Disclaimer: Monster Musume no Iru Nichijo belongs to Okayado and is published by Tokuma Shoten and Seven Seas Entertainment. I own nothing except for original plot lines and characters within.
Author's Notes: I decided to try my hand at writing a fan fiction for an anime that for me has only recently popped up. I was inspired by an unlikely source so see if you can pick up on what it is as you read. So, now that that is settled, on with the show! I herein present to you all: Where's My Money?!
Kimihito Kurusu couldn't believe it. He simply couldn't believe it! He had just finished rereading a letter from the Interspecies Cultural Exchange Program head office. He had read the letter over and over again and still couldn't believe it! The people in charge of the exchange program had issued a statement saying that they were no longer going to be reimbursing host families for renovations and expenses incurred supporting the exchange candidate. It was absurd! Outrageous even! The sheer magnitude of the expenses incurred by taking care of just one candidate was enormous, never mind seven! No matter how Kimihito crunched the numbers, he was up shit creak without a fucking paddle!
As he flopped on the couch and heavily sighed at his incredible misfortune as of late, he was glad that at least he hadn't started swearing out loud or doing something that would have alerted the girls to his sorry predicament. As bad as things were he seriously didn't need the girls to start worrying over the finances and kicking up a ruckus; he could do without that, thank you very much!
"So much trouble you find yourself in, yet your more concerned with your lady friends feelings and such? My, what a chivalrous fellow you are!"
Kimihito froze at the unexpected commentary. He turned his head toward whoever had spoken-and instantly wished he hadn't! The "person"-if that's what they could be called- was sitting on the couch across from him, taking up almost the entire thing! It was a wonder the couch hadn't simply collapsed under the mysterious strangers weight. He looked like he weighed in the tons range! He had to be at least ten feet tall when he was standing up, Kimihito guessed. It wasn't just height either; the mystery visitor was covered head-to-toe in fabulously ornate armour, with intricate armour plating covered in flowing symbols carved into the largest pieces. There were deathly images all over the armour; demonic skull-shaped spaulders and leering evil faces on the grieves and gauntlets, every piece of armour had some kind of creepy detail work.
The guy had a monstrous physique like a body builder who had overdosed on steroids for years and had been working out for twice that long! What really creeped Kimihito out was the massive, glossy black horns that rose from the sides of the ornate helmet the guy wore. Something else also disturbed him and greatly so: the mystery guy's armour had the same colouring as Lala's armour! What?!
"I hear, my mortal friend, that you have been looking after my dear sister, Lala as you call her. I wanted to thank you for looking after my dear little sister for me! Considering the bit of trouble you find yourself in, it seems I've come at an opportune moment! Oh, how rude of me! I forgot to introduce myself! My name is Callahan, and I am a Dullahan".
Kimihito has had many – and bizarre – experiences since he became a host in the Interspecies Exchange Program...but this particular experience by far took the cake when in came straight up weird! Another Dullahan? Lala's big brother?! What?! Well he did have an Irish accent like Lala did so that was something, he supposed.
He decided to hear the Dullahan out, because if his offer of helping Kimihito out of this horrid jam was on the up-and-up, then he could rest a whole lot easier knowing the bills would be covered. Of course, Callahan as he called himself, could be trying to pull some kind of con, so he would listen to the huge Dullahan's proposal and check things out for himself. He also thought he should tell Lala about this, to see if the whole big brother business was the genuine article or if he made it all up.
He decided to, at the very least, hear what the giant Dullahan wanted in return for the help he suggested he wanted to give to Kimihito.
"Okay. I'm listening. What do you have in mind, sir?" Well he could at least be polite when speaking to the guy!
"Oh, no need to so formal my young friend! Callahan will do, just fine! As to the matter at hand I ask only this: in a single years time, I ask for only one percent of the money that you owe as repayment. If you are having trouble making ends meet or suffer unemployment, it would be no trouble for me to simply wait until things are sorted out. Now, sadly, there will come a time when I will have no choice but to seek repayment, but again, do not worry; as long as you have done your earnest best to pay me back what I ask, we shall have no trouble!"
Kimihito was just about to ask what Callahan meant by trouble, but suddenly he disappeared in a blast of noxious purple smoke that burned Kimihito's eyes and nose like he guessed tear gas was supposed to do. He covered his mouth and eyes as best he could and tried to rush out of the room, but as he did he realized the horrid stuff was everywhere in the house! He saw it in the hallway, he saw it going up the stairs, snaking into the kitchen, he couldn't get away from the stuff! He tried going for the door, but stumbled as his vision was beginning to blur. Instead of slamming head-first into the floor, he collided with something soft, bouncy and kind of warm. A sultry giggle tickled his ears as a very familiar, though strangely muffled voice said, "Oh, Honey! I had no idea you were so desperate to have some fun!"
