[fic] Balloons 5
Oct. 13th, 2010 10:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
keire_keTitle: Balloons
Rating: none
Pairings: 39, past Sanzo/Koumyou
Genre: AU WAFF
Wordcount: 50k, total.
Warnings: Koumyou is dead. Also, before the pairings squick you out, for the purposes of this fic Koumyou was never Sanzo's father figure. Might contain wacky adventures.
Summary: Sanzo hates the park, Hakkai, Gojyo, people and the world. He likes his OCD and his job as a professional Internet troll. He likes his unapologetic, rampant atheism. The universe sets out to prove him wrong.
Author's Note: Very loosely based on the (awesome and amazing) movie Up! This is actually a “light” version of the bunny – the original explored the pitfalls of reincarnation and crushed your soul.
The story is finished and will be posted whole over the next three weeks, maybe a little more (there is sixteen chapters, total). Doing it like this, because a/ I need a pick-me-up right now, and b/ have internet issues, posting the whole thing in one go would be a pain, c/ I figure this will make reading easier for you. So, enjoy!
Betaed by kispexi2, who graciously stepped in to help. <3 Thank you, hun!
Even with the recklessness of Hakkai’s driving, the journey could only last so long; at least that’s what Sanzo told himself in an effort not to jump out and be done with it. Whoever had thought Hakkai should be allowed to share the road with other people was clearly a few marbles short.
Fortunately, it wasn’t long before the cliff ended and the Jeep was hidden among the trees again, periodically emerging into clearings, to soak up the sun. If Sanzo didn’t know any better, he would have sworn the damn thing was solar-powered. Then something else occurred to him, something much more worrying.
“Do we even know where are we going?” he asked Hakkai.
“In a manner of speaking,” Hakkai yelled back.
“The fuck?”
“There weren’t any signs, exactly, and I didn’t want to ask specific questions in case we were followed.”
“Great.” So now they were going to get lost in the jungle in an effort to evade their captors, who so far hadn’t shot them, hadn’t tried to poison them, and in fact – barring the obvious non-consent issue – had been rather careful with their well-being. Sanzo was beginning to think he was betting on the wrong horse here.
He stayed silent, pondering the odds of them emerging out of this disaster alive, when Hakkai slammed the brakes and the Jeep skidded to a stop with a dramatic half-turn.
“What,” Sanzo asked, spitting each syllable with care, “the fuck?”
“It is a little embarrassing,” Hakkai said with an embarrassed laugh, “but I honestly don’t know where I’m supposed to go now.”
“Wow,” Gojyo said from the backseat, and Sanzo turned to inquire just what was it that had him so awed, because the expected irony seemed to be missing from his voice.
He followed Gojyo’s gaze and discovered, to his immense surprise, a shadow among the trees; a grey, straight-edged shaped that looked anything but natural.
“Now that’s just great, if we wanted a human sacrifice,” Sanzo muttered, but clearly his voice of reason counted for naught in this company, because Gojyo was already jerking Goku by the arm and out of the car, with the dog following. And Hakkai was rummaging in the trunk for provisions.
“Relax, Sanzo,” Gojyo called. “Live a little!”
“Am trying to and you are not making it easy.”
“Come, on we’re not that bad!”
“On a scale of one to ten, you are a twenty.”
“I love the guy,” Gojyo told Goku. “With friends like him I never have to worry about having enemies.”
“Why, does he scare them off?”
“No, but he is a crash-course in managing adversity,” Gojyo said in his best Hakkai-voice.
“Hilarious. Can someone please explain why are we sightseeing instead of getting somewhere civilised?”
“Part of the reason might be that we seem to have lost the road,” Hakkai said. “Another is that we are in Venezuela, it would be a crime to let this opportunity go to waste.”
“If I get shot, I will sue you.”
“Duly noted.” Hakkai made a beeline for the ruins, pausing now and then to admire a scrap of rock that to Sanzo looked like a moss farm.
The shape peaking through the foliage turned out to be merely the front wall to a grander complex, the top to a pyramid, one with aqueducts and stairs and a plaza at its base. The jungle had long since made it its own, so now the surface of every grey rock was green, or, in few select cases, shimmering with every colour of the rainbow.
“It does look bewitching, you have to admit,” Hakkai said.
Sanzo was reluctant to agree, though it was a losing battle. “It’d have been better with a payphone.”
“It’s not like we have any local change.”
