I apologize for the long update… I've had this odd unwillingness to write lately… and school. I hate school.
BTW, I would love to hear ideas from people. I have a general idea of where I want to go with the plot, but… I need stuff to get me where I need to be. I need dirt to fill in the big gaping holes.
Me, Myself, and Kuronue
- Sleepless Beauty -
Youko Kurama wasn't sure how they had done it, but they had. They had managed to find their way out of the bunny fort without any causalities thanks to a certain drugged redhead tripping over a misplaced mop bucket and opening a secret passageway that conveniently led to the Way Out. He still had cake and taffy all over his rear and that damn boy hanging from his ankle, but what's a master thief to do?
"So," said Kuronue at his left, straightening his battered hat. "What now?"
Youko paused to gage his surroundings. They were strolling down a broad road of oddly bright yellow bricks, a cheerful sight slightly misplaced among the smoldering trees, burnt grace, and dismal gray clouds against a dying brown sky.
"Well…" The fox considered all possible options. His amber eyes settled on the magenta-clad teen at his feet. (Why was Kurama wearing his school uniform at his birthday party? I don't know.) "We could ditch the ningen here." He kicked out with the captured appendage, and Kurama giggled as he was dragged violently along the paved ground. Kuronue sniggered.
"I dunno," he replied. "Human is kinda flattering on you." Youko glared at him, but before he could dignify that with an answer, a giant pink bubble floated into view. Instead, he said:
"What the?"
And Kuronue said:
"Hell if I know."
And Kurama said:
"That's a cross between an elephant and a rhinoceros."
And the bubble said:
"…." Before it expanded and burst into purple sparkles. As they shimmered about in the wind, a woman with long, flowing red hair and a rosy dress that look like it had come out of an old Disney movie appeared. Of course, this woman was also a demon and therefore had scaly purple skin, a spiked tail whishing out from under the dress, and giant toad-like yellow eyes.
"On behalf of the munchkins," she cooed in a nauseatingly fluttery voice, "I thank you for killing the Wicked Witch of the East." The two thieves exchanged glances, but she ignored this and went on. "We would like to know, good sirs, if she is a good witch or a bad witch." She pointed daintily with a shiny, star-tipped wand at Kurama.
Kuronue and Youko stared at her for a moment, then burst into a fit of laughter. She frowned disapprovingly at them, then turned to the surrounding charred trees. The laughter stopped abruptly as she burst into song.
"Come out come out…!" The smiles died away as the thieves watched, horrified, as midgets in bizarre clothing paraded out from behind the trees, joining the crackpot woman in song.
"We represent the lollipop guild…"
They swirled about them, singing their high-pitched hearts out and ending the musical number by presenting a bus wheel of a lollipop to Kurama… who actually let go of Youko's foot to suck on. Finally, the little people retreated and the woman went back to her bubble.
"…Riiiight…" Youko stated simply as Kurama broke off a considerable piece of candy with his teeth.
"Again, what should we do?" Kuronue repeated.
Kurama leaped up, biting off the rest of the sucker and chewing it as he warbled out, "Follow the yellow brick road!" He struck a batman pose and pointed. "Follow the yellow brick road!" He swallowed. "Follow, follow, follow… whoa." He blinked down at the white stick in his hand, then up at the two taller males watching him with weary eyes. "What happened?"
"I'm going to assume that that lollipop just so HAPPENED to be the antidote, and that you're sane again," Youko said shortly and began marching down the—dare I say it?—yellow brick road. Kuronue shrugged at Kurama, and they followed.
As the trio continued on their way, the scenery became more and more cheery. The sky morphed into a quilt of the loveliest shades of azure, cobalt, cerulean, and sapphire, and the sun graced the now vivid emerald grass with its warm, inviting presence. Little red houses dotted the distance, and the sounds of beautiful bird songs filled the fresh, daisy-scented air. All in all, the world came to look as through it had been ripped from a fairy tale book.
Kuronue sent Youko a suspicious look. "That smell…"
"Is not me," the fox finished firmly.
