Bungo Stray Dogs - Volume 8 Chapter 1 Part 4

The young man instantaneously wedged the cue stick between his neck and the wire, but the winding piano wire snapped through the wood like butter before it was perfectly flush against the man’s neck. All that was left was for the merciless wire to turn the man’s shoulders into a flat table…and yet that didn’t happen.
“What—?!”
The young man didn’t try to dodge. He didn’t even try to pull the wire off his neck. There was no need for him to because the piano wire was simply gliding around the surface of the man’s skin. The winding device screeched as the wire dug into his neck, but that was all that happened. It didn’t even leave a scratch.
“Stress in the exodermis contacts detected,” the man noted with a blank expression. “Activating escape measures in accordance with designated self-defense routine.”
He instantly spun to his side like a car wheel without any sort of windup. His leather shoes drew a perfect arch in midair as he spun so quickly and powerfully that he snapped the piano wire and destroyed the winder along with it. Fragments of the device were sent flying.
“Oh, now that is impressive,” Piano Man said as he stepped back. “A combat-type skill, huh? I can see how you infiltrated Mafia property by yourself.”
Everyone swiftly created distance between them and the man. Ordinary rules wouldn’t work on a combat-type skill user, because unlike guns or knives, this kind of opponent was unpredictable. One miscalculation could lead to a quick death. The young mafiosi immediately began getting into their anti-skilled-opponent formation.
“Please wait. I did not come here to fight you,” the young man implored the group before producing a black badge from his breast pocket. “My name is Adam. I am a Europole detective.”
The atmosphere in the room suddenly changed.
“You’re a cop?” Piano Man’s smirk was as sharp as a knife. “Oh. Then I guess that means you were right, Adam. There has been a misunderstanding. It was a mistake on your part thinking that a cop could waltz in here and make it out alive! …Lippmann!”
“Very well.”
Lippmann pulled two machine pistols from his jacket, each spitting out ten bullets per second with incredible speed. The man who introduced himself as Adam held up the back of his hand to block. Each 9 mm bullet that hit his hand ricocheted in a different direction.
“Impact detected! Rupture stress limits are at thirty-seven percent!” the detective shouted. “You are in danger of damaging an international investigator!”
“It looks like physical attacks really don’t work on him.” Piano Man calmly stared at him. “Lippmann, keep him busy. We’re gonna capture him instead.”
“Wait,” Iceman spat, cue stick in hand. “I don’t sense anything. That man…”
This was the first time Iceman’s face expressed astonishment that day. “…doesn’t have any special powers!”
“What?”
Confusion skewed the six comrades’ faces…because what Iceman said couldn’t be possible. There was no way someone without a skill could snap Piano Man’s wire or deflect 9 mm bullets with his bare hands. That was like gravity working in reverse and causing the sun and moon to collide. But Iceman’s gut was never wrong.
The average person would have trouble holding out in battle when confronted with two completely contradicting situations. Most would devolve into chaos or flee the scene. These six mafiosi weren’t any ordinary people, though.
“Interesting.” Piano Man smirked. “Then let the game begin! Whoever beats this guy gets to be the talk of the town all next week! Everyone, you have permission to use your powers!”
“I don’t have to conceal my skill anymore? Very well.” “Ha-ha-ha! That’s what I’m talkin’ about!”
“Heh-heh… Can’t wait to slice open his stomach.”
Numerous luminous spheres appeared out of nowhere. These fist-size orbs had neither heat nor weight. They began revolving around Adam like planets in a solar system.
That was when Adam stumbled. “Oh?”
Adam’s leather shoe sank into the hard floor as if he were stepping into quicksand. The floor swallowed his foot and crumbled like sand; he stomped the ground with his other foot to break free, but that foot slowly began sinking as well, causing him to instinctively place his left hand on the floor. That hand, of course, was soon submerged, too.
“Hmm…?”
Adam twisted his body and tried to grab onto one of the pool table’s legs, but something sprouted from the back of his hand. It was covered in elaborate scales and had a pointed birdlike head; rows of sharp fangs filled its mouth.
It was a dinosaur. A tiny dinosaur’s head was growing from the back of Adam’s hand like a plant.
“No relevant information available in the knowledge module.” Adam appeared dubious.
The dinosaur roared and lunged its jaw at Adam’s neck. He turned his head and managed to evade, but the motion threw him off-balance, causing him to be swallowed even farther into the ground.
“Another,” said a voice.
All of a sudden, another radial wire shot out of the ceiling, wrapped itself around Adam, then instantly began pulling him up until his body slammed against the ceiling. Beige sand scattered onto the floor; parts of the ceiling came crumbling down. Adam let out a pained groan, and the wire simultaneously vanished. Gravity then dragged him back down until he crashed into the floor, causing his body to once again be swallowed by the hellish quicksand-like flooring.
“Combat evaluation module unable to process current situation.” Piano wire once again found its way around Adam’s neck.
“Coming in here alone against the six of us was a tremendous miscalculation on your part, detective,” taunted Piano Man with a cruel smirk. He happened to have a spare winding machine. “Not even God himself would last ten seconds against all of our skills at once. Anyway, here’s your last one-year anniversary gift, Chuuya. Feel free to break his arms and legs as you please.”
“Chuuya.” Adam’s expression changed the moment he heard that name. “I knew it had to be you.”
What happened after that ended in the blink of an eye. Adam purposefully shoved his right arm into the ground, causing the dinosaur to shriek before disappearing into the floor. The inertia from his right arm allowed him to lift his left leg out of the quicksand and kick the nearby pool table, knocking the cue stick onto the ground. Adam scooped up the cue stick with his foot and kicked it upward without even glancing in its direction.
It spun in the air…and then he caught it with his left hand behind his back. After twirling the stick a few times, he slammed it into the quicksand, using the recoil to pull himself out of the floor.
“What is he, some kinda acrobat?!” Albatross shouted. “Don’t let him move another inch!” Piano Man ordered.
Lippmann began rapidly firing his machine pistols. Adam twisted his body and dodged every bullet—each one missed him by a mere whisker. He flitted through the air, traversing the gunfire’s maze of death with minimal movement. Eventually, he landed on his feet right in front of Chuuya—the ground under the mafiosi was unaffected by the quicksand so as not to trap the six of them. Adam raised the cue stick in the air.
“Chuuya!” someone screamed.
And then…the cue stick dropped onto the floor. “Chuuya.”
Adam got on one knee, lowered his head, and respectfully bowed as one would to royalty.
“I have come to protect you.” “…Huh?”
Chuuya was bewildered. He looked down at the submissive European man with obvious suspicion.
“I was created by skill user engineer Dr. Wollstonecraft and am the first autonomous humanoid supercomputer in existence. My name is Adam Frankenstein, and I have come here to arrest the assassin who is after your life. The assassin’s name is Verlaine. Paul Verlaine.”
“”Verlaine’?” Chuuya’s eyes opened wide the moment he heard that. “How do you know that name?”
“You know this guy, Chuuya?” “An assassin?”
“Did he just call himself a computer?”
The five Flags were abuzz. Adam then stood back up with a serious look in his eyes and said:
“Chuuya, you cannot defeat Verlaine alone, which is why I was sent here. He is no ordinary assassin. Paul Verlaine is the king of assassins—and your elder brother.”