Author's Note: I don't own Azumanga Daioh. Read this thing here, then review it, becuase it will make me happy, and you need to be happy to write something that feels like Azumanga Daioh. If you're in a sour mood while writing, then you won't get the right feel and the story will be off! How sad is that! Terribly sad! To avoid sadness, write me reviews!
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Kagura dashed down the hall, towards the front door.
You bastards shot Tomo and took Chiyo from us! I'm not letting you get Osaka too!
Sakaki chased after Kagura, lagging behind only slightly.
I... I couldn't help Tomo or Chiyo... but I can at least protect Osaka...
Yomi raced after Sakaki and Kagura. Still, they seemed to be quite a bit faster than she was. Yomi wasn't much of a slouch, but Sakaki seemed to be a sort of savant as far as physical prowess went, and Kagura was a professional athlete. The two had made it to the front door long before Yomi did.
They're coming for Osaka too? thought the bespectacled girl. Why would they wait until now to come after her, and why didn't they just grab her at the restaurant? We were all just... cowering, anyway. Tomo was the only one willing to fight back, and they took her out...
And... Osaka sounded shocked, but she didn't seem to be anything more than surprised. There weren't any sounds of struggle, or anything...
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"Aladdin?" asked Osaka, eyeing the man cautiously.
He grinned at her, as though he expected this kind of reaction, and replied, "Yes. So if you'd just get the Genie and come with us, then everything would be absolutely wonderf-"
"Keeeeyaaaah!" shouted Kagura, cutting him off.
He glanced up just in time to see her foot streaking out towards his face. He deflected it, but just barely. Kagura's momentum carried her toward the ground, and as she landed she swept her foot around towards the man's legs. He hopped backward, but just as he recovered from that she stood up and struck out with her fists. He parried desperately, but the athlete's rage-fueled strength was slowly but surely winning through.
Osaka watched all this happen in the blink of an eye. Before she could even begin to be surprised, Sakaki had picked her up and pulled her backwards, away from the fight and away from the stranger. The dreamer tried to protest, but Sakaki and Kagura didn't seem to be in the sort of mindset that made them easy to convince.
Yomi turned the corner and saw a rather adorable looking Sakaki and Osaka, huddled in a corner, staring out the door. The bespectacled girl dashed down the stairs to check on her friends, who for the most part seemed alright. She followed their gazes and saw an enraged Kagura launching a flurry of attacks which could scarcely be discerned as solitary kicks and punches at a very confused and somewhat frightened looking fellow.
Yomi looked back at Osaka and Sakaki, then glanced back to Kagura, who had now driven the man quite a distance out the front door, though she didn't seem to have any intention of stopping at that. She looked down at Osaka again.
"Osaka... who is that man?"
"Another one of those bad guys, of course." said Sakaki.
"Osaka, who is that man?"
"I... dunno." she replied. "He called me 'Aladdin.' He said that he needed me and the 'Genie' to come with him so that they could protect us."
"Who's this 'Genie'?"
"I dunno. He just asked me to come with him, even after I tried to explain to him that I'm neither Arabian or the owner of a pet monkey or flying carpet."
"Asked."
"Yeah."
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The man kept falling back. A weaker fighter can still last against a stronger opponent by giving up ground constantly, after all, and so he did. He kept stepping backwards, but the woman attacking him refused to tire.
To add to the confusion, she kept shouting things at him.
"You! You bastards shot Tomo!" she screamed. "Kidnapped Chiyo!" came with a kick aimed at his gut. "And you want Osaka too?" she asked, furious. Before he could get a word in edgewise, she struck out at him with her fists, quick as darts. "I won't let you! I might not have helped when you got Tomo, but if she's down, then someone has to step up!" she wailed. "I'll take you!"
He finally managed to catch one of her fists. As it turns out, that was a mistake. The tanned girl dragged him closer and then yanked him off of his feet with her sheer strength. As soon as he'd left the ground, she kneed him in the gut. As he dropped to the ground, she dropped on top of him.
