Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ My Shinigami, My Hamburger ❯ Romper La Muerte ( Chapter 23 )

Chapter 23

"Romper La Muerte"

"Don’t tell her, please don’t tell her!" The pillow clamped over the whimpering deity’s head muffled the whine, and he only buried his face deeper as the grief settled in on top of his back, where his wings still shrunk slowly. He groaned pitifully, through the secretary was not likely to comfort him no matter how pathetic noise he could produce. In fact, in the short time the mortal had been gone, he’d only succeeded in scaring her to sit stiffly in the armchair clear across the room, daintily crossing her legs. With each whimper he gave off, she twittered nervously with hands, trying to keep them calmly folded in her lap but obviously failing. She was obviously nervous; she wasn’t sure if the Shrinks was completely not contagious, and who knew how cleanly this mortal home was, anyway? Opportunities for illness crept around her in the strange mortal world and made her crave the safety of her secretary’s desk in lush, red Valentine.

The Shinigami was curled up on the couch where Heero had left him, only now he’d gone to burrowing his face deep into the cushions. He’d taken the nearest pillow and pulled it over his head with both hands, as if trying to squeeze out the ailment physically. As he dreaded out loud, his tail whipped and twisted in anxiety near his feet. "Do not let her know—Okasan told him so many times not to eat anything!"

Nadette, still fidgeting her fingers while nervousness built up in her body, just shook her head compliantly. "No, of course I won’t," she promised quietly.

The ailing Angel of Death sat bolt up on the couch suddenly, still with both hands clenched around the edges of the old pillow, pulling it around his head like a ridiculous bonnet. He looked at her and she flinched almost to see that his puffy eyes were turning an ethereal bluish-violet, flushing with immortal blue blood known more formally as ichor.

Now his wings were nearing their final, absurd miniaturization and they were no longer than the entire length of his forearm, and still shrinking. The sounds of the bones dwindling supernaturally could be heard sometimes, as a joint made an abrupt transition. Only the tiniest down feathers remained clinging to the bone, as flimsy as air, and around him laid whirlwind patterns of glossy black feathers from when they had simply fallen to the floor. When he choked back another troubling hiccup and sob, Shini abruptly fisted his hand around the pillow and flopped it down in frustration on the couch.

His mouth twisted into a dramatic display of dread. Apparently, from his following wailing, he had not heard the secretary’s response. "Oh, he will not see the light of day for years to come!" One finger twirled his long ear tail anxiously. "If she knows, Okasan will surely dig a hole, hit him over the head, and bury him in it for being so stupid!" To punctuate the grievous nature of his fate, he laid a punch into the pillow and then tossed it over the arm of the couch to symbolize being tossed away by his self-absorbed and quick-tempered mother.

"No, no, I’m sure she wouldn’t—" Nadette assured him, more unnerved by his dramatic display. For a moment, she regretted allowing herself to stay back with the ailing deity—ogres and demons of the underground could be depended upon to be generally, dumbly nasty, but the Thirteenth Son of Shinigami was anything but predicable and could be counted on to cause a dilemma wherever he went in more cases than not. His nickname, coined by the many of the lower demons who’d been coerced into babysitting him or ones who’d been on the direct, receiving end of his mischief, as the most troublesome thing in all the circles of Hell had not been unfounded. It was a celebrity that didn’t go unknown to anyone in the netherworlds, except Shini himself, who either did not understand the implications of the nickname assigned to him or was too busy getting himself immersed in trouble to notice or care.

"Yes, she will, he knows! She will be very angry with him and just toss him back into Limbo." Shini pouted and glanced over at the pillow he’d thrown over the arm of the couch. He picked it up again and cradled it in his arms protectively, resting his chin on his crossed arms with a miserable expression. "She gave him such a nice caretaker this time. He didn’t want to make trouble this time, he swears. He did not want to make him worry this time, but he did anyway. She’ll take me away from Teishu, and he won’t even be sad to see him go."

Nadette’s face flickered uncertainly. There was no certain consoling answer to this, unless she wanted to lie to the ailing deity. Although he was young in immortal years, he wasn’t stupid enough as to think that his mother wouldn’t be furious with him for botching this one up, when she’d been working for over a year staking out the "Arrogant Mortal" for her beseeching son and was returned only with even more nuisance when he was finally given what he asked for. Yes, Miss Iria would no doubt not waste a second in chucking her problematic son back into the transitional plane of existence and take a break from worrying about him.

