Disclaimer: I own your soul. (yes. yours.) I do not, however, own Furuba.
Uo-chan's Solution
Chapter Three: Pentagrams
Shigure's house was dark and quiet when they arrived; silence greeted Tooru's cheerful "We're home desu!" A quick check around the grounds confirmed the house's emptiness.
"Hm, odd," Yuki murmured as he helped Hanajima load the groceries into the fridge. "Shigure must have gone out. He usually tells us, first."
Kyou, still in his cat form, still the unwilling prisoner of Uotani's hold, twitched his sore tail irritably as he drawled, "Maybe Akito caught a deadly virus and is even as we speak dying a slow, painful death, and Shigure had to go stand watch by his bed. I'll miss him, the poor bastard."
Yuki lifted an eyebrow, unable to miss the opportunity to take a jab at Kyou even if he did secretly hope what Kyou had said was true. "You'll miss Shigure?"
"WRONG!" Kyou yelled, fur standing on end as he spat angrily across the kitchen floor. "I'll kill you!"
Ignoring Kyou's standard response, Yuki said to Uotani, "Uotani-san, you can go put Kyou somewhere else so he can change back. I feel bad beating him when he's all fuzzy and cuddly and helpless." He smiled demeaningly at Kyou, who snarled back but scampered off when Uotani bent down to let him go.
Tooru had tied an apron over her school uniform and was already washing the vegetables to prepare for the evening meal. "Hana-chan," she directed, "could you please go into the far cabinet and take out the large pot? I'll make oyako donburi tonight since there are so many of us. It'll be easy to make."
Uotani leaned one shoulder against the wall, eyeing Yuki as he measured out the rice. "And what are you going to do about this whole Juunishi-animal-hugging thing? Pray?"
"Praying doesn't help," Yuki sighed despondently, casting a glance at Tooru. He kept his voice low so Tooru wouldn't overhear their conversation. "Look, Uotani-san. There's nothing we can do about it. We're just destined to be miserable and lonely all our lives. Please, don't talk to Honda-san about this. I don't want her to think that she's not doing enough…Believe me, she's done more than enough for us already."
"You think this is your fate?" Uotani repeated, incredulous. "Ouji-sama, I never took you to be such a fatalist." She spread her arms. "Look at me. Do you think I was 'fated' to stay a gang member all my life? I met Tooru and her mom, and my entire life changed around." She poked a finger at his chest. "Don't tell me you didn't change any because Tooru was here. You just have to do something about it."
"Arisa is right," Hanajima murmured placidly, appearing out of seemingly nowhere to startle Yuki. He nearly jumped in surprise as she materialized beside Uotani to look at him squarely in the face, but barely managed to quell the instinctive reaction. "You just need to deal with your…problems…and get over them. Tooru-kun is very kind at helping others with their problems."
Yuki cast a glance at Tooru, obliviously peeling carrots. "Shh!" he warned. "Please, I don't want to worry Honda-san. Even if I were to try to solve this 'problem', I wouldn't be able to do anything. We've tried, and all we get is beaten by Akito for our troubles. It's better if we just accept this as our future and our lives, and try to move on."
"Keh." Uotani snorted in derision, turning as Kyou entered the kitchen, fully dressed and fully human. He glared at her, rubbing at the base of his spine where her yank had lingering effects.
A broad grin spread across Uotani's face as she snapped her fingers. "I got it!" Turning back to a confused Yuki with an exultant expression on her face, she said, "You guys are so fatalistic and pessimistic, it's making me sick. You talk about being lonely and isolated for the rest of your lives…You were both probably 'isolated' as kids, weren't you?" There were reluctant nods from both of them.
"What you need…" Uotani again threw her arms out and rushed a startled, yelping Kyou. "What you need is to get used to girls!"
He couldn't dodge fast enough; the blond-haired girl lunged at him, wrapping her arms tightly around his chest.
Poof!
"I HATE YOU!" Kyou, furious, spluttered as he squirmed violently out of her lingering embrace. Uotani tossed him away as he brandished his claws menacingly at her; landing on all fours on the kitchen floor, bristling, Kyou snarled, "Would you stop that already? You know what a cat looks like! You already know what's gonna happen when I get hugged! Isn't that good enough!"
Uotani lifted one eyebrow, unperturbed—and seemingly unfazed by the fact that she was arguing with a cat. "And who said I was merely hugging you to see what you looked like as a fuzzy orange kitten, eh, smart one?" Kyou growled, and her smirk widened infuriatingly. "You see," she explained patiently, "it's obvious that you just need to have practice."
Yuki interjected, his face a slight pink. In the background, Tooru paused in rinsing her hands, casting her friends a confused glance. "Um, Uotani-san…" Yuki looked vaguely uncomfortable with the direction of the conversation. "What exactly do you mean by 'practice'? And what is it that you think we need to 'practice'?"
Hanajima replied placidly, "Hm, wouldn't you just like to know?"
Yuki flushed in response, and Tooru asked innocently, "Ano, what are we doing? Uo-chan, is something the matter?"
Uotani shook her head. "Not at all, Tooru," she reassured her oblivious friend. "I'm just performing a little experiment over here. You see, Kyon and Ouji-sama just aren't used to girls. And so, obviously, they just have to get over their fear. It's simple, really. And once they're so tired from the whole, you know, changing thing, they'll have to either be one or the other. I'm betting that they're human. I mean, Kyon's rather weird, but he is human, after all."
