Disclaimer: see part 1

Sister, Sister

Part 5 – Wanted Dead or…

By Random1377

"Are you sure this will work?"

Kitsune continued tugging at the waistband of the jeans she was trying to force onto Keitaro's body. "You need to be more trusting," she grunted. "Come on, haven't you ever seen Some Like It Hot?"

Keitaro bowed his head.

"My bra is pinching me…"

"Shut up and hold your breath, I've almost got it – there!"

Kitsune stepped back and surveyed her handiwork.

"How do I look?" Keitaro asked, turning a bit blue as he tried to get a decent breath into his lungs.

"Like a sausage," Kitsune replied immediately. "Here… let's go with the skirt instead."

Ketiaro, who was simply thankful to be getting out of the purgatorial pants, could only nod. "Hur…ry…" he gasped, fumbling with the zipper. "Losing… consciousness…"

"Alright, alright," Kitsune mumbled, tugging the jeans off of the man, "here, let's try-"

Abruptly, her door flew open and Naru and Motoko slipped in, took one look at where Kitsune was kneeling in front of a bra-clad Keitaro – with his pants still bunched in her hands and pulled down around his ankles – and turned back around, leaving without a word.

"Oh come on – it isn't what it looks like!"

The door opened again and the two came back in the room. "Get this skirt on," Naru said quickly, picking up on Kitsune's idea immediately. "You'll be able to run better."

"See, that's what I was thinking," Kitsune exclaimed. "We disguise him as a girl – granted, kind of an ugly girl-"

"Hey!"

"-and once we get him out of town, we can-"

From the floor below, the sound of the front door banging open reached them, accompanied by the sound of Tsuruko's voice exclaiming, "…ly is an amazing device, Miss Su. Now which floor is he on?"

Leaving the skirt in Naru's hands, Keitaro made a break for it, sprinting into the hallway in nothing but a black lace bra and his tighty whities. Rounding a corner, he nearly ran straight into a very startled Tsuruko. Veering left, he ran, instead, into a support beam, bounced off, and made a beeline for the stairs leading to the roof.

"Oh man, that'll leave a mark…"

"Let's go," Naru said, ignoring Kitsune's commentary as she grabbed Motoko by the hand. "We've got to save him from… from her!"

The 'her' in question was a very determined looking Amalla, who was hot on Keitaro's heels, her face split in such a large grin that Naru was certain the woman would have been happy to continue the chase for another day.

Or week.

Like a herd of buffalo, Motoko, Amlla, Su, Motoko, Kitsune, Naru, and Tsuruko raced up the stairs, finally cornering Keitaro on the rooftop. As everyone surged forward, Naru took the lead and spun around to face the others, spreading her arms out wide and taking a deep breath to scream a single, thundering order.

"Enough!"

Shocked into stillness, the entire group came to a halt, dust swirling around their feet as Naru glared at each and every one of them.

"That…is… enough…!" she declared fiercely. "You two are acting like little kids! Running all over the damn place over a couple of badly written letters? Get a goddamn grip on yourselves, would you? You don't even know who sent them, let alone-"

"I sent them."

Everyone whipped around as a girl of about twelve stepped onto the rooftop.

Su leveled a finger at the girl. "You're… you're…!"

She blinked, letting her hand fall to her side.

"Wait, who are you?"

"She's my sister."

Everyone whipped back around to stare incredulously at Naru. "Your… sister?" Keitaro echoed. "I didn't even know you had a sister."

Naru shrugged. "We didn't know about Kanako until she appeared," she pointed out. "Oh, and speaking of Kanako, there was a message on the answering machine from the police… she's in the drunk tank."

"Super…"

"But that's not important right now," Naru went on, staring her younger sister down. "What is important, Mei, is-"

Abruptly, Su spoke up.

"Are you here to make out with Keitaro too?"

"What are you, stupid?" the girl snapped. "Why would I want to make out with him?"

"I can think of one reason," Amalla mused, glancing significantly at Keitaro, "one, nice, satisfying re-"

"Keep it in your pants, hussy!" Naru interrupted. "Mei, start talking!"

"Yes," Tsuruko agreed, "an explanation would be very nice at this point."

"Didn't you get my letters?" Mei demanded. "They explained everything – he's a shibito!"

Amalla and Tsuruko exchanged a glance. "A what?"

