InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Nikanaru ❯ Not kansas, that's for Damn Sure ( Chapter 11 )

 

Previous Chapter Illustration

 

http://www.deviantart.com/view/30216169/

 

This one's a bit of a doozy, because I want those little glimpses of Max's younger years to be clear while giant, current Max screams like a banshee. Lots of cutting and pasting here.

BONUS

www. deviantart. com/ view/ 30300781/

I guess you could call this the "cover art" for this story. I've been sitting on this for while now, but wanted to submit it at just the right time so that there were no visual spoilers for the story, though I guess there is still one if you look hard enough. Still, all those intros on anime shows get away with it, so why the hell can't I?

 

 

 

Nikanaru

 

Chapter 11

 

Not Kansas, That's for Damn Sure

 

Or

 

Some Visuals in this Chapter have been Brought to you Courtesy of Sleep Deprivation Inc.

 

The very first thing he became aware of was the smell. Even before the waking world slowly managed to infiltrate his head, the smell had seeped into his unconscious mind, making his sleep a somewhat uncomfortable, guarded one. The aroma all around was so unnaturally…natural. T'was alarmingly unfamiliar. It was so clean, so pure, and so raw that he didn't think it was really possible for such a natural taste to exist.

 

Uuugh… Max turned in his waning sleep, trying to shoo away from this uncomfortable sensation interrupting his beauty rest. Uuh…what the hell? Further awareness set in when he realized that his “bed” was, in fact, a very hard surface. Aw, hell, are we camping again? I hate camping! Much to the protest of his weary eyelids, he commanded them to open and waited patiently for his vision to focus.

 

Am I blind, or is it just dark out…? What the hell was I doing? Pulling himself into a sitting position, Max took in his surroundings in confusion. While it was taking a while for Max's eyes to adjust to the dark, he could tell he was in some sort of room. It smelled vaguely of wood, but once again the overall smell encompassing everything was disarmingly strange. It smelt like…nature, only amplified times a hundred. Sort of like how things smelled when he'd been in the forest out behind the house, or out in the woods on said detested camping trips. The weird thing was that this was an absolutely pure forest smell, without even the slightest trace of humanity. No buildings, no smoke, no cars, no… pollution, he guessed. No forests in Japan smelled this clean.

 

Eh…I must just be stuffed up. With the palm of his thumb, he removed the crust from his eyes with practiced caution, making sure not to scrape his corneas with his claw. Now…what was I doing? This was something that hadn't happened since he'd been a kid. A few times, he'd slept over at a friend's house only to wake up in confusion at not being in his own room. That, however, hadn't happened since before he'd hit puberty, and even then he'd usually remembered where he was a few seconds after waking up.

 

So he simply sat there, waiting patiently an explanatory memory to come to him. Silence permeated through the night while he groggily sat for five seconds…ten seconds…thirty seconds… Damn it. Now out of patience, he tried scanned his memories for what he'd last been doing. Let's see…I got up…ate some Raisin Brand, since Grandpa ate the last of my Lucky Charms…me Lucky Charms, they're always after `em…ew, God, that didn't even sound funny in my mind. Uh, yeah, went to school… um… slept through math … slept through English… got smacked by Mr. Wong for trying to sleep through civics… then I got called in to the principal's office…I, um, …

 

“…Max?” A soft voice appeared in the darkness, but its softness didn't keep it from scaring the pants off Max at its extremely sudden appearance. Meeting the direction of that voice, the platinum haired head snapped very nearly painfully to its right. It was still pretty dark, and Max could still only make out a shape, so he had yet to tell if he should be embarrassed about acting surprised or not.

 

“Yeah?” As he tended to do, he kept his tone relaxed and casual. Stupid pride kept him from acting as perplexed as he was. He didn't want whoever this was to think he'd…no wait, she'd gotten the drop on him. Weird, though. Usually, I can smell someone before they're even close to me. Damn weird smells are throwing me off.

 

“You're…up.” Now he recognized that voice! Al! He just hadn't spotted it immediately since the voice was without the usually sullen dryness that it was usually drenched in. As a matter of fact, the voice was not only without said bitterness, but held a great deal of… concern? Weird, considering that all it had done was observe that he woke up.

