So lets see... Ringo got concussed... Ochiba tried to kiss him... and got punched. Then he punted a bell.
Ringo started to say, "I was wrong to try and—"
*ding*
Before Ringo could finish shouting at Ochiba the bell in the front rang. A shout quivered its way to the room Ringo was in "Hello?!" assumedly old. "I'm here for a.. bell!"
Right, now were in uncharted territory.
"A bell?" Ringo quirked an eyebrow, why would he have a bell? something so bland didn't often get dumped in his shop. There was that time Ukyo tried to leave a leaf at his shop. For whatever reason.
"It has a ghost." The voice added.
"Ah, that makes some sense." He did see a bell earlier—tried to crush him even. "Oh... Right. the job..."
Quite a while ago (three hours and twenty minutes) he was just getting aquatinted with the fury bell (pinning it to the ground) "I've got it! honest," he assured, pinning it with his elbow when his foot slipped. "Tonic didn't send you all this way for nothing." his voice stretched.
Mr.... Choco... cho-Chōzoku, trusted him with this super important job.
…That lasted for a total of two conscious hours.
Back in the present, Ringo was actively cursing Tonics name, wondering why she always sends odd jobs his way.
"Hello!?" Mr. Chōzoku called again.
Ringo groaned. "I hear you!" he shouted in response, forgetting he hadn't finished with Ochiba. Well, Right now, Ringo had to explain why a giant bell went missing. Precedence.
The moment Ringo stepped through the door however, guilt snuffed lingering anger like a flame under dirt.
The old man put on a warm expression, "There you are, Konotori." Yet his voice was akin to a hot pocket warmed by a microwave—on low—
He gestured to the custom shrine, a bell shaped imprint at the center. "Do you have the bell I let you watch over?" His shut eyes grew weary, tense in a way.
That tone made Ringo's skin bristle, It was warm on the surface, but lacked any comfort no matter what the man said. And don't even mention how the old man's figure threw him on a loop.
Beneath the brown robes and red poncho, he was frail. You could tell even at a glance just through the way he stood. Ringo swore a draft could tip the man over. He was just the worst. Old, pitiable. The last type of person he needed asking him about a job.
This made him anxious. Made him feel... he had to confess... Somewhat, half truths were an option. So Ringo slapped a few pieces of the story together, like he needed to.
"It... flew east..." he muttered.
Just wonderful.
Save for the "proper" execution, he did well to tell a fact. Somewhere east, The bell sat comfortably in a tree, jingling merrily about a pain in a rear...
that it didn't have.
With his hands interlocked behind his back, Ringo rocked to the tips of his toes and back. As inconspicuous as ever.
"You just—came—just when it just—ha-happened! If you could believe it."
…true, I guess. It works, just missing a few things—like how.
The man's previously closed eyes widened ever so slightly. "That so." he murmured. "Well if that's the case, could you get it?" he asked, reaching into his robe.
"O-of course... I can." Ringo confidently assured, though eyes trailed toward the general direction of east. 'where would it land? It flies.'
In his moment of thought, he nearly had forgotten to start searching. He had been so forgetful lately.
This pause was noticed by the old man, leaving whatever he was reaching for in the loose robe. "Well? I need it before night." The old man pressed.
"Oh of course." It was sunset. He scooted toward the door. "Right, away..."
Ringo finally stepped out on the road, looking left, "Where do I start?" he muttered. Of course, he wouldn't find it flying down that street—Since it just did.
Not taking his sweet time, running after it, Ringo clicked his tongue furiously. "Here kitty kitty!" He cheerfully cooed, and then, not so cheerfully, hissed: "Get your stupid—" He nearly tripped on a fresh "pothole" as he ran.
By the time Ringo got stable on his feet, the sound of fences crumbling, and glass shattering were already chaining down another block. Around the corner, he found the bell decorating the street with formless furniture and a hint of broken glass. "Who even puts cats this angry in a bell?!"
