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A Different Beginning	By : Takeda Category: +S to Z > Spirited Away Views: 16070 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Spirited Away, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
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It's
Just a Dream

Chapter
2

Chihiro
looked back toward the direction she and her parents had entered the
strange town, trying to find a hint of life beyond the cleanliness of
the restaurants and the food that seemed to have come from nowhere.
The dirt street was empty though, so she headed right, wanting to go
deeper into the town to explore. But she stopped and glanced back at
her parents before she shook her head and sighed.

I've
got a really bad feeling about that.

She
continued on, though, making her way to the steps at the head of the
main street. At the top of them sat a rather strange structure that
may have been a sign or a greeting, but the kanji painted on it was
ancient, a dialect she wasn't familiar with. The architecture itself
was similar to the clock tower where they had come in at, so there
was no doubt in her mind that this town and the clock tower somehow
had something to do with each other.

For
a moment she examined the old kanji, then when she glanced to her
right her eyes widened. Wow.

It
was an aburaya, a huge aburaya. Similar to the clock tower in shape
but much larger with green tiles on the sloped roves and large
sliding doors on the sides. The entire thing was gigantic, but at the
same time it looked rather squat, like a fat little person, if that
made any sort of sense at all.

“Weird,”
she commented, walking towards the wooden bridge that connected the
aburaya to the town of restaurants.

The
aburaya looked to still be open despite the rather abandoned
appearance of the town. Great black streams of smoke plumed from the
chimney, the windows were clean, rattling in the wind. There was even
a waterfall of sorts, though the water itself looked kind of gray and
murky. The whole place was just strange, she decided once she was
standing on the bridge and looking over the side of the railing.

Chihiro
heard the scream of a train whistle and then a two-car train came
chugging out of a dark tunnel in the side of the plateau which the
town and aburaya sat upon. Her eyes brightened and she smiled
stupidly, “There's your train, Mom.”

She
hurried to the other side of the bridge, standing up on the lower
beam of the handrail as she watched it speed away. For a few seconds
she just stood there, running the tips of her fingers over the smooth
surface of the wood until she caught movement out of the corner of
her eye. When she looked over she quite nearly fell down.

To
her right, not but a meter and a half away stood the most gorgeous
man that Chihiro had ever laid eyes upon. He was inhumanly fair, but
not so much that it looked sickly, and he had the most intriguing
emerald eyes; the kind of eyes that demanded your attention
immediately. Once she managed to get past the shock of his eyes she
noticed his clothes, nobody wore those kinds of clothes anymore. Deep
blue hakama and a white yukata with a blue haori underneath, tied
with a blue sash.

He
gasped and moved closer to her, a look somewhere between surprise and
shock covering his features. Immediately, she stood up a little
straighter, blinking out of her momentary trance and halfway noticing
the shadows as they shifted on the bridge behind him.

The
man looked at her with an angry sort of frown, “You're not
allowed here. Go Back!”

A
confused expression crossed her face and she backed away from him a
little as she dropped from her perch on the railing. “Wha ...?”

“It's
almost dark!” he told her, still advancing, “Leave before
it gets dark.” Then he looked back in the direction of the
aburaya, his perfectly straight dark green hair swaying as he moved.
“They're lighting the lamps.”

They?
she wondered, following his gaze, they
who, there's no one here.

But
before she had the chance to voice her question he was looking at her
again and had somehow managed to push her off the bridge in the
direction of the town.

“Go!”
he urged her. “I'll distract them. Get back across the river!”

By
this time Chihiro was already halfway running back into the town, but
she glanced back at him a few meters from the bridge to find that he
had turned around. She noticed something white and shiny flow from in
front of him before she looked where she was running again.

The
neon sign for the cafe on the other side of the standing structure
flickered and began to glow, the lights on the inside and the red
paper lanterns around it turning on as well. She practically flew
down the first half of the steps that led back to the main street,
signs and interior lights and lanterns coming to life all around her
as the sun set. Then she stopped on the brief landing in the center
of the flight and turned to look back once more.

