Bungo Stray Dogs - Volume 7 Chapter 4 Part 3

Chapter 4 Part 3

They stood side by side and began walking toward Randou. “Did you convince him?” Randou asked.
“Yep,” Dazai replied. “Everything went smoothly. Chuuya convinced me not to die yet.”
Bewilderment flashed across Randou’s face. A few seconds went by until he forced his lips into a smile.
“I see.” He sighed. “Mori would jump for joy if he heard that. After all, this would normally be something worth celebrating. I will do my best to make sure your death is painless.”
“Heh. What a gentleman.” A smirk made its way to Chuuya’s face. “Do you have any idea how I feel right now?”
“I cannot even imagine.”
“I’m ecstatic. It’s been ages since I could fight with both hands!”
Chuuya dashed forward. A crimson shock wave burst right before his eyes, but he appeared to have expected it. He launched himself off the ground with both hands, then used the momentum to throw himself into the air.
“These fists aren’t gonna stop till they meet your face!”
He scattered the gravel he’d picked up in each hand and used the fine particles as footholds to sprint up and down, left and right like lightning. The crimson shock wave followed his small figure, but all it could destroy were the blurs of movement left in Chuuya’s wake as he rocketed through space.
“Ha-ha-ha-haaa!” he cackled as he hurtled toward Randou and aimed a comet-like kick at the man’s heart.
Just then, a crimson shock wave pierced the air. “Hff…!”
Air expelled from Randou’s lungs as he raised both hands, creating a condensed subspace shield that blocked the kick. The blow was so powerful that the soles of Randou’s shoes cracked radial fissures into the ground beneath him.
“Dazai! Now!” Chuuya shouted. “What—?!”
Dazai was already standing right in front of Randou. He had approached him like a shadow hiding behind Chuuya’s flashy attack.
“Hmph!” Randou snorted. “Sneaking up on me so you could touch me and prevent my skill from manifesting?”
No skill could touch Dazai. Any skill user’s powers would be nullified if they touched a part of his body, leaving that person virtually naked.
“However…”
Something dark appeared between Dazai and Randou. It was death itself, clothed in ominous robes.
“It’s time to die, boy,” the old boss declared hoarsely. “…He saw right through my plan, huh?” said Dazai.
The silver scythe glimmered with death as it fell. And yet, Dazai didn’t look away. He watched the blade swinging down at him with utmost calm. It was as if he knew the scythe wouldn’t touch him.
And the blade did stop…right at the tip of his nose.
“You have no idea how irritatin’ this is, you crafty son of a bitch,” Chuuya grumbled while still midair. “I can’t believe your prediction was right again!”
“Hrm…?”

Something dark was restraining the old boss’s scythe.
It was Chuuya’s biker jacket wrapped around the base of the scythe. He had thrown it into the air while manipulating its gravity, and the weight of it caused the massive scythe to drop. After it hit the ground with a resounding thud, the jacket returned to its normal weight and softly fell.
“Haaaaaah!”
Chuuya swung his fist down at the old boss. Each punch was no different than a burning comet, slowly breaking down the predecessor’s body.
“Gwah…”
The previous boss’s inhuman form gradually cracked open, expelling flames from each lacerated wound and pushing him back.
“Eat dirt, you old fart!”
Chuuya grabbed the previous boss’s face, and black waves of gravitational force shot out from his hand. The predecessor’s body slammed into the ground, sending radial cracks through the spot where he landed. Nevertheless, Chuuya still didn’t ease up the gravity. Instead, he pressed the old man’s body into the earth by applying as much gravitational force as he could muster.
“Even this artificial body…is not powerful enough,” the old boss said as he gradually sank into the ground. “How unfortunate. But impressive work, boy.”
“You can’t use your hands anymore,” said Chuuya. Then he shouted, “Dazai! Now!”
“I’m already on it!”
Dazai sprinted right for Randou, one fist raised.
The boy’s eyes were as clear as the sky on a sunny day; they lacked any shred of trepidation. This was not something earned, for only those determined to live could possess their heavenly blue sparkle.
“Haaaaaah!”
Dazai’s fist closed in on Randou’s face. Until all of a sudden…
…the world collapsed.
“What—?!”
A crimson glow had engulfed everything in sight. The buildings vanished along with the ground beneath. Even gravity itself had disappeared. Their entire environs had been shaken up, broken down, and were now floating in midair.
“You should already know my powers allow me to manipulate subspace.”
They heard a voice—something not human was speaking in this crimson world.
“In other words, I can control everything inside it,” the voice continued. “Dazai, you may be my greatest threat; your fists will never reach me as long as I can manipulate where you stand or the distance you move.”
Randou was floating. His overcoat fluttered in the wind, countless pieces of rubble hovering around him.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Chuuya spat. “The hell can’t his skill do…?”
Dazai looked around in mute amazement. “Sneaking into the Mafia’s vault must have been a piece of cake with a skill like this.”
The world inside the subspace no longer resembled any place on earth. The ground was hollowed, and the buildings were destroyed. Everything was floating in the crimson atmosphere. Dazai and Chuuya stood atop giant pieces of rubble like tiny ants clinging on for dear life.
“Does this place look familiar, Chuuya? You’ve been here once before, after all,” said Randou. “On that day eight years ago, my partner and I infiltrated this country to steal a high-energy being. We learned that it was sealed away in a secret military facility…but when we captured you, Chuuya, and tried to flee…something happened—something not good. But I still cannot remember what that something was. All I do remember is that it led the enemy to find me and back me into a corner until I had no choice but to absorb Arahabaki as my skill.”
Debris swirled around Randou. The indescribable noise filled the air as something invisible to the eye roared into space.
“Randou,” said Dazai, “just what is Arahabaki? Who is Chuuya?”
“Not even I know. Bringing Chuuya back with me and finding the answer to that question was one of my duties…but every record stored in the secret facility where Chuuya was being kept was wiped out in the explosion. There is perhaps no one left who knows the truth… Nevertheless, when I turn Chuuya into my skill, his memories will be reconstructed. Then all questions will be answered. Perhaps something happened to my friend that day as well.”

