An Artist's Inspiration

Protagonist: Kaede

Genre: Friendship/Romance

Disclaimer: I do not own Senran Kagura or any of its characters.

Author's Note: So….this got me thinking a little bit. Seeing that our cute manga artist doesn't really have a waifu or…well doesn't really need one in a way, I thought I should write about her anyways.

So I hope you all enjoy!

Inside her room, there are full of papers, canvases, and some scattered crumpled paper here and there since some of them didn't make it to the trash can. Kaede is making her latest doujinshi, drawing like there's no tomorrow. It's been about 5 hours now and not one single page is complete. Mostly because the manga artist is only focused on one thing: to impress her idol, Murakumo. Ever since becoming a fan of the masked girl's works, Kaede herself began drawing manga. She even made her own manga research club and got some members to join. However, she never lets anyone know what kind of manga she draws. The main reason? For her, she only wants her idol to see her own works one day. She's been working up a storm for the past year now. Some of her doujinshi are complete, but she has yet to show them to Murakumo.

Right now, here she is, at her desk with her desk lamp shining at the paper while the dark haired girl keeps on drawing.

"This will definitely impress Murakumo-sama for sure!" she says to herself.

After a few attempts, she feels she is finally starting to feel confident. This might take weeks to finish, but she doesn't care. As long as her doujinshi is as impressive as Murakumo's, she has all the time in the world.

It's late at night, like 12 midnight right now since she got started on her doujinshi. She glances at the clock and stretches her arms. She only did 3 pages of sketching. She lets out a soft sigh, deciding to head for bed for the night. She can sleep it off and think of more later on.

**Later**

Kaede is up and ready to draw the next thing on her doujinshi. So she starts working up a storm, her papers stacking much faster than the past few days. Her mind is like a movie playing non stop while working. She will do whatever it takes to get her latest doujinshi done. Then she will show them to her idol, in hoping she will become Murakumo's assistant.

At least, at the very least, she could eat first and then go back to her doujinshi later. She leaves her drawings, hoping more ideas will come up while eating breakfast. So she cooks herself some eggs and sausages in the kitchen where there are a few people present and sits down to eat. And lucky for her, more and more ideas for her doujinshi start to form in her mind and smiles to herself, giggling at the pleasant thought. Recently, she read something about naked aprons Murakumo created, due to some inspiration from her girlfriend Shiki. So, for that, Kaede decided to make some ecchi scenes of her own, just to give it more spunk.

However, one thing for sure….she's been mostly making yaoi doujins, but short ones since she has a hard time. Now she has become bored with them since a couple months passed. Reading that yuri naked apron doujin gave her the motivation to now draw yuri doujinshi all the time. She realizes that girl's love is much better than boy's love. She finished her first yuri doujinshi and is now making another one. The thought of making ecchi scenes is making her drool with satisfaction. She can hardly wait to get back on her desk and draw like crazy. She finishes her eggs and sausages within 10 minutes, washes her plates and quickly heads back to her dorm room and shuts the door with the sign flipping to "Do Not Disturb". She begins drawing the rest of her romantic yuri kiss scene before going to the ecchi scene with one girl insisting on wearing lingerie. She grins with a soft evil giggle while drawing them in that exquisite outfit. For her, this must be the best yuri doujin she has drawn so far. She will never stop until she is finished. Then, she will go and find Murakumo to show her what she has done.

Days become weeks as Kaede completes each page with her amazing art skills, plus the inking and such. Papers stack up as she goes, probably at page 15 by now. Kaede is very determined to finish this yuri doujin no matter what. Along with weeks worth of rest and a good appetite, her doujin is becoming better and better.

Another week passes and Kaede is drawing what it aappears to be the 29th page. She is getting close to the end of her doujin, as she wants to end it with a bang so that her readers will leave good reviews on it. She draws and draws to her heart's content. A smile appears on her face at the thought of Murakumo praising her and then claiming her as her loyal assistant to help her on creating manga. This motivates her to draw more and more.

A month has now passed and Kaede is on her last page. Drinking some tea she just made, she gets right to work on her last page and then, she will gather up the doujinshi she made previously and go and find Murakumo to show her the hard work she's done. That last and final scene, with just a few small panels and one big picture with the two school girls kissing under the sunset. Her hand moves smoothly on the paper, drawing the figures carefully and beautifully. And next comes the inking and the finishing touches. While she lets the ink dry, she begins drawing the cover of her doujin. This only takes another week to complete.

Finally, after putting all the pages together, she holds up her now completed yuri doujin.

"I did it…" she says. "I finally did it~! Murakumo-sama will be so pleased with it!"

