To Be Brutally Frank With You...

It was a fine, sunny day. The birds were waking people up before they needed to be woken up; the sun was blinding random people and Yanagi received an e-mail from Inui.

It was entitled: RECIPE FOR TRUTH SERUM V2.1. Yanagi was very curious, so he opened the e-mail. In it, the ingredients and instructions for a juice that would, according to Inui, allow Yanagi ample opportunities to update his data.

Yanagi scanned the ingredients, and thought to himself, 'Knowing my teammates, I probably have to double all of this…"

And so he did.

-0-0-0-

Sanada was confused.

This wasn't anything new, because Sanada was constantly confused. It was almost his semi-permanent state of mind when he was around his crazy teammates.

But this time, he was confused by Yanagi, who was pretty much the only sane person on his team, aside from himself. Sure, Yanagi was eccentric, but he was pretty sane. Considering.

Yanagi was proffering a greenish-grey liquid at him, with an odd glint in his eyes. What freaked Sanada out even more was that his best friend had actually opened his eyes.

Sanada stepped back slightly, and asked, "Why do I have to drink that?"

"For data-gathering purposes."

"Why just me?"

Yanagi smirked, just a bit, and replied, "I'll get to them later. Now drink."

Out of the corner of his eye, Sanada spotted Yukimura approaching them, and thought, 'Thank God, Yukimura's here. He'll put a stop to Yanagi's madness.'

Sadly, he was wrong.

Yukimura glanced at the drink, and then at Yanagi, before finally staring at Sanada's reluctant face.

He asked, "What's going on here?"

Sanada was quick to reply, "Renji's trying to make me drink that."

"Hmm… For any particular reason?"

Yanagi cut in before Sanada could reply, "I need the whole team to drink it to update my data."

Yukimura looked like he was thinking about something very hard, and Sanada thought he was trying to decide how to tell Yanagi 'No'. It was the sane thing to do, after all. Who drank an unidentifiable liquid willingly?

Unfortunately, this was Rikkai, where common sense and sanity were thrown out the window, burnt, and completely obliterated.

So, of course, Yukimura told Yanagi, "That's a wonderful idea! Come, let's round up the others." His smile was slightly scary for some reason.

Sanada was depressed. But it was Yukimura's orders, and he wouldn't go against Yukimura.

-0-0-0-

"So, you want us to drink this."

Yukimura and Yanagi were bemused, why was it so hard to make 6 teenagers drink something?

"I thought I explained that already," said Yukimura, with a glint in his eye. The glint said 'Obey-me-now-lest-you-want-to-die-a-painful-death'.

His team was cowed. But Niou tried to resist anyway, and said, "No way. Make the bratling drink it or something."

Akaya yelped, "Hey!" But he was ignored.

"I think you missed the point," said Yukimura, "The entire point of this is to make all of you drink this."

Niou was resistant, "So why aren't the two of you drinking this?"

Akaya piped up, "Yeah! It's not fair! Why do we have to drink this kinda poisonous looking juice while you guys just stand around and watch?"

Yukimura's smile was icy, "I'm your captain, I'm supposed to oversee the practices. And Yanagi was the instigator, and he needs to be in top form to collect his data."

Niou was still resistant.

Sanada, though extremely reluctant to drink the liquid, wasn't going to let his teammates talk back to Yukimura that way, and therefore yelled, "Tarundoru!"

Yukimura smiled, "Thank you, Sanada. Now, the lot of you, drink already."

His team drank, for fear of Yukimura's wrath, because the last time Yukimura got that look on his face, he had—well, it was too horrible to even think about, Let's just say that Marui still had nightmares of the incident.

Niou, however, was still strong in his conviction, and refused to even take a sip of the liquid.

Yukimura's face darkened, and he muttered, just loud enough for only Niou to hear, "Drink, Haru, or I will be forced to bring all my six fish to practice tomorrow."

Niou twitched, he hated fish. He'd even go so far as to say he had a phobia of them, not that anyone knew. Which was why he liked cats so much, they ate fish. Damn, how did Yukimura find out?

With a sigh, he drank, but not before silently promising to try and pull a Trick on Yukimura in the near future.

And with that, all the victi- I mean, all the Rikkai Regulars had drunk Yanagi's concoction.

There was silence for a few moments, then Marui clutched his stomach, "That was disgusting… and I feel sort of weird."

"Yeah, me too," said Jackal with a grimace.

Yagyuu, being the polite gentleman that he was, simply turned a mild shade of green.

Akaya expressed his feelings on the matter by running to the toilet to barf his lunch out.

He was soon joined by Sanada.

Niou shrugged, confused by his teammates reactions, he thought the juice tasted pretty okay, actually.

Yagyuu asked, "And may I ask what was the point of the liquid?"

"Oh… You'll find out soon, it should take effect within the next five minutes." Said Yanagi with a small smile.

Abruptly, Marui interrupted them, by saying, "Have you ever noticed that Yanagi really needs a haircut."

"Yes, it sucks." To everyone's surprise, it was Yagyuu that answered him.

Jackal raised an eyebrow, "Aren't you supposed to be polite or something? You're not being Niou now, after all."

"That's just to trick all of you. Idiots." Yagyuu's eyes widened, that was supposed to be internal.

Yukimura stifled a laugh. He knew all about Yagyuu's snarky side.

While all of them were trying to absorb this new shocking information, Niou, who already knew about Yagyuu's other side, interjected, "That was a truth serum, wasn't it, Yanagi?"

Yanagi just nodded, still miffed about the haircut comment. He asked Sanada quietly, "Does my haircut really suck?"

Sanada tried to keep silent, but the truth serum was too potent, and he answered, "Yes."

Yanagi was depressed. Sanada couldn't lie, and even he thought his haircut sucked. Sanada. Who had no fashion sense. Oh, the embarrassment.

Akaya wailed, "Yanagi… Why'd you do that to us? I don't want to tell the truth all day!"

"You shouldn't lie anyway, Akaya," said Yukimura, with a look of disappointment on his face.

Yanagi mused to himself, 'Maybe I made the serum too strong… They can't seem to keep their mouths shut.'

Jackal cut in, "Yukimura looks really girly today." As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he regretted it. Damn Yanagi's truth serum.

Marui muttered, "Should I get his funeral ready?"

"Yes." Said Yukimura, a sweet looking smile on his face, but they knew better, that smile meant pain.

Poor Jackal.

-0-0-0-

So how'd you like it? If I get positive feedback, I'll continue it.

Kudos to - - for the base premise of this fic. Lots of thanks!

I hope this flows well, I'm pretty rusty at story-style writing.

Positive feedback and criticisms are greatly appreciated.

Much love,

~FO