Dance this new creation It's the new sensation
Characters: whatsacliche aaaand anyone and everyone
Setting/Location: In the halls of the caravan
Date & Time: Noon on Day 11
Warnings: Public humiliation (for Finn)
Summary: Finn's making things up to Kurt for everyone's amusement
( Hop hop hop! )
It was just so...undignified! Brave! Useful! Efficient! Supportive! Strong! (Aah~ He'd do anythign for someone to think of him as strong...)
Any of those! But nice?!
"Well they shouldn't be laughing!" Gau retorted trying to disguise how warm-faced affected he was by compliments with a veneer of anger.
He was a bad actor even at the best of times, though. Much too straightforward--even when being complimented on niceness by a huge person in a bunny suit.
He hoped nobody saw him, on gut reaction, then...asked himself who would possibly be there to see him? Or care? This wagon if interplanar refugees all forced from their homes into a place like this? How could any of them bother to do something against one another?
"A bet is like a promise!" Gau affirmed loudly, with the air of serious hair-trigger fire normally reserved for his rants on justice. (He also noted for about the eighth time, the sheer size of this person.) "You shouldn't make one with stakes you aren't willing to accept, but whoever asked this of you, has no right!"
He snapped his notebook shut.
There was something to be said for that notebook, too. A giant trapper-keeper-sized thing jammed with photographs, and papers, marked by more organizational tags in more colors than seemed plausible or likely from anyone, even the star overachiever in any given class... It was a monster among notebooks.
And its owner was definitely not a monster among men.
Gau Meguro stood: sweater-vest-clad, black-tie'd, skin-and-bones nerd-knobbly framed, with too-long hands and sneakered feet sticking out from under his plaid pants, clearly very displeased.
He also--at only 5'6"--just came up to Finn's upper arm, even swelled up with pent-in firecracker idealism.
"It's sickening that someone would do something like this, on a caravan where everyone should be working together for the better of the whole! It sows unecessary dissension and division!"
Gau's bulging black eyes narrowed. "Who did this to you?!" he demanded, jabbing a pink-tagged post-it pen like it was a weapon.
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"Chill, dude. I did something mean to someone and I'm just trying to even the score. It's-- like, repenting. It's totally cool, alright? Nobody did this to me." Seriously, did this guy think someone shoved him into the suit?
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He also had a big mouth, and not much in the way of subtlety: the sort of boy who thought being shoved in a dumpster, or knocked down in a shower, or beat up in a parking lot by six other people was a sign that whatever he'd been expounding on with that loud mouth five seconds earlier was that much more righteous. Granted, it usually had good intentions behind it, but Gau wasn't one who usually minced common sense in before he acted on gut impulse to correct something he thought was wrong.
Usually, again, resulting in him getting thrown in a dumpster. Or worse, as the years went on and he was led into the world of Nabari by Raikou Shimizu.
Murder, rape, theft...it was easy to see how Gau had joined up with a branch of ninja designated as treason control officers, or, less delicately, secret police. His idealism glossed over the fact that he and his fellows murdered those who committed those crimes on the unsuspecting outside world using their ninja abilities and equipment to bully those beneath them.
Gau still took even the humiliation of an "outsider" very seriously. There was quite a bit of irony in bird-boned Gau attempting to defend someone his age from "social tyranny".
But...he also was a person who took seriously the idea of righting any wrong he committed on a friend. To the point of offering himself up for death, and instead receiving his recent coma.
This was likely why his eyes went wide, and he stared up at Finn for a moment, before he blinked, returning to a cynical, narrow-eyed glower.
"So...you put yourself in this position because you wanted to?" Gau asked, snub nose wrinkling in disbelief. It was plain on his face that he was putting together a few rather unwholesome and unflattering possibilities as to why a huge fellow would want ot put himself in a pink bunny suit, still working out the "friend" aspect of involvement like it was an ornate confrontation plan blossoming on a blank page.
He still crossed his arms over his notebook, with a barely conscious rub at his shoulder, and a small frown he couldn't quite help.
