A/N: This is going to be a longer chapter than Chapter 3. I only stopped that one so short is because it's so hot here I have writers block.
Disclaimer: I do not own any of Miyazaki's characters or the song "Karma" by Alicia Keys.
Chapter 4: An Angry Polar Bear with Rabies Would Be Nicer Than Her!
"So you got out safely from the old witch?" Iku had been placed back on the dishwashing squad, with her sister as a drier.
"Yep." Koi shrugged. "All she wanted to do was make me feel grateful. I gave her a piece of watermelon instead."
"Sis, if you live to be 21, I will personally pay you a hundred dollars." Iku scrubbed at the porcelain cup she was holding.
"Yeah, but when I'm 21 I won't need $100. But you can pay me now!"
"What would you do with it?" Iku motioned around her at the kitchen. "Buy something? There's nothing to buy!"
"Good point. I would get on the train and ride it until I could spend it somewhere." Koi waved her dishrag in the air, then applied it to a cup Iku passed her. "There has to be somewhere that has a gift shop…Chihiro! What are you doing here?"
"That's a nice, warm welcome. I was just wandering around. This place hasn't changed at all. The spirits are the same, the people are the same, even the radish spirit is still here. I was just thinking…I'm going to see Zeniba and No-Face, and I was wondering if you'd like to come with me, Koi, you and…" her voice trailed off politely.
"Ah, yes. Chihiro, this is Iku, Iku, Chihiro. Good, the intros are done. Glad to get that off my chest."
Both of the older girls regarded Koi with mild amusement.
"Yes, well, either of you wants to go see Zeniba?"
"Of course." Koi nodded vigorously. "Who's Zeniba?"
"She's Yubaba's identical twin…but nicer."
"That's given! An angry polar bear with rabies would be nicer than her." Koi snapped, and cracked her dishcloth in the air.
Iku laughed, and immediately muffled it, so it came out sounding somewhat like a strangled snort. "She doesn't like Yubaba."
"I wouldn't have noticed." (I know this isn't a very Chihiro-like comment, but I had to put it in. What would you say in this case?)
The train squeaked to a halt. Chihiro climbed out, and stopped to look around. Koi nearly squished her by scrambling over her. Completing this group was Iku, Fumi, Haku, and a very irritable Tantou.
"But you don't get it!" she was grumbling. "A No-Face is a very powerful spirit! It eats people! And cats! And this witch is-"
"Tantou, I'm sure if anything comes up, you'll be able to handle it. Right?" Iku picked up the little grumbling animal and held her close. Tantou had told horror stories about incidents with No-Faces the entire train ride, spoiling it for all the people except Fumi, who had stared out the window with rapt attention the entire duration of their ride. When the train had stopped, she hadn't wanted to get off, sitting in her seat until Koi dragged her down off the train.
"Chihiro?" an old woman who looked exactly like Yubaba opened the door to the small cottage and peered out.
"Zeniba!" Chihiro cried out and ran to hug her.
"Chihiro, you've grown so much!" Zeniba smiled at her. "How old are you now?"
"Sixteen." Chihiro smiled again, this time somewhat bittersweetly.
"Six years, has it really been that long?" Zeniba asked, then flicked her gaze towards the rest of the huddled group.
"Oh, Zeniba, these are Koi, Iku, and Fumi. Haku you know."
"Well it's certainly lovely to meet you all. Care to come in for tea?" Zeniba's gaze took in all the people standing in her courtyard. Koi shrank under her gaze; it felt like being scrubbed with steel wool.
"A-hem!" Tantou, still held by Iku, cleared her small feline throat.
"And this is Tantou." Chihiro motioned to the little animal. "She's a cat spirit."
"Is there any reason why nobody's talking?" Koi whispered across the table, and everyone sat and sipped their cups of tea.
"Not for me." Zeniba sipped her tea. "I'm just wondering why you are carrying one of Kamaji's servants with you."
"I am?" Koi's eyebrows shot up.
"Yes. You can come out now, little one." Zeniba tapped on the table imperiously.
A dustbunny hopped out of Koi's sleeve. It looked around at all the people assembled, and climbed up on the handle of it's carrier's teacup.
"What are you doing here?" she asked it. In reply, it made a tiny shrugging motion, waving its top two legs in the air like an oversized spider.
"You just came along for the ride?" Iku asked it, holding tight to Tantou's tail, lest the cat spirit lunge at the dustbunny.
It nodded, and dipped a leg into Koi's tea.
"And the tea?" Koi winced at the little specks of soot now floating in her cup. "Do you want some tea?"
It nodded again, and looked into the cup of tea on the table again. Holding up it's top two legs exactly as if it was holding it's nose, it jumped in backwards.
At the little plunk it made, Koi flicked her eyes to the sky. Turning them back to the sooty tea, now with a dustbunny floating happily in the cup, she asked Zeniba, "Can I have some more tea?"
No-Face stood up and poured more tea for Koi. Carrying it over to the table he removed the cup with the dustbunny in it to the center of the table.
"Thanks, No-Face." Koi took a sip of her new tea.
"Chihiro, how long are you staying in the spirit world?" Zeniba suddenly put her cup down. Her voice was gentle, but her eyes were not.
