Part 105 The Shufflebout Chiba Polytech freshman Belldandy Morisato gingerly massaged her ankles, trying to knead out the tension coiled in her heels. If she had time, she would have massaged almost every inch of her body; it wasn't just her feet that were still feeling a bit tender after this afternoon's rugged workout. She wasn't used to so much running, and the strenuous sessions in the weight room were only making her knees sore. The weight room was Tamiya's domain; the senior squad leader often bull-horned threats in her ear, causing Belldandy to push herself beyond her limits on the exercise machines. And then there was squad practice. From 4 to 5:30pm, Coach Chihiro had made the entire team do "dig-n-burns". The concept was simple...the team would split into two squads, and then face off against each other. Standing behind the court line, each player would run out into the mid-court as fast as she could and dig for a spiked ball fired from the other side of the net by one of her teammates on the "spiker's" side of the court. Only digs were allowed...any other types of return resulted in laps. After making a diving dig, she would then dash full-sprint around the net to the other side of court, where she would wait her turn to fire one off over the net to the "digger's" side of the court. But there was no standing still...each team member had to run in place while she waited for one of the coaching assistants to set her up for a spike. On the receiving end, she would have to bunny squat while waiting in line before taking the court for a chance to dig out a spiked ball. And if the Coach caught anyone with her hands on her hips, she'd have her run ten laps... In other words, it was much more grueling than anything Belldandy had ever experienced in high school. But that's what you get when you have a former Olympian volleyball player as a coach...and you're attending college on an athletic scholarship. "Some scholarship," Belldandy grumbled as she rolled her kneecaps under her skin with her fingers, loosening them up. Once again, she felt like she had signed up for one of the Self Defense Force's boot camps, rather than the Chiba Polytech volleyball team... Belldandy looked up miserably at the bulletin board, which was crammed with layers of fast-food delivery ads, guy's phone numbers, doodles, postcards and pictures of idol stars and various announcements. This whole scenario was much different than what she had pictured college life to be. Her senior year in high school, she had joyously accepted the athletic scholarship, thinking that this crucial next step in her life would be a springboard for adventure and independence. She had assumed that college life as a volleyball team member would be one long fun-fest, with lots of guys to hang out with and parties to go to, and luxurious dorms for the athletes with catered meals in private cafeteria. But the Athletic Director who recruited her never told her about *this*... The Girl's Dorm was an old run down two-storey affair located several blocks from Chiba Poly. It looked squalid on the outside; a shapeless concrete fab with broken-down shutters, peeling paint and rotting eaves. Inside, it was crowded and house-pitted; seasoned with the heady smells of perfume, food, booze, sweaty clothes and musty textbooks. In other words, it was a dump. "This place is a pit...and once again, I'm stuck here all alone minding the fort on a Saturday night. Why? Because I'm the freshman!" Belldandy lamented as she pulled at her long auburn-colored hair. She removed the sports tie, finger-combed her hair, and then pulled it through the tie again. Captain Tamiya kept pestering her to braid her hair for practice, but Belldandy thought that braiding would be too rough on her hair. So she had elected to use sports-bons to tie her hair back. Needless to say, someone in the Dorm seemed to keep 'borrowing' her favorite hair-ties. It just wasn't fair! She *really* needed a shower...she still had her wrist sweatbands on...but all the hot water had been hogged up by her upperclasswomen teammates. The chances of getting a hot shower seemed even more remote as she eyed the laundry room. Chiba Polytech only had one new volleyball scholarship this year, which meant that the team had only one new face. One freshman squad member. Her. She walked up to one of the windows and looked out at the orange night sky, but the night scene did little to stow the tides of irritation she felt. Her 'sisters' were all gone, having a fun-filled Saturday night on the town hitting Karaoke clubs. They were probably meeting all sorts of interesting guys, and having tons of fun... Belldandy sat down on the couch and stretched her legs. Her feet felt raw, her quads were throbbing with pain, and one of her elbows stung from a floor burn resulting from a particularly nasty dive to the floor a couple days ago. Jumping in for a dig during a scrimmage, her elbow pad had been dislodged and her elbow had taken the full brunt of the slide across the hardwood. It seemed that no matter what she did, she couldn't ever prove herself to Coach Chihiro. "This isn't *fair*!!! This *really* sucks!!!" she shouted to the empty hallway, full of girl-teen angst. In a pique, she grabbed one of the nearby towels and twirled it over her head before sailing it across the room. The towel cruised through the air, barely missing the break-room's bulletin board. But one of the small lamps in the lobby wasn't so lucky. The damp towel flashed and took out the small lamp. "Eeep!" Belldandy gasped, hoping that the lamp wasn't broken. She hurdled the couch and ran across the lobby to check on the lamp. The fixture was gaudy and cheap, probably worth a couple hundred yen at Grandma's garage sale. But she knew that if it was broken, she'd get yelled at by her teammates. Not because of the cost of the damages, but simply to ride her dignity down a notch. But to her immense relief, it was intact. She quickly restored it to its shelf, and then returned to the couch to pout. Being stuck in the dorm on a weekend night was bad enough. But it wasn't just mere house-sitting. As Captains Tamiya and Ootaki pointed out right before they left on cloud of giggles, she had *chores* to do on top of minding the Girl's Dorm. In other words, she was stuck with having to *do the team's laundry* tonight! All of the towels, the uniforms, the socks, the team's warm-up jackets...at least ten loads of stuff. And no hot water. Stomping her foot angrily, Belldandy swooped the offending towel up off the floor, wadded it up to a cotton density, and then blindly threw it as hard as she could, venting her spitfire. It slashed into the bulletin board...and Belldandy gulped as the *entire board* came down with a crash! "I'm so screwed!" she fretted. One of the pieces of paper that got knocked off the bulletin board floated upwards-downwards in a leaf-spring spiral. After a few seconds of twirly-birding around the room, it finally landed on her lap. "Probably some guy Captain Ootaki's after," she grumbled as she picked up the errant slip of paper. Captain Ootaki was one of the most popular girls on the volleyball squad, mostly because of her wild blonde hair and wilder behavior at parties. She didn't keep too many of her boyfriends, because