"Shibito," Mei repeated, stamping one foot on the rooftop, "living dead – he's a zombie, a demon, a monster from beyond the grave!"

As one, the two older women pulled out their letters. "Mine says shito," Amalla reported.

"As does mine," Tsuruko confirmed, holding the letter out for Mei to see. "Shi-to."

Mei inspected the letter… closed one eye… bit her bottom lip… counted the syllables represented by the characters on the page on her fingertips… and cursed under her breath.

"Damn," she muttered, "forgot the bi…"

Abruptly, everyone watching the exchange fell on their faces.

"Mei!" Naru shouted, recovering from the shock enough to realize that the trouble was not over. "You have got a lot of explaining to do!"

Defiantly, Mei planted her fists on her hips. "No I don't," she countered, glaring up at her sister as Keitaro quietly crawled towards the stairs. "That… thing you call a manager is a demon from Hell! How else could he survive all the beatings you guys lay down on him?"

Naru blinked, shifting uncomfortably on her feet. "Er, we don't beat him… that much," she mumbled lamely. "And he-"

"I've been watching."

"Huh?"

"I've been watching this place," Mei said bluntly. "I came to visit you a few weeks ago, and I saw this guy," she jerked a thumb in Keitaro's direction, "come flying off the roof, bounce down the stairs, and roll all the way into town."

"I remember that day," Motoko said thoughtfully. "If I'm not mistaken, Keitaro came into the hot springs when we were all in there, and-"

"You're missing the point," Mei cut in, stamping her foot once more, "no human could survive a fall like that – so I decided to watch to see what my sister had gotten herself into, and in two weeks I saw him survive at least six falls that would kill a normal person." She looked around as everyone simply gaped at her. "Are you people thick?" she shrieked. "Don't you see what's happening here? He's a demon!"

Keitaro, who had been eyeing the stairs longingly, protested, "I am not!"

"Oh, I'd expect you to say that," Mei retorted snidely, leveling a finger at the flustered manager. "It won't matter, though, I've got holy water, a silver knife, and a wooden stake – and I'm using all three, just to be sure! And if that's not enough, I brought garlic and a cross, so just hold still and this'll all be over in a few seconds."

"Hey!" Keitaro cried, taking a cautionary step back as the girl produced all of the aforementioned implements of undead slaying from a rather cute bear-shaped backpack –the definition of 'juxtaposition,' if ever there was one. "Hey, this isn't funny anymore! Just because I'm a little more resilient than the average guy doesn't mean I'm a zombie!"

"Zombie, werewolf, vampire, demon, whatever," Mei mumbled, holding up her stake as she took a step towards Keitaro. "Doesn't matter what you are, I've got it covered."

Keitaro took another step back. "Tsuruko," he said shakily, "I thought you were going to protect me?"

"I never said that," Tsuruko replied calmly. "If you are a heavenly messenger, then you will be protected by the Almighty. My offer was of servitude."

Taking another step back from the advancing Narusegawa, Keitaro said, "What about you, Amalla? You can't marry a corpse."

Amalla shrugged. "That's true," she said, "but I don't want to marry a demon, so the way I figure it – if you're a shito, she won't be able to kill you, and I'll marry you… and if you're a shibito, I wouldn't want to marry you anyway, and she's doing the world a favor by getting rid of you."

"This is crazy!" Keitaro complained, taking another step back, "you're all-"

"Watch out for the edge!"

The warning came too late. Taking a final backward step, Keitaro pitched back over the edge of the Hinata Sou's roof, his arms pinwheeling frantically as he tried to regain his balance, but it was a lost cause. Instead of screaming as he fell, the unfortunate manager simply closed his eyes, and everyone distinctly heard him utter a single word as he vanished over the side.

"Figures."

There was a moment of silence, followed by a crunch that made everyone present – even Mei – wince. Walking to the side, they all peered over, finding Keitaro lying sprawled on the sidewalk in front of the Hinata Sou.

"See?" Mei said, "Any second he'll get up and start running again – and I'll have to chase him down all over again!"

Together, they watched.

"Any second now…"

From below, Shinobu appeared, walking slowly out of the front of the Hinata Sou and approaching the prone manager. Reaching his side, she sank down to her knees and put her fingers against the side of his neck.

Abruptly, she jerked her fingers away, looking up at the assembled crowd on the roof to announce in a broken voice, "He's… he's dead!"

