Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ My Shinigami, My Hamburger ❯ 2000 Light Years Away ( Chapter 24 )

Chapter 24

"2000 Light Years Away"

Between two roughly parallel streets in western Shinjuku-ku lay an open alleyway connecting the two. It had been converted, like almost any precious free space in the bustling city, into a marketing opportunity and stuffed to the rafters with stores and boutiques flaunting names in English that would rarely adhere to normal American grammar but displayed them proudly anyway. The street was immaculate and paved with concrete, divided into two walks by a low green rail in the middle of the alleyway. On either side there could be seen a few preened and green bushes and young ash trees, and the mouths of the shops spewing from all the customers moving busily in and out, young consumers itching to dump the yen burning holes in their pockets. Through the current of the shopping district they moved, swinging purses and listening to the music pulsing from their headphones. They were little expecting or even able to imagine that in a moment they’d be in the presence of one of the outdated gods that only their antiquated grandparents worshipped.

And the poor deity, he would have no idea of what was happening after he fell into existence abruptly and also hit the concrete on the way there. He was suddenly just there, crumpling to the ground as if he’d fallen from the sky because of his puny wings. The Shinigami popped into existence between those two streets in Shinjuku-ku and sat up with a whine while he nursed his stubbed nose. His face was already flushed red with a heightening fever and even to sit up on his knees was enough to invite vertigo. Just before he swooned over again, he sneezed loudly and another black bubble floated up on the breeze.

But it was so heavy with thick Darkness oil it lumbered toward the ground before it popped and dripped to the concrete. After a few seconds in the sun, the oil began to crawl in agitation toward the protection of the nearest shadow.

Already, a few kids and one dour-faced old man had already stopped to observe the strange-looking young man in the middle of the street. They kept their distance, though. After all, they weren’t going to be able to ignore a half-naked, foreign-looking man sitting and swooning unhealthily on the concrete. The fact that he was wearing nothing but archaic black robes, had chestnut hair untied down to his waist, and a certain ominous air hung around him helped, too. After a while, he had begun to draw more and more eyes from the streets and the shops.

They watched the strange man shake his head dizzily a few times before he blinked, took a double take, and realized where he was. That’s when he oddly clamped his hands over his mouth, hiccuped, and shook his head dreadfully. Just as the crowd watching him started to get some vague suspicions and fears, the strange young man tried to get to his feet, sneezed, toppled backward in a dizzy spell, and disappeared before he could hit the ground. After that, the crowd quickly dispersed itself.

A few young girls gaped and ran out to the spot where the handsome young man had disappeared. The crawling black puddle was what finally scared them away, and the rest had already quickly turned or walked away, ready to forget the strange sight they’d seen. That was lucky for the ailing deity, already involuntarily teleported to another chu, or neighborhood, of Tokyo. He was going to be spotted many more times, and hopefully all the rest would be as willingly forgetful, for he’d be much too sickly to think about that. He’d be too sickly to do much but sneeze, hiccup, and wish he’d heeded his mother’s advice.

When Heero came into the living room, he was still pulling off his sneakers clumsily with one hand, which he’d failed to leave at the doorway because of his rush. In the other, he held the object he’d been sent out into the unseen, ethereal underground of Tokyo, risking his neck among disagreeable monsters of lore, and his face wore the an almost vulnerable look of surprise when he arrived, still moving forward from the momentum of trying to take off his dirty sneakers as he walked. He nearly dropped it the first time, blinked at the empty couch, and then really did drop it to the carpet. Clumps of half-dried mud soaked into the fabric as he left it there, more occupied at the moment with his unpleasant surprise. He stumbled into the living room as he yanked off the other shoe and let it hang in his grip while he stared at the couch.

The blanket under which had laid the Thirteenth Son of Shinigami now laid flat against the cushions. There were pillows tossed on the floor and disturbed cushions, all littered with a layer of glistening black feathers, so the signs of his existence had not disappeared, but the air felt empty and barren without him there. His cheerfully, enthusiastic, and often troublemaking presence was even more noticeable when it was gone. The house seemed awfully quiet now, even though now it just did not harbor a God of Death to make any noise to disturb the silence. That’s when the sneaker slipped out of Heero’s fingers and he almost dropped the little golden vial in his other hand as well.

Nadette remained standing in the living room, some distance behind him. She watched him with caution. He was simply standing there, not moving, until he turned his head to look at her out of the corner of his intense blue eye. Luckily for the secretary who hated confrontational situations, he spoke evenly.

"Please tell me he just went up to the bathroom for something."

She shook her head sadly. Even now, his face remained level and reasonable, though still a little vulnerable for her tastes. It was always the handsome mortals who had the worst sad-eyes and it made her even more anxious that she already was. It’d been only a minute or two at the most since Shini had disappeared, and already she could imagine the wrathful expression of her superior should she find out that her son had been misplaced someplace in Tokyo, and oh yes, he had a potentially lethal case of the Shrinks.

