I do not own Bungou Stray Dogs or its incredible, deep, and well written characters.

Hi! I felt like going crazy and writing another Bungou Stray Dogs fanfiction, so I did. I'm an angst writer and I just had to do something kind of intense with this anime. So... yeah. That's about all I have to say. Enjoy!

Atsushi's head pounded when he woke up. Throbbing as though it was a heart pumping blood. He moaned, trying to put together how he'd ended in a dark prison cell of a room. He remembered what happened, but somehow, it was all jumbled and disjointed like an unfinished puzzle. Some events were hazy and others appeared out of sequence.

Okay, okay. He thought when panic began to set in. Just start from the beginning. What happened before I left the dorms?

The day had started out like any other. He'd woken up, he'd gotten dressed and brushed his teeth, he ate breakfast with Kyouka, and he reported to the Agency office. So, really the day was shaping up to be a normal day.

He'd gotten to go investigate a murder with Tanizaki. He'd gone on Ranpo's behalf again. And… If he remembered right… after that investigation… something had gone wrong.

The sun was beginning to set and Yokohama was bathed in a golden orange light. Atsushi walked out of the grocery store, carrying a paper bag filled with food and ingredients that he'd told Kyouka he would pick up on his way home. He took in a breath as he walked back to the agency. The warm weather was comfortable as opposed to the ridiculously humid days they'd had the week before.

What would be best for dinner tonight? He thought. We ate miso last night, so I feel like we should have something aside from soup. He considered all the dinner options he could think of on the way back. Maybe we can have- Something small collided with him. He staggered backwards, reprimanding himself for getting so lost in thought. A little girl sat where they'd bumped into each other. She had big tears in her eyes.

"Oh, gosh," Atsushi began, holding out a hand to help her up. "I'm so sorry." She reached for his hand and he pulled her back to her feet. "Are you alright?"A few tears rolled down her cheeks as she nodded. She looked like she was desperately trying not to cry. "Are you sure?" Atsushi asked. The girl began to nod again, but then shook her head.

"I-I…" She began to sob. "I lost my mommy!"

A few people turned to stare and Atsushi lead the child to sit down on a bench. "Okay," he said gently, trying to sooth her. "It's okay, I'll help you look for her."

"Really?" The girl said, her sobbing slackening.

"Of course," he responded, getting up. "Where was your mother going before you got seperated?"

"Umm… She- she was going to a store."

Atsushi suppressed a slight sigh. That didn't narrow their search down by much. "Do you know which store?" The girl shook her head. "Would you be able to point it out if you saw it?" The little girl thought about it for a moment, then nodded.

"I think it was... over there," she replied, pointing in the direction that she'd come from.

Atsushi smiled kindly. "Okay. Let's go look for her then." He shifted his grocery bag so he could hold it in one arm. His free hand stretched down, offering it to the little girl. Her fingers wrapped around two of his fingers, since her hand was too small to circle his hand fully.

Helping a child find her mother would probably cause him to come home late, but Atsushi figured Kyouka would understand. Worst came to worst, he'd simply have to go to the police station and they'd figure out how to get the lost child home from there.

He asked a lot of meaningless questions on the way there, and they did seem to distract the girl from her fear of being without her mother. "Do any of these stores look like the one?" He asked eventually after walking for about thirty minutes.

She twisted up her mouth, trying to remember. "Mmm…" She puzzled over it for a minute. "I think it had a green dress in the window."

That would have been helpful to know earlier… He brushed away his exhausted feelings. He didn't have room for negativity right now.

Another ten minutes passed, and Atsushi's eyes continually scanned for green. He squinted at one of the windows. "Is that it?" He asked.

The little girl's eyes lit up. "Yes!" She cried excitedly. She ran to the door, pulling Atsushi with her. He let her, since it was possible that the mother could have left the store and he couldn't just abandon a child in the middle of Yokohama.

They weren't greeted by a normal store. The interior of the shop was splattered with blood. It was everywhere. On the floor, on the merchandise, covering the walls, dripping from the ceiling. He quickly covered the girl's eyes before she could soak in too many details. He felt tears beneath his hand. "Okay," he said as carefully as he could. "We'll go to the Agency, they'll figure some stuff out with the police. Everything will be fi-"

Before he could finish his sentence, something sharp and hard punctured his abdomen. He looked down, feeling pain and seeing an inky black thread that were all too familiar. "I wouldn't count on that, Weretiger," a voice said from behind him.

Rage filled him, as it always did when he heard Akutagawa's voice. In less than a second, his hands transformed into tiger claws and tore through Rashomon. "Akutagawa!" He yelled angrily. Atsushi shoved the child behind him, nightmares from the scene in front of her were the least of his concerns right now. "Run," he told her as he lunged forward to attack his enemy. "Go to the police!" He turned back to Akutagawa. "What's going on?! The Agency and the Port Mafia have been on good terms for the past month! Do you want to make us fight each other again?"

Akutagawa coughed into his hand before answering. "What I want is irrelevant to this attack. I'm simply doing as I'm ordered." He paused, glancing at the bloody hole in Atsushi's shirt. "By now I know that you're harder to kill than you look, so I'm not simply toying with you as I did last time."

Rage surged through Atsushi. "I'll defeat you like last time," he yelled, throwing himself forward to attack.

He knew that he and Akutagawa were about equally matched in terms of strength (Mostly). If he could defeat him without causing too much damage to the surrounding area, he'd consider that a success. He dodged a tendril of Rashomon, mentally cursing that he couldn't use any long range attacks.

Akutagawa struck again, and Atsushi grabbed a tendril on his right. He pulled it hard, trying to drag his adversary off center. He wasn't quite successful. Akutagawa's Rashomon coiled around his hand, yanking him forward and popping his arm from his socket. He grunted, pushing through the pain and clawing at the string.

Atsushi's legs became those of a tiger, and he launched himself forward. He slashed Akutagawa in the abdomen. Blood splashed, painting the walls with more red. Akutagawa looked stunned. "If I wasn't told to bring you back alive," he began with a hand pressed against his stomach, which dripped red. "I would kill you right now, Weretiger."

"If you were able to kill me, I think I'd be dead by now," Atsushi responded as Rashomon lashed out, impaling Atsushi and throwing him against the wall. Both of them coughed up blood in that moment.

The bonds of the Rashomon were beginning to weaken. I should be able to tear through this in- He didn't finish that thought. It was cut short by a pinching feeling in his wasn't Rashomon, but it felt very vaguely familiar. He looked down.

The child who he'd been helping earlier stood there, jamming a needle into his side, pressing her thumb down on the plunger of the syringe. "What the-" His words were silenced by a sudden wave of nausea. His senses blurred. The pain of being impaled a few minutes ago faded to a dull throb. He felt himself drop to the ground, hardly able to recognize his surroundings. Atsushi experimentally flexed his fingers, the movement felt numb. Crap...He thought as his world got darker and darker until it disappeared completely.

I'll be perfectly honest: I feel like starting a fanfiction is one of the hardest parts. In this one, I'm just trying to establish how Atsushi gets captured because I'd feel this was incomplete if I didn't explain how he got into this small prison room.

So, it will a kind of speed up in the next few chapters. I've got so many plans! =)

Thank you for reading this. Please review!