DURARARA!! Vol.6 CHAPTER 5, PART VIII
♂♀
Back side of Raira Academy's Second Ground, Ikebukuro
Compared to the area closer to the Station, the open space here was so devoid of traffic that it was hard to believe that one was still in Ikebukuro.
What was originally a cool and comfortable spot in the shade of trees was now smelling of blood.
"Hey…just how sturdy are you, man?"
The one who spoke was Kadota, blood dripping down the corner of his mouth and a sizeable swollen bruise on his right eye.
He said so in a slightly shocked voice while sitting on paving stone between the asphalt and the grass.
"Had you been a little more well-rounded I would be the one lying on the ground right now."
Rokujou Chikage lay sprawled on the ground several meters in front of him.
The bandages on his face were drenched anew in blood. He looked like he had difficulty breathing.
Chikage opened his mouth slowly as he heard Kadota speak.
"Nah…you're just as tough, so I wouldn't be so sure. Speaking of which, if you were planning on pulling your punches just because I was injured, I would never have challenged you in the first place…you didn't, did you?"
"Well, I did spare your life, and you can call that pulling punches if you want…but mostly I did it because I didn't fancy the idea of a life in prison."
Kadota said with a hollow smile.
Chikage returned that with a dry laugh and raised his left arm to check the time on the watch.
"Ah…don't tell me I passed out just now?"
"You did, for a little while. But then I was about to fall as well."
"For real? …Damn, it's the first time I've lost two fights in a row. Feels bad, man."
Even though his words were bitter, Chikage somehow remained smiling.
"If you are talking about the fight with Shizuo, I don't think that should count."
Kadota silently got to his feet and walked to Chikage's side.
He looked down at Chikage, but not in a contemptuous way.
Looking at Chikage, Kadota suggested:
"Hey, I'm not asking you this because I won the fight or anything, but can you tell your Toramaru friends to get out of Ikebukuro now?"
"…"
"I'll put out some feelers to find the ones who did the thing back in Saitama and make them apologize somehow. Can you just be patient till then?"
"…Are you saying that Dollars members will sell their fellow Dollars members out?"
Chikage humph-ed in his nose at Kadota's suggestion.
Kadota, however, did not look displeased. Instead, he replied with a mischievous grin:
"Dollars has no rules. Which means, of course, that there's no rule saying we can't sell other Dollars members out even if we don't like them…also, I'm not doing this on Dollars's behalf. I'm doing this for myself, for Kadota Kyohei. I don't like those guys, so I'm going to help you find them. That's it. Got questions?"
"You, man, are a scoundrel."
Chikage laughed on the ground.
Kadota, too, smirked from the bottom of his heart.
"Of course. Dollars is full of scoundrels. What did you expect?"
The duo laughed hard in unison. A harmonious atmosphere surrounded them. However -
"You can quit your shitty friendship game now, Ka-do-taaaa!!"
A voice cut in, loud and vulgar, breaking the temporary peace.
"?"
"What's up?"
Kadota and Chikage turned in the direction of the voice - and saw some twenty hoodlums heading their way.
A young man who looked like the leader of the group spat on the ground and yelled:
"Making friends through fights? This isn't a fucking manga. Or is your brain rotting from hanging out too much with otaku bastards like Yumasaki?"
Kadota, on the other hand, looked back at the gang of intruders with his expression unchanged.
"There are plenty of examples that aren't in manga. Are you going to laugh at them too?"
With a pitying glance towards his opponent, Kadota continued:
"Ah, right, I forgot. You don't have friends."
"Wha…!"
The delinquent's eyes widened. To mock him further, Chikage got back to his feet and said to Kadota:
"Don't remind him of what a pitiful creature he is. Just look his face. I don't think he even has a girlfriend. Don't bully the lonely ones."
"…What! Yer…!"
The man yelled as the tip of his nose turned scarlet. Kadota, however, did not even bother looking at him.
"Speak Japanese. This is Japan."
His haughty attitude provoked the delinquents further. But remembering that they had overwhelming superiority in numbers, they regained their composure.
They soon began to mock Kadota and his injuries.
"Look at that, you're all tattered! You think you can fight us like that?"
