Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It was a rainy Saturday afternoon, which meant no work, and also that he couldn't go anywhere due to the literal buckets of rain pouring from the sky. He genuinely wasn't sure if it was actually raining or if the homeless guy living on his roof started filling buckets full of his own piss and throwing them down the side of the building.

Either way, it meant Danny couldn't leave the house without getting drenched in some kind of liquid coming from above him, so he decided to stay at home. It wasn't worth it to try and convince the man to get off of his roof; the last time he talked to him, the guy spat on his face and tried to rip out his short beard.

So, Danny resigned himself to staying home this fine Saturday, watching anime. Maybe he'd catch up on reacting to an anime, start working on another video...after all, his editor had kept sending him increasingly menacing emails with increasingly menacing images of socks at the ends of them and Danny wanted to give him something to do, since this meant his editor was bored, and when his editor was too bored, he tried to escape from his underground prison cell in Arkansas and harass Walmart employees.

Anyway, Danny headed to the kitchen to get some food because his tummy was giving the rumblies that only hands could satisfy. He wasn't wearing socks, of course, because only losers wore socks, and he liked feeling the tiny dust specks on the floor with his long, elegant toes.

So with his grippers exposed to the outside air, he scuttled over to his kitchen unsteadily. He wasn't watching where he was going because he had his nose buried in his phone, like all kids these days did, with their silly gosh darn machines. Back in my day, we walked fifty miles to school in eight feet of snow and fifty miles back from school on the weekends, for fun. When we weren't doing that, we were making bombs out of mud and sticks and fighting tigers in our front yards. Ah, to go back to the good old days...

Going back to the story, since my captor wants me to keep writing and says he's going to cut off another one of my toes if I don't.

(For legal purposes, that's a joke.)

Anyway, Danny scuttled into the kitchen, and because he was on his phone looking at Elon Musk's feet pics, he didn't notice the huge, rotting, slimy banana peel on the floor in front of him. It was in a large puddle of steaming green liquid and was covered in blue and black fuzzy spots, and had been there for eight weeks.

So Danny stepped on the banana peel, blissfully unaware of how his pure and innocent grippers were being sullied by the radioactive thing on his kitchen floor, slipped in the puddle of acid, and fell backwards all in the span of a second. The back of his head hit the floor with a hollow thud, because there was nothing in his skull (his brain was in his stomach), and with an earsplitting crack, his skull split open, revealing the clear, vaguely shiny spinal fluid nestled inside as it oozed out, finally free to take a vacation to Hawaii.

All Danny could register was vague, sharp pain coming from his head, and then everything went dark...

Chapter Text

Danny woke up lying flat on the ground. He opened his eyes slowly, blinking them to get rid of the sleep clouding them, and realized he definitely wasn't inside his house anymore. For one, the floor wasn't greasy and slimy like his was. Instead it was cold, sandy, and slightly damp.

Where the fuck am I...? Danny thought, sitting up and rubbing the back of his head, where he expected to feel a huge crack, but instead was met with flesh that was perfectly knit together. There was some blood in his hair though. He didn't even need to look at his hand to know that. Only blood was that thick, that tacky, and it was exactly what he felt whenever his editor successfully escaped from his cell and killed all the gerbils in the nearest PetCo.

Oh. That was right. He had slipped on a giant radioactive banana peel and fallen on the floor. Well, it was a good thing he hadn't died, or gotten severely injured. Danny was counting his blessings here, especially since he may-or-may not have gotten kidnapped, given he was definitely not in his home anymore.

Actually, where was he? Now that he thought of it, he should probably open his eyes.

So he did, and was met with the absolute jumpscare that was a huge anime face way too close to his own face.

"What the fuck?!" Danny yelped like a dog on steroids and jumped eight feet in the air. He scooched away from whatever the face was, and realized, looking around, that his surroundings were all drawn, like he was in a cartoon. Feeling his stomach drop, he looked down at his hand, and...drawn. His hand had a black outline and some pretty decent shading, but none of the lines and details a normal hand had, nor any of the small scars he'd accumulated throughout the years.

