Chapter Text
The windows of the car are tinted, like most family vehicles, so Kiryu can only see his own grim reflection as he strides over, the strange little pearl clutched inside his coat. What if this doesn't work? Majima had been confident enough, but it's clear he knows just as little about all this as Kiryu does. His promise that they'll find the answers together is meaningless if he can't even get Majima back in his own body.
Madness. This is all madness, a screaming maelstrom of insanity and horror. To face it alone might be more than he could bear. But he has to keep going, to try and bring Majima back, or it will have been for naught.
He reaches the back door of the car and takes a moment to brace himself. Will Majima's body just be sprawled across the seat, thrown in without a care? Or will it have collapsed into rot with nothing to sustain it, a loose pile of flesh slowly congealing into the leather?
Only one way to find out. He opens the door and steps inside the car in one smooth, purposeful motion, shutting himself in so he has no choice but to face this.
He forces himself to look, turning his head in a series of short, sharp fractions of movement, his affectation of confidence faltering. Relief extinguishes the worst of his fears when he finds Majima's body sat in the back seat, perfectly intact, leaning against the window as if he's just sleeping. Safe and secure, even strapped in.
"A seatbelt?" Kiryu mutters to himself, surprised at the sight.
"Oh, um. I thought that it seemed more polite that way."
Kiryu whips around in alarm towards the voice, arms raised and ready to fight. A threat? Wasn't the car supposed to be empty?
There's a rather nervous looking man sat in the driver seat, and knowing Majima’s list of confidants there’s only one person it could be. Definitely not someone he’d consider a threat.
"...Nishida."
The other man bows his head in greeting. "Yes, Kiryu-san. It's good to meet you properly at last!"
"Mm.” Kiryu doesn’t feel much like introductions, but he does not want to be impolite to the man who cleans up so many of Majima’s messes. "...How are you doing with all this?" he ventures.
"Oh! Very badly, sir!"
Not the response he was expecting. Kiryu thinks about this for a moment, and then decides honesty will do. "Yes, me too."
Nishida wipes a sweaty palm over an even sweatier face, looking at the jacket Kiryu has bundled in his arms with concern. "So... is that... oyaji?"
"Apparently." Kiryu clenches the bundle a little tighter.
"I saw what was happening out there. He told me he'd be okay, but..."
"But we still have no real idea about any of this," Kiryu sighs, inwardly berating Majima for his overconfidence and haste. "Did he have his little game making you guess who he was, too?"
"Uh, yes, sort of. I didn't get it at first when he called me. His voice was different, but he talked just like normal and knew all the things oyaji knows, so I thought maybe he had a cold or something? And he said I had to come help him move a body." A dry swallow, Nishida staring into some middle distance. "Then when I got there, it was... him. He was the body."
It's at least slightly reassuring for Kiryu to see someone else having just as bad a day as him. "And then you both came here to find me."
Nishida nods, wringing his hands. "He said you'd know what to do. But how can anyone know what to do? What do we do now?!"
"I think the first step is to get him back inside... himself."
"Is that possible?"
"He told me how it’s supposed to work... so we can only try."
Completely out of his depth, Kiryu turns to Majima's body. Is he going to have to force-feed the soul back in, or will it just work from being close enough? He can feel Nishida's eyes on him, both of them uncertain. Still protecting his hand with his jacket, Kiryu unwraps the glowing orb and presses it to the bare skin of Majima's chest.
The reaction is instant. With a choked gasp, Majima jerks back into animation, his body spasming as whatever qualifies as life returns to it. Kiryu shifts backwards to give him space, and there's a second where Majima looks absolutely feral as he snatches the orb with a growl to open his mouth and swallow it down.
The next noise Majima makes is far more obscene.
Kiryu's ears go pink, and he schools his gaze on his fists, clenched now in his lap. "Ah... are you alright, nii-san?" he asks.
"Mmm." Majima beams drunkenly as he slides sideways down the seat. "I am... veeeeeery good."
He gets tangled up in the seatbelt and spends a good few moments being perplexed by it until Kiryu grows impatient, pressing the release and freeing the other man. This sends Majima tumbling bonelessly, landing with his head face down in Kiryu's lap.
Nishida very pointedly turns to face away from them both, his hands clutching the steering wheel.
"Are you alright?" Kiryu repeats.
Majima flaps a hand at him. "Shh. I'm ridin' it out. Just... just got a whole bunch o' juice all at once. Let me have this."
Oh, that's right. Majima had said that absorbing energy feels good for him. Kiryu just hadn't realised it was this powerful, or this... charged. He tries to keep still as Majima sprawls even further across him, an arm snaking around his waist, face hot against the fabric of Kiryu’s trousers. Majima clearly hasn't suffered for his temporary out-of-body experience, and while Kiryu is relieved, he's getting increasingly self-conscious as this continues.
"Perhaps I should leave, Majima-san. Let you recover fully."
"No can do, Kiryu-chan. I got ya in my clutches." A second arm wraps around him, holding him tight. He presses his face close and inhales deeply. “Fuck, ya smell so good.”
Kiryu’s blush spreads all the way down his neck. “I’ve been wearing the same suit for two days.”
Majima tuts, now moving to press his face into Kiryu's stomach. "Not like that, dumbass. Your fuckin'... aura, whatever. It smells real nice." He inhales again, but somehow it’s not just with his breath. It’s as if Majima’s entire... being, that spark which makes him Majima, is revelling in Kiryu’s presence.
This is absolutely not the time to be losing focus. The situation at hand is dire and they're both out of their depth. Majima is talking about auras and burrowing his way into Kiryu's lap, and he's so warm; shouldn't he be cold? He was cold before, but now he's a radiator spread across the seat.
