A/N: This is my first story. I've seen a few human Karupin/Ryoma fics, but I don't think they've been continued, so I decided to write one. The title will make more sense in later chapters, if I ever get that far…
Blink
By m3ow-chan
Chapter 1- It will always be the juice's fault.
Karupin was a cat.
Yes, was.
It had started out a nice day, watching Ryoma as he woke up and prepared for school. Karupin had said his goodbyes to him and went to bother Oyaji (or so Ryoma called him) into playing with him.
Karupin was walking around to the back of the temple when, to his surprise, some crazy messy haired kid came leaping through the bushes, followed by an crazy silver haired kid that was chasing him shouting something or other about 'taking his punishment like a man'.
The so-called 'punishment' was a cup full of some foul-looking liquid. And it just was his luck (or lack there-of) that the crazy white haired kid just had to trip then and splash the liquid all over him.
Karupin wasn't happy. It was gross and slimy and Ryoma would definitely give him a bath for this no matter what. Karupin disliked baths a lot. Then it got even worse. The slimy stuff started to glow. No matter how many weird things Karupin had seen, he knew that things like juice were not supposed to glow. It was starting to burn his fur when his whole body tingled and then...
Kirihara stopped in mid-run, and Niou got off of the ground, looking in the direction the juice had landed. It looked like their jaws weren't going to be picked up from the ground anytime soon.
:3
Ryoma was annoyed. So far today one of his shoelaces broke, he lost an assignment for English (Which was bad because even though he already could speak it fluently, the teacher had said that it didn't excuse him from not doing his homework. Then he made him stay after class and told him to clean the chalkboard erasers.), all three of his rackets had snapped strings, and practice hadn't even started yet.
He briefly wondered if Arai-sempai and his friends had decided the 'put the freshmen in their place' thing again, but considering the number of laps they would have to run for destroying someone's property wasn't exactly worth it. Besides, Arai-sempai wasn't stupid enough to get humiliated by him a second time. At least Ryoma hoped he wasn't.
He didn't want to tell Tezuka-Buchou yet, because last time he did, he had to run to the racket stringer with weights on him and Ryoma did not feel like running that far again, especially since Inui-sempai had added another 2 kg to their training schedule, making it to 12 kg, surpassing the intended 10 kg already.
While Ryoma was pondering his other choices-- if there were any-- Momo-sempai and Eiji-sempai had wondered why he wasn't on the courts yet, and decided to interrogate (attack) him.
"Oi, Echizen! Why aren't you practicing?" said Momo-sempai as he put him in a headlock. Ow. Momo-sempai was heavy. Plus, it cut off his air supply.
"Yeah, O'chibi! If you don't hurry you'll have to run laps, nya!" said a way-to-over-energetic Eiji-sempai as he squeezed whatever amount of air that was left in him.
"Let go sempai!" He tried to say as best as he could. Which was a great feat, since he had no air and was trapped under his sempai.
Oishi was the next to come into the locker room. He knew he should have tried to stop Momoshiro and Eiji when they had volunteered to look for Echizen, as they were more prone to squeezing the life out of the freshman than actually getting him to places in time. Ah, there were they now, doing exactly as he thought--no, knew, they would.
Oishi sighed and prepared to deal with them.
:3
Back at the Echizen household, this was the current scene:
"Ahhhh! Niou-sempai, that--that thing Yagyuu-sempai made, i--it...the cat! It, ---"
"Whoa. That, ... I don't believe it, how--"
"Hey, what are you kids shouting abou--...Waahh!? What happened here?"
"It, the juice, and the cat, it--"
"What? Oi, brat, are you seishounen's cat?"
Karupin looked at his paws—no--hands, these things were called hands, and at the rest of the screaming humans. He never imagined this happening, or that it was even possible in the first place. He didn't think it was, actually.
He opened his mouth.
"Mrowrow..." he said. Hnm, a humans' mouth was much different. Maybe if he did this--
"Yes," he tried. It wasn't that hard, actually, just different.
Opps, maybe he shouldn't have done that. There was more screaming now, and it was really hurting his ears. Oh, good his ears were still there. He moved his hand down his back (cool, he couldn't do that when he was a cat) until he felt the line of fur. His tail was there too. Good.
Oyaji stopped screaming and grabbed all three of them and shoved them into the house (somehow), shouting at him to get some clothes while throwing him a towel for the juice. Oh, so that's why he was so cold. His fur wasn't there anymore. Karupin sighed. He had liked his fur. He wandered into Ryoma's room and into the closet. He had remember there being clothes in there...
:3
After prying Momoshiro and Eiji off of Echizen, Oishi asked him what was wrong.
"My racket stings broke." Echizen said, after gulping in some air.
"Your racket strings? All of them?" Oishi questioned.
"Usu…" said Echizen disheartened. Or it could have just been his normal emotionless voice. It was hard to tell, really...
"That's strange, and it's only the beginning of practice too...Ah, what if something bad happened! That would be bad! Has anything else bad been happening?" Oishi worried.
