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rallamajoopFive parts in, not counting all that intro stuff, and I finally get up to showing a bit of the April Fool in action.
BTW, looks like the title The Telling of One Billion Ghost Stories is going to stick at this point. Nothing better has yet come to me, and we can always call it "Ghost Stories" for short if need be. (Unless I decide to up it to 'six billion ghost stories', but that may be getting a bit literal.)
The next time Watanuki was woken up in the early morning, it was because the see-through boy with the brown hair and the smirk was prodding him with his toe.
When Doumeki woke up a minute later, Watanuki was arguing in loud whispers with someone Doumeki himself couldn’t see. It wasn’t much of a surprise.
He raised an eyebrow when Watanuki finally turned to find him awake. His roommate let out a sigh.
“I got a message about a new supply cache,” he said, sounding tired. He twitched a couple of times in an odd kind of way that Doumeki eventually took to mean he was now doing his best to ignore whoever it was he’d been talking to before. If this was all an act, it was an entertaining one.
“Do we have time for breakfast first?” he asked, getting up.
“Sure,” said Watanuki, rubbing an eye and moving to do likewise.
When Doumeki got to the doorway, he heard Watanuki hiss something that sounded like, “Why not? Do you have something better to do? You’re still going to be dead in ten minutes.”
Doumeki decided they could make breakfast quick.
***
“So what are we looking for?” he asked later, as he gave the recently repaired bike a quick check over.
“They never tell me what until we get there,” Watanuki reported, sounding petulant, “They don’t often give me much idea where either – I just get directions.”
“Have you tried asking?”
“You think you just pester dead people with questions like that?”
“You’re the expert,” said Doumeki.
Watanuki gave another sigh. “Of course I’ve tried! I gave up years ago when they wouldn’t answer. The last thing I want to do is insult them if they’re so set against telling me.” He shot a glance at the invisible something, which had apparently followed them out here. Doumeki managed to prevent himself from mirroring the movement with minimal effort.
“This one’s always been reliable before though,” Watanuki concluded.
“Someone you know?”
“They don’t often give me names, but he’s taken me a few places before,” Watanuki admitted reluctantly. He shot his informant another look, then watched Doumeki preparing the bike for another minute before asking, “Isn’t anyone else coming with us for this?”
“Is that a problem?”
“Well, no – I mean, probably not,” said Watanuki, fidgeting a little. “But usually, I’m used to…”
“If we find more goods than we can carry, we can always make a second trip, right?”
“I guess,” said Watanuki, uncertainly. “Some ghosts won’t take me back to the same place twice. But what if things get dangerous? What if we run into someone who doesn’t like us? You might have noticed I get recognised a lot, and I don’t attract the friendly sort of attention.”
For his own part, Doumeki had spent enough time travelling alone or with only Syaoran or Kurogane as backup to be confident he could handle himself. Hostile gangs were always a threat, but not many survived in the area long before running afoul of one or the other of the local superpowers. Still, Watanuki did have a point.
When he went back inside for his gun, he paused to rip a strip of cloth off the edge of a sheet. He propped the gun up against the bike outside, confident he’d checked it over recently enough to trust it. The strip of cloth he handed to Watanuki. “Here. Cover up that eye. We don’t want to invite trouble by advertising who you are.”
Watanuki accepted it with a nod, and passed his glasses wordlessly over to Doumeki to hold while he knotted it into place as a one-sided blindfold. The right pane of the glasses had a crack running through it, Doumeki noticed, though this wouldn’t have bothered Watanuki. He’d only need that pane for balance.
“Any good with a gun?” he asked.
“I’ve never used one before,” said Watanuki, finishing with the cloth and holding a hand out for his glasses.
Doumeki frowned – that didn’t sound right. “But didn’t you say…”
“I said I can clean a gun. No-one at any of the other camps ever trusted me enough to let me near ammunition. Besides, I have enough trouble with dead people without adding any with personal grudges to the numbers. Why would I want to shoot anyone?”
