Author's Notes: Yeah. It's updated, but only updated in the "Hey, I wanted to write real Author's notes for this as opposed to the shoddy thing I threw together two days ago because I had five minutes before I had to leave" fashion. It's still a one-shot, unless I get struck by some absolutely crazy idea.
But I did add in a few things that didn't make it into the original draft because I was strapped for time or... uh... simply didn't think of them back then. Enjoy, if you care to reread it.
Once more, I don't own Azumanga Daioh, God, or anything really. Well, I have a few really nifty mugs.
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The girl spun. Around, and around, and around, and around, and around... and around... she spun. It was the kind of spin that made you realize that you're on a small ball of rock rotating at magnificent speed, whirling around a ball of gas at an even more terrifying velocity, and that the aforementioned ball of gas is rotating around a conglomeration of gaseous balls at an outright ludicrous rate. In short, this spin awoke some universal awareness.
This spin was legendary.
There's a lot that can be said about being dizzy. The earth, previously strong and steady underneath your feat, wobbles about in a way that completely mocks your very understanding of the world. Everything in the universe is thrown out of line because of the mere act of spinning. From another point of view, however, it can be said that becoming dizzy simply calls attention to the fact that we are never truly standing still and are instead tracing a maddeningly corkscrew path throughout the grand empty space that is the universe and that if, say, we were watching ourselves from Alpha Centauri, we'd have a very good and confusing time of making out the exact path taken. Dizziness reveals the truth about the universe, then, and so there are be some people who equate dizziness with enlightenment.
There are also some people who simply get dizzy because it's fun.
It was not entirely clear as to exactly which type of person Ayumu "Osaka" Kasuga was, but it was entirely clear that she did a damned good job of getting herself dizzy.
Chiyo Mihama watched her friend as she spun, getting a bit dizzy herself, but she realized that dizziness is caused by disturbing the fluid in her ears and that there was no way that Osaka's spin could have done that and thus returned to a normal state of mind. Still, it would be nice if Osaka would stop sometime soon.
Osaka stopped.
The world, however, refused to. She watched it dance before her eyes, the maddening result of her legendary rotation. It drew her forward, drew her in, mocked her, comforted her, made her laugh, made her want to cry, and still it spun. The world split into four pieces, and the four pieces split into sixteen. The fragments of perception rotated madly around Osaka, and Osaka beheld them with the same calm indifference with which she beheld everything.
Chiyo watched Osaka. Osaka stood still, staring at nothing in particular. So far, normal.
The pieces glanced over to Osaka and realized that they weren't making any headway. Bit by bit, the shards of the universe gathered themselves together and became one coherent whole, collapsing back into something entirely normal. Osaka watched them closely, and then something became astoundingly clear to her.
Chiyo watched Osaka closely. The older girl stood there for a moment that felt like an eon, simply staring at the perfectly normal space in front of her.
"Oh... I gotcha' now!" she exclaimed.
"Got... who, exactly, Osaka?" asked the prodigy.
"Don' worry, Chiyo! You'll see!" declared Osaka, and she strode forward purposefully, having completely shaken off her dizzy spell.
Chiyo watched Osaka march towards a perfectly normal looking student and decided that she should follow, lest Osaka's strangeness spread to other groups.
The girl Osaka was marching towards looked fairly average. She wasn't terribly busty, and she wasn't terribly tall or short. In fact, her only really distinctive feature was her hairstyle. Two long black braids extended from her head in such a fashion that one with a cruel frame of mind would not hesitate to call them handlebars. Still, at least she had a distinctive feature. There were some students like Chihiro who were, for the most part, entirely forgettable.
Chiyo quickened her pace and caught up to Osaka just as she reached the girl, just in time to hear the start of the conversation.
"I gotcha. You're god, aren't ya?" said Osaka.
That's... that's insane, even by your usual standards, Osaka, thought Chiyo. She was ready to apologize for her friend, but there wasn't a chance. The stranger spoke up first.
"...you got me. How did you know? Come to think of it, how did you even see me? Most people don't see me unless they're specifically looking for me, and even then they usually don't find me."
"Oh... it just came to me, y'know? A revelation or somethin'."
"Well, yeah, you got me. I'm god, kind of."
The prodigy finally found her voice. "I don't believe you. You're probably just someone who's got the same mindset as Tomo does, and simply thought that it'd be kind of funny to play along with the joke and string Osaka alone. Well, I wont' have any of that. I don't believe you. Prove it. Summon a lightning storm or something."
