Fic: Turns To Dust (Kamen Rider 555)
Nov. 1st, 2007 08:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
estiriseThis is my ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
multific Finish-a-thon entry for 2007. I had a tie between two concepts, and I chose this one. It's a Kamen Rider 555 fic, but it was written for someone not familiar with the series, so it should be readable to just about anybody. It also features only a few characters from the series.
Thank you to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-syndicated.gif)
angel_negra for the beta.
Title: Turns To Dust
Author: Estirose
Fandom: Kamen Rider 555 (Faiz/Phi's)
Rating: 8+
Summary: The life of an Orphenoch, from making to dusting.
Disclaimer: With the exception of Susan and a few other characters, the characters don't belong to me, they belong to Toei and TV-Asahi.
Turns to Dust
by Estirose
c 2007
Most people don't jump and live their dreams. I do. Admittedly, this is not what I chose, but I am an adventurer, and I will adventure.
And right now, I want to tell my story.
Why do I feel the need to narrate like this, to nobody in particular? I don't know. Maybe because with all I've seen, telepaths don't seem all that impossible. Or I'm talking to a higher power. Or maybe I'm insane, though I'm pretty sure it's not that. I mean, it's normal to dictate in your head, I learned that in creative writing.
But assuming you don't know me, or I somehow have the urge to write this down, let me tell you about myself. My name's Susan. I'm twenty-two years old, a University graduate, and I jumped at the chance to go to Japan and earn what someone told me was a nice relaxing thirty thousand dollar a year salary. Teaching Japanese middle schoolers how to speak and read English? Piece of cake. And you gotta admit, it looks good on a resume. A job plus international experience. You've got proof that you can adapt.
Actually, I've adapted damn well, if I say so myself.
It started the end of Orientation, where they try to tell you everything that they think you need to know about living in Japan.
This is, of course, after you've arrived in Japan and are jetlagged to hell and back. A lot of people sneak off and go drinking, to celebrate getting to Japan, making it through orientation, and most of all, to distract themselves from the fact that they're going to live in the middle of nowhere for at least a year.
Because, of course, the entirety of Tokyo is used to foreigners (ha!) and so they don't have people from my program here - the program being the Japan Exchange and Teaching program, or programme if you're being fancy about it. No, most people go to little machis, chos, and muras, "machi" and "cho" being towns and "mura" being village. I myself had been assigned out to this little cho in Saga prefecture, called Arita-cho. Well, it's not that small; I guess it has about twelve thousand people and is famous for its pottery. But still.
My drinking partners were pretty much going that way too. Angie was going to Nanmoku in Gunma prefecture, Ashley to Matsushima in Miyagi prefecture, Tina to Agematsu in Nagano prefecture. Only Megan had lucked out, she got some city named Matsuyama in Ehime prefecture.
Well, we were on our way back to the hotel. All of us were smashed, which turned out to be a good thing. For me, anyway. I mean, I don't remember a whole lot. A grey thing with some kind of... whip? I'd learn later what the grey thing was. I'd learn what happened to my drinking pals later too.
Admittedly, I don't remember much about what happened. Some of us laughed, thinking it was a guy in a costume or something. All of us ran. Perfectly natural reaction. But we were smashed, remember? So it caught us one by one. I heard Megan scream first, then Tina, then Ashley, then Angie. I could actually sprint, wobbly though I was, so I got the farthest.
I'm told I died, just like everybody else did that night. But unlike the rest of my drinking buddies, I came back.
But, getting ahead of myself here. So, I woke up on somebody's grass. I guess I thought the whole thing was some drunken remembrance, looked around for my drinking partners. But they were gone, I figured they'd gone back to the hotel. Grumbling, I got back to the hotel before I got into too much trouble and fell into sleep.
Tina, Megan, Ashley, and Angie didn't show up the next day. And I couldn't tell anyone where they were, either, because I assumed I'd passed out on way back, and just missed them. Yeah, it bothered me that they were missing, but I could hardly confess that I'd broken conference rules - even though a lot of people do - to go drinking, so I kept my mouth shut, wondered where they'd went, and prepared to head off to Arita-cho. Maybe I was hoping they'd show up before I left, but I guess that I knew that they weren't.
But I didn't have time to worry about that. I had bags to pack and a hotel room to vacate; after all, it was time to head out to Saga prefecture and Arita-cho, and my understanding was that I was going by bus.
I'd packed, checked out, and was sitting around waiting for the bus to get on the train (and apparently, a couple hours later, another bus or whatever to get into Arita), when I saw him. A guy with a Smart Brain nametag. He was looking around, but headed over my way when he saw me. "Susan Marianne Myers?" he inquired, in that polite way the Japanese seem to have.
"Yes?" I asked. I didn't know how a Japanese guy had gotten my full name. Didn't worry me, though. Might have seen my name somewhere.
"I'm Riku Nakamura," the man said in lightly accented English.
He reached into his pocket and handed me a business card, a meishi as it's called here. The card had the Smart Brain logo and his name, office, title, and telephone number. It seemed strange to me at first that the whole thing was in English, but I guess that he'd just handed me the card English side up.
"I represent the Smart Brain corporation, and I would like to speak with you."
"I'm listening," I said. After all, I really didn't have anything better to do at the moment.
"Perhaps you would like to have lunch?" he asked, flashing a smile at me.
"Um, well, if you hadn't noticed, I'm waiting for my bus," I pointed out. "I have a little town to go to."
"I know," he said, still smiling, as if he wanted to make me feel at home. Which was making me feel creeped out, to tell you the truth.
