Chapter 15:

"The Real Party"

It was almost midnight by the time Yahiko and Misao arrived at the party from the East Falls band camp concert, partially because Yahiko forgot how to get there and also for the fact that Misao refused to drive properly. It amazed Yahiko sometimes on how fast one person could speed down a 25 mph speed limit street and not get caught. Still, he could just as easily understand her rush to get to the beach house since being at the beach house meant being in the bedroom and being in the bedroom automatically meant a HUGE party for two.

They both just barely missed the sight of Tsubame and Chou heading up the stairs to do whatever weird and disturbing things, not fit for writing down, would happen. But even if they had arrived only seconds earlier to see it, it was very doubtful that they would have noticed anything else but each other.

Grinning from ear to ear, Misao hurriedly pushed Yahiko inside, who was by now, too shaken up from the car ride that practically had him wetting his pants to figure out how to balance his upper body. In an instant, Yahiko fell forward, his eyes wide in surprise, and he reached out to try and grab whatever blessed thing there was near him that could prevent his face from meeting the booze-covered carpet. The thing he grabbed onto however happened to be a former classmate of his that was unfortunately standing in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Whirling around and expecting someone completely different to be latched onto his behind, Shishio's cocky smile drooped into a flat line as he came face to face with a familiar head of black spiky hair.

"What the...? Dude, did you just grab my ass?"

Definitely not a good question. Yahiko's first reaction was to run and hide, but knowing him, he would have most likely hid behind some transparent curtains with the thought of, 'If I can't see you, you can't see me!' where he could easily be seen. Yahiko's second choice of action was to pretend he was too drunk to tell the difference between a man's ass and the staircase. Instead, he decided on something much better.

"Um... N... no, but uh... Saito just walked by and I heard he was into that man-ass-grabbing stuff," Yahiko pointed out and at the look of disgust on Shishio's face, it took the smaller man more than a handful of energy to keep a straight face with his next sentence, "Yeah, he once asked me to give him a handjob."

"That sick fuck..." Shishio muttered under his breath, obviously believing every word Yahiko dished out and suddenly snapping out of his daze, he whipped back to face him, "He out there on the porch?"

"Um... sure..." Yahiko shrugged, uncertain.

"Here, hold my beer for a second," Shishio said as he handed the relieved Yahiko the plastic dixie cup he had been drinking from, "I've been holdin' in a bucket load of piss since I got here." And with that, Shishio walked off toward the stairs, grabbing onto the collar of Houji on his way up with a hushed whisper of, "Cover me, I gotta go piss off the balcony again."

After the longest ten seconds of Yahiko's life, his face finally broke off into the widest grin his face allowed.

"HAHAHAHA! Whoo! Misao, hey, did you see that?! He just...!" Yahiko stopped, his ranting suddenly trailing off as he realized that he was the only one laughing like a hyena and he yet again, looked pretty stupid doing so. Turning in several 360 degree circles in search of his girlfriend, Yahiko's eyebrows lifted to inhumane heights. "Uh... Misao? Misao...?" Scratching his head in confusion, Yahiko frowned at the lack of echoed laughter he was so used to sharing with his favorite band camp girl that had so unexpectedly vanished into thin air. "Hm... that's funny. I swear she was right here a second ag... WHOA!"

His back hit the floor. Hard. The word, "Ouch!" didn't even begin to cover it and before he could even recover from his shock and mutter some inappropriate profanities to his "mugger," a hand clamped down on the back of his shirt and gradually began dragging him up the stairs. Well, let's point out the traits of this mystery person that we have collected so far. One, he/she is freakishly strong. Two, he/she is dragging him up the stairs, much like a scenario at his prom. Three, he/she smells like cheap perfume that one can only buy at MacFrugal's. Indeed, Yahiko may be dumb, but it was more than obvious who was bringing him up the stairs. If this sort of thing had happened to him while he was still in high school, Yahiko would have kicked and screamed for his life, but because that wasn't the case, he was remotely calm.

