Richie woke, freezing cold and soaked through his clothes and bedroll, disturbed and panicked from his frightening and brutal dream.
Did I piss myself?
He looked down with mounting aggravation at the sleeping Cuppy. "You little slacking fucker!" he roared, pulling off an elbow drop on Cuppy's stomach.
The smaller boy's eyes went wide like an owl's.
"Hoot?!" he gasped, clutching at his new stomach dent. "Cuppy's tummy… is upset…" he groaned.
Richie put Cuppy in a leglock, pulling mercilessly. "You had one job, you shitty fucknugget! Just watch me and wake me up if it looked like I was having a bad dream! What the hell?!?"
Cuppy rapidly tapped out on the floor, trying to signal a submission and secure his release from the stressful bind. "I was! I got sleepy and traded shifts!" he pointed at his marionette, propped up in a corner.
Richie blinked. "I'm going to strangle you."
"Any chance I can talk you out of that?" Cuppy ventured.
"Not likely." Richie sighed.
His eyes were bloodshot and moist. The chirping of morning songbirds drifted in from beyond the windows, where the first of the dawn's warm watercolor light began to reach into the apartment.
"Well, looks like we lasted the night, despite your best sabotage efforts." Richie conceded.
"Of course, my talismans held the fort." Cuppy beamed.
Richie looked over at the place where he had left the moonlight kanji page. The paper was blank.
-
Over the subsequent days, the grudging roommates brought the home together with secondhand and refurbished furnishings and appliances salvaged from the junkyard and donation bins, and raided the greenhouse for produce and the means to replicate it. Cuppy proved himself a surprisingly competent engineer, and helped carve out a channel connecting the fresh creek-water to an improvised storage tank, connected by a complicated system of hoses and suction physics, as with those that powered decorative fountains. They could try to catch a few wild turkeys to occupy the coop they patched together, but the craving for poultry was superseded by a utility that was still missing - power.
"Yes, it's a nice blender, Cuppy, but it's a paperweight as long as the breakers are out. I already tore the walls apart trying to figure out the electrical systems, and this entire block is fucked. I need you to help me collect spare parts to slap a generator together, Monday morning's booked for us." Richie scratched his head.
"No can do, friend, I got's school tomorrow." Cuppy shook his head.
Richie blinked a few times, a tic that was quickly becoming daily protocol for him at this point.
"The fuck are you talking about? What do you mean school?" Richie asked.
"Well, my memory before Station Bay is shot, and I look passable as a preteen, so I thought I'd take advantage and hit the books. I'm enrolled at the schoolhouse down by the art park, starting tomorrow." Cuppy said.
"What? When? How? You know what, fuck it, I don't care. Have fun reliving younger years while I break my back lugging metal shit to this illicit hole in the wall." Richie rolled his eyes.
"Don't take it too hard, big cat, there's more to learn from school than dumb books and wedgies." Cuppy said.
"And you would know? I guess I can't speak from experience, I never stepped through a school's doors. Ok, I'll humor you, enlighten me on what you stand to gain from passing yourself off as a kid - creepy, I might add - that you can't just find looking up shit in libraries?" Richie asked, curious against his better judgment.
"Juicy gossip, and rumors." the diminutive boy smiled.
"And this serves us how?" Richie asked.
"You need information, right? Do you think you're the only one seeing weird things around the city?" Cuppy asked.
"Well, no, not exactly, there's no reason to think others haven't seen the doors. That freak with the claws did, after all." Richie admitted.
"What better place to get the scoop on spooky stories and urban legends than school?" Cuppy said.
"I can't think of a good argument, and I hate you for that." Richie grumbled.
"Case in point. I need you to pack a lunch for me for tomorrow then. I'd like cheese and crackers." Cuppy smiled expectantly.
"You're a year older than me, pack your own fucking lunch!" Richie shoved the stunted boy.
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
"Worth a shot." Cuppy shrugged, and accepted the verdict.
On the promised morning, as Richie walked Cuppy to the bus stop and Cuppy stowed away on board the bright yellow school bus, Richie found himself contemplating his daunting workload to restore power to the apartment. The dread of the groan-worthy labor was offset by the surprised realization that in the course of little over a week, Richie had gone from fighting fellow street rats for crumbs to pulling a life together for himself, with help from this strange puppeteer from who-knows-where. He had begun to create a rudimentary self-sustaining farm, was working to restore power for heating and lighting, and in fact had the entire property to himself, its existence somehow forgotten from Station Bay's history, possibly by the same influence that had set Richie's journey in motion. He had trespassed into unknown realms separated from his own by time and space, reclaimed the animate power of his living, breathing dragon tattoos, spoken to his dearly departed mother, and even fought back and killed a ghostly creature intent on consuming his very soul. He supposed, when he had time to think about it, that the spirit's ability to siphon life force from Richie's body more or less confirmed the existence of that soul. For so long, his only concern had been the preservation of his body, to the degradation of his soul. It was stained with trauma and self-loathing, warped by the turbulent and amoral life he had been forced by circumstance to lead. Now though, as he began to take his own power into his hands, he began to wonder if he should feel hope. Perhaps his dirtied soul could be cleansed, and this new future he was living for was his long-awaited second chance.
