FLCL Fan Fiction ❯ N.O Return Address ❯ nueve ( Chapter 9 )

It's finally gotten to the part where I feel like I know what I'm doing, I realize.

 

Chisune runs beside me and Reiko stole some kid's bike and Mika is clinging to my shoulders for dear life as I run, run like the wind, like a running thing, like Taro, through the streets of Mabase that I have somehow memorized because I know everything to the place where Raharu is with Suzume. The closer we get the more I can hear in my head the situation that I know is playing out.

 

Feet to the sidewalk.

 

"It's you," says Suzume.

 

"It's me," says Raharu with a grin.

 

Feet to the gravel of an alley.

 

"You're just so - "

 

"I know," says Raharu. "I know exactly what you think of me. You know, I've never been with a woman before."

 

It's a lie or else how would I have known what Samejima Mamimi tasted like? Feet to the grass of someone's lawn that gets shredded by Reiko's stolen bike wheels, after the rain and all.

 

"Just step a little closer, and let me try it out."

 

Don't do it, Suzume. We've got to fucking hurry or she'll do it, damnit. I can't even spare a glance at Reiko. Feet down the center of two-way traffic with car horns blaring at us. Mika's hot breath in my ear and legs locked around my hips and chest pressed into my spine.

 

"I've got a girlfriend."

 

"No you don't, sweetie," she says with a horrible turn of her tongue.

 

It's just over this hill we have to run will Cheeze make it his lungs are giving Reiko can't bike that hard either oh god how fast am I running are we too late?

 

"No!" I scream, but neither of the women turn to look at me before the kiss happens, happens, like it's a verb without a subject or an object, just something that does rather than something that people do. It's not like Mika's kiss; this is the kiss of death.

 

Literally.

 

Tasuku's voice is back and I wish I could block it out because it tells me things I don't want to hear.

 

Raharu's true form is made of far too much energy for her to exist on our planet without causing serious damage. Fortunately, technology has given her a way to inhabit human forms so that she can be of assistance to our cause. At the time it seemed like a worthy sacrifice. Now that she has defected, becoming one of her host bodies is possibly the worst fate a person could have. She has been cut off from the improvements that her device needed and her host bodies will last for less and less time each time she must take a new one. It seems like she was long overdue.

 

Naturally Suzume screams, but it is almost more a scream of anger at being tricked and losing what had seemed like such a quest than in pain. Her eyes roll back in her head and when we can see the irises again they are a sickly golden-yellow like something alcoholic. The tips of her hair fade to pink and then the color sweeps down to her roots in a wave like it's growing the wrong direction. I can't turn away.

 

Reiko's hand flies to her mouth as though she is about to cry, something I have never seen her do. Chisune's eyes are bugging out of his head. I feel like I'm going to be sick.

 

Mika hops off my back, runs to her sister, and smacks her clear across the face.

 

"Get the fuck out of my sister's body!" she screams, shrill and inconsequential against the force of power that is Raharu.

 

"This is all that monkeys are good for!" RahaSuzu spits back at her, grinning so wide that her teeth are everywhere which is a face that Suzume never makes. "Don't think I'll hesitate to kill you!"

 

"You'll have to get through me first," I growl.

 

"Oh, and what are you going to do about it, you backward freak?" She lifts the guitar from the corpse beside her and shoulders it with an angry twang. "You've been inside my head, damnit! You know what I'm capable of!"

 

"You'll have to get through me first," says Reiko, and all eyes swivel to her.

 

"How is that supposed to be any different?" RahaSuzu says but it's a little stammered and a little choked.

 

"You can't do it, can you?" says Reiko with an equally strangled voice. "I can see it in you. You're still her. Come on, Suzume, damnit! Fight her!"

 

"It's no use!" says Raharu. "She's dead!"

 

"You're wrong," I say. "It takes longer than this. Your device is old, it's not up to speed - "

 

"How do you - you horrible pondscum on the surface of sentient existence. People have been telling you things that are beyond your comprehension!"

 

"Nothing is beyond my comprehensions! I know everything!"

