Ahem.
So who's made it to the next round of the JET Application Process?
:-D
**
Also, sorry for the delay. You know how sometimes when you're writing its like your dragging it word by word out through your eyes? Yeah, like that.
Time to bring on the Very Special Guest: Man of Twenty Faces! Yayy!!
Chapter 3: Everybody Loves Cheerleaders
Watanuki
It took some of them that way, ghosts, as if their stomachs had been filled with buoyant gas and they couldn't help but float, leaning forward a little and lifting their translucent feet off the ground. This time there were two of them, beautiful older women, each with an arm wrapped around the other's shoulders, shrieking, !!We want it!!
Watanuki blinked. "I'm sorry," he said to the gentleman in the tuxedo sitting next to him at a small foldable table. "I didn't quite catch what you said."
"Mmmbldfrgh," the gentleman replied.
"Oh!" said Watanuki, and removed the gag from the poor man.
"I said, 'Think nothing of it,'" the gentleman said cheerfully. "Might you perhaps remove the blindfold as well?"
Watanuki hesitated. "I'm sorry," he said at last, looking over the baseball stadium which they sat in the middle in, and up into the bleachers filled with weird and wonderful creatures - there was a guy with a hand for a head, trying to applaud, and a very long-necked woman, and a toaster with long, lithe, gym-toned legs, and a flock of floating fish, and of course the lady with the eyes - "but I don't think that would help much."
"As you think best," said the gentleman courteously. He really was being ridiculously nice about all this. His tuxedo had to be a custom-fit, Watanuki thought - nothing else would fit his broad-shouldered form so neatly. Even bound hand and foot, with additional rope wound tightly about his arms, the gentleman sat lithe and straight in his ladder-back chair, as if he were but a heartbeat away from kissing a lady's hand or sweeping his cloak over a puddle for her to walk on. Despite the stress of their situation, Watanuki was rather impressed.
!!We really want it!!
Watanuki set his bony hands flat on the table. "Let me explain, sir."
"Ijyuin," the gentleman said cheerfully. "Ijyuin Akira."
Watanuki thought for a moment - what to tell someone who couldn't see spirits? "Okay. So there are some groups in Tokyo who aren't exactly what you might call citizens-in-the-spotlight, who have an interest behind-the-scenes, as it were, and they are meeting right now to resolve a conflict, sort of... back-stage."
Ijyuin-san stiffened. "Are we on the top of Tokyo Tower?" he said urgently.
Watanuki blinked. "No, we're in a high-school stadium. It's a cooking contest, sir. Apparently last year they did ten-pin bowling."
Ijyuin-san relaxed. "Do go on."
!!But we neeeed it.!!
"So anyway, the three groups in conflict - let'sjustforthesakeofcomfortablenomenclaturecallthem the Fox Group, the Crow Group, and the Tanuki Group - are fielding the best cooks they can find, but they also have the right to name a judge. That's you, me, and a, ahem, kokkuri board, sir." He lifted the sheet of paper marked with hiragana characters beautifully written around the sketch of a shrine-gate and rustled it so that Ijyuin-san could hear.
A small roar from the bleachers and Watanuki looked up to see the competitors coming from the bunkers to the center of the baseball diamond where the judges sat. "Oh now that's just wrong."
At the front was Doumeki, with furry ears on his head and a tail which swished slowly back and forth. Closer observation revealed a wire leading from the tail's tip to a stick waved carefully by little Tamame-chan, the tanuki girl in the frilly pink dress. She waved at Watanuki with her free paw, then hid it in her skirt and looked sheepish.
Watanuki frowned, troubled. He had promised to grant Tamame-chan's wish, because little girls belong to that class of people to which you cannot say no - especially if they have huge, jewel-like eyes - and because she and the Oden Fox's Son had wangled a judge's spot for him, and she was going to help rescue that idiot Doumeki if an appropriate opportunity presented itself, but he still had really no idea what to do. After all, it wasn't everyday you -
!!But we wouldn't ask unless we really positively absolutely needed to have it right this minute!!
