Future Talk
Chapter 25:
"Falling"
Being miserably cold and uncomfortably wet is unpleasant business, and the unpleasantness only increases when you're both wet and cold and scared, bouncing along over an uneven road with your heart in your mouth, the ribs on the bed of an old pickup gouging your hipbones with every jarring jerk. From personal experience, I know—and excuse me for the following statement; it's unforgivably crude—I know that this sucks more than a hooker with a Hoover.
I also happen to know for a fact, once again from personal experience, that such a scenario is more bearable when you have like-minded company lying next to you in said pickup bed.
Wait,you might be thinking. Wait,what?
The discovery that I was not alone went something like this. I climbed into the pickup bed, waited for Kuwabara to start off down the road, and I then wrapped a portion of the tarp around myself and started rolling, hoping to curl up in the sheet to keep even more rain from soaking me (not that I wasn't already half drowned; even my underwear was saturated with rainwater). However, as I rolled myself up like a Dani-flavored burrito, I encountered a resistance that stopped my efforts cold. It was like the other end of the tarp was stuck under something (a rogue suitcase, maybe? It was certainly heavy), but I heaved at it anyway and tried to untrap it. It didn't work. Since I'm a small person I ended up getting pitched toward the obstacle holding down the tarp when we encountered a particularly vicious bump in the road, so I really had no choice but to face it head on. I rolled once, out of control, toward the other side of the bed, and I found myself plastered against a lump separated from me by only a few layers of plastic sheet.Whattheheckisthis? I thought. It was a mushy lump, one with a lot of give but also a lot of resistance, definitely not a suitcase, it was much too fleshy, somehow, and...
The lump squeaked.
Oh,fuck, I thought, scooting backward as fast as I could, but then the lump started moving—I could see the blue plastic twitching when occasional bursts of lightning lit us up, and I could hear the sheet rustle above the thunder and rain and the engine and wheels—and hands emerged from a cocoon of tarp. A pale face topped by a shock of tangled, dripping, and oddly-colored hair followed after. Their eyes seemed like black holes set in alabaster as they shined wetly in the dark.
"Dani-chan?" the lump-that-had-turned-into-a-person said, voice sounding just as flabbergasted and frightened as I felt.
I squinted through the dark and the rain, blinking water from my eyes as I tried in vain to see my riding buddy, but then the lightning flashed again and I saw the blue hair, the fair skin, the eyes glowing all but magenta, freakingmagenta, and—
"Botan?"
"Dani-chan?" she repeated.
"What are you doing here?" we said in unison, and then we stared at one another.
"You first," I said.
She looked around, water coursing over her neck and down her shirt. "Not out here!" she said, and we got busy with crawling under the tarp. A tent-pitching session later, after many 'Shh!'s and 'Stay low!'s, I found myself nose to nose with Botan in a small burrow, curled up on my side facing her. Our combined body heat made the air within our plastic pocket rather humid and steamy, but it sure did beat the cold rain.
Speaking of which, it's weird to feel the force of the rainfall hitting you through something but not feel the wetness of the rain against your skin. It's like the general concept of rain is missing something, or something. Just throwing that out there.
"So," I said once we got settled.
I couldn't really see her; everything just looked very blue when the lightning lit up the air outside the tarp. Still, I could tell that her eyes were darting everywhere at once and that she was nervously biting her lip.
"So," she returned. She spoke in a hushed voice despite the fact that no one could have possibly heard us over the other background noise. "Um. This must look rather odd, I know, but I have my reasons, and I assure you that they are very good ones, Koenma would surely approve, and—"
"You feel like you should be there to help the boys instead of just sitting around?" I said.
Her jaw dropped. "How did you—?"
"Because I feel the same way."
"Oh." She processed that. "So we thought of the same escape route."
"Looks like it."
"Right. Not like there were many options, of course. Um."
"So when you said you had things to do, it meant you were stowing away," I said, remembering how she had excused herself back at the cottage. "You planned this!"
"Um, yes." She sighed. "I would have just flown there—as a grim reaper I am allowed the power of flight to make my job easier, you understand—but this weather is simply atrocious and I did not feel comfortable flying in it at all. I also don't exactly know where the boys are staying at the moment, so going with Kuwabara seemed like the best bet, but he would never have agreed to take me up front, so this was the only way, you see."
