I started this fic a year and a half ago and was unable to continue it because I had so many projects going at once. And then, surprise surprise, people actually reviewed it. So here I am, trying again, hopefully with better consistence! As previously mentioned, this story isn't about Akira characters. It takes place during Akira, involves Akira concepts and theology and runs parallel to the Akira plotline, but the characters are original. If you stumble over this story, be ready; that's all I can say.
Disclaimer: No, I don't own Akira.
That being said, without further yammering…
Scism
Chapter Two
By zapenstap
A splattering of night rain was falling on hot, ash-ridden concrete in a parking lot in the industrial section of Neo Tokoyo. In the middle of the parking lot a heap of debris and trash had been gathered in a pile, soaked with kerosene and lit on fire. The fire burned wild, oblivious to the splatter of soft raindrops, angry flames licking and lashing at the air. The human figures around it appeared only as indistinct shadows, the boys who had started it standing close and the girls maneuvering around them for a spot in the empty space.
Taro Hisaishi watched the fire burn from where he sat on a broken wall on the edge of the scene, just barely in the circle of the fire's light. The front of his dusky face was warmed by the light, but his body was cold. He clutched a faded denim jacket around his shoulders; his arms wrapped around one knee drawn close to his chest, the other dangling over the edge of the wall. He felt the rain pattering against his head and neck and sleeves, but ignored it. The flames fascinated him, distracting him from his discomfort, but the dark of the night, in the musty coolness, was where he wanted to be. The fire burned bits of cloth, rope, and metal soaked in flammable oil. That was all that was available, but by the way the tongues seemed to leap out of the pile of discarded trash, the flames hungered for wood. Taro thought he might identify with that.
The other boys were crowded closer around the fire, most of them standing, tossing bits of trash into the pile to keep the flames high and the heat hot. There were four of them tonight, not counting the two girls tagging along, a small gang, but there was sometimes as many as eight and they had welcomed him to their group. Despite his early fears, the initiation hadn't been that bad—he'd had worse from Akira—and there had been benefits. Besides, these guys were his friends now. Hell, they were his family. Screw Akira.
"Taro! Are you just going to sit there all night?"
"I'm fine," he called back to Katsu. Katsu was the leader, always looking out for the others and harassing them in turns. No one minded. Everybody deserved their kicks.
Taro propped his dangling foot up on the remains of something that might once have been a microwave and wondered why junk heaps like this one weren't patrolled. This whole district was by the large part abandoned. Taro's gang was just a small thing, a group of drifting, shiftless kids in the same community, but there were others who came out this way that were not so harmless, biker gangs and ravers and a variety of older, more dangerous people to which Taro's group deferred when they made the scene. Maybe the authorities figured that anyone who came here came looking for trouble. That was fine by him.
The kick from the upper he had taken earlier was starting to wind down. He hated winding down. Once reality leveled out, life was just too damn depressing. It was his goal some nights never to wind down until he was somewhere were he could crash indefinitely.
Laughter went up among the group by the fire and Taro noticed Katsu strolling his way.
"Hey," Taro said.
"Hey. You bored?"
"Nah, just… I'm coming."
Katsu roughed up his hair with a hand. "That's my kid," he laughed. "Come on. It's fucking cold over here."
Taro hopped off the ledge and followed, shaking water out of his hair. The rain was starting to let up, just a light sprinkle still falling softly like snow. Now everything just smelled like wet dirt and car oil, the grit of the city. He was so used to it he only noticed it when it rained these days. There was dirt in the rain too, that's why. When they rebuilt Tokyo they built it as fast as they could, sparring no expense, but not wasting time and money to curb pollution. Factories, warehouses, houses, businesses, shopping centers, that was Neo Tokyo, every square inch geared toward stimulating a consumerism economy. They didn't leave any room for parks. The old Tokyo hadn't had much in the way of nature and what was there was destroyed by the bomb. The only nature Taro had ever seen was on television at school. Not that he went to school much anymore.
"Taro, what are you hanging in the dark for?"
Taro smiled shyly at the girl who addressed him in such a bossy manner.
