I, being in good health and of (questionably) sound mind and body, and 
being resolved to write a truly evil fic, do hereby ordain and 
establish that phantasmagoria which, dear Reader, is about to be 
inflicted upon you.

Those Obnoxious Pirots
(Spelling Intentional)


~Monday~

	Okay, here I am, keeping a journal for a week the way the 
assignment says. Not that I think it'll actually be worth much of 
anything -- I tried to keep a journal once or twice before, and I never 
remembered to write in it, not to mention that nothing journalworthy 
ever happens in my life anyway.

	The assignment says I'm supposed to start off by describing 
myself. My name's Duo Maxwell. I'm American. I'm fifteen. I'm skinny, 
not as tall as I'd like to be, and I've got a hell of a lot of long 
bronze hair, which I usually keep in a braid. Mother calls it a French 
braid, which means that it's sort of attached to the back of my head. 
Agh, I'm no good at explaining this sort of stuff -- you've seen it, 
sensei. My favorite book is *The Silmarillion*, my favorite movie is 
*Yellow Submarine*, and I have no clue what my favorite song is.

	I'm probably supposed to mention what I'm doing at this high 
school, given the fact that I'm American and this school is in the 
middle of Tokyo. (Tokyo's been a little disappointing, by the way. So 
far I haven't seen ONE mutated monster crawl up out of the bay or 
rampage through the city, unless you count the mutant rush hour subway 
clown-in-the-car sardine game.)

	See, my mother got a chance to go on this six-month sabbatical 
and business tour, and they let her bring Dad but not me and not Trey. 
(Trey being my little sister, and fairly decent, except when she keeps 
pestering me to play with her.) So she asked us what we wanted to do.

	Trey wanted to go stay with our cousin Sylvia, and Aunt Agatha 
agreed to take her. I wanted to go and train to be a space pilot, and 
they start them *young* these days. Since Mother and Dad were really 
really busy making arrangements for their six-month trip, they asked 
another aunt, Aunt Ruth, to see if she could get me into a six-month 
space pilot training program at such short notice.

	Well, something got passed on wrong SOMEWHERE, because here I am, 
at a space *pirate* training program. In Japan, because this high 
school is the only one that offers such a thing.

	Oh, well, I suppose there are worse people to imitate than 
Harlock. Not to mention that Ryohko is really hot.

	(The guy in the apartment above me lets me watch his video 
collection a lot. It's freaking enormous. Man, they make a lot of 
animated stuff with PG-13 or R ratings around here.)

	Anyway, another cousin of mine, named Treize -- you can tell we 
have sort of weird names in my family, right? Anyway, he's part Russian 
or Ukrainian or something, so he's got an excuse for it -- anyway, he's 
working on his doctorate at Tokyo University, and he has a part-time 
job as manager of this old crummy-looking apartment building. He got it 
when the last one left to get married. I'd say I don't know how he 
finds the time, except that I know for a fact that his rules for the 
apartment residents go as follows:

1)	Keep it down to a dull roar; don't distract me when I'm working 
on my dissertation.
2)	While you're at it, don't burn the place down.

	I know this because I live there, practically free, in Apartment 
#2, like my name. Which actually means two in Latin *and* Greek. Well, 
it looks more like 'duw' in Greek, but it's still *pronounced* Duo. 
Which is good. I think.

	I do a little microwave cooking, and now and then Treize invites 
me in for dinner if I make pathetic enough faces at him, and some of 
the takeout places will actually deliver, even though most of them are 
sort of scared of us. Plus, if all else fails, I can always bum food 
off the Chinese guy in #5.

	He so does NOT appreciate being bummed off of -- he's some kind 
of genius or something, and he's trying to get into a college even 
though he's MY age. First I thought he was crazy. Then the guy above me 
in #4, the one with the video collection, explained that nobody ever 
does anything but goof off in Japanese colleges -- which is lucky, 
because high school is ridiculously hard here. The only teacher who'll 
actually listen to our explanations of why I should be given some slack 
-- good explanations, with a doctor's note and everything -- only does 
so because she's got this enormous crush on my cousin.

	But then the Chinese guy said he wanted to go to college to 
STUDY. Okay, he is nuts. Apparently, instead of sending SAT scores to 
all sorts of places, you actually have to take a different test at 
*each college*, so he spends all his time studying for them. The guy 
NEEDS to have something vaguely resembling a social life. You'd think 
he'd be grateful for us coming in and hanging out.

	Hilde looked over my shoulder at this, and she said I should 
explain why we do. See, the family in #1, and the guy in #4, and the 
chick in #6, all assure me that get-togethers and parties and general 
hanging out ALWAYS happen in #5, dating back to before the guy who 
married the last manager, who was there before the Chinese guy. It's a 
tradition of Ikkoku Hall, just like all of us having names that match 
our apartment numbers is a tradition.

	Uh, I think 'hall' is a good translation there. I'm still not 
that great with my Japanese.

	Anyway, the Ichinoses -- or should that be Ichinose, or -- 
Ichinosezoku. Thanks, Hilde. Anyway, they live in #1, and Miss Roppongi 
is in #6, and the Chinese guy's name has "five" in it -- my fellow 
inmates call him "Gohi" because that's the way his name's pronounced in 
Japanese, and I call him "Wumeister" or "Oofy," like Oofy Prosser, if 
you happen to be familiar with Wodehouse, which you probably aren't, 
because he makes the most interesting faces when I do -- he calls me 
something in Chinese which I keep trying to memorize because it's got 
to be foul language, and I collect swearwords and insults in other 
languages -- and Mr. Yotsuya, the man with The Most Incredible Video 
Collection, No Visible Job, and No Life, in #4.

	Come to think of it, when the high point of my day these days is 
climbing through the ceiling, scuttling through the hole in Mr. 
Yotsuya's closet (together with Mr. Yotsuya) into #5, and unblocking a 
hole into #6 to see the chick who lives there lounging around in the 
same skimpy lingerie that she was lounging around in RIGHT OUT IN PLAIN 
SIGHT OUT IN THE HALLWAY EARLIER IN THE DAY, it's probably a fairly 
good clue that I really ought to get a life myself. (At least it keeps 
me in shape.)

	Sheesh, one of the other two foreign exchange students in the 
school has already declared me a loser -- and I'd been hoping for more 
from Miss Relena Who-Died-And-Made-You-Ruler-of-the-Universe? Darlian. 
I think we started on the right foot, and I was even hoping to ask her 
out for a burger or something, but then she said that she thought 
Ryohko was too loud -- dammit, it's not her fault! I'm rooting for her, 
because if she can make it, there's no excuse for me not to -- and then 
she said that she didn't like Miss Piggy. I mean, how can one not like 
La Pig? Hell, I'd date her in a New York minute if she were flesh 
instead of foamrubber. So I started pacing back and forth and sort of 
running or maybe bouncing, explaining the true greatness of La Pig, who 
is my second favorite Muppet after all, and I accidentally hit Relena 
in the arm with my braid when I turned and shook my head too suddenly. 
It was an accident, but she told me that the others were right and that 
I was a loser. I wish they'd keep us apart from the other students, the 
ones who aren't in the space pirate program. Well, except for Hilde. 
Hilde's the only one who talks to me now, outside of class.

	Hilde says I should probably explain the dyssemia thing. Like we 
haven't told all of you and told you about it already -- they thought I 
was hyperactive when I was little, and then they were sure I had ADD, 
and from what I've seen on the papers they've changed their minds again 
and think it's this Asperger's Syndrome thing, whatever that is, except 
I think it's got something to do with autism because that's what Treize 
is writing his dissertation on, and he makes me do these tests every so 
often. Anyway, a side effect is that I have this body-language learning 
disability "dyssemia" which I mentioned, and it's rather like being 
socially tone-deaf. My cousin says that most of the people who have it 
are way too introverted, and that I'm an exception in being too 
outgoing for my own good. All part of the Maxwell charm, y'know. Except 
that it so does not work in Japan, because all of you are too 
introverted too. I should think most of the people from Judy's social 
skills class -- I took it from her four years running -- would be right 
at home here. Except in Ikkoku-kan. I think I get along so well with 
everyone there because we're all dyssemic together. Except maybe for 
Oofy the Wu-man, and I wouldn't really be able to tell because I don't 
know the current state of manners in China. Or Taiwan. Or wherever he's 
from -- I haven't really asked.

	Hilde, now, I knew before -- she used to go to my middle school, 
and her father's a squash partner of Dad's, so we've sort of known each 
other our whole lives, just about. She grew up really hot, though. I'll 
bet she's the third best-looking in the whole school. I've asked her 
out a couple of times, but she always turns me down. At least she 
usually does it nicely, though. Most Japanese girls slap my face, and I 
don't *think* I said anything objectionable.

	I need to pick up more colloquial Japanese. It's going to kill me 
one of these days.

	Oh, my math teacher had a hissyfit about me not paying attention. 
Guess I'll write more later, if I can think of any more. Which I doubt.

~later~

	What a DAY.

	After school, I asked Nanami -- she comes to school early, so do 
I -- if she'd have a cup of java with me tomorrow before school 
started. (Well, I don't like coffee, but the coffeeshop next to the 
school has plenty of other hot drinks. I was sure I'd got it right, 
negative form and everything -- "Tomorrow, won't you drink coffee 
together (with me) in the morning?" but for some reason she not only 
slapped me, she called me a lech at the top of her lungs. You'd think 
I'd asked her to have wild monkey sex on top of the school piano with 
me instead of a simple cup of joe. (Not that I'd have any objections to 
the former with Nanami, but even I know not to try anything on the 
first date.)

	Then I was cutting across the ball fields on my way home, and one 
of the guys kept yelling. I thought he was talking to some friend of 
his, but he meant the baseball was going to hit me, which it did. 

	And then this creepy Chinese monk -- at least, he was dressed 
like a Buddhist monk -- popped up out of nowhere, startling me so that 
I fell on my ass in a puddle and got the end of my hair all muddy, and 
told me that I had the unluckiest-looking face he'd ever seen.

	I resent that.

	I mean, sure, I'd like to lose some of the baby fat from my 
cheeks, and my eyes are so big I look a year or two younger than I am 
(which is going to be a BIG pain if I ever get my hands on that faked 
ID Mr. Yotsuya offered to get for me for a reasonable price), but I'd 
like to think that I'm pretty good-looking, if not classically studly.

	And once I shook him and was finally on my way back to Ikkoku 
Hall, this unobtrusive-looking car pulled up next to me and two guys in 
quiet suits that, together with the car, just *screamed* "secret 
government agency" grabbed me and shoved me in the backseat.

	I asked them what they thought they were doing with me, and they 
wouldn't talk.

	Then I told them I didn't *like* guys -- not that I really 
thought they'd grabbed me off the street for that when they could have 
rented five hookers with their departmental budget, the way everyone 
else in the Japanese government does (Mrs. Ichinose told me all about 
it), but I figured it might get a response.

	"Neither do I," said the guy on my left.

	Then the driver said "You'll be told everything when we get 
home," and it was Mr. Yotsuya!

	That's about when I decided that today wasn't just weird, it was 
majorly weird.

	I mean, Yotsuya, working for a secret government agency? Give me 
a break.

	Anyway, when we got back to Ikkoku-kan, the G-men, or whatever 
you call them in Japanese, frog-marched me into the manager's 
apartment. I walked into the living room and froze.

	There was this huge -- and I mean HUGE -- guy in there, sitting 
at the table. At least eight feet tall, probably nine, and built like 
Fred Flintstone on top of that. The Flintstone resemblance was 
heightened by the fact that he was wearing this huge tiger skin. I 
mean, either it was a bunch of skins sewn together so well that you 
couldn't tell, or it came off a tiger the size of a minivan. And he had 
HORNS, I kid you not, growing out of his head.

	I quickly looked around to see if Treize was within easy 
grabbing-running-like-hell-and-bolting-the-door-behind-us distance, or 
if Blunderbore there had eaten him.

	He was sitting at the table, drinking wine -- probably a good 
one; I don't know much about that sort of stuff, but my cousin never 
economizes on alcohol -- and looking so perfectly at ease that I was 
surprised he wasn't wearing that stupid baby-chick apron of his. Oh, 
wait, not appropriate for entertaining guests.

	"Pray take a seat, Duo," he said. "This is 'Invader,' who has 
come to conquer the earth."

	Okay, about this point I figured I was having a dream worthy of 
the weird Society of Gonzo Admirers, and I might as well go with the 
flow. This is why I sat down and grabbed some Doritos from the bowl on 
the table.

	"Invader-san is a member of the Space Pirates' Guild," the guy 
who'd been sitting on my right in the car went on. "Since we have a 
small branch here, he has kindly agreed to call off the invasion if a 
randomly selected Terran space pirate can defeat their champion in his 
people, the Oni's planetary sport. You have been selected."

	"What sport is that?" I asked, swallowing the chips.

	"The Oni game."

	I must have looked as confused as I felt, because Treize leaned 
over and whispered "That's Japanese for 'tag.' The oni is 'it.'"

	A game of tag. With a guy who could probably knock me flying 
fifty feet with a friendly slap on the back.

	"Count me out," I informed them. "Randomly select somebody else."

	"We can't. It has to be you," the guy who'd been on my left 
glared.

	"For the sake of the Earth, you've got to do your best!" Where 
did these two get their dialogue, old giant robot shows?

	"Against HIM?" I shook my head very firmly, half-hoping that I 
smacked one of them in the face accidentally-on-purpose.

	Invader started laughing. "Ore ja nai," he announced, sounding 
even more uncertain of his Japanese than I am. Okay, so not him.

	"Aite wa anoko da." He waved at someone sitting behind him, whom 
I'd sort of inexcusably not noticed before, probably due to Invader's 
sheer physical presence. That meant "she's your opponent," right?

	"Anoko" turned out to be a girl about my age in a short kimono-
looking thing (the kind of thing you see people wearing in historical 
dramas, doesn't quite reach to the knee) made out of -- what else? -- 
tiger skin. From what I could see of her, she was a bit more solidly 
built than I preferred, but at least it was all muscle, not fat. She 
would have been really cute if she smiled, and her small horns peeked 
out of short messy moss-green hair.

	"Aite wa anoko?" I repeated. Yeah, she'd definitely be cute. And 
I'm pretty good at running -- must be all the bouncing around I do when 
I'm thinking. "Oni-game? Hell, yeah. Of course I'll do it."

	Oh, for crying out loud, sensei, you've got to have been young 
once yourself! The only girl who'll give me the time of day treats me 
like a brother, this one sure LOOKED as if there were potential there, 
and so what if she were an alien planning to take over the world? 
Worked for Tetsuya in *Outlanders*, didn't it?

	Of course, the earth sort of got blown up in *Outlanders*, too. 
Maybe not the best of examples.

	Yotsuya and his two co-workers broke out in cheers, and my cousin 
poured wine all around. I plastered my best smile on my face and leaned 
towards my prospective opponent for the fate of the world.

	"My name's Duo Maxwell, what's yours?"

	She snorted, stood up, and glared at Invader.

	"This place is full of idiots," Green-hair's voice was about two 
octaves below what I'd been expecting, "AND it's hot. I'm out of here."

	Green-hair shrugged out of the robe, tossed it at Invader, and 
stalked off in nothing but tigerskin half-boots, spandex shorts in one 
pattern of tigerstripe, and a tank top in a different one -- all of 
which added up to more than enough for me to see that unless Oni were 
wildly different from humans, my counterpart was definitely-but-
definitely a boy.

	Oh God. I'd been checking out a *guy*. In front of Other People. 
Thank God I hadn't actually said anything that actually sounded like a 
pick-up line. "What's your name?" was a perfectly logical question to 
ask anyone, male, female, or talking octopus. Probably nobody noticed. 
Hopefully nobody noticed. Please, let nobody have noticed -- my 
reputation was low enough already.

	"Excuse my son," Invader sounded amused. "Hiiro hasn't mastered 
Terran manners yet."

	"Doesn't seem to be a problem for Maxwell." Yotsuya poured 
himself another glass of wine.

	Oh GOD. Yotsuya noticed. (And told all of my fellow-tenants later 
that evening, much to their amusement. I think Oofy's still laughing.) 
Which is why I bothered to write it down, because it'll be all over the 
school tomorrow.

	And then I pinched myself, and it hurt, which meant that it 
wasn't a dream, and I was going to face -- Hiiro? Weird sort of a name, 
the way Invader said it -- tomorrow, as they arranged, and have the 
fate of the world depend on me winning a tag game.

	You know, I'd have liked to start off the journalworthy events of 
my life with something a LITTLE less out there?

	Well, with any luck, being the savior of the world should mean 
that SOMEBODY will actually be willing to date me for a change.

~Tuesday~

	I'm operating on the assumption that there will still be a school 
next Monday and that this stupid rotten journal assignment will still 
be due. Partly because I can't afford to think otherwise until this 
contest thing is over, and partly because just about every time I 
assume I don't have to do some homework it turns out that I did.

	(Too bad it doesn't work the other way around, or I could just 
blow this assignment and assure my victory in the Game.)

	Anyway, what with all the racketyshmack last night, I forgot to 
set my alarm. Of course.

	So I got woken up by my cousin knocking on my door and by Yotsuya 
and the Wumeister dropping through my ceiling and nearly landing on my 
stomach, and had to get dressed in a hurry.

	And NOT my school uniform, for a change! What idiot decided that 
people should wear uniforms to school? How can you ever tell people's 
taste in T shirts (or find out about new cool ones) if you can't see 
them on your classmates? Plus the darn uniforms start reeking by the 
time it's time to do the week's laundry, and who has time to wash them 
every day?

	Not to mention the fact that you can't run worth shit in them.

	So I showed up -- was dragged, more like (the two cans of 
Mountain Dew hadn't kicked in yet; last of the stash I brought from 
home) to the middle of the local, um, bit with all the shops and weird 
little stores and restaurants and such. Probably would have been the 
village downtown if this piece of Tokyo ever used to be its own little 
village. Which it might have been; I never asked.

	And it was *cold* -- shorts and a tank top just do not cut it in 
a Tokyo early morning. At least HE'd be stuck with the same problem.

	You know, the more I see of him, the more I can't believe I ever 
thought he was a girl. Or should that be the less I can believe...

	Of course *I* wasn't wearing spandex. That stuff is evil, plus a 
pain to get off in a hurry if you've got to piss. I have no quarrel 
with it on cute girls, of course. (is that too many of courses? Oh, who 
cares, it's my journal, not an essay...)

	I was wearing running shorts and a tanktop with a big 2 on it.

	For some reason Yotsuya thinks I should have worn one with a four 
on it. (Hell with the 'Mr.' I'm too stressed for a 'Mr.' Besides, he 
doesn't deserve one.) This is absofuckinlutely ridiculous (don't bother 
trying to look that word up, it's one of the ones Mother doesn't like 
me using) because firstly, my name means two, not four, and secondly, 
four is really unlucky in Japan, kind of like thirteen is in America. 
(I wonder if that's why Treize came here for his doctorate. He 
certainly always seems to have a date Friday nights.)

	Anyway, so here we are, out in the cold and grey, with a bunch of 
oni -- sheesh, they seem to run to the big and bulky, except for the 
chicks -- oh, MAN. Why couldn't my opponent have been a girl who looked 
like THAT?

	You saw them on TV yourself, of course. Along with all those 
important dignitaries who had to be seated, and a kazillion news 
reporters, and half the school.

	So there's all the last-minute muttering and fuss, and my cousin 
hissing translations in my ear half the time. Wish he'd had time to 
brush his teeth that morning. Translations were good, though. I hadn't 
realized I was supposed to tag HIM, not the other way around. Then 
again, the oni version of the game requires tagging someone on the 
horns, and it would be kind of hard to tag me on mine, being as I'm not 
even seeing someone yet, let alone married. 

	I don't expect you to get that one, sensei.

	And the five-day limit... today's Tuesday, so it ends on 
Saturday.

	Well, I figured it shouldn't be that hard. I got ready and 
everything for a mad dash. A regular Jess or whatever his name was, 
from the Terebithia book.

	The umpire lady (never seen a woman with wings growing out of her 
head before, unless you count the one in the Devilman preview, and that 
was an evil one, not like this one) yelled "Start!" and I took off.

	I nearly touched him. Honest. Hiiro actually looked startled for 
a moment -- I'd thought he couldn't manage anything between Deadpan and 
Glare. Silly of me; did I think he was a cartoon character or 
something?

	And then he just... FLEW up and out of my reach.

	Flew.

	Like Superman or something.

	No one said ANYTHING about flying.

	I mean, isn't it against the rules or something? If I can't fly?

	Screw them. Screw all of them. Offering hope and dashing it in 
everyone's faces.

	And when I looked up at him, he *smirked*.

	Bastard. I am so going to GET that bastard. I'm going to WIN 
this.

	Nothing journalworthy happened the rest of today.

~Wednesday~

	I *told* them they should let us have more practice flying actual 
aircraft and less on simulators. I *told* them!

	Jet packs do not work the way they're supposed to.

	My aunts called. My parents are on a trip somewhere in the wilds 
of Uzbekistan at the moment, and nobody's really sure of getting a hold 
of them before Sunday.

	Trey called. Normal. For once today.

	Fuck the journal. I'm tired.

~Thursday~

	It rained.

	I sprained my ankle.

~Friday~

	Most of today went about the way you'd expect. Read: lousy.

	This evening, Hilde came over.

	We talked about this and that and middle school days and so forth 
for a while. I could tell she had something on her mind, so I 
encouraged her to talk. This meant that I had to be quiet a lot.

	It's not that I dislike quiet. As a matter of fact, Hilde's one 
of the few people whom I can be quiet with for a long time and just 
enjoy the being there. (So's Trey. I wish *she'd* understand that -- at 
least she doesn't bug me to put on stories together with her Barbies 
anymore. Trey, that is. I don't think Hilde ever HAD Barbies.)

	But quiet when I want to talk -- THAT'S annoying.

	After nearly an hour, she finally said that she was rooting for 
me to win. Correction. She needed me to win.

	I wasn't quite sure what all this had to do with the price of 
eggs, but I very suavely asked her if that was a way of indicating her 
receptiveness to the idea of going out to see a movie or something next 
Tuesday, provided the world hadn't gone to hell in a handbasket.

	And Hilde said "Duo, I can't stand the thought of you being a 
loser all your life!"

	Ears to brain: how to process this? On the one hand, maybe it 
means she might actually maybe like me. Sort of.

	On the other hand, she just called me a loser. HILDE called me a 
loser. I know lots of people think I'm a loser, but I don't -- at least 
not most of the time -- and I didn't think Hilde did either.

	I mean, this is me. Duo Maxwell. All-around cool guy.

	Well, partway-around cool guy, at any rate.

	"Please, you've just got to win," Hilde said, and hugged me. Not 
exactly a platonic hug, either.

	Looking back on it (from an hour's perspective) I don't think she 
MEANT to call me a loser, she was just nervous.

	"If... if you win... I swear I'll marry you!" she said.

	And then she ran out, and I couldn't go after her because I had 
to yell at Miss Roppongi (whom Hilde had knocked flat with the door) 
and then throw an empty ice-cream tub at Yotsuya for eavesdropping 
himself.

	I think I'm actually beginning to sympathize with Oofy.

	Okay, I just scared myself there.

	But... Hilde? Marriage?

	I'm only fifteen! I haven't lived yet!

	Of course, I don't know anyone I'd rather marry than Hilde...

	It's an awful lot of responsibility, and I'm way young (so's 
she)...

	Well, she probably meant when we grow up. I can deal with that.

	I mean, when I win, I'm probably going to get marriage proposals 
and women mailing me their underwear and everything.

	Now that's got to be a side effect of the Asperger's, because I 
know guys are supposed to get excited about getting underwear mailed to 
them by women, but I'm not quite sure why. I mean, what am I supposed 
to do with it, wear it?

	Hilde probably just wants to make sure she gets first dibs.

	So maybe she DOES really like me. All *RIGHT*!

	And she wants to marry me.

	Which means forever... well, or until divorce do you part...

	And a veil and orange blossoms...

	And children... not just yet, of course...

	And living together and doing the laundry and the dishes and who 
left the top off the milk...

	And regular nookie...

	Say what?

	Mokkori-taishou reporting for duty, SAH!

~Saturday~

	It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

	Maybe I just dreamed all of today.

	Maybe I just dreamed the whole week.

	Hell, maybe I just dreamed the whole month, and I'm still at home 
in bed waiting for Mother to come home so Trey and I can help bring in 
the groceries.

	I do NOT believe what happened today. Nope, not, no freaking way 
in Hell.

	Last night, Yotsuya and Treize and Oofy and I got together and 
raided the attic and borrowed something from Yotsuya's collection -- 
what do you want to bet it's the only time anyone's ever raided HIS 
stuff? -- and put together my secret key for winning the race.

	If I ever meet the former manager of Ikkoku Hall, remind me to 
thank her for leaving that "piyo-piyo" apron behind. After I remember 
to get a picture or five of Treize in it -- it ALWAYS makes me nearly 
crack up, except for now and then when it makes me crack up, and I 
never have a camera handy to capture the moment and share the joke with 
everyone else.

	Anyway, we met in the same street again. My Key got some strange 
looks, and the oni had to check it because no edged weapons, ray 
weapons, or projectile weapons were allowed. I pointed out that it 
wasn't a weapon and talked really fast, and they finally let me keep 
it.

	The umpire lady yelled "Go!"

	I lifted the powerful recurved bow and fired at Hiiro.

	More specifically, at his shorts. The SuperSuction Cup Arrow hit 
almost directly in the upper middle, too. I'd say, under and to the 
left of his navel.

	And then I began to reel in the string attached to the arrow.

	I saw the tabloid that claimed I ripped his shorts off. That is 
such bullpucky -- it was a strong suction cup, but that'd be plain 
ridiculous.

	But the shorts did start to come with the cup. However, 
irresistible force (me -- picture me grinning here), immovable object, 
something had to give.

	The suction cup came flying back to me, and the shorts snapped 
back against Hiiro very loudly.

	That's the other reason I don't wear spandex. Nobody can snap it.

	I dropped the bow and prepared to receive enraged oni. He was 
pissed. He was beyond pissed -- I don't think anyone had ever snapped 
his shorts in his life. 

	I kind of ducked him when he rushed me, slid my left arm up under 
his right, winced as he got a hold of my hair (my scalp's still 
tingling and I think he pulled some of it OUT. Bastard) and clapped my 
hands onto his horns.

	"Gotcha!" I yelled. Okay, so I said it in English. I was excited.

	And he froze. And let go of my hair, thank goodness. And just 
stared at me while the flashbulbs went off and the cameras rolled.

	The staring was making me uncomfortable. Besides, people were 
approaching. My cousin. My classmates. *Hilde*.

	"I won! Katta zo!" I cheered. "Kekkon shiyoo!"

	I'm sure I used that right. The dictionary says that the -yoo 
form is used for intention. I intended to marry Hilde. Although 
probably not right that minute.

	Hiiro stared up at me. Thinking about something. Lord knows what. 
And I still had my hands on his horns -- I was wondering if he wanted 
me to let go, or when the proper time was to let go, or what. I mean, I 
had the third-most-gorgeous girl of Tomobiki High waiting around to be 
hugged as soon as I could pry my hands off, right?

	Then he finally said something. "Wakatta. Ninmu ryoukai."

	I need to learn more Japanese. I know the last bit of that means 
something like "Roger!", especially in SF and military stuff. 

	Hiiro wasn't done. "Kekkon surutcha, Darling."

	Okay. I mean, say WHAT?

	The news people started getting really excited about then. 
Babbling about interspecies relationships, and what this meant for LGBT 
groups -- that last was only the Terran ones, Miss Roppongi explained 
afterwards that all the aliens gave us weird looks and then demanded to 
know why such marriages WOULDN'T be valid.

	"I will be honored to marry you, Darling," he continued. At least 
he wasn't saying 'darling' in an endearment way or anything. He was 
saying it as if -- as if I'd introduced myself to him as Darling 
Maxwell back on Monday.

	"A living symbol of the peace between our cultures!" one of the 
oni reporters enthused for their camera-or-whatever.

	Hilde just stared at me as if I were a two-headed frog on 
steroids. Which is a pretty good description of the way I felt at the 
moment.

	"My son!" Invader was beaming from ear to ear.

	Why the hell did he have to take it as an OFFER? Why did everyone 
ELSE have to take it that way? If they'd all told him he'd made a 
mistake, he'd probably have apologized, or at least not pushed it, 
right?

	"I will always be faithful to this compact." In the same monotone 
he'd been using the whole time. And keeping saying 'cha' at the end of 
every sentence -- I know that means "tea," but I was fairly sure it 
didn't here, because it made no sense to keep mentioning tea.

	Why the hell did he have to ACCEPT?

	Unless...

	Oh God, does he have the hots for me? He's certainly never acted 
like it, but...

	"And if you are ever unfaithful, I shall treat you thus."

	And I swear, it felt like an honest-to-God LIGHTNING BOLT 
slamming down on me and knocking my head into my toes. I feel dizzy 
just remembering.

	"Where we are two, there we are one," is the last thing I 
remember him saying before passing out.

