March of the God

Chapter 2: Waiting at the Bus-stop

And you're back for another chapter!

Warning: Putting down own story comes next. Why? This really isn't any good, so… yeah. I really need a self-esteem boost. Does anyone have a goat, a lighter, two candles and a giant balloon full of propane? That always makes me feel all good inside!

And of course Princess Tutu is a nickname. This is a Gash Bell fanfic laced with (mostly) Boogiepop references, for God's sake!

Disclaimer: Konjiki no Gash Bell is not mine. Nothing is, aside from the OCs.

As I've said, the POV changes. The first part in first person is an OC you're just meeting now, and the second is Sawao's. I know this has loads of OCs. Then we move to third person, so that's good for that.

Me? I'm Vieve Decatour. I'm fourteen and am absolutely average, in absolutely every way. It's kind of boring, sometimes, but hey, I'm happy.

I was born and still live in France. I've never left the country, even to go just across the channel to Britain. The farthest I've been from my home was a trip to visit family that lives just outside of Paris.

I go to a private school out in the countryside. I get decent grades, and I'm pretty popular with the boys. I'm pretty popular, period. A lot of people say I'm nice, at that, but I don't know if I believe them.

I had a boyfriend, in the sense we walked down the halls together and sometimes would go to the movies or buy the other lunch. It was typical middle-school dating; that was all. I never admitted this out loud. I told my boyfriend that I loved him, and he said the same, but it really wasn't true. Sure, I liked him a lot, but I knew that any relationship between sane people at this age was never serious. We broke up because his sister really hates one of my best friends. It got annoying when we came over to his house, you know.

I wanted nothing in my life, perhaps a new scooter at most. The one I had was a piece of junk, and constantly broke down, restricting my travel around town greatly. I couldn't wait for the day when it would refuse to start up, and I could show my parents that my cousin's hand-me-down bike was no longer functional. They'd buy me a new scooter like they promised they would when the old one broke. The world would be perfect, then, if our school uniform didn't include heavy jackets, even in the summertime.

Their hideous maroon color seemed to soak in the heat, making the few days left until summer break seem endless. I couldn't wait for summer; I couldn't wait to go out to the lake to swim, like absolutely everyone else.

Like everyone else, I was normal. My parents were normal. All of my friends were normal. Everyone… they were all normal. All I knew… was normal.

I was normal, normal, normal. At times, I wished I wasn't.

I only knew one person who wasn't normal. Well, I thought she wasn't normal. She didn't seem normal, at least.

She could never be considered attractive by any human being, never. She wasn't ugly, but she just wasn't pretty.

I liked to think I was rather pretty. Rosy cheeks, white-blonde hair, green eyes, and, not to sound arrogant, a cute face. I checked each morning in the mirror to make sure each of these things was still there with me. I took good care of myself to make myself look better, for showmanship reasons, combing my hair at least once every two hours, applying make-up and filing my nails madly. I was always pleased with the turn-out. I never wanted to change the way I looked in general, but I knew that wasn't true of a lot of people.

Maybe she wanted to change the way she looked, but I doubted that. The only proof she had of ever taking care of herself was a clear complexion, painted nails and the fact that she wore some sort of make-up on her cheeks, although it barely made her any less pale. Actually, it seemed that she took good care of herself, but her unruly hair and all around air of 'Guess what? I don't give a rat's ass!'-ness made it seem otherwise.

If you looked at her skin color, you'd thinks she was sick, assuming from its sheet-white tone. She didn't seem to comb her short hair; it turned into some sort of briar patch near its ends. The blue sheen to her hair was unnatural, yet something no amount of conditioning could ever give it. She needed braces, too, I think. Her teeth weren't uneven, but her canines came down 'a little' (a.k.a. way) longer than they should have, and were strangely pointed. She looked like a vampire, maybe. Her blue eyes were freakishly large. Freakishly. I wondered if she ever noticed how outlandish she looked amongst all of us fair-haired French schoolchildren, even when she wore the same uniform.

I really didn't think she cared. Was that part of not being normal? I wondered.

But I think even not-normal girls cared about being flat-chested. I think I have a decent sized bust and a nice body overall for a fourteen-year-old, the type that made one proud to wear a swimsuit.

