VERY IMPORTANT MESSAGE! Hello everyone, I am so bloody sorry that it has been so long since I posted to this story, but I'm back at last! The reason for the delay is that I was randomly inspired to change the identity of a MAJOR character and it does change the story quite a bit, so if you read chapters 1 and 2 before 2/23/2012, PLEASE go back and re-read them! I hope that by changing the character, I have improved the story. Thank you all for your patience, and for all the follows and reviews and such! Now that I have rewritten the entire fic and just need to do some edits, the rest of the fic should be posted relatively quickly.
Disclaimer: Still don't own OHC or Tangled.
Chapter 3: Meeting Tamaki Suoh
Tamaki and the Hitachiin twins continue to run through the forest, pursued by palace guards. As they run, they pass a collection of Wanted posters. Tamaki stops to catch his breath, and he gasps when he sees his own poster.
"Oh no…" He grabs the poster off the tree, staring at it in horror. "No no no no no no no no! This is bad! This is very, very bad! This is REALLY bad!" he yelps in horror. The twins stop and turn to stare at him. "They just can't get my likeness right!" Tamaki whines, holding the poster up. It's a very dull picture, and he holds up a second picture, one that he clearly carries around with him. This picture positively glows, with sparkles and flowers and hearts and glamor abound across the picture. This is the way he wants to be remembered, and seeing a picture of him looking anything less than magnificent clearly pains him worse than a physical wound.
The Hitachiin twins exchange exasperated glances. "Who cares?" they demand as one.
"Well that's easy for you to say!" Tamaki whines. He holds up their posters, showing the two brothers with their arms around each other's waists and looking just a little too affectionate to be brotherly love. "You guys look amazing!" Tamaki whines.
The twins look exasperated and they grab Tamaki's arms and drag him off through the woods. The scene briefly changes to show the pursuing guards, led by Captain Yoshio Ootori. Tamaki slips his own portrait carefully back into his shirt, then carelessly stuffs the poster into his satchel as they run. The fleeing trio finds themselves trapped in front of a tall ledge.
"Oh crap!" Tamaki groans. "All right. Okay. Give me a boost and I'll pull you guys up."
"Give us the satchel first," Hikaru and Kaoru chorus together.
Tamaki clutches the satchel to his chest, looking wounded. "What?! I just… I can't believe after all we've been through together, you don't trust me?" The twins cross their arms and glare at him. "Ouch…" Tamaki sighs, dramatically brushing his hair out of his eyes.
"Give us a break, Boss. We know that as soon as we let you have the satchel, you'll drop it off a cliff or smash it or do something stupid," Hikaru tells him sternly.
Tamaki sighs dramatically and hands the satchel over to Kaoru and the twins lift him up onto the ledge. "Now help us up, boss!" they exclaim. Tamaki reaches down and grabs the satchel from the twins, but it pops open and the tiara starts to roll away.
"Ohcrapohcrapohcrap!" Tamaki yelps, chasing after the loot. The twins' indignant yelps follow him, but he does find the prize eventually. As he runs back, he sees that it's too late and the guards have caught up to the twins and Tamaki has no choice but to try to save his own skin.
Tamaki dashes through the forest, dodging as the guards shoot arrows after him. Captain Yoshio Ootori and his three sons are at the head of the pack. "Retrieve that satchel at any cost!" he yells to the guards.
"Yes sir!" they exclaim.
Then the captain focuses on his three sons. "There may be a special reward if one of you catches him… the king has been asking me to start training my successor."
The three boys exchange looks and they speed up their horses, pulling away from the rest. Tamaki scampers under a fallen tree as arrows stick into said tree and he keeps running, managing to clamber over a second fallen tree. Most of the guard's horses are stopped, but Kyouya manages to scale it, along with his father.
"We've got him now, Kyouya!" Yoshio exclaims.
Tamaki has managed to set up a tripwire with a vine a little ways ahead, and Yoshio and Kyouya are both sent flying. Yoshio lands hard at the foot of a tree, but Kyouya is able to jump to his feet almost instantly and start chasing after Tamaki on foot. Tamaki glances back and see the slim dark-haired boy with glasses in hot pursuit, and damn can that boy run!
"Surrender, thief!" Kyouya yells after the fleeing blonde.
"Ha! Forget it!" Tamaki tosses back over his shoulder.