Their conversation was cut short with a growl, one that made them both jump. They turned as one, expecting to see a charging rhinoceros – though why Sanzo’s brain made that connection, he wasn’t sure – and finding nothing but a blind monkey with a dog.
“Sorry,” Goku said, colouring. “I’m hungry.”
“We seem to be out of kebabs,” Sanzo said.
“Where are we, anyway?”
“We’ve narrowed it down to Venezuela.”
“I knew that. Didn’t Hakkai say we have GPS?”
“Yes, he did, and I’m sure he can quote the coordinates, so when the rescue finally comes they will have no trouble locating our putrefied corpses.”
“Oh.” Goku considered, coughed in embarrassment when his stomach growled again, and then asked, “Does putrefied mean what I think it means?”
“Probably. Are we going down?” Gojyo asked.
“No,” Sanzo said at the same moment Hakkai said “yes.”
“Do we have time for this?”
“Don’t we have time for this?”
“How is it that you are treating this as a recreational trip? Did kidnapping become a hip way of travelling when I wasn’t looking?”
“No, but it does seem to me that there is no point in cultivating fear. Best we can do is enjoy ourselves and hope not to get shot.”
“Because that’s going to work so well, when they catch up and see we’ve escaped to go for a walk.”
“Certainly better than if they catch up with us and decide to stop us from going for a walk ever again.”
“Oh, I see. Did you share their ‘how to be an evil overlord seminar’?”
“Hakkai is right, I think.”
“The hell you would know anything, monkey?”
“’s kinda sensible, that’s all.”
“On which planet?” Sanzo asked, because Stockholm syndrome was not happening to him, ever, not as long as his skull was still intact and free of bullet holes.
“Dunno, Vulcan?” Goku grinned broadly and raised his hand for Gojyo to high-five.
“I’m surrounded by morons,” Sanzo muttered, massaging his temples as though that would alleviate the pain of existence.
“Cheer up, Grumpy,” Gojyo said.
They ended up going down the temple steps. Sanzo lost the vote three to one, four, if one counted the excited bark Dug let out when Hakkai turned the question on him. Sanzo preferred to think Dug had woofed in his favour, even if that did make him feel ambivalent about his sanity.
“You gonna get down okay?” Gojyo tossed in Goku direction, completely ruining the effect by adding “Or do I got to carry you?”
Goku responded with a one-fingered salute and, Dug’s leash firmly in hand, took several cautious steps to the edge of the top platform. “How high are the steps?”
Hakkai took an estimating look at the regular build of the pyramid, hopped down a step, did a more accurate measurement, and turned to appraise Goku. “I’d say midway between the knee and thigh, adjusting for your height, and about two feet wide. They seem even from here.”
“I should be okay then.” Goku thrust the leash in Sanzo direction and inched closer to the edge. Sanzo almost envied the apparent ease with which he crouched and hopped to the lower level, and lower still.
“The hell does he need you for?” Sanzo asked Dug, getting a puzzled stare and then a bark in response. Goku was ten steps down when Sanzo finally moved and followed, trying not to strangle the dog as he went. Walking with a leashed living creature was a very peculiar experience, he found. Said creature had a brain on its own, and when Goku -- inevitably -- slipped on a loose rock and landed on his arse a step lower, Dug did his best to hang himself on his collar in an effort to get to his master. Thankfully he was wearing his harness, and experience had apparently shown that asphyxiation by that thing was out of question.
“Goku! Are you okay?” Hakkai called.
“Yeah, my butt hurts, but I’m fine. ” He proved the point by getting to his knees and stretching, then continuing on his way down with as much care, which was to say none. Sanzo stared after him, then tried closing his eyes and descending a step. It wasn’t pretty, but thankfully Dug caught on to his ruse and didn’t let him fall.
How the fuck could anyone live like this?
******
The bottom of the pyramid offered a view in many ways more spectacular than the top. They were standing in a bowl that had been possibly formed by nature to begin with and then incorporated into the designs of the culture that had erected the structure .
“So… anyone versed in local history to act as a guide?” Gojyo asked, folding his arms across his chest.
“Don’t look at me. It’s Disneyland for all I know. Kinda slimy Disneyland, but I guess with ducks and mice and dogs you get that way.” Goku poked at the rocks. His fingers dub into the moss all the way to the first knuckle.
“It’s not Disneyland.”
