Disclaimer: I obviously don't own any of this. Get real.

This Means War

Kondo

Talking to Ayame had proved fruitless. No matter how much I pressured her, she wouldn't admit to knowing anything. In the end, I'd settled for saying, "The regulars aren't bad people, you know. Tezuka isn't bad, just . . . unresponsive. You would get along with them if you gave them a chance."

She had locked her big brown eyes on mine and said, "I have no intention of trying to get along with people who assume things and take things for granted," she said coldly. "Maybe you can get along with them, but I have a definite personality clash."

Ayame was so ridiculously stubborn sometimes it made me want to clobber her.

I made my way back to the other regulars, after deciding spending any more time with her would be a waste. "Inui!" I called, seeing the bubble-gum hair and knowing it couldn't be anyone else. He turned around.

"Yes, Kondo?" he said.

"I checked with Kazuko, and the dye will wash out by itself in a couple of days," I told him, "But she also said that getting it stripped would work just as well, though you'd have to spend some time in a salon."

"I know," he said. How he knew, I have no idea. But it is Inui, so I didn't bother asking.

"Saa, Inui?" Fuji said, approaching us. "What would you say to a little . . . retaliation?"

"No, Fuji," I protested desperately, "She'll cool off and this whole little incident will just be forgotten. If you fuel the fire, it's just going to escalate."

Fuji just smiled. "Inui?" he said, "Do you agree?"

Inui considered. "Kondo is correct. However, I do not believe that I'm going to let this incident pass without Inui Juice."

Kondo groaned internally. Inui Juice would be enough to make Ayama do something to the entire tennis team. "Please don't, Inui."

"Why not?" Fuji said, "It's tasty." His tone was partly sarcastic because He already knew no one agreed with him. I just ignored him.

"Let it go, Inui. People will forget about it in a week," I nearly begged.

Inui looked at me, his face unreadable and his eyes hidden by his thick glasses. I could tell, though, that he really wasn't going go just let it go. He silently left with Fuji in tow, and, with a sinking feeling, I followed after them.

If they were going to pull something, I was at least going to be there as a voice of reason.

Within a few minutes, Inui had gathered every regular that would approve of pranks on the team. Eiji, Momo, Fuji, Inui and I stood outside the locker room. Ryoma had tagged only with Momo and Eiji, but looked a little bored.

Inui proceeded to pull out an opaque grey water bottle. "This contains Aozu Hyper-Remix," he explained, "A juice I specifically created to take out Fuji adapted from the only juice he ever reacted to. It should be more than sufficient for Ayame."

Maybe I'm losing my mind, but I think I saw bottle move by itself, like there was something alive inside it. I hope you survive this, Ayame, I prayed to myself. But I didn't move to stop him. Why? Because I didn't want to get on Inui's bad side anymore than I wanted to be on Ayame's. And with her, at least, I could claim I knew nothing about it.

"According to my data, Ayame always buys her lunch," Inui said, "Which means that someone will need to distract her as someone else adds the juice. Fuji, since you are in her math class, you will be doing the distracting. Eiji, since you are the most innocent-seeming one among us that attends third year lunch, you will add the juice . . ."

And so, Inui began planning the next trigger.

The next day, I watched reluctantly from a different part of the cafeteria as Fuji approached Ayame, who was moodily shoving her food around her plate.

"Saa, you're in first period math with Tansho-sensei, right?" Fuji asked her.

"Yeah," she said, "Why?"

She looked distinctly suspicious. Did she know that we were planning something? I actually hoped that she did, because then she wouldn't get in the way of the Inui juice, and would cool off faster than if something really happened to her.

"I need to borrow your math book – mine got locked in her classroom and I want to copy the homework for tonight," he explained. I have to give Fuji credit, because even though he would likely never make such a careless mistake, his entire body radiated with a truthful innocence.

He must have had alot of practice.

Still watching his every move with dark, suspicious eyes, Ayame got up and said, "It's in my locker. Come with me and I'll get it."

Too naïve, Ayame, I thought sadly. At this rate, she really would be done for. I watched quietly as Eiji, giggling, poured the strange bluish liquid into the bottle of juice sitting by her lunch. Normally the color would be a dead give away, but she was drinking a very dark kind of grape juice, and there wasn't any noticeable change in the liquid.

Dread spreading through my body, she came back with Fuji. They separated at the door, and she sat down to her lunch. Now it was only a matter or time.

Or so I thought, anyway. Ayame proceeded to spend the rest of lunch chasing her food around her plate, not eating – or drinking – a single thing.

At last, as she threw her lunch away, I came after her. "You usually eat a lot," I commented, "Aren't you feeling well?"

"I'm fine," she said, "Just not hungry."

"Did something happen?" I pressured.

