Bungo Stray Dogs Vol. 8: Storm Bringer Read online

  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 h
e 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.”

  Colorful, vivid spheres of light hovered in the air: red, orange, and dark green, each one orbiting at a different height.

  “Incredible…,” muttered Albatross, overcome with surprise.

  Adam was juggling billiard balls as if they were mere beanbags. Nine balls created different complex arches at different heights, making it look as if some sort of living creature were dancing in the sky.

  “That definitely isn’t something your average street performer could do.”

  “Incidentally,” Adam began as he continued juggling, his expression serious, “the numbers of the two balls in the highest position are always co-prime integers. In other words, the two highest balls never share a common divisor.”

  Piano Man crossed his arms and scrutinized the airborne balls. “Hmm… Five and eight… Now four and nine… You’re right.”

  “Huh? Co-prime…what…?”

  “Albatross, seriously, learn some basic math. You’re gonna need it if you ever want to make it to the top,” Piano Man said, rolling his eyes.

  The six young mafiosi sat on the pool tables around Adam and watched his performance.

  “So this is your hidden talent, huh?”

  “These are simple physics calculations,” Adam replied with a blank expression. “Gravitational acceleration, air resistance, moment of rotation, Coriolis force… I am simulating the constant physical quantities of matter and estimating the behavior of the billiard balls. A computer is far more efficient at such calculations than the human brain.”

  “Uh-huh. Phew.” Albatross heaved a sigh. “I didn’t catch a lick of that. Did you?”

  “I did,” Iceman answered, nodding.

  “How ’bout you, Lippmann?”

  “You’re the only one here who doesn’t get it,” noted Lippmann, eyes still on the juggler.

  “And now, the finish.”

  Adam then began tossing the billiard balls over his shoulder one by one at the pool table in his blind spot behind him. All nine fell into a pocket as if they’d been sucked in…and then there was silence.

  “Ta-da!” Adam suddenly shouted as he held out his arms.

  Everyone’s eyes opened wide in astonishment. The group looked at Adam, then over at the pool table, and then cocked their heads in confusion.

  “Oh? I don’t hear any clapping. This contradicts the data in my external memory.”

  “Hmm. It looks like he really isn’t human, after all,” observed Iceman, his expression unchanged.

  “Heh-heh… Europe’s skill technology is even more impressive than I heard…,” Doc said with a grim smirk. “I would love to use that biotechnology to treat some of my patients… Heh-heh-heh…”

  “Er… Allow me to introduce myself once more.” Adam faced the others and bowed. “I am Adam, an autonomous humanoid supercomputer secretly sent to this country as part of an investigation. I like acorns and grass seeds. I dislike the metal detector at airports. My dreams are to establish a detective organization consisting only of robotic agents and to protect humans with the extraordinary investigative skills unique to machines.”

  “An all-robot detective organization? Why?”

  “Because humans are flawed and illogical, of course. Perfect machines—such as myself—are far superior.”

  “Well, this suddenly took a dark turn…”

  “At any rate, I buy your story. You’re a machine. Got it,” began Piano Man. “But that still doesn’t solve our problem. We Mafia folks have no intention of getting friendly with a cop like you, machine or not. You saw some of our skills, if only for a brief moment. How can you say for certain that your agency isn’t going to learn something that might put us at a disadvantage?”

  “You do not have to worry about that,” Adam declared with a smile. “My mission is only to arrest Verlaine. I have no obligation to report back with any other information I acquire, even confidential information about the Mafia. Technically, I could not even tell anyone if I wanted to because of how I was programmed.”

  “Why would you be programmed that way?”

  “I will explain when the time comes.” He was still smiling.

  “He’s lying,” Chuuya said firmly. The group looked over at him.

  “What?”

  Chuuya glowered at them. “I don’t care if this tin tchotchke can keep a secret or not. I meant he was lying about something else. Verlaine, king of assassins? My elder brother? He’s just talking out of his ass, making shit up as he goes along. Paul Verlaine couldn’t possibly be after me in the first place.”

  “Why’s that?” Piano Man asked, eyes on Chuuya.

  “Because he’s already…”

  Chuuya paused, then turned his gaze toward a past that could not be seen.

  “He’s already dead.”

  “What?”

  Chuuya hesitantly began to explain.

