!!!ICHI BAN!!! KATAMARI FAN FICTION (PART IV) !!!ICHI BAN!!!

King lay in the middle of the highway, flat on his face, gradually regaining consciousness and realizing that he had successfully made his escape. There was no need to worry about getting hit by a car, because all the oncoming traffic had suffered the same fate as the limousine, and nobody wanted to drive into Kyoto right now anyway. He carefully peeled himself off the pavement, slightly bruised and cut, but otherwise okay. He turned towards the city, only about four or five miles away, and could clearly see that it was very much in distress. Fires burned, helicopters circled, sirens blared. He thought he could make out the Katamari rolling between buildings if he looked hard enough.

The momentary elation at still being alive burned off quickly as he realized he had lost his Prince. "My Prince!" he cried out in despair, "Where have you gone? Why have you left us!" King collapsed onto his knees and cursed the sky.

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"Now where them big titty girls you promised me, Michael?" inquired Howard "Sludgy Puddles" Jameson, world-renowned blues guitarist, for the fifth time. Mike Greenjeans, his agent, was beginning to get a little irritated, and his growing concern over his own personal well-being was not helping. They had been down in the club's cellar for about an hour now, and the sounds that came from outside had not grown any more assuring. Mike had had enough.

"Listen here, you old fart! I lied. There ain't no big titty girls down here. I made it up to manipulate a senile old man!"

A look of severe distress took hold of Sludgy's face and his bottom lip quivered dolefully.

"Oh God, Sludgy," said Mike, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean it. I'm just a little on edge right now. C'mere." Mike gave the old musician a hug.

"My oh my, Michael. You sure know how to give an ol' man the blues."

"Sorry... sorry."

The blues club, of which the cellar's ceiling was comprised, was abruptly ripped away. A giant ball of urban real estate was making off with Sludgy's venue, and several of the surrounding buildings as well.

"You sho' been settin' up some shit gigs fo' me lately, kid." muttered Sludgy to his agent.

"We're leaving." said Greenjeans. The wine cellar, which was now no more than a large concrete dugout, still featured a set of stairs leading up to what used to be the kitchen. The kitchen (and the the rest of the Blue Lotus of Despair Happy Blues Club) was now a vacant lot, strewn about with a few bits of rubble and furniture that the Katamari left behind. The talent agent lead the aged musician up to street level, and together they began to move in the opposite direction of the creature.

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It wants nothing more than to consume, to grow. It thinks nothing of what it devours, or what it has devoured, or what it will devour. Only one question lingers in its mind, the question of whether or not it's being fed. I can feel its hunger, bottomless, insatiable. We are connected, our destinies entwined. I shall find it, or perhaps it shall find me first. But first I have to kill this huge fucking sewer rat.

Let me back up a bit. Yes, I am King's Prince. My father accidentally let go of me when the Doomsphere, the Omega Orb, the Katamari, consumed his car. The impact sent me flying out an open window and I fell directly through a sewer grate, landing in a streaming underground river of Japanese crap... that's right, some asshole had dumped all his Pokemon DVDs and Sailor Moon comics into the sewer system.

I managed to swim for the concrete shore, but upon reaching it I was accosted by a rodent. This thing is probably large by human standards, but from my inch high point of view it's about the size of a rhinoceros. And that's how I got into this wacky predicament.

The rat growls at me viciously. It's angry snarls gurgle as viscous saliva drools from it's infectious maw. I slowly back away, maintaining eye contact. I nearly trip and fall backwards as my heel makes contact with a heavy object on the ground. I glance down. It's a Lego crowbar that some kid must have flushed down the toilet or eaten accidentally. I carefully pick it up, still facing the beast.

The rat lunges, its elongated front incisors glistening hungrily. I dodge, the rat momentarily loses its footing and stumbles. I bring the plastic bludgeon down hard upon its mangy head. Critical hit! Rat loses 50 HP!

