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The night is dull and cloudy. The half moon filters hazily above the city lights, and a half-hearted shine makes it through the overpass to the pavement below. Shizuo exhales and lets his hand fall, trickling nicotine and indifference. It is the beginning of autumn, but the summer splutters in and out like a yakuza with a crushed windpipe; today it is warm and dark enough that he sheds his vest and stands in the shadows.
It's quiet, Shizuo thinks, twitching around his cigarette. The nearest vending machine is--
--he snaps open his trilling phone, scowling as if the flea could see him. "What?" It's unusually late for this - there are unspoken rules they have adopted after years of trying to kill each other, and sleeping hours are precious to both of them - and the itching feeling in his fingers intensifies.
"Shizuo," says Izaya, and for once his voice has no trace of laughter or menace in it. Shizuo stops and unbends his fingers where they have instinctively dug themselves into the metal railing of the highway, dread building between his shoulder blades.
Izaya pauses at the creak of metal, but only for a second - then he follows it with sharp staccato instructions, which is good because a second longer and Shizuo would have started yelling - "Get to the east end of the Seibu exit now, run past the houses until you see an old stretch of shops; it should be obvious from there. Listen to me, and this is very important: do try not to kill them, because I need to know what they know and you owe me for this. They have Kasuka."
Shizuo swears like a professional bartender as he sprints, slipping his phone into a pocket without bothering to end the call. He's two hundred metres down the street before the thought occurs and he plucks out his phone: "If you set this up--"
"I didn't," replies Izaya flatly. "I wouldn't."
"Wouldn't?" laughs Shizuo in disbelief, leaping over an illegally parked car - "Wouldn't you, if you wouldn't get caught?"
Then there's just the sounds of the city through the phone, which suits Shizuo just fine because he's got a wall to scale and parkour is faster with two hands. He gets the phone back up to his ear in time to hear a slightly out of breath singsong, "Shizu-chan, if I ever mess with your brother, you'll know it."
"If you do, I will actually properly kill you."
"Ah~~ So mean, Shizu-chan!"
"I swear, Izaya."
"Fine, fine," and Shizuo can hear the pout over the phone, and then the smirk that comes after it, even through all the running the both of them are doing. "I wouldn't touch your brother, but I suppose I see why you might think otherwise. You must admit though, that he does make an amazing bait! Such an obvious trap, but utterly irresistible."
"Bastard, just tell me the truth!" There's another wall, but this time Shizuo just punches through it. He's almost there - about eight hundred metres left to go.
"The truth, Shizu-chan? Why, I'm hurt. The truth is my currency, dear protozoan, and I never lie about business. You are going to leave some of them alive for me to question, hmm?"
Shizuo growls in reply. There's a distorted sigh from over the phone. "You know, it's for his own good really. It's not the most well kept secret in town-"
"-and whose fault is that?"
"-which means either some idiots have yet to hear of your monstrous reputation, or someone important and confident is behind all this, or someone who thinks he's important, or someone actually important is manipulating the idiots - which is the most likely. You need to know who's behind it."
Three hundred metres to go. Shizuo grimaces around the corner and scrambles up the side of a convenient low building. "Ugh, so basically you're saying not to kill everyone. Did you have to explain all that complicated shit?"
"Yes, because I'm trying to get it through your thick skull how important this is," he chirrups, sounding entirely too cheerful. "Almost there."
Two more streets, one more street, there - he decelerates so fast that another person would've gotten whiplash. He stares in disgust. "A garage?" It's not as cliche as an abandoned warehouse, but it's an automobile garage, and somehow that's just as bad.
"Oh?"
"I'm going in," he declares, folds his phone into his pocket and promptly rips out a street sign. He smashes in the garage door to the soundtrack of Izaya's cackling, breathless laughter.
-
Shizuo is often a patient man. On an ordinary day, he would wait out the stunned silence that usually follows his entrances, then endure several attempts to bruise him before letting loose with the nearest heavy object.
Today is not an ordinary day.
Kasuka sits at the far end of the garage, tied to a chair. He's unmoving and expressionless - but his brother is always unmoving and expressionless, so when Kasuka lifts his eyes in the barest hint of what might a smile, it's all Shizuo can do not to grin like a deranged fool. The relief and fury in his chest builds, and then he looks at the crowd: barely two dozen and they don't even have guns, the idiots. Shizuo hefts the street sign and roars.
