Begin Again (Chuuya x reader)

chapter four

In the past few weeks, my ability's had increased tenfold. As always, there was still the occasional problem when I got too stressed or felt cornered, but Chuuya had been working with me on developing different ways of combat that could help me out in a sticky situation. When our training had started out, it was always me against him. I refused to work with anyone else which, in retrospect, was silly of me. Now he tended to stay off to the sides while I worked with various subordinates of his.

Hirotsu was my favorite to work with. As leader of the black lizard, he was far from being beneath Chuuya. Every once in a while however, he still liked lending a hand in my training. He said it was much more interesting than training with the rest of black lizard. Hirotsu was strong, stronger than most I'd faced, and I always ended up loosing when I fought him. The most recent few times we had fought however, I'd been closer to beating him than ever before.

"Alright," rang Chuuya's clear voice through the gym, "you guys can stop. I have an idea."

immediately I returned to my new state of 'normal' that Chuuya had taught me as possible. Today, I wore simple black leggings and a yellow sweater with my hair up and out of the way. It had become normal for me to change my appearance at my own volition, normal to make the scars go away.

"You can leave." he said as he stood up, pointing to the subordinate I had been fighting before turning to me, "You and I are gonna have a chat while we wait for Akutagawa to arrive."

I nodded as the person I'd worked with ran out of the room. When Chuuya reached my side, I turned to face him. 

"Did I do something wrong, Chuuya?" I asked, expectantly. 

"No, no, no." he sighed, waving his hand as if to clear the air of my question, "I just wanted to say that you're doing a good job. You seem to benefit from me being honest with stuff like that so, I wanted to tell you I'm proud of how quickly you've progressed in the past few weeks."

"Really?" I checked, feeling the blood rush to my cheeks, "You... you're proud? You don't want me to change what I'm doing? You don't think I'm weak without you beside me?"

"You know, almost every time you open your mouth, I find another reason to hate that fucker."

The gym door opened and Akutagawa stepped in, closing it softly behind him. 

"You wanted to see me?"

"Yeah, come over."

Akutagawa moved so he was standing beside me before Chuuya. He sent me a questioning look and I simply shrugged before we both turned our attention back to the redhead.

"Alright, Y/n-chan?" he began.

"Yes sir?"

"I want you to fight both Akutagawa and I."

"At the same time?" asked Akutagawa, his brow furrowing.

It was then that I realized in all of my months training with Chuuya, I had never worked with Akutagawa. Neither of us knew what to expect from the other. 

Except you do. Whispered a little voice in my head, Remember everything that man complained to you about him. Remember his weaknesses and what they were then. No one can change that much.

"At the same time." confirmed Chuuya.

I could see Akutagawa was about to protest when I suddenly grabbed his chin between my thumb and pointer finger, pulling his head down slightly so we made eye contact. 

"Don't worry." I smirked, trailing my hand across him as I began to walk towards my starting corner in the gym, "I can handle myself."

When I reached my position, I turned back around to see both men standing stunned in the middle of the gym.