Hurricane Yoh: First Stage! Chapter 6: Morning After, a shaman king fanfic

Chapter 6

Disclaimer: I don't own Shaman king, any characters, or even the background story, but I own the story I write here, of course.

WARNING: After that delightful little side-story, which, if anyone hasn't noticed, was "that day" that Anna "almost lost everything", you may have simply forgotten exactly what was happening in the main story. Here's some clips from Chapter 5, skip them if you actually remember anything from back then already:

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A red bandana.

He wouldn't dare… Slowly, she reached up to touch where her bandana should be. Sure, she had been asleep, but Yoh valued his life too much to remove any article of clothing from Anna's being. And sure enough, her own bandana was still in place.

Then who's was this?

Tamao! I will bind her spirit to a gas-station toilet!

And for the first time, she noticed the note lying on the bed sheets. What do you have to say for yourself, Yoh? Just "happy birthday Anna!" and your name? There's writing on the back, too… "phew, I just made it in time. The clock said 11:58 Anna!"

You… were even late for something like that. Two minuets more, and I wouldn't have accepted your present, so horribly lazy...

And then, something occurred to her.

"Baka-Yoh, the clock is an hour slow"

But she didn't let go.

Right then, on with the show.

Tamao woke up early-morning. Curiously, she seemed to be lying on her back, on the wooden plank-floor underneath a towel. Oh, and she didn't have any clothes on.

What?.!

Tamao had never blushed so hard in her life. And her face was known far and wide as routinely turning shades pinker than her hair. Oh no, what if someone sees me?.! What will I do?.! This is horrible! A disaster! And I'm in Yoh-sama's house… Tamao hadn't noticed when she had reverted to calling him "-sama" but then, she didn't notice much, far too absorbed in her own embarrassment was she.

Yoh-sama!Memories of the day prior flooded back to her. Yoh had… collapsed. He was had been so still, so cold…

Tamao ran franticly towards Yoh's room.

She froze in the doorway. Yoh lay still under his covers. Tamao's mind almost jumped back into her new "frantic Yoh-resurrection mode" when she noticed he was breathing evenly. Tamao let out the breath she had been holding. Oh thank goodness, he's okay. And actually, that was the only thought that entered Tamao's mind for the next two hours as she simply stood in the doorway, flooded with relief, and filled with a strange, warm, peaceful joy that she didn't understand while she silently watched Yoh's seemingly o.k., sleeping form.

Many people would say "What the heck is her problem? What a waste of time!" but for Tamao, whenever she would get her thought-process back online, she would look back and think about what a lucky day it must have been. She always felt so content at times like these. It was a frighteningly rare feeling for her throughout her entire life.

"(yawn)… ah, what a nice dream… eh? Oh, ohayo, Tamao-chan"

(A/N: ohayo good morning)

"E-eh?.!. A… um… o-ohayo, Yoh-sama"

"Mouuuu(geez), why is it back to –sama again?" Yoh complained. I finally got her to switch to –kun and now It's right back to this again.

"I… but… last night…" Tamao blushed furiously

"… huh?"

"I… came to warn you, but I only made things worse" Tamao hesitated "And… I think Anna-san's pretty angry too"

"Anna? Nah, you just wanted to help" yes, 15 seconds into waking up, and Yoh was easygoing and wanting everyone happy.

"I mean… I, I was…. My clothes…" was it possible to faint from blushing too much? Tamao hoped so, she didn't think she could last too long in this conversation anymore.

"Oh yeah… but we've been friends since we were little, right?... more importantly, Tamao-chan…"

"y-yes?"

"maaa, but then… shouldn't you go get dressed?"

"E-eh?.!" Tamao looked down, of course, she'd never picked up the towel when madly dashing to find Yoh…

She screamed, and tried to cover her 'unmentionables' while running away so fast that her eyes, which were filled with tears of embarrassment and horror at her situation, could not see exactly where she was going. Luckily, she only crashed into a few walls, the phone, a lamp, and a door before she calmed down and jumped into her room.

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Yoh had a look on a face halfway between pain and amusement, "Ah, te,te,te,te,te…" (doesn't mean a thing, those are the sounds I make when I express pain in a laidback way, so…) he removed his hands from his ears "Tamao sure can scream loud" and then he chuckled in that way that he always does. He stretched in the way that he always did too, and dressed himself in same style of clothing he had always dressed himself in and reached for his always-there-by-the-futon, headphones.

"Eh? Headphones?" Aw man, I misplaced them… wait, did I have them when I came home? Hmmm… no, no I didn't. The grave reality dawned on him

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooooo!"

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Anna woke up, and as every morning she sat up in bed and resisted the urge to wipe the sleep out of her eyes. The last time Yoh had seen that, he had called her cute. So she avoided that particular activity, after all if she wanted to be an block of seemingly emotional-ice she couldn't go around blushing now, could she?

She got dressed, of course she was still wearing the same type of dress as before. Anna would easily scoff at "change" if one compared it to the much more respectable "tradition".

She looked to the bandana in her hand, the one Yoh had snuck into her room to place as her "birthday present". She scowled, how in the seven hells had Yoh figured out her birthday? She had kept that information more secure than Manta kept his "Final Fantasy X save game data". At least there was a hurricane. If not, Yoh would have probably done something stupid like set up a "birthday party" or act all sweet, or pick flowers. Baka-Yoh, what part of "keep away from me until I can control my powers" escapes him? Such extreme levels of Baka-ness can only-

A scream rend through the air. Anna resisted the urge to cover her ears or cringe, standing as if everything was perfectly normal. What kind of ice-queen cringes? She noted that she could hear various bump and crashing sounds following the scream. Good, I can still hear… I thought banshees weren't native to Japan? Wait… no, it's just Tamao.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooooo!" an anguish-ridden cry drifted to Anna's ears. Again, she resisted the urge to cover her ears.