 

Her eyes widen and she finally can't do anything but scream and charge toward me with her blue left-handed Rickenbacker outstretched and ready to do damage. I brace myself for the impact that I know will do nothing.

 

It doesn't come. I'm waiting for a guitar and what I get is an elbow. Her whole swing was thrown off course by Chisune's shoe connecting with her face. I shoot him a two-second glance and see him smiling before I stop wasting time and grab the sides of RahaSuzu's face, forcing her forehead into contact with mine.

 

With the guitar in her hand the channel in my head is wide open. Her energy wars with mine in the minute space between us. She won't leave Suzume.

 

"Help!" I garble out.

 

Reiko crosses to me first and fastest with her hand to the back of my skull. Chisune is taller and finds the top of my head. Mika is shorter and sends her energy to me with a half-hug from behind and a trace of fingers slipping up into my shirt.

 

Slowly but surely and with the most cliché union of powers like something out of an anime or whatever, I draw Raharu out of Suzume, in through my reverse N.O, and out of this world.

 

For good.

 

~-~-~-~

 

I find out later how the whole ordeal at Amarao's headquarters went down. The end of Raharu is the end of my bottomless knowledge. Tasuku and his cohorts managed to terminate the poorly run facility. Amarao and Kitsurubami were arrested. Atsuko was dead. Part of me almost liked that.

 

When I get to tell them about what happened to Raharu they are pleased. Too pleased. I try to remind them that wherever she is she's probably wreaking even more havoc but they're just relieved to pass her off as someone else's problem. I don't know, maybe it really is high time that it was someone else's turn.

 

Suzume is taken in by the S.I.E.T.E. operatives for remediation and therapy after playing host to Raharu. She's lost a lot of energy and they say some of the synapses in her brain have been disrupted. Reiko, who is obviously very interested in the proceedings of their organization, is allowed to go along. Right now I'm pretty sure she's wrangling for an internship. And they'll take her. She's certainly intrepid enough.

 

Right before she leaves she asks me to write everything in her book. Everything I knew, everything Tasuku's voice had whispered into my ear/brain. I can't. It's gone. I tell her she'll find it all out for herself but she seems a little disappointed. Frankly I'm just amazed that she's still so fixated on all of this after everything we went through.

 

I could go forever without seeing any of it again.

 

So they pay for Chisune and Mika and me to take the train back home. They give us letters for Reiko's dad and Suzume's parents explaining what's going on and that nothing is really wrong. Tasuku assures us that the letters are very convincing and leave no space for doubt. Somehow we don't find that very convincing. After all, who would believe all of this?

 

I suppose maybe even you don't believe all of this. It's a pretty crazy story, isn't it? Maybe I'm a pathetic kid with an overactive imagination who comes to track practice every day but never gets to run because he's awful at it. Maybe Chisune is that kid I always wanted to be friends with but was never good enough for. Maybe Suzume is the girl that used to babysit me and Reiko was her fat, ugly friend that she only hung out with because she pitied her. Maybe Mika was the queen bitch of the school and yeah, I still jacked off to her, but she was totally out of my league.

 

But maybe I ran in the Olympics one day. Maybe Chisune went cold turkey for a year, only to cave in, buy a pack of cigarettes and a lottery ticket, and win the whole jackpot. Maybe Suzume and Reiko wrote a book together on everything paranormal they had experienced and are growing old together in Mexico. Maybe Mika opened her own fashion line and became incredibly successful because of the cute signature cherry logo. Maybe she and I have sex every fucking night.

 

I guess you'll never know, right? The days of getting inside my head are over, right?

 

Yeah. And maybe you can tell us what that goddamn pink graffiti said, too.

 

END

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AN: So I finally managed to complete a chaptered fanfic. Out of the three I attempted to date, this is the only one I didn't abandon (this is not including This "Love" Business, which I started after N.O Return Address), and I'm pretty proud of it. For anyone who's actually been reading this at all, I thank you and I hope that you enjoyed this story. I'm really fond of the characters - I tried not to make them unbearable OCs - and while I had thought this would be longer, I think it wrapped up as nicely as I could possibly ask for. If you've been reading, please, please give me some reviews and let me know what you thought! I'd super-appreciate it. Thanks again.