Okay, this story was originally written as part of a challenge on an old, now defunct, Azu-forum back in May of 2009. The subject for the challenge was "Tomo finding a locked box in the park" and from there the story advanced in the form of a oneshot. Now I never ended up posting this here since this is largely an incomplete story in a way, and which can be continued further should I decide to do so. For this specific reason I wasn't sure whether it would be a good idea to post this should I feel like wanting to continue it beyond this opening, but on looking at it now the open endedness does work too, leaving your imagination to run free as to imagine what might have actually happened in this. A lot of it was, apart from a couple of jokes, written completely without a plan, so the story shaped as it went along, and I still don't have any continuation ideas either. Thus I post this here as a oneshot… until further notice at least. Still, I figure it's a good idea to have this story here at least for some reference.

Also I tried to do something new and prefaced this with opening titles as if this was the beginning of a movie. Because I like doing stuff like that. Enjoy! :P

Azumanga Daioh © Kiyohiko Azuma, 1999-2002, 2009
Original Story © Berlioz II, 2009

JANI BODMANN Presents

TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP…

Thursday morning.

TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP…

9.19 am.

TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP…

On May 17th, 2000.

TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP…

Sunny. With mild cloud coverage.

TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP…

Temperature: 25C

"Oh, man!!! I'm so late!" Tomo wailed as she tore through the streets on her way to school. "Yukari-chan is going to kill me!"

A BERLIOZ II INDEPENDENT Production

Based on the Original Manga Created by KIYOHIKO AZUMA

"BOX"

"Nooooo!!!"

Tomo's chest ached. She was tired from the running, but she knew she couldn't stop. And as much as she loved to be an irritant and defy her homeroom teacher, she also knew Yukari to be a demon in disguise when the caprice so dictated. And who knew whether this day was the day Yukari'd be in complete demon mode.

The thought of it made her pick up her pace slightly more… or at least as far as her physique could handle it.

It had been a miserable couple of days for Tomo Takino already anyway. It had all started last Monday when she had watched a televised news coverage of the "Tokyo Reinboo Matsuri" gay parade the previous evening, and decided to do a little gay experiment of her own in class the next day. Needless to say, Kagura had taken the allegations on her sexuality rather personally… a little too personally Tomo thought as Kagura had punched her in the nose. Yomi's reaction hadn't been much better, the lump staying on Tomo's head well over to the next day, and when she had attempted to give Sakaki a kiss, some force she had yet to figure out what it was exactly had collided with her out of nowhere, sending her crashing through a couple of desks before ending up upside down against the far wall of the class room. This last incident still baffled her immensely.

The next day hadn't been much better when the dumb drink dispenser had done it to her again and made her loose her money, her drink and everything that was holy and decent for the entirety of the day. Tomo decided that she hated that machine. It had even robbed the pleasure of teasing Yomi, her insults having ended up being very half-hearted in Tomo's humble opinion.

And now she was late due to her stupid alarm clock not having woken her up in time… which of course was understandable since she turned it off completely as she fell back asleep. Now she was late and a lot.

Taking a sharp turn, she thought she might as well try to take a shortcut through the park that was beside her usual route to school. Never mind that it actually would take a detour instead of a shortcut, but she didn't have time to think of such irrelevant and minor details like that.

"AAAAHHH!!! I'm strong like bull!!!" she bellowed for no real apparent reason, but it supposedly gave her some extra strength to maintain her pace.

That is until she was brought to a screeching halt by something ahead of her. Something that begged her to stand her ground by its sheer unusualness. Something that made Tomo's eyes widen to a ridiculous degree.

A box. A metallic, square box, not much smaller than a regular cardboard box the post office packed their smaller shipments in. And it was locked with a heavy-looking padlock. Sitting there right in the middle of the pathway.

How totally unusual. And enticing. And unusual. And weird. And odd. And… weird. Tomo's brain was momentarily so mesmerized by her sudden discovery that all other thought was suspended in awe.

"Wow… A box. A locked box. Why… why would anybody leave such a box in the park? In the middle of the road, too? It… it makes no sense!"

The box didn't seem to react at all to Tomo's bewilderment. As she cautiously approached the container, Tomo began sweating from nervousness. Nothing like this had ever happened to her before. It was the first time… and first times were always the most nervous ones. A total mystery.

The box was just sitting there on the road. Tomo took a glance around her, but could not see anybody who could have claimed ownership of the object. Circling it carefully, Tomo kept her eyes hard on the strange box, fearing to even blink. As if breaking eye contact now would somehow be a bad decision.

She couldn't even herself truly explain the source of her sudden perturbation this item inspired in her, but something about this mysterious thing was making her nervous and apprehensive; two conditions she was not very experienced in feeling.

