Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Ryuji really thought he was going to die yesterday. He’s honestly amazed he isn’t dead. He spent the entire school day yesterday and most of his time at home spacing out, constantly questioning if he made it out of there alive or if this was his mind playing tricks on him as he laid bleeding out on the ground somewhere.

Then he woke up. Tuesday, April 12th. Better get to school now, don’t want to be late and get crapped on by the faculty again. Text mom good morning and good luck at the hospital today, hope you don’t end up there on a stretcher later.

Ryuji dresses himself automatically, pours a bowl of sugary cereal and fill it with milk on routine. Crunches the grains and sweetness between his teeth and hears razor-sharp fangs as long as his arm grinding through a knight’s armorclad arm. Put down the spoon and put his head in his hands and breathe through the panic.

He’s struggling to process it. All of it. The school turning into a castle, Kamoshida deciding to let his freak out and let it all dangle (honestly that might be the most mentally scarring thing Ryuji’s seen, and he’s seen some shit), his classmate (the new transfer student who, apparently, had a criminal record) turning into a giant winged thing (did he get caught turning into that before and get arrested or something???) and deciding to chow down and maim everything around him.

Ryuji’s only alive because of luck. All of the luck he never got in the last year—Kamoshida taking over the track team, breaking his leg, screwing over his life and all of his teammates, the track team disbanding, Ann and Shiho further distancing themselves from him—finally came when Ryuji effing booked it from that cell, found the cat, and hid in its cell while Kurusu rampaged.

He doesn’t know why Kurusu didn’t chase him. A morbidly curious part of him wants to know. The rest of him remembers the screams and sounds echoing down the halls of the jail and never wants to know anything again.

Ryuji knows that Kurusu has to be going through it. How could he not? He saw the guy turn into a giant winged demon thing, then saw the aftermath of his rampage through that twisted castle. He could only guess what the guy was thinking, because Ryuji is still reeling even though he wasn’t even the star of all the effed-up shit that happened yesterday.

But here’s the thing: when they were running for their lives out of that gore-soaked hellhole, Ryuji saw some other people down there. He didn’t get a good look, the cat urging them on and Kurusu almost pushing him away from it all in a panic, but he could swear he saw they were wearing the school’s gym uniform.

Ryuji doesn’t necessarily want to go back to the castle. Yesterday wasn’t exactly sunshine and rainbows. But if there’s even the slightest chance someone else is trapped there, Ryuji can’t leave them. Even if that weird ‘King’ Kamoshida has already gotten to them, at the very least, Ryuji has to see this through. 

Problem is, Ryuji knows he’s not going to make it out alive on his own. His leg hurts more often than it doesn’t, and he can barely dash for longer than thirty seconds—complete bullshit compared to his stamina last fall—so running around a castle with a lot of stairs is out of the question. And even if he could run, if he’s the tiniest bit unlucky and runs into a knight, he’s not winning. He’s not too proud to admit he got his ass kicked yesterday and is still nursing a couple bruises, nor is he unable to admit he needs help. He has no clue where the cat went, and it didn’t really seem that keen to help him out, so that leaves only one option.

When Ryuji dresses in his usual barely acceptable uniform and gets on the subway, bracing for the shitty day ahead, he does so with a few goals in mind: avoid pissing off Kamoshida, find Kurusu, and see if they can get back into the castle.

Standing at the threshold of the school, Ryuji swears he can hear the running water of the moat, feel the crowd disappear and turn to thick, oppressive air, see the school shift into the courtyard leading to the castle. It’s right there, right in front of him, he could touch it—

Then everything turns back to normal. The school is just the same as it’s always been, the crowds return and fill the air with gossip and barbed insults, the hustle and bustle of Tokyo fills the gaps. Ryuji stands in the middle of a stream of students, feeling his heart beating double-time in his chest, even though nothing is happening.

Ryuji’s right thigh twinges and he takes a second to massage it, knowing that trying to climb the stairs when it’s aching is a recipe for disaster. Someone jostles him and nearly knocks him to the ground. He looks up just in time to see Takeishi’s glare before his former friend briskly walks upstairs, leaving Ryuji in the dust.

With a sigh, Ryuji straightens up as much as he can, wincing as he takes the steps one at a time. He wonders how long it’ll be before the pain in his leg finally goes away.

Ryuji’s starting to suspect Kurusu’s avoiding him.

Not that Ryuji can blame him. He’s pretty sure Kawakami warned him to stay away, because of course she would, she’s always been disappointed in him. Besides, after someone sees you go on a murderous rampage and slaughter everything in sight, finding him in an isolated cell covered in blood and gore and in the middle of eating something’s innards, well…

Yeah, Ryuji would avoid people after that too.

But Ryuji needs to talk to him, so, screw whatever Kurusu was doing, they were gonna sit down and chat about all the weird shit that’s been going on.

He waits until lunch—not only because Ryuji can’t find him before class starts, but trying to shove an important conversation before homeroom feels like bad manners. Walking over to 2-D, he spots Takamaki standing by the door, the frumpy pout on her face turning into a full-blown frown when she spots him. “Sakamoto.”

“Takamaki.” Ryuji returns the formality. “Mind movin’ out of the way? I gotta talk to Kurusu about something.”

“You do know there’s another door, right?” Ryuji rolls his eyes. He seriously can’t believe he used to be friends with her and Suzui. As he goes to walk past her, Takamaki calls after him, “He’s not in there! He ran out once the bell rang.”

“Son of a bitch,” Ryuji swears under his breath. Louder he asks Takamaki,  “Any clue where he went?”

Takamaki opens her mouth, probably to say no, before she pauses and looks contemplative. “He came in a bit late this morning. He told Kawakami-sensei he wasn’t feeling well. Maybe he went to the bathroom? Or the nurse?”

Ryuji nods his thanks and heads to the bathroom first, simply because it’s closer and his leg is bugging him too much to bother with stairs right now. Luckily, Ryuji strikes gold if the small crowd around the entrance is any indication. He taps the shoulder of one of the students on the fringe, a scrawny guy with short blue hair and a big bruise on his cheek. “Yo, what’s happening?”

“Th-the transfer student’s in there.” The guy shuffles nervously and keeps his head down, like he can’t look Ryuji in the eye. “He… didn’t look that good.”

That doesn’t bode well, though it doesn’t change much. Even if Ryuji wasn’t chasing the guy down, he’d still want to check in on him. He shoves his way past the crowd, enduring the familiar glares and annoyed looks. When he reaches the entrance he turns to the remaining students, “A’ight, clear out, show’s over.”

One of the guys coos, “Gonna make out with the rest of the trash Sakamoto?”

Ryuji glares. Sometimes he really wants to live up to his ‘delinquent’ brand and thrash some of the other students. “I’m taking a piss. Do you seriously want to stand around and listen in on that?”

Enough of the crowd looks disgusted, annoyed, or bored. The clump steadily dissolves until it’s just the wimpy guy and one of the newspaper club girls hanging around. Figuring that any gossip that comes from this will be the bargain bin variety, Ryuji enters and tries to ignore the feeling of dread settling in his gut.

It feels stupid to say the Shujin bathrooms are familiar, but they are. Ryuji’s cut class many a time here, camping in the western style stalls where he can hide his feet on top of the toilet seat whenever someone came looking for him. He’s contributed to the small collection of graffiti on the inside of those stalls when he’s felt particularly creative. He looks at his reflection in the familiar, grimy mirrors over the semi-clean sinks across from the urinals (the best, least mortifying design when it’s crowded and you gotta wizz, obviously) and can see the heavy bags under his eyes, which are only emphasized by the ominous red light coming from under one of the stalls.

Oh, yeah, that’s a thing that’s happening. Along with the heavy, ragged pants and low moans of pain coming from it.

God, Ryuji is in such deep shit.

Swallowing around the lump in his throat, Ryuji walks up to the stall door slowly, feeling like he’s about to knock on the cage of a lion. He’s seen that same red glow before in the impossible castle, seconds before Kurusu… before everything happened. Which probably means something bad is about to go down. Either Ryuji can leave and let this play out, or he can try and stop whatever’s about to happen before it reaches a boiling point.

