Plague of Skulds Part 6 of 8
An Oh! My Goddess Fanfic
By Jim Nutley
jnutley@lvnexus.net
Please send me comments! Good or Bad.
All characters created by Kosuke Fujishima were used without
permission, as were characters from products by Studio CLAMP and
Bandai. This story may not be sold. Many thanks to Brett Handy for
allowing me to use his character Brett, God of Destiny. Many thanks
to Lloyd Goodbar for allowing me to use his character Riana, a
Goddess of Relief Goddess Office.
Please do not repost this fanfic, since I will be modifying it in
response to comments from the ML. I will make a repostable version
available when I have had a chance to respond to comments.
**************
Belldandy began fixing dinner. Keiichi protested that it was too late in the
evening, but when she insisted that she had so much energy she wasn't the
least bit tired, he gave in. A short time later Urd entered the kitchen.
"Are you all right?", Belldandy asked.
"You mean am I suspended, cast down, or something like that. No, not
this time." Urd regarded her sister's quick dinner preparations. "Good a
cook as you are, I'll bet you're the only one hungry tonight, Belldandy."
"I'm sure Keiichisan will eat. But you mean that Terai hasn't come out of
Skuld's room, don't you."
Urd paused for a moment, "Yes." she finally said.
Belldandy didn't pause at all in her headlong preparations. "You're not
saying what you think, Urd."
"I don't want to screw up twice in one day."
"Out with it. I want to hear what it is."
"After what you've just done tonight, doesn't dinner seem a little, ... tame?"
"I don't want to go out and party, and I don't want to be separate from my
dear ones either. Keiichi needs to eat and we all need to talk, about little
things, and laugh and be happy together. The most natural way to do that
is with a meal."
Urd sighed. "I hope it works out.", she said as she left the kitchen.
Belldandy expected to hear the TV start up as Urd settled in to channel
browse, but no one turned it on and the house stayed quiet.
************
Dinner went on the table in record time, and it was beautifully arranged
too. Keiichi and Urd took their places. Belldandy noticed that Keiichi
was sitting up very straight, and trying to be more polite than was natural,
maybe that was because of Terai. Skuld lead Terai out to the table a
moment later, while Belldandy set out the drinks. Terai was still
downcast and silent.
A few minutes later Belldandy was beginning to wish that Urd had made
her point more forcefully. It was the most strained, horrible gathering
Belldandy could have imagined. Everyone was silent. Terai and Keiichi
were avoiding making eyecontact with everyone else. Skuld would watch
Terai or look pleadingly at Belldandy. Urd was silent and depressed also.
Belldandy attempted to start the conversation a few times, but failed
miserably. And they were all just picking at the food! Belldandy wanted
to cry, which of course would only make things worse, then Keiichi
surprised her.
"Terai?", Keiichi asked, at which Terai visibly jumped, set her chopsticks
down by her plate, stuffed her hands in her lap, and did not even glance at
Keiichi. He continued gently, "You and Amaterasu called each other
sister. I never imagined that Stars had families. Did the two of you, um,
grow up in a house? or play together? or ..." Keiichi trailed off watching
Terai watch her mostly untouched plate.
"The house that could have held us would have been very big.", Terai
replied, and the hint of a smile crossed her face, and she turned timidly to
look at Keiichi.
When they all went to bed, Belldandy thought fiercely, I'm going to follow
Keiichisan into his room and kiss his feet, maybe just for starters.
"We don't have parents or homes like you do, Morisatosan", Terai went
on. "We call each other Sister and Brother when we come out of the same
clouds. My generation comes from newer clouds with many chemical
elements in them. There is an older generation, my 'Uncles and Aunts',
who formed when our galaxy was young. They formed out of older clouds
which had few chemical elements in them, and there is Grandmother."
Keiichi, while he listened, had actually put a bite in his mouth, and was
chewing with some enthusiasm. "Umm," He gulped the bite down,
"Grandmother?"
"In the beginning,..." Terai paused, but had warmed up to the
conversation so she continued, "Kamisama ordered the dust to gather
together into Clusters, and then into Galaxies. While it was gathering
though, it clumped together to form a few isolated clouds, which were
eventually drawn into the galaxies. Out of those clouds, before the
galaxies could begin forming stars, came the first stars, our Grandparents.
They are terribly few in number. In all our Galaxy there is only
Grandmother, orbiting by herself in a long ellipse outside the Core. She
stopped shining long ago, but there is still heat and life in her. Some
Gods and Goddesses call her Grandmother Cinder, but we stars only say
Grandmother."
"Wow," said Keiichi, "Have you met her?"