Now the few times he called the bell a cat may seem stupid, but hear me. Legends have it... -flashlight- a ghost cat named Okoru, became a powerful nekomata. They would rampage through villages, swiping houses down with its claws. One day, a young priest had enough its antics and crushed it with a bell.
didn't get rid of it though. Just trapped it inside. It stayed furious since.
Now it's Ringo's problem, and increasingly so as the bell flies up the side of a hotel. Ringo froze for a moment, "Should I even... I mean, it is quite much for a storage unit, climbing up a hotel and all..." But Ringo imagined the old man's disappointment. Reluctantly, this job became important.
"Ah... look at it." A woman cooed, holding a pot at the edge of the balcony. And of course instead of roses or spider lilies, she chose to grow kelp—extra water— . "And they said you couldn't grow seaweed in a flower pot!" (You can't- no, couldn't.)
From below, she felt a rumbling, it was getting closer—A bell shot past on her right, like a harsh wind, but thankfully she held her experiments on her left.
*Smash*
Well she was holding her pot in her left, but she wasn't sure what happened. A blur suddenly her flower pot was smashed from what a she could tell.
It was Ringo had plowed through the impossible specimen of effort, coming out of it with wings.
The lady had seen the stork scaling up the and found it simpler to sit in silence. She couldn't even explain what happened, a human could run up the side of an apartment, but a stork... was a stretch. Sure it had wings but... She'd rather just blame something.
"Kelp is a sin."
Enough dwelling.
Back with Ringo, he was currently skipping across roofs. He had to thank Cologne—even as a bird, parkour was still easy. He was even confident he could leap further, spreading his mentally human arms as he soared.
At the edge of a risky gap between buildings, his leg coiled, tense down to the toes. Then he leapt, two feet before spreading those arms again.
Well, those "arms" physically were wings, that happen to drag in the air when spread.
He realized somewhere between the loss of momentum, and the sharp reversal of it: 'Right, I'm a bird'.
Like he were slapped out of the air, Ringo fell too quick to land comfortably.
And before he could chose how uncomfortably he wanted to fall, his long neck snagged around a clothesline, hard enough to spin him up, tangle and wrap him in towels and strings like a cloth bell.
The real bell (and pain) mocked Ringo as it floated above, certain he wouldn't get free anytime soon.
But Ringo burned a hole through it all, dropping onto the balcony. He glared at the bell, burning bright with acknowledgement to the mockery, and responding with much more intensity to catch it, maybe reshape it—a bit.
Never in the thousands of years that the bell had existed did it ever believe it would eventually be chased by a flaming bird that gave flocks a heatstroke as it passed.
Yet here it was, soaring the skies to escape Ringo. The bell flew away the moment Ringo escaped.
Learning how to soar the skies, just to chase this bell, Ringo was a blur when briefly next to other flocks of birds or clouds.
He was moving at a constant pace of about fifty miles per hour and growing, while inflicting fear into the bell by the minute.
It dove for the city, hoping to use the tight corners to escape.
A street vendor had just set up their chips cart. Then they had to watch it get crushed in an instant by a bell that later bounced through the window of a nearby building. Shortly after hearing a *fip* a sudden heat wave flushed past and slipped into the same building.
From inside an office worker was just about to finish her week long project, when the window shattered, a bell flew in, and plowed through her computer. Then a stork flew in with a heat wave and burned her notes.
Chaos erupted inside the building, Ringo using his beak and stabbing clean through cubicle after cubicle and nicking an employee on the nose. while the bell bounced off of the ceilings and walls. It crashed its way down the stairwell, nearly trampling a woman on her way up. Ringo lunged down the stairs, forced to rebound off the walls to avoid slowing down too much.
When he made it off of the stairs the bell tried to sneak attack from above to crush him, hitting the ground instead.
Ringo tried to stab the bell, careful retrieval to the wind. But unfortunately the bell was tougher than he thought.
