Shoot me again
The problem with woodland stakeouts, the man in black thought, was that you had to walk to them. And the problem with being a sniper on a woodland stakeout was that your gear was really fucking heavy. Dressed in camouflage with his sleeves rolled up to perpetrate the image of being a hiker, he carried a PSG-1 sniper rifle, a 64x zoom scope, and two days worth of granola bars and water in an extremely oversized backpack, covered with a tarp.
The tarp itself was his own personal stakeout invention: The tarp was covered in the same kind of paper that you peeled off of the edge of stickers, because the tarp was itself a sticker. In a pinch, he could (and he had in the past) peel off the paper to reveal a layer of glue, which he could essentially drag through the woods or desert to pick up loose sand or foliage. He could then hide under it for as long as he needed to, provided he didn’t overheat or suffocate.
Another one of those things he had used to cover his ass during the lazy years. It beat the hell out of booze, or it would have if he’d actually let the tarp take the place of booze. Not that a tarp could really help loneliness like the booze had.
The man in camouflage with black underneath hiked through the night, with only a flashlight and a GPS-equipped palm pilot to guide him to some remote site that a certain asshole with a scratchy voice had decided was the best point to observe what he could only ascertain was a group of kids on a spring vacation.
Oh, how the mighty have fallen, he thought.
--
Chie always dreamed. Tonight was no different.
A figure stands outside of the cabin, looking in at her. She meets his eye for a moment. The figure is large and predatory, and she hears more on their way.
More of what, though?
More monsters. They’re everywhere. The sand is alive with them.
He looks away.
“Kill her.”
Chie always dreamed. Tonight was no different.
All and all, she was having a hell of a day, considering it was only about a minute long.
Then she opened her eyes and found herself staring into cleavage that seemed, at that half-delusional, groggy moment, to be about a mile wide. She half-yelped in alarm, and then restrained herself, forcing herself to think clearly: If this cabin has indeed been invaded by cleavage monsters from the deepest pits of hell, she thought, the first thing to do will not be to scream and wake what appears to be sleeping. Think clearly: If somebody is cooking outside, there must be a knife out there, or some fire at least. Cleavage monsters fear fire, don’t they?
“Chie, is it time to get up already?” the cleavage monster murmured, and Chie froze. This monster was devious: It sounded remarkably like her close friend, Aoi Senou. That clever bastard, she cursed, eyes never leaving her foe.
“Chie?” the voice was a little clearer now. “Um. What are you looking at?”
Maybe it was Aoi. Maybe she had been captured by the enemy? She decided to risk speech. “Don’t worry, Aoi. I have the enemy in my sights,” she said, her voice strangely muddled, like somebody who was half-asleep. “It doesn’t seem to be moving; so long as it doesn’t move, we can figure out a way to get you out of there.”
“Um, Chie? Are you okay?” Aoi’s voice was completely awake at this point, and a little confused, a little worried.
“Don’t worry about me. If you see your chance, run and warn the others.”
The enemy shifted downwards, and Aoi’s face appeared; this time Chie actually did yelp, shouting Aoi’s name in alarm.
“Are you sure you’re alright, Chie?” Aoi asked.
Chie sat up and observed Aoi, by herself, wearing a loose, white shirt, which she was absently shifting upwards towards her neck to cover herself. Chie blinked, shook her head, and shoved her dream away. What had she dreamed about that had caused her to think that Aoi’s…that Aoi had been a monster out to kill her? “I’m good. Sorry. Must have had a nightmare.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Aoi said. “Was it very bad?”
“It was…”
monster
kill her
“It was awful. I dreamt that your baby-feeders were coming to EAT ME!” Chie shouted this last, and Aoi went beet-red. “Bwargh! God, they’re coming for me! Won’t somebody save me?”
People were beginning to awake at this, which was all right, in Chie’s mind: If breakfast was being served soon, then she was doing them a favor by waking them all up before Mikoto, who was suspiciously absent, ate it all. Not that Chie herself would ever dream of doing just such a thing. Oh, no.
