CHAPTER 4 – INSIDE THE DREADED CAMP
As Sakuragi entered the camp, he was glad that his girlish look has earned the ignorance of the other girls. He was surprised to see the amount of people actually chosen to enter the war. Girls were abundant everywhere doing their own things like powdering their faces, testing out their weapons, combing their hair, reading a magazine and all sorts of girl things. But the ignorance didn’t stay for too long—his height that made him stand out among all the girls was beginning to draw attention.
“Woah there, girl. What have you been taking all these years? Steroids?”
Sakuragi turned around and saw that it was a threesome of girls with a Do-Re-Mi kind of hair, as in a short hair, a medium-length hair and a long hair. They were all looking at him with those bitchy eyes and seemed like they were ready to pick on him. He scowled.
“My height is none of your concern. Get lost!”
“Oh, tough girl, huh?” the medium-haired girl said with spunk. “Wanna pick a fight or something?”
“Don’t waste your breath, girlfriend,” the short-haired snorted. “With her kind of figure, she would be better off hanging around with the boys.”
“Yeah! She’s no fighting material!” the long-haired agreed. “Look at her. She may be tall but she doesn’t even have the bones to fight! She even carries a cat from home to this place! That is so lame!”
“Oh yeah?!” Sakuragi felt his blood boiling and his pride challenged. “You want a piece of me? Come and get it then!”
“Stop it, you girls! That’s no way to treat a new member in our group.”
Sakuragi spun round at the other voice which was behind him. It was also a threesome of girls with Do-Re-Mi hairstyles, but they look kinder and friendlier than the first threesome. The so-called leader, the one with long hair, came forward and stood between Sakuragi and the first threesome.
“Haven’t you have anything better to do than pick on the new members? You girls don’t fight as well as anyone anyway. We’re all new here and to train, not start fights.”
The threesome glared at the girl for a while before the short-haired huffed and said, “Come on, girlfriends. Let’s get out of here. No point wasting our time and energy over these puny characters!”
Soon they left, chattering among themselves which one of the girls in the camp was the weakest and the strongest. The long-haired girl who stood up for Sakuragi turned around and smiled, “Don’t let them get into you. They’re just a bunch of sore, uneducated bitches who nothing of the true meaning of war. I like your cat though.”
“A…Arigatogozaimas…” Sakuragi thanked the girl. “I’m new here and, uh, I…”
“Aren’t we all?” the long-haired girl smiled sweetly and held out her hand. “My name is Akagi Haroko, sister of the matchmaker Akagi Tawanori. You must have heard of him.”
“Nani?! The Gori?! You’re the Gori’s sister?!” Sakuragi was shocked at first, but realizing that acting like that would blow his cover, he shrank sheepishly, “Err…I mean…Sunimase, I was just overwhelmed that you’re the sister of the famous matchmaker…he he he~”
“Funny,” Haroko giggled. “There was someone I’ve heard about who would dare to call him the Gori. What was his name…Sakuragi Hanamichi…? Yeah, I think it’s him.”
Sakuragi was half-embarrassed-half-proud. Embarrassed because of the incident that made him fail the Gori’s test and proud because he has become the famous ‘tensai’ he claimed to be. He got back to his senses when he heard Haroko introducing her other friends to him.
“This is Fujii,” she said as she pointed to her short-haired friend, “and this is Yuki,” as she pointed to her other friend who tied her hair in to pony tails (I dunno her name in the manga, so I just made it up). Sakuragi shook hands with each of them. Haroko then turned to Sakuragi and asked, “What’s your name, friend?”
Before he could answer, he suddenly felt his hands which held Mido empty. He looked around frantically for him and saw that he was chasing a mouse. Mido may be a higher level kind of cat but he still has his animal instincts. Sakuragi gave chase, not bothering who he had bumped into just to get the bronze-eyed cat. It was like the out-of-the-coop chicken all over again. When he finally caught Mido and clutched him in his arms, he realized that he had just knocked down a line of people who were getting ready for their lunch, including the cook who was providing them with oatmeal.
Sakuragi and his newly found friends realized that he was in total deep shit.
Meanwhile, inside the captain’s tent, the general was discussing the strategies of war with a man with ebony-black hair and a pair of striking blue eyes. Beside the general was Hikoichi the Queen’s counselor. As the general continued to discuss the strategy, the man stared at the map she was pointing at in full concentration. His blue eyes looked serious and full of interest. Finally the general finished her discussion by handing a sword to the man.
“I hope that you will be able to train the girls and make them into lean, mean fighting machines by them time we send for backup, Captain Rukawa.”
The man who was called Rukawa looked at the sword with a mild surprise in his eyes. He took the sword tentatively and looked at it with admiration. Hikoichi, on the other hand, was in a state of disapproval.
“What’s this? We can’t have a man for a captain! Surely there must be someone else of greater experience to take this job! And a woman is needed, not a male!”
“He is suitable. I trust him,” the general replied. “Besides he had scored everything in the books and had mastered everything there is to know about the war. He was a special case in the team and was first in class and basic training. I can’t let him have desk jobs all his life if he’s meant to fight the war. Furthermore, he is of my ranking, not a commoner.”
Hikoichi nodded grudgingly as he recalled the rule. It is true that only women are allowed to go into war and men, even if they want to be part of the military team, are only allowed to be doing desk jobs and touch no weapons of the military. And it is also true that only the women in their families that have been promoted to higher rankings of the military such as generals, lieutenants and other high military ranks are allowed to have their sons to be part of the war as soldiers or other positions than doing desk jobs, which benefited Rukawa. Rukawa tied the sword onto his belt and stood up.
“I will not fail you, General.”
“Very good,” the general stood up too and left the camp. Hikoichi and Rukawa followed suite. They were quite shocked to see that the general’s assumption of future ‘lean, mean fighting machines’ were all on each other punching and kicking and fighting in a huge bundle, with a very tall redhead yelling and thrashing everyone who attempted to hit the lights out of her and a threesome of girls trying to coax her to stop. The general took it humorously and turned to Rukawa, “Well, you better get started if you want to whip them into shape. I expect a full report in 3 days’ time, Hikoichi.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Hikoichi said, then turned disapprovingly at Rukawa and stressed, “and I won’t leave out a single word.”
“Alright. I’ll see you then, Kaede. Sayonara!” the general said as she mounted her stallion and rode off, her troops following suite.
“Sayonara, Mom,” Rukawa Kaede whispered before turning to the fighting bundle of girls. Hikoichi gave him a smug look and raised his writing board. Rukawa got the cue and let out a shout, “Soldiers!!”
Everyone stopped and dispersed from the fight, pointing directly at Sakuragi and yelling, “She started it!!” Rukawa walked over towards Sakuragi who was still head-butting a woman, glaring at him coldly with his sky-blue eyes. Sakuragi realized the tense atmosphere around him and turned to look at those glaring blue eyes and ebony-black hair that shone under the sun. He let go of the woman and stood up straight. Everyone gasped to see that Sakuragi was actually a wee bit taller than their captain. Sakuragi glared back at Rukawa; he didn’t like the way he look at him and he definitely didn’t like that foxy look on his face.
“Who are you?” Sakuragi asked, to his new friends’ horror. “Don’t you know that a man is not supposed to be at war? You kitsune!”
“Mind your tongue, young lady!” Hikoichi said. “He is the general’s son and your captain and you…”
Needless to say, it resulted to a head-butt from the redhead.
“A captain, eh? Well, you look more like a kitsune than a captain to me!” Sakuragi said, folding his arms across his full breasts. Obviously, the breasts were new to him and it hurt a little to the touch. Mido hid behind Sakuragi’s armour.
“What’s your name, lady?” Rukawa asked coldly, his blue eyes piercing through, as if he could see the male look underneath the spell Sakuragi was cast.
Sakuragi wanted to answer but he couldn’t tell him his real name. That Hikoichi guy might have a record of his mother and her family members and he didn’t want to reveal himself and get decapitated for that. As if reading his master’s mind, Mido immediately whispered a name, “Haroko!”
“Her name is Haroko!” Sakuragi hissed, jerking his head at Haroko standing a few feet behind him.
“I asked for your name, not her name,” Rukawa said, his tone as cold as ever and his blue eyes even more piercing.
“Err…Oh, what the heck!” Mido was running out of ideas. “Just say that your name is…err…Minako! Yes, that’s it, Minako!”
“Minako! Yes, my name is Minako. Sakuragi Minako, daughter of Sakuragi Midori,” Sakuragi replied as he handed the report scroll to Rukawa. Rukawa took it and scanned it through. Hikoichi, who got back to his senses, looked into the scroll as well.
“No one said anything about Private Sakuragi Midori having a daughter in the family!” Hikoichi said in a suspicious tone, looking at Sakuragi Hanamichi—now Sakuragi Minako—from head to toe.
“Well, no one talks about me much, ‘coz I’m too precious to her and wasn’t allowed to go to war,” Sakuragi replied, getting into this lying business. “But then I told her that I’m a grown woman and I make my own decisions. And of course, I am tensai and I will prevail! Nya ha ha ha ha ha~!!”
Everyone stared at him like he was an alien or something (come to think of it, he does act like one). Hikoichi whispered to Rukawa, “I can see why they don’t talk about her much. She’s selling herself like a complete idiot!”
“Well, thanks to our Minako here, you’re all going to pick up every single crumb that is on the floor right now,” Rukawa said as he rolled up Sakuragi’s report scroll. “And I expect you all to be here early in the morning at dawn for your first training. You’re dismissed!”
All the girls glared and cracked their knuckles at Sakuragi with a vengeance, but shrank back when the ‘tensai’ glared back at them dangerously with his copper-brown eyes, his steel forehead glowed threateningly at them. Sakuragi turned back to the leaving Rukawa as he scooped up the spilt oatmeal and picked up the scattered bread, glaring at him grudgingly. His eyes were like on fire when he growled through clenched teeth, “Grrr~!!! Baka kitsune~!!”
“Please, Minako, don’t start another fight again,” Haroko came to Sakuragi and begged. “You’ll get us all expelled from camp. You can’t afford to go home now, can you? I know I can’t.”
The cleaning up ordeal lasted till late in the evening and needless to say, their dinner didn’t seem encouraging at all, what with the wasted food and all. Sakuragi’s hunger wasn’t satisfied with just two bowls of congee but he had to do with it. He could feel all the accusing eyes, except Haroko, Fujii and Yuki, on him like a spear through his back.
“Gee, Master Hanamichi,” Mido said as he followed Sakuragi into his tent which was isolated 3 feet away from the rest of the tents. “You seriously need to work on those social skills of yours.”
“Whatever,” Sakuragi groaned.
He predicted a hard day ahead of him.
Monday, February 5, 2007
Mulan: A Parody-Chp3
CHAPTER 3 – THE TRANSFORMATION
As the thunder boomed throughout the night and all the way to dawn, an eerie silence hung over the ancestral pagoda where the statue of all the fallen warriors and relatives of the Sakuragi bloodline lay. Besides lighting a candle every time you want to pray to the ancestors, the Amazon Island people carve a miniature statue of the person who died 7 dasy after his/her death to be placed inside the pagoda. The folklore of the Amazons about these statues is that if you really have a serious trouble and you pray to the ancestors for help, they will come alive in the middle of the night and discuss the problems together before giving their living family a sign on how to solve that problem.
And that’s exactly how it happened. It wasn’t much of a folklore at all. As soon as Mrs. Sakuragi made a silent prayer to the ancestors that they protect her son and keep him from harm before going into the house with her husband, the pagoda soon became bright and glowing and one of the statues began to grow into full human size and stood tall among the rest of the mini statues before his feet. He had a really long beard and a plump body, with a majestic aura around him which made him looked like the first of the Sakuragi family. His body was the colour of the oak that he was made of and as he stretched his body, he bellowed and summoned a bronze cat that holds the candles lit for them to awaken.
