For Washuu – ch. 1: Transfer

2: Yes, it’s self-insertion, so, yes, it is about me. So what.

3: The quotes are all from various Bride songs. I tried to position them so that you don’t need to know the songs to get the effect. Well… I tried.

Aaannnnnddd……..

1: Transfer

“This past school year… I’ll start there. This year has been my senior year of high school, and it has probably been the most disturbing and painful school year to date. It’s not really anyone’s fault but mine. You see, I’ve grown tired of the world,” He waved his hand around at nothing in particular. “This reality, if you will.”

The Scientist looking down on the scene laughed quietly to herself. ‘He doesn’t know how far from his reality he is!” she chuckled.

“I’ve come to understand that there is nothing in the reality I inhabit that is not corrupt, and that nearly all the people around me haven’t the slightest clue as to how the world works. They simply don’t understand the workings of life.” He paused.

“Then again… maybe I’m just talking about my peers.” Another pause.

‘Well, if the Wall Street Journal is any example, the rest of the world is just like them.’ he thought to himself with a sense of annoyance.

“Anyways, I’ve grown tired of the world, and one thing that didn’t help this at all was my latest obsession: Tenchi Muyo. An amusement of sorts. I had long since stopped reading fantasy novels when I started watching Tenchi Muyo, mainly for the same reason that the anime was ruining me now. Novels, especially fantasy novels, are nearly impossible for me to put up with because they portray a world or reality that reflects how my world should be. I hate reading about that because no matter how much I may want such a reality (like Tenchi Muyo), it will never exist. So I’d read more fantasy or watch more of the videos until it affected me nearly like a drug.”

He glanced over at the clouded face of the girl. He was pretty sure she had a blank stare, but, again, he was only guessing.

“Aww, never mind. Let me back up to a few days ago, at…” he thought for a minute “the concert.”

“Okay. what happened there?”

“I had spent the whole day volunteering in setting up and tearing down a concert at a local concert hall that I hang around, so I was totally spent When I got home. You see, I had gotten up at seven o’clock to arrive early, and ended up getting home at half past one. AFTER midnight.

Back in the lab, the scientist muttered something about foolish young humans wasting their stamina while they had too much.

“Pretty much the whole next morning as I made my way to school I was both half-asleep from staying up so late, and terribly depressed and grumpy from my wishes for a different reality. Again, it was- no, is my fetish, and it nagged at me the worst when I’m fatigued like then. Sleepiness wasn’t new, but on that day I felt an aching hunger, as if something was continuously imploding in my stomach, pulling on the insides like a vacume.

“At school I basically slept with my eyes open for the first two periods, unable to handle both the over-bearing aching and my nearly surreal mental state.

By the time third period ended, however, the drowsiness and hunger were totally gone, replaced by ubiquitous pain, an uncanny alertness, and a burning energy from inside. It seemed like everywhere that I could, I ached, and yet… it all felt so real. And I felt so… powerful…”

The mist shifted uneasily, and the overlooking genius started mumbling some more agitated thoughts, but stopped when the boy continued.

“Anyway, as the day progressed, the aching and intense energy became overwhelming, and I had no trouble checking out of school on the (very) convincing excuse of a fever.

“As I got in my ’96 Ford Ranger -I love that truck- my seemingly never-ceasing mental jukebox suddenly stopped what it had been playing and jumped to a different song all together.”

The girl in the mist suddenly could hear a song float by her like a waiving tail-end of a kite.

I am the fever that burns your skin

The addiction, the ancient sin

“I found it ironic that-“

“Hold on, a minute,” The misty girl cut him off. “What music?”

“Hmm? Oh, you mean my ‘Mental Jukebox’?”

“Yes, what’s that supposed to be?”

“Umm, how do I say this?” he started, thought for a bit, and then continued. “I kind of live and breathe music. It’s always in my head, and I don’t always have control over what song is playing, especially since I have so much music to listen to. I know most of it by heart (and head, obviously). Because of this, you could ask me at pretty much any time of the day what’s playing in my head and I’d have something for you.”

