Name: Across the Sea (Version 2.0!)
Rating: PG-13, possibly R in later chapters
Warning: Full series spoilers, OOCness, Rampant fancharacters, Shonen-ai and possible lemon in later chapters. Swearing, too! So much fun!
Taikoubou
Well, the first thing you should know is that when Fukki is around, things are pretty chaotic. Not outside him, though that is also true, I mean inside him. We've got an alien ancestor, a deranged youkai and in my personal opinion THE coolest doushi that ever existed. Occasionally we get along and become kind of one entity, but most of the time it's the real Fukki in control of the body with Outenkun and me playing shoulder angel/devil. And we disagree on a lot of things. We can't even decide what to have for a snack. ("Peaches!" "Nuts!" "Peaches!" "Nuts!") So it's pretty much constant squabbling in Fukki-san's head. After two thousand, five hundred years three months two weeks three days four hours and thirteen minutes, most people will have a tendency to go insane.
"SHUT UP! SHUT UP SHUT UP JUST SHUT UP!"
Weshut up for a minute.
"I am SICK and TIRED of you two bickering! Get out of my head! You two are going to SPLIT and if you even THINK about fusing again in the next TWO HUNDRED YEARS I will personally destroy all that is good in your after lives! Actually, make that FOUR hundred years! Now GET OUT!"
An angry alien ancestor isn't something you really want to deal with, so Outenkun and I split. I think Fukki needed some time without us in his head for a while. He was most likely planning to wander the earth in soul form for a while, enjoying the blissful silence in his head. But that's just my opinion.
Outenkun gave me a look that said 'I hate you. A lot.' And said "This is all your fault, you know."
"Yeah, I know."
HA! Did you really think I'd say that? No, it really just kind of degenerated into hurling insults at each other for a while, then we went our separate ways. I think Outenkun was a bit mad because- and this is just my guess- being fused keeps him sane. I could be wrong here.
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"Taikoubou, go get that damn oyaku don from Reiki!"
"Fine fine."
Reiki is the only one of us that can cook for his life. Hell, his food is delicious! Sadly, he refuses to admit this unless you really flatter him. This is why the job of waiter or waitress is not highly sought in the Koneko Kissaten. And I always seem to lose when we pick in the morning.
I stuck my head in the kitchen. "Reiki, there's two orders of Oyaku Don that should have been out there five minutes ago."
Reiki was, as usual, bustling around doing what he loves. "On the counter to your right." "Great." I grabbed the plates and headed back into the main part of the airy restaurant. Kuniko, our 'employer' threw two sodas at me. I don't have great hand-eye coordination.
"Ah!"
Luckily, Talis does.
"Nice diving catch."
"I've got to take time off flirting now and then to save your ass, don't I?" The orange-haired kitsune went off to 'rescue' Jahiro from a few loyal fangirls. "Kami, those things are here almost every day!" Jahiro was a hanyou kitsune whose father owned the same palace Reiki had to work at. Both were there unwillingly.
See, after Outenkun and I, uh, decided to take a break from each other, I somehow ended up running across the ocean so as not to incur the wrath of Youzen. I looked it up on a map one day, humans now call it the East China Sea.Before I made it over, I met a young noble girl named Maku who had run away from home. She bought me dumplings! We wound up at a palace where she knew somebody. Some brother's friend's father's niece's old boyfriend's daughter. Or something like that. Turns out she and her brother had been sold by their uncle into slavery at Tori no Shiro, a castle owned by Futtota. I shudder just thinking of him.
That was where we met Talis, Jahiro, Jahiro, Reiki and his sister Aiko.
From there, we ended up waiting until Futtota and his other son Seiji (who was Jahiro's half brother and a full kitsune) left on business and looted the place, not to mention setting what was left of the servants free. It wasn't exactly a nice place. Some of it doubled as a sort of brothel, which is where we met Jahiro. Don't mention it to him, I think he's blocked out the memories.
We finally sold the loot in a small town, where we met another hanyou and a few of his friends. His name was InuYasha.
Hehe.
Anyways, we hadn't planned on staying long, but the next day a certain blue haired 'genius doushi' showed up on our doorstep. Kami, I've never heard anybody yell so loud. I bet they could have heard him back in Chouka! I spent the next half hour or so running for my life through the woods. Don't people say absence makes the heart grow fonder? I think in this case, absence made the heart really, really pissed. Finally I pushed him into a well, but the young miko of the village got really pissed at me too. Turns out the well was a portal into another world. Well, not another one, per say. Just this one five hundred years in the future. "So THAT'S why I didn't see him at the bottom. I thought he'd just put on so much weight while I was gone he had sunk into the ground." So the entire group volunteered to come help us find him again. It probably helped that Seiji had put bounties on most of our heads. I don't mean he put bounties on most of our actual heads, I mean he put bounties on the heads of most of us.
So we wandered around the Japan that existed five hundred years (or so, I suppose...) in the future without anywhere to go. Finally we found an old boarded up building in the suburbs on the edge of a park. Let me tell you, it takes a LONG time to get from downtown Tokyo to the suburbs. We snuck in and slept on the third story, but in the morning a woman with magenta hair kicked most of us asleep. Turns out she bought the old building and was turning it into a restaurant. She introduced herself as Kuniko Hayasaki and offered to put us up for boarding on the top floors if we worked for her. She couldn't pay us a lot, but beggars can't be choosers. The conversation went something like this.
"So what are your names?"
"Taikoubou."
"You have a last name?"
"Uh…. Kyoshika?"
"And you?"
"Talis."
"Last name?"
"…..Kitsunekage?"
"And you?"
"Aiko."
"Last name?"
"….."
"Do ANY of you have a real last name?"
"………………………."
She then proceeded to bang her head against the wall, but hired us anyway. It didn't take long to realize that Reiki was the only one who could cook really well. I mean, I can cook pretty well, and so can Maku and Talis, but I'm a doushi and Maku spits in the food of anyone she doesn't like. Talis would rather be flirting with the customers to get free drinks. As for the rest, well, Jahiro nearly cuts his hand off with anything other than a butter knife, and Aiko eats everything as soon as she makes it. I think they starved her in that palace.
There's been a lot to keep us busy since then. We finally found Youzen and had him working in the kitchen, we met a girl we suspect is InuYasha's descendant (though the only ones with really good noses are Aiko and Reiki, and they won't tell us who the other ancestor is), found a monument to a friend who died before we came to the 'present', and met the reincarnations of Talis, Seiji and Futtota. But I'm getting ahead of myself. I haven't even mentioned Ryugumo or Atsuko yet, have I? Then there was that time we got kidnapped by the government! That was fun…
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Author's Notes:
(Description of Fukki) This is how I picture Fukki. Really.
(Koneko Kissaten) Koneko Kissaten translates loosely into Kitten Café. They usually just call it The Kissaten.
(Oyaku Don) Oyaku Don is this wonderful Japanese comfort food which basically consists of rice, mirin sauce, vegetables, egg and chicken, but you can substitute it in pretty much any way you could think of. Since there's both chicken and egg in it the name means 'Mother and child'.
(Laughing at InuYasha's name) InuYasha translates directly as 'Dog Female Demon' Since InuYasha is male, Taikoubou is amused by this.
(Taikoubou can't cook) Doushi are vegetarians, so if Taikoubou was cooking and somebody ordered anything with meat in it he wouldn't be able to make it.
(Youzen can cook, but Suusuu can't?) Taikoubou doesn't cook well enough to have a speciality, but Youzen cooks almost as well as Reiki so they have him do most of the vegetarian stuff.