	And then when they got me back to Ikkoku-kan, Yotsuya was saying 
that I'd obviously changed my mind about not liking guys, and Oofy was 
ranting about consorting with the enemy and celebrating said 
consortation in his room, and Mrs. Ichinose started sobbing that she 
always enjoyed weddings and announced that this called for a drink, or 
better yet several, and Miss Roppongi told me some of the juicy details 
I'd missed and offered to lend me some of her fan-made guys-boinking-
each-other manga smut if I needed any manuals for my wedding night, and 
Treize stuck his head in to let me know that Hiiro had gone back to his 
ship, at least for tonight, before going to do more work on his 
dissertation. Treize's, that is. I have no clue if Hiiro's working on a 
dissertation or not. With my luck, he's probably working on one about 
Earthling weddings.

	How am I supposed to face everyone at school?

	I'm just about ready to declare this journal assignment garbage. 
After all, I have the best excuse in the world for not having done 
squat.

	If he comes over tomorrow, I can explain then about it all being 
a mistake. Maybe it'll die down.

	Trey's going to tease me about this one forEVER. As if my fellow 
tenants weren't bad enough...

	Oh, SHIT! What will my parents say?


Continue (Y/N)?
C:\> Y


Disclaimer: None of this is mine. Except for the Asperger's, and I 
don't think I want it. Know of anyone willing to trade me some 32-meg 
DIMM 128-pin RAM for it?

With deepest respect for Ms. Takahashi and Mr. Yankovic.

Those Obnoxious Pirots
(Spelling Intentional):
Twine Balls and Gentle Monsters -- Not To Mention An Oil Crisis


Dear Trey,

	I'm glad you liked reading the ill-fated journal I xeroxed and 
sent to you. As per your instructions as of last phone call (that 
sounds wrong), I'm writing to explain in more detail and less cost per 
minute the next chapter of my adventures at space pirate school (or out 
of space pirate school).

	See, the Thursday after the race and its stupid denouement, that 
being after I told Hiiro it was a mistake (and he didn't even say 
anything! Just looked at me and walked away) and explained to everyone 
at school that it was a mistake, and explained to Hilde that it was a 
mistake, and Hilde jilted me, and I asked her if she wanted to go see a 
movie and got shot down AGAIN, Hilde and I were swinging on the 
swingset at the local park.

	Well, Hilde was sitting on a swing talking to me, and I was 
swinging. So I like swings. So sue me.

	And the Chinese monk guy popped up again and nearly startled me 
into flying off the swing and describing a graceful arc headfirst into 
the ground.

	So of course, when he said "Today is also a very unlucky day for 
you!," I strongly considered decking him one.

	When he went on to yatter about having foretold bad things or 
something like that -- I didn't concentrate hard enough to translate it 
in my head -- I slowed down and hopped off and said "Come along, 
Hilde."

	"Don't act as if I'm together with you," she told me, but not 
really sounding mad or anything. That's a good sign, right, Trey?

	Anyway, I took two steps and got hit in the back of the head with 
a softball.

	Hey, it could have been worse. It could have been a baseball 
again.

	But it *hurt*, and raised a definite bump on my head. This is why 
I'm not planning to start wearing my hair in a high ponytail the way 
you've been pestering me to; can you imagine how badly it would have 
hurt if the braid HADN'T cushioned it?

	Chinese-bald-and-ugly was acting as if his prognostications had 
just been vindicated, so Hilde and I ignored him and went off to the 
neighborhood health center to get my ankle re-taped (and wash my foot 
off in between).

	Take my advice and never sprain your ankle. Not only does it feel 
like something's ripping your foot off at the time, they tape up your 
ankle for a couple days, which limits you to sponge baths and makes 
your ankle feel as if you can FEEL Creeping Fungus Worms slirping along 
your skin...

	So Hilde waves goodbye to me at the door of Ikkoku-kan and takes 
off, and I walk in and bend down to get my right shoe off (since what 
with the tape, I can't just kick it off the way I normally would) and 
see an upside-down Chinese monk who has followed me inside).

	Of course I straightened up in a hurry and demanded to know what 
he was doing there. 

	He kept on with that stuff about unlucky days and faces, and it 
got loud enough that we acquired a bunch of listeners, Treize came out 
and glared at us all, and we repaired to Oofy's room. (The Wu-man 
wasn't there -- still at one of his college entrance exams -- so we had 
to go in through Yotsuya's room.)

	The rest of the evening is kind of fuzzy, because I took some 
painkillers and Miss Roppongi thought it would be funny to spike my 
drink. (Treize yelled at her. So did Mrs. Ichinose. Don't worry. Do NOT 
tell Mother. Or the aunts.)

	Anyway, the Chinese monk ate most of the food in the room -- 
thank God it wasn't mine -- and basically said that he intended to 
watch over me the whole night.

	What *is* it with me and guys these days? I mean, I was under the 
impression that I was reasonably attractive, but this was ridiculous.

	Bad enough that he knew where I lived. I was NOT planning to let 
anyone this weird-looking in my room. No thank you.

	So I dragged the Wumeister's futon out of its cupboard and sort 
of curled up in a corner. I figured he'd be back by the time the party 
wound up (sometime in the gweepning, I expected) and if he wasn't I 
could always go down and bother my cousin. Which I'd prefer not to do. 
He has this way of *looking* at you...

	Only I sort of fell asleep. It's got to have been the painkillers 
and the booze -- either that or I was really really tired -- because in 
the normal way of things there's no freaking way I'd sleep through an 
Ikkoku-kan party in the same room.

	I woke up at about oh-dark-hundred in the 
OhmygodwhatamIdoingUPthislatening, and found that the Chinese monk guy 
was asleep with his head pillowed on a corner of the Wuster's futon, 
and that my head hurt more.

	So I got up and turned on the light and picked up my Chinese 
neighbor's hand mirror to see if I could use it and his wall mirror to 
see how the bump on my head was doing.

	I'd about come to the conclusion that it really wasn't working 
when my reflection seemed to... waver.

	And then, looking in the mirror, instead of my face looking back 
at me I saw this weird blue-and-white clown face.

	Attached to a little blue monster with a jester hat and a pointy 
tail.

	Which proceeded to fly out of the mirror and knock me flat.

	The Chinese monk guy woke up with a loud noise and whacked the 
little monster with his scare-away-the-insects-walking-stick.

	It was at that precise moment that Oofy *finally* came home.


	Sorry about the squiggle there -- the car went over a bump. 
Anyway, Oofy was not amused. He took one look and booted the Chinese 
monk guy out the window. I got the impression they were acquainted.

	Then the little blue monster thing tried to fit back inside the 
mirror and couldn't.

	It proceeded to chew me out in some language I couldn't 
understand (the Wumeister told me it was Old High German) and fall 
asleep on Oofy's futon.

	I figured this was my cue to quietly tiptoe off to bed myself, so 
I did.

	
	The next morning, we held a council of war in room #5. It seemed 
that apparently one should NEVER look in two mirrors at once at 
midnight in the time zone of wherever the mirrors were made on a Friday 
the thirteenth, or Bad Things will happen.

	The monster assured us he was a very friendly and gentle little 
monster. Then Miss Roppongi came in the door and he screeched something 
that Treize later translated for me as "I've turned into a girl!"

	You know, it's a real pain having someone around when you have to 
depend on Treize or the Wu-man for translation. Both of them are 
practically ALWAYS busy.

	Anyway, he finally said that he'd go back, but there was just one 
thing that he'd like to see first. Just one thing in the whole world, 
and then he'd go back home.

	The Biggest Ball of Twine in Nagasaki.

	Uh, hello? The *what*? Sheesh, if you asked anyone what they'd 
most like to see in the world, they'd tell you Paris! Or Rome! Or 
Disneyland! (Although we've been there so often it's nothing special 
anymore.) Or Yellowstone! Or the big Buddha-carved-out-of-a-
mountainside in China! Or, if you were sticking with Japan, Mt. Fuji or 
Nara or something! A *twine ball*?

	So I said he was nuts and went off to school, and apparently 
missed some priceless stuff. On the other hand, Relena spent most of 
three classes looking at me speculatively, and pretending to be 
fiddling with her rectangular-lensed glasses whenever she saw me 
noticing her look at me. Maybe she's attracted to the Savior of the 
Earth. You think?

	Anyway, when I came home, *everyone* was complaining about the 
gentle little demon. Apparently, he seems to have managed to scare off 
some guy who was supposed to take Miss Roppongi on a date tonight, 
causing the guy to run over Yotsuya's foot with his car on the way out 
(couldn't have happened to a nicer guy), and I'm still trying to hear 
the details of the Watermelon Incident, but Mrs. Ichinose's too worked 
up to be anything vaguely resembling coherent on the subject.

	Not to mention that Gentle Monster has decided that the Wumeister 
is his stepmommy. I swear, I thought I was *actually* going to see 
steam coming out of his ears.

	And since both Mr. Ichinose and Kentarou -- Kentarou is the 
Ichinose's kid, I can't recall if I've mentioned him before or not -- 
thought that going to see the Biggest Ball of Twine in Nagasaki was the 
perfect way to spend a weekend, and since Treize had apparently decided 
that he wasn't going to get anything done on his dissertation until 
Gentle Monster was gone, we resolved to journey to Nagasaki.

	The last manager, the one who left, but not to get married -- I 
was mistaken about that; it seems that she got married several years 
before she left with her husband and daughter to go to... um... Yotsuya 
told me the name, but when I try to remember it all I come up with is 
Horgelbock, and I'm fairly sure that's got to be wrong -- anyway, they 
couldn't take their car with them, so they let the Ichinosezoku use it.

	What I'm trying to get at here is that that evening (being 
Friday), we loaded up the Ichinose's little hatchback with Doritos and 
seventeen different kinds of pickles (they pickle EVERYTHING here in 
Japan), espresso coffee, crossword puzzles, Shonen Sunday "phonebook" 
magazines, and Mrs. Ichinose's homemade sooshiki-manjuu, not to mention 
paperback copies of every historical novel Andre Norton ever wrote and 
my trusty notebook, which I'm writing this all in. We piled into the 
car according to arcane rules of seat-devising, which worked out to Mr. 
Ichinose and Treize in the front trading off driving, Mrs. Ichinose, 
Kentarou, Oofy, Gentle Monster, and Miss Roppongi all crowded into the 
back seat, me in the trunk on top of some of the luggage, and Yotsuya 
hanging on to the rest of the luggage tied on top as we pulled out of 
the driveway and the neighbors all waved to us.

	Oofy demanded to know why he was in the car instead of studying 
at home. 

	Gentle Monster promptly said "You don't love me any more!" and 
started bawling.

	We were all (except for the two in the front seat) glaring at the 
Wu-man for making Gentle Monster cry when Mr. Ichinose stopped and 
picked up a guy holding a sign that said, roughly translated, "Twine 
Ball or Problem." He reeked pretty badly, and he said his name was 
Walker. We were worried for a bit that he might want to ride in the 
back seat, but between Miss Roppongi and Mrs. Ichinose he ended up 
riding on top with Yotsuya.

	Mr. Ichinose stuck in a tape with this horrible song "The Wreck 
of the Edmund Fitzgerald" on it -- I cannot believe that "MacArthur 
Park" beat it to the title of worst song of all time. There is no 
justice in this world.

	I said as much to the other occupants of the car, and the 
Wumeister shot back this entire speech on justice, which, boiled down 
to its essentials, worked out to "If there were justice, I wouldn't be 
here."

	Hey, if there were justice, I wouldn't be here either. I'd be 
lounging on a couch watching "Army of Darkness" or "The Princess Bride" 
on a home projector while scantily clad girls fed me gummy raspberries, 
Good'n'Plentys, and candy corn.

	Miss Roppongi started putting her hair in curlers and dabbing 
face stuff on her face. 

	And, as we began heading into the outskirts of the Tokyo 
metropolitan area, an evil impulse began to hound me.

	I nobly held out, of course.

	For about two minutes.

	Then I plaintively asked, "Are we there yet?"

	Oofy spun around in his seat and gave me this LOOK which made the 
whole thing worthwhile.

	Treize said "Very funny, Duo," and put on a pair of headphones. 
Probably listening to more opera stuff, or maybe some of his classical 
tapes. Damn, why didn't I think to bring along my CD player?

	Mrs. Ichinose said, "No, not yet."

	Five minutes later, I asked again.

	The Wu-man's face was even better than last time.

	Mrs. Ichinose told me of course not.

	Five minutes later, Kentarou asked.

	Five minutes after that, Gentle Monster asked "Are we there yet?"

	It's getting pretty dark and all, and we're getting short of 
streetlights, so I'll finish this letter tomorrow.


	We couldn't wait to get there, so we pretty much have been 
driving for eighteen hours straight now. Mrs. Ichinose's driving at the 
moment, and her husband's crashing in a corner of the back seat. (I 
slept during the night, and my neck and back hurt like crazy). Of 
course, we've been stopping for bathroom breaks and coffee and more 
pickles now and then.

	The scenery that I can see out of the rear window, before Mrs. 
Ichinose or Treize orders me to get my head out of the way of the 
rearview mirror, is really pretty. Boy, I wish Oofy and Kentarou and 
Miss Roppongi could see it, but their windows are completely covered 
with decals from all the places the Ichinosezoku have been. (I'd hate 
to be them when the old manager comes back and wants her car back...)

	And these are from pretty interesting places, too. Like Rudy-
Valentinorama, the Beefbowl Museum, Waka Daisho Theme Park, and Gobo 
Root World; the Hyakunin-Isshu Card Game Hall of Fame, and the Mecca of 
Albino Squirrels.

	"And we've been to the Mito Koomon Memorial," Kentarou explained 
when he caught me puzzling out the decals, "and steam parks and wax 
museums."

	"Once I went to a place where you drove through the middle of a 
tree," I began, and told him about the Annual National Park Trips for a 
while.

	"And I've seen oyster farms and tarantula ranches," Miss Roppongi 
added, "but this Twine Ball's on my list of Yet To See."

	Well, about midmorning we ran out of Honshuu (the big island) and 
got on a car ferry across the straits to Kyuushuu, which are pretty 
famous straits and I think they might even be the ones where that ship 
got fired on, like one of my teachers ranted on about -- he's a history 
freak and he's an raving Sakamoto Ryouma fan and copies the legendary 
swordsman's state of hygiene. I mean, Walker up on the roof is wearing 
a Dirty Pair T shirt that not only has stains who've developed their 
own stains BUT is probably bonded to his skin, and yet he seems 
cleaner than this teacher I was talking about. It's gotten so we all 
carry air fresheners for when we have classes with him.

	Anyway, we all got out of (or off of) the car for the car ferry 
and bought overpriced dumplings and hot tea and certain of us (namely 
Kentarou and Gentle Monster and I) ran around on the decks like maniacs 
and scared people. That is, Gentle Monster scared people. I, of course, 
am not scary at all. I might have been a little overexcited due to 
having eaten two boxes of Pocky and washed them down with three Lamunes 
(kind of like Sprite or 7-up) in quick succession before I started in 
on the dumplings and hot tea AND being on a car ferry for the first 
time in four years, though.

	Then we were on the island of Kyuushuu, or Kyushu, which is where 
Satsuma is, although that probably doesn't mean anything to you since 
they don't teach Japanese history in eighth grade, so we all got back 
into the car (or on top of it) and Mrs. Ichinose suggested that we use 
that energy to sing songs. So Kentarou sang a song about pigeons, and 
another about rain, and the opening to his favorite sentai show, and 
this weird sort of Japanese rap, because he was annoyed at having to 
sing such little-kid songs.

	Then I asked what Japanese car trip songs were, and nobody knew 
what I was talking about. I mean, don't they have an equivalent of "99 
Bottles"?

	So I translated in my head for a minute, and began singing "Sake 
ga kyuujuukyuuhai, sake ga kyuujuukyuu; ippai nondara, sake ga 
kyuujuuhappai."

	This was a big hit with Kentarou and Gentle Monster, and with 
Mrs. Ichinose and Miss Roppongi and Yotsuya (we'd rolled down the 
windows so the people in the back seat could actually see the scenery, 
now that it had warmed up); I mean, hey, it had sake in it!

	And they got the theory of the song fairly quickly and started 
singing along, so I dropped out at kyuujuunihai (92 cups) to eat Mrs. 
Ichinose's Homemade Sooshiki-manjuu and look at the truly incredulously 
aghast faces Fei-kun was making. (That's Oofy.)

	Well, we finally crossed the prefectural line into Nagasaki about 
half an hour later, I think -- see, there's a Nagasaki Prefecture, and 
a Nagasaki City, which is the capital of Nagasaki Prefecture and which 
we weren't going to see on this trip, and the back-seat crew were so 
happy they (not counting the Wu-man) started singing "99 Cups of Sake" 
again.

	I think I've created a monster.

	So I sort of tuned them out to concentrate on *Stand And 
Deliver*, which is a pretty cool book if you ever get around to reading 
it -- it's set in England right after the Revolutionary War and it's 
got highwaymen and missing heirs and everything.

	So then we pulled off the road at the Last Chance Gas Station so 
the Wu-meister could commit bloody mayhem on some harmless weeds 
(Treize remarked that he'd reckoned it was either the weeds or the 
tenants, and that dead tenants didn't pay rent, not to mention that the 
stains might have been a little hard to get out of the upholstery), and 
so that we could get some more pickles and I could make puppy-dog faces 
at Treize until he gave in and bought me some diet chocolate soda.

	You have GOT to try those, Trey. Food of the gods (that and 
Pocky).

	Finally, as the sun was getting around to the pinnacle of its 
current path through the sky, the Ball appeared, as Yotsuya proclaimed, 
"like a vision before his unbelieving eyes." I didn't bother looking 
because I was right at the big climactic scene.

	Luckily I finished it by the time we parked the car and clambered 
out and walked with more or less reverence towards the immense sphere 
(that thing's pretty darn huge, let me tell you!)

	Mrs. Ichinose declared herself so overwhelmed that it called for 
a drink. I'm not sure when they stashed the sake away, but they got it 
out and offered it to everyone except Kentarou. I had a little even 
though I don't really like the taste that much, and Gentle Monster 
promptly chugged a whole bottle, and Oofy turned it down, and Treize 
had produced a wine glass full of something red from somewhere and was 
sipping it. I thought about pondering where the heck he'd pulled THAT 
out of and decided to have another diet chocolate soda instead.

	We finished our drinks and went in to see the Twine Ball as soon 
as they'd let us in (open 10 to 8 on weekdays, 12 to 6 on Saturdays); 
they've built this little pagoda thing over it. I wondered if Oofy were 
feeling homesick.

	"What on earth," Miss Roppongi asked, "would make a man decide to 
do that kind of thing?"

	"It consists," Oofy read from a placard, "of twenty-one thousand 
one hundred forty pounds of string."

	"What was he trying to prove?" Mrs. Ichinose said.

	"I wonder who he was trying to impress," Treize remarked.

	"Why did he build it?" Kentarou was nearly bouncing up and down. 
"How did he do it?"

	Yotsuya cleared his throat impressively and stated, "It's 
anybody's guess."

	We all fell over (except for Treize, who I think would probably 
keep his cool if he found a giant robot in his back yard or a 
dimensional gateway in his closet).

	"Where did he get the twine?" Gentle Monster said.

	"What was going through his mind?" Mr. Ichinose asked.

	I shrugged. "I expect it just seemed like a good idea at the 
time."

	Mrs. Ichinose noticed how close Kentarou had gotten to the thing 
and said sharply, "Now you'd better not touch it, those ropes are there 
for a reason."

	Kentarou stuck his hands in his pockets and pretended to be just 
standing around, fooling nobody.

	"Maybe if you're good," Mr. Ichinose said, "I'll tie it to the 
back of our car, and we can take it home."

	"Really?" Gentle Monster said excitedly.

	Kentarou glared at it. "He's teasing us."

	"...oh."

	Anyway, then we went to the gift shop and stood in line, bought a 
souvenir miniature ball of twine, some window decals, and anything else 
they'd sell us. (Well, I bought another box of Pocky, and neither 
Walker nor Treize nor the Wu-man bought anything.)

	I passed up on the postcards, although Mrs. Ichinose bought five 
(Welcome from the Twine Ball, wish you were here) declaiming "Won't the 
folks back home be jealous!"

	Then we walked back to the ball and Mr. Ichinose gave his camera 
to Walker to take a picture of us in front of it. We all clustered 
together and I linked one arm with Treize's and draped the other one 
around Oofy's shoulders as Miss Roppongi leaned up behind us and we all 
said "Cheese!"

	Then Walker ran away with the Ichinosezoku's brand new Leica, but 
hey, at least we've got our memories.

	Even the Wumeister said so. Well, he said "I'll never forget 
about this trip, no matter how I try," which is close enough.

	So we all just stared at the ball for a while, and I was getting 
so bored I was about to demand the car keys so I could start in on 
*Velvet Shadows*, when Yotsuya declaimed with moist eyes and a smile, 
"Young men, this is what Japan is all about!"

	Oofy and I looked at each other, and then we said in unison "No 
wonder we beat the pants off you!"

	This prompted a big long noisy discussion -- I guess I sort of 
understand it, because even when teaching American History the teachers 
never manage to get past World War I (and sometimes they don't even 
make it past the Civil War), and Japan's got a lot more history to try 
and fit into a year, but neither Kentarou NOR Miss Roppongi knew 
anything about Japan's role in WWII besides the kamikaze pilots and 
them getting the atom bomb dropped on them!

	And while I was maturely pointing at Kentarou and Miss Roppongi 
and going "You started it!", Yotsuya and Gentle Monster were apparently 
overcome by an attack of sentiment and fell on their knees and cried 
and cried...

	And that's when the security guards threw us out.

	As we were piling back into the car, I remarked "You know, I bet 
if we unravelled that sucker it'd reach all the way to Ibaraki."

	Oofy offered to see how far my braid would stretch if he cut it 
off and unravelled it, so I shut up. A guy's hair is his life, right?

	Anyway, we drove about half a mile down the road and stopped at 
the Itomaruya, which means "Twine Ball Inn," so as to sleep. It's one 
of those old-fashioned ryokan, and we got two rooms. That is, the 
Ichinosezoku got a room and told Miss Roppongi she could share a futon 
with Kentarou (who's in what, fourth grade now?) and the Wu-meister 
paid for a third of his and Treize's and my room (it was ridiculously 
overpriced and they demanded cash up front), and we told Yotsuya and 
Gentle Monster they could crash in the car and make sure nobody stole 
it. 

	The room had two *narrow* futons in it. I promptly claimed one 
and explained that I stole the covers, so neither one of them would 
want to share with me.

	Treize pointed out that he'd been driving and would be driving on 
the way back and therefore really needed his sleep, so it would 
probably be a good idea for the two of us to share, considering we were 
the same age and all.

	Fei-kun declared that there was no way in all the Buddhist hells 
that he was sharing a bed with either one of us, and that was that.

	Considering that Oofy wasn't family, we let him have a bed to 
himself and sort of crashed.

	I woke up sometime during the late afternoon and found that 
Treize had buried his face in my hair and was mumbling "Gloria, 
darling," so I elbowed him in the stomach and he rolled over.

	He snuggles in his sleep. I swear, it's as bad as sharing with 
you.

	I eventually went back to bed and, it seems, woke up sometime in 
the dark to find that Miss Roppongi had come in. She told me that Mr. 
and Mrs. Ichinose snored too darn loudly (I know they do, I can hear 
them from #2) and I said she could crawl in with the Wu-man, who was 
apparently sleeping too soundly to notice.

	That's what she said later, anyway. I don't remember it at all.

	Anyway, I was woken up at six in the morning by a screech in 
Chinese.

	"WOMAN, WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?" the Wumeister repeated in 
Japanese.

	That's when Miss Roppongi trotted out her explanation. Oofy 
started yelling at ME, and then Miss Roppongi started wailing that Oofy 
was intending to compromise her or something, and the Ichinosezoku 
piled in to see who was torturing the poor cat (there wasn't really a 
cat, it was just the screeching), and just then Yotsuya showed up with 
Gentle Monster and announced that we should send him back now.

	So after some research (in some of Yotsuya's science fiction 
magazines) Yotsuya and Oofy declared themselves ready to try. I'd been 
spending the time reading *Velvet Shadows* -- it's actually a 
historical ROMANCE, but it's reasonably good, not like those trashy 
bodice-rippers you've been reading lately (I ended up reading three of 
those last spring when I was really really bored. Sheesh, that one 
author's really fond of the phrase "throbbing proud manhood," isn't 
she? Let me assure you, as a bona fide genuine guy, that I have never 
thought about that part of myself under that name), and just as they 
were about to start Treize woke up.

	No, I don't know how he slept through all the caterwauling. Don't 
ask.

	Anyway, they had Gentle Monster sit in front of the room's tiny 
mirror, Oofy drew a whole bunch of magical symbols on the floor with 
Miss Roppongi's lipstick, and Yotsuya began chanting. 

	The mirror seemed to open up, and Gentle Monster was sucked into 
it.

	And then it spat out about twenty of Gentle Monster, each one 
holding a souvenir miniature ball of twine.

	We all looked at each other and then, with one accord, dashed for 
the car, leaving the little blue monsters to the Itomaruya (and I wish 
it much joy of them).

	So as we drove off, Mr. Ichinose turned around from the passenger 
seat in the front and said "I can tell you're all sad to go."

	Oofy and I exchanged Does-he-live-on-the-same-PLANET-as-us? 
looks.

	Mr. Ichinose winked at us then and said, "You know, I have a 
funny sort of feeling that we'll be coming back here next year."

	"Although not to the inn," Miss Roppongi clarified.

	Mr. Ichinose nodded firmly. "Since I cannot think of any place in 
this world where I would rather go."

	"He needs an imagination transplant," I hissed to Fei-kun.

	"Agreed," the Wumeister hissed back.

	So I guess the only bright sides to that trip were that I 
discovered diet chocolate soda, that I got to read a whole bunch of 
hard-to-find Andre Nortons from Treize's collection, and that I have 
developed a new respect for Oof-- for Chang Wufei, and I think he has 
developed some for me, which I hope lasts when he finds out what I just 
did this afternoon.

	You'll probably have heard about THAT on the news already by the 
time you get this. I'll write up an explanation after dinner, because 
maybe we'll have solved the problem with the oil by then. (Maybe I can 
float a loan from Treize -- I know he's got a ridiculous amount of 
money socked away somewhere, but I don't know if it'd be enough. 
Besides, I'd be indentured to him for the rest of my life.)


	I spent yesterday evening doing my homework, attempting to use 
chopsticks to throw empty lychee jelly cuplets into a Styrofoam cup 
that once held cup noodles, reading *Scarface* (the ending of which is 
rather disappointing) and discovering that I'd gotten two medals in the 
mail, an offer to get a subscription to several magazines with squicky-
sounding titles practically free, and a letter from the British 
government offering me a title. I wrote back and asked if I could be 
the Earl of Ickenham. The answer's probably no, especially after this 
last stunt.

	Anyway, so my alarm woke me up bright and early this morning, and 
I went off to school, dodged the Chinese Monk Guy (who stated that 
today was my unluckiest day yet), told Hilde all about the Adventure of 
the Gentle Monster (her state of mind was not exactly what a purist 
would name belief; she did not venture, however, to suggest that I was 
lying) and did school stuff until school was out, when I went to find a nice 
solitary spot in which to eat Pocky and snicker my way through *Dave 
Barry Does Japan* in peace -- please thank Aunt Agatha for that book 
again, Trey. It is *so* true.

	(Although how come I never get to find the places where a woman 
does some amazing things with her genitals, two doves, and a yo-yo?)

	 -- anyway, I was going to find that sort of spot, when SOMEBODY 
hit me over the head and I passed out.

	It really was a lot like all the descriptions. When I woke up, I 
felt sort of the way you feel when you've had a nap in the middle of 
the afternoon and it hasn't really done anything to make you feel 
rested, except that my head ached like anything and I could hear 
Relena's voice.

	"Yui-kun was gorgeous," she seemed to be declaring.

	"Hear, hear!" some other people said.

	"We must see him again!"

	This got louder noises of approval.

	About this time I figured that I was actually hearing Relena 
talking to some people and tried to think if I actually knew of any 
Yui-kuns. Which I didn't. I mean, last I checked Yui was a girl's name. 
However, considering that I was tied up with some old jumpropes, I 
wasn't sure if I'd be able to convince my captors of the fact.

	I was considering being weirded out at this point, except that 
between the race, Gentle Monster, and the twine ball I'd been sort of 
weird-proofed for the fortnight.

	"Bring forth the key to summoning Yui-kun again to Earth!" Relena 
finished, and somebody dragged me from the nice quiet corner where I'd 
been resting out into the open, which proved to be the school roof.

	I took one look at my captors and groaned. It was the Spice 
Girls.

	There's a band with that name, isn't there? I'm sort of under the 
impression there is, but you know I don't really follow any groups 
these days except for Two-Mix and Weird Al. Oh, and I picked up a CD by 
this group called Shonen Knife that's so weird it's hilarious. You've 
got to hear this stuff.

	But these were four of my fellow-students.

