The Fear of Chainsaws 3
The streets bustled with life in some places, and in others they were as quiet as the dead. Denji was able to see the division clearly and change the scenery with just a couple of steps to get to the other edge of the building he was resting on top of.
He took another slice of this pizza thing the old geezer told him about and got half of it in his mouth in a single bite. It was cold already, but it was apparently alright to eat it that way. Such a wonderful recipe, which went really well with such beautiful scenery in this Burooktun Beii place he found himself in.
It was so peaceful, so pretty. The cars themselves had their rhythm and hummed in the distance, a pleasant tune Denji could certainly fall asleep to, and the people seemed full of life and things to do. Everyone was going somewhere, even if they looked sad or displeased, with small tabloid things on their hands more often than not and a fashion sense that seemed like an explosion of color when Denji first saw them.
There were no blatant deaths, no devils rampaging and spreading fear among the people. Which kind of sucked since that meant Denji was jobless if the situation was the norm, but these slow days slacking off and just doing whatever with Power were great as well. Besides, it wasn't as if he would be running out of money soon.
He got his small bag full of money, thanks to the people that would be generous enough to have their wallets with them while attacking him. Very kind of them, to be honest. Back in Japan assholes weren't so understanding. They either held back their identities or ran away whenever he got his chainsaws out, but in this place they were small fry and funded his newfound passion for pizza and hamburgers.
Power would love it here. Though reigning her in would be hella complicated without the bureau nearby… She would still love it.
"Can you see it, Pochita?" Denji asked the air while placing his hand on the chest, fondling the cord in the center of it for a moment "It's great. Makima-san's not here, but it's great here."
Living the dream. These people were living the dream right there.
Denji dropped his hand to the cardboard box he dropped to his right, but found nothing else in it. He had been chewing while sightseeing, so he had already finished the pizza without realizing.
Well, nothing to do about it. Now, to eagerly wait for that place to open once more and order another one!
Or so he would like to say, but waiting around was not really Denji's thing. He would rather be doing anything else, even if it was lazing around, than to stay put and wait. Waiting was for losers. It didn't get devils killed, action did. And if what the old geezer told him was true, then Denji could get himself things to do before the pizza place opened.
Revving his heart, Denji threw himself off the building he had been slacking off on and reached out with his arms. Blood came out when the chainsaws bursted through his limbs and head, but he managed to shoot the chains before touching the ground and pulled himself back up to grapple the next building and move around.
This whole superhero business sounded thoroughly complicated, well beyond what Denji was capable of remembering. He was sure he had already forgotten like half of the info dump the old geezer did, and what he remembered was probably not enough to find his way in this work environment, but that was no problem at all.
There were people with strange powers, but they were human. Got it, that was all Denji really needed to know.
That meant, of course, that the metal dude was human… Or had been. And though Denji would be hard pressed to say he ate that day with the same vigor as before, the truth was that he hadn't known at the moment and no one could fault him for thinking that thing had been a fiend of some kind.
So he would do things right this time. He had learned that following the rules went a long way in making life more comfortable. And although he seriously doubted he would get a boss as wonderful and understanding as Makima-san, it was worth trying to play ball with people.
It stopped the bureau people from wanting to kill him, so being in good behavior did improve things. Or so Denji hoped.
Denji grappled the floor and pulled himself after detecting trouble. He used his chainsaws to dig into the face of a building and slow down his descent until he just jumped the remaining three or so floors to land heavily on the street.
He recognized the colors. The people following the duplicating asshole wore them, and they obviously meant trouble. They seemed surprised to see Denji just randomly fall from the sky, but quickly composed themselves and took a few tentative steps back away from their victim.
How to say this… It felt very anticlimactic.
"Scram!" Denji shouted, spinning his chainsaws for a moment before the thugs just nodded and went their merry way. Leaving their victim behind without more trouble.
It was a girl. One that looked more like the people in Japan than almost everyone else in the city, but still had something that made her look different although Denji couldn't put his finger on what.
The girl scurried away as well, without looking back or even thanking Denji for his effort… Well, that sucked. He wouldn't complain about a kiss for reward, at least on the cheek. On top of not getting into a real fight… Well, Denji didn't count this encounter and swung his chains back to the top of the surrounding buildings to find his actual first encounter of the night.
There wasn't much of anything around, nor farther away from the place the gang members had come from. It was, after all, a pretty calm city all things considered. The only thing Denji got his chainsaws into were walls and concrete while he moved around from building to building. Which was nice, he supposed, but didn't really get his heart beating like a good fight did.