"Well, it may not be as bad as you think. Heero would miss you if you did have to leave, I’m sure," she tried to reassure him with, a little awkwardly. "Right?"

Rubbing at his slightly puffy eyes, that’s when the Angel of Death just sniffled pathetically and stared down at his toes. "He would not," he mumbled unhappily, reaching out to snatch up the tip of his demonic tail and knead it in his hand anxiously. "He does not want Shinigami her at all sometimes. Sometimes he is nice, but Shini can tell that he is just trouble to him, no matter what he does. He does not like him at all—he is scowling all the time!"

The secretary hesitated, rummaging her mind for something to respond with, drumming her fingers nervously on her knee. "He doesn’t hate you, though. It could always be worse." Even though the sentiment of the comment had meant to be uplifting, the poor Divine only ended up worsening the expression on the Shinigami’s face until it threatened with real tears. Se was already mentally kicking herself—she may not have been experienced with dealing with the dangerous mortal world, but she was very aware of what could and would happened should too many tears be shed. After all, she’d been plagued with hearing her superior gripe about it while not attending to her work, instead choosing to file her nails while sitting on her secretary’s desk, gossiping.

"No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say that—"

"Because it is the truth, isn’t it?" Shini sniffled pathetically, rubbing the back of his hand noisily on his nose, holding back his tears. "He knows it is. He’s not blind. Teishu doesn’t want him here, and that’s just as bad as being hated completely to him."

Nadette was adjusting more and more to consoling the lachrymose creature. After all, her well being probably hinged on it; there was no way she’d be able to withstand an attack from a vengeance spirit should she be unable to dry his tears. She shook her head. "No, I’m sure that you’re just mistaken. Heero doesn’t not like you, he just—well, I’m sure that he just—"

Waiting for the conclusion of her sentence, the bedraggled, puffy-eyed deity lifted his head, sniffling once and fixing those innocent eyes on her, just waiting for his hope to be either torn asunder or uplifted with those bright violet eyes of his.

She hesitated and sucked in a tiny bit of breath before continuing. "He just—a little impatient, that’s all. He’s young, he’ll learn to adjust before you know it," she tried as cheerfully, as brightly as she could. There was no way she wanted to risk upsetting the emotional creature again. "You know he’s been alone for so long and living on his own since he was so young. He doesn’t remember what it’s like to have family. He’s not ready for the change. That’s it, I’m sure. Don’t you agree?"

Shini’s expression grew simple and considerably calmer, and he blinked clearly at the idea. It was not new to him, but he’d been too smitten and too afraid of rejection in his husband’s presence to realize it. His mind began to turn the concept over carefully, looking for a new point of view from which to analyze it. "He was very alone, like Shini was," he began, nodding truthfully. "And he can get him to smile sometimes now, but he always gets so angry when Shini does something wrong, and that’s not a few times. He just makes so much trouble for him, even when he wants to cheer him up. You think he’s not mad at him?"

Nadette cautiously smiled. "You make trouble for everyone. Don’t worry about him. I think he can handle it, don’t you?"

He answered with a slow nod, gazing deeply off into the carpet while his young immortal mind churned, more positively this time. Another, waning sniffle, interrupted by another hiccup. As soon as the secretary believed that she was in the clear of the threat of tears and relaxed her posture in the chair, the Shinigami spoke up again, still curled up on the couch, clinching the pillow to his chest. "But he gets very mad when he tries to kiss him. That’s still a very big problem. How is Shini supposed to stop doing that?" Tilting his head, he pondered the question while his tail curled at his feet, and he scratched at his disheveled hair from burrowing his ailing head into the cushion. "The only time he cannot see Teishu’s mouth is when he closes his eyes, and even then he still wants to very badly. That is a problem, huh?"

He rested his chin against the pillow and peered up at her, not necessarily requesting an answer but wondering all the same. The flustered secretary did not have and did not necessarily want to have to answer that question, either, and kept her mouth shut while the Shinigami wondered it on his own, hiccuping sharply as he did so. Another feather fell from the bone and floated to the ground without a sound. With a sigh, his eyelids drooped unhappily and he muttered to himself, "He misses him already."

