Notes: Even more batshit insane than the last one. But hey, crazy sells, so I deliver.

Warlord

He wanders the worlds, the streets like a seventeen-year-old drunk, and the city is his mistress. Ikebukuro stands tall and confident, the tiny shreds of night sky in between the skyscrapers' edges grace Her like nothing else can.

He lets his gaze drift across Ikebukuro's beauty, and notices a girl on the other side of the road, sending him hopeful invitations with her blazingly dark eyes. Her skirt is too short and her lips too red, but he rises to the bait and veers round in her direction. Her mouth curves into a debauched smile, her white legs clashing with her black leather stilettoes, and — she's barely sixteen. She's got nothing on Ikebukuro.

"Hey there handsome," she breathes, noosing her arms around his neck. "You free tonight?"

Izaya humours her by taking her hand, and slowly leading her away from the street into the darkness.

"Where are we going?" she giggles, so marvellously naïve that he almost breaks her wrist.

"My place," he answers hoarsely.

It doesn't take long, maybe five minutes, and they halt in front of a plain apartment house, where every door and every window looks the same rundown grey. He lets go of her hand and shoots her a meaningful glance, before slowly ascending the stairs to apartment 58. She follows him with a bit of a flounce, her heels colliding sharply with the concrete: clank, clank, and clank. It makes him want to rip off her stilettoes and burn them right in front of her.

After the last step, snuggling up to him, she reads the sign next to the door, "Shizuo Heiwajima, huh?" She chuckles throatily. "So you're that Heiwajima?"

Her body presses against him, all hot and edgy (aren't women supposed to be smooth and curved out?), only the tips of her fingers are cold. They leave an icy trail on the nape of his neck.

"The silent type, huh? I like that," she purrs and pulls him down for a kiss.

He lets her until their noses are only millimetres apart from each other, then he goes for her neck and pulls at it, hard. His fingernails dig into her skin as he tightens his grip around it, and she can't even scream, can't even blink. With big blank eyes she stares at him, unable to grasp the concept that she's going to die, right here right now, in front of Shizuo-chan's apartment. She moves her mouth to speak, but the words are running together, her mouth leaking red.

And Izaya's face breaks into a wide grin. "Don't take it personal. Nobody's serious when they're seventeen," he says brightly. "Right?"

At that moment her neck snaps, head rolling to the side, and her body goes limp. He loosens his hold on her and watches as she hits the ground with a thud.

The sun had barely risen when Shizuo arrived home from a usual night of work and throwing state property at the heads of people he didn't like or who had generally been unpleasant to him. He was tired and wanted to go to bed, maybe have a drink and a smoke or two before. Upon climbing the stairs to his apartment, his bones ached with exhaustion and his lungs burnt. Maybe he'd skip the cigarettes …

He froze. His frantic breathing slowed down, his feet went numb. Horrified, he stared at the floor in front of his apartment. Another one, he thought absentmindedly. With heavy steps he approached her.

She was young, around Kasuka's age, and pretty in a cheap sort of way.

Head slightly tilted, her blank eyes stared up at him almost expectantly, as if waiting for an explanation.

"Where've you been last night?"

He looks up from his chess board, a dark smirk befalling him. "What, are you afraid I might have been with another woman?"

Namie's eyes narrow, but she manages to adopt an overall indifferent expression. "I'd just like to know what's going on before anything starts burning, so I can prepare for the aftermath. You know, cleaning up after you can be a real pain."

"Aww, you're just like a mother, worrying about her child. So cute! Perhaps I should call you 'Mommy' from now on. No? How about 'Momma', then?"

Namie takes one of her slippers and throws it at his head. With that, the matter is settled. It's not her problem what he does at night or if he's found another resident of Ikebukuro, Tokyo to toy with. After all, they're not friends or anything.

He hated Ikebukuro at night. He hated it, because it was always loud and it really never went to sleep, and as a consequence he never really went to sleep either. Especially now that these things kept happening to him. At first he'd thought it'd been coincidence. That had been the one on the sidewalk just around the corner of his apartment block. But the third one, the one below the stairs to his apartment. That had been when he'd started to think something was weird. Not because it had been so close or because of the fact that he kept finding them, but because there'd been scribbled something across her face: WAR. In clumsy Latin letters.

In that moment, he had known the identity of the predator.

He'd tried to do something about it, tried to find that bastard Izaya and pluck him apart into tiny pieces, and finally burn him until there were only ashes left. Only, he suddenly seemed untraceable. His old broker firm was deserted; nobody in Ikebukuro — or Tokyo for that matter — knew where he'd hidden himself.