Honestly, he didn't really remember what happened the last time he and Misao got together at prom since he was a little too dazed from the head to floor collision he had just had (and was still having) as his skull came into contact with each step his "captor" climbed. Yet his memory was suddenly reawakened when Misao finally lugged him into his laundry-overridden room and threw him against the farthest wall. His back smacked against the wall with a loud thud, knocking over the picture frame by the window of some miscellaneous family portrait. Although the collision was quite harsh, he paid no attention to the pain, after all, he was somewhat of an experienced person when it came to Misao's freaky way of beginning sex.

Throughout the entire being-thrown-across-the-room-about-a-dozen-times deal, Yahiko couldn't help but smile. 'I could get used to this,' he thought as his back slammed down onto the floor once again and he barely winced as he was immediately pounced upon by a very energetic Misao.

"Say Uncle!" Misao shouted at him, her hands clawing at his clothes. They weren't as expensive as his prom tuxedo so it didn't really matter to Yahiko.

"Huh?!"

"Oh! I mean!" Misao corrected herself, giggling at her mistake for about two seconds until she suddenly turned serious again, "What's my name? Say my name, Bitch!"

"Misao," Yahiko said simply, putting his hands behind his head as he waited for her to get on with her whole half-abusive-but-totally-erotic sex ritual. Yahiko gave her his best smile, more of an ear to ear grin actually, and Misao laughed.

Leaning low to where she had him imprisoned underneath her, she quickly undid the belt at his waist and threw it out the window, ignoring the startling yelp of someone that had caught it with their face outside. Smiling, Misao captured his lips with hers in a not too gentle way, leaving them both no space to breathe. Suddenly, she pushed back and sat upright again as an amusing thought entered her head.

"Hey, I've got an idea!" she exclaimed, pointing one finger up at the ceiling as if she had just discovered some kind of new found element that all scientists had overlooked, "You're always MY bitch whenever uh... well... okay, you're just my bitch. But how's about this time, I'll be yours!"

"ALRIGHT!!! Now we're talkin'!" Yahiko exclaimed excitedly and he eagerly rubbed his hands together in anticipation, his tongue sticking out at the side of his mouth as he tried to conjure up his best fantasies, "Okay, I'm in control then, huh? Heheh... This is gonna be good... Hm, what to do first, what to do first.... Okay, um... how about...?" Yahiko trailed off, his mind slipping from an unusual fantasy involving a lot of water, as another idea nipped him in the back of his brain, an idea that was actually quite appealing at the moment. "Well, there's uh... I dunno if you'd wanna do it or anything, but..."

"What is it?" Misao asked, strangely eager to hear if her boyfriend had some kind of dream she could take up as her duty to fulfill, "Does this have anything to do with ropes and a chair? Or melted chocolate? Wait... this doesn't have any super glue involved, right?"

"Um... no," Yahiko answered with a scratch of his head as nervous sweat began to drip down his neck and uncertainty crept into his thoughts. Yeah, sure, Misao was strange alright, but this was quite a random fantasy. "It's a little weirder than all that and uh... a whole lot less dangerous than the super glue."

"Tell me already!"

"Okay... well, uh..." Yahiko took in one last deep breath and finally said, "Have you ever experimented with baked goods?"



Mina was growing curious. Okay, fine, she was extremely curious. Kenshin and Kaoru had been down in the basement for a good half hour now and Mina had been waiting in the living room for them to come out so she could give them both a good hard noogie. So far, neither person had exited the door she had so enthusiastically ushered them to and she was starting to grow restless with anticipation.

Whatever they were doing couldn't take that long, could it? Unless...

'I shouldn't be doing this...' Mina thought to herself as she quietly tiptoed over to the basement door that was undoubtedly securely locked on the other side, 'I might hear something I shouldn't and then...'

Mina's thoughts trailed off and her foot stopped midair as she was finally able to hear a few hushed whispers coming from behind the door. Leaning in close, she pressed her right ear right above the knob and heard...

