The fire doesn't spread as fast as Izaya was hoping, but that's alright. He's not actually trying to burn the Blue Squares to death. Just scare them. The character for 'family' he painted out across the concrete floor in gasoline is illegible, unfortunately, but his expectations weren't that high.
The important thing is that the Blue Squares scatter to avoid the flames. Most of them run, which is good. Izaya didn't block the exit with fire on purpose. It might spread there eventually, but those who wanted to abandon their leader's pointless cause out of fear of a painful death had the option. Now it's just Izaya, Izumii, and two of the undoubtedly stupider members left in the warehouse.
Izumii shouts profanity at the boys who run but can't stop them. Not unless he wants Izaya to escape with all his bones intact. He rounds on Izaya quickly screaming his rage and running to the base of the blocked stairs with his pair of idiots. The blockade won't hold them for long, it's only made of the furniture around the hideout. Izaya only put it together to keep them from charging him immediately. He needed to make sure they stayed down there long enough to see the light show Izaya took the time to make for them.
"I'm gonna KILL YOU, ASSHOLE!" Izumii roars as his battle cry, tossing aside couches and tables with the help of his goons.
This next trap is very reminiscent of his childhood.
Well, not exactly, his house doesn't have all the useful, exposed pipes on the ceiling like the warehouse does, but it's close. When he first designed it as a child he thought of it more along the lines of a slapstick comedy prank. Now he knows just how dangerous it is.
Just as the boys are vaulting over the last chair lzaya acts. He knows the timing for this will be close, but he's done it before. He throws a short, loose pipe he removed earlier, but not at the Blue Squares. They all duck, thinking he was aiming for them, and just as they right themselves with triumphant grins, a pile of loosened pipe-work collapses from the ceiling.
The boys look up to the sounds of metal scraping together and air whistling through hollow, three centimeter wide pipes falling from the ceiling. Just before any of them are hit in the head they cover themselves with their arms and crouch down. They cry out in pain and anger as five pipes collide with their arms and upper back.
Izumii seems to be more angry than in pain. He roars like the child of a beast and shakes off the blossom of bruises on his upper back and charges up the stairs with his lackeys close behind.
As much as Izaya's enjoying the show, he really needs to get moving.
He doesn't let himself think about it when he looks out over the patches of fire dying out on the concrete. Occasionally it flares up when it catches on a junk-yard rug or a patchy bean-bag chair. But without enough fuel, it's going to die. The character Izaya meticulously painted is completely lost. Just like the Blue Squares' family. And maybe…
He doesn't think about the 10-foot drop when his hand grabs the metal guard rail and his foot braces against it. This is just physics. He only thinks that he has to stay loose. He needs to keep his legs bent. His weight lurches forward just as fear grips his throat, but it's too late. He can't change his mind now.
He jumps just as Izumii's hammer comes down on the metal platform where Izaya was standing with a horrible crash.
Izaya can hear the metal screech behind him and the rattle of the old bolts struggling against the force of Izumii's hammer, but that's all background to the air whooshing past his ears. The ground is coming fast. So much faster than he thought it would-!
...
"Oh, Nakura…" Izaya tutted, snapping a photo of the scene in front of him. He had been keeping an eye on Nakura for weeks, ever since Shizuo had gotten his jacket as evidence of Izaya's… behavior in the guidance counselor's office. He had just wanted to be sure Nakura wasn't planning to make any moves against him, and what he saw was so much better.
Nakura, stealing money from the fundraising boxes the clubs had worked so hard for…
Not a lot of money. Just a few yen here and there. But stealing and stealing, awful bad to be caught on camera.
Nakura whirls around to face Izaya, the voice of his tormentor, masked as he was the last time.
"I didn't-! This isn't what it looks like! I- I was just counting-!"
"Counting how much you think you can get away with taking. You probably thought: if it's just a little, a bill or two, they'll probably just think they made a mistake." Izaya drawls, looking at the photo on his phone screen with a grin that sharpens his eyes. "Wow, you're not very photogenic. Maybe we should take another and I'll try a different angle."
Nakura's face goes from pale with terror to red with rage.
"W-what the hell is wrong with you?! Why do you keep doing this to me?!" He snaps, still sweating nervously even through his outburst.
Izaya laughs because to him, this is funny. This is genuine entertainment.
"Because you make it so easy, my dear friend. You should be thanking me. You're not cut out for a life of crime and I'm saving you from it!"