Mai, too, was absent; she was probably cooking. She had heard that Mai was an excellent cook, though she’d never had the opportunity to sample her culinary delights herself. She supposed that this was to change shortly.
“Stop it, Chie!” Aoi half-squealed, going even redder, if possible. “Get out of here!”
“I will do no such thing. Not while the enemy still lurks nearby.” She turned to Shizuru, who was rubbing her eyes calmly as she sat up. “Get your hunting gear, Shizuru. We’re going—” her stomach loudly informed her that she would be sampling Mai’s culinary delights very soon or she would be in very deep trouble with several of the higher-ups. “Whups. Looks like I’m just going to have to stick to foraging for now.”
She stood up, still in her pajamas, which consisted of a loose white tee-shirt and panties (it was too hot for anything long), and slid open the thick wooden and paper door separating them from the girls’ entryway, and found the source of the wonderful smells: Out on the beach, not ten meters off and clearly visible from where she stood, somebody had built an old-fashioned campfire. Hanging over it, supported by a metal rod attached by two others to the ground, was a pot full of miso. The rice was next to it, already cooked. It smelled even better with the door open. She imagined that anyone else staying on that beachside lodge was going apeshit with hunger about now. Standing next to it, stirring it slowly, was Mai. She grinned, waved, and for a second, Chie thought she was the one being waved at.
Until, anyway, Tate walked out from the male side, waved back, stepped out the door without his shoes. He realized he was missing them about three steps later as the hot sand burned his feet, and he whirled around and went back for the cabin.
Unfortunately, with the door open, it was entirely possible for him to observe Chie standing there in a tee-shirt and panties. And as he looked up from putting his shoes on, he did just that. He went instantly red, and Chie half-shrieked as her hands flew to cover her legs.
Shiho moved so quickly that it was barely possible to observe her: Apparently standing behind Chie, also summoned by the scent of food, Shiho’s eyes locked onto her “Big brother” as his locked onto the copious amount of slim, white leg Chie was flashing at him; enraged, emboldened, or perhaps simply stupid, tearing off towards him at full tilt, her own baggy tee-shirt flaring out behind her; a solid leap, with intent to kill, and then the two of them were falling. Tate caught the brunt of it; he landed more than half off of the platform and fell down three steps into the burning sand that he had been running to escape; Shiho simply bounced onto his head, and there was a good two-second delay between the time she did and the time her tee-shirt settled back firmly on her torso.
If it was possible for Tate to be any more red, the probability of such an event could only have been described using abstract mathematics.
“Just what were you staring at?” Shiho demanded as the dust settled around Tate’s head. When she was referring to, he wasn’t certain; to be fair, at that point, he was certain of only two things: His head hurt, a lot; and he was completely unable to speak.
“I…I wa…I buh…bu…lu…”
Chie laughed from her vantage point. “He was staring at my hot legs, Shiho!” she shouted at her. “They’re completely irresistible!”
This didn’t help; Shiho knocked Tate’s already aching head with the flat of her palm, and he groaned. “Let up, Shiho. My head is killing me.”
“You’d best get off of your big brother,” Reito said from the doorway to the men’s bedroom. “Otherwise, he’s probably going to die of heat stroke down there. I’m sure he didn’t mean anything by it, did you, Tate?”
Tate sputtered for a moment. “I…uh…no, I didn’t. Of course I didn’t.”
Shiho stared at him with eyes that could kill given were they given appendages of any sort for a moment, and he gave her his most winning smile. Which, to be fair, was saying very little when the back of his neck was in searing pain as he spoke.
“Fine,” she grumbled, and got off of him. He sat up faster than anyone Chie had ever seen before, and after a moment of what could only have been consideration, took off for the ocean, screaming, “HOT!” all the way. Reito, fully dressed in swimming trunks and a tasteful Hawaiian shirt, walked out towards where Mai and Mikoto were cooking, turning back only to grin a little at Chie, informing her gently that she was still standing there in her panties. As he did this, Shiho marched past Chie, giving her the glaring of her life, in Shiho’s opinion. Chie would have thought her opinion was vastly overrated, if she had been thinking about it.