"…Why would I want to fight you?"
"Shut your mouth! You've been irritating me since long ago, Kadota! Walking around thinking you're Dollars's boss or something when you haven't actually done shit!"
"Huh?"
Kadota had never even thought about it.
But Chikage had said the same thing to him when they met.
It looked like that the situation had already gotten out of hand before he could realize it. But still, Kadota did not understand why on earth he gave that impression.
"There are no bosses in Dollars. Everyone is the same. That's why you're a pain in the ass when you walk around thinking you're one!"
"I don't remember ever walking around thinking I was boss or anything…"
Kadota scratched his head, sighing and walked a step towards the men.
They couldn't help but stop moving and take half a step backwards in alarm.
Kadota was a famous expert at street fighting. Even though these men did not think that he could win against all of them single-handedly, none of them wanted to be the first one to take his blows.
In the tense atmosphere, Kadota asked straightforwardly without hesitation:
"Speaking of which, who the hell are you?"
""""…""""
These words from the bottom of Kadota's heart were enough to send these men into a rage.
They feared him, or at least was grudgingly aware of his existence. This was the best opportunity to claim his position for themselves - before this they had just never had a chance - but their opponent did not even know who they were.
To a group of delinquents who could usually do as they pleased on the streets in the name of Dollars, it was the worst insult they could think of.
"…We're in luck today. We get to kick both Toramaru's ass and Kadota's!"
They said it to conceal their humiliation.
One of them pulled a nightstick out from inside his clothes, veins popping on his temple.
"We'll be a little more famous once we've kicked Toramaru's ass. But just a little more…since it's nothing more than a pathetic little gang from Saitama!"
The man laughed and aimed his nightstick at Chikage's face.
Only that -
With a sharp metallic clang, the specially made nightstick was stopped before it could hit Chikage's face.
"Huh…?"
The man saw a stick-like object appear as if out of nowhere in Chikage's hand.
Its handle and sheath were painted a varicolor pattern, mainly in red and black -
It looked like a short sword, only without a guard.
"What the…?"
The delinquent was confused at the sight of the strange stick-like object blocking his attack. Chikage ignored him, however. While his right hand remained on the handle, he put his left hand on the red and black sheath and pulled with force.
A faint metallic sound was heard, and a silvery stick revealed itself.
From a distance, it looked exactly like a short sword or a dagger. The men's faces changed instantly.
But as they looked more closely, they realized that it was a weapon with a unique design.
It looked like a dagger, but it didn't have a blade. Instead, it was blunt and heavy with a steely shine. At the root of the stick a key-shaped branch protruded from the metal surface. To someone who had never seen it before, it would probably look like a fusion of a metal nightstick* and katana.
* Metal nightstick (jitte): a weapon used by Japanese policemen in the Edo era.
Only Kadota appeared not unfamiliar with this weapon. He regarded Chikage and the "object" with interest and said:
"Kabutowari, I see. Pretty cool."
"Yeah, got it in a souvenir store on a trip to Kamakura."
"Oh, I know that place. The store right in front of the Eyes of Buddha, right?"
"You know that place too? That store is kickass. I got other stuff too, but this one seems to like me. There was no one around to teach me how to use it, so I've kind of developed my own system."
They continued chatting despite the dire situation they were in.
The delinquent with the nightstick was further agitated at being ignored.
He raised his hand high and made a move to split Chikage's forehead open -
Chikage reacted fast in that split second.
Almost as soon as the man began to raise his arm, Chikage twisted his body and thrusted the blunt end of the kabutowari towards his nose.
A dull thud later, the man's eyes began to roll incontrollably.
After a couple of seconds, he fell on his knees, blood squirting from his nose like a fountain.
"…"
Several meters away, the other delinquents gasped at the sight, sweating.
We're at an advantage here.
The fantasy was quickly washed away by the fountain of nosebleed.
"So? You were saying?"
Chikage kicked the kneeling man to the ground, put his foot on the man's head and grinned. His face looked completely different from when he was laughing in unison with Kadota.
"…Hey. You were actually the one who pulled the punches when we fought, weren't you?"