she was simply too tall; at 194cm, she towered over most men. Unlike Belldandy, who...despite being over 10 cm above the national average height for Japanese girls her age...was still one of the shortest girls on the squad. But she had another strike against her in the dating department: she was also a gaijin. Her mother hailed from Norway...and Belldandy was the bellyfruit of a teenaged love affair her Mom had with a classmate in high school. Years later, she married Belldandy's father and moved to Japan. Uprooted to Japan when she was nine years old, Belldandy had to learn a whole new language and culture. Consequently, she was slightly 'off' in her Japanese. Plus, because she was gaijin, most of the boys her age were either diffident or rude. "Better to put the paper back on the board, otherwise someone will raise shit about it," Belldandy chafed to an invisible audience. As she started to pin the paper back on the board, she pulled herself short. Unable to resist her growing curiosity, she unfolded the paper and took a peek... "Divine Wish Escort Service. We will make your deepest wishes come true!" Belldandy grimaced in disgust as she reread the paper. *Escort Service*?! Unbelievable!!! The name of the business sounded like some kind of sex-trade sort of thing, especially the part about "deepest wishes"! She didn't miss the fact that there was no street address printed on the note; other than the name of the business, there was just some barely legible writing in a torn corner of the paper that read "Windowsill" or something like that. The lack of a legit street address definitely pegged this as some kind of kinky sex shop! It was probably some shithole perv bar in an alleyway in Kabuki-cho. Bemused, she looked to see if there was a number... An idea started to form in her mind. "Hmmm...what if this is some kind of bunny bar or strip club sorta thing? Could one of the girls here be moonlighting at a place like that? Ah-haaa!!! What if this is one of those phone-in sex encounter lines? Maybe one of my 'sisters' here has a sugar-daddy!" she mused aloud, rereading the paper and imagining all sorts of lurid scenarios. Scenarios that might give her leverage over one or more of her dorm-mates, if played out the right way. Looking at the note more carefully, she noticed that it was handwritten on regular Chiba university-type stationary, probably scribbled down in haste. So it *had* to be one of her 'sisters'. And there was a contact number. "Maybe I should call this number!" she thought excitedly. "But what if I wind up talking to some letch? Some old some pervert who knows one of my 'sisters' here? And what if he's all weird and obscene on the phone with me?" she argued with herself, checking her impulsive nature with a series of worries. That would be totally uncool! "On the other hand, what if I can learn about *who* in our dorm is doing this from whatever old fart I end up talking to on the phone? What if this is one of those co-ed call girl scandals like they show on TV? I could wind up getting the goods on some old geezer who's a rich businessman or politician! Then I wouldn't have worry about money for the rest of my life! Even better, I could pay back some embarrassment back to someone!" she enthused. Then her light spirits sank as she realized that this was probably some prank cooked up by her teammates. They'd been hazing her all along this term...this was probably just a clever ruse. "Too bad it's probably a joke!" Belldandy giggled as she imagined how she could stir up a little bit of hell by fucking with one of the pervs. She could play him, leading him on to think that she was coming over to go out on 'date'... Maybe she could get out of having to do the team's laundry while she was at it. "Let's see, 02...3363...7712..." she said aloud as she dialed the number. The dialing tone seemed normal, but once the phone picked up on the other line, she heard a bizarre sequence of tones over the phone. The sounds remotely suggested a modem link, but they were too complex. And they were semi-melodious... "Hello?" a voice finally answered on the other line. "Hey, wow! Cool! It's you! Thanks for calling me. I'll be along in a moment. Stay right there!" "WH..WH..WAIT!" she shouted into the phone just as it went "click". She didn't even have time to answer! Gulping deeply in her throat, Belldandy felt a rush of anxiety clutch her. Within seconds, her whole body started shivering with nervousness. "What have I done? This *completely hurls*! The guy who answered the phone probably knows right where this dorm is...and *he's gonna come here*! How could I have been so retarded?" she exclaimed in a reedy voice of desperation. She angrily wadded up the note in her hand and threw it against the wall. Now she found herself hoping that this *was* one of her 'sister's' pranks! She wouldn't put it past her teammates; after all, they had stranded her here with an inordinate amount of laundry to do. Fired with apprehension, Belldandy sprung to her feet and started pacing around the Girl's Dorm, her long pony-tail bobbing against her back... Suddenly, one of the washing machines started buzzing, indicating that it was finished with its load. Cursing her luck and the machine's bad timing, Belldandy stormed off down the hall towards the laundry room. Without missing a step, she angrily slid the shoji door open and walked into the laundry room... "YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK!!!!!!" There was a *guy* sitting on the washing machine! * * * * * * * * "A..are you the guy from the sex c..club th..that I just c..called?" Belldandy stammered at the man sitting on the washer. As soon as she spied him, she had backed herself tight against the wall, as far away from the intruder pervert as she could manage. Grabbing a nearby steel pipe, she brandished it in front of her, making it clear that she didn't want the interloper to take a single step towards her. "What's a sex club?" he asked blithely. Belldandy almost choked at his idiotic question. Oddly enough, upon a second glance...he seemed to be a *young* pervert. In fact, he didn't appear to be much older than she was. On closer examination, he seemed almost boyish: he was lithe and casual as he sat cross- legged on one of the laundry machines. His dress was quite striking; he was clothed in some kind of tight black leather costume, something that would have been right at home in the college's Cosplay Club. But Belldandy realized that these weren't the ill-fitting, amateurish costumes your everyday otaku would wear to anime conventions. Not to mention that his outfit didn't resemble any of the anime or manga series that were popular in Japan at the time. His boots, his cape, his shirt and tight leather pants...were too intricate, too articulated with accessories. He looked like he would be right at home as one of the male characters in Magic Knight Rayearth... His clothes looked *too* good. She felt the blood rushing to her cheeks as she realized that it wasn't just the *clothes* that she thought looked too good... This guy was a babe! He had some kind of longish hairstyle, with braids and dreads and straight locks of hair, all mixed together in layers. And he was wearing some kind of 'crown' thing...his 'crown' brought to