Go West

By Eline (Kanzeon on ff.net)

Dedicated to my PC, Elektra T_T

The Uncut and Uncensored Author's Edition: http://www.theparapet.net/max/shite/go02.html

(Know the power of the strikethrough function!)

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After an uncomfortable night on the floorboards of the Stinkin' Codfish, Mari Su woke up groggily and told herself that things would look up as soon as they left the godforsaken surrounds of Were'am-mai.

"Ughhh . . . I think I must have ate something bad . . ." Goku swallowed some antacid and frowned at his belly. "Was that fish last night fresh?"

Mari Su raised an eyebrow, too tired to be helpful. "You want know *why* they call this place the Stinkin' Codfish?"

"I'll pass. Where's our ride?"

"I don't know," Mari Su said truthfully, though she had a faint idea that there had been much riding going on upstairs last night.

Their new travel companions emerged later and consumed two jugs of hot coffee before they deemed themselves awake enough to leave. Wise to the ways of the inn kitchens, they did not touch any of the breakfast victuals except for the toast.

"Eh, where's your transport?" Mari Su asked after they emerged out onto the only road wide enough to be called a street in the godforsaken settlement of Were'am-mai.

"Ah, here he is now . . ." Hakkai held up an arm and allowed a small white lizard-like-thing with wings to land. "This is Jipu--our transport."

They stared at the small white dragon for a moment. It squeaked cutely at them and preened.

"Erm, it's kind of small for a dragon, isn't it? That kind of dragon can't even lift a coconut! Not even in pairs," Mari Su exclaimed when she saw their "transportation".

"Kyuu!" their transportation squeaked indignantly.

"Now you've gone and upset Jipu," Hakkai said, stroking the little white dragon like it was a pet. "There, there--she didn't mean it *that* way . . ."

But before they could get to the part where Jipu turns into a jeep like we all knew he would, trouble arrived in the form of an average-sized mob of youkai.

"We're looking for . . . uh, Sha Gojyo!" the leader of the mob called after referring hastily to a scrap of paper. "The employer, hereby known as 'Boss', wants your head on a platter together with a few choice bits, if there are enough pieces of you leftover. However, the Boss will just settle for a great deal of grievous bodily harm visited upon your person."

"Ah . . . that last man you swindled was more persistent than we thought," Hakkai said to Gojyo.

"It was a fair game--some people are just sore losers," Gojyo said with a shrug. "Besides, if he had enough money to pay this lot to follow us here, he's too rich by half."

"Yes, but what do we do about *them*?"

"Oh easy . . . Hired muscle, brainless as doorknobs."

"But they outnumber us ten to one . . ."

"We've been in tighter spots," Gojyo said, ignoring the mob entirely. "Remember that time about a year back? You, me, a jar of sake and two hundred youkai out for our blood . . .."

"Indeed," Hakkai said with a fond smile.

Goku cleared his throat. "Ano . . . this is all very nice--"

"--and romantic and everything, but don't you have other things to worry about right now," Mari Su said, waving her hands desperately to get their attention.

"Yes, yes . . . I'm sorry, but we're all rather attached to our body parts at the moment," Hakkai called out. "And I cannot let you take pieces of Gojyo away because I have dibs on him first."

"You and what army?" some youkai asked, emboldened because they did, in fact, out-number our intrepid travellers ten to one.

And because they really weren't that bright, they did not know that the narrative imperative always favoured the hopelessly outnumbered in fics like this.

"Charge!" the lead youkai shouted. It should be noted that he managed to wind up at the *back* of the aforementioned charge he was supposed to be leading. This was an integral part of being the leader of a mob--the leader always has slightly more IQ points and knew that being in front of a charging mob was the fastest way of being demoted without any red tape involved.

"Let Hakkai deal with this," Gojyo said with a lazy wink.

"Oh dear, I don't really want to see anyone hurt," Hakkai said in a regretful tone as he unbuttoned his shirt. "Well, I apologise in advance . . ." Something in his stance and the glint in his monocle gave them pause.

Predictably, someone said, "He's only one guy!"

Gojyo lit up a cigarette, the perfect picture of someone supremely unconcerned about the potential carnage that was about to happen in front of them. "Saaa . . . just watch."

So they watched as Hakkai took his rather cool limiter ear-clips off and faced down the mob.

