[FanFic] Gods Willing episode IV: Rainy Day Miracle

[Acolyte of Skuld]

Not long ago, nor far away, but infinitely removed from our world...

Eyrie Productions, Unlimited
presents

G O D S W I L L I N G

Part IV: Rainy Day Miracle

It is a time of rationality and science. Magic has all but
left the world, and few remember or believe it was ever here.
All over the world people have forsaken belief in their gods in
favor of the newer, more abstract concepts such as Reason. Only a
few attempt to reconcile faith with reason; fewer yet succeed. Faced
with this essential dilemma they cry: If only the gods would give us a
sign, and let us know that They are still there!"

At an institution of learning in Massachusetts, a few people are about to get
that sign.

FRIDAY 16 SEPTEMBER 1994
SANFORD RILEY HALL
WORCESTER POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE
WORCESTER, MASSACHUSETTS
10:34 PM

Keiichi Morisato, an unassuming, slight and perfectly ordinary
Japanese international student, sat back in the uncomfortable desk
chair provided with every dorm desk at WPI, shifted uncomfortably, and
then gave up. Retrieving his books from the desktop, he put them on
the floor in the middle of the room, then sat down on the carpet. And
there was another thing he didn't understand about Americans: how
could they honestly prefer sitting on such a thing to just sitting on
the floor? Did they actually think it was more comfortable?
He sighed. He'd only been here for a little less than a
month; he kept telling himself that he needed to allow himself more
time to be acclimated. His roommate Tom, a senior, was a nice enough
guy, and was helping him out as much as he could, and Tom's network of
friends were pretty good too, although many of them weren't actually
students themselves. Still, Keiichi was fairly certain that he'd be a
complete loss if his English weren't so good -- something to thank his
parents for the next time he called home.
WPI, he had soon learned, wasn't everything it was cracked up
to be. Oh, sure, it was a good school: the facilities and faculty
were excellent. There was something odd about it, though, something
Keiichi hadn't felt on the campus of any of the schools he'd visited
at home or elsewhere in the US. A kind of apathy pervaded the student
body; school spirit was low and nobody engaged in the kind of madcap
technical antics he had always thought people in tech schools were
supposed to do.
That, and the women were largely unfriendly.
Now, the relative friendliness of the female student
population wasn't of Earth-shattering importance to Morisato. He
didn't stand up in the Wedge and utter long, bitter soliloquies about
WPI's 5:1 male-to-female student ratio, nor did he pay much attention
when one of the upperclassmen (such as Tom) would rise and deliver
solemn dissertations on how When They Were Freshmen It Was Much Worse.
Truth be known, Keiichi Morisato was a bit of a romantic, and so a
lack of something to do on Friday night was considerably less
stressful to him than the simple lack of companionship and
conversation. He disliked being alone.
The telephone rang, jolting him out of his calculus-induced
reverie, and he picked it up, barely remembering not to say "Moshi
moshi" and settling instead for, "Hello?"
"Hi, is Tom there?" a cheery female voice -- that of one of
Tom's numerous female acquaintances, all of them, as far as Keiichi
could tell, equally platonic and all of them named Alison -- inquired.
"Uh, no, I'm afraid not," Keiichi replied.
"Oh. Do you know where he is?"
"No, sorry... the last I knew he was going to his 4 o'clock
class, and I haven't seen him since."
"Oh. Well, could you tell him Alison called?"
"Sure."
"Thanks. Bye!"
"Bye." Keiichi hung up the phone, then went back to work,
grumbling. "I shouldn't have to take messages for him all the time...
I guess it's part of being a roommate... "
A loud grumbling noise interrupted his musings.
"Hm?"
*borborygmi*
"Ah! Damn, I've missed dinner." Not, he thought with a
repressed shudder, that that was such a bad thing. "I guess I'll have
to order take-out."
Doing so required him to venture out of the bedroom and into
the common room in the center of the suite in search of the menus. As
he did so, Keiichi reflected that he could just go downstairs to
Gompei's, which, after all, was located right in the basement of Riley
Hall. After thinking about it for a while, though, he decided against
it; he didn't like the food there all that much, and besides, it was
bound to be crowded and noisy on a Friday, and he felt like having
quiet around him.
Unfortunately, his quest for food did not go well. The first
restaurant he called had closed at ten; the next three didn't deliver,
and without a car, Keiichi wasn't about to venture down WPI's infamous
Institute Hill. Especially not tonight; it was unseasonably cold, and
judging by the grey cast to the twilight sky, it looked like rain.
The next attempt ended in failure due to a mistyped number,