Hana was one of the prettier girls that hung out with the boys on nights like this, and Taro stammered in trying to answer her as she placed her fists on her hips and leveled him with a haughty stare. She was two years older than he was, but more importantly she was experienced. He could tell by the vagueness in her eyes that she was tripping on something that was making her more heady than usual. And more aggressive. Whether it was what Katsu had given him earlier or something stronger, he didn't know. Like most the girls, Hana always wore short skirts, but she accentuated her good points with flat-soled shoes and netted tights that went just above the knee. The exposed skin between the tights and the skirt was tantalizing. In her white tank top, she looked like she should be freezing, but she didn't appear cold.
Taro glanced past her to see Naoko huddled by the fire. Naoko had pretty features, Taro supposed, but he couldn't help but feel a little contemptuous of her beside Hana. She was the only one of the three he really knew at all, because Naoko was almost always the first girl. Naoko's role in the initiation process was the best part about the whole thing, one of the reasons Taro had joined, but now, next to Hana, she looked disheveled and ratty. Her leather shoes had deep creases, her skirt was dirty and she shivered in her t-shirt, arms wrapped around bare legs that seemed bonier than he remembered. Feeling like he deserved it, Taro decided to ignore her.
As Taro turned his attention back to the group, the boys around the fire greeted him lazily. He was offered another hit and he took it without comment, swallowing without the need of water.
"Yeah, Katsu, Taro is definitely getting older!" Hana laughed, reinitiating the conversation that had been interrupted when Katsu went to fetch him. Taro found himself drawn into the light and offered a seat on an overturned milk crate. He wasn't sure whether to feel gratified or uncomfortable at being the topic of conversation until Hana grabbed him by the arm and pressed herself close to him.
"We should be better friends, Taro," she whispered loudly and enticingly into his ear. Her breath tickled, and the hint of the laugh in it rang in his ears like a bell. He felt her shifting and suddenly found his shoulder snug between her breasts and his hand resting on her thigh as she slid close to him.
One of the other gang members, Jiro, snickered. "Taro's just a baby. Aren't you, Taro?"
Taro gritted his teeth angrily. Hell no, he was not a baby!
Taro opened his mouth to defend himself, but Katsu spoke up first.
"Enough sitting around. I need to do something."
The effects from the pill he had taken were beginning to affect him. Already he was beginning to feel a little heady. Things looked sharper, clearer, and yet certain realities were beginning to slide at the baseline, like he was looking at a picture through a moving window. His fingers and toes tingled with energy and he blinked to shake away the giddiness rising in his head. He needed to move too. To do something.
"I know somewhere we can go," someone muttered.
Somehow he ended up in the backseat of Katsu's car, though he didn't remember getting in. He did notice Naoko sitting next to him. His hand touched her thigh and slid up and down her leg idly. She let him. She always did, but though she allowed his hand on her leg, she grabbed his arm above the elbow. That was good. She was supposed to give the older guys priority, but his mind fumbled over the subject. By then the car was moving and, distracted by the movement under the influence of the drugs, he forgot about her.
"Where are we going?" he asked.
"I'm out of stuff," Katsu muttered. "You took the last and best one. See what I do for you?"
Jiro answered from the front passenger seat. "I think I know where we can get something. You'll have to avoid city center, though. People are supposed to be gathering to protest the new tax laws or something down there. Head for the edge of town. There's that psychiatric ward down by the water…"
"You want to steal drugs from a hospital?" Katsu muttered.
"Why the fuck not? They're under-funded. Low staff. And I need something stronger than this over-the-counter shit. Besides, those people aren't sick, they're just crazy. So maybe they'll be a little crazier, but who the fuck cares?"
"Hey," Katsu warned.
Jiro actually managed to sound contrite. "Sorry, Taro."
"My mom's not that one," Taro muttered, trying to sound disinterested. "Akira would probably have a cow though."
"Who the hell is Akira?" Hana demanded by the other window.
"My older brother," Taro said. He'd forgotten she was there.
"Wait," Jiro laughed. "He's your older brother? Kid, you do know that 'Taro's' a name given to a first son, right?" Taro's teeth clenched tight.
"Drop it," Katsu muttered. "That's his name."
"My mom's crazy," Taro said with only a little heat in his voice. The implication was noted and further conversation on the matter was dropped. Silence stretched by a minute.
"Hey," Katsu, said. "Check that out."
