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.
“You’re right… This is a horrible sight…,” Mikado mumbled when he saw Masaomi.
Why was Masaomi being ganged up on by the Yellow Scarves? Why was Anri here, and why did she have a katana with her? There were plenty of questions.
And the other two must have had questions of their own.
Yellow Scarves, Dollars, slasher.
Three symbols floated into three heads—but it all went out the window the moment they saw one another’s faces.
All the information each one had gained…
All the doubts they’d felt about the others…
All of it confirmed as trivial with all their hearts.
In the moment, they each thought and acted with no concern except one another’s safety.
The confusion held true for Horada as much as it did for the trio.
“There you are, Black Rider… Crap… Whatever’s happening here, go, guys! Pound ’em all into dust! And take the empty-handed kid hostage!” he shouted, just before a voice piped up from the crowd.
“Now! Turn traitor!”
“…Huh?”
Horada looked around, unclear what the shout was supposed to mean.
He saw something he could not believe.
Hey… What’s going on…?
What the hell is happening here?!
Horada’s parched throat swallowed dry spittle. They were supposed to take the boys captive to immobilize the Black Rider and the katana chick, then surround them and wipe them out. That was the image he had in his head.
But he never could have imagined what he was actually seeing.
The Yellow Scarves were attacking one another. The ones going after the intruders were hit by other members from the side, and those who went after those attackers suffered jump kicks themselves.
Everywhere he looked in the factory, similar events were playing out. More and more Yellow Scarves were hitting the ground.
In particular, one man was laying Yellow Scarves flat at a frightful pace, a man with black hair and a yellow scarf. When he met eyes with the dumbfounded Horada, he pulled the scarf off to reveal—
“Yo.”
“K…K…Kadota! You…you son of a bitch!”
“I figured it was you. When Izumii and them got hauled in, you were the only one who got away, and you also didn’t get stuck with any charges… And here you are, acting like quite the big man. I’m surprised. Y’know, if it’s this easy to infiltrate with just a scrap of cloth for disguise, maybe it ain’t the best thing in the world to grow your numbers, is it?” Kadota muttered with a smirk. He turned to Masaomi.
“That was scary, wasn’t it? We thought you were gonna get shot…but I guess the slasher saved your ass, for whatever reason… Sorry, man. We couldn’t act until we knew that gun was out of the picture.”
Still unclear on what was happening, Masaomi used the crowbar as a crutch to get to his feet. He asked the older man, “Kado…ta? Wh-what is this…?”
“When you said the name Horada, I knew it sounded familiar… So I looked into it and found out what was going on. We got about thirty of the Dollars together with some random scraps of yellow and snuck in. I left Yumasaki and Karisawa behind, since they’d stand out.”
Kadota paused to knock out another “enemy” Yellow Scarf. He made it sound easy, but scraping together thirty people to infiltrate the midst of the enemy was no easy feat. Masaomi watched the man who had once saved Saki—a man with a universal, undeniable charisma, unlike him and Horada. The only things he could register in the moment were shock and gratitude.
The group Kadota pulled together all recognized one another. But from Horada’s Yellow Scarves’ side, they didn’t know who was friend and who was foe, particularly in the midst of such chaotic battle.
“D-damn…wh-what’s going on here?! My gun…where’s my piece?!” Horada shrieked, looking for the weapon that had been knocked out of his hands earlier—defeat was almost certain now, and his top priority was survival.
But there was no black hunk of metal to be found on the ground.
“Hey,” came a voice over his back. “Years ago…was that you…with Izumii?”
He felt his heart being crushed. Horada’s body and breath went entirely still. The only thing moving wa
s the flow of cold sweat.
“Who broke Saki’s leg? Was it you?”
“N-no, I didn’t…,” Horada stammered, teeth chattering, as he imagined the figure of the boy standing behind him.
The smaller boy, raising the metal crowbar, bloodied to hell and without mercy.
“Who made Saki cry? Was it you?”
“…Dammiiiiit!”
Horada pulled a small knife from his pocket and spun around, thrusting it with all his might. But Masaomi’s fist, wrapped in a yellow bandanna, slammed into his face instead.
“In reality…I should have split your skull with that crowbar,” Masaomi murmured, as he gazed down at the writhing Horada. He could sense two figures watching him nervously from behind. “But Mikado and Anri don’t belong to this world.”
Masaomi kept his face hidden from them. He mumbled, “They don’t need to see a dead body. So I changed my mind.”
But from deep down, he was suddenly possessed by an urge to see their faces.
It could just be chat—no need to talk about the Dollars or Yellow Scarves. He just wanted to speak with them…
That was when he saw some of Horada’s juniors dragging him away from harm.
“No, wait…”
He took a step forward to go after them. But with all of the tension and nerves gone, Masaomi’s body had reached its limit, and he collapsed to the ground.
“Masaomi! Masaomi! Hang in there, Masaomi!”
“Kida!”
The sounds were amplified several times, slamming into his brain.
Through the haze, Masaomi could see a teary-eyed Mikado rocking him and Anri leaning over with a similar look of concern.
The sight of their faces next to each other drove all thought of the Dollars or the slasher from Masaomi’s mind. All he could think was how alike their expressions were.
Damn. Why do they look like such a good couple?
Masaomi put on a wry, brave grin as he gritted his teeth against the terrible pain overwhelming his body.
So who suits me, then…? I guess that’s obvious. Whether we fit each other or not doesn’t matter.
“If you’re gonna take me to a hospital…can I ask you for a favor?” he asked in his tattered state. Mikado and Anri looked overjoyed just to know that he was still alive.
Durarara!!, Vol. 3 (Novel) Page 20