Disclaimer: I don't own DCMK.
The Show Goes On
54: Grab and Go
"Could it have been an animal?"
Ran gave the blond detective a long, dubious stare. "Do you really think there are animals around here? I mean, I don't remember seeing a single one."
"We often don't when we trespass in Mother Nature's domains," he replied with a wry smile and a sip of his tea. They had moved the room's small, round table next to the window and were now seated on either side of it with cups of tea in hand and a spectacular view of the canyon walls. "Just because we have yet to see any natural creatures around these parts, does not mean they do not exist. There were fish in the sanctuary pool after all. Why not birds out here?"
"I…guess that might make sense," Ran conceded. "But I know it was watching us."
Hakuba's expression grew grim. "How so?"
"I could feel it. Maybe the winged shape was my imagination, but I felt someone watching us. I'm sure of it."
Hakuba didn't speak immediately. Instead, he lifted his cup to his lips and took another long, savoring sip before he set the cup down again. On the outside, he appeared to be taking a few minutes off to simply enjoy the luxury of the tea. But inwardly, his thoughts were no less jumbled than Ran's.
True, he had seen very few real animals around here. But he had seen shadow beasts shaped vaguely like animals that could tear through trees with an ease that no flesh and blood beast could ever achieve. And he knew that those beasts answered to a master.
And some of them could fly.
Was that it? Had the Ghost King's Pied Piper found them after their escape and sent a winged shadow to track them down? Or perhaps it was a messenger or even a spy? All were likely possibilities, and none were welcome.
But he didn't want to stress the cyborg girl out any more than necessary. She already looked on the verge of snapping. Best keep his bigger concerns to himself.
"Did the creature seem solid? Or was it more like a shadow with glowing eyes?"
Ran hesitated then shook her head. "I don't know. I didn't get a very good look at it. And all the fog around here makes everything a little harder to make out."
Hakuba glanced out the window at the fog in question and sighed. The girl had a point. That thick, faintly luminous fog eddied and undulated almost as though it were a living thing with a mind of its own. There were moments, when he let his guard down, that even he would swear that there were figures dancing in that whiteness only to realize that they were but twists and swirls in the fog.
"Did you notice anything about the creature other than that it had wings?" he asked.
Ran thought for a moment before saying, "It was really big. Like, human sized at least."
Well that didn't bode well, the blonde thought. His concern must have shown on his face because Ran tensed.
"What do you think we should do?" she asked.
Hakuba hesitated. His first instinct had been to reassure the girl—to tell her that everything was going to be all right. But that was neither a plan of action nor a promise he could keep. So instead he took a deep breath and let it out slowly before saying the only thing he could at the moment.
"We wait." The words were clipped and simple, but he knew that they embodied the most difficult of actions. "Whatever you saw left. We do not know when or even if it will be back. Furthermore, we have no way to determine its intentions. Reacting too fast to an unknown situation can only land us in more trouble. Therefore, we should stay here and hold down the fort as we were asked to until the others return."
"But what if the creature or bird or whatever comes back?" Ran pressed. "Do we, I don't know, try to talk to it? Or do you think we'll have to fight it?"
"Both options seem likely," the blonde mused then cracked a wry smile at Ran's dismayed face. "Do you know how to change the settings on your laser?"
"I…don't know. I haven't tried."
"Then I would suggest you start trying. We must learn to use all our tools if we are to survive this nightmare and make our way home. That, I fear, is the only certainty I can offer any of us in this place."
X
The food the clowns had provided had nothing on the lavish feasts and delicacies they had tasted at the Court of Stars, but that was only to be expected. The food at the Court had, after all, been the stuff of dreams. But food was food.
Shinichi had no idea how long they sat in their slowly revolving cups, munching on the occasional sandwich or cookie between brief naps and heated discussions with their new allies over what, if anything, they could do next.
The plan they had eventually arrived at, loosely woven as it was, basically boiled down to A, find and win back their friends, B, learn how the clowns operated, and C, find a way to beat them at their own game.
It wasn't much of a plan, they all had to admit, but at least it gave them a direction.
That, Shinichi thought with a certain wry amusement, seemed to be all they could ask for more often than not these days. But it had served them well thus far, so he wasn't going to complain.
By the time the clowns returned, the travelers were pleasantly well rested—ready for more games, the travelers noted. They also saw that the gargoyle had been right, and the clowns who had come to retrieve them were once again the size of normal men.
And their eyes, Shinichi saw, were no longer red. Instead, all four were a marble black.