He’s not a coward. Ryuji lifts his hand and knocks.

The ragged breathing stops, the sudden silence so much worse. When Ryuji speaks up, he can’t hide the faint trembling in his voice. “Hey, Kurusu? You okay in there?”

There’s a long stretch of silence. Then, “I’ve been better.”

Ryuji’s not sure what to think of Kurusu’s voice. He didn’t talk much in the castle, except when he was screaming, so the deep scratchiness isn’t that strange to hear. A part of Ryuji kind of hopes that his voice could get higher, lighter, like he doesn’t have any problems and can just get through the day without a worry. “Do you, uh… d’you need help? A shoulder to lean on, or something?”

“Or something,” Kurusu agrees with a weak chuckle. The maroon glow pulses briefly before dimming, making the stall look less like a gateway to hell and more like someone was just using some mood lighting. “I… don’t think I can get up. I locked the door, so I’m pretty sure I’m stuck here ‘til my legs decide they want to work.”

“All good, bro.” Ryuji kneels on the floor, wincing as his thigh twinges again. Doing this might leave him stuck just like Kurusu, but it’s too late now to back out. He gets onto his back, seeing Kurusu move his legs out of the way as Ryuji grips the bottom of the door and pulls himself under.

Now in the stall, Ryuji finally gets his first good look at Kurusu since yesterday afternoon. The other second year is practically wrapped around the toilet, hugging the seat with his head hovering over the bowl. There’s a thin layer of sweat on his skin, his curly hair plastered to his forehead and nape. His uniform is rumpled, like he’d fallen asleep in it and didn’t have the time to change. Most alarming are the myriad of jagged, dark red lines branching across his body, the source of the glow that’s making the bathroom feel more like a red light district. They’re the most dense around his chest, but there’s a bunch that stretch down over his stomach and shoulders, a few more crawling up his neck.

Ryuji feels bad that the first thing he thinks to do is to pull himself out of the stall, but he fights against the instinctive urge to run. He doesn’t say anything as he pulls himself up so he can sit against the door, leaving barely any room between the two of them as Kurusu gives him a sardonic, exhausted smile. If Kurusu wants to vent, Ryuji’s all ears, especially considering he’s about to ask for a pretty big favor. “Hey, man.”

“Hey,” Kurusu returns before his entire body shudders. The lines glow brighter and he grips the toilet seat so hard Ryuji can see thin cracks in the porcelain. He hangs his head over the bowl, his breathing picking up as he gags. “God this sucks.”

Ryuji’s not sure what to do, now that he’s stuck here. Bringing up Kamoshida or the castle might set Kurusu off, and Ryuji doesn’t know what’ll happen if he brings up the students trapped within considering how the entire school has made Kurusu the star of all their rumors and shittalking. He doesn’t know Kurusu well enough to comfort him, and he’s never been the best at distracting people, so he falls back on what he always did when his mom came home exhausted from her shift: he places his hand on the center of Kurusu’s back to rub little circles into it.

The moment he makes contact, Kurusu jolts like Ryuji’s touch electrocuted him. Then, before Ryuji can do anything, his body sags like a puppet with its strings cut. The lines spread further and glow brighter, curling around Kurusu’s limbs and back, gathering under Ryuji’s hand like it’s a lodestone. Ryuji watches like a slack-jawed idiot as Kurusu straightens up, the movement too smooth, unnatural. The black of his jacket somehow turns darker, deeper, unreal—

“There you are!”

Kurusu snaps around with a snarl, his body entirely black except for the lines and his eyes, both glowing scarlet. Ryuji barely has the time to pull his hand back before Kurusu snaps at it, his teeth shockingly white against the pitch void of his body. Kurusu lunges for his throat next, and Ryuji has a moment to think that maybe he really is as dumb as everyone says because he does nothing but press his back against the locked stall door and hopes that it’ll be quick. He slams his eyes shut, waiting for the pain of Kurusu’s teeth sinking into his flesh and tearing into him, just like he did the knights in the castle.

He waits…

And waits…

…and waits…

Ryuji dares to peek an eye open. His and Kurusu’s faces are less than an inch apart, but instead of the bloodthirsty rage Ryuji expects to see, Kurusu almost looks confused . His lips and eyes twitch spastically as his fingers scrape against the stall walls, like he wants to tear Ryuji to shreds but can’t. He watches as the lines and blackened skin slowly recedes, Kurusu panting like he just ran a marathon as his growling lowers into a barely audible rumble.

Ryuji doesn’t relax until the lines are completely gone, and even then he waits until Kurusu slowly leans back, looking disoriented and almost drugged, eyes half-lidded and pupils blown wide as he lodges his body between the toilet and the stall wall. Ryuji slumps and raises a hand to his chest, his fingers clenching down hard on his shirt to hide how badly his hands are shaking. “Holy shit dude.”

“I’ll say!” Ryuji jumps at the familiar-yet-not voice, looking around the stall as if a third person will magically appear from thin air. Kurusu does the same only to pause and look down at his lap. Ryuji follows his gaze and realizes that, somewhere along the way, a cat had snuck in and plopped itself on Kurusu’s lap. The low ‘growl’ Ryuji’s been hearing is actually the little guy purring his heart out.

The cat turns to look at Ryuji with the tiniest, smuggest expression he’s ever seen on an animal. It opens its mouth and the voice comes out, “You’re either seriously brave or seriously stupid. Do you have any idea how close you came to being Avatar chow?”

Ryuji doesn’t faint, but he does check out for a bit as his brain calms down from the adrenaline rush and the realization that, if the cat hadn’t shown up, Kurusu would’ve killed him just then. He vaguely hears the cat properly introduce itself as Morgana, something about magnetite, and atma, and brands, and hunger, everything going over his head, except for the last one because his stomach rumbles in sympathy. Honestly, Ryuji could go for a bowl of beef ramen right now. If he wasn’t on thin ice after yesterday, he’d risk cutting to go to Ogikubo and get some.

He breaks out of his musings on what kind of ramen he’d want (more accurately: could afford) when Morgana says, “So, you ready to go back?”

Kurusu makes an unsure noise and Ryuji looks back up in time to see him grimace, his legs pulling closer to his chest. If Morgana wasn’t on his lap, Ryuji thinks the second year would’ve been curled into a ball. When he doesn’t say anything and only continues to look more upset, Ryuji chimes in with a helpful, “Go back where? To class?”

Morgana gives him the dirtiest look a cat can muster. “No, you idiot! The castle! It’s the best place to help out frizzy hair, here.”

Whoa, wait a minute, they’re actually talking about going back there? Now? Or at least soon? Maybe he should have been paying better attention, “Forreal?”

“Do we have to?” Kurusu asks, a note of resignation in his voice.

“If you don’t want to start biting people here, then yeah, we do.” Satisfied with its bullet-proof argument, Morgana prances off Kurusu’s lap and sits, prim and proper, on the dirty bathroom floor. “It’s a convenient location, you can handle all the Shadows on the first floor and jail with ease, and the only risk, other than dying, is getting near Kamoshida.”

“‘Other than dying’,” Kurusu repeats, deadpan.

“Well, it’s not going to be easy, but it’s better than the alternative.” Morgana puffs out his chest. “Besides, with me guiding you the whole way, there’s no way this can go wrong!”

“Let me come, too!” Ryuji interjects. Kurusu gives him a surprised look while Morgana’s bravado falters. “I actually came in here to ask if we could try to get to that castle after school, but… if you two are already planning on going, then…”

“No way,” Morgana shoots him down. “Nuh uh, it’s already going to be difficult keeping frizzy hair on track. If we have to defend you from Shadows the entire time, the plan could go wrong at any second!”

“What plan? You two are just going in there to look around, right?” Morgana’s lips stay shut, which is all Ryuji needs for an answer. “Look, I just want to go down to the jails and check something out.”

“It’s still too dangerous,” Morgana meows, “and not just because Kamoshida has it out for you. You’d be a lot safer if you stayed here, in the normal world.”

