Daring!

In a small lot forgotten by urban construction is where I found Celty. remember, Shinra's now girlfriend? The headless one? She's sort of hard to forget.

She was my transporter of things I needed to distribute throughout Japan. She never asked questions, just like Shinra. All she did was collect her payment and leave. It was nice to mess with her. She'd been searching for her lost head for many years and now I have it in my possession. It made the game that much more fun. The game.. The game that everyone has to play.

I don't give my toys an option to leave. They stay until I discard them like the useless pawns they all are; everyone loses worth eventually.

The only one that didn't have to play was Shizuo. I couldn't really predict what he would do anyway. His stupid protozoan brain didn't have a proper pattern for me to follow. I hated it. I hated him because I still loved him.

After all those years, I still loved him. After he beat me up, told me to leave him alone, and broke my heart.. I still loved him. It was appalling how I could bring myself to have feelings for someone of such low intelligence and sheer stupidity. Someone who could throw cars at people and survive getting hit by a truck..

I clenched my fists. I had important work to do, I couldn't get myself worked up yet. Forcing myself out of my own head, I pulled out the briefcase and handed it to the headless rider. She stared at me a few moments before taking it into her hands. She pulled out her phone and quickly typed.

"Are you okay?" The screen said in black Japanese characters. I rolled my eyes and smirked at her.

"Celty-san, my feelings are for me, not you." I twirled around and laughed. "Now get going, I have other things to do."

Celty silently shook her fist at me then rode away on her motorcycle. The wind blew my bangs in my eyes. It was very painful so I closed and wiped them to get some relief. While my eyes were closed, I sensed someone throwing a punch and ducked down and jumped backwards. When I opened them, I was surrounded by members of the yellow scarves, one of Ikebukuro's local gangs. They were all dressed in yellow and had iron bars, bats, and knives.

"Ohaiyo." I greeted happily to them.

"you're that info broker!" The main guy that had tried to punch me yelled.

"You've heard of me! I'm honored." I said in a mocking tone. I pulled out my switch blade and pointed it at him. My expression grew a lot more sinister. "Don't fuck with me."

"You think you can escape all of us!" Someone yelled. "We're the yellow scarves! We run this town!"

I scoffed and genuinely laughed. "You run this town? I think you need to go home and study up on the Dollars." I took a step toward the leader, waving my blade around. "Last I heard, They abolished you and you all ran scared and took off all your yellow little clothes."

"We heard that you sold us out the headless rider! I got my face smashed against a parking lot wall because of you."

"well, you were trying to rape that girl." I mumbled and laughed. "The headless rider is a good guy, even if I wouldn't have told them, they still would've found you."

"Shut up and take your beating!" Then they all came at me. It was child's play, really. The reckless lunging and swinging of the arms, simply boring.

I dodged left and right, up and down, side to side. Everything was missing and I could tell they were getting frustrated. A few of them were already out of breath. I laughed at all their pitiful existences and jumped far enough back that the crowd was in front of me.

"tsk tsk." I said and waggled a finger at them. "What would your real leader say if he saw this?"

"we don't have a real leader." The guy with the pipe spat.

"OH?" I yelled sarcastically. "What would Ma--"

"He's not our leader!" Another guy yelled. "We don't want to hear his name. He betrayed us."

I rolled my eyes. "Maybe he would've stayed if he didn't have idiots like you to boss around." Then I pulled a throwing knife out of my pocket in quickly, almost invisibly, threw it at the guy with the pipe. There was a flicker of light and suddenly his arm holding the pipe started bleeding. He yelled in pain and dropped the pipe.

"That's it." The crowd's temporary leader said. He pulled a small pistol out of his jeans, cocked it, and pointed it at me. Everyone froze and looked back and forth between me and the gunman. "Make one move and you're dead."

I was stuck between a rock and a hard place then. His hands didn't shake as he pointed a deadly weapon right between my eyes. The idiot was serious. I didn't want to seem panicked so I just stood there in silence. I could've killed all of them, but that was messy work to hide and a lot more steps would come after it. I couldn't believe I had let myself get put in a corner like that.

