"Next week is Family Night. Each class is going to do something to celebrate the cohesiveness of their class and the theme is going to be… the Zoo."
"The Zoo?" several kids questioned Eriol, but he smiled.
"It was my idea." Li felt his head slam down on the desk. His ancestor was such a trouble maker. "We will all dress up as our favorite animals..." he went on to explain his vision of putting his students in cages and having them act out as if they were really zoo creatures.
"Seriously Mr. Hiiragizawa?" Sakura raised her hand and waited for the punch line. She had been practicing reading auras, that and the fact that Li was beating his head against the desk with a methodical bump, made her think that their teacher was being funny.
"Psych!" he crowed. He chuckled as the students all relaxed. "No, we are really going to make a café out of our classroom. It'll be fun." He wrote sections on the board. "We'll need waiters and waitresses, cooks and clean up crew. Not to mention advertisers around campus who will pass the word around that our class has this set up and to lead people around the building during the festival."
"Sir, if we're going to talk about class cohesiveness…" a student sitting next to the doors raised his hand tentatively.
"Yes Mr. Saotome?" Eriol called on him.
"Maybe you should keep them alive sir?" he pointed to the thin door and the suddenly raised voices of Kyo and Meilin. They were threatening each others lives, in horrible graphic detail.
"Then I'm going to pull out your spine and stab you through the eye with it! THE BLUNT END!" Meilin continued at the top of her lungs.
"That's going to be hard after I tie your arms in knots!" Kyo snarled back. A dark shadow fell over them and a sense of cold foreboding made them shiver. They both looked up as the door slid open and Eriol looked down on them from his lofty height.
"Do I have to separate you two?" he teased. Though Kyo only growled in temper Meilin looked up and smiled.
"I was just pointing out some short comings, and some obvious mistakes my colleague has made in his impression of the female psyche." she stuck out her tongue at the CAT. What she had been doing was listening to him bitch about their punishment for half an hour, then teased the real reason he was pissed out of him. After that she called him a moron for freezing Tohru out when she was sure the girl didn't mean what he thought she meant. Then the insulting had begun. And he'd been having fun too.
"Come back inside, and keep your tempers on a low simmer if you can. I think everyone should have input for Family Night." his voice was stern with an underlay of humor. Meilin knew he wasn't really mad, and she thanked him with a nod for giving her the private time she needed to snap Kyo out of his funk. He winked at her as Kyo passed into the room, and she smiled back.
A week later and Li was closer still to perfecting the circle. He'd gone over it again and again, fine tuned his and Sakura's control over the new set up until they could both create the magical seal with a thought perfectly. All he needed now was the cooperation of a test subject and hope that the entire thing didn't collapse under him. He'd done plenty of magical practice and application. He knew that his theory was sound and his assumptions had so far checked out in the practical field. But he needed to talk to Kyo about it, to make sure that everything he'd learned about the curse was true in the present day as well as in the books he'd read.
But first…
Family Night.
Tohru and Yuki walked into the classroom just as Tomoyo pulled a thick stack of cloth from a bag. The students had agreed to wear all black as wait-staff, but Tomoyo couldn't help herself. She tossed half the students vests and the other half, the ones who were to hold out flyers and call out their specialties all got hats. Kyo walked in just a hat flipped in the air and fell perfectly on top of his head. He sighed in resignation when Sakura chuckled from behind him.
"Perfect timing Kyo." she smirked.
"Right, right… just give me the flyers." He grabbed a stack from Eriol's desk and left the others frozen in his wake.
"What's wrong with him?" Tomoyo asked, her eyebrow raised. Kyo had been short tempered, even more so than usual.
"We're working with him on a project." Sakura said, not sure how much he'd told his cousin and Tohru, and well aware that there were other student's around that could overhear them. She pulled on the apron and smiled when she realized that the patterns on the front were Clow's magic circle.
"Nice." Li complimented and pulled on his own. Yuki looked out the window as Kyo ran down the stairs outside the school and began handing out papers to the early family's. He sighed, hoping against hope that the Sohma's would remain at home, but knowing it was impractical seeing as how four of the Zodiac attended school there. Momiji and Hatsuharu's class was doing a bake sale, but they promised to come up and sample the café if time permitted. Yuki knew that Shigure was looking forward to dropping in, the tune of "High-school girls!" playing in his pitifully empty of all else skull… He turned just as Sakura came up behind him, froze as the girl braced her hands on his biceps carefully to prevent their contact.
"Sorry." Sakura smiled a little nervously.
"Its ok, nothing happened." he cleared his throat and had Sakura moving her hands away quickly, fluttering them a little as she settled back on her heels.
"Tohru told me to tell you that you're tables are set up in the corner, over there." She pointed to where their desks usually were. The classroom had been set up with tiny round tables and chairs, large curtains hung around the room disguising blackboards and other school-like postings. If not for the laminated flooring and the obvious school clock it could have been a cozy little café. Tohru looked over and smiled at him.
"Maybe this won't be so bad after all."
"I'm feeling much better Hatori."
"I know that but-"
"But nothing. Yuki will be there… he will be upset without the support of his family… all I want to do is to let him know that I approve of his choice not to live in Sohma-house…"
"big fat lie." it was said quietly, but the other man mearly smirked in response.
"You cannot prevent me. So call my car…"
"But-"
"Now."
ok, so if your as big a dork as i am them you recognized several references to other animes!
this is just me building up to BIG DRAMA which will hopefully put an end to some things, and lead up to the AWESOME endcap i have planned. The end is in site... now i just have to figure out how to get there. in the meantime enjoy.
