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Chapter 8

Posted: 27/10/2020

Status: Ongoing

The flea was being weird, Shizuo thought.

Of course, he’d always been weird, since probably before they had even met. Heck, he was even worse than weird, that guy was a freak. Then again, so was Shizuo…

But they were different kinds of freaks! Shizuo was a freak of nature, but the pest was a mentally deranged freak, they were completely different! They had absolutely nothing in common!

Anyway, the flea was being weirder than his usual freaky self, which was saying a lot. He was still making fun of Shizuo like he used to, although milder than before, maybe in respect of their very temporary truce. Yet, he still seemed on edge, his gaze regularly darting between Shizuo and… the kid.

“What was your name again, kid?” He asked, unsure. It was Mari, right?

“Mirai.” It was not, in fact, Mari. He was close, though.

“Ah right, thanks.” He’d try to remember this child’s name. Emphasis on ‘try’. She looked at him, red eyes void of any emotion.

Now that he paid attention, this kid’s eyes were sort of like the flea’s. Their color was similar, as was their shape. She looked like she could be his sister, although, as far as he knew, Izaya only had two sisters and no other siblings. A cousin maybe? The informant had never mentioned his extended family…or any family member other than his sisters, actually. Shizuo realized he hadn’t the slightest idea what Izaya’s family was like. Were they a big family? Small? Were they tight-knit like Shizuo’s own, or more distant?

Were they all nuts like Izaya or was he the odd one out?

For some reason, Shizuo felt a sudden curiosity about the man who had consistently been ruining his life since high school.

God, maybe Izaya wasn’t the only deranged one there.

“Might I ask,” Izaya’s voice broke the silence, “Why you were here on your own?” He gave the girl a smile as pleasant as it was threatening, she stared at him unflinchingly.

“I needed to guard this for you.” She said, tilting her head towards the chair Izaya was sitting in.

“Oh?” Izaya’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “So, you’re saying you knew I would come here, looking for a wheelchair?”

“Yes and no. I knew someone would need it, so I guarded it. I didn’t know this person was you, or why you would need it.” This had to be, by far, the most words they’d ever heard come at once out of Mirai’s mouth since they’d met her.

“Interesting. Are you claiming to have done that out of your own volition then?”

The girl opened her mouth to answer…then closed it without a sound.

“I…” She started, some hesitation in her voice, ”…I don’t know.”

She looked at her feet in what appeared to be confusion. Izaya looked awfully satisfied at having made a young child question herself. It infuriated Shizuo, who frowned, but did his best to keep his cool in front of said child.

“It’s fine if you don’t know.” He said, attracting both Mirai and Izaya’s attention. “Sometimes you do stuff and you don’t know why. It’s fine, happens to everyone.”

Izaya sent him a disdainful glare.

Shizuo gave him a brief look, then ignored him and continued. “Actually, it happens to me all the time. I do things without knowing why, and sometimes things end badly, but sometimes they don’t. The most important thing is that you own up to whatever the consequences might be, good or bad.”

Izaya bristled, the casual rejection clear as day. He gripped the armrests of the chair in anger.

“Stop trying to be philosophical, beast. You’re going to fry your few remaining brain cells.” He sneered at him. The blonde sure was getting on his nerves lately, had he always been this infuriating?

”…I see.” Mirai’s quiet voice was barely noticeable thanks to the overbearing hostility present in the room. She looked at both men, who were glaring at each other, unsure what to do about the current situation.

After a few seconds of intense staring, Izaya let out an annoyed huff and started rolling away. “Whatever, I got what I was looking for, I don’t need you anymore.” He said and left the room.

“Hey, we gotta stick together!” Shizuo called after him. He looked back at Mirai, then at the doorway, then back to Mirai. “Stay with me, alright? We got to stay together.” He told her gently, then followed after Izaya as soon as she nodded. They exited the room together and found the hallway empty.

Damn, he thought, why was a flea on wheels much faster than one on foot?!