 

“Uh…yes. Yes I am.” He nodded. “And you're…you're…” It was too dark to see what she was doing. So much for a sarcastic comeback. Her shadowy form shifted in the darkness until she knelt next to him, now close enough for his eyes to see clearly. Odd, she was wearing her usual blue t-shirt under a white long-sleeve and jeans, but they were covered in dirt.

 

“Jesus, what happened to you??”

 

“I…pardon?”

 

“You look like you've been out mud-wrestling or something.” He commented, flicking at a few specks of dry dirt on her shoulder. “You know, you're supposed to take off your clothes before you go do that. It saves on laundry fees, and its way sexier.” He was expecting to be either yelled or snorted at for that remark, but instead she seemed to ignore it completely. She just kept staring at him oddly.

 

Well, this is creepy. Detracted as he wanted to be from this gaze, he pulled himself quickly onto his feet, now aware that he was fully clothed, shoes and all.

 

“Are…are you okay?” Once again, this was spoken in this odd, carefully concerned voice of hers. She seemed like she was genuinely worried about his welfare, but simultaneously wary of him, as if she was expecting something bad to happen.

 

“Jim dandy.” He replied with a yawn. He did feel a good deal stiffer than usual, but hardly anything worth fretting over. Arms raised, eyes closed, muscles were stretched and all the usual spots were popped and cracked. Afterwards, he opened his eyes to see that Al was still giving him that odd look. “What?.?”

 

“Do you…? Um…I…” VERY strange. She acted like she wanted to ask something, but didn't know what the question was. Exhaling in mild frustration, he dismissed her stammering and stared at his watch.

 

“What time is it?” Fingering around for the button, the backlight came on and the digital readout displayed 3:27. “A.M.?!”

 

Holy hell. Yeah, that explain the grogginess, but what's Al doing up at this hour? And what's she doing here at all? And… where is here? In the light his watch gave off, though, Max got a good look at his own sleeve, which was also covered in dried dirt. The hell?? Giving himself a quick look-over, he saw that all of his clothes were just filthy. Aw, man… With another irritated sigh, he brushed his hands over his coat and shirt, flaking off what dirt would come off.

 

Finishing off his collar, Max looked over the room again now that his eyes had adjusted again. Yup, this was definitely a wooden cabin…or rather a hut of some kind. Wow. This is really old school. I…wait a sec. A though came to him suddenly, and he slapped at his collar again. He hadn't felt something there that should've been, and now realizing that, was checking again. His Toku crystal wasn't there. HOLY SHIT! Spinning around, he gaped at Al, who still gaped at him oddly, but now more cautiously now that that Max looked alarmed. She sees me! She…wait…

 

That did it. Memories of what he'd last done came back to him in a rush; Getting shot. Getting chased though the sewers. Clawing off a woman's hands. Al's apartment and her revelation to him. Naraku. The fight at the Shrine. And… and…

 

“GRANDMA!!” Rushing past Al, he burst thought what appeared to be a wooden door. Outside, his rush was stopped short at the sight of a forest. A pure, thick, dense forest with a sky brighter and clearer than any he'd seen in the city. “Souta!? Grandpa!!” He screamed their names repeatedly into the woods, but nothing replied. The crickets and other animals had silenced following Max's alarming outburst. He sniffed about in an effort to try and get any sign of them, but all he got was the pure pine and forest scent, as well as bit of Al.

 

Al…that's right!

 

Spinning back around, Al had followed him to the entrance of the hut, she seeming to be as alarmed as he was. He opened his mouth to demand an explanation, but found himself in an oddly similar position she had been in seconds earlier. He wanted answers, but didn't quite know what the question was. This wasn't the city! This was nowhere near any city, or any town he'd even been in his life! The smells, the landscape, and even some of the vegetation were all completely unfamiliar!

 

“Al…” He didn't know what single question to ask, so he instead asked them all in a panicked rush. “Where are we?? What is this place?? Where…where's Grandma and Souta and…what happened?!?” His barrage of queries where only met with the further confused and further frightened Al. But Max was too panicked to give her any leeway. “AL!” With a tighter tone, he approached her almost threateningly, though he really was just scared.

 

“I…” In no small way frightened by him, she shook a little before forcing an answer out. “I…don't…know.”

