March of the God
March of the God
Chapter 7: Goodbye, Blue Monday!
Hullos. Welcome to chapter seven, where stuffs happen.
I'm going to try to cut down on the inner monologue, but there still might be a lot, seeing as I was given the suggestion by a reviewer halfway through this, and I'm still not so good at editing stuffs. I think I pushed the fact that most of my characters are whiny the-glass-is-half-empty-always children who need to grow up badly a teensy bit too hard.
Thanks for the reviews y'all, especially the concrit. I take thine advice to my heart. Aspiring writers need it, don't we: D
Disclaimer: I don't own Konjiki no Gash Bell. If I did, things would be very different, and would go according to my very sick sense of humor. For instance, there would be a character named 'Kirk the Pimp'. I don't own anything else that I'll be mentioning, by the way, aside from my OCs. I believe I've already issued my orange-in-a-sock threat, no?
Ooh, I'd like to add that the chapter is a bit rushed, I know that's not a good habit to get into! I apologize!
Gash laid the scroll out on the table. The material of the 'paper' was unlike that of any paper known to man, it was a color that would remind one of opal, and had a faint glow to it which accentuated the small black words, written in a neater and more elaborate fashion than any calligrapher could ever hope to accomplish. Obviously, this document had come from the Makai, chronicling all of those who had disappeared and had not yet been found.
"Is this what you wanted, Kiyomaro?" the King asked. "This is a copy of the original, so you can mark on it if you want."
Kiyomaro nodded, and observed the paper on which the names and information about the missing was listed. All of a sudden, one of the names and the related information vanished from the opal-colored paper, and the lines under it moved up, as if someone had deleted a line on a computer. The Japanese man jumped, somewhat alarmed by the change on what he had thought was a hand-written document.
"Someone's been found," Gash said, "Either that or they've turned up dead…." At the second sentence Gash frowned. Kiyomaro still stared at the paper, eyes wide, panting slightly in surprise. Gash laughed. "I guess I should have told you! Any changes to the original, which are done by magic, are changes on here, too!"
"Well, I guess we can start marking names off," Kiyomaro said, taking a ballpoint pen from the table.
"Kiyomaro, do you mind if I go talk with Tio for a few moments before we start? She wanted me to tell her how Teo's doing. He was out playing with his friends while I was there, from what I heard, but Koruru told me that Teo's doing fine for his first long separation from his parents," Gash said, evidently proud of his young son.
"How long will this take?" Kiyomaro asked, narrowing his eyes. "Will this be like your 'coffee breaks'?"
"No, no!" Gash said, laughing sheepishly. "It'll just be a few minutes!" With this, the king scurried out of the room as fast as he could.
Kiyomaro sighed. This paper was the first lead that might come of something. However, there were several, hundreds, probably, of missing mamono, and as it was, the time-frame was rather large. Aside from that, the demon could have gone missing and left the Makai a long time before they started acting on their plan, whatever that plan was. In truth, if, as Nazo Nazo Hakase said, the demon wanted to leave a trail indicating their movements, they weren't doing a very good job of it…
"No, no, and no!" I insisted, staring in absolute horror at the rust-colored liquid Babylon Angel had in the syringe he held, and more importantly, at the long needle of said syringe. "I am not letting you inject me with that!"
After a failed attempt at teaching me how to throw a punch and kick, Babylon Angel had taken my short impromptu 'instant gratification' speech to heart and decided to whip up an instant-super-strength serum. Apparently, side effects included excruciating sickness, vomiting (basically nausea) and headaches, which the onset of was immediately after injection, until your system made peace with the new fluid. Also, having one's skin pierced with a needle came in the package.
"Come on, Aston!" he said waving the needle in a bad attempt to make it seem less painful and more welcoming. "You could lift that snack machine really easily if you took this! And it's not steroids! It's the magical equivalent of steroids, with no long-term repercussions!"
"Firstly, what did you put in that thing?! And secondly, does it have to be injected through a needle?!" I'd much rather take a suppository than have that needle jammed into any part of my body, and the very idea of suppositories scared me.