Belldandy's mind the types of headgear Tenchi from the old "Tenchi Muyo!" series would wear when he was in Jurai Prince mode. But the guy's face and eyes were the epitome of what Belldandy considered handsome. "Why am I thinking manga and anime all of a sudden?!" she confronted herself. Looking at the young man across the room seemed to trigger all sorts of imaginings. He was like some idol star! No...a *mega* idol-star! Blinking her eyes, she quickly regretted the fact that the most beautiful man she'd seen since she'd come to Chiba...was some ecchi guy who responded to a sex ad! It just wasn't fair! Belldandy suddenly paled as she remembered the laundry... "Could you please move off the washing machine. I..I need to get in there!" she asked, gesturing with the length of pipe. "And don't you even dare come near me, or I'll beat your head in with this!" Raising his hands to indicate that he was no threat, he started to move slowly across the laundry room. As soon as he was distant from her, Belldandy hastily made for the laundry machine. But then she stumbled over a laundry basket and fell against hard against his chest, partly because she didn't take into account that he was *floating* in mid-air. He reached out and caught her...and Belldandy felt all of the blood in her body rush to her head as she felt his body cushion her fall. She looked up... ...and noticed that his lips were only a few cm away from hers. His eyes made her feel all buttery as he smiled at her. She could hear her heart thumping in her ears as she went limp in his arms. His breath was potpourri-sweet in her nostrils... And then it was over. Belldandy swallowed hard and tried to gather her spiraling thoughts as he let go of her and went to sit on one of the dryers. She hoped that she wasn't blushing... ""I'm sorry, how rude of me!" he saw, bowing slightly. "I forgot to introduce myself. I'm the God Keiichi...First Class, Unlimited, Unrestricted, Apprentice Senior Licensee, Head Agent of the God's Wish Escort Office for this Sector." That was the last thing Belldandy heard before she fainted in his arms... * * * * * * * * When she came to, Belldandy found herself lying in her own bed. She felt tides of cool air drawing against her face. Opening her eyes and looking around her room, she noticed the intruder fanning her with an ornate fan that looked like it belonged in a museum, rather than in the hands of a young pervert. She pulled the covers tight against her, tensing her hands underneath her jawline. "I hope you don't mind that I brought you to your room after you swooned," he said casually, smiling gaily as if he had done nothing wrong. "GET OUT!!!" Belldandy shouted at him, pointing her chin towards the door. He leaned closer to her and raised an eyebrow. Under the bed sheets, Belldandy felt her feet nervously rubbing against each other. Thinking the worst, she quickly peeked under the bedding to see if she still had her clothes. Thankfully, she was in the same clothes as she was wearing when she ran into the pervert-boy in the laundry room. "This is an all-girls dorm, if you didn't happen to read the sign outside! And not just *any* girl's dorm...this is the dorm for the university volleyball team! When my team gets back and finds you here, I'll be in deep shit. And you'll probably get your ass kicked by my teammates!" she warned. Instead of reacting with fear, the stranger simply giggled. "Ha ha aha! That's not very likely. You see, I *can't* leave," he answered her. Belldandy felt giddy with consternation; she wasn't used to *any* guys being in her bedroom. And he was sitting cross- legged on her roommate's bed as if he belonged there! "Look! I don't care who you are, I don't care that it's my fault that I called some 'escort service' and you picked up the phone...I don't even care if you're here because of a mistake. If you don't leave right this minute, I'm calling campus security!" Belldandy threatened. "I think you don't understand what I'm trying to say. You *called* me, Belldandy! So I have to stay until I grant you a wish!" he said, smiling at her. Belldandy glared at him, gripped with exasperation. This guy was unbelievable! He sneaks into a girl's dorm, claims to be God, dresses up like some kind of extra from an American sci-fi flick, and then says that he can't leave. She pulled her bedcovers even tighter under her chin. "I am *not* having sex with you, even if you pay me a billion yen!" "My name is Keiichi, not 'you'. And you don't have to have sex with me, unless you want to. By the way, why don't you try to be more polite, Belldandy?" he said with that irritating grin. Belldandy felt a wave of shock go up and down her spine as she became alert to the fact that he knew her name. This might be even worse than an intrusive pervert situation, she realized. This guy...what if he's some escaped psycho from a mental unit! What if he was some kind of whacko stalker. He *knew* her name! "H..how did you know my name?" she demanded. "Well, I am the *Head* Agent of the GWEO for this Sector, so I know the names of all 864.9 septillion sentient mortal beings in my jurisdiction," he answered. "Y..you're nuts!!!" Belldandy exclaimed. Then a sly thought passed through her mind. If the guy thought he was God, then why not make him make a fool of himself? Then, she might be able to convince him to leave before she called the cops... "Okay, I'll play along with you! You said that you'd go away if I make a wish? All right, I'll make one! My wish is for you to do all the laundry that I have to do tonight. Let's see you do that, Mr. God!" she said smugly, sitting up in her bed and crossing her arms across her chest. 'Keiichi' smiled and snapped his fingers. "All done!" he said cheerfully. Belldandy glared at him, definitely not amused at his sense of humor. "But I should inform you that wish doesn't count, because it was a whim. It wasn't a *true* wish," he added. "That's pretty weak, y'know!!" Belldandy shouted, knowing that she had gotten the best of him. She hated guys who bullshitted her...especially when guys were too lame to even do a half-assed job of it. "You lied to me and I can prove it! You said that you would grant a wish of mine, so I asked you to do the laundry, which you obviously *couldn't have done* because you've been sitting there the whole time! That just proves that you're a liar!" "Go check the laundry room," Keiichi said politely, folding up his fan. "Oh, and by the way, I even sorted and stacked everything, plus I got rid of all the stains that your Earthrealm laundry machines are incapable of cleaning. I also repaired all the defects and rips in the uniforms, and I..." While he babbled out a description of how he 'washed' the laundry, Belldandy nervously got of her bed, grabbed for the nearest softball bat in the closet for protection, and then cautiously backed herself out of the doorway into the hall. She continued walking backwards towards the Laundry Room. She paused at the pay phone, but decided that she would at least check the laundry before calling the cops. When she entered the Laundry Room, she dropped the softball bat in shock. Inside, every single item of laundry in the whole dorm folded and stacked neatly. Not only was the laundry done...but all of it looked *brand