I hope I didn't make you all wait too long for this next chapter. Thank you to everyone who followed this story, favorited it, or commented. You guys inspire me to write quicker so that I can get chapters out as quick as possible! Please remember to write me a review to tell me how I'm doing! Thanks, and enjoy!
DISCLAIMER: I don't own Skip Beat! or Tangled.
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Kyoko hadn't answered his question yet, so Ren decided to climb back up to see if she wanted to stay in the tower and give him his crown back instead of blackmailing him to be her babysitter. He heard a yelp, then looked behind him and saw a blur of orange hair trailing behind a young girl wearing a purplish old dress as she fell down the tower.
As Kyoko descended her tower, she felt a rush of cool outside air that she had never experienced before. She grinned wildly. If only she had gotten out of her tower before! It felt so good to be outside without Sho!
At the thought of Sho, Kyoko let her newfound grudges fly around her. Due to her extreme anger, she almost missed how the ground was getting closer and closer. Right at the last second before she would have splat onto the ground, Kyoko yanked on her hair and stopped her descent. Cautiously, she put out her bare feet to test the ground. As she touched the grass with her toes and stepped fully onto the ground, she felt an onslaught of excitement. Finally her dream would come true! Kyoko frolicked around the grass, looking for the fairies she had heard of so many times in the stories she read.
Ren finished climbing down the tower to see Kyoko lost in la la land. He felt amused at the girl's antics for a split second before remembering that once he brought her to the lights, she would give him what he wanted.
"Are you ready for your dream to come true yet?" Ren asked with a fake gentlemanly smile.
Kyoko's grudges came out to bask in Ren's dark aura, which drew her out of her fantasies about fairies. Realizing that he had been waiting for her for who knows how long, she went into a dogeza.
"Gomennasai! I'm really sorry for forgetting that you were here and then causing you to wait for me. I know I'm a big burden to you, and I'm such a lousy blackmailer-"
"Instead of apologizing, let's just get going," Ren said as he started walking towards the passageway to the outside world.
"Hai!" Kyoko replied while running after him.
...
The pair walked through the forest with Ren hiding his annoyance at having to babysit this girl and Kyoko being amazed at everything around her. When the sun was nearing the middle of the sky, Ren suddenly had an idea on how to scare Kyoko back to her tower. "You must be hungry! I know the perfect place to eat!" Ren said with mock enthusiasm.
Kyoko at the mention of food was unable to see Ren's true intentions and replied with an excited "Hai!" since she hadn't eaten breakfast that morning.
...
Going towards the kingdom to visit all his fangirls and sing at the Akatoki tavern, Sho stopped when a group of the kingdom's guards approached him. They hadn't found out about Kyoko, had they?
"Excuse us, citizen. Have you seen this man? He was spotted near here recently," one of the guards asked holding up a wanted poster.
As Sho took a look at the picture, he noticed immediately who the man was. He grit his teeth in anger at the one man in the kingdom who was more popular than him. Ren Tsuruga. Notorious thief. He could make any girl fall in love with him in one smile...
Sho froze. He hadn't journeyed that far away from the tower where he held Kyoko. "I have to go home and check on my property," Sho said before sprinting towards the tower. As he sprinted through the vines concealing the tunnel that led to Kyoko, he called out her name.
"Kyoko! Let down your hair!" Sho yelled.
With no answer from the top of the tower, he removed a loose brick from the bottom of the tower and started to remove more bricks to get through the wall. Once he could get through, he ran up the stairs to the hidden trapdoor that led to Kyoko's bedroom. He threw open the hatch to a dark room devoid of any inhabitants. In a rage at the loss of his property, Sho threw his shoe at a nearby pot, causing it to explode on impact. After his tantrum had subsided, he went to pick up his shoe and saw a satchel that had been hiding in the pot. When he looked inside the satchel, he found the lost princess's crown. Only one thief would be able to steal that crown, and Sho would go show him that he couldn't steal Sho Fuwa's property. Sho grabbed a knife and headed out to find the thief who had taken his Kyoko.
...
"Where are we going?" Kyoko asked.
"We're going to a place called LME," Ren replied.
"Ooohhh! It sounds like a fun place!" Kyoko replied perkily.
As the pair approached a normal looking tavern that had a sign saying LME, Kyoko started jumping up and down in excitement like a little kid about to get candy.
"What do they serve here? Do they have hamburger and egg?" Kyoko asked with sparkles in her eyes.