He did appreciate not getting severely hurt and bleeding all over the place for once. But if the night was going to be this boring, then was it really a good thing? To begin with, the old geezer said there were a lot of bad guys around downtown or something like that. Yet Denji got himself in trouble more often while he was messing around in the afternoon than at night.
Sure, maybe he wasn't as good at solving things in the name of the law thing. But Denji had years of fighting devils on his back. He understood almost instinctively that 'a violent city' meant he should have at least bumped into a couple of bad guys or two. How come there was no one to fight like he fought the spiked man or the duplicating asshole?
Man, these guys didn't know how good they had it…
Denji went down again, using his chains to actually swing himself for once instead of pulling and pulling in the air. He gently kicked a skinhead out of the way of a fleeing black skinned woman before returning to his chain pulling method. The woman screamed, but Denji sent the skinhead flying a good couple of meters, so she had plenty of room to keep up her pace.
Wait, she was running. Right?
Denji spun in the air and applied the same method to her pursuers. He gently tapped them with her feet and sent them flying farther back to give the woman a chance to keep on running.
Now satisfied, Denji went back to the rooftops and kept on pulling the chains to move.
Disappointing. So thoroughly disappointing. Maybe this city was more in Aki's strike zone than Power's. This place would easily be Master's playground for a couple of days before the man grew tired of squishing weaklings and the licor, and went back to Tokyo. Would this even register as a vacation spot? Knowing Master, Denji doubted it. The girls were nice and beautiful, so maybe Master would consider it? Who knows. Denji would have to ask when Makima-san came to pick him up.
"Makima-san…" Truth be told, Denji had only gone along with this heroing business because he was growing impatient. Someone like Makima-san would no doubt be smarter than Denji could comprehend, so he had no doubt in his mind the sexy lady would eventually find him again. He was getting so bored of just punching and kicking some randos at night and getting lost during the day. He would even take on Power babysitting without Aki instead of doing absolutely nothing here.
It didn't occur to him that maybe he would have more things to do if he knew the language. After all, he could count and buy things by pointing at them just fine. Surely the communication department was covered, right?
Even if the old geezer insisted he should talk to this so-called pee-aru-tee. The thought that maybe the language barrier was damning his stay in Brockton Bay never crossed his mind. Only coming close when people tried talking to him and annoyance at not understanding surfaced on both ends.
After all, Makima-san said he should not talk to strangers, and should not reveal his ability to turn into a chainsaw devil unless she expressly said so or his survival was at stake. And Makima-san knew better than he did. So even if she wasn't around, Denji had her words in mind.
Well, maybe he was bending the rules a bit at the moment. But in his defense, if he didn't go around doing this hero business, he might actually die out of boredom. Right? That was a perfectly valid fear. After all, Denji had never felt this sort of thing before. He always had things to do or think about, even while Pochita was by his side. Or especially back then. Nowadays other people could do the thinking, he didn't mind. Denji was more a person of action, after all.
"Hey! Listen!" Was that…?! That was japanese, wasn't it?!
Denji spun in the air again and threw himself at one of the rooftops that had two people waiting for him. They were dressed even weirder than the people he had seen, to the point Denji felt like he didn't want to get near them once he spotted them. But japanese was japanese. Maybe they were Makima-san's people!
"Sup, Chainsaw Boy!" When Denji got close, he realized the voice was coming out of some kind of device on the guy's hand. And his actual voice was gibberish like the rest.
"Hey." Denji replied, hearing his own voice come from the device in gibberish a moment later.
Oh?! What the hell! That was so creepy!
"Hey yourself." The taller guy replied "I'm Uber, and this is Leet. How's it going?"
Oh? Denji remembered those names. These were bad guys, right?
"They call themselves gamers. But they're just villains like the rest."
Or so the geezer said. Now, Denji didn't understand what geimaas were, but it sounded like it was just another way to call bad guys. Ok, gamers were evil. He got it. Won't forget it.
Denji raised his chainsaws.
"Woah! Easy there, sharp boy!" Both of them flinched, getting a step or two farther back from Denji "Didn't you like our video? I thought it was pretty cool!"
Video?
"I don't know what you're talking about." Denji stated "But you're bad guys so I'll kick the shit out of you!"
The two gamers reacted, one getting out of the way and the other getting in some sort of shooting position.
Hah, the suckers.
Denji threw his chains at them, taking the smaller guy by the throat and the taller one by the shoulders. He janked them back to him before he could get shot rammed into them with the chainsaws out of the way.
And then they broke.
"The hell?!"
