FLCL Fan Fiction ❯ N.O Return Address ❯ dos ( Chapter 2 )

The crazy woman seems to feel that she can sit and have an almost normal conversation with Chisune while my skull is exploding. Both of them are ignoring me but for obviously different reasons. I just don't know what hers is yet.

 

“Ahh, Taro-kun. He's just the guy I was looking for.”

 

“You were looking for Taro?”

 

“Yeah, about six weeks ago.” She rubs a finger in her eye and scrapes out something appallingly puce and crusty. Her next sentence is directed toward it, still sitting on the tip of her gloved index finger, and not Chisune at all. “Ended up in Mabase, of all places. Who's ever heard of Mabase anyway?”

 

“My dad has a cousin in Mabase.”

 

“Huh. Reeeeally. Small world.” She's done staring at the eye scum and she flicks it at me but misses. ”Small world with small minds.” She bends over - she's fucking tall, I realize - and stares me in the eye. “And this one's getting smaller every day!”

 

Without any semblance of warning, she reaches out and grabs the free end of my head bandaging and yanks it loose with a fierce tug that sends me spinning. I almost get knocked into Chisune twice before she is done with her completely random action. Her hand grazes my cheek more than once and each time is like a blow to the head with a cinderblock.

 

Once the bandage is gone I scream.

 

Something is growing out of my head.

 

The crazy woman sees it too and laughs maniacally. “I'm not too late! This is perfect!”

 

My eyes dart toward Chisune in their desperate hunt for an explanation. “I'm sorry,” he practically pleads, “I'm sorry but we thought it was just the lump, the lump from when you fell and hit your head on the rock but then it moved - “

 

“Who is this woman?!” I am screaming but her hand is wrapped around the thing on my head and she's tugging as hard as she can.

 

“Why - “ she grunts with the strain of the effort evident in her voice - “won't - “ and now her elbow's crunching into my ear in a way that I'm certain ears shouldn't be forced to endure - “you - “ she tries pushing at it from underneath but this is obviously not the way to go about it - “just - “ it is not humanly possible for someone to brace their legs against someone else like this - “let - “ my head is going to fucking spontaneously combust - “GO?”

 

But she's lost the tug-of-war with the monster inside my head and with that flash of green light that always seems to accompany the paranormal in the movies, she is pulled inside.

 

I shouldn't know who Atomsk is, I tell myself.

 

I shouldn't be thinking that Chisune is like déjà vu of a kid in a city I've never been to.

 

I shouldn't be inherently scared to death of this thing that really only looks like a company logo, two capital Ms sort of superimposed on each other. I shouldn't have all the chords to twenty different bass guitar songs memorized left-handed. I shouldn't get the feeling that I need to remember what my name should be, and not what my name is. I shouldn't think that vodka tastes better on planets that aren't Earth.

 

I shouldn't want to ride on a yellow vespa instead of running, because that doesn't make a shit's worth of sense.

 

“It doesn't make a shit's worth of sense,” her voice was saying the next time I had any of my five senses other than tasting metal. I realized the other three were working as well, just that being the idiot I am I hadn't opened my eyes yet.

 

“There's no way in Uranus I could've gotten sucked back in,” she's continuing. “N.O's a one-way ticket. The imbecilic things come out and they can't go back again.”

 

I think that's the point where she figures out I'm staring at her and decides that she needs to stare back in reciprocation. So…we stare.

 

“You're an alien,” I tell her as if she doesn't know it already.

 

“You've never met your father,” she answers in the same exact tone of voice, only female.

 

“Your name is Haruha Raharu,” I say like I'm repeating the first thing I said.

 

“You wanna screw a girl named Morita Mika,” but this time her voice is sly and condescending and I hate her for saying it in front of Chisune.

 

Except he fainted and I think his father is calling the cops.

 

~-~-~-~

 

I have gone straight past the point of being confused and decided that angry is a much better route.

 

I am angry that this crazed woman, Haruko or Raharu or whoever she's telling people she is, has landed in my life for no apparent reason. I'm angry to learn that it's her fault, however indirectly, that my head hurts so much. I'm angry that she grabbed my wrist and yanked me onto her vespa and sped away so fast that jumping off and escaping was never even an option. I'm angry that she had the nerve to kick the unconscious body of my friend before we left.