“Yeah, thank you.” Goku wasn’t, and likely never would be, a master of sarcasm. Not exactly a shock to Sanzo, but a mild surprise all the same. He must have been the first of Sanzo’s acquaintances not to be intimately involved in the worship at the irony tree.
“Are we done sight-seeing yet?” he asked, because this was getting out of hand.
The only response he got was the sound of a dozen guns being cocked.
“I told you so,” Sanzo said, even as he raised his arms. Slowly, from the edges of the bowl the men descended, brandishing threatening guns.
“Oh dear.”
“Um. I hear people?” Goku ventured, taking a step back and bumping into Sanzo. His warm hand touched Sanzo’s shoulder and then travelled down to take possession of the leash.
“Can you also hear guns?”
“Not right now I can’t.”
“Silence!” barked the man at the forefront of the group.
“I told you so,” Sanzo hissed directly into Hakkai’s ear.
“I heard you the first time, thank you.”
“What do you plan to do about it?”
“Here’s a thought: let’s go with these nice men to wherever they plan on taking us, and wait for the demands to be issued.”
“Because escape is so last season.”
“We were carted off to Venezuela. How easy do you think it would be to escape an organisation which can do that?”
“I was hoping very. So were you, I recall.”
“My opinion has since been revised.”
“Great. Just fucking great.”
“You said it, pal,” Gojyo said. “Hey, you guys mind if I smoke?” he asked when the soldiers started herding them back up.
“Yeah, I mind,” one of the soldiers said.
Gojyo rolled his eyes but shoved the packet back into his pocket. “Whatever, don’t get your knickers in a twist.”
The man growled and shoved Gojyo forward, up to the edge of the green bowl. A barely visible humvee was waiting there, with more soldiers perched on its sides.
“Somehow, this is all your fault, Hakkai,” Sanzo said when they were ushered inside.
“How do you figure?”
“Out of the four of us you’re the one most likely to be running a secret human trafficking operation out of your basement.” Sanzo finished the sentence, bit his tongue and felt a wave of shame and dread sweep through him, and that was before he looked at Hakkai’s face. “I’m sorry,” he told his clenched fists, low enough that no one save for the words’ intended target could hear.
“I wish you’d remember that, for the future,” Hakkai said icily.
Goku turned his face to Sanzo, looking puzzled. He said nothing, but Sanzo was struck again by how intense his gaze was, how it contained all the power of insatiable curiosity, which comes with gentle affection, without recognition or focus. Sanzo looked away, all but blinded himself by the vision of a world bathed in darkness, whose designs and colours had to be wrought with words and touch rather than be freely available. The vision gave him a surprising amount of pain.
******
It was difficult to hold a conversation with a dozen armed men and, what do you know, at least three women, pointing guns in your general direction. Sanzo was surprisingly unbothered about the guns -- shooting them was going to win the kidnappers no points -- but it did put a damper on the conversation, as though the muzzles doubled as miniature black holes that sucked in all the sound.
Fortunately, the drive wasn’t long. Before Sanzo could even work up a good string of insults, they were stopping by a dilapidated shack in the middle of nowhere, one that seemed like an open invitation to insects of all shapes and sizes. They were politely shoved inside and locked in a room that, by some miracle, had fewer spiders than people.
Sanzo was reluctant to touch any flat surface.
“Well, that went well,” Hakkai said, looking around.
Dug woofed mournfully and Goku bent to give him a pat. “Dug is hungry,” he said.
“Hey, we have a shower! Outstanding.”
“Since when you’ve been such a stickler for hygiene?” Sanzo asked, folding his arms. There was nothing that he found less attractive than the prospect of getting undressed and taking a chance with whatever sludge came out of the pipes, not even if he was so hot and sticky he could probably suspend himself from the ceiling by pressing his open palms to it really hard. Though Gojyo was such a disgusting human being nothing in the shower could kill him.
“Right now I’d kill for a shower,” Gojyo said.
“I’m hungry,” Goku added. He’d abandoned Dug’s leash in favour of searching for a door by means of groping the walls.
“I wouldn’t touch those, if I were you.”
“I don’t exactly have other options.”
“You could have asked.”
“Ah, found it!” Goku started hammering on the door, yelling now and then. He was so annoying that Sanzo was surprised he had to wait as long as he did without an answer.
“What do you want?” asked one of the soldiers as he threw the door open.
“Dug is hungry. And I’m hungry too.”