"KENSHIN!!!"

A loud crash was heard from the top of the staircase leading down to the lower level floor as Mina fell backwards in shock and coincidently knocked over a dresser near the wall. But the damage didn't stop there, oh no, it seemed that all the furniture had been lined up like dominos and one by one, they knocked one another over until practically every table and chair fell to the floor.

"What was that?" Kenshin asked curiously as he looked up to the right of the ceiling, expecting to see the room shaking and reverberating from some kind of tyrannizing earthquake, "Are we being bombed?"

"Of course we're not getting bombed! That's just God getting angry with you for getting your foot stuck in the pocket AGAIN!" Kaoru shouted into his ear in frustration and she slipped out from underneath his body. Impatient from yet another delay to their getting it on, she rolled her eyes, shaking her head at his stupidity, and went over to the corner of the table where his foot was captured by the tiny hole.

"I'm really sorry, Kaoru, that I am!" Kenshin said. To Kaoru, he sounded just like a broken record since he seemed to have said the exact same thing the last time this happened. As Kaoru wrestled with his leg to unstick him from the pool table, tugging with all her might, she barely noticed that she was causing Kenshin pain; that is, until he screamed: "Oro! OW! Kaoru! That hurts!"

"Well, you should've thought of that before you got your foot stuck in there again! This can really ruin the mood you know," Kaoru snapped back, her hormones lending her the strength to fight the "evil captor of her love" and she gave one last final pull on his leg, "LET GO!"

Almost automatically, Kenshin's foot popped out of the pool table pocket and the force sent Kaoru flying back down onto the table into their original position. Kenshin easily caught her by the waist, but got the wind knocked out of him when she landed on top of his chest.

(Insert overly loud, "Oof!" here.)

"Oh my god! Kenshin! Are you okay?!" Kaoru asked worriedly and she hurriedly checked on his rib cage for any fractures, trying her best to be concerned as her want drove her to play doctor in a not so docterly way, "I didn't mean to land on you. Can you breathe?"

"I'm fine, Kaoru, that I am. Just got the wind knocked out of me, that's all," Kenshin said, his happy-go-lucky smile returning to his face in support of his answer. He had absolutely no complaints at that moment with the girl of his dreams straddling him, even if he held no more feeling in his lower body. Kenshin bit his tongue from asking her if she had gained any weight recently.

"Good," she said and she bent down to give him a much earned kiss.

The pool table under them swayed a bit from under their weight, most likely because of much abuse it had handled that night and because Kaoru did weigh a bit more than she would ever admit. It wobbled for only a few brief seconds, holding them in the air in their tight embrace until it finally collapsed to the ground.

Unharmed and completely preoccupied with themselves, neither seemed to notice that the pool table no longer stood up on four legs and instead was lying completely flat on the floor. After a few seconds of some serious lip-locking, they realized they were human, and Kenshin finally came up for air. Kaoru, also out of breath, pushed her hair over her shoulder and out of her face, and settled her head down on his shoulder for a light break before the big finale would begin.

Kenshin smiled and lightly ran a hand over her bare back, twirling a few silky strands of her waist-length hair through his fingers as he bent down to kiss her brow. It was moments like these that Kenshin had missed most, but unfortunately couldn't have because of a certain narrow-eyed asshole that threatened to kill him if he so much as looked at Kaoru. The only time he had actually been free to spend time with her was their time at the beach house, which even then Saito pushed them away. It was his fault in the beginning that Kenshin didn't even get to see Kaoru play volleyball that day (heheheh...) Speaking of volleyball... Giving a small cough, Kenshin cleared his throat, unsure if he should ruin the intimate moment or give up the upcoming conversation topic.

"Um, Kaoru?" Kenshin began, pulling the length of his collar nervously.

"Hm?" she practically purred in response as she lightly nuzzled his cheek.

"You have a bikini, right?"

