-Chapter 4-
-Broken-
"English"
"Japanese"
[PDA]
'Thoughts'
*Actions*
"Insanity - a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world."
~R. D. Laing
"Now what could that look be, hm?" The man in the pale doctors outfit glanced over at the clipboard by his side and frowned. Looking back at the child on the floor he make a disappointed click with his tongue and spoke again. "Now we made an agreement. You know that..." The man looked down over his smallish reading glasses, expecting a reply from the motionless figure below him. He received none. "I promised that you could see your sister, didn't I?...You can't just go trying to break out all the time, or it'll draw too much attention." Another silence enveloped the two. "...Don't you ever want to know what your little sister looks like?" The tall and starkly pale man stood quietly over the child, who's chains clinked lightly as his frail body curled up into a ball. "Hm, little Raizou?"
"I hope she isn't hurt." Shinra spoke lightly as he slipped into the kitchen.
Raizou made an uncomfortable noise from the couch as he lied on his back. "She probably got lost again."
Shinra's voice gently echoed from behind him. "Aren't you worried about her? Now that you have a little sister to walk to school every day, you can't mope around on your way to classes.
"If it were Celty missing, I wouldn't be able to sleep until I knew that she was safely resting in my arms," Shinra pouted.
The room quietly hummed with Raizou's laughter. "I can only imagine the friends she will make at school." Raizou's face resumed his troubled complexion. "I hope that her...disability... doesn't cause any problems."
Shinra slowly entered the living room and stood over Raizou. "You shouldn't call it that, Raizou. Your little sister went through a lot to be here with you. Yet, you're lying on the couch instead, just expecting her to come back."
"I don't care if she came here to see me. She needs to know just how nasty people can be when things like...THAT...show up out of nowhere." Raizou shifted over to glare at Shinra. "I'd rather that she head right back to the lab than have to live through a pathetic hinderance like that."
Shinra stood motionless, looking down through his glasses at Raizou. "You are absolutely wrong. She knew exactly what she was doing when she came back to Japan. I couldn't even keep up with her English when she talked about you, she was so excited. It's your job to take care of her, and you aren't going to send her back..."
Raizou, now uncomfortably stiff in his position on the couch, had both eyes trained up at Shinra.
Shinra blinked. "You..."
"...you wouldn't..."
Street Level, Outside
*SLAM* A slender figure stepped out from the main building, closing the door in a rush and nearly crashing into an older man walking in the opposite direction. The boy, easily in his late teens, carried on without a backward glance until he had gone halfway down the block, at which point he stopped abruptly and turned around.
"Always looking so serious. I can't believe him. I'M SO DONE WITH THIS FAMILY FULL OF IDIOTS!" The boy, regaining his lanky composure, ducked his head to the side, then continued to walk along the sidewalk.
'I don't have to put up with any more of this mess. I can just head down to the station, get on a bullet train, and be halfway across the country in a few hours.'
Raizou spoke in a coarse, frustrated undertone, "I don't have to listen to Shinra's incessant rambling about his eternal love, Celty. I don't have to put up with the continuous whisper coming from my friends because my little sister is a freak."
"I don't even care-."
Raizou slowly turned his head to the right. The pupils in his eyes immediately constricted as a blinding light hit his face. It increased in intensity, and all of the world went black.
His whole face hurt. His entire body. Even his bones ached. He felt like an angry drunk had been taken off the streets, brought into this small, scantily lit room through the only door it had, given a club, and told that the man tied up in the center of the room was actually a piñata. The thought entertained him a little, and he let out a painful chuckle.
*CRACK*
Perhaps the comparison wasn't all too wrong. The raw skin on his arms, neck, and face burned enough to keep him awake. The aching in his head did nothing to sooth that pain. It only reminded him that it was a jumbled mess, even before they had jumped him. Before he had been hit over the head. Before...
*CRACK* The sound became lost among the yellowing plaster walls, just as the previous.
'This isn't so bad.'
The man standing to his left was wielding what looked like a piece of bamboo. He resorted to that about twenty minutes ago, after his knuckles became raw from the...conversation.
Bound at his wrists, sitting in the chair, and dipping in and out of consciousness, the last thing he remembered himself saying was...not entirely...complementary. But by now the bamboo stick seemed to be wearing out.
'Then again, so is your face...'
*Squeeeeek* The chair let out a sigh. The bright colors and drawings from the children's cartoon Totoro almost made the scene comical. Except for its size and weight, the chair seemed to have been made for a child. None were to be found here, thankfully, especially with what he planned to do.
*CRACK* A sharp pain drove deep into the back of his shoulder.
One of the screws holding the back of the chair had become loose with stress. Not wanting to miss out on the opportunity, he had been slowly working at it. The only man in the room besides himself seemed relatively lanky, and had something of a stubble on his cheeks where sideburns were attempting to surface. It would have been no feat of strength to take the man down, if only his fingernail fit into the screw better.
*CRACK* Something felt wrong.
