A/N Update, update, update! Yay! Thanks to everyone for the reviews and support so far! I apologize for the rather lengthy gap between updates; sadly it's not glorious summer everywhere xD Anyways, I don't mean to keep anyone waiting!

Disclaimer: I do not own Princess Tutu or anything else that is recognizable in this chapter. Except Surprise!Cookies hehe…

Enjoy!

Chapter Four – Those Poor Quails

Despite the fact that Ahiru was once filled with indescribable amounts of determination and joy, the rain, among other things, lowered the overall quality of her mood. Said rain was not just regular trickles of moisture; it was bucketing down water in a practically sideways fashion, which somehow managed to drench innocent passers by, even if they stood underneath an umbrella or sheltered area. The sheer velocity of the falling droplets caused Ahiru's hair to feebly surrender to gravity and stick to her face, which annoyed her quite a bit as it was extremely uncommon in the anime world. While wandering aimlessly, her hair soaking wet, she managed to sell three boxes of Surprise!Cookies although she was verbally abused by an old, drunken man, and an animal rights protestor, claiming that the machine manufactured creations in fact had traces of an endangered species of quail.

Her eyes widened and her mouth dropped open upon the mention of this possible fact; she didn't necessarily believe this hippie protester gallivanting around in the pouring rain, but she was quite happy that she hadn't put a cookie anywhere near her mouth. She couldn't imagine what on earth one of her feathery brethren would taste like; then she remembered the horrid duck-consuming incident, and felt nauseous for a moment.

Ahiru blinked slowly and then walked away cautiously from the animal rights activist, trying to avoid stepping in a puddle or on the foot of another drunken man. She sighed; only that afternoon it had been a beautiful day. The sun's warmth radiated onto the happy civilians laughing and chatting while sitting on the lush green grass, enjoying their day. It seemed that only just after she decided to try and succeed in the marketing scheme and Fakir reassured her that everything was going to turn out great, the previously blue sky quickly turned to a murky grey and the heavens opened.

Speaking of Fakir, he was supposed to be accompanying Ahiru on her journey out of cookie-selling amateurism. However, coincidentally not long after the sudden storm had began, his face went deathly pale as he muttered something about 'promise' and 'threat', before running off in a random direction. Taking note of the time, Ahiru noticed that Fakir had been gone for almost two hours, and considering how horrified he seemed before he left abruptly, he must have had something urgent to get to at home, or maybe back at school. She decided that it was probably time to call it a day; the sky was beginning to get dark, and the weather was cold and wet, not the ideal conditions for making sales.

So that was what she did, called it a day, and began her long walk home. Narrowly avoiding puddles of water and rather unpleasant puddles of mud, she was soon more than halfway through her treacherous quest battling against the wind, the rain and the sheer cold. As her walk progressed, it seemed harder to find her way through the grey fog that was seemingly getting thicker by the second. 'Surely I'm not going mad!' the thought over and over again to herself as she began to get herself lose herself in the mist. Ahiru rubbed her eyes in frustration; no matter how hard she tried, it was now virtually impossible to view anything in the distance. Luckily for her, she was almost where she needed to be, and the stupid fog was no match for her—

…"Ow." She muttered bitterly, as she crashed into … she hadn't quite figured that out yet. To be honest, it was quite hard to make out what sort of being this thing was, even if was alive at all. It was quite tall, thin, had a rather large head, and naturally a shocking sense of balance to be able to so carelessly walk into her like that. If this … thing knew how annoying and rough her afternoon had been , they would know damn well not to mess with an angry Ahiru with wet hair, or ever for that matter.

Her eyebrows furrowed and she let out a disgruntled moan as she realized that while she was out wandering aimlessly, battling against the elements, Fakir had ran off in a hurry .. to get a jacket, and umbrella and a thermos?! He had got to be kidding.

"… Want some? It's chicken noodle." Fakir feebly smiled, weakly bringing the thermos forward.

"What a lousy, pointless afternoon" Ahiru mumbled monotonously into her hands. She was now sitting in the school library, mainly because of its top-quality heating system, trying to make Fakir explain his random absence. Things didn't seem to be going particularly well, one of the signs being the lack of conversation in the room, and the abundance of pointless mumbles and sighs.

Mytho was sitting quietly nearby, rocking back and forth, completely fed up with the concept of silence. It was quite irritating when you knew exactly what had to be said, but lacked the ability to express yourself; he knew that too well. He had even since surrendered to the author's and reviewers will, now wearing pants just as often as a regular person. Stuck for options, Mytho spontaneously leapt out of his seat, took the nearest library book in sight, and began to write on the inside of a randomly selected page, before handing it to Ahiru.

