![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
KHR Rarepair Week, June 15 - Zombie Apocalypse AU
It starts off with a simple bit of graffiti, something he writes in sprawling big letters against a large billboard right next to some sidewalk that was once not so bloody:
HUMANS ARE THE REAL MONSTERS
Which is quite a thing to say, when there are flesh-eating and shambling atrocities to nature stumbling around looking to devour whatever is still warm and alive, but Mukuro feels quite satisfied about it. For all that there's an apocalypse happening in Namimori thanks to some bastard Mafia with a Lightning Flame and a bad idea, it's still far too clean for his liking. Not nearly enough people are tearing each other apart, throwing each other to the metaphorical wolves and the much more literal zombies. It's not happening how he feels it should be happening.
Part of that is because, while the Namimori police are quite useless, there are quite a few factions actively in Namimori that are less so. The most relevant to Mukuro, of course, would be one Hibari Kyoya, who refuses to let a single person be delinquent to school.
It's a stupid reason, and it's always been a stupid reason along with the rest of Hibari's asinine territorial feelings towards the school, and yet he's quite serious about it. With his right hand man realizing just how much of a problem this could blossom into being, they quickly established the walls of the school as a strict safe and contained zone. His Disciplinary Committee, too, began to forge a route system to every single student and teacher home, escorting them and protecting them from the undead.
While he might hate the world of humans more than anything else, Mukuro does have to admit that it's a hilarious time to be alive - when the local government and police force are next to useless, but the Namimori Middle School Disciplinary Committee can ensure not a single student misses a day of school or life.
Vaguely connected to Namimori Middle School would be the work of two mafia Families. In fact, the only mafia Families that are in the sleepy little town. Obviously he's talking about the Vongola Decimo, and his ridiculous lot. His tutor seems to think that clearing hoards of undead is a perfect training exercise in teamwork, which is not entirely wrong if one can ignore the fact that a teenager could easily lose a chunk of flesh for this. Then again, that's probably true in anything the infamous hitman makes his proteges do so.... Nothing's really changed.
Meanwhile, the Shimon Family apparently keeps their entire neighborhood safe with upturned pavement that barricades the zombies from important paths, and then the Cavallone are behind what seem to be regular air drops, although not directly.
It's all so well put together that it drives Mukuro absolutely up the wall.
So, yes, he vents a little bit by scrawling some graffiti on a billboard that's street level, and he walks away feeling at least a little better. He feels even more so when him and Ken find some more things to raid from abandoned shops. They could steal anything whenever they wanted before the zombie apocalypse, of course, but it feels a little more satisfying somehow to do so now.
That good feeling doesn't last very long, when he dips down into town again a couple days after. Zombies are hardly much of a bother for him, not with his abilities, and he's lazily smacking one aside with his trident when he sees an addition right beneath his own graffiti:
NO, THAT WOULD BE THE ZOMBIES.
Mukuro's eye twitches.
So apparently, even with something that can seem like the end of the world, there are still smart asses around that just can't help themselves. He does have to admit that it's almost commendable, that someone would actually be out here in the zombie infested wilds instead of hiding away in Namimori Middle, or the impenetrable ice-enforced earth walls near the Shimon territory. He'd just rather they kept their mouth shut in this case.
But it's fine. Mukuro convinces himself that it's completely fine. What does he care that someone is writing stupid and pithy little responses to him? They can't possibly know what kind of thing they're dealing with. Right. Of course. That soothes his ego, and he sets off again.
And, alright, fine, maybe he heads off into the danger zone a little more to scrawl more graffiti, after venting some of his annoyances onto the unsuspecting dead. Perhaps for the average person, they would be hard foes, but even Mukuro doubts that, honestly. Their danger is in their numbers, and if a human is particularly ignorant to their surroundings. As creatures from morgues that the idiot mafioso broke into for his stupid plan, they are easily identifiable, and the Lightning Flames coursing through their bodies may keep them animated but it certainly doesn't do much more than keep them moving at A Pace.
For a world class illusionist - the best in the world, and Mammon of the Varia can fight him again on that - they are simple obstacles to dispatch. He doesn't even have to use any of his other abilities, born from his wretched eye. So he's left to be perfectly free, a boot grinding into the collapsed skull of a corpse as he places up another message for Namimori on the windows of an abandoned store.
MANKIND REAPS THE SINS IT HAS SOWED
That's probably the best thing about the zombie apocalypse that's fallen over Namimori, Mukuro considers as he taps his shoe against concrete to get some of the extra brains off. It feels as though it's really been too long for him to, well, revel in everything. His power, the despair over everything else...
