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Madrugada Zzzzzzzzzz Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: In season
Zzzzzzzzzz
#101: Apr 18th 2010 at 10:01:54 PM

It's tomorrow where I am. Consider yourself reminded.wink

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
harmattane X_X from Location, location Since: Jan, 2010
X_X
#102: Apr 19th 2010 at 7:46:42 PM

Okay! I just hope I get through the whole update tonight; they can take a while, and I've been out all day. But I will try.

Hopefully all of my damn edits haven't been too annoying. This is what it is like on my hard drive all the time. I have incomplete edits on top of incomplete edits. Without my mild synthesia (probably spelled wrong), I wouldn't be able to keep track of them all. If you feel more for the characters so far, though, I will consider my job well done.

Ce ne pas un post.
harmattane X_X from Location, location Since: Jan, 2010
X_X
#103: Apr 20th 2010 at 4:25:53 AM

Update. I sacrificed too much sleep for this little piece of WTF.

Chapter The Second


It took eighteen years for Ginger’s curse to come full circle…by which we mean that fourteen-year-old Lux Langley III woke up in his own vomit. Sorry.

He only had one sense left—smell. He could not see. He could not feel anything meaningful; all sensations were the same, pressure and cold, wet fabric that blocked out all sound. All of that amplified his sense of smell to such an unbearable height that it had forced him awake in this unfamiliar place, tense. He relaxed, too weak not to. This left him a little energy to think—what the hell? The smell of the sick burned over another smell, a more pervasive, unwell haze. While he had clearly got the former out, this was inside him as well as outside, heady bubbles under his skin. His arm felt too light when he lifted it—

Or, that’s what he would have liked to try. The question of why he had been out took a backseat to the one of why he could not move any limb more than an inch in any direction. It was not his body restraining him, as he could strain against the boundary, though all of the pressure went straight to his stomach and filled his mouth with its contents again. He did not open his mouth. Awake enough to guess that he was wrapped in the blankets that should have been spread over his bed, instinct would not let him mess them up any worse, though the taste made his eyes water and burned his throat. He would escape first and find out—what the hell? That one thought, his first one, was enough to get him to try.

Most likely, he was still in his room. If he was on his bed, having gotten himself into this through some extremely active dream, he had falling off the edge to worry about. Fortunately—or unfortunately—he could feel the floor through the blankets, too hard for a bed. Ah, that meant his senses were returning, but the picture they painted made him feel no better.

He twisted his arms ear to breaking point to reach a dimly lit spot in his vision that he had thought was just his reeling eyes before it stayed that way. There…there, light. And through the finger sized hole he had made, the wall of his room, the carpet, the base of an onyx bedpost. Under his bed was his location. Tied up in his own bedclothes with that nauseating smell trying to force him back into sleep.

Oh, gods; assassins. Fourteen years of childhood fears had come to this point. Instead of learning that there were no monsters under his bed, his experience with facing his fears was to be a rather backwards and upside down version of such.

He caught himself before he could hyperventilate with terror, which would almost certainly have forced him back under the spell of the poison gas—what else could it be? Instead, he breathed as shallowly as he could. He needed what time he could get. Time he did not have a lot of as it was—stomach acid burning holes in his cheeks would not help him survive anything.

He searched his person for sharp implements by feel alone. Feel was enough to tell that he had nothing but a nightgown. He searched his memory for a clue in the events leading up to this—it had been early morning. Really early, and he had not slept the night before. He remembered barely being able to speak in response to his father’s voice over the intercom, mouth dry from sleep deprivation and fear. Not fear of his father—he was used to being awakened each morning by obnoxious animal sounds and discharging firearms. Not shock from hearing the intercom at three in the morning—his father only used the intercom, never seen outside his padlocked thirtieth floor chamber but constantly heard. Fear of what was happening that morning. Something ritualistic, painful, with doctors and needles to calm him down to receive more needles. Aha. Something had felt off about him wearing a nightgown—it was not a nightgown. It was a hospital gown, and there was the key to his escape!

Enough clues had been gathered, and they arranged themselves. Today had been the day he would undergo a procedure every Langley archduke had since the development of realistic prosthetics, the installation of the family’s signature weapon: a small, retracting knife with a prosthetic cap installed invisibly beneath a finger. Every wealthy family these days had a version, a secret implant kept to themselves, just in case friends betrayed. This was the Langleys’—of course it was the middle finger. They were the Langleys, after all.

Lux was the luckiest man alive.

Obviously, the attackers had aimed to take advantage of his post-surgical unconsciousness, but what the surgery had been for had not trickled down to them! His relief helped clear his head as he, by the sliver of light, locked the sore prosthetic and unscrewed it. As Doctor Hisakawa had promised, there was a sensitive spot near his knuckle, a new part to move. And as she had promised, when he flexed the little manmade joint—after taking a second to savor the miracle—something came out—

—something that made him spit his stomach contents down his bedclothes involuntarily. It was not a knife …with this, he could not escape, but he could conclude three new things about his situation.

Firstly, the surgeon had been in on this. Someone wanted him dead from within. Again, considering his heritage, not a surprise.

Secondly, even if he did escape and survive, he would have to live out his entire life—permanently, considering his phobia of needles—with a middle finger that shot a flag that said “BANG”. Those assholes. Knives didn’t even go “bang”.

Those two added up to the third thing, a similar resolve to that gained by the child who finds that the monsters do not exist: he would not be killed by something so silly. If he had to kick a hole through these blankets, he would do it. One…two…three.