and that, for Keiichi, was the last straw. Frustrated, he began
punching keys at random, pseudo-reasoning that he had to get through
to -someone-, eventually.
Imagine his surprise, then, when, in the midst of a string of
random touch-tones, he heard a dial, and then the click of an answer,
and then the most beautiful voice he had ever heard.
"Hello," that voice said. "You have reached Valhalla
Technical Support. My name is Belldandy. May I have your name,
please?"
Startled, Keiichi fumbled, "Uh, Keiichi Morisato, but I think
I have the wrong -- "
"Thank you. I will visit you immediately for a consultation."
"Uh, wait, I -- wait -- hello?" The line was dead. Behind
Keiichi, unnoticed by him, the large wall mirror had begun to glow.
"Hello??"
"Hello?" the voice from the phone said -- but now it was
coming from behind him. He turned to meet the blue-eyed gaze of a
very pretty girl -- who happened to be mostly on the other side of the
mirror, except for her head. Keiichi made the only response one could
consider sane or appropriate under such circumstances:
"AAAAAAAAAAAGH!!"
In his headlong flight across the room, he managed to trip
over and overturn the coffee table (in the process sprawling on the
floor) in such an artful manner that the table actually landed
top-down on his back before he scrambled from under it and made his
way to the corner of the room. There, he sat on the floor with his
back against the wall, facing the mirror with wide-eyed terror.
"Who in God's name are you?!" he demanded.
The girl emerged from the mirror completely, to stand in all
her glory before him in the living room. She was, Keiichi estimated,
a couple of inches taller than he was, and very pretty (as he had
already noticed), with crystal-blue eyes and light brown hair which
was tied up in an elaborate headdress of white fabric and trailed in a
long tail all the way down her back. On her face were three unusual
blue marks, a narrow diamond-shaped one on her forehead and a
downward-pointing triangle on each high cheekbone ridge. They didn't
appear to be appliques or tattoos; it was more like her skin was just,
for some reason, naturally royal blue there.
Her clothing was expansive: great flowing robes made of some
lightweight, white material, with heavier edgings of a rich blue
color. An ornate necklace of golden rods, and matching earrings,
adorned her; looking closer, Keiichi could see that she wore bracelets
and anklets with groups of small, similar rods on them. He also
noticed, with another small shock, that she was standing a couple of
inches -above- the floor, which made him revise his estimate of her
height.
She was, without a doubt, the most radiantly beautiful thing
Keiichi Morisato had ever seen -- and she terrified him utterly.
"Please don't be alarmed, Mr. Morisato," she said politely.
"Permit me to introduce myself: I am the goddess Belldandy, one of the
three Norns."
Keiichi's mind, already dangerously close to unhinging,
creaked inside his head. "Goddess?!"
Belldandy nodded, the quiet, kind smile never leaving her
face. "You have been selected to receive a wish."
"A wish?" (Inwardly, Keiichi cursed himself for sounding like
such an idiot.)
Unperturbed, Belldandy nodded again. "Yes. Whatever you
desire I can grant you."
Keiichi pulled himself up into a more normal sitting position.
As he did, Belldandy approached, settling onto the floor and walking
toward him, then assuming a similar seated position about a foot from
him.
"Take your time," she said. "This is an important decision,
and it mustn't be rushed."
"A wish, eh? Anything I want? So, say, if I wanted to be
unbelievably rich, or surrounded by beautiful women, or a champion
race car driver, or rule the world... "
Belldandy nodded again, then looked a bit discomfited and
said, "Although generally we don't like to deal with the kind of
people who make wishes like that last one."
"Unbelievable." [This is insane! Things like this don't
happen. I must be overworked, or -- no, I know what it is! This is a
joke. Tom didn't really go out; he set up some kind of trick mirror.
She must be one of his legion of Alisons. He's playing a joke on me
because he knows I can't get a girlfriend -- ]
"Why not?" asked Belldandy suddenly, with a look of concerned
curiosity. It took Keiichi a moment to realize that he hadn't spoken
aloud, but she had heard his musings anyway, and he reddened slightly.
"Uh, well... stand up for a moment." She did, and he stood
with her; then, looking her in the eye (for it turned out they were
about the same height), he said, "As you can see, I'm quite short."
"Is that all? How can it be so important?" she asked. The
openness of her attitude and her complete guilelessness told Keiichi
that she was genuinely curious; she really didn't know. He liked that
about her; in fact, as his initial panic was beginning to fade, he
realized that he liked -her-. She was a nice girl; perhaps once Tom's
joke was over he could get to know her a little better.
"Never mind... sit down," he said, and they sat. [Is she for