Kyouya leaps rather dramatically and tackles Tamaki, sending the satchel flying over a nearby cliff, where it catches on a branch of a tree on the cliff edge. The two of them wrestle for a minute before Kyouya worms his way free and begins edging out towards the satchel. Tamaki grabs at him and Kyouya knocks him off the large branch, but inadvertently places him closer to the satchel. Tamaki manages to stretch and grab it, clinging with one hand to a slender branch.
"Ha!" he yelps, waving it around triumphantly. Kyouya leans in to grab it, but Tamaki swings away from him, just out of reach of those slender white hands. Kyouya loses his balance and manages to grab Tamaki's arm, but their combined weight proves to be too much for that fragile branch to handle, and it snaps.
The pair plummets towards the ground, screaming in surprise and horror. Their fall is broken along the way by several tree branches, and they somehow land out of sight of one another. Both are dirty and bruised, but still manage to look very sexy in a rough-and-tumble sort of way. Kyouya pushes himself onto one knee and looks around carefully, head cocked to listen for even the slightest sound.
"Damn…" he whispers. "Who would have thought a mere cat burglar… would be so much trouble…?" he mumbles to himself. Hearing a faint sound, he jumps to his feet and hurries over to the source.
Tamaki hears the young guard coming after him and he presses his back against a wall covered with ivy, except it's not really a wall and there's a cave of some sort behind it. Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, Tamaki ducks behind the ivy and holds his breath until he hears Kyouya moving away from him.
As Tamaki catches his breath, he decides to see if there's a better place to hide and maybe have a nap while he waits for the coast to be clear further back in the cave. He steps slowly through the cave and is surprised to find there's a light in the back of the cave! Curious, he steps into the light and finds himself in a hidden valley with a small babbling brook and an elegant ivy-covered tower that appears quite deserted. Unable to believe his luck, Tamaki hurries to the tower and sets to work at the painfully-slow task of climbing the wall up to the window at the very top.
After several agonizing minutes, he makes his way inside the dark, and still apparently deserted, tower. He closes the window and leans against it with a sigh of relief. "Alone at last," he gasps, touching the satchel and starting to open it to look at the tiara once again.
WHA-BONKKK!
Tamaki gets a dazed/startled look on his face and his eyes cross for a half-second before they fall closed and he face-plants on the floor. Haruhi is standing behind him, holding a frying pan. She takes a deep breath, then shrieks in alarm and runs across the room. When the young man doesn't move, she cautiously creeps forward to poke him with the handle of the pan, flinching away as though afraid he'll leap up and attack her.
Haruhi looks over at Pascal, who just blinks at her. Then she uses the handle of the pan to move some of the white-blonde hair out of the young man's face. Seeing that he is incredibly good-looking, she pauses and looks a little surprised. She starts to reach out to touch him, but stops and looks at Pascal again. The chameleon gestures to one of the drawings left by Benibara on the floor of a monstrous man with fangs. Haruhi uses the frying pan handle to lift Tamaki's upper lip to reveal perfectly normal teeth.
"Oh…" she whispers. She starts to kneel down and reaches out again to touch the young man's hair or face, but then one violet eye flickers open.
"Huh…?" he mumbles.
With a yelp, Haruhi hits him on the head with the frying pan, knocking him out again. Then she spends several minutes trying to stuff him into a nearby cupboard. She tries to just slide him in, but can't get the leverage to actually lift him. Then she wraps him in her hair and tries to swing him in, but that gets her hair caught in the door. She rests for a moment to contemplate her position while Tamaki is upside-down and spread-eagled at the doorway of the cupboard. She finally shoves the limp body into the closet and seems to succeed, but then the door opens again and the unconscious Tamaki falls onto her as she squeals in shock. Finally she takes a broom handle and uses that to jab him into the cupboard and slams the doors as hard as she can. Unfortunately, she catches his hand in the doorway, and she winces as she gently pokes his fingers back inside the cupboard. Finally she grabs a chair and wedges it against the door handles, preventing the cupboard from being opened again.
"Okay," Haruhi gasps, backing slowly away from the closet and brandishing her frying pan as though she expects to be attacked. "I've got a person… in my closet. I've got a person in my closet…" Suddenly she looks at herself in the mirror and a smile begins to spread over her face and her spine begins to straighten. She starts to look downright triumphant. "I'm got a PERSON in my CLOSET!" she almost cheers.
Pascal blinks at this sudden change in attitude. Haruhi can't help but laugh as she dusts off her frying pan.
"Too weak to handle myself out there, huh, Benibara? Well, tell that to my frying pa…" As she swings it around, she accidentally hits herself with it.
