Ummm... Yeah, I should be working on my -ay Man story, but I spent my days languishing around reading Kamisama Hajimemashita, and now a plot bunny has been kicking me in the head for the past week. Thank you for reading, even though the number of stories in this fandom are sorta... miniscule? ^^' Well, anyways, enjoy~
A little girl bounced on her father's lap. "Tell me more, tell me more!" The girl's fists beat gently on her father's chest, and he sighed.
"So, the story of the fox is from a long, long time ago, in the netherworld..."
The rumpled pile of duvets moved as the seemingly disembodied hand under it searched for the snooze button for yet a fourth time. Luckily, the owner of the hand finally decided to stick her bed-head out from her bed, and was soon shrieking at the ungodly hour of the morning. She quickly pulled on her secretly stolen male uniform and barreled out of the door. The gods above clearly didn't like her today, so they had decided to finally allow the greedy loan sharks to find the unfortunate girl's house. The beady-eyed man glared at her contemptuously down his nose at her unsightly appearance. In a thin, reedy voice, he stated rather slowly, as if the girl wouldn't understand conversational Japanese, "Is your father home?"
The girl, named Yozora Fuyu, widened her eyes. "Fuck."
Grumbling bitter curses under her breath, Fuyu made the bench she sat on squeak. Hearing a panicked yell, her eye twitched involuntarily, and despite her usually indifferent self, yelled at the commotion. "Shut your traps!" Unsurprisingly, her sudden outburst did nothing except to excite the dog that happened to be the trigger to the noise. She swiftly gripped the unlucky dog by the collar and threw it into a nearby garbage bin. Wiping her hands on her uniform pants, she turned to the victim. The blond man in glasses was wiping his eyes in relief. "Thank you, I have a terrible fear of dogs." Raising her eyebrow delicately, Fuyu looked at him expectantly. The man jumped, and sighed. "I'm sorry, my name is Mikage, what is yours?" Resisting the urge to facepalm, Fuyu ground out her name.
"Pardon me, what was that?"
"Yozora Fuyu, are you deaf?" Fuyu glared at him.
Mikage seemed to slouch a bit. "I'm sorry if I've offended you-"
Fuyu looked away for a second at his sheer obliviousness. "I've just had a bad day, alright? I suppose you would too, if your house got taken and you were turned into the street."
Mikage made a dramatic face and covered his mouth (politely). "If that's the case, you can take my home, you would be a much better master than me. Oh boy, Tomoe's going to be so mad~" He then handed her a piece of paper with chicken scratch on it. As she began to study it, he suddenly kissed her forehead and skipped away. Fuyu, who was still frozen in shock, finally began to register what had happened. "AAARRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHH!"
At the top the stairs, she knocked on the shoji screen's frame, but no one answered. Shrugging, she tugged it open, only to be met by a menacing aura. "Welcome back, Mikage-sama..." A man- wait, were those ears?-appeared out of nowhere.
"I'M GONNA FUCKING KILL YOU!"
After clearing up the misunderstanding with the minimum amount of bruises (which was eight), Tomoe grumpily left for the demon red-lights district. Fuyu had a tic mark from all the fussing over from Kotetsu and Onikiri, and finally shut them out the door. Feeling slightly guilty after a while, she let the two back in. They started to explain about the duties of a tochigami, but stopped when they realized that the girl was sleeping. Shrugging, they decided to come back in the morning.
Yawning, Fuyu rubbed her eyes and rolled over. Suddenly sitting up, she realized she didn't hear an alarm. Then, she noticed the walls around her and groaned audibly. "It wasn't a dream?!"
Onikiri and Kotetsu started teaching her about the tochigami's job, she grew less enthusiastic. When it came to the task of weeding the yard, however, she paled so fast she could match speeds with a chameleon. Although she was used to the indoor jobs, like cleaning and repainting (kami knew how many times she had done that), she hadn't ever done yard work because her father and she were never able to afford a place with growing room. She cautiously pulled at the thorny plants, but because she had no gloves, tore her skin, and crimson blossomed on the surface. Hissing in annoyance, she popped her fingers in her mouth to staunch the bleeding. Feeling a breeze and a rustle of leaves, she realized the the fox familiar had come back. Tomoe opened his fan. "My, my, the dirty little girl can't even weed a lawn~" She threw a clod of dirt at his smug face and growled.
