Alvis was himself a Kreb
Dec. 25th, 2009 05:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mythicfox(To anyone who doesn't get the post title's reference, check out this classic episode of Sealab 2021.)
Happy holidays to everyone who follows my LiveJournal. It's an honor and a privilege to have all of you following me year after year, in the hopes that I post something interesting.
I hope to achieve that one day.
Before I get into this week's chapter of "Let Sleeping Foxes Lie," I'd like to share with you the special Christmas offering from the Venture Bros. folks from this year: The Chipmunk Song, as sung by Henchman 21 and the Pupa Twins/Murderous Moppets. That page also has all of the previous Venture Bros. holiday songs, so you'll have to scroll down a bit to get to the new one. But the images will help there.
And now...
Wait, I thought, Why is there noise in my kitchen?
I slipped over to the bed as silently as possible, reaching underneath to grab the baseball bat I brought from home when I moved in. Its weight was not as comforting as most people like to think it is. I crept into the hall, moving the bat to my right hand. Ahead of me I could see my living room and I knew to the right of it was my kitchen. Well, kitchenette.
Either way, there was someone rummaging through my cabinets and opening my fridge. I stood up against the wall a foot from the edge. My kitchen and the intruder were effectively right behind me, as the wall was more of a divider. I took a deep breath and stared at the wall in front of me, trying to draw upon any experience I might have had in my life that could help me wield a baseball bat threateningly.
"Where are your bowls?"
I dropped the bat, blinking. Shiko was standing there, holding a box of cereal. She wore a white blouse and a red skirt, very 'business casual' -- but not what she wore the day before.
"What?"
"I was going to make you breakfast, but all you have is cereal and orange juice. I was wondering where your cereal bowls are."
She was oddly casual about all this, like she was supposed to be here.
"Dishwasher," I blankly said, stunned. "How drunk did I get last night?"
"Barely at all. You were a little wobbly and Mitami-sama asked me to walk you home. Good thing you live so close to the warehouse. Have a seat at the table."
She disappeared back into the kitchen, digging into the dishwasher. I sat down at the dining table, self-consciously running my fingers through my short hair again. I watched her make me breakfast while I found myself thinking through something. Several things, really. Alarms were buzzing in my head; I could see in my mind's eye a board of LEDs going completely berserk. It was like I just figured out a puzzle.
First off, I was kicking myself for not noticing before that Shiko was in fact male. Not that it was a problem for me, as such. But there was an assortment of clues I'd been missing all along. Some of them I couldn't notice until today, but still.
It was little stuff. The walk, the voice... the Adam's apple I didn't see until she got close. Although after waking up missing most of an evening with no warning, I was pretty well braced for a shock like this. I wasn't as braced for the 'you're staring' look Shiko was giving me at this point.
"Something on your mind?" Shiko asked while bringing me cereal and a glass of orange juice while some water heated in my electric kettle.
I decided it was too early in the morning to dance around things.
"Do you have any preference on pronouns?" I asked.
I had breakfast to finish before heading out to work and that left little time to play polite with a cross-dressing near-stranger who shouldn't have been in my home to begin with. Also, at the time I think the question sounded clever in my head. I didn't know whether to be disappointed or pleased to not have Shiko drop something in surprise at the question.
"No preference, really," Shiko said without missing a beat. "Some folks prefer to say 'she' out of fear of getting in the habit of 'he' and outing me in public. Not for my sake, though, but out of a fear of having to explain it.
"Sorry if you were hoping for something more dramatic," Shiko continued after a moment. "I've had much more awkward morning-after conversations than this."
I was mid-cereal at the time and some went down the wrong pipe at the 'morning-after' comment. I coughed and pounded my chest and Shiko gently slapped me on the back. I cleared my throat and took a drink of orange juice, wincing when it hit my now-scratchy throat.
"Oh, relax," he said. "It was a shitty question to ask and you knew it. I was obligated to mess with you a bit. Nothing happened. You didn't even make a pass at me." He sounded offended at that. "I got you back here, you started to pass out on the couch, and I eventually wrangled you to your bedroom. I crashed here to make sure you were okay, and snuck home to get dressed this morning."
