I'm really going to try and be consistent and write a new chapter every day/every other day. Enjoy chapter two of Due to this Autonomy! AND PLEASE REVIEW! IT'S WHAT KEEPS ME GOING!
The relaxation that the sunset of Plastic Beach brought 2D was overwhelming.
He'd sometimes pass out from the quiet, peaceful lapping of the waves and the short, useless strums of his acoustic guitar.
The notes and chords he played were inaccurate most of the time. He couldn't remember any of the notes from his band's third album.
He only remembered the notes to El Manana.
He sniffed and played what he knew. The sun seemed to hesitantly go down as he continued playing.
"Maybe in time…" he whispered.
"You'll want to be mine…"
Noodle was anything but dead.
She had been out of Hell for two years.
A scar adorned the young Japanese woman's face as she walked back up to Kong. She hadn't been rotting away like her bandmates thought she had been. She had been traveling the world; "finding herself" as one may call it.
Surprisingly, she hadn't learned much. She left Hell with an open mind.
She had come back to Kong with an even more open one.
Noodle had been to every corner of the globe; every continent. She didn't learn anything about herself.
She learned more about others.
The guitarist had thought mostly of her bandmates the whole time. She always checked the British newspapers for info on them. She frowned heavily upon them when she heard about Plastic Beach.
She knew about Cyborg Noodle and she knew about the torture 2D went through.
She knew everything.
Noodle sped up the long driveway that led to the main entrance to her former studio. As she approached it with caution, she noticed the state of disrepair it was in.
The zombies weren't crawling everywhere, like she had expected. The front door was also unlocked.
She pushed it open to reveal Kong Studios. It wasn't different at all.
The petite Asian woman avoided the lift and took the stairs to her room. Each step was slow and painful. A memory of some sort somehow seemed to lurk on every step.
She remembered Russel, 2D, and even Murdoc giving her piggy back rides up these stairs.
She remembered hauling 2D all the way upstairs to her room because she was too eager to wait for the lift. She wanted to play video games instead.
Noodle smiled slightly as she looked around the tainted stairwell. The memories were bittersweet now. She knew that times like that could never happen again.
Or maybe they could.
Before she could think about it anymore, she had reached the hallways of her former room. Noodle was eager to check on Shaun, her robotic head that resided in her closet.
The guitarist shuffled quickly to her room and stared at the sign that hung on her door. It hadn't changed since Russel put it up for her ten years ago.
"Has it really been ten years?" she asked out loud.
It had been. Noodle opened the door, but to her surprise, it fell down to the wooden floor.
She stepped back in fear, and then continued into her room. She was met with a bitter breeze, the kind you could only get during the late night. It lashed into her face, causing her to step back again.
At least half of the roof had been torn off. The floorboards were shaky, and Shaun was far from well.
He sat in his closet, completely dehydrated.
Noodle looked at the sight and frowned. Tears welled up in her eyes as she explored further. Her hands waved over everything in her room; from old acoustic guitars to lanterns and posters that had been catapulted onto the floor, presumably from storms.
Each item had an individual memory for her. She thought she was finished exploring until she found a broken object by her destroyed dresser.
It looked as though it had been knocked onto the floor.
It was a picture frame.
Noodle only noticed it because of the small shard of glass that had found its way into her foot. She yelped in pain and picked it out.
The clear solid had smeared with dark crimson. The girl sighed and went down on her hands and knees to pick up the pieces. Doing this was a rather dumb idea. She only got stabbed a few more times in the legs and arms.
She cursed loudly, an unusual thing for her. Noodle looked down to see that it was indeed a picture frame, and in it was a picture of her and all of Gorillaz.
Her pain was slightly subsided by happiness as she looked deep into the eyes of each band member, including herself.
It reminded her of how much she had changed over ten years.
She desired to go back to those times. Her teen years were taken away by Satan himself.
Noodle feared what her family would think of her now. Older, scarred and mature, she was very far from the little girl who had jumped out of the FedEx crate ten years ago.
The Asian woman looked into the shiny reflection of the glass to look at herself. She brushed her hand over her scarred eye and let her cat mask drop to the floor.
"Ten years…ten years…"
The android reincarnation of Noodle was still following Murdoc as he set his things into the submarine.
He shooed her away constantly, only to be responded to with a single beep.
"Damn it, Cyborg! I told ya to leave!" he screeched.
The Cyborg stopped beeping and saluted her master.
"I cannot do that, sir."
Murdoc looked at her in anger. "Wot do ya mean, ya can't?" he asked. The Cyborg stepped away timidly.
