A/N: Sorry about that little blip at the end of Chapter 1. I still need the water spirits name, though, and multiple dustbunny names.
And the reason all the paragraphs seem to flow into each other with the time changes was edited by FanFiction, not me.
Disclaimer: I do not own any of Miyazaki's characters. Or Finding Nemo. Or Titanic.
I HAVE no reviews, so I can't RESPOND to any. (This means you people!)
Of course, maybe I'm being a bit unfair, since Chapter 1 has only been up for about 24 hours.
Chapter 2: Into A Gold Sunrise
That night, Koi lay awake. Is this just some wonderful dream, or is this all real? If it was a dream, there was no harm done. If it wasn't…Mom will be searching all over for us. I wonder what will happen to all the adults who come searching. Will the bathhouse become filled with the entire local police force? Where is Mom now? What is she thinking about-
A flying ball of soot landed squarely on her mouth, causing her to sit up, and cough loudly. Glancing down at it, she realized it was a dustbunny. "What are you doing here?" she asked it, taking as reasonable a tone as can be used by an insomniac with a faceful of soot.
"What is it, Koi?" Iku rolled over and raised an eyebrow at her sister.
She immediately threw her blanket over the dustbunny, and said, "Nothing! Nothing, really."
"You know, Koi, whenever you take that tone of voice I know that your…"
Iku's voice trailed off as she fell asleep again.
Now it was Koi's turn to raise an eyebrow. She flicked her blanket off the dustbunny. It squeaked at her and held up a sooty candy star.
"For me?" she asked.
It squeaked again and made a nodding motion. Koi took the star and smiled at it. "Thank you. Is there any other reason that you wanted to come here?"
It squeaked, yet again.
"I'm sorry, but I don't understand what you're trying to say. You have a very limited vocabulary. Either that, or I just don't understand squeak."
Apparently giving up, it spun around, and beckoned into one of the shadows in her room. Two more dustbunnies scampered over to join the first one, carrying between them a message.
Koi took it, and opened it.
Dear Koi, it read.
Hello. I am that spirit that you so politely insulted on the bridge yesterday. I have a question for you. You may have heard from Lin about Chihiro. If I know her, she isn't able to keep her mouth shut about anything. If not, ask her. My question is: would you be willing to go out into the human world for a day, and bring Chihiro back to here? You will have to give her this; it will make her remember what occurred in this world, which she has forgotten. It has been six long years, she may have forgotten just by natural causes anyway. Please meet me.
Kohaku River
Koi looked up, but the dustbunnies had fled, leaving her with the note she held.
She looked down at the thing that had fallen out of the note, a little paper card. "Chihiro." she whispered. "Chihiro." also in her palm was a little yellow candy star, slightly smudged with soot and melted a little from the heat of her hand.
"If you were given a choice of whether or not you wanted to go home ever again, would you?" Fumi glanced up from the dish she was drying.
Iku pushed a piece of hair behind her ear with a soapy hand, and continued washing, keeping her eyes averted from Fumi's. "I-I would." she admitted to the sponge.
"Really? You would leave here just to go back to the real world, where nothing ever happens? You would actually leave?"
"My mum is missing me right now." Iku shoved a cup at Fumi.
She fielded it. "Actually, no. When you ate the food from the spirit world, you ceased to be in the human world. Currently, your mother is living like you never existed. if you return home, you will be sent back in time to the instant where you crossed the river, and you will lose all your memories of this place. They'll still be there, of course, but they'll be hidden, something lingering in the back of your mind, almost forgotten, but almost remembered."
"What do you know about it?" Iku spun around. "You're a spirit, aren't you?"
"No. I'm a human. But I've lived here for so long I like to think that I am."
"How long have you been here?"
"Oh, a hundred years, give or take a few months." Fumi took the dripping dish out of Iku's hands and dried it briskly. "I've seen many people come and go, but none ever stayed. I suppose everyone had a busy life to get back to, and couldn't live like this." she shrugged, and replaced the dishcloth on it's hanger, and went to get another pile of dirty dishes."
"Why are you here?" Koi scrubbed her bath vigorously, but kept her eyes on the cat sitting on the rim serenely. "Surely you can't have come here for the baths."