“Mido!”
Almost immediately, the bronze cat blinked its eyes and the bronze covering fell off it like powder. It put down all the candles that it held and looked up to the old man, “Hait, kobanwa! What can I do for you, Ojisan Sakuragi?”
“Wake all the ancestors up, Mido,” the man the cat called Ojisan Sakuragi replied. “We have a crisis at hand.”
Mido the bronze neko obeyed. He walked towards each and every statue and nuzzled his nose at theirs, and within second, they grew into full human size one by one, making the pagoda pretty crowded. Almost at once, they started bickering.
“I knew it! I knew that Hanamichi is just a troublemaker!”
“Well, he certainly didn’t come from my side of the family!”
“Neither is he from my side of the family! We are perfectly civilized and noble for the likes of this little ragamuffin redhead! He doesn’t act like the boy he should be!”
“Of course not! Your son was a gigolo before he was taken as my lovely redhead daughter’s husband! I bet that’s where he got all that spunk from!”
The bickering went on and on, each ancestor blaming another for the reason Sakuragi acted this way. Their argument came in all at once that it made the whole pagoda sounded like the market just moved in to town. Ojisan Sakuragi looked at them silently for a few minutes before clearing his throat to make himself heard. Slowly, they ceased bickering one by one.
“Now that I have your attention, I would like you to discuss about how we are going to keep our Hanamichi from the harms of war. After all, he is our next of kin,” Ojisan Sakuragi said in a leveled tone. Everyone nodded.
“Well, he only went out of the house for about 10 minutes or so,” an ancestor from Mr. Sakuragi’s side said. “He might not be far. The forest of Gaia is much further a distance from here.”
“Yes. We should send someone to take him back before it’s too late,” another one agreed, which came from way back of the woody crowd.
“Very well then,” Ojisan Sakuragi nodded in satisfactory at this good idea. “Who wants to go and fetch Hanamichi back from the war zone before he gets himself killed?”
No one said anything. None of them wanted to have anything to do with the girlish Sakuragi Hanamichi even if their lives depended on it (that is, if they still have life left). Obviously Sakuragi has done enough damage in life to make even the ancestors wary of him. Ojisan Sakuragi sighed. He had expected this.
“Please? Anyone? He’s is, after all, our descendant.”
“I’ll go.”
Everyone turned to the timid voice coming from Mido the bronze neko. His eyes flashed in eagerness as he looked from one ancestor to another. They all looked back at him as if he had announced that he was going to become the goddess of Amazon Island. Ojisan Sakuragi lowered himself until he was the same level of height as the bronze cat. Though the bronze has come off his body, his eyes remained bronze. A really magnificent bronze indeed.
“Are you sure you want to do this? You know that danger is afoot once you set foot out of this pagoda and into the wide world, don’t you?”
“Yes, of course. But I own him a favour and it is time for me to finally pay it back.”
“Favour?”
It turned out that a few years ago, when Sakuragi was about 5 years old—give or take—Mido’s bronze tail was broken when one of the chickens flew the coop and broke it while trying to escape from the hysterical Sakuragi Hanamichi during last spring. Sakuragi caught sight of the poor chap’s broken tail, and with some superglue he got from the shed behind the house, he glued the tail back into place and placed a candle for him to hold, just for ‘good health’. Mido had felt in debt with Sakuragi since then.
“I will go to the ends of the earth just for Master Hanamichi because of this,” Mido said. “It’s a very appalling thing for cats to lose their tails. A very unhounourable thing it is.”
Ojisan Sakuragi considered a moment and rubbed his chin, looking at the tiny cat with bronze eyes. He looked at the other ancestors and they all nodded in agreement. Ojisan Sakuragi sighed and patted Mido and replied, “Oh well, since no one else around here wants to volunteer and Mido is willing to venture out into the humanly open, I suppose I’ll have to agree that you go after our Hanamichi. Remember, Mido, you must bring him back safe and sound and try to keep him out of trouble. It’s a jungle out there, and I mean a real jungle for the likes of you.”
Mido nodded eagerly and replied, “I will not fail you, Ojisan Sakuragi! I will bring Master Hanamichi home without a scratch on him. Trust me on this!”
As he scurried down the pagoda and out of the Sakuragi home compound, Ojisan Sakuragi looked out from the pagoda and before he shrank back into his statue size as the dawn began to hit, he muttered, “May the gods and goddesses protect Mido and Hanamichi.”
“Hi, I am so glad to be with you girls. How do you…OK, that’s lame.”
Sakuragi Hanamichi was in the forests of Gaia and about a few miles away from camp, hiding from view. He didn’t want anyone from the camp to see him there without being thoroughly prepared. He was afraid that if he ever walked in just like that, the girls would see right through him immediately. He was now keeping a safe, inconspicuous distance from the camp to practice how to actually sound like a girl.
“Hey, girls! What’s kickin’ around here? Wanna check out my sword?” Sakuragi practiced again, trying to pull out the sword as majestically as his mother used to do, but it couldn’t come out. Oukutsu whinnied a horse laugh and earned a head butt in return.
“I’m working on it, OK?! I may used to hang out with girls back in town but I never actually go out for war like this!!” Sakuragi yelled at his kaput stallion. “Well, gang-fights might be excluded, but then again I never dress up as a girl…”
“Do you need my help?”
Sakuragi turned around and saw a cat with a pair of bronze eyes staring back at him. On top of his head was Noma the lucky mynah. It looks like the mynah also took the liberty to follow the cat to save his master, whom he had a fondness of. Sakuragi and the cat stared at each other for a really long time. The cat decided to break the ice.
“Hello, Master Hanamichi. My name is Mido. Can I be of your assistance?”
“YAGH~!!! A talking cat~!!! A demon~!!! YAGH~!!!” Sakuragi immediately went into a fit of hysterical yelling as he saw the bizarre oddity displayed in front of him. Mido sighed and shook his head in dismay.
“The ever gullible Master Hanamichi,” Mido sighed before explaining himself calmly. “Don’t worry, Master Hanamichi. I am sent by Ojisan Sakuragi, your ancestor to guide you on this quest. Well, actually he wanted me to send you back home, but I know you, so…”
“Ojisan Sakuragi?” Sakuragi Hanamichi said as he sat on top of Oukutsu. “You mean you were sent by my great-great-great-great-great…grandpa to send me home?” His face showed a little sing of relief, but after realizing something, his face changed sternly. “Hey, I’m not going back! I’ve come all the way here just to help my mother to fight this war and not get her killed! I’m not going back! You go back and tell Ojisan Sakuragi about that!”
“I knew you would say that, that’s why I’ve changed my mind of sending you back,” Mido smiled. “I’m here to help you go through this war.”
“You…You will?” Sakuragi asked as he got off Oukutsu. “But…But why? What have I done to deserve your servitude?”
“Remember the chicken that flew the coop and broke the tail of the neko candle holder?” Mido asked as he wagged his tail at Sakuragi. “That’s me!”
Sakuragi stared at Mido as the memory came back. He picked up the bronze-eyed cat and smiled, “Oh, so it’s you! Long time no see! So, uh, how are you going to help me out?”
“Leave that to me,” Mido said and leaned forward to lick the tip of Sakuragi’s nose. Sakuragi sneezed and let go of Mido in the process. He was about to rub his nose but Mido stopped him, “Don’t rub it! Stop! Just take off your clothes now.”
“Take of my clothes? Doushite?”
“Just wait and see.”
Sakuragi did as he was told. He stripped himself off the armour and the bra and girl underwear and everything else, leaving his whole body bare and exposed to the cold autumn wind. Suddenly, Sakuragi felt a slight heat radiating from inside his body. The heat soared from his fiery red head down to the tip of his toes. He could feel a great change happening to his body but he kept his eyes shut tight, afraid to see what was going on his body. This lasted for about a full 15 minutes or so.
“OK, you can open your eyes now.”
Sakuragi opened them tentatively. He looked down and yelled in shock at what he was seeing. He covered his mouth when he realized that his voice was high-pitched instead of his usual masculine yell. With a piece of the armour, he covered himself and looked at his body again with a face as red as a tomato. He saw that his breasts have actually become full and were huge—the exact size of a D-cup women’s breasts and that his Adam’s apple was gone. His body was perfect in every way—his original broad shoulders have shrunk a little to the size of an average woman who had done quite a number of workouts through her life, his waistline has also shrunk to fit a waist of a model, his arms and feet were slender like a girl and if he were to enter a beauty pageant he would be a winner for sure; and his face looked feminine, although there were still a few itsy-bitsy traces of masculinity in it. And the most important and bizarre thing was that his penis was replaced with a woman’s vagina. He blushed terribly at upon looking at it.
“So, Master Hanamichi,” Mido said as he produced a mirror out of nowhere, trying hard not to experience a serious nose bleed, “How do you like your new look?”
“It’s…It’s horrible!!! Terrible!!! What have you turned me into??!!” Sakuragi was in a stage of ranting and raving and was about to grab Mido to give him a head-butt when he noticed the features of his face on the mirror. His copper-brown eyes have gone softer and larger, like a girl, and his lips were rosier and a little bit fuller. His nose was a little bit higher and more feminine-looking and his long shoulder-length red hair has increased in length until it reached his elbows. He pouted at the image shown on the mirror and at Mido’s smug look before admitting, “I guess…I guess you’ve done a good job. But what’s this for?!”
“Well, if you want to be a girl, you better start by looking like one,” Mido said as he climbed up to Sakuragi’s shoulders and started combing his hair and tying it up into buns (like Chun-Li’s hair in Street Fighters). “You may act and hit and punch anyone like a real girl, but if you set one foot out there in that camp with that original male look and you definitely won’t last for 3 seconds before they start cutting your head off. I gave you the magical lick so that I can transform you into a real girl. 100% foolproof and you won’t have to worry about getting caught. Stuffing cloths into that bra of yours is not going to make you look like a girl enough, you know.”
Sakuragi nodded as he picked up the armour and underwear he had thrown in a careless heap and started dressing up. He realized that the bra he took form his mother’s dressing room wasn’t big enough to fit his D-cup sized breasts. Mido poked his claw at it and it expanded to fit. After putting everything on, he scrutinized himself in front of the mirror again and this time, he didn’t need to convince himself that he really looked like a real girl.
“Yada~! Sugoi desu-ne! I really am a girl right now! Kewl!”
“Arigatogozaimas, Master Hanamichi. It’s one of my powers I’ve mastered throughout the years. But there is one condition if you want to keep this look just right after the war. You must shed no blood or you will lose everything feminine on you.”
“Everything?” Sakuragi asked, his face showing worry.
“Everything,” Mido nodded. “All the looks, your breasts, everything. You’ll turn back into a complete man and all will be lost, if you know what I mean.”
Sakuragi gulped as he thought of his head being decapitated. He nodded and made a mental note that whatever he does, he will not let himself get hurt and bleed.
“Are we ready?” Mido asked eagerly as he climbed onto the back of Oukutsu. “Then let’s go! Ganbatte!”
Before he knew it, Sakuragi was walking towards the battle training camp.
As the thunder boomed throughout the night and all the way to dawn, an eerie silence hung over the ancestral pagoda where the statue of all the fallen warriors and relatives of the Sakuragi bloodline lay. Besides lighting a candle every time you want to pray to the ancestors, the Amazon Island people carve a miniature statue of the person who died 7 dasy after his/her death to be placed inside the pagoda. The folklore of the Amazons about these statues is that if you really have a serious trouble and you pray to the ancestors for help, they will come alive in the middle of the night and discuss the problems together before giving their living family a sign on how to solve that problem.
