Well! A slightly longer chapter than the previous one, at least by a couple hundred words or so. It was originally going to be the shortest chapter so far, but I wracked my brains and stretched it out. I'm sorry for taking quite some time to update this, and now my attention will be going back and forth this story and Tenipuri Crossover. I WILL NOT abandon this while working on TC, even though a reviewer for TC said that I couldn't concentrate on one fic and finish that before turning to another one. I realize that the earlier edition was ambiguous...no, scratch everything. I'm making no sense. This was a plot bunny anyway. -pokes plot bunny to make it squeal-
Hope you enjoy this chapter as well! -bows- Onwards!!
As if on cue, all of the Hyoutei tennis members (excluding Jiroh, who had promptly fallen alseep on a bench) turned to stare at the cat. Ryoma was starting to feel like a specimen on display as he was skewered by incredulous stares.
"Now that you've said it..." Gakuto came to stand beside Yuushi, a finger pointed at Ryoma, "He looks like that first year from Seigaku! You know, the one everyone's been talking about, how he's a first year brat that managed to get on to the famous Seigaku tennis team."
Brat? Brat? Ryoma shot to his feet indignantly. He was not a first year brat! He hissed angrily, his ears flattening against his head.
"Maa, it's just a coincidence." Chotaroh laughed uneasily. "I mean, Echizen-kun is...a boy, right? This is just a stray cat that I picked up when he was wandering the Hyoutei grounds."
For once, Ryoma didn't object to someone calling him a stray. He wanted the attention off him, then perhaps he could attempt to escape and find his sempais. Yuushi's guess was a little too close to the truth to suit him. They couldn't do anything even if they found out the truth – it was too farfetched to believe, and besides, who'd ever heard of someone ransoming a 'stray' cat?
"Still, the similarities are quite uncanny." Shishidoh poked Ryoma in the side. "Can you talk?"
Ryoma swiped his front claws across Shishidoh's hands as a reply.
"Shishidoh-san, your hands!"
"I told you not to provoke the cat."
"It's your own fault." Gakuto shrugged. "If you want, take a picture of the cat, then. You can show it to that first-year when we meet him for the match."
"Oh, good idea." Yuushi rummaged about in his bag then produced his cell phone, which had an inbuilt camera. "It'll be interesting to see his face when I show him this."
Ryoma glared sullenly at the camera lens, wishing that he had never come to Hyoutei. The tennis had made up for it a little, sure, but it still wasn't worth it to have the Hyoutei members poking him and taking pictures of him, for goodness' sake.
Atobe came back at this moment, and declared the break over. Thankfully, everyone's interest in the cat's similarity to Seigaku's most recent and famous rookie diminished instantly, although Chotaroh gave him a rueful pat on the head. Kabaji had to shake poor Jiroh awake as Atobe got them started on volleys.
Ryoma watched as they went back to training. It was time to sneak off quietly and unobtrusively, he thought. Giving his limbs a bit of a stretch, he glanced at the ground from the bench he was perched on. It seemed far for a cat his size, but confident in his newly acquired 'nine lives', Ryoma took a daring leap – and landed, of course, on all four legs.
"Psst! Ryoma!" A cat's hiss sounded, and Ryoma looked aside irritably. Momoshiro was crouched under the bushes just beyond the tennis courts, his tail swishing from side to side. Kaidoh and Fuji were nowhere to be seen, or they might just be lying out of sight until Ryoma rejoined them.
"Where were you?" Ryoma asked crankily as he trotted over to join his sempai, careful not to let Chotaroh or anyone else spot him. "Yuushi-san came very close to finding out the truth. He said I looked like Ryoma Echizen from Seigaku!" He appropriately omitted the 'first year brat' phrase out of his recounting.
"Really?" Momoshiro sounded impressed. He moved aside to allow Ryoma to squeeze in underneath the bush. "He really is a tensai then."
"Hmm." Fuji's voice sounded so close to Ryoma's ear that he very nearly yowled out loud. As it was, his fur shot up on end for the upteenth time in the day.
"Fuji-sempai!!" Ryoma protested, baring his teeth in a grimace. "Don't sneak up on me like that!"
"I didn't." Fuji replied mildly, his light chocolate fur immaculately groomed. "I was here all along."
"Whatever." Ryoma grumbled, settling down to lick his fur again. He was going to cough up a massive furball later, he was sure of that. "We got what we came for. Can we go back now?"
A slow smile spread eeriely across Fuji's cat face. "Of course. The only problem is, I seem to have forgotten the way backto Tezuka's house."
