TITLE: The Great Red Pants Incident
AUTHOR: Eyes of Shinigami
PAIRINGS: Blink and miss 85 and 39 hints. No intentional pairings.
RATING: T for language and material.
WARNINGS: Silliness, some OOC, language, and general chaos
SUMMARY: Gojyo's boasting gets him into trouble. Response to a fic challenge by Madhumalati: write a 400 word fic that involves Gojyo, red pants, and a festival. This is what happened, and as you can see, it turned out WAY more than 400 words. Blame her for this descent into madness.
DISCLAIMER: I do not own Saiyuki or any of its characters. The red pants are mine and all the chaos they caused are mine, though.
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If you were to ask any member of the Sanzo-ikkou about it, it's likely that you won't get a straight answer. Hakkai just titters and keeps his polite smile fixed firmly in place, as though it were going to crack at any second. Sanzo snorts behind the hand holding his cigarette, but otherwise gives no reaction. Goku dissolves into helpless giggles and couldn't give you an answer anyway. But ask Gojyo, and you get an irritated huff and ignored as though he hadn't heard you in the first place.
That's because Gojyo doesn't like to talk about it. The others can't without finding it uproariously funny. So, in order to keep the peace amongst the traveling foursome, it was decided that no one would ever speak of the Great Red Pants Incident again.
What is the Great Red Pants Incident you ask? Well, it's a bit of a funny story actually….
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It all began when the Sanzo party stopped in one of the bigger towns along their endless route to India, which was sporting a festival of mass proportions. Hakuryuu had been pushed to his limits, so continuing on was not an option, and their fearless leader was outvoted four to one that they stop for the night and take the time to enjoy the festival. Begrudgingly, Sanzo agreed and they found in an inn that wasn't filled to maximum capacity. It was no easy feat, but the monk's banishing gun was very good at negotiating when the wielder of said gun was not.
Once they had settled into their assigned rooms, the party members, by majority vote, decided that they would go check out the festival after dinner. Said dinner was a routine affair, with the petty fights over edible materials until the aforementioned banishing gun stopped by for a guest appearance. It was over relatively quickly, especially since dinner is not the important part of this story.
The important part begins at the festival itself. Everyone and their relatives seemed to be bustling about the overcrowded streets, much to the dismay of Sanzo and the others. But, mostly Sanzo. The group found themselves jostled, poked, prodded, and occasionally groped as they moved through the crowd, attempting to part the sea of people so they could actually get somewhere.
This is about the time when Gojyo's Wandering Eye began to act up, finding himself unable to resist all the tempting beauties that he found himself surrounded by. "Talk about a nice selection. I think I've died and gone to Heaven."
Sanzo, roughly shoving a particularly brave soul's hand away from his exquisite rear end, looked at the kappa as though he had lost his tiny pea-sized brain at long last. "If you call the hussies in this town prime selection. Hmph. That just goes to show that you have horrible taste," the priest commented, unknowingly inching closer to Goku, who was too busy ogling the amount of food stands rather than the human scenery.
Ignoring the chuckle that came from the healer's direction, Gojyo snorted at that. "Just goes to show that you have no idea what you're talking about. Besides, I always know what to look for in a woman. You can usually tell by the way she's dressed what sort of chick she's going to be."
Three expectant glances turned towards him at that, asking him to explain what he meant. "That's an interesting theory, Gojyo. Please enlighten us," the healer requested, though the glint in his eyes was almost enough to make the redhead nervous. Almost. However, being the kappa that he was, Gojyo pretended to remain oblivious.
"Just look at them. The ones with the low cut shirts are usually whores, the ones that wear the long dresses tend to be prudes, and everywhere in between. Just trust me, all right?" He tossed his head arrogantly, offering a dashing smile to his best friend, though the green-eyed man didn't seem the least impressed. The redhead's smile withered to a frown when he noticed that the other two looked just as blasé as Hakkai did. He smacked the monkey in the back of the head in an attempt to get his attention. "Like you would know anything about women, you chibi-chimp."
"I do know that what you just said has to be the dumbest thing I've ever heard," Goku retorted, rolling his eyes as his attention again shifted to more important things than women; like how he was going to convince Sanzo to buy him a bag of cotton candy and one those funnel cakes.
Sanzo just snorted, bringing Gojyo's attention on to him for the first time. "And what does our mighty leader have to say on the matter? Enlighten us, O Illustrious One."
The blond took his time in answering, lighting up another cigarette and enjoying the feeling of the nicotine entering his bloodstream. When he was sure that the redhead was sufficiently pissed at him, he decided to respond. "I think you're full of shit. That's what I think." The monkey chuckled heartily at that, and even Hakkai laughed politely behind his hand, though he tried to hide it behind a couple of ill-concealed coughs.
Crimson eyes narrowed at his companions' behavior, putting his hands on his hips and glaring hard at them. "Fine. You want proof that I'm right? I'll give you proof. I bet you anything that I can take a woman home tonight, based on what she looks like. To make it easy, I'll pick one of the slutty ones. When I come back to the inn, I'll give you a detailed description of what happened so that you know that I was right."
