INTERROGATION

She sits across from me, achingly beautiful.
Porcelain skin, dark auburn-tinged hair, Asian features -- Japanese, maybe, but mixed with something else.
And eyes -- shimmering grey eyes -- that glisten with defiance. Oh, man.
Hard to tell her age. Early 20s, I guess, but I've always been bad at telling for sure. Especially with Asian chicks.
We sit across from one another in the interrogation room -- a small, nondescript room with cinderblock walls and no windows, just two fold-up chairs, a card table, and a monitor camera in one high corner.
I lean over the table, clipboard in hand.
She sits, arms crossed, challenging me.
I can tell she's scared. Scared shitless. But she doesn't let on, and she does her best to look poised and secure.
Good girl.
"Okay, one more time," I say. "Name?"
"Puddin Tame," she replies somberly.
I lower my mirrored sunglasses so she can see the serious expression in my eyes.
"Okay, one MORE time," I say, pulling back my coat just enough to show my gun holster. "Name?"
Her eyes focus on the revolver, and she suppresses a shudder.
"A- Akima," she says. "What's yours?"
I push the glasses back up, hiding my eyes. Clever girl. She's trying to establish a personal connection, make it harder to snuff her. Good hostage tactic.
"Fisk," I reply. "Akima, that your first or last name?"
"First," she says. "Fisk, that your first or last name?"
:Last," I reply. "What's yours?"
She pauses, then her eyes momentarily linger over my coat, at the spot she now knows conceals my gun.
"Takeshi," she answers.
I scribble the name on my clipboard.
"Akima Ta-kesh-i," I read. "Pretty name."
"Thanks," she says hollowly.
"Japanese?" I ask.
"Yeah," she says. "On my dad's side. My mom, she's Welsh."
Again, she's personalizing. Trying to make me think of her as an individual. Smart.
"Age?" I ask.
"18," she answers.
Yow. Told ya I was bad at guessing ages. I feel downright guilty for some of the thoughts that have lingered in my head.
I write down her age, not looking up as I ask the next question: "And what brings you here, Akima?"
She sits, silent.
I look up. "Look, I know you're not a local."
She says nothing.
"Where are you from?" I ask, trying a different tactic.
"Atlanta," she replies.
Huh. That's where we picked up Gretchen from, way back when. Surely, it's a coincidence.
"And how did you end up in the backwoods of Tennessee?" I ask.
"Bus," she replies.
I write. Not info we need, but I should keep this interrogation rolling along.
"Why did you come here?" I ask.
She shrugs.
I tap my fingertips on the tabletop. "Look, miss, we both know you came here for some reason. Speigel County isn't much of a tourist attraction."
She says nothing.
I put down the clipboard.
“You were caught on private property, Akima,” I say. “In a fenced, gated area on the outskirts of Dogpatch USA. No way you just stumbled across this place.”
“I was… looking,” she says.
“Looking?”
“For my dad,” she replies. “He disappeared near here like two years ago.”
Well, that’s not good.
Two years ago, these woods were still crawling with Deadites. If her father came here, he probably didn’t make it out alive.
I think back to the intruder problems we’ve had in the past few years. Those hunters. That pair of horny teenagers, sneaking onto the casle grounds for a thrill. At least two others, people who ran afoul of the things that lurked in the woods. Not much is ever left of the bodies we find. Can’t recall if one of them might’ve been Japanese. They’re usually too mangled to tell.
“Do you know what made him come here?” I ask.
She shakes her head no.
I believe her.
She takes a deep breath. “What are you going to do to me?”
Ooh, bad question. She wouldn’t like the answer.
Mr. Z has been quite explicit on this point, ever since that incident with the kids in the van. Anyone sneaking into the estate, who’s not a local, gets whacked.
There’s a logic to it. The locals, they get curious about this mansion, out here near their little town. They occasionally try to get in, just for a peek. But the outsiders? If they’ve travelled all this way, odds are they know something.
The wrong person gets into the mansion, they could set the Deadites free, and all our work will have been for nothing.
Hell, there are even cultists out there who worship the damned things, and want to set them loose from the binding spell. The fools.
Now, I can tell this girl is no cultist. And two years ago, the binding spell wasn’t in place, so her father probably wasn’t one either.
She starts to spill her guts.
Not just to personalize our relationship this time. No, this is more cathartic.
Her life was torn apart when her father vanished. Her mom – quiet and demure to begin with – had suffered bouts of depression and become sullen and withdrawn. Her kid brother has fallen in with a bad crowd.
And Akima – she has nightmares.
Ones about her father, lost in the woods, shrieking in sheer terror as the trees and vines come alive and slash at him.
Huh.
That’s probably just what happened. The Deadites seem fond of taking over the local flora and using it as a weapon.
This may be an out. I don’t want to kill this girl, but if I have to, I will do my job.
But that sounds like a psychic flash, perhaps a spiritual connection to her father and what may have become of him.
If she’s sensitive to this type of thing, we may want to study her. At the very least, Oracle will want to test her, see if she has potential as an operative.
That’ll give her a little more time, at least.
She goes silent once more, then looks up at me, her eyes dark and soulful.
“Am I going to die?” she asks.
“We all die, sooner or later,” I say as I pick up my cell phone to call Mr. Z. “Well, most of us do, anyway.”

