A/N: Well, here ya go! 4th chappy. NBB, don't go back to writing ur own chaps cuz then u might start talking to urself more than u talk 2 us… 0.0 Anyway, R & R, and enjoy! Reviewers get a huge cookie in whatever flavor they ask for… -chibi smile-
Yuki's POV
I frowned in irritation. It had been weeks since we'd seen Kaede, and the newest batch of Pretties had come and gone. I was sure I hadn't seen Kaede among them, but I could tell they were starting to doubt me. Maybe I'd missed her, in the flood of beautiful new faces? No, that wasn't possible. Kaede's words had to have been an empty threat. Right? She would never…
"HEEEEY!" Ariana shouted in my ear. "EARTH TO YUKI!"
"Owww!" I scowled and rubbed my ear. "What?"
"I said, 'We're going on a Kaede hunt and you've been signed up!'" Ariana stomped her foot, glaring at me.
"Right. Would I have the option not to be signed up?" I stared at them, trying not to laugh. They wore all black, and everyone had their hair slicked back into ponytails. Chiho had put her long hair into pigtails, making her look cuter than ever. There were tiny bells on each side, although they made no noise at all. Probably more of Kaede's magic.
"No," Chiho piped up. "That's awful. She's supposedly our best friend, re-mem-ber?"
"Yeah. Duh." I sighed. "But wouldn't sneak suits be so much…oh." As I spoke, the soft fabric of their clothes turned to the scales of sneak suits. "Oh," I said again.
Chiho set hers back to the clothes. "So much more…suspicious?" she said, laughing. "This way, we look like harmless old Extras. But only we know better, huh?"
I noticed the tiny key charm hanging from her wrist. "Is that…"
"Yup. My keyblade rules." She laughed.
"Only 'cause Kaede put the spell on our keyblades to make them do that!" Akako piped up. "Otherwise, they'd still be HUUUUUUGE!"
Chiho held up her palm, inches from Akako's face. "Don't ruin the happy."
We cracked up. Akako was twice as tall as Chiho, but Chiho had her cowering on the ground. (A/N: And that's the power of the chibi! Ha, ha.)
"We should get going," Ariana announced, her eyes scanning the dark sky.
"Yeah, guess so," Chiho said, chucking the stool she'd used to be eye level with Akako over her shoulder carelessly. It smacked into a wall, making us giggle.
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Ariana's POV
"Hey, hey! Where are you little ladies going?" A warden pulled up next to us in his hover car, shining a hoverlight at us. "And so late at night!"
I cussed inwardly, and Yuki looked like she'd swallowed a fly. Akako's eyes were huge, but Chiho had on her best chibified expression.
"Oh, mister, I'm sorry," she said in her cutest voice. "I asked them if they'd take me to go see my friend. She recently turned, and I miss my bestest friend…" Chiho's eyes grew big and tear-filled. "I'm so sorry…"
The warden settled back in his seat. "Okay, okay, miss. It's all right…"
Chiho stared up at him, hands curled into tiny balls. One hand was in front of her mouth, and the other arm was held straight down, finishing the classic "Crying Chibi" image. Her eyes were still huge. "No, I'm sorry," she whimpered.
He seemed to soften. "All right, miss. You can go with your friends."
Instantly, her fake tears disappeared. She brightened. "Really, mister? That's awfully nice of you…"
"No problem, miss. But next time, go over earlier. Surely it's hard to see in the dark?" The warden smiled at her, calmly.
"Oh, no sir. My friends are all surged so they have super-duper vision! But I hafta wait until Mommy and Daddy say I'm allowed to," Chiho nodded, her long pigtails swishing. The tiny bells in her hair jingled, which made her even cuter.
"Okay. Well, you girls be safe," the warden said, and he left.
"Wow." Yuki stared at Chiho. "Are you human?"
"No," Chiho said, laughing. "I'm chibi."
"That much I know," Akako said. "But that was SO cuuute!"
"Amazing!" I agreed, hugging her. "God, you are SO ADORABLE!"
"Uh, guys?" Chiho squeaked. We were all hugging her now, and I could tell she was squirming, trying to get out. "Helloooo? Kinda can't breathe here? Hellllllllloooooooo?"
We let go of her, laughing. "Sorry," we said, at slightly different times.
"So, Chiho?" I looked at my friend. "What's with the bells?" I flicked one, and sure enough it didn't jingle anymore.
"Oh, you noticed? They only jingle when I want them to. It's an advanced spell Kaede was learning, so I offered the bells for her to practice with, and it worked. So, I have magical hair accessories!" Chiho laughed.
"Oh. Cool," I said, flicking them again.
"They also change color," Chiho added, smiling. "See?" The bells were purple now.
"I like black," I told her. "So much more Sly Girl-worthy."
"Ohhh. That's right. We're Sly Girls, huh?" Akako touched the tiny keyblade charm on her thick gold ring. "Bet the other Girls don't have keyblades, huh?"
