Wire (#2) – Takashi

The next day, Takashi woke up to find the sun in his eyes and something glittering on the floor. Initially, Takashi did not want to get up. He groaned and rolled over and tried to go back to sleep, but the sun had already filled the room, making it impossible to evade or to sleep. Takashi rolled around for a bit, throwing his blankets over his head and trying sleep like that, but found himself too hot and still with the sun in his eyes. Heaving a heavy sigh, Takashi pulled the blankets down from his head, rolled over, and started to get out of bed.

A special something on the floor stopped him cold.

It was a sparkling, silver sliver of a thing, and having no idea what it was or what it's intention for being there was (Takashi couldn't sense the emotional affiliations of objects, or at least not ones that had been sitting alone, unused, for a very long time), Takashi naturally distrusted it. He put his foot back on the bed, and scrunched the rest of his body down so he could peer over the edge of the bed at the strange something. Takashi stared at the piece.

… stare…

… starE…

… Stare…

… sTaRe…

… StArE...

… STARE…

-STARE-

The piece of silver did nothing. Even after ten minutes of intense staring, the piece of silver did nothing. To combat this, Takashi pouted. He stared harder. He glared.

… The piece of silver light did nothing.

Takashi blinked at the strange thing sitting on the floor of his bedroom. Slowly, cautiously, he extended an arm, a hand, a finger… and touched it.

… It was warm to the touch. Takashi jerked a little, staring wide-eyed at the piece of silver string, but it wasn't hurting him (if anything, Takashi might've been hurting it with how hard he's pushing into the thing), and furthermore, there was sunlight all around the room, so why wouldn't this little tiny piece of metal be warm?

Logic settled, Takashi wrapped his hand around the silver string and attempted to pull it. It did not move. There seemed to be something anchored on one end, Takashi realized, so he pulled on the silver string some more to figure out where most of the weight was. With a yank, Takashi pulled the string up violently, and was startled when his bedroom door jerked open, a new rivet along the bottom of the door. Takashi blinked at the open door a few times, glanced at the silver string (wire?) in his hand, and shrugged to himself.

String in hand, Takashi got out of bed and wandered off, on a quest to figure out where the wire came from.

O X O

Wire (#3) – Skull

Skull was in the basement. How did he know this? Well, the boiler was a dead give-away, but the fact that the room was small, made almost entirely out of cement, and smelled faintly of lead pipes* also clued him in.

Skull blinked down at the little room, tied upside down in steel wire and possessing no recollection of how he got there or the day that it was. Skull eyed his(?) leather and purple get-up, wondering if they were indeed his, and if so, why did he dress like this? He looked like he had self-esteem issues, or at least something to hide… And why wouldn't his head stop pounding?! Skull breathed deeply and groaned loudly, his lips twisted in an upside-down frown as his headache got even worse. It felt like there was a bomb or a helium balloon in his head that was expanding outwards with little to no regards to the borders of Skull's head. In a pitiful effort for respite, Skull closed his eyes.

Silence.

Then,

"Why are you tied to the ceiling?" a small, high-pitched voice asked. They sounded like they were just below him, and Skull opened his eyes, desperate to get out.

"Please, man, ya gotta get me out!" Skull cried, begging with his eyes and his words for the wide-eyed little boy to save him, "I don't know where, what I'm doing here, or who I am, but please, help me down!"

Skull turned up the Puppy Eyes 2.0, determined to get down, "I really need to go to the bathroom… !" Seriously, it felt like someone took a hammer to his bladder and his head… ! Skull was going to make himself piss his pants if he kept thinking about it, so he directed his efforts to not thinking about his bladder and using the tears his head and bladder were causing him, to convince the boy below to save him.

The boy, for his part, looked noticeably unnerved, but stood strong. "I need to go talk to my dad," he hedged (Skull's heart dropped to his shoes; for some reason, the thought of this boy's father made his headache worse), "How do I know you're not an intruder?" the boy asked.

