Shopping. Oh Lord Help...

Poor Yusuke is the victim of having to go shopping with you and the girls. Poor boy. But you both wind up doing the same thing, walking behind the chattering girls with your hands in your pockets and your heads down, except when Botan or Keiko grabs your arm and drags you over to talk about how cute you'd be in this dress, or when Yusuke decides to pick on Keiko with a bit of "underwear" he likes.

"Lemme alone! I don't wear dresses!" you shout for what has to be the six hundredth time. "You do it again, I'm going to the arcade to play DDR, and I'm not coming until you're in your fucking car and you use the damned communicator to tell me!"

"We've already agreed, you get to go to the arcade with us when we finish. Now come on, won't you try on this dress for us? Just this one? Or we won't let you go to the arcade."

"What?!" you almost shout. Yusuke looks at you amusedly, but you hit him in the head for looking at you like that, and then continue glaring at the girls.

"Just try on this dress!"

"I'm happy with my t-shirts and jeans, thank you!"

"None of them FIT!"

"They do too fit. They just don't fit as tight as you think they should."

"You buy your clothes at thrift shops and sizes that are two times too big for you. The only reason your pants don't fall down all the time is because you're a girl!" Keiko shouts.

"So WHAT?"

"So you've got a figure under that long flour bag of a coat and your tents that you call clothes!"

"And I suppose you want to see it?"

"I want to see how pretty you really can be!"

"Why do I sense a trip to the make-up department?"

"If you don't go with this, we're going to make you carry one of us on your back. And there's no way you can knock any of us off you without hurting us, and no one will be happy with you for that."

"So? Are you forgetting who I am? I can probably carry all of you at once, if I could figure out how."

"No, I'm not forgetting. I know full well that you won't put up with anyone screaming in your very sensitive ear," Botan says, petting your chin with a finger. You fight the urge to punch her in the jaw, but you settle very firmly where you stand. "Now, try this on!" she says, holding a slinky-looking red dress at you. You look at it, then at her.

"Botan... Please... I'm not a whore."

"I never said you were."

"Prove it and pick out something that doesn't show my back, half my boobs, and most of my legs, please?"

"You have boobs?" Keiko says skeptically, quirking an eyebrow.

"Wouldn't you like to know, you little lesbo?" you demand, crossing your arms.

"Oooh, testy," Botan says. Yukina puts her hand on your arm, but you shrug her off very gently. You sit down on the floor like a little girl, until Botan comes back with another red dress. It's got no sleeves, but it goes all the way up to your neck on the back and the front, and it goes to the floor with a slit on one side, most of the way up to the hip. The lining is gold and black, tracing around the edge of the collar and there is a band of it that goes over where your left breast would be, were you wearing it, down to the waist, and there's a black foot-wide ribbon tied loosely around the waist. You look up at her.

"Why red? Black, sure, but why the hell do you pick red so fucking much?"

"You seem like a very red person," she says with a cheerful smile.

"Maybe because I'm usually bleeding when you see me," you growl, "or I've got some blood on me, in any case. And there'll be your blood on my fist in a little while."

"Enough talk, go change," Botan says, pointing. You lead the way to the changing rooms, and you stand in the stall. You have to keep your word, so you dress into the red... thing.

"I've changed. You'll be able to tell because there's gonna be a hole in this stupid door, and you'll see me in it, right after I get my fist out of it. I don't like it, and I'm changing back."

"No! You have to model it for us!" Botan demands.

"I'm not modeling anything for anyone!"

"I'll ride on your back and scream in your ear for every five minutes-" Keiko threatens.

"Come ON, guys, it's touching me! And it's red! And... Uggghh!"

"Come out, give us a twirl, then go back and change back. And if we like it, we're buying it."

"For WHO?"

"You, silly."

"And I would wear a dress without this obligation...?"

