Categories > Anime/Manga > Mai HiME > Resolution
Prologue: You'll get your kicks...
0 reviewsA spring break trip to the beach exposes still untied threads both inside and outside of the lives of the HiME. Rated T for violence, language. Possible Shizxnat, Maixtate? I don't know, but I make...
0Unrated
My-Hime: Resolutions My-Hime: Resolutions
Author's Notes:
No OOC Here, hopefully. Sadly, I only just finished the series, so the likelihood of all of my characters being perfectly IC is fairly slim. I'll do my best. Please let me know if I've slipped up somewhere.
A lot of the supporting characters, such as Chie Harada, are not well-developed within the series, and thus I have very little to work with when writing them. They will play relatively important roles in this story, so I'll try to take as few liberties with them as I can, but you'll see some of my own design in them.
In spite of Japanese culture, names will be written first-last, rather than the typical Japanese last-first. This is because as somebody who is not Japanese, it is less confusing for me.
Finally, rather than wasting your time by re-introducing characters you already know, I'm going to skip that phase. This is a specialized community, and as such, I assume you all know who I'm talking about when I say "Mai". You'll probably get a general physical description anyway, but don't be surprised if it's unintentional.
Thanks for reading!
Prologue
You'll get your kicks...
Mai Tokiha found herself quietly singing the old tune, familiar to many but to her still fairly novel, as route 167 from Toba became route 260 towards Goza. To her, it was really all the same-grass and sidebar flashed by, there was a slight dip as they took the exit, and then they were going west instead of south. Still, though, she found herself thinking of the old American song as the car she was fairly well crammed into entered the last leg of the journey from Fuka Gakuen to Goza Shirahama Beach.
"On Route sixty-six," she sang to a car full of dozing students, a cool window, and an inattentive driver. It was a song she'd come across not long ago in a round of lightning karaoke; as just another karaoke song, it should have been like a groupie to a pop star: Used once and then discarded into the recesses of her mind; but for some reason, it had stuck with her like few other songs had.
"It winds from Chicago to L.A., more than two thousand miles all the way."
Something about the perky, jazzy beat had simply enthralled her, the way few other songs had. Music had a way of doing that-enthralling her without regard to her "tastes." She had a feeling it was like that for everybody; no matter what "kind' of music you like, certain songs simply ensnared you, often wonderfully, sometimes dangerously.
Who are those little girls in pain just trapped in castle of dark side of moon?
Yes, often dangerously. She said nothing about it, but that song had been coming back to haunt her increasingly of late. That song and that life.
She expected that this, too, was normal. Life had a way of not going away. No matter how far into the future you looked, life was still life; indestructible in many ways. The boy sitting in the seat in front of her was living proof of this.
"Get your kicks on Route six-six."
Unfortunately, the only kick she was getting here, now, from this living proof was a soft, somehow defiant snore. She stared at the back of his head, at the faux-blonde hair spiking inelegantly out in all directions, and reflected on the fact that this bothered her more than it probably should have.
She twisted her neck back around to stare out the window of the brown conversion van that she and eleven other people were squeezed into, dismissing the thought,
("Now you'll go through Saint Louis, and Joplin Missouri, and Oklahoma City is mighty pretty,")
and felt something small and warm slide around her waist, something a little larger, and far hairier, press into the back of her neck, making it itch just a little. She heard a small voice murmur in a half-asleep stupor, "Mai sings pretty," before a wet line of what could only have been drool began a slow decent from the warm hairy spot into the depths of her orange tank-top. She stifled a yelp and grimaced, realizing that once Mikoto Minagi was attached to her and asleep, she was fairly well doomed to this fate until the girl woke up.
And still, her mood, morose at best, did not lift. It had been nagging at her since
your life ended
spring break had started; this melancholy stupor that set in only when she was by herself. She couldn't put a name on it, nor could she put a reason, try as she might, but that didn't it from dropping her gaze a little, from demolishing her easy smile, from sinking her shoulders when nobody was looking.
