Written for iimAdOrKabLe.
About as cracktastic as a regular canon manga chapter.
XXX
Of Junkyards And Giraffes
XXX
"Why did you want to meet in this place?" Sumire said, scowling at the rather poor surroundings. A junkyard in the middle of nowhere was not her idea of a "cool getaway". Then again, Koko had rather strange tastes.
"Natsume said that he was going to meet us here," said Koko, scratching his head and sitting down on an upturned tyre. "I wonder where he is. He said he was going to be here half an hour ago..."
"And why exactly is Natsume invited to what you specifically said was 'a really private one-on-one conversation'?" She looked around for a reasonably clean space, and sat down next to Koko.
"I didn't invite him!" Koko said frantically, waving his hands in the air in an innocently frightened manner. "His mission was supposed to end here and he wanted someone to pick him up, so... yeah."
"That still doesn't make sense," said Sumire. She glared at him. Koko could hear her thoughts going along the lines of how does that work you take him back to wherever so how were you going to meet me here and why here I DON'T GET IT!!
"-and why here I DON'T GET IT!!" Sumire finished. Koko winced, taking care to keep his PermaSmile(tm) intact. This was why he should never try to read her mind, he remembered belatedly. The effect of Sumire saying everything she was thinking at one same time tended to make his head hurt in confusion, especially when they were angry thoughts.
"Look, it was a last minute thing... anyway, I like this place!"
"I don't." She sniffed disdainfully. "Couldn't you do any better than this rubbish tip?"
"Er... probably, but you know what?" He took a deep breath.
"No?"
"I, um, I... I asked you to meet me here because..." This would be so much easier if she could read his mind!
"Get a move on," Sumire muttered.
"... because Hotaru's stalking me and it's really annoying!" he finished quickly. Damn! He never could quite work up the courage to confess his undying adoration of every face and facet and fact of Sumire, and always ended up saying something a little stupid. Luckily, this time it had the good fortune to be something a little stupid and true. Maybe next time...
"She is?" Sumire was taken aback. "Why would anyone be interested in stalking you?"
"Was that offensive?" You could never tell with Sumire.
"No," she said, looking confused. "Why?"
"Never mind. I dunno, I just see her around all the time and she's always taking pictures of me! So I thought I should get away from her, and the last place that she'd be is in an old junkyard, so that's why I wanted to come here."
"Maybe she likes you. Although I can't see why she would, really."
"Hey!"
"What?"
"You just implied that no-one would be interested in me! And that no-one would like me!"
"No-one as cold and as weird as Hotaru," Sumire explained. "I'm sure plenty of people would be interested in you - I guess. I wouldn't want them to be, though," she added.
"In you, you mean?"
"I don't know, maybe!" She huffed. "Anyway, how do you know she hasn't stalked you here then?"
"Aha! Because I've set up loads of traps and things so I'll definitely know she's here." He gestured proudly around at various buckets and tripwires and levers. It had taken a lot of hard work and dedication to set those up.
Sumire surveyed them sceptically. "You know, Hotaru does have a brain, unlike some people I know. She's going to have to be pretty stupid to fall for one of those, although I suppose she supposedly fell for you, so..."
Koko didn't even want to ask if that was offensive.
"And how sad were you to spend all that time setting this up?"
"Um... it was fun."
Sumire raised her eyebrows. "You do have your fun."
"It was!" Koko said defensively. "Come on, I bet at least one of those traps'll go off."
Sumire snorted. "Yeah, whatever. That's if I believe Hotaru's even stalking you, which I highly doubt, and even then only if she's idiotic enough to just wander in here and get a bucket tipped over her head without seeing the totally obvious wire that leads to it." She got up and started to pace around. "Do you have anything fun to do except setting up stupid traps?"
"Well, actually, I was going to say, um..."
"What's the matter with you today? You're not normally so stuttery," Sumire said, inspecting her nails.
"Hey! A cat!" Koko exclaimed, pointing at a small black blob a few metres away.
"Wow, cool," Sumire said sarcastically as Koko got up and tried to entice it towards him. "Hey, get back here!"