“Kamoshida’s not just a problem in that castle, cat.” Ryuji slowly stands up, leaning heavily on the stall’s walls for support. His leg is killing him, having stayed on the floor in a curled-up heap for so long, but it’s fine, Ryuji can handle it. “If you’re seriously about to tell me that castle doesn’t have any dirt on that scumbag that we can use here, I’ll kick you.”

“I’m not a cat! Weren’t you listening?” Morgana hisses, his spine arching up in rage as the fur along his back stands up. “If you go walking around that castle with us, Kamoshida isn’t your biggest threat. It’s—”

“I want him to come.” Kurusu pipes up. They both turn to see him still wedged between the toilet and wall, like he’d rather be stuck in the most uncomfortable position possible than something more natural.

“Are you serious? Why?” Morgana taps a paw to Kurusu’s foot. “Ignoring all the ways he could die, what if he gets the virus? Are you both seriously willing to risk that?”

“He’s the only one that cares what happens to me,” Kurusu says, dropping an anvil on Ryuji’s heart. “If something goes wrong… I want at least one person to know what really happened.”

And well shit, if Ryuji wasn’t already intending on coming along no matter what the weirdo cat said, then Kurusu bluntly stating that would’ve dragged him on board. Morgana looks like he’s swallowed something rotten before he sighs, looking askance at Ryuji, “Fine… but if something goes wrong, don’t blame me.”

As if waiting for their conversation to end, the bell rings, signalling the end of lunch. Ryuji groans as his stomach aches with hunger pangs, the quick bowl of cereal from this morning absolutely not holding him over. Maybe he could sneak some of the school’s bread before he and Kurusu do… whatever they need to do to get back to the castle.

Morgana sneaks away, crawling under the stall door and disappearing down the halls. Ryuji offers Kurusu his hand so he can get up off the floor. When Kurusu grabs him, Ryuji swears he can feel claws pricking against his pulse point. 

Then Kurusu lets go, they leave the stall, and all is normal, if only until the school day ends.

Chapter Text

Ryuji can barely focus for the rest of the day. He catches snippets of algebra and English but completely tunes out history. He spends most of his time staring blankly at the board and pretending to take notes or massaging his thigh, right over the scar. It’s really acting up today, probably means a storm’s coming soon.

When the final bell rings he springs up from his chair and nearly knocks over a classmate. Ryuji practically sprints out of the classroom, having to double-back to grab his forgotten bag, only slowing down a when he heads downstairs. He even manages to make it to the school store in time and grabs the last loaf of bread on sale, chowing down in one of the alleys outside. 

He almost misses Kurusu leaving. He walks with his head tilted down, black hair blending in with the crowd, his thick glasses hiding his eyes. Morgana weaves through his legs, not quite hidden in the crowd based on how many students coo at him, but Kurusu’s general presence is a shield, preventing anyone from drawing too close.

Not knowing if Kurusu or Morgana can see him, Ryuji whistles and waves. Ryuji swears he can see Kurusu smirk before he walks across the street, gently bumping Ryuji’s shoulder with his own before going further into the alleyway.

Returning to the castle is surreal. Ryuji only kinda sorta pays attention to the hows of it all, especially since it looks pretty easy. He does notice how reality warps around them like a funhouse mirror, and how his head pounds like someone is rooting through his memories and knocking on the inside of his skull along the way. Ryuji has to blink a few times before his vision clears up, and when it does, he’s greeted with Morgana standing on two legs and Kurusu dressed in the crazy get-up that appeared after that mask showed up on his face.

“I know I said I wanted to come back here,” Ryuji starts, feeling his hands start to shake. He shoves them in his pockets, clenching and loosening to work off some energy. “But man, this place is still freaky as hell.”

“Last chance to back out.” Morgana jumps down from the dumpster he perched atop to explain everything. His ears twitch and flick, probably using some super demon hearing to scout out the place… or maybe just normal cat hearing, who knows. “The further we’re in, the harder it’ll be for you to leave if you get cold feet.”

“Not a chance, I’m seeing this through.” Ryuji looks to Kurusu for assurance only to falter as looks past his sweet outfit and really takes him in. Kurusu’s hands are limp at his side, his chest barely moving, as though he’s terrified to even take a breath. Most alarming are Kurusu’s eyes—gray as storm clouds, vacant and glassy, like he’s not all there.

Ryuji looks down at Morgana and is weirdly relieved to see that the cat looks cognizant of everything going on. Morgana stands before them both and clears his throat, “Before we go in, let’s set up some ground rules.”

“Uh, okay?” Ryuji leans against the wall, trying to keep some weight off his leg.

“Rule number one: no names. We’re effectively wreaking havoc in Kamoshida’s head, the last thing we need is for the Kamoshida in the real world to catch on to what we’re doing.”

“Right,” Ryuji says, not understanding in the slightest. “So… what do we use instead?”

“I’ve already got the perfect aliases.” Morgana points at Ryuji, “Blondie,” points to Kurusu, who barely reacts, “Frizzy,” and then himself, “Leader!”

“Yeah… no, those suck.” Ryuji says, ignoring Morgana’s indignant squawk. “If we’re gonna use code names, they gotta at least be cool ones.”

“Well, do you have any better ideas?” Morgana asks. It’s a good question, and it works perfectly to stump Ryuji, because he definitely doesn’t know. He’s never been the most creative guy, and coming up with names on the fly is definitely not his shtick.

“Arsène,” Kurusu suddenly pipes up. At their confused looks, he says, “It’s… the name of the thing I turn into.”

Ryuji didn’t even know that it had a name. Did that mean the monster-guy from yesterday is separate from Kurusu, or is he just trying to distance himself from it all? “You sure you want to be called that, dude?”

“Better than my own.” Kurusu shrugs. 

“Well, if we’re going that way…” Morgana hums, ears twitching happily. “Zorro. That’ll be my name.”

“What? Why that?” Ryuji asks.

“Because I feel like it.” Morgana replies. “And you’ll still be Blondie.”

“Am I seriously going to be the only one that doesn’t get a cool name?”

“Yup,” Akira says with a smile. Ryuji realizes it’s probably the first genuine expression he’s ever seen on the guy, other than the completely manic snarl he had in the cell and bathroom.

Ryuji sighs, resigned to his fate. “Fine. Blondie. For now.”

“Rule number two!” Morgana interjects. “Arsène leads, I’ll be second, and Blondie goes last. It’s the safest formation while hunting, but that means Blondie has to keep an eye out for ambushes.” Ryuji nods, and Kurusu gives a barely-there thumbs up as he stares at the castle.

“And rule number three.” Morgana gives Ryuji the sternest look possible. “I know neither of you like Kamoshida. I don’t like him either. He’s an obvious scumbag and he deserves the worst. But neither of you can fight his Shadow.”

“I mean, wasn’t planning to, but… why?” Ryuji asks. “If we run into the guy, we’re gonna have to deal with him and his crap, right? Are we really just gonna run away every time we get near him? That rubs me the wrong way.”

“Self-defense should be fine, but anything more would be too risky. For one, Kamoshida’s stronger than all the random Shadows here combined. If we go after him, he could easily kill us. Second is he’s linked to the real Kamoshida, so anything you say or do to him can affect the one in the school.”

“So, if we hurt the king real bad…”

“Then your teacher will also ‘get hurt.’ Maybe not physically, but mentally. And if you go too far, well…” Morgana winces. “I wasn’t out in the real world that long today, but I heard about the recent mental shutdown incident. Three guesses how those happen, and the first two don’t count.”

Ryuji’s eyes go wide. He’s not a big fan of the news, but he knows about why all the trains have new, wonkier schedules after that accident. Everyone does. Ryuji’s been scared to ride the subways, honestly, but there’s no other option with how far he is from school and his leg. He’s heard his mom crying in her bedroom Sunday after her shift, the thin walls doing nothing to muffle her sobs. She’s been coming home later and later from her shifts at the hospital, and Ryuji makes sure to text her every time he gets on and off the train just so she doesn’t worry too much.