Mei blinked. "Really? You mean… DEAD, dead?"

"He's dead!"

As the young girl threw herself over the body and began to sob, Mei snorted and pursed her lips. "He'll get up," she said confidently, "you can't kill a demon that easily."

"I don't think he's getting up this time," Tsuruko said grimly, glancing over the edge as Kitsune pulled Naru into her arms and murmured soft, consoling words into her ear. "It really is too bad."

"Yes," Amalla agreed, nodding sagely. "I doubt he'd want to be buried in that."

"He'll get up," Mei insisted. "Just wait!"

When the ambulance arrived, and the two paramedics slowly shook their heads and loaded Keitaro into the back, however, Mei realized that she just might have made a mistake.

"Oops…"

( 0 0 0 )

The funeral was a tearful affair. Neither Naru nor Shinobu would leave Keitaro's coffin, making the viewing of the body all but impossible as they sobbed and complained that it was not fair – it just was not fair. The undertaker, a handsome man with dark hair and square-framed glasses, lamented the early loss of life and advised all present to live each day as if it were his or her last.

Services were held in the living room of the Hinata Sou, at the insistence of all of the tenants, since it was – as Shinobu put it – the place he truly belonged.

Amalla, Mei, and Tsuruko held back, feeling very much like the outsiders they were as the few friends who had been able to make it passed through to give their respects, offering them awkwardly around Naru's sobbing back.

"I was so sure," Mei muttered as the other two nodded in agreement. "I mean, come on – the guy was practically launched into orbit a hundred times!"

"It does look like he's just sleeping," Amalla observed, "but the paramedics declared him dead at the scene, so…"

"I suppose this means your country won't get its successor," Tsuruko mused softly. "Pity, really… I wouldn't have minded serving under the most powerful house in MolMol and a heavenly messenger – it would have been quite a coup for the school."

Turning to the other woman, Amalla said, "Wouldn't your husband have been upset with you traveling to another country?"

Tsuruko waved a hand dismissively. "He wouldn't have even noticed I was gone," she muttered. "Hell, he's probably playing video games right now and wondering why I haven't cooked dinner yet. He's a sweet man… but he's entirely clueless."

Dropping the elder Aoyama a wink, Amalla whispered, "That's why I wouldn't have minded being married to Keitaro."

"I see your logic," Tsuruko said, smiling as the dark-skinned woman grinned broadly. "I suppose with everything that's happened, we should put our differences aside… agreed?"

"Agreed."

The two shook hands as Mei whispered, once more, "I was so sure…"

"I want to thank everyone for coming," Haruka said formally. "Now if you could excuse us, the tenants would like a few moments of privacy before the interment."

Amalla, Tsuruko, and Mei nodded, filing out with the rest of the visitors and sparing only one backward glance before leaving the Hinata Sou. For several minutes, the only sound in the living room was the continued sobbing of the residents and the retreating footsteps of the guests.

Finally, when it seemed that all was calm… Ketiaro's right eye popped open, glancing around as best it could as the man quietly muttered, "Are they gone yet?"

"Shh," Naru muttered, turning the volume down on the SobSound 2000 Su had made just for this occasion, "they might still be around somewhere."

"Nah," Kitsune yawned, stretching expansively as she came back into the room, "they all went down the stairs together… we're clear."

There was a collective sigh of relief as the ushers (Motoko's friends from school) finally took their leave and the undertaker screwed a cigarette into his lips. "All this fake death really makes you think about life, eh?" he observed. "Hey Haruka, maybe you and I should do something to reaffirm the joys of-"

"Oh give it a rest," Haruka mumbled, "can't you see we're at a funeral?" Lighting her own cigarette, she took a deep pull and asked, "Was all of this really necessary?"

"Well," Keitaro replied, sitting up in his coffin and using the handkerchief tucked in his tuxedo pocket to wipe the pale makeup off of his face, "Kitsune and I figured this was the only way to get rid of them. It was pretty tricky, especially getting everything together on such short notice."

"Yeah," Haruka observed, "how you ever got those two friends of yours to pose as paramedics is beyond me – and where did they get the ambulance? That was pure genius."

Keitaro grinned. "Shirai and Haitani love cosplay," he said happily, "and Shirai's uncle owns a used car lot. If you'd looked closely at the ambulance, you would have seen that one of the flashers was broken and the paint on all of the logos was still wet. The timing was tricky, though," he admitted. "We barely had time to cook up this plan and tell Shinobu about it – and if Kitsune hadn't been upstairs to whisper what was really happening, one of you guys would have come down and ruined the whole thing."