Danny felt his heartbeat accelerate, and the walls start to close in on him. He couldn't breathe, no matter how hard he tried. Oh my God, what the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck. How was this even happening? He would have thought he'd fallen asleep with his VR headset on if he had one. But he didn't. So what the fuck was going on? All he remembered was slipping and hitting his head, a lot of pain, and then waking up...here...

God fucking damnit, did he get fucking ISEKAI'D????

"Wow, you're really freakin' out, huh?" A high, slightly annoying voice asked, sounding amused. It sounded a little familiar, for some reason...

"Way to comfort someone while they're literally having a panic attack, dude!" Danny shouted immediately, frustrated.

Then he turned back to look at who said it, and stopped.

No. No. It couldn't be. No.

But it was. It was Edogawa Ranpo, his least favorite character from the popular anime series Bungou Stray Dogs. Which meant...he had gotten isekai'd, alright. He had gotten isekai'd into Bungou Stray Dogs.

Oh, he wasn't lasting even a week in this world. Fuck.

"It's really not that big of a deal, y'know. We can find someone with an ability that can send you back," Ranpo continued, his arms behind his head.

Danny stared at him. "Huh?"

"What, are you gonna make me spell it out for you how I know? Fine. You just showed up out of a huge rift in the sky, a huge puddle of blood under your head, and when you woke up, you looked like you thought everything here was inherently wrong, like it couldn't exist. Then there was your reaction to me. You looked at me like you recognized me, but you knew for sure you couldn't be seeing me. Like I didn't exist. Like I was a fictional character. So you got isekai'd."

Danny wanted to feel annoyed at the whole little rant Ranpo gave after acting like he didn't want to have to explain his thought process, but honestly, it was pretty cool how Ranpo had solved it all like that, and even better, the explanation actually made sense this time.

"How do you even know what isekai is?" Danny asked, squinting.

"I know everything," Ranpo said matter-of-factly (I don't care that that's not a word). Okay, now Danny was back to being annoyed at him, just like I'm annoyed at autocorrect for trying to change isekai into 'Isaiah'.

Anyway...

"C'mon, let's go," Ranpo said and skipped out of the alleyway like a three-year-old on drugs.

"What? Where are you going?" Danny asked, his voluptuous eyelashes fluttering.

"To my crib, baby gworl," Ranpo replied, taking a hit from the enormous bong in his hand that he got as a gift from Dazai because Dazai be giving out drugs like it's his firstborn child I guess.

"What the fuck?" Danny shouted. He was starting to think he wasn't in Bungou Stray Dogs at all.

And he wasn't. Little did he know, he was actually in Bungou Drug Dogs...

Chapter Text

"Hello THOTS!" Ranpo shouted into the room, opening the door dramatically. "Your king has returned!"

"Shut the Fuck up Ranpo, nobody cares," Yosano yelled back from where she was assembling a time bomb. She took a huge swig of the literal barrel of wine she had next to her.

"What the fuck?" Danny said. Bungou Stray Dogs was kind of weird, but he was pretty sure it wasn't this weird.

"I care," Atsushi piped up, and was ignored, because nobody liked Atsushi because he was a fucking furry.

Fukuzawa was also a furry, but he was a cool furry and he had his own cool theme music, so he was okay.

"Ranpo, you're back! Here, take this," Dazai, now renamed Drugzai, said so fast no one could understand what the fuck he just said. Except Ranpo, because he was special and not like everyone else. Drugzai handed him a plastic white snack bag full of white powder. "I just gave birth to it."

"Aw, a baby crystal meth!" Naomi crooned, which sounded really disturbing with her 90-year-old woman smoker voice. "What are you gonna name it?"

"WE'RE NOT GONNA NAME IT ANYTHING!! IT WAS MADE FOR SNORTING AND NOTHING ELSE, YOU STUPID WHORE!!!!" Drugzai screamed, going from 1 to 10 in the span of a second, and flogged her in the schnozzle, sending her flying into a wall a few feet away.

