Bungo Stray Dogs - Volume 8 - Chapter 2.8

Rescuing Shirase from his cell was a success, although now I had to escape without catching anyone’s attention. But right when I was about to place a hand on the door to the exit, Shirase suddenly spoke up behind me.

“Hold up.”

It appeared he was talking to me.

I turned around. “Yes?”

He was wearing a puzzled expression. “What happened…to your left leg?”

When I lowered my gaze, I noticed that my left leg was missing from the knee down. An alarm went off in my head. I lost my balance and staggered but managed to place a hand on the wall to catch myself.

“It must be hard being a robotic investigator.”

The voice echoed from the depths of the corridor, and I immediately faced its direction.

“I’m guessing they don’t give you paid sick leave even if your leg gets blown right off. They don’t even give you workers’ comp, either, huh? I feel for you.” A man walked this way, juggling my left calf like a baton and chuckling mirthfully.

“Verlaine…!”

The timing could not have been worse. He came too soon. We still hadn’t even prepared our trap.

I promptly summoned my Type I Combat Protocol. My electrical nerves’ conduction rate increased, and my battle analysis program’s execution was raised to maximum priority. I was going to be destroyed if I did not fight. That was all there was to it.

In order to make up for the loss of my leg, I began recalibrating my balance as quickly as possible when, without warning, Verlaine threw my torn-off leg in my direction at supersonic speed. I leaned my upper body to the side and managed to evade it; the tip of my foot ended up piercing the wall right behind me.

“Chuuya’s not with you? Good grief. He’s even late to important events like this.” Verlaine’s tone was casual and carefree, even. “I bet he would show up late to a first date, too. You know, as his brother, I worry about him. Sigh…”

I did not have the luxury of replying. If I lost, then that would be the end of Shirase’s life. His death would be instantaneous. In order to quickly calculate the appropriate protocol with the highest chance of survival, I could not waste time thinking about Verlaine’s statements.

I leaped as far as I could on my one leg in order to get away from Shirase—even if only a little—and I rushed toward the exit. But in spite of my efforts, Verlaine caught up with me in the blink of an eye. He grabbed my shoulders, then continued to ram me into the wall.

“Gwah…!”

The wall cracked, and my inner skeletal framework creaked.

Verlaine’s attacks did not end there. After I sensed distortion in the air near the center of my body, a gravitational force pushed me farther into the wall. It was like a finger sinking into sponge cake. The only difference was that I was the one sinking—and straight into a hard, concrete wall.

“Don’t worry. I’m not interested in breaking you. Just stay put for a bit, will you?”

I was almost completely buried in the wall. The thunderous sound of crumbling concrete reverberated throughout my body, sending overload warnings to my main processor. However, there was nothing I could do. I tried to get myself free, but Verlaine’s gravity manipulation set every piece of rubble back in its original position. I was being buried within the very place that I needed to escape from, until I found myself stuck like a house trapped in a landslide. Only my face and part of my arms stuck out of the wall.

I tried bending myself like a spring to create the necessary amount of torque to break free but it was no use. My entire body was covered in rubble.

“Now, Shirase…”

After burying me alive, Verlaine turned around and faced Shirase instead, as if he no longer had any interest in me.

“Wh-what the…?”

Shirase’s voice trembled with fear.

“I came here to see you, but it was so easy that I actually got here a little too early, so let’s talk for a moment before I finish my business.”

“Wh-what the hell? What the hell are you?!”

Shirase’s voice quavered like never before. It took everything he had to simply stand on his own two feet.

“I-I’m not Shirase! You’ve got the wrong guy!”

“Then why did you respond when I called you that name a few seconds ago?”

Verlaine curiously tilted his head to the side. His long legs strode slowly, gracefully as he approached Shirase.

I shouted a warning: “I will not allow you to get any closer to him!”

Verlaine turned around in an amused manner. “Then stop me. That is, if you can.”

His assumption was correct. I would stop him if I could. I calculated various situations: escaping, self-destructing, remote communication, et cetera. I searched every method available, but I ended up with zero results.

There were no effective measures. There was no way out of this. I even considered calling Master Chuuya, but that would be the most foolish strategy of all. We had decided to ambush Verlaine because we knew that we wouldn’t be able to defeat him in a fight head-on.

The worst thing that could happen right now would be losing Master Chuuya or me and being unable to follow with our plan to ambush Verlaine. He had two more targets remaining. There was still hope.

“Come. Have a seat,” Verlaine demanded, but Shirase was too frightened to respond. He simply looked up at Verlaine and trembled.

