Chapter Text
His head is pounding hard. Harder than anything he’s experienced in his life.
(He remembers nothing about his life.)
Something does not feel right. Ultimately, it has not felt right since he arrived here—a mere, noble knight, not knowing a thing other than how to protect his princess, and thus, protecting the civilians she cares so greatly about. For some reason.
It is, almost, as if there are two minds within his cranium.
There’s a scrappy, feisty, young man. He has tear tracks straining his youthful cheeks, and refers to the knight as Akutagawa with a certain grit to his tongue that makes him feel like they have history. When the knight meets his eyes, something within his skull beats harder.
He pays it no mind. There is clearly a job to do here.
He does not recognise this boy, nor the clear foe in front of him that is larger than life and can, somehow—or at least, according to a rambling, crazy-eyed Russian man—manipulate space and time. He fights and battles, for the sake of his honour and his princess and those who are not blessed with a demon that wraps itself—no, herself—around their shoulders.
He, however, is nowhere near enough.
The commoner, whose eyes had previously flashed with something adjacent to pride, downturns once more.
This is it, he thinks manically. I could not save the princess. I could not save the commoners. I cannot save anyone. I shall become death.
A brute force lands on his back, stopping his train of thought. He grunts, boots scraping the gravel underneath him as he snaps his head back. The commoner, eyes and breath and body full of light, is mid-air, taking the hit from the monstrosity in front of him.
The knight, so-called Akutagawa, feels his mouth run dry.
“Consider us even,” the weretiger says, arm starting to disintegrate at the strike of a time-wielding blade. “Away with you, you fool.”
Akutagawa falls to his knees, throat enclosed, body trembling, and screams.
-
(Once upon a time, on a dreaded night in a forest as calm as a lake, a young boy had screamed so loud it felt like a storm. It was the first time in his miserable, meagre life that he could register his own emotions—his own anger, his own upset, his own hurt, his own pain, his own grief, his own gratitude, his own saviour.
Six people were in his mind. They lined up, all smiling. Six children, six members of his family, scraped from the world with something as measly as a gun.
A boy, not too much older than himself, had put a leash around his neck, plucked him up from the ground, and promised him something he would eventually never honour.)
-
Grief is a word that is all too familiar to a man like Akutagawa.
It used to rattle in his bones. It used to take away his breath. It used to find him like a prick in his chest, leaving his vision clouded with nothing but red.
He was meant to have trained this feeling out of him. He underwent years of brutal, extensive training to get this wretched, encompassing feeling out of him.
(For the last six years, Akutagawa has seen the faces of smiling children behind his eyes every night before he falls to a distorted, erratic slumber.)
Rashomon is already reacting before he can relinquish any hold in her. She’s just as furious, as angry, as devastated. He cannot do anything but let her—the grief enshrouding him just his Rashomon does, wrapping herself around him and allowing him to feel nothing but rage as she spins and slices and shreds.
(Akutagawa sobs. He cries and he screams and he sobs.)
He was not destined to be a boy with friends, he thinks, as Rashomon narrowly avoids the monstrosity in front of them and crashes into the tarmac. Somebody like Akutagawa—with a weapon that manifests herself from his coat and became him, with a sibling and parents that did not want them, with a childhood spend in squalor and filth, with a career that meant he could do nothing but become one with death.
He was not meant to have friends, and he should not have ever allowed it. Whether that friendship was reciprocated or not, it does not matter. With Rashomon, as cursed and protective and horrifying as she is, all Akutagawa should’ve done is embody the end of mortality.
And yet, here he is.
Grieving.
Once again, with the burning feeling scaling all over his skin and an out-of-control ability that thrashes and crashes and screams as she flies wherever she can find a target.
(Amenogozen does not budge. Akutagawa tells Rashomon, with as much as he can muster, that she should not kill anyone. Even something that looks far from human. The two of them have a promise to keep, after all.)
-
After what feels like hours and minutes and days and seconds simultaneously, Amenogozen hiccups the weretiger back out, sopping wet and disorientated.
Akutagawa has been in far better states than this one. Exhausted beyond his belief, he drags his sorry self to the weretiger’s side, unable to care about anything other than what is right in front of him—anything than what he almost lost.
There is barely a beat of time that passes before their arms wrap around each other. The weretiger gives as much as he takes—both of them holding on tightly, breathing heavy, trembling in each of their grips.
