Disclaimer: I don't own any of the CCS characters. I just like to write about them. Please don't sue me.
Title: Eternally Alternate Destinies
Author: A.O.D.x5452
Rating: PG-13
Type: Action/Adventure
Summary: She went missing and now she's back and changed. Now she's an assassin. Her number is 2525 a.k.a. Tomoyo Daidouji.
Eternally Alternate Destinies
Chapter 1"Vell, Vell, Vouldya lookie here." Tomoyo started at the sound of the hoarse voice, which sounded like sandpaper being rubbed against a very rough surface.
Tomoyo felt sore all over, especially her palms and her thighs. She opened her eyes and she wondered if she had gone blind because everything was black. From feeling the floor she could tell that she was in a stone-floor chamber of some sort.
She heard whispers around her that sounded like a large group of red-eyed rats all sick with disease desperately clawing and squeaking as they fought for food. She was scared out of her mind and she swore that if she ever ran away from home again she would cut herself off from all cameras andcamcorders.
"Vouldya look at tat mate. Ta little beaut 'as finally woke up. 'Tis about time too, I'm feelin' awful itchy down thur." Tomoyo looked in the direction where the voice came from and she could scarcely make out the shape of the figure. Whatever was talking and cackling about her was ape-like, with a large head and a humpback, not to mention the metallic smell of blood and rotting flesh.
"Yo, Fonzo, git sum light on, I can't see no fucking thang." Fonzo obviously complied because a candle was lit and what Tomoyo saw was more than she could handle and she let rip a scream that was the loudest and most terrified one that she had ever given before in her life.
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Tomoyo's Mansion
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The maid, Rina, knocked loudly and impatiently on the door.
"Mistress, it is time for your supper. Unless you wish to starve yourself to death, I suggest you open this door immediately!"
Rina looked at the large grandfather clock whose handsome mahogany wood was well polished till it was gleaming in all its glory daily and its golden pendulum swung hypnotically from left to right and right to left. According to its hands, it was twenty minutes past Mistress Tomoyo's suppertime.
Rina wondered if she should dare enter the room without permission. She had noticed that lately Tomoyo hadn't been very hungry or as jovial as she used to be when that girl Sakura was always around. At times Rina saw how her mistress's eyes were all amethyst colored and it seemed that there was no pupil, but when looked at after a blink, Rina saw that they were normal except they were icy cold. Rina knew how sad Tomoyo was and how often Tomoyo brooded in her room. If she was bothered, she was awfully snappish and reproachful.
"Mistress Tomoyo is awfully late to supper Rina. Do you think there's something wrong?" Rina was startled from her thoughts by Henry, an Englishman that had been employed to be a butler earlier that year. Tomoyo didn't like him much because of his very stiff English ways, but Rina thought his manner rather handsome and his physical features weren't bad either.
"I don't know Henry, she hasn't been eating well the poor dear."
"Yes, I've noticed." Although Henry was very "English", he had a soft spot for Tomoyo because she was like a daughter or niece that he never had. In his heart he loved her very much, even if he didn't show it.
"It's getting late. Henry, I'm going in." Rina promptly turned the doorknob and pushed the door open only to meet a blast of cold wind mixed with some stray leaves coming in from the open windows. Rina quickly walked over to the window and latched it shut.
"Mistress, you know that you could get sick from having such a draft come in from the windows. Not to mention you're going to let all the heat out," said Rina as she put her hands on her hips and was turning around to face where Tomoyo was supposed to be, which was somewhere inside her room.
"She's gone," said Henry with a air of awe in his voice.
"What!" Exclaimed Rina after she snapped out of her stupor. Rina rounded around the room quick to see if Tomoyo was hiding behind cabinets or in her closet.
"Dear Lord, have mercy, Mistress Daidouji will kill me!" Rina fell to her knees and made a loud thump as all 78 kilos of her hit the ground.
"Rina, we must keep level heads. Now Mistress Tomoyo may just be in the library or outside in the gardens." Henry began rambling on about places where Tomoyo might be so he could console Rina in anyway possible. If it was one thing that made an Englishman or at least Henry uncomfortable was a woman, however big or small, crying.
"You're right Henry, there must be a logical explanation or that I'm just going crazy or that maybe Tomoyo is really gone or I'm hallucinating because this is a dream. Yeah, that must be it. I'll go to my bedroom and get in the bed and close my eyes. Then I'll wake up from this nightmare. Oh Lord, who am I kidding and I've even said Mistress's first name without the word Mistress! I'm going to be in so much trouble, be fired, then my family will starve, and I'll be shipped to a foreign country and disgrace my family name." Rina was hysterical, which caused Henry to feel very disoriented.
