hello again, so, how's life? nobody guessed the crossovers (there were some by the way, subtle ones, but they were there) so i wasn't able to give out goodness (tears). so yes, for my challenge, i must up the ante! the first three people to guess the crossovers will get a preview to the next chapter. (this contest is only valid as long as this remains the last chapter). so guess peoples! you can still review if you can't guess any (ps. partial goodness!), i live on feedback. so yessss...
last time: wata-chan was kidnapped and sold to the army of heaven (ie. the chorus) (chorus of angels, get it? srry...) and dome-kun is going to find him. we left off with domeki's POV, so let's start!
pps. thanks to blackcat666 for reviewing (here's your update) and a BIG thank you to Danfred for C2ing this! (another insentive to review, free publicity!)
"Morning boss." A whip thin woman said from her position on the couch.
"Good morning to you too Antoinette." Sameal said as they entered the high ceiling room with a Modern feel but a Spartan finish. What was most irritating though, to Watanuki at least, was that everything was white.
"Hey boss, what's this new strategy I'm hearing about?" asked an eager black haired man from his position on the white counter in the break room.
"Actually, we've come to call a meeting; it might be time to rearrange the Chorus." Sandaphon said, smiling.
Dômeki forced on eye open, squinting against the light. When he discovered that there was no light, he opened both eyes and found himself…in the center of the design Yûko painted, in fact, the Time Space Witch was still there, leaning against her oversized paintbrush. In fact, the only differences in this scene were that Watanuki's 'spirit chain' continued on, disappearing out of sight through the paper door. Another thing was his own body was slumped on the floor.
"What, did you think you would be transported to some magical plain reserved for spirits?" Yûko asked slyly. Dômeki sighed, agreeing with her logic even if he had been expecting a tunnel with a light at the end.
"What are you waiting for?" Monoko piped up, "Go find Watanuki!"
"Find Watanuki, find Watanuki!" Moro and Maru chimed in. The archer just sighed and placed on hand on the ribbon in front of the other, following the red scarf to its end at who knew where.
Watanuki was amazed at the sheer amount of people the pure white room accommodated. When Sandaphon had said he would 'call a meeting', the boy had thought maybe twenty people at most. But there were at least fifty people in the relatively small room; although many had chosen perches on the edge of a window that gave the room its damnable glow (those wings had to be good for something, no?).
"You're probably wondering why I've called this meeting, and now I'm going to tell you." Sandaphon said with an authoritative yet friendly air, "Well, we've got a new way to deal with those filthy Fallen and Manifestations." There was a buzz throughout the room as the news spread; obviously there was a strong tradition that was being uprooted with these 'new tactics'.
"We're going to be using loose souls as bait." Sandaphon announced after the whispers had died down. This however, just raised another wave of rustling and whispers.
"Isn't that immoral?" a voice piped up. There were sounds of agreements, but Sandaphon's eyes hardened,
"We are at war Miss Mockingbird, I'd rather loose a few floating spirits to the dark than the innocence of the citizens of heaven." He replied, voiced iced over and hard as steal. The assembled angels quieted like they suffered a collective heart attack.
"Now, there as certain aspects of this new strategy…" Sandaphon continued, friendly once more. But the rest of his speech was lost to Watanuki as he realized that he was a 'loose spirit' and his mind drifted to a conversation overheard about a war between heaven and hell.
Dômeki moved along the crowded streets, guided by the hand loosely grabbing the spirit chain. The sea of people in front of him subconsciously parted, not acknowledging him or questioning why they were squeezing around an empty space. Rather odd actually. But none of this really mattered to Dômeki, he was just here in spirit to save Watanuki again and he was marching single mindedly towards his goal.
He continued in this manner, the spirit chain making few turns, until he was in front of an odd wooden structure built in a traditional western ranch style squeezed between two high-rises. Watanuki's spirit chain led into the building but as Dômeki passed through the veranda, the thick red scarf twitched violently in his hand then started fluttering in an almost agitated way. Dômeki tried clenching it tight, hoping to stop the wiggling that way, he didn't want to drop it and the shudders were getting rather bad.
