There's a Method to This Madness
Ten short stories about friends and family, written for 42_souls.
Part 09: How the Future Began
Prompt: January/The Beginning ((troika+Death))
It was another long day in the Death Room. Not that Kid's father seemed to mind, though. He sat happily at his little skull-shaped tea table in the back of the room throughout the entire day, occupying himself with matters of grave importance such as folding paper cranes and building a pirate ship out of Lego blocks. That left Kid to do all of the real work. Not that he would ever have thought of complaining, though.
Kid knew that he was being tested without having to be told as much.
Kid sat behind his skull-shaped desk in the Death Room, his papers stacked neatly in front of him, dealing with the Death Room's steady stream of visitors one by one. Kid's day had started with a meeting with Spirit, then with Sid, then with the chief of the Carson City police department (a meeting during which Kid was forced to apologize on behalf of his father and all of Shibusen for the shenanigans that three of their drunken senior students had gotten up to the previous night), then with three potential students who sweated through their entrance interviews, then with the school librarian who needed to request Kid's help dealing with a cursed book that had already eaten two students. Kid had told the librarian to leave the book with him and had then spent the rest of the afternoon struggling to compose a letter to the Chief Bibliomagician in the White House library explaining the situation and asking for her help. Kid spent a good thirty minutes writing an absolutely perfect "D" at the beginning of "Dear" before he was ready to move on to the "e." Two hours later, still unable to write an acceptable "e" with his hand, Kid finally gave up and called Sid, asking him to bring a laptop and printer up to the Death Room.
"I'll be right up," Sid said. "By the way, your three-o-clock is here to see you."
"I have a three o-clock?" Kid said, glancing down at his father's appointment book.
"You do now," Sid answered. "There's some guy from the Department of Education here to see you."
"Oh. Okay. Send him up," Kid said. He sighed and hung up his desktop mirror. Then he glanced over at his father, still sitting down at the little tea table on the far side of the Death Room, playing with his Lego ships and trying to pretend like he hadn't been paying careful attention to what Kid had been doing all day long. "Do you usually get visits from the Department of Education?" Kid asked his father.
"Once a year, somebody from the Nevada State Department of Education usually shows up, yes," Death answered. "Would you mind dealing with him for me today?"
"Of course I will, Father," Kid said.
"You're the best son ever!" Death gushed happily.
Kid tried to hide his happy blush. He knew that he was being tested today. He also knew that he was making his father proud. That was a good feeling.
Kid wished he didn't also know, however, that Father had asked him to fulfill his duties today not primarily as part of some sort of unspoken test, but rather out of sheer necessity.
The fight with Asura had wounded Kid's father more deeply than most of the public was aware of. Not even Sid or Spirit knew how much Kid's father still needed time to heal his invisible wounds. Father was nowhere near strong enough to endure a day's worth of official meetings, not yet. He had tried to delay dealing with his official business for as long as possible, but eventually even Death had realized that he couldn't keep shuffling around his appointment book forever. So Kid's father had asked Kid to take care of a day's worth of official business in his place. As the future Death, it was necessary for Kid to learn how to deal with these things after all. So Kid's father had spent the day sitting at his little skull-shaped tea table and watching Kid while Kid had dealt with all of the official meetings in Death's place.
Now Kid had only one meeting left to deal with before he could be finished for the day.
The man from the Department of Education was nervous about meeting with Death, although going to get lengths to not outwardly show it. But the confident way that he strode into the Death Room did him little good when Kid could clearly see the trepidation in his soul. His suit was neat and trim and his shoes were polished, but cheap. Kid could tell that they were cheap. The man's leather briefcase was scuffed and worn. Kid reminded himself to be nice. The poor man probably wasn't paid nearly enough to have to face whatever it was that he usually had to face on a daily basis. Bureaucrats never were.