He looked up an article on Monday and learned her hospital’s at max capacity because of the accident. Over a hundred passengers were admitted to various hospitals with serious injuries. Of those, only eleven have been discharged as of this article’s publication. He read that line over and over and didn’t dare read further, because the next sentence was about the total number of people who’d died and Ryuji didn’t think he could handle knowing that.

“Okay, no Kamoshida ass-kicking,” Ryuji backs down. “Still doesn’t mean we can’t wreck his stupid castle, amiright?”

Ryuji lifts his hand to Kurusu for a high five. Kurusu doesn’t respond, hands in the pockets of his jacket, staring at the entrance with those same, glassy gray eyes. “Hey, you good?” Kurusu doesn’t even twitch. Ryuji snaps his fingers a few times near his face and tries again. “Kurusu-kun?”

The second year jumps like Ryuji’s snaps are gunshots. He looks around confused before seeming to remember where he is. “Sorry.”

“You alright? That’s the second time you’ve spaced out.”

“I’m good, I’m good. It’s just…” Kurusu takes a deep breath and Ryuji sees his eyes flash red. “Everything’s more now.”

“Transforming in the Metaverse is easier than in reality since there’s a lot of free-flowing magnetite compared to reality,” Morgana explains, “As such, your Avatar is a lot closer to the surface, so its urges are stronger.”

Kurusu bites the inside of his cheek. “Yeah, that explains a bit.”

Ryuji shuffles his feet, anxious to move but even more anxious to accidentally set Kurusu off if he was standing on a hair trigger. “You gonna be okay?”

“I have to be,” Kurusu states matter of factly. 

Ryuji remembers how he used to feel when his dad came home after a night out in Shinjuku, how he’d go to class next day with his bruises aching beneath his shirt and shorts, how he hid his grimaces and hisses when people bumped into him on the playground. There were plenty of days where he didn’t want to go to school because his body hurt so bad, he wanted the same types of moms and dads his classmates had, but he couldn’t. He had his mom, and he had his dad, and he had bruises and fractures and black eyes that he had to hide and lie about because he had to be okay. Not just for himself, but for his mom and her job, for Ann and Shiho so they wouldn’t worry about him, for his teachers so they wouldn’t get him in trouble, for his dad so their broken family could be somewhat put together. If he wasn’t okay, then no one else would be, so he’d lie and lie until he couldn’t anymore.

Kurusu pulls his gloves tight, bright red against black and gray. Ryuji is certain the rest of his outfit will match by the end of this. “Let’s go.”

They enter the castle the same way they left it: crawling through a window into some weird storage room. Ryuji nearly falls on his face when he pulls himself out, but Kurusu catches him. For a moment his grip turns tight as iron, Ryuji’s heart beating double-time, but he lets go once Ryuji gets his feet under him.

The castle feels the same as it did yesterday: the air is heavy and musty, the halls cold with an occasional warm, muggy gust that feels gross, an invisible layer of scum covering everything—though Ryuji doesn’t know if that’s just his imagination making Kamoshida’s usual dirtbag nature more literal. Ryuji can already hear metallic clanking of patrolling knights echoing through the halls, the sound alone dredging up yesterday's finest memories; metal gauntlets clamped around his wrists, flashes of silver swords and his own terrified reflection out of the corners of his eyes, Kurusu's screams as his body warps into a being beyond perception.

“Okay, here’s the plan,” Morgana says as they enter the hallway, a knight standing at the end of a T intersection, its back turned to them. “I’ll hit the knight first, which will reveal its true form. Arsène will rush in right after to finish the job and get his meal. After that, Arsène can continue leading while I support and help you weaken them. Clear?”

Kurusu nods. Ryuji hangs back, hidden behind a small pillar with a vase on top as the two stalk forward. The knight stands there, unaware of the two slowly approaching. Ryuji feels like one of those cameramen in a nature documentary filming a lion stalking a gazelle.

In the blink of an eye, Morgana dashes forward, a comically large sword in his hands as he leaps and pierces through the back of its neck. The knight chokes and gurgles as its body shudders and twists, its armor clipping into itself like a video game that can’t handle collision before exploding into tar. From the goo rises a small, delicate girl with two light blue wings fluttering on her back, short amber hair and a blue leotard.

Ryuji has a moment to think aw that one looks kinda cute before Kurusu rushes forward, his body shifting into the nightmare from yesterday in the blink of an eye as his maw snaps down on the tiny fairy. Ryuji sees its legs kicking wildly and half of a wing fluttering in pain before Kurusu chews and its body goes limp. He mashes his razor-sharp teeth together a few more times, pulling the pixie in further so Ryuji can’t see it get mangled, but he can hear the tiny snaps and squishes of its bones and muscles break and pop. 

When Kurusu swallows all Ryuji can think is he’s next, he’s gotta be next, because as much as he pitied the pixie there’s no way that tiny thing satisfied Kurusu. As if summoned by that thought, the monster turns its head to look at Ryuji, terrified brown meeting molten, starving scarlet, and this is it, this is it—

“Hey!” Morgana snaps at Ryuji’s left, drawing both their attention. “You’re not eating Blondie here, remember? You’re hunting Shadows.”

Kurusu hisses, the sound rattling through the hall and shaking Ryuji down to his bones. His head tilts left then right, like a bird examining a particularly tasty looking worm. Ryuji can almost see its invisible pupils widening with desire, “Hungry…!”

“I know you are, but Blondie and I aren’t going to satisfy you.” Morgana points a tiny, rounded paw down the hall. “There’s more Shadows over there. Try sneaking over and eat them before they can sound the alarm!”

Kurusu’s head snaps down the hall. True to Morgana’s claim, a knight comes clanking around the corner, shield raised as it continues to patrol. Kurusu hisses again, though not as loud as when Morgana challenged him. His wings rise and are careful to not brush against the walls or ceiling as he slinks down the hall, his claws raised to strike.

The moment Kurusu’s attention is thoroughly off of him, Ryuji sighs in relief, back hitting the wall as he slides down onto the floor. His heart pounds in his chest, feels like it might just jump right out and dance around the floor.

Kurusu would like that, wouldn’t he? It would definitely be easier, getting to all the juicy bits straight away. Ryuj watches his classmate-turned-monster stalk down the halls. When he crouches to pounce, Ryuji looks away and catches Morgana’s eye, the cat staring directly at him. “What? What, do I—what?”

“You’re really not suited for this.” Morgana states, plain as can be. Ryuji almost takes offense before he sags and quietly accepts that yeah, yeah he isn’t.

“Don’t matter if I’m not ‘suited’ for this, I’m trying to do something right.” If they can just get down to the dungeon again, free whoever else is down there before Kamoshida can hurt them more, before they end up just like Kurusu…!

“Right or wrong, I can only keep his attention off you for long.” Morgana’s ear flicks towards Kurusu. A few seconds later, Ryuji hears a choked scream and splatter, and he’s reminded of what’s happening not even twenty feet away. “No offense but, aside from Kamoshida, you’re probably the most appealing thing here.”

“‘Appealing’?”

“It’s pretty simple math: standard Shadows roaming around the halls have the least magnetite, big Shadows like an important guardian or someone as distorted as Kamoshida have more, but humans? They’ve got the most. More than any Shadow could ever hold.”

Ryuji feels the blood drain from his face. “So. So if he gets too, uh, ‘lost in the sauce,’ then—”

“Then he’ll probably go after you, especially since all you can do is run. And, no offense,” Morgana gives him the stink eye. “I’m not sticking my neck out that far for you. So you better run fast.”

Ryuji lets out a weak laugh. Run fast, huh? Yeah, no, because if his leg acts up, that’s it. Game over, man. Sakamoto Ryuji doesn’t even get a stretcher, or an open casket funeral. He’s dead and gone and sitting in his classmate’s stomach after being eaten in a medieval castle ruled by his nemesis gym teacher who’s dressed in a speedo. 

“What is my life?” Ryuji asks. Morgana has the good grace not to answer. 

