A/N: If you haven't watched PTA, which I highly recommend, you will find the story rather confusing and the characters very OOC.

Alliteration

By Janine (see profile)

Fakir was off his meds. No matter how schizophrenic and delirious he apparently was, he wasn't going to choke down pills that got stuck in his oesophagus half the time and made him feel as though he had indigestion. Not today. Enough was enough. Damn Mr Cat for making him dance with Miss Anteaterina! Damn all the morons in the world!

Fakir wrenched open his dormitory door and slammed it behind him, his hair still wet from the shower. The sight that met his eyes, appalling enough as it was, was rendered all the more infuriating given his current mood.

Mytho was not wearing pants.

Again.

The moron was reclined on his bed in the most relaxed of manners, staring into space. The bottom of his shirt extended just enough to conceal what Fakir did not wish to see. Thank God for that.

"For the last time, put some pants on!" Fakir growled, marching up to his own bed and throwing himself onto it with such force that the whole thing moved a few centimetres with an awful, dissonant squeaking sound. He cursed it with an extravagant assortment of profanities.

"Are you off your meds again?" said Mytho, turning to observe Fakir with a vaguely mystified look on his face. But then again, Mytho always looked mystified. As did all morons. Why did his eyes have to be so round, luminous and worst of all, irritatingly honey-coloured? In Fakir's opinion, only attractive females deserved honey-coloured irises – not that Mytho wasn't attractive, but –

"I'm straight, dammit!" Fakir bellowed, largely to himself.

Mytho continued to stare unhesitatingly at him, oblivious to Fakir's discomfort at his doing so. "Do you want me to get your pills, Fakir?"

Fakir exhaled through his teeth and thought he had better speak to Mytho as though to a toddler. "Mytho," he said very slowly, "you are creeping me out. Now put some pants on and go to bed." If he delayed the process any longer the psycho would get started on trivia, and if he got started on trivia –

"An embryo becomes a foetus after nine weeks in the womb."

Oh, please. "Mytho, I told you –"

"A foetus is able to be called a foetus when it has gained a human form."

"Mytho, seriously –"

"The internationally acknowledged technical spelling of 'foetus' is F-E-T-U-S."

"Mytho –" He stopped. "Wait – why are you so keen on foetuses all of a sudden?"

"The use of alliteration."

"What?"

"Fantastically fanatical foetus fetish."

"Hang on . . . fantastically fanatical . . . you have a foetus fetish?!"

No answer. Fakir sat up and squinted through the darkness. Failing to discern anything save a head of pale, glowing hair, he sank down again, but a moment later jerked back up. "Do you really use Loréal on your hair?"

No response.

"Even though it hasn't been invented yet, like alarm clocks?"

Silence. Then, spoken so faintly it might have been the wind: "Fakir, I want a foetus."

Fakir could have bashed his head against the wall at this stage but refrained from doing so, seeing as he would no longer be popular with the girls with a pulsating purple lump on his head. Oh no – now he was getting into the alliteration. What was a synonym for 'lump' that began with 'p'? And why was he even thinking about it?!

"Fakir, I want a foetus," said Mytho, louder this time.

"Then go elope with a girl and get one, for God's sake!"

"No, Fakir, you don't understand. I want a foetus with you."

Fakir jerked convulsively and smashed his head on the wooden post of the bed. Head throbbing, he leapt up with a sort of spontaneous ballet dancer's elegance, which he remarkably managed to retain in his present state of disturbance, and gaped at Mytho with his eyes almost popping like a goldfish's.

"Is something wrong?" Mytho was at it again – the gaze from those honey-coloured eyes was both flawlessly innocent and intensely penetrating, if such a paradox was possible.

Fakir could feel his face heating up. "Wrong? Wrong? Oh, I knew I shouldn't have let Princess Tutu restore your heart shards. They make you even more absurd than you already are!"

And perhaps another thing Fakir shouldn't have done was stop taking his meds. Although at this point none of the principal characters in Princess Tutu Abridged knew about the trauma he had experienced at the age of seven, the meds had been prescribed for a reason. Without them he was rather . . . unstable.

How so, exactly? What he did was this: after a lapse of a few minutes, during which time he and Mytho stared at each other in utter silence, he proceeded to make his way to the window, throw the window open . . . and launch himself straight out of it. Which, ironically, was what Mytho had done some episodes beforehand.

He wasn't thinking of suicide, strictly: the atmosphere in the dorm had just been unbearably stifling, and the look in Mytho's honey-coloured irises even more so. Under normal circumstances Fakir might have acted more sensibly, but after all, he hadn't taken those horrible pills for a good while.

So as he soared out the window and the scene was suddenly animated in slow motion because it was oh-so-melodramatic, no one knew what he was thinking, least of all himself. All he did was gaze at the stars above him like a moron, before flashes of bright pink entered his field of vision in quick succession and without warning. A hand slipped into his and held on with both gentleness and strength, pulling him into an upright position. His feet touched the ground – which had been transformed into a carpet of candyfloss – no, they were flower petals.

Hang on. Flower petals? Fakir looked up. A white tutu with pink frills. A strapless bodice that barely stayed up. White, fluffy feathers and pink pointe shoes – oh, not the alliteration again. In any case, Fakir recognised this benefactress. "You can't be serious," he said, dumbfounded. "I've apparently been saved by a ninety-pound ballerina princess who just happens to be my sworn enemy."

Princess Tutu made to let go of his hand with the grace expected of a ballerina such as her, but Fakir, suddenly struck by a strange sensation – alas, the atrocious alliteration! – tightened his grip. Princess Tutu's eyes grew wide – but at least they weren't honey-coloured. Fakir thought he'd had enough of honey-coloured eyes for the rest of his life.

"Well, I'll be damned," he said before he could stop himself. "I think I've been fooled into following the flow of fantastically fanatical foetus fetishes."

Princess Tutu dashed away in terror, burst out, "Oh snap!" at the lake on the outskirts of town, morphed into a duck and dived headfirst into the water to hide the feathers rendered rather redder than was required.

Fakir forlornly fretted for foetuses – but then he started taking his meds again, so it was all good.