Disclaimer: Here's a random fact: Cyprus is a country, not whatever the hell I thought it might be. Here's another random fact: I don't own Prince of Tennis, or any of the characters. :)
Rating: PG max.
Warnings: Shounen-ai/yaoi, crack, randomness, pointlessness, Niou, Yagyuu.
Summary: It is NOT hide and seek, thank you very much, Oshitari Yuushi. It's… adult hide and seek. With cryptic clues and… biscuits. Totally different concept.
Author's notes: Another Rikkai drabblething. You don't have to have read the ones that come before this, but it might help a bit. The full list can be found on my profile.The latest ten drabblethings are:
Sanada Hates Random
Time Will Tell. Probably.
The Way of the Jinx
The Hottest Fire
The Name's Metaphor. Blatant Metaphor.
Cirque du Rikkai
Guess Who Fate Doesn't Like Much?
Eep, Crayons, and Parrots with Problems
The Waiting Camel
Operation: Gentleman Hunt
Ok, this is how it's gonna work from now on – since I've now officially hit 50 Drabblethings (this being the 51st) my AN were getting insanely long. So now, I'm only going to list the latest ten Drabblethings, and the rest of the list may be found on my profile. And they're numbered:o Such a novelty, I know.
HAPPY (late…) BIRTHDAY, BRITIX!! You rock n.n Where would I be without your happy nagging? Up a creek without a fic, that's where. –Sets off party streamers- Hope this is cracky enough for you, dahl; my crack bunnies are somewhere in limbo right now n.n;; Despite it not existing, according to His Holiness. Trust my plot bunnies to find a way into a dimension that doesn't exist… -Rolls eyes-
I apologise in advance for the Crazy.
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He wasn't in the clubhouse. He wasn't at the library. He wasn't at home. He wasn't at the miniature golf course. He wasn't at the tennis courts. He wasn't in the little coffee shop. And he wasn't answering his phone.
Really now, that was just annoying.
"Agent to Base. Agent to Base. You read me?"
An answering crackle, then a static-broken voice. "We read you. Just. You're almost out of range, Agent. Where are you?"
"Near the hospital. I don't know what the road's called."
"Um… Oh, right. Yes, we know which road you mean."
"Permission to instigate a change in plan."
"Permission denied. We stick to the original plan."
"Roger that. Plan change instigated."
"Wait, what? No, Agent, we said permission denied."
"I outrank you." Considerable satisfaction. "So there. We go to plan B."
"No you don't! I'm a Special Agent, so I outrank you."
"Field Marshal Yukimura promoted me. I'm a Specials Class One."
"That's rubbish. Intelligence says…" There was a pause. "Oh. Well, you could have told me that earlier, couldn't you, Yanagi?!"
"Plan B instigated. Over and out." A long, calloused finger flicked casually at the switch and the static was cut off.
Stretching languidly, Specials Class One Agent Niou checked his watch. "Twelve past eleven," he said out loud to his general surroundings.
It was time to start the Hunt.
Yukimura had ordered it. He'd called Niou at nine that morning and said something along the lines of, "I have a Mission for you. Find the Gentleman, and detain him for questioning. Take your radio – Special Agent Marui and the Intelligence sector," which basically meant Yanagi and his dimensionally disobedient notebooks, "will aid you from one of the bases. Don't fail me."
Normal? Certainly not. Don't be ridiculous. Normal for Rikkai?
Naturally, my dear Watson. Niou accepted the Mission, no questions asked.
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The first stop was the clubhouse again. This time, Niou stayed in the doorway. His sharp eyes roved slowly round the dim interior; over the silent lockers, the ball baskets, his shadow on the dark green floor.
Ah ha. Very clever.
Niou took a few steps forward and crouched down. He smirked to himself and extended his left hand, peeling carefully at a tiny inconsistancy on the floor. Sure enough, he was able to lift away a small note, the back painted the exact same colour as the linolium.
"I must've walked right over it," he muttered, shaking his head. "Ah, you can't decieve these eyes of mine for long." Straightening up, Niou turned the note over.
Make mine a double in the treacle well.
"Oh now, come on," he murmured with a lopsided sneer. "Too easy."
About turn, and Niou walked briskly out of the clubhouse. Barely three steps away, however, he was startled by the little two-way radio that suddenly blasted out white noise.
Cursing, Niou fumbled frantically for the volume switch.
"In the name of Buddha-sama's increasingly expanding belly button!" he growled. "What is it?"
