Disclaimer: see prologue, please.
Warnings: crack, humor, more crack, heaps of OOC, deus ex machina and karma abuse...spoilers?
Notes: Cookies to both authoresses, or the baby as yet nameless shall wail...and wail...and wail...we kid you not.
Baby Tales: A Sanzo Adventure
Chapter One
Sanzo stared at the small basket with a fresh new wave of hate. The baby had cooed at him, and when he'd leaned closer it had tried to grab his hair (and succeeded, getting a yelp and many snickers for its efforts). Deciding then not to stand in the rain like a dope and get further soaked, he opted for the better plan of going into the inn, getting a room, and sleeping. That was ALL he wanted. Sleep. Sleep was good. Maybe when he woke up Goku would have eaten their blasted little problem.
So Mr. Unholier-Than-Thou monk began stomping and splashing his way to the door, pausing for half a second when another intense, impossibly high-pitched wail echoed from the car. He glared over his shoulder for a long second before continuing on.
The noise intensified in relation to how far Sanzo got away from its source.
"WAAAAAAAAAH! WAAAAAAAAAAAH! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"
"GODDAMMIT, BOUZU! THIS IS YOUR PROBLEM! GET BACK HERE AND TAKE CARE OF IT!" Gojyo shouted angrily, clutching at his ears. Hakkai didn't even have the heart to reprimand him for his language. He rather thought it was justified.
But Sanzo would have none of it and slammed the rickety door of the building, completely ignoring the others' existence. And when the young girl at the night desk asked if they were accompanying him, he denied that too. Safe to say the monk was not happy with anything that evening. Anything.
Talking with the manager was a cakewalk, though. All he'd had to do was bring up his shorejuu, aim it steadily and scream profanities, kicking the desk in a sudden burst of rage (as much as he hated to admit it, he still needed Hakkai to drive. And Hakkai wouldn't drive if he maimed the other two youkai or left them out in the cold. Dammit.) He stomped up the stairs and slammed the door.
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Back at the car the three yokai stood quite still, still mulling over what to do. Their leader had gone and left them in the lurch with a bundle of seriously joyless baby. And since Sanzo had picked it up, it was Sanzo's job to take care of it, right? Right?
At the very least Hakkai had managed to disentangle the prayer beads (between them and the damp, the poor thing was starting to turn positively blue). No one wanted to look at the note, still crisp and fresh-looking despite all the watery ordeals it had gone through. The whole think stunk of karma and fates and, since they tended to look at that as supreme priestly BS, that was their resident supreme BSing priest's problem as well.
Hakkai solved things by retrieving screeching baby, beads, baby wrappings and note, confirming with the perky desk clerk that yes, indeed, the Great and Revered Sanzo-Houshi-sama had booked four separate rooms for himself and his disciples/faithful followers/unwilling slaves. For, you see, Hakkai was a sensible man. Youkai. Whatever. And he had very little patience with being aimed at by a loaded gun and being yelled at for more than twelve hours. He'd just about reached his limit with it all.
Quite abruptly, he kicked open the door of the one Sanzo had appropriated for himself, zipped over to the bed, and put the soggy baby and everything that came with it down on top of the blonde's chest, very gently.
He was downstairs to help bring in their belongings before the monk had even registered the weight, the wet, the sudden happy cooing gurgle, or the chubby hand that came up and tugged--HARD--at his hair.
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When Sanzo had registered it, it was too late to protest, too late to scream, too late to--"OW!" He cracked open an eye. He wanted sleep. That was all he wanted, to get rid of the remnants of his headache. But no, he couldn't even get that! No, he had to suffer! But right now he was just in a lot of pain.
"Oi..." he reached up, taking hold of the little fingers, gently uncurling them from his nice soggy hair...and glared observantly.
A child. A baby child. No. Just a baby period. A baby with hair. Very familiar hair, too. "Look. My hair isn't some kind of tugging mechanism alright? You shi--" He paused. Was it wise to swear in front of children this young? Wait--why did he care?
"Look, just don't pull alright?" He set the child hastily down, ignoring the note and everything else and just stared. Was this karma paying him back for all those ugly but neccessary deaths of youkai? He hoped not...
Small hands fisted in his robe.
"Gah!" He tugged the garment away quickly and scrambled back until he was flat against the wall in a very uncomfortable position. Hakkai was the mother hen of their team! "HAKKAI!" but no, Hakkai probably wouldn't come back. What was he supposed to DO with it? The damned thing didn't even look toilet-trained!
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On the stairs, Hakkai, Gojyo, Goku and a worn-out Hakuryuu paused, then chose to employ their own version of 'an eye for an eye' and steeled themselves to ignore any and all screaming unless it sounded like Sanzo was going to commit infanticide.
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And then there was a clichéd flash of light with residual sparkles and sakura petals, and the much-acclaimed and cursed Bitch Goddess of Mercy--er, that is, Kanzeon Bosatsu-sama, appeared and poked Genjyo Sanzo in the nose with a long, sharp, perfectly painted fingernail and asked him just exactly what he thought he was doing.
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"Did you hear something, Gojyo?"
"Nadda thing." The kappa had developed a cold. He hated colds.
"HAREHATTA!"
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Back up there, Kanzeon took the uncharacteristically motherly (fatherly?) duty of drying the baby off with Sanzo's blankets (probably to spare its life, as doing such a thing hadn't even occured to the blonde,) indulged in some very odd-sounding baby talk (hey, se was a high-ranking deity, se could do whatever se wanted) and then dumped it back into hir once-nephew's very unwilling arms. Sanzo held it like he was about to go drop it over a cliff.
"Think of it this way, Konzen," se said, flipping back hir long dark waves of hair, "He won't do anything worse to you than what you did to him."
And then disappeared, leaving Sanzo flabbergasted, while the baby looked up with big solemn eyes and reached for his hair again.
'"No way in HELL, brat!" Sanzo snarled in his usual attitude, craning his neck to the far side out of reach. And almost immediately, those huge dark eyes began to fill up with tears, dripping right onto his hand. And then...
"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"
Deaf in one ear he leaned his head back painfully, allowing the brat to pick at his hair like it was the prize sunflower in some magical garden, and sighed. "Look, you...OW! Stop tugging, dammit, before I throw you out!" He slid down into a hunched seat against the wall, barely registering the 'coos' and 'goos' and slobber, or the fact that he was sitting in a puddle. He really didn't care anymore.
All he wanted was to sleep. Hell, he couldn't even muster up his usual brand of rain-induced angst.That in itself wascomforting...even though his master had been killed on a night such as this...
That should have been disturbing, but it wasn't.
"Huh. Guess it's your fault, brat." Gently, he managed to get them both back in the general vicinity of the bed, putting the baby down at the cost of a few precious strands of hair, and read the note over.
I think you get the point. Oh, and it's one spoonful to every two ounces of water, since none of you look like you're capable of breastfeeding. Have fun, Konzen!
Did he LOOK like he could breastfeed? And what the hell was one spoonful to every whatever? What did he look like, a mathematician? A mother, all irritating gods forbid? "Oi...brat...stop tugging, dammit!"
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Ending Note 1: Moooou, it seems no one got who the baby was in the first chapter. Oh well, all is still good, and if it's still not clear, it will soon be. Muchos gracias for the hits and reviews, guys :D They make us really happy!
Ending Note 2: All baby-care experiences and characterization taken from Drac's niece. Not that anyone needed to know that.
Ending note 3: USE THE FORCE, SANZO-HAN! USE THE FORCE AND YOU SHALL (NOT) PREVAIL! DAHAHAHAHA! -shot dead-