Swallowing her trepidation, and fixing her eyes back to the box after having taken a couple more glances around her as in making sure there was nobody hiding somewhere, she took a cautious step toward the object of her attention, now having completely forgotten that she was in fact still late from school.

The box didn't make a move.

Another step. Still nothing. And another. No trap wires or anything in sight yet. A couple more incidentless steps and Tomo Takino was standing behind the box.

Tomo scanned it with more attention now that she was so near, but couldn't see anything particularly strange about the box itself outside of its position and the fact that it was locked.

Giving a careful shove with the tip of her foot yielded no results. Neither did another such shove. Nor the more forceful kick she applied.

Hazarding to get a little closer still, she kneeled down and slowly moved her hand over the item until she very slowly laid the palm of her hand on top of the box lid. Still nothing happened, even when she pushed it a slight bit.

"This makes no sense," she mantra'd in her head.

No, she couldn't take it anymore. This was starting to freak her out. Thus she grabbed the box, lifted it on top of her head, and started running around the park with it, all the while yelling out as if someone was chasing her. It didn't make any particular sense, this action, but for Tomo it seemed the most natural… indeed the only thing she could do. And thankfully there was no one to see her doing it.

But it was also tiring, so after a minute or so, she calmed down, stopped, and set the box down again on the gravel.

Now that her initial bewildered panic had settled down, she decided to apply logic to her discovery. T'was a bit of an alien concept to her, but hey! Might as well give it a go.

"It's obviously a box. Made of metal. And… and it's locked…" What else, what else? "Oo, and it's left there on the road for no particular reason." With that Tomo's logical course of mind had reached its end, her ability for abstract thinking that didn't border on fantasy having never been particularly strong. And as before, she was still left in the dark. "Logic sucks," was her conclusion.

Having not got anywhere far with her previous actions, Tomo decided to circle the box some more, her levels of fear starting to rise again. This Tomo just didn't understand. She never feared anything. In fact, such a mysterious object was always sure to excite her to no end. But… no, not this time. This time she couldn't shake off that intangible feeling of dread that was only usually inspired by Chiyo-chan's smarts, cops and cashew nuts.

Yet, at the same time she couldn't ignore her habitual want to not have any mysteries in her life, thusly also feeling drawn toward the box… and even more so what was inside the box.

"I wonder what's inside the box…" Tomo wondered, even if the narration had already mentioned this. "Maybe… a bomb? Or some ultra-cool weapon or something? Or, or maybe it's a collection of nudie magazines?"

Tomo was getting a little excited. It could contain all sorts of possible treasures. Nothing too heavy, though, as she remembered the ease she had wielded it in her arms before. But surely it had to be something interesting. Otherwise what would be the point?

Tomo laid her hand on the top of the box again. It was cold. Cold like metal. Next up, she went to examine the lock. After all, that was the only part of this container that stood in her way to finding out what was in it.

It was a sturdy padlock, one that seemed more like a movie prop than something actually designed to be used for real. Jiggling it a bit, it also seemed like it wouldn't be yielding from violence.

Therefore Tomo stood up and started kicking it with all her might. No harm in trying is there. But after about 30 seconds of hard kicking, there didn't seem to be any effect on the lock opening. And after striking it with the tip of her toes, it just ended up hurting her than solving the problem.

After a few choice curses and a little hopping around, Tomo sighed loudly. "This is hopeless!"

But in the face of impossible odds, Tomo was not about to be defeated by a stupid cartoony lock. Therefore she kicked it some more.

Once that yielded no more results than her previous attempt, Tomo decided to use a bit more cunning. She had often seen people picking locks in movies and TV, so it must not be too hard. And there was nothing Tomo Takino could not do.

With this in mind, she rummaged through her school bag in order to find something that she could stick into the lock. Besides her school books, however, all she could find were a couple of yen, an old cream caramel, a picture of a pissed off Yomi, something sticky she didn't particularly want to know what it was and… a hair pin!

Tomo's spirits pumped up. Weren't these used by all secret agents and thieves and stuff to open locks? "Lucky!"

Without much more fussing about, Tomo got down to it and started twisting and turning the pin inside the lock. But as ever, Tomo had no actual knowledge on how to do this and ten minutes in was starting to feel the effects of frustration. She wiggled and waggled the dumb pin, but nothing seemed to be happening. "What… what the hell's wrong with this thing? Is it broken or something? In the movies the other guys would have already gotten it open!"

With a couple of more minutes of pointless shaking and rattling, Tomo gave up with a frustrated "GAH!" and threw the useless pin as far away from her as it flew, which was seven metres.

"This sucks!" she wailed, and started kicking the lock again, which proved to be as futile as her last two attempts. "Stupid, stupid lock! Why don't you open, damn it?!"