Watanuki leaped from his chair and screamed, "No you do not need it and could you please be quiet I am trying to think here!"
"Eh?" said Ijyuin-san.
Watanuki sighed, and asked, sotto voce in Ijyuin-san's ear, "What would you say if I said that there were two transparent ladies pointing and shouting 'We want it'?"
Ijyuin-san looked inexplicably pleased, as if receiving a letter from a ten-year's-lost friend. "I think I might say, 'To what were they pointing?'"
"Oh," said Watanuki, "to the trophy behind us." He turned and squinted through the coloured contact lenses Yuuko had rented him. "It's a... it's a giant wooden statue of a grinning baby, with its feet sticking out so you can tickle them and a topknot on its head."
"Ah," said Ijyuin, "that sounds rather like Billiken, the Eighth God of Good Luck, which disappeared from Luna Park in Osaka City in 1923. Very good."
Watanuki blinked.
"Art history is rather my hobby," said Ijyuin. "Ahaha."
Doumeki
This wasn't exactly how he'd planned to spend his first day back, but the weather was sunny. Doumeki paced stolidly across the grass of the stadium field, his left arm still in a sling, surrounded by tanuki, small and brown and fluffy but vaguely humanoid, adorned with odd bits of apparel. A platoon of little guys in black trench-coats and dark glasses jogged in step a little behind and to his left, their heads bald but for tufts of hair over their forehead. To his right, an antique Oden cart was pushed by an elderly fox in a striped kimono and a scarf, and a similarly dressed small fox trotted beside. He stopped and bowed formally to the pair. They bowed back.
The little rabid tanuki in the scarlet jacket whacked him on the head with the scabbard of his ornamental saber. "Hey! No fraternizing!" He ignored it.
"Don't worry," whispered the little girl wagging his tail behind him. "We have a man in place to provide aid and assistance. Do your best, okay?"
He nodded.
In the stands, a variety of interesting people were cheering them all on. Also, there appeared to be cheerleaders. Three cheerleaders. It was hard to tell through Watanuki's borrowed and blurry glasses, but the tall one with the long swinging braids and the fetishistically short red skirt might be Yuuko, that fox-faced woman. From the silhouette of bountiful hair, the Tanukis' cheerleader might possibly be Kunogi Himawari - wonder how she got here? - and the shy girl who stole his soul that one time blushed and waved cute yellow pompoms for the bald guys in jackets. Huh.
He continued walking to setup at the centre of the stadium, where the pinwheeling limbs and stream of sharp-edged non sequiturs revealed that the 'man in place' could not be other than that moron Watanuki. Doumeki clenched his jaw.
Watanuki
Back at the judge's table, further explanations were incoming. "...I mean," said Watanuki, waving his hands for emphasis, "the Tanuki Generalissimo is cheating. But in such a stupid way. Everybody's going to know. Kidnapping you and my fr-eheh- acquaintance and annoying everybody. It will only bring down more trouble.
"I sympathise with them," he said, more quietly. "The Tanuki Group used to own all this area before the urban development. It was theirs and they lost it. And now they keep fighting over that Billiken statue with all the, the good influence it brings, and losing. I bet they get rained on a lot too," Watanuki added, half-savagely.
"So Tamame-chan says the Generalissimo turned nasty last year, after he lost with an Inside Split. But he really doesn't look haunted or possessed or anything like that, so I don't know how I'm going to grant her wish and 'heal his heart' because I just don't understand why he acts like that."
"Perhaps the Generalissimo is saying, 'I love you so much I would dishonour myself for you,' " said Ijyuin-san equably.
Watanuki's eyes slid sideways and he regarded Ijyuin-san dubiously.