But that girl… Once, while in the bathroom, I saw her sitting on the sink, jacket and shirt off, bra revealed. She was staring into the mirror, wrapping gauze around her waist for some unknown reason, though I seemed to be able to catch the smell of blood coming from her for a brief moment before the scent was contained by layers of the material.

She didn't need the bra at all. She was completely and totally flat, although she did have hips, which made her look very unbalanced.

That day in the bathroom, she did nothing more to acknowledge me than stare at my reflection in the mirror. That was the most I've ever interacted with the girl named Mallory Belmond, for good reasons.

She had a nasty personality. In the hallways, she seemed to cringe in disgust of all of us as she walked. She rarely spoke, but when she did, it was in a harsh, androgynous voice. Her language was almost insultingly polite. No matter what she said, that voice had a 'get the hell away from me' edge. I don't think it was voluntary, but it was indeed obvious she didn't want to be around others, using a tone like that. Yet no one ever noticed her, no matter how terrible her personality really was. Infact, she was actually insufferable.

Absolutely insufferable, yet I was the only one who noticed. No one knew Mallory Belmond, it was that simple. She never ran in gym class, only walked, as if it wasn't worth the effort. I've seen her sleep in class. It wasn't like she nodded off during the lecture like everyone else did, she outright walked in, put her head down on the books, and fell asleep. When the teachers woke her up, she looked up at them in some sort of strange quasi-glare. She missed school often, probably ditching and getting in fights, seeing as she often sported some sort of bandage. (The entire week before I saw her wrapping gauze around her waist, Belmond had been missing from school.)

It wasn't like she was from a bad family, either. Actually, she's from one of the richest families in the country, the Belmond family, although probably not from the main household, which found itself situated not far outside our little town.

As far as I had heard, the head of the Belmond family was a single woman. There was gossip floating around that claimed otherwise, but most rumors that blew around town were utterly ridiculous, not to be paid attention to. I mean, while making casual conversation that started about the Belmond mansion's amazingly fancy hedgerow, a shopkeeper said the heiress fell for some sort of demon man, who she got married to. I think the shopkeeper's nutty. I decided not to shop there anymore; he might have done funny things to the merchandise I was going to buy.

If the heiress, Ms. Sherry Belmond, had married, there would have been a huge ceremony and a large party. My parents told me that when the last generation's heir wed, the entire town celebrated for a week, seeing as a member of the Belmond family had been the founder of our picturesque little village.

I didn't think a future heiress of such a family would be going to our school. All of the previous children of the Belmond family had been home schooled, or sent to boarding school somewhere illustrious. Our school didn't fit the criteria of 'illustrious', although it was definitely 'upscale'. Proof: It had uniforms.

My school was for wealthy families, not filthy rich ones.

Wealthy enough to buy me a new scooter, unlike the one I bitterly and unwillingly rode on the day I first spoke to Mallory Belmond. I threw my leg over the seat of my old black scooter, careful not to let my maroon school-issued skirt fly up.

I started my scooter up, and its metal parts inside choked a few times before slowly, slowly, slowly beginning to move forwards, and…

BAM! I believe 'bam' is onomatopoeia, but that really isn't the issue.

It was truly sad that such a slow-speed crash could wreak such internal havoc on my stupid motorbike, leaving me absolutely unscathed, but it did. It sputtered out just as it had sputtered starting up, only this time… it was going, going… gone.

The bike that had collided into mine was a brightly colored new model. Its orangey-pink paint wasn't even scratched by the collision, proving how fragile my own old black scooter had been before its long awaited demise moments before.

"Oh, god, I'm sorry!" called the helmet-less owner of the other scooter. "A-are you okay? Did I kill you?!"

Mallory Belmond hopped off of the orangey pink bike, and flipped out some sort of kickstand, her normal stoic façade she wore in the classroom dissolved, an expression of shock replacing it. "You're… Decatour, right?" she asked, calling me by my surname.

"Uh, yeah, and you're… Belmond?" I knew who she was, but I pretended to ask anyways, a little surprised by the girl's uncharacteristic frenzy.

She bit her bottom lip slightly, nodding, "I'm sorry," she apologized, calming down, "I'm entirely willing to settle."

"N-no, it's no big deal!" I stuttered. Was she really the girl from class, the one who glared up at teachers for reprimanding her for sleeping in class?