End.

...She sounds cool ^_^ Let's hope you don't kill her now

BTW, good call on naming her Takeshi, as always I love how many of your characters have meanings to their names...however, I'm not quite sure what you mean by naming her "Akima"..."vacant room"? That supposed to mean she's an airhead or something? lol I'd like to reiterate on how I love all things japanese ^_^

to point out that this episode suffers from a typo that will be fixed once it is archived, and her name is actually Akina not Akima?

Possible Explanations for the Akina/Akima Paradox:


1. She was nervous and misspoke.
2. She was trying to lie and make up a fake name, but got spooked by the gun and gave her real last name, thus making her lie a moot point.
3. Fisk needs to clean the wax out of his ears.
4. The writer didn't go back and re-read his two-year-old story to make sure that the name was spelled right.
5. She had a legal name change between September 1999, when that first episode was set, and May 2001, when this here episode right here takes place.
6. It's all part of the master plan.
7. It's the not-so-well-documented N/M name shift that takes place when a girl of Japanese/Welsh descent hits the age of maturity.
8. Her dad never could remember her name.
9. See Number 4.
10. Fisk is reminiscing, and he has a bad memory because he was so fixated on ogling the poor girl he couldn't remember what her name was. We're lucky he got it THIS right.

...To me anyway, Akina doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me either, since is doesn't actually mean anything in japanese, not to my knowlege

Nice little bit of continuety you've got here Omar. It's cool to be able to get into Fisk's head like that, get to know his thoughts and whatnot.

Definitly no way Akima's dad survived a night in those woods pre-binding spell. Almost feel sorry for the guy... almost... mwahahaha (Fnord)!

hey is Akima's dad that guy who was outside because he got locked out and wandered into the woods before getting slaughtered or something along the lines of that? i'll find the episode.

where are all the archived ED episodes?!

http://www.network54.com/Realm/Deb_U/omar/omar_index.htm

also some of em are at fanfiction.net, and i'm in the process of moving the others there as i get time to.

The episode you're looking for, by the way, is Episode 12, "The Abyss Gazes Also"...

her dad surviving. Big time against it. Will we ever know for sure?
shrug
ain't wrote any such episode yet, but who knows?

Glad you enjoyed it!

How many points do I get for that'n? And when is ash gonna fight an army of Schmoon?

"In September, 1948 Al Capp (Lil' Abner comics), decided to solve the problems of mankind by inventing the Shmoo, who only did good. So out of the hidden valley of the Shmoon, somewhere in the Dogpatch country, poured millions of ham-shaped toeless shmoos. Wherever he went, Lil Abner presented free Shmoos to all comers, because a single Shmoo could produce an endless supply of the necessities of life at absolutely no cost to the Shmoo-keeper.

The Shmoo is a little animal who lays eggs and gives milk, both Grade A, of course. The Shmoo himself, when fried tastes exactly like chicken and when broiled comes out like steak. A Shmoo's eyes make splendid suspender buttons, and his whiskers make the finest grade toothpicks. When you look at one as though you would like to eat it, it dies out of sheer will to please you.

Al Capp used the Shmoo to show us that this big earth itself will give us everything we want, just as the Shmoo does, if only we leave it alone and not abuse all of the good. If only, in our passion and hatred and intolerance, we don't tear it apart, the Shmoo will live on forever!

So love your little Shmoo and he will love you back.. and may he bring everything good to you always."

25 volumes of Li'l Abner reprints sitting on a bookshelf along with little statuettes of Abner and Daisy, three videotapes (the 1930s cartoon, the 1940s movie and the 1950s musical), a couple of other books, and a Li'l Abner jigsaw puzzle.

So yeah, you get a coupla bonus points for catching the reference. Other than that, how did you enjoy play, Mrs. Lincoln?

When can I redeem said points for cool, hypo-allergenic prizes?