Yoshikazi

"Get up!"

I wheezed as something large, heavy, and named Aaren jumped on my stomach. My usual wakeup call.

I reached up to my bed and patted Dez to wake him up. He wasn't there.

"Aaren, where's Dez?"

"Oh, he's still in the kitchen."

I looked suspiciously at him. They were up early… they were walking around my house… and without me.

I grouchily followed Aaren up to the kitchen, where I knew I would find Dez with my sister.

When I walked through the door, it was like looking at a younger, much prettier version of myself. Akemi had the large, green, almond-shaped eyes that our family was famous for, the perfectly smooth, petite ski-slope nose from our Mom, and the strangely curvy lips that only the two fo us had out of the entire family.

Right now those green eyes of hers were working their magic on Dez and Aaren, who had refilled his cereal bowl and sat entranced. I listened to her as I got my own breakfast out. She was talking about Japan. I could trace a very faint accent from her last eight years of living there.

"Hey, Yoshi," Aaren spit chunks of cereal as he spoke. "How come she went and you didn't?"

"It was a… hard time for our family. He was nine, so he could actually understand he wanted to stay here with Dad, and I just wanted to be with my Mom's family. People who looked like her." The green of her eyes darkened as she thought of Mom's death.

"And so, why did you come back after eight years?" Dez had never heard me talk about this.

Akemi hesitated. She looked from me to my friends, asking me what she should say. Tell them that our Dad was dying too? In almost the exact same way that our Mom had?

"I, uh… decided it was time to come back home." She decided to explain a small part of it.

"I think I broke your toilet,"

Of course I turned around to find Brayden backing cautiously out of the bathroom. We all peered curiously at the half-closed door.

"What's in there? A bomb or something?"

"Well—"

CRACK!

We all dropped to the floor behind the counter.

"Oh, so now you're avoiding me?" Bea was ticked.

"Who are you?" my sister looked Bea up and down.

"No one you know," Bea smarted off.

"Oh. Well, then, get out of my house." Akemi didn't take crap form anyone. She looked indignant in her manga-character pajamas and slightly ruffled hair. She was half a foot shorter than Bea. If you had just looked at her and then at Bea, you just knew that Bea would win a fight. But my sister was stronger'n crap, meaning if Bea didn't leave, and no one stepped in, Bea would be no more.

"Ok, shorty, I will if you can make me."

"Look, I know you must really think you can take me on, but get real." Akemi almost looked like an indignant two-year-old who'd just been told she couldn't do anything.

"Hey, um, Akemi, I don't think you should mess with—"

"No, shh," I shushed Aaren. "Watch." I slowly backed away from the table as Bea got closer. "Oh, and Bea, this is a warning. My sister gets very moody if people don't do what she says." I pulled Brayden and Dez back by their shirts.

Bea absolutely towered over Akemi in her rage.

"Look, to get out of the house you should head towards the door, not the center of the room."

"You wanna fight, or—" Bea couldn't even finish her sentence before Akemi was out of her seat and had turned Bea over, a front-flip through the air straight onto her back, just by jerking her arm. And then Akemi returned to her breakfast and started searching through the newspaper.

"Whoa! She's like, Lucy Liu, except… real!" Dez was dazed.

"Lucy Liu is real," Brayden grunted as he tried to lift Bea up.

Aaren and I took one look at each other and grinned widely. We knew right then, that as long as my sister was around, we wouldn't hear any crap from Bea.

Heaven on Earth!

"Ok, so, I had Treks set out all the scavenger hunt stuff earlier today," I explained how my older brother had set everything up. Everyone would get one object far away, and the rest fairly close to each other. And how they would each have a color-coded paper, just to eliminate confusion. We were searching for his creepy toys, of course. He had also provided a way for Dez to stand a chance of not getting stuck with Bea.

"Pick a paper, get a partner," Treks grinned widely.

I drew out Dez's name. Brayden got my sister. So, Aaren was stuck with Bea.

"Can we draw again?" they both whined out miserably.

"No, that's hardly fair. Ok, rules, you can't set out till nine." They all nodded. "If either one of you screams, you can't win. But you can try to get other teams to scream."

Aaren grinned creepily at this and breathed heavily on Bea's neck until she slapped him away.

"don't hide other people's stuff. And, um… lose your partner by deadline, two o'clock, you lose. Team with the most object by two o'clock wins, blah blah blah." They knew the rest.

Treks gave us all our first clue and watched as we waited for nine o'clock. He had told me to give them 'till two. I thoguth the time limit was ridiculously long, but Treks knew more than me about these games.