"Mmmmmm....SOOOOO GOOOD!"

Akumu rubbed his face. This happened at least once or twice a month, and Junko
would always have two or three bowls, nattering incessantly about how good it
was. Head still cradled in his hands, he didn't even look at her when speaking,
"You've been saying that for the last five minutes, Junko. And between bites on
the last bowl. Are you going to be finished soon?"

"But Akumu! It IS so good. The noodles, the broth, the tofu...especially the
tofu. Fried just right SLUURRRRP."

Akumu continued to suffer in silence. He'd never really thought it was true, but
then he'd met Junko, and he'd learned exactly how much truth there always was in
things like that.

Next time the cafeteria was serving Kitsune Udon, Akumu was eating off campus.

~*~*~*~
Mystery Club -- Part 6
"Are The Foundations of Mischief"
Created by Aaron Peori
This part by BSD
An Improfanfic Production
~*~*~*~

Akumu finally managed to drag Junko out of the cafeteria, but only with the
promise that he'd buy her a bowl of the udon the next time it was served. Making
sure that they were alone in the corridor, he began the questions that had been
burning in his mind since he had seen her again that morning.

"Where have you been for the past two weeks, Junko? Being an idiot fox doesn't
give you the right to take vacation whenever you feel like it."

Junko stuck her tongue out at the young baku, but averted her gaze before
answering, trying to hide the fear in her eyes. "I was hiding, Akumu. At home.
Listening to Grandma go on and on about how it was just my father's blood
showing. I wouldn't have come back, but, well, you know..."

"I know. You get your fifth on graduation. But WHY were you hiding?"

"Because I was scared!" Glancing about, she chewed her lip and dropped her voice
back down, "I almost got that OTHER club killed, and I was so scared I couldn't
hide my tails."

"You WHAT? How COULD you, Junko? Do you really think Kuroko was right?"

"It had nothing to do with that! You think stealing someone's bag is much of a
joke? Would they really see me if I didn't want them to? And I'm not scared of
them! Haven't you seen the others yet?"

-/-/-/-/

"An infestation, Sensei?"

"That's what he said. He'd seen at least five, and where you see five there are
at least ten."

Ibuki looked up from her doodling to look at her professor and friend. "So when
are we doing this, Mitsu-chan?"

Mitsurugi glared back at his clubmate. "Don't call me Mitsu-chan. And ask the
professor."

"So, Mirumoto-sensei. When are we doing this?"

"WE can do it anytime you'd like, Ibuki-chan. But you're not coming with
Mitsurugi and I tonight. Though Setsuna should come."

"Don't be disgusting, old man. And why not?"

"And why should I come? What can I do that she can't?"

Professor Mirumoto grinned. "For you, it'll be good experience and relatively
safe. And YOU'LL stay here because this is one of the few things you can't help
with. If you try and wrestle them, you'll lose, no way out of it."

"Oh, you're kidding. Those? A properly equipped child could get rid of them. I
will stay here. It'll probably be less boring."

Setsuna blinked in surprise. "What? Those? What are "Those"?"

Ibuki chuckled and continued on without answering Setsuna's question. "But isn't
that a bit silly for the club to take care of? Is there anything new you can
learn about them>"

"Bills do have to be paid, Ibuki-chan. Golf courses are profitable, and the
owner is willing to pay to have his pond cleaned."

"Pond?" Setsuna was even more confused than before. "What are we doing, killing
frogs?"

Mitsurugi scratched at his eye, not turning away from his view of campus.
"Close, Setsuna. Kappa. Unbelievably strong, almost invincible, but very, very
easy to trick."

"Kappa?"

"That's right." Mirumoto confirmed, "Kappa. You buy the cucumbers, Setsuna.
We'll meet back here at eight."

-/-/-/-/

The last class of the day had ended, and the majority of students had left this
part of campus, back to the dorms, their housing, or entertainment. The
occasional student remained, working on a paper or studying for a test, but
Junko had the small courtyard, and the bench she sat on, to herself. It was
quiet, and she brooded, idly twisting the tips of two of her tails together.

She hadn't liked doing something for "Those Two", as she thought of them, and
she hadn't liked going home. If she was here to learn about people-things, as
Grandma called them, why should she get involved with them; they certainly
weren't people, and what they were doing were far from people-things. They'd
just pushed her around, and she hadn't liked it one bit. Her frown deepened as
the two tails she wasn't now plucking at starting swishing nervously. There she
sat, tiny bits of fur drifting from her pluckings, a small breeze stirred by her
swishings.