"It was a long night," was all she said. By now I'd known her long enough to decode that this meant someone had died in her family's hospital overnight. She had either known them pretty well or it had been a pretty gruesome death, for it to actually put her off her food.

"Bad luck, Inui," I said, finding him looking uncharacteristically confused on the edge of the cafeteria.

"It doesn't match my data," Inui insisted, "Ayame usually consumes three times as many calories as the other girls in our school. How did she know?"

"She didn't. She's not eating today," I told him.

Inui frowned thoughtfully. "Is that so? Is it a religious holiday your neglected to mention?"

"Sort of," I lied, deciding that it would easier than explaining the truth.

"Well, that's no good, now is it?" a silky voice came from behind me, making me jump.

"F-Fuji . . ." I said. It was natural, of course, that Fuji wouldn't want his efforts to go to waste. And he seemed to like watching people stuffer.

"I have another idea!" Eiji said brightly, "My siblings used to do this all the time in high school. All you have to do is call her out by the locker room after school, Kondo."

My stomach clenched. Couldn't they just let it go? They were being nearly as stubborn as she was!

"I can get all the supplies together after lunch," Eiji declared. "This is what we're going to do . . ."

Ayame

I was seriously worried that the tennis club was planning something weird. That trick during lunch was too suspicious. Of course Inui figured out that I had put the dye in the shampoo, Kondo's questioning made that obvious. And Inui was a genius, so even if Kondo didn't spill, which I found unlikely, he would have known on his own.

I was staying after school today, too, for library duty. Really, I spent so much time here after school, it wasn't any different than if I were in a club, even though I wasn't right now.

Beep . . . beep . . . beep . . . came the ring of my phone, conspicuous in the library. I set down the books I was carrying and hurried out into the empty hallway as the librarian glared at me.

"Moshi-moshi?" I sighed, picking it up.

"Ayame?" came the voice from the phone, "Its Kendo. You're still at school, right?"

"Yes, why?" I asked. I was trying to keep from being suspicious, but Kendo was too respectful of his tennis friends, and I wasn't entirely sure that he wasn't part of the large conspiracy I was sure the world was building against me.

Yeah, I know I'm paranoid. Get over it.

"You left something at lunch," he told me, "It looks like a paper for English, and I thought you might want it back."

"Really?" Hn. I didn't remember dropping my English homework, but then, if I'd noticed I dropped it, I would have picked it up. "Alright, do you have it?"

"Yeah," he said, "I have to run some errands, so I won't be going home with you, though, so do you mind running by the club room in about ten minutes? We'll be done, and I can give it to you then."

"Sure," I agreed. Kondo would be seriously ticked off if I questioned him and he really was trying to return my homework, so I didn't have much choice.

I regret that decision, now.

After finishing my work at the library, I hurried around the corner of the locker room.

And was promptly soaked. Normally, this was not a problem. I loved water. I was prone to stand in the rain and playing in the lawn sprinklers, even though I was in high school. But this time, it proved to be a major problem for three reasons:

One, I was carrying my school bag. I was sprayed so thoroughly that the water penetrated the thick cloth of the bag and made the edges of all my textbooks and made all of my textbooks and assignments wet. Definitely not funny.

Two, it was hot today so I wasn't wearing the weird sailor-jacket part of the uniform. This meant that the water went straight through the plain white shirt I was wearing and made it basically see through. Cliqued, I admit, like something out of an anime, but still definitely a problem.

The third and final problem was created on purpose by the tennis club. While Momo doused me with the hose, Eiji covered me in glitter.

Now, for all you non-crafty people out there, wet glitter sticks to everything. And it doesn't come off for a week. You do the math.

"Dammit!" I shouted. My first reaction was to clobber the person closest to me, which was Eiji. And thus, he experienced being judo-thrown by a little girl for a second time.

I grabbed Kondo's regular jacket from where he was holding it a few feet away, looking at me pityingly. Despite the heat, I put it on and zipped it up, thus fixing the second problem, and probably also coating it with glitter, but at this point, I didn't care.

"Give them a chance, huh?" I asked Kondo bitterly, "Not too likely anymore. And don't think you're going to be spared, either."

"I was afraid of that," he admitted.

"Not afraid enough," I said, shaking some of the excess glitter in my hair his direction and took off away from the school.

A/N: I think . . . that the regulars are OOC and that this is getting to be less of a 'humor' story. It's harder to make Kondo humorous, because he's not so cynical. Since I'm not very funny, it might be better to ignore the genre and just think of this as a General fic. I've been updating fairly quickly because I already had some of this prepared, but depending on how long it takes me to pull together each chapter, it might spread out a bit more. Once again, please review and constructive criticism is welcome, but no flaming for the sake of flaming.