Baccano! - Volume 20 - Chapter 6

Final Chapter Neither Hare nor There

Beside the river

“Okaaaay, we’re here!”

“Awright! Unload the boats!”

“Twenty-one minutes and thirteen seconds left.”

The boys were acting like kids on a camping trip, and reaching the river had given them an extra shot of energy. Even the sleepier ones all jumped up, stuck their feet in the cold December river, and ended up yelling “Hya-haah, hya-haah,” in an imitation of Chaini. Melody and the few other members who’d kept their cool watched them with chagrined smiles.

Meanwhile, Pamela and Lana had stopped their truck a short distance away, but they didn’t get out.

Sonia and Cazze had already clambered out of the bed and were goofing around with the delinquents. It had only been half a day, but the pair really seemed to have hit it off. Although she was five-plus years older than he was, Sonia looked more like Cazze’s friend than his big sister.

“So wh-what do we do? Take Sonia and run?”

“If we do that, they’ll definitely treat the delinquent robbers as the kidnappers.”

“…Wasn’t that what you were planning on?”

“I’m on the fence about it. If they were regular joes who had nothing to do with this, it wouldn’t even be an option. They’re train robbers, though, which means they’re like us. But then again, they didn’t get in our way… I just don’t know what to— Wait a second.” Suddenly, Pamela fell silent. She opened the window, straining her ears.

“Wh-what’s the matter, Pamela?”

“Just now…I thought I heard somebody scream.”

“Hmm… Someone’s here. Did they hear you scream?”

The twin struck sharply at the stomachs of the men he’d been torturing, summarily knocking them out and ending their pain prematurely.

He hid the pair behind a car parked some distance away. Then, slipping into the shadows under the trees, he watched for approaching figures.

Sure enough, two appeared.

A pair of young women who seemed to have no connection to the military men.

As the two of them got out of the truck and took a good look at the woods, they saw something that appeared to be sooty fabric up ahead, partway up the slope that led to the bridge. Realizing it was part of a tent, they slowly started climbing the hill, through the trees—and discovered several cars, parked where they couldn’t be seen from below.

“What…is this?” Pamela looked around, but she didn’t hear any more screaming.

The tent wasn’t the sort used for camping. It was a large military tent, with a metal frame and a low roof. Inside, there was a folding table and several chairs, with what appeared to be a detailed code chart open on the table. A wireless set was sitting on top of a car. This obviously wasn’t a group of ordinary campers or birdwatchers.

“Blood…?”

The stain was on a corner of the tent. Chills raced down the women’s spines. Lana’s glasses rattled on her nose, and Pamela squeezed her hands into fists.

“I-it’s that thing…! That—that huge black shadow did this!”

She wanted to tell Lana that was ridiculous, but even with all this equipment here, there wasn’t a soul to be seen. Only that bloodstain remained.

Under the circumstances, it would have been understandable even for people who weren’t Lana to suspect the supernatural.

“…Let’s go back, Lana. I’m worried about the others.”

“Y-yes, you’re right… But that huge shadow… There’s no telling whether Sonia’s guns will even work on— Hmm?” When she averted her eyes from the bloodstain, Lana had noticed something odd on the opposite side of the tent, in a corner.

It was a white tube, with a pin attached to one bulging end.

“A hand grenade!” Lana snatched it up and turned back to Pamela, her eyes shining. “If we have this, we might be able to kill that huge thing if it shows up! Luck is on our side!” She gave a firm thumbs-up.

Pamela met it with an endlessly weary look.

She didn’t go along with her, but she also didn’t reproach her for stealing the grenade. Keeping a wary eye on their surroundings, she turned back and began to retrace their steps.

“Let’s go. I’m worried about Cazze and Sonia.”

Waiting until the pair had started down the hill, a man poked his head out from behind a tree. “Those women… One of them just used young Master Carzelio’s nickname…”

After a little hesitation, the man decided to silently follow the women.

The riverbank

The delinquents had finished lining the boats up on the shore, and now they were horsing around, soaking their feet in the midwinter river as if they didn’t know the meaning of the word cold.

Cazze didn’t want to get his trousers wet just so he could feel chilled, and he was having fun watching the other kids from the bank.

Then one of the boys got careless, slipped, and fell right into the water. “Gwuff?! …C-cooOOOoold!”

“Hya-haah!” “Hya-haw!”

“What’s that hya-haw-ing about?! Huh?! What about me freezing my butt off is worth a hya-haw?! Dammit! W-wait, my shoes, where’d my shoes go?!”

The guy started yelling at Chaini and company, but the chill cooled his head down fast, and he realized he had bigger things to worry about.

He’d shucked his shoes off on the shore, but they had since been washed away. Then he spotted them snagged on the bank quite a ways downstream. Clambering into a nearby boat, he shouted at several people on the shore who still had their shoes on. “Hey! I’m just gonna go grab my shoes! Somebody go get a blanket from that pile in the truck! I c-can’t take this cold!”