"You're Yûko's boy, aren't you?" a voice said from the shadowy interior of the store (the open sign on the door alluded to the building's purpose). Squinting and peering inside, Dômeki was suddenly graced with the appearance of a shaggy haired man jumping almost out of the shadows.
"Tsing Li?" Dômeki inquired, remembering the man from Yûko's shop.
"That's a direct connection to your friend's soul." He said, avoiding the question entirely, "It reflects his emotions, and some say that the chain can affect their mood. The portals are in the attic." He finished with a sly smile before the darkness of the shop swallowed him again.
Once Dômeki stepped into the shop proper, the door snapped shut behind him, giving him a nudge into the semi-darkness occasionally penetrated by a shaft of weak sunlight passing through a thin curtain. But the thick dust in the air trapped the light, allowing only enough to see faint outlines of furniture and the ghost of objects five feet away. Following the spirit chain again, Dômeki made his way up a flight of stairs that nearly groaned even though as a spirit, he technically had no weight to stress the ancient construction. Oddly, the stair ended at the ceiling, but the spirit chain seemed to pass through it, the first time it had displayed something of this nature. Taking a bit of a wild shot in the dark, Dômeki set his shoulder near where the chain disappeared through the ceiling and heaved. Sure enough, thin lines formed in the hardwood and soon, a showering of dust rained down as the trapdoor was flung open.
Since breathing was optional, Dômeki wasn't chocked by the sheer amount of dust in the attic. If he had thought that Yûko's was dusty, then this place was the inside of a vacuum cleaner. But that blasted spirit chain had led him up there, so up he went. The attic was primarily filled with boxes of many sizes, but a few what-nots and larger furniture were peeking out from under drop clothes.
The chain however, led toward the back of the attic, away from the large windows that spread light more thickly in this room. Following it, Dômeki soon found himself in front of three full length mirrors. One, on the left, was oval and the frame looked a dove grey under the dust. On the far right, a rectangular mirror stood, hard black or red angles jutting out of the dust that covered the frame. The one in the middle was warped, it might have once been square or round, but was now morphed into a asymmetrical shape, the frame, burnt so the original colour was unknown, was ill fitted to the glass and had cracks in it.
But neither of the latter mirrors mattered to Dômeki, the thick red chain led directly into, or through rather, the white framed mirror, so he walked up to it. Like before, the chain went right through, but then it twitched violently, on only one side of the mirror. So Dômeki did what he had been doing for the past few hours, he placed one fist farther along the scarf, and another, fully expecting to hit glass. But he didn't, and then he slipped fully through the mirror, and it swallowed him whole with barely a ripple.
Watanuki had been placed between the thin angel, Antoinette, who was nursing a gun equally as slim and a burly yet good hearted male, introduced as Shylock, who specialized in passive magic (which he admitted with a bit of embarrassment) in the wagon, near the back. Both were laughing as they stowed their supplies and settled into the wagons as the largest birds were attached to the wagons.
Around them, similar caravans were being prepared, each holding about a dozen bodies, usually they were all angels except on or two shackled spirits, most still in an unconscious state. Sameal got up then at the end of the courtyard nearest the gate in the white stone wall surrounding the beaten dirt field and waited. As everyone settled into their seats, an eerie silence fell over the crowd; even the blinding white plumed birds that pulled the carts were silent.
"Alright," Sameal started, "everyone knows where they're going?" he asked, nods and quiet affirmative statements were made. "Then we'll get started, Squad 15, you go first, then Squad 12…" this sort of thing continued, slowly but effectively, for another five minutes. The wagon Watanuki was in was the last to leave, and met with Sameal at the gate, where he stopped the wagon briefly.
"Good luck troops, and Sandaphon, make sure you bring back our best and brightest in one piece."
