Bungo Stray Dogs - Volume 8 Chapter 3 Part 8

Verlaine let go.
The condensed gravitational field then began surging in search of an exit. Verlaine purposely limited the direction it could go, which sent the skeleton accelerating that way like a cannonball.
Even after hitting the wall, it didn’t stop. It shot through the wall and continued tumbling until it was covered in rubble and steel beams. Then it crashed through the walls and ceiling before piercing the wall in the very back, where it finally stopped.
Verlaine stood stock-still, gazing in the direction he sent the skeleton flying. His eyes clouded with countless emotions.
He clenched his teeth and punched the closest table with brute strength alone. The already beat-up and warped table bent even more until it was folded almost straight down the middle.
Verlaine looked around the room, but N was nowhere to be found. He had already escaped using the emergency elevator. After walking over to the back of the room, Verlaine forced the door to the elevator open, but the cab was already gone. N was taking it up to the surface.
Verlaine emotionlessly grabbed the cable dangling in front of him and pulled. The snapping of metal immediately followed as the shaft’s beams broke, and soon he heard the safety mechanism breaking. Verlaine caught the falling elevator cab with one hand, pried it open, and dragged N out.
“I’m going to kill you.”
There were no flames of rage in his eyes—only hatred black as boiled sludge.
“However, I’m not going to kill you with the respect I give others as an assassin. I’m going to do something different—something I’ve never done before. You will die by my hand in agony, regret, and despair. But first, I’ll give you plenty of time to suffer for what you’ve done.”
There was an intense pain in his side. His nerves were throbbing. He tried to sit up, but he felt an unpleasant stickiness at his flank.
Chuuya felt around for the source of the pain with his fingers. There was a metal pole piercing the muscle in his side. A piece of the wall must have stabbed him when it was destroyed. Only the tip of the pole was sticking out of him, but the other end was hidden under the rubble, which made it impossible to tell how long the pole was.
After Verlaine kicked him straight through several rooms, Chuuya eventually hit a wall and was buried under the debris. He hadn’t been able to manipulate gravity and protect himself from the successive impacts. Now he was bleeding all over his body, and the wound in his side was especially deep.
It was rare for him to get injured, so he wasn’t used to judging how deep a wound was from the pain or the severity of his injuries. Even if he got a little hurt during a mission, the Port Mafia’s extraordinary medical personnel had him healed within a few days.
Extraordinary doctors like Doc.
The name of Chuuya’s friend calmed him. Doc was gone now. And not just him; all of Chuuya’s friends were…
Chuuya tried to sit up, ignoring his wound and the pain. Fresh blood spewed out of his side.
“I gotta…keep moving…”
He firmly planted his feet on the ground, then tried to pull the iron bar out while swinging himself into a sitting position. But the very next moment, he was slammed back down to the ground.
He wasn’t expecting this. The metal bar deeply pierced his body once more, causing even more blood to spill out.
“Gah…!”
Chuuya looked up.
White bones. Tubes and cords. A resin lab garment. Pale bones that were only managing to stay together due to the gravity manipulating them.
The skeleton was straddling Chuuya and trying to push him down. “Damn it…!” Chuuya grunted as he tried to withstand the pressure by
using his own gravity manipulation skill. Their bodies creaked painfully under the overwhelming pressure.
“Stop doing this!” shouted Chuuya. “This doesn’t make any sense!
You’re me!”
But the skeleton could not comprehend his voice. It was simply following orders to destroy the nearest skill user. Its murderous urges were clear and shapeless—and irrational.