Kadota asked, frowning. Chikage shook his head and answered:
"No. When my opponent's not using a weapon, I don't use any either. That's the way I do it. I wasn't pulling my punches with you. But I'm not going to have mercy on them now. That's all there is to it."
As he said so, Chikage tapped his shoulder rhythmically with his kabutowari and announced with a ruthless smile:
"It's kind of hard to take on all of you at once, I'd admit…but I guarantee you that the first five to try anything will end up losing an eye or breaking a collarbone."
"…!"
The men looked at each other, holding their breath.
They were sure that they wouldn't lose with the number of men they had. But none of them wanted to be one of the "first five". The assurance that they would win only made each of them more obssessed with not getting themselves hurt.
As if to pressure them further, Kadota stepped forward.
"Since you wanted to kick my ass as well, I guess you won't complain if I pulled off five more of your ears, will you?"
"…You think you can lick us?"
Finally one of the self-proclaimed Dollars men spoke, but his voice was already weak.
They were different.
By now the men had to admit that the duo in front of them was far above them.
They were two injured men, yet they looked more formidable than twenty.
But it was too late to back off now.
The man who looked like the leader of the group made a bitter face and gave a sign to someone lurking in the back of the warehouse - where Kadota and Chikage could not see.
- The plan was to show them those after we beat them up a little bit, but…
Or they might have decided to resort to the "trump card" sooner because a strange boy had just called them "low" -
As soon as the kidnapped girls were pushed out of the back side of the warehouse -
"…Non…?!"
Chikage's eyes widened in surprise. As soon as he realized what must have happened, he gritted his teeth furiously.
The girl looked into Chikage's eyes and said apologetically:
"…Sorry, Rocchi. …We got caught."
♂♀
Road to the back side of Raira's Second Ground
Mikado and Anri arrived slightly later at the track field than the gang of delinquents.
They moved as discreetly as possible from shade to shade towards the warehouse, making their way to the open ground where Kadota and the others were.
Shouts of "Kabaddi!" were still coming from the track field. No one would have believed that there was actually a fight going on where they were headed.
In fact, the warehouse was such a seldom-visited spot even by members of the sports clubs that it hardly even counted as part of the academy. The sports clubs mostly brought their sports gear from the academic buildings, rendering the warehouse almost completely unnecessary.
As he considered these attributes of the Second Ground, Mikado realized that it was a spot where an ongoing fight would hardly be noticed, let alone reported to the police.
Text messages from the Dollars mailing list would sometimes report that members were hanging out here both during the day and in the evenings.
Mikado had considered sending a text message saying "We can't use girls as hostages. Let's go stop them!", but he deleted it, worried that other members would call the police and get Dollars in unnecessary trouble.
- …No, still no.
Girls who had nothing to do with the gang fight had been kidnapped. It was not the time to debate whether it was "unnecessary trouble" to alert the police. But Mikado's mind was far from calm enough for him to decide rationally.
- Also, since it's a real crime, I don't think anyone would want to get themselves involved…
At the time of its first gathering, Dollars was more like a club, and its members mostly showed up because they were interested in the idea.
But he felt that ever since that gathering, Dollars had been changing.
"Dollars is real." Once this fact was confirmed, people began to use the "power" invested in Dollars's name.
Mikado did not reprimand them or try to stop them. He knew that he didn't have the right to do so.
But that was exactly why things happened the way they happened.
He did not know what Aoba and his gang were after, but he knew that the possibility had always been there that things would turn out like they turned out now.
- It's all my fault.
- I haven't been able to do anything…
- …?
Mikado sensed that something was amiss from his thoughts.
But he had no idea what it was. He simply kept walking.
From the back side of the warehouse, he saw the same gang of delinquents standing opposite two men.
The delinquents looked like they were using the girls as hostages. The man right next to Kadota was probably Toramaru's leader.
"…We have to figure out a way to approach them from the back and help the hostages get out…"
But Mikado had no concrete plan nor preparation; there was not much he could do.
He could try to scare the men by pretending that he was calling the police, or confound them with a fire extinguisher from the warehouse -
Mikado weighed these options in his head. Without turning around, he said to Anri who was walking behind him:
"I'm going to try something, if I fail, Sonohara-san, please call the police…"
Clang
A strange metallic noise interrupted him from behind his back.