"Oh, I dunno. You might get a date with a certain someone. You ARE supposed to mother the greatest things of all time with--"

"Say it, and I'll kill you," you say very evenly. "And I may not be their mother. It's a possibility, not a fact."

"Good enough a possibility that I'll talk about it!" Botan says. "And I'll say it if you don't come out in three... two..."

You open the door and walk out, arms crossed and head down. You look at Botan with the death glare that Hiei tends to give Kuwabara. "Lower your arms."

You put them at your sides, but your fists are clenched.

"Pick your head up."

You do as she says, but you are twitching, now, with your anger and you seem ready to launch yourself at the Reaper and kill her.

"She's got a figure!" Keiko squeals.

"She's got a great figure," Botan says, sounding amazed. "I didn't know you could be so pretty!"

"You know, all I have to do to kill you is thump a little bit of air in your face."

"But you're so pretty!" Botan says, grabbing your shoulders from behind and pushing you towards the area the others are waiting in. You grab her arm and flip her over your back, and she lands on her back and starts whining as you stomp off to the others.

"Where's Botan?" Yukina asks. You point back into the dressing rooms.

"I, uh... knocked her down," you say. Botan comes out, fuming.

"Knocked me down my ass; you flipped me onto the floor and nearly broke my arm and my neck!"

"Yes, and it's the most exciting thing that will ever happen because of this dress unless I happen to kill you in it, and this is red- the blood won't show," you warn.

"But you're so pretty in it," Yukina says sweetly. "It's very nice on you."

"We're buying it! And we'll be stopping in the make-up department to get you some make-up to go with this. And shoes."

"I don't know how to put make-up on, for one ((I don't. And I'm putting this down on you.)) and for another, I'm never wearing this thing again, no matter how I look," you growl. You retreat back to the changing stall and you hear Yukina outside the door. You pull your pants on and let her in the stall, because you don't want anything she finds important enough to talk about heard.

"Kali-san, you don't have to be so self-conscious. You did look very pretty," she whispers. "And Hiei-sama will think so, too."

"How'd you know--"

"I could guess," she says with a smile. Her tones told you she is lying her ass off.

"Botan told you. You're a bad liar. Now, I've held up my end of the bargain, could you help me keep them off my back, literally?"

"Oh, of course," she says. "After we get the shoes and make-up. We're trying to get you and Hiei-sama to go on a date."

"Whose idea was that?" you ask, feeling very homicidal all of a sudden, and being perfectly willing to skip the arcade if you get the opportunity to rip Botan's heart with your bare hand.

"Botan-san's, I think," she says, confirming your suspicion.

"Oh. I'll run her through."

"Oh, no, please!" Yukina yelps, grabbing your arm. "Please, no! Just try, just once. You like him, don't you?"

"It's not whether or not I like him, it's whether or not we can spend a night alone with each other without one of us killing the other for some reason or another."

"Oh... He won't," she says cheerfully as she leaves. You follow her, shoving the dress into Botan's arms and stalking away before Keiko grabs your arm.

"We need you with us for the make-up. And we need to know what size shoes you wear."

A long pause passes between you, then you look at your boots, at the bottom, though you know what size they are- they are men's. You know what you wear in men's sizes, but women's sizes are complicated and you have no idea what you wear in any of them.

"Uhh... I don't know what size shoes I wear in women's. Mens, I wear a seven. ((An eight is a nine and a half in women's, but apparently, I have big feet for a female, so I'm taking it down.))

"Oh. We can use a chart, then, to help us," she says with a smile. "Now, come on, we need to have your face to help us with the make-up."

You groan again as they start dragging you. Yusuke looks amused as you walk behind them with your head down.

"What the fuck are you smirking at?" you demand, glaring heatedly at Yusuke.

"You," he answers.

