I wanna take a moment to thank everyone who has reviewed thus far, glad you're enjoying it! Hopefully it'll continue to be amusing!
DISCLAIMER: Nope, still don't own Vocaloid, or anything related to them or... well, anything at all.
Title: Reception
Summary: Just when Luka had given up on the television, the other Vocaloids find a working, albeit unusual, solution to their problem.
The TV had been acting up lately. It had been fine for the most part, but it had one day happily decided it no longer wanted to provide the household with clear images, instead often being very fuzzy and headache inducing. It was for this reason that Luka had stopped watching television, and besides, what with streaming being available for most things, she found even less need to watch. Her only real use for the TV was for when she decided to play video games, which would be more often if it were not for the fact that the TV was often occupied by the other members of the household. Squabbling over the remote control had been a near-daily occurrence, and while that had settled down after the TV happily decided it was going to be on its last legs, the TV became even more unbearable because of all the banging everyone else did on it, trying in vain to get the picture to clear up.
One day, on her way out to go run a few errands, Luka had taken notice of Miku, Gumi, and the twins groaning at the TV and occasionally banging on it. She'd smiled wryly, knowing how often this happened and also how little the whole banging on the TV bit actually worked. She fully expected that by the time she returned, they would have gotten bored of the futility and gone on to do something else (and hopefully it'd be nothing catastrophic).
What Luka had failed to take into account was that they were actually quite ingenious at problem solving once they applied themselves to finding a possible solution...
"I'm home!" Luka called. She shut the door behind her with her foot, her arms preoccupied with the bags carrying the items she'd gone out for.
"Welcome back!" she heard a chorus of voices from the living room. Luka raised an eyebrow. She'd been gone for a little over two hours, and they were still on that television? They must have been adamant. Setting her bags on the counter in the kitchen, she went into the living room.
She was brought up short by the sight that greeted her. Sitting on the couch were Miku, the Kagamine twins and Gumi, with Gakupo, Haku, and Lily standing behind the couch, and Kaito, Neru, and Meiko sitting at the foot of the couch, all eyes focused on the TV (and she hadn't realized Neru and Haku were even coming over today). The TV was projecting beautiful fluidly moving pictures, ones that would put TVs ahead of its class to shame. Indeed, this had to be something beyond HD, and was definitely something the TV had never been able to do before. But as surprising as that was, it wasn't this that stopped Luka short.
"H-Hi, Luka-nee-chan..."
Perched atop their TV and looking about as pathetic as a puppy caught in the rain was Furukawa Miki, offering a weak, pitiful smile at the pink-haired woman. Luka stared blankly, unable to offer any sort of reply to the greeting for a long while. Finally, she managed to answer her.
"...Miki... what are you doing...?"
The girl looked embarrassed. "Er... w-well... Miku-chan invited me over, and like... the TV was on... and they told me to sit on the TV..."
"..." Luka had a bad feeling she knew the answer to her upcoming question, but she had to ask. "And... why did they tell you to do that...?"
"W-W-Well..." she mumbled, fidgeting. "Th-That's because-"
As she spoke, her ahoge twitched the wrong way and the TV burst into static. Most of the viewers went into an uproar, and Gumi shouted, "Miki-chan, hold still!"
Miki cowered, whimpering frightfully, "I'm sorry! I'm sorry!"
Her ahoge twitched back into place, and to Luka's dumbstruck amazement, the picture cleared up instantly, once again revealing a pristine quality image on the television screen. There was a soccer game on, but she frankly hadn't realized anyone in the house even cared about sports and said so.
"We don't," Lily replied honestly.
"But," Rin chimed in, "Since it's on TV and since the TV's actually working, we might as well watch it!"
Luka felt a headache coming on. She really did not want to try to figure out how a girl's (rather animated) ahoge had been able to fix their TV's problems by being a pseudo-antenna, or how this idea had even occurred to them to begin with (and she could only wonder who was the mastermind that had hatched up this idea... with four prime suspects and another four potentials, and maybe a fifth, given Neru's nigh-amoral nature, it would pretty much be detective work to figure out who had, and she was not exactly interested in solving this mystery).
Sighing, she looked at the screen. A player had managed to steal the ball out from under one of his opponents and was running up the field. The crowd's already energetic cheering began to reach a fevered pitch as he dribbled past one defender... two... three... He was getting close to the goal when suddenly two more defenders came after him. The ball shot vertically into the air and the player followed with it, along with his opponents, and-
"What's the score?" Miki asked curiously. She bent her head down to sneak a peek, and as soon as she did, the picture exploded once more into static.
"MIKI!" the others roared, sans Luka and Haku.
"I'm sorry!" she whimpered, once more returning to her place.
The screen came back to the sound of the announcer excitedly chattering about what an amazing goal that was, and how they were unlikely to ever see a goal that exciting ever again. Several pairs of eyes moved to glare at Miki, who cowered, her lower lip trembling as she meekly continued to remain at her post. Luka's eye twitched. She glanced over at Haku, who met her gaze and shrugged helplessly. Sighing, Luka left the room.
It didn't seem that Miki could be relieved of her post any time soon, but the least she could do was try to make the unhappy girl a little more comfortable. Luckily, she knew just the thing.
Miki happily chomped on another cherry that was offered to her, careful not to bite the hand that was feeding her. Her ahoge was wagging out of control with happiness, but its movements didn't affect the picture any, so the viewers really didn't care. Luka smiled with exasperated affection at the redhead girl as she spat out the seed and opened her mouth for another. Obliging her, she fed her another cherry, which she ate happily, no longer minding her position as an overgrown antenna quite as much. After all, she reasoned, what was there to complain about? For doing nothing more than sitting on top of a TV, she was being rewarded with Megurine Luka feeding her cherries, and she knew for a fact there were many fans of hers who would have killed for such an opportunity (possibly even literally; some of Luka-nee-chan's fans were pretty scary...)