“What do you want me to do about it?”
“You’re going to let my dog starve? What kinda arsehole are you!”
“Woah, chill. No one said anything about starving the dog.” The soldier put his gun away and produced a doggy treat.
“I should hope not!”
“Here boy,” the boy in uniform said, waving the disgusting biscuit in the air. “Here.”
Goku looked confused for a moment, then he caught on. “He’s not taking food from no one but me.”
“He’s dog.”
“Try him.”
The soldier shrugged and threw the biscuit on the floor. Dug looked down, looked at Goku, looked down again, then back at Goku then very pointedly looked away, casting furtive glances at the biscuit.
“See?” Goku said, when after a minute there was no sound. He went down on his knees mapping the floor with his hands. Dug got up, nudging the treat towards Goku’s open palm. “It’s not poisoned or nothing?”
“No one is going to kill a dog. What are you, insane?”
Dug went from begging to ecstatic, as Goku offered him the treat on an open palm. “That’s not going to be enough. He’s a big dog.”
“He’s a glorified poodle, is what he is,” the soldier said, but disappeared and returned a few minutes later with what looked like a pack of pebbles and a dish.
“I’m not eating that,” Hakkai and Gojyo, who’d managed to return from his shower, said in unison. The soldier scowled, but he had been followed with a woman in fatigues with an armful of bread and a box of edibles. There was a large bottle of water in her hand, too.
“Stop whining,” she told them. “We can hear you all the way downstairs.”
“Thank you for voicing that thought. Your comfort is of utmost importance to us,” Sanzo muttered in the direction of the door. He had yet to move away from his spot. He would, if he felt like it, but the whole place was just so filthy.
“You won’t be here long,” she said, and Sanzo really didn’t like the sparkles that danced in her eyes as she spoke. He hated being the butt of a joke. He hated jokes, period.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Eat, have a shower. In an hour we are moving you out.”
No sooner had she finished speaking when the door closed, leaving the four of them staring at one another. Goku was busy filling a bowl with the brown pebbles dogs apparently ate.
“If no one has any objections, I’ll take my shower now,” Hakkai said.
“Knock yourself out,” Sanzo said, watching Goku pet Dug as he stuffed his face.
“Are you gonna lend a hand?” Gojyo asked delving into the box of food. Sanzo glanced at the table and then up at the ceiling over it. Neither was even remotely sanitary.
“I’m not hungry.”
“Very funny. You don’t have to sit down, but you are eating.”
“Fuck you.”
“Flattered, but spoken for.”
“Oh?” Goku found his way to the table, and sat down on one of the least damaged chairs. “You’re married?”
“Not so much married as shagging Hakkai, and he’s a possessive bitch,” Gojyo said, handing him a bottle.
“Huh,” Goku said. “Hakkai sounds like he has a nails and coffins in his cellar.”
“Not far from the truth. Sandwich?”
Goku took Gojyo up on the offer with enthusiasm, but it took Hakkai, fresh from the shower, to force Sanzo to swallow some of the food, despite the protest. It was only because Hakkai was Hakkai and therefore an unstoppable force of evil, that Sanzo deigned to see whether the so-called shower met his very high sanitation criteria, and as expected it didn’t. He undressed and gave himself a cursory wash, because if there was one thing he hated more than unclean surfaces it was when those surfaces were on him.
They seemed to be on some very peculiar clock, because the moment Goku stumbled out of the shower, thanks to some carelessly dropped piece of rubble, the door slammed open and the four of them were rushed outside again, into the car and through the sweltering jungle. The drive was very short, and as soon as the forest thinned, they were unceremoniously shoved onto a very tiny plane.
“This cannot end well,” Hakkai said as they strapped themselves in.
“Hakkai’s got a fear of flying,” Gojyo told Goku.
“What flying?”
“Oh. We’re kinda on a plane right now.”
The engines whirred into life before Goku could respond, and Sanzo welcomed the change of scenery, as they left the jungle edition of tarmac behind and sailed over the green expanses of the forest. It was almost peaceful.
Then, of course, the pilot started flopping like a mad fish, opened the door to his cabin and jumped. He -- or she, the flight suit made it difficult to tell -- was out of sight before they could utter as much as “what in the holiest of mauve fucks is going on?!”
TBC
Rating: none
Pairings: 39, past Sanzo/Koumyou
Genre: AU WAFF
Wordcount: 50k, total.