"We've taken care of that bit of paperwork. Don't worry, if you really want to go to Arita-cho after you hear our presentation, we'll make sure you go there in luxury."
"Why me?" I asked, not sure I wanted to hear the answer.
"Because we'd like to talk to you about a little... incident that happened last night."
I got it then. Now, the reference to not going to Arita-cho was a bit troubling - because, of course it didn't make sense to me at the time that they'd be willing to hire me just to cover something up - but if they wanted to hush something up, hey, I'm willing to hear. If just to find out what had gone on that night.
Of course, they could also have been planning to kill me, but thankfully they didn't. I mean, I'm still here. And it did run through my head that somebody powerful enough to rearrange my bus schedule didn't need to do the niceties.
But still, I excused myself long enough to confirm what he was telling me. And yeah, my bus trip seemed to be on hold for the moment. So, back to the guy in the business suit.
"So," he said, "Would you be willing to meet with us?"
"Sure," I said. Nothing better to do, after all. I'm sure somebody would find some excuse to give to the lovely school authorities for the town. Not that I was opposed to meeting them, they did sound rather nice and the messageboard folk said it was a nice place to work. It was just a nice, small town to work in.
He took me to Smart Brain HQ, I got a visitor's pass, we went up an elevator. Mr. Nakamura was a man of few words, as if he didn't want to reveal anything before his bosses did.
He took me through a door up on the umpteenth floor, and I saw the person whose appearance told me that I was going to have a very interesting time in Japan.
You ever seen Japanese commercials? They can be kind of weird. Well, the TV shows can be even weirder, but they make some strange commercials as well. The Smart Brain ones featured this woman in a blue plasticy dress with the Smart Brain logo, with the announcer intoning (in actually not-bad English) "Be smart. True Life is your start." I was never sure what those commercials were about.
The woman from those commercials leaning against a chair in what was some kind of waiting room. Well, I guess it was maybe some kind of meeting room. I'd heard that in Japan, they're so big on the ingroup/ outgroup thing that even different divisions had meeting rooms so people who weren't in the division wouldn't go into the division's rooms.
But coming back to the woman, she was dressed the same as in those commercials. Exactly the same. I wondered what kind of weirdo dressed in such a silly outfit all the time. She turned to us, smiled, and immediately let out an enthusiastic, genki "Hi!"
And being a very genki (that's kind of enthusiastic/energetic/motivated) greeting, it came out "Hiiiii!!!!!". Yes, with multiple exclamation points. I am so not kidding.
Mr. Nakamura bowed at her and left me with her. So apparently I got entertainment while I was waiting for whoever. I sincerely hoped that she wasn't Smart Brain's president. She seemed way too silly.
"Hi?" I asked. I knew it sounded dumb, but it was the only thing I could think of to say.
"Pleased to meet you! I'm Smart Lady, and I'll be helping you out like a good nee-san."
Nee-san meant older sister, I'd picked that up before I'd landed at Narita. The insane thing was that she'd peppered it in an english sentence, as if she couldn't think of the English word, and yet she seemed fluent in English. "Could you tell me why I'm here, please?" I asked.
"You're here because you've become a very *special* person," Smart Lady said. "You're chosen!"
Now, I was familiar with Buffy The Vampire Slayer and things like that. What I was chosen *for*, I had no clue, though. She was nicer to look at than Anthony Head, though. And less solemn. Someone on a sugar high, really.
"I am?" I asked. Yeah, I was doing a whole lot of asking here, but really. She needed to get on with the answers.
"Last night, you became a very special being, called an Orphenoch," she said, as if speaking to a kid. "Not everybody makes it through the process. So you're special."
"Special?" I asked, trying to encourage her to go on.
"Orphenoch are the next evolution of human beings," she said. "But not everybody can handle the change. Most of them turn to dust in a matter of minutes."
"And I didn't," I said. I can get the obvious. "And my - the others?"
She made a scrunched up, saddened face. "They didn't survive. Nee-san is so sorry!"
Yeah, Angie, Ashley, Tina, and Megan were all dead. I can say that without emotion now because I've had time to get used to it and over it. But then? I staggered like some victorian lady who needed smelling salts.
"So, why did I survive, and they didn't?" I asked, kind of numbly. How they died, why I survived, those were mysteries to me.
"Nee-san doesn't know," Smart Lady told me. "But it's a good thing that you survived, because you can help us out!"
"Help you out?" I asked. Now, I know I was sounding dumb here, but sometimes getting things out of Smart Lady can be a bit tricky, I've learned that from experience. I would really like to know to this day how she's on that perpetual sugar high.
"Some Orphenochs are natural," she said, as if she hadn't heard me. "But there are so few of them! But others can be made."
Yeah, definitely continuing the dumb trend, I echoed, "Made?"
I could have been speaking to the chair she was leaning against for all the dent I made in her little speech. "Orphenochs can change others, like you were changed," she said. "Don't worry, you'll understand. Nee-san will make sure of that."
She bounced up from her lean against the chair. "Let's go! I'm sure you'd like to see your new apartment! It's paid for by the company, you can have it as long as you do your job."
"Okay," I said. "But what job? I'm an English teacher...." Yeah, something coherent in there, for once.
"To make more Orphenochs, of course! Just like you were made an Orphenoch." She paused. "I'm sure I can get someone to teach you."
Of course, at that point, I didn't know what making meant, but then again, I was pretty not with it there. "Can I learn Japanese too?"