"Dazai, you and Chuuya need to start using protection," Kunikida said gravely. Drugzai pulled a gun out of his pocket and shot Kunikida in the head. Kunikida ate the bullet and continued. "I'm serious. One of these days you're going to produce a real baby and not just more drugs, and it's going to ruin your life."

Atsushi started throwing it back, and a dull clapping sound filled the room.

"Hell yes," Junichirou said and threw money at him.

"Atsushi, put your ass away!" Danny shouted on reflex. Atsushi hissed at him like the furry he was and ran away.

Suddenly George Washington ran into the room and said "Is this what's happening to my americussy? The Founding Fathers' orgy will be so proud."

"This is Japan you old fuck. Now come and help me fuck my sister," Junichirou Ed Sheeran demanded.

"What? No! I don't consort with the devil, you little bitch boy," George Washington retorted, righteously apoplectic (look it up, bitch). "All gingers are Satan."

Danny was currently having an aneurysm. "Why are you concerned about her being a ginger and not the incest?!" he shouted.

"My sister's not a ginger," Ed Sheeran said, and George Washington lugged him and Naomi into the supply closet.

"GEORGE MITOCHONDRIA WASHINGTON get the fuck back here you little BASTARD NAOMI IS A MINOR-" Kunikida screamed, and followed them into the supply closet with his glock.

Then Yosano finally finished her bomb, threw it in the air, and it exploded all over them (😏), blowing everyone apart into little bits of flesh, shards of bone, flecks of blood, and mushy, half-burnt organs that were reduced to a pulp.

Of course, that wasn't the end. Danny woke up again, unfortunately, this time surrounded by burning flames taller than he was. "Oh, FUCK, am I in hell?!" he screamed. "What did I even do?"

"Oh, silly pookie, it's obviously because you were too much of a twink," Ranpo said from behind him, trying to get a whiff of DAT ASS, and Danny spun around and bitchslapped him.

"Fuck you, Ranpo!" Danny shouted. "You're the reason I'm in hell in the first place, bitch!"

"Woah, calm down, baby girl," Ranpo said, shimmying (that doesn't look like a word but whatever) like Kris Jenner as he took another hit from his bong, which had followed him into hell. "This is a good thing. Now I can introduce you to my cute little discord kitten!"

Edgar Allan Poe was standing next to Ranpo, for some reason. At least it was the one from Bungou Stray Dogs. Danny wasn't sure if he could handle seeing a pedophile while he was in hell.

"H-hi daddy uwu 😻 *blushes cutely* 👉👈," Poe said, and Ranpo bit his lip like a fuckboi.

"Wait, what? How did you even say that out loud?" Danny questioned, questioning his sanity.

"You're so hot, babe 👁🫦👁," Ranpo uttered as his voice finally dropped, twelve years after it should have, ignoring Danny like a little bitch, and the two of them started doing...well...you know. That.

"OH MY GOD!" Danny screamed in outrage, watching them. "Let me join, guys!"

And so the three of them passionately did that on the red asphalt with the fires of hell burning around them and the smexy smell of Bergamot 22 and voluptious, beautiful, sweaty feet adding to the atmosphere, until suddenly...

"What the frick-frackety-fruck is going on here?" A deep, gravelly voice thundered. The three of them looked up to see a massive figure towering over them, bright red, sweaty, and erect.

Satan crossed his arms. "Were you really planning on doing that without me?" he demanded, and then joined in. Ranpo, Danny, and Poe welcomed him, of course, because the more people playing Uno, the more fun it was.

Yeah, that's right. They were playing Uno. What did you think they were doing?

Then, a familiar nagging voice sounded, ruining everything. "Dazai, are you sleeping on the job again? I swear to God if you don't wake up, Dazai I'll rip into your abdomen with a plastic spork, cut out your large intestine, and shove it up your left nostril, and then take you to Yosano so you don't die and have to live with the humiliation of having a sack of shit up one of your nostrils for the rest of your life, bitch. Is that what you want? To be publicly humiliated for every second of the rest of your life, making it even more miserable and worthless than it already is? Because I'll do it, I swear!"