“Sit,” Verlaine repeated sharply.

Right as he placed a hand on Shirase’s shoulder, Shirase stumbled, and his knees gave out from under him. The ground beneath Verlaine’s feet simultaneously cracked from the intense gravity, then heaved and bulged like a tumor. Shirase’s rear dropped right on top of the protrusion. He was too astonished and afraid to even yell out.

“Shirase, I did a little research on you. As a matter of courtesy as an assassin, of course.” Verlaine’s demeanor became very civil. “And out of everyone in this city, you have known Chuuya the longest. Which is why I want to ask you this: What was Chuuya like as a child?”

Verlaine effortlessly pulled off the door to a cell as casually as one would pull off an old scab. He then bent the door in half and placed it on the ground, taking a seat on it and elegantly crossing his legs. He smiled at Shirase.

Verlaine’s skill was an aberration. It was highly doubtful any skill user in this city could do anything about him, especially after how easily he handled the Order of the Clock Tower’s knights.

I typed an internal note and sent it to Master Chuuya’s cell phone as a text message. I explained the situation and strongly warned him that there was only one thing he could do: stay away from here. I told him he needed to retreat, calculate his next objective, and get the Mafia’s help to lay out the trap, even if that meant Shirase and I would meet our demise.

Shirase was shaking. Perhaps he reached the same understanding as I did. He managed to open his quivering mouth and replied:

“I—I…”

His breathing was shallow, and his voice sounded fragile enough to break at any moment. It would be no surprise if he vomited right then and there. But if he didn’t keep talking, he would be deemed worthless and killed on the spot. Shirase had no choice but to answer the question if he wanted to live even a second longer. It was difficult to watch.

“I think we first met…under a bridge…where me and the Sheep used to hide and drink booze,” he began while glancing at me for help.

His eyes were asking me if I could find a way out of this while he bought me some time. But it was hopeless. Help was not coming. I knew buying time would not change a thing.

“He—Chuuya—was wearing a military uniform I think he stole from somewhere. He was a huge mess. His face and hair were filthy. He wasn’t wearing shoes, either,” Shirase continued, voice quavering. “We—the Sheep’s original members—thought he was some orphan living on the streets. He spoke to us first. ‘What’s that square thing?’ is what he said.”

Shirase looked down at the ground as if he was desperately trying to remember every detail that happened that day.

“I had no idea what he was talking about… I thought he was just weird. That’s when he said, ‘Tell me what that square thing is in your hand. Right now.’”

Shirase lifted his gaze and idly stared into the distance.

“I was holding a slice of bread.”

A deep silence reigned over the corridor, eerily so, especially after the destruction that preceded it. Verlaine quietly listened to the story.

“When I told him it was bread, he asked, ‘Can you eat it?’ Then when I went ‘Yeah’ and tore off a piece and ate it to show him, he did the last thing I was expecting him to do. He fainted, like he was out of batteries. It wasn’t until I went over to check up on him that I noticed how skinny he was. He looked half dead. The others were weirded out and didn’t want anything to do with him, but I gave him bread and some water. After convincing the group, I took him with me to the Sheep hideout in the sewers.”

I opened my external memory database. According to my records, the Sheep were originally a mutual-aid organization that protected orphans from adults. Their infrastructure was much smaller at the time of Shirase’s story compared to their eventual peak, and they were more like a shelter for children who wanted to protect themselves from violence or kidnappers, threats of child labor, et cetera.

“We were a pretty small group back then, us Sheep. But we eventually were able to welcome Chuuya in. We couldn’t just turn our backs on a starving kid.”

Shirase looked up once more, but there was a change. He was still scared, still trembling. However, there was a cold fire burning in his eyes that was not there before—the flames of a freezing rage, of an herbivore as it howled at its enemy before being eaten alive.

“You’re Chuuya’s brother, right?” asked Shirase in what was practically a scream. “So why do you want to kill me? We were the only ones back then who saved kids like him from starving to death! And this is the thanks I get?!”

Verlaine quietly stared at him without giving an answer.

“Yeah, I know. This is just how the world works. Life’s not fair. It’s irrational, and I’m gonna die because I helped someone.” Shirase kept ranting. “Whatever. Just get it over with before I piss myself and make my corpse smell worse than it already will.”

After briefly closing his eyes, Verlaine slowly opened them and got out of his seat. He walked over to Shirase.