 

*********

 

Earlier

 

This was well beyond anything her rational mind, grounded in science and reality as it was, was able to accept. But that didn't matter in the least bit, because it happened anyway, and happened with violent intensity. Arms gripped Max as though his limp weight was her anchor against the horrific vortex of wind and energy pulling at them from all directions. Already, she'd screamed out the last of the air in her lungs, but was too scared to dare take another breath. She didn't even dare look. Between the wildly screaming winds and the sickening feeling of imploding from within, the impending feeling of death was far too terrifying to face. All she could manage to do was cling on to Max, hold her breath, and pray that it would be over soon and painlessly.

 

When another explosion boomed out, Al's entire body shook out of reflex. This blast, however, had been different from the last one… it started off extremely loud, but was quickly hushed. Muffled out, almost, as though someone had thrown a blanket over it. Then, the imploding feeling just suddenly stopped. Everything was silent now. She couldn't feel or hear anything around her…no wind, no sound…she didn't even feel the ground. She couldn't even feel the pull of gravity! All she could feel was the body of Max, which she was still grasping onto like a lifeline. Her limbs and her hair felt as though they floated weightlessly.

 

Seconds passed where she awaited anything else to happen. Nothing would, so she finally gained enough courage to open up one eye. When she opened it just a little, however, seeing what little she did made her snap both wide open.

 

The world was gone.

 

There was no Shrine. No earth beneath them. No sky above them. Nothing of the natural world she knew of was there anymore. In its place, there was instead something she didn't know how to categorize… it looked like they were floating in a sea of dense blue light, though it wasn't “light” in the traditional way she'd known it. It was more like they'd been submerged underwater, except the “water” was bright and luminescent. It flowed and drifted around them in waves, the similarity of its movement somewhere in between liquid and smoke.

 

She'd unconsciously started breathing again. There was air around them, but it felt…thicker, somehow. Like a dense fog, only she could see the waves of light moving toward her mouth as she breathed in, and away as she breathed out. It warmed her lungs as though they'd been soaked in a therapeutic bath. Was she inhaling light?

 

Moreso than that, her mere breathing was the only sound that could be heard in this tidal of light, only it seemed to be amplified several times. Max's breathing, while much shallower, could also be heard very clearly. It was like any noise they made was bouncing off the columns of light and bouncing immediately back at them, more powerful than ever.

 

“…Max?” She finally asked the sleeping body in her arms, her full voice much louder than she'd intended. He made no response, despite how undeliberately loud she'd been. He was out, but there was no question that he was breathing, too. Even his heartbeat , in this amplified soundscape, was nearly audible. Still not knowing what to do, she just held on to him while they seemed to float aimlessly in these calm waves.

 

The big, silver tail he'd always kept on his shoulders was now floating around them like a rag in space. When it very nearly brushed up against her face, she tentatively released a hand from Max's torso and reached for it. Almost as though she were in a daze, her hand gently grasped at the outermost fur on the thick mane. Strange…despite knowing Max all these years, she'd never once felt this appendage before. Why on earth the irrational desire had hit her now of all times and places was beyond her, but she didn't know what else to do. In this weightless place, the tail felt incredibly soft, yet still thick and firm.

 

How long had she been here? How long had she been holding on to this? Time felt like a variable in an algebra equation, as she lost all sense of it, but at some point she chose to release the tail and let it float free in the space.

 

“…Are we dead?” She finally called out, uncaring of how much louder her voice was. She hoped someone, something would answer, but no reply came. Not a God, not an angel, not anything that could offer her a hint as to what was going on. All that kept them company were the waves of light, still swaying calmly and silently around them, holding them afloat like an ethereal pair of mother's arms. If they were dead, then perhaps this was purgatory. After all, she was an atheist. Maybe this was God's punishment for infidelity to Him.

 

And if that was the case, then Max was probably here also for the way he constantly used Jesus' name in vain.

 

Time continued to pass, leaving Al only to stare hypnotically at the scenery around her like one entranced by a lava lamp. Fear was still alive and well within her, but there was also a fascination in some uncertain way. Similar, somehow, to the fascination she'd had with Max's appearance… it was something so completely… unfathomable. They were things that couldn't and shouldn't exist in the world she knew, and that foreign element made it both frightening and attractive all at once.

 

At some point, Max's tail seemed to slowly droop back down, as eventually did Al's hair and limbs. The warmth surrounding them was going cold, the light was fading out and she felt gravity beginning to settle in again. Once again, her arms wrapped around his torso as the sensation of floating faded into a very distinct feeling of falling. The light dissipated, cold wind rushed up from below at them, and Al closed her eyes, beginning to scream again.

