Chapter 1: The Opening Movement
The setting was cliché from a romantic point of view, which suited the young couple's purposes just fine. The stone bench they were sitting on overlooked an empty pond, so clear that you could see straight to its man-made bottom. The sun was on its way out of the sky, bathing the land in a soft purple shade of dusk. The young teenage male explored the female next to him with the desperation available only to men of his age. His hands roamed up and down her wet, white dress as his tongue explored the tender sweetness of her mouth. Just as his hands were in the process of exploring the inside of the dress the young woman abruptly disengaged herself from him.
"Hey babe, what gives? I thought we were enjoying ourselves," he complained as his hands reached out for her. The hands were pushed away gently and for the first time since she had climbed out of the pond he took a good look at the woman sitting next to him. The long hair that was clinging to her body was dyed blond, and the two eyes that seemed to be pulling him in were two different colors. It was hard to tell which colors they were in the light of dusk, but he really didn't care. This girl was hot and ready for it. He didn't need to know anything else. Again, he reached out to her, and yet again he was turned away. She stood up this time, offering him a glimpse of her lithe body as her wet, white dress hugged her figure. She was wearing dark panties, and he wanted so very badly to tear them off with his teeth. His musing was interrupted when she asked in her sultry voice, "That's your bike, right?"
She was very particular about which Laundromat they were headed to, but he wasn't in any mood to complain. In order to dry her dress she had to take it off, after all. After 15 minutes of being intensely aware of feeling her chest pressed against his back they arrived at the building. She hopped off of the bike and skipped into the store with the innocent manner of a five-year-old made irresistible through the magic of a seventeen-year-old body. He quickly followed her into the building, making furtive glances to be sure there wasn't anyone around who could interfere with what he had planned.
She had already peeled the dress off of her body by the time he entered and while he was slightly disappointed at missing that show, the sight before him was well worth every good deed he had done for the past year. As she bent over to throw it into the dryer he quickly kicked off his shoes, pulled down his pants, hopped out of the pants, and lunged at the milky white body before him. "Babe, this is your fault for being so fucking sexy!"
His assault was rewarded with what felt like a ton of bricks crashing down on him as the taser hit his body with an incapacitating voltage of electricity. He was on the ground in seconds, and she was stepping over his body to sit down calmly on one of the chairs. As her dress tumbled softly in the dryer she propped her head against her hand and allowed her mismatched eyes to drift to the window outside. Night had overtaken the sky by now, the darkness seeming fitting in relation to her current thoughts.
From her lips, a faint whisper escaped, "Really, is there no one out there like you, Onizuka?"
The body of the unconscious boy twitched sympathetically.
The teacher quickly dropped the half stick of chalk onto the board's ledge and proceeded to rub the dust on his pants as was his custom. The chalkboard was littered with equations, the order of which eluded most of the students in the room. "That's all for that topic. Um …" he frowned slightly and nervously glanced at Urumi before he finished, "Any questions?" Surprisingly, the hand that shot up was in the total opposite direction from the one he had been glancing at. "Yes, what is it Nomura? Do you need to use the bathroom?"
In a shaky, high-pitched voice, Tomoko asked, "Sir, why is it that you solved the problem …" she glanced down at her notebook, "implicitly when it clearly does not have a," again she glanced down, "simple or earlier defined version of x of f."
The teacher coughed and began to look down at his notes, which were the lifeblood of his lectures. x(f) … x(f). "Ah, Ms. Nomura, you mean f of x, right?" The girl turned a shade of pink as she glanced down, scrutinizing her notes, before nodding. "Yes well, that should fix the problem, shouldn't it?" Inexplicably, the girl glanced over in Kanzaki's direction before shaking her head emphatically. Looking at the board now, the teacher realized that he had made an unqualified assumption, one that he had probably qualified in his notes somewhere. He just couldn't seem to find it in the tangled jumble of equations.
The remaining 15 minutes of class were spent with the teaching muttering slightly as he poured over his notes. In a remarkably common event for teachers who faced this set of students, the teacher was saved by the bell. As soon as it rang, he quickly gathered his material and left with his face ablaze. He hadn't taken more than two steps from the room before it erupted into laughter.
Most of the class began gathering around Tomoko's desk, passing around the note that Urumi had floated to Tomoko while the teacher's back was turned. The paper airplane had been perfectly constructed and delivered. This perfection had been required since it had to be received by the notoriously clumsy Tomoko, after all. "As expected from a genius," commented Kikuchi as he turned towards Urumi. The usual victorious smirk was absent from her face as her eyes watched something outside of the window. Kikuchi's eyes narrowed as he studied her body language. Her eyes had a glassy, vacant tint to them; her legs were crossed loosely with the right over the left; her right hand which was usually flipping a pen mechanically remained still. She was pissed. "Hey, Kanzaki," he called as he touched her shoulder lightly, "Are you alright?"
