Daddy's Little Girl

[unicornhunter]

Erika grinned. "Great! Be right there, then!" She skipped on her merry way to Izaya's office.

****

Ah, so the good-for-nothing brute smoked on top of everything else. Bad for his little princess's lungs, bad for little Erika in general....

Mamoru approached Shizuo, his gait awkward yet confident, his breathing quick from excitement. He lifted the picture Izaya had given him of Shizuo Heiwajima up and compared the two. Yep. This was the guy. Mamoru walked closer to Shizuo, starting to chuckle.

"You're the bad man keeping her away from me but you won't be in the way much longer, oh no you won't won't won't Shizuo Heiwajima, no no no, she's much too good for you and you just won't do, no no no."

Mamoru took out the knife he had bought and ran at Shizuo, poised to stab him in the chest with it.

****

Erika was humming one of her favorite anime opening songs as she climbed the stairs to Izaya's office. She knocked cheerfully on Izaya's door.

[tossingtrashcans]

Shizuo thought... he had heard something. He raised his hand up and picked at his ear then turned around and blinked behind his sunglasses. What in the blazes was this babbling fool talking about? He sighed and raised up his hand from his pocket a little.

“Look, I don't know who she is that you are rambling about and-” His train of thought was cut off by a sharp pain in his chest. He looked down and let his eye twitch.

Next thing he knew he had the strange man by the collar of his shirt, he picked him up then threw him into a bush. With a heavy sigh he looked down,

“Shit.” he mumbled as he watched the blood soak through his shirt and vest. “I just got these clean.” He added.

Shizuo poked at the vest a little, “Wonder if I have a band-aid at home?” He asked himself as he walked away from the fruit cup with a knife.

[unicornhunter]

Mamoru got caught up in the bush rather comically for a few minutes, then he managed to finally disengage himself from it. He didn't really see the actions he was taking against Shizuo as he ran after him, catapulting himself onto Shizuo's back and digging his knife into his shoulder. No, what he saw was this man manhandling his daughter in a similar fashion, and that was a no-no, Mr. Heiwajima!

He held on tightly, wrapping his legs around Shizuo's torso as he slashed repeatedly, blood squirting all over the two of them.

Soon Erika would be back with him and she'd never have to deal with such a brute ever again, no she wouldn't, she'd be at home with him, forever and ever and ever and everandeverandeverandevereverevereverevereverevereverever - !

He began cackling manically at the closeness he had to the tangible moment of having his daughter back in his arms.

[tossingtrashcans]

Shizuo was almost out of the park when he felt a weight on his back then another sharp pain in his shoulder. Oh god, that one kind of hurt. He stopped walking and looked over and sighed. He reached around grabbed the man and flipped him over his shoulder and onto the ground.

He reached up to his shoulder and pulled the blade out and sighed as he folded it up and stuck it into his pocket. Shizuo looked down and tilted his head before he leaned down and punched the man in the face, causing his head to fall back and hid the ground with a loud thud. He then stood up and stepped once on the body that laid twitching on the ground and processed out of the park.

The bleeding was worse now, he felt a little dizzy but continued to headed home. Well he'd have to scratch getting milk off his list. He'd have to go home shower and change then go out again and get it. Stupid guy and his silly knife.

With a heavy sigh he rounded the corner out of site from the man. Wondering if he had enough band-aids at him for this.

[UndergroundGod]

Soon after, Mamoru left him with an eerily cheerful thank you and Izaya was overjoyed to see him go. As soon as the door closed behind him, Izaya let out a silent sigh of relief. Now it was just a matter of waiting. Sometime that day, Mamoru was bound to run into Shizuo, and when he did, he'd attacked him, and then Shizuo would retaliate.

Izaya moved back to his desk chair, plopping down into it. He was seriously going to order a new couch, probably the next day, and until then, he would sit where Mamoru had been sitting. Surely there were some sort of evil pedo-germs on it now, and Izaya was having none of that, not to mention that man stunk like he hadn't had a bath in days… which he more than likely hadn't.

He spun around to watch the front of the building, waiting for Mamoru to leave, and after a few minutes, he spotted the man far below them on the sidewalk, until he disappeared around a corner and was gone.

At that point, Izaya closed his eyes and took a few minutes to relax, swaying back and forth in the office chair, until he felt like enough stability had returned to his mind to continue with the work he had for the day.

Before he could continue though, he felt a sudden need to contact his sisters. He immediately pulled out his phone, texting Kururi quickly and asking how she was enjoying school.

A few moments later, he got a reply: "Fuck you, big brother – K&M <33"

He smiled to himself, and could finally breathe a bit easier knowing that his sisters were fine. He returned to the work he had pulled up on his computer.

It was a few hours later that he got a call from Erika asking to drop by his office and he gave her the go ahead.

He told Namie to get read to head out as soon as Erika arrived, as he figured the girl wasn't going to want to discuss her father with a stranger around, so when there was a knock on the door, Namie grabbed her things and headed towards it, opening the door long enough to wave Erika in and leave and close the door behind her.