A particularly vicious pluck pulled a small tuft of hair from one of her tails.
Holding it up in the fingers that plucked it, she gazed at it in pain a
surprise, released both tails she was holding, and let the others stop their
movement. "Hah. They think they can push me around just because I'm a four-tail?
I'll show them. I'll show those horned idiots what a four-tailed Kitsune is."

With quick movement she stood, and after a quick check to make sure her disguise
was lacking a tail, she scurried off.

-/-/-/-/

In the small hours of the morning, a creature of the night stalked the halls of
one of the smaller dormitories, seeking out fearful young women, seeking to feed
its inhuman hunger. Quietly, it sneaked along the floor, pausing by each door as
if listening, and usually moving on.

Akumu stopped again. He could feel it right through the door. Chasing? It felt
like a chasing dream. For a moment, the young man was also a squat quadraped,
and then merely a distortion in the air. A few seconds later, the breathing
behind the door, which had been fast a quick, the breath of a disturbed sleeper,
quieted to the slow and regular breaths of a peaceful dreamer. A moment later,
the small animal reappeared, quickly replaced by the young man. Akumu smiled to
himself and moved on. The girl would sleep better now, and he was no longer
hungry. The corridor was long, though, and whether he was hungry or not, he had
an obligation to go on.

As he continued on, pausing at each door, sometimes vanishing within for seconds
or minutes, he worried. Junko was flighty, but she wasn't so easily scared,
Kitsune normally weren't. He was sad, and had been angry, about Kuroko's loss,
but someone had to have been far more angry than he was to want the Mystery Club
trapped on the Night of a Thousand Ghosts. On top of that, there was new fear,
fresh fear, in many of the nightmares around. Shadowy things half seen, chasing
the dreamer down dark paths, had been in many of the nightmares he'd seen
tonight.

Finally, after plucking a nightmare of toothlessness from the mind of the
floor's Resident Advisor, he was done. But not yet ready to turn in. He couldn't
help Setsuna with her dreams, but he could see if she was alright.

-/-/-/-/

Setsuna slipped in the back door of her apartment building, access to which came
along with her rent discount as perks for helping the manager. She didn't want
to wake anybody, and she DEFINITELY didn't want to be seen like this. The kappa
had been as easy as the others had said, but nobody had mentioned the slime. Or
the splashing. Or exactly how much water each of the horrible little things had
in their heads.

Right now, she was dripping with rank pond water, her hands still feeling
slightly slimy from dragging the weakened kappa away from the water until they
died. It had taken hours to lure each kappa away from the water's edge and trick
them into spilling their heads with the cucumbers. The night had been boring,
and disgusting, and now she just wanted to shower and sleep. She fumbled for her
room key, wincing as they slipped from her slimy fingers.

"Setsuna?"

She gasped and backed against her door, peering into the darkness of the hallway
to try and find the source of the voice. It was familiar, and it hit her who it
was. She faced the silhouette and tried it out. "Akumu?"

He nodded. "Not a good time? Sorry. I just have to tell you some things."

Setsuna blushed slightly, suddenly glad he couldn't see her well in the
darkness, though unsure really why. "It's been a particularly unpleasant
evening. Something tells me it'll only be adding to my nightmares. Though you
wouldn't be able to help me with that..."

Akumu shook his head sadly. "No, as much as I'd like to. But it's not about
that. Junko's scared of something, and if it scares her, it's probably worth
being scared of."

"Do I really need more things to be scared of? Vampires, werewolves, and
something even the monsters are scared of? Thanks a lot. Do you BRING
nightmares, too?"

"Sorry, sorry."

"I'm sure you are. Goodnight, Akumu."

"Goodnight, Setsuna."

-/-/-/-/

Junko hummed to herself as she brought joy to students and professors,
administrators and facilities staff, and all other members of the college
community. She'd spent the entire night switching the signs on the men's and
women's rooms throughout the campus. Tacks on seats and gluing doors shut had
occupied the early morning, and now just as classes were about to start, she had
finally finished oiling the floors. Now to dig out her camera; this morning
would be one to preserve to posterity.

And look, here came a car now. Probably a professor, students tended not to
drive and administrators tended to drive nicer cars. Junko hid herself, not
wanting to be associated with the early morning of the day that bore so many
pranks. Self-satisfaction was good, but expulsion was not, at least if she
wanted to get her fifth tail before she was as old as Grandma.

"This is our secret, right?"