Dazai opened his eyes to reveal Kunikida standing over his body, arms crossed and foot tapping impatiently. Dazai groaned, rubbing the side of his head, trying to fix his no-doubt horrible bedhead. "Okay, okay, fine. Jeez, Kunikida, no need to be so mean. It's like you hate me or something!" he whined, pouting like a little uwu girl trying to get her senpai to notice her.

Kunikida rolled his eyes. "Yeah, whatever. The President told me to tell you that you're going on a mission with Ranpo and the man from the other world, Motta," he said. "They're waiting outside the door."

His message delivered, Kunikida left.

Dazai sat up fully, taking off his headphones with a sigh. What a strange dream. That was what happened when one fell asleep listening to Chuuya's educational sounds, he supposed. He was never going to stop doing that, though, so he resigned himself to getting used to them.

With that, he stood up from his desk, straightened his bandages and smoothed down his slightly rumpled coat, and left in search of Ranpo and the twink.

Chapter Text

They headed to the Uzumaki Cafe downstairs before going anywhere, of course. With Ranpo's sweet tooth and Dazai's (fabricated) inability to focus and get on task, it would have been nearly impossible to avoid at least one detour. Motta didn't question it, just raised his eyebrows, examining the scenery around him as they sat down and ordered. Dazai ordered a cup of coffee with milk, and a plate of canned crab, which they had eventually started selling after the seventeenth time Dazai harassed them asked politely about it, while Ranpo ordered a cup of sugar with a little drizzle of milk and coffee, and two hot cocoas, one for himself and one for Motta. Interesting.

Motta's attention remained on the cafe surrounding him, which Dazai supposed was reasonable, considering previously, the cafe and everything else in their world had been a thing of fiction to Motta, but still. It was an unwise decision to be inattentive while around Dazai. It gave him enough time to dump the packet of powder he'd made from the mushrooms left over from his failed suicide attempt utilizing them.

Ranpo had definitely seen him slip it in, but just narrowed his eyes at him before digging into his cup of sugar. He must have already deduced what Dazai had put in Motta's drink and what it would do, and was fine with it.

"Motta! Earth to Motta!" Dazai called teasingly, pushing the hot chocolate towards said man. "Your hot chocolate's getting cold!"

Motta blinked a few times before looking over to Dazai and the chocolate. He made a strange face. "Just call me Danny, dude," he insisted, before taking a sip of the shroom-laced hot chocolate. Dazai internally hummed in satisfaction at the sight. Diluted like that, it should take effect in about twenty minutes, he thought. Then the chaos will begin.

Interestingly enough, Motta began exhibiting the symptoms Dazai himself had experienced while under the influence of the mushrooms only six minutes and about fourty-three seconds in, which meant that either Motta had an incredibly low drug tolerance, which Dazai didn't buy; he seemed like the type to have experimented at least once in college, if not with recreational drugs then medicinal, likely sleep-inducing, or in Motta's world, mushrooms lacked a certain drug-like quality that all mushrooms in this world possessed. Either way, it was interesting to note the possible differences between this world and Motta's.

Currently, Motta's eyes were extremely bloodshot and dilated, only leaving a thin ring of brown left visible, and was rocking in his chair, muttering something about a misuse of commas, an idiot author and a scarlet letter. It was pretty amusing to see the other customers at the Uzumaki Cafe staring at him and scooching away from him. Dazai was overall satisfied with his handiwork.

That is, until Motta darted out of the cafe like a squirrel (heh heh), the entire little box of salt from their table in his hands, laughing maniacally.

So, Dazai may have made a small miscalculation. Now he had no idea where Motta was, with some vague idea of where he was trying to go, and if he lost Motta, the President would get on his ass about it and his ass alone, even though technically it was also Ranpo's responsibility to make sure Motta didn't get killed. Of course, Fukuzawa wouldn't punish Ranpo. Oh, sure, he would give him a slap on the wrist and a few reprimanding words, but he wouldn't do much more than that, because Ranpo was his favorite.

No, Dazai wasn't jealous at all.

=====

Danny cackled with delight, looking up at the sky for some reason. He had everything he needed to make the plan work...now all he needed was to find out where Nathaniel Hawthorne was.