Heero squinted unhappily at the couch, walked forward to take the blanket off, and sighed as he rolled it up in his arms. Still staring at the ruffled cushions, he asked, "He’s already in the last stages, isn’t he? Do you have any idea where he could have gone?" He glanced at her over his shoulder when she failed to produce a sound, and she shook her head again with a very apologetic expression.

He tossed the bunched up blanket into the corner of the couch and black feathers skittered along on the breeze it created. "Shit," Heero announced in complaint, though his face didn’t loose that vulnerable expression. "I have a feeling this isn’t going to end well," he mumbled to hismelf.

After the surprise of discovering that the Angel of Death had again found away to cause trouble even when he was only lying innocently on the furniture, Heero decided that he’d wasted enough time and if he stood around his house he definitely wasn’t going to find him. He somehow doubted Shinigami would simply appear again at his feet, looking bedraggled but definitely still alive, and went quickly back to where he’d dropped his muddy sneakers when from upstairs came a tiny eletronic peal. Heero stopped and stood straight up to listen. He knew he’d never be caught dead with the chorus of "Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?" as his ring tone, and went bolting up the staircase toward his bedroom as it rang again, one sullied shoe in hand as he took the stairs two at a time.

The miniature pink Hermes cellphone was laying on Heero’s nightstand, ringing as loud as an obnoxious bird inside the silent house to the beat of an old disco song. Without the sounds of Shini snooping around the house, or scampering on the roof, or tailing Heero and begging to play a game, the noise went uncushioned and echoed sharply against the walls. He picked it up, knocked over the alarm clock in his haste, and flipped it open in the middle of the second chorus. As soon as he had, it could already hear the griping voice of a certain demigod, and he frowned at the glowing gold screen for a second before putting it to his ear.

"About time, Arrogant Mortal. What the hell were you doing? Coping the Bible by hand? You must walk slower than I age, I swear!" Iria snapped at him, also smacking her gum into the receiver. On the other end of the line, she sitting at the gold and ruby-studded vanity she kept in her second closet, wrapped up in a silken robe and her hair wrapped up in a towel.

"What do you want?" Heero growled back. Oh, yeah. He remembered the oh-so affectionate nickname with a scowl.

"Give me my secretary back. It’s been bloody long enough! I have to redo my nails and I need someone to flip my magazine for me," she explained, as if it was obvious and Heero should have known and spared her the stupid question.

The mortal made an odd face. "Why don’t you just ask somebody else?"

The goddess scoffed at him, now picking up her eyeliner, which slunk to the corner of the box when she lifted the lid off and hissed at her and coiled up. As she pinched the tiny black snake by the neck and slid his tongue over her eyelid, she replied, "Because Nadette is the only one would can do it half-decently. Everyone else always picks up the blandest issues. I want my secretary back."

"Why don’t you come and get her yourself?"

Iria quaintly dropped the creature back into its box, where it whimpered and crawled into the shadow. She went looking for the key for her mascara box next, half-listening to Heero while she shuffled through drawers. "Just because I’m beautiful and successful doesn’t mean I have the time to do all these fanciful things—my work is very important and I’m never not pressed for time. Unlike you lowly mortals, I have a responsibility to go with my remarkable beauty and exquisite power and I do so extremely faithfully." This was said while the ‘In’ pile was overflowing and the ‘Out’ pile might not have seen a paper pass through it for years. "Send her back. Walk her to the station if you have to."

"I’m surprised Shini learned to tell his head from his ass, with a mother like you," Heero grumbled to himself.

"Excuse me?" Iria asked abruptly, quitting her admiration of her hair in the reflection as she heard the mumble. "Would you care to repeat that, Arrogant Mortal? I didn’t quite catch that last part."

He ignored it. There were more pressing issues than his regular argument with the self-centered Goddess of Love. "I’d be glad to return your secretary, but there’s a problem."

"Ugh," Iria scoffed at him in distaste. "You haven’t been fooling around with her have you?"

Safely on the earthly side of the line, Heero rolled his eyes. He was not amused in the least. "No."

"Good, because if you did, that’d be cheating. And that’d be in direct violation of our agreement and I would have the right to cut off whatever body part I wished, Heero Yuy," she warned plainly, as if it was casual information. "So remember that when you think you’re getting the seven-year itch, your eyes better not wander off my precious Shinigami or I’ll be there to personally secure that you’ll never foster any illegitimate children. Plus, if it’s a Catholic woman, I get to take another body part and stick it in a jar just for kicks. Catholic women are so damn hard to sway, holy hellfire! Takes three or four arrows to take them down, and those things don’t just grow on trees! They snip a neat amount off my profit, I’ll tell you—"

"Alright, hold it. Just wait a minute," Heero interrupted suddenly, furrowing his brow as he listened to the Divine’s words in his head again, coming across a certain line with a red light flashing in his mind. "What ‘seven-year’ itch?"