The boy sneezed, but almost nobody was listening to him. Even the ones who only laughed heartlessly and said, “Go get it yourself.”

But Cazze heard the kid’s shouts and spoke up happily. “I’ll get you one!”

“Hey, thanks! I’m counting on ya!”

The delinquents had only just met this boy, who also happened to be an oblivious kidnapping victim, and yet they were casually using him as a gofer. They didn’t mean any harm, though. They’d genuinely accepted Cazze into their circle.

Their relaxed attitude was totally new to Cazze. He’d never been treated like this before, but it didn’t bother him.

In fact, it was what he’d longed for from the bottom of his heart.

He didn’t understand why he felt exhilarated. He was simply happy that these older boys, whom he’d just met, were treating him like one of their own. Smiling, he climbed into the bed of the truck.

And with that smile still on Cazze’s face…

…in that supposedly deserted truck, he came face-to-face with him.

Once again, Cookie had been drawn up from a deep sleep into a shallow one.

As the truck bounced and rattled along, he’d heard the boys and girls being noisy. It had reminded him of the excitement from his circus days and started to bring his temperature back up.

That had ended, and he’d nearly fallen asleep again, but someone began to shake his back. Still half asleep, Cookie raised his head and poked it out of the mound of blankets. He turned to look around.

And faced a boy.

A bear.

Cazze might have been raised as a bird in a cage, but even he knew what this was.

It was a unique individual, quite a bit larger than an ordinary grizzly, but he probably didn’t know that.

Still, a bear. A bear through and through. Overwhelmingly grizzly. Heartbreakingly grizzly.

This situation was tailor-made for such dramatic expressions.

The small face of a boy who wasn’t yet ten years old stared right at the hairy face of a bear three times his width—and that was ignoring any other measurements. Someone with a weak heart could easily have died of shock on the spot. Even if they didn’t, they would have had to prepare to die for a different reason.

The boy was lucky on two fronts, though.

First: The bear was very used to humans and didn’t see them as food.

Second: When it came down to it, the boy was a Runorata.

“Wow! I’ve never seen one of these before!”

As he spoke, Cazze began petting the bear’s cheeks.

Anyone with common sense would have considered this completely abnormal.

Who could say for sure that it was due to his innocence and ignorance? A creature with sharp fangs and claws, something more than twice the size of a human, was right there in front of the boy. Even so, that overwhelming “beastly presence” didn’t faze the kid at all. He just ran his fingers through its fur gently, as if it were a pet dog or cat he’d had for years.

“Incredible! This… This is what it’s like being outside…!”

Young as he was, Cazze felt an odd surge of deep emotion, and he put it into simple words.

“Outside” was a vague concept, but the young boy was outside and free for the first time in his life, and it was probably the best he could do.

Meanwhile, the boy’s delighted voice seemed to have reassured Cookie, who pushed his snout into the boy’s own cheek.

“Ah-ha-ha! That tickles!”

The child didn’t seem to feel any wariness toward him at all. He reminded Cookie of the redheaded kid. The grizzly kept his eyes on the boy’s face, and in it, he caught glimpses of the good old days.

For a little while, Cazze was all excited about the creature he’d stumbled onto. Then he remembered why he was here and hastily grabbed a blanket. “I forgot,” he told the bear. “I’m sorry—I have to take this to him! See you later, Mr. Bear!”

The bear tilted his head, looking rather lonely, but he didn’t try to keep the boy there.

That’s amazing! I made lots of friends…and I met a real live bear! Cazze thought as he headed out of the truck.

Was it because he’d grown up with the intimidating Bartolo? When it came to feeling fear, the boy’s skin was extremely thick. Awed by his miraculous communion with the bear, he climbed down from the truck and broke into a run.

Yet another unexpected thing happened to the guileless boy.

The truck wasn’t far from the riverbank.

Clutching the blanket, the boy started to call to the delinquents—

—but an arm suddenly snaked around his neck and cut him off.

A gunshot echoed through the woods by the river, terribly out of place in the peaceful environment.

“What’s up?” “Hya-haah?” “Hya-haw.”

When the gunshot rang out, everyone who was down by the river turned around.

“…Hey, who’re they?”

“Friends of the fellas that we found up by the bungalows, maybe?”

“Uh, guys? This is completely not the time!”

Five or six men in military uniforms were standing there. They were all holding guns. One of them had just fired his at the ground; fresh smoke drifted from its muzzle.

However, what had startled the boys wasn’t the guns or the group in army uniforms.

It was the fact that their leader had grabbed Cazze.

“All right. First things first: There’s something I need to tell you.”

The man spoke impassively, but his left hand held Cazze firmly by the throat. His right hand held a knife, and he set its sharp, gleaming edge against the boy’s neck.

“Playtime is over, kids.”

Sarges wasn’t yelling, but his voice carried well.