Warnings: Koumyou is dead. Also, before the pairings squick you out, for the purposes of this fic Koumyou was never Sanzo's father figure. Might contain wacky adventures.
Summary: Sanzo hates the park, Hakkai, Gojyo, people and the world. He likes his OCD and his job as a professional Internet troll. He likes his unapologetic, rampant atheism. The universe sets out to prove him wrong.
Author's Note: Very loosely based on the (awesome and amazing) movie Up! This is actually a “light” version of the bunny – the original explored the pitfalls of reincarnation and crushed your soul.
The story is finished and will be posted whole over the next three weeks, maybe a little more (there is sixteen chapters, total). Doing it like this, because a/ I need a pick-me-up right now, and b/ have internet issues, posting the whole thing in one go would be a pain, c/ I figure this will make reading easier for you. So, enjoy!
Betaed by kispexi2, who graciously stepped in to help. <3 Thank you, hun!
Even with the recklessness of Hakkai’s driving, the journey could only last so long; at least that’s what Sanzo told himself in an effort not to jump out and be done with it. Whoever had thought Hakkai should be allowed to share the road with other people was clearly a few marbles short.
Fortunately, it wasn’t long before the cliff ended and the Jeep was hidden among the trees again, periodically emerging into clearings, to soak up the sun. If Sanzo didn’t know any better, he would have sworn the damn thing was solar-powered. Then something else occurred to him, something much more worrying.
“Do we even know where are we going?” he asked Hakkai.
“In a manner of speaking,” Hakkai yelled back.
“The fuck?”
“There weren’t any signs, exactly, and I didn’t want to ask specific questions in case we were followed.”
“Great.” So now they were going to get lost in the jungle in an effort to evade their captors, who so far hadn’t shot them, hadn’t tried to poison them, and in fact – barring the obvious non-consent issue – had been rather careful with their well-being. Sanzo was beginning to think he was betting on the wrong horse here.
He stayed silent, pondering the odds of them emerging out of this disaster alive, when Hakkai slammed the brakes and the Jeep skidded to a stop with a dramatic half-turn.
“What,” Sanzo asked, spitting each syllable with care, “the fuck?”
“It is a little embarrassing,” Hakkai said with an embarrassed laugh, “but I honestly don’t know where I’m supposed to go now.”
“Wow,” Gojyo said from the backseat, and Sanzo turned to inquire just what was it that had him so awed, because the expected irony seemed to be missing from his voice.
He followed Gojyo’s gaze and discovered, to his immense surprise, a shadow among the trees; a grey, straight-edged shaped that looked anything but natural.
“Now that’s just great, if we wanted a human sacrifice,” Sanzo muttered, but clearly his voice of reason counted for naught in this company, because Gojyo was already jerking Goku by the arm and out of the car, with the dog following. And Hakkai was rummaging in the trunk for provisions.
“Relax, Sanzo,” Gojyo called. “Live a little!”
“Am trying to and you are not making it easy.”
“Come, on we’re not that bad!”
“On a scale of one to ten, you are a twenty.”
“I love the guy,” Gojyo told Goku. “With friends like him I never have to worry about having enemies.”
“Why, does he scare them off?”
“No, but he is a crash-course in managing adversity,” Gojyo said in his best Hakkai-voice.
“Hilarious. Can someone please explain why are we sightseeing instead of getting somewhere civilised?”
“Part of the reason might be that we seem to have lost the road,” Hakkai said. “Another is that we are in Venezuela, it would be a crime to let this opportunity go to waste.”
“If I get shot, I will sue you.”
“Duly noted.” Hakkai made a beeline for the ruins, pausing now and then to admire a scrap of rock that to Sanzo looked like a moss farm.
The shape peaking through the foliage turned out to be merely the front wall to a grander complex, the top to a pyramid, one with aqueducts and stairs and a plaza at its base. The jungle had long since made it its own, so now the surface of every grey rock was green, or, in few select cases, shimmering with every colour of the rainbow.
“It does look bewitching, you have to admit,” Hakkai said.
Sanzo was reluctant to agree, though it was a losing battle. “It’d have been better with a payphone.”
“It’s not like we have any local change.”
Their conversation was cut short with a growl, one that made them both jump. They turned as one, expecting to see a charging rhinoceros – though why Sanzo’s brain made that connection, he wasn’t sure – and finding nothing but a blind monkey with a dog.