"You'll see," Ren replied as he opened LME's inconspicuous looking door. As Kyoko and Ren walked in, Kyoko held onto Ren's arm in fear. The inside of the tavern was filled with tough looking men and women dressed as thugs. A couple of them smiled at her with full mouths of gold teeth. At the center of the pub with a spotlight on him (Kyoko wasn't sure where the spotlight came from), was the toughest looking thug complete with a hook on his right hand.
"Welcome to LME," the mysterious man said.
"OMG! It's Ren!" A bearded lady yelled. This caused screams everywhere, and dozens of the heart-eyed ladies launched themselves at Ren.
Kyoko hadn't seen anything like this place in her life, but she had magical hair for crying out loud. This wasn't that hard for her to take in after she got a little used to it.
"Who are you?" Kyoko asked the man with the hook.
"Me? I'm Lory Takarada!" The mysterious man smiled. Looking over at the hoard of fangirls piled on Ren, the president grinned.
"So my boy, have you found love yet?" Lory asked. At the mention of love, Kyoko's grudges came out. Lory looked wide-eyed at the girl's strange reaction to love.
"I would appreciate if you didn't get into my love life, sir," Ren replied from under the pile of women. Even though he could have the pick of any woman he wanted, he didn't ever stress over finding a lover. He had never been truly in love before, but he did have some girlfriends. When they would tell him that they were in love with someone else, he would encourage them to follow their hearts. They would then run away crying about how he didn't care enough about them to fight to keep them. He didn't really care when they left.
"Then who's this girl?" Lory asked, motioning to Kyoko while playing with his fake hook that was part of today's costume. All of the thugs were dressed in costume as well. They weren't real thugs. Lory had a tendency to be eccentric over his establishment, so every day there was a new theme. Today just happened to be thug and ruffian day.
"Oh! Gomennasai! I completely forgot to introduce myself! I'm Kyoko Mogami!" Kyoko said dropping into a bow, completely looking over the real meaning in Lory's words.
"Ah! You're the first girl Ren has ever brought here willingly," Lory responded, trying to show that Kyoko could have a special place in Ren's heart.
"Tsuruga-san suggested this place as a nice place to eat lunch!" Kyoko said.
"Are you here with Ren, or could I have the pleasure of stealing you away from him?" A dark haired man asked Kyoko.
"Kijima Hidehito," the man introduced himself in a mock bow.
"Huh? Why would you want to steal me away from him? He's already taking me to the floating lights," Kyoko asked.
"She's not interested," Ren said with a glare towards Kijima. Kijima stormed out of LME with a scowl on his face. That Ren! He always took any ladies that Kijima had his eye on!
"So how did you meet Ren?" Lory chimed in.
At Lory's question, Kyoko went into her rendition of how Sho had called her a servant to how she had blackmailed Ren into taking her to see the floating lights. During her explanation, Lory's expression shifted between one of disapproval for what Sho had did to her to a look of amusement especially when she described knocking Ren out with a frying pan to the head.
She also spoke of her dream to see the floating lights that came out every year on her birthday, which elicited surprise out of Lory who in turn asked her age. He was even more surprised at her answer. He smiled as his suspicion was proven correct. He hoped she would have the happy ending she deserved when she went to the kingdom.
During her tale Ren offered to buy her food as he was a gentleman, and when she said she could eat anything that he ordered, he ordered frog legs. Kyoko paused in her retelling to scream at the scared waiter not to make frog legs and that a hamburger and egg would be fine instead.
"This has already been such a fun adventure! I don't think I ever want to go back to my tower!" Kyoko exclaimed as she smiled between bites of her favorite meal.
Little did she know who had been listening to her exclamation outside a nearby window. Sho seethed in anger at how he had lost his property, and how happy she sounded to have escaped him. He unconsciously gripped his knife tighter. That Tsuruga was going to pay. Sho was about to barge into the restaurant to reclaim his prisoner until he heard the clamor of a troop of guards planning to ask if LME had spotted the famous thief Ren Tsuruga anywhere. He smirked before hiding behind a bush to let the scene play out. Luckily he could still look in the window from his hiding spot to see that bastard get what was coming to him.
The head guard neared the door and knocked loudly calling out, "Open the door! We are here to ask of any sightings of Ren Tsuruga!"