I laughed a little. "I just saw Kuwabara checking the engine while I was coming back from the bathroom and jumped in here on a whim."
"Well, it's very good that the two of us thought of the same thing," she said, tone pitched as if we were sharing delicious gossip; that's what it felt like, at least. "They will be much more understanding if we arrive together, like a team. They'd just kick me out if I showed up alone."
"And they'd probably chain me up so I could never see the light of day again if I came by myself," I said, agreeing with her. "Either that or Hiei would skin me alive on sight, which would be gross, not to mention painful."
"An excellent point!" she said, smiling. "But may I ask, when do you think the others will notice that you are missing?"
"Huh-wha—?" The thought had not occurred to me.
"Well, as far as they know, I'm off on Spirit World business," Botan said. "You, however, don't have such a handy alibi. What was it that you said you were doing when you stowed away, using the bathroom?"
"Uh, yeah." I pondered the possibilities for a moment. "Well, they'll probably think I got lost and will look for me, but eventually the weather will drive them back indoors and I don't think they can contact anyone until the weather clears... is that right?"
Botan nodded.
"So they'll probably guess that I ran off," I said, "or they'll wait until the rain stops and then come to that conclusion after more searching, or maybe they'll think I wandered into the sea and died, but I'd put my money on the escaped idea. And when Koenma shows up they'll tell him whatever conclusion it is they actually came to, so either way I'm pretty much fucked." Something else came up in the depths of my deranged head. "Will Koenma be delayed by the storm, too?"
Botan nodded again. "Actually, yes. This storm is an odd one. I didn't want to say anything to anyone back at the cottage because they'd only worry, but it's storming in all three worlds right now, and the cloud—because there is only onecloud, you see—the cloud seems to stretch through various rifts between the worlds all at once. It is quite concerning, but right now Koenma can't leave the palace in the Spirit World. For his own safety, of course."
"That buys me some time, then," I said. "Where are the guys, anyway?"
That seemed to get Botan excited. "Well, the party is one week from today, next Friday evening," she said. "Everyone slept over at Yusuke's apartment last night, but tonight they've rented a suite at the hotel hosting the party! They're staying there to get a feel for their surroundings, the lay of the land, and they're hoping to find Seishou and take him out before the party even starts, if they can."
"Sounds cool."
"Oh, Dani, you've never seen anything like this hotel before!" She sounded like a wistful schoolgirl. "I saw the reconnaissance photos. Crystal chandeliers and champagne everywhere, satin sheets, marble floors, gourmet food, gold taps on the sinks—solid gold! On the taps!" Her eyes lit up at that prospect, and then she frowned. "What areyou laughing at?"
I banished my giggle. "You're excited about gold taps?"
"Aren't you?"
"Not so much as I am at the prospect of gourmet food and real beds, no."
Her sheepishness over such a silly subject seemed way out of place, all things considered. "The taps," she said, "will have to wait. We have quite the ride ahead of us, and then there are the boys to deal with when we get there, and..."
"And taps are the least of our worries."
She smiled at me, a beacon of warmth despite the coldness of the rain.
"Don't worry, Dani-chan," she said, and she took my hand right there in the dark. "It'll all work out in the end. You'll see."
Considering how I could hardly see anything beneath that tarp and the night was only just beginning, I had my doubts.
I must have fallen asleep despite the wind and the rain and the bumpy roads, because the next thing I knew I was being shaken awake quite violently. I blinked, groggy and disoriented—I had no idea where I was—to find myself sprawling atop something hard and crinkly. Botan crouched over me, water dripping from her lank hair onto my face, and with a groan I sat up. She moved away and whispered: "Quiet!" Her command was much louder than my groan, for the record, and it irked my newly-awoken mind the way a stick in the eye irks a bear fresh out of hibernation.
Somehow, I refrained from snapping at her. I decided to look around, instead, and when I did I realized that we were in what appeared to be an underground parking garage. Dim lights hung from bare concrete support struts, illuminating rows of cars and sloping driveways that could only lead to more floors of even more cars. It was an eerie place, to be sure, but Botan didn't seem too unnerved by it.
