Love Hina:
A Different Path Taken
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Chapter Five
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"Now that is a damn good cup of coffee."
Taking a whiff of the steam coming off his coffee, Keitaro took a moment to luxuriate in it's aroma. Sipping it, he exhaled happily. Coffee was a habit he had picked up from his time with Shinji's crew, and he liked it the way the boss made it- strong, with no sugar or cream.
Some people had compared Shinji's coffee to engine degreaser, but he always laughed at their descriptions of it, saying that he had tasted stuff that made his look weak. That was all he said about it, claiming that he couldn't say anything more due to it being "classified".
Keitaro snorted at the thought and took another sip of his coffee.
From deeper inside the house he heard the soft thump-thump of slipper clad feet on the stairs and then the hallway leading to the kitchen.
"Someone's trying to be quiet, probably juvenile, which means its Shinobu." he thought, listening to the footsteps.
His assumption proved correct when she entered the kitchen and was startled to see him.
"Oh!" she exclaimed. "Senpai, I didn't realize you were up." she added, then paused for a second "Don't you think you should get some more sleep? You were up awfully late last night with Kitsune."
"We weren't making too much noise, were we?" Keitaro asked, suddenly worried that the most innocent person in the Inn had heard him while he was balls deep in Kitsune.
She shook her head in the negative. "No, I had to use the restroom and I saw that your light was on from across the courtyard." she said.
Mentally Keitaro relaxed when she said that. His time in Africa had made him capable of many things, but destroying the innocence of a fourteen year old girl wasn't one of them.
"Oh." he said. "We got to talking and lost track of time." he explained. "Normally, I'd still be out after being up that late, but I'm still getting over the jet lag. My sleep schedule's completely messed up right now."
"Oh, I understand." Shinobu said. "I was going to make breakfast. Would you mind if I made you something too?"
"I wouldn't complain." Keitaro admitted.
"Okay then!" Shinobu said with a smile.
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He ran into Naru after breakfast. He was heading to her room to see if she was going to be out for the day and he ran into her coming down the stairs.
"Hey, Narusawa." he said. "You got a minute?"
Naru looked up at him dark circles under her eyes, and if looks could kill, the glare she gave him would have reduced him to his component atoms.
"Well, Shinobu may not have head me and Kitsune, but Naru sure the hell did." thought Keitaro. "Oh, well."
"What do you want?" Naru growled at him.
"I was gonna ask, are you going to be out today?" he asked, completely unfazed by her death glare. After your first car bombing, a teenaged girl with anger issues wasn't all that threatening.
Her glare ratcheted up in intensity in reaction to his nonchalance. "Why? You going to be picking up where you left off with Kitsune last night?" she growled.
"I wish, but the poor girl needs her sleep. Anything more and I think I'd put her in the hospital." Keitaro said with a lecherous smirk that he was making no attempt to hide. "No, I was thinking I could fix that hole in your floor."
Naru took a moment to grab hold of her temper with both hands, remembering that Keitaro had demonstrated that he wasn't going to take her shit, took a deep breath, and exhaled. "For your information..." she said, her voice tight "...yes, I will be out today. I will be leaving shortly and will not be back until sometime after four."
"Okay then." Keitaro said with a smile. "You have a good day."
Naru let out a strangled growl and stomped past him. Keitaro chuckled to himself at her agitation and then headed down the hall, his mind on some things that he could get done before he got to the hole.
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Keitaro had finished up the couple of chores that had needed doing and was about to go take a look at the hole to make a list of materials when Ms Otohime wandered up to him.
"Excuse me, you wouldn't happened to have seen a turtle around here anywhere?" she asked him as she looked around.
Keitaro blinked a couple of times, then shook his head. "No, not really." he said. "As a matter of fact, I wasn't aware that there was a turtle around here. Also, why is there a turtle around here?"
"Oh!" Mutsumi exclaimed, clapping her hands together. "Where I'm in Okinawa we have turtles. One of them snuck into my luggage and I'm looking after her until I can return her home. I got up this morning and was going to feed her and I noticed that she had gone missing."
"Ohhh-kay." Keitaro said, not really sure how to respond to that, and not wanting to be pulled into the maelstrom of ditzy madness that was Mutsumi Otohime. "Well, it's a turtle. It-"
"She." Mutsumi corrected him. "My turtle is a she."
Keitaro nodded and continued. "She is a turtle, so she couldn't have gotten too far-"
At that point from the baths there was a scream and an explosion.
