"How cute!" Asuka exclaims.

Cute isn't a word Yo ever thought she'd apply to Sakamaki Izayoi- but there's a kid barely six or seven years old standing in front of her, huge amethyst eyes and a shock of lightning hair, with a too-large school jacket pooling around his feet and his shirt falling to his knees like a dress.

"I agree," she says, dropping to one knee to ruffle the boy's hair.

It's a strange curse, but not a malicious one. Thousand Eyes had hosted a festival, and there'd been an accident with some Gifts - old, strong ones kept in storage. A blinding light, and Izayoi had been yelling at them to get back, throwing them behind him as he took it head-on.

The light faded, and Izayoi was gone, replaced with this tiny, skinny boy. It's still him, but so young. Smaller than Yo ever thought Izayoi could be.

He was - is? - a cute kid, Yo thinks; except that in a split second his eyes have widened then narrowed into hard, gleaming points.

In a fraction of a heartbeat, he's ducked out of her reach. There's something in the set of his shoulders, the wildness of his eyes, that reminds her very much of a feral animal, bound with the thinnest of strings.

"...Who're you?"

Well. "Kasukabe Yo. I'm your friend." Yo offers him a hand, but Izayoi doesn't take it.

He steps back, eyes wary points. Smirks, and it's almost the perfect mask, but something in the edges of his mouth and eyes reveals how utterly confused he is, how lost.

Yo has the vision of a hawk, the nose of a wolf, and an animalistic sensitivity that comes from her bonds with all her friends. She's never been able to read Izayoi before - but now, with his youth, she can see the flickers of emotion beneath the cracks, uncertainty and anger and resentment; something else that's frustrated and resigned.

"Liar," he says. He looks down at his clothes - "Why am I-" he cuts himself off, looks up. His eyes are sharper than knives. "What do you want?"

"Izayoi-kun," Black Rabbit says, sliding to her knees. "We are your friends."

Izayoi's eyes go wide. He reaches out one small hand, gives Black Rabbit's ear a sharp tug.

"What the hell," he says. "It's real?"

"Black Rabbit's ears are indeed very real, so I'd appreciate if you stopped tugging at my beautiful- owwww!"

Izayoi gives it another sharp yank, then leans forward, parting the hair around it to peer at the base of her ear. "Human experimentation?"

"I assure you that my ears are one hundred percent natural," Black Rabbit says. "I am a descendent of the Moon Rabbits-"

Izayoi steps back, releasing Black Rabbit's ear. He tilts his head, something shining in his eyes. "Oh? You're not human?"

"No," Black Rabbit says. Izayoi grins, teeth like sharpened bone. He rolls back on the balls of his feet, barks out a laugh.

"Oi, oi, what sort of strange dream is this?"

"I agree." Asuka gestures at Izayoi. "How did he-?"

"It's not a dream," Black Rabbit says.

Izayoi rubs a hand over his face, still smiling. "Rabbit," he says, "Want to play a game?"

Yo takes in that eager edge to his eyes, the set of his shoulders. So Izayoi isn't that different, after all.

"No way," Black Rabbit says immediately. I'll get killed, her face says.

Izayoi laughs - "Come on, come on, just one round-"

"Rejected!" Black Rabbit yells.

Yo smiles, and shakes her head.

-x-

"Oh? What's this?" Shiroyasha peers at Izayoi with sharp eyes. "Come here, boy, let me look at you."

Izayoi laughs, steps forward, lifting his chin to meet Shiroyasha's gaze with a challenging stare.

Shiroyasha flicks out her fan, eyes gleaming like molten gold. "It'll wear off," she says. "He should be back to normal in a day or two."

"Oi, don't talk about me like I'm not here." Izayoi is watching them, something in his eyes that makes Black Rabbit uneasy. She sent Asuka and Yo ahead to get lunch, and came with Izayoi alone - it may have been a bad idea, given that he's been spending the whole time eying her with something between curiosity and wariness, responding to her questions with laughter and smirks and careful, calculated distance. (He's also asked her to fight him every five sentences, and Black Rabbit doesn't feel like dying today.)