new*. The team's uniforms looked fresh off the hanger! Amazed, Belldandy inspected one the washing machines to see if the load she had started was still inside of it... "Not to worry, I didn't forget that load. I hope everything is as you would expect it to be. If not, I can do your laundry again," Keiichi offered. His voice sounded so close, Belldandy literally jumped up in the air in shock. "Don't sneak up on me!!!" she snapped as she quickly turned around, preparing to dash out of the room. And then she almost bumped into him again. Checking herself in mid-turn, she back-stepped away from him warily. He was blocking the doorway, his feet a dozen-or-so cm above the floor. "Ohmigod!!! Y..you're *floating*!" she shrieked, her eyes bugged out with awe. "Now, do you believe me?" Keiichi asked. * * * * * * * * The last thing Keiichi remembered was a black sphere of energy swifting away from he and the others. A hazy shard of a memory, but a shard nevertheless, piercing all the awe-melting events of the creation of the OmniArc. Against the hooked light-brilliance that expanded into matter to fill the OmniArc, the sphere was like an ebony marble of non-depths, non-spaces. Keiichi immediately recognized it as the StealthSphere they had created to preserve the two Lords and the Reaper Kid while they fought Isilblius and restored the Everything. As the wave of light regained and regarded a blossoming into the 'petals' of the OmniArc, Life seemed to faucet all around him with grandiose expanses of Soular consciousness... ...and then the faucet started to stem its flow... ...flowing into a stream... ...and then a trickle... ...and dissolving into droplets... ...each drip became a screed... The tiny moments began to loom larger as Time itself slowed down all around him. Billions of years that had been compressed into nanoseconds were now complexifying...stretching open beyond inertial regions of expression, filling his consciousness with the sense that TimeSpace itself was dilating, slowing down all around him. Turning in towards itself... With a series of lightning flashes, the Everything expanded. Keiichi's field of vision was filled with seed-like shapes; the orbs of countless universes floating in an ocean of Being. He had the sensation of his body growing around him as he fell down to the Earth... *thud!!!* * * * * * * * * Belldandy was in a haze-faint, her vision and hearing...even her thoughts...misting over with information overflow. A pervert intruder had come to the Girl's Dorm, claiming to be some kind of Divine being, dressed in some kind of sci-fi cosplay costume that looked like it belonged in the Matrix movie trilogy, or maybe Macross or some as-yet- unmade anime feature. Wary that his claims to be God were some sort of effort to influence her thoughts...after all, people were getting fooled by such cultish claims every day...Belldandy had armed herself with a steel baseball bat, just in case the intruder made any ecchi moves towards her. But in the unscripted vision of reality, she was conflicted...the 'pervert' was actually a *very* cute guy; definitely not your average everyday couch-slouch or lecherous salaryman. He was beyond-cute...as in heroically handsome and otherworldly mysterious. In other words, he really was a tall, dark, handsome stranger! And then when she had watched him floating in the doorway of the laundry room, Belldandy felt her belief system suffering one of those 'lights out' sort of moments. In fact, *she* had suffered a 'lights out' moment! The only times Belldandy could recall that she had fainted in the past were due to athletic overexertion. She had trained extra hard in high school all year long; her first love was volleyball, but she also was the star of the school's track team, and she was just starting to take judo lessons. She would push herself to her burning limits, exercising until she became light-headed at times. Now that she was on Coach Chihiro's team, the years of hard work during high school were paying off; at least she could survive the Coach's grueling workouts. Coach Chihiro was fully expecting their team to win the national collegiate tournament this year. So a little dizziness from a vigorous workout...that was something she expected. The occasional fainting spell, although very rare, did occur when she overdid it. But Chiba Polytech freshman Belldandy Morisato never experienced a head-spinner like this... Her eyes felt like they were fluttering uncontrollably as she tried to focus her vision. She could feel a cold steely flatness against her back; she surmised that she was propped up against one of the washing machines in the laundry room. The pervert...scratch that...Keiichi was leaning over her, his handsome features figured with a concerned expression. He looked like one of those romantic heroes from a CLAMP manga, impossibly effeminate and yet dashingly masculine. Disturbed as she remembered the 'God' part of his introduction into her life, Belldandy hastily looked towards his feet...and sighed with relief when she noticed that he wasn't floating. He did have some pretty funky hi-tech type boots on his feet, however. She measured the look of his face, noticing for the first time how smooth his skin was. She could see that there were no blemishes there; his skin lightly shaded and baby's-breath smooth. She flitted with an odd impulse to reach up and touch his cheek, just to see if his skin was real. The fearful symmetry of her convictions were already broken, so Belldandy boldly decided "why not?" Extending her hand tentatively, she cupped his chin and began to stroke the line of his jaw. It was as if she was stroking silk... "What the hell's going on here!" When she heard that shrill voice of disdain, the silken curiosity of the moment was shattered. Keiichi didn't react at all, but Belldandy did the only thing that made sense. She grabbed the black collar of her 'captor' with her free hand. "@*#&~%!!!" she thought...but it was too late. Her mouth worded a silent "it isn't what it looks like!" as she looked past Keiichi's shoulder to see a good portion of her team queued in the doorway of the laundry room. Captains Tamiya and Ootaki looked completely pleased with themselves; sadistically gleeful in the knowledge that they had caught the only freshman girl on the team in the midst of a significant wrongdoing. Belldandy wanted to force her hands away from Keiichi's collar and cheek...but paralysis had already set in. This was the worst! Her face bloomed crimson tides as she realized how this must appear to her teammates. Belldandy had avowed herself to her sempai as a tomboyish girl who thought that boys were nothing more than pawns to be exploited. Maybe that was all some sort of girlish bravado, but she was always wary around guys when she hung out with them...and also very observant when an opportunity would arise that would give her an opening to manipulate a guy to do her bidding. But now, she was caught up in the midst of a scenario; a 'snapshot' that would only require a small leap of her teammate's imaginative 'choreographing' in order to be easily interpreted as a surreptitious make-out scene in the laundry room. It was even worse, because it would appear that she was doing the deed *behind their