Unconsciously, Skull's eyebrow twitched. "If I managed to get in, steal something, and then get caught by my own tools, I deserve to get caught," Skull told the boy seriously. He attempted a shrug, but it didn't work with the steel wire binding him in place. "Plus, wouldn't you notice if I had something on me?" Skull added, hoping to get the kid moving again. He really needed to pee. And an ibuprofen. And maybe a bath (he didn't know how long he'd been in this leather trap, but it's been too long).

The boy below narrowed his eyes and surveyed Skull's small body suspiciously. Truly, even if Skull had stolen something small, like a ring or a broach, it would appear ginormous on him, and thus would become immediately apparent. Seeing as there was nothing on Skull's body (well, besides his stuff and the wires), he hoped this would end the matter. True to form, the boy's eyes flickered over Skull's body a couple times, glancing suspiciously at the helmet Skull wore, but found nothing that was stolen or otherwise note-worthy (well, except for the bobble around Skull's neck, but not even Skull knew what to do with that).

Slowly, cautiously, the little boy nodded. "I'll go see what I can do," he promised, and scampered off. Unconsciously, Skull's eyebrow twitched. That was a really vague promise to make…

…

Skull was bored. He'd done what he could, and help was on the way, but that was for his physical being, not his mental. Try as he might, Skull's scattered memories would not come back. And, since thinking about it just made the headache worse, Skull stopped trying. Instead, he stared down at the floor.

The cement floor.

The gray cement floor.

The gray, flat, and terribly dull, cement floor. Which was the only thing Skull could look at without his head being torn off at the neck. Skull closed his eyes and sighed. "Boring…" he grumbled, before opening his eyes again. Closing his eyes meant there was nothing distracting Skull from his bladder, and he'd rather look at the floor than pee his pants (... well, it would be something to do...).

… There was something on the floor. Skull squinted down at the floor, wondering whatever it could possibly be. To his surprise, Skull's vision improved drastically and he could see the—

The door opened, admitting in the little boy with a big ladder, but before he could totter in Skull yelled, "Don't move!"

His heart in his mouth, Skull saw Takashi (? – how did he know the boy's name?) stutter to a halt, surprised and accidentally knocking the ladder against the cement wall. The little boy, barely seven years old, huffed. "Did you want to get down?" he asked rudely, annoyed at having fetched the (heavy) ladder, wobbled all the way back here, and discovered his aid unwanted.

But Skull knew different. His eyes flared dangerous at the boy, at Takashi: "If you step forward," Skull said seriously, "You'll cut your foot open."

Takashi's eyes widened minutely, and evidentially the grip he had on the ladder loosened, because it thudded gently at the wall, now doing more than wobbling nearby. "How do you know that?" Takashi asked, his voice clear, but wavering on the edges.

Skull took a moment to be puzzled at the kid's quick belief in strangers before being thankful it was so, and saying, "Those spots of light on the floor? They're pieces of steel wire. They're sharp enough to cut through a man's mid-drift in two seconds. Don't. Touch. Them," Skull stressed, worried that this little kid, this little boy who wanted and went to help a complete stranger, would end up with his foot severely injured, bleeding out while Skull was trapped up on the ceiling, unable to move, and too far from hearing to call for help.

But Takashi just blinked at Skull, and then at the crisscrossing wires. Slowly, Takashi crouched down to the ground with the ladder, and inspected one of the 'light spots'. Then he snorted, confusing Skull, especially when Takashi looked up and smiled. "They're harmless," he reassured the 'man' floating above, and stood up with the ladder and started walking.

Before Skull could rush into more pleas, threats, or warnings (perhaps a few cuss words if Skull was feeling up to it), the little boy stepped on a piece of silver light, and walked away, unaffected. Skull stared, incredulous, as the little boy made his way across the space, his face as nonchalant as the ladder was wobbly. Once the boy was close enough for the ladder to be of use, Skull quickly put his foot out, worried that the wobbly ladder might hit him in the face. The boy below huffed, but said nothing. He put the ladder down the ground and, with Skull bracing it, started to climb the ladder.