"What?!"
--
The practice match ended roughly two hours later, and Chotaroh came back to the bench puzzled.
"Eh? The cat's gone." He said in disappointment. "I hope it doesn't get run over by a truck or anything..."
--
Ryoma sneezed. Everyone else paused to look at him critically, and he swished his fluffy tail nervously.
"What?" He asked defensively.
"You sneezed." Fuji stated calmly.
"So?"
No one bothered to say anything else. They all followed Fuji nervously, the four cats weaving their way in and out of the human traffic that congested the sidewalk. Kaidoh's whiskers twitched once.
"Fuji-sempai, are you sure we're going the right way?" He questioned when he noticed that they had passed the same pink billboard about three times before.
"Well, I did say that I'd forgotten the way back to Tezuka's house." Fuji replied, seemingly unconcerned as his head went up to sniff the air lightly. "Things look so different when you're a cat, doesn't it?"
"Let's try some other way than the path we've been following the last ten minutes." Ryoma suggested. Momoshiro pounced happily on a stray leaf that happened to flutter by, paying no great interest to either his companions or the surroundings. "How about this way?"
Fuji didn't object, so the four cats padded their way down a less busy sidewalk that branched off the main road. Kaidoh's dark fur with green markings attracted a lot of attention from passing people, and more than one tried to pick the cat up to have a closer look. Kaidoh warned these overenthusiastic people off with a baring of his teeth, and when one of the humans hurriedly got out a cellphone to call the nearest animal shelter for dangerous cats, the four cats fled hurriedly, vanishing with a graceful bound.
"Baka Mamushi! See what you got us into!" Momoshiro hissed as they watched, safe under the cover of a leafy bush (where they seemed to be hiding out a lot), the human replace his cellphone as he realized that the cats were gone. "We could've gotten locked up!"
"Pshhh." Was Kaidoh's cranky reply. The poor cat was tired and all Kaidoh felt like doing was crawling back to Tezuka's house where, at least, he knew that Tezuka couldn't unknowingly send them off to an animal shelter.
Fuji stared silently at them for a long time.
"What?" Ryoma asked cautiously.
"I think we should go this way." The brilliant cat-grin was back on Fuji's face again, and he shook his fur out as they left the safety of the bush. Amazingly, Fuji's memory didn't 'fail' him this time as the cats stared up at their buchou's modest and neat house.
"We're back!" Ryoma was undeniably relieved. He'd had enough of a 'walk' with Fuji-sempai, and was more than ready to hurl his little cat body on to one of the soft sofas that he'd spied earlier that morning.
Momoshiro, however, was still staring at the front door.
"How are we going to get in?" He asked finally, scratching himself under the chin.
"Well...the same way Fuji-sempai got us out." Ryoma replied finally.
"But Fuji-sempai unlocked the front door from the inside by jumping on that tall decorative table that was just beside the front door." Momoshiro pointed out. "There's nothing to jump on here, this side of the door."
Momoshiro was, sadly, right. Everyone's gaze went to Fuji for an answer.
"I daresay we can get in all right." He replied easily. "Tezuka-buchou's coming up the street, anyway."
It was with extreme alarm and slight trepidition that Tezuka faced one supremely smug and three exhausted cats sitting on his porch, all staring at him with huge, solemn eyes. He felt rather like a specimen under scrutiny as he fished around for the front door keys in his pocket. He had just returned from a long and gruelling lecture from Ryuzaki-sensei, and did not feel up to wondering why the four cats he had left in his room were now sitting on his front porch, calmly awaiting his return. And he did not know why three of them looked as if they had been run through by a steamroller, either.
When Tezuka finally found the front door keys, Kaidoh sat up in relief.
"Pshhhhh." Was the extra long hiss from him at the anticipation of getting inside the house and out of the heat. His dark, green-mottled tail swept the porch eagerly.
Tezuka frowned when he realized that the front door was unlocked, contrary to what he had done by locking it that morning after his parents had gone to work and he, to school. He gave a sharp glance to the calico cat that was Fuji, who beamed right back at him. If there was a cat who could unlock a door quite deviously, he was sure it would be Fuji. However, he was relieved when, upon opening the door, he was not faced with a scene of mass destruction. Everything seemed to be in place and where it was supposed to be.
He was quite startled when three furry forms streaked past him. One landed squarely on the sofa, scattering a tiny amount of loose dark green fur on the white cushion. One shot straight into the kitchen and Tezuka stoidly refrained from wincing when he heard a 'thump' which probably indicated that the cat had ran head on into the controversial wood cupboard, upon which many guests had also studded a toe or two. The last cat vanished upstairs in a flick of its tail, apparently seeking some more familiar and comforting surroundings.