“You might if they were trying to shoot you.”
Watanuki snorted. “I’m sure that would only encourage them.”
***
He didn’t know how to ride or drive any kind of moving vehicle either, which didn’t surprise Doumeki much. There would be no sense in giving someone who’d been brought to your camp by force an easy way to get out.
For the first hour there was nothing much to see in the unvarying landscape, and not much talking except for Watanuki making the occasional minor correction to their course. However, Doumeki knew the land around his own camp well enough to know what was out there, and so probably anticipated the sight of the city appearing over the hills before his guide did.
Doumeki never been much past its outskirts before. Humans and game animals avoided these places as long as any other shelter was available, and many of the old buildings were unstable and dangerous even to approach. The few other old towns and cities within a day’s travel were in similar states. They were eerie places. Although some buildings looked so unaffected by either the disaster or the passage of time that even the paint had barely faded, others were little more than unrecognisable piles of rubble, and in some places there was scarcely any distance between examples of one extreme and the other. He had heard that the Tower and the Diet Building were once part of a giant city themselves, but mysteriously, little but those two buildings had survived well enough to be recognisable now. It was strange to recall that so many people had once lived in places like these.
“That way,” said Watanuki, pointing. “There should be some kind of road.”
There was, and for another half an hour the bike’s wheels had the rare luxury of travelling over a solid surface before a collapsed building up ahead made the road impassable.
“We’ll have to leave it behind from here,” Watanuki announced, dismounting.
It was safe enough to leave it unguarded, the odds there would be anyone else around to find it while they were gone were comfortably low. Doumeki followed his example, propped the bike up against a wall and took the opportunity to look around a little before they would be moving on.
“Is it always places like this?” he asked.
“Usually. Not always.”
“You’d think everything here would have been salvaged years ago.”
“You would think so, wouldn’t you?” said Watanuki. “Everyone thinks so, so no-one comes back to check. But the truth is that in all these cities, everyone left so fast or died so suddenly they didn’t take much with them.”
Made sense, thought Doumeki. Useful thing to know if you had to scam people into believing you were psychic. A little trailing through funny routes after fickle ghost guides and a few lucky hits could easily turn into a miracle in the April Fool’s handlers’ eyes.
“Are you ready?” Watanuki asked, forcing him to abandon that train of thought for a better time. “Not all the ground is safe around here. There’s going to be some climbing, and we’re going to have to keep to the directions we get very carefully.”
Without prompting, he began leading the way.
Watanuki’s unseen guide lead them into a maze of ruined buildings. There was indeed some climbing required, and some edging carefully along uncomfortably narrow ledges and over walkways which had already collapsed in multiple places. More than once Doumeki slipped far enough from the path to feel patches disintegrate under his feet and send new streams of gravel spilling away down the slope. Any doubt Watanuki had been serious about the danger was soon dispelled.
Several times Doumeki would have sworn they’d gone around in a circle – or at least an exaggerated spiral, but it didn’t seem quite worth it to complain. Doumeki didn’t much like the thought of what a trip through this kind of territory could be like with one of the less friendly guides Watanuki had alluded to, and after his first couple of slips, made a careful point of placing his feet only where Watanuki had before him.
It would have been a lot more nerve wracking had Doumeki not had good reason to believe Watanuki had come back alive from enough errands like this one plenty of times before. The April Fool had taken on a new air since they arrived, he seemed strangely at home in these surroundings, particularly given that he couldn’t have been to this city before. Even the sideways glances at whatever ghostly companion he’d been following became less uncertain and – before long – barely even discernable from Doumeki’s angle behind him.
The one exception to Watanuki’s strange, new found dignity was a big one, and struck as they were moving into an enclosed tunnel formed where a wall had fallen sideways against a sturdier building beside it, leaving a narrow space between them. Inside, there was little light, and the sound of their footsteps echoed loudly off the walls.