A few minutes after that, while the time passed in silence between the ailing Shinigami and the timid secretary of his mother, the Angel of Death sat up in discomfort and she looked at him with an almost horrified expression when he hiccuped again, and a tiny black bubble floated lightly in the air in front of him. A little Darkness splattered to the floor when it popped. Shini hiccuped again, and this time he curiously reached out a hand to touch it, but it burst at the slightest brush. Nadette began wringing her hands again.

Iria flipped dully through the glossy pages of a magazine, with her womanly feet currently soaking beneath her desk and her files lying untouched in her ‘In’ basket. She bored eventually of looking at the flashy advertisements and reading the petty concerns in the timid, questioning letters to the editor and reclined back in her chair with a dissatisfied huff. Her toes curled in the warm water, and beneath her desk, her tiny sprite attendants were hurriedly tending to the heating fires created beneath the gilded container of water. Turning the pages without even looking, she let out a sigh and rolled her eyes.

"Someone get me another magazine. And this time, make sure I won’t be reading it for the fifth time now!" she huffed in exasperation. She tossed it airily into the wastebasket. "Don’t I pay someone to make sure I haven’t read the magazine before I pick it up? For Hell’s sake—!"

When the sprites at her feet continued only to work busily, also ignoring the boisterous woman’s complaints by burying themselves in their task, she sighed again and folded her arms across her chest sharply. She looked around the room sourly until her eyes laid to rest on the phone on her desk, a vibrant, cherry-colored chic thing she hardly used except to punch the line to her secretary’s office downstairs. Iria readjusted herself as she sat up straight, and one of the sprites beneath the desk caught a glimpse as the Goddess of Love re-crossed her legs in her skimpy dress-suit that ended nearly where those legs began. Caught off guard and with a slack jaw, he also caught a dripping wet, steaming warm foot in the chin and flopped to the floor with a clumsy grunt in his high-pitched voice.

Hardly noticing she’d sent one of her underpaid employees careening to the floor, she began to vainly tend her hair that no one would really see anyway as she reached out and punched the button that patched her through to her secretary’s desk.

"Nadette, sweet, bring me something to do, would you? I’m dying up here," she asked flatly, lifting her finger so she could casually ruffle through her top desk draw for gum. Pushing aside lipstick and makeup and perfume bottles and money and jewels, she couldn’t find any, and she sat stiffly back up in her seat, squinting, when no one responded. She punched the button again. "Nadette?"

Squinting suspiciously at the phone, she lifted an eyebrow. "Hey! Wake up, sunshine!" she barked loudly, hell-bent on rousing any secretaries that might be sleeping on the job. "If I find you’re out for coffee or another one of your so-called ‘bathroom breaks’, and not here working where you should be, hon, I swear I will—"

"Uh, Señorita?"

The sprite who’d lifted his voice found himself stared sourly down by a Goddess of Love who loathed being interrupted over many things. "What the hell do you want, Thumbalina?"

"Your secretary is not in at the moment, you realize?"

"And why the hell is she not, then, Señor Lawn Gnome?"

With a little more humility this time, the little sprite bowed away a little as he informed her, "You sent her away hours ago, remember? To Tokyo, I think."

Iria’s look turned murderous with her blood-red eyeshadow in stark contrast to her blonde hair. She highly disliked being disproved, and hated it even more when she was caught in the middle of a mistake. Baring a curled lip at the creature, she growled, "Git."

"Excuse me, Señorita?"

"Git, git, git, you little flea! I don’t want to listen to you gripe and complain anymore, so haul your ugly face out of here," she dismissed abruptly, conceitedly folding her arms and closing her eyes as she leaned back and picked up another magazine. When the creature promptly scurried away, leaving the fire heating the Goddess’s water unattended and dwindling. He had difficulty in throwing his dazed friend over his shoulder, but took great pleasure in finally being free from the self-absorbed deity’s office and pulled the other sprite into the velvet red elevator, eager to use it before the peevish woman snapped at him. Of course, he didn’t realize he couldn’t reach the button until the door closed.

A few minutes later she would sigh and chuck the magazine away with a frustrated squawk and proclaim to no one that she was horribly bored and fully expected that she paid someone to prove entertainment for her when she was doing no work at all.