The bell zigzagged and burst through the doors of the office building, flattening a small old pervert. Crashing through a fence and swerving into an alley, and through some dumpsters. It stopped once it no longer felt heat singeing its nerveless body, thinking it was safe.
From above, Ringo was flapping higher and higher. He stopped once he reached a low cloud and looked down. Finally calm enough to think for a moment, he watched the bell hover toward the street.
One: This is high enough
Two: He can just turn it into a fine plate for the plenty, of troubles. That would hurt him too though.
Three: The old man would want it back round and bell shaped.
He flapped one final time, folding his wings to his sides. his fourth thought was: Lucky bell
Then he dropped.
He bore a tunnel into the air, the ground closing in rapidly. small sparks of a flame that barely clung glistened in the shimmering air warped from heat.
Below the bell hovered cluelessly, stopping to check it's surroundings at a slight whistling sound—
*fsh*
A gust of warped air erased it, a trail lingering behind, then the heat caught up. Crystal-like waves whistled through the air before fading into scorch marks where the bell had existed.
The orange laced shimmer tore through two blocks by the time anyone noticed. Through Ringo's eyes, anything visible blended together as one streak—wires, birds, reasonably frightened people, and signs distorted from the heat tunnel.
Then he carefully swung the bell ahead, pinning it beneath his claws. They scraped across the street for a yard, sparks flung every where igniting wood benches, fences, and anything remotely flammable.
The sliding finally stopped, the air still bending from lingering heat. Ringo stepped off, legs nearly collapsing as he stumbled toward the shop. Storks weren't made for such speeds, which may be the reason his vision spun so much.
The bell quivered weakly in its small crater, smoke curled from the spot used as brakes. It really wanted to fly away, but it couldn't even float an inch because of the damages.
Ringo grabbed the bell by one foot and hopped toward the shop door. His beak slipped between the gap of the door and its frame, sliding it open. Then he rolled the bell forward and stepped in after.
Mr. Chōzoku was waiting, sipping his tea calmly when he heard Ringo returning.
Instead, a stork stumbles in, sirens wailing in the background, the smoking bell rolling in.
He spat out his tea sadly, right at the stork.
Then a naked Ringo popped out, wrapping himself in a favor day banner like a robe. "I got it back! bell shaped as well." he announced with relief.
"You... did. bell shaped too." Mr. Chōzoku hummed, more focused on the silence of the bell.
"If that's all, I'm going to get back to..." Ringo trailed off, Ochiba firmly forgotten about. Call it, anger management courtesy of his feather.
The old man lifted the bell, inspecting the smooth spot at the bottom of the bell.
Crack.
In his hands it split. A faint scream shivered from the remains, the Okoru finally choosing to pass on.
Mr. Chōzoku said nothing, simply humming and nodding.
"Fare... well."
The old man shuffled out of the shop, looking at the remains. "They'll make fine bowls."
Ringo shook his head as the man left
"Good enough," he sighed, retreating to his bed.
Ochiba was waiting patiently, thinking thoroughly about this moment. He must be direct about it.
The door tossed open—He's here!—Ringo stumbled in, dressed in nothing but a sheet.
Ochiba was stunned for a moment, from what he could tell, Ringo finished his job quicker than usual—he stalked long enough to know Ringo normally takes leisurely walks—And now he returns, barely dressed, after confessing?
"So... you—"
"Get out Ochiba. bother me some other time."
Ochiba slowed, his smile drooping. "Right..." he mumbled. But slowly, the loom in his brain spun up a new meaning "like a date!"
Ringo slowly grew tired, he wasn't going to deal with this. "Go." He spat.
"Right. Later!" Ochiba skipped out of the door, humming merrily.
"Later? ugh..." Ringo dropped on his bed. "Problem after problem." he mumbled, dozing off. He would be asleep for a few days at least. No space in his mind for later.
His...