The sun shone brightly across the lawn of a rather impressive mansion as a young fourteen-year-old girl strode towards a small bridge connecting two sides of land across a river. Her hand clenched at her sides, her stride was angry and stiff.

This is a story, of a young man…

"Goddamn it!" the dark haired girl swore, dark eyes piercing holes through her cut short brown hair. "Goddamn HIM! Goddamn this LIFE!" Slowly a pair of crystalline tears began to build at the corners of her narrowed eyes.

His family was killed in a traffic accident, leaving their huge fortune to him. All the money he would ever need…

"Why the hell did we get stuck with him? Why is it me that has to suffer in this life?" The girl felt the hot tears running down her cheek, to her chin, and then take a leap, landing with a small 'plisk' into the river of koy beneath her.

But something was missing…

"If it wasn't for the fact that bastard has leverage with his money, we could be rid of this nightmare of a job…forget Pochi! We could live without him." Slowly, the young girl began to wipe the tears away from her face.

"I want to go home…"

Every child needs a companion, somebody to converse or to fight with. Someone to hate or to love. Every child, no matter how rich or knowledgeable, or introverted, needs someone. He had no one…

"Stupid pervert," she muttered. "I miss my mom and Karin. I miss our house, being able to enjoy life without need of worry…"

She paused for a moment before adding, "I guess I miss dad a bit too, even if he is as bad as that bastard. He is family…"

His family was gone, all he had was his money for company, and that was no company at all. Feeling desperate and lonely, he did the only thing that came to mind…

Slowly the girl began to make her way back towards the large house, tears left behind, along with some of the stress she had been carrying. It wasn't easy, her job. Full of danger and pressure.

And all the stupid and perverted uniforms. Why was she picked on to wear so many of them?

He tried to hire someone to keep him company, to help him take care of himself and the large estate left to him. To buy somebody's time for him, somebody's comfort, somebody's friendship…

And it almost worked.

"Damn pervert and his uniform fetish…" the girl murmured to herself. "He deserves to burn in hell for his perversion." And she felt she meant it. Taping her in the bath, sharing the videos with coworkers and even causing her sister to fight against her at times. "How does he always get away with it?"

Two young girls arrived at his door, recent runaways with only their clothes and a pet crocodile that needed shelter. Seizing the opportunity (as he was about ready to settle for a middle aged woman to share company with instead of these two girls his age) he hired them, doing everything he could to force them to stay, indebting them to him…

Finally reaching the front door once again, the dark haired girl opened it up and entered the large building, at once beginning to head up the stairs and back to her duties. She jerked back, however, when a stray bit of broken banister caught her maid outfit and ripped it, causing her to trip.

After a few minutes she rose up, staring sadly at the broken piece of decorative wood. Yet another addition to her debt.

True, the boy admitted to himself several times that he was in the wrong with his attitude at times, but he would have to be blind not to appreciate the beauty before him, and besides, only one of the girls, now numbering three after a small incident, minded.

It was all in fun, and he was a growing boy, hormones raging. He knew who he was, and he wasn't a self-sacrificing hero or a member of a religious brother hood. Nobody really liked him anyways, so what was the harm?

"Will this nightmare ever be over?" the girl thought, slowly trudging up the stairs. "I wish…"

Wishes are funny things. They don't always go as planned. The young boy wished for companionship, and, expecting a housekeeper, ended up with a group of cute maids.

"I wish…"

They don't always come true, but when they do…

"I wish there was a way for us to go back home…"

Like it or not...lives will change.

"…and never come back."

Yoshitaka was a young pervert. He even admitted it to himself (but only himself), and was surprisingly happy with it. It just wasn't like him to hide his hormones. Appreciation of beauty is an art; he would quote to himself during any time of self-doubt, to which the undeniable result was a quick trip to the video archives.

Currently, however, any thoughts of perversion were pressed from his mind by the simple pressure of the challenge that Mitsuki was bound to announce at any time now.

"Why don't we have a contest, master?" Mitsuki shot out suddenly, as if some divine thought had entered her head.

"Knew it," Yoshitaka mumbled to himself.

"In order to decide who gets the day off, we could-,"

"Forget it, Mitsuki. You all three can have the day off. Go do whatever…"

In that instant, everything in Mitsuki's mind went crashing down. "Huh?" was the only thing she could get out while trying to comprehend what had just happened.

Yoshitaka never let them all have a day off at once, and he never backed off from one of her challenges.

"He didn't even swoon when I called him master…"

When the thought to ask him what it was popped into her mind, however, the young boy had already moved far from Mitsuki's line of sight.

"Master's probably just having a bad day," Mitsuki reasoned. "He'll be fine tomorrow. In the meantime…" she shouted as her eyes flashed brilliantly, "SNACK TIME!"

