For warnings and disclaimers, see first chapter.
Installment Four
In Which Goku Finally Makes an Appearance
OR
Hopefully I Won't Hate This Chapter
Sanzo ground his teeth, more than a little annoyed. Searching for this boy was proving to be almost as fruitless as searching for the Seiten Taisei itself.
He had followed every meager lead given to him and come up with nothing. He had been to every major gang in the city, asking them to check their networks for the boy or anyplace where one could remain so well concealed for so long. He had been from one side of the city to the other nine times today and he hadn't found so much of a hint of this clever, elusive boy.
Sanzo sighed, telling himself that if he didn't find a respectable lead soon he'd have to assume that the last page of the file had been wrong; it had been talking about a different person, or that since the time of the writing the boy had either died or moved on to another city. It was ludicrous to think that none of his contacts could so much as give Sanzo evidence of the boy's existence. If tomorrow they still came up with nothing Sanzo would be forced to believe that the Squad had been wrong and the boy did not actually exist.
Sanzo's temple begin to twitch as he stepped out of the subway, not looking forward to the conversation he'd have with his boss if that turned out to be the case. He walked a few paces towards the stairs that led up to the sidewalk and froze.
There.
At the drinking fountain.
Sanzo's mind raced. The face was older then the one in the photograph, but nearly ten years had passed since the time it had been taken. The hair was longer then in the description from the diary, but time had passed since then too. There was something else very different about the boy, something that Sanzo couldn't quite place, but he put it down to the torn clothes and dirt-smudged face.
Deciding that this chance was too good to pass up, Sanzo quickly walked over to the boy.
"Hey, kid," Sanzo murmured quietly, trying to attract as little attention as possible, gently tapping the kid on the shoulder. The boy jumped and turned to face him, a strange wildness in his eyes. Some water had spilled out of the boy's mouth as he drank, and it was now cutting a muddy line down his chin.
Sanzo was silent a moment, deciding what to do with the kid. "Hey, kid," he repeated again. "You hungry?"
The mantra was telling him to run, so what choice did he have? If he had had a choice in the matter he probably would've stopped to rest, found something to eat or something to drink, but he didn't have a choice. He had been running for a long, long time, and by now he didn't even know why he was running. The boy suddenly found himself in a busy area. Although people never noticed him, even when he ran right past them, he hated crowds all the same. He didn't exactly know what he was going to do when he reached the even busier upper-class urban streets, but his body decided the matter for him, like it almost always did. Before he had any say in the matter he catapulted himself down into a subway stop. Vaguely he remembered having been here before, but that had been many years earlier, when the mantra had only just started. His mind wasn't much interested in things like memory anyway, so it quickly dismissed the thought.
After jumping almost the entire flight of stairs it took him a moment to get reoriented, and when he had managed to get his balance back he was horrified to find that the throng he had just escaped from was nothing compared to this. The instinctual part of his mind briefly shut down, not able to cope with all the human activity surrounding it, leaving Son Goku in his right mind for the first time in several years.
The first thing that hit him was the hunger. It hit like a tidal wave, leaving only rubble and ruin in its wake. He doubled over from the pain, clutching his stomach, wondering how no one could notice him when he was making such a scene.
The second thing he noticed didn't come as suddenly, but when the full force finally overtook him it was just as painful. Maybe more so. Worse than the hunger was the thirst.
However, the thirst he could do something about, Goku realized suddenly, watching a woman take a quick sip of water before rushing off to catch her train. Every fiber of his body screamed for him to leave now, to start running and not stop until he had left all the people far, far behind. But it was his mind that was in control now, not his body, so he carefully made his way through the crowd of people to the other side of the station.
Goku's hand shook slightly as he reached for the knob, from hunger and thirst and the murmurings of an unknown fear in the back of his mind. But the first sip of water was pure heaven.
Those who say that water has no taste are obviously taking it for granted, Goku thought to himself as he drank his fill of the cold, clear liquid. Water tastes like water, he concluded, the corners of his mouth turning up slightly like he wanted to smile but couldn't quite remember how.
A quick tap on the shoulder was all it took to wrest his other mind from its brief holiday. Goku quickly jerked around, mind racing, wondering what to do, but on another level, a deeper level, he was surprisingly calm.
Goku looked up into a pair of surprisingly purple eyes. It had been a long time since Goku had met anyone's eyes, an even longer time since he had met anyone's eyes without both of them flinching.
But this strange man didn't flinch.
And neither did Goku.
What the FCK? Sanzo thought to himself, his temple twitching slightly as he led the boy towards his car. That had been too easy. Far, far too easy. The kid hadn't put up any sort of fuss. Wasn't he ever taught not to get into a car with strangers? Sanzo thought exasperatedly, his hand inching towards his gun, just from the satisfaction of putting a few holes in the nearest wall. And not only that, but no one had even noticed him leading the kid away. He had expected at least one person to shout something like 'Kidnapper!' or 'Sicko!', but no one seemed to notice the tramp at all.
Sanzo shook his head to himself as he slammed the drivers' side door of the jeep, and waited for a moment while the boy easily swung himself into the passenger seat. He had to suppress a shiver. Well, that's one thing, he thought to himself. It's not every day that you meet someone who makes absolutely no noise when they move.
Sanzo lit a cigarette and glanced over at the boy. He made rather a pathetic figure, knees drawn up to his chest, head resting on his knees, trailing one dirty hand across the window. For a moment Sanzo contemplated Hakkai's reaction when he saw all the muddy fingerprints over the car window, then realized that he was neglecting the road, and forced his eyes and mind back to the front.