And that’s exactly how it happened. It wasn’t much of a folklore at all. As soon as Mrs. Sakuragi made a silent prayer to the ancestors that they protect her son and keep him from harm before going into the house with her husband, the pagoda soon became bright and glowing and one of the statues began to grow into full human size and stood tall among the rest of the mini statues before his feet. He had a really long beard and a plump body, with a majestic aura around him which made him looked like the first of the Sakuragi family. His body was the colour of the oak that he was made of and as he stretched his body, he bellowed and summoned a bronze cat that holds the candles lit for them to awaken.
“Mido!”
Almost immediately, the bronze cat blinked its eyes and the bronze covering fell off it like powder. It put down all the candles that it held and looked up to the old man, “Hait, kobanwa! What can I do for you, Ojisan Sakuragi?”
“Wake all the ancestors up, Mido,” the man the cat called Ojisan Sakuragi replied. “We have a crisis at hand.”
Mido the bronze neko obeyed. He walked towards each and every statue and nuzzled his nose at theirs, and within second, they grew into full human size one by one, making the pagoda pretty crowded. Almost at once, they started bickering.
“I knew it! I knew that Hanamichi is just a troublemaker!”
“Well, he certainly didn’t come from my side of the family!”
“Neither is he from my side of the family! We are perfectly civilized and noble for the likes of this little ragamuffin redhead! He doesn’t act like the boy he should be!”
“Of course not! Your son was a gigolo before he was taken as my lovely redhead daughter’s husband! I bet that’s where he got all that spunk from!”
The bickering went on and on, each ancestor blaming another for the reason Sakuragi acted this way. Their argument came in all at once that it made the whole pagoda sounded like the market just moved in to town. Ojisan Sakuragi looked at them silently for a few minutes before clearing his throat to make himself heard. Slowly, they ceased bickering one by one.
“Now that I have your attention, I would like you to discuss about how we are going to keep our Hanamichi from the harms of war. After all, he is our next of kin,” Ojisan Sakuragi said in a leveled tone. Everyone nodded.
“Well, he only went out of the house for about 10 minutes or so,” an ancestor from Mr. Sakuragi’s side said. “He might not be far. The forest of Gaia is much further a distance from here.”
“Yes. We should send someone to take him back before it’s too late,” another one agreed, which came from way back of the woody crowd.
“Very well then,” Ojisan Sakuragi nodded in satisfactory at this good idea. “Who wants to go and fetch Hanamichi back from the war zone before he gets himself killed?”
No one said anything. None of them wanted to have anything to do with the girlish Sakuragi Hanamichi even if their lives depended on it (that is, if they still have life left). Obviously Sakuragi has done enough damage in life to make even the ancestors wary of him. Ojisan Sakuragi sighed. He had expected this.
“Please? Anyone? He’s is, after all, our descendant.”
“I’ll go.”
Everyone turned to the timid voice coming from Mido the bronze neko. His eyes flashed in eagerness as he looked from one ancestor to another. They all looked back at him as if he had announced that he was going to become the goddess of Amazon Island. Ojisan Sakuragi lowered himself until he was the same level of height as the bronze cat. Though the bronze has come off his body, his eyes remained bronze. A really magnificent bronze indeed.
“Are you sure you want to do this? You know that danger is afoot once you set foot out of this pagoda and into the wide world, don’t you?”
“Yes, of course. But I own him a favour and it is time for me to finally pay it back.”
“Favour?”
It turned out that a few years ago, when Sakuragi was about 5 years old—give or take—Mido’s bronze tail was broken when one of the chickens flew the coop and broke it while trying to escape from the hysterical Sakuragi Hanamichi during last spring. Sakuragi caught sight of the poor chap’s broken tail, and with some superglue he got from the shed behind the house, he glued the tail back into place and placed a candle for him to hold, just for ‘good health’. Mido had felt in debt with Sakuragi since then.
“I will go to the ends of the earth just for Master Hanamichi because of this,” Mido said. “It’s a very appalling thing for cats to lose their tails. A very unhounourable thing it is.”
Ojisan Sakuragi considered a moment and rubbed his chin, looking at the tiny cat with bronze eyes. He looked at the other ancestors and they all nodded in agreement. Ojisan Sakuragi sighed and patted Mido and replied, “Oh well, since no one else around here wants to volunteer and Mido is willing to venture out into the humanly open, I suppose I’ll have to agree that you go after our Hanamichi. Remember, Mido, you must bring him back safe and sound and try to keep him out of trouble. It’s a jungle out there, and I mean a real jungle for the likes of you.”
Mido nodded eagerly and replied, “I will not fail you, Ojisan Sakuragi! I will bring Master Hanamichi home without a scratch on him. Trust me on this!”
As he scurried down the pagoda and out of the Sakuragi home compound, Ojisan Sakuragi looked out from the pagoda and before he shrank back into his statue size as the dawn began to hit, he muttered, “May the gods and goddesses protect Mido and Hanamichi.”
“Hi, I am so glad to be with you girls. How do you…OK, that’s lame.”
Sakuragi Hanamichi was in the forests of Gaia and about a few miles away from camp, hiding from view. He didn’t want anyone from the camp to see him there without being thoroughly prepared. He was afraid that if he ever walked in just like that, the girls would see right through him immediately. He was now keeping a safe, inconspicuous distance from the camp to practice how to actually sound like a girl.
“Hey, girls! What’s kickin’ around here? Wanna check out my sword?” Sakuragi practiced again, trying to pull out the sword as majestically as his mother used to do, but it couldn’t come out. Oukutsu whinnied a horse laugh and earned a head butt in return.
“I’m working on it, OK?! I may used to hang out with girls back in town but I never actually go out for war like this!!” Sakuragi yelled at his kaput stallion. “Well, gang-fights might be excluded, but then again I never dress up as a girl…”
“Do you need my help?”
Sakuragi turned around and saw a cat with a pair of bronze eyes staring back at him. On top of his head was Noma the lucky mynah. It looks like the mynah also took the liberty to follow the cat to save his master, whom he had a fondness of. Sakuragi and the cat stared at each other for a really long time. The cat decided to break the ice.
“Hello, Master Hanamichi. My name is Mido. Can I be of your assistance?”
“YAGH~!!! A talking cat~!!! A demon~!!! YAGH~!!!” Sakuragi immediately went into a fit of hysterical yelling as he saw the bizarre oddity displayed in front of him. Mido sighed and shook his head in dismay.
“The ever gullible Master Hanamichi,” Mido sighed before explaining himself calmly. “Don’t worry, Master Hanamichi. I am sent by Ojisan Sakuragi, your ancestor to guide you on this quest. Well, actually he wanted me to send you back home, but I know you, so…”
“Ojisan Sakuragi?” Sakuragi Hanamichi said as he sat on top of Oukutsu. “You mean you were sent by my great-great-great-great-great…grandpa to send me home?” His face showed a little sing of relief, but after realizing something, his face changed sternly. “Hey, I’m not going back! I’ve come all the way here just to help my mother to fight this war and not get her killed! I’m not going back! You go back and tell Ojisan Sakuragi about that!”
“I knew you would say that, that’s why I’ve changed my mind of sending you back,” Mido smiled. “I’m here to help you go through this war.”
“You…You will?” Sakuragi asked as he got off Oukutsu. “But…But why? What have I done to deserve your servitude?”
“Remember the chicken that flew the coop and broke the tail of the neko candle holder?” Mido asked as he wagged his tail at Sakuragi. “That’s me!”
Sakuragi stared at Mido as the memory came back. He picked up the bronze-eyed cat and smiled, “Oh, so it’s you! Long time no see! So, uh, how are you going to help me out?”
“Leave that to me,” Mido said and leaned forward to lick the tip of Sakuragi’s nose. Sakuragi sneezed and let go of Mido in the process. He was about to rub his nose but Mido stopped him, “Don’t rub it! Stop! Just take off your clothes now.”
“Take of my clothes? Doushite?”
“Just wait and see.”
Sakuragi did as he was told. He stripped himself off the armour and the bra and girl underwear and everything else, leaving his whole body bare and exposed to the cold autumn wind. Suddenly, Sakuragi felt a slight heat radiating from inside his body. The heat soared from his fiery red head down to the tip of his toes. He could feel a great change happening to his body but he kept his eyes shut tight, afraid to see what was going on his body. This lasted for about a full 15 minutes or so.
“OK, you can open your eyes now.”
Sakuragi opened them tentatively. He looked down and yelled in shock at what he was seeing. He covered his mouth when he realized that his voice was high-pitched instead of his usual masculine yell. With a piece of the armour, he covered himself and looked at his body again with a face as red as a tomato. He saw that his breasts have actually become full and were huge—the exact size of a D-cup women’s breasts and that his Adam’s apple was gone. His body was perfect in every way—his original broad shoulders have shrunk a little to the size of an average woman who had done quite a number of workouts through her life, his waistline has also shrunk to fit a waist of a model, his arms and feet were slender like a girl and if he were to enter a beauty pageant he would be a winner for sure; and his face looked feminine, although there were still a few itsy-bitsy traces of masculinity in it. And the most important and bizarre thing was that his penis was replaced with a woman’s vagina. He blushed terribly at upon looking at it.
“So, Master Hanamichi,” Mido said as he produced a mirror out of nowhere, trying hard not to experience a serious nose bleed, “How do you like your new look?”
“It’s…It’s horrible!!! Terrible!!! What have you turned me into??!!” Sakuragi was in a stage of ranting and raving and was about to grab Mido to give him a head-butt when he noticed the features of his face on the mirror. His copper-brown eyes have gone softer and larger, like a girl, and his lips were rosier and a little bit fuller. His nose was a little bit higher and more feminine-looking and his long shoulder-length red hair has increased in length until it reached his elbows. He pouted at the image shown on the mirror and at Mido’s smug look before admitting, “I guess…I guess you’ve done a good job. But what’s this for?!”
“Well, if you want to be a girl, you better start by looking like one,” Mido said as he climbed up to Sakuragi’s shoulders and started combing his hair and tying it up into buns (like Chun-Li’s hair in Street Fighters). “You may act and hit and punch anyone like a real girl, but if you set one foot out there in that camp with that original male look and you definitely won’t last for 3 seconds before they start cutting your head off. I gave you the magical lick so that I can transform you into a real girl. 100% foolproof and you won’t have to worry about getting caught. Stuffing cloths into that bra of yours is not going to make you look like a girl enough, you know.”
Sakuragi nodded as he picked up the armour and underwear he had thrown in a careless heap and started dressing up. He realized that the bra he took form his mother’s dressing room wasn’t big enough to fit his D-cup sized breasts. Mido poked his claw at it and it expanded to fit. After putting everything on, he scrutinized himself in front of the mirror again and this time, he didn’t need to convince himself that he really looked like a real girl.
“Yada~! Sugoi desu-ne! I really am a girl right now! Kewl!”
“Arigatogozaimas, Master Hanamichi. It’s one of my powers I’ve mastered throughout the years. But there is one condition if you want to keep this look just right after the war. You must shed no blood or you will lose everything feminine on you.”
“Everything?” Sakuragi asked, his face showing worry.
“Everything,” Mido nodded. “All the looks, your breasts, everything. You’ll turn back into a complete man and all will be lost, if you know what I mean.”
Sakuragi gulped as he thought of his head being decapitated. He nodded and made a mental note that whatever he does, he will not let himself get hurt and bleed.
“Are we ready?” Mido asked eagerly as he climbed onto the back of Oukutsu. “Then let’s go! Ganbatte!”
Before he knew it, Sakuragi was walking towards the battle training camp.
