Episode 2
Painful Malaise
Sigma's Note: I found Naota's Strat on Ebay, though I changed the color. Conveniently, it was a Japanese Stratocastor. Sweet! Also, I did change the tittle from what it was. It's editted in the preview of the last chapter
One would think that after 4 years of complete and utter silence and normality, that something would have to happen in Mabase. But no. Despite the fact that the peaceful river town was the host to a 2 aliens, a robot, an evil, brain washing organization and the military, the second it was all over, life returned to its normal, sedate natural state.
The Medical Mechanica plant still rested at the top of the hill, leaning to one side. No one really knew how to fix it or to get rid of it, so the were content to leave it there and go about their everyday lives, trying their best to ignore the giant Iron that almost wiped out their conscious thought. Only in Mabase.
At the edge of the city, there was a small house. Like everything else in Mabase, save for the factory, it was completely ordinary. The man of the house ran a "underground zine" that he claimed would expose the lies and treachery behind the government, but nobody really cared about what was going on with the government, so the unsold back issues just continued to pile up in the house.
The only thing that was not ordinary about the house was the boy that lived in the house, Naota. Not that one could tell that just from looking at him. On the outside, he appeared to be just another 16 year old kid.
He wasn't in his room on that particular twilight evening. His room was somewhat unusual, but nothing that would rouse and suspicion. His walls were lined with photographs from various locations around the world. Most of them featured a red hair girl with a smile that was almost too big standing in front of some odd locale. One had a shaolin temple in the background, while the picture directly next to it showed Mamimi standing in front of what appeared to be a giant ball on twine. At least she had an interesting life.
Aside from the pictures, the other notable fact about the room was the large quantities of instruments neatly hanging from the wall or sitting on stands. Naota credited Haruko with introducing him to music. Before, he could have cared less about people like Jimmy Page or Don Felder or Dusty Hill. Now, he had Pink Floyd and Guns n' Roses CDs strewn about his room. Along with them where his collection of Acoustic Guitars, Bass Guitars, Drums, even a Mandolin or two. But there were two that stood out. One was an blue Rickenbacker Electric Bass that sat in its stand in the corner of the room next to his bed (which was no longer a bunk bed). It was the most taken care of out of all the instruments. Some, like his first Squire, had begun to collect dust, but the Bass was sparkling clean.
The other one was missing.
Naota was sitting on the roof of the house, staring off into the sunset. The sky had turned a fiery orange as the great orb in the sky slowly began to descend behind the Medical Mechanica factory. His eyes where half closed as he listened to the sounds of the traffic below. He reclined in against the box of magazines that his father stuck up there when he began to run out of storage room in the rest of the house. In his lap, Naota was slowly strumming a Red and Black 1989 Fender Stratocastor. It was his favorite guitar.
When Haruko had given him his first "forceful" lecture on Rock and Roll, she never anticipated that he would be the prodigy that he was. In four years, Naota had all but mastered the guitar and bass. He could almost play in his sleep, as he was close to doing that evening. He could feel the constant malaise of the city overcoming him once more as he continued to play "Pigs on the Wing" softly over and over (considering that its only 45 seconds long). Deep inside him, something was screaming to get out, to leave Mabase and its air of normality behind. He now knew why Taskun had gone to America. It wasn't for baseball. It was to escape.
But that rebellious voice within him could break through his sedate exterior. There were people that wanted him to stay. His friends needed him so they could keep up their delivery business. His father and grandfather needed him to maintain some kind of sanity in the house. And Ninamori.....
If you didn't care....what happened to me.... And I didn't care.... for you.... We would, zig zag our way Through the boredom and pain, Occasionally, glancing up through the rain. Wondering which one, of the buggers to blame. And watching, for Pigs on the Wing.......
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Deep in space....
"I'm sorry sir, but she got away," the commander said. The bug eyed general stared daggers at his subordinate.
"What do you mean she got away!" he shouted at the top of his lungs, a giant vein threatening to burst in his forehead. He was truly pissed.
"We underestimated Raharu's tenacity. Plus she had a guitar-"
"I don't care if she had a damn rocket launcher! You had 114 of out best pilots the Black Dogs had to offer with out best technology to go with it, and you blew it. Along with out prison facility AND THE NO GATE!" he shouted again, causing the commander to shrink back in his seat.
