AN: Thank you guys with your patience with this chapter. I'm going to aim for some longer chapters. Last week was my first week back at school after the winter break so I had to focus on my work. In addition to that, my cat got sick and had to be checked over by the vet. She seems to be doing okay right now but she may have had a kitty stroke Hopefully I'll be able to work on my other fics next week.
Act 31: Rabid Rooster
Kyoko smiled maybe a little too joyously as she heard the next question being read. Despite being under a rooster costume, she had to keep her cool and focus on taking Shotaro down, there was too much room for error. She looked over at Hikaru as he took a look at the next question, seemingly a little confused.
"I heard through the grapevine that Fuwa Sho joined the badminton club in junior high."
Kyoko looked at Sho seeing a slight but somewhat unnoticeable panic in his eyes. She knew the history of Sho and badminton. She knew that he was having trouble with his aim and the angle of degree that he wanted the birdie to fly. She would trounce him at this. He would never be able to pick the pieces of his shattered ego off of the floor.
"I really want to see Fuwa play," Hikaru commented as he still looked at the egg confused. He hadn't practiced this and he had wanted the show to go off without a hitch. Sudden improvisation wasn't the way to do that, "but I guess we're need rackets and a birdie."
Kyoko grinned as she pulled the items out from behind her back. She saw Hikaru sweat a little but this wasn't really about him. This was about her taking revenge on Shotaro. She held the badminton rackets in front of her as everyone reacted to her with a shared silence. She would make him cry all night, that was the goal that she wanted to achieve.
"What's up?" Shiniichi asked as he stood to get a closer look at the scene, this wasn't supposed to be happening and he was worried about HIkaru holding it together on his own. "Does Bo want to play with him?" he asked as there was a dark aura swarming around the mascot. Kyoko gave a definite nod.
"Oh, right" Hikaru continued with a weak laugh. "I forgot to mention there's a penalty. The loser has to howl like a beast and circle around three times on all fours howling."
There was a shared murmur and gloom within the crowd and Hikaru kept laughing nervously as he held the pieces of paper in his hand. He didn't know what to do. Had this been some plan that his manager had had in the last minute. Had he gone crazy?
Kyoko however was too lost in her own mind. She knew that Shotaro had a good chance of losing. She knew that the show was being aired on national television and that it was being aired live. She would hear Shotaro howl as would the rest of Japan. It would show his pathetic side. His childish side. She wouldn't have to work so hard in order to take her revenge if she shattered his pride tonight. His howl would echo throughout Japan.
As she smacked the birdie at high speed, she was taken aback as Sho managed to return it with a determined expression on his face. He hadn't been able to do that before. She had thought that only with one strike she would cut him down but it wasn't working in the way that she had expected that it would. He had always lost as a child and now she would have to work even harder. She charged at the birdie before hitting it back, still focusing on the high speed.
Despite the heaviness in the costume, she had to keep going and keep moving. She couldn't afford to lose. She had risked her own job and taken a huge gamble on this and it wasn't working. She didn't know why it wasn't working. She smacked the birdie back a number of times.
For an instant Kyoko could see that she was improving his image unless she got him to howl. The way that he gracefully and elegantly jumped into the air to master the hits was annoying her. It was almost as if the stupid blond believed that he was at a modelling shoot. This night wasn't supposed to increase his popularity.
The idiot girls in the crowd were going wild over this. They should be calling him stupid and pathetic but they were looking at him with their gaga eyes and she needed this to end. She couldn't believe there were so many in the position which she had once been. They needed to be freed from their disillusions.
Kyoko only had one card to play in her bag, she had developed a special move as a kid, a final kill because Sho had said he wanted something hard. Well, she had never lost when she used this move. It was one that he hated the most and she could see the shock on his face as she jumped up and hit the birdie at an angle that would strike down on him just as if it was a katana that she was using to strike down the man himself.
It was her final attack. A move that only she knew.
Sho was frozen as he stared at her, it was as if he had figured this whole thing out but that didn't matter. It didn't matter if he knew that she was taking her revenge or not. She grinned underneath the suit before despair flooded her. The birdie had gotten stuck in the ceiling.
"It's over!" Hikaru announced and Sho blinked out of his trance, "We have a winner. This match is Bo's loss."
Kyoko crashed onto the ground. Once again she had lost to Shotaro. She never wanted to lose to Shotaro. This wasn't fair. She had been taken down because she had gotten too cocky and over confident. She hadn't completed her task and now she would have to devise another plan to show Japan his foolish and prideful and pathetic nature.