“I know,” the weretiger whispers, said to nobody but Akutagawa. “I know, Akutagawa, but it’s not over yet.”
-
Akutagawa realises it wasn’t meant to be personal as he carries a half-conscious weretiger to an Armed Detective Agency-owned car.
(Or maybe, it was. In fact—it definitely was meant to be personal, to know one’s enemy so horrendously intimately. This kind of dynamic has Osamu Dazai written all over it, after all.)
Operation Weretiger. That is what it had been called, when Mori had told him that a dangerous ability user had been unleashed to the public and plucked off the streets by a shabby detective agency. “You are the only person that has an ability to match,” his boss had said, and Akutagawa had bowed courteously and began crafting his plan to capture a teenager for a large sum of money.
It was still Operation Weretiger once their fight was cut short in an alleyway—even when he had sent Kajii and Kyouka on a train.
(Though, by that point, he didn’t care if anyone lived. The failure would’ve been his responsibility, but not necessarily his fault, and he was starting to grow desperate to get rid of his new, envy-driven problem. )
At first, he did not feel anger. It was more of an impartial feeling—perhaps even a little bit of glee when his opponent screamed and curled in on himself in an alleyway. He did not think or feel anything at first, simply seeing a feeble young man in a street, with no courageousness or self-worth. Even as the tiger form was unleashed, taking over her master and finally providing Akutagawa with a fight that soothed the itch under his skin, he was not angry.
(He felt alive, perhaps. How… odd.)
Even when Akutagawa saw his mentor after four painstaking years, realising that he had been playing merry fools with pathetic detectives, it still wasn’t personal. Seven billion yen; that is what the Port Mafia offered in return for an alive, unscathed, weretiger.
(He knew then that nobody, not even the Port Mafia, could capture one Osamu Dazai. Dazai isn’t somebody who gets captured. He’s somebody who allows himself to be captured. It did ignite something in him, though, when he got to face the man square on and punch him with about as much energy as he could muster.
The second time he smacked him, though, it felt like a fuse had blown inside his whole body.)
It wouldn’t have been personal—not if it wasn’t for that decrepit, evil man.
My new subordinate is far superior to you, he’d said, and Akutagawa should’ve known by the shit-eating smirk on his face and all-too-familiar gleam in his eye that it was a ploy, or a ruse, or just a way to rile Akutagawa up.
He should’ve known, but he was far too blindsided by his own reason to die. Not to live, because he had not earned such a privilege yet.
For a brief second, he wonders what Dazai would think of this sight—of the weretiger groaning with discomfort as Akutagawa carries him and clambers into a vehicle that is supposed enemy territory, on tenterhooks about the well-being of somebody who is nothing but personal; of somebody he shares with ability with and is meant to want dead.
(But he never did want the weretiger dead, did he? Not even on the ship, when the weretiger triggered something so horrifically devastating within his soul and sent him sinking down the ocean.
And he certainly doesn’t want the weretiger dead now. The thought of the weretiger dying brought him to his knees, screaming, sobbing, sparking a rage inside of him that matched the same rage when he lost his family and home.)
Somewhere between a fight on a ship and a fight underground, it became far too personal.
It happened quickly, before Akutagawa could gain control of it or push it away or clarify his own mind and become the emotionless dog he is meant to be—but it didn’t come from a place of love or nurture. It came from venom and hatred and everything Akutagawa is at his core; from I don’t understand you and I don’t understand you either and I want you dead and fight me about it then; from finding out the worst about each other in the most unconventional ways, and navigating a space between comfort and despise to become the best.
(It came from trust. It came from care. It came from sharing things that nobody else has ever heard about. It came from the sentiment of repeating each other’s words. It came from a mutual understanding. It came from—)
“If I knew that all it took was repeating those stupid words to you to get you back,” the weretiger starts, croaking as he’s slumped against Akutagawa in the back of the car, “I would’ve said them to you when you were a vampire.”
“Stop saying nonsense things,” Akutagawa hisses. “Fool. Do you really think that you-,”
“Akutagawa?”
“What?”
“Shut the fuck up.”
And then, the weretiger, his enemy and rival and mirror, closes his eyes and dozes off to sleep, still in the grip of his ability.
-
(The car ride to the Armed Detective Agency is rather awkward.