He paused again and looked down. “Usually it reflects my mood. Sometimes it only makes things worse.”

“How sad.” the girl thought aloud, and the mist shimmered and shook for the slightest moment before the boy sat bolt upright.

“W- What did you do just now?” His voice wavered. The mist was silent for a moment.

“What DID I do?” It retorted knowingly.

“The…” He trailed off. “The music… stopped. It just stopped.”

The misty figure suddenly realized it had probably gone to far into the boy’s conscience by stopping his songs. It gradually let the his music come back after asking him to continue.

“Uh, yea. Right. So, as I was saying, I found it ironic that my obsession would be as decimating to me as to remind me of a song about drunkenness.”

“Think about that moment for me, okay?” the girl asked.

The boy nodded, and the song returned. The girl could make out a high tenor voice wailing along with an 80’s-era track.

I am the reputation that makes you loose face

I am the fear that presents no case

She could see in the boy’s mind as he tried to make his mind ‘play’ a different song while driving home on that day.

“I kept trying to distract myself, but…”

Another song floated through the mist. The same singer, the girl concluded.

I’m standing on the sword of the dragon

He can’t pull it from beneath my feat

“It didn’t really help the situation much. Every song I ended up hearing in my head was some sort of song of fantasy.”

Again, the song changed.

On a hill there is a spark

Where the light would spread and strangle the dark

“What did you do then?” The misty figure asked.

The boy shook his head. “I started running through all the songs I had in my head, wondering just why the only ones coming up were songs of fantasy.” The boy looked peeved. “Really, fantasy! Of all things…” He glared at nothing in particular.

“What was so bad with that?” asked the mist.

“All of those songs reflect a reality I can’t have, that’s why.”

The boy suddenly seemed to get a thought, and an alarm sounded in the scientist’s lab. She started and began typing, fast.

On the display, the mist shifted, and the expression of thought passed from the boy’s face.

“Well, I’m glad I still have some control of his subconscious.” the genius sighed. She sat back on her chair and waited for the boy to continue.

“Uh, well, either way. I fumbled around in my head, trying to find the song I was looking for. It wasn’t the safest thing to be doing, distracting myself that much, but then again, I don’t know why it was so distracting. Come to think of it, I was distracting myself so much that I almost missed a turn and I had to brake hard and swing the wheel around quick.” An extremely annoyed expression crossed the boy’s face as he added “I hit the horn by accident, which almost made me run off the road, because I always jump back when I do that. I HATE it when-“

The boy’s reiteration suddenly stopped and he put a hand to his head. Back in the lab, the genius also had an annoyed expression plastered on her face as she practically threw her fingers across her translucent keyboard. She swore at the screen.

“Can’t you just stop thinking long enough to finish?!?” She shouted at the screen. Her fingers stopped on a key and she waited for the boy’s memories to start telling themselves again.

On the screen, the boy relaxed. Reluctantly, the scientist did as well.

Close the hatches and lower the sails

The storm is whipping great balls of hail

“I had almost reached the gravel road to my house when that happened, and from that point on, I seemed to grow more and more agitated and broody.”

“Broody? You?” The misty girl giggled. “Really, now. What do you mean by that?” The boy considered for a minute before replying.

“I’m not really sure. Something just didn’t feel right. Heck, nothing felt right, from then up till-“

“So, what happened next?” the mist cut him off.

Tempest is raging, pulling us down

Time to learn to swim, boy, or time to drown.

“Right about then I hit the gravel. Nothing new to me, just another part of my route home, but for some reason I looked up, and…” He trailed off.

Oars have broke, your time to kneel

This storm is screaming with the vengeance to KILL

“I gunned the tiny engine in my truck to get up the hill in front of me, like I usually do when I get to that spot in the road, and I looked up, and…”

The girl was getting a little impatient. “And? And what?”