[unicornhunter]

Erika maneuvered her way around Namie, waving back at her and giving her a chipper "Hello and goodbye!", complete with a silly little salute, as though Namie and she were in Fullmetal Alchemist or something. She closed the door behind Namie, then twirled around to face Izaya.

"Good afternoon! Or I hope it is, at least. Did everything with my dad go all right?"

She moved farther into the room and was about to sit on the couch right where Mamoru had sat - but then she smelled the foul odor and could figure out for herself exactly who had sat there. Scrunching her nose up, she picked a different seat entirely, choosing not to go anywhere near that couch.

[UndergroundGod]

Izaya watched calmly as the two women passed each other in the doorway, Erika giving his secretary an overly formal greeting. The information broker shook his head a little, but smiled as Namie gave the younger woman a weird look before she had escaped the office and the door was closed behind her.

He leaned forward against his desk and watched as Erika crossed the room to the sofa, raising an eyebrow as she approached the exact seat her father had taken… but then quickly veered away from it, likely because of the smell. Hell, Izaya was twelve feet away and he could smell it (though, to be fair, he was awfully sensitive to things like that), he was sure it was absolutely repulsive to Erika, who was much closer.

If only he'd been joking when he'd thought about burning that couch. Pfft, he had half the mind to make Erika buy him the new one, if he thought she had any money for it.

"It went well enough, I suppose," he replied nonchalantly. "He seemed to buy everything, and was terribly delighted with the information I gave him."

[unicornhunter]

Erika laughed a little nervously. "Y-yeah, I guess.... I guess that's to be expected.... Eh heh...."

She looked down at her hands folded in her lap, the smile she had managed to hold on her face until she got there starting to falter.

"Iza-iza. . . . We're doing the right thing, right? Shizu-chan is gonna beat him up, he'll lay around unconscious, and then maybe get picked up by the police and we'll never have to worry about him again, right?"

She wasn't sure how much longer she could keep all this from Walker. . . . He was starting to ask questions, wondering where she'd been these last few days, why she hadn't been talking to him or hanging out with Kadota and Togusa with him lately. . . . She had even been receiving concerned texts from Kadota. . . . Kadota was too smart for his own good, on top of all that. Though she supposed that was the whole reason why she was even alive right then. . . .

All of a sudden, she laughed at herself. "Am I worrying too much?"

[UndergroundGod]

He frowned a little at Erika's nervous question, though the frown wasn't necessarily at her; his eyes were unfocused, staring across the room absently as the weight of his head leaned heavily against his hand. It was a serious, thoughtful look and he wasn't sure how to answer her at first.

Honestly, he didn't like any of this. The best way to go about this would have been to find a time machine and go back to the first time the man had been running loose; then Izaya could make sure that Shiki handled the situation. Because when Shiki handled something, it was settled for good. Mamoru would be dead, his body dumped, and no one would have had to worry about it again.

Unfortunately, Izaya didn't have such a device, so he just had to hope that they were handling the situation the right way, but for once, Izaya felt the nervous flutter of butterflies twitching their painted wings around inside his stomach. He hated feeling this way, but… it was just this case, this man. The horrible feeling of inadequacy that had plagued him on his first real life mission had tagged along with Mamoru and while Izaya was normally over confident in his ability to handle adverse situations, with this man, he felt none of it.

He wasn't sure whether to be relieved or more nervous that Erika shared the sentiment.

His voice was low as he spoke, shaking his head vaguely, "I don't think there's such a thing as worrying too much over this."

[unicornhunter]

Erika frowned, knowing that Izaya was right but wishing they didn't have to worry about her father at all....

". . . I know Shizu-chan is more than capable of taking care of himself. And there's no way my father could beat him in any way whatsoever. . . . But . . . there's no way Shizu-chan is going to get him out of the way permanently, is there? He's - he's not the kind of guy who would kill someone, is he?"

She knew it was terrible of her to sound morose and disappointed about that, but . . . . She looked up at Izaya.

"H-Has Shizuo ever killed anyone?"

[UndergroundGod]

Saying that Shizuo could handle himself was more than a bit of an understatement. If anyone in all of Japan could defend themselves, it was Shizuo. The man had fought off entire hordes of gang members all at once, busting skulls, breaking noses, and somehow punching people out of their clothes. Even Izaya didn't fully understand how he managed it; he only knew that he did and that somehow Shizuo was very much invincible. He had very few doubts that Shizuo wouldn't be really harmed by Mamoru, at least not as much as he would harm Mamoru.

Izaya was thoughtful for a moment at Erika's question. Had Shizuo ever killed anyone? If he had, Izaya wasn't acutely aware of it, though that didn't mean it hadn't happened. Really though, despite Shizuo's often violent nature… he wasn't a cruel person. Even if he had killed someone, it would have been an accident.