"Of course!" she practically squeed. "I'm sure we can find you a tutor. You're good on your feet."
"Um, thanks," I said. That seemed to be the end of the discussion as far as she was concerned, because she practically bounced off towards the door I'd come in. I decided to follow her, mostly to get an idea of what I was dragging myself into.
And yeah, I really hadn't had a chance to turn this thing down, if you hadn't noticed. They hadn't explained things much, either. I was just caught up in the excitement of the moment, and I have yet to regret it.
So, she drove me down to an apartment in a high-rise building. It was a nice building and a fairly nice apartment, really. I was surprised; while it wasn't what I'd call *huge*, it was decent enough. It had a fully-stocked kitchen and a computer.
"This is mine?" I asked. Of course it would be, but yeah, you don't expect to be picked up by a major company the day and given a nice apartment the day you're supposed to start teaching school out in the middle of nowhere.
"Of course!" Smart Lady proclaimed. "We'll let you settle in for a few days while we change your paperwork, and then you can start doing your job!"
"Okay," I said.
Well, it did take a few days to get everything settled. Mostly apparently it was to change my visa status from English teacher to general skilled worker, two entirely different types of visa. They explained it to me at some point, I don't entirely remember, but apparently the suits wanted me to know.
Once all that stuff was done, I got called back again. Of course, by that point I had a Smart Brain card, as an employee. Smart Lady (who seemed to be my supervisor of sorts and the only person I really talked to there, apart from the guys handling my paperwork) had called me to a meeting of some kind.
To my surprise, not only was she there, but so was this guy. He wasn't asian at all, not Japanese by ancestry. More like a big black guy. He seemed like a football player to me. I suppose I got him because he wasn't Japanese.
"Hi, hi! This is Mr. J!" Smart Lady told me. "He's going to help you understand what it's like to be an Orphenoch. He's an elite Orphenoch and he's very good at his job."
At the time, Mr. J kind of intimidated me. I mean, big burly black guy, petite white girl. And he didn't speak much until after we were in his car. (I don't know why I was worried; I had a lot of black guy friends in high school, and a couple of them were big. Admittedly my home town of Tustin's not precisely ghetto; my family was middle class and we were the low end, at least where I lived.)
"So, ah, Mr. J?" I asked once we were on our way to wherever we were going. I'd been distracted by his adorable chihuahua, apparently named Chaco. Apparently Chaco was not pleased to be separated from Mr. J, and it showed. "What do I need to do? Smart Lady was a little light on the details."
He mumbled something under his breath, and then answered, "You'll see."
And I did. He took me to this quiet bar. (Not the one I hear the elites hang out at; I hear that's someplace else) this was some little drinking place where there weren't a whole lot of people besides a bartender and a bunch of drunk salarymen.
Now, there are places that don't like foreigners, I hear. But other than the bartender doing a doubletake, and maybe starting to open his mouth to shoo us out, nobody really reacted. Mr. J's form shimmered; his skin became gray and hardened, he had scales, and so on. His form generally resembled a crocodile, really, and I suppose that's the animal form he took on when he became an Orphenoch.
"Let yourself change," he hissed at me, and I nodded. Somehow, I instinctively knew what to do, my skin becoming grey as well, hard, sprouting irregular ovalish patterns. I wouldn't get a good look at myself for quite some time, but I could see that there was something cowling around my face, a projection like a snake's tongue at the top. But as drunk salarymen were stumbling towards the exit, since Mr. J had gotten the bartender, I moved to stop them. Before I realized it, a spray was coming from a hole just below my neck, spraying the salarymen with brownish-greyish goo.
They collapsed, trying to get the goo off of their faces. But it was a futile effort, and I could see the men start to collapse into dust, the goo fading to become dust as well.
As Smart Lady had said, not everybody survives what I had survived. I have to admit, it was out of a horror film, except there was no blood. I'm not a big fan of slasher movies or gore, so I guess it was better to have them turn into dust.
In some ways, if my fellow drinkers had to die, at least there wasn't blood all over the place. Which is probably why the others remain missing to this day. It seemed so unreal to have people turn into dust, but it was weird enough that I guess my brain could accept that and not run screaming.
Needless to say, nobody survived, and Mr. J (his name is Jonas, I found out later, I guess he doesn't like it too much) says he didn't expect anyone to, but one never knows. Heck, I survived, and so do a lot of petite people. It may have to do with a will to live, or whatever.
After that, we went to lunch. Yes, to lunch. We had pizza. "You know the basics," he said. "The strong'll survive, the weak won't. Either way, the Orphenoch-to-human ratio becomes better. Someday there'll be nothing but Orphenochs."
I nodded, and thought if people had to die, at least there wouldn't be really messy remains. "So, this is what all Orphenochs do? Make more Orphenochs?" Sounded less pleasurable than making babies.
"Yes." Mr. J took a swig of his beer. "'Cept for some renegades, but they won't be around for long. Someone will take them out, 'cause they won't do what they're supposed to."
That was the first I ever got to hear about the renegade Orphenochs. Actually, I haven't heard much about them, and if I've met them, I don't think I'll ever know. It's not like they're a big problem in my own life.
And, too, it was the first indication that my job consisted of wandering around Tokyo and taking out people. Maybe also taking the occasional trip around Japan and taking out people, too. Yeah, I wasn't keen on the whole 'kill people or you die' thing, but Smart Brain had connections. Some people figuratively make a killing; I really made a killing.