Richie didn't want to die. For him, that had been his only reason to fight. But now, he realized he wanted to live. They were similar, but distinct concepts. There was room for more than animal instinct now. He looked over the walls of kanji they had painted, at the bean bag chairs Cuppy had insisted they liberate from the garbage heap, and at the unclean dishes of their last meal together, waiting for the return of running water - and he felt pride.
It was overwhelming, like looking up skyward from a high cliff, magnifying the sensation of falling. Richie decided that the construction of an electric generator could wait - he needed fresh air, somewhere divorced from the hustle and bustle of the city's main body. He took a walk in search of a park trail, still wary of unnecessary ventures into the forest where he had nearly lost his life, at least without Cuppy as backup. His search took him to one of the greenery districts, a coiling path snaking away from the crowded streets and imposing skyscrapers, straying off into groves of trees and shrubs. The morning air was cool and crisp, seeming so much fresher even such a short distance from the exhaust fumes and soggy residue of the city. Dew drops were visible on the blades of grass, sparkling where they caught the sun. It felt good to stretch out his legs in a more casual setting, and actually walk for pleasure for once, instead of a constant search for food, shelter, and resources.
His inner peace was spoiled minutes later when he caught the gated sight of flashing red and blue lights. A branching walkway at a right angle to the main path took Richie across a small intricate stone bridge spanning a babbling brook, onto a concrete path that led to an all-too familiar sight. Despite his impulse to put as much distance between himself and the authorities as possible, he found himself drawn to the police car lights like a moth to flame, and he recognized with mounting dread why that had been - Richie was looking upon the fence enclosure stage of the nocturnal battle within his vivid dream, where the blue-haired woman fought and killed the hulking oni. The police cars had not gathered on the grounds of an arrest, but of an investigation, and to seal off the crime scene with yellow caution tape. The cop cars formed a loose perimeter around the area, front ends scuffed from the all-terrain switch from streets to grassy hills, and a dozen or so officers in their black, startling uniforms were surveying the square area in which the stone flooring was smashed to a mess of rubble.
Richie even recognized the sizable dents in the fence, both where the oni's giant club had struck one stretch of it, and where the woman's ragdolled impact from the brute's merciless kick had deformed another.
"What could have done this?" Richie overheard one of the cops ask his fellow officer.
"It's no ordinary vandalism, that's for sure. This kind of destruction is on the level of a low-end terrorist attack, but the targeted location makes no sense if that were the case. Why blow up a shed area?"
"Maybe it's some kind of statement?"
Richie grew restless from eavesdropping on the speculating officers, and sick in his stomach as it dawned on him, heavy and unwelcome, that his dream had actually happened. He stumbled off, struggling to hold down his breakfast and clear his graying vision.
It was a terrorist attack alright, but not of the kind expected by down-to-earth city cops or government officials. The disgruntled aggressor had come from a world beyond the fog, and while he may have been acting alone, it was neither the first incident, nor would it be the last. But more than that, beyond the revelation that folkloric beasts of old could steamroll their way into a modern day, magicless Earth, something else was gnawing on Richie's instincts. The dream he'd had of that animalistic combat below the moonlight had happened more than a single night ago, yet only now was there a visible police response. This park was not like the lost apartment complex abandoned to time and weeds, it was regularly frequented by joggers and dog-walkers, and saw birdwatchers tossing bread chunks to geese who claimed the tiny lakes and ponds on a daily basis.
How could the battle have passed by unnoticed?
Richie didn't realize he had stumbled mindlessly into oncoming traffic until the honking of a semi truck horn crashed him back into awareness, and he meekly stuttered an apology as he trotted himself off to a sidewalk bench to stop and recollect himself and his thoughts.
The woman had said something - that the fog wouldn't last long, and that they should conclude their fight quickly. Was she conscious of prying eyes, and motivated to evade them? She had taken precious time and attention out of her ongoing life-and-death struggle to swat away a swarm of insects that, in retrospect, Richie realized had no business being there - not at that time of night, in those compact numbers, and in the vicinity of that violent and chaotic brawl.
When he had first seen the fog previously to this, it had been roped off and excluded from the public eye, under the official excuse of having been a poison gas leak, he would later learn. The agents who had marked off the perimeter of the supposed gas spill had not been humble street cops, and moments before this event, Richie had felt his gaze drawn toward that strange joined pair of towers, a building with no marks or signs, no windows, and seemingly no entrances. If the dream was true, it was safe to assume Richie had somehow engaged in involuntary astral projection to witness it. Was a similar psychic force responsible for guiding him to the apartments as well? And if so, had it told him that that unassuming building was more sinister than its occupants would like the common city folk to believe?
Richie was suddenly very glad that he had eyes and ears in the form of Cuppy in a crossroads of eclectic information after all.