Magician's Note and Disclaimer: Okay, I admit it—I've been lazy. I had most of this section sitting around inside the cave of wonders that is my brain (insert derisive snort here) for the better part of a week now, and I haven't done a thing with it. This turns out to have been for the best though, since I just got to see another episode of the anime last night, and it gave me a great idea of how to wrap everything up a little more neatly. I'm not going to say which episode it was, because that might spoil the surprise for the avid viewers out there, and I hate to ruin a suspense story.
And now I've been really lazy. You can't tell it from reading my note, but I've had the first paragraph of my disclaimer sitting around waiting for me to write some actual story for two days. Bleah. I don't have to work today though, so I'm gonna have a drink of water, take a deep breath, then try and finish this thing once and for all. (Me? Finish a story? Unreal!)
Everybody send me your ki, and I just might be able to pull it off.
Two Down and Three to the Left, Part VI
A Love Hina Story by MagicianXV
When he looked back on that rainy, chaotic day, Keitaro would later admit that he had never been entirely sure what was going on. The concept of normal life obviously went out the window when Shinobu turned up as a feline, but even so, things had only become more and more surreal. For example, seeing a fox drinking sake like a pro was definitely something he would have liked to have a Polaroid of, if for no other reason than to be sure it actually happened. Life has a funny way of playing jokes on people however, and not only had Keitaro's situation grown even more unsettling, but he was now completely in the dark.
Literally.
"Shinobu!" he shouted, waving his arms frantically around. "Where are you? Kitsune? Are you guys okay?"
"Quit shouting!" he heard Kitsune yell. "I'm fine, but—ow! Who put a damn wall here?"
"Where did Shinobu go?" Keitaro whirled around, unable to see anything in the pitch-darkness. Somewhere on his left, one of the three black phones on the police station's front desk was still ringing, but he barely noticed it. Shinobu had been secure against his chest before the lights went out, but now there was no trace of her.
"What's that noise?" Kitsune was demanding. Keitaro felt her bump against his leg and stumbled back, landing against the desk with a thump. "And who turned off that red light? What the hell is going on?"
"You'll know as soon as I do!" Keitaro snapped, rubbing his side; he had landed against the desk's corner and it felt rather like he had punctured something. "Shinobu!" He shoved off from the desk and took a few uncertain steps forward, hands outstretched in front of him. He crossed about half the room, moving slowly for fear of stepping on Shinobu if he found her, until his fingers brushed something that felt like fur. "Shinobu? Is that you?"
"Hey!" he heard Kitsune exclaim. "I found her, Keitaro! She was under the desk...I think you dropped her, you big idiot. Nice job." The gears in Keitaro's head spun freely for a few confused seconds, then came to a grinding, smoking halt.
"She's over there?" he asked dumbly. "But—if she's over there then what's this thing...in front...of...me?"
It was at about that second that the red lights decided to come back on. It wasn't all at once either, but a gradual shading of illumination that filled the room slowly, bathing the sparse furniture in a hot, crimson glow. Keitaro found himself staring at something very black and very hairy; it was fur he had touched, that was for sure. The only problem was that it appeared he had touched the fur on the thing's chest, which meant it was a good three feet taller than he was.
Very, very slowly, Keitaro looked up.
"Urashima..." growled the thing. Under different circumstances, Keitaro expected he would have wet his pants about then. (Different circumstances being if he had drank anything at all that day.) Fortunately his dignity was spared, and the black thing had to settle for seeing him start to shake like a bowl of jello.
It was enormous, for starters. The creature's body extended from the hallway at the far end of the room all the way to where Keitaro was standing—a distance of about nine feet, give or take. It stood on four massive legs, each about the width of a telephone pole, ending in huge paws tipped in claws resembling meathooks. The face was wide and wolfish, and its nose was roughly level with Keitaro's, so he had an excellent view of its teeth; there were a vast number of these, and every one of them looked quite capable of grinding concrete into dust. It rumbled a growl, and a blast of cold, damp wind nearly knocked him over.
"Urashima," it growled a second time. Keitaro waited for it to bite his head off, but the movement never came. After a few very tense seconds, he plucked up his remaining strands of courage.
"Um...y-yes? Can I help you?" The wolf-monster seemed to scowl. Its eyes, a deep, dark yellow-brown, narrowed in what looked incredibly like thought.
"Talk."
"Uh...yes, we are talking. I mean, you're talking, and you're doing a great job for a big...slobbering...dog-thing." The eyes narrowed further, but now it just looked annoyed.
"TALK!" A second blast of wind shot from the beast's maw, knocking Keitaro clean over. He rolled the length of the room and hit the wall, slumping beside Kitsune and the unconscious Shinobu. The wolf snarled, and Keitaro could have sworn he felt drops of rain splattering on his face.