Bones screeched. It wasn’t clear whose bones they were. The gravity the skeleton was manipulating was gradually exceeding what the human body could handle.
Cold sweat dripped down Chuuya’s forehead.
The skeleton didn’t care if it destroyed itself, but Chuuya didn’t share the sentiment. However, if they kept up this gravity-based pushing match, they would both be crushed simultaneously since their bodies were equally durable.
Chuuya had to do something. But he was fighting himself. He was in pain. Intense pain.
Wait, wait, wait.
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. The hell is that? A skeleton? You’ve gotta be kidding me.
Shirase rubbed his eyes. He wasn’t seeing things.
The world before him was warping. The irregularities in the gravitational field were causing the surrounding gravel to float. In other words, there was a gravity-manipulating skill being used, which meant Chuuya was here, too.
Shirase almost dropped the garment bags out of fear, but he promptly tightened his grip around them in a fluster. And yet—these garment bags didn’t actually contain any garments. Inside were valuables Shirase had stolen. He’d been looting whatever goods he could find while searching for an exit. After all, both security and the researchers had already left, and he could make a small fortune selling gems used in the laser transmitters or even the supercomputers.
They’re just gonna burn this place to the ground in order to destroy the evidence, Shirase thought, so why not give this stuff a new life as war funds, help rebuild the Sheep? Better than wasting them. Man, I’m a genius.
And with that in mind, Shirase started to loot before eventually realizing he was utterly lost, leading him to this room. He frantically looked around. There didn’t seem to be anyone else here besides Chuuya and the skeleton, and they appeared to be battling. Shirase caught a glance of Chuuya’s pained expression. “Chuuya!”
He reflexively began to sprint forward before hastily stopping himself.
What am I doing? I’m gonna die if I go over there! Even I’m not stupid enough to throw myself in the middle of a battle between two monsters. I’ve always been smart about avoiding trouble, and that’s why I’m still alive.
Chuuya’s the one who did the fighting. Chuuya dealt with the pain. He was the one who showed our enemies just how much we should be feared. We took care of everything else, though. And it only made sense. He’s powerful, and he was simply fulfilling the duty he had as someone with that kind of power.
But he’s somehow weaker than usual right now. He’s covered in wounds.
I’ve never seen him like that. He looks just like a regular guy my age.
Wait, no—he doesn’t just look like one. He is my age. He’s a boy just like me.
It had finally hit Shirase. “…”
But still…
Even then, why’s that my problem?
“Who cares! I’m getting outta here! Alone if I have to! You guys can fight about war and weapons and the truth about skills yourselves! All I wanna do is have a good time, and I need to be alive to do that!”
Shirase tightly held the bags, turned his back to Chuuya, and began to walk away with a long stride, carving each footstep into the floor.
The skeleton’s weight increased. A heavy, dull sound echoed along with their creaking bones.
The floor’s foundation was caving in. Any ordinary human’s body would have easily been flattened by this point.
“Stop doing this…,” Chuuya faintly muttered as his lungs were being crushed. “You’re me, damn it…”
A glimmer of hesitation appeared in his eyes. The skeleton’s jaw rattled as it quietly looked down at Chuuya with pitch-black eye sockets. There