The rat is Enraged! Rat gains 15 Fortitude. It spins and rushes me, head butting me to the ground. Prince loses 25 HP! My head hits the concrete hard. Prince is Dazed! Prince loses 10 General Wherewithal. The rat rears up on its hind legs, and prepares to fall upon my body, ripping, tearing, devouring. But I've already spotted the endgame lying on the ground next to me. It's a pointy Lego Dunce Cap from the 19th Century School House Lego Playset. I put the conical plastic hat over the end of the crowbar and aim upwards as the rat's rancid smelling body descends towards me. With a nasty crack, the hat and crowbar combo pierce the beast's ribs and plunge straight into its worm infested heart. Critical Hit! Rat loses 50 HP! The beast lets out a horrific shriek and convulses in it's final death throws. Rat is Defeated!

I shimmy out from beneath the reeking carcass, rat blood dripping from my green skin. I pause for a moment. I must find the Katamari, but which way should I go? All at once my mind is crushed by a searing flash of pain.

WE ARE HUNGRY! THAT IS WHY WE ARE GLAD THAT HAPPY FUN TIME IS CATERED! CATERED BY KYOTO! KYOTO TASTES LOVELY!

Its thoughts pierce my brain. Our connection grows stronger as it grows larger. And now I know where to go. Against the flow of the sewer water, towards the city. I'll find him.

I wander for at least an hour, his thoughts becoming more defined and frequent in my brain. I know I'm close to the Katamari; the sewer water is running red with blood. And then I'm there. It is very near now. I climb a ladder, and pop out of another drainage grate onto the street. There it is, half a block away, and trying on a 10 story apartment building for size. It just isn't quite big enough, but the Katamari is testing the water anyway. Now is my chance.

A light breeze kicks up a scrap of paper lying nearby, and I grab hold of it, fluttering with it towards the Doomsphere. The paper smacks into the monster and, as with everything else, is held fast. But not me, I don't stick to the Katamari; the Katamari sticks to me, when and only when I see fit. I move my arms along its enormous circumference. I don't need proper leverage or power as would someone bound by the usual laws of physics, the Katamari simply yields to my every motion. The next thing I know I'm rolling it down the street, back towards the wreckage and away from the parts of the city that remain relatively intact. It comes more naturally than I would have imagined.

But someone stands in my way.

-------------------------------------------

"C'mon Sludgy, we gotta move faster!"

"My 'roids!" protested Sludgy.

Sludgy and Mike Greenjeans were about two miles away from the edge of the city, traveling on foot. As the day grew darker, the wreckage around them grew more ominous and foreboding, as though the destruction of the city had opened the door for some lurking evil that could never show itself among an intact civilization. Mike was getting ready to ditch this slow-moving demented old fart. He had other clients anyway, and Greenjeans knew his life depended on getting out of Kyoto, fast.

An aroma crept up into Greenjeans' olfactory nerve, and to his surprise it was not an unpleasant one. Something that reminded him of home, too. As they walked further it became unmistakable: it was pizza.

"Back in my day sometime' we had to use the telephone book for toilet paper." said Sludgy.

"Shh! Do you smell that?" interrupted Mike. If the absurdity of having to quiet down in order to smell something occurred to Sludgy, he didn't show it.

"Son, I ain't smelled sheeyit since '73. And by sheeyit of course I mean 'anything.'"

"Hmm, more for me then," muttered Greenjeans to himself. He didn't mention it again. Instead they continued to walk in the same direction, the smell getting stronger. A few moments later they reached what was obviously, based on appearance and scent, the source of the smell. It was a small shop, adorned with a quaint sign reading, "Super Tony-san's Honorable Pizza Pies." The only thing that didn't quite add up was the fact that the store was completely dark inside. Greenjeans was still hungry enough to investigate.

"Wait here, Howard," said Mike. "Just stand here and talk to that newspaper box or whatever. I'll be right out."

Mike tried the door and found that it was unlocked. He proceeded inside, pausing to let his eyes adjust to the darkness. Indeed, from what he could see the restaurant appeared to have been quickly deserted many hours ago. Nevertheless, the smell was very strong now. "Hello?" he said. There was no answer.