After getting stuffed into an owl for too long - something he both thinks back to and aggressively doesn't think about as he makes his way down the street - he's needed a win of sorts. A win all his own, not forged together with Sawada Tsunayoshi. If a win is gotten alongside him, does it really count as any kind of win at all? Mukuro certainly doesn't think so.
His graffiti attempts aren't going to get him a win either, because, in roughly the same amount of time, his latest work also gets an addition right beneath it:
HAVE YOU THOUGHT ABOUT OPENING A CHURCH?
Chrome is with him for this little outing, a rare occasion considering how much she seems to prefer being with her new female friends, and she leans forward with her hands on her knees to take in this addition. "It's very neat," she comments idly over her shoulder to where Mukuro is still seething over this minor nuisance.
Honestly, she has a point. Whoever is making these kinds of additions must be using stencils of some sort, because they could almost be produced by a computer with their straight lines and even spacing. It's a style that was true with the response to the first bit of graffiti Mukuro did, and it's true here, too. That there is someone who already had the stencils to use with a spray can, and decided to use them during a zombie apocalypse , to harass another person...
Mukuro is, grudgingly, respectful of that.
He does not say that aloud with his actual mouth and vocal chords. Instead, he flips some of his hair over his shoulder and crosses his arms. "They must be quite quick on their feet to avoid all the zombies to get here, and then leave again," he says, and hopes that the other graffiti artist he's up against trips and gets devoured.
Shrugging, Chrome straightens up again. "I wonder if they do any other work around Namimori," she says. "The police will be annoyed when this is all over."
Oh, there is absolutely no doubt that the Namimori police will have all sorts of trivial nuisances to deal with when the zombie apocalypse is over. They'll have to get specialized corpse cleaning services to take care of what wasn't just incinerated in a garbage pile, there will be identification that will need to be done for the families of the walking dead, looting and stupid accusations that will no doubt spring up...
A lot will happen, certainly, but Mukuro doesn't care about the police or their problems. This is especially true considering how much more important Chrome's other point is, and he taps his chin. "Any other work... That is something to ponder, my dear Chrome. Something to ponder indeed."
Mukuro has never really paid attention to local graffiti much before. In the majority of cases, for a should-be sleepy town like Namimori, it's often just a teenager acting out with rather amateur skills. The things they make are often childish, with no skill behind them. Really, more often than not, he sees words that are just scribbled about and childishly declare insults or territory. Really, there's nothing worth his attention.
But for this... For this, he's willing to look around.
The rest of his gang can take care of themselves, with some guidance - Ken to continue foraging for food, Fran to not get himself killed. M.M. sends him a mocking text over the phone from where she's vacationing in the United States, along with a picture of her in a bikini, and he knows that he couldn't pay her enough to come back to Namimori to help with babysitting them all. With that taken care of, Mukuro begins to nose around the town again, but with purpose this time.
A lot of the graffiti he sees is sprawled and panicked, offering directions or safe locations, a phone number to call for those whose phones still work at all. None of it is even close to the careful and rigid structure of his opponent's sprays.
When that fails to give him any leads, he starts trying to pay attention to a much rarer find. Graffiti that is more picture than word is a lot more rare, he's found, and that's true in even large cities. For a small town like Namimori? They seem almost impossible to find, and what he does find seem to be more like stenciled images than anything else, some with drips falling from them.
But there's nothing that seems as though it would match the neat and tidy comebacks that have dogged two of his own messages, now. Although, Mukuro has to admit as he smacks away a zombie with his trident, it's not as though he really knows his mystery rival's art style. All he has to go on are some stenciled messages.
Clearly there's only one solution: to keep making more graffiti.
Mukuro figures it has two uses: first is that it may serve as sufficient lure for his resident nuisance, and the second is, whatever happens, he'll get to keep making more pieces of art to help vent his annoyances with how much of a failure the zombie apocalypse is going. Really, it's a win-win for him.
HUMANS DESERVE THIS.
MAYBE YOU DO.
...Well. It's a win up until he has to look onto every response that his rival makes, and feels his blood pressure tick up just a little bit higher. It's fine, he tells himself. He's above such petty nonsense. This is just bait that the idiot is falling for. So why does it feel as though it's taking him forever to pull the trap successfully? It's nothing but message and response, message and response...
WE'VE ARRIVED IN HELL
NOT MY STOP.