Mulan: A Parody-Chp2
CHAPTER 2 – THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF WAR
Sakuragi brooded all the way back home, thinking about the disastrous day he had endured with the legendary Gori. Somehow, since the first matchmaking test, the Gori never had a liking towards him. He was always knocked in the head with his concrete fist and was told that he would never make it to be a groom with that girlish attitude like his. Well, in Amazon Island, if you’re a boy and you act tough and all that like a girl, you are considered girlish, almost like if you’re a girl and you act like a boy, you’re a tomboy kind of thing. To Akagi, he was all girl and no man. He always told to be acting like a boy—timid and loyal and speak when you’re spoken to—but he couldn’t help it! He was born that way! He can’t help it if he’s the only child in the family—and a boy for that matter—and so happens to love action and adventure his mother used to do during the war. Why can’t they just let him be? Why can’t they just let him do what he wants and be himself? Why, why, why?!
Before he knew it, he already found himself walking into his home at the front yard. He looked up and saw his mother, Mrs. Sakuragi, her face filled with anticipation and hope of his son finally succeeding in his test. Sakuragi felt really ashamed. He looked away and bounded off, running past his mother to his room. He stripped himself of the ridiculous suit he was wearing for the test and changed into his sports clothes before he barged towards the large garden behind his home. He passed by the goldfish pond and stared at his reflection: a tall, awkward, strong and built yet handsome redhead whom no one will ever marry, not for the gold in the world.
“Hana-chan?”
Sakuragi turned around at his mother’s voice. Mrs. Sakuragi stepped closer towards her son and sat beside him by the pond. Sakuragi slowly looked away; he was too embarrassed for failing the test the 6th time in so many years.
“It’s alright, Hana-chan. You’ve tried your best,” Mrs Sakuragi said kindly and calmly.
“I screwed up, Mom…My life is totally ruined! That Gori said I’m not fit to be anyone’s husband,” Sakuragi said gloomily.
“Nonsense, Hana-chan. You’re tall just like your great-great grandmother, you have beautiful red hair just like the ancestors before you, you have those beautiful copper-brown eyes like your Dad, and you are strong just like me. You will get yourself a great wife and she will love you unconditionally.”
“That’s just it, Mom,” Sakuragi frowned. “I’m not like other boys that are small and timid and listen to whatever the girls tell them to do and ignored at unless someone actually talks to him. I’m…I’m like a girl! I do chores terribly, I don’t hang out with boys the same age as me, I even entered basketball and let Sensei Ansai to coach me, even though all the girls laughed and called me girlish. Sooner or later, I’ll turn into a matchmaker and won’t marry at all, like the Gori! He’s still single until now!”
Mrs. Sakuragi shook her head slightly and turned to the goldfish in the pond. She pointed at a juvenile male goldfish who stayed at a small corner while the other male goldfish mingled around with the females, “You see that fish?”
Sakuragi turned to where she was pointing and nodded.
“That, my Hana-chan, is a late bloomer. I’ve been observing him for a very long time now. The mating season has started a week ago, but he still remained there, not moving and not swimming at all, except that he still eats. He maybe late in joining in the mating seasons, but I can tell you, once he’s ready to mate, he’ll the most outstanding of all, just like you, my tensai Hana-chan.”
Sakuragi stared at the fish for a while, then looked at his mother’s kind smiling face and smiled back. He stood up abruptly with a finger pointing to the sky as he exclaimed, “Yes!!! That’s right!! I’m a tensai! I will prevail!!! Nya ha ha ha ha ha~!!!”
Mrs. Sakuragi sighed and shook her head weakly. He was her only son, and she favoured him the most when it comes to him and her husband. He was like the daughter she never had—funny, outgoing, outspoken, tough, strong and always happy and gay. And speaking of gay, she also had a small suspicion that her son is actually gay, because she noticed that when he was around girls he would be so devilish and wild, just like any other girl, but when he’s around guys, he would automatically switch to the gentleman mode, making himself look like he was born to impress men. Not that she had anything against her son’s ‘interests’, but she was afraid that his ‘interests’ would bring further damage more to his son than to the family (as I said, she favours more than anything else). Which is why she hoped that Sakuragi would hurry up and get married so that the gayness would be suppressed.
While Sakuragi was getting all his hopes high again, a trumpet suddenly blew. Mrs. Sakuragi knew this kind of trumpet sound very well—it was a sign that war was near. Everyone moved out of their homes to see what was going on. There, on a magnificent stallion, sat the Amazon Island’s Queen, Queen Ayako’s counselor Hikoichi and a few more soldiers (women, of course) behind him. He was chosen as counselor for his skills of writing and taking notes, so he was often trusted with important paperwork. As everyone looked at the counselor quizzically, Hikoichi cleared his throat and opened a scroll.
“Our island is under siege and the Queen needs extra people to join the war. The family whose name has been read out from this scroll must send in a woman in the family to report to the training grounds at the forests of Gaia tomorrow morning,” Hikoichi announced before reading the scroll, “The Murada family, the Kimura family, the Tateno family, the Fujisaki family…”
And the list went on. One by one, a daughter would come up to take the report scroll. Sakuragi watched in fascination. He had heard stories about being sent out to war, but that was his mother’s time. As he continued to watch, Hikoichi suddenly announced, “The Sakuragi family!”
Sakuragi gasped. His family was also chosen?! But…But his family has no girls! He’s a boy! He doesn’t have a sister or a girl cousin or any female relatives in his family, why was his family chosen? If he’s not the one they want, then it has to be…
Just as he feared, his mother Mrs. Sakuragi handed her walking stick to her husband and walked towards Hikoichi’s horse in a hobbling manner. She stood tall and took the scroll from Hikoichi. Sakuragi was filled with anxiety. Without thinking twice, he ran towards the Queen’s counselor and yelled, “No, you can’t! You can’t do this to my Mom! Can’t you see she’s having a bad knee? She’s not fit to fight in the war!”
“Mrs. Sakuragi,” Hikoichi said haughtily. “I suggest you teach your son to mind his manners and speak when he’s spoken to.”
“Here we go again! Another ‘speak when you’re spoken’ crap! I just don’t understand why you girls have all the power to…” Sakuragi’s ranting and raving was stopped by his mother’s stern voice.
“Hanamichi, you dishonour me.”
Sakuragi wanted to protest but when his mother started calling him by ‘Hanamichi’ instead of ‘Hana-chan’, he knew she meant business, and that means ‘Urusai’ for him. He shut his pie-hole and stepped aside. Hikoichi handed the last two scrolls to the Hosokawa family and the Kurita family before riding away, his henchwomen following him behind. As soon as Hikoichi was out of earshot, Sakuragi wanted to speak his mind about his mother volunteering to fight in the war, but she made clear to his son that she didn’t want to talk about it when she just passed him by without a word.
Sakuragi didn’t know which was worse: being ignored by his beloved Mom who had met his every whim and fancy or losing her out in the battle he knew she’ll never win.
The whole dining room fell as silent as the graveyard as the Sakuragi family sat down for dinner that night. No one said a word about that afternoon’s incident with Sakuragi’s outburst and about Mrs. Sakuragi going out to war. Mr. Sakuragi has already been trained to be a diligent, ask-no-questions type of husband, so it’s no big surprise that he took everything in without a word. And for the first time in his life, Sakuragi Hanamichi actually has no appetite to eat (at usual time, he could eat about 4 bowls of rice).
Almost suddenly, Sakuragi thumped his bowl of rice onto the table. He couldn’t stand being quiet anymore about all this. He turned sharply to his mother and said, “I can’t take it anymore! You shouldn’t have accepted that scroll!”
“Hana-chan, I’ve made my decision to serve the Queen,” Mrs. Sakuragi was not at all perturbed with her son’s sudden outburst. “It was my duty to protect the Queen when the last war occurred and it is my duty now to continue protecting her.”
“So you rather risk your life for the Queen and risk your health over her? There are millions of girls out there who are young and can fight! They don’t have to depend only on you! You’re not the only woman in the whole wide world! That Queen is a baka for thinking that…”
“Urusai, Hana-chan!” Mrs. Sakuragi said sternly, glaring at him. “You will not say mean things about the honourable Queen and say things that’ll dishonour our namesake!”
“Screw our namesake! Baka! Baka, baka, baka!!!”
Sakuragi ran off from the dining room, leaving his food untouched. Mr. Sakuragi wanted to rush over to talk to him but his wife forbade him to do so. It was raining outside, and it drenched the young redhead from head to toe. No one came out to coax him, and he knew that his mother had made it clear to his father that he shouldn’t be inside until he has come to his senses. From the garden, he saw his mother tried to do some stunt moves with the family sword and her sitting abruptly due to her bad knee. His father came in and tried to talk to her but she wouldn’t hear of it. Sakuragi understood where he got the hard-headed and indignant attitude from.
He continued to stand under the rain and let it drench him seriously. He began to contemplate about the reason of his life and his existence throughout his whole life. Why was he born in a land where men are patronized? Why couldn’t he be just like everyone else? Why did his mother insist on going out to this war even though she knew that she was going to die out there leaving him and his father all alone? Why are all girls trying to act tough and all and expect men to be a goody two-shoed person…?
That was when he made his decision. He ran all the way to the ancestral pagoda and lit a candle, which was Amazon Island tradition when you want to pray to the ancestors. He prayed for protection and forgiveness before hurrying back into the house. After making himself decently dry a bit, he grabbed a few ribbons and a bra from his mother’s dressing table and also the scroll, replacing it with his basketball. He rushed to the weaponry and armour room and took out his mother’s war clothes and the family sword. He took the few girly ribbons and tied his hair into two pony tails, trying to sell himself off as a girl. To sell himself even more as a girl, he tried stuffing cloths into the bra to make him look ‘fuller’. After watching himself in the mirror and tried to convince himself that he looked no different than a common girl, he quickly walked towards the stables and got his family stallion Oukutsu. He was quite a strong horse with blonde, magnificent flowing name and had an attitude of his own. At first when Sakuragi came into the stables in his woman armour, Oukutsu was shocked to see an intruder, but Sakuragi came over to calm him down, whispering “It’s me” before running off out of the house and into the rain down the cold valley towards the forests of Gaia.
When Mrs. Sakuragi woke up with a start at the loud boom of thunder outside, the first thing that caught her eye was Sakuragi’s basketball. She couldn’t find her report scroll anywhere. Her heart was filled with horror as she ran towards the armour room and sure enough, she found her armour and the family sword missing. She rushed to the stables and saw that Oukutsu the family stallion was gone and that the front gate was wide open. She knew it. She knew that her son would do such a foolish thing as this. Mr. Sakuragi came forward to his wife and begged, “We must save him and bring him back! He’ll die out there!”
“If we reveal him,” Mrs. Sakuragi held his husband back, “he’ll die too.”
Sakuragi brooded all the way back home, thinking about the disastrous day he had endured with the legendary Gori. Somehow, since the first matchmaking test, the Gori never had a liking towards him. He was always knocked in the head with his concrete fist and was told that he would never make it to be a groom with that girlish attitude like his. Well, in Amazon Island, if you’re a boy and you act tough and all that like a girl, you are considered girlish, almost like if you’re a girl and you act like a boy, you’re a tomboy kind of thing. To Akagi, he was all girl and no man. He always told to be acting like a boy—timid and loyal and speak when you’re spoken to—but he couldn’t help it! He was born that way! He can’t help it if he’s the only child in the family—and a boy for that matter—and so happens to love action and adventure his mother used to do during the war. Why can’t they just let him be? Why can’t they just let him do what he wants and be himself? Why, why, why?!
Before he knew it, he already found himself walking into his home at the front yard. He looked up and saw his mother, Mrs. Sakuragi, her face filled with anticipation and hope of his son finally succeeding in his test. Sakuragi felt really ashamed. He looked away and bounded off, running past his mother to his room. He stripped himself of the ridiculous suit he was wearing for the test and changed into his sports clothes before he barged towards the large garden behind his home. He passed by the goldfish pond and stared at his reflection: a tall, awkward, strong and built yet handsome redhead whom no one will ever marry, not for the gold in the world.
“Hana-chan?”