“Your friend…?” Chuuya muttered as he gazed up at the crimson world. “Yes. My spy partner who snuck into the facility with me was also my dearest friend. His name was Paul Verlaine, another skill user who overcame many dangers,” Randou explained. “What happened to him? Did he die in the explosion? Or is he alive somewhere? That is the sole thing I cannot remember. Therefore, I need your memories, Chuuya. But if I try to integrate you while you’re still alive, the same thing that occurred eight years ago will happen again. You must die so that I can absorb your dead body and learn what became of my friend—so that I can fill in those
missing eight years—so that I can save him.”
“I see… So it’s all for your partner,” Dazai said listlessly. “Betraying the Mafia, spreading rumors about the old boss’s resurrection, this fight we’re in now… It’s kind of hard to believe, to be honest.”
“Maybe for a slimeball like you it is,” Chuuya scoffed. He looked up at Randou. “Throwing everything away for your friends is a perfectly respectable reason to risk your life if you ask me… What more could you ask for in an opponent?”
Chuuya focused his skill in both hands. The mass of his fists increased as the air shook around them.
“Hey. You wanna know why I always fight without using my hands?” Chuuya asked as he approached Randou. Numerous pebbles vibrated by his feet and floated with each step. “I’ve never lost a fight in my life. I’ve never even been in real danger… But that’s no surprise. After all, I’m not even human. My identity is a safeguard, like you said. Nothing more than a little pattern etched on a colossal furnace of power. Hey… Do you know how that feels?”
Chuuya stepped onto empty space, using the floating debris to walk in midair. He took another step forward with his other leg. And just like that, Chuuya slowly approached Randou as if he were ascending a staircase.
“That’s why I kept my hands in my pockets. I figured I’d one day feel like I was about to lose, no longer enjoying the fight but just doing everything I could to protect myself… I thought maybe that way I’d start to like myself as a person—me, a little pattern without a body of my own.”
He launched himself into the air like a falcon tearing through the crimson night.

All of a sudden, a shock wave appeared right before him, powerful enough to pulverize an entire building…and yet, Chuuya went right through it without even attempting to dodge.
“What?!” “Haaaaaah!”
His clothes and flesh split open as he shot through the shock wave. Copious amounts of blood followed the many cuts that appeared on Chuuya’s body, but he did not slow down.
“He absorbed the impact by increasing the gravity and density of his clothes and skin…?!”
Chuuya left a trail of blood in his wake as his every bone cried in agony, but even then, he managed a ferocious smirk.
He used lateral gravity to increase his speed even further, launching himself at Randou like a living cannonball. There was no wall to stop the soaring menace, no time to create a barrier of subspace waves. The old boss wouldn’t make it to Randou in time to absorb the blow, either.
Chuuya buried his fist deep into Randou’s stomach, folding the man’s body in half. He accelerated even more, turning himself into a living storm as he threw a right hook that tore through the air. Then came a roundhouse kick, followed immediately by a lightning-fast ax kick. Chuuya pivoted on his right heel, using gravity to anchor his left heel as he slammed his knee into Randou’s chin.
Punch, kick, punch, punch, punch, kick, punch—the ceaseless attacks came from each and every direction with the weight of heavy machinery behind them. Moreover, each blow accurately hit Randou’s vital spots. It was a relentless storm of punches and kicks where one flowed into the next, speeding up with every strike. The onslaught was unstoppable.
Chuuya slammed a foot into Randou’s chest, then spun like a wheel so quickly that his next kick looked like a mere blur. The resulting impact was powerful enough to make the air vibrate. Randou was immediately sent crashing into the earth as a cloud of dust rose into the air.
“Incredible…,” Dazai muttered absentmindedly as he watched from the ground.
Chuuya landed in the cloud of dust and immediately dropped to his knees, out of breath. The lightning-quick succession of blows had clearly worn him out. He placed both hands on the ground to keep himself from collapsing.

