[AMS] [UY] "Urusei Megamisama!" (11/12) "Urusei Megamisama!", Chapter Eleven: "Nightmares and Villains" By Henry J. Cobb $Id: urusei_megamisama11.txt,v 1.9 1998/06/26 14:12:38 hcobb Exp hcobb $ The Ah! Megamisama! characters and situations are the creation of Kosuke Fujishima. The Urusei Yatsura characters and situations are the creation of Rumiko Takahashi. No infringement of their copyrights is intended. Previous chapters are available at: http://www.io.com/~hcobb/anime/fanfic/chaos.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Thanks to Paul Corrigan and Steven Cornett for their assistance with this chapter. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Skuld, seventeen year old goddess of the future, dashed around the corner of the hedge maze and stopped. She wiped the sweat from her brow and looked again. The maze opened up into a small alcove with a kotatsu table in the center. A man-sized white cat with brown markings sat by the table with a large plate of taiyaki. (1) "Mew?" The cat offered one of the taiyaki. "No thanks, I only have those ala-mode," Skuld explained, "plus I'm in a bit of a hurry today." "BUMOO!" The 15 foot long tiger-striped monster with elephant ears, horns and a black horse-like tail turned the corner of the maze behind Skuld. Skuld ran around the kotatsu, then pointed at the plate on it. "Look Rei, COOKIES!" "Un!" The Oni-monster dived for the the taiyaki and was met by a white paw to the nose. Rei held one paw to his nose and attempted to reach around the cat, but had his rear legs swept out from under him. Skuld didn't stay to watch the rest of the fight. She needed to get back to the fountain at the center of the maze. She had been too surprised when Rei first appeared to teleport out, but now she desperately wanted to leave. She just couldn't face one of the boys she'd killed. The grass seemed to not have any trace of their trail. "That's odd, with the cube-square law, you'd think that Rei would leave quite an impression, especially at full gallop." "Bumoo!" "Damn, that was fast." Skuld shrunk down to a few inches in height and crouched down against the hedge. Even at this size, the hedge seemed to be very solid. "Bumoo!" Rei ran past the point that Skuld was hiding, then stopped to smell the ground at the next intersection. Slowly, he turned around. Skuld turned the corner and ran. She didn't think he'd seen her that time, but he doubtlessly had heard her. With his animal senses he had the edge on her here, especially since her telepathy didn't pick up the Oni at all. "Bumoo!" Rei chased Skuld around a corner, into a dead-end. She turned back to face him, hammer at the ready. "Gee Rei, you've really grown in the past three years. Death certainly has been good to you." "Bumoo!" Rei moved in slowly, stalking the goddess with steady graceful tread of a jungle cat. "Look, I'm really really sorry I killed you. Can't we be friends?" "Bumoo!" Rei swiped the hammer from Skuld's grasp. Skuld took one step back. Her back against the wall and raised her palm. "I've got a new trick to show you. Noble Scarlet!" Rei paused for a moment, but nothing happened. "Bumoo!" Rei swiped his paw across Skuld's face, cutting into her cheek with one claw and driving her down to her knees. "Ow! How dare you scar the face of a goddess!" Skuld held one hand to the bleeding wound and threw a bomb with the other. "Boom!" "Kyaa!" Rei moved his front paws back towards his assaulted rear, leaving an opening. Skuld fired the raygun as she drew it from hyperspace. There was no time to aim and no room to miss. The beam sizzled through Rei's chest. "No! Not again!" Skuld would have done anything to have taken back that shot. She dropped her weapon and buried her face in her hands. "Gusun gusun gusun." Those weren't Skuld's sobs. As she pulled her hands from her face, she noticed that they were a bit smaller and the cut on her face was gone. All around she felt a bit younger. "No, don't take me back to that day!" She looked up at the schoolyard on Uru. All of the children, from many different species, seemed to be shocked into silence. All the blood seemed to have drained from Ran's face. Benten stood shivering in the grasp of conflicting emotions. Oyuki had fallen to her knees with her hands crossed over her mouth. All was silence, except for Lum's gentle sobbing. Lum held Rei's humanoid form in her lap. Even with a hole blown in his chest, he was so very handsome. As Lum looked up towards Skuld, she bared her fangs. "Why did you kill my darling?" "I'm sorry, I didn't mean. It was an accident..." Skuld gave up on words and sobbed into her hands. As she wiped her eyes on her sleeve, she noticed that her outfit had changed. Skuld looked down at herself. Her