Since their group had swelled into quite a crowd, the clowns graciously offered them a small set of bleachers—all the better for everyone to watch the games from. Most of the band of misplaced convention guests were now seated on those bleachers, though most showed little to no interest at all in watching the goings on below. Few bothered even to wonder at how their new seats seemed to be following their few more active colleagues as though rolling after them on wheels even though there was no sense at all of actual movement. Only Takamiya the medical student was watching the proceedings closely from his seat in the very first row. He had his suitcase beside him and a small notepad in hand, and he was actually taking notes—much to Katsuya Ken's incredulity. He too was watching the next round of games, but he was doing so with a sneer and the occasional rude comment. Rosa had spent a few minutes trying to persuade him to curb his tongue to no avail. Once she had decided he was a lost cause, she had turned her attention to moving among their disheartened companions to talk to them and get a better feel for exactly what each of them was thinking. As a coach, she'd told Shinichi, she had had plenty of practice getting people to open up and learning how to motivate them, and she had suggested that she might be of more use plying these skills than participating in the carnival games—especially since she had lost the only one she'd ever tried.
So of their many new comrades, only the gargoyle had opted to join Kaito, Shinichi and Heiji on the front lines for their next round of gaming.
"I've tried out several of their games before," he told them. "And I was able to win several too. If we run into anything that requires brute strength or the ability to fly, I can also be a great help."
"Well, Kuroba's sort of got those things covered too," Hattori mused. "But having two of you super powered types could be helpful. We'd have gotten everyone out of the shark tank much faster if you'd been up top with us instead of down in the water. That's for sure."
"Our painted friends want to know what game we want to play next," Kaito announced as he rejoined their little group standing before the foot of the bleachers. "Sir Gargoyle, I seem to recall you said you knew where we might find our skeleton friend?"
"I do," the man agreed. "And please, call me Gozu." Squaring his shoulders and folding his wings neatly against his back, the stony creature stepped forward.
"We wish to play the claw game," he announced to the clowns in a loud, firm voice.
The clown faces rotated outwards until their faces were both upside down while their bodies were still right side up. The sight made several people gag and draw back, but the clowns didn't seem to notice. Instead, they grinned identical, upside down grins before their faces snapped back around to right side up again so fast that Shinichi would swear he heard a chink.
"Yes, the claw game."
"Is right this way."
"Claw the claws—"
"With a claw to play."
"This way!"
"This way!"
"This way!"
Pivoting as one, the clowns began to walk away, forcing Gozu, Shinichi and the others to follow. And behind them the bleachers slid forward, silent yet still as a held breath.
They had gone no more than a dozen steps into the carnival tent's vast, indefinable darkness before, just as suddenly as every other major attraction had made its appearance, a pit opened up before them. It was the size of two football fields, perfectly rectangular, and sunk a good thirty feet into the ground. Its walls and floor were all hard packed dirt. At each of the four corners, however, was what looked like a bottomless pit five feet across and perfectly square.
The rest of the field was littered with bones.
"Oh my god," came a horrified gasp from the bleachers. "You…you don't think those are—were—I mean, like us…"
Someone on the bleachers stood up and ran to the very end of his row to throw up over the side of it. Someone else began to weep. The sound was stifled, but, in the eerie silence that had descended upon them at the sight of this desolation, everyone could hear.
"It could just be stage dressing," a slightly more optimistic audience member suggested.
No one answered.
Shinichi decided that, for the sake of his own sanity, he would try to ignore them for now. At least until they had the game's rules and found Akiyama.
"How does this game work?" he asked Gozu.
The gargoyle glanced at the clowns, but they seemed willing enough for the gargoyle to explain, so he continued.'
"You see how there are doorways in every wall of the arena?"
Shinichi and the others looked. And indeed, right in the middle of each stretch of arena wall was a large, rectangular opening roughly the height of a grown man and three times his width. Where exactly those doorways led, however, they couldn't see because all that appeared to occupy the space beyond those thresholds was a darkness so thick that the light outside couldn't touch it.
"When the clowns tell us to start," Gozu continued. "Skeletons will start running out of all those doorways. Some of them will have weapons. And they're going to start fighting each other. They…don't hold back. We on the outside get these." He stepped up to a small podium that had materialized when the pit had appeared. "When the game starts, a cube of light will appear on each of these podiums. You place a hand in that light, and you'll be synchronized with one of those claw machines up there." He pointed up to where four enormous, mechanical claws were hanging from a nonexistent ceiling. They were enormous, red and scaly like the clawed hands of dragons. "The idea is to grab as many skeletons as you can and drop them into those holes in the ground you see at the corners of the arena before they bash each other to bits."