"Thunderstorms take energy out of the environment, Mihama. You should know that energy can't simply be created like that, so I'd have to draw a lot of energy out of somewhere, and you see, as a god, I've got a general no-interference policy to uphold. I mean, sure, creation is fun and all, but it's best to just sit back and watch."
"But you do interfere! I saw you, after my first day here, talking to Chihiro! You were comforting her because she was depressed over something or the other."
"Oh, well, there are special cases. You see, Chihiro will go on to do some great things, and I wasn't about to let her shift into a depressed sort right at the start of High School. There's a virtue in being perfectly average."
"I still don't believe you."
"Oh? Then what about a bit of information? Your friend here, Yukari calls her Osaka. Her real name, however, is Ayumu Kasuga. The nickname was because she came from Osaka. You'd know that just from hanging out in her class, but Osaka was previously from Kobe, and before that she lived in Wakamaya."
"God's totally correct there, Chiyo."
"See?"
"... I still don't believe you."
"Oh, it doesn't matter much."
"If you are God, what are you doing in a perfectly normal high school?"
"Being God, I can be wherever I want to be. Even multiple places at the same time, and... you know, High Schools are one of the most entertaining places to be. Campuses in general are funny, but high schoolers have so much random drama it's just... hilarious, so I spend a lot of time in every high school in the world. You know those days where everything goes terribly wrong, and you feel like there's someone out there pulling the strings and making things go wrong just for their own entertainment? As if God himself/herself was trying to make the world a living nightmare for you? There's a chance that it's true."
"Spiteful deity, ain'tcha?" said Osaka, nodding in acceptance.
"No, no, I just like to keep myself entertained."
"Then what about coconuts, eh, God?"
"Coconuts." said Chiyo. "What about coconuts?"
"Oh, well, you see, they're absolutely wonderful things, you know? I mean, think about them. In that little coconut is so much stuff. You slice off a piece, drink the milk from inside, and then you use the piece you sliced off to scoop out the coconut meat, which is very nutritious, mind you. It's like they were designed specifically by god for people."
"Which they were."
"Yep. And then she puts them in a 20-foot tall tree with no branches. Pretty mean, don'tcha think? Still, they figured out how to climb the trees eventually, so on one island she puts some big honkin' lizards. You climb the tree, get the coconut, and at the bottom there's a 12-foot long dragon waiting for you. Ha!"
"That's horrible."
"Yeah. God's such a spiteful person."
God glanced at the two girls and decided to explain herself. "No, no, you see... it's just like when you play with rocks. I mean, as far as you can tell, the rocks don't have feelings, and if they do they can't really protest to you, so you feel totally free to melt them and make them into buildings, or cut them apart until they're a shape you like or... you know, whatever. You guys are kind of like rocks compared to me."
"That whole business with the apple must've ticked ya off more than we thought." observed Osaka.
"Apple? Oh, you're confusing me for that God. No, no, that's not me. I'm a deity playing with rocks. As a matter of fact, stop thinking of me as 'God' right now. Call me something else."
"What, exactly?" asked Chiyo.
"How 'bout Rachel?"
"That's not even Japanese."
"Yeah, but who's to say that a deity is Japanese, anyway? Japan is superior, Chiyo? You should drop that attitude."
"So you're not the big boss god person or anythin', then?" asked Osaka.
"Oh, no. Well, I think I'm the only deity who's really playing with Earth right now. So... you know, I'm kind of the big boss god person for earth, but not really."
"What do you mean, not really?" said Chiyo.
"Oh, well, you know, I might not have created Earth, but I'm the only deity concerned with it for now. A while back, there were many, many different gods playing around on this planet. There were a few really big kahunas, and there were a couple just outright deity super-teams, but they've long since gotten bored with humanity."
"Bored with us?"
"Oh, they say that you don't really do anything interesting anymore, so they decided to leave. That's why there aren't any miracles or anything anymore, you know. They aren't micro-managing Earth anymore. They've moved on to bigger and better things, or at least, bigger and better things in their opinion."
"What'cha mean, their opinion? Gods are supposed to be omniescent and such, aren't they?" said Osaka.
"Well, that's your understanding of it. I mean, hey, imagine that you're another animal for a second. You think in terms of 'Hey, food's here, let's eat it.' but then the humans know where food will be before it grows. I mean, to you the animal, they know something that's inconcievable to you, but to you the human, it's simple agriculture. That's kind of how our relationship to you is, except you're quite a ways further down from us than animals are from you."
"So why're you still here?"
"Oh... well, you see, I disagree with them, kind of. I don't think you humans are boring. I think they might have spoiled you with all those miracles in the past, you know? I mean, they gave you all of this stuff, just handed it to you... so you became accustomed to just waiting for it. You, however, do your best in times of despair. By bestowing gifts upon you, they took away what made you so wonderfully entertaining, so they got bored and left. Now, a few centuries later, you're funny again! But I'm not going to make the same mistake as the other gods, you know."
