Bloody Monday, Blue Diamond
new underrated polycule, Villain!nanami, you, and getou.
Nanami succumbs to the utterly understandable despair of late-stage capitalism and decides he's tired of working with the people who create it by scamming those on the cusp of retirement to create their own wealth. He snaps etc etc, blood, guts, pollock spatters all around.
He's fully expecting to get caught and initially thinks he doesn't have the arrogance to avoid capture. He did it. He'll have the courtesy to look his old classmates in the eye (...maybe not Ijichi) when whomever comes for him.
Except Suguru gets there first.
The flashbang of Nanami's energy didn't originally read like teenaged Saturday night rave Nanami and plenty of techniques involve novel ways to cleave things, so Suguru thought this was some newly realized sorcerer, thought maybe he could provide some guidance.
At first, Nanami isn't sure whether to simply stay seated on his old boss's favorite leather chair, sprawled perhaps a bit more than was polite, or bare his teeth. He's sure it would make a horrifying visage, covered in gore as he was. Or perhaps he should simply curse Getou out, for old-time's sake.
But Suguru smiles, welcoming and nearly ecstatic. Immediately, Nanami pings that something is more wrong with Suguru than expected, but, well... he looks around at the three bodies separated at the shoulders or shins.
The clarity is beginning to die away with the adrenaline high by the time you peak around the door, clearly looking for Suguru, but brightening almost comically when you catch sight of Nanami, different than he was as your kohai more than five years ago.
"Hells, this place made you old," you scoff, a very open mixture of disgust and pity and curiosity and a totally unfamiliar hunger aimed right at him.
Suguru raised an eyebrow. "That's not very polite."
You gave him an utterly irreverent look back. "Yes, I know."
Nanami found himself torn, whether to laugh. Or perhaps to scream. Both jockeyed as equally viable options given this was increasingly becoming some kind of fever dream.
Suguru held his hand out to help you step, nose wrinkled, over a pool of blood that revealed the lazy lean of the room. Nanami found himself glaring distastefully at one of the managers piled across the cheap carpeting. It seemed representative of the current situation that the people who were supposed to call in repairs now didn't need to worry about being four years late.
He'd half tuned out what you and Suguru were saying to one another, but he was practiced at half-ignoring conversations that did not interest him while still tracking their tragectory.
"I've no interest in coming with you," he said blandly, looking around for something to clean his blade on. It had been with him for a very long time, and he would like it at least to be taken care of.
"Oh please, we're not kidnappers," you replied archly. To which Nanami simply glanced at you in the kind of way that implied he hadn't been considering you bodily dragging him out of this horror show, but now he knew it had been one of the first options you had.
Suguru laughed in a helpless, familiar sort of way that also made Nanami think this was some sort of joke.
"- but it would be in your best interest not to be here in about... ten more minutes."
Without much of apparent interest at the scene of Nanami's deciding crime, Suguru was clearly attempting to wrap this up.
"I'll stay," Nanami said evenly, his conviction as sturdy and inevitable as when he had first stepped into the office with a weapon in his hands. This was not an event meant to be ignored. Over thirty people slaughtered at a fairly reputable finance firm wasn't something that was going to go over well with the press, Nanami thought grimly. Satisfied.
He felt briefly remorseful for the people he knew in passing who would find themselves tainted in a way by knowing him.
It took him a few moments to realize how far silence had extended around him, between you and he, and how there was a crawling feeling going over his skin. He glanced out the window, but it was as bright and sunny a day as when he had come inside. There was no evidence of the kind of monsoon thunderheads that might pile on the horizon.
There were a quartet of over-large, prickly centipedes and the same of stringy earthworms wrapped around his arms and legs. Even with far worse around him, he found himself slightly put off by the conflicting textures.
"Sorry, Nanami," you were saying, tiptoeing over dotted mirrors of drying black blood to get right in front of him with a determined set to your mouth that still communicated the hell you are, and that you were a bit grossed out as you leaned in to touch him.
"What-" was all he got out before light, sound, and then consciousness cut completely out.
He awoke quite gently laid out on a refuse pile. Or...
Yes, there was something soft in the bag on his left. Opening it despite his better judgement revealed some plain clothes, a bit broader in the shoulder and waist than his own size, but serviceable. And it appeared his exposed skin had largely been cleansed of the rusty freckling he'd worn in the office.
He could still see it, the towering building, 35th floor. He didn't much care to count but high-rises stacked much like the tiny boxes of a spreadsheet, so he felt he made a fairly accurate guess.
The third grade curse had been hiding behind the bag, revealed as he lifted himself from the literal garbage pile and began divesting himself of his sullied suit, as comfortable as if he were in the apartment he'd likely never be able to go back to.
Briefly, he mourned the loss of his books and his plants and his other, nicer, better fitting clothing, all while keeping an eye on the curse.
Which looked rather sullen, if a curse could look sullen, as it watched him too.
When he was dressed, still in his dress shoes as the ones in the bag were a touch too large, the curse gave a dull, breathy sigh and drifted to one end of the alley.
He was clearly meant to follow.
So, he did. It directed him to a boring but tidy hotel where the curse concealed him from the front desk with some minor technique, spiriting him away to the 14th floor before giving a relieved sigh, or perhaps a mournful one as it was rid of him, and drifting through a wall of the room he'd been led to.
There was a black burner phone on the table beneath the television and another, smaller, bag on the chair. He stared at both and then went to kick off his dress shoes, strip off his socks, and fall back against the mattress, as comfortable as most hotel mattresses usually were.
A quick sniff at the collar of his borrowed t-shirt revealed an unfamiliar detergent, and it clicked into place that these must be Suguru's clothes somehow, although he hadn't thought you knocked him out for that long.
He turned his head this way and that and thought he should probably shower. It was a bit gross, his hair sticky with gel and sweat. At least there were two beds in the room. He could lie on the other later too.
He smiled briefly. Hysterical. What luxury.
What horrible, awful people you'd both remained.
He thought that after his shower, he should probably call you, for surely that number was in the new phone on the table under the television. He could give Suguru his shoes back.
And, it came to him with a grim sort of irritation, it wasn't as though he'd planned anywhere else to go.