"Sounds simple," said Kaito.
"It's harder than it looks," the gargoyle said grimly. "Your movements will be limited to what the claws are capable of. And, when you drop a skeleton into a chute, it'll pop up out here." He pointed at a large square outlined in white chalk that had appeared on the ground to the right of the podiums. "Last time I was here, the first one I got attacked me and the other players the moment it appeared. We weren't expecting that. To make a long story short, you can synchronize with each claw only once. If you pull your hand out for any reason, the podium deactivates."
Kaito frowned. "That does complicate things. I suppose some of us will have to stand guard."
"Only four may play," one clown said.
"Choose wisely," his twin advised.
"That probably means we need to include any guards we place in the player count," said Shinichi. He turned to Gozu. "Will the weight of things be a problem like it was back at the shark tank?"
The gargoyle pondered the question for a moment then shook his head. "I don't believe so. Though as I said, I didn't manage to play for very long last time I was here."
"Then I think we should split into two teams. So two guards and two claw operators," the puppy detective concluded. "That would give each operator a backup podium to use should something go wrong with the first." He paused to glance at the clowns to see if they would object. When they did not, he turned back to his teammates. "If Gozu-san wouldn't mind, I think he should be a guard because he has the most limbs to use as well as enhanced strength."
"Sounds reasonable," the gargoyle agreed. "If I am holding down skeletons though, someone else may need to catch the new arrivals."
"I can do that," Hattori offered. "And Kuroba can operate a claw just in case the weight does turn out to be an issue."
"And I'll operate the second claw," Shinichi finished.
"Perfect." Kaito rubbed his hands together and grinned a very toothy grin. "Now that we've got that sorted out, we might as well get started."
He stepped up to one of the podiums and gestured Shinichi to take the podium to his left (farther from where the captured skeletons were supposed to make their appearance). Hattori and Gozu took up positions on either side of the chalk outline on the ground. The scarecrow detective had put away his light saber in favor of a wooden sword they had won earlier in the carnival since he didn't want to accidentally hurt anyone. The gargoyle, on the other hand, had opted to stay barehanded. Then again, crouched there with his great, bat wings arched high and his long, arrow-tipped tail lashing in unconscious anticipation, he cut quite the intimidating figure. Shinichi thought he might have to worry less about the captured skeletons attacking him and more about chasing them down before they ran away.
"Are you ready?" a clown asked, materializing just behind Shinichi and making the puppy detective jump. He hadn't heard the clown coming at all—hadn't even smelled him. It was that second fact that truly unnerved him though. It wasn't that these clowns had no scent like the masked man from the Court of Stars but that their scent was indistinguishable from all that surrounded them. Like they were truly and completely part of it or as though everything here was part of them.
The thought made Shinichi pause, frowning.
But he was called back to the present again before he could capture the nagging sensation in the back of his mind and give it shape. Now was not the time for wandering thoughts.
"We're ready," Kaito was saying.
The second clown grinned a joyous grin that never reached his dead black eyes. "Then let the game begin!"
Both clowns clapped and skipped off to stand on a terrace that had suddenly appeared hanging in the air some dozen feet over the arena. Where the terrace had come from and how the clowns had leapt up into it so fast, no one could tell nor really cared at this point.
No one except Takamiya, who wrote it in his notebook.
With the clowns declaration and sudden departure, cubes of light appeared atop each of the four pedestals just as Gozu had described. At the same time, the gaping doorways of darkness down on the field suddenly began to bubble. It was as though the darkness on the other side of the threshold was a thick, inky mist that was now in the clutches of an increasingly unruly wind. Wisps of darkness roiled out of those portals then, swept forward by the marching of dozens of bony feet.
Skeleton after skeleton marched out of each of the four doors. Some bore weapons, others were barehanded, and every one of them was basically identical.
"How are we supposed to tell which one is Akiyama?" Hattori wondered under his breath.
One of Shinichi's furry, canine ears flicked in his direction, suggesting that he had heard, but the detective himself didn't answer because he also remembered what Gozu had said about the skeletons bashing each other to bits. The last thing Shinichi wanted was to see Akiyama, someone he'd come to see as a good friend, be battered to pieces. Best get to work and fast.
Taking a deep breath to brace himself, Shinichi plunged his hand down into the cube of yellow light as Gozu had instructed. It didn't hurt, as he'd half expected it to. In fact, it was warm and almost comforting except that he could feel that the shape of his hand was no longer that of a human hand. He felt as though, if he were to look through that opaque glow, he would see that his five fingers had become four claws.