"Eh…?"
Mikado turned around -
What he saw was a weird sight to behold.
A katana had appeared out of nowhere in Anri's hand and stopped the knife in the hand of a person who had appeared out of nowhere wearing a full-faced helmet.
- !?
At first Mikado thought it was Celty. But the colors of their rider suits were different.
The person had a curvier body than Celty did. It was probably a woman.
- W-Who is this…?
Mikado was confused. The woman in the helmet, however, took no notice of him as she thrusted her knife a second - and a third - time at Anri.
Anri blocked those with her katana and made a move to slash her opponent's legs.
The assailant dodged her attacks by a hair's breadth and swung the knife at her again after taking several steps backwards.
"S-Sonohara-san!"
Mikado couldn't help but yell. He didn't understand what was going on.
"…Please run away!"
Anri said briefly to Mikado as she took a giant step forward, wielding her katana.
Her opponent, however, had retreated to a spot further away than necessary in the meantime -
She produced a certain object from the pouch on her waist, pulled its safety pin and threw it at Anri.
- Eh?
At some level, it was the kind of "unusual" happening Mikado had been hoping for.
- What is that?
Yet at the same time it was so completely different from what he had imagined - the object flew straight towards Anri and Mikado before the latter could even mentally prepare himself.
- A grena-…
The object was but meters away from him. Mikado felt more disoriented than ever -
But blinding whiteness took over his vision in the next second, blowing up his confusion along the way.
♂♀
"Argh…?"
"What's happening?"
With Rokujou Chikage's girlfriend as their hostage the men had reversed the situation to their advantage.
In their peripheral vision, however, there was suddenly blinding light.
They saw the mysterious light flash explosively in the shade on the other side of the warehouse.
There was no noise, and the light disappeared right away - but it was still so eerie a flash of light that the men stood glued to their spots.
Kadota and Chikage, who too had taken notice of the light flashing behind their backs, turned around with widened eyes.
Seconds.
The men were distracted by the afterglow for no longer than 10 seconds.
Had they been more experienced street fighters or people who had seen that kind of light before, they would have refocused faster.
But these men were neither.
As a result, mere seconds of inattentiveness made an astounding difference.
A man felt that something had been sprayed onto his arm.
"…Argh?"
He was the one who was holding a knife to Non's throat. A mysterious liquid had been sprayed onto the arm he was holding the knife with.
The man looked at his own arm not knowing what had just happened -
"Ciao."
A young man with slanting eyes who looked like he had some Caucasian blood in him appeared in front of them.
"Y-Yumasaki!"
The man yelped. He had realized something.
Namely, that his arm smelled of a certain volatile liquid - and that Yumasaki was holding a can filled with lighter oil in his left hand and a Zippo in his right.
"Uwah?! Wait…wait, you bastard!"
The man tore himself away from Yumasaki, yelping.
Yumasaki seized the chance to grab Non's hand and take her away from the gang of men.
"Ah…y-you bastard!"
"The hell you're doing?!"
"When did you get here, stinky otaku?!"
The men yelled and charged at Yumasaki -
But several other men placed themselves in their way.
There were about five of them. They looked very different from this gang of delinquents.
"Ah, it looked like everyone was going away for Golden Week, so we only managed to get these people to come. But they're the best! With full Musou power gauge! Dance dance revolution!"
"…! You…are you all Kadota's underlings…!?"
The leader of the delinquents yelled. But it was too late: the intruders had begun to attack the men still holding the girls hostage.
"W-Wait…uwah!"
To hold the girls or to release them and attack back?
There wasn't even time for the men to choose before they were beaten up one by one.
The girls ran hastily towards Yumasaki as soon as they were released. The men ran after them and were, naturally, about to corner Yumasaki.
But in front of them there was an orange flame.
"Eat that! Scientifically speaking, this is called Pyrokinesis. How I'd love to be in Komoe-sensei's class*!"
* Komoe-sensei: Tsukuyomi Komoe, a teacher at the Academy City in Toaru Majutsu no Index.
"Argh!?"
The men, feeling the heat, stopped dead in their tracks.
