doing my dark deeds, in my flesh church

They file in, one after another, armed to the teeth, blocking the exit. Out from the wall of men steps Jonouchi - and Yugi Mutou himself.

Mutou looks the same, though he’s missing that trademark bat of his. Jonouchi’s got a new get up on - a collar with what looks like fucking knives jutting out of it, shiny new knuckle dusters, clothes that look like they were hand-picked by that shrimpy fuck, a scowl he has no right to. Cute.

“Nice threads, Kacchan,” Hirutani sneers. “Make the lingerie ride up any?”

Jonouchi’s mouth curls in a snarl, new metal canine teeth glinting in the low light of the bar. Ooh, those are a nice touch. Hirutani will have so much fun pulling those out, just like he did with the old ones.

“We’re here to correct a mistake,” Yugi says, cold and business-like.

“Oh?” Hirutani drawls. “What mistake is that?”

“Letting you live,” Yugi says.

Silence hangs for a moment, thick like cigarette smoke. Hirutani snorts.

“Yeah, right,” he says.

Hirutani rolls his shoulders back, joints popping as he reaches into a pocket. Fingers close on cold plastic.

“Think you’re forgetting something, star-head,” Hirutani says.

Yugi tilts his head. “Oh? What’s that?”

Hirutani smirks, drawing out his hand. “I have just the thing to make your mutt heel-”

Hirutani stops. Frowns. Looks at his hand.

It’s empty.

There. There was something in his hand, just now. Wasn’t there?

Hirutani stares at this empty palm, trying to make sense of the sudden nothing in his hand, in his mind.

It… He’s used it before. On Jonouchi. He’s used it a lot, he should know what’s called, he just had it, what -

Hirutani looks up.

The gang is gone. Weapons, people, gone.

There is only Yugi, leathers pitch black against the bar lights, his eyes almost glowing and ember red. He stalks forward with all the terrible purpose of a hungry lion. When he opens his mouth, his teeth are fangs, and his high voice is dragged deep and guttural as he growls,

“Run.”

Hirutani bolts.

J’z’s bar has a couple exits - Hirutani skitters up the exit closest to the bar, opposite from where Yugi came in, stumbling and skipping up the stairs. It’s narrow and it’s tricky but it leads right up to the street and he bursts through the door and skids into -

a hallway.

Hirutani freezes. The hallway is dark, doors every few feet on both sides. A fluorescent bulb above him flickers.

That’s - this isn’t right. This door goes up to the one of the alleyways, not upstairs. He couldn’t have got turned around, he knows this place like he built it himself - there isn’t a hallway this way -

“Did you think it would be that easy?”

Hirutani spins in place, breath catching in his throat.

Yugi’s voice sounds like he’s right behind Hirutani, but he’s not. Hirtuani can feel him like the gravity of an incoming meteor, hear his boots thudding as he comes up the steps. There’s still some distance, still some time. Hirutani picks a direction and runs.

“Did you think I’d cower?”

The hallway is impossibly long, unmarked locked doors one after the other running far past the length of the building. Hirutani should either be out in the street or in a different building entirely, but there’s only the doors and cracked linoleum and the same flickering fluorescent light. Hirutani’s lungs burn.

“Did you think this would be quick?”

Suddenly: an open door. Hirutani nearly runs past it, skids and trips as he grabs at the doorframe. He looks behind him - just for a second, half a second - and sees Yugi, the scant light warping around him like the accretion disk of a black hole. His eyes are redder. Brighter. His teeth flash like a steel trap.

“Did you think I’d be merciful?”

Hirutani bolts into the door, finds another staircase, takes it two, three steps at a time. This has to be it, this has to lead to the street -

Hirutani steps into another hallway. An identical hallway. The same light flickers, just above him.

He stares, unbelieving, breath heaving.

There’s. There’s no second floor. There’s the basement and the ground floor, there isn’t a second floor to J’z, he should be either in the alleyway or on the roof, what in the fuck is this?

“You think you deserve mercy?”

Yugi’s voice echoes, sepulchral, from the bottom of the staircase. Hirutani steps back from the void, heels digging as he - as he -

His legs don’t move.

They should. Shouldn’t they? There’s a way - a way for them to move to make Hirutani go fast, far away from here, he was just doing it. Right? Why. Why can’t he make them move the fast way? There’s a word for the fast way, he can feel the shape of it in his head, why can’t he think the word, why can’t he think it at his legs to make them go?

Hirutani looks up -

and is met with blood red eyes, an open snarl, and a third eye glowing bright as the sun.

“After what you’ve done?!”

Hirutani gasps, and a hand grabs him by the jaw, slams him into the linoleum. The tile cracks under him, his head ringing, blood in the back of his mouth. Fingers dig like claws into his face, and Hirutani raises his hands to -

to…

Do what, exactly?

Hirutani whines, the hole where the word for hurt the other person with your hands should be jagged and bloody in his mind, his hands flapping uselessly against the floor. His lungs burn and his legs lay limp and something cracks, like a gunshot, just in front of his face.

Hirutani freezes.

Yugi’s face slides, this way and that, cracking as it goes. Opens, wetly, a bloody flower blooming out, scraping teeth radiating out from the petal edges, and Hirutani opens his mouth to - to - to make a noise, any noise, a loud noise to make to get help, but the word is gone gone gone, scraped out of his brain by the radula of some horrible kind of leech, and he can only watch in mute horror as the teeth start to dig into the skin of his face, his nose, fangs piercing his eyeball and scraping against his skull and oh god oh god make it stop make it stop MAKE IT STOP -

“Enough.”

Hirutani blinks, and there’s the sensation of a rubber band snapping against the surface of his brain and then -

He’s back in J’z.

The gang is back, weapons in hand, Jonouchi standing in front of them. Yugi, looming over Hirutani, glaring, his eyes no longer red. Out of the corner of his eye he watches one of Yugi’s gang pick the Taser up off the floor and remove the battery.

Yugi turns, slowly, towards Jonouchi, who walks forward.

“I want him to be himself for what I’m gonna do to him,” Jonouchi says.

For a second Hirutani’s sure Yugi is gonna tell Jonouchi to fuck off, let him work. Instead his shoulders lower, just a fraction, his snarl loosening a notch. He licks his lips, teeth flashing.

“All right,” Yugi says. “How do you wanna do this?”

Jonouchi’s gaze slides to Hirutani. His eyes are flat and lightless. Maybe, once upon a time, he would’ve been conflicted. Held himself back. Hirutani made sure that wouldn’t be an option a long time ago.

And there’s -

- more than there should be?

That can’t be right. Karuta counts the bills again, and again, and - there’s definitely more in her pocketbook than there was when she got back from work, about [¥] and some change. The bills look different, too - the ones Karuta had to start are more crisp, because she just got them from the bank. The new ones, the ones she thought Jonouchi was stealing, are worn and crinkled and have nicks along the edges.

Karuta looks at the bills, then up at Jonouchi. There’s a question there, just on the tip of her tongue, but it refuses to come out.

“It’s for the coat,” Jonouchi says in a small voice.

Karuta stares at him uncomprehendingly.

“For, y’know,” Jonouchi says, fidgeting, “the winter coat, and the other one, and the um, clothes.”

Karuta shakes her head. “I don’t…”

“I don’t like owing people,” Jonouchi says. “And that’s not all of it, but I-I’m good for it, I promise, you’ll get the rest when I get paid.”

Karuta blinks. Something molten and ugly churns in her, makes her mouth go sour. What the hell is wrong with this kid?

“Jonouchi,” she says, slowly, “you don’t owe me anything.”

It’s Jonouchi’s turn to stare at her.

“…Yes I do?”