"Aw, it's so cute!" Koko had managed to get the cat to come somewhat near him, and it was snarling in a rather alarming manner. "Woah, calm down! Don't bite me!" said Koko, backing away.
"Idiot," muttered Sumire.
XXX
Natsume was not having a good day. In fact, he was having a day so terrible that even that day last June when he had eaten that bad oyster and spent a good morning on the toilet trying to get it out of his system and then spent a good afternoon living with the inevitable bad-smell-in-the-loo jokes and then spent a good evening starving because there had been nothing to eat except more oysters paled to the colour of ivory oyster flesh in comparison with this.
It had started with a mission. Now, mission days were usually quite terrible. Being forced by a shady organisation to do its dirty work was never a good thing. Being forced to use his Alice was never a good thing. It always made him feel a little ill, spending a little of his life energy to burn Yakuza gangs and North Korean spies and whatnot. This particular mission contract had had no transport clause, which he had only realised until too late, and that meant that he had been dumped into a rubbish tip a few miles away from civilisation as soon as he had finished the burning things part.
And then, of course, to make a bad day worse he had had a smelly potion dumped on him by The Enemy during the mission. Natsume didn't know and didn't care who The Enemy was, but he was meant to be burning them out and instead a potion bottle had exploded and showered him in its contents. Now he smelt like the Technicals' Chemistry lab when Nonoko had gone wrong again. And that was not a good thing at all.
Of course, the actual effects of the potion had not shown up until some time afterwards, when it had soaked through his shirt and seeped into his pores and - well, Natsume didn't know what exactly had happened next, because he had passed out.
The next thing he knew was that he had opened his eyes to find that he was not Natsume anymore.
No, he was something small and furry and definitely not human.
After seeing Koko, his very smiley designated driver, in the distance with some girl he couldn't see from here - probably Sumire, as the whole world (excepting, of course, anyone who really shouldknow) knew that he had a massive five-year long crush on her - Natsume had realised that he couldn't speak. At least, he had tried to, but instead of a fairly normal sound like, "Help me I don't want to be a stupid furball cat!", what had come out was more like, "Grrr ssss meow ss sss meowww!"
So he had got up, grimacing (or whatever a cat does instead of a grimace) and made his way over to Koko and Sumire.
Oh look, Koko was coming towards him now.
"No, I am not cute!" he had said in response to Koko's exclamations. Actually, he had added in a few more rude words for emphatic effect, but still. It looked as though Koko had got the message, as he was backing away nervously.
"Woah, calm down! Don't bite me!" said Koko.
"I'm not going to bite you!" Natsume said in cat-language exasperatedly. "Can you understand me?" he asked, hoping against hope for a 'yes'.
"Aw, you are cute," said Koko. "Are you a stray? What're you wandering around the junkyard for?"
"Don't talk to me in that patronising baby-talk tone," growled Natsume.
"Ever seen that musical called 'Cats'?" said Sumire to Koko. "Maybe this one got inspired."
"Nope," said Koko. He turned back to cat-Natsume. "Hey, Sumire, can you speak to it?"
Yes please say yes for once in your life please use your Alice! Natsume had never actually seen Sumire use her Alice in all its full-blown power, but there was always a first time for everything.
"Can you read its thoughts?" Sumire said crossly.
That would be great too, Natsume thought.
"No, but your Alice is like specially created for all things cat-like! Can you talk to it? Can you? Please please please?"
"I'm not going to make myself look stupid just because you think a stray cat in a rubbish heap is cute!"
"Sumire, you never look stupid! Okay, sometimes you do. But I don't care!"
Sumire glowered. Very fiercely. "I do NOT look stupid. Ever."
"Okay, okay. You don't look stupid, ever. You're wonderful. Can you talk to cats?"
"..."
"That's a yes," said Koko happily. Well, at least, even more happily than usual.
"So what. I completely totally refuse to use my Alice in front of anyone except for emergencies, and guess what, that means you as well."
"This is an emergency!" Natsume said angrily.
To Koko and Sumire-with-non-activated-Alice, it sounded like, "Hissss MEOW!" and the effect was rather lost on them.
