Okay, my Inbox is finally dumped, a 3556 waterfowl cut from my neck.
Now it's time to start posting, writing and C&Cing like there was no
tomorrow. BUT, I have writers block, so what's an Otaku to do? Write a
One-Hour challenge, and a Guess Who at that! Wai! Wai! Actually, it's
pretty easy, please C&C, MST, and FFIRC it to your heart's content. Heh,
and I bet you guys thought you had gotten rid of me...

	Can you guess that I'm looking for a better title? 

OtakuNXS presents...

		Blood and Sap 

	Lightning flashed and thunder rolled, the skys boiling like a smelting
pot of raw still. Yet the rain itself seemed afraid to fall, as though
for every pain and charged moment spent in the sky, it was nothing to
the searing touch of the scorched Earth. The city simply quietly waited,
it knew the water would eventually come, despite it's reluctance. Sheets
of sky tears to wash away at least the thinnest layers of grim,
transforming them to the cleaner, more acceptable form of mud. 

	While the buildings below waited for cleansing, the man above waited,
for defiling. Flashes of light served as a poor illumination, but it
fitted his mood. With practiced hands, he flipped through the book of
paper, ink and nubile, big eyed females. As he turned another page, he
was completely unaffected by the story unfolding. The angst as the hero
as he said his last farewells, farewells that his lover would never
hear, the impact as the piloted mecha collided with the heart of the
dark beast that had threatened an entire multi-verse. 

	The words didn't touch the man, the pictures gave no feeling of
elation, even the scantily clad princess held no more meaning to him
then that she must be cold. The next page, however, an emotion did swim
up to the surface. Less of a tiny salmon swimming up the waterfall of
his apathy, and more of a Leviathon, swallowing him and his good ship
Serenity whole.

	The emotion was fear, and fear held it's own form of self loathing that
struck at the man far deeper then any harpoon he could of smited the
accursed beast with. A small trickle of blood ran from his thumb to flow
down to the page below. Ignoring the pain of the paper cut, the man
simply stared at the image in the right hand corner of the manga in his
hands. It was round, big eyed, seemed to be a child's scribbling
actually, defeniatly nothing that belonged in a Shonen serial with an
eight million press run. But there was more sadness, more agony, and
more malice in those round eyes then should ever to come from a simple
image. Especially one he had no idea of what it represented. even worse,
no idea how the image had made it's way onto every tankabon he had
produced this year.

	"Still, now I've found you. You won't get away." With a curse, he
smeared his thumb over the image, obscuring in it a tangle of ink and
gore. Bringing the afflicted appendage up to his mouth, he suckled at
the wound, his eyes roaming to the other book on his desk. It was a
children's story. 

	No guns, demons, or fan service, just a simple tale of a girl, her
family and a tree they all loved. A holy tree that seemed almost magical
to the little one, one that held as expected, a magical secret. The CEO
looked down at the beast, the tree's guardian as it danced about with
the little girl. It was huge, yet seemingly small bodied and ungainly,
and there was power to it's bearing. Not demonic or even angelic searing
power, just a natural feeling of hope, and that spring would come again.

	Then had come the villian. A young man in a black suit with a black
car. "This is all mine," the black suited man had said, "this is my
house, this is my grass, and that is my tree." Though the family
protested, they couldn't stop the man, as he approached the holy tree
with an axe. Bad men that the man in black had bad to be badder held the
family, as they cried. "This is my tree, it'll make good paper for books
and people will buy them." Casually, the man tore of the wishes that had
encircled the ancient plant, and tossed the dreams to the side. "This is
my tree, and this is where my plant, a paper plant, will grow where my
tree once stood." Then the man swung.

	There is an old question asked by those who see real life in the woods.
If trees screamed, would we cut them down? The man fell to his knees,
his hands on the window looking down on the street below. The clouds had
finally burst, and he tried desperately to feel the scouring water
through the glass. The tree had screamed. It still haunted him, he had
gotten into his big black car, and had told his bad men to burn the
village down, but still the screaming would not stop. Only when he had
fled into the deepest depths of the city did the noise lessen to a
simple ringing.

	Reagining some of his lost compusure, the man flipped to the last page
of the book. The little girl was all dirt and tears, she came to what
was left of the special place and found her freind had gone. In his
place was charred ground, and the forest was silent. The girl turned to
go, then she heard it. Inexplicidly, she heard something growing.
Turning, she saw a single flower, shudder and strecth as it tried
desperatly to feed on what life was left in the woods. Smiling, the girl
watered it with her tears, and fed it some candy from her dress. There
was always hope, in the next life, as long as the children lived, as
long as they understood. Maybe if she wrote a book, they would.

	The man turned the book over in his hands, and stared at the author's
picture. It was her, the little girl all grown up. How nice of them to
print such a detailed biography, it made it so much easier to find her.
Soon my dear, everything would be over and done with. Then he'd write a
book himself. About an obsessed woman, living in the past, and the man
whose brillance and perserverance struck a blow for the tommorrow of
Tokyo. Just one dirty deed, one stacked apon a thousand, and it was
done.

	A quiet knock awoke him from his dreaming, he smoothed over his hair
and placed the book back on his desk from where he had thrown it. His
back to the door, his eyes flashing with the latest bolt from above, the
man studied the beautifull city before him. All of it, glass and still,
none perverted by the green of infection, the green of decay. He waited
for the newcomer to shut the door behind them. "Ah, Ikari, it seems
you've been a bad boy. Well, we'll see to it that a flower is sent to
the funeral, something, syntehtic I think. Did she scream Ikari? Tell me
she screamed."

	"Sir?" A female voice asked confused, confused and definatly not Ikari. 

	His eyes went cold as he turned, they went back to normal proporitons
as he saw his secetary looking at him slightly mystified. "Yes, what is
it?"

	"It's about Ikari sir, he- they found, oh sir I'm so sorry." The young
woman breathed quietly. 

	Suddenly, a buzzing became a noise, and like as the storm outside
reseded, the noise became a scream, that of a male in incredible pain.
Sitting down as his desk, the man held his head as though it might just
fall off. His eyes fell to the desk and it's contents, a final brillant
crash outside illuminating the room. The picture had changed, there was
no rounded bunny face, just the scribbling of a man with long hair. All
the loss, and malice that had been in the phantom image's eyes before
simply replaced with nothing but the pain.


	Eleswhere, atop a certain paper plant, a soft moaning tune echoed as a
ball of white and black fur played a simple, ancient song. Slowly, the
creepers began to grow, and the forest began to reclaim what was
Totorro's due.

TIME'S UP!!!

	The fun is trying to guess when you play guess who... warning, fic does
not actually do an impersonation of Bela Legois trying to convinve Torgo
that he's just no his type... O negative.


(And the Moon was as blood, the Storms crashed and the Seas BOILED!)
(Typical, thought the Lobsters)  
      /  
 Oo
(~, )
 V