Meanwhile, behind the door, Mina was anxiously trying to get away and run from the overpowering mess that she refused to have anything to do with making it. Giving all viewers a shaky drunken smile, she quickly picked up a fallen vase off the floor and lightly placed it back on a turned over shelf at her feet.

"Eheheh... yeah, you know how these beach houses are..." she said with a shrug as she leaned against the wall, "Too many expensive curtains from IKEA, not enough wood from Home Depot..."



"So..." Sanosuke started, looking at Megumi with his most serious face, "Was he a better singer than me?"

"For the tenth time, NO! He wasn't," Megumi replied with a roll of her eyes, tired of her boyfriend's constant and annoying questions that had so far kept them from doing anything interesting. Frankly, she wasn't in all that much of a mood to talk. "You are a much better singer than Aoshi is or ever could be and you are the KING of everything! There! Are you happy now?"

Okay, so the real question she wanted to ask him was, "Are you ready now?" They had been up in Sanosuke's room for a good hour and a half and so far, nada action. Not that Megumi didn't like talking, but since all these "casual" questions were aimed to just boost her boyfriend's already larger-than-life ego, it wasn't too much fun for her.

"The King, eh? So, if I'm the 'King' does that mean I'm better than him at everything else too?" Sanosuke asked, persisting in the fact that he had to be better than Aoshi in every way, that way, he knew just what he had been up against.

Megumi sighed, making a serious mental note in her head to never again let the word 'king' slip itself into the same sentence with the subject of Sanosuke.

"And... eheheh..." Sanosuke continued with a nervous chuckle, "You didn't really mean all that stuff about his car, right?" Megumi's eyebrows creased and her teeth set into a tight grit as she grabbed for the biggest pillow on the rooster-head's bed that she could latch onto and used it to try and pummel his head in. A lot.

"Hey! What was that for?!" Sanosuke exclaimed, his arms up over his head, still blocking his face as her endless and very unexpected tirade of an armed person versus unarmed person pillow war raged on.

"Well, that was for making me call you the King and this if for...!" Megumi said as she lifted the pillow as high as her arms would go to strike him again, but Sanosuke, all too easily, snatched it away in her hesitation, "Hey! Give me that!"

"It's yours if you can get it," Sanosuke reasoned, raising the pillow over his head, behind him, behind Megumi, anywhere to keep it out of her reach, and he smiled at her poor attempt to wrestle it away from him and also for the fact that a particular upper part of her body was practically smothering his face. "You know, if you just can't wait to get your hands on me, you could've just said so." Sanosuke smirked, suggestively wiggling his eyebrows in a 'I'm-tired-of-playing-around' kind of way and Megumi immediately stopped in her climbing all over him and poked him hard in the stomach.

A small, 'Oof!' was heard before Sanosuke lurched forward and dropped the cotton case to the mattress below. Big mistake. While he was distracted, Megumi grabbed the pillow away and hit him with it again, a little more gently this time.

"Sanosuke, you're being dirty..." Megumi said with a sigh, although the tone of her voice didn't show the least bit of negativity. Before she could hit him over the head again, Sanosuke tackled her down and grabbed her around the stomach, catching her completely off guard. Surprised, she let out a startled squeal of laughter, letting the pillow drop to the floor.

"Oh, I'M the dirty one?! You're the one that wanted phone sex!" he protested, pulling her down underneath the covers as she half-heartedly tried to get away from his hold on her waist, "You're the one that was touching yourself over the phone! And then you have the nerve to say that I'M dirty?!"

"Yes."

"Hm... fair enough," Sanosuke said with a shrug and he pulled the covers over both their heads so a little different kind of wrestling could resume.



"HA-JI-ME!!!" Tokio shouted, balling up her fists at her sides as she glared at the ex-captain of the lacrosse team from across the room, "I am not getting in that bed until you tell me just who those two girls were!"