Because he absorbed Shimano.
That gets Kiryu focused again.
"Majima-san, we need to talk about what just happened."
A grumble from the man who is currently trying to fuse them into one person. "Can it wait til I crash? Ya sound so serious and it's fuckin' bumming me out." He keeps his face flush against Kiryu’s midriff as he speaks, his voice muffled.
"It is serious. Shimano is dead, and you were puppeteering his body."
"...oh yeah." Majima finally peels himself off of Kiryu like an octopus releasing its prey, sitting back up, looking momentarily disoriented. "Kinda forgot about that for a second."
"You- you forgot."
"Been a crazy day. Can't keep track of all the little details." Majima lets his head fall back against the seat with a hum. He lets a few seconds of dead air sit between them before he says, "He's really dead, huh."
"Unless he comes back." It wouldn’t surprise Kiryu if he did.
Majima shakes head. "He won't. When I was in there I could hear him, kinda. He was so mad about it, kept tryin' to take back control. But it got quieter the more he burned, til he wasn't there at all. Poof." He waves away this last word with a flick of the hand.
Poof. Like it's all a joke, or a game. A magic trick to make someone disappear. Kiryu pinches his nose to try and reduce the tension headache building behind his eyes. "So he's gone, then."
Majima laughs suddenly, making Kiryu jump. "He's gone cause I ate him. Snapped that motherfucker up like a candy bar. A rotten, stinking candy bar full o' worms and poison."
"And you're... alright with that? With killing your patriarch?"
"What, ya gonna do ten years for me, too?" He looks at Kiryu with a challenge, but it goes unanswered, Kiryu’s gaze steely and unyielding, so he looks away again. "Someone was gonna do it sooner or later. Maybe I just saved ya the job."
It's true that Shimano had been dancing on a blade's edge going against the clan. Many have died already in the dash for Sera's seat, and this has taken out a significant threat. It may also be true that Kiryu would have been forced to stop Shimano himself, if Majima hadn't. But the way it happened, and the fact that Majima seems to feel no remorse at all - quite the opposite, in fact - sits uncomfortably in Kiryu's stomach.
"You wore his face."
Majima tuts. "Ya should be fuckin' grateful I did, cause it meant I could stop his meatheads! He was all pumped up about comin' here to slaughter everyone. Had boxes full o' grenades and shit, said there wasn't gonna be nothin' left after he was done. So once I had his face, I ran down and told 'em all to sit and spin."
"You stopped his men?"
Majima bats his eye with a grin. "I did. Gotta look out for my Kiryu-chan, now don't I?"
Kiryu frowns. "...I suppose so."
"And!" Majima shouts, pointing like he's just remembered something very important. "He said he was gonna go after Nishida. Can't have that at all."
Nishida's head whips round from the front seat. "You protected me too, oyaji?!"
"Shut up, idiot. I liked it better when ya was pretending ya weren't there." Majima tries to kick the seat, but Shimano's car is bigger than his usual one and he can't reach. Nishida goes back to facing forward and keeping still, but there's no mistaking the enormous grin across his face.
Has everyone else gone insane? Or is Kiryu being slow to adjust? How are they both so accepting of what just happened? Nishida had seemed just as alarmed a minute ago, but now his boss is restored, he's fine. Kiryu is the only one floundering with the thought of it all, with worrying how the hell they're going to solve this problem. If there's anyone who could help them.
"Majima-san," Kiryu says, his tone serious. "What exactly do you want, here?"
He can see that Majima wants to make another joke, to make light of everything like he always does, but the firmness of Kiryu's expression gives him pause.
"Shit, I dunno. If ya figure out how to undo this, that might be me gone for good, ya know? Nobody wants that." He picks at the edge of the tape around his waist. "I just wanna know what the fuck is goin' on."
Well, it's a start. "If anyone knows, the Florist will know. We can go to him."
"Sure, whatever." Majima slumps back in his seat, arms folded. He looks pale again, apparently having already spent what he took from Shimano. A whole life, used up in ten minutes. Will he want more?
They need answers.
"I have to make sure Haruka is somewhere safe first," Kiryu says. "We can meet at Purgatory and go together."
"Don't keep me waitin', Kiryu-chan."
Kiryu manages a half-smile. "I know you'd only come and find me if I did."
He leaves the car and watches Nishida drive away, a heavy weight in his stomach. If the Florist can't help them, there's nowhere else to turn. They'll have to do this alone.
Whatever it takes.
He heads back up to the boat, but when he goes to reunite with the others, he finds a gun pointed at his head.
Terada is standing just in the doorway, aim steady and unwavering. There's a sickening moment where Kiryu assumes this was the plan all along - that Terada had waited for Shimano to arrive and killed Kazama, expecting Kiryu to be taken out as well. But then he sees Kazama in the room beyond, holding Haruka still so she won't run to try and help. Not interfering at all.
What is going on?
Kiryu stands his ground. "Put the gun down, Terada-san. I'm not your enemy."
"Indeed," Terada says calmly. "From everything I've heard, Kiryu Kazuma has always been an honourable and trustworthy man. It just depends if that is still who you are."
"What do you mean? There's no reason to think I'm not honourable or trustworthy."
"You misunderstand. I'm not asking about your character. I'm asking if you're still Kiryu Kazuma, or if there's something else wearing that skin."
Kiryu looks at Terada in confusion. The man's aim hasn't wavered, his expression grim. Determined, but concerned. On a lesser man, that might be fear. Kazama too - he's not scared, but he's watching Kiryu closely, searching for the truth. And he's gripping Haruka's arm tight, shielding her with his body so that Kiryu can't get to her. Protecting her.
They think he might hurt her.
They think he's a monster.
That means they know what this is.