Chapter 3.5- The Ponytail Incident
Warning: Impending OOCness.
Hazelnut spent four happy weeks working for the two young scientists. However begrudgingly, she had to admit that it was really nice to be useful, for once. Even though she was still clumsy, and had a hard time keeping up with all the biogenetics jargon, she at least kept things interesting.
But the orange haired girl had a rendezvous with destiny. Nothing could have prevented it.
If Hazelnut had spent more time around the house, or if her parents had been more attentive, she might have at least once heard the time honored rule "Don't run with scissors."
Unfortunately, she hadn't, and they weren't.
It was really too bad. On that fateful Wednesday afternoon, while helping Ryou make a few adjustments on some very scientific machine that she didn't understand at all, he asked her to fetch the kitchen scissors.
The kitchen scissors were the sharpest in the house; Keiichiro used them for ripping through particularly tough packages.
Ryou needed them to split a couple of heavy duty industrial wires. Hazelnut was fascinated with watching him work, and eager to assist. Which was a first for her. The eagerness. She was usually pretty uncaring.
In her hurry to be helpful, though, her feet got in the way of one another, and she tripped, sending the scissors flying.
That in and of itself wouldn't have been too bad; if it hadn't been at that exact moment that Akasaka-san entered the kitchen.
The scissors missed slicing open his skull by mere inches. But he had not escaped unscathed. The traitorous blades had sheared his luxurious locks clean off, pinning them to the wall.
Hazelnut was paralyzed with fear. The most important rule of the house was to never, ever, touch Akasaka-san's hair.
Keiichiro blinked, a little dazed. His hand went up, gingerly feeling the spot where his ponytail had resided mere seconds earlier. An unearthly wail rose and filled the house, permeating even the soundproof basement.
Ryou burst into the kitchen. "Keiichiro! What is it?"
Somehow, Hazelnut found herself again and immediately put her face to the ground. "I'm really sorry, Akasaka-san! Please don't kill me," she pleaded.
If Hazelnut had not been kowtowing, she might have noticed the odd, and very unnerving, gleam in the gentleman's eyes. He seemed unable to form a coherent sentence, and had also developed a bit of a twitch.
Hazelnut had been half-expecting him to whip out a samurai sword and slice her head off.
Ryou put his arm around the pastry chef's shoulder. "Come on, Keiichiro, why don't you lie down for a while?"
The poor man couldn't stop twitching, but allowed himself to be led to his room.
When Ryou came back, Hazelnut still had her face on the floor.
"You can get up now; I think he'll be okay."
Her strange, honey colored eyes peered up at him fearfully. "Really?"
He helped her up. "Yeah, but he'll definitely be out of commission for a couple of days, maybe even weeks."
"Hazelnut, will you stay here and help run things until he gets better? I don't think I'll be able to do it alone."
The girl smirked. "Do you think you'll be able to trust me? I can't even fetch scissors without causing an international crisis."
Ryou chuckled. "Are you kidding? That's the first hair cut he's had in three years. If anything, we ought to give you a medal."
Extra Super Special Awesome Bonus: How This Fanfiction Came About
(As mentioned in the first chapter, you can skip over all this; it doesn't bother me.)
It all started on a dark and stormy night, almost four months ago, during Christmas break. On that very night, absolutely nothing happened.
The next day, however, left me in a bookstore for almost an entire afternoon. It was destiny, I suppose. It was the manga section, and some strange compulsion made me pick up the first book in a series called Tokyo Mew Mew. BAM! I was hooked. The concept was not revolutionary, and for the most part, the plotline and characters were predictable, but it held some strange attraction for me. Naturally, I couldn't read all the books in the bookstore, and they didn't have all of them anyway.
The next week was spent watching the first half of the episodes online.
About three days into that, I felt inspired to write. My creative process went something like this:
"Hey, I should write a fanfiction! My English teacher will be so proud of me!"
"I'll make it about Ryou! And Pudding! (my two favorite characters) But I can't pair them; that would be a little awkward, so I'll put in an OC! Yaaay!"
"Orange, I suppose, yeah, orange. And some kind of animal."
In the very first thoughts I had of her, Hazelnut was going to be fused with tiger genes because that's the only orange animal I could think of. But then I realized that wildcats aren't pink, porpoises aren't green, and wolves aren't purple. (usually.)
Anyway, I finished the story by the time Christmas break was over. I read over my rough draft, decided I hated it with a purple passion, and left it to gather dust on my hardrive.
It took me months to forgive myself for writing something so boring. (Yes, it was boring. I had like five pages before I actually got anywhere with the plot.)
I picked it up, blew the dust off, and thus began the writing process:
1. Read the first chapter.
2. Cry, and fret about how in the world I'm going to draw readers into the story.
3. Spark an idea.
4. Write down the idea.
5. Do a happy dance of joy.
6. Trip over my biology book.
7. Explain things to my worried mother, who comes in to inquire about the crash.
8. Lather, rinse, and repeat with chapter 2, etc., taking care to avoid any obstacles when dancing about.
Yeah, the original went through a lot of revisions. That's why this week's chapter is so short. I'm starting to add things from scratch instead of building off the foundation I already laid. The next chapter is going to be written from ideas I'm still in the process of coming up with.
Don't worry; I'm still working toward the same ending. It's just the middle parts that I decided needed a little elaboration. And the beginning. The beginning was terrible.
Whew! Juniper and Shanequa, I can't thank you two enough for being so completely awesome. It's your reviews that keep me working on this thing. Have some pancakes for your troubles. holds out plate of delicious pancakes