The force sent him spinning, squirming for a hole that he had failed to make until the mess spat him out anyway, unrolled, onto his bedroom’s deep red carpet of the consistency of cake and the temperature of linoleum. He had never loved that hideous stuff so much.

"Doctor Hisakawa!"

His voice came out weak. He was not done; he still smelled the gas. He still had the door to crawl to. With his shivering, it would take a long time.

edited 20th Apr '10 10:07:54 AM by harmattane

Ce ne pas un post.
Madrugada Zzzzzzzzzz Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: In season
Zzzzzzzzzz
#104: Apr 20th 2010 at 9:37:36 AM

I think I love the doctor...

This is shaping up nicely.

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
harmattane X_X from Location, location Since: Jan, 2010
X_X
#105: Apr 20th 2010 at 10:00:38 AM

You get another update because insomnia. Don't worry; it will get edited later.


Doctor Hisakawa, the first person he’d called out for, just because he had seen her last. The one certain guilty party. His head really was cloudy. She cared nothing for him, never hesitating to mention that her relationship with him was best kept “professional” when he got fed up with her coldness and let slip something snippy in her presence. She was worse without saying a word about how she felt about him, looking down at him even though he was now an inch taller than her, calling him just “Langley” in a voice that put his entire family’s reputation on his shoulders and never making eye contact with him. Lux was not stupid—he could tell that there was something wrong with his father, besides the condition that kept him upstairs. He could deduce that there was likely something wrong with him, too, and could tell that the doctor had given up on him, even as a doctor.

She had enjoyed maiming his hand, Lux imagined. He retracted the flag and screwed the prosthesis back into place, swearing at her in his head. His anger gave him a tight enough grip on the carpet an arm’s length ahead of him to pull himself forward a foot or two toward the door.

He lay still for a second after that, staring at his own skin in front of him. The sleeve had peeled off of his arm, and his arm was even paler than usual. His appearance had always worried him, with his black hair making his skin appear even more washed out. Even his eyes were pale. He reminded himself of a corpse, and no part of him ever had like this straining arm. He could see the bones a little bit; he had lost weight over his impending surgery.

It scared him, and the tension built until he could no longer keep his mouth shut.

Marina!” Marina Keller, his personal maid. And oops; he had forgotten that she had told him to never call her by her first name again. Another person’s help he could not expect.

He quickly made his way to his door—his bedroom was small, containing his bed, a nightstand and the door to a bathroom only. He had chosen it when he was very little and had found the one he was designated to be too big for him in every way. Now he could fall asleep nowhere else.

Since lifting his arms felt strange, he beat on the door with his head, calling a third name.

Yamagata!” First officer of the house guard and acting butler, Yamagata would hear. He was always near the back door, and so was Lux’s bedroom. Lux waited for him to come running like a startled hare—his family shamed him into working for the Langleys, but he did what he was told because he was scared shitless of them. Lux could make him shudder just by walking past him, and his father…Yamagata was not unknown to be led from Lux II’s chamber by a pair of doctors. When he was, Lux would hiss at him and tell him that he did not belong in their skyscraper. His father’s mutated appearance had stopped scaring him after the first few glimpses of it, and he had been five. As well, he had to keep Yamagata afraid because Yamagata was the only person to listen to him. Lux expected him any second now. "Damn it, Yamagata! I'm dying!"

Lux waited with his ear pressed against the door. Many seconds passed without even a footstep. He hit his head against the wood again, and he waited again. For the first time since he had awoke, it occurred to him that the crisis which had put him under his bed was occurring outside of his room, too.

Good riddance to them, then. But he had to get out of here himself. Who would survive an attack? His father, probably, but the intercom was down, or else he would have heard from him. He tried the captain of the guard: "Kimura...!"

Kimura, who sneered at him and always muttered "If you were my child..." without ever speaking what he would do. Yes, Lux had taken to trying to give him dirtier looks back, but Kimura had started it. No, it was no surprise when Kimura did not come for him.

He pawed at the doorknob until it turned. Unlocked, thank goodness. That was how fast Hisakawa had thought he would die—some doctor.

Out here, the air smelled unpoisoned, and he felt safe letting himself lie in the Langley skyscraper's reverse hall for a moment. He also felt like he had the morning after he had stolen the elevator operator's half full bottle of vodka and decided not to just let it sit. His nausea persisted, but there was nothing left to throw up. Ah, Mister Sikes. He could call for—no, Mister Sikes had quit, "most of all because of that creepy child."

Lux would try one more potential survivor instead: "Kenichi!"

Lux remembered Kenichi by his first name because that was what his father yelled when the captain of the skyscraper's interior security messed up. Kenichi was a throwaway newbie—having remained longer than most throwaway newbies, but after a recent mishap in the reactor core, his days here were almost certainly about to run out. Lux II, if sufficiently displeased, would do his best to make Kenichi unemployable when they did, his parting gift to everyone he fired or scared away. Lux had never spoken to Kenichi in the two years of his employment; he did not consider socializing with throwaways to be worth his time.

And yet Lux sat up and called Kenichi's name again. "Kenichi Zimmer!"

He didn't care about stupid Kenichi, but about what happened when he yelled—the echo. A perfect echo. The building was dead to all sound but that of Lux's voice. It had never been this way before.

Is everyone dead?

"Is everyone fucking dead?"

Someone was alive. Something thudded to the ground outside the window above him—like someone leaping down to finish him off. Lux ran.