"You sure?" The bat demon asked.
"Positive."
Kuronue sighed at stretched his ribbon-clad arms to the sky, yawning. He then turned to Kurama, pointing at the silver haired demon. "Do you believe him, Suuichi?"
Kurama smiled faintly. "Why shouldn't I?"
"Because," Kuronue answered bluntly, "There is no way Makai could smell this good on its own."
"Well, I wouldn't know," Kurama replied, playing the ignorant human he supposedly was.
"Except," Youko cut in, stopping suddenly, "that one place."
Kuronue snorted. "Please, like we could just HAPPEN upon that place."
"What place?" Kurama inquired, searching his memories for any inkling of what they could possibly be talking about.
"It's not here," Kuronue said, waving his hand dismissively. Youko frowned.
"But… the aroma of Chrysanthemum leucanthemum…"
Kurama's eyes widened in realization as Kuronue informed his partner, "I have no idea what you just said."
"The Land of Cheesy Human Bedtime Stories and Various Pretty Things That Have No Right Existing in the Demon Realm?" Kurama queried. Youko nodded, and Kuronue added his own commentary.
"Yeah. Supposedly, there are all sorts of overly dressed hot chicks waiting around for some guy to come pick them up, but no demon has ever managed to escape from the place's preadolescent clutches." He thought for a moment. "And we're not there."
"Whatever you say," Youko replied dryly. The group continued down the road the in silence for about a quarter of a mile before they spied an elderly man on the horizon. He was pushing a molding wooden cart, and a stuffed parrot was perched precariously upon his shoulder. Kuronue dashed ahead of them, eager to prove himself correct.
"Oi, mister!" he called out, waving one arm in the air. "Can you tell us where we are?" The man stopped his cart and starred up into the demon's purple eyes.
"Argh, matey," said he. "Would ye like teh purchase ah sack o' bread crumbs?"
Kuronue blinked down at him as both Kuramas came up behind the scythe-toting demon. "…Bread crumbs?"
"Ay, ye landlubber. Bread crumbs."
Kuronue leaned back, whispering to Youko, "Why would we need bread crumbs?"
"Why, in case ye got lost, o' course!" the man cried, raising a hook-for-a-hand and expertly slipping it into a plastic loop on the back of the toy parrot and pulling.
"SQUAWK! In case you get lost! SQUAWK!"
"Ah… no thank you, sir," said Kurama, eyeing the parrot. "But if you could tell us where we are, it would be very much appreciated."
"Fine, ye scraggly legg'd lobstah 'ead of scallywag," the pirate salesman huffed, pushing his cart around them. "Don' buy meh bread, but jus' don' come runnin' teh me when ye get yerself kidnapped by ah witch."
"SQUAWK! Kidnapped by a witch! SQUAWK!"
The bishonen watched the man disappear into the picture-perfect yonder in silence. When they could no longer see him, Youko turned to Kurama with hands on his hips.
"'It would be very much appreciated,'" he mocked, pitching his voice several octaves higher than usual. Kurama coughed.
"You'll find, one of these days, that sometimes one is more likely to get what one wants by being polite." Youko snorted at this.
"Not in Makai," he replied, spinning so that his hair flipped perfectly over his shoulder and waltzed down the road, completely unaware of how feminine that looked.
The next thing of interest the trio encountered was a lofty tower placed neatly at the side of the walkway. It was made, as per princess-oriented tales, out of moss-covered stones, but it did not have the charm of the customary Abode of the Wonderwoman. The granite rock, ignoring the laws of physics, did not carry the warmth of the sun. Rather, the whole of the building seemed as cold as the authoress's Spanish classroom, and, trust me, that's pretty flippin' cold. It reeked of Evil Villain Hide Out. No, really, it did.
"Well, here's a change of scene," Kuronue commented.
"Stench is more like it," answered Kurama, wrinkling his noise. He had almost forgotten how bad Makai could smell.