Ever since he had entered the Bungou Stray Dogs world and fully processed all that it entailed, he had been planning this. So now, with a stolen volume of The Scarlet Letter, a bag of salt (he had decided that just the box from the cafe was much too little for the likes of Nathaniel Hawthorne), some rope, and a plastic spoon, he was wandering around Yokohama. He couldn't go back to the agency, because they would probably try to stop him in his righteous mission. They wouldn't understand. None of them would understand...He needed to do it alone.

Also, he wasn't really sure where he was or how to get back to the agency anyway.

Wandering around aimlessly, he eventually reached a Target. He wasn't sure if it was the same Target he stole the absolute monstrosity that was Nathaniel Hawthorne's overly dramatic disaster of a novel and that bag of salt and ran out the window, because he really didn't know where he was and couldn't remember how he'd gotten here or where the other Target had been.

Anyway, who did he come across while leaving the Target, arms laden with groceries, but his one and only target Nathaniel Hawthorne. And how ironic was it, that he found his target at a Target? Very, and in fact, it was so hilarious he laughed out loud into the air, doubling over and clutching his stomach with the hand that wasn't holding his rope, The Scarlet Asscheek, and the salt.

"Nathaniel, I'm scared," Poe said, staring at him.

"There's nothing to be scared of, Edgar. It's just a bum loitering outside this fine establishment. Honestly, the employees at this marketplace need to find better guards, if they're letting people like that around the place," Nathaniel Hawthorne said snootily, like a snoot. "Just shoot him if he bothers you. We're Americans after all; we can get away with that," he said in a Southern twang.

Karl took offense to these remarks towards homeless people because he had been homeless before, and it wasn't funny to make fun of homeless people unless it was Dazai, in which case it was absolutely acceptable. Karl slashed Nathaniel Hawthorne's face open with his claws and spat out a huge glob of acid onto the wounds.

By this time, Danny had recovered from his brief bout of hysterical hyena laughter, and jumped up behind Nathaniel Hawthorne, taking advantage of the situation by wrapping him (poorly) in rope.

"Kinky," Jeffrey said.

"Who...are you?" Poe asked.

Jeffrey scuttled off into the sunset.

"NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE! THIS IS THE DAY YOU FINALLY GET WHAT YOU DESERVE!" Danny screamed, and forced Nathaniel Hawthorne's mouth open. Nathaniel Hawthorne's eyes shot open in panic, and he began to squirm away, yelling, the sound muffled by Danny's greasy, dusty fingers while jerking around when Danny produced The Scarlet Letter and began to move it closer and closer to Nathaniel Hawthorne's facial cavity.

"What the fuck is happening," Karl said.

"Karl, you can talk?!" Poe exclaimed.

"Of course I can, silly Edgar. I am Karl," Karl declared.

This was when Danny began shoving The Scarlet Bitch Boy in Nathaniel Hawthorne's mouth and down his throat, giving him thousands of paper cuts on the slimy flesh. Nathaniel Hawthorne kept screaming and squirming the whole time, but Karl held him down with his big strong raccoon arms.

"This is what you deserve, Nathaniel," Karl told him, and Karl's word was law. "This is what you deserve after writing that monstrosity."

"Am I hallucinating?" Poe questioned, putting a hand on his forehead. "I have to be, right? There's no way this is actually happening."

"Oh, but it is, my dear Edgar," Ranpo intoned ominously from behind him.

"Ranpo? When did you get here?"

"Just now. He's kinda hot, isn't he?" Ranpo replied, taking a lollipop out of his pocket and unwrapping it.

"Who? Karl?" Poe asked, horrified.

Ranpo just made the gigachad face menacingly.

Anyway, back to the main event.

Now that Nathaniel Hawthorne was appropriately incapacitated, Danny retrieved the bag of salt and plastic spoon from where it was hanging from his belt. He then began scooping messy spoonfuls of thick Kosher salt into Nathaniel Hawthorne's eyes, making them dry up and visibly shrivel and Nathaniel Hawthorne scream even louder, thick, dry tears of blood running down his face until he began steaming, shriveling up like a tortured snail and crumbling into dust before their eyes with a dying, agonized half-shriek, half-squeal.

