#like he's locked in the basement which is actually some underground sewer thing

[ridiasfangirlings]

Saru no there are better ways to get a hot merman to save your life. So say Yata's a merman and he lives a perfectly normal life in the sea, he's not supposed to go to the surface or let humans see him and he's always been told that humans are bad news. Even so he's always been kinda curious what it's like up there, he probably has visions of like swimming to the surface and fighting off a bunch of vicious humans like a he's a superhero. One day he decides to swim out to a part of the ocean where he's never been before, just to see what's there and maybe have an adventure, and that's when this huge ship passes above him. Yata's never seen a ship this big so he swims closer, even surfacing right next to it. Yata's having fun swimming around the ship when he suddenly hears this splash to his right. He turns to see there's a human drowning, presumably having fallen off the ship. Even though he knows that he shouldn't let humans see him he can't just leave this guy to drown and Yata decides to save him.

He drags the human onto the nearest beach and Yata can't help but be interested by him, like he's never met a human before after all and are they supposed to be so pale and skinny. The guy's skin is really smooth too and Yata finds himself leaning in to get a closer look. The guy's eyelashes start to flicker and Yata gets a glimpse of the bluest eyes he's ever seen before quickly diving back into the water before he can be seen. He swims behind a rock though so that he can keep watching as the guy sits up and shakes his head, clicking his tongue as if annoyed. Yata notices that the ship is coming closer, presumably to pick up the guy he just saved, and finally Yata reluctantly dives back under the water and swims back home.

Yata can't stop thinking about that strange human he saved though so a few days later Yata goes back to where he saw the ship. He's swimming along the shore when he hears a splash near this small cliff, Yata goes to investigate and there once again is the same guy that Yata saved last time. Yata's probably like what the hell if you can't swim stop going near the water, like he just can't believe this guy. Of course Yata goes to save him anyway, dragging him back up onto the beach and then going to hide when the guy wakes up. This time though there's another tongue click and a sullen voice saying 'stop saving me, you idiot.'

Yata's immediately like hey I'm not the idiot who keeps almost drowning, realizing too late that he just showed himself to a human. The guy doesn't seem fazed though, irritated expression never wavering as he says he was trying to drown. Yata's really confused about that and a little concerned, like sure he doesn't know this guy but who would ever try to drown. Yata awkwardly introduces himself and asks the guy's name, getting a curt 'Fushimi' in reply. Yata's like look Fushimi I don't know what your problem is but trying to drown is a super bad idea, Fushimi snorts and says Yata doesn't know anything about him and should just go away.

Yata gets angry and is like fine I will, turning and heading back into the ocean. But he can't stop thinking about Fushimi and he's worried that maybe Fushimi will try to drown himself again so he heads back to the beach the next day. Fushimi's there again, walking along the beach, and Yata's immediately like 'don't drown yourself again.' Fushimi sullenly says that wouldn't work anyway, since Yata's here, and Yata's like that's right I'm always gonna be here so you can't drown yourself. Fushimi has a momentary shocked look but then he says that Yata shouldn't say stupid things he doesn't mean, Yata's like I mean it I'm gonna check on you every day. Fushimi clearly doesn't believe him but Yata intends to show him and they start meeting every day at the beach, becoming closer and Fushimi's clearly confused about how Yata really is always coming back for him.

One day Yata goes to the beach though and Fushimi isn't there, he's immediately worried because even though he doesn't know much about Fushimi's life he's aware that there's something with Fushimi's family that's bad enough he was trying to drown himself. Yata feels super helpless that he can't go find Fushimi and finally in desperation he goes to Sea Witch Hisui to ask for help. Hisui agrees to give him legs, but he needs to find Fushimi within three days or he'll go back to normal (oh and also he'll belong to Hisui unless Sea King Mikoto wants to trade for him please don't look too closely at that fine print it's nothing important). He also has to give up his voice, Yata doesn't get how he's supposed to find Saruhiko without his voice but Hisui says body language works wonders above the surface and Yata's like well I guess.

