Disclaimer: I don't own Fushigi Yuugi and I have no regular source of
income so suing me is not advisable.
Author's Note: Okay, I spent a lot of my Christmas vacation reading Inu Yasha blanket scenario fics by various authors and decided that I should write my own. I decided to do a Fushigi Yuugi one first because the Inu Yasha ones tend to be unoriginal. Here's the drill if you're not familiar with blanket scenario fics: Two or more characters are caught in a blizzard and have only one blanket. Needless to say, things get pretty cozy. Another thing, this doesn't really take place in any episode or anything. The setting is Hokkan or some other place that's pretty cold. The series is still going on so they're in the book not reincarnated. Okay that's all you need to know.
Fushigi Yuugi Blanket Scenario:
One on One
He pushed the ratty curtains aside and looked out at the muddy courtyard of the inn. A stable boy led a horse into a covered stall. Another boy rushed over with an armful of worn blankets to keep the horses warm during the impending "storm."
To Nuriko's (apparently) inexperienced eye they looked like regular old rain clouds but the locals appeared to think that a "real doozy" was on its way. The innkeeper had predicted they would get about a foot and a half of snow. A patron of the bar who had introduced himself as Gregary the radish farmer had contradicted him saying he thought they would get snow up to their thighs, if the kami was gentle.
Nuriko had practically choked on his cheap ale, and Tasuki had laughed out loud, proclaiming that they must be "f**king crazy." Chiriko had pointed out that Hokkan was known for unpredictable weather. Chichiri had agreed suggesting that they prolong their stay in the village inn to avoid getting caught in the storm.
At the time Nuriko had been willing to go along. He could catch up on his beauty sleep and just hang out for once. Unfortunately, he had been woken up far too early by Tamahome and Tasuki's squabbling and aside from sleeping, which was impossible and getting drunk, which wasn't really his style, there was nothing to do but sit around.
So he had. After about 2 hours, it was getting incredibly old. After about 3 hours he was getting incredibly bored.
Now it was four hours later. 12:30 in the afternoon and the storm STILL hadn't hit. He looked longingly at the road into the forest. Maybe I SHOULD have a few drinks. It might take the edge off this boredom. He sighed in annoyance and opened the door into the common room.
The sound of an argument coming to its peak immediately assaulted his ears. Surprisingly enough, the fight was not between Tamahome and Tasuki but between Tamahome and Hotohori. One look at Miaka's worried face gave him a big hint as to what the argument was about. They're fighting over her again. I thought they were over that.
Nuriko sat down on a rough stool at the bar. He already knew that all they had was the watery ale he'd tried to avoid since their first day at the inn.
"I'm a little parched, sir," Nuriko said, forcing a smile for politeness' sake.
"Ale then! Right away, sir," the innkeeper replied, giving a last wipe of the bar before he ducked below the counter to fill a mug at the tap.
"One for me too, innkeeper!" Tasuki bellowed cheerfully, slamming an empty mug down on the counter and plopping himself down on the stool next to Nuriko in much the same manner as he had the mug. "It's not sake but it's not too f**king bad!"
"Glad to hear it sir!" the innkeeper replied as he placed Nuriko and Tasuki's mugs on the counter before them. "'S pretty hard to get sake in these parts, seeing as rice don't grow too well in this climate."
"Yeah! So f**king cold here it's a f**king wonder anything grows at all!" Tasuki said between gulps.
Nuriko sipped his drink cautiously and listened as Tasuki and the innkeeper made polite conversation (or relatively polite, considering that Tasuki says f**king at least once a sentence). True to most men of his trade the innkeeper was a talkative man.
It didn't escape Nuriko's attention that the rest of the common room had fallen silent. He felt the tension present in the room, a herald of their previous state of discord, and wondered how Tasuki could be unaware of it.
Nuriko forced himself to start taking deep gulps from his mug in the hopes that the alcohol would dispel the sense of others emotions dragging at him. His glance moved from the bottom of his mug to Hotohori's face before he pulled it back and drank deeply from his mug. Perhaps he needed it to dull the drag of his own emotions.