It’d been nearing an hour since Heero had taken off with a disappearing roar of Youkai’s engines, and Nadette’s worried mind and hands were fully aching at his point. It had only taken a few minutes for the Shinigami to pass through the next stage of the Shrinks, the odd production of black, dripping bubbles, and straight into a exhausting immortal fever. Almost as if trying to sink away into the cushions and leave his misery behind him, Shini continued his feverish mumbling and buried his face into the pillows. As sick as he was, he kept moving anxiously, turning and shifting sides. With a groan, he flopped down lifelessly when he realized he was just not going to be able to get comfortable. His tail coil and twisted constantly as the fever ran through his body and his head mimicked the French carousels he’d seen in a slow, disconcerting spin.

The tall blonde secretary returned to the room with a blanket folded over her arm, while Shinigami curled up completely curled up on the couch and ceased his restless fidgeting. He had his back pressed up against the back of the couch, hiding the fact that each of his once majestic wings were nearly roughly the size of a chicken drumstick. His black silk robes spilled over the edge of the cushions, his feet wrapped up to keep warm. At the moment, Shini had his face buried beneath an arm and she could see his bare back shivering. The fever was worsening quickly—the illness had been progressing even quicker than Nadette could have expected. Not that she was any expert on metaphysical diseases, but it was clear that something was going wrong.

When she stopped next to the couch, still wary of contracting anything, he barely even noticed her. It wasn’t until she self-consciously cleared her throat to announce her presence that he turned his head on the pillow to look at her out of the corner of one dizzy eye, his long hair tangled and his bangs slicked to his forehead. She held out the blanket to him and he took it with a heavy arm and covered himself with it. With a few tired, nauseated whimpers, he managed to crawl completely beneath it and pull it tight over his ailing head.

Nadette sat down on the chair again, a safe distance from the sick deity. It didn’t take her long to begin wringing her hands again as nervous habit. The secretary glanced over to the clock hanging on the wall. It’d been an hour and a half. As she watched the second hand twitch agonizingly around the center, ticking so slowly, he gave off another loud hiccup, and it ended abruptly with a little strangled, sick noise muffled by the blanket.

"I hope he gets back soon," she muttered to herself. She turned her head again to address the sick Angel of Death. "Don’t worry, Shinigami, he should be walking through the door any—Shinigami?"

Nadette stood up from the chair so fast that it knocked it over. "Shinigami?"

The blanket was draped motionless and innocent over the couch. The secretary walked over quickly, suddenly shaking with nervousness, and cautiously lifted up the edge of the blanket. "Shinigami? Oh, dear Heavens—" There was nothing but a pillow there and she pulled the blanket completely away, only confirming the horrible fear that the young deity had disappeared.

She was right. There was something wrong; he was progressing far too fast. He had already struck the final stage, marked by uncontrollable teleportation and the potential for the lethal disease known as the Drains. He could be anywhere within a hundred miles of the house at this moment, and he was definitely dehibilitated by the high fever. It'd be incredibly hard for even a Divine to find him now, she realized, and her fear solidified in her stomach as a tightknot.

Standing there lost, without a clue as to what she should do next, she held the blanket over her arm while the other went to cover her mouth in dread. She stood there until a few moments later when you could hear the distant growl of returning motors in the driveway and feet on the porch. Her eyes moved toward the hallway, widened as she heard the door opening. "Oh, dear…"

A/N: Well, I don't have much to say, and even less time to say it. So, I think I'll thank everybody who bothers to read what I take the time to write, and then I'll have to bolt. And I just did, so, ciao! Oh, one thing I forgot : I'm having a hard time deciding when I should post the first chapter of the new fic I'm working on, Barbarians in Rome. I have the first chapter of five or six competely done and the second is near completion. So this is my question to everyone who reads this author's note. Should I wait to finish the entire story until I post the first chapter, then post the next every week or so, or should I post it now and just hope I can get my nose to the grindstone and finish it in a relatively decent time? I'd choose either way, but I'm more worried about making readers wait ridiculous amounts of time for the next installment, as has become the situation with Twelve. Speakign of which, there might be a little suprise coming up. ^_^ That's all, so, I gotta go. Ciao!