She turned her gaze away from the window and turned the small thing clinging stoically to her away from her neck and back, allowing her to bury her head in Mai's left breast and allowing Mai to lean against the seat, rest her head for a while. She looked down at Mikoto fondly, shook her head, and forced it through her consciousness: You are going on a vacation. You are with everyone. You are with Yuuichi. You can't-- she stopped, went back. You are with everyone. You can't allow yourself to ruin your first spring break with your friends ever simply because some unknown depression is nagging at you. Be happy that you're here at all.
"Mai," the braid at her breast murmured, apparently only nine-tenths asleep, "you stopped singing."
"Honestly," Natsuki murmured from the left side of their bench, surprising Mai. "That girl..." Mai hadn't known that Natsuki had been awake at all, let alone paying attention to Mai's miniature concert. She was resting her head against the window as Mai had been, but with her eyes closed, her arms folded loosely across her chest.
"It's okay," Mai said, feeling a smile work its way onto her face without her approval. "I really don't mind. I'm sorry I woke you."
"You didn't," Natsuki said, still not looking up.
"Couldn't sleep?" Or didn't want to?
"Mmm. I really enjoyed listening to you sing," At this point, a shade of a grin appeared, ruining Natsuki's well-crafted image of aloofness. "What was it?"
"Route sixty-six. It's by an American named Nat King Cole." She paused a moment to consider whether elaboration would bounce off of Natsuki's head or not, decided it probably would, and chose not to waste her breath.
"Well," Natsuki said as though Mai had said nothing at all (proving her point about the rubbery effect of Natsuki's ears quite nicely), "don't let me stop you."
"I wouldn't want to keep you up," Mai protested. Karaoke was one thing; singing privately for somebody quite another, in her mind.
"Like I said, I enjoyed it. Besides, it's not every day I'll get to hear you sing." This was a very careful way of saying, Don't/ even think of draging me along on your excursions to that abysmal hell-pit you call the Karaoke shop. /
"You don't think so? Are you feeling all right, Natsuki?" This was a very careful way of saying, Screw you, you're coming if I have to tie you to the back of the van and drag you there.
"I'm feeling fine," Natsuki said, doing her best to feign ignorance of the subvocal exchange, her voice rising a decibel or two higher as she concentrated on choosing her words, carefully. "I just can't think of many places where I would be party to such a pleasant concert."
Mai smiled pleasantly. "I'm sure you'll be happily surprised at some point, Natsuki."
"Mmm," Natsuki repeated. "Maybe I will take a nap."
"I wouldn't want to keep you up."
"Wake me when we get there." Natsuki knew full well she would be doing no napping in this car. Cars made her uncomfortable.
"Mai," the small thing at Mai's bosom protested again. "Sing."
Mai sighed, looked out towards the window again, and did just that: "You see Amarillo," she sang, her voice quiet but not unpleasant, "Gallup, New Mexico; Flagstaff, Arizona; and don't forget Winona; Kingsman; Barstow; San Bernardino."
Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed that bastard of a grin back on Natsuki's face, and shook her head, annoyed and amused all at once, her fighting spirit poking its head out of layers of dust gathered from months of disuse. Fine.
She grabbed Mikoto's braid and raised it to her mouth like a microphone-a specific microphone, in her mind. The girl yelped and jolted awake as Mai suddenly broke full-out into the first cover of the old Cole classic by a Japanese High School student in stinted English:
"Won't you get hip to this timely tip: When you make that California trip, get your kicks...," Yuuichi's snoring got a little bit more insistent: He was awake now; and with him came Shiho, napping on his shoulder, rubbing at her eyes groggily. Chie Harada woke easily to find she could barely contain a laugh, and only for the sake of the girl, Aoi Senou, still napping next to her. "On route sixty-six."
From the driver's seat, Midori Sugiura turned her head back-dangerously-towards the group and laughed, shouting, "Sing it, Mai!" She took her hands off of the steering wheel, to the visible chagrin of Reito Kanzaki, also up front-she was apparently now steering with her knees-and mimed a saxophone, swaying erratically in an impersonation of an inebriated jazz artist, and making bizarre pseudo-instrumental noises.
