Tokyo-3 Arcana
Chapter 3
Nice to Meet You / Cards on the Table
Please Read and Review. I'd like to know what I'm doing right (to keep doing it), and what I'm I doing wrong (to correct it).
Hikari Horaki walked back home, after a long day as Class Representative. 'I swear, herding Suzuhara and Aida is worse than herding cats. Hyperactive cats at it. They get distracted by the smallest things. I mean, just how hard is it to clean a classroom? Ikari and Ayanami can do most of the job by themselves, I hardly have to tell them what to do... Why can't the other Two Stooges learn from their example..?'
She wiped her forehead with a handkerchief. 'And they had to act out just as the heat is worse...'
She was still several blocks away from her house, and stopped at the store. She took out her cellphone, and quickly called her big sister. "Kodoma? Hi! Did you get the groceries?" Her face fell at the answer. "C'mon! It was your turn!"
Hikari leaned her back agains a wall. "No, no. Sigh... Okay, yes. I'll just ask Mrs. Yamada if I can get her the money tomorrow morning on my way to school."
She cut off the call, exasperated. 'And Kodama is worse... She's twenty and I am the one who has to take care of the house...' She put the device back in her school bag, and turned towards Mrs. Yamada's store.
When she was about to walk in front of a small alley entrance, she heard a noise and jumped back in fright. At first she thought a cat must had knocked down some trash cans.
Then, a sharp scream made her jump again. "Leave me alone, you melon-headed reprobates!" More trash cans were knocked down, and a girl came running out, holding the lid of a can as kind of an improvised shield. The girl crashed against Hikari, almost knocking her down. The lid fell from her fingers, rolling away for a few yards, until it clattered down.
"Oh, Hi! Sorry about that. Hum, not to hurry you up, but those guys back there... Well... I'd say we should run away. And fast, if you catch my drift."
Hikari looked at the girl, then at the alley. She could see a few shadows moving at the other end. In a split second, she took a decision, grabbed the hand of the girl. "Run!" she hissed, and dragged the girl behind her.
They ran to the end of the block, turned around and hid behind the corner. Hikari peeked from their hideout, and saw a gang of children pour out of the alley like a swarm of angry hornets. Looking around for their prey.
They looked to be around six or seven years old, judging from their size, but there was something nasty on the way they moved. They had really big heads, for a moment, Hikari thought they looked like american footballs... Or maybe even melons. They wore mismatched clothes, dirty and ragged. But the worst part was that each one wielded a rusty knife, and looked like they knew how to use them. Even more disturbing, they were singing a creepy little song with screechy, raspy voices.
"We be new here! We come thru!
We be hunting now for you!
Cut your guts until you dead!
Cut your throat and kick the head!
Run away! Go run and hide!
We will catch you and eat your eyes!
We cut legs until you fall!
We be goblins, hunters all!"
The girl pulled at Hikari's hand, and urgently whispered "Listen, kid. We really must make ouselves scarce here. Savvy?"
Slowly, Hikari backed from the corner. Once out of the view of the gang of urchins, she nodded. Both ran away as fast as they could. They ran a block, changed direction, and ran away four more blocks in a zigzag pattern.
Finally, Hikari judged they had escaped. She wiped the sweat from her forehead, and gasped several times, trying to recover her breath.
The girl smiled widely. "That was great!" And she jumped up and down several times. "Oh, I'm sorry. Limiry Siggari, at your service!" she bowed with a complicated series of hand movements Hikari couldn't follow. Now that she had time, the Class Rep looked at her strange companion.
The girl looked like a clown. Bright yellow painted skin, a polka dot tunic in green and purple, a vest that seemed to be made mostly of pockets, which bulged in some places. Mismatched shoes, in both style and color. Her neon pink hair had been arranged in complex ringlets that must have taken hours to do.
"Hum..." Limiry hesitated, "you wouldn't know of a place I could stay for a few days?" Hurriedly, she added, "I can pay, I swear I can pay! I have gold! Look!", the girl jingled a bag. "And I can bring Desna's blessing to the place if you allow me to."
Hikari finally had recovered her breath. "Blessing? Desna's blessing?"
"Sure. I'm a priestess in good standing, even though I cannot remember some things, I remember that." she shrugged, holding up the curious pendant that hanged from her neck. "See? The High Priestess didn't give me this holy symbol just because I have great sense of fashion!"
The pendant was shaped like a blue butterfly, each of its upper wings held an eight-pointed star, while one of the lower wings held a sun and the other a waning moon. The pendant was exquisitely made. A true work of art.
Hikari gulped, "No, I guess not." She walked a couple of steps back. As non-chalantly as possible.
