#but for people mori is closer with. his actions frequently feel like betrayal to them. because that may be how you treat a soldier | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

nuttersascend · 4 years

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What did it mean to be human?

Eyes bulged out with their nerves prominently covering the pure white slimy surface, as the latest example’s jaw extended far beyond their limits with blood pouring through the pavement step. It was not a peaceful death, and it wouldn’t be granted regardless of his pleas or information reveal.

His scream reached an inhuman pitch as they deformed his face, after which they shot at his body, giving him his peace far too late.

Osamu Dazai looked uninterested. There was nothing he had said that could pique his intrigue, for it was all crystal clear even without a single utterance. His body and his actions screamed evidence- it wasn’t even worth a second glance.

The mercy he had begged for didn’t come as his suffered from a cerebral shock from the utter pain. The finish was traditional and utterly boring, which fit the man to a T, his name not even worth remembering. He squealed like a pig throughout the punishment, but Dazai saved himself from the headache from all that noise by wearing earmuffs. It seemed like his mouth couldn’t be open far enough to compensate from that volume.

Why did such a typical man cling to life? His attachment and desperation overlapped with countless others and added on to his collection. It was another tally to his body count as they reduced to grudge-bearing ghosts. It was sad that those were merely shadows of what they once were and nothing more. The concept just slipped past his hands once it was over.

It was their swan dance, a gesture that was to highlight everything they would represent as their life would be extinguished.

In this profession, he could see what humans truly were, even literally speaking. Nothing was skin deep, with secrets forcibly pulled apart with separated tongues. The ties that held the members ran deeper than blood, as gallons and gallons of it flooded into their lives, invading their possessions.

Nothing was subtle when everything was violence. The faces around him blared everything he needed to know as they looked at him with awe, fear, emotions that coloured them with such gaudy and flamboyant paints.

His missions and the collar he willingly donned to reveal what was behind the curtains left him unsatisfied, just as an audience member got disillusioned when they saw the backstage of the play.

The Mafia was a power tower and with all that influence, it gave him a front-row onto the happenings of the citizens of Yokohama. It was their tango with death that told him so much about people’s lives as he could personally view their entire life on a cinema reel as it flashed by. Information flowed excessively as his subordinates put eyes, ears and mouths around the city as records upon records full of data were accessible to him. They adequately summarized their lives.

But with every life extinguished, Dazai could only agonize ‘Is that all there is to being human?’

It was all neatly packaged like a firecracker disintegrating into dust. It made him wonder if he’d truly live at that edge too. It was the thrill that boiled inside him at the threat that everything could be over at that very instant if the brave ones in front of him pulled the trigger.

The bullet could break through his skin, embed itself into his muscles and dig into his flesh as it would hit his bones and puncture his organs. Then as it made its way through, exploring his physical body, it could see what made him Osamu Dazai as he was outwitted by fate, by his opponent’s ingenious or his ally’s betrayal and incompetence and thoroughly lost, having given his all.

As his potential was snuffed out, the bullet could leave his body, leaving nothing more to see and leaving a corpse behind that would tell no more tales, despite all of the person’s history being tantalizingly told by whatever was left behind as all vital signs faded away into the void.

Boring. It was the monotonous drudgery that surrounded him as the Mafia only saw in black or white, simplifying things until those labels would have to be forced to fit. He could show up in bandages, looking like a damsel in distress and yet no one would bat an eye- his outstanding prowess excusing his eccentricity. He sent a rabbit with a communication device around its collar in his place to face his assignment and yet they would quake in fear as he spoke the obvious.

That rabbit came back to him with a head missing as the traitor’s last method of defiance, but it simply carried on, relaying his message. It seemed like being headless affected neither of them. Mori said that it had been prepared into his special feast, but the bandaged man could only pout as all his fun was ruined.

It was the little things that popped up during investigations that fascinated him. His thoughts could circle around these incidents as he dissected the metaphorical frog until it was dead. He grew bored the instant he found out that he was beating a dead horse. The injuries he received from the close encounters drew adrenaline to his nerves and made him feel almost human.

He went closer to the newest troublemaker and crooned pitifully. “Why would you miss such a golden opportunity? You had that beautifully sharp knife and I’ve not broken your hands. Heck, even if I lopped your limbs off, you should have crawled and stabbed me holding one in your teeth.

Did you need more motivation? Should I have mailed your comrades’ heads to your doorstep?”

Blood dripped from a wound that was just centimetres away from the machine that beat life into him. Disappointment irradiated from him as he saw his assailant taking his last breaths as he lied down, riddled with bullets. On top of that, Dazai’s look of fervour as he kept the man in place as a still target- holding the knife snugly close to his heart disarmed his attacker.

“How incompetent. Your eyes weren’t even focused in the right place. I simply moved in a step to the side and you failed at that distance.”

If his opponents could push him off a building, he could feel the wind whiz past him as gravity would push into him and piling the weight of all his sins as he would lose all control of his limbs during the free fall. If he would not be cushioned, his skeletal prison would break right open as the restraints that made him conform to the human appearance would break right open like a watermelon as his blood and organs would flow wherever they would please. The winds in his sails would be knocked out immediately as his lungs deflate as the wind that accompanied him during his descent abandoned him. His face would be damaged beyond recognition as his identifying feature would go missing. Maybe then, his rats wouldn’t put his name before their eyes and flee from a battle that hadn’t even started.

To make things worse, the prized abilities that gave his enemies their infamy were reduced to dust and ashes at his single touch. Wrapping them in bandages did not stop the executive from reducing a potential challenge and ruining all the fun.