"Keitaro." It was Kitsune. He looked down at her. "I think he wants you to pick up the phone. It's probably ringing for a reason, you know?"
"Oh," he said, thinking how much sense this made, and also that he really, really didn't want to answer the phone. "Maybe you should do it instead." The fox rolled its eyes and lifted one paw from the floor.
"Do I have thumbs, Mr. Tokyo-U?" Keitaro had to admit she didn't. He did some quick-soul searching and discovered that, surprisingly enough, he was more willing to answer a phone than he was to risk annoying a giant wolf-beast by not answering one, so he stood and moved slowly over to the desk. The wolf watched him the entire time, breathing through its wide snout in short, cold bursts. Keitaro lifted the phone from the receiver and pressed it against his ear.
"Hello?"
"Mr. Urashima!" There was no doubt about it—it was the same crackly, static-filled voice as before. "What a profound pleasure it is to speak with you again. Although it really isn't." Keitaro frowned and tried to figure out whether or not he had just been insulted. "I am pleased you made it this far, however. The timer is winding down now, so I suggest you do exactly what I tell you if you want to survive this ordeal."
"What do you want me to do?" Keitaro inquired. He privately thought it would be very nice if he was required to relax in the hot spring back at Hinata House, but that didn't seem very likely.
"Roughly one minute after our conversation ends, someone will attempt to enter the front door. You will let them in, then bring them to the end of the hallway. Take the last door on the left hand side, which will lead you into a storage room. At the back of this storage room, you will see a stairway which descends into the basement of the building you are currently inside. Go down this stairway, and I will be waiting for you at the bottom. If you can complete this task without bumbling it up in some manner, you and your friends will be free to go. I expect most of the changes I've made to your world will be reversed as well, although I can't be entirely certain."
"That's what I have to do?" Keitaro asked, almost giddy with relief. It sounded ridiculously easy, and he had no complaints about that.
"That is all. Of course, if you do make a mistake, Garou-sama will eat your fox. If you make a second mistake, he will eat your dear, precious little kitten. If you make a third mistake..." The voice trailed off into a very nasty chuckle.
"Garou-sama?" Keitaro glanced over his shoulder; the wolf's head perked up slightly at the sound of the name and snorted wind at him.
"Yes, that's what I've been calling him. It is a bit of a shame I won't be able to take him with me, but I expect he shall be safe enough in your world."
"My world?" Keitaro repeated, feeling that he was being left out of something very big and interesting. It was almost like there was a cloud around his head, and if he could pull his face out of it, everything would be clear. The problem was that no matter how low he ducked, the cloud stuck with him. "What are you—"
"No time for that now, Mr. Urashima. Your task will begin momentarily. Do try not to fuck it up." The line clicked, and a dial tone hummed into Keitaro's ear. He set the phone down, thinking that the cloud around his head was also on the rude side.
"So?" Kitsune hissed, still crouched against the wall. "Who was it? What do you have to do? I know they told you to do something."
"I think I have to...guide somebody," he said, not totally sure himself. "Just help me be sure I don't trip or anything, okay?" Kitsune blinked curiously.
"Why?" Keitaro looked quickly at Garou-sama. He wasn't showing quite as many teeth anymore, but didn't exactly look cheerful either.
"You'll be much happier not knowing. Somebody should be here any second though, and the guy on the phone said I have to take them to the basement."
"The basement? Who's coming? And was the guy on the phone the fake Seta?"
"I think we'll know pretty soon," Keitaro told her. "But for now—" He broke off suddenly as the door handle clicked; someone was trying to turn it, but it was locked from the inside. "Here we go," he thought, and dashed across the small lobby. The locked turned smoothly and Keitaro flung the door open. Standing outside, drenched in rain and dressed in gleaming black armor, was none other than—
"Motoko?!" Keitaro and Kitsune both cried her name at the same time, and the former stumbled back from the door in shock. Motoko's face was mostly hidden by the grating on her helmet, but there was no mistaking her.
"Motoko!" Kitsune exclaimed, leaping up. "Man, am I glad you're here! This has been one crazy day, believe you me." She hesitated; Motoko had given no response at all, and was still standing in the rain, oblivious to the water pouring into her armor. "Motoko...?"
"I don't think she's herself right now, Kitsune," Keitaro muttered, stepping forward. "Look at her eyes." The fox looked, and understood what Keitaro had meant. Motoko's eyes were utterly blank. If it been the first time they had met, Kitsune could have mistaken her friend for a mannequin.
"What the hell is this?" she muttered, slinking backwards. "Who did this to her?"