But his eyes and mind seemed to be paying him no heed. He kept on finding himself watching the boy, and no matter how stern the lecture he gave himself was, a moment later he would find the same thing happening again.
He sighed and turned into the lane that would take him to the (current) Headquarters of this branch of Rosemont, but after another few seconds, reversed his decision and got back into the left-turn only lane instead.
"I want to run a check on him before I bring him in," Sanzo muttered quietly to himself, too quietly to be heard, but the boy cocked his head up, as if he had heard. Sanzo shook his head at the strange gesture, the strangeness of this boy once again looming over him.
Sanzo pulled into the garage and still wordlessly, the boy hopped out. Sanzo found him waiting patiently at the door from the garage into the main entrance. He had to stop twice and look around on the stairs to make sure the boy was still following him. Having someone completely silent trailing you is a rather odd experience. He held the door open for the boy, and the boy entered, automatically reaching for the light switch. His hand scrabbled momentarily, getting muddy handprints on the walls, but eventually his fingers found the switch and flipped it on.
He's obviously lived in a place with electricity before at least, Sanzo thought to himself. I was beginning to wonder.
He passed the boy, who was standing uncertainly in the middle of the immaculately clean room and entered the kitchen.
"If you want to take a shower the bath room is down the hall," Sanzo called to the boy, still standing in the middle of the room with a puzzled expression on his face. He pulled out a large pot and swore under his breath when he almost set it atop Hakkai's forgotten history book.
"You should at least wash your hands before you eat," Sanzo said, looking the boy in the eye and then promptly looking away again. There was something about him that made your eye want to skitter across him. It was an effort to stare at him for too long.
Sanzo sighed and turned away, realizing that the boy probably wasn't going to move. He quickly brought the water to a boil, and threw in the ramen (one of the few dishes Sanzo actually knew how to make). He also threw in a few vegetables just for good measure, wondering weather the kid would actually eat them.
As Sanzo poured the soup into a bowl and placed it on the table the boy walked past him, washed his hands, and sat down in front of the bowl, briefly bowing over it. A second later he was stuffing his face as if he hadn't had a proper meal in a year.
He might not have, at that, Sanzo thought to himself, turning to stare out the window. Who knows what the kid has been up to.
He looked back in time to see the boy tilting the bowl up towards his face, making sure to get every last drop of the broth. Sanzo was about to stand up and get more for the boy when he stopped. The broth and the vegetables were gone, but the noodles remained in the bowl, lying in a sodden heap at the bottom. He raised an eyebrow at the boy, who caught his gaze only for a moment before looking away, over Sanzo's shoulder at the kitchen counter.
Movement caught his eye and he looked down at the table, to see the boy's fingers moving in a strange, deft pattern. Sanzo frowned, eyes following as a double triangle pattern was shaped, then began and shaped again. It took him a moment to recognize the Star of David.
"It's against your religion to eat noodles?" Sanzo askedskeptically, one eyebrow raised. The boy almost imperceptibly shook his head, but continued tracing the pattern, his gaze occasionally flickering from the all-engrossing counter-top back to Sanzo and then back again.
Sanzo watched him for another moment before shaking his head and standing up, deciding that the boy must be slightly touched in the head. His gaze landed on the still-open history book, and a small chill ran up his spine. The book was open to a page on World War Two, the pictures featuring either Hitler or members of concentration camps. He turned back to the boy, who was still tracing that same, meaningful pattern.
"Don't tell me," Sanzo whispered, too quietly to be heard. "Not post-war." The boy made no sign that he had somehow managed to hear Sanzo, even with the impossibly quiet voice, except to stop tracing the pattern and sit back in his chair. Sanzo turned and walked down the hallway, one hand massaging his temple, now more confused then ever.
"Just who is this kid," Sanzo whispered to himself as he shut the door to his room, grabbing a pack of cigarettes. He stared out the window for some time, contemplating, occasionally raking a hand through his hair.
(A/N: After WWII all the people in concentration camps were very happy, so they had very big parties and celebrations, where much food and drink was served. However, they had been starving for several years. This meant that their bodies were on starvation mode, taking ALL nutrients from foods instead of, say, thirty-fifty percent which is normal. Once all the fatty food entered their system, they were still on starvation mode, so one hundred percent of the nutrients were taken from the fatty foods. Their hearts couldn't deal with so much fat, so they had heart attacks. Thousands died. This is a true story, and also what I was referring to at the end of this chapter. . Sweet dreams!)
Sorry, y'all, the next update might take a little while... you see, the first four chapters I finished weeks ago, and I'm just now posting, but the next update I'm still in the process of writing. I'll try to get it out by the end of this week, at the latest.
Special thanks to:
Vivid Mirage: Thanks so much for reviewing! I'm sorry I haven't posted any thing before now...
Timberwolf220: Yay! Thank you! I hope that the plot stays fairly good as well!
Vivid Mirage: Actually... I never thought about it. I need to go back and re-read that chapter now andsee what you're referring to...
Vivid Mirage (again . Yay!): Thanks so much for reviewing each of my chapters.It makes me feel all happy and fuzzy. I wastrying to make the characters seem a little bit out there, I'm glad you picked it up. I'm also glad that you don't hate the story because of that, I was worried thatmany people wouldn't like my portrayal.