Not What You See
A/N: Hey! I just found my stuff from Natural Helpers last year. I'd forgotten what all the others had written. It was so uplifting. Not that I was feeling depressed or anything. I'm a very happy girl. But I found some poems I may use in here. I'll credit them appropriately in footnotes when they appear.
DISCLAIMER: I own only whom I own in this story, and that's well over a hundred (I actually have an entire family tree mapped out on my comp. Minus Tala, Kai, Rei, Max and Judy, I have… 141 people I own. In the Hiwatari-Toshiro-Kon-Mizuhara-Nanase line. That's not even including other people). So I feel quite… good.
Chapter 3: The Taming of Kai Hiwatari
"Regine, why are we going to this again?" Kirk grumbled.
"Because maybe these people will have some ideas on what to do with Kai."
"Send him back!" Kirk whined. "These people have probably already had him and sent him back. And are receiving therapy to recover from him."
"Kirk," Regine warned.
"So YOU'RE the poor unfortunate souls who have Kai Hiwatari!" an elegant woman exclaimed. "Good luck."
"My wife is hesitant to send him back," Kirk grumbled.
"Do you have other children in your home?" a man asked.
"Two more foster sons and two children of my own." Regine answered.
"How old?"
"Almost 15, 13, 8 and 5."
"Send him back." A third woman advised. "He's a menace to society."
"He pulled a knife on my seven-year-old son!" A fourth man added.
"He was also beating up on my son."
"All of us have had him at one point or another," the head of the group told Kirk and Regine. "I think the longest he's ever stayed in a home in Tokyo was…"
"A month and a half, with me, a little less than two years ago." Marlon Oyamadi provided.
"He lasted two days once about three years ago." A woman commented.
"It's getting progressively harder for Stanley to find somebody willing to take him." another added. "You're probably the last stop. How long have you have the other two?"
"We've had Max, our 13-year-old, for about ten years. Rei, our almost-15-year-old, has lived with us for about nine? Yeah, nine years." Regine answered.
"Tell them to watch out." Marlon advised. "He's going to be pretty nasty to them."
"It works pretty well if you just let him run his own show." Helen Oyamadi told them. "As long as he's not being hauled back by police at one in the morning,"
"Already happened," Kirk muttered.
"Or getting into trouble at school,"
"Done."
"Then forget that, you're in trouble."
"Well, that was enlightening!" Regine snarled as they were on their way home. "No wonder he's so messed up. And the fact they have nothing on his history is suspicious. Like some other city dumped him on Tokyo."
"Probably went through all the homes there, too," Kirk muttered. Regine glared at him and he fell silent.
In the end, Regine convinced Kirk to give Kai one more month. "Trust me on this one, Kirk. The last thing a foster kid who's been bounced around the system for three years wants to see is that he's being treated much different than any other kid. If he can see that we're just treating him exactly the same as the others, I'm sure he'll come around. It worked on me."
So the month came and went, and though Kai was still apt to take off at odd nights, they became less and less frequent. He tested Kirk and Regine to the limits of their patience, constantly getting into trouble, both at school and at home. He didn't get carted off to the station anymore from school, but Kirk was halfway to sending him to juvenile hall after a near-violent encounter between Rei and Kai one afternoon. Max was pretty skittish around Kai, avoiding being alone with him whenever possible.
Then, one afternoon in late November, the school bus never dropped Marina and Griff off from school. When Kirk called the school, they confirmed that they had been waiting at the designated pick-up spot outside the school at 3:45, five minutes before the bus arrived, but the school bus driver never recalled picking them up at the school.
"All right. Regine, you and Max take the Rav and go search the neighbourhood. Rei, come with me in the van and we'll go down near the school. Kai, you know the city pretty well. You'll be all right on your own?"
"Sure." Kai said.
"Check other places where they might be. Take the cell phone, call the Rav phone or the van phone if you find them."