My situation assessment program calculated 168 different outcomes, and each one of them ended with Shirase’s death within the next ten seconds. It was inevitable. The least I could do was see him off until the very end.

Verlaine placed a hand around Shirase’s neck, and Shirase stopped breathing. That was when my real-time scanner picked up a change in the distance.

The 169th outcome. An unthinkable possibility.

“Unbelievable,” I instinctively muttered.

Master Chuuya’s kick knocked Verlaine straight back.

Verlaine’s tall body immediately crashed into the wall before ricocheting and hitting the opposite wall, destroying it in the process. He continued ricocheting off the walls like billiard balls until he slammed into the end of the corridor and stopped. Then he slowly fell forward as if he were being peeled off the wall until he collapsed to the ground, his palms out.

Master Chuuya immediately stood in front of Shirase as if to protect him and glared at Verlaine.

“Chuuya…!” Shirase shouted incredulously.

“Damn it, Shirase. How many times is this now?” Master Chuuya spat bitterly. “Every time you cause a problem, I gotta come clean up your mess. I’m not your damn babysitter, y’know!”

“Chuuya, why’d you come here to save me?”

“‘Save you’? I ain’t here to save ya. I came here to kick that guy’s ass.”

I ran a diagnostic status test as I shouted, “Master Chuuya! Coming here was a mistake! You must escape! You cannot defeat him if you fight him head-on like this!”

“Oh, hey, tin man. You really look like you’re right at home in that wall over there. Anyway, just shut up and watch.”

Master Chuuya smirked before facing Verlaine once more. After managing to stand back up, Verlaine bent over and picked up his hat off the floor.

“You’re late, my dear brother,” he commented while wiping the dust off his hat.

“Ha-ha. I’m usually not the kinda guy who gets mad when someone means well, but hearing you call me brother makes me sick.”

“Means well”? I quietly wondered what he meant by that.

“You can feel as sick as you’d like. You have that right.” Verlaine began to leisurely approach Master Chuuya. “But I can’t say I’m a fan of your lack of strategy. What you did was foolish. Did you already forget how easily I made a fool of you just the other day?”

“Yep.” Master Chuuya casually strolled toward his opponent. “How ’bout you jog my memory?”

It wasn’t long until they were face-to-face, within arm’s reach of each other. Master Chuuya looked up at Verlaine; Verlaine looked down at him.

The silence lasted only a split second.

Verlaine threw the first punch. His right hook sliced through the air with extraordinary speed as if it were drawn into Master Chuuya’s head, but Master Chuuya turned his face and dodged it. The next moment, he struck Verlaine’s chin.

“Gwah!”

Verlaine’s head jerked to the side. Not even my built-in high-speed camera was able to keep up with what had happened. Only after I ran a playback analysis did I understand: When Master Chuuya dodged Verlaine’s punch, he swung his lower body and hit Verlaine’s chin with a lightning-fast high kick. It was a perfect strike from his opponent’s blind spot that would have taken any ordinary human’s head clean off.

But the storm did not end there. Master Chuuya twisted his upper body further and placed a hand on the ground, thrusting his other foot right into Verlaine’s throat and causing him to groan.

Verlaine fell backward and reached out a gravity-manipulated hand in an attempt to seize Master Chuuya, who dodged by a hairbreadth before throwing another high kick. He followed with a spinning back kick.

A lightning-fast four-hit combination against an opponent taller than him, this superhuman feat was essentially a work of art. Verlaine could not even moan in pain.

“What’s wrong? I thought ya were supposed to be stronger than me!”

Verlaine manipulated gravity to prevent himself from falling and tried to grab Master Chuuya without even looking in his direction. His hand possessed a fatal amount of gravity, but Master Chuuya calmly dodged. The few strands of his hair Verlaine’s fingers did grab, however, were ripped into shreds by the pressure.

Master Chuuya swiftly kneed his opponent’s arm away and followed with a backfist to the eye that snapped Verlaine’s head back. He then kicked the inside of Verlaine’s knees to bend his legs before slipping behind him and dropping a thunderous elbow on his skull, a human weak point. A roar echoed down the corridor.

Verlaine moaned in agony and tried to grab Master Chuuya above him, but Master Chuuya was already gone. He had kicked off the ground to create some distance between them—too quickly for Verlaine to keep up.

“Tsk…!”

It was an unbelievable sight. The king of assassins, Verlaine, was being toyed with. Not one person back at European HQ could have predicted this.