 

It didn't last long. She finally impacted onto something that nearly knocked her out, then felt a cold, gooey substance all over the unleveled surface she landed on. In her shock, she'd released Max and now laid alone on something that felt quite the opposite of what she'd been feeling earlier. Fighting to take a breath after this sudden blow, she managed to inhale some of the cold, thin air. After forcing a few more breaths of this new, regrettably normal oxygen, Al reopened her eyes and, with shaking hands, readjusted her glasses. However, they hardly helped her vision, as they were spattered with some brown substance.

 

Mud?

 

Groaning, her body rolled over and onto her hands and knees, where she took a few moments to steady her breathing. Yep, that gooey substance had been a thin layer of mud on a dirt ground, which she had in various spots all over her. Turning around, she spotted Max a few feet to her side, and panicked when she saw that he was laying face down in said mud. Lunging towards him, her hands pushed his whole body onto its side. That got him covered even worse in the filth, but his respiratory passages were at least unobstructed. His chest still heaved up and down regularly, so he was still breathing comfortably.

 

Max's safety assured, her limbs forced themselves to stand up. It wasn't easy… she was shaking a lot more than she'd realized, unable to suppress it if she tried. She wasn't sure if it was the cold wind blowing against her damp clothes, or the trauma she'd just been through. Still she fought her way until her legs hefted the rest of her up into a weak standing position. From there, she could finally examine her surroundings.

 

A forest. The two of them had, for lack of a better word, “landed” in a small clearing within an otherwise dense forest. A small cabin… or rather, hut, stood erect at the center of it, just a few yards away from where they were, her attention brought to it by the light banging the door was making as the breeze opened and shut it. Embers of a dying fire were present before it, a trail of thin smoke lifting up from it to an evening sky. The sun was equally dying, its red stain across the sky growing smaller by the second. Even now, stars were becoming somewhat visible.

 

They were most certainly not in the city anymore. Given that the sky was so clear, they also couldn't be anywhere near a city. That made absolutely no sense, given that they'd been right in the middle of one mere minutes ago, but, then again, what in the last few moments had made any sense?

 

“H-hel…” It took still another deep breath for the poor girl to be able to even speak properly. “Hello?” Her call went off in the direction of the hut. Someone had to be there, seeing that the fire had to have been made by human hands recently. Apprehensively, she tried again. “HELLO?” The fact that she had her hands around her mouth didn't change the results; nothing responded.

 

Then she jumped when she heard something that sounded vaguely like a growl coming from very, very close. But it was no animal. Not exactly. It was Max.

 

He was snoring.

 

********

 

Present

 

“That's just it.” She finished relaying her experience to a now calmer Max. “I can't…really explain any of it. That's just what happened.” (Although she had tactfully kept the part about groping his tail to herself.) Sitting together with her in the hut, Max listening with an attentiveness he rarely used. The last images he could remember before he'd passed out kept flashing in his mind… Grandma, Grandpa and Souta, apparently free and safe from Naraku… although those brief flashes could hardly confirm anyone's safety. Al had told him that it had seemed like that “shockwave” of energy he'd unleashed had purged the Infestation out of those people, his uncle included. That did offer him some measure of relief, but it still killed him to not be there to make absolutely certain they were okay.

 

Furthermore, he'd had a hard time fully digesting everything she'd told him. HE'd created some sort of an explosion of energy that killed off the Infested? HE'd created some sort of vortex that pulled him and Al in, left them floating in a blue light and then dropped them off right smack dab in the middle of God-Knows-Where?

 

“O-kay.” He spoke it very slowly, as though each syllable were a word in itself. As near-impossible as it all was to believe, Al's testimony was the only indication he'd had as to what happened, no matter how poorly informative it was.

 

“What…what exactly, did you DO?” She verbally echoed the exact same thing he was wondering.

 

“I…don't…know.” He verbally echoed her earlier explanation to his questions.

 

Aren't we just a lovely, clueless pair?

 

“Woah…wait…what'dya mean you don't know?” Gone now was the gentleness of before, now replaced with irritation. The glorious return of classic Al. “You where the one who did this!”

 

“I said I don't know!” Max snapped back, equally frustrated by the given situation. “Look, if what you just said is right and I did do all that, obviously I didn't do it on purpose!”

