Maohden Vol. 2 by Hideyuki Kikuchi Page B

come.
    Setsura’s right hand moved in a beckoning gesture. Their devil wires clashed halfway between the two men with a shower of blue and white sparks and a sound like crystal glass shattering against tempered steel.
    Before either could launch a second volley, Gento disappeared through the steel gates, followed a second later by the hurtling ball of Yamada’s head.
    Setsura felt a wet warmth on his arm. Red blood did run through the veins of this young man after all.
    With a wave of his left hand, the fetters holding down Mayumi dissolved. Sprinting closer, he caught her—still wrapped in his slicker—with his left arm.
    “Can you walk?”
    Mayumi didn’t ask him who he was. He probably looked like Gento to her. She shook her head. “They made me drink something—”
    Setsura glanced back over his shoulder. People were entering the arena through doors separate from the main gates. They weren’t spectators, but the organizers, no doubt objecting to him making off with their prize. In the light of the bright spotlights, the caseless submachine guns glimmered in the hands of the security detail.
    “Freeze, buddy.”
    “Or we’ll shoot.”
    They spoke like cops out of an old crime drama. The guns barked fire. The ground around Setsura’s legs kicked up clouds of dust.
    At the same time, a stir shot through the crowd. Clamoring voices and pointing fingers.
    Setsura looked up and said to no one in particular, “Shall I give it a shot?”
    The air whispered. The spectators camped around the spotlights heard a much louder reverberation. The unsteady sway soon prompted cries of alarm. The three spotlights toppled forward, the electrical wires sparking and arcing.
    The Coliseum plunged into darkness, followed by the sounds of steel and glass smashing together and the shouts and cries of the security detail crushed beneath them.
    Several minutes later, when the emergency searchlights came on and guards wearing night vision goggles burst into the arena, the young man wrapped in darkness and the girl had disappeared into thin air.

Chapter 2
    Beneath the concrete sky, the air was filled with night. The darkness wrapped around the pillars and the mountains of debris propping up the building cast an oppressive, leaden pall across this world.
    Footsteps emerged from one corner of the seemingly infinite black. Heavy footsteps, evidence of substantial weight and volume. Even the concrete floor swayed beneath their tread.
    Two shadows emerged from the gloom, Gento Roran and Siegfried’s enormous frame. But what an awful state the giant was in.
    Down the front of his body, from his throat down to his waist, the flesh was split apart as if he’d been vivisected by a surgeon’s scalpel. Not a single drop of blood oozed from the wounds. He surely must be dead, as his internal organs were missing as well.
    Propelling him forward could only be Gento’s necrodancing techniques. The problem was his head. It wasn’t his. Sitting on his shoulders, eyes staring forward like a dead fish, wasn’t Siegfried’s head, but Yamada’s.
    They stopped in front of the great mound of dirt, that by now reached out farther than the eye could see. A shadow suddenly descended from the ceiling and landed on the ground between the mound and Gento.
    “Hyota.”
    “It is I.”
    “I am tired. I will rest for a while.”
    “You are in need of a cleaning.”
    Gento touched his pale cheek. “Now that you mention it, I haven’t washed myself off since hiding inside this fellow and guiding him hither and yon.”
    His face was stained with Siegfried’s blood and gore. The odor about him was something else as well.
    “I shall prepare your bath.”
    “First, what is the state of my abode?”
    “We have at last grasped its location. We shall produce it in a day or two. But in the process, Gento-sama, I happened upon a most curious prize myself.”
    “Oh? Do you have it here?”
    “Yes,” Hyota said with a bow. His lower half was so short, and his