	Firstly, Relena Darlian, from some weird country over by where 
the Soviet Union used to be. Given the weird things Japanese people do 
to Rs, it made perfect sense to apostrophize her as 'Dill' when with 
these three particular friends. (That is the verb I wanted, isn't it?) 
I mean, her with these three... truly a lily among thorns, or a fox 
among dogs.

	Secondly, Chin-Ling Shughart, from Hong Kong, a.k.a. "Sugar." 
One-quarter Chinese, and determined to be more so than the Chinese 
themselves. I'd probably fall for it if I didn't know the Wumeister, 
seeing as he really *is* the real thing. She was probably the one who 
hit me on the head.

	Thirdly, Kay Riley. I don't know where she's from, but she's got 
a mass of strawberry-blonde curls -- her one beauty, like George P. in 
fifth grade -- and she always wears this headband with ratty cat ears 
on it. Hence, "Ginger." She can fall asleep anywhere, and often does. 
Whenever I debate the possibility of worrying that I might have the 
lowest grades in the school, I think of Ginger and wander off happily 
to do something else.

	Last, something-or-other Yuri, known as "Pepper" for no 
particularly good reason. She squints, you can't pin her down to 
anything, and the hair she keeps out of her face with a headband 
probably hasn't been washed in two months. I mean, I know sometimes 
I'll let bits of personal hygiene slide, but that's just ridiculous. 
Also disgusting.

	The latter three are... well... picture Aphrodite attended by the 
three Graces. Now imagine that the Graces got their biannual vacation 
to Theamelpos and asked their cousins the Gorgons to fill in while they 
were gone, and you'll have a good visual image of the Spice Girls -- or 
the Gang of Four, as they're also known. It's a reference to these 
Chinese... um... look, get Aunt Agatha to explain it to you, I don't 
want to cramp my hand.

	I asked them what the hell they thought they were doing, and 
Relena told me "We want you to summon Yui-kun."

	I looked at her kind of blankly, and she sighed and stuck a 
newspaper article folded to the color picture smack in my face.

	It was Hiiro.

	Glaring, as usual.

	The caption said "Hiiro Yui, alien champion."

	"I know it's not that respected a newspaper," Relena said (it was 
USA Today, and that's what? Two steps above the Enquirer?) "but it does 
have nice pictures."

	I wasn't thinking about newspapers then THAT much, because my 
mind was busy boggling at the idea that they were talking about Hiiro. 
I mean, like I said, aesthetically speaking, he's not exactly hard on 
the eyes, but I hadn't actually translated that into thinking that 
maybe somebody would think he was handsome.

	I know you're probably giggling now. Stop it.

	"Anyway," Sugar said, "he is quite good to look at and it would 
be wise for you, as a person of irreproachable honorableness, to make 
call for the so-honorable opponent to arrive very quick, quick."

	She always talks like that. It drives me NUTS. 

	Except I didn't have time to be driven up the wall by her crummy 
imitation of Charlie Chan and Kai-Lung, because of the nature of their 
proposal, which had just sunk in. 

	"'Yada! 'Yada! 'Yada!" I yelled. (Japanese lesson for the day: 
'yada = iya da = no fucking way.) I knew that much slang, at least. 
"That's the one guy I never want to see again in my life!"

	More accurately, if I never see him again in my life, it'll be 
too soon.

	At that point, the door from the stairwell burst open and Hilde 
came through it.

	"Duo!" she yelled, throwing herself at me and grabbing me by the 
front of my shirt. "Don't do it! Don't summon him! If you do, he'll 
take you over, no question!"

	Ehh, that's a bad translation. Maybe "possess you" would be 
better.

	Anyway, my reaction was pretty straightforward. "Hilde, if you 
want to be of help, could you like maybe UNTIE ME?"

	Hilde started picking at the jumpropes, but considering she keeps 
her nails about as short as you do (and *she* doesn't play the viola, 
or the violin or cello or guitar, so what's her excuse?) they didn't 
respond lickety-splat.

	Ginger and Pepper took exception to this, and they ended up sort 
of in a wrestling match with Hilde. (Darn it, why couldn't they have 
looked like the Lovely Angels Kei and Yuri? I'd pay good money to see 
*them* in a wrestling match with Hilde.)

	Relena looked at me and said "Duo-kun, you're not doing well in 
math, are you?"

	We will now pause while you evince absolutely no surprise 
whatsoever. Math in a Japanese high school is not only as boring as 
math always is (there are *theorems*. And *functions*.), it's all in 
Japanese, and in Japanese I can't really understand.

	I spend most of math class doing homework for something else or 
reading Star Trek novels. 

	Or standing outside reading Star Trek novels (or manga volumes) 
with buckets of water hanging from my elbows.

	So I said "What does being bad in math have to do with anything?"

	"If you do us this little favor," Relena said, "from now on I'll 
meet with you and tutor you in math."

	Tutoring sessions being two people in close proximity.

	Relena's a *lot* prettier than my last three tutors, back home.

	And I might actually please the parents into the bargain.

	"Miss Darlian," I said, "you have got yourself a deal."

	"Thank you, Mr. Maxwell," she said, shaking my hand.

	Hilde made peculiar squawky noises.

	Ginger and Pepper let her up.

	"Fine," Hilde growled at me. "Get swallowed down by an oni. See 
if I care." She stomped off down the stairs.

	And that was how I found myself holding hands in a ring with the 
Gang of Four on the school rooftop.

	"Why are we standing around holding hands?" I asked.

	"It is for the purpose of calling yufos from their heavenly 
beds," Sugar told me. (In Japanese, a yufo [spelt UFO] is any alien 
spacecraft, even if you know darn well what it is.) "Linking ourselves 
thusly in a circle sourceless and unending, from the deep depths of our 
hearts we shall chant "Ventura, ventura, space people" in a union of 
utmost solemnityness."

	I looked at Sugar as her eyes glowed with fanaticism. "Oh, 
brother."

	"Ventura, ventura," the others began, "supaysu pee-pul!" (That's 
about the way they sounded -- except for Relena, none of them speak 
English that well. I think Ginger might have been born here in Tokyo.)

	"Ventura," I joined in, "ventura, space people!"

	"Ventura, ventura, space people!"

	We went on chanting this for some time. Actually a lot of time. 
To be perfectly honest, the only reason I didn't wander off was because 
I'd have had to go back to Ikkoku Hall, and I didn't really feel like 
making small talk with the rest of the inmates. That and I did NOT want 
to try and get the Wumeister to tutor me in math -- it'd probably be 
worse than when DAD tried to help me and we woke you up while screaming 
at each other.

	Anyway, it was sort of getting dark (not really but you know it's 
about to in a hurry, you know what I'm talking about) when the UFO 
appeared.

	And it certainly *was* a UFO, because I had no clue what it was. 
(Except maybe one of the cherubim, because they're supposed to look 
like nothing on the face of the earth or beneath it or in the seas or 
in the skies, and this didn't. Well, except for looking remarkably like 
a humonguous ball of chewing gum that somebody had been throwing 
girders and fifty-foot sporks and 1:4 scale models of skyscrapers at.)

	"It came!" Relena said, starry-eyed.

	"This isn't Yui-kun's!" Ginger yelped as it descended upon us.

	"What do we do now?" Pepper asked.

	"This wasn't in the plan!" Relena shot back, looking decidedly 
put out.

	I glared at her. "Well, now that you've got an unexpected 
occurrence, what are you going to do with it?"

	I never did find out, because at that moment we all got caught in 
a tractor beam and sucked up into the ship, yelling, screaming, and in 
some cases probably wetting our underpants. (Not me, thank goodness. I 
sort of squawped, but anyone would squawp on finding themselves 
unexpectedly picked up by the world's biggest vacuum cleaner.)

	We found ourselves inside the thing. It looked kind of like a big 
shimmery room. At one end, in front of about a gabazillion switches and 
little lights and spiffy-looking things, sat a... um... THING.

	If you'd ever read Craig Shaw Gardner's Wanderings of Wuntvor 
trilogy (or maybe it had been in the first three, Enchantments of 
Ebenezum), I'd tell you that it looked exactly the way I'd always have 
pictured the Bog Wombler looking if I'd had that level of visual 
imagination.

	But you haven't, so I can't.

	"It's a space alien!" my mouth up and said before my intellect 
could have any say in the matter whatsoever.

	Hey, it's a recognized disorder that can affect people, 
particularly when suffering from stress. Ronald Reagan had it for 
*years* -- just dig up the relevant Doonesbury strips for a good visual 
diagram.

	I mean, it really was a pretty obvious thing to say, especially 
in front of Relena. She's probably got a 4.0 GPA.

	Straight As, that is. (You're in middle school. They stick with 
letters there. LUCKY.)

	The Space Wombler sort of turned to look at us and grinned. It 
did have a face (or general approximation thereof) with a mouth and an 
eye. Presumably it had once had two eyes, but it wore a large black 
patch over where one probably had been.

	"Where do you think we're going?" Ginger whimpered.

	"Gee, maybe his home planet. You think?" Pepper hissed.

	"And then we shall be taken for the experiments of laboratories, 
for the noble cause of science, and slain there most grievously under 
stars of surpassing alienness!" Sugar wailed.

	I swore.

	Well, wouldn't you?

	"Shut up, all of you!" I snarled at them. "I want to go home!"

	"This is an alien abduction, you fool!" Relena switched to 
English to snirp at me. You can tell hers is a little out of date, 
right?

	"Well, back to Ikkoku-kan, at any rate!" I shot back. 

	"To Ikkoku-kan?" the Space Wombler said in a deep, wombly voice, 
rather like Pooh Bear's in the Disney version, or Eeyore's in the old 
record that Mother listened to when she was little.

	The room made a peculiar humming noise, and the next thing I knew 
we were all dropping about five or six feet onto the roof of Ikkoku 
Hall, and Sugar put a foot right through it.

	"It's a UFO!" somebody yelled from the ground.

	"What's that Maxwell kid up to now?" one of the next-door 
neighbors growled.

	"Pardon me, could somebody please find us a ladder?" Relena 
called. If that girl doesn't make class president, it'll be because 
Hilde beat her to it.

	"The alien is...!" Sugar yelped, pointing to the Wombler, which 
was wombling through the air towards us.

	"Why's it coming straight towards me?" That was yours truly.

	The Wombler looked at me, and this box gizmo on its chest said in 
the deep wombly Brooklyn voice, "Pay the fare."

	Fare? What fare?

	After a bit of back-and-forthing on the subject, the Wombler 
declared "I am the driver of a Stellar Taxi, and I was passing through 
this system when I detected a strong telepathic call."

	"Telepathic call?" Relena asked.

	"From this guy here," the Driver declared, pointing at me. 

	"Maxwell-kun," Sugar asked, "are you by some unforeseen chance an 
esper, possessed of psychic powers?"

	(This is how you know that Grandmaster Norton's popular; one of 
her made-up words becomes a common word IN ANOTHER LANGUAGE.)

	"How the hell should I know?" I told Sugar. "Maybe I'm a genius 
at summoning weird things!"

	I was NOT in a good mood. Particularly not around that 
chinoiserie bitch -- I'd sort of landed on her leg when we fell on the 
roof, sort of like being kneed only the other way around...

	In other words, I'd been in a world of pain for the last couple 
of minutes.

	"Pay the fare, chump!" the Wombler growled.

	I sighed, reaching into my pocket. "How much?"

	Some lights flashed on the translator box. "An amount equal to 
the value of the oil deposits of your world."

	WHAT THE? I nearly fell off the roof.

	"That's too high! I can't pay that!" I complained.

	"Are you trying to *joyride*?" the Driver wombled. "You don't 
want the Stellar Taxi Union to be called in!"

	"He honestly doesn't have that amount of money with him..." 
Relena tried.


	It was a nice try on her part, really it was. I bet she could be 
a heck of a public speaker when she grows up.

	But I guess it lost something in the translation, or the Union 
never even bothered to listen to it, because here I and the Spice Girls 
and the Ichinosezoku and Yotsuya are, watching the news on Oofy's ten-
inch TV as the alien ships suck Earth's oil fields dry.

	What a night for Treize to be researching late at the library. I 
may have some differences with our cousin, but I bet he would have 
thought of something.

	What a night for Oofy to be out studying. Maybe *he* could have 
thought of something. 

	Darn it, why did Miss Roppongi's job tending bar have to begin 
already? She's had lots of experience, maybe SHE could have thought of 
something.

	I wish Mother or Dad were here. They might have thought of 
something.

	Dammit, maybe *I* could have thought of something if it weren't 
for Sugar's bony legs.

	Well. I suppose the environmentalists will have a field day with 
this. They've been doing experiments with solar cells, haven't they? 
And battery-powered cars. Maybe the air will clean up. There's always a 
bright side. Somewhere.

	I'll probably send this off tomorrow, unless Treize or somebody 
can produce a god out of one of the boxes in the attic or something.  
Mrs. Ichinose, Yotsuya, Ginger, and Pepper have decided to get drunk, 
and the idea is looking more and more appealing by the second. 


~Tuesday~

	Well.

	The deus ex machina showed up on time, all right.

	The world is saved. Yippee-kai-yay.

	And I might as well write a clear and logical account of how it 
happened, because as soon as this is done, what with the time 
differences, I've got to call and explain it to Mother. And to Dad.

	Rather late last night, there was a knocking on the door.

	We wandered out into the hall and yelled "Who is it?"

	"The Neighborhood Association!" the people at the door yelled 
back.

	We quailed. (People in Japan tend to be a bit more public-
spirited than people back home; they form committees to see that 
everyone keeps their place up nice and everything.)

	"They're coming to lynch us!" Mrs. Ichinose wept.

	"Open up!" the Neighborhood Association demanded.

	"We won't!" most of us declared in unison, throwing ourselves 
against the door.

	"We said, 'open'!" The lock twisted and unlocked itself. Thank 
heavens we'd shot the deadbolt.

	The door quivered and then exploded. All of us were thrown back.

	"Darling!" a slightly nasal voice said, and a surprisingly heavy 
muscled body slammed into me as WAY too many volts of electricity went 
through my system.

	To coin a phrase, ororororoooo.

	As the world slowly started turning itself into recognizable 
patterns again, I heard Yotsuya say "Kanrinin-san! What a beautiful 
night!" and realized, hearing his official title, that Treize had come 
home.

	I also realized that I was being supported in a half-sitting 
position by a very firm arm behind my back, and that another hand was 
trying to push freestanding bits of my hair back into their plait.

	"Hiiro!" Relena half-screeched into my ear.

	Oh, hell.


	Some time later, we were sitting in the manager's living room, 
the heads of the Neighborhood Association at the table with Treize, 
Yotsuya, Hiiro, and me (Hiiro was sitting next to me and holding the 
end of my braid in his hand, staring at it intently. I was debating 
whether to yank it back or to leave it there, considering that hair 
follicle sensory nerves need quite a bit more stimulation than normal 
epidermal ones, and that touching my hair was probably better than 
touching ME) and everyone else against one wall or another.

	"Invader Hiiro Yui-san," the president of the Neighborhood 
Association explained, "has agreed to pay the taxi fare on his 
conditions."

	Conditions?

	"I'm moving in here," Hiiro said, fixing me with an intent look.

	"Moving in? Here?" I babbled. "At Ikkoku-kan?"

	"He will pay the fare," Treize explained kindly, "if he can move 
in with you."

	You can tell how tired I was when I say that that took a moment 
for my brain to process.

	"IYA DA!"

	"Why?" Hiiro asked me, looking mildly puzzled. "We're married."

	"Says you," I growled.

	"Maxwell, this is for the fate of the Earth!" Yotsuya told me.

	I told Yotsuya what the fate of the Earth could do with itself. 
Using all the colorful phraseology which I'd thought of *after* the tag 
game and thought I'd never get to use.

	"It is the duty of one who is taken as a consort to dwell under 
the same roof," Hiiro told me.

	I blinked, taking a moment to realize that the word he'd used 
didn't *always* mean 'wife.'

	"You're coming to live here Over My Dead Body," I told him.

	Hiiro shot bolt upright, glaring. Ignoring pleas from the 
Neighborhood Association, he told the Wombler to go on and suck up the 
Earth's oil.

	"Fine by me," the Wombler Taxidriver said. "We'd be doing that 
anyway."

	"I'm the only one who can help you," Hiiro said, turning back to 
me.

	"Iya da," I repeated, feeling... um... look, I've got my pride, 
okay?

	"After I came all this way to help you," Hiiro said, and tossed 
my braid back at me.

	That was when the Gang of Four started in on me. With names. And 
insults. And a speech by Relena, which I'd reproduce only I couldn't do 
it justice and my hand really would fall off.

	"Oh, very well," I muttered, and went on my knees before a still-
glaring Hiiro.

	"Hiiro. I beg of you. Pay the fare."

	He sort of grunted.

	"I will welcome you under this roof," I continued, wishing for 
the floor to swallow me and get me out of this. Of course it didn't. 
That stuff NEVER happens when you want it to. "Hiiro-sama."
	
	"Aa. Wakatta." He bent and grabbed one of my wrists. "Nine 
thunder-energy glasses ought to cover it, right?"

	"Certainly," the Taxidriver wombled, "that will be splendid! 
Always a pleasure doing business with you, Invader Yui. I'll see about 
having that oil replaced."

	Hiiro pulled, and I realized that he was helping me up.

	"Well," I said dazedly in English, "at least no one can say I'm a 
*cheap* lay."

	Hiiro dropped me, looking even more startled than he had when I 
charged him on the first day of the tag game.

	"I think," Treize said, "that you and he need to talk about some 
things. Privately."

	I looked at the Spice Girls, the Neighborhood Association, the 
Ichinosezoku, and Yotsuya.

	"Attic," I declared, and dragged Hiiro up to it.


	"I," Hiiro began, looking somewhat at a loss for words. "I did 
not mean... Proximity will be enough."

	"Simple cohabitation, you mean," I said, fumbling for the words 
in Japanese. "Just under the same roof." 

	He nodded.

	"Why are you pushing this?" I asked, curious, and EXTREMELY 
relieved, and therefore talkative. "I told you it was a mistake."

	"You announced your intention to wed," he said, "while holding my 
horns."

	I think that -cha thing is some dialect he picked up somewhere. 
Lord knows where.

	"Yeah? So?"

	"If someone holds an oni's horns and bids them do something," he 
explained, "it is the oni's duty to do it."

	"But I wasn't really asking YOU to do anything."

	"Aa. I misunderstood. But I promised in the belief that I was 
following duty. It is my duty to keep that promise."

	"So you don't *really* want to be married to me, any more than I 
want to be married to you?"

	He twitched one of his shoulders in something that might be meant 
to be a shrug. "It is duty. Want does not enter into the picture."

	You know, I think I'm getting better at Japanese after being 
immersed in it.

	Because I'd swear he's got the faintest hint of a French accent.

	"Can't you, I don't know, give duty a rest or something?"

	He stared at me the way Hilde or you would if I'd suggested 
giving gravity "a rest or something."

	"Duty is... " he fumbled with the language... "is everything. 
That is, duty and honor and explosions."

	"Oh, *lord*," I groaned. "I'm stuck in *Horton Hatches an Egg*."

	"In what?"

	"I meant what I said," I quoted, "and I said what I meant, and an 
elephant's faithful, one hundred percent!"

	Let me be the first to inform you, Trey, that it sounds 
*unbelievably* better in English.

	"You are not an elephant," Hiiro said. Then he paused. "Although 
you have made a good imitation trunk with your hair."

	I blinked. "Was that a joke?"

	He gave me that intent look of his again. "Was it?"

	I groaned. "Look, give me the important questions in the morning 
when I'm not so tired, okay? When are you moving in?"

	"Tomorrow."

	"See you then, then. Good night."

	I opened the door and found Yotsuya, Mrs. Ichinose, the heads of 
the Neighborhood Association, and the Spice Girls unashamedly listening 
in.

	Hiiro looked at them and threw a small lightning bolt in their 
direction. It looks pretty spiffy from a third-person perspective. 
Levinbolt, I think it would be called.

	Then he stalked downstairs, out to the porch, and flew off.

	"I shall have to charge him for a replacement door," Treize was 
saying as I stumbled into bed.


	I woke up to be informed by our elegant cousin that I had been 
excused from school for the day. I, of course, wasted no time in using 
this unexpected free time to good purpose.

	I reset the alarm for four hours later and went back to bed.

	When I woke up, beating the alarm by twenty-three minutes, there 
was a discussion going on in the front hall. I opened the door and 
peered out.

	"They're transferring me to space," Yotsuya was explaining to 
Miss Roppongi, who looked about as awake as I'd felt when my alarm 
first went off today. "I'm to be the liaison officer with the Stellar, 
Sidereal, and Galactic Unions, in order to prevent a reoccurrence of 
yesterday's... happenings."

	"It wasn't my fault," I said automatically.

	"Whatever," he said. "I'm moving out today, and my assistants 
from work have come to help."

	I saw two teenagers over by the ruins of the front door (which 
had an old tarpaulin tacked up over it). They looked a year or so older 
than I was. One was a girl with long blonde hair.

	"Oi, Yotsuya, I'll help you as soon as I get dressed, 'kay?" I 
said and shut the door, hurrying to throw on some clothes, unbraid my 
hair, give it a quick going-over with a brush, and rebraid it.

	Sadly, the girl proved not to be very friendly. I didn't quite 
catch her name -- I think it might have been Eula, but that's 
ridiculous. She didn't really want to be here, she didn't want to help 
Yotsuya (whom she addressed as "Sekoi-san" -- I'd always thought 
Yotsuya was his family name, but apparently I was wrong), and she was 
only doing this because of the other guy, who was apparently her 
boyfriend.

	All the hot chicks are taken or uninterested. It's not fair.

	I did fall into conversation with her boyfriend, however. 
(Carrying a heavy desk down a flight of stairs with no help whatsoever 
from its owner can do that to you.) His name was Tamuro Rei, and he was 
a sort of high-class esper called a Newtype -- which, in practical 
terms, meant that he could teleport, but only from one collection of 
garbage to another.

	I gave him most of the remainder of Oofy's instant ramen and flat 
sesame seed candy, in recognition of the fact that I'd finally met 
someone whose life sucked worse than mine did.

	Yotsuya and I were just arguing over who ought to carry the last 
item left in the room, the trash bag, out (Tamuro and his girlfriend 
had already stood on it and teleported back to work) when Hiiro stuck 
his head in the room and asked where he should put his stuff.

	"How about in here?" I said. "Yotsuya is just moving out."

	"You can't do that," Treize said, appearing behind Hiiro.

	"Why not?" I asked.

	"Because then the Otonashi family cannot rent the room to a 
tenant. I can take one apartment out of my earnings. Not two. He can 
stay in your apartment."

	I made a squawkety noise.

	"By the way," Treize continued, "I do trust you and Yotsuya-san 
intend to patch up those artistic holes. It will be far easier to rent 
to another if the room is not quite so well ventilated."

	"How am I supposed to get into #5, then?" I demanded.

	"Try the DOOR, Maxwell!" Oofy yelled through the hole into his 
room.

	"If you go up through your futon closet," Treize said mildly, 
"you should come through the floor of the drakling's."

	He went back to doing whatever apartment building managers and 
doctoral students do during the day, the Wumeister yelled something 
that, except for "Kisama!", was entirely in Chinese, and I told Yotsuya 
we'd get the trash if he got the holes.

	Then I gave Hiiro the bag to take out while I looked over my room 
to try and figure where his futon could go.

	I'd just tentatively decided on a place when he took two steps 
into my room, stopped, and stared.

	Which was totally unwarranted. I mean, there was a perfectly 
clean patch of floor by the door, and a little one near the foot of my 
futon (which I hadn't bothered to put in the cupboard, because I'd just 
have to take it out again tonight) and one sort of under the window 
that I figured I could expand so he could dump his bedding there.

	"I figured you could put your bedding there," I vocalized, waving 
at the window (which conveniently was across the room from my bed), "as 
soon as I pick some of the clothes up."

	"*Some* of the clothes?" Hiiro repeated.

	Turns out the guy is an obsessive neatnik. Sheesh, the only 
things I organize that determinedly are my books!

	We eventually got a fair bit of room cleared off (although I now 
have a shoulder-high pile of dirty clothes in one corner -- think I 
should do some laundry?) and wandered outside to go shopping and pick 
up some sticky hooks, some portable shelves, stamps for this letter, a 
souvenir for somebody he knew, and more Pocky.

	I happened to look up.

	Picture the *Arcadia*, only a bit smaller.

	Picture it with lots and lots of orange paint, so that the olive-
green paint shows through as tiger stripes on the orange.

	Note that it's the exact same color scheme as Hiiro's tank top.

	Also note -- which you can't help BUT note -- that it's parked on 
Ikkoku Hall's roof.

	"What?" I managed, pointing at it.

	"Hn. My ship."

	"That's YOURS?!" I squawked.

	"Aa."

	Then something made a beeping noise and he pulled a pocket watch 
out of nowhere, glared at it, put it back wherever, and pulled out an 
umbrella. A *big* umbrella. The size of Dad's navy one, only this was 
tiger-striped. (Navy on orange, as opposed to the green-on-orange tank 
top and ship and the black-on-orange shorts and futon.)

	"Huh?" I said intelligently.

	"The Stellar Taxi Union spilled a bit," he said, and opened the 
umbrella.

	About fifteen seconds later, it began to rain.

	Not ordinary rain, either.

	This was rain with an oil spill pre-mixed in.

	It was a good thing that he'd got the umbrella out -- can you 
imagine what a pain that would be to wash out of hair?

	Particularly mine?


	Anyway, that's pretty much the story, and I'm not quite sure yet 
what to think of it all.

	I mean, look at it.

Cons:
	I'm sort of maybe married to a GUY.
	Who throws around levinbolts when he's pissed at things.
	Including me.
	He's also a compulsive neatnik.
	And tends to do a lot of communicating in grunts or staring, 
expecting you to divine what he's thinking behind a poker face.

Pros:
	I don't actually have to sleep with him.
	He fries annoying people with the levinbolts, too.
	I actually have practice dealing with dyssemic introverts. (I 
should hope so, after the amount Mother shelled out.)
	He has a really damn cool ship.
	And he did think to let me share the umbrella.

	So I guess he'll fit right in with the rest of us misfits at 
Ikkoku-kan (Yotsuya said, before he left, that he'd probably be back 
for a visit or three). Heck, maybe I'll end up running through some of 
Judy's social skills exercises with him. I can tell right away that he 
could really use the one on making an "I'm interested" face.

	But, in name only or not, did I have to be technically MARRIED to 
him?

	I hope Mother or Dad will be able to think of some way we can get 
out of it without breach of contract or whatever the oni call it; 
they're lawyers, aren't they?

	Because I don't really think that I want to spend the rest of my 
life the way I was an hour ago.

	Walking together with him under an umbrella, both of us being 
ultra-careful never to touch each other, even by accident, while the 
shimmery black rain falls around us.

Love,
Your incredible, incomparable (because I can't think of anything to 
compare me to), outstandingly wonderful oniisama,
Duo


Continue (Y/N)?
C:\> Y


Those Obnoxious Pirots
(Spelling Intentional):
Fish and Visitors


Just wild beat communication, ame ni utarenagara, iro asenai atsui omoi 
karada-juu de tsutaetai yo tonight...

Dear Trey,

	Ignore the song lyrics scrawled across the top of the page -- I 
was trying to remember the words to a song I like (which is a little 
hard, given that any Two-Mix song sounds a lot like any other Two-Mix 
song. They're worse than the Beach Boys).

	To answer your questions, I don't know how the monster learned 
Japanese so quickly. Friday morning he was speaking Old High German, 
Friday afternoon he was speaking heavily accented hard-to-understand 
Japanese. We-ird.

	No, I haven't heard back from the British government yet.

	Yes, I've got the tape off my ankle. I have to do these stupid 
exercises with a big piece of elastic that has to be hooked onto 
something so I can pull against it. I wound up making Hiiro hold the 
other end. He retaliates by making me actually do the exercises. He 
also reminds me whenever I've got homework (and sits and GLARES at me 
until I actually do it. Very annoying). Come to think of it, he's 
probably exactly the sort of tutor the parents would want to get for 
me, except for the whole married thing.

	No, getting dressed isn't exactly -- the Japanese have a saying, 
'Nudity is often seen but seldom looked at,' and I think the Oni must 
too. I mean, he never seems to notice one way or the other -- I never 
know what to do with my eyes when he's changing (although I tend to 
pull my underwear on and off under the covers and then get up and put 
on the rest of my clothes). Aside from the horns, he LOOKS pretty human 
-- no tails or, uh, forked members or anything.

	(And I was NOT looking! I was very deliberately not looking!)

	So I guess it's sort of like being in a locker room, except for 
when I remember and feel awkward.

	Yes, Relena is tutoring me in math. (Although she spends most of 
the time staring dreamily at Hiiro, who's usually around watching us 
suspiciously. Between the two of them, I *am* actually picking up a 
fair bit of Japanese math, though.)

	No, I haven't gotten around to trying to teach him the "I'm 
interested" face yet. I'm not sure how well it'd go over, for one 
thing, and for another, he's been spending a lot of time reading up on 
what he says are Earth customs. I get the feeling his usual manual is 
probably some second cousin of the *Hitch-Hiker's Guide*.