The further they descend into the castle, the calmer Kurusu gets. Ryuji can see the tension starting to fall from his shoulders and his eyes look more alert and aware. He’s not entirely sure if that’s a good thing or not, but Morgana doesn’t intervene on Ryuji's behalf for any more fights, so he’s hoping that’s good.

Ryuji doesn’t know why Arsène eats everything they fight, because he also has some weird magic-looking stuff too, but Ryuji can’t ask the question. It hovers on the edge of his mind like a bear trap; the moment he dares to say hey what’s up with all the chewing he’s going to lose a few fingers (or his life). Maybe Morgana explained it earlier and he just missed the answer. Maybe Kurusu already knows and doesn’t want to think about it. Maybe Ryuji never wants that answer.

They descend into the jail and Ryuji feels his heart start to beat like a hummingbird as they get closer and closer to the cell they were kept in. All the sounds start to blend together: the babbling of the underground river, the water dripping off the roof, the knight’s clanking armor. Arsène makes an odd clicking noise with his teeth and Ryuji nearly dives into one of the cells.

Finally they reach the end of the jail and reach a pair of double doors. A simple white banner hangs over it, strung up to a pair of volleyball posts: Kamoshida’s Training Hall of Love.

“Gross,” Ryuji whispers, because none of that sounds promising. Before he can suggest turning around, Kurusu shudders and pushes forward, nearly tripping in his haste. “H-Hey, where are you going?”

Morgana curses and chases after him. Not wanting to get left behind, Ryuji follows. He can hear people grunting in pain and picks up the pace, almost falling down the stairs as his leg twinges and nearly gives out. Finally Ryuji finds Kurusu staring at a series of cells, jaw hanging open as the cries of pain and impacts fill the air like the most screwed up symphony. 

Ryuji moves past him to get a better look in the cell and his anxiety is replaced by a rush of blind anger. Holding onto a volleyball net are a bunch of Shujin students dressed in their gym uniforms, all being whipped by knights. Their shirts are torn and dyed bright red with blood as they cry and scream as the lashes overlap. Ryuji’s leg aches fiercely and he nearly doubles over in pain, “Bastard!”

“Keep your voice down!” Morgana hisses. “Arsène, I know you’re tempted, but you can’t eat these guys. They’re a key part of Kamoshida’s cognition, there’s no way he won’t notice if you tear through them.”

Kurusu makes a hungry, inhuman sound as he stalks towards the cell door, only a few inches away from Ryuji. He grabs the bars and shakes them, the guards ignoring them but the students looking up and crying, cringing away, only to get beaten harder. Kurusu snarls as the lines appear over his body again, his eyes turning completely red as he thrashes and slams against the cage door. Ryuji can’t move, his leg pulsing with intermittent pulses of agony as he breaks out in a cold sweat.

“Akira, stop!” Morgana shouts and, thank god, he freezes, “We need to get out of here, we’ve already stayed too long!”

“I know,” Kurusu replies, his voice shaking. He hangs his head and Ryuji can see a line of drool trailing from his lips. His hands tighten around the bars, the metal dents and bends but does not break. “I’ve already eaten so much, why isn’t it stopping?”

“An Avatar’s hunger never ends.” Morgana shakes his head sadly. “You could gorge yourself on Shadows and Humans for the rest of your life, but the reality is it’ll never truly be satisfied. The most you can do is stave it off as best you can without doing harm.”

Kurusu falls to his knees, red gloves gripping clumps of his hair and pulling until he lets out a pained whimper. Ryuji has no clue what to do, faced with the abuse in front of him and Kurusu having a complete crisis to his left. He wasn’t exactly okay with seeing Kurusu eating all the monsters, but knowing that hunger wasn’t ever going to go away feels like some unknowable boundary has been crossed. Like Ryuji is a voyeur on something unapproachable, incomprehensible.

“Can we get them out?” Ryuji asks, his original goal feeling like a distant shore after the last couple hours spent running around here. “Maybe… maybe if they’re not here, then…”

“Those guys aren’t real humans,” Morgana explains, “They’re cognitive entities. Think of them like… extremely complex dolls, made straight from Kamoshida’s imagination. They’re close enough to the real deal, but they’re warped by whatever Kamoshida thinks about them.”

“So this is how he sees the students?” Ryuji looks into another cell, sees the students running on a treadmill that feeds them into a spiked crusher, a kettle dripping water on the leading end to tempt them. Ryuji can almost see himself on that track. 

Ryuji has the haunting realization that, under different circumstances, this could almost be comedic . Like, this is such an exaggerated form of anything realistic that he could conceivably see this on Takeshi’s Castle. Was that how Kamoshida saw the track team’s ‘training?’ A joke? Something for shits and giggles? Ryuji knew Nakanohara passed out because of how intense Kamoshida’s training was, and he was only second best behind Ryuji. How was any of that funny?

“More than likely,” Morgana sighs, “Not that there’s anything we can do to help them here. If we did take them out of the castle, they’d either evaporate into nothingness once they reach the real world, or they’d live a completely distorted life as a facsimile of whoever they’re meant to represent.”

Ryuji nearly joins Kurusu on the ground. The whole reason he came here, redundant. There was no one to help escape, no one to save from turning into a monster. There was just him, a monster cat, and the guy who was already a monster.

“Can we leave now?” Kurusu asks. His voice trembles with something Ryuji doesn’t want to name.

“We should. Any longer and we risk Kamoshida taking action.” Morgana says. He walks towards the exit and looks at them imploringly. For a moment Ryuji thinks Kurusu is going to snap again, turn into Arsène and tear the room apart with feral abandon. But he stands up, leaning heavily on the door and looking down at the students like a starving man stares at a three-course meal. Then he turns and walks away, his steps slow and heavy, lacking the grace he’d effortlessly exuded throughout the rest of the castle. Morgana waits until Kurusu passes him then begins to pad along behind him.

Ryuji looks at the students one last time, trying to memorize their faces. He takes up his usual position at the back and hopes that he’ll never have to come here again.

It was too easy to be true; the three of them reaching the bowels of the castle unseen, Kurusu tearing through Shadows like tissue paper and ‘satisfying’ his weird hunger, Ryuji managing to keep pace with only minimal pain from his leg. Ryuji should’ve known better: he used up all his luck yesterday, after all.

They make it all the way to the main entrance hall when the doors are blocked by knights. They run for the hallway they first came through only for a gold knight to burst from the ground and nearly break the doorway. In seconds they’re surrounded on all sides, Ryuji forced against Kurusu’s back as the second year snarls and transforms. Ryuji feels an indescribable chill run up his spine as he feels Kurusu’s body shift and grow behind him, his wings bursting free and nearly knocking Ryuji upside the head.

“To think you’d make the same mistake again,” Kamoshida laughs as guards press forward, their bodies exploding and turning into a stampede of giant horses. They circle around the three of them like a cyclone, blocking any way for them to escape. “You’re hopeless!”

The horses charge like a tidal wave. Ryuji ducks down as Kurusu and Morgana slash and claw against the horde, curling up in a ball in the hopes that’ll keep him mostly out of harm’s way. He sees more of that dark, cloying magic shoot away from Kurusu’s body, but the horses ignore it completely. Morgana’s sword may as well be plastic with how little damage it does. It hits Ryuji that they’re getting a taste of their own medicine; the only reason they made it so far was because Kurusu ambushed all the knights and ate them before they could get off an attack.

It isn’t long until the horses break through their meager defenses and separate them. Ryuji is lucky enough to get headbutted and thrown towards the castle doors, the wind knocked out of him and the bitter taste of iron on the back of his tongue. He lays on his side and struggles to breathe. He briefly spots Morgana leaping across the backs of the horses before one of them chomps down on his tail and flings him to the ground. Kurusu’s wings beat hard enough to stir up a wind as he attempts to fly, brilliant red feathers flashing against the gaudy gold of the main hall, but the horses rush him all at once, bucking and kicking to keep him pinned. Ryuji watches in horror as one manages to throw its head back just right so its horn pierces through Kurusu’s chest and out his back. Kurusu screams and manages to swipe off its head, but the horn remains.