"Then why did you come back?" I asked, surprise giving my voice an exasperated edge.
"To make you breakfast and some tea. Speaking of which..."
Shiko rushed over to the electric kettle, which was whistling by this point. He poured some powder into a small bowl and poured water over it, stirring it up with something. I finished my cereal and juice and looked up at the clock. I barely had time to get to work.
"Hey, we can have tea later, I gotta run. Lock up on your way out."
I got up and dropped my cereal bowl into the sink with a clatter. Shiko tried to stop me, but I pushed past and ran down the stairs in the hallway. I rushed out onto the sidewalk and began the relatively short jog to the warehouse. I winced at the sun filtering down past store signs to the street.
The street was packed with the morning rush hour crowd. This being the Little Tokyo district of Grünstadt, I wasn't too surprised at first to see one of those papier-mâché dragons with three or four guys in it moving down the sidewalk across the street. Until I realized that there wasn't any sort of festival today. There was also the fact that there weren't people holding up the prop with sticks.
I blinked and the vision vanished. I paused for a moment and shook it off as a hallucination before turning to continue to the warehouse. I pushed past people who reflexively moved around me in that way that massive crowds occasionally do. In the process I pushed past a red-skinned guy with tusks that dressed kinda like a pimp, a kappa running a juice stand, and a scaly unicorn-looking guy. I think they're called kirin or something, but I didn't get a close look as the inevitable double-take showed them to be normal people again.
As I was trying to figure out when Shiko had a chance to drug me, I became aware of the guy following me. He looked normal, albeit slightly ridiculous. He wore sunglasses and a faux-leather biker jacket with his hand holding something underneath. I wasn't sure he was following me until he distinctly looked away when I spotted him.
"Rookie," I muttered derisively under my breath as I dove into a nearby alley. I ran for the far end of a dumpster halfway down and ducked behind it. I crouched and closed my eyes.
His footsteps crunched on broken glass as he followed me. I assumed he was the one following me down the alley, but I was too afraid to look. He came up to the dumpster, moving with cautious steps. I held my breath and silently prayed that he would mistake me for a bum or something. He paused next to me, and I trembled with the effort of holding my breath.
He moved on and I opened one eye just a bit. He walked out the other end of the alley and I released the breath I was holding.
"What the fuck was that about?" I asked nobody in particular, standing back up and brushing myself off.
I jogged back the way I came and continued on to the distributor. When I reached the door I leaned against the wall next to it while I paused to catch my breath. I hoped desperately for anything resembling normalcy when I went inside.
Past the door, I caught movement out of the corner of my eye; there was a shifting, glowing aura around the shrine in the corner. There was movement in the fox photos next to the shrine. My jaw clenched and I braced myself. I blinked and they kept moving. The fox statues in the pictures were actively watching me and looked very much like real foxes.
"Dammit," I whispered and looked away.
A bunch of the other guys there were staring at me, and the forklift operator from yesterday muttered 'Looks like the twinkie is losing his shit' in Japanese. The others laughed, and I glanced back at the pictures. I could see wind blowing grass and leaves in the background as the foxes shifted in their sitting positions.
Kazuhiro came over. He looked a little blurry and I shook my head to clear my vision.
"Are you alright, Mac?"
"No."
"Well, get it together quickly, Mitami-sama and Mitami-sama want to see you."
"Wait, both of them?"
I rubbed my eyes and didn't wait for a response before heading to the office door. I slipped in and looked up at Yusuke Mitami and his wife Yutsuko. Shiko was there, too, carrying my thermos and Kazuhiro followed me in a few moments later.
"You wanted to see me?"
"Minocci-san, please come into my office, we need to have a talk," Mr. Mitami said, gesturing to a nearby door.
We all went inside and sat down in various chairs. The walls were covered with traditional Japanese artwork as well as photos of the Mitamis in various environments. Now that they were older it wasn't a problem but in their younger days they had a physical resemblance that made it hard to tell which one was which. If I didn't know better, I would assume they were related rather than married.
