Ride 751: Hakogaku's preliminary inspection
Pag 1
1: Plunging into a new chapter!!
Pag 2
1: The rivals standing in their way in the Inter High!!
Pag 3
1: Kanagawa Prefecture, Hakone city
3: Huh, a preliminary inspection
4: for the Inter High!?
5: Yeah... well... it's a usual thing
Now, really? Really?
Pag 4
1: Gwaaa hoii!!
2: I'll go, I'll go, I'll go!!
Yeeah!!
4: Huh, preliminary inspection? I might be a little interested
He's suddenly acting cool!?
5: Ah
Pag 5
1: Coough
Waaaa
He's suddenly vomiting blood!?
2: He definitely bit his tongue while jumping around in excitement earlier....
3: 'm ohey
It's obvious that your tongue hurts....
Yeah...
This guy is always injured....
4: If nohing!!
I get it, I get it!!
5: 'en u we 'eave? (When do we leave?)
In thirty minutes, before the clubroom... you'll take a car to the train station
'aight!!
6: It's so obvious he's happy about it
7: Was that right? They didn't give us details
I guess, it's what Manami-san told us
First year Tobirama
Pag 6
1: Last month, in the club's tournament he won the F-group climber race
Pag 7
1: Yeah, I see, and he's gonna run in this year's Inter High as the sixth regular member of Hakogaku!!
2: Seriously, I
3: I want to be considered cool by everyone!!
4: What's up with him, he looks so cheerful
Cool, cool, Kyuushu~
That Tobirama is so festive
Pag 8
5: Huh!? It's just me and Manami-san!?
Isn't- like, Doubashi-san coming!?
6: Hn.... I told Jou-kun and Yuuto, too, but they had their practice menu, so they said “no”
8: They said no!?
Huh!? But it's a preliminary inspection!?
9: For the Inter High!! A preliminary inspection, right!?
Yeah
Pag 9
1: A preliminary inspection for summer's great battle, right!?
2: That's right... the place we're going to now it's the biggest “mountain”.....
3: A mountain we absolutely have to overcome
4: And yet the other members didn't come!!
Ah... Manami... I'm seeing now that apparently the train stopped because of an accident
Ah
Should we just go there directly?
Is that okay? Thank you
5: Directly!? By car!?
Huh!?
6: To Kyuushu!?
7: The Inter High is in Kyuushu, right? How long will it take from here....
Hm? Around
Pag 10
1: Two hours and a half
Pag 11
4: Yeah... we arrived in two and a half hours, but- this is Chiba, isn't it!?
5: Where is Kyuushu!? Ah!? Is there a theme park like the park in Kyuushu here too?
And what abaout the splendid nature!? The big volcano...!!
6: Ah
7: Where will he have the preliminary inspection?
Cool
If you hurry up and get ready...?
Pag 12
1: We'll do our practice menu here, today
Pag 13
2: Our menu.... did you want to practice here just for a change of mood?
3: It's here, right? Where they do tournaments and stuff
It's Chiba's
4: Minegayama, right?
Yeah!!
5: Hakone is better though
6: I wanted to go to Kyuushu
7: Ah, by the way, speaking of Chiba, an acquaintance of mine lives here
Pag 14
1: You know, I was in the basketball club when I was in middle school
Ehh... I didn't know...
2: A good senpai of mine meddled with their basket club....
3: And apparently he was a good friend with my club's teacher advisor, and so they often organized practice matches with Chiba's middle school
4: I got injured a lot back then, too
So I often got injured and that guy from that middle school took care of me
5: He was so good at treating injuries that in my school they called him the “super manager”
6: I guess he's still in the basket club?
Pag 15
2: Ah, by the way, what's today's practice menu?
Fifteen minutes at a fixed output... three or something?
Nahh
3: Since they'll probably come, it's “do your best to win against that guy”!!
3: Huh!?
Who's gonna come!? You organized this with someone?