As she shakes her head to clear it, Haruhi spots the discarded satchel on the floor. Curiosity gets the best of her and she walks over to it and pulls out the tiara. She stares blankly for a moment before putting it onto her arm like a bracelet. Pascal shakes his head. She peers through the jewels like a magnifying glass and Pascal shakes his head again. Haruhi stares at the tiara for a moment, then at her reflection in the mirror, holding it first like she's going to try to make in a necklace, then setting it carefully into her golden hair. For an instant, Pascal looks amazed… but then he shakes his head.
Benibara's voice floats up into the tower. "Haruhi! Let down your hair!"
Haruhi quickly drops the tiara back into the satchel, and hides the satchel in a pot before running to the window. "One moment, Beni!" she calls out.
"I have a big surprise!" Benibara calls.
"Uh… I do too!" Haruhi calls, letting her golden locks fall down to Benibara, who climbs aboard.
"I bet my surprise is bigger!" Benibara calls as Haruhi pulls her up.
Haruhi smiles to herself and glances at the blocked closet. "I seriously doubt it," she whispers happily.
"I brought back parsnips!" Benibara declares triumphantly. "I'm going to make hazelnut soup for dinner. Your favorite. Surprise!"
"Well, Beni, there's something I want to tell you," Haruhi begins eagerly, but Benibara interrupts her irritably.
"Oh, Haruhi, you know I hate leaving you after a fight… Especially when I've done absolutely nothing wrong," she adds self-righteously as she places her basket on the table and begins to unpack it.
"Well, I've been thinking a lot about what you said earlier," Haruhi tries again.
"I hope you're not still talking about the stars," Benibara says, still messing with her basket.
"Floating lights," Haruhi corrects her as she walks towards the closet. "And yes, I'm leading up to that…"
"Because I really though we dropped the issue, sweetheart," Benibara continues with just the tiniest edge in her voice, utterly oblivious to Haruhi's movements as her back is turned.
"No, Beni, I'm just saying that you THINK I'm not strong enough to handle myself out there…"
Finally Benibara lifts her head to look at Haruhi. "Oh, I KNOW you're not strong enough to handle yourself out there."
"But if you just…"
"We are done. Talking about this," Benibara says in a tone that is filled with finality.
"Trust me, I know what I'm…"
"Haruhi…"
"Oh, come on," she pleads as she reaches for the chair in front of the closet door to make the big reveal.
"ENOUGH WITH THE LIGHTS!" Benibara bursts out at last. "YOU… ARE NOT… LEAVING THIS TOWER… EVER!"
Haruhi's jaw drops, her brown eyes widen, and tears appear in them as she looks shocked and hurt by the outburst. Her hand falls limply away from the chair without bothering to remove it from the doors.
Benibara puts her hand to her forehead in exasperation and collapses melodramatically onto another chair. "Ugh, great… now I'm the bad guy… I gave up my career on stage to care for the orphaned daughter of one of my dearest friends, and this is the thanks I get…"
Haruhi gazes sadly up at her mural, then finally looks at Benibara. When she speaks, her voice is soft and heavy with sadness. "All I was going to say, Beni, is that… I know what I want for my birthday now." She makes a valiant effort to smile.
"And WHAT is that?" Benibara asks, sounding very stressed and annoyed.
"New paint? The paint made from the white shells you once brought me?" Haruhi asks, a note of pleading in her voice.
"Well that is a VERY long trip, Haruhi," Benibara says, but she sounds distinctly less annoyed now. "Almost three days' time."
"I just thought that is was a better idea than the… stars," Haruhi whispers.
Benibara stares at Haruhi for a moment, then stands up. "You're sure you'll be all right on your own?" she asks finally.
Haruhi approaches slowly, then hugs her. "I know I'm safe as long as I'm here."
Benibara returns the hug and kisses the girl's golden hair. Then Haruhi packed some supplies into Benibara's basket and Benibara put on her cloak. Benibara slide down Haruhi's hair, calling up to her, "I'll be back in three days' time. I love you very much, dear."
Haruhi leans out of the tower to stare down at Benibara. "I love you more," she calls.
"I love you most," Benibara calls back, waving from the cave entrance. Haruhi waves back and Benibara vanishes into the cave and the outside world.
A/N: Yes. I did that. I basically made Kyouya the horse. Bahahahaha! He'd probably strangle me. Actually, he'd just have me killed cuz the Shadow King would never get his hands dirty…