"Rina, please be quiet for a second!" Henry had never raised his voice like that before, which scared Rina into stopping her crying and babbling. So now Rina looked like a bewildered pigeon that just nearly escaped death when a car went speeding right past it.
"Come on Rina let us raise the alarm and tell everyone to search the place and put the guards up at all entrance to make sure if Mistress Tomoyo is here she will not escape. Come now." Thus, Henry helped Rina up with some effort and they bustled out of the room to raise the alarm.
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"Stop yer screamin' ya stupid gill. 'Tis only te boss, ya show sum respect. Lordy, ya coulda woke ta dead!" Tomoyo clapped both hands to her mouth not caring how much they hurt.
"Tats loads better." Fonzo got up and put himself into view of Tomoyo. He looked equally as frightening as the boss did.
"What are you?" Tomoyo's curiosity overcame her fear.
She stared at the hideous skin of the creatures; it was composed of sagging, wrinkled folds that were bumpy and scaly with a dry look like flakes of skin that were shedding, but not falling off. The arms and legs were human-like in attachment, but it still had the disgusting skin and thankfully the feet were hidden. The hands were equally scaly and flaky skin-wise and normally where there were fingernails, it looked like the meat of the top joint of each finger was cut off so they looked like the tips of the fingers of a skeleton's bony hand.
The face made Tomoyo's stomach churn and her face turn pale and she felt awfully cold. (She was really close to regurgitation.) There were tufts of hair that was fried and wild all over the head. There were scars and burn marks on the places where there was no hair. Then the mouth looked like it had the texture of metal zippers with scaly looking teeth that were black, bloody, and in need of serious orthodontist care. The nose was a wrinkled, scaly, ugly skinned nose that was a twisted shape (like a pumpkin vine), which made Tomoyo wonder how they could breath. The worst part of all was the eyes. The eyes had large scaled lids and slits where pupils should have been; the colors were red and white. White for the slit and bloody red for the rest of the eyeball. Underneath and above the eyes (where eyebrows should have been) were stitches that reminded Tomoyo of Frankenstein.
"Whot are ve! 'Tis a rude thang ta ask us missy! Now ve may not be lookers lac ya self, but yall dun gotta go givin' us ta look and queesteening whot vee are." There was a scratching and rustling sound as all of the creatures nodded their heads.
"I'm sorry, but you all don't look like normal human beings." Blurted Tomoyo, who was quick to apologize because she didn't want to cause them to be mad at her and give them a reason to get up close and personal. She also wished that she hadn't blurted out the part of how they didn't look like human beings. Good thing, they didn't get mad.
"Vell, if ya gonna be sooo nosie, me vill have te tell ya," said Fonzo. He tried to rearrange his folds of skins to sit more comfortably, but failed and he noticed the dislike on Tomoyo's face, so he stopped and began talking.
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"Oh Lord, we can't find the young mistress anywhere," moaned Rina as she sank into a chair in the kitchen. Everyone in the mansion had looked through every nook and cranny of the place and nothing was found.
"RINA! RINA!" Henry ran in a rather undignified way into the kitchen and his face was streaked with dirt and sweat.
"RINA!" Henry was still running hot and screaming at the top of his lungs.
"RI-" A cup of cold water was dumped over Henry's head, as he was about to scream Rina's name again.
"What is it you silly goose! I don't need to be deaf on top of the young mistress missing!"
"Thanks, I needed that," said Henry sheepishly. "Sorry Rina, but I think I found something relevant to helping find the mistress." Henry showed Rina the index finger part of his right hand's white glove.
"I was poking around the fence and I saw that two of the spear points were a little red, so I went and checked it out. The residue I found looked like paint at first but it seemed to dry differently then paint and it smells metallic like blood."
"Dear Lord and saints of above, you don't think mistress ran away and got injured do you?" Rina whispered as she stared at the smidgen of what looked like blood on the tip of the glove covering the index finger.
"I think it's so. I backtracked to her room and I found that her duffel bag is missing along with some of her clothes. I also saw that there were some bits of the bark of the tree outside her window missing and bruised. At the base of the tree are some fresh tracks. Also there was a slightly worn path that led straight to the fence and then I checked the cement outside but there was nothing there. I bet that if we go to the police, a hound of theirs could track mistress down easy." After Henry said all this, Rina had a confused and slightly relieved look on her face.
"There's only two questions, why would Tomoyo run away and where did the blood come from?" Rina sat there thinking that there was definitely more to this story then she and Henry knew.
"We should phone Mistress Daidouji and inform her now. It's better sooner than later, especially considering the circumstances. It' would be plain stupidity to hide this information. I'll go call her and you tell the rest of the house hold to cease searching and to stay away from that tree and fence." As Henry left and Rina followed, just outside the window was a pair of eyes with slits as pupils that flickered and melted into the darkness of the night.
To be continued...