"Grandmother begins all our lives." Terai replied, "Which makes her very
busy, but she personally helps each little star spirit begin to gather dust to
form their own body, and she has been present at every ignition in our
galaxy also. She herself arranged for me to come here, when she came to
tell me that Kamisama had granted me the Authorization."
"Th Whhh!" said Urd with her mouth full.
"h, Terai!" Belldandy was so happy she clapped her hands together,
"How wonderful for you!"
"Amaterasu congratulated you for that too," Keiichi remembered out loud,
"But what does it mean?"
"Only some stars qualify to have living things grow on their planets,
Morisatosan," Terai said. "Of those, most are what you would call small
things, lichens and plankton for example. Some Stars qualify to have
complex plants and animals, and a few of those are allowed to have
intelligent beings come forth from among their creatures. But the rarest
thing of all is to have a technical civilization, only a Star receiving a
special authorization from Kamisama can give birth to such a planet."
"Wow," Keiichi said again, "You're very special then. Congratulations."
Terai smiled and looked a little embarrassed. But a moment later her
happy face faded away. "What am I saying? I can't be trusted with a
planet full of people! I've proved that beyond any doubt!" Sobbing, Terai
leapt up from the table and ran back toward Skuld's room.
Skuld jumped up to follow her. "Almost, Keiichi." she said as she gave
him a thumbs up sign and ran after her friend.
"Yes Keiichisan," said Belldandy "That was wonderful."
Now it was Keiichi's turn to look embarrassed. "Didn't work though.
What are we going to do about her?"
"How about nothing?" injected Urd, between mouthfuls of food, "She
screwed up, she feels bad for a while, she gets over it. Just let her work it
out herself."
Belldandy sighed. "I suppose we shouldn't wonder if she felt ashamed for
a while. But no Urd, we're not going to leave her alone in this, not for too
long. We're going to be sure she cheers up."
**********
It was Three AM the next morning. Skuld startled awake and sat up on
her tatami. Terai, still dressed, was sitting on her tatami nearby, head on
her knees and arms wrapped tight around her calves.
"Did you hear something Terai?"
"She just came out of his room.", Terai replied. "They were talking and
cuddling at first. I think he fell asleep a while ago, but she just lay there
with him, looking at him, sometimes stroking his hair, for the last couple
hours."
Skuld flopped back down on her tatami. "Yeah, she does that."
"At first I thought they were going to ..."
"If they did, I'd know it. And Urd wouldn't let them keep it a secret, even
if they did hide it from me."
"Don't they know these walls are transparent to high ultraviolet and
infrared light?"
"Think of it as a game Terai, we're all pretending to be human so Keiichi
doesn't freak. We act like we can't see through the walls or understand
auras and we only use magic for things we can't do with our hands."
"Do you want them to ..."
"No Way!"
"What do you want them to do then?"
Skuld sighed. "I was really jealous of Keiichi when I first came here. I've
mostly gotten over that, but even if I don't mind Oneesama being in love
with him, I don't want her to do it. I'd be the only virgin left of the three of
us then. It would be like she'd left me and sided with Urd."
"You have to stay a virgin so you can fight with Urd?"
"Teraiii! Don't be gross."
"Was I?" Terai asked. When Skuld didn't answer, Terai changed the
subject. "You three are really close."
"Um Humm", replied Skuld, starting to fall back asleep.
"I've met some double stars and triple stars that are close like you three."
Skuld didn't answer this time, and as Terai watched her friend she saw her
breathing even out the way it had when she fell asleep earlier. Terai had
never slept, nor would, until she was older than Grandmother, and from
that sleep ..., well some things only Kamisama knew. Last night she had
lay flat on her tatami with her eyes closed and reviewed and cataloged
every interesting thing that she and Skuld had talked about the previous
evening. There had been so many interesting things she'd seen this
morning. And the afternoon, she'd known about liquids, but never
imagined sliding or playing in them. That happy, inquisitive Terai
seemed like another person now.
"I'm not close to anybody, Skuld.", she whispered to her sleeping friend.
"You're the best friend I've got and still we're not close like you and your
sisters. And today, I almost burned you up."
Terai was faintly surprised, she hadn't realized that this body she
pretended to have would cry when she was sad enough. She wasn't being
terribly observant either, or she might have noticed Belldandy, lying flat
on her own tatami but with her eyes wide open and turned toward Terai.
Terai shook with quiet little sobs, and answering tears of sympathy went
down Belldandy's face toward her pillow.
*************
That morning, Terai was up at dawn again, and gave her Sister a
respectful bow as she rose over the horizon. But then she went back to
Skuld's room without saying a word.