real?] He looked up and saw her smiling patiently at him, the look on
her face telling him that she would gladly sit there all night, or all
week, until he made up his mind. [If she is, then I'm certainly glad.
All right!]
"All right!" he said aloud. "My mind is made up!"
Belldandy brightened -- a not inconsiderable trick,
considering she hadn't been particularly gloomy. "Oh, you've
decided?" she asked eagerly.
Keiichi smiled triumphantly and said -- no, practically
shouted -- "I wish that a pretty girl just like you would stay with me
forever!"
Belldandy looked moderately perplexed.
"Ah... although that's not a very good idea, now that I think
of it," Keiichi added, looking sheepish. Sanford Riley Hall was only
co-ed by floor, and although the policy on this was not usually
horribly draconian, the RAs for Riley First were Young Republicans who
had instituted a veritable Reign of Terror. Their first proclamation
was that anyone who had a female evening visitor would be summarily
thrown out of the hall.
Keiichi's protest, however, came too little, too late, for
Belldandy had already started to glow. Closing her eyes, she leaned
back as if about to look up into the sky (or, as the case may be, at
the ceiling).
"Wait a minute now -- what's all this?" Keiichi asked, and
then, with a deafening roar, a beam of brilliant blue light sprang
from the mark on Belldandy's forehead, striking the ceiling.
(Although Keiichi couldn't see it, it was in fact passing through the
ceiling and the rooms beyond -- amazingly, unnoticed by the residents
of those rooms -- and up into the storm-clouded sky.) The lightstorm
went on for a couple of seconds, and then the beam snapped off as
though a switch had been thrown, the glow died, and the room returned
to normal.
Opening her eyes and smiling, Belldandy informed Keiichi,
"Your wish request has been approved."
Keiichi practically leaped to his feet. "WHAT?! But -- but
-- "
"Is something wrong?" asked Belldandy, standing as well.
"Um... well... this isn't a co-ed floor, and you're not a
student anyway. You can't stay here!"
"Don't worry," she said, smiling. "It will be all right. Now
that the contract is made, that which we call the Ultimate Force will
go to work, safeguarding it. It will step in any time there's a
danger that you and I may be separated."
"The Ultimate Force is going to save me from Rick and Sven?"
Keiichi demanded, seizing her shoulders in his panic.
Slightly flustered, she replied, "Sometimes it doesn't work
quite so directly, but -- "
Belldandy was interrupted by the sound of a key in the suite's
door lock. Keiichi turned, startled, as one of Riley First's Fascist
resident advisors barged in, passkey in hand.
"Morisato! What the hell's all the noise -- " Rick ground to
a halt as he took in the scene. "A female visitor after ten PM? You
know the rules, Morisato!"
"But -- but I can explain this -- "
"I don't want to hear it. You knew the rules! SVEN! We've
got a violation of Hall Code 1!"
Before he really knew what was happening, Keiichi Morisato had
been handed a small bag containing his most immediately useful
possessions and chucked, goddess and all, into the street, with the
gruff promise that "We'll have Russell send you your stuff when you've
got an address."
So it was that he sat on the curb, contemplating the dirty
pavement and whimpering, "You've got to be joking... "
"This is the Ultimate Force at work," Belldandy explained.
Noticing Keiichi's despondence, she bowed her head and inquired
quietly, "Am I a bother?"
Keiichi looked at her, and knew immediately that if there was
one thing he hated to see, it was her being sad. He brightened,
smiling, and said breezily, "Ah, it's all right. As long as I have a
pretty girl like you with me, I'll be okay."
Immediately, Belldandy's mood brightened back to the "Class A
star" level, nearly blinding the poor boy.
"But we can't stay here on the curb all night. C'mon, let's
go find someplace to crash. Oh, um... can you do something about your
clothes? They're a little flashy, don't you think?"
Belldandy looked down at herself. "You think so? Hmm... you
may be right, at that." She began to glow again -- nearly flinging
poor Keiichi into another attack of panic -- and her clothes seemed to
melt like wax and flow together into a new form, a light woolen
skirt-and-sweater combination in a warm pink, with a rather archaic
grey wool cloak, fastened at her throat with a large garnet brooch.
The fingerless gloves remained, but the similar wrappings on her feet
became low-heeled shoes which matched her clothes. The headdress
vanished from her head, and her hair settled itself into an enormous
braid that trailed down her back.
"How's this?" she inquired.
Faced with a question like that, Keiichi Morisato made the
only statement he could possibly make, under the circumstances.
"Magnificent... " he whispered.
"I'm glad you like it," said Belldandy cheerily. "Shall we
go?"
The question jolted Keiichi out of his reverie, and smiling
sheepishly, he replied, "Yeah... let's."

