Out of the frying pan and into the fire, Louis tries to come to terms with the position he finds himself in.

Chapter Text

The ornate wooden door closed solidly, the sounds of lions retreating into the background, and Louis was alone for the first time in a while.

He stood in a room still stained with blood, and full of shattered glass and splintered wood—although the bloody remains of the Shishigumi’s previous boss had thankfully been removed already. Slumping into the mostly-intact couch in the center of the room, Louis sighed deeply. This was... not how he'd planned this day to go.

Not only was he not dead, he now found himself in an entirely new set of problems. He had to deal with a group dedicated to killing and eating people like him, he had to somehow make them more successful at doing so, and if he failed he'd be eaten. Now that Louis had some time to collect himself, the urge to be killed had died down. Were he to die, he'd do it on his own terms—and as things stood, that wasn't an option. He wouldn't go out in such an undignified and vulgar manner as being devoured unwillingly. Earlier, the idea had been palatable—after all, he was the one choosing to be eaten—but the thought of being forced to nourish those worthless beasts outside the room sparked bitter fury in him.

Fine, then. If the Shishigumi didn't want to eat him when he offered, then he'd just have to make sure not a single one of those worthless fleabags ever got the chance to taste even the smallest bit of him. He'd make sure red deer was well and truly off the menu for those savages if it was the last thing he did. He'd be the best goddamned leader the Shishigumi ever had.

The only thing Louis had to do now was find out what they actually did.

He rested a bit longer, collecting himself and re-organizing his thoughts, and then rose from the sofa. This was where the old leader of the lion mafia had been; surely there was something in this or one of the connected rooms that would show the lions’ business connections. Ten minutes searching the largest room proved fruitless—it appeared to be merely a reception area—but one of the two attached side doors proved slightly more useful. Behind the first door was a ridiculously tasteless and gaudily-decorated Western-style bedroom, but the second door lead to a small office or study. Louis went inside the office-his office, he supposed-and began poking through the filing cabinet for... well, for whatever would tell him what the Shishigumi did to make profit.

After five minutes, he slammed the drawers shut in disgust. He’d expected to find contracts, ledgers, and paperwork, the lifeblood of any money-making organization, the things he'd been trained almost his whole childhood to utilize. Instead, the so-called boss seemed to have occupied himself with cataloguing his meals by taste, texture, and purity of coat, with an accompanying text describing the Old Boss's thoughts on the meal and his critique of the species.

There were pictures.

Far too many pictures.

Louis felt a pressure in the back of his throat, and his mouth filled with saliva in the peculiar way one gets before being particularly nastily sick. Th-they hadn't been that bad, had they? He'd seen worse than that, hadn’t he? But now, seeing it all so clinically, looking at an albino fox ripped to shreds accompanied by the all-too-ordinary text of a food critic complaining about the texture of his meal... that was too far.

But that was how things were going to be now, wasn't it? He was on the other side of the cage at this point. The red deer was no longer Stock #4, Lot 144... instead, he was the butcher. Summoning every inch of willpower he had, Louis choked back the urge to vomit. This was all a distraction he couldn’t afford; if he wanted to lead the Shishigumi, for a very loose definition of “want”, then he had to find out something about the organization besides the old boss’s eating habits. Returning to the search, he moved on from the filing cabinet and began to search the ornate desk for any information.

As he was dumping out one of the heavy desks, there was a soft knocking at the door. Louis waited for a second, but the door didn’t open.

“Come in.” The deer said, equally soft; immediately the door opened, and a tall, powerfully-built lion walked in, with wire-rimmed glasses framing his narrow eyes.

”I didn’t expect to find you in here already, Boss.” the lion said. He looked around the room, seeing the opened drawers and strewn papers, and his eyes narrowed.

Louis rolled his eyes. “And where else was I supposed to be? Curled on the sofa, crying? Maybe sleeping in the declaration of war on good taste that is the bedroom?”

The lion’s expression didn’t change, maintaining a look of suppressed disapproval. “Well I certainly didn’t anticipate you making a mess of your office, Boss."

