I just realized, I forgot about Rex… again. So, we're getting some Rex time in this one, and she's going to be a little pushy in the next chapter probably. Hope you like it, and her. See you at the end!
Disclaimer: I own nothing!
Chapter 8: Listen Here
"So, where are you planning on taking me, maestro?" Yasu asked lightly as they tromped down the corridor away from Base, falling deeper and deeper into the darkness that always seemed to encompass the orphanage, as if the sun had never learned to shine there.
"I don't know…" Gene murmured, trailing off as he stopped at a T in the hallway. Peaking around the corner, he glanced right then left. He chose left, heading deeper into the bowels of the house and further from the doors that would spill them into the blessed night air. "We're going to the children's sleeping quarters," Gene announced. He figured that Miss Anaga's, or Ash's, or whoever-was-actually-running-this-place's, room would be closer to the door to deter any excursions into the greater beyond. That left the back of the house for the children to populate. At least, that's how he remembered it to be.
Yasu frowned, following after him, glancing over his shoulder down the opposite hall. In the gloom, he saw a pair of green and brown swirled eyes staring after them. Jolting with surprise, he blinked rapidly. The eyes disappeared. 'I need sleep too,' he thought, cautiously turning his eyes back forward. He could still feel those eyes boring a hole into his back. He decided that it'd be best to mention that fact later. If Gene didn't feel like he was being watched, then he was probably just tired and beginning to hallucinate. Yeah, that was it.
"Why are you so sure that the orphans' rooms are this way?" he asked just a tad bit suspiciously. Gene and Naru knew a surprising amount about this orphanage in particular. He would have attributed it to their living in an orphanage for a number of years, but they seemed too familiar with the house, like they were returning to a not so good friend. He trailed after Gene, watching his, or rather Mai's, hair swish back and forth between his shoulder blades. It was hypnotizing. He almost missed Gene's reply.
"I… looked at a… layout plan… of the house," Gene said haltingly. It seemed to take a great deal to come up with this lie. And it was a lie. They could both tell. Neither commented.
Instead, Yasu asked, "Is the nursery back this way too?" They turned right around another corner. To their left was a set of double glass paned doors. To their right was another set of bathrooms. The door, large and wooden, was ajar. The clean scent of lemons wafted out, but that didn't mask the other smell. The hallway smelled like a dead skunk left to rot in the middle of the road. "Jesus," Yasu muttered, pulling his shirt up over his nose.
"No," Gene coughed, pressing a hand over his nose and mouth, "It's down that way." He pointed off down the hall into the gloom.
"Well, that's reassuring," Yasu muttered sarcastically, "I don't feel like I'm going to get murdered or something just standing here."
Even as the words left his mouth, there was a quiet click against the hardwood floors. They stiffened, turning their eyes to the darkness of the hall stretching ahead of them past the children's room. Slowly, a white ghost materialized out of the darkness.
"Oh my god, what is that?" Yasu whispered, stepping closer to Gene, just in front of him.
Gene stared at the approaching ghost for another moment before rolling his eyes. "I don't know. Maybe it's a dog," Gene said sarcastically as Rex appeared out of the gloom, her tail wagging slowly and her tongue lolling out. She trotted up to his side, licking his hand fingertips to wrist. "Rex, that was so gross," he muttered, wiping his hand on Yasu's pants.
"Why on my pants?" Yasu sighed, rubbing at the wet spot.
"Because they were there and I didn't want to put slobber on my skirt."
"You sound like a chick."
"Technically speaking, I am a chick."
Rex huffed in exasperation, rolling her eyes. Padding towards the door, she scratched at the wood. The panes of the door were covered in dry erase markers and sharpie. The inside of the door seemed to be littered with papers tapped and glued to the wooden surface. She looked back at them before whining quietly.
Glancing down at her, Gene and Yasu turned their eyes to the door. "You want us to go in there, girl?" Yasu asked, placing a hand on a shiny silver doorknob. He looked to Gene. "Think we should go in?"
"Might as well, we have nowhere else to go for now," Gene said, grabbing Yasu's hand around the doorknob and turning it. He pushed open the door, ignoring the way that Yasu's hand tightened under his, tendons standing out his skin. "God, is smells like a high school locker room."
"Geez, what kind of locker rooms have you been in?" Yasu laughed, his voice quiet as they slipped into the room, "If I remember correctly, ours smelled like angst and teenage depression."
Soft flares of orange-ish light lit a far corner of the room every few seconds, glinting off the glass of the window. Many of the beds were filled with small children sleeping, or at least trying to sleep. Some just stared at the walls, kept awake by the smell and the creaking of the floors.
"England's locker rooms," Gene muttered, coaxing a louder laugh from Yasu.
Yasu pressed his hand to his mouth, glancing around at the beds of children and the beds missing children. He didn't seem to have woken any of them, but he also hadn't helped any of the others fall to sleep.
They rounded the last bed, frowning as they came upon a small group made up of both girls and guys sitting in a circle. They passed a homemade bong between each other, taking deep breaths of the smoke rising up through a tube. They didn't seem to have noticed the pair standing behind them.
"Uh… what are you kids doing?" Gene asked slowly, pressing his shirt over his face. "Jesus, that smells horrible. Are you smoking pot?"
The teens turned towards the pair, looking up at them with dopey eyed high expressions. "Ooooooh, you're those ghost people aren't you?" a boy across the circle from them asked, voice slow and thick.
