Quote of the Week: "Skiing combines outdoor fun with knocking trees down with your face." - Dave Barry
Well, I know I've been very lazy about updating this summer. Very. No need to tell me twice. School is already coming up again in a few weeks, and I'm still not out of the 20's. x.x
On the bright side, at this rate, by the time I reach the April vacation bit, it may already really be April vacation! Again! ;;
"It is not freaky... it's called a growth spurt," Lyonell muttered for the last time, letting his bag drop to the floor out of annoyance. Taking a seat next to the cat demon, Yusuke snorted.
"Growth spurts don't make you grow eight inches."
"Hey!-"
"-In three months."
Lyonell, not feeling up to an argument with the spirit detective, merely growled and kicked at Justin's (vacant) seat in front of him. Indeed, the cat had gotten much taller, now exceeding Kuwabara's height; however, he also hadn't gained much weight to go with his taller frame. Slim to begin with, he looked unhealthily thin now. Any remnant of muscle tone he'd had before the group had left on "Mission: Rescue-Holly-At-All-Costs!" was nearly nonexistent.
Rogerik, seated behind Yusuke, the dark bags under his eyes slowly fading from the months long excursion without his friends, looked the cat up and down. "Seriously, though," He tiredly said, "You look... sick."
"Dude, you're the fourth person to tell me that since last Thursday." With a groan, Lyonell let his head thunk down on the desk, his paw-like feet sprawled in the aisle. "As if Chrys isn't enough... You guys are just all out to get me, aren't you?"
Yusuke and Rogerik shared looks, but their retorts were cut off as Suzuki (wearing a badly knitted scarf with his initials sewn onto the bottom end) came in. Now out of the chilly February air, the inventor whipped off the scarf as if it carried the plague, and looked around the room.
"Where's St. Pierre..?" When no one answered him, Suzuki sighed and sat down in his chair, wincing as the old, rusty, joints creaked and squealed under his weight. Pen strokes flourished across the page as the inventor took note of attendance, and he did a double take at Yusuke. "Well... if you aren't back from the dead. Again."
"Real funny," Yusuke muttered, glad that the reference to his former death went flying over the heads of the others. After all, it was one thing to be killed in a violent alternate dimension created by a cursed painting; to be hit by a car was entirely different.
The familiar fury of pounding fists on the door (followed by the, again, familiar busting open of the door) nearly made everyone jump to hide under their desks, teacher included. Aki, faced with a classroom of startled students, merely blinked and beamed at them. "Good morning!"
"Rapture..."
"What was the Suzuki-san?" The fairy tilted her head at the much taller man, and Yusuke had the feeling that she was resisting the urge to just float up in Suzuki's face. As usual, her wings were nothing more than a vaguely red-colored blur.
"Uh, actually," Suzuki wracked his mind for a plausible excuse, then his eyes seemed to light up. "Aki, would you run an errand for me?" He asked. When the fairy energetically bobbed her head (after a momentary pause in memory of the former "errands" she had been sent on, some of which had seen her away from the classroom for most of the day), the blond nearly sighed in relief. "Excellent. Could you go and find Justin again? He seems to be attempting to skip history class again."
"Oh, of course! That'll be no problem."
And, as quickly and mind-numbingly she had appeared, the foliage fairy had already left. Suzuki glanced up at the clock, then shrugged and flipped through a heavy textbook that had been in place on his desk. "She won't take long. Everyone, feel free to talk amongst yourselves quietly."
Immediately, the volume in the room doubled. Yusuke could only stare and blink in wonder of what the inventor had just said as his two friends swiveled in their respective seats to form a demented little circle of sorts.
"This isn't going to take long, and he knows it." Rogerik stated, jerking a thumb over at Suzuki. Lyonell nodded in reply. "Yeah... Justin always ends up hanging around the same corner on the path between the cafeteria and lake, in the end. He doesn't learn."
"It's like he's drawn to the same friggin' spot."
"Hypnotized," Lyonell suggested.
"Like a bug zapper... The light..."
Although Yusuke was feeling a bit out of the loop from his long absence, at least that joke earned a laugh. Perhaps it had been from his three-month-long excursion, but no matter where he went, the same uneasy feeling hovered over him like a cloud.