Drugs or no drugs, something got him down the full length of the reverse hall very, very fast. He slipped a few times on the black and red marble tiles, but his terror numbed the bruises. At the end of the hall, he threw himself against the back door uselessly until he remembered where the doorknob was, then threw himself outside, where his burst of energy died off on the dust-colored grass. He collapsed in it shivering too violently to move even with human sounds in the hedge sculptures only yards away. Outside was so cold.

I tried. He could not tell the apathetic hum of traffic at the other end of the back gardens from his body's own death knell. At least no one has to miss me.

Then one of the whispering voices in the hedges raised loud enough for him to hear.

edited 20th Apr '10 2:07:57 PM by harmattane

Ce ne pas un post.
harmattane X_X from Location, location Since: Jan, 2010
X_X
#106: Apr 20th 2010 at 1:42:38 PM

I think I'll just spam with updates until I feel like stopping. I have many, many hours before I can sleep again now.


"WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO TO HIM?"

Their hedge sculpture rustled visibly, the owner of a second voice, a woman, appearing to physically silence that of the first, a panicked young man. "Shh! If anyone can wake him up, it's you!"

It must have been hard to keep hidden inside the hedge they were in, that nearest to Lux, which was sculpted into a twisting snake. As a whole, the hedge sculptures in the back of the Langley skyscraper had been acts of sadism born of a trapped man's boredom. Lux II had hand picked the eight hardest animals to sculpt a hedge into on purpose, then watched the helpless gardeners through a security camera to kill an afternoon. Besides the snake, they included a massive spider, an octopus, a porcupine, a lionfish, a sea urchin, a giraffe and a jellyfish.

The second voice went on, having abandoned its whisper. "Or maybe not. He won't remember us if we get out quickly. I nabbed it from Hisukawa—I'm sure she'll forgive us later."

"No," gasped the other.

"Kenichi! Calm down. It was the same anesthesia they used for his surgery; we just piped it into his room for a while—"

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN A WHILE—"

Another rustle. "Get an indoor voice, will you?"

"Mmmmmhmmmhmmmfgmmm—they don't just stay asleep as long as you want." Kenichi panted heavily enough for Lux to hear, who was too woozy to know what to make of this behavior from this human shield. "If he hadn't gotten out, he would've stopped breathing, and other worse things that I don't remember right now! I said I wouldn't go through with this if we were going to kill him—"

"I didn't know, and one, you're implying that you actually know this. You. And two, that you care."

"I can explain both—I'm a bloody nurse."

"Bullshit. We all know you failed your exams, Captain. I took them with you."

"But I remember the stuff! I saw him, and it came back. I fucking swear. If we leave him and he dies—"

A slapping noise and a slight movement of leaves. "Then what would that make Hisukawa? And no you don't, you ditz. Don't be absurd. You have held us up long enough—the rest of the servants, the guards, the rest of our interior security took the last train out fifteen minutes ago, and the next is coming in twenty more. I have our tickets. If you spend any of our time on that kid, it's going to be your time, because I'll leave without you. My sister really wants to go to Cedille, and with no archduke left to employ you as captain over me, nothing is keeping me from leaving you."

"But—"

"But before I go, I have a few things to say to you. Things I have been saving for the day when you were no longer my captain—I should've known that you would be dumb enough to fire yourself."

"But I—"

"Kenichi Zimmer," she began in the voice of one giving a speech before a crowd of millions. "I have always wanted to express how embarrassed I was every time I had to call you "captain"."

"I didn't care. I said you could call me Kenichi—"

"Shut up, Kenichi. When I saw that you, of everyone, were that guy who could not remember a lick of his training, was not hired on merit but through some medieval loophole, was never on time unless he was drunk, and so fucking on, I realized something that you never did. The archduke used you for one of his sick jokes. Why else would he make you captain the moment your old duke kicked you here? Why so adamant about you keeping your job? Because that's the kind of thing he does. Look at these hedges—octopus. You, like them, are the product of the boredom of a diseased sociopath who has become too liquified to leave his floor. Keep that thought with you and that little monster."

Kenichi finally got his words in. "But I was trying to say that I don't want to sit next to someone who hates me on a bullet train for three hours anyway!"

"Try until that psycho child snaps and kills you! He hates everyone. Or someone from another house kills you both—you can't take on their spies alone like we did together. They understand. If he's dying, we could be minutes away from an Iosethep out of the slimy hands of that family for good. I know he's just a kid, but they have to die. For everyone else. Not just Iosethep; the country. They were a mistake. This is a chance to let them go."

"Minutes?" The entire snake squirmed with the movement of the two bodies inside. "Let me go—"

"You step out of this hedge and you're dead. You have killed yourself. There's nothing I can do."

"First I—I have something to say to you. If I knew you'd do this, I...I wouldn't have slept with you. I wouldn't have even liked y—gahhhh—"

Kenichi Zimmer fell out of the snake hedge followed by the woman's boot. His arms and legs were tangled, and he was all arms and legs. He struggled to get up. "Okay, keep your ticket. Lux needs me!"

"I hope you die!"

"And I hope you sit between two huge people with babies!" He dashed toward Lux with plant matter flying off his red interior uniform and his clashing orange hair, looking back every few seconds to add something to his oath. "And that one of them gets train-sick! And the other has a dog! And that you hit a bump and the overhead compartment comes open so that a suitcase falls in your food like when I went to—Lux?" Kenichi fell on his knees beside Lux, who looked pretty dead on his back with his eyes wide open and crossed.