Tala was stretched out on the couch, clearly ignoring the pile of pre-calculus in front of him, when his 12-year-old sister Melissa yelled, "TALA! PHONE!!"
"GOT IT!" Tala howled back at her, picking up the living room extension. "Hey."
"Tala?" Kai's voice came over the line. "Think you could spare a couple of hours out of your night and come help me?"
"Now there are two words I never thought I'd hear you say. Sure. Where do you want me to meet you?"
"Over at the corner of Heineken and Terries."
"Be there in a couple of minutes."
"So what's going on?" Tala asked as he appeared, warmly dressed in his new parka and hat and gloves. Kai was waiting at the corner, less warmly dressed than Tala in a sweatshirt, but what else was new?
"Marina and Griff have disappeared," Kai said. "Kirk and Regine's kids," he clarified. "I have an idea of where they might be."
"Down in the warehouse?" Tala guessed and dashed to catch up as Kai turned swiftly down another unmarked street.
"Yep." Kai answered.
The sounds of taunting teenage voices greeted the pair as they entered the abandoned warehouse, as well as the sounds of two young and terrified children.
"Your parents let Chinee bastas in your house?" (A/N: I'll let you figure out what that means…) "How do we know you're not some little half-breed whelp?"
Kai zipped into the room and before the gang member even realized he was there, had been thrown against the wall. Kai's fist hovered not far from the guy's face. "Got something else to say?"
"Oh, well, if it isn't little Kai Hiwatari." The guy smirked before Kai punched his lights out.
"Answer me. Got something else to say?" Kai growled. "Your little buddies are gone."
It was true. The other guys, the moment Kai had entered, had beat it fairly quickly.
The teen looked frightened for a second before shaking his head.
"Good boy." Kai said, entirely too calmly. "You ever got something to say about my family, take it to me and I'll listen with my fist. Now beat it." He released the front of the guy's shirt and he scrambled to his feet and dashed out, yammering the whole way.
Kai fished out the cell phone from his pocket serenely and dialed in the van. "Hi, Kirk. I found them."
"My darlings, are you okay? Did they hurt you?" Regine fussed over the returned children as Kirk, Rei, Kai, Marina and Griff all returned to the house, where she and Max had already been waiting anxiously. "Did they do frightful and unpleasant things to you?"
Neither one answered, but Regine didn't seem to mind and ushered all five kids into the kitchen for some hot drinks.
There was quite a shock in the Toshiro household not long after that.
Rei's face had a look of sheer disgust on it. "You're what?!"
Looking a bit stunned, Regine repeated. "I'm pregnant. Due sometime in mid-May."
Rei shivered. "I really don't want to know when that happened."
Once Marina and Griff had gotten the idea, they were thrilled, Max a little less, and Rei, once he got over his 'ewewewewewewewew' stage, was fine with it. During this whole spectacle, Kai had been standing apart from the group, a gnawing sensation of disappointment in his stomach.
"Why are you sending me back?" 9-year-old Kai asked plaintively as Stephen Kiyoshi set Kai's duffel bag in the trunk of the car.
"Because Julie and I are going to have a baby of our own now, so you can't stay."
"Why am I going back again? I didn't do nothing." 10-year-old Kai whined.
"We're pregnant." Daniel and Alise Iei told him.
"Kai, with a new baby on the way, I just don't think we can keep you anymore." Kai was told on the day of his 11th birthday.
"I'm really sorry, Kai. You know I would do anything to keep you here with me. But with the baby on the way, I just can't afford to have Ted leave me in the loop." Rosalina Hoshizaki told 11-year-old Kai, a stray tear in her eye.
"I don't trust you in the same house as a newborn, Kai." Sebastian Hawita told 13-year-old Kai harshly.
It figured. The first time since the Aarons in Grade 8, that he finds a home that might actually want him, they get pregnant. Which, in his experience over the past six years, always leads to him getting sent back. Even Rosalina had sent him back.
'Check off home number 25 on the list.' Kai thought to himself. 'I'm going to be out of here in a week, tops.'