Eventually, we parted ways. Mr. J even gave me his cell phone number for when I got a cell phone. Now that one of Smart Lady's - well, Smart Brain's, actually - numerous salarymen had gotten my visa fixed, I was supposed to go down and get my gaijin card - basically, a card to say I'm in Japan legally and not as a tourist. Yeah, it sucks having to carry a card around, but realize most of the time I'd been carrying my passport. Plus, I could get my cellphone after I got my card.
Anyway, I didn't bother Mr. J more than twice, though he got me through a tough spot or two. The third time I called, his phone service was disconnected. Smart Lady, looking uncharacteristically sad, informed me that he'd been destroyed by some humans who had found ways to kill Orphenochs. She also told me not to worry, because I wasn't going up against them.
I wondered who was. They'd gotten Mr. J, and he was an elite Orphenoch. Tough. Someone you didn't want to mess with, but I guess they wanted to take out the strong guys first. Or maybe it was because he was gaijin.
But in the meantime, I got my card, spent my days in Tokyo and other urban parts of Japan, chose my targets carefully. The bar thing, I found, was really kinda hard to do without a second person there. So I targeted people, mostly salarymen, walking alone. A few even survived and became Orphenoch. But they weren't my problem.
Yeah, it sounds so callous to dismiss human deaths as nothing, and I know I sound like some kind of psychopathic killer. But I found, other than terrifying the humans I hunted, it wasn't that bad. There were people I wouldn't target, really. I could never work up to pregnant moms-to-be, or moms and dads with their kids. Or the kids themselves, especially the kids. I don't do kids.
But in every other way, I was pretty normal for an Orphenoch, or so I'm told. Then again, our kind are diverse, just like the humans.
And yes, I know I'm not calling myself human anymore. Because I'm not. It's easier to deal that way. I hear sometimes doctors have to step back and see their long-term patients as case studies rather than people in order to save them; I think that's how I maintain my sanity as well.
Smart Brain continued to pay me well. I even had a Japanese tutor; a rather intense one that Smart Lady found for me.
My Japanese got better. I continued to try to make new Orphenochs. I saw Smart Lady once in a while, and she'd occasionally compliment me on my Japanese, or be enthralled over my statistics, or just give me some totally random information. Like the fact that my form was based on a native California plant called the cobra lily, aka the California pitcher plant, a so-called carnivorous plant native to the other end of the state from Tustin. I guess it doesn't quite spit water, but it uses groundwater to dissolve its prey. Just like I do, without the groundwater. I looked up everything about it once she gave me the name.
I've been here almost a year now, as I speak to you. I continue to please Smart Brain, I enjoy life, and I'm told in another half a year they'll transfer me to New York. Smart Lady says they'll ship anything I want them to ship from my apartment here to the New York one, and they'll try to make it as least as big.
But in the meantime, as usual, I hunt the population of Tokyo. It's like any other day for me. Admittedly, right here, right now isn't the best time; it's vacation, half the world is out with their families, and I don't touch families. Maybe as I go along, I'll find someone alone. Someone that's strong-willed. There are about ten 'duds', as the parlance goes, to every person who survived the process.
I survived. They should too. Most of them I wish did, but they don't.
Oh well. Got a new one. Young guy. Alone. Looks too wimpy to make it, but then, a surprising amount of wimpy people survive when the burly folks don't. I wait until he's away from the crowds, alone, walking through a park.
And I transform. And strike. And... dust. A dud.
It occurs to me that the conversions of humans to Orphenochs will be doing a whole lot for the overpopulation problem. I mean, if one out of eleven survive, that'll bring our population down a few billion.
A sound makes me turn as I watch the wind scatter the dust away.
Another lone human. Male. So much the better. I like hunting males. Not bad looking, either. It's like he stepped off of a television production set. I smile, though he can't see it. He looks scared, was scared, bolts.
Well, nobody ever said I was beautiful in Orphenoch form. I chase after him; he's fumbling with one of those metal briefcases. He dashes out of sight unexpectedly and I try to catch up. I could use a good run.
I catch up to him just as he's slapping a belt around his waist and picking up what seems to be a gun butt, saying "Henshin" (I think that means "change") into it and pushing it into a compartment in the belt. And then light rays form around him, and so does armor. The helmet looks all fierce, two wide red eyes below stylized fins pointing out the top of the mask, some kind of triangle pattern between the fins at the top.
Uh, yeah, I think I'm going to get out of here, pronto. I think this is one of those humans that has been killing hapless Orphenochs like me who are just doing our jobs.
I run. I can hear him chase me. I make a mental note to ask Smart Lady in some training how to fight armed humans with futuristic armor who tend to want to kill us, because my experience has been dealing with Salarymen and Office Ladies. I'm not prepared for this, I am getting out of here.
As I run, I feel pain. He's shooting at me, and it hurts! It really does hurt. But I have to keep moving. I can't fight him hand to hand, I know this.
One blast staggers me, and I knock straight into a sturdy tree of some kind. I'm in pain, really not having a good time, and if I intend to stay alive, I gotta get out of here, but my body's not responding well now that I've been shot so many times.
"KICK," I hear a motorized voice intone, and suddenly there is this cone of energy that plows into me, almost knocking me into the slanted ground. The man in armor is coming towards me, towards the cone, coming through it and slamming into me. I don't know where he is now; my only thought is that my whole body hurts. I collapse to the ground.
I look at my hand, now that I can't do much besides drag it up to my line of sight. It is shedding dust, turning into dust like the duds always do, a red flame flickering down my arm. I guess I'm going to turn into dust now. It's so not fair.