"There are many ways to say 'I love you.' My mothers used to say it by never being able to find random items of household paraphernalia without me. My wife says it by knitting me gloves for when I am out on heis- hobby expeditions, and I say it back by being home at 8 sharp for dinner. My senpais said it by intervening in matters far beyond their scope, once upon a time in 1999..." He laughed softly in the back of his throat. "And sometimes we say it by dressing up as Santa."
"Ah! They're starting," pointed out Watanuki, then put his pointing finger back down.
One of the tengu, the little bald guys in black sunglasses and trenchcoats, stepped to the forefront. He shrugged off his coat and the pinstripe jacket underneath, revealing a snowy white shirt and cheerful yellow suspenders holding up his ample, high-waisted trousers. He rolled the sleeves up around his plump white forearms and brandished his fists in the air. "On behalf of the Tengu Group: black winged, tricksy footed, true hearted, for the Crows of Tokyo City I shall make... Black Fire Mountain Curry."
The crowd in the stand cheered wildly as the Zashiki-warashi jumped in the air waving her pom-poms. The Zashiki-warashi blushed and looked down, her feet in thick-heeled yellow sneakers set so that the toes pointed slightly together. The crowd went Awwwww and all the little tengu hugged each other and sighed.
The Oden Fox bowed to the judges, and then to the crowd. "On behalf of the Foxes of Tokyo City, this insignificant person will attempt his family's traditional cookery." His son clutched his bushy tail and looked down. Awwwwww. Then the Oden Fox clapped a paw over his son's eyes as a chorus of in-drawn breaths marked the start of Yuuko's cheering routine. Watanuki didn't actually have to erase the routine from his memory - he simply bashed his head madly against the table until it was over.
Then Watanuki looked up again, because Himawari-chan was jumping and cheering and waving her cute blue pom-poms. One of them slipped from her hands and flew in a delightful arc over the crowd. Urgh! went someone in the crowd.
The Genralissimo strutted forward, gaudy in his red jacket. "For the Tanuki Gang of Tokyo City," he said, slapping Doumeki on the arm, "This is our man Wa. Wa Tanuki, that's him."
The crowd hushed expectantly, waiting to hear what he would produce.
"... I can make tea."
to be continued
NOTES:
a guy with a hand for his head He's very into zen.
a very long-necked woman She's a rokurokubi.
a toaster with long, lithe, gym-toned legs I'm tolerably certain there were some walking artifacts in the Hyakki Yakou but far, far too lazy to check through my books.
a flock of floating fish The neko-musume swallowed one somewhere in the Spider's Grudge Arc.
and of course the lady with the eyes Don't look at me: I don't know. It's all messed up.
"Are we on the top of Tokyo Tower?" Akira refers, of course, to the climactic events ending X/1999. Actually, with the structure's great potential for drama, any conflict up there would be a bit alarming. Conversely, once you've dealt with a potential apocalypse (Akira doesn't show in the anime but he must have been in Nokoru's train somewhere), anything else is very small potatoes.
kokkuri board Readers may remember the fortune-telling game Angel-san, from early in the series - a sheet of paper with a lot of characters written on it around a 'shrine-gate', used roughly like a ouija board. Yuuko mentions its other names, including Prophecy-san and Kokkuri-san. 'Kokkuri' is written with kanji characters for fox, tanuki, and tengu, though I can't remember which order, and I think the board was originally supposed to be used for talking to those worthy spirits. Apologies if I messed up my folklore here. (I got most of it from Ghost Hunt, and the rest from Shaman King. Ehehe.)
shrine-gate The thing that looks like the grid for noughts and crosses, only the verticle strokes slipped down a bit. Often red. Turns up at shrines and temples a lot.
Tamame-chan Please enjoy my made up name! Kanji = tama (jewel, round object, ball) + me (eye).
Billiken I didn't invent this guy, I got him from the Internet, which is never wrong. Go look him up - so cool.
fox-faced woman == woman with a narrow face and high, narrow eyebrows
Wa Can mean a lot of things, but let's go for 'peace and harmony'. :-)
One more chapter, almost complete. Please don't kill me Stephanie!
