirty.
But Dazai didn’t necessarily want to carry it again if it wasn’t clean. Plus, it smelled like garbage, and while Dazai could clean mud and alley germs off his apartment, getting bad smells out would be harder.
He sighed and deposited the cat in the shower, shutting the door between them as the cat, spitting, shot out from the folds of the coat and promptly ran directly into the glass door between them.
“Heh.” Dazai poked the glass with one finger. “How does it feel, facing the inevitability of fate?”
The cat made an angry hissing sound.
“What’s fascinating about that,” Dazai said, “is that those are my exact thoughts on it as well.”
The cat made a valiant attempt at escaping the shower, hunting for a way out. Dazai waited for it to be on the other side of the small room before easing the door open and turning the water on, setting it to lukewarm.
Unsurprisingly the cat expressed its immediate displeasure with a horrified yowl. The water pressed its fur down on the side facing the downpour. In its frantic efforts to get out of the shower, it only got itself more wet, until it was a tiny, dripping mess in the middle of the shower, muddy water swirling down the drain under its feet.
“This is called a shower,” Dazai said. “It is uncommonly used for the torture of small cats.”
The cat made a pitiful mewling noise.
Dazai sighed, silently bemoaning the health of his skin and the quality of his clothes before he opened the shower door and stepped in with the irate creature.
He was immediately attacked, the cat leaping for the exit, but he stepped easily to the side, shutting the door behind him and trapping them both inside the Chamber of the Torturous Downpour. When the cat realized the way was blocked, he hurried back across the small space to the least wet spot in the shower, the far corner. He backed into it and hissed at Dazai.
“I am a horrible excuse for a person,” Dazai agreed, wincing as the water soaked into his clothes and bandages, sticking both to his skin. Nothing was worse than wet bandages. “However, at the moment our interests are aligned. You don’t want to be disgusting. I don’t want you to be disgusting. So I humbly request that you cooperate with me and allow me to give you a bath.”
The cat growled.
Dazai reached up and took down the shower head, testing the lukewarm water with his palm. “While I’m aware that was not consent, unfortunately you are a cat and your opinion is invalid in this particular case. My deepest apologies.”
He turned the shower head on the cat.
It turned into a game of cat and mouse, only Dazai was the cat, the shower head was his claws, and the actual cat ironically was the mouse. While the feral beast ran around the small room, Dazai sprayed it continually, watching the water dripping from it turn progressively more clear. Eventually, the cat wore itself out and found a corner to die in, laying down miserably and ducking its head to protect what it could.
“Excellent,” Dazai said, following it into the corner. “Complacency.”
He crouched down next to the cat, carefully dropping a hand into its fur. It twisted to bite him, but it had tired itself out so much that Dazai saw it coming long before he was in any danger and caught its face, holding it still so he could properly wash it.
“Have you never bathed yourself?” Dazai asked, moving on from the cat’s head to card his hand through its soft fur. “Most cats are very insistent on staying clean. Are you the exception to that, noisy one?”
The cat made another half-hearted attempt at biting Dazai’s hand.
When it wasn’t covered in alley dirt, the cat was gray with black stripes. Dazai gently exposed its tummy, cleaning off everything the cat had been trying to protect before and checking over her health in the process. She had a few cuts and a missing claw from the looks of it, but as a whole she was in very good condition. Both of her ears were impressively intact. The lack of self-care was concerning, though. Maybe he’d ask Yosano to take a look tomorrow.
Not that he cared about the well being of this cat.
She hissed weakly as Dazai reached up and turned off the water.
“You have had a very exciting day,” Dazai said empathetically. He stood, dripping wet, and opened the door of the shower for his towel. Retrieving it, he crouched down next to the cat again and started patting her dry, massaging the towel into her fur. “And tomorrow will be another one, yes?”
The cat released a loud and protesting meow, clawing Dazai’s hand deep enough to draw blood. Dazai frowned, disentangling his hand. He examined the blood as it pooled on his skin, stinging slightly. The cat meowed again, and again, and again.
“You’re annoying,” Dazai said, and he knew he had found a (temporary, this was all temporary) name for his new cat.