It would have been natural to assume that a man who talked this much during combat was leaving himself wide open. However, even the members of Larva, who had been specifically designed for combat, and the twins who were circling the perimeter on their motorcycles, keeping an eye on the situation—all of them could tell that Ladd was giving no openings.
If Chané Laforet was an inexhaustible storm of blades, then Ladd Russo was the vast energy of a volcano on the verge of erupting, encased in a thick rubber skin.
These two dangerous objects were clashing, one pitting its speed against the other’s strength.
The people who knew what the pair could really do came to the same conclusion, and every one of them thought…
✦ ✦ ✦
…If we even touch one of ’em, it’s not gonna end well for us.
✦ ✦ ✦
Meanwhile, two figures were watching Ladd from the car.
“Uh… You’re sure we don’t need to shut that down, Ms. Lua?”
Shaft had decided staying outside came with a risk of taking damage from the fight, so he had returned to the driver’s seat and was talking with Lua.
“Ladd seems to be enjoying himself…doesn’t he? I was wondering what it would be like if I were as strong as that girl.”
“I think it’s probably best not to think that too much.”
“Do you? …Sometimes I think if I were strong enough to fight Ladd in mortal combat, we would be able to understand each other better. I can’t make him that angry or make him smile that much, you know,” Lua said, a little wistful.
“But as women go, you’re far and away the one he likes best, Lua,” Shaft told her.
“Huh?”
“He said so, a while back.”
It was something another member of Sham had heard in prison, but Shaft kept that part to himself.
“Once, when some thugs messed with Ladd, I hear they asked him if he didn’t care what happened to his girl. And he told them, ‘Lua’s waiting for me to kill her. There’s no way she’d get killed by some other guy. I trust her more than I trust anyone.’”
“Ladd…said that?”
“…Well, I know it kinda sounds awful, but he really did believe in you, see? He trusted that you wouldn’t get killed by anybody else.”
When Ladd had said those lines to Firo, Sham had been down for the count, so his memories were pretty fuzzy. However, as he told the story, he cleverly filled in the blanks.
Lua was silent for a while. Then her pale face broke into a fragile, beautiful smile. “I see…,” she said, her voice a bit more cheerful than usual. “So Ladd said that about me…”
“Um, I know you could interpret it as him abandoning you when you were a hostage, but don’t, all right?”
“It’s all right. I know… But if I had become a shackle to him, and he broke that shackle to do something he wanted to do…it would mean he was the one who’d killed me, so I’d still be happy.”
“Uh…huh.” He responded noncommittally. This lady’s a little weird, too.
Lua went on, her cheeks flushed. “But then…Ladd remembered our promise, didn’t he…?”
Apparently, that was enough to satisfy her. She gave a sigh of relief, gazing rapturously at Ladd. “Oh, I wish everyone but he and I would expire peacefully at the peak of happiness, right this minute… Heh-heh. I know it isn’t possible, but I end up wishing anyway… It really would be better if I died, wouldn’t it…?”
“Please don’t ask questions I can’t actually answer.”
Maybe she’s more than a little weird…, Shaft thought.
Lua ignored him. Her eyes turned to the enormous bear and to the woman on its back. She cocked her head, perplexed. “…Isn’t that Miria? What do you suppose she’s doing up there?”
✦ ✦ ✦
“Well, well. What should we do about this, I?”
“Those are Huey’s handpicked underlings. Is it okay if we just zotz them all, Me?”
“No, we shouldn’t interfere with the Runoratas’ guest. If anything, we should probably assist his people, but young Master Carzelio takes priority right now. Let’s secure the bear.”
“We’ll need to get a truck over here, though.”
Gabriel and Juliano stopped their motorcycles temporarily and sized up the scene.
A confused fight involving multiple parties had broken out abruptly. At this point, the situation had condensed into mortal combat between a man and a woman, but the murderous intent that radiated all the way to the fringes of the group made it obvious that the group melee had been safer. If one of those two had had a gun, no doubt several people would have been hit by stray bullets by now.
Given the danger, the pair had decided that Charlie, Cazze’s pet bear, couldn’t get hurt in the fray. They were planning to show him some food in an attempt to get him to follow them, but—
“Say, Me. Who’s that up on his back?”
“Who knows? It’s a mystery, I. However, they do seem very calm for people riding a bear, don’t they?”
✦ ✦ ✦
“Hey, Miria, what do we do? Why did Ladd and Chané just start fighting like that?”
“Maybe they were hungry…”
“They do say hunger is the best spice! I hear wars were fought and villages plundered over salt, way back when… They say the Roman emperor Domi-what’s-his-face fought using pepper!”
“I see! We make blinding powder with black or red pepper, too!”
Isaac had provided information that didn’t quite fit the situation, and Miria nodded firmly.
The pair’s thoughts seemed to be as vague as usual, but there was an unusual hint of unease in their expressions. In their own way, they were shaken.
To Isaac, Ladd was an important pal who’d looked out for him in Alcatraz, while to Miria, Chané was a precious friend who’d encouraged her when she’d been crying her eyes out over Isaac’s imprisonment.
They’d clung to the bear, and then Ladd had suddenly started rampaging in Central Park. When Chané had come along, it had turned into a knife-and-fistfight, and the peculiar sight had left the two very confused.
As they tried desperately to figure out what was going on, Isaac came up with a deduction that was part wishful thinking. “…What if it isn’t a fight?”
“What do you mean, Isaac?”
“Neither of them is hurt. They might be practicing for a show.”
As a matter of fact, although the two were clashing fiercely, their only “injuries” were that the tip of Chané’s nose was red, and that Ladd had a shallow cut on his throat that was bleeding slightly. From Isaac and Miria’s vantage point, they couldn’t even see it.
More than anything, neither of the combatants was making any wasted moves, which made the fight an extraordinarily beautiful thing to watch.
“Come to think of it…all these other people look like they belong to the circus, don’t they?!” Miria was surveying the members of Larva.
This seemed to give Isaac confidence in his own theory. He nodded firmly. “Don’t they?! Maybe that noise back there signaled the start of the show. That’s why this bear came to rejoin his circus companions!”
“Are Ladd and Chané going to be in the circus, too, then?”
“Yeah! I bet this is Romeo and Juliet’s duel scene or something! They changed up the story! It’s an opera where Romeo and Juliet fight with boxing and knives, and now there’s even a circus! That has to be it!”
“Yes, it’s Romeo versus Juliet!”