"See, if you had used your Alice then we would know what it's saying," Koko said, poking her.
"It's a cat, for God's sake! They never have anything interesting to say except where the nice places are to sleep and whether there's any rotting tuna in the trashcan."
"That is so cool," said Koko admiringly, although Sumire didn't hear the admiring part of his tone.
Natsume felt like he wanted to shoot himself. Actually, he had reached that stage quite some time ago, but this was just getting annoying. He wondered how long this potion was likely to last for and whether he'd have any clothes on when he turned back. If he turned back. Eek. How to send his message across?
"Hey, it's doing something!" said Koko. "It's like it's trying to write something!"
"Cute," Sumire said in a voice layered with a triple velvet coating of sarcasm.
"They don't normally do that, do they? Is there something wrong with it? Hey, do you think it's a he or a she?"
Natsume paused in the middle of writing a crude "N" in the dust to furiously say, "Of course I'm a he!" complete with added profanities.
"It's stressy enough to be a girl with PMS," said Koko thoughtfully, making Sumire hit him.
At that moment, a sudden loud crash and an even louder scream distracted Natsume, Koko and Sumire from dust-writing and hitting each other. There was a rather tall and wobbly thing staggering towards them.
"What the hell is that?" Sumire said, standing her ground and frowning at it. It looked like... Sumire had no idea what it looked like.
"No idea," said Koko and Natsume together, who had forgotten that no-one could understand him. Hmm, but that scream sounded familiar...
"Mikan?" said Sumire suddenly. "Is that you?"
"Yes!!" yelled the Thing, taking a break from screaming. "What is this stuff?!" Something that could have been a hand waved around and pointed at the brown stuff that was coating most of the outside of the Thing.
"That's chocolate," said Koko. "Are you riding a giraffe?"
Natsume and Sumire looked at Koko. "Chocolate?" repeated Sumire.
"Yes, it's a giraffe! I borrowed him from Luca," Mikan said, or rather, gurgled. There was really a lot of chocolate, if that's was it was. And Natsume and Sumire really did hope it was.
"Uh huh, I didn't have anything else to put in those buckets except for those big vats of chocolate sauce that Anna left at my place last Christmas, so-"
"What about water?" Sumire interjected.
"That's so boring!" Koko said indignantly. "Why did you even want a giraffe?" he said to Mikan.
"It's cool!" gurgled Mikan. Natsume was past caring where or how or when or why Koko had set a chocolate-bucket trap and why Mikan had borrowed a giraffe. Right now, he just wanted to get to his room and sleep and sleep and sleep. He said this very loudly, and the three humans turned to look at him.
"Oh, that is so cute!" Mikan cried, sending a few drops of chocolate his way. "Where'd you guys find such a sweet little cat?"
"Koko's fault," said Sumire.
"Is it a girl or a boy? Oh, can I keep it? It's so fluffy and black-and-white like a penguin and awww!" Her sentence degenerated into a happy gleeful sound. She dismounted from Honky The Giraffe (as his chocolate-covered name-tag read) and crouched down next to Natsume, who stepped back. Mikan looked very, very much bigger than he remembered her. Stupid tiny cat size.
"We think it's a girl," Koko said, looking at Natsume. "See, Sumire, I told you it was really cute!"
Sumire rolled her eyes. "Still not talking to it. Her. Whatever."
Natsume did not have the energy to protest any more at his new gender. Instead, he curled up and tried to block out the outside world, praying that this was all just a terrible, horrible dream. It didn't really work, though. Instead of waking up in his lovely and comfortable bed, he felt something touching his back and uncurled to find an abnormally huge Mikan stroking him. Going by his first instinct, he darted round and bit her hand.
"Ow!" Mikan yelled. "She bit me!"
"Yeah, and I'll do it again if you keep saying 'she'!" Natsume spat, together with a bit of chocolate sauce. Right. That was the last time he was doing anything - his head felt like it was going to split open.
"Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow," said Mikan, waving her hand about and flinging bits of chocolate around. Koko looked vaguely concerned (as concerned as his PermaSmile(tm) would permit him to be) and Sumire looked beyond caring. Much like Natsume felt.