The man paused when he entered the Death Room, his eyes briefly flickering toward Kid's father, who was sitting off to the side at his little skull-shaped tea table, intently absorbed in arranging his small armada of various giant robot action figures in an attack formation on the top of the table. Then the man's eyes flickered toward Kid, who was sitting in the exact center of the room behind his father's most intimidatingly enormous desk, his hands folded, waiting patiently for the man to approach him. "Welcome," Kid said.
The man stood in front of Kid's desk and reached over to shake Kid's hand. "Loren Strickland," he introduced himself. "I emailed you earlier about-"
"I don't check my email," Kid said.
"I've also called on the phone multiple times and left several messages with the secretary at your front office-"
"There is no secretary in the front office," Kid said. "Well, there was. She died rather gruesomely a few months back. We're still working on getting her ghost flushed out of the phone system. It was probably the ghost that you left your messages with. I apologize, but I never received any messages from anyone named Loren Strickland."
"Oh. Well then." Loren Strickland withdrew his hand. "I suppose I should explain myself from the beginning, then. I-"
"Stop standing," Kid said. "It's impolite. Sit down."
"But there's no- Oh." A moment before, there had been no chair behind Loren Strickland. Now there was one. Strickland sat down, cleared his throat, and then continued. "I'm the FES assigned to-"
"The what?" Kid interrupted.
"Field Education Specialist," Kid's father supplied helpfully, before turning his attention back to his toy robot battle. "Pew! Pew! Pew! Rrrrr rrrrr rrrrrggggghhhhh!"
"—The FES assigned to the Death City Independent School District this year," Strickland finished, raising his voice to talk over the sound of Kid's father providing his own sound effects for his toys. "I need a copy of your CSIP to submit to the State Board of Education for-"
"My what what?" Kid interrupted again.
"Comprehensive School Improvement Plan," Kid's father cut in again. "Remember, Kid? I asked you to do that whole thing last week."
Suddenly, a light bulb flickered on inside of Kid's brain. "Oh, that thing! Yes, I remember, Father. I completed it, as promised." Kid pulled opened both the bottom left and the bottom right drawers of his desk – even if he only needed something from one drawer, he absolutely had to open drawers on both sides of his desk in order to maintain the symmetry of his seating arrangement – and reached for the CSIP document that he had filed in the bottom right drawer.
"Excellent," Strickland said, reaching out for the document that Kid offered him. "I'll just take this and be out of your way, then. It's been a plea…" Strickland's voice died in his throat as soon as he took the document from Kid's outstretched hand. "This is… Er…"
"This is our Comprehensive School Improvement Plan," Kid said.
"But this is only one page," the man said.
"It only needs to be one page," Kid answered.
"And there's only one thing written on it."
"I know."
"It just says 'Cry havoc, and unleash the dogs of war.'"
"It's a good plan," Kid said.
"And it's written in crayon," Strickland went on.
"Yes, well. That would be because I dictated the document to Patti last night when we were playing Principal and Secretary. I couldn't very well write the thing myself, because my wrists were handcuffed."
"But—But—" Strickland stuttered. "But this plan does nothing to address your failure to meet AYP or NCLB accountability guidelines or-"
"Wait, we didn't make the Annual Yearly Progress benchmark this year? How could we have not made AYP this year?" Kid turned toward his father. "Father, I gave Professor Stein permission to vivisect any of our students that scored unacceptably low on the HSPE and I personally ensured that he communicated as much to the student body. There's no way that our test scores could have failed to meet the AYP benchmark."
"Oh, the HSPE test scores don't matter," Kid's father said. "I struck a deal with the Nevada Department of Education back in 2001. Death City Independent School District doesn't measure AYP in terms of test scores. We're measured based on how many of our students survive past October." Death shrugged. "Those idiot third-years who ran off on that suicide mission in Venezuela not only got themselves killed but also tanked our AYP numbers for this year."
