Being somewhat smaller than average, Masaomi offered to lead. He moved to squeeze into the narrow crevice. There were plenty of members skinnier than him, but he didn’t want them thrashing the pile and potentially endangering the life of the woman hiding inside.
If he was going to settle this peacefully, he needed to go in himself and make it clear that he meant her no harm.
But only if she doesn’t mean harm herself.
“Sh-Shogun!” yelped a frightened voice, stopping him in the process of squeezing into the crack.
“Told you to call me Masaomi. What is it?”
“Uh, over there…”
Masaomi spotted a shadow in the direction they were looking.
Something even darker than the rain-soaked darkness.
So dark that it seemed to absorb that very rain…
A figure of pure, deep black.
Amid the tense silence, the cell phone clutched in Anri’s hand vibrated and glowed.
“!”
When she saw the message on the screen, she immediately began to type a response.
Her fingers were clumsy, unfamiliar with the buttons.
The message to her was short and simple.
“I’m at the factory. Where are you?”
There was only one thing Anri could do, trapped as she was.
She asked for help through the cell phone she’d just recently purchased.
From another person who wasn’t supposed to exist, either in public or in secret…
“The Black…Rider…?”
Masaomi’s eyes went wide. It was the very person they’d just been talking about moments ago, an urban legend often seen around the neighborhood.
Anyone who lived in Ikebukuro long enough was familiar with the rider, but when facing the legendary figure with potential personal business on top of that, it was a much more imposing presence.
The other boys began to murmur among themselves.
“Uh…are you saying…that was the intruder?”
“N-no way! I’d have recognized that freak right away!” shrieked one of the boys, clearly terrified of their dark visitor. Masaomi turned around and saw that someone must have alerted the others, as the rest of the boys from inside the factory were now on their way, walking toward them as a crowd. Some of them were even running, and the tension was thick among the rain.
“It’s the Black Rider!”
“The real thing?”
“Oh crap!”
“You serious?”
“Let’s rumble!”
One boy spoke up and compressed all of these emotions further. “I-I saw the rider pop over the wall… Like, just leaped over it, bike and all.”
They were the words of someone in a state of deluded confusion, but Masaomi had heard enough rumors about the Black Rider to know that this was expected. It’s what the Black Rider can do, he thought. There was a more pressing concern at the moment.
What is the rider…doing here now?
The timing was perfect—almost expectant.
The rider was stopped about sixty feet away, apparently pulling out a cell phone in the middle of the rain.
He could see the faint glow of the screen in the darkness, but there was obviously no way to make out the contents from this distance.
Suddenly, the light vanished.
Here he comes, Masaomi guessed right as the motorcycle began to silently ride forward. It sped up slinkingly, like a predator with prey in its range, spraying the falling rain as it raced toward the group.
At first it seemed to be coming right for them, but the course veered just slightly—and the bike crashed directly into the pile of vehicles.
“Whoa!” the boys exclaimed. The motorcycle chugged its way over the mountain of wreckage like an off-road bike conquering a rocky path, only to vanish into the little valley between the piles, the very crack that Masaomi was facing.
The image burned itself into his eyes.
Countless shadows extended from the bike, tangling and gripping onto the scrap to pull the vehicle over the hump.
He had heard the rumors.
It seemed like too impressive a gimmick to be relegated to the level of “urban legend”—but there was no doubt that he had just witnessed something eerie, something unexplained, amid the pouring rain.
Confusion reigned over every inch of Masaomi.
Just as it did for the intruder shivering behind the rubble.
“Ce…Celty.”
Anri’s eyes were full of surprise, gratitude, and her ongoing confusion as the huge black thing descended from overhead.
“You okay? How did this happen?”
Celty produced her PDA for Anri to see, fashioning a tiny shadow umbrella to keep it out of the rain.
“S-sorry…”
“You can explain later. Let’s scram. Get on the back.”
“Um, o-okay…”
Anri tried to quickly get onto the motorcycle, but it being her first time, she had trouble straddling it. Celty helped her up and placed a hand on her face.
“Uh…”
Black shadow began to spread over Anri’s features, until just a few seconds later, she was wearing a helmet very similar to the one Celty wore herself. Only the shape was the same, however; Anri’s was pitch-black.
There was a small viewport so that Anri could see, and the little glowing PDA screen shone through.
“Better to keep your face hidden while we escape, I’m guessing.”
“Th…thank you!”
It would have been bad for Masaomi to catch sight of her face, though Celty wouldn’t have known that fact. Anri was filled with gratitude.
“Hang on to me tight,” Celty typed, then stashed the PDA away and cranked the throttle.
A sound like a horse whinnying erupted from the engine of the bike, and Anri experienced a forward lurch in gravity, like the instant a roller coaster begins to dip.
The boys bore witness.
A black shadow leaped from the small hill of scrap as the motorcycle engine screeched.
The only difference was that now a girl wearing a black helmet was seated behind the rider.
