*********************
Azuringu Dai-O!
Azumanga Daioh! is owned by Azuma Kiyohiko, Media Works
Ringu is owned by Koji Suzuki.
Ringu/The Ring, Asmik Ace, Dreamworks SKG.
*********************
---
Friday, September 19
Yomi never thought she could find a morning shower so invigorating.
However, after a solid week of stress and anxiety, it was surprisingly
soothing and refreshing. Sure, her mind was still filled with
unanswered questions and lingering doubts about Osaka's true motives,
but for the first time in seven days she felt quite optimistic about the
entire matter.
Chiyo had already taken a drowsy Osaka to the hotel's restaurant for
breakfast; meanwhile, Sakaki and Kagura were waiting for Yomi to
finish her shower before joining those two downstairs. Of course,
Tomo and Yukari were more than likely willing to sleep through the
morning, but that couldn't be helped. Besides, there was nothing their
former teacher could tell them that Sakaki and Kaorin didn't already
know.
And thus, Yomi met up with her friends with a slight spring in her step.
Osaka's picture diary was carefully stored in her bag; its owner would
probably appreciate it. So, smiling all the way, she led the others down
to the restaurant.
They found Chiyo and Osaka sitting at a table beneath the restaurant's
suspended TV set, watching an equestrian show intently. Since Osaka's
clothes had been left with the cleaners, Kagura had lent her an oversize
white T-shirt and shorts --giving her an appearance not unlike that of S-
chan or Sakaki's ghost, oddly enough.
"And once again," the TV announcer called, "the trophy for the
twentieth Annual Kyushu Horseback Roundup goes to an American
breeder! Congratulations to the Morgan Ranch for their eleventh
consecutive victory." Osaka giggled and clapped her hands excitedly
while Chiyo smiled up at her.
Kagura came up to the pair. "Yo, Osaka," she said, "You like horses?"
Osaka shook her head, "Nah-ah. Not really." But she clapped at those
on the screen anyway.
"Osaka," Yomi said, pulling up a chair along with the others, "You left
this behind."
The brunette's eyes widened as Yomi took the picture book out of her
purse. "A!" she exclaimed, quickly taking it in her hands. "S-chan!"
Yomi smirked, "Er, yeah, that's right." She leaned forward on the table,
"You know how we got here, don't you?"
"Un," Osaka said, still poring over her book. She then looked up at
Yomi, and blinked. "Aa? Did you watch the tape, Yomi-chan?"
"Yeah, we all did," was the response. Yomi seized the chance to take
the original tape out of her purse and set it on the table. "Osaka, what
was the point of this video? Did you want to help someone?"
Not really listening, Osaka turned to Sakaki, "No, only Sakaki-chan
watched it..." She broke into a wide smile, "Heee... S-chan's video
worked."
Yomi frowned. "What do you mean, it worked?" Recalling what had
happened last night, she added, "Are you talking about the other
video?"
Osaka nodded, still grinning, "Did she come for you, Yomi-chan?"
Sakaki felt a chill run down her back, while the others stared
quizzically at Osaka. "Who?" asked Kagura.
"S-chan," Osaka stated simply.
"S-chan?" asked Chiyo, who then turned to face Yomi. "Come for
Yomi-san? I thought it was all over when the video changed."
"No, it's never over," Osaka said, deep in concentration over her
breakfast pastry. "S-chan comes for everyone, like with Sakaki-chan."
She bit into her jam-filled croissant. "Yummy..."
"Wh-what?" Yomi's demeanor faltered; suddenly, she felt as if the
ground had been pulled out from under her. Almost predicting what
was about to happen, Sakaki was already rising to her feet.
"Yomi-chan is too serious," Osaka was still not paying attention. Lazily
turning to face the clock on the wall, she continued, "Aa, she's coming
for Tomo-chan now."
Her breath dying in her throat, Yomi jumped to her feet and shot a stare
of disbelief at Osaka. Without a word, she joined Kagura and Sakaki as
they raced back up to Tomo's room. As they ran, they vaguely heard
Osaka say dreamily, "You weren't supposed to help, Yomi-chan...
"You were just supposed to watch."
- O! -
Tomo's eyes opened groggily as she heard the TV in her room come
alive. It took her a couple of minutes to get her bearings, by which
point the blaring static had become almost unbearable. Annoyed, she
threw a pillow over her head and whined, "Kaguraaa! Switch it off,
there's nothin' good on..."
The static continued to get louder. Scowling at her interrupted sleep,
Tomo sat up and tossed the pillow at the TV. "Turn that down!" she
yelled, and instantly the noise faded out. "'s better." She dropped back
onto the bed.