Urumi sighed loudly, shifted her eyes to Kikuchi and stated, "Men's thought processes are as simple to solve as a puzzle that has the answer written prominently all over it. Stimulate one organ and their fate is sealed."
It was Kikuchi's turn to sigh as that one statement told him all he needed to know. She had played the "test a delinquent" game again last night. In these games she would take random men and place them in situations that she had experienced with Onizuka to see if she would find someone who reacted similarly. He had yet to hear of anyone passing the first stage, which was actually pretty good news considering most men wouldn't be able to survive a fifth of the things Onizuka had walked away from.
Murai butted into Kikuchi's desk before he could reply, effectively stealing his attention. "Hey, we're going to go eat up on the roof. Are you coming?" Kikuchi stole a glance at Urumi before shaking his head. Rolling his eyes, Kunio said, "Fine, fine. You two geniuses enjoy your lunch," he stole a quick glance at Urumi to make sure she didn't have anything sharp to throw at him before finishing, "OF LOVE!" He ran away then, but not fast enough to avoid the pen that had been chucked at him before he could even finish his words. It was an Urumi special projectile pen that had been rigged to explode on impact, and explode it did; all over Kunio's back. Cursing, Kunio continued running before she could throw something more painful at him. He didn't slow down until he reached the stairs leading up to the roof, allowing Fujiyoshi and Kusano to catch up to him.
"Dude, she got you good," announced Fujiyoshi as he checked out the remnants of the inky explosion on Kunio's shirt. "That's what you get for antagonizing the Evil Genius."
"Whatever, man, it's fucked up that she has him wrapped around her finger like that," stated Kunio as they climbed the staircase.
Kusano shrugged before throwing in his two cents. "It's his fault. She already turned him down after he confessed, remember?" The other two boys sighed reflexively. It had been a sad day for men at the time. Kikuchi and Urumi were as close to a perfect match as you were going to find in their school, and he had done everything right from every angle they had looked at it from in the ensuing weeks. Kikuchi had been shot down in scathing words according to a first hand account, however. If the male genius couldn't get the girl, how were they supposed to succeed? It wasn't until much later that they realized that the girl in question was Urumi and cheered up considerably.
Kunio was still trying to survey the damage to the back of his shirt when they reached the roof. As he had feared, the damage was extensive. They chose a shaded area to collapse down onto then proceeded to pass around cigarettes and their sole lighter. It took Kunio a full minute to realize that the lighter had disappeared somehow and he was the lone boy without a lit cigarette. He groaned then, for the sound of the lighter going off behind him meant that their teacher had again snaked a free smoke from him.
"Yo, Onizuka, you gotta quit snatching my smokes!" he said as he turned around. He was unprepared for the spectacle going on behind him. Onizuka had the lighter between his feet and was proceeding to light four cigarettes in each of his hands. Quick mental math assured the youth that those were all of the cigarettes that had been in the carton. "God damn it, Onizuka, don't light all of them!" He tried to jump at the offender, but with his inhuman reflexes Onizuka had maneuvered out of Kunio's range and begun to smoke the cigarettes as though he were playing a harmonica. It would have been a laudable stunt if those weren't his cigarettes.
"Sorry Mom-Com-Kun, but I REALLY need these right now," he mockingly apologized as he danced out of his range. The chase continued until Kunio was sweating and panting. Giving up, he collapsed into the shade. Onizuka propped himself up against the chain fence of the roof. "I'll pay you back next paycheck, I swear."
"You always swear that, and I never see a yen," complained Kunio. "I'd take it out of your flesh, but you move like a god damn ninja."
Onizuka burst into laughter then. "I may move like a ninja, but you sure dressed like one, Kunio." Onizuka somehow stole Kunio's shirt and wrapped it around his head with only the black ink dyed parts showing. In his ninja mask he tiptoed around the roof, well out of the reach of the re-energized, furiously chasing Kuno. The joke at the expense of Kunio and his ruined shirt was enough to send Fujiyoshi and Kusano into stitches.
The quickly reddening teenager angrily spat, "It's not my fault Urumi can't take a joke." This only caused Onizuka to laugh harder, tears forming at the corners of his eyes. "What's so funny?"
"It … it just proves how stupid you are! You don't piss off Urumi, man! That's like pissing off a genius!"