The weretiger sprawls out on his lap, out to the world. Kunikida, who once electrocuted Akutagawa in an abandoned building, drives the car and occasionally steals a glance in the rear-view mirror that reads I’m watching you. Don’t try any funny shit.
Akutagawa merely blinks back in response—lost and confused and dazed and holding onto somebody who deems him worthy of saving.)
-
“So,” the Angel of Death begins, sitting herself down in an office chair adjacent from Akutagawa with a clipboard in hand and a smile that bares far too many teeth, “I don’t know if this is good news or bad news, but that disease is still inside of you.”
Akutagawa clears his throat.
Truthfully, medical examinations make him uneasy at the best of times—though, and albeit a little bit scary, Yosano is a far kinder doctor than Mori—and he apparently just had no control over his body or his weapon for two weeks.
He blinks.
“Shit,” she grimaces, shaking her head. “Not the lung disease. That’s been taken care of by something I can’t yet work out.”
“Then?”
“The Vampirism,” Yosano confirms. “It seems that Bram Stoker-san left you a wonderful present. A calamity in the hands of a deadly mafioso,” she continues, bellowing out a dry laugh. “I would dread to be your enemy, huh?”
“You are my enemy,” Akutagawa argues. “We are from opposing organisations.”
Yosano continues laughing until it stops, her mouth snapping shut and pressing into a fine line. “Kid, after what you and,” she begins to explain, gesturing over to a passed-out-weretiger that’s curled in a fetal position in a cot, “he did together, I don’t think you can call yourself an enemy of the agency anymore.”
“What about the others?”
“The infected?” Yosano responds, and when Akutagawa nods his head, she smiles once more. “Seems that the control over them has been relinquished. I don’t know if that was you, or if it was Bram Stoker. Could’ve even been Dostoevsky, when he took over Bram’s body.”
It can’t have been Akutagawa. He barely had the ability in control when he and the weretiger fought Amenogozen the second time. It acted on his own, grasping his Rashomon and creating things he never thought she would be capable of. That, and that alone, is how they won that stupid fight.
He shudders.
He does nothing short of blink, then he bows once and returns to his cot, crawling under the covers slowly. When Yosano is out of sight, he shifts and locks his gaze on the weretiger’s cot. The weretiger, who, since the battle was over in the airport tracks, has been out cold.
(He filled in the gaps somewhere in the Armed Detective Agency’s manic post-battle meeting. The weretiger had watched a lot of people he cared about—and by the look that Kyouka exchanged with him, Akutagawa included in that—disappear or die. He’d been fighting, on his own, without a wink of sleep, for what sounded like weeks.
Akutagawa does not mind too much, he thinks, if has to wait a while longer to speak to the weretiger.)
((The first thing he will be asking him is not why he saved him. It’s why he tried more than once.))
-
When Akutagawa comes to, he notices how bright the moon is. There’s a small window in the infirmary—and the light pours in from outside.
The second thing, which should’ve been the first thing Akutagawa noticed, is that there is a giant cat attempting to climb into his bed, still dazed. Perhaps, even, still asleep.
“What are you doing?” Akutagawa hisses as the weretiger crawls under the covers, grunts under his breath, and collapses his tired head against Akutagawa’s chest, ear pressed firmly to his breastbone. “Weretiger.”
“Shh,” the weretiger slurs, shaking his head. “Don’t wanna be alone.”
“Weretiger-,”
“Noooo,” the weretiger murmurs, squeezing his eyes shut. Like a child, Akutagawa thinks. He’s barely an adult, that’s his next thought. “Shh. ‘M sleeping here.”
Akutagawa opens his mouth. He swears, though disgruntled himself, that he goes to retort, but his entire mouth dries up when the weretiger’s hands curl into the fabric of his shirt, clutching it tight.
“Okay,” Akutagawa croaks, sure that the weretiger is mostly back into his slumber at this point anyway. The weretiger smiles, huffing, then nuzzles impossibly closer.
He’s warm.
“Can’t leave me again,” the weretiger states, sleep etched in his voice, “if we’re like this.”
“Weretiger-,”
“Not now,” he says, softly and slowly and devastatingly. “Tomorrow. We can talk tomorrow.”
There were times in Akutagawa’s life—days, nights, weeks—where the warmth of another body was a source of life. Two people, or three, or six, with as many scraps of fabric as they could find, bundled up together and clutching onto each other so the bitter cold wouldn’t take a single one of them.
