Treia !P0dSPtgivA 2011/05/04 (Wed) 08:29 No. 140579 ▼ File 130449779827.jpg - (122.23KB, 400x400 , 129177147856.jpg)
Proofreaders? Uh, heh, you see....
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[X] Sign me up, the place sounds interesting! Sanae seems to want to go, too.
Well, she wants to go…
You bow, bringing your right hand to your waist and flourishing with your left.
“Lead on, madam.”
You look up, expecting to see an excited or overjoyed Sanae. Instead, you see a hand come whipping across your face. You stagger back and recover,
“Hey, what was that for?!”
“That’s a derogatory term!”
“What?! No it’s not!”
“Yes it is, it’s like a term for a woman who runs a shady prostitution bar!”
“No it’s not! It’s like… French! It means miss or missus!”
Sanae gives a “hmph” and looks away as if disgusted, crossing her arms. Damn women… You know how to handle this. You turn around, waving goodbye as you walk away.
“Alright, see you then. Sorry ‘bout the insult.”
Sanae looks back, surprised at your reaction. She panics when she sees you leaving, and quickly starts to speedwalk after you,
“Hey, where are you going?! Y-You said you’d go to the salvage field with me!”
You pick up your pace, letting her nip at your heels while trying to get in front of you. The scene becomes almost comical, with you half-jogging and her very, very quickly striding after you, both of you speeding up and down with her trying to get in front of you to stop you.
“Nope, can’t! I’m not welcome around here; made a bad reference to you being a prostitute, unfortunately. I’m just going to go hit the tavern, get a few drinks, let you cool off…”
She almost catches up to you, tugging on the back of your shirt sleeve for a second before you pull ahead, causing her to stumble trying to catch you.
“No no, see I’m not angry, see!”
This time she does catch you, grabbing you by the elbow and forcing you to turn around. She just stands there and gives this creepy, creepy wide-grin smile. She keeps talking through her clenched teeth,
“Not angry~”
Oh gods. You can’t help it. You try to tell her you’re not angry, but you just can’t stop staring at that creepy grin. You choke out something unintelligible before shoving your fist into your mouth and turning away from her, half laughing heartily, half choking. You feel Sanae’s hand on your shoulder,
“Are you okay?! What’s wrong?”
You turn around, tears streaming from your eyes and a stupid grin on your face.
“Your face! Your fucking face! Oh man…”
You slap your forehead,
“And you were all like ‘I’m not angry!’ and then you had this stupid grin plastering your face but you were completely serious.”
This time, you feel that the slap is well deserved. Completely worth it, though. You rub your burning cheek as she reverts back to her cross-armed, won’t-look-at-you stance. You give her a friendly slap on the shoulder,
“Sanae! Sanae… however the hell you pronounce that! Listen, I’m not angry. I understand if you are! But that was… the stupidest fucking grin, I have ever seen. For something like that, you’re just going to have to forgive me.”
“No. Hmph!”
She flicks her hair. Yeah, like that’s helping her case. Attempt two, you are go for launch…
“Alright, bye! I’ll be at the tavern, if you need me.”
She grabs your shirt sleeve the second you turn around.
“Seriously… stop doing that. You said you’d go!”
“Ah, but how can I go with you if you won’t even forgive me for something that small?”
“Well you, you… Apologize! Or something.”
“Nah.”
“What?! We cant’ go, then! Not until you apologize!”
“Oh, well. That stinks…”
You start looking around, as if for something to do. You press your point by continuing,
“Hey, they got a McDonalds around here, or something"... Since we can’t go to that place you were talking ‘bout, I was going to get a bite to eat.”
“You, you!... We can still go! I forgive you! Come oooon!”
You turn back to look at her, putting on a face as if you were completely uninterested,
“Oh? Well I guess we can, then…”
Sanae fist pumps the air,
“Yesssssssss!”
She pulls you along by the arm again,
“Come on, it’s not a long walk!”
******************************************
Not a long walk your ass. It’s been something like an hour since you left the village, and Sanae isn’t the greatest conversationalist. Most of the talk’s been small, just talking about where you each are from, and what you did before you came (or found yourself) here.
“So… what’s with the shirt?”
“Huh?”
She motions at your shirt. You look down before you realize it’s looking quite worn, and blood is still visibly stained over it. Oh…
“…Shit! I must look like some sort of crazy murderer! The writefag I completely forgot! Man, I don’t even have any other shirts with me…”
Sanae giggles at that,
“How can you forget getting covered in blood? What did you do, anyway? Get into a fight? Or did you forget that, too?”