"Kuwabara just left," she said. She seemed excited, judging from the flash of her eyes. "There's an elevator nearby; I heard it running a few minutes ago. Let's try to find the lobby and have the boys paged in their room." She paused. "Well, I'll have them paged while you wait nearby. It might be better for me to explain why you're here, first. Lessen the shock and such."
"I like that idea," I told her, feeling less grumpy. She helped me out of the truck and onto the concrete floor, but when I stood upright for the first time in ages she frowned.
"If my hair looks anything like yours," she said, eying me, "then we probably aren't dressed properly for this hotel." Her normally perfect ringlets and ponytail were lank and squashed, respectively. "Here, let me..."
She took a minute to fix up my hair, combing it with her fingers. She poked her tongue out of the corner of her mouth when she concentrated, I noticed, and when she was done I took a minute to fix her hair, too. Both processes involved much giggling, and when we finished getting somewhat back to normal we began to look around for the elevator. It was easy to find, of course, as was the lobby (there was an elevator button labeled as such, thank the holy mother of Thomas Edison), and when the doors opened onto the aforementioned room I felt my jaw positively drop.
Have you ever visited the Rockefeller home in New York? I encourage you to Google it because the hotel reminded me very much of that illustrious place, at least as far as the general mood of indulgence went. The ceiling of the lobby stretched at least two stories tall, culminating in a window made of glass that showcased the nighttime sky above like a priceless painting. Crisscrossing those otherwise fragile panes were several beveled archways (buttresses? I'm not good with architecture) that suspended crystal chandeliers so big I had to hold my breath, expecting them to fall at any precarious moment. A huge round desk of black marble sat in the middle of the black-and-white-checkered-marble floor, and in the center of the circular desk was a giant candelabra with lights and flowers fountaining from its iron branches. Along the back wall of the lobby stood multiple glass doors, behind which glowed greenery clouded by mist, and along another wall stood so many revolving doors that I felt I was looking at a kaleidoscope. There was also a grand staircase leading to god knows where, but Botan—after a brief staring contest with the gorgeous place—beelined for the desk.
"Excuse me," she said to the man in the tuxedo behind the counter. He was standing over a leather guest-book and a fountain pen, looking dapper, helpful, and bored. "Excuse me, but we have friends staying here tonight, and they forgot to give us their room number! How silly! Would you mind calling them down here for me?"
"We are not allowed to divulge the personal information of our guests, miss," he said in a dry voice. His eyes blazed, for a moment, with a disgusted looked aimed at mine and Botan's mutually bedraggled appearances, but years of practice helped him school that expression into a mask of bland neutrality.
"Oh," said Botan. She stared at him, unsure of what to do, and then she let out a defeated sigh. "Um. Well, then." She glanced at me. "Come along, Dani."
I smiled at the man behind the desk (no use getting on his bad side) as Botan grabbed my wrist and pulled me to the glass doors with the greenery behind them. My cane slid across the marble floor, hard-pressed to find purchase.
"New plan," she hissed.
I waited for her to tell me what it was, and when she said nothing I opened my eyes widely and stared at her, expectant.
"A new plan," she said, for once falling short of my Botan-is-super-creative-in-a-pinch expectations. "Do you have one?"
She stood with her back to the glass doors; I stood facing them. For the first time I could see just how strange we looked thanks to my reflection in those windows. My hair hung in tattered straggles around my face, my makeup had smeared beneath my eyes, I had a red nose and chapped lips... pair that with rumpled clothing and a soaked everything,and I did not jive with the image of the hotel, that was for certain. I was about to bring this up to Botan when her face went considerably more pale than usual.
"Oh no," she whispered, and when I made to turn to see what she had spotted over my shoulder she reached out, grabbed my elbows, and stopped me.
"What..." I started to say, and then I focused in on the reflections in the doors, the reflections forming a background to the image of my face. I could see the whole of the lobby, desk and stairs and elevators and all, and walking across the lobby floor was...
"Shit," I breathed as I took stock of one long-haired redhead, a short man with spiky black hair, and two punks with similar hairstyles in distinctively different carroty and black shades. "Oh shit."