Like glass statues they fragmented and scattered on the floor like Denji had just smashed a pretty big window. The only thing that remained was the object that had been spewing their voices and his from japanese to gibberish and back. Denji retracted his chainsaw to catch it, before going back on guard since he understood what happened, even if he didn't really get how.
The crystal fragments started dissolving like smoke.
"Come face me! What are you, chicken?!" Denji roared, ignoring the weird black box spewing his own voice in gibberish. He placed it on his mouth, careful with his dagger fangs and threw his chains into the air after jumping off the roof to try and give chase.
He was starting to really hate the 'we have reinforcements' kind of bad guys.
Once with the Zombie Devil was enough. Twice with the Doll Devil was already one too many, but a third time? A fourth?! Boy, was Denji going to do something about it!
He didn't really know where to give chase to, but had to go somewhere and he was too bothered to really think deeply about it.
The sound of gibberish gave him a trail to follow. Even if the box didn't pick it up, Denji still recognized the voice of the taller dude mocking him.
He jumped off walls and light poles, sent sparks flying when his strength crushed the innocent objects. He shook his head trying to see where the two gamers had gone.
He smashed on the walkway, releasing the black box from his mouth to catch it with his arms the next moment. Denji roared in annoyance.
There was no one where the voice had come from.
They ran away! Other people would have killed him from the back, but no! They escaped like cowards! Denji could revive, and then cut his aggressors. But he couldn't if they just disappeared like that!
The box in his mouth kicked back to life.
"Look, Leet. What do we have here?"
Denji stared at the roof above, from where the two gamers were staring down at him.
Uber threw a box at Denji, from which pointed sticks were released and rained down on him like the projectiles they were.
"There are more around here, Uber." Leet replied, giving his companion another box with arrows for him to throw down.
They still had the gun. Which Denji remembered midway through the air.
So he spun and threw himself around the building, coming up from behind them with his chainsaws still so he wouldn't be given away.
Leet turned around and pointed at Denji, but he already had his chainsaws started and janked the weapon out of his hand with the chain before throwing it backwards to the alley below.
"Oh-oh…"
Denji landed on all fours while Leet got out of the way, now unarmed.
Uber got himself into a fighting position and dashed for Denji, who retreated the chainsaws of his arms before the villain got in his face.
Uber sent a straight uppercut, connecting with Denji's stomach in what obviously was a perfectly executed hit.
Denji took it, and answered with a knee to the balls.
"Oof…!"
"Was that really necessary?!" Leet took out some sort of bomb and threw it straight at Denji.
His first instinct was to cut it. But that just caused it to start releasing a shitton of smoke, which immediately was capitalized by Leet who rushed to his companion's side.
Denji spun around, foot raised to kick that guy into oblivion…
...But was stopped since the smoke was becoming solid foam and was growing more and more until Denji's left side of his body was completely immovile.
"It worked!" Leet roared in clear surprise "Uber! It's gaseous containment foam! It fucking worked!"
His friend was too busy throwing up his dinner, but the smaller guy didn't seem to mind it too much. He still helped him stand, but the euphoria was clear even without the translator box.
It sounded muffled to Denji, since his face was already trapped within the foam, but it was clear as day they were going to escape again.
Denji spun his chainsaws.
"Oh, for fuck's sake!"
The chainsaws cut cleanly through the foam. Though they didn't help much to get him out of the greater structure.
It took Denji a bit of time to cut himself out, but only because that thing kept on growing so Denji had to keep cleaving it off his body.
He razed through his chainsaw mask to clear off the way to see, roaring at the idea that the gamers would be gone again.
He took a step to tackle them both.
Then an arrow randomly materialized at Leet's side.
"Aaaaahh?!" The guy was thrown into a scrambling fit as the projectile pierced his shoulder, not really drawing blood at all but confusing the hell out of Denji for the suddenness of it all.
The bow, perhaps? Was she still around?
No.
A shadow came down on them, turning to a cloaked figure that was just barely visible in the dark.
The shadow screeched at the villains and started pummeling them, to the point Denji couldn't even understand the box parroting her words.
Oh, well.
Denji quickly came up to the shadow, who reacted by kicking at him.
Denji raised his chainsaw arm without spinning it and took the hit.
What the hell? Weren't they on the same side? If the shadow was attacking villains then it had to be a hero, right? But if it also attacked Denji…
Well, devils did that too. Even if Denji didn't fully understand this whole hero business, he understood one thing: If he wanted people to stop attacking him, he needed to pummel them to the ground.
His chainsaws roared.