Darkly dreaming, the sky stretches over the metropolis like a vast blanket made of shadows and white twinkling dots. Under the veil of the night Izaya leaves his stuffy hideout to roam the enticing nightlife of Ikebukuro. After ranging over some suburbs — Nerima, Itabashi, and Kita —, he heads for his actual target, but before he can get there, he sees something lying on the byroad to his left. It's a thirty-ish woman with long straight hair and lots of blood on her face. Someone broke her nose, Izaya realises upon closer examination, and tries an experimental shove. Seconds pass. He tries again. The woman moves one shaky arm, then the other; slowly, she sits up. She touches her nose, notices the large amount of blood covering her face, clothes and hair, and winces.

Finally, she turns to look up at Izaya.

"Thank you," she says weakly, "for finding me and waking me up. I — I'd better go home now."

"Oh. Oh, I get it. So now you're the martyr."

The woman stares at him, uncomprehending.

"Am I supposed to admire you now? For your poise? For your restraint?" He breaks into heavy, taunting laughter. "I bet your own husband did this to you!"

"How dare you insult—"

"Wow," he exclaims, and smashes her head down on the asphalt with one fluid motion of his wrist. He lets out an appreciative whistle. "You're even defending him? So cool!"

Muffled sounds emit from her while he continues to press her face against the floor, but it's only when he bends down to her that she really thrashes out, without calculation or control but just panic, and he whispers into her ear:

"But to tell you the truth, I hate cool. Don't you?"

He begins knocking her head down and again and again. She screams, not shrilly, rather low and throatily. It almost sounds like a growl. And he hates it. He hates her voice, her attitude, how she keeps on fighting what is inevitable. He didn't even want her, and now he has to because she just had to lie there on the street.

After one or two minutes her body goes limp and he lets go of her. He's panting, and it scares him that he reacted so strongly to her when she hadn't even been planned.

"It's getting out of hand, asshole."

Izaya's head whipped around, genuine horror planted on his face. Shizuo felt something itch in his fingers. It was weird for him to display such raw emotion.

"Shizuo?" Izaya asked, taking a few small steps forward. He was gradually regaining his composure. "Shizuo-chan? I'm impressed. How did you find me?"

"You're not as good at covering your tracks as you think."

Izaya scoffed. "Ah, so you had Celty help you out a little. Cheating isn't fair, you know."

Shizuo was tempted to laugh out loud but the sight of the woman's corpse in the background stifled it with burning nausea. "I'm not here to play games with you. I'll put an end to this at last."

Moving even closer, Izaya's expression took on some kind of sinister amusement. "You always say that, Shizuo-chan, yet you never carry out your threats. So, can you really? Kill me, I mean."

"See for yourself."

With the speed of a leopard, Shizuo lunged at Izaya who had nowhere to run in this small alley. Together they landed on the floor, Shizuo at the top pinning the other down.

"Oww, that hurt," the flea whined, "be a little more careful next time. Or maybe you like it better this way? Do you compensate your violent nature and lack of social ability by projecting all your grudges on me? Does it make you feel better when—"

"SHUT UP," Shizuo seethed and punched him in the face. "JUST SHUT THE HELL UP."

With boiling rage he watched Izaya hold his nose, weeping theatrically. Then he averted his gaze to the dead woman just a few metres away from them.

"Does it make you sad?" Izaya enquired, clearly enjoying himself despite the physical pain. "Do you feel guilty?"

"You killed people," Shizuo-chan says, "Before her. Too many."

"So you're being my judge?" Izaya snarls because it's not funny anymore, he's had enough. Enough of Shizuo and his stupidly naïve dreams of fucking poetic justice.

"Someone has to be."

"Do you really think the world gives a damn? About her? Or you?"

"Do you think the world gives a damn about you, then?"

Fine. Fine, Izaya thinks, be the hero. Be the martyr. Be just like her.

Summoning all of his strength, he pushes Shizuo down. He enjoys the way his head hits the ground with a conclusive thud.

"The world doesn't give a damn about anyone," he hisses, unwrought hatred dripping from every syllable.

"Aah," Shizuo sighs and casually lights a cigarette. "I see. I was wrong. You aren't war."

He puts the cigarette to his mouth and takes a strong drag. When he exhales, the smoke obscures Izaya's sight and causes his eyes to burn. It's an unpleasant feeling.

"You're emptiness. You're so empty that you became infatuated with other people's emotions. You say you love mankind, and now I believe you, because you all alone could never feel fulfilled. You love mankind because you need it. You poor bastard, you're so frustrated because the only one who really understands you is—"

"That's enough, Shizuo-chan."

With both hands Izaya clasps Shizuo's neck. The smoke is gone now. The cigarette has fallen down and lies discarded on the wet asphalt, its ember slowly dying.

"— the one you hate the most."

Almost without any effort Izaya squeezes Shizuo's neck. Still, he is dead almost instantly.

"Too bad, dear Shizuo," Izaya says to Shizuo's dead body and even feels somewhat disappointed by this fast and cheap sort of victory. He feels cheated. "You were only right about one thing." Gingerly, he lets his hand slide over Shizuo's cheek. "I really do hate you more than anyone else."