The can of lighter fluid had disappeared from Yumasaki's hand. In its place, he was holding what looked like a spray bottle.
"Whether you're a good kids or a bad kid, don't try to imitate what we do!"
Yumasaki grinned and released his finger from the spray.
It was a simple flame generator made using a spray bottle of flammable liquids and a lighter.
When handled wrongly, however, the spray bottle would leak and cause serious explosions. There were often reports of such accidents and ensuing fires on TV. It was a very dangerous thing to do.
Yumasaki understood this well, but he used the spray and the lighter to threaten the delinquents anyway.
The fire from the spray nozzle had disappeared, but the fire on the lighter was still on. None of the men moved another inch towards Yumasaki.
As soon as he saw familiar faces among the intruders, Kadota yelped in surprise.
"You guys…"
A woman in black - Karisawa - suddenly appeared from behind his back and said:
"Well - to tell you the truth, Dotachin, we were planning on watching you and seeing if we can steal some moves from you. But these weird guys already stole the best spots for that, so we decided to hide ourselves and see how things turn out."
"…Speaking of which, how did you know we were here?"
"You'll know once you've checked your Dollars messages. Speaking of which, why was everyone standing with their mouths hanging open just now? Though thanks to that Yumacchi was able to save the girls."
"Ah, that's because there was a flash…"
Kadota said, turning again in the direction of the blinding light to check -
And heard the roar of a thousand engines from the opposite direction.
Kadota turned around and saw riders in leather jackets appear from in-between the trees outside the fence.
They looked like they were trying to see what was going on here. As soon as they realized that there were no way to enter, they parked their motorbikes on the road and climbed over the fence.
These were the men who were attacking Dollars members everywhere else.
They made a Dollars member call his fellow members, but his face suddenly changed.
One of them found it suspicious and grabbed his cell phone to look at the text message on it - and saw a photo of their leader entering a place that looked like a park. The next message came with a photo of their leader's girlfriend.
So they summoned every one of their men still standing and headed straight here to find their leader.
Chikage, upon seeing his men, muttered in surprise:
"Why are they here…?"
His eyes were still widened and his mouth hanging open - but Chikage was already at the center of the gang of delinquents.
"Ah…?" "Wah…!" "What are you…?!"
Already distracted by Yumasaki, the men panicked as they saw Chikage approach them so swiftly. They tried to grab his collar, but -
The first one to charge at him fell after he was kicked squarely in the balls.
The second, who raised his chunk of log, lost two front teeth to the tip of Chikage's kabutowari.
The third pulled his knife and swept the blade at Chikage's arm.
But his first attempt was blocked by the hook on Chikage's kabutowari. Chikage twisted his wrist, and the man's blade was bent.
"What…argh!"
Chikage hit the man hard in the face as he lost his balance. Just like that, he took down three men in a second.
"You bastards…if you've got the guts to go around kidnapping other people's girlfriends, you know you deserve to die, don't you?"
At the same time, Toramaru members who had climbed over the fence began to call out to him.
"Captain! Are you alright?"
"Yeah!"
Chikage replied leisurely. Toramaru members asked with rage in their eyes:
"Can we finish them off, Captain?"
"Ah, no."
Chikage looked around and said in a loud voice as he thrust the kabutowari into the clavicle of the man who dared approach him from behind:
"Nah, it'll be hard to tell who's who at this point. You guys, just fight off whoever's coming for you or me. I'm going to finish them off, so you guys can just put them to some good sleep."
His tone was lighthearted, but the anger concealed in his voice was threatening to come through.
One of the delinquents felt it and realized that things didn't bode well for them. He turned his back on Chikage and tried to run, but -
Before he could do so, an arm had coiled itself around his throat.
"What now? You want to run?"
"K-Kadota…"
"But I want to play."
After sending the man to groan on the ground with a clothesline, Kadota laughed bitterly and said:
"…There are people like this in Dollars now? Looks like Dollars can only go downhill from here."
♂♀
One minute ago, beside the warehouse
Vorona closed her eyes as the light threatened to blind her.
What she had thrown at Anri was a weakened flashbang. Unlike the type Slon had used in front of Shinra's apartment, this flashbang was almost noiseless. All it did was give off blinding light.
