A/N: … The beginning of what may just be the best fic… ever. Ever. Seriously. I mean this. Well, no, I don't, but who cares? Here it is. It's going to be multi-chapter, so, uh, approximately nothing is explained in this chapter except that Horohoro should probably not attempt poetry.
Warnings: … uh… none this chapter? Possible shounen ai/yaoi-- maybe Horo X Ren, Hao X (insert random character here,) and … yeah, I don't know, depends where things head. Absolutely nothing serious, though. This is a humor fic. … There's a wee bit o' profanity, though.
Disclaimer: Don't own Shaman King. It belongs to Takei-sensei. Wow. Who woulda thunk it? If I owned ManKin, Horo would molest Ren regularly, and Hao would be the main character instead of his brother. … Yeah.
On with the fic.
Tao Ren ran his tongue along the roof of his mouth, and glared down at his work. This wasn't just anything he was making here, no! It required concentration, and skill, and hard work! It required the sort of dedication and talent that, out of all the members of Team THE Ren, only he had!
… Exactly why Tao Ren had sewing skills is another story for another day.
"Ooooi~! Reeeeen~! Reeen~ where are you?" came a loud, raucous voice, from somewhere out in the hallway. It sounded like Horohoro. Sure, he'd matured and mellowed out a bit since Ren's "death," but he was still annoying and stupid more frequently than seemed humanly possible.
Ren deemed that the best response to that question was, probably, no response. There was no reason to let Horohoro know where he was. He was busy, and quite happy to be –alone- while working, thank you. Distraction from the annoying blue-haired snowboarder was completely unnecessary, and probably a thing to be avoided.
He had a job to do, see. A task that needed doing! Not completing this (incredibly irritating) job would probably result in near-certain death.
It's not wise to oppose Asakura Hao unless you know what you're doing, and are fully prepared to face any and all consequences. … or you're suicidal. It's fine to face Hao if you're suicidal, since you'll probably die. Ren was most definitely suicidal, and was also fully aware that it would be impossible for him to face Hao's wrath, so he figured obeying, even if he didn't want to, was probably a good idea. You could never be quite sure what Hao would do if you decided you didn't feel like listening to him, and, well…
"Reeeeen~! Where are you? I've got something to show you!" Horohoro was yelling again. Really, it was days like today that made Ren wonder if the universe had some sort of grudge against him. He was being forced to sew, for Hao, no less, and Horohoro was acting stupid again. Really, his day probably couldn't get any worse.
The door was kicked open noisily, and Horohoro bounced in. … Bounced. Yes. Really. "Oi~! Ren! Are you in here—hey! Ren!" Horohoro was grinning a big, stupid, overly cheerful grin, and clutched an envelope in one pale hand. Then he paused.
Really, you would pause too, if your first sight upon entering a room was Ren, sitting on the floor in his pajamas, sewing something. It's not really something you see every day, you know? That's probably fortunate. Anyway, for now, at least, Horohoro was highly amused. His grin grew wider, and took on a slightly malicious aspect.
"Aw, did I interrupt little Miss Ren-ren doin' 'is chores?"
Ren twitched. "Shut up," he said, his voice several shades below 'happy,' and, in fact, much closer to 'really pissed off.' No, no, not just close to 'really pissed off.' That description was, in actuality, right on the mark, if perhaps a bit mild. His tone would have been more accurately described with quite a bit of harsh language that would be at least a little out of place in this narrative.
Surprisingly enough, Horohoro did shut up. Maybe at some point he'd actually picked up some common sense, and realized it was stupid to make Ren angry?
. . . No, in fact, that wasn't it. He wasn't saying anything—but he was snickering like there was no tomorrow.
"I told you to shut up," Ren snarled. If looks could kill… well, Horohoro would have died several years ago, but he'd be even more dead now.
"I'm not," Horohoro paused to outright laugh for a moment, before regaining something resembling control, "saying anything. See? I shut up! I'm talking now and all, but I wasn't then, see? I shut up when you told me to, see? So there's no reason to get mad at me, li'l miss Ren-ren!"