Mai felt the physical weight of depression lift off of her chest, and she laughed and once more pulled Mikoto's braid towards her lips:
"Won't you get hip to this timely tip: When you make that California trip, get your kicks..." her voice had increased to a near shout by this point, and Yuuichi snored a little louder, a little faster, as though to make up for it. Aoi finally broke out laughing, and Mai finished, in the booming voice she reserved for the karaoke stage and the karaoke stage alone, "On ROUUUUUUTE..." she flicked Yuuichi on the back of the head, and he finally whipped his head around and shouted, "What the hell are you doing?"
Her reply was short and succulent: With all of her might, she positively screamed, "SIXTEEEEE...SIX!"
This, and the ruckus that ensued, destroyed the group's chances of any sort of a peaceful ride. Tate Yuuichi, Shiho Minakata, Akane Higurashi and her boyfriend Kazu, Natsuki Kuga, Aoi Senou, Chie Harada, Reito Kanzaki, Mikoto Minagi, Midori Sugira, Shizuru Fujino, and, of course, Mai Tokiha, dissolved into various states of laughter and wakefulness, banter and serious discussion, violence and peace, and for a while, all was as it was best. In Mai's opinion, anyway.
The man in black followed the path of the conversion van with his sniper rifle, and the tall grass by the side of the road didn't make a sound as he brushed it. Specifically, he followed the light brown head of one of the girls in the back. His target.
A very odd target, though. She couldn't have been more than eighteen. The youngest person he'd ever killed in the past had been twenty-five years old. It wasn't that he was necessarily /opposed /to the idea; only that before the age of thirty or so, most people didn't need to die so badly that somebody was willing to pay a price to have them killed by a professional.
Stranger yet, he supposed, was the fact that he hadn't been paid to kill her. He had been paid to watch her when she arrived, and notify somebody of it. Nothing more.
And he supposed that this was the time to do that. He supposed he was nothing more than a checkpoint for now; he had been put on retainer to his current employer, which meant that he was being paid a great deal of money to do just about anything his employer asked him to do. If that meant being a checkpoint, so be it. Maybe there were a hundred more like him and he wouldn't have to do any more work for this paycheck.
He leaned his head a little more to the right so that his ear touched his shoulder, triggering the small comlink inside. "Target has passed my location. Target is in the back seat, along with three other females of roughly the same age."
There was no reply for a moment, and then: "Confirmed. You can head back for the day. We'll be in touch."
The man in black let his sights track the van for a moment longer, and then sighed, relaxed.
"Of that, I have no doubt."
Author's Notes:
No OOC Here, hopefully. Sadly, I only just finished the series, so the likelihood of all of my characters being perfectly IC is fairly slim. I'll do my best. Please let me know if I've slipped up somewhere.
A lot of the supporting characters, such as Chie Harada, are not well-developed within the series, and thus I have very little to work with when writing them. They will play relatively important roles in this story, so I'll try to take as few liberties with them as I can, but you'll see some of my own design in them.
In spite of Japanese culture, names will be written first-last, rather than the typical Japanese last-first. This is because as somebody who is not Japanese, it is less confusing for me.
Finally, rather than wasting your time by re-introducing characters you already know, I'm going to skip that phase. This is a specialized community, and as such, I assume you all know who I'm talking about when I say "Mai". You'll probably get a general physical description anyway, but don't be surprised if it's unintentional.
Thanks for reading!
Prologue
You'll get your kicks...
Mai Tokiha found herself quietly singing the old tune, familiar to many but to her still fairly novel, as route 167 from Toba became route 260 towards Goza. To her, it was really all the same-grass and sidebar flashed by, there was a slight dip as they took the exit, and then they were going west instead of south. Still, though, she found herself thinking of the old American song as the car she was fairly well crammed into entered the last leg of the journey from Fuka Gakuen to Goza Shirahama Beach.
"On Route sixty-six," she sang to a car full of dozing students, a cool window, and an inattentive driver. It was a song she'd come across not long ago in a round of lightning karaoke; as just another karaoke song, it should have been like a groupie to a pop star: Used once and then discarded into the recesses of her mind; but for some reason, it had stuck with her like few other songs had.
"It winds from Chicago to L.A., more than two thousand miles all the way."
Something about the perky, jazzy beat had simply enthralled her, the way few other songs had. Music had a way of doing that-enthralling her without regard to her "tastes." She had a feeling it was like that for everybody; no matter what "kind' of music you like, certain songs simply ensnared you, often wonderfully, sometimes dangerously.