With out warning, a mass of sunbeam-spun hair was dropped from the lone window near the top of the structure. It straightened into one glossy braid, complete with small pink flowers and a scarlet, satin ribbon entwined with the tangle-free locks. The boys slowly followed the shampoo commercial worthy tresses up the tower and to the smiling face of a young woman leaning out the gap in the tower.
"Oh, has my prince at long last come to rescue me?" she cried.
Ignoring the girl, Youko gave his companions a pointed look. "A ningen fairy-tale princess. I told you so."
Disregarding the fox, Kuronue, transfixed upon the damsel in distress, flexed his wings twice and jumped into the air. Gracefully alighting on the windowsill, the bat demon hoped into the barren room and smirked seductively at the girl. She promptly slapped him.
"You idiot," she reprimanded, glaring at him. "What do you think you're doing? That is NOT how you're supposed to rescue me! My hair is there for a reason, moron." She tugged her skirt into place angrily, yanked off her wig to reveal dirty-blonde frizz, and stomped out the door on the opposite side of the room.
It took a minute for Kuronue's brain to process what had just happened. Another girl had just walked off on him. Dammit, what was he doing wrong?
"Oi, bat boy!" Youko's deep voice called from some forty-five feet below.
"What?" Kuronue snapped back, leaning carelessly against the loan spindly table in the room.
"Get your popsicle-craving ass down here; some old hag wants to talk to you!"
Oh, that's right… his popsicle. He still wanted that. He glanced lazily down at his hand upon the table. Preferably a cherry one; he didn't really like grape. Blue raspberry would be good too…
There was a flier under his hand. Slightly interested, he picked up and began reading, Youko's distant and impatient voice serving as white noise.
Nachiko Nanasawa, the Girl with Lips Red as the Rose!(1) Rescue her as she plays a wide variety of damsels in distress—including Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty, and Cinderella! Contact the Happily Ever After Dating Service for more information.
(1)Thank you to Poison Apple Lip Stick
Below was a cartoony map of the Land of Cheesy Human Bedtime Stories and Various Pretty Things That Have No Right Existing in the Demon Realm that had all the "Princess Hot Spots" and bathrooms marked with different colored stars.
Kuronue blinked at the paper for a moment. He shook his head as though to banish the various schemes that he was involuntarily formulating and jumped out the window. He glided to the ground and nimbly landed next to Kurama and the "old hag", a squat woman robed in black and with fake warts spotting her face and hands. Youko glared proverbial daggers at him.
"You're not Prince Amiable," the crone croaked.
"'Prince Amiable'?" Kurama questioned, raising an eyebrow.
"Well, there can only be one Prince Charming," she responded. Addressing Kuronue once more she said, "What have you done with Prince Amiable, you imposter? He was paying good money for a Let Down Your Hair evening."
"I honestly have no idea who this Amiable guy is," Kuronue retorted rather rudely. The woman sighed.
"Well, that's one less skewering I have to go through then, I guess…" She trailed off and pulled a broom from behind her hunched back (which Kurama suspected of being a pillow). Mounting it like a horse, she faced herself toward the west and muttered something about refereeing a Quidditch match before kicking off and zooming into the pastel blue sky.
"Kurama," Kuronue said after a pause. Youko lessened his glare.
"What?"
"I want to go here." He pointed to a red star on the map. Youko leaned closer to inspect the fine print that served as a label.
"The Castle of Destiny?" He looked incredulously up at his partner. "What could you possibly want with something so lamely named?"
"A castle is bound to have treasure," Kurama offered. He had a vague (and extremely amusing) idea of what Kuronue was after. Youko considered this for a moment, trying to think of a more menacing sounding place he would rather rob. When nothing came to mind, he nodded in approval and allowed Kuronue to navigate for them.
