Disclaimer: I don't own Love Hina. Ruin my fun for me why don't you.
A/N: Here comes chapter four to save the day!! *anticlimatic fanfare*...fine. Well, here it is in all its..err glory. Input much welcome.
Luminous Foundations
Motoko sat up in her bed, face a strange melange of bewilderment, weariness, and cognitive processing. She had, through years of strict discipline in order to gain a greater control of herself, developed somewhat of an inner alarm to wake her when she needed; she found it much easier to wake herself up than have a strident noise shock her senses and ruin her mood. Besides, those alarm clocks bore a startling resemblance to Keitaro, and it was common knowledge what happened to Keitaro when he startled Motoko. No, she didn't have that kind of budget to spend replacing alarm clocks. Glancing at her generic, noiseless clock, she saw that it was just before five in the morning and she knew instinctively there was some valid reason why she should be up this early; the only problem was, she couldn't quite remember the actual reason, which made it all a moot point. 'Damn moot points. Who invented those anyway?' Motoko mused idly to herself. Was it an errand? No, she thought, all the stores were closed at this hour. Appointment? she snorted at this, she had an innate distrust of doctors and hadn't had so much as a checkup appointment since before she could remember. Unable to put her slender finger on the reason, she shrugged. Things had a way of coming to her in time. It would come to her soon enough, she imagined; in the meantime, she swung out of bed and shrugged on a plain white bathrobe. She had recently taken to sleeping in the nude, especially in warmer weather, but she didn't think it would be a particularly good idea to parade about the inn naked, on the off chance that someone else would be up and about at this hour. As she swung on the familiarly textured robe, feeling the sensation on her skin, toned muscle shifted and played under the surface of her flesh. Pausing only to grab a towel on the way out, Motoko headed towards the hot springs.
She shed her robe absentmindedly at the edge of the hot springs, not even noticing what she was doing, or noting the white robe crumpling into a heap on one of the rocks, so foggy was her mind. One of her feet still caressing the textured raises and dips of the stone near the water's edge, Motoko's other foot penetrated the surface tension of the steaming hot springs. With a sigh of true appreciation and relief, bare, pale, flesh disappeared into revitalizing water. Submerged to just above the delicate hollow of her neck, she waded silently through the steaming waters to lean against the solid surface at the other end of the springs. Back supported by the sturdy boundary, she tilted her head back to rest against the rock with another heartfelt and grateful sigh. Spreading her arms in an idle and graceful gesture, she relaxed all control and allowed the limbs to float limply on the surface of the water, shifting slightly with the small push and pull surface currents of the springs. The enveloping warmth began to pervade her rigorously disciplined flesh, filling her, feeding her, stuffing her, until..it was as if she exploded and imploded simultaneously in the flash of realization.
Images flashed before her eyes in a rapid fire sequence; her sister's sword at her neck, her sister walking in on her and Kitsune, the conversation she and Tsuruko had had over tea. A montage slamming home recent events, it was like a transitional scene in a movie. Match cut after match cut, the common element always being Tsuruko; calm, dark, and graceful. Skating, she realized, she was supposed to meet Tsuruko at the ice skating rink this morning. Originally, it had been set for after she had concluded with her studies for the day, but the plans had been changed after the school had closed for extensive renovation. She shook her head slightly, remembering what had made the renovation necessary. Keitaro telling those girls that he'd love to play dress up with them with that huge smile on his face wasn't really the best idea, especially when Naru happened to have overheard.
Shaking herself, she levered her long body out of the water easily. Hurrying around the edges of the hot springs, she didn't stop, but only swooped up the crumpled, yet still dry and clean towel from its abandoned post where she had left it earlier. Quickly toweling herself dry, she wrapped the towel around herself. It was slightly small, they all were on her markedly longer than normal frame, showing off her legs and not often seen cleavage.
Her senses were alerted; a gagging noise followed by a muffled squeak sounded throughout the still silent air. Whirling around while grabbing the towel, her eyes narrowed. A trickle of blood flowed towards the hotspring; dark brown eyes following the meandering track of the prodigious stream, she found its source, and it was a logical one indeed. Keitaro. Of course it was Keitaro. With her luck, his two pervert friends and Kentaro would show up too, with a myriad of hidden recording equipment. Belatedly, she looked around for some wood to knock on, but after a few moments, Motoko decided that the gods smiled mercifully upon her in this at least, allowing her to grasp the top of her towel in a white knuckled grip and charge at Keitaro, legs pumping fluidly and easily, stopping at the last moment to, once again, slam the unfortunate voyeur out of a conscious thought stream and into one of air and pain.