NONE OF US ARE GOING TO MAKE IT OUT OF THIS ALIVE
SPEAK FOR YOURSELF. I'M SET.
WE HAVE BEEN ABANDONED BY THE GOVERNMENT
NO SHIT. YOUR MISTAKE WAS TRUSTING IN IT IN THE FIRST PLACE.
....Mukuro has to admit that last one is very agreeable, which kind of just annoys him all the more. How dare his mysterious zombie-dodging graffiti rival have sensible taste in not trusting higher ruling powers.
A part of him knows this could be easily solved, honestly. All he would have to do is grab Ken, have him equip either his Wolf or Boar channel, and patiently wait until he found a scent past all the gore and rot. Yet he doesn't want Ken to see any of this nonsense, which is why he's been carving out his marks far from where he knows his subordinate normally forages about when they dive into town. It's one thing to be humiliated. It's another thing to be humiliated in front of someone under him.
(He knows Fran does this every day, but Fran doesn't count. Fran is a nuisance to all of them that they put up with on a regular basis. He's not some mysterious stranger.)
So, no. He can't rely on anyone else for this; it's bad enough that Chrome got to see some of his shame. Instead, Mukuro begins spending more time in the city, trying to find even the slightest clue that could lead him to his rival. It's actually quite tricky, which is commendable. His antagonist leaves no trace behind, acting more like a ghost than anything else. While ghosts would certainly be fitting with the current state of Namimori and also past experiences, Mukuro is certain that his enemy is someone of flesh and blood.
Eventually, it comes down to the only thing he can do: he forces Fran to concoct an illusion of him (normal, no stupid fruit hat) as a part of his "training", and then scurries off to stakeout his latest bit of graffiti. Throughout the whole first day and the whole first night, he gets absolutely nothing. Same for the second day.
It's the second night, with every streetlight having long been shattered, that Mukuro's keen eyes spot something through the gloom, and he hears the hiss of a spray can.
Without a single ounce of hesitation, he leaps down from the shadows he'd been hiding away in, and forces up real illusions to quickly wind around his target's legs even as his opponent is mid-leap in escaping. Which - that is impressive in its own right. Not many can react so quickly upon being suddenly attacked in pitch black.
Although it's less surprising as he immediately recognizes the lanky figure he's trapped only a second after summoning his illusions, before his feet even hit the ground. "Chikusa!?"
In a very Chikusa manner, his subordinate has succumbed to being caught by him, and simply lays sprawled out against the ground. Then again, Mukuro suspects he's only sprawling so easily because the nearest pile of blood and guts is at least three meters away and thus not in danger of seeping into Chikusa's hoodie. Through the dim, he can see Chikusa slowly blink at him. "Hello, Mukuro-sama," he says, in the same apathetic tone as always, although it's muffled through his facemask. One would never think that he's just been caught in the ultimate betrayal.
Then again, the only time Chikusa has ever gotten worked up has when Mukuro or Ken has gotten hurt. Maybe he shouldn't be surprised here. "Chikusa," Mukuro says mildly in return greeting. "Can I ask what exactly you were doing?"
"Doing graffiti, Mukuro-sama."
"Would you have perhaps been the one who has been leaving me rather smartass remarks on all the graffiti I've been putting up in this town?"
"Ah.... Yes."
Sometimes, having a conversation with Chikusa is as easy as breathing. Before Chrome's existence, the only other person who seemed to understand the wavelength he was one was him. Having Chikusa around is as natural as having a right hand.
And then sometimes he's a huge pain in the ass who hates having to speak with other people because speaking means effort and Chikusa would rather, many times, rather just lay facedown on the floor. "Please explain to me, in detail, why exactly you have been acting as such a nuisance to me for over a week," Mukuro orders, eye twitching again.
"You were getting bored, weren't you, Mukuro-sama?"
He blinks. Well... He supposes he couldn't lie there. It seemed like, even with a zombie apocalypse happening all around him, things were still the same old, same old - at least for Namimori, with its stupid and overprotective Disciplinary Committee, and the Vongola tidying everything up so quickly again. He'd been clawing at the walls of his skull, infuriated... And the graffiti responses had been something to focus on, something new, something to work at and think about.
Mukuro stays silent for a long moment, before soft chuckles roll out of him, blossoming into cackling. With a flick of his trident, he guides the vines and thus Chikusa upwards, until his loyal subordinate is stumbling onto his feet again. "Certain you were not simply getting out frustrations of your own?" he mocks Chikusa, reaching forward to tip Chikusa's glasses further up his nose.