Had it not been for Belldandy's presence, the next two hours
would have probably been among the worst of Keiichi's life. As it
was, they weren't exactly wonderful. First he had to face up to the
unpleasant realization that almost everyone he knew lived in the dorms
as well, and so had no room to offer him. Then he made the
disappointing discovery that his acquaintances in Ellsworth 6 weren't
interested in offering him shelter, although they would, they said,
gladly help out a lady in distress. Then it started raining as the
two of them ranged out into the surrounding streets. Finally, as they
fled hand in hand from the "invitation" of a bunch of Sig-Eps to come
in and join their party, Keiichi remembered GweepCo.
So it was that he and Belldandy turned up, dripping wet, on
the doorstep of 15 Lee Street, Apartment #1, ringing the bell. The
door was answered by Derek, at six foot seven and nearly four hundred
pounds a jovial giant of a man, who greeted them with his usual
enthusiasm:
"HI!"
"Eep!" said Belldandy, startled, as she ducked behind a
somewhat confused Keiichi.
"Come in, come in, get out of the rain," Derek continued
breezily, practically herding them inside. "Hey everyone, Keiichi's
here," he declared as he ushered them into the living room. On the
sofa, using one of the several terminals scattered around the messy
room, Keiichi spotted his roommate Tom, who looked up, blinked, and
then grinned.
"Keiichi, ya bastich," declared Tom. "Who's this, and where
are the rest?"
"What?" Keiichi replied, confused.
Tom affected a look of mock disappointment. "Keiichi. I'm
very disappointed in you. You haven't forgotten the rule, have you?
If you show up here with a woman, you're supposed to bring one for
everyone else."
Keiichi blushed a little, ignored his ex-roomie's statement
completely, and said, "Uh, everyone... this is Belldandy." Looking
around the room, Keiichi pulled everyone's identity out of his mental
Rolodex and named them off:
"That's Derek," he said, and indicated the grinning, Mohawked
giant who had answered the door. Belldandy smiled timidly and waved
to him; he replied with a bigger grin, and she began to feel a bit
more at ease as she read his face and realized that he was probably
the most harmless person in the entire world.
"This is Andrew," continued Keiichi, indicating the man
sitting in the ugly greenish armchair next to the door. Andrew was a
short and stocky fellow with dark hair, bearded, bespectacled and
slightly befuddled-looking. He smiled warmly, then went on with what
he was doing as if this were nothing unusual, for to him, very little
was unusual.
"And this," said Keiichi, indicating the tall and rangy fellow
with short dark hair on the couch, "is --was -- my roommate Tom.
Where's Truss?"
"Where do you think?" asked Derek with mock disgust. John
Trussell, the third resident of the apartment, had of late spent a
good bit of time in the eastern part of the state, being, as Andrew
put it, "disrupted".
"Wait a second -- what do you mean, 'was'?" Tom asked.
"Oh, uh... Rick found Belldandy in our suite and threw me
out."
"Why Keiichi, you sly devil."
"It's not like that!" Keiichi protested. "She... she was,
uh... lost! Yes -- she was lost. I was just giving her directions!
She's an international student like me."
Tom nodded sagely, his grin refusing to fade. "Sure, Kei.
Directions. Yep." He held up a hand in the "A-OK" gesture. "Noooo
problem."
Belldandy looked confused, and said nothing.
"They threw you -out-?" Derek asked.
"Yeah," Tom interjected. "Hall rules this year... women in
the rooms after ten, out you go."
"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard!" said Andrew.
"What is?" asked a new voice. Turning, Keiichi saw Gryphon
emerging from the front bedroom, which belonged to Truss and as such
contained his computer, on which Gryphon had until just now been
playing Doom. "Oh, hello."
Gryphon was also a short man, albeit an inch or two taller
than Keiichi, and he was stocky like Andrew, but in poorer shape, with
most of his considerable extra weight around the middle. His brown
hair was long enough to pull back into a ponytail largely because he
never bothered to get a haircut; he was bearded partially in
preparation for the coming winter and partly because he hadn't
troubled to shave in long enough for a full beard to grow in. He
blinked his blue eyes, took off his wire-framed glasses, polished them
on the tail of his tatty blue flannel shirt, and put them back on, to
have his suspicion confirmed: Keiichi really did have the prettiest
girl he'd ever seen with him.
Well. This was an interesting development in what had been an
uneventful Friday evening. Unfortunately, Gryphon knew himself well
to know that he now had a better than 50/50 chance of turning into
Jerry Lewis right before everyone's eyes, and equally even odds of
going into Power Stolid Mode trying to avoid that. He was lousy at
first impressions and he knew it. Already he was feeling quite
self-conscious about his rather ratty attire, until he reminded
himself somewhat cynically that there was little chance it would ever
matter.
Still, bitterness wouldn't become him very well, so he dug his
cheeriness out from under the pile of magazines beside the sofa of his
conscious mind and put it back on his face, and made greeting noises.
And, in doing so, unconsciously made what may have been his
first good first impression, ever.
"Oh, hello. I didn't know you were here... Belldandy, this is
Gryphon. I, uh, sorry... I seem to have forgotten your real name... "
Keiichi looked sheepish.
Gryphon smiled. "Ben Hutchins; Gryphon is fine, though.
Everyone calls me that." He wasn't entirely certain what would be the
right etiquette now; falling worshipfully at her feet would probably
be too much, and nodding would be curt. He settled for extending a
hand, which she took in a warm and firm grip for a long moment before
releasing it.
"I'm Belldandy," she replied. "Belldandy Wishbringer."
"What a marvelous name."
She colored slightly, as did he when he realized what he'd
said; then the moment passed, and the conversation rolled, and the
usual evening wackiness at GweepCo was into full silly swing.