It was slightly unnerving, up to the point where, out of the blue, Watanuki suddenly yelled out, “We are not! How much noise are we supposed to make in here? It’s the echo, anything would sound like stomping!”
Doumeki was just about to point out that outburst had been uncalled for because he hadn’t said anything, when he realised he wasn’t the one being addressed.
“So what are we supposed to do, tiptoe?” Watanuki continued, “It isn’t like there’s anyone around to hear.” There was a pause, then in a slightly higher voice, he said, “You’re only saying that to scare me! Just how old do you think I am?”
Here Watanuki must have abruptly remembered Doumeki’s existence, because he whipped around to face his visible companion. Seeing Doumeki had responded to the exchange with no more than a look of continued mild disinterest, he settled for giving Doumeki a quick glare and going back on his way again, now only stomping louder, if anything.
Even if they didn’t turn up anything useful, there was some good entertainment value to be had from these trips.
BTW, looks like the title The Telling of One Billion Ghost Stories is going to stick at this point. Nothing better has yet come to me, and we can always call it "Ghost Stories" for short if need be. (Unless I decide to up it to 'six billion ghost stories', but that may be getting a bit literal.)
The next time Watanuki was woken up in the early morning, it was because the see-through boy with the brown hair and the smirk was prodding him with his toe.
When Doumeki woke up a minute later, Watanuki was arguing in loud whispers with someone Doumeki himself couldn’t see. It wasn’t much of a surprise.
He raised an eyebrow when Watanuki finally turned to find him awake. His roommate let out a sigh.
“I got a message about a new supply cache,” he said, sounding tired. He twitched a couple of times in an odd kind of way that Doumeki eventually took to mean he was now doing his best to ignore whoever it was he’d been talking to before. If this was all an act, it was an entertaining one.
“Do we have time for breakfast first?” he asked, getting up.
“Sure,” said Watanuki, rubbing an eye and moving to do likewise.
When Doumeki got to the doorway, he heard Watanuki hiss something that sounded like, “Why not? Do you have something better to do? You’re still going to be dead in ten minutes.”
Doumeki decided they could make breakfast quick.
***
“So what are we looking for?” he asked later, as he gave the recently repaired bike a quick check over.
“They never tell me what until we get there,” Watanuki reported, sounding petulant, “They don’t often give me much idea where either – I just get directions.”
“Have you tried asking?”
“You think you just pester dead people with questions like that?”
“You’re the expert,” said Doumeki.
Watanuki gave another sigh. “Of course I’ve tried! I gave up years ago when they wouldn’t answer. The last thing I want to do is insult them if they’re so set against telling me.” He shot a glance at the invisible something, which had apparently followed them out here. Doumeki managed to prevent himself from mirroring the movement with minimal effort.
“This one’s always been reliable before though,” Watanuki concluded.
“Someone you know?”
“They don’t often give me names, but he’s taken me a few places before,” Watanuki admitted reluctantly. He shot his informant another look, then watched Doumeki preparing the bike for another minute before asking, “Isn’t anyone else coming with us for this?”
“Is that a problem?”
“Well, no – I mean, probably not,” said Watanuki, fidgeting a little. “But usually, I’m used to…”
“If we find more goods than we can carry, we can always make a second trip, right?”
“I guess,” said Watanuki, uncertainly. “Some ghosts won’t take me back to the same place twice. But what if things get dangerous? What if we run into someone who doesn’t like us? You might have noticed I get recognised a lot, and I don’t attract the friendly sort of attention.”
For his own part, Doumeki had spent enough time travelling alone or with only Syaoran or Kurogane as backup to be confident he could handle himself. Hostile gangs were always a threat, but not many survived in the area long before running afoul of one or the other of the local superpowers. Still, Watanuki did have a point.
When he went back inside for his gun, he paused to rip a strip of cloth off the edge of a sheet. He propped the gun up against the bike outside, confident he’d checked it over recently enough to trust it. The strip of cloth he handed to Watanuki. “Here. Cover up that eye. We don’t want to invite trouble by advertising who you are.”