"I'm-I-" Chihiro looked at Haku, who just glanced at her sadly. "I…Only a few more days."
The room fell silent again, except for the splashes of the dustbunny in the tea.
Iku suddenly put her teacup down into her saucer so hard it cracked. She hooked her arms through Fumi and Koi's and dragging them out of the room.
"What are we doing out here, Iku?" Koi asked, as she dragged the two of them along the courtyard.
"I don't know if you're thinking what I'm thinking, but this is one of those opportunities that shouldn't be missed. What we need to do, is find some way to help Haku able to stay with Chihiro for a long long time. For…"
"For forever?" Fumi sighed. "Oh, I just love romances."
"Anyway, it goes like this, Haku did something nice for me and Koi-"
"Koi and me." Koi put into the conversation.
"Or maybe just me, but I think we should do something nice for him, you know. What goes around comes around."
"What goes up must fall down, now who's cryin', desirin', to come back to… Yeah." Koi completed the chorus with a little dancing.
"Right…" Fumi raised her eyebrows at Koi, who finished her dance and turned on her heel to face her sister again.
"You know what would be cool? If we found some way that Haku would be free of Yubaba, and he could go to the human world and live happily ever after!"
"Yeah! And you know how we could do it? We could get the dustbunnies to revolt, storm the old git's office, and find his contract! Take the antipathic hag down a notch or two, too."
"Are you serious?" Iku stared at her sister with disbelief.
"I mean 'too' as in 'also' not 'tu' as in a little pink thing a ballerina wears." Koi nodded happily. "Yup."
"Are you a liar?" Iku posed this question next.
"Nope." Koi shook her head, again.
"Are you insane?" Fumi asked a question of her own, her eyebrows lost somewhere in her bangs.
"Uh-huh. No, wait! I mean no!"
"So it all comes out now." Iku sighed, and sat on the flagstones of the atrium. "And how are you going to get all these dustbunnies to mutiny?"
"That's the easy part. They're intelligent beings. All you have to do is ask them nicely and give them some food, or tea, afterwards."
"Is that so." the way Iku expressed it was more of a comment than a question.
"They're cool little things, once you get to know them. What's that shadow over there?"
Iku and Fumi both spun around and stared into the face of the No-Face. Or the mask, rather.
"Aaaaah. Aaaaaah." it held out something in its hands, which were dripping with an unidentifiable liquid. It opened its hands, and Koi screamed.
Yubaba sat in her study and fumed. "I don't get it! How could something like this happen? Why do these things happen?"
The heads bouncing around her made faint noises of agreement.
"First I simply take a human into my bathhouse…my well run bathhouse, I might add, and then it starts wreaking havoc on it. really this is just too much! I knew that Koiso girl would be trouble, but there's absolutely no reason at all why she should be so disagreeable!"
A baby's cry erupted in the relative silence of the study, sounding like a fire siren on a still afternoon that goes off right behind you when you're sitting outside in the grass and thinking how good life is, and makes you think the world is ending and your house is on fire.
"I'm coming Bou!" she cried, jumping up hurriedly and running into the next room. Flinging open the door to the next room, she looked around. The wailing was coming from a corner piled high with things.
"Bou!" she wailed, shoving aside pillows and boxes and broken toys, and uncovering a baby in proportion to the wailing. "Bou! Speak to me! Is anything broken? Can you hear me? Are…you…choking?" she asked in proper pre-Heimlich fashion.
"Bou held up a single sootball, a dustbunny squished in his fist.
"Ah!" Yubaba sounded as if she was dying, but in reality was just gasping at the sight of a broad streak of black soot across the characters across the front of his red suit.
She pulled the gasping dustbunny out of her colossal son's grasp and busily gave it CPR. After she put the little creature down, she pulled a silk unicorn out of the pile of toys and wiped the soot off of Bou with the tail. "I really must ask Kamaji to get his…little helpers under control."
"Zeniba, six years ago I came here, and I've forgotten nearly everything. My parents are worried about me. I don't know what I'm doing her. Is it a dream? A nightmare? Am I dead?" Chihiro fiddled with her teacup.
"No, you are not dead. You are not dreaming. You are here, in the spirit world. In the human world, it is as if you never existed." Zeniba took a sip of her tea.
"In other words, while I'm here, nobody knows I exist?"
"Yes, Chihiro." Zeniba put her cup down. The No-Face left the house, going outside to the courtyard.
"But then…I could stay here for as long as I want! I could stay here for years, if I wanted to!"
"No, Chihiro." Haku said sadly. He had not had any tea; it was stone cold in his glass. "The door swings both ways. You would just become more and more of a spirit. You would forget your name, and the real world. Soon the world you had lived in before would just seem like a dream, like how the spirit world was to you before you returned. That girl you invited, Fumi, is one of those who stayed, not one of those who left. If you ask her what her real name is, she won't remember it. All she would say is, 'this is my real name.' When you were Sen, could you remember yours?"
A/N: Due to an unfortunate case of writers block, I am going to leave this story alone for…a week maybe? So I'm going to post again as soon as I've finished with next chapter. Stay tuned for…Chapter 5: The Great Dustbunny Revolution! Dun dun dun! (Fade into appropriate theme music.)