backs*! Wrongdoing...no. Hanky-panky...yes. "What do you think you're doing, bringing a *guy* in here!" Captain Ootaki shouted, smirking drunkenly in the doorway. Her smug expression made it be known that she knew she had Belldandy pinned down on this one, even if Belldandy hadn't done anything. Looking at the taller girl, Belldandy felt her lips trembling. She nervously glanced at Keiichi, but his face was turned; he seemed to be regarding the six or seven girls pressed tightly in the doorway. To her surprise, Belldandy watched as all of her sempai's faces grew wide- eyed and pink-cheeked as they looked at her. Heap another helping of embarrassment on it, why don't you... No, it wasn't her. She realized that they were looking at *Keiichi*. Gripped by embarrassment and panic, Belldandy was almost dizzy again from the shock of being paralyzed by this horribly amiss train-wreck of a compromising situation. What was going on here? It seemed that something was occurring, but it was a shadow of truth, or maybe a truth out of reach... "Breathe!" she willed to herself as the laundry room was filled with a moment's silence and the odor of detergent. Then it struck her like a bullet; her teammates were practically fawning attention over Keiichi. If this was a scene from an anime series, they would have had heart-shaped irises in their eyes... "H..how come we go out partying, only to end up in a karaoke room with a bunch of jerks from Waseda University...while *you* wind up with such a babe-alicious hunk all to yourself?!" one of her teammates stammered, clearly irritated and jealous...and quite intoxicated. The remark only deepened the pools of Belldandy's embarrassment. Now, her teammates were assuming that she had hooked up with this Keiichi character! "W..waitaminute! He and I are..." Belldandy gasped, wanting the words to pour as quickly as she could speak them now that she had finally found her voice. But Keiichi's lips finally found hers. In mid-sentence, he leaned down towards her. His lips brushing against hers delicately. Time stood into a stillness, as Belldandy felt a sparkle of electricity pass up and down her spine...the kind of 'juice' that she had only sensed during competition when she had blasted a nose-flattening spike over the net. It wasn't just some kind of mental trickery; her entire body seemed to tense up as well. And in a split second, Keiichi's lips passed hers. He kissed her on the cheek, and then she felt his breath against her ear. Her sparkly body-rush began to flow towards a willy-wobbly feeling of inertia... "Slap me!" he whispered in her ear. As he pulled his head away from her, she did just that. Not because he had asked her to, but because he had done the worst thing in the world to her. Kissing her in front of her teammates, without warning, without permission. **slaaapcrack!** Keiichi's head jolted sharply to the side with the blow. As he recovered from her palm-stinger, he winked at her. Making a show of it, he quickly stood up and warily backed away from her. Spinning on his heels, he bowled towards the doorway with a dash. In the space of two seconds, he rushed the throng of her teammates and literally wedged through their ranks like a knife cutting butter, bumping them aside. Fast as a blink. But Belldandy didn't fail to notice something very strange about his swift exit from the laundry room; for the force of his dash through the doorway, her teammates should have been hurled to and fro from the brunt impact. They should have been knocked flat on their asses. But instead, it was as if he *wove* through the tightly packed circle of girls with a superhuman speed, carefully avoiding injuring any one of them. "Damn! He's *tall*!" Belldandy suddenly realized, replaying the split second glimpse of him breaking through the queue of her sempai in her mind. Captain Ootaki was the tallest girl on the squad...and Keiichi looked like he towered another 20 or 25 cm taller than her! He was easily over 2 meters in height...definitely in the NBA league of physical loftiness! Thoughts of Yao Ming danced in her head... Could she have been imagining that he was floating in the air, simply because he towered over her? As Belldandy's thoughts warred between facts and fiction, Captain Tamiya stamped a foot on the ground. "Allll right, you!" Captain Tamiya shouted sternly, her short black hair shivering with each syllable as she rested her hands on her hips. "What the hell kinda stunt do you think you were trying to pull, inviting a guy to our Dorm while we're out partying? You're supposed to be doing *laundry*, Morisato!" "Yah! An' where the hell did you find that guy! He looks like some kinda freak, in a good way, but still a freak! He sure ain't from *our* campus! And he's gotta be the tallest dude I've ever seen. An' I've dated some tall ones," Captain Ootaki chimed in. "You've told some tall ones too, Ootaki!" one her sempai jeered. Ootaki tousled the shorter girl's hair, and then pulled on her ear... "Da rulez is da rulez!" Captain Tamiya interrupted. "No men's allowed in our Dorm! We're *athletes*, not just regular coeds! Having men in our Dorm is like putting wasabi on sweet mochi. You guys all know that men defile the purity of our feminine energy! A..and they're a soil upon the sakura-bloom of our concentration! They're nothing more than a distraction that'll keep our team from achieving it's goals! They're useless!" Several of her teammates winced briefly in distaste for Tamiya's mochi metaphor, but the emphasis wasn't lost on anyone. "Can't we make an exception for her?" one of her sempai argued back. "She's just a *frosh*, for gods sake! She's barely more than a little girl...she's still a teenager! So she made a high schooler's mistake. We should go easy on her! We're not some lez dorm filled with butch dykes; this is the *Chiba Poly* Women's Volleyball Team, not the Takarazuka theater troupe!" "Rulez is rulez! Especially in her case, since she's a freshman! Morisato needs to be punished! We need to make an example of her!" Captain Tamiya insisted. Belldandy could see that her Captain was definitely churning a sadistic bent. "Besides, what do you girls think Coach Chihiro would do if she found out about this?" the squad captain continued, running a hand through her closely clipped hair. Belldandy's face blanched at the mention of the squad's Coach. Chihiro was a *Olympian*...she certainly wouldn't put up with horseplay or guyplay in the teams dorm! Belldandy sheepishly noted "I did do all the laundry!" in a meek attempt to qualify some merit on her behalf while back stepping away from her teammates, especially Captain Tamiya. She mouthed a private prayer that she wouldn't get kicked off the team. It wasn't fair! As she watched the mixture of emotions playing over the faces of her disheveled, inebriated sempai teammates, Belldandy returned her mental gaze to the source of the whole problem in the first place. This...nightmare...was all that idiot Keiichi's fault! God or human, he had actually kissed her in front of the worst audience possible. Belldandy felt sullied...and murderous... "As of now, you're kicked out of the Girl's Dorm for the next month, Morisato! Pack your junk up and find a place to crash for the next few weeks while you figure out how to keep