Yeah, yeah, I'm late. Any complaints you have about it can be directed to my secretary, good friend and occasional bodyguard, Pancake "Leftie" Jackson. He'll personally beat the living snot out of you for me.
By the way, because of some idiot's request, I'm gonna list most of the references I make from now on, starting with American Psycho:
From American Psycho: Dorsia's Restaurant;
From Baccano! (also known as the best anime in the world): Ladd Russo, Claire Stanfield, The Rail Tracer and Firo Prochainezo;
From Berserk: Guts the Black Swordsman and his sword;
From Bleach: Ichigo Kurosaki, Uryu Ishida, Zangetsu, Kojaku, and Ikkaku Madarame (just because he's awesome);
From Cardcaptor Sakura: Sakura Kinomoto and her wand;
From Code Geass - Lelouch of the Rebellion: Suzaku Kururugi and the Lancelot frame;
From Death Note: Ryuk and the Death Note;
From Doctor Who: The Daleks (EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!);
From Final Fantasy VII: Cloud Strife and the Thundaga materia;
From Fruits Basket: Tohru Honda;
From Is This A Zombie?: Ayumu Aikawa, Eucliwood 'Eu" Hellscythe, The Lord of Night (A.K.A. Night-san) and Mystletainn the chainsaw;
From Soul Eater: Death the Kid, Liz and Patty Thompson, and so on;
From The Dark Tower series: the term 'docker's clutch', which is a certain type of gun holster;
From The Legend of Zelda: The Twinrova Sisters (Kotake and Koume);
From The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya: Haruhi Suzumiya (the most terrifying woman in all of fiction) and Kyon (her loyal sidekick and occasional punching bag).
From The Neverending Story: Falkor the Luck Dragon;
From Trigun: Vash the Stampede and Millions of Knives (yeah, that's really his name);
From VanDread: The cast of VanDread (obviously);
From Yotsuba &! : Yotsuba-chan, Koiwai, Jumbo, the Ayase family, and some cicadas;
Happy now, ya meatball?!
I gotta say thanks to Blue Biscuit-chan for giving me the kick in the face required to jump-start Death the Kid &! again. And thanks to oath-keeper95 for starting me off in the first place. Together, the two of you inspired me to keep writing.
Actually, screw you guys. Now I can't stop writing!
Oh, before I forget... put that gun DOWN, Blue Biscuit-chan! What? ...you changed your name? What the wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey did you do THAT for?! Four Dimensional?! What does that mean?! That name sucks!
(QUICK FOOTSTEPS as the author retreats to a bomb shelter. Cue MACHINE GUN FIRE. After a moment, silence.)
...Ha! That all you got?!
(MACHINE GUN FIRE, followed by WHOOSHING SOUND and EXPLOSION)
Chapter 7: YOTSUBA SHOW UP! HOORAY! ...and Kido-kun makes friends with a zombie...
Two days later (that is, the thirteenth of July), on a very nice Friday, at noon...
Kid woke up. He felt relaxed, so he took a deep breath from the open window. It smelled like a beautiful Japanese day outside as he stretched his shoulders. With that lighthearted thought in his head, he turned around and finally opened his eyes.
That was as far as he got before his day was completely ruined.
Sununu and Yotsuba were sprawled between him and the door. Even in his sleep, Sununu was unbalanced; his hands trailed out like he was doing a Buddha pose. His feet folded in on themselves in some illogical, click-clack way Kid couldn't even fathom. His eyes flicked open at random, one after the other, and seemed to follow the beat of a punk rock song playing inside a jackhammer.
His hair just went wherever it wanted.
Yotsuba had a perfectly, beautifully symmetrical form. It was wasted on her sleeping posture, though. Her arms were flung out like one of those chalk outlines crime shows were so fond of, and her folded legs made something like an off-kilter square. Even her toes seemed to rebel against her symmetry; they curled on each other like a monkey's.
Kid looked back at his sleeping bag.
Eh. Patty was passable. Her hair was a little flatter on the left, but it was nothing he couldn't fix. She looked cute, tucked inside the folds like a little baby.
Kid smiled a little. He crept closer to her.
Patty was having a dream about giraffes riding humans into battle when she felt someone touching her real hair.
She breathed in, stretching her hands over her head. She opened one bleary eye and caught sight of Kid above her, petting her hair.
"Mguh...?" she asked.
Kid looked down at her, startled. "I was just fixing your hair," he explained bashfully. "It was all flat on one side, and I thought you wouldn't want to awaken to that level of asymmetry." He gave her a weak smile. Patty couldn't help but think it made him look like Crona.