It was undeniably the boys. I could tell from their hair as much as I could from their individual walks and means of dress.
"What do we do?" I murmured. I sounded a lot more calm that my rapidly beating heart otherwise proclaimed. Yusuke's brash voice echoed through the cavernous lobby like cannon fire.
Botan thought about it for a minute, obviously as panicked as I was, and then her jaw set itself. She was good ol' Botan again, coming through in a pinch like a total pro. "Go!" she hissed, groping blindly behind her for the doors' handles. Her hand connected with a knob; she wrenched the door open and shoved me through it in the same motion. I stumbled on suddenly wet cobblestones. "Hide in there! I'll come get you later!"
"But Botan—"
"Just go!" she said, eyes focused on the boys.
The door closed, separating us with layers of steam and glass. I saw her trot across the lobby, waving. I turned to dive deeper into my new environment.
Needless to saw, I was alone.
I found myself in a garden, of sorts: A garden with stone pathways meandering through carefully tended plots of flowers, vines, bushes, trees, and all sorts of green and growing things I was sure Kurama would go nuts over. Flowers ached to embrace each other, issuing unreal amounts of confusing perfume. The place was open to the air and sky, so at least the scents didn't get too overwhelming, and luckily for me it had stopped raining and the lingering mist and dewy leaves were the only indicators of recent precipitation. Stars blazed in patches of cloudless sky overhead, not diminished at all by the city lights that I had been so sure would surround such a luxurious hotel.
Ormaybethisplaceisinthecountry, I thought as I wandered farther into the garden. The greenery stretched much further than I thought it had any right to, but I didn't complain as I put more distance between myself and the others.
The garden started all nice and cultivated, lit frequently by warmly glowing spheres set high atop blackened metal rods (fairy lights, a younger me would have called them), but as I wandered deeper into the garden's heart the plants grew more wild, less brightly colored and crazily scented. Brownish greens instead of reds, pale greens in lieu of yellows... the pathways narrowed, too, and became harder to navigate as the lamps grew less and less frequent.
It was with relief (not to mention good fortune) that I happened to stumble upon a small oval courtyard amid a copse of twice-my-height shrubs that bloomed with cascades of small white flowers. They grew in clusters of a dozen or so, and—even luckier for me—there was a low bench off to one side and a lamp in the courtyard's center. I sat down with a sigh, resting my cane across my lap, and I tilted my face to the sky as I drank down a breath of cool night air. The flowers smelled a lot like baking bread, oddly enough, and I enjoyed the incongruous scent for a time before I heard what can only be described as... well, crashing noises punctuated by curses.
Didtheyfindmealready? I thought, tensing in my seat, but it was far too late to run with my slow legs. With bated breath I watched as the shrubs across the courtyard from me rustled and snapped apart, and from the blackness between them stepped a man.
I sighed in relief when I realized who it was not, because I had absolutely no idea who this guy was and that was exactly what I needed right then. "You here to avoid the inevitable, too?" I asked, sounding grumpy even though the question was meant to be a friend-scoring one, and his eyes popped open in surprise.
"Actually, yes," he said. He eyed the bench beneath me as he brushed specks of broken twigs and leaves from his skin and clothes. "Are you in a sharing mood?"
"No." I scooted over to allow him room anyway. "Feel lucky you happened to meet someone so nice."
He smiled. "I am lucky," he said, and sat down.
This new fellow was a handsome one, I'll give you that much. Hair as blonde as wheat, eyes of a dove-gray shade that bordered on pale gooseberry, golden skin, broad shoulders, tall, muscular, I'm-a-country-boy-at-heart-,-honest-ma'am features... not quite a looker like Kurama, of course (because who is a looker like Kurama, really?), but handsome all the same and exotic enough to fit in with my regular crowd quite nicely. He wore jeans and a black t-shirt that hugged his built frame, showing him off, but he seemed a little more self-conscious than someone of his attractiveness had any right to be.
"Well, I have to wait here until a friend of mine comes to get me, so as long as we're stuck here together," I said as he hunched and leaned his elbows on his knees, "we should get to know one another." My presumptuousness made me eager to clarify: "You are stuck here, aren't you?"
"More like trapped," he said glumly.