That is not now.
Akutagawa is lying in the Armed Detective Agency infirmary with a sleeping weretiger on his chest. Enemy territory, rival beside him, and this is the closest thing he has felt to safety in his entire life.
He lets one arm slip around the weretiger’s waist. The other finds itself on top of his head, fingers spiralling through his silver hair, brushing it away from his clammy, grimy face.
“Goodnight,” he whispers, though the weretiger doesn’t stir an inch, “Atsushi.”
-
(They don’t get the chance to talk when they wake up.
The absolute whirlwind that is ChuuyaandDazai or soukoku or however else people refer to such a bold and agitating dynamic enters the infirmary rather loudly.
The weretiger clutches Akutagawa’s arm, still half-dazed, and asks very quietly if they are real. Akutagawa gets a sensation adjacent to whiplash shock his body as he remembers a commoner talking into a void, then nods his head slowly.)
Atsushi’s definitely had better days.
He’s had worse ones, too, he thinks, as he follows mutely behind a skulking Akutagawa, stomping his feet with his hands shoved in his pockets. He doesn’t even know where they’re going. After Akutagawa came up to the roof and told him, no matter what, he’d fucking die for him all over again if he had to—he pulled out his phone and started sending some text messages.
Now Atsushi is on the outskirts of Yokohama, following behind him, as they enter an apartment block.
“Mr. Shujin-sama?” a man asks, as they approach a door. He’s dressed in a suit, very plain looking, and he bows politely.
“The very same,” Akutagawa responds. “This is a two-bed, correct?”
“It is,” the man confirms, nodding his head. “Would you like to take a look inside? Will the two of you be sharing the apartment?”
Huh?
“No,” Akutagawa responds. “He is an acquaintance with a lot of free time. He decided to join me on this occasion, and I deem his input important.”
“Understood,” the man says, unlocking the door. What is this, Atsushi thinks? A trap? A mission? A… “There’s a small kitchen, a living area, two bedrooms and one bathroom. Feel free to look amongst yourselves.”
Apartment hunting. Akutagawa has taken him apartment hunting.
“What is this?” Atsushi hisses as they enter the first bedroom, grasping onto Akutagawa’s arm and digging his fingers in. “What are you doing?”
“Keep up, weretiger,” Akutagawa huffs. “My apartment is owned by the Port Mafia.”
“Yeah, and you work there,” Atsushi argues, though whispered. “That’s why you have it.”
“Do I?” Akutagawa asks, and then he hums as he looks at the bedroom. He’s hard to read—but it’s certainly a nice room. Just one bedroom is bigger than his and Kyouka’s entire dormitory, and— “This will do for a guest room, correct?”
“And who would you be having as guests?” Atsushi responds. “I’m… well, your acquaintance, apparently. Do you have any others? Gonna be hosting dinner parties?”
“Shut up, weretiger,” Akutagawa bites. “Do you like the room or not?”
“It’s nice,” Atsushi says. “Since when did you care about my opinion?”
Akutagawa rolls his eyes in response, pushing past Atsushi to open the door to the second room. Even bigger, the master bedroom, and Atsushi didn’t know such a thing existed until the man behind them explains it to them.
“Where’s the furniture?” Atsushi asks quietly.
“Do you think apartments come furnished?”
“I…” Atsushi starts, trailing off. “I wouldn’t know.”
“Oh,” Akutagawa responds, then frowns. “Right. Well, some do, and some do not. This one does not, but that is no bother. I will purchase furniture.”
Akutagawa can afford an entire new apartment and new furniture. Atsushi has to scramble together for coins to pay for his dinner most nights. His lip quirks, remembering the time he and Akutagawa argued over groceries and salaries and Akutagawa shopping in normal places.
(It was a little surprising, Atsushi thought, to see Akutagawa carrying a leek.)
Akutagawa checks the rest of the rooms and Atsushi simply follows, unsure of why exactly he is here besides from the fact that Akutagawa seemed to want to help him get away from the agency all together.
“I’ll take it,” he tells the man, folding his arms as he speaks. “How much?”
“Including maintenance, ¥625,000 a month,” the man says, and Atsushi tries not to gasp. “Is that—“
“Not a month,” Akutagawa responds. “How much in total, to own?”
