Managed to finish this faster than I expected! Banzai!

Thank you for everyone who faved, followed, and reviewed the previous chapters! The last chapter got a mixed response about Reino, I'm not really sure which one is the majority...

Disclaimer: I do not own Skip-Beat!

Chapter 5: Cat Fight ~When Men Are Useless~

The staring contest had lasted for what seemed like hours for Lory, filling his office with deadly silence. He saw the two women, both of them having their own sharp intellect, assessing each other and calculating the whole situation. He did not dare saying a word.

Marina finally broke the silent with only one word. "Saena."

"Marina," Saena hissed. "So you're her guardian now? I thought I've given all responsibilities over Kyoko to the Fuwas."

"It is indeed true that I was appointed as guardian for Kyoko-san just recently through written correspondence that was perfectly legal," Marina said calmly with a smile that did not reach her cold eyes. "I heard you wanted to speak with me. How may I help you?"

"Let's get this straight. I want Kyoko out of showbiz."

"And why is that?" Marina asked, raising one eyebrow.

"It's none of her business. Now annul the contract."

The vice-president of Akatoki Agency scoffed. "And why do you think I will just do as you ask?"

"She's my daughter. By the way, where is she?" Saena snapped.

"That is supposed to be my question," Marina retorted. "Where were you these past years? You left her years ago and now you want her back?"

"Where is she?"

Marina looked around, making it as dramatic as possible. "Well, she is not here presently."

"Don't act dumb with me, Marina," Saena growled. "Now tell me where she is!"

"I will not. In my opinion, it is better for her to be as far from you as possible, though."

Saena's face contorted in growing rage. "I'm her mother, Marina! How dare you keep her away from me?"

Marina rolled her eyes. "She practically grew up to be an independent person without a mother. You are no longer her mother, Saena."

"And who gave you the rights to act as her mother? Ah, are you acting as her mother to quench that desire of yours? You infertile b****."

Marina's eyebrows twitched at that comment, but she managed to keep her calm. She spoke again tiredly, as if what Saena said was boring. "For what reason do you want her back, exactly? Is it so that you will be able to demand perfection from her and scorn her when she is not able to reach that perfection you desire? Shoving her away when things did not go as you will it to? I know you are a perfectionist, but isn't that too much? I shall remind you, Saena, you are not a perfect being, either.

"If you really want perfection, why don't you achieve it yourself? Ah, I know why. Because you are a coward who is afraid of failing and being humiliated, isn't that correct? That was why you forced your sick ideals onto your innocent daughters, planting those absurd morals into her head, and when she failed you could take the position of the superior and scorn her as an inferior."

"You seem to know what happened," Saena smirked sickly. "That stupid girl told you, huh?"

Marina gasped dramatically, acting shocked. "So that was what happened? Wow, you are truly sick, Saena. No wonder Kento decided to leave 18 years ago."

A second later, to Lory's astonishment, a hand was swung with fervor.

The dinner at Ren's was lacking of events. Kuon and Kuu spent a lot of times explaining the article they were talking about to Julie in English, and the blonde woman's face was instantly filled with disdain when Kuon mentioned about Kyoko being ditched by her mother.

"That's so wrong!" Julie hollered. "No one has any right to neglect children like that. I can't wait to meet this b**** and give her a piece of my mind."

Kuu sighed. "Sadly, not all people are like you, Julie. People like this woman exist everywhere. Remember that case in the newspaper a week ago?"

His wife pouted. Kuon then continued to explain how Kyoko had come to Tokyo together with Sho and slaved herself for the boy before being thrown aside. When he reached the point of explaining the rumored arranged marriage, Julie had had her 'sparkling attack' face on, scaring him and his father.

Their grim atmosphere was broken when they could hear the sound of kitchen alarm and metal pots clanking. An excited smile spread across Julie's face as she stood up abruptly. "I'll go and help Kyoko and the kitchen."

