Goodbye, Hello, Who Are You?
Part 2: Voices in my Head
A Dance Dance Revolution Fanfiction
By: Azurite (but people call me Andi, Akachan, Mer, and Baka)
http://azurite.rosedreams.org

Well, if you've gotten this far, then you are no doubt wondering one of these things:
(1) WHAAAT?! Andi wrote a DDR fic!? What about all her *other* unfinished fics? Well you know the story about the thing that never goes away? Ever? Yeah, this is like that. I'd never be able to watch/play (ha ha) DDR again if I didn't write this. So here it is.
(2) O.o How did I get here? What am I doing here? Well, if you clicked on "DDR" in my profile, then you either knew what it meant, and wondered what the heck a poor dancer such as myself was doing with those three letters, or you were like "huh? Dark Dark Rain? Double Dark Rocks?" and just clicked out of curiosity. Well, poor soul, you have found your way to a piece known as a FANFICTION! It's about DDR. Ha. Ha.

Notes and Schtuff:
(1) No, I can't DDR. I have terrible coordination. I can try, but I only embarass myself and my much-better-at-DDRing friends. My fingers are much faster than my feet anyway. -.- Of course, that doesn't help me when playing DanceManiaX any...
(2) No, I don't own DDR-- any aspect of it. Konami owns DDR, and the individual artists responsible for the songs therein own them. I'm not making a profit off this... if anything, I'm giving MORE money to those companies by buying their games, and dumping token after token into the arcade machines to try and play. Key word being try.
(3) Yes, I have written fanfiction before, but no, not DDR fanfiction. This is an original piece... it's fictional (duh. Hence the "fiction" part of fanfiction) and absolutely did NOT happen. I'm just sort of setting it where I am, since I know my area best. ^.~
(4) Yes, I know *some* Japanese. So unless you're a native or have studied Japanese for over 10 years (ooh goody, someone on par with me!) then don't correct me. I may not know kanji all that well, but I know names and phrases like I know the English alphabet. -.- Don't even comment on that last one.

Dedicates: (because I'm a dork)
Amber
Mike
Onii-chan
Sean-chan
Fred
Psycho Joe
Jimmy
Joemi
and
Will and Grace.

What happened last time:

Alexa Dirson is your average 17-year-old -- except she talks to herself, and can't DDR to save her life. AND, her life was just put in danger when, by simply waiting for a bus, she got hit by a speeding motorcycle-- yet got away mostly unscathed. Her friends are glad to have her back in the realm of the conscious, but when Alexa decides to nap shortly after awakening *she* doesn't wake up in her right mind! Instead, the late DDR champion from Tokyo, Japan, Akio Kataoka finds himself in her body... WHAAA??

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!"

With a female voice, Akio Kataoka's scream was even louder than he would have expected, but that didn't change the fact that *he* was in a girl's body.

Tumbling out of the standard hospital bed and tripping over the blankets to a sink with a mirror above it, he stared at his new reflection. Rather than his own face staring back at him, there was that of a pretty gaijin girl-- probably a year or so younger than him-- and with short, cropped brown hair.

His own fright radiated through her expression, her green eyes as wide as saucers as he stared at his reflection, touching his face, his hair... Absently, Akio's fingers ran over his newfound form-- and he turned a flaming scarlet when they reached what were most definitely soft, round breasts.

"Miss Dirson?" A voice chimed, and Akio jumped a good foot and a half in the air, eeping loudly and dashing back to the hospital bed. Only the cool breeze that came with this scampering motion gave Akio the sudden awareness that he -er, she- was only clad in a paper-thin hospital gown, and little else.

The voice that had spoken was that of a female nurse, long hair tied in a simple ponytail to the side of her white coat. She held a clipboard in one hand, a thermometer resting on top of it, and she approached Akio, who was curled up against the headboard in trepidation. This was all some crazy nightmare... he wasn't here... he wasn't FEMALE...

"Uh, Miss Dirson, I'll need you to lean forward so I can take your temperature." The nurse smiled gently, and leaned forward towards Akio again, who was so stupefied about his-- again, *her*-- predicament --not just being female, but also understanding English, and not feeling any immediate pain, despite being in a hospital-- that he sat still, and within a moment, the nurse had taken his temperature and smiled.