By the time Ryuji can even sit up, the horses have piled on top of Kurusu, at least ten standing on top of his legs, arms, wings and back. Morgana is slowly clawing his way across the ground to get closer to him. One of the horses kicks him with a whinnying laugh and Morgana yelps and falls still.

“How far the former track star has fallen.” Kamoshida walks through the crowd of horses to press his foot on Morgana’s back. The gold-plated knight does the same to Kurusu, who growls weakly at the rough treatment. “I can only imagine the pain of the others who were dragged under with the ‘Track Traitor’s’ selfish act.”

“I wasn’t being selfish! Not then, and not now!” Ryuji retorts. He tries to stand up only to fall back to his knees as his thigh screams with pain. It feels like someone’s stuck a knife in there and is twisting it around. He’s stuck here, pinned by his broken body and Kamoshida’s leering grin.

“I bet you simply came in here on a whim and ended up having to trail behind an Avatar to avoid being eaten, is that right?” Kamoshida taunts. “Too scared to even run away, or is it because you can’t run anymore? You know, the femur is supposed to be the hardest bone to break in the human body, but yours shattered like a twig. Watching you hobble around on crutches for the rest of the spring semester was just dues after all your whinging during track meets.”

“Shut up,” Ryuji snarls. “You didn’t deserve to train the track team, or any team! You didn’t even train us, you abused us, just like you’re doing to the volleyball team! How was me telling you to lay off the other first years selfish?”

“Because no one is allowed to talk back to me!!” Kamoshida’s face twists with animalistic hunger. “Do you need me to break your other leg as a reminder? Let one of the Bicorns stomp on your bones until they’re nothing but dust? I’ll break your body and string you up to the volleyball nets to remind the other slaves what happens when they speak against me, and the school will write off your disappearance as a problematic delinquent finally cracking under the pressure.”

“You’re disgusting,” Morgana weakly snarls beneath Kamoshida’s slipper. “Abusing students, threatening to kill Ryuji, you don’t deserve to—”

Kamoshida raises his foot and slams it down on Morgana’s back. Ryuji swears he hears something crack under Morgana’s caterwaul. Kurusu snarls wildly and thrashes underneath the horses pinning him down, a few getting shaken off before they stomp on his limbs in retaliation. When that’s not enough to quell him, the gold knight reaches down to pull the Bicorn horn out from his chest then stabs its sword through the same hole. Kurusu chokes and that same tar-like substance the Shadows are made out of splatters out from his mouth.

“Such a waste of time and effort,” Kamoshida says. “Really, I should thank you. You’ve saved me quite a lot of effort tracking you down for your executions. Delinquent, thieving trash like you three don’t deserve a search party.”

It’s the same as yesterday. Same impossible odds, same claustrophobic feeling, just as bloody and gory. Ryuji’s entered a horror movie and can only watch as the scene unfolds in front of him. Kamoshida picks up Morgana by his scruff, the cat’s breaths choked as his body hangs limply in the King’s grasp.

“Ryuji,” Kurusu chokes out. Across the room, their eyes meet, the hellfire bursting from Kurusu’s body somehow the most serene thing in the room. “Run.”

Ryuji shakes his head. He can’t. He can’t, he can’t, he can’t. He hasn’t been able to run for months, hasn’t been able to fight for even longer. He tried to fight back with Kamoshida and was left with his name tarnished, abandoned by his friends, his body weak and his future stolen. He even ran away in his head, his anger festering as he laid in bed and he took his meds, felt nauseous and floaty and wrong and still hurt. He took control the only way he could: bleaching his hair, buying shirts that broke dress code, fighting for any scraps of self-expression when he could barely hobble up three flights of stairs in the spring for class. He’s ran, and ran, and ran from everything, everyone, until he ran right into Kurusu and jumpstarted this whole mess.

“Stop…” Ryuji whispers. The pain in his leg shifts. The knife is gone, replaced with a cattle prod that stabs so deep it hits bone. There’s a current running through his whole body, a buzz that grows stronger with each panicked breath he takes, each beat of his run-down heart. He can’t breathe, his ribs cracked and bruised, a lump in his throat as tears build in his eyes. He hurts, he’s tired of hurting, tired of feeling like all he can do is go through the day.

“Look on as these hopeless scum die for nothing because they sided with trash like you.” Kamoshida declares, the gold knight pulling its sword free of Kurusu’s chest and raising it above his head.

“Stop it…!” Somehow he finds the strength to climb to his feet, taking a few stumbling strides towards Kamoshida. Every step is agony, his body feeling like a tree the instant it’s struck by lightning, the sap boiling and bursting and sending bark flying in every direction. He feels like his bones are too small, his muscles stretched thin, nothing feels right, in him, around him, it’s all wrong wrong wrong and he wants to tear it all apart.

It dawns on Ryuji that the twisted, euphoric grin the King has on his face is the same expression the real Kamoshida had when he broke his leg.

Fury flashes through Ryuji’s mind as his vision tunnels. He can feel it now, that electric current running through him, running through everyone, blitzing across the sky and striking the ground as a year-long storm breaks. His body feels wrong, too heavy, too squishy, needs to be bigger, harder, made of tougher stuff to weather the hell that’s about to break. There’s a bomb sitting in his chest that’s been waiting to go off ever since he stood up to Kamoshida, it just needed the right fuse to prime it.

Ryuji’s done running.

“Stop lookin’ down on me with that STUPID SMILE ON YOUR FACE!”

Ryuji loves storms.

It’s a weird thing to love, but he always thought they were cool. Whenever a storm came, he’d run and splash through puddles, cheer whenever thunder rumbled, jump when lightning flashed just a bit too close for comfort. Tracking typhoons was practically its own adrenaline rush and, whenever one rolled over Tokyo, Ryuji used to stand on his balcony and feel the wind whip around him as he got soaked by the sheets of rain and laugh.

Ever since his leg broke, though, storms are painful. His mom explained that whenever air pressure drops, your body reacts to the shift in weather, and the more metal you have in you the worse the pain is. Ryuji tracks storms not because he loves them anymore, but because he has to know which days he can walk without taking any meds to ease the pain.

Right now, the air thick with ozone and iron as electricity runs through his bones, there’s only two things Ryuji can grasp: he is standing in the eye of a typhoon, and there is no pain.

For a moment, he thinks he’s dreaming. This is too good to be true. He breathes in, his chest expands and doesn’t even ache with bruises. He raises his right leg and stomps, feels tiles crack beneath his feet, feels that current spread and crackle around his through body. This feels unreal, it’s too much, he can’t—

The horses used to be massive, easily the size of a bus. Now, he towers above them. 

He breathes in to—to scream, or cry, or something. Then the smell hits him and obliterates any rational thoughts in his head. Relief and horror get drowned out as his stomach twists and growls. Saliva pools in the caverns of his jaws and drips past his teeth, plinking onto the floor. His breathing picks up as his vision tunnels. The horses back away with nervous whinnies. He takes a step forward and bares his teeth.

There’s so much meat in front of him.

He’s so fucking hungry.

His body moves on autopilot, his thoughts waylaid in favor of rip, tear, eat eat EAT. Electricity pulses out of him in violent waves, the horses convulsing and falling back. There’s a flash of bright red out of the corner of his eye before horses slam into him to tackle him to the ground only to scream in agony as thousands of volts courses through their bodies. 

A startled meow, unimportant in the chaos, then the jingling of the chandelier above him. His claws tear through hides like butter, sinks his fangs into thick necks and drinks greedily of their blood. He sees Kamoshida running upstairs— him him want him so much so good will be full forever —but Ryuji’s blocked by the gold knight. It explodes into a man atop a horse who wastes no time and pierces Ryuji’s shoulder with a spear. He feels it tear through his muscles and scrape against bone but feels nothing.

He laughs, high and manic. Tears the spear from his shoulder and uses it to gut the horse. It screams and collapses, giving him the perfect opportunity to sink his claws into the man’s helmeted head and throw him across the room.

