Warning: Again, beware Shizuo's foul mouth and a few gags involving women's underwear. It's nothing to bad- it's just Shinra being Shinra.


Chapter Four- Dr. Shinra or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

Celty knew that she was basically suicide-bombing the apartment by bringing Shizuo in while Shinra was home. Sure, she loved the unorthodox doctor, but she knew that Shinra was, well, he may have been a brilliant scientist, but Shinra was still idiotic enough to provoke Shizuo at any possible moment.

He'd claim it was in the name of science- that he was just keeping track of any changes in the ex-barista's muscular capabilities or something. It didn't really matter to Celty why Shinra did what he did to Shizuo; she just knew that his antics weren't a good idea.

Of course, neither was allowing Shizuo and Shinra to interact in an enclosed space. But leaving Shizuo to deal with the cops was the greater evil, so she figured that the three of them would just have to deal with the consequences of being around one another.

She just hoped that when things started to escalate, she could diffuse the bomb before her dearly beloved became the dearly departed.

Regardless, she snuck past most of the public eye as she zoomed between buildings, above dumpsters, through a car wash (Shizuo had been whapped in the face by the rotating brushes a few times), around street vendors, into a few unlucky clotheslines, through a window or five, back around it all again, and into her apartment building before dismounting her bike and thanking it profusely in her, well, whatever does the thinking in a Dullahan.

Poor Shooter really didn't get enough credit, but what can one do in gratitude for an immortal, shape shifting, and obedient mode of transportation that neither eats, sleeps, nor speaks? The mental "thank you" was the only token Celty could really give her trusty companion.

Speaking of trusty companions, Shizuo was dizzy from the incredible route Celty had taken to get back to her place of residence.

"Man, transporter, you really gunned it!" He ungracefully tipped off of his seat and steadied himself against the wall before sliding the ladies' brassiere (a souvenir from the clothesline encounter) off of his face. She could tell that he was exhilarated by the ride from the light flush on his face. Shizuo exhaled an excited breath and looked down at the article of clothing in his hands.

When he realized what it was, he swiftly placed in in Celty's outstretched and steadying palms.

"I think you can use that more than I can," he said, and she couldn't tell if his face was reddened from the ride or the bra.

If Celty had been an ordinary woman, Shizuo would have been correct in his bra assumption. The headless rider, however, wore nothing but her shadow and had no need for real clothing. Celty knew better than to explain this to Shizuo- she found it neither dignified nor pertinent for her male friend to understand that she was not human and did not need a bra because her perfect breasts were incapable of sagging.

She shrugged, slung the clothing over her shoulder, and pulled out her PDA.

[Sorry about the sudden ride. There would have been trouble if the cops had found you.] Celty knew better than to tell him about her acute fear of the head motorbike cop- if Shizuo found out, he'd stop at nothing to get the law (at least, its enforcers) off of her back.

It would have been a sweet gesture, but neither of them needed to get into another mess.

"No, it's okay. You're right." He gave the bike a sideways grin. "'Sides, It was kind of fun!"

In reply, Celty tilted her head a little and showed him her handheld screen again. [You can come in if you want. Shinra's here unless he got called in for a job.] Shizuo's face didn't seem to change at the doctor's mention, so she took that as a good sign and led her guest to the apartment door.

She had hardly walked into the living room before Shinra popped up from his place on the floor (what had he been doing there, anyway?) and raced to her side.

"Celty, my honey!" Chipper as usual. "How was that job? Not too bad, I hope."

Prior to her rendezvous with Shizuo in the park, Celty had delivered a package to the Awakusu. It was some kind of watercolor pencil or something, apparently- the man she'd given them to had laughed at her cautious handling of the goods and shown her what was inside.

It was hard to believe that the headless rider had been used as a simple delivery girl for such an innocent product, but she wasn't complaining.

[The job was easy.]

"Oh, that's great! Does that mean we have the afternoon to ourse—" Just then, Shizuo strode into the room from changing his shoes.

"Hey, Shinra," he said, and the other man replied with a pout.

[Shinra, don't be rude. I ran into Shizuo and brought him over here when I heard the-] her shoulders shook a little [-motorcycle cops approaching. Is that okay?]

"My darling honey, I wanted to have you all to myself this afternoon, but I suppose I can share you with-" Shinra's eyes fell on the flowery lingerie draped over his roommate's shoulder.

He snatched it up instantaneously. Celty would have been just as quick to realize the hell that broke loose in Shinra's mind upon seeing her enter the apartment with an unhooked bra and another man had she been one to interact with undergarments regularly. Unfortunately, she hadn't thought of it earlier and now it was too late. She regretted not tossing the thing out the window before Shinra could see it.

