Bandages and Salt (PJO X BSD AU)

Chapter eighteen

It'd only been a few days since the mission to get Chuuya, but somehow, it felt like it'd been weeks. The boss has been working me to the bone ever since 'gifting me' the Black Lizards. It was an endless supply of small, quick missions. The missions themselves didn't take long, all of them could be day missions, done before lunch, but they become exhausting when there's two or three each day.

The last mission yesterday didn't end until well into the night. We were supposed to take down a small group of gifted and non-gifted soldiers that were running around attacking different organizations around Yokohama. They'd only managed to hit one of our smaller bases, but that was enough to send out a team. I ended up getting in a fight with one of the gifted soldiers and breaking my left leg in the process. The doctor had put my leg into a boot and is forcing me to use crutches for the next six weeks.

Fine by me.

With my leg in the cast, I was stuck at headquarters, running missions from behind the scenes. To put it simply: manipulate the scenario, play puppet master for six weeks. It's what I'm good at after all. The only horrible thing about the situation was the cast itself. Annoying piece of shit.

The driver dropped me off at the back entrance of the mafia building, it was an area out of sight of most civilians, with a ramp that could be used by hurt and injured mafia members who would end up with similar injuries to mine.

There was an elevator at the end of the hallway that you immediately walked into from outside. It had a fingerprint key lock next to the elevator button, a precautionary measure that the old boss had put in when he started going senile in his old age.

At least it's a decent investment.

The back entrance wasn't as heavily guarded or servailed as the front entrance of the Port Mafia, so the extra measure made a twisted kind of sense.

I was prepared to go to the small, temporary, office that I'd been given on the eighth floor and dig through the material that I'd downloaded on my computer regarding coding. I wanted to add my skill set while I was stuck at a desk all day, but I didn't make it as far as hitting the floor number button before an annoying ding came from my phone.

I flipped the device open with an apprehensive sigh. Only three people texted me these days: Hirostu, Kouyou, and the boss. The twisted feeling in my gut told me just which of the three it was.

Boss Bastard: come to my office. I have a new project for you.

I thought about how easy it would be to just ignore the message and throw myself out of the eighth story window, but I couldn't really do that. I brought Chuuya here, I can't leave him alone after only three days... even if I haven't seen him at all in those days.

The boss bastard talked so much about Chuuya and I becoming proper partners over the past month, and yet he's the one that has been assigning missions to keep us apart.

A final punishment for making him wait I suppose.

I hit the button for the top floor, riding the elevator all the way up to the top floor before walking down the hallway and taking another elevator to the boss's floor. I didn't have to walk far after getting off the elevator, the boss was waiting outside his office, his black coat and red scarf on today. That meant that he was acting as boss right now, and not a benign doctor. It was a sight that I was used to after all this time, it wasn't what made me pause. What made me stop just after getting out of the elevator was who he was talking to.

Bile rose up in my throat.

... A child. He got his hands on another child...

There was a kid no older than six, dressed in white clothes that could pass as both street and bedtime clothing.