"What happened this morning?" Yusuke asked.
"Um..." I glanced at Shiko and then continued. "I woke up, got dressed, had breakfast, came to work."
"Shiko was there." That was a statement, not a question. "Were you served tea?"
"I didn't have time; I had to get to work."
"You should have stopped him," Mrs. Mitami said to Shiko with a glare. "You should have made sure he drank the tea."
Things were getting kind of fuzzy and wobbly, so I pretty much dismissed the comment at the time. I rubbed my eyes and hoped everyone else in the room didn't notice something was wrong with me. My skin felt itchy.
"Did you see anything strange this morning?"
"Other than..." I bit my tongue. "No, no. Sorry. I... I'm a bit lightheaded; I think I'm still drunk from last night."
"Did you see anything strange this morning?" he asked again.
"You can tell us whatever happened; we'll believe you," his wife chimed in.
"I saw..." I paused, and took a moment to rub my face, trying to ignore the itching. "There was a dragon, but I figured there was a celebration of some sort. But then... then I saw a kappa and a kirin. Some weird guy was following me, too, but I didn't get a good look at him."
Shiko brought my thermos over and poured me a cup of the tea from earlier. He offered it to me and I just accepted it and set it down. The others were watching me expectantly.
"Am I going crazy, Mitami-sama?" I asked, my voice cracking with a hint of desperation.
"Drink your tea, Makoto," Mr. Mitami said.
"Can't you tell me what's happening to me?" I pleaded -- no, let's face it, I whined.
"Once you've drunk the tea, we won't have to," his wife interjected.
I looked at the cup of lukewarm tea in my hands, only now acknowledging it for the first time. I couldn't stand green tea usually, but I was too afraid to ask for some honey or something to sweeten it. I actually hesitated, waiting to see if someone would just grab me and force me to drink. Rather than let my density screw with my destiny, I sighed and chugged the bitter tea as quickly as I could without choking.
A sharp pain dug through my temples and blurred my vision further. I reached for the side of the desk to steady myself and fell out of my seat. My skin stopped itching, but the sensation had jumped to my throat. I tried to force myself to cough and ended up dry heaving instead. The others were talking to each other but I couldn't make out the words, as focused as I was on struggling with whatever the hell was happening to me.
The carpeted floor of the office was gone, replaced with a tatami mat. I slowly stood up and the walls were no longer drywall but traditional paneled walls. The photographs on the walls had been replaced with woodblock art but the scenes were more or less identical. The existing artwork... was still artwork. That detail slightly worried me more than it comforted me.
I stood up and staggered a few steps, trying to regain my balance. The others kept talking all around me, but I still couldn't make out what they were saying. Then I realized that the Mitamis weren't speaking. Kazuhiro and Shiko were silent as well even though all around me incoherent whispers blended into a noise like a distant ocean. I was sure that it wasn't them because I was blatantly staring at their fox faces and saw that their muzzles weren't moving.
No, really. Fox faces, muzzles, canine features, whiskers, pointed ears; the whole nine yards. Kazuhiro's fur was bright red and two tails stuck out the back of his coveralls. Shiko's was black and gray, like a black and white photo of a regular fox; I couldn't help but admit to myself it was a pretty effect. I hadn't noted yet how many tails Shiko bore; I felt this was a bad time to get caught staring at his ass. The Mitamis still looked normal to me.
I sat back down and closed my eyes, forcing myself to breathe slowly. Somehow I was tripping on green tea. Maybe my guess was right and I was still drunk from the night before. I opened my eyes and while the office was restored to its previous state, my co-workers' vulpine natures remained.
"Okay, now can you tell me...?" I started to ask until I realized I already knew the answer to my question.
The office had an enchantment on it that made it look more traditionally Japanese for the benefit of employees who had the ability and desire to see it that way. There was another magical effect on it that I couldn't place right away, but I was aware of its existence. I was as instinctually aware of all this as I was that two plus two equaled four. There were supernatural creatures in the world that most people wouldn't perceive in their true forms. Shiko and Kazuhiro fell into that category because they were fox spirits in human bodies known as kitsune.