Everything blurs. Hooves kick frantically against his legs and chest, horns slam and try to pierce his body, flesh tears to ribbons, tar splatters over his eyes, teeth, tongue. He bites and rips and kicks and shocks and eats, swallowing limbs whole and not taking the time to taste, his hunger all consuming. The knight reappears and he electrocutes it until it's convulsing on the floor. He rips it in two, shoves his face into its innards and chows down. Each mouthful soothes something deep within him and sends endorphins rushing to his head. It’s not the same high he’d get from running, it’s better.

“Blondie?” Says a tiny, insignificant voice to his left. He ignores it, the meal is more important. He  bites the knight’s intestines and slurps them down like ramen noodles. They’re tough and stringy, and stick between his teeth like gum. Annoying, but worth it. So, so worth it.

“Sakamoto.” A deeper voice this time. His body twitches and he pauses in his feast. Sakamoto. Sa-ka-mo-to. He rolls the syllables around his head and feels a twinge of familiarity at the back of his mind. A tiny spark that struggles and squirms like a worm. He ignores it with a grunt, pushing his face in deeper and pawing at the knight’s armor to get to the heart, his tongue wrapping around a lung and pulling it free. “Ryuji.”

The spark flashes and his body jolts, inadvertently pushing his face further into—

“Wha’ the hell?” Ryuji’s voice comes out weird, deeper and distorted. He crawls back (when did he get on the floor?) and tries to figure out what happened, because the last thing he clearly remembers is yelling at Kamoshida. He looks down and sees a completely eviscerated knight, its body split into two pieces at the waist as bloody tar pools on the floor beneath it. Spread around the main hall are the horses from before, their bodies torn into with teeth and claws, scorch marks littering their hides and their limbs ripped from their body.

Something warm and sticky drips down his face. Ryuji raises a hand to swipe it away and sees bones. Dark, steel bones with whip-thin black cords connecting them, splattered with the same blood coating the floor.

“What—” Ryuji cuts himself off. His mouth feels off, his voice feels off, everything feels off. He stands up easily, too easily, and holy shit he’s huge. He’s easily three, maybe four feet taller, and as he frantically backs away from the gory mess in front of him his back hits a pillar and the top of his head scrapes against the bottom of the second floor. “Wh-what the fuck happened? What am I—what?”

“Ryuji,” He looks down again and sees Kurusu standing beneath him, hand outstretched towards him even though Ryuji is some massive… thing now, what does he even look like? He can’t bear to properly look down and examine his body, seeing his arms stripped down to metal-like bones and wire tendons enough to make him feel sick. “Ryuji, you need to breathe.”

Ryuji’s not even sure if he has lungs to breathe with, but he tries. He pats at his chest, feels ribs and a hollowness within him. His fingers brush against something round and pulsing, an odd feedback loop starting up and he decides that’s enough exploring and grips the pillar behind him until the wood cracks. “Kurusu—Akira, I can’t,” He breathes and smells the ozone hovering around him, the iron of blood and how he’s salivating at just the scent and shakes his head frantically. “I can’t—”

“Hey, Blondie!” Morgana shouts a million miles beneath him. “Try not to shock me!”

Ryuji feels Morgana hop onto his foot, his little paws tapping along his bones and for some reason that brings him so close to the edge that he nearly screams from simply the overwhelming feeling flooding his core. Before he can, Morgana nuzzles his shin and starts to purr, loud and imposing over the static buzzing around him. It's enough to shock him into stillness, the abrupt shift combined with his knowledge that cats only purr if something good is happening enough to pull him out of his spiral.

It takes a moment for Morgana’s purr to really hit. The panic thrumming through him abruptly vanishes and that alone nearly makes him collapse. The electric energy coursing through him pulses a few times in protest before ebbing into nothing more than a low thrum. Ryuji’s bones crack and shift and shrink, the ceiling growing more distant as he slides to the floor. Morgana’s now as tall as his knee and is still purring up a storm, eyes closed as he uncomfortably stands on Ryuji’s foot. Kurusu is taller than him again, would be taller even if Ryuji had the strength to stand, and that gives him a strong sense of normalcy that clashes with how he can still taste blood on his tongue and how his teeth feel too sharp to even brush his tongue up against.

Some distant, vaguely rational part of Ryuji’s mind registers that he did this. The knight, the horses, the taste clinging to every corner of his mouth, the blood covering his body—he did that. Not Kurusu, not Morgana, not Kamoshida. Him.

(Something deep within his soul resonates, whispers in the back of his mind: us.) 

He looks down to see that his clothes had changed, just like Kurusu’s. His usual school uniform is replaced by dark black pants and jacket, metal knee pads, steel-toed shoes and a long red tie draping down the center of his chest. Ryuji’s chest hitches with a barely-restrained sob, running his hands through his hair with his newly-acquired yellow gloves. Ryuji grabs Morgana and holds him close, the steady stream of purrs briefly interrupted with a startled mewl as he frantically hugs the cat like a lifeline.

Ryuji isn’t sure how long he sits there, staring off into the middle distance as he pieces himself together as best as possible. He only comes back to reality when Kurusu comes up to his side, an involuntary, inhuman growl leaving him. Kurusu hisses back, and then they both snap out of it because what the hell are they doing? What's wrong with them?

What a stupid question, says that distant part of Ryuji. You already know the answer: everything.

Kurusu gently places his hand atop Ryuji’s head. Ryuji stiffens at the contact, feeling that same, unnatural chill that accompanies Kurusu wherever he goes now, and crumples. Any composure he managed to gather falls to pieces, tears gathering in his eyes and cascading down his cheeks as he sobs.

They stay on the gore-coated floor for a long time, pushing the limits of Kamoshida’s grace before Morgana insists they need to leave. Despite how long Ryuji stayed curled up on the floor, his leg doesn’t ache in the slightest.

He almost wishes it would. If it did, he could brush off the last two days as nothing more than an overzealous nightmare.

Chapter Text

It’s 3:48 in the morning when Ryuji decides to call Akira. 

He’s been tossing and turning throughout the night, unable to settle and intermittently getting up to pace around his room, a near-constant thrum bubbling in his body. He ate about three cups of instant ramen since he came home, played video games until his eyes were about to fall out of his head, and stared at the piles of homework he’d already accrued as if he had the energy to do anything but try and be normal. He’s out of distractions and counting sheep and he can’t fall asleep to music because that just makes his brain go haywire so…!

He needs something else. He needs to hear someone who gets it. He needs to hear something that feels vaguely right or he’s going to snap.

He stares at his phone screen and guilt curdles in his stomach, because they both have to get up in a couple hours for school, and he doubts either of them are sleeping well. Then a bone-deep hunger pang ripples through his body, strong enough to make him curl into a ball, and he decides any distraction is better than this.

The phone rings once, twice, three times. Ryuji knew there was a chance Akira wouldn’t pick up, but suddenly he’s almost overwhelmed with the sudden urge to back out and hang up, pretend he never called or maybe even pass it off as a mid-sleep thing. Before he can, however, the line clicks to life and he hears a very sleepy voice through the speaker, “Mmmhello?”

“Hey,” Ryuji says eloquently, trying to not chew the inside of his cheek, especially since he can’t quite seem to make his teeth stay comfortably normal (and thinking about how they’re not normal anymore sends him into a mild panic every time. “Sorry I’m calling, it’s just…”

“Can’t sleep?” Akira guesses. “Last night was awful for me. You really should’ve taken Morgana with you, if only for the first night.”

“I’m not an emotional support animal…” Ryuji faintly hears Morgana meow sleepily on the other end of the line.

“I know but, as much as he says he’s not a cat, he’s got the fur and my ma’s allergic.” That, plus Ryuji knows their lease doesn’t allow pets. If his mom broke out in hives that would definitely be enough to tip their jackass landlord off, and the last thing he wants to do is worry her more than necessary. “How’d bringing Morgana home go down with your folks? Or, wait, you transferred, so uh… your aunt? Uncle?”