goddess uniform had been replaced by mechanic's coveralls. She looked up at a racetrack. One of the motorcycles lost control and hit the wall. It's rider was torn away, his helmeted head yanked around to an impossible angle. "Not Sentaro too!" Skuld turned away and saw Ataru shoved against a wall by a fiery explosion. He hit a wall and bounced away to lie burning on the ground. Smoke billowed out from Ataru's corpse, blanketing everything in a gray fog. Skuld hugged her knees to herself as she drifted through the fog. "No, THAT hasn't happened. Not yet. It won't happen. I won't let it happen! Not again!" Through the fog, Skuld heard her own voice. "That's the advantage of triage. You tell them: ``Help is on the way, please keep up hope'' and then you leave them to DIE!" Why did those words now hurt so much? Surely, if anybody was expendable, it was that idiot. Was it simply another case where she would fail to live up to her responsibilities or was it something more? "Scarlet's right." Skuld wiped the tears from her eyes and opened them. "Today class we shall find out how many angels can dance on a bed of nails." Sensei Onsen-Mark pulled out a foot square board with dozens of nails sticking out of it and a sledgehammer. "Skuld, if you will provide the angel please." Skuld looked at the jeering faces of her classmates. She could sense nothing from any of them, they were all simple phantasms, but there was one independent entity in the classroom. Skuld rose from her desk and walked to the back of the class, where that strange large cat sat smoking a pipe. "You, you know what's going on here, don't you?" The cat said nothing, but blew smoke into Skuld's face. Skuld crossed her arms in front of her face and when the smoke cleared she woke in her bed in the temple. "Am I back?" Skuld wondered. "Was that it?" She turned as she heard strange noises coming from down the hall. "I don't think so." Skuld strapped on her breastplate and helmet, then took her sword and shield down from the wall. Skuld tested the heft of her sword and slid her door open. Then she strode down the hall towards the sounds. The trail lead to Keiichi's room and the noises sounded very familiar. She slid his door open with her sword. Belldandy was naked with Keiichi and they were doing it. "Oneesama!" Skuld stood and stared. "Skuld!" Belldandy stopped and looked with shock at her sister. "Give you any ideasssss kiddo?" A snake's tongue hissed into Skuld's ear. "This is all your fault!" Skuld turned around to face the hydra with a half dozen heads of Urd. "Prepare to face the wrath of Athena, warrior goddess!" Skuld held up her sword and stopped. "Forget it!" Skuld stabbed her sword down into the ground, threw down her shield, unfastened her helmet and placed it on the hilt of her sword. "This isn't me." Skuld turned back towards Belldandy and Keiichi, who had covered themselves with a sheet. "Have fun you two." Skuld waved, then walked away. Skuld dropped her breastplate, leaving herself in plain white robe and sandals. She wandered aimlessly for what seemed like hours, finally sitting on a rock on the shore of an underground river. In the distance a lone boatman ferried the dammed across the river. "That last one really hurt didn't it?" A short figure stood in the gloom. "You want him for yourself?" "I got over that long ago." Skuld didn't turn away from the river. "Show yourself Mujaki." "Have we met, young lady?" The short demon with white hair, in the star-spangled suit and top hat stepped out of the shadows. "No, but mother pointed you out in the Big Picture Book of Supernatural Beasts. She said that you'd come to give naughty little goddesses bad dreams." "That's right, I haven't run you through her death yet." Skuld sneered at the demon. "Is that the worst you can you do, dredge up my past?" "For somebody with such a remarkable imagination, your worst nightmares seem to all be things that have actually happened." Skuld turned back to look down at the river of death. "Life's been tough on me, what's your excuse? And where's your pig?" "Baku is his own tapir and he's engaged elsewhere." "Then this is a big operation for you. Why bother, I'll be free as soon as I awaken." "You are awake." Mujaki announced. "Shall I pinch you to prove it to you? It's your nature as something of an illusion to be where you appear to be." Skuld turned around to glare at the demon. "Now that you've got me trapped, what do you intend? To destroy me?" "What a waste of potential, my dear lady. Also impossible. There will always be a future, just as there will always be dreams. If I snuff out your current form you will reemerge in some other and you are almost perfect this time around." "Perfect for what?" "My dreams are not