Midnight came, and the gathering showed signs of breaking up
somewhat early; Truss hadn't gotten home yet, Andrew had power-crashed
at 11:30, and both Tom and Derek were rumbling about turning in early
as well. All this raised the inevitable question which everyone had
been more or less consciously avoiding all night.
"So... where are you two going to stay tonight?" It was
Gryphon who finally approached the issue.
"I don't know," Keiichi admitted. "We can't go back to
campus... "
"You could crash here, no problem," Derek offered.
"Yes, but for how long? Don't get me wrong, I appreciate
it... but we've got to find someplace to live, as in permanently, and
soon."
"Long as you need to," Derek replied. "Heck, Ben spent most
of last summer at our old apartment, and almost a month this summer,
before he could move into his... own... apartment... " Derek trailed
off as an idea formed on his face, and as he turned to Gryphon, he
could see the same idea on the other's face as well.
"The extra room," Gryphon muttered. "Duh! I should have
thought of it sooner. There's an empty room in my apartment you guys
could take... we never ended up getting another roommate, so Noah's
old room is empty, more or less. I'm pretty sure Zoner won't mind."
Keiichi blinked, then stumbled, unsure of what to do. "Um...
I'd help you with the rent, of course, but I'm sort of, er... "
Gryphon waved him off. "Worry about it later, kick in what
you can... Zoner and I have been managing to pay it on our own since,
what, June, we can survive a while longer. I can't deny you your
right of sanctuary, now can I?" He grinned. "C'mon, let's go see if
Zoner's home."