Brushing her hands clear of some imaginary dirt, she walked back into the house to change into some clothes.
Tsuruko sat on the bench at the edge of the rink, watching some other early morning skaters move around the ice at varying degrees of skill; some fell more than once a second, a feat Tsuruko had not thought possible before now, while others jumped and spun admirably. 'Not like Motoko,' she thought. 'no one's like her....in skating of course...' Eyebrows drew together; why did she feel the need to add that to herself? It sounded fake, as if she was just trying to fool herself. Shaking her head, a motion that might have caused observers to wonder about her if she wasn't so young and so beautiful, she wondered where her little sister was, until she realized she was early. Six, it was. They had decided upon six-thirty for the beginning of their first practice. Thirty minutes then. If she didn't know herself better she'd have said that she was nervous.
The tall, dark and polished warrior actually levitated a hand's width into the air as a hand tapped her gently on the shoulder. 'Okay, I'm nervous.' Tsuruko thought crossly at herself, then she made her own mental note of the day. 'Note to self; know self better.' A husky voice drawled into her ear, a bit coy, a bit flirtatious, but never serious.
"Well, fancy meeting the elder TDAS here. Of course, I knew you would be here, and obviously there's a reason I'm here as well, so I guess it's not such a fancy after all, is it?"
Dark brown eyes mirroring those of her younger sister's squinted ponderously as she tried to place the figure...
"Kitsune?? Well then, if it's not such a fancy, pray tell me two things; first, what on earth is TDAS supposed to mean, and second, what is the reason that you are here? I find myself genuinely interested, because, as you probably know or could probably see with your own two eyes, Motoko isn't here right now."
Kitsune found herself engaged, drawn in by the charismatic speech and dark eyes of a woman whom she thought was an impersonal type. 'She's like Motoko in some ways, but real different in others.' she realized. She grinned slightly; there might be two different sisters, but there was only one Kitsune. Some might praise the gods everyday for that, she thought.
"TDAS means Tall, Dark, and Sexy of course!" In the next instant, Kitsune had another revelation to add to her, as of late, growing list. 'Tsuruko blushes just as cutely as Motoko!' Seating herself unceremoniously with a whoosh of moving air, fluffed up down winter jacket deflating with a faintly audible hiss around her rear area, Kitsune dropped next to the still flushed elder Aoyama. "And I'm here to offer my services, such as they may be."
"Hmm, exactly what kind of services, Miss. Konno?" The foxlike woman fascinated her; mercurial and always out for a good time, there were few people whom Kitsune had never fascinated, or forced to like her. Tsuruko could see why Motoko had engaged in a relationship with this life-loving woman, and it irked her, because she was beginning to like this woman's infectious attitude as well.
"I wanna be you and 'Toko's manager!" Kitsune said this extremely cheerily, with an enormous grin on her face; if Tsuruko had been a more easily effected woman, she would have fallen over in a textbook animation movement, legs splayed vertically at seemingly impossible angle. 'Wow. That's enthusiasm, all right.' Tsuruko thought as Kitsune spoke on, oblivious to Tsuruko's chagrin. The warrior had been horrified because she thought Kitsune might be speaking of her..bodily charms. "I am, as a matter of course, very business savvy and a scheming type of gal, ask anybody. I'd be good for ya! And ya know what that old dead white guy said...it's better to have camels peeing outta your tent than into it!"
Well, the girl was certainly blunt, if nothing else, Tsuruko thought, and her skills were, strangely, perfect for the business. She took her time in replying, straightening her warm jacket and tugging on the snug fitting pants she was wearing.
"All right. I don't generally make a practice of trusting people who are scheming, but because you make no qualms about admitting to it and I appreciate your honesty, and because you are a friend of my little sister, I will make an exception. A word of caution though; should you try to trick me, I am most certainly not as forgiving as Motoko." For a brief second, the visage long since termed her Motoko-punishing face, reigned her features. Kitsune gulped inaudibly, realizing a small part of why Motoko held her ane-ue in such high reverence.
"Yas'm!" she blurted. "I mean, of course, Tsuruko! No double-crossing here! Speaking of doubles....lissen' to the idea I've got for your debut performance!"
