Choices & Chains

Tracking Dazai

Kath walked back and forth, circling the pews and checking her phone every now and then, hoping against hope to get the briefest message of the situation outside.

Her feet dragged her to the door, twice, only to be stopped each time by Yosano.

" I can't stand it! I want to be out there, being of help to them! This is so unbearable!"

" Keep your head cool, Kath." Rampo lowered his feet from the table and threw the straw left from his lollipop into the bin. " Our best members are already there, those two will be fine. Don't you have trust in them?"

" I do!... I do but..." She looked down at the ground, as if recalling a scene from a long forgetting past. " The moment you look away... is always the moment misfortune strikes..." Before her, a pool of blood unraveled. One only she could see, existing in her memory only.

" Kath, nothing will happen. They will save both Naomi and Haruno and come back here alive and well." Yosano spun the girl around, giving her a tight hug. " This time is different. We are different. That kind of misfortune wouldn't strike us easily."

She hoped, she prayed it was the case, giving in to the warmth of Yosano's hug. Her body felt heavier than it was moments before. And when her fatigue from keeping her ability functional for too long finally caught up, she was sound asleep in Yosano's arms.

✦ -─────────- ✦

Praying alone never solved a dilemma, she ought to have known.

Although, Haruno and Naomi returned to the Agency sound and safe, Atsushi was captured no longer after, and so was Kyouka.

Their whereabouts were unknown, the Agency was unable to do anything but pray, again. That's when Kath understood, that praying alone, that just waiting for some miracle to happen of its own accord, was simply not good enough. Some sort of effort had to be applied.

In her case, this effort consisted of locating currently the missing Dazai. A week earlier, said man was caught in a car crash, and there was no news about him ever since. Finding him wouldn't be any easier than finding Atsushi or Kyouka, but Kath already had a small lead.

" Tracking your coworker isn't nice." Said man was particularly waiting for her in a back alley, a good distance far from the agency. He was holding a pen cap and twirling it in between his long thin fingers. " Since when?"

" But keeping the tracker on yourself was useful, right." Kath stowed away her phone which she used to locate Dazai. " Since this war started, not that you didn't notice. You initially hid the tracker in an abandoned container by the pier a week ago, I checked it. But since you didn't destroy it upon discovering it, I realized you had a reason to keep it."

" And so didn't retrieve it." He flipped it up then clutched it again and looked back at her with a smile. " Only for me to use it to call for you this time."

Kath kept checking the tracker every now and then until it finally moved that very day, and by the look of it, it didn't seem like some stray animal picked it up, and no one would show interest in a discarded pen cap. It was her cue, her only lead.

" You don't trust me that much I guess. Putting a tracker on me. Did you think I was going to betray the agency or something?"

Kath shrugged, not keen on providing an answer he already knew. " Why did you bring me here? What do you need from me?"

" Something is about to happen and the whole of Yokohama would be razed to the ground overnight if nothing is done about it." Using his unwounded hand, Dazai pushed open the door of the shed he was leaning against for the whole time. " And I need your help with stopping it."

Kath pouted and walked up to him, peering inside the dark shed, her eyes widened at what was stacked in there. " How... Did you get those?"

" Connections help." The man smirked.

Kath looked back at him, befuddled. What the heck was that man thinking of? He really bothered himself with coming up with such an idea, and yet for what?

" What's it that you're really after?"

" My life's goal is peaceful eternal sleep."

" No, I mean this!" She pointed inside the shed. " Why would you bother? Why would you go to such length?"

" Isn't it obvious?" His tone was calm and soft, one she never heard him use. " Despite what it seems, I still care for this town as much as any of you does. I would never allow them to have it their way."

Kath's eyes locked onto his, gauging his intentions. She knew it was futile against Dazai, she had never been able to read anything out of his eyes, yet, there was one thing that he made sure to her that day, that he would never betray Yokohama, at the very least.

" Very well." Despite her attempts, a smile escaped her face as her skill activated, and her wires streamed from the ends of her fingers and into the shed. Seconds later, something shuffled out of the shed in a rather penguin-like gait. It was something akin to an egg with sticks for arms and legs and balanced on top of a cylinder.

A similar one followed after, then another, and another, and another, forming a line of thirty. " Where do you want them?"

" This street would do," he said innocently showing her a map on her phone that he had swept a moment ago.

" You really have very light hands don't you." A vine twitched on her temple. " Fine, as long as I line all of them up there, it would do, right? Though I still don't exactly get what you're planning at."

" Even though you realize what those things are?" He pointed at the blue and white striped eggs surrounding him.

" Of course I know. Mike is the one who came up with their concept. He sold the idea though. Didn't think I would run into these here of all places." A gentle smile appeared on her face as she looked at the figures before her eyes met with Dazai. " For you to resort to these, it means you expect a vicious attack."

" It's just how much of a nuisance their plan is. But hopefully, by the end of it, we can save Yokohama and have Atsushi-kun back."

Kath tilted her head at Dazai. " Say... What's Atsushi-kun to you?"

Dazai tilted his head too, mimicking her. " What do you mean?"

" I doubt you forgot this very alley, it's where you and I met for the first time, Dazai."

" Was it really?" The man had a finger to his chin as though trying to recall.

" Don't play dumb!" The girl warned him with a sharp glare. " The way you treated Ryuu back then and the way you treat Atsushi-kun now..."

Dazai's smirk broadened slightly before he spun around, holding the pen cap between his fingers. " That's an answer for another day." He crushed the tracker with his hand and left.

Kath squinted her eyes after him. " You're saying it had already served its purpose, huh." With a sigh, Kath had the egg figures waddle before her through the back alley and in the direction of the street Dazai had marked...