SIA 7

There was an exodus happening in the slums of Gotham… perhaps calling the movement of fewer than fifty people an exodus was a bit of a misnomer, but Shinori couldn’t think of another word to call it.

The news had come in late in the afternoon. She had woken up without her sweet baby by her side, so she had done what any reasonable mother would.

She raised hell.

The camp was in a state of controlled chaos from the moment her bleary eyes opened and she realized Sukuna wasn’t beside her. She had assumed the furious mien of her father, something that came surprisingly easy, and quickly began to send runners searching.

It was a good thing her baby was so unique. It didn’t take long to get an idea of where he had headed, and then off went another runner to confirm. This one didn’t take half as long before he came back to the camp. Face white as snow. Eyes wide and frantic. Lips shivering and shaking. And somehow, she knew the snow had nothing to do with his behavior. He was scared, which only meant one thing.

The realization brought a smile to her face.

He had found her baby. The messenger had been sent back with a message from another missing member of the camp, the weird man with the gruff accent, Boris. And thus the exodus had begun.

Despite their rapidly growing number, it didn’t take them longer than ten minutes to pack up everything they had. One particularly strange duo tried to drag along an empty, heat-darkened barrel, most likely to create warmth.

“Leave it,” she told them as she walked past, ignoring how quickly they dropped it to do something more productive, for she had a tune on her lips as she thought about her baby.

A child she had left the comfort of the world, of her father, of her clan for. She felt something then. Something she had not felt in a long time, at the thought of the old man once more as he stared down at her with an order.

“Drown or throw that monster into Slaughter Swamp, or I’ll throw you out of this house.”

She had felt shock, then she had pleaded, begged on her knees with tears in her eyes, but the older man's heart refused to budge instead he had given her an ultimatum. The sudden silence that enveloped her environment drew her attention back from her memories and into the waking world.

Then there was a thump, as something dripped down and splashed on the snow-covered cobblestone. It took her long seconds to realize the sound was coming from her, what with the other packing residents behaving like frozen statues.

She looked down at her hand and realized it had been her blood dripping, from where she had squeezed her hand into a fist so tight, her fingers had dug into her palm and bled for the world to see. Red

A woman finally found the strength to walk up to her. She was a plain woman, young like her, but her features were rougher. More beaten. A sign that indicated she had been a resident of the alleyways of Gotham much longer than she had been.

The woman stretched out her hand to her, and on it was a surprisingly clean white cloth. It took another second before she understood the offer, and she felt a warm smile blossom on her cheeks. “Thank you, Beth.”

The woman gave her a shaky smile in return before retreating, and slowly everything returned to normal. People began to move once more with purpose while she cleaned up her injury, tied it shut with the aid of the cloth, and once again began to skip forward with a hum on her lips.

The reason for her previous rage was long forgotten, as instead, she thought of her beautiful child. Their exodus led them from the slums and dark alleys of the Narrows, and closer to the rest of the city.

In the slowly fading twilight, they must’ve seemed like an army instead of a couple dozen of the homeless. It didn’t take them long to find their new destination, a huge duplex in the thin line between the alleyways and the heart of the city.

She blinked and realized it was less a duplex and more like a mansion. Yet a few years ago her status had been one where she would not have paid the building any attention. Now…

The rest of the entourage looked to her, and she walked forward, up the stairs and the porch. One of the doors was missing, its empty hinge swinging with the chilling wind of winter.

She continued forward alone as she walked past dead, broken bodies, none of which drew her attention longer than it took to spare them a glance. Then she was in the main room. A cavernous space that had two winding stairs leading to the second floor.

That was where she found her son. He was seated upon a pile of corpses, his form splattered with blood and other unmentionables. His beautiful pink hair slicked back with the same substance.

He had discarded the fur-covered jacket he usually hung on his shoulders while he rested his head in the palm of one of his hands as his four eyes stared down at everything with an imperious mien, like everything and everyone he surveyed under his gaze was his.

Then his eyes met hers.

“My child.”

He stared at her for a second longer before he spoke, and as always, the word came out from his lips in a stuttered tone. It was the only thing his voice nearly broke for. A single word.

“Mother.”

Shinori smiled. All was right in the world once more.

...

Boris found the office on the second floor. It was hard to miss.

The walls had been painted once. Maybe a pale green, the kind used to give a place a bit of fake life. Didn’t seem to work very well. Time had eaten through all that anyway. Most of it had peeled off, flaking down the walls like diseased skin. It smelled like dust and something more bitter.

He ignored the shelves of untouched books and instead stopped in front of the huge wooden table.

The boss had died here. That much was obvious. The blood on the carpet was still thick and viscous, slowly darkening into a patch under the chair. The gun was still on the desk, one bullet missing. Someone had closed the man’s eyes before they left him. Maybe out of pity. Maybe fear.

He glanced at the cup of wine on the table and the two cups beside it. They had been used. He grabbed the wine and took a swig before frowning. He barely felt it go down his throat. Weak Western swill. He needed a proper shot of vodka.

He continued on, stepping over the dead body and the blood like it wasn’t there.

He opened drawers and kicked open a side cabinet. Nothing but old receipts, ledgers, and papers half-burnt in a panic. He took his time. The rest of the building was quiet. Everyone was dead other than the child with a thirst for violence that would rattle hardened officers from his old life.

No one was going to bother him here. This place reeked of dashed ambitions and broken dreams. He would know - he smelled it on himself every day.