"We think we know where she's going," he said sheepishly.
"WELL COUGH IT UP JACKASS!"
"We got a reading from the gate when she opened it and before it exploded. One of our pilots saved it and determined her destination. Apparently, she has an organic terminal somewhere on planet IG-ZZ6 8652-3," the commander said, reading off a sheet of paper that was shaking in his hand. His superior immediately punched the coordinates in the computer on his desk. An image of a blue planet popped up on the screen along with a readout of its vital information.
"How can she have an organic terminal on a world of primitives? That's insane!"
"I'm just telling you what we found!" The superior sank in his chair and thought for a while.
"Can we tap whatever channel she's using?" he asked.
"I believe so."
"Good. Do it and send a recon unit through, preferable one with guns. We're going to get her back if it's the last thing I do."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -----------------------------
Naota sat in his chair as his aged, Russian Algebra teacher scribbled equations on the board. His guitar was leaning against his desk in its fabric casing. He took it almost everywhere he went, including to school. He pretended to take notes while his teacher explained the equation for an ellipse was (X squared/ A squared Y squared/ B squared = 1). He could just borrow them from Ninamori later. She usually took good notes. She was sitting right next to him, actually.
People were always puzzled by how it was that they were together. Truthfully, neither of them knew why either. Ninamori was an honor student with lots of friends and a definite future. Naota was a loner with only a couple of friends and a guitar. Nobody knew how or why it had happened. When they asked Ninamori, she would just smile and say:
"He's......interesting." Naota never had an explanation when he was asked. He usually just ignored the question.
Ninamori was wearing a red beret and let her long hair fall down her back. It was a good look for her. She looked over at Naota and smiled her knowing smile.
After school, they walked home together. Just like any other day. As they crossed the bridge that spanned the all encompassing river, a yellow Vespa flew past them both. Naota nearly jumped out of his skin. He spun around, his eyes as wide as dinner plates before he noticed that the driver was not Haruko, but rather an unusually fat man wearing a tank top.
"That's...disturbing," Ninamori said, catching site of the man. Naota didn't say anything. He was in a trance.
"Hellooooo! Noata!" she said as she waved her hand in front of his face. Naota blinked rapidly as he snapped back to reality.
"What was that all about?" she asked.
"Sorry. For a second there, I thought it was..." his voice trailed off was he rubbed his forehead. He had a permanently cracked skull from being hit be Haruko's guitar so many times, as well as by her Vespa twice and by his friends' truck. He was lucky that he didn't have permanent brain damage.
"You're thinking about the woman again, aren't you?" Ninamori said. "It's okay if you are. I know that she meant a lot to you." There was the smallest hint of sadness in her voice. Naota wrapped his arm around her. "Your guitar," she said.
"What about it?" Naota replied.
"Where is it?"
"Right he-" he said as he reached behind his back to grab it. His hand groped at air.
"I LEFT IT AT THE SCHOOL!" he shouted. In a panic, he turned around and dashed at full speed back over the bridge and into town.
"Wait Naota!" she cried back, "you can pick it up tomorrow!" but he was allready well out of ear shot.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -----------------------------
The High School was open late for some kind of teacher's meeting, and the lazy janitor had failed to lock the doors again. He did that all the time, so there were always kids in the high school smoking or having sex in the drama club room or what not. Naota personally hated the school. To him, it epitomized his dullard town. He tried to think of the last place that he had it. It was in the chemistry room...
As Naota rounded a corner into the science wing, one doors opened up right in front of him. He was running at full tilt to get his precious Stratocastor and couldn't stop in time.
WHAM!
Stars filled his vision as he smacked head first into the thick wooden door. He reeled backwards before falling on his back. There was a tremendous throbbing in his head, like someone banging a bass drum in his brain. He struggled to his feet while his world spun around in a psychedelic haze. A the teachers that exited the room looked at him with concern.
"Are you all right?"
"What is a student doing in the school after hours?"
"That's a nasty bump on your head." That last part struck a chord, so to speak.