Almost immediately, they fog up from the hot breath in the mask, and Chikusa sighs. "Mukuro-sama," he starts to say, right as Mukuro reaches over, tugs his mask down, and kisses him with a smirk curved along his lips.
"I'll permit a little bit of backtalk just this once," he murmurs, feeling lighter now than he has all week, and strangely satisfied. "But in return, until the Vongola finally fix this whole mess, all of your snacks will go to me."
"They were always yours to take from the start, Mukuro-sama."
Which is quite a thing to say, when there are flesh-eating and shambling atrocities to nature stumbling around looking to devour whatever is still warm and alive, but Mukuro feels quite satisfied about it. For all that there's an apocalypse happening in Namimori thanks to some bastard Mafia with a Lightning Flame and a bad idea, it's still far too clean for his liking. Not nearly enough people are tearing each other apart, throwing each other to the metaphorical wolves and the much more literal zombies. It's not happening how he feels it should be happening.
Part of that is because, while the Namimori police are quite useless, there are quite a few factions actively in Namimori that are less so. The most relevant to Mukuro, of course, would be one Hibari Kyoya, who refuses to let a single person be delinquent to school.
It's a stupid reason, and it's always been a stupid reason along with the rest of Hibari's asinine territorial feelings towards the school, and yet he's quite serious about it. With his right hand man realizing just how much of a problem this could blossom into being, they quickly established the walls of the school as a strict safe and contained zone. His Disciplinary Committee, too, began to forge a route system to every single student and teacher home, escorting them and protecting them from the undead.
While he might hate the world of humans more than anything else, Mukuro does have to admit that it's a hilarious time to be alive - when the local government and police force are next to useless, but the Namimori Middle School Disciplinary Committee can ensure not a single student misses a day of school or life.
Vaguely connected to Namimori Middle School would be the work of two mafia Families. In fact, the only mafia Families that are in the sleepy little town. Obviously he's talking about the Vongola Decimo, and his ridiculous lot. His tutor seems to think that clearing hoards of undead is a perfect training exercise in teamwork, which is not entirely wrong if one can ignore the fact that a teenager could easily lose a chunk of flesh for this. Then again, that's probably true in anything the infamous hitman makes his proteges do so.... Nothing's really changed.
Meanwhile, the Shimon Family apparently keeps their entire neighborhood safe with upturned pavement that barricades the zombies from important paths, and then the Cavallone are behind what seem to be regular air drops, although not directly.
It's all so well put together that it drives Mukuro absolutely up the wall.
So, yes, he vents a little bit by scrawling some graffiti on a billboard that's street level, and he walks away feeling at least a little better. He feels even more so when him and Ken find some more things to raid from abandoned shops. They could steal anything whenever they wanted before the zombie apocalypse, of course, but it feels a little more satisfying somehow to do so now.
That good feeling doesn't last very long, when he dips down into town again a couple days after. Zombies are hardly much of a bother for him, not with his abilities, and he's lazily smacking one aside with his trident when he sees an addition right beneath his own graffiti:
Mukuro's eye twitches.
So apparently, even with something that can seem like the end of the world, there are still smart asses around that just can't help themselves. He does have to admit that it's almost commendable, that someone would actually be out here in the zombie infested wilds instead of hiding away in Namimori Middle, or the impenetrable ice-enforced earth walls near the Shimon territory. He'd just rather they kept their mouth shut in this case.
But it's fine. Mukuro convinces himself that it's completely fine. What does he care that someone is writing stupid and pithy little responses to him? They can't possibly know what kind of thing they're dealing with. Right. Of course. That soothes his ego, and he sets off again.
And, alright, fine, maybe he heads off into the danger zone a little more to scrawl more graffiti, after venting some of his annoyances onto the unsuspecting dead. Perhaps for the average person, they would be hard foes, but even Mukuro doubts that, honestly. Their danger is in their numbers, and if a human is particularly ignorant to their surroundings. As creatures from morgues that the idiot mafioso broke into for his stupid plan, they are easily identifiable, and the Lightning Flames coursing through their bodies may keep them animated but it certainly doesn't do much more than keep them moving at A Pace.
For a world class illusionist - the best in the world, and Mammon of the Varia can fight him again on that - they are simple obstacles to dispatch. He doesn't even have to use any of his other abilities, born from his wretched eye. So he's left to be perfectly free, a boot grinding into the collapsed skull of a corpse as he places up another message for Namimori on the windows of an abandoned store.
