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Screams. The sound of crackling flames. Screeching alarms and the roar of emergency vehicles speeding down the street. The echoing booms of explosives that rocked the streets and ripped through the foundations of the razed building.
Sigma tore down the sidewalk, ducking through gawking onlookers and racing as fast as those cursed heels would permit toward the street corner. He dashed down the alleyway and reappeared on the open road behind the smoking building. Skidding to a halt in a whirlwind of panic, he nearly toppled over and stared upward at the four story building. White hot flames shot out of every window in sight and smoke billowed into the grey sky. Despite keeping his distance on the opposite side of the road from the burning building, heat still licked up the sides of his pale, distressed face. Long locks of hair whipped around him as he stared upwards, confusion and panic etched into his expression.
The clown had promised a distraction–a decoy to throw the mafia and detective agency off their scent and wane any suspicions tied to the Sky Casino. As Sigma squinted at the torched building, his apprehension grew.
This couldn’t possibly be the distraction Gogol promised, could it?
The mess of fantastical chaos did look suspiciously like the clown’s signature erratic handiwork. Still, Sigma felt that the sheer level of destruction taking place before his very eyes seemed like overkill. He coughed as a thick swatch of smoke blew across the road, engulfing him. Eyes watering, he covered his nose with one saggy sleeve and flapped around his other arm to ward off the smoke.
“ —mmaaaaaaa~”
Sigma vigorously wiped his eyes, discarding pained tears as his watery gaze latched into the burning building once more in bewilderment. He lowered his hand, peering intently through the smoke. Had that been a voice just now? Or had his mind been playing tricks?
“Heyoooooo—!“
Sigma’s eyes widened in shock as his gaze fell upon a figure silhouetted in a window on the second floor of the building. The hat was a dead giveaway–though Sigma didn’t need that signature accessory to work out the man’s identity. This whole ordeal had the ringmaster’s terroristic little fingerprints all over it.
“What are you doing up there?” Sigma shouted back, a panicked note creeping into his voice. Mind racing, he stole an uncertain step forwards, keeping his gaze fixed on the hazy man in the window. Black smoke billowed out of the room from behind the clown’s silhouette, momentarily obscuring his form. Sigma winced, awaiting the pained cries of a man burning to a crisp. Yet as the jet black smoke climbed into the sky, Sigma peered through the remaining smog and made out Gogol’s blurry figure now gracefully climbing out the window and balancing on the razor-thin ledge by the heels of his pointed shoes.
“Wooooh! Look at this neat trick!” Even at this distance, Sigma could hear the clown’s unmistakable giggles of delight loud and clear over the din. Yet the poor man could do nothing but stare in horror as Gogol began to shimmy sideways along the length of the building, precariously hopping heel over heel and balancing his cane across both palms stretched out before him.
“Heya, cookie! How do I look?” The clown’s glee stretched across his expression as he addressed Sigma from the height of two stories up on the sheer cliff face of the building’s exterior wall.
“Get down from there!” Sigma cried out furiously, brows furrowed in a mixture of desperation and anger as sweat rolled down his cheek.
“Awh, of course dear, if you insist!” Gogol spun the cane into one palm, raising his other hand in a mocking salute.
Sigma’s eyes widened, as the clown’s intentions instantly dawned on him.
“Don’t you dare!”
“Catch!” The clown hollered gleefully, launching himself off the paper thin ledge, just as a sixth bomb rocketed through the building, sending spiderweb cracks shooting through the concrete. While in the past Sigma might have simply left Gogol to become clown colored paste on the pavement, in the present he was seized with panic and leapt forwards in a flash. There were only mere seconds between the window and pavement, yet Sigma lunged forwards just in the nick of time for Gogol’s entire weight to crash down into his outstretched arms.
Gogol slammed into him with the comical force of a dropped anvil and Sigma let out a strangled cry, simultaneously collapsing and staggering backward as Gogol rolled out of his arms and staggered to the ground. Recovering in a near instant, he popped upright like a jack in the box with a look of pure glee stretched across his face.