They hit a stoplight at the corner of town. The rain had let up and people were moving about, catching trains and heading home after movies or a late dinner. On the right, where Katsu was pointing, two girls stood by a restaurant, umbrellas held over their heads. Gorgeous girls.
"So what?" Hana said with a distinctive sneer. "Rich girls. They'd spit as soon as look at you."
Naoko remained silent.
Rich. Yeah. They looked it, down to their open-toed shoes, purses, portable phones and glossy hair. But girls like that didn't spit, if they deigned to notice you at all. They made Hana look like a trashy, over-painted and glossed rag doll. Taro stared at the one nearest the curb, long white legs and tiny feet neatly balanced on three-inch heels. Her hair was a sheet of long, glossy black curls cascading down to her back in fine, rolling waves. It was rare to see a Japanese girl with hair that long these days, much less curled, rare to see anyone so prim and poised and put together. Like a slender vase, expensive, fragile, something that would hold a room together by its very shape and presence. Just beautiful.
"Damn," Jiro muttered.
No one said anything else about them. Girls like that, though...
The spotlight changed to blue and the car rolled on.
*****
Tomiko turned her wrist over to glance at her watch. Only 10:30 and nothing to do.
"What do you want to do now?" Naomi asked. She was always impatient and showed it.
Tomiko never let much of her emotions show on her face. She had been raised to be poised, reserved, an icon of manners and propriety. Still, she smiled at her friend as she tipped her umbrella off of her shoulder. The rain had stopped.
"Well, I don't want to back to my aunt's house. I can't stand her."
"There's a party at Susumu's. You know he'd be glad to have us. I'm sure Nibori will be there. He likes you, right?"
Tomiko scoffed, but turned it into a peal of laughter. She ran a hand through her curls and glanced at her reflection in the window of the restaurant where they had just dined. So beautiful…so often used and lied to because of it. Tomiko pulled her compact from her purse and opened it to touch up her face. It was a compulsion, her beauty; it was the only thing she had that was really hers. "Him and others," Tomiko told Naomi slyly. The slyness hid contempt, and disappointment, a whole lot of fears and woes she was too much of a coward to face now, not yet. "They all bore me these days. So no parties tonight, not for me."
Naomi was petulant, and her lower lip stuck out stubbornly. The girl wanted to throw herself into a man's arms as soon as possible, to drink and carouse and forget her life as her money allowed her to do. Tomiko would have none of it. As soon as she could go back to Kyoto the better, or better yet, her parent's estates in the country. Neo Tokyo was as nauseating as it was oppressive.
Naomi loved it, though. A city girl to her toenails, she enjoyed hard alcohol, rough parties, a dozen suitors and wild weekends. Clubs, bars, house parties, expensive drinks and even more expensive clothes, that was Naomi's style. Tomiko used to like it too. She had been the debutant in her day, a year ago, less. Last winter everybody who was anybody knew her name. Call Tomiko for a good party. She would get the fireworks crackling. But all those drinks and all those men and all those forgotten hours… No more. It was all empty for her now.
"Tomiko, you haven't been out in months. You will never meet anybody if you stay holed up in your house."
"I've met everybody," she said disdainfully. "I'm tired of it."
"You have to get married someday, you know."
Tomiko slammed her compact shut angrily. "No, I don't. Who says so? I don't trust men. I don't want to waste my life petitioning to one to take care of me." She shuddered unconsciously at the thought. If what she had done in the past was any indication of what was necessary to maintain interest…it made her shudder involuntarily, and increased her anger.
"Then you should have fun while you still can. You're the prettiest girl in eight districts. My god, don't waste that."
She didn't understand. Tomiko's annoyance made her pick out the weakest thread of that statement and attack it to distract from the real issue. "You don't believe in God."
"So? What do you believe in?"
"I don't know," Tomiko mused. "But I don't believe in Neo Tokyo. People here are animals. Pigs. Come on. I don't want to stand on the street corner like a prostitute."
*****
It was getting late when Akira and Ken reached Akira's tiny apartment in the eighth district. Akira paused by the door that led up the stairs.
"Make any decisions?" Ken asked him.
"No."
"Think Taro will be up there?"
"No."
"Yeah, well..."