"Seta," Keitaro answered cryptically. He placed one hand carefully on Motoko's shoulder, waiting to see if she would slice it off. When she made no attempt to unsheathe her sword, he guided her carefully through the doorway and closed it behind her. Even though her legs did move when he pushed, it was mechanical, as if she were merely something programmed to react. She was clutching a large bundle, wrapped tightly in yellowed cloth. Keitaro didn't dare try to take it from her. Keitaro shut the door while Kitsune watched Motoko warily.
"To the basement, huh?" she murmured. "That's the whole deal?"
"As far as I know," Keitaro said. He picked Shinobu up, then reconsidered. "Kitsune, if I put Shinobu on your back, do you think you can keep her from falling off?"
"Um..." Kitsune cast a dubious look at the sleeping kitten, then gave a strange, four-legged version of a shrug. "Yeah, I guess. Won't know unless I try, anyway."
"Thanks." He knelt down beside her and carefully situated Shinobu in a position that looked secure, then stood and faced Motoko. "Please don't kill me for this, Motoko," he requested, inching around behind her. "I don't think you're going to move by yourself though, so this is the best thing I can think of." Placing one hand on each of her armored shoulders, Keitaro began to steer her across the lobby. Garou-sama apparently knew what was coming—as soon as he spotted Motoko, he shifted his immense bulk away from the hall, clearing a path. "Thank you very much," Keitaro said sincerely as they passed.
Garou-sama leered at him, then snorted carelessly, as if to say, "It's not as if I really cared anyway." Keitaro took this as progress in their relationship and continued down the hall.
Kitsune padded close behind him, stopping every few feet to shift Shinobu to one side or the other. They passed numerous doors until the hallway finally ended, yielding one last door on the left-hand side. There was nothing ominous about it, a fact which Keitaro didn't mind at all. He reached around Motoko and pushed it open, then carefully propelled her forward. There was a short moment of panic when he wasn't sure if she would be able to negotiate the stairs, but her legs seemed to know what to do even if she was a zombie in other regards. Breathing a sigh of relief, he continued onward.
The stairs led down for a long time, much longer than they seemingly should have. Even with Motoko leading the way, so to speak, Keitaro didn't feel at all safe, and he felt his heart rate increasing with nearly every step until he was positive that Kitsune must have been able to hear it. Out of morbid curiosity, he started to turn around and see what she was doing.
"Don't look back here," she hissed sharply. "That damn wolf is breathing down my neck and I think it'll bite my head off if we make any sudden movements." Remembering what the person on the phone had told him, Keitaro deemed it in Kitsune's best interests if he did exactly what she said.
The stairway finally ended, and the group found themselves wrapped on all sides in total darkness. Motoko stood like a statue in front of them, Garou-sama like a demon behind. Keitaro squinted, trying to see if there was anything in the basement aside from them, but he couldn't make heads or tails of anything more than three feet away.
They waited in tense silence.
Garou-sama, incredibly enough, sneezed.
They waited some more.
"This bites," Kitsune observed. "What did we come down here for? To stand in the dark forever?"
"I'm sure I did everything right," Keitaro said. "I'm sure. All that person on the phone told me to do was bring Motoko down here without screwing anything up."
"Don't worry, Mr. Urashima," said someone. "You've done a perfectly acceptable job." The voice came from about ten feet away, judging by the sound of it, and Keitaro spun around in the direction he thought it had come from.
"Who's there?" A loud, metallic clunk echoed through the room, and Keitaro was suddenly able to see normally as fluorescent lights flared to life.
The voice belonged, not to Seta, but to an old man. Keitaro looked closer and realized that 'old' didn't even begin to describe him; he was positively ancient. His back was hunched, and he was balanced on a thick, knobby cane that ended in a three-pronged claw. His skin was incredibly wrinkled and dry; he looked as if he were covered in crumpled-up paper. A thick, white-gray beard covered the lower half of his face and ran all the way to the floor, but he didn't seem to mind. As Keitaro watched, the man took a few halting steps forward.
"It's a pleasure to finally meet you in person," the old man said, chuckling wheezily. "A pleasure for me, in any case. I doubt you're very pleased."
"Just confused, to tell you the truth," Keitaro admitted. The man stopped a few paces away and looked Keitaro over severely.
"I'm afraid you'll have to remain that way, for the time being," he replied. "I'm not the type to give out information freely. Garou-sama might tell you a thing or two eventually, but I wouldn't suggest pestering him about it. Neither of us has a very good temper."
The man now walked straight past Keitaro and stopped when he reached Motoko. He lifted one hand from his cane and made a movement that seemed horribly creepy and arcane to Keitaro. Motoko instantly came to life; her arms, which had still been clutching the sheet-wrapped bundle, released the cargo and lowered it into the old man's grasp. He chuckled again, this time with a note of unmistakable triumph.
