I'm not doing that not-future one with the weird name anymore so I thought I'd do something else to replace it, and I came up with this drug trip of an idea. Basically, it's Azumanga Daioh reworked like a road movie. I should warn you it's completely non-canon, and even though it has all the same characters, pretty much everything else is different. It's set in a strange sort of alternate universe that's really all kinds of different things thrown together.
also i don't own azumanga daioh but yu nu dat
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AZUMANGA ON THE ROAD
I
On the dot we call the Earth, in the wonderful country of Freedomland (population 1.3 billion, official languages Japanese, English, Klingon and Birdspeak, capital Stockholm, main exports wheat, electronics, gold, silver, and toothpaste), in the small west-coast town of Osaka, in the shabby but still fairly respectable Osaka Bus Station, at 7:12 AM, there was a young girl sitting on a bench playing the banjo.
It was a gift given to her by her mother before she had died. It didn't look pretty; it had been worn out by time, blasted with wind, covered in acid rain, carried through heat and cold, and this one time bit by a rattlesnake. But it was the most precious possession this girl had. It was the only possession she had now, besides the clothes on her back and the ties in her hair. It reminded her of better days before the depression - before her parents had lost their jobs when the toothpaste company they owned had collapsed, before her twin sister had left, before The Patrol, before the food shortages, before any of the chaos or the bad things entered her life. Back when things were simple. Now all she had left was this banjo. When life got her down, she would forget her troubles by playing it.
This hadn't fixed any problems, but she was getting very good at playing the banjo.
She sighed and put the banjo down. She looked up at the overcast sky until her neck started to hurt, so she looked down at the yellowed grass. She picked some and held it in her hand. It wasn't quite dead yet. Neither was she. She wasn't sure what sort of hope she was supposed to derive from that, given that the grass would die in five months when winter rolled around, but somehow it made her smile a little. She couldn't give up hope. Otherwise she couldn't be thankful for what she did have. Or what she didn't have - some kind of life-threatening disease, for one.
"Why'd you stop playin' there? I was enjoyin' the music."
The girl looked up from her clump of grass and found a girl probably not much older than she was standing next to the bench she was sitting on. "Oh... I don't know, really..." she said warily. "Are you..." She looked warily at the girl- she appeared friendly enough, and she didn't seem to have weapons on her, but you never know... and there was a strange look about her- but maybe it was just the fact that she just looked so happy. Not a lot of people were happy in these times.
That made it even more odd when the girl smiled blankly and said, "Well, I just thought it was a nice song, is all. You really can play good." She held out her hand- "I'm Kasuga Ayumu. Some people call me... well... Kasuga Ayumu. What's your name? D'ya have one? I've met some people who say they don't have one. They're pretty scary-lookin', though, not like you. Y'know-"
"Er." The girl looked at this Ayumu girl apprehensively. She knew she shouldn't talk to this strange person or she could get into some trouble, but she also knew that a friend, even if they were only one for a day, could really help out in these times. Plus, her parents had raised her to always introduce herself to someone who had introduced themselves to her. "I'm Mihama Chiyo. It's a pleasure to meet you," she enunciated. She actually sat up just so she could bow to her new acquaintance before sitting down again.
Ayumu stared at her intently. "Huh... you sure talk fancy. You sure are somethin', I dunno anyone else who'd talk like that when they got no money. You could go pretty far on charm I'm bettin'. Not to mention that you're talented. And, uh, I hope it don't seem weird for me to say so, but you're pretty cute too."
"But I'm not those things," Chiyo sighed. "I'm really nothing special, believe me. I'm not like Nikola Tesla, whose revolutionary contributions changed the field of electromagnetism forever, or 1729, which is the smallest number representable in two ways as a sum of two cubes, or mint chocolate chip ice cream, which is yummy."
"Wow, you're even smart too. I bet with all that plus a little luck you really could go far," Ayumu smiled. "I bet you could make it real big. Like, real real big. Bigger than that world's largest ball of twine I saw once."
Chiyo gasped. "You mean..."
"I sure do! The magic store! The dream factory! Tokyo!"
Tokyo was the greatest city in all Freedomland. Sure, Stockholm was the capital, but it just didn't compare. After all, Stockholm wasn't where all the world's biggest stars were made.
"You really think so?" Chiyo beamed.
"'Course I do! Why would I lie?" Ayumu said, giving her a slightly stern look, as if telling her that thinking she was a liar had consequences.
"Well, gee, thanks, but... I dunno..." Chiyo said. "I don't know how I'd go about doing something like that..."
"Oh, easy," said Ayumu. "You can just take a look at the bus schedule and-"
"But, miss," Chiyo interrupted glumly, "I don't have any money..."
"Oh... Well, then, I dunno what you'd do then... Unless you had like a flyin' carpet... You got a flyin' carpet?"
"Uh, no..."
"OK, OK, just askin'." Ayumu put her hand on her chin for a few seconds before snapping her fingers. "Then why don't you just hitchhike?"
"What?"
"You know, hitchhike. Stick out your thumb at passing cars and see who picks you up." Ayumu explained, vaguely waving her own thumb to sort of illustrate the point. "It's kinda like bein' a parasite, except instead of sucking blood or eating the food your host digests-"
Chiyo quickly waved her hands and spoke to stop her new friend from going into the gory details. "No, no, I know what hitchhiking is, I just didn't believe you had said it..."
"Oh, OK. Sometimes people can't understand all the stuff that I'm sayin', yanno?"
"Maybe, I dunno... I mean, I know I've been through a lot, but I don't think I would feel very safe doing that unless I had someone else with me..." She looked up at Ayumu.
"Well, I dunno what to... Oh no, you're not thinkin' about me going with you, are you?" Ayumu gave Chiyo that strange look again, as though examining her.
"Er, uh, n-no, I wasn't," Chiyo lied.
"Really? Cuz I would totally take you if you wanted me to," Ayumu continued, brightening up immediately.
"No, it's fine, it's- Wait, did you say you'd take me?"
"Yeah!"
"Oh, wow, thank you! That would mean a lot to me!" Chiyo beamed for a few seconds, then abruptly looked serious and added, "Wait, can you drive a car?"
"Why would I need to drive a car?"
"...What? But I thought you said-"
"That we would hitchhike together."
"Right, so wouldn't we-" Then it hit Chiyo. "You mean you want both of us to go and signal for a car?"
"Yeah, see, that's what I was tryin' to tell ya," said Ayumu as if it was very obvious.
"I thought you meant you'd drive me," Chiyo explained apologetically.
"Naw, naw, it's fine! Besides," she said, cupping her hand over one side of her mouth and leaning in closer to Chiyo conspiratorially, "I don't really have any money either, so I couldn't, like, pay for food or lodgings..."
Food or lodgings? Chiyo repeated to herself in her head. What would that matter? She can't even drive!
Out loud, though, she merely said, "Okay, let's get going then!"
So they did.
--
"Y'got any fives?"
Chiyo looked up from her hand at Ayumu.
"I don't know," she said, "I can't see my hand, it's too dark out here." She kicked up some dust and, squinting, watched it float to the other side of the road.
"Really? Cuz I think the moon's real bright tonight."
"I don't think that's enough," said Chiyo.
"Well, I don't have a flashlight, so yer gonna have to just guess."
"No, I think I'm finished." Chiyo put her cards down onto the dirt. She looked up at the moon. "You know, the moon is awfully bright tonight. Why do you think that is?"
"Prob'ly cuz they painted it white, so more light bounces off it."
"...I don't think that's it."
--
Wow, I totally didn't expect to go so overboard at the beginning. I guess I don't know myself as well as I think.