	As for the noise last time you called -- that's going to take a 
bit of explaining.

	It started last Saturday. (I don't seem to have much luck with 
Fridays and Saturdays these days. No clue why.)

	I'd actually been feeling kind of good. See, we got our math tests
back on Friday, and thanks to the lovely and talented ojousama (that word
means that she's sort of a wealthy and cultured girl and all that, only
it's polite) and possibly because my Japanese was getting a little
better, I got eighty-seven percent. And yes, I know it isn't that great,
but compared to how I *was* doing, it's pretty darn spectacular.

	So what I'm getting at here is that I was in a pretty good mood, 
and it carried over to Saturday, even though the weather was pretty 
lousy. All overcast and humid. And along about three-thirty, it started 
thunderstorming.

	I rather like thunderstorms, provided that they're outside and 
I'm not. So I pulled out my futon and curled up on it with a good book. 
Well, an okay book. (I borrowed it from Oofy, because I've read all my 
English books, I don't feel like rereading any of them again yet, it 
takes too long to puzzle through a Japanese book, I've read all my 
manga, and I wasn't about to go out and buy more in the weather we'd 
had that day. If it weren't for the used book store that has a ton of 
English books, next to the not-as-cheap sushi bar, I think I'd go 
absolutely freaking nuts. But Oofy has a bunch of books in English I'd 
never read, so I was reading my way through them.) I must say that some 
of them are NOT what I'd have expected, although if you ever get the 
chance you ought to read *Our Hearts Were Young And Gay*, because it's 
hilarious. But *Quentin Durward*, which is what I was reading, was 
pretty hard going. I think it's overrated.

	Hiiro was sitting in the window looking out at the thunder and 
lightning.

	It's really weird, but he's the sort of person whom you know 
where he is. Argh. I mean, when he's in a room, you notice that he's in 
the room, and you notice where in the room he is, even if you're not 
consciously looking for him, like if you're reading a book or 
something.

	Did I just lose you?

	Like I said, it's confusing. (Okay, so I didn't say it.)

	The point is, I was there and he was over there, and next door 
the Ichinose were having an argument. That is, Mrs. Ichinose was arguing,
and now and then there were pauses in which her husband might be
answering, or creatively wielding a newspaper, or something.

	From what I could hear through the wall, it basically was over 
the fact that Kentarou was scared of thunder, and he ought to be old 
enough not to be.

	And she went on and on about it. I looked at Hiiro, but he 
obviously wasn't about to do anything, so I sighed and got up and set a 
package of blue bag nuking and went to knock on the door of #1.

	"I was wondering if Kentarou would care to come help me eat up my 
noodles and kiwifruit," I said when Mrs. Ichinose opened the door. "The 
kiwi needs to be gone by the end of today or it'll spoil."

	Neither of the older Ichinose like kiwi for some reason, but 
Kentarou appreciates its true greatness.

	"Oh, sure," Mrs. Ichinose said, and half-shoved Kentarou out the 
door. I did a quick little sidestep and avoided being hit by a ten-
year-old in motion.

	The door slammed behind him.

	"Loud," I muttered.

	Kentarou tried to say something, gave it up, and tried again.

	"Oi, come on," I muttered, and stalked back into my room, 
Ichinose Kentarou on my heels.

	When I was nearly to the microwave, the thunder decided to break 
right overhead with a sound that must have run from one end of the sky 
to the other and gone right down into the base of my skull.

	It made Kentarou jump, which made him slam into me, which made me 
take three steps forward I hadn't exactly intended taking and end up 
with a graceless nosedive into Hiiro's chest.

	I stayed exactly where I was for a moment while I caught my 
breath and made sure I wasn't going to go slomp-to-the-floor.

	"You're enthusiastic, Darling," Hiiro observed in the sort of 
voice that goes with a deadpan expression.

	I yelped, jumped about five feet backward, and sat down more 
suddenly than I'd expected -- fortunately, on my futon.

	Also fortunately, I was wearing the Evil Ankle Brace I told you 
about on the phone -- even if my sneakers are the only shoes I can fit 
on over it, it's worth its weight in gold -- because even with it, my 
ankle STILL hurt.

	We started eating the kiwi and noodles. (Hiiro didn't want any.)

	And just when I thought I'd shut Mrs. Ichinose up, she started
arguing AGAIN. Or maybe not arguing exactly, but loudly complaining.

	"Honestly, it's ridiculous at his age!"

	Silence.

	"Lightning never hits anything!"

	And just then, there were about three thunder cracks all 
together, the power went out, and there was a most peculiar crashing 
sound not quite above us.

	Hiiro was the first one into my closet and up through its 
ceiling, which was fortunate, as the Wumeister had piled a bunch of 
quilts and stuff on top of the trap door. You'd think he didn't want us 
coming in or something. Kentarou and I swarmed up behind him; we burst 
through #5's closet door (at the same time as Miss Roppongi burst 
through the door door) and stared.

	A lightning bolt had apparently gone through the roof and the
attic to dead-end in Oofy's living room floor and leave behind a reek of
ozone, a hole through which rain could fall, and a huge oblong SOMETHING,
like a monstrous egg.

	Then Hiiro got out of the way and I could see that the Something 
was apparently the world's biggest SQUASH. You know. Like a zucchini, 
only yellow, and very very big.

	And there was a tag attached to the stub of its stem.

	Miss Roppongi lifted the tag and read "Maxwell, Ikkoku-kan, 
Nerima Ward."

	"MAXWELL!" The Wu-man was most definitely pissed.

	"Aim's off," Hiiro said.

	I debated thwapping him.

	Then I realized whom I was debating thwapping and tabled the 
notion.

	I told him to go fix the roof instead.

	This took him about two minutes. I wonder what he patched it 
with?

	Oh, he says it was an old umbrella repair kit. Sigh. I was hoping 
for a pair of spandex shorts (he's got about thirty pairs or so, and 
they all look exactly alike. How's *that* for unimaginative?)

	Anyway, he came back, Mr. and Mrs. Ichinose on his heels, just 
when Miss Roppongi was asking me what I was going to do with the 
squash. Or melon, as it might be.

	I told Mrs. Ichinose that it was a present for her because of the 
Watermelon Incident. (Which was as good an excuse as any. If it tasted 
like its smaller cousins... I don't *like* squash. I suppose I'd eat it 
if I were very hungry, or if I'd been hungry all my life, or something, 
but...)

	And she even accepted it after a few polite back-and-forthings.

	So she went and got a cleaver to start cutting it while Oofy was 
still looking at the remains of his ceiling and gibbering. After all, 
it looked a bit large to manhandle out the door and down the stairs as 
was. And she set the thing so as to start cutting it down the middle 
(as opposed to in slices) and pressed down.

	The cleaver went in a centimeter or two and stopped.

	Mrs. Ichinose gave me the sort of look she gives me during the 
day when her husband's not home and she wants me (it used to be 
Yotsuya) to open the pickles, or the mustard, or the what-have-you.

	I leaned over her and put my hands atop hers and pushed down.

	It did NOT want to give.

	The Wumeister came around the other side, set his hands on top of 
mine, counted to three, and then we all p~u~s~h~e~d.

	Ow. I think it took two days for my hands to get back to normal.

	The melon (or squash, as it were) made a shuddery movement and 
crackled with electricity. We all stepped back pretty hastily.

	Then it split down the middle and fell apart with a dazzling 
shock.

	It was hollow, and lined with metal with blinking lights inside, 
and there, in place of a core, a girl a bit younger than Kentarou was on 
her back in a sort of flattened fetal position, holding the cleaver 
between the palms of her hands.

	I'm not quite sure why I pegged her as a girl first thing, since 
her bright red hair is cut about the way Christopher Robin's is in the 
original Shepard (is that the way you spell his name?) illustrations 
for Winnie-the-Pooh -- you know, the good ones -- and she was wearing 
something that could be a sundress or a very large tank top with only 
one arm strap over Japanese bloomers -- they call them bloomers, but 
they're the sort of thing Mother called overpanties when she got some 
for you to wear under your Sunday dresses back when you were little, 
and it's a bit hard to tell the difference at that age. But I just knew 
she was a girl, and I turned out to be right.

	"This planet is scary," the newcomer said, carefully putting the 
cleaver down and sitting up. She had one single solitary horn at the 
back of her head -- you know, right in the middle of where the hair 
grows in a sort of whorl.

	"Ah, it's Meia-chan," Hiiro said.

	"Hiiro-chan!" 'Meia-chan' squealed, hopped into midair, and began 
flying towards him.

	At the speed of ketchup before you shake the bottle.

	"This is my cousin, Jarimeia," Hiiro informed the rest of us. 
"Seven years old."

	Sheesh, I'd have thought she was eight.

	"She's awfully slow for seven, isn't she?" Miss Roppongi observed 
critically.

	"Why don't you just run?" I asked. "You'd get there faster."

	At that point Meia-chan reached Hiiro's arms and proceeded to 
thoroughly glomp him; an interesting scene, since if there were one 
person I'd have pegged as thoroughly UNglompable, it'd be Mr. Hiiro 
Yui. Sheesh, that's like glomping Saitoh Hajime or Mr. Spock or Sam the 
*American* Eagle or something!

	She turned her head and spat fire at us.

	I don't think it was real fire, exactly, since it engulfed my 
face and stung a bit but it didn't burn my hair off. It did leave this 
awful gunky black deposit, though. I think it's sort of like flaming 
plum pudding, where the brandy burns up and the pudding doesn't even 
get charred.

	"I am, so, fast," she snapped, turning her head back into Hiiro's 
shoulder.

	"Her father was an alien," Hiiro said, rather stiffly. "Meia-chan 
is doing very well for a hybrid."

	Meia glared at him. "I'm doing well for ME. What about you?"

	I really, really want to know what she was implying. Maybe I'll 
find out one of these days.

	"I heard that you had found yourself a good husband on a planet 
calling itself Earth," Meia continued, more reasonably, "and I said to myself 
'Now this I *gotta* see,' so I packed up and left."

	She was overdramatizing. I guess you can get away with it when 
you're only seven, but it's still bad manners. (Unless I'm doing it, 
but I know WHEN to do it.)

	"It was a long, hard journey for a little kid! I was so scared! I 
was so alone!"

	"You're here now," Oofy said, almost as stiffly as Hiiro.

	I bet he doesn't have any little sisters or cousins. Great. He'd 
probably let her get away with murder.

	"And then at last I have found you! Is this your husband?"

	Oofy looked decidedly startled.

	"No. This is Darling."

	"Duo Maxwell," I introduced myself, holding a hand out.

	Meia ignored it, squirming out of Hiiro's arms to float slowly 
around me, giving me an extremely thorough once-over.

	"He doesn't look like much," she said critically. "Can he fight 
with a sword?"

	"No," I told her.

	"Can he parse Xelcthonian rhetoric?"

	"What's 'parse'?"

	I seem to recall that I ought to know what 'parse' is. Do YOU 
know what it is, Trey? Does Aunt Agatha?

	"I'll take that as a no. Can you cook Spicy Chili of Death?"

	"No. I don't like spicy food that much."

	She looked at me as if I'd stated that I didn't like Mother's 
chocolate chip oatmeal cookies that much. Only more so.

	"How accurate are you with a four-hundred-meter sight?"

	"What?"

	"On a rifle?"

	"Never shot one."

	She looked at me as if I'd said I never read a book.

	"I'm okay with a pistol," I offered. Okay being the key word, as 
you'll recall -- I never hated the loud noises the way you did, but I 
won't say I exactly liked them, either. "And I won fifth prize in 
archery the last year I went to summer camp."

	"What's archery?"

	I tried to explain.

	"Primitive," she snorted. "Why do you even put up with this guy?"

	"I promised," Hiiro growled.

	Meia snorted.

	Miss Roppongi and Mrs. Ichinose were busy laughing their heads 
off during all of this, but at least Kentarou spoke up.

	"You can't steer."

	"WHAT!" Meia yelped.

	"You landed in Gohi's room. Maxwell's is next door and down one."

	Meia glared at him, and Mrs. Ichinose swallowed enough laughter 
to snap "Be polite!" at her son.

	"Maxwell-oniisan's, then."

	"Yes, but we'd all have ended up in here anyway," I pointed out, 
"so it all worked out fine."

	The Wumeister shot me a Glare-o-Death.

	Meia spun on one heel, crossed her arms, and nearly singed our 
-- that is, Kentarou's and mine -- feet off with a fart-flare.

	And she didn't even need to light it.

	"Ow! Little bint!" I yelled.

	I *did* remember to sort of clean up my language. At the last 
moment, so it sounded sort of like 'bichnt,' but oh well.

	Then I realized what she'd done, so I hissed to Hiiro "Can you do 
that, too?"

	"No," he muttered. "I do lightning."

	Sheesh, talk about unfair divisions. Fart-flares are obviously a 
Guy Thing. Ne?

	"What sort of space pirate is this?" Meia demanded of the room at 
large. "I'm higher-rated, and I'm still a cadette!"

	Oh, great. Hiiro's cousin is the oni equivalent of Wesley 
Crusher.

	"Another obnoxious pirate," Oofy mumbled.

	I elbowed him. "What do you mean, *another*?"

	"Obviously," Meia wound up, "Hiiro-chan is far too good for you!"

	"Who would be good enough for him?" I wondered. "Masaki Ryohko?"

	"This guy's a loser," the redhead continued. "I didn't need to 
come all this way."

	"WHY YOU --!"

	"Maxwell, for shame!" Oofy yelled at me.

	"Threatening a little girl!" Mrs. Ichinose agreed. 

	Little *brat*, more like.

	"Oneechan," Meia cooed at Mrs. Ichinose, who melted in the 
flattery as if she'd been a fan of whatshisface and been personally 
congratulated by him. You know. That guy half the girls were cooing 
over, back home. *I* don't see what he did to deserve it.

	I stomped down to the manager's apartments and complained.

	"If she's going to be staying for more than a week," Treize told 
me, "be sure to remind Hiiro to pay an extra share of the rent." He 
went back to his paper.

	"But -- " I sputtered. "But -- but -- but -- "

	He ignored me. Our cousin can be very irritating sometimes.

	Jarimeia's voice echoed down the hall. "If he ever had any 
brains, they must have all dripped down his hair!"

	"Do you expect me to stay in the same house with someone who 
talks about me like that?!" I yelled.

	Treize looked at me mildly. "You can always get an after-school 
job."

	"You call this family feeling?" I stomped out into the entryway, 
leaving his door open behind me. "How can I remain under this roof?"

	With an animal yell, I ran out the front door, slamming it behind 
me.

	Then I was rather forcibly reminded that of course I wasn't 
wearing shoes, so I went back in, put my boots on, gave another animal 
yell, and ran out the front door, slamming it behind me.

	There's a way to do these things, you know.

	Fortunately, the rain had passed on to some other part of the 
city while Meia was grilling me. It was still pretty cloudy, but the 
sky showed through here and there and everything had that nice fresh 
smell you get right after a thundershower. Also everything was wet, but 
what do you expect?

	I'd actually worked through my mad, started thinking about what 
I'd do as a space pirate, and was deep in thought pondering the details 
of how a Robin Hood-like existence would really work -- and thus 
running back and forth and back and forth and back and forth along this 
one little street -- when I ran slap bang into Hilde. Literally.

	I did manage to twist so that she mostly landed on top of me, 
though. I'm such a nice guy. Particularly since it got my hair all wet.

	"Hilde!" I managed, as soon as I got my breath back. "Man, am I 
glad to see YOU! You're the only one who understands me!"

	I put an arm around her and buried my face in her shoulder, she 
being conveniently situated for that sort of thing.

	"Duo, stop it," she said, sounding mildly irritated, but not 
outright ticked off or anything. "There's someone watching."

	Watching?

	I looked around as Hilde picked herself up and began picking up 
scattered groceries -- apparently, she'd been carrying a bag of them 
when I did my drunk driver imitation.

	There, above and behind me, floating three feet off the ground, 
was Meia.

	Oh, great.

	"This is Hiiro's cousin Meia," I introduced, getting up and 
wringing my hair out.

	"What a cute little girl!" Hilde gushed. Gee, I always thought 
she had more sense. "I'm Hilde."

	"What a brat," I muttered. "I'm Duo."

	"You're so pretty, Hilde-neechan," Meia said.

	I gave her a suspicious look. "Why are you being so nice to 
girls, kid?"

	Meia pushed off me and flew over to Hilde at the same slow pace, 
making little swimming motions in midair.
	
	"You're flying so well, so quickly," Hilde enthused.

	If you'd asked me before Saturday, I wouldn't have thought Hilde 
had a maternal bone in her body. Hmm. Wonder what she'd think of our 
younger cousins? Emily can look incredibly cute when she does that 
half-smile thing, for instance.

	"Well done!" Hilde clapped as Meia reached her, flung her arms 
around her, and buried her face in Hilde's bosom.

	"So soft and warm," Meia murmured happily, wriggling back and 
forth.

	Why, that little BITCH!

	I haven't gotten that far yet!

	(And not for want of trying, believe ME.)

	"Now try and fly over to Duo, Meia-chan," Hilde told the little 
girl.

	I clapped halfheartedly as she floated over to me. "Well done, 
well done."

	"What's with the nice act?" Meia hissed as she settled into my 
arms. She's definitely heavier than Emily. 

	"You look so cute together like that!" Hilde proclaimed. "Just 
like real cousins!"

	Trey, if I had a cousin like Jarimeia, I think I'd divorce that 
whole branch of the family. She doesn't even look like us. 

	I carefully set Meia down on her feet and advanced on Hilde, 
moving in an exaggerated parody of a predator's stalk.

	"My turn," I growled.

	Hilde's mouth quirked in amusement as I approached.

	A piece of lightning that the thunderstorm had left behind and 
forgotten fell down on my back.

	"Darling, what are you doing over there?" Hiiro sounded as if he 
were on top of the telephone pole behind me or something. He also 
sounded distinctly Put Out. "It's time for dinner."


	Back at Ikkoku Hall, Hiiro went to talk, presumably about 
cooking, with Mrs. Ichinose, and I sat on my futon and tackled 
Jarimeia.

	Or I guess you could say she tackled me.

	"If you cared for Hiiro-chan," Meia snapped, "you'd break up with 
him!"

	Oh, puhleaze. Give me a break.

	"What makes you think I care at all for a GUY? One who throws 
levinbolts at me for no reason, no less!"

	"What do you mean, no reason! Weren't you making a pass at Hilde-
neechan?"

	"Of course I was! She's funny and sexy and hell on wheels! I 
don't WANT Hiiro! I wouldn't be stuck with him if he hadn't made that 
stupid promise by accident!"

	"So release him from his promise to you!"

	"And how the hell do you suggest I do that?" I was on my feet, 
now. "If you know a way I can honorably release him from this mockery 
of a marriage, TELL US!"

	Meia began sniffling.

	"Oh, hell," I muttered.

	I offered her a Kleenex.

	She blew her nose into it, coughed, and reduced it to ash.

	"What was all that with Hilde, anyway?" I asked. "Are you 
planning to grow up to be a lesbian or something?"

	"Oh no, I'm bi," Meia said, relatively cheerfully. "Mommy said my 
father was and that I'd probably inherit it from him. And I did."

	Sheesh. What kind of person knows their sexual orientation at 
seven? I didn't think seven-year-olds HAD a sexual orientation.

	Oh, right. Space aliens. 

	I wonder how old Hiiro is?

	"Is that why you're so mad at me?" I asked.

	"Huh...? No! Of course not! I don't think about Hiiro-chan like 
that! He's like my bestest big brother!"

	"Oookay..." I murmured in English.

	"You took him away from me! You don't deserve him! You should let 
him go so he can go back to the stars with me!"

	Okay, make that the oni version of Skuld.

	"Have you ever thought of getting a long-handled hammer?" I 
asked.

	"Whatever for?" Meia looked absolutely blank.

	"Whacking people?" I shrugged.

	"Whatever for? I've got my flame."

	"Well, seeing as you insist on my playing Keiichi to your 
Skuld..."

	Then the other shoe dropped.

	I started laughing so hard that my sides hurt.

	"What is it?" Meia sounded extremely irritated.

	"Meia-chan," I whooped, "if you carry that analogy to the logical 
extreme... if Hiiro Yui is in any way, shape, or form like Belldandy, I 
will -- I will eat his spandex shorts. I will eat them while he's still 
WEARING them."

	Meia lost it.

	"Lech! Pervert!" 

	I dodged another fart-flare.

	"Creep! Sicko!"

	I dodged another.

	"How... how DARE you!"

	Sheesh, it wasn't that bad an offer (although I probably should 
have gone for the tank top instead of the shorts); after all, it'd 
leave him standing around in his underwear -- wait a moment, I know 
I've been doing my best NOT to look, but I have been seeing bits now 
and then, and I don't actually recall him ever taking off or putting on 
underwear -- oh, yuck. WHAT did I just offer to do?

	"I wish you'd choke on your own tongue and die!"

	All right, babe. This means war.

	I ran next door, grabbed a frying pan, and ran out again, pursued 
by the curious looks of Mrs. Ichinose and Hiiro.

	"All right, Meia," I snarled, pulling my snorkel and mask on. 
"You and me. Mano a mano."

	If you make any cracks about Manos, Trey, I'm going to throw my 
snorkel at you. And since of course it'll fall way short, you're going 
to be responsible for buying me a new one.

	Meia spat her pseudoflame at me. I blocked with the frying pan.

	The battle raged up and down my room, out into the hall 
(garnering a few odd looks from various fellow tenants who wandered out 
to see what was going on) and into the front entryway.

	"She thinks you're taking Hiiro-kun away. How cute!" Mrs. 
Ichinose enthused.

	I would have argued the notion, but she'd obviously already 
started on the sake.

	"She is performing well," Hiiro remarked.

	I *think* that works out to "how cute" in Hiiro-ese, but I'm 
nowhere near proficient in *that* language yet. If ever.

	I had her cornered. She was up against the door, and there was no 
way she could evade this one. Frying Pan of Doom at the ready, I swung.

	"Propane delivery!" a voice called as the door opened.

	I really did try to pull the blow, but it was a last-minute 
thing.

	I didn't exactly miss.

	I did miss Jarimeia, however, for what it's worth.

	"Sorry," I apologized to the propane delivery guy. (Instead of 
having a gas man come around and read the gas meter, somebody comes 
around and delivers propane in tanks. I guess they didn't want to put 
in a kazillion gas lines.) "I sort of slipped a little."

	"A little? A LITTLE!" The propane delivery man was understandably 
upset, given the blow I'd landed on his cheekbone. "A hard-working guy 
shows up just doing his job, and you -- a LITTLE?!"

	He ran out to his car and grabbed up an armful and a half of 
propane tanks (which look kind of like helium tanks). No, I don't know 
how he managed to pick them all up at once. Willpower, probably.

	"I've dedicated my life to propane!" he yelled as he threw them 
all at me.

	Ow ow ow. Trey, never have full propane tanks thrown at you. I'm 
lucky I didn't break anything.

	"If you want to know my father's name, it's Confucius!" the guy 
was shrieking as Meia advanced on me.

	I remember that mostly because it made no sense whatsoever. I 
don't suppose you have a clue what he was talking about?

	Meia opened her mouth.

	"MEIA-CHAN, NO!" Kentarou, Mrs. Ichinose, the Wu-man, and Miss 
Roppongi shrieked in unison.

	I thought I saw Hiiro pointing something at me.

	Then fire lanced down from Meia, and I closed my eyes as the 
world exploded.


	A little bit later, I patted my hair to see if it were still 
there.

	Amazingly enough, it was. It was also shrink-wrapped.

	"Why is my hair shrink-wrapped?" I asked, opening my eyes to see 
that the front of Ikkoku-kan was on fire and that all of us tenants were 
standing around outside.

	"To protect it," Hiiro said. "So it would not be burnt."

	"YOU did that?" I said.

	"Earth campfires are pretty spectacular, aren't they?" Meia said 
happily.

	Oofy took one look at Ikkoku Hall as the flames climbed upward 
and began laughing hysterically.

	"I think you've pleased Wufei," Hiiro said. "He's so happy that 
he's laughing."

	Meia beamed.

	Hair settled, I took thought for other important matters.

	"My books!" I wailed. "Yotsuya's video collection!"

	Hiiro's brow furrowed.

	At that point, Treize dove out of his window, wearing a fluffy 
bathrobe. I think he must have been taking a shower or a bath or 
something.

	"Did I not make a rule not to burn the place down?" he demanded.

	Trey, do not ever piss off our cousin. He gets *scary*. It's not 
that he yelled or anything... he just sort of got deadly.

	Hiiro reached inside his shorts and pulled out a remote control. 
(I do NOT want to think about where he could have pulled it out 
*from*.) He pointed it at his ship and pressed a button.

	Ikkoku-kan was suddenly encased in rainbows.

	The fire went out.

	The rainbows disappeared.

	"That's useful," I remarked.

	Treize, meanwhile, had grabbed Meia by the arm. He proceeded to 
smack her behind.

	I don't think anyone had ever spanked her in her life. She looked 
incredulous.


	Fortunately, my room didn't get damaged in the fire. #1 did 
(Treize let the Ichinosezoku into #3 for that night), and #4 did, and 
both the manager's apartments and #5 were a little charred around the 
edges, but mine was fine except for the burnt spots in the carpet from 
the beginning of the duel.

	Hiiro sat down behind me on my futon and proceeded to lecture me 
while picking the shrink-wrap off, which latter took forEVER.

	The lecture could be divided into two subjects fairly neatly. 
First, Meia. That part could be summarized as "ignore her and she'll 
leave you alone" and "she just wants attention" and "don't provoke 
her."

	Second, Hilde. And this was where I took issue in a big way. 
Where did he get off telling me whom I could or couldn't talk to? So 
his research said that a married Earthman shouldn't pay casual 
attention to other women. So? Obviously he's been reading the wrong 
books. Casual flirtation is perfectly fine even when it's a real 
marriage. 

	Besides, even if I did want more than casual dating and 
flirtation (and I don't know if I did or didn't yet! I'm a teenage guy! 
Do you honestly expect me to ANALYZE my hormones?) he needn't take that 
amiss. A marriage in name only runs on different rules than a love 
match. I swear I'll lend him the story of Tristram and Isolde or 
something. He needn't go all dog-in-the-manger.

	I was still fuming about that when he'd gotten all the plastic 
out of my hair (even if it were superduper plastic, it had still 
caramelized in the heat), and taken back the weird stuff he'd given me 
to put on the places where I'd burned myself (weird stuff, but it works 
great! You'd never know today that I'd done anything more than get a 
sunburn) and taken out his futon, and crawled into it along with Meia, 
who'd taken forever to brush her teeth.

	I figured I'd brush mine on Sunday morning.

	I mean, *really*! What is it to him if I make a date with a nice 
girl? Or don't make a date, in this case? I'd be quite as discreet as 
he felt comfortable with, if he didn't want it being widely known; what 
does he expect me to do, go on a national talk show? Before I'd go on 
one of THOSE, I'd hang myself in my own hair. I wouldn't make him lose 
face or anything. This is JAPAN. It's more expected than otherwise. 
It's not as if he wants me himself or anything.

	That is...

	He said, when I dragged him up to the attic...

	He said that he was stuck being married to me, of course, and...

	Well, he didn't exactly say that he was as uninterested in me as 
I was in him, but he meant that, right? Right?

	I mean, it's really not as if...

	And I can't ask him, because that would be a hell of a thing to 
be wrong about and he'd be insulted forever and it's embarrassing as 
all get out and what if he said he *did*...

	I didn't get much sleep Saturday night.


	Trey, I don't need to remind you not to say ANYTHING about that 
last or the upcoming bit to Aunt Agatha or any of the other aunts and 
uncles or Mother or Dad, right?

	It's not like they can really do anything about it, anyway, so 
it'll only upset them. *You* know.

	When I finally did get to sleep, it was all full of weird dreams. 
I was running around chasing a flying Beatles record trying to see the 
title, and Aunt Ruth was riding on a space shuttle through downtown 
L.A., and Hiiro was Inspector Gadget and rebuilding the front of 
Ikkoku-kan with the big mallet that comes out the top of his hat while 
Miss Roppongi was twirling six hula hoops at once and doing some really 
interesting things inside her dress in the process.

	And then I was lying in bed with half the covers kicked down to 
my waist and Hiiro and Meia were arguing in some language I couldn't 
understand that sounded like Taipei tiles. I know a language can't 
sound like game pieces, but this one did.

	She was leaning over me with something shiny in her hand, and 
then he twisted her arm up behind her back. I'd have said something 
about not using excessive violence on a little kid, but that would have 
necessitated opening my mouth, which would involve moving, and I was 
too dead to even want to.

	Then he said something more and let go of her and she went away, 
and he sort of bent over with an illegible expression on his face and 
pulled the covers back up to my chin and left.

	Now that's a weird dream. Hm. I'll have to ask Hilde which is 
weirder; dreaming that Hiiro was Inspector Gadget or dreaming that 
Hiiro was tucking me in. Weird.

	(Uh, that was probably too many "weird"s in that sentence. But it 
was just so odd!)