"Now that's more f**king like it!" Tasuki said as he slapped him on the back companionably, noticing that Nuriko had finished his mug. "How 'bout some refills!"
"Here, here!" he said, almost managing to sound cheerful. He massaged his temples as he felt a headache starting to pound behind his eyes. The moment his mug was placed before him again he picked it up and sloshed some of the fizzy liquid into his mouth.
"When's this damn storm going to hit?" Nuriko suddenly questioned. The innkeeper looked up at him, slightly surprised by the breakage of his silence, but he didn't miss a beat.
"Oh, it'll hit sometime today or tomorra, you can bet on that. It'll be a big one too! Knock your socks off!" the innkeeper stated, making a vague gesture toward the ceiling as if to motion right through the roof to the clouds.
"How soon?" Nuriko persisted.
"Well, no telling really. It could hit anytime and it'll be sudden too. It almost always is," the innkeeper said as he began to wipe the bar again. While he was distracted with a refill order from Tasuki and the reappearance of Gregary the radish farmer, Nuriko slipped away from the bar, grabbed his coat and left the inn. He paused at the steps for a moment to get his bearings.
"Want your horse, sir?" a stable boy asked him.
"No, thank you. I need to stretch my legs for a bit," he replied, and with a smile and a small wave to the boy he walked off down the road toward the forest. He even felt cheery enough to whistle, as the escape from the cramped and prison-like atmosphere of the inn. He hardly noticed as tiny flakes began to descend from the sky, whipped by a frigid wind.
* * *
Jeez, I've never seen so much snow in my life! Nuriko thought as he slogged through the knee-deep snow. He shielded his face with his arm as the wind drove the thick wet flakes into his skin, hair, and clothes.
He'd lost track of how long he'd been walking. He had foolishly left the "road" about a half an hour ago. Since then the snow had started falling faster and with larger flakes. By now he couldn't get back onto the road if he'd wanted to. Nuriko's attempts to backtrack had led to the discovery that the snow had somehow completely covered his tracks. He'd tried to follow what looked like faint tracks and was now so hopelessly lost that he had given up trying to find the road and was now just wandering.
His feet and legs were beyond the point of feeling the cold. His hands were so numb he could barely grip his coat to pull it tighter around himself. His coat was no longer any good anyway. All his clothes were soaked, icicles were beginning to form in his hair, and every gust of wind chilled him further. His whole body was shaking like a leaf.
Forget the road, I just need shelter. He set his eyes to looking for anything that might do. He just needed to get out of the snow and the wind.
Nuriko's vision was beginning to blur when his eyes fixed on a likely place. Large full pine boughs weighted down with snow shielded some kind of crevice. At first he had thought it was just a snow bank, but closer inspection revealed a crack in the rock of the hill large enough for him to squeeze through.
He sucked in his stomach and wedged himself through the narrow crack. He was surprised to find that he was out of breath after his brief struggle. Even his heightened strength was beginning to fail him. He lay down on the packed dirt of the burrow-like cave and curled himself into a ball, shivering violently.
Cold, empty, darkness closed in on him and he surrendered to it, hoping that somewhere within it he would find warmth.
* * *
Hotohori jerked his head up from the mirror and jerked his mind away from his thoughts. A terrible chill had invaded the room, and for a moment he saw a dark cave and a white expanse of snow superimposed over the room in which he, Chichiri, Tasuki, and Nuriko were staying, and he saw Nuriko, curled up in a cold, still ball.
The chill faded, but as it did it was replaced by a feeling of dread that was even colder. He got up from the table that (for him) doubled as a vanity and hurried into the common room.
"Where's Nuriko?" he asked to the room at large. Miaka and the seishi looked at him blankly.
"I thought he was in your room, taking a nap or something," Tamahome said slowly. The rest of the seishi sitting on the benches around the fire nodded their agreement. They had assumed the same.
"Nuriko? Well he was my drinking buddy for a bit but then he left," Tasuki said from the bar, too drunk by now to be really worried.
"Where did he go?" Hotohori questioned him, starting to feel frantic. If the vision he'd had was some kind of message from Nuriko then they had to find him fast.