The Lemures had opted to watch from beside the river for a while, and when a boy they assumed was the group’s youngest member went off on his own, they’d grabbed the opportunity to take him hostage.

Now they began to interrogate the delinquents.

“Who exactly are you?”

* * *

Sarges’s dispassionate question clearly flustered the kids.

“Wha—?! Wait just a minute! ‘Who are you?’ That’s what we wanna know!”

“Hey… They look like soldiers… Did they maybe find out about the freight robbery?”

“Wh-what do we do?!”

The boys whispered among themselves, but Melody ignored them and called to the man from the boat. Although her expression was still sleepy, her voice was dignified, if frightened.

“M-mister… We just came to check out the area downstream! We haven’t done anything wrong, and we aren’t planning to interfere with your soldiers’ drill, so, um… Would you please let that boy go?!”

“Oh… You haven’t done anything wrong, hmm?” With a flat chuckle, the group’s uniformed leader shook his head. “Then how do you explain our unconscious comrades in the bed of that poor excuse for a truck?”

“That truck isn’t ours, but…its owners found those men laid out by some bungalows, back in these woods! They said they were going to bring them to the river for some fresh air, and if that didn’t wake them up, they’d take them to a hospital!”

Melody seemed completely different—far more deferential—and the boys exchanged looks.

“How is Melody managing to speak up like that?”

“She’s good at this stuff; she kept herself fed by borrowing money, skipping out on the loans, and pickpocketing…”

“Forget that—seriously, what are those fellas? Nobody mentioned that the National Guard trained around here.”

“Yeah, but they’ve got guns. Let’s not tick them off.”

The delinquents had mistaken the group for real soldiers. They held still as they watched the conversation unfold, careful not to do anything stupid, but then—

“Good grief. Do you really think we’ll fall for that? Did you want me to shave this boy’s nose off?”

“Nn—! Nnn ”

When they heard the military man’s callous remark and saw that his grip on Cazze’s throat was so tight that the boy could barely make a sound, the delinquents all spoke up in protest.

“Hold on! You fellas are soldiers, right?! Isn’t protecting civilians your job?!”

“And even if you’re mad at us, what did a little kid like him do?!”

The delinquents complained at him, but…

“You’re still playing innocent? What fool would release a hostage because someone told him to? Although, as the situation stands, it doesn’t look as if there’s any real need for a hostage. We could just shoot all of you dead.”

…when they saw Sarges’s brutal smile, even the densest of the boys finally figured it out.

These men weren’t soldiers. They were something much uglier and far more dangerous.

“Wh-what do we do, Pamela?! I knew those military types were bad news!”

“Quiet, Lana. They’ll see us.”

Pamela and Lana had been watching the scene on the riverbank from partway down the slope. Their timing had been good, and the men in uniform hadn’t noticed them. As things stood, they could technically make their escape without getting dragged into the mess, but…

“What should we do? At this rate, they’ll hurt Cazze!”

“If it comes down to it, I’ll be a decoy. If we can at least save Cazze…”

From the sound of it, neither of them saw abandoning him to his fate as an option.

“…we’ll risk it. If I can get to the truck, I’ll be able to get the guns out of the bed. Then we can use those to—”

“I wouldn’t be too hasty if I were you.”

When the voice suddenly spoke behind them, Pamela and Lana tensed, all their hair standing on end. They steeled themselves, thinking a member of the military group must have snuck up on them from behind.

The figure who stood there was a young man whose clothes couldn’t have been less appropriate for a forest by a riverbank. “Those men seem to have a decent amount of experience with guns. Amateurs who challenged them to a firefight would be unlikely to win it,” he said. He was dressed entirely in black.

Pamela and Lana hadn’t noticed him approaching. Not only that, but beneath his courteous words, they sensed an intimidating aura even greater than the group in military uniforms had.

And—his next words showed them that he most certainly wasn’t their ally.

“Rescuing the young master unharmed isn’t your job, in any case. That duty was assigned to Me and I.”

The way he referred to himself was odd, but the man clearly had connections to the Runorata Family.

“Eep…”

“Don’t.”

Lana shuddered, reaching for the hand grenade she’d picked up a minute ago, but Pamela immediately held her back.

The man in black didn’t even seem to see them anymore. He was watching the situation down by the river. “If only I had an opportunity of some sort, I could rush them… Hmm?”

The man seemed to have spotted something. He looked mystified.

“What…might that be?”

“Answer me! How did you incapacitate our comrades?” Sarge bellowed, convinced that he had an unshakable advantage. He was wearing a rather sadistic smile. Huh. Apparently, they really are just a band of thugs. How did this scum manage to take out our scouts…?

I am concerned that the first negotiator hasn’t returned, but… In any case, we should dispose of about half of them. Dealing with a large group is too hard on the nerves.

He began to order his subordinates to cull half the brats, but then he froze, his smile fading. Something wasn’t right.

……? …What is this?

Their faces gave him a bad feeling.

