MADNESS, CHAOS AND WAGTAILS

CHAPTER 2:

A BORED OUTER GOD IS NEVER A GOOD THING

Takami wanted to strangle her boss, Minaka Hiroto, for a number of reasons. For the insane Sekirei Game he thought up based on a perversion of Takehito Asama's Sekirei Plan, for his megalomania, for his managing to seduce her and impregnate her, not once, but twice. Oh, and there was that insane cackle of his that never failed to grate on her.

But at the moment, she wanted to strangle him because he had made it a decree for the alarms in MBI HQ to be based on those from that British panel show QI, and the alarms made it seem like they were caught in a time loop with Alan Davies having just made the wrong answer.

After shouting at the technicians to give her some information other than 'AWOOGA! AWOOGA! AWOOGA!' (which was admittedly what the alarms were doing rather than the technicians, but she couldn't hear the technicians thanks to the alarms), she finally got some answers once the cacophony had died down, and her ears had stopped ringing. "It's Number 07, Dr Sahashi!" one hapless technician (chosen by fate…well, drawing straws, and the game was rigged to make him a sacrifice to appease the angry deity that was Takami Sahashi) exclaimed. "She's…well, she's been…"

Takami realised what he meant with a sinking feeling. Rather too calmly, in a flat tone, she said, "Akitsu's been Winged, hasn't she?"

"Umm…yes, ma'am," the technician said, hoping beyond hope that he would get through this night without his balls mashed into testicular pâté.

"How? Who?" While still quiet, her inflection had now an incredulous and irritable edge to it, suggesting that the hapless technician wasn't quite out of the woods yet.

"…We don't know. Either of those things," the technician admitted.

Takami sighed quietly, trying very hard not to lose her temper. She wouldn't attack the technician, but if Minaka decided to make himself known…

"YES! THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT THE SEKIREI GAME NEEDS!"

Speak of the devil, and he's at your shoulder, groaned Takami inwardly. Skating in on roller blades and asking 'did anyone order a LARGE HAM?!'

Without looking, she thrust out her fist. It impacted part of his face with a satisfying crunch, and sent him flying into a nearby bank of computers, which immediately started playing Minaka's own take on the Caramelldansen video…featuring the Sekirei.

"We're looking at CCTV cameras in the area. I think we've just found him. Her Ashikabi appears to be a male of African extraction," the technician said, bringing up the feed to the main screen. "Facial recognition…well, it claims this man is Danny John-Jules, but I'm pretty sure he's at the current Dimension Jump convention in the UK. Plus, he looks too young to be Danny John-Jules. Unless he knows how to travel in time."

"Great!" Minaka yelled as he got off the keyboard bank he had been punched onto.

"How is this at all great?" Takami said.

"Because I said so!" Another blow to the head from Takami, and he said, "No thank you, garçon, I believe I will order a bedpan and a vivarium full of tsuchinokos instead." Yet another blow, and he slurred, "And tomorrow's forecast, there will be a shower of sharks. Flurgen." With that coherent last word, he sagged to the floor. Still bearing a grin that looked like he wanted to kill Batman.

"Umm, ma'am? Why do you keep hitting him like that?" the technician asked.

"Percussive maintenance," Takami said. "I'm sure that one day, it will work out, and I'll hit him back into sanity. Or render him catatonic, so that I can actually run MBI properly." She shrugged. "Either way is fine."

The gathered technicians nodded sagely. At least there was method to Takami's madness. Whereas there was no real method to Minaka's. Then again, there was a workplace cliché that one didn't need to be mad to work here, but it helped. It certainly helped here.

"I want anything you can pull up on this new Ashikabi," Takami said, as she sat down on a chair, and used the comatose body of her former lover (acts she had regretted to this day) and present boss as a footstool. Might as well take advantage of this while it lasted. "I want to know his name, phone number, how often he goes to the goddamned toilet. I don't like being kept in the dark!"

Nyarlathotep sneezed, and then smirked. "I believe someone's talking about me. Either that, or there's a Mi-go that hasn't been spayed yet nearby, and my allergies are playing up."

Akitsu, as she walked alongside her Ashikabi, cocked her head, as was her wont to do. "Allergies?"

"Never mind, Akitsu, dear. So, how do you like the new threads?"

Akitsu looked down at the clothing her Ashikabi, somehow, had conjured up out of the very air. She didn't know it, but they were very similar to the ones she wore in other timelines, had she become the minion of Mikogami, a sort of kimono that exposed a very sizeable portion of her cleavage. Only, they were the colour of the pitch-black void of the event horizon of a black hole, with icy blue trimming like the eyes of B'gnu-Thun(1).