Limiry's exhuberance dropped. "Oh, I see..." she said sadly, "I'm doing it again..."
She seemed about to cry. The girl sat on the curb. "I didn't mean to alarm you. It was just the excitement..."
Hikari was about to run away, but her compassion won. "Shhh... Don't cry." And patted the girl on the shoulder. "It's okay."
Limiry straightened up."I'm not a baby, you know. Just because I'm a gnome it doesn't mean I'm not a fully functioning adult!"
"Gnome?"
"Oh, man..." Limiry gasped, "Please, don't tell me you are one of those isolationist humans I've heard about in..." Her brow knotted in concentration, "...somewhere."
"No, no! Of course not." Hikari backpedaled, "It's just I thought gnomes were just, you know... fairy tales."
Limiry smiled, "Ah, well, I know what you mean. They will tell you anything just to see how long they can string you on. But let me tell you, I am very real. Well, it was nice to meet you, and thanks for the race. It was fun!"
Hikari stood again, "Pleased to meet you, Limiry. Will you be okay?"
"Sure, don't worry. I'll find a place. I just need to rest for a few minutes and then I'll go my merry way."
Hikari stood up, and realized at some point, she had slightly twisted her left ankle, the adrenaline rushing through her veins had kept her from noticing. She grunted in pain. The ankle was already swelling.
Limiry was at her side in an instant. "You okay? Let me see." The girl knelt besides Hikari, and carefully touched the injured ankle; Hikari winced at her touch. Limiry nodded to herself. "No problem, let me heal you."
Before Hikari could say anything, Limiry grabbed her pendant and mumbled some words. about the only one had heard before was Desna, and was just a little while before. A light passed from Limiry's fingers to Hikari's ankle; and after a few seconds, the pain disappeared, along with the swelling.
"How... How did you do that?" Hikari's eyes almost popped out of her face. She gingerly put some weight on her foot, realizing there was no pain at all.
"I told you, I'm a priestess. It's my calling." Limiry smiled warmly.
"Could you tell me more?"
Limiry's stomach growled. She smiled awkwardly. " hum... Could we get something to eat first?"
Hikari nodded with a smile. "I know a good place not far from here. My treat."
"You will tell me all your secrets, Third!" Asuka grinned at her oponent, feinting with her left hand and immediately throwing a quick jab with the right.
"You have to do way better than that, Red Devil!" Shinji dodged the jab with a grateful movement, and slapped Asuka's hand to one side.
"Oh, now you did it!" The redhead stepped back to prepare for her next movement.
"Yup, I did it." Shinji held up his hand, showing the ribbon he had teared from Asuka's vest. "And I think that's it for today."
"What? I didn't... I didn't even feel when you did that!" Surprised, Asuka patted her vest, checking she had no ribbons left, while Shinji still had his full complement of tearable ribbons.
Shinji smiled, "I just used your own movement. But to be honest, you did much better than I expected."
"Of course!" Asuka grabbed a towel and wiped the sweat off her face. "What I want to know is how come you're not even breathing hard! You were jumping around like a monkey on double expressos!"
"Ah, well... That's gonna be hard to believe..." Sheepishly, Shinji rubbed the back of his head.
"After your little demonstration yesterday?" Asuka arched an eyebrow.
"Yup, even after that. I had a hard time believing it myself, even though I was in the middle of it."
"Spill it." Asuka wiped the sweat off her face with a small towel.
"Okay, are you familiar with the multiverse theory?"
"Yes, the existence if alternate universes, in different planes of existence. Never been proved, though it makes for a nice resource for science fiction writers. Why?"
"They really exist. I've been in three different dimensions. And as it happens, there are many more."
"No way!"
"I swear on the most sacred... Thing. The Twelfth Angel was a whole dimension by itself. And somehow it sent me to yet another dimension." Shinji sat on the floor, cross-legged, resting his hands on his knees.
"It was like something out of a fantasy movie, with magic and dragons. I was very, very lucky, and was found by the best group of people I could have asked for." His eyes lost focus for a moment, he seemed lost in his memories, but he went back to normal so fast Asuka doubted her own eyes.
"Yeah, sure, like you could have gotten very far in what? Seventeen, eighteen hours? Tops?" Asuka sat next to him.
"That's the time that passed here, Asuka. For me... It was quite longer." He pulled up his right sleeve. "Press here." He pointed at his elbow. "Feel something there?"
Gingerly, Asuka pressed where Shinji had pointed. "There's a bump. It feels like a healed fracture."