That, Ren decided, was not in any way amusing. The nickname was particularly grating on the nerves, in fact. "Just shut up, right now." Ren punctuated the last part of that sentence with a sharp glare, and a sharper pin, which he threw at Horohoro. Okay, maybe it was idiotic, but idiocy never stopped the rest of Team The Ren from doing things, so why should it stop Ren now?
"Ow!" Horohoro said, as the pin bounced rather harmlessly off of his forehead. "What on earth was that, o violent shark-haired leader?" Horohoro laughed again, quite proud of himself for having come up with two great nicknames in just one day. Oh yeah, he was cool. Definitely! He'd have to tell Chocolove, 'coz even if Ren thought they were stupid, Chocolove'd laugh and stuff, 'coz—
"It was a projectile weapon, thrown to make you shut the hell up. Now, do you have something important to say, or are you just here to mock me?"
Horohoro laughed for a second, then, rather suddenly, stopped. "Oh yeah!" he exclaimed, brandishing the envelope he'd bounced in with. "This is for you!" he said, and then tossed it at Ren.
Ren, who had gone back to attempting to sew, was hit in the face. ". . ." was all he had to say.
Horohoro bounced over—which, by the way, was kind of scary—and flopped down on the floor next to Ren. "Open it!" he said, sounding more cheerful than anyone deserved to on a no-good, awful, incredibly bad day like this.
Ren frowned, not amused by Horohoro's excessive energy, but figured he might as well open the envelope. Maybe he'd get money, or maybe his family had bought him his own place so he wouldn't have to stay in a hotel with these morons. Whatever it was, it couldn't possibly make his day any worse, right?
Now, before tearing open the envelope, he figured he might as well see who it was from. There was no from address, and all the envelope said, scrawled sloppily in permanent marker, was . . .
"Fo Pen?" Ren wondered, sounding at once bewildered and annoyed.
"No, no! See, that's a 'T,' right there. And that's not a 'P,' see? It's an 'R!' It says 'To Ren,' yanno. 'Coz that's who it's for. Ren. That's you. I mean, well, you know that's you and stuff. At least I hope you do, 'coz it'd be weird if you'd forgotten your name, and… yeah. See?"
Ren frowned again, squinted, and stared at the envelope for a moment longer. ". . . Ah." Fine then. So whoever had written this had crappy handwriting. Well, that meant it wasn't from his family, then. Oh well, that didn't necessarily mean anything bad. The handwriting was eerily familiar, though, which could be a bad thing.
He tore the envelope open, and pulled out the card.
"Roses are red, violets are blue," the front of the card proclaimed, in large, noisy red letters on a too-bright green background. Down in a corner was a hastily drawn thing that Ren assumed to be a lotus, simply because the hastily scrawled kanji next to it appeared to read 'lotus,' and had a little arrow pointing to the flower next to it. Ren's frown deepened, as he tried to remember where he'd last seen that near-illegible handwriting.
He paused. He blinked. He stared at it a bit.
"Horohoro," he said, turning to stare at the other shaman, "what the fuck is this?"
"C'mon, c'mon!" Horohoro was practically bouncing. "Jus' read the rest of it!"
Ren sighed, and shook his head. Fine. Whatever. He'd read the damn thing. Slowly, he opened the card.
"Team the Ren," the first line read, "would be nothing without you! Happy birthday, Ren!" Under that were crudely draw stick figures—Ren assumed they were supposed to be of Horohoro and Chocolove--waving and smiling.
Ren stared at the card. The card didn't stare back, because it wasn't alive. . . . Silence persisted for a few moments before Ren turned his head to stare at the snowboarding idiot once more.
"What," he said again, "the fuck is this?"
"It's a birthday card," Horohoro explained slowly. "See? That's why it says Happy Birthday right there."
". . . My birthday was a month ago," Ren said slowly, voiced tinged with disbelief and mild annoyance.
". . . so?"
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A/N: LOOKEE. CHAPTER ONE IS DONE. :D What a nice, friendly abrupt ending! Chapter 2 is soon to come. I hope.