With that, the deed was done. Nathaniel Hawthorne was dead.

Karl chuckled darkly with a grin. "That's what you get for saying I have rabies, Nathaniel Hawthorne..."

Suddenly, Danny's stomach grumbled thunderously. "Seeing Nathaniel Hawthorne shrivel up like that made me really hungry," he said, patting his sunken Bergamot 22-scented stomach.

Ranpo perked up, sensing an opportunity. "Hey, you wanna go out to eat with me and Edgar?" he asked excitedly.

Danny felt like he should refuse for some reason, but he couldn't really remember why, so he didn't. "Sure thing broski! But first, let's get your emo boyfriend there a haircut. He looks like he's cosplaying Dora the Explorer and a dementor's evil lovechild."

Poe died a little inside, hearing those words. And to make matters worse, Karl had scampered off with his new hoe Jeffrey who was mentioned in the 20th and 22nd paragraphs of this chapter, so he didn't even have an emotional support cryptid to pet, either.

Ranpo agreed readily. "It's a date!" he exclaimed, and dragged them both off by the arm in the direction of the nearest barbershop. Poe wanted to disappear.

Chapter Text

Ranpo dragged the both of them down yet another sketchy alleyway, and Danny groaned. It had been about half an hour since they had agreed to go on a date, and the drugs had already started to wear off, which meant he was starting to actually think about his actions, and he didn't like that at all.

"Are you sure you know where we're going?" Danny asked aloud, since it seemed like Poe was too afraid of what would happen to his hair to ask.

Ranpo stopped in his tracks, causing Danny and Poe to bump into him and each other. "No, actually. I'm completely lost."

"What?!" Poe exclaimed, which was the first thing he'd said in twenty minutes. "You don't know where we are?! How are we even supposed to get home, then?!"

"Jeez, calm down, Ed," Ranpo said nonchalantly. "We'll just stay under that bridge over there if it gets dark before we find ourselves again."

Danny looked over at the bridge Ranpo was pointing at. "Seems pretty reasonable to sleep there. We can all cuddle on the piss-stained cement by that dumpster that's on fire," he deadpanned.

"I'm more worried about the literal swarm of people in plague doctor masks holding hands in a circle around the fire!" Poe screeched. Then his face turned red as he seemed to notice his high volume. "Sorry..."

"It's okay, Ed. I like to hear to hear you scream, and I'm sure Danny does, too," Ranpo said, making the Lenny face. Poe spluttered loudly and straight up fucking fainted, becoming a dead weight in Ranpo's grasp.

"I'm going to shoot you," Danny told Ranpo.

"No, you aren't. You like me too much," Ranpo declared.

That was true, but it didn't mean Danny had to like it.

"Hey, I think I see a barbershop!" Ranpo said suddenly, and dragged both Danny and the now-unconcious Poe by the wrists around a corner.

Sure enough, a row of tall buildings loomed into view. One of the buildings, strangely narrow compared to the others and squeezed between two wide buildings like an extra tooth that needed to be removed, had one of those swirly red, white and blue banner-things on the outside, and a sign that read "FYOLAI AND SON'S BARBERSHOP: NOW OPEN" in tall, crooked dark red letters that looked as if they had been painted on with someone's fingers.

"If only Ed was awake," Ranpo lamented. "He would love to see this flag from his homeland, the United States of Asscrack."

Danny genuinely couldn't tell if Ranpo was being serious or not. He sighed deeply, feeling all of a sudden immensely tired. "Let's just get inside already."

"Of course, kitten!" Ranpo chirped.

"I hate you."

As they approached the building's entrance, Danny noticed the front door was abnormally tall. The color of the door was a pale, fading purple, the paint was chipping, and the wood was splintering. Plus, the two wooden steps leading to the door were moldy and crumbling, and covered in a thick, drying dark red substance the same color as the sign.

"Ranpo...maybe we should try and find a different barbershop..." Danny suggested, a little disturbed. "Preferably one that doesn't belong to a murderer."