However, I was able to uncover how this was happening upon analyzing prior battle data. Master Chuuya had originally been using his gravity skill mainly as a method of attack, which was why he fell short against someone with the same skill but at a level higher than his. This time, however, he had changed his approach. He was sticking primarily to rapid-fire martial arts techniques. As a result, the fight had become purely a battle of hand-to-hand combat.

Master Chuuya picked up a piece of rubble as he attacked and threw it at Verlaine, who swiftly reacted with a backfist that shattered the projectile into many pieces. Master Chuuya capitalized on this brief moment of poor visibility and approached his opponent before immediately throwing another kick—a powerful spinning back kick akin to a battering ram. Verlaine reflexively held up his arms to block but was sent flying backward. Only when he collided with the wall behind him did he finally stop.

Shards of debris languidly floated in the air. Verlaine ever so slowly lowered his arms, then wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth. His lip must have gotten cut during the barrage of kicks earlier. He quietly observed the blood on his fingers with great interest.

“It’s been a while,” Verlaine rasped. “Haven’t seen my own blood in ages.”

“Congratulations. And don’t worry. There’s plenty more where that came from.”

“You’re a world-class shit talker at least,” Verlaine said with a smirk. “Too bad that’s all you’re good at.”

As he gently touched the wall behind him, his fingers dug into the concrete like a spoon in jelly. Master Chuuya’s expression transformed.

“But while you may be able to take me by surprise with your speed, you will never be able to defeat me.”

Verlaine then expelled the rubble in his hands like bullets. With his gravity-backed fists, Master Chuuya deflected the concrete projectiles, but the onslaught did not end there. Countless fragments of concrete immediately followed one after another like the volley of a submachine gun. Verlaine had his hand on the wall and was shooting pieces of it by laterally manipulating gravity.

Master Chuuya continued knocking each comet-like fragment down, but there were too many of them. They were too quick, and there was seemingly an endless supply. He was stuck on the defensive.

“Damn it!”

Master Chuuya leaped to the side and dodged the incoming barrage of debris, but what followed him was not another concrete projectile. It was Verlaine with a lunging lariat.

The bulk of his long arm hit Master Chuuya right in the chest, sending his feet straight up. The meteorite-like impact ran through the corridor as Master Chuuya’s body swiftly broke through the wall. It was an unbelievable amount of force.

Outside the corridor wall was the underground car park for police vehicles, and Master Chuuya’s body slammed straight into one of them. The car bent in half and flew backward, finally coming to a stop after ramming into a few more vehicles.

Master Chuuya collapsed forward onto the ground, and then there was silence. Utter silence.

The only sounds that followed were crumbling debris, the station’s alarm—which could be faintly heard in the distance—and the bent police car’s anti-theft alarm. The clamor muffled Master Chuuya’s groans.

“Ngh… Gah…”

A single forearm strike had shifted the tides of battle. The power Verlaine was able to generate using his skill was staggering. Neither speed nor technique could compete with his simple gravity skill that he used to strengthen his body. His might was extraordinary.

Verlaine walked through the newly created hole in the wall and got closer to Master Chuuya.

“Wake up, Chuuya. I know you’re not dead.” He approached Master Chuuya and casually added, “Because I went easy on you.” Verlaine then grabbed him by the neck and picked him up.

“Let…me…go…”

“Make me.”

The air surrounding Verlaine’s hand around Master Chuuya’s neck began to waver. I detected a change of index of refraction in the air due to thermal radiation. Master Chuuya was in trouble.

“Master Chuuya! Run!”

I increased the output of every joint actuator in my body. My joints proceeded to vibrate while I probed the resonant frequency of the debris encasing me.

Objects of all kinds experience increased vibration at a particular resonant frequency. If I matched that frequency using my internal motor, I could gradually break down the rubble.

However, there was not much time left. Gravitational waves were spreading from where Verlaine was gripping Master Chuuya’s neck. Heat began spewing from the invisible gates of hell.

“Control yourself. Control your powers,” Verlaine demanded coldly.

Master Chuuya let out a scream—and as he did, black flames began spewing from his mouth.

The worst-case scenario was now reality. If Arahabaki created a black hole as it had the other day, then the entire police station would be compressed into the size of the tip of my finger before vanishing. Shirase and I were no exception.

“What’s wrong, Chuuya? Everyone’s going to die at this rate. You’re going to kill them. Your shortcomings are going to kill them. Nothing will remain. Want to give this a try?”

All of a sudden, there was the hollow echo of gunfire. Two bullets had lodged themselves into Verlaine’s arm.