Sakuragi turned around at his mother’s voice. Mrs. Sakuragi stepped closer towards her son and sat beside him by the pond. Sakuragi slowly looked away; he was too embarrassed for failing the test the 6th time in so many years.
“It’s alright, Hana-chan. You’ve tried your best,” Mrs Sakuragi said kindly and calmly.
“I screwed up, Mom…My life is totally ruined! That Gori said I’m not fit to be anyone’s husband,” Sakuragi said gloomily.
“Nonsense, Hana-chan. You’re tall just like your great-great grandmother, you have beautiful red hair just like the ancestors before you, you have those beautiful copper-brown eyes like your Dad, and you are strong just like me. You will get yourself a great wife and she will love you unconditionally.”
“That’s just it, Mom,” Sakuragi frowned. “I’m not like other boys that are small and timid and listen to whatever the girls tell them to do and ignored at unless someone actually talks to him. I’m…I’m like a girl! I do chores terribly, I don’t hang out with boys the same age as me, I even entered basketball and let Sensei Ansai to coach me, even though all the girls laughed and called me girlish. Sooner or later, I’ll turn into a matchmaker and won’t marry at all, like the Gori! He’s still single until now!”
Mrs. Sakuragi shook her head slightly and turned to the goldfish in the pond. She pointed at a juvenile male goldfish who stayed at a small corner while the other male goldfish mingled around with the females, “You see that fish?”
Sakuragi turned to where she was pointing and nodded.
“That, my Hana-chan, is a late bloomer. I’ve been observing him for a very long time now. The mating season has started a week ago, but he still remained there, not moving and not swimming at all, except that he still eats. He maybe late in joining in the mating seasons, but I can tell you, once he’s ready to mate, he’ll the most outstanding of all, just like you, my tensai Hana-chan.”
Sakuragi stared at the fish for a while, then looked at his mother’s kind smiling face and smiled back. He stood up abruptly with a finger pointing to the sky as he exclaimed, “Yes!!! That’s right!! I’m a tensai! I will prevail!!! Nya ha ha ha ha ha~!!!”
Mrs. Sakuragi sighed and shook her head weakly. He was her only son, and she favoured him the most when it comes to him and her husband. He was like the daughter she never had—funny, outgoing, outspoken, tough, strong and always happy and gay. And speaking of gay, she also had a small suspicion that her son is actually gay, because she noticed that when he was around girls he would be so devilish and wild, just like any other girl, but when he’s around guys, he would automatically switch to the gentleman mode, making himself look like he was born to impress men. Not that she had anything against her son’s ‘interests’, but she was afraid that his ‘interests’ would bring further damage more to his son than to the family (as I said, she favours more than anything else). Which is why she hoped that Sakuragi would hurry up and get married so that the gayness would be suppressed.
While Sakuragi was getting all his hopes high again, a trumpet suddenly blew. Mrs. Sakuragi knew this kind of trumpet sound very well—it was a sign that war was near. Everyone moved out of their homes to see what was going on. There, on a magnificent stallion, sat the Amazon Island’s Queen, Queen Ayako’s counselor Hikoichi and a few more soldiers (women, of course) behind him. He was chosen as counselor for his skills of writing and taking notes, so he was often trusted with important paperwork. As everyone looked at the counselor quizzically, Hikoichi cleared his throat and opened a scroll.
“Our island is under siege and the Queen needs extra people to join the war. The family whose name has been read out from this scroll must send in a woman in the family to report to the training grounds at the forests of Gaia tomorrow morning,” Hikoichi announced before reading the scroll, “The Murada family, the Kimura family, the Tateno family, the Fujisaki family…”
And the list went on. One by one, a daughter would come up to take the report scroll. Sakuragi watched in fascination. He had heard stories about being sent out to war, but that was his mother’s time. As he continued to watch, Hikoichi suddenly announced, “The Sakuragi family!”
Sakuragi gasped. His family was also chosen?! But…But his family has no girls! He’s a boy! He doesn’t have a sister or a girl cousin or any female relatives in his family, why was his family chosen? If he’s not the one they want, then it has to be…
Just as he feared, his mother Mrs. Sakuragi handed her walking stick to her husband and walked towards Hikoichi’s horse in a hobbling manner. She stood tall and took the scroll from Hikoichi. Sakuragi was filled with anxiety. Without thinking twice, he ran towards the Queen’s counselor and yelled, “No, you can’t! You can’t do this to my Mom! Can’t you see she’s having a bad knee? She’s not fit to fight in the war!”
“Mrs. Sakuragi,” Hikoichi said haughtily. “I suggest you teach your son to mind his manners and speak when he’s spoken to.”
“Here we go again! Another ‘speak when you’re spoken’ crap! I just don’t understand why you girls have all the power to…” Sakuragi’s ranting and raving was stopped by his mother’s stern voice.
“Hanamichi, you dishonour me.”
Sakuragi wanted to protest but when his mother started calling him by ‘Hanamichi’ instead of ‘Hana-chan’, he knew she meant business, and that means ‘Urusai’ for him. He shut his pie-hole and stepped aside. Hikoichi handed the last two scrolls to the Hosokawa family and the Kurita family before riding away, his henchwomen following him behind. As soon as Hikoichi was out of earshot, Sakuragi wanted to speak his mind about his mother volunteering to fight in the war, but she made clear to his son that she didn’t want to talk about it when she just passed him by without a word.
Sakuragi didn’t know which was worse: being ignored by his beloved Mom who had met his every whim and fancy or losing her out in the battle he knew she’ll never win.
The whole dining room fell as silent as the graveyard as the Sakuragi family sat down for dinner that night. No one said a word about that afternoon’s incident with Sakuragi’s outburst and about Mrs. Sakuragi going out to war. Mr. Sakuragi has already been trained to be a diligent, ask-no-questions type of husband, so it’s no big surprise that he took everything in without a word. And for the first time in his life, Sakuragi Hanamichi actually has no appetite to eat (at usual time, he could eat about 4 bowls of rice).
Almost suddenly, Sakuragi thumped his bowl of rice onto the table. He couldn’t stand being quiet anymore about all this. He turned sharply to his mother and said, “I can’t take it anymore! You shouldn’t have accepted that scroll!”
“Hana-chan, I’ve made my decision to serve the Queen,” Mrs. Sakuragi was not at all perturbed with her son’s sudden outburst. “It was my duty to protect the Queen when the last war occurred and it is my duty now to continue protecting her.”
“So you rather risk your life for the Queen and risk your health over her? There are millions of girls out there who are young and can fight! They don’t have to depend only on you! You’re not the only woman in the whole wide world! That Queen is a baka for thinking that…”
“Urusai, Hana-chan!” Mrs. Sakuragi said sternly, glaring at him. “You will not say mean things about the honourable Queen and say things that’ll dishonour our namesake!”
“Screw our namesake! Baka! Baka, baka, baka!!!”
Sakuragi ran off from the dining room, leaving his food untouched. Mr. Sakuragi wanted to rush over to talk to him but his wife forbade him to do so. It was raining outside, and it drenched the young redhead from head to toe. No one came out to coax him, and he knew that his mother had made it clear to his father that he shouldn’t be inside until he has come to his senses. From the garden, he saw his mother tried to do some stunt moves with the family sword and her sitting abruptly due to her bad knee. His father came in and tried to talk to her but she wouldn’t hear of it. Sakuragi understood where he got the hard-headed and indignant attitude from.
He continued to stand under the rain and let it drench him seriously. He began to contemplate about the reason of his life and his existence throughout his whole life. Why was he born in a land where men are patronized? Why couldn’t he be just like everyone else? Why did his mother insist on going out to this war even though she knew that she was going to die out there leaving him and his father all alone? Why are all girls trying to act tough and all and expect men to be a goody two-shoed person…?
That was when he made his decision. He ran all the way to the ancestral pagoda and lit a candle, which was Amazon Island tradition when you want to pray to the ancestors. He prayed for protection and forgiveness before hurrying back into the house. After making himself decently dry a bit, he grabbed a few ribbons and a bra from his mother’s dressing table and also the scroll, replacing it with his basketball. He rushed to the weaponry and armour room and took out his mother’s war clothes and the family sword. He took the few girly ribbons and tied his hair into two pony tails, trying to sell himself off as a girl. To sell himself even more as a girl, he tried stuffing cloths into the bra to make him look ‘fuller’. After watching himself in the mirror and tried to convince himself that he looked no different than a common girl, he quickly walked towards the stables and got his family stallion Oukutsu. He was quite a strong horse with blonde, magnificent flowing name and had an attitude of his own. At first when Sakuragi came into the stables in his woman armour, Oukutsu was shocked to see an intruder, but Sakuragi came over to calm him down, whispering “It’s me” before running off out of the house and into the rain down the cold valley towards the forests of Gaia.
When Mrs. Sakuragi woke up with a start at the loud boom of thunder outside, the first thing that caught her eye was Sakuragi’s basketball. She couldn’t find her report scroll anywhere. Her heart was filled with horror as she ran towards the armour room and sure enough, she found her armour and the family sword missing. She rushed to the stables and saw that Oukutsu the family stallion was gone and that the front gate was wide open. She knew it. She knew that her son would do such a foolish thing as this. Mr. Sakuragi came forward to his wife and begged, “We must save him and bring him back! He’ll die out there!”
“If we reveal him,” Mrs. Sakuragi held his husband back, “he’ll die too.”
Mulan: A Parody-Chp1
Started: 10-8-03 Completed: 10-21-03“Diligence, loyalty, trust, respect, understanding, forgiving, hardworking…”
Sakuragi has just gotten out of bed remembering that today was the matchmaker’s test day. He took out the scrolls that were meant for him to study and started jotting down the notes onto his arm. He had to—he hadn’t studied last night because he was busy doing the chores in the house and playing with other guys just to forget about the nauseating feeling of meeting the matchmaker—again.
Sakuragi Hanamichi was not such a bad-looking character, really. He had the reddest, brightest flaming hair, running down to his shoulders, you have ever seen in the whole world, and his copper-brown eyes are just the most wonderful ones you just can’t help loving. He got that hair through a skipped generation of red-heads—his ancestor from his mother’s side has red hair. He’s tall and built, at about 189cm, and he has incredible stamina and strength. He could take down anyone with just a swipe of his hand or a butt on the head (his head is seriously as hard as steel) and can jump higher than anyone else put together. His arms and feet are tough and strong and unbelievably skillful in holding anything at all with the just the palm of his hand, including his favourite basketball.
But this wasn’t much liked by the girls of the Amazons, for he was born and bred in the half-traditional-half-modern Amazon Island where the role of girls and boys are exactly the opposite—girls go around in battle and do all the important stuff and walk around being tough and all while the guys stay at home to do the household chores or minor things like being a hawker or something. In Amazon Island, the women are the bread-winner of the family. Thank goodness that the nature of things hadn’t changed the fact that women still play a role in bearing children, but whether in having sex or having kids or a family, women still is the ‘man of the house’. Which is why our dear ol’ Sakuragi Hanamichi had failed to pass the matchmaker’s test over and over again 5 times in a row. His attitude is so much like a girl and not like those typical timid little boys who walk around lowering their heads while girls keep theirs high.
“And the final one…punctuality,” Sakuragi muttered to himself again as he wrote down the last piece of the 10 rules of being a husband. The word struck him like a gong. Punctuality…Sakuragi yelped in shock. He was late for the preparation to go for the matchmaking test! And he hadn’t even brushed his teeth yet! As he brushed his teeth hastily, he tied the bag of grain to his basketball and rolled it on the ground, spilling the grain around the grass for the chickens to feed on. With the toothbrush still in his mouth, he rushed over to the kitchen to boil his mother’s herbal tea. His mother had a bad knee due to her last war and was now retired and resting at home nursing it. After gargling, Sakuragi had just enough time to rush to the ancestral pagoda to bring his mother her tea.