"Excuse me, sirs but would you mean the purple haired sir?" said a scruffy boy of about 12 from behind the bar.
"Yes, that's him. Do you know where he went?" Hotohori said, putting on a thin façade of calm so as not to scare the boy.
"He headed off toward the forest on a walk, sir. Said he needed to stretch his legs," the boy said eyes downcast out of respect. Before the boy even looked back up Hotohori had grabbed his coat and gone into his room for supplies
The second he was inside he gabbed a pack from below the bed. Inside it he put a thick woolen blanket and a flint and tinder, hoping that somewhere outside there was still some wood dry enough to light a fire, however small. He rushed back to the door intending to leave immediately, knowing full well that the matter was urgent.
As he reached his hand out to grasp the crude knob, the door was thrown open. Momentarily frozen with surprise, which was not helped by the adrenaline pumping through his system he simply stood in the doorway. Chichiri and Tasuki, the ones entering the room, crashed right into him, not having expected that he would be standing right in the doorway.
"Where the f**k d'ya think you're going? There's a f**king blizzard going on out there! You're gonna f**king go out there BY YOURSELF!" Tasuki ranted, heedless of the fact that he had almost knocked over the emperor of Konan and heedless of the fact that this was exactly the course of action he would have taken in Hotohori's position. He continued to rant at him as Hotohori pushed past Chichiri and Tasuki and headed for the door out of the inn. Chichiri had grasped the fiery seishi firmly by the upper arm at the start of his rant and he held him firmly now as Tasuki attempted to stop the emperor from leaving the inn.
The other seishi tried halfheartedly to stand in Hotohori's way but he took no notice of them as he pushed past them as he had Tasuki. Hotohori was beyond thinking of anything besides Nuriko and the delicate seishi's predicament. He would have been surprised at his single-mindedness if he weren't occupied with obtaining a horse. He fairly dragged his stallion out of its stall and jumped onto it without bothering to have it saddled. The other seishi burst out of the inn just in time to see him gallop away toward the forest, bundle tightly clasped in one arm and hair flying out behind him.
"He's going to get himself killed too! We need to go after him!" Tamahome said, starting toward the stables with the remaining seishi, excepting Chichiri, in tow.
"'Chiri, aren't you f**king coming?!" Tasuki shouted, noting that Chichiri stood in the doorway to the inn, immobile.
"Nuriko didn't call for our help, he called for Hotohori's. I have faith in my fellow seishi and believe that Nuriko and Hotohori can handle this on their own," Chichiri said, removing his smiling mask as befit the seriousness of the situation. The other seishi looked at him incredulously.
"Even if he called to Hotohori and not the rest of us we should still help him! He's our friend! Miaka said hanging onto Chichiri's arm, pleading with him. The more rational of the seishi appeared to be wavering. (More rational as in everyone but Tasuki, and possibly Tamahome. It's a testosterone thing.)
"F**k, Chichiri I can't believe you don't wanta help him! Nuriko's f**king in trouble and you don't wanna help him!" Tasuki shouted, his symbol flashing beneath the cuff of his jacket.
"Nuriko's soul is calling Hotohori directly to his location. For all of us to go searching blindly for him would serve no purpose and would risk our lives needlessly," Chichiri responded, logically. He turned and went back inside without waiting for a reply. Chiriko and Mitsukake hesitated then followed dejectedly. The logic of the situation had shown them the light but only after violently ripping their eyes open. They were not inclined to like "the light." (weird metaphor thingy)
"F**k! What the f**k are you doing?"
"He's right. This blizzard could kill us all, and Nuriko wouldn't want that. He's alive and Hotohori can make sure that he's well," Mitsukake said as he went into the inn. Tasuki seemed about the do something violent but Tamahome nudged him and headed inside as well, Miaka reluctantly following. He stood in the thigh deep snow shivering and cursing vehemently before heading in as well. To say that he did so reluctantly would be the understatement of the century.
To be continued.
Author's note #2: It hasn't really gotten started yet, but I had fun writing it. If you had fun reading it drop me a line. Al you have to do is press the SUBMIT REVIEW BUTTON. Please do, I love reviews. They give me a purpose in life.