"No, you're quite right." Tantou nodded vigorously. "Baths…Brrrr. No, I'm here to see what comes out of Haku there bringing Chihiro back to the spirit world."
"You know?"
"Of course I know! All cats are fortune tellers, and if I'm the cat spirit, I should be the best of them all." Tantou purred benignly, and squinted at Koi.
"I would think the cats would choose someone more…well, imposing."
The diminutive cat stood up at her full 9 inch height. "I am very imposing!"
"Sure, if the radish spirit could actually see you, he'd be very scared."
"I take offense at that!" Tantou's gray-and-amber fur stood straight out. "If I was big enough, I'd use my awesome telepathic powers to knock you over, you miserable ten-year-old!"
"I'm thirteen."
"You are! I would have sworn you were ten."
Another dustbunny came into the room and tracked soot across the floor of the baths and the mirror-bright surface of the bath itself.
"Ah! Back you beast!" Koi attempted to defend herself from its onslaught of soot, but to no avail. Soon the front of her uniform had soot spots on it.
"You really had to do that, didn't you?" she asked it. It hung it's head for a second, then handed her a scrap of paper. On it, nearly illegible in the soot, was written two words. Rose Garden. (Is there even a rose garden in the movie? I highly doubt it, but I guess I'll have to just put it in.)
The dustbunny bounced out cheerfully, avoiding Tantou's pounce easily.
Koi quickly scrubbed off the soot marks and dumped out the scrubbing water.
"I hope you know that this is an unauthorized break you're having." Tantou slid down into the center of the bath.
"I do. But what are they going to do if they catch me? Fire me?" Koi smirked at the little kitten, who glared back.
"Well, I'm coming with you." Tantou marched out the door. Koi let her lead her to the rose garden.
"I've been waiting." Haku said simply.
Koi turned a bright red. "Well, if you wanted me to come faster, you wouldn't have sent a dustbunny to get me."
"You're still covered in soot." he said critically.
"I know." Koi narrowed her eyes.
Haku raised his hands defensively. "I didn't do anything."
"So why did you want to meet her? This is an unauthorized break time, I hope you know." Haku looked down at Tantou, who stood in front of Koi.
"Tantou!" Koi hissed down at the cat. "You said you wouldn't say anything!"
"If you have ever known cats, you will notice they never keep their moths shut." Haku looked pointedly at Tantou.
"You're very observant." Tantou said warmly. She looked up at Koi. "See, this-"
Koi picked up the little cat and covered her mouth. "So why did you ask to meet me here?"
"Oh, you got my message last night?"
"Of course. This morning would be a better term, as I got it about 4 a.m."
"Sorry about that. But I have a plan…"
The next day, Iku was put on bath-washing duty. However, instead of simply having to scrub out one of the ordinary baths, she was ordered to scrub out the largest one in the entire bathhouse.
"I don't get it." she groaned to Fumi, who had also been relegated to the unsavory work duty, "Am I being punished for something? Did I do something wrong in a previous life?"
"Apparently." Fumi tied up her sleeves to her elbows. "I am never going to get over this. I hate being covered in sludge."
"I wonder why." Iku scrubbed for another second, then sat with a muffled squelch in the sludge. "I can't take this anymore! Really!" she thwacked her head against the side of the bath and received a large green splotch on her forehead.
"Having issues there?" Fumi sat down sympathetically in the slime. "I know, it must be hard."
"It's not that, it's that I just can't scrub anymore! I've been up to my elbows in soapsuds for the past two days, and now I have to scrub out a slimy green tub that some sort of spirit used."
"Hey Mr. Grumpy-gills-"
"No, not now, Koi." Iku hit her forehead against the sludge on the side of the bath again.
"When life gets you down, ya know what you do?" Koi grinned at her sister.
"What?" Fumi, apparently very confused, asked her.
"Nooooo…" Iku groaned, muffled by the slime.
"Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, what do we do we swim, swim…" Koi did a little dance on the edge of the bath, and slipped inside. "Need some help? 'Cause I'm free."
"Why would you want to help with this?" Iku motioned around her at the huge, slimy bath.
"So I can annoy you, why else?" Koi plucked a scrubbing brush out of her sister's hand. "Phew! This bath must have been used by the king of all algae spirits."
