The Wraith is the forty-first chapter of the Black Lagoon spinoff series Dismemberment Galore! The Gore Gore Girl. It was originally released on January 19, 2023.
Plot[]
At a casket-lowering funeral at the Roanapur Public Cemetery, as rain pounds down, Bunny the Undertaker wears a raincoat while standing meters away and observes a crowd of mourners. To her left, Bunny sees just outside the cemetery fence a distant, black-suited man whose umbrella covers his face. Hearing someone yell in grief, Bunny's attention is brought back to an angry mourner, who kneels down and asks why his younger brother had to die. Telling his dead comrade that they could have prospered in the city, the man yells that he will absolutely avenge his fallen brother. Sometime later after the funeral and the rain's end, Sawyer the Cleaner and Choptop sit in the cemetery to drink some tea with Bunny, with Choptop recalling how the surviving older Clay brother put a whopping bounty of $50,000 on "Wraith." Carrying a plate of tea, The Undertaker No. 2 asks if it was Mr. Clay who was buried last time, also asking what Choptop meant by "wraith." The punk answers that he is a murderer who has never been seen before, hence why people call him Wraith.
Turning to Sawyer, he recommends that she leave with him. Finishing her tea, Sawyer puts down the cup and carries her chainsaw, and Choptop smiles, remarking that it is what he thought. Elsewhere at the Yellow Flag, Revy and Eda drink at the counter and overhear another table loudly discuss their disappointment that they cannot get any information or records of contact on the mysterious murderer, wondering if he is truly a ghost. One man angrily rejects the theory that he is an alien, and another talks back that they swore they saw a green guy. With a bored look on her face, Revy concludes that she and Eda cannot do anything and must leave the work to an informant. Interested, Eda lifts her glass and asks about the information, and Revy states that a share of the bounty will be taken by the informant after tracking down the killer's appearance and whereabouts, adding that they will have to wait and see how the hunt turns out. Just then, several men loudly enter the bar with one yelling that Wraith killed the informant who was searching for him, surprising the two women.
Back at the cemetery, four men stand around a casket being lowered, with a dark-haired man offering his condolences for the dead informant Gametsu. A blond man asks if they have found any information on Wraith and if the informant was killed by the same murderer. As Bunny observes the funeral, she notices the black-suited umbrella man standing outside the cemetery fence again near a tree. When he turns his body to see her, Bunny then turns her head back at the funeral. The dark-haired man responds that he checked the informant's room and found nothing, adding that it is possible that he overlooked something. Agreeing that they still need to look, the blond man calls for his men to follow him as he leaves. Afterward, Bunny begins to fill up the grave with No. 2 standing by, and they hear Choptop yell at them to stop filling in the grave. Also accompanying him, Sawyer puts on her various protective equipment and opens the casket as Bunny watches.
Using a locking clamp, Sawyer pulls out a small bottle from the corpse and hands it to the happy Choptop. He tells the women that he drank some sake with the informant before he got killed and found out that he had swallowed something that was vital to determining the killer's whereabouts. Out in town a little later, Choptop runs with Sawyer following behind as the former yells about Wraith running in a particular direction. Urging that they cannot let him escape, Choptop also frustratingly says that he was the one who found Wraith, specifying that he is an old man and that he does not want the bounty to be taken by bounty hunters. As Wraith pants and runs away holding his injured left arm, several bounty hunters chase him and comment that he may be wearing a disguise. Thinking they have the old man cornered, they reach the dead end but do not see the tiny drops of blood near the alley fence, bewildered that he somehow disappeared. At the cemetery, Bunny brooms the cemetery grounds when it starts to rain. When she looks up to the sky, she turns her head to notice the umbrella man Wraith. Noticing that his left arm has blood running down, Bunny tilts her head in curiosity.
She calmly asks him if he is the killer that everyone is looking for, noting that she saw him watching her all the time when she buried his victims and asking him why he never came near her. Smiling and letting out a chuckle, Wraith remarks that it is truly awkward for him to watch the person that he killed being sent off by the brother's own relative. Bunny then asks why he came into the cemetery today, and he pauses and surmises that he wanted to see her. He feels that he is worried that they always saw each other, finishing the conversation by quietly handing her his umbrella and declaring that it was nice to meet her. Watching him leave and using the umbrella, Bunny bids goodbye with a small hand-wave. The next day at the cemetery in the sun, No. 2 asks Choptop what happened in the end. Crossing his legs and drinking a cup of tea, he claims disappointingly that Wraith was seen again several times until eventually being killed by "Two Hands" Revy and his corpse handed over to the surviving Clay brother.
Sitting on a tomb, Bunny lightly places her right boot's sole against an adjacent tomb. As Sawyer sips on her cup of tea, No. 2 contemplates and wonders out loud if no one else was involved with the old man since he went so long without anyone discovering his true identity. She asks Choptop how he feels about that, and he sighs and claims that he knew that. Feeling a drop of rain hit his head, Choptop points out the beginning rain, saying that he has to go and asks Sawyer if she is coming with him. Using the old man's umbrella, Bunny walks through the cemetery and passes by the tree near where she previously saw Wraith. Turning her head to look at the spot, she does not see anyone there.
Notes[]
- The chapter title is a reference to the 1986 action-fantasy film The Wraith.