	Anyway, early yesterday morning, I woke up when Hiiro and Meia 
left to go nail a front back onto Ikkoku Hall, realized they'd left, 
and went back to sleep. Wonderful sleep. Glorious sleep. With no Hiiro 
in any dreams (although I did have that strange recurring dream again 
where I'm wearing a hat half again as tall as I am, a frilly blouse, 
and lederhosen while standing in a vat of sour cream. But that's really 
not important to this story).

	Of course, even when I woke up, I still felt tired. Another 
boring grey day. Another pleasant valley Sunday, here in shadow-symbol 
land.

	Isn't it odd how the mind hears much more interesting words than 
the lyricists write?

	I was demolishing a box of crackers that tasted almost exactly 
not quite like wheat thins and my third diet chocolate soda of the day 
when Hiiro came back.

	First he explained that he'd sent Meia to go replace a bunch of 
stuff that the fire had destroyed. Then he announced that he'd told 
Hilde to leave me alone.

	I lost it.

	I told him exactly what I thought of his interfering ways, his 
insistence on picking everything up the instant it touched the floor, 
his bratty little cousin, his loomingness, the fact that grunts are NOT 
a valid form of communication, the fact that my social life was in 
enough jeopardy before he came, and a lot more besides.

	Then I climbed up into #5 and ranted about all of the above to 
Oofy, who was studying for another one of his college examinations. He 
threw a box of chocolate-covered malt balls at me, so I said "Don't 
mind if I do" and ate a bunch.

	Then Miss Roppongi came in and attempted to cheer us up. That is, 
she said "Oh, he's gotten into the 'acting possessive' stage! How 
sweet!"

	*Sweet*? Hello?

	"You should move right along into the kissing stage," she went 
on.

	Trey, it's embarrassing as all get out to say this, but I think 
I'm going to HAVE to borrow some of Miss Roppongi's fan-made guys-
boinking-each-other manga smut, if only to understand what the H-E-
double-hockey-sticks she's talking about.

	I mean, MAYBE it could be kissing and making up, but...

	And since when is durance vile supposed to be sexy, anyway?

	"Oh, you'll probably want this," she said, and gave me a tube of 
antibiotic ointment.

	Um. Trey. What am I missing here?

	Why on earth would she give me a tube of antibiotic ointment, 
right out of the blue?

	Besides, I've already got one.

	I stuck it in my pocket anyway though, and went on grumbling 
about Meia.

	"In-laws are supposed to be horrible and awful," Miss Roppongi 
sympathized. "Why do you think I'm not married?"

	"So you could have more fun playing the field?" I flashed her my 
best lecherous grin, just to keep in practice.

	She whapped me with Oofy's pencil case.

	He growled and threw us out.

	I got into the old phone booth at the end of the hall, called up 
Hilde and invited her over for the evening, and then went to go bug 
Treize and see if he had a Lesley Gore tape or CD or record or 
something I could borrow and put on full blast.

	I don't care if he DID buy me for nine thunder-energy glasses. He 
can kill me, but he can't eat me!

	Meia was reading over my shoulder for the last bit, and she seems 
to have collapsed in laughter, so I pushed her out the window and shut 
it. Stuffy is better than having a little oni-girl laughing at my 
sincere letter. Sheesh, doesn't she understand the concept of "private" 
yet?

	Anyway, that's why I was in the manager's apartments when the 
knock came on the door.

	We went to go and see who it was. So did Mrs. Ichinose, probably 
suffering from an excess of curiosity.

	It turned out to be the weird Chinese monk. One thought was 
running through my mind: "Not *again*."

	"Young man," he informed me, "a mononoke is threatening you!"

	"Something's hair is threatening him?" Treize raised an eyebrow.

	"Yes! An evil spirit is threatening him! I was eating my soup 
when the character 'evil' appeared in the middle of it, for one 
moment!"

	This guy was worse than a Jehovah's Witness. Not that I've ever 
met one, but he was obviously worse.

	During his little speech, Hiiro and Meia and Oofy and Miss 
Roppongi had wandered downstairs and into the entryway.

	I wish Yotsuya were still here. I'd love to see how he and the 
monk would face off.

	But anyway.

	"Who do you think you are anyway?" I demanded. "Barging in as if 
you owned the place..."

	"My name is Ahma Saka," the Chinese monk guy said, "and I am a 
high priest."

	Fei-kun wrote that name out for me last night, and it's made up 
of these four really complicated-looking characters whose meaning I 
don't know and really don't feel like looking up.

	"Ah, masaka?" Mrs. Ichinose repeated. (Japanese lesson for the 
day: 'Ah, masaka!' = 'No shit!' OR 'O my God!')

	"But please call me O," the monk finished.

	Oofy made this peculiar growling sound.

	"I don't care if your name's O or Ahma Saka or Ambrose!" I was 
ticked off. "You're still a nutcase monk!"

	"You're in great danger from Hiiro the invader!" he retorted.

	I pulled my braid around over my shoulder to hang in front, so it 
couldn't be used as a handle or a leash or charred by a small rude girl 
or anything.

	Hiiro snorted.

	"He will take you over, body and soul!" O was waving his arms 
now. He could probably go in for an acting career if he ever gets tired 
of the monk shtick.

	"Will not happen." Hiiro had somehow or other moved himself to 
right behind my left shoulder, and, despite the fact that I think I'm a 
little taller than he is, was managing to loom over me without 
noticeably floating in midair. "Suki datcha."

	I grabbed the bottle of sake out of Mrs. Ichinose's hand and 
knocked back a slug. It set me coughing, and Hiiro pounded on my back, 
but I'd really, really needed it. (And Miss Roppongi squealing like a 
thirteen-year-old Leonardo DiCrappio fan didn't help matters, either.)

	See, Trey, there are a bunch of different ways to say "I love 
you" in Japanese -- most of which they never use because you're 
supposed to pick up on it from body language, but you know me and 
nonverbal cues -- they have to be the size of a Mack truck for me to 
start picking up on them.

	Now, "suki" isn't as bad as some of them -- it's the one you use 
to say things like "I love Mother's lasagna" or "I love the beach" or 
"I love riding really really fast in the front of a speedboat with the 
wind in my face" -- but it's also the one that most guys will use to 
tell a girl about their feelings if they have to tell her.

	I mean, what was THAT doing coming out of left field?!

	At that point, mercifully, the power went out.

	We all said the sort of things one says when the power goes out -
- "The power's out" and "My, it's dark."

	There was some movement behind me, and then Treize came back with 
a lit candle in one hand and a bunch of flashlights in the other. "I'd 
suggest making an early night of it," he said as he handed out the 
flashlights.

	"Let's go to bed early," Hiiro agreed.

	"Mmgrph," I said. I do not do role reversals.

	Miss Roppongi cooed some more.

	"Ah, yes, to bed early," Mrs. Ichinose said. "It'll be just like 
when we were newlyweds."

	She juggled her flashlight and sake bottle for a moment before 
getting the door to #1 open and herself through it. I winced.

	After all, on my list of People I Don't Really Want To Think 
About Ever Engaging In Sexual Intercourse, Mrs. Ichinose is way up 
there (although below Professor G-something the physics teacher and 
that exceedingly odd one with all the prosthetics).

	The Wumeister said something very rude-sounding in Chinese, and 
he and O promptly got into a big argument in that language.

	"Hey, Treize, do you have any chapstick?" I asked. "I can't find 
mine."

	He disappeared into his apartment again and came out with a CD 
and a large jar of petroleum jelly.

	"Oh, this'll do," I said happily, unscrewing the top and swiping 
my finger... across a bit on the side of the near-empty jar. "Sheesh, 
this is almost gone. When did you use it all?"

	He found something very interesting about a bit of the rebuilt 
front door frame. I shrugged and anointed my lips. (Isn't that a great 
word?)

	"Did you run out of antibiotic ointment?" Miss Roppongi asked, 
examining the nearly-empty jar with professional interest.

	"Hey, you wouldn't want to put THAT on your lips," I argued. "I 
don't think it's supposed to go in your mouth."

	Miss Roppongi made a very odd snort. Treize quirked the corner of 
his mouth (and it wasn't just a trick of the flickering candlelight, 
either).

	Trey? Whatever the joke is, do I *want* to get it?

	"Shall we go to bed together?" Hiiro repeated.

	"I'm not sleepy," I hastily demurred.

	Meia spat her pseudofire all over my butt. Yowch. Maybe it's not 
really fire, but it sure FEELS like it.

	She'd chased me into my room before I could grab the nearest 
handy object (a dirty undershirt) and throw it over her. Hiiro had 
followed us in; I think he said "Ryoukai," but I'm not really sure.


	Hilde told me later that it must have been right around that time 
that she was stomping over to Ikkoku-kan, in a pretty lousy mood -- she 
had brought along an umbrella, but the wet was splosheling up the backs 
of her legs and her shoulders were cold.

	Besides, she said that she didn't know yet if she wanted to date 
me or not (that's better than a flat-out no, right?) but that she 
REALLY didn't appreciate being told she couldn't.

	That is what's called the Elizabeth Bennett touch. (Did you watch 
the BBC version of that when Mother rented it back in February?)

	Anyway, she was passing one of the vacant lots when it happened. 
Tomobiki has quite a number of vacant lots. I think people are moving 
out a great deal, or maybe it's just that the property values are going 
way down. (For no good reason. It's not as if mutant beings from beyond 
the galaxy had attacked, after all. Unless you count Hiiro, and that's 
a *bit* recent to blame the vacant lots on him.)

	This big tiger-striped unknown flying object shot past her head 
and plowed into the ground at the other end of the vacant lot.

	She was unnerved, of course. Wouldn't you be? But she stayed and 
watched while the top opened and someone clambered out and proceeded to 
fall flat on his face in the wet grass.

	That's my Hilde. 


	Meanwhile, I turned around only to discover that one, Hiiro had 
spread out his futon when I wasn't looking IN THE DARK, and two, he was 
in it, and three, he had lost his tank top. Maybe the shorts as well, 
but the quilt was pulled up over his hips and he was sort of reclining 
on an elbow and giving me a weird look.

	I quickly shone the flashlight somewhere else.

	"What do you think you're DOING?" I squawked.

	"Hn. Hilde's coming over tonight, isn't she?"

	"Well, yes, but... talk about non sequiturs! What on earth are 
you doing?"

	"We shall sleep together, Darling."

	"The hell you say."

	"N?"

	"You needn't be embarrassed," Meia chimed in from MY futon. "I'm 
closing my eyes."

	I think I gibbered for a while. It was very stress-relieving.

	"Where did this come from?" I finally said, keeping the 
flashlight and my eyes on Meia. "You said that all you wanted was to 
stay under the same roof."

	"I did not know you would ignore the marriage so completely as to 
still pursue your former intended."

	"What did you EXPECT me to do?" I thought for a moment. "Besides, 
I don't really want to marry Hilde. That is, I don't want to be married 
to anyone for years and years."

	"Tough," Meia said.

	"You stay out of this!" They never cover situations like this in 
the Foreign Exchange Student Manual. (Hilde lent it to me on 
Wednesday.) "It doesn't have anything to do with you!"

	"Actually," the voice behind me sounded a little... uncertain, 
maybe? "Meia-chan found the documents which suggested this strategy 
today."

	"*What* documents?" I will have you know that I did not screech. 
Even though I very definitely wanted to.

	Meia got up, took the flashlight away, rummaged in one of the 
piles on the floor, and came back with two paperbacks with lurid 
covers.

	"*Lust's Burning Passion*?" I read incredulously. "*Passionate 
Flame of Desire*? You're modeling your behavior on scenarios from 
VALERIE VANDERBILT?" I collapsed onto my bed. Futon. Whatever.

	"Did we get something wrong?" Meia asked. "Don't you know how to 
do it with a man?"

	I wondered if slamming my head into the wall would help. Probably 
not.

	"Why would I *want* to know THAT?"

	"She didn't really say anything about that, but it can't be that 
different, right?"

	I did slam my head. Into the pillow. I'm not totally lost to 
common sense.

	I then proceeded to tell them, in great detail, exactly what was 
wrong with Valerie Vanderbilt. And Valerie von Hentzau. And Nekaya 
Amberine. And Johanna Lindsey. And most of the other... um... you HAVE 
quit reading those, right?

	Anyway, I finished up recommending Hiiro to read Jane Austen and 
Andre Norton and whatsherface, the lady who did One Pound Gospel, if he 
absolutely had to find out what Earth romances should be like.

	Then I pulled the cord of my CD player out of the wall, stuck the 
CD I'd borrowed in it, and hit play. Yes, there was power in the 
batteries.

	(He hadn't had a Lesley Gore album, so he'd lent me the 
soundtrack-and-more to First Wives Club -- not the score, the other 
one. Unfortunately, that starts with a pretty awful song, and I 
couldn't quite reach the skip-ahead button, which meant that I was 
blasting the room with Dionne Warwick. Ugh.)

	Then O opened the door and the lights came on. I don't think I 
want that creep in this building again. He's an electricity jinx.

	Meia spat fire at him, which he barely dodged.

	Well, I guess that proves she's really not all bad.

	Fortunately for my heart, Hiiro was in the process of squirming 
into his tank top.

	O started off on another of his spiels.

	"I ~ can't ~ hear ~ you," I singsonged, putting my hands over my 
ears.

	Hey, after the day I'd had, I had a RIGHT to act as childish as I 
pleased! Ne?

	O tried again. I ignored him.

	"Go away. We're going to bed," Hiiro said.

	I think O's ears must be Hiiro-proof. Neat trick. Wish mine were.

	"YOU'RE going to bed," I corrected. "I'm not sleepy. Not one bit. 
Nope, no, no way. It's a beautiful morning..." I sang along.

	"Shut up," Hiiro growled.

	I thumbed my nose at him.

	"I'm being serious!" O yelled, practically in my ear. "Listen up 
and run away!" His voice dropped. "Although even if you do run off it 
probably won't do any good..."

	"Well, then shut up, for crying out loud!" I was NOT a happy 
camper. "Besides, Hilde's coming over, so I can't possibly run off."

	Hiiro threw a levinbolt at me.

	And people actually endure this for therapy. There's just no 
accounting for tastes.


	I guess O wasn't completely Hiiro-proof after all, because he ran 
off while I was still twitching, mumbling about a cursed family.

	I took my stereo and clambered up to join the party in #5. 
Besides, that's where I'd told Hilde I'd meet her.

	I don't know if you've ever heard that particular CD? The next 
track is sort of not that good, so I don't blame the Wu-man for looking 
more and more annoyed. So I skipped ahead. I'm *such* a nice guy.

	(I think I might have annoyed Miss Roppongi a little, though. 
Well, you can't have everything.)

	Anyway, the next singer was ordering some jerk to take another 
little piece of her heart again, baby, when Hiiro and a Small and Sorry 
Meia came into #5 through the door.

	"I was bad," Meia said in an overly smarmy voice.

	"Yes, you were!" I agreed. "And I'm glad you realize it!"

	"But I was forced to it, because I'm dealing with such an idiot."

	I'd left an empty can of diet chocolate soda in the Wumeister's 
room earlier in the day. Now I threw it at her.

	"She's right," Hiiro said.

	Miss Roppongi perked up her ears. Oofy went on writing and 
ignoring us.

	"If you had not pursued that Hilde person -- "

	I threw the box of malt balls at him. "Sheesh, Hiiro, there's 
such a thing as taking a role too far, you know?"

	It bounced off his chest, and Meia grabbed it and started 
scarfing down the rest of them. "Now you've done it," she said, mouth 
full. "Why'd you have to remind him of that?"

	"Of course I know! Far better than I'd have liked to!" Hiiro 
stomped right up into my face. "At least I am proceeding in an 
intelligent fashion -- and I have to cover for you as well!" 

	Then he said a lot of rude things about me and about Hilde, which 
I'm not going to bother to repeat. Miss Roppongi resettled herself more 
comfortably, audibly lamenting her sad lack of a camcorder.

	Oofy snapped. High, wide, and handsome.

	"WILL YOU KEEP YOUR DOMESTIC DISTURBANCES TO YOURSELVES? HOW CAN 
I STUDY FOR MY ENTRANCE EXAMS WHEN YOU PERSIST ON... on... "

	He started throwing things at us. Pencils. Pens. Notebooks. 
Textbooks. A milk carton of goldfish crackers. A pencil board (which 
fell about a foot away from him; those things are so not aerodynamic.)

	Meia handed a revolving chair to him as he found himself 
temporarily short of missiles.

	"Hsiehsie," Oofy said absently, and threw the chair at Hiiro. He 
ducked it as he had the others, and the chair hit the wall with a 
horrendous crash.

	"Duo-kun?" a voice said tentatively.

	I turned to look at the window. Hilde's head was slowly rising 
above the sill, as she gave her best imitation of a drowned rat in the 
gentle, steady rain.

	"It's a ghost!" Miss Roppongi wailed.

	"Oh, good, she's dead," Meia smirked.

	"Hilde, what happened?" I said, bounding over to the window.

	No, Trey, I didn't think she was dead. However, since Oofy's room 
is on the second floor, I knew *something* weird was going on.

	Hilde continued to rise. "This strange guy brought me here by 
force," she said nervously.

	By then, she had risen enough so that I could see that she was 
sitting on the shoulders of Kazama Shin from Area 88.

	I'm serious, that's what he looked like. Hair and everything. 
Only with horns. And wearing a tiger-skin bodysuit.

	"Wolf out of legend!" Meia gasped.

	I helped Hilde down from the oni-Kazama. This necessitated 
putting my arms around her. You live right, you get right.

	"Hiiro," the newcomer said in a deep voice from behind his hair,
climbing in the window.

	Hiiro's voice took on the tone I had learnt to recognize as 
exasperated. "Trowa."


	I'm shocked at the amount of time it took Mrs. Ichinose and 
Kentarou to wander up and see what was going on. Sheesh, if we had to 
depend on them we could all be murdered in our beds before they figured 
out that something might be happening.

	As a matter of fact, they didn't arrive until after Miss Roppongi 
had hastily excused herself to powder her nose or something.

	I swear to God, Mrs. Ichinose actually blushed.

	"Who is this handsome man?" she asked.

	"This is Trowa," I said, realizing that nobody else in the room 
seemed to want to speak up. "Apparently, he's Hiiro's ex-fiance."

	This explains a few things. Actually, it explains a lot of 
things.

	"I think you should go back with him," I switched gears and went 
back to arguing with Hiiro. "Surely you'd be happier with someone from 
your own culture?"

	"No." Hiiro folded his arms and glared at me. "And my name is not 
Shirley."

	"Are you nuts?" Meia agreed. "They'd just sit around and go '...' 
at each other all day long!"

	"Not my idea of fun," I shrugged, "but hey, whatever floats your 
oyster."

	"*Oyster*?" Hilde's lip trembled for a moment or two before she 
lost the fight and burst into laughter. Meia didn't even bother to try 
to battle it. Neither did Kentarou, for that matter.

	I stood up, bowed extravagantly, and sat down again.

	"I'll just get some snacks," Mrs. Ichinose said, and rushed out.

	"Hey, what got into her?"

	"I don't know," Kentarou answered me.

	Oofy had unearthed a jumbo-size bottle of aspirin and was taking 
some with tea-in-a-can.

	Don't ever drink that stuff, Trey. It's NASTY.

	"But, Hiiro -- " I went back to pushing it -- "this does seem 
like a valid excuse to pack up and leave me. You should take it."

	"Iya."

	"I don't understand it," Hilde said. "He's so handsome. I could 
really go for someone like that."

	"Hilde!" I yelped.

	Trowa peered at her curiously from behind his hair.

	Hilde blushed.

	"Hn. He turns into something odd when he gets worked up." Hiiro 
reached out and grabbed the end of my braid. "I would rather be with 
Darling."

	This time, I did snatch my hair back -- but not before Trowa had 
actually, literally, growled, and then swelled, horns extending, until 
his form had shifted into something that looked like a cross between a 
tiger, a cow, and a gorilla, in size somewhere between Yotsuya and 
Hiiro's father.

	"See?" Hiiro said, waving a hand at the mutant monster.

	"Hey, cool!" I said. "I was afraid Tokyo was all out of mutant 
monsters from beyond the stars."

	"Beyond the galaxy," Meia corrected snippily.

	"Same difference," Kentarou said. "I don't think we've had one 
since before I was born."

	"So what if he turns into a monster?" Hilde said airily. "He's 
quite handsome most of the time!"

	Hiiro glared at Trowa. Trowa went on gazing at Hiiro with a 
blinding lack of anything vaguely resembling thought processes in his 
one visible eye.

	"Go home, you stupid tiger-cow," Hiiro growled.

	"Yeah! Go home!" Meia echoed.


	And then Mrs. Ichinose and Miss Roppongi came back in at the same 
time, the former carrying a tray of roasted sweet potatoes and the 
latter in a black sequined cocktail dress that was so tight it looked 
like it was painted on.

	And BOTH of them made up like nobody's business. I mean, it was a 
really classy makeup job too, looked like they were ready for a night 
out at the opera or something.

	"K - k - Kaasan?" Kentarou squawked. "What's with the face 
paint?"

	"I'm not over the hill yet, you know," Mrs. Ichinose said. 
Demurely.

	Oofy and I took one look at each other and verified that the 
other one of us was there looking as flabbergasted as the one of us 
felt. I mean, Mrs. Ichinose? DEMURE?

	"Oh, is that so, *ma'am*?" Miss Roppongi said sweetly.

	I never knew that women found a face half covered in hair sexy. 
Hmm. Maybe I'll try unraveling my braid and draping it that way for a 
change. Think it'll do any good?

	"Help yourself," Mrs. Ichinose caroled, setting the sweet 
potatoes in front of Trowa.

	He caught up her hand and kissed it.

	"Kyaa!" Mrs. Ichinose said, clapping her hands to her face. "I'm 
so embarrassed!"

	"*I'm* the one who's embarrassed!" Kentarou growled as she ran 
out.

	"He seems pretty fast with women," I commented under my breath.

	"It is only that he has no class," Hiiro muttered, equally 
quietly.

	Trowa grabbed two sweet potatoes and inhaled them in about ten 
seconds.

	"Yeah, I see what you mean," I agreed.

	Trowa inhaled another sweet potato.

	This reminded me that I hadn't had dinner. Also that I probably 
ought to eat something soon, because the combination of the alcohol 
earlier and my empty stomach was starting to make me feel a bit dizzy. 
(At least, I think it was that.)

	"Hey, are you planning to eat all the sweet potatoes?" I 
demanded.

	He finished the potato, nodded, and grabbed another one.

	"I can't stand such a disgusting man," Hiiro said.

	A tear trickled down his fellow-alien's cheek.

	"Stop that, Hiiro-kun!" Miss Roppongi said. "He's crying."

	"He's crying because the sweet potatoes taste so good," Hiiro 
snorted.

	Trowa nodded.

	"He hasn't changed at all!"

	"However, since he is so handsome..." Hilde said.

	"That's all you've *been* saying," Kentarou pointed out.

	"But his looks are the only thing he's got going for him!" Hilde 
spread her hands helplessly.

	Hiiro grabbed my hair AGAIN. This time he sort of wrapped it 
around his wrist. "I wish to stay by Darling's side."

	"Get your filthy hands off his hair!"

	I'm sure THAT'S a good sign. Right, Trey? It's got to mean that 
Hilde's feeling possessive and maybe a bit jealous, right? Or at the 
very least that she understands my feelings and doesn't want me to get 
hit on by a guy any more than I want a guy to hit on me.

	"Good for you," Miss Roppongi said at almost the same time. "I'm 
sure you won't mind if I borrow your ex for a while -- I'm certainly 
not interested in his BRAINS."

	And right about there we all began yelling at once, except for 
Kentarou and Meia, who got into the Wumeister's brand new six-pound bag 
of popcorn and just sat back and watched the show. I know I said a few 
things about football bats and the like which I probably wouldn't have 
said had I been sober (I have no quarrel whatsoever with gay people 
provided they don't do it in the street and frighten the horses, and 
don't hit on ME). I have the general impression Oofy was ranting about 
his studying because that's what he always rants about.

	Then, all of a sudden, everyone broke off, leaving me indignantly 
voicing amidst utter silence "... and in most Norse and Celtic 
cultures, long hair was considered a sign of virility -- huh?"

	"Gun," Trowa said in English, pointing one at me.

	I swear to God, if it weren't a Kill-O-Zap pistol, it was a 
direct competitor or a market compatible. It made it absolutely CRYSTAL 
clear that there was a right end and a wrong end to that thing, and 
that I happened to be on the wrong end.

	"Don't shoot!" I yelped, raising my hands.

	"He's challenging you to a duel," Meia translated, malicious 
amusement dancing in her eyes.

	Trey, the early Christian iconographers have GOT to have met up 
with Oni sometime back then. No ifs, ands, or buts. Their devils HAD to 
be inspired by Meia's umpty-somethingth-great-grandparents. (And 
Hiiro's, for that matter.)

	"Hiiro," Trowa went on.

	"The winner of the duel will get to do as he pleases with Hiiro-
chan," Meia translated.

	"Does that mean I can make him go home if I win?" I asked. Heyyy.

	"No."

	"...oh."

	And that's when you called. They all followed me to the telephone 
booth and crowded me, so you can see why I was a little short with you. 
Make that a lot short with you. I'm sorry.


	But, a lot sooner than I wanted, we were out in a vacant lot. Not 
the one where Trowa crashed his ship. Another vacant lot. Like I said, 
there are too darn many vacant lots around here, and that's a fact. I 
think I'll suggest to the Neighborhood Association that we take a page 
from Alvin Fernald and turn a couple of them into parks. Even if I 
don't get to wear a Superweasel costume.

	 Trowa and I faced each other grimly (well, *I* was grim. He was 
sort of blank). Hilde was sniffling. Hiiro was watching with intent 
eyes.

	So, for that matter, were the rest of the inhabitants of Ikkoku-
kan -- even Oofy, who had found himself dragged along willy-nilly in 
the flow of people from his room.

	So, for that matter, were a whole bunch of neighbors and people 
who happened to be in the area. I swear, the Tomobiki neighborhood has 
the fastest Rubbernecker Crowd-Coalescing Time I've ever seen. 

	Several of those last were muttering things like "A duel!" and 
"That Maxwell boy again" in order to bring later arrivals up to speed.

	Miss Roppongi stepped forward. "Ready!

	"Get set!

	"HAJIME!"

	And, in accordance with her command to begin, Trowa and I leapt 
upon... 

	...the clamp of roasted sweet potatoes. (A mound of potatoes IS 
called a clamp. You know. You have a gaggle of geese, a pod of whales, 
a herd of cows, a flock of sheep, a pack of dogs, a skulk of foxes, an 
exaltation of larks, a murder of crows... a clamp of potatoes.)

	And I went at them like nobody's business. I was STARVING.

	"They choose to duel," the Wu-man sounded as if he couldn't make 
his mind up whether to be incredulous, bemused, or aghast, "by having a 
SWEET POTATO-EATING CONTEST?"

	"We didn't have any American pie," Kentarou shrugged.

	 "At least," Treize said, "it is far less likely to accidentally 
cause harm to innocent bystanders."

	Miss Roppongi went on ticking off sweet potatoes in two columns.

	I paused to cough on a bit that went down wrong, swallow most of 
a glass of water, and suck in a big breath of air before returning to 
gobbling.

	Kentarou told me later that while we were eating sweet potatoes 
as fast as we could manage to choke them down, his parents were 
dramatically reenacting one of the big climatic scenes from 
"Konjikiyasha," which is like this classic Japanese soap opera from 
back in the days before radio when you serialized them in magazines and 
then collected the whole schmeer in a three-volume novel or two. Darn 
it, why do those things never happen when I can pay attention to them? 
I'd have paid good money to see that.

	I *did* hear Mrs. Ichinose when she'd pushed her way to the front 
and was yelling "Trowa-san! Break a leg!", though.

	We'd both slowed down a bunch by then; I was feeling rather as if 
I'd eaten my weight in sweet potatoes, and there still seemed to be 
more to eat. Ugh.

	However, Trowa was still going at a steadier pace than I was.

	"Eat faster!" Hiiro ordered me.

	I ignored him.

	He stomped over, grabbed a couple of sweet potatoes, and jammed 
them into my mouth.

	Bleagh.

	Hilde slammed into Hiiro, clawing at his hand and face. "Are you 
trying to kill him?" she shrieked.

	I, thankfully, spat the sweet potatoes back out before I gagged 
on them, and then began to eat one at a reasonable, decent pace.

	"He'll be killed if he loses anyway." In his normal monotone, no 
less.

	Okay. I could manage to eat the sweet potato a *little* faster.

	"But -- " Hilde said.

	And just then, Trowa tried to shove four potatoes in his mouth at 
once and expanded to tiger-cow-gorilla form.

	Hiiro grabbed one of my arms and held it above my head. "Darling 
wa kachi datcha!" he proclaimed, the faintest hint of triumph in his
voice.

	I was so out of it that it took my brain a moment or five to 
process his announcement that I'd won.

	"He did?" Miss Roppongi said.

	"Trowa transformed," Meia exulted, "so he lost. Biiida!"