"Actually it was a stink spirit."
Iku raised her head. "A stink spirit?" she tried to wipe off some of the sludge on her hands.
"Yeah. They don't come here all that often." Fumi rubbed the side of the bath. "Usually they're something underneath all that gross stuff, but this one was a stink spirit through and through."
Koi's eyes widened. "So how did you get it clean?"
"We didn't. We gave it some perfume, scrubbed at it a little, rinsed it off a little, and asked it to come back later. Sometime in the next century preferably."
"I hate this." Iku and Fumi stumbled up the stairs, led by a sprightly Koi.
"Don't be mad! Look at all the stars outside…There aren't nearly that many in the city…And the ocean…"
"It is incredible, isn't it?" Fumi smiled fondly at the light of the train, shining under the water.
"Where does it come from?" Koi looked at it. "Where do the spirits live?"
"I don't know. Someday, I want to get on that train, and go somewhere…to the horizon, into a gold sunrise."
Both of the humans sighed, and rested their chins in their hands.
"Hey, you know where the view would be really good?" Koi said suddenly. "Up on the roof."
Iku looked up…and up…and… "No way, Koi. Absolutely not."
"Why not, Iku? It's only a few stories above us."
"Over my dead body will you go on the roof."
"Come on. There's the ocean!" Koi looked over the rim of the railing on the balcony. "People pay to go cliff diving, even if this is really just a building.
"I know, I know…"
"Plus, Mum had us take those rock-climbing lessons. You don't want them all to go to waste, do you?"
"But-" Iku tried to protest but was cut off by Koi standing on the railing. She grabbed at the window above her, and pulled herself up on the window ledge.
"I can't watch!" Iku covered her eyes.
When Koi finally managed to pull herself up onto the roof, she leaned over the edge and waved at her sister and Fumi. "Come on up! It's not that hard, and the view is great!"
"I hope you know you just took ten years off of my life." Iku looked at her hair as if she expected it to be white.
"Yup, but look at the stars!" Koi lay on her back and stared up at them.
"LOOK AT THE STARS!LOOK AT THE STARS!"
"Relax, Iku, or you'll blow a head gasket." Koi waved one hand limply at her sister.
Iku sat with a bump on the roof.
"She's scared of heights." Koi told Fumi, who was pulling herself up on top of the roof. Suddenly she gasped. A wicked smile lit up her face. "There's something I've always wanted to do…and I think now is probably one of the only times that I'll ever be able to."
"Oh, jeez." Iku muttered.
Koi stood up, flung her arms out and yelled, at the top of her lungs, "I'm the king of the worllllllllllllllllllllld!"
As she yelled 'world' her foot slipped. She slid down off the edge of the roof, with Iku flinging herself at her ankles, and Fumi latching on to Iku's arm. All three girls teetered on the edge for a moment, then fell of the edge.
Yubaba, who was poking up her fire in her study, heard a distant 'aaaaaaah!' She opened up her window, looked out…and nearly got her nose clipped off by a trio of banshees hurtling through the air. She had just enough time to recognize Koi when they flew past her.
Splash! All three hit the water, being driven down, down, down, by the force of their landing. Koi saw the bottom rushing up to meet her, reached out, and just missed it as she started floating back up again.
Fumi broke the surface first, coughing and treading water. Iku followed, pulling Koi up by the neck of her shirt.
"That was fun!" Koi exclaimed, as soon as her mouth broke the water.
"That was not fun!" Iku answered her, and started swimming back in towards land.
Yubaba paced the hallway of the building, her arms crossed, her black shoes tapping a staccato rhythm on the lacquered floor. "Where is she? Where is that…Koi?"
Haku came hurrying up to her. "Is there anything you want, Yubaba?"
"Yes, I want to know where that girl Koi is!" Yubaba glared at him as if it was his fault she couldn't find her.
Behind her back, Haku say the very girl in question, dressed in her human clothes, walking down the hall.
"She's not with Lin?" Haku asked distractedly. Koi had a long stick…she was rolling something…
A/N: Not much of a cliffie again. But hey, what more do you expect from something like this? People don't like fluff. Hmmm. Must-write-something-serious-
I will not post Chapter 3 until I get at least one review. One review! Isn't that few enough people?
Foxglove