"Not only did your school fail to meet your AYP goal," Strickland said, turning his head and his disbelief toward Kid's father, "but there's the other issue of your continued violation of federal law while hiring unqualified teachers to work in your classroom. Mr. Death, this is a matter of grave importance, so could you please put those silly toys down and speak with me seriously for a moment?"
Death suddenly turned his head and glared at Strickland. "I'm far too busy to concern myself with such petty matters as non-binding federal laws issued by a governing body that has only been around for one quarter the time that my school has. Pew! Pew! Pew! See?" Death smashed his robot toys together with his giant hands so that it looked like they were fighting each other. "As you can see, I am far too busy to deal with your silliness. You will have to continue to discuss this matter with my son. Kid is the one in charge of legal matters this year, anyway."
"I have nothing left to discuss with Mr. Strickland, though," Kid said. "According to human laws, if a school fails to meet an AYP goal, then that school has to write a Comprehensive School Improvement Plan and submit said plan to the State Board of Education. I already wrote the Comprehensive School Improvement Plan. Having submitted our plan to Mr. Strickland just now, I have fulfilled my obligation to submit the plan to the State Board of Education. Mr. Strickland has no more business here, so I suppose that he will be taking his leave of us now." Kid stood up and reached out to shake Strickland's hand. "It was a pleasure meeting you, Mr. Strickland."
Strickland hesitated a moment, as if unsure that he wanted to give up so easily. But Kid could see that the wiser part of Strickland's soul ultimately won out. Strickland shook Kid's hand and said, "Likewise." That was a lie, and Kid didn't have to be able to see Strickland's soul to know that it was a lie. But nevertheless, Loren Strickland finally opened up his briefcase, stuffed Kid's Comprehensive School Improvement Plan into it, then turned around and strode out of the Death Room.
Kid silently watched Strickland take his leave. Then Kid turned to his father and said, "He won't be back, will he."
"No. We only get a visit from an FES once a year. And it's never the same person two years in a row. They never come back." Kid's father shrugged. "Good riddance, as far as I'm concerned. Human laws are so very short-sighted and obnoxious."
"Human laws are unbalanced," Kid agreed.
Kid's father started to laugh, but suddenly his mask seemed to wince. He shrank for a moment, drawing into himself, but less than an eyeblink later was suddenly back to his full height, his enormous shoulders shaking with laughter. "Kid, Kid, Kid, you should have seen the look on the last one's face when she-"
"You're not healing," Kid said, daring to interrupt his father. He pushed back his desk chair, stood up, and glared at his father.
Death pouted. "I am too!"
"Then why does it still hurt when you laugh?"
"Kid, you don't-"
"You shouldn't have done it," Kid suddenly interjected, interrupting his father again.
Death scratched at his head, confused. "I shouldn't have done what?"
"Don't play stupid, Father. You know what I'm talking about."
A long, long silence spun between the two of them. Death loomed over Kid, his face an unreadable, blank mask. Finally Death said, "Goodness, I never would have guessed that my own son would say something so terribly ungrateful to the father who saved his life."
"I'm not ungrateful," Kid insisted, glaring up at his father and refusing to back down from the argument. "But that doesn't change the fact that what you did was wrong."
"Oh, do explain," Kid's father shot back.
A human boy would have quaked in terror if Death had spoken to him in that angry tone of voice. But Kid knew that he was a god and that he had every right to take his own father to task for this very issue. He was the only one with the right to do so. "You always taught me that a god was supposed to worry about the balance of the world more than anything else," Kid told his father. "You taught me that a god isn't supposed to be selfish. You taught me that it was important to cherish human lives but to never place the good of one person that you care about above the fate of the rest of the world. You taught me that sometimes gods have to be detached and that sometimes gods have to make hard decisions." Kid took a deep breath, summoning the courage to finish what he had started. "That's why what you did was wrong, Father. You should never have risked your own existence in order to protect me from Asura. What would have happened to the world if Asura had destroyed you? The balance of the world would have been destroyed, too, and without you it never would have recovered! I wouldn't be able to fix it. I'm not Death yet. You are. I was expendable in that battle. You weren't. As a god, you should have prioritized the balance of the world above the protection of one soul. But you were selfish and you risked yourself – and the balance of the entire world – because of your attachment to me. That is not what you taught me that a god should do. Not at all."