Shiroyasha glances at Izayoi. "There's nothing to worry about," she says. "There was a minor accident with some Gifts - very careless; the Thousand Eyes sincerely apologises. You'll be sent back to your own world soon."

A lie, Black Rabbit knows. Izayoi isn't going back to his own world - doesn't want to, as far as she could tell.

Proving her point, Izayoi laughs, saying, "I don't mind staying here. It looks more interesting, anyway."

"Don't you have family waiting for you?" Black Rabbit asks. He's only seven, just a kid.

Izayoi snorts. "Nope."

"Boy," Shiroyasha says, "What happened to your parents?"

"Hn? They died or something, I guess. Or they abandoned me. It doesn't matter." He says it so carelessly that it almost hurts, a child so used to it that it can't touch him anymore. Black Rabbit opens her mouth to say something, but Izayoi smiles fiercely. "Oi, cat-loli, do you want to play a game with me?"

Shiroyasha laughs, and Black Rabbit sighs. "Not now," Black Rabbit says, grabbing him by the collar and dragging him from the shop.

Seven and seventeen - she hadn't thought it possible for the biggest problem child to be worse.

-x-

Asuka hadn't thought that it was possible for someone to have nastier eyes than Izayoi, but he'd clearly mellowed out by the time he'd met them. Because this boy, this seven-year-old Izayoi, has eyes like a shark's, cold and calculating and wild, like he wouldn't mind setting the world on fire and watching it all burn to the ground.

And Izayoi at sixteen had been arrogant, yes, and hedonistic, and crude and sometimes near cruel, but she'd never really realised that he'd also been kind. Not until she sees this boy, who looks at the world with something cold and distant in his eyes, who scowls and attacks first, doesn't listen, doesn't look like he knows the meaning of trust. Izayoi hadn't been the most trusting person, but he'd been less openly suspicious - and Asuka hadn't noticed the little things he did for them, until they were gone.

Asuka wonders if he's learnt to trust, or if he's just gotten better at hiding his suspicions. She hates it, but she thinks it's probably the latter. He's always, always watching, calculating game plans and analysing words, looking for any sign of a lie.

This is such a bad idea. They'd played rock paper scissors - Yo won, Asuka lost. So now Yo's at a Gift Game with Black Rabbit, and Asuka is on babysitting duty.

It doesn't feel like babysitting, though. They're in the living room, hanging awkwardly around; Izayoi's settled on a table, and Asuka is leaning against the room wall.

Izayoi tips his head at her. Sitting on the table with his legs dangling high above the ground, he should look more like a kid, but something in the tilt of his head is downright predatory. "Hm? Is there something you want?"

Asuka shakes her head, narrows her eyes at him. "Nothing. I was just thinking about that nasty look in your eyes."

Izayoi laughs. It's not as hearty as it was at seventeen, sharp and cold. "Don't you have a pretty nice look in your eyes, too?"

Asuka raises an eyebrow. "Oh?"

"Mm. Like you're looking for a fight." He grins at her, teeth bared like he wants to rip out her throat. "Want to go a round?"

"No." She almost says, there's no point fighting a brat like you, but he'd take it as a challenge, instead of the admission that she'd surely lose. She'll go toe to toe with him any day in a million other ways, but she knows she'll never beat him in hand-to-hand combat, or anything resembling a brawl.

"It'll be fun," he says, eyes gleaming. "It won't kill you."

Asuka raises an eyebrow. "If we cause property damage, Black Rabbit will get upset." Not that they've ever cared before, but Izayoi at seven seems, strangely, a lot more obedient than Izayoi at seventeen. It's not better, though; before, they could trust that he had his reasons, and that he'd bring them no harm. Now, it's like he's a wild animal, kept in check by flimsy chains.

It works for now, though. Izayoi sighs, scowling and looking away. "What, you're her tool too?"

Asuka blinks. "What?"

"Aren't you being used by them? You and that Kasukabe girl. You're their tools, tight?"

Frowning, Asuka says, "We're her friends."

Izayoi sighs, swinging his legs back and forth. "Ha? So freaks like that can have friends in this world?"

"Don't call her a freak," Asuka snaps, burning like cold flame.

Izayoi snorts. "Isn't she?"

"She's not." Asuka folds her arms. "You're much worse than her."