“What's
his problem?” she asked to nobody in particular before
continuing on down the steps and towards the alley shop she'd last
seen her parents in, or rather, where she'd left them.

Shadow-like
things began to rise up out of the ground all around her, but she
either paid them no mind or didn't notice them at all. She had to get
to her parents and leave this place. The shadows were everywhere,
though, in the restaurants, in the streets, on the wooden stools.
Wherever they came from, they were only making the bad feeling in her
gut grow more and more. Something really bad was about to happen if
it hadn't happened already.

“Dad!”

They
were right where she'd left them, she noticed with a small sigh of
relief as she skidded around the corner. But ... they looked a little
different ... like they were bigger or something, and their skin
looked kind of pink. That didn't matter though, what did matter was
that they hadn't stopped eating long enough to notice all the strange
things going on around them.

“Dad,
we gotta go, let's go home,” Chihiro urged, taking hold of his
arm and pulling, trying desperately to get his attention. “Let's
go, Dad!” she nearly growled at him in her urgency.

Then
he turned to look at her and she shrieked in horror. Her father had
the face of a pig, large nose, small beady eyes, and pig’s
ears! That explained why he looked so fat from behind, but ... he
couldn't
be a pig, he was a person! There was no chance that this ... thing
could be her father, despite the fact that it wore his clothes and
sat where he had not but twenty minutes before.

She
immediately let go of its arm and backed away, her eyes wide as her
hair stood on end. The pig thing went back to eating, hardly taking
notice of her at all. Most of the food was gone though, so it dug
further into the remaining items, nudging the dishes with its long
snout. Several of them fell to the ground with a crash, soy sauce
running from the counter to the broken porcelain below.

Oh
Kami!
she internally screamed, stuck between horror and disgust as she
looked on. This
is insane, I've lost my mind!

A
strange whip-like sound came from behind the counter and when she
looked back up she saw an arm, green, with webbed fingers and warts
here and there, smack the pig-creature with a fly-swatter. It was
only then that the teenage girl noticed the steam clouded kitchen,
the same kitchen that had been empty when she and her parents first
got there.

The
pig ignored the fly-swatter, digging for food more eagerly than
before until the frog-like arm hit it again and again right in its
face. It fell from where it sat on the stool onto its back, landing
in the food remains that were either half-eaten or had fallen when
the plates did. The food flew everywhere from the impact of the pig's
massive size and weight, landing a few feet away from where the pig
squealed its upset.

Chihiro
pushed herself up against a support beam to the overhang of the
restaurant, unable to look away in her horror. Her grayish-blue eyes
widened even more and she cried out, then finally pushed away from
the post. “Iia!” She ran back out onto the main street,
looking around desperately for any sign of her parents.

“Dad!
Mom! Where are you?!”

The
inhuman shadow-creatures moved up and down the street all around her,
hardly noticing the presence of the slight human girl. They writhed
with eyeless faces and soundless moans as they went. Some were
incredibly tall, others just looked like stretched out balloons and
other seemed to resemble centipedes. The last kind were the ones that
frightened her the most because they were at least
five times her size coupled with her adamant fear of insects.

The
shadows waved from behind some of the counters while others just kind
of crawled here and there, the fact remained that whatever they were,
they sure as hell weren't human. They were like black, featureless
ghosts, only they didn't float or glide; they were completely
opposite of what she'd envisioned ghosts as when she was younger.

Her
heart was racing as she glanced around the street, “Mom!”
Then she noticed the strange black shadow behind her and sprinted
down the main street towards the clock tower, thanking Kami-sama for
every brutal and agonizing soccer practice she'd ever had to endure.

Please
let them be there, please,
she prayed.

Darting
in between the shadow-creatures, she made her way to where the stone
frog sat at the top of stone steps. As she skipped down them, she
noticed water gushing from its mouth, but she wasn't paying attention
to where she was going. Her foot caught on a step and she fell
forward, bracing herself for a fall down the rest of the stone steps.
Instead, she fell into a body of icy water and was completely
submerged. Then when she broke the surface she gasped, her skin
feeling as if she was being shot through with hundreds needles over
and over again.