When Celty and Anri emerged from the piles of junk, they saw several dozen young men waiting for them. Among the crowd were a few girls, too, but they stared at the two just like the boys.
They were surrounded by a wall of humanity on all sides. Such a wall would be easy to break, but it would only guarantee that some of the Yellow Scarves were injured in the incident.
Are they even aware…that I’m a member of the Dollars?
If that was the case, any act of open hostility here was a bad idea. The leader of the Dollars was an acquaintance of sorts, and she was a properly registered member of the Dollars—but taking an antagonistic attitude here would cause trouble for a great many people beyond just herself.
It would be fantastic if the situation were resolvable through dialogue, but that didn’t seem like an option at this point.
“Who are you, huh? I’ve seen you around for ages. Sorry, it’s just that I’m a fan, see? Can I have an autograph?” came a flirtatious, out-of-place question.
Celty focused in the direction of the voice and saw a single boy approach the bike.
“First of all, do you understand Japanese? Let’s start with that. Do you know the word for love? It’s ai. That refers to me: Ai am in love with the girl sitting behind you. And I don’t appreciate you swooping in and taking her away from me.”
Huh? Isn’t that…the one who’s always hanging out with Mikado and Anri…?
“No response, huh? Well, maybe you really are foreign. Actually, if it turns out you are a woman after all, I think that’d be perfect. Love isn’t me—love is you. How about that? I always thought the contours of that riding suit were too slender to be male. I wouldn’t care about you if you’re a guy, but I could love you based on the riding suit alone if you’re female. Love a nun, love the habit. What do you say? I’d be perfectly content to love you and y
our passenger at the same time, if you want.”
He’s sharp…and oddly pervertical.
Wait, was pervertical even a word? Celty was momentarily distracted by her own thought process as the boy strode over to her, step by step.
That’s when she realized something.
As Masaomi approached, the arm Anri had clinging to Celty’s waist trembled slightly. She pressed her upper half into the small of Celty’s back, trying to hide her helmet-concealed face even farther.
I see now…
Anri didn’t want him to recognize her.
Celty decided that now was not the moment to ponder why the boy Anri associated with was among the Yellow Scarves. All that mattered right now was to get the girl away from this place. She abandoned the PDA method and decided to go straight for the urban legend angle.
If she tried to reason with them, they would demand that Anri show her face to them.
Of course, I’m sure Shinra or Izaya would be able to talk their way out of this.
But sadly, Celty did not have the power to extract them from this situation through dialogue alone.
Well, if he wants a foreigner, he’ll get one. And hey, he’s not wrong—I just happen to understand the language, she noted ironically. Celty ignored whatever Masaomi was saying and slowly expanded her shadow in a vortex of black.
Ugh. This feels exactly like what happened last night…
Celty was momentarily gripped with fear as she remembered her run-in with the police. But the trembling of the girl clinging to her brought Celty’s sense of reason back. Under the cover of the rain, she materialized her shadow into a different shape this time.
But I bear some of the blame for yesterday. Then again, even if I hadn’t, it wouldn’t have changed the outcome.
The shadow extended from Celty’s feet, writhing like a snake as it gradually condensed to take on solid thickness.
At least I can say…I feel no shame in rescuing her now.
The shadow grew larger and faster over time, channeling the waves of menace she exuded. The majority of that menace and anger was actually directed toward herself, but she pretended not to notice this.
“Whoa… Wh-what is that thing?”
“No…way…”
At first, the boys assumed that it was just the rain spraying off of the ground, but they gradually murmured louder as they noticed the abnormal activity of the shadow.
And if I am at fault, this doesn’t count, because I’m not realizing it.
For an instant, the entire ruined factory was dominated and subsumed by a single noise.
БoOoovvoovvvWVVWWwwwwvvvvooooooЯяяяooo
It was less the sound of an engine than the cry of some creature.
They could tell it was an animal.
But the boys couldn’t even begin to imagine what kind of animal it was.
The fierce, eerie shriek of some thing that did not actually exist in this world.
The black motorcycle’s engine roared a sound that came directly from the depths of hell itself.
The sound resonated with the shadow creeping across the ground, each amplifying the other as it sped up toward the wall of youth.
In the past, Celty had tested herself to see how far the shadow could go. She stood on the Yamanote Line and extended it all the way to the next train station over, but she was unable to tell what was beyond that and had to prematurely end the experiment.
She had always tried to limit the use of any mammoth shadows to cut down on the image of herself as a monster, but that hesitation had disappeared since the Dollars’ meeting a year ago.
Ultimately, that lack of caution had come back to bite her with that scare the previous evening.
But it wasn’t because I knew I had a get-out-of-jail-free card…
The shadow erupted upward and took a form that resembled a gigantic horse.
It only resembled a horse because in the spot where its head should have been, there was nothing.
The headless horse leaped upward with another braying from the engine and charged straight at the boys. The ones directly in its path screamed and leaped to the sides for safety.