Vorona's helmet had a special safety light hood installed in it. But for Anri and Mikado, the flashbang would explode right in front of them, and even if they closed their eyes immediately they would still be temporarily blinded.
They would remain unable to see for longer than mere seconds, but it wouldn't be a very long while either.
Vorona was not about to let the brief window of opportunity go. To complete her mission of "Injure Sonohara Anri enough to make her unable to move for a while", she thrust her knife at the girl's abdomen.
But -
The girl with the katana reacted almost immediately and blocked her attack.
A metallic clang was heard. The girl proceeded to slide the blade and swing with force at Vorona's legs.
Vorona jumped and dodged the blow expertly. Assuming that any contact with the blade was likely to be dangerous, she leaped further backwards than necessary.
- She saw my attack?
The girl's aim was so accurate. Vorona looked at her face - and couldn't help but hold her breath.
Anri's eyes were bright red like they had been the previous night - or even brighter.
Her eyes were glowing.
That was enough to tell Vorona that the girl was something very different from humans.
Vorona looked at Anri and smiled calmly.
There were things she did not have any knowledge of in this world.
Was she human? Or was she something else?
To her, whose only goal in life was to see how strong or ephemeral human beings can be, these were all objects of interest - be it the monster girl with a human form or the Black Motorbike.
Seeing Mikado crouched on the ground, hands covering his eyes, Vorona said as she kept up her footwork:
"That boy, seems merely human. Pity, pity."
"…I won't forgive you if you do anything to him."
Anri narrowed her eyes and muttered. Vorona smiled and said:
"One question. Could you acknowledge an answer?"
"…?"
Anri stopped momentarily as she heard Vorona.
"Are you human? Monster? Which one?"
"…"
Vorona asked as she approached Anri. As soon as she was back in the attack range, she raised her knife again.
Anri blocked her knife and answered in her own way:
"…I am not human. I am not a monster, either."
It was hard to tell if Vorona had heard her or not. She stepped aside quickly and pressed a switch on the handle of her knife.
The blade sprung forward from the grip and flew towards Anri's abdomen like a bullet.
Anri, however, repeled it by twirling her body - and continued to answer Vorona's question:
"I'm…just a parasite."
Anri's vision was actually far from recovered.
The flashbang had blinded Anri, and she saw nothing but white - but inside her body, Saika detected everything.
A lovable human's heartbeat, breathing, footsteps and even the movements of the muscles.
Even the tiniest sounds made in the wind by the blade the human was wielding -
Saika was able to feel every sound that was coming from this human.
It was all because of her twisted love.
Vorona was not aware of Saika's existence, but she knew that Anri's katana was something unusual. She assumed that it would be futile to try to bend it. If she used a gun, she would risk not fulfilling the "Do not kill the target" requirement.
The seriousness of gun wounds tended to be greatly exaggerated in Japanese media.
If Anri made her katana disappear again, the entire situation would just look like an ordinary school girl getting shot by violent gangsters.
If the incident was publicized, it would be hard for her to ever find another job in Ikebukuro. In fact, it would become hard for her to even stay in this city.
- Yeah, right…
Vorona came up with an idea and decided to try it on Anri.
She leaped, took out another knife from her pouch and walked towards Mikado.
"…!"
Anri hastened to follow her - but Vorona didn't do anything to Mikado. Instead, she kept running as if to lure Anri somewhere, casting backward glances every now and then.
Anri's vision was dim. She ran after her opponent relying on Saika's perception of her surroundings.
Judging by the flashbang and the strange bullet knife, it was not a good idea to fight her at anything but a very short range.
That was what Saika's fighting experience told Anri, so she began to run after Vorona.
Part of the reason was also that she did not wish to get Mikado involved -
But that led her into even deeper chaos and commotion.
Because the place Vorona was heading for -
Happened to be the very spot where gangs of delinquents were fighting each other.
♂♀
Somewhere in Ikebukuro
"Oh, Aoba? Listen. Things have gotten interesting over here."
"Interesting?"
Face unchanging, Aoba listened calmly to his fellow Blue Square member's report over the phone after sending the the latter to spy on Kadota.