Both Kenichis looked unimpressive up close for a watchman who spent more time at parties than at his post. Lux had never seen anyone paler than himself (uncle Vox did not count), but here was someone. Kenichi's mixed Snofflandish and Oceanic parentage had given him ginger hair. Against his Oceanic skin, it made him worse than pale. Pastel. Faded. He would have looked like an overexposed photograph had his eyes not provided one point of contrast—black, small and almond shaped, hard to see anyway when he was squinting at Lux for signs of life. When Lux spoke, he fell backward into the grass, startled.

"It's Your Grace now."

"Oh, thank you! You're alive! Can you breathe okay?" Kenichi stuck his hand over Lux's nose and mouth and felt for his breath without hearing an answer.

Lux gave only a question back, blankly. "What happened to Dad?"

Kenichi froze. He had not planned on Lux having overheard. He could think of nothing to say but the truth. "We don't know."

Lux kept staring.

"He was gone this morning. We were watching and everything, but then he was gone. Maybe we'll know something soon, but not yet. He was in trouble with a lot of people...that's was even why he was...yeah. Sorry. I don't have anything else to say...we can only wait."

Lux was rather unfazed. Even beneath the effects of the anesthesia, he and his father had almost exclusively known each other through sound, and though a bond can be formed that way, they were Langleys. They had never known any emotions that could bond. "Oh, okay. And his staff fled." He raised his eyebrows. "Like they all wanted to."

"Wow. You guys really are different, aren't you? Right before you went into surgery..." Kenichi's face suddenly brightened. "I heard they did something different to your one finger. Can I see?"

Lux raised his hand to Kenichi's eye level. It trembled, but he focused every bit of energy he had on holding it up. He really felt like doing this. "Unscrew it. No, to your left..."

Kenichi unscrewed it and cringed at the healing, half-mechanical socket.

"It's hard to see. Look very closely."

Kenichi looked closely.

"Closer."

Closer. And...Lux flexed the trigger, firing the flag square into Kenichi's eye.

Kenichi gasped and nearly fell backwards, blinking madly. "Ow...that's one way to introduce yourself. I'm Kenichi."

"You know my name."

"Internal security. Or, I was. I was not involved! And am not going anywhere—I'm here to help you. I'm a nurse, and—"

From the hedges, "No, he's not!"

"I thought you were going, Sandrine! Sorry—I was saying that we're finding you a different bedroom, wrapping your finger back up, and letting you sleep this off. What they did to you was crazy. Way out of hand. Not my idea. Come on—you have six hundred and ninety-eight rooms to choose from now." Kenichi pulled Lux to his feet and held him upright by his shoulders when the need immediately became apparent. They walked inside at Lux's pace. "You can close your eyes. Sleepwalking is fine—ow! That was my last eye!"


And thus the unstoppable force meets the immovable object. Yeah, leave two people who are terribly immature in very opposite ways in a huge building beseiged by asassins by themselves. Great idea, author. What if they're both arachnophobes or something? Welcome to what Part One is really like, and I apologize in advance.

edited 20th Apr '10 1:55:36 PM by harmattane

Ce ne pas un post.
harmattane X_X from Location, location Since: Jan, 2010
X_X
#107: Apr 20th 2010 at 2:04:54 PM

Also, holy shit. This is over 100 posts now! By seven posts!

Ce ne pas un post.
harmattane X_X from Location, location Since: Jan, 2010
X_X
#108: Apr 20th 2010 at 9:17:41 PM

Post in a row 2837182398: One more thing. Kenichi is the character to watch for when I go back and revise this stuff. As you can probably tell, he's the kind of person you want to whack in the back of the head because it looks like his face is jammed in the "smile" position. And obviously, his drive goes the opposite way of what his occupation wants—to help people rather than to fight them. Sound familiar? Please let me know if he starts heading into Sue territory so I can stamp it out before it gets too bad. Have no mercy.

edited 20th Apr '10 9:17:53 PM by harmattane

Ce ne pas un post.
Madrugada Zzzzzzzzzz Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: In season
Zzzzzzzzzz
#109: Apr 20th 2010 at 9:33:00 PM

Kenichi is intriguing to me. Very intriguing. I had a suspicion that Lux III was going to find that all the staff had left even while I was reading the first section, and now I want to know ''why Kenichi stayed". It wasn't for love (of his employers or his job) as far as I can tell, but it wouldn't have been fear, either — with Lux II dead and Lux III dying and abandoned, there wouldn't be any thing left to threaten him. I like characters I can't figure out, and I can't figure out Kenichi at all.

And wait, I just caught this — Lux II just sort of disappeared? More questions every day... Are we going to find out what Ginger's curse really was?

And by the way, this has got the same sort of urgency bubbling through it that the first few sections had when they were spilling out as fast as you could type. I wish I could explain what I feel as I read this — it's partly eagerness for the next part and partly a feeling that I need to read and reread in small chunks in order to not overload and get lost... But not really either of those.

edited 20th Apr '10 9:39:14 PM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
harmattane X_X from Location, location Since: Jan, 2010
X_X
#110: Apr 20th 2010 at 10:04:21 PM

Hopefully that doesn't mean it's all disorganized again. At least I'll fix that soon. This chapter is short.

And we get to find out about Ginger's curse in the next update, but not where Lux II went. Not for a while.

And as for Kenichi, he's about as reserved as a golden retriever puppy—with what he knows about himself. There's a lot that he doesn't know. Here, as someone who at least tried to study medicine, he just can't stand leaving Lux alone when he has an inkling of how to help. Simple as that. Maybe I can make that clearer later.

