A/N: Sorry about that delay. The writing's block's killing me softly, as the song says, and not in a good way. I thought the announcement of the new Zombieland Saga season would get me all fired up, but, eh, didn't really work. Been doing a lot of reading lately, though, and its actually helping a bit (thank you Sherlock Holmes). Here's the full chapter; deleted the last one like last time, so there's no confusion. And again, sorry for the delay, hope you enjoy.
46 / The Monkey's Predicament
If someone had told Maria that the dead would one day walk among the living, she would have laughed, called them stupid, and would have been on her merry way. Yeah, if someone had told her the dead were actually living, she'll probably just...but it didn't happen like that. Instead, Maria had walked up to a conversation she really shouldn't have been listening in, and found out everything.
Saki Nikaido, her mom's (her mom's!?) old friend, a member of Dorami, the legendary biker from Kyushu, the, the...the dead girl, the zombie, the idol. How weird. How strange. How, how...how could the dead be among the living? That made no sense! (And her mother agreed that everything was weird. An idol for a biker, how was that? But Saki, Maria remembers, huffed, reminding Reiko what she told her about Aunt Rita, who had been a member of Dorami and was a model now, so what's so different about that? And Reiko smiled, she smiled! and told her that Rita still swears like a sailor, and that she's not dead, and that was that.)
Maria still can't believe any of this is real.
The dead are walking, the dead are dancing, the dead are, are...alive.
That's the best way to describe everything; there's Saki, yawning and stretching, her scars and bandages and the dead, dead, all covered up, and with her, skipping about, is one Liy Hoshikawa, looking like that first time Maria met her in that park, along with that pink haired girl and that tall, dark haired woman who bit her hair, and then, there had been Saki, of course, back then, she had just been some chick.
(and they were dead, dead, and Maria threatened them like a fool, and one of them bit her, damn it! Saki was scary when Maria thought she was alive but now...there's that fear again, creeping in, scratching at her heart andー)
"Oi, Maria!" Saki shatters the fear, gesturing at the street before them. Still dead, just normal...not! "We are going the right way, right?" Maria nods, and Saki's shaking her 's a faint little cracking sound every time she turns. It's so unnatural, so not alive. "Man, I can't believe that old man's arcade closed! I thought arcades were still pretty popular…"
"They are, but maybe not in Karatsu," little Lily responds. There's no cracking, no nothing, just the truth.
"A...a few places have closed up recently," Maria explained, trying to ignore that nagging discomfort (and fear) in the back of her mind. "Some of the older businesses have moved to another prefecture altogether...at least, that's what Dad says…better business, he said…"
"What a freaking bummer…" Crack, crack, craーMaria shouldn't really be paying too much attention to every single noise, she'll drive herself insane and besides, she's already here, she's, she's…
"I'm surprised you just found about that arcade closing, though," Maria suddenly says, trying to ignore the fact she's talking to the living dead. "Weren't you guys...uh...around for a while now?" Saki snorted.
"Yeah, for about a year...started lousy enough, I can tell you that."
Lily giggled. "Pretty much. I still can't believe we managed to salvage that first performance somehow after you started playing around with Tae and Sakura got really mad!"
"Heh, good times!" Saki laughed. Maria just stared, unsure of what to do, laugh or run. Everything was just...wrong, and weird, but mostly wrong. The ex-biker winked Maria's way, making the girl blink back. "That shady weirdo is a total slave driver, so we didn't have time for sightseeing all the new things we missed these few years we've been, well, you know."
Maria nodded slowly. "I...I get it..."
"He didn't let us out on our own until recently," Lily answered, a small hop in her step. What a cute (dead) kid. Nothing like her father. That man was a literal mountain with a head taped at the top.
(would she be that tall had life given her a chance to grow?)
"It can't be helped...our real...uh, appearance, creeps people the hell out," Saki noted, and then slapped her forehead as if remembering something important before turning to Maria. "We ain't creeping you out, are we, Maria?" Lily stopped her skipping and turned towards Maria. Maria can't help but be put in the spot and realized that they…they…
(they're dead, they're corpses, they…they...aren't supposed to move and talk anymore)
"Eh...a little…" Maria said, trying to sound sincere.
Saki sighed.
