dream 001 | a little madness to kick it off
He's in the Rikkai tennis club locker room just before practice-- it's fairly nice, as far as club locker rooms go. He's just finished pulling on his mustard-yellow uniform shirt when a voice drifts over from his left.
"Hey, Yagyuu. I had an idea." A flash of white hair, a lazy smirk, and Niou's draping his arm across his shoulders. Yagyuu stiffens slightly.
"The thing," Niou continues. "You know. That. Maybe if we used that to--"
The door swings open with a loud BANG! and interrupts the thought. Three regal presences enter; at the front, a petit boy with blue hair and a jacket draped over his shoulders that flutters in the nonexistent wind.
"Everyone," the boy, Yukimura, says in a commanding voice, "your forms have all been terrible lately! As soon as you get out there, I want five hundred laps from each of you!"
"FIVE HUNDRED?!" a shrill voice shrieks. A boy with curly black seaweed-hair-- Akaya-- is staring at Yukimura, his eyes widened almost comically in horror. "Buchou-- are you trying to kill us--??"
Nobody dares to say anything else, but expressions all around the room have similar horror-struck looks.
Yukimura smiles sweetly. Yagyuu is suddenly terrified of that smile.
"None of you are going to agree to it?" he asks. "Well then, I'll just have to give everyone some form of... punishment."
And before anyone can ask what punishment could possibly be worse than five hundred laps, something strange is happening. Over to the side, Marui's reddish hair begins to melt and twist upwards, and his face starts scrunching up and twisting. Yagyuu stares in horror as Marui drops to all fours, perks up his rabbit ears and sniffs around with his rabbit nose-- and with the rest of him perfectly human.
Yagyuu looks back at Yukimura, the latter of which is now positively smirking-- and it's then that he notices that the jacket draped across Yukimura's shoulders is almost glowing. He blinks. Yep, it's glowing all right.
"Renji!" Yukimura barks.
Yanagi's eyes shoot open-- it's only the second time Yagyuu has ever actually seen his eyes-- and soon Jackal is screeching in the other corner. His head, normally completely bald, is now growing long, shiny black hair-- it gets all the way down to the floor, and doesn't stop growing.
"Sanada!" Yukimura shouts.
Sanada nods and tilts the visor of his cap down, glaring over at Akaya. The younger boy cringes in fear, and then glances down at himself when he realizes something is wrong. Yagyuu frowns as he notices that Akaya's clothes no longer fit him-- in fact, they're getting quite a bit baggier as Akaya gets smaller and smaller. Before he knows it, Akaya is barely ten centimeters tall and huddling in his pile of clothes.
Yagyuu stares at the three demons in front of them. "Yukimura-kun, isn't this overdoing it a bit..." he says. He trails off when he feels something tugging at his pant leg. He glances down. To his horror, Marui, who still clearly thinks he's a rabbit, is tugging on his sock with his teeth. When he notices Yagyuu staring at him, Marui looks up at him with a blank, eerie look in his eyes. Yagyuu cringes and takes a step back.
"Surely you aren't afraid of him, Niou-kun?" his own voice says from behind him.
Yagyuu whirls around and faces... himself. No, that can't be right-- it's Niou, he knows it's Niou, he can just tell, but it looks just like him.
"Niou-kun, when--" he starts to say. But his voice is not his own voice. He reaches up to adjust his glasses-- they aren't there. He brushes a lock of hair into his view-- it's white and fluffy now, not brown. He blinks. I'm Niou.
"Hmm, Niou-kun?" Yagyuu-that's-really-Niou leans in closer to him, glasses glinting, and--
--and then he wakes up with a jolt, breathing hard and staring at the ceiling wide-eyed. He leans over and fumbles with his glasses for a moment before managing to slip them on, still in shock from the dream.
"What on earth..."