It took everything for Kuu and Kuon to hold her at her place, and in the end Kuon had to sacrifice himself by letting Julie baby him, while Kuu slipped into the kitchen and help Kyoko preventing the dinner from disaster.

"You look a lot like someone I know, Sir."

Kento turned around to see a tall, frail man with silver long hair and lavender eyes. His nails were long and pointed like claws, and he was dressed in the most outrageous outfit Kento had ever seen. At the moment, the silverette was staring at him intently.

The golden-eyed man felt goosebumps all over his body. "Err… Young lad?" he said carefully, rubbing the back of his neck uneasily. "You do know that I'm a male, don't you?"

"Perfectly, and I also know that you're straight," the lavender-eyed man replied in a smooth voice. "Ah, pardon me for being rude. I'm called Reino."

"Nice to meet you… Reino," Kento greeted back. "And to let you know, I have no intention whatsoever to be a gay. Now if you'll excuse me, I'll take my leave."

He stood up and started walking out of the hotel lounge when Reino's voice was heard again. "You look a lot like a girl I was interested in, KYOKO."

Kento stopped on his tracks and turned back to face the frail man. "KYOKO? As in Mogami Kyoko?"

"Ah, so you know her too, Sir?"

"Yeah, I know her," Kento decided to bluff. "You're interested in her?"

"She's an interesting one," Reino said. "She has this particularly interesting black aura full of royal hatred and grudge and elegance that makes me want to possess her. How I want to have her in my arms and ravish her again, filling her head with the feelings of pure hatred towards me–"

He could not finish his sentence as a fist made contact with his jaws. He staggered back a few steps in pain before lifting his eyes to look at the furious pair of golden eyes.

"Did you just say you ravished Kyoko?" Kento growled in escalating fury. "HOW DARE YOU DISGRACE MY DAUGHTER?"

Reino could feel his face going pale. Before he could say anything, the other man yanked him up by his collar and hissed in a venomous voice. "Now, Reino or whatever your name is, I want you to stay away from her. When I receive news that you appear before her eyesight, or call her, I'll make sure that every possible force, real or ethereal, will hunt you down, and I will guarantee your death straight away. You got me?"

Kento did not wait for the younger man's response. He threw him away into the armchairs and strode away from the lounge, completely pissed off.

When he reached his room, he was wondering why he had been angry for a daughter he had never known – until Marina had told him – and seen.

It took time for Marina to finally register the stinging pain on her left cheek. She knew that Saena was temperamental, but she did not think that the woman slapped hard.

Now she knew. And it just escalated her irritation at Saena and made her want to mock the woman more. "Really?" she scoffed. "Is this the best you can do, Saena?"

Saena growled angrily and slapped Marina again before yanking her by the hair. It shocked the strict woman when her old colleague slapped her back. They glared at each other before exchanging more slaps and hair-yanking.

"NEVER MENTION HIM TO ME AGAIN!" Saena growled.

"And why is that?" Marina retorted, trying to push Saena away from her. "Because it hurts your ego that he left you?"

And suddenly she was tackled to the floor.

Kuu and Julie were walking towards Lory's office, perfectly pleased. They had had a nice dinner consisting of grilled chicken with Caesar salad, they had had a nice conversation with Kuon and Kyoko without once bringing up the damned article, and Julie had fulfilled her desire to have some quality time with her son – which was mostly her cuddling him and Kuon trying to get away if it had been not to save Kyoko's dinner. And to Julie's delight, her picky-eater of a son actually ate his dinner.

Their smile, however, faded when Kuu opened Lory's door to reveal an office with chairs strewn everywhere, a broken table lamp on the floor, and two women they did not recognize trying to land at least a kick on each other. Behind the working desk, Lory was peeking at the two women acting like Amazonian, while his hands were groping everywhere for his phone.

Kuu instantaneously bolted and separated Saena and Marina, who were still trying to claw the life out of each other. "What the hell is happening here?" he asked exasperatedly.