His eyes had glittered when he saw abilities that invoked the elements of nature itself as the beings who could consider themselves forces of natures went through their forces like they were mowing grass. The people who filled in the pages and went into the history as written by Ango Sakaguchi, a rather peculiar historic record that noted down the losers instead, wracked their brains and perfected their skills to overcome insurmountable odds. But Dazai’s ability was rather one-note, disconnecting him from ever feeling those experiences as he reduced a person’s worth by simply touching them. The fear of seeing a formidable enemy would never truly resonate with him.

The ones that surrounded him were new faces that changed every day with life and death interchanging and interacting frequently with him in the centre. As he survived, the more survival became innate to him. His subconsciousness became his biggest rival instead.

Nothing worked. Nothing.

Poison that became a part of his diet. Abrasions in his throat making it sensitive from the attacks both inside and out leading to him constantly wearing bandages as a necklace.

Concussions and head injuries did nothing to hinder his perception, with everything being as clear as ever before. The tipsy feeling of drunkenness to make him an easier target just left a longer trail of bodies, nipping his enemies in the bud and leaving underdeveloped cases that never truly became the threat it was capable of becoming.

He jumped off from buildings, bridges, walls as he recklessly explored uncharted areas during chases. He tripped over rough terrains as his consciousness faded from overexertion, and yet he survived. Never unscathed, but never left to die or stronger from the insights learned.

It was like he got into a game of sorts. He set up a precarious scenario for himself and he would have to get out of that situation alive. As he cycled through these games, it slowly escalated. The thrill of hanging by a single thread along with the despair that came from being forced into both taking part in it and leaving them behind- all for nothing but a single moment of respite.

It was maddening.

At first, it was glass shard splinters that covered his upper body, one dangerously close to his eye as his vision flickered when it broke into pieces as the lamp was overloaded beyond its limits. It changed to intrigue as he explored different knives and daggers as they sunk into his skin, leaving behind a scorching sensation- particularly at his nerves as he looked at the thinning blood and the permanence of the scars they left behind. It was like cotton out of a stuffed teddy bear. He wrapped it up in the gift wrap of bandages as they stung horribly as they tried to heal. But he wasn’t satisfied at just that as he put nettle leaves at the exposed flesh and trapped insects in the open wounds.

The searing pain overcame all his thought as the feeling of pain dominated his mind. At that instant, no troubling thoughts remained in his mind. Sweat poured out from his skin pores as he compared the heat, he was feeling with something that was known for its heat- a simple cigarette butt. His senses were overloaded as the smell of burnt flesh remained prominent in his mind. Thus, he decided to share it with the rats who were good sports.

In return, his harrowing lifestyle led to him having more revelations about enemy strategies as they carried the same intention as he did- a plan to hurt and kill him.

He started deviating from the normal, as a sense of misery from his activities permeated into his life. It was a dreadful feeling of apathy that came from the predictability of it all. He could play people like a fiddle from both his self-reflections and the curiosity that nagged at him as he pulled people apart and put them back together with every word and gesture put forward. He couldn’t help but notice their reactions and explored them, learning about them more as a person- what made them tick,

What made a person human?

That disconnect grew stronger as the weapons they threatened him with looked familiar, overlapping with other faces of suffering, his included. It triggered vivid sensations as the murky feeling of pain mixed in with that strong desire to come closer and reach out.

The knife that pointed right at him, looked custom made as the strong malice made for a tete a tete between the two, attacker and target. Their roles were ambiguous, with what was apparent differing from what was reality. The knife that could have very well put an end to his ever-moving footsteps through bodies upon bodies and the same knife that showed the pathetic man beside him who was caught in his carefully constructed web. The dissonance between the two dug into Dazai’s psyche. There was first him, who brought such pain onto himself, both from the disappointment from never meeting his match and the gut-wrenching hysteria from seeing the same view from his opponent’s perspective of not even matching up to himself. And there was his opponent, who never seemed to meet his expectations and answer the question that plagued him.

It was the eerie question that stared him right in the face as he saw nothing ahead of him as he stood at the edge of the precipice, with the stench of death surrounding him. Was this all that was there?

His opponents preyed on the weak, like children, people who sought to protect despite not having the ability, civilians who dreamt of pies in the sky while denying reality. Noble intentions were completely wasted on them as ideals were ruthlessly exploited.

They ensnared them, while he devoured them. The eyes that looked upon a monster transferred between the levels.

As he meandered between life and death while searching for something in that eternal darkness, he could only glance at what could be beyond life while his attention lingered and longed at the empty room that he obsessively stayed with, a life where he sought meaning and purpose and yet, none was found or bestowed upon him.

He chose to be a puppet as long as Ougai would put on a show after going so far as upturning the whole cast. But the view he saw as the main cast was one that was neither a dream nor a nightmare. For all the power and charisma that the Port Mafia and its leader possessed, it could only leave him heart-wrenchingly still on his knees.

He could plead and beg, his roles did not leave him anything to satiate his hunger with.

He starved as he danced erratically for a morsel or two as he descended to his insanity- the puppeteer’s strings weren’t a good fit for him. There was no one who could nourish him as they chased sights that appeared only to them.

There was nothing left behind and no future he could pursue as he stood on a graveyard filled with scavengers. There’d be nothing left behind and the ravens that swarmed around him urged him to continue onwards, showing faux jewellery that he could never adorn. He allowed them to fester, urging them to devour him completely and then they continued the play, chanting-

“Nevermore.”

#whump #bsd fanfic #port mafia dazai #didn't quite cut it #so it's here now lol

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