The Angst (short fic)

From Echoalpha

Type:	Humor
Length:	About 1100 words
Date:	April 2002
Warnings:	None.

This takes place before the end of the first OVA series, but after the second OVA series and The Alternate World.

El-Hazard © AIC / Pioneer / Geneon.

                

The last time Nanami had visited with Makoto, he had just had a string of successes in his research. He might be able to bring Ifurita back any day now. His spirits had risen, even as Nanami had felt her spirits sink.

Makoto had been working continuously for weeks, and his friends had insisted that he take an afternoon off, and try to relax for at least a few hours. He had reluctantly agreed.

As Nanami walked to his room that afternoon, she braced herself. This might be her last chance. And, when she looked at herself, she was dismayed with how far she had gone this time. This is all so... depressing, she thought.

That's good, Nanami suddenly thought. I can "use" that.

She paused at Makoto's door. She brought out a large onion from her restaurant, held it to her face until she teared up, and then slipped it back in a pocket.

Then Nanami knocked on Makoto's door. Uncharacteristically, he answered it fairly quickly, as if he were expecting someone— and his jaw fell to the floor.

Nanami was wearing a long flowing black dress. She had covered her face with pale makeup, and she had used dark red lipstick and heavy black eyeliner. And she had dyed her hair a deep metallic blue. She looked like a cross between a clueless suburban teenage goth girl and... Ifurita.

Silently, she wafted into his room, like a restless spirit. She collapsed into a chair. And she put the back of one hand to her forehead, and sighed deeply.

"Na— Nanami!?" Makoto asked. "Are you... alright?"

"Of course not," Nanami answered, in a distant voice. "How could I be, when I must live my meaningless life... day after dark, dreary day... alone... so very completely alone..."

Makoto looked at her blankly. "Uh... are you having a nervous breakdown, or something?"

She rolled her weeping eyes to him. "No... but I could, if you wanted me to..."

He continued to look at her in complete confusion. "Huh?"

Nanami looked back at him a moment longer. Then, in a fit of more typical behavior, she lunged at him and grabbed him by his collar. "Fer cryin' out loud! Work with me here! I'm just trying to give you what you want!"

Makoto repeated himself. "Huh?"

Nanami shouted in his face. "I know I waited too long to talk about our relationship! But I've tried to do everything I could think of since then! I've tried to be the spunky girl-next-door, and the successful business-woman, and the intrepid sidekick, and still... nothing!

"So I asked myself... what's Ifurita got that I haven't got? And I finally figured it out! It's the ANGST! It's the heart-rending soul-numbing existential cosmic angst! It's GOT to be!

"What else do I have to do? Destroy a city, and then agonize about it? 'Cause, believe me, pal, I'm about ready to—"

She was interrupted by another knock at Makoto's door. Makoto gently pushed her away. "Uh, Nanami... why don't you, uh... sit down... and as soon as I answer the door, I'll summon Dr. Schtalubaugh, and he can bring you some powerful drugs... or maybe a nice straitjacket..."

Nanami swept back to the chair, and she swooned into it with another dramatic sigh, putting her hands to her face. But she peeked through her fingers, like a water priestess about to spring a marriage proposal, and watched Makoto open the door.

When she saw who was at the door, she growled.

Sweet mother of pearl, Makoto thought, as Shayla fell into his arms. Now there's two of them. Whatever it is, it must be contagious.

To her credit, Shayla hadn't copied Nanami exactly. She had simply colored her hair black, and she had eschewed the pale makeup for a more Stygian look, wearing heavy silver jewelry and a huge silver ankh with her black clothes and Cleopatra eyelining. Oddly, the "look" suited her more than it did Nanami.

But when Shayla opened her mouth, she revealed herself to be even more clueless. "Oh, Makoto... the darkness... and the despair... and... it's so dark... and... there's no light... and..."

Then she saw Nanami. "What the hell's she doing— I mean, oh, it chills me, it hurts me so very deeply, that I should have to confront this horror."

Nanami was not about to be out-angst'ed. "I feel so empty, so hollow, so dead inside, when I think of this dreadful—"

"OH NO!"

Nanami's soliloquy was interrupted by a cry from Makoto's still open door. Nanami, Shayla and Makoto turned to look.

Kauru was at the door. Unlike Nanami and Shayla, she truly had cried out in despair. And also unlike Nanami and Shayla, she was wearing a modest but colorful swimsuit, and carrying a blow-up horsie water toy.

Kauru looked at Nanami and Shayla with sad shiny eyes. "OH NO! Did somebody DIE? Oh, Mr. Makoto, we CAN'T go to the beach if there's a FUNERAL!..."

Fujisawa came to the door behind her, wearing a robe over his swimming trunks, carrying his young daughter in one arm and a picnic basket in his other hand. "No, no, Kauru," he said, "I think they're just—"

He was interrupted in turn by Miz and Afura. They had just got a peek into Makoto's room, around Fujisawa, and then they had collapsed outside his door with hysterical laughter.

Makoto gently guided Shayla to a second chair, next to Nanami. "You two didn't give me a chance to tell you," Makoto said. "They invited me to a picnic lunch by the lake this afternoon. Uh, would you like to come with us? It might, uh, cheer you up."

Nanami had put a hand over her face. She was so embarrassed that her blush was visible under her heavy pale makeup.

Shayla pulled a face, and drummed her fingers on the arm of her chair. "No, I think we'll both pass. Go ahead. Have... fun. We'll close your door after us."

Makoto sighed. He put his arm around a still distraught Kauru and guided her to the door. Fujisawa had to roll Miz and Afura out of the way; they were still laughing too hard to stand.

Nanami and Shayla didn't move or speak until well after the others had left.

"Damn," Shayla muttered. "Now I really am depressed."

Nanami looked at her. "Wanna go back to the restaurant, and drink absinthe until we go blind, and ponder the absurdity of our pathetic existence?"

Shayla looked back at her. "Sure. Drinking always helps— I mean, perhaps it will help us shoulder this burden of sadness, at least for a short while."

They both sighed deeply.