She stared at him for a second. "Coming from you, that sounds like 'I love you'," she said slyly.
"Well, I do," he said seriously.
All of a sudden, Patty was on his head.
(What followed might have been considered kissing, but I don't feel like going into it. Just thinking about it makes me queasy.)
After Kid wiped the spit off his stomach, he decided to wake up Yotsuba and her apparent bedmate.
"Patty, would you give me a hand?" He reached back to her.
"Okay!" Patty responded.
She gave him a high five.
Kid looked at his hand for a second. "I meant turn into a gun," he explained.
"I know," Patty smirked.
Kid rolled his eyes. "You... ugh."
"Yeah, yeah, I'm goin'," Patty assured him.
In seconds, the glow fell away from a slick semi-automatic pistol in Kid's hands. Patty chuckled sinisterly. "So, what did you want me for, anyway? I'm starting to get rusty. Do I get to shoot something?!" She sounded excited all of a a sudden.
Very calmly, Kid raised his arm and pointed directly at the ceiling.
"Well," he hummed, "a roof is something..."
BLAM-BLAM-BLAM!
At the same time, Yotsuba and Sununu bolted upright... right into each other. Their heads made a satisfying, coconutty clonk as they slammed together, thanks in part to Sununu's freshly-shaved scalp.
"Ow!" Yotsuba cried, clutching her head.
"Yow!" Sununu rhymed.
In her gun form, Patty was cracking up. Kid did his best to keep a straight face, but it was tough when his mouth started curving on him like that.
The door to their room crashed open from a wild kick in two seconds flat. An entire ensemble of anime characters piled into Yotsuba's room, headed by Ladd Russo, who was in turn flanked by Cloud Strife and Guts. Vash the Stampede came climbing in over them like a lizard, keeping a hand close to his hip.
All of them yelled something different at the same time.
"Who wants to die?!"
"Thundaga!"
"Black Sword Slash!"
"Bullet time!"
There were a lot more of them, trust me. It went on for a while.
Once the introductions were over, Ladd took charge of the investigation."You guys hear anything?!" he demanded, pointing a shotgun straight at Kid.
"Hear what?" Kid responded with a fake curious expression on his face. He turned to Patty. "Did you hear anything?"
Patty resisted the urge to giggle. She just shrugged.
Ladd raised an eyebrow.
Koiwai awakened to the sound of glass shattering. That was slightly unusual for him; normally, he was awakened by the sound of Yotsuba's knee diving into his sternum.
After he got his pants on, he rushed out the door like the morning newspaper was on fire. He quickly caught sight of Kid, who sat in the middle of a huge pile of rubble and splintered glass, brushing shards of glass off his arm while he waved at someone on the house's second story. Koiwai couldn't catch what he was saying, but he looked a bit miffed.
As he opened the front door, Koiwai started hearing the middle of the conversation.
"-breaking Uncle Koiwai's window! Do you have any idea what he'll do to me if he finds out about this?! I don't have life insurance, Mr. Mafioso! He's gonna..." Kid trailed off. He slowly looked over to the front door... and saw Koiwai.
Koiwai didn't say a word.
"Oh..."
Kid was too busy working on his obituary to add anything more.
Koiwai looked at the pile of glass.
Then he checked the second-story windows.
Then he looked at Kid again.
"No, keep going. I need some inspiration," Koiwai teased him.
"I'll do anything! Anything you want!"
"Just fixing it would be fine," Koiwai said, bored already with his moment as nightmare fuel.
"I'll fix it, I'll pay for it... I'll clean your house! I'll PAINT your house! I'll BUY you a NEW house! I swear to Lord Death I'll..." Kid got a grip. "Oh, yes, yes, I'll fix it! Where's the nearest hardware store?!"
"I'll get the keys," Koiwai sighed before he strolled back through the door.
"Thanks for driving us, Koiwai," Patty said.
Kid and Koiwai turned back to her and yelled "Show some respect!" as one.
Patty muttered something like "...show you respect... have you know Kid heels like a dog when..." under her breath.
Apart from her creepy muttering, she just stared out the window as they went along. Koiwai did a respectable pace of 30 miles an hour as he rolled along some of Karakura Town's (surprisingly well-filled) backstreets.
Kid stood up in his seat as Koiwai's van rolled over a bump.
"Did we just run over Tohru Honda?!" he yelled.
"No," Koiwai replied, "that was Sakura Kinomoto. You can tell by the wand fragments."
Kid relaxed. "Oh, good. For a second I thought we ran over someone I actually had a desire to see living."
Patty looked hurt. "I thought you liked Cardcaptor Sakura," she complained.
