Duran-kun and Kiyo-chan's Omake Theater

(featuring the Kuga-Fujino family pets)

Natsuki Kuga had spent a fair amount of her formative years hanging out in bars inhabited by shady underworld figures as well as diligently training in such ladylike accomplishments as breaking and entering, hand-to-hand combat, and the handling of firearms, which she subsequently spent considerable time applying to real-world situations.

This was a rather long-winded way of saying that Natsuki had quite a way with profanity for a beautiful nineteen-year-old.

Her language was probably not exactly appropriate for the Christmas season, but then again she wasn't a Christian anyway and it would have tried the patience of a nun (well, if that nun was Nao, at least) to have banged into the coffee table while carrying boxes of decorations and knocking carefully laid-out ornaments onto the living-room rug where they promptly rolled under the couch.

Natsuki finished exploring the Japanese language (and a couple of foreign ones besides), set the boxes down on the floor, and went into the kitchen to get the flashlight. She knelt down on the floor, flicked on the electric torch, and pointed it under the couch so that she could fish out every glitterball.

Then she once again devolved into very un-Christmaslike language.

Duran poked her with his nose and gave a little whimper. Natsuki turned around and petted her dog on the head.

"Aw, boy, were you worried about me?"

He gave a little woof.

"Sorry for making you concerned. This job is kind of hard on my Christmas cheer, when everything keeps going wrong."

He licked her face, which made her laugh despite the slobber.

"Should I be concerned? Natsuki rarely reacts like that when I lick her face. Though I have to say that I cannot object to the view."

Natsuki looked back over her shoulder to see where her girlfriend Shizuru had come out into the room.

"How long were you standing there ogling my butt?"

"Since right before your second outburst. I have to say, it was a quite the early Christmas present."

"You're incorrigible," Natsuki sighed, then got back to her feet. "Did all the yelling interrupt your studying?"

Shizuru shook her head.

"No. Well, if I must be scrupulously honest, I cannot say that I did not hear you, but I was going to come out for another reason. Indeed, I am actually pleased to see what it was that had so irritated you, and not just because of the excellent scenery."

"Can we seriously stop discussing my rear end now?"

Shizuru gave her a mock pout.

"Ikezu! I could rhapsodize about Natsuki's rear end for hours!"

"Don't they teach you in Kyoto to never pick a fight with a woman carrying Christmas tree ornaments? Anyway, what was so important that it brought you out?"

"Well, I thought that Natsuki might have gotten the same e-mail that I did and that prompted her…colorful response, shall we say?"

"E-mail? And why would I be getting your e-mail anyway?"

"It came to our joint account."

They'd set up a separate e-mail account not long after moving in together for things like household notifications, utility bills, and shopping district fliers that they could both freely access.

"I'm not going to like this, am I?"

Shizuru smirked.

"Well, that depends on how comfortable Natsuki is with being a scofflaw in her new life. You have an overdue library book."

Natsuki blinked.

"Wait, what?"

"It's quite plain to see. Your book was due one week ago today, and will now be accruing fines."

"But that can't be. I don't have any books checked out. The last thing I had was that engineering text I used for that project two weeks ago, and I definitely returned that. Remember; it was the day I took Kiyohime to the vet for you?"

Shizuru tapped her finger on her cheek as she thought it over.

"Come to think of it, I do remember that day. I saw you put the book into your backpack."

"I'm definitely going to have to give them a piece of my mind over there. Though I think I'll wait until after Christmas. Anybody who's stuck on duty now is either going to be mad because they're missing out on time with their sweetie or mad because they don't have someone to spend Christmas with and it'll suck either way."

"Indeed."

"A better question is, why didn't whomever burned out the flashlight batteries replace them?"

Shizuru held up her hands.

"It was not me, Natsuki."

"Huh. And it wasn't me, either." She thought it over. "You're not lying to me to slither out of trouble, are you?"

Shizuru could not resist putting on an enigmatic face for that.

"Would I do that?" she teased.

"I'd answer that, but I'd get put on the 'naughty' list for saying things like that about my girlfriend."

"Ara, ara, but I would very much enjoy a naughty Natsuki."

Natsuki just rolled her eyes.

"You know, I don't need to worry about whether or not to believe you as some kind of couples trust exercise. Duran?"