“It's
water?!” Chihiro sputtered as she tred her way back up to the
steps and pulled herself out, her hands slipping on the stone of the
steps.

Noticing
the reflection of lights in the water, she looked across the river,
clutching her arms across her chest and shivering slightly.

Then
she clenched her fists into her sleeves when she saw a faerie moving
slowly across the water's surface. She pounded her fists against the
sides of her aching head, trying to erase what was in front of her.

“This
can't be ...” but when she looked up, the lights, the river,
and the faerie were all still there. “I'm dreaming, dreaming!”
she declared, squeezing her eyes shut for a moment, but when she
opened them again, nothing had changed.

Chihiro
shook her head, pressing her fists to her eyes. “Wake up! Wake
up!” she crouched down, burying her face in her knees. “Wake
... up ...” Then she was rocking back and forth, “It's
just a dream, a dream. Go away. Disappear.”

She
felt like she was going insane. Nothing that was happening to her was
possible; the pigs, the frog arm, the lights, the lake, the faerie,
the man with the emerald eyes ... none of it. Her stomach lurched and
the need to empty what little contents contained within was
overwhelming, but she couldn't just get sick all over the steps,
that'd be disgusting. So, she swallowed and took a deep breath,
rubbing her eyes with tingling fingers ... Wait. What was wrong with
her fingers?

Looking
down at her hands she gasped, they were going transparent! So she
raised them up against the light of the faerie to make sure that her
eyes weren't playing tricks with her. But she could see the faerie
almost perfectly through her hands.

“I
can see through!” she cried out in shock, trying to rub the
color and solidity back into her limbs. “It's a dream, it's got
to be.” Then she covered her eyes with her hands and gasped her
shocked frustration when she could still see through them. Nonono!

When
she heard the boom of the faerie as it landed, she looked over
cautiously. It
can't get worse,
she thought, it
can't
possibly get
any worse.

Then
a wooden ramp came down and the doors flew open all on their own. A
single sheet of white paper at a time exited the doors, floating
maybe five and a half feet over the floorboards. Once they got to the
ramp, strange red cloaks appeared on them, having melted into
existence like wax, and then purple hat things appeared on their
heads in the same manner. But it wasn't necessarily the clothes they
wore, no, it was the fact that they had pieces of paper for faces and
no other distinguishing features. So she backed away from them and
looked down at the lake when she noticed pieces of movement out of
the corner of her eye. It was those shadow-things ... they were
coming out of the water!

It's
worse. It's worse!
her mind screamed as she tried not to and she bolted up a hill, away
from all the worse-ness that had decided to inflict itself upon her.

There
was an old wooden fence at the top of the hill and on the other side
were several old buildings, most likely the sides of the restaurants.
The corner was dark and looked like no one had been around it in
ages, but then, so had the train station, or rather, the faerie
launch. It didn't matter, though, it was vacant and she sure as hell
didn't want to see or be seen by the freakish creatures that she knew
were all around the town of restaurants. There weren't any strange
creatures and for that she was immensely grateful.

So
she ran over to the side of the building and leaned up against the
wall, breathing deeply to calm her frazzled nerves. Then the events
of the day caught up to her finally and she slid down the wall and
buried her face and transparent hands into her knees. She had great
reason to believe that her mother and father had turned into pigs and
even if they hadn't, she was all alone in the abandoned theme park.
Which wasn't quite as abandoned as her father had said it was, not to
mention the fact that a whole ton of weird creatures were coming in
by faerie, the field was now a lake and she was disappearing. All in
all, it wasn't a good day, it was actually a pretty bad day. Who was
she kidding, today just plain sucked.

Chihiro
sobbed silently, not knowing what to do. I'll
never be a pain in the ass again,
she promised, if
someone will just help me get out of here in one piece, I swear I'll
never be a pain in the ass again.

Almost
twenty minutes later, when she'd finally given up hope of having her
silent prayer answered, she felt a hand on her arm and one across her
shoulders. Her head snapped up and to her surprise, she found the man
from the bridge looking back at her.