*************
About noontime later that day, Urd called Belldandy at the Motorclub
garage on campus, where she had accompanied Keiichi that morning.
"You win," commented Urd from the Temple house hallway phone, "We
gotta cheer her up before I go crazy."
"What is she doing?" Belldandy asked.
"The two of them are flopped on the floor like throw rugs in front of the
TV, pitiful as only preteen girls can get. Right now they're watching that
anime tape Skuld keeps but almost never watches, the one with the gaki
named Sharon and the two warriors who've sworn to each keep the other
from bedding the girl."
"Oh dear, that tape makes Skuld a little sad even when she starts out
happy.", commented Belldandy.
"Well, what can we do?, what can I do?", asked Urd.
"I don't have any ideas yet.", replied Belldandy, "Have you thought of
anything?"
"I thought to call you, nothing else is coming. When can you come back?"
"Keiichi is on a roll here I think, I don't want to pull him away. We'll be
home for dinner but not before. Maybe one of us can think of something
by then."
"Oohhhh, Think hard Sis." Urd hung up the phone and went back past
the TV/Dining room. Skuld and Terai hadn't moved an inch. The story
was almost over though, since the gaki was seducing everyone with her
songs and was about to try to possess the giant, transforming spaceship.
'Wasn't that thing in another TV show?', Urd wondered.
**********
In the Heavens, in the part of the Yggdrasil 'campus' devoted to the
Earth's Goddess Relief Office, Brett Handy, God of Destiny, looked out
through the eternal morning sunshine and across the titanic roots of the
Yggdrasil toward the other World Tree systems that towered up in the
distance. There was absolutely no haze here to give scale to the view, but
his eyes still weren't entirely up to blocking the glare. He turned away
from the view again, knowing he would likely start looking at it again in a
few minutes. His eyes surveyed the luxurious lounge and waiting area.
There was no glass picture window here, since outside was exactly as
comfortable as inside. ALL the chairs and couches were comfortable.
Still, Brett wasn't in a restful mood, so he paced for a while, and told
himself he ought to read something, or browse Heavenet, or do anything
that would keep him from waiting tensely.
At that moment Parvati entered the waiting area. A petite person, she had
to crane her neck up to look at Brett's face. She was one of the Goddesses
who had been very active in India and South East Asia, which was why
she continued to sport four graceful arms. She had a daughter Skuld's
age, although standing next to Brett, she looked the right size to be a child
herself. She came up to him, smiling her constant serene smile, and just
stood there.
After a moment, Brett decide to say something. "Ah, Hello Parvati"
"Hello Brett," came the soft spoken reply. And nothing more.
After another moment, "Um, Parvati, I'd really like to know if I passed."
"Of course you would.", she replied.
Brett stood there squirming for another minute, while Parvati looked on
serenely, then the corners of her mouth tilted up, which with Parvati was
as good as a belly laugh. "Forgive me, Brett, I couldn't resist teasing you.
Westerners are so driven."
Brett cracked a smile himself, not an altogether confident one though.
"Parvati, does that mean I passed?", he asked.
"Of course you passed. You are a fully qualified Wishbringer now,
pending successful completion of your probationary period. Welcome to
the Goddess Relief Office."
"Whew.", said Brett as he relaxed, in all his .. months .. as a God, he'd
never had to actually test at it till now. "I'm really pleased Parvati, when
do I start?"
"So driven.", she repeated, shaking her head. "Go relax and get yourself
rested, then come back and I'll have your first assignment for you."
"But when, or, ... what time do you expect me back?"
Parvati shook her head again, and settled back into her most serene
expression. "What time do you want it to be Brett?"
"Well, if it's alright, I'd like to pop in on some friends, maybe spend the
night if I could start tomorrow morning."
"In May 1996?"
"Actually," Brett sneaked a peek at his watch, "It was June, last time I
checked."
"And twelve hours there will be how long here?"
"Um," Brett suddenly realized what she was getting at, "35 minutes?"
"Seventeen minutes. Not that it matters, I already have your assignment
ready for you. If you would like more time, 1862 and 2040 are passing
much more rapidly per minute for the next few 'hours' here."
"Well, my friends are in 1996, though I hope they're in 2040, come to
think of it. How do you keep all that straight in your head, Parvati?"
"Time isn't straight from this reference frame, Brett. Your primary
instructor should have taught you a lot more about temporal topography,
and you can tell her 'Little Cutie Four-Arms' said so."
Not for the first time Brett found himself blushing for Urd's sake. "I'm
sure she intends that name fondly, Parvati." To which he received a single
raised eyebrow. "No dice eh?"