Ce ne pas un post.
Madrugada Zzzzzzzzzz Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: In season
Zzzzzzzzzz
#111: Apr 20th 2010 at 10:25:00 PM

Nononono. It's not disorganized-getting lost I worry about. It's ... it's... shit! words are failing me. It the reader's equivalent of having a big ice-cream cone in a flavor that's absolutely delicious and wanting to take a big bite because it's so good, and knowing that if you do you'll get a brain-freeze — you know, when you take a big bite of something really cold and it feels like the top/back of your head is going to blow off? and not wanting the pain but really wanting the goodness and ...like that. But not really. But kind of. It's a good thing though. For me at least.

edited 20th Apr '10 10:27:06 PM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
BobbyG vigilantly taxonomish from England Since: Jan, 2001
vigilantly taxonomish
#112: Apr 21st 2010 at 8:49:38 AM

This is awesome. Really, truly, awesome.

I'm sorry I didn't catch up with it sooner - I wanted to set aside some time so that I could read the earlier chapters and the new updates in one sitting. But this is absolutely excellent. There were a few points that seemed confusing at first, but it's really come together. I can't wait to see where it goes from here.

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harmattane X_X from Location, location Since: Jan, 2010
X_X
#113: Apr 23rd 2010 at 2:26:01 AM

Bonus Material: The room that Kenichi tosses Lux into actually exists in a bed and breakfast somewhere in Oregon. I do not remember what it is called, so cannot warn you against going there, but if you end up there, you will either spend the entire time laughing or puking at the interior design.

The rooms were all neon color-coded, and the main lounge was pattern hell, with furniture from every room arranged in it haphazardly and nowhere to put your feet because of all the useless acessories. Where they found a garden statue of a masturbating cupid, I have no idea.

Outside, they stuck random antiques like dinner trays and silverware all over the surfaces of everything on the property, including the outside of the house. Gracing the front lawn is a miniature Statue of Liberty, and right inside the front door is framed a newspaper clipping stating the owners' intent to make that statue light up and talk to passers-by.

I am not making this up. Most hilarious place ever.


Lux had never experienced pain like being dragged from bedroom to bedroom to bedroom to bedroom down upward spiraling hallways, being asked in the same voice at every door, "You want this room?" He had brought it on himself, rejecting every door Kenichi carried him past until Kenichi fell into a hypnotic state, moving to the next door and asking the same question reflexively. It took Lux a little while to realize that the sight of every room made him equally nauseaus. He would turn them all down if he rejected every one that made him sick.

At last, Lux conceded to one at random, snapping Kenichi out of his daze, who panicked at the time that had passed and got Lux inside and into bed as fast as he could throw him.

Apathetic about decor, the Langleys had let the staff's bedrooms fall far out of date, and this one was from a very bad year. Perhaps pre-1900s, only if the world had been black and white before then like in the photos. Here was the electric blue and zebra print room.

Lux closed his eyes because the stripes on the top blanket made him dizzy. Luckily for him, Kenichi threw another one, a peacefully solid black one, on top of that.

"This will feel better, but the shivering is from the anesthesia. It'll wear off along with it." Kenichi kicked a faux zebra fur covered footstool over to the side of the bed, sat down, and from there, arranged all of the pillows but the one under Lux's head at his side. "Try to keep your finger elevated on this."

Lux opened one eye, half dreaming and comprehending the instructions less. What was that moron talking about? His single finger was not long enough to reach all the way up there.

Kenichi took Lux's hand and dropped it on top of the pillows for him, patting it reassuringly—like an excitable dog, he never, ever stopped moving. "But if it falls off in your sleep, you won't die or anything. Does it still hurt?"

Lux shook his head. Strangely enough...

"Great." Kenichi leapt back to his feet as fast as he had sat down and immediately hit the third poster of the four-poster bed. He staggered backward toward the door, speaking too quickly for Lux to catch everything. "All I've got to get for you is the nausea medicine. Now, I don't know what it's called, but I can find it by the color—red and white. Totally recognizeable. I'll be back in a minute!" He ran out of sight, neglecting to close the door.

A twisting fear drifted to the top of Lux's brain. "Kenichi?"

Kenichi half fell back into the doorway. "Want something?"

...and it sank back down. Lux was too tired to care about anything. He shook his head and turned it away, and Kenichi ran back out.

Lux groaned. The second Kenichi's footsteps faded out, he took his hand off of the pillows, made a gun shape with his thumb and first two fingers, pointed at his temple, and accidentally discharged the flag into his own eye. It threw the prosthetic cap right off without unscrewing it at all—said cap landed on the other side of the room, next to the blazing turquoise chest of drawers. Retrieving it could wait a few days. He pulled all of his limbs under the covers and curled up into a freezing little ball, letting his eyes fall closed on their own.

Outside, Kenichi was fascinated by the sound of his own running footsteps. Nothing had ever echoed like this in here before, something having always been droning over the noises. Most often, the intercom. Lux II had rarely turned it off when finished speaking, leaving the static to hum through the skyscraper for most of the day. Kenichi had never admitted it to his annoyed coworkers, but the sound relaxed him. He liked noise. That had been most of why he had said yes to fleeing the building with the others when told that Lux II had vanished from the premises in the night—the static had been gone, letting silence fill in the space like so many ghosts. Staying had been uncomfortable...

...Lux II. Kenichi knew the skyscraper was empty, but something in him did not believe. Once on the elevator, he let it pass Hisakawa's floor and continue to the top. It had been two years since he had seen the button bearing the number thirty glow, and the first time, he had not pushed it himself.