"Everyone has to start somewhere, Foxy Loxy."
"Why don't you just go home? You aren't fit to be tochigami anyway."
Fuyu bent over to go back to weeding. "Try going back to a place the government's already confiscated."
Tomoe hid his face with his fan. "Why should I care about how a pathetic human lives?"
Aiming to kick her over, his foot moved toward her back, but she'd already grabbed it and was in position to give his foot serious pain. Surprised, he jerked his foot back, his geta falling off.
"Shoo, go to your red-lights district and leave me alone," Fuyu threw the shoe backwards at him, which he caught haughtily.
After hearing the old lady's voice, she looked through the prayer books and groaned. "Onikiri~ Kotetsu~ I don't want to be a god after all..." Hearing this, the two Will-O'-Wisps panicked and started persuading her to stay, and by telling her how Tomoe did all the work beforehand. Now feeling slightly guilty (again), she decided that she would go find him to apologize.
Finding the fox youkai in a brothel was surprisingly easy, since Kotetsu seemed to know exactly where he was. Tomoe was half undressed and downing cup after cup of sake. The two shrine guardians were pleading with the fox, but he decided not to care whether the shrine survived or not. They only got passive replies until they said that Fuyu herself was in the netherworld. When Onikiri and Kotetsu started getting beat up by the tanuki girls, Fuyu stepped in, grabbed them, and left without saying a word. As she stalked off angrily, some demons grabbed for her, and Tomoe, ever being the knight in shining armor, saved her. After a short bout of sarcastic arguing (actually, only Tomoe was actually talking, Fuyu just grunted), they parted ways; Tomoe to the brothel, Fuyu to the bus.
Realizing that the bus to the human world had gone, and wouldn't be back for another three hours, the Will-O'-Wisps took the chance to persuade her into binding a contract with the fox familiar. When they told her about the kiss, she ran behind one of the scraggly trees and began to dry-heave. An old woman appeared, asking for help because of a sprained ankle. Fuyu began to back away slowly because of a foreboding feeling. The woman then sighed, and transformed into a hag.
"Seems like my disguise didn't work this time. In that case, I'll just eat you now!"
After trying to implement her martial arts skills, Fuyu realized that it would be no use, since the demon just tried to get any part of her body in between her teeth. Running into Onikiri, he gave her some white talismans and an ink brush, explaining while they ran. Gritting her teeth, she picked up a stick and put a talisman with the characters for 'magic wand' on it. Onikiri sweatdropped and explained how the object had to have powers that didn't surpass hers. After using the second charm as a distraction, as the witch suddenly popped up behind them, she was hiding in a bamboo thicket with Onikiri. The witch had found them again, and Onikiri had forced her to write Tomoe's name on the last charm, before helping Fuyu climb a tree. Fuyu felt pissed off at the tree. It's limbs were far apart and the trunk was fairly smooth.
"I'm use to climbing buildings, not trees!"
The hag had grabbed her ankle above her tabi, so she couldn't escape. As she struggled to pull her leg free, Tomoe appeared and sat back to enjoy the show. Falling finally, she grabbed his foot on accident, and due to the position, accidentally had her face smashed onto Tomoe's by the tree. Still free falling, she yelped, "Somebody, save me!" Due to the power of the kotodama, Tomoe's free lifestyle was cut short.
Finishing up his yelling and abuse at the old demon, Tomoe was thanked, through gritted teeth, by the new tochigami. Onikiri and Kotetsu successfully brought the fox and the human back to the shrine, with the minimal amount of injuries.
Thank you so much for reading~ Please tell me if you like this idea/character and give me feedback so I can do my best the improve and perfect this story (even though there's only on chappie)~ Review and I love you too~