You will remember me, right? Even when I am dust. Even after I fall apart. Promise me, will you?
Please?
-end
multific Finish-a-thon entry for 2007. I had a tie between two concepts, and I chose this one. It's a Kamen Rider 555 fic, but it was written for someone not familiar with the series, so it should be readable to just about anybody. It also features only a few characters from the series.Thank you to
angel_negra for the beta.Title: Turns To Dust
Author: Estirose
Fandom: Kamen Rider 555 (Faiz/Phi's)
Rating: 8+
Summary: The life of an Orphenoch, from making to dusting.
Disclaimer: With the exception of Susan and a few other characters, the characters don't belong to me, they belong to Toei and TV-Asahi.
Turns to Dust
by Estirose
c 2007
Most people don't jump and live their dreams. I do. Admittedly, this is not what I chose, but I am an adventurer, and I will adventure.
And right now, I want to tell my story.
Why do I feel the need to narrate like this, to nobody in particular? I don't know. Maybe because with all I've seen, telepaths don't seem all that impossible. Or I'm talking to a higher power. Or maybe I'm insane, though I'm pretty sure it's not that. I mean, it's normal to dictate in your head, I learned that in creative writing.
But assuming you don't know me, or I somehow have the urge to write this down, let me tell you about myself. My name's Susan. I'm twenty-two years old, a University graduate, and I jumped at the chance to go to Japan and earn what someone told me was a nice relaxing thirty thousand dollar a year salary. Teaching Japanese middle schoolers how to speak and read English? Piece of cake. And you gotta admit, it looks good on a resume. A job plus international experience. You've got proof that you can adapt.
Actually, I've adapted damn well, if I say so myself.
It started the end of Orientation, where they try to tell you everything that they think you need to know about living in Japan.
This is, of course, after you've arrived in Japan and are jetlagged to hell and back. A lot of people sneak off and go drinking, to celebrate getting to Japan, making it through orientation, and most of all, to distract themselves from the fact that they're going to live in the middle of nowhere for at least a year.
Because, of course, the entirety of Tokyo is used to foreigners (ha!) and so they don't have people from my program here - the program being the Japan Exchange and Teaching program, or programme if you're being fancy about it. No, most people go to little machis, chos, and muras, "machi" and "cho" being towns and "mura" being village. I myself had been assigned out to this little cho in Saga prefecture, called Arita-cho. Well, it's not that small; I guess it has about twelve thousand people and is famous for its pottery. But still.
My drinking partners were pretty much going that way too. Angie was going to Nanmoku in Gunma prefecture, Ashley to Matsushima in Miyagi prefecture, Tina to Agematsu in Nagano prefecture. Only Megan had lucked out, she got some city named Matsuyama in Ehime prefecture.
Well, we were on our way back to the hotel. All of us were smashed, which turned out to be a good thing. For me, anyway. I mean, I don't remember a whole lot. A grey thing with some kind of... whip? I'd learn later what the grey thing was. I'd learn what happened to my drinking pals later too.
Admittedly, I don't remember much about what happened. Some of us laughed, thinking it was a guy in a costume or something. All of us ran. Perfectly natural reaction. But we were smashed, remember? So it caught us one by one. I heard Megan scream first, then Tina, then Ashley, then Angie. I could actually sprint, wobbly though I was, so I got the farthest.
I'm told I died, just like everybody else did that night. But unlike the rest of my drinking buddies, I came back.
But, getting ahead of myself here. So, I woke up on somebody's grass. I guess I thought the whole thing was some drunken remembrance, looked around for my drinking partners. But they were gone, I figured they'd gone back to the hotel. Grumbling, I got back to the hotel before I got into too much trouble and fell into sleep.
Tina, Megan, Ashley, and Angie didn't show up the next day. And I couldn't tell anyone where they were, either, because I assumed I'd passed out on way back, and just missed them. Yeah, it bothered me that they were missing, but I could hardly confess that I'd broken conference rules - even though a lot of people do - to go drinking, so I kept my mouth shut, wondered where they'd went, and prepared to head off to Arita-cho. Maybe I was hoping they'd show up before I left, but I guess that I knew that they weren't.
But I didn't have time to worry about that. I had bags to pack and a hotel room to vacate; after all, it was time to head out to Saga prefecture and Arita-cho, and my understanding was that I was going by bus.
I'd packed, checked out, and was sitting around waiting for the bus to get on the train (and apparently, a couple hours later, another bus or whatever to get into Arita), when I saw him. A guy with a Smart Brain nametag. He was looking around, but headed over my way when he saw me. "Susan Marianne Myers?" he inquired, in that polite way the Japanese seem to have.
"Yes?" I asked. I didn't know how a Japanese guy had gotten my full name. Didn't worry me, though. Might have seen my name somewhere.
"I'm Riku Nakamura," the man said in lightly accented English.
He reached into his pocket and handed me a business card, a meishi as it's called here. The card had the Smart Brain logo and his name, office, title, and telephone number. It seemed strange to me at first that the whole thing was in English, but I guess that he'd just handed me the card English side up.
"I represent the Smart Brain corporation, and I would like to speak with you."
"I'm listening," I said. After all, I really didn't have anything better to do at the moment.
"Perhaps you would like to have lunch?" he asked, flashing a smile at me.
"Um, well, if you hadn't noticed, I'm waiting for my bus," I pointed out. "I have a little town to go to."
"I know," he said, still smiling, as if he wanted to make me feel at home. Which was making me feel creeped out, to tell you the truth.