Everyone nodded, freely admitting that Keitaro's plan was quite masterful.

Haruka tapped her ashes into an ashtray on the end table before commenting, "You realize that news of this will get around, though, don't you? You'll have to pretend you're dead now."

"Nah," Keitaro shrugged. "Mei's in junior high and never visits – how would she ever find out, and who's she going to tell that would contradict her? Amalla lives overseas, so even if she tells everyone she knows, it won't affect me. I just need to keep my eyes open so Tsuruko doesn't spot me in the streets or something, and since she lives in Kyoto, I doubt that'll be too hard."

"I'll send her a letter," Motoko informed them. "If I explain everything, she'll understand that she was mistaken."

"What if she doesn't?" Naru asked skeptically. "I don't want a repeat of the last couple days if she decides she has to be next to shito-boy here."

Motoko shook her head. "My sister's very levelheaded… most of the time," she said calmly, "once she's had time to think things over – in Kyoto, alone – she'll realize that the idea of Keitaro being a messenger from God is pretty farfetched."

"I agree, but he sure is handsome…"

Everyone looked up in surprise at the husky, gleeful observation.

"A-Amalla…?"

Hanging nimbly by her feet from one of the rafters overhead, Su's sister gave a jaunty wave. "You're right, Miss Narusegawa," she said happily, "he's not a shito – I figured that out when I first met him – no almighty being would send someone that clumsy to Earth, it's just impossible."

"Then why did you keep chasing him?" Naru demanded, trying not to strain her neck as she looked up at the older woman. "If you knew all along, then-"

Amalla's sudden, predatory grin cut her off in mid-sentence.

"…because I don't care if he's a shito or not, I'm still marrying him."

Before Keitaro could scramble out of the way, Amalla dropped from the rafters, landing on top of the coffin and deftly shimmying in at his side. Laughing with delight as she pushed him onto his back, she pulled the coffin lid closed behind her, supremely confident that her victory was ensured.

Naru sprang into action, shouting, "Come on!" as she reached for the lid… but for the life of her, she could not get it open. "Why… won't… this… oh for crying- who puts a lock on the inside of a coffin?"

From within came the muffled sounds of some kind of scuffle, followed by a scream of terror – clearly Keitaro's – and then… an ominous silence, broken finally by a long, content sigh.

Everyone jumped as Su suddenly announced, "Don't be sad – MolMolese law says that the Prince Regent can live anywhere he wants as long as he's siring the required number of offspring, so Keitaro can live here."

"How many offspring is he required to have?" Naru asked dully, giving the coffin lid one last ineffectual tug before sinking to her knees in defeat as Motoko patted her consolingly on the shoulder.

Su smiled happily. "Thirty."

"Thirty?" came the collective gasp.

"That's not even physiologically possible," Seta scoffed.

"Oh, not for one woman," Su confirmed brightly, "which is why in addition to his wife, the Prince Regent is required to take on at least five consorts, all of whom he is required to love, honor, and support – though with the royal dowry, that's not such a big deal."

"Dowry, you say?" Kitsune asked, materializing from nowhere at Su's side. "Dowry of how much?"

"It's… I can never get the conversion right," Su mumbled, biting her tongue and closing one eye as she thought. "Five royal drachmars, one for each consort's needs, which equals about…" she screwed her face up in thought, "about nine million dollars for each consort."

"Nine million?" Kitsune echoed, dollar signs appearing in her eyes as she rubbed her hands together. "And all I gotta –er, all the consort has to do is lie around and be pampered by the prince and have a bunch of kids with him?"

"That's about the size of it."

"And he's allowed to have six women?"

"Or seven, or more, however many he needs to ensure the bloodline… the most I've heard of was nine."

"Seriously? At the same time?"

Su cleared her throat. "Well, I think they took turns," she said with a blush, "but I was always told that I shouldn't worry about that kind of stuff until I'm older, so I don't really know. All of the consorts have to get along, too," she added. "In MolMol, they're all considered members of the same family, and they call each other sist-"

Abruptly, the coffin lid was flung up, and Keitaro, his face covered in lipstick and sweat and his shirt practically torn from his body, panted, "Please… help me, she's…"

He trailed off as he looked around the room, staring from one pair of hungry, contemplative eyes to the next before realizing that – from these women – there would be no help forthcoming… or at least, not the kind of help he was thinking of. So when Amalla pushed him back down into the coffin and shut the lid, Keitaro did nothing to stop her.