"Well, I think we're all done here . . ." Gojyo said after two minutes and a lot of screaming later.

"Yargh . . ." Goku and Mari Su said incoherently. They had been standing too far back for the spray and the . . . other bits to reach them, but they had received a full-colour preview of What Happens When Hakkai Takes Off His Limiters.

"Unless he totally forgets himself and doesn't put his limiters back on . . ."

"Yargh!?!"

"Then I've gotta resort to Plan B . . ."

"Yargh?"

"Strip naked so that he'll drag me into the bushes for crazed youkai sex and I can get his limiters back on. Usually afterwards."

"Yargh . . . Yeesh."

"Aw, you didn't lose it completely," Gojyo said when Hakkai came back, buttoning up his shirt neatly.

"Gojyo--not in front of minors," Hakkai said with a wink. "Jipu--it's time to go."

"Kyuuu!" *poof and pretty lights* And a jeep occupied the space where the dragon used to be.

"Oi, stupid monkey and weird girl!"

"Yargh?"

"Let's get going."

So Mari Su, Goku, Gojyo, Hakkai and Mari Su's impractical luggage piled onto the jeep and they chugged out of the godforsaken hick-town of Were'am-mai.

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* * * * * * * * * * *

There was a knock on the door. It was the kind of knock that seemed to imply that the knocker did not want to knock on this particular door but was forced by extenuating circumstances to do so.

"Homura . . ." Shien's soft voice, not entirely ideal for this kind of job, floated through to the room beyond. There was a stirring from within as the knocking continued from without.

"Homura!" Zenon, in his militant and loud style, produced better results.

"Eh?"

"We're supposed to be getting on with the Plan," Shien said delicately.

"You know, the Plan? The Big Plan we've given up practically everything to pursue?" Zenon said, rolling his eyes at Shien. "The Plan that you said would work and create a new Utopia in which you would never be uk--"

"Right, right," Homura said hurriedly. "Give me a minute!"

"Honestly," Zenon huffed, "we're about an hour late starting this revolution already . . ."

"Homura has been distracted of late . . ." Shien pointed out.

"Yeah--I can imagine why . . ." Zenon and Shien looked distractedly into the distance. "Hmmmm . . ."

* * * * * * * * * * *

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About nine hours later, the jeep stopped outside a gas station in the heat of the afternoon sun. They were no longer in the godforsaken hinterland surrounding Were'am-mai. Unfortunately, they did not know where on the face of this wretched fanfic universe they were either.

"I thought we were supposed to be going somewhere," Goku said.

"I thought you knew the way?" Mari Su complained as they topped up Jipu's petrol tank with Diesel for Dragons.

"I thought you knew where you were driving to?" Gojyo said to Hakkai.

"Ah ha ha . . . Sumimasen--"

"You lost the map, didn't you?" Gojyo asked, tactfully refraining from banging his head against the petrol pumps.

"So we will buy a new one," Hakkai said calmly, heading for the small shop attached to the gas station.

"Food too!" Goku chanted, bouncing along behind.

"More cigarettes. And a drink--make it a big cold drink."

"The toilet!" Mari Su sighed in relief. It wasn't easy, being the only female on the trip. For one thing, she couldn't go out in the middle of a desert. There hadn't even been any convenient bushes along the road in this fanfic.

Five minutes later, they were at the cashier with a pile of beer, snacks, two maps and four hot dogs.

"That'll be eighteen ninety-five," said the cashier, obviously bored out of her skull.

"Oh dear . . ." Hakkai patted his pockets apologetically.

"Just how large was the bill back at that inn?" Gojyo whispered.

"Quite large . . . we spent most of it on the sake that night . . ." Hakkai whispered back.

The cashier looked up, fully intending to tell them to pay up or clear out. That was before she was momentarily stunned by the redhead and the brunet in front of her.

A quick whip-around produced five dollars and thirty-five cents in spare change.

"That much alcohol, huh?" Gojyo said thoughtfully. "No wonder I don't remember a thing . . ."

"I spent almost everything I had back on food at the inn," Mari Su said, rolling her eyes.

"Oi, Monkey Boy--still got that card?"

"What, this?" Goku pulled out the lami card.

"Yep, thanks." And Gojyo turned back to the drooling cashier with a disarming smile. "Hi, miss, we're just a bunch of poor travellers . . ."

