FLCL Fan Fiction ❯ N.O Return Address ❯ cuatro ( Chapter 4 )

No one can sleep when they're being lit on fire so now I'm awake. I wake up to excuses: I never sleep well in beds that aren't mine. I've had a trying day. My head's still addled. I could be hallucinating. I went to bed a little earlier than I usually do and I was asleep all day.

 

But a scrap of my conscience that sounds unnervingly like Reiko says, “Something paranormal is going on.”

 

I roll over and groan in pain and confusion. The sunlight filtering through Mika's Venetian blinds and peach curtains is new and gray and I can tell I'm the only person awake inside the house. I shift back around a little and see Mika on the cot beside and below me with a blue afghan clutched half to her chest. Her bare legs peek out from the bottom and I stifle another groan and wonder how cold her shower gets.

 

Or you could go running, the Chisune-conscience reminds me.

 

I didn't know I could be this quiet but I guess it's Mika's carpeted floor compared to the creaking hardwood I'm used to. Her door also opens noiselessly and I locate my sneakers by her front door before venturing out into the dawn gray.

 

It's cold, but there's no one around.

 

My feet pound subconsciously at the gravel of her driveway, the grass of her front lawn, the weeds of her back lawn. I think I've circled her house three times clockwise when my head starts pounding harder than my feet and I sink down hard onto (unfortunately) the gravel.

 

Have I been destroyed? Is this the end of Taro, when he can't even run without malfunctioning in the head and falling and scraping his knees into oblivion? As I reach up to clutch my head in pain and defeat, is that my brain I can feel leaking out of my ear?

 

“Nice shot,” someone mutters to herself from the roof of Mika's house.

 

As much as it pains me to further incline my head I look up to the jerkily brightening sky and see a silhouette of someone short and soft and blonde against the stupid winter white-sun. When the leaking brains I pull from the hair by my temple turns out to be a blue-gray wad of bubble gum then I know it must be Reiko. She's up strangely early and my curiosity gets the better of my better judgment. I scale the porch railing and hop from there to the roof next to a window that I assume belongs to Suzume's room. That's where Reiko's sitting.

 

I hand her the gum. She looks at me like I'm stupid and then gives up and begins chewing it again. It's not like it really hit the ground.

 

We sit in silence for a few moments before she works up the stamina to ask me the question that I know she's been dying to ask me all night and which is even probably the reason she's already awake. “So. Aliens?”

 

“She was inside my head. I think it's safe to assume that the memories I got from her were definitely those of an alien. She said so herself to Chisune's cousin.”

 

“Cheeze's cousin? What the fuck?”

 

“I dunno, man. I guess it's his second cousin. It's this stupid kid named Naota who lives in Mabase - where the fuck is Mabase - and thinks it's cool to put the moves on his brother's girlfriend, who's this chick that looks kind of like you only not ganguro, and there's a TV-head robot that's really some intergalactic pirate king, only I think that's really the kid, and she was in love with him - the alien chick, not the brother's girlfriend - “

 

“Slow down, for fuck's sake! It's only eight in the morning.”

 

I turn away from the place I hadn't realized I'd been staring, a spot on the gravel, the spot that must be the spot where I fell, and look at her. “Did you really hit me with that gum from all the way up here?”

 

“Good aim, yeah?”

 

“That's not human. Maybe you're the alien.”

 

But she's halfway through Suzume's window with her ass sticking in the air and I seriously keep thinking she's going to fall off the damn roof before she re-emerges and hands me a bright pink notebook.

”Write it down. Everything. We'll get to the bottom of this.”

 

I open the notebook and the first page says “Sai Reiko's Paranormal Investigations.” It's in green ink with this funny sheen to it.

 

“It glows in the dark,” she says.

 

~-~-~-~

 

There are pages and pages of this crap to the point where I can't even read it. Tucked into a flap in the back are printouts or photocopies or pencil drawings of crop circles and unidentified flying crap. I don't read it all - I can't read it all. Some of it seems to be in code and I assume it's “in case anyone finds it: top secret!” kind of stuff.