"Shut up," you answer, punching at him. He catches your fist, but he doesn't catch the other fist going for his solar plexus and you knock the wind out of him. He punches you in the back when you turn around, and you launch yourself at him, tackling him to the floor. Botan and Keiko team up to wrestle you to the floor, and Yukina calms Yusuke down easily, grabbing his arm and hanging onto it. He wouldn't have stopped if he wasn't so sure that someone would die if he didn't. You, however, are fighting like a madwoman to be released, but you can't figure out how much strength it would take to force both of them off of you, so you calm down and settle where you lay until they get off you.

"Don't fight, dummy, or we'll-"

"I know."

"You're silly," Yukina says. You smile slightly at her. It's hard to be mad at someone who's so sweet, you think, but you suddenly remember how easy it is to be angry with Botan as she sits you in the chair next to the test samples. An old woman wearing the wrong colors walk up, but you insult her until she goes away, and a younger woman wearing the right colors comes towards you. You sit with your jaw clenched and your eyes shut while they chatter about what to do about a foundation, because your skin color doesn't seem to suit anything they have. ((I, apparently, have this problem, being sheet-white. Even the "Ivory" stuff doesn't suit me. I found this out at school when I became my Chorus class's Barbie Doll. Whee. But in any case, I'm inflicting this on you, too. God opened the clouds and said "fuck the Irish. And the Scotts."))

"Well... We could just not use foundation- she's not going to be wearing this for long," Botan says. "And we can't have much, because I'm afraid she'll injure anyone who stays around her face like this for too long."

"First date for the rocker punk?" woman asks.

More like an experiment with a trained killer, you think. Yusuke laughs a little, almost too quietly to hear. You look at him and narrow your eyes hatefully, until Botan starts brushing a shade of blush on you and you automatically close your eyes again to concentrate on not reaching up and breaking her arm. Someone starts putting something on your eye, and you grip the arm of the chair, which suddenly creaks.

"Calm down, it's just eye shadow!" Keiko hisses.

"She's... touching... me..." you hiss back.

"It's okay," Botan says in your ear.

"I'm going to snap..." you say. Then it goes away, and they start back on your eyes.

Through the eye liner, it's very tempting to reach up and just snap Botan's right wrist, and the woman-helping-her's left one. It's also very tempting to scream and run, but you're afraid that you'll get stabbed in the eyes if you move.

"I swear to all gods, I can walk into a fight six thousand to one and not bat an eye, but make-up will be the end of me," you groan when they finish. Botan smiles cheerfully.

"Nonsense! You look wonderful!"

You look in the mirror and see that you're wearing very red lipstick, almost as red blush, red eye shadow, and black eyeliner and mascara. You realize, for the first time, that you have very strangely waved eyelashes.

Botan's buying the right shades of make-up and you run as quickly as possible to the nearest bathroom to get this shit off your face.

"Get it OFF!" you yelp, scrubbing your eyes and watching the black run into the water and down your face, making streaks on your face. It has a fascinating look, but you take it off and start for the arcade. Yusuke's waiting outside the bathroom for you.

"Why are you here?"

"Because as much as I love my girlfriend, I don't want to spend any more time with her friends," he answers. "You're more fun."

"Ah," you mutter. "Do you know how to play DDR?"

"Yes, but I'm not going to."

"Aw, come on, just because you have no rhythm doesn't mean you won't be fast enough to get it."

He glares.

"Okay," you mutter. You walk into the arcade and get some tokens and you start to play. Yusuke watches you, until you finally pull him onto the neighboring pad.

He's actually pretty good, you find out. Ties with you on Standard Mode. But he still loses in the long run.

"You two!" Botan screams at you. You turn around and look at her, still going on "Twilight Zone", though you have trouble with doing it backwards.

"Yes?"

"We're leaving."

"Leddus finish this one, then we'll come," you say, smiling and turning back around just in time for the big finish.

"Okay, we're coming," you say. Botan has a frightening number of bags with her, which she promptly shoves into your arms, so you wind up carrying them to their car.

To no surprise, when you get there, Yusuke takes your bike helmet and waits for you on your bike while the girls are giggling profusely as they pile into the car.