"Yes. Why are you smoking pot with young children around?" Gene asked, more annoyed and indignant than he thought he should be, but that didn't change the fact that he was. "Why are you smoking pot at all?"
The boy shrugged. "Dunno. Something to do. Keeps the ghost away."
Gene couldn't tell if the boy was being serious or not. He had never been well versed in the stupidity of teenagers, and since he'd been dead, he seemed to be even less literate in their language. He wanted to hit the boy for being vague and not actually answering his question. "Put it out. Now," he instructed, glaring poison tipped daggers at the teen.
Quickly, the girl to his immediate left extinguished the flame she'd been lifting towards the pipe. The boy snatched the pipe from her hands, staring defiantly at Gene as he lit up, smoke travelling up the tube to his waiting lips. He inhaled the smoked, holding it in his lungs for a long moment before blowing it towards Gene.
Yasu gently pushed Gene out of the path of the smoke, grabbing the pipe from the teen, and glaring at him. He dropped the pipe on a bedside table as he said, "I wouldn't do that if I were you. Neither of us is very tolerant of drugs, and she's pregnant, so I'm even less tolerant."
Several of the more sober teens' eyes widened. "Oh shit, she's pregnant," one kid blurted out.
"Open a window or something," a girl said to the boy, scrambling to her feet. The pair quickly pushed open every available window, allowing the cool night breeze to sweep through the room, clearing out the pent up smoke rather quickly.
The teen still glaring at Yasu and Gene rolled his eyes. "I don't know why you guys are here anyway. One, you're all phonies. Two, you aren't going to be able to fix our problem anyway, so you might as well clear out before something happens."
Gene's eyes narrowed. "Did you just threaten us?" he growled, anger flaring in the pit of his stomach.
"Not a threat, just a fact of what'll happen if you hang around," the boy said with a dismissive wave of his hand.
"What do you mean? Why won't we be able to solve your problem?" Gene asked, choosing to redirect the conversation before he burst a vein. This kid wasn't making his life any easier by being a little shit.
"You're all just too incompetent. Like I said before, you're a bunch of phonies," the teen said, leaning back against the wall with the most bored expression he could muster. With his eyes blood shot from the smoke, he just looked like he'd been crying.
Grinding his teeth, Gene finally gave in to the aggravation. With a chunk of Naru's personality fueling his actions, he stepped between two of the teens into the middle of the circle. Without even a simple grunt, he hauled the boy up by his collar, slamming him high up against the wall. "Look here, you little shit," he snarled, "You can think whatever you like about us, but the point is, we're trying to help you. You being a douche bag is not going to solve anything. If you don't shut your fucking trap, I'm going to shut it for you, and you are not going to like how I do it. So, you have two options. You either tell us what we want to know so we can help, or you shut up and let your brothers and sisters talk." He released the boy's collar, letting him slide to the ground with wide eyes. "My twin and I were once foster kids too, in this very house as a matter of fact. We learned quickly that acting the way you are acting would never get us anywhere. We got out of this hellhole because we learned to play the game. You better learn to play it soon or you'll never leave."
Silence permeated the room. Yasu was giddy with satisfaction, grinning triumphantly. He hadn't caught on to the end of the spiel, but he didn't care. All he cared about was the fact that the teen looked like he'd wet himself, and the other teens who had been part of the circle were pressed as far away from Gene as they could get.
The other kids stared at Gene with wide, astonished, and admiring eyes. Cautiously, they slid from their beds and came to stand at the end of the room with the rest. "You're not really a lady are you?" a brave young boy asked, looking up at Gene.
Gene, tearing his eyes away from the shell shocked teen, looked down at the little boy. "What do you mean?"
"Like, you're soul isn't a lady is it? Your soul is a sir like him." He pointed to Yasu, never removing his eyes from Gene's dark blues.
"How can you tell that?" Gene asked, not confirming or denying the child's claim.
The boy frowned at his feet. "I don't know. Ash said that I had a special power that normal people don't have." He glanced back up at Gene. "Are you special like me?"
Gene smiled softly. "I don't think I'm special in the same way that you are, but yes, I am special."
"Yeah, special ed," the teen who he'd slammed against the wall muttered.
"Did you say something?" Gene shot at the teen. He shook his head quickly. "That's what I thought." He turned back to the little boy, smiling widely. "Is there anything you could tell us that could help us help all of you?"
The boy's smile fell. He looked around at the others who all had similar expressions to him, even the teens still sitting on the floor. "There might be something," he murmured, glancing cautiously over his shoulder at the door. He pulled Gene down to his level and whispered into his ear, "There are dead people in the attic."
Gene jerked back in shock, staring around at the faces of all the orphans. They were all starting to look a little terrified.
"We're not allowed up there, but we all know what Ash is hiding," the teen against the wall muttered, staring at the floor between his feet.
Before one of the others could speak another word, Rex stuck her nose in the little boy's palm, licking at his wrist. The boy giggled, and the tension dissolved into laughter.
"We'll go check out the attic," Gene said, ruffling the boy's hair as he headed toward the door, "In the meantime, I advise that you learn to clean up your act and stop with that." He pointed at the teen against the wall, circling around him and the bong still sitting on the bedside table. The teen nodded, his eyes still wide. "Good, we'll see you all soon."
Gene and Yasu slipped back through the double doors, Rex trotting behind them.
Well, there you go. The next chapter should be the end of Gene's and Yasu's excursion outside Base, and Tamaki waking up. I know some of you wanted to read that. See y'all soon!