Disclaimer: Welcome to the Permanent Disclaimer. Please make your insertion, followed by this silliness. Sign now?
Of course, I don't own Durarara. I have no affiliations to the wonderful creator of the manga personally either. The same goes toward the studio that did the crazy-awesome anime adaptation. I only own my original characters, and the ideas I have for this story. I don't have a lot of money really, so I don't believe any efforts to sue me would amount to much of anything.
Author Notes: I first of all would like to say that it's been some years since the last time I attempted to upload one of my stories onto this site. (Probably around 2005 or 2006 was the last time I updated anything on my account.) By sometime soon, after I've uploaded this, my profile page should be updated as to what happened back then. (Better off that way, or else I'd end up rambling about it!)
It's been a long time, and my writing has improved some along the way, so I hope that the webmasters and moderators of this site will let this story stay on here. I put a lot of time into writing my stories, and I get very perfectionist-like on them! Although I don't see any reason why this would get removed, for I've been a little more perfectionist than how I was so long ago…
One more thing, readers; I can't say I've got everything planned out as I'm writing and developing the plot. It's something for the both of us to take a journey to discover. 8D This new OC is a character so far, I promise, is interesting, and I hope to develop her well and make this story so good and exciting that I'd want to do a very intense sequel for it. That's my goal.
Summary: Post-Anime. The Dollars go international. (Mikado didn't see why not.) Jenna decided to check out the website upon a friend's suggestion. Despite the weird name, she discovers how genuinely friendly the online community is. In finding the user-friendly chatroom, she finds it a good escape from the struggles that come with of living her semi-mundane life from time to time.
Izaya Orihara, who had recently left Ikebukuro, decided to go to America on a mission only Namie Yagiri knows about. He didn't exactly choose to lay low from the rest of the world—with his plan to start an international war to wake up Celty Stuluson's head. In search of discovering and meeting new humans to play with on the other side of the planet, checking the Dollars would be the first of places to look.
Their paths crossed. Jenna, in her own words, doesn't mind explaining what happened.
Meanwhile in Ikebukuro, does the Tokyo district truly fare well during the information broker's absence?
How Far Are You Willing to Go?
Prologue: On the Run
From what had been a risky and exhilarating mission of personal importance, I was shown that everything we had arranged was shattering to pieces. I realized this as I was running—as fast as my legs could move! It was more of a crucial instinct than a thought process to just get the hell away from him. I felt I couldn't be around that conniving rotten bastard anymore, not even for one more second. The revealing betrayal and horror I felt was more than I could stand.
I had heard plenty enough. It sent my mind reeling. What was supposed to be smooth sailing had turned into a most hideous and sporadic storm the moment he spilled his twisted intentions to me.
A familiar roar of a voice and a flying vending machine soon flew over us. My eyes widened to their maximum as my heart was racing in my chest. Holy shit-Shizuo! The timing was almost convenient, as I had started to move away from the other man who had tried to take hold of my arm. While the two went at each other similar to what I had seen previously, my entire body pumped itself full of adrenaline and took off.
I had been taken for a ride, and there was nothing I detected to suspect him for being so sick, twisted, insane! What he showed me, all the things he just said—those words from earlier I heard were repeating in my head. It echoed in there, as I felt caught in a climax of a horror-suspense movie. In getting in and out of trouble in my lifetime, I've never been in anything going so terribly wrong, so fast.
This and more to be scared about! I was on my own in a foreign country I was not familiar with. I wasn't very familiar with the Japanese language either. Guess who had started to teach me, little by little. That's right; it would be none other than the devious, manipulating creep I kept running from. What a guy-to cause me to feel a dose of instant panic like this.
Oh, and here's another fact: He knew Tokyo a whole lot better than I did. Those two things hit me like two sudden, hard jabs to my stomach. Of fucking course he does, I cursed to myself, my mind in a frenzied state of disbelief and fear. I couldn't really think—my brain hadn't quite caught up past the dust cloud the rest of me left behind. I only knew that staying around him (temporarily or permanently) was out of the question. This overwhelming surge of emotion screamed that loud and clear. I would have to be brain-dead otherwise!
I couldn't be entrapped into a life revolving around madness and violence as a plaything in his eyes. Hell no—I was my own free person! I had my own life and loved ones, and there was no way I was going to let my mom and my friends back home get mixed up in that. I couldn't do that to certain friends I made here in Ikebukuro either.