There was a silence, and Yuki ventured, "Uotani-san…I'm afraid I'm a little…lost. Your logic…it doesn't make sense." They tended to stay in their animal form when they were exhausted or over-exerted. And being embarrassed by females had nothing to do with that being the reason for their transformation. "We—"
Uotani cut him off rudely, a wild gleam in her eye that had even Tooru blinking in something bordering on fear. "You know," she said with a sly glance at Hanajima, "we haven't seen you, Ouji-sama." He frowned, confused—he was right there; couldn't they see him while they talked?—before realizing what she meant. Uotani's evil grin spread as she stalked towards him. "Don't think we're letting you off the hook just because we know you're in love with our friend."
"Wha—? That's not tru—I don't—" Yuki's flustered protests died as, with a frightened wail, he dashed to the side. Uotani's flailing arms collided hard with Tooru mid-leap; there was a pained cry, and Uotani hastily apologized to her smaller friend before taking off after the fleeing Yuki into the living room. With another pat to Kyou's head, Hanajima followed calmly.
Tooru looked at Kyou; Kyou looked back at Tooru. Together, they shrugged. "I'm not sure I understand," Tooru admitted worriedly, her head swiveling around at the sound of a large crash from the living room, "but I think I'm afraid for Yuki-kun's safety." There was another crash, and both Tooru and Kyou hurried to the doorway in time to see the coffee table go end-over-end as Uotani leapt over to make another grab for Yuki. He gave a highly un-princely shriek and ducked to the left, only to be tripped by the ever-mysteriously and eerily silent Hanajima. Uotani squeezed him tightly before he hit the ground and—poof!—his clothes dropped emptily to the floor.
"Make them stop!" Yuki scowled angrily at the two girls, doubled over in laughter—well, Uotani at any rate, was, while Hanajima contented herself with a secretive smile—from his hiding place behind Tooru's foot. "This is highly unacceptable—"
A second poof! heralded Kyou's return to human form.
If he had wished he could disappear when Uotani first found out about the Souma secret, now he wished he could just melt and drip between the cracks in the floor and die.
"Whoa, no wonder Tooru was so worried about getting 'im away from us before he turned back," Uotani snickered between gasps for air. Kyou slammed the door to the kitchen behind him, shouting something angry-sounding and otherwise unintelligible back at Uotani from the other side.
Hanajima was neatly rearranging the upturned furniture into strange, hexagonal arrangements. "And will the same fate—the untimely returning to human form—occur to Yuki, too?" she inquired serenely, peacefully moving around the slumped form of Uotani on the ground as she turned the coffee table to a thirty-degree angle to the doorway.
Tooru glanced down at the pink-faced mouse hiding behind her ankle. "Ano…well…" He returned her gaze and, without waiting for her consent, scampered to the doorway to the kitchen. Tooru slid the door open enough to let him enter; she was just closing the door when the distinctive poof! sounded, and Uotani dissolved in another wave of hysterics.
There was a long silence as the girls tried to puzzle out what the boys were doing on the other side of the kitchen door in the utter silence that emanated from their direction—and how they planned to get out of the mess. Yuki's clothes, Tooru realized, were still in a pile in the middle of the living room floor. Kyou could get dressed again, of course, but what would they do about Yuki?
"Dammit, I'm not your delivery boy!" Kyou's infuriated yell heralded his re-entry to the living room, and he spun around, suspicious, as the kitchen door slammed shut in his face. He scowled and, keeping a wary eye on the gasping Uotani, crept forward to retrieve Yuki's clothes. Glaring at Tooru, Kyou snapped, "Do something about these two freaks, Tooru, or I swear I'll let Hatori on 'em."
He stomped back towards the kitchen, wrenching open the door and flinging the garments inside. "There you go," he growled, slamming the door shut once more. His narrowed eyes swept back to Uotani. "Give this a rest, would you, yankee? It's not going to work. What Yuki the idiot didn't tell you—for reasons that could only possibly include his natural stupidity—was that when we get tired, we stay in animal form. I don't know why, we just do. When we're sick or exhausted or stay out in the rain…" He shrugged. "So just give this up already."
Sighing, Uotani sank to one of the floor cushions scattered on the ground and currently the topmost point of the five-pointed star Hanajima was creating with the furniture. "Sure. Sure." She wrapped her arms around her waist and blew out another long breath, a huge grin spreading across her face. "That was too fun, you guys. I don't know why you do what you do, or what exactly is going on here—this is all a little spooky, wouldn't you say?—but it's rather amusing."
Hanajima lifted one elegant, dark eyebrow and glanced around the mystically-designed room. Her voice was a low murmur, mysterious as smoke.
"I wonder what will happen next?"
And the doorbell rang.
2.12.05
NOTES: Chapter Three is done! I'd already written most of it, so I just manipulated it to where I wanted it to go. You'll be glad to hear I've got an outline—yes, an actual outline—for this baby, and I'll be busting my butt to honor my promise that I will finish this fic. It'll have a proper ending and everything. I can't say it's the most imaginative ending, but it'll hold when push comes to shove.
The whole Uotani-chasing-Yuki scene just makes me laugh. Could you ever see it really happening?