At the sound of the guards, Ren stilled. Lory quirked an eyebrow in amusement. He didn't know what Ren had managed to steal this time, but from the sound of it, he was wanted for something big. Lory rolled his eyes. This kid got into way too much trouble.
"Come! Follow me!" Lory motioned behind the bar. A few seconds after Kyoko, Ren, and him were hidden, one of the drunk patrons of LME accidentally opened the door to let the guards in. Good thing they didn't spot Ren. After making sure that both Kyoko and Ren had followed him, Lory pulled down a hidden switch behind the bar counter which opened a secret passageway.
"Go live your dream," Lory said.
"I will," Ren answered.
"I wasn't talking about you. You probably don't even have a dream. You're too boring," Lory rolled his eyes.
"Thank you," Kyoko said with a smile.
Lory let his eyes wander to Ren. He wondered if Ren knew how he was looking at the girl. Lory chuckled, and flicked the switch to seal off the secret passage. Young love was an amazing thing to witness in real life. Usually he would only see it in his choose your own romance books.
Outside the window, Sho fumed at how the thief had gotten away. Lory had just let them escape! The guards wouldn't be able to find out anything! There needed to be justice! Before Sho knew it, he had already entered LME and walked behind the bar.
"Hey! I saw them go over here and disappear earlier!" Sho said. The guards immediately came over to him, looking for a switch of some kind. Sho found the hidden switch first and pulled it to reveal the secret tunnel that Ren and Kyoko had escaped into. Lory sighed. He knew of this Sho Fuwa from his rival, Akatoki tavern, where the boy frequently sang, and he knew of how the boy had hurt Kyoko. He hoped that Kyoko and Ren could outrun the guards as they sprinted into the secret passage.
"Where does that tunnel let out?" Sho asked menacingly while putting his knife up to Lory's nose. Lory's eyes widened. He couldn't get killed by Sho today, at least not before hearing the wedding bells for Kyoko and Ren's wedding.
...
Kyoko and Ren walked through the secret passageway with Ren holding a lantern for light, and Kyoko holding her frying pan for protection.
"I didn't know that you'd been through so much when I met you earlier," Ren stated.
"I know. I haven't told anyone that story before. I didn't meet anyone except for the nice couple that raised me and Sho before today," Kyoko said while pulling a stray strand of hair behind her ear. She paused before asking, "Tsuruga-san? Where are you from?"
Kyoko froze in her tracks when Ren turned a gentlemanly smile towards her. "Sorry, but I don't do backstories. I would appreciate it if you don't try to pry into mine."
Kyoko was able to breathe again when Ren's dark aura dissipated. "I do have a question for you, though. Since you've been dreaming to see the floating lanterns your whole life, why haven't you tried going before?"
"Eh…" Kyoko started before she heard the sound of people running. She looked behind her to see a faint light growing in brightness every second.
"Ren Tsuruga! Stop right there!" The head guard called out.
"Tsuruga-san?" Kyoko asked worriedly.
"Run!" Ren called out as he dropped the lantern to grab her large pile of hair so that she could run. They dashed towards the light at the end of the tunnel which came out to a ledge above a river in a canyon. Further away was a tall dam. Kyoko spotted a cave about 30 feet away below them next to the lake.
The guards came out of the tunnel and approached the pair slowly with their swords drawn. Kyoko looked at Ren worriedly before she spotted a tree on another ledge in the canyon. She suddenly had an idea.
"Hold on!" Kyoko called out before looping her hair around the tree and grabbing Ren's hand. He grabbed her hand and wrapped his other hand around her waist right before she used her hair to swing to a ledge across the canyon. The guards tried to pull down a support beam of the dam in order to make a bridge across to their ledge. They didn't notice that water had started to leak out of the dam due to their actions.
Ren grabbed an armful of Kyoko's long hair and they both climbed down several ledges until they reached the bottom of the canyon with the guards in hot pursuit. Kyoko had been leading Ren to the cave she had seen earlier when the dam suddenly burst. Everyone ran as quickly as they could to escape the impending wall of water. The guards were slammed into by the giant wall of water, and the force of the water was enough to knock over a column of rocks. The spot that the column was falling onto was right where Ren and Kyoko were! Just in time though, they made it into the tunnel with the column of rock blocking their entryway.
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Thanks for your continued support of "Their Tangled Fates"! If you like Kyoko and Ren fluff, please don't hesitate to check out my other story: "A Heartbeat is Always Truthful"!