 

“I was an accident?”

 

“I…yeah, I guess.”

 

“No. No no. People `accidentally' drop things. People `accidentally' forget to set their alarm clocks and wake up late. In the worst cases, people `accidentally' drive their cars off the road and kill somebody. Nobody `accidentally' makes a vortex that sucks people up and drops them off in the middle of the woods!”

 

“Well…” Arms waved around desperately. “…shit, Al, apparently, I do. I don't know!”

 

“Max, God Damn it, WHAT HAPPENED?!” She just kept pressing at him with greater and greater fury.

 

“I…DON'T…KNOW!!!” And he just kept meeting the degree of passion in her inquisition with an equal degree of passion in his ignorance.

 

“Max…please…” Hands covered her face as her voice began to break again. “…I am really scared here.”

 

“Well, Jesus, how do you think I feel??” His attempt to maintain his cool felt about as fruitless as hers. “Look, I… I very, truthfully, seriously do not know why or what did all this! Hell, I don't even remember what happened since before that…that freak stuck me with that weird shit of his!” The boy did NOT want to have this kind of argument right now. But, then again, he did not want a lot of the things that he'd ended up getting today anyway.

 

“What was that thing, anyway? Why…why was he trying to kill you?”

 

“I don't know.”

 

“How…” She wasn't yelling anymore, but the frustration coming from her remained strong as ever. “…how can you not know these things?”

 

“I just don't! Al, that thing just started chasing after me this afternoon! I don't know who he was, WHAT he was, or why he had it in for me!”

 

“…but…you said…ARRGGHH!!” No small part of him was starting to feel sorry for her. She really wasn't taking this well. “You…you said you're a demon, right?”

 

“…yeah?”

 

“Well, then isn't this…this… whatever the hell's been happening, isn't it all part of some… demon subcultural thing or something??”

 

“Demon subcultu… what??”

 

“I don't know! You're not human! You have… powers and stuff that let you make others think you're human… isn't this all this some other occult stuff you do!?”

 

“I DON'T KNOW!” Part of him began to understand why she wouldn't stop badgering him; she knew he was inhuman, but he still hadn't taken the time to explain to her what he was or what his history was. Given all the recent supernatural happenings, the frightened girl was desperate for answers, and not knowing any better was making her claw at Max for them, him being the only other supernatural element present. Sighing, he tried a gentler tactic. “Al, look, I am only this much …” Emphasis was created by showing a very small space between his thumb and his index finger. “… less confused than you are right now. Yes, I disguised myself as a human, but that's all I've ever done that's really…magical or whatever you want to call it. Nothing like this…nothing CLOSE to this kind of shit has ever happened to me before today.” He'd kept his eyes locked right with hers in hopes that would convince her of the sincerity in his claims. It seemingly worked to some extent, as she calmed down a little and dejectedly relaxed back into her sitting position.

 

“…yesterday.” The word just huffed quickly out of her mouth as though she'd tried to relay it to him subliminally.

 

“Huh?”

 

“You've… you've been unconscious for about a day now.”

 

“A…” Now that, that got his eyes nearly bulging from their sockets. “…a day?! Wh… you mean like…like a 24 hours kind of day?”

 

As opposed to the 27 hour day, moron?

 

“A little longer than that, actually.” Not that he didn't believe her, but he still looked at his watch just to double-check that… and yes, the digital readout confirmed that it was a full two days later. He'd spent the day before yesterday evening, all of yesterday, and the first four hours of today unconscious.

 

“Holy fu-u-u-ucking hell.” Not knowing what else to do, the exasperated demon settled on dropping his head to the floor, letting his forehead suffer the wrath of gravity and the solid wood below it. He remained that way silently until his ears picked up the distinct sound of a stomach rumbling. That head perked back up immediately, a concern for Al taking precedence over his irritation. “You hungry?”

 

“It has been over a day, remember?”

 

“And…you haven't eaten anything?” She obligingly shook her head. “There's no food in here?”

 

“I haven't checked, but…I don't think so.”

 

“What, you mean you've been here a day and haven't even looked?” Her gaze returned to the floor, not really ashamed, but there was something clearly disturbing her.

 

“I haven't really…moved much from this spot.” Came her hesitant admission.

 

“There's a dead body out back.”

 

********

 

Earlier

 

“H-hello?”