Junko's ears pricked up, little fox-points sticking out of her human hair. She
liked secrets, they were like pre-made jokes.

"...Yeah. So my grade?"

"Don't worry about it."

Now THAT was interesting. Camera, camera, where was her camera? Aha! There it
was, and there was the perfect shot. A frightened looking freshman, getting out
of a professor's car in the early morning wearing rumpled clothes that had
clearly seen wear the previous day.

*Click* *Click* *Click*

-/-/-/-/

When Setsuna entered the otherwise empty club room, Ibuki was already perched on
the desk, reading the campus paper. Without moving her eyes up, she addressed
the younger girl. "Have a nice day? Or did you run into any presents from this
places's resident Kitsune?"

"Lost my shoe in a glue puddle. But nothing else."

"Lucky you. See this?" Ibuki turned the paper around and pointed at a picture of
one of the chemistry professors with a freshman who obviously hadn't been home
the previous night.

"No, but everyone's talking about it. They say she ran crying from her class
when she heard about the paper."

Ibuki shrugged. "It happens. With assistants, professors, coaches, even the
occasional administrator. Do you think that our old pervert could resist if he
got the chance?"

Setsuna smiled wanly and shook her head.

"Of course, this picture comes from a role of film that the journalism club
found slipped under their door. Says here that the roll also had shots of
various pranks around campus. I wonder who shot it, huh?"

The door clicked open again and Mitsurugi entered. A quick nod to both girls,
and he grabbed himself a chair facing the window, his eyes already starting to
unfocus as he muttered out, "Professor won't be by today. Said something about
an emergency faculty meeting over some prof who killed himself."

Setsuna and Ibuki shared a glance and a nod, and with an unspoken agreement,
Setsuna slipped back out the door.

-/-/-/-/

Her first stop was the art department, and there she found her quarry. At one of
the long tables sat Akumu, quietly sketching the bud vase at the front of the
room.

"Do you know where she is, Akumu?"

"No. And I'm not happy with her either. I got slapped silly when I walked into
the right bathroom on autopilot and found a gaggle of girls who had walked into
the wrong bathroom after reading the sign. I'll probably see nightmares of that
sort for weeks."

"That's not what I'm here about. Her jokes killed a man and ruined a girl. How
can you worry about getting slapped?"

He carefully erased a misdrawn line before replying in a quiet voice, "She
didn't create that picture, she just took it. I'm a lot more angry about her
creating mischief than exposing it."

Setsuna flopped down into a chair. "But, but, she gave that picture to the
paper, and if she hadn't, everything would have been OK."

"OK? It probably would have gone on, and the professor would do the same to a
freshman every year until he retired. A Kitsune's pranks aren't just pranks,
they're traps for the unwary and the deserving, and especially for the unwary
deserving. You shouldn't jump to judgement, Setsuna."

"I'm not jumping. She left traps all over the place, and not one of them is
funny. I came myself, so it's not Ibuki or Mitsurugi-san here to kill her. I
just want to yell at her or something." She paused and started to chew at a
nail. "I just want to yell at something that won't kill me, or eat me, and still
deserves it. It'd be nice to yell back, or hit back, or something."

"You want to yell at me, Fume-chan?"

Setsuna whirled toward the door, rounding on the fox-woman standing in it
smiling happily. "Does it make you happy? That almost everyone in the college
has been embarrassed today? That a girl's life is basically over? That a MAN is
DEAD? Do you find it FUNNY?"

"In a particular sort of way, yes. That man brought it on himself, and the girl
did too. And all the others are just little things, hardly worth noticing. I'm a
Kitsune, and I'm not going to just sit and twiddle my tails instead of doing
what we do. And I'm nobody's pawn, and they should know that."

"What are you talking about? You have to stop, Junko. If you don't, the rest of
the club will want to make you."

"Do you think I care? I'm a Four-Tail Kitsune, soon to be a Five-Tail. I'll do
what I want." With a puff, she was a small fox, and that winked and scampered
away.

"Happy now, Setsuna?"

Setsuna just walked away without turning back, and dreamed that night of
drowning in a bucket of water that had been propped over her door.

-/-/-/-/


I'm not good at angst or horror, but I'm happy with this as an Impro part. I'd
have liked to delve a little more deeply into the role of the trickster, but I
couldn't find a way without doing a full Stephenson.

What I love about MC is the freedom from the chains of over-arching plot. It
feels freer than other impros, allowing the writer to write about what excites
them, rather than the cliffhanger left by the previous author. It's fun. Write
for it.

7/3/00