A day in the life of Sanjou Yukito...
The hours before dawn are filled with a special type of silence. Those lucky enough to be awake are witness to utter stillness and a pervading sense of peace.
That is, unless the person in question has nightmare-prone flatmates.
Sanjou Yukito dragged the pillow over his head, even though he knew from past experience that it wouldn't block out the cries from the next room.
"...Mahoro..."
Yukito dropped the pillow and glared at the wall separating his room from Asuka's, resisting the urge to hit it. It never helped, anyway.
Bakuryu Sentai Abaranger: A Day In The Life Of Sanjou Yukito
Dawn had barely broken above the horizon - not that it was visible in the middle of Tokyo - when Yukito made his way downstairs, but Ryunosuke was already hard at work preparing to open the cafe. Yukito wasn't quite sure why the place was open so early on Sundays; they rarely got customers at that hour. Occasionally he suspected that Ryunosuke just wanted an excuse to wake them up that much earlier on the weekend.
"Good morning, Yukito!" Ryunosuke's greeting was cheerful, despite his apparently total concentration on whatever task was at hand.
Yukito grunted at Ryunosuke's back. Green tea and possibly the newspaper were all he felt inclined to deal this early. It was inhuman to be awake this early.
"Ah, Yukito, that reminds me."
Yukito tensed. Those were ominous words. They never prefaced something good. "Yes?" he said slowly.
"We ran out of tea yesterday. Would you pick some up as soon as the stores open?"
"I knew it," he muttered. Bad news, making the start to his day even more inauspicious.
"What was that?"
"Nothing. I'll go." Yukito sighed. "Do we have any coffee?"
During the time he'd spent in America - how long ago had that been? - he'd developed a taste for coffee. Good coffee. Yukito stared down at the mug in his hands. It held a substance that might loosely be termed coffee, if one was lacking a sense of both smell and taste and had never heard of coffee to boot. He swirled it around moodily. Perhaps if he fed it to Asuka, it would chase the nightmares away. It certainly tasted bad enough.
Yukito forebore to mention his less than flattering opinion on the so-called coffee, opting instead to get the newspaper from outside. It was getting warmer already, the sky lightening to what promised to be a dazzling blue. He spent a minute just looking at the reflection of the sunlight crawling across the windows opposite, stringing glittering webs across the otherwise mundane buildings. "The hell," he muttered at his own observation, and ducked back inside.
"Do you need any help?" he asked Ryunosuke before taking the paper over to the glass table in the center of the main room.
"No, just the tea later." Ryunosuke had run the cafe alone before the four of them - plus Emiri and Mai - had unceremoniously dropped into his life, but it didn't hurt to ask if he needed the help. Yukito shrugged and left the kitchen.
The routine of sipping a hot drink while reading the previous day's news helped restore a sense of balance. Yukito grimaced as he came across mention of the Abarangers - a small article on the eleventh page. Not that he expected adulation, but how the general populace could dismiss their existence as an 'urban legend' when they battled skyscraper-size monsters at least twice a week was beyond him. What, did they think it was a mass hallucination? Then again, he'd seen the buildings that he knew they had damaged during their fights standing unscathed mere hours later. A note comparing them to 'Masked Riders' almost made him laugh out loud. Masked Riders really were urban legends; there was no way they could be operating in Tokyo now. He or one of the others would have seen them by now.
"Ryou-chan! Ryou-chan! You're gonna be late!"
Yukito barely had time to register Mai's voice before a five-year-old body threw itself across him, fingers scrabbling on the glass to reach the remote control. Ryouga stumbled into the room a few seconds behind his daughter, yawning and rubbing his eyes.
"Morning, Yukito," he said, stretching. "What are you doing up so early?"
"Kkh." Yukito twisted around, turning his back on the television. Ryouga wasn't listening to him anyway; he had Mai in his lap, and the two of them were quietly but enthusiastically singing the inane theme song to some morning cartoon along with the broadcast. It was probably a good thing that he'd finished reading; he couldn't really concentrate with all the chatter in the background.
"Ah, Yukito?" Ryunosuke waved him over. "Could you pick up a few other things?" Yukito could see the list from where he was sitting; it was as long as his forearm. He nodded, and resigned himself to a morning of shopping.