“No! I just… kinda… landed on somebody.”
“You… landed on someone?”
“Yeah. I think. I don’t really remember getting here.”
She looks at you with a worried look on her face,
“So you don’t know if you actually landed on this person? Were they okay?”
“Yeah… I think. Keine said she’d be fine, something about being a fairy or something.”
“So you landed on this fairy…. And don’t remember at all?”
“Yep!”
“That’s… creepy. You’re not going to murder me as soon as we step off the road, are you?”
“No. …Probably not. If I do I won’t remember it, haha!”
Sanae steps to the side, letting a good distance form between you. Well… she took that the wrong way. The conversation descends into an awkward silence, and just as you hope for something to break the silence, you see… road-side vendors up ahead? You’re about to ask Sanae when she steps off the road completely.
“This is where we leave the road.”
“Hm? But it looks like there’s people up there.”
“Yeah, thieves and criminals. You don’t want to go through there, trust me.”
You shrug. She knows this place better than you do. You follow her off the beaten path, trudging through some light vegetation. Although it takes a few minutes, you know you’re getting close as the ground slopes downwards and the vegetation thins out, the ground becoming nothing but brown dirt.
Another minute’s worth of walking gets you to the edge of a very small cliff. Below you is a valley strewn with debris. Immediately noticeable is a burned out car (A mustang, you believe.), what looks to half of an oil well, and… a frilly princess costume worn by a scarecrow. Uhh.. What.
Sanae calls back from you halfway down the hill into the valley,
“Don’t just sit around! There’s stuff waiting!”
Alright then. You head on down after her, and she quickly reaches the burnt out car. She leans in through the driver window and starts fiddling with things. By the time you’ve caught up to her, she’s pulled out a very retro eight-ball stick shift and is looking it over like an appraiser.
“Found something cool, huh?”
“Yeah! It’s like… a billiard ball thingy.”
“…That’s a stick shift.”
“Oh, was that why it was attached?”
She takes another look at it and finishes,
“Huh. Cool. Here, hold it.”
She hands it to you, grease and all, and keeps poking through the car. A bit irritating, but… she seems to be enjoying it, humming to herself as she brazenly steals from whoever’s car this used to be.
…Okay maybe that’s not the best way to look at it. It’s abandoned. Abandoned, yeah. Or at the very least it’s lost and you couldn’t find the owner. Finders keepers. Or something.
You’re interrupted by a booklet flying by your head, thrown by none other than your good, thieving friend.
“The hell was that?”
“Manual. Dunno what language.”
Well that sounds more interesting than standing around. You look around for the manual and find it lying on the ground a few feet away. A quick leaf-through tells you it’s in glorious English, but other than that it’s just standard car maintenance bullshit. You consider pocketing it, but considering its ragged condition and greasy smears… nah. Not worth it. It’s tossed aside as you wait for Sanae to finish her little chop shop adventure. She slides back out the driver and claps her hands together. When she turns around, it becomes quite clear she’s dirtied her arms in grease. Hey, why’s she staring at you?
“Why are you staring like that?”
She grins, and advances a step. Uh oh. You step backwards, but she keeps coming,
“Sanae?”
She keeps advancing on you, holding her hands out like she’s going to grab you.
“Sanae!”
“Come on, let me use your shirt as a rag! It’s already ruined!”
“My shirt?! No!”
“Come on!”
“No way, Sanae. This is my only shirt.”
“Fine then, I’ll do it by force!”
“By force? Wah-“
You’re forced to stop mid-sentence to spring away as Sanae starts to chase you around the car. You quickly throw away the eight-ball novelty item and dodge around the car, outpacing Sanae easily. It ends up a stalemate, with you mirroring her moves on the other side of the car.
“Come on, just give up! Your shirt’s already ruined…”
“No damnit! You can’t use my shirt as your own personal washrag!”
“Aww…”
She slinks back and relax. Whew, crisis av- Oh dear god she jumped at you. Evade, evad- Fuck she’s on you! Ah, swing! Swing like you’ve never swung before! Crawling on your back, this woman requires- Nope you’ve collapsed. Face-down in the dirt… well this is familiar. And something hard is digging into your chest as Sanae is gleefully rubbing her hands over the back of your shirt. Goddamnit. You try to motion your arms to tell her to get off, but she doesn’t listen,
“Stop struggling, I almost finished… There we go.”