“Chuuya! Are you okay?!” someone shouted from the back of the car park.

The instant Verlaine’s grip loosened, Master Chuuya kicked off his chest and broke free. He then rolled off the ground and desperately tried to catch his breath.

Someone ran over to his side—the detective who had been with us in the interrogation room earlier. I believe his name was Murase. The pistol in his hand was still smoking.

Master Chuuya broke into a coughing fit and shot him a harsh glare. “Detective… What are you doing?! Get outta here!”

Verlaine curiously stared at his bullet-ridden arm, then looked toward the detective.

“You’re finally here,” Verlaine told him. It was an odd thing to say.

Verlaine faced Master Chuuya once more. Both the high-energy rays and skill phase had ceased. Master Chuuya immediately got back on guard.

“Chuuya, I know you don’t need to hear this, but you have to be strong if you ever want to get anything in this world. You’ll lose if you keep fighting, and this entire building will be engulfed in Arahabaki’s flames, killing hundreds of people.”

That was neither a threat nor a taunt. Verlaine’s tone of voice was perfectly level and unemotional. He was simply stating what was about to occur.

“I’m not gonna let that happen,” Master Chuuya growled.

“True, that won’t happen,” said Verlaine, much to my surprise. “Do you know why?”

But before Master Chuuya could answer, Verlaine leaped into the air. He had erased his own gravity before landing upside down on the underground car park’s ceiling. He then hopped down and appeared behind Master Chuuya.

“Because my job for the day is over now.”

Verlaine’s hand was wrapped around the detective’s neck.

“Don’t…!” Master Chuuya shouted at the top of his lungs.

The detective’s mouth was open and moving as if he were trying to tell him something, but the words would never leave his throat.

His mouth twisted to one side until there was a dull crack, and then his head was facing backward. The momentum from the detective’s twisted neck spun his body around, and he collapsed.

“Shit!”

Master Chuuya ran over and lifted the detective’s body, but the look on his face said everything. I ran a long-distance scan and detected no heartbeat. The detective had died instantly.

“Verlaaaaaaine!”

Master Chuuya leaped forward with a shout and pounded his raised right fist into Verlaine. A black beam of light exploded between Verlaine’s hands, spreading gravitons through the air in gravitational waves and distorting the surroundings into spheres.

The expanded gravitational shock waves blasted the nearby vehicles backward as if they were made out of paper. Verlaine rode the shock wave until he landed at the underground car park’s exit.

“That’s the best punch you’ve thrown so far,” he said with a smirk before leaping backward out the exit and vanishing into the outside world.

“Wait!”

Master Chuuya ran out the exit to chase after him. He was in danger. I could not allow him to fight the enemy alone. I adjusted my intrinsic vibrations while gradually breaking the concrete in order to free myself. It took another 144 seconds until I was finally able to escape from the wall.

I hopped on one foot over to the detective as quickly as I could. His face was twisted as he lay on the ground with blood trickling out of his mouth. After a brief scan, it appeared that his vertebrae were broken from C2 to C6. His heart had stopped. A pupillary reflex test showed no response to light. I could have called for an ambulance with my internal transmitter, but it was already evident that the man was beyond saving.

Human life is held together by a very delicate string. Unlike machines such as myself, they do not run on parts. Their kinetic systems built upon the brain and the heart lack any backups, and once either of those organs stop, it is nigh impossible to reactivate them, nor can they be replaced. In other words, humans die very easily.

When I moved the detective over to scan his back, I noticed something familiar on the ground: a cross carved from white birch. Verlaine must have left it. When I began scanning it, Master Chuuya returned.

“Where is Verlaine?” I asked.

“Disappeared. Into the sky,” he grumbled, pointing up. Verlaine must have used gravity to launch himself into the air and escape.

“You could say the same for this man,” I said with the detective’s body in my arms. “I mean that poetically, of course.”

I closed the detective’s eyelids. He looked at peace.

“Damn it!” shouted Master Chuuya as he hit the detective’s chest with his fist. “What happened to arresting me, detective?! I thought you were gonna show me the light…!”

When he hit the detective’s chest once more, one of the man’s possessions dropped out of his coat pocket and onto the ground. It was a slightly outdated cell phone model that was blue and folded in half.

I had seen it once before. It was the same blue phone that Verlaine had the smuggler get for him.

I picked it up and showed Master Chuuya. The moment he realized what it was, he let out a soundless scream between clenched teeth.

The assassin Verlaine’s first target was not Shirase. But…why the detective? Why did the detective have to die?