The boys’ expressions were as pale as they had been a moment ago, but their eyes weren’t focused on his group.

What…are they looking at…?!

As he began to glance around, searching for the cause of their unease, several of the boys whispered among themselves.

“Uh, if you wanna know what happened to your guys… Um…”

Just as Sarges’s gaze turned in the direction of the truck—

“I think…it was probably that.”

And whether they wanted to or not, Sarges’s group saw something surreal.

He stood on his hind legs, stretching as far as he could. At that point, he was taller than the truck.

What…is…this?

What am I looking at right now?

It was so huge it had to be some kind of joke. The timing with which it had arrived was nothing short of comical.

“Ah— Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah! That—! That’s it! That’s what I saw earlier!” Lana screamed, shaking Pamela’s shoulders violently.

A being that was nearly beyond comprehension had entered the fray, and Pamela forgot herself for a few seconds.

The shaking jump-started her mind again, and she grabbed Lana’s head with both hands and held it tight. Pressing her forehead against the other woman’s, she snapped, “What ‘huge something’? That is a goddamn grizzly bear!”

“It was a ‘huge something’ in the dark!”

With that inane retort in her ears, Pamela turned to the man who’d stopped them a moment ago. “What are you going to… Huh?”

But the man in black was gone.

Is this some kind of joke?

For both Sarges and the other Lemures, the development had come completely out of left field.

When they encounter a truly unexpected situation, most people go blank for a moment. They need time to get their confusion under control, compare what they were seeing with reality, and figure out their next moves.

Had they originally come to vanquish a monster, no doubt that blank moment wouldn’t have happened. They were already holding rifles and tommy guns, and they would promptly have fired them.

The same thing would have been true if the grizzly had been smaller, a size more in line with common sense.

However, when confronted with that ludicrous creature, even the well-trained Lemures went blank for a moment.

In the first place, their group hadn’t been assembled for combat. They’d only been selected to negotiate with the government.

That said, when faced with the “red monster,” most of their comrades on the train had also gone blank.

The blank lasted only a few seconds.

Even a bare handful of seconds could be fatal, though.

At least that was true for these men, in this case.

After all, they ended up caught between a bear that was still upset about that earlier gunshot, and a third party who’d recovered from his own blank faster than anyone present.

Cookie hadn’t come outside intending to kill.

Just as the boy had left the truck, he’d heard that “nasty sound,” the gunshot, and so he’d poked his head out to see where it was coming from.

There were several men out there, and they were holding the tools that made that unpleasant noise. Apparently, they’d made the boys stop cheering.

Convinced that those tools were the cause of all the trouble, Cookie may simply have been trying to knock them out of the men’s hands.

At the very least, he seemed to be acting more out of fear of the terrible sound than hatred.

However, when an enormous grizzly tries to slap something out of a person’s hand—for a mere human, it’s the same as getting dragged into a tornado.

The gun was knocked high into the air, and its owner went flying as well, in a slightly different direction. He might have blacked out before he had time to scream; he flew several yards in silence before his back slammed into the riverbank.

He didn’t seem to be dead, but he was clearly unconscious.

A single attack had rendered an armed man unable to fight.

The terror of that fact swept over the Lemures, yanking them back to reality.

But it was too late.

Far sooner than that, the man who’d barely flinched at the sight of the oversize grizzly had come up behind them.

“Wha… What are you do…ing…? Fi—”

With his hand still around Cazze’s neck, Sarges started to scream for his men to fire. Before he could get the words out, though, he heard a groan behind him—and the sound of an approaching engine in the woods made his heart freeze again.

While everyone was focused on the enormous bear, the young man had knocked out two of the Lemures.

Just then, with excellent timing, his twin emerged from the woods on his motorbike.

A second man in black burst onto the riverbank, riding a motorcycle that had the wooden crate with Pamela’s note on its cargo rack.

“Wha… Wha—?!”

Sarges’s brain was refusing to process the situation. In the next moment, intense pressure came to bear on the wrist of his knife hand.

“Gah— Wha… Aaaaaouwaaaagh?!”

He understood instantly that someone had grabbed him there, but as he tried to twist around to see who it was, he lost track of the positions of the ground, the sky, his own right arm, and the rest of him. His feet rose into the air, and he rotated, then slammed into the ground. A jolt of pain ran all through him.

“Gahk…!”

As his vision warped and turned all the colors of the rainbow, Sarges managed to make out a man in black who was toying with the knife he’d just been holding. Behind the man, he spotted the boy he’d been restraining three seconds earlier. The man in black was standing between them, as if to protect the kid.

The man spoke in a voice that held the utmost respect. “Young master, it isn’t safe here. Please go down to the river, if you would.”

“Gabriel!”

Gabriel smiled reassuringly at the boy.

Meanwhile, the man who’d ridden up on the motorcycle took a look around. “What the hell is all this, Me?”

“Juliano!”

When the boy called his name, Juliano got off his bike, held his left hand out to the side, and bowed as respectfully as a butler. “I’m glad you’re safe, young Master Carzelio.”