:-D
**
Also, sorry for the delay. You know how sometimes when you're writing its like your dragging it word by word out through your eyes? Yeah, like that.
Time to bring on the Very Special Guest: Man of Twenty Faces! Yayy!!
Chapter 3: Everybody Loves Cheerleaders
Watanuki
It took some of them that way, ghosts, as if their stomachs had been filled with buoyant gas and they couldn't help but float, leaning forward a little and lifting their translucent feet off the ground. This time there were two of them, beautiful older women, each with an arm wrapped around the other's shoulders, shrieking, !!We want it!!
Watanuki blinked. "I'm sorry," he said to the gentleman in the tuxedo sitting next to him at a small foldable table. "I didn't quite catch what you said."
"Mmmbldfrgh," the gentleman replied.
"Oh!" said Watanuki, and removed the gag from the poor man.
"I said, 'Think nothing of it,'" the gentleman said cheerfully. "Might you perhaps remove the blindfold as well?"
Watanuki hesitated. "I'm sorry," he said at last, looking over the baseball stadium which they sat in the middle in, and up into the bleachers filled with weird and wonderful creatures - there was a guy with a hand for a head, trying to applaud, and a very long-necked woman, and a toaster with long, lithe, gym-toned legs, and a flock of floating fish, and of course the lady with the eyes - "but I don't think that would help much."
"As you think best," said the gentleman courteously. He really was being ridiculously nice about all this. His tuxedo had to be a custom-fit, Watanuki thought - nothing else would fit his broad-shouldered form so neatly. Even bound hand and foot, with additional rope wound tightly about his arms, the gentleman sat lithe and straight in his ladder-back chair, as if he were but a heartbeat away from kissing a lady's hand or sweeping his cloak over a puddle for her to walk on. Despite the stress of their situation, Watanuki was rather impressed.
!!We really want it!!
Watanuki set his bony hands flat on the table. "Let me explain, sir."
"Ijyuin," the gentleman said cheerfully. "Ijyuin Akira."
Watanuki thought for a moment - what to tell someone who couldn't see spirits? "Okay. So there are some groups in Tokyo who aren't exactly what you might call citizens-in-the-spotlight, who have an interest behind-the-scenes, as it were, and they are meeting right now to resolve a conflict, sort of... back-stage."
Ijyuin-san stiffened. "Are we on the top of Tokyo Tower?" he said urgently.
Watanuki blinked. "No, we're in a high-school stadium. It's a cooking contest, sir. Apparently last year they did ten-pin bowling."
Ijyuin-san relaxed. "Do go on."
!!But we neeeed it.!!
"So anyway, the three groups in conflict - let'sjustforthesakeofcomfortablenomenclaturecallthem the Fox Group, the Crow Group, and the Tanuki Group - are fielding the best cooks they can find, but they also have the right to name a judge. That's you, me, and a, ahem, kokkuri board, sir." He lifted the sheet of paper marked with hiragana characters beautifully written around the sketch of a shrine-gate and rustled it so that Ijyuin-san could hear.
A small roar from the bleachers and Watanuki looked up to see the competitors coming from the bunkers to the center of the baseball diamond where the judges sat. "Oh now that's just wrong."
At the front was Doumeki, with furry ears on his head and a tail which swished slowly back and forth. Closer observation revealed a wire leading from the tail's tip to a stick waved carefully by little Tamame-chan, the tanuki girl in the frilly pink dress. She waved at Watanuki with her free paw, then hid it in her skirt and looked sheepish.
Watanuki frowned, troubled. He had promised to grant Tamame-chan's wish, because little girls belong to that class of people to which you cannot say no - especially if they have huge, jewel-like eyes - and because she and the Oden Fox's Son had wangled a judge's spot for him, and she was going to help rescue that idiot Doumeki if an appropriate opportunity presented itself, but he still had really no idea what to do. After all, it wasn't everyday you -
!!But we wouldn't ask unless we really positively absolutely needed to have it right this minute!!
