Oh wow! Thanks for all the awesome reviews everyone! You make me feel special inside 0#0~
Glad to be back! And oh gee- look, an early update. For ONCE.
This chapter changed perspective a lot and at the very end, flashbacks yay! Thanks to reviewers; RandomNumbers523156, Zhane17, Black White and Superstitious, Awesome D.T, Saints-Fan-12, Guest 1, Lolrus555, Guest 2.
I think you'll all be happy to know, over my hiatus I have improved my fluff and romantical writing so expect that in later chapters! Oh and don't worry, I have no intention of having Iroha destroy my Yuuma and Gumi pairing. That's just blasphemous.
Oh and from my time on deviantart I've realized a lot of fanfictions get fan art, so if any of you loving people out there have ATFO fan art, PM me the link! I'd illustrate some of the stuff myself but art is beyond me T^T
On another note,
Enjoy, *throws Gumi in your face*
~Tiruneko ;3
X~64~X
"Tomorrow is a lovely day to see"
The feeling is better than any high. It's better than any kind of drug induced haze and it feels like someone has electrocuted her very soul. She could kill the heavens if she wished, she could fly all the way to Neverland if she wanted with this… And then there's the pain. The blinding, dizzying, pain that makes vomit bubble up from the deepest pit of her stomach and scream in agony because it feels like your eyes are going to burst from the pressure in her brain. It's as if someone's lit a fire in the space between her brain and skull and it won't go away.
Tiny little shocks send shivers down her spine. Something vibrates somewhere and the noise of birds chirping somehow reaches her over the sound of her own voice screaming and the buzzing, the insatiable buzzing in her ears. On an instinct, Gumi's hands twitch and bend and contort, gripping for anything to hold as her spine bends in agony. She can't stop screaming. Her fingers clasp something, a something with a cold and smooth face. A watch. Its faint ticking sends electric shocks through her overly sensitive body.
Blood bubbles up from her mouth and nose and Gumi utters a horrible, depraved sound, a beast screaming, a monster pleading for life. And then her voice is gone.
She can't scream anymore but lays there, tears moving freely down her face and her body twitching ever so often, tiny whimpers and choked out noises passing through her vomit and blood stained lips.
Gumi lays like that for a long time, her fingers subconsciously sliding across the smooth surface of the thing in her hand. Her reset button.
The pain begins to fade and is replaced with… pure and absolute ecstasy. She lays over heaps of concrete in a place where she can't even see the sky feeling so unbelievable fantastic it wipes all traces of the agony she had faced away with the wind. Gumi opens her mouth and laughs.
With the electric current in her veins carrying her, she manages to work her way out of the precariously perched heaps of rubble from the city at the mouth of God. The city she tore down. So what does that make her?
Her clothes are all but ruined, burned and ripped and mostly gone. Any other time this would bother her considering her scars are exposed to air but as she continues to scramble wildly like an animal through the piles of rubble towards the surface, it doesn't matter. Her mouth practically waters and her lungs inflate with oxygen. She can practically hear them, she can hear her own heart, she can hear her own blood flowing.
Ecstasy.
The feeling of freefalling courses like a disease through her as Gumi takes off running in the middle of night, spinning, twirling half-naked in the streets, smeared with dirt and blood, a sleek black watch in her left hand. She stops to inspect it under a street light. There are no numbers or numerals or any kind of markings on the watch. There are three hands, but only the second hand moves. In the very center of the watch is a small silver cube. Gumi is overcome with the desire to touch it. It reminds her of the ear-ring Mr. Not-God wore.
Her emerald eyes widen and a smirk spreads her face wide. "I DIED!" She screams at the top of her lungs, swinging around the street land by one hand, laughing manically like nothing else could be better. She bends over and practically leaps into the air screaming, "WELCOME BACK, GUMI! WORLD SAYS, HELLO!"
She can't even process anything but a ravenous hunger and the energy she has. Gumi leaps off the street lamp and runs, runs, dashes madly through the street. She nearly doubles over some very confused and panicked looking people. One of which stops her entirely. Her eyes widen and as the man hurries away, Gumi turns on a pivot and grabs him by the collar of his expensive dress shirt.
"Wallet," she whispers, smiling madly.
Ten minutes later with bruised knuckles and a fist full of cash and credit cards, Gumi resumes her mad dash down a shady part of the city. Her eyes grow to the size of saucers upon running past a gun store closed for the night. Gumi dashes into an alley and pulls the metal lid off of a trashcan, throwing it with immense force like a Frisbee into the window of the gun store. Glass shards illuminated like glitter with buzzing neon city lights rain down on her and Gumi thrusts her hands upwards, twirling in it before jumping into her opened window.