The dark holes in Death's mask of a face stared straight down into Kid's soul. "Is that why you think that I protected you?" Death said, his voice sounding utterly astonished.
Kid was taken aback. Of all the reactions that he expected his father to have, this surprised reaction was not one of them. "Asura said that you did it because it was your duty as a father, remember? But that shouldn't have been-"
"Asura was insane, and you're being silly," Kid's father said, suddenly reaching down to ruffle Kid's hair with one enormous hand, the eyes of his mask crinkling with an invisible smile. "I love you, Kid, but I would never put the good of any one soul, not even that of my own son, before my duty as a god. You are correct, that isn't what I taught you. And that isn't the reason that I saved you, either."
"Father…?"
"I chose to protect the balance of the world at all costs," Death said, "even if it meant risking an end to my own existence. That was why I jumped in front of you and protected you from Asura, Kid. Because you are the key to the balance of the world. You are this world's future, Kid. You are the only one who can protect and balance the world in my place. You have already proven as much to me many times over. And don't you dare try to tell me that you can't fix the balance of the world ever again, kiddo, because I happen to know that you can balance the world, even without me if it comes to that, and the sooner you start realizing that that's the truth, the better. So that is why I protected you, Kid. Because you're here now, which means that the world can move on without me. But not without you. The world needs you, not me, not anymore. That is how the balance has already tilted."
Kid stared at his father, eyes wide, lip trembling. "B-but Father, I can't-"
"Nuh-uh!" Death smashed one of his enormous fingers into Kid's lips, silencing him. "What did I just say? I don't want to hear you whining any more about how you can't do it without me or that you think you're not ready or any more of that melodramatic pity-party nonsense that you're always going on about. Besides…" The eyes in Death's mask of a face softened from their harsh, angular shape into a more gentle roundness. "It's pointless for you to worry about what might happen if I were gone, anyway. Because I'm not going anywhere, Kid. Not for a long, long time." Death wrapped his arms around his son and pulled Kid into a warm embrace. "I'm staying right here with you, and I'm not going to let anybody or anything – not even another kishin – keep me from watching my only son grow up. I promise, Kid."
Kid buried his face in his father's cloak, his cheeks burning with what might have been a blush of joy, but which was also at the same time a flush of humiliation. Forgive me, Father, Kid thought as he bit his lip to hold back his tears. Please forgive me. I'm a hypocrite. I shouldn't have said those things to you. I'm the one who was selfish all along. I still am.
Kid wanted to balance the world. He wanted to protect the world. He wanted to become a great god because it was his duty and his obligation to the universe. He really, truly did want to become Death for all of those reasons. But more importantly than all of that, far more importantly than all of that, the real reason driving Kid was so much more selfish, so much more mundane than all of that.
I'll do it for you, Father. All of it. Everything that I am, everything that I do, everything that I will be. All for your sake, Father.
Kid didn't choose the world. He had chosen his father instead. He knew that this made him selfish. He knew that a god wasn't supposed to care more about one person – even another god – than the entire rest of the world itself. But Kid couldn't change the way that he felt. He wanted to become a god for his father's sake. He wanted to become a god because he knew that his father believed in him, because he knew that he absolutely could not let himself let his father down, because he wanted to a good son, because he loved his father so much that sometimes it hurt, because he wanted his father to be proud of him.
Those were the only things that mattered. Those were the things that drove him every day.
Father. All for Father. Everything for Father's sake.
Kid closed his eyes, wrapped his arms around his father, and did not say anything to his father. He couldn't. He didn't have the right words to say those things. He likely never would.
Maybe that was all right, though. Maybe Father could see all of that within Kid's soul, and maybe that would be enough.