One somewhat harrowing ride in Gryphon's cranky old pickup later, the
threesome arrived in front of a somewhat dilapidated-looking
three-decker apartment house, a typical example of the type of
dwelling with which Worcester was dotted. Had Gryphon been in a
slightly more trivial mood, he would have displayed his knowledge of
useless information about the area by informing his companions of the
fact that the three-decker apartment house originated in Worcester;
instead he just told them it wasn't quite as shabby as it looked,
wrestled with his slightly defective keys in the more-than-slightly
defective locks, and showed them up to the second floor.
Here, he struggled with another lock to open the door, which
was festooned with odd decorations (a small plastic sign reading "SANS
ISSUE", a larger cardboard placard reading "CAUTION- TRIPPING HAZARD -
PLEASE WATCH YOUR STEP" and a laserdisc being the most obvious), then
picked his way across a pitch-dark room, stumbling once and biting off
a curse before it could completely form, before switching on what had
to be the ugliest table lamp either had ever seen. It had a brown
burlap shade, held on a dull brass pole over a false oil reservoir of
orange glass and, above that, a big brass eagle, its wings
outstretched and head turned to one side. The bulb in it had three
settings: very dim, just a bit dimmer than comfortable, and just a bit
brighter than comfortable. Gryphon opted for "just a bit dimmer",
then made his way around a coffee table made out of a broken Space
Invaders console to switch on the -other- light in the room, a
jury-rigged-looking thing that resembled a construction floodlamp and
was affixed to one of the windowsills with a spring clamp. Between
the two of them, the lamps fairly well illuminated the living room.
Which was cluttered, but not too badly. Large piles of
videotapes, sneeringly escaping the inadequate cardboard boxes
intended to control them, were slowly encroaching over one end of the
room, including an orange chair next to the Nazi-eagle lamp that
looked like it would be comfortable if it didn't have all those coats
and videotapes on it. A footlocker full of CDs and cassette tapes
crouched at the feet of a monolithic stereo system which was up on a
shelf built into that end of the room, next to a smallish TV set and
what looked like an old Nintendo eight-bit game box. Doors led away
just to the left of the stereo, just to the side of the small corridor
leading into the apartment from the stairwell door, and through the
wall on the far side; the one by the stereo was a glass gridwork
obscured with some sort of mirrored film affixed to the other side,
the one by the entry was wooden and had the words "NOAH VAWTER"
scrawled on it in colored chalk, and the one in the far wall was just
an open doorway.
Flanking that open doorway were two chairs; one of them was
squat and ugly, a brown and tan, blocky thing which looked much less
comfortable than it was, and the other was a generic-looking blue
recliner. A couch which matched the squat brown chair sprawled out
along the wall beside the wooden door with the chalk writing on it,
half-buried in comic books and old TV Guides. The squat chair faced
an endtable which matched the one in the opposite corner, the one with
the eagle lamp on it. This table had a large grey computer on it,
which sat running, its cooling fans grinding merrily along. Another
computer sat dismantled next to the table, along with a printer, and a
third, this one a portable, was on the orange chair along with the
coats.
All in all, the room looked little different from the living
room at GweepCo, except that it was larger and contained almost the
same amount of furniture, so it looked less messy than it was. For a
moment, Gryphon felt a pang of embarrassment about its condition; then
he shrugged it off. Surely they've seen clutter before. He made a
mental note to clean the place up the following day, made apologies
anyway, and then gave the mini-tour.
"Here's the kitchen... sorry about the dishes," he said,
wishing he'd gotten around to washing the bordering-on-cataclysmic
pile of dishes in the sink. "The bathroom's in there," he continued,
and observed silently to himself, [and thank the gods Zoner cleaned it
up on a whim last night.] "Zoner doesn't seem to be home... his room
is the one out of the living room, with the silver Mylar on the door.
Mine is over there, and that's the back door next to it. We don't
have much food; we need to go shopping sometime soon, but help
yourselves to whatever we've got."
Leading them back to the living room, Gryphon stepped around
the couch and opened up the wooden door.
"This is the extra room... it's got some of Noah's junk in it,
still, but we can make that go away easily enough. There're no beds,
though... I suppose we can see about fixing that tomorrow. It's a
little small for two people," he continued, sounding apologetic.
"It's better than having nowhere to go," Belldandy said,
smiling radiantly. "You see, Keiichi, I told you it would work out."
Keiichi smiled. "Heh... I guess so. Thank you, Gryph,
really."
"Ah, forget it. What was I supposed to do, let you freeze?"
Keiichi yawned. "Busy day... I think I'll turn in.
Belldandy... you should sleep on the sofa, you'll be more comfortable.
I'll take the floor, I'm used to it."
"Oh, no, it's no trouble. Why should you be uncomfortable
because of me?" She looked downcast. "I've already gotten you thrown
out of your room."
"Don't worry about that. We've got a place to stay now, and
everything's going to be okay, just like you said. I'll be fine, I
like sleeping on the floor. Please. Take the couch. Okay?"
"I... " Belldandy looked up, considered, and smiled. "All
right."
Without interrupting, Gryphon unobtrusively cleared off the
sofa, then went back to his room to dig out the extra blankets and
pillows for distribution, thanking, for once, his ancestral tendency
to overpack and overstock.
"Thank you," said Keiichi again, taking the proffered blanket
and pillow. "Uh, well... good night, Gryph... good night, Belldandy."
"Good night, Keiichi," replied Belldandy, and even Gryphon,
who was making a concerted and deliberate effort not to pay too close
attention or draw any conclusions, couldn't miss the affection,
bordering on adoration, in her voice.
How odd.
He shrugged, inwardly, and when she turned away from the
now-closed door, he held out her blanket and pillow with a smile. She
took them, and thanked him almost shyly, and then, removing her shoes
carefully, situated herself on the sofa, curling up in the blanket.
"Shall I kill the lights?" he asked.
"No, that's all right. I can sleep with them on, as long as
they're not too bright." She paused. "Thank you very much for
putting us up."
"Really," he replied once more, "it's no problem. I'm glad I
could help."
"You're very nice," she said, and settled down to sleep.
"Good night."
"Uh... thank you," he replied, coloring slightly. "Good
night." Not knowing quite what else to do, he shut off the
construction light, turned the eagle lamp down to "dim", and, clearing
away the coats, sat down in the orange chair with his battered,
half-read copy of _The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich_ to read and
wait for Zoner to get home.