He had not been alone then, but flanked by the operator on one side and a bald, cruel-faced guard on the other. His nametag had said "Spike". Even Spike had had an apprehensive twitch in the way he had tapped his foot, waiting through the long gap between floors twenty-nine and thirty.

Kenichi remembered looking up through the ceiling and watching the overdone security measures pass around the elevator. He was hung over, and it made him feel motion sick, but he was too intersted to look away. Solid layers of metal sepearated webs of wires and machines that beeped as they passed each one. One of them had shone a light through the ceiling, momentarily casting all of their faces in blue. "If I'm going to need a weapon, is fencing okay?" he had asked, expecting a test. His voice came out choked from nerves and bending his head so far back.

The operator had laughed darkly and whispered a translation to Spike, who had laughed with him. Fencing was a useless skill, a fighting style only specialized in by right-minded servants aiming for desk jobs, for fun. Kenichi hadn't known. Spike whispered back to the operator, and the operator assured Kenichi that he would need no weapon.

"Then," Kenichi pressed him, "Is there a written test? Just because Girard had one..." And he had only scored at assistant underling level among the duke's security. Upon stepping into the Langley skyscraper, he had been informed that Lux II wanted something of him very different.

"No," said the operator thinly as a shadow from outside passed through their faces. "You are hired, Captain Zimmer. No test."

"No age limits or...?" Or warning. Kenichi had never done anything at Girard's. Girard, who inhabited a more subdued dwellling across Iosethep, was a modest gentlemen, the aristocrat whose name everyone forgot. Kenichi had never had to draw a gun. Not even a sword. Lux II's summons had come from nowhere, for nothing. Not a native of Iosethep, his only worry had been that he and Girard would never see each other again; they had become friends when they had met. Girard, though, had been grim whe telling Kenichi that there was nothing he could do. "I asked Girard about leading security, and he said not to think about it until I was at least thirty..."

"He wants you anyway."

"What does he want from me up here?"

"He only wants you to see him."

"What does he mean by—" Spike had then gripped his shoulder threateningly, shutting him up. When the guard removed his hand, it had a button from Kenichi's green Girard uniform in it; Spike tossed it aside.

They stepped from the elevator a minute later, into a hall without the decoration of the rest. Instead of the Langleys' colors gracing the walls and floor in marble and glossy paint, everything was grey, like the interior of an office building. This floor had not been used for long. An attic, Kenichi guessed, but repurposed. He wondered why the archduke would be up here.

"Why up here?" he asked, shoved down the hallway by Spike. The operator had been replaced by an underfed Oceanic man who had met them outside the elevator doors. His nametag said "Yamagata", and he looked close to tears with terror.

"He never..." Yamagata choked. "He never leaves th-this floor. Go in that door." He pointed to the only door in the hall, one not at the end—there was a boarded up window—but off to the side, nondescript.

Yamagata stopped and left Spike to walk Kenichi forward, but then Spike got the message and stopped, too, next to Yamagata. He placed his dustbin lid-sized hands between Kenichi's shoulder blades and shoved him in the direction of the dooor.

"Voulez."

Kenichi looked at the door for no more than two seconds, then looked back when he heard a ping. The elevator had already left with Yamagata and Spike inside; he was alone, with nowhere to go but in.

There wasn't even a nametag on Lux II's door, only a piece of paper tacked to the wall beside it on which was drawn a crude arrow in black ink that pointed to the door and the word "ME" next to it. Kenichi smiled wryly at this, not knowing what to expect of this eccentric archduke, as his hand rested on the cheap doorknob.

Lux II startled him into the opposite wall by shouting through the door, no intercom necessary. "Get in here...KENICHI ZIMMER!"

It was the first time Kenichi had ever heard this voice, and it sounded different than every other time he would hear it again. Though it was still loud enough to make his ears ring, it seemed to come from beneath the mud of a landslide or a pile of hands, covered up by something trying to silence it. An artificial growl trailed off of each word—the bubbling of something viscuous, or maybe a moan of pain through fluid.

Kenichi turned the doorknob and went in. What he saw dissolved his legs out from under him.

"Hi, I'm Lux. Nice face."

edited 23rd Apr '10 2:37:27 AM by harmattane

Ce ne pas un post.
Madrugada Zzzzzzzzzz Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: In season
Zzzzzzzzzz
#114: Apr 23rd 2010 at 7:53:16 AM

Nice turnaround emotionally there. From laughing out loud at the description of the bedroom and Lux III shooting himself in the eye with the Bang-flag to some very effective Nothing Is Scarier horror at the end — my stomach queased at trying to imagine what II had become by that point.

And Kenichi is growing on me even more — you've got some lovely complexities working there,

edited 23rd Apr '10 7:53:39 AM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
harmattane X_X from Location, location Since: Jan, 2010
X_X
#115: Apr 23rd 2010 at 8:02:44 PM

Well, excellent. scaring people and making them laugh are my two favorite things in the world.

Expect another update here or in the WMG story.

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WilliamWideWeb (weaving) Since: Jan, 2001
(weaving)
#116: Apr 24th 2010 at 2:05:37 AM

Dear harmattane:

How the fuck can you say bad things about your writing? This knocks the pants off anything I've ever done or thought of in my life.