"It is," she said, bluntly. "I wrecked your scooter."

"I told you, it's absolutely fine." I stood my bike and attempted to start it up again. I didn't like the way she said that.

"And I told you that I was going to pay for the damage," she said forcefully as she stared at me with her freakishly large eyes, opening them wider, and leaning in just slightly. "And I will pay for the damage."

God, she could be scary.

Before I knew what was happening, I'd ditched my scooter, which had begun to smoke, at the side of the road on the premises that no one would want to steal the damned thing, and was at a café talking about a settlement with Miss Mallory Belmond, who was indeed the daughter of the heiress. (It was easier to accept money from her now, because I knew she was rich.) She demanded she pay me a good amount of money, and that I call her by her first name, and reached her hand across the table to shake. "Deal?" she grinned slightly, allowing one of her canines to show.

I took her hand and shook it. As I did so, Mallory shook slightly.

"Wow," she said, "wow."

"Huh?"

"I don't think I've carried a conversation with someone from school before, ever." Her grin broadened. "I guess I've just been too busy being an ass."

That was entirely true, as far as I could tell, so I really didn't know how to respond. "Ah, well, you're not being an ass on purpose, and you're working on it, aren't you?" She wasn't working on it as far as I could tell. I could never understand why, though.

"No, and… uh, no," she answered. "I never seem to be able to get around to being a nicer person." That was most definitely sarcasm, which, in situations like this and many others, was not an attractive trait.

"Ah, you know, you'd be a lot better off if you tried to fix that and didn't have that stupid attitude problem!" I hit my hand against the table, but I didn't know why. I now found that Mallory wasn't insufferable, but she was close. Impossible, actually.

"Maybe, maybe. You win," she said, accepting defeat on half of the matter to play with the straw in her drink. "It's not like I'm going to do it, though." She smiled in a pigheaded fashion. "Hey, even my father said he'd hate me if I weren't his daughter. He's been saying it since I was like… eight."

"Oh, geez." I knew I was going to regret the next thing I said, but… "Hey, Mallory, by any chance, is your father a demon?"

At first she seemed shocked that I said that, but then smiled, looked down at the table, her shoulders heaving in a silent laugh.

"Come on, Pick up," I hissed into the receiver. "Pick up!"

I had no idea what time it was in France, though after all the years of calling Mal, you think I should know.

Maybe she was out of the house, probably at school, though it was a possibility that the schools in France had already let out for the summer. Even if not, her mother would have probably answered the phone by now.

"Pick up… Pick up…" The answering machine answered for her. She'd changed the message from something her mother had recorded since the last time it had received one of my calls.

"You've reached the Belmond family," the voice on the machine said. It could have easily been mistaken for a boy's, but I knew it to belong to a female. "Leave your name and number after the beep, and if you're a telemarketer, you should burn in hell. We don't want what you're selling." What needed to be said needed to be said, right? Beep.

Damn. I've always sucked at leaving messages, so I figured it would be best to have Mal call me back to work out anything extra.

"Ah, hey. Mal, Sawao. Call me back if you can. Can't wait for Saturday."

I sort of wished I could take that last part back, even if it was true. She was my best friend, after all. We'd promised.

"Oh, yeah, the point of this call…" I stuttered dumbly, realizing I had paused for a good deal of time, "Li Xiao used her magical speed-talking and persistent spammy-email powers to persuade my dad to let us stay at the house rather than endure another plane ride. Well, dad was actually more they happy to let us stay." I brought the receiver closer to my mouth, and talked in a hushed tone. "They think we think they're going on a casual visit."

A few days earlier I had overheard, well, eavesdropped on a conversation between my father and Gash Bell, an old friend of his who was the king of another world, called the Makai. They were planning to research a symbol carved into the wall of my disappeared sister's room in a large library in America. I really didn't know why our parents were keeping it from us, but I'm glad they didn't drag us into it.

I wanted to find my sister (if she was still alive, that is) as much as anyone else, but I really didn't think researching some symbol would help. It'd exert far too much effort for nothing, I thought. I'd rather stay in Japan and go out for karaoke with Mal and Princess Tutu, and then maybe go out for dinner. Basically, I wanted to spend the summertime with my friends.