His mother, Mrs. Sakuragi just came out of the ancestral pagoda after asking for the ancestors to help her son succeed in his matchmaking test. She saw her son bounding up to her holding the cup of herbal tea for her. He was trying to shove in a pair of trousers while buttoning his shirt. Mrs. Sakuragi sighed and shook her head as she took the cup of tea.
“Here you go, Mom,” Sakuragi Hanamichi said as his mother took the tea. “Remember, Mom, 3 cups in the morning and 3 cups at night. You want your knee to heal, right?”
“I hope you will succeed this time, my son,” Mrs. Sakuragi tried to give her son some encouragement but he was too much in a hurry for pep talk.
“Sorry, Mom! I’m running late! I gotta go, Dad’s waiting for me! Don’t worry, I’m a tensai, I will prevail! Nya ha ha ha ha ha ha ha~!”
So saying, Sakuragi Hanamichi bounded off, leaving his mother standing in front of the pagoda with her steaming cup of tea. She sighed and walked back into the pagoda.
“I think I’ll pray some more.”
“Where have you been, Hana-chan? You have a test today and you’re almost running late!”
“Sorry, Dad. Overslept,” Sakuragi Hanamichi replied as he bounded into the shower house. The cleaning man shook his head in disapproval before stripping him naked and pushed him into the bath. Sakuragi yelped as the scalding hot water gave him a sudden burn.
“ATSUI-NE~~~!!!!!!!”
“Well, you were quite late and the water was getting cold, so we had to refill it,” Mr. Sakuragi (in Amazon Island, when a couple marries, the man will obtain the wife’s surname) told him. He noticed the notes he scribbled on his arm and gave him a disapproving look, but was kind enough not to wash it away—he knew his son very well about his appalling memory. He was then taking to the beauty house and was given a makeover—as in new suit, new hairstyle (Sakuragi insisted on not cutting his long hair), new shoes, new everything. His basketball sifu, Sensei Ansai was also there to wish him luck, giving him a lucky mynah named Noma to make things even better. Sakuragi groaned.
‘I need more than just luck,’ he thought nervously. ‘I need a miracle!’
After all said and done, Sakuragi quickly rushed up to the line of other men his age to take the test. People stopped doing whatever their doing to see the event—it’s not always that Amazon Island has anything interesting as this. Among all the people before him, he was the tallest (obviously) and he stood out among the rest. They all stood in a single file in front of the matchmaker’s house waiting to be called in. Slowly the door of the matchmaker’s home opened. There stood Akagi the matchmaker, standing even taller than Sakuragi with dark skin almost like Michael Jordan’s and a face which resembles a gorilla, thus earning the nickname by Sakuragi ‘The Gori’. His assistant Kokure was walking beside him, holding a writing board. Timid and silent with his glasses, he was the perfect husband any woman wants to marry, but somehow no one did. Probably because he was hangin around with the tall, giant-like Akagi.
“Sakuragi Hanamichi!” Kokure called out, tapping the writing board with his pen.
“Hait! The tensai is present!” Sakuragi said cheerfully, standing right away and waving his hand valiantly, sending the townspeople into fits of chortling and laughter. Akagi looked at him in disapproval.
“Speaking without permission,” Akagi muttered as he scribbled onto his board. Sakuragi slapped his head. That was the golden rule of a husband and yet he forgot all about it. He walked awkwardly behind Akagi and Kokure and was ordered to take a seat while Kokure closed the door. Sakuragi gulped in anxiety. This was it. The big test.
“Recite the 10 rules of being a husband,” Akagi said. Sakuragi took off his hat and pretended to look grooming enough as he stole a peek at his arm. He was slightly horrified when he saw that the ink on his arm smudged due to the bath but he recited it anyway.
“Diligence, speak only when spoken to, royalty…sunimase! Loyalty…trust, respect, understatement…no! understanding, forgiving, hardworking…and, err…” Sakuragi squinted to see the terribly smudged word before he finally blurted, “Punch you in the eye…gomenasai! It’s punctuality. Sunimase…Itai!!”
Akagi grabbed Sakuragi’s arm all of a sudden as soon as he finished reciting the 10 golden rules. Sakuragi thought that he had been found but, to his relief, the Gori was checking his hat to see if he was cheating by reading notes in it. So far, so good. Sakuragi thought he saw Kokure giving him a disapproval look, but remained silent. He guessed that Kokure has seen him cheating but was kind enough not to tell.
Akagi, on the other hand, glared at Sakuragi suspiciously before returning the hat to Sakuragi. Unknowingly, Akagi had smeared his hand on the ink while he grabbed his arm that has the notes on, and as he rubbed his chin while giving a sort of sermon to Sakuragi about the importance of practicing the golden rules, the ink blackened his chin, forming a sort of beard on it. Sakuragi tried very hard not to scoff. Kokure wanted to voice it out but seeing that Akagi didn’t wish to be interrupted, he hid a smile and pretended not to see it.
“And now, Sakuragi, the tea pouring ritual,” Akagi brought the struggling-not-to-laugh Sakuragi back into reality. Sakuragi collected himself before reaching his hands charmingly towards the teapot, just to impress the Gori. He poured the tea 3-quarterly full, just like his father taught him to and handed it to Akagi. The Gori let out a sideways smile; he was finally and actually impressed at his change of attitude. As Sakuragi sat quietly in front of Akagi while the Gori drank his tea, he noticed something horrifying.
The mynah, Noma, actually got out of the small cage that hung at his belt and it was fluttering above Akagi’s head, flying round and round to look for a nice spot to rest. As soon as Noma found one right in the middle of Akagi’s squarish hairstyle, he descended on it and sat there, not moving an inch. Sakuragi was horrified. If the Gori were to find out that Noma the lucky mynah actually made a nest out of his hair, he’ll be in deep shit! While Akagi wasn’t aware of this intrusion on his head, Sakuragi decided to clear things up.
“Err…Annou…Gomene…”
“You are to speak when you are spoken to, young man! Have you forgotten the golden rule?” Akagi’s booming voice shot through his ears. Sakuragi winced before climbing up onto the table.
“Hait, I know that…but, uh…I need to get this…off your head…”
“What thing? There’s nothing on my head! Hey!!”
Before he knew it, Sakuragi was already pouncing onto Akagi’s head as he tried to catch the bird. He wanted to clasp his hands onto Noma but ended up slapping Akagi’s head instead. He stood a little higher on the table trying to get Noma who was fluttering up the ceiling out of his reach and as he leaned forward, Akagi was so taken aback that he leaned too far back and ended up sitting on a basket of sharp-tipped combs (it was a sort of ‘diploma’ when a man passes the test—the matchmaker will slip the comb into the man’s hair). They stung his butt like sea-urchins and Akagi yelped in pain. He stood up abruptly and hit his forehead against Sakuragi’s forehead in the process. Kokure watched all of this with a face of horror.
Bad move. Sakuragi Hanamichi was very well-known with a forehead of steel and anyone who gets in serious contact with it will blackout for about, say, 15 minutes tops. Lucky for ours truly Sakuragi, his matchmaker the Gori was able to withstand the accidental head butt due to his tall and strong built, but he couldn’t help feeling a little woozy because the head butt came to him as a surprise. He swooned and walked in an irregular file and soon found himself bursting out of his own house and falling onto the porch. When he got back to his senses, he found himself lying on his stomach on the porch floor with all the sharp-tipped combs sticking out of his butt (this scene is a little bit familiar, don’t you think?).
Judging by the dangerous look on the Gori’s face when Sakuragi came over to help him get up, he was sure that he was in for a very, VERY big trouble. Noma has finally being in the mercy of his strong hands and back into his cage, but he knew that the worst is not over. And sure enough, Akagi was starting to yell and pointing an accusing finger at the young redhead after his assistant Kokure came over and helped him up instead.
“You are a walking disaster! You are a bringer of all chaos and calamity! You are nothing but sheer trouble! Mr. Sakuragi,” Akagi turned to Sakuragi’s father with a pair of fire-breathing eyes, “I suggest you take your son home here and tell him not to waste anymore of my time trying to pass any test for him! He may look like the perfect groom, but he’ll never ever be a real groom or a husband!!”
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
He Lies
Created: 1-26-07
HE LIES
She loves him.She loves his lovely whispered sweet nothings, his tenderness and care and his endless short little love messages.
She loves him so deeply, loves his everything, his all.
Except his lies.
She often watches with depressed eyes at him getting off the bed and leaving her secretly.
He treats her well, and would give her a big bouquet of red roses in the morning. Roses so fresh and deep like the colour of dripping blood, like her broken heart.
She starts asking questions, but instead of giving her an impatient tone, he would shower and console her with soft words more tender than cotton.
He would always call her ‘Babe’ on the phone, saying that he was busy, saying that he loved her but he was going to have to do overtime again, and hangs up the phone hurriedly.
She lies on the bed thinking of his sweet nothings, and she knew that these words were not said to her alone.
She knows he never really loves her like he said he does.
He is an expert. He makes a huge honey-sweet web of love and calmly and tenderly confronts women’s frantic questions and heated arguments, making it hard to go hysterical and succeed in making her surrender to his deadly trap.
She never gave up. She deliberately gussied up and made herself as pretty as a goddess, drank herself silly and fell into his arms.
“Can you please not lie to me anymore?” she gazed at him with pleading eyes.
“If I could, I wouldn’t want to,” he never denies his lies, and that made it even harder for her to rebuke.
“You really don’t want to lie to me?”
“Yes, babe, if I could, I really wouldn’t want to lie, I really don’t want to…”
--:--
When she was interrogated by the police, she only said one thing.They said she was cruel, but she did not think so. She was only fulfilling his wish.
She told them, “Because I don’t want him to lie.”
That night, she sewed up his lips.
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Bump Through My Heart
Created: 1-26-07
BUMP THROUGH MY HEART
When did he fall in love with her? It has to be the time when she bumped into his arms. At the same time she bumped into his heart.Everyday he took the early morning 7 o’clock MRT to school, and that repetitive monotonous life was making him as dead as stagnant water.
It was that fateful day when he woke up late, he ran hurriedly towards the MRT station at almost 7.15 am. As he went down the stairs he lost his grip and dropped his school bag on the flight of stairs behind him.
When he turned around to pick it up, he unknowingly held in his arms a small tiny figure that tripped and fell.
Her face went light red, probably embarrassed. “Gomenasai,” was all she squeaked out.
He stared at her, dumbfounded and speechless, as he held her tiny arms and helped her stand properly on the flight of stairs she fell from. He picked up his school bag and never said another word.
Since then, he would deliberately come 15 minutes late to the MRT station and would never miss seeing her there.
They would always meet but never talk, only exchanging a slight nod and knowing smile.
He got used to looking at her from afar reading her book. His monotonous days seemed to have some sort of longing.
Although he would drop off earlier than her, this sort of deliberate coincidental meeting was enough to make him happy all day.
One night after detention, as soon as he stepped into the MRT, he saw a familiar figure.
The window reflected her tired and teary face.
Gathering his courage, he went up to her and handed her a handkerchief.
For the first time, they talked.
Everyday was a brand new day.
A beautiful, sweet brand new love story.
Thursday, January 4, 2007
The Cry of Love-Chp Finale
CHAPTER FINALE: SAILOR SATURN & SAILOR CHIBI MOON
“Ohayogozaimas!!”
Hotaru was standing at Usagi Tsukino’s door calling out her greetings. Needless to say, she was waiting for her best friend Chibi Usagi a.k.a. Usagi-Small Lady-Serenity Sailor Chibimoon to come out and go to school with her as she did every morning.
“Oh, hello there, Hotaru,” Mrs. Tsukino opened the door and greeted Hotaru with a small. “Waiting for Chibi Usagi, aren’t you?”