"Well, somebody around here has to make something of you litter of mangy kitties." Louis heard a low growl from the lion mobster, and internally wondered if he'd gone too far, but he decided he was already in for the pound as well as the penny, and continued. "It's clearly not you, or you'd have just made yourself the leader directly. No, instead you chose to play a game, with me as your pawn."

Still the lion's face was unchanged. "I don't know what you're talking about. You're the boss, not me. I live to serve at your whim."

Getting irritated now, Louis walked closer to the lion, past a pair of overstuffed sitting chairs in front of the desk. His every instinct was screaming to run and hide, but he resisted the weakness of his species. "But why am I the boss? I can count; the votes were clearly higher against me, and yet for some reason you decided that it would fall to a test. You claimed to be against the idea, and yet you engineered things so that against all odds, a red deer will lead the lions' pack. Why?"

Before the lion could answer, he continued. "It's clearly not because you're fond of me. You claim that it's because I give you "legitimacy", but that's only a fraction of the equation. No, you figure I'm scared. Weak. Easily controlled, like every other piece of livestock that passes through the Shishigumi's paws. The others would never let you grab power for yourself, but you imagine I'll be the puppet king and you'll be my Grand Vizier." The deer smiled, completely without mirth. "And you are so very, very wrong."

The growling notes grew slightly louder, and the lion began to show his teeth. "This is all very... entertaining... conjecture. Please, Boss, do continue on."

Louis met the lion's eyes. "You need to understand that I won't be controlled. You've put me in charge, and I plan on taking the reins to the fullest. If you want to be in charge, your best bet is to eat me now and—if you can survive every other lieutenant of the Shishigumi gunning for your head—run this flea-bitten shame into the ground, once and for all. Or..." He leaned against a chair, never looking away from the lion's eyes, "...you can trust me. If I fail, if the Shishigumi don't see their fortunes increase ten-fold under my hand, then by all means kill me on the spot and take my place. If I succeed, then can't you take the credit for making me boss in the first place?"

He shrugged, feigning nonchalance. "It's all the same to me one way or another. You take your time on deciding; I can wait." The deer picked up a stack of papers from the desk and began picking through them idly.

The tall lion paused for a second. And another. Then he rolled his shoulders, and moved towards the desk as well.

"What are you looking for, Boss?"

Louis gave an internal sigh of relief. He'd likely gone too far; clearly, his original death wish was still around somewhere. It seemed to have worked out in the end, at least. "I'm looking for paperwork. Ledgers, accounts, hell, documentation of any kind would be nice! All your last so-called boss seemed to be concerned with was his own stomach. You're—We're—a syndicate, right? There has to be something you do to keep the lights on beyond simple extortion."

A snort from the mobster. "That's because it was all he was concerned with in the end, the bastard. If you're looking for anything regarding the actual running of the Shishigumi, you're in the wrong place. Not that there was much to run, in the end; the fool destroyed our reputation and ran us into the ground."

Louis looked at him, annoyed. "Then where should I be looking, then? I don't suppose you'd happen to 'coincidentally' have all the files."

"No. I'm not particularly good on the numbers end of things, sorry to say. Agata—he's the young, dark one—is the one who keeps the books. The kid went to school for accounting, or something like that."

Agata... the name didn't ring a bell, but he had seen someone who matched that description among the lieutenants. Louis was skeptical, but it was at least something to start with. It was clear that there was nothing here, at least.

"Take me to him. If I'm going to lead, then I'm at least going to goddamn know what I'm leading."

"Yes, Boss. And, since this is technically our first proper meeting, allow me to introduce myself to you, sir. My name is Ibuki, the longest-serving lieutenant of the Shishigumi, and I am at your service."

Louis eyed him coldly. "I didn't ask for it. If I ever care enough to learn your name, I'll let you know; now, let's get going already."

Following the lion, Louis left the office and the sunset-lit, bloodstained reception, in search of Agata and the first beginnings of answers to his questions. He didn't know much about the Shishigumi, but from what the lion—Ibuki, apparently—had said and what he could see for himself, it was clear that he had a long and uphill road ahead of him if he wanted to get through this alive.

Well, his father always had always told Louis he needed to face some real challenges...