This day could not get any worse. First, a very horrible and unmentionable incident happened to him to the back porch for the second time that month. Second, while he went to take a shower and rid himself of the um... warm wine, Tokio insisted on flushing the toilet every three to four seconds while he was in there, giving him nothing but freezing cold water. And third, now he was squeaky clean, dressed only in a damp towel under the covers, and his girlfriend was having some kind of psychological problem with joining him. Or at least having some severe case of a man's worst nightmare: PMS. For the fifth time that day, Saito rolled his eyes and felt again the urge to take a long drag from a cigarette. Unfortunately, he had none and it was getting harder by the second not to scream.

"Look, I already told you! I worked for them for a summer job!" Saito repeated through gritted teeth and he waited an entire minute for her to protest again. Seeing that she wasn't going to, he smiled and gave a welcoming pat to the place beside him on the bed for her to join him at last. The only thing he received was a slap across the face. "Ow! Jesus! I'm telling the truth! I had to fix up their house!"

Saito frowned, rubbing his reddened cheek while Tokio stood over him, her eyes almost as narrow as his, and she turned up her nose to the ceiling, crossing her arms over her chest, and turned her back on him in refusal. Saito sighed and inched down the edge of the bed so that he was sitting right next to her standing form. Gently, he reached out his hand and ran it over her arm, putting on his best 'feed-the-hungry-children-of-Africa' face in the process. Tokio glanced over her shoulder at him and turned away after seeing his begging expression.

"Nope, I'm not getting into that bed until you tell me just who they really are," Tokio persisted, her arms never leaving their crossed position over her chest, "You tell me or you're gonna be sleeping in that cold bed yourself! You slept with them, didn't you?!"

"Not even if there were a million of them." Tokio still didn't looked convinced and at her silent refusal, Saito sighed. "Well, I guess I'm just gonna have to tell you something to clear my name then, huh?" Saito asked, pulling her down to sit next to him on the edge of the bed and he turned to face her, tilting her chin up so she could look into his bronze-flecked eyes, "I wasn't really supposed to tell anyone this, but you're an exception...." Tokio gave him a look that read: 'I'm-not-really-following-you' and Saito turned his head, looking from side to side for any unknown witnesses that could be lurking in the innermost corners of the room. Realizing that there were none, he turned back to her and whispered in her ear, "Those girls are lesbians."



"I think he's dead," Suzume whispered to her older sister, Ayame.

Both girls were up early that day so that they could collect some sea shells on the beach and maybe make a sand castle or two when they stumbled upon a man buried up to his neck in the cream colored sand. The man's eyes were closed, most of his hair and face was covered with bird dung and he didn't appear to be in any condition to get himself out.

Without a word, Ayame ran a little farther down the beach and grabbed something that had washed ashore over the night. Running back to her older sister, she held up her find in the air like a trophy and kneeled back down in front of the buried man, examining him with her eyes. Both girls, only four and six years old, tilted their heads sideways to get a better look at him, Suzume's pig tails sweeping across the sand as she bent her head to the right.

"You really think so?" Ayame asked, squinting her eyes to try and look past all the piles and piles of bird poop covering his face, "That's so sad..."

"I wonder how he got here..." Suzume said curiously and then she turned to her sister, who was now wiping her eyes with the back of her hands as she fought back tears, "Hey! I know! Let's poke him with the stick!"

"Yeah! Let's poke him!" Ayame repeated, lifting the thin branch up in the air again, her depression suddenly gone and was now replaced with an endearing smile. Cautiously, both girls held their breath as Ayame inched the stick closer and closer to the supposed dead man. She stopped about half an inch away from his face and started giggling, causing her to steer the stick off course and it collided not-so-gently with his closed right eyelid.

"Ow! What the hell...?!" Aoshi cried as something hard and pointy hit him in the eye and he opened his left eye, still in good shape to look at the culprit. His vision focused on a pair of little girls kneeling in front of him, one holding a tiny stick in her hand and the other holding a long seashell in hers. "Who are you?" Aoshi asked in a coarse voice, his throat dry and parched from all his scolding at the birds the day before. He would have killed for a glass of ice water. Cautious, he looked from one girl to the other, both with anxious looks in their faces, and Aoshi frowned, completely confused as to what they were up to.