"BUMP?!" Naota exclaimed as he felt his forehead. There was indeed a small lump in the center, but nothing out of the ordinary, and certainly nothing that would sprout a robot any time soon. He breathed a heavy sigh of relief.
Still somewhat dazed, Naota stumbled into the chemistry room. His guitar was still sitting in its bag at his desk. He walked over to it and was about to pick it up when something very unpleasant happened.
If the throbbing from the door had sounded like a base drum, then this felt like a hand grenade going off in his head. All of a sudden, he felt this immense pressure in his skull trying to get out. It was like a hockey player slamming into the inside of his head over and over again. He could physically feel his head bulging with each hit.
"Oh god no!" he cried out as he stumbled backwards, knocking over a desk and the set of beakers that rested on it. He slipped on the shattered glass and fell onto another desk, knocking it over. The sound of glass breaking and furniture being overturned could be heard through the entire school.
"Why now?!" he shouted. The last time this happened, a robot came out of his head. He gripped the side of his head as the bulge between his eyes grew larger and larger until it took on a shape. A hand. But not a robot hand. A humanoid hand, wearing a yellow glove.
"What the hell?" he said as he saw the digits before him. He'd never had a person come out of there before. He hand braced itself against Naota's body and tired to pull whatever or whoever it was attached to out with it. The throbbing was intense. Beads of sweat ran down Naota's head as he fell to his knees and the hand pulled out the last person he thought he'd see.
"Takun!" Haruko shouted, her upper body still sticking out of Naota's forehead.
"Haruko! What's going ooaaaAAA!" he tried to say, but was stopped when the pink haired alien promptly put her foot in his face. With that, she finally managed to pry herself out of the NO channel, sending Naota flying into the chalkboard, cracking it.
"Hey! My Vespa!" Haruko shouted as she threw herself towards Naota's twitching body. She raised her hand as his eye's widened.
"N-n-no! No no! Not that!" Naota protested, trying desperately to hold Haruko back. But it was futile. With a maniac grin on her face, Haruko drove her hand back into Naota's skull up to her shoulder. He started drooling as she reached around inside the transdimensional gate in his brain. He was fried. And by now, there was a large group of teachers watching to strange display.
"A little privacy please!" she shouted at them as she picked up a chair and threw it at the open door, slamming it shut. "Now where were we?" She continued to root around his skull cavity with flagrant disregard for his severe discomfort.
"Ah, there...we...go!" she grunted, pulling her arm out and along with it, her yellow Vespa. The hole in his head stretched and swelled as the motorbike struggled to get free. With one final, tortuous yank, Haruko excavated the vehicle from the NO gate. She then took out what appeared to be a staple gun from her pocket and fired what appeared to be four staples into Naota's head.
KA-THUNK!
KA-THUNK!
KA-THUNK!
KA-THUNK!
"Owwwww! What are you doing Haruko!" Naota shouted. He pushed her off him and fingered his forehead, noticing the four staples that she had unceremoniously drove into his skin.
"Oooooooooo, Takun! I missed you so much Takun!" she said, leaping on him again. "Space is sooooooo lonely without precious Takun!"
"Get off me!" he tried to struggle against her embrace, but the strength that knock a baseball the size of a Mack Truck into the far reaches of space was too much to overcome. Like an anaconda, she wrapped herself around him. "And what's with the staples!"
"A little gift from me to my favorite monkey!"
At that point, the door to the lab swung open again, this time by Ninamori. She had raced from the bridge to catch up with Naota. She stared open mouth at the compromising situation before her.
"Ninamori! It-it's not what it looks like! Shejustpoppedoutmyheadand- " he was stopped by Haruko putting an elbow in his face. She batted her eye lashes at the slack jawed Ninamori.
"And fulfilled every fantasy of his teenage mind!" she cackled, wrapping her arms around the bloody and bruised Naota.
"No she-"
Just another day in dull, run of the mill Mabase.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The old guitar players will always have the edge over the new school in my eyes. They pioneered the electric guitar and invented rock and roll as we all know it and love it. And if you play The Immigrant Song loud enough, you can almost here the sound of god rocking out.
Next Episode: Rock and Roll!
Now where did I put that guitar.....