Who are those little girls in pain just trapped in castle of dark side of moon?
Yes, often dangerously. She said nothing about it, but that song had been coming back to haunt her increasingly of late. That song and that life.
She expected that this, too, was normal. Life had a way of not going away. No matter how far into the future you looked, life was still life; indestructible in many ways. The boy sitting in the seat in front of her was living proof of this.
"Get your kicks on Route six-six."
Unfortunately, the only kick she was getting here, now, from this living proof was a soft, somehow defiant snore. She stared at the back of his head, at the faux-blonde hair spiking inelegantly out in all directions, and reflected on the fact that this bothered her more than it probably should have.
She twisted her neck back around to stare out the window of the brown conversion van that she and eleven other people were squeezed into, dismissing the thought,
("Now you'll go through Saint Louis, and Joplin Missouri, and Oklahoma City is mighty pretty,")
and felt something small and warm slide around her waist, something a little larger, and far hairier, press into the back of her neck, making it itch just a little. She heard a small voice murmur in a half-asleep stupor, "Mai sings pretty," before a wet line of what could only have been drool began a slow decent from the warm hairy spot into the depths of her orange tank-top. She stifled a yelp and grimaced, realizing that once Mikoto Minagi was attached to her and asleep, she was fairly well doomed to this fate until the girl woke up.
And still, her mood, morose at best, did not lift. It had been nagging at her since
your life ended
spring break had started; this melancholy stupor that set in only when she was by herself. She couldn't put a name on it, nor could she put a reason, try as she might, but that didn't it from dropping her gaze a little, from demolishing her easy smile, from sinking her shoulders when nobody was looking.
She turned her gaze away from the window and turned the small thing clinging stoically to her away from her neck and back, allowing her to bury her head in Mai's left breast and allowing Mai to lean against the seat, rest her head for a while. She looked down at Mikoto fondly, shook her head, and forced it through her consciousness: You are going on a vacation. You are with everyone. You are with Yuuichi. You can't-- she stopped, went back. You are with everyone. You can't allow yourself to ruin your first spring break with your friends ever simply because some unknown depression is nagging at you. Be happy that you're here at all.
"Mai," the braid at her breast murmured, apparently only nine-tenths asleep, "you stopped singing."
"Honestly," Natsuki murmured from the left side of their bench, surprising Mai. "That girl..." Mai hadn't known that Natsuki had been awake at all, let alone paying attention to Mai's miniature concert. She was resting her head against the window as Mai had been, but with her eyes closed, her arms folded loosely across her chest.
"It's okay," Mai said, feeling a smile work its way onto her face without her approval. "I really don't mind. I'm sorry I woke you."
"You didn't," Natsuki said, still not looking up.
"Couldn't sleep?" Or didn't want to?
"Mmm. I really enjoyed listening to you sing," At this point, a shade of a grin appeared, ruining Natsuki's well-crafted image of aloofness. "What was it?"
"Route sixty-six. It's by an American named Nat King Cole." She paused a moment to consider whether elaboration would bounce off of Natsuki's head or not, decided it probably would, and chose not to waste her breath.
"Well," Natsuki said as though Mai had said nothing at all (proving her point about the rubbery effect of Natsuki's ears quite nicely), "don't let me stop you."
"I wouldn't want to keep you up," Mai protested. Karaoke was one thing; singing privately for somebody quite another, in her mind.
"Like I said, I enjoyed it. Besides, it's not every day I'll get to hear you sing." This was a very careful way of saying, Don't/ even think of draging me along on your excursions to that abysmal hell-pit you call the Karaoke shop. /
"You don't think so? Are you feeling all right, Natsuki?" This was a very careful way of saying, Screw you, you're coming if I have to tie you to the back of the van and drag you there.
"I'm feeling fine," Natsuki said, doing her best to feign ignorance of the subvocal exchange, her voice rising a decibel or two higher as she concentrated on choosing her words, carefully. "I just can't think of many places where I would be party to such a pleasant concert."
Mai smiled pleasantly. "I'm sure you'll be happily surprised at some point, Natsuki."
"Mmm," Natsuki repeated. "Maybe I will take a nap."