"Yes, it has to," Babylon Angel said reversing the order of my questions, "And it's a mixture of demon blood, magic, and some herbs from around Ningenkai which I'm using to improvise for the original recipe!"
"No!" I insisted. Where did he get that needle, anyways…? I mean… mystery blood and a needle, which I did not want to be injected with, that had unclear origins… It was like begging for AIDS or something of the sort.
"You'll still be technically human, so you'll still be able to read the pink book," Babylon Angel said. "I'm an expert at this; I've practiced for over 4,000 years in the Makai! You can trust me on this, I made sure there's just enough blood. As long as it's a tiny amount like this, you're going to be just fine!"
"I'm not worried about being human or not! I'm worried about how painful having you stick that damned thing into me will be!" I said, finally snapping over it. Although I thought words like 'hell' and 'damn' probably more often than anything else, it was rare for me to actually say them aloud for the world to hear. I'd been (forcedly) raised better than that; I was an Englishwoman, for the good Lord's sake. My family, after all, was relatively old-fashioned.
Babylon Angel looked at the syringe he held. "This isn't that bad, is it? And if you want to know, the needle's brand-new, and super-clean!"
I nodded. Although part of the reason to fear AIDS had vanished, I'd always been afraid of getting shots as long as I could remember for no particular reason except for, of course, being squeamish of any sort pain.
"I could knock you out," said Babylon Angel, "only that will probably give you a bruise the size and shape of an egg. I doubt you'd want that." He paused. "Or I could distract you! Look, there's a distraction!"
Of course I didn't look. Who would? "Listen, I don't want to be injected with anything, especially not magic steroids! Just let me be!"
He blinked and looked down at the syringe again. Once again, he began to speak, more slowly and his words more emphasized than before. "Ah… okay. I took a long time to make this, you know. Besides…"
"…Besides, this will give you power. You can get back at your parents, you know…" the demon said, smiling. Words had always been his specialty. He could relay any thought in a very calm and cool fashion; he could lie about anything with a straight face. Persuasion, too, came under his expertise. Articulation and language had come naturally to him, he never had to work at it as he had to in order to learn mind-control techniques or how to use special spells. Of course he had refined his talent, but it had never been hard work.
The girl blinked, drawn in. "G-get back?"
"Yep, you tell me how much you hate them, how much pain they've caused you. I could take you to the suburbs of London in an instant. I remember right where it was, you know. With both this and the book, you could defeat and destroy anyone." Babylon Angel was lying, as he had many times before. This, however, was the first time he'd lied to Aston, and it made him feel odd inside. Maybe it was because this lie could hurt her. There were many human/demon teams that could defeat his whole army without so much as loosing a substantial amount of heart energy, he knew. One teenage girl and her small demon partner were among this mass, even if the girl did have incredible strength.
Aston blinked and thought, obviously contemplating. Babylon Angel bit his lip. Aston had never said she 'hated' her parents, but once she got talking, she had constantly complained about them. He sure hoped he'd gotten it right— otherwise his persuasion would sound weird and he'd seem like a jerk. But one usually did hate something they incessantly complained about, so the demon felt like he was on the right track.
Even if 'anyone' was a little much, the average human would be an easy win even without the serum for one with a demon and a book. In truth, Babylon Angel would much rather Aston leave her parents alone, but honestly, he was concerned about the girl. She had been his first friend in thousands of years, a friend he didn't want to see hurt in battle. Even if she'd still be defeated easily, she'd be able to hold her ground better than anyone else, and then, if it ever came to it, run away faster.
Babylon Angel knew the King and his companions were amazingly strong, far stronger than he was. He'd made plans and preparations to counter their strength, he had gathered pawns to weaken, no matter how slightly, and distract them with. He felt nothing for these pawns. Most were as lifeless as puppets, their true self silenced and bound behind luminous purple eyes. It was hard to think of this fraction of them as anything more than pawns, anyhow. Babylon Angel never talked to the un-possessed ones if he could help it. Even then it was a quick and impersonal word.