She began to type frantically.

Shinra gaped like a fish for about three minutes (accentuating his disbelief with throaty gasps in fifteen second intervals) before he managed real words.

"WHAT IS THIS?"

Celty had been spamming him with explanations on her PDA, but her assurance of the innocent origins of the bra could not stop Shinra's emotional oozing. The frilly straps and conspicuously-placed daisy pattern on the front of the cups did not help, either- his eyes hadn't left them since he'd spotted them.

"I THOUGHT- YOU SAID- JUST FRIENDS! BUT HE- REAL CLOTHING? WHY? IS THIS SOME KIND OF KINK Y THING HE MADE YOU DO? HOW-CELTY, DID SHIZUO FORCE YOU WITH HIS BRUTE STRENGTH TO DO THINGS IN REAL CLOTHES? WHY-? SICK BRUTE! VILLANOUS CUR! OPRESSIVE APE! CELTY, YOU'RE PERFECT JUST AS YOU ARE, YOU DON'T NEED LINGERIE! HOW COULD ANYONE WANT TO COVER UP YOUR GORGEOUS, CURVY—"

Celty was able to force a little bit of text into Shinra's mind. [NO- Shizuo didn't make me do ANYTHING like that!]

"YOU DID IT BECAUSE YOU WANTED TO? CELTY MY HONEY AM I NOT ENOUGH FOR YOU? I'LL DO ANYTHING FOR YOU- I CAN BE AN UNNATURAL ANOMALY LIKE THAT GUY- I'LL WORK OUT AND EAT NAILS FOR BREAKFAST EVERY DAY AND TRY TO LIFT VENDING MACHINES AND BE SO MANLY NOBODY BUT RIPLEY CAN BELIEVE IT- I CAN BE A WHOLE MUSEUM OF RIPLEY'S BELIEVE-IT-OR-NOT IF THAT'S WHAT YOU WANT!"

Celty was about to force her next message down his throat (along with her handheld so he'd at least shut up), but Shizuo beat her to the punch.

Luckily, there was not a literal punch involved. Yet.

"Shinra, what are you talking about?" He already looked annoyed by Shinra's infernal yelling, but can you imagine what he'd look like if he had caught onto the things Shinra was implying? Naïveté could only stall the impending doom Shizuo would no doubt bring upon the Kishitani residence, because Shinra proceeded to make himself obnoxiously clear:

"YOU AND MY DARLING, BEAUTIFUL, WONDERFUL, PERFECT CELTY HAVE BEEN FOOLING AROUND BEHIND MY BACK."

"…What?"

Okay, perhaps Shizuo needed a little more help than the average person. Shinra got past the frantically texting Celty and got face-to-face with Ikebukuro's Fighting Doll.

"YOU AND MY BLACK QUEEN, THE MARINADE ON MY SANDFISH, THE LOVE OF MY LIFE, HAVE BEEN DOING KINKY, NAUGHTY, TERRIBLE, WONDERFUL THINGS WITHOUT ME!"

Shizuo began to see the picture when the insufferable doctor began listing adjectives, but when he threw in "WONDERFUL", Shizuo was lost again.

Shinra held the brassiere up to Shizuo's face so he was staring straight at the daisies. "THIS SEXY PIECE OF INTRIGUE PROVES IT! ADMIT IT!" He began to shake the bra vigorously so that it rhythmically bopped Shizuo in the face.

"Stop it!"

The doctor did not heed him. "ADMIT THAT CELTY HONEY IS SO IRRESISTABLE THAT YOU BEGGED HER TO HAVE MERCY UNTIL SHE RELENTED AND FELT PITY ON YOU SO YOU AND SHE HAVE BEEN HAVING S-"

"GET THIS DAMNED THING OUT OF MY FACE!"

"IT'S NOT AS GOOD AS THE REAL THING, IS IT? NOTHING IS AS AWESOME AS THE REAL ENCHANTRESS! YOU DON'T HAVE TO TELL ME!"

"WHAT ARE YOU GETTING AT?" Shizuo ripped the bra out of Shinra's hands (the daisies on the cups, anyway) and loomed over him like an impending air raid. Looking at Shizuo's unshaded eyes through the frilly tangle of the remainder of the bra reminded Shinra of a wild beast glaring at passersby from the depths of the jungle. It wasn't very comforting.

