The Pocky Effect
Excelcia
A lone figure stands in the spotlight. She clears her throat and regards the audience with dark brown eyes. "Good evening, Ladies and Bishonen. I'm here to tell you a story. This is a tale, a tale of unfathomable explicit emotional region." A young girl wearing purple and white sub-armor teleports in and hits the girl upside the head. "Ex! You're not supposed to be telling the story. You're just here to give the legal stuff!"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, fine. Jeez Kasashi, lighten up…"
*
Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing or Ronin Warriors…yadda, yadda, yadda…they belong to their respective owners…blah, blah, blah. There, I said it. On with the fic!
The day was hot and humid. Shinjuku was right in the middle of a brutal heat wave and everything was baking. The ground turned liquidy to the human eyes as the people walked along the sidewalk. The sun continued to shine down, delivering its wrath to anybody daring to leave the comfort of their air conditioning.
Kento plopped down in the middle of the floor, and ice pack pressed to his forehead. "It's soo HOT!"
Ryo sighed frustratedly, "We know Kento! You've only reminded us that fifteen times in the last hour!"
Cye looked up from his book. "Try to ignore it Kento."
"But it's too hot to ignore it!" He whined.
Mia sighed, "Yes, thank you, goodbye…" She placed the receiver delicately on the on the hook.
Ryo craned his neck around to look at Mia from the sofa, "What did they say?"
She shook her head in reply. "They can't get out here until next week. They're already booked solid with people having the same problem.
Kento groaned. Last night they awoke to a lovely little explosion and fireworks display on the side of the house. Apparently even the air conditioning unit thought that it was too hot and decided to end it all in the form of a sonic boom and a ball of fire. When they got outside, the whole wall of the house danced in a blanket of orange and blue flames. Fortunately for them, they had their own Cye of the Torrent. He quickly extinguished the flames and they all spent the rest of the night locking down the damaged areas of the outer wall until they could call the contractors. They now had to suffer in the heat of the house. A stifling breeze floated though every open window, only succeeding in making it hotter. It was so hot that Cye decided against swimming in the lake (O.o Now that's hot!).
Kento groaned again and Ryo was one comment away from armoring up and personally throwing him out of the house and locking the door.
The frustrated silence was broken as Rowen cheerfully walked through the door.
"Where have you been?" asked Mia, "You've been gone all day."
Rowen stopped eating what was in his hand and smiled. "I went to the nice, cool, AIR CONDITIONED library!"
Kento groaned again and Ryo was instantly on top of him trying to strangle him with a pillow. Yuli ran downstairs at the sound of the commotion and was immediately trying to break up the fight.
Rowen shrugged and continued his snacking.
Ryo and Kento diverted primary attention from Rowen due to the fact that he'd given up the pillow and was now trying to strangle Kento with the ice pack. After about ten minutes, the two quit; it was just too hot to move anymore. The silence was broken when Rowen began to giggle like a schoolgirl.
Cye looked at Rowen strangely. "Are you feeling alright?"
Rowen nodded his head vigorously.
Kento blinked, "Uhh….."
"Rowen?" Mia asked.
Rowen stopped laughing, got up and skipped out of the room, dropping a few small, red boxes as he left.
Ryo picked up one of the relinquished treasures and looked at it. White blocked letters stood out against a red background. What they spelled answered all of their questions: P. O. C. K. Y. Above it was the familiar picture of the coveted chocolate-covered biscuit sticks. "Great. Hashiba the sugar addict strikes again."
"Aww man!" Kento moaned and fell back on the floor.
"Well," Mia said, "I hope he doesn't decide to redecorate like he did last time."
Cye chuckled. "Yeah. Kasashi almost put him in the hospital because she caught him preparing to shave Orin like a poodle."
Everybody started laughing.
"Ah well," Ryo said as he snacked on the small goodies, "At least she and Sage are out today. Maybe there won't be any bloodshed."
"Hey! You gonna share with the class?"
Ryo chuckled, "Sure Kento." He tossed a couple of the unopened boxes to Kento and Cye and continued eating. "Hmm, these things are addictive…"
After a while, through the sweltering heat that rose in waves from the ground, the unmistakable sound of laughter emanated from the Koji household. Somewhere, a woman screamed.