Meanwhile, a rather large cushion of space had been given to Hatsune Miku, who sat by herself on the left most end of the couch, a dangerous aura brewing around her... Both of her hands had a death grip on the poor leek in her lap, the leek seemingly trembling with fear as well. The others were visibly more nervous and tense with that suffocating aura of jealous rage boiling around her, to the point that even Neru, who usually didn't give a damn about people's moods, especially bad ones, was visibly nervous, the clicking of keys on her omnipresent phone far more agitated than normal.
Miki munched on another cherry, positively glowing with happiness, and Luka even laughed lightly at how cute she was acting. Unseen to both, a vein had begun to throb at Miku's temple, and the suffocating aura worsened. The weight of the teal-haired girl's displeasure was practically a tangible object by this point; in fact, it was astounding that the two at the TV had not felt it.
"Sorry, Miki, that was the last of the cherries," Luka said, smiling apologetically.
Miki looked as if someone had told her that a puppy she had just bought and taken home had been run over by a truck. So pitiful was the sight that Luka could not help but reach out and rub her head comfortingly. The girl's mood instantly turned around and her heartbroken expression shifted into one of unbridled joy, her ahoge wagging energetically. Despite herself, Luka giggled. Miki could be so cute sometimes.
Not too far from the spectacle, a leek whose only crime was to fall into the hands of a now extremely angry and immensely jealous teal-haired Vocaloid was unable to resist the laws of physics any longer and was wrathfully snapped in half.
This, Miku promised herself, would not go unanswered...
To say that Luka was speechless would have been a bit of an understatement. She had woken up this morning not really expecting anything special (which in retrospect was a dangerous assumption in the Vocaloid household), but the first thing she saw as soon as she made it down the stairs into the living room was that the old television had been quite suddenly replaced with a gigantic flat screen with visuals so sharp as to make even the most callous and cynical TV watcher weep. And weep the Kagamine twins and Kaito did, but that was most likely because they were watching one of Gumi's anime DVDs and it happened to be a really sad part (and in Kaito's case, probably because he had found that they were fresh out of ice cream).
"Good morning, Luka!" Miku greeted her cheerfully.
The pink-haired woman turned to Miku as she grinned beside her, apparently having sidled up while she'd been distracted. "Good morning, Hatsune-san. Um..." She looked helplessly over at the TV, pointing towards it in a flabbergasted manner.
Miku followed the direction of Luka's finger, cocking her head to the side as if just noticing their brand spanking new TV. Smiling broadly, she chirped, "Oh, that. Well, I got tired of everyone whining about the TV, and also I felt sorry for poor Miki-chan being stuck on the TV all day, so I thought I'd shell out and buy a new TV for us! Pretty good, ne?"
"Y-You bought it?" Luka asked incredulously. "But... Hatsune-san, it must have cost a fortune!" That TV was definitely not something that was going to be available to the average consumer... And despite the fact that every last member of the Vocaloid household brought in decent sums, Luka was not one to approve of reckless expenditures.
Waving it off, Miku answered airily, "Oh, it was no biggie. As long as it makes the rest of us happy, I'm fine with it!"
Luka frowned slightly. "Well... I don't really approve of such a big purchase but... I suppose it was very generous of you to do so." Smiling, she patted Miku's head affectionately. "You really are a good girl, Hatsune-san."
The teal-haired girl blushed, smiling bashfully and digging her toe into the floor with her hands shyly clasped behind her back. "Aww, it was nothing..."
With one last affectionate smile, Luka headed toward the kitchen to make herself some breakfast. Behind her, Miku's shy expression had melted into a sinister smirk. Oh yes, that baby had cost her a pretty penny, but oh, it was so worth it. She had positively seethed watching Luka dote on Miki, and as soon as she'd had an opportunity, she had swiftly gone online to order a new TV for their house, making sure to pull a couple of strings to make sure the TV could be delivered overnight to their house. The spending was worth it, she told herself, and it wasn't like she spent all that much of her money anyway. And so, they had a new TV that did not rely on some sneaky little cherry-loving girl's ahoge to function properly, and thus she had removed any chance of Luka needing to dote on Miki. Sometimes, those kind and sympathetic tendencies of Luka's drove her mad... but that was alright.
She thought briefly of the old TV, now ground into dust courtesy of a brief hijacking of the Kagamine roadroller and the business end of a leek (which was a lot deadlier than it sounded, for hell hath no fury like a Vocaloid in a jealous rage), and sitting innocuously inside the bottom of a neighbor's trashcan. And as for Miki...
Well... from what she last remembered, she didn't look like she'd be recovering from her newfound fear of leeks anytime soon...
Miku chuckled in a sinister fashion, a shadow falling over her eyes.
No one stands between me and my Luka~
Fin
Sadly, the ending for this one could have been done in a million different ways, with a little more emphasis on a semi-yandere Miku, but all my attempts at it ended up not going so well. x_X Maybe next time. XD Oh, and just an FYI, but an ahoge is that strand of hair that sticks up on some anime characters' heads. Literally translated as "stupid hair" IIRC, but I mean it in the most affectionate way possible. I find ahoges really cute, to be honest. XD
Anyways, lemme know what you think! Next update will probably be quicker, I had another in progress while I was writing this one. 'Til next time! ^_^v
