Hey Gorillaz! This is my first fic of the band, this first page detailing what I think is the most pivotal event in the pre-superstardom history of the Gorillaz. Some stuff may be non-canon, but that's aight. It's short, but I hope it's sweet.

You can write off any typos as 2-D's accent, deal?

Thought I'd display both sides of Russel's personality in this, minus the whole possession thing. And Murdoc is only a little less perverted than usual for the sake of the kiddies. Just a little. ;)

I have some Japanese translations at the bottom for those interested enough to know what the hell they're saying. :)

R&R, and enjoy!

The cold rain that pounds on the window makes for good beats. Stuart Pot realized this while inhaling the magic of a "café" in Amsterdam, deciding not to join in the mosh pit of Europeans by the bar, but instead watch the typhoon outside. A woman ran past outside, her shoes clicking on the pavement like taps, her legs a double metronome. And instantly, the rain matched her stride, perfectly drumming the glass in a wonderful rhythm that forced a musical epiphany upon poor Stuart, whose brain basically imploded once the napkin was full of ink on all sides. He ran full sprint after the woman, hugged her before she could make it into a bank, and busted through his hotel door. In the following twelve hours, he had perfected the song that would make him famous.

That was a while ago, just after his first and only year of university before the accident, but the practice was steadfast. Not every storm offered a gift from the Muses, but it helped some. Even now, no longer watching girls run through rainy brick streets, the artist formerly known as Stuart Tusspot found the depressing blackness of Essex, England to be rather inspiring… in a bleak and gothic kind of way. Though, for some weird reason, the storm of November 1999 was drumming out a lot of damn Green Day.

"2-D!" A voice shouted angrily from downstairs. For a second, Pot ignored it, but then it came again, louder and closer this time. "2-D, you sack o' shit, get out here!" And 2-D, fearing the antichrist, reluctantly obeyed.

Murdoc was a genuine perverted British wanker caught in the 60s, if ever such thing were to exist. In addition to that, he burned down a church last month.

"2-D!" He greeted the songwriter with a sneer and raised arms, revealing a robe he hadn't bothered to tie. "Guess what?"

"Um…"

"I'm feeling better!"

"Yeah you do look a little less green."

"Yeah…"

They stood there staring at each other for a few seconds, before Murdoc ripped one.

2-D groaned, "Fuck, i' that really all ya wanted to tell me?"

"No, in fact." The naked guy grinned devilishly, strolling to the front door. "Get Russ, I want you both to witness it." And he danced into the drizzling rain outside without a second thought, leaving his friend to rip his hair out.

On the way downstairs, 2-D stopped into the movie theater. It was pitch black, save for a square on the far wall that shone a bright display of a soaking wet Leonardo DiCaprio kissing Kate Winslet's hand. In the glow of the disastrous romance, 2-D could dimly make out a big shape rumbling in the middle of a sea of DVDs, arms wrapped around its knees. As Kate let go of her lover's frozen hands, and he drifted into the great abyss, the sitting hulk shuddered.

Suddenly, the lights flipped on and the film paused, leaving a distraught Russel Hobbs open in the stark light. The big guy had been wearing his signature fez, but it now lay off at the side with his shoes. Wheeling around, he caught sight of 2-D with his hand on the light switch.

Russ wiped away some tears on his cheek and stood up. "What the hell d'ya want? I was busy."

"Yah, o-vously." Stuart grinned wide at his accidental discovery. "C'mon, yeh can get back to tha' later, The Doc wants to show us somethin'."

"Is it another stupid, uh... arcade game involving his-?"

"No, I'm pretty sure t's not."

"Well, at least we can narrow it down halfway."

They stumbled down the stairs, out the front door, tripped over Murdoc's forgotten slippers and found the old man pacing back and forth in the driveway, twiddling his thumbs. Beside him, a giant FedEx crate with tape all over it rested in a puddle. When the two younger artists discovered Murdoc's surprise, his gravelly excited screeching bombarded them.

"It's finally here boys!" He danced around with the robe still open before running to the box and stroking it lovingly. "You won't believe your eyes when you see what I managed to get."

"Yea?" 2-D approached Murdoc's beloved shipment. "Why ah there 'oles in the top?"

"Oh, probably just to keep it fresh, or whatever."

Russel sighed. "Another monkey?"

"Are you kidding me, one's enough! We have to feed it and keep it happy and shit, no no, one's good." Muds pulled out a knife out of nowhere, and began cutting frantically. "No, this little doohickey will be the main attraction of this dump! It will never cease to amaze and entertain! And best of all, Russel can't use it."