Author's Note: Okay, I spent a lot of my Christmas vacation reading Inu Yasha blanket scenario fics by various authors and decided that I should write my own. I decided to do a Fushigi Yuugi one first because the Inu Yasha ones tend to be unoriginal. Here's the drill if you're not familiar with blanket scenario fics: Two or more characters are caught in a blizzard and have only one blanket. Needless to say, things get pretty cozy. Another thing, this doesn't really take place in any episode or anything. The setting is Hokkan or some other place that's pretty cold. The series is still going on so they're in the book not reincarnated. Okay that's all you need to know.
Fushigi Yuugi Blanket Scenario:
One on One
He pushed the ratty curtains aside and looked out at the muddy courtyard of the inn. A stable boy led a horse into a covered stall. Another boy rushed over with an armful of worn blankets to keep the horses warm during the impending "storm."
To Nuriko's (apparently) inexperienced eye they looked like regular old rain clouds but the locals appeared to think that a "real doozy" was on its way. The innkeeper had predicted they would get about a foot and a half of snow. A patron of the bar who had introduced himself as Gregary the radish farmer had contradicted him saying he thought they would get snow up to their thighs, if the kami was gentle.
Nuriko had practically choked on his cheap ale, and Tasuki had laughed out loud, proclaiming that they must be "f**king crazy." Chiriko had pointed out that Hokkan was known for unpredictable weather. Chichiri had agreed suggesting that they prolong their stay in the village inn to avoid getting caught in the storm.
At the time Nuriko had been willing to go along. He could catch up on his beauty sleep and just hang out for once. Unfortunately, he had been woken up far too early by Tamahome and Tasuki's squabbling and aside from sleeping, which was impossible and getting drunk, which wasn't really his style, there was nothing to do but sit around.
So he had. After about 2 hours, it was getting incredibly old. After about 3 hours he was getting incredibly bored.
Now it was four hours later. 12:30 in the afternoon and the storm STILL hadn't hit. He looked longingly at the road into the forest. Maybe I SHOULD have a few drinks. It might take the edge off this boredom. He sighed in annoyance and opened the door into the common room.
The sound of an argument coming to its peak immediately assaulted his ears. Surprisingly enough, the fight was not between Tamahome and Tasuki but between Tamahome and Hotohori. One look at Miaka's worried face gave him a big hint as to what the argument was about. They're fighting over her again. I thought they were over that.
Nuriko sat down on a rough stool at the bar. He already knew that all they had was the watery ale he'd tried to avoid since their first day at the inn.
"I'm a little parched, sir," Nuriko said, forcing a smile for politeness' sake.
"Ale then! Right away, sir," the innkeeper replied, giving a last wipe of the bar before he ducked below the counter to fill a mug at the tap.
"One for me too, innkeeper!" Tasuki bellowed cheerfully, slamming an empty mug down on the counter and plopping himself down on the stool next to Nuriko in much the same manner as he had the mug. "It's not sake but it's not too f**king bad!"
"Glad to hear it sir!" the innkeeper replied as he placed Nuriko and Tasuki's mugs on the counter before them. "'S pretty hard to get sake in these parts, seeing as rice don't grow too well in this climate."
"Yeah! So f**king cold here it's a f**king wonder anything grows at all!" Tasuki said between gulps.
Nuriko sipped his drink cautiously and listened as Tasuki and the innkeeper made polite conversation (or relatively polite, considering that Tasuki says f**king at least once a sentence). True to most men of his trade the innkeeper was a talkative man.
It didn't escape Nuriko's attention that the rest of the common room had fallen silent. He felt the tension present in the room, a herald of their previous state of discord, and wondered how Tasuki could be unaware of it.
Nuriko forced himself to start taking deep gulps from his mug in the hopes that the alcohol would dispel the sense of others emotions dragging at him. His glance moved from the bottom of his mug to Hotohori's face before he pulled it back and drank deeply from his mug. Perhaps he needed it to dull the drag of his own emotions.
"Now that's more f**king like it!" Tasuki said as he slapped him on the back companionably, noticing that Nuriko had finished his mug. "How 'bout some refills!"