“Pop quiz!” He exclaimed, scooping up his ringmaster's hat from the pavement and spinning around to shoot finger guns at the trembling heap of Sigma’s collapsed form on the ground. “Who set the nearest government building on fire and earned us the most brilliant decoy ever!?”
Sigma’s expression contorted into a dark scowl that would have instantly killed any ordinary citizen on the spot. Yet Gogol was undeterred as a wide grin spread across his face and he laughed, throwing his cane to the sky.
“That’s right! This clown!” He swished open his cloak and twirled around, the cane shooting through the pocket dimension and materializing up into his other hand. Then he crossed arm over his torso and stole a sweeping stage bow, braid whipping unceremoniously over his shoulder.
"Voilà, monsieur!"
By now Sigma had managed to unsteadily rise onto his feet, wobbling slightly in his heels as he dejectedly brushed off patches of soot from his meticulously kempt white vest.
“Please never do that again.”
“No promises!” Gogol beamed, swinging his cane in a playful arc as he strode forward to Sigma’s side. Sigma’s scowl lessened slightly, although he refrained from further meaningless argument with the clown. Instead, he raised a bruised hand and squinted through the grey smoke rolling across the street. Muffled by the smog, the wail of sirens grew louder and through the haze, he could spy the unmistakable flash of red and blue lights. Gogol’s little display had drawn in law enforcement from all over Yokohama. Alarmed, Sigma nervously rubbed his wrist.
“You have a plan to get us out of here, correct?” his sharp earrings swung sideways as he glanced over at the smooth diamonds peppering Gogol’s mask. The corners of Gogol’s lips maliciously curved upwards.
“Of course!” He chirped, waving his cane. Then he tapped his chin, casting his companion a thin smile. “You can trust me, Sig.”
Sigma blinked. “I know that. I’m just–“
“Wrong! You should never trust a clown! I have no idea what I’m doing! Let’s go find a getaway car!” Gogol exclaimed, heartily slapping Sigma’s shoulder before sauntering off toward the nearest police car that had stopped at the street corner. Sigma pinched the bridge of his nose, struggling to contain his frustration before hotly marching after Gogol’s bouncing figure. Approaching the car, the two abruptly stopped short.
“Wait wait–you stay here,” the tip of the clown’s cane suddenly poked Sigma’s chest. Sigma paused, glancing over at his companion. He wasn’t entirely sure he enjoyed the sly, malevolent grin creeping across Gogol’s expression as the clown cheerily proclaimed, “Sit back, relax and enjoy the show!”
———-
As Sigma soon had the misfortune to behold, Gogol’s show consisted of him sauntering up to two wary law enforcement officers and brandishing a deck of cards under their noses. Then, against the officers’ will, he performed a card trick and proceeded to shriek “ALAKABLAM!” which was followed by two clean gunshots and two bodies dropping to the pavement from a disembodied hand clutching a revolver.
Delicately hopping over the cops’ corpses strewn across the road, the clown triumphantly glanced back at Sigma and gave the roof of the police car several energetic slaps. Then he cupped one gloved hand around his mouth and hollered for his companion to “get in the clown car!”
Now, Sigma was currently hunkered down in the passenger's seat of the speeding cop car, one hand gripping the arm of the door and the other gripping the console, holding on for dear life as Gogol cackled wildly, spinning the wheel freely in his palms and sharply cranking the vehicle down another one of Yokohama’s narrow winding streets. Sigma fought down several distressed noises, fearful that he might accidentally empty the contents of his stomach during their little joyride. However, his rolling nausea soon became the least of his concerns as the window beside him suddenly exploded in an earsplitting roar, showering him in a spray of glass. The bullet shattered the window, whizzing past his cheek and lodging itself in the front windshield of the car.
He let out a horrified yelp of course, immediately ducking and throwing his arms over his head as glass splinters caught in his hair and embedded themselves in the fabric of his suit. Sigma didn’t even have a split second to recover. Without warning, Gogol yanked the steering wheel sideways, sending the stolen cop car chaotically spinning down another street. Sigma was thrown against the restraints of his seatbelt and a pained groan escaped his lips as he buried his head in his hands.
“Having fun?!”