* * * * * * * * *
It had been a month since their last mission. The fighting had died down for now and the Gundam Pilots' actions were placed on standby while the beaurocrats argued over their peace negotiations. Now they were just plain bored. Heero sat at the table of Quatre's safe house, fingers flying across the keyboard of his laptop. Wufei had moved all of the furniture to one side in the next room and was currently practicing some basic martial arts techniques. Quatre was idly flipping through the channels on the T. V., only half-paying attention to what he was looking at. Trowa was outside practicing his acrobatic act for when he returned to the circus. Needless to say, without the action and constant chaos that the war was causing, normal life for the Gundam Pilots was pretty boring.
Duo walked in with an arm full of groceries. "Hey guys," He chirped happily, "Looky what I got!" He reached into the bag and produced five brightly colored red boxes with white lettering on them.
Heero regarded Duo with his cold blue eyes. "Baka, you were supposed to get rations, not snack food."
Duo just smiled. "Come on Mr. I-never-have-any-fun Yuy! It's just a little chocolate! He distributed the boxes to the other pilots, excluding Trowa who was still outside, and began munching happily.
Heero looked at the box. He didn't understand why Duo was so insistent that he eat the things. Scanning the kanji on the side of the box, he determined that it wasn't the healthiest of things to be eating. He looked around at the others, who were trying the strange chocolate-covered concoctions.
"Hey! These aren't bad," Quatre exclaimed.
Wufei tried one. "Not bad Maxwell."
Duo beamed. "See? They aren't bad at all! C'mon Heero…try one, they aren't poison."
Heero wasn't sure. After all, this was an unknown food to him, and it WAS Duo. "Oh, what the hell," he thought as he opened the box and bit into one of the sticks.
Trowa walked in from his workout about an hour later. "Hey guys. What's up-ACK!!"
* * * * * * * * *
Kasashi stood before the waterfall in full armor. It was dreadfully hot, and truth be told, the armor wasn't helping. But she needed the practice. She shut her eyes and started concentrating. She moved her arms in a complex pattern before sticking them straight out in front of her. Instantly she started glowing and a small portal opened in front of her. "How does it look," she asked, her eyes still shut in concentration.
"It feels pretty stable to me," Sage answered her. He was perched on an outcropping of rock on the spring's edge. His eyes were closed and he appeared to be in a meditative state. "Where is it linked?"
Kasashi opened her eyes and inspected her handiwork. "Where else? The Gundam's dimension. It's easier to open a gate when I can focus in on a certain person's energy signature and it takes half the energy than it regularly does."
Sage hopped off the outcropping and walked over to her. "Well, I think it's time we headed back in. It's really hot out here."
"Yeah," Kasashi agreed, "I want a cold shower when I get back." She turned towards the gate in order to close it when, all of a sudden, four colored blurs ran past them wearing grass skirts. They each carried with them one of the tiki torches that they used to decorate around the lake for Mia's birthday about a month ago.
One of the blurs spoke. "Hi Kash and Sage! Bye Kash and Sage!" Then they disappeared into the blackness of the portal.
Sage blinked.
"Why am I reminded all of a sudden of that show 'Survivor'?"
Sage blinked again. "I guess….we follow them?"
Kasashi sighed. "Yeah...knowing them…they'll probably end up in SOME kind of trouble."
Kasashi and Sage entered the gate and it closed behind them. In a brilliant flash of light and color, they were standing in a small wrecked village. From the looks of it, there had been a huge battle here. But that was long ago. Nobody had occupied this place in a good while. The ruined streets and the collapsed buildings created the perfect place to hide the gundams, so the pilots had to be somewhere close. Kasashi started walking off to the left.
Sage called after her. "Hey! Where are you going?"
"To find the guys."
"And how do you
propose to do that?"
Kasashi pointed at the ground.
"Follow the magical armored foot steps," She said with a kind of sarcastic
singsong tone in her voice.
Sage looked at her and raised an eyebrow.
Kasashi laughed. "Come on…"
They walked along the deserted streets of the battered old town until they came across a lone group of standing buildings. Apparently the mobile suits missed a block or two during the attack. As they got closer to one of the houses, they noticed tiki torches lined up along either side of the doorway. The Ronins of Light and Hope looked at each other and walked inside the house. Nothing could have prepared them for what they were about to see.
* * * * * * * * * *
Trowa slowly regained consciousness. He had no idea how long he'd been out of it, or who even attacked him in the first place. He struggled against the bonds that held his hands to the back of the chair. The blindfold over his eyes prevented him from seeing anything. "Mwahahaha! I see you have pocky, I have pocky too." Trowa sighed. From the sounds around him, he guessed that there were at least seven or eight people surrounding him, but the voices were too high pitched and bubbly that he couldn't tell who they were. "Great," He thought. "What else could possibly happen?"