 

At this point, her breaths were becoming labored, what with shouting every thirty seconds and dragging Max around. There was some fireman's technique for hefting a person's weight on your shoulders so you could carry them, no matter how much they weighed, but damned if she knew it. And damned was exactly what she was, as that left her the option of dragging him by his armpits. It was like pulling along a 175-pound sack of potatoes. “Aaargh!” Already she was spent, even though the hut had only been a few yards off from where they'd landed. Though unsure as she was as to what to expect from the little shack of a building, it was still at least some sign of civilization, and therefore logically something she should investigate if she wanted to find out where they where.

 

Inside now, it could be confirmed that the place was empty. Whoever had made that fire outside must have left shortly afterwards. The hut was only one-room, barely larger than her own bedroom back home. There was barely even anything inside it…just a table, some randomly strewn about bottles and scrap pieces of wood. Her arms settled Max down as gently as she could, although it was a wonder why she even bothered, considering that he slept though being dragged a few yards and those couple of times she almost lost her grip.

 

And he kept snoring though every damn thing!

 

Now needing a moment to rest, Al set herself down beside him while she let her breathing become regular again, Examining the place more carefully, it was made primarily out of wood, with what she guessed was a hay and mud roof. Obviously handmade, judging from the cracks, bent wood and holes which spoke clearly of the lack of any technological precision. Also lacking was any telephone, light bulb or even basic wiring. This was a small, absolutely bare-bones little structure.

 

Well, there was nothing to be done just sitting here. The situation had improved, but only insofar as that they had a shabby roof over their heads now. There was no food, not water, no sign of anything that could help their situation. Perhaps somewhere in the immediate area, whoever owned this place had left something useful…food, smelling salts, a GPS navigation system or something. Couldn't hurt to look.

 

Making sure Max was comfortably asleep and in a decent position, Al rose to her feet and made her way towards the banging door, this time taking a small rock from just outside and using it a doorstopper. Evening light would die off very soon, but there was still just enough left to see most of the things outside. Aside from the now dead fire, there was also a rack, presumably for hanging and drying clothes, and a wooden bucket.

 

This place was definitely old, at least in terms of construction style. It wasn't decrepit or run down, though, like most post-industrial architecture. This place looked like it was used and maintained frequently. This place had probably been built by someone with a weird penchant for medieval lifestyles or getting away from it all. She herself had, at various times of depression, envisioned doing the exact same thing… building a house out in the middle of nowhere, cutting off all communication with the rest of the world and living in solitude. That had seemed like a good idea before, but it was by far not what she wanted at this moment. Her footsteps took her around the perimeter, looking all about and finding nothing of interest. A few other objects that probably served some function centuries ago, but she failed to recognize them.

 

When she got around to the back of the hut, she at last came across something she was familiar with; leaning against the back wall was a bow and a quiver of arrows. She stood for a few moments, staring somewhat incredulously at them. Worry set it when the sight of weaponry made her consider that whoever lived here could very well be a hostile character. Hell, who knew if this person would come back, find strangers in his house and try to kill them? Al had intended to explain to whoever it was, if they came back, that they'd become lost and needed a place to rest, but that would only work if the person were of reasonable mind. Now that she thought about it, what sort of nutjob lives alone, isolated in the woods equipped only with technology that had been outdated for at least five centuries?.? Probably some social outcast, psychopath on the run from the law or … if she were lucky, maybe the guy was just Amish.

 

No small amount of apprehension was apparent in her as she approached the bow and quiver. They were also clearly handmade, no work of any production line. Yet, there was nevertheless a quality of craftsmanship apparent in them. Whoever had made them had known their stuff.

 

She nearly tripped on something.

 

The tip of her foot ran into some solid object hidden in the tall grass. If not for her cautious approach, she may have clumsily fell right over. Instead she wobbled a little before stumbling back and looking down.

 

“EEEYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!”

 

She fell right back. Her scream echoed out over the forest for what must have been miles. Alarmed birds went flying out of trees from all around.

 

A woman lay right in front of Al, completely motionless.

 

Now held up only by her arms, Al scrambled back away from it. Her eyes were wide, her heart pounding, her breath very quickly sounding like hyperventilation. A woman lay in the grass behind the hut, motionless, showing no signs of breathing.

 

Al was less than a few feet away from a human corpse.