(Kids, please don't try this at home--I'm pretty sure it's illegal.)

If the cashier had been quietly drooling at Gojyo and Hakkai before, she was drooling overtime as Gojyo turned on the charm. And the crowning touch was the card he held up in front of her.

"We need to help . . . a friend," Gojyo said, moving the card ever so slowly from right to left. The cashier's glazed eyes followed it--she was totally gone. "And isn't he pretty?"

"Pretty . . ."

"We don't need any money to pay for this."

"You don't need to pay for this," the cashier said, nodding along.

"Or for the gas."

"Or for the gas," the cashier agreed and they had to leg it before she could wake up from her trance completely.

"I can't say I approve of this . . ." Mari Su muttered as they walked out with three paper bags.

"Of course not, it's wrong," Hakkai said, popping open the regional map. "But then so is killing, cheating at cards and hitting on people who are not your SO."

"Er . . ." Mari Su glanced from Hakkai to Gojyo and back again.

"But I love him anyway. Jipu, are you done?"

"Kyuu!" the jeep squeaked and burped gently. Hakkai removed the petrol nozzle and stowed all their illegally-obtained goods onboard.

They hit the road and made it to a decent-sized town where Gojyo hit a few bars in quick succession. Two hours of hard card-sharping later, they had enough for motel accommodations and several meals.

Which led up to another impasse just before dinner in the their motel room . . .

Gojyo took a deep breath. "Let me get this straight . . . You don't cook, you don't clean and you don't know how to do laundry?"

"I know how to do laundry!" Mari Su said indignantly. "Only we used to do it in the river at home. None of this stuff with machines . . ."

"Ah . . . and in your town, the people used to drink the river water too--that explains *a lot*." Gojyo flicked the ash off the end of his cigarette. "Let's start again . . . Do you have any pertinent skills to speak of? Any contribution to this road trip at all?"

"Um . . ."

"Thought so. Which leaves doing the shopping. Take the ape and the shopping list out and be back for dinner, okay?"

And though Mari Su knew that Gojyo wasn't actually going to be helping Hakkai with the cooking, she seized on the chance to get out of the way. "Just don't do anything gross with the cooking utensils--"

"Hai, hai . . . get going and I'll teach you how to use a washing-machine later."

Removing themselves from the motel as fast as their legs could carry them, Mari Su and Goku were still able to hear the beginnings of something *very* hot being cooked up in the kitchenette.

"Hentais," they muttered and headed into town for more groceries, beer, sake, cigarettes and a few extra things on the bottom of the list that sounded pretty exotic and strange.

Mari Su found that most vendors gave up bargaining with her quite quickly. Goku didn't have the heart to tell her that she had the most annoying voice in the known universe and besides, he was hungry.

Fully intending to spend at least two hours out of sight and out of hearing range of their motel room, they bought takoyaki and walked *really* slowly as they asked shopkeepers for directions to the elusive items at the end of the list.

"I didn't know there were speciality shops," Mari Su said when they finally reached their destination. Several people had been very helpful, pointing the way to this rather hard-to-find store amidst the various . . . interesting establishments in that particular district.

"It's a big city," Goku said, mentally making notes and stowing them away for later, preferably when he was in the company of a certain blond priest.

An instructive half-hour later--fifteen minutes of which had been spent reading the labels in an aisle where one could find things called "Astro-glide" and "Jelly Pocket Rockets", the rest of the time had been spent gawking at the goods on display--they walked out with their purchases in plain white paper bags.

"Well . . ."

"Well, well, well . . ." Goku said bemusedly.

"I never . . ." Mari Su muttered, fascinated despite herself.

"Saw that much leather without cows in one place before?"

"That too."

"At least that was . . . educational," Goku had to admit. "I'm still hungry and there's half an hour more to go."

They stopped at a small corner-shop to get more pre-dinner snacks. And Mari Su bought herself a clue when she purchased a copy of Be Boys Gold from the magazine rack.

A thoughtful while later, they were back at the motel. Dinner, consisting of curry and saffron rice, was just ready and everything looked oddly spick-and-span.

"You're sure you didn't do anything funny with the utensils?" Goku asked, looking suspiciously at his spoon.

"Oh perish the thought . . ."

"There are much better things found around the kitchen to use," Gojyo informed them with a smirk.

"TMI!"

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All apologies to Monty Python and Jipu . . .