"Sorry about that," she said. "Knowing about us feels like a punch to the gut, huh?" Maria couldn't really argue about that. "You can go home if you want, Maria, we get it." Saki went on, hand rising, as if to give her a pat on the shoulder but thinking better of it. "Trust me...we, well, some of us, anyway, didn't really take it well...when we found out about, ya know?"
(Huh. So, it had been scary for the dead to know they were...dead.)
"I-it's fine...I'll get used to it." Maria hopes it doesn't sound like she's lying. Saki tries to believe her, either way.
"We ain't gonna think differently of you if you think otherwise, girl...getting used to us takes time." Lily smiled, looking so normal, so alive so…
"Don't worry...I...I know…" Maria would get used to it, she had to.
(she wanted to)
Renoir let out a loud sigh as he put the groceries on the table; he had run into Yugiri a little while ago, carrying some food to Sakura, smiled his way and thanked him for helping out with the chores, however small they were.
Sakura had been cleaning the place up the past few days, Yugiri and Tae by her side; the mansion wasn't exactly falling apart, unless one were to look at it from the outside, but Renoir guessed it kept the girls busy after that whole mess with that reporter and the parents, god, what a mess.
(and now there was another shady man, and a freaking zombie bear, and well...it sucked)
The courtesan disappeared with the food in hand soon after, leaving Renoir alone to ponder recent events, eating a snack he bought from the store. He ate slowly, trying to pretend the day would go on as normal, not believing there's an actual lion (a dead one, mind you) wandering around inside the mansion; that there wasn't another crazy bastard reviving the dead somewhere in Saga, hiding behind abandoned construction, and building up his little undead zoo. It's scary, and a little weird, but most of all, it's frightening.
That lion had just jumped inside the van, and like any other stubborn old cat, refused to move, no matter how much Kotaro pulled it's tail, and yelled, and Romero barked. Sakura (still out of her freaking mind), had cheered Kotaro on, thinking it was some sort of game, until finally, whether out of annoyance or worry, Yugiri had ordered Kotaro to just leave the beast alone and drive back home. Sakura was a little disappointed that the game was over, but cheered up as they all drove back to the mansion, Sora waving good-bye somewhere in the background.
(how had things gotten so far out of hand?)
Renoir was starting to get a headache just thinking about everything that had happened the past few days; hitting gangsters in the face by accident, meeting (zombie) idols and their parents and friends, and now, there was a lion. Not a boring start of the year, that was a given but still what a mess.
He sighed and walked out of the kitchen, snack finished and gone, groceries on the table, and spotted Romero taking a nap nearby. He smiled, wandering how a freaking zombie dog could look so adorably dead, before a loud bang almost made him jump.
"What do you mean by that!?"
Renoir stared at the closed door leading to Kotaro's office, flinching as he heard that loud bang again.
What's going on now!?
"You don't know!? How could you not...I! NO! OF COURSE NOT!" Kotaro sounded absolutely furious. He didn't sound over the top, didn't sound ridiculous, no, there was emotion behind that yell, an emotion Renoir couldn't quite place. "She...she's fine…No...no...he sounded...off..." Kotaro got quite all of the sudden, as if realizing someone might hear. Renoir was barely paying attention, and even if he had, he wouldn't be able to make heads or tails of what Tatsumi was saying.
(does someone else know about this zombie business, too!?)
Before he could get his thoughts in order, Genji appeared, looking a little frustrated. "Hey, where's the idiot?"
"He's...uh, he's on a business call, I think…" The other young man seemed distracted, before just nodding. "What's wrong?"
Genji sighed.
"Sakura...her arm's starting to hurt again...just as bad as if that bear had torn it off a second time…" He glared at nothing in particular. "Yugiri is trying to get her to lie down for a bit but it isn't doing her any good. She's getting a little...upset…" Genji passed a hand over his hair. "Sakura doesn't get mopey when she's in pain...she just...well, she's getting a little scared there, now that she's not worried about that bear and whatever. Thank god Yugiri and Tae are there...can't believe that freaking lion is noticing she's stressing herself out…" Genji seemed to think about something for a bit. "We need to call that doctor, Mizuno." Renoir blinked, confused.
"You mean Ai's mom? How's she...what's she...nevermind, what makes you think she's going to be able to help Sakura, she's…" Dead. Sakura was dead. Dead, and feeling miserable because her body wouldn't let her forget the pain, and the feeling of being alive, and frankly, if Tatsumi's cocktail didn't help, what was there to do? They obviously weren't going to the hospital, and Genji figured if anyone could help his sister as she was now was Aoi Mizuno. "B-but, would she even want to help?"