Izayoi laughs, sharp and bright like light flashing off broken glass. "Nn. I never denied it." He shrugs. "What about you and that Kasukabe girl? You're freaks as well?"

And Asuka's heard the insult before, whispered behind her back by servants and nobles alike, but she's never heard it from Izayoi's mouth before. Not this callous, and never this cold.

"We're human," she says, lifting her chin like he's a particularly slow child.

He just looks at her, big eyes steady and hard. "Are you?"

"Of course."

"Huh." He tips his head back, smiling at the bright lights. "Didn't expect that. So the three of you are really friends?"

"Obviously."

For a moment, Izayoi's jaw locks, and his face does this strange crumpling thing, eyes flashing with something brighter than anger.

(Almost like tears, Asuka thinks, but this isn't a normal child, this is Izayoi.

Right?)

A heartbeat later, his face smooths out into something careless and uncaring. Asuka wonders if she was just seeing things.

"So?" He asks. "What do you want me to do?"

"Huh?"

Izayoi smiles fiercely at her, venom in his eyes. "I told you already, I'll let you use me however you want. So what do you want me to do?"

"We're not using you," she says, and something in his face goes cold very fast.

"Oh? You could've told me earlier. You're sending me back, then?"

"Sending you… back?"

Izayoi sighs noisily. "I thought you'd be interesting. I'm quite an amazing tool, you know. Full of the spirit of service."

"You're not a tool," Asuka says, blinking at him.

He laughs, but it suddenly sounds so hollow. "What, I'm your friend too?"

"Of course," Asuka says, no hesitation because he is. "You're crude, violent, hedonistic, arrogant, and a hopeless person, but you're a comrade of the No Names."

Something flickers in his eyes, aching and lonely, and Asuka suddenly recognises that look on his face because she's seen it in the mirror before. The way you put on a tough mask so that no one sees that you're lonely, and put haughtiness on like a cloak so that no one sees your fear.

She'd never expected to see it on him, though; not on Izayoi, who laughs like the world's his plaything and doesn't seem to care about people eighty percent of the time. (But that's the point, isn't it? Not letting people see that you care?)

"Oi, oi, who'd believe such a stupid lie?" Izayoi's scowling again, but he suddenly looks tired and so small, sitting on the table and still not eye-to-eye with her. His bright, too-long hair is falling into his eyes, casting shadows across his face.

He's so young, Asuka thinks, blank and surprised. Young, and alone, and so small. "If you want to use me, just call me your tool, don't feed me that bullshit about comrades and stuff."

Asuka reaches out to ruffle his hair, and he goes so suddenly still that it almost hurts. "Geez, you're such a brat. I said you're my comrade, didn't I? You've never listened to us anyway, not a good tool at all. If you weren't our friend, we wouldn't keep you around at all, you know?" Which isn't quite true - Izayoi is powerful enough that they just might, but, but-

-but even if he were weak, and helpless, they'd never throw him out. Because he's their friend, and a comrade, and theirs. They're not doing it for some stupid reason like power.

Izayoi blinks at her, wide-open for a second before his face slams into a scowl and he tries to push her hand away. "Don't touch me, stupid hag."

"Wha- how could you call a beautiful girl a hag? You brat-" She rubs her hand into his hair more violently.

"Violence is unbecoming of a lady, you know, monster girl." He smirks at her, and doesn't flinch away.

(It counts, Asuka thinks.)

-x-

"Master's turned into a child?" Leticia's eyes are wide.

"Yeah." Asuka nods, leaning back against the wall. "I can't tell if he's more trouble, or less. He thinks we're trying to use him."

"Ah." Leticia doesn't look surprised; Asuka raises an eyebrow at her.

"You knew?"

"Master told me a little about his childhood while you were in Underwood." When he gave up the chance to go, just so that he could search for his headphones.

"Oh?"

Leticia nods, looking unhappy. "He lived in a welfare organisation; it appears that he was not treated kindly by those that took him in."

And… yeah. Yeah, Asuka can see that. Izayoi, with his too-sharp mind and razor eyes, brilliant and strong and defiant even as a child. Izayoi, who they've called a monster a hundred times over - never meant cruelly, never as an insult, but. To normal people, staring down a kid with the power to shatter the world?