Behind her, a twig snapped, and she swiveled one furred ear to catch the sound better. This time of year, it could have easily have been the cold that made the noise, but it was best to be cautious. Although most of the teacher might've taken the day off to take advantage of the snow, that didn't mean that the day was an automatic skip day.
Another twig snapped, and this time she caught the suddenly sharp intake of breath as her follower stopped in their tracks. They knew that she had noticed them, and were thinking over what to do. Chrysanthemum ran through her possible choices through her head, and decided that the simplest method worked best, most often. So, tail twitching in the snow, the cat twin turned her head, then grinned in relief.
"Lark, you had surprised me..." But while Chrysanthemum was perfectly warm in an autumn jacket, long pants, and her own fur, the water manipulator was shivering, even among all her layers. Eyes nearly hidden underneath a large and fuzzy bucket hat, Lark glared and huffed warm breath into her scarf. She shifted her weight from foot to foot, her arms crossed against her chest, in a vain attempt to stay warm.
"It isn't like you to ruin your perfect attendance record, Chrys," Lark said, as muffled as it sounded behind the scarf. Chrysanthemum rolled her green eyes and turned back towards the hilltop, where the object of her affections was currently adjusting the straps on his snowboard. Curious as well, Lark picked her way through the brush among the trees, and joined the Aurata twin. "Who are we watching, again?"
"Shikyo-sensei, you twit!"
"Geez, I'm sorry if I'm not into my English teacher."
If looks could kill, Lark would have been paralyzed from the neck down by Chrysanthemum's eerie slitted-pupil-gaze. As it was, the twin gave Lark the cold solder and focused all of her attention on her black cat. "He's only about nineteen..."
"Wonderful," Was all that Lark spat out, staring up at her teacher with something between annoyance and curiosity. "You know," she muttered thoughtfully, "I don't know what's more annoying... that big-ass study guide he gave me for my Finals redo, or the fact that he can go snowboarding while we still have classes."
Both girls fell silent as the force of gravity took over, and their teacher skillfully weaved his way downhill. The cat demon sharply fishtailed the boat, sending a spray of snow into the faces of Ryo and Hisagawa (they had managed to find an antique toboggan somewhere on the school grounds), and his smirk could even be seen from the girls' hideaway. That smirk was wiped clean off Shikyo's face with the mere narrowing of Ryo's eyes, however, as something that only the cat demon could see seemed to interfere in his path. He swerved to the right, then left, only to find that his imaginary obstacle/opponent was moving to block him.
CRRSHHH!
Lark winced and Chrysanthemum's tail puffed out to twice it's normal size as the two girls peeked from between their fingers at the path in the snow that led to a stand of trees. A lovely path that the English teacher had carved out of the snow with his face.
"Ah! Shikyo-sensei!"
"Jeebus!" Lark and Chrysanthemum darted out from their hiding place and scurried over to the copse of trees, the light laughter of Ryo still ringing in their ears.
The world stopped flip-flopping, and he rubbed his head and face, trying to get the blood flowing again. His ears, although fur-covered, felt like they were frozen solid, and as he flicked them backwards he could feel little chunks of balled-up ice go flying. His board was unharmed, but one leg, the same one that had been in a cast just last summer, was throbbing horribly. And he had just managed to get the damn cast off a week before school started...
Deciding it would be best to check if he was as blind as he was cold, Shikyo forced his eyelids open, breath hissing between his teeth as melted snow dripped from his eyelashes and onto his actual eyes. Once the pain dulled over a bit, he couldn't help but blink at the blue hair and patterned wings of someone looming over him. Before the fairy could even talk, Shikyo raised a hand and managed to, more or less, sit up.
"We always meet in the worst situations, don't we, Clarice."
Clarice sighed and got to her feet, holding a hand down to help the teacher up. "I know... but at least you're alright-" Shikyo choked back a grunt of pain as he put weight on his throbbing leg, and the fairy backpedaled. "Well, you aren't dead yet."
"Thanks," he dryly stated. Despite the pain in his leg, the cat demon knelt down to undo the straps on his snowboard and dragged the board out of the snow. Butterfly wings making tracks in the snow, Clarice bent down to look at the injury and her eyebrows crinkled.