Yata gets his legs and spends some time flailing around on land trying to get used to this whole sudden being human thing. Imagine him traveling to the nearest town and getting all these stares because he's wearing a sack and he can only communicate with wild gestures and animated expressions. Yata's getting super frustrated when he spots this guy in the marketplace, a guy who looks kinda like Saruhiko does. Yata decides to tail him and follows him to this giant castle outside of town. Yata doesn't see Saruhiko in the house but then maybe he spots the guy who looks like Fushimi coming up from the basement and he's like carrying a pair of glasses that are definitely Saruhiko's. Yata realizes that this must be Fushimi's dad and he decides to like present himself to Niki to try and get a job at the castle. Niki is amused at this weird mute kid who apparently wants to become one of the servants but he figures maybe this kid will be fun to torture a little so he hires Yata, now Yata has to endure Niki's terribleness all while trying to find out where Fushimi's being held and rescue him before the three days pass.

[dragonrajafanfiction]

Genji Heavy Industries (Part 2) Into the Underground

Chu Zihang makes me have a surprisedpikachu.jpg here.

ITT: The MC can have ally chats and date both genders soooo...

The elevator descended to the bottom floor. The door opened to pitch black.

Chu Zihang flicked on the flashlight. The beam of light illuminated the dusty statue of the Virgin Mary. Although pigment has faded due to age, the Virgin Mary statue is still flushed with a magnificent red and gold, which indicates that the paints they used were mixed with real gold powder.  

This is the second basement level of the Takamagahara. The building actually had a second underground floor and one of the four elevators was a freight elevator that could reach this floor.

"This house looks pretty old!" Lu Mingfei exclaimed, "This style is not like a Japanese house." 

"Before World War II, this was a Catholic church. After the Meiji Restoration, many priests came to Japan to preach, and there were many Catholics at that time. This was once a stronghold of the faithful in Tokyo, where dozens of priests lived and held regular services and masses." Chu said, "When Tokyo was bombed in World War II, the bas-reliefs and arches were destroyed, leaving only the main structure intact. The store manager saw its location and rented it, spending a lot of money to renovate it into a nightclub. The stage was originally where the organ was housed, and the card seating area was originally the choir stalls. This floor was a confessional and reading room, and was used as a bombing shelter during World War II. To this day it is a government-planned shelter, although the store manager is using it as a storage room." 

You’re riding on Caesars back, your legs straddling his waist and propped up by his arms. Even though there was no danger yet, you were still slightly inebriated by your night’s show and he insisted on carrying you until you sobered up. Practical reasons aside, he made it clear that he wanted you to stay close to him. You were essential to the mission. You surmised also that his own personal code of honor and justice pushed him to go the extra mile.

Everywhere the flashlight swept was grey with dust. The four walls were painted with chalk. The floor was just smoothed with cement. The walls still had traces of smoke and fire and, in the corners, were stacked organ parts, enamel-decorated pulpits, and two or three human-high crosses with aged ochre vestments hanging from them. You can vaguely feel the prosperity of this Catholic Church back then. You imagine the clergy shuttling to and fro, the sound of voices reciting the Bible. No one could have imagined that, a hundred years later, this place would become a nightclub of sound and fury of male strippers.

Chu Zihang found a cellar well in the corner of the hall. It was covered by an old-fashioned cast iron well cover. The rusty cover was probably hundreds of years old, and the German markings of the cast iron company were indistinct. Chu Zihang and Caesar worked together to move the well cover, and the sound of water gurgled in the darkness. 

"The sewer entrance is actually inside the building!" Lu Mingfei whispered in surprise, “So Hydra won’t even notice us going in and out of the Takamagahara!”

"It's indeed a very coincidental thing." Chu Zihang said, "I also did not expect the entrance to the sewer would be hidden in Takamagahara. I found the sewer map of Shinjuku district from the Internet. It doesn’t look very big. There are only a dozen sewer entrances and exits. Most of them are housed in a sewage treatment station. Only this cellar well is the exception. It should have been sealed long ago, but because it was connected to the shelter, it happened to provide an escape route, so it was preserved. I should say we got lucky, we found the shelter at the same time we touched the back entrance of Genji Heavy Industries."

Lucky, huh? You raise your eyes again to the statue of the Virgin Mary and the words of Z in your dream echoed. He was doing this for a reason. Was it revenge for Black Swan Bay? If so, why wait 20 years? He told you frankly that you wouldn’t be able to understand until the very end. But your skin was starting to crawl.

“MC! Come on.” Caesar was waiting for you at the entrance. He once again lifted you up on his back and carefully you descended into the pipe.

