The Good Fight

Prologue/Chapter One: The Wonders of it All

Disclaimer: I do not own Durarara!! If I did, I would be making Izaya and Shizou do naughty things while...I'll stop there.

Note: This fic does include an OC. Pairings are questionable, but I know that I will definitely throw in Anri/Mikado/Masaomi, Celty/Shinra, Namie/Izaya, SHIZAYA and others. If I get anything wrong, feel free to correct me. Reviews are appreciated, thank you and enjoy!

P.S. Pairings for the OC are still undecided. Please give me your input on who you would like to see paired with Takanabbi!

The streets of Ikebukuro were dangerous.

Sometimes it was hard to see how horrifying this place could be. Some of Ikebukuro's residents, in a way, were not even aware of how bad it was.

Maybe it was because some of the terrors of Ikebukuro had to be found, sought out and dissected. They had to be explained, mapped out. Because who really understood what went down in this part of town without knowing everything that there is to know?

Stories were common, some of them true, some of them obviously fake. So they were labeled as such, because not every word that was said had cold, solid proof behind it.

Stories that portray ruthless gangs, crazed murders, mysterious disappearances and one headless biker seemed to be the backdrop of everything.

In the end though, they were just stories.

And yet, there were a select few Ikebukuro residents that could rebuke the claims.

Key words: a select few. These few, however, were not always the most reliable sources.

Because if reality serves itself right, everything and everyone has its secrets. Secrets that unveil not everything is as it seems and not everyone is how they appear.

One that knew this well was a young woman who has lived in Ikebukuro her entire life.

Her name is Tae Takanabbi.

The first time Takanabbi had experienced anything completely out of the ordinary in Ikebukuro was three years ago, when she was sixteen years old.

The day of this occurrence was a rather pleasant one, weather-wise.

The temperature was neither too hot nor too cold so she felt completely comfortable in her Raira Academy uniform as she walked home from school.

The evening sky was one that looked straight out of a painting; with long streaks of orange, red, purple and pinks, Takanabbi felt at ease as she slowly watched the sky fade into night.

The young teen, at this hour, usually would have been home or with friends by now, but she had been forced to stay late at the Academy to assist in tutoring duties. Her having to commit more hours to class actually just added onto the heap that was known as Takanabbi's Wednesday.

It hadn't been a spectacularly amazing day at all for the girl actually, although the weather seemed to contradict that. It had been quite a troubling one for her.

First, she had woken up with the feeling of a head-cold. She had a cough, runny nose, pretty much the works. She immediately took some medicine, but it pestered her all morning long until it panged away in mid-afternoon.

Then, as she was going about preparing herself for her outing and whatnot, she realized there was nothing suitable to pack in a bento in her home, which was incredibly ironic because her family owned a small grocery store in Ikebukuro. Not only did she comment under her breath about this irony, but her older brother, who was a lazy bum that graduated Raira Academy about a year ago, had managed to hear her rummaging about the house. He appeared in front of her in a foul mood, furious that she had awakened him at such an early hour.

He said many cruel words to her, and she listened and soaked them up like a sponge before she wrung herself out, shooting similar insults at him. She was particular to mention heavy subjects such as why he was still living in their parent's home and why his college and doctoring dreams seemed to have simply disappeared.

The fight ended there with a heavy silence, and Takanabbi instantly fled the scene with mismatched socks and untied shoes because she was running late and she needed to get food. She did feel bad about hurting her brother, as she always did when she snapped at him about those points, but he had started it, and she was genuinely concerned about those two things.

His future was bothersome to her. He used to be such a dreamer.

Then something happened. No one knew what, but everyone knew that Tetsunosuke had changed. That much was obvious.

But her brother and family is a different story.

As soon as she accepted the fact of her socks being different colors, the lunch she had bought at grocery store that wasn't her family's (her parents would have murdered her if they knew this, and in a way, she was kicking herself about it), and that she was going to be undeniably late, she realized this day just was not hers.

School supported that thought. Her teacher reprimanded her for her "poor time management" in a loud voice, she was embarrassed in front of classmates with her socks because a girl had so rudely pointed them out, and her bento, when she opened it, had been mislabeled. She had wanted one with beef, not shrimp.

Then the remembrance of her and her brother's fight made her sad, and her friends started to question her with unnecessary ambition because apparently her face "just gave away so much".

Finally, her teacher decided to inform her she would be tutoring two fellow students, which meant another three hours added to her school schedule. Not only was this news relayed to her last minute, but it interrupted her plans of going shopping with her friends after class.

But as Takanabbi reminisced about these events, hiking up her shoulder bag that she used for school closer to her neck, she wasn't as upset about the day as she thought she would have been. Instead, she had almost completely forgotten about her misfortunes.

Takanabbi didn't understand why she felt this way, but she just shrugged it off and accepted the oddity of it all because at this moment, of this seemingly bad day, she saw something.

It was something she wasn't expecting. It was something that made her eyes open wide and her mouth gape open. She was alone at this time, standing in awe on a street corner, one foot in mid-step, ready to set off on the crosswalk.

But she froze. Listened to the roar of a motorcycle, and then an echo of a horse's neigh, watched the passing figure of a biker shrouded in black rev the machinery beneath him.

She could have sworn she had heard the 'clop, clop' of a horse's hooves as she met the view of this biker, who had slowly turned his yellow-helmeted head towards her.

It was like nothing she had ever experienced before.