from screwing up like that again!" Captain Tamiya pronounced judgment, her eyes flaring wide to emphasize that this was a no-debate-allowed decision. "What about Coach?" one of her sempai asked. "We'll tell Coach Chihiro that you had to stay at an elderly relative's house in Tokyo to take care of them. A sudden illness or something personal, something she can't pester you about. We'll cover your ass as long as you behave, Morisato. And if I see that guy in our Dorm again, I'm gonna kick his butt all over the place. You may have slapped him...but I'll *punch* him! I'll punch his daylights out..." "Tamiya, chill out!" Captain Ootaki interrupted. She turned to Belldandy with a sly-fox grin. "Never mind our resident man-hater! But you do have to hit the street, kiddo. We'll box up a boxful of your crap, so you don't have to..." "But I don't have any relatives in Tokyo!" Belldandy protested in a wail of frustration. "And my parents live in *Choshi*, clear over on the ocean 80 Km from here! What am I gonna tell 'em? They'll *kill* me if I have to move back in! They'll think I flunked out or something." "That's your problem, not ours, Morisato!" Tamiya said mercilessly. Belldandy looked at her with a withering expression of anger for as long as she thought she could get away with it, and then pouted and asked for the phone. "The phone's dead!" one of her sempai announced. Figures. Belldandy guessed that her call to wherever Keiichi had come from had shorted out the Dorm's phone system. There was that weird series of tones while she was being connected to that Windowsill place! Well, the phone would have gone out sooner or later; the Dorm was pretty crummy anyway, with all sorts a patch-on wiring and peeling paint and banged-up phone outlets. A moment later, she tried punching up a friend's number on her cell phone, only to learn that the cell system was down. Even the cell phones were working against her! But what difference did it make? Who was she going to call at 3am in the morning? Not to mention that she didn't have a lot of friends, and the friends she did have outside of the Girl's Dorm were either living with their parents or they were shacked up with their boyfriends. "This is *mega* unfair!" she thought. Five minutes later, her dorm mates had given her the 'toss'. As soon as they learned that the phone was out, they escorted her to the front porch and slammed the door behind her, giggling drunkenly. Belldandy's mood soured even more as she was surrounded by the silence of night, broken only by odd shifts of traffic and the sounds of her room being rummaged. A few minutes later, a hastily-compiled boxful of personal belongings was shoved through the door, which then was 'clicked', locked up for the night. Chin in hands, elbows on knees, she sat with her belongings on the Girl's Dorm porch. This night had been the ultimate nightmare. Her summary expulsion from the Girl's Dorm was Keiichi's fault! As well as her squad mate's...they were all pretty lit up with excitement and booze when they got home from a night on the town. Belldandy mentally envisioned Keiichi's smiling face, just so she could further imagine it being blasted in the face with a cannon-fire of volleyballs. Her fists tightened up beside her as she meandered through her misery. In contrast to the stillness of night, she couldn't still the flurried racing of thoughts and worries. Where was she going to stay? How would she explain this to her parents? What if Coach Chihiro figured out the truth about her banishment from the Dorm? How was she going to face her squad mates...how was she going to act at tomorrow's practice? "What am I going to do?" she groused. "Life is *so* unfair!" Belldandy silently watched the moon descend towards the horizon; silent, because she had no one to talk to on the porch. A cat fight nearby in the neighborhood startled her out of her morose reverie. She realized that she had been staring at the selene pearl long enough to be aware that it had moved a significant distance across the nightsky. Not one to wear watches, Bellandy didn't know how much time had passed, except that the early-waking birds were starting to chirp all around her. The birdcalls seemed to be mocking her; avian laughter from hidden tree copses, mirthfully taking advantage of her lamentable situation. She wished she was a hunter with a gun, so she could shoot a few of them, to shut them up. She stared at her Nikes and then started tapping her feet on the porch. She was dressed in her 'dressy' jogging outfit, figuring that if she was going to be out walking about before sunrise, she might as well look the part of an early-morning jogger. At least her clothes were clean, courtesy of Keiichi. "God damn you, Keiichi!" she cursed. "For a fuckin' God, you're certainly a dimwit! How could you do this to me!" "Oiii!" she heard someone shout behind her. Captain Ootaki was leaning out of the front window. She told Belldandy to brace up and stop yelling...chiding her for waking up her teammates. Then her face softened, and with a smile, she tossed a kerchief wrapping towards Belldandy. Belldandy quickly grabbed it and opened it up; there was a number of coins and bills inside. Not even bothering to count the money, she looked up at Captain Ootaki and inclined her head with sincere gratitude. "We took a collection for you, Morisato, to help you out just in case you need to ride the train or somethin'!" she noted to Belldandy before pulling the window shut. As she counted the money, Belldandy felt touched by their kindness despite their rough handling of her expulsion from the Girl's Dorm. All things being a milkshake of emotion, Belldandy wanted to break down and cry, or break down and scream maniacally. But screaming was definitely out. She had been warned, fortunately by Captain Ootaki rather than Captain Tamiya. Belldandy knew that keeping her dorm mates up with shouting would probably ruin their resolve to fib to Coach Chihiro about her moving out of the Girl's Dorm. "And there's no way that..snff..*I'm* going to cry over this!" she said firmly to herself, an actress and audience of one. With a will of the champion, she bit her lip, hard enough to taste blood. If that's what it was going to take to keep from crying, then that's what it took! A moment later, she felt something wet on her cheek. Rain. Even the weather was being unfair! It wasn't bad enough that she had to sit outside in the pre-dawn hours, spurned by her drunken teammates and kicked out of her college dorm. Now the sky was pissing on her! It was all Keiichi's fault! "God must *really* hate me!" she said, punching her pendant leg in frustration as the rainfall intensified. ***frrweeet!!!*** Belldandy turned to look in the direction of the whistle...and saw Keiichi standing across the street. He brandished a large umbrella in one hand, shielding him from the steadily increasing patter of raindrops. She flipped him off. He whistled towards her again, and she flipped him off again, only this time she shot him a stinkface and stuck out her tongue. He whistled a third time...