"Oh, Arrogant and Stupid? You must be the diamond in the rough Shini convinced me you would be. Drugstore diamond is more like it." She scoffed and let out another windy, dramatic sigh, but at the same time, she disinterestedly picked through her collection of exotic makeup items and they hissed and growled at her.

By now, Heero’s jaw was set tightly, both from frustration with the ramblings of his dreaded mother-in-law, and from something else, much more upsetting. He repeated it again with less patience. "What ‘seven-year’ itch?"

For a moment, there was a silence over the line. Then, "Oh, Hell." The deity had considerably lost her casual, offhand tone and she even quit touching up her hair in the mirror. "So…" she drawled, "I’m guessing that means you have not slept with my son, then."

"Definitely not," he growled back.

"…you didn’t just forget, or something—?"

"No!"

"Oh, damn it all, Shinigami! You oversensitive crybaby, you knew you had to seduce this one! Just take your own sweet time, why don’t you?" Iria railed to herself, huffing impatiently.

"Wait one fucking minute," Heero interrupted again. "You were going to—"

"Yes, yes," she confessed in annoyance, now that the secret had been brought out into the open. "I never actually was going to come and get Shini after the five days, alright? Is that what you want to hear? Well, fine, it’s out there." When there was a tense, constricted moment of silence, she spoke up brazenly again. "If you would just suck it up and get over that ridiculous authority-complex of yours that makes you turn your little nose up at whatever people tell you to do, you’d see that this is the best, for both you and Shini! Holy Hell, you have pretty eyes, but you can’t see anything with them, I swear!"

The Arrogant Mortal was not happy in the least to hear that, and just suspecting it would have been enough to fully upset him. Now, if there had been anyone in the bedroom with him, they would have found themselves pinned to the wall by the knives in his eyes, as he scowled at the phone. "Whatever happen to a Divine’s sacred word?" he growled at her finally, clenching a fist at his side.

"Hey, I lied," Iria answered. "We do that too, you know."

At that moment, the harrowing worry over the disappearance of the Shinigami and the new found fury at the discovery he’d been deceived by both of the gods were mixing in his mind in a frightful combination. He was visibly upset, but torn as what direction to put that energy to, his rage, or his concern. For a few seconds, the phone line remained quiet as Heero scowled at the wall, fist tightening. And eventually, without the affectionate smile of the Angel of Death to ground him, to put sense in his head for a moment, the former won out and took control.

"Anything else you’d care to tell me?" His voice was near venomous.

"Keep him away from food," she answered casually, going calmly back to applying her makeup. "I forgot to mention that to you, so my secretary should have come and told you. You’d better watch him. That scamp will shove anything sweet-smelling he can find into his mouth as fast as he can."

Heero managed to keep his jaw gritted tightly enough to hold back his frustration, his anger, and his fury at his deception behind his teeth as he talked out between them. One last answer came out of him before it swelled out of control. "I already know. And if you want to see your son alive again, I suggest you get over here and find him, because lost in Tokyo. He’s probably going to die very fucking soon and I don’t know where to even start looking." And before Iria could even register her great surprise and disbelief, he’d hung up angrily and was already dashing back down the hallway and taking two steps down the stairs before simply jumping the rest of the way.

People in all corners of Tokyo were being inadvertently terrorized by a figment of old religion, though to the individuals who saw him it seemed like an isolated incident of pure delusion shared with those around them. It could have very well been the summer heat, which was beginning to climb that day up to dizzying temperatures, so most simply walked away. They were ready to convince themselves they were just suffering from a little dehydration, and went wandering off for a beverage. That was a good thing for the poor Shinigami, for he was thrown all over the sprawling city at the mercy of his erratic teleportation, hiccuping and sneezing all the way. The God of Death appeared next inside a cold, empty stairwell, already rolling down the last three steps of a flight of stairs and coming to a stop with a whimpering sigh. It echoed back to him off the walls in a distorted reverberation and he sat up groggily.

His head was spinning horribly out of his control from the slightest movement, and it upset him a lot, not even being able to focus clearly. He blinked slowly at the close, whitewashed walls, trying to get his fevered mind to force his eyes to focus on the number painted on the wall and failing anyway. He felt as sickly as he looked, struggling to keep his inner balance while he sat up. Fever turned his face a glowing red, coated his skin with a thin sheen of sweat, and made his violet eyes hazy and unsure. His hair had again returned to its unruly state, and it felt heavy and stuffy on his back, so he weakly gathered it up and held it over his shoulder. As he squinted at the wall in the cramped stairwell, he held it tight and nervously ran his fingers over his tangled hair. He couldn’t make the number out and, fully discouraged, tried to figure out exactly where he was.