"I'll do my best Sameal," Sandaphon said from his perch at the front of the wagon. Quite a few angels were grinning or giggling as they moved out, having a higher up calling you the best was a good ego booster. As they rolled out on to the sort of grassy road suspended in a disgustingly perfect sky blue which nearly fell off into black about a half yard in front of the wagon.
You'd better come back bastard, I need you... drifted on the wind, although judging by the looks of it, neither Antoinette nor Shylock had heard this, just Watanuki. Peering back, Watanuki saw an angel gazing out of the gate, looking like a sweetheart watching her solider go off to war.
Dômeki had been traveling blindly for a bit because the blinding white of this world was well…blinding. But then he felt something bump against him and he dared to peek open, this was the first time he had felt a physical sensation since being separated from his body. The man who had bumped into him was a drowsy looking person wearing a crisp, if not grossly outdated, Allies uniform.
Glancing up ahead, Dômeki saw a white marble staircase leading to a pair of white gates with a mother of pearl sheen. The long scarf of Watanuki's spirit chain dodged between the bars of the gate, but there were hundreds of souls between Dômeki and the gates. There was a single desk set up near the gates, and a single man, correction angel, was letting one person through at a time. At the current rated, Dômeki really would be dead if he waited until it was his turn. But if Watanuki was past the gates of heaven, this was too cliché to be anything else, was he too late? Was Watanuki really past the point of no return? Oh well, if he was, Dômeki would still get him back.
He would have just run along side the line and slipped through the huge holes in the gates, but the staircase wasn't that wide; only three people would be able to squeeze on. While he could have easily maneuvered his way through the crowd, it would take too long and he would probably be rejected to the end of the line, which grew every second. He looked at the scarf, his mind shifting through possible ways to use it in his escape. Unbidden, an image of a horrible western action/adventure movie came to mind, "Indiana Jones" where he swings through over a pit…
What the hell. Holding tight to the spirit chain, Dômeki jumped over the edge. As he fell, he could hear gasps from above as he fell, suffering whiplash when the spirit chain snapped taut. Pulling himself up quickly, Dômeki made it back up to the stairway in record time (archer's arms). Except this time, he was at the front of the line, near where the spirit chain had caught on the gates. Dashing the last final feet, he slipped through the huge gaps in the bars, much to the dismay of the record keeper stationed at the desk and the crowds waiting to get into heaven.
After five 'days' of travel (meaning the sky had darkened five times), they had entered the flat wastelands full of dust and the occasional scrub. There was no sun, the sky was just there, a flat blue a shade to dark to be the real sky. During all this time, Watanuki had remained firmly placed between Shylock and Antoinette. The latter of the pair had taken a bit of a shine to the wandering spirit, often trying to include him in conversations and making sure no one disrespected him.
"You remind me of my little brother," she replied when asked why she cared for a spirit that was little more than the piece of meat in their devil trap. Watanuki himself didn't understand why that mattered, but apparently, for her, the bonds of family were very important to her. Which was very good for him as the rest of the squad didn't give a damn about him and would have probably have begun bulling him without the seemingly harmless angel's protection.
About a week after departure from heaven, Watanuki felt his heartstrings tug, but he was too worried about the nausea building that had been building in his gut since they entered the wastelands, he wanted to puke so badly. The spirits, no longer deterred from their treat by a crusty mortal shell, were sending out waves of delight as they raced to get to their candy.
"Shylock, Darren, we need neutralizing circles if you please." Sandaphon said, stopping the wagon, a toothy grin more appropriate for a vampire than an angel on his face. The cart bounced slightly as the massive Shylock got off, followed by a thinner angel who looked too young to be fighting. They quickly began drawing in the dirt, bright lines following the wake of their fingers in the dirt. Watanuki swallowed hard, trying to stop himself from heaving whatever was in his stomach all over the floor of the wagon.