"We've taken care of that bit of paperwork. Don't worry, if you really want to go to Arita-cho after you hear our presentation, we'll make sure you go there in luxury."
"Why me?" I asked, not sure I wanted to hear the answer.
"Because we'd like to talk to you about a little... incident that happened last night."
I got it then. Now, the reference to not going to Arita-cho was a bit troubling - because, of course it didn't make sense to me at the time that they'd be willing to hire me just to cover something up - but if they wanted to hush something up, hey, I'm willing to hear. If just to find out what had gone on that night.
Of course, they could also have been planning to kill me, but thankfully they didn't. I mean, I'm still here. And it did run through my head that somebody powerful enough to rearrange my bus schedule didn't need to do the niceties.
But still, I excused myself long enough to confirm what he was telling me. And yeah, my bus trip seemed to be on hold for the moment. So, back to the guy in the business suit.
"So," he said, "Would you be willing to meet with us?"
"Sure," I said. Nothing better to do, after all. I'm sure somebody would find some excuse to give to the lovely school authorities for the town. Not that I was opposed to meeting them, they did sound rather nice and the messageboard folk said it was a nice place to work. It was just a nice, small town to work in.
He took me to Smart Brain HQ, I got a visitor's pass, we went up an elevator. Mr. Nakamura was a man of few words, as if he didn't want to reveal anything before his bosses did.
He took me through a door up on the umpteenth floor, and I saw the person whose appearance told me that I was going to have a very interesting time in Japan.
You ever seen Japanese commercials? They can be kind of weird. Well, the TV shows can be even weirder, but they make some strange commercials as well. The Smart Brain ones featured this woman in a blue plasticy dress with the Smart Brain logo, with the announcer intoning (in actually not-bad English) "Be smart. True Life is your start." I was never sure what those commercials were about.
The woman from those commercials leaning against a chair in what was some kind of waiting room. Well, I guess it was maybe some kind of meeting room. I'd heard that in Japan, they're so big on the ingroup/ outgroup thing that even different divisions had meeting rooms so people who weren't in the division wouldn't go into the division's rooms.
But coming back to the woman, she was dressed the same as in those commercials. Exactly the same. I wondered what kind of weirdo dressed in such a silly outfit all the time. She turned to us, smiled, and immediately let out an enthusiastic, genki "Hi!"
And being a very genki (that's kind of enthusiastic/energetic/motivated) greeting, it came out "Hiiiii!!!!!". Yes, with multiple exclamation points. I am so not kidding.
Mr. Nakamura bowed at her and left me with her. So apparently I got entertainment while I was waiting for whoever. I sincerely hoped that she wasn't Smart Brain's president. She seemed way too silly.
"Hi?" I asked. I knew it sounded dumb, but it was the only thing I could think of to say.
"Pleased to meet you! I'm Smart Lady, and I'll be helping you out like a good nee-san."
Nee-san meant older sister, I'd picked that up before I'd landed at Narita. The insane thing was that she'd peppered it in an english sentence, as if she couldn't think of the English word, and yet she seemed fluent in English. "Could you tell me why I'm here, please?" I asked.
"You're here because you've become a very *special* person," Smart Lady said. "You're chosen!"
Now, I was familiar with Buffy The Vampire Slayer and things like that. What I was chosen *for*, I had no clue, though. She was nicer to look at than Anthony Head, though. And less solemn. Someone on a sugar high, really.
"I am?" I asked. Yeah, I was doing a whole lot of asking here, but really. She needed to get on with the answers.
"Last night, you became a very special being, called an Orphenoch," she said, as if speaking to a kid. "Not everybody makes it through the process. So you're special."
"Special?" I asked, trying to encourage her to go on.
"Orphenoch are the next evolution of human beings," she said. "But not everybody can handle the change. Most of them turn to dust in a matter of minutes."
"And I didn't," I said. I can get the obvious. "And my - the others?"
She made a scrunched up, saddened face. "They didn't survive. Nee-san is so sorry!"
Yeah, Angie, Ashley, Tina, and Megan were all dead. I can say that without emotion now because I've had time to get used to it and over it. But then? I staggered like some victorian lady who needed smelling salts.
"So, why did I survive, and they didn't?" I asked, kind of numbly. How they died, why I survived, those were mysteries to me.
"Nee-san doesn't know," Smart Lady told me. "But it's a good thing that you survived, because you can help us out!"
"Help you out?" I asked. Now, I know I was sounding dumb here, but sometimes getting things out of Smart Lady can be a bit tricky, I've learned that from experience. I would really like to know to this day how she's on that perpetual sugar high.
"Some Orphenochs are natural," she said, as if she hadn't heard me. "But there are so few of them! But others can be made."
Yeah, definitely continuing the dumb trend, I echoed, "Made?"
I could have been speaking to the chair she was leaning against for all the dent I made in her little speech. "Orphenochs can change others, like you were changed," she said. "Don't worry, you'll understand. Nee-san will make sure of that."
She bounced up from her lean against the chair. "Let's go! I'm sure you'd like to see your new apartment! It's paid for by the company, you can have it as long as you do your job."
"Okay," I said. "But what job? I'm an English teacher...." Yeah, something coherent in there, for once.
"To make more Orphenochs, of course! Just like you were made an Orphenoch." She paused. "I'm sure I can get someone to teach you."
Of course, at that point, I didn't know what making meant, but then again, I was pretty not with it there. "Can I learn Japanese too?"
"Of course!" she practically squeed. "I'm sure we can find you a tutor. You're good on your feet."