"I never said that," Kid replied. And I'll never admit it, his thoughts added.
They drove on in silence for one second after that.
"You were crying at the end," Patty recalled.
"YOU WERE SPRINKLING PEPPER IN MY EYES!"
"Yeah? You were still crying!"
"You put pepper in his eyes?!" Koiwai asked incredulously. "You have deep-seated emotional issues, kiddo!"
"Leave me out of this!" Kid yelled.
Suddenly, something occurred to him. "Hey, Patty."
"You didn't like... jerk... WHAT?!"
"You know where Liz is?"
"Eh. Probably trying to hook up with... I don't know, probably that Suzaku dude with the giant mecha thing."
"Yeah, whatever. Just thought I'd ask."
"I hate to break up such a riveting conversation, but... we're here." Koiwai gestured toward the hardware store with one hand, and steered his van into a parking space with the other. The van scraped along the side of a small luck dragon in the next space, who grunted and rolled to the other side.
Koiwai rolled down the window and waved. "Sorry, Falkor," he said.
Falkor groaned.
Kid and Patty piled out the van and onto the pavement. In a flash, they were up, charging the store like a Kishin had decided it liked the taste of their blood, and was on the fence whether or not chasing them down and eating them was worth it, and they wanted to tip the scales on the side of 'kind of a hassle'.
Sununu appeared out of nowhere and followed behind them, giggling maniacally all the while.
Yotsuba leaped off the top of Koiwai's van, hit the ground running, and dashed after Sununu. "GIVE ME BACK SLIPPER LEFT NOW!" she yelled, her look of anger clashing with the adorable smiley-face on her t-shirt so violently, Koiwai's brain felt bruised.
An orange-spike-haired guy in a student's uniform dinged Koiwai's car as he rushed by. He said something as he passed; it sounded like "longstorynoTIMEGOTTAGOSorry'boutyourcar..." and then he was out of sight.
A guy in what looked like a lab coat came a second after. He held still just long enough to say, "We need to catch those guys," before he took off like an Olympic sprinter.
Now, I want to be perfectly clear here: Koiwai had no idea what was going on. None at all. On a scale of cluelessness from one to ten, he would be Dalek-IQ, a number so huge that there was no number large enough to express how many decimal places it had.
But then again, he knew his daughter.
He locked his van.
It was a battle cry that emerged from his lips.
"YOTSUBA!" he screamed as crossed the sea of burning black asphalt that lay like an ocean between his van and the store.
"YOTSUBA!" he roared as he ripped into the hardware store like a drunken linebacker crossed with an inordinately miffed avenging angel.
His sneaker-ed feet crashed into the tiled floor with earth-shaking impacts as he strode up to the nearest terrified clerk, grabbed him by the shirt-neck and snarled,
"Excuse me, sir, I'm looking for a little girl with green hair. She went by here a moment ago. Did you see where she went?"
The clerk pointed to the glass aisle in a way that implied screaming men crashing through the front door was something he had to deal with every so often. "Yeah, over there. So, I'll just go clean up the broken glass."
Koiwai darted for the glass aisle.
Yotsuba had drawn her water pistol and pressed it to Sununu's liver, since that was the highest spot she could reach on him. Sununu was grinning like a fool. Koiwai noticed he had a small, green velcro shoe in his hands, which were suspended above his head, encased in ice, had multiple sword wounds, and were currently perforated with no less than seventeen invisible arrows made of pure spiritual energy. His hands, not the shoe.
The lab-coat guy acted like he had an invisible bow-and-arrow and he was a great archer. His right hand whizzed back and forth between his other hand and his shoulder like he was trying to load a particularly stubborn crossbow - never mind that the comparison would have left him murderously peeved - and his lab coat actually looked a bit respectable.
The student guy was snoozing underneath a sheet of shatterproof glass - a wise choice, considering that Kid and Patty were hammering on it with a wild storm of pinkish-purple energy bullets and stomping on it furiously.
"Why does my daughter's friend have a shoe in his hands?" Koiwai asked Kid.
"I DON'T KNOW!" he yelled. "I thought the Soul Reaper trying to cut me in half was a bit more worthy of attention! WHOA!" That last part was Kid ducking really fast.
"Look out!" came a disembodied voice from where Kid used to be. Koiwai hurriedly joined the orange-haired guy under the sheet of glass. The second he was behind it, an invisible wave of something smashed it back into Koiwai's face.
He could practically feel his hair turning gray from all this stress.
The lab-coat guy glanced at Koiwai. His eyes went wide. "ICHIGO! BODY THIEF!"