Carefully he crossed to the other side of the darkened establishment, nearing the kitchen. He had never smelt such a strong scent of pizza. It was intoxicating. He felt slightly dizzy.

Leaning through the open doorway, Greenjeans peeked tentatively into the kitchen. No cooks, no pizza, not even the vaguest indication that there had been any recent life in here at all. Then his eyes adjusted further as he stood there, allowing him to see something on the opposite side of the room. A large gaping hole in the floor. The rubble surrounding it was indicative that something had definitely dug up from under, not down.

Carefully he approached it and peered into the small abyss. It was much too dark to tell where it lead, but when he came close to the opening another smell became apparent, even through the intense pizza odor. Raw sewage. This hole had been dug up from the sewer.

A prickling feeling rushed down Greenjean's back and he knew he shouldn't stay. He turned to walk out and thought he saw the top of a head peering over a counter at him. He startled in surprise and then it wasn't there. "Okay," thought Greenjeans, "Getting the fuck out of here."

He rapidly moved out the kitchen door and was halfway across the dining area when a dark shape leaped down off the ceiling and somehow ensnared him in a weighted net. Greenjeans struggled, only to become more tangled and incapacitated. Something like a nunchuck was flung out of nowhere and everything went black.


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"Prince! Oh, my Prince! My son! We thought we had lost you forever!" King addresses me from the middle of the street, his jubilancy radiating, lighting the surrounding darkness. "And look at how well you command our Katamari! So deftly and with such professionalism! Could a father be more proud of his son?" I tell the Katamari to stay and run to my father, jumping up in his palm, hugging his pinky. "But we were so worried! Don't you ever leave us again, my Prince!" he says, scolding and praising all at the same time.

"I am sorry Father."

"We are just glad you are okay. But we were very scared. Say, do you know how you can make it up to us?"

"Anything, Father."

"Why don't you go back and grab that Katamari, and we'll tell you."

I hop off his palm and proceed back to the giant ball of city, sitting docile and monolithic in the middle of the street, awaiting my command. "Are we going to take it away, Father? Take it somewhere safe?" I ask.

"HAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHA!" His manic laughter echoes strangely among the waste. "Prince, you are a peculiar and funny child! No, our son, we have much grander plans for our Katamari!"

"But father, the Katamari is a terrorizing force of evil! Look at how much has been lost to it!"

"We are hurt that you would speak ill of our creation, son. Now do as we say. You will continue to roll the Katamari, and you will roll up as much as you can, until we tell you to stop."

"No!" It was bad enough knowing that this thing was running rampant, but the idea that I could be behind its terror was too much. Why would my father want to incur such destruction? "I won't, Father!" There was a pause, a deadly one.

"Are you defying us, son?" His voice was ominously flat and tranquil, like the calm before a horrific storm. "You do not understand our plan do you? Of course not. To understand our plan would require you to understand where you came from. To understand where we came from." I know that for once his use of "we" is not the royal form, but the genuine "you and I" form. "We are not of human origin." he says, referring to himself once more, "We were cut from the cloth of the cosmos, and destined from birth to rule over existence. But opposing forces cast us down to Earth, sensing in us what they referred to as a 'relentless egotism,' a 'selfish disregard for the needs of the universe.' Our power as King of All Cosmos was stripped away, and we were banished to this planet, doomed to live out our existence as a mere mortal.

"But those fools who deposed us left a small fraction of our power intact. And it was with this power and the genetic meddling of human science that we were able to devise you and the Katamari you command. And now our plan nears fruition. What is the purpose of the Katamari? With it we shall hold the universe at ransom! With an ever growing force of destruction at our command, the Powers that cast us down to Earth will have no choice but to reinstate us as Supreme King of All Cosmos! And if they don't, there's no limit to what the Katamari will consume. Earth will be just the beginning. After this planet is eaten, our creation will cross the void of space with impunity and consume other bodies, eventually in just one gulp! Of course, this will not be necessary. The Powers will not allow for it, they will have no choice but to reinstate us. We shall be King!" His voice has risen in a tyrannical crescendo and his final assertion rings out to the urban destruction, among which most life has already fled or been extinguished. "You are the final piece in the puzzle, son." he tells me. "We admittedly lack the power to command our first creation, but our second creation is in fact just so enabled. That's you, Prince."