"No.", Parvati agreed. "Now run along and don't worry about getting
back 'on time'. Here, time waits for us if necessary. Oh that reminds me,
I had a clock put up in the hall so you don't have to use your watch to
teleport.
*********
Neither Urd nor Belldandy thought of anything in particular to do or say
before dinner. Belldandy was afraid that there might be a repeat of last
night's fiasco. However, Terai, while still depressed, seemed much less
despondent, and actually asked one or two questions. Particularly
interesting was the one she turned on Urd.
"Urdsama, Do singing idols really receive a lot of adulation by the
people?"
"You bet, everyone admires a good singer.@
"But Skuld says that most of them aren't good singers."
"Yeah, you can hype someone up so that everyone gets excited about
them, whether they can sing or not."
"Then what are the people getting excited about, since it isn't the
singing?"
"Ummm, they're getting excited because everyone else is excited."
"Then, they don't need the idol to be excited?, They could just be excited
all by themselves?"
"Ha!", said Keiichi, "This is beginning to sound like Urd at a karoke bar.
Everyone's excited and nobody's singing."
"Hey!", replied Urd, "I'm a good singer!"
"He he he he", laughed Skuld, "Good one, Keiichi."
"You stay out of this.", said Urd to Skuld, "Tell you what, Terai, let's all
go over to a karoke place tonight and you can see for yourself how good a
singer I am."
"Oh. That wouldn't be proper." answered Terai, and looked back down at
her plate.
Belldandy didn't let her escape though. "Why wouldn't it be proper,
Terai?"
Caught in a question herself, Terai visibly squirmed. "Well, I mustn't go
out."
"Why is that?", Belldandy continued gently.
"Because, ... I won't make mistakes if I just stay here."
"No.", Belldandy took a firm but still gentle stand. "You're not going to
hide in here until your visit is over Terai. The karoke bar may be too wild
an idea for tonight, but we will definitely go there before you leave."
"Hey!" said Skuld, "You and I can do a duet!, show Urd who really
inherited the good voice in our family."
"Brat!" replied Urd, "The day I can't sing better than you with marbles in
my mouth, I'll ..."
"Please sisters.", commented Belldandy. "Now Terai, Keiichi is making a
lot of progress on his project for the Motorclub, so I was wondering if you
and Skuld would like to come with us back to campus tomorrow and see
the cart when he finishes it." At the mention of Nekomi campus Terai
turned a little pale, but, gently as ever Belldandy continued. "What you
saw there last night was very much out of the ordinary, Terai. Not just for
the campus but for all Japan. I'd like you to come back so that incident
doesn't make your only impression of the campus."
Terai hung her head for a moment, but then picked it up. "I'll come.", she
almost whispered.
"Great.", said Keiichi, "After this I'll have a few days free, so Belldandy
and I can escort you two around. Maybe we could even get up early one
morning and catch the trains to Tokyo."
Terai managed a half hearted smile. It seemed she was moving out of
depression, though still very nervous about going among people. The rest
of dinner went even better, so Belldandy was humming a little tune to
herself as she, Skuld and Terai cleaned up the dishes. Urd turned on the
TV, and paused on a news program.
"In our next report," said the news anchor, "A sudden, drastic drop in the
salinity of Tokyo Bay has researchers baffled."
"Urrk." said Urd, and she flipped to another channel.
In a different news program, a doctor was being interviewed. "I'm at a
complete loss to explain it. There's simply no bacteria anywhere in the
hospital. This is especially fortunate in the children's ward as some of
them with dangerous infections are now well, if still a little weak." Urd
cut the report off by turning the channel again while Keiichi sent a
worried look toward the kitchen. Neither Belldandy nor Terai nor Skuld
seemed to have heard.
"Air quality in the greater Tokyo area may have briefly improved due to
an unexpected rain shower, mostly falling in the bay, but health agencies
have disregarded this morning's near pure readings, attributing them to
equipment failure." "Click" went the channel changer.
A stern looking man in a suit was editorializing. "As further evidence that
violent American madness is spreading into our society, last night some
local college students interrupted a brutal rape in the nick of time."
"VCR!" said Keiichi.
"Right!" said Urd. And turned on the tape player so that it blanked the
screen.
***********
The tape Urd and Keiichi insisted on watching when Belldandy, Skuld
and Terai joined them had no particular appeal to Skuld or Terai, so the
two girls adjourned to Skuld's room. Terai was doing much better, so
Skuld was quite optimistic as well. Still, they weren't nearly as giddy as
the evening Terai had first arrived. Outside, Terai's sister's face had
passed below the horizon, and the rest of her family was beginning to fill
the sky with sparkling lights.
"Do you think I'm cheering up too fast, Skuld?"