“Well, I saw a light shining over from the other side of the hill, like an oncoming car at night, but brighter, even brighter than that. And it was the middle of the day!” The boy turned to the mist for a second. “How can that happen if it’s not dark? How could that happen?”

“I don’t know.” The mist replied. “Some odd things… happen, you know.”

“But it had been bright as day one minute-“

The boy stopped altogether, his memory lost.

The redhead back in the lab held her finger on one key as it glowed red, her fierce glare leveled at the screen and the boy on it. Slowly, she turned where she sat. Her finger never left the key it was on as her gaze shifted to the boy on the table. The genius’s eyes narrowed as she made a very rare gut decision and lifted her finger. She spun back and continued watching.

Faith is plunged into the sea beneath

The waves beat the ship with iron fists to sink

The boy’s hands were shaking slightly as he continued where he had left off.

“That’s right. I was going up the hill. Ramulsburg Hill, as it’s called by some in the area, and the light… I don’t know. It was just there, and I can’t figure out why I could see it. It was still midday, and I could see the tree-line going up and stopping at the top of the hill, and then… light?

“What was happening?” asked the voice in the mist.

“I was getting really scared of whatever it was, and I just started panicking when my foot wouldn’t come off the gas. It was like it was stuck there, driving me up the hill towards that… thing.

“When I looked up again -it felt like minutes but it must have been as little as seconds- I saw the sky growing dim as I watched.”

The girl backed up in a disbelieving manner.

“No, really! Just looking at the sky, I could see it going dark… like a storm was rolling in at an incredible speed. Like… like a tornado had come there in a matter of seconds.”

Sky grew black, and like an engine humming,

I could tell it was my time

“Wow. I’ve never heard of something like that happening. Even on-” The girl stopped herself, but the boy didn’t even notice.

“I was just cresting the hill when the light hit me. It didn’t blind me, but it seemed to shine everything else into their own shadows. It totally blocked any view down the road, and it took me a minute to realize that it was because the source of the light itself was wider than the whole road!. It was directly in front of me, and yet… It didn’t move. Come to think of it, neither did I.”

The girl looked at him oddly.

“It felt like time… No, time hadn’t slowed, it had stopped moving. It was like everything -me, my truck, the trees, and the… the ‘thing’- all was suspended in the moment.”

This time, the scientist was disbelieving of the boy’s story. She tried to reason with herself on the matter, but she quickly decided to let reason go to the wind for the moment. She had to, if she wanted to believe who the boy was at all.

“I could still move, and the light still shimmered. The light… it was all from one lamp on the front of the thing and-“

The boy stopped again.

I could hear the sound of my heartbeat thumping

And it echoes in my mind

“It had gone red. The whole scene had gone red with the light from the lamp. Blood red and cold. It felt so empty and-“

“What happened next?” the misty figure cut him off.”

“More light appeared, engulfing the scene, and my truck was seemingly blasting to pieces as a massive, robed, and angelic figure shot into view between my truck and the… thing bearing down on me.”

Fear is the driver, we fight for our lives

We’re not afraid of death, but we don’t want to die

“Behind the sudden, shining figure I could still easily make out the wavering image of the hulk that had been bearing down on me. It appeared the be some form of space ship, but above all else, it reminded me of the Phantom Train with a most wicked and menacing sort of iron mouth pasted on the front of it. Erie, tentacle-like tubes were slowly, slowly slid out from between the gaping jaws like a snake’s tongue.”

Prayed out loud and clung to the deck

No glory for sailors when they’ve been ship-wrecked

“Slowly my focus and attention shifted to the angelic figure hovering in front of the demonic-looking ship. Its face was obscured by the overwhelming light it radiated, but I could tell that its form rose far above the ship behind it and sank far below the grade of the road. Its white and blue robes billowed as a beam of hideous black light burst from the mouth of the ship, heading straight toward me. The beam inched its way on and on, but before the beam could reach me, the shining figure raised its arms outward and the the sinister light hit it and shot away. Kind of like a waterfall hitting the ground, but a lot more intimidating.” The boy grimaced. “Intimidating, Hah! More like ‘pants-wetting scary'”.