That's probably the best thing about the zombie apocalypse that's fallen over Namimori, Mukuro considers as he taps his shoe against concrete to get some of the extra brains off. It feels as though it's really been too long for him to, well, revel in everything. His power, the despair over everything else...
After getting stuffed into an owl for too long - something he both thinks back to and aggressively doesn't think about as he makes his way down the street - he's needed a win of sorts. A win all his own, not forged together with Sawada Tsunayoshi. If a win is gotten alongside him, does it really count as any kind of win at all? Mukuro certainly doesn't think so.
His graffiti attempts aren't going to get him a win either, because, in roughly the same amount of time, his latest work also gets an addition right beneath it:
Chrome is with him for this little outing, a rare occasion considering how much she seems to prefer being with her new female friends, and she leans forward with her hands on her knees to take in this addition. "It's very neat," she comments idly over her shoulder to where Mukuro is still seething over this minor nuisance.
Honestly, she has a point. Whoever is making these kinds of additions must be using stencils of some sort, because they could almost be produced by a computer with their straight lines and even spacing. It's a style that was true with the response to the first bit of graffiti Mukuro did, and it's true here, too. That there is someone who already had the stencils to use with a spray can, and decided to use them during a zombie apocalypse , to harass another person...
Mukuro is, grudgingly, respectful of that.
He does not say that aloud with his actual mouth and vocal chords. Instead, he flips some of his hair over his shoulder and crosses his arms. "They must be quite quick on their feet to avoid all the zombies to get here, and then leave again," he says, and hopes that the other graffiti artist he's up against trips and gets devoured.
Shrugging, Chrome straightens up again. "I wonder if they do any other work around Namimori," she says. "The police will be annoyed when this is all over."
Oh, there is absolutely no doubt that the Namimori police will have all sorts of trivial nuisances to deal with when the zombie apocalypse is over. They'll have to get specialized corpse cleaning services to take care of what wasn't just incinerated in a garbage pile, there will be identification that will need to be done for the families of the walking dead, looting and stupid accusations that will no doubt spring up...
A lot will happen, certainly, but Mukuro doesn't care about the police or their problems. This is especially true considering how much more important Chrome's other point is, and he taps his chin. "Any other work... That is something to ponder, my dear Chrome. Something to ponder indeed."
Mukuro has never really paid attention to local graffiti much before. In the majority of cases, for a should-be sleepy town like Namimori, it's often just a teenager acting out with rather amateur skills. The things they make are often childish, with no skill behind them. Really, more often than not, he sees words that are just scribbled about and childishly declare insults or territory. Really, there's nothing worth his attention.
But for this... For this, he's willing to look around.
The rest of his gang can take care of themselves, with some guidance - Ken to continue foraging for food, Fran to not get himself killed. M.M. sends him a mocking text over the phone from where she's vacationing in the United States, along with a picture of her in a bikini, and he knows that he couldn't pay her enough to come back to Namimori to help with babysitting them all. With that taken care of, Mukuro begins to nose around the town again, but with purpose this time.
A lot of the graffiti he sees is sprawled and panicked, offering directions or safe locations, a phone number to call for those whose phones still work at all. None of it is even close to the careful and rigid structure of his opponent's sprays.
When that fails to give him any leads, he starts trying to pay attention to a much rarer find. Graffiti that is more picture than word is a lot more rare, he's found, and that's true in even large cities. For a small town like Namimori? They seem almost impossible to find, and what he does find seem to be more like stenciled images than anything else, some with drips falling from them.
But there's nothing that seems as though it would match the neat and tidy comebacks that have dogged two of his own messages, now. Although, Mukuro has to admit as he smacks away a zombie with his trident, it's not as though he really knows his mystery rival's art style. All he has to go on are some stenciled messages.
Clearly there's only one solution: to keep making more graffiti.
Mukuro figures it has two uses: first is that it may serve as sufficient lure for his resident nuisance, and the second is, whatever happens, he'll get to keep making more pieces of art to help vent his annoyances with how much of a failure the zombie apocalypse is going. Really, it's a win-win for him.
...Well. It's a win up until he has to look onto every response that his rival makes, and feels his blood pressure tick up just a little bit higher. It's fine, he tells himself. He's above such petty nonsense. This is just bait that the idiot is falling for. So why does it feel as though it's taking him forever to pull the trap successfully? It's nothing but message and response, message and response...
....Mukuro has to admit that last one is very agreeable, which kind of just annoys him all the more. How dare his mysterious zombie-dodging graffiti rival have sensible taste in not trusting higher ruling powers.