It was Kunio's turn to laugh now. "That just proves how stupid YOU are," he retorted between chuckles. "You can't make an analogy by comparing something to itself!" The blank stare that meant that Onizuka didn't understand a thing he was saying was almost enough to make him piss himself, starting another round of jokes at Kunio's expense. It was a vicious cycle, but it was also a pleasant enough way to spend the break.
As the group was leaving to head back inside Kunio asked Onizuka, "Teach, isn't there something you can do about Kikuchi and Urumi?"
"You just spent 15 minutes calling me stupid, and you expect me to figure out something Kikuchi can't figure out?" Onizuka laughed a bit more before putting his arm around Kunio and confidently saying, "I'm sure Mr. Brainiac knows exactly what is going on and has some kind of plan or something."
Kikuchi had no idea what was going on and hated that he could not hate every minute of it. It seemed like every plan he had imagined involving Urumi had fallen to pieces since his confession. In all of their interactions since that event the girl had been using it as leverage. Truly logic had decided to leave him hanging when he felt that it was time to confess to a self-admitted evil genius. What good was his intellect if it had allowed to him jump headlong into Urumi's most basic trap? It was the exact same one that Onizuka had fallen for! Her soft, light hair had gleamed brilliantly in the sunlight, and her firm, young body had been pressed against him. Were males really as easy to figure out as Urumi frequently complained?
Apparently they were, because after days of her actively ignoring him here he was sitting with her under a tree overlooking the tennis courts just because she threw him a welcoming glance. As they sat eating their lunches in calm silence, he remembered the first time he had heard about her replacement Onizuka hunts. It had been shortly after his infamous confession which had given the school two truths where there had previously been only rumors. First, contrary to a growing female fan base's beliefs, Kikuchi was NOT involved in a yaoi relationship with Mayu. Second, Urumi Kanzaki wasn't attainable by any male student in the school. The first one obviously had more impact than the second to the student body since most of the male students who were attracted to Urumi were the quiet, stalker type.
He had tried talking her out of these dangerous games at first, but considering anything other than her own interests wasn't one of Urumi's strengths. Being a naturally loquacious, effective pedant was one of her strengths, however and so using a combination of Chinese proverbs and Greek logic she was always able to almost convince Kikuchi that she was doing the human race a service. It was an annoying process to the young man and so his current plan of action was to offer Urumi his ear as she explained her latest escapade in vivid detail. Even though he had to fight down his jealous feelings multiple times, by the end he couldn't help chuckling at the poor idiot's fate. Urumi abruptly stopped her story as soon as his chuckles turned to guffaws, taking the time to stick her tongue out at Kikuchi before asking what he found so hilarious.
"I was just thinking of ways to soften the effect of your almost nude body, and really the only way I could think of would begin with you eating both of our lunches"
Urumi gave him her trademark Cheshire grin. "Even if I did gain some weight, my breasts would get larger and therefore the magnitude of the effect would remain." His sudden silence and blushing cheeks told Urumi that she had just imprinted a mental image on him. Rolling her eyes she expertly flicked a grain of rice at his eye. Her marksmanship was dead on, slipping past his lowered glasses and directly onto his left eye. As he tried to blink away the rice she haughtily stated, "And thus the rightful fate of all perverts. To have their eyes put out."
Kikuchi flashed a wide grin of his own as he removed glasses and proceeded to remove the food from his eye. "You can't blame me for being a healthy young man, Urumi."
"I've told you before, Kikuchi, I don't see you as a man." As soon as the words left her mouth, Urumi realized she had made a mistake. The grin had disappeared from Kikuchi's mouth; his expressive face replaced with the emotionless mask that he showed most of the world. His eyes lost focus and shifted towards the tennis courts.
Urumi sighed inwardly. He entered into this sullen mode every time she brought up something closely related to his confession. Kikuchi was such a baby when it came to rejection. He still actively listened to and participated in conversation, but his eyes would remain distant and unfocused even when he was looking straight at her. It was a shame that Kikuchi was the only one in the school that she could carry on a conversation with. She really hated having to dodge the constant vocal land mines.
She managed to bring him out of his funk by offering him a piece of meat from her lunch, offering it to him at the end of her chopsticks while brandishing an apologetic smile. He quickly nipped at the peace offering, the corners of his mouth turning into a smile as he chewed it.
Boys were really so easy to manipulate.