"NO!" I shout. I will not, cannot allow such horrors to continue unceasing. A deadly silence follows my insubordinate outburst. Nothing is said.

"Do you mean to defy us?" says King quietly.

My tiny heart is pounding in my throat but I cannot back away now. "I will not be responsible for any more destruction." I try to maintain a level and calm tone of voice but it cracks under the strain anyway.

"THEN YOU CAN EAT OUR SHIT, YOU INSOLENT LITTLE COCK SHINER!" His voice booms in such a way that a listener at a significant distance might assume that Japan had just entered round three with the atom bomb. "Suffer and do our bidding!" Two eerie glows accumulate under his dark brow, one for each eye. Beams of searing energy shoot forth and scorch the ground around me. I am too small to be considered an easy target. I run. I must get away.

Then one of his bolts finds its mark. Excruciating pain roars through me. I fall. He laughs. It is not a wicked laugh. It is a joyous one. My blurred vision refocuses as the pain subsides and he is standing above me, his rage completely absent, and replaced by manic happiness. "There you go, kid! You see why you must not defy us? Now go ahead champ, get back on the ball!"

No. I get up, stumbling, start to run again. "Unacceptable!" he booms. He manages to hit me with another horrible beam. I fall, the pain twice as agonizing. I can't, I won't. But I do. Part of my mind still protests but the pain is too terrible. My feet move on their own volition towards the Doomsphere, where I take hold and hear my mouth say, "Where shall I begin?"

"Here." he says.

---------------------------------

"Dude, what've we got here?" Greenjeans was beginning to come around. His vision was still blurred, but he could at least tell that the shape looming above him was humanoid and green. He tried to move his arms and legs and found that they were bound.

"Dinner, man." said another voice. "And its not pizza this time."

"Way to go bro, I was getting so sick of that shit." At the mention of pizza, Greenjeans briefly noticed that the smell of it was still amazingly strong, though clearly his location had changed. It occurred to him that it was coming off his captor's bodies.

"Well, now that the man has been brought down, we don't have to, like, eat what society tell us to anymore, dude." says a third voice which cracked pubescently. "We can even move up out of this shit hole sewer." So that's where he was. The sewer. Who were these people? They sounded like a bunch of kid skateboard punks. His mind and vision suddenly slipped more into focus and he gazed upon his captors.

They were four giant, bipedal, talking turtles. Their faces were smeared with what appeared to be terrible acne, and aside from various bits of martial arts gear and colored bandanas, they stood completely naked. "Well dudes, let's chow down on some man flesh!"

"Cowabunga!"

"I call his balls and scrote!"

"That's fucking gay, dude."

"Yeah, you're such a fucking faggot, Michaelangelo. It's no wonder the rat named you after some pansy ass artist."

"Shut the fuck up, douchebag. I heard the guy you were named after was a bit of a flamer himself. That's right, I read the DaVinci Code."

"You know, guys," said a fourth voice, "I uh, looked our names up on Wikipedia the other day... We're actually all named after artists."

"I had to go to a museum once. Art is fucking gay."

"Whatever, let's eat already."

And with that, the four adolescent gene-spliced martial arts expert amphibian freaks devoured Michael Greenjeans, talent agent, alive.

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Sludgy was getting bored of talking to the newspaper box. "I'm sorry Reggie, but I gotta get moving. Say hi to the wife 'n kids fo' me." Now where had that Michael gotten off to? In a sudden bout of surprising lucidity, it occurred to Sludgy Puddles that he might be able to spot him from a higher vantage point. He noticed a relatively intact 10 story car park a little farther down the block and proceeded towards it.