Breath coming out in wisps of vapor from the slight chill of the rink, Motoko stuck her hands in the pockets of her puffy black jacket. Impatiently pushing the long scarf out of her way, she thought for the thousandth time on how strange it was to be out of her normal garb. However, even she had to admit that her practice gi was grossly impractical for skating. Eyes scanning the still sparse benches for the prominently tall figure of her elder sister, she wished desperately she had some hot chocolate, or tea, or...anything hot, she finally decided, in a fit of exasperation. About to head over to the concession stand, she finally saw Tsuruko, talking to a shorter, short-haired woman. Jealousy consumed her once again, as it had been doing a whole hell of a lot lately, almost taking her sight away with the force of it in a sheet of vivid red. Without thinking, she began to move towards her sister, and it was only her instinct developed by years of training that kept her silent and in some semblance of calm.
The second figure, usurper of her sister, she thought irrationally, turned when Motoko was but five feet away from the bench. Cold relief doused her and the overwhelming tension building up dissipated, only to be replaced by apprehension and worry. Two feelings that often went hand and hand with the unpredictable Kitsune. Especially when she was somewhere she wasn't supposed to be.
"Ane-ue, Kitsune. Pardon me for my lateness. I did not expect to see you here, Kitsune.." The unspoken question in her voice was conveyed clearly to both Kitsune and Tsuruko, but it was Tsuruko who ended up answering it, Kitsune deciding only to look at Motoko's figure appreciatively, causing her to blush, yet again.
"Motoko, right on time, actually. Kitsune has just become our manager. I interviewed her myself, and am satisfied she will be adequate." Tsuruko looked, as she always did, confident. And like always, that made Motoko believe unfailingly in what her older sister was saying. To be honest, Tsuruko could have told her that the sky was about to fall down and without hesitating, Motoko would have moved to do her damndest to save her from it. Even if Motoko had known that Tsuruko's interview had comprised of all of one question, which Kitsune had answered somewhat dodgily, she would still have accepted it without a second's worth of thought. The younger warrior did, however, spare the time for a glance full of potential venom at the grinning fox, unknowingly compounding her elder sister's earlier threat. Again, Kitsune gulped. And then went back to ogling Motoko's figure.
"Oh all right, ane-ue. I'm sure if you think it is a sound decision it will work out for the best." Saying the words simply, still blushing slightly from Kitsune's not-so-discreet appreciation, Motoko again awoke a storm of controversy in her sister's mind with her steadfast devotion. "So, how will we begin?"
'Does she really believe in me that much?' Tsuruko wondered, visage never showing any outward appearance of her inner thoughts. 'What have I done to deserve such blind faith?' "Well, I have brought a pair of ice skates for you to wear, as well as my own. Perhaps we should venture out on the ice just to acclimatize ourselves to the experience once again."
Long, slender hands calloused from sword work held out a pair of new skates, blades shining in the lighting of the rink. A pair of just slightly shorter, less refined, but no less graceful hands soon joined them on the skates, to gently take them away from the older woman's grasp. A glance of hands; enough to send chills through Motoko's nerves that froze, but burned her up at the same time, and then again made her want to just melt into Tsuruko's flesh, to be as close as unhumanly possible to her. Instead, Motoko's long fingers gripped the cold leather of the skates and took them, tucking them under her arm as she sat herself on the bench, next to her sister.
Sliding those skates on, though they were much larger and more technologically advanced, slipped Motoko unwillingly into a world of nostalgia. Already she could feel the cool streams of air caressing her body as she glided on ice as if floating on air, and it surprised her how vividly she could still remember all of her experiences on skates. Barely avoiding tearing up, she stood after tying the laces on the skates. It was amazing, Motoko thought, how easily the balance came back, but she supposed the hand-eye coordination required to be a warrior had something to do with it.
"Hai, ane-ue. I am ready now...perhaps we should also choreograph a program and select a song to which to perform as well?"
Tsuruko snuck a sidelong glance at Kitsune, who maintained her normal, cheery, slightly sneaky face.
"Nope! No need! I got it all planned out, 'Toko! So you just get yer pretty behind out there on the ice with your sister's pretty behind and hope that the ice doesn't melt with all the H-O-T -ness!" With this, Kitsune pushed the two women, who were, of course, blushing furiously, unceremoniously and cheerfully out onto the ice, still unconcerned as they struggled to catch their balance for a few brief instants.
"Kitsune! Just what exactly are we going to be skating to?" Motoko was beginning to feel some concern now; the last time she had heard, Kitsune wasn't a choreographer.
"It's a surprise! You won't find out until your majestical debut. But it'll be great, I promise!" Kitsune winked.
As Tsuruko and Motoko began to move on the ice, Tsuruko's hand glanced against Motoko's upper arm and Motoko groaned inwardly.
Anything Kitsune was planning was never good news and now Motoko had serious doubts about emerging from this experience in one piece.