"Ow... you should go to the infirmary."
"I'll keep that in mind." And with that, and his snowboard handily repositioned for use as a cane, the cat started to hobble off towards the main building. He had walked a grand total of twelve feet when Clarice finally spoke up again.
"Want me to give you a ride over? I could probably stay airborne while carrying you..."
He was about to say no, and bravely continue hobbling, but common sense told him better. With a poorly hidden grumble, the cat demon slung his snowboard over his shoulder. "I guess that would be best-" He didn't even get to finish before he was hoisted into the air, the fairy wrapping her arms around his waist to lift him up. Beautifully detailed wings pumping steadily, she got a good ten feet off the ground by the time they had flown past the very bottom of the hill.
Down below, helping Ms. Hisagawa up from the overturned toboggan, Ryo chuckled. "Even injured, that furball draws them in."
"Ryo!" The exotic creature care teacher lost her grip of the elf-man's small hand, and fell back on her butt on the snow. Although normally kind and patient, the woman couldn't help but enjoy her coworker's screech as the cold snowball struck Ryo's ear. Winter wasn't as miserable as she had thought it could be...
"There you are!"
He nearly jumped at the voice, but managed to get a grip on himself. Instead of standing there, stuttering and trying to find an excuse for his truancy, like any other idiot punk, Justin decided to put his sudden burst of adrenaline (caused by the surprise) to good use.
Simply put, he ran.
Already, he had leapt down the stairs (luckily avoiding the patch of black ice at the bottom) and took off for the lake. The frost coating the brick pathway crackled beneath his thudding footsteps, but the sound was nearly drowned out by the constant buzzing of his pursuer's wings. The buzzing was getting louder, too...
With a snort of superiority, Justin braced one foot on the granite curb and leapt, regaining his balance as gravity dragged him down the frosted-over grass towards the banks of the lake. He tried to dig his heels in in time, grabbing onto brush for good measure, and finally came to a stop at the lake's edge, clinging onto a tree trunk to prevent himself from running right onto the ice.
Breathing heavily, Justin looked back up where he had left the path; his descent leaving defrosted and snapped shrubbery in his wake. There was no sound from Aki's wings... had she finally left him alone? No, it couldn't be; she never gave up this soon. But she couldn't possibly fly through the lower canopy of the trees; it was too thick, and there were no leaves to cushion the sharp twigs. Where could she..?
"EEEYYYAAAAAHHH!"
"Ho, Sh-!"
Phwumph!
They went flying backwards, the ice burning even through his jeans. And his hands... stupid him for thinking that he wouldn't need gloves this morning. When they finally slid to a stop, somewhere in the middle of the lake, his fairy attacker grinned down at him, her face framed by auburn-red hair. "Guess what class you're missiiing..!"
"...I hate you." Truthfully, he would have said more, but that was when the lake decided to interfere. Hairline fractures thickened and took on the formerly invisible spider web-shape that their impact had created. The two students scrambled to their knees (well, Aki had decided to hover, instead) and their eyes widened at the sight.
The lake ice was breaking... not that it had been very thick to begin with, but still. Now struggling to his knees, Justin shot a halfway desperate look up to Aki, already certain that he would never make it before the fragile surface beneath him shattered. As quick as Aki was, however, she only managed to lunge out and grab onto the younger teen just as the ice underneath him gave one final crack. Water dripped from his feet as she flew him to shore, forming little icicles on the end of his shoes.
Once again on the banks of the lake, Justin attempted to wring the ice water out of his jeans hem with his equally cold hands, and gave up with a sigh. The lack of feeling to his feet was just now starting to set in, which wasn't a pretty sight at all... As he attempted to stand back up on his own feet, the painful feeling of pins and needles shot through his leg. Dignity still fairly intact, Justin relied on the various trees and shrubs to pull himself back up the hill, a puzzled Aki trailing behind.
"Forget class... go home and take a hot shower..."
"I'm fine; Just need dry clothes."
"Well, the main office is closest... I think the cafeteria is full of younger students, today. And we don't want to scare them..."
"...Hate...you..."
"Hey, don't blame the messenger!" Aki whined, hovering over the younger boy's shoulder as he trekked towards the Offices, his legs already starting to go numb in the cold.
