Ikebukuro. An electric labyrinth of chrome and neon; an electric labyrinth of scum and greed. The dirt of back alleys mingled freely with the dazzling lights of commercial entertainment here. Together, they created a hybrid city life that ran amok through the crowded streets, causing a dangerous electricity to pulse through the city unlike any other district of Tokyo.

Most did well to avoid this monster, keeping themselves to the cleanly swept streets outside Ikebukuro station or the ramen shops and establishments labelled clearly in any tourist guidebook as friendly and trouble-free. But sometimes, even the most cautious of people got swept up in the unpredictable chaos. And that unpredictability was exactly why Izaya Orihara loved Ikebukuro more than he ever could another living person.

It was in this metropolis of bright lights, crowded streets and hardened characters that Izaya called home. The city of Tokyo welcomed his absolute ambition like no other. It revelled in his desire to toy with each and every citizen, and Ikebukuro was his personal playground.

This evening Izaya sat on his rooftop balcony, finding great contentment in entertaining this thought as he cast his gaze over the Tokyo cityscape.

An uncharacteristically warm breeze lapped at the skyline tonight. Izaya had been sitting outside for about twenty minutes already, simply allowing the young autumn breeze to caress his face and body as he perched on the iron railing boxing his office balcony. When he closed his eyes, he could almost feel the breath of the living city below.

Millions of lives; salarymen, students, teachers, restaurant workers, taxi drivers; the list went on. All those people with the opportunities of a neon wonderland laid out before them and still most chose to live their lives in the most utterly mundane manner conceivable. They followed every rule, never got into anything over their heads, and not only that, but they were praised for planning to continue on this path through the entire compilation of their waking lives.

A single eternity gone up in the smoke of banality. Izaya could only find himself disappointed in them. These people would never do anything to make their own lives interesting. But that was why he was there. He was looking out for them, or rather down over them, like some rogue God playing his role in some ancient Grecian lore.

He trained his ears on the rattle of cars below, the backfiring of engines from the taxi's shunting down Otome road, and the clap of shoes, worn to the sole, crossing outside Ikebukuro station. The constant buzz of voices rose from the bright lights below in a disorienting smog, rising like some great funk of humanity.

From his balcony view, it looked as though someone had stretched a great sheet of shining metal over the concrete skyscrapers and buildings below - the famed Tokyo skyline, a glimmering city, twinkling in the eye of progress and setting the standard for the future of Japan's continued economic prosperity.

Izaya began to grin. Clad in his usual all-black, he also began to swing his legs provocatively over the railing of his Tokyo office. He didn't grin for Japan's silver ray of hope, nor out of respect for the dying hearts of salarymen enjoying a late-night meal before returning to the grind of their suicidal overwork culture. No. Instead, he grinned for the 5%. Those 5% of occurrences when the grease and oil lingering beneath his tinfoil city would meet the residents on its surface. A wrong turn down a dangerous alley, the accidental rooftop drops, the dark roads any lax visitor to Ikebukuro could mistakenly wander on to. When the drunk salaryman encounters a man capable of tossing a vending machine fifteen yards across the asphalt, when quiet school girl's unknowingly make friends with infamous gang leaders, when sushi meets huge Russian men, and when those bent on ending their lives find new meaning for them in the gutter.

Izaya loved all of these things. The unnatural. He strove to create such bizarre occurrences as often as humanly possible. He was the absolute enemy of the mundane. This was his purpose in the city of Tokyo, in the world of Ikebukuro.

And now, as the major vehicle in that which was the disruption of the city, Izaya had unearthed a new pipeline of chaos. Something so unnatural that by its very phenomenon, it could only be described as supernatural. And if he handled that something carefully, his latest scheme would outstrip all that he had before now launched on the sterile citizens of Ikebukuro.

Mid-thought, Izaya heard the high whinny of a breathless horse pierce the lively night air. He quickly slipped his hand from where it gripped the balcony rail to get a better view of the main road below.

Celty Sturluson pressed her body low against the tank of her black bike as she roared into Izaya's birdseye view. A dark shadow churned out from behind her, blending with the backfire of gravel and stones that her thick tyres kicked out in their wake. Her yellow helmet glinted in the white and orange lights shunting down from the street lamps on either side of the crowded street. The helmet's striking difference in colour from her black suit was made all the more visible in the strong lighting.

'The headless rider wearing a helmet?' Izaya muttered. She failed to live up to her street name.

Izaya startled himself as he lent too far over the balcony. His feet dangled precariously over the thirty-foot drop to the crowded pavement below. With a shuffle, he reinstated his balance on the railing, the sudden adrenaline that flooded his system at the near fall only feeding the giddy buzz in his stomach as he watched the famed headless rider zoom straight beneath his feet.

Izaya glared at the spot Celty had just traversed below him, unblinking as the ghostly howls of the beast she rode reverberated through the populated street. The shutter clicks of phones followed the sound, rapid pinpricks of camera flash trying to catch a glimpse of the dimming taillights of the bike that was already too far away to produce a recognisable picture. The flashes specked Izaya's vision as he continued to stare at the tarmac road beneath him.

He felt a sudden giggle well up in his throat. The giggle soon expanded, fueled by the tingle of humour in his belly. He cackled openly at the lunacy of it all.

Celty was that close, that damned close to her most sought after prize that had she only glanced up, she would have been practically eye to eye with it. Izaya clamped his hands hard enough to the rectangular railing that they trembled. He kicked off from the slim lip of concrete piping the balcony edge and flipped backwards over the rail to the safety of the concrete landing behind him.

Ignoring the dizzying sensation the movement had caused, he immediately released the balcony and knelt to the ground. He picked up the object that had been patiently resting on his balcony floor whilst he had been observing the landscape. He extended the object in front of him, dangling it over the railing with a childlike lack of caution.

The reflection of the orange and white lights speckled the surface of the polished glass tank just like they had Celty's helmet seconds before. Izaya narrowed his eyes to see past the obscuring reflections.

The severed expression of Celty Sturlson's detached head glowered back at him. Her reddish hair waved gently in the bubbles produced by the water filter inside the tank. Her skin was preserved perfectly in the fluid that encased the head. The green eyes watched him with an alien intelligence, begging him to give them the spark of life they had lost.

Izaya squeezed the glass harder, his excitement overwhelming him.

The issue here wasn't the case of a missing head. The true problem was that both Celty and her head both had helmets, but only one of them had a body.

Izaya wrapped smartly on the glass with his knuckles.

Two helmets, but only one body? That sounded a little unfair to him. He'd have to go about correcting that.

/

Hi there, I hope you enjoyed the opening to this brand new horror / thriller story. I think it'll be a lot of fun writing about Izaya as he goes about his twisted ambitions. I intend to update this story at least once a week every Saturday evening (BST). Thanks for your support.