"FUCK1" swore Keitaro as he reflexively pulled his pistol. "Now what?"
"Oh me, oh my!" Mutsumi exclaimed.
Pistol at the ready, Keitaro headed for the baths with Mutsumi following behind him, eager to see what all the excitement was about.
What it turned out to be was Motoko in a robe, pale and shaking with her sword drawn and a very large hole in the exterior wall of the womens changing room.
"Motoko!" Keitaro said, getting her attention after he had swept the room for threats. "What the hell happened? Why the hell is there a giant assed hole in the wall?"
Motoko didn't look at him when she responded. Instead, she kept looking around her, looking for something.
"Th-th-there was a t-t-t-t-turtle..." she said.
Keitaro looked over at Mutsumi. "Just what kind of turtle is it?" he asked, jerking his thumb at the wreckage.
"She's just a turtle." Mutsumi said. "About this big." she added, holding her hands about ten centimeters apart.
Keitaro arched an eyebrow at her, then turned his attention back to Motoko. "Okay, so there was a turtle." he said. "Just what the hell happened?"
Motoko swallowed nervously as she recalled the events. "I- I was about to open the bin to put my clothes in when I saw it sitting on top of the bin." she began. "On reflex I performed the Cutting Air Spark, but it dodged my attack and the last I saw of it was when it flew out the door."
"What?" Keitaro asked. "Did I hear you correctly, in that you said that it flew out the door?"
Motoko nodded and Keitaro then looked at Mutsumi, who also gave a confirming nod. Keitaro gave an irritated sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose.
"It's like I'm back in Africa..." he grumbled.
Any further comments from him about the situation were cut off when Naru barged into the room. She stopped, saw the gaping hole in the wall, Motoko in a robe, and Keitaro, put two, two, and two together and came up with pi.
"URASHIMA YOU PEVERTED BASTARD-!" she screamed as she came off the handle and launched herself at him, fist cocked to deliver a hay maker.
Keitaro simply sidestepped her attack and as she went by, brought the butt of his pistol down on the back of her head. There was a crack as the plastic magazine pad met her skull and Naru collapsed, coming down like someone had dropped a sack of potatoes.
"Not now!" Keitaro barked at the unconscious Naru and turned to Mutsumi. "You! Come with me! We're gonna go find that turtle before it causes any more property damage and you're gonna tell me everything you know about it!"
Almost anyone else would have been startled by Keitaro's taking charge of the situation. Mutsumi was delighted, and followed him out the dressing room door.
"Well, first, she's an Okinawan Hot Springs Turtle..." she began.
Motoko was left standing in the dressing room, wondering just what the hell was going on.
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Not knowing what else to do, Keitaro started a room-to-room search, starting with Kitsune's room. Her room proved to be turtle free, so they moved onto Motoko's room, which looked like it had been deposited there from sometime in the Edo period. It was also turtle free.
When they came to Suu's room, Keitaro knocked on the screen. "Suu! You in there?" he asked.
A couple of moments later he got an answer when the screen slid aside to reveal a grinning blond teenager.
"Heeey Keitaro!" she said cheerfully. "What ya doin'?"
"Looking for a flying turtle." he answered with a straight face. "You seen one come through here?"
Suu grinned and nodded enthusiastically. "Yeah!" she said. "It's in here! You wanna see?"
"Yes." Keitaro said, and Suu slid the screen open fully and stood aside to let them pass.
When she did that Keitaro nearly had a heart attack, for Suu had transformed the interior of her room into a veritable jungle.
"Ah, Suu, are these real plants?" he asked as he and Mutsumi stepped inside, visions of rotted wood and black mold flickering through his mind.
"Of course they are, silly, silly, Keitaro!" Suu said with a laugh. "It wouldn't be a jungle if they weren't!"
Keitaro quailed at the thought of what all that damp, cloying, moisture was doing the Inn. "Oh, that's not good." he said.
"Why not?" Suu asked, dancing past them.
Keitaro took a deep breath and let it out before answering her. He also resisted the urge to pistol whip the blond teenager, reminding himself that she was still young, and that stupidity was covered by diplomatic immunity.
"Because, Suu, jungles are warm, and damp, and full of rot." he explained. "And this is an old, old, building, made of pine and paper."
Suu stared at him blankly, like she hadn't understood a word he'd said. Keitaro felt an eye twitch, and the urge to pistol whip her increased. Reminding himself that he couldn't do that, he went with plan B.