"Here, here!" he said, almost managing to sound cheerful. He massaged his temples as he felt a headache starting to pound behind his eyes. The moment his mug was placed before him again he picked it up and sloshed some of the fizzy liquid into his mouth.
"When's this damn storm going to hit?" Nuriko suddenly questioned. The innkeeper looked up at him, slightly surprised by the breakage of his silence, but he didn't miss a beat.
"Oh, it'll hit sometime today or tomorra, you can bet on that. It'll be a big one too! Knock your socks off!" the innkeeper stated, making a vague gesture toward the ceiling as if to motion right through the roof to the clouds.
"How soon?" Nuriko persisted.
"Well, no telling really. It could hit anytime and it'll be sudden too. It almost always is," the innkeeper said as he began to wipe the bar again. While he was distracted with a refill order from Tasuki and the reappearance of Gregary the radish farmer, Nuriko slipped away from the bar, grabbed his coat and left the inn. He paused at the steps for a moment to get his bearings.
"Want your horse, sir?" a stable boy asked him.
"No, thank you. I need to stretch my legs for a bit," he replied, and with a smile and a small wave to the boy he walked off down the road toward the forest. He even felt cheery enough to whistle, as the escape from the cramped and prison-like atmosphere of the inn. He hardly noticed as tiny flakes began to descend from the sky, whipped by a frigid wind.
* * *
Jeez, I've never seen so much snow in my life! Nuriko thought as he slogged through the knee-deep snow. He shielded his face with his arm as the wind drove the thick wet flakes into his skin, hair, and clothes.
He'd lost track of how long he'd been walking. He had foolishly left the "road" about a half an hour ago. Since then the snow had started falling faster and with larger flakes. By now he couldn't get back onto the road if he'd wanted to. Nuriko's attempts to backtrack had led to the discovery that the snow had somehow completely covered his tracks. He'd tried to follow what looked like faint tracks and was now so hopelessly lost that he had given up trying to find the road and was now just wandering.
His feet and legs were beyond the point of feeling the cold. His hands were so numb he could barely grip his coat to pull it tighter around himself. His coat was no longer any good anyway. All his clothes were soaked, icicles were beginning to form in his hair, and every gust of wind chilled him further. His whole body was shaking like a leaf.
Forget the road, I just need shelter. He set his eyes to looking for anything that might do. He just needed to get out of the snow and the wind.
Nuriko's vision was beginning to blur when his eyes fixed on a likely place. Large full pine boughs weighted down with snow shielded some kind of crevice. At first he had thought it was just a snow bank, but closer inspection revealed a crack in the rock of the hill large enough for him to squeeze through.
He sucked in his stomach and wedged himself through the narrow crack. He was surprised to find that he was out of breath after his brief struggle. Even his heightened strength was beginning to fail him. He lay down on the packed dirt of the burrow-like cave and curled himself into a ball, shivering violently.
Cold, empty, darkness closed in on him and he surrendered to it, hoping that somewhere within it he would find warmth.
* * *
Hotohori jerked his head up from the mirror and jerked his mind away from his thoughts. A terrible chill had invaded the room, and for a moment he saw a dark cave and a white expanse of snow superimposed over the room in which he, Chichiri, Tasuki, and Nuriko were staying, and he saw Nuriko, curled up in a cold, still ball.
The chill faded, but as it did it was replaced by a feeling of dread that was even colder. He got up from the table that (for him) doubled as a vanity and hurried into the common room.
"Where's Nuriko?" he asked to the room at large. Miaka and the seishi looked at him blankly.
"I thought he was in your room, taking a nap or something," Tamahome said slowly. The rest of the seishi sitting on the benches around the fire nodded their agreement. They had assumed the same.
"Nuriko? Well he was my drinking buddy for a bit but then he left," Tasuki said from the bar, too drunk by now to be really worried.
"Where did he go?" Hotohori questioned him, starting to feel frantic. If the vision he'd had was some kind of message from Nuriko then they had to find him fast.