"Oh. Well, that works too." I paused, unsure of what to say next, so I decided to introduce myself. "I'm Dani," I said, keeping up a conversational tone, "and I'm avoiding responsibility."
His nose crinkled; he had to turn his head sideways to look at me, and look at me with disbelief he did.
"I can understand the responsibility part," he said, "but what did you say your name was?"
"Dani."
"Dah-nee? Donny?"
That was a battle I was in no mood to fight. "Dani, Donny, whatever. It's close enough."
He looked away, smiling as if he had told himself a private joke. "What an odd name," he said, staring down at the stones beneath us. "Dani. Heh."
"Yeah, I get that a lot," I said, rolling my eyes. "How about you?"
He pushed his fingers through his hair, sweeping it away from his face briskly, and then he sat up. "I'm Ryu," he said, "and I'm avoiding a woman."
Ifiguredaguylikethatwouldhaveagirl, I thought. "Girl trouble?" I said. "Well, I'm a girl."
His pale eyes washed me over. "I can see that."
I decided not to comment on the unintentionally perverted statement due to his open face and the nonthreatening delivery of said statement. "Need advice from an objective source?" I continued, and he looked pensive. "I promise to be harsh, but I'll employ an underlying air of optimism you can't help but feel uplifted by. It's disgustingly refreshing."
That got a laugh out of him; the sound rang like an iron bell, echoing through me in waves.
"That was enough to cheer me up," he said once the laughter died away, eyes glittering with mirth. "Thanks, and no, I think I've got the situation covered."
"Then it's no skin off my nose," I said, looking back up at the sky. I twisted my cane between my fists. "Stars sure are bright tonight, huh?"
He looked up, too. "The rain cleared nicely."
"I'll say."
We sat there in silence until he said: "So what would an objective source tell me if I said that I was conflicted over how to handle something?"
I frowned, glancing at him, but he was still staring at the sky.
"Well," I said. "I guess I'd tell you that you should do what wouldn't make you lose any sleep at night."
His odd eyes darkened. "And if both will make me lose a little?" he said, regarding the stars like they would tell him what to do.
I shrugged, not really knowing what to say beyond: "What would make for the least disturbing nightmares?"
That seemed to catch him off guard, because his mouth dropped open for just a second before snapping shut. He started to say something, face serious, but then his eyes fell to regard my lap and the cane twined between my fingers. Then the eyes traced the curve of my legs all the way down to my open sandals. I knew, vaguely, what was coming.
"Have you ever wished that other people were crippled?" he blurted out, and my eyes went wide. He held up his hands, turning red around the cheeks and ears, obviously as shocked at his words as I was. No one had ever asked me that before, especially not just after meeting me.
"I'm sorry, that was..." he said, but he had nothing more to say. "I'm... shit, I'm sorry."
"It's fine," I said, but it really wasn't because all of the sudden my head was filled with images, images I had never entertained before, and...
He did not let it go, however, and pressed me with: "No, really, I—"
"Drop it," I snapped. "Just drop it!"
He pulled back. I took a deep breath.
"I think," I carefully said, "that a part of me has always wanted others to share my pain and to know what I've been through. I'll admit that." Voicing these things to a stranger felt... good, almost, just as much as it felt stupid and dangerous. "And there's a part of me that just wants to be normal like everyone else, too. But I don't know if I've ever wished for others to be crippled, exactly. Does that make sense?"
"I... think so," he said. He started to say something else, but then his eyes focused on the shrub he had earlier burst through. "I have to go," he said, and stood.
"I hope everything works out for you, Ryu," I said as he began to jog away. At the sound of my voice he stopped and turned around.
"Thanks for the advice," he said softly, and two long-legged steps carried him to my side. Before I realized what was happening, he had reached past me and snapped a cone of clustering white blossoms off their stem and tucked the sprig behind my ear. Fingers curled into my hair and brushed my skin, warming me just as much as the smell of baking bread did.
"I'll see you around, Dani-san," said Ryu, and he vanished into the night.
Botan and the boys arrived hot on Ryu's heels and, surprisingly, none of them looked all that mad. Botan seemed nervous, of course, but the boys didn't pay her much attention, and the really odd thing was that they were all unanimously focused on Kuwabara.