"Halt!" seemingly from nowhere, the library Nazi Autor, his glasses glistening in the dim light bellowed from the top of a nearby staircase. "What sort of horrendous, blasphemic act do you think you're committing?!"

Mytho sighed. It was most likely that Autor was simply over-reacting. 'Honestly', he thought to himself, 'How many people would even consider reading… Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows?' Upon taking closer inspection at the hardback cover, Mytho realized just what he had done, and that if Autor spread the word around the world, millions of crazed fanatics of the series would hunt him down, come to his house in the middle of the night, and cut him.

Due to the unfortunate loss of his voice, Mytho was unable to respond to the library Nazi's yells, which had drawn the attention of every person in the building, all six of them. He thought quickly of a way to relieve himself of the total humiliation he was experiencing, and to perhaps avoid paying the thirty-odd dollars for the book. Due either to frustration or OOC-ness, he threw the insanely thick novel at Autor's head, resulting in a rather loud thud as his unconscious body fell to the floor.

Fakir and Ahiru remained quiet for the whole idea, honestly shocked at the fact that Mytho of all people would be the one to finally shut up the literature freak.

The author would like to make a brief statement by saying that it is indeed wrong to deface school property or throw things at people, and that having a passion for literature or wearing glasses does not make one a Nazi or a freak. Not all Harry Potter fans are rabid. Continue on.

Fakir looked at Mytho, then at Autor, then at Mytho, then at Ahiru again and finally at Mytho for a third time. "… Nice."

His face glowing red, Mytho power walked out of the building, with hopes that the previously mentioned series of events would never re-enter the minds of anyone ever again. We readers know better than that however, and may be replaying the exact moments of the throw in our heads for hours, maybe even days to come.

As the embarrassed mute attempted to discreetly remove himself from sight, Pique confidently strode into view. Being seconded in the cookie-selling competition only by Rue and Fakir, both of whom had ridiculous methods of selling and/or a vicious fan club of sorts, the magenta-haired girl had quite the reason to feel relatively triumphant. She debated whether to sit herself down at the seat recently left vacant by Mytho, but upon seeing Autor lying unconscious only about a meter near the table, she decided that perhaps it wasn't best to stay in the library for long.

After briefly glancing at her fellow student lying motionless, she glared at Fakir with a raised eyebrow.

"Fakir, what did you do?!" she questioned perhaps a little too loud considering where they were.

Fakir looked quite shocked. "Why do people always think I do these things?" he sighed.

"Remember that time you pushed Mytho out of the window?" she stated in an intelligent manner.

"This was settled ages ago" he huffed "He just fell. It was a complete misunderstanding"

"Ya-huh" Pique was honestly uninterested in the matter, so she turned to her dear friend Ahiru for some more meaningful conversation "Ahiru! Wonderful, awesome, doesn't-speak-all-lies Ahiru! Did you do anything exciting last night?" her attention was fully drawn to Ahiru now, and her mood had definitely changed for the better since she was accusing Fakir of attempted murder approximately a minute ago.

"Um, not really" she answered quietly "I tried to sell some cookies, and then it rained, and then Fakir disappeared, and then some people yelled at me, and then Fakir came back, and then I had some soup, and then I did homework, and then—"

"Oh, you poor thing!" Pique now had her arms wrapped tightly around the head of said 'poor thing', while Fakir watched on with an animated sweat drop sliding down the side of his forehead. "You're sentence structure skills are appalling. Oh and speaking of cookies, do you have any? I'm just starving!"

"I—"

"Here." Fakir interrupted Ahiru unknowingly as he reached into a random black hole of sorts to grab hold of a brightly coloured box that was never previously mentioned. He then held out his hand as Pique gave him a number of small coins, and it wasn't long until she was happily skipping out of the building, munching on the mysterious doughy confection.

"Wait!" Ahiru yelled from across the room, yet not necessarily noticed by Pique "I wouldn't be eating those! They … have … quail … in them" However, by the time Ahiru had finished her sentence, her friend had already left eyesight and could have well consumed a good few cookies in that time, depending on her hunger levels. She sighed as the thought of the little birds that could have potentially been killed to form the purple jelly substance in everyone's sweets. She then took a moment to think to herself, coming to the conclusion that that protestor may not have known exactly what they were talking about, and for the quail's sake, prayed that that was the case.

"Quail?" Fakir tapped Ahiru on the shoulder as she stared blankly into the distance, thinking about birds. Technically, she was born a duck, so these subjects caused her to delve into deep thought. "What are you talking about?"

"Wah!" Ahiru quickly caught up with reality and turned around. "Well you wouldn't know, because you weren't there, were you!"

Fakir groaned in defeat as Ahiru began to flatten out the piece of paper Mytho had handed to her.

"Let's see why, shall we?"

A/N Thanks for reading! Hope you liked it! Reviews would be greatly appreciated :3