"My shoelaces broke and I lost a homework assignment earlier..." Ryoma started.
"Wah!!? That's bad, Echizen, real bad!" shouted Momoshiro.
"Yeah! O'chibi, you should call your family right now! Broken shoelaces mean something bad happened to them! What if they were in an accident…or DIED??"
"Eiji, don 't say that! They wouldn't be dead, would they? Ahh, this is bad!"
"But Oishi, it could happen--"
"I know, but--"
"Wahh, poor O'chibi-chan!!"
"Eiji, we haven't confirmed anything yet, --"
"Hey, where did Echizen go?" Momoshiro interrupted them.
"Huh? O'chibi-chan? Where did you go O'chibi?"
;3
"Wait, say that again?" demanded one Nanjirou Echizen.
"Well, you see, Yanagi-sempai had heard from Seigaku's Sada-something--"
"It was Sadaharu, Kirihara. Inui Sadaharu."
"Right, him. Well, he heard from him that he was making juices for his team, so Yanagi-sempai started to make juices too, and gave them out for punishment if we lost matches--"
"And Kirihara here lost pathetically to Sanada, of course, so--"
"Hey, don't make it sound like I lost by that much!"
"But you did! 6-1 if I remember correctly--"
"I was having an off day!"
"Of course you were..."
Karupin was listening to their (almost completely pointless) conversation from upstairs. He had somewhat figured out how to put on clothes, and now had on Ryoma's normal ensemble of t-shirt and shorts. When he had finished, he went back downstairs. It was harder going down the stairs on all fours. He scowled. He would have to get Ryoma to help him with the two-legged walking thing the humans did. He stood (on fours) at the kitchen door. It wasn't that he minded interrupting their talk, after all he was Ryoma's cat. Any semblance of manners he could have had was more than likely gone. He just didn't want to go closer to the loud noises that would hurt his ears. Like Ryoma (and just cats in general), he liked his silence. But it didn't really matter since they spotted them the next instance anyways and dragged him in.
Karupin sighed again. He would have to join their pointless conversation now. At least Ryoma was coming home soon...
:3
Back at the school grounds, Ryoma gave a sigh of relief. Tezuka-Buchou had been perplexed as he was with the broken rackets (even if he didn't show it) and hadn't sent him to the stingers since practice was going to be short that day anyways. The bad part was that he had been assigned 20 laps for being late to practice. It wasn't his fault this time even. Momo-sempai and Eiji-sempai had held him up.
He was on the 16th lap when Oishi, Kikumaru, and Momoshiro finally found him. Ryoma did not know why it took them so long to find him, and wouldn't care either if they didn't come over and try to attack him again. While running.
"Hoi, O'chibi got in trouble with Tezuka, nya?" said Eiji as he tried to hug him somehow while he was running. It was rather uncomfortable, since one: his feet were scraping against Eiji-sempai's, which was annoying, and two: Eiji-sempai was hugging him.
"Wanna go for burgers after practice, Echizen? It'll be sempai's treat!" suggested Momoshiro.
"Yeah! --Hey wait! Momo-chin, that's not fair! You can't do this to your sempai!" Kikumaru jumped onto his other kohai. "I know! Lets make Oishi pay!"
"Wha...? Eiji, I never agreed to that! Besides, I have homework!" and that he had heard of his kouhai's vigorous appetites and didn't want to waste his allowance on their "snacks".
"Oh, come on Oishi! We all have homework! Just this once! I'll even pay for some of it!" Some...
"Fine, but just this once..."
"Yahoo! Oiishi's coming! What about you, O'chibi?"
"Hey! What about me, Eiji-sempai?"
"What about you Momo?" Eiji grinned.
"Ah, so cruel Eiji-sempai, so cruel..." Momo feigned.
"AH! O'chibi left again! Hurry Momo, Oishi! We have to go find him!" Kikumaru exclaimed as they went to chase after the freshman once again...
:3
Ryoma had left practice after his laps. For once he was glad for his sempai's weird conversations, as
they distracted them long enough for him to get away. He walked to the front door.
"Taidama!" He shouted, putting down his tennis bag and taking off his shoes.
"Okaeri Ryoma!" He heard a voice say. Hm, that was weird... Ryoma was sure he recognized this voice, but...
"Oof." He said as he was jumped on by...
"K--Karupin??" His eyes widened. What had…?
He picked up Karupin as best as he could, which was a lot harder since Karupin was nearly his size now. Okay. There had to be an explanation for this. (Not reasonable explanation because there was no way this was reasonable.)
Ryoma walked to the room, the one he had seen Karupin come out of. Karupin's head was tucked over his shoulder, with his arms around his neck. Karupin found it more comfortable this way, now that he was bigger. He had somehow even tucked his feet to his chest so Ryoma could some-what hold him how he did before, when he was a cat.
When Ryoma went through the door only two words were on his mind.
"Oh no."
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…:3