***
As it turned out, shopping didn't take as long as he'd thought it might. He was grateful for that little occurrence, since there were a few things he'd wanted to take care of, things that didn't involve his teammates. It was difficult to adjust to living and working with others; he'd been on his own since middle school. Even before that, his father had made sure that he had no close friends. So it was that though he enjoyed the company of the others, occasionally he still needed to get away from them.
He was walking up to the door of the shop when it burst open, missing him by millimeters. Asuka stopped just short of running him over. "Yukito-san!"
Yukito's leftover irritation at being woken up so early dissolved. Asuka looked like hell; he clearly hadn't had much sleep either. "What?" he asked when Asuka made no move either to speak or to get out of his way.
Asuka jumped slightly. "Torinoid!"
"Move, then." He jerked his head. The shopping bags were unceremoniously dumped in the corner and he studied the display across the screen. "What's it doing?" It was always some convoluted plot. Directness was not a trait possessed by their enemies. "Wait..." He stared at the readout, sure he'd read it wrong.
"It's turning women into sakura trees!" Ranru confirmed what he'd read the first time. "And -"
Yukito just shook his head. The minds of the Evorian were completely beyond him. He didn't even want to know what kind of twisted logic was behind this one. "Let's go."
As they started out, the alarm went off again. Another dimensional gate had opened. Ryouga and Asuka went to deal with the second possible Torinoid, leaving Yukito and Ranru to deal with the sakura-tree-creating lunatic.
The Torinoid, when they caught up with it, cackled maniacally and fled in a shower of petals. He started to chase it and promptly tripped; for some reason, he couldn't move his feet properly.
"What the heck?!" Ranru's voice sounded from behind him. Yukito twisted around to see her tangled up in a long yellow dress with a narrow skirt. She ripped apart the seams until she could stand properly. "Yukito?" She looked over to him, and inexplicably started giggling.
"What?" he snapped, scrambling to his feet. By the time he made it, he'd figured out both why it was so hard to move and why Ranru was giggling. He was wearing an exact replica of her dress, except that his was a lovely shade of blue. "What is this, a running gag?" None of the other men ever ended up in skirts.
Several centimeters of shredded material and a transformation later, he and Ranru were back on track. The Torinoid, however, had vanished.
"We'll have to go back to the cafe to track it," Ranru said disappointedly.
"Or look for sakura blooming out of season," Yukito pointed out. He could see several trees from where he stood, a trail that probably would lead them straight to the Torinoid. Or maybe a trap, he thought morbidly. Sometimes the Evorian creations were smarter than they looked. They were following the trail when Ryouga and Asuka joined them, running hard.
"What?" Yukito asked.
"Trap!" Ryouga gasped out. Of course it was a trap. Jeanne was waiting for them. That put them automatically down one fighter; she dragged Asuka off to the side and engaged him almost immediately. It was a very pretty fight, two fighters in black against the backdrop of falling cherry blossoms, but Yukito rolled his eyes. Asuka managed to attract melodrama the way a light attracted moths.
Across the square, the Torinoid cackled.
***
"Here?" Yukito asked.
"Yeah." Ryouga gently lowered his burden. Yukito followed suit, although it was unlikely Asuka would notice even if they dropped him.
"How long do you think it'll take this time?" he asked.
Ryouga shrugged. The backlash effects of Asuka's energy problem were wildly varied. On one occasion he hadn't woken properly for nearly three weeks. Sometimes it was as little as blunted reaction time and a tendency to get distracted. None of them knew why it was that Asuka had such trouble; he just did. "He'll be fine," Ryouga said cheerfully.
Yukito pulled the blanket over Asuka, making sure the other man was adequately covered. Didn't want him to catch cold or anything, after all. He must have spent too long about it, because he straightened up to see Ryouga giving him a slightly odd look.
"All it means is that we're down one for the lunch rush," Yukito said.
Ryouga's expression cleared, sliding into mild irritation and disbelief. If Yukito had been anyone else, Ryouga probably would have told him to be more considerate.
"Let's go," he added over his shoulder.
TBC