Chapter Eight: The Almost-Cure-Only-Not-Quite
When the team finally hauled Kirihara out of the closet, he was sleeping. When they reached the tennis courts with him in tow, he was still sleeping. When Niou and Marui decided to pour a bottle of water in his face, he finally woke up, albeit sputtering and clearly not amused by their antics.

"What the-? You didn't have to do that!" Kirihara protested firmly. Not only was his hair soaked, the collar of his shirt was drenched as well, and his teammate's snickering faces weren't a nice accessory to the situation. On normal circumstances, Kirihara might've left them off with a glare and a scowl and maybe a taste of their own medicine if Sanada or Yukimura wasn't watching, but given his circumstances all of his options would've been labeled as 'cute' should he try to initiate them. Instead, he settled for crossing his arms, but perhaps that would've been labeled by the above as well.

"We're glad you're awake," Niou told him with sarcasm dripping. "Though we were hoping you had died."

"Niou-kun, stop that," Yagyuu told him off as he offered Kirihara a towel, which he took gratefully. At least some people were nice in this world filled with psychotic lunatics… but Kirihara counted as one of the latter, didn't he?

"So…" Kirihara began.

"So what?" Marui answered.

"So why the hell am I here?"

"Oh, swearing is a big no-no, Aka-chan," Niou taunted, wagging a finger in front of Kirihara. Two years of experience with this boy had taught Niou just exactly how to push his buttons and push them well. Immediately after the comment, Kirihara's eyes flashed red.

"Go to hell," he hissed, clearly defying what Niou had just told him to do. The older teen gave him a smirk in response. Kirihara glared at him with malice, as if wanting to lunge right at his throat and ripping out his voice box for good before logic and good judgment washed over him. There was no way he'd be able to take him down.

"Only if you're coming with me," Niou replied. Kirihara just grumbled, for there was nothing else for him to say. Luckily, Yanagi appeared in time to put him out of his embarrassment of loosing yet another verbal fling with Niou.

"Ah, Akaya," he began as he withdrew a bottle of what appeared to be blue-goo from his tennis bag. "We've come up with a cure, and it's sure to work."

No doubt everyone was skeptical. Last time the only thing the 'cure' did was toggle Kirihara's brain. What if this reversed the effects and they ended up with a thirteen-year-old screaming for his blanky? Somehow, Kirihara would no longer be considered cute in that traumatic state, and they were all unanimous on that account. However, all caution was thrown aside as Kirihara attentively accepted the toxic poison, no, cure, into his hands. Fear crawled up his face as Kirihara stared into the eye of death, no, hope.

"Are you sure it's… safe?" Yukimura asked, slightly unnerved by the bubbles coming out of the bottle. During his time in the hospital, Yukimura had gotten to know the equipment and the medicine fairly well, and he was sure that there wasn't anything like that on the market. Besides, with Yanagi's history in chemistry, Yukimura had high doubts on his ability in the lab. He was also beginning to wonder how it was that Yanagi managed to keep his science grade the way it was.

"I'm sure it'll work," Yanagi reassured him, but the tense expression on Yukimura's face did not waver. In fact, it deepened even more as Kirihara slowly forced himself to down the bottle, knowing that there was no turning back from whatever fate awaited him, and Kirihara didn't even believe in fate.

The team tuned in their focus to Kirihara as he dropped the empty bottle in disgust and struggled against the strong will to throw up the contents due to how badly it reacted with his taste buds. They could really care less if Kirihara threw up as long as it wasn't on them, and besides, they were more anxious for any kind of results to really care that much. At first, nothing happened. After five more seconds though… nothing happened. Finally, after ten whole seconds… well, to be frank, nothing happened.

"Are you sure it works?" Marui asked as he lent Kirihara a bottle of water to wash out the taste. Kirihara took it gratefully. Yanagi's brows were knit into a perplexed expression, truly surprised that it didn't work.

