Bungo Stray Dogs: STORM BRINGER

Bungo Stray Dogs: STORM BRINGER (文豪ストレイドッグス ＳＴＯＲＭ ＢＲＩＮＧＥＲ,) is the ninth light novel in the Bungo Stray Dogs series. It is set one year after Dazai, Chūya, Age Fifteen.

The novel was adapted into a stage play of the same name, which ran in Summer 2022.

Japanese
太宰治とともに『荒覇吐事件』を終息させ、ポートマフィアに加入して１年.

幹部の座を狙う中原中也の前に現れたのは、中也を弟と呼ぶ暗殺王ポール・ヴェルレエヌだった！

「お前の心に関わる人間を、全員暗殺する」

彼の計画を阻止するため、中也は欧州の人造知能捜査官・アダムと手を組む.

それは横浜をふたたび呑みこむ嵐の予兆.

中原中也とは一体“何”なのか. 射干玉の闇に包まれた過去の真実が今、明らかになる――！

English
It's been roughly one year since Chūya Nakahara joined the Port Mafia, and he's got his sights set on an executive position. But as he makes plans to move up, a man by the name of Paul Verlaine—claiming to be his younger brother—appears and vows to assassinate everyone he cares about! Now, Chūya must team up with Adam, a European A.I. investigator, to stop this lunatic before the storm swallows Yokohama once again…

Summary
A passenger airplane crash causes a forest fire in a certain village, and from the wreckage emerges a humanoid detective from Europole named Adam Frankenstein. He sets out for his mission after his aircraft's crash landing, then asks a village boy for someone named Chūya Nakahara.
 * Prologue

A year after joining the Port Mafia, 16-year-old Chūya has now made a name in the organization managing a gemstone black market. For his one-year anniversary in the Mafia, Chūya is surprised by his friends, the Flags, who hand him a photograph of him as an ordinary child after going behind Ōgai Mori's back to uncover Chūya's background. They hold a party at a bar where they are sneaked upon by Adam, who asks Chūya to cooperate in an investigation involving the assassin Paul Verlaine, whom Adam believes wishes to harm Chūya. When the boy refuses, Adam kidnaps him to the Flags' amusement and tries to convince him elsewhere.
 * [CODE;01] Nothing more than 2,383 lines of code some researchers wrote off the top of their heads

Chūya soon escapes from him, only to be caught by Verlaine who reveals having slayed the Flags moments ago during Chūya's absence. The assassin says he wishes to kill everyone associated with Chūya and partially opens the Gate within the boy, causing gravity to go haywire and unleash Arahabaki's flames, until Osamu Dazai arrives to nullify it. He then takes Chūya to the bar, where he witnesses his friends' corpses. Chūya finally agrees to join Adam in the investigation.

The next day, Adam attends the funeral for the Flags and interrupts the ceremony trying to speak with Chūya about Verlaine. Initially pestered to a fit of rage, Chūya gets ordered to go with Adam, who brings intel on Verlaine's next possible targets, one of which is Buichirō Shirase. Chūya and Adam head to where Shirase works to warn him about Verlaine, but Shirase flees from them out of spite for Chūya, believing that he had betrayed the Sheep. The three of them get caught and detained by Detective Murase and the police. Dazai is visited by Verlaine, who retrieves the Mafia's internal files they had negotiated over two days prior.
 * [CODE;02] The dead feel no emotion

Murase, who has since been bent on getting Chūya out of the Mafia, tries to strike a plea deal with the mafioso to be released with Shirase in exchange for selling out internal Mafia intel, which Chūya flatly rejects. Adam breaks Shirase out of jail at Chūya's behest, but Verlaine storms the facility and corners them. Chūya arrives despite Adam's cautionary messages and fights Verlaine. Before Chūya uncontrollably unleashes Arahabaki again courtesy of Verlaine, the latter spots Murase and kills him—his actual first target—before retreating.

Adam examines Murase's phone and recovers a call of Murase contacting his allegedly dead brother known simply as N; Chūya deduces that N is still alive and researching Arahabaki. Just then, N hacks into Adam's feed and invites Chūya to see him. Chūya, Adam, and Shirase head to a secret military facility, where they meet N who introduces himself as Chūya's "father". As N reveals that France was once able to weaponize an ability singularity that birthed Verlaine, he isolates Chūya from Adam and Shirase, bringing him to Research Facility B that was modeled after the facility he was created in as an ability with its own will like Verlaine. Chūya finds the "original" Chūya, the owner of the self-contradicting ability that brought him to life, before the boy dies.
 * [CODE;03] I want to see Chūya suffer as a human

N soon subdues Chūya and attempts to force Arahabaki out of him to control the singularity, until Verlaine frees him. Dazai arrives and aids Adam to look for Chūya. The latter corners N, then impales and fights Verlaine. After N mentions knowledge of The Secret of the Gentle Forest to a shocked Verlaine, N makes a short-lived escape, while Shirase ultimately rescues Chūya. They soon regroup with Adam and Dazai, where they find Verlaine and N in tow escaping out of the facility.

In his journal, Rimbaud had detailed his first encounter with Verlaine, then known as artificial ability-derived life-form Black No. 12, and that he had deciphered The Secret of the Gentle Forest. Verlaine then urges N to tell him about The Secret of the Gentle Forest, but N reveals that these pages have been ripped off by Rimbaud. In disbelief that his partner hid it from him, Verlaine leaves N hanging on a tower crane and sets off to kill his last target, Mori. He derails the train carrying Mori, only to find out it was a body double and gets ambushed as per Dazai's strategy. With no other choice, Verlaine activates Brutalization and decimates the Mafia's squads, but Chūya and Adam, per Dazai's earlier plan, poison Verlaine in that state.
 * [CODE;04] O grantors of dark disgrace

For his final journal entry, Rimbaud wrote having gifted Verlaine with a bowler hat that could control command sequences using ability metal powder. Later, with Verlaine put to sleep, N—having killed his Mafia captors—remotely unleashes Demonic Beast Guivre, the singularity living inside Verlaine. With Verlaine succumbing to the beast, Chūya and Adam get swallowed inside, while Guivre tramples on everything in its path, including N, and heads towards Yokohama. After Chūya is shown Verlaine's memories on how Guivre was thwarted nine years ago, Adam initiates his Final Protocol, his secret mission, and sacrifices himself to incinerate Guivre using the Shell built inside him, but to little avail. Using Verlaine's memory and as per Verlaine's plea to his brother, Arahabaki Chūya unleashes his energy on Guivre and defeats it.

The King of Assassins Incident is swept under the rug due to the intervention of European agencies. Chūya sees Shirase off to London, while Chūya and Dazai receive British investigators and Adam's creator, Dr. Wollstonecraft, to conduct investigation with the Mafia. Chūya apologizes for Adam's sacrifice saving his life, though Dr. Wollstonecraft reveals someone from her suitcase who ostensibly turns out to be Adam. Verlaine survives after Rimbaud used his ability to resuscitate him and comes to terms with Rimbaud before the latter finally passes on, and Verlaine gets confined in a Mafia underground shelter as an executive training assassins. Adam continues with his investigations alongside another humanoid like him, while Chūya later visits who appear to be the parents of the "original" Chūya. It is highly implied that the current Chūya is actually the original Chūya, due to a scar on his right wrist that would not have been present in an artifical skill-derived life-form, since the scar was obtained long before his skill was turned into a singularity. After some time, Chūya decides against meeting his parents to Mori's confusion, as Chūya merely asserts that the Port Mafia is now his family.
 * Epilogue

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