As Isaac shouted from the bear’s back, most of the surrounding crowd ignored him. Meanwhile, Graham and Christopher started fantasizing about how Romeo Versus Juliet would go. The only direct reaction came from Ladd, who was right in the middle of the fight.
“Ha-ha! Those two don’t change, huh! They’re saying our fight to the death is a show!”
“……”
“Well, sure, why not?! Let’s make the world watch us! All the world’s a show anyway. Even Huey Laforet’s terrorist revolution or whatever is just a stale performance to bring a little spice to the lives of faraway people through their newspapers! If we’re supporting characters, then let’s twirl and twist the world around until the whole planet is a mangled mess! Are ya with me, sister?!”
“……”
Wordlessly, Chané slashed at him. Knocking her blade away, Ladd asked a question that had been on his mind. “…Hey, so are you pals with Isaac and his girl?”
“……”
Chané didn’t hear what Ladd had said.
She hadn’t heard Isaac and Miria, either. She hadn’t even noticed they were nearby.
Chané had become a system that existed only to slaughter Ladd, and she wouldn’t stop until she was utterly exhausted or Ladd was dead.
For Ladd’s part, watching that system near completion gave him a sense of twisted delight. He wanted to see the moment she realized the determination and resolution that had built it were all in vain, and his own engine kicked into high gear.
Even as he raised a ruckus, Ladd was also transforming into a machine meant to destroy his opponent.
✦ ✦ ✦
Enraptured with the fight, Graham murmured to himself, “It’s beautiful…”
He’d spent long years wrecking cars, and to him, Chané and Ladd’s fight looked like beautifully assembled auto components, even though their mechanisms were completely different.
They were gears that meshed perfectly, rotating in opposite directions locked together, the strength of their convictions being the sole determining factor for which direction they spun. As he witnessed their exquisite balance, Graham was deeply moved, and yet the question of which way the gears would ultimately turn made him nervous.
✦ ✦ ✦
Like Graham, Christopher was muttering, “That’s pretty…”
As an unnatural being, Christopher had always respected nature. Right now, though, the man-made clash of knives and prosthetic hand struck him as a truly beautiful “natural sight.”
It was like a volcano that had suddenly erupted in the middle of a plain where snow was falling. The view in his mind’s eye was unbalanced, yet strangely harmonized, and it made him emotional as well.
✦ ✦ ✦
Although their thoughts weren’t as specific as those of the other two, the rest of the group was beginning to think the pair’s clash was something sacred that must not be disturbed. It was as if, in a different sense of the word, the fight had passed into territory that was out of their reach.
There was no one who could butt in.
There couldn’t possibly be.
And yet…they abruptly slashed through the harmony.
✦ ✦ ✦
“……?”
The first one to register the change was the girl in the stocking cap. She was a Larva member who specialized in spreading poison.
This smell…
Since she handled gases and powders, her nose had been adjusted by Salomé and the rest of the Rhythm team to be twice as sharp as the average person’s.
The girl was a lab rat as well as a homunculus, and her nostrils had caught a scent they rarely picked up among the members of Larva.
Something smells…boozy?
✦ ✦ ✦
Just as Chané and Ladd were about to unleash their next attacks on each other—
“Wha—?”
“……!”
—they both lost their balance and passed each other, spinning forward.
As they did so, they registered something.
Just as they were about to connect with their opponent, some other force had abruptly been exerted on them.
✦ ✦ ✦
What they’d just seen left the onlookers dumbstruck.
After all, they’d assumed no one could interrupt Chané and Ladd, but a red-faced old man had appeared out of nowhere and cut in—and when he touched the combatants lightly, they’d seemed to leap forward of their own accord.
✦ ✦ ✦
Ladd and Chané had been set spinning without warning, but although they were disoriented, their exceptional reflexes let them get by with just falling to one knee.
As they started to get back up, they heard an old man’s drawling voice. “Hic… Are you kids drunk? Ish shtill afternoon…”
Chané didn’t recognize the man, while Ladd had only met him a few days before. “Geezer… What was your name again, bastard? Alkie?” Frowning, Ladd glared at his elderly coworker. “What’re you getting in the way for? Huh? Are you lit? …You always are, though.”
Alkie took a gulp from his hip flask. “We were s’posed to cut loose after we figgered out who th’ enemy was…hic…”
“Oh, well, that’s a cakewalk. This doll has ties to Huey Laforet. Ties to the Runorata Family. There’s no need to size her up. She’s been an enemy this whole time. As a matter of fact, she’s my archnemesis, geezer.”
“I see. In that cashe…”
Ladd was looking at the old man, but out of the corner of his eye, he saw that Chané had recovered a moment faster and was heading his way.
Ladd tried to meet her—but another figure cut in, distracting him with a flash of silver quite a bit longer than Chané’s knives.
“Don’t end her on yer own,” the old man was saying. “We’ll gang up on her and make shure.”
And a sharp metallic clang echoed through Central Park.
✦ ✦ ✦
“!”
“Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Long time no see, amiga! How’ve you been?”
Chané had caught the twin katana that had swung at her out of nowhere with her knives.
Her attacker was a striking contrast to herself: a brown-skinned hired killer who was all dolled up in a gaudy saloon girl costume. She and Chané had once crossed blades at Jacuzzi’s base, Eve Genoard’s second residence.
“It’s been ages since I got to fight with you like this, amiga! And we kept getting interrupted last time…”
“……”
A step away, Chané leveled her knives, and the katana-wielding saloon girl beamed.
“Will you finish the dance with me this time?”
✦ ✦ ✦
“Maria…Barcelito…!”
“Wait, Adele. Don’t you go.”
On seeing Maria, Adele had leveled her cross-shaped spear and tensed, preparing to lunge at the other woman. Tim clapped a hand onto her shoulder, firmly holding her back.
“But, Tim…”
She looked from Tim to Maria and back with obvious reluctance, but her boss slowly shook his head. “I know how you feel, but hang back for now.”
At the beginning of the uproar, Tim had worked his way over to a spot that was as far from the noise as was practical, and he had been monitoring the situation. The moment he saw Maria, someone they had some ugly history with, he knew he’d made the right call.
“It’s like some tornado out there right now. You might call me a wannabe psychic for saying so, but I’ve got a bad feeling about all that swirling energy over there. If you mess with it, you’ll get dragged in.”
“That isn’t a logical answer, but…your instincts are usually right, Tim.” Adele lowered her spear, resigned to watching over the fight from a distance.
As a matter of fact, Tim’s prophecy would prove to be correct.
The chaotic vortex had begun to pull in the most troublesome individual around.
A few minutes earlierIn a car stopped beside Central Park