The Umbrella

(Everyone at the Order was afraid of Kanda. Until his loud, embarrassing big sister showed up. With some awesome blackmail material.)

It was morning at the European Branch's headquarters of the Black Order. Birds chirped, sunlight streamed through the windows, and the fresh air smelled good and strong.

Kanda was sitting with the Moyashi and Lavi, a big bowl of soba in front of him and chopsticks poised in hand. At the moment, he was trying to enjoy his food and forget the fact that he was sitting with the Moyashi and Lavi.

It was hard, though. Especially when the idiot Moyashi was making as much noise as he could while he inhaled more food than humanly possible. Kanda glanced over at him, slightly disturbed. Did he just... eat a plate? And what were those shiny, metallic looking things in his mouth? Silverware? Kanda shuddered inwardly. The Moyashi was a monster.

Not that the annoying redhead was any better. Always blabbing his mouth off about whatever caught his eye. Right now, he was trying to explain the history of the parasol, or something, but their talk was slowly drifting towards the topic of hot girls going to meet the matchmaker with little crickets in their sleeves. He tried to block it all out and enjoy his breakfast in peace- he was still tired after his grueling mission, after all- but there was only so much he could ignore.

It was a relief when Lenalee finally came over to join them after her she did her morning coffee rounds. And unlike the Moyashi, she was actually carrying a tray with a normal amount of food on it.

So it was when Lenalee was chatting to Allen and Kanda about some girl who went off to fight in a war to protect her family, and Kanda was eating his soba and feeling strangely at peace for once, that he saw her.

A young woman of perhaps 20 years stood at the doors to the entrance hall, obviously lost. She wore a plain brown dress and clutched two battered suitcases to her slight frame as she surveyed the Headquarters. Her long black hair was pinned up in a wide bun, and her eyes were sharp and keen. In fact, the girl almost looked like...

Oh hell. Kanda bowed his head and willed himself to disappear into his soba. It was... she was... fuck. Someone hide him, quick.

Too late. The girl spotted him from across the hall, dropped her suitcases and squealed, rushing down the long hall to greet him. "Yuu!"

"Who's that, Yuu-chan?" snickered Lavi. "Your girlfriend?"

Kanda glowered at him- which turned out to be an epic fail, what with the girl battering into him at the speed of Yoruichi's shunpo. After which she then valiantly attempted to deprive him of his oxygen supply via the Embrace of Death. And as Kanda was still recuperating from his first real near-death experience in a long, long time, the girl started to speak.

"Yuuuuuu! Ah, you've gotten so tall! You look just like Father, now! And your hair's so long! Ha, what would Kazuko say if she saw you? She'll be so jealous when I tell her that your hair's longer than hers! And- oh, you have a sword! Well then, I guess you're a warrior now. I bet you've become a really good warrior, too. Yuu, you've really grown so much!" She looked so happy that Kanda thought for a second she would break down and cry.

But then her eyes narrowed and grew cold. Suddenly the room turned chilly. "Huh. Yuu. You look skinny. You're really skinny. You haven't been eating enough, have you?" She poked his stomach. Hard.

"They'd better not be starving you here. I don't care how much you like soba, a balanced meal is essential. How many times has Mother told you to eat your fish and beans, huh, Yuu? They're really essential."

She emphasized the essentiality of fish and beans by poking him again, this time twice on the forehead. "And it rains so much here, ah! Do you keep your umbrella with you? Your coat doesn't even have a hood, does it?" She stared at him accusingly.

"It's not my fault that it rains here, Ane-go," said Kanda sullenly.

"Well, what if you were out in the rain and you caught a cold and died! What then, ah? What would I tell our mother? She would die of shame!"

Grunt.

"Ah, Yuu, why are you always so diff-i-cult?" his sister groaned, shaking him roughly back and forth in frustration. Kanda thought he heard something snap. Probably just his spinal cord. No big deal.

"You know what? We'll go out to town tomorrow and buy you one."

Kanda froze. Don't say it, don't say it...

"I know!" His sister's face lit up. "We'll get one that suits you! Something really cute! Let's find something really cute, just for you!"

She said it. And worse, now the idiot usagi was talking.

"Yeah!" Lavi was saying brightly, "We'll get you an umbrella with clouds, and rainbows, and these wee little bunnies with cottontails on the handle, so you can be really happy, even when it's rainy and you're feeling down! Right, Yuu-chan? You'd like that, Yu-chan?"

Kanda twitched and resisted the Urge to Kill.

Allen snorted, choking on his plate of spaghetti. "Woah," said Lavi, patting him on the back. "Take it easy with the pasta."

"Kanda," said Allen in a strangled voice. "Rainbows. Bunnies."

"That's a little too much imagining you're doing there, buddy."

Kanda twitched. Or rather, his fingers twitched. As they went towards his sword.

Unfortunately for Kanda, Lenalee saw him. And gave him The Look. The, I-Know-What-You're-Thinking-And-Don't-You-Even-Dare Look. That scary one. The one that- oh, yeah. It really did burn.