that different from Shutaro's. He sees you as a great prize as both a woman to be won as well as extremely helpful in his plans. You are even more useful to me." "In what way?" "With our combined powers we can make every nightmare come true." "You're scum, you know that?" "I simply am what I have been created to be. I'll leave you here for a while my lady and then when you're feeling better when can talk." "I don't think so. I'll be leaving now." "How?" The demon swept his arm around. "You're trapped in my domain!" "This is all I need to defeat you." Skuld held up her left pinky. A red thread trailed away from it. "What is this?" The demon leaned forwards to get a better look and had his head smashed to the floor by Ataru's tennis shoe. "It's about time you got here Ataru." Skuld stood up and walked to his side. "Is this guy bothering you?" Ataru asked. "Not any more." "You will never escape goddess!" Mujaki shouted from under Ataru's foot. "Where is this place?" Ataru looked around at the cave. "It's a rather depressing dream and I think it's about time to wake up." Skuld took Ataru's hand and walked a few meters away. The demon got to his feet. "He can wake up, but you never will!" "You don't know anything, do you?" Skuld turned back to Ataru "Come on, let's go." "But how?" Ataru asked. "Like this." Skuld wrapped her arms around Ataru's neck and brought him close for a kiss. He was so surprised that he woke up. When Skuld opened her eyes, she was sitting on Ataru's lap, in his desk in the classroom. She could feel the shock of all the other students. Everything was back to normal. "S-sorry." Ataru whispered. "I feel asleep in class. I was up all night looking for you." "How sweet." Skuld leaned forwards to kiss him again. "Moroboshi!" Sensei Onsen-mark slammed his hand down on his desk. "What is the meaning of this?" "Uh, I found Skuld, sir." Ataru placed his right hand behind his neck. Skuld reluctantly got off of Ataru and walked around to her own desk. "And what is your story Skuld?" The teacher asked. "I was abducted by a demon, sir." "What!" "On my word as a goddess sir." After school Shutaro walked up to the couple with one hand on the hilt of his katana. "Ataru, if you ever cause this goddess the slightest pain, I will hear of it and you will suffer. Until then, I just want to say congratulations and I wish both of you the best." He shook Ataru's hand. "Thank you Shutaro." Skuld gave him a kiss on the cheek. He just stood there shocked as the pair walked on, holding hands. Ataru stopped. "Skuld, I don't know what to tell my mother." Skuld lead him over to a bench in front of the fountain in the park. "Try the truth." "I just don't know how she's going to take it." "I think, that just this once, she'll be proud of you." "Skuld..." Skuld put her arms around Ataru's neck and drew him in for a kiss. "My, what a touching scene, t'cha." Skuld disentangled herself from Ataru and looked back at the girl leaning over their park bench. "Lum!" "So this is your Darling?" Lum had blue eyes, long green hair, fangs and horns and wore a tiger-striped bikini with matching boots. "Sentaro, aren't you, t'cha?" "No, I'm Ataru." "Why you little two-timer Skuld, I never knew you had it in you, t'cha!" "Sentaro is dead." Skuld scowled. "What do you want here Lum?" "Nice little planet you've got here Skuld. Selfish of you to keep it a secret like this. I'll have to take it away, t'cha." "Do you think you can just walk in here and take over?" Ataru asked Lum. "Earth's military is no match for her forces." Skuld whispered to Ataru. "But, her pride won't let her turn down a personal challenge." "I challenge you!" Ataru stood and pointed to the alien princess. "My a bit of spunk there, t'cha. This should be fun. If you should win I shall call off the invasion and grant you any one thing in my ability. But, when I win you become my first Earth slave willingly, t'cha?" "Agreed." "Now as the challenged party, I get to pick the game. It has to be something that won't bruise you too much. I wouldn't want to spoil my prize. How about tag, t'cha?" "Whatever you say." "Ataru..." Skuld grabbed his arm. "You will have ten days to catch me and grab my horns. That sounds simple enough, t'cha?" "Lady, ain't nothing gonna keep me from grabbing you." "But first I need to go arrange press coverage, t'cha." Lum waved as she flew towards a waiting UFO. "S-she can fly?" Ataru looked after Lum as she flew off. "I tried to warn you dummy." Skuld sat down again. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Notes: (1) Taiyaki: Carp shaped pancakes filled with bean jam. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Henry J. Cobb hcobb@slip.net http://www.io.com/~hcobb Next: "The Game of the Oni"