"Probably not," I agreed, flicking my keyblade earrings. Although I'd only had one back in Soul Kingdom, Chiho had explained that I had acquired another one to go with my "increased power."
"Now…Where to?" Chiho sighed impatiently, twirling her bracelet on her narrow wrist.
"To Prettyville!" I announced, pointing at the one part of the city that was still it up. It was the Big Face part of town, where all of the Pretties certainly would be found.
Yuki's mouth twisted up into a wicked grin. "Now this should be fun."
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We rode hoverboards into Prettyville.
Of course, Chi was having difficulty. Every time we accelerated, she slid a little farther back on the board, making us laugh. The sound was whisked away by the harsh wind, until we couldn't laugh anymore. The wind whipped at our clothes and made or ponytails fly straight behind our heads. And through it all, Chiho was sliding farther and farther towards the end of her hover board.
She hadn't even noticed until she fell off.
"CHIHO!" Yuki screamed, screeching to a stop.
"Chill," Chiho said, rolling her eyes. "Can you say hoverball rig?"
She was floating right behind Yuki. Yuki whipped around on her hoverboard, eyes bigger than Akako's when we'd almost been caught by the warden.
"Now," Chiho continued. "Can someone go get my board?" She pointed off into the distance, where her riderless hoverboard was still crashing through the trees at breakneck speed.
Within a few minutes, I'd caught Chiho's board. She was settled back on it, lying flat on her stomach like before. But we'd also made her put on grippy gloves and kneepads, which aggravated her.
"Why do I need these?" she kept whining. "They're pointless." She lifted one gloved hand and bent her fingers. "They're not doing anything."
"Sure they are," I told her. "It's okay to be hovering over the park, but what would the Pretties and Big Faces say if they happened to look up and saw a chibi floating in the air?"
"Nothing," Chiho insisted. "They'd go back to their bubbleheaded lives!"
"Or would they? Not all Big Faces are Pretties, you know. Like Aya Fuse, before she became a Special. She went straight from Ugly to Special. Never a bubblehead," Akako reminded Chiho.
"Fine," Chiho grumbled, flattening herself against her board even more.
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When we landed, we switched out clothes to more Pretty-style clothes: black minidresses with some sort of design on the back, over bold leggings and simple ballet flats.
"Well, this sucks," Yuki grumbled. She stared at her black minidress in the reflection of us on a big shiny building in obvious dismay. Her eyes grew huge as she noted the big gold screen-printed angel wings on the back. "Ugh…I hate dresses."
"I think mine's worse. Dresses suck!" Akako studied the shimmering red heart on the back of her dress and shuddered.
I opened my mouth to respond, but some one else beat me to it.
"Why?" A new voice spoke up from behind us. "They're so pretty."
We turned around. The girl standing behind us had a Manga-head face, with slight vampire fangs barely visible in her wide smile. Her huge eyes were green, her skin paler than snow. Her hair was dark brown, and fell to her shoulders in a short cut, which actually looked a little top-heavy but was really cute. She wore a light pink shirt with ruffles on the v-neck and the ends of the three-quarter sleeves, with a loose white mini skirt. Her hair was loosely tied with little pink ribbons to hang on either side of her face. She looked almost like a child, although she was the standard Pretty height and much taller than us.
"Kaede?" Yuki asked, a little shocked.
Confusion clouded the girl's face. "Kaede? No, I'm Ruriko. Ruri for short, if you want."
"Oh." My face fell. Of course we wouldn't find Kaede so easily. If the Pretty surge let her remember her grudges, she was probably locked in her new room making curse dolls. Ugh. Something about that image bothered me. Happy, carefree Kaede locking herself in her ultra-fancy, super-cool room to…make curse dolls and listen to emo music? Uh. I imagined several human-shaped candles in the window, melting until their heads were gone…until all you could see were the names, carved into the bottom: Yuki, Akako, Ariana…there probably wouldn't be a Chiho candle: nobody could hate Chiho enough to do that.
"But…let's see, you mentioned a name?" Ruri looked at us, her huge green eyes distant. "I know everyone here. Who are you looking for?"
"Kaede," Yuki repeated.
"Oh! Kaede. I know her. She cam a few weeks ago." Ruri nodded.
"So you know where she is?" Akako smiled.
"Of course!"
"Ruri-chan, can you tell us how you know her, first?" Chiho asked, her eyes huge. They betrayed none of the suspicion I knew she was feeling.
"Yes. Kaede is my new room mate."
A/N: Go to my profile to see a pic of Ruriko. (Or, if you have Skip Beat Volume 3, look at pg 47, in Act 13, and take away the gloves and microphone.) That's Ruri-chan, although she is a lot nicer in my story. (I do not own Ruri-chan, since she appeared in Skip Beat! and is from the imagination of Yoshiki Nakamura, not me.) I just…reinvented her, so she's not really Skip Beat! Ruri, she's more… "Pretties" Ruri. (I'm not making sense, am I?)
BTW-again, sorry fot the long author's note. But one last thing: 5 pages, and 1765 words. Heck. Yes.