"YOU'RE MAKING THE BUILDING ROT!" he shouted, Suu flinching backwards slightly from the volume of his voice.
"Oh." she said. "Oh well, if there's something wrong, I'm sure I can fix it! I mean, for a genius like me it should be a piece of cake!"
Keitaro groaned and covered his face with his free hand. "And just like that, you've guaranteed that he'll show up..." he muttered.
"She." Mutsumi corrected him, misunderstanding what he had said.
"I was talking about Murphy, not the turtle." he told her as he dropped his hand away from his face. "And thank you for reminding me." he added as he turned his attention back to Suu. "Where is the turtle? You know, the thing we originally came in here for?"
"Oh!" Suu said, beaming "She's over here. C'mon!"
Keitaro and Mutsumi followed the blond girl to where there was a metal container with a turtle happily swimming around in it.
"Oh, you remembered to simulate a hot spring!" Mutsumi exclaimed, clapping her hands together.
"Hot spring?" Suu asked as she dumped a handful of vegetables into the container, which turned out to be a stock pot.
Keitaro reacted instantly. He snatched the turtle out of the pot and handed it to Mutsumi in one smooth motion.
"Hey!" Suu protested.
"No!" Keitaro scolded her. "No eating the turtle!"
"But-"
"I SAID NO!" he yelled. "No eating Mutsumi's turtle!"
Suu flinched backwards at having been scolded, clearly not used to that happening to her. Keitaro, on the other hand, couldn't care less. He was the one who had to fix the messes the girl had caused and thus his opinion was the one that mattered.
"I also want all of this crap gone!" he continued, sweeping his arm around to encompass the vegetation surrounding them. "I'm not having your homesickness rot out my grandmother's inn, do you understand?"
Suu stared at him, open-mouthed in shock. "Do. You. Understand?" Keitaro repeated, emphasizing each word. Numb from shock, Suu nodded. "Good. You have until the end of the week."
With that, Keitaro turned on his heel and left. Mutsumi looked at Suu for a moment, then followed after him.
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Mutsumi caught up with him in the hall.
"Don't you think you were little hard on her?" she asked as she fell into step beside him.
"She's fourteen." was Keitaro's response. "She should know better."
"I'm not disputing that." Mutsumi countered. "I just think the way you put things was a little harsh."
Keitaro sighed and stopped to turn and look at Mutsumi. "Mutsumi, do you have any idea on just what kind of damage she could have done?"
She shook her head. "No." she answered.
Keitaro pointed back down the hall where Suu's door was. "You remember how humid it was in there? And how she had an actual jungle floor and not tatami mats?" Mutsumi nodded. "You add dirt and moisture together, and you rot, black mold, fungus, all sorts of nasty stuff."
"Oh." Mutsumi said.
"Yeah." Keitaro said as he resumed walking. "And now I'm gonna have to go rooting around under the Inn and see what damage has been done. Hopefully, hopefully, it's minimal, but I'm not expecting that."
"Hopefully..." Mutsumi echoed.
"Anyways, I'm gonna go get cracking on that." Keitaro said as he split off from Mutsuimi. "You and your turtle go have fun and do whatever it is that you two do together."
Mutsumi watched Keitaro go, then looked down at the turtle she was holding in her hands. "Have you ate yet?" she asked it.
"Myah!"
"Okay..."
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Keitaro let loose with a rather impressive string of profanity when a jabbed him in back and made him crack his head against a support beam. Worming his arm behind him, he found the offending stone and chucked it off into the darkness of the crawl spaces beneath the Inn.
Closing his eyes, he took a few calming breaths before resuming shimmying his way through the crawlspaces to where Suu's room was.
"Oh, well." he said to himself as he worked himself along. "This still a hell of a lot better than the Central African Republic."
Which was true. The crawlspaces might be dank, dusty, and blacker than a tax collector's soul, but at least he had coveralls, a respirator, and goggles on. During their stint in the CAR, it had been hot, humid, and almost all of the fauna had seemed to want to eat them alive. Not to mention almost all of the locals had been wanting to shoot them.
So, yes, definitely a better situation- though Keitaro had to admit, the pay had been awesome.
Pausing in his exertions to check his progress, Keitaro craned his head back to get a look at the way ahead of him and the light of his head lamp caught something that made his heart sink: The timbers and cross pieces ahead of him were black and slick looking, rather than a dusty brown like the ones he had passed.
