Author's Notes – Alright! I finally got chapter three up. Now it's time for chapter four. I'm trying to write this in between quarter finals, oral exams, thesis papers, consumer economic projects, and Spanish stuff, so sorry if this chapter comes out later than normal. I hope you guys enjoy it anyways. Viva Yaegashi and Koume!

Rated – PG – 13 for swearing *glares at Koume*

Exciting Girl Talk! Kunikida's Missing? Blue Seed 1.399: The Mysteries of the Decorative Orochi-Slime and the Power Outage That'd put California to Shame.

            Kusenagi woke up the next morning with a raging headache and the inability to move the majority of his torso without causing extreme pain or agitation. With a groan he tried to sit up; his neck, shoulders, and back killing him from sleeping on a hardwood floor, courtesy of Momiji. Propping himself up with one arm, Kusenagi rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and took a look around him. A beam of sunlight was streaming through the three-foot wide gap in homework that Kusenagi's head had majestically smashed through the night before. Aside from that one beam of light, the room was dark, the rest of the light having been sucked up by the evil void of Momiji's plethora of homework. Kusenagi looked around for Momiji, and to his surprise didn't find her. Grunting, swearing, and yelling then ensued as Kusenagi tried to stand up so as to go look for her.

            "Momiji?" Kusenagi called, hoping for a response. He got none. Wondering if maybe Momiji was at school, Kusenagi slowly made his way towards her door, only to find a piece of accursed paper taped to it. The note read:

Dear Kusenagi,

            By the time you read this, I'll have already left for school. I'm still mad about last night (passing out on me like that you jackass, sheez!), but I'm willing to forgive and forget. School is guaranteed to be really gut-wrenchingly hard today, so I could sure use a nice surprise when I got home (hint hint!). BTW, Mr. Kunikida didn't come home last night (he wasn't here to eat his traditional Japanese breakfast that I always make for him this morning, which is very peculiar), so if you could stop by the TAC office building today and find out where the heck he was, that'd be great. Luv ya lots!

Your wonderful, caring, beautiful, gorgeous, smart, funny, pretty, nice, sweet, girlfriend,

Momiji

            "Why does she make me having to do everything for her?" Kusenagi grumbled grumpily as he crumpled up the note. First thing first: get aspirin, get morphine, and then get Kunikida. Noting his various tasks, Kusenagi left the room, and grabbing a bite to eat on the way out, left the Kunikida residence, his destination being the nearest Drug-o-Mart.

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            Yaegashi skipped going to the office first thing, as he quickly made his way over to the Snoozano-o tree to fix the machine that had fizzled out. Making his way up to the machine, Yaegashi turned on his laptop and set up the program needed for the particular piece of broken junk. Once arriving at the machine, Yaegashi plugged in his laptop and began fixing it. Suddenly, he heard a beep on his monitor, and another screen popped up. The screen showed how every single machine at the tree had blown out as a result of the power outage from the night before.

            "DAMNIT!!!" Yaegashi swore in an uncharacteristic manner as he kicked the tree and cursed himself for having forgotten to put surge-protectors on the mechanisms. Then again, being as big as Tokyo was, it was quite odd to have all of the power go out. That thought having crossed his mind; Yaegashi stopped beating the tree (much to the tree's relief) suddenly began to wonder why exactly the power had gone out. "I've never heard of a major city having a major, unpredictable power outage, where all of the reserves and back-ups failed as well. Los Angeles and San Francisco had major power outages that I know of, but those were planned rolling blackouts. Hm, quite odd…"

            Yaegashi got excited at this thought. "Maybe there are still Aragami around! Wait, why am I so happy about that?" Yaegashi exclaimed, knowing full well the reason why he was so happy was because of two reasons. The first reason being that he could get away from that horrid desk job and get back into the field a little bit, and the second reason being that he could get Koume to let off some serious steam on blowing the Aragami to little bitty pieces, thus giving him a break from her pent-up rage of being cooped up as Kunikida's makeshift secretary.

            With that in mind, Yaegashi unplugged his laptop from the dead machine and ran back to his car, anxious to get to the TAC office and fill everyone else in on his theory.

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            Matsudaira and Koume were both sitting around at the TAC office with nothing to do. The night before, Matsudaira had been studying the effects of the Orochi-chunk that was crawling up her arm when she became very tired and fell asleep. Apparently, she told Koume, Orochi had a few tricks that they didn't know about earlier, one of them being the ability to spew spores that could send even a whale into slumber land. When Koume walked in (on time for once) and woke her up, the Orochi-bit had crawled away, causing Matsudaira's day to be blown before it had even begun.

                "Aw, quit your sulkin' Matsu, you've got plenty more of that Orochi-Aragami-crap in your lab. You can just get some later." Matsudaira simply sighed at Koume's attempt to cheer her up and went back to her earlier task of filling out various, unimportant paperwork. Frustrated at the thought that she had just been blown off, Koume spoke up,

            "You know what you need? Ya need to get out more. Go see Jun or somethin'. I dunno, try going out to a bar at some point. Maybe start datin' again. Or maybe you and I could go to the target range! Yeah, that'd be great!" Mastudaira sighed again and looked at Koume.

            "I love my work, it's what I do, it's what I want to do, it's what I love to do. I don't need to start dating again, I see Jun enough as it is, and you know as well as I do that I'm not marksman when it comes to shooting."

            "Bah!" Koume spat, "You keep workin' like that and you'll give yourself an ulcer. As for datin', why not? Yoshiki and I wouldn't mind double-datin', well, at least if he did mind I'd make him not mind, and the point of target practice is to get better."