Painful Malaise
Sigma's Note: I found Naota's Strat on Ebay, though I changed the color. Conveniently, it was a Japanese Stratocastor. Sweet! Also, I did change the tittle from what it was. It's editted in the preview of the last chapter
One would think that after 4 years of complete and utter silence and normality, that something would have to happen in Mabase. But no. Despite the fact that the peaceful river town was the host to a 2 aliens, a robot, an evil, brain washing organization and the military, the second it was all over, life returned to its normal, sedate natural state.
The Medical Mechanica plant still rested at the top of the hill, leaning to one side. No one really knew how to fix it or to get rid of it, so the were content to leave it there and go about their everyday lives, trying their best to ignore the giant Iron that almost wiped out their conscious thought. Only in Mabase.
At the edge of the city, there was a small house. Like everything else in Mabase, save for the factory, it was completely ordinary. The man of the house ran a "underground zine" that he claimed would expose the lies and treachery behind the government, but nobody really cared about what was going on with the government, so the unsold back issues just continued to pile up in the house.
The only thing that was not ordinary about the house was the boy that lived in the house, Naota. Not that one could tell that just from looking at him. On the outside, he appeared to be just another 16 year old kid.
He wasn't in his room on that particular twilight evening. His room was somewhat unusual, but nothing that would rouse and suspicion. His walls were lined with photographs from various locations around the world. Most of them featured a red hair girl with a smile that was almost too big standing in front of some odd locale. One had a shaolin temple in the background, while the picture directly next to it showed Mamimi standing in front of what appeared to be a giant ball on twine. At least she had an interesting life.
Aside from the pictures, the other notable fact about the room was the large quantities of instruments neatly hanging from the wall or sitting on stands. Naota credited Haruko with introducing him to music. Before, he could have cared less about people like Jimmy Page or Don Felder or Dusty Hill. Now, he had Pink Floyd and Guns n' Roses CDs strewn about his room. Along with them where his collection of Acoustic Guitars, Bass Guitars, Drums, even a Mandolin or two. But there were two that stood out. One was an blue Rickenbacker Electric Bass that sat in its stand in the corner of the room next to his bed (which was no longer a bunk bed). It was the most taken care of out of all the instruments. Some, like his first Squire, had begun to collect dust, but the Bass was sparkling clean.
The other one was missing.
Naota was sitting on the roof of the house, staring off into the sunset. The sky had turned a fiery orange as the great orb in the sky slowly began to descend behind the Medical Mechanica factory. His eyes where half closed as he listened to the sounds of the traffic below. He reclined in against the box of magazines that his father stuck up there when he began to run out of storage room in the rest of the house. In his lap, Naota was slowly strumming a Red and Black 1989 Fender Stratocastor. It was his favorite guitar.
When Haruko had given him his first "forceful" lecture on Rock and Roll, she never anticipated that he would be the prodigy that he was. In four years, Naota had all but mastered the guitar and bass. He could almost play in his sleep, as he was close to doing that evening. He could feel the constant malaise of the city overcoming him once more as he continued to play "Pigs on the Wing" softly over and over (considering that its only 45 seconds long). Deep inside him, something was screaming to get out, to leave Mabase and its air of normality behind. He now knew why Taskun had gone to America. It wasn't for baseball. It was to escape.
But that rebellious voice within him could break through his sedate exterior. There were people that wanted him to stay. His friends needed him so they could keep up their delivery business. His father and grandfather needed him to maintain some kind of sanity in the house. And Ninamori.....
If you didn't care....what happened to me.... And I didn't care.... for you.... We would, zig zag our way Through the boredom and pain, Occasionally, glancing up through the rain. Wondering which one, of the buggers to blame. And watching, for Pigs on the Wing.......
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Deep in space....
"I'm sorry sir, but she got away," the commander said. The bug eyed general stared daggers at his subordinate.
"What do you mean she got away!" he shouted at the top of his lungs, a giant vein threatening to burst in his forehead. He was truly pissed.
"We underestimated Raharu's tenacity. Plus she had a guitar-"
"I don't care if she had a damn rocket launcher! You had 114 of out best pilots the Black Dogs had to offer with out best technology to go with it, and you blew it. Along with out prison facility AND THE NO GATE!" he shouted again, causing the commander to shrink back in his seat.