His search finally bore fruit as he found something tucked behind a loose panel at the bottom of the bookshelf. A small lockbox beside an unopened safe he was ready to bet his nonexistent vodka contained cash. Yet it wasn't something he could open, so he shifted his attention to the little lockbox. It took all of five seconds to pop it open.

Inside, there were files. Not many. But enough. Names. Pictures. One in particular stood out - a black and white photo of a group of men in suits. The kind that smiled too cleanly. The kind that wouldn’t be found dead in these slums. The kind that didn’t look into the camera but through it.

There was a symbol on the paper, a subtle watermark shaped like a coiled serpent biting its own tail. Mafia. Boris features twisted into a scowl. He had been wrong. The Mafia weren’t simply trying to stick their hands into the pie. They already had. The Burnley Slashers were a front for a much bigger group.

He recognized the name written in red ink.

Maroni.

“Fuck!” he said into the empty room. He understood why the boss had decided to just up and kill himself now.

He left the office not long after - yet not without snatching the gun off the table. It was the most decent weapon his eyes had seen since his banishment and disgrace. The wine also found a comfortable place in his coat. Barely acceptable swill that it was, it was still valuable.

...

Boris found the boy where he had left him. The kid had a weird name, Sukuna that is. However the name was not any weirder than the body, and he had accepted that with a shrug. Yet, unlike when he left the boy, he was not alone on his throne of broken bodies and corpses anymore. A woman sat beside him. The boy’s mother. If Boris were more outspoken, he would’ve called her insane.

He wasn’t, so instead, he focused on the boy he came to meet, ignoring the way the mother looked at him. He wasn’t oblivious to how it looked in that wide-open main room with the cavernous ceiling and rotting chandelier. The boy sat like a prince on his throne of dead bodies, while Boris looked like a supplicant.

Boris did not mind. Not after what the boy had accomplished. A feat that Boris had only seen done once, however, KG Beast was a cybernetically enhanced monster of a man with decades of experience and training under his belt as the Boogeyman his previous group used. The boy had rivaled all of that and more. And he was still a child.

He didn’t look up as Boris approached, but Boris did not begrudge him of it.

“I went through the office,” He began, stopping a few feet from the blood-soaked carpet. “Found what I needed and a little bit of bad news.”

The boy said nothing. Four eyes half-lidded, distant, as if he were listening to something else entirely. Something far away. His mother continued to brush his hair back, wetting her hand with the voluminous blood that had been splattered on it. It was barely recognizable as pink anymore.

Boris continued, ignoring the byplay.

“The gang leader is dead upstairs. Suicide, but that doesn't matter now. What matters is that he reported to someone. A bigger group. I was wrong earlier boy. The Mafia already has its hands here. We might have to pack up and disappear before they get wind of us.” The boy was silent, but the mother seemed to be paying attention now, so he continued. "These ain’t your alleyway rats. These are bigger. Cleaner. Meaner. The type of bastards that wear suits and smile for cameras in the day, then firebomb houses at night. The Maroni family. You’ve heard the name, da?”

Another long pause. The mother nodded, however, the boy he seemed to be reporting directly to said nothing. There was not even a flicker of interest. Not even the slightest tilt of the head in interest.

Boris felt his brows furrow. The boy had been receptive to his words earlier, so what changed? Was it the presence of his mother... he doubted it. It was something else. It took Boris almost a minute to decipher the look on the boy’s face. Boredom mixed with dissatisfaction. It didn’t take him long to understand then. The boy was disappointed with the fight.

A fight that ended in dozens dead. The child was a complete monster. Boris let out a sigh at the realization he wasn’t going to get through to him anytime soon. Still, he needed to try once more at least. He had already hitched his wagon to the little monster, he doubted he could just turn back now, which meant he had to impress upon the kid the danger they were in.

“The Maroni family are not the kind to let things go. You’ve destroyed their pawns, and now they'll send messengers soon. Maybe to talk, maybe to kill. This isn't just the Narrows anymore. You’re walking into city politics now. Blood politics. When they do send someone, maybe don’t kill the messenger in the first few minutes, and we won't have a war on our hands, eh?”

There was a flicker of emotion on the boy’s face.

That was what drew his attention. Boris took a breath and shook his head in confusion before speaking. “You hearing me, boy?”

The boy finally moved. Just a small shift, a tilt of the chin like an afterthought. He stared at Boris, all four eyes landing on him at once. It was enough to quiet the grumpy man.

“Okay.”

That was all he said. But Boris stood there a second longer, waiting for more that never came. Then he turned and shrugged. “I’ll go help the rest settle down.”

...

The Maroni name meant nothing to Sukuna.

Names didn’t mean anything when people bled the same. When they screamed the same. The so called structure, the hierarchy, the rules, it was noise to him. Filler. Theater for men pretending they were anything but meat. He had already forgotten their name by the time the grumpy older man stepped outside. More importantly, something was wrong.

He still felt a hole in his stomach. A bottomless gnawing thing. An ache in his bones. Hunger and Thirst. His avarice had not been quenched. It had been satiated somewhat - the fight had been interesting. Guns were an interesting mix to combat, yet It had not made enough difference.

The whole affair had left him feeling... hollow. The blood, the screams, the easy deaths, none of it stirred the hunger inside him like it once did.

But then, Boris, in his gruff, droning mutter, had let something slip.

A single word. War. A thought, an idea, a seed mistakenly implanted. It echoed in Sukuna’s mind as a slow, feral grin curled across his face. War. Now that, that sounded interesting for Sukuna was growing quite bored.