Hopping over the counter and using a silver crowbar she found in the back of the store to smash open the locked display case, she grabs four loaded silver pistols and puts them in what's left of her shorts. As they begin to slip out she finds a dark green camo backpack supposed to be used for hunting and throws as many weapons and ammo as she can fit inside.
Now armed to the teeth and still buzzing with energy, Gumi continues her invisible chase down the street. Breathe in, breathe out.
Ecstasy.
Walking into a large department store with a paper bag over her head with eyes cut out wielding her massive guns, she begins to indulge in a game of dress up. She settles on a large orange parka with a faux fur hood and black short shorts with knee high black leather heeled boots adorned in all kinds of silver studs and buckles and to the relief of all the late night shoppers and clerks, leaves having only shot out about a dozen florescent lights.
Before she knows it she's also wearing a heavy utility belt with her new crowbar attached and a fancy new silver pair of biking goggles, but she has no idea where they came from.
The energy is starting to burn off but part of her still feels compelled to run like a mad woman through the streets, although the sun is beginning to rise.
A bus' horn blares as Gumi crosses the street in her absurdly large boots. It narrowly avoids a head on collision with her head and Gumi holds up a certain finger in an obscene manner to a cursing driver.
"Oh yes…" Gumi trails off, suddenly turning to face the rising sun, "…the signal." Sliding her thumb over the watch on her wrist, she starts to run.
~ ~ ~X~ ~ ~X~ ~ ~
Iroha and Yuuma traipse silently into a parking garage, Yuuma silently fiddling with the zipper on his new grey hoodie. It has two thick black stripes running from the armpits down its sides and the lining of the hood is white. His jeans are a very expensive pair of black acid washed jeans and a silver chain Iroha insisted he get hangs from his belt. Iroha is apparently two years older than him, putting her at almost nineteen, but he still towers over her like a giant. Iroha is incredibly tiny even with her white steam punk boots with their three inch heel.
The parking garage is abandoned and Iroha seems insistent on humming rather loudly so that it echoes. They stop about halfway through the structure before she pulls out a pink flip phone adorned all kind of kitten charms, most with bells. She types in a few numbers and holds the phone up to her ear. Yuuma opens his mouth to speak but Iroha cuts him off with a hand in his face and a shake of her head.
As the phone rings she applies two more layers of bright pink lip gloss flavored like bubble gum and when she chirps out an abrupt and loud, "Hi!" it startles him so much he jumps.
"Mhm… Mm… wait level what now? Yeah I'm there. Mhm…" Iroha begins to turn slowly until she spots a car parked in the darkest corner of the parking garage. "Op! There it…" as she starts to approach, she stops. "What," she deadpans in a voice void of emotion. "Oh yes, I found the car… No, no I am not happy!" Iroha scoffs loudly. "You have the audacity to question me? This isn't the car that I asked for you-" she proceeds to go on a rant colored with such brutal and vulgar language it makes Yuuma cringe.
The car is a silver minivan and he has no idea why Iroha is so torn up about it.
"Fine! Fine, fine, fine, fine, fine!" she chirps in a mock sing-song tone. "Oh no, It's quite alright… Mm… yes, make do with what we have an' all… Mm… alright. Alright. You have a nice day too. Mhm… alright, bye, bye now." She ends the call with a beep and a sigh. Iroha turns to Yuuma and instinctually he flinches and after an emotional roller coaster like that who wouldn't blame him? "The keys are under the right tire, mind getting 'em, doll?"
With a slight nod, Yuuma bends to grab the car keys and hands them to Iroha who hops in the front seat and begins randomly mashing buttons on the stereo. Loud pop music begins to blare from the sound system and Iroha turns to Yuuma, grinning. "What do you want?"
"Huh?" Yuuma gives her a blank stare.
"Y'know," she starts as they pull out of the parking garage, "what do you want? I can get it, whatever it is. Just pick somethin'!" Iroha smiles and taps her nails against the steering wheel to the beat.
After very careful consideration, Yuuma turns to her, his face stoic. "I want a sword."
Iroha grins. "Brilliant choice, my good man." Within seconds she's on her phone. "Hi! Yeah, me again. Listen, I want to cash in that favor…"
~ ~ ~X~ ~ ~X~ ~ ~
When Gumi wakes up her head is pounding. She's curled up somewhere dark that smells musty and the ground beneath her is hard and uncomfortable. Something reeks like vomit and she can taste it in her mouth too. A migraine threatens to overcome all of her other senses and with a quiet groan that more or less resembles a whimper, she rolls onto her back, white light surging through her eyes as she tries to open them.