"Tell me where Chiyo is!" she wailed, raising her fists to continue her savage beating.
He glanced up at her, ready to admit that he could barely understand Japanese when people were calmly speaking with him, let alone screaming at him and throwing a variety of punches, but someone else spoke up before he could.
"Oh man! Hot-blooded Kagura kicks immeasurable amounts of ass!" came a voice that was familiar to both.
"No... no way..." said Kagura, who'd suddenly forgotten entirely about wailing on the supposed kidnapper. She stared at the speaker, and her pin on the man slackened.
The person's figure was silhouetted against the rising sun, looking quite dramatic amongst the rest of the morning scenery.
He took full advantage of this and leapt to his feet, saluting her. "Good to see you, Wildcat, ma'am!"
"Hey, Wally, at ease, eh? You know I hate all that stuff, and we don't really care for it much at Low Key anyway. So just... stop it."
"Yes ma'am."
"Tomo..." started Kagura.
"Awww, you cooled off so fast, Kags! It was kind of fun seeing you wail on Wally here, and now you have to get all serious on me? Well, I mean, you were probably serious while fighting him, but at least you were hot-blooded! Kagura, powered by rage! But alas, now it's all gone."
"Erm... Wildcat... ma'am... I understood most of that." said Wally.
"Right. Sorry about that, but it did look really cool, Wally."
"...glad to have entertained you."
"Tomo..." said the athlete.
"Yes, Kagura?"
"Your boy's at attention. All of him."
"Hmm?" Tomo glanced over to Wally, then shot a quick glance at the only area Kagura could have meant. "Oh, ha! Should I be flattered, Kagura?"
"No, it's that..."
"Oh, shit! I'm still in my underwear! Damnit Kagura, you let me go this long without clothes?" Tomo raced towards Osaka's house, leaving Kagura and Wally alone.
"Me... am... sorry. Lately have bad mood. You want come in house? No more fight, promise."
"I can kind of understand Japanese, mind you, I just don't speak it terribly well. Either way, I'll take you up on your offer... er... Kagura, was it?"
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Rémy Beaufort sighed heavily as he wandered down the hallway towards the room where the linguists usually stayed.
A charming voice called out to him. "That you, Rémy? Oh, who am I kidding, of course it is. I could tell that attention-seeking sigh from anywhere. What do you want to complain about today?"
"Hey, Lim, shut up. I've seriously had better days than this."
"Oh? What was your last assignment? Oh, I remember, you had to go recruit that Mihama girl, eh? What a rough assignment! Pick up a pretty young 20-something and try to convince her to join our organization with words. Oh, how difficult! Spare me your sobs, you jerk."
"Lim, you and I both know that if linguistic skills were really that useful in convincing pretty young 20-somethings into doing anything, we'd not even be in this line of work. Instead, we'd be using our linguistic abilities for things that are better left unmentioned.
"Don't you know it. Still, it's easier than my job. I had to do a diplomatic mission. You know, fly out to some country, talk with their leaders, and try to convince them to pledge allegiance to the dominion, or something. Well, you see, I had to fly to Zaire. Do you have any idea how annoyingly bad it is to even get into Zaire? You fly in, and you meet a customs official. He then proceeds to ignore you and ask for things that don't exist until you give him money, at which point he passes you to two customs officials. One of those guys tries to play nice and gives you cigarettes and beer, and the other one simply yells at you and takes away the cigarettes and beer. The net effect is that it slowly drives you insane until you relent and give them money. You do this with every customs official until you finally get into Zaire, and if you wanna get anything you brought into Zaire out of Zaire, you better be ready to go through another entirely different but just as horrible train of customs guys. And you know what? I did that. Zaire is now aligned with the BAD, although I don't see why we need them."
"Hey, I've got to do a diplomacy mission too."
"To Kyrzygystan. We already helped those guys by raiding Darcia in the war. You just have to show up and go 'Hey guys, I'm the BAD representative' and they'll be all over you! Hey, what's that smell?"