He had some difficulty hobbling up to the top, but eventually he got there. Sludgy took a seat on an abandoned Honda Fit and absently began to strum a few chords out of Spicywings, his legendary guitar. The sun set serenely over the far off mountains, paying no heed to the chaos unfolding in Kyoto. The musician looked out over the ravaged city skyline and he saw many things. He saw trees of green, flowers of white; the brightness of day, the darkness of-

"The fuck's that thing?" said Sludgy to himself. A giant ball of random crap was devouring what remained of the high rises in Kyoto's financial district. Unexpectedly his memory vaguely recalled the monstrosity that had destroyed his last venue, the Blue Lotus of Despair Happy Blues Club. "Why, that's the son' bitch spoiled my last gig!" he said. And with that revelation he composed a song.

Giant ball o' random crap,
makin' me into some down 'n out sap,
I had fame and I had fortune,
sittin' here in my lap,
now I wanna lie down,
and take a long dirt nap,
thank's for nuttin'
giant ball o' random crap.

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Now he wants me to leave the city. I can't let this continue any further.

"Good going Tiger!" he says, excitedly, as he follows me and the Omega Orb through the city. "You gobbled up those skyscrapers like popcorn! We are so very proud! Oh look!" As we roll along a main street towards the outskirts of Kyoto, I notice segments of pavement beginning to rip out of the ground. "Now we know you're ready son! You're starting to rip up the very Earth from beneath you! Now the Powers will have to listen! Soon you'll be rolling up this quaint island country!"

I spin the ball 180 degrees, turn it to face my father. "What are you doing son?"

I roll over him. He sticks like anything else. "BLAST AND DAMN YOU, YOU LITTLE TWAT!"

But I can sense something else. Something else sticking, something immaterial, lacking mass and volume but nonetheless very substantial. Its his ego... redistributing it's immense metaphysical mass around the circumference of the Katamari. I can see it, a swirling flamboyant rainbow-colored aura, moving out of the King and washing over the Doomsphere. Something changes. The Katamari is no longer under my control, or under its own control. It begins to levetate, climbing up into the air, and settling about 30 stories up.

"LOOK AT WHAT YOU HAVE DONE! WE ARE VERY UPSET. WHEN WE GET DOWN FROM HERE-"

But a sickening, space-time rending crack echoes through the very fabric of existence, cutting off even the King's mighty voice. The ball, collapsing under the massive weight of my father's ego, undulating with color, begins to implode. Slowly at first, it crumples like a papier-mache balloon. Then faster and faster, the skyscrapers, the Blue Lotus of Despair Happy Blues Club, the houses, the army tanks, the cars, the phone booths, the cow, the stupid college girls, the fat kid, the dogs, the cats, the action figures, the Pokemon merchandise, the lab equipment, the mice, all collapsing into a singularity at the bottom of an infinite vortex of absolute black. I watch as it's circumference grows, and I descend into darkness.

---------------------------------

Sludgy knew what that big black dot over the city was the moment it appeared. After all, he had read Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time at least four times. "That there's a juicy muhfuckah." he said to himself. "Well, Spicywings, looks like the gig's up. How 'bout one more song fo' the road?"

As the black hole grew rapidly, hungrily devouring what the Katamari had not, Sludgy played his bluesy swan song. And the lyrics went a little something like this:

There just ain't no escapin',
got them black hole blues.
Space time fabric it be rapin',
I got them black hole blues.
There ain't no point to cry son,
once you cross the event horizon,
I got 'dem black hole blues.

And as he neared the end of his song, he felt the darkness' immense gravity well pulling him up and into the expanding pitch. With a surprising gentleness he began to spiral towards it's core. The theory of relativity suggests that with his growing proximity to the hole's event horizon, the perceived passing of time must begin to slow, eventually to an infinitely tiny fraction above zero, for all intents and purposes halting time itself. Crossing the threshold, one final blue note rang out, accompanied by one final chord, frozen, timeless and immortal in the perfect blackness of eternity.

THE END