Ranpo opened his mouth to say something, but whatever it was, Danny never got to hear it, as that was when the door to the decrepit building creaked open. Miraculously, the door didn't immediately fall apart upon contact. Instead, it opened to reveal a tall man dressed in black and white, with a white overcoat and top hat, long white hair tied in a tight braid, and a single visible blue eye.

Danny raised his eyebrows and felt a smile creeping along his face. He didn't recognize this character, but it had to be someone relatively important for him to be dressed that eccentrically. A random one-off character wouldn't be that eye-catching. Then again, he wasn't finished with the fourth season, so maybe it was someone who appeared later on? In any case, he definitely looked interesting. Danny looked forward to seeing more of him in the show, if he ever managed to get back to his own world and watch Bungou Stray Dogs again.

"Hello~!" the man exclaimed, clasping his gloved hands in front of him. "Welcome to Fyolai and Son's Barbershop! Come in, come in!" he said, and ushered them inside. Danny let himself be guided inside the cramped building, but Ranpo jerked away from the man and glared. Danny blinked. Why was Ranpo acting like that? Did he figure out this guy was some kind of criminal or something?

The man didn't look bothered by Ranpo's attitude and simply closed the door behind them. "Are you here for a haircut or an amputation? Haircuts are a hundred yen minimum, but amputations are free of charge so long as you donate the limb afterwards~!" the man declared, stroking the cleaver propped by the entrance.

Danny laughed loudly, a bright, sudden sound that surprised himself and Ranpo. The man just smiled. Then his single visible eye widened as he seemed to remember something. "Oh, how rude of me. I haven't even introduced myself!" he said, leading them down a narrow, dark hallway with a grayish-purple wallpaper and into a slightly more spacious room lit dimly by a yellowish lamp hanging precariously from overhead. In the center of the room, there were three chairs lined up in a row, and off to the side, a dirty sink stained pink (heheh, that rhymes...) and a small wooden table and matching chair, where a man with a fluffy, dingy hat that might have been white at some point sat, collapsed over the table.

"I am Nikolai Gogol, the "'lai" in Fyolai and Son's Barbershop! And this," and here, Gogol gestured towards the man sleeping(?) on the table. "Is Fyodor Dostoyevsky, the "Fyo" in Fyolai and Son's Barbershop!" Gogol declared. "Isn't he cute?"

Fyodor made a sound in between a growl and a hiss, and Gogol cooed, his cheeks flushing.

Danny squinted. Wasn't that Fyodor guy the one from Dead Apple who kept acting like he was the main villain just because he was in the movie?

...No, it couldn't be the same person. That guy looked like an actually somewhat classy villain, if a bit greasy. This guy looked like he just crawled out of the sewers to steal food from someone's house.

Suddenly, a muffled yell and a loud thud sounded from above them, accompanied by a scream and loud sobbing.

"Uh, what was that?" Danny asked.

"Hm? Oh, that? Don't you worry your pretty little head about that," Gogol said, waving him off. Danny made a weird face, and Ranpo's glare intensified.

Then there was the light sound of pattering footsteps going down stairs, and a small child with long, choppy hair, white on one half and lavender on the other entered the room. It glared at Danny and Ranpo, and went to stand next to Gogol.

"Ah, Sigma!" Gogol exclaimed, and rubbed Sigma's head. Said child smacked him away with a small, chubby hand and edged away from him, towards Fyodor and the table. "This here is Sigma, the son in Fyolai and Son's Barbershop! He just turned three this month."

"Um. That's. Nice, I guess," Danny said haltingly. To be honest, he hated little kids. They were such annoying little shits, always demanding things and kicking your shins if they didn't get what they wanted and doing gross things like smearing their boogers on your shirt. That was the reason why he didn't like talking to annoying parents like Gogol apparently was.

"It is, isn't it?" Gogol gushed, trapping Sigma in a bearhug that the kid tried desperately to wiggle out of, to no avail.

"Yeah, yeah, that's nice and all, but can we get to the haircutting part? We have somewhere to be," Ranpo said, voice uncharacteristically annoyed. He placed Poe's unconscious body on the nearest chair and began strapping him in.

