Bandages and Salt (PJO X BSD AU)

Chapter fifty

A/N: The information after the first section of this is all a rewrite of the light novel, The Day I Picked Up Dazai, which was given out as a free bonus to all those that went to see the Beast live action movie in Japan during opening week, so I don't claim to own any of it. If you want to read that before reading these next few chapter then search the title on Google and you should be able to find a translation after a bit of digging. This stands for chapters fifty through fifty-four.

Dazai POV

The time following the incident that the Japanese government had seen fit to pin the blame on ongoing gang warfare rather than the consequences of illegal human experimentation had passed tensely as the Port Mafia had lost many ability users, weapons, and soldiers by the rather climatic end of it all. Though that was the expected outcome of mine from the start. The Port Mafia was currently scrambling to piece itself back together once more, something that I had no doubt within my mind that it would. The boss wouldn't allow for anything else after all.

The only apparent upside to the King of Assassins incident was that the organization was currently lying low from the intristed authorities, quietly rebuilding what had been loss, we were able to avoid immediately being drawn into the beginnings of another stirring conflict that seemed to be drawing almost every other organization in Yokohama to it. The downside, however, was that while laying low the menial tasks had begun to pile up. Which was how I found myself on a solo mission to retrieve the last of our counterfeit notes that Piano Man had made before his... unfortunate death, something that had been stolen during the commotion by a defector who thought the Port Mafia wouldn't notice.

Idiotic, really.

The Yokohama air was warm well into the night once more, the chilly breeze from the port a welcome respite, I imagine, to all those who found themselves running about the city either for the growing conflict or for the mafia itself.

The stolen counterfeit notes and the man that had stolen them had taken up a temporary residence in a rundown part of the city close enough to the slums that the crime rate had risen high enough for a good number of homes and other store buildings in the area to have become rundown or plain vacant with time. The crime in this part of the city tended to be solo acts that didn't belong to any organization and didn't care to tie themselves to one.

The criminals were largely left alone by most organizations in the port city because their presence served a purpose. Their activity had a tendency to drive people to move to and operate close to the heart of the city itself where all of the organizations themselves happened to reside. It was good for business, but also accidentally created quite the area for foolish strays to hide.

Good thing this one never seemed to learn hope to put a muzzle on.

The defector seemed to have the inability to not brag to anyone that would listen about how he'd managed to get away from the Port Mafia, of all places, unscathed. He was trying to build a name for himself in the run down area while waiting for a decent buyer for the notes to make themselves known while he decided whether or not he would be fleeing the city once the deal was done.

Personally, if I were to betray an organization that was known for brutally murdering those that betrayed their ranks, taking care to make a painful example of the offenders, I would get out of the city, country even, as fast as I possibly could. I wouldn't stay around and air the news of what I'd done for all in the area to know, all but offering myself up to the mafiosos waiting to take me away. But he so clearly wasn't me, as I was standing outside of the condemned building that had once been called a house before it had fallen into complete, hazardous, disarray.

Complete and utter idiocy.

Quietly, I slipped inside of the side door of the house and into the darkness of the building, only lit up by the dull light escaping from the only lit room in the entire building. The light had an almost sterile look to it, that of a flashlight propped up somehow rather than a ceiling fan.