* * * * * * * * * *
Kasashi and Sage stood in the doorway dumbfounded as the scene that was laid out before them. Poor Trowa was in the middle of the anarchy, bound and blindfolded to a chair. Kasashi resisted the urge to fall on the ground and laugh till she was out of breath and ran over to give the pilot of Heavyarms a hand. She undid the blindfold. "Trowa? Are you okay?"
He nodded as she undid his wrists. "Yeah, what happened?"
Kasashi giggled and pointed to the others. "From the looks of it, they all got themselves hyper. If I were you, I'd be scared out of my mind!" The Ronins were still in their subarmor and grass skirts, and the gundam pilots were in nothing but their boxers, their pants adorning their heads. Well, all except for Quatre, who was still wearing his vest. They were dancing around Trowa like a tribe of aborigines.
Kasashi looked over to where Sage was, only to find him on the floor gasping for air from laughing so hard. She looked at the outrageous site. Even Heero…straight shot Heero Yuy had been taken in the grip of a mass sugar high. He was dancing around like all the others, his jeans (for the sake of this fic) flopping around his head. Finally Kasashi couldn't take it anymore. She cursed herself for not having her camera at a time like this and broke down into a fit of hysteric giggles. Trowa cracked a smile.
Duo was happily jumping around, mimicking the spin cycle in a washing machine when he stopped short. "Hey Wu-man…the guy with the light blue, didn't Syn say he was Jewish?"
Wufei looked at him and swayed a little unsteadily on his feet. "Don't be a baka Maxwell. Jewish? Nope- he's Irish!" Wufei ran into the kitchen and came back with two bowls. He put them on his ears and screamed, "Look! I'm an elephant!" He then put them on his arms and flapped them up and down. "I'm a dragonfly!!"
That was enough to send all three of the sane people to the ground laughing.
The "tribe" stopped dancing and looked at all of them.
Quatre was the first to speak. "Dost thou mock us? Why, ye are not even of our clan!"
"They have found our secret cave, brethern," Heero stated, "they must not leave alive!" He pulled out his gun from God-knows-where and trained it on Trowa. The others started closing in on them.
Kasashi blinked. "Guys?" She took a step towards them and was met by a bullet that came within two inches of her temple. She glared at Heero. "That's it!" She armored up fully and powered a gust of wind that knocked everyone off their feet. She suspended them in the air and then opened up the dimensional gate. "In you four go…" She hurled the four hyperactive Ronins through the gate and they landed on the other side in a heap of grunts and twitching limbs. Sage calmly walked though the portal to keep an eye on them. She turned to the four remaining occupants of the mid-air in the room. "Now, for you…" She looked a Trowa and then a malicious grin crept across both their faces.
* * * * * * * * * *
Trowa sat on the couch watching the news. After he and Kasashi had firmly "secured" the other gundam pilots, things had calmed down considerably. He relaxed and took a sip of his coffee. He wasn't going to let them out of those gundanium restraints until they practically begged him to. He let out a contented sigh, closed his eyes and smiled. Only one phrase came to his mind at this time: Payback's a bitch.
* * * * * * * * * *
Kasashi and Sage sat on the living room couch, thoroughly exhausted from the day's toils. After they had released a royally pissed off Mia from her duct tape cocoon and kept her from killing the other Ronins, they made sure that the guys couldn't get out of bed by means of duct tape until they were okay again. They had given up looking for Yuli. He was no where to be found. Not like they wanted to find the little brat anyway. Kasashi absent-mindedly walked through the house singing, "Oh where, oh where can that little boy be?" Sage just rolled his eyes as he tightened Rowen's restraints.
Kasashi curled up at the end of the sofa and opened her book and Sage laid down and propped his head up on the side of her legs. He glanced up at the ceiling and chuckled.
Kasashi looked up from her book and down at him. "What?"
Sage shook his head. "It's nothing…don't worry about it."
Kasashi shrugged and went back to reading and Sage closed his eyes and fell asleep. Had Kasashi looked up, she would have seen the one thing that would have made their strange day rewarding. Yuli was duct-taped head to foot and attached to a blade on the ceiling fan. All that could be seen of his being were two little pupils looking at them from the eyeholes.