Kimihito froze as he stared up from the bouncy softness he had collided with and right into Rachnera's beautiful eight-eyed face. He would have stuttered some apology but not only were his eyes and nose burning, but now he was getting dizzy and his lungs were burning. He wasn't sure though, but he could swear that Rachnera was wearing a gas mask. As he slipped in and out of consciousness, the others girls began storming into the den.
"This poisonous fume! Hast it no end?!" Centorea yelled as she wildly swept her arms through the air trying vainly to be rid of the noxious smoke. Rachnera reached into a satchel she wore across her shoulder and tossed Centroea another gas mask. Centorea was dumb-founded for a moment, but decided not to look a gift horse – or in this case, spider – in the mouth and quickly slipped the mask on. Tiny motors revved to life and almost instantly cleared in the air in the mask, urging Centorea to take heaping gulps of now clean air. Rachnera slipped a mask onto Kimihito's face as well, but where the girls found instant relief, Kimihito only found slightly lessened misery. He picked up a strange odour and almost vomited in his mask but instead he passed out.
"Master!" Centorea rushed over to her beloved master and tried to rouse him but to no use.
Rachnera scooped him up and shouted, "I'll take care of Honey! You get the other girls together and get the Hell outside. No use in anyone else getting sick! Here, take these!" She tossed Centorea the satchel full of gas masks and the Centaur girl got the idea. They both were halted by a firm voice shouting, "Hold! I shall disperse this poisoned mist!"
They both turned to see Lala in her full outfit, holding her scythe in front of her. She seemed completely unbothered by the horrid smoke but the girls didn't question; at least not yet. She began twirling her huge scythe in the air, twirling like a ballerina her own self. The smoke seemed to freeze in place and then began to flow toward the Dullahan girl! Faster and faster Lala spun, until she was a blur and the smoke was swirling around her like a dark purple hurricane. The swirling mass shot past the girls and out the front door, where suddenly Lala stopped spinning and slammed the blade of her scythe into the ground, every last wisp of the smoke flowing into the cracks in the ground which sealed up almost immediately after the smoke had vanished. Lala glared at the ground where her scythe had struck and then quickly rushed back into the house to check on the mortal and the other girls.
Miia and Papy had come down stairs, racked by coughing fits and eyes teared up and red from the smoke.
"Oh My God! What the Hell was all that nasty smoke about! Guys, are you...DARLING!"
Miia's heartbroken screech made everyone jump as she protectively wrapped herself around Kimihito, not realizing just HOW tightly she had wrapped him up. She was so overcome with grief at seeing her beloved so stricken she tightened her coils to the point where Kimihito's bones began to creak. As he began to wheeze and choke from Miia's crushing embrace, Lala brought the long handle of her scythe down onto Miia's head, hard enough to send a resounding crack echoing throughout the house.
"Idiot Lamia! Art thou trying to kill the mortal! Be quit of thy stupidity!" Miia was about to tell off the bossy Dullahan, but the cold glare she received sent her shooting to the other end of the hall. She carefully picked up Kimihito bridal style and dashed outside again. She gently laid him down on the front lawn and pulled a small vial of bluish liquid from a pocket on her coat and knelt beside him. Lala gently coaxed Kimihito to open his mouth and gently lifted up his head. She poured the liquid down his throat and moved back a step.
As the other girls came careening out of the house, Lala looked back at them to make sure they were okay. Papy was flapping her wings like crazy trying to get rid of persistent wafts of mist, Centorea was trying to get her to stop since Papy was sending the fume her way, Suu had no idea what was going on and was smiling carefree as usual, and Mero looked simply haggard, the mist causing her skin to dry out rather severely and even make her light-headed as she was having trouble steering her electric wheelchair and kept bumping into things.
Rachnera was climbing along the outside of the house when she jumped down to where Kimihito laid in the lawn. She pulled out her cell phone she had recently picked up from a pouch on a belt around her waist and hit the speed dial for Mrs. Smith, the Interspecies Exchange Program coordinator that oversees Kimihito's handling of the girls. Rachnera was in no mood for any of Mrs. Smith's lacklustre behaviour: "Just get over here you sorry excuse for a bureaucrat! Honey's been poisoned! Someone gassed the whole damn house!"
As Rachnera angrily snapped off the call, she noticed Lala tending to Honey, who it looked like had just up-chucked a gallon or two of a nasty looking liquid that sent a shiver down her spine. She turned her head from the disgusting sight as she got the distinct impression that crap was poisonous. She walked over to them and tried to smile reassuringly, but she heard something that made her freeze to the spot.