"Um, thanks," I said. That seemed to be the end of the discussion as far as she was concerned, because she practically bounced off towards the door I'd come in. I decided to follow her, mostly to get an idea of what I was dragging myself into.
And yeah, I really hadn't had a chance to turn this thing down, if you hadn't noticed. They hadn't explained things much, either. I was just caught up in the excitement of the moment, and I have yet to regret it.
So, she drove me down to an apartment in a high-rise building. It was a nice building and a fairly nice apartment, really. I was surprised; while it wasn't what I'd call *huge*, it was decent enough. It had a fully-stocked kitchen and a computer.
"This is mine?" I asked. Of course it would be, but yeah, you don't expect to be picked up by a major company the day and given a nice apartment the day you're supposed to start teaching school out in the middle of nowhere.
"Of course!" Smart Lady proclaimed. "We'll let you settle in for a few days while we change your paperwork, and then you can start doing your job!"
"Okay," I said.
Well, it did take a few days to get everything settled. Mostly apparently it was to change my visa status from English teacher to general skilled worker, two entirely different types of visa. They explained it to me at some point, I don't entirely remember, but apparently the suits wanted me to know.
Once all that stuff was done, I got called back again. Of course, by that point I had a Smart Brain card, as an employee. Smart Lady (who seemed to be my supervisor of sorts and the only person I really talked to there, apart from the guys handling my paperwork) had called me to a meeting of some kind.
To my surprise, not only was she there, but so was this guy. He wasn't asian at all, not Japanese by ancestry. More like a big black guy. He seemed like a football player to me. I suppose I got him because he wasn't Japanese.
"Hi, hi! This is Mr. J!" Smart Lady told me. "He's going to help you understand what it's like to be an Orphenoch. He's an elite Orphenoch and he's very good at his job."
At the time, Mr. J kind of intimidated me. I mean, big burly black guy, petite white girl. And he didn't speak much until after we were in his car. (I don't know why I was worried; I had a lot of black guy friends in high school, and a couple of them were big. Admittedly my home town of Tustin's not precisely ghetto; my family was middle class and we were the low end, at least where I lived.)
"So, ah, Mr. J?" I asked once we were on our way to wherever we were going. I'd been distracted by his adorable chihuahua, apparently named Chaco. Apparently Chaco was not pleased to be separated from Mr. J, and it showed. "What do I need to do? Smart Lady was a little light on the details."
He mumbled something under his breath, and then answered, "You'll see."
And I did. He took me to this quiet bar. (Not the one I hear the elites hang out at; I hear that's someplace else) this was some little drinking place where there weren't a whole lot of people besides a bartender and a bunch of drunk salarymen.
Now, there are places that don't like foreigners, I hear. But other than the bartender doing a doubletake, and maybe starting to open his mouth to shoo us out, nobody really reacted. Mr. J's form shimmered; his skin became gray and hardened, he had scales, and so on. His form generally resembled a crocodile, really, and I suppose that's the animal form he took on when he became an Orphenoch.
"Let yourself change," he hissed at me, and I nodded. Somehow, I instinctively knew what to do, my skin becoming grey as well, hard, sprouting irregular ovalish patterns. I wouldn't get a good look at myself for quite some time, but I could see that there was something cowling around my face, a projection like a snake's tongue at the top. But as drunk salarymen were stumbling towards the exit, since Mr. J had gotten the bartender, I moved to stop them. Before I realized it, a spray was coming from a hole just below my neck, spraying the salarymen with brownish-greyish goo.
They collapsed, trying to get the goo off of their faces. But it was a futile effort, and I could see the men start to collapse into dust, the goo fading to become dust as well.
As Smart Lady had said, not everybody survives what I had survived. I have to admit, it was out of a horror film, except there was no blood. I'm not a big fan of slasher movies or gore, so I guess it was better to have them turn into dust.
In some ways, if my fellow drinkers had to die, at least there wasn't blood all over the place. Which is probably why the others remain missing to this day. It seemed so unreal to have people turn into dust, but it was weird enough that I guess my brain could accept that and not run screaming.
Needless to say, nobody survived, and Mr. J (his name is Jonas, I found out later, I guess he doesn't like it too much) says he didn't expect anyone to, but one never knows. Heck, I survived, and so do a lot of petite people. It may have to do with a will to live, or whatever.
After that, we went to lunch. Yes, to lunch. We had pizza. "You know the basics," he said. "The strong'll survive, the weak won't. Either way, the Orphenoch-to-human ratio becomes better. Someday there'll be nothing but Orphenochs."
I nodded, and thought if people had to die, at least there wouldn't be really messy remains. "So, this is what all Orphenochs do? Make more Orphenochs?" Sounded less pleasurable than making babies.
"Yes." Mr. J took a swig of his beer. "'Cept for some renegades, but they won't be around for long. Someone will take them out, 'cause they won't do what they're supposed to."
That was the first I ever got to hear about the renegade Orphenochs. Actually, I haven't heard much about them, and if I've met them, I don't think I'll ever know. It's not like they're a big problem in my own life.
And, too, it was the first indication that my job consisted of wandering around Tokyo and taking out people. Maybe also taking the occasional trip around Japan and taking out people, too. Yeah, I wasn't keen on the whole 'kill people or you die' thing, but Smart Brain had connections. Some people figuratively make a killing; I really made a killing.