When the dust eventually settled, he looked up…and his expression froze.
“Magnificent.” Randou was standing on the other side of the dust cloud with not even a scratch on him, despite having taken so many hits. He didn’t appear to be in any pain whatsoever. “Chuuya, you already possess strength and talents all your own, separate from Arahabaki. You are strong not as a god but as a human being.”
“Gee… Thanks,” Chuuya mumbled, his breath ragged. “But I’m kinda bummed out… There’s not even a scratch on you after all that.”
“So be it—this is my world.” Randou lifted his hands and showed Chuuya his skin. “I use subspace to keep a thin film over my skin. No physical attack can break through it.”
“Hmph… Anything goes when you’re a skill user from Europe, huh?”
A shadow rose above Chuuya—one in a black robe. He saw the previous boss’s deathly visage followed by a silver flash aimed for his neck.
“Tsk.”
Chuuya couldn’t stand right away; he had overexerted himself. He began lifting his arms to touch the blade at the last second and manipulate its gravity…but the subspace sliced the gravitational field open, allowing for the tip of the scythe to pass clean through.
“Mn…!”
The scythe pierced Chuuya’s left arm right below the wrist until the blade came out the other side and dug into the floor. Chuuya was pinned down like a laboratory animal about to be dissected.
“You won’t be able to move around so quickly with a wound like that,” said Randou. “Which is why you won’t be able to dodge the next shock wave, either.”
A shock wave crushed Chuuya with enough force to shatter a boulder. “Chuuya!”
Dazai tried running over to help, but he was too far away. It would take ten seconds to reach Chuuya, even if he sprinted across the hovering debris.
“Another.”
Another shock wave came crashing down, fracturing the ground and sending clods of earth flying.
“And another.”

The next shock wave came from below, rending the earth and scattering the fragments everywhere.
“The next attacks will be consecutive.”
He knocked Chuuya into the ground, tossed him into the air—and almost simultaneously, countless shock waves hit Chuuya from all sides. He couldn’t dodge, much less get into position to block them. It was like being hit by a car in every direction. The seamless attacks appeared to have no end in sight.
The crimson shock waves eventually ceased. Chuuya’s body had been crushed, twisted, and ripped apart. He lay facedown, not even twitching. A rusty metal drum by his side had been smashed into a thin board after the attack.
“Even a tank would be completely flattened after that much force,” Randou said quietly. “I will reconstruct your broken bones and organs after I absorb you into my skill.”
Randou solemnly extended his arm toward Chuuya, and a light appeared at the tip of his finger. He was trying to absorb Chuuya as a skill.
“No need to worry. Your soul and identity will soon become nothing more than superficial information…although I suppose that’s no different from now.”
Chuuya’s body was wrapped in light.
However…
“I appreciate it.”
He swiftly jumped to his feet, then thrust the scythe piercing his arm deep into Randou’s chest.
“What…?”
Chuuya was alive. He was covered in a myriad of lacerations and bruises, along with a number of broken bones, but nonetheless alive.
He pushed the scythe even deeper into Randou’s chest, piercing the man’s sternum until blood suddenly sprayed out.
“Im…possi…ble…”
“I’m pissed, too.” Chuuya’s scowling face was bruised and cut up. “Every last detail went just as that sly bastard said it would, even the ending.”
Dazai was standing at a distance. “Sorry, Randou.”
In his left hand was a piece of fabric: a garland he’d used as decoration for Chuuya’s fake party.

The long garland dragged across the ground, cleverly hidden in the shadows of floating debris. One end of the cloth was stuffed inside Chuuya’s clothes.
“I told Chuuya to pick up this garland when you destroyed the nearby building,” Dazai said with a childlike grin.
“Then I tied it to myself using my skill,” Chuuya added with the scythe still piercing his arm. “I wrapped it around my entire body and made sure it was hidden underneath my clothes.”
“After that, I simply touched the other end.” Dazai held up the cloth. “Want to guess what happened then?”
“The skill affecting the cloth you touched…was nullified,” Randou replied painfully. “In other words…it functioned as armor to keep the subspace shock waves from ever reaching you…”
“Exactly.”
Chuuya ripped the scythe from his arm, and copious amounts of blood immediately began spilling out. The airborne rocks and debris dropped lifelessly to the ground.
“What formidable children…you two turned out to be…”
Blood that had entered Randou’s airway now spilled from his mouth. He collapsed into a pool of his own blood with a sickening splat.
The wound was clearly fatal.