Durarara!!, Vol. 3 (Novel) (27 page)

Interior, ruined factory

With a grunt, another Yellow Scarf—or perhaps he was really a Blue Square—collapsed next to Masaomi.

Over a dozen teens were already rolling around on the ground at his feet, clutching their arms, legs, or heads.

“Hey, he’s just one guy! What’s taking you so long?!”

At some point, Horada had gotten out of his chair and to his feet. He had the gun clutched in his hand, but he was taking a step backward, trying to put distance between him and the advancing Masaomi.

He was certain that when his companions closed in all at once, their victory was instantly assured. But that moment had passed, and Masaomi was still standing.

Naturally, he wasn’t unscathed. But all of the truly devastating blows were coming from him, not the other way around.

Horada’s command sent the useless posers, who had no experience with group fights, forward in an attempt to drive away their
momentary intimidation. Rather than attacking his blind spots in groups of three or four, they all rushed in like sardines, swinging metal pipes and the like. Predictably, they mostly got in one another’s way, hampering their ability to fight.

Meanwhile, Masaomi didn’t swing his crowbar around like a bludgeon, but held it out straight, striking at ribs, collarbones, and knees.

His attacks were as ruthless as they were efficient. It was if he was trying to pierce straight through his opponent’s body with each blow. With every merciless strike, the Yellow Scarves each reconsidered their own attack for an instant, giving him more time to swipe with the crowbar. No mercy, no hesitation.

Who was going to be first to leap into an attack that could easily get himself maimed? If anyone locked eyes with Masaomi, they were the next to fall prey to the crowbar. The bodies of the wounded were a physical and mental wall that served as a warning to the rest.

And if there was any mistake that Horada made, it was his sore underestimation of Masaomi’s power.

Horada had pegged him for the opportunistic type of leader, but he did not realize that the Yellow Scarves were originally formed around the bedrock of Masaomi’s fighting ability. He had taken part in several fights that pitted him against larger groups completely alone.

But naturally, Masaomi’s body was accumulating steady damage. There were multiple trickles of blood coming down his forehead. His movement had been noticeably slower since taking a metal pipe to the ribs—he might even have cracked a few.

But Masaomi didn’t go down.

No matter how many blows he took, he continued his inexorable progress toward Horada.

Meanwhile, no one was bothering to stand in his way to form a human barricade around their leader. They just stood around as the same event played out over and over. About half of the gathering was just watching from a distance, not making any effort to join the fray.

Y-you useless idiots…

But he also couldn’t just run for it and be the first out the door.

The possibility of death flitted across Horada’s mind again.

If it comes down to it…

He clutched his gun and considered creating his second victim. If he
shot him in this state, the other guy would die for sure this time, but only if it came to that.

Should he just go ahead and shoot him now? Horada was losing his ability to make rational decisions. He clutched the gun, swallowing hard—and the situation made a tiny bit of progress.

“Die!”

One of the boys’ hearty swing of a metal rod connected with Masaomi’s head, and he collapsed to the ground.

“Oh…? Heh…heh-ha-haaa! Don’t scare me like that, you little shit!” Horada crowed, relaxing his grip on the gun and moving closer to the prone Masaomi.

He raised a foot, preparing to stomp his helpless victim into oblivion. In a flash, Masaomi leaped up and swung his crowbar down at Horada’s head.

“Raaah!”

But the strength went out of Masaomi’s knees, and the tip of the crowbar fell just an inch short as it dropped.

“H-hyaaah!”

Horada was half-mad at that point, however. He leaped aside like a terrified dog, turned his gun on Masaomi as the boy slumped to his knees, and…

Instead of a gunshot, there was a sharp metal
clang
.

A shock ran through Horada’s hand. The gun he was holding flew through the air and landed elsewhere inside the factory.

Even Masaomi didn’t understand what happened.

One of the men near Horada had suddenly swung a knife, knocking the gun out of his hands with inhuman quickness.

The man with the knife dully told the stunned Horada, “Um, sorry. If you kill him, Mom will be sad. So I acted on my own. Yes.”

“What?! What do you think you’re…do…aaah?”

All the boys who saw the man’s face scrambled backward. The man holding the knife had eyes that were pure, deep red—as though the entire whites of his eyes were bloodshot.

The knife wielder looked around the scene and said again in monotone, “Well…I can tell. Sorry. I can tell Mom is very close by.”

The next instant, there was an incredible crash from the entranceway of the factory.

All present turned to look that way and saw the lock placed on the door being blown clean off.

The padlock fell to the ground as cleanly as a vegetable chopped by a kitchen knife. The door blasted open…and Masaomi saw.

At the door was a girl with the same katana that he’d seen two nights earlier.

When she saw him about to be stomped by the gang, she cried out, “Kida!” and raced over to him.

“Huh…?”

What’s Anri doing here?

Why does Anri have…a katana?

Masaomi’s world lurched perilously.

He wasn’t quite able to put together the “Anri equals slasher” equation in the heat of the moment, but there was no denying the extreme confusion he felt at the bizarre combination of Anri and an old-fashioned katana.

And then came the ultimate element of confusion roaring into view.

Right around the time that Anri reached the spot just in front of Masaomi, a powerful whinny echoed off the walls of the factory.

The Black Rider!

Why did Anri show up?