"Now, before you say anything," Kuwabara said as they all marched into the courtyard and found me sitting on the bench, "I want you to know that you and Botan are the absolute worst sneaks on the planet."
I blinked at him as Jin waved at me behind the tall psychic's back.
"I'm still having trouble believing that you let this happen," Yusuke grumbled, glaring. Kurama, at his side, chuckled in a velvety smooth sort of way, and Hiei just glared at everyone and everything he looked at. Jin didn't stop waving until I smiled at him.
"Hey, Dani and Botan had just as much a right to be here as the rest of us," Kuwabara snapped back. "If they want to come along then I'll let 'em."
"Aye, aye, that's what I've been sayin' this whole time!" Jin agreed.
"But she," Yusuke said, jabbing a finger at me, "is a spy!"
Kuwabara didn't want to hear it. "Yusuke, you can take your paranoia and shove it right up your—"
"I'm... confused," I said, looking between Kuwabara and Botan.
Botan sighed dramatically. "Kuwabara let us tag along. He could sense out spirit energy in the truck the entire time and he didn't mind it one bit." She scowled at him. "And why, may I ask, didn't you let us ride in the cab?"
Kuwabara scratched the back of his head sheepishly. "Hey, I didn't know how long it would take Genkai to catch up, which she never did, and I just wanted to play it safe, so..."
"So did you really have car trouble or were you just giving me enough time to stow away?" I asked.
"The second one!"
I threw up my hands before getting my cane and standing. "And here I was thinking I was just so brilliant, but noooo, I was playing right into your hand the whole time." I shook my head wearily. "I sat down here worrying that I was going to get flayed alive like a roast duck, and you guys are hardly even surprised."
Kurama coughed into his fist to draw our attention. "Need I remind everyone," he said, "that we have yet another guest waiting for us upstairs?"
"Right!" said Botan, and she took my arm. "Dani, I believe you have a talk with Koenma to attend."
My mouth went dry. "He's here?" I squeaked. "He's here already?"
"Of course! He came over as soon as the storm cleared. Now hurry, we can't keep him waiting, and I need to fix your hair, and..." She stopped, eyes narrowed. "Picking flowers is bad, Dani-chan."
I didn't know what she was talking about until her hand moved toward the flower in my hair.
"Oh, this? I didn't pick this." I pulled away so she couldn't take it from me.
"Really? Who did?"
"There was a young man sitting with me until a few minutes ago. We talked for a bit. He was nice." But, despite my chipper words, everyone had gone very still around me, eyes staring and panicked, and I felt I had to ask: "What? Is something wrong?"
"Hiei, check her," Kurama said, voice dangerously muffled, and I felt a familiar itch caress my cerebellum.
Longtimenosee,I thought.
Hiei spared no time for niceties as our physical eyes met right along with our mental consciousnesses. ThisisanimageofthemediumcalledSeishou, he said, and my head was filled with a vision of darkness. Long black hair that fell to an incredibly tall man's feet, golden eyes with liquid hematite pupils shone out of skin as pale as milk, all of which was enveloped by an aura of shadow and power so complete it made the light from the lamp overhead sting my eyes like acid. He was beautiful, terrible and wonderful all at the same time, and I couldn't look at him for fear of going up in flames.
"That's not him!" I cried out, covering my face with my hands, and I threw a picture of the boy I had spoken with in Hiei's corporeal face: golden skin, blonde hair, an innocent smile and a pair of burdened eyes that shone purple in the darkness. The apologetic and slightly nervous Ryu was nothing like Seishou; that much was clear in an instant.
"It wasn't Seishou," he said as he pulled the image out of my head. "She's clear."
A collective sigh of relief went up, and my own sigh went with it.
"Well," said Botan, slipping an arm around my shoulders, "now that that's over with, let's go!"
I hummed a funeral march all the way up to the room, and when the set of wide double-doors opened, my humming died off, because it then became DESCRIPTION TIME!
Dear god, was this is getting old. I wasn't used to having so many new things thrown at me in just one day. I'll be brief.