The garage immediately descends into chaos.
"S-Stop! Or Yuuhei gets it!" someone stutters after about half a minute, and Shizuo pauses mid-swing. One of the men he was about to swat pales and scrambles out of the way; the other falls in a dead faint. "Eh?" Shizuo squints, and sure enough, there's a knife held up to his brother's neck. His eyebrow twitches. What a dumbass. "Do you want to die?" he growls, and Dumbass shakes even more but leaves the knife up - probably his only hope at this point, actually.
Nothing happens for five seconds. Shizuo's nose twitches.
"Oi. Do something."
The handful of his assailants remaining look at each other, trying to scrounge up enough courage to attack. Shizuo slaps the road sign onto the floor with a loud clang. "Oi, if you let my brother get hurt because you're too busy observing, I will rip your spine out and stuff it down your throat."
"So mean, Shizu-chan!" comes from across the room, amusement in every syllable, and Dumbass whips around and whimpers.
"Oh shit get away get away get away get...."
"You talk too much," Izaya shrugs, and Shizuo snorts at the hypocrisy. Faster than a thought his switchblade draws an arc through the ligaments of the offender's wrist, spraying blood across Kasuka's face as the knife clatters to the floor. Kasuka blinks it out of his eyes. Izaya fluidly pins the flailing man with a blade held to the throat, and he shuts up in sheer terror.
"Do you know what I want to know?"
The man sobs, shaking his head frantically.
Izaya smiles. "No? Well, I'm feeling generous today. I'll give you three seconds to guess."
Underneath Izaya, the man goes even whiter, if possible. Shizuo rolls his eyes, and picks up the road sign with an easy flick.
"Three."
Shizuo dispatches four men in one hard swipe. The rest drop their weapons and try to flee. The man pinned under Izaya gapes, eyes flickering back and forth.
"Shizu-chan, please leave them able to talk," requests Izaya sweetly. Then, "Two."
Shizuo raises his fists and steps into motion.
"One."
"Stop stop please I'll talk, it was Yodogiri Jinnai, we just wanted Heiwajima, he said to use his brother, he had Yuuhei's schedule, we grabbed him at a 100-yen shop - it was just supposed to be Heiwajima, not you, please don't kill me please," the man wails.
"See, was that so hard?" says Izaya mockingly, and knocks him out without waiting for a reply.
Shizuo tidies up the pile of groaning bodies he'd created, kicking a few in the general direction of the flea for him to interrogate. He walks over to Kasuka and snaps the ropes like thread. "You alright?"
Kasuka nods and pulls out a handkerchief. He wipes the rest of the blood from his face expressionlessly. "Thank you."
Shizuo looks away and lights up a cigarette. He exhales. "You wouldn't have been stuck here if not for me in the first place."
Kasuka looks at him steadily. "It's fine."
"It wasn't you, Shizu-chan," comes Izaya's bright voice, standing up from over the prone forms in Shizuo's impromptu pile. Shizuo glances towards him - the information broker grips his switchblade with counterproductive force, the line of his back deliberately loose. "This Yodogiri Jinnai got to you to get to me. Or, he decided would be convenient with you out of the way, but mostly he knows that by taking you on he's annoying me."
Shizuo looks down at himself and catches sight of his uniform. "Ah, damn," he mutters, prodding the rip in his arm, where a shallow cut oozes into his white shirt. "I left my vest somewhere on the way. What are you talking about, flea?"
Izaya's smirk stretches wide, and he snaps the switchblade closed. "No one is allowed to irritate you more than I do, Shizu-chan~~!"
Shizuo's scowl deepens, and he picks his way to the exit. "I'm not something to be fought over, and I'm not in the mood to fight you now. How did you find out about this, anyway?"
"I'm an information broker. I have my ways."
"Sure you do," agrees Shizuo, stepping out of the jagged hole. Kasuka follows, silently. "Tell me when you catch him."
"Of course, Shizu-chan!" promises Izaya cheerfully. He crosses his fingers behind his back, just because, and watches the pair step out into the night.
The smile doesn't fade from his mouth all the way home.