"Of course!" Gogol said readily, releasing Sigma, and picked up his cleaver. With his free hand, he tapped Fyodor on the shoulder, extending a hand in his direction expectantly. After a few seconds, Fyodor sat up fully in his chair, lifted his head, and began gagging loudly.

What the fuck...? Danny thought, watching in horror. Ranpo looked mildly disgusted, but ultimately it was nothing he wasn't used to. He worked with Dazai, after all.

Slowly, a strange, sharp outline of something appeared through the flesh of Fyodor's throat, rising slowly until it reached Fyodor's mouth, making his cheeks bulge with the size of it (😏). Whatever the object was, it was rectangular, flat, and somewhat long. Then Fyodor spat it out onto the table and the thing was revealed to be a catalogue filled with pictures of haircuts.

Nikolai picked it up off the table, seemingly unbothered by the viscous yellow slime coating the catalogue. He opened his own mouth and, to Danny's increased horror and disgust, licked all of the slime off the catalogue with a wide smile.

"What the hell?!" Danny shouted. "That's nasty, man!"

"It's not nasty," Gogol said, looking unperturbed. "I'm just showing my love for my dear Fedya."

He then thrust the catalogue in Danny's direction, apparently expecting him to grab it. "Heeeeere you go."

"What? No! I'm not touching that!" Danny exclaimed, disgusted.

Gogol had the nerve to look offended, clutching his chest like a scandalized Christian grandmother after catching her grandchild making out with someone in her living room. (I know that's oddly specific, please don't comment on it.)

Sigma sighed, looking tired, and waddled off to the stairs once again. He came back a few moments later with a cleaner, albeit dusty and slightly stained, catalogue. "Sorry that those two are so weird. I'm trying to train them on how to be humans."

"Oh, thanks," Danny said, taking the catalogue, because Ranpo definitely wasn't going to thank him. Then he made a face, processing what Sigma said. "What, were they not human before?" he quipped.

Sigma shook his head, completely serious. "Rats."

Ranpo interrupted anything Danny could have said by snatching the catalogue from Danny's hands and swiftly leafing through the thick pages until his finger stopped at an image. "This one, please. An Edgar for Edgar," Ranpo said. His mood seemed to improve after saying that.

Danny peered over at what Ranpo was pointing at, and recoiled. It was an undercut...with a bowl cut on top? Combined? It framed the model's face horribly, making his head look like a cube and his ears look strangely flat and long. To be honest, it was the worst haircut he had ever seen in his life.

He opened his mouth to argue, but then shrugged. The faster they got Poe a haircut, the faster they could leave this place, so Danny decided to just let Poe get Edgar-ified.

And so, Gogol moved to stand behind Poe, placing a white paper over his shirt, and readied his blades. Sigma sighed heavily and left the room, going back upstairs to beat Jeff Kinney up some more.

Then Fyodor stood up, his spine snapping, crackling and popping like a certain name brand cereal as it straightened, bones protruding from his spine and shooting out of his flesh, splattering blood on Danny's new white shirt.

"Son of a bitch!" Danny shouted. "This cost twenty dollars, man!"

"It cost 30 yen and you didn't even pay for it," Ranpo deadpanned. "You're such a babygirl," he said, shaking his head.

"What the fuck does that even mean?" Danny asked, and didn't receive a response.

Suddenly, Gogol and Fyodor began cutting, retrieving scissors and razors from seemingly nowhere (they were probably from Fyodor's mouth again to be honest), shaving and sawing and cutting until finally they stepped away, revealing...a haircut, definitely.

Edgar Allan Poe now looked like a tortured Bratz doll someone put through a paper shredder, then a meat grinder, and then in the hands of a five year old girl with too much time on her hands. To put it simply, he looked like your mom's left asscheek. Fucked up and like he's been slapped a few too many times, but still beautiful, in a way.

Danny was taking his phone out to take a picture, succumbing to the homosexual thoughts, when Gogol turned his razor on again and said, "Ah, shit, I messed up. We gotta go bald now-"

Poe's eyes shot open and he screamed.