When he saw that laid-back exchange, Sarges realized something.

None of the Lemures had a gun anymore.

He hadn’t seen it happen, but around the time he was taken out, the others seemed to have dropped their weapons as well. One of his comrades was groaning with a knife stuck in his arm, while the grizzly had immediately sent someone else flying: Another man had been knocked in the opposite direction from the first one and was still lying where he’d fallen.

On top of that, the boy Carzelio had done as he was told and gone to join the other kids by the river, avoiding the possibility of being taken hostage again.

Ridiculous… Ludicrous, inconceivable!

The grizzly seemed to be satisfied with the situation, dropping back to all fours to comfortably watch the boys by the river.

What…the hell…is going on…? Sarges stared at the scene in complete shock.

Juliano spoke impassively. “With that taken care of, I don’t know who you are or where you’re from, but…you didn’t think you could make an enemy of the Runorata Family and actually get anything out of it, did you? Huh?”

“Wh…what?”

The Runorata Family…?

The name had come up very abruptly, and Sarges almost relapsed into confusion. However, mobilizing all the knowledge left in his brain, he managed to come up with an answer of sorts. “I…I see…! So Bartolo Runorata is Senator Beriam’s loyal hound… Did he tell you to come here and dispose of…us…?”

He started with conviction but trailed off partway through.

He’d picked up on intense murderous hostility from the twins.

“…This guy says some pretty funny stuff, Me.”

“He does indeed, I.”

“What did he just call Mr. Bartolo? The head of our beloved family?”

“Don’t say it, I. Even hearing it would be disrespectful.”

Their tones grew colder and colder, and Sarges felt the blood retreating into his core.

“Then what do we do, Me?”

“To avoid any further disrespect, I, it would be best to ensure he can never speak again.”

The conversation could have been a joke, but they certainly didn’t sound as if they were fooling around.

As the men approached, step by step, Sarges felt despair settle over him.

But then the tables turned again.

“Freeze!”

A yell split the air, along with the clicking of guns being cocked. When he looked in that direction, two more men in military uniforms had appeared and were leveling guns at the black-clad twins.

Both men were holding old-model submachine guns. They stepped closer, little by little, keeping a wary eye on the grizzly in the background.

“Comrade Sarges, are you all right?!”

“Who are these people?!”

Pamela, Lana, Sonia, and the delinquents all recognized the newcomers’ faces.

They were the pair who’d been passed out behind the bungalow.

“Aaaah! Those are my guns!”

Sonia protested, but the uniformed men didn’t hear her.

They’d come to in the bed of the truck, freed their hands and feet, then grabbed the nearest weapons and gone outside. Then they’d seen their comrades on the ground and that enormous grizzly. This was obviously no time to nurse their lingering aches and pains, and they’d promptly joined the fray.

Meanwhile, although the twins didn’t feel as if their lives were in danger, a different worry occurred to them, and they began to converse in whispers.

“The situation may compel us to draw as well, I.”

“They’ve told us to do our best not to let the young master see any killing until he turns thirteen…”

“We have shown him once before, though. Besides, if we hesitate, a stray bullet could fly his way.”

“…Man, oh man, what a pickle.”

“Oh, right! Now’s our chance!”

As the situation around Pamela and Lana devolved, Lana’s eyes suddenly sparkled. She took something out of her jacket.

“Wh-what’s the matter?!”

“Cazze is out of harm’s way! We can take out this bunch, the Runorata men, and that big bear all at once!”

No sooner had she spoken than Lana yanked the pin from the white grenade.

“Huh?! W-wait a second, Lana!!”

If we do that, we’ll make enemies of the Runoratas for sure—

Pamela reached out to stop Lana, but she was too late.

Lana had already flung the grenade.

A few of the uniformed men who could still move had gotten to their feet and were beginning to retrieve their guns.

“Heh…heh-heh. Pet dogs to a loyal hound, hmm? What a sloppy endgame,” Sarges said, shooting them a leer. He was ready to demonstrate how thoroughly the tables had turned.

Despite his words, the situation flipped for a third time.

Clang, clang! Rattle, rattle, rattle…

A white cylinder came flying in out of nowhere and landed in the center of the commotion with a dry clatter.

Sarges recognized the object.

It was, in a way, the most important article in this operation.

Inconceivable.

What’s the smoke flare doing—?

Before he could even think the rest of his question, a vast cloud of smoke billowed up.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold up—what’s going on here?”

“Bears, guns… Hey, is this part of the country supposed to have bears?!”

“L-look, what’re we supposed to do with all this?!”

“Well, only two hundred and eighty-three seconds have passed since that gunshot.”

“N-nah, that’s got nothing to do with…”

“Hya-haah…” “Hya-haw…”

All Melody and the rest of the delinquents could do was watch the rapidly shifting situation from the sidelines.

