Chapter 84

Chapter 84 is the eighty-fourth chapter of the Dead Mount Death Play manga.

Official Blurb
As Shinjuku deals with the aftermath of the battle, the mediators begin to move...

Short Summary
In hot demand.

Synopsis
In Takeru Shinoyama's office, Bao apologizes for her inability to contact him for a time during the Shinjuku War; she was busy, she says, forging a non-aggression pact with Agakura.
 * Shinoyama Security

Taipei, who is aware of Xiaoyu Lei's history with Agakura, remarks on Bao's selfishness and, in doing so, implicitly questions her motives. Bao says that she will acquiesce if Takeru decides to fire her, but Takeru decides no such thing; the opening of a "pipeline of negotiations with Agakura," he supposes, may be a boon. After all, with no Agakura ever being brought to justice despite the family's longevity in the underworld, much about the organization remains a mystery.

This new pact demands new measures: Takeru's hidden network shall have to extend its reach without finding itself in Agakura's maw. In other words, while the Heilei handle defense, others will need to dirty their hands. With this in mind, Takeru instructs Yomogi to call a meeting with four people: Hotokezaka, Rouge, Ootsuzura, and Tamate.

Two photographs are open on Taipei's laptop: one of his step-grandmother holding his infant half uncle, Polka Shinoyama, and a cropped image of a much older Polka.

Over the phone, Lisa Kuraki tells someone that "we'll be there" and hangs up. To her inquisitive lovers, she explains that the caller, Roppongi's mediator; said that Shibuya's mediator Kuon Higuro, has disappeared; therefore, the other mediators must meet to discuss Higuro's replacement.
 * Youtoukorou

At the foot of a damaged high-rise building under repair, Tsubaki Iwanome, Kōzaburō Arase, and fellow Comps-3 members Danjō Tozawa and Kayakusa speculate as to the cause of such damage; Fire-breathing Bug is suggested but discarded, as hypnotism cannot create a cyclone—that which scientists suspect took place.
 * Shinjuku

The invoking of Bug leads Tozawa to bring up Comps-3's ongoing reevaluation of the backgrounds of individuals associated with the estate where Comps-3 and Bug confronted each other. At Tozawa's ambivalence as to whether this reevaluation will uncover any links to the Sabaramond people, Kayakusa asks Iwanome whether the police have seized Habaki's correspondence; Iwanome replies that they do, but he lacks the manpower to properly examine it thanks to this new incident.

On cue, Ranmaru Yatsu informs Iwanome that gunfire reportedly was heard in Yotsuya, and that law enforcement is currently analyzing relevant security camera footage. Iwanome glances at a headline on his phone—"Sudden Squall in Shinjuku and Sightings of Solitaire?"—and in exasperation exclaims, "It just keeps coming...!"

Atop a building somewhere else in Tokyo, Phantom Solitaire sings the city's praises and, with grandiloquent, speculative affectation, attempts to summarize what may or may not have taken place in Shinjuku—though, as he acknowledges with staid aplomb, summarizing the likes of 'a draconian creature manifesting within a magic circle' is rather impractical.

Solitaire's staid expression drops and Solitaire drops with it, rolling about with incredulous, overjoyed laughter until he regains his gentleman's composure. He stands in response to the task standing before him: that of verifying whether he can, through his sleights of hand and his magic tricks, reproduce the events or manifestations he saw in the night. What Solitaire managed to see, however, he only saw from a distance, due to Lemmings chasing him away from the scene. Overcome with indignation, Solitaire cries out, "What did I ever do to him!?"—a wail that the wind carries to the pedestrians below.

Takeru, with Bao and Taipei still in attendance, questions Lemmings on his eyewitness account—the only one—of the events that transpired in the night. That Lemmings allowed Solitaire to escape has yet to be explained; that Xiaoyu defeated a woman with a bolt of lightning is potentially explicable, if Rozan Shinoyama has made advancements in his prosthetics' designs; that the woman "grew tiger ears" seems inexplicable outside of cosplay, something that Takeru's experience with is limited to his shark-loving sister.
 * Shinoyama Security