            "If I get an ulcer, then I'll get an ulcer, I really don't care. As for dating, I tried dating, even marriage and being a homemaker, but they just weren't for me. Why don't you and Yaegashi double date with Mr. Kunikida and Ryoko?" Matsudaira retorted in a calm, low voice as she put down her pencil and began staring at the once-white walls, the piece of Orochi having gone crawling all over it, leaving really weird slime-marks all over the place. Matsudaira had wanted to study the trail, but it was dry. She made a mental note to jot down the pattern and to then get out her knife and scrape some off.

            "Yoshiki and I never were comfortable with the idea of double dating with Kunikida. I mean, he's our boss for God's sake! That'd be like double dating with your professor somethin'. Besides, all of those lame-ass jokes that he makes really kills the mood." Koume exclaimed as she kicked her feet up onto her desk and began counting the ceiling tiles.

            "You never really struck me as the romantic type of person." Matsudaira said absent-mindedly, noting it more of a side-comment than an actual part of their conversation. Koume, who liked being thought of as a tough and a take-no-crap-kinda-gal rather than a normal girl with giggly notions of romance and how many different shades of pink there are within in the color spectrum, blew off Matsudaira's last comment and changed the subject.

            "Speaking of Kunikida and Ryoko, where are they? I mean, come on, I'm actually on time for once and they're not. I'm starting to see a pattern of a double-standard going on."

            "It is quite odd that they're not here, although one would presume many tangible reasons as to the reason why." Matsudaira commented, noticing Koume's change in subject and making a note to herself to prod her about it later on. Matsudaira looked over at Koume, and knew what was coming as she viewed the evil look upon her face that said that she was thinking things that she shouldn't be.

            "I bet they're doing it in the janitor's closet." Koume commented with a hint of malevolence in her voice.

            "Koume!" Matsudaira exclaimed with a scolding tone, she knew Koume was going to get into the subject, and once you got Koume going about co-workers and sex, you could never get her off.

            "Or maybe they're still at home in bed? Or maybe they're doing it in your lab! That would be funny." Matsudaira, who was horrified at the possibility, excused herself and quickly jogged down to her lab, listening for anything that would disturb the silence in the hallway and give a hint as to where her boss and co-worker were. Matsudaira sighed in relief when she opened up the door and found nothing. Upon returning to the office, Koume looked up at her and laughed.

            "You really thought they were there, didn't you?" Koume said through massive fits of laughter. Matsudaira smiled and laughed along with Koume.

            "You must admit, the prospect of it in general is enough to make you want to be sick. I mean, he is Mr. Kunikida." Matsudaira said as she sat back down.

            "BLECH!!! ACK!!! DON'T PUT IMAGES IN MY HEAD!!!" Koume yelled as she put her hands on her head and began shaking it until she became dizzy. The same thought equally horrified Matsudaira, and she tried to drown out the thought by pestering Koume a bit more.

            "Hey Koume, have you and Yaegashi, ever, well, you know, have you two ever…?" Koume's eyes widened as her face turned five different shades of red at Matsudaira's interrogation,

             "NONE OF YOUR DAMN BUSINESS!!! ARGH, I GOTTA DO SOMETHING!!!" Koume screamed as she grabbed her TAC jacket and ran out the door. Matsudaira chuckled, knowing full well that she had some blackmail against Koume, as well as knowing that Koume was a little bit more human than previously thought. "Guess that means I won't be examining her." Matsudaira thought to herself as she went back to her tedious paper work.

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            Kusenagi made his way up the stairs as an angry Koume came barreling down.

            "Outta my way plant boy!" Koume yelled as she stomped past Kusenagi and out the door. Trying not to get confused over Koume's actions (she was Koume after all), Kusenagi continued climbing until he reached the floor of the TAC. Opening the main door, he walked in to find Matsudaira laying on her back on top of a giant pile of office furniture, scraping away at the ceiling. Not one to even bother with Matsudaira when it came to strange and completely nonsensical actions, Kusenagi sat down next to the sad scaffolding attempt and hailed her.

            "Hey up there!"

            "Hm?" Matsudaira asked as she struggled to contort herself into a position that would allow her look down while not knocking over the scaffolding or disturbing the slime on the ceiling that she was currently scraping off. "Kusenagi? What a surprise, what are you doing here?"

            "I was sent by Momiji to find Kunikida. Do y'know where he is?"

            "No, I don't. He didn't come into work today. Why, what happened?"

            "Oh nothing, Momiji just left me a note saying that he didn't come home last night and she asked if I could find out where he was."

            "Well that's odd, because Koume and I were wondering earlier about precisely the same thing. I never realized that he hadn't gone home last night. I wonder what happened."

            "Not that I care or anything, but it is kinda strange. I mean, I've seen that guy, and he's one hell of a stickler when it comes to a traditional Japanese morning routine. He's not one to skip out on one of those, that's for sure."

            "Well, Ryoko hasn't show up for work yet either. Maybe we should give her a call and see where she is." At this comment, Kusenagi suddenly broke out into a sly grin.

            "I think I know where that man is." Kusenagi said has he slipped out the door and back down the stairs. Matsudaira, who knew exactly where Kusenagi was going and decided she was too lazy to stop him, went back to her work at scraping Orochi-sludge off of the ceiling.

The End of Chapter 4

So all you Blue Seed fans out there, what did you think? Like it? Hate it? You know, I started out writing this with no real plot in mind whatsoever. Now not only have I inadvertently set myself up for the perfect storyline, but I've also found a way to tie in all of the events that I'd written so far and had had no intention of ever giving any significance at all. Yippee! Please review, I LOVE reviews!