"Bo," Yuusei said as he patted Kyoko on the shoulder, "Please howl for us when the show ends."
The world started to close in as a commercial break was called. Kyoko needed to get a new plan ready, a new way to humiliate him. A commercial break would give her the necessary time that she needed to come up with such a plan.
…..
…
This wasn't supposed to happen. This was not supposed to happen. The show wasn't supposed to be proceeding as if nothing happened and Shotaro's popularity wasn't supposed to grow. He was supposed to be acting ashamed of all his faults and he shouldn't have fans screaming about him. This wasn't the result that she had been looking for at all.
The producer of the show was irate when it came to her. She had taken things too far by trying to take control and now that she was being scolded for it, she was finding that she was sadly being pulled into the reality of what was happening. She had messed up. She didn't want to be scolded but it had been too easy with Shotaro right in front of her.
"Listen up!" the producer snapped at her, "Since there isn't another substitute, I have no choice but to let you play Bo, but if you ever pull another stunt like this, I'll make sure you never set foot in this TV station again even if you become a major celebrity."
Kyoko could feel her gut twist as she was reprimanded. She bowed her head, a rush of feelings flowing through her, "Yes, sir. I'm very sorry," she apologized. She should have thought more clearly. Her career hadn't even stated and it was already in danger. She was faced with falling off the edge of a cliff and the risk hadn't paid off. It was all his fault. Everything bad in her life had come down to Shotaro. All she could see was the anger towards Shotaro. It wasn't fair.
…
…
The next part of the program was an interview between Bride Rock and Shotaro and it was her job to serve him tea. She had to serve the vain Shotaro tea as if she were his maid again. She loathed having to do this but she was controlled by what the producer had said. She was so close to Shotaro and she couldn't use physically violence against someone that she despised with her whole heart.
As she focused more on the scene, she saw that Shotaro was constantly staring at her. Kyoko wasn't sure why that was happening. He wasn't paying attention to the interview but rather he was staring at her. This shouldn't be the position that she was in. She was supposed to be a lowly mascot, not the focus of Shotaro's attention.
Before she realized it, Sho had leapt up and was trying to pull the head of the costume off. This was assault right? Even though Sho was famous, this could be considered an assault of a fellow cast member. That was illegal. Why was Shotaro doing something illegal?
Shiniichi looked at the scene with confusion, "What are you doing, Fuwa-kun?" he asked and Sho continued to look at Kyoko.
"Nothing," he told them, "I was just wondering if this rooster is played by a man or a woman."
That wasn't the type of thing that you needed to announce on a live show. Maybe he was angry because she had messed around with him but this was none of his business who was behind the mask and he couldn't expose her on live TV. This wasn't fair. Did she really have to put up with this type of wrong thinking? He was famous, sure, but didn't the simple rules of being a human being apply to him?
Kyoko pecked him, losing her temper as he tried to touch her and expose her. Maybe this would be considered assault, but he was the one who had started it. He was the reason that it was happening. She just needed to stay away from him so that he didn't ruin her plan to take revenge.
Somehow during all of that pecking, Shotaro managed to clutch the beak between his hands and Kyoko was trapped. He could whip it off at any moment and she would be a laughing stock throughout all of Japan. It wasn't just this TV station that wouldn't hire her, she would never get started as an actress and nobody would ever give her a chance to prove herself.
Shotaro leaned into her, she could almost smell his breath through the suit, almost feel the warmth of it, that disgustingly nauseating warmth. "Hey," he said as he looked at her with a challenging expression. "Why are you trying so hard to stop me? Are you perhaps someone I know from home?"
Kyoko's eyes widened from behind the suit. Had the dimwitted Shotaro been able to figure it out? How could she have thought that he wouldn't. She hadn't been thinking and for him to expose her on live TV would be a disaster. He didn't have any right to ruin her life more than he already had.
Kyoko felt startled and afraid as Sho attempted to rip the head off of her costume, "Is it possible that you're Yosuke?" There was one tug to the ground and the worry that was circling around and around in Kyoko's mind was that the head was going to come off. "Or maybe Kazuki!?"
Kyoko felt her panic rise even more in her chest. She'd rather die than let Shotaro know it was her in front of the whole audience. He would feel justified in feeling superior to her and she would be ruined. Her plan was to ruin his reputation, not to feel that she herself would have her life further wrecked.