"Well, see ya on Saturday, Mal." I said, bringing my phone call to its end. "Call me back." I put the phone back on the receiver, making plans for the summertime I would spend with my friends.

My friends. I was incredibly popular at school, surrounded by the kids who loved hanging out with the 'pop star's handsome son'. Yeah, I'd been called that before. I cringed upon hearing that. Although I smiled while around them, called them on the phone, and even went to their houses, I didn't like them, except for maybe Misuzu Mizuno, who was always pushed to the back by the overbearing crowds of idiots. I could barely say I knew the girl, only that she had a crush on me. I didn't mind it, but didn't really care for her in that manner. In reality, I could barely call Misuzu a friend. Pathetic, I know.

I hated being a 'celebrity baby'. I wasn't Sawao Takamine, I was 'Megumi's son', I was some sort of sideshow that came along with my mother's singing act. There was nothing important about me. I just came in the package with my mom's singing act. I didn't hate her career choice; I simply hated the package that came with it.

Ever since I could remember, I knew my family, myself included, was being hounded by the press. My father, who hated the reporters and paparazzi and stayed out of the limelight, kept some of the more… idiotic tabloids from when I was little so I could read them as I grew up. Many disgusted me so much that I laughed.

Once, when I wasn't even two, my mother was doing a photo shoot with another actress who had a three-year old daughter. Since Dad was busy in college at that time, my mother brought me in and had me sit behind the set, making crayon squiggles on paper with the little girl. Later that month, a magazine published a page about the 'Children of the Stars', complete with a 'future boy/girlfriend' section. Because I had once sat drawing with a girl whose name, at that time, I didn't even have the mental capacity to remember, they expected me to go out with her ten-twenty years in the future. Because little Rika and Taro, two ordinary children, make a block tower together in kindergarten, will they end up together? No. How are I and this girl any different from Rika and Taro? Our mothers were famous, of course.

I only saw that girl I drew with two more times, once when I was eight, and once when I was eleven, both times at large runway parties. We didn't even greet each other. Some romance.

What sucked more about the tabloids was that I had to hide in order to get a smoke in. It would create some sort of scandal, no doubt; although creating a scandal had been the reason I even started smoking. No one ever found out, so it never did. Besides, I didn't want to anymore, seeing as scandals that weren't based on truth have troubled Mom enough.

Why? Why was everyone watching us, so interested in our lives? They're not so exciting. The only thing that's even close to strange that's really ever happened to us as an entire family was Naoko disappearing… But we… I hate talking about that.

My mom could sing, that was all that was different about our lives from anyone else's.

I wonder what the magazines and tabloids had thought of Tio, the little girl who had appeared in Mom's life fifteen years ago, and then suddenly vanished. Was she even noticed at all? Probably. When Tio left for the Makai when her book burnt, was my mother upset? If so, did any celebrity magazines speculate about depression? When Mom had fought in battles and gotten injured, even slightly, did any of them ask if she was in some sort of secret abusive relationship? Unless things recently changed, these would have only been the tip of the ice-berg, as far as I can speculate.

I was beginning to wonder if my phone call with Mal had been wiretapped. The family usually gets tapped at least once a month by fanatics of my mother's. That's just plain weird, in my own opinion.

I was surrounded by people, maybe half of the school, who claimed to be my friends, only wanting to bask in the glory my family did not actually have. The other half of the school hated me for being an attention hog. They could have the attention, I didn't want it! Li Xiao and Mallory, they were my friends. We saw each other for only about a month each year, but they're my friends, I know.

The tabloids have stared to look at me, only adding to the large pain in the ass. They say I may have as much musical talent as my mother, which makes no sense. I'm not special; I don't want to be special. 'Sawao' would be a nice identity for me, or perhaps 'Mr. Takamine'. There are plenty of people who deserve the spotlight, just not me!

I apparently am good at playing the guitar, maybe good enough to be a rock star some day. Yeah, right.

Li Xiao has the talent. She can dance, hence her nickname, Princess Tutu. (It's a reference to an old anime that I found some DVDs for in the attic. Mom probably bought them for Tio way back when.) She's fourteen, and already a ballerina in a small dance troupe. She'd be world famous by now if she had my mother.

I had never really wanted to play guitar, anyway.