My chances of escaping for good were still slim though. I couldn't hide for long, and I had no clear direction to where I was going—only far, far away from the danger. I most certainly did not know anyone who could protect me that the sociopath didn't know about. It was through him that I met Celty and Shizuo, those who had the agility and skills to catch up to him. They had a better chance than the cops ever would.
I ran endlessly past two blocks across a crosswalk while avoiding to collide into anyone, and then through a narrow space between two office buildings. Over and over I was mentally kicking myself for being taken advantage of—even when I did not see it coming. I had been as cautious as I felt I had to be, but that whole time he had hidden a side that was so despicable and revoltingly terrible. Knowing that he hid away his darkest secrets so well for a long time had to be the scariest thing of all.
I so badly wished I had the money to take a plane back home now. I had what I needed in order to get Mr. Trigger Happy Yakuza Thug brought to justice. I could prove to my friend in spirit and myself on how much I deeply cared for him, that it wasn't too late... I'd have to scrape all the travel expenses on my own from here, no thanks to Izaya Orihara.
I ran pretty far, and hadn't heard that playful tone of voice behind me. I hadn't heard much of anything other than the very distant noise of things crashing and breaking, as well as the panicky cries and screams from scattering pedestrians. It was all rising over the normalcy that went on in any other city.
I must have lost them by now, once I finished zigzagging through an alleyway that had nothing but trash and a few cats scurrying out of my way. Shizuo back there looked really pissed, and he terrified me when he got like that. Three times have I seen him so out of control, and I still couldn't believe someone like him actually existed. It's good to know that gene pool he emerged from didn't design him to be always so full of rage.
My lungs were starting to burn from doing more than I usually did during a sprint. Lately, when first coming to Ikebukuro I've been doing quite a bit of running around, and my body was barely adjusting to craziness that included Izaya and the blonde Japanese Superman, A.K.A. Shizuo Heiwajima.
Eventually I stopped my blind panic run, and looked behind me. There was no one. I let out a heavy sigh, relieved to have gotten a good amount of distance from Izaya—for now.
Yet I was proven wrong as I was turning around. He must have taken a really epic parkour route to spot me because there he was, standing five feet or so away. I froze and held my breath. I had an icy feeling down my spine at seeing him beam in sinister delight.
"You can't possibly believe you can get rid of me that easy, Jenna-chan," he breathed. He wagged his finger at me. "You're a smart person, so you should have figured it out in the middle of telling you almost everything..." The slightly winded version of his often playful, teasing affections toward me I started to see in a different light now. His auburn eyes took on a glinted predatory look as he grinned at me so wickedly. He caught his breath, chuckled, and added, "Denying your curiosity at this point would make you look pathetic, my friend. And taking off like that was so sudden, so unlike you. Tell me, does the truth scare you that badly?"
The way he said "friend" was, of course, a fucking joke to him at my expense. I knew that now. I must have been soooo entertaining for him the whole damn year we've known each other. Realizing this made my stomach tighten. I was doing all I could to hold back any tears—not wanting to appear or feel any weaker than I already was.
A glare and a slight rise in my voice came automatically. I could barely control myself, being so upset—and it was scaring the crap out of me! "Like I'd have a better reaction to a sociopath who keeps a person's head in a big jar for shits and giggles! And you know what? I don't thi-"
Izaya took a few quick steps forward to put a finger to my lips, before I could get out anything else. He lowered his voice, sounding semi-serious as that smirk was shrinking down to a half smirk. "You might want to be careful, Jenna-chan. Spouting that off out here might get you killed... We'll have to talk more on this later-once I'm done with Shizu-chan."
I didn't get to follow through with my sudden jolt of an impulse to shove him away. At about a split second later, I heard hard and fast running on the street as the blonde in the bartender's attire came around the corner, still looking pissed as hell. Shizuo was about to swing that stop sign he was holding effortlessly above his head. "IZAYAAAA!"
I immediately dropped down from where I was standing, and inwardly begged for Shizuo to only hit Izaya, and not me. I mean, I knew I got to be such a hard-head at times when it came to following others' advice—but Shizuo had to know I learned my lesson putting any trust in Izaya.
Right?
(Hey, why not have a bit of Closing A/N?) I loved how this turned out. It's so unlike any other beginning I've done in any story of mine. 8D