"Oh good, a healthy 98.1 degrees. It's good to see you awake, Miss Dirson. We'll get some food in here as soon as we can... your mother's downstairs signing some release forms..." The nurse prattled, adjusting the blankets and disconnecting the IV from Akio's arm.

"Uh..." Akio began, hearing his -or whoever's body he was in- new voice for the first time in normal speech. "How did I get here?"

The words didn't feel foriegn on his lips. He spoke them perfectly, with no trace of an accent. Yet the voice was undeniably female, with an almost sing-song quality to it that there could be no mistake... the words uttered came from *his* mouth! Or at least he thought it was his... what had happened?

"Oh! Well... you were brought here..." The nurse picked up her clipboard again and scanned it briefly, no doubt trying to decipher the illegible doctor's handwriting, "Friday morning, at around 7:48am. Injured in a traffic accident, minor injury to the head. Nothing broken."

"...traffic... accident?"

"Yes, it seems that that morning there was a strange jam on Park Presidio Boulevard all the way from the bridge to where your accident occurred at Balboa... and a speeding motorcycle hit the bus stop where you were sitting."

"AND I'M ALIVE?!" Akio stared at the nurse in shock, wondering how he could have survived such an accident. Whoever this girl whose body he was currently occupying -as strange as that thought sounded- she sure was tough.

"Well..." The nurse giggled, "Yes."

"You may want to sort through your things that your friends left... staying here over the course of the past three days has given you quite a load to take home with you tomorrow." The nurse grinned and stepped outside, gently closing the door as she left, staring at the clipboard.

Akio took this moment to step lightly out of bed, and look out the window on the far side of the room. His eyes met with an unfamiliar slope of houses, fluffy, yellow-flowered trees lining the street, and a few cars zipping down the road. It suddenly occurred to him that, besides the obvious signs of a gaijin nurse (and the girl whose body he was IN) that the CARS were going in the wrong direction.

Neither he -rather, she- or the nurse had had accents, so where was he?

"America?" Akio mumbled, staring at the room. It was then that his eyes caught on the poster he'd first seen when coming to.

"SAN FRANCISCO!?"

"Uggh... Where the heck am...I...?" Alexa Dirson looked around a place that was most *definitely* not her bedroom, and certainly not the hospital room she'd been in when she'd awoken from her three-day coma, after the accident she couldn't remember.

Rather, it was a dark place, with the faint sound of rushing water at the edge of her hearing. There was a patch of something soft and somewhat wet that she sat upon, and the faint blur of light in the distance. If she squinted her eyes enough, it almost seemed like the hospital room...

Alexa stood up on wobbling feet, grasping in the dark for anything with which she might catch her balance. However, nothing met her outstretched fingertips, and she instead collapsed back onto the wet again. When she didn't feel immediately muddy, she realized that she was wearing the same outfit she'd chosen the day of the accident-- Friday. She couldn't remember the accident itself too well, but she did remember haphazardly choosing an outfit, then being so satisfied with it, that she felt more confident than she had in a long time.

"Matt," she'd thought, "Matt will love this outfit."

"Ugh," Alexa groaned, patting her rear in distaste, "Matt will think I pissed my pants." She stood up, only to be jolted to the side again, and she fell back to the sopping ground with a "Woooaaah!"

Alexa sat, groaning at her current predicament, the strangeness of the situation, and feeling nauseous from the falling.

"Am I on a boat or something? Geez, this place is hella dank..." Alexa wrinkled her nose, faintly catching the smell of rot, before she squinted again at the source of light in the distance. A porthole, maybe?

Hah, what a trip. Maybe she'd been kidnapped and was being brought to China on a freighter?

"Right. And James Bond will come bursting through that doorway over there any second now." Alexa spoke to no one in particular, grouching as she thumbed towards the endless expanse of darkness. She almost found herself staring at the point she'd named "the doorway," half believing, especially with her recent string of "luck" that such a thing would happen. Actually, anything that happened to Alexa was always contrary to her current line of thought-- so that if anyone *did* come bursting through any door in the dark, it'd probably be a twenty-eyed octopus with an appetite for human girls.