Shinra's voice withered down immediately, on account of both the terrifying aura radiating from Shizuo and the brutal way he handled the brassiere. (On the other hand, the torn lingerie was also the reason the man of science ignored his logical side's urges to shut up entirely, so he hadn't actually been discouraged at all.) "Shizuo, you have to be gentle with her. How can you be such a brute?"

Ah, an insult- something Shizuo could actually understand. He snagged the good doctor by his white lab coat. "Shinra, do you want me to tear you apart BECAUSE I WILL."

Celty, who had resigned herself to standing between them both with her helmet in her hands (from laughter or exasperation, we'll never know), butted between the two and pushed them apart. She turned to face her roommate first.

[SHUT UP, SHINRA.]

"Yes, my darling!" Shinra, despite his conviction that Celty had been unfaithful, was still totally and utterly whipped.

Shizuo was not so tame, however. It took a bit more coaxing and patience to calm him down, but Celty did eventually manage to get them both quiet and obedient before she explained the origins of the bra to Shinra.

Actually, she had been quite successful in bossing them around- she had even made Shinra prepare tea for Shizuo as she was proving the blonde's innocence.

Shinra was the first to speak after the tea had been poured. "So, what was so special about this person Shizuo was running after? That's what started the whole fiasco."

Celty made a slashing motion across her throat (which was silly, as she had no head to mime severing) to keep Shinra from setting Shizuo off again, but the question had already been thrown out there.

Shizuo put down his tea.

"That asshole has this notebook that they keep dicking around with all the time and it's driving me insane." Besides his foul language, the only hint of Shizuo's annoyance was the intense grip he had on his knees.

[Shizuo has been curious about what's in this particular book for several days and he tried to point it out to me. The owner left before he could, so he chased after them. He wanted to prove he wasn't imagining the book's existence,] Celty added.

"Oh, and you went after him to keep him out of trouble! You are such a faithful friend, Celty! You're so perfect!" Shinra threw himself at her. She shoved him away.

[Get ahold of yourself.]

"But Shizuo, seriously? You went ballistic over wanting to peek in a notebook?"

"Yeah."

"That's low."

Shizuo looked up at Shinra and a look of shock, anger, and then self-loathing crossed his face.

Celty was going to berate Shinra, but the next words out of his mouth both overtook her and dispelled any notion that her beau was being malicious.

"I can't believe you'd do something as low as make up a fake chase in order to have a romantic ride with Celty through the streets of Ikebukuro! …Actually, I can't believe I didn't think of it!"

"Hey! The person really exists- they really were there!" Shizuo's anger was building again.

"Whatever, I know you were just overtaken by Celty's charm and planned for an exciting ride through the city." He forgot all about the notebook conspiracy and retreated into his own sick mind. "Sitting so close in such a time of danger~!" Shinra was just fantasizing to himself now, but Shizuo didn't know that.

The angry young man stood up and Celty swore that the sound that erupted from his chest mimicked an entire bombing squadron flying above her.

"Holding onto Celty's gorgeous perfection while the world flies by and wraps you in a cocoon of Ikebukuro love~!"

Shizuo exploded and nothing could stop him. Celty didn't even try.

As the sun slowly set on the city, several inhabitants snapped a photo on their cell phones of a mushroom-shaped cloud engulfing the top floor of a certain apartment complex.

Puts a whole new spin on the term "homewrecker", doesn't it?

When Shizuo went to bed that night, he thought about how lucky he was to have a friend like Celty who didn't hate him when he trashed her shared apartment. He was grateful for that idiot Shinra, too.

As for them, Shizuo knew they were lucky to have one another.

He felt a little unwell. Had Shinra put something in his tea? No, the doctor wouldn't do that. Maybe he was just tired.

After a few more minutes of tossing and turning, Shizuo got up and looked in the mirror. Was it his imagination or did he look a little green? He turned on the light and let it flood out into the rest of his apartment- it wasn't like there was anyone else in there with him who would be bothered by it.

Disgusted with himself, Shizuo turned the lights back off and went to bed.


Wow! I got this out a lot faster than I thought I would- I never know when I am and am not going to have oodles of time on a computer, so the update rate of this is, well, rather random. You'll get, like, five chapters real quick and then, like, nothing for, like, ever and then a whole bunch again and... aw, whatever, you get the point.

NOTHING SAYS OBNOXIOUS LIKE CAPS LOCK. OH, CAPS LOCK, YOU WERE MADE FOR SHINRA. I hope I didn't make any of you actually gouge your eyes out from the BIG RANTS he gave.

Anyway, thank you to all of you who are reviewing and watching! I really appreciate it more than you know!