Strewn in several times among the heap of idiocy the magazine maniacs compile, there lies the foolish idea that I'm attractive. I'd even been suckered into modeling once for a clothes company. Never again. In the face, I look just like my father. He's the genius husband of the pop star, not her son, so none of the attention ever goes directly to him.

No. Both Mallory and Li Xiao are attractive. (I realize it sounds strange when a man says that, but it's not like I check them out. You notice it when people are that pretty.) Plenty of people are, but I'm not.

My drab brown eyes and brunette hair were nothing. (I didn't know that 'brunette' was a word until I read an article describing me as a 'brunette babe'. It was absolutely terrifying. I wanted to sue so badly that now I'm sinking to comparing myself to women.)

Li Xiao had brown eyes, too, but due to some strange twist of genetics, her black hair was naturally slurred with silver. I don't know if that's co-dominance or incomplete dominance, but any stylist that could recreate that deserves a million dollars. The girl had fair skin, and a winning smile. Pretty, I tell you! Pretty!

Wow. I sound manly, talking about stylists, huh?

Mal, well, Mallory, seemed to be an almost monochrome blue look to her, aside from the incredibly slight pink tint to her incredibly pale white skin. Even the shadows fell blue on her, and the light shone from her short black hair with the same tone. You could tell she wore make-up on her face; it could never look the way her skin did.

Both Princess Tutu and Mal had mamono, demons which came from Gash Bell's kingdom, for fathers, but Mallory showed it more; however the silver in Li Xiao's hair more than proved her inheritance of demon traits. Mal, on the other hand, obviously had demon blood. Her nails were naturally dark, and her canine teeth slightly elongated and pointed. The make-up she wore served to hide black facial markings which shot both upwards and downwards from her eyes with a curve.

I'm boring, I'm entirely human. My parents, they were both human, both completely human.

No, I'm wrong. My mother was a pop star, she was not human, she, and all celebrities, were animals that could be prodded mercilessly for the talents they possessed, and I knew I was going to be dragged into it. I don't want to be known as 'Megumi's Son'. I don't want fame as 'Megumi's Son'. I just want to be Sawao, but the magazines, the tabloids and the pollutant limelight won't let me have that simple sky.

"A simple sky," I voiced absently as I leaned into the wall by the phone, preparing to wait possibly hours for Mal to call back. I never waited at the phone for calls from anyone else, but it was Mal calling.

"The girl that just disappeared, she's from around here, right, Mallory?" asked they boy, turning his large blue eyes away from the television screen.

"Yeah," replied his sister from the couch, seemingly troubled.

"Did you know her?" asked Demi Belmond, the four-year-old boy.

Mallory nodded. "We talked once, and I've broken her scooter before, but that's it." She paused. "I didn't know her well at all."

Her brother stared at her unblinkingly, possibly expecting more, so Mallory decided to continue. "Just because that weird symbol was cut into the building's wall, it doesn't mean she was taken by the person who took Naoko. It could have been a copy-cat, like that idiot from Prague."

"Do you think Naoko could have been taken away by a copy-cat?" asked Demi quietly, looking up at his sister. His large eyes plastered in his pale face seemed to be begging her to say 'yes', regardless of whether it was the truth or not.

Mallory wasn't the type to tell her young brother a little white lie.

Mallory shook her head. "Sorry, kid. She was the first to go. There's no way."

With that, all traces of hope left the boy. "Oh. Do you think that… whoever-it-is could come take me too, Mallory?"

"Don't worry," she said, hoisting herself up off the couch. "They rarely strike twice in the same country, let alone the same neighborhood. That's what gave away the guy from Prague, remember? You're safe." Mallory walked off to go get the answering machine, which was reading 'New Message', while her brother stared blankly at the screen, not taking in any of the flashing images that danced across the TV set.

He'd been strangely disappointed by his sister's statement.

Now for the Boogiepop Phantom ending theme!

Kono hoshi no hashikko de miageru taiyou…

Okay, I'll cut it short, I'm done. I love that song. XD

Well, as you noticed, Sawao said Mallory was pretty, but Vieve said she was average-looking. She really is average. XD

And I know the story sucks…. Though I kinda liked the last segment.

Well, review, or I'll be forced to devote more of my time to stalking you.