"You know," Seta commented, taking Haruka by the elbow and steering her towards the exit as the other tenants slowly began to converge on the coffin, "maybe we should be going."

"I almost feel sorry for him," Haruka mused. "I don't think he'll be getting any rest until he's in one of those for real."

"Hey," Seta said suddenly. "All this shito business…"

"What about it?"

"Well," the archeologist mused, "what if he really is a messenger sent down to Earth from somewhere up above? I mean, he does seem inordinately lucky, and unless there was divine intervention, I doubt there's any realistic chance that he'd be able to get six women to want to be with him enough to tolerate not only him, but each other. So what if he really was sent here to spread the joys of truth and love?"

From within the coffin, there was another terrified scream.

"…then I'd say he's off to a good start."

Leaving the unfortunate manager to his fate, Haruka and Seta stepped out for coffee, putting thoughts of shito and torrid six-way trysts out of their mind. The way they figured it, in the next couple days they would either get a wedding invitation, or a notification of death.

Or maybe both.

Walking down the stairs, Seta could not help but glance back over his shoulder at the Hinata Sou.

"Lucky bastard…"

Shaking his head, he continued down the stairs, quickening his pace a bit before his morals could step in and send him running back to save the poor man he was leaving behind.

Privately, he hoped Keitaro was a shito… otherwise he would be dead inside of a week.

But what a way to go…

Epilogue

(Courtesy of Hawker-748)

Haruka sat in the Cafe Hinata, reading the paper, while her usual cigarette dangled from the corner of her mouth. Four days had gone by since the faux funeral Keitaro had dreamed up to drive away the women who'd mistaken him for a divine conduit.

One of those women, Su's older sister Amalla, had pronounced that she would marry Keitaro and make him the Prince Regent of Molmol. Haruka wasn't sure if they'd been officially married, but Amalla had decided to skip the ceremony and move straight to the honeymoon.

In the casket they'd used for the funeral service.

The other girls, especially Naru had been distraught, but had consoled themselves with the notion that Keitaro was required to take at least five consorts, the better to produce the thirty heirs demanded of him. The fact that each consort would be supported by a royal dowry of approximately nine million dollars US was simply icing on the cake.

A hell of a lot of icing...

'Haven't heard much since the first time Amalla jumped in that coffin,' Haruka recalled. Not that she wanted to know what exactly was going on up there, but she was a little curious in the abstract. The door to the Cafe opened, disturbing her musings. She casually glanced over, and was surprised to see Keitaro literally crawling through the opening.

"Water..." he rasped hoarsely.

Haruka went to the cooler and retrieved a bottle of water and walked over to where Keitaro was dragging himself along with his hands. He was wearing a pair of shorts and a ratty t-shirt that had seen better days. This description could apply to Keitaro, as there were black circles under his eyes, his hair was mussed up, and his eyes had a sunken look to him.

Now he did look like the shibito that Mei had assumed him to be.

Haruka handed Keitaro the water, which he snatched out of her hands and drank so quickly, that Haruka was sure that he'd end up swallowing the bottle as well.

"Thank you," Keitaro breathed gratefully.

"You look like hell Keitaro."

"I-I'm so tired... I can barely move."

"Haven't you slept?"

"Been in several beds," Keitaro replied drunkenly. "As well as the sofa, kitchen table, kitchen counter, outdoor bath, indoor bath, the attic, annex rooftop, the washing machine... Haven't gotten a chance to sleep though..."

"You've been up for four days?" Haruka asked in disbelief.

Keitaro took a moment, and started counting on his fingers. "Yeah, four days. Thought it was only three though, lost a day somewhere..."

Haruka helped the exhausted Prince Regent of Molmol to his feet and over to a chair, which he sat in with a pained hiss.

"Do I want to know what that's about?" Haruka asked.

"Riding crop."

"I beg your pardon?"

"When Naru and Motoko were...'occupying' me, Kitsune went into her closet and brought out some 'special' outfits," Keitaro explained. There were some questions in the Universe that were best left unasked, such as where had Kitsune gotten that human sized saddle and bridle...

And why they had been a perfect fit for Keitaro...