*loud*...and she heard the rattling of someone in the Girl's Dorm trying to open a window. Taking the hint, she quickly scooped up her box of belongings and walked across the street. She made sure to stand near Keiichi...but *not* under the umbrella. "What *are* you doing, coming back here after getting me in a shitload of trouble? And why the fuck are you whistling so loud? You wanna wake up everybody and get me in even *more* trouble?! I just got kicked out of my house because of you!" she hissed at him angrily, feeling the plips of rain dripping down her forehead and nose. "Here," Keiichi gestured, extending his umbrella. Belldandy stepped aside with a smart aplomb, avoiding any chance of standing underneath it. "There's no way I'm getting under that with you! I *hate* you! You're the cause of all my miseries! I *really* hate you!" she snapped, seething with rage. "Do you want to make a wish now?" Keiichi asked. Belldandy was so angry at his words, she almost dropped her box. "How could you ask something like that, when I'm in this situation?" she asked in a dry voice, her teeth biting in the rain. "Can't we at least stand under a tree?" Keiichi gestured with his umbrella, she shook her head "no!" and then he walked under the nearest tree and leaned up against the tree trunk. Belldandy rolled her eyes...he should have at least offered her the tree trunk! "Look, I don't ever want to see you again! But before then, I want to know just one thing. Why the hell did you kiss me...and then tell me to slap you? What did you think, that I *wasn't* going to slap you? As if you had to ask me to slap you after you went and kissed me in front of all my teammates, you big jerk!" "Belldandy, I could read their minds, and they were thinking all sorts of unsavory ideas about you and me..." "You're damned right they were! What'd you think they would think?! You were practically all over me!" she replied. Then she realized what she had just said...and blushed guiltily. For a moment, *she* had been thinking the same thing! On the coattails of this realization, she was startled to discover that she was acting as if she actually believed that he had read her sempai's minds. He was using that "God" story again to mess with her mind! "What in God's name am I thinking! I'm actually believing you! Stop confusing me with that 'God' bullshit! It isn't very cool!" she shouted, turning away from him. Her wet ponytail swung around and slapped against her chest. "If I recall, it was you who wanted to touch me..." Keiichi noted. "NO!!! IT DIDN'T HAPPEN THAT WAY!!!" she screamed. "And if I could touch you again, I'd...gladly wanna break your nose!" "Mortal see, mortal do..." Keiichi sighed to himself resignedly. She didn't miss the condescending tone in his voice, which only caused her to get even more angry with him. Belldandy had no idea how much more anger she could bottle up, because she had never been this angry before. Even that bad call by the ref in the high school tournament that cost her team the championship during her junior year didn't even get her this riled up! Determined, she started walking away from him...and quickly regretted her decision, as the rain pelted her mercilessly until her eyes stung. She quickly sought out refuge, as the downpour was getting downright vicious... "Dammit! Why'd you kiss me?! Just shut up and answer me!" she screamed, dashing toward a nearby kid's park. She was sprinting by the time she pulled to a halt under a streetlight sheltered underneath a giant wisteria tree. A moment later, Keiichi caught up to her. Belldandy saw red as she noticed that his hair was completely dry... "I wish for you to explain yourself! Why'd you act so retarded back there?" she asked. "Again, that doesn't count as a wish!" Keiichi noted. "Wishes, wishes, wishes! Is that all you think about? Gods, you're worse than a guy who's got nothing but sex on his mind!" Belldandy observed. Keiichi smiled at her, as if he was thinking that she was cracking a joke. "Under the circumstances, I presumed that if I kissed you, followed by the perfunctory handslap to the face, it would render the appearance to your inebriate roommates that my presence was unwanted. It would stand to reason that, if they saw you rebuffing me, then the logical course of action would be compassionate empathy. Therefore, I assumed that they wouldn't expel you from your domicile. But mortals being so unpredictable, it would seem that they fled from reason when acquitting your situation..." "Quit talking like a lawyer and just tell me why!" she insisted. She also wanted to ask him why he had stolen a kiss from her *lips*, but figured that this guy who though he was a God would make up another string of fantasies. The last thing she wanted was to encourage him on a course of imaginings that could lead into the ecchi realm of things... Keiichi pierced her with a moment's stare. "How impolite! He's staring at me!" Belldandy thought. Even if his face was very handsome, she didn't like being stared at. How could he be so socially inept? Or was he trying to be ill-mannered to keep her off her guard? "Belldandy, I didn't want you to appear undignified in front of your friends. And I didn't want you to get in trouble with them either!" he admitted, his eyes sparkling with sincerity. Belldandy gulped deep in her throat, shufflebouting as she reappraised him. Even though he had screwed up in the worst possible way, he was convinced that he was trying to protect her honor. Well, that was one gold star in his favor. Along with his good looks, he had two golden stars...against a few million checkmarks for getting her in so much trouble. And for being a liar. And for sneaking into her room... Then it dawned on her that Keiichi was trying to shield her repute. Belldandy scowled at this realization; she didn't need *anyone* to protect her honor, especially a guy. And yet, his intentions seemed to warm her somewhat, somewhere deep inside. "Why do I feel this way?" she asked herself, wondering if he was telling her the truth. As she measured him, he was measuring *her* silently. She felt a little sorry for him...after all, she *had* slapped him rather forcefully. "Couldn't you think of some other way besides kissing me? You knew that would set me up to slap you!" she asked, her voice a little calmer than before. "How do you know that I *felt* your slap?" he answered. "I mean, I did *feel* your slap...you're definitely a strong girl, Belldandy...but I didn't feel it in the sense of any pain. Of course, I could feel the pain if I wanted to. But why do that?" Wordlessly, he left the shelter of the tree and started walking down the sidewalk again. Not knowing what else to do, Belldandy watched him walk away...and then decided to catch up with him. The crown of her head tingled as the rainfall plashed her. The wind started up, driving the rain against her now-soaked jogging outfit. She looked down at her box, aware that the clothes, cosmetics and whatever else inside of it was already soaked. He seemed to be walking purposefully, as if he had a destination in mind. Continuing to walk next to him in the rain, Belldandy felt completely abandoned, lost for everything except her confusion. Her emotions boiled into turmoil. She was sullen and angry, because she had to walk next to the guy who had kissed her and got her kicked out of her dorm. Even worse, she was *choosing* to do so, for some unknown reason! She was definitely embarrassed; she