She had never heard Lala swear before, which wasn't unusual. What was unusual was what she was swearing about.
"Damn your eyes, Brother! There was no need of this cruelty! Why do such a thing to one who has done you no wrong?!" Rachnera had never heard Lala ever mention mention family of any kind, never mind a brother. Now here she was, cursing out her brother who no one had even known she had? Hmm. It was about ten minutes later of trying to deduce what happened and Rachnera was coming up dry. Something wasn't copacetic here! She had initially thought of a more "entertaining" interrogation for the Dullahan, but after seeing Honey in such a state, maybe her fists would work better!
She began stalking toward the Dullahan who was tending to her human sweet heart, lacing her fingers together and popping them. She flexed her armored talons and balled them into fists, preparing to beat some answers from the so-called "Death God". She was stopped right behind her and was just about to swing her balled fists when Mrs. Smith and her MON girls showed up in their 4WD Jeep. They were all decked out in Haz-Mat gear, and other vehicles were screeched to a halt right behind them as they slammed to a stop in front of Kimihito's house.
Ms. Smith was surprisingly all business, barking orders left and right, striding toward the downed Kimihito and the Dullahan. She quickly knelt down by Kimihito and firmly asked, "What happened here?" Lala looked like she was hesitant to answer but she did anyway. What she said made the MON girls freeze on the spot: "My brother has come".
Rachnera knew when someone was hiding something from her and the looks of shock on all of the MON girls was enough to set her alarm bells to screaming. She was about to ask about said brother when the paramedics came rushing up with a gurney and carefully loaded Honey onto it and strapped him down. They quickly wheeled him away to a waiting ambulance. As they quickly loaded him up, one of Ms. Smith's human subordinates jogged up to her and whispered in her ear about the team's findings. Rachnera saw all of the color drain from Ms. Smith's face. The MON team had walked up, looking like the world was going to end with ashen faces and very frightened looks in their eyes.
Ms. Smith took off her head gear and looked Lala right in the eyes. What she had to say was simple: "Gather everyone in Darling's living room, Lala. They have to hear this".
Hours later, after removing the Haz-Mat gear and making sure her analysis team was finished with their work, Ms. Smith was nursing a cup of coffee with her team and all of Kimihito's housemates gathered in his living room. She had her trademark glasses laid on the coffee table and looked positively ill. All of the MON girls looked downcast, but the girls who had been staying with Kimihito had been everything from anxiously worried about him to outright cursing on Ms. Smith. Ms. Smith had finally had enough and shouted for quiet.
"Enough! Please, enough! I know your all worried about Darling but you have to calm down! I was just about to answer yours question, so please, let's all calm down".
Centorea was having none of it.
"Harlot! Jezebel! You know the cause of Masters' woes and yet you keep them to yourself, like you always do! Every single important fact that Master needed to know about the home-stay program, you left out because you were too damn lazy to tell him or ignorantly thought he already knew! You have stolen from him, forced yourself upon his hospitality, and gods knows what else you have committed against my Master! No more I say, you stupid cow!" She stomped up to the human woman, grabbed her by her shirt, roughly hoisted her up and decked her right between her startled eyes.
Ms. Smith was sent flying into the arms of her startled team, but an unexpected voice stopped the ruckus before it could get any worse.
"Damn it, all of you! The mortal is sick and your pointless fighting will not make him better! I know of what ails him, but this finger-pointing is helping no one!" Lala stood in the middle of them all, her cold yellow eyes afire. She looked ready to start dropping bodies but suddenly deflated. As Ms. Smith disentangled herself from her team and sat down, rubbing her face where Centorea had punched her, the pale skinned Dullahan girl began to speak.
"I have a brother. His name is Callahan. He is my older brother and developed a horrible obsession with extorting services and coin from others; he would perform a service for them and ask for what his 'clients' had thought of as pittance in return, but soon learned he would accept nothing less than everything. He would start the deception as being a genuine need to help someone out, but as time went on, He would actively sabotage each and every attempt to repay his 'services', but make it appear as though the poor individual he tricked was simply having a great bout of misfortune or even trying to renege on the agreement! He is what you would call a 'loan shark'. The powers he wields as a Dullahan allows him to torment someone to no end. With a life unending, he can harass some poor lost soul until they die and even after, using his Dullahan magics to bind them to the living world and deny them their final rest. He can, as you say, teleport, but when ever he leaves he always releases that horrid purple smoke as a form of sadistic goodbye".