"Poke him again!" Suzume exclaimed and both girls lifted their objects toward him again, excited expressions on their faces as they hovered the sticks close to his face and they began jabbing at him repeatedly without mercy.

"Hey! Quit it! What do you think you're doing?!" Aoshi cried, but his protests only gave the girls more motivation and they only poked him harder, one even succeeded in getting him in the eye again, "OW! Cut it out, you little brats! What the...?! Stop that right now!" To his surprise, the girls did stop and Aoshi opened both his eyes to look up at them. His spirits died back down when he saw them chattering away back and forth to each other and when they finished their little huddle meeting, they turned to him and grinned mischievously. "What the hell are you kids gonna do to me?" Aoshi asked, watching them as they got up with understanding nods, "What kind of kids are you?!"

"Let's find bigger sticks!" Ayame exclaimed and she and Suzume ran off in opposite directions down the beach to find bigger sticks than the previous ones. Aoshi's eyes darted back and forth as he looked for some kind of escape route, hoping with all his might that some kind-hearted person would stroll by and help him out of this mess, but he saw neither.

In the distance, Aoshi could hear the people at the beach house rustling about as they began to pack up their things in their cars to head back home and Aoshi's face drooped. He could hear bits and pieces of what they were saying and he was able to hear the car engine start up of Sanosuke's crap-of-a-car jeep. Aoshi gulped back his last hope. He could hear Megumi talking to him as she opened the car door.

"Hey, Rooster-Head..." Megumi began, her hand pausing on the door handle as she hesitated to take her seat inside.

"Hm?" Sanosuke asked in response as he turned on the radio, turning the station to his favorite alternative music station and putting the volume up to put his speakers to their best potential. Sanosuke paused for a second, listening again for what he thought he heard was a cry for help, but he only shrugged his shoulders as he realized it was probably just a seagull.

"I can't shake the feeling that we're forgetting something..." Megumi said hesitantly, looking back at the beach house as she tried to pinpoint just what exactly she might have forgotten.

'Lipstick? In my purse. Wallet? In my pocket. Clothes? In the trunk. Boyfriend? In the car. Hm...' Megumi went on like this for another minute or so, but unfortunately for Aoshi, the title, "Rich guy who tried to make a move on me" didn't appear on her list of things to remember to bring home.

Finally, after about twenty seconds of rethinking her entire luggage accessories, Megumi shrugged and settled down in the passenger seat next to her boyfriend. "I guess it was just nothing," she replied as she strapped in her seatbelt, "Alright, let's get going then."

Sanosuke put the gear in reverse, placed his hand behind Megumi's head rest, and glanced backwards as he backed the jeep out of the driveway. Once it was in the street, he changed the gear to drive and stepped on the gas pedal. The jeep had just reached the first stop sign when both Megumi and Sanosuke heard an excruciating shriek of, "NOOOOOOOOO!" They both turned and frowned at each other in confusion, turning their heads back to look in the direction they thought they heard the sound, but only shrugged their shoulders when the sound died off.

"Eh... I guess it was nothing important," Sanosuke said as he took his foot off the brake and continued on past the stop sign.

"Yeah," Megumi replied as she comfortably rested her head against his shoulder, "Let's just go home...



A/N: And.... IT'S OVER! AHHHHHHH! Can you believe it?! I can't! Sorry for taking so long in updating! I had to come up with the ending chapter so it took up a lot of thinking. Hopefully you guys enjoyed reading this story as much as I enjoyed writing it. I've got an epilogue coming up too to let you know what happened to the characters later on and I'm also thinking about making a Japanese Pie 3! If you think it should just stop at two, review. If you think I should add another story of hilarious laughs, review. Pretty much, just REVIEW! If I get enough requests for the story, I'll put in a preview in the epilogue-thingy. Thanks so much to everyone who read! You guys rock!