Nakura jerks back as though he's been slapped, but then rears back. He clutches desperately to his anger, as though it would make Izaya take think twice about messing with him. But he's slipping into fear and submission quickly.
"What- what do you want me to do this time? Be-because this is the last favor, you got that?!"
Izaya laughs again. At least Nakura is smart enough not to waste his time begging Izaya to delete the photo. That would've been really embarrassing. He's finally starting to speak Izaya's language. Business. Izaya slips his phone into his pocket and rewards Nakura's understanding with getting to the point.
"At one-thirty in the morning you're going to call an anonymous tip to the police and you're going to give them this address." Izaya pulls a torn piece of notebook paper from his jacket pocket and hands it to Nakura who accepts it with trembling hands.
"Wh-what is i-it?"
"The hideout of the infamous Blue Squares."
"The Blue-!" Nakura's voice cracks.
"Yes. Now keep quiet if you want to stay anonymous, ne?"
The Blue Squares have been dodging cops a long time now and these five guys will have known exactly how to shake them so they couldn't be followed. And that won't do at all .
...
The ground comes so much faster than Izaya's expecting. He lets his legs collapse beneath him and manages to tuck into a haphazard roll, but it's sloppy, and his ankle twists painfully. There's no snap, no agony of a break, just the sharp twang of a twisted ankle. Sprained at worst and nothing he can't push away in favor of survival. He reaches into Kanra's- into his boot and pulls the kitchen knife out as he comes out of the roll, landing in a crouch and ready just in case-!
He looks up just in time to see that crazy bastard follow him off the platform, his hammer trailing after him brandished high. Poised to- No. It is crashing down towards Izaya's head. A solid block of iron. Deadly. Easily able to crush every single one of Izaya's bones under its weight with the full force of gravity-
It's weight.
Izumii's hammer must be extremely heavy and Izumii is no beautiful monster boiling over with strength and energy. Izumii is only human. A human foolish enough to haul around such a ridiculous weapon. Izaya learned the hard way there's nothing quite as exhausting as a fight and Izumii's body must be expending twice as much energy as Izaya's is just by tossing that thing around. There's no doubting how dangerous a sledgehammer is, but how long could Izumii possibly keep up with Izaya with that as his weapon of choice?
Izaya can do this. He tightens his grip on the kitchen knife and dives out of the path of the hammer towards the outside of Izumii's body, managing to slash the underside of Izumii's forearm through his long, blue sleeves. Drawing first blood.
All Izaya has to do is outlast him.
Just tired him out, and he can win.
Of course, there's two more he's got to worry about as well.
"Fuck!" Izumii curses and stumbles back clutching his bleeding arm. There's no telling how deep the cut is, only that the blood that's dropped down Izaya's blade is sticky. How disgusting.
"Little bitch came ready to play, huh?!"
Izumii lunges forward with his empty, undamaged arm outstretched towards Izaya and this attack is noticeably faster than when he took a swing with his hammer. But he's not fast enough to get a hold of Izaya.
For now, Izaya needs to stay focused on two things only. Avoiding the hammer and staying out of his grasp. He holds onto those thoughts as his source of belief in himself.
By now Izumii's lackeys have come back down the staircase and are brandishing the pipes Izaya had dropped on them as weapons. Instead of staying back to watch the fight, they charge forward, uninterested in letting this be a one-on-one match. Izaya didn't expect less. They are a gang, after all.
But Izaya's had larger groups charge him before. All he has to do is keep moving, and keep them in line with each other to increase the probability of their attacks crossing. This isn't some choreographed movie fight, they're bound to slip up and hit each other and one good whack from a lead pipe will be enough to put someone out of the game.
All Izaya has to do is not be the one benched.
For several exhausting, heart pounding minutes it's a deadly game of tag. Or at least, Izaya thinks he's exhausted, but he can't feel much of anything around the adrenaline. He jumps back away from a swipe of short pipe to gain distance as he has no intention of using his own short-range weapon if he doesn't have to. He leans to his left and back to avoid the slightly longer pipe and darts to the side to avoid the sledgehammer again. He circles the boys to keep them stumbling over one another, taking advantage of the open space he didn't have in the alley.
Izumii's lackeys don't attack nearly as often as Izaya had thought they might. From a tactical standpoint it seems most advantageous in theory to attack as often as possible to overwhelm the opponent, but in practice, they're reluctant to get close, but not because of Izaya and his kitchen knife. It's because Izumii is a mad man with that sledgehammer and neither of them wants to be in striking distance. Izaya can relate as he side-steps, ducks, and rounds a blackened card table to kick towards Izumii's only to be turned into splinters.