 

Being the daughter of Doctor Shino Tanaka, and having studied some medical academia herself, Al had heard and read plenty about cadavers. Never in her life, though, had she actually seen one, let alone stumbled on one.

 

There was a DEAD goddamed body right in front of her.

 

Al had done pretty well dealing with all the curveballs fate had handed her recently. She'd dealt calmly with Max finding out that she knew he wasn't human. She acted when that monster had attacked the shrine. She hadn't panicked when she'd been sucked up and spat out by shiny blue light.

 

But there was a DEAD HUMAN BODY. Right. There.

 

Perhaps she'd been able to keep her cool earlier because he didn't understand the things that were happening before, and what the significance of them would be. But there was no mistaking this. Dead. Dying. Death. Not alive anymore. This is where all these strange happening had led her.

 

She got up and she ran. Ran now with her own mortality chasing after her. She ran with absolutely nowhere to go. Where was there to flee? A forest, full of God-Knows-What other potential horrors? No, she ran to the only familiar thing there was in this place.

 

“MAX!!” Bursting back inside, she grabbed him by his collar and shook. Hard. “MAX, GET UP! PLEASE!!” His head bobbled lifelessly at her abuse, the only sign of his continued mortality being that snoring. “Please…wake up…”

 

She didn't know what to do. She was lost, terrified, and the only person she could beg to help her was unresponsive. Terror made her want to flee this place, yet greater terror prevented her. She was helplessly trapped in between two insurmountable walls of horror. Instead, she buried her face in her knees, rocking herself slowly while sobbing a few feet away from the unconscious demon in front of her. She would spend the next day unmoving, paralyzed by her own fears, staring hypnotically into the darkness and the light as they passed her by.

 

It wasn't until the middle of the next night that the snoring stopped.

 

***********

 

“A body? You're serious??” He knew she was. When on earth wasn't she? But he still asked, probably due to his own inability to believe what he'd just heard.

 

Fuck that. She just told you there an effin' corpse outside. You wanna make Goddam sure you didn't just mishear her and she may have said that there's “A Red Potty” out back.

 

“It's…it's a woman.” She continued, her discomfort evident with the way her arms held her own sides. “She's just…laying there.” Max sniffed a little more.

 

Weird. I don't smell nothin' except Al, and all this… obscene amount of nature. And corpses are supposed to be really, really pungent, from what I've heard.

 

“Did something kill her, or…?”

 

“I…I dunno. I only looked at her long enough to make sure she wasn't breathing.” Her head was to the side, eyes squeezing shut at the though of the sight that had so unsettled her. “There wasn't any blood or anything around. She was just… THERE.”

 

“Jeez.” This was well beyond fucked up. Passing one hand through the hair on the top of his head, the demon let out a long breath while he considered the situation.

 

Okay…okay…okay…okay…o…kay… you're lost, you're scared, and, most importantly, you're hungry. Let's just approach this situation rationally, and deal with these problems in order of priority. Or something.

 

“Show me.”

 

“What?” Al was understandably confused.

 

“Show me where she is. We gotta do something about the food situation.” Her eyes went wide. So very wide.

 

“I am NOT eating a human corpse!!”

 

“What?!” The insinuation literally knocked him back a step. “No, no, I meant…God, I meant like she might have a cell phone or something on her!”

 

“Oh.” Calm and relief instilled itself back into her, although she still held him with a wary gaze. “Are…you gonna eat her?” Max blinked repeatedly and growled slightly at the mere suggestion.

 

“Al, we've been over this already. I do not eat human flesh. I eat rice. I eat beef. I eat spicy chicken wings. I don't eat soybeans, because they're just gross. I eat candy and, when really desperate, I eat fast food. But I have never, not ever, so much as tasted another man. Because that's just sick, and also because the way I just put it sounds totally queer.” Still, she didn't appear much at ease. He sympathized, considering everything the poor girl had been through and how shook up she obviously was.

 

“Listen…” He tried for a warm smile tugging at his lips and gently approached her. “…I'm still the same Max, okay? Probably a good 95% of the things you think you know about me are true. And uh, I am taking into account that time in fourth grade you accused me of hiding Legos down my pants when I thought no one was looking.” She didn't smile at that, but her face relaxed considerably. “Al, I truly am sorry that all this happened. And I wish I had a good explanation for it, but the fact is that I don't.”