"Anyway, Kanda," Lenalee said sweetly, pigtails bobbing about her head in an innocent mass of pure, pure evil, "Won't you introduce us to your friend?"

"Che. She's not my friend, she's my sister, Kanda Fumiko. Fumi, the redhead is Lavi, the one with the pigtails is Lenalee and the moyashi is..." no way was he ever going to say the kid's name, "...Beansprout."

Fumi demurely lifted her eyes from the ground to give a small smile and a nod to her brother's friends. And, wait- did she just bat her eyelashes?

What the hell is this? screamed Kanda's freaked-out expression. What's with the weird personality changes, huh? That spot is already filled by the idiot redhead! And besides, don't you usually boss me around and tell me what to do?

But there she was, still looking off to the side with a shy, coy little smile on her face. "Um, good morning, Lavi, Lenalee... Beansprout..."

"It's Allen Walker, Miss Fumiko," said Allen, rubbing the back of his head sheepishly. "That guy over there just, uh... forgets my name sometimes." He cast a meaningful look towards Kanda, which Kanda promptly ignored.

"Oh, well- I think it's really cute that he gives all of his friends such nice nicknames!" Fumi beamed, abandoning her faux-shyness act and quickly reverting back to her usual self as she reminisced. "Ah, Moyashi- I remember when everyone in our family used to call Yuu that, back when he was little!"

"They did, did they?" said Allen, a slow smirk spreading its way over his face. "Was he really little?"

"Yuu? Ah- yes, he was always small for his age." Fumi laughed. "We might have even given him a bit of a complex, calling him Moyashi all the time, but it's just that he was so small! He was so tiny that we used to joke that you could lose him among the weeds, like a little bean sprout. I was always much taller than him."

"You were not," Kanda couldn't help saying.

"Of course not," Fumi replied, smiling at him benevolently.

"But you weren't."

"You're right," she said in a placating tone. "Just because Father and Mother and Kazuko and Nanami and Asako and Keiji thought I was always taller than you doesn't mean that I actually was."

"Che."

"Ah. You still say that, huh?"

"Say what?"

"Che. You always used to say 'che'. And I guess you still do."

"Yeah, he does say it a whole lot. I wondered where he picked it up from."

"Ah... whenever my father used to scold him, he would always end his speeches with a 'che'. So whenever Yu was angry, he would push someone, say 'che!' and walk off in a huff. Ah, he was so cute..."

"Che. No, I wasn't."

"Aw, don't try to deny it," Lavi insisted. "Now, every time I hear ya say that, I'll be thinkin' about how cute you musta been."

"Ch-" Wait. Wait. No. He was not going to fall into that one. Argh, this was impossible! Why did Fumi always do this to him? He glanced her way, and she gave him a secret, evil grin. Oh, yes. She knew what she was doing. And she was enjoying it a helluva lot.

"Fumi, why are you even here?" grumbled Kanda. "You can't have come here for no reason."

"You're right," said Fumi, her tone suddenly serious. "I've come here..."

Lavi, Lenalee and Allen leaned forward imperceptibly.

"I've come all the way here from Japan..."

The three leaned closer.

"I've traveled by boat and by train, and even on foot to tell you that..."

Lavi, Lenalee and Allen's expressions all said the same thing: what? TELL WHAT?

"Well there's no use in stalling... Mother thought you might need a new umbrella."

"An umbrella?" Lavi, Lenalee and Allen chorused.

Fumi nodded.

"An umbrella," repeated Kanda. "An... umbrella."

Fumi nodded again.

"You came here... to get me an umbrella."

"Well," said Fumi, "We can get you a nice one, right?"

Kanda nodded dumbly.

"Good!" Fumi smiled breezily. "Oh, and by the way, I'm getting married and moving to America. Mother said I should probably tell you that, too." Something registered in her brain. "That's funny... now that I think about it, maybe it wasn't about the umbrella after all. Huh. That actually makes a lot more sense."

Her brow furrowed for a second, and then she brightened. "Oh well, we'll still get you a really cute umbrella, Yuu! Remember how you used to love that one with the little yellow bears on it- how you used to carry it around the house, and once you opened it into Keiji's eye? And then Kazuko tried to take it away from you, and you cried so hard..."

His sister continued blabbing embarrassing stories about him and his family the whole morning and even as they searched the market to find him a new umbrella- black, thankfully. Even though at that point, it didn't even really matter, what with all the blackmail material Fumi was giving the moyashi and the idiot usagi- and Lenalee, from the way she was grinning at him.

It was only until a week after Fumi had left for America and he was on a mission in the damp, drizzly streets of Paris that Kanda discovered the glow-in-the-dark teddy bear stickers she'd taped to the handle of his umbrella.

A/N: Well, that was really fun to write! First time doing an OC, I think. I really like Fumiko though, even if her character's a bit sketchy. Okay, maybe a lot sketchy. I always wanted Kanda to get embarrassed, though. Drop me a review and tell me what you thought!