"There's no one else but you, then?" Chiyo asked.
"Hmm... well, there is one. Strangely enough, she's also in Japan, but only Japan. She's not in multiple places like I am."
"So you're stronger than her?"
"No, no. She has some amazing potential. For her, power is limitless. Whatever she truly believes can and will come true. However, she has not realized her powers just yet, and so while she hopes for some truly amazing things, she still thinks like a normal human being. With doubts and everything, you know, and so she never really fully believes that the sort of world-changing events that she hopes will happen could truly happen. As a result, she never really accomplishes anything. Someday, however, she'll realize her latent abilities. Hopefully she won't abuse this world too badly when she does. Who knows, maybe she'll become the sort of serene bastard that all the other gods are."
"So who is she?"
"Can't tell you that."
"What's to stop us from telling the rest of the school that you're god?"
"Who'd believe you? I mean, sure, you're a genius and all, but they'd just start to believe that you were starting to develop those eccentricities that all geniuses have. You know, blurring the line between genius and insanity."
Silence hung in the air as Chiyo tried to come up with the proper reaction. Rachel grinned winningly at her, and Osaka, being Osaka, simply grinned.
"I don't believe you, Rachel, god, whatever. I'm... done with this." said Chiyo, matter of factly, and left.
"Oh, she's gone. Hey, well, that's nice. I wanted to talk to you more anyway, Osaka."
"Really? What about?" asked Osaka.
"Oh, just general stuff. I want to know about you, because as far as I can recall, I didn't create you. Nobody I know seems to have created you either. You're foreign to us."
"What? So I'm like... an alien, or somethin'?"
"No, no. If you were an alien, then I'd just ask the resident deities of your home planet. You, my friend, are odd. Really odd. Mind-numbingly odd."
"Hey, that's not very nice of ya."
"No, I mean, I mean... look around at all these people. They're normal. They see the world in shades of reality... You, however, you can see everything that they can see, but you don't see everything that they see. Your universe is simply tilted a few degrees over, at slight odds to theirs. I've made a few people before who can see things slightly differently, but I never went to such extremes as to make a person who sees everything differently. You might as well be from another universe, looking in on ours in your own odd way."
"So am I a god?"
"Do you have any godlike powers?"
"Are 'showing up late' and 'forgetfulness' godlike powers?"
"Not quite. Anyway, there's someone else who I forgot to mention. While I never really did make someone of your specifications, I did make someone for the other side of the spectrum. She sees everything that everyone sees at its barest. Understands everything in mechanics, you know? A real genius, sort of. If she ever could get really inspired, she'd create some wonderful things. The problem is that because she sees everything in a plain and simple fashion, she can't really get inspired and create change. But I digress. The bell's going to ring, and I'll miss out on some quality hilarity if we stay here much longer, so I'm afraid we're gonna split here, Osaka."
"Really? Oh... what a shame. Anything else that you want to tell me before you go?"
"Names are more important than most people think! Just keep that in mind, and you should be fine, although I honestly can't predict you."
Osaka waved goodbye to the girl and wandered off to join her group of friends. Rachel wandered off into the halls of the school, seeking to become utterly forgettable again.
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Author's Notes: Aiyah! I don't know about one-shots, but this idea came to me one night while thinking to myself, and it started to nag at me until I decided to write it. Sorry that none of the other girls showed up, but I thought that including them all in this kind of fic would make it unweildy. I know that it's all just one giant conversation, but I figure that there's really not much action to be had in a conversation with god.
Anyway, this fic is dedicated to a friend of mine, for his birthday. I figured that instead of making a card for him I'd write him a story. It's not exaclty reflective of him or anything, but hey, it's as good an excuse as any for writing, right? Besides, it'd be weird if I just dedicated like, a random
Endeavors chapter to him.
As for those of you who caught the reference, yeah, it's totally there. Good eyes, good taste in shows, eh? Anyway, there are a few other random connections, but those are simply connections to my other two stories, and a few haven't even really manifested themselves in a way that can properly be identified as a connection, so don't worry if you didn't get it.
Yah! Read and review! Reviews make me happy, and Azumanga Daioh is a happy series. You've got to be in a happy mood to write stories for a happy series, or they don't match up with the feel of the series. You know, makes it much easier to write. I bet that it'd be real easy to write for an angsty series unless you drew up a lot of fans and they reviewed and made you so happy that you couldn't write angst anymore. Then again, that's neither here nor there.