For a friend...?
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He jerked his head back suddenly, flicking one of the ears out of his face. "It's just the right thing to do, I think." He hoped that was enough of an explanation that this guy wouldn't yell again.
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He was also straightforward enough to say so, though as usual, he didn't grasp the difference between indoor and outdoor voices when there was something to rant about.
"I woke up in a forest yesterday, with Robot-san, a blond schoolgirl who shoots...something...the curly-haired girl, a boy with a katana, Guitar-san, White-Hair-san, and Eyepatch-san." He counted off on his fingers. "I've been gathering information on how to get back to my home as quickly as possible, and I've been monitoring the networks through this." He pulled the junogram out of his bag. "-though it's suspicious that I had something like this in my bag to start with, and I can't believe anything in it."(This statement was delivered with baffling seriousness.)
"So I don't know what you're doing, or why, but dressing up like this... Well, I can't believe your friend would actually enjoy that!" The junogram vanished back into the bag, and Gau raised a sharp index finger in point. "What is he? Some kind of sadist? That's an unsavory opinion of your friend's character! You should apologize and prove your sincerity through work and restitution instead of pulling weird stunts like these!"
Work solved everything, clearly. That much was plain in the belief written out in every square inch of the kid's face. There was practically fire dancing in his pupils.
"What will people think?! That you want attention?"
Gau's eyes followed the motion of the ear, and his frown deepened, the finger jabbing out, jumping the subject with barely a pause:
"And that's ripped."
He made it sound like a crime.
"Didn't you notice? You'll lose the whole ear with the wrong pull." Clearly this was most unsatisfactory. He shifted on the spot determinedly, digging through his bag again, drawing out-
A needle. And thread.
Quick as anything he was grimly threading a needle in the middle of a hallway, like it was the only logical course of action, the only plausible response. Another surreal moment. The mundanaity of Gau Meguro standing there in a hall with his notebook tucked against his chest with his chin, cutting thread with his ninja kunai...
Finn was likely getting more humiliation than he'd ever bargained on--being mothered by an angry, curly-haired Japanese boy he'd never met, in the middle of a public hallway.
Kurt, wherever he was, should have felt on some unspoken level that karmic balance was definitely shifting.
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Long pause.
"What?"
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Shit.
Only in G-rated terms.
He tried to muster his dignity.
...What dignity Gau actually had was nothing compared to the amount of dignity Gau was under the delusion that he had. Largely, Gau's attempts to muster dignity or act as though he weren't secretly in an unexpected pinch consisted of trying to look seriously pissed off.
This in turn explained the majority of his customary gamut of facial expressions towards--especially the more realistically impressive--common strangers. Unfortunately, Gau's overall intentions of looking tough and cool gave him the general impression of savage fierceness one could expect if confronted by a curly, asian hedgehog in a sweatervest, whose offensive capabilities largely consisted of baking pastries and threatening to turn you in to the neighborhood watch.
Typically as ever, it had also escaped Gau's notice that it was very difficult to try to look tough and badass enough to escape logic while holding a needle in one hand... Granted, the ninja-knife helped some, but even a kunai lost some credibility when it was a kunai gripped in the same knobby fist that also held a pink pincushion shaped like a squashy toadstool, while wearing a thimble over the thumb.
The valiant attempt at clinging to dignity persisted like the valiant crease ironed into the front of Gau's dress pants.
...Logic prodded him under the ribs with a knife and mugged him in an alleyway despite it. It also told him not to be a hero.
He had to look away, red creeping into his ears until they shone like beacons.
"Your methods are...wrong." Gau muttered, looking interestedly at his shoes. "But..." he paused to swallow. "But what you're doing...the motivation, it's..."
"Well you should be reconciling yourself with your friend, and that's what you're trying to do. I-If you're going to do it this way-"
His voice cracked, inconveniently.
The red in his ears leaked transparently over his cheekbones.