Skull's eyes widened. "Hey, hey, hey!" he yelped, maneuvering his other leg around the steel mesh to support the other, "What are you doing?! You could get hurt!" Skull yelped shrilly when Takashi purposely shook the ladder into falling (it fell onto the cement wall behind Skull). Skull's heart thumped loudly in his chest as he stared at his 'savior', stupefied.

Grabbing a handful of mesh and with a half-smug, half-proud lilt to his lips, Takashi told Skull, "You said that the last time. It wasn't true," Takashi grunted, having just now discovered that picking up and walking across the fine wires was very different from trying to pick them apart. Takashi growled at the filaments in his hands, concentrating with all the force a seven-year-old boy can muster into glares and pulling. Takashi huffed, unsuccessful, and loosened his grip (he tried with his teeth instead).

Skull stared at the boy, not a little bit speechless. "You're insane," he blurt out, and then blinked rapidly when Takashi glared harshly at him, the mesh in his teeth and hands an obvious warning. Skull sighed. "Sorry," he said softly, and scooted over (as much as he could anyway) to give the boy some room to work. The boy grunted, but said nothing else, choosing his work over conversation.

Silence.

While Takashi worked, Skull contemplated the lad, and couldn't seem to get his head around the idea of someone walking over fine metal wires without a scratch to show for it. And, if Takashi's continued efforts were anything to go by, the same applied to pulling and prying sharped steel nets. Skull stared, his attention caught and curiosity peaked.

"… How'd you walk across all that wire?" he finally asked, unable to keep his questions silent any longer. Takashi looked up, frustration and suspicion waring with curiosity on his face. There was an unsettling amount of deadly wire between his teeth… or at least, according to Skull, it was.

Takashi shrugged. "It's warm," he said, "I can pick it up when it's warm." Takashi shrugged again, having no more words to describe this 'amazing phenomenon', and went back to work. Unbeknownst to him, his words had sparked something in Skull, and his headache was pushed to the side in favor of his racing thoughts.

"You… can you make them warm, the wires?" Skull asked, hesitant to voice his theory, but excited to see if it was true.

Takashi looked up again, his expression more mild and his movements half-hearted now. The conversation was interesting (and the work was unfruitful), but Takashi shrugged. "Well, yeah," he said, "Can't everyone?"

Skull's heart picked up the pace. "Focus on the feeling," he managed to say smoothly, uninterrupted by his bouncing nerves, "I think it might be able to get me out."

Takashi raised an eyebrow. "I highly doubt body heat is the answer here," he said drily, his wire-pulling having almost completely stopped.

Skull smiled without meaning it. "I meant with your heart," he added, "Imagine that there's a flame attached from your heart to the wire, and that that flame is strong enough to melt even the strongest of wires," Skull encouraged, excited to see the results of his improv-teaching.

Takashi looked unsure, but he closed his eyes, presumably in meditation while Skull eyed him impatiently, excited to see the what would be produced, and in a hurry to get to the bathroom. Skull watched and waited until Takashi's eyes snapped open, an intense light to his blue-grey eyes, and a faint, pale blue glow whispered across the steel wires. Under Skull's eager (and Takashi's increasingly wide) eyes, the wires slackened, softened, and became so dull that Skull easily pulled himself out of the wire net, smiling widely and intensely pleased to be out alive.

In a feat of showmanship that Skull so rarely practiced nowadays, Skull took Takashi by the waist, transported them down to the floor, and stopped the ladder from falling, all in a couple seconds. Still grinning widely, Skull put the stiff little boy off to the side, said, "Excuse me," and then made a break for the bathroom. Takashi stared after him, stupefied.

O X O

In an illusionary garden with crystal flowers and a chessboard set between two cups of tea, Checkerface smiled. "Your turn," he murmured softly to the breeze, which whispered back happily before moving on to other parts of the garden.

The game had begun.

O X O

*This the year 1996; they still have lead pipping. I'm basing this date off the year KHR is based off of btw (2004).

So, yeah. This was the last of the fluff, and the beginning of the next part. Yeah. Hope y'all enjoy. Now, if you'll excuse me, I really need to go the bathroom. *runs off*

R & R. Please and thank you.