She then looked around her, determination building up within her, and she grabbed an adjacent rock by the side of the road, large and sharp enough to possibly be of some use. Thus she began pounding on the lock with the lump of rock, beating and beating with her full frustration taking hold of her for the lock's inexplicable non-cooperation.

She beat and beat and beat and beat and beat. Not even when her hand started to get a little sore did she stop, but continued on beating the lock, fuelled by her lack of patience and her other failures in completing the task.

Then the unexpected happened. The lock gave a small cracking sound, and after a few more strikes, it disintegrated, the bottom half of it disengaging from the curved metal bar on top.

"Ha!" Tomo ejaculated in triumph. "I did it. I… I did it! I broke it!"

Tomo's hands were shaking as she removed the bar from around the box's lid, letting it drop on the ground. Then, with tentative hands she took hold of the sides of the lid, and slowly lifted it up, her eyes glimmering with a mixture of fear, excitement and wonder, wearing an expression similar to that of Indiana Jones grabbing the Sankara stones.

Once the lid was half way up, Tomo quickly flinged it to its side and revealing… nothing.

"Huh? W-what the heck is this all about? It's empty? B-but… That makes no sense! Why lock a box if it's empty?" Tomo spoke aloud. After all this trouble there was nothing in the box. Tomo was feeling angry now. She felt like somebody was deliberately trying to make a fool out of her. As if the box had disappointed her just like the drink machine before it had after all her trouble.

"You dumb box!" she shouted as she jumped up and gave it a swift kick.

But as the box fell on its side, an unexpected and powerful gust of wind suddenly began rattling Tomo's surroundings, the wind circling and bending the trees in the park, sending a flurry of dust in the air along with leaves and the wind shooting within the branches making colliding swooshing sounds, like the primordial sounds of the earth groaning and shouting in anguish.

Tomo covered her face from the sudden wind that was tussling her hair here and there, and almost caused her to fall down from the strength of it. "W-what's going on?!" she wailed.

But as quickly as it had arisen, the wind suddenly died down, leaving the sunny day as it had been before and the park looking as calm and undisturbed as it had been just a few seconds ago.

Still it left Tomo feeling a bit dishevelled long after it had passed. Something in that burst had not felt exactly right to her. Something felt… wrong. Twisted. Dreadful. Almost… evil. And Tomo didn't particularly like this feeling she was left with.

"Screw this! I'm getting the hell out of here!" Tomo said as she picked up her school bag and ran away as fast as she could toward school.

Reaching the schoolyard she was quick to get inside the building and made her way hastily toward her homeroom. Reaching her designated class, she quickly slammed the door open, in the process garnering the attention of everybody else in the room as well.

"Takino!" Yukari was quick to bark out. "Where the hell have you been?"

Tomo gave a stare at her teacher, before just answering, "Huh?"

"You better have a damn good excuse to being late. Do you even know what time it is?" Yukari growled.

"Umm… no…"

"It's 9:50! You've missed almost the entire class!"

"Oh… yeah… sorry… I guess…"

"You guess?"

"But it wasn't my fault! The alarm clock didn't wake me up, so it's the clock's fault first and foremost, not mine! And then there was the box too, you see!" Tomo explained.

"The box?"

"Yeah. You know. The treasure box in the park," Tomo said as she flailed her arms about in an effort to bring more weight to her words.

Yukari simply stared a moment at the wildcat flunker of her class before giving a sigh, "Tomo, it's called a trash recepticle."

"No, no! I didn't mean that this time! It was another one. An odd one too. I thought it was a treasure box, but it was like…" Tomo started, but Yukari quickly interrupted her.

"Tomo! I don't want to hear! Just… just go to your seat, sit down and shut up! I really can't handle this stuff today. The class is almost over anyway…"

Tomo quieted down, looking at Yukari for a moment, then glanced around the rest of the class, noting Yomi rolling her eyes in particular, and then quietly decided to do as her teacher instructed.

Yet, sitting down, she still couldn't shake the sense of the willies running down her spine and which made her skin go all goose-bumpy. This had been an odd morning… one that Tomo didn't necessarily want to repeat any time soon.

Glancing toward the windows, she noted that the wind was picking up again, and clouds had began forming over the formerly sunny sky. As if a storm was forming. It was odd, but somehow it made Tomo feel the dread again.

Suddenly she wished she had never seen that dumb box.

And outside the wind was howling.

So yeah, there you go. Whatever did Tomo release from the box, or did she in fact release anything at all? I'll just let you wonder that since I don't really know either. Maybe… and that's a big maybe, I might continue this one day. But as of now it is just going to remain… A MYSTERY!