"Let me see - after an awesome fight, they realized the power of friendship, and then a bunch of weird guys came and used hostages but bang! Light was everywhere and we got a big fire too!"
"…I was a fool for sending Gin on a spying mission."
Aoba sighed heavily and gave out orders to the fellow member named Gin.
"Listen. Just tell me what's happening in front of you right now."
"OK - hmm. Someone in a rider suit just came in…and it's not the one in the black rider suit back at the factory, it's someone else coming in with a knife…"
"…?"
- What's going on?
I should have gone there myself after all -
Just as Aoba thought so, his fellow member told him something that confused him even more.
"Ah, the one in the rider suit is…fighting a woman with a katana. What's with this woman? Eh…looks like she's wearing red sunglasses or something. Her breasts are fucking huge. God, she fights as well as us! Awesome! What's with those moves?"
"…?"
The report still made no sense, but Aoba still realized that something was wrong. He immediately told Gin to send him a photo or video.
Less than a minute later, Aoba gasped as he looked at the photo attached to the message.
It was a girl with a katana surrounded by other people.
The photo was slightly blurry, but the person was definitely someone Aoba knew.
"…Anri-sempai?"
♂♀
Several minutes ago, the road to Raira's Second Ground
- This is such a pain.
Celty hid herself from view on the rooftop of a certain building and looked down.
What she saw there was a truck.
There was no mistaking it. She knew that it was the truck her female assailant had used to park her motorbike the night before.
On the truck there were firearms she had only seen in movies, games or new reports and documentaries about wars in distant countries. It had hardly been a day since one of those was fired directly at her by her female assailant.
- She should be inside, but…
When Akane left the apartment, Celty did more than just watch her leave.
She wanted to make sure that her bodyguard job was done perfectly. That was why she had attached a thread of shadow on the girl's clothes. To avoid accidentally getting the girl hurt, Celty made the thread feel like liquid or smoke; it was infinitely elastic, so it would not hurt the girl even if it was caught around her neck or finger.
But even Celty didn't expect that her physically impossible thread to prove useful within minutes.
Following her shadow, Celty reeled it back into her body and tracked Akane down -
And ended up discovering the truck.
Celty exercised caution. She rode to the rooftop on Shooter, who had turned back into a motorbike, and made sure that the opponent did not notice they were being followed.
On the way here she was shocked when she ran into an employee loafing on his job on the rooftop. But since she bowed immediately and took off, it did not cause much of a commotion.
- But what exactly should I do?
- I've never really had to save hostages before…and I don't even know what's happening in the truck.
Maybe Akane had a knife pressed to her throat or explosives tied to her body that would be triggered if she tried to run away.
Celty hoped that the opponent would not do something like that. But since they had fired a rifle on the street, nothing they do would come as a surprise.
- Speaking of which, why here?
- This…I remember this place…
Celty looked around. She saw Raira's Second Ground, where the girls' soccer club and Kabaddi club were practicing.
- Kabaddi. Looks like fun.
- But I can't say "Kabaddi Kabaddi", so there's no way they'll let me join…
With such thoughts on her mind, Celty looked further away.
Further down the track field she saw the roof of the warehouse surrounded by trees. Kadota and the mysterious guy should be right on the back side of it.
- Will they be OK?
- Seems like that Kyohei guy is a good fighter, so he should be alright. I'm more worried about Mikado and Anri.
- Where are they…
Celty looked around the truck, concerned about the safety of her friends -
At that moment, Celty, who had a vision like that of humans, perceived a flash of blinding light in her peripheral vision.
- !?
It was obviously no natural light.
Compared to lights for illuminating purposes, it was more likely to have come from a small explosion of some sort.
The location was right next to the back side of the warehouse.
People on the track field probably didn't see what was going on because the fence was blocking the view. But Celty realized immediately what was going on from her rooftop.
She had thought that the noise of explosion had merely been delayed by the distance, but after waiting for many more seconds, the sound of explosion still didn't come as she had expected.
- Why…?
Celty had a bad feeling. However, knowing that unnecessary action would only make things worse, she instead directed her attention towards the truck parked at the entrance to the track field.
- Eh?