“Sorry,” Goku said, colouring. “I’m hungry.”
“We seem to be out of kebabs,” Sanzo said.
“Where are we, anyway?”
“We’ve narrowed it down to Venezuela.”
“I knew that. Didn’t Hakkai say we have GPS?”
“Yes, he did, and I’m sure he can quote the coordinates, so when the rescue finally comes they will have no trouble locating our putrefied corpses.”
“Oh.” Goku considered, coughed in embarrassment when his stomach growled again, and then asked, “Does putrefied mean what I think it means?”
“Probably. Are we going down?” Gojyo asked.
“No,” Sanzo said at the same moment Hakkai said “yes.”
“Do we have time for this?”
“Don’t we have time for this?”
“How is it that you are treating this as a recreational trip? Did kidnapping become a hip way of travelling when I wasn’t looking?”
“No, but it does seem to me that there is no point in cultivating fear. Best we can do is enjoy ourselves and hope not to get shot.”
“Because that’s going to work so well, when they catch up and see we’ve escaped to go for a walk.”
“Certainly better than if they catch up with us and decide to stop us from going for a walk ever again.”
“Oh, I see. Did you share their ‘how to be an evil overlord seminar’?”
“Hakkai is right, I think.”
“The hell you would know anything, monkey?”
“’s kinda sensible, that’s all.”
“On which planet?” Sanzo asked, because Stockholm syndrome was not happening to him, ever, not as long as his skull was still intact and free of bullet holes.
“Dunno, Vulcan?” Goku grinned broadly and raised his hand for Gojyo to high-five.
“I’m surrounded by morons,” Sanzo muttered, massaging his temples as though that would alleviate the pain of existence.
“Cheer up, Grumpy,” Gojyo said.
They ended up going down the temple steps. Sanzo lost the vote three to one, four, if one counted the excited bark Dug let out when Hakkai turned the question on him. Sanzo preferred to think Dug had woofed in his favour, even if that did make him feel ambivalent about his sanity.
“You gonna get down okay?” Gojyo tossed in Goku direction, completely ruining the effect by adding “Or do I got to carry you?”
Goku responded with a one-fingered salute and, Dug’s leash firmly in hand, took several cautious steps to the edge of the top platform. “How high are the steps?”
Hakkai took an estimating look at the regular build of the pyramid, hopped down a step, did a more accurate measurement, and turned to appraise Goku. “I’d say midway between the knee and thigh, adjusting for your height, and about two feet wide. They seem even from here.”
“I should be okay then.” Goku thrust the leash in Sanzo direction and inched closer to the edge. Sanzo almost envied the apparent ease with which he crouched and hopped to the lower level, and lower still.
“The hell does he need you for?” Sanzo asked Dug, getting a puzzled stare and then a bark in response. Goku was ten steps down when Sanzo finally moved and followed, trying not to strangle the dog as he went. Walking with a leashed living creature was a very peculiar experience, he found. Said creature had a brain on its own, and when Goku -- inevitably -- slipped on a loose rock and landed on his arse a step lower, Dug did his best to hang himself on his collar in an effort to get to his master. Thankfully he was wearing his harness, and experience had apparently shown that asphyxiation by that thing was out of question.
“Goku! Are you okay?” Hakkai called.
“Yeah, my butt hurts, but I’m fine. ” He proved the point by getting to his knees and stretching, then continuing on his way down with as much care, which was to say none. Sanzo stared after him, then tried closing his eyes and descending a step. It wasn’t pretty, but thankfully Dug caught on to his ruse and didn’t let him fall.
How the fuck could anyone live like this?
******
The bottom of the pyramid offered a view in many ways more spectacular than the top. They were standing in a bowl that had been possibly formed by nature to begin with and then incorporated into the designs of the culture that had erected the structure .
“So… anyone versed in local history to act as a guide?” Gojyo asked, folding his arms across his chest.
“Don’t look at me. It’s Disneyland for all I know. Kinda slimy Disneyland, but I guess with ducks and mice and dogs you get that way.” Goku poked at the rocks. His fingers dub into the moss all the way to the first knuckle.
“It’s not Disneyland.”
“Yeah, thank you.” Goku wasn’t, and likely never would be, a master of sarcasm. Not exactly a shock to Sanzo, but a mild surprise all the same. He must have been the first of Sanzo’s acquaintances not to be intimately involved in the worship at the irony tree.