It was a disconcerting feeling, but it was also nothing he couldn't have anticipated.
Tilting his head back, he focused on the four claws hanging in the black infinity of the sky and flexed his fingers. The claw closest to him on the left flexed with him. So that one was his.
Even as he thought this, the claw to the right of his began to descend towards the arena pit.
Below, the skeletons raised their weapons and charged.
Shinichi immediately pushed his hand down towards the top of the podium. The action met with resistance as though the light wrapped around his hand was a rubber glove anchored to the top of the insubstantial cube at the wrist, and his movements were stretching it. As such, there was only so far his hand could move, but apparently that was all that was needed. With his hand pushed down into the light as far as it would go, the claw began to descend—albeit it did so at what seemed to him to be a frustratingly slow pace.
"The action's going to be over by the time we get anywhere near a skeleton," Kaito muttered, clearly sharing Shinichi's frustration.
The detective heartily wished that he didn't agree. He tore his eyes from the claws and their unhurried descent and focused instead on the skeletons, hoping he could somehow use this time to their advantage.
He was just in time to see the skeletons leading each charge meet in the center of the arena. One immediately swung its heavy mace at another, who struck back with a notched sword. As the lighter and more maneuverable weapon, the sword hit home first, cracking the bone of the mace-wielder's free arm. But then that mace connected with the swordsman's skull with a dull crunch that Shinichi swore he could hear even from his distance. With its head half caved in, the swordsman skeleton staggered back, but, unlike a living person, the injury only slowed it down. Teeth clacking, it struck with its sword again, this time aiming for its opponent's neck. The mace-wielder was unable to bring its weapon up fast enough to block, and its skull parted company with the rest of it to go flying across the arena like a struck golf ball.
Back at the center of the field, however, the now headless skeleton gripped its mace with both hands and whirled, smashing its weapon into the ribcage of yet another bony adversary with the misfortune to venture too close.
Shinichi dragged his gaze from the carnage, feeling sick.
"Akiyama-san wouldn't want any part of that," he said, half thinking out loud and half trying to distract himself. "We should focus on skeletons that look like they don't want to fight."
Kaito chuckled. "Good point. Any that seem afraid or confused too. Those are more likely to be ours, whether or not they're Akiyama."
It was a good plan in theory, Shinichi thought. Unfortunately, it turned out to have one major flaw. It seemed that even the most vicious of the skeletons feared the claws in the sky. The moment said claws drew near, they abandoned whatever skirmishes they were engaged in and scattered. And since most of the skeletons looked the same until they'd been through a battle or two, this made it difficult to actually keep track of any one particular skeleton.
On the up side, this gave them a way to slow the rate at which the skeletons destroyed one another. The claws were also not quite as slow as they had first appeared to be. They were faster than the slow skeletons if not nearly as fast as the quick ones.
Spying three skeletons who had ganged up on one of their brethren, Shinichi aimed his grappling claw in their direction. The skeleton under attack had been unarmed earlier, but it had snatched a broken spear from the ground and was now waving it about desperately to fend off its assailants. The desperation in its wild swings made Shinichi hope that it might not be one of the apparently (hopefully) mindless masses.
The three attacking skeletons dispersed upon his approach. The remaining skeleton hurled its broken spear shaft at the claws in a desperate attempt to drive them off. When that didn't work, it pivoted and tried to flee, but by then it was too late.
The tips of the claws Shinichi was operating closed around the running skeleton and ferried it the two dozen paces to the nearest drop point. There, he released it.
The skeleton vanished into the darkness of the pit. An instant later, it reappeared standing in the middle of the chalked square by the podiums.
"Aki—" Heiji started to ask only to cut himself off when the skeleton lunged at him, teeth gnashing and hands outstretched with bony fingers curled like claws.
"That is definitely not Akiyama!" he yelped, stumbling back and trying to get his wooden sword up before the skeleton could grab him. But the thing was faster than he had expected, and he knew he wasn't going to make it.
Gozu leapt forward. One huge, stony hand seized the attacking skeleton by the spine and yanked it back just as one bony digit grazed the scarecrow detective's cheek. The gargoyle tossed his captive onto the ground, skull face down, and placed one clawed foot squarely on the back of its ribcage.
"Tha—thanks," Heiji gasped, righting himself with a grimace.
The gargoyle nodded. "No problem. The first one's always a shock."
"Incoming!" Kaito called. "There'll be two of them."
Determined not to be caught off guard again, Hattori shifted hastily into a guard position, eyes fixed on the chalked square. This time, when the skeletons appeared, he was ready for them.
TBC