'Lo, the author here. Or here, which ever you feel more comfortable with. As most of you noticed there were no author's notes in the first three chapters, which is how I planned it. Okay, I uploaded a version of it without the notes, but the end effect is the same. My pre-reader Weltall Elite had mentioned some time ago that while in the cell, the Children had no way of excreting. You know, going potty, taking a dump, running to the jon...ect. Well, he is right; there really IS no way, unless I wanted them to go into a hole in the middle of the cell, which would completely alter the feel of the room that I wanted to give it and horribly alter the character interactions. Needless to say I couldn't let this happen, so I just left it out, not mentioning it. (Kind of hoping that most would not notice either =D) Well, as in all fun things of writing and such I have to make fun of myself here, or else you'd all think I was some elitist author with no faults whatsoever. In any case, I also really like to make fun of stuff, and since I just made a very 'D'oh!' like mistake, I guess I'm up. He he.
Observers: A study of the beings known as Children
Omake Force Alpha
By Shinagami
There was a 'hmmm'. A second later it was followed by a rather raucous 'thump'. A second passed. Hmmm. Thump. Hmmm. Thump. Dammit!
As usual per time of night Shin was at a terminal in his dark musty concrete walled room in the sub-basement of the Darkscribes compound he happened to like very much. He rubbed his chin, noting the rough layer of stubble that had grown there in the past five days.
"Hmmm." He looked asked his terminal what it was busy doing. It did not answer because was too busy being busy showing him what he'd previously typed which was something to the effect of a lame study of character profiles. Not that Shin thought it was lame, of course. "Thump." His face landed into the keyboard, the obvious perpetrator of the noise.
It was about then that Weltall showed up. Just checking in, you know?
"Yo, how's it going?" He leaned back slightly as a small Kenshin figure flew at him. "Still haven't figured it out, I guess."
"Bah.....If you ask me Shinji can hold it." Shin reached for his Pibb, only to find it empty and in turn, flung it across the room.
"You'll need to tie that end up," Weltall said, looking over Shin's shoulder at what he was furiously deleting. "or your readers will wonder." This evoked another 'Bah!' from the God of Death.
"And what if I don't?" He leaned back from his computer and crossed his arms.
Weltall grinned. "Or else the Yakuza boogie man will get you." Shin sighed...not THAT again. It wasn't that Shinagami didn't believe in the Fanfic Yakuza boogie man, but he was well defended against such an attack. Anti-incendiary devices hung from the otherwise bare ceiling and a firemen's axe leaned in the corner next to the decidedly wicked scythe.
"Feh, I'm sure they understand that the nature of this fic was to capture the characters personalities for study. Not some ultra-realistic story telling fic." He humphed and moved across the room to shuffle through his dresser. "And!" He shuffled some more.
"And?"
More shuffling. "And I found this!" He held up the item to the bare 60 watt bulb of the room and grinned.
"Its 35 millimeter film ." The grin widened. "It says 'Footage'."
The grin on Shin's face became too much, something was going to split open soon. "Yes! Of actual observation video from the security cameral from each of the Children's rooms!"
Weltall shook his head, obvious he was right about to kill the mood of excitement emulating from Shin.
"You have a VCR, Shin." The mood was abruptly killed. Shin looked from the gleaming footage in his hands to Weltall, eye twitching.
"I....I knew that."
"No you didn't."
The film dropped from Shin's hand to the concrete floor, clattering all the way. "I really ought to kill you."
Weltall grinned. "I know." He moved to the shelves of plastic mecha models. "LD has a 35 millimeter projector in his chambers, you could always ask to use his."
Shin crossed his arms. "Phooey." He made a few quick adjustments to his typing and saved it. "Guess I have to get dressed now, huh?" As per the usual Shin was working in his favorite pair of black sweatpants and dark blue t-shirt. Weltall nodded.
"Yeah, you spilt pizza all over that." And so he did. What did you expect? "And some coke, what looks like cheese, I think that's Cheetoh dust....and what is that?" He nodded towards the dominating stain on Shin's shirt, black and oily.
"Oh, that's where I dropped the high-grade starfighter oil." Weltall shook his head again and stepped outside.
"What? Gotta keep those things maintained or they'll stall...."