The school day ended like every other school day in recent memory, which was in itself another huge disappointment for Urumi. Most of the classes were unbearably boring for her, and the idea of arriving at school just in time for Onizuka's class and then conveniently disappearing again took a prominent place in her thoughts. Her classmates would be severely disappointed in her though, and Kikuchi would probably stop talking to her. Then again, that wouldn't really matter since she only needed his conversation when Onizuka wasn't around. Her mental routine was interrupted abruptly when the Black Stars popped around a corner. Rolling her eyes, she continued to put on her shoes.
"Hey, little Miss Brain, don't act like you can't see us, 'cause we know that those messed up eyes of yours work." Urumi turned around, crossing her arms under her breasts as she leaned her back against the lockers and patiently waited for whatever they were going to say. Idiots tended to be stubborn when they had something to say, and ignoring them only led to unnecessary conflict.
The second one was talking now. "You may act like you're all tough and stuff, but you know what? You're nothing compared to us, you know?" Urumi smiled neatly at this rhetorical question. The tanning was really rotting away their brains. "Shit, look at her not even knowing what kind of trouble she's in, flashing those ugly teeth at us."
Sighing, Urumi reached up with her right hand to hook some strands of her blonde hair behind her ear. "And what kind of trouble am I in, ladies?"
Predictably, the third one was taking her turn to speak. "We still remember the time you dissed us wit' that biological weapon bullshit, whore. Its payback time," she moved in front of Urumi, quickly slamming her hands against the locker behind Urumi; one hand next to each of her ears. The loud sound was still resonating in her ears when number three pushed her face close to her own and yelled out, "Ganguro Style!" The other two girls had joined their faces into the mix, and proceeded to assault her with a barrage of threatening glares. These glares were of course nothing compared to Onizuka's level of intimidation, so she had to seriously hold herself back to prevent falling into a fit of giggles.
A sizable group of onlookers had gathered by now, so the genius calculated the odds of this altercation turning violent as very slim. She just had to wait until the idiots were done marking their territory by flashing their feathers and urinating on trees and she could get on with the rest of her day. Still, this Ganguro Style payback was interesting in itself. Were they planning an attack? If so, she had her trusty taser hidden in a pocket of her skirt and there were enough witnesses for her to be able to claim self-defense. No, they wouldn't dare, so they had something else in mind. Maybe they were going to assimilate her. The sudden image of herself tanned and buried under ridiculous make-up hit her hard and fast, forcing her to crack a smile. As expected the move just infuriated the girls.
"You know, the bitch still isn't taking us seriously!" screamed number two, her voice rising in pitch.
It was number one's turn to hoot and holler. Her screams were accompanied by a ridiculous hopping motion, the effect of which was lost on Urumi but pleasing to several males in the audience. "She'll get what's comin' to her skanky ass!"
Number two bobbed her head in agreement before adding, "We've been watching you, you know," this next part came out in bad Engrish, "Rike a Hunk!"
Here came number three. Their entire conversational order probably could have been mathematically derived now that Urumi thought about it. "She won't be smiling so much after we expose her weakness." This was enough to allow Urumi to change her opinion of the day. It had certainly taken an entertaining turn.
Feeling intrigued, Urumi took a bold step forward. "So expose it. What's my weakness?" A cold smile had taken up residence on Urumi's face, and suddenly the face that had seconds earlier been showing signs of slight annoyance showed no emotion at all. The crowd that had gathered around involuntarily took a step back. Like most sane people in the school the onlookers had a healthy fear of class four's Evil Genius.
The three girls stepped back along with the rest of the crowd, taking a moment to exchange nervous looks. The first finally broke the silence with a forced laugh, soon joined by laughs from the other two. "You won't know it until it's too late." They beat a quick retreat then, leaving so quickly that the onlookers could have sworn that there was a cloud of dust rising in the air.
Urumi walked away from the scene of the incident briskly, yet calmly. Her mind was turning over what could be perceived as her weaknesses. By the time she left the school she had three possibilities in mind, and a feeling of disappointment at the fact that the girls weren't going to force tan her.
She had a feeling that she might look pretty good tanned.
Kikuchi was resting his feet on the concrete "pot" of a publicly planted tree which sat in front of an arcade Kunio and company were currently donating their allowances to. Leaning his back against the tree, his eyes scanned the people passing by as he leisurely smoked his cigarette. His cell phone went off as he was nearing the end of the cigarette. After taking a second to recognize who had been assigned to that particular ring tone, Kikuchi flicked the butt of the cigarette towards the ground. Removing the phone from his pants pocket he flipped it open and held it to his ear. "What's up, Kanzaki?"
There was a humorous tone to Urumi's voice. "Kikuchi, I think now would be the time to develop a fetish for ganguro girls."
After taking a second to re-process that sentence, the only thing the level headed boy could respond with was a stupefied, "Huh?"