Watanuki accepted it with a nod, and passed his glasses wordlessly over to Doumeki to hold while he knotted it into place as a one-sided blindfold. The right pane of the glasses had a crack running through it, Doumeki noticed, though this wouldn’t have bothered Watanuki. He’d only need that pane for balance.
“Any good with a gun?” he asked.
“I’ve never used one before,” said Watanuki, finishing with the cloth and holding a hand out for his glasses.
Doumeki frowned – that didn’t sound right. “But didn’t you say…”
“I said I can clean a gun. No-one at any of the other camps ever trusted me enough to let me near ammunition. Besides, I have enough trouble with dead people without adding any with personal grudges to the numbers. Why would I want to shoot anyone?”
“You might if they were trying to shoot you.”
Watanuki snorted. “I’m sure that would only encourage them.”
***
He didn’t know how to ride or drive any kind of moving vehicle either, which didn’t surprise Doumeki much. There would be no sense in giving someone who’d been brought to your camp by force an easy way to get out.
For the first hour there was nothing much to see in the unvarying landscape, and not much talking except for Watanuki making the occasional minor correction to their course. However, Doumeki knew the land around his own camp well enough to know what was out there, and so probably anticipated the sight of the city appearing over the hills before his guide did.
Doumeki never been much past its outskirts before. Humans and game animals avoided these places as long as any other shelter was available, and many of the old buildings were unstable and dangerous even to approach. The few other old towns and cities within a day’s travel were in similar states. They were eerie places. Although some buildings looked so unaffected by either the disaster or the passage of time that even the paint had barely faded, others were little more than unrecognisable piles of rubble, and in some places there was scarcely any distance between examples of one extreme and the other. He had heard that the Tower and the Diet Building were once part of a giant city themselves, but mysteriously, little but those two buildings had survived well enough to be recognisable now. It was strange to recall that so many people had once lived in places like these.
“That way,” said Watanuki, pointing. “There should be some kind of road.”
There was, and for another half an hour the bike’s wheels had the rare luxury of travelling over a solid surface before a collapsed building up ahead made the road impassable.
“We’ll have to leave it behind from here,” Watanuki announced, dismounting.
It was safe enough to leave it unguarded, the odds there would be anyone else around to find it while they were gone were comfortably low. Doumeki followed his example, propped the bike up against a wall and took the opportunity to look around a little before they would be moving on.
“Is it always places like this?” he asked.
“Usually. Not always.”
“You’d think everything here would have been salvaged years ago.”
“You would think so, wouldn’t you?” said Watanuki. “Everyone thinks so, so no-one comes back to check. But the truth is that in all these cities, everyone left so fast or died so suddenly they didn’t take much with them.”
Made sense, thought Doumeki. Useful thing to know if you had to scam people into believing you were psychic. A little trailing through funny routes after fickle ghost guides and a few lucky hits could easily turn into a miracle in the April Fool’s handlers’ eyes.
“Are you ready?” Watanuki asked, forcing him to abandon that train of thought for a better time. “Not all the ground is safe around here. There’s going to be some climbing, and we’re going to have to keep to the directions we get very carefully.”
Without prompting, he began leading the way.
Watanuki’s unseen guide lead them into a maze of ruined buildings. There was indeed some climbing required, and some edging carefully along uncomfortably narrow ledges and over walkways which had already collapsed in multiple places. More than once Doumeki slipped far enough from the path to feel patches disintegrate under his feet and send new streams of gravel spilling away down the slope. Any doubt Watanuki had been serious about the danger was soon dispelled.
Several times Doumeki would have sworn they’d gone around in a circle – or at least an exaggerated spiral, but it didn’t seem quite worth it to complain. Doumeki didn’t much like the thought of what a trip through this kind of territory could be like with one of the less friendly guides Watanuki had alluded to, and after his first couple of slips, made a careful point of placing his feet only where Watanuki had before him.