	"Huh?" several people said.

	Trowa-cow turned and bolted, earth thudding with every footfall.

	I slumped. Ugh. I think my stomach weighed more than I did at 
that moment.

	Hiiro picked me up.

	"Put me down!"

	"You should not walk all the way back to Ikkoku Hall in your 
condition."

	"Put me DOWN!" I squirmed and twisted and generally tried to get 
loose.

	He went up thirty feet.

	I quit moving. (I hate it when he does that...)


	When he finally did put me down (so that he could open the door), 
I stomped off and took a long, hot bath. Which I desperately needed at 
that point.

	You might be interested to know that I'm actually wearing pajamas 
these days. They aren't *that* uncomfortable to sleep in, and for some 
reason I don't feel comfortable sleeping in my underwear any more. Or 
even my underwear and a T shirt, the way you do sometimes.

	Then I remembered where I'd left my stereo, so I had to knock on 
Oofy's door (he'd locked it) and ask for it back.

	All in all, I really don't think I cared much for yesterday, 
except for the bit at the very end when I crawled into bed and set the 
stereo blasting the remix of "You Don't Own Me" so that it was blaring 
into Hiiro's ears and Oofy pounded on the ceiling three times and 
finally stuck his head through the top of the closet and yelled at me 
to turn that thing DOWN.

	Don't say I can't go with -- other girls.

	And don't tell me what to do, and don't tell me what to say...


	I woke up this morning to find out that Hiiro had moved my alarm 
clock out of smacking range.

	He was sitting on his futon, completely dressed, and when I 
crawled over in the general direction of the annoying beep, he told me 
that he had been mistaken.

	That's exactly what he said.

	I know my mouth gaped open, because I'm fairly sure that's as 
close as he gets to an APOLOGY.

	So I think we're going to pretend the weekend didn't happen, 
except for the undeniable fact that Jarimeia the Incredibly Obnoxious 
is still with us (and went on sleeping while I scraped my jaw off the 
floor and put my eyeballs back in their sockets and finally got around 
to whacking the snoozer. And I thought Treize was the only one who 
could manage that trick).


	Today's been -- well, it's been Monday, and I really do think 
that the general level of human sanity would be vastly improved if the 
Powers That Be would just remove Monday from the week.

	On the other hand, while school was pretty awful, it was *normal* 
awful. I've got to write a composition in Japanese -- I figured I'd 
translate one of the stories in my binder -- and one in English on "An 
Interesting Tanabata Occurrence." I don't think I've ever *had* an 
interesting Tanabata occurrence -- I'll have to check when it is again.

	Oh, and we started a new unit in math, and Relena was out sick. 
Pepper said it might be the 24-hour flu... or a bronchial infection... or 
maybe mononucleosis...

	Shows what I get for asking *her*.

	Anyway, somehow or other I ended up wandering around after school 
with the lesser three Spice Girls. 

	Now, if I made a list of all the girls in Tomobiki High whom I 
actually would like to go out with, or even be seen with, Sugar, 
Ginger, and Pepper would be at the very bottom.

	It's not really that much fun being with them, to be honest:
they're not that attractive, their manners leave a thing or five to be
desired, and they could really use a nice, long, determined scrub.

	On the other hand, they aren't any worse than some of the guys I 
know back home, and definitely better than the Asshole Patrol -- yeah, 
I know, Trey, Cardinal Richelieu, Ing the Invincible, and Marvin the 
Paranoid Android would be an improvement on the Asshole Patrol (at 
least they'd have better manners) -- so I figured I'd declare them 
honorary guys for hanging-out-with purposes.

	We were sort of heading in the general direction of home, 
complaining about today's simulator practice (a bitch and a half, 
believe you me) when we saw a whole flock of people, so naturally we 
went to see what it was all about.

	It turned out to be the grand opening of a beefbowl restaurant, 
with a first-day special offer of beefbowl for only a hundred en.

	That's cheaper than a dollar!

	So we all looked at each other, said "Heyyyy," and shoved our way 
through the crowd. You know. Boys are *always* hungry, teenagers are 
*always* starving, and we teenage boys could outeat the Blob on a good 
day.

	And I like beefbowl fine -- rather have pizza, but they can't 
make it right here for some reason. I think the State Department should 
send Japan a delegation to teach them how to make good pizza.

	We got inside. And stopped dead.

	Hey, you would have too if you saw a gigantic tiger-cow-gorilla 
at the counter scarfing down bowl after bowl of beefbowl before two 
restaurant workers' panicked eyes.

	"Aw, man! I thought he left!"

	Well, I *had*.

	"A cow sits there, feeding upon beefbowl." Do I really need to
tell you that was Sugar?

	"Yeah, that's Trowa," I shrugged.

	"THAT'S Trowa?" Ginger sounded, frankly, incredulous.

	"Didn't I mention he transforms?"

	The subject of our conversation chose this moment to turn around 
and give me a death glare from behind long locks of tiger-striped hair 
-- I think I forgot to mention that he still has hair in his face when 
he transforms. Or maybe he keeps his forelock when he changes back to 
humanoid.

	Didn't faze ME. He needs to take some lessons in the fine art of 
How To Eviscerate People And Ignite Buildings By Prolonged Eye Contact 
from Hiiro before he'd be able to get me to do more than bat an 
eyelash.

	The gigantic paw on my shoulder, with claws out and ready to sink 
home, was much more effective.

	"An extra-large beefbowl! QUICKLY!" I demanded.

	"Y-yes. Ex-extra large," one of the guys behind the counter
stammered.


	Fifteen minutes later, we were all sitting at one of the tables,
cow-Trowa had gone through six more extra-large beefbowls, and I was
wondering how much cash the Spice Girls had on them, because what I had in
my pockets was *so* not going to cover the tab.

	"That's TROWA?" Ginger still didn't seem to have managed to quite
wrap her mind around the concept. I didn't think it was *that* big a
mental hurdle, but I guess Ginger's brain is just incredibly compact.

	Trowa, having finished the eighth beefbowl, leaned back and yawned
immensely.

	"What's he DOING?" Pepper squawked.

	"He is muchly enraged!" Sugar whimpered.

	"Another beefbowl!" Ginger squealed.

	The attendants brought out another beefbowl as Trowa produced a
scrap of rubber from somewhere or other about his person, raised it to 
his mouth, and huffed and puffed into it.

	The rubber swelled into a cutely disproportionate image, the size
and shape of those stuffed toys you win in the UFO catcher machines, of
Hiiro, colored appropriately. Cow-Trowa cradled it soulfully, tears
standing out in his eyes.

	"It is most certainly, without any possible possiblinging of
doubt, Yui-kun." Sugar kept her voice low.

	I didn't. "Hey, isn't that a bit on the small side for a blow-up
doll?"

	"Even if it is just a doll, we will not permit you to insult
Yui-kun in that fashion!"

	I don't remember which one said that, but next thing I knew they
were pounding on me and the tiger-cow-gorilla indiscriminately. Is that
fair? Trey? I ask you?

	Trowa turned and roared at us.

	We all shut up.

	Trowa noticed his new helping and dove into it. Well, not
literally, because he wouldn't exactly fit in it, but he certainly got his
entire muzzle into the bowl.

	"Why exactly was Trowa here anyway?" Pepper asked.

	"Oh, he's Hiiro's ex-fiance," I said, popping one of the ice cubes
from my former water into my mouth.

	They looked pretty stunned.

	"Yui-kun was engaged to that THING?"

	I can't see that Ginger exactly has room to talk, but... "He
transforms."

	"Ha!" Sugar was obviously about to go off on one of her chop-suey
rants again. "Of what manner of man might this before-us one be, who is
wear the so-stupid cow shape-form?"

	Some chopsticks tapped her on the hand.

	Sugar followed the chopsticks, the hand attached to them, the arm 
attached to the hand, and so forth with her eyes, until at last they 
rested on humanoid-Trowa's face.

	"It is not the lovely face which one sees that is of the great 
importance," she hastily said, "but the heart of irreproachable 
honorableness and sentiments of utmost kindness!"

	Yeah, right.

	"THAT'S TROWA?"

	I hope they never run the flowers-for-Algernon experiment at 
Tomobiki High, because Ginger would be the first candidate, and I'd 
rather not have her wasting death on my mind, thank you.

	"Hmm." Pepper chewed on a bit of her hair. Eyeugch. "If they were 
to reconcile, it might be that they -- seeing as the two of them are so 
hot and all -- would pose for pictures together, or that certain clever 
and sneaky people might find a way to watch them together, or it might 
not."

	A speculative look crossed Sugar's face. 

	Remind me NEVER to introduce them to Miss Roppongi.

	And is that supposed to imply that I'm not hot? I didn't know 
whether to be grateful or insulted.

	Trowa squeezed the inflatable doll more tightly.

	One of its feet popped.

	The thing shot up out of Trowa's arms, did a few wild loop-the-
loops in the shop, and then shot out the open door in its best 
imitation of a helium balloon that someone has let go before tying the 
bottom off.

	Do I WANT to know what oni exhale? Is it hazardous to my health 
or something to sleep in the same room as Hiiro?

	But the way the doll had sprzled around, and the look of utter
"What the?" on Trowa's face --

	We all died laughing.

	"Rejected by a *doll*!"

	Trowa, in the spiffy Victorian phrase, took exception to this
remark.

	Rather violent exception; we all bolted out the door, nearly
getting stuck in the doorframe for a moment before we popped out like a
cork from a bottle, empty bowls flying past our ears.

	"Darling!"

	Hiiro and Meia were perched on the crosspiece of a telephone pole.

	"We were *looking* for you," Meia said, tapping a heel against the
weather-beaten wood.

	"Wah! YUI-KUN!"

	I'm glad *somebody* was happy.

	Hiiro jumped off.

	I think the only thing going through my mind was "What is he
THINKING?"

	Then Trowa stepped in front of me, arms spread wide.

	Hiiro picked up speed, twisting so that he was coming down
feet-first like some sort of human -- I mean oni guided missile.

	The Spice Girls took one look at the scene and yelled "Yui-kun,
look out!" as they tackled Trowa and pulled him flat.

	Like Hiiro wasn't about to do that anyway... and now was
apparently trying to slow down.

	Oh, hell.

	I stepped out to try to grab an arm and maybe get pulled around in
a circle or something while he dumped speed, but I miscalculated or
something and got smacked flat when his chest ran into mine.

	I seem to end up flat on my back a lot these days.

	"Darling. You did not have to protect me with your body."

	"I hadn't intended to!"

	Great. Either he thinks I'm a melodramatic self-sacrificing idiot,
or he just thinks I'm an idiot. You just can't win some days.

	"Hiiro." Trowa had somehow or other worked things so that he was
standing up and the three members of the Gang of Four were sprawled on the
pavement, looking even more out of it than I felt.

	He then picked up the deflated figure (when'd he find that again?)
and pointed at it. Then he produced a little change purse from somewhere
and waved it.

	Geez, and I thought HIIRO was taciturn.

	"He saved up all his money," Meia came down to our level to
translate, "and came here to find Hiiro."

	Trowa pulled a pocket inside out and pointed at the restaurant.

	"Then he blew all his money on beefbowl, so he's flat broke."

	"Hn." Hiiro had an expression on his face like the only mature
person in a playgroundful of kindergarteners. "See why I no longer hold
the engagement valid?"

	"Wait a second." Something had been striking me as very wrong
since yesterday. "I thought you said that contracts had to be honored
among the oni?"

	"The affiancement was before he became Trowa," Hiiro explained. Or
didn't explain, more accurately. "I have no duty to endure Trowa's
habits."

	I didn't get it.

	"Maybe if you could try and make a decent proposal he might go
back with you," Pepper said.

	Ginger eeped. "But we don't want Yui-kun to go away!"

	Hiiro snorted.

	"In what tongue is this troth intended to be pledged with great
honorableness?"

	"A Terran one," Hiiro answered Sugar.

	"And he can't speak any Earth languages..." I was tempted to
smile. Hiiro has an evil sense of humor buried somewhere... about six feet
deep at least, but somewhere.

	Then I wondered why I was thinking of smiling.

	I mean -- that is -- AAARGH!

	I am NOT the sort of person who laughs at people for things they
can't help! Not when I know just how it feels!

	Trowa looked at us for a moment and then sort of half-smirked,
which was EXTREMELY disturbing.

	Then he whipped out a scroll of tiger fur, unrolled it, and began
reading.

	Aargh. That's bad. That's beyond bad.

	See, the Japanese call a "tiger scroll" what we'd call a "cheat
sheet."

	"Will... you..." Trowa slowly read from his cheat sheet, "cook...
for... me... for... the... rest... of... my... life?"

	My God. He actually put more than two words together.

	I think we all just stood around goggling for a while.

	"Hey, speak up," Ginger said. I looked to see what she was talking
about, and noticed that Trowa's mouth was working.

	"Pro... pro... mise..."

	"Mm?" Pepper grunted curiously.

	"Pro...mise."

	"What's that?" Meia asked.

	"Promise." Trowa stepped up to within an inch of Hiiro. I could
have told him that was a waste of time; the guy just isn't intimidatible.

	"Promise?" Hiiro turned to me. "Did I promise him something?"

	"Saa... can't remember anything off the top of my head." I
scratched the back of my head.

	"No promise recalls itself to me," Sugar agreed.

	"Promise? What's that?"

	"Was there a promise?"

	Trowa lost his temper, and his hold on his form.

	We exchanged a glance and ran like hell.


	"I had thought that the betrothal to Yui-kun was of great
displeasingness to you," Sugar panted out as we stopped, backs against a
wall, and tried to catch our breath (hoping we'd lost him).

	"It is."

	"Then... for why...?"

	"Hey, he deserves better than to get out of one unwanted marriage
just to be stuck in ANOTHER one, this time to some one with the brain
capacity of your average tofu dog. I'm sure my parents can figure out a
way to get us both out of it."

	Hiiro turned and stared at me. I think he was going to say
something, but just then a huge mutant tiger-cow-gorilla bore down on us
and we all ran off again.

	
	It was an... interesting chase, I'll say that much.

	It probably would have been a lot shorter except for us keeping
going places Trowa couldn't quite fit through and caused a lot of
destruction when he tried -- fortunately he wasn't thinking straight
enough to switch form.

	"What's all that," I asked as the monster demolished a vending
cart, "about 'before he was Trowa'?"

	"Trowa accidentally got killed last Setsubun," Meia said, latching
onto Hiiro's left arm for a tow.

	"So what's this guy? A ghost?"

	"Weregild," Hiiro said, going up a few feet to avoid an ornamental
hedge.

	"It was kind of not exactly his side's fault," Meia amplified, "so
he took Trowa's place. And Hiiro-chan wasn't promised to Trowa, so no
engagement."

	"Hn."

	Translation from Grunt: 'That isn't quite accurate.'

	"Well, the thing is -- " Meia broke off for a moment as we looped
around Trowa and started back the other way -- "that Trowa was stupid, so
Trowa acts stupid, and like you said, Hiiro-chan shouldn't marry someone
with the brain capacity of your average tofu dog." 

	We passed the wrecked cart and its noisily lamenting operator.

	Meia dropped back to talk to him -- I caught the words "Ikkoku
Hall" and "directions."

	I suppose it's nice to offer to pay for the damage, but she could
have just given him the address so he could send us a bill, right?


	"Sorry! Coming through!"

	I really felt bad about crashing through the couple on the park
bench like that, especially since it looked like they were about to kiss.

	Well, Hiiro started it.

	I looked back to make sure they weren't smushed by way too many
pounds of mutant monster or anything, and saw Trowa go humanoid, slump on
the lady, and dazedly repeat "Will you cook for me for the rest of my
life?"

	Then he looked up and said "Not Hiiro."

	Well, duh! I don't know how dumb you'd have to be to mistake Hiiro
for a girl who looked like THAT.

	"Oh, I will!" the woman declared, eyes shining.

	"T - Tanko-san!" her date gasped.

	Oh... dear. In the immortal words of Bailesu, "It falls on a newt.
This could be trouble."

	"Come *on*, Darling," Hiiro ordered.

	Okay, okay, whatever.


	I think the park was entirely full of girls being taken out on
dates by guys.

	And Trowa managed to accidentally propose to just about every one
of them.

	That is, we ran right through most of them, he gasped out the
words in their general direction, and then he capped it all by standing on
a telephone pole and belting the proposal out through a microphone. Or can
you only use that verb when you're talking about singing?

	I passed Meia cheerfully telling a few of the women "And you can
find that handsome guy at this place."

	I was thinking 'Oh, great, maybe she's directing them away from
Ikkoku-kan for a change.'

	Then she ran over to a group of exceedingly annoyed-looking guys
and began "If you want revenge on that guy, go to Ikkoku Hall..."

	Why, that little bitch.

	"I'm a gooood girl!" she was exulting to herself as I changed
direction and charged her.

	She shot up, and I took a header over a bush I hadn't realized was
there, came down hard, and decided that the ground was a very friendly
place for rest and recuperation.

	Just about when I was feeling human again, somebody came crashing
down on top of me.

	"Will you cook for me for the rest of my life?"

	"Hell, no!" Duo Maxwell was NOT a happy camper. Nope nope nope.

	"You."

	"Yeah, it's me," I agreed with Tall, Dumb, and Handsome If You
Swing That Way, I Suppose, Although Frankly I Don't Really See It.

	He crawled off me and flopped. I guess he was tired, too.

	"So," I finally said. "Who are you when you aren't Trowa?"

	"... Nobody."

	Okayyy. "Then there's a pair of us -- don't tell! / They'd banish
us, you know."

	His lips actually honest-to-God quirked. "Terran poet Amelia
Dickonsen."

	"Emily Dickinson," I corrected with the small bit of brain that
wasn't taken up with being flabbergasted.

	I think I stared at him for a short while. Or a long while. Well,
it was a while.

	"So why are you pretending to be STUPID?"

	"Duty."

	Great. Either he and Hiiro were absolutely made for each other, or
they're long-lost twins separated at birth.

	Why do I always attract the weirdos?

	"Darling!"

	I watched all the intelligence drain out of Trowa's face as he
jumped up and tried to glomp Hiiro.

	Hiiro went up about ten feet.

	Useful technique. Wish I could use it on him.


	Apparently, Relena started feeling better in the afternoon, so she
actually got up and figured she'd try and make it to my tutoring session.

	Then she ran into Hilde, so they were talking on their way there.

	About ME.

	Only bright spot in all of Monday, I think.

	As nearly as I can figure out (neither one of them was all that
vocal on the subject), Japanese guys think all Americans are easy. So once
they found out Hilde wasn't, they quit asking her out.

	Their loss.

	But this meant that I'm the only guy who's been asking Hilde out
for the last couple weeks, and... well... she might only have gone on a
date or two with me because I'm the only one who asked her, and if so I'll
*take* that, but I'd rather that it was because she genuinely wanted to go
out with me.

	Am I losing you?

	Anyway, so Relena asked Hilde what would happen if, say, some
other guy were to propose to her.

	SHE proposed to ME, dammit! Any guy proposes to a
fifteen-year-old, I'm going to start entertaining serious doubts about his
mental health here. No matter what age he is.

	Hilde said "Yeah, like that would ever happen."

	At this point we all came tearing around the corner and I nearly
slammed dead into Hilde for the second time in as many days, only
fortunately Hiiro grabbed me by the back of my uniform jacket and hoisted
me over her head, putting me down on top of a handy seven-foot high brick
wall.

	Interesting experience. Wouldn't mind doing it again if I could
figure out something more comfortable for him to lift me by.

	This time *Trowa* ran into Hilde and put his arms around her to
keep her from falling over.

	Which was well and good as far as it went, I suppose, but he
didn't have to KEEP holding her, did he?

	And then he said... well, I'll give you three guesses, and the
first two don't count.

	"T... Trowa-san?" Hilde sounded dazed. "Did you just propose to
me?"

	"Aw, he says that to all the girls," I told her. 

	"This is so sudden." She didn't even seem to hear me. "I'd
probably never see my parents again... "

	"Uh, Hilde?"

	"...and I don't even know if we're uh, compatible..." She was
blushing like crazy.

	"Uh, Hilde?"

	"...and not just like that, either. Mom always said that when you
get married, your husband should be your very best friend as well as the
guy who makes you go weak in the knees and the one who lights your world
with his presence -- Mom gets surprisingly poetic sometimes... "

	I guess that explains some things. Or maybe not.

	"Hilde?"

	"...and then, you turn into that cow thing a lot of the time, and
I just don't know if I could deal with that on a long-term basis... "

	"Hilde?"

	"... not to mention that I think I might want children someday,
and I have no idea what your feelings are on the subject, or if it's moot,
although I suppose we could always adopt..."

	"HILDE!"

	"Oh, hi, Duo. How in the world did you get up there?"

	"WHAT ON EARTH DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?"

	"Agreeing to marry Trowa?" Hiiro said, floating at my current
shoulder level.

	I whirled on him. "YOU stay out of this!"

	"I wasn't exactly agreeing... " Hilde said at the same time.

	Also at the same time, Trowa choked "Hiiro!"

	Hiiro took off in the general direction of Ikkoku-kan, Trowa hot
on his heels.

	I hopped off the wall and started yelling at Hilde, and she yelled
back at me for a while as the whole argument started feeling more and more
familiar -- although I couldn't quite place it.

	And then she yelled "I'm not your personal property!" hit me with 
her schoolbag, and stomped off. Owwww.

	And that was when I realized I'd been using some of the exact same
words and phrases Hiiro had been throwing at me when he told me to leave
Hilde alone. And what's more, she'd been using some of my exact same
arguments back at me.

	Of course, this was different, since this time I was right. (Well,
I'd been right the last time too, but you know what I mean.)

	Still...

	It's all Hiiro's fault. If I was coming across as -- what's the
word I want -- *superior* as he had, no wonder I set her back on edge.

	So I picked myself up and trudged home, Relena burning a hole in
my back with her eyes all the way, and Sugar and Pepper woke Ginger up and
followed me for some reason.


	Kentarou told me that he'd just come home and was taking his shoes
off when Hiiro burst in the door, looked around, and nearly grabbed *him*,
only Mrs. Ichinose poked her head out and said "What's going on?"

	Hiiro grabbed her by the shoulders instead and shoved her in the
direction of the door, as he bolted for Oofy's room.

	Trowa apparently rushed in not half a minute later and repeated
his proposal to Mrs. Ichinose, of all people!

	At any rate, when we finally raced in, slammed the door behind us, 
and I yelled "I'm here!" for the benefit of anyone who might actually
possibly be interested, Mrs. Ichinose was repeating "That was certainly a
proposal. To me, a married woman." and Kentarou looked as if he were
desperately hoping that the floor would open up and swallow him.

	So was I, for that matter.

	Then Mrs. Ichinose looked up and said "Whatever is all that noise
outside?"

	"It is mere sounds, of no import," Sugar said.

	"Maxwell, what *have* you done this time?" 

	"Uh..." I tried... "well... you see..."

	And then the door flew open and the beefbowl people and the people
whose stuff had accidentally gotten smashed from the chase and all the
girls from the park and all their ticked-off boyfriends and Jarimeia
poured in.

	"I'm a *good* girl!"


	They're still all here making noise -- Trowa parked himself
outside the door of #5 and, last I put my ear to it, was slowly reading
off the words for "You... are... under... a... mistaken... impression."

	"Oh, say it isn't so!" about fifteen women were cooing.

	Why do some people have all the luck?

	The people who wanted money, seeing that I'd had sense enough to
lock myself into #5 along with the Wu-man (and, unfortunately, along with
Hiiro and Meia; although he didn't even bat an eyelash when I tossed her
out the window for aggravated annoyance. It's okay, she flies, you'll
recall) were making demands of the Ichinosezoku, all four Spice Girls, and
Miss Roppongi -- talk about getting blood from a stone on that last! --
while I sit here comfortably eating Fei-kun's lychee jellies, writing this
letter to you, and wondering when the heck Treize is going to get home
and what he'll say when he does. (Ouch.)

	Sheesh, what with all the stuff that's been going on, especially
these last three days, I'm tempted to write the lady who writes *One Pound
Gospel* and *Ranma 1/2* and see if I can rent the story of my adventures
in Japan to her; she could probably turn them into a long-running manga
series or two and make a ton of money.

	And while I wouldn't wish the last three days on my worst enemy --
well, okay, on my worst enemy, but not on my third-worst by any means -- I
have the unsettling feeling that I'm going to look back on them as golden
days of normality.

	Like that song I heard the other day and can't quite recall the
lyrics to -- this last page is on the back of one of my failed attempts.

Love,
Duo, Supreme Master of the Universe --
-- although it's showing an embarrassing tendency not to pay attention.

Hen to hen o atsumete, motto hen ni shimashoo; hen na hen na uchuu wa
taihen da! da! da!

Continue? (Y/N)
C:\>Y


Those Obnoxious Pirots
(Spelling Intentional):
The Swallow and the Penguin


Dear Trey,

	Well, nothing much of a serious and permanent nature has happened
around here since my last letter, although you won't believe who our new
flight instructor is. That is, the one thing that -- well, it didn't
really -- look, to quote Julia Larwood in Sarah Caudwell's *Thus Was
Adonis Murdered*, "it is no use writing to you in this haphazard 
incoherent fashion, beginning at the end and ending God knows where. I
will proceed clearly and chronologically, beginning at the beginning."

	You really ought to read those books -- Mother lent me the first
one right before the whole trip thing came up, and Treize has the others.
They're really fun, although they're written in this pseudo-ultra-literary
style that might put some people off... it's all part of the joke.

	Trey, why is it that, when you use proper speech correctly, you
sound like a girl? I mean, the only guy under the age of thirty I've ever
actually seen use a literate vocabulary and the subjunctive tense -- don't
worry, you won't know what that is until you get to second-year French,
because English cleverly disguises its subjunctives -- and NOT sound girly
is Treize, and I think he gets by on sheer force of personality or
something.

	At any rate, the most permanent thing happened first -- I got a
letter, certificate or five, and pamphlets back from the British
government. You are now reading words from the pen (well, pencil) of Lord
Duo Maxwell, Earl of Ickenham. The woman who wrote the letter is
apparently a fellow Wodehouse fan and congratulated me on my good taste. I
keep telling you, you ought to read those. They are *hilarious*. Well,
some are better than others, but if you try *Fish Preferred* or *The Plot
That Thickened* or *Code of the Woosters*...

	Yes, I know, you don't want to read a letter that's nothing but
book recommendations.

	Yes, Trowa has left. Gone. Kaput. He is among the stars. I asked
Hiiro.

	No, he hasn't tried to seduce me (or whatever the hell that was)
again. Thank God. I'm fifteen. I'm way too young to have heart attacks.

	You're... undoubtedly right about the antibiotic ointment. I think
it was the "antibiotic" that threw me -- I mean... I don't want to think
about it! That's si~i~ck! Especially... I mean... great, I think Treize
*is* bi. Good. I can dump all those magazines off on him, and HE can
decide whether to throw them out or not. I'm already giving the Playgirls
to Miss Roppongi. She's got some Devious Plan involving them and her
ex-husband which I have no desire what-so-ever to know about.

	For the essay on the Interesting Tanabata Occurrence, I decided to
write about the time we met An. I mean, it's close enough datewise, and
it's far and away the most out-there thing that ever happened to me in
July. Have you heard from her recently, by any chance? Last I knew she was
planning to let the whole unkindness camp out in her apartment for the
late fall and winter, and all I can say is that I hope that they've
figured out how to flush with their talons or have some other
arrangements, or she's going to be putting down a *lot* of newspapers.

	It was while I was writing that that I discovered that Hiiro has
philosophical objections to the song "Along Comes Mary," due to the fact
that it does not make sense. 

	Songs are supposed to make sense?

	So I've been playing it and "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and
"Quinn the Eskimo" and this Monty Python CD I found at a used CD store
whenever I want him to go do something else, and it seems to be working.

	It's got the Camelot song on it. And Brave Sir Robin. And the
Bridge. And the Bookshop. And the Dead Parrot Sketch. And this wonderful,
wonderful, wonderful song called "Always Look On The Bright Side of Life"
that you absolutely have to hear -- I think I'm going to adopt it as my
personal philosophy or something -- and I cannot BELIEVE I found it a week
ago Tuesday and that it was only twelve hundred en. I mean, it's even
funnier than "Life's Gonna Suck."

	Of course, now Meia-chan is a fan of Monty Python. Yotsuya 
actually had the bilingual laserdisc of Monty Python and the Holy Grail,
so we all (well, that is, except for Hiiro) hooked it up in #5 and watched
it on Thursday night, because he'd come back for a short visit, which
was interesting...  Hiiro stared at him and at the opening credits up to
the part about "a moose bit my sister" and then walked out in disgust.
Hey, his loss. 

	Meia, on the other hand, started laughing so hard I thought she
was honestly having trouble breathing or something.

	I guess it's true that Monty Python isn't for everyone -- it left
Miss Roppongi cold, oddly enough, except for the Castle Anthrax. And it
took the Wumeister forever to get into it, but he finally did -- and then
treated us to a Chang Brand Rant on the ending (or lack of one).