4: Any time now... probably
But we didn't
5: Organize it
6: Huh!?
The sound of wheels.... from behind us!? A bike!? …. no, more than one
Pag 16
2: They're here
Pag 17
1: Last year's champion, Sohoku High School!!
Pag 18
5: Teh!?
7: Yo
Pag 19
1: It's been a while, Sakamichi-kun
2: Hakogaku's captain, Manami Sangaku- why is he here!!
Pag 20
1: Wearing their jerseys and riding their bikes, there's no way they came here to sightsee!!
2: Manami-kun!!
3: The Inter High is next week already, isn't it? Bu before that.... I thought we should cross that “mountain*” once
(*NdT.: here, the kanji say “mountain king”, but the reading says “mountain”)
Pag 21
1: “Mountain”.....!! “That we absolutely have to overcome”- so this is the “preliminary inspection”!!
2: How about... that summit over there?
Your team... we're at an overwhelmind disadvantage, but
3: We don't plan on losing
It's a “preliminary battle”!?
5: Manami-san's concentration.....
Pag 22
1: it sprang up!!
Sounds interesting, doesn't it!?
Pag 23
1: A preliminary battle!?
He wants' to challenge us!?
2: Now!?
Here!?
3: You came here... on purpose... for this?
4: Yeah
5: I came here for this only?
7: Uh!! Sohoku's captain's.....
Pag 24
1: Onoda-san's concentration sprang up too!!
Got it!!
Pag 25
1: Onoda!!
2: Onoda-kun!!
3: Seriously!?
4: Waaa
5: We're starting a race against those two!? Teh!?
6: Oh, oh oh?
Pag 26
1: Really?
Those jerseys
2: It's Hakone Academy and Sohoku!!
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Something something steddie role swap AU. Steve and Eddie swap places for the final fight against Vecna (because you don’t really need to be able to play the guitar to make a distraction with one, and Steve is already injured while Eddie is Not), things proceed as in canon - the bats get in, Steve is self-sacrificial because that’s the Steve Harrington Agenda™, Steve gets himself killed.
Dustin has to watch his older brother die in his arms. Robin has to come back from a fight that she’s pretty sure they lost to find the other half of her soul is gone. Lucas finds out that not only has he lost Max, but he’s also lost his role model, one of his biggest supporters. Eddie is stuck in a town that’s falling apart, filled with people that hate him, and the only people who will understand are mourning someone Eddie barely knew. Someone whose shoes Eddie is never going to be able to fill, even when he feels like he has to try because that’s what he does; protect his people. And no matter how fucked the circumstances that got them here are, he’s decided these are his people now.
(They have to be, now that not even Uncle Wayne can calm him down when he has the nightmares, seeing Chrissy’s lifeless eyes staring down at him as he hears her bones crunch and twist-)
Eddie can’t breathe with how the gaping absence of Steve Harrington is threatening to swallow him whole. It’s always there, in the way Robin is isolating herself, sleeping over in Steve’s empty house whenever she can, and no one can get her to talk about it. It’s in the way Dustin, overcome with grief, keeps oscillating between blaming Eddie for agreeing to switch places and blaming himself for suggesting it in the first place. It’s in the way Eddie wonders sometimes, as he turns the events of Spring Break over in his mind, if maybe there was something there, or could have been something - and then he’s immediately overcome with guilt, because he’s lusting after a ghost. A ghost of someone he didn’t even know, really, as he’s learning more and more every day about the ways Steve has changed since high school.
So after a few weeks of this, especially with the added stress of Hawkins falling apart at the seams and being constantly invaded by hellbeasts from the gaping portals all over town, Eddie does what he does best.
He runs away.
He doesn’t even think about where he’s going, just puts one foot in front of the other - even as he crosses over a portal into the Upside Down, one near the trailer park, he doesn’t let himself stop and think. If he does that, he’s going to have a panic attack, and having one of those here in Hell is absolutely going to get him killed, the otherworldly hisses and screams echoing around him amongst the trees are a pretty potent reminder-
There’s a snap behind him, sounding way too close for comfort. Eddie spins around, heart racing in his chest, tensed and ready to run if he has to.