The kill-you-dead angry eyebrows returned immediately in all their death-knit glory, along with the ranting, "authoritative" soapbox half-bellow in the hopes that volume would remove all evidence of the moment of weakness. (The red was still there, signalling any of Steamdrab's possible planes for landing.)
"Well you can't do it right if you lose an ear from shoddy stitching!" He gave a yank to the side of the hood, trying to draw Finn's offending fabric ear down to his tiptoed level.
"Now, hold still! What friend would reconcile with Usagi-kun when he only has one ear and therefore reflects halfheartedness and inconsistancy of desire for forgiveness despite whatever mortification or punishment it might bring?! Usagi-kun must reflect his character and wholeness of intent properly!" Gau declared with a seriousness and fervor which would put a revolutionary to awe.
(((*N.B.: Usagi="Rabbit" in japanese.
Names of objects/things/concepts and names themselves seem relatively interchangeable in japanese, so even with a common language, Gau might import "names".
Finn? Er...might want to defend thyself or be henceforth be known as "Bunnyman". *shot repeatedly in the face. Point blank. With rockets.*)))
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But then the boy turned red and dropped his eyes and Finn realized he had, indeed, embarrassed the guy. His conflicting opinions were easily explained, but Finn still felt a tiny selfish victory at being right about something for once.
Now he just had to fight not to laugh as the little guy tried to reach the ear.
"Um, well, thanks. I appreciate the help." He paused, and then added. "Should I sit down?"
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"The floor's bound to be full of germs and parasites, and who knows what foreign contaminants from a strange new world." He declared solemnly, then peered at Finn suspiciously. "Unless you're one of the natives. Then you're probably immune to all the sickening possibilities."
He certainly was really tall, Gau noted--with continuing irritation--for the hundredth time. Even taller than Yoite. Or Yukimi. Yukimi was easily six feet tall, too (the demented blond chickenhead) and both were certainly taller than Raikou.
Then again, this world had giants that pulled caravans.
Gau considered this seriously, looking over the bunnyman.
Well. If he wasn't a native of this world he was probably something more normally weird. Like an American.
Gau had seen enough television during the day that he was pretty sure he knew what to expect from an American: violent, viciously competant and competitive, and definitely overly loud. Bunnyman had probably just run out of gum to chew a while before and lost his sunglasses. And Americans did strange individualistic things all the time, didn't they? That might explain the binny suit anyway. Gau resisted the urge to make a note of this distinct possibility in his notebook. His hands were full, anyway.
Oh, that reminded him. He had to track down that cowboy man who'd saved his life earlier, and offer some sort of repayment. The fact he might be American too went without saying. In Gau's daytime-television-between-ironing-and-report-filing experience, cowboys who shot people in streets were still no match for ninjas.
Or magical girls.
Not that he ever watched shows with magical girls, of course-THAT would be...well certainly not something appropriate for a boy, right?! Right...?
Gau tossed off the thoughts, making faces with his inner commentary, unbeknownst to him. "If you leaned it would probably be fine." he said. He would magnaminously look over the implications towards his shortness. Bunnyman was doing something noble, after all, and patching torn clothes in a hurry was something he practiced, actually, just in case Raikou ran into some trouble. That and the samurai's growing cosplay habit demanded a bit of...costume surgery from time to time. Raikou's taste in fashion was legendarily atrocious after all, even when he chose costumes. Though...he did look rather...lively with his pink-hair and the various anime academy uniform mock-ups, and who knew how many samurai...
Gau's eyes misted over.
If anyone ever called him on his practiced sewing, he'd be irate, and horribly embarrassed, but at least here it came in handy since he could fix the ears on the costume of a giant man who wanted to humiliate himself for the glorious purposes of reconciliation. (As ever, this thought had absolutely no sarcasm in it when it went through Gau's mind.)
He shrugged to himself, completing his thought, and tugged again, more firmly at the side of the hood.
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Oh, he should probably thank him. "Um, thanks...man." He suddenly realized they hadn't introduced themselves at all. That might fix some of the awkwardness. Maybe. "I'm Finn. By the way. Finn Hudson."