For some reason, Koiwai felt eyes on him. "I don't know what that means!" he shouted.
"Get away from my body!" a disembodied voice shouted from next to Koiwai's head.
Koiwai looked at the student guy. The guy wasn't moving. Or breathing. Or... well, anything, really.
"AAAH! He's dead! This guy's dead! You're a serial killer, aren't you?!" he yelled, pointing at lab-coat guy. "Oh God, you're a serial killer and now you're going to kill me like you killed this student guy! I don't wanna die in the glass section of a hardware store! Please, Mr. Lab-coat Guy! Let me live! I have a little girl and two beautiful nieces!"
The lab-coat guy stared at him uncomfortably. "Uh... I'm... not a serial kil-"
"Daddy! Want me to shoot Mr. Killer?!" Yotsuba yelled joyously.
"I'm not a serial killer. My name's Uryu Is-"
Koiwai interrupted him with a laugh. "Yeah! Show Mr. Killer the power of the Koiwais!"
"I'M NOT-"
Yotsuba shot him with her water pistol. "Take that!"
"Ow! I keep trying to tell you, I'M NOT A SERIAL K-"
Sununu whacked him in the head. "Eat a stick, you pansy wick!"
Everyone fell silent and looked at him.
Sununu shifted self-consciously on his feet. "I had no time, I had to rhyme..."
"Wonder if Sununu's fired now," Kid said absently. As the words passed, his eyes flashed open so fast they looked like they might fly off altogether. "Patty! I have to write that down! PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT'S HOLY!"
Patty emerged out of gun form and slapped him across the face. "Calm down, Kido-kun!" She was quiet for a moment. "Now, what is it?!"
"I just had an epiphany! That's why Sununu is so mismatched! His name is the key! HIS NAME IS A PALINDROME! Same backwards as forwards," he explained when he noticed the looks he was getting. "Seriously, I have to write this down! This is like watching the Big Bang happen, except IT'S WITH WORDS! PATTY! I! HAVE! TO! WRITE! THIS! DOWN!"
Patty took her hands from her ears. "Okay, okay! Sheesh! Let's go to Target or something."
Kid nodded, then froze. "Oh damn it! I still have to buy glass for Koiwai's window."
Patty slapped him again. "Make up your mind already! Are you gonna go off and buy a frilly little diary or do we haul a sheet of glass around until SOMEONE walks up and smashes it?!"
"This coming from the girl who spends the better part of an hour scribbling in that notebook about... what is it you write about again?"
They started walking for the door.
"For your information, Kido-kun, I am investigating the Kira serial killings. It's tough work, getting all that detail in about time of death, what they were doing, the order they die in... tough work. On the other hand, I've actually begun to get a profile on Kira's mind! See, he's not as good at hiding his intent-"
"Yeah, like you keep telling me. Seriously, every time we get out of the house, all I hear is 'Kira! Kira! Kira!' Honestly, can't we just go one day without talking about serial murder?"
Patty frowned. "Aw, do we have to? Seriously, this info could crack the case wide open! Listen, he lives in the Kanto area of Japan. He has a younger sibling who he considers too innocent to know what he does. He's young and highly intelligent, and he's probably a student in high school - maybe he goes to a university. He can control their times of death! He has connections with the police, and they don't even know it! Kid, we could save lives here! We might actually have a chance to save a lot of innocent people!"
Kid stared at her. "You really think they don't know about that? Listen, Patty, they have the best detective minds on the planet working on this case. I'm not trying to be rude, but do you really think you have information they won't come up with?" He laid a hand on Patty's shoulder. "I think we should leave this to the police. They'll know what to do."
Patty nodded. After a moment, her eyes narrowed. "Hey, wait! You're a Grim Reaper! Can't you figure out how all these guys are dying?!"
Kid shrugged. "Lord Death says it's not another shinigami, so we can't trace it. It's weird, though... it has all the marks of a Death Note, and Ryuk hasn't called in for... a while now, actually..." He stopped in place and put his hands together, like he was praying. "Hmm..."
"Well?! We gonna go or what?!"
"Oh, yeah, glass. Let's go."
Patty turned around, satisfied. "Oh... uh, Kido-kun? We should go. Now. Now! NOW!"
Kid whipped around.
A high-school student with dead eyes, an honest-to-goodness bonnet, and a frilly pink dress crashed through plate glass at him, bearing down with a gigantic chainsaw and screaming "MEGALO!"
(What follows has been deleted from this account for filthy language, excessive gore, several acts of a disturbing and violent nature, and inappropriate use of a frilly pink dress. Some screaming was involved. Mostly Kid's.)