Except for maybe one. Aston. The thing that originally drew Babylon Angel to Aston amongst the other book-readers he was gathering was that she had been crying when they met. She was in pain, not physically but mentally. She needed help, she needed a friend, and Babylon Angel could provide both.
Aston, he learned, was a daydreamer of sorts, over-dramatizing things, making it much worse on herself. She caused most of her own problems by being undisciplined and melodramatic, and as far as Babylon Angel could tell, Aston was a mess, a walking pity-party who loved to romanticize her world and make her opinions sound grand. She was just a child; she needed guidance that she would actually listen to. Babylon Angel was trying to find out how to provide this.
Aston shifted her weight, clearly thinking. Then, slowly, she reached out her arm to Babylon Angel. "I-I'll do it," she said.
Babylon Angel smiled slightly, sticking the needle into Aston's arm and injecting the fluid into her. She made a rather loud squeaking noise as he did this, almost jumping backwards, away from the demon. She clutched her hand over the tiny pinpricked area, overreacting slightly.
"Oww…" Aston muttered. She then spilled the contents of her stomach onto the floor.
"Yeah, that'll happen," Babylon Angel said. "I told you about it! I'll get someone to clean that up… Come on, I just got a couch placed in my room… we'll get a bucket and you can rest on there…" he said, lifting her up by her torso. "You're okay, right, Aston?"
The girl nodded. "Throwing up is no big deal for me," she said, grinning slightly.
"You sure?" Babylon Angel asked, hauling the girl along, careful not to allow her trailing feet to hit a rock or the walls.
Aston nodded, smiling softly and tiredly.
Her expression was mimicked by that of Babylon Angel's, only his was broader from happiness at this simple reassurance. Even if Aston was sick now, even if she ended up hurting others, it was all so that she could defend herself. His words and actions were justified.
I was actually beginning to feel bad about lying to Teo about not being his bookkeeper as I observed him sitting on the couch. He stared down at his knees in disappointment instead of at the TV screen, the poison of normal children. He had gone out, under our mature, fourteen-year-old supervision, searching for someone who could read his book to no avail.
Only I could read his red book. I knew from the stories my parents told me. Because only I could, he would never find a book-reader amongst the multitude in the city, or even in the world.
He could never fight to rescue his cousin without my assistance; he could never save her from whoever kidnapped her as well as my own sister, Naoko. A better person would have helped him. A less lazy person would have wanted to, but I was no less lazy, and no better. I would have been justified in wanting to find and attack his cousin's (not to mention my sister's) captor, but I knew it would do no good, even if we did find where on the large earth this mystery person was hiding.
It was better that I lied, anyhow. That way, Teo wouldn't get hurt. I wouldn't get hurt. No one would, not because of me, at least.
But Teo was really starting to bother me. Even Demi was looking at the screen, watching the opening credits of the cheesy old black-and-white vampire flick. I stood up and moved couches, sitting down next to the little prince of the Makai.
"You know, there's a movie on," I said, trying to keep myself from sounding like I cared at all. The movie was, as mentioned, probably the corniest and the oldest vampire flick you could find in the video rental stores of Mochinoki City. It was set in an old mansion in Transylvania, located way up in the Carpathian Mountains.
Teo looked up at me, frowning. "Are you sitting over here to make fun of me now, huh?" He seemed pretty down for a kid.
"No. You're just not… well… Kids are supposed to like watching TV, you know," I told him, trying to keep up the non-solicitous-totally-cool-teenager tone.
"Really?" he asked as a grumpy old groundskeeper who walked with a limp pontificated onscreen about how no one should live in the decrepit-yet-fancy Komacsarov mansion because something evil had been lurking there for a few centuries, about how he'd seen it with his own eyes and such.
I nodded, trying to think of something to say to a little kid. "Yeah. In this world, they watch it so much that scientists and researchers take studies to show that it's bad for your brain."
"Then we shouldn't be watching it if it is bad for our brains!" Teo said, his orange eyes wide. "Quick, Sawao! Tell Li Xiao to turn it off!"