While the Brooklyn native growled in response, Stuart looked all over the crate for a clue as to what this miracle product was.

"Oi, where'd you order this from?" he asked the guy with the knife.

"Um… I dunno, Shitsburg, Pennsylvania. Ya think I keep tabs on that sorta thing?"

"It says it's from Japan, you- "

The box shuddered and the side began to open. "Ladies and ladies, may you be the first miserable human beings to experience the miraculous wonders of…"

The side of the box fell open and landed at the trio's feet, revealing something that made both Russ and 2-D grimace.
"A mail-order bride?" Hobbs chuckled.

Murdoc, on the other hand, stopped talking and stood gaping while a little Asian girl trudged out of the crate, squinting in the light.

"Hey!" he shouted, quickly covering himself up. "That isn't my dunebuggy!"

Stuart rolled his eyes. "No shit."

They watched silently as the girl, no older than ten, spun around in a disoriented manner and then focused on the three men that stood there awkwardly. She wore a dusty purple jacket buttoned up to her chin and sported matching orange-striped tights. A green cap bearing all sorts of pins was sliding off of her head.

"Sekai wa nani ka? Doko made hanashi mashi ta ka?" (1) The accented twang of her voice forced Murdoc to react as if someone had scratched their nails across a blackboard.

"Alright, what the fuck?" he shouted to no one in particular. "I order a dunebuggy and get a kid?" Said kid shrunk in fear at the sudden outburst, her face looking close to tearful. She was scared, had no idea where the hell she was, and for that matter, who the screaming naked man was.

Russel sniggered. "It's God making up for your tiny dick, I suppose."

"Bugger off."

2-D ignored his two roommates and knelt down to the confused child. "Hey," he started gently. "Um… konnichiwa?" She looked at him as if expecting a long explanation as to why they weren't speaking at least mediocre Japanese. He tried to touch her shoulder gently, but she whined and pulled away. 2-D had dealt with kids before - his uncle's baby son was a pain in the arse, but still a kid who needed things to be familiar and calm. Without reaching for her, he asked "Hey, um… what's ya name, luv?"

The girl looked at him anxiously, then replied. "Gomen, watashi wa aidea o nani o itte iruga ari masu." (2)

"Um, alright then." He stood up and looked at Russel for support.

"Bro, don't look at me," the big guy reacted. "I speak ghetto, thas' all"

"Muds?"

Tying his robe together and taking a deep breath, the elder resident tried to think of something. "Unless she knows Thai, I'm no help, mate."

2-D shrugged. "Try it."

Murdoc strolled over and bent down to meet the girl eye-to-eye, which only opened up the back of his few coverings to everyone else. He looked her over carefully while she sniffled in anticipation.

"Dī txn yĕn phlād. Khuṇ chụ̀x xarị?" (3)

For a moment, she simply squinted and seemed to analyze this new oddity of humanity intensely. Then, out of nowhere, she spit in his face.

"I'm likin' 'dis girl more and more!" Russel laughed while his friend reeled back in surprise.

"I just asked for her bloody name!"

Stuart shoved Murdoc away and tried again. Using hand signals, he tried to ask her a different question. "Where are you from?"

The girl grinned slightly. "Watashi wa sono basho kara hijō ni tōku, koko de ryū wa anata no yō na hito o tabete i masu!" (4) She said this with much enthusiasm; so 2-D assumed that they were getting somewhere.

Meanwhile, the other two had taken the liberty of looting the box from whence this strange new creature had come.

"I got a weird helmet… radio… thing!"

"I've got a box!"

The two returned to Stuart, who took the two objects and handed them to the girl. "Do these things mean anything to you?" But she simply grabbed the helmet and stuffed it on top of her head, smiling.

Not sure of what to do now, he grabbed her hand gently so she wouldn't freak out, and started leading her back to Kong Studios. "C'mon," he nudged. "Let's get you inside."

"Here, bro, I found a dictionary."

"Ah, thanks mate."

Stu sat in what might pass as a kitchen, sipping Ramen and staring at the little Asian girl who sat in the corner and entertained herself with an old video camera. The red light flipped on and off, filming the eating singer for seconds at a time. He eyed the dictionary carefully, barely making sense of the endless babble that was a foreign language. He tried learning Spanish before. Busto. And then French. Fail. Japanese wasn't any less remarkably boring. But he was intrigued enough to try.