The woman clad in the once-strict business suit panted for breath. She growled, "This whore here won't give my daughter back!"

"Why in the world should I do that?" the other black-haired woman, who was dressed more casually in long knitted dress adored with black belt circling her waist, snapped. "I will never betray Kyoko-san by sending her back to a woman who never cares for her in the first place."

"What did you say?!" the strict woman screamed.

Marina scoffed. "Now answer me, Saena; you want her so badly now, why did you give her up in the first place?"

Something in Julie snapped. The blonde goddess stared at the business-clad woman. "You're Kyoko's mother?" she hissed angrily, reminded again of Kuon's story about the abandonment. Fast as a leopard, she pounced on Saena, making it her goal to choke the woman.

"How dare you treat her like that!" she growled. "You have absolutely no right to be a mother, you lame excuse of a b****!"

"Julie, honey, STOP!" Kuu barked, trying to yank his wife back, only to be elbowed painfully on the ribs.

Saena, panting hard to get some air into her lungs while Julie was trying her best to crush her windpipe, tried to launch a punch onto Julie's face. Her fist did not land on the American's face.

Instead, it landed hard on Marina's lower jaw bone, making the ghostwriter staggered back holding the hit jaws. Her eyes flashed with fury. "Now you have done it!" she screamed, throwing herself back into the fight.

Kuu ran to Lory's side behind the heavy desk. "Boss!" he yelled. "Do something!"

"I'm trying!" Lory yelled back, still desperately searching for the phone. "Just let me find the damn intercom and I'll call the security for help!"

"Why didn't you stop those two madness from the start?" the infamous actor asked.

"You think I didn't try?" the man dressed like Willy Wonka screamed. "I tried to make them talk civilly again, and one of them elbowed me on the corner of my mouth so hard I thought I've lost some of my teeth!"

A shrill scream of pain was heard from the tangled mess of women. The two men looked at each other helplessly.

"Don't just stare at me! Look for the phone, dammit!" Lory yelled as if the phone was their only lifeline.

Kuon had to struggle really hard to stifle his laughter to not wake Kyoko up.

She had fallen asleep after they had finished the dishes and been in the middle of a movie. Her head was against his hard chest, with her face nuzzling against his shirt. Kuon himself was leaning against the couch, trying to make Kyoko as comfortable as possible in her slumber. His fingers were busy tangling themselves in her chestnut tresses, while his other hand was holding his phone to his ear.

"So, who won the fight?" he snickered.

On the phone, Kuu sighed tiredly. "Considering that it ended with your mom losing a few strands of her hair, the Saena woman having bruised neck and black eye, and Akatoki-san having two swollen cheeks and bite marks on her arm, I'd say that no one won."

"Bite marks?" the younger man repeated in disbelief. "Who the hell bit Marina-san?"

"Who knows," his father replied. "Even if Akatoki-san and Julie teamed up against that damn woman, in that chaos of threesome world-class woman wrestling championship, they wouldn't manage not to hurt each other. I bet they would have still continued to take each other's life if we hadn't found the phone and managed to call the security in."

Kuon laughed softly, making Kuu scowl. "Let me tell you, son, this ain't a funny matter. A lesson for you: never make a woman angry."

"Roger that," the dark-haired man agreed solemnly, his fingers still stroking Kyoko's hair. She murmured something into his shirt, and he smiled at her gently before planting a kiss on her crown. "How's Mom?"

"Still revved up," the older man answered, completely horrified. "She claimed that she still hadn't gotten her point across the crazy woman's head and swore to give her a jab and an uppercut the next time she met her."

Kuon's expression turned grim. "Dad," he murmured. "About Kyoko's mother, though."

"Yeah?"

"Can you not tell Kyoko about this?" Kuon asked. "I mean, I think it'd be better if she heard it from Marina-san. She's her guardian, after all."