Sayo Shinoyama, bundled in her shark sleeping bag, enters an unfurnished room and offers matutinal salutations to its occupants: Lulu, Xiaoyu, the dual-fanged tiger Rafa & Gufa, Misaki Sakimiya, and Soara, the penultimate of whom returns the "good morning," and the last of whom points out that it is now nightfall. Some sharks half-sleep as they swim day and night, replies Sayo, who valiantly flops onto the floor in order to make up for the sleep deficit.
 * Abandoned Building

That Sayo so flippantly sleeps in the presence of yesterday's enemies makes her "quite the character" in the mutual, though perhaps not identical opinions of Xiaoyu and Soara—the former of whom compares Rafa & Gufa's sleeping pattern to that of the half-sleeping sharks. Soara envies the tiger this ability, though she nonetheless pets the head that purrs at her, and it is with uncharacteristic melancholy that she explains how the Bastard researchers transplanted Rafa & Gufa's heart and spinal cord—along with segments of their nerves—into her body. This was, she says, an experiment to test the viability of transplanting organs from otherwordly magical beasts into humans.

Xiaoyu, in deducing that the Bastards and Corpse God respectively collected the tiger's carcass and soul, surmises that the Bastard organization might very well indeed be affiliated with the must-discussed Empire. Soara says that she and her companions possess only limited knowledge of the organization's inner workings, neither confirming or denying Xiaoyu's line of thinking. Certainly, she is ignorant regarding the reunion between Lulu and Lulu's "grandma or great-grandma"—and she certainly is not about to share her breathing technique with the cheater who had prior training with the tiger.

Xiaoyu huffs that the tiger has won their every bout so far; ergo, he and Soara alike have much to improve upon. Then, in the theme of 'opponents on a winning streak,' he says, "You know Lemmings didn't intend to kill us." Soara cannot disagree, because, if Lemmings had... Well.

All this overheard talk of self-improvement, Takumi deadpans to Misaki, is not for him. Misaki is on Xiaoyu's side, for she wants to evolve into a stronger vampire—but this will require the involvement of a higher-level "original" vampire, according to Palomy: the winged imperial sorcerer—and fellow spellcrafted vampire via Corpse God—who fought in the Shinjuku War. Palomy, Misaki exclaims, with a beaming smile, is her twofold senior both as a vampire and a friend to "Polka"—or "Liz-kun," she supposes, cradling Polka-the-plush between her hands.

Polka—Liz-kun—Corpse God is presently deep in conversation with Civil A. Sabaramond, so Takumi in his stead tells Misaki what to call him for the time being: just "Polka," never mind all Misaki's talk of 'seniors' and 'newbies'; such distinctions, Takumi opines, do not exist between friends, nor are they ones that Corpse God would deign to make. Takumi's reassuring opinions on friendship remind Misaki of Takumi's previous friendship-rallying over the comms, much to Takumi's embarrassment.

Misaki's smartphone chirps with a message from Lisa on a job for Misaki come the morrow: bodyguarding Lisa herself. Takumi checks his own messages and discovers requests for multiple investigations—including into, he is stunned to concomitantly learn, Higuro's disappearance.


 * The Next Day

In a carpeted room, Lisa sits at a card table. Behind her stand Misaki and Kazami. Behind all three stand several henchmen at a short distance, their handguns aimed in the women's direction. Lisa asks the unseen person responsible if she should take this threat of violence as an imminent one, for—if it is—then she must assume the person and their henchmen are carrying out a suicide mission. And suicide missions, she quips, smiling, are only worth it if the pay is good.

Across the card table, the mediator of Roppongi—Andalucía—matches Lisa's imperturbable smile and Lisa's bodyguards with two of her own: the junior snipers of Atelier.

Trivia

 * In the wake of Chapter 84's individual release in the Young Gangan magazine, manga artist Shinta Fujimoto apologized in a tweet for forgetting to draw Iwanome's facial wound; this error, he promised, would be corrected in the volume edition. Attached to the tweet was a sketch of Iwanome's wound being treated.
 * Yomogi has previously been called 'Yochigi' in Yen Press' releases of previous chapters, though "Yomogi" was also used in Chapter 68.

Referbacks

 * Palomy made her visual debut in the second bonus comic of Volume 2, seven volumes before her debut proper in Volume 9.
 * Kazami, the woman in a gas mask, can be seen treating Takumi's wounds in Chapter 59.
 * Takumi's communication issues with Bao were mentioned in Chapter 73.
 * The cropped image of Polka is cropped from the family photo shown in Chapter 10.