AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“We’re under attack! Get out of the car!”
I slam on the gas and quickly accelerate before jumping out and escaping into the thickets.
“I guess this means we’re at the right place…!”
The armed enemies are shooting at us with rifles from the lee of some slanted rocks. There are three…no, four of them.
“What do we do, Kunikida?!” Dazai shouts out while hiding in the shadow of a slope.
“The
y’re only trying to buy time! I’ll provide backup! Just get inside that building!”
Bullets fly over my head as I yell. I glance over at our attackers. All they’re doing is firing at random and taking cover. Their guns are good quality, but they are not as experienced as the Port Mafia gangsters.
“The Matchless Poet: Flash Grenade!”
I’ve been using far too many pages out of my notebook lately!
I catapult the flash grenade, and the enemies recoil from the noisy explosion over their heads.
“Now’s your chance! Go!” I urge Dazai while firing my weapon. He springs into action.
Dazai separates from Kunikida and races through the decaying air-raid shelter. The tracker device’s signal is coming from the maintenance depot on the other side. After climbing out of the pit, he passes through the marshaling yard before immediately dashing to the two-story maintenance depot’s galvanized iron outer walls.
The abandoned maintenance depot has a hangar for storing cars and aircrafts on the first floor, with an operations room looking down at the hangar on the second floor. Dazai dashes up the staircase and rushes inside the operations room.
“It’s here, huh?”
While the floors are discolored and worn with rust at every turn, the door’s hinges appear to be new, implying someone has been frequently visiting this timeworn room. A near-empty liquor bottle rests on the table by a faintly smoking cigarette. The flashing light on the large communicator attached to the wall blinks, indicating it’s still working.
Dazai is approaching the communicator when a shadow falls over him—a large foreign man now stands at his back. The muscle-bound, tanned individual with a tattoo of a camellia on his arm looks at Dazai in silence. Old scars run down his bald head and over his dark-green eyes.
“What are you doing here?” the giant barks.
“What am I doing here? …Isn’t it obvious?! I came to warn you!” Dazai swiftly turns around and shouts. “The Armed Detective Agency found our hideout! We’ve gotta get outta here, or we’re all done for! Where’s the boss? Come on—we don’t have much time! They’re gonna come breaking through the entrance any minute now!” He urgently rattles on without even taking a moment to breathe.
“I don’t know you.”
“Well, of course you don’t. I work undercover for the boss. You know how secretive the guy is. Now hurry! Go get ’im!”
A hint of bewilderment flashes across the man’s face.
“Okay.”
He turns his back to Dazai to leave the operations room.
Crack.
The large man sluggishly falls to the ground. A large bump is forming on his head. Grinning, Dazai stands behind him with the bottle of liquor cracked in half in hand.
“The boss is a real secretive fellow. Not that I’ve ever met the guy, but it’s just a hunch.”
Having no more use for the bottle, Dazai tosses it to the floor before facing the communicator once more.
“All that’s left is to send a stop signal with this.”
I start to follow Dazai after neutralizing the enemy. In stark contrast with the shoot-out by the entrance, a dead silence hangs over the building’s interior. Fresh footprints and tire tracks litter the ground, making it rather apparent this is their hideout. But I have no way of finding Dazai now. Plus, he has the transmitter’s tracking device.