	"But, Gohi," Yotsuya said, "it's *Monty Python*. You just know
they're all going to end up arrested."

	Well, yeah, but it's still a sucky ending. I mean, there's no
climax! No resolution! No MEANING!

	So Oofy told us that if we really wanted to see a funny movie, we
could watch *Feiying Gaiwak*, whatever that was, on Sunday, and kicked us
all out.

	Meia started quietly singing the Camelot song, and I joined in,
especially on the line about the pram... I think I've perfected the
voice-dropping bit.

	I think we disgusted Hiiro, because he went to go sleep in his
spaceship that night. Oh well. Meia and I talked Monty Python for several
hours and put the lumberjack song on repeat for about half an hour, and
fell asleep feeling more in charity with each other than we have before or
since. 

	And then Friday was really, really good. Like I said, you will
not *believe* whom they got to be our new flight instructor.

	Honest to God, you won't.

	Remember Uncle Nakuhiro? The one who, for six straight years, 
whenever he sent Christmas presents Dad would look at them and go "Who? 
Oh, *Hooty*." -- remember him?

	Well, you were a little young at the time.

	But our flight instructor is Tsukuno Nakuhiro -- that's right, 
Uncle Nakuhiro himself. It took me a little while to recognize him, 
since most of Dad and Aunt Agatha's photographs of him are back before 
he got a haircut. And if Dad said he was easygoing -- well, that's 
compared to DAD. Tsukuno-sensei is quite strict enough for my tastes.

	But we were still doing LAC simulator practice, and I ended up 
going up against Sugar. (I swear, if I ever put together a crew -- 
thank goodness Dill's civilian and not in the running -- I'm going to 
see if I can steal Sugar for tac witch. She may be a bitch to work with 
-- pardon my French -- and not exactly easy on the eyes, but that girl 
can just about turn ECM on their collective head. Shee-it.)

	So she came diving out of the sun at me, and of course I *still* 
haven't quite figured out how to block (and I'm slow on dodging). So I 
fell back on my Quest for Glory fight strategy, namely "Attack like 
hell and never let up until your opponent's down for the count," and 
charged in with all guns blazing and missiles out the wazoo.

	And I took a bunch of hits and I had to ram one of her pods and 
the end of my wing'd NEVER be the same if this were live-action, but 
she went down and I followed her down until she plowed nice and easy 
into the side of Olympus Mons (the one on Mars, not the one near home, 
or the one in Greece).

	It was a very satisfying fireball, and I even got to make her 
pickup myself... Martian parachutes have to be way bigger than Earth 
ones because of much less atmosphere, so they're practically wings 
themselves, and -- look, I'll print out some of the techspecs and send 
them along later, 'kay? Point is, I pulled her in, still muttering 
obscenities through her mike. I now know how to say "big turtle" in 
Chinese.

	And Tsukuno-sensei pointed us out to the entire class as an 
example of a Victory That Shouldn't Have Worked. That is, how by doing 
the utterly unexpected now and then you can pull victory from the jaws 
of defeat, although it'll cost you.

	So I mentioned Dad's joke about it being connected to the nature 
of the number two, and Tsukuno-sensei gave me this incredulous look and 
went "DUO?!"

	I nodded.

	He asked how Mother was, and how Dad was, and how you were, and 
then he asked me what I was doing here, so I told him all about Aunt 
Ruth and the mishearing and he almost fell over, he was laughing so hard.

	I think we might have annoyed some of my classmates.

	Then Hiiro showed up and asked if he could join the dogfight at 
the end, and Tsukuno-sensei told him "oh, sure."

	I think that annoyed more of my classmates.

	Then we got in and started -- Hiiro appointed himself my wing, 
and ohmyholyfuckingGOD.

	I know that sounds bad, but take it as meaning Cybele or someone 
who's used to it, because -- holy merciful SHIT. That guy can stop on a 
DIME. That guy can turn on a -- a -- one of those little paper circles 
that the three-hole-punch leaves. That guy can FLY.

	Well, at least I needn't worry about what on earth Dad and Hiiro 
would ever say to each other. All we need to do is get them in the air, 
and the rest of us can go home and eat Mother's lasagna and chocolate 
chip oatmeal cookies. (Or snickerdoodles. I wonder what Hiiro's views 
are on snickerdoodles).

	Anyway, the rest of the class never really had much of a chance, 
and it wasn't *entirely* because of Hiiro -- mostly because of him, but 
not entirely.

	Oh man. That was great. That was CLASSIC. It's a good thing flight
simulation is the last class of the day, because I'd never have been able
to pay attention to any teachers after that.

	I think I must have been almost dancing all the way back to Ikkoku
Hall, every so often saying things like "oh dear sweet GOD, we knocked
them dead!"

	He was walking back alongside me -- walking, not flying, for a
change -- but he didn't say anything until we got there and the swallow
flew by.

	The swallow has a nest in a tree in the front yard, and you can
just see it from the window of #5. Her eggs hatched a while back, and they
cheep their heads off all day long, so she's always looking for food.
Sheesh, you'd think her mate could help, couldn't you? He's probably taken
off for Nagasaki or something. What a birdbrain.

	Anyway, here I was, coming home in an euphoric mood (that's where
you're so happy you're silly), so I sang out "I'm home, Tsubame-san! We
blew my entire class away in simulator practice!"

	(Japanese Lesson of the Day: tsubame = swallow. Oddly enough,
'tsubakurou' also equals 'swallow.' I don't know how they tell the
difference, and of course the one guy we know of who'd be sure to know --
although he'd probably give us the Sparrowhawk Rant again -- isn't at his
address anymore... I'll ask Uncle Nakuhiro if you ask Aunt Agatha, 'kay?)

	Hiiro gave me a weird look and said "That bird... it is tsubame,
right?"

	"Yep!" I said. "Or in English, it's a 'swallow.' I know because we
have a picture of some because Dad's family all have these bird code
names."

	"Hn."

	I forgot I was speaking to Mr. Uncongeniality here.

	But I was in too good a mood for it to be offset by a little thing
like that. Besides, I really didn't want to just go back into my tiny
little room where there's no room for anything but him and me (and
sometimes Meia) and the horrible ghastly silence between us, not after
we'd just --

	"How much cash do you have on you?"

	He blinked at me. "I have money."

	"Good! Let's go to a sushi bar!" I headed off in the direction of
the not-so-cheap one with the little tables out in the courtyard, and when
I was three steps back down the front walk he followed.

	This is the one I mentioned that's next to the used bookstore that
has all the stuff in English, so I ducked in to see if they had anything
new, or anything I was more interested in buying, or whatnot.

	Half an hour later, I walked out with the continuing adventures of
Dray Prescot, four (translated, of course) plays of Aristophanes, a
three-in-one of Nero Wolfe novels, the Batman volume of the comic book
encyclopedia (I cannot *believe* I found that), this interesting-looking
thing called *The Classics Reclassified*, a mini-artbook of Yoshikazu
Yasuhiko's (geez, those both look like personal names to me) work -- one
of the pictures looked sort of like that assistant of Yotsuya's, the one
who teleported -- some random Yoshimoto Banana novels, and a very peculiar
look from Hiiro, which intensified when I told him to make himself useful
and carry some of the books.

	He did carry them, though.

	We went in, ordered sushi, and I tried to make conversation.

	"Where the hell did you learn to fly like THAT?"

	"Planet Oni."

	Okay, ask a stupid question...

	"What's your favorite color?" I tried next.

	He sort of stared at me as if I'd asked what the English language
smells like.

	"Mine's silver," I offered, "and then really really dark blue and
black, but I'd rather WEAR black than silver because you can't get away
with silver clothes unless you're in a visual rock band or something."

	Silence.

	"Uh... so what do you do in your spare time?"

	"Practice. Study. Observe Terran culture." He paused for a long
moment. "Observe you."

	"I wish you wouldn't!" I flared.

	Oh man oh man WHY did he have to bring that up? We were doing so
well, too...

	Luckily, they called our numbers just then, and he went to get the
food. Food. Good. Yummy.

	I like this place because they know not to put too much wasabi on.
(The other place is cheaper, but I have to lift the fish off the rice and
scrape the extra green paste off regularly.) They do offer it on the side,
and Hiiro came back with a lump the size of a tennis ball.

	"You are NOT going to eat that," I said, eating three pieces of
gobo root roll at once.

	"I will."

	And he smeared one of his rolls across the ball and popped it in
his mouth. (I know that sounds wrong, but you can't exactly *dip*
something in a paste last I checked...)

	His mouth quirked a little, which I think qualifies as making a
face for Hiiro.

	"Told you," I said before eating another roll piece (California
this time).

	"Too bland," he remarked.

	BLAND?

	"You could have mine," I said, pointing to the lump of wasabi
they'd dumped on my tray even after I'd mentioned that it wasn't
necessary, "but you STILL won't be able to finish that monster as it is."

	He reached across, picked the lump up with his chopsticks, and ate
it.

	Then he picked up another piece of tuna roll and smeared more
wasabi on it than he had the first time, without changing expression.
"Piquant."

	I know you and Dad have a stronger stomach for spices than I do,
but Hiiro has the Taste Buds From Hell. That guy could probably drink
buffalo wing oil.

	He even tried to put wasabi on the *tamagoyaki*, until I screeched
at him that you just Didn't Do That.

	Yuck.

	Anyway, before the tamago thing, after we munched at each other
for a while, I told him that if he really didn't want to talk that was
fine and pulled out the Stout omnibus, which I'd saved from being wrapped
up with the rest. I started reading about Goodwin and Wolfe vs. Arnold
Zeck, and more or less tuned him out until the tamago thing.

	He ate his last, the way I had saved mine, and his eyes widened a
little. "Sweet."

	"Gooood," I answered, and got up to order some more. I was still
hungry.


	And then when we did come back to Ikkoku-kan, Treize had decided
that he was going to throw himself an unbirthday party and invited Meia,
Hiiro, and myself.

	He cooked. I don't know *where* Treize learnt to cook, but he's
even better than Mother, except for lasagna and cookies. Then again,
Treize tends to cook much fancier stuff, too. 

	So, as I said, Friday was really, really good. Nothing much
happened on Saturday, for a change, thank God, except that the
neighborhood clinic thought that maybe next week I can get rid of the
Obstreperous Ankle Brace.

	Then, on Sunday, I called up Hilde and invited her over to watch
"Feiying Gaiwak" with us.

	She, naturally enough, asked what the heck it was.

	"I don't know," I had to admit, "but the Wu-man says it's funny,
and I really want to know what he thinks of as 'funny.'"

	"Oh, well, can't be too bad," she said, and came over.

	This promptly made Hiiro change his mind and come watch the movie
in #5 with us.

	When the movie began, I suddenly realized a problem.

	It was in Chinese.

	With no subtitles.

	And while Hiiro and Meia seemed to understand Chinese (I guess
they'd learned all major Terran languages or they've got Babel fish in
their ears or something), I sure didn't.

	I was going to turn to Hilde when she started bouncing up and
down. "Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! This is -- "

	Darn it, I can't remember what she said the movie was called.

	Condor something, I think.

	Anyway, the movie was great. It was marvelous. It had Jackie Chan
in it.

	See, as I understood the plot whenever someone could lean over and
explain it to me before someone else shushed them, Jackie Chan was looking
for this horde of Nazi gold along with three beautiful women, and there's
this fight scene where one of the women is standing around naked and this
jeep thing and all these great desert things and this humonguous wind
tunnel and...

	Look, just rent it, if you can find it. (Try looking at the back
of the boxes.)

	Even without fully understanding it, I still laughed my ass off.

	As we got up and picked up the trash and so forth, Meia said "That
was funny... but do Terran women act like that all the time?"

	"No, no, of course not," I said. 

	"Those three were kind of frail," Hilde agreed, "You ought to
watch Supercop."

	This entailed a complicated discussion between Hilde and the
Wumeister which came up with the final results:

	1) The movie is called Supercop in America.
	2) The movie is called Jingchagushi 3 in Chinese.
	3) The movie is that one where Jackie is a Hong Kong detective and
that really really hot Chinese chick is a Communist Chinese detective and
we've seen Dad watching the end of it on TV five times.

	Then Hilde left and I tried to make omelettes for dinner, which
turned into scrambled eggs.

	Oh well.

	At least they weren't burnt.


	On Monday, Hiiro told me as I got ready for school that he'd be
along later.

	"Oh, that's all right. You don't have to," I told him.

	"Yes, I do," he said, and gave me the This Is Not Open To
Discussion face.

	I didn't really feel like making an issue of it, so I headed off
and missed the beginning of the Swallow-Penguin Affair.

	Hiiro said, later, that Meia had been pestering him to play with
her in the front yard, and that he had told her that he was too busy. (He
does give very thorough descriptions of happenings once you pry them out
of him.)

	Then the swallow flew by at its usual breakneck pace.

	"What's that?" Meia said.

	"It's a swallow, a common insectivoric bird which has species
living all over Earth," Hiiro explained. 

	"They fly as fast as that, and yet humans are superior. Earth is a
weird place."

	Oofy leaned out of his window and explained that swallows, like
other birds of the air and beasts of the field, had neither laws not
customs nor justice. Humans had been given those by the gods, and thus
were made superior.

	Meia apparently listened to that -- whatever for? -- and then
asked what the noisy thing buzzing around her was.

	"That's called a 'housefly,'" Oofy explained.

	The swallow dove, caught the housefly, and flew off to its nest.

	"I'm going," Hiiro told Meia. "Here. Take some candy."

	And he left.

	"Poor Oofy," I said when Hiiro told me about it. "She's going to
have him wrapped around her pinky finger -- wait a minute. Forget poor
Oofy. Poor ME, if she gets him in on her side every time."

	"Could Wufei be dangerous?" Hiiro asked, sounding as if
"dangerous" meant "dangerous to the completion of this piratical 
operation" or something else that calls for kidnapping or lying or
liquidation or whatnot.

	"I'm overdramatizing," I said hastily. "The Wumeister can be
annoying sometimes, but I wouldn't want anything permanent to happen to
him or anything."

	Meanwhile, back at Ikkoku Hall, Meia complained that she wasn't a
baby to be pacified with candy any more -- and then ate some anyway. The
Wu-man, who described this to me when I wandered up and asked him so I
could tell you about it, sounded a bit skeptical, but it makes perfect
sense. After all, why let perfectly good junk food go to waste just to
make a point.

	Then she went to get a closer look at the swallow nest, and Oofy
went back to studying until he heard her say "There isn't much to the
insects. Here, try this."

	He leaned out his window and said "No, wait... " just in time to
see the swallow eat a piece of the candy and start hyperventilating.

	"JARIMEIA! THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN POISONOUS TO IT!"

	"It's *nutritious*... " Meia protested.

	The swallow flapped its wings awkwardly, nearly losing its place
in the air.

	"Is something wrong?" Meia asked.

	The swallow shot up, did a couple of loop-the-loops over the tree,
and took off in the general direction of Tomobiki High like a bat out of
hell.

	The Wumeister said a few sharp things to Meia on the subject of
not interfering with other living creatures without knowing what the heck
you're doing.


	While all this interesting (at least, what happened to the swallow
can't have been very pleasant for her, but if it was going to happen
anyway I'd like to have seen it) stuff was going on, I was sitting in
physics class half-bored out of my mind. 

	I don't exactly MIND learning physics instead of biology -- I'm
not sure if dissecting fetal pigs would have been cool or not, but I'm
fairly sure I wouldn't have gotten sick or anything; however, physics is a
heck of a lot more useful to space pirates OR pilots, I think. (At least,
from something Meia said, the first use of biology for a pirate seems to
be knowing where to stick a sharp object to produce a fatal result. I told
her about the under-the-fourth-rib-and-angle-slightly-upward thing, and
Hiiro leaned over and told me to be sure to cut a throat from behind if I
didn't want to get all over blood.)

	However, it was a gorgeous WARM day, and they never put air
conditioning in the school, and so half the class was dozing as
G-whatever-sensei went on about the universal gravitational constant. I
was using the time to write down another installment of the Yoshida saga
-- it's not that I particularly mind that Solo has gotten his sequels done
before mine, but I DO mind that all of our mutual friends take the
direction he's taken as canon, when *I* came up with Yoshida and Okada
and the whole Mu setup myself. (And I have since found out that Yoshida is
a family name, so I decided that "Yoshida" is an alias for OkaDA
YOSHIkazu.)

	Ehh, but you'd rather read the story when I'm done than hear about
it in mid-construction with all the bare bones showing.

	Pepper was setting empty lychee-jelly cups on top of the sleeping
Ginger's head and whacking them off with her textbook, trying to see how
far she could hit them without waking her friend up. She even managed to
send a few flying out the open window.

	Sugar was reading what I presumed to be a trashy Chinese novel.
Relena was doing something with a pencil and a notebook (physics is a
shared class -- no clue why they're making tenth-graders do physics, but
maybe Japanese schools order things differently), probably doodling. Hilde
was unobtrusively reading the copy of *Ishmael* I'd lent her (you'd like
it. It takes place in early Seattle), now that I'd assured her it probably
wouldn't get her into trouble -- the Monday of the beefbowl incident, I'd
lent her *How Much For Just The Planet?* and she'd laughed so hard she'd
been thrown out of class. (Well, it was the part where everyone jumps
down the laundry chute.)

	Hiiro was sitting on the desk behind me. I'd given him my physics
textbook to look at, and last I turned around to see what he was up to he
was making extensive notes in the margin.

	They're sort of old textbooks to begin with, and Oni science is a
bit more advanced than the Terran variety, so if I can just figure out
some of this stuff -- he did write in English, but half of it's
technospeak and I don't have a technospeak-to-real-people dictionary handy
-- I'll know more about atoms, quarks, and certain kinds of stars than
Stephen Hawking.

	(That is the person I meant, right?)

	So G. was writing an equation on the board when Hiiro told him
that it was not a universal constant, and they promptly got into an
argument which I couldn't follow at all, even when G.'s technical Japanese
ran out on him and he started speaking English (he's got a Southern
accent. Go figure.)

	I made a face at Hilde and she made one back which let me know she
didn't understand it either. Relena was listening intently, but five gets
you seven she was listening to Hiiro's voice and not his words.

	Anyway, I'd just finished a particularly good description, so I
got up and was getting Hilde's opinion on it when G. glared at us and
snapped "This is NOT a singles bar!"

	"I was getting her opinion on something!" I said.

	Hiiro glared at the both of us.

	"And it isn't a public room that you can invite any Tom, Dick, or
Harry into either!" G. went on.

	"Hey, I didn't invite him," I said. "He just came."

	"We are wed." Hiiro moved to stand next to me. "A married couple
should always be together; in war, in peace, at home, or at school."

	I think he might have been smirking, a little, but I *really*
didn't want to turn and see.

	Hilde made an Infuriated Noise and rushed to the window. "I can't
stand it! He's just doing that to humiliate me!"

	"Calm down, Hilde," I said, tentatively patting her shoulder.

	"This is all YOUR fault!" Hilde snapped.

	Sheesh, she didn't have to put it like that.

	"Yeah, Maxwell!" one of the guys in the class agreed. "How could
you pass up such a cute girl for some alien pretty boy?!"

	"Pretty?" My jaw dropped. "What are you *smoking*?"

	Okay, so Hiiro's skinny -- almost as thin as I am (thank heavens I
don't have to take that stupid riddlen, however you spell that, any more;
I hate, hate, HATED those orange triangles) and his cheekbones are a
little delicate. He's still WAY too butch to be called "pretty."

	Then I noticed IT.

	"Oh my God, there's a penguin on the teacher's desk."

	That is, it didn't quite look like any penguin I'd ever seen, but
it was a bird about a foot and a half tall, black with a white chest and
belly, and had wings that looked too small to actually bear it in flight.
So if it weren't a penguin, it'd do until one came along.

	"What are you talking about?" G. scoffed. Then he turned around.
"Well, I'll be a monkey's uncle! It IS a penguin!"

	The flightless bird blinked at him.

	"Could this possibly be.. a sign that the world's Fifth Ice Age is
approaching?"

	My mind promptly came up with a picture of Treize, Hilde, me, and
all the other Ikkoku-kan residents in furs and parkas in front of a giant
igloo with penguins in a row along its ridge-pole, and then threw the
world's first Snowmobile Van in next to us.

	"I'll write this up," the teacher gloated, "publish it, become
renowned academically, and be lifted out of this lowly teacher's
existence!"

	Good for him. This school sucks. Except for flight training.

	The bird darted at somebody's desk.

	"It's eating my lunch!" the desk's occupant yelled.

	The bird turned to another desk, pulled out the wrapped lunchbox,
and managed to get it open and transfer a substantial portion of the
contents into its mouth. And then another.

	"Catch it!" G-sensei commanded. "Don't let it get away!"

	We tried, and succeeded in chasing it out the door and down the
stairs, where I swung myself over the five-boy pileup at the foot, trying
to get *between* the penguin (or puffin, as the case might be) and a route
of escape.

	Fat chance. That thing took off running like an Olympic champ.

	Oh well. It probably just escaped from a zoo or something.

	Sensei managed to get on the PA and request the entire school to
help capture the penguin.

	Geez Louise, he's a PHYSICS teacher. If he really wants to become
famous in the higher circles of academia, he should publish the results of
that discussion he got into with Hiiro.

	So Hiiro and I were ambling down the stairs to the ground floor,
figuring (that is, *I* was figuring) that in all the confusion we could
take a couple hours off from school with the excuse of chasing the
penguin, when the entire home-ec class chased it right across our path
shrieking "Give us back our cooking!"

	And I thought *I* was a bottomless pit sometimes.

	As they disappeared down the hall, Meia flew in the front door and
panted "Hiiro-chan! We have a situation!"

	"There's a situation here, too," Hiiro observed.

	Meia ignored him. "You know that swallow? When I fed it one of
these, it started acting really weird and flew this way!" She waved a
brightly colored box with symbols that looked like Zapf Dingbats or
something on it. (There were a lot of little flowers.)

	I blinked. "Is that food?"

	Hiiro snatched the box. His voice got colder. "Jarimeia, if you
feed this to a Terran creature, it will become a giant from
overnutrition."

	How the heck does *that* work?

	Well, I had no desire to become part of that "Village of the
Giants" movie we saw on MST3K, so I gave up any thoughts of snarfing some
of the whatever-it-was.

	*Wait* a moment.

	"So you're saying," I stared at the two of them, "that that
'penguin' -- "

	"Is the neighboring swallow," Hiiro finished.

	The bird came back and went out the door -- goddamn, but that bird
can waddle!

	We followed.

	Most of the school somehow ended up following us. (I guess they
were all as bored as I'd been.)


	And then Meia spotted it next to "a wrecked truck."

	We drew closer and found that the truck not only had run into a
lamppost, but that from its open rear penguins were pouring. (These ones
were a darker black and didn't have the splosh of red at their throat that
Penguin Swallow had.)

	Lots of penguins.

	At least a hundred penguins.

	"How did they multiply so quickly?" one of the many
butterfly-net-carrying students gasped.

	The students promptly tried to capture the penguins.

	You should have been there, Trey. You really should have been
there. I leaned against a wall and started laughing my head off.

	Some guy who was probably the truck driver grabbed me by the front
of my uniform jacket. "You've got to capture them all or I'll be blamed!"

	How was his lousy driving my problem?

	"I swear, the red-throated bird just walked out in front of me!"

	Oh. That's how.

	The penguins started spreading out into the shops -- we were in
one of the commercial districts -- and the resulting chaos was pretty near
indescribable.

	It made it onto the evening news -- I think I'll ask around and
see if anyone taped it and if I can make a copy to send you. I mean, we
are talking "Invasion of the Penguin Horde" here.


	And eventually, most of my class wound up with Hiiro, Meia, and me
in Ikkoku-kan's front yard, joining Mrs. Ichinose, the Wumeister, and the
portable-radio-carrying Miss Roppongi as we watched Penguin Swallow try
desperately to shinny up the tree.

	"That's not going to work," I said, shaking my head half in
admiration.

	"What is she doing?" Hilde asked.

	Miss Roppongi looked at the tree, and then at the nest from which
loud cheeps could be heard. "Her babies are up there."

	"She'll keep trying and trying," Mrs. Ichinose said, misty-eyed,
"as long as they call to her."

	Oofy tried to get under the bird and push.

	"Now that's an idea," Miss Roppongi said.

	"It would be easier if the nest were down HERE," I said.

	Hiiro promptly flew up and got it.

	He held it very gently all the way down.

	You wouldn't think someone that rude (and cold) could be so
careful with delicate things, could you?


	Swallow nest on ground.

	Penguin-sized swallow leaning forward, beak open, full of rice,
tofu, and whatever else people had in their lunchboxes.

	What's wrong with this picture?

	"Dame datcha."

	Well, Hiiro was right about it being no good, but he didn't have
to say it in that cold a tone of voice.

	"She can't feed her children like THIS!" Oofy said, gesturing
towards the bird with a beak bigger than her nest. "Look what you've done
by acting carelessly! You've destroyed Earth's entire ecosystem!"

	Meia hung her head.

	"Aren't you exaggerating a little?" I said.

	Then Meia-chan brightened. "I know!" she said, pulling out the box
of Enlarger Candy.


	The enlarged swallow nestlings' cheep-cheep was much louder.

	This was not surprising, considering that they were now seven feet
tall.

	I grabbed Meia. "Was there a reason for making them so much bigger
than their mother?"

	She laughed nervously. "Oops. Got the dose a little wrong. Here!"

	She shook a few pieces out and fed them to Mommy Swallow.


	Above us, the news helicopter was reporting on the penguins
running through the heart of Tomobiki and causing havoc. (Their voices
sounded a little tinny from Miss Roppongi's dinky radio, but it was better
than only hearing helicopter blades overhead in MY opinion.)

	"Will the Department of Animal Control be able to catch them all 
by nightfall? We -- MASAKA!"

	The above terrified squeal was actually a perfectly reasonable
reaction to running aground on the head of a Godzilla-sized mother
swallow.

	"This is no longer a problem for Animal Control!" the radio
crackled. "The Ultra Squad! Call out the Ultra Squad!"

	Hey! That's not fair!


	And shortly later, expensive cool-looking planes buzzed around the
swallow's head, FIRING on her.

	"Stop it!" I was yelling, dancing up and down. "Stop it, stop it,
STOP IT!"

	And then she toppled and fell on her face.

	I was about to charge down hill into town and and probably do
something extremely stupid when I felt a gust of wind beside me. I turned
and saw Hiiro flying up to his ship.

	And I'm not quite sure how he started it up, but next thing I
knew, there he was, standing at the wheel on top of it, charging the
planes and the slowly rising swallow (thank goodness she was alive.)

	Charging them, physically blocking their shots, occasionally
shooting down a missile with something (I wasn't close enough to see how
he managed to do that...)

	"INVADER HIIRO YUI! YOU BASTARD! HOW DARE YOU TAKE OFF AND RESCUE
HER WITHOUT ME!"

	"Well, the important thing is that she's getting rescued, right?"
Relena tried to calm me down.

	"But I could have DONE something!"

	The swallow stood triumphant, flapping her now ridiculously small
wings and roaring to the skies.

	"All right!" Meia announced. "This is my fault! I'll take full
responsibility!"

	"Well said," Wufei remarked.

	"I'm a good girl!"


	And so, today, here we are, stuck in physics class again.

	"This is Kepler's Second Law..." G. began, bouncing an eraser up
and down in his hand.

	Cool. He let me do a book report on a biography of Johannes Kepler
earlier this term in order to make up for work I missed because of coming
in in the middle of the Japanese school year (which starts in April).

	"Oh, it's hopeless," G. sighed. "I'll never escape this lowly
teacher's life... "

	"You could always write up *his*," I jerked a thumb at Hiiro,
"science thingydoies and publish that."

	And just then two objects the size of ducks shot in the windows
and expanded.

	Eww gross. Trey, you cannot imagine how absolutely disgusting a
four-foot-tall housefly is until you see one, legs twitching, wings limply
quivering, because of course its muscles will no longer even hold it up.
Their bodies seemed to be slowly sinking in on themselves.

	The Gang of Four screamed. Hilde stuffed her fist in her mouth. I
turned away, swallowing hard.

	"Will somebody put the poor things out of their misery?" I said,
slowly pulling my math textbook (the heaviest one) out of my backpack. I
really didn't want to get closer to those things, but...

	Hiiro pulled a GUN out of his shorts (I really, really, REALLY
don't want to know where he holsters that thing) and walked up to the
first overgrown fly. I peered through my fingers, not wanting to watch but
not able to make myself look away, as he put the gun against the base of
its head and fired. Then against the top of its abdomen and fired again,
into its heart.

	He probably would have done the second one, but Mommy Swallow
pushed her head into the classroom (breaking down most of the outer wall),
picked it up in her mouth, and waddled off with it.

	She did that in a few other classrooms, so they canceled school.

	Well, it was that and them freaking about Hiiro's gun --
apparently it's even harder to get gun licenses in Japan than it is in
America. Hiiro isn't going to be allowed back unless he either leaves it
behind or has permission to carry it. I'm still trying to work out whether
this is a good thing or a bad thing, especially since I suspect that the
answer to the question "Where can a ninety-nine pound oni go?" is eerily
similar to that of the similar question about the two-ton gorilla.