“…¥150,000,000, but Shujin-sama—“
“Will you accept cash?”
Atsushi blinks, disbelieving. As does the property owner, whose mouth falls agape as Akutagawa merely tilts his head.
“You are willing to pay that much, in cash, today?” the estate agent questions, utterly confused. “That’s… that’s…”
“I’m willing to take my business elsewhere, if needed,” Akutagawa responds.
“No, no!” the estate agent responds, awkwardly laughing as he reaches for Akutagawa’s arm. Big mistake, Atsushi thinks, and he’s right, because Akutagawa swiftly turns and grits his teeth. “Do you have the money on you, Shujin-sama?”
“I do not,” Akutagawa says. “You may take an item of my possession, or I will keep my… acquaintance… here in the interim while I collect it.”
“I…” the man says, then he shakes his head, disbelieving. “No, it’s fine. I’ll wait here until the end of the day, alright?”
“Very well,” Akutagawa responds. “With me then, weretiger.”
-
(Atsushi doesn’t bother with the intricate details of Akutagawa buying an apartment and seemingly not returning to his job.
Furniture, at least enough of what Akutagawa would consider basic, arrives within the same hour. A sofa, a television, a few antique pieces, and most importantly—a bed and bedding.
There is barely a glance that passes before the two of them end up crowded in there. Coping , Akutagawa had called it, the word spoken into the space above them as he pressed his head on Atsushi’s chest and fell straight to sleep.)
-
Something is not quite right when Atsushi returns to work the next morning—late, he will add—following a message from Kyouka that simply read where are you.
(Akutagawa had grunted next to him when they woke up, rolling out of his arms and blinking, all sleepy and soft-like, just as Atsushi had seen him every morning since the stupid Decay of the Angels nonsense had ended.
He’d asked if he was leaving, and asked if he would come back. Atsushi almost quipped about how clingy Akutagawa had become, but he stopped himself and said, “I’m just going into the office,” instead.
Akutagawa exhaled a breath and fell back asleep.)
There’s a sensation that often pulses against Atsushi’s skin. There are things that Atsushi hears that no one else does. There is danger that Atsushi can sense before others have even stopped speaking.
All of that is… gone.
The office is strange, too. Ranpo is not eating anything sweet, staring blankly into the distance. Yosano seems to be pottering around the office more than usual, nervous. Kunikida is not at his desk, but in the president’s office—though Atsushi can only tell from his figure in the window pane and not from his usual sense of hearing.
Dazai enters the office, not too chipper, and Atsushi can’t smell last night’s sake on him. His first thought is that he’s given up drinking, then he remembers this is Dazai and he realises pretty quickly that…
Byakko is gone. Or, at the very least, is dormant somewhere within him.
“Atsushi-kun,” Dazai says, somewhat gravely, as he clasps a hand on his shoulder. “We were waiting for you to get back to give you the news.”
“What… news…?” Atsushi asks slowly. The room falls deadly silent, and Dazai meets his eyes with a solemn gaze. “What’s going on?”
“The president,” Dazai responds, quietly, “did not make it.”
-
Of course, work doesn’t stop just because the world almost ended, or because the president of the Armed Detective Agency is now dead.
It also doesn’t stop because of previous events—or, of the fact an orphan was collected from a riverbank and thrusted into a world he was never equipped for—has settled a sensation into Atsushi’s bones so deeply that he aches entirely.
It certainly doesn’t stop because Atsushi’s ability, his tiger, has decided she wants to retreat into a small corner of his mind and not thrum against his skin anymore.
(That does, however, render him rather useless in his line of work. Kunikida said it once, too: the tiger is strong, but Atsushi is weak.
He doesn’t find himself caring whether or not he will get fired.)
It’s easy—repairing the agency following the police raids and utter chaos; filling in his paperwork; filling in Dazai’s paperwork; talking about cases; ignoring the crawling pit of dread that has begun to settle into his stomach. It’s easy, he thinks, to let the looming feeling of existence tie itself to his ankles and force him to drag it around, than to acknowledge it at all.
(He hasn’t seen Akutagawa in well over a week. He doesn’t want to, despite the fact the man has managed to find his number and has texted him a series of times asking him… well, not if he’s okay, but:
This is Akutagawa.
Do let me know if any of your cases require my assistance.