But the appliance hadn't been turned off. The static had simply been
replaced by a fixed image of a clearing in a forest, with an old stone
well dominating the center of the picture. Sounds of crickets and other
insects hummed through the speakers. When those became unnervingly
loud, Tomo quickly sat up again and shouted, "I said, turn it off! I--
eh?"
When she finally took stock of the situation, she gasped at seeing the
same stone well of the video fixed on her TV screen. Mysteriously, the
forest around the well began to glitch in and out of the picture,
eventually being replaced by a classroom backdrop. All the desks had
been pushed back, imitating the trees in the forest, to leave a clear path
between the well and the foreground. The birds and insects only
continued to become louder.
Transfixed, Tomo began crawling on the bed towards the screen. The
casing of the TV set began to sweat water onto the dresser and the
floor, barely missing the pillow that lay directly beneath the screen.
Tomo gulped loudly.
A small, pale hand rose from the depths of the well and grabbed hold of
the lip. Hair as black as pitch flowed up onto the stones, followed by a
head and a second hand. The figure pulled itself up.... then slipped, and
with a cry it fell back inside the well. There was a loud splash and a
bizarre curse. Tomo blinked despite herself.
There was a second attempt. This time, a small ladder poked out of the
well, followed by more muttering and some splashing. Again, a small,
pale hand rose from the well, followed by the other, and finally a head
of hair came into view. Once more the image on the screen glitched,
and all of a sudden there was a little girl outside the well, all dressed in
white and with a wall of the darkest hair completely obscuring her face.
Her feet were bare, and the dress certainly had seen better days. Tomo
watched as the girl slowly shuffled towards the screen, tripping once,
then twice --until the girl's impenetrable hair finally caused her to lose
course towards the side of the classroom.
The sound of clattering desks echoed from the TV, followed by a quiet,
"Owww..."
A couple of seconds later, the girl glitched back into existence at the
center of the screen, closer and closer to the foreground (and, every so
often, parting her hair with her hands to make sure she was still headed
forward.) Unable to move or speak, Tomo was unaware even of the
grin that was forming on her face. All she could think of was that the
girl looked almost as cute as Chiyo's penguin suit.
With a solid *thunk*, the girl banged her head against the screen itself.
She rubbed her bruise with her left hand... while the right hand reached
out of the TV set and into the real world. Tomo finally cried out in
horror and shuffled backwards on the bed.
Gracelessly, like a marionette with its strings cut off, the girl poured
out of the TV and spilled onto the convenient pillow that Tomo had
tossed earlier. She rose from the ground as if in a drunken haze,
swaying to side to side though never revealing the face behind the
black cascade. Some distant, conscious part of Tomo's mind thought
that the girl couldn't be a day older than eight. Tomo's instincts, though,
immediately took hold of her and she scrambled off the bed and
towards the door, all while the girl watched her impassively.
Equal parts terrified and entranced by the cuteness, Tomo had barely
reached the corridor when the girl simply glitched into place between
her and the door. Tomo cried out and stumbled away, backing herself
into a corner beside the bed.
There was no escape now. The ghostly child slowly, slowly turned
around. The wall of hair finally parted, uncovering the left side of her
face.
...and to Tomo's horror, it revealed such an adorable, innocent and
excited grin that she was only able to utter one word:
"C-cute..."
- O! -
Yomi and the others burst out of the stairwell with little regard for door
locks or fire alarms. So desperate was their dash that even two seconds
of waiting for an elevator were deemed too long to waste. They ran
through the corridors in a mad race to Tomo's room, only to fumble
with the keys upon finally reaching it. At last, Kagura jammed the key
in the lock while Yomi twisted the knob and pushed herself in.
"Tomo!" she shouted. Her eyes immediately found her friend slumped
against the far corner of the room, her face locked in a horrible rictus of
joy. Sakaki and Kagura gasped behind her, but she paid them little
attention as she rushed to Tomo's side.
"Tomo! Tomooo!" she cried, shaking the short-haired girl by the
shoulders.
"So... cute..." was Tomo's only reply.
"Ah- aaaah!" Kagura gasped. Yomi turned to see the tanned girl point
at--
There was a girl in the room, standing between the beds and looking
back at her like a child caught with her hand in the cookie jar. The right
side of her face was completely obscured by black hair, though it didn't
stop Sakaki's from passing out again at the cuteness of it all. Kagura
just stared.
The little girl looked back and forth between Yomi and the TV set, then
decided to make a run for it back into the screen. Unfortunately, she
tripped on Tomo's shoe and fell flat on her face.
"Aaaah... cuuuuute..." sighed Tomo again. Yomi's glasses fogged up.
Crawling on the floor to make herself as inconspicuous as possible, the
girl inched towards the TV and slowly climbed halfway into the screen.
