Dead of Night
Prologue
Okay, so this fic is a little weird. It's a joint fic, but instead of everyone writing a chapter, we all contributed short scary stories starring the TMM cast, and I (uh, sakuuya) strung them together with the frame story you see in front of you. So this chapter was all me, but as we go along, you'll get great little vignettes from more talented writers, so please don't give up on this story just from the relative strength of this chapter. :)
In addition to the writing process being weird, the frame story is a little weird, too. Most everyone's an adult here, and the plot of TMM didn't happen in this world, so you should just assume everyone knows each other. Oh, and the existence of aliens on earth is just kind of a given in this 'verse, rather than cause for alarm.
So enjoy this chapter of set-up, and I promise we'll get to the fun stuff soon.
Ichigo Momomiya peered down at the map spread across her lap, then out into the pounding rain, and then, frowningly, back at the map. "Are you sure we're on the right road?" she asked, tracing her finger over the route they were supposed to be taking. Ryou Shirogane spared a glance away from the road for a moment to look at his girlfriend and navigator.
"Of course. I know the way to my own mother's house, Ichigo," he replied testily.
"I just meant—the rain, you know..." Ichigo trailed off, blushing from embarassment. She tried to reassure herself that he wasn't really annoyed with her, just at the terrible weather, but the excitement she'd felt this morning when they started out for this trip was sinking fast.
She was looking forward to meeting Ryou's mother, of course. From everything Ryou had told her, Shirogane-san sounded like a very nice woman, but she lived so far out of Tokyo that Ichigo had never before gotten a chance to meet her. This long weekend—the first vacation Ryou had ever had from the lab where he worked—had sounded like a golden opportunity when they'd first planned it. Neither of them had thought that it might be storming like the end of the freaking world.
The road they were on did nothing to calm her nerves. Their little car was winding down a mountain road that would have been perilous under ideal conditions and that, under present conditions, made Ichigo feel like she was about to plummet through the guardrail and off a cliff every time the car made even the slightest turn. In the driver's seat, Ryou didn't appear to share her apprehension. He just stared determinedly into the torrential rain, his hands clasped tightly around the wheel when Ichigo wished for nothing more than to have one of them to hold onto.
After what felt like a million years, Ryou stopped the car in front of a wooden bridge that Ichigo could barely make out. "Are we here?" she asked tentatively, not daring to let go of her armrests even though the car was parked. Ryou bit his lip.
"Well, not really. The house is still maybe half a mile away yet, but I'm worried about this bridge. The river under it looks pretty high, and I'm not sure it'll take the weight of the car. What do you think, darling?" Ichigo looked searchingly out at the bridge. Ryou was right: She could just make out movement below it, far too close for comfort. On the other hand, she didn't relish the idea of walking any distance through this tempest, but, on reflection, looking like a dead rat would still be better than drowning in a car.
She'd thought to bring an umbrella, but it wasn't much use against the driving rain. Ryou, who knew the terrain, walked slightly in front of his girlfriend, clutching her hand tightly. As they made their laborious way toward the house, they passed other cars, all pulled over at places where the road had washed out or a tree had fallen across it. At one point, they even saw what looked like one of those bullet-shaped vehicles aliens sometimes drove, stuck in a particularly deep patch of mud.
Eventually, they reached Ryou's mother's house. Ichigo had never been so relieved to see a building before. There were no lights on inside, and it terrified her to think that Shirogane-san might not be home. But they had nowhere else to go, and if it turned out that the house was empty, waiting out the storm on the porch was still a damn sight better than going back out into the storm. Still holding tightly to her boyfriend's hand, she stumbled up the steps, shivering and soaked clear through. There was a doorbell, but Ryou ignored it, rapping his knuckles against the door instead. A thin blonde woman opened the door. There was a candle in her hand, but the house behind her was otherwise dark. Some kind of cloth was slung over one of her arms, which made Ichigo think she might be some sort of servant. The house was certainly fancy enough.
"Ryou! Come in, honey, come in! And you must be Momomiya Ichigo!" the woman said as she hustled them inside. "I wish we were meeting under better conditions, but it's nevertheless wonderful to finally meet you. I'm Shirogane Elizabeth." Ichigo blushed and gave a shallow bow, embarrassed but overwhelmingly glad to get out of the rain. "You two look positively soaked. Here, you can dry off with these while I find you some dry clothes." She handed them what turned out to be towels, which they took gratefully. As Shirogane-san disappeared up a staircase, she added, "The power's out, but there are people in the living room. Feel free to join them!"
As her candle bobbed out of sight, the house grew quite dark, but Ryou took Ichigo's hand again and led her down a series of hallways until they came to another room, which was warmly lit not only by more candles, but also by a fire crackling in the fireplace. Ichigo and Ryou moved toward the fireplace immediately, still a little shell-shocked from their journey. As they slowly warmed up, they started to hear chatter around them and realized that, as Shirogane-san had said, the room was full of people who, for the most part, looked as bedraggled as Ichigo was sure she herself did.
A middle-aged man with graying hair and glasses sat slumped in an armchair, fiddling with his cell phone. Near him, on the floor next to the fire, there sat a blonde girl who must have been younger even than Ichigo's twenty-one years—she looked barely old enough to drive, but she also didn't appear to have any chaperones. The girl was chatting animatedly with a similarly young-looking alien boy, who was leaning over the arm of a couch, his strange little auburn pigtails bobbing up and down as he spoke and laughed. They were all dressed in a curious mixture of old-looking clothes that suggested they had all changed into clothes Shirogane-san had had lying around. The only person who didn't look like he'd just been through a storm was another alien, much taller than the brown-haired one, who sat on the other end of the couch in an expertly-tailored blue coat, looking exasperated and bored.
"I didn't know there were going to be other people here," Ichigo whispered to her boyfriend. "Are they friends of your mother's?"
"I have no idea who they are," he replied, his voice just loud enough that Ichigo was sure everyone else in the room could hear him. "They're probably just strays my mother dragged in out of the rain. She's like that." Ichigo wouldn't dare look at the blue-coated alien, but she could feel him staring hard at the back of her head, and she blushed for what felt like the thousandth time that night.
"I see you've found your way to the fire," Shirogane-san said warmly from behind her, and Ichigo sagged with relief.
"Who are all these people, mother?" Ichigo buried her face in her hands, hoping that the others wouldn't assume she was as ill-mannered as Ryou was acting. Honestly, she was upset about the storm too, but his attitude wasn't helping anything!
"Just people who got caught in the storm like you did, darling. I couldn't just turn them out in this weather, could I?" She gave her son a look but didn't wait for an answer before adding, "I'll introduce you and Momomiya-chan properly once you've gotten out of those wet clothes. The bathroom's down the hall on the right, Momomiya-chan. Ryou, I trust you can find another one." She handed them each a set of clothes and one of the many candles that stood around the room. "Now go before you catch your deaths of cold."