More Human Than Human
(Dunno if the titl's been used yet. C&C is requested.)
Prologue
by JJC
---
Oh! My Goddess! is property of Kosuke Fujishima. This work is a piece
of fiction intended for personal use. No commercial use of this piece
is intended or allowed.
---
Belldandy hummed a nice little song to herself as she folded freshly
washed linen. It was mind numbingly boring work, something that most
mortals -- and quite a few deities -- would have found distasteful. It
didn't bother her too much, though.
Keiichi had attempted to do the laundry a few times -- he had wanted to
do his fair share of work. Unfortunately, his attempts at washing
clothing had turned all his underwear pink. Urd also tried to help a
couple times, but she only ended up creating an extremely messy
situation -- all the clothes in a six kilometer radius of the temple
attempted to fold themselves regardless of whether they were being worn
by people at the time. Skuld made an automatic washing machine that
worked just fine, except for a few little details -- it tended to blow
out the entire city power grid from time to time.
*There! All done.*
In retrospect, it wasn't that much work after all. If it was a really
heavy load, there was always the option of just magically cleaning the
clothes.
Belldandy smiled to herself ruefully.
*Just because you can do it, it doesn't mean that you _should_ do it all
the time, 'neechan.*
She had told Urd that time and time again. Urd never listened to her on
that point. Come to think about it, lots of people never took her
seriously. She carefully maintained a facade of unearthly serenity in
an attempt to balance Keiichi's near constant exposure to the arcane and
esoteric that life with goddesses brought about. She new the heavy
price that many a mortal had to pay for living with gods.
Sometimes Belldandy wanted to scream out at the world in frustration.
Oh, Kami-sama! There was only so much that one could take!
*Keiichi was out at work -- probably doing some ridiculously hard job
that gave little pay. Something that he "got" from the motor club
grapevine. Oh, Keiichi. This was the man that utterly defined humble.
She loved him. He was too trusting, too kind, too... too... timid...
Wait a second.*
Belldandy blinked for a second.
*Maybe that's why our relationship hasn't gone anywhere! Someone has to
take the aggressive stance. She had to talk to someone about her
situation.*
---
She hesitated before knocking on Skuld's door. When she heard no
definite answer she decided to open up the door carefully.
Belldandy peered around the door frame, "Ano... Skuld-chan... What are
you up to?"
The young goddess sat in front of her desk, bashing her head into the
keyboard. A mess of cardboard and cellophane sat upon Skuld's rumpled
futon in the carton -- "Windows 2000:Server Edition".
"Skuld-chan," scolded Belldandy firmly, but gently, "What did I say
about installing software?"
"Arrrrrgh! I know! I know! Don't install completely new packages on
production systems. Do it on a test system!," wailed Skuld,
"'Nee-chan! I'm sorry! I couldn't resist!"
Belldandy wrapped her left hand around the door's edge and pivoted
herself into Skuld's room. She put her right hand into the mess of
cables, breadboards and other electronic detritus. She drew her hand
back with a small black rectangular object held between the tips of the
index and the thumb. Her eyes crinkled up at the corners and her lips
stretched wide as she threw a mischievous grin at Skuld.
Skuld looked up slowly, tears making smearing her rounded face. Skuld
blinked away the remaining tears and stared at the object in her
sister's hands, a surprised expression spreading across her face.
"You made a backup??!!! Oh, Onee-sama! You're the best!," cried out
Skuld.
Skuld hopped off her chair and smothered Belldandy in a massive hug.
"It's all right, Skuld. I made this backup disk image last night when
you were out at the software store. It wasn't too hard to guess what
you were going to do."
Skuld looked up at Belldandy. It wasn't fair! She knew this was gonna
happen??!! She quickly mentally revised her view of her older sister.
Belldandy was sugar and spice, but with a hint of Tabasco hiding behind
those gentle eyes.
"Skuld. I wanted to talk to you about something," Belldandy breathed
softly into Skuld's ear as she patted Skuld's back.
Skuld suddenly loosened her grip on Belldandy and scooted back a few
steps.
"You know about Urd's bike? Oh man! I'm sorry! I didn't mean to take
the brake assembly off!," panicked Skuld, "Well, not all the way..."
Belldandy laughed. Her peals of laughter echoed off the paper and wood
walls of the room.
"Oh, Skuld! It doesn't have to do with that. I have some personal
things to discuss, and I think you should have some input. Besides, Urd
needs to learn some humility sometime..."
"Okay 'nee-chan. Whatcha want to talk about then?"
Skuld sat down on her futon, tossing the trash over to a large trash can
in the other corner of the room. She patted the futon with her right
hand, motioning Belldandy to sit down with her other hand.
Belldandy came into the room and sank onto the futon. Skuld wrapped her
arms around Belldandy's left arm and rested her head on Belldandy's
shoulder.
"Well, it's about me and Keiichi..."
---
to be continued...