“Hait, Mrs. Tsukino,” Hotaru replied sweetly. “Is she ready to go?”
“She’s just finishing her breakfast. Come in and wait for her.”
“Arigato, demo…I think I’ll wait outside.”
Mrs. Tsukino nodded her head and went inside the house. There is a particular reason she didn’t want to go into the house. Not because she was afraid of bothering Mrs. Tsukino and end up being late for school, coz she doesn’t mind going in and have a light snack or two—Mrs. Tsukino’s cooking is truly delicious.
It’s because she didn’t want to have a sudden heartburn meeting Chibi Usagi early in the morning.
Yup, you guessed it. Our little Hotaru Tomoe has a slight crush on our Chibi Usagi and that crush goes on everyday and gets a little deeper every time she laid eyes on her. It kinda started way back before she was even reborn to the Hotaru that she is now. She had already liked Chibi Usagi during the Mugen incident. She, growing up with her father Dr. Tomoe, was a lonely soul with a body made out of wires and cold steel and screws, like a human cyborg or an android. No one wanted to be friends with her and no one wanted to even talk to her. She was often a target for bullies and she was just too weak to fight them (well, except for that sudden occasion when she crushed her own pencil box in front of the bullies with her own hand). Her father was always busy with work and had no time to spend some quality moments with her. And with her mother’s death, it made her loneliness even worse. She thought that she was a burden to the world and had no significant purpose in life.
But it was Chibi Usagi who saved her life. She was the first person to speak to her and broke the ice and the barrier between her and the world. She was the one who brought her back to life and showed her her worthiness in life. She was the one who showed her the way of life and helped her remember her true mission—as Sailor Saturn to bring silent death to the world to help Sailor Moon bring new life to replenish the earth. And as she was now reborn into almost the same age as Chibi Usagi, they could be closer than ever and truly become friends, with a new life and a new feeling of belonging in this world.
After waiting for quite a while, she could hear Chibi Usagi laughing cheekily at Usagi as they both walked out of the front door, led by Mrs. Tsukino. Hotaru blushed as she saw Chibi Usagi in a really pretty one piece dress that was a mixture of blue and pink colours. Her rabbit-like hair buns were decorated with light yellow ribbons, with cherry-coloured hair clips to match. Chibi Usagi automatically held out her hand and grabbed Hotaru’s—out of habit, actually—and Hotaru blushed even more. She looked away and almost dragged Chibi Usagi out towards the gate, hoping that Chibi Usagi hadn’t seen her face.
“Take care, my little Usagi-s,” Mrs. Tsukino said as she led stood behind the gate. “Study hard now, girls.”
“Hait, Mom!” Usagi said as she followed behind the two perky little elementary schoolgirls. “Sayonara, Mom!”
Usagi walked Hotaru and Chibi Usagi all the way to Jyuban Elementary School, shaking her head weakly at how close those girls can be once they got together. She stood outside the school for a while and watched Hotaru and Chibi Usagi enter the school compound before leaving towards the direction of her own school. Once Usagi was out of sight, Chibi Usagi turned to Hotaru and said, “Guess what? Our school idol, Ichiro Masai actually invited Momoko to his birthday party tomorrow!”
“Ho…Honto?” Hotaru tried hard to be surprised just to distract herself from her thumping heart as she felt Chibi Usagi’s spellbinding eyes on hers. “But…doesn’t that really jerky boy—I can’t seem to remember his name—feel anything? Jealous, maybe? I mean, they were rumoured to be a couple.”
“Yeah, that’s what everyone said, but we can’t be too sure about that. We’ll just have to see his reaction later in class then,” Chibi Usagi grinned naughtily. “I bet it’s going to be a serious blast.”
“I bet,” Hotaru agreed. She continued to stare at Chibi Usagi as they entered the school building together. Her pink hair was soft and silky and shining with health. Her pink rabbit-like eyes sparkled like diamonds under the sun. Her rosy cheeks were as smooth as her hands that she was holding right now. She realized that she may be in her child-like form, but she definitely was no child when she battled evil villains or in her princess stance. To her, she was more than just a 900-year-old child-like princess. She was an immortal, a goddess, an idol which will live forever through time and space and through eternity.
She was more than just Chibi Usagi.
She was Usagi-Small Lady-Serenity, the future Princess Lady Serenity who will reign over Crystal Tokyo after her mother and whom she would protect and hold forever more. That was, what she believed to be, her life-long destiny.
“Chibi Usagi! There you are! I’ve been looking for you everywhere!”
Hotaru and Chibi Usagi were to be in charge of the cafeteria food but when recess came, Hotaru couldn’t find Chibi Usagi everywhere. The head of the cafeteria was beginning to complain and she had searched frantically for her in vain. She wasn’t in the toilet, she wasn’t in the other kids’ classroom, she wasn’t in the clubroom or in the staffroom, and she definitely wasn’t with her Mummy Setsuna at the sick bay. Seeing Hotaru so worried and agitated of Chibi Usagi’s whereabouts, her Mummy Setsuna suggested that she looked at the least likely place: up at the roof. She tried her luck and, sure enough, there was Chibi Usagi standing there leaning against the railings.
It took her quite a while before she actually called out to her. Chibi Usagi was just standing there leaning against the railing, her eyes a faraway, dreamy look and her pink rabbit ears hair blowing gracefully by the spring breeze. The end of her one piece dress fluttered by the blowing breeze too and it was a magnificent sight for her to behold. If it weren’t for her task to get her down to the cafeteria, she could just stand there and keep watching her quietly and not alerting her at all.
“Oh, hi, Hotaru,” Chibi Usagi turned around and greeted her best friend nonchalantly. “I didn’t hear you coming up here. Gomenasai.”
“What are you doing here?” Hotaru asked as she joined her at the railing. “We’re supposed to be in charge of the cafeteria food this week, and yet you’ve run up here. Doushite?”
“Gomene. It’s just that I’m having things on my mind right now.”
“Such as?”
“Like what report would I let in for my mother when I go back to the future. You know, back to Crystal Tokyo.”
It took Hotaru about 5 seconds before those words actually struck her mind. She turned around abruptly at Chibi Usagi and said in a horrified voice, “You’re…You’re leaving…? You’re leaving Jyuban and Usagi and the others and…go back to the future?!”
“Hait, that’s right,” Chibi Usagi replied casually. “Doushite? Something wrong?”
“Annou…ie…I mean…” Hotaru tried to find something to say to hide that sudden outburst—she had never felt so shocked before. “Well, what are you exactly going to do when you go back to the 30th century?”
“Why do you think I’m standing up here thinking? I have to prepare some really good words and I have to beg Diana to speak a few good words about me. Ever since my mother became The New Queen Serenity of Crystal Tokyo, things had to be pretty formal, well, that’s what Luna and Artemis told me when I first got to know them when I was 4 years old. I have to say that I haven’t been much of a good Sailor lately.”
“I think you’re a great Sailor,” Hotaru replied indignantly. “You’ve battled almost as much villains as Usagi did.”
“Thanks for the support,” Chibi Usagi smiled gratefully, then sighed a little and said, “I just hope that I would be able to become the Princess status I have wished to be for so long.”
“Of course you will be the Princess status! You’re born a Princess and you have your mother’s royal blood! Why would your mother deny your birthright?”
“Well, I’ve been denied my birthright ever since I stopped growing and unable to transform, and it has been more than 700 years that I’ve remained a child and unable to transform, and I thought that it would be too late and nothing was ever going to change. I don’t know whether it would be too late to be a Princess, now that I’ve become the Sailor I always longed to be, just like my mother and her comrades.”
“It’s never too late for something to happen,” Hotaru said in a sure tone. “Like you said, you thought you were unable to transform and you thought that it was too late for it to transform, but you did. So why would it be too late to be the Princess status that you deserved to be all along?”
Chibi Usagi stared at her best friend for quite a long time in silence. Hotaru was surprised but a little tentative to ask. ‘What is she looking at? What is she trying to do? What’s going on in her mind?’ A lot of things were going through her mind as she tried to guess what was Chibi Usagi’s next move. After what seemed like a really, really long time, Chibi Usagi finally said something.
“Why are you suddenly so confident and caring about me?”
“A-re…” Hotaru didn’t expect this coming. She didn’t know what to say and didn’t know what to do. And she definitely didn’t know what to do to cover up her previous actions. She looked away, avoiding any eye contact with Chibi Usagi. And for a good reason too, ‘coz Chibi Usagi had her way of trying to get the answer out of anyone just by opening her big pink rabbit-like eyes.
“Anything wrong, Hotaru? Daijobu deska?”
“Dai…Daijobu…” Hotaru muttered as she turned to walk out of the roof. When she was almost nearing the door and the stairs that led her to the roof, she stopped. What was she doing? It wasn’t always that she and Chibi Usagi could be all alone in a place no one would see or look at them and yet she was letting this chance go and the opportunity to say the things that she had been bottling up in her heart for so long. She knew exactly what to say to her but she was letting it all go just because of submitting to the part of her heart that was shy and timid—the old Hotaru Tomoe who would just sit quietly in classes and bear the sickness within her body, watching as people chattered away merrily and ignored her, no one to understand what she really felt or even trying to understand. She was becoming the old Hotaru Tomoe who would run away whenever there’s something bothering and hide in her room sobbing and wallowing in self pity.
She wasn’t that Hotaru anymore. She was the new reborn Hotaru, the one being raised by Papa Haruka, Mama Michiru and Mummy Setsuna as a healthy normal child who would frolic around and be jolly just like everyone else. She knew she wasn’t the same old Hotaru anymore and she had to prove to herself that she wasn’t. Finally, after taking a deep breath, she turned around again, facing Chibi Usagi and blurted out everything.
“I’m just worried about you, that’s all. I mean you’re going to leave Jyuban and all of us Sailor members and there could be a possibility that you won’t come back anymore. I was just trying to make myself feel better about you leaving, by saying that you’ll be leading a pretty good life and that you’ll be the greatest Princess just in case you really are not coming back.
“To tell you the truth, I have always liked you. I’ve liked you ever since we first met and when you first talked to me properly at my home. You are the kindest, purest and most beautiful soul I have ever seen. Even when I was reborn into this Hotaru right now, you and that Pegasus unicorn have often revolved around me and perhaps you were to one who made me realize who I really am and what was my true destiny as a Sailor. I truly appreciate your friendship towards me and I truly like you for who you are, Princess or not. I guess…what I’m feeling now is more than just puppy love. Maybe it’s…”
“I know.”
Hotaru looked up with a surprised look on her face. Chibi Usagi was standing a little closer to Hotaru with a silinh face. Without warning, she reached out and hugged the purplish-black haired girl close to her chest and in the midst of Hotaru’s daze and all, she could feel her shoulder going a little wet.
Chibi Usagi was actually crying. Her voice trembled as she said, “I know what you’re trying to tell me. I don’t feel like going either. I can’t bear to leave Usagi or the other Sailors, and I mostly wouldn’t want to leave you. You have always been my best friend, my partner, my close comrade, my everything. I wouldn’t leave this for the world if I didn’t have an obligation in the 30th century. And I wouldn’t be up here if this return home didn’t bother me. I would’ve just left and tell you nothing.”
“You sounded so casual…I thought you want to leave…” Hotaru was also going close to tears.
“Can’t you tell a forced feeling when you see one?”
“Gomenasai…”
“Don’t say another word. Let me just hold you like this for a while…”
And they stood there like that under the cool spring breeze for the whole recess, with Chibi Usagi’s arms around Hotaru as they silently let time pass through them like sand in the wind…
“Ohayogozaimas!!”
Hotaru was standing at Usagi Tsukino’s door calling out her greetings. Needless to say, she was waiting for her best friend Chibi Usagi a.k.a. Usagi-Small Lady-Serenity Sailor Chibimoon to come out and go to school with her as she did every morning.