"Excuse me, sirs but would you mean the purple haired sir?" said a scruffy boy of about 12 from behind the bar.
"Yes, that's him. Do you know where he went?" Hotohori said, putting on a thin façade of calm so as not to scare the boy.
"He headed off toward the forest on a walk, sir. Said he needed to stretch his legs," the boy said eyes downcast out of respect. Before the boy even looked back up Hotohori had grabbed his coat and gone into his room for supplies
The second he was inside he gabbed a pack from below the bed. Inside it he put a thick woolen blanket and a flint and tinder, hoping that somewhere outside there was still some wood dry enough to light a fire, however small. He rushed back to the door intending to leave immediately, knowing full well that the matter was urgent.
As he reached his hand out to grasp the crude knob, the door was thrown open. Momentarily frozen with surprise, which was not helped by the adrenaline pumping through his system he simply stood in the doorway. Chichiri and Tasuki, the ones entering the room, crashed right into him, not having expected that he would be standing right in the doorway.
"Where the f**k d'ya think you're going? There's a f**king blizzard going on out there! You're gonna f**king go out there BY YOURSELF!" Tasuki ranted, heedless of the fact that he had almost knocked over the emperor of Konan and heedless of the fact that this was exactly the course of action he would have taken in Hotohori's position. He continued to rant at him as Hotohori pushed past Chichiri and Tasuki and headed for the door out of the inn. Chichiri had grasped the fiery seishi firmly by the upper arm at the start of his rant and he held him firmly now as Tasuki attempted to stop the emperor from leaving the inn.
The other seishi tried halfheartedly to stand in Hotohori's way but he took no notice of them as he pushed past them as he had Tasuki. Hotohori was beyond thinking of anything besides Nuriko and the delicate seishi's predicament. He would have been surprised at his single-mindedness if he weren't occupied with obtaining a horse. He fairly dragged his stallion out of its stall and jumped onto it without bothering to have it saddled. The other seishi burst out of the inn just in time to see him gallop away toward the forest, bundle tightly clasped in one arm and hair flying out behind him.
"He's going to get himself killed too! We need to go after him!" Tamahome said, starting toward the stables with the remaining seishi, excepting Chichiri, in tow.
"'Chiri, aren't you f**king coming?!" Tasuki shouted, noting that Chichiri stood in the doorway to the inn, immobile.
"Nuriko didn't call for our help, he called for Hotohori's. I have faith in my fellow seishi and believe that Nuriko and Hotohori can handle this on their own," Chichiri said, removing his smiling mask as befit the seriousness of the situation. The other seishi looked at him incredulously.
"Even if he called to Hotohori and not the rest of us we should still help him! He's our friend! Miaka said hanging onto Chichiri's arm, pleading with him. The more rational of the seishi appeared to be wavering. (More rational as in everyone but Tasuki, and possibly Tamahome. It's a testosterone thing.)
"F**k, Chichiri I can't believe you don't wanta help him! Nuriko's f**king in trouble and you don't wanna help him!" Tasuki shouted, his symbol flashing beneath the cuff of his jacket.
"Nuriko's soul is calling Hotohori directly to his location. For all of us to go searching blindly for him would serve no purpose and would risk our lives needlessly," Chichiri responded, logically. He turned and went back inside without waiting for a reply. Chiriko and Mitsukake hesitated then followed dejectedly. The logic of the situation had shown them the light but only after violently ripping their eyes open. They were not inclined to like "the light." (weird metaphor thingy)
"F**k! What the f**k are you doing?"
"He's right. This blizzard could kill us all, and Nuriko wouldn't want that. He's alive and Hotohori can make sure that he's well," Mitsukake said as he went into the inn. Tasuki seemed about the do something violent but Tamahome nudged him and headed inside as well, Miaka reluctantly following. He stood in the thigh deep snow shivering and cursing vehemently before heading in as well. To say that he did so reluctantly would be the understatement of the century.
To be continued.
Author's note #2: It hasn't really gotten started yet, but I had fun writing it. If you had fun reading it drop me a line. Al you have to do is press the SUBMIT REVIEW BUTTON. Please do, I love reviews. They give me a purpose in life.