Alexa sighed loudly, doing her best to ignore the seeping feeling of wet crawling through her pants. It felt like she'd just fallen into a pool, or a very icky part of her high school's football field. The very thought made her shudder all over, and she sat as still as possible, gathering her arms into her chest and trying to stay warm, and stay calm.

"Patience is a virtue," Alexa murmured, faking a Zen-like state as she sat. Oddly enough, the sound of the rushing water receded from her hearing, and instead, she heard a voice:

"SAN FRANCISCO!?"

It was most definitely not her OWN voice.

"Hello? Is anyone there?" Alexa immediately stiffened, rising to her feet. The wet feeling had vanished completely, though Alexa wouldn't have noticed anyway-- her attention was soley focused on the source of the voice. It seemed to be coming from everywhere... but nowhere, all at the same time. It was quite perplexing.

"...who?" The same male voice repeated. There seemed to be a slight accent to it, and Alexa almost swore that she'd heard it before. But she couldn't place when. Perhaps the accident had affected her memory?

"Uh... where are you?" Alexa asked, looking about her frantically. She backed towards the light, glad for her sneakers with enough traction to keep her from slipping. Even as she edged away from her self-named "door," the ground grew more solid behind her feet, thickening and flattening to level stone.

"I'm... I'm in San Francisco, it seems."

Alexa rolled her eyes. Well, that was helpful. Wasn't she in San Francisco, too? Or...?

"Look, who the hell are you?" Alexa snapped, losing her temper. Whoever it was sounded confused, and if this person wasn't stuck in the same situation as she --trapped in a foriegn place, not knowing how or why she got there-- then they had no right to be so slow and confusing to her. She just wanted to get out of this darkness, and go home!

"...The name's Kataoka. Akio Kataoka."

Alexa suddenly felt her throat constrict; that was a Japanese name. It wasn't that she'd had heard the name before; the boy's name was just as unfamiliar to him as his name. But the manner in which he'd said it implied that he wasn't speaking English. She was just *hearing* it that way, if it was at all possible.

"Just great, I'm living in a Star Trek moment..." Alexa hissed under her breath, snapping her gaze around to try and pinpoint a source to Akio's vioce.

"'Star Trek?' What's that?" Akio asked, the confusion easily clear in his voice.

Alexa nearly toppled over when the world took a sudden shift, and suddenly the darkness receded to a gray. There was a *shuk shukking* sound, as if someone had just tossed open curtains or blinds.

"What the hell...?" Alexa growled, staring at the now-growing point of light, once a haze, in the distance. It wasn't a porthole, as she'd originally suspected, but it was a window of some sort. Yet the things in there seemed familiar, while the world around her produced a sense of fear, if anything else.

Alexa shivered as an unexpected sensation rippled through her, like goosebumps from the cold-- irritation.

"You needn't swear, you know." Akio's voice came coldly, and Alexa seemed taken aback.

"Well, excuse me! I don't know who the heck you are, or where the heck I am, and I just want to go home!" Alexa's voice suddenly slipped into a sob on the last syllable. What if she never saw her friends again? Her mother... or...

Matthew's face flashed across her vision for a moment, and Alexa choked to herself, overwhelmed with sadness.

"...O...Oi, you... you don't have to cry..." Akio's voice came, somewhat softer and more broken than before.

"I CAN CRY IF I WANT TO YOU JERK!" Alexa shouted, and then everything went white.

"Huh...?" Alexa found herself lying face up on the hospital bed, surrounded by the same balloons and flowers as before. Even the tube of white roses that Andrea, Matt, and Whit had chipped in to get for her was still lying on the floor.

Slowly sliding her legs off the bed and getting up, she picked up the tube, sniffing the roses once before setting them aside. She dared to glance into the mirror above the sink, and was relieved to see everything normal and in place.

Whatever she'd been imagining-- about a place of darkness, filled with white and gray haze... and running water... well, it just had to be a dream. But...

The next few days passed by with relative ease-- Alexa didn't dream of the realm of darkness anymore, and before she knew it, the name Akio Kataoka had completely slipped her mind. It was Friday afternoon before she even thought about what had happened last weekend at all.