"You have told me to stop you anytime you or anyone else attempt to leave the island. I cannot go against these internal server commands. They of high priority, and I must keep you sane, sir."
Murdoc mentally cursed himself. He tried to think of a way to get the thing to go away.
"Go power down." He muttered.
The robot didn't listen.
"I am fully charged, sir." She said triumphantly. She was always so proud of herself when she was able to sustain her battery. These pleasures made Murdoc sick to his stomach.
The bassist realized that he had no way out of this. He was being controlled by his own creation.
Her circuit board-green eyes flashed and whirred uncontrollably, almost like she was trying to analyze the Satanist.
Murdoc sighed and went inside his plastic sanctuary while Cyborg Noodle picked his bags up from inside the sub.
He couldn't leave.
It was close to ten, which meant 2D needed to start making his way back to his room. The only thing he had to look forward to was that tomorrow was his feeding day.
He entered the Study to find Murdoc sleeping on the couch with a bottle of rum in his hands.
He hadn't actually talked to Murdoc in over two weeks. Sometimes the green man would come down to his room to mutter a few drunken insults, but that was the only kind of contact the two really had.
The singer thought they needed to talk things out.
They needed to talk about Noodle, about Gorillaz, about Kong…about everything.
2D slumped down next to Murdoc and poked him lightly.
"Muds?" he asked hesitantly. Murdoc's odd nose shifted and wrinkled for a moment before going back to its normal position. 2D stifled laughter. It was the first time he had come close to laughing in months.
The blunette poked Murdoc again to entertain himself. Sure enough, Murdoc's nose shifted like a pig's again.
2D busted out in a cheerful laugh.
He grasped his sides. It seemed like such a small thing to be laughing about, but 2D took in all the humor he could get.
He lived in a world of seemingly endless depression. I'm sure you would have laughed, too.
Murdoc instantly jolted up and smacked 2D. His laughter subsided.
"Wot the f*ck are ya doin'?" Murdoc asked calmly. The singer had been expecting the older man to scream at him, or even worse, beat him harder than usual.
2D, confused, answered. "I-I wanted to talk to ya, Muds. Tha's all…" he whispered.
Murdoc's expression softened. "Wot is it? Spit it out."
"Do ya miss Noodle?"
Murdoc grunted. He wasn't expecting that to pop out of his singer's mouth.
Without thinking, he responded.
"Yes. Absolutely."
2D shifted in his seat. He wanted to ask Murdoc so many more questions. So much had been left unanswered since their first Gorillaz album. 2D asked a new question.
"Do ya really 'ate me?"
This made Murdoc shiver.
"No. I don't." he replied. He rubbed his temples lightly.
2D curled up in a ball.
"Fanks…" he said. "Fank you…"
Murdoc grunted again and looked 2D over. He was thinner then he had imagined him to be.
"Cyborg!" the bassist called out. The digital creature stepped lifelessly into the Study from the Kitchen.
"Yes, sir?" she asked. She looked as if she was begging to be commanded.
"Get Faceache some soup… or a sandwich or somethin'. And when ya get 'im breakfast tomorrow, get 'im some real food."
2D was astonished at the words that were coming out of Murdoc's mouth. Was he really being nice?
The Cyborg reluctantly obliged. She had been programmed to dislike 2D. Her internal servers started to malfunction as she seemingly argued with herself over this conflict.
He was 2D.
Master despised him.
Or so she thought.
The only choice she had was to bring the soup and sandwich to her band's singer, no matter how much it conflicted her.
After rehydrating Shaun and taking all of her intact items, Noodle marched out of Kong for the second time that night. She seriously considered staying the night until she ruled it to be too depressing.
She had already tried to take a rest on her old, in-ground Japanese bed, which resulted in massive amounts of tears.
Leaving Kong was the easiest decision she could make. There were still so many questions left behind her in the old studio.
Questions that she was too scared to answer herself.
She made her way down the driveway and pulled her cat mask tighter to her head. Her suitcase dragged on the cracked pavement.
The pressure on it became too immense, and the contents were soon clattered onto the driveway.
Noodle frowned and leaned down to pick everything up. She couldn't put her knees on the pavement; she didn't want her uncovered cuts to become infected.
She though she picked everything up, so she continued down the driveway. She walked ten more feet and stopped when she reached the street.
An acute sound was apparent behind her. She perked her head up and whooshed around to see the picture of her and her bandmates tumbling towards her. It took a hard toll from the cracked blacktop. The guitarist sniffled and picked it up.
A tear fell on the dated photo, and she made up her mind.
She needed to return to Plastic Beach.