"Well, that ain't good." he said with a sigh, and resumed crawling.
When he got closer, he got saw just how bad it was. Not only was it all wet and damp, and covered in black mold, mushrooms had sprouted in some of the beams and roots forced themselves down between the floorboards.
"Oh, no, oh God no..." Keitaro moaned as he took out the tac light he had in his chest pocket for some better illumination.
Turning it on, he played the brilliant white beam of the tac light along the beams and saw that the area underneath Suu's room had mold and fungus, and it was beginning to spread to the other rooms as well. Pausing to let loose with some of his most colorful profanities, Keitaro then took out his cell phone and started taking pictures and video.
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When Keitaro crawled out from underneath the Inn, he found Kitsune waiting for him.
"Hey, Kitsune." he said after pulling his respirator off. "What's up?"
Kitsune huffed and crossed her arms. "Why does Naru have a lump on the back of her skull?"
she asked. "She said you hit her."
"I pistol whipped her, actually." Keitaro corrected her. "But, she did come at me first, and I have warned her."
Kitsune sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. "I know, I know." she said the tone of her voice conveying the annoyance she was feeling. "She overreact to something?"
Keitaro ran his hand back and forth through his hair to knock the dirt and cobwebs out of it. "More like jump to conclusions. Motoko managed to blast a chunk out of the changing room's wall, and Mutsumi and I showed up to investigate. She showed up right after that, took one look at the room with Motoko having her sword out and in a bathrobe, saw me, and tried to deck me."
"Oh."Kitsune said. "And that's when you pistol whipped her?"
Keitaro nodded. "Yeah. I was trying to help Mutsumi find her turtle, and I wasn't in the mood to fuck around."
"Turtle?"
Now it was Keitaro's turn to sigh. "Apparently, in Okinawa, is a species of turtle called the 'Hot Springs Turtle'. One of them snuck into Mutsumi's luggage and she's been caring for it until she can take it back home with her." he began "Anyways, it escaped, and went exploring. It ended up in the changing rooms, where it ran into Motoko, who, incidentally, is terrified of turtles."
"Let me guess: she used her mystical monster slaying abilities, right?"Kitsune asked.
"You knew about those?" asked Keitaro in weary surprise.
Kitsune shrugged. "Well, I didn't exactly know about them, but I do remember her talking about them..." she said sheepishly. "I didn't exactly think they were, y'know, real or anything."
Keitaro stretched. "Well, they are, if the damage done to the changing room is any indication." he said. "Fixing that's gonna have to wait awhile though."
"How come?" Kitsune asked.
Keitaro pulled his phone out of his pocket and flipped through a few menus. "This is why." he said, handing the phone to her. "Take a look."
Kitsune took the phone from him and made a face when she saw the photo that was on screen. "Ewww." she commented. "What's this?"
"The space underneath Suu's room." Keitaro deadpanned. "That's black mold and mushrooms on the floor joists."
"Oh." Kitsune said as she flipped through the photos. "You gonna be able to fix this?"
"Yeah." Keitaro said with a groan. "Not that it's gonna be easy. I'm gonna have to put jacks under the good sections, brace the floor above, and cut it all out, then put new in."
Kitsune paused in her scrolling to look at him. "You can do that?" she asked.
Keitaro nodded. "Yeah." he said. "Let just say that I've picked up a few useable skills and leave it at that."
"I see." Kitsune said, then went back to scrolling. "And you said this is under Suu's room?"
Keitaro nodded. "Yeah." he confirmed. "I found out about the little jungle room she'd put together while on the great turtle hunt today. By the way, if Naru mentions anything about Suu being upset because I yelled at her, that's the reason why I was yelling."
"Okay..." Kitsune said as she finished scrolling and handed the phone back to Keitaro. "Here ya go." she said.
"Thanks." Keitaro said, taking the phone and getting onto his feet. "Now I get to go do the other fun part of this."
"What's that?" Kitsune asked.
"I get to go poking around the ceilings with a ladder and see if it's bad as the crawlspaces."
"Fun, fun." Kitsune commented.
"Oh, yeah. Lots of fun."
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Keitaro let out a groan as he lay back into the baths. It had been a very, long, day. He had thought that the crawlspaces were the worst section, he was wrong. So very, very, wrong. When he had went into the room next to Suu's and turned on the light, he had been less than delighted to see spots of black mold on the ceiling panels. When he had climbed the ladder he had brought with him and lifted a panel to take a look, he had been greeted with the wood being completely black with mold.