Finally getting a grip on herself, Kagura yelled, "Wait!"
The ghost froze on the spot, half her body still poking out of the
television screen. Slowly, she crawled back out and looked around for
the caller.
"Ah!" the girl exclaimed upon spotting Kagura, causing her to blush up
to her ears. The teenager's mind went numb instantly.
"A-ah, w-who are..." Kagura tried to speak, but found herself
completely at the apparition's mercy.
Smoothing out her hair once again so it covered her entire face, the girl
repeated her stalking act for Kagura's benefit. When they were only one
foot apart from each other, the girl's hair parted by itself again and she
lifted her arms, happily crying out, "Hee!"
Kagura fell on her rear in surprise, almost completely missing the girl's
following, "Thanks!" Unfortunately, the word was spoken with such
joy that Kagura instantly fainted from cuteness shock. The girl blinked,
turned to face the already-unconscious Sakaki, and repeated, "Ah!
Thanks again!"
All her friends had fallen. Steeling herself for the inevitable, Yomi
swallowed hard and stood up. If she had to succumb to the cute, at least
she would go down fighting.
But when the ghost child shuffled back towards the TV, she only
looked up at Yomi with one huge, sparkling eye and said, "Bye!"
Yomi blinked.
And then, giving just a small wave, the girl climbed back into the
screen and playfully dove into the well with the cutest "Wa-hoo!" ever
heard. Yomi dropped onto her knees, her eyes blank, precisely as the
TV turned itself off.
"W... why...?" she asked to no one in particular. "Why not me?" She
looked back at the comatose Tomo, then at Kagura and Sakaki.
Stumbling to her feet, she suddenly roared and slammed her hands onto
the TV's black case. "What did I do that they didn't?!"
A quiet, almost spectral voice echoed in her mind. "You all watched it."
It was quickly joined by a multitude of memories.
"That wasn't there when I watched it..."
"She's almost done with everyone..."
"You were just supposed to watch..."
"The images are meant for us..."
"Did she come for you, Yomi-chan?"
"That wasn't in the video..."
And a final voice, a voice she identified as her own, concluded.
"You didn't add anything."
Yomi looked back at her friends, her eyes frozen and her mouth dry.
"What did *they* do that *I* didn't..." She glanced down at Tomo. "It
changed after Tomo watched it... But I..."
"You're too serious, Yomi-chan."
All of a sudden, a thought came unbidden to her mind, and she cried
out, "Chiyo-chan!"
- SA! -
"Ne, ne, Chiyo-chan..." Osaka said, merrily leading Chiyo through a
store's electronic department. They weren't too far from the hotel, but
the area was packed with department stores and malls as far as the eye
could see. "Did I tell you about a trick that Samara-chan taught me?"
Chiyo nodded warily, "Umm, about nensha?"
"Un," Osaka nodded. "Did you know Samara-chan can also do it the
other way around?" She inserted an unlabled, black VHS tape into a
VCR. Acting as a single screen, nearly a dozen television sets in the
vicinity immediately tried to form a ring of light.
"The other way around?" Chiyo wondered. "Um, you mean grab other
people's thoughts and print those?"
Osaka simply giggled. "You made the video a lot better than I could,
Chiyo-chan," she said, and turned to the matrix of TV screens, where the
image of a happy little girl with black hair and a white dress grinned
back at her. Chiyo, oblivious to the cuteness, gasped in surprise rather
than shock.
"Did you hear about the video tape that kills people in seven days?"
Osaka smiled.
Chiyo gulped and nodded.
Osaka smiled in determination, clenching a fist. Samara mirrored her
actions on the screen.
"You're going to help me fix that, Chiyo-chan!" Osaka's smile widened,
looking slightly unhinged for a moment. "And our first stop is national
TV!"
And while Chiyo couldn't help shuddering, Osaka and the image of Samara
began cackling maniacally. But just as the TV screens began to fade into
deafening static, she could swear she saw the phantom girl's dress slowly
transform into a familiar penguin suit...
---
Friday, September 19
Day 0
---
Azuringu Dai-O!
by Jorge A. Pratt
Based upon characters and situations created by Kiyohiko Azuma and Koji
Suzuki.
Azumanga Daioh! is the property of Kiyohiko Azuma. 2000 Media Works.
2003 ADV Films.
the ring/rasen, Sadako Yamamura and the Ring concept are the property of
Koji Suzuki. 1991 Kadokawa Shoten Publishing. 1998 Asmik ACE.
2002 Dreamworks SKG.
The Ring and Samara Morgan are creations of Gore Verbinski and Ehran
Krueger. 2002 Dreamworks SKG.
*********************
Jorge A. Pratt
00709382@academ01.ccm.itesm.mx
terbril@rocketmail.com
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