Chapter 1
Things had been changing a lot lately. The setting that was supposedly Japan but looked more like a Japanese artist's rendition of America was getting even more dark and unreal. It was starting to look almost gothic. But both the flower-shop running assassins and the chaos-bent members of Schwartz were a bit desensitized to surrealism. After all, they lived under the rule of a god as inconsistent and arrogant as Koyasu. So it wasn't until that January, when their bodies began to change too, that they began to really worry. Wait, no. Worrying is an understatement.
Brad Crawford woke up early, just like he had every morning since he was ten. The American had been living in Japan for nearly a year now, and he was used to the annoying white-washed vans driving through the narrow streets of the Kyoto suburbs blaring obnoxious overly-cheerful and sickeningly-polite female voice recordings of campaign slogans that gaijin didn't give a damn about. He sighed and slid out from under the covers of his bed, planting his feet on the cold floor. As he reached to brush his hair from his eyes he noticed it was getting rather long. He wasn't sure when he'd let in reach so far towards his back, but he shrugged it off, making a mental note to have it cut soon. He moved towards the bath with a small yawn and looked into the mirror....
A horrified scream coming from Crawford's room shook the other two members of Schwarz from their sleep.
Schuldig sat up straight, immediately aware of the ear-piercing sound. He fumbled with his tangled sheets for several seconds before racing frantically to the bathroom. He reached out and threw the door aside, and it slid back easily, making a loud snap as it hit the frame.
"Brad?! What the hell is-" he gasped, his words taken away by the shock. A stranger stood before him, with slick gray hair and slanted gold eyes that looked familiar and yet not at the same time.
The stranger stood in front of the mirror, still in his night pants and no shirt. Schuldig noted he had awfully defined hips for a man. He was shaking slightly, a look of terror painted across his face.
"Who..." Schuldig gasped, wishing he had his gun. He was on guard now, but shaken. "WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT DID YOU DO WITH CRAWFORD!!!"
The stranger turned, his feminine eyes looking terrified. "I... what is this... who are you?"
That voice. It was definitely Brad's voice. "WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON!!!" Schuldig cried, moving back from the doorway as the stranger with Brad's voice moved towards him.
"Schuldig?" he asked, his brow furrowed in concentration.
"Eh?" The telepath pushed past the man and stood in front of the mirror himself. And almost fainted. Looking back was another stranger with lighter orange hair that had a strange fluffy consistency to it, totally unlike his straight and casual mop of red-orange that he was used to seeing. And those bangs! He gasped, noticing that the reflection possessed blue eyes like his own, but they were far narrower and the lashes were ridiculously long. "Who... what... my..." he stuttered, stepping back from the mirror. "MY HAIR!!!" he screamed, dropping to his knees and cradling his face in his hands.
"What is it?" a smooth and familiar voice asked from the hallway.
Brad looked at the boy. And shrieked. "Na-NAGI?!!"
Schuldig jumped up from the floor and ran over to the boy with dark steel hair that hung ridiculously thick in front of his right eye. He poked him tentatively as if to see if he was real. "Nagi? ...Chibi?"
The teen glared at him. "What the hell is your problem?"
Schuldig just kept poking him.
Irritably the young man moved past the two traumatized adults and looked into the mirror himself. The other watched, waiting for a reaction like their own. But it didn't come. He just shrugged and looked back over at his teammates. "So? The settings changed."
Schuldig's jaw dropped. "But... but... but.."
Nagi held up a silencing hand. "Look. We've been through this sort of thing before. When Schuldig discovered he could jump over buildings, when I showed up out of nowhere two days after I'd died beside Tot under rubble, when you two found yourselves in a busy district in Kyoto after we all sank in the elders' tower.We're not real. Does it really matter so much. You know this."
Schuldig began to sob. He fell to the floor again, fists clenched. "Koyasu.this is all Koyasu's fault.KOYASU!!! DAMN YOU KOYASU!! YOU'RE A CRUEL AND VENGEFUL GOD!!!"
Brad heaved a long sigh, seeming to have recovered from the initial shock. "Well I guess the kid's right. Let's just get dressed and go. We have a species to destroy.unless Koyasu changed our character motivations too." He glanced up at the ceiling and then shook his head. "Whatever," he mumbled.
Schuldig sat on the floor for several minutes as his teammates passed him and proceeded to go back to acting like nothing happened. Finally Nagi returned to where he was slumped in the hallway and bent over slightly. "Hey."
The once red-headed-now-turned-carrot-top looked up at the still unsettling face.
"Look Schuldig. We're gonna get booted from the plot if you don't get it together. Now go get dressed."
Broken and bitter, the telepath stood and stumbled towards his room, totally immersed in gloom. He opened his closet and reached in, expecting to feel the familiar worn fabric of his green jacket and cotton shirt. What came out in his hands was something much different.
Nagi sighed irritably as another scream came from down the hall. He liked his new clothes, with a nice classy, cool-black coat and neat buckles. He'd been damn sick of wearing that stupid schoolboy uniform even though he never went to school. Apparently Schuldig was not so happy with his new wardrobe.
The telepath held before him the most horrifying outfit he'd ever seen in his life. "They're... really... trying to point out that I'm from Germany, aren't they?" he stuttered, studying the monstrous attack against traditional German attire. Frantically he dropped the clothes on his bed and searched though his closet, hoping beyond hope that he had multiple costumes for the new season. No such luck. All he found was a little beret that would suffice to cover his awful, flipped up bangs. Sighing he looked back at the clothes on his bed. The yellow cotton shirt was still there, but it looked like it had gotten bigger, and with it he was expected to wear suspenders and a pair of tight black pants. "This is fucking abuse," he muttered, resigning himself to getting dressed.
Brad was lingering outside of Nagi's room, trying to make sense of why the collar of his over-puffy shirt wouldn't unbutton so that he could actually put the tie under it instead of around. Finally he ended up just tugging it tight, shoving it under his jacket over the annoying ascot. Nagi exited his room and stared blankly at their leader. Brad was scowling, trying to decide if he'd get in trouble for cutting the fringes off of his cuffs.
"You look like a vampire," Nagi commented flatly.
Crawford noted the neat and tasteful coat and gray pants that the youngest member was wearing. "Easy for you to say," he growled, reaching into his jacket pocket expecting to find the glasses he usually left in his old jacket's pocket. To his surprise he pulled out a single round glass lens attached to a gold beaded cord. "Ah Christ! I would really like to have had vision in BOTH of my eyes," he muttered, trying to figure out how monocles are supposed to stay on. To his surprise it balanced easily over his right eye, like magic. He was obviously showing his surprise because Nagi moved closer to his side.
"It's anime. Don't question it."
Brad frowned. "How come you get the cool clothes this time?"
"I was stuck in a school uniform for twenty-six episodes. It's only fair."
"Forget it," he said, waving his hand at the boy. He did feel kind of bad that he'd never actually sent Nagi to a school, but there hadn't been enough time in 26 episodes to give him a school subplot. "I'm having pancakes for breakfast, in honor of the fact that I'm supposedly American even though this costume makes me look like I'm from Transilvania."