Bungo Stray Dogs - Volume 7 Chapter 5 Part 2

Chapter 5 Part 2

Sticking out of his back was a brand-new dagger. Fresh blood slowly trickled out of the wound around the handle.
“The solution is to attack from outside your periphery the moment you let your guard down. That way you won’t have time to manipulate gravity,” Shirase said with a smile plastered on his face. “Right, Chuuya? I would know. We’ve been comrades for a long time, after all.”
“The hell…was that for…?” Chuuya groaned painfully. He tried to get up, but his arms and legs were trembling and weak.
“I wouldn’t squirm so much if I were you. The blade was tipped with rat poison.” Shirase’s lips curled into an even wider smirk. “Your arms and legs are gonna be numb for a while, so you won’t be able to move like normal. I feel bad for you. It wouldn’t have had to be like this if you weren’t so strong.”
“What are you…talking about…?”
Chuuya covered the wound on his back while managing to look back and glare at the silver-haired Sheep.
“This.”
With a wag of the Sheep’s finger, a group of soldiers instantly appeared on the other side of the graveyard with their rifles aimed at Chuuya.
“Those are…GSS soldiers…”
The highly armed soldiers formed a semicircle around Chuuya where he lay on the cliffside.
“This is what we decided on. The Sheep and GSS have joined forces,” Shirase revealed. Several boys and girls with guns weaved between the soldiers before aiming their weapons at Chuuya. Their expressions were grim.
“This is your fault, Chuuya.” He glared at Chuuya with a smile still on his face. “Everyone came to the same conclusion: What if you really did join the Mafia? What would the Sheep do? It was easy for all of us to imagine. We’d be helpless. Everyone would get killed. And that’s because we were weak. We’d always relied on those incredible powers of yours. We couldn’t just let dozens of lives depend on the whims of one person. They call that a ‘vulnerability.’ An organizational vulnerability—like how a flood can sneak through a small crack in the foundation of a fortress and destroy it. You get what I’m trying to say?”
“You dumbass… Do you really think…I’d betray my friends…?”

Chuuya growled. Cold sweat dripped down his pale face. The poison seemed to be working.
“See, GSS doesn’t switch loyalties on a whim. We can trust ’em so long as there’s something in it for them. This is the smarter way to take on a powerful organization like the Port Mafia.”
Chuuya, his breath ragged, looked around—first at the teens pointing their guns at him and then at the GSS soldiers. The people he’d thought were his friends up until a few moments ago were now staring him down like terrifying beasts.
“So that’s it…,” Chuuya managed between gasps. “Everything I did… was just an annoyance…to you all…”
“We’re really grateful to you, Chuuya.” Shirase took the gun out of the holster at his waist and aimed it at his former leader. “We Sheep took you in when you had no family and nowhere to go, but you already gave us more than enough in return. That’s why…it’s time to rest…after dying and contributing to the Sheep one last time.”
He signaled to the soldiers with his chin. “Kill him.”
A barrage of gunfire followed. Chuuya blocked each bullet with his skill at first, but there were too many. The Sheep knew what kind of ammo it would take to kill him. A heavy downpour of bullets rained on Chuuya.
He used his nearly lifeless limbs to roll away as the ceaseless gunfire pelted the weed-covered dirt where he’d just been.
The next moment, he increased the gravity on the soles of his feet, sinking his body into the ground. A fissure opened up in the earth and immediately spread until the bullet-ridden soil could no longer hold.
The ground crumbled beneath him as if it had been shaved off the cliffside. Chuuya fell along with the crumbling earth, sending clouds of dust into the air. The ocean’s raging waves waited for him below.
“He threw himself off the cliff!” Shirase shouted. “The poison might’ve weakened his powers, but he ain’t gonna die from a fall like that! Hurry— after him! Don’t let him live!”

A white wave broke over the boulder at the bottom of the cliff. Chuuya tottered up an unmarked path.