"She got a little carried away around the final turn, something about a 'Triple Crown'." 'At least she hadn't been that heavy,' Keitaro consoled himself. Her riding costume had consisted of a cowboy hat, chaps, boots complete with spurs, and nothing else...

"I need sleep," Keitaro murmured softly, placing his head on the table.

"Why didn't you sleep when they did?"

"After Amalla caught me trying to get away, they started sleeping in rotation," Keitaro explained. "Everyone slept in turns but me. The only reason I got away now is that Kitsune passed out on guard duty, and Su and Shinobu were too tired to stay up afterwards."

Haruka went to the liquor storage and took out her best sake, taking a big swig to help her keep the visualization that threatened to appear out of her head.

Feeling the warmth of the sake in her stomach, Haruka regarded her nephew closely. He had already dozed off, but he was fidgeting nervously even as he tried to catch up on the sorely needed sleep. 'Poor Keitaro, it couldn't have been that bad, could it?'

'Please, not here Shinobu, this is where we eat...' Keiatro murmured in his sleep.

"Maybe it could," Haruka admitted.

"Urashima-sensei, it's time for our lessons," a voice called out from the doorway.

Haruka turned and saw Amalla, Motoko, Naru, and Kitsune standing there, all of them wearing school girl outfits. Judging by the length of them, it had to be their junior high outfits. "Let the guy have a break, are you trying to kill him?"

"I guess we should," pouted Naru. "He's been kinda busy lately."

"If Kitsune hadn't fallen asleep, he wouldn't have gotten away," accused Amalla.

"Hey, I was more tired than I thought," Kitsune replied defensively. "'Sides, we found him, didn't we?"

"Only because of Su's Keitaro detector," pointed out Motoko.

"The guy needs to rest," insisted Haruka, in a voice that brooked no argument. Even Amalla didn't try to argue with her.

The four girls sighed and took seats at the table near Keitaro, watching him sleep fitfully. "We're going to have work out some kind of schedule, or we will kill him," remarked Naru, gently stroking his hair.

"I'll have Su work something out," replied Kitsune.

"Just make sure she does it fairly," insisted Naru. The others nodded in agreement.

For a few minutes there was only silence in the cafe, as the women watched the man of their affections get some much needed rest. Finally Motoko gave voice to something that had been on the back of her mind for some time, but not really considered in light of all that had happened.

"Does anyone else feel as if we're forgetting something?" she asked.

The others though about this for a moment, before shaking their heads in denial. "Don't think so, what could it be?" replied Kitsune dismissively.

XXX

In the Hinata City Prison, Kanako resumed her furious attempts at pulling the bars of her prison cell loose, the cracks in the concrete testament to her efforts. The orange prison uniform she was wearing didn't suit her at all, but at least it was a better fit than those damned grocery bags.

"When I get out of here, that white-haired tramp is SO going to get it," Kanako seethed between clenched teeth, as she resumed her attack on the bars. "And the rest of them too, leaving me to rot in here, while my brother is molested by that hussy!"

The bars continued to groan in protest.

The End

Notes: and thus, the madcapery is at an end! I was really planning to make this a serious story when the idea hit me, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it worked better as a comedy. Someone asked in one of the reviews what 'shito' means, and I THINK most of the other readers picked up on it due to my writing history, but it's the Japanese word for 'Apostle,' or 'Messenger.' In Evangelion (which I've written a… couple stories for) the creatures NERV is organized to fight against are called Shito. When the show was translated into English, ADV Films decided that Angel sounded better than Messenger. Shibito means 'walking dead,' and is a word I learned from playing the PS2 game Siren. I honestly have no idea if it LOOKS anything like Shito when it's written out in kanji, but it sure does make for good comedy, eh? EH?

I think that covers everything except Drachmars, which may or may not be a real kind of currency… I just needed something that sounded like it could have come from a place like MolMol.

I must pause here to thank Hawker-748 for his fine pre-reading support. He knows a lot more about Love Hina than I do, so he was invaluable in keeping everyone in character (or as close to it as possible for a fic like this) and keeping me from tripping over continuity flaws. Everyone should be reading his stories instead of mine, because he's better at this game than me.

One last note before I forget – the idea to have Keitaro in a coffin was MacBeth2001's… I just picked it up and ran with it. Thanks to him for giving me a better conclusion than the crap I had planned out.