"Damnit! Would you at least get a new stick! I'm starting to get splinters!" The thug swung his stick a second time, embedding even more half-inch long agony into his skin.
'Just a quarter turn more should do it...'
*CR-SNAP* The sound of the stick finally snapping muffled the noise caused by the opening door. Footsteps shuffled, but the noise was lost as the figure in the center of the room burst into motion, launching himself at the thug with the now broken stick.
'Here we go.' Time slowed down. His body screamed at him even more as adrenaline rushed through his severely bruised muscles. The underling stepped back in surprise.
Then everything went wrong.
A slight pressure appeared in his side. The lines defining the wall from the floor and the walls from each other switched places. Everything flipped sideways and his course veered him into the wall. He just barely managed to glance to his side, realizing two figures had entered the room, the right foot of the closer one extended in his direction, and he realized what had occurred.
*CRACK* The spiking pain in the back of his head turned everything black and white, and the two figures in the door blurred, as if being absorbed by another dimension. A piece of stucco chipped off from the wall and crumbled to the ground in front of his face.
The second figure, still in the doorway, seemed to have instantly concluded whether she wanted to enter or leave. Much shorter than the first man, she jolted forward, only to be grabbed and shoved roughly against the wall.
There was a snap of metal on metal, the all too familiar click of a knife being opened.
The next words took all thoughts away from the pain in his shoulder, the aching in his head. They felt like ice water being slowly poured into his ears until they were all he could think about.
"Don't scare your boyfriend like that. He's quite a tough one, but I think his time is all up."
The dim, blurry room began to fade.
"Don't you think, Izami?"
Then, she screamed.
"Good morning." The words etched into his mind, and Raizou could see through his left eye a blurry, half-formed Shinra, even through the bandages. He couldn't see that Shinra was smiling, but assumed that he had one of his dumb grins on again anyways.
"I hope you rested well while all of us were up and running about. Celty is still in a panic looking for her." Shinra spoke, more flustered now, as he stepped away from what was probably the dining room table made hospital gurney.
'Back in this hellhole again. Wait...'
Raizou stiffly sat up, decided against it, and fell back onto the table with a resounding moan. "Her. Who's her?"
"Your little sister. I woke you up because we still haven't found her."
"Why didn't anybody wake me up before!? I-" Again, Raizou lifted himself off the table, this time making it half-way off until his leg bumped a chair. His back arched and he fell to the floor with a thud.
"The painkillers should be kicking in soon." Shinra glanced over with hardly a care. He straightened his glasses, addressing something other than the bandaged, crumpled body at the foot of his dining table. "Interestingly enough, not a single bone in your body was broken."
"The hell if I care!" Raizou began to move more freely, standing up and looking around as if it was his first time in the mansion-like suite that was Shinra's and Celty's.
"You should though. A normal person would have been in a coma by now. The only other person I've seen like that is Shizuo...but that reminds me."
Raizou toppled into the couch, almost like a doll as Shinra continued to stare intently. "Everything else was a mess. No, that's correct. You had a concussion. And bleeding. And so much bruising. Oh yes. The bruises should be showing up at some point. Just don't...touch anything."
Raizou glared poisonous daggers at Shinra as he manouvered himself back into the standing position. "What the hell do you expect me to do about Mika!?" he let out in a dry voice. The medication seemed to have kicked in fully, as he now stood perfectly. Or near perfectly, given that he was at least five centimeters taller than Shinra either way. "Or should I just wait here, expecting my little sister to magically appear out of thin air?!"
Shinra looked intently at his chest, maybe at the bandages, but then he looked directly up at Raizou. "How is this different from two nights ago? You're even more worse for wear now than you were then. As your doctor, I really should be keeping you under control on your bed." Shinra motioned towards the dining room table.
"I don't care! I'm going outside! I'm going to find her!" Raizou walked towards the door, with only the slightest trace of a hobble. Whatever medications Shinra had collected, they were certainly potent. Or he was just drugged up with enough of it to kill a horse.
"How long was I out?"
The question caught Shinra off guard. Raizou had stopped half-way to the door, and stood with his back protecting him from Shinra's scrutiny. Shinra adjusted his glasses and looked down slightly.
"Two days." Shinra paused. "A lot can happen in two days, that much is true, but you shouldn't worry so much. Celty had been everywhere in the city, at one point or another. She will find her."
The room was quiet.
The van lurched from side to side. Somehow, the four figures inside remained unphased as bags and books alike launched from one side to the other, as if dancing to the tune of the raciously loud J-Pop blasting through a portable radio. A magazine in particular landed on top of the fifth figure, who lay prone in the far corner of the van.
"COME BACK, YA-" A line of expletives flew from the driver's mouth as he wheeled through traffic and back alleys in pursuit of a hit and run driver who had grazed his bumper a moment before. The more calm passenger kept his cursing in check with a glance, then looked back into the open area which contained the other three.
"Don't mess him up too much you two." Kadota said in an undertone. "If he gets taken to a hospital, the police will start sniffing around."