Somewhere between then and now Shin's large oak medieval styled door swung open and he stumbled out, kicking frantically at something black wrapped around his leg.
"Back! Back fiend!" His scythe arced around and sliced at the undulating black mass.
From across the hall Weltall watched in mixed bemusement and pity. "Aren't those your sweatpants?"
"That's why they're so dangerous! Ack! Not the neck! Zounds!" With the flailing going on and the scythe grasped in one of those flailing hands the nylon material was eventually sliced through and dropped to the floor. And he liked those pants too.
The long walk through the corridors of Darkscribes was, as previously stated, long. Along the way Weltall noticed that Shin was no longer at his side, but instead knocking on another one of the doors; this one labeled Lord Random1377.
"Random! I know you're there!" The knocking became louder and more insistent. Several seconds later the door flew open and a disheveled looking Random peered out.
"Any reason you're banging on my door, or is this going to be a nightly occurrence?" He grinned.
Shin bit back a witty comment, but just a little late, so Random got: 'Now that you mention it-' And the rest Shin had bitten off.
"In any case, I need my coat back."
"Coat?" Weltall asked, staying far away enough from Shin and Random so that anything coming from inside the author's room or Shin's stomach would be out of range.
"Yeah, can't go to LD's place without my trenchcoat. I needed one of the buttons sewn back on so I asked Random for a bit of help." At that moment Random was searching through the piles of half finished fics that towered dangerously above him and could not make a comment. So they waited. 12.4 seconds later Random reappeared with the sought after garment, thimble on and cutting the last bit of thread from the new button with his teeth.
"There, good as new. And you'll pre-read my new fic, right? The Mana/Toji lemon?"
Shin nodded, though slightly pallid and with eyes slightly glazed over. And they left. Well, at least Shin thought they left. In reality Random shut the door, leaving Weltall and Shinagami to stand in the dimly lit corridor, Weltall wondering and Shin just glazed.
"And I hang out with him why?" He asked as he snapped his fingers in font of the other man's face.
"Whoah....reality. I'm stuck here again?"
"Afraid so."
"And I was just really getting to like all that polka music."
The journey continued with Shin's newly repaired black trenchcoat trailing out behind him rather majestically, if one could see a man in all black with long shaggy hair majestic in anyway except maybe the majestic that Animal Planet seems to regard Steve Irwin. That kind. Yeah. The two of them came to a stop down a dead end hallway, the limestone blocks that made up the corridor lit by two single torches on either side of a giant wooden door with a plaque attached to it. It read:
Lord Deathscythe
Dark Lord of the Fics
"Why don't I have a neat title like that?" Shin asked as he approached it. Weltall shrugged.
"Isn't 'God of Death' neat enough?"
Shin grimaced. "That was placed on me as a curse, you can't use it against me." he knocked. "Sides, I think I'll make up my OWN title. Like....like...."
"Like?"
"Like!"
Weltall waited. He waited another moment. One more. "Shinagami of Stix - Reaper of Souls!"
"Isn't there a game called 'Soul Reaper'?"
Shin sagged. "No respect at all. nyuck -nyuck- nyuck."
The door opened and a figure loomed out of the darkness from within. Then it loomed right into Weltall's arms.
"Erm?" Then he looked at it again. It was the body of a man, with somewhere in the near vicinity of eight knives buried into his back. Shin counted, eight indeed.
"LD? Home?"
"Can't talk, killing." Came the response. Another man was thrown out into the hallway. Then a cracking sound and LD finally emerged. "Hello Shin, Weltall." The black garbed man said from behind his fangs.
"Should I ask? Because I'm not too sure if I really want to know." Shin stepped lightly over the fallen man as Weltall dropped the knifed man to the floor.
"Just some combat training, don't want to go off on assignment without a refresher course."
He got an 'ah' from both other parties. He sat at a desk with a computer that was continuously updating this and that. But mostly that. "So, what do you want?"
"You've got a 35 millimeter projector, right?"
LD nodded and steepled his hands. "Yes."
"Can I borrow it?"
The Dark Lord seemed to think about what collateral the younger God of Death could offer up, but in the end decided against it. "No."
"What?"
"Just kidding. Yes, do you have the film?" And Shin felt the urge to facefault.
Exactly thirteen minutes later Shinagami returned with the film, some new bruises and some blood spatters on his scythe.