“No!” Sigma snapped back, the color draining from his cheeks as he raised his head and gripped the edge of his seat with taught knuckles. Gogol continued to weave the car through winding back alleyways, headed toward city limits.
“Whoop whoop!” In one fell swoop Gogol had yanked the car’s police radio off its rack, screaming into the receiver as he manned the wheel with one hand. “Do any of you fellows know how to turn on the funny lights and noises? I can’t seem to figure it out!”
Radio static crackled and a police officer’s rough voice shouted teresly through the device.
“Give yourselves up! ”
“Boo! Boring! Ugh–“ Gogol ripped the useless plastic radio off its cord and Sigma flinched as the device whizzed past his head and straight out the shattered passenger window.
“Sigma!” Gogol’s energetic chirp startled the other man out of his shell shocked stupor.
“What?” He yelped back.
“I’ll give you a prize if you can figure out how to turn on the funny siren and lights!”
“God no!”
“Pretty please?” Gogol glanced over at Sigma with one unmistakable puppy eye as the wheel uncontrollably spun through his fingers, the car sliding onto the final stretch of road just before the Yokohama’s city boundaries. Glancing in the side mirrors, Sigma spotted a considerably sized troupe of police cars hot on their tail, and glancing up at the sky, he could make out the silhouette of a helicopter speeding through the clouds toward them from a distance.
“No! Hand me the gun!” Sigma insisted, whipping around and glaring at his smug companion.
“What's the magic word~?” Gogol sing-songed gleefully.
“Please!”
“Okie dokie!”
Gogol’s revolver found its way into Sigma’s hand and the man gingerly leaned out the window, squinting in concentration as he meticulously aimed down the barrel of the gun. Then, with a steady hand, he fired two clean shots into the front tires of the lead police car that had been formerly gaining on them. Hair whipping around him, he retreated back into the interior of the car, dropping the revolver on the seat as Gogol adjusted the rear view mirror to scope out the destruction in their wake.
“Woah! You’ve got some neat magic tricks!” Gogol giggled as the horrid screech and crunching of metal filled the air, the first car behind them spinning sideways and slamming into the rest of their pursuers in a burst of flames.
“Where did you learn that? Have you been keeping secrets from me, cookie?” Gogol broke eye contact with the road, glancing over at Sigma with a smirk. Sigma let out a heavy, distraught sigh.
“This better be worth it,” was his only gruff remark. “I want to be back at my casino.”
“Are you that bored of me already? You’re killing me, Sig! I'm wounded–Utterly destroyed!”
A slight frown tugged at the corners of Sigma’s mouth and he neglected to respond, instead resting his chin in one palm and peering out of the shattered window as the roar of the helicopter's choppers filled the air.
“Hey–what’s that look for?” Gogol protested and Sigma sighed, raising his head from his chin as he picked at the glass splinters in his vest.
“This whole ordeal is a mess,” he mumbled dejectedly, brushing a stray lock of hair from his eyes.
“Well cheer up! I’ve got a nice surprise for you!”
As Sigma cast Gogol a questioning glance, the clown took one hand off the steering wheel and tangled his gloved fingers through the choppy, uneven locks of hair behind Sigma's head and firmly nudged him closer.
While Sigma wanted to do nothing more than indignantly scream, “WATCH THE ROAD!” he was a bit too enamored with the chaste kiss pressed to his pale cheek. Then it was over and Gogol’s head whipped back toward the road, braid smacking Sigma across the nose in the process. He sputtered, batting the assailant away before settling back down into the passenger seat, somberly crossing his arms.
Beside him, Gogol raised an energetic finger and waggled it in Sigma’s direction.
“Will you pretty pretty pretty please figure out how to put on the funny lights and wee wooo noises now?”
“That’s completely impractical and utter nonsense. That will increase our chances of getting caught and there’s still a helicopter following us by air.”
“You’re no fun–Wait!” Gogol snapped his fingers. “Wait–I’ll braid your hair when we get to the safe house! I promise!”
“...”
“I’ll make you sugar cookies! There’s still ingredients left somewhere in that place!”
“...Alright fine. ’Funny lights’ it is.”