She felt scared, yet excited as the biker and her studied one another. There was a sensation of being so cold, so engulfed in shadows and darkness that consumed her even though she stood beneath a warm glow of a street light. Her stomach was doing flips, her body was shaking.

The biker saw it all, and Takanabbi knew it. It was like the biker and she were the same person, could feel, hear and see the same things. Was it because it felt like time had slowed? Was it because there was no one else, just the two of them? Was it because the end of this awful day was molding into a night that seemed too perfect?

And before she knew it, Takanabbi raised her hand at the biker.

"Hello," it seemed to say.

Then time froze up again, went slower and slower as Takanabbi turned her head to follow the passing biker. The biker mimicked Takanabbi's head moves, and then...

He waved back.

It was over as suddenly as it came. Takanabbi was alone again, standing dumbfounded, her hand raised in the air, her eyes staring far down into the shades of a city street, appearing to be doing these actions for no apparent reason.

She dropped her hand to her side, looked up and down the street one last time, and then started to walk across the crosswalk. When she rounded another corner, she was met with crowds upon crowds of Ikebukuro citizens. If one were to look at her face, observe her body language, she would give off the display of a normal school girl, calm and at home in the bustling city.

Little did anyone know that she was anything but normal, because with that sighting, the life of Tae Takanabbi would never be the same.

She had seen "The Black Rider". She was one of the first to have seen the legend that was slowly, slowly being born in Ikebukuro. She had made a connection.

She was different.

"Tae-san, where do you want me to put this box?"

Takanabbi blinked, pulling herself out of her memories, and glanced at one of her employee's teenage face.

"Oh, uh, place it in the back will you Kenichi-kun? I still need to inventory that."

"Haiiiii."

The young woman watched as the blue eyed, dusty brown haired boy walked away, whistling a tune like he always did. He disappeared behind the front desk of Takanabbi's grocery store, Tae Grocery, seconds later.

With this, Takanabbi turned back to her task at hand, which consisted of organizing soup cans on a shelf. She discovered herself wanting to fall back into her mind, and think of that day once again.

The steel haired girl had been doing this a lot lately. Constantly thinking of that moment and the past, constantly wondering 'what ifs' and constantly losing focus in the middle of important things. Her favorite time to daydream seemed to be when she was trying to maintain her business.

Takanabbi didn't know why she kept revisiting her memories. They weren't anything special really, now that seeing The Black Rider had become somewhat common. In fact, The Black Rider was an accepted fact in Ikebukuro now. No one doubted it when someone claimed to see the biker, people only questioned what the rider actually was.

Because apparently, he was headless.

However that was merely a rumor. It wasn't proven that he didn't have a head. It wasn't even proven if it was a 'he' at all. Was it human, a lone biker that disbanded from a gang? Or was it something more, a monster of some sort?

Personally Takanabbi threw all of that nonsense aside. She liked to think the biker was a person just trying to make a living, like the rest of the world. But in the back of her mind, she had this nagging feeling that this was no where near the truth.

It didn't matter though, at least not to Takanabbi right now. She decided to keep her memory of The Black Rider to herself, as well as her thoughts of him...or her...or it locked safely away. Because there was something nice, something lovely about not knowing everything.

Takanabbi placed her last soup can in its spot and stood up, brushing off her white store-apron and headed over towards the front desk.

As she stepped behind the counter, she caught sight of her store's cigarette collection. She noticed it looked a bit empty and unorganized, and noted this would be her next project, because work was never done at Tae Grocery. There was always something to do.

"Kenichi-kun," Takanabbi called, "are you almost done with that box?"

"Hai Tae-san! Do you need- gah!"

A loud crash, a strangled cry and the sound of things clanging and falling met the store owner's ears. She instantly placed a hand on her forehead and sighed, walking slowly towards the back of the store as she did so.

She paused by the doorframe, placed her back against the wall and crossed her arms. She wanted to hear how bad the damage was before she saw it.

Because frankly, from the noise it made, it didn't sound good.

"...so how bad is it?" she asked lightly, her voice straining with irritation. She could hear Kenichi moving around, pushing aside products and other things.

"Eh...it could be worse..."

Takanabbi peeked her head into the doorway, and exhaled once again.

There really was always something to do here.

After an hour of cleaning up the backroom, of which Kenichi had somehow managed to cover in flour, it was back to its previous state. Or it was relatively close to it.

Takanabbi had moved to the front of the store, leaving Kenichi to go about doing some last minute cleaning and closing procedures. She was glancing out the large, front window and into the street that lay beyond.

Her grocer resided in an area that received heavy people-traffic during the hours of both day and night, but for some reason, even though this evening was just as bustling as the others, there was something Takanabbi felt was missing.

She watched the many colors of city-goers' clothing pass by, and listened to the muffled noises of booming chatter that dangled outside the window. The bright, neon lights that shone above other places of work highlighted the actions of the street, and made people's faces glow, showcasing what they seemed to be doing, thinking, or speaking of.

Takanabbi's pale grey eyes studied everything closely. However her studying soon came to an end when Kenichi rounded her side with a smile, with her jacket and shoulder bag in hand.

"Time to go home, neh Tae-san?"

The young woman smiled back and nodded, but did not speak a word. As she began to head towards her employee and retrieve her things, Takanabbi glanced outside one last time.

The brown eyes of a teen girl with pigtails met her grey gaze, and for a moment they just looked at one another. The girl looked sad, nervous too as she fiddled with her pink flip-phone. Then a man with glasses appeared by her side, and their eyes unlocked.

And that was that.