As soon as she saw what was going on there, Celty bent forward as far as she could from the rooftop without thinking.
- Why? ...Why is he here?
- Don't tell me he's here to help Kadota and the others?
She saw someone walk in a dignified manner through the entrance to the track field -
Namely, a man in a bartender suit composed of contrasting white and black shades.
♂♀
Beside the warehouse
Everything suddenly fell quiet again on this side of the warehouse.
A boy groaned on the ground as fighting noises came from the other side of the warehouse and shouts came from the track field.
"…Uh…"
It was Mikado, who was still temporarily blinded by the flashbang.
But he still heard every word the attacker and Anri had said.
- "That boy, seems merely human. Pity, pity."
The syntax sounded weird, but Mikado understood very well that it was meant as a contemptuous remark towards him.
Just because he was a mere human.
Mikado was feeling shocked, but it was not because the reason had made no sense.
- A mere human.
Mikado felt shocked because someone else had just decided for him that he was "a mere human".
To be more exact, the fact that he felt shocked at being called a mere human was enough to shock him.
- What…am I?
- I'm just curious about unusual things.
- There's no need for me to become anything unusual myself…
In his confusion, Mikado remembered what Anri had said.
- "…I won't forgive you if you do anything to him."
- …
- I was the one being protected.
- I wanted to protect Sonohara-san, but it turned out to be the reverse…
- …But haven't I known from the very beginning?
- Sonohara-san beat those three men in a second…
- ...
- …No, what am I thinking about?
- That's not what I wanted to say.
- Eh?
- This is weird.
- What…what exactly…did I want to think about?
Mikado thought that his brain must have been fuddled again by the light.
He tried to reassure himself that it was the case. However, he was reminded of what Anri said just now.
- "I'm…just a parasite."
- ...What was she talking about?
- She had said the same thing when he had first met her.
- But she's no longer dependent on Harima-san or anyone else…
Black emotions surged in Mikado's heart yet again.
The last time they did, he was feeling contempt for the man who was kicking him.
But now - it was anger towards himself.
- All things considered…I'm more like the parasite.
He had founded Dollars. But that was it. He wasn't capable of anything, but despite that he somehow felt as if he was special. He had never wanted to see himself as anything special, but he had only just realized it now.
That when he was called a "mere human" and not treated as a worthy opponent by the mysterious assailant, he felt so humiliated that he could hardly stand it.
- I…what a despicable human being I am...
Mikado felt ashamed of himself.
But he struggled to his feet anyway, trying to think of what he could do.
The burning whiteness in front of his eyes was receding.
As his vision slowly began to recover -
He saw a man in a bartender suit standing right in front of him, a motorbike on his shoulder.
"…!? S-Shizuo-san?"
"Ah…just like I thought. Um, yeah, that. You're…Celty's friend…Ryuugasaki? I saw you at the hotpot party at Shinra's."
"Yeah…um, it's Ryuugamine."
"Oh, right, right. Sorry."
Mikado was back in shock after the strongest man in Ikebukuro appeared out of nowhere right in front of his eyes. He had a motorbike on his shoulder, but he made it look as effortless as a dancer walking around with his casette player.
The "legend" in front of him made him feel even more disoriented - but Shizuo continued in a calm voice as if to help cool his head:
"Ah - right, you're in Dollars, aren't you?"
"Eh? Ah, y-yes."
"I see…it would be kind of rude to not tell anyone. You're a Raira kouhai, so I'll just tell you…"
Mikado nodded fiercely. Shizuo looked away somewhat apologetically and said:
"I'm quitting Dollars. Sorry about that."
- Eh?
"…Eh?"
His bewilderment was faithfully conveyed by his voice.
"W-Why is that!?"
"Didn't you see that text? I don't want to be breathing the same air as people who go around kidnapping women just for a little fight. That's why."
Shizuo began to walk in a relaxed way again after calmly finishing this sentence.
"So from this moment on, I'm no longer in Dollars or anything else."
Mikado couldn't stop him. All he could do was wait for his vision to go back to normal.
All the while hoping against hope that this conversation - in fact, this entire day - had only been a dream.
(TO BE CONTINUED IN PART IX)