Akira shrugged. He didn't want to think too much about it. "I have to get up early for work tomorrow," he told Ken. "It was good to see you though. Good luck with that waitress…Fuyumi?"
Ken laughed. "Yeah."
Car lights distracted them, lighting up the side of the building and Akira's face.
"It's Noa," Akira murmured. At Ken's blank look, he tried to explain. "You've met him before. He's the guy who lives in the Church."
"The one with all the tattoos?"
"Yeah."
The lights dimmed as Noa parked the car. They heard a door slam and watched as an impressive figure approached them from just a few feet away. Noa was a striking six feet, three inches, built like a bull and not an ounce of fat on him. Tattoos ran up and down his arms and back, mostly of crosses, but also of birds and knives and a dozen symbols meaning everything from love to death.
"Hey," Akira called. "I haven't seen you in awhile."
"I've been away. Ken Harold?"
Ken looked surprised. "Yeah, that's right."
"I thought I recognized you." He turned his attention back to Akira. "Hisaishi, have you heard the news? There's rioting downtown. Bunch of students protesting the tax laws, but they've brought the army out to resist them."
"Shit," Ken said. "The army? Are you serious? What are they going to do? Shoot people?"
Noa gave Ken a calm look. He was always calm. When Noa was angry, people got hurt. "They're using gas bombs, but they're carrying clubs, and what's on television looks like a riot. People are going to get killed."
"My God," Akira said. "Taro."
"Don't use the Lord's name in vain, man" Noa warned. "But that's why I came by. I saw Taro earlier. He was with a bunch of kids breaking into a psychiatric ward south by the water, that old, half-abandoned one. With crowbars."
"Shit," Akira said, echoing Ken. "I gotta go get him." He was trying to hold down his anger, but it was starting to boil out. His hands clenched into fists as he worked his muscles with the effort. "Damn punk."
"I'll give you a ride," Noa said.
"I'm coming too," Ken muttered. "What? Don't look at me like that. It's not like I have anything better to do."
*****
Katsu stood on a stool, digging through a cupboard in the sterilized storeroom of an empty hospital building. The lock they had ripped off with a crowbar. Katsu handed Taro several bottles of pills that might have done anything. Even in his blazed state, Taro wondered what they were for.
"Man, this place really is abandoned," Jiro muttered. No guards. No night-time staff. No patients. The place was empty.
"The drugs are good," Katsu said, turning a bottle around to read the label. "Somebody must still come here."
Taro dumped his bottles on the countertop and swayed on his feet. "I feel kinda ill," he said. "I think I'm gonna pass out."
"Whathefuck?" Jiro said. "Why?"
Katsu turned his head from the cupboard and looked at Taro in surprise. "Hey, you sure you're not okay?"
"I don't know. It's been awhile since I took two hits so close together and I haven't eaten anything today. I'm gonna go sit down."
"Too bad we dropped the girls off," Jiro muttered. "They could take care of you." He laughed.
Katsu snorted.
Taro left the room, thinking maybe a bit of a walk would clear his head a bit. The hallways of this hospital were dark and foreboding, shadows throwing strange figures across the floor. Maybe gangs other than his had been here because the tiles on the floors were cracked and broken. Large holes had been smashed into the walls. There was trash everywhere. But there were no people. It was like the occupants just vanished. Jiro had said this place was low funded, but not shut down. It was like everyone left this afternoon.
Then he heard a sound. Was that someone crying?
Cautiously, Taro trailed a hand along the wall, following the sound. It intensified as he drew near, an echo of soft, shuddering sobs. Somebody was crying. It sounded like a girl.
The trail led him to a closet at the end of the hallway. He stopped, surprised. A closet. Somebody in a closet.
"Hello?" he called, and knocked softly on the door.
The crying stopped. He heard a rustle and stepped back, a little alarmed, but not afraid. Maybe it was the drugs.
"Is somebody in there? Are you okay?"
He realized that the closet was locked from the outside. Who would lock somebody in a closet in an abandoned psychiatric hospital? Perhaps somebody crazy was in there, but maybe somebody crazy had locked somebody in. His mother was crazy, but no one deserved to be abandoned in a closet.
Without much thought on the matter, Taro unlocked and opened the door.
TBC
Review if you want me to work on it! I've got lots of projects going.