"Hey, Al, check this out!" Andrea brought out two wrinkled pieces of 8.5" by 11" paper, obviously printed from someone's laserjet. There was a faint picture that was quite pixellated, bright white stripes passing through the image's top and middle sections. But it appeared to be a person-- a smiling boy, in fact, who was Japanese.

At the top of the page was a very familiar logo-- that of DDRNews.Net, a site that Alexa was prone to frequent for the latest info on DDR, especially when it came to new mixes, songs, and codes. She was always interested in those little details, even if she never had the confidence to get up on the stage and dance for herself.

The few time she'd tried, she'd only embarassed herself, and swore she'd practice in private before ever trying to play again. It wasn't as if she'd said she was any good when she played in public, but there had been a lot of expert players around, and Alexa had ended up getting off the platform cherry red, ashamed of the bright red, blood E flashing on the screen.

Never again, she swore. Never.

"'Japanese Dance Dance Revolution expert killed in fatal hit-and-run'? Where was this?" Alexa asked, looking up at her pink-haired friend. Andrea grabbed the paper again, scanning it rapidly. The two of them had met earlier in the day at the Lowes Theaters, and were now waiting for the F train to take them to the Pier.

Alexa rolled her eyes. It was just like Andrea to make some news big and then not know anything about it. But it was these little details that fascinated Alexa so-- it was why she wanted to be a journalist. Of course, that was a separate hobby altogether from DDR, and since Alexa knew she had to work on her social skills, she figured learning to dance --DDR or otherwise-- was a good start. She'd made so many friends since she'd started coming to the Arcade... it was wonderful.

"Tokyo," Andrea began, her eyes still glued to the paper. A green F-train was pulling up beside them, it's quadruple-fold doors squeaking open. Alexa turned to get on, and slammed her head on the door with a yelp.

"Ow..." She and Andrea got on the bus, Andrea stepping up the high rises without so much as lifting her eyes. She flashed the driver her pass, as did Alexa, but Alexa's other hand was plastered to her forehead.

Great. Just great. Now I'm sure that Matt will see me with this softball sized LUMP on my head and know once and for all what a DITZ I am...

Alexa frowned, trying to be more optimistic. Running her fingers over her newest wound, she realized there wasn't much of a bump at all-- but it still stung like hell. And as childish a thought as it was, she half-wished that Matt was there to kiss the "booboo away."

Feh. How ridiculous.

At least now she was keeping her thoughts to herself, instead of mumbling aloud, and coming off as a crazy person.

"...Earth to Alex?" Andrea's voice rang in Alexa's ears, and she shook her head out of her stupor. Dammit, she'd been doing it again! Her mind wandering like that was nothing new, but it seemed to happen more often, for longer periods, after the accident. Half-afraid, Alexa thought she should tell her mother, but she knew she'd just be dragged back to the doctor's office for a long and uncomfortable examination-- and probably tons of nasty pills to take, and a stupidly insensitive shrink to see.

"Huh?" Alexa queried of her friend intelligently. Andrea rolled her eyes and snickered in response, flicking out the paper so that the folds were straightened, "'An eighteen year old Dance Dance Revolution Expert in Tokyo, Japan, was brutally killed after a hit-and-run on September 13th, 2002. Akio Kataoka was the receipent of such prestigious awards as the Bemani B.E.A.T, and the Konami Golden Koin.' Wow, Al, isn't that weird... this guy was in a hit-and-run only two weeks before you..."

Alexa had blanched.

That... that name!

"Guess... Friday the 13th just wasn't his day, huh?" Alexa mumbled, still wracking her brain for why the name sounded so familiar. A ping seemed to echoe throughout her ears, and a mini-world, as if her vision were suddenly enclosed in a snow-dome, appeared before her eyes.

Darkness everywhere, and a white, patchy haze in the distance... the smell of rot, and the cool feeling of wetness all around...

"Yeah, but I wonder if it was the 13th for him that day, too... I mean, you know Tokyo's like, 14 hours ahead of us, they might have converted it... but who'd go to all that trouble..." Andrea continued to mumble.