was no light within. No emotions. Nothing. An absolute void.
And from those eye sockets—from that nothingness, Chuuya could sense what it was trying to say. Perhaps it was only his imagination, but he couldn’t stop the words from flowing into his head. They were meaningless words, but it felt like they were coming from the skeleton:
This should have been you.
“You’re me,” repeated Chuuya while he stared at the skeleton that had left its humanity far behind. His words were unconscious. Even Chuuya didn’t know what he was saying. “So…who am I?”
The gravity increased as the skeleton’s face—the face of death itself— approached Chuuya until they were nose to nose.
All of a sudden, there was a scream. “Ahhhhhh!”
Someone had charged at the skeleton and knocked it aside. The skeleton and the shadowy figure who had lunged at it rolled on the floor in a pile.
Chuuya opened his eyes wide. He recognized the shadowy figure. “Shirase…?!”
Shirase’s voice cracked as he screamed something unintelligible before getting back to his feet. The skeleton, which had used every bit of gravity it could to push Chuuya down, was powerless against the sidelong impact that broke off its right arm at the elbow.
But that hardly slowed it down at all. It opened its jaw to tear into Shirase’s flesh. Shirase lifted his garment bags, and the skeleton chewed right through them. The cracking of gems and electronics was painfully audible, but the gems were far harder than any bone; the skeleton’s jaw snapped in half.
“Shirase, you dumbass! Get outta here! Run!” “Ahhhhhh!”
While Shirase wildly flailed his arms with his eyes shut, his fingers happened to get caught on one of the tubes in the skeleton’s back, pulling it out and causing a bluish-black fluid to spill onto the floor. The skeleton suddenly slumped forward and seemingly stopped moving for a few seconds.
The moment Chuuya noticed this, he yelled, “Shirase! Pull out the cables! All of them!”
Shirase once again flailed about wildly for a few moments in confusion until he realized what Chuuya was saying. Rolling in the bluish-black chemicals, he grabbed the tubes and cords—the skeleton’s “tail”—and gave them a swift, powerful tug. The bundle of tubes that continued all the way to the neighboring room popped out of the skeleton’s back.
It screamed.
But a body of only bones does not have any vocal organs. It had no throat, nothing to produce a scream. The sound it made was the remnants of gravity and its fading skill shaking its bones, resonating like a musical instrument.
It was the echo of an appalling scream, the last gasp of a crying boy.
The skeleton eventually lost the signal to its command directive and exhausted its energy reserves. It toppled over at the waist before landing on the ground headfirst. Without gravity holding its body together, its bones fell apart. The cracks the skeleton sustained from the onslaught spread throughout each bone until it was nothing but small white fragments that slowly turned to dust and vanished.
And then it was no more. It was as if no one had been there from the very start.
After staring in blank amazement for a few moments, Chuuya slowly managed to get back to his feet.
“Shirase.”
He turned his gaze toward Shirase while clutching his side. “What?”
Chuuya stared at Shirase as if he wanted to say something. After eyeing Shirase, covered in dirt and dust and bluish-black chemicals, he eventually said:
“You’re filthy.” “Kiss my ass!”
Chuuya held out a hand. Shirase grabbed it and stood up. “Let’s go. We should meet up with Adam first.”
“All right.”
Shirase and Chuuya began to walk side by side. When Shirase glanced over at Chuuya, he saw just how bloody and dirty he was. Chuuya was wounded from head to toe; there were too many bruises to count, and he was still bleeding from his flank.
“Hey, Chuuya.”

Chuuya turned around. Shirase looked like he wanted to say something
—like he wanted to apologize. Chuuya waited in silence until Shirase eventually told him:
“You’re filthy.”
Chuuya lowered his gaze and smiled. “Kiss my ass.”
The first thing that came to mind when I ran into the room was Did a dinosaur go on a rampage in here?
That was how wrecked the room was. It was irretrievably destroyed. The chairs and desks had been warped beyond recognition, the floor had fractured and buckled, and there was a hole in the wall roughly large enough to fit two adult humans. None of the furniture was in its original location. It was to the point that I was unable to immediately recognize what kind of room this had originally been.
Nevertheless, the wretched state of things did not hold my attention any further. There was something else I had to deal with first: Verlaine, the king of assassins.
He stood at the back of the room and looked this way with his hand wrapped around N’s neck. His grip was as casual as if he were holding a sleeping dog’s leash.
“Help… Help me…!” N called out, voice trembling. I promptly took out my gun. “Let go of him.”
“Him?” Verlaine wore a curious expression as if he was not expecting such a proposal. “You’re not human, so surely you can think about this logically. How would you benefit from protecting scum like this? Are you really going to fight and die for this man?”
“My sole reason for existing is to protect humans from crime,” I replied with my gun still aimed at him. “I was not programmed with a function to determine if someone is scum, nor would I even want such a function.”
“I’m jealous.” Verlaine chuckled cynically and looked down at his hand. “But don’t worry. I’m not going to kill him…without making sure he suffers.”
I suddenly heard a voice coming from behind.