Why did she have the same kind of katana as what the girl two nights ago had?

Why would he hear the sound of the Black Rider’s motorcycle right now?

There was no end to the questions, no lack of confusion, and no time to think about anything.

But the biggest problem of all, the thing that dulled his resolution to risk death…was the appearance of the Black Rider—and the boy sitting on the rear edge of the seat.

It was the person he was least ready to face—but most eager to talk to.

“Masa…omi…?”

“Mika…do…?”

Twenty minutes earlier, apartment building, Ikebukuro

“Huh…?”

A number of emotions flew through Anri’s mind when she learned that Celty was a woman. But before she could process them to ascertain their true meaning, she was distracted by a sound from the other room.

It was the room farthest into the apartment, not the one where she had slept.

“Oh? Is he already awake…? Those were pretty hefty tranquilizers I gave him,” Shinra said morbidly. Anri focused on the far room, curious about the source of the sound.

The door slowly opened to reveal a man’s face.

“Hey, where are my shades?”

It was a blond man wearing a button-up shirt.

“Hi. Your brother was just on TV. Starring in a film? Congrats.”

“Oh, Kasuka? Yeah, I think I remember him mentioning that.”

Anri felt her pulse leap as she listened to their mundane chat. The cursed voices that welled up from within her were raising a cheer more powerful than any she’d ever heard.

Understanding and memory came swiftly to her.

About two weeks earlier, when she first met Celty, this man had completely flattened one of Saika’s “grandchildren.”

Shinra was completely oblivious to Anri’s petrification. With surprise in his voice, he asked the man, “Listen, Shizuo… You got shot in the leg and the side and suffered tremendous damage. How are you standing and walking around already?”

The doctor’s tone suggested that the other man was violating everything he knew about life. Shizuo Heiwajima only raised his eyebrows a bit.

“Why…? Because I can stand and walk, obviously,” he said unhelpfully.

On the inside, Anri’s cursed voices churned and roiled even harder. She shoved the voices into the world within the painting frame and spoke to the man who once saved her from the slasher.

“Um…Shizuo…why are you…here?”

“Huh…? Uhh…crap. Who are you?”

Shizuo didn’t recognize her. He started to mull it over in earnest. Meanwhile, Shinra explained what had happened while she was asleep.

“Oh, him—he got shot yesterday. Took bullets to the leg and ribs, and while he was off-balance on the ground, the shooter ran away. What a clumsy klutz, am I right?”

“…You want to die?”

“I am so sorry with all of my being.”

With a single glance from Shizuo, Shinra was down on his hands and knees.

Shizuo had clearly given up on trying to remember Anri. “At first I thought I slipped and fell because of the rain…then I noticed all the blood coming from my side and leg. That’s when I realized I’d been shot, and I was ready to kill them all…but they’d all run away already. Then, Tom said some scary stuff about dying of lead poisoning if I didn’t see a doctor…”

“What made you choose a black market doctor like me? I lost a couple good scalpels trying to cut out the bullets.”

“Who wants to go through all that police questioning about the bullet wounds? I figured it would be cheaper in the long run to go with you,” Shizuo answered simply.

Shinra sighed and asked, “Anyway, what’s your plan after this?”

“Ain’t it obvious?” he replied, his face suggesting that there could only be one answer.

He had no idea how cruel an answer it was to Anri.

“I’m gonna find the guys who shot me, and this Masaomi Kida asshole who gave them their orders, and kill ’em all.”

Present moment, abandoned factory

And then Anri was here.

She knew about Shizuo’s strength. Given that he could easily kill Masaomi, she considered it smarter to help Masaomi escape than try to convince Shizuo not to kill him. Shizuo and Shinra had been
talking about something, but she didn’t hear them—she was too busy sending a text message to one of her “children” in the Yellow Scarves.

That was how she learned the Yellow Scarves were gathered at the abandoned factory. She broke free from Shinra when he tried to stop her and raced on foot to the scene.

But the message did not contain a particular piece of crucial information.

That there had been a revolution within the Yellow Scarves and Masaomi was already exiled from the group.

“Kida!”

Anri exposed herself for all to see, boldly standing to block the way and protect Masaomi, when—

“Masaomi!! Sonohara?!”

It was Mikado, seated behind Celty. He saw the state of the factory from the back of the motorcycle and called out to them in shock.

He couldn’t be blamed. One was brandishing a deadly weapon, and the other was bloody and beaten.

He had called out their names because his emotion preceded his understanding.

Mikado leaped from the motorcycle and raced over to the bloody, kneeling Masaomi.

Celty, too, viewed the scene with conflicting emotion.

What is this? What is…going on here?

On the phone, Shinra had said, “Anri got a message and just up and ran out the door. I’m trying to chase after her, but… I think she’s heading for the abandoned factory, but I can’t…breathe… Geez, she’s fast! Anri! So! Fast!” So she had taken Mikado with her on the bike straight to the factory.

As they rode, she showed Mikado a PDA message that read,
“Are you prepared for what’s next, no matter how awful a sight it might be?”

Celty had been imagining the Masaomi boy leading the Yellow Scarves into battle against Anri with her katana.

That was what I figured would happen… So what exactly is going on?

For whatever reason, the boy who was head of the Yellow Scarves was being mobbed by his companions in yellow.