A fill from the Tiger and Bunny Anon Meme. Prompt: Tomoe is bored, and pretends to be dead when Kotetsu gets home. Inspired by a Vocaloid song of the same name.

The first time, Kotetsu is not amused in the slightest when he opens the door and finds Tomoe sitting on the couch, staring blankly at the opposite wall with a bullet wound congealing in her forehead, a river of blood spilling down her face and onto her shirt. His whole world shorts out as he runs to her side, shakes her shoulders, and shouts her name, but she won't stir. Tears in his eyes, Kotetsu pulls out his cell phone and started dialing for the police…

…But he stops when Tomoe grabs his hand.

Kotetsu screams and falls over as the presumed-dead Tomoe sits up, calls him an idiot, and asks, "Don't you know a joke when you see one?"

"A joke?" Kotetsu splutters. "You think this is a joke? You have a bullet in your HEAD!"

Tomoe explains, no, it's not a bullet, it's part of a stage makeup set, some rubbery molds that, with the right makeup and a generous application of fake blood, look like extremely realistic wounds. She shows him the package and the tube of blood, and repeatedly tells him, "It's all right. It's just a joke."

To which Kotetsu swears he's going to sleep on the couch for a week, a self-imposed exile, because he can't bear to sleep next to a woman who tricked him into thinking she died, and because he can't bear to kick her out of the bed, even when this is clearly her fault. As he's fluffing pillows on the downstairs couch, Tomoe says in a small voice, "If it makes you feel any better… I'm a little glad you're this upset. It's proof you still love me."

Fuming, Kotetsu thinks, of course I still love you, I've loved you since high school, and we've barely been married a year on top of that. And you shouldn't be glad when I'm upset!

In hindsight, Kotetsu realizes that was his first hint.

"Hello?"

"Hey, Tomoe."

"Gonna be late?"

"Yeah."

"How late?"

"No dinner, maybe later."

"Got it."

"If I leave before midnight, I'll call again."

"Okay. I love you."

"I love you, too."

She gets that call so often. Tonight, Tomoe turns on the TV as she puts away the chicken cold cuts, awaiting the Hero TV broadcast. She adores Kotetsu's job about as much as he does, but she can't just will herself to be 'not bored.'

The second time, there's a rope around Tomoe's neck, tied in a tight noose. She lies face-down on the living room floor, one hand tangled in the lariat, the other reaching toward the door. As Kotetsu's blood runs cold and his stomach drops at terminal velocity, he thinks, Wait…. Where was the noose hanging from?

Slowly, he approaches, two trains of thought warring in his head: Tomoe's dead. But she couldn't have hung herself. My wife is dead. But the rope is too short. She's not moving. There's no chair. She's dead-dead-dead. He takes her hand in his trembling fingers and presses his thumb against her wrist. A strong, steady, warm pulse beat beneath his thumb.

"Tomoe!" Kotetsu cries, hurt. "Dammit, that's twice!"

She laughs, the most reassuring sound in the world, and lifts her head. "Gotcha!"

"What do you mean, 'gotcha?' You faked your death! Again!"

"But wasn't it clever?" Tomoe unlooped the noose from around her neck. "It took me ages to learn how to tie this knot!"

Kotetsu admits it's a fine-looking knot, very professional, but he's still frustrated. He tries to explain that it stresses him out, he doesn't like seeing her dead, it scares him to death himself to think about anything bad happening to her. Tomoe pouts remorsefully and kisses him and tells him she's sorry.

But she doesn't promise to stop.

She's at it again. Kotetsu thinks, staring at Tomoe flopped on the kitchen floor, mouth gaping and eyes wide, face tinged slightly blue. A tupperware container of leftover fried rice—Kotetsu's dinner from the night before—is strewn across the table and floor, grains of rice, kernels of corn, and shrimps everywhere. He kneels down beside Tomoe and checks her pulse: strong, steady, warm.

"Are you trying to say something about my cooking?"

"Not at all," Tomoe winks at him. "It was a delicious dinner."

"But it killed you the next day."

"It's nothing personal, but I had to choke on something."

"Choke? I thought it was a food poisoning death."