“Don't
be afraid, I'm a friend,” he soothed, pulling her slowly closer
to him.

"No,
no, no,” she said, her arms clasped to her chest and she was
trying to back away from him.

She
saw him reach into his haori and take out something that looked like
a berry; he held it out to her, “Open your mouth and eat this.
Unless you eat something from this world you'll disappear.”

“I
don't want to stay here!”
She cried out and covered her mouth with her arms, “No, no,
no.”

When
she tried to face mush him away with her hands, she was shocked to
find that her arm went straight through. It shifted through his face
and hair and she moved her fingers just to make sure it was really
her
arm. Not a hair shifted as she did so, he wasn't affected by this at
all.

Ha!
Take that you nasty physics teachers,
she thought with a sort of sick satisfaction.

“Don't
worry. It won't turn you into a pig,” he told her, pressing it
closer to her, his hand passing through hers and his other still on
her shoulders. His fingers maneuvered past her lips gently as he
pushed it into her mouth. “Chew it and swallow.”

Oh
Kami that's bitter,
she thought, squeezing her eyes shut and doing as he said, though
rather unwillingly.

“Good,
you're fine now.”

She
opened her eyes and looked at him skeptically, not quite believing
that s single berry had the ability to make her solid again. Not that
she even knew why she had gone into an anti-solid state to begin
with.

He
held his hand out with his palm facing her, “See for yourself.”

Rather
timidly, she touched her fingers to his palm, hoping that she wasn't
being tricked. As she felt the skin of his hand she sighed in relief,
looking up to see that he was still looking at her with the same
stoic features, “I'm all right.”

“You
see?” he asked, taking hold of her hand, “Now come.”
He stood, pulling her with him.

But
she pulled her hand back, “What's going on? Where are my
parents? They didn't really
turn into pigs ... did they?”

The
man looked down at her, “You can't see them now, but you will.”
Then he narrowed his eyes and looked off into the sky as if he were
searching for something.

What
are you looking for?
she wondered curiously, though a bit annoyed that he hadn't even
bothered to give her a real answer to her question. A rather confused
expression crossed her face and she glanced up to see what it was he
was trying to find.

Suddenly,
he crouched down in front of her, hiding her from whatever it was
that he had seen.

“Wha
...?”

“Quiet!”

Then
she saw it, a black bird with the head of a woman that wore her hair
in a huge puffy bun, an enormous monstrosity of a bun actually. How
the hell could she fly with that thing on top of her head like that?
The face was hideous, though, sharp and terrifying features, not to
mention the mouth full of jagged teeth. She inhaled sharply, fighting
the urge to scream in her all-consuming horror.

The
man pulled her closer as he pressed their bodies up against the wall
of the building behind them, his left arm across her shoulders and
his right braced against the building. Her heart beat sped up
dangerously at the closeness that she'd never been bothered by from a
boy before ... it shouldn't be so different. The man hiding her
couldn't be any more than two years older than she ... so he was more
of a young man if she thought about it. Thinking, however, was now
out of the question, though, he was so damn close to her ... And just
as she forgot how to breathe, the bird-thing flew off, the green eyed
man watching it until it was no longer visible.

He
pulled away from her a little, "It's looking for you.”

Say
WHAT?!
she so desperately wanted to scream at the top of her lungs.

But
he stood suddenly, his telepathy obviously needing some work, trying
to pull her up with him. “There's no time, let's run.”

Chihiro
pulled herself up, or at least she tried to, but when she found she
couldn't she looked disbelievingly at her legs. “Of all the
times to fall asleep ... this is impossible.” It wasn't the
same though, she could tell after she noticed that there wasn't a
tingling feeling of numbness, they just wouldn't work. “What
the ... I-I can't move!”

He
crouched back down in front of her and looked directly into her eyes,
startled grayish-blue against calm jade. “Calm now. Take a deep
breath.”

She
gave him a well-how-the-hell's-that-supposed-to-help look, “What
... why?”

“Do
as I say,” he told her, as if he wasn't to be questioned and
that's just the way it was.