Kuu sighed again. "You have a point, son. Ah, Julie's out from the shower. You wanna talk to her?"

"I guess not," Kuon said. "Kyoko's sleeping now; I'd better turn in now as well."

"Sure thing. See you around, Kuon."

Kuon stared long into his phone before putting it carefully onto the low coffee table, trying to not jostle Kyoko awake. He pulled a fleece afghan over their body, switched off the dim light, and let himself being dragged into slumber after giving his beloved a passionate good-night kiss.

Marina was beyond pissed off.

When the security had managed to pull the three of them apart, she was left angry and wondering how in the world she had had strands of shiny blonde hair in her grasp and hideous bite marks on one of her arms.

After the struggling Saena had been safely dragged away out of the office, Marina had made her point clear to Lory that she had not want the woman anywhere near Kyoko.

She had even instructed the flamboyant man to send Yoshimoto to her apartment early to instruct the new manager directly before Kyoko went to work.

At the moment she just paid the driver of the taxi she had hailed from LME, and got off the car when Saena's words came back to her.

You infertile b****.

It stung her badly as she was harshly reminded of her inability to bear children. A breeze blew her hair to a side while she stood on the entrance of the condominium building limply. For some reason, her attention was brought to a man standing on her far left side.

Her eyes widened. There, Uehara Kento, clad in thick winter coat and gripping the handle of a brown large suitcase, waved his hand and smiled sheepishly.

"Marina," he greeted. His golden eyes scanned the appearance of his cousin and he whistled. "Wow, you look like s***."

"Language, Kento," she snarled. "Why are you here?"

"I asked Seijuro if you were still living here and–"

"What I was talking about," Marina cut him off, "is why you are here in Tokyo. Shouldn't you be in Osaka for the next few days?"

He scratched the back of his head uneasily. "You see," he began. "I was sitting at the hotel lounge, enjoying my scotch–"

"Since when do you drink alcohol?" she asked in disbelief.

"Since my friend in Germany introduced me to their beer. Now, can you stop butting in every word I say?" Kento snapped. "Okay, so back to where I was in the lounge. A young man called Reino suddenly come to me and greet me with a pick-up line they usually use in pubs it gave me terrible goosebumps. And then he mentioned something about him ravishing Kyoko once.

"I gave him a piece of my mind before leaving him limp against the table in the lounge. But after that something kept nagging me, so I took a taxi straight to the airport and bought the earliest ticket to Tokyo. Now you're allowed to say something."

Marina quickly took a quick breath. "By leaving him limp, were you saying that you punched him?"

"Straight on the lower jaw," he added proudly. "That boy gave me the creeps. He said something about aura… I have the suspicion that he's a fae."

"You said Reino…" she mumbled. "Silver hair, lavender eyes, pale skin?"

"You know him?" he asked with wide eyes.

She nodded. "Reino from Vie Ghoul. They gave one of our talents quite a competition last year. Did you say he molested Kyoko-san?"

"That was the implication, I think," Kento tapped his chin. "By the way, can't we go in? It's cold out here."

Marina rolled her eyes and opened the door.

"Saena, huh…" Kento mumbled with a grim smile. "As always, her violence is not to be underestimated. That's a nice bite mark, I should say."

"Quit it, Kento," Marina grumbled, pressing an ice bag onto her swollen cheek. "So? What are you going to do?"

He sighed. "I still can't believe she's someone who can do something like abandoning a family, but…" He let himself deep in thought, before saying in determination. "I'd like to meet her."

"What?" his cousin snapped.

"If what you're saying is true, then I want to talk to her at least once," he explained. "After that, depending on how the situation looks to me, I may or may not appeal for custody."

Aw, I feel like I made Reino a bit OOC...

A lot of cussing, swearing, barking, growling, snapping, yelling, shouting, and screaming in this chapter... Why does it sound a lot like a circus?

Please review :) Thank you!