"My face is blue, not green! I couldn't figure out how to make realistic smelling vomit."

Kotetsu makes a face. "So… you're going to keep this up? Fake killing yourself, just for me to find you and freak out?"

"You didn't freak out this time," Tomoe smiles. "And I promise to make it interesting each and every time."

Kotetsu protests, but by now, the idea is starting to sound a teensy bit less weird.

Kotetsu really starts to enjoy Tomoe's faked deaths when one of them leads to sex. He's not sure why, but something about that slain Amazon Princess costume really did it for him.

When Tomoe's baby bump starts to show, Kotetsu comes home to find Tomoe spread on the floor in her underwear, with a mess of blood and guts and a strange green jelly spread across her womb. Once he's checked for her strong, steady, warm pulse, Kotetsu asks for an explanation.

"Remember that alien movie we saw?" Tomoe says. "The alien lays its eggs inside your stomach, and then they grow really big and then claw their way out and it's incredibly painful? That's going to happen to me in a few months!"

Kotetsu shivers. "But... I thought you wanted a baby..."

"Of course I do. We're going to have the most beautiful baby in the whole world. I just thought the similarities were funny." She swipes a finger across her belly, taking a glob of green goo with it. "Wanna know how I made this goo?"

"How?"

"It's Jell-O. I think it looks a lot like the goo from the movie, don't you?"

Kotetsu leans forward to lick the dessert off her finger, but Tomoe whacks him with her other hand. "Ew, you idiot! This is all mixed with the makeup! The rest is in the fridge!"

Changing his target, Kotetsu kisses Tomoe. "Then, let's go eat."

Stabbed in the back. Pretty standard, Kotetsu's surprised it's taken her this long to use that scenario. But Tomoe has taken pains to drench the entire floor in blood. She probably calculated exactly how much blood the human body contained, and then soaked herself in it. The knife buried in her back is pretty impressive, too—Kotetsu can't see any indication that it's a fake. With one finger, Tomoe reached outside the puddle and, using the blood as ink, wrote out "I (heart) Ko (plus) Ka" with her finger, presumably her last words.

After confirmation of her strong, steady, warm pulse, Kotetsu decides to not give her the satisfaction of reacting to her death just yet. He opens the fridge and pulls out a beer, hanging his hat on a kitchen chair and loosening his tie as Tomoe continues lying on the floor, awaiting some sort of cue that he acknowledges her effort. But, before he can get too comfortable, Kaede begins screaming upstairs.

Setting aside the beer, Kotetsu checks on the little baby, confirming her diaper as clean and bouncing her a little to see if she's just lonely, but the screams continue. Wondering how something so tiny can be so loud, Kotetsu brings Kaede downstairs with him and holds her little head right by Tomoe's ear.

After barely a minute of close-proximity baby howling, Tomoe lifts her face from the blood and snaps at Kotetsu, "Why are you just letting her cry!"

"I did all a man can do. When did you last feed her?"

Tomoe calculates the hours in her head, and then stands up and takes the baby from Kotetsu, sticking her tongue out at him and sitting down in a kitchen chair so she can watch Kotetsu scrub up the red puddle.

"Do you think you could use less blood next time?"

"Why should I, when you look so good on your hands and knees?"

The deaths slow down as Kaede takes up more and more of both of their time, but every so often, Tomoe manages to surprise Kotetsu.

He comes home, having missed dinner yet again, and realizes that Tomoe's death tonight is a martyred soldier, with an array of rusty red bullet wounds in her front, clutching her gun with a dead man's grip. Kaede is in her playpen, shouting, "Mama! Mama!" with no awareness that anything is actually wrong, just that she wants Mama, but Mama isn't coming, and she has no other options but to keep shouting until Mama came to attend her.

As usual, Kotetsu confirms strong, steady, warm, and then crosses the room to Kaede. The one-year-old raises her arms in preparation for someone to lift her, still shouting, "Mama!"

"No, I'm Papa," Kotetsu corrects, but he picks her up anyway and takes her to Tomoe. "This is Mama. See?"

He lets Kaede 'stand' on Tomoe, her teeny feet pressing into Tomoe's motionless leg while Kotetsu holds her upright.

