~*~* Chronicles Of The Rift II *~*~ Starts [Mature] FINISHED!

[Roy Karrde]

I do not nag! I Suggest!

[classy_cat18]

I do not nag! I Suggest!

You do too nag. Don't deny it.

Shonta/Kite
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

"It's a mad, mad, mad, mad world," I muttered as hobbled up to my room. My barriers had managed to grow in strength but Kite reminded me when the fight was over that I needed to learn new barrier skills.

We shall start at daybreak.

'Yeesh, give a guy a day to recover, why don't ya?' My drooped ears perked up as I saw one of the new additions lean against the wall. Stella, I think. She seemed to be in deep thought so she didn't notice me until I stopped in front of her.

"Uh, hi," she said softly. "You're...Kite, right?"

"That'd be me. I'm surprised you haven't gone to bed already. Haunting thoughts keeping you up?" I managed a small smirk but it didn't seem to help as the girl (who was actually older than me) started to quiver. One of my ears drooped when she gave out a small whimper. "Something wrong?"

"My earrings..." she whispered.

"Oh," was all I said. It wasn't that I didn't sympathize; I had a few precious pieces of jewelry disappear or fall apart during my life. It was more confusion than apathy. She sounded like the earrings were more important than I thought.

I scratched my head as she fidgeted nervously. Not knowing a better way to show my concern, I took her hand. "Worrying about them now won't help. Try to get some sleep," I told her.

She grasped my hand and led me to one of the rooms. "My earrings are...were very important. I wasn't able to use a lot of my mana at once without feeling pain but they stopped it from overtaking my being. Without my earrings...I might become something else."

My hand squeezed hers without my noticing. "Has it happened before?"

"No, but I've never used my powers without the earrings before."

"Then how do you know it will happen?" I asked her a little harshly. "You have to learn to beat the odds. I'm sorry if I sound cruel but I believe in a world like this, anything is possible." I let go of her hand and put a finger on her nose. "You'll get through this okay."

I started what I thought was a stylish exit but that was ruined by the sudden appearance of another new addition. "WHEEEE!" she squealed in my face.

I made a sound that sounded like a mix between a cat whose tail got stepped on and a man that just got scared by Freddy Krueger. "DON'T DO THAT!" I yelled at her.

"Someone told me that kitty boy is Classy Cat!" she said in glee. But she didn't wait for a response as she took off down the hall like a schoolgirl at the start of summer vacation.

I was left in shock. "It truly is a mad world."

[Emotional Faun Chiko-sai]

Excuses for the brevity and plot-advancing-lessness of this post: Character exposition, attempt to provide proof that Zombie-chan is not actually completely insane, drabble nodes overreacting. Incidentally Saifa and Okiku aren't doing their whole plate-smashing-haunting routine in the hotel/inn/wherever we are; also, the zombie won't scare people from now on - it's content with mere snarking interspersed with occasional uncontrollable laughter.

Saifa, Okiku, the body/F, F, F
111:
"Trust me, this will take time but there is order here, very faint, very human."

At midnight, in a kitchen not so far away, Okiku takes nine plates from the dresser, and floats to the courtyard. It is a large courtyard, for it is a large mansion.

There is a well in the corner. It is deep. Okiku has been in there, and she knows.

She paces herself out so that it will only take her nine steps to reach the well - nine steps for nine plates. The shattering wakes everyone up, grates on everyone's nerves.

At the tenth step, or where the tenth step is supposed to be, Okiku turns, looks at the master of the mansion rushed out in his nightgown. Then she disappears where she stands over the yawning chasm of the well.

The man provides the ghostly wailing in her stead.

Saifa watches, hidden in the shadows of the eaves of the mansion, and she thinks that in a way this is retribution, and so she ignores the man who is now shrieking, his mouth wide open in a dreadly redly O, his mind shriveling up at the edges into something entirely other.

*

What goes on in the mind of a zombie?

Idle speculations about the weather - if it rains there will be trouble, it will be all muddy and yuk and the body will not be riding, because zombies do not ride. Bits and pieces of not-meaning-to-scare-so-many-people-I-won't-do-it-again, and in any case it wouldn't work the next time since they all know what it - what she - is. It must remember to refer to itself in its mind as she now, because the body has a gender.

She never wants her laughing fits to be quite so long and spectacular but they inevitably turn out that way, and she always has a reason for laughing. She thinks they are very good reasons.

Sitting on the roof of the inn she swings her legs and watches the sky. She sees it change colour from pitch to dark blue and then with yellow streaks to rosy pink-and-orange, and feels the jolt when Saifa returns, when Okiku circles slowly about her and stops, hovering above her right shoulder.

Taking in the dawn through Saifa's eyes, she wonders if she should be present for breakfast.