	"This is what you call 'taking full responsibility'?" I asked Meia
later, twisting from my position on top of Hiiro's shoulders several
hundred feet up in the air. (He keeps a tight hold of my ankles, and you
get the *coolest* view from up there.)

	"Well, their not having anything to eat was a problem, right?" she
said. "So I got them something to eat."

	"Creating an even bigger problem," Hiiro said, cheek moving
against my thigh. I quickly twisted right way round again.

	The swallow happily fed another giant, crippled insect to her four
large noisy children, perched in a giant nest on the corner of the top of
the observation deck of Tokyo Tower. (Which is like the Eiffel Tour, only
bigger.)

	"What a nice family scene," Meia said, smiling fondly at her
swallow family.

	"Yeah, but how are they supposed to live from now on?"

	Hiiro looked up at me. "They will lose the extra mass in a day or
two."

	"Hiiro, move your head forward NOW before I punch you in the
nose."

	At least he did. (I guess he just hadn't thought about the physics
of the situation before trying to look at me when talking to me while I
was sitting on his shoulders.)

	"Better." I thought for a moment. "That's not going to KILL them,
is it?"

	"No. The excess will be deposited in the form of proteins."

	I figured the practicality of that. "So in a day or two the Tokyo
Tower area will be covered in brown gook. We'll just avoid it, then --
except for Meia, because she'll have to put them back in their own nest
and bring them back home. Is that about the size of it?"

	"It will be more pink than brown," Hiiro said, doing a stunning
impression of a plane caught in a downdraft (which was a great deal of
fun. Seriously, it was. They should make a roller coaster out of it).
"Otherwise, you are correct."

	So I'm sitting out on the front porch, writing you and the parents
letters before we go see about getting Hiiro a gun license. I think we'll 
even get to see Tamuro again if they need references or whatnot. It's a
bit of a relief to me that life isn't *always* hectic here, although I'm
sure you're disappointed.

	Be sure to let me know how the field trip to Mount Hood goes; that
sounds like a great deal of fun.

	And how was the anime society screening? I told you that that was
good stuff.

	Okay, now I'm meandering, which is usually a good clue that it's
time to finish up the letter and move on.

Love,
Duo, Top Ranked Battle Simulation Pilot of Class 1-Z,
Earl of Ickenham and Co-Champion of Defenseless Penguin Swallows

PS. Can you possibly send me a package of beef jerky? Even if they do have
it here, the price is probably through the roof. I'll pay you back.

Continue? (Y/N)
C:\>


Those Obnoxious Pirots
(Spelling Intentional):
Sidestory -- The Interesting Tanabata Experience


	The closest thing I have to an Interesting Tanabata Experience
happened several years ago, around the Fourth of July.

	4 July is a big American holiday. There are fireworks, and grilled
hot dogs and hamburgers, and little flags on sticks to wave. We usually go
see one of the summer movies on it. It is especially important to Dad's
side of the family because of their having saved not only the United
States, but the entire world, a few times back in the 1970s. I'd tell you
all about it, but then they'd probably have to kill you.

	Even for the Fourth, they haven't all gotten together for a long
time. However, three of them, including Dad, all live in roughly the same
geographic area, so they at least usually manage it so we all spend at
least SOME of the day together.

	Sometimes the Doc shows up, too. He's not exactly the sort of
person you can call an uncle -- he talks far too much, he's usually always
right, and he has some miraculous ability to keep his glasses fastened to
his nose without having to clamp them.

	Oh, none of Dad's family is actually related to each other. As a
matter of fact, I think he and Aunt Agatha were going out for a while
before they decided that they made much better cousins than dates. And
then, of course, Dad met Mother and the rest was history -- he even
changed his last name to Maxwell for her sake, thank God.

	But, anyway, on the day of the Interesting July Experience, the
Fourth was part of a weekend and we decided to spend the whole weekend
more or less together -- the Doc was going to come in late on the Third,
and Aunt Agatha and the Noventas weren't coming until then either -- she
was expecting an overseas call from her "baby brother." 

	So the remaining two families went to Carkeek Park for the
afternoon. Carkeek is a really spiffy park with a wilderness and a ravine
to hike through, or you can skip all that and go straight to the beach.
The beach is stretched out between the railroad track and the Sound, and
you have to go up on a big bridge with chain-link fencing on the sides to
cross the railroad and get to the beach. A little creek goes under the
railroad track in these three *huge* tunnels, makes a
nearly-three-feet-deep-at-one-point pond, and then spills out across the
beach into the ocean. Once, when I was about seven, its course had gone
all meandering, and this was an Affront, because it hadn't done that when
I last was there. So I started digging a straight channel for it, and in
the end about half the people on the beach were helping me and we all
cheered when the stream took its new bed and ran straight to its
destination. Which, come to think of it, is what I ought to do with this
composition.

	So Trey and I were technically supposed to be playing with our
cousins. However, the twins George and Joe were too little at this point
in time to be much fun, and Jason is a *brat*. I know it's considered rude
to say such a thing about your own cousin, but if I don't say it who will?

	Although, come to think of it, he's been getting better as time
goes by. Maybe he'll be okay by the time he's my age.

	Their older sister, Median, is all right for a girl however. Her
name is sort of appropriate, because her age is right between mine and
Trey's. She gets all mad when we bring it up, however. Median has green
eyes, like Trey, and long hair so fair it looks sort of white -- it looks
as if she dyed it or something.

	She inherited it from her mother, and that July, her mother had
just up and divorced my uncle and left without even asking for custody. I
mean, it would have been bad enough for Median and her brothers if they
had to get shuttled back and forth between parents and feel like they were
a football, but their mother didn't even TRY. What sort of mom doesn't
want her own kids? 

	Median's been awfully standoffish since then. I blame my ex-aunt.

	But the point I was trying to make is that that left three adults
to watch six kids, and Jason was being bratty enough to need one all to
himself -- which worked out to we Elder Trio being pretty much left to our
own devices.

	Now, I had *always* wanted to walk through those tunnels the creek
came through. Ever since I was six. They were made of corrugated pipe,
and they were big enough that even when I was six I'd barely have had to
duck my head to walk right through, so Dad's argument that I might get
stuck was not sensible.

	So I got the idea of actually doing it this time, along with
Median and Trey. That way, even supposing one of us stepped in an
unexpected hole and got our foot stuck or some other equally unlikely
disaster, another of us could hold their head above water while the third
of us ran back for help if necessary.

	The adults were talking about how early they'd have to leave to
make sure of grabbing a good picnic lunch spot at the Montlake Cut, and
what we were going to bring -- I really hoped they wouldn't do potato
salad that year, since I hate potato salad -- when the three of us ducked
into the tunnel and crept along in our swimsuits and thongs, bent nearly
double.

	It was dark and cool in the tunnel. The water current was stronger
than it was in the pond or in the shallow outlet to the Sound, and our
breathing echoed along the metal tunnel in a way that made all of us sure
that we were just about to get caught.

	Trey's sandal came off once, but Median grabbed the thong as it
went floating by and handed it back to her.

	The other side of the railroad was... I'm not quite sure what we'd
expected, but it was very green and quiet. The plants grew right up to the
creek bank, and there were about a gabazillion ferns, including a few that
weren't your everyday kind of mildly broad straight dark green leaved
fern. 

	There was also a bramble with some sort of red berry. Median said
that they were tayberries and okay to eat. Tayberries are sort of like
a blackberry and sort of like a raspberry. The ones we ate were also very
sour. I think they're supposed to actually be black and not red.

	Trey was so disgusted she threw her third one right away. It
landed in among the ferns, and a voice said "Ow!"

	We all looked at each other to make sure we hadn't imagined it,
and we hadn't.

	Now, last we checked, ferns couldn't say "ow," so we tackled the
ferns to look where it had come from, and there was a raven in a bathrobe.
It looked really startled and tried to fly off, but the bathrobe got in
the way and Median grabbed it.

	"It wasn't that, was it?" Trey said.

	"You can teach ravens to talk," I was happy to display my superior
knowledge, "just like parrots and mynah birds. I bet it *was* the one who
said 'ow!'"

	"You'd say 'Ow!" if YOU got hit on the head with an unexpected
piece of sour fruit, too," said the raven.

	Median was so startled she nearly dropped it.

	"I didn't know you were there," Trey said, sounding really weirded
out (probably because she was really weirded out).

	"Well, that's no excuse! Youngsters these days..."

	"Are you a leprechaun or something?" Median said. "With a pot of
gold you could show us?"

	"Hey, we can't take somebody else's gold!" I protested. "That's
money. That's *stealing*. Can you imagine what Dad would say?"

	The girls winced.

	"It isn't very nice, either!" Trey backed me up.

	"Okay, okay," Median sighed. "It was just a thought."

	"I don't have a pot of gold anyway," the raven grumped. "Gold,
forsooth! What would a grandfather like myself be doing with the stuff?"

	"Forsooth" is such a cool-sounding word that I remembered to look
it up in the dictionary a few days later. It's like saying " now really"
in a sarcastic tone, or sticking "ka" after the word you're grumping about
in Japanese.

	"Can we help you with something, Mr. Raven?" Trey asked.

	The raven looked at all of us.

	"He can," he said, jerking his head at me. "It would also help if
you loosed me."

	"Let him go already," I said.

	Median shot me a dirty look, but she did let him go. "You could
have asked POLITELY," she growled. "Who died and made you leader?"

	The raven flapped over to my shoulder and pulled a tiny
walkie-talkie out of its bathrobe.

	No, I have no clue how it did that. I had no clue the several
thousand times I got asked this question. You should hear some of the
Pacific Northwest stories about ravens.

	"Der Prinzessins Braeutigam!" he squawked. "Einlasse!"

	(At least, I think that's what it was. I don't do German. Four
languages is plenty, and I barely do Latin as it is.)

	And, fwomp, a whole piece of slope near us suddenly pulled
backwards and revealed a hole.

	A lit hole.

	A tunnel, with an actual floor and ceiling. It looked kind of like
the inside of the Space Mountain line, right before you get to the big
room where you board the cars.

	We~ird.

	So the raven walked in and we all followed, and it was after we
turned the first corner that I finally said "So what can I do for you,
anyway?"

	"We need you to kiss our princess, awakening her from her
slumber," the old raven guy said.

	Eeksh. I was sorry I'd asked.

	"Why couldn't one of you do it?" Trey said.

	The raven harrumphed. "None of our males are sufficiently
unavian."

	"But ravens are birds," Median protested.

	I thought about it for a bit. "I think he means you need lips to
kiss somebody."

	The raven made a grawk of agreement.

	Well, kissing a bird couldn't be *that* bad. I'd just have to be
careful not to poke myself on her beak -- and remind the girls not to
mention it to any of the guys I might know, because I didn't really want
to get teased forever after.

	And then we finally came into the room.

	It looked just the way that anyone who'd seen enough Japanese
B-movies would expect a Secret Underground Base to look, except for the
coffin-looking thing in the middle.

	We walked up to it.

	"Our Princess," the raven said, waving a wing at the clear sleep
capsule top.

	I looked inside.

	My jaw dropped.

	The Raven Princess was humanoid.

	She was a *girl*. Like, maybe college age (I found out later that,
not counting the years in stasis, she was nineteen).

	And she was beautiful.

	She was wearing this sort of sleeveless double-breasted maroon
jacket-minidress thing, bitch boots, a dog collar around her neck, a
matching belt, a matching armlet on her right arm (at the top of a really
long black glove), a black wristlet on her left arm, and a black cape kind
of like the very first one Batman had back in the early days of the
comics, only with the ends looking a little more feathered.

	Her hair had been braided and the braids coiled into a bun on each
side of her head, with a hair ornament sort of like a wing in between the
bun and the head. She was holding a large maple leaf in her folded hands.

	I think her face looked a little like mine (only thinner and a
little more delicate), but it's only fair to tell you that Median doesn't
see it at all, and neither does Mother.

	A bunch of other ravens started filing in, but I didn't pay much
attention to them.

	"So I kiss HER?" I said.

	Trey and Median, drat them, started giggling.

	"Exactly," quoth the raven. He raven-walked over to the wall and
pressed a button.

	The top slid off with a hiss of air.

	She had very red lips.

	I'd never kissed a girl before -- not a kiss kiss, I mean, as
opposed to the sort of kisses on the cheek you give your relations -- and
my stupid brain proceeded to try and call up everything I'd ever read,
seen, or heard on the subject.

	"Gimme some sugar, baby," I muttered, and dove in for the kill.

	She smelled sort of warm, I suppose, and female. Her lips were
softer than I'd expected, and I managed not to mash them against her
teeth.

	And of course I didn't stick my tongue in her mouth. For one
thing, we'd only just met, and for another, what if she woke up and bit
down?

	I straightened up, wondering if that had done it.

	Her eyelids fluttered open.

	Then she sat straight up and said something very quickly and
annoyedly, in what sounded like German. Dad knows some German, but I don't
really -- like I said, I don't do German. I did, however, catch the word
"knabe," which means "boy," so I figured she was talking about me.

	I quickly racked my brain for every scrap of German I knew, which
wasn't much, and most of that wasn't really appropriate (who wants to be
counted to five at?)

	"Um, uh, guten tag," I stammered, "Sneewitchen."

	That is German for "Shirayuki-chan," which is what they call the
story you call "Shirayuki-hime" on this side of the pond, and which I grew
up calling "Snow White."

	Hey, she'd been in a glass coffin or as near as makes no
neverminds, right?

	Besides, I could *not* remember the German for "Briar-Rose; or,
the Sleeping Beauty." Still can't, for that matter.

	The raven said something which sounded even more like German.

	"Now you've done it," Trey said. "Think."

	"I did think!"

	"Not hard enough," Median said.

	"Won't Mommy be looking for us?" Trey added.

	Oh, crap.

	"Um... " I tried again. "'Scuse us... however the fnarg you say
that... uh, auf wiedersehn..."

	"I speak the English," the princess said, climbing out of her
capsule.

	Oh, good.

	"And you cannot just now leave."

	Oh, crap.

	"Look, my family's going to be worried about us," I said.

	"Can we take this outside so we can at least call to them?" Trey
asked.

	Why, yes, my little sister does have some good sense in her head.

	There was another exchange in German. This time the princess and
about half the ravens in the room argued with each other.

	"This we can do," the princess agreed, starting for the door. She
had a nice low voice. We fell in behind her. "My name, it is An Theophanou
Swift-tongue of the Vasa, Princess of the Darting Taloned Ravens, Lady of
the Low German States. What might yours be?"

	"Duo Ashley Maxwell." (My middle name's kind of embarrassing, even
though it IS a guy name -- my mother was reading *Gone With the Wind* at
the time. I read that book because I was curious, and the only decent
characters in it were Bonnie and Belle Watling.)

	"Trey Aldith Maxwell."

	"Median Thyra Darren." (You do not want to know what a bunch of
inventive children can do to the name Darren. My uncle's still getting a
few good-natured jabs from Dad and Aunt Agatha.)

	"Maxwell," An repeated. "That is Scots, is not it?"

	"Uh... maybe way back when," I said. I hadn't ever really thought
about it. 

	We rounded a corner. Another raven flew forward, pecked a button
on the wall, and the end of the hall moved forward and out of the way. So
that's what it looked like from the inside.

	"I think so," Trey said. "Didn't Dad once say that we were Scots
and Alsatian on his sainted mother's side?"

	"You're *dogs*?" Median giggled.

	Gee, Median, thanks for nothing.

	An looked bemused.

	Another raven flew up and dropped a funny smallish long box in her
hand. She opened it, took out the weirdest pair of eyeglasses I had ever
seen, and put them on.

	Then she stared at my hair for a while. It wasn't quite as long
then as it is now, of course -- the braid was maybe as long as Relena
Darlian's whole hair -- but it was still pretty spiffy-looking.

	"Your... grandmother?" the princess finally said. "Your
grandfather, then...?"

	"Oh, Mother made Dad change his family name before she'd marry
him," Trey explained.

	We came out onto the creek bank. (It's pronounced "crikk," by the
way, for some reason. English spelling seldom makes sense.)

	"Your mother has some feud with your father's father's family?"

	"No, she just thought it sounded really stupid," I shrugged, "and
didn't want it for herself."

	"The way your father used to spell it didn't help any," Median
chimed in.

	Some ravens started flying out of the doorway in the hillside.

	An looked at us again. Specifically, at our bathing suits.

	They were perfectly good bathing suits. I forget which ones they
were, but mine were swim trunks and the girls were wearing one-pieces -- I
think Trey's might have been the one with bright humonguous pink and orange
flowers and little bits of teal and aqua.

	"Your clothes are..." she said.

	"Swimsuits," we all chorused.

	"There's a beach over -- " I began. "Uh, you might want to take
your boots off to go through the tunnel with us."

	More ravens flew out. And more.

	"Your hair..."

	"He's growing it out," the girls explained.

	"Dad says he's planning to look like Brak the Barbarian,"
Trey said. "It's too bad the Sixties are all over."

	I elbowed her and we started wrestling. 

	I *like* long hair. It looks cool and everything. I would wear it
if everyone had it or if nobody else had it. Why should I care how
everyone else wants to wear their hair? I used to have NIGHTMARES about
Camazotz.

	(Camazotz is from a book by Madeleine L'Engle and has absolutely
nothing to do with my Interesting July Experience.)

	The ravens were still coming out. Some of them were wearing
bathrobes, some of them were wearing vests, and a bunch were just flying
around in their feathers. There must have been a lot more to that place
than we ever saw.

	"What... is the year?"

	Median told her. (Trey and I were too busy wrestling.)

	"More than FOUR HUNDRED YEARS?" An said, and sat down very
suddenly on a fern.

	Trey and I stopped wrestling. 

	Poor An. That's got to have been a shocker.

	"DUO! TREY! MEDIAN! WHERE ARE YOU!"

	Oh, shit. Mother.

	(When I stopped calling her Mommy, I called her Mom for a while,
but she said that she'd called her mother Mother and she'd like it if I
did. So I did. Dad's still Dad, though, and I don't see why referring to
"Mother and Dad" gets you funny looks, but it does.)

	"COMING!" all three of us shrieked.

	"Um, would you like to meet our parents?" Trey offered. "Get off
me, Duo."

	"Yes. Yes, pray."

	"Pray?" Median said as An started attacking her boot laces. 

	"I think she means 'please,' I said, wading into the creek. "JUST
A SEC, MOTHER!"

	I hoped it came out the other end of the tunnel fine -- the echoes
were great, but they might have messed up the words.

	So we waded back through, me, and then Median, and then Trey, and
then An, bent nearly double with her boots under her left arm, bracing
herself with her right hand (left one being full of maple leaf and metal
glasses case).

	And all the ravens flew through, some in front of us, some behind
us, and some down the other tunnel(s). (Darn it, my memory's going -- I
can't remember if there were two or three of them. Have to go back and
see.)

	When we came out the other end, all three adults were *looking* at
us, and I got the impression we were in Trouble. 

	"Um, this is An," I introduced hastily as soon as she came out
(which was how I knew where she was carrying what), "Princess An Vasa of
the Darting Talon Ravens and lady of the lower German States -- is that
the Netherlands?"

	"No, it's the part of Germany next to them," Dad said. He still
looked mad.

	"This is my father. This is my mother. This is my Uncle Dirk."

	"I am well pleased to meet the family of my promised husband," An
said.

	This time it was my turn to sit down very suddenly. I sat down in
the pond, so I was buoyant enough that my rear didn't actually hit the
bottom, although I did get my shoulders wet. "Say WHAT?"

	"Well, you did kiss her awake," Trey said.

	Little brat. She thinks this sort of stuff is funny. 

	"I'd have kissed YOU awake if you were under a sleep spell,
although not on the lips or anything! I'd have kissed Aunt Agatha awake!
Doesn't mean I want to marry either of you!"

	"That is fortunate," An said. "I misdoubt me that thou couldst
gain a dispensation."

	God. Try to do something nice for people, and see where it gets
you.

	"I suppose this explains the replay of *The Birds*?" Uncle Dirk
asked, waving at all the ravens on the tree by the pond and the side of
the railway embankment and the beach and the ones still coming out.

	Then the last raven flew out and squawked something in a language
I really didn't recognize, and then again in German.

	"TIMER?" Dad said. "Two more minutes?"

	He and Uncle Dirk looked at each other, and then at the rest of
us.

	"Out, out, out out out out now!"

	Somehow or another we got out of the pond, grabbed up the towels
and the beach chairs and the cooler and my book and Dad's magazine and 
Mother's bag, and got ourselves and Jason and the twins and all the ravens
and most of the other people visiting the beach several yards down from
the creek.

	There was a large explosion. A pillar of smoke went up from behind
the railroad, fortunately well away from the bridge. Trey wailed and held
one of the towels over her ears (she hates loud noises). A two-foot high
wave of water came out the tunnels, hit the pond, and ran down the outlet,
much less high. A bunch of fireworks went off all at once. Since it was in
broad daylight, we *could* see the sparkly bits, but the smoke trails were
much more obvious.

	Even Jason thought it was all extremely cool.


	Then we got to walk back to the cars and explain things to the
parents. That took a while. An and the ravens helped, although half of
them jumped every time a car drove off, and you should have seen An when
the first one started up and drove away... she grabbed my arm so hard I
wouldn't have been surprised if she'd broken it.

	Then she wanted to know how a car worked, and Uncle Dirk explained
it in great detail. I hadn't known all that about pistons and firing and
so forth -- if you'd asked me how a car worked then, I'd have said "You
turn a key, and it burns gasoline and goes." It all sounded extremely
cool, and I kept asking questions. 

	Dad turned to Mother and said, "Well, he'd have had to have hit
his car phase sometime."

	Since An's place had just gotten blown up, and she couldn't
exactly walk to Germany, we ended up inviting her back home with us. Dad
was inclined to pitch a fit about this betrothal thing, but Uncle Dirk
looked worried and hissed in his ear and Dad shut up.

	Then Uncle Dirk looked at Mother and said "Thank goodness you've
trained him well. I never could get him to do that back then."

	Dad put Uncle Dirk in a headlock.

	Eventually they disentangled themselves, and the Darrens all left,
and we started getting in the car. 

	It quickly became very obvious that all the ravens wouldn't fit.

	So we got out the map and showed them where Carkeek Park was and
where our house was, and then we got in the car, and the ravens with
bathrobes got in the car (fortunately Mother had thought to put the beach
towels over our laps so the ravens could walk on them and not our bare
thighs with their sharp raven talons), and the rest of the ravens flew off
to our house -- we had explained that it was right next to the one with
the blue roof, so they should have had no trouble finding it, and, as it
turned out, they didn't.

	I like where our house was. Originally, Dad wanted somewhere
nearer the airfield, but Mother argued him down -- it is near where she
worked, after all. 

	An and I kind of looked at each other nervously across Trey half
the way home. (Trey was in the middle, of course. She really hates being
the smallest).

	Then we finally started talking. Four-hundred-year-old English is
sort of hard to understand -- for instance, the word "an," the one that's
a preposition these days and doesn't sound like her name -- An rhymes with
fawn -- in her English also means "if." However, we worked out that the
betrothal thing was a matter of custom and supposed to work so that she
would be well provided for, since four hundred years ago all women were
expected to grow up and get married, and if they didn't they were seen as
unlucky or worse.

	The ravens had apparently been looking for the sort of guy who
wouldn't think that a really smart and self-determined wife who could
fight like an Amazon was a threat to their manhood or something, and I was
the first one they'd found that fit the requirements. I said it was a
shame they hadn't done some more looking, because now after four hundred
years there were lots and lots of guys who could appreciate such a kickass
lady.

	An said that I carried myself like a nobleman's son, and asked if
my father had a title.

	"I don't really think so..." I said. "But Mother is a doctor of
law. She went to Stanford."

	"That was where I did my undergraduate studies, pumpkin," Mother
said. "The law degree was from Boston University. And your father got his 
master's at Harvard."

	Oh, right. I'd forgotten that "master" was a title, too.

	An looked sort of dazed. 

	Eventually we got to the house, and An ended up nervously helping
Mother cook dinner. We got to go out and pick some lettuce and peapods --
the flat kind you eat along with the pea-lets in them -- from the garden,
and An washed them and watched Mother cook with the oven and the stove. As
soon as we told her it didn't matter how much water she used to wash the
lettuce leaves, she kept turning the faucet on and off and on and off. She
kept opening and shutting the fridge, too, until Mother told her to please
stop because she was letting all the cold out.

	Then Dad turned on the television to watch the game, and An jumped
about a foot.

	Mother suggested then that I take An into the basement and let her
pick out a book to look at. She ended up with a Shakespeare play and a
translation of the Odyssey.

        Then Aunt Agatha called. I forget what exactly was going on, but
there was some threat to world peace or something and neither she nor her
family nor the Doc would be able to make it until the next day.

        As if enough things weren't going wrong.

	That evening, the ravens slept in the backyard, and we put An in
the guest room, which used to be my room (it would have been Trey's room,
but she refused to move out of her room. Oh well. The guest room closet is
connected to mine, so more closet space for me). Mother showed her where
the bathroom was, and explained what everything in it did, and offered to
run her a bath. I think An agreed.

	It seems that the ravens had had *some* very advanced stuff, but
they'd been very short of water. They had had a microwave, though, so An
picked up how to use ours very quickly.

	Anyway, the next day we got up bright and early, and I found that
An had been making a vocabulary list out of the Shakespeare play
annotations on a notepad Mother had given her when she'd lent her a
nightgown, so I took her down to the family room and invited her to watch
PBS.

	That's a television channel. In the morning, it shows things like
"Sesame Street" and "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood." It's the sort of channel
that would run the World Classic Theater show, the one that did Swiss
Family Robinson and Lassie and Anne of Green Gables (that's "Anne the
Redhead," and I think she'd like Montgomery's title better).

	An made more notes through breakfast.

	Then the Darrens came over, and we packed our part of the picnic
lunch and went to go grab ourselves a piece of grassy slope. We ended up
getting a very nice one, mostly due to the fact that not many people want
to picnic next to a big unkindness of ravens.

	Trey showed An where we were on the map and explained that the
crew teams would come rowing through here.

	Mother *had* made potato salad (blech), but fortunately the ravens
liked it. Uncle Dirk wasn't much for cooking, so he'd just got takeout
from Kentucky Fried Chicken.

	He also explained that perhaps I shouldn't try to get unbetrothed
to An just yet, because the present world was so different that she might
start feeling suicidal.

	I said that she had the ravens to need her, and that I was sure
she was very nice but I didn't really want to be engaged to her, because
first, our ages were too incompatible for us to have much fun on dates for
the next few years, and second, how was I supposed to ask anyone else to
date me if I was engaged to someone?

	(If you know the answer to that last, please let me know. At the
moment, I could use it.)

	Then we saw the Schbeikers, so we waved and they spread out their
blanket near us. Hilde came over after a while, and Uncle Dirk traded her
some of the KFC mashed potatoes for some of Mrs. Schbeiker's homemade
sauerkraut.


	The Noventas and the Doc showed up soon after we got back from
lunch, and we had to introduce them and An and the unkindness.

	And, very luckily, Mother and Aunt Agatha managed to talk An out
of wanting to be married to me. Mother is a very good lawyer. Aunt Agatha
saved the world in her teens, and now she's a physical therapist. Neither
of them particularly needed a husband to do those things, although Trey
pointed out that Dad was useful for doing the dishes and Sylvia Noventa 
noted that a husband was good to have around for when something broke or
you suddenly found a humonguous spider. I chased them out for not helping,
and we lit puffy snake pills and sparklers in the back yard along with
Sylvia's brother and the Darren kids.

	An stayed with us that summer, learning how to cope with the
modern world. (One week into it, she'd decided that she wanted to be Miss
Piggy when she grew up and Lady Elaine Fairchild when she turned into an
old bat.) She didn't get suicidal, but she did go schizo for a couple of
years. Aunt Agatha's husband, who is a psychiatrist, said that it was
actually a very healthy way of dealing with such a major change and that
schizophrenia is actually often a prelude to achieving a higher and more
advanced mental state.

	I don't know about that, but I liked both Princess An and Warrior
An. Especially since Uncle Dirk taught her how to drive -- riding in
Warrior An's car is a very interesting experience not recommended for
anyone over the age of thirty or with neck or back problems. We never did
tell the parents about the time we took the curve too fast and ended up on
somebody's driveway.

	The Doc found her a foster place that August, and she ended up
sitting for Trey and I a bunch of the times when both parents were out of
town. She had a few years of tutoring in modern literature and math and
science, and she taught ME a thing or five about French and Latin. 

	She's attending the University of Oregon these days, studying
anything she can get her hands on (the ravens turned out to have been
making a few investments somehow or another), and last I heard had
switched from living in a dormitory to living in an apartment. I think
she's thinking of going into the Navy, but I could be wrong.

	So that was the closest thing I've ever had to an Interesting
Tanabata Experience, and that was how getting unbetrothed from someone
SHOULD be. 

	I swear, sometimes I think Solo's right and I've got "Dartboard of
the Universe" painted on my butt in invisible ink.

	Why *do* these things always happen to me?