Prologue

One year before…

The center of Ikebukuro crumbled. Glass broke, people screamed: fire and ashes covered the street outside of the largest Yagiri Pharmaceutical building in town. Masaomi Kida, the fourteen year old Yellow Scarves leader, started at the flames in utter shock. Kida's body felt like it was made of cement, and as he gazed around to the other members of the group: he could read their faces well, he knew they felt the same as he did. It took a full breath of oxygen for Kida to find the nerve to move. Kida knew the moment he moved, the Yellow Scarves would too: what he didn't anticipate was for them to be chased.

Kida darted through every alleyway and street he could possible to outrun them. Masaomi realized quickly that the group of people behind him dropped in numbers, tackled by men in blue: cops. This was worse than he thought. The blonde middle schooler ran for a good twenty minutes before he could shake the paranoia off and feel safe for a moment.

Kida dropped to his knees and discarded the dirty yellow scarf he had been wearing for so long.

Fire burned the bartender's arm: the pain was worse than anything he'd ever felt before, but he kept running. Soot filled his lungs, but he kept chasing. Shizuo Heiwajima, no matter how wounded he was or how much pain he felt, would always keep running as long as he saw him. No matter how much blood he bled, his need to destroy that man would always outweigh his need for survival.

As long as Izaya Orihara stood in his way, every cell in Shizuo's body would always pursue.

"IZAYAAAAAA!"

At last, that bastard looked his way and stopped. Izaya's mouth formed into a grin of sardonic delight. Shizuo was half-destroyed: his glasses were broken, his outfit covered in black soot, and his arm practically burnt off.

"Ah, Shizu-chan, you look half-dead."

"Don't play games with me, I know you were in charge of the bomb."

"Oh, Shizu-chan, must you blame me for everything that goes wrong?"

"You son of a bitch, you killed all those-"

Shizuo dropped to the floor: no matter how many cells in his body wanted to act, they simply couldn't: there was too much of his own blood on the floor to possibly still fight. Shizuo's eyes slowly closed but heard one last thing from the man with the most punchable face in Japan.

"Oh, Shizu-chan. I'd love to kick you while you're down, but I've got to run."

Fuck.

It wasn't long after the pitter-patter of Izaya's steps disappeared into the night that he then heard a very familiar noise: the noise of a motorcycle revving and a horse whinnying. Izaya felt the glow of a touchscreen near his face. His eyes darted over to the text on the screen.

Shizuo, how did this happen? Are going to be okay?

"Please... take me to him."

Even more frantically this time, she typed again.

To who?

"Shinra."

Author's Note: I haven't written any kind of fan fiction in centuries: but please, be as brutal as you'd like. I'm really keen on writing this thing, I've had an idea to do something with this universe for quite a while. Expect familiar situations re-interpreted and alternative character interpretations. DRRR is one of my favorite anime, so I don't plan on going too far off of this. This prologue is a bit of a placeholder, admittedly, so expect Chapter One to be longer. Also! If anyone's interested in Beta reading, feel free to contact me.

1/14/2017: I've recently updated this chapter to make it flow a little better and fix any spelling mistakes or issues. Expect Chapter One within a week or so!