"On the contrary! If they can't recognize him, they won't know where to even start!" Walker gleefully flipped through a manga with his companion Erika, the both of them muttering about completely irrelevant objects and plot devices, but nonetheless making the small heap in the corner whimper even more. Erika looked up for a moment and saw the magazine spread across him.
"Look, Yumacchi!" Erika reached over and grabbed the magazine off of the figure, who shuddered.
"Now don't you worry, Mr. Yamada-San!" Walker chimed.
"We can even give you a choice if you like!" Erika joined in.
"WHAT DO YOU PEOPLE WANT FROM ME!?" The man in the corner shreeked.
Erika and Walker looked at each other, becoming absolutely serious. Erika intoned, "We want you to tell us where you saw the fairy. That's why we picked you up."
Walker looked over as well, almost disappointed. "Isn't the fairy who you were talking about? You have quite a loud voice, Mr. Yamada-San. It would make it hard to trust you when you talk about things like that so loudly in public. Especially because we want the fairy to ourselves."
The man in the corner looked on the verge of tears. Or insanity. Then he remembered. "You mean...the monster?"
The van lurched into yet another turn, throwing books everywhere. Erika jumped forward, slamming the unlucky guest against the back door as Walker picked the magazine out of a newly formed pile of books.
Kadota joined Togusa, both of them verbally abusing one driver or another.
Erika looked at Mr. Yamada with wide eyes. Walker barely glanced up from the magazine as he said, "Don't scare us like that, Mr. Yamada-San. You obviously know where the fairy is."
"But, Yummacchi. What if the fairy saw him?" Erika looked back.
The man looked only more terrified and confused.
Erika looked down. "They must have made him forget. Is that true, Mr. Yamada-San?"
Mr. Yamada glanced through the window, then back at Walker. "Y-Yes."
Walker found what he was looking for next to him, shoving all of the loose books and other remnants of Otaku-culture into a large camping backpack. "Then we don't really need him, do we?"
Without a second glance, Erika clicked open the side door, swinging Mr. Yamada so that he was barely able to keep himself from colliding with a rogue lamppost at ninety kilometers per hour. He screamed.
The van took another turn, throwing Mr. Yamada into the opposite wall. Both Erika and Walker remained unphased.
"Yumacchi," Erika kept her eyes trained on their captive, "doesn't Mr. Yamada-San look a lot like Maizaki Kurosugi?"
"Uwaaah?!" Walker looked up from his magazine, his eyes widening as he joined Erika's gaze. Their prey shrinked under the combined scrutiny. The sunlight flashed through the passing buildings, drawing lines across the scene as it unfolded.
"You're right, Karisawa-san! He must have been sent by them!" Walker immediately stashed the last magazine in his backpack and spoke something to Erika which was entirely unintelligible to Mr. Yamada.
Kadota, however, perked up at the noise from the passenger seat and glanced over at the two with suspicious eyes. "I specifically told you two to leave him intact."
As Mr. Yamada looked innocently at Kadota for any assurance of protection, Erika excitedly opened a panel in the floor, pulling out a large toolbox. Walker moved quickly to pin Mr. Yamada to the wall and Erika moved closer as well, opening the toolbox with a nearly innocent smile.
By now, Mr. Yamada had lost all sense of sanity. "I SAW THE FAIRY GIRL IN THE ALLEY BEHIND TANAKA'S LOVE MOTEL! A BLOND HAIRED MONSTER IN A BAR TENDER'S UNIFORM THREW A DESK AT ME AND I RAN OUTSIDE! SHE GOT HIT BY A FLYING DOOR AND I RAN AWAY! I SWEAR THAT'S ALL! NOTHING MORE! I PROMISE!"
Erika smiled unnaturally, looking up at her prey. "How inappropriate. You looked like such a nice person before, Mr. Yamada-San."
The door behind Mr. Yamada slid open freely in the strong wind. He screamed again before Erika intervened. "But wait, Yumacchi! Shouldn't we try to find out more? What if he mistook one of the cute girls walking by for a fairy?" She said while pulling out a pair of pliers and what looked like a box of screws.
Despite his reaching and Walker's attempts to hold him up, Mr. Yamada's face slowly came closer and closer to the street, and he flailed even more. Walker looked frustrated, then whispered something to Erika. Erika tilted her head, and whispered back even more intently. All the while, Mr. Yamada felt small pebbles fly through his hair and waited for the worst.
Erika spoke. "We can't let anybody else know about the fairy though. She could be in danger. I guess that's it for Mr. Yamada-San then."
The hand holding Mr. Yamada from the pavement let go.
Mr. Yamada looked up, and nothing was moving. The two monsters who had kept him captive smiled intently from the inside of the van as the door slid close. Mr. Yamada twitched as bone-jarringly loud J-Pop music resumed.
The most terrifying moment of Mr. Yamada's life drove off, hopefully never to be seen again.
Raizou's YouTube theme music of the day:
Gumi & Rin - Invisible