"Give yourself a break, Terai."
"I killed all those people!"
"They're alive now."
"But, shouldn't I keep feeling guilty for ...", Terai shrugged her shoulders.
Skuld sighed. "I don't know, Terai. You're not like Urd, who almost
never seems to be ashamed of any screw up, but you're not like Oneesama
either, who's so freaked about the one mistake she made, ...", Skuld
paused, Terai was giving her her full attention. "I'm not supposed to
know about that, I probably shouldn't talk about it. I hacked Urd's
password a while ago, and I've been monitoring her E-Mail to Fulla and
the other Yggdrasil systems managers."
"What's a Yggdrasil?"
"It's a World Tree System, it moderates spiritual energy on a world with
animal or higher life forms. You've got one, I saw them doing final
hardware checks when I came to visit and met you, remember?
'YGGDRASIL' is just the nickname for the Earth's World Tree, it's the
first nine letters of the 144,000 character serial number. Anyway, Urd's,
Oneesama's and my first jobs as Goddesses were as
programmer/technician's on the Yggdrasil, Urd got good enough to be one
of the system managers, but I was so good,", Skuld couldn't help but tilt
her nose up and look smug, "I was made system debugger, after about a
year, the ONLY system debugger!, but what I was trying to say was that I
started out spying on Urd to figure out if she was getting her friends to
tamper with the system parameters to manipulate Keiichi, or worse. She
wasn't, but first, things went really crazy around here Christmas before
last, with such an outbreak of Bugs I ended up assigned down here to
stamp them out, sigh, then Fulla got a copy of a document about
Oneesama and forwarded it to Urd. It was pretty obvious what had
happened then."
"What's a Bug, Skuld?"
"A spontaneous, spiritual life form, they're awful, yuck, anyway, when a
World Tree System has a loop, or some other screwup in code it can start
making bugs, YGGDRASIL bugs look like very stupid rabbits with
eight legs. Fixing the code error is just the first thing you have to do,
those Bugs, once they're out there, can multiply by brachiating, like a
fractal creates more curves as you change the values, the longer they exist
at all, the more chance they multiply, ewwww."
"That's why you're here?"
"Yeah, enough Bugs popped into this world that some of them got away
from the immediate vicinity, so every so often, when something weird
occurs, I rush over to see if a Bug is there and if it's multiplying. Then I
crush it back into ether. Sigh, but there were enough that got out, I don't
know if I'll ever get them all."
"I'll help you, Skuld, then you'll get all the Bugs." said Terai, rather
solemnly.
"Well, I could get you a copy of my hammer, Terai, but ...", Skuld cut off
her sentence in surprise.
Terai had reached across from where she was sitting and touched Skuld's
forehead Goddess marking with her index finger. "**Goddess, your will
is mine.**", she intoned.
**********
In the TV/Dining room, Keiichi and Urd were watching the video tape.
Belldandy had been knitting, but her head snapped around to face Skuld's
room.
"Hey", said Keiichi, "I hear a sound, like popping popcorn."
Belldandy jumped up and raced down the hall towards Skuld's room.
"I can't believe they're cooking back there, not after the dinner we had.",
said Urd.
A door slid open and Belldandy could be heard, barely, going "Eeee!",
over the sudden patter of ...many small footfalls?
"Now it sounds like a rain storm.", said Keiichi, and, thinking he might
need to cover the sidecar motorcycle, turned around to get up, so he was
facing the hallway and Urd had her back turned, still watching TV.
"KON'ICHIWA!" came the sound of literally a hundred, maybe more,
small voices as Waves of small Skulds, each about 1/2 meter high, and
with eyes streaming out light, poured into the TV/Dining room.
In a heart beat, Keiichi was literally hip deep in them. "BELLDANDY!",
he yelled, and tried to make his way toward Skuld's room. It was very
much like swimming against a flood, he thought, which ,of course, only
started to make him panic since he was deathly afraid of water. A few
laborious steps later he was a meter closer to the door to the hallway and
now up to his stomach, since Skulds were now carrying Skulds over their
own diminutive heads He opened his mouth to call her again, but then the
tide of Skulds swept him away.
Keiichi was deposited outside the Temple house. Here, the Skulds were
running the hose, making impromptu puddles and using them to teleport
away. Skulds were still pouring out of the Temple house, and as he
circled around looking for a way back in , Keiichi saw that every door and
window was now pouring out Skulds. It was obvious that Keiichi was
going to have to wait till something changed to get back in. There had to
be thousands of Skulds by now, but the torrent coming out of the Temple
house showed no signs of ebbing. Of Belldandy, Urd or Terai there was
no sign.
