Love Hina: Next
His head was filled with whiteness, a bland distasteful realm of clouds. Slowly, a small mountain appeared, with steps leading up it, and finally a large building appeared at the center of this new existence. Off to the side, a small sandbox existed, with two children frolicking in it. He moved towards these beings, and stepped seamlessly into the boy's perspective.
"Hey, did you hear? If two people that love each other go to Toudai together, they'll find happiness!" The boy smiled at the girl, whose name he couldn't remember at the moment. He couldn't grasp the full implication of what she was saying, but he knew that he was the happiest he had ever been, so he nodded with her.
The boy turned his head away to look towards the inn he was staying out, extending a hand towards it. As his hand hovered in the air, a strange thing happened. His hand slowly began to mature and age, and suddenly, all of Keitaro's memories flooded his dream. Looking down, he realized he was his own age again... but what of the girl behind him? Eager to find out who his promised girl was, he span around...
---Scene Change---
Keitaro woke with a shock. Was it a dream, or a memory, or what? He wondered fleetingly. Filled with an intense joy, he decided it was time to tell Naru what he had dreamed. Tossing off his covers, he leaned up and popped the small plank of wood out of way, so he could enter Naru's room through the small hole that separated their rooms.
"Naru, I just had this dream, and you were in it, but..." Keitaro stopped mid sentence, looking fully upon the naked figure of one Narusegawa Naru. "Er, that is..." As Naru proceeded towards Keitaro, he wondered why stuff like this always happened.
---Scene Change---
Floating, pain, intensity, clouds, falling, pain again, possibly a tree.
---Scene Change---
"Why do you always hit me, Naru?" Young Keitaro asked the tiny girl next to him, while nursing a new bruise developing on his cheek.
"Because I love you, silly!" The little girl giggled at Keitaro as his brain boggled from this information.
---Scene Change---
Keitaro slowly awoke, initially feeling disorientation based on height. Why is my bed floating in the air? Su? Slowly, as he came to, he realized he was on a hospital bed, though the other details escaped him. Noticing a small call light to his left, he squeezed the cord. After nothing happened, he squeezed the cord again. Finally he deigned to call for someone.
"He...llo?" Keitaro was shocked at the sound of his own voice – it was gravelly and coarse. How hard did that banshee hit me this time? Keitaro pulled his strength together again and called out again, this time with slightly better result.
Silence greeted Keitaro, and not the kind of other residents sleeping, but the silence of death. Unfortunately, being Keitaro, he didn't notice, and called out again. And again. Finally, after calling out five times, he decided to try something different. He went for the call light again.
After maybe fifteen minutes of alternating between the call light and calling out, Keitaro finally decided something was wrong. God, what sort of crappy hospital did Naru and the girls put me in? Nurses don't answer calls for help or the call light. Keitaro decided to try and get to the nurse's station by himself.
It was startlingly easy, if by startling you meant how startled Keitaro was when he stood up and promptly fell over. This might have had something to do with the blood congealed on the floor beside him, but he passed it off as just him being clumsy as usual. Making his way over the blood trail leaving his room, and only slipping twice more – God, I'm tripping a lot today... probably means Naru is on the other side in a loose blouse, or something... – he finally exited his room.
Now some people would be scared by all the people with blood dripping out of their mouths, sitting in chairs with their eyes shut and portions of their flesh ripped off. Keitaro looked around in awe for a few seconds, and then decided that this was why no one had answered his call light. Good lord, I hit a tree and I think I deserve immediate help. These people look like they hit a tree and promptly fell into the wood chipper the tree was going into. One man in particular looked awake, with no legs and one arm missing. He tried to drag himself over to where Keitaro was standing, releasing a feral grunt with every pull.
"Hey, man, don't worry about it, I'll go to the nurse's station and tell them you need some help, okay?" Keitaro walked away from the missing limbed man feeling slightly better about his prior moral decline, having decided to do something for others with his obviously better help.
When he reached the nurse's station, the first thing he saw was another armless woman, her arm a few feet away from her with a shotgun clutched in it. He tittered at the shotgun – in a hospital, imagine! – and turned to the glazed eyed woman. She stuttered and spat as he approached her, total fear in her eyes. Keitaro finally noticed her armless state, and frowned for a moment, the hints of something is wrong here finally playing at the corner of his brain. Then the solution to this equation arrived – equal opportunity employment. After all, why shouldn't she be allowed to work just because of a small disability? Ignoring the blood on her arm – where the trail of blood from his room came from, incidentally – he smiled his most winning smile. Unfortunately, the woman, in terrible shock, saw his winning smile as a gaping maw full of sharp, deadly teeth. She screamed, stood up, and ran into the nearest closet, locking herself in with a lot of gibbering.
Keitaro was definitely starting to figure something out in the back of his mind. Equal opportunity employment, while beautiful in principle, wasn't a working system. After all, any individual with mental issues should be kept in a hospital, not working in a hospital. Or at least that was how Keitaro felt. Then again, he was just mildly peeved that he wouldn't be able to do a good deed for the missing limbed man who was still trying to crawl (in Keitaro's mind) to the nurse's station.