And
resisting the urge to punch him right in his pretty face, she did as
he said, inhaling deeply. Not at all believing it would work for the
first half of a second, but then she remembered that was the exact
same thing she'd thought about the berry. What could it hurt?
Besides, he'd done nothing to deserve her skepticism, so she'd trust
him ... a little. It wasn't like he'd turn into a dragon and eat her
or anything.

The
green eyed young man extended his hand and ran it over her leg,
making it feel warm and something akin to butter or jelly-like. “In
the name of the wind and water within thee ...” he spoke and
his hand took on a bluish glow. “Unbind her. Get up!”

She
blinked, rather surprised that she didn't feel and different, and she
was about to ask if she was supposed to but he pulled her up into a
standing position. I
guess it worked, then,
she thought.

Then
he started running at what felt to her like the speed of sound. The
wind was rushing through Chihiro and she could have sworn that she
heard it as they passed. Together, they headed down a dark alleyway
toward the metal door at the end with red writing on it that she
didn't have the opportunity to read. The man waved his hand and the
door opened all on its own just before they ran into it.

Now
that was odd,
she thought as the door shut again behind them.

The
room beyond the door was full of huge barrels which were filled with
ginormous rocks of which she couldn't fathom a use for. The man
practically drug her down a flight of wooden stairs and past several
enormous black jugs with red coverings over the lids. Then they were
in the butchery and she thought she was going to be sick. She'd never
been good in dealing with surroundings like that. It wasn't the
blood, no, blood didn't bother her at all. She'd had enough cut knees
and skinned arms during the soccer seasons to last her a lifetime. It
was the cut up animal sides hanging from hooks and chains in the
ceiling that really bothered her; for some reason, it just made her
sick to her stomach.

There
were giant fish sides here and there, sides of pork and Kami knew
what else. And the next second she felt like she was going to freeze.
They were in a large freezer, full of frozen fish and other sorts of
things. When they ran through the door that lead out, it too closed
behind them all on its own.

This
is getting really weird now.

Not
that a freezer or butchery was weird, but the contents were. Where
the hell did one find fish that big? Some of the fishermen back home
... not that it was home
anymore ... would love to get a catch that big. Of course, this
entire place was odd, maddeningly strange, and a bit unnerving all in
the same ten minutes. She'd give just about anything right now to be
back in her father's little blue Audi, listening to the Miyavi CD,
and on her not-so-merry way to the house her family had been forced
to move to given their financial situation. If her father had just
gotten a normal desk job, it would all have been all right. But
noooo, he had to become a job contractor for demolition and
construction. Drain the river, build apartments, tear down the
apartments, build a shrine, tear down the shrine and build more
apartments.

“It's
a new job in Tochinoki,” he'd said, “it's not that far.”

Oh
but it was, it was far enough that he'd decided the night after that
they had to move so the commute would be shorter. If he would have
just left the damn river what's-it-called alone, then they would
still be at home. Not in this abandoned amusement park that's really
not abandoned because, oh yeah, these weird things that look like
shadows pop up out of the ground and then pig-things are just
randomly sitting on stools at the restaurant where her parents had
been eating, and let's not forget that the field had turned into a
lake with the faerie and the things that came out with nothing but
sheets of paper for faces.

Before
she knew it, they were running through a huge pig pen, filled with
enormous pigs which squealed at them as they passed. They lights from
the ceiling illuminated their pink skin and Chihiro gasped.

There
were hundreds of them, all crammed into the separate pens together
like sardines in a can. That couldn't possibly be comfortable, not at
all. It did, in fact, look incredibly uncomfortable. Then she vaguely
wondered if the pigs she'd seen at the restaurant were in there, and
despite the fact that she looked from one to another, she couldn't
tell any of them apart. They were all the same. As the man lead her
to the exit on the other side of the pens, she noticed where he was
taking her and wanted to pull away so she could run back the way they
had come.

He's
taking me back to the aburaya?! she
internally screamed, the lights glowing sharply in
the
distance. He's
lost his mind, didn't he tell me to get away from there?
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A Different Beginning