Four massive velvet couches: brown and arranged in a square. Coffee table in center of aforementioned square: dark wood. Lamps everywhere: gold and expensive. Chandeliers: crystal. Rugs: Turkish, or something. A crap-ton of rooms: all through wide veranda doors off of the main room. A huge and totally open wet bar, a huge balcony, pillows, fresh fruits in vases and bowls, remnants of a beautiful meal on the table. Typical high-class stuff in shades of brown and white and gold, all gorgeous and more expensive than anything I had ever owned.
Sitting on one of the couches was, of course, Koenma. He didn't look too happy to see me.
"Want to explain why I had to take an extra trip to find you this evening, Dani-san?" he asked testily.
"Nope," I said, heart fighting to jump out of my mouth.
"Well, then, let me explain that I did not appreciate the extra trip," he said, and he gestured at the couches. "This could have been kept private had you stayed with Genkai, but instead I will have to showcase my findings to everyone who cares to hear them. I hope you're happy with that."
"Sure thing," I said, sitting down on the couch across from the prince. Notlikeyou'regonnafindanything,anyway,I thought as I settled in. Botan and Jin took seats on either side of me; Hiei and Kurama sat on the third couch while Kuwabara and Yusuke took the fourth. You'reeithergonnacondemnmeasaspyorlabelmeasacivilian.Eitherway,meandmymissionarebothscrewed.
Koenma leaned back in his seat, legs crossed, and from the depths of his billowing sleeve he drew a scroll the length of my forearm.
"You claim no knowledge of the three worlds," he said, tapping the scroll in his fist like a weapon, "so allow me to clarify. There are three of them."
Botan rolled her eyes.
"They exist one on top of the other, like floors in a building. Demon World is below Human World, Spirit World is above Human World. That's why many humans think of hell as 'below' them; some humans in ancient time accidentally traveled to Demon World and spread the word that they 'fell' to get there. Opposite for Spirit World, which some interpreted as heaven." He smirked. "The physics of everything are such that the worlds aren't reallyabove and below one another, but for purposes of simplification let's just say they are."
"I'm game," I said.
He pulled another scroll from his sleeve and set both scrolls on the coffee table, pushing plates and glasses to the side as he did—and when I say that he 'pushed' them to the 'side', I really mean that 'shoved' them to the 'floor.' Many pieces broke, making me wince and the others stare with wide eyes at the mess (and the expense of replacing such fine china). Koenma paid them no heed as he unrolled one scroll and laid the parchment out. The scroll was about the size of the entire table, although its edges did hang off a bit.
"This," said Kurama, leaning forward. Green eyes gleamed. "This..."
"Yes," said Koenma. He looked at me. "Very few attempts to map the Demon World have ever been made. It's much too dangerous for cartographers to travel freely in, and the geography can change completely after high-powered battles, and there are too many of those to track. This is, as far as I know, the only truly cohesive map of the Demon World in existence." He traced a finger over the map's face. Swirling black lines webbing across faded gold parchment made me think of spilled spaghetti. "Worth a fortune, of course. A prized treasure of the Spirit World."
ButthereareabunchoflevelstoDemonWorld,I thought. Y'know,deeponesweretheS-classlive.That'swhattheysaidduringtheSensuiarc,atleast.
But then I remembered all the differences I had discovered already and I decided to keep an open mind.
"There is also the altitude issue," Koenma went on, and I kicked myself for getting too far ahead. "There are floating countries, drifting islands in the sky, plateaus the size of continents that are held up by nothing more than a pencil-thick column of stone... a mapmaker's nightmare, as you may have guessed."
HencethelevelsintheSensuiarc, I thought as I nodded in affirmation.
His fingers traced the map again. "Most areas on the map indicate odd levels and multiple stories of landscape," he said, "but there is one area that is oddly flat. It lies in the Westernmost region of the Demon World. There are no levels in that region, and most of it is covered by sea. However, there is a landmass mostly covered in whirlpools and ruins, one which few can access and most avoid."
"My home isn't like that at all," I said.
"As you said," Koenma said. He pulled an old leather-bound book from his sleeve—really, how much could he store in there? "This book sheds some light on your story." He set it carefully atop the unrolled map and reached for the other scroll.