SHIKI is dead.
harmattane X_X from Location, location Since: Jan, 2010
X_X
#117: Apr 24th 2010 at 5:08:54 AM

I can say them by using my hands to type them.

edited 24th Apr '10 5:11:40 AM by harmattane

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WilliamWideWeb (weaving) Since: Jan, 2001
(weaving)
#118: Apr 24th 2010 at 5:14:08 AM

Fair enough.

SHIKI is dead.
harmattane X_X from Location, location Since: Jan, 2010
X_X
#119: Apr 25th 2010 at 5:06:44 AM

Well, none of this tonight, but since it's a spinoff, I'll report it here: zombie story update. If you haven't read it yet, start at the top.

The short-ish thing I'm writing there for people who can't commit to longer stuff is absolutely not essential for understanding the main story. However, zombies. And some tidbits about Aubrey London and his family that you probably won't find here—it's his story. What a severe case of Born in the Wrong Century he was, and how much more than just that one scary person.

Tonight, a totally deadpan conversation about the effect of eaten brains on the mortuary business. No one else could pull it off.

edited 25th Apr '10 5:44:51 AM by harmattane

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Madrugada Zzzzzzzzzz Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: In season
Zzzzzzzzzz
#120: Apr 25th 2010 at 11:47:12 AM

And yet, you managed to make it work. You underestimate yourself. And your professor severely underestimates you. I suspect that the type of thing you write simply doesn't appeal to him.n Just because he get paid to teach about writing doesn't mean that he always knows what he's talking about.

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
harmattane X_X from Location, location Since: Jan, 2010
X_X
#121: Apr 25th 2010 at 3:33:40 PM

Well, I put a lot of stock into the advice of people that much more educated than me...it tends to actually be surperior.

I'll write another update tonight if something doesn't come up like a surprise midterm tomorrow.

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harmattane X_X from Location, location Since: Jan, 2010
X_X
#122: Apr 25th 2010 at 10:54:47 PM

...of course that means nothing when it comes to me. Early night, it turned out. Tomrrow.

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harmattane X_X from Location, location Since: Jan, 2010
X_X
#123: Apr 26th 2010 at 11:28:56 PM

Here's the link to post one of my little spinoff.

I'm not sure if I'll update this or that tonight.

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harmattane X_X from Location, location Since: Jan, 2010
X_X
#124: Apr 27th 2010 at 3:10:03 AM

WARNING: HIGH OCTANE NIGHTMARE FUEL (assuming I did it right tongue). DO NOT READ IF YOU CANNOT STAND HIGH OCTANE NIGHTMARE FUEL.


The room was another world. Initially, Kenichi choked on the humidity. Any wetter, and he would have been floating. Something moldy had absorbed the ceiling into its spongy body, and that wasn't bad polka dotted wallpaper; it was mildew. Oily slime formed a puddle in the middle of the floor, moistening it and turning it black. A thin, reedy plant—or, Kenichi hoped it was in the plant family—had grown in ths spot once, but it was brown and dead. In the middle of it all, an opaque decorative screen spanned the room between Kenichi and Lux, upon which was delicately painted a series of black roses, and on top of that was indelicately painted, in blood red letters that spanned from its top to its bottom, "GO AWAY". The archduke spoke from behind it, unseen. Kenichi breathed.

Yamagata and Spike had gotten him so jumpy. He laughed, playing with his hair awkwardly. "Nice touch...startled me. I expected to see you!"

"You talking to me like I'm some kid friend of yours...? It's something new, fine." Lux paused, and wherever he was, Kenichi could feel him enjoying how nervous he was. "What's your problem, Captain? Yamagata tell you I was some kind of monster?" Strangled laughter filled the room, with a steady death rattle underneath.

"Well, he sure did his best to get me wound up. Sorry, Your Grace." The rubbing of Kenichi's uniform sleeve on his hair had induced static, making it stand on end with a soft tingle.

"You outrank him now. Give him a good beating for me, will you?" Lux cackled, fizzing. "You're getting ahead of yourself, Captain."

"Your Grace...may I ask what do you mean by that?"

Something hissed delightedly behind the screen. "You haven't even looked at me yet. Oh, you are going to be so much fun..."

"No, I mean—"

"Oh, that. I'd use a crowbar, but take what you can find—curtain rod, rolling pin—as long as it hurts."

Kenichi shuddered, remembering the tremble in Yamagata's step. Now he recognized it as the gait of someone who was knocked around a lot. He would correct Lux one more time before giving up for his own safety. "Captain. I mean, what do you want me to do? Your Grace, I...I think there's been a mistake. I'm not qualified. Even among those who aren't, I'm really, really not—"

"I want you to move the screen," said Lux. "This is everyone's first order."

"No...I mean...okay..." At the last second, Kenichi decided not to. He couldn't even see Lux yet; he didn't know why the archduke had such trouble communicating. There was a reason why Lux did not leave this room, and he didn't yet know it. Perhaps he was here to be let in on it. For some reason the thought made him feel sick, or maybe the dripping walls generated swamp gas.

He stepped forward and had only placed his hands on the screen's left edges before Lux gave his second order.

"Close your eyes! Fold to your right. Do not step any closer."

Kenichi closed his eyes and did it slowly as Lux spoke on.

"You're Captain because I chose you. I wanted you to be, and that is all that matters to me anymore. You didn't think I liked this shitty attic, did you? I don't like it! From this second on, you can safely assume that anything I will ever want from you serves no purpose that concerns you, except for one: the only semblance of enjoyment I can get from inside this prison.