Watanuki leaped from his chair and screamed, "No you do not need it and could you please be quiet I am trying to think here!"
"Eh?" said Ijyuin-san.
Watanuki sighed, and asked, sotto voce in Ijyuin-san's ear, "What would you say if I said that there were two transparent ladies pointing and shouting 'We want it'?"
Ijyuin-san looked inexplicably pleased, as if receiving a letter from a ten-year's-lost friend. "I think I might say, 'To what were they pointing?'"
"Oh," said Watanuki, "to the trophy behind us." He turned and squinted through the coloured contact lenses Yuuko had rented him. "It's a... it's a giant wooden statue of a grinning baby, with its feet sticking out so you can tickle them and a topknot on its head."
"Ah," said Ijyuin, "that sounds rather like Billiken, the Eighth God of Good Luck, which disappeared from Luna Park in Osaka City in 1923. Very good."
Watanuki blinked.
"Art history is rather my hobby," said Ijyuin. "Ahaha."
Doumeki
This wasn't exactly how he'd planned to spend his first day back, but the weather was sunny. Doumeki paced stolidly across the grass of the stadium field, his left arm still in a sling, surrounded by tanuki, small and brown and fluffy but vaguely humanoid, adorned with odd bits of apparel. A platoon of little guys in black trench-coats and dark glasses jogged in step a little behind and to his left, their heads bald but for tufts of hair over their forehead. To his right, an antique Oden cart was pushed by an elderly fox in a striped kimono and a scarf, and a similarly dressed small fox trotted beside. He stopped and bowed formally to the pair. They bowed back.
The little rabid tanuki in the scarlet jacket whacked him on the head with the scabbard of his ornamental saber. "Hey! No fraternizing!" He ignored it.
"Don't worry," whispered the little girl wagging his tail behind him. "We have a man in place to provide aid and assistance. Do your best, okay?"
He nodded.
In the stands, a variety of interesting people were cheering them all on. Also, there appeared to be cheerleaders. Three cheerleaders. It was hard to tell through Watanuki's borrowed and blurry glasses, but the tall one with the long swinging braids and the fetishistically short red skirt might be Yuuko, that fox-faced woman. From the silhouette of bountiful hair, the Tanukis' cheerleader might possibly be Kunogi Himawari - wonder how she got here? - and the shy girl who stole his soul that one time blushed and waved cute yellow pompoms for the bald guys in jackets. Huh.
He continued walking to setup at the centre of the stadium, where the pinwheeling limbs and stream of sharp-edged non sequiturs revealed that the 'man in place' could not be other than that moron Watanuki. Doumeki clenched his jaw.
Watanuki
Back at the judge's table, further explanations were incoming. "...I mean," said Watanuki, waving his hands for emphasis, "the Tanuki Generalissimo is cheating. But in such a stupid way. Everybody's going to know. Kidnapping you and my fr-eheh- acquaintance and annoying everybody. It will only bring down more trouble.
"I sympathise with them," he said, more quietly. "The Tanuki Group used to own all this area before the urban development. It was theirs and they lost it. And now they keep fighting over that Billiken statue with all the, the good influence it brings, and losing. I bet they get rained on a lot too," Watanuki added, half-savagely.
"So Tamame-chan says the Generalissimo turned nasty last year, after he lost with an Inside Split. But he really doesn't look haunted or possessed or anything like that, so I don't know how I'm going to grant her wish and 'heal his heart' because I just don't understand why he acts like that."
"Perhaps the Generalissimo is saying, 'I love you so much I would dishonour myself for you,' " said Ijyuin-san equably.
Watanuki's eyes slid sideways and he regarded Ijyuin-san dubiously.