"After all this time," he murmured, caressing the cloth with a withered hand, "my day of victory." He turned away from the samurai and walked across the room once more, supporting himself with his free hand. When he reached the wall, he halted and turned toward Keitaro. "I'm afraid this is where we part ways, Mr. Urashima," he announced, beaming. "You'll find the rest of your friends back at your home. Tell them whatever you like."
"What—that's it?" Keitaro blurted. "But—who are you?" The man smiled and shook his head.
"As I told a very rude gentleman a short while ago, I have no name that you could pronounce. But..." he let his voice trail off and smiled again, the wrinkles around his eyes deepening as he did so. "For the sake of humor, you may call me Geppeddo. I am, you see, a puppet master, of sorts. I came to your world to collect something that was taken from me. Something that I care about very much."
"Taken?" Keitaro's mind was whirling, but not in any way that was helpful. "What? And by who?"
"This, of course," said Geppeddo, running his hand over the bundle of cloth. "And you should know the answer to your second question. After all, you are the one who took it, Keisuke." An unpleasant screeching sound was suddenly mixed into Keitaro's whirling brain as a few cogs came loose.
"Keisuke? What are you—but—"
"Forgotten it already, have you?" Geppeddo sighed and shook his head in disgust. "We live so closely to each other, but are still so different...my world is not far at all from yours, you know. Only two down and three to the left from this one." He sighed again and fingered his beard. "Humans. Such a momentary species. You exist and are gone before you even have the chance to grasp what your lives can truly amount to. Maybe this will help." Leaning further than his hunched back should have permitted, the old man laid his bundle on the concrete floor and began to unwrap it. The folds of cloth came away easily, revealing something Keitaro had all but forgotten about. He heard Kitsune gasp behind him.
"That's...Moe-chan?" Geppeddo picked the doll up from the old sheet and cradled it in his arms.
"Yes, it is. In my world she is called something different, but you would not be able to speak it. Sufficed to say, she means a great deal to me, and I was very unhappy when you took her away. But..." the old man smiled again, and for the first time, it looked like an honest, happy smile. "...But now, all is as it should be. I shall now leave you, Mr. Urashima, and I beg that you treat others better than you have treated me. Farewell."
"Wait!" Keitaro shouted, resisting the urge to grab the man's shoulder. "I still—there's way too much going on here. Are you the one who's been doing everything? I mean, the fake Seta last night, and turning Shinobu and Kitsune into animals—was that all you?" The old man gave the tiniest roll of his eyes.
"I believe you already knew I was responsible for your friends' transformations," he said coolly. "I am quite skilled at the art of changing one thing into another. Garou-sama, for example, is actually a hurricane." Keitaro managed a quick look at the gigantic wolf; it didn't take that much imagination to see it being a storm in another life. "But," Geppeddo continued, "as to your question about Mr. Noriyasu, yes—that was also my doing. I used a puppet of dear old Seta to investigate Hinata House, and to be certain that it was indeed where Moe-chan was located. To be frank, you're quite lucky it was me who arrived first. Moe-chan is hardly the only unusual thing about your home."
"What does that mean?" Keitaro asked, frowning. Geppeddo gave him a dismissive wave.
"Plenty of time for that later, but I expect you'll figure it out eventually anyhow. I, however, would very much like to return to my own home. Be kind to people, Mr. Urashima, and your life will be a much happier affair." He bowed deeply, and then winked. "Adieu."
And just like that—from one second to the next—he was gone. The wrinkled sheet was still lying on the floor, but Geppeddo and Moe-chan had vanished without a trace. For about a minute, Keitaro tried desperately to understand what was going on, or what had just finished going on, but he gave it up. There was just no point.
"Keitaro!" He turned and looked at Kitsune. He looked at Kitsune some more. He wondered if he could have stopped looking at Kitsune even if he had wanted to. "Quit staring," she snapped. "It's not like you've never seen it before."
"Sorry," Keitaro said, giving his head a shake. "I didn't realize you had turned back into a human. When...did that happen, exactly?"
"Right after the old fart split. I think he was the only thing keeping all the weird stuff going on. As soon as he left, everything went back to normal." Keitaro had been holding his jacket out to her, and she accepted it gratefully. "Thanks. Whoa...feels weird to have two legs again." She teetered uncertainly, and would have fallen forward if Keitaro's shoulder hadn't been there for support. He said nothing; his eyes were glued to, strangely enough, the top of her head.
"Uh...Kitsune?" She blinked at the strange expression he was wearing.
"What? Why are you looking at me like that?"
"Because," he gulped, "not...everything...is back to normal."
Magician's Note: Yahoo! Only an epilogue left now! I'm too dam tired to write that now, so I'll do it tomorrow. Most of the mystery has been figured out now, and I hope nobody is disappointed. If you are, I apologize and ask that you don't send Death Chickens after me. Chickens are scary.