Barreling downstairs, the bright haired maid ran right by a still waking Anna, who had apparently spent the entire night doing…something. It was still early in the day, though, so there was so much they could all do.

"I'll ask Izumi what it is she wants to do…" Mitsuki started thinking as she poured batter into a pan, the sizzle of frying food emanating from the stove. The young maid began to hum to herself, letting her natural inner-cook make the food while her mind wandered.

Truly, while Mitsuki's mind operated differently than most people, she was by no means ignorant of anything around her. Life interested her, and making friends came easily to her, so she never really felt lonely.

However, even if she had never really felt it herself, she could feel the cold emotion clinging to some people. She did her best to make lives happier, to rid those people of the lonely emotion that she could feel emanating from them. She was proud of the work she had accomplished.

And then she met Yoshitaka. At first glance, he seemed nice enough, a real gentleman. Yet, after living with him for a while, it became obvious that he was by no means the most gracious person on Earth. But Mitsuki just wasn't happy looking closely, she wanted to look underneath.

And that was where she found it.

The feelings of loneliness just rolled of the boy like waves from an ocean. The pain he was in seemed enormous, and it shocked the poor girl for a while. It was soon after that that she decided she would do what she could to make that boy happy, like all the others she had in the past.

Yoshitaka seemed to realize what she was doing, and the girl had always felt a twinge of pride when he mentioned how she seemed to understand him the best. It felt like she was accomplishing something. Proof came as the waves of sadness he had once shown began to diminish, and he became even friendlier towards his blond employee. He had always shown a tolerance for her much above that he had shown for others.

In a way, Mitsuki had once reasoned, it was really Izumi that kept all of the people in the house together, including Pochi. She acted as Anne's love interest, an idol for Pochi and Yoshitaka's hormones, and Mitsuki's older sister.

Yoshitaka had guessed right when he had given her the debt to give her reason to stay.

At times, Mitsuki even felt a bit left out, because she really had no one to chase after, and no one to chase after her, but these feelings quickly fleeted when her thoughts turned to the two perverts of the house.

Pochi and Yoshitaka.

She was here for them, for the alligator that she had raised and protected since birth, and that young boy whom had shown his true face only once.

There's something wrong with Yoshitaka…Mitsuki thought. He seemed…sad or disappointed just earlier…

However, allowing one's mind to wander did have its consequences, inner cook or not. Mitsuki smelt the food in the pan begin to fry, and she instantly reacted, pulling the pan from the stove and allowing her breakfast to cool before sliding it onto a plate. Then, like every morning, she headed to the pantry to find some of Yoshitaka's morning sugar concoctions.

A box of donuts seemed to look about right, so she quickly chose a few and placed them on a tray, along with a glass of milk and a thin vase of flowers. Even though the boy was already up, Mitsuki had a feeling he would be spending most of his day up in his room.

Still smiling to herself, she picked up her plate and scooped a portion of her cooked meal onto the young boy's plate, quickly turning so as to take it to his room before it got cold.

"Izumi…" Yoshitaka started slowly, staring at the dark-haired girl before him. Calling her here had taken a lot of will power on his part. After meeting Mitsuki in the hallway, he had continued back to his room, eventually bumping into the returning Izumi. Without really knowing why, he had invited her to come to his room for a talk. Now he had no idea how to begin.

"What do you want Yoshitaka?"

Yoshitaka cocked his head to the side. "What do I want? What makes you think I want something?"

"You always have something you want. What should make today any different?"

Yoshitaka moved across the room, sitting with a creak onto his rather lavish bed. With an unerring gaze, he asked the girl slowly. "You don't think today is any different than any other day of the week?" he asked. "Of the year?"

Izumi looked up at the boy's tone of voice. "Why, should it be?"

"No, of course not."

"Then you do want something."

Getting slightly exasperated, he replied stonily. "Did I say that?"

"No. But you implied it!"

"Look, you're my maid anyways, what difference does it make if I wanted something? I would just tell you. I wouldn't go through this pointless game of twenty questions!"

"OH, how was I supposed to know that, oh exalted master?"

Though he had waited for what seemed like forever for the girl across from him to call him by that title, it was understandable that the tone with which the word was said drove him to act rashly.

"What is your problem, Izumi?"

"You're a jackass, that's my problem! A hormonally driven sack of dung that only thinks about himself and his penis! God if it wasn't for that damn debt I would have been out of here so long ago! Far away from you and your stupid uniform fetish!"

Unseen by Izumi, Yoshitaka balled his hands up in his bed sheets so tight, his knuckles turned white. "Is that really how you feel…Izumi?"

"Of course! If you even really cared at all for me, you would know that I felt that way every minute of every day!"

"And all that's keeping you here," Yoshitaka calmly restated, "is your debt?"