I laughed as the groundskeeper continued to ramble on at the pretty young sisters, one brunette (as far as I could tell with the black-and-white) and the other blonde, that had bought the mansion where evil lurked. "They're just saying that so we'll read their research papers instead. That way they'll get more funding."
"Even if the acting in this is terrible, we're trying to watch the movie, you know," Mallory said, tossing an empty balled-up popcorn bag at the two of us. "Keep it down." She turned away from us towards the television, where the eyes of a painting were following the brunette as she walked through the hallways of her new home.
"Why is Mallory always so mean to everyone?" Teo pouted in a hushed tone.
"Aww, Mal's not so bad," I said. "She's smart, and she's nice if you know how to talk to her."
"Does that mean sucking up to her and agreeing with everything she says?" Teo asked, blinking.
"No!" I said, even though the kid had pretty much hit the nail right on the head. "Not at all!" Truthfully, I'd always found that not questioning Mallory's opinions and accepting them as fact made her much more genial.
"I don't know why you and Li Xiao are friends with her," Teo said in a whisper. "She's mean, and complains about lots of things. I guess it's 'cause you're nice people, I could tell with Li Xiao when I met her, and just talking to you now tells me about you!" He paused. "You know, I'm really super-sorry that you aren't my book-reader. I really wish you were, Sawao!"
I didn't know what to feel. Offended, maybe, because Mallory was my best friend? Flattered, because I had been called nice? All I could feel, though, was plain lousy for lying. I didn't know what I was supposed to say. Was I supposed to fess up and apologize for not telling the truth about being able to read Teo's book? Then, I was saved by the bell. Actually, it was Li Xiao talking.
"Hey, check this out!" she grabbed for the remote and hit pause. It was the imminent blood-sucking scene of the movie where the vampire had come out of hiding and had found the blonde sister lying in her bed.
"Please observe," said Li Xiao as she stood up, walking over and positioning herself next to the TV set. "Freaky pale thing in black, which looks like it hasn't seen sun in forever leans over pretty blonde lady in bed and bites her neck." Li Xiao paused.
"So?" Mallory said, leaning forward towards the screen just slightly and crossing her legs. "I don't see anything."
I knew what was coming. I just… knew it.
"Demi? Lord Teo, Prince of Narnia? Sawao?" Li Xiao asked. "Any takers?"
I just shook my head. Demi didn't react, and Teo found himself with a very confused look across his face.
"Why, Mallory, I'm amazed you don't see the resemblance!" Li Xiao crooned, walking around behind the girl and patting her shoulders, chuckling all the while. "It's your parents making out!"
Ugh, knew it. It wasn't particularly funny, but still, Li Xiao and I loved to harp on Mallory's father for being mean, creepy and weird-looking, and having a bad fashion sense on top of it all. I don't even want to know where that ugly black fur came from!
Again with my masculinity issue.
This was all behind his back of course; he'd probably kill us and eat our corpses if we ever said anything to his face. We did, however, say it to Mallory's face. She just got irritated, and then laughed.
"Oh, shut up!" Mallory said, trying to look annoyed and angry. Instead, she keeled over, laughing as she always did. Mallory had a loud, open laugh, unlike Li Xiao's devious yet whole-hearted chuckle. "You're a real bitch," Mallory said, "You know that, Li Xiao?"
I let out a long breath. God, Li Xiao could come up with some weird things.
Teo winced at the use of the word 'bitch'. He most definitely had something against swears, even biblical ones like 'damn' and 'hell' to a small extent, because he'd stared at me in horror when I'd cussed after a guy in a Pontiac as he drove away for running a light and nearly hitting Teo when he was out looking for his bookkeeper.
"No more than you, Mallory, no more than you," Li Xiao said, still smiling broadly. She could be such an idiot, I thought, but an idiot I was sure glad to have around.
I figured I'd think of my issue with Teo later. Right now, I just wanted to hang out in my basement.
Sickness, for the most part, made me realize one thing: I'm a miserable, childish person that would probably never survive on their own in the real world.