He knew he was in a stairwell for the moment, but that could change. Before, he’d seen glimpses of shrines as he’d fallen into existence at the foot of the stairs, smelled food in restaurants, and once the terrifying blaring of horns as he momentarily existed in the middle of a street. Countless other places as well, sometimes only for a moment and sometimes longer. The only constant had been the confused dread everytime he felt himself transported to another unknown place. A fearful part in his heart, one unaffected by the crippling fever, knew that that he was most likely be torn from his current position like a leaf on the wind and it was that part that realized he could die—that he could be destroyed by a horrible disease simply because he had taken a bite of mortal food.

And that in turn scared him to tears again, falling out of his reddened eyes with hardly a notice. The world was blurry again, and his face was burning and wet. All he wanted was his Teishu to be standing before him, with that same little disgruntled scowl and telling him he was being ridiculous, that he was fine after all. He’d shake his head, maybe even roll his blue eyes at him, and stand him up and take him home. Shini smiled weakly to himself. He knew Heero would roll his eyes, sigh, and huff and puff in exasperation, but he would never just leave him no matter how much he managed to fuss or grumble. Though he hoped his mortal husband would just somehow be there to grumble and lead him to Youkai, he knew that it was near to impossible. Not even he knew where he was—he wasn’t even sure if he was going up or down the stairwell when he staggered to his feet and tried to find his way out without an inkling of direction.

By now, the terrible ache in his bones had disappeared, substituted for a worse one in his stomach. It felt like he’d swallowed a live serpent rather than a bowl of ice cream and now it’d woken up and started hissing and fighting back in his belly. The Shinigami continued his direction-less motion; he was halfway delirious, halfway terrified as the pain continued to worsen. The serpent was striking at his insides now, and he had to stop for a minute. He made a confused face as he wrapped his arms around his bare stomach and looked down to see wisps of black mist coming off the skin of his torso, and dissipating slowly. The pain kept getting worse, no matter how tightly Shini pressed on his churning stomach.

His feet stumbled off the last step and he fell to his knees on the floor, overtaken by the vicious alliance of vertigo and this strange new pain. Shini tried calling out to Heero, but as soon as he opened his mouth, he hiccuped violently. Little could he know, the first stages of the Drains had already sunk its teeth into the poor Shinigami. The very stuff that kept him alive, animated him, gave him his latent power, was just seeping out of him.

As he finally gave into his ailing body and curled up in the corner, on the cement floor, he felt all the Darkness in his body tense up in anticipation. Shini mewled unhappily to himself, knowing that another random teleportation was coming to throw any clarity he’d gained out the window and set him down in another place. He huddled closer to the wall in the hopes that it might keep him from being jarred around the city without his permission. With each teleportation, his body ached more deeply, and it spent his energy. It was what caused his Drains, when the Darkness contained in him was somehow let loose and would ebb out of him until nothing remained in his Divine body. The only things that remained with him throughout every transportation were his dizzy head and the comforting but distant image of the blue-eyed mortal that recalled of a time when he wasn’t blind with sickness and in pain and alone.

He pressed his nose into the corner of the stairwell’s whitewashed walls and groaned, "He’s sorry, Heero. He swears he’ll never make you angry again—he’ll never kiss you again if you don’t want, just come take him home. Please. He’s sorry, sorry, sorry, Teishu." His hot tears came freely now, and he rubbed a weak hand across his face to wipe them. But he just ended up burying his face into those hands.

The wisps of escaping Darkness hung eerily in the air around him as he cried to himself, his bare back to the stairwell. His tiny wings, nearly naked of their feathers and revealing stark white bone beneath them, were to weak to do anything, and as he tried to resist the next teleportation and remain there, crying, his tail smoked then opened up in flame. A second later, he was not there.

Only a little black mist hung in the air afterward and even that faded within a few moments.

A/N: Hmmm, I might just be ahead of myself in this arc. I think there should only be about five more chapters, but that's an estimate. I've been moving a few of the elements around, saving some for later and whatever, so I might be further along than I expected. Poor, poor Shini, huh? I'm not being very nice to you, and Heero's definitely not going to be in the mood to, either, and you don't have a clue what to do. I'm so kind to all the characters, aren't I? And Iria's practically mother of the year! The chapter title is, of course, the Green Day song off Kerplunk!. Hey, when I'm in doubt of what to name the chappie, I go scrounging through my cds. Yeah, big music addict. Never leave home, go to sleep, work, write, or do anything without some! ^_^