The bat youkai was fairly certain that this would be the most likely (and closest) place to meet a girl. After all, in this part of Makai all you had to do was save a girl from a troll or something and they'd fall head over heels for you. Unfortunately, as with most maps, the flier was near impossible to interpret. Combined with the fact that it wasn't exactly drawn to scale, the group ended up knee deep in a swamp. Kurama had sighed, gently taken the map from Kuronue, and successfully led them to a candy land-wannabe castle. It was blindingly white with all sorts of turrets and towers, all decked with shimmering, brightly colored rounded roofs that, somehow, brought several types of sweets to mind. However, and oddly enough, the only thing that served as any sort of door or window was an immense, gapping hole some seven yards above the gorgeous gardens surrounding the building.
"Psh. I could have done better," Youko stated as he surveyed aforementioned grounds. "Look at those orchids… SOMEONE isn't watering them right." He glanced up at the palace's only entrance. "Now Kuronue, I want you to—"
But Kuronue was gone.
"Erm," said Kurama. "He, ah, went ahead."
"Dammit," the fox muttered. Then, to himself as he was forced to reevaluate his options, he asked, "Now how am I supposed to get up there?"
A smile tugged at the corners of Kurama's mouth. "Might I suggest a bean stock?"
-
Kuronue barreled down the hallway. He was going to a girlfriend! A girlfriend! Take THAT, Youko Kurama… and all your little lackey chicks and fangirls! Soon, he, Kuronue, was going to have posters made of HIM , and all those anime-freak ningen girls would wake up to HIS digitally enhanced and dramatically poised face in the morning. And there was nothing—nothing—anyone could do about it!
"GRWOOOOOOAAAAAAAAARR!"
Except for maybe that angry fire-breathing dragon waddling toward him.
-
To be honest, Kurama was slightly surprised by Youko's bean stock. It had been a deadly shade of forest green and had teeth, but that was no shock. What the redhead found surprising was that the plant had been, despite the incisors, undeniably a bean stock. Ferocious, drooling, and tried-to-maul-Kurama-twice-as-he-climbed, but a bean stock all the same.
How anticlimactic.
"There's nothing but posters in this stupid place," Youko growled. Indeed, the only decorations of the furniture-devoid building were colorful adds for everything from liposuction to pencil sharpeners to beef jerky. The walls were plastered with the bright oddities; one couldn't even tell what the wallpaper pattern was.
"The owner of this castle, the princess, should know where anything worth stealing would be located," Kurama commented, examining a Sketchers add.
"I'll refrain from saying 'duh'," Youko answered. In a much more frustrated tone, he added, "Where IS Kuronue?"
-
Kuronue took a cautious step back as the dragon advanced, smoke venting through its nostrils. He pulled his scythe from where-ever-the-hell-he-keeps-it and let his body relax into a defensive stance. It was just one, fat ol' monstrosity of a lizard. No biggie.
The dragon, whose name (unbeknownst to Kuronue) was Betsy, stared down her pray. Eyes as gray as her fire's smoke bore into the muscular figure, sizing him up and hopefully intimidating him. Guys were always afraid of an intelligent, strong woman. He was just another loser wasting their money on a cheap dating service. No biggie.
The suspense finally reached its peak, and the man charged, swinging his scythe toward her snake-like neck. It bounced of her rigid scales, leaving her unharmed but with an ugly scratch extending down from her jawbone. Roaring in rage as her opponent skillfully caught the blade's rebound, the dragon shot flames in his general direction.
"Grwar raaaawr gwaar," she managed to spit out through the fire, which, when translated from Dragonese, means something along the lines of, "You bastard! I just got that waxed!"
The smoke cleared, and Betsy smirked the best a reptile could as she observed that the only thing left of her adversary was a wall of charred advertisements. She hobbled around to return to her private quarters (and her soap opera), only to come face to face with a very much alive bat demon.
"Gwar?"
"You should really work on your aim."
And with that single, heroically cliché statement, Kuronue held up the fire extinguisher he had conveniently found in the janitor's closet he had just so happened to have dived into to escape third degree burns. Carefully following the directions on the label like a good little demon, he took aim and pulled the nozzle, spraying the dragon in the mouth full force. The CO2 in the extinguisher reacted with Betsy's saliva, yielding an explosion. Kuronue dropped the heavy metal cylinder on his foot in alarm, but that was nothing in comparison to poor Betsy, who lay in an unconscious, scaly heap.