Yoh? Anna resisted the urge to sigh. Either Bob's died, Bob's retired, Yoh lost/broke his CD collection, he's stumbled onto his grandparents making out, or his headphones have gone missing. Anna, again, resisted the urge to sigh. She stepped out into the hallway.

"Anna! Anna! Anna! It's an emergency! Something horrible has happened! We have to-"

Anna would have responded, or slapped him, which was a response in itself, really. However, Yoh had grabbed her shoulders and was shaking her, trying to get her to understand the horror, the urgency of the situation.

Anna, meanwhile, couldn't speak. Of course, she was been shaken way too much to form coherent sentences, and Kyoyama Anna's sentences were always coherent, so she stayed silent. Yoh is such a baka. Anna remembered the bandana in her right hand, the one Yoh had secretly made for her birthday out of condensed and solidified, furyoku. Furyoku energy is linked to the soul, she reminded herself. And using her itako-typical powers, she spoke directly into his soul through the link between the bandana and Yoh.

An abuse of power? An abuse of something as sacred as a direct path to someone's soul? Yeah, but this was Yoh, her fiancée, she'd been abusing him for years (lol). What normal people called abuse was an everyday occurrence by now. They had together, after all, left 'normality' far, far behind.

"Baka-Yoh"

Yoh was so surprised to hear Anna's voice resonating throughout his soul, that he stopped shaking her, and gave off a questioning look.

"I'm sending my thoughts directly into your soul, because you were shaking me like the baka you are, so that there's no way that I can talk"

"eh, heheh. But, more importantly, my headphones!"

"No, more importantly, do you have any idea what I can do with this?"

"you can talk to me, but headphones…"

Yoh isn't going to even listen until he finds his gaudy, too-large headphones… I still think he cares about their safety too much. Anna didn't particularly feel like reminiscing about Yoh's reasons for cherishing the monstrous set of headphones, there was an important matter to deal with.

Seeing that the effect of someone 'invading' his soul with outside thoughts was lost on Yoh, Anna started talking normally "I have your headphones, baka. Did you think you ran out into a hurricane yesterday with them still on? You left them in the house."

"Eh?.! Alright!" Yoh, overcome with emotion, totally ignored all semblance of reason and… survival instinct and did the first thing that came to his mind. Relieved and happy beyond comprehension at having his headphones safe and sound, he hugged Anna. (Oh dear god, get Faust over here!)

Once again, Anna couldn't speak, because Kyoyama Anna's sentences were always coherent and she was truly at a loss of what to say. She fought the rising blush coming to her cheeks mightily and, somehow prevailed over her feminine emotions yet again. B-Baka-Yoh, if you're going to hug me, at least make sure not to hold me so… tenderly. And for Kami's sake don't make me feel so… warm.

A timid cry of "breakfast is ready!" reached them. Yoh, still smiling like an idiot, pulled away from Anna and increased his smile to full-blown "I'm-not-even-sure-why-I'm-so-ridiculously-happy-but-I-am" status and walked ahead towards the dining area, Anna following behind. Yes, he had come to his senses, and now if he could just pretend that he hadn't done anything, maybe Anna would let him live…

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Tamao was quite lucky, she realized, that Yoh had walked into the dining area with Anna. Because Anna's immediate reaction to seeing Tamao had both Zenki and Kohki aiming for her head.

Yep... just another random day in the Asakura household

Explination Corner

Ah, this one is neither fun, funny, or remotely interesting, but pure information for those that don't get the "-sama" and "-san" things

Ah, for those of you that don't get the "-kun" or "-sama" things:

In Japanese, you can add various things to the end of someone's name. In fact, it's mandatory that you do. If you aim for formal politeness, you add "-san" like Tamao does for Anna's name.

If you're closer friends with a person you would usually add "-kun" for a boy or "-chan" for a girl. There are instances where, for instance, a girl may add "-chan" to her boyfriends nickname or whatnot, but that is rare.

"-sama" is added to someone you would define as someone above you, not as in the sense that your boss is your superior, but in the sense that a king, god, or a very respectable relative is above you. For instance "kami-sama", "funkmasterjo-sama" "Onee-sama"

You will also, hear Amidamaru use "-dono" and this similar to sama, but rather old and 'out of use'. He uses it because: 1. Amidamaru died 600 years ago and 2. because he recognizes Yoh as his master and deeply respects him.

Finally, there are instances where nothing is added to the end of someone's name. This tends to show a deep level of familiarity. Like Yoh and Anna. Or maybe just contempt, as in, you would refuse to even add the polite "-san" to someone's name.

One last thing to tagg on, why is Amidamaru so... respectful to Yoh, a kid? Because, for the greater part of his life, Amidamaru's dream was only to serve an honorable master. That's all, not fame, not glory, not a family or money or status, his dream was just that. And he looked for one for a long time, but he never found one. A fact that, inevitabely led him to death, if you think about it. Amidamaru finally found a trully honourable master in Yoh, he can be forgiven for his sometimes serious attitude towards his service.

Author's Corner

Ah, well it's not really that great, it was somewhat unrefined, and there's a cliffy, but I had to do something to make up for missing Sunday. So…

Oh, and it was really hard to pick up this line again after that "Demonslayer-Yoh" side-story arc.

Oh, and I'm very happy that more people have added me to their "story alert list".