For the umpteenth time that day, the middle-aged secretary looked up over the tops of her bifocals to see a frozen and shivering youth stand before her. Only, this shivering youth had come by earlier that day to drop off his latest student assessments. And that time, he hadn't sported a familiar pair of crutches.
She sighed and straightened the stack of manila folders, before giving the English teacher a faint smile. "Shikyo, perhaps you should take a vacation?"
The cat's eyes narrowed, and he readjusted the snowboard strapped to his back. "That was my vacation."
"My, my..." She pursed her lips and tried not to laugh. How many times had she told her own sons to be careful when on the slopes and trails? Like many a mother, she'd seen a number of injuries, but never a bone broken twice in the same place. The poor boy before her had worse luck than he let on. "Well, I hope you get better soon."
"Like last time," an intern muttered as he passed by, long hair tied up in a sweeping ponytail of reddish-brown waves. Shikyo barely had time to catch the jaunty sway of the other man's hips before his eyes widened. "You," stated, pointing at the intern.
The intern turned, shifting his folders to one arm as he pushed his rhinestone-decorated glasses up his nose. "Good job, Shikyo. Me," He grinned, pointing at himself. The cat demon's ears twitched back, and he seemed to lean back on his crutches and more towards his uninjured leg.
"I don't recall you working here, Victoria."
"Oh, Victor? He, uh, she..? He?" The secretary pondered over what gender to call Holly's older brother, but smiled instead. "Anyways, Victor is a big help. Amazing with numbers, let me tell you; he even worked with Rachel to set up a plan so the school can pay back all its debts within the next eight years." She sighed. "I can't even stand balancing my checkbook, never mind the salaries of all the faculty."
At this, Shikyo made a choking noise, and Victoria tilted a head at the teacher, glossed-up lips forming a gentle smile. "Ah, might you need some help, there? A cough drop, perhaps, Shi-kun?"
What was more amazing than the pace the cat was able to keep up on crutches, however, was the size his black tail had puffed out to. Gleefully, Victoria waved his now-coworker off. "I'll see what I can do about upgrading that health plan of yours!"
It had taken a full elevator ride, and then some (because he had felt like jamming it up for everyone else and hit the basement level and fourth floor button numerous times before getting off on the third floor), before he managed to simmer down enough to calmly stride out of the elevator. The hall was spacious, the walls covered with stacked canister-shaped student mailboxes, and Shikyo stopped by the water bubbler to fill himself a paper cone-shaped cup before disappearing into the Student Files room. Not that he really had any work to do... but anything was better than sitting around with a brand new cast. Afternoon classes had drawn to a close a few minutes ago, anyways.
The door to the stairwell creaked open, the rusty hinges in dire need of maintenance. Shikyo grimaced at the noise, nails nearly crushing his cone-cup. Nearly everything on campus was in need of some sort of repair or upgrade. Stupid cut educational funds...
"Oh, hey man..." Lyonell walked past his twin's teacher and knelt down by a section of canister mailboxes next to the Files room doorway. Shikyo nodded, downing the cup with one gulp and tossing the cheap little cone into the trash bin next to the water cooler. Some smart aleck little snot had pasted a large sticker that read "FIRE EXTINGUISHER" on the side of the off-white unit. The teacher eyed the sign while talking to the taller student.
"What are you doing up here? Most mail is delivered to the dorms."
"Yeah, but I got a call over the intercom that a package came in for me. The secretary made a big deal of it when I came in, and then the elevator wasn't working... kept on stopping on the basement level."
"Ah." As if just being in the same room with Lyonell would unearth the truth about his elevator joyride, Shikyo readjusted his crutches and hobbled into the Student Files room. The blond cat crinkled his nose at the sight of the familiar cast and looked up, a small box in hand. "What happened to your leg?"
"Snowboarding accident. Nothing much. Gotta get to work, bye!" As suddenly as the English teacher had spouted out the story of his broken leg, the door to the Files room slammed shut, and Lyonell's green eyes just widened in curiosity. "What in the world..?"