The girl smiled from within the mist. The boy was getting tired. The genius also smiled. ‘Maybe this will work.’ She thought to herself.

“For a moment, it was very quiet. I hung there, dazed in the darkness and void. Nothing else, until… the figure’s eyes shot open with a roll of thunder, and before I had the chance to even look at the figure’s face, time was unceremoniously snapped back to its normal rate. The truck, which I was one again in, hit the ground and it skidded off into the woods with me uselessly jerking the wheel back and forth trying to get control!”

The scientist’s head hit her desk and snapped back up to glare at the screen in disbelief.

“Gaah! Couldn’t you just settle down for a minute?” she yelled at the unhearing boy. And then she realized something.

“Wait, now that’s not consistent.” She looked to a different screed and checked a line of data on it before reluctantly typing another command into in console.

The boy had stopped talking and held a thoughtful look for a short minute.

“Wait a second,” he started. “What woods? There aren’t woods-“

“Forget the woods, I want to hear what happened next,” The girl cut in. “What happened?”

“Well, I…” The boy looked very embarrassed. “I went right into a tree. The whole front end of the truck had been totally ruined, and the windshield had a hole in it where a tree limb had punched through the safety glass. And that’s… that’s how it was. I kept thinking… and I KEEP thinking… I don’t know what I hit, because I know that the tree-line ended, or ends, at the top of the hill.

The boy looked lost in a daze for a minute until he suddenly perked up.

“So! What do you think of that?” He asked the misty girl. She considered quickly, computing a sedating answer. A boring answer.

“I think it’s remarkable! I like how you set a backing tone with the music in your head as well as-” and she continued on. The scientist tapped a button and got up to stretch a little, until…

Don’t be deceived by what you might see,

As it was for me every day

The boy spontaneously shot upright. “I remember now! I was surprised while looking out the splintered glass.”

“Huh?” the red-haired genius’ head spun back to the screen showing the scene with the boy.

“That’s right, the tree I’d hit wasn’t any kind that grows in Iowa…” the boy continued

“He shouldn’t be able to remember anything now!” she yelled and ducked back over to her console.

“And that house? I know I’ve seen it before. With that lake… and that deck…”

“What’s happening?” the scientist panicked, again typing like mad.

“And there was that boy of to the left, too. I recognized him, too!”

“Not good!” Red hair seemed to fly from one screen to another, and back to the keyboard.

“Tenchi? Was that his name?”

The girl appeared on an isolated screen in the scientist’s lab. “What the heck is he doing?” The genius asked ‘her’. What let him slip loose?”

“I don’t know. I just did what you programed me to! How would I know what went wrong?”

“And the guy seemed surprised to hear his name.”

The scientist went back to hammering at her keyboard. “Not now, not now, not… No! He’s going to break through to consciousness!”

“Of course, I was like ‘Yeah right’, sarcastically to myself, and…”

“YOU CAN’T DIE ON ME YET!”

“I guess I just passed out on the horn and…”

‘Forget it.’ she thought to herself, and turned to the boy’s body.

“…then where am I now? I must be dreaming. Shouldn’t I wake-“

Red hair obscured a shaky finger as it flipped a switch on the side of the table. Just as consciousness started to break even, and just as the boy’s eyes started to crack open, they fell heavily shut again. His mind once again entrapped itself.

Because the Greatest Scientific Genius in the Universe didn’t know what else she could do.

==========

Sorry about the indentations, or rather lack thereof. The formatting gets way off when I put thing online.

First half: third revision.

Second half: first revision.

Well, whatdidjathink? Worth the read?

Or… do I have a lot of explaining to do? 🙄

Remember, it’s all for Washuu-chan! :washu: