Birthday

Kohari: Well, it's Kuwabara's birthday. Unfortunately, the boys were prevented from harming the girls. Don't worry. They'll get the crazy little onnas eventually... Anyway, once again, my partner is absent for reasons unknown. Strangely enough, chapter 7 was the most successful...weird. Maybe I should go solo again...Ha! Just kidding. I'd never abandon one of my best friends. Especially since we're working so well together.

Note: This sucks since I had already written up the responses to reviewers, but we are no longer allowed to reply to the reviewers' comments. My apologies. (I had to go back and delete all the rest of the chapters' responses just so we didn't get banned!). Well, read and review, anyway, people. We'll find some way to respond to you. I think.

Note 2: My commentary was written some time ago, and since then, I have met up with Jacqie again. We agreed for me to go ahead and finish writing this chapter, and then we'd get back in the hang of writing as a team again. Okies? Okies.

The room was quiet. Too quiet. Kuwabara sniffed, snorted, and rolled over onto his back in his sleep. Three familiar girls hovered above him in the lighted room, each with a party hat perched atop their heads and a party favor noisemaker in their mouths. They counted to their favorite number, three, silently on their fingers simultaneously, then blew, creating a loud phwooooot! noise, startling Kuwabara. He thrashed around under the covers in surprise, fighting the covers, and fell off the side of the bed in a haphazard position. The girls crowded around him as though concerned.

"What the-!" he managed to stammer before the girls gave a happy shout.

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY, KUWABARA!"

He eyed them suspiciously. "Hey...what's going on?"

"It's your birthday!" Daphne repeated, giving it a "duh" tone, as though it explained everything.

"Yeah," Kit added. "So we decided to be nice and help you celebrate!"

"So here," Kai told him, who happened to be in the center of the semi-circle they formed, and held out a cute little package nicely wrapped in metallic purple and tied with a pretty pink metalic ribbon.

"But -..."

"Go on! Open it!" they encouraged.

Kuwabara stared at the article that had been shoved into his hands as though it were a bomb waiting to explode. It was tiny, after all. And you know what they say: Big things come in small packages. Or, in this case, big bangs. (THIS WAS NOT A DIRTY MESSAGE, PEOPLE!)

Slowly, he ripped through the wrappings and opened the box. Digging through the tissue paper, he finally found the gift. When he pulled it out, he realized that it was...nail polish?

"Yeah," Kai said. "We didn't know whether to get sparkly, metallic, unusual, or natural, so we got some shiny cream-colored stuff."

Before he could protest, or react, for that matter, they were treating him like a customer in a beauty salon, applying it to his worn-down-from-biting nails. "It's only proper to use a gift when it's given to you," they reminded him.

They finished in a flash. At the end of the procedure, the guys rushed in. "ALRIGHT! WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO HIM?" demanded Yusuke. He dropped his pointed finger when he saw that a half-naked pajama'd Kuwabara was on the floor with two girls sitting beside him and one behind him.

"Giving Kuwabara his birthday present," Kit answered innocently.

"Never mind," Yusuke quickly replied, regretting barging in in the first place, and he, Kurama, and Hiei retreated, each with weirded-out expressions on their faces.

The girls glanced at one another, realizing the strange situation they were in. They stood, then helped Kuwabara to his feet, who was still unsure of whether to trust them or not. Despite the nail polish thing, though, he wasn't about to complain about their sudden switch in behavior.

"Come on!" the females chirped. "It's breakfast-time! We're having cake for breakfast!" (A/N: How unusual is that?)

Hesitantly, Kuwabara allowed himself to be half-dragged out of the room, feeling a little awkward, being pretty much undressed.

Kuwabara was biting his nails nervously. He was just nervous. Something didn't seem right about all this...his mouth was getting hot just thinking about it. Wait. His mouth?

"AAAHHH! Hot! Hot!"

The girls giggled insanely as Kuwabara ran to the kitchen sink while the cake was being dragged in. He turned on the faucet and put his head under the spicket before he noticed that...

"Ewww! What the-?" He looked again, wiping his mouth, ignoring all the laughter from the entire gang. "Bubbles?"

"Happy Birthday, Kuwabara!" Everyone chorused.

"I thought it would be a cute birthday surprise!" Kit chirped.

"Um...yo! The cake!" Yusuke pointed out impatiently, ready to dig in.

"Oh. Right." Just as Kuwabara was about to blow out the candles, the cake blew UP with a muffled BOOM, splattering all around with the tasty goop of icing and dry carb-loaded sweet-bread (It is a bread, right?).

"Just WHO blew up the cake?" Daphne wondered aloud angrily, wiping a particularly large section of cake and icing off of her face. She then noticed everyone staring at her with disappointed sort of angry faces with their arms folded across their chests.

"What? I didn't do it!" she protested truthfully. "Jeez, you people think it's me every time something goes bad!"

"Most of the time, it is you," Hiei reminded her, disgustedly picking pieces of vanilla cake out of his spiked hair.

"That's not the point!"

They all then got into a heated agrument about her habits of pranking and who blew up the cake if she didn't. While all that was going on, Genkai plucked a used firecracker out of the 'debris'.

"See? That's not my brand!" Daphne pointed at it.

Silence.

"Ye-ah," agreed Kai cunningly. "It looks more like the ones that Yusuke uses..."

"Wha-? What the-?" Everyone began to glare at Yusuke. "You don't think it was me, do you?" he asked nervously as they all began to advance on him. "Now...wait, wait a minute! Hey! I-!"

(A/N: Hinthint, he didn't do it.)

Okay, so that's all settled. Yusuke, with bruises, held an ice-pack to his face begrudgingly as he watched everyone shooting off fireworks in honor of Kuwabara's birthday, staring maliciously at the girls, whom he suspected framed him. (A/N: Suspected?)

All of a sudden, the girls produced Super-Soakers (no own) seemingly out of nowhere and began to torture the boys with them. Kurama moved to the yard hose to counter them.

Kit, Daphne, and Kai shrieked in pretend fear (that the guys didn't realize was pretend) and shrunk to the ground (HIT THE DECK!) for cover. Kurama pulled the trigger on the hose-gun.

Instead of a heavy stream of water directed at the girls, bubbles issued forth. A surprised, yet puzzled look crossed Foxy's face. "Huh?"

"Surprise!" The girls once again burst into giggles.

"I've had about enough of them," Hiei remarked to his animal-like companion.

"I agree," replied Kurama. "Don't harm them too badly."

"You think I'm going back to Reikai Prison?" was the response. Jaganshi drew his katana.

This time, KKD's screams were in genuine fear.

Kohari: Y'all know the drill. Hurry up and review so's we can get this show on the road! New ideas always welcome!

Note: And if you would like the see the chapter where Hiei, Kurama, Kuwabara, and Yusuke finally deliver the girls' just desserts, I would suggest you review all that you can as quick as you can, even if the chapter won't be 'til...23 or something. Random number. It may come sooner, we dunno yet. But get those reviews in or it won't come at all! Dum, dum, Duuuuum! (cue the scary music)