"Report in please, Agent. What did you find?"
"How the hell did you know I found-" Niou stopped. Then, like a character from a horror film, he turned his head round and up towards the school building.
Marui waved cheerfully down at him from the first floor library window, grinning like an idiot.
"I see." Niou's voice was very, very neutral.
Unfortunately for Marui and Yanagi, it was damn hard to tell over the radio. "What did you find?"
"A note. See, Hiroshi said something odd yesterday. We were just packing up after practice, and he said, 'The solution to invisibility lies in the clubhouse.' I asked him what the hell he was on, and he said that it'd make sense tomorrow. Which is today. And it does."
"Um."
Niou considered rolling his eyes at Marui, but decided that he probably wouldn't be able to see. Then did it anyway, just on principle. "He's having one of Those moods. I guess he decided that today would be a fun time to play some hide-and-seek."
"Yagyuu? Really?"
"Oh, come on, Maru, don't sound so bloody surprised. The Rikkai Crazy has to find an outlet sometimes. Otherwise Hiroshi'd explode, or invert into a poodle. He must've planted the notes yesterday evening."
"Notes? Plural?"
"I'm guessing there'll be more than one, yeah." Niou started to walk again, tucking the note into his pocket.
"Alright. What did that one say?"
Niou nearly made something up out of malice (it was never nice to be spied on from a window, damnit), but then reconsidered. After all, he didn't want to be demoted again. "It says, 'make mine a double in the treacle well.'"
"Who did the whatnow?"
Satisfied, Niou rested his thumb on the Off switch. "Work it out Agent, Intelligence, whoever the hell else is up there. Let me know if you solve it. Over and out."
"Woah, woah, wait, Agent! The radio only has a mile radius, remember, so report in if you need to move beyond that."
"Roger that. Over and out." This time Niou made sure to flick the switch and he pocketed the radio, jogging lightly towards the school gates.
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"Treacle well?" said Niou, ignoring the puzzled glances he got from the people in the street watching the bleach-haired teenager talking to himself. "That's Alice in Wonderland, my dear Hiroshi. And you always have a double expresso when you come here. You'll have to do a little better than that."
Pushing open the door to the coffee shop known as 'Wonderland' (personally, Niou had always thought the name sounded more like a brothel of some sort. Then again, some of the waitresses' outfits…), Niou sat down at the closest table and leant back in his chair.
Now then. Where would Yagyuu…
"Ah, bing-bong." Getting up again, Niou headed for the little packets of biscuits waiting to be bought by the counter. Honestly; his seat was barely warm. Maybe this wasn't going to be as fun as Niou had originally thought.
One of the packets had a sticker of a golf club over the proper logo. Niou turned it over in his hands a few times, but reluctantly conceded that he'd have to buy the packet so that he could open it. He had no idea how Yagyuu had gotten the message into the packet without ripping or otherwise damaging it, but he didn't really want to know. It probably involved secret gadgets hidden in his golf clubs. Or glasses.
"Thank you," the girl at the counter said politely. "Please come again."
Something in her smile made Niou pause before turning around to leave. He narrowed his eyes at her, suspicious all of a sudden without quite knowing why.
"I don't suppose you've seen Yagyuu Hiroshi today?" he asked casually.
"Your friend in the glasses? Ah, no, I haven't." Niou's eyes narrowed further, and the girl blushed. "I mean, I haven't seen him, as such."
"As such?"
"Um. I, er…" Now Niou's look was positively approaching a glare. Aware of the mortal peril she was rapidly sinking into (every waitress and counter girl in here knew the story of Mariko-chan. The poor girl would never be able to look a tennis ball in the face ever again), the counter girl surrendered.
"There was a note addressed to me this morning by the door," she confessed. "It was from Yagyuu-kun saying that I wasn't to let anyone but you buy the packet of biscuits with that sticker on. That's all I know, I swear. Please don't hurt me!"
Niou held her frightened eyes for a moment longer, then nodded. She sagged in relief and Niou said, "Normally I'd report you to my Field Marshal for Aiding And Abetting someone who isn't me, but after all, it wouldn't have been fun if the packet had gotten sold, would it?"
"Um, no?" the girl ventured with the voice of one who can see the end of a dark tunnel.
"No. I'll see you around. Thank you for your help." Niou pulled open the top of the packet and headed back out of 'Wonderland'.