"Shut up, moron," he said and curled up again. This time, no-one disturbed him.
"Ow ow ow. Hey, so how comes you had a bucket of chocolate hanging up there anyway? And have you seen Hotaru? I haven't seen her at all for AGES!"
"I think she's stalking me," said Koko, patting Honky and looking worriedly at his now very sticky hand. "The trap was so she wouldn't stalk me. Yes! Sumire! I told you someone would set one of those traps off!"
"Mikan doesn't count 'cos she's too thick," said Sumire, wiping a chocolate drop off her skirt. "Mikan, do you know if Hotaru is interested in Koko in any way?"
"She doesn't tell me that sort of stuff," said Mikan, looking sad. "Maybe she doesn't want to be best friends anymore..."
"I always thought she was like this asexual alien who would never like anyone," said Koko. "Besides, she probably stalks everyone. Remember when she took all those pictures of Luca?"
"Yeah," said Sumire, who had bought most of Hotaru's Luca-and-Natsume photo collection. Ah, those good old Fanclub days.
XXX
"Hello, Hotaru!" said Koko cheerfully as he barged into her workroom.
"Why did we come here again?" said Sumire to Mikan.
"'Cos I wanted to see my best friend!" said Mikan at an ultrasonic pitch that made Sumire regret asking. Mikan bounded over to Hotaru and enveloped her in a surprise hug from behind. Sumire was left standing dazed with Honky's lead in her hand.
"Hi," said Hotaru stonily. "Please keep your chocolate to yourselves and off my workbench. You can let the giraffe stay in the corner." She cleaned herself with some gadget in the corner and got back to working on the piece of metal on her workbench.
Koko put Natsume (who had now been christened Maybelline and was currently asleep) on a table and sat down on a chair. Then he began to focus his Alice on Hotaru, while Sumire asked, "Hotaru, what do you think of Koko?"
"Irritatingly smiley," Hotaru replied calmly.
GET OUT OF MY HEAD!!!
Koko sat back, holding his head. "That's not fair!" he said, rubbing his temples.
"Your Alice isn't fair," Hotaru said.
Sumire shared a look with Koko. Seemed like Plan A wasn't going to work. And as the description for Plan B was, 'Improvise', Koko wasn't sure what to do next.
"Why do you keep stalking me?" he said.
"No, I'm not," Hotaru said, not looking at him.
"Yes you are! Everywhere I look there's one of your spyflies or remote viewing camera things behind me! You know, Sumire thinks you fancy me."
Hotaru was saved having to respond to this by Mikan accidentally knocking over a strange electric device that looked a little bit like a hairdryer. "Sorry! I didn't see that there... hey, what does it do?"
"It's a scanning device," Hotaru said, picking it up.
"Can I try it?"
Hotaru nodded, and lowered her protective goggles again.
"Well? Why are you spying on me?" Koko said.
"Eh? It says that there's five people in here... but I can only count four! Do Maybelline and Honky count as a person, Hotaru?"
"Last time I checked, cats and giraffes weren't people," said Hotaru, walking over to inspect the screen.
"Hotaru!" screamed Sumire, losing her patience and making Natsume/Maybelline twitch in his/her sleep. "Answer Koko, you moron! And you'd better tell us the truth, because if you do like Koko then you've got a whole fricking lot to answer for! And if you don't, you've got another lot to say about why you would send those stupid spying things of yours to take pictures of him sleeping!!"
"Shut up," Hotaru said quietly. "Mikan, Maybelline isn't a cat."
"Yes she is," Mikan automatically said. "Whaddaya mean, May-May isn't a cat?"
"Unless my LifeScannerTech v5.3 is malfunctioning, which it certainly isn't, then it appears that your 'May-May' is actually a human under enchantment. Wait a moment-" she turned a few dials and tapped the touchscreen, "-does this person look familiar at all?"
"Natsume?" Mikan gasped.
"HOTARU!! Why don't you just answer me, idiot?!" yelled Sumire, adding in a few choice expletives. Natsume opened an eye and snarled at her. Koko was blocking his ears.