"It's hard to say," Izaya replied, shaking his head a little. "He's hit too many people not to, I would think, but I doubt it was ever intentional. Maybe he wouldn't even know about it, if he did. Because honestly, when you punch someone and it throws them three blocks, there aren't many people who are going to survive that, but then the guy would be way out of Shizuo's sight, so he wouldn't even think about it afterward.

"Plus," he added with a snide grin, "even if he did, the police probably wouldn't even think about it. It would look more like a hit and run death than anything a person could do."

[unicornhunter]

Erika listened intently to what Izaya had to say. Though, she'd be lying if she told herself that she didn't feel like a horrible person for wishing that Shizuo would murder her father. Yes, it would be for the good of Ikebukuro and Japan at large, but it still wasn't a nice thing to think. Then again, the way Izaya was framing the situation . . . Shizuo wouldn't even have to know he had killed him. . . . So it wasn't as though she was wishing guilt and trauma on Shizuo. She just . . . wanted the bad guy to never come back.

"S-so . . . there is a chance that Shizuo could take him out for good? How - how likely do you think that chance is?" She bit her lower lip, still unaware of how much she looked like her father when she did little things like that, that he did too....

She had never really noticed what mannerisms she had in common with him. And she tried her hardest not to think about it, because if she started comparing herself to him, she wouldn't be able to stop, and she'd be right back in the darkness, and what if Kadota couldn't pull her back out again. . . ?

She hung her head and brought her knees up to her chest, the heel of her shoes digging into the seat cushion. She wasn't crying, though. She just . . . needed to comfort herself.

[UndergroundGod]

Izaya would have preferred to talk about anything else. Mamoru and Shizuo were his two least favorite topics to discuss at this point, and the last thing he wanted to do know was pick apart this plan. He knew there were flaws in it, there were potentials for failure, but… he didn't want to think about it. He didn't want to consider how this could backfire, he just wanted to believe that it was over with.

"There's definitely a chance," he replied with a soft nod. "The way I figure it, Mamoru will attack Shizuo and Shizuo will beat him up. He probably won't kill him the first time around, but he'll probably do some damage and maybe knock him unconscious or something. When Mamoru wakes up, he won't have any reason to think we deceived him, he'll just think that Shizuo's really strong. But since Shizuo is guilty in Mamoru's mind, it's compulsory that he'll go after him again. At which point, Shizuo beats him up again, though he's more frustrated this time because even Shizuo would remember a nut job like Mamoru, so he hurts him more. If he doesn't kill him, Mamoru just comes after him again. Lather, rinse, repeat. It shouldn't take long before the accumulative damage is too much."

He thought briefly over whether it was a bad thing to talk about someone's father dying so casually, just musing on the thought. Normally, hoping someone's dad would get murder was a pretty bad idea, but in this case, it was what Erika wanted too, and really, who could blame her. They both just wanted this to be over.

[unicornhunter]

Erika lifted her eyes just enough to watch Izaya as he talked about what he believed would happen between Mamoru and Shizuo.

There was something very interesting going on in her head whenever she talked to Izaya about her father and how everything involving her and this whole mess. It was very similar to the feeling she got when she talked to Kadota about things that bothered her - things that she didn't feel comfortable telling Walker about.

Don't get her wrong - she loved Walker. But there were just some things that she felt like she couldn't talk to him about. It was hard to explain. But it was so much easier to talk to Kadota about it....

This was the same feeling. Despite knowing that Izaya was actually the last person she should trust with any of her secrets, she felt like, if she couldn't divulge them in Kadota, then she could come to him now. With anything. Izaya might not be particularly interested in it, perhaps, but . . . she liked this feeling. That she had a safety net. A safety net under the safety net known as Kyohei "Dotachin" Kadota.

She managed a smile at the end of Izaya's explanation.

"Thanks, Izayan. I owe you." Her smile widened. "You know, maybe you're more of a main character than I thought."

[UndergroundGod]

Izaya had been a confidant on a number of occasions, it was just that the circumstances under which people confided things to him were often faulty. He played a friend to those in suicide forums, trying to pick apart their brains and discover their true motivations for the things they said. In high school, he'd more or less had an occult club of fangirls that followed his drearily around the school; all of them had told him more things than he had ever asked for, and some things he'd never cared to know, but that was because he'd set himself up as their occult god so discretely that they hadn't even realized it.

No, no one in Izaya's personal life had ever, after getting to know him, decided that he was a person worthy of sharing their innermost secrets with.

He couldn't know what Erika was thinking of course, no matter how much he pretended he could. He could only know that there was something… interesting in the way she had smiled at him. It was the smile that someone wore when they were thinking about something ridiculous that probably shouldn't be happening, but was anyway. The look on her face caught his eye and he watched her as she spoke and the grin widened.

At her words, he let out a sharp burst of laughter, feeling a bubble of tension pop, releasing a temporary wave of relief. "In a way, that almost sounds like a compliment."