Ryouga and Mousse get the treatment! One hour ficlet. Ho-hum.
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Ryouga and Mousse were lost.
"Do you see it?" one of them said agitatedly, craning his neck but seeing nothing. "I know they set up camp a couple of meters down from this pile of rocks that looked like an elephant."
"A pile of rocks that looked like an elephant or an elephant that looked like a pile of rocks?" the other said tiredly. "We can never tell with you you know."
"Oh shut up, Mister 'Let's-use-a-map-of-Switzerland-when-we're-lost-in-the-endless-forests-of-JAPAN'."
"We aren't lost, Quacky!"
"DON'T CALL ME QUACKY!"
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Ryouga and Mousse were still lost.
They sat side by side on a small clearing, trying to ignore each other but unable to leave the other alone.
"Okay," one of them began tensely, after some moments of hostile silence. "We're on a patch of grass about six feet by six feet, and there's an anthill to our left. Does that help?"
His companion nodded slowly, without looking at him. (Presumably because he couldn't see him) "We go left from here. It'll lead us to the tree shaped like a stork and then there's a path leading down to the elephant rocks."
"All right."
Silence.
They both stood.
"Which way is left?"
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Ryouga and Mousse tried very hard not to be lost, but it just could not be helped.
"Are you SURE we headed west of the mountain?" one of them asked for about the 50th time. "Because there's a whole lot of purple and I don't remember anything having passed anything purple."
"That's the sky," the other replied. "The sun is setting. We may need to set up camp."
"But we haven't found them yet!"
"You don't think I know that?"
A frustrated groan came from the boy with the long hair, who fingered his glasses atop his head. "All my stuff is back at camp. I can't believe I followed you out here!"
The boy with the bandana slammed down his backpack and faced his companion squarely. "Why DID you follow me out here anyway?! I didn't ask you to, you dumb duck! You just showed up out of nowhere and now you're doing a heck of a lot of whining! It's getting on my nerves!"
"I followed you because I was asked to!" Mousse blurted out defensively. "They were worried you wouldn't make it back so I volunteered to keep you in line!"
Ryouga stared. "You volunteered?"
Mousse tucked his hands into his sleeves. "Nothing better to do at camp..." he mumbled.
"Shampoo put you up to it?"
"I think she wanted me out of the way."
Ryouga bit his lip. God, I know the feeling.
"I didn't expect your sense of direction to be this bad, though," Mousse continued, pulling his glasses over his face again and taking a look around. "It feels a lot warmer here and I think I can hear the ocean."
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Ryouga and Mousse sat side by side on a plateau facing the ocean and a slowly setting sun, and tried hard not to think about being lost.
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"We were walking for six hours, and somehow we end up on a beach in Thailand." one of them says, shaking his head in amazement. "How do you do it?"
"It's a gift," says the other, pulling his arm back and pitching a bit of rock into the ocean. It glittered slightly in the setting sun before dropping soundlessly into the water. "I can never get where I want to go but... I find places I never knew I wanted to see."
"Good deal," comes the reply, with an accompanying push of his glasses up his nose. "I had no idea I wanted to see this either."
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END
The best I could do in an hour! Sigh. Self-imposed writing exercises are so mean. (Additionally: suspension of disbelief, PLEASE! These boys turn into animals, surely they could suddenly be whisked away across an ocean.)