"Yes, I'm sure it works," Yanagi said, still quite confident in his creation. However, after thirty full seconds, even he was having second thoughts. "Perhaps I should've added more bleach…"

"You put bleach in there?" Sanada bellowed as he immediately checked to see if Kirihara was dying. Luckily, he was only suffering from a case of taste buds rejection. "Are you aiming to kill him?"

"No, no, the bleach was for-"

However, before he could finish that elaboration, there came a sputter from their junior ace, and before they knew what hit them, before them stood the effects from Yanagi's frightful cure. The team didn't really know what to say.

"Hey, I think I'm back to normal," Kirihara said slowly as he examined himself. His face felt solid enough, and judging by how he was no longer three feet shorted than everyone else, he probably was back to normal. No, he had convinced himself that he was normal, because if this charade went on any longer…

"Yanagi…" Yanagi wasn't very tuned into what Yukimura had just said to him as he was busy trying to contemplate the situation. The only thing his mind could conclude at the given moment was that he had indeed put in well enough bleach… maybe a little too much…

"Kirihara, how do you feel?" Yanagi asked, just like a psychologist would examine their patients.

"I feel great. Better than I have in the past few days," Kirihara said as he smiled widely, and then that was when he began noticing the change in his voice and how a lot of his teammates now seemed shorter than he was.

"Oh, I see," Yanagi said, flashing back his smile with a strained one of his own. The situation could easily be fixed once he reconstructed the cure with a lower concentration, so the ideal focus here was not to let Kirihara think that anything was wrong. Well, actually, a couple visits to the hair salon could fix it too, but the dangerous hard way was always more fun than the boring simple way.

"Damn… you look like a wad of seaweed," Niou said, pointing a finger at Kirihara's head while trying to hold back a snicker as well. It was a hard task to do, especially since Kirihara looked so ridiculous and it was embedded in his nature to laugh at other's miseries. Kirihara shot him a criticizing glare, but out of curiosity, his hand flew to his head and pulled down a lock to see what Niou was talking about. Once he got a good smack of green did he know what Niou was really talking about.

"You're being a hypocrite, Niou-kun," Yagyuu said calmly, seemingly finding nothing rather wrong with the situation. It was his opinion that in time, Kirihara would eventually color his hair an outrageous color and show up at practice one day with a gleaming smile and strutting around proclaiming how cool he was. Though this was a bit off of his predictions, it was almost the same, and Yagyuu was satisfied with an 'almost'.

"Sure, sure," Niou said offhandedly, more intrigued by Kirihara's new do and freaked out expression. Kirihara had yet to say a word, probably internally struggling between screaming in rage of screaming in rage and beating someone to death. He wasn't really sure who should be at fault exactly, so that took a bit more time to process.

"Why is it green?" Kirihara finally decided to scream, his eyes shooting from person to person as they flinched in response. Finding no answer save pure silence, Kirihara broke down into a puddle of hysterical mutterings and not-so-silent profanities as his teammates scrambled their minds to find something to somehow comfort the frantic soul. Jackal decided to speak up:

"Kirihara, I'm sure Yanagi can fix this, or you can just go dye your hair right now," he suggested helpfully, only to be met by vicious swears and hissing. He retreated immediately. Not only could Kirihara bark loud, he knew for a fact that the boy could bite just as hard.

"Oh, before you do that, I would like to take a sample of it," Yanagi piped up as he magically pulled out scissors from his tennis bag, probably from a dissection kit he kept with him for when he needed to extract a certain organ from certain bugs for brewing his substances. (What's a juice without some crushed beetle shells?) Kirihara stared at him with a pale face as he immediately put a stop to his hissing and just concentrated on cursing the whole time.

"For what?" Yukimura said cautiously.

"A slide sample, of course," Yanagi stated as if that was the obvious answer everyone would expect. Kirihara decided to be helpful as he plucked a strand from his head and handed it to Yanagi.

"Here," he said, rather edgy. "Just don't touch my head with those scissors."

"Very well then," Yanagi sighed contently. "After all, I should begin devising another formula for-"

"No!"

And they were all agreed upon that point.