She tripped as she attempted to keep her balance and fell on top of Shotaro. She heard people gasp, wondering if Shotaro had hurt himself. She didn't care about him. He was the one who had attacked her. As Kyoko managed to get over the shock of falling down, she put a wing to her face. The head was still on. Thank goodness the head was still attached. It was then she realized that she was atop Shotaro in a more X-rate intimate position but she couldn't get up. The costume was hard to move around in and she couldn't get up.
Sho looked at her with pity in his eyes, "Damn, I'd must rather be pushed down by a sexy woman with a nice body. Sorry but, you're not my type."
Shotaro pushed her back and his hand rested atop her breasts. Kyoko felt fear and pain rush through her. He shouldn't be allowed to touch her there. He had already told her that she was a plain and boring woman with no sex appeal, he had made it beyond obvious that he wasn't attracted to her. If this was the case, why was he keeping his hand here?
"Huh?" he said with a grin, "What's this? I feel something," he said and Kyoko felt as if the fear was dripping off of her body like a strange, ice cold sweat. "Ah, could they be breasts?" he asked with a cocky smile. He looked at her with a superior expression and laughed, "I guess that means you're a woman? Sorry about that," he smirked, "I thought only guys dressed up in these costumes. For a woman to do this kind of work, she must be really ugly."
Kyoko couldn't help the rage that was flowing through her body. He had insulted her on national TV and he had sexually assaulted her. He was acting so casually about it as well. She wanted to destroy him, she wanted to see him plummet down into hell. Kyoko felt herself experience maximum rage as darkness swirled around her. She was at her highest level of ferocity as if an android programmed only to murder Shotaro Fuwa.
She would murder him. She would slaughter him in front of everyone. She would make sure that no trace of him remained. Shotaro Fuwa must die.
…
…
Before Kyoko realized it she was trapped. She wasn't only trapped by the actions that she wasn't able to take back but she was literally caged and deemed a "rabid rooster". She had hit rock bottom, right? This was the end of the short-lived showbiz career.
The produced pointed a finger at her, the anger showing throughout his whole body. "You're through!" he said with more anger than Kyoko had imagined, "That was the last straw!"
"What? No way!" Kyoko protested as she stared at him. This was unfair. Compared to the sexual assault that Shotaro had made, she hadn't done anything wrong, "but why?" she asked nervously and the producer continued to yell at her.
"You interrupted the program and almost ruined the show, not only once but twice! Luckily, we were showing videos when you attacked him so it wasn't on TV but everyone in the studio saw it! How in the world could you attack and choke a guest!? And why did it have to be Fuwa Shou!? Your behavior is unacceptable!"
Kyoko grabbed the bars as she internally flinched, she hadn't expected for him to get so angry at her. She had just been attempting to do her job and it was because of Shotaro that she had had to defend herself. Kyoko truly believed that even if he had undressed her, the producer would have blamed her for it.
"But," Kyoko protested, "he tried to take off my headpiece."
As the producer glared at her in deep-rooted anger, Kyoko realized that he didn't care about her or whatever she said. "Enough! The schedule is already off since you added the badminton match in the first half without our permission! We can't skip Fuwa's live performance so we'll cancel the whole section with Bo at the end of the program! I don't need you anymore! Go home!" he ordered her.
Kyoko felt faint. She had been hurt and mocked and embarrassed on TV but none of this was considered Sho's fault. As human beings they should be ranked equally but was this because he was a celebrity. Was this the kind of life that Corn enjoyed as well? No. Corn wasn't like this, he would never hurt anyone like this, fairies and humans were different and she was seeing that even more tonight.
"Why am I the only one who's in trouble!? I had nothing to do with the second half," Kyoko attempted to defend herself but before she had realized it the producer had walked away. Her words didn't matter. Her defense didn't matter. "He started it and everyone knows it" Kyoko fell down feeling the pain rush through her. "I haven't even had my debut yet but I'm the only one getting punished! It isn't fair. I'm so pissed."
Kyoko looked down at the floor, she felt as if she was being kicked in the gut but as she looked at the light that gleamed over Shotaro, the painful truth sunk in even more.
These were the rules when it came to show business. Shotaro was a star with songs that always topped the charts. Kyoko was just an amateur with no connections. She didn't want to feel this way any longer and so she would have to climb to the top, she would have to reach his level.
She had to get to that glorious spot.
End of Act 31
Thank you for reading, reviews are appreciated
Thank you to the reviewers of Act 30
H-Nala, Kaname671, KrisXD, misherukuro, MWEH, paulagato
Thank you for all the support everyone and also thank you again for all your patience