Once Kid retrieved the remains of his pants, correctly dismantled the chainsaw, and removed as many of the glass spears as he could, he reawakened the high-school cross-dresser.
"Let's try this again," Kid said to him.
"Are you a zombie?" the cross-dresser asked him, pointing to him with his elbow. The rest of his arm dangled limply below the elbow, waving around like a line of snot.
Kid huffed. "No. I am a shinigami, son of Lord Death Shinigami-sama himself! Do you honestly think... never mind. Who are you and what are you doing here?"
The cross-dresser's clothes turned transparent. "See, I thought you were a Megalo-"
"UGH! That's disgusting! Put some clothes on, man!"
"I did."
Reluctantly, silently cursing himself every second, Kid glanced back.
The cross-dresser wasn't cross-dressing anymore. Now he was dressed like a normal teenager - t-shirt, jeans, sneakers and all. To Kid's mild surprise, his eyes still looked dead.
"Anyway, I'm Ayumu Aikawa. I'm a Magikewl zombie necromancer Girl, man. This is my... well, Eu's the one who got me like this." His elbow pointed to a silver-haired girl in full plate armor who, Kid realized with a jolt, had been sitting against the wall the entire time. "She doesn't talk much."
"I should hope not!" Kid exclaimed. "I mean... hello, Madame Hellscythe. I didn't know you were visiting."
The silver-haired girl began writing on a pad of paper. Her armor clanked a little.
'Neither did I. Ayumu is my manservant while I stay on this plane.'
"You know Eu?" Ayumu blurted in surprise.
"Yeah, you know this chick?" Patty asked, somewhere between jealous and honestly curious.
"No matter where you're from. If you're a death god, the other death gods tend to know about you."
'Quite true. Everyone knows about Lord Death Shinigami-sama and his son. The embodiment of insanity through order tends to be the leader of whatever he gets into, as well, so all of us - from a Grim Reaper to the lowliest psychopomp - usually follow his lead. Shinigami-sama's, not his son's.'
Kid blinked. "Ah. Of course." He blinked again. "If you don't mind my asking, why do you have a zombie manservant, ma'am?"
'Because he died. Obviously.'
Kid shivered.
"Okay... changing the subject now, what are you doing in Karakura Town, of all places?"
Eu nibbled on the end of her free thumb as she wrote.
'A long and convoluted series of events have forced us into your world. Personally, I believe it was Haruna's fault. From what Ayumu has told me, the same has happened to many, many other worlds as well. I, Ayumu, a young man named Kyon, and a very strange girl by the name of Haruhi seem to be the only ones who noticed. Incidentally, I enjoy your world's moon. It is very... comforting.'
Kid nodded. "True. It does have a certain... terrifying familiarity... but why just you few, Miss Hellscythe? And me and Patty, for that matter?"
Eu put her pen to her lips. Then, she went on writing.
'Good question.'
"Well, that was informative. Wasn't it, Patty?" Kid smiled at Patty endearingly.
"Huh? I wasn't listening."
Kid sighed. Eu looked at him questioningly.
Kid displayed Patty to her.
"This is Patricia Thompson. She is what happens to people we don't like." He stepped closer to Patty and wrapped his arm around her shoulder. "And she's my girlfriend."
Eu blinked slowly.
'I wonder what you two would taste like together. Probably a bit too fatty for my palate...'
Patty shifted into gun form. "OH THIS IS ON NOW BIT-"
Kid poked his finger into the barrel. "Patty, no cursing at extradimensional death gods. It's very rude, and it makes our reality seem uncultured. Agreed?" He took his finger out.
"-CH!"
Eu wrote again.
'Whenever you are ready, sweet cheeks.'
"Would you do something, Ayumu?"
Ayumu dashed over to Eu and began talking. Kid didn't really care what they were saying (or rather, Ayumu was saying and Eu was writing), so he didn't listen. Meanwhile, he hauled Patty off, bucking and kicking, in her gun form.
"Let me shoot her! Just once! I swear, I'll clean up afterwards! All it'll take is one bullet and we never have to worry about meeting her again! Besides, you owe me for that time I got us seats at Dorsia's!"
"No, Patty. Killing death goddesses from other dimensions is very rude. Let her live."
"Aw, do I have to?"
"Yes, and that's final! And besides, I repaid you for Dorsia's! Remember, I got you that pink spring-clip holster you wanted!"
Patty sighed and kicked a chunk of glass with the tip of her shoe.
"You're no fun. Besides, you only got me a docker's clutch..."
To be continued, friends and neighbors. To be continued.