The horse plunged straight through the resulting empty space, then melted back into the earth, leaving only a long path of shadowy ground behind.
And most importantly…there are no police here! Celty laughed selfishly. She took her partner’s engine into a high-pitched shriek. The headless horse roared, planting seeds of terror into the ears of all who heard it.
It was as if she wanted to force the others to feel the same fear that she had experienced the day before.
“This is bad.”
“Huh?” said one of the nearby Yellow Scarves, turning to look at his leader.
“H-hey, Masaomi… What…is that…thing?” asked a different boy, his throat tight with fear.
Masaomi shook his head. “What makes you think I’d know that?”
He was unable to process what he was seeing as an illusion, but he didn’t want to accept it as reality, either. He found himself taking a step backward.
“All I know is that thing is dangerous. It’s not like us… It came from somewhere else.”
Masaomi felt a cold sweat trickling down his back. He stared at the back of the Black Rider.
“Okay, but…what about the chick riding on the back of that ‘dangerous thing’? What’s up with that?”
“D-don’t let ’em get away!” one of the terrified Yellow Scarves shouted.
“Wait! Don’t just attack them!” Masaomi commanded, trying to control his partners, but the shock wave spread through the other boys. None of them was reckless enough to stand directly in front of the bike, but several were ready to swing pipes and two-by-fours from the sides.
The result of this action took them even further into shock.
Anri felt a breeze blow through the visor of her helmet. She looked out at the scene.
It’s Kida, she realized, noticing that he was staring right at her. She looked away. Hopefully she had mistaken someone else for her friend, but the face she’d just seen was too much of Masaomi Kida to be a coincidence.
The black helmet completely covered Anri’s face, but she couldn’t help the terrifying feeling that he was going to realize who she was.
The moment she turned her eyes away from him, she saw something else, something that completely overrode her own fears.
It was the dull silver gleam of a metal pipe, hurled directly at the motorcycle carrying her and Celty.
Look out.
Madness trained in their direction.
Weapon hurled in their direction.
Anri’s reflexes took over in the face of these two simultaneous volleys, driving her into motion. Normally, the sight would be pushed back into the picture frame—but realizing that Masaomi was just nearby left her mind unable to perform that act in the moment.
Instead, her body acted without her.
Her arm throbbed, and the cursing voices that rang throughout her heart bellowed in one loud voice.
In her haste to not spend an instant of time listening to them, Anri yanked the throbbing in her arm directly out of her body, all at once.
It slid right into Anri’s hand at the same time that it ripped through the sleeve of her jacket in one smooth motion.
At the exact moment that the metal pipe bore down on Celty, she turned it onto the projectile without thinking, and…
It might as well have been a stage magician trick.
As the bike sped away, stones, umbrellas, lumber, and scrap material flew through the air at it. Most of the junk hit nothing but air or other projectiles, unable to handle the acceleration of the motorcycle—but a few of them were perfectly placed to intersect the bike’s path.
But just as the first pipe was about to collide with it, a metal sound reached the boys’ ears.
Twing. The sound of something freezing instantly. Or perhaps endless mic feedback compressed into a single moment.
What
they saw next was two halves of a metal pipe floating in midair.
Next, a stone heading for the motorcycle crumbled into dust, disappearing amid the rain.
In what little time they had to wonder what was happening, a flying piece of wood provided the answer.
It was in the hand of the girlish figure on the rear seat of the bike.
A long, sharp cylinder that gleamed in the little amount of streetlight illumination that reached the factory.
“A…katana…?” Masaomi heard someone say.
That word brought a fresh image to the mind of everyone present.
The slasher.
They saw clearly that the figure sitting in the rear was holding a katana.
Stunned by the sudden appearance of this deadly weapon, all the boys stopped throwing objects and scrambled away from the path of the bike. When the person in the rear seat noticed this, she slid the katana away somehow, in the same magician’s way that she produced it.
Before the boys could regain their footing, the black motorcycle picked up speed, attempting to break its way right through one of the exits.
It roared.
It roiled.
Dancing along with the whinnying of the engine.
Drops of black shadow mingled among the spray of the rain.
The rising shadow seeped back into the motorcycle and its rider.
Black mist enveloped both person and bike, giving it the momentary appearance of one giant creature.
It leaped in time with another bray from the engine—just as the headless horse had moments earlier.
Seated on its back was a girl, her face hidden by a pitch-black helmet.
A headless horse ridden by a girl with a silver blade.
Such an image was not their intention, but as they rode through the darkness, they created the very picture of the headless dullahan from the fairy tales.
The boys didn’t even have the wherewithal to throw objects anymore. It seemed to be dawning on them that perhaps just letting them go was the safest plan of action.
“Can a katana…actually cut a steel pipe…in half?” someone murmured, picking up a piece of the severed pipe. The boys around him examined the shockingly clean cut—and began to pray in earnest that the Black Rider left them in peace.
Durarara!!, Vol. 3 (Novel) Page 9