had suffered a whole year's worth of that tonight. She felt even more ashamed in her embarrassment; as she recalled the kiss, Belldandy still felt a tingly afterglow. Fright seemed to clench her as well. Keiichi was a total enigma, a 'left field' reality in the 'right field' of her life. She didn't have a clue...she had no way of knowing who or what he was. What if he *was* some kind of God? Or maybe this whole evening was a mismass of memories, confounded by the shock of an intruder and getting kicked out of the Girl's Dorm? She even sensed a tiny bit appreciative towards him, because he had claimed he was trying to protect her dignity... "Protect me?" Belldandy whispered to herself. Suddenly, the idea of being 'protected' by this tall, dark stranger...really pissed her off to the max! Her anger volcanoed, transformed the irritating sensation of being soaked by the rain into a vivid pleasure of martyrdom... "You should take this umbrella. You're getting pretty wet," Keiichi asked, proffering her his umbrella. "This way, you won't have worry yourself about walking close to me...you can have it all to yourself." Belldandy slapped it away. "Good! I hope I get completely soaked! I would rather get drenched and struck by lightning than stand under your umbrella! I hope I catch the flu because I got soaked to the bone tonight!" she shouted angrily. She narrowed her eyes at him, while he looked at her with an expression of surprise. "I suppose you think you're cute, trying to get me to walk close to you by doing the 'umbrella trick'. I know the routine...you give me the umbrella, then when you get soaked in the rain, you figure that I'll start feeling all sorry for you, which'll lead me to ask you to walk under it with me, and then we wind up walking together under the one umbrella anyway. Give me a break!!! Isn't that pretty weak, for a guy who claims to be God?" she yelled, dropping the box of her personal belongings and standing to face him, arms straight and rigid against her sides. Belldandy wanted to project the Total Bitch Posture to him, wanted to sear him with her disgust, wanted to savor how she was glaring at the edge of rage. If he was a guy, he might as well wither into the ground. No male can possibly stand up to the Total Bitch act! Keiichi seemed to regard her for a moment, and then he smiled to himself. "WHAT?!!" she scream-asked irritably, taken aback at his introspective aloofness. "Ahhh that's right! he admitted, punching the palm of his opened hand with his fist as he looked skyward, almost seeming to Belldandy that he was deeply embarrassed. "Oh Seeds of Light, make yourself known/Let folds of grey column away Quell yon shower's airy throne/dispel its energies to another sway" Belldandy looked on as he waved his hand with a peculiar bent of his wrist... ...and then the rain *stopped*. Totally. "Oh..My..God!!!" Belldandy gasped. "That's one way to put it," Keiichi commented with a grin. Her anger was instantly dissolved as Belldandy stared in rapt amazement at the overhead sky. High above her, the rain clouds began to dissipate...as rapidly as one of those time-elapse sequences in a Hollywood movie or the Science TV channel. In less than 15 seconds, a torrential downpour had completely disappeared, impossibly revealing a pink-edged sundawn... There was no way he could have faked that! There was no way *anybody* could have faked that! This wasn't like the mysterious event in the laundry room, where she had tested him by telling him to clean all the backloads of uniforms and towels and such. He had claimed to complete the 'test'; the clothes were clean, but she had never witnessed him doing anything extraordinary. Belldandy could have her doubts about that...maybe he had laundered the clothes while she unconscious after fainting, and she was so shocked by his intrusion into the Girl's Dorm, she had got it all mixed up. Or maybe she had already completed her chores, and had simply forgotten about it. The illusion of him floating...maybe that was another result of shock. His clothes could have been handmade, or rented from a classy cosplay shop. All that mumbo-jumbo about "Windowsill" and jurisdiction over "trillions of species"...any high school geek fanboy could have come up with that. And printing up a hundred meishi business cards could be had for a few thousand yen. But this utterly incomprehensible feat of shutting down an entire storm? She had witnessed the miracle, she had beheld it all, from start to finish, and all the moments in between... Which meant that he was the real thing! Belldandy felt all the blood in her body seemingly rush to her head. She heard knelling bells pounding in her ears; her tongue was heavy with speechlessness. She was walking next to *God Himself*! He had just made a rainstorm vanish with just a few words and a gesture. The sky was huge...and beautiful; her upward gaze was almost arrested as she strived against the sudden impression that she was miniscule, inconsequential. All along, Keiichi had been trying to tell her that he was God...and all along, she was convinced that he was bullshitting her. What could be the punishment for not believing in God when He tells you that He's with you? What if she got sent to hell for that? If He could stop a storm, what else could He do? Was there even a conceivable limit to His powers? "There! No more rain!" Keiichi announced, pleased with himself. Belldandy looked up and down at the sky, and forced herself to look at him. She would have rather hidden under one of the slides in the kiddie park a block down the street... "Why me why me why me why me..." she wondered as she stared at him in amazement. Belldandy struggled to put on a game face...to conceal the fact that she was scared to death, overawed and feeling very insignificant in the face of His display of power, all at once. "Why would God show up in *my* life? I'm just a girl! And why does he have to come as he such a cute guy?! Why couldn't he be some old man that looks like something out of a Renaissance painting? Why does he have to look so handsome!" she pondered. Keiichi certainly didn't look like God...if He was God, then Heaven and all of its angels were Visual Kei to the max! The waterpools in her sneakers interrupted her gawking as she squished in her shoes, shifting from side-to-side to keep from going heels up with shock. Keiichi was still dry, the result of using the umbrella. It didn't make a difference whether he was God or not, the umbrella had kept him dry. Was there a penalty for not accepting a walking under an umbrella with God? Belldandy felt miserable...she was soaked, to the point where water was puddling under her where she was standing. She noticed that the umbrella was gone, it was no longer needed. No longer needed... She felt her jaw clench just as the rage hit her. "You mean...that I got drenched...while you could've fixed the weather all along?" she screamed at him hysterically, soaked with rain and irritation. "Keiichi...you *IDIOT*! Why'd you wait until I got *totally soaked* by a downpour before doing your God thing and making the rain go away?" "Now make me dry, right this instant!" she commanded him. "I will gladly do that for you, Belldandy. But that doesn't count as your wish." * * * * * * * *