She searches for an explanation but can't really find one. Gumi sits up and her head spins, vertigo swallowing her. It takes all of her will power not to vomit. Something clinks on her side and blindly she moves her hand to it. Her fingers slide over the cold surface of a gun. She lets out another pained whine.
She has no idea where that came from.
Slowly she forces her eyes open, realizing she's in the basement of a library back with the far too damaged books and old newspaper articles only the characters in the dumb mystery novels care about.
Oh. A faint ticking draws her attention to a sleek and small black watch on her left wrist. Right. Suddenly really, really interested and internally panicking, Gumi searches blindly in the near total dark for anything reflective. Her hands hit a light switch and she stumbles around in the new lighting change, finding a mirror.
"At least one thing's goin' right…" she mutters under her breath to no one.
Slowly, as if afraid of what she'll see, Gumi moves over to the mirror. Green hair, in desperate need of a cut hangs in tangles around her face. Her cheeks and forehead are damp with sweat and her mouth is sticky with the taste of bile. Gumi almost gasps in relief when she locks eyes with her reflection. Green orbs stare back at her and she chokes on an exhaling breathe in joy. So, not a demon, that's a plus. She runs her sweaty hands through her hands and unzips her ridiculously huge jacket. The basement is still chilly but with what she can only assume is a high fever, all she wants is to get cooler.
With a sigh Gumi checks the backpack she has with her. Some money and then all weapons. Guns, ammo, a new crowbar that she kisses over and over in elation, and a couple knives. No water or food, to her dismay.
For a moment she wonders how she got here and why she feels so sick, but thinking brings on a wave of nausea she isn't willing to handle. She remembers a light haired boy in a card dealer's uniform telling her she died and an unfathomable amount of pain that still lingers in her temples with each beat of her heart.
She gives her own reflection a weird look before a truly disturbing feeling pulls at her. Where is everybody? Gumi has no idea how far away the rendezvous point is from where she is now, or even if Iroha and Neko managed to get them all out in time…
Yuuma. The name rips through her like a bullet and it takes all of Gumi's willpower not to puke again. It's been a long time, a very long time, a too long time since she's had this feeling and it hurts. She wants him.
She wants him like she wanted her mother.
She wants him like she wanted a home.
She wants him like she wanted power.
She wants him.
It stings her, burns at her and makes her head spin and her stomach churn. God she wants him. The thought of him is like an addiction but it makes her feel worse. She can't stop though. His hair, his eyes, his scent-
Oh god he could be dead, they could have not gotten out-
Gumi doubles over and vomits so violently that against her will a few tears mingle with the acrid liquid. She needs to find out where she is right now.
Because she wants him.
And her brain won't shut up about it.
~ ~ ~X~ ~ ~X~ ~ ~
"Lenny?"
The little boy turned his head. With a crooked expression he muttered a disinterested, "Mm?"
"Daddy's home," she whispered like it was taboo. It wasn't though. It was just a lie.
"Nuh uh."
Rin nodded enthusiastically, her mop of blonde hair bobbing as she played with a loose string on her overalls. "I saw 'im!"
"You're lying."
"That's what you said was the point of the game, though," she mumbled dejectedly, moving away from the window and letting the curtain drop.
He leaned back against the head board of the bed. "Rin?"
"Mm?" She crawled over to him.
"I don' wanna' play that game anymore."
"… Okay." There was a long pause. "Lenny?"
"Mm?"
"Wanna' play a new game?" Rin suggested, smiling coyly like she does.
Len thought for a moment. "Sure."
"I wanna' play the magic game." He looked at her odd. "Ya' know, the magic Mama said we do."
"Rin… she said no," Len muttered softly.
"But… it's magic, magic's not bad," Rin whispered, punching him lightly on the cheek. He flinched a little and stuck out his tongue. "C'mon, I wanna' try it!"
Len pouted. "It hurt. I don' wanna."
Rin thought for a moment. "I didn't mean you, dummy. I meant me."
Len sighed. "Alright, find somethin' we can use."
Rin thought for a second. "Just use the pillow!" She picks up the pink heart shaped cushion. "Y'know, like on TV."
Len sighed again but as Rin laid back he shifted so he was hovering over her. "Okay, ready?" Rin nodded enthusiastically. "Don't try to hold your breath, it makes it hurt more," he warned her. Rin pouted.
"Just do it ya' chicken!"
He pressed the pillow over her face and held it with all his might even as she started to thrash. Only when she stilled did he take it off and patiently waited for the magic to happen.