Just like me.
To be continued...
I hope all of your holiday plans work out, everyone. Mahalo.
Happy holidays to everyone who follows my LiveJournal. It's an honor and a privilege to have all of you following me year after year, in the hopes that I post something interesting.
I hope to achieve that one day.
Before I get into this week's chapter of "Let Sleeping Foxes Lie," I'd like to share with you the special Christmas offering from the Venture Bros. folks from this year: The Chipmunk Song, as sung by Henchman 21 and the Pupa Twins/Murderous Moppets. That page also has all of the previous Venture Bros. holiday songs, so you'll have to scroll down a bit to get to the new one. But the images will help there.
And now...
Wait, I thought, Why is there noise in my kitchen?
I slipped over to the bed as silently as possible, reaching underneath to grab the baseball bat I brought from home when I moved in. Its weight was not as comforting as most people like to think it is. I crept into the hall, moving the bat to my right hand. Ahead of me I could see my living room and I knew to the right of it was my kitchen. Well, kitchenette.
Either way, there was someone rummaging through my cabinets and opening my fridge. I stood up against the wall a foot from the edge. My kitchen and the intruder were effectively right behind me, as the wall was more of a divider. I took a deep breath and stared at the wall in front of me, trying to draw upon any experience I might have had in my life that could help me wield a baseball bat threateningly.
"Where are your bowls?"
I dropped the bat, blinking. Shiko was standing there, holding a box of cereal. She wore a white blouse and a red skirt, very 'business casual' -- but not what she wore the day before.
"What?"
"I was going to make you breakfast, but all you have is cereal and orange juice. I was wondering where your cereal bowls are."
She was oddly casual about all this, like she was supposed to be here.
"Dishwasher," I blankly said, stunned. "How drunk did I get last night?"
"Barely at all. You were a little wobbly and Mitami-sama asked me to walk you home. Good thing you live so close to the warehouse. Have a seat at the table."
She disappeared back into the kitchen, digging into the dishwasher. I sat down at the dining table, self-consciously running my fingers through my short hair again. I watched her make me breakfast while I found myself thinking through something. Several things, really. Alarms were buzzing in my head; I could see in my mind's eye a board of LEDs going completely berserk. It was like I just figured out a puzzle.
First off, I was kicking myself for not noticing before that Shiko was in fact male. Not that it was a problem for me, as such. But there was an assortment of clues I'd been missing all along. Some of them I couldn't notice until today, but still.
It was little stuff. The walk, the voice... the Adam's apple I didn't see until she got close. Although after waking up missing most of an evening with no warning, I was pretty well braced for a shock like this. I wasn't as braced for the 'you're staring' look Shiko was giving me at this point.
"Something on your mind?" Shiko asked while bringing me cereal and a glass of orange juice while some water heated in my electric kettle.
I decided it was too early in the morning to dance around things.
"Do you have any preference on pronouns?" I asked.
I had breakfast to finish before heading out to work and that left little time to play polite with a cross-dressing near-stranger who shouldn't have been in my home to begin with. Also, at the time I think the question sounded clever in my head. I didn't know whether to be disappointed or pleased to not have Shiko drop something in surprise at the question.
"No preference, really," Shiko said without missing a beat. "Some folks prefer to say 'she' out of fear of getting in the habit of 'he' and outing me in public. Not for my sake, though, but out of a fear of having to explain it.
"Sorry if you were hoping for something more dramatic," Shiko continued after a moment. "I've had much more awkward morning-after conversations than this."
I was mid-cereal at the time and some went down the wrong pipe at the 'morning-after' comment. I coughed and pounded my chest and Shiko gently slapped me on the back. I cleared my throat and took a drink of orange juice, wincing when it hit my now-scratchy throat.
"Oh, relax," he said. "It was a shitty question to ask and you knew it. I was obligated to mess with you a bit. Nothing happened. You didn't even make a pass at me." He sounded offended at that. "I got you back here, you started to pass out on the couch, and I eventually wrangled you to your bedroom. I crashed here to make sure you were okay, and snuck home to get dressed this morning."