"Come on, asshole! If you wanna stab me get over here and do it already! You brought the knife, right?! You wanna kill me?!"
He's wrong. Izaya doesn't want to kill him. Izaya just wants him to know he could have killed him. If Izaya does kill him, then he won't have to live with the knowledge his empire was destroyed and his life could have been taken by a skinny nerd in drag.
However, Izaya is running low on time. If his internal clock is correct, which it is, they have about ten minutes before the cops show up.
Izaya turns to run and vault over the couch but only makes it two steps before a hand grabs hold of his hair. There's a sharp tug on his scalp but he can afford to let the pain distract him. Panic and another surge of adrenaline push him forward and-!
The wig comes off.
Ah… Izaya had almost forgotten his hair isn't that long. It was Kanra-
No. It was just Izaya's wig.
And it doesn't stop him from vaulting over the old couch.
"What the fuck?!" The lackey with the short pipe throws away the tangled wig in shock, his voice cracking over fear and confusion in the most hilarious way.
"Ah, come on, those things aren't easy to maintain, y'know?" Izaya purrs, dropping his lashes the same way he did to make Shizuo crazy for him. He steps back further from the couch poised for another attack, watching the movements of the boys with his knife held up and close to his body.
The boy with the short pipe shakes his free hand like he's trying to get cobwebs off to get rid of some strands of black hair, looking disgusted.
"Y-you're not a girl!" He shouts.
Izaya rolls his eyes at such a waste of words. But he can't keep away the curl of a grin. There's something so satisfying about being caught. Maybe it's the entertainment value of the shock. Who doesn't love a good plot twist? Maybe it's the possibility of having someone appreciate the amount of work and planning that went into this.
Without changing his defensive stance he hooks his pointer finger into the soft cotton of his black turtleneck to pull it down and expose his Adam's apple to the shadowy lighting of the warehouse.
"Nice detective work." He says dryly.
"Gross! I always said Akihito was a fag, didn't I?!" The boy with the long pipe exclaims a bit too enthusiastically.
"No, you didn't!"
Suddenly, Izumii rushes forward, clearly more interested in satisfying his need for blood than whatever stupid argument his boys want to have. He leaps over the couch, hammer raised to bring down on Izaya. It's the very same attack he used from the staircase landing except Izaya's ready this time. This time he ducks into Izumii's body. This time, he goes on the offensive.
The boys are stuck on the other side of the couch and can't get around in time to back Izumii up. Izaya doesn't hesitate. He doesn't think about the stickiness of blood or the pain he'll be causing a human being. He doesn't think of what it means to be violent, what it means to hurt.
"I was right, you're just like my brother! Too pretty for your own good! I wonder if you'll struggle and cry like he did, or if you'll actually like it!"
He thinks about humiliating Izumii in a way that he'll never be able to forget and slashes a deep cut across Izumii's right cheek. One that he knows will scar.
Around him, all hell breaks loose, but Izaya doesn't see it. All Izaya can see is the splatter of red and feel that warm, sticky blood between his fingers. Except there's more. And it's just as disgusting as it was the first time. But Izaya can't worry about that because he's kicking a slow, distracted Izumii back towards the couch and leaping on top of him. He can't hear anything but pounding of his own heart that sends his own blood through his veins and he dives on top of Izumii's. He presses the kitchen knife to his throat and now is the time. He has a message to deliver.
"Remember-"
But Izaya can't finish. He's wrenched away from Izumii by the back of his shirt like he's nothing more than an angry child.
A/N:
Wow, that was my first time writing actual action. And I think it shows lol
But seriously, sorry for taking so long to update, and thank you all for your continued support. The response I've gotten for this story has been unbelievably wonderful! And it's almost over!
Since the end is approaching so soon, I'd like to tell you all about the last little hurray I'll be doing for this story. As I said before, the response I've gotten for this story has been so incredible and I've actually received fanart for it! Crazy, I know. So, I'll be dedicating a tag in my tumblr to all the wonderful fanart people have done for this story, as well as my own concept art that I did when this little story of mine was just starting out.
So, if you want to see great fanart because you're craving more Bookcase, or just have a might need for some lovely shizaya art, as we all do, check out the tag 'bookcase' on my blog here: search/bookcase