"We think we know where she's going," he said sheepishly.
"WELL COUGH IT UP JACKASS!"
"We got a reading from the gate when she opened it and before it exploded. One of our pilots saved it and determined her destination. Apparently, she has an organic terminal somewhere on planet IG-ZZ6 8652-3," the commander said, reading off a sheet of paper that was shaking in his hand. His superior immediately punched the coordinates in the computer on his desk. An image of a blue planet popped up on the screen along with a readout of its vital information.
"How can she have an organic terminal on a world of primitives? That's insane!"
"I'm just telling you what we found!" The superior sank in his chair and thought for a while.
"Can we tap whatever channel she's using?" he asked.
"I believe so."
"Good. Do it and send a recon unit through, preferable one with guns. We're going to get her back if it's the last thing I do."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -----------------------------
Naota sat in his chair as his aged, Russian Algebra teacher scribbled equations on the board. His guitar was leaning against his desk in its fabric casing. He took it almost everywhere he went, including to school. He pretended to take notes while his teacher explained the equation for an ellipse was (X squared/ A squared Y squared/ B squared = 1). He could just borrow them from Ninamori later. She usually took good notes. She was sitting right next to him, actually.
People were always puzzled by how it was that they were together. Truthfully, neither of them knew why either. Ninamori was an honor student with lots of friends and a definite future. Naota was a loner with only a couple of friends and a guitar. Nobody knew how or why it had happened. When they asked Ninamori, she would just smile and say:
"He's......interesting." Naota never had an explanation when he was asked. He usually just ignored the question.
Ninamori was wearing a red beret and let her long hair fall down her back. It was a good look for her. She looked over at Naota and smiled her knowing smile.
After school, they walked home together. Just like any other day. As they crossed the bridge that spanned the all encompassing river, a yellow Vespa flew past them both. Naota nearly jumped out of his skin. He spun around, his eyes as wide as dinner plates before he noticed that the driver was not Haruko, but rather an unusually fat man wearing a tank top.
"That's...disturbing," Ninamori said, catching site of the man. Naota didn't say anything. He was in a trance.
"Hellooooo! Noata!" she said as she waved her hand in front of his face. Naota blinked rapidly as he snapped back to reality.
"What was that all about?" she asked.
"Sorry. For a second there, I thought it was..." his voice trailed off was he rubbed his forehead. He had a permanently cracked skull from being hit be Haruko's guitar so many times, as well as by her Vespa twice and by his friends' truck. He was lucky that he didn't have permanent brain damage.
"You're thinking about the woman again, aren't you?" Ninamori said. "It's okay if you are. I know that she meant a lot to you." There was the smallest hint of sadness in her voice. Naota wrapped his arm around her. "Your guitar," she said.
"What about it?" Naota replied.
"Where is it?"
"Right he-" he said as he reached behind his back to grab it. His hand groped at air.
"I LEFT IT AT THE SCHOOL!" he shouted. In a panic, he turned around and dashed at full speed back over the bridge and into town.
"Wait Naota!" she cried back, "you can pick it up tomorrow!" but he was allready well out of ear shot.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -----------------------------
The High School was open late for some kind of teacher's meeting, and the lazy janitor had failed to lock the doors again. He did that all the time, so there were always kids in the high school smoking or having sex in the drama club room or what not. Naota personally hated the school. To him, it epitomized his dullard town. He tried to think of the last place that he had it. It was in the chemistry room...
As Naota rounded a corner into the science wing, one doors opened up right in front of him. He was running at full tilt to get his precious Stratocastor and couldn't stop in time.
WHAM!
Stars filled his vision as he smacked head first into the thick wooden door. He reeled backwards before falling on his back. There was a tremendous throbbing in his head, like someone banging a bass drum in his brain. He struggled to his feet while his world spun around in a psychedelic haze. A the teachers that exited the room looked at him with concern.
"Are you all right?"
"What is a student doing in the school after hours?"
"That's a nasty bump on your head." That last part struck a chord, so to speak.