They went down the iron staircase into the sewer, the flashlight illuminating the mossy brick wall. The structure of this section of the sewer was very old, completely different from the modern Iron Dome shrine, with a semicircular cross section. A water channel was in the middle and narrow paths for walking were on both sides. The ceiling is draped with some kind of aquatic plant, dark green and hair-thin, and if you are not careful, they will brush your face like cold hands in the dark. There was a foot-long black shadow slowly creeping across the corner, and when Chu Zihang shone his torch over it, it suddenly accelerated and disappeared into the dark green plants, emitting a woofing sound similar to a dog's bark. Lu Mingfei was so scared that he leaned back, Caesar held him up in time, otherwise he would have been planted in the gutter. 

“Stop being so jumpy!” He hissed.

"It's a mud salamander, a kind of salamander, native to North America." Chu Zihang locked the thing's exposed long tail with the beam of the flashlight. "It eats the eggs of aquatic animals, which prevents them from overpopulating the sewers. They put them in the sewers as scavengers." 

"Holy shit! Scared the hell out of me! There are actually such dumb things in the sewers!"

"Each city's sewers are an ecosystem, where there is sufficient water but basically no sunlight. Those species that can adapt to the darkness will quickly reproduce and eventually form a stable biosphere." Chu Zihang walked ahead with a flashlight, "The sewer ecosystem of each city is different, related to the city's rainfall, temperature and the acidity of the groundwater. The most important thing to be careful of here is the small things like blood worms, they may lay eggs on you. The big things are mostly not dangerous, even the water snakes are also not venomous." 

"Anywhere you go, the sewers are not built all at once. The sewers you see now are the sewers of Shinjuku district a hundred years ago. Tokyo had a massive renovation of the sewer system ten years ago, connecting all the old sewer systems, and the excess groundwater enters the Iron Dome Shrine through the various sewers, and is purified and discharged into the sea from the mains. If we keep walking, we’ll eventually enter the main channel." Chu Zihang glanced at the map in his hand, "About 600 meters further we will pass under the Shinjuku subway station, where there will be giant water turbines, through the turbine holes we will enter the Iron Dome Shrine." 

"Brother were you born in the sewers, so you know so much about them?" 

"I googled it."

"But you can't read Japanese." 

"I have Google Translate, and I learned a few sentences of Japanese through Google Translate." Chu Zihang switched to Japanese and said, "Thank you for your patronage. I look forward to seeing you again. Would you like some more wine? Cry if you are sad. And that's about it." 

“You’re so smart.” You say, “Maybe someday I’ll be as smart as you.”

“You’re very intelligent in your own way, MC. Mostly by way of survival. In Chizuru, you didn’t hesitate to wait until nightfall, find your own clothing, make your way to the Internet Cafe and fend off attackers. You recognized the danger of the gangsters long before we did. And in the end, if I hadn’t distracted you, you probably would not have been injured. Those are the major examples. I could go on longer with the smaller examples. When I think of them I’m glad you’re our friend and not our enemy.”

“Aw…” You say, resting your head between Caesar’s shoulder and neck. “I bet you say that to all the girls.”

Caesar snorted. “Speaking of flirting, I’m very surprised not even the hottest men of Tokyo could earn your favor tonight. You really didn’t see anything in any of them?”

“They each tried to sell themselves to me very well. But I wasn’t interested in what they had to offer. It’s not that they didn’t have anything.”

“If you had no choice and had to pick one… which one would you choose?”

“That’s a weird question. I’m wondering why it matters. Have you bet on a favorite to win?”

“No. I just don’t think it’s good to walk alone in the world. I was honestly hoping that you and Mingfei Lu would get along a bit better but…”

“It wouldn’t be good for someone like me to court an ordinary human. Playing like this for a show is… alright.”

“You loved someone back in your old place… what was he like?”

“She.”

Caesar’s eyebrows lifted. “Oh!”

Mingfei’s head swiveled in your direction. “You like girls!” He slaps his forehead. “It all makes so much sense now!”

“I didn’t know I did until I was asked that question about lost love. It’s a bit sadder now because if I had understood my feelings then, I would have told her.” You shift your gaze back to Mingfei. “Can I ask you something? Are both your parents Chinese?”

“Yeah, why?”

“You look like someone I used to know. I think he may still be alive. I liked him too.” 

“Then you swing both ways?” Lu Mingfei seemed to be having a mini-crisis. How was he supposed to protect your innocence from everyone in existence? It was funny to see him frantically holding back his bangs, concerned about that rather than being worried about breaking into the headquarters of the most powerful organization in Japan.

Caesar’s eyes shifted in your direction. “If you need help searching for survivors, you have the full support of the Student Union.”

“Thanks… If anyone could survive, it would be him.”