"Um, sorry 'bout that," Kuronue stammered as he hopped away from her lifeless body, clutching his injured foot. Assured that she wouldn't come to any time soon, he gingerly replaced his foot on the ground and, after testing his weight on it to make sure it didn't hurt too much, continued his dash down the hallway.
At the end was a dark, spiraling staircase, which Kuronue scaled. (To the tallest tower, don'cha know.) It ended at a locked and ominous looking door, which he, never one to waste time lock-picking, kicked open. It opened (er, fell into with a big THUD) into a dismal looking room furnished with a rickety chair and a pink-sheeted bed whose canopy was emblazoned with a red and white COCA-COLA insignia. Through the sheer clothe, he could make out the form of what he assumed was a young woman. He stepped into the room.
"Thank GOD," the woman had sat up. "Did you know you're first EVER to make it past Betsy?"
"Who?"
"But you know," the woman continued. "I still have no idea how I let myself get roped into this job."
Wow, thought Kuronue. She sure did have a deep voice for a girl.
"It's all because I come from a family of sixteen girls." The 'woman' swung her legs over the side. "The whole family's in this business. So I just HAD to too. But now you're here, and now you can get me out and I can quit." 'She' stepped out from behind the canopy. "But no funny business; I'm perfectly straight, despite what my contract says."
It was a man. He had long, silky raven tresses any girl would be jealous of, but he was unmistakably male.
"You… you're," Kuronue stuttered. The man stomped toward the door.
"What?"
"You're… a guy," the bat demon finished dumbly.
The other rolled his eyes. "Yes, I'm a guy."
"But then… why?"
"Girls want dates too," was the reply. An awkward silence. "And homosexual men. I suppose you AREN'T one of them, then?"
"No…"
"Thank god."
Youko and Kurama took this moment to make their grand entrance. In unison, they stared from the unknown man to Kuronue, to the man, to Kuronue, and back to the man.
"Kuronue?" Kurama started.
"Is there something you're not telling us?" Youko finished.
Kuronue turned bright red. "NO! I thought he'd be a girl!" Kurama suppressed a laugh, and Youko snickered.
"Anyway," continued Youko. "Six-eared freak, is there anything besides posters and half-dead dragons in this place?"
The man, who did indeed have six ears, huffed. "It's Yomi, and no."
Youko sighed. "Then this was a complete and total waste of time. C'mon Kuronue." He retreated to the hallway, closely followed by Kurama and Yomi. "Kuronue?"
Kuronue stood, eyes glazed over as he stared, transfixed, at the wall. Or rather, a specific something on the wall. "Popsicle…" he murmured, pulling a poster from the wall to reveal that there wasn't actually any wallpaper to be hiding.
"What is it?" Kurama inquired.
"Popsicle," Kuronue repeated.
Youko groaned. "Look, we'll worry about your frozen treats later, but first let's get out of this media-driven hellhole."
"Yomi's disappeared," Kurama said to no one in particular.
Youko grabbed Kuronue by the ponytail and dragged him down the stairs after Kuronue. He didn't let go until they were outside the castle, but the raven-haired demon didn't seem to mind. Even as Kurama led them back to the yellow brick road, he stayed immersed in his poster. Just when Youko was about to ask what in the three worlds could be so freaking fascinating, they heard a maniacal cackle from the castle.
They whirled around to see Yomi, perched upon a flying carpet, hovering above the castle. A huge burlap sack overflowing with gold and precious stones sat behind him, and he had adorned himself with a few pounds of bling.
"Don't you dweebs know all dragons have a mound of treasure they sleep on?" he called down to his dumbfounded spectators. "Guess not. So long, suckers!" he cried, and laughing gleefully, joined the old woman in flying off into the sunset.
"That lying son of a—" Youko stopped and turned to Kurama. "Do you think it was the ear comment?"
Kurama smirked, mimicking Youko's previous manner toward Kuronue. "I told you so."
…and THAT is how Youko Kurama met Yomi.