Two hours later, Gryphon looked up at the sound of Zoner's key
in the lock, and the door ground open to reveal his tall, stocky
roommate, his unidentifiable squarish soft bag in hand.
"Yo," Zoner said, and Gryphon held up a hand.
"Shh."
"What?" Zoner replied, quietly. Gryphon pointed, and Zoner
peered through the gloom at the couch. His eyes widened slightly, and
he turned back to Gryphon.
"Who's that?" he whispered.
"Remember when you said it'd be nice if we had somebody to
take up the spare room? Well... "

Written by Benjamin D. Hutchins and MegaZone

THE CAST:

KEIICHI MORISATO
BELLDANDY WISHBRINGER
DEREK BACON
ANDREW PETRARCA
TOM RUSSELL
and
MEGAZONE
as
THEMSELVES

A FARAWAY VOICE THAT SOUNDS AS CLOSE AS YOU FEEL
as
THE VOICE OF ALISON

and

MAN #1 and MAN #2
as
RICK AND SVEN, the FASCIST RESIDENT ADVISORS

THE BIG BLOCK O' DISCLAIMERS
WPI is a real place. Everybody listed as "themselves" except
Belldandy and Keiichi Morisato are real people who we asked before
using. them as characters Everybody else is made up. Belldandy and
Keiichi were created by Kosuke Fujishima for the manga "Oh My
Goddess!", which first appeared in Afternoon Comics in Japan and is
being imported/translated by Dark Horse Comics. They're doing a
pretty decent job of it, so you might want to read it if you don't
already There's also an OVA series which has been imported and
subtitled by AnimEigo, Inc. They did a good job, too. You might want
to look into seeing it if you haven't. Neither company paid us for
this endorsement; we just figured, what the heck.

Copyright (c) 1994 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited

--
In the temple of love Shine like thunder | gry...@world.std.com
In the temple of love Cry like rain | gry...@hotblack.gweep.net
In the temple of love Hear the calling |----------------------------
And the temple of love Is falling down <- The Sisters of Mercy -><-