"What happened to you?" LD asked, wondering why he hadn't been there for the slaughtering.
Shin caught his breath and glared at Weltall. "You said you had disposed of the P-virus subjects!" A plant began to sprout on Shin's forehead.
"Heh heh....I did...." Weltall Elite smiled inching his way away from the virus infected Shin.
Anger flared from behind Shin's brown eyes. "In my room?!"
"That's where I put it....see, your trash can is better than mine-"
"I got it at freaking Target!"
"Good, now that we've cleared that up we can watch your film."
Shin stuttered about for a second, sighed, and pulled a tube of green liquid from his coat. A needle sprung out and he promptly injected himself with it.
"I thought Blue was the antidote." LD said from his desk.
Weltall shrugged. The T-Virus antidote is green. I think the G-Virus is purple....and there isn't an antidote for the P-Virus."
"D'oh."
LD took charge, not wanting to waste any more time on debating which food coloring water they thought was the antidote. He grinned and noted that his black market scheme were profitable. Take that Epyon. "Settle down children." He pulled the projector from a corner of the room and, with a snap, the lights went out. "Here we go."
From the machine a beam of light shot to a blank gray screen, showing grainy footage of the Children's rooms. It this point in the video Shinji sat on his bed looking at something off screen.
"Psst...hey, what's he lookin at?" Shin nudged Weltall in the ribs.
The offending man shrugged uncomfortably and kept watching. The next seen showed Rei sitting on her bed. Looking at something, no less. It was off the screen. Five minutes of this and the scene changed to Asuka, which perked up all three instantly, who was walking from the hall way into a smaller windowed door.
"I think it says something on it." Shin said, digging into one of his many pockets and pulling out his glasses. "Nope, still can't read it."
LD squinted at the screen. " I think it says....W....C." And all three of them perked up instantly. Unfortunately for them LD's old projector had a cruel sense of humor, so it caught fire.
"Hey, fire." LD said, eyes shifting from the screen to the rapidly engulfing-with-flame projector.
"NO! NONONONONONO!" Shin leapt clear of Weltall and body-checked the machine, smothering out the flames in order to save his research material. He pulled the roll of film from the machines innards and blew the dust off it. Then he realized that the dust, WAS the film, disintegrating into a billion different pieces. Nuts.
"Well, that was a waste." Weltall said from his seat, bag of popcorn in hand.
LD stood over Shin, who was desperately trying to salvage a three inch long fragment of film that showed frame after frame of Asuka walking down the hall, it too disintegrated. "You broke my projector. You know how much they cost?"
"Didn't you get that from the garage sale last Tuesday?" Weltall asked before munching down some more buttered corn that had been mysteriously popped.
"That's not the point. You will suffer for this." Shin stood up to his full height, staring eye-to...chin with the Dark Lord. Nuts.
"Okay, okay...I'm sorry." the look LD shot him proved this to be too little, too late.
Three days later, a cage fell from the sky and landed non-too gracefully on a tour bus from fanfiction.net. No one was killed, but eighteen Chain of Command fans were seriously injured. But that's besides the point. Inside the cage Shin's eyes fluttered open for the second time. In three days. The door of the steel enclosure was very much annihilated, so in that respect Shinagami could now stand up straight.
"Man...LD knows how to throw a chair...." he sat up and looked around. He recalled his punishment was to be locked into a cage and dropped from a C-130 into a Random part of the world. And of all the places he ended up here. Right outside the main lobby of FFN Central Headquarters. Not that Shin didn't like FFN, in fact, he almost liked it a lot. But still, that was the LAST place he wanted to be right then. In some regard he DID have a few bone to pick with the moderators, so he hefted his scythe and stepped off the ruined bus. Only to be attacked by zombies.
End Omake Force Alpha.
Next up: Omake Force Beta: Gathering of legends and all that nice and noble stuff.
Author's Drivel
Ever notice how my humoury things seem to go off on a leg of their own? I do. And I like it that way. After the next few chapters are up I'll post Omake Force Beta, but till then you have to suffer through another couple Observers. Quit yer griping! Think of this as a pit stop on a little road trip, or one of those intermission type objects that opera fans seem to anticipate so very much. Feedback welcome at mathis478@hotmail.com