A part of him knows this could be easily solved, honestly. All he would have to do is grab Ken, have him equip either his Wolf or Boar channel, and patiently wait until he found a scent past all the gore and rot. Yet he doesn't want Ken to see any of this nonsense, which is why he's been carving out his marks far from where he knows his subordinate normally forages about when they dive into town. It's one thing to be humiliated. It's another thing to be humiliated in front of someone under him.
(He knows Fran does this every day, but Fran doesn't count. Fran is a nuisance to all of them that they put up with on a regular basis. He's not some mysterious stranger.)
So, no. He can't rely on anyone else for this; it's bad enough that Chrome got to see some of his shame. Instead, Mukuro begins spending more time in the city, trying to find even the slightest clue that could lead him to his rival. It's actually quite tricky, which is commendable. His antagonist leaves no trace behind, acting more like a ghost than anything else. While ghosts would certainly be fitting with the current state of Namimori and also past experiences, Mukuro is certain that his enemy is someone of flesh and blood.
Eventually, it comes down to the only thing he can do: he forces Fran to concoct an illusion of him (normal, no stupid fruit hat) as a part of his "training", and then scurries off to stakeout his latest bit of graffiti. Throughout the whole first day and the whole first night, he gets absolutely nothing. Same for the second day.
It's the second night, with every streetlight having long been shattered, that Mukuro's keen eyes spot something through the gloom, and he hears the hiss of a spray can.
Without a single ounce of hesitation, he leaps down from the shadows he'd been hiding away in, and forces up real illusions to quickly wind around his target's legs even as his opponent is mid-leap in escaping. Which - that is impressive in its own right. Not many can react so quickly upon being suddenly attacked in pitch black.
Although it's less surprising as he immediately recognizes the lanky figure he's trapped only a second after summoning his illusions, before his feet even hit the ground. "Chikusa!?"
In a very Chikusa manner, his subordinate has succumbed to being caught by him, and simply lays sprawled out against the ground. Then again, Mukuro suspects he's only sprawling so easily because the nearest pile of blood and guts is at least three meters away and thus not in danger of seeping into Chikusa's hoodie. Through the dim, he can see Chikusa slowly blink at him. "Hello, Mukuro-sama," he says, in the same apathetic tone as always, although it's muffled through his facemask. One would never think that he's just been caught in the ultimate betrayal.
Then again, the only time Chikusa has ever gotten worked up has when Mukuro or Ken has gotten hurt. Maybe he shouldn't be surprised here. "Chikusa," Mukuro says mildly in return greeting. "Can I ask what exactly you were doing?"
"Doing graffiti, Mukuro-sama."
"Would you have perhaps been the one who has been leaving me rather smartass remarks on all the graffiti I've been putting up in this town?"
"Ah.... Yes."
Sometimes, having a conversation with Chikusa is as easy as breathing. Before Chrome's existence, the only other person who seemed to understand the wavelength he was one was him. Having Chikusa around is as natural as having a right hand.
And then sometimes he's a huge pain in the ass who hates having to speak with other people because speaking means effort and Chikusa would rather, many times, rather just lay facedown on the floor. "Please explain to me, in detail, why exactly you have been acting as such a nuisance to me for over a week," Mukuro orders, eye twitching again.
"You were getting bored, weren't you, Mukuro-sama?"
He blinks. Well... He supposes he couldn't lie there. It seemed like, even with a zombie apocalypse happening all around him, things were still the same old, same old - at least for Namimori, with its stupid and overprotective Disciplinary Committee, and the Vongola tidying everything up so quickly again. He'd been clawing at the walls of his skull, infuriated... And the graffiti responses had been something to focus on, something new, something to work at and think about.
Mukuro stays silent for a long moment, before soft chuckles roll out of him, blossoming into cackling. With a flick of his trident, he guides the vines and thus Chikusa upwards, until his loyal subordinate is stumbling onto his feet again. "Certain you were not simply getting out frustrations of your own?" he mocks Chikusa, reaching forward to tip Chikusa's glasses further up his nose.
Almost immediately, they fog up from the hot breath in the mask, and Chikusa sighs. "Mukuro-sama," he starts to say, right as Mukuro reaches over, tugs his mask down, and kisses him with a smirk curved along his lips.
"I'll permit a little bit of backtalk just this once," he murmurs, feeling lighter now than he has all week, and strangely satisfied. "But in return, until the Vongola finally fix this whole mess, all of your snacks will go to me."
"They were always yours to take from the start, Mukuro-sama."