"There are many ways to say 'I love you.' My mothers used to say it by never being able to find random items of household paraphernalia without me. My wife says it by knitting me gloves for when I am out on heis- hobby expeditions, and I say it back by being home at 8 sharp for dinner. My senpais said it by intervening in matters far beyond their scope, once upon a time in 1999..." He laughed softly in the back of his throat. "And sometimes we say it by dressing up as Santa."
"Ah! They're starting," pointed out Watanuki, then put his pointing finger back down.
One of the tengu, the little bald guys in black sunglasses and trenchcoats, stepped to the forefront. He shrugged off his coat and the pinstripe jacket underneath, revealing a snowy white shirt and cheerful yellow suspenders holding up his ample, high-waisted trousers. He rolled the sleeves up around his plump white forearms and brandished his fists in the air. "On behalf of the Tengu Group: black winged, tricksy footed, true hearted, for the Crows of Tokyo City I shall make... Black Fire Mountain Curry."
The crowd in the stand cheered wildly as the Zashiki-warashi jumped in the air waving her pom-poms. The Zashiki-warashi blushed and looked down, her feet in thick-heeled yellow sneakers set so that the toes pointed slightly together. The crowd went Awwwww and all the little tengu hugged each other and sighed.
The Oden Fox bowed to the judges, and then to the crowd. "On behalf of the Foxes of Tokyo City, this insignificant person will attempt his family's traditional cookery." His son clutched his bushy tail and looked down. Awwwwww. Then the Oden Fox clapped a paw over his son's eyes as a chorus of in-drawn breaths marked the start of Yuuko's cheering routine. Watanuki didn't actually have to erase the routine from his memory - he simply bashed his head madly against the table until it was over.
Then Watanuki looked up again, because Himawari-chan was jumping and cheering and waving her cute blue pom-poms. One of them slipped from her hands and flew in a delightful arc over the crowd. Urgh! went someone in the crowd.
The Genralissimo strutted forward, gaudy in his red jacket. "For the Tanuki Gang of Tokyo City," he said, slapping Doumeki on the arm, "This is our man Wa. Wa Tanuki, that's him."
The crowd hushed expectantly, waiting to hear what he would produce.
"... I can make tea."
to be continued
NOTES:
a guy with a hand for his head He's very into zen.
a very long-necked woman She's a rokurokubi.
a toaster with long, lithe, gym-toned legs I'm tolerably certain there were some walking artifacts in the Hyakki Yakou but far, far too lazy to check through my books.
a flock of floating fish The neko-musume swallowed one somewhere in the Spider's Grudge Arc.
and of course the lady with the eyes Don't look at me: I don't know. It's all messed up.
"Are we on the top of Tokyo Tower?" Akira refers, of course, to the climactic events ending X/1999. Actually, with the structure's great potential for drama, any conflict up there would be a bit alarming. Conversely, once you've dealt with a potential apocalypse (Akira doesn't show in the anime but he must have been in Nokoru's train somewhere), anything else is very small potatoes.
kokkuri board Readers may remember the fortune-telling game Angel-san, from early in the series - a sheet of paper with a lot of characters written on it around a 'shrine-gate', used roughly like a ouija board. Yuuko mentions its other names, including Prophecy-san and Kokkuri-san. 'Kokkuri' is written with kanji characters for fox, tanuki, and tengu, though I can't remember which order, and I think the board was originally supposed to be used for talking to those worthy spirits. Apologies if I messed up my folklore here. (I got most of it from Ghost Hunt, and the rest from Shaman King. Ehehe.)
shrine-gate The thing that looks like the grid for noughts and crosses, only the verticle strokes slipped down a bit. Often red. Turns up at shrines and temples a lot.
Tamame-chan Please enjoy my made up name! Kanji = tama (jewel, round object, ball) + me (eye).
Billiken I didn't invent this guy, I got him from the Internet, which is never wrong. Go look him up - so cool.
fox-faced woman == woman with a narrow face and high, narrow eyebrows
Wa Can mean a lot of things, but let's go for 'peace and harmony'. :-)
One more chapter, almost complete. Please don't kill me Stephanie!