"Umm, konnichiwa!" The girl looked up from her new toy, and 2-D continued. He had written down the words carefully, and then rearranged them according to how the book vaguely told him how. "Anata… nani ka… tabe ni shi… masen ka?" (5)

A blank stare was her initial response, followed by a good thirty seconds of giggling. "Anata wa kimyo nah oho de hanasu!" (6) she laughed, and stood up to sit at the counter with her new friend. "Nani o taberu ka?"

Stuart flipped frantically through the dictionary, searching for those words. "Oh! What do we have to eat? Um…" He made a quick glance around the room, a mish-mosh of cereal boxes and TV dinners and coffee. And beer. Lots of beer.

Instead of offering food poisoning to a minor, 2-D grabbed another box of ramen and shook it in front of her.

"Would you like some noodles?"

She stared. "Noodle?"

"Yeah, noodles. Pot 'em up, stir, enjoy! Ya know."

"Noodle," she repeated, grabbing the box and examining it.

"Mhmm. You like noodles?" But she didn't seem to hear him. After a quick read, the translation was discovered. "Ramen o taberu… no ga suki… ka wa?"

Nodding her head excitedly, she took her food and rushed to the barely-operable microwave. As soon as she got there, however, her previous apparent understanding of the appliance seemed to disappear, and she simply stood there staring at it. Until 2-D followed the directions and made it for her, she couldn't for the life of her comprehend how it worked.

"Here're ya noodles." Stu said, handing her the meal.

The girl seemed in a daze. "Noodle."

2-D spent the next twenty minutes just watching her eat slowly, sometimes prompting her to say 'noodle' again. It seemed to be her favorite word, and the only one she knew.

"Right, mate, whadya have for me?"

2-D was shaken from a daydream when Murdoc strutted into the room with Mike, the band's resident primate, on his shoulder. The girl had picked up one of Muds' dozens of guitars and started strumming, surprising Stuart but eventually almost putting him to sleep with the rhythm. When Murdoc spotted the guitar in her hands, he coughed to make himself known and she stopped.

"Well, that's a relief. Means this advert didn't go to waste." He flicked an old magazine ad between his fingers, the one he himself had had published in looking for a new guitarist. "Though the results are a bit… unusual."

"Since when is anything you do ever 'usual?'" 2-D scoffed, rubbing one of the dents in his head.

"Point taken. I found the advert in the box she had, along with a load of picks and some odd stuffed toy." He took a blue stuffed alien of some sorts out of his back pocket, and dropped it in front of the girl, who immediately picked it up and hugged it with all her strength.

"So…" 2-D was unconvinced. "She's our new guitarist?"

"Guess so."

They both looked at the ten year-old skeptically.

"Well, guess we'll find out in time."

"Sure." Murdoc yawned. "Find anything out about the poor doll?"

Stu had written everything he had learned on a scrap of paper, which wasn't much. "Noodle is… ten years ol', definitely from Japan. Doen't know how to use the microwave, but strums Eric Chapman like she's 'im."

"Wait wait wait wait," Muds interrupted. "Her name is Noodle?"

"Well no, she likes noodles, so I'm callin' 'er Noodle."

"Oh, your logic is astounding, professor. Please continue."

"I asked her a bunch of random questions. She likes Johnny Thunder, the color purple, believes that we are a dream and has no idea who Jesus is."

"As it should be, anything else?" Mike jumped from Muds' shoulder and towards Noodle, who stared at the chimp for a moment and then hugged him as well.

"She likes monkeys?" 2-D guessed.

Soon enough, Mike was on Noodle's back and they tore off together down the hallway. The chimp screeched happily while Noodle continued yelling random Japanese, audible throughout the building. Posters fell off the walls, potted plants collapsed, and a bookcase (devoid of books) came down. Russ was finishing up Titanic when all of a sudden, two tiny screaming mammals rushed in, interrupted the ghost scene, crushed a few DVDs, and then ran back out.

In the kitchen, the two Englishmen listened to the destruction just a floor above them.

Murdoc groaned conclusively, "She's not allowed in the Winnebago."

"Don't worry," 2-D reassured him. "It's already doomed."

TRANSLATIONS

(1) What in the world? Where am I?

(2) I'm sorry. I have no idea what you are saying.

(3) Hello there, miss. What is your name?

(4) I am from a place very far away, where dragons are known to eat people like you! :D

(5) Would you... like... anything to... eat?

(6) You speak in a ridiculous way!