She wasn’t. Her eyes were locked onto Reito’s, and for a second, she felt as though she was in a trance, unable to look away. His eyes were neutral and level, and hers were too, but still, something…
monster
kill
eye
wasn’t right in her mind. Maybe she was just hungry. Either way it wasn’t a feeling she wholly enjoyed. As soon as he turned from her, she did the same, stepping back into the room as quickly as her dignity would allow, suddenly a little pale.
Aoi, who had been up until now watching the entire endeavor, looked at her with some concern. “Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked one more time. “You look really pale. Are you running a temperature?”
Chie instinctively placed the palm of her hand on her forehead, finding it cool as it ever was; Chie’s circulation wasn’t great anyway. “I’m fine.”
Aoi placed her hand on Chie’s forehead anyway, and Chie leaned into it, suddenly tired all over again. “Can’t I just go back to sleep? I was having such a good day.”
“Why? What’s wrong now?”
What is wrong?
Nothing I saw in Reito’s eyes scared me. He’s a handsome, generally uninterested male that does more or less nothing for or to me. But something I saw
monster
kill
eye
sand
in…was it in my dream? I don’t remember.
Her stomach informed her more insistently that time that if she didn’t hustle and get some food, it was going to start gnawing at her colon.
“Forget about it. Your cleavage just scared me is all.”
“My…” Aoi sputtered a bit, covering the neck of her shirt unnecessarily. “What are you on about?”
Chie shook her head, looked outside at the
sand
ocean again. It was too nice of a day to spoil just because a cute guy saw her panties. Even if he is Mai’s. Sort of. She grinned.
“I told you before! Your baby-feeders are out to EAT ME!” She tackled Aoi into her sleeping bag and laughed, and after a few seconds, Aoi laughed too.
There was another man in black waiting for him, except this man in black was actually a man in green camouflage. Like him, but he bet this guy didn’t have a black suit underneath.
“Howdy,” he nodded to the other man, who didn’t look up. The other man was holding a G3A3 sniper rifle with the largest scope the man in black had ever seen, aiming it at the cabin where his targets were staying. “What a wonderful day to lay around in the grass pointing guns at kids, eh?”
The man in green still didn’t look up. “Are you Minoru Alder?” he asked. His voice was a little dry, a little scratchy, like he hadn’t had anything to drink all day.
Minoru Alder, the man in black, nodded. “And you must be Nori Ikimasu.”
“Mm. Orders are only to observe today. You go over to the other hill and keep an eye on the girls’ cabin. Make verbal notes every time you see anything happen, and don’t forget to report in every half-hour.” Nori pointed off down (and back up) a bitch of a hill that Minoru had already braved to get there, and Minoru’s face fell.
“Fine.” He didn’t even volunteer to watch the girls’ cabin. He must be a eunuch. He set off back down the hill, trudged up the hill, laid down, and opened his backpack. It took him a minute and a half to set up all of his gear: Weapon, stand, food, drink, and emergency tarp. He could have opened it up and dragged it, but what was the point? It wasn’t like these kids were dangerous. Besides, then he’d have to order a new one from his storage facility in America, and that was plenty expensive.
He closed his left eye and looked with his right into his not-unimpressive (though certainly wimpy next to Nori’s) scope and into the window of the girls’ bedroom. They were all asleep, all eight of them, all fully clothed, no sexy pillow fights or erotic games of spin-the-bottle in sight. Another eternal mystery solved, he thought with a touch of misogynistic humor. Damn.
The door slid open, and an orange-haired girl walked in sleepily, rubbing her eyes, and left his field of view, what little he had from the window. Ooh, he thought half-heartedly. Where was she coming from?
Probably the bathroom, you fuckwit letch.
He sighed, another fantasy ruined by his own ability to reason, and grabbed a granola bar.
By the time Tate managed to soak his neck in the cool ocean water, he was thoroughly bored.
Back to Resolution Index - Back to Mai HiME Shoujo-Ai Fanfiction