But that hadn't been the worst part. Oh no. When he had ran the beam of his flashlight along the ceiling joists, he had gotten a look at the wiring and saw that it was old, rotted, and cloth wrapped. After hurriedly shutting the light off, he went and checked the rest of the rooms in that part of the Inn and had found much to his dismay, that they all had cloth wrapped wiring.
He had then spent the next two hours tracing the wiring back to the boxes and figured out that it was just that main section that had the old wiring. After killing the power to the whole Inn and pulling the fuse boxes, Keitaro had then figured out where the rest of the rot was and how bad it was.
After getting Suu and Shinobu moved to another section of the Inn that didn't have wiring that was a fire hazard -not a joke there, some of it was charred- he had then hung a tarp over the hole in the changing room and gotten some mold killer, then proceeded to soak ever square centimeter he could reach.
And when that was all done, he had went downstairs and called Grandma Hina over an international line to Des Moines and told her what had happened. That had been a pleasant hour long phone call.
Thankfully, he had a pile of money saved up in the bank so he'd be able to do the repairs. His biggest worry had been the inspectors finding out, but Grandma Hina had directed him to a little steel filing cabinet in her office that contained a treasure trove of blackmail material on the local bureaucracies, so that had been a load off his mind. It had also answered his questions on how she's never been tagged with code violations as well.
Off inside the Inn he heard voices raised, but he couldn't what they were saying. One did sound like Kitsune though. Keitaro kept an ear on the voices, in case they started heading towards him or it sounded like things were about to become physical, but they didn't.
Lighting a cigarette, he took an obscenely long draw on it and exhaled a cloud of blue cigarette smoke.
"Ahhhh..." he said happily. "I needed that..."
The voices conversation ended with a scream of rage followed by stomping footsteps, which meant that it almost certainly Naru doing the yelling.
Keitaro grunted and adjusted his position. "That girl's got some serious rage issues..." he muttered to himself.
The ember on his cigarette had burned it's way down to the filter when he heard the door to the baths slide open. He looked up to see Kitsune stepping out with a slightly exasperated expression on her face.
"Hey." he said, waving a hand in greeting "That was you talking to Naru, wasn't it?" he asked.
"You heard that, huh?" Kitsune asked as she walked over to the pool he was seated in. "Sorry about that." she added as she dropped her towel and sat down next to him.
Keitaro nodded and fished out another cigarette. "It's okay." he assured her before lighting it. "All I heard was your voices, I couldn't make anything out."
Kitsune reached over and plucked the cigarette out of his mouth and took a long drag on it. Keitaro arched his eyebrow at her, then without a word fished out another from his pack and lit it.
Kitsune exhaled and watched the smoke dissipate for a moment before speaking again. "She'd just gotten home and heard about you making Suu change rooms." she said.
Keitaro nodded and took a drag on his cigarette. "Didn't take it well, did she?"
Kitsune shook her head and flicked her ash into his ashtray. "Not a bit." she said. "Fortunately I was able to intercept her and explain what had happened."
"She didn't believe it, did she?" he asked.
"Actually, she did when I showed her the pictures I'd taken of the mold." Kitsune told him.
"Then what was that scream of rage for?" asked Keitaro.
"That you were right." Kitsune told him.
Keitaro took a drag on his cigarette and thought for a moment. "You know, that unresolved crush of hers seems to metastasizing into a bigger problem."
Kitsune rolled her eyes. "I know, I know." she groaned. "I've been meaning to talk about it, but I keep forgetting, or something else comes up, or one of a million other things."
"It happens." Keitaro said.
"Well, I had better do something about it before it gets out of hand." Kitsune said. "Sooner or later, she's gonna start in on men in general like Motoko does, and that's when things will go downhill."
Keitaro nodded in agreement. "You'd best get on that."
"I will." Kitsune said, and then her expression turned mischievous. "Speaking of getting on things..." she said, slipping her hand across his thighs "... have I mentioned how much I appreciate the job you're doing around here?"
"Once or twice." Keitaro said, tensing slightly when she grabbed him.
Kitsune's face split into a mischievous grin. "Well, allow me to show you just how appreciative I am..." she said.
Keitaro just smiled and scooted down a little to give her a better angle.
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End.
Author's note: Sorry for the delay, folks. I've been playing GTA Online and thought it would be a good idea to start writing some fanfiction based on that...