“Still… That’s a heckuva lot of smoke…”

“Might even be smokier than Miz Nice’s smoke bombs, don’tcha think?”

The “grenade” Lana had thrown was a smoke flare the Lemures had planned to use to communicate the results of their negotiations to the train. It was something Huey Laforet had made for fun, and it really packed a punch; white smoke blanketed the area with the force of a minor explosion.

Sarges stood at the center of a pale wall stretching up and up, high into the air.

W-wait! Beriam hasn’t accepted our demands…! he screamed internally, but it was too late.

As if celebrating its own birth, the smoke rose rapidly into the lightening predawn sky.

Regardless, the way things were going on the Flying Pussyfoot just then, smoke signals meant absolutely nothing.

Chaos took over.

Cookie didn’t understand the situation at all, and it hadn’t interested him in the first place. Not until the smoke shot into the air, and he sprang to his feet.

He was remembering his grand entrances at the beginning of the circus.

He’d run through dense billows of smoke: an enormous grizzly bursting out of the clouds, carrying a redheaded boy on his back.

Remembering that trick he used to always do, Cookie bounded happily to his feet and leaped into the expanding cloud of smoke.

“H-hey, we can’t shoot like this! We’ll hit each other!”

“Calm down! For now, circle around to the other side and get that grizzly first…”

The speakers were the pair who’d helped themselves to Sonia’s guns, but they didn’t get to finish their conversation. Before they had time to aim, a huge mass of fur burst through the smoke and charged gleefully toward the men, who were frozen with terror.

“AAAAAaaaaaaah!”

It squashed their screams right along with them, and they ended up reliving the tragedy that had occurred behind the bungalow.

However, they took 30 percent more physical damage this time.

By the time Pamela and Lana timidly made their way down the hill, everything was over.

The twins in black had taken advantage of the smoke to completely steamroll the Lemures and were piling the unconscious men into a heap.

As the two crept closer, they began to hear the twins’ conversation.

“Still, what was that all about, Me? ‘Put the money in the crate’? It makes no sense,” Juliano said.

Gabriel gave a wry smile. “We’ll go over the details later, I. Your brother tortured some of them earlier and got them to spill their objective.”

“Hmm? Their objective? Wasn’t it kidnapping the young master, Me?”

“No, apparently they were after the train that’s about to pass through here.”

“Huh?” Juliano seemed lost. Roughly tossing an unconscious military man onto the pile, he glanced at Gabriel again. “So they weren’t the kidnappers, Me?”

“Mm… That’s an excellent question, I. They did say the caller was a woman,” Gabriel murmured. Smiling, he turned to look back at Pamela and Lana.

“Eep!”

This is bad.

Are they onto us?

Although Pamela had braced for death earlier, the man’s smile made her knees go watery with terror. Even so, she didn’t let it show on her face.

Before she could say a word, though, Juliano cracked his neck. “Nice work, dollface. That smoke screen back there really helped us out. Didn’t it, Me?”

“Yes, it truly was helpful. Oh, that’s right, I: Go and retrieve the young master, please. There are no more enemies.”

“Whoops, good catch.”

The man ran over to the group of boys by the river, who were watching them with worry. After his twin had gone, Gabriel quietly turned to face Pamela and Lana. “Now, then… I suppose I should ask, who are you? You really can’t have been ‘just passing through’ way out here.”

Well, now. Will we be able to fool him? That really is the gamble of a lifetime, isn’t it? Summoning her courage, Pamela drew in a deep breath. If it came down to it, she was prepared to take all the blame.

Before she could say anything, Lana started apologizing with tears in her eyes. “I’m sorry… I’m so sorry! It was me! Cazze got into the back of our truck, and I came up with the idea of kidnapping him!”

“Wha…?! L-Lana?!”

Lana had caved to their intimidating opponent and spilled the whole truth immediately. Pamela’s eyes went round, and all the excuses she’d come up with evaporated.

Even as Lana spilled all the details of what had happened, she didn’t mention Pamela or Sonia once. “B-but none of the other people knew a thing! I’m also the one who made the phone call, s-so, um…if you’re going to report someone to the police, please just report me!”

The police?! You moron! Biting back the impulse to yell, Pamela stole a glance at Gabriel’s face.

The man in black chuckled. “You seem to have the wrong idea, young lady,” he said politely.

“Huh…?”

“Over the telephone, we were instructed not to contact the police. In addition…our noble master informed us that the decision of what to do with the criminal was entirely up to us.”

“I-in other words…?”

“We may dispose of the culprit as we see fit, here and now.”

“Eeeeeeeep?!”

Lana shuddered with terror, and Pamela stepped between them, protecting her. “What do you plan to do with us?”

Gabriel snickered. “It isn’t really a question of ‘what’… Let’s see.” He took a wallet from his hip pocket and peered into the coin compartment. “You told us to pay as large a ransom as we could manage, correct?” He’d thought the wallet was empty, but finding a half-dollar coin in a gap, he tossed it to Lana. “This is as much as I can manage at the moment. Any objections?”