"Hey, sir, I really wouldn't recommend wasting any more energy, since the nurse is a bit preoccupied right now. Let me see if I can find you a wheelchair, or something." Hurrying past the missing limbed man and narrowly missing getting bitten by him, Keitaro headed towards the emergency entrance, feeling that would be a logical place to keep wheelchairs.
"Oh, hello sir!" Keitaro said cheerfully to the man behind the ambulance's wheel. "I'm just going to borrow a wheelchair for a guy inside, okay?" The man grunted, which Keitaro took to be an okay sort of grunt, and so, without considering anything else, Keitaro climbed into the back of the ambulance.
The first thing Keitaro noticed was that there weren't any wheelchairs in the back of the ambulance. The gurney looked like it would roll easily enough, so Keitaro got to the task of removing the securing straps on it. He paused in his task, however, when the ambulance suddenly started moving forward.
"Um, excuse me sir, but I need to get this gurney out, okay?" Another grunt met Keitaro's ears, and the vehicle continued to move. Quickly. Actually, speeding was the word. And then it stopped. Suddenly. Keitaro was flung out of the backside of the ambulance when it hit the other ambulance in the parking lot, the gurney flying below him and, for once in Keitaro's memory, something soft broke his fall. Then the gurney, having expended all its stored kinetic energy from the throw, began using its potential energy which it was entitled to, due to the fact that Keitaro was on a hill. For those, like Keitaro, who didn't understand that, this summary will suffice. It stopped rolling uphill, and began rolling downhill.
What occurred next would best be described by a NASCAR announcer, however, since at the time of writing this paragraph they are all dead, except for the one who is being eaten alive by a manic fan (who incidentally, isn't sick, possessed, undead, or anything - just a manic fan,) this will have to do.
Keitaro zoomed around the corner, on his trusty vehicle Gurney #1, sponsored by the Hinata Hospital Complex, as another individual swings by on Gurney #2, also sponsored by the Hinata Hospital Complex. The other individual is, shall we say, drop dead gorgeous? Or maybe he's so sexy, he's a killer? Would it work to say that he is hungry for a good race? That, as a child, he was starving for attention? Or that the only words he has said so far are the four italicized in this paragraph?
Keitaro grinned, still contemplating his good fortune of having something soft break his fall, and so didn't notice that his slightest movement threw the gurney he was on into a random direction. This is good, because if he had tried to steer, odds are he'd be back at the hospital, either directly or indirectly. Instead, because he was distracted, every motion he made drove the gurney with startling accuracy – indeed, twice his pursuer crashed trying to emulate a stunt Keitaro had just pulled off. Fortunately, there was always another gurney ready to replace the other individual if it crashed, so the race Keitaro didn't know he was in never got boring. In fact, had Motoko been present at the race, she would have been so impressed she would have ripped off all her clothing and started nibbling on Keitaro eagerly. Actually, the clothing was already off, and the nibbling would have been entirely unrelated to how impressed she was.
Fortunately, Keitaro was further distracted now by the idea of Motoko nibbling on him, and so still didn't realize that he was indirectly controlling the gurney – which would have been direct sabotage. Instead, he unintentionally lined himself up perfectly with a ramp, launching himself over two small food vendor stands while his follower crashed. Then, because he shuddered at the thought of what Motoko would do to him if she knew he was thinking these thoughts about her, the gurney did a perfect 180o turn and drove straight past the new replacement, zooming ahead and heading on a direct path.
Finally, Keitaro shrugged and decided he didn't care what happened, since Motoko would never find out what he thought. As he shrugged, the gurney did a 2160o (that is six 360s, so you know) turn and slammed perfectly into a parking space mere feet from the Hinata Inn. Had the nearby policeman seen Keitaro's stunt, he would have given Keitaro a speeding ticket, and promptly ripped it up for doing the most perfect parking of a gurney the officer had ever seen. However, the officer was distracted by a lovely blonde who was, like Keitaro, completely unaware of the problem with the town. Fortunately for the officer, it was time for his lunch break. Unfortunately for Keitaro, he was now the only person left in town who was clueless as to what happened.
Keitaro hopped off of the gurney and began moving up the steps leading to the Hinata Inn. Unfortunately for his escort, the stairs were not gurney friendly, and so, the last Keitaro heard of the pursuers he didn't know about was a loud crash and mumbling from the bottom of the steps.
He paused at the door, his senses tingling. Something isn't right, Keitaro. Get out, get out now! You're going to die if you go in there! All this shocking information flooded Keitaro's mind suddenly, overwhelming him. Finally, he shook his head and decided that it was too much work to find out where that came from, so it would be best to just forget about it.
"Hello? Naru, Shinobu, girls?" Keitaro called out from the front door. A low gasp came from his right, and he slowly turned to face one Su Kaolla, blood dripping from her mouth and a feral hunger in her eyes that could only mean one thing. Keitaro's eyes widened as he finally realized what was happening, and he turned to flee, releasing only one scream before Kaolla lunged at his throat.