 

Still she seemed so unsure. And still, despite that he didn't particularly feel that any of this was his fault, somewhere within him was guilt. This, this was precisely what he never wanted to happen; He never wanted to lose friends because of what he was. He didn't want relationships to change. He just wanted to be the Max Higurashi he'd always been, and not be seen as some demon that alienated all those around him. Ever cautiously, with inoffensiveness apparent in his movement, Max gently took one of Al's hands in his own. She didn't flinch away, although she did seem a little surprised by that particular choice of action.

 

“I can tell you one thing for sure, though. And that's that I will get you back home safe, okay? We'll figure out where we are, and we'll find a way back to the city. I promise you.” Great emphasis was put on the word `promise', as he really did mean it. She, meanwhile, kept darting her eyes from his face to her held hand and back again. Much to his disappointment, she still seemed dubious.

 

“Okay.” She nevertheless nodded. “But could you stop acting so weird?”

 

“I…begging the pardon?”

 

“You're acting…serious.” Eyebrows raised at that remark, followed with a slightly relieved huff.

 

“What, I don't get to be serious? I can be serious.”

 

“You're also holding my hand.”

 

“Yeah, sorry, didn't mean to give you my boy-cooties.”

 

“Well, you are definitely the same `tard I've always known.” She sighed.

 

“And you're still the humorless shrew that can make fun die just by looking at it. Now sh'mon, let's get moving.” Rather beaming at having more or less solved the trust issue between themselves, Max put his classically smarmy smirk back on his face.

 

“Right-O.” She walked behind him as they exited, and he didn't seem to mind if that kept her at ease. It was pale moonlight out, so visibility was pretty good.

 

“You said she was in back, right?” With a positive nod, Max slowly strode around the hut, observing his surroundings with the same curiosity Al had. Rounding the corner, he spotted the shape in the grass as Al stiffened up behind him. Max stiffened a little, too. Despite his previous bravado, the sight of a dead person managed to stir up some sickening feelings in him as well. “Wow.”

 

“Yeah.” With a nod to Al, she stood back while he quietly approached the woman with careful footfalls. Closing in, it only perplexed him further that the woman didn't give off any scent resembling death at all. Come to think of it, she didn't give off any kind of scent at all… she smelled…earthy. Like dirt, or clay or something.

 

Oh, great. It'll probably turn out to be a dummy or something. Al got all excited over nothing.

 

Standing over the body, it certainly seemed real enough. The face and skin looked about middle-aged, given the light wrinkling about it. Judging from how peacefully the eyes were shut, the woman almost looked asleep as opposed to post-mortem. The position she was lying in also suggested that she'd laid down voluntarily to sleep as opposed to falling form a deathblow. But there was no rising and no falling of her chest. She wasn't breathing. Kneeling down, Max cautiously put a finger against her temple area.

 

Oh, she was real, all right. That felt exactly like flesh. Cold flesh without a pulse, but flesh nonetheless. Looking her over again, she wore some odd clothes. They almost looked like priestess robes, but they were the wrong colors, and had a hood on the collar.

 

Well, then… let's see what she'd got on her.

 

Clawed hands patted down the woman's body, trying to feel for any bulges indicating possessions. He did feel something strange along her stomach area, but had some difficultly determining how to get into her pockets, given his unfamiliarity with these clothes.

 

This must seem absurd. Probably looks like I'm feeling her up or something. Those cop shows make all the frisking look strictly non-necrophilia. Still, he frustratingly persisted in his clumsy search, his hand disappearing under several folds of robes.

 

“Have you found what you seek?”

 

It was a cold voice. It was an emotionless voice. It was an older voice. And it belonged to neither Max nor Al.

 

Turning his head suddenly to the side, he met the now-open eyes of the dead woman.

 

Al screamed like a girl. And so did Max. Only more so.

 

End Chapter 11

 

*********

 

A/N: Well! Much improved wait time on this installment. And that's with my `net service cut off, mind you.

 

This was supposed to be a shorter chapter. Supposed to be, but I can't stop fucking adding stuff. Hope this didn't drag on.

 

This one was also pretty dialogue heavy, and, as always, I want to know how it sounds to y'all. Sound natural? Sound stiff? Sound robotic? Too many pro-nouns? Too many con-nouns? Too many bad puns?

 

Or did I accidentally blind you all with my heaping helping of AWESOME?

 

…no.

 

Sitting Pretty,

 

Koday.