Lana, who’d caught the coin, looked dazed for a few moments. Then the situation sank in, and she hastily shook her head. “A-a-a-absolutely not, sir! It’s enough—this is enough!”

“In that case, this transaction is settled…but let that be our secret. If word got out that I’d set a price of fifty cents on the young master, my slow and painful death would take years.”

It sounded like nothing more than a joke, but the coldness in his eyes indicated he meant every word.

Lana was shaking in her shoes, so Pamela spoke up dubiously in her place. “You mean you’re letting us go? Why…?”

“Consider it a demonstration of my respect for the great criminals who made an enemy of the Runorata Family for fifty cents. Besides, I truly am grateful for the support you gave us with that smoke screen. It allowed us to avoid showing the young master needless bloodshed.” Gabriel chuckled for a little while, then turned to face the two women and added one quiet remark. “However, should you press your luck again… You do understand what will happen, yes?”

He smiled at them with eyes that were colder than ice. Lana and Pamela felt a sharp, frigid something race down their spines. Thinking that he probably had every intention of murdering them should something like this happen again, they understood all too clearly that the man meant what he said.

Lana’s face had gone dead white, and she seemed ready to topple over. Supporting her, Pamela mustered her courage and briefly replied to this pursuer she’d only just met. “…Thank you. We’re in your debt.”

“No, we’re even.”

“Huh?”

Gabriel wasn’t looking at them any longer. He was gazing at the boy Juliano had brought, the one who was hurrying toward him. “I haven’t seen the young master enjoy himself so much in a very long time. Thus, we’re even.”

Gabriel walked away toward Cazze, and as if to take his place, Sonia came running. She’d retrieved her guns from the men in military uniforms. When she saw Lana, who was pale-faced and trembling, she cocked her head. “What’s the matter? Pamela? Lana? Oh… Did you two fight again? Come ooooon! You shouldn’t dooo that.”

At the sound of the girl’s easygoing rebuke, Pamela pulled on a brave face. “Sorry, sorry. It’s fine, Sonia. We aren’t fighting.” She thumped Lana on the shoulders.

The impact made Lana stagger a little, but she smiled, still teary-eyed and pale. “I’d like to pat myself on the back for not passing out. Come on, tell me I did good.”

“Yes, yes. Wow, amazing, you’re incredible, Lana.”

“Yeah, increeedible!”

Sonia smiled, attempting to join their conversation, but something else caught her attention. She turned in that direction.

“Hey, it’s that big bear from earlier.”

She looked and sounded so innocent while she pointed. When Lana saw the grizzly that emerged from the smoke screen, her mind finally succumbed to oblivion.

“Are you all right, young master?” Gabriel called as he approached Cazze.

Cazze looked down. He seemed rather dejected.

“What’s the matter?”

“Um… I’m sorry I worried you…,” the boy murmured with genuine regret.

Gabriel smiled. “It isn’t our job to be angry with you. That task belongs to your family. If we ever scold you, it will be when you’ve treated their words with contempt.”

Juliano picked up where he’d left off, switching out of his usual coarse tone. “However, you should probably prepare for a very sound scolding when you return home.”

“…Yes.” The boy kept his head lowered apologetically.

Gabriel spoke to him quietly. “Did you experience enough to make that scolding worthwhile, young master?”

At that, Cazze’s face lit up, and he nodded firmly. “Uh-huh! I’m sure I’ll never forget today as long as I live!”

“That’s wonderful. Now, let’s go home. We’ll arrange for a car. Do you have any belongings?”

Since he’d run away from home, Gabriel didn’t think he’d have much, but he asked just in case.

Cazze fidgeted a little. “Um, can I ask you for…just one thing?”

“Anything, as long as it’s in our power to provide.”

“There’s somebody I want to take home with me.”

“My, my. Bold words.” Gabriel hadn’t been expecting that request. His eyes widened, and he remembered the boys and girls who’d been nearby. Is it the young lady with ponytails, or the bespectacled Asian, or one of the three kidnappers? He can’t mean one of the boys…

As various conjectures churned in his mind, the boy pointed at something.

The enormous grizzly that shambled out of the still-expanding smoke screen.

“We made friends earlier! The others say they don’t know anything about this bear, and, um, do you think I could keep him at home?”

Far too reckless, far too innocent.

Ordinarily, the giant grizzly could only have been an object of terror, but the boy was treating it like a puppy he’d found.

The twins in black exchanged looks, then smiled back with no hesitation.

“As you wish.”

They bowed deferentially to their future master.

While the bear and the twins confronted each other and the kids were launching their boats into the river, a man was breathing roughly. He was bleeding from the head and sitting in a small boat that had cast off from the shore a little distance away.

“Dammit… I’ll kill them… I’ll slaughter them all…!” Sarges had managed to escape the twins and the grizzly by a hair.