There’s nothing there. Nothing living, at least, because Eddie can see a broken branch just dangling down from one of the trees he just walked past. From this far away, it looks like something has pulled down on it, snapping the top part of the branch and leaving it attached at the bottom by just a thin layer of wood. It’s such a tenuous connection that the branch is bobbing slightly under the weight of gravity, and it looks like at some point it might just break under its own weight.
The main problem with this is that it was definitely a whole, intact branch when he first walked past it.
Eddie finds himself taking a few steps forward without really thinking about it. As he gets closer, his heartbeat gets louder and louder until he can hear it pounding in his ears. He feels a deep sense of wrongness here, like something - someone, maybe - is watching him, waiting for some kind of trigger. It crawls up his spine like a spider, making his skin crawl, his shoulders twitching involuntarily.
The feeling only intensifies when he’s within arms reach of the broken branch. It’s like a block of ice gets dropped into his chest, the way he suddenly goes cold; from this distance, he can see the branch is thicker than his upper arm. Whatever it was that did this, it’s stronger than a human, that’s for sure. Eddie feels the sharp buzz of panic begin to settle over his body, is dimly aware of a hysterical noise starting to bubble up within him-
The breath is slammed out of his lungs, too quickly to even scream. At the same time, he feels pain bloom across his upper body from being grabbed by the shoulder and shoved up against the tree. Eddie feels pinpricks of pain all up his back, his thin Iron Maiden t-shirt doing little to protect his skin from the tree bark.
Eddie’s eyes are screwed tight as he waits for the inevitable; he’s seen enough of this place to know he doesn’t want to see whatever it is that’s about to kill him. He feels something sharp scrape against his neck, followed by a pressure along the underside of his jaw, and his last coherent thought is, Jesus Christ, can’t believe I’m leaving Henderson fatherless.
Except... he doesn’t die. Eddie Munson keeps breathing, quick and shallow gasps with his eyes still tightly shut. It doesn’t make any sense, his brain can’t even begin to process what’s happening to him, so after a few seconds - when he’s sure he’s actually still alive, and not just having a delayed reaction to being eaten - Eddie opens his eyes. Immediately he feels like throwing up.
Because there in front of him, mere inches away from his face, face twisted into an utterly chilling smile, is Steve Harrington.
Or at least - something that was Steve Harrington, once upon a time. The creature now in front of Eddie has- christ, where does Eddie even begin. He doesn’t know where to look first, his brain overloading trying to take it all in - Steve has fangs now, that Eddie’s certain of, sharpened canines that jut out under Steve’s top lip and glint whenever lightning crackles overhead. He can see streaks of what looks like dried blood trailing down Steve’s chin from the fangs, following his neck downwards until they’re lost in the ring of scar tissue and dried blood at the base of his neck where he got choked by the demobats.
Most captivating of all, though, are Steve’s eyes. Once he makes eye contact, Eddie can’t bring himself to tear his eyes away. Steve’s eyes have always looked pretty to Eddie, in that strange middle ground where they look brown in some lights and almost green in others, but now they shine with a soft golden glow in the darkness. He’s not quite sure, it’s hard to focus enough to be sure, but Eddie thinks his pupils are no longer human-like, instead vertical slits like a cat’s eye.
Now that Eddie’s made eye contact, out his peripheral vision he sees Steve’s grin grow impossibly wider. At the same time, that pressure around his neck gets worse momentarily as Steve squeezes, oh fuck, he has his hand around Eddie’s throat. That sharp prickling sensation is back again, too, and Christ Almighty he’s pretty sure Steve has fucking claws.
Steve leans in even closer, and Eddie feels his breath fan across his face as he drawls, “Did you miss me too, baby?”
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