  The Arahabaki Incident one year earlier was actually a betrayal of epic proportions in which one of the Port Mafia’s sub-executives created a god. The root of said incident happened nine years ago at the end of the war.

  The former national defense force was secretly researching an artificial skill-derived life-form known as Arahabaki, and two European agents plotted to steal said top secret information. These highly adept skill users—Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine—managed to steal Arahabaki without a hitch, only for Rimbaud to be met with misfortune the moment he and his partner, Paul Verlaine, escaped the military base.

  Verlaine betrayed him.

  Verlaine wanted to take Arahabaki all for himself, which led to a vicious battle between Rimbaud and him, both elite skill users. The light from their battle scorched the night sky, and the subsequent explosion shook the area. Their battle eventually ended with Rimbaud victorious, but that victory came at a price. First, he had to kill Verlaine, his best friend and the man he trusted the most, with his own two hands. And second, the intense fight between two top-tier skill users caught the attention of the military’s tracking unit. Rimbaud was surrounded within moments, already severely wounded from battle. Therefore, in an act of desperation, he had no choice but to absorb Arahabaki and use its skill as his own.

  That was Rimbaud’s skill: the power to absorb someone and turn them into a skill. Although a transcendent skill, it completely backfired on him. He ended up breaking Arahabaki’s seal.

  The military had sealed the monster away to prevent it from unleashing its true powers—powers that surpassed human comprehension. What Rimbaud had actually absorbed was not Arahabaki but the seal. As a result, the divine beast appeared in its true form, draped in all-powerful black flames that reduced everything to ash: the soldiers, the research facility, the surrounding land—whatever the flames touched. It was all gone. All that remained was an empty crater in the shape of a suribachi.

  Rimbaud managed to avoid a sudden demise thanks to his skill, but he lost most of his strength and memories as a result. He wandered the streets until he was picked up by the Mafia and spent the next eight years slowly regaining his abilities and memory while he searched for clues about his past. And in order to fully regain his memories, he lured the real Arahabaki—Chuuya—into a trap and tried to absorb it as a skill. That was what led to the Arahabaki Incident one year ago. The ensuing battle between Chuuya and Rimbaud ended with the latter’s defeat—his demise.

  “Huh?” an incredulous Albatross blurted out. “Wait, wait, wait. Hold on. That whole thing a year ago was the Impostor Predecessor Incident, right? I heard Randou was behind that. Does that mean he was a—?”

  “Ye
ah.” Chuuya nodded. “He was a spy. Former spy, that is. That entire incident was just an elaborate trap to lure out Arahabaki.”

  “I see,” said Iceman. “I always thought it was strange that Randou betrayed us. So that’s what happened…”

  “I killed Randou.”

  Chuuya stared at his fist. He seemed to be thinking back to that day.

  “And right before he died, he told me about his partner and what happened to him. He had no reason to lie to me. Verlaine is dead, no matter what you say,” he insisted, turning his gaze to Adam.

  “No.” Adam shook his head. His expression betrayed nothing. “He is alive.”

  “What evidence do you have?” Piano Man leaned forward. He appeared to be getting a kick out of this.

  “I can prove it, but doing so would violate my obligation to secrecy in regard to the mission,” replied Adam, the epitome of serious. “Only the individual concerned in this matter, Chuuya, is authorized to learn the details.”

  “They’re already involved in this, too,” Chuuya added as he looked at the others in his group.

  “Don’t worry about us,” Piano Man said with a shrug. “This issue is about your past. You’re the only one who needs to know.”

  Chuuya tapped his lip with his index finger for a few moments in deep thought.

  “All right,” he eventually replied before heading toward the pool hall entrance. The door was still ajar from earlier, so he wouldn’t have to open it before leaving…but instead, he closed it. A look of surprise flashed across the others’ faces.

  “Yeah, this is my problem,” began Chuuya, standing in front of the closed door. “But if something like this happened to one of you guys, I don’t think I could just ignore it. I’d try to help whether you liked it or not; I bet the rest of you’d feel the same way. So, detective, spit it out and tell them, too, or I’m not gonna cooperate.”

  The group stared at him, wide-eyed and impressed.

  “Hey, did you guys hear that?” asked Piano Man.

  “I did,” Iceman said with a nod.