As soon as one door slammed shut, another seemed to be barraged open, and Lyonell was met with another victim of winter's vengeance. At the end of the hallway, Justin, dressed in a pair of khaki brown shorts (most likely rescued from the Lost & Found) with his sopping jeans thrown over one arm, his hair damp and free of gel, stalked past empty rooms and private offices. Noticing his roommate, however, the human slowed his pace.
"What are you doing up here?" he asked, eyebrows furrowed. Lyonell only grinned, trying to hide the box (and it's gaudy yellow ribbon) behind his back.
"Hey, you know, funny thing... you're not the first one to ask me that-"
"Tell me why you're here," Justin stated, clearly, seeming even more hot-tempered than usual. Lyonell fought back a gulp, edging closer to the wall as he felt for an empty mailbox to stash his package in until Justin left. It wasn't often that someone saw such a suspicious look from his roommate. Even now, he could notice the way Justin seemed to be circling him. Better ditch the box and fake stupid.
"I was, uh, just meeting Shikyo-sensei here for some homework help. He told me he was running an errand for Rachel in the Student Files room."
Right about now was the part where the Spanish Inquisition would tie him up to a gurney, place him under a giant swinging axe blade, and scream "Lies! Lies!" as they doused their torches with his scalp.
Although not quite as violent, Justin could certainly have much the same effect.
"Then what are you-" Lyonell noticed Justin's eyebrows lift, and suddenly wished that Shikyo would pop back out the Files room door; or Laird Michealangelo to make his usual oozing-cool-like-nobody's-business rounds along the halls; or for Rachel to come along and give them detention for loitering. Suzuki unicycling, even, while juggling hand grenades. Anyone, so long as they would distract Justin. "Who's the present from?"
"Hey, that's confidential information." There was no use pretending that it wasn't his, and the cat demon suddenly got a brilliant new idea, one that he hadn't thought of amidst all the teasing he had gotten.
Use his height to his advantage. Duh. If his sister (or older brother, for that matter) were here, he was certain he would have been whapped over the head and called a dunce.
Already, he was a good half-foot taller than Justin, and with the box held high up above his head, Lyonell was sure that there was no way his roommate would ever reach it. Brown eyes darker than they had been in years, even more so than the infamous Trap-pitfall-in-Suzuki's-classroom fiasco, the human merely glared at his cat-like friend; and, if only Lyonell hadn't been close to breaking out in a show-stopping number about the fact that he was finally winning something, the two might have come to some sort of agreement before anyone got hurt.
Not that stupidity or ignorance ever caused anyone pain, right?
No, this time the muse of pain came in the form of an overly curious college-aged fairy. Aki had followed Justin in his quest for dry pants, not all-too-entirely ready to let the younger student skip the entire day of school. After all, if frostbite hadn't set in on the walk to the office, there was no way it would affect him in a heated building.
As Lyonell toyed with Justin, taunting the shorter boy to take the gift-wrapped package by force, Aki had quietly hovered along behind. Lyonell's tall frame proved no obstacle for her, what with her wings and flying and all... In fact, she had already read the tag (which had been, unremarkably, unmarked) and was fingering the soft satin of the ribbon by the time the two boys had noticed she was even there.
"Hey!" Ears turned back, Lyonell jerked the box away from Aki's curious touch, and as the knot of the ribbon slipped, time seemed to slow. All was eerily quiet for those few fragments of a second, and the fairy had time to catch the wide-eyed, unspeakable, horror that Justin's face showed
Minding his own business, Shikyo shuffled through the numerous manila folders, some thicker than others, a select few nearly bursting with papers and forms; he wasn't even through a fraction of them, and he had been going to this room since late August. He could hear the argument outside, although it was muffled and faint, even with his select hearing. Still, nothing to interfere in; they were big kids... they could settle it on their own without a referee.
That was when the room rocked violently and all hell broke loose. Heeding to his responsibilities, the cat demon lunged for the door, his cast and former task forgotten.
Stacked on the floor, in numerous and towering piles, the most recent section he had been working on toppled, as smoke poured in through the door.
:cue dramatic music: ...Cliffhanger, or lazy writer? Find out in..!
...Chapter 24!
:more dramatic music, this time paired with the all-powerful dramatic wind and shoujo-style dramatic sparkles (don'tcha love dramatic?):
But, until next time, remember to tell your fellow YYH-loving friends about this story. May the geekdom spread!