“You’re not going to get any information out of him, Verlaine. Not even if you take him back with you and torture him.”
Verlaine looked in the direction of the voice, mildly surprised. “Dazai…”
“Hey. What a coincidence running into each other here, huh?” Dazai came strolling over as if he were taking a neighborhood constitutional before stopping by my side.
“Seeing as you’re here…I can only assume that means you double- crossed me,” said Verlaine.
“Hey, you make me sound like the bad guy when you put it like that. I was never on your side to begin with. I’m on their side.”
“”Their side’? I find it hard to believe someone like you even takes sides.”
“Heh… You really are a joy to talk to.” Dazai smirked ambiguously.
Dazai and Verlaine—the two superhumans stared at one another in silence, wearing smiles no ordinary person could understand.
During their exchange, I ran my combat evaluation module. I had a gun, but no matter how I ran the numbers, our chance of winning never exceeded
0.1 percent. Firing my weapon now would be a poor strategy. My only choice was to wait and see how the situation developed.
However, the situation changed far more quickly than I imagined.
“Hey, Verlaine,” Dazai suddenly said as if he had realized something. “You should probably keep your head down.” He lowered his head until it was chest level.
Verlaine stared dubiously, but the very next moment, two blocks of rubble flew through the air like cannonballs. One whizzed right past where Dazai’s head had been a second ago and then broke apart; the other one collided with Verlaine. Verlaine reflexively blocked with his arms, which shattered the slab of concrete into many pieces.
“The hell do you think you’re doin’, Dazai?!” came an enraged voice. “How dare you show your stupid-ass face to me without my permission!”
“Hey, Chuuya. How was the torture?” Only the corners of Dazai’s eyes lifted in a smirk. “I was planning on saving you before you got tortured, but that would’ve been way too boring, so I decided to take my time instead.”
“You what?!”

Verlaine stood in mute amazement for a few moments before nodding as if he had figured out what was going on. “Now I get it. I finally see how you two did it.”
Master Chuuya and Dazai stood side by side. There was something surprisingly perfect about it.
Two young men with completely different personalities…
“I heard that you two managed to kill Rimbaud on your own.” “And you’re planning on avenging him, Verlaine?” asked Dazai.
“Not at all.” Verlaine shook his head, then stared off into the distance. “He was already dead long before you two killed him. To me, at least. He died nine years ago the moment I attacked him from behind.”
Dazai observed his expression, then took a step forward.
“Do you know why I’m here, Verlaine?” His gaze was clever, calculating. “Because I’m done buying time. You’re going to die. You shouldn’t have crossed the Port Mafia.”
But Verlaine simply shrugged at the chilling death threat. “We’ll see about that. I’ve been similarly threatened countless times, but they’re always wrong.”
Verlaine tightened his grip around the trembling researcher’s neck, then started to retreat. I promptly followed him, my gun still pointed at his head.
“Your skill is powerful, but I already have a good idea of what you can and can’t do,” Dazai quietly added. “All I need to do is use an even greater power to kill you.”
Verlaine burst into laughter. Blissful laughter. “You have a good idea of what my powers can do?”
Right as he raised his arms toward the ceiling, his carefree smile vanished. Every one of my gauges simultaneously went berserk.
“Oh no” was what I tried to say, but the sound was absorbed into nothingness. The light in the room vanished, and a shock wave followed shortly thereafter.
A shock wave, then a black light.

It was anyone’s guess as to how many seconds went by. The powerful electromagnetic wave temporarily shut down my external sensor, so I made sure to check my surroundings the moment I could see again.

Master Chuuya and Dazai were still safe. They hadn’t moved from their previous position, but they were staring blankly at the ceiling, their mouths agape. I quickly followed their gazes…and realized the ceiling was gone.
“Hey, dipshit. You said ya had a good idea of what he could and couldn’t do, right?”
“Yep.”
I realized there was a cold breeze blowing past us. It was coming from outside—specifically, from the sky.
“Didja know he could do that, too?”
A colossal hole was where the ceiling used to be. Dozens of floors of the underground facility had been penetrated, creating a tunnel straight back to the surface. The hollowed floors continued into the distance in a concentric pattern, and at the very end was a small cutout of the evening sky. Neither N nor Verlaine was anywhere in sight.
Nobody said a word. All we could do was look skyward as if in prayer, sensing that something not of this world was about to emerge.