"It should be over in a day or two," Babylon Angel said, handing me a plastic-lidded Styrofoam container and a plastic spork. The spork looked fast-food joint issued, and the Styrofoam container contained lemon rice soup, probably from a Greek-owned restaurant. Babylon Angel had probably paid for it with his own money, which had been stolen from others. Because of all the junk he had laying around, I was beginning to think that Babylon Angel was a kleptomaniac or something of the like. "Then you'll be up-and-at'em, ready to…"
"Ah, about that," I said, cutting Babylon Angel off as I better positioned myself on the arm of the couch. "I think it's better that I just let my parents go on with their lives and have or adopt another kid or whatever they want to do." I set the lid on the floor, ready to eat the warm soup. "You know, leave them alone?"
Babylon Angel blinked, and then smiled. "Change of heart, hmm, Aston?"
"I guess," I said, taking a sip of my soup. It needed pepper, but who was I to complain? I was ill and it was warm. The fever brought on by Babylon Angel's injected medicine had been terrible— I had lay on the couch puking into a bucket for a day an a half, sweating and crying, but it sure felt like it had been much, much longer.
"Hm. Why?" Babylon Angel asked, seeming very happy. He sat on the back of the couch, head titled just slightly, staring down at me with the large brown eyes of this Naoko Takamine.
"It was pretty much brought about by hour after hour of pounding headaches and nonstop vomiting into the bucket while begging to God that my mum would show up with a tablespoon full of Nyquil," I said. I constantly had been begging that my mother would come to my rescue, clad in sweats and armed with cold medicine, or at least an aspirin or two. Preferably both.
I wanted my mother the entire time, the mother I claimed to hate. Through all the stomach pains and sore muscles, I wanted one person. It wasn't Babylon Angel, who I had revered as I would God for 'saving' me; it was my mother, who'd cared for me while I was in states of sickness countless times before. My father wouldn't be so bad, either. I am ungrateful, I guess, because even after realizing how much I'd vilified home, a place that wasn't so awful at all, I, for some reason, still didn't want to return.
"You need Nyquil?" Babylon Angel asked. "How do you spell that? N-I-G-H-Q-U-I-L-L?"
"No, it's N-Y-Q-U-I-L. Nyquil, see? But I'm fine now, I don't need any Nyquil." In truth, I figured I'd need an extra bucket and loads of that Nyquil.
There was a short silence as I continued eating my soup. "Aston?" Babylon Angel said, "I'm sorry about suggesting that… you know… You kill your parents," he said. "I'm very sure that you think I'm the evilest thing on the plane of existence now…"
"We all say things we don't actually mean," I said, finding no better way to phrase it. I had given up on ladling the soup into my mouth with the plastic spork and just began drinking it from the Styrofoam container, even if it was a rather thick soup and it flowed slowly. We all think things we don't mean, as well. All it took to fix that, however, was a bad bout of nausea.
"Are you really okay?" Babylon Angel asked. "…'cause I'd love to give that training a second try, you know…"
"I'll have a go…" I said, although my poor stomach was nowhere near ready. Truth be told, I was beginning to want to return home— after I helped Babylon Angel succeed in his plans. He was my friend, after all.
During my sickness I decided I would return home under the guise of an innocent kidnapping victim with a shining new view on things.
"Great!" he said, smiling. "We've got a whole tundra for room! Come on! I'll call your partner, I'm pretty sure she's in the next room!"
He pulled on my arm as I had barely slipped my vest on. His enthusiasm was almost infectious, making me think of a phrase from my favorite book. It was way out of context, but still, I was ready to say "Goodbye, Blue Monday!" and look forward to a distant Friday.
This was kind of a short (and rather terrible) chapter, but let's pretend that it wasn't. It was kind of rushed, I apologize. Because in a chapter or two, exciting things may begin to happen, and I'm anxious to begin writing them.
Summarized, Babylon Angel's plotted to give Aston super-strength by using a magical serum, Sawao's having a moment equivalent to 'hmmm… should I be studying for my SATs right now?' and Aston herself is on one of the ups of the roller coaster of teenage emotion in deciding that she's been vilifying her parents too much. And then, I decided to quote Vonnegut yet again.
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