"Then why did you come back?" I asked, surprise giving my voice an exasperated edge.
"To make you breakfast and some tea. Speaking of which..."
Shiko rushed over to the electric kettle, which was whistling by this point. He poured some powder into a small bowl and poured water over it, stirring it up with something. I finished my cereal and juice and looked up at the clock. I barely had time to get to work.
"Hey, we can have tea later, I gotta run. Lock up on your way out."
I got up and dropped my cereal bowl into the sink with a clatter. Shiko tried to stop me, but I pushed past and ran down the stairs in the hallway. I rushed out onto the sidewalk and began the relatively short jog to the warehouse. I winced at the sun filtering down past store signs to the street.
The street was packed with the morning rush hour crowd. This being the Little Tokyo district of Grünstadt, I wasn't too surprised at first to see one of those papier-mâché dragons with three or four guys in it moving down the sidewalk across the street. Until I realized that there wasn't any sort of festival today. There was also the fact that there weren't people holding up the prop with sticks.
I blinked and the vision vanished. I paused for a moment and shook it off as a hallucination before turning to continue to the warehouse. I pushed past people who reflexively moved around me in that way that massive crowds occasionally do. In the process I pushed past a red-skinned guy with tusks that dressed kinda like a pimp, a kappa running a juice stand, and a scaly unicorn-looking guy. I think they're called kirin or something, but I didn't get a close look as the inevitable double-take showed them to be normal people again.
As I was trying to figure out when Shiko had a chance to drug me, I became aware of the guy following me. He looked normal, albeit slightly ridiculous. He wore sunglasses and a faux-leather biker jacket with his hand holding something underneath. I wasn't sure he was following me until he distinctly looked away when I spotted him.
"Rookie," I muttered derisively under my breath as I dove into a nearby alley. I ran for the far end of a dumpster halfway down and ducked behind it. I crouched and closed my eyes.
His footsteps crunched on broken glass as he followed me. I assumed he was the one following me down the alley, but I was too afraid to look. He came up to the dumpster, moving with cautious steps. I held my breath and silently prayed that he would mistake me for a bum or something. He paused next to me, and I trembled with the effort of holding my breath.
He moved on and I opened one eye just a bit. He walked out the other end of the alley and I released the breath I was holding.
"What the fuck was that about?" I asked nobody in particular, standing back up and brushing myself off.
I jogged back the way I came and continued on to the distributor. When I reached the door I leaned against the wall next to it while I paused to catch my breath. I hoped desperately for anything resembling normalcy when I went inside.
Past the door, I caught movement out of the corner of my eye; there was a shifting, glowing aura around the shrine in the corner. There was movement in the fox photos next to the shrine. My jaw clenched and I braced myself. I blinked and they kept moving. The fox statues in the pictures were actively watching me and looked very much like real foxes.
"Dammit," I whispered and looked away.
A bunch of the other guys there were staring at me, and the forklift operator from yesterday muttered 'Looks like the twinkie is losing his shit' in Japanese. The others laughed, and I glanced back at the pictures. I could see wind blowing grass and leaves in the background as the foxes shifted in their sitting positions.
Kazuhiro came over. He looked a little blurry and I shook my head to clear my vision.
"Are you alright, Mac?"
"No."
"Well, get it together quickly, Mitami-sama and Mitami-sama want to see you."
"Wait, both of them?"
I rubbed my eyes and didn't wait for a response before heading to the office door. I slipped in and looked up at Yusuke Mitami and his wife Yutsuko. Shiko was there, too, carrying my thermos and Kazuhiro followed me in a few moments later.
"You wanted to see me?"
"Minocci-san, please come into my office, we need to have a talk," Mr. Mitami said, gesturing to a nearby door.
We all went inside and sat down in various chairs. The walls were covered with traditional Japanese artwork as well as photos of the Mitamis in various environments. Now that they were older it wasn't a problem but in their younger days they had a physical resemblance that made it hard to tell which one was which. If I didn't know better, I would assume they were related rather than married.
"What happened this morning?" Yusuke asked.
"Um..." I glanced at Shiko and then continued. "I woke up, got dressed, had breakfast, came to work."