There was only one emotion left inside him, and in a sense, it might have been fair to call it revenge.

Goose had given him a mission, as a member of the Lemures.

He was no longer able to carry it out.

His mission had been stolen.

As a result, his thirst for revenge was directed at every living creature in sight.

The smoke signal had already gone up.

At this point, he had no way to tell whether Senator Beriam had actually agreed to the deal, but now it would be hopeless either way.

It was possible that this would throw off the operation on the Flying Pussyfoot, too. If that happened, the Lemures’ plot wouldn’t succeed.

Beneath the paling sky, he began to hear the noise of the approaching train.

It’s over. It’s all over.

Safe in the escape boat he’d prepared for just such an emergency, Sarges quietly let his malice build.

I’ll kill them. It’s their fault… This incomprehensible crew—!

He was holding a machine gun. Quietly raising its muzzle, he took aim at the figures on the shore, the boats floating downstream.

Proper form didn’t even come into it. He was just braced to shoot.

There was no telling what his accuracy would be like, but he wasn’t calm enough to consider things like that at the moment.

Considering the number of bullets he was about to unleash, though, a few people were bound to get lead poisoning.

As if releasing the impulse he’d been forcing down, Sarges began to squeeze the trigger.

But his finger stopped.

Wh-what’s that…?

He’d picked up on the same uneasy feeling he’d felt earlier.

It was so intense that it halted his impulse in its tracks.

Of the detestable living creatures he saw, most of them had frozen—except for a few who were in boats floating downstream, looking in his direction. Even that enormous grizzly.

What…is it…?

Up…?

It took only about a second.

Sarges’s finely honed senses promptly registered what had attracted the attention of the group.

Were they watching the train on the bridge? If so, their expressions were very strange.

The question calmed him down as he turned his attention to the train, too. His Lemures comrades had to have completed their hijacking by now.

Right in the middle of it, he saw a vision in black, red, and pale flesh tones.

The jet-black dress reminded him of a crow.

Skirt fluttering, a black-haired woman with a wounded shoulder leaped lightly off the train and plunged toward the river.

“Cha…Chané?!” Sarges shouted.

According to Goose’s plan, they were supposed to find an opportunity during their occupation of the train to get rid of her.

Technically, he should have turned his gun on her and shot her dead.

But he began to move a moment too late.

The woman fell, her long, slim legs shining against a backdrop of the dawn sky and the train.

For just a moment, their beauty and allure made Sarges freeze.

The next moment, a shadow fell over him.

It would have been great if that shadow had been thrown by Chané’s dress—

—but the object that appeared above him was a sturdy, extremely heavy wooden crate.

Less than a quarter mile downstream

“Hey, there we go—they’re comin’ down. So we just have to go get those, huh?

“Man, that’s a whole lot earlier than Melody predicted.”

“Actually, that train’s really bookin’, ain’t it?”

“Is it, uh… It looks like it’s smoking from places besides the smokestack.”

“I bet you’re seeing things.”

The boys in the boats gazed at the crates that were tumbling off the distant train one after another.

“Huh…? Did a black thing just fall off, too?”

“Huh?”

“It looked like someone in a dress…”

“It’s my little sister!” “Enough already.”

“Hya-haah!”

The earlier commotion was just a distant memory, and the kids had resumed their usual mode of conversation.

A few minutes later, they’d meet a woman who was drifting along, clinging to a crate.

They’d have no idea what sort of fate she would bring them.

“Hey! It’s a lady! She really did jump off that train!”

“Whaaaat? …So this sister was cargo, too?!”

“Hey!” “Heeey!” “You okay?!”

“Hya-haah!” “Hya-haaaw.”

Or really, whether they’d picked up on it or not—

—the boys would welcome her with smiles, just as they always did.

Even as he stayed wary of the black-clad men who’d come to stand on either side of him, Cookie gazed at a spot on the train as it passed by.

He was looking at a red human-shaped something that seemed to glide across the sides of the cars.

For a moment, he thought that red something had looked his way.

There was no knowing whether Cookie ever realized what it actually was, but as if he were wistfully calling to it, he sent a roar echoing over the early-morning river.

Meanwhile, the “red something” that had been crawling along the side of the train had noticed the enormous grizzly, too.

At first, he only thought that the young cargo thieves’ accomplices were out on the river in boats—but then he saw a huge grizzly standing on the riverbank with its head turned his way.

“…Cookie?”

Inexplicably certain that the grizzly was his former companion, the young man smiled happily. And although he had no reason to be as sure as he was, he was correct.

“Ha-ha!”

Briefly forgetting the situation on the train, he remembered scenes from the past.

No idea what’s going on, but wow. Who’d have thought I’d meet up with Cookie again at a time like this…?

Is it even possible for this to be a coincidence?

Thinking of the good old days, just for a moment, the Rail Tracer let Claire Stanfield surface. He gave Cookie a jaunty wave, then nodded firmly.

“I’d expect no less of my world!”