IF YOU HAVE EVER READ GUIDING THE FALLEN ANGELS BEFORE, READ BELOW!
Hello! I have rewritten this story. (And you all probably thought I had taken summer off.)
So please, readit again. doesn't alert anybody if I reload a chapter and I didn't want to lose my precious reviews so I just did it in secret.
I am getting my two stories caught up with each other so that it will be easier to maintain them both.
This is an Alternate Universe featuring a plethora of darker themes. For example, this story just got a rating boost. It is a pretty dark one so I don't want to hear anyone's shit about it being OOC. If you don't like mature themes or characters doing stuff that they normally wouldn't, rot in bloody hell and leave me be.
One flame messed me up last time. It only took one, of course they ended up being right… but it was the delivery that did me in. I know I am not the best author, but this story deserves better. So I am reposting the chapters with a full reworking and character design.
I have a feeling that some people are going to hunt me down and kill me for not alerting anyone that this story just went into major reconstruction. You know you you are and I am locking my doors at night.
I tend to rewrite stories like clockwork. Sorry bout that.
IF YOU HAVE EVER READ GUIDING THE FALLEN ANGELS BEFORE, READ ABOVE!
Prologue
Guiding the Fallen Angels
He knew it was going to be a bad day the second he opened the mailbox… a real bad day, like winning the lottery and losing the ticket kind of bad day.
Soun held the tattered postcard with numb depression. There was a cute little panda on the front of the card eating bamboo.
"I hate fucking pandas. Especially pandas that probably get fed more that I do…"
Soun's tears spilled on the cheap ink. The blackness smeared and dripped on the stained floor.
"He's coming. I was really hoping he would forget," Soun Tendo mumbled to himself almost incoherently as heavy rain beat down on the massive residential estate.
"Christ Genma. When did I fail?" Soun's form dropped to the busted bed. His slightly oily hair spiraled on the musty sheets like a crispy rotten halo.
Springs and boards popped under his weight on the mattress. His mood only further elevated itself when a leak sprang from the roof and as if calculated, fell right on to his head.
But anyone in the room probably couldn't tell the difference between the water from outside or the tears that burned from within.
She was a hummer. She was a singer too… but mostly a hummer.
Whenever she felt sad or down her mother's favorite song rang from her lips.
Rain crashed down from the sky and created a rumble in the house that sounded, in her opinion, like what "the inside of a monster must sound like."
So, in essence, it was a noise that could never be replicated.
She glanced around their once beautiful home. How had their empire fallen?
Kasumi looked around their estate and felt her insides whither at the sights before her.
Her own cooking equipment was heavily mangled.
She, as the housekeeper, did her best to keep their house together but dust found ways in and everything could not stay fixed at the same time.
She threw the dishrag she had been holding into the sink and her silent cry screeched in her own ears, if no one else's.
Wrinkles stretched across her delicate features as her hands covered her ears. Kasumi Tendo, the quietest of the three, screamed.
Once again the house trembled.
"I am tired of going to the market only to buy scraps of a meal! I am bloody sick of the whole mess!" Pots and pans were tossed with frail strength against the walls, against each other.
Finally settling her eyes upon her purse, the eldest daughter of long deceased Kimiko Tendo found what she was looking for… her "happy" pills.
In moments she was back in front of the sink. After picking up the once-discarded wash cloth she knew that things were going to be alright.
"After all, sister is looking out for us. We are going to be ok."
The humming ensued once again. It was sometimes even coupled with what the inside of a monster must sound like.
Tick. Tap. Tickity tickity tap. Tap.
"God damn it all."
Certain "ticks" and "tacks" would often go on for hours in the room of the middle daughter of Kimiko Tendo.
They would often get faster and faster before stopping completely. Followed closely by obscenities a sailor would be proud to hear… much less be responsible for.
Nabiki Tendo was re-adding tax statements and other bills together, hoping that her precise fingers had found an error the other times she had checked.
Once again the tapping and ticking stopped and an obscenity was spat out towards the "evil-bastard" calculator.
She sighed and leaned into her makeshift chair. Her family was in deep, deep shit.
The kind of shit that could easily get one of them killed… if the right amount of yen was not found in time.
Unlike other members of her family she knew why her troubles were around them- suffocating them.
It was entirely their mother's fault. A fact which only served to make her angrier that she wasn't here to help them float above the water.
Her head fell into her right hand and her eyes stared out the window into the thunderstorm. Their next bill was due tomorrow morning and if Akane could not deliver, they were well, "royally fucking fubared."
She glanced at the clock on the bed stand. She had the feeling where it was important that time moved faster AND slower all at the same time.
It was only twenty minutes to nine. 'Akane won't be home for hours...'
Soon after Nabiki heard the ritual Kasumi panic session. She listened as the pots and pans slammed into one another. She even heard her sister break down crying.
She hoped their father heard it too. "It serves him right… the greedy bastard."
The crash of the rain against the roof always calmed Nabiki.
She liked to think that it meant her mom's corpse rotted faster in its wooden tomb.
She realized tonight that she had gotten used to second hand smoke.
Her shift was just beginning and her adrenaline began to rush and smother her.
She left her things sitting on the bench in one of the backrooms. She cracked her neck side to side and did a quick stretch. Her perfectly straight blue hair touched the arch in her back as she moved towards backstage towards the front.
She hated her job for what it was- forcing her to give in to the extreme lapse of time.
The rhythm from the massive speakers began to tickle her ears and a bass "boom" began thrumming itself up though her feet and into her legs and hips.
Was it sad that she recognized the song simply by the way its rumble made her body move?
The music devoured her senses and it was as if Akane Tendo was blinded by music. She was almost to the stage now.
It sometimes astonished her how quickly every moral fiber left her. From her dressing room to backstage she was a completely different person.
The music got her every time.
Of course, it often did to that to all of them, and THAT was what was able to draw that inner cat out of them.
All the strippers referred to their personality shift as the "cat" coming out of them.
Akane was almost there now… to her timeslot.
She pulled the curtain back and the plethora of colors bombarded her senses from the track lighting.
It was now when Akane would recede to the back of her thoughts… because Spitfire reigned over this club and everyone there knew it.
Akane parked her crusty yellow motorcycle next to the dojo somewhere around three or four in the morning.
It rained the entire way back to Nerima.
She took a quick bath in the furo, cursing at the layer of makeup on her skin she could not remove for the life of her.
She pulled her perfectly straight blue hair into a high bun. She flipped the ends and checked them in the mirror.
Few weeks back she died them blood red and was pleasantly surprised the dye had not faded.
She opened her sisters' doors, to make sure they were safe. She left the money she earned that night in a bag on Nabiki's desk. Her sister was sound asleep on the futon and it never ceased to amaze Akane how beautiful she was.
She pulled Nabiki's hair back and kissed her on the forehead before going back to her own room and crawling under the covers.
It was late, so she fell asleep fast, but she did get off a prayer before the great god of sleep came to get her.
Despite the weather the stars did shine that night. Bright and brilliant and glistening… oh, did they shine.
In fact, one boy not too far away could not help but marvel to himself just how beautiful they were.
Prologue
Complete
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