"You noticed something wrong with this room. I saw you—it's a cursed room, and I am a cursed guy. I did something someone didn't like, and she never even explained it to me, just went for the throat. I don't look like your last guy, Captain. I don't leave this floor because I do not fit in the elevator. I don't leave this room because my legs don’t last long enough. One of my eyes has been lost for days; I forgot which one. The slime on the floor? Yeah, that's me. My skin emits stuff that will make you a little dizzy—yeah, that means I'm dizzy all the time."

Kenichi stopped believing it there, but then the dizziness almost made him topple over with the screen.

"We can't do shit anymore! My guard is bored, and imagine me! But you, Kenichi—you make me smile. You have a reputation for that, don't you? What else did that stuffy nobody hire you for?" Girard. Kenichi bit his tongue. "Somewhere a witch is tossing in her sleep. Stand back, Captain."

Kenichi let go of the screen and took a step backward.

"One more step."

He took one more step.

"A little to the left...stop! Don't move. Okay, look."

At first, Kenichi thought he had missed Lux—what was in the middle of the slimy puddle, on top of a crumpled, useless waterproof sheet, was no longer recognizable as human, though it was shaped like one—a child’s drawing ripped out into the physical, with only the basic shapes of human extremities. But that was Lux, alive. He sat in the puddle, lopsided.

His skin had gone an oily ochre as in decay. He had one eyeball, lidless, lodged in his spherical head as if it had been picked up off the ground and shoved into clay. The air reddened the eye, though the slime Lux secreted prevented it from drying and shriveling into blindness. The other eye, as he had said, was lost. In its place, a silver button stuck to where it should have been, the nearly liquid skin poking through the holes. His right arm grew from the right side of his neck without a shoulder or elbow, and its hand had only four fingers, all different lengths. Beneath it, his right leg had all the definition of a tentacle. He did not have a left leg. The blob of his body had devoured the limb into nonexistence, his bones becoming splinters floating in jelly; silt. His left arm was going the way of the leg, a useless flipper with no hand and two fingers sticking from the end in opposite directions.

A few tubes pierced his middle brutally and fed into the ceiling, from which a red liquid flowed down through them in intermittent spurts, each sending a tremble across Lux’s skin.

Surrounding the monstrosity, pinned to the entirety of every moldy wall, were photographs of hundreds of faces, most in Langley uniforms, all standing where Kenichi stood right now, and all in various states of shock. Some frightened, some swooning, some drained, some sick, soon to be joined by Kenichi's as soon as the developing machine whirring in the back of the room spat it out. When his eyes could no longer stand the sight and fell to the floor, Kenichi noticed that he was standing on a red X.

"Was I rambling?" Lux's deranged laughter escaped with only a twitch of his mouth, which was only a hole, a grin-shaped tear in his head that widened by the second, dripping toward the floor. Everything moved in that direction—the one arm slowly arced downward, and his shapeless side became more shapeless, spreading over the floor. He lifted his better arm and with a hooked finger, pulled up the corners of his mouth higher than where they had started from; they began the descent again from there. This made clear the nature of Lux’s curse: he was forced to maintain his own shape, re-sculpting it constantly as it melted away. The asymmetrical creature before Kenichi was a product of Lux’s twisted sense of himself, which had proven inapplicable to a body. He had no pictures of himself and had forgotten what he looked like. "Yes, I was. What I'm trying to say is I called you up here so I could get your picture. Ha—it's going to be one of the best! That's all. Get out, Captain."

Moments later, to Lux's disappointment, the photo came out quite boring. Kenichi was biting his lip, brow wrinkled, less afraid than sympathetic, trying not to ask if he could help. Yamagata was ordered to throw it out.

Upon walking back outside, Kenichi had nonetheless vomited all over Lux's "ME" sign. No one is perfect.

In the present, Kenichi stood with one hand pressed to each side of Lux II's doorway, wearing the same expression as long ago. The mildew was still there, and the moist condition of the room had progressed—something pale green hung from the ceiling in soft, dripping spikes like stalactites, and a slick of viscous, oily fluid polished the floor, which was starting to bubble and peel. Each eruption of the tiles made the liquid swirl with many colors. Across from Kenichi, one corner of the ceiling appeared to have grown black hair, and he wondered if he was inhaling anything toxic.

The photos were there, yellowed. The screen was still there, but knocked over at Kenichi's toes. He could see everything—everything but little Lux III's father.

The room no longer reminded Kenichi of his first day here, but of his first night—spent staring at the ceiling of his bedroom, searching his mind again and again for what preparation he had to be captain of security and repeatedly finding nothing. And he would go into it smiling at them, like he had smiled whenever Girard's captain had sneered at him, been unable to hold back the same smile every time his parents had showed him his report card and uttered expletives they otherwise never dared to use, and laughed through his final nursing exam like a hyena on nitrous oxide. He had turned it in with nothing on it but for the words "I LOVE YOU PROFESSOR WATSON" written in giant, sweeping letters across page four.

That time, in room 235 of the Langley Skyscraper, was worse—he had no answers to forget. He had had no chance, just like the abandoned child downstairs. Unless, for the first time in his life, Kenichi could do something.

When the sun had peeked though the curtain of room 235, he had cried.

He cried.


End of Chapter 2!

edited 16th Jun '10 4:38:41 AM by harmattane

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harmattane X_X from Location, location Since: Jan, 2010
X_X
#125: Apr 27th 2010 at 10:00:25 PM

Unfortunately, there is little chance of another update until next Monday. I have two midterms and have to read everything before then. Everything.

Sorry; just warning you.

edited 27th Apr '10 10:00:36 PM by harmattane

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