"The book is an ancient Human World historical text," he said, unwinding a scarlet string from around the scroll. "It's roughly ten thousand years old, and it speaks of a place in the Human World west that no longer exists today, a place with technology so advanced it could bring people back from the dead. Today's Human World has similar technology, of course, but the west the author speaks of had technology thousands of years ahead of when the book was written."
He laid the second scroll atop the first. I could tell it was an ancient document from the way he handled it with utmost care, and from the dust marring the parchment's edges.
"This map accompanied the book. See something familiar?" he asked.
Heart going nuts inside my chest, I hopped off my chair and knelt beside the low table. The second scroll was much smaller than the first, but despite the small size I could easily see what Koenma was trying to show me.
The Americas, north and south and central. Right where they were supposed to be.
"He called the place 'America,'" Koenma said softly. I couldn't look away from the sketched continents, all that was left of my homeland. "And in his book he describes how the people of America dabbled in technology so evil it ripped the very fabric of space in two. They used this technology to go to war with themselves, and in their struggle for conquest and internal hatred the Americas were swallowed by the sea as they tumbled down into hell, never to be seen again."
"The Spirit World confiscated all records of America to keep that technology a secret, although no plans of it remain so we needn't have worried. But King Enma considered the destruction of the Americas a huge black mark on Spirit World's face, and he forbade mention of it ever again. We blotted out all records of its name to keep the Spirit World's failure a secret, and we destroyed or confiscated all documents that mentioned the place to keep the memory of America dead and gone. For us, that chapter of history was over and done with." He chuckled. "I had to fight tooth and nail to get into the restricted vault where these texts were kept."
I said nothing.
He coughed in discomfort; my stare was an intense one. "However, the story of America does not end there."
"It doesn't?"
"No." He pushed the book and the map of the American world aside, and then he pointed at the Demon World map. "See here?"
I looked. Outlined in black were dozens of islands, small and large and huge alike, and they clustered together in a way that reminded me—in a very vague and disjointed fashion—of an outline of the Americas, perhaps one sketched by a small child with an unsteady hand.
"America fell into hell, the author said," Koenma intoned in a voice of quiet thunder. "And according to what little Demon World history exists, there was an odd occurrence in the western parts of the Demon World ten thousand years ago. A rain of earth and buildings crushed half a world to smithereens, blotting out thousands with radiation and rubble. That rain—that ruination—was America falling deep into the Demon World as a result of its own pride and greed."
I raised my eyes to look at Koenma. He was staring straight at me, a judge presiding over a room of stunned silence and disbelievers.
"Your home has been gone for ten thousand years, Dani-san," he said softly, "and my father made sure that no one could have ever discovered America's existence. You're too young to have lived there when it still bore its proper name, so how could you—as young and as powerless as you are—have known it?"
NOTES:
Erm... cliffy? Also, AmeriCAS, not just the USA. Koenma doesn't know there's a difference between the north and south, ha ha, and Dani's not correcting him.
OK, so, Botan. I think I have her speech patterns down pretty well after writing this chapter, and it all boils down to the one thing English teachers everywhere despise: run-on sentences and italics. She just... babbles. Also, when I write her I speak her lines aloud with a British accent. This goes on top of the accent I already have (Texan) and the results are silly.
Originally, the plan was for Koenma to have his talk with Dani and then, later that night, have Dani discover Botan about to fly off on her oar to find the boys. She persuades Botan to take her along. For some reason I couldn't get the image of Dani jumping into a truck bed and freaking out when she's not alone out of my head, so I had to do it this way. More drama, yay! Also, I've been doing some reordering of the plot and the results are getting more and more streamlined as I work through it in my head repeatedly, which is good news for you. =]
Many thanks to my lovely reviewers! Kai-chan94, lostmoonchild, ichixichigo, colbub, Out-Of-Control-Authoress, WickedLovelyDream, Naitza-Kururugi, Zetsubel, Kaiya's Watergarden, WorldsAngel, chocolateluvr13, AkaMizu-chan, j.d.y., Foxgirl Ray, 0nfateswings, crossyourteez, DoilyRox, Reclun, rain chant, Panda-chan31, fluffyfoxears, Kiriatana, heve-chan, ShadowFireFox13!