“That would be nice if you could meet again. Pick up where you left off maybe?” Mingfei rested his arms behind his head.

You stare at him in silence and give a sigh, your chest rising against Caesar’s back.

“Don’t mind him. It’s going to hit him in like an hour.” Caesar grumbles.

You bury your head in his shoulder, giggling.

[dreamsinthefoxhollow]

Under the city

We found a tunnel entrance under a building. We first thought it led to sewers, but actually led to maintenance corridors under the streets and buildings, long tunnels filled with metal cages and machinery and pipes and cables. Not really dirty, but unused and a bit dusty and oily in places. Other places were very clean as if recently occupied. Lots of secured heavy doors in the walls. Some had sliding armored windows. The doors led to the basements of various businesses, or to other hallways.

I was following a female reporter around as she was walking the corridors. Everywhere we went was mostly well-lit, with only a few places with slight darkness. Nothing spooky at all. Just a feeling of spooky due to being underground in the city, with hundreds of thousands of people and cars just above, and no one at all down in the tunnels where we were.

We went to a heavy metal double door and peered through a window. It seemed something weirdly green and vaguely human was in there. It turned to look at us. We ran. We saw it come through the door far behind us, following us at a fast walk. We ran through a door and into a mechanical area. Lots of wire cages and machinery. All the doors were locked. Some others were open but only lead to dead ends. There was no way out. The thing was at the door now. There was just one more door leading to a side corridor with more machinery. We ran. We weren't fast enough. The thing was right behind us. The reporter turned and screamed. I turned and laughed. We both laughed. The thing following us was a huge hulking man, severely overweight, well over 6ft tall, with a face like an angry baby. It was actually silly. He walked past us and vanished from sight.

We went back out, and to a corridor that seemed to run directly below a sidewalk. There were frosted panels near the top of the corridor, or probably glass windows coated with dirt from years of neglect. They would have been at or just below street level outside. The panels glowed like fluorescent lamps from the outside light. This corridor was very clean. It linked together the basements of several businesses. I peered through a few locked steel door windows to the storage areas of shops, or passed locked steel doors with no windows. A group of children came running around me. We went to the double door the "monster" had come out of. It was unlocked and it was the basement of a toy store. The children spread out in amazed glee at having all the toys to look at, while I did much the same, but also wondered if there were any security cameras or motion sensors to worry about. Someone came running around the corner. It was a Terminator robot all gleaming silver and my gut reaction was to punch it in the face and run away. The robot flopped over instantly and the head fell off. It was just a mask. It was just a fake metal suit. It was just some guy dressed in a silver robot costume. He was also dead. The fall to the ground after I hit him had cracked his head open like splitting the top off a coconut, and his brain sat on the floor next to the silver mask.

The children screamed. I ushered them out to the corridor to get them out of the way. I had to run up some metal stairs and fin the rest to get them to leave as well. They were grossed out by the body but ran out without complaint. I had a large cell phone and I tried to call for an ambulance, but I had no phone signal. I went up to the main store area. I'd probably trigger an alarm but that would only help. I got to the roof of the building, which was sort of a stack of rectangles and some garden-style walls like star patterns (as seen from above). I made the call and the ambulance was on the way. I went back down into the store and waited.

Random people arrived and were wandering around the store. I tried not to spook them. They were age 20-something young women. They were the store workers. I told them about the body below and the ambulance which was on the way. I went back to the basement to wait. There was a lot of noise nearby. The ambulance crew were entering through a different underground corridor, one lower than the corridor we had come through. They had to drag their heavy equipment up metal stairs from below.

They went to the body while I spoke to others who arrived. There was a shout and we went to look. One guy dressed in firefighter gear was bent over and was saying there was no body there. We looked and there was just the mask and some blood and a weird slimy stain against the wall, leading to the left of us. We followed it along the wall and it ended at a small hole in the concrete floor, like a bathtub drain without a drain cover. There was a lot of blood and ripped flesh around the hole. Someone else shouted they had found something, too. There was a clear pipe running along the wall we hadn't noticed, and inside was a weird slushy red substance. The guys managed to get the pipe free from the wall and were pushing the substance out. It was like hamburger slush, all red and gooey. It finally stopped falling out and was a spot of grey gooey stuff on the floor.

There was a sense of strange dread. Something had dragged the body and managed to shred it and suck it into the tiny drain. And worse … It might have been the actual building itself, the building we were still standing inside of. It could kill us all the same way.