She then grabs a few of her latest doujins, shoves them in her bag and heads out of her dorm room. She runs past her teammate, Kasumi's room as well without even greeting her, not that she didn't want to. Though, Kasumi is pretty busy with her RPG game anyways. She exits the dorms and starts running down the busy streets, not caring if people are looking at her strangely. She's in a hurry for goodness sakes. Who wouldn't be when they got an idol to meet?

She turns a corner and keeps on running when she accidentally trips on an uneven surface and falls flat on her face.

"Ow!" she groans. "Someone needs to fix these sidewalks." She stands up and brushes off the dust on her uniform and continues her journey.

A few blocks later, Kaede finds that her journey to Gessen Academy is taking a bit longer than she expected. She decides to take a little rest on the bench at a park. She sets her bag down and lets out a sigh. The sooner she meets Murakumo, the better. For all she knows, she might be busy doing her own doujins, which is fine. She respects that. She decides to take out a few of her doujin from her bag to read through her work. She unzips it and goes through a few sheets of paper, making sure everything is perfect to show her idol. Strong wind blows suddenly, so she holds onto the papers tightly in order not to get them blown away. Once it stops, she flips her braided hair and skims through several of her completed pages. She smiles and nods in satisfaction. Kaede is fully confident that her work will be praised by Murakumo for sure.

A squirrel jumps beside Kaede, catching her attention.

"Oh, my!" she says. "You're so cute~! Wow! I have to make a sketch of you! Please stay here, Mr. Squirrel." She starts to dig through her piles od papers to get her materials out when the strong wind blows again, plus she hears barking coming her way.

"No!" a poor girl cries, chasing after her big lab running toward the squirrel. "Stop! Stay boy! Come back!"

Kaede looks toward the dog's direction, but it's too late to react. It all happened so fast. First the squirrel jumps on her, knocking her down, plus her open bag falls on the ground, her materials and papers scattering. She starts to get up, but the dog jumps on her in order to jump on the bench to get to the squirrel. The strong wind blows harder, making the papers blow away, much to Kaede's surprise.

"NO!" she cries as she reaches her hand out. "No way! My work! My doujins!"

Unfortunately for her, the papers are going toward the streets and all of them are either getting run over by cars and trucks or land in dirty puddles. Kaede lowers her hand with her body shaking as she watches in horror at her hard work being ruined by the wind and transportation. She looks over at her bag, which still has the art materials, but barely has any paper left. She then looks in the direction where the papers were scattered.

The dog owner runs up to Kaede. "I-I'm so sorry my dog did this! H-he can be a little wild at times."

Kaede smiles weakly at the girl. "O-oh, it's okay. It's fine…I'll stick with it….for now…"

She decides to head back to the dorms, so after shoving her things inside her bag, she walks toward her room and slams the door. She drops her bag as she replays that horrible scene in her head over and over.

"My work…." She says quietly. "All my…hard work….blown away…."

Tears start falling from her eyes. Why do days like this be so unfair sometimes? It's not like she did something to deserve this kind of treatment. Or maybe she's just too blind to notice.

Kaede drops to her knees as more and more tears fall and drop to the floor. "I'm sorry, Murakumo-sama! All I….w-wanted was to…impress you, but now…." She buries her face in her hands and sobs.

All that time and effort she put into those beautiful doujins have been blown away. What will she do now? She might start over yes, but nothing has come to mind at all. Heck, she has forgotten half of the doujins she worked on previously. This is a very troublesome situation.

However, when she removes her head from her hands, something catches her eye. One of Murakumo's doujins she bought from comiket. She crawls toward it and picks it up and flips through some pages until she gets to an important scene. The doujin contained some magical girls who just lost a battle against a tough enemy, plus one of them was seriously injured. However, one of them, the leader, will not back down and tells the others that even when defeated, they always have to stand back up and fight. Kaede can tell Murakumo got that inspiration from a tough mission she went with her teammates.

It is then that the artist understands her predicament. Even though her hard work was blown away, she cannot give up her dream of becoming Murakumo's assistant. Confidence has finally returned and with newly found strength within her, she stands up and pumps a fist.

"I cannot give up now," she says. "Murakumo-sama will be pleased with me and I'm going to work hard no matter what! Just you wait, Murakumo-sama! Just you wait!"

A/N: Kay so maybe Kaede doesn't need a waifu, but how about everyone loving her? Hehe! Yeah, I know. Yuri harems are just so satisfying.

A-anyways, another thing. Some people are stupid in situations like these, yes. But…ummm…how can a story plot be this good when people HAVE common sense? I know. Common sense is always good, but….just…a good plot really needs some lacking or…..something….

S-so sorry for ranting but this is what I want to write. Hope you all enjoy the first chapter and leave some long and detailed reviews~!