“Are we done sight-seeing yet?” he asked, because this was getting out of hand.
The only response he got was the sound of a dozen guns being cocked.
“I told you so,” Sanzo said, even as he raised his arms. Slowly, from the edges of the bowl the men descended, brandishing threatening guns.
“Oh dear.”
“Um. I hear people?” Goku ventured, taking a step back and bumping into Sanzo. His warm hand touched Sanzo’s shoulder and then travelled down to take possession of the leash.
“Can you also hear guns?”
“Not right now I can’t.”
“Silence!” barked the man at the forefront of the group.
“I told you so,” Sanzo hissed directly into Hakkai’s ear.
“I heard you the first time, thank you.”
“What do you plan to do about it?”
“Here’s a thought: let’s go with these nice men to wherever they plan on taking us, and wait for the demands to be issued.”
“Because escape is so last season.”
“We were carted off to Venezuela. How easy do you think it would be to escape an organisation which can do that?”
“I was hoping very. So were you, I recall.”
“My opinion has since been revised.”
“Great. Just fucking great.”
“You said it, pal,” Gojyo said. “Hey, you guys mind if I smoke?” he asked when the soldiers started herding them back up.
“Yeah, I mind,” one of the soldiers said.
Gojyo rolled his eyes but shoved the packet back into his pocket. “Whatever, don’t get your knickers in a twist.”
The man growled and shoved Gojyo forward, up to the edge of the green bowl. A barely visible humvee was waiting there, with more soldiers perched on its sides.
“Somehow, this is all your fault, Hakkai,” Sanzo said when they were ushered inside.
“How do you figure?”
“Out of the four of us you’re the one most likely to be running a secret human trafficking operation out of your basement.” Sanzo finished the sentence, bit his tongue and felt a wave of shame and dread sweep through him, and that was before he looked at Hakkai’s face. “I’m sorry,” he told his clenched fists, low enough that no one save for the words’ intended target could hear.
“I wish you’d remember that, for the future,” Hakkai said icily.
Goku turned his face to Sanzo, looking puzzled. He said nothing, but Sanzo was struck again by how intense his gaze was, how it contained all the power of insatiable curiosity, which comes with gentle affection, without recognition or focus. Sanzo looked away, all but blinded himself by the vision of a world bathed in darkness, whose designs and colours had to be wrought with words and touch rather than be freely available. The vision gave him a surprising amount of pain.
******
It was difficult to hold a conversation with a dozen armed men and, what do you know, at least three women, pointing guns in your general direction. Sanzo was surprisingly unbothered about the guns -- shooting them was going to win the kidnappers no points -- but it did put a damper on the conversation, as though the muzzles doubled as miniature black holes that sucked in all the sound.
Fortunately, the drive wasn’t long. Before Sanzo could even work up a good string of insults, they were stopping by a dilapidated shack in the middle of nowhere, one that seemed like an open invitation to insects of all shapes and sizes. They were politely shoved inside and locked in a room that, by some miracle, had fewer spiders than people.
Sanzo was reluctant to touch any flat surface.
“Well, that went well,” Hakkai said, looking around.
Dug woofed mournfully and Goku bent to give him a pat. “Dug is hungry,” he said.
“Hey, we have a shower! Outstanding.”
“Since when you’ve been such a stickler for hygiene?” Sanzo asked, folding his arms. There was nothing that he found less attractive than the prospect of getting undressed and taking a chance with whatever sludge came out of the pipes, not even if he was so hot and sticky he could probably suspend himself from the ceiling by pressing his open palms to it really hard. Though Gojyo was such a disgusting human being nothing in the shower could kill him.
“Right now I’d kill for a shower,” Gojyo said.
“I’m hungry,” Goku added. He’d abandoned Dug’s leash in favour of searching for a door by means of groping the walls.
“I wouldn’t touch those, if I were you.”
“I don’t exactly have other options.”
“You could have asked.”
“Ah, found it!” Goku started hammering on the door, yelling now and then. He was so annoying that Sanzo was surprised he had to wait as long as he did without an answer.
“What do you want?” asked one of the soldiers as he threw the door open.
“Dug is hungry. And I’m hungry too.”
“What do you want me to do about it?”
“You’re going to let my dog starve? What kinda arsehole are you!”
“Woah, chill. No one said anything about starving the dog.” The soldier put his gun away and produced a doggy treat.
“I should hope not!”