"Don't worry, I'll look after you." Antoinette said, hoisting her gun onto her shoulder. The two angels on the ground finished the design with a bright flare of light. After he had blinked the spots from his eyes, Watanuki could only see two changes. Firstly, the angels had spontaneously changed from whatever white outfit they had been wearing (ranging from summer dresses to snow suits) into plain white gi's of varying style (judogi, karategi, jujutsgi, there were even some kendo outfits mixed in) and some angels had shed their wings. The second difference was the impeding darkness gathering on the edges of the horizon. Ghost hopefully, evil manifestations most likely.
They rushed towards the wagon full of angels at an impossible speed, but stopped abruptly, like they hit a glass wall. It was only then that one could get a good look at these creatures, and then realize why they never wanted to see them again. They were primarily either sky blue or black, with small bodies and grotesque limbs, sticking out of main bulk like a child's attempt at human form using sticks and mud. Everything else about them varied except that they were all inappropriately mismatched. For example, razor sharp, three-inch fangs poked out of swollen human lips, fat tails with grinning jaws snapped, multi-faced bug eyes stared out a fatty pig's snout; all manner of monstrosity was witnessed.
Some of them began falling forward through the shield, crumbling into a fine ash. Beside Watanuki, Antoinette fired her gun with a loud report. This was the last straw for Watanuki, who dived down, just in time too, as he ducked, a wave of guts nearly spewed out of the manifestations closet to the wagon, hitting anyone not fast enough to duck.
"Antoin." Someone groaned, trying to wipe black blood and guts off his face.
"Sorry," she replied too cheerfully.
"Don't waste bullets Antoinette." Sandaphon said from the front.
"Yessir." Antoinette chirped back, firing another shot. "You alright?" she asked, looking down to where Watanuki had huddled.
"No," he said plainly, daring to poke his head above the protection of the wagon. He was shocked to say the least to fine the last of the manifestations turning to ash as they passed through the barrier, or at least where the barrier would be if the entire area wasn't covered in gore.
"I told you not to waste bullets." Sandaphon said although his vicious grin had only increased with the amount of gore. Then, a high pitched whining spun through the air. Sandaphon's grin was wiped out in an instant as he and everyone else ducked. Just in time too, as the second after they ducked, huge chunks were torn out of the top of the sides of the wagon. Almost immediately after, another whining was heard, this time coming from the opposite direction. Everyone jumped, Watanuki following their lead. This time chunks were torn out of the bottom of the wagon. A howling was heard in the distance, and this time peeking out of the new hole, Watanuki was able to spy a growing darkness on the horizon again, this time though, it kept low to the ground and was moving at a slower pace than the manifestations.
Antoinette! drifted over the air in Sandaphon voice with a commanding tone. The requested angel aimed carefully, the fired her rifle. From his point of view this time, Watanuki was able to see the round ricochet off thin air, turned red from the friction of air on lead. Suddenly, there was a flash of bright red light and miniature fireworks seemed to explode.
"They have van Weber." Someone commented,
"Damnit that means that…" Darren started, but was cut off by a strangled sort of choke as his body was consumed by…words? The rest of the angels took the sky, Antoinette and a few others releasing a barrage of bullets in the direction of the dark mass nearing them. Watanuki saw Antoinette try to get back down to help him, but she was kept in the air by Shylock. Then book-worm like creatures invaded his vision, stuffing themselves up his sleeves, down his throat, and the blanketed his eyes, throwing him into darkness.
so there we go, another installment of Life in a Dictorial Eden and an Anarchic Utopia, (falls on knees) please, please please please review! (sobbing) remember my blantant bribery and fun contestiee!
well, ta lovelies, the next chapter might come out in a few days, if it's done, but if not, Merry Kwanzachristmakah, a Joyous Teng Diwsodas and a Happy Zagnalia (don't you just love the butchering of religious holidays for the sake of political correctness?) (all holidays parts are taken from wikipedia's winter holiday season page)