 

I've made it down into the living room by now. Everyone else is up for some reason. Reiko is trying and failing to help Mrs. Morita make something that we can call breakfast. Mrs. Morita seems vaguely concerned about my bandage but more concerned about her kitchen. I assure her that my stomach hurts more than my head and that she should get to worrying about the food. Mika darts through the kitchen door for reinforcement.

 

Suzume and I sit on opposite ends of the living room in identical chairs. I've got Reiko's notebook propped open on my lap and a blue inkball pen. I smear the ink writing.

 

There was an alien inside my head, I write. But she got yanked in trying to pull something else out. I have something called an N.O unit. It acts as a portal to another dimension, or maybe lots of them. It's going to go away once I turn eighteen. That's why my head started hurting on my half-birthday. Cheeze's second cousin Naota has one too but the alien was in love with him. She found him looking for me. His worked better than mine does, but she couldn't use him because she loved him. A robot came out though. He was called Canti, but I don't think that was his real name, it was just what Naota's friend called him. She started fires, and her name was Mamimi. He was a robot, and he was blue but then he turned red. I think this meant that he was getting more powerful. He had to merge with Naota to do it. He did this by eating him, only it wasn't really eating him.

 

Maybe it has to do with the Pirate King. I don't know what that is but I know that Raharu was in love with him, so maybe it was him and not the kid. But I don't know if the Pirate King was the robot or Naota. I only got her memories and they seemed to run together pretty bad.

 

She wants to kill me. She rides a yellow moped. She has a Rickenbacker guitar that she plays left-handed. Her eyes are yellow too. They're weird. She'd be kind of pretty if she weren't insane. She's taller than

 

Suzume's reading over my shoulder.

 

“Don't encourage her.”

 

“Breakfast is ready!”

 

~-~-~-~

 

Mika sits across from me at breakfast. I have to remember I have more than one problem right now. She's not eating suggestively but it still seems that way to me anyway. I try to stare at my food instead of her tongue but it doesn't work very well. “How's your head?” she says.

 

Right. My head. The one on top of my neck, that got hit by the guitar. “It's better. Probably not concussed.”

 

“We should go to Keiji-san's shop later, all of us. We can talk to Chisune and maybe between the five of us we'll figure something out.” It's bold of her to talk about it in front of her mother. I stuff my face a bit more to keep from answering immediately.

 

“We have a lot of things to take into consideration,” I say at last. “I wrote them all in Reiko's book.”

 

Suzume snorts into her juice. Reiko spits into it. They glare.

 

“Is it safe for you to go out there?” Reiko asks me. Mrs. Morita reacts this time. It's an incredulous look which wasn't what I was expecting. Maybe she's used to paranormal-paranoia Reiko.

 

“We need to go see Cheeze, I think. She's been into their place, maybe she left something.”

 

“Something I can analyze!”

 

“Don't get too excited.”

 

“Whatever. I'm going to get dressed. Excuse me, Okaa-san.” She leaves before she's really gotten permission and the rest of us keep eating. And then one by one the women start excusing themselves and here I am alone with an empty plate and a head full of strange thoughts.

 

Some of which still aren't mine.

 

She's taller than me, but only by a little bit, but still.

 

There's also a guy with really thick eyebrows but they might be fake or something. I think they may have had some kind of relationship. He might be someone we can trust but he might not. But I think we should try to talk to him.

 

She was only in my head for a few minutes so I didn't get everything. But maybe it's safe to say that she got as much from me as I did from her. She probably knows where I live

 

Suzume, Reiko, and Mika come down the stairs all at once. Reiko's laughing at some joke she apparently just cracked but she's the only one. Her arm's around Suzume's waist but Suzume doesn't seem all too welcoming.

 

Mika's not paying attention to either of them. Mika's smarter than that. Mika's wearing the cherry shirt.