You feel her weight come off you and you’re able to turn over and sit up, a little mud and a lot of grease now slicked over your shirt. Well that was fun. Fun like crawling through mud. Or being tackled into it. You check to see what you landed on (thankfully not a dead fairy this time) and discover a small, metallic… item. It takes you a moment to realize the top actually flips open, revealing a pretty good looking zippo lighter. Nice.
You look for Sanae to show off possibly the one cool thing in the entire place, and discover she’s off digging through a pile of metal wreckage. Figures. Ah well…
You fiddle with the light a bit, eventually taking it apart. The design is quite simple for a lighter. A capped reservoir of butane, the flint wheel, and a pressurized seal to ensure it lights. Just a standard, cheap, lighter. Still looks nice, though. You quickly check the amount of butane left before reassembling it, and it appears to be more than halfway filled. Still a good amount left.
You finish putting it back together just in time for Sanae to come back from her brazen theft scavenging. She wheels over an old-fashioned, stripped down bike (Surprisingly with two good tires).
“Hey hey, look what I found found! It’s even got a seat for two!”
Ah, ass rugburn. Just what you needed.
“You’re taking that back?”
“Well… yeah. I thought I would.”
You raise an eyebrow at her and she tries to further defend herself,
“Oh come on! It’s serviceable! I could really use a bike!”
“None of my business! Forget I asked!”
She sticks her tongue out at you. Because you’re suuuch a spoil-sport. Ah well, might as well see if she’s enjoying herslf,
“Hey did you find anything els-“
You stop, distracted by a sound. It’s like an incessant buzzing, a bee in your ear.
“Hm? No, it was just the bike.”
You put your hand up to silence her, listening for the sound. Constantly it invades your senses, like a person muttering under their breath you know it’s there but you can’t hear it.
“Hey… what’s that sound?”
You motion with your hand, telling her to be silent again. She hears it too, though… What the hell is it? Something like a person whispering makes you snap your attention back to the burned out car, but there’s nobody there.
“The hell was that?”
“You heard it too?”
“Yeah… I thought somebody was trying to get our attention. Nobody there, though.”
That is odd… Maybe Sanae knows more?
“Have you ever heard something like that before?”
She shakes her head,
“Nope. Completely strange, if you ask-“ BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
A sound akin to a buzzsaw fills the air, drowning out your speech. It’s loud enough to force you to cup your hands over your ears in pain. A thousand voices intertwine perfectly with it, completely unintelligible in its garbling. You try to scream over the sound at the similarly confused Sanae,
“What the hell is going on!?”
She screams back at you, fear evident in her voice,
“I-I don’t know! I don’t know!”
The sound grows louder. It sounds like standing next to a jet engine that’s taking in metal, just horrible screeching pervades your skull. The sound is loud enough to drop you to your knees as you desperately push your hands against your ears, trying to block out the cacophony. Voices rise above the madness.
“Enemy fast movers just made another pass! Where the hell is our support?!”
“Tally-ho, bandits at four. Weapons free.”
“Armored column in sight! Let’s let ‘em feel our guns go live!”
“I now ask all of the nations gathered here today to signal their commitment to this cause. This would entail…”
The voices are drowned out by the incredible sound growing in intensity, a feat which before that your ears considered impossible. Just as it seems your ears are going to burst, everything stops. The sound completely vanishes. The voices, gone. There is nothing but peace. You slowly uncup your ears and look around. Sanae looks up from where she was similarly crouched, a terrified look across her face.
“The fuck was that?!”
“I don’t know! That’s never happened before!”
Well fuck this. Disembodied voices and incredibly loud sounds out of thin air are not an indicator of cookies and money to come.
“We are leaving.”
You don’t even wait for Sanae’s response, you whip around and do a quick one-over on the hill leading out of the valley, to make sure you can still get out on the same route. Looks like it’s clear, although… there’s some more trash there? That wasn’t there before. You turn back around to see Sanae trying to pick up her new bike from where she dropped it. Damn girl, get your priorities in order…
A few quick strides and you’re next to her, and practically pull it over your head getting it off the ground. You hand the bike to Sanae and practically drag her along towards the exit path. You freeze before you get two steps. Something’s there. On the path.
Ethereal, would be the best way to describe it. Like a shadow across the air. A non-existence. Something that is just… there. And it’s moving towards you.
An evil spirit.
Battle plan?
[ ] Write-in only.