Genji said nothing for a bit before a loud knock made them both look up; Romero woke up, jumping, barking a bit before running straight towards the front door. Another knock, and soon, Saki Nikaido's loud voice reached their ears.
"Oi! Egghead! Sis! You there!?"
"So...you noticed the resemblance, too, huh?"
Reiko sat up straight at Susan's question; of course Susan would have noticed, how could she not? Susan Ishikawa had always been noisy to a fault, a "noisy little bitch", as Rita (and Saki, when she was alive) had kindly put it. Anything interesting happening in Karatsu and Susan was all over it, a little habit that had served Dorami well, but nowadays, it was just something to keep her busy when she was bored. Her network was smaller, and her interests had been few and far in-between, unless it involved Dorami and the past. And now, that interest has shifted to a local idol group, on account of one of them looking like the dead.
(she wasn't wrong)
"Y-yeah.."
Susan sighed. "Figures."
Silence.
"...anything interesting about it?"
"There's really nothing about them, actually…" Susan muttered, sounding mildly disappointed.
"Huh?"
"I mean, there's this weird blog about some zombie thing to get the metalheads interested, probably some weird marketing ploy, oh, and did you know one of those girls knows a few magic tricks? The blog mentioned that one of the girls made it look like her friend's head was missing...it was a really cool trick, according to them...pretty professional and all that. Wonder why they thought that would get them fans, but, eh, to each their own, I guess."
What!?
Reiko stared straight ahead, holding the phone a little tighter than she meant to; a part of her was momentarily freaking about about the whole "head falling off" to listen to Susan's annoyance of not learning anything beyond those weird blogs and other little tidbits here and there. Reiko, for her part, couldn't actually believe that their heads actually came off...off!
(was Saki's head not even attached to her body or what!?)
The older woman coughed a bit, remembering what she was about to do, or rather, ask, all the while Susan went on and on about her frustrations about not being able to find out anything about this Franchouchou group.
"So...so...you got nothing?" Reiko asked after Susan had finished, and Susan clicked her tongue, annoyed.
"Pretty much...and it's killing me a little. I mean, I figured that Saki had family living somewhere else, you know how it is...and maybe this kid was like, I dunno, a cousin, super distant one...or maybe that girl is the good twin and we ended up with the evil one, or something. Mind you, Saki was a good evil twin, so... "
Reiko burst out laughing at the silliness of it all, trying to bury the image of Saki without a head. Now, everything made much more sense; Susan wouldn't see what Okoba had. He had been hunting the dead, and she was looking for the living.
"Although there's something that I found rather odd about all of this…"
Reiko stopped laughing, all attention, mighty interested.
(had she figured something out?)
"And what's that?"
"...One of those girls looks like Junko Konno."
Oh, that's...not good.
"Konno?"
"Yeah, she was a rather popular idol back in the eighties. Poor kid. Plane crash." Susan hummed a bit. "She was considered a legend back, then, and I heard a few songs of hers...my goodness what a voice she had. Kinda like that girl in Franchouchou, with Saki's good twin…" Reiko said nothing.
(if Susan had noticed Junko, how long until she noticed Lily or Ai?)
"Susan…"
"Hmm…?"
"I…" It was now or never, and Susan was one of the few people she could trust. "I...there's something I haven't told you yet...about Franchouchou."
"Oh! You actually met our doppelganger?"
"Yes...but...it's a little complicated."
"Umm...why's that?"
"...because that's Saki, and before you say anything Susan, listen to me first...that blog about that zombie marketing was.." And Reiko let it all out, hoping with all her heart that her old friend wouldn't hang up on her, or worse, think she was losing her mind, or, orーbut Susan just listened, from the beginning when Maria had decided to revive Dorami, to her destroyed bike, to what Okoba told her, to what she had seen, to what she knew, to Saki, Lily and Maria hanging out like out friends, and Susan listened, never talking, only listening, until finally, Reiko was done, and the only thing that came out of Susan was a loud, nervous sigh.
"Reiko…I think I need a drink."
And Reiko laughed, because she needed a drink, too.
Huh. Maybe Kotaro was right about Saga finding out by the end of the year. Or not.