He pulled out his radio with his spare hand, ready to report back to Marui and Yanagi and gloat that they hadn't worked it out. But then he stopped, frowning.
Putting down the radio on a bench, Niou dug into the packet, pulling out the biscuits that had evidently been soaked in some kind of violet food dye. Puzzled, he poured them all out onto the bench, searching the inside for a note of some kind. But there wasn't one. And the biscuits clearly didn't have anything inside them.
Hesitating, Niou picked up the radio again and switched it on.
"This is Specials-etc Niou reporting in. I've found the next clue, but it's kind of… odd."
"Oh? Elaborate, Agent."
"This is definitely the second clue, by the way. It's a biscuit packet, and the biscuits inside have been dyed or partially dyed with violet… dye. I'm guessing the target used some kind of syringe-like instrument to inject the dye into the packet. I gotta confess, I have no idea what it means."
There were several odd clicking noises – presumably Marui was passing the radio over to Yanagi. "Violet dye?" he said after a moment. "Can you describe the exact shade?"
"I don't think it's important," said Niou.
"Hm. A reference to his hair, perhaps? Why biscuits?"
"Maybe, and I don't know. If you think of anything, let me know."
"Roger that."
"Over and out." Clicking off the radio, Niou rolled his eyes. "Some help you two are," he muttered.
"What are you playing? Some kind of hide and seek?"
Every organ, cell and nerve end in Niou's body tried to crawl into itself.
"It's not hide and seek," he said stiffly, turning round. "It's a far more adult version. It involves cryptic clues and tests your knowledge of the other person."
"So… adult hide and seek?"
"For your information, Oshitari, you wouldn't be able to understand." Niou paused for smug, dramatic effect. Then he added, "What the hell are you doing here anyway? Don't you live like, four miles away?"
"It's called a bus," said Oshitari calmly, sitting down with far more grace than necessary on the bench where Niou had poured out the biscuits. "You may have heard of them? No doubt their nightly roars have instilled many a nightmare into your mind."
Niou was very, very proud that it only took him an extra half second to understand the last sentence. It was the use of 'instilled', mostly. Still, Yagyuu and Thoughtful Mode Yukimura had used far worse.
"I think you're getting confused with that little acrobat ho of yours," he drawled. He scooped the biscuits back into their packet.
"I'm sorry?" Oshitari looked genuinely puzzled. "Acrobat what?"
"Ho. Now if you'll kindly excuse me…"
"Hoe? Ahh, in reference to his build. That's a first – people normally say 'rake'."
There was a three-second moment where Niou looked Oshiatri squarely in the eye (well, as squarely as he could through those meaningless glasses) to see whether or not Oshitari was completely taking the piss.
Apparently, he wasn't.
"You Hyoutei people make me laugh," he muttered under his breath. "Look, look, I'm laughing so hard that my face might develop exhaust pipes and take off to the moon, where it will spend the next twenty years developing a lunar base only to realise that the moon is but a figment of scientists' imaginations. Now go away; I'm trying to find someone." With that, he left feeling satisfied and, above all, really rather triumphant.
Until he realised that Oshitari was following him sedately.
"What do you think-" he began, annoyed. But he was cut off.
"Why, Oshitari. How are you?"
Unable to believe his bad luck, Niou gaped as Fuji strolled up to them, hands in pockets, smiling that incomprehensible smile of his.
"I'm very good, thank you. I happened across Niou-kun here as I arrived to wait for you. He's playing hide and seek."
"Really? You're not doing it very well, I'm afraid. Anyone could see you."
"I'm the seeker, you idiot," Niou growled, temper getting in the way of a more suitably snark-filled reply. "And it isn't hide and seek, it's-"
"Adult hide and seek," Oshitari chipped in. "Far more advanced."
A hint of blue flickered behind long eyelashes. "That sounds fun. May we play?"
Niou forced his mouth to obey him. "Sure thing! I'll count to a thousand, and you two go and hide. You have to hide at least a mile away; those are the rules."
Sadly for Niou, the two Tensai could detect efforts to escape purely by the scent of a person's heartbeat. "Now, Niou-kun," said Oshitari. "We were only asking politely. It really does sound like fun. Who are you seeking? Perhaps we can help."
Niou opened his mouth to tell them both to go away and leave him alone. Please. Or, you know, something along those lines but with many more expletives. And hand gestures too, probably.