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"Hudson-san?" He repeated. "FINN Hudson-san?" he repeated.
he let the needle hang, and flipped quickly through his notebook, finding what he was looking for.
He blinked, then looked back up at him, going pale, then very red.
"Uhm..." Gau swallowed. "Meguro Gau."
He shifted a little, then finally managed to articulate what was on his mind. It was like the floor had dropped out from under him. All his careful plans to clean, organize, and wait, all the plans to bake soemthing, and make a good and proper introduction...
"I'm...your roommate."
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And there it was. "Roommate?" Finn blinked a few times, confused. He'd been told he should check the board to find his room but given all the empty ones and his desire for privacy, well, he'd taken matters into his own hands. So to speak. "Oh! Man, I'm sorry..."
Pause.
"Well, this is awkward. But uh, still. Nice to meet you, Meguro. Um. Meguro-san." He chewed his lip for a moment before adding, "You aren't disappointed, are you? I don't...always dress like this, I promise."
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He shut his notebook with a snap, fumbling a few photographs that were trying to leap for freedom back into the notebook, and chewed on his knuckle, thoughtfully.
"Even as your roommate, I have no right to be disappointed in you for reconciling with your friend." He slumped a little. "Besides, you never met Raikou-san..." He muttered.
A thought occured to him. He blinked up at Finn, looking startled, hopeful.
"Unless maybe you have?! A pink-haired man with a sword called "shirogamon"? and really terrible fashion sense and no sense of fiscal conservation..."
He paused, and looked at his notebook, flipping through it, needle still dangling awkwardly from Finn's pink costumed ear. "I might have a photograph in here, even though he told me not to keep it in there...he beat me over the head again. I've been looking for him everywhere, but there's no way to show people what I'm looking for except when I see them face to face."
He brightened, pulling out his photograph.
Finn had no idea how bad someone's fashion could get...
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Finn swung his head suddenly, attempting to send the needle off its course with his eye. He hoped Meguro would finish the ear before something terrible happened and he'd need to start wearing an eye-patch.
"Have you tried contacting him on the computer thingys?" he asked, watching the dangling needle carefully, "Maybe he's still in the forest or something."
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He rememebred the needle, and grimaced, snatching it up and deftly threading it through the soft bits of the pink ear. "I made a network post, so he could hear it was me. But he hasn't contacted me, and my phone has no service." A shrug, and a slightly deeper scowl, talking as he sewed. "With Yoite-kun here, and in such a horrible state of closeness to death, I can't go looking for him in the woods, just in case he doesn't know how the junogram works." He added in a mutter, "He tends to fix things by throwing them, after all..."
Gau sighed, pulling the stitches tight. "It might be safer in the forest for him, though, after that attack yesterday. Cowboy-san had to save me from the wolf-birds." He added a little darkly. "And the leader doesn't seem to be someone to be trusted. He left his post up, and he told people to bring weapons for his announcement! He knew something was going to happen! It's safer if Raikou-san doesn't end up here overall, but that doesn't mean I don't want to know where he is."
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And even if he was angry at him right now, they were still friends, right? More or less? He hoped so.
It was this worrying that made Finn understand Meguro's problem even better. Losing someone physically was ten times worse than losing them emotionally. He knew, deep down, that focusing on getting back on Kurt's good side was easier than focusing on all the friends and family he'd left at home. He liked Kurt, sure, but so much else was missing that his obsession with staying friends with him was, well, maybe a little extreme.
Still, even those things didn't compare to the crap Meguro had apparently been through. "Man, that sucks," he commented sympathetically-- though whether he was talking about the being attacked part or the being rescued part wasn't even clear to him, in the end.
But as Meguro continued, he had to admit he was suddenly more interested in what had happened the day before. "Wait, that's so true. That's-- wow, that's messed up. I don't even. Do you think he like, hid a bowl of monster chow somewhere on the caravan to attract them?" Pause. "Although he could've gotten attacked too. I wonder why he would do that..."
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