As the girls listened intently, Manako the cyclops noticed a letter on the table that carried the official markings of the Interspecies Cultural Exchange program. She walked toward the small end table it was resting on and picked it so she could read it. As she began to do so, her brow crinkled in confusion as she knew for a fact that the Exchange program had made so such revision of no longer reimbursing expenses occurred during home-stays. She walked over to Ms. Smith carrying the letter, catching everyone's attention. Ms. Smith arched a slender brow at what Manako had in her hand, but after reading it she gasped aloud.
"What the hell is this? Why wasn't I notified?"
Everyone looked at the paper in her hand and noticed the official styling on the paper. Centorea saw what was on the paper and looked ready to strike Ms. Smith again. As all eyes were drawn to the document-and what it entailed-more voices rose in anger.
"My poor darling has been tearing his hair out the last few days, and now I know why! I knew you were no good, you damn bureaucrat!" Miia hissed as she rose up on her tail, spoiling for a fight.
"Hubby was so sad! Why did you make Hubby sad?! Papi make you pay!" the small harpy girl flapped her wings angrily, lifting her wicked talons for all to see, aiming them right at Smith.
Rachnera simply snarled, showing of her mouth full of pearly-white sharp teeth, while Suu the slime had latched onto her back, armed with a pair of baseball bats in her hands and a different bludgeon held by each of her head tentacles. Centorea had retrieved her real sword as well her bow and a full quiver of arrows, perfectly content to put them to immediate – and violent – use.
The most frighteningly equipped of the girls was Mero, who somehow added actual min-guns to the arm rests of her electric wheel-chair (where she got those, no one dared to even contemplate). Lala stared in terror as the situation was well beyond control and realized if she didn't do something very very quickly, the entire household would become a small war zone!
"NO ONE IS TO MOVE! AWAY PUT YOUR ARMS AND BE PEACEABLE!" Lala's voice carried with it an ancient strength that knocked everybody back, or even off their feet. She briskly walked into the center of the living room and exhaled a massive breathe even she hadn't realized she had been holding. She calmly began to speak again.
"This is all of Callahan's doing. He put the mortal into such an emotionally trying time that he would jump at the chance to have this horrid situation mended, despite what common sense may have warned him about. He created a situation where the mortal would no longer be able to easily afford participating in the Exchange Program and would "help out" by paying off the coin owed, which my guess says was never really owed to begin with! He would say that only the barest portion of coin would be needed payment for services owed, but in fact he would hamper any and all efforts to repay the false debt so he could extort even more from his victims!"
"If he's so rotten, why haven't you tried to stop him?! Do the rest of your people not care, or do they turn a blind eye as long as he does his job?!" This angry shout came from Rachnera, who had 'borrowed' one of Suu's baseball bats, gently slapping it against her chitinous armoured hands.
At this angry accusation, Lala turned her head away in shame and guilt, but before she could even begin to word her response, Ms. Smith's cell phone began to buzz from from her jacket pocket. She quickly pulled it out and answered the call. She listened intently for what seemed like forever, then her face brightened spectacularly as she almost shouted, "He's awake! That's great news! Thank you, Doctor! I'll be there right away!" Ms. Smith disconnected the call and slipped her phone back into her pocket and locked eyes with each and everyone of Kimihito's house-mates.
"I know asking you to wait here would be pointless, so lets get going. We'll all go together, since a couple of vehicles stayed behind as security. I promise, we'll fill in he blanks about Callahan as we drive to the hospital, but please believe me: we had no idea any of this was going on, I swear!"
The girls were not quite so sure about that, but they were dead-set about seeing that Kimihito was alright, so they accepted Ms. Smith's offer of a ride. What they would not except was giving up the weapons they had (Monako had tried to ask Mero where she got the mini-gun attachments for her chair and almost got her head blown off by said guns when Mero politely told her to 'get stuffed' and ran over her feet!).
Ms. Smith knew she was sitting on a powder keg with a lit fuse right now. Her only hope was that by explaining how they knew about Callahan and trying to help out Kimihito they could avoid a multi-species incident.
As the group loaded themselves into the collect of vehicles that had stayed behind, a glowing pair of blood-red eyes gazed at them from high above the Kurusu house. The Heavily armoured owner of those eyes snickered to himself as he realized that he was about to have more fun with this human and his lovely little harem than he had had in an eternity! Callahan chortled as he said, "now, me sweet sister, we begin again!" and vanished in another noxious cloud of purple smoke.
Author's Notes: Well, that was fun! I hope everybody reads and reviews this chapter of "Where's My Money?!" I hope you all enjoyed reading this chapter as I have enjoyed writing it it for you! TTYL!