"Stop it" I heard a voice from behind the crowd say. Everyone turned around and parted away to reveal Masaomi standing there with his hands in his jeans and a yellow bandana tied around his next.

"Masaomi-san." One of them mumbled as Masaomi walked over to the guy with the gun. He jumped high into the air and kicked it out of his hands. It flew across the lot and slid into the grass somewhere.

"Don't make an enemy of Orihara Izaya." Masaomi said in a low tone and looked up at me. "He's stronger than all of us combined."

"Oh Kida, you flatter me." I teased and looked away over dramatically. "Get your dogs under control. I'd hate to have to kill someone." Then I warned. Kida knew I was refraining from murder because of him. He knew I would've pinned it on him as well. He knew all the highly dangerous things I was capable of and he didn't want to start an actual war. Now he owed me even more than originally.

"Sorry, Izaya-san." Masaomi said with cold eyes. He turned to the Yellow Scarves. "Meeting at the usual place. Now." He demanded.

No one argued, or left, or complained. They all silently followed him as he walked away. Masaomi would always be their leader, no matter how much he upset them.

"That was scary!" I laughed to myself and felt my hunger growing. "Lunch tiiiiime" I sang and skipped towards Russian Sushi.

Shizuo was there, at the front door, smoking a cigarette. He had a to-go box in his hand and he lifted up his sunglasses when he saw me.

"Shizu-chan!" I called, feeling my heart begin to race. "You're.. here!" I said, my mind had seemed to stop working. "Uh, you like sushi? I didn't know you liked sushi."

"Well you did buy it for me all those years ago." He exhaled a thick cloud of smoke. "Six years ago was it?"

"It was three, actually." I said. "You fucking idiot." I then mumbled.

"What was that?" Shizuo growled. I jumped back and chuckled nervously.

"Nothing, can I please go inside? I want to get lunch."

Shizuo frowned at me. He frowned so hard I thought his jaw was trying to detach itsself from the rest of his head. "I told you to stop coming to Ikebukuro. For god's sake you got a teenage girl put in the hospital. She may never walk again!"

I rubbed my arm that was broken all those years ago subconsciously. "You started this." I whispered.

"What was that, you flea?" Shizuo said threw his to-go plate on the ground. Guess he didn't want lunch that much.

"Nothing, Shizu-chan." I said annoyed and turned around. "Whatever. I'll get lunch somewhere else."

"Wait! You're not gonna stay here and fight me?" Shizuo yelled at me.

"I have better things to do." I shrugged and walked away. I didn't want to fight him. I hated fighting with the monster that I loved no matter how much he abused me. "Have a nice day."

"IZZZZAAAAAYAAAA" Shizuo screamed and ran at me. I cursed under my breath and dodged a cross walking sign. He chucked it at me like a javelin. "STOP TRYING TO ACT LIKE YOU'RE CHILL. YOU NEVER FIGHT BACK. IT TICKS ME OFF."

"Just leave me alone!" I yelled, ran to Shizuo, catching him off guard, and tripped him. He fell down slowly like a tree. Then I booked it and distanced my self as much as possible before Shizuo could get back up. I ran and I ran and I ran all the way back to my apartment.

I slammed the door shut behind me and began to sob. It wasn't fair. I had tried to make things right. Nothing ever worked, he always just tried to kill me. I couldn't take it anymore.

"Izaya!" I heard someone snap at me. It was Namie. She worked for me and used my information to stalk her brother, whom she was in love with. She had a very dry and somewhat rude personality. "Stop crying." she barked.

"Whatever." I hissed and wiped my eyes. "I don't expect you to understand."

Namie rolled her eyes and put her hand on her hip. "I don't understand? I'm in love with my brother who's in love with some girl that stalked him and had facial reconstruction surgery to look like the head of a girl that works for you because she wants her head back." She huffed. "But I don't understand, Izaya."

I sighed. She was right. Her situation was a lot more difficult than mine was. It was also pretty fucked up.

"You're right." I stood up and wiped the still falling tears from my face. My shoulders slumped and I dragged my feet over to my desk and laid my head down. "what do I do, Namie?"

"Do what you do best, Izaya. Manipulate people." Then Namie paused. "and quit being an info broker."