"See? It's Mama. Say, 'Hi, Mama!'"

"Mama!" Kaede says, reaching toward Tomoe, so Kotetsu moves her a little closer, onto Tomoe's stomach. "Mama, Mama, Mama!"

With that, Kaede stamps her little feet enthusiastically, right into Tomoe's gut. She coughs and drops her gun as Kotetsu immediately pulls the baby away.

"Mama!" Kaede reaches for her mother even as Tomoe wipes tears away from her eyes. "Mama!"

"You okay?" Kotetsu asks as he struggles to set the insistent baby on his hip.

"I'm okay," Tomoe reassures him, though she groans a little. "Kaede blew my cover."

"Like I actually believe you're dead."

"Mama, Mama, Mama-Mama-Mama!"

"You check my pulse each time."

"That's just good sense. But seriously? A soldier? In what army?"

"The samurai suit was too expensive."

"Mama-Mama-Mama-Mama-Mama-MAMA-MAMA-MAMA!"

"You could always use the Amazon Princess armor again…"

"Repeating a death? Never," Tomoe smiles at him. "But I suppose I could wear it again, just for fun."

Once, Kotetsu manages to make it home at a relatively reasonable time. He calls Tomoe to announce this rare event, and she is equally pleased, promising they'll have a nice night all together as a family. Kotetsu can't wait: a home-cooked meal, cuddling with Kaede, putting her to bed and cuddling with Tomoe…

But when he opens the door, a super-charged two-year-old tackles his legs instead.

"Papa!" Kaede screams.

"Indoor voice, sweetie." Kotetsu reminds her, pulling his daughter off his leg and giving her a kiss.

"Papa, Tora-san eated Mama!"

"Huh?" Kotetsu takes a second to translate the elements of that sentence: Papa, him; Tora-san, the stuffed tiger that Kotetsu and Tomoe had bought when Kaede was born as their single ironic toy before they stopped themselves from buying more tiger merchandise; eated, probably the past tense of 'eat,' so 'ate'; Mama, Tomoe. "…Tora-san ate Mama?"

Kaede nods furiously, a giant grin on her face, lying to Kotetsu and failing badly. "He eated her! He eated her all up!"

Tomoe's probably dead again, and she asked Kaede to help. Kotetsu realizes, so he better play along. "What? Tora-san ate Mama!" He pulls on the ends of his hair and stares at Kaede. "Where's Mama! We've got to save her! Run, run! Where's Mama! Find Mama!"

Screaming delightedly, Kaede runs through the house on her unstable toddler legs, crawling up the stairs as Kotetsu pursues her, calling encouragement, "Faster! We gotta save Mama! We gotta save Mama from Tora-san! Run, run, run!"

The pair barrel into Kaede's room and find Tomoe lying on the floor, her torso covered in gore from her presumed encounter with a wild tiger (not to be confused with Wild Tiger). Her limbs are all twisted about and her face screwed up in pain from the tiger's fangs. The stuffed tiger is resting just to her side, cuddly and cute as ever, but with fake blood along its mouth, which rests on Tomoe's neck.

"Tora-san, no attacking Mama!" Kotetsu orders, and he tackles the toy, wrestling with it all across the floor. "Grr, you don't get to eat Mama! Mama is not for eating!"

Kaede cheers for him, squealing and jumping up and down as Kotetsu battles the tiger, winning, losing, until Kotetsu sets the toy tiger on her. "Oh no! Kaede, run! He's gonna eat you!"

Shrieking, Kaede runs as fast as she possibly can from the puppeted stuffed animal as Kotetsu provides realistic growls and snarls. Even the mauled Tomoe can't hold back giggling, watching the two chase each other around her bedroom. Suddenly, Kotetsu reaches out, grabs Kaede, and shoves Tora-san's bloodstained face into her stomach, trusting Tomoe that the blood is washable.

"Oh no, Kaede, he's eating you! Tora-san is eating you, too!"

"NO!"

"And now he's tickling you!"

"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

They fall back onto the floor beside Tomoe, the three of them covered in blood and laughing until their sides ached.