"Ah…I like them," she said.

"I'm glad. They used to belong to a priestess of mine. Unfortunately, the poor girl got nommed by a Shoggoth I was trying to housetrain," Nyarlathotep said with a shrug. "So…you wanna be my priestess, Akitsu?"

A number of thoughts went through Akitsu's mind. Firstly, that this man was insane to think of himself as a god. Secondly, despite the insanity of such a proclamation, he had used powers no human could use. Thirdly, he had done the impossible, and made it possible for her to be Winged.

That, plus the fact that she had no knowledge of the Cthulhu Mythos or HP Lovecraft, meant that her response was a simple, "Yes, my Ashikabi."

"Hey, call me Nyarlathotep, Akitsu," Nyarlathotep said with a grin. "Anyway, this is going to be a nice, fun, relaxing vacation."

"Vacation?"

"Why, yes. D'you know how often I get called upon to act as the Emissary of the Outer Gods? And ever since that lugubrious loon Lovecraft advertised our presence, well, we had all sorts of idiots crawling out of the woodwork, demanding our attention. And while I like getting worshipped and all, well, it's now becoming like being nagged by a bunch of needy children. One stupid little teenager called me to make a girl like him. I decided to visit her to find out her opinion on him, and, well…let's just say I flayed him alive. Don't feel bad. He was planning on killing her boyfriend horribly anyway. And I needed a new cover for my copy of the Necronomicon. The old one was getting a bit…tatty."

Akitsu didn't know what to say to that. So she decided to change the subject. "Where are we going, Nyarlathotep?"

"Dinner! Tell me Akitsu, how long has it been since you've eaten a decent meal?"

Akitsu considered the question, before she admitted, "A few days." Dinners scrounged from bins didn't count, of course.

"Well, let's remedy that! The last time I was in town, before this was called Shinto Teito, I knew this lovely little restaurant. Thankfully, their dress code is lax enough that you'll just get stared at, rather than told to leave…"

Takami nodded grimly. The restaurant that Akitsu and her new Ashikabi had entered had means that they could use to contact the mysterious Ashikabi. Sighing, knowing that this meant she would no longer have her footstool, she got off the chair, and kicked Minaka awake. "Wake up you idiot!"

Minaka stirred, his glasses askew. "Wuh? Mummy, it's the weekend. And I stayed up all night playing the latest Dragon Quest game(2)." On his brain fully rebooting, he sat up. "Huh? What happened? And why do I feel like Shizuo Heiwajima beat the shit out of me(3)?"

"Minaka, we found a location where the Ashikabi who Winged Akitsu can be contacted at," Takami said. She also reflected privately that it was impossible for anyone to beat the shit out of Minaka, if only because he was so full of shit in the first place. "I just thought you'd want to go and get yourself ready to do your megalomaniacal nutjob routine."

"Bah! You have no appreciation for the fine and subtle art of making a grand entrance," Minaka huffed, getting to his feet, before striding out. "Make sure that we're ready to transmit to our mystery Ashikabi soon, Takami!"

Akitsu had to admit, she enjoyed the meal. Her clothing attracted stares, true, but it wasn't exactly a top-end restaurant. Still, the food was better than she had had for some time, even before she escaped MBI after killing that stupid adjuster.

As they drank afterwards, Akitsu asked, "Nyarlathotep…how much do you know about the Sekirei Plan?"

"Oh, quite a bit. You see, your desperation called out to me, and, well, I looked around. I'm not exactly omniscient, but on an area of interest, I can see a lot when I focus on them. Not everything, but I get the general gist. I know some idiot of a mad scientist cum would-be god has basically set you lovely ladies up in a battle royale to the death, more or less. Setting you up to find your chosen partners, only to fall in battle, and only a lucky few will survive. Well, I'm going to be a spanner in the works. For kicks, really. Like I said, I needed a vacation, and I was bored."

"Ah."

"Incidentally, if anyone asks, I go by the name of Randall Flagg(4). I actually like Stephen King better than HP Lovecraft. Apart from anything else, most of his books are thick enough to beat a man to death with. I should know, I once did that to someone with a hardback copy of The Stand."

Any further conversation on that, or indeed any other subject, was derailed when the waiter came around with a laptop on a tray. "Sorry, but you have a call."

"On a laptop? Someone wants to Skype me?"

"Something like that."