He sighed and took long strides towards the direction he and Izaya had originally come from, making sure to pace himself so that Mirai could keep up with him despite her small size. The flea had probably gone to leave the hospital now that he’d found what he needed.

They went down the stairs, and found themselves in another empty hallway, no sign of the flea there either.

“Damn, that guy sure is fast when he wants to be.” He muttered, then walked to the other end of the hallway and took the descending staircase again, Mirai close behind him. They exited the staircase and found themselves in yet another empty hallway. Shizuo paused.

”…Were we that high up?” He wondered aloud as he once again traveled to the other end of the hallway and, again, took the stairs.

They were met with an empty hall. Again.

And again.

And again.

“Fuck.” Shizuo swore.

Mirai stayed silent.

…

Izaya rolled away from the room with an annoyed huff. If the beast wanted to make friends with the very suspicious child that bore an odd resemblance to Izaya himself and who was probably some kind of spy for their captor, well, that was none of Izaya’s business.

Truthfully, the chair itself was probably bugged; it was much too convenient for there to be a single chair in the whole hospital guarded by a strange child who claimed not to know why she’d even guarded it in the first place.

Something was going on here, and he was going to find out what, beast or no beast.

He headed to an elevator he had overlooked when they’d entered the hospital and pressed the button to call it to the floor he was currently on. The door opened immediately, indicating that this, too, was working. As he entered the elevator and pressed the button for the ground floor, he thought their captors had certainly gone all out to create this fake Tokyo. He’d have to congratulate them once he managed to corner them.

Before making sure they knew never to mess with Orihara Izaya ever again, of course.

Which brought him to his current thought: what had they done to his and Shizuo’s bodies? Considering that the effect wasn’t immediate, with Shizuo being able to use his monstrous strength and Izaya his legs without pain, it must have been some poison or drug.

Thallium maybe? He did gradually feel pain in his lower body until they finally gave up on him, but this was much faster than ‘normal’ Thallium poisoning. He passed his hand in his hair and came up empty-handed. No hair loss either.

Mild Strychnine exposure could be a possibility too. He had a few symptoms, and this was a faster-acting poison. He’d have noticed if it had been slipped into his morning coffee thanks to the color, but there was a possibility it was given to him in his sleep. Once again, though, he was missing some key symptoms.

Izaya sighed. He prided himself on his vast knowledge, but poisons and drugs were really more around Shinra’s area of expertise.

His body hurt, but his condition didn’t seem to have worsened, at the very least. It certainly wasn’t getting any better, though.

He looked at the buttons inside the elevator with a bored expression. He could feel the elevator moving, yet he still wasn’t on the ground floor. The door hadn’t opened once either, so it couldn’t have been because of someone pressing all the buttons.

He laid back in the wheelchair with a loud sigh.

“I have been crippled and then so generously been offered a practical means of transportation, only to end up trapped in an eternally-moving elevator. I commend the effort, but I’m sure there are much more fun ways to torment me than that. This is just boring.” He said aloud. It was very likely he was being monitored, and if he wasn’t, well, Izaya was used to talking to himself anyway.

Just as he finished his sentence, the elevator dinged.

“Oh, so you just wanted me to acknowledge you? Cute.” He wheeled himself near the slowly opening doors, ready to escape the small space…only to stay frozen there.

Beyond the open doors was a vast expanse of blue.

Izaya blinked and looked down.

More blue.

Left. Right. Blue.

Then, he looked up.

There, far up in the sky(?), was a bird’s view of Tokyo.

The world was upside-down.

As if to test out something, Izaya took one of his knives and threw it outside in front of him. Normal rules of gravity would make the knife fall down, and from there, there were two possible outcomes.

One: the knife falls down in front of him on the floor, which was made to look like a bottomless sky.

Two: the knife falls down, and down, never stopping. In that case, Izaya would be truly and utterly fucked.

What happened instead was option three.

The knife fell.

But it fell up.

Author's note: "amki what the fuck is even happening" you might ask.

And to this, all I can answer is : ¯\_(ツ)_/¯