Crossover With Non-anime Series Fan Fiction ❯ Bane Sidhe ❯ Bane Sidhe: Angel Fall Vacation ( Chapter 5 )

A day later, Touma knocked on my door.

“Hey Shaun. I’m heading down to Kyushu to my home town to visit my family. Index is going with me. I got warned by my teacher in Antiskill that there’s some academy city higher ups are mad at me about ending the Level 6 project. They also said something about a scientist found dead in a parking lot. Do you know anything about that?” he asked me.

Crap. I checked my talent and determined I needed to go with him.

“Uh. Give me a minute to pack a bag and grab some Yen.”

Getting out of the city was slightly nerve wracking, but we were released without comment by the city guard station. We got to the nearby trainstation on foot and bought tickets for a city down in Southern Kyushu. The Shinkansen was several hours heading southwest to the far end of Kyushu, and I admit to drifting off into a nap. When we arrived in Nagasaki, we changed trains and rode another couple hours before getting to our destination, a small port city with a volcano across the harbor. So this was Touma’s home town, and where Accelerator came from too. Nice enough. Warm, too. It was barely dawn and already sweaty in the summer heat. I bought a bright Hawaiian shirt and sunglasses when we arrived. It was warm, sunny, breezy, and beautiful. Like a real vacation.

That’s when things got weird. My changeling half acted up. I bought a big straw hat to cover the points on my ears. I couldn’t cast anything to conceal the slightly blue-green tint to my skin, however, so I used rub-on tan to cover that from a local drug store. What, you didn’t think they had drug stores in every town? It made me look pretty awful like some gyaru’s sugar-daddy, but it kept away the questions. It was worse for everyone else, though. People had swapped looks. Touma’s mother looked like Misaka, Index looked like one of his Level Zero friends from Academy City, and it was very confusing. There was also a violent goth loli my instincts warned me to avoid.

My talent urged me to visit a specific house. The key was under a yard sculpture on the front step and I used that to open the door and enter the place. It was full of statues and various religious icons, and it was all carefully arranged. I used my talent there and was just about overwhelmed by all the biblical attention on it. Ordinary people can’t detect angels. They live on faith without confirmation. I can see them. Its part of the Changeling heritage, being half human, with a soul, but also half fae. If I choose to become fae, I lose my soul. This is why I’m still human. I moved statues and stuff around and the spell broke. Nobody died, nothing exploded and I left a note on the kitchen counter while I stole the sea turtle sculpture from the bathroom. I gave it to Touma later.

The rest of the vacation, once the goth loli disappeared without trying to blow up the whole world, was spent enjoying the beach, hot springs, and meeting Touma’s family who were nice people and telling them stories about all the girls chasing him. His father looked relieved.

“So Touma has entered his popular phase, eh?” he confirmed.

“Indeed. So many maidens are paying a lot of attention to him.”

“Not just the nun?” they confirmed.

“She’s just 14. He’s not a pedo. There’s a 15 year old that’s pretty serious about him… I have her picture here.” I showed them Misaka Mikoto, the real one. I had lots of pictures of the sisters on my phone. We hung out together and told each other jokes, because we made such a good Manzai team.

“She’s certainly… earnest,” said Mr. Kamijou.

“You could say that. She’s the Railgun. Pretty famous level five. Think Olympic Athlete. His hand protects him from her temper. He convinced her not to risk her life. And he saved some of her family from pretty big trouble. He’s also oblivious to her intentions. I suspect that Miss Kaori, who’s here at the hot spring, might be a more urgent prospect. She’s Amakusa Christian, from Goto island.”

“Really? That’s close. She’s practically local. Dresses a bit oddly,” said Touma’s mother.

“She’s kinda like Touma, and just as sensitive about it. She’s been one of Index’s guardians for the last few years.”

“So why is Miss Index living with our Touma?” asked his mother.

“Eh… there was this thing with the church leadership and a special duty she bears as a nun, and some changes he helped happen. There was significant risk for both of them, and it’s settled out for the better, but for now he’s her guardian.”

“What about her schooling?” asked his Dad.

“Eh… she’s incompatible with the academy city power program. Regular education might be good for her, though. She’s been sheltered so could use some exposure to more people and ideas.”

“Where are you from before you arrived in Japan, Mister Davies?” asked Touma’s father.

“County Clare, Ireland.”

“I had been told that the Irish have a very high rate of education. Is that true?” he asked me.

“I am a man of letters, and a graduate of Trinity College in Dublin,” I said. “In Archaeology.”

“So do you follow the path of Poets or Warriors?” asked Touma’s father. He was well informed.

“I did want to be a poet, but we find ourselves in many wars, do we not?” I said. The man nodded, and his wife gave him a look.

We ended up getting a room together and drank sake and ate their overpriced hot springs food because we were drinking. They broke out the Karaoke machine next.

There is a reason I don’t do karaoke. My voice is seductive, like Frank Sinatra or Elvis, and other voices are rarely on pitch so I find their off-key singing physically painful. It’s the curse of the Bain Sidhe. Perfect pitch, along with precognition. Some of my people have managed to maintain a pleasant expression to have a career in music, and they tend to be famous, or paid by famous people to make them music. We recognize each other, though there’s no newsletter.

The family and guests each sang some tunes and I struggled hard to keep a straight face and their broke notes and drifted pitch and drank more and when it was my turn I sang a Depeche Mode song, called Halo. I decided that was appropriate with all the unwanted attention we’d had, and the lingering visitors doing a terrible job of hiding themselves from me. I passed on the mic to one of Touma’s level zero spy friends and he was good, and didn’t hurt my ears either, or make my teeth ache. Yes, teeth ache is what you get with perfect pitch. It’s not funny. No, it really isn’t funny. Stop laughing at me.

I somehow got back to my motel room and drank a lot of water before bed and slept in. A long hot shower, some greasy breakfast to cure the morning ugliness in my guts and a walk along the shoreline helped me find my inner peace. Or at least banished my hangover.