 

The vespa's brakes screech horridly to a stop in the middle of the field that I recognize as my false-track. The sun has almost completely set and soon I won't even be able to see her at all. Right now she's a silhouette against the gray-gold sky. She kicks me off the yellow moped and into the dirt before I realize that I could have run away.

 

She knows I can run. I hate her for being right in knowing that even running away and never stopping wouldn't fix this. So I drag myself to my feet and stare at her, her eyes the same color as the sunlight that's going down the drain.

 

“Are you dropping me back at the scene of the crime?”

 

“No…no that's not it. See, Taro-kuuuuun, you know too much.”

 

“Whose fault is that for jumping inside my fucking head?”

 

“C'maaahn, you know why that happened.”

 

I don't answer, but only because I do know.

 

“Well, it's `bout that time.” She hefts her guitar from the sling on her back and readies it like a baseball bat.

 

“What's that supposed to mean?”

 

She gives me a funny look and her grip on the guitar neck relaxes about two inches. “Surely you can't be that stupid. Please tell me you're not. Isn't it obvious? I'm gonna have to kill you. Now be a good boy and hold still.” She grips the guitar harder again but I've already started yelling.

 

“Kill me? For something I didn't do? Whose bright idea was it to send you after me? My N.O is closing up because I'm about to turn eighteen, so that automatically means you have to milk me dry at the last possible second? Yeah, that plan worked!”

 

“Don't you dare insinuate that I am not a trained professional, human fungus!”

 

“Trained professional my ass! Is that why Medical Mechanicca wants you?”

 

“You're getting yourself involved in things that are none of your beeswax! You're only ensuring that your death be slower and more painful!”

 

“Why's it gotta be my head, huh? Why can't you use your precious Takkun back in Mabase? Is it because you love him too much to exploit his head?”

 

I strike a nerve and now she's yelling louder than me.

 

“You know NOTHING of my relationship with that boy!”

 

“I know everything! You were in my head!”

 

“YOUR DEATH IS NOW!”

 

But instead of a loud thump of plastic connecting with bone and a twang of guitar strings I hear a strange whizzing noise and the jingle of a bicycle bell. I dive out of the way as fast as I can but Raharu hits the dirt like a felled tree.

 

Propped up on my elbows, I look up at my mystery rescuer and realize, realize with my heart about to join my head in rupturing that it is Mika.

 

I expect a great statement of heroism, and I know she wishes she could do the same, but both of us are to be disappointed as all she croaks out is, “I…have never ridden…a bike so fucking fast…in my life.” And I can tell that she's about to pass out but that's not very reassuring to me and so she's smiling instead to disguise it.

 

As Raharu is attempting to stand again, groaning as she has no right to do without her head pounding like mine, thudding sneakers approach from the same direction as Mika's bike. I recognize the thud immediately as Chisune and wonder who woke him up. He approaches us from through the cherry trees and positions himself behind the alien so we've got her surrounded.

 

“How'd you find - “ I start, but he's answering already.

 

“She's leaking fluid,” he says, “s'why she came in in the first place. Leaves a trail.”

 

“Oh I see, I see, I neglected to cover the evidence.” Raharu is standing and I swear I can see a bicycle tire tread imprinted in her face even in the almost-pitch-dark. “The monkeys score on a technicality, eh.”

 

And that's when I realize that it's never this dark this early at this point in the year and the thunder sounds.

 

“But the game is called on account of rain.”

 

And I hate her for knowing that we don't have enough energy left in us to chase her more today.

 

“We'd lose her anyway,” Chisune says in an effort to excuse our lack of pursuit. “The rain'd wash away the trail, and none of us even have a light. We'd be totally blind.”

 

“Yeah,” I say, “fucking blind.”

 

“He's the only mechanic in town, she can't stay away from your place forever,” Mika adds.

 

“Yeah,” Chisune says, “she'll never make it anywhere else.”

 

“I can't move too well,” I tell them, “my head and all. One of you have a cell phone?”

 

“Yeah,” Mika says, “you can come home with me.”

 

The best and worst things to ever happen to me should not come to pass on the same day.