"I wouldn't want to keep you up."
"Wake me when we get there." Natsuki knew full well she would be doing no napping in this car. Cars made her uncomfortable.
"Mai," the small thing at Mai's bosom protested again. "Sing."
Mai sighed, looked out towards the window again, and did just that: "You see Amarillo," she sang, her voice quiet but not unpleasant, "Gallup, New Mexico; Flagstaff, Arizona; and don't forget Winona; Kingsman; Barstow; San Bernardino."
Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed that bastard of a grin back on Natsuki's face, and shook her head, annoyed and amused all at once, her fighting spirit poking its head out of layers of dust gathered from months of disuse. Fine.
She grabbed Mikoto's braid and raised it to her mouth like a microphone-a specific microphone, in her mind. The girl yelped and jolted awake as Mai suddenly broke full-out into the first cover of the old Cole classic by a Japanese High School student in stinted English:
"Won't you get hip to this timely tip: When you make that California trip, get your kicks...," Yuuichi's snoring got a little bit more insistent: He was awake now; and with him came Shiho, napping on his shoulder, rubbing at her eyes groggily. Chie Harada woke easily to find she could barely contain a laugh, and only for the sake of the girl, Aoi Senou, still napping next to her. "On route sixty-six."
From the driver's seat, Midori Sugiura turned her head back-dangerously-towards the group and laughed, shouting, "Sing it, Mai!" She took her hands off of the steering wheel, to the visible chagrin of Reito Kanzaki, also up front-she was apparently now steering with her knees-and mimed a saxophone, swaying erratically in an impersonation of an inebriated jazz artist, and making bizarre pseudo-instrumental noises.
Mai felt the physical weight of depression lift off of her chest, and she laughed and once more pulled Mikoto's braid towards her lips:
"Won't you get hip to this timely tip: When you make that California trip, get your kicks..." her voice had increased to a near shout by this point, and Yuuichi snored a little louder, a little faster, as though to make up for it. Aoi finally broke out laughing, and Mai finished, in the booming voice she reserved for the karaoke stage and the karaoke stage alone, "On ROUUUUUUTE..." she flicked Yuuichi on the back of the head, and he finally whipped his head around and shouted, "What the hell are you doing?"
Her reply was short and succulent: With all of her might, she positively screamed, "SIXTEEEEE...SIX!"
This, and the ruckus that ensued, destroyed the group's chances of any sort of a peaceful ride. Tate Yuuichi, Shiho Minakata, Akane Higurashi and her boyfriend Kazu, Natsuki Kuga, Aoi Senou, Chie Harada, Reito Kanzaki, Mikoto Minagi, Midori Sugira, Shizuru Fujino, and, of course, Mai Tokiha, dissolved into various states of laughter and wakefulness, banter and serious discussion, violence and peace, and for a while, all was as it was best. In Mai's opinion, anyway.
The man in black followed the path of the conversion van with his sniper rifle, and the tall grass by the side of the road didn't make a sound as he brushed it. Specifically, he followed the light brown head of one of the girls in the back. His target.
A very odd target, though. She couldn't have been more than eighteen. The youngest person he'd ever killed in the past had been twenty-five years old. It wasn't that he was necessarily /opposed /to the idea; only that before the age of thirty or so, most people didn't need to die so badly that somebody was willing to pay a price to have them killed by a professional.
Stranger yet, he supposed, was the fact that he hadn't been paid to kill her. He had been paid to watch her when she arrived, and notify somebody of it. Nothing more.
And he supposed that this was the time to do that. He supposed he was nothing more than a checkpoint for now; he had been put on retainer to his current employer, which meant that he was being paid a great deal of money to do just about anything his employer asked him to do. If that meant being a checkpoint, so be it. Maybe there were a hundred more like him and he wouldn't have to do any more work for this paycheck.
He leaned his head a little more to the right so that his ear touched his shoulder, triggering the small comlink inside. "Target has passed my location. Target is in the back seat, along with three other females of roughly the same age."
There was no reply for a moment, and then: "Confirmed. You can head back for the day. We'll be in touch."
The man in black let his sights track the van for a moment longer, and then sighed, relaxed.
"Of that, I have no doubt."
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