“Guardian. He’s not related to me or anything, friend of my mom’s friend or something like that,” Akira says, nonchalant. Ryuji tries to imagine his mom shipping him off to another city—hell, another prefecture of Tokyo—and can’t even imagine a scenario where she wouldn’t insist on coming with him. He’d have to argue that she should stay with her job and her apartment while Ryuji dealt with… whatever would’ve forced him to move. “I tried to sneak Morgana past him, but he found us out. Thankfully, he seems to like cats, so Morgana gets to stay.”

“Really? No offense, I didn't think it’d be that easy.”

“Might’ve been because I panicked a bit when he first found us. Or maybe he could just tell Morgana’s a good influence on me,” Akira chuckles. “He couldn’t be more right about that. He helps a lot with… all of it.” Ryuji hears shuffling on the other end of the line, maybe Akira sitting up. “You sure you don’t want me to get Morgana over to you? I know what it’s like, alone with nothing but your own thoughts.”

“There’s no way the trains are running this late, man.”

“I could try flying. Those wings on my back aren’t just for show.”

“Don’t joke about that bro.” Ryuji says, ignoring how he’s gnawing on the inside of his cheek and can taste his own blood in his mouth. He doesn’t even know if he can trust himself to fall asleep. What if mom comes home and that other part of him freaks out? Makes him change, tries to hurt her, succeeds in hurting her? He’s not risking voicing his concerns to Akira, though. That would make it all too real, too possible. Besides, calling him at the ass-crack of night is already too much. “I’m… okay. I can make it.”

“We can meet up before school tomorrow. Morgana can give you a morning pep purr, just in case,” Akira jokes. “Do you take the Ginza line?”

“Yeah, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to wake up early enough to meetcha at the station. Maybe at the gate?”

“Works fine for me.” There’s a lull in the conversation. Ryuji’s more beastial urges fixate on Akira’s slow, even breathing, barely audible through the phone speakers. For a moment his thoughts drift, his gaze unfocusing as he wonders if Akira’s blood tastes more like iron, or if it’s similar to the indescribable buzz the horses tasted like. Would his flesh be warm, or would it contain the same, lovecraftian chill that permeates his body? Would that make him taste sweet, or foul? It doesn’t matter. So long as it satisfied his hunger, even for a second, Ryuji choke down every last bit—

Ryuji feels his teeth change again, gums aching as they stretch and sharpen. Desperate for anything to ground himself, Ryuji forces the words out around his malformed jaw, “You wanna know somethin’ funny?”

“Sure.”

“Ever since I… since we left, my leg doesn’t hurt.” Ryuji rolls onto his back and stares up at his ceiling. He lifts his leg up until it’s perpendicular to the rest of his body, stretching out his foot and then curling it close to his chest. He rotates it to the right, then over his hips and to the left. Not a single ache or pulse of pain. His physical therapist would be proud, if Ryuji hadn’t been avoiding going to physical therapy since their bills are a bit tight the past few months. The simple calisthenics, however, are enough to bring him back to his normal, human-shaped body. “And like… that feels like the most unbelievable thing that’s happened. If I told my ma about all the monsters and Kamoshida and the students… well, she wouldn’t believe that either, but the idea of me not being in pain? She’d probably think the world turned upside down or something.”

“Was it really that bad?”

“Dude, it sucks. Or, sucked? Since it’s not happening any more?” Ryuji shrugs, as if Akira could see him. “After we heard the damage, we knew pain management was going to be a life-long thing on top of physical therapy. Forget becoming a track star, we were worried I wasn’t going to be able to walk at all.”

A sudden growl comes over the phone, enough to make Ryuji’s hackles raise. He barely restrains his own angry sound when Akira says, “I hate that he did that. Scumbag.”

“Yeah, he really is a piece of shit,” Ryuji’s chuckling turns sad. “Have you… thought about what you want to do?”

“Well… we have to go back there.” To eat.

“I know we do,” And he’s not looking forward to it. He gets how Akira felt now, standing in front of that castle. Ryuji wants to space out just laying on his bed, the never-ending hunger lancing through his body in waves. If it somehow became more intense in the blink of an eye, Ryuji would lose it. “But I mean about Kamoshida in general. We know he’s abusing the volleyball team at the very least. If I had to guess, he’s probably got some hand in leaking your record. We can’t just let that go.”

“Not to mention what he did to you already,” Akira agrees. “I… hate him, I think.”

“You ‘think?’”

“No, I know I do. It’s just—” There’s a pause, Ryuji hears Akira let out a tired sigh. “I haven’t been able to feel much of anything lately. Before the castle, I was focused on making it through each day as it came. There wasn’t time to think about hating or loving or how I felt about things, because I couldn’t change anything. My future was already ruined, so why think past the present? But now… now we have to think about it, now I have to feel something about it, because if I don’t, someone will get hurt. It’s just a matter of whether it’s us or someone else.”

Ryuji thinks back to the first day he bleached his hair. Days spent laying in bed blurring together, the hell of limbo culminating in a split-second decision when he went to his local pharmacy to pick up his meds. A pair of vinyl gloves barely clung to his hands as he scrubbed the bleach in thoroughly. It hurt—the chemical scent assaulting his nose and eyes, the hunch in his back as he washed it out, the stinging in his scalp and the ache in his leg as he curled over the sink. Ryuji looked up at his reflection and didn’t recognize himself, a full head of black had been replaced with corn-on-the-cob yellow before his eyes. For a moment he didn’t think about what others thought of him, or how his mom would react, or what this meant for him. All he could think was I did something, I did something.

“I get that, honestly,” Ryuji says “But I think we gotta think about this more than just having a place to… ‘let loose.’ We know what Kamoshida’s doing, and maybe… maybe we could change things.”

“I want to do something,” Akira agrees. “I just don’t know what we can do, outside of going against his Shadow.”

“What if that’s enough?” Ryuji asks. “Morgana said that the King and Kamoshida are linked, maybe we could get more blackmail, or spook the shit out of the King. He’s already run from us twice after we changed.”

“Maybe.” Akira agrees. In the lull there’s a slight rustling and an annoyed mew. Ryuji can almost picture him petting Morgana’s back. “Let’s try a more normal method for now. If we can get enough students to turn on him, then that could start something.”

“That might work. I got a good enough look at the student’s faces in the dungeon, we can start there. And if it doesn’t…” Ryuji trails off. He’s more than okay with fighting, now that he has the power backing him, but… there’s definitely the fear that they could go too far. Not that Ryuji wouldn’t be against kicking Kamoshida’s ass seven ways to Sunday, but one wrong move, one tiny slip in what has to be ironclad control, and that could be the permanent end of Kamoshida. It’s hard enough grappling with his new diet, he doesn’t want to deal with the emotional weight of actually murdering someone. Even if the thing coursing through his body doesn’t care about silly things like guilt , and if there was anyone Ryuji could see himself slaughtering, it’d be Kamoshida, Ryuji has to hold onto some moral anchor, else he’ll snap before the hunger gets to him. “We’ll figure it out from there.”

Akira lets out a sleepy hum. Then, quietly, as though he’s scared to ask, “Do you know what its name is?”

Ryuji’s hand rubs over his right thigh. He saw it when he got home, striping off his sweat-covered uniform in a frantic rush to shower and get the lingering stench of blood and viscera off him. The mark covers the surgical scar on his thigh, a pitch black skull and crossbones. Ryuji traced the shape and felt like he was touching an exposed wire. He peeks under his bare thread blanket to look at it again. The empty eyes stare up at him, as if daring him to keep believing everything will be okay, that there isn’t a voice in the back of his mind hissing and laughing at his distress, that he didn’t stare at the other subway passengers and thought about which ones would taste the most savory on his tongue, that he didn’t sit in his shower and curl into a ball and found himself wishing the pain would return.

If he told himself even a week ago he’d be wishing for his leg to ache so bad he’d think about cutting it off, he would’ve laughed until he was blue in the face. Now look at him, laying in bed and not a thing wrong with him, wishing for agony, a foreign name bubbling up within him like something dredged from the abyss.

“Kidd,” Ryuji eventually says. “Captain Kidd.”

“Cool name,” Akira purrs, an otherworldly quality backing his voice, dual approval. “Definitely better than Blondie.”