Asuka isn't as strong as Izayoi. She gets it, even if she'll never admit it out loud. Not now, not yet - she wasn't as strong as Izayoi, and she was the heir of a prominent family, and still, still she was locked away for fear of what she might do to those around her.

What would they do, she wonders, to an orphan? To an orphan like Izayoi, no less, with a sharp tongue and a sharper mind, callous and brash; a kid that no one believed they could hurt?

They'd try to hurt him all the more. And she can imagine that Izayoi would've laughed it off, let it slide off him, but he's a kid, and she saw that look in his eyes when she called him a friend. (Like no one's ever said that to him before.)

A cold, quiet anger eats at her throat and lungs. She grits her teeth, fisting her hands; "He kept saying that we could use him."

Leticia nods. "I believe that, when he was younger, it was that all he was wanted for."

Asuka clenches her hands so tightly they shake.

-x-

And then Izayoi disappears.

-x-

Yo and Black Rabbit have the best senses, so they're the ones to track Izayoi down.

They find him two towns away. He's standing in the middle of a crowd, hands in fists, so small compared to the adults around him.

There's bloody, beaten mess on the ground in front of him, the white of bone poking from beneath blood-slick skin. A half-tiger man like Garou, within an inch of his life, breaths puffing weakly from lungs encased in shattered ribs.

Izayoi stands over him, grinning, eyes gleaming and fierce, blood on his face and arms. He looks more animal than human, more demon than anything else, the grin on his face stretching wide and sharp.

"That all you've got?" He nudges the man's body with one bloody sneaker. "Come on, come on, you were bragging all that time, so I thought I could let loose a little."

"Izayoi!" Yo climbs onto the stage, wrapping a hand around Izayoi's arm.

Izayoi lifts his head to grin at her with something challenging in the glint of his eyes, the tilt of his chin. "Hey, it's the animal girl. You caught up pretty fast."

"Izayoi! What are you doing? Jeez, how much trouble do you want to cause?" Black Rabbit's got dramatic tears in her eyes and her fan lifted high; something flashes through Izayoi's irises, and he steps forward instead of back. His hands are balled into fists, and Yo feels his arm go tauter beneath her grip.

She steps forward, catches the fan in her hand. Black Rabbit stares at her for a long moment, says, "Yo-san?"

Yo releases her fan, but keeps her hand on Izayoi's arm. She saw the look in his eyes, bloodlust and anger and something snapping for moremoremoremore like it's going to eat him whole. He's wire-taut and she can feel the adrenaline thrumming beneath his skin; understands, now, why his foster families couldn't keep him for long, even when they wanted him as a tool. Izayoi at sixteen wasn't bloodthirsty, but at seven he's fierce and furious and aching, with enough power in his fingers to crumble the world to bits and no outlets to release it.

She remembers the first time a bear's strength flowed into her, remembers tearing through trees as power ate through her veins. She wonders what it must be like, to be so young and have all that strength burning in you - to swallow it and keep your head down, claws sheathed. To be so angry that you want to tear down worlds and still, still bite it down.

Yo apologises to him in her mind. They can't let him run loose, not yet.

Instead, she turns to him, asks, "Why did you leave?"

Izayoi laughs, eyes glinting. "Why not? You weren't gonna use me, so there was no point staying."

It hurts, a little, that he thinks that it's all they want. That they'd only keep him around to use him, that they don't care. Izayoi's always been a little twisted, but this...

Yo meets his burning, challenging gaze. "You are our friend."

Something in his smirk flickers, at that, crumpling lightning-fast, curling with bitterness, distaste, spite - pain, cracking for a second like electricity across his eyes - and then his cocky grin is up again, fierce and sharp.

"The ojou-sama told me that your Gift lets you use the Gifts of those you've befriended. But you can't use my Gift, can you?"

"It doesn't work on humanoid creatures," Yo explains.

"Ah? But I'm not a human."

"You are," Yo says, and he snorts.

"Liar. I'm not human and I'm not your friend. I told that ojou-sama already, use me or don't. I've got better things to do than waste time with you." And Asuka and Leticia told them about him, of course, but it eats at her. That a child - that Izayoi, of all people - could be so badly treated that he doesn't understand the concept of friends; it's unacceptable.