“Oh, hello there, Hotaru,” Mrs. Tsukino opened the door and greeted Hotaru with a small. “Waiting for Chibi Usagi, aren’t you?”
“Hait, Mrs. Tsukino,” Hotaru replied sweetly. “Is she ready to go?”
“She’s just finishing her breakfast. Come in and wait for her.”
“Arigato, demo…I think I’ll wait outside.”
Mrs. Tsukino nodded her head and went inside the house. There is a particular reason she didn’t want to go into the house. Not because she was afraid of bothering Mrs. Tsukino and end up being late for school, coz she doesn’t mind going in and have a light snack or two—Mrs. Tsukino’s cooking is truly delicious.
It’s because she didn’t want to have a sudden heartburn meeting Chibi Usagi early in the morning.
Yup, you guessed it. Our little Hotaru Tomoe has a slight crush on our Chibi Usagi and that crush goes on everyday and gets a little deeper every time she laid eyes on her. It kinda started way back before she was even reborn to the Hotaru that she is now. She had already liked Chibi Usagi during the Mugen incident. She, growing up with her father Dr. Tomoe, was a lonely soul with a body made out of wires and cold steel and screws, like a human cyborg or an android. No one wanted to be friends with her and no one wanted to even talk to her. She was often a target for bullies and she was just too weak to fight them (well, except for that sudden occasion when she crushed her own pencil box in front of the bullies with her own hand). Her father was always busy with work and had no time to spend some quality moments with her. And with her mother’s death, it made her loneliness even worse. She thought that she was a burden to the world and had no significant purpose in life.
But it was Chibi Usagi who saved her life. She was the first person to speak to her and broke the ice and the barrier between her and the world. She was the one who brought her back to life and showed her her worthiness in life. She was the one who showed her the way of life and helped her remember her true mission—as Sailor Saturn to bring silent death to the world to help Sailor Moon bring new life to replenish the earth. And as she was now reborn into almost the same age as Chibi Usagi, they could be closer than ever and truly become friends, with a new life and a new feeling of belonging in this world.
After waiting for quite a while, she could hear Chibi Usagi laughing cheekily at Usagi as they both walked out of the front door, led by Mrs. Tsukino. Hotaru blushed as she saw Chibi Usagi in a really pretty one piece dress that was a mixture of blue and pink colours. Her rabbit-like hair buns were decorated with light yellow ribbons, with cherry-coloured hair clips to match. Chibi Usagi automatically held out her hand and grabbed Hotaru’s—out of habit, actually—and Hotaru blushed even more. She looked away and almost dragged Chibi Usagi out towards the gate, hoping that Chibi Usagi hadn’t seen her face.
“Take care, my little Usagi-s,” Mrs. Tsukino said as she led stood behind the gate. “Study hard now, girls.”
“Hait, Mom!” Usagi said as she followed behind the two perky little elementary schoolgirls. “Sayonara, Mom!”
Usagi walked Hotaru and Chibi Usagi all the way to Jyuban Elementary School, shaking her head weakly at how close those girls can be once they got together. She stood outside the school for a while and watched Hotaru and Chibi Usagi enter the school compound before leaving towards the direction of her own school. Once Usagi was out of sight, Chibi Usagi turned to Hotaru and said, “Guess what? Our school idol, Ichiro Masai actually invited Momoko to his birthday party tomorrow!”
“Ho…Honto?” Hotaru tried hard to be surprised just to distract herself from her thumping heart as she felt Chibi Usagi’s spellbinding eyes on hers. “But…doesn’t that really jerky boy—I can’t seem to remember his name—feel anything? Jealous, maybe? I mean, they were rumoured to be a couple.”
“Yeah, that’s what everyone said, but we can’t be too sure about that. We’ll just have to see his reaction later in class then,” Chibi Usagi grinned naughtily. “I bet it’s going to be a serious blast.”
“I bet,” Hotaru agreed. She continued to stare at Chibi Usagi as they entered the school building together. Her pink hair was soft and silky and shining with health. Her pink rabbit-like eyes sparkled like diamonds under the sun. Her rosy cheeks were as smooth as her hands that she was holding right now. She realized that she may be in her child-like form, but she definitely was no child when she battled evil villains or in her princess stance. To her, she was more than just a 900-year-old child-like princess. She was an immortal, a goddess, an idol which will live forever through time and space and through eternity.
She was more than just Chibi Usagi.
She was Usagi-Small Lady-Serenity, the future Princess Lady Serenity who will reign over Crystal Tokyo after her mother and whom she would protect and hold forever more. That was, what she believed to be, her life-long destiny.
“Chibi Usagi! There you are! I’ve been looking for you everywhere!”
Hotaru and Chibi Usagi were to be in charge of the cafeteria food but when recess came, Hotaru couldn’t find Chibi Usagi everywhere. The head of the cafeteria was beginning to complain and she had searched frantically for her in vain. She wasn’t in the toilet, she wasn’t in the other kids’ classroom, she wasn’t in the clubroom or in the staffroom, and she definitely wasn’t with her Mummy Setsuna at the sick bay. Seeing Hotaru so worried and agitated of Chibi Usagi’s whereabouts, her Mummy Setsuna suggested that she looked at the least likely place: up at the roof. She tried her luck and, sure enough, there was Chibi Usagi standing there leaning against the railings.
It took her quite a while before she actually called out to her. Chibi Usagi was just standing there leaning against the railing, her eyes a faraway, dreamy look and her pink rabbit ears hair blowing gracefully by the spring breeze. The end of her one piece dress fluttered by the blowing breeze too and it was a magnificent sight for her to behold. If it weren’t for her task to get her down to the cafeteria, she could just stand there and keep watching her quietly and not alerting her at all.
“Oh, hi, Hotaru,” Chibi Usagi turned around and greeted her best friend nonchalantly. “I didn’t hear you coming up here. Gomenasai.”
“What are you doing here?” Hotaru asked as she joined her at the railing. “We’re supposed to be in charge of the cafeteria food this week, and yet you’ve run up here. Doushite?”
“Gomene. It’s just that I’m having things on my mind right now.”
“Such as?”
“Like what report would I let in for my mother when I go back to the future. You know, back to Crystal Tokyo.”
It took Hotaru about 5 seconds before those words actually struck her mind. She turned around abruptly at Chibi Usagi and said in a horrified voice, “You’re…You’re leaving…? You’re leaving Jyuban and Usagi and the others and…go back to the future?!”
“Hait, that’s right,” Chibi Usagi replied casually. “Doushite? Something wrong?”
“Annou…ie…I mean…” Hotaru tried to find something to say to hide that sudden outburst—she had never felt so shocked before. “Well, what are you exactly going to do when you go back to the 30th century?”
“Why do you think I’m standing up here thinking? I have to prepare some really good words and I have to beg Diana to speak a few good words about me. Ever since my mother became The New Queen Serenity of Crystal Tokyo, things had to be pretty formal, well, that’s what Luna and Artemis told me when I first got to know them when I was 4 years old. I have to say that I haven’t been much of a good Sailor lately.”
“I think you’re a great Sailor,” Hotaru replied indignantly. “You’ve battled almost as much villains as Usagi did.”
“Thanks for the support,” Chibi Usagi smiled gratefully, then sighed a little and said, “I just hope that I would be able to become the Princess status I have wished to be for so long.”
“Of course you will be the Princess status! You’re born a Princess and you have your mother’s royal blood! Why would your mother deny your birthright?”
“Well, I’ve been denied my birthright ever since I stopped growing and unable to transform, and it has been more than 700 years that I’ve remained a child and unable to transform, and I thought that it would be too late and nothing was ever going to change. I don’t know whether it would be too late to be a Princess, now that I’ve become the Sailor I always longed to be, just like my mother and her comrades.”
“It’s never too late for something to happen,” Hotaru said in a sure tone. “Like you said, you thought you were unable to transform and you thought that it was too late for it to transform, but you did. So why would it be too late to be the Princess status that you deserved to be all along?”
Chibi Usagi stared at her best friend for quite a long time in silence. Hotaru was surprised but a little tentative to ask. ‘What is she looking at? What is she trying to do? What’s going on in her mind?’ A lot of things were going through her mind as she tried to guess what was Chibi Usagi’s next move. After what seemed like a really, really long time, Chibi Usagi finally said something.
“Why are you suddenly so confident and caring about me?”
“A-re…” Hotaru didn’t expect this coming. She didn’t know what to say and didn’t know what to do. And she definitely didn’t know what to do to cover up her previous actions. She looked away, avoiding any eye contact with Chibi Usagi. And for a good reason too, ‘coz Chibi Usagi had her way of trying to get the answer out of anyone just by opening her big pink rabbit-like eyes.
“Anything wrong, Hotaru? Daijobu deska?”
“Dai…Daijobu…” Hotaru muttered as she turned to walk out of the roof. When she was almost nearing the door and the stairs that led her to the roof, she stopped. What was she doing? It wasn’t always that she and Chibi Usagi could be all alone in a place no one would see or look at them and yet she was letting this chance go and the opportunity to say the things that she had been bottling up in her heart for so long. She knew exactly what to say to her but she was letting it all go just because of submitting to the part of her heart that was shy and timid—the old Hotaru Tomoe who would just sit quietly in classes and bear the sickness within her body, watching as people chattered away merrily and ignored her, no one to understand what she really felt or even trying to understand. She was becoming the old Hotaru Tomoe who would run away whenever there’s something bothering and hide in her room sobbing and wallowing in self pity.
She wasn’t that Hotaru anymore. She was the new reborn Hotaru, the one being raised by Papa Haruka, Mama Michiru and Mummy Setsuna as a healthy normal child who would frolic around and be jolly just like everyone else. She knew she wasn’t the same old Hotaru anymore and she had to prove to herself that she wasn’t. Finally, after taking a deep breath, she turned around again, facing Chibi Usagi and blurted out everything.
“I’m just worried about you, that’s all. I mean you’re going to leave Jyuban and all of us Sailor members and there could be a possibility that you won’t come back anymore. I was just trying to make myself feel better about you leaving, by saying that you’ll be leading a pretty good life and that you’ll be the greatest Princess just in case you really are not coming back.
“To tell you the truth, I have always liked you. I’ve liked you ever since we first met and when you first talked to me properly at my home. You are the kindest, purest and most beautiful soul I have ever seen. Even when I was reborn into this Hotaru right now, you and that Pegasus unicorn have often revolved around me and perhaps you were to one who made me realize who I really am and what was my true destiny as a Sailor. I truly appreciate your friendship towards me and I truly like you for who you are, Princess or not. I guess…what I’m feeling now is more than just puppy love. Maybe it’s…”
“I know.”
Hotaru looked up with a surprised look on her face. Chibi Usagi was standing a little closer to Hotaru with a silinh face. Without warning, she reached out and hugged the purplish-black haired girl close to her chest and in the midst of Hotaru’s daze and all, she could feel her shoulder going a little wet.
Chibi Usagi was actually crying. Her voice trembled as she said, “I know what you’re trying to tell me. I don’t feel like going either. I can’t bear to leave Usagi or the other Sailors, and I mostly wouldn’t want to leave you. You have always been my best friend, my partner, my close comrade, my everything. I wouldn’t leave this for the world if I didn’t have an obligation in the 30th century. And I wouldn’t be up here if this return home didn’t bother me. I would’ve just left and tell you nothing.”
“You sounded so casual…I thought you want to leave…” Hotaru was also going close to tears.
“Can’t you tell a forced feeling when you see one?”
“Gomenasai…”
“Don’t say another word. Let me just hold you like this for a while…”
And they stood there like that under the cool spring breeze for the whole recess, with Chibi Usagi’s arms around Hotaru as they silently let time pass through them like sand in the wind…
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