"Shiko was there." That was a statement, not a question. "Were you served tea?"
"I didn't have time; I had to get to work."
"You should have stopped him," Mrs. Mitami said to Shiko with a glare. "You should have made sure he drank the tea."
Things were getting kind of fuzzy and wobbly, so I pretty much dismissed the comment at the time. I rubbed my eyes and hoped everyone else in the room didn't notice something was wrong with me. My skin felt itchy.
"Did you see anything strange this morning?"
"Other than..." I bit my tongue. "No, no. Sorry. I... I'm a bit lightheaded; I think I'm still drunk from last night."
"Did you see anything strange this morning?" he asked again.
"You can tell us whatever happened; we'll believe you," his wife chimed in.
"I saw..." I paused, and took a moment to rub my face, trying to ignore the itching. "There was a dragon, but I figured there was a celebration of some sort. But then... then I saw a kappa and a kirin. Some weird guy was following me, too, but I didn't get a good look at him."
Shiko brought my thermos over and poured me a cup of the tea from earlier. He offered it to me and I just accepted it and set it down. The others were watching me expectantly.
"Am I going crazy, Mitami-sama?" I asked, my voice cracking with a hint of desperation.
"Drink your tea, Makoto," Mr. Mitami said.
"Can't you tell me what's happening to me?" I pleaded -- no, let's face it, I whined.
"Once you've drunk the tea, we won't have to," his wife interjected.
I looked at the cup of lukewarm tea in my hands, only now acknowledging it for the first time. I couldn't stand green tea usually, but I was too afraid to ask for some honey or something to sweeten it. I actually hesitated, waiting to see if someone would just grab me and force me to drink. Rather than let my density screw with my destiny, I sighed and chugged the bitter tea as quickly as I could without choking.
A sharp pain dug through my temples and blurred my vision further. I reached for the side of the desk to steady myself and fell out of my seat. My skin stopped itching, but the sensation had jumped to my throat. I tried to force myself to cough and ended up dry heaving instead. The others were talking to each other but I couldn't make out the words, as focused as I was on struggling with whatever the hell was happening to me.
The carpeted floor of the office was gone, replaced with a tatami mat. I slowly stood up and the walls were no longer drywall but traditional paneled walls. The photographs on the walls had been replaced with woodblock art but the scenes were more or less identical. The existing artwork... was still artwork. That detail slightly worried me more than it comforted me.
I stood up and staggered a few steps, trying to regain my balance. The others kept talking all around me, but I still couldn't make out what they were saying. Then I realized that the Mitamis weren't speaking. Kazuhiro and Shiko were silent as well even though all around me incoherent whispers blended into a noise like a distant ocean. I was sure that it wasn't them because I was blatantly staring at their fox faces and saw that their muzzles weren't moving.
No, really. Fox faces, muzzles, canine features, whiskers, pointed ears; the whole nine yards. Kazuhiro's fur was bright red and two tails stuck out the back of his coveralls. Shiko's was black and gray, like a black and white photo of a regular fox; I couldn't help but admit to myself it was a pretty effect. I hadn't noted yet how many tails Shiko bore; I felt this was a bad time to get caught staring at his ass. The Mitamis still looked normal to me.
I sat back down and closed my eyes, forcing myself to breathe slowly. Somehow I was tripping on green tea. Maybe my guess was right and I was still drunk from the night before. I opened my eyes and while the office was restored to its previous state, my co-workers' vulpine natures remained.
"Okay, now can you tell me...?" I started to ask until I realized I already knew the answer to my question.
The office had an enchantment on it that made it look more traditionally Japanese for the benefit of employees who had the ability and desire to see it that way. There was another magical effect on it that I couldn't place right away, but I was aware of its existence. I was as instinctually aware of all this as I was that two plus two equaled four. There were supernatural creatures in the world that most people wouldn't perceive in their true forms. Shiko and Kazuhiro fell into that category because they were fox spirits in human bodies known as kitsune.
Just like me.
To be continued...
I hope all of your holiday plans work out, everyone. Mahalo.