"It is, I got it while fleeing from a nesting giant eagle. Now, try here." He pointed at his left collarbone. While Asuka traced the bone, he continued, "a little souvenir from an orc bandit."
He smirked, "Dr. Akagi said I have so many scars I should have been in the ICU looking like a mummy for months. I've been hit, crushed, zapped, cut, burnt, poisoned, slammed; in short, I've had almost every kind of getting hurt known to medical science, plus a few it doesn't know, not in this world. Lucky me, I had a friend who was very generous with healing spells, or I would really be in bad shape." He shrugged. "I got my little collection of scars over a long time."
Asuka grew serious. "How long..."
Shinji lowered his eyes, and whispered, "Five years."
Asuka gasped. "But... But you don't look a single day older! Unless you found the Fountain of Youth! I mean..." She shook her head. "Hell and Damnation, you came back wearing the same plugsuit! We have to get new ones every couple of months as we grow up!"
"True. But it was a little side effect of the... company I kept." He looked at Asuka. "Her very presence kept all of us stuck at the same age." A sad smile crossed his lips for a moment.
"So... You're trying to say you are actually nineteen years old?" Asuka recoiled.
"In a way, yes. Physically I am still fourteen, with a lot of experience and healed lesions. Mentally, I am nineteen. Emotionally... Well... I guess I'm still fourteen."
"Oh, yeah? And why is that so, hm?"
"Because all I've been able to think about since I woke up back in this world is..." A strange look crossed Shinji's eyes. He breathed deep, steeling himself. "You."
The volatile pilot inhaled sharply. "Knock it off, you baka! Now you're going to tell me you are falling in love with me. Hmph, as if."
"It took me a long time to realize my feelings towards you. I wouldn't say I am actually in love." Asuka's eyes widened in surprise. "But I do like you, not just as a friend. Since we met aboard the Over the Rainbow. But as you already know, I was a complete baka then."
"Then why did you just stand there when we kissed? Answer that!"
He looked at her with a deep sadness in his eyes and voice. "Because I was a baka. I had no idea of what to do." Shinji flicked a piece of brick away. "I was being kissed by the girl of my dreams and I hadn't the foggiest idea if I should hold you, just keep quiet, or run to the hills and shout to the whole world I had kissed the most beautiful girl in the whole world! My brain was in meltdown, Asuka. The whole building could have been on fire at that moment, and I wouldn't have moved a single muscle."
He shrugged, "I'm sorry I was worse than an orc." He seemed to shrink into himself. "You were very clear about it afterwards, and I don´t blame you for it. I've had five years to come to terms with that." He sighed. "So, I will do everything in my power to help you survive this Iuz-damned Angel War. We still need to face five more Angels, and that will be it."
"What about Ayanami? Will you help her too?" Asuka's voice cracked.
"Yes. But not in the same way nor for the same reason. She's... Oh, you are so not believing this!" He smiled ruefully. "She's kind of my sister."
"Wait, what?"
Shinji stood up, looked at his watch, and said, "That is a tale for another time. I trust you to keep all we have talked about between just the two of us. We should go back to Misato's. It's almost dinner time. Coming?"
"In a minute. I... I will go down in a minute. I have to... To gather our stuff..." she gestured towards the containers of their meal, consumed three hours before.
"Sure. I"ll prepare some cream and sausages. It's okay?"
Asuka nodded. While Shinji crossed the door to the stairs down from the roof, the German raised pilot looked at him, biting her lower lip.
Author Notes.
Limiry is a gnome from Pathfinder, (actually, the gnomes aren't native of Golarion, but came from some other world, wich they call the First World). In this setting, gnomes have unusual pigmentation in skin, hair and eyes; all in bright colors. For example, the Iconic Druid, Lini, has bright yellow skin and green hair.
Gnomes need a constant influx of new experiences, it is literally a matter of life or death for them. Otherwise, they will literally lose the will to live and even the color of their skin and hair will grow paler and paler, until they are almost white. Most gnomes don't survive the experience. They literally die of boredom. The few who survive lose their exhuberance and are shunned by the other gnomes.
Limiry is three feet tall, and fully developed, but her choice of clothing hides it. She's a Cleric of Desna, Goddess of Dreams, Luck, Stars, and Travelers. Limiry will be around for a while.
We saw her briefly back in Chapter 1.
The gang of urchins Limiry and Hikari flee from are Golarion goblins, a nasty variant of the usual D&D creatures. These are big-headed, somewhat manic (especially when fire is involved), and tend to sing creepy songs. They are also funny in a strange way.
The way Shinji describes his kiss with Asuka was very influenced by Panther2G´s Advice and Trust, a great AU Evangelion story. If you haven´t read it, go now.