"BUMP?!" Naota exclaimed as he felt his forehead. There was indeed a small lump in the center, but nothing out of the ordinary, and certainly nothing that would sprout a robot any time soon. He breathed a heavy sigh of relief.
Still somewhat dazed, Naota stumbled into the chemistry room. His guitar was still sitting in its bag at his desk. He walked over to it and was about to pick it up when something very unpleasant happened.
If the throbbing from the door had sounded like a base drum, then this felt like a hand grenade going off in his head. All of a sudden, he felt this immense pressure in his skull trying to get out. It was like a hockey player slamming into the inside of his head over and over again. He could physically feel his head bulging with each hit.
"Oh god no!" he cried out as he stumbled backwards, knocking over a desk and the set of beakers that rested on it. He slipped on the shattered glass and fell onto another desk, knocking it over. The sound of glass breaking and furniture being overturned could be heard through the entire school.
"Why now?!" he shouted. The last time this happened, a robot came out of his head. He gripped the side of his head as the bulge between his eyes grew larger and larger until it took on a shape. A hand. But not a robot hand. A humanoid hand, wearing a yellow glove.
"What the hell?" he said as he saw the digits before him. He'd never had a person come out of there before. He hand braced itself against Naota's body and tired to pull whatever or whoever it was attached to out with it. The throbbing was intense. Beads of sweat ran down Naota's head as he fell to his knees and the hand pulled out the last person he thought he'd see.
"Takun!" Haruko shouted, her upper body still sticking out of Naota's forehead.
"Haruko! What's going ooaaaAAA!" he tried to say, but was stopped when the pink haired alien promptly put her foot in his face. With that, she finally managed to pry herself out of the NO channel, sending Naota flying into the chalkboard, cracking it.
"Hey! My Vespa!" Haruko shouted as she threw herself towards Naota's twitching body. She raised her hand as his eye's widened.
"N-n-no! No no! Not that!" Naota protested, trying desperately to hold Haruko back. But it was futile. With a maniac grin on her face, Haruko drove her hand back into Naota's skull up to her shoulder. He started drooling as she reached around inside the transdimensional gate in his brain. He was fried. And by now, there was a large group of teachers watching to strange display.
"A little privacy please!" she shouted at them as she picked up a chair and threw it at the open door, slamming it shut. "Now where were we?" She continued to root around his skull cavity with flagrant disregard for his severe discomfort.
"Ah, there...we...go!" she grunted, pulling her arm out and along with it, her yellow Vespa. The hole in his head stretched and swelled as the motorbike struggled to get free. With one final, tortuous yank, Haruko excavated the vehicle from the NO gate. She then took out what appeared to be a staple gun from her pocket and fired what appeared to be four staples into Naota's head.
KA-THUNK!
KA-THUNK!
KA-THUNK!
KA-THUNK!
"Owwwww! What are you doing Haruko!" Naota shouted. He pushed her off him and fingered his forehead, noticing the four staples that she had unceremoniously drove into his skin.
"Oooooooooo, Takun! I missed you so much Takun!" she said, leaping on him again. "Space is sooooooo lonely without precious Takun!"
"Get off me!" he tried to struggle against her embrace, but the strength that knock a baseball the size of a Mack Truck into the far reaches of space was too much to overcome. Like an anaconda, she wrapped herself around him. "And what's with the staples!"
"A little gift from me to my favorite monkey!"
At that point, the door to the lab swung open again, this time by Ninamori. She had raced from the bridge to catch up with Naota. She stared open mouth at the compromising situation before her.
"Ninamori! It-it's not what it looks like! Shejustpoppedoutmyheadand- " he was stopped by Haruko putting an elbow in his face. She batted her eye lashes at the slack jawed Ninamori.
"And fulfilled every fantasy of his teenage mind!" she cackled, wrapping her arms around the bloody and bruised Naota.
"No she-"
Just another day in dull, run of the mill Mabase.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The old guitar players will always have the edge over the new school in my eyes. They pioneered the electric guitar and invented rock and roll as we all know it and love it. And if you play The Immigrant Song loud enough, you can almost here the sound of god rocking out.
Next Episode: Rock and Roll!
Now where did I put that guitar.....