Eventually, we parted ways. Mr. J even gave me his cell phone number for when I got a cell phone. Now that one of Smart Lady's - well, Smart Brain's, actually - numerous salarymen had gotten my visa fixed, I was supposed to go down and get my gaijin card - basically, a card to say I'm in Japan legally and not as a tourist. Yeah, it sucks having to carry a card around, but realize most of the time I'd been carrying my passport. Plus, I could get my cellphone after I got my card.
Anyway, I didn't bother Mr. J more than twice, though he got me through a tough spot or two. The third time I called, his phone service was disconnected. Smart Lady, looking uncharacteristically sad, informed me that he'd been destroyed by some humans who had found ways to kill Orphenochs. She also told me not to worry, because I wasn't going up against them.
I wondered who was. They'd gotten Mr. J, and he was an elite Orphenoch. Tough. Someone you didn't want to mess with, but I guess they wanted to take out the strong guys first. Or maybe it was because he was gaijin.
But in the meantime, I got my card, spent my days in Tokyo and other urban parts of Japan, chose my targets carefully. The bar thing, I found, was really kinda hard to do without a second person there. So I targeted people, mostly salarymen, walking alone. A few even survived and became Orphenoch. But they weren't my problem.
Yeah, it sounds so callous to dismiss human deaths as nothing, and I know I sound like some kind of psychopathic killer. But I found, other than terrifying the humans I hunted, it wasn't that bad. There were people I wouldn't target, really. I could never work up to pregnant moms-to-be, or moms and dads with their kids. Or the kids themselves, especially the kids. I don't do kids.
But in every other way, I was pretty normal for an Orphenoch, or so I'm told. Then again, our kind are diverse, just like the humans.
And yes, I know I'm not calling myself human anymore. Because I'm not. It's easier to deal that way. I hear sometimes doctors have to step back and see their long-term patients as case studies rather than people in order to save them; I think that's how I maintain my sanity as well.
Smart Brain continued to pay me well. I even had a Japanese tutor; a rather intense one that Smart Lady found for me.
My Japanese got better. I continued to try to make new Orphenochs. I saw Smart Lady once in a while, and she'd occasionally compliment me on my Japanese, or be enthralled over my statistics, or just give me some totally random information. Like the fact that my form was based on a native California plant called the cobra lily, aka the California pitcher plant, a so-called carnivorous plant native to the other end of the state from Tustin. I guess it doesn't quite spit water, but it uses groundwater to dissolve its prey. Just like I do, without the groundwater. I looked up everything about it once she gave me the name.
I've been here almost a year now, as I speak to you. I continue to please Smart Brain, I enjoy life, and I'm told in another half a year they'll transfer me to New York. Smart Lady says they'll ship anything I want them to ship from my apartment here to the New York one, and they'll try to make it as least as big.
But in the meantime, as usual, I hunt the population of Tokyo. It's like any other day for me. Admittedly, right here, right now isn't the best time; it's vacation, half the world is out with their families, and I don't touch families. Maybe as I go along, I'll find someone alone. Someone that's strong-willed. There are about ten 'duds', as the parlance goes, to every person who survived the process.
I survived. They should too. Most of them I wish did, but they don't.
Oh well. Got a new one. Young guy. Alone. Looks too wimpy to make it, but then, a surprising amount of wimpy people survive when the burly folks don't. I wait until he's away from the crowds, alone, walking through a park.
And I transform. And strike. And... dust. A dud.
It occurs to me that the conversions of humans to Orphenochs will be doing a whole lot for the overpopulation problem. I mean, if one out of eleven survive, that'll bring our population down a few billion.
A sound makes me turn as I watch the wind scatter the dust away.
Another lone human. Male. So much the better. I like hunting males. Not bad looking, either. It's like he stepped off of a television production set. I smile, though he can't see it. He looks scared, was scared, bolts.
Well, nobody ever said I was beautiful in Orphenoch form. I chase after him; he's fumbling with one of those metal briefcases. He dashes out of sight unexpectedly and I try to catch up. I could use a good run.
I catch up to him just as he's slapping a belt around his waist and picking up what seems to be a gun butt, saying "Henshin" (I think that means "change") into it and pushing it into a compartment in the belt. And then light rays form around him, and so does armor. The helmet looks all fierce, two wide red eyes below stylized fins pointing out the top of the mask, some kind of triangle pattern between the fins at the top.
Uh, yeah, I think I'm going to get out of here, pronto. I think this is one of those humans that has been killing hapless Orphenochs like me who are just doing our jobs.
I run. I can hear him chase me. I make a mental note to ask Smart Lady in some training how to fight armed humans with futuristic armor who tend to want to kill us, because my experience has been dealing with Salarymen and Office Ladies. I'm not prepared for this, I am getting out of here.
As I run, I feel pain. He's shooting at me, and it hurts! It really does hurt. But I have to keep moving. I can't fight him hand to hand, I know this.
One blast staggers me, and I knock straight into a sturdy tree of some kind. I'm in pain, really not having a good time, and if I intend to stay alive, I gotta get out of here, but my body's not responding well now that I've been shot so many times.
"KICK," I hear a motorized voice intone, and suddenly there is this cone of energy that plows into me, almost knocking me into the slanted ground. The man in armor is coming towards me, towards the cone, coming through it and slamming into me. I don't know where he is now; my only thought is that my whole body hurts. I collapse to the ground.
I look at my hand, now that I can't do much besides drag it up to my line of sight. It is shedding dust, turning into dust like the duds always do, a red flame flickering down my arm. I guess I'm going to turn into dust now. It's so not fair.
You will remember me, right? Even when I am dust. Even after I fall apart. Promise me, will you?
Please?
-end