It would have been a lot more nerve wracking had Doumeki not had good reason to believe Watanuki had come back alive from enough errands like this one plenty of times before. The April Fool had taken on a new air since they arrived, he seemed strangely at home in these surroundings, particularly given that he couldn’t have been to this city before. Even the sideways glances at whatever ghostly companion he’d been following became less uncertain and – before long – barely even discernable from Doumeki’s angle behind him.
The one exception to Watanuki’s strange, new found dignity was a big one, and struck as they were moving into an enclosed tunnel formed where a wall had fallen sideways against a sturdier building beside it, leaving a narrow space between them. Inside, there was little light, and the sound of their footsteps echoed loudly off the walls.
It was slightly unnerving, up to the point where, out of the blue, Watanuki suddenly yelled out, “We are not! How much noise are we supposed to make in here? It’s the echo, anything would sound like stomping!”
Doumeki was just about to point out that outburst had been uncalled for because he hadn’t said anything, when he realised he wasn’t the one being addressed.
“So what are we supposed to do, tiptoe?” Watanuki continued, “It isn’t like there’s anyone around to hear.” There was a pause, then in a slightly higher voice, he said, “You’re only saying that to scare me! Just how old do you think I am?”
Here Watanuki must have abruptly remembered Doumeki’s existence, because he whipped around to face his visible companion. Seeing Doumeki had responded to the exchange with no more than a look of continued mild disinterest, he settled for giving Doumeki a quick glare and going back on his way again, now only stomping louder, if anything.
Even if they didn’t turn up anything useful, there was some good entertainment value to be had from these trips.
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Date: 2007-09-06 01:02 pm (UTC)okbacktoworknow
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Date: 2007-09-07 01:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-07 07:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-06 02:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-07 01:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-07 06:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-06 04:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-07 01:10 am (UTC)It isn't really a bad situation by Doumeki's standards ('bad' in this world implies near starvation, serious injury or unfriendly people with guns in the vicinity. Don't even ask about 'terrible'). It's just a bit tedious. But he's entirely prepared to make the most of it.
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Date: 2007-09-06 07:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-07 01:37 am (UTC)In this kind of world, I think it'd be natural not to trust new people. I don't think Doumeki's being proven wrong about any of his initial assumptions - he's never really believed Watanuki's a fraud, he just isn't ready to make up his mind one way or another. Watanuki's still got a long way to go towards earning his trust from this camp, but he's making gradual progress.
As for what they'll turn up, you'll have to wait for the next part for that. ^_~ (Technically it's not too far from ready to post already, but I've already used up most of the buffer I had on this story, and I'd rather leave some in reserve while I figure out what happens after this.)
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Date: 2007-09-06 10:06 pm (UTC)Also, now you have me on my toes for whatever they encounter here. :3 :3 :3 I can't wait for more, Joopjoop! ^__^
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Date: 2007-09-07 01:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-06 10:18 pm (UTC)I'm enjoying the mutual discoveries very much. The contrast between all Watanuki couldn't do (and Doumeki understanding why) and Watanuki's sudden competence in the (literally) ghost towm was thoroughly cool. Good job at conveying how difficult a place it is to traverse... which is another reason you don't get many salvagers, I guess.
And I loved both the rant and Watanuki's embarassed realization that some of his audience was still breathing. But my favorite line was "You'll still be dead in 10 minutes."
Thanks for sharing, Joop!
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Date: 2007-09-07 01:48 am (UTC)I'm enjoying the mutual discoveries very much. The contrast between all Watanuki couldn't do (and Doumeki understanding why) and Watanuki's sudden competence in the (literally) ghost towm was thoroughly cool.
I'm not sure that was even so much intentional as just something that came out of the situation, but I'm glad you thought it worked so well. ^^; This Watanuki is perhaps too specialised for his own good.
But my favorite line was "You'll still be dead in 10 minutes."
And here I was thinking that line might be a little too silly for people. ^_^