"Hey, lemme see that picture." Alexa grabbed the paper from her friend quickly, ignoring her friend's yelp as the paper sliced across one finger and made a tiny cut. Hurt, Andrea sucked on her finger, giving her patented death glare. However, it went unnoticed to the brunette, as she stared intently at the paper, her face paling even more.

"H-Hey... girl, you look like a ghost. I mean it this time. What's wrong? You... you didn't know that guy, did you?" Andrea was almost afraid of the answer, setting one hand on Alexa's shoulder just as the train lurched forward, and the pink-haired teen pitched into her best friend like sardines in a can.

"I..." Alexa trailed off. No, this was impossible. Downright, flat out, impossible... right?

She looked up at her friend, worry creasing her face.

"I don't know."

"KUMIKO! Bring the chairs in here, please!"

The seventeen year-old Japanese girl barely had enough time to finish tying up her shoulder-length ponytail before she hoisted the four oak chairs up in her arms once more. This is what she got for being an only child.

It was one thing to be part of a Japanese family that was very cultural-- but far from traditional. Her father had no problem with letting Kumiko work on the engine of his car, or carry four twenty-pound-each oak chairs up a flight of stairs.

But no, Kumiko wasn't complaining-- she was grinning and bearing it, as was her habit of late. She couldn't manage anything else nowadays. Ever since...

But in just thinking about Akio, Kumiko's grip on the chairs slacked, and she nearly dropped the lot of them on the last stair. Luckily, she caught herself just in time, and with an adrenaline surge, lifted the last of the chairs over the carpeted stairway. She whispered a silent prayer of thanks to her late boyfriend, and finished bringing the chairs into her family's new apartment.

Overlooking the selfsame ocean that she and her family had just crossed not less than a week ago, Kumiko Nikado now resided in a large two-bedroom apartment near Ocean Beach. The family had just moved here, and had yet to truly get familiarized with the city and its people, but they had all been to San Francisco for leisure, visting relatives, or just checking out the sites. When Mr. Nikado's business offered him a transfer to the City by the Bay, he readily accepted. Mrs. Nikado wasn't horribly pleased, but when she found out that her aunt, already short on years, was living in the city, she agreed and believed it best.

The decision was not as easy for Kumiko, whose life had just begun to blossom in Tokyo. Living in one of the more populated and expensive cities on the planet had given her a world of opportunities, and one of which was the chance to meet the handsome and talented Akio Kataoka. He was only a few months older than her, but everything seemed to fall in place when they met.

Kumiko had been sure that Akio was going to propose to her once they graduated high school. But he never got the chance.

The flood of painful memories caused the young woman to freeze in place. She'd left him -body and soul- behind. Maybe it was the right thing to do. Maybe it was time to move on.

Kumiko sighed, sitting down on one of the chairs and beginning to unpack things from the boxes littered in the living room. She unwrapped several glasses and plates wrapped in newspaper, setting the unfolded paper to the side. She noticed after unwrapping a blue glass vase that a brand new newspaper, titled The Chronicle was open to the 'Datebook' section. It wasn't so much the pink-colored paper that caught the girl's eye as the large ad taking up an entire third of the page:

A large surfboard decorated with the word 'Pier Side Arcade' was emblazoned in large, funky English letters. Kumiko had no trouble reading the characters, as she'd taken English for all three years of high school, and it had been a required class back in junior high. Having relatives in the States to write to had only made it easier, though Kumiko still carried a thick accent when she spoke.

"Bemani Night now every Friday Night at the Pier Side Arcade, located in the rear of Pier 39. All Bemani games half off, and a raffle for up to 70 tokens for freestyle... DDRing..."

Kumiko mumbled out the last words. DDRing. Akio had been champion. He'd danced for himself, then danced for her. Then... then...

Oh Akio... why... why did you have to leave me alone like this?

With her parents busy unpacking in their own bedroom, there was no one present to hear Kumiko's sobs.

This one was much longer! I hope you enjoyed it... don't worry, DDR will make its apperance soon! Soon every chapter should take place (and may be posted the day after) every Friday night! I'm hinting now at the romance with Akio/Kumiko and Matt/Alexa, but there will be other secondary romances, too.

Please let me know what you think... I have most of this plotted out already, so expect to see more soon (weekly, if I'm lucky).

~Azurite

AIM: Meriellen5