"I am your friend," Yo repeats, resolute. "You're ours." There's that flicker across his face again, that split-second shattering of walls, but he smiles defiantly at her. Opens his mouth to say something, then Black Rabbit reaches out to push back his hair.

He recoils, eyes widening - and it makes something roar in Yo's chest, because she's seen him face down monsters with a cocky smirk and a laugh, and she's never ever seen him flinch. But it's this thing, this one, small thing, that makes him twitch away; and anger burns through her chest until she can't breathe.

A moment, then Izayoi stills at Black Rabbit's careful touch. She smiles at him, gentle and sweet in a way that's so uniquely her.

"Izayoi-kun," she says, nothing but truth in her kind blue eyes. "Let's go home."

Yo sees him swallow; and he's still smiling, but he looks so young.

He shrugs, and takes Black Rabbit's hand.

-x-

Yo gives Izayoi a ride home.

It's impulse, really - she'd taken in the uncertainty in his eyes, the way he stood; like the world was shifting sand beneath him and he was struggling to stay upright. And instinctively, she'd given in to the animal urge to reach out and soothe. She'd lifted him up, settling him on her shoulders.

His hands had buried themselves into her hair to keep his balance, and he'd gone stiff. An automatic tension, an instinctive flinch from touch- but despite that, and despite all that earth-shattering strength in his hands, his fingers were so gentle, curled in her hair. Yo could still smell the blood on him, but he'd held his power back.

And then Yo stepped into the air, and he'd gone silent.

They're standing in the sky, now, staring down at Little Garden - an endless blue around them, the bustle of life far beneath their feet.

Izayoi isn't making a sound, but there's this barely-there way that he leans into her, a kid denied affection for too long. Something in her chest aches for him.

"Beautiful, isn't it?"

"Nn." She's not used to hearing such honesty in his tone. "Really beautiful."

He doesn't thank her, but his hand finds its way down to her shoulder and squeezes, once, gently.

By the time they're on the ground again, skin cold from the biting wind, the blood has crusted on Izayoi's shirt, and the wildness has faded from his eyes.

Asuka runs out towards them, Leticia by her side. Asuka is complaining about how much trouble he gave them, and Leticia smiles, rubbing the blood gently from Izayoi's face.

"She was worried about you," she says; and Asuka goes red. "We all were," Leticia continues, before she can protest.

Izayoi's eyes are very wide, and his scowl fits loosely on his face, not quite real. "There's no need to worry," he says.

"But we were, anyway," Leticia says. She's taken his hand into hers, carefully cleaning off the blood. "I'm glad you're safe."

Something confused and so lost is flickering in Izayoi's eyes, and when Black Rabbit cards her fingers through his hair, he ducks his head.

"Stupid," he mutters, but it isn't sincere at all.

-x-

He wakes up to see people at his door.

Izayoi's mind skips straight over the possibility of checking up on me - he doesn't need looking after, doesn't need to be checked on, no one's ever bothered to do that before - and lands on, going to betray me.

He wonders, idly, what they'll try this time. Drugging him, or threatening him with a gun… or maybe they'll go for a knife, or even an honest brawl. Get some variety in there. The same old drug-and-threaten routine got boring after the first three foster parents tried.

Izayoi wants to laugh. Of course. Of course. These people didn't mean it, you're our friend too, let's go home, we were worried about you, what sort of bullshit-

He's not human, and no one cares - not the way they care about that rabbit girl, and he gets it, but it's not fair, anyway, that she's so obviously not a person and still, she's got people who care.

She's not a freak. She had rabbit ears, what a shitty lie.

They care enough to lie for her, though, Izayoi thinks. How sweet.

But Izayoi's not like Black Rabbit. He's not kind, or sweet, or open - he gets it. He's hedonistic and violent and too angry all the time, he's a little monster-freak and it was stupid to think that these people would be the ones to care. He knew it, but wanted to believe it, and wasn't that stupid?

They're so obviously hiding something from him - like they know him from somewhere, when he's never seen them before. If this is some alternate universe, maybe they knew some counterpart of his or something, though he's not certain that he'd ever have something like friends.