The laptop was opened, and as the waiter walked away, the screen lit up. It revealed a man Nyarlathotep had only seen on the TV while walking the streets of Shinto Teito. White hair, white suit, white cape like something out of a cheesy manga. His glasses were opaque in the lighting. Toccata and Fugue in D Minor was playing in the background, the bombastic organ version that was such a horror and mad scientist cliché.

And then, he spoke. Well, exclaimed, anyway. "Greetings, to you, mysterious Ashikabi! And congratulations on joining the Sekirei Game!"

After a moment, Nyarlathotep conjured up a card with a number on it. Namely, the number 3. The man blinked. "What? Is that out of five?" he asked in a mixture of hope and outrage in potentia.

"Ten. And that's being generous. I like Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, but it's overused. And are you trying to look like a rejected supervillain from a comic book?"

"Excuse me, but I didn't call you to have you criticize my taste in music or haute couture," the man said huffily.

"Haute couture? High fashion? You must've been high when you thought that ensemble was a good idea," Nyarlathotep snarked. "Anyway, what is it that you want? I don't like gooseberries when I'm trying to have a nice dinner with a fine young lady."

The man spluttered, before he finally said, "Fine, fine, I'll get straight to the point. As you're new in town, allow me to introduce myself. I am Hiroto Minaka, the CEO of Mid-Bio Informatics. By Winging Number 07, Akitsu, as impossible as such a feat should have been, you have just been conscripted into the Sekirei Game! The rules are simple: 108 Sekirei have been released into this city. They are to fight until only the last Sekirei and their Ashikabi, whether the Sekirei are singular or plural, are left standing. They then are worthy to ascend."

Nyarlathotep stared at the screen for a moment, before he broke out into laughter. "Seriously? Just those vague instructions? Nothing to do with a definite prize? Two out of ten for the motivational speech, Minaka."

"Well, maybe this will raise up the score," Minaka said sulkily. "You can't tell anyone not in the know about this, otherwise, we might just have to silence them. Oh, and if you try to escape the city…kaboom!"

"One and a half out of ten. Oh, don't worry," Nyarlathotep said as Minaka's smile became a touch fixed. "I had no intention of leaving this city any time soon. In fact, I think I've just found something to amuse me. Rest assured, Hiroto Minaka, you'll be seeing Gods before long. Just not the ones you expect."

As he made to close the laptop, Minaka said, "Wait a moment! I want your name!"

"My name? I guess you can call me…Randall Flagg." And with that, he shut the laptop, before gesturing over the waiter. "May I have the bill please?"

Now, lunatic though Minaka was, he wasn't stupid. In fact, he was a genius. So a couple of things came immediately to mind. The first was that Flagg had given him a threat. The second was that 'Randall Flagg' was the name of a recurring villain from Stephen King's books, most notably The Stand. So it seemed like an obvious alias.

Minaka couldn't understand why, but he now felt a strange sense of unease. Small, true, but it was there. He wrote it off as being caused by the concussion he had suffered courtesy of Takami.

In truth, it was something more primal. Something that had, instinctively, recognised what he had seen…

CHAPTER 2 ANNOTATIONS:

So, Nyarlathotep's made a declaration of war, and Minaka is getting a premonition of doom that he will ignore. Poor, stupid bastard…oh, wait. Scratch the 'poor' part. He's got lots of money, and he doesn't deserve pity.

1. Fittingly given that I'm describing clothes for Akitsu, B'gnu-Thun is an Outer God (albeit written in after the Lovecraftian stories, AFAIK) who is an ice god, associated with a blizzard, described as 'cyanotic' in colour. Which means blue, BTW.

2. It's an urban myth, but one commonly accepted, that a Dragon Quest game can only be sold on a weekend than a weekday in Japan, due to schoolchildren ditching school to play it. That's how popular the series is.

3. For those of you not familiar with Durarara!, Shizuo Heiwajima is a waiter with a hair-trigger temper and, for various reasons, super strength. No, seriously, this guy can lift vending machines with relative ease and hurl them. Although he has a short fuse, Shizuo is actually a decent guy who doesn't want to be violent, which is sort of fitting, as his name is made of the characters for 'serene man' and 'peaceful island'. Unfortunately, a lot of things piss him off, chief amongst them amoral information broker and all-round troll Izaya Orihara.

4. AKA the antagonist of many of Stephen King's books, most notably The Stand, The Eyes of the Dragon, and The Dark Tower series. He is identified as Nyarlathotep in The Stand, amongst other names.