“Here boy,” the boy in uniform said, waving the disgusting biscuit in the air. “Here.”
Goku looked confused for a moment, then he caught on. “He’s not taking food from no one but me.”
“He’s dog.”
“Try him.”
The soldier shrugged and threw the biscuit on the floor. Dug looked down, looked at Goku, looked down again, then back at Goku then very pointedly looked away, casting furtive glances at the biscuit.
“See?” Goku said, when after a minute there was no sound. He went down on his knees mapping the floor with his hands. Dug got up, nudging the treat towards Goku’s open palm. “It’s not poisoned or nothing?”
“No one is going to kill a dog. What are you, insane?”
Dug went from begging to ecstatic, as Goku offered him the treat on an open palm. “That’s not going to be enough. He’s a big dog.”
“He’s a glorified poodle, is what he is,” the soldier said, but disappeared and returned a few minutes later with what looked like a pack of pebbles and a dish.
“I’m not eating that,” Hakkai and Gojyo, who’d managed to return from his shower, said in unison. The soldier scowled, but he had been followed with a woman in fatigues with an armful of bread and a box of edibles. There was a large bottle of water in her hand, too.
“Stop whining,” she told them. “We can hear you all the way downstairs.”
“Thank you for voicing that thought. Your comfort is of utmost importance to us,” Sanzo muttered in the direction of the door. He had yet to move away from his spot. He would, if he felt like it, but the whole place was just so filthy.
“You won’t be here long,” she said, and Sanzo really didn’t like the sparkles that danced in her eyes as she spoke. He hated being the butt of a joke. He hated jokes, period.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Eat, have a shower. In an hour we are moving you out.”
No sooner had she finished speaking when the door closed, leaving the four of them staring at one another. Goku was busy filling a bowl with the brown pebbles dogs apparently ate.
“If no one has any objections, I’ll take my shower now,” Hakkai said.
“Knock yourself out,” Sanzo said, watching Goku pet Dug as he stuffed his face.
“Are you gonna lend a hand?” Gojyo asked delving into the box of food. Sanzo glanced at the table and then up at the ceiling over it. Neither was even remotely sanitary.
“I’m not hungry.”
“Very funny. You don’t have to sit down, but you are eating.”
“Fuck you.”
“Flattered, but spoken for.”
“Oh?” Goku found his way to the table, and sat down on one of the least damaged chairs. “You’re married?”
“Not so much married as shagging Hakkai, and he’s a possessive bitch,” Gojyo said, handing him a bottle.
“Huh,” Goku said. “Hakkai sounds like he has a nails and coffins in his cellar.”
“Not far from the truth. Sandwich?”
Goku took Gojyo up on the offer with enthusiasm, but it took Hakkai, fresh from the shower, to force Sanzo to swallow some of the food, despite the protest. It was only because Hakkai was Hakkai and therefore an unstoppable force of evil, that Sanzo deigned to see whether the so-called shower met his very high sanitation criteria, and as expected it didn’t. He undressed and gave himself a cursory wash, because if there was one thing he hated more than unclean surfaces it was when those surfaces were on him.
They seemed to be on some very peculiar clock, because the moment Goku stumbled out of the shower, thanks to some carelessly dropped piece of rubble, the door slammed open and the four of them were rushed outside again, into the car and through the sweltering jungle. The drive was very short, and as soon as the forest thinned, they were unceremoniously shoved onto a very tiny plane.
“This cannot end well,” Hakkai said as they strapped themselves in.
“Hakkai’s got a fear of flying,” Gojyo told Goku.
“What flying?”
“Oh. We’re kinda on a plane right now.”
The engines whirred into life before Goku could respond, and Sanzo welcomed the change of scenery, as they left the jungle edition of tarmac behind and sailed over the green expanses of the forest. It was almost peaceful.
Then, of course, the pilot started flopping like a mad fish, opened the door to his cabin and jumped. He -- or she, the flight suit made it difficult to tell -- was out of sight before they could utter as much as “what in the holiest of mauve fucks is going on?!”
TBC
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Date: 2010-10-14 02:44 am (UTC)*pets Dug* Good dog!
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Date: 2010-10-30 10:52 am (UTC)I am not really a dog (animal) person, but from what I read that's how you train guide dogs. They need to be smart and attentive and only answer to their master.
Dug is such a good boy!
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Date: 2010-11-15 05:30 am (UTC)Also, Hakkai FTW!