"Vomit."
"Too much to drink?"
"Not me."
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Chiyo Mihama was led by an assortment of people who didn't much look like military types to what she presumed was her prison.
"Please, reconsider joining up with BAD, Ms. Mihama." said one of them as they pushed her into a room and locked the door.
Chiyo scrabbled around for the light and eventually managed to flip it on.
...This is a hell of a cushy prison.
It was a hotel room, filled with all the standard things that come with hotel rooms. Chiyo glanced around.
I could try to fashion something to escape... a few parts from this and that and...
She thought back to a conversation she'd had with Osaka and decided against that course of action. With nothing else available to her, Chiyo flopped herself down on the bed and turned on the television, waiting for something to happen.
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"Yeah, you see, it's really quite fascinating." said the grinning doctor.
"Fascinating..." replied Kaori.
"Fascinating!"
"Really."
"Yep. You see, it's the most common disease in the world after tooth decay, and still it seems like nobody in the world has really heard of it."
"Is... that... so."
"Yeah. You see, you get it from wandering around in unsanitary water, yeah? Those people in the poor countries who go wading around in the marshes are prime victims for it. Anyway, it's caused by these little snails."
"Snails."
"Snails. The snails get on the person's feet, right? Well, I guess it's wrong to say the snails cause it, but the snails go on the person's feet and these little worms go from their hosts, the snails, to their new hosts, the people wading in the dirty water. The worms head right on in through the pores and enter the bloodstream rather quickly and start to multiply.
"Worms..."
"Yeah. You'll know when you have it because it's like a combination of the flu and diarrhea, except blood comes out from your wastes too and it burns like hell. It's really quite fascinating."
"Fascinat-"
"Kaori! There's a problem with the gravity generator! You've got to come quick, or we'll crash!" shouted Leo, grabbing the astrophysicist by the wrist and dragging her away.
"Sorry! I go must!" she shouted to the doctor.
"Thank you, Leo." she said. "I don't even know that guy's name, but... gah. He wouldn't let me leave! So... thank you!"
"Problem? Not! Hah!"
"I think that's enough for me. I'm gonna go to my room for a few hours, alright?"
"Mind if I come with?"
"Leo! So enthusiastic!"
"No, no. I don't want to stay out here either, but if I go back to my room they'll think I'm being a hermit, as I do that all the time anyway. Forgive my vanity, Kaori!"
"... Oh, hell. Okay, but if you try anything, I will find something sharp and I will cut you with it."
"Worry not!"
There weren't any defined days or nights on the BAD headquarters, as the pilots liked to simply go wherever they pleased. As a result, people were constantly coming and going from bed, though usually people would make friends with those who had similar sleeping schedules with them. Some of the more cautious doctorly types spoke up a lot about this, saying very many things about how harmful it was to not have a regular sleeping schedule and quoting a lot of very important studies and books, but eventually they settled for simply nagging everyone to get around 8 hours of sleep per 24 hour cycle, although it is unknown as to how many people actually managed to pull that off.
For Kaori, a Japanese native, it would be just after dawn, but her time on the HQ had long since obliterated any remnants of her biological clock. She reached out for her room's door, completely unaware of the fact that this would be the time when she would just be waking up and heading for school.
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Author's Note: Oooh. It's a new chapter. And I get to write some fun stuff for a change! Now in addition to Action Hero Tomo we've got Hot Blooded Kagura, which may or may not be the result of me playing too much Pokemon and activating Houndoom/Flareon's Flash Fire. HOOOT BLOOOOOOOODED!
Oh, yeah. New stuff, eh? But it's the same old same old! You! Click that thing in the bottom left that says "write a review," write one, and then compliment me, or flame me, or act indifferent or something. I'm still powered by reviews! Oooah!
In all honesty, I'm sorry for the delay, but I got distracted with a lot of things. Like Pokemon. Gotta love Pokemon.