And now they're at his room door in the middle of the night, and this is the part where they betray him - where they pull out the knife, or the drugs, and he feels their bones crunch beneath his fists; this is the part where he crushes them and walks away.

"How is he?" The Kasukabe girl's voice, quiet as if not to wake him.

"He's asleep." Black Rabbit, and he didn't want it to be them he had to crush - the one who took him to the sky with her and the one who looked him in the eye with such sincerity he could barely breathe.

But it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter, he doesn't care. He's used to this old routine. (Seventeen foster homes and counting and he's done it before, can do it again. Will do it again, anyway, and that's what matters.)

He keeps letting people use him, hoping that they'll give him something interesting, that they'll let him stay. (That they'll alleviate this boredom, this emptiness that eats at his chest and gut until he wants to scream.) So far he's had no luck, and he's starting to suspect that he never will.

"He looks pretty cute when he's sleeping," Black Rabbit says. "You'd never know that he was such a problem child."

"Agreed." Silence for a while, then, "He doesn't believe that we're his friends."

"I know." Black Rabbit's voice is quiet and almost sad. "But," she says, and she sounds steely hard and resolute, all of a sudden, "We'll just have to convince him. We're not giving up on him that easily."

"Of course." The ojou-sama's voice; her footsteps were surprisingly quiet, Izayoi had barely noticed them. "That's not the No Name's style. We don't abandon comrades, right, Black Rabbit?"

"Yes!"

Izayoi's known her a day, and already he can imagine Black Rabbit's smile. His stupid, useless lungs refuse to breathe.

They've only known him a day. How can they talk like that, like he's a comrade, a friend - like they care? He doesn't understand.

This must be a different universe - they must know some alternate version of him, or something. Somehow, some stupid, brilliant version of him had found comrades.

Incredible, he thinks, and there's a smile that's nothing near bitter curling across his face. He figures he won't be able to stay in this world - will probably be sent back to his own, soon enough - but maybe if one version of him could find friends, then he could, too.

It's a strange thought, but not unwelcome. Being alone gets boring, after all.

He drifts off to sleep with a stupid grin on his face.

-x-

Izayoi wakes up the next morning seventeen again.

He has vague memories of the last few days, confusion and frustration and boredom, suspicion and wariness and something like joy. He hazily remembers being young, and assuming that he was in a parallel universe - not a bad guess, but somewhat off the mark.

Yanking on his shirt and jacket, he barks out a bitter laugh, grinning ruefully. Damn, they'd shrunk him to his younger idiot self - he'd been a brat as a kid, and the ojou-sama in particular is going to play up the debt he owes her for "looking after" him when he was tiny and dumb.

He's never been one to run away, so he pulls his headphones over his head, stepping out of his room. It's late morning, and though he's usually the first awake, everyone else should be up by now.

They're gathered in the kitchen when he arrives; Black Rabbit notices him first, and throws herself towards him with a cry. Izayoi blinks when she crashes into him, arms tight around his chest, and Yo and Asuka are grinning at him like they've won ten thousand gift games, like they've got the authorities of a million suns, and what. What is this, what did his stupid brat self do?

"I'm so glad you're back!" Black Rabbit says. Her chest is pressed against his in a very distracting manner, her breath warm against the side of his neck. Izayoi just laughs, patting her back.

"Jeez," Asuka says, "You sure caused us trouble."

"Ah, my bad, my bad."

Yo folds her arms. "It's okay. Because we're friends, right?" There's something very sharp in her eyes, held steady like a drawn blade.

Ah. Izayoi remembers that, vaguely - remembers being seven, and just being sent away from another foster home; remembers finally finally deciding that someone like him would never have family, or friends, or a home.

But Yo is watching him with those fierce eyes, and Asuka is beside her, eyes and dress burning like flames. And Black Rabbit is hugging him, and Leticia is standing by the kitchen door, smiling at him with knowing eyes.

"Yeah," he says, laughing.

Yo and Asuka grin, and their smiles are brighter than ten suns.

"Welcome back," Leticia says.

Izayoi smiles.

"Nn. I'm home."