My situation does not stop our partnership.)
It’s not like Dazai, who has a book he can read from memory, on how to execute things like this. It’s not like Dazai, who has tried and failed over and over and over again—though probably on purpose. It’s not like Dazai, who Atsushi assumes can barely get himself out of bed in the morning and that’s why he’s always ridiculously late.
It’s not like Dazai, who only shows how little he truly cares for himself when you get close enough to smell the stale drink on his breath, the unshaved stubble on his face, or the sleep that still crusts in his eyes.
He looks at the email that flashes up at his screen, one that details a case regarding a dangerous ability user, and sighs.
“Atsushi-kun,” Dazai chimes, far too chipper for the solemn Armed Detective Agency. “Go and check out that crime scene with Tanizaki-kun, will you?”
And Atsushi is not equipped for work like this anymore, but maybe it’s too-much-like-Dazai when he lets the corners of his mouth quirk up and says, “okay.”
Fourteen days, two hours.
The world ended, then it didn’t. He died, then he didn’t. He couldn’t remember anything, then he could. Everything wasn’t okay, then it was.
They called it a number of things. It was gratitude, a symbol of their partnership, a one-time-thing that became more than one time, a way to cope with everything that happened, a reason that they could remind themselves they were alive.
Fourteen days, two hours. It wasn’t like anything had ended on that day, but the assistance he had reluctantly offered to the Armed Detective was no longer necessary—and like every other instance in his life, he was disposed of and likely replaced with something better.
He decided there was no point in picking up his phone. He told himself that, and he told that to Gin; Gin who stroked through his hair and told him they were sorry, and that it wasn’t his fault, and that they would kill that wretched detective for hurting him.
(He’d argued he wasn’t hurt. Gin had scoffed and said, “I thought you didn’t lie.”)
There was no point in texting him, either. (He'd tried numerous times. Then threw his phone across the room and screamed a tad.) Chuuya had said that an alliance between the two organisations still stood, but now that work was not so intense, he was not required. That meant the promise between them was null-and-void, because Akutagawa’s job is to be a lawnmower, and he doesn’t agree with that.
And also, he may or may not have left the mafia altogether.
Fourteen days, two hours. The fact this was planned has already crossed Akutagawa’s mind. Chuuya had sent him a text message with a location attached saying, if you’re nearby, check this out. apparently some freak is walking around, and Akutagawa had wandered to the location with his cold hands shoved into the pockets of his no-longer-so-new coat.
(He had lost his old coat. Well, it was never really Akutagawa’s coat to begin with, more adjacent to a hand-me-down, or a passing of ownership, or a leash. It’s buried deep in the ocean now, Akutagawa assumes, and though he does not enjoy the concept of being a liar, he’d rather die all over again than admit he’s spent countless nights wandering in cold water to try and locate it.
It’s gone. That’s what he has to tell himself now. It’s gone, and it was never his anyway.)
He’s not sure what he expected when he enters a dimly-lit alleyway. A bleeding out weretiger groaning on the ground, holding himself pathetically, is not what he expects. Whatever happened here seems dire, with blood splattered on the ground and the weretiger in such a state that his regenerative powers are failing him, and yet Akutagawa just…
“Weretiger.”
“Fuck,” Nakajima spits, barely glancing up. His lip curls, but it is not a smile, nor is it one of his bitchy smirks that only Akutagawa seems to be on the receiving end of. “Come to finish the job, huh?”
“Why aren’t you regenerating?” Akutagawa asks, ignoring the taunt all together. They’ve moved past this. At least, he thinks they have. “What are you doing flailing around on the ground? Surely you are past this kind of feeble behaviour by now.”
“Kill me,” the weretiger pleads, his trembling fingers attempting to clutch at the earth beneath him. Though Akutagawa cannot see the wound, he can imagine how dire it is from the blood seeping through the weretiger’s off-white shirt. “Please, Akutagawa. It’s what you wanted anyway. Just—”
It must take the last of the energy from him, because the weretiger collapses to the ground with a soft thud, cheek grazing against the gravel as his arms give in. Akutagawa inhales once, teeth clenched, then lets his ability act on her own—reaching out to wrap around the injury and lift Nakajima from the ground. He pinches his nose bridge, taking one final look at the scene, before fleeing with the weretiger intact and his hands shoved back into his pockets.