The other three seemed to weigh the decision over in their minds, until Hakkai offered a smile that sent a chill up Gojyo's spine. "All right. If we win, you can't go out and prowl for card games and other things for an entire week."
"And you can't steal my food either. You'll just have to deal with it." Leave it to the monkey to interject something as stupid as that.
"And you have to give up smoking. For one whole week." Damn, Sanzo was getting sadistic, and if the smirk that was perilously close to a smile was any indication, he was getting sick pleasure out of the idea as well.
"You're all on. And if I win, you all have to do what I say and treat me like the great God Sha Gojyo that I am for an entire week. You got that?" The other three nodded in agreement, and the contest began. At first, the little contest went off with Gojyo just pointing out random females to various members of his posse, until he saw her.
She was walking out of the nearby bar, and her entire demeanor screamed 'sex' loud and clear to the normally horny kappa. She was a brunette masterpiece, with her dark hair flowing down her back and accentuating her magnificent curves. Her skin was the color of fresh milk, and her eyes were a deep drowning blue that fixed directly on Gojyo from across the way. Her ruby red lips curled into a smile, the color matching her painted on leather pants that she was wearing. Oh yes, she was definitely the one.
"There you go, boys. A masterpiece if I ever saw one. I can tell you that she's going to be a wildcat in bed…I'll probably come back with scratches and bruises," the redhead announced confidently, strutting over to where she was leaning casually against the building. The three remaining members watched as the two of them talked, flirted, and generally produced the sort of picture that made onlookers want to lose their lunch.
"That's disgusting," Goku commented as he shut his bag of cotton candy that he had managed to weasel out of Sanzo. The other two members had to admit that this was one of those moments where Goku's intelligence shined through, and that his observation was correct.
Hakkai turned to the other two, wearing his smiley-mask that he always wore when he was getting really, really pissed off. "I think we should retire to the inn, don't you? This crowd is getting considerably stifling." Though spoken with the most genial of tones, the other two knew that it was more of a command than anything else. Though Sanzo would never admit it and Goku would easily deny it, they went along with the human-turned-demon's suggestion out of fear of retribution. Though, they knew who was going to be in trouble when he got back to the inn.
Anyway, the night wore on as the three remaining party members amused themselves with a board game that the manager of the inn provided. Just as Goku was about to demand his rent from Sanzo for landing on Park Place, the door to the common room they shared swung open to reveal Gojyo standing there, wearing the exact same skin-tight red leather pants that the woman had been wearing when they noticed her hours before. The redhead looked utterly horrified, though his look turned to fury when the three at the table began to snicker. It didn't take long for Goku and Hakkai to erupt into peals of laughter, while Sanzo's shoulders shook with his repressed mirth.
"What the hell are you bozos laughing at? You'll never guess what happened to me! It was horrible! It was-" Whatever the kappa had been planning to say was left forgotten, when Hakkai's shaky hand pointed towards his very unmanly attire.
"Your…y-your pants…." the man wheezed, clutching his stomach with one arm and using the other to keep his balance. By this time Goku had already fallen out of his chair and was rolling around on the floor, and Sanzo was still attempting to appear like he wasn't laughing at all.
With a howl that was most unbecoming of a man his age, Gojyo rushed past the laughing figures and into his room as the lock clicked behind him. Once Hakkai had managed to get a hold of himself, he went and knocked on the door. "Gojyo? I'm sorry…I didn't mean to laugh. Do you want to tell me what happened?" He tried his best to sound sympathetic, holding in the stray laughter that threatened to spill out again.
After a few long minutes, the lock clicked again and the green-eyed man was allowed access. He managed to get the story out of the hysterical man as he kept his face impassive, finally calming the redhead down enough to go to sleep. He exited the room, sneaking into the other room before erupting into laughter once more. At Goku and Sanzo's expectant looks, he wiped an errant tear from his eye and caught his breath. "He…He went home with her, and he said that he… he started fooling around with her, and when he went to touch her…he realized that she wasn't really a 'she' at all…and in his haste to get out of there, he grabbed 'her' pants instead of his own…" His voice broke then as he started giggling again, waiting for the other two to catch on.
Goku's eyes lit up with realization, snorting less than discreetly as he spoke. "You mean…it was a guy? How funny is that!"
"So much for the mighty Sha Gojyo and his ability to tell what kind of a woman a chick is by the clothes she wears," Sanzo added blandly, smirking as he quoted what the redhead had said nearly verbatim earlier that day. "This is going to be a very, very interesting week."
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Gojyo claims to be emotionally scarred from the ordeal, and that the week after was probably the worst week of his entire life. No smokes, no outings, and no squabbling with the monkey over food. He was the most miserable kappa in all of existence. But a lesson was learned that day, though the redhead would die before ever admitting it.
Stay away from women in red pants, no matter how hot they look.
-End-
(A/N: I'm sorry if Gojyo comes off as a bit homophobic, but I think I would be slightly perturbed if I found out the girl I was hitting on was not really a girl. shrugs I thought it was funny, and it was kind of a way to teach Gojyo a lesson. This is for you, Niru-chan. I love you!)