Tezuka sighed inwardly and replaced his house keys in his pocket. Fuji swayed through the front door, looking quite pleased with himself.
"How did you unlock the front door?" Tezuka asked the cat sternly, not really expecting a reply. He watched as Fuji oblingly showed him how he had achieved the feat, leaping lightly up on the decorative table beside the door and tapping the doorknob with one furry paw without actually showing his Captain how he had gotten the lock to spring.
Tezuka had hoped that being turned into a cat had idiotfied and sadisticfied the tensai of Seigaku, but apparently that was not the case. He turned away from Fuji, who had a disgustingly amused smile on his furry little face, and went to his bedroom.
It wasn't long before Momoshiro appeared at the door of his room, a pleading expression on his whiskered face as his tummy rumbled, alarmingly loud. Oh. The violet-eyed cat was probably starving, and now that Tezuka thought back on it, he was sure neither he nor his parents had left anything out for the cats. He felt a sudden stab of guiltiness.
He proceeded to the kitchen with the cats in tow, searching the cupboards for food that a cat could safely eat. Having no pets in his household, and therefore not having any cat food, Tezuka gave them some dry biscuits, which Momoshiro, prominently, seemed to wolf down at an alarming rate. Tezuka made a note to purchase tins of cat food, and to remember to charge the four for the cost of feeding them while the situation lasted.
His parents came home then, and Tezuka had to bundle the four cats into his room as his parents didn't feel extremely comfortable with the animals. He made sure to close the door tightly after him, but he no doubt knew that Fuji could pry the door open had he any mind to.
"I'm glad Tezuka-buchou came home when he did." Momoshiro belched and sighed, flopping down on his belly. "Otherwise we might've been stuck outside until goodness knows when."
"I want Ponta." Ryoma grumbled, curling up into a ball in one corner. "I always have Ponta after dinner."
"I'd prefer it if Inui-sempai turned us back." Momoshiro remarked. "I mean, being a cat and all is fun, but it gets tiring after a while. Everyone else is so much bigger than us."
"I'm sure Inui-sempai will come up with something soon." Kaidoh commented. "Maybe he's working on the juice antidote now."
Immediately, the image of Inui bending over a bubbling, frothing liquid in a dark and sinister room popped into everyone's minds, and as one, they shuddered, even Fuji. They hoped that the antidote that Inui was working on was effective, and that they wouldn't have to drink countless of nasty, foul-tasting Juices for nothing.
They lounged around in the room, waiting for Tezuka-buchou to return. Momoshiro and Kaidoh started out by playing a gentle tug-o-war using one of the hand towels in the bathroom, which rapidly turned to an outright war and both cats hissed, spat and scratched each other in an attempt to win the towel over.
"Those two will always be at each other's throats, wouldn't they?" Fuji remarked in amusement as he padded over to Ryoma, who was still cranky about his lack of Ponta. A ripping sound filled the air. "Dear me, now they've gone and torn the towel."
In the distance, they heard the peal of the telephone, the sound of someone walking across to pick the jangling receiver up, then the muted voice of a person floated dreamily up the stairs and squeezed under the door. Ryoma cocked his head to one side.
"Oh. They've stopped." He observed as Momoshiro and Kaidoh both stopped pulling at the same time, both too tired to continue the battle over the towel. The said article was lying in a pitiful heap on the floor, dirty and shredded beyond repair.
The door to the bedroom opened, and Tezuka came in. He frowned at the sight of the ruined towel, but said nothing as he moved aside to allow another person to come in.
Inui Sadaharu, data genius of the famous Seishun Gakuen's tennis team, stepped into the room, carrying a large jar which contained the infamous Juice, this time looking for all the world like a mutated alien as one moment it was unnaturally still, then the other moment, without Inui moving, the Juice slapped angrily against the side of the jar, leaving trails of what looked like slime as it slid back down to the bottom of the jar. The colour was something that no one could describe, a cross between ochre-red, a dark sabre colour, and with a sprinkling of pink dots. Momoshiro and Kaidoh gulped audibly.
"Inui, I hope this works." Tezuka said omniously, and Inui smiled very sinisterly as he carefully placed the jar on the floor.
TBC
You know what to do. Typos, weird grammar, thoughts and suggestions - pack them in a review, please!
Thank you!
PS: Idiotfied and sadisticfied are not real words.