But then he paused. After all, Fuji and Oshitari might be the essence of what grated on Niou's sanity, but they were nothing if not very smart. And Fuji especially had lateral thinking down to an art form…
"Actually," Niou said, "you could give me a hand…"
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He'd lied, of course.
"I should get a medal," Niou said out loud to himself, smirking lopsidedly and with a lot more teeth than most people would feel comfortable with. "Maybe I'll apply for one from Mura."
If he ever whistled tunes, he would be doing so. As it was, Niou did the Trickster equivalent of radiating tangible self-satisfaction as he walked away from the abandoned caretaker's house by Rikkai's language department.
Contemplating the cellar door using the tiny crack of light from a line in the wall, Oshitari folded his arms.
"I think we may have been Tricked," he said carefully.
"So it seems."
"You sound more amused than anything. As expected from you."
"Of course. It was a good trick."
"Yes. The part with the frog was rather innovative."
"I personally like that balloon bit."
"Mm."
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"Base to Specials. Base to Specials. Do you copy?"
"I copy," Niou sighed, getting out the radio again. "What do you want?"
"We solved it! At least, we think we have. See, Intelligence dug out his data books, and we've been going through them. It's a little obscure, but our theory is, you know Yagyuu's Kaasan's dog? She's called Lilac, right? So we think that the biscuits and colour go with that. And it would be dead easy for Yagyuu to put a message, say, under Lilac's collar or something." Marui sounded pleased. "What d'you reckon, Agent?"
"Of course. You're absolutely right. Why on earth didn't I think of that before? I'll go round to his house straight away."
"Great! Tell you what, we'll meet you there – the librarian's kicking us out. Over and out."
"Jeez…" Niou switched off the radio and emptied out the batteries onto the floor. "You know, even if I did sound genuine, can't he tell that I'm being sarcastic? Why the hell would I ever say something like that?"
Yagyuu picked up the batteries and carefully arranged them parallel to the radio. "Never mind," he said. "It would spoil the game."
"You know, Mura," Niou said as he flopped backwards onto a little cushion pile, "You're possibly the only person I know who would actually arrange a weekend-long game of Sardines from your bedroom. I can't believe you got Hiroshi to start it off instead of me – I was forced to dispose of Seigaku's Fuji and That Damn Oshitari on the way here, you know." Give me my medal, his look said.
"Sorry, 'Haru. But you were more likely to reach the second clue. And now that Renji and Bunta know the second clue, they'll probably spread it around to try and find you two after your mysterious disappearance. Let's see who turns up first, hmm?" I'll see what I can do, his look replied.
"A thousand yen on the bratling," Niou yawned. "He has moment of brilliance for things like this. When I say 'things like this' I mean things concerning you, of course."
Yukimura smiled fondly. "He is adorably dedicated, isn't he?"
"You could say that. I would use 'pathetically' in place of 'adorably', but…"
"How long did it take you to solve the clues?" Yagyuu asked.
Niou smirked. "The first one took me about as long as a walk to 'Wonderland', if you get me. Way too easy. But the biscuits did stump me for an hour or so."
"How did you manage to solve it, in the end?"
"I reached the same conclusion as Maru and Yanagi. Then I thought, ok, so what's the answer that isn't blindingly obvious?" Niou reached for a violet biscuit and took a bite. "I got it when That Damn Oshitari said that they smelt like vanilla. 'Cause they're cinammon biscuits, obviously, so why would they smell like vanilla? So that was obviously a further clue. Vanilla? White. What else is white? Snow. Yuki. Violet? A type of purple. Murabi. Put the two together and you get Yukimura."
"Ahh. There was an easier, slightly more obvious solution, but never mind. That one works."
Niou shook his head with a mouthful of crumbs. "I don't care. I solved it the hard way. So ha."
Yukimura chuckled, and Yagyuu's mouth moved a couple of millimetres. Niou grinned at them lazily in reply, and settled further into the cushion pile to wait out the weekend.
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Sandy: This fic did not want to stay in past tense. )x I think I got them all, but let me know if you spot anything…
I really love to hear what you think – please leave me a review? Just a couple of sentences or whatever to scatter some thoughts my way, eh? It feeds me. Especially with my workload and escalating list of Things to Do. –Scowls at her debit card- So yeah, please review and make my day. n.n Quotes of your favourite bits are also relished as they help me improve my writing. :D
Hope you like it, Britix – I'm so sorry for the delay, again!! I'm just not good with deadlines… I made it nice and long for you…?
Until next time!