"Fine, I shall. I do have some kind of romantic feeling for Koko, which is why I sent my TechSpies to follow him," Hotaru said in a clear monotone.
Sumire gave her her best glare. "What kind of stupid romantic idea is that, spying on the guy you like?!" she shouted.
"At least I can recognise my romantic feelings when I get them," Hotaru replied.
"And what is that supposed to mean?!" Sumire looked ready to explode.
"Guys, stop it! I think we should all calm down and say what we need to say and get Natsume out of that enchantment!" said Mikan, putting herself in between Sumire and Hotaru.
"Yeah, exactly!" Koko agreed.
"Sure! Great! Whatever!" Sumire growled. She sat down and crossed her arms irately.
Natsume, by this time, had woken up fully and had just taken in the fact that he was in Hotaru's workroom and, oh by the gods, they had finally realised that he was Natsume and not a stupid little kitty-cat. He would have danced around with joy had he not been Natsume and therefore had an image to keep up.
"Okay, Sumire can go first," said Mikan, pointing at Sumire.
"What? I don't have anything to say!"
"Then why are you so angry at Hotaru?" said Mikan, showing an uncharacteristic intelligence.
"Because... because, she's annoying!"
"... and?"
"Because she likes Koko and I'm the only person who's allowed to do that," Sumire said, glowering so fiercely that no-one dared laugh at her.
"Why didn't you just say that before?" said Koko, furrowing his brow.
"Because I didn't realise before," Sumire said in a tone of don't-ask-any-more-or-you'll-get-hit.
"Cool! Now it's Hotaru's turn," Mikan said, beaming at Sumire.
"I don't have anything to say that I haven't said before, and I mean it. Sumire is very welcome to have Koko, because I really don't think him suitable for me in any case, whatever my emotional status."
"Great! Koko?" Mikan said.
"Um, I like Sumire," he said sheepishly. "That was what I wanted to tell you away from Hotaru in the junkyard," he said to her.
"Oh," said Sumire, not quite sure what to do next.
"Natsume?" said Mikan.
"Why does Natsume need to say anything? He's not even in this!" said Sumire.
"You just don't want to use your Alice," said Koko, extending his PermaSmile(tm).
"Why don't you just use it?" said Mikan.
"Hotaru's going to take embarrassing pictures and videos!" protested Sumire.
"Of course," said Hotaru, gesturing at the various TechSpies buzzing around the room.
"See?"
"Come on, just do it! It's Natsume!" said Mikan and Koko almost exactly together.
"I want to see your Alice too," said Natsume in cat language, stretching on the table.
"Well, no. As much as I want to hear what Natsume sounds like in cat talk, I'm not doing it. See you later!" Sumire said as she whirled out of the room. Koko looked from the door to Mikan to Hotaru to Natsume to Honky, and followed suit.
XXX
In the end, Natsume turned back into a human after spending a night by himself in his room, away from the annoyances of Koko and Sumire's public displays of affection and Mikan's insistence on calling him May-May. He did indeed end up naked, although as we have said, he was fortunately alone in his room when it happened. Honky The Giraffe was returned to Luca after being showered in the girls' shower room, to the distress of the girls there when the toilet water turned brown with chocolate. Hotaru managed to sell all those pictures of Koko sleeping to Sumire, who therefore remains her number one customer.
XXX
A/N: Challenge prompts:
~ Sumire x Koko x Hotaru
~ no love potions allowed
~ setting is at a junk yard
~ someone has got to be covered in chocolate .
~ Natsume is there in cat form somewhere throughout the one-shot
~ Mikan appears at least once in the one-shot, riding a giraffe
A new record for me! 4000 words in two hours. :)
A few notes:
~ The musical "Cats" takes place in a junkyard
~ The "GET OUT OF MY HEAD!!!" thing comes from an episode of Heroes, sorry
~ I wrote a few joke reviews on IMDB recently (Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Vitus, Twilight, The Love Guru) and if anyone wants a copy to snicker at, just ask. I want to share them. It also helps me keep my comedic writing abilities in shape.