"Yeah."

With almost a mumble, Yoshitaka inquired about Pochi. "Doesn't what happens to him matter to you at all?"

"Pochi is Mitsuki's thing. I couldn't care less."

"If that's really how you feel then, I guess I have no choice. Izumi, I had decided to tell all three of you the good news at the same time, and had hoped it would be at a later date, but circumstances force me to move from what I had originally planned.

As of today, Izumi, all three of you are fired."

Brushing her blonde hair away from her face in astonishment, Mitsuki slowly began to back away from the closed door before her. The laden tray she carried began to shake as she tightly clenched it to her chest, still careful not to spill anything, lest she be discovered in her eavesdropping.

Forcing herself to move, the blonde girl slowly placed the silver tray on the ground before the door, then turned and quickly made her way back down the stairs brushing her eyes with a delicate gloved hand.

"I think…" she muttered to herself, "if I move fast enough, I can still fix this."

I can still fix this…

"We're fired?! NOW WE'RE FIRED?! Do you think this is some kind of punishment?" Izumi howled in the boy's face. Her forehead was creased violently, eyes flashing violently. "Give me half a second! I'll get all three of us packed and out of your hair in an hour."

Just as violently as her outburst, the dark haired girl swung herself around, maid outfit billowing about her, and stormed out of the young master's room. With the rattling of the china around the room, Yoshitaka stood tall, his shoulders drawn back and square, and his hands clenched tightly at his sides.

"A punishment…" the boy quoted beneath his shallow breathing, "of course it's a punishment…"

Squeezing his eyes shut, Yoshitaka found his throat tightening around him, wrapping around a phantom ball placed in the center of his neck. Slowly he found his breathing beginning to grow more difficult as he began to hiccup.

"Of course…" he croaked out, "of course…it's a punishment…"

Growing dizzy, he began to stumble back, tripping and planting himself down on his bed. Finally, he began to give in, slowly moving his small hands up to his blurring eyes, rubbing his face and pushing at his bangs in a strange restlessness.

"It's a punishment…for me…but why…why…"

Slipping his fingers into his hair, he gripped it tightly and began to pull, the dull pain it brought easing his other hurt slightly. He could feel himself loosing it, and bit his tongue, ashamed at his weakness. A slight brush of something could be felt at his cheeks.

"Why…" he managed to get out in a choked sob, "why isn't it a punishment for you?"

At last, like the snapping of a twig or the beginning of a stream, he broke, curling himself up into a familiar ball and began to sob, wrenching his body violently and cursing his poor control of his bodily functions.

It just hurt so much.

With the slamming of the door behind her, Izumi stomped ahead, intent on making it downstairs and gathering the other girls so that they could leave quickly. With the shattering of china and the cold sound of clattering metal, however, she stopped momentarily to see what she had just walked over.

Before her lay the remains of a scattered breakfast and, sliding down a few stairs, went the silver serving tray that was usually brought up to Yoshitaka every morning.

"Mitsuki…" Izumi breathed out. She must have heard us fighting.

Making her way down the stairs a little slower, Izumi brushed her hand over the slick wooden banister. As a last moment, the middle school girl allowed the different items in the room to wash over her.

Everything in this house had meaning. It all held a small amount of power over her mind and thought. All of the bad experiences just seemed to bring themselves out of hiding, all to ambush her, steadily raising her temper once again.

Yoshitaka's acts of perversion and his objectifying ways, Mitsuki's selfishness, Pochi and Anna's suffocating love, it all came back to her in full color, reminding her of all the hardships she had suffered, and allowing her to try and think of any kind or happy thing had ever happened to her here.

What reason did she have to stay? Nothing could be remembered that allowed her a smile or a joyous thought.

It almost felt as though, in all her searching, she could find no other connections besides the now cleared debt to cut and allow herself freedom. However, something continued to sit out of reach.

Something caused her regret. Something in her heart allowed her mind to burden her with frustration, doubt, and a tiny bit of guilt.

Nothing was strong enough for her to halt for even a moment in her march to round up the two other maids though. It merely sat in her chest, as if to tell her she was doing something wrong.

"Wrong or not," she spoke to herself determinedly, "I'm still leaving."

"I am going home."

From the Desk of Tyr'll

Okay, first of all, this is a two shot, and the second chapter may or may not come out any time soon. I don't really expect a big response for this story, but I did want to show my support for the fandom. I do like HIMM, and read of it what I can, but honestly that isn't much, so…

Oh well. To those who care, I am also currently nursing a rather pushy plot in my head for a Teen Titans fic, and Imbedded Instinct may take awhile to come up.

I'm just so busy trying to find good fanfics to read, as they seem to be rather rare nowadays. Help me out, write some good stories.

Please?