Duran sat up and barked enthusiastically. He was going to be useful! This was definitely a dog's moment to shine (and maybe get in good with Santa himself and earn a few extra-juicy bones in his stocking)!

"Take a good sniff and find out who's been using this besides me." She extended the flashlight towards him and he snuffled his nose up and down its length. His ears pricked up, and he turned and darted into the bedroom.

"…Okay, I didn't expect that."

Natsuki and Shizuru followed him, and found Duran standing there in a dramatic pointing pose, his nose speared directly towards where Kiyohime was sleeping curled up on her purple sheep pillow, the hydra's third head snoring gently.

"Wait, you're saying that Kiyohime was using the flashlight?"

Duran answered with an affirmative woof. This had the side effect of waking up Kiyohime, whose heads blearily uncurled from one another.

"Kiyohime, you know better than this. When you use the flashlight, change the batteries if they run out. What if this had been important and we really needed light?"

She looked at the flashlight, then back at Natsuki, then back at the flashlight and drooped her heads.

"I am wondering why she needed it at all," Shizuru mused.

It didn't quite come with angel choruses, but inspiration came to Natsuki in a flash.

"I think I know."

Natsuki knelt down and reached for the pillow. Kiyohime squirmed, trying to block her hands, but Natsuki fixed the eyes on her main body with a look.

"I apparently have late fees from the library," she said sternly, and Kiyohime shrank back from the power of justice. Natsuki felt around the pillow and easily discovered the outline of a book inside it. Further examination led to her discovering that one of the side seams had been carefully removed, and she slipped her hand inside to pull out the contents.

"Yumi the Serpent-Maiden Vol. 6: The Jungles of Death?" she said, reading off the title of the light novel. The cover illustration showed a lamia—a woman with the lower body of a giant purple snake—fighting off a massive python twice her size against a backdrop of tropical foliage, a vaguely Incan-looking temple half-obscured by trees in the background.

"I do not understand this at all," Shizuru said. "Kiyohime, why would you try to steal a library book?"

"I get it," Natsuki said. "You were embarrassed, weren't you? Shizuru likes to read classical literature and poetry, and I basically don't read fiction at all, so you were afraid we'd think you were silly for reading a light novel series. That's why you was sneaking around at night to read it by flashlight, and why you couldn't figure out how to easily get it returned."

It was not every day that one got to see a hydra blush.

"Is that it?" Shizuru asked. "But how did Natsuki know?"

"Natsuki is kind of an expert at keeping up a public façade to try to keep people from getting the wrong impression of her." She reached out and gave Kiyohime a hug. "Fortunately, Natsuki also has a Shizuru who works hard at trying to convince her that she can trust her loved ones with all parts of herself, and that she doesn't ever have to be embarrassed."

Kiyohime let out a long sigh and nuzzled all of her heads against Natsuki's shoulders and upper arms.

"Except for the fruitcake," Shizuru amended. "That I retain full teasing rights over."

"…I thought you'd forgotten that."

"Natsuki would not want me to lie at Christmas, would she? Santa might not bring me what I want under my tree if I do."

"You sent me your letter to Santa, and I can definitely say that everything on that list would have you marked down as 'naughty' just for knowing it exists."

"Natsuki ikezu."

Natsuki stood up and pulled her girlfriend into a hug, then kissed her on the tip of her nose.

"I love you too, idiot. Now, why don't you come and help me find the batteries, and then we can fish out the loose ornaments from under the couch and finish trimming the tree together? Kiyohime can make us some hot chocolate, since she's going to be on kitchen duty for the next week to work off her library fine."

"You have many good ideas today."

"Well, I have to keep up my end of the bargain."

"Ara?" Shizuru looked at her, puzzled.

"With Santa." Natsuki swept her gaze from Shizuru to Duran to Kiyohime and back again, taking in her little family that they'd made. "He gave me my gift early, so I need to stay on the 'nice' list."

~X X X~

A/N: Merry Christmas and happy holidays to all of you! And a special holiday thank-you to my best friend and honorary little sister Fuyu no Sora for giving me the idea for Kiyohime's (well, anyone's; Sora wasn't specific) dubious taste in reading as the subject for an omake!