[oneshot] Curls
Title: Curls
Author: Luna (dreamweavernyx )
Pairing: Inoobu
Genre: Crack/Parody
Summary: Once upon a time...there lived a princess named Princess Inoo.
Notes: Contains genderswitched characters. Minor B.I.Shadow appearance.
For Au (au_takarai ).
~
Once upon a time, there was a king named Johnny, who ruled over the land of Enturtenmen. In fact, he was such a great and powerful leader that the land was known as ‘Johnny’s Enturtenmen’.
As time went by, due to the inability of people to properly hear things clearly, by the time Johnny decided to step down as king the land was known as ‘Johnny’s Entertainment’, and nothing he could do would fix the mistake.
But this is not a story about King Johnny. This is a story of a time after him, when the land had been split into several kingdoms.
This is a story…..of Heiseiland.
~
Princess Inoo was born to the King and Queen of Heiseiland. She had skin as pale as paper, eyes as black as coal, and a pair of pouty lips. The King wanted to name her Snow White, but the Queen scrapped the idea and chose the name ‘Inoo’ instead.
Shortly after, she died, and the King was left to raise the baby alone. Sick and tired of staring at poo-filled nappies, he finally decided to remarry after a year of torture.
The second wife of the king was an extremely vain woman. Some whispered (out of earshot of the queen, of course) that she married the king not for love, but for his money, as her one true love was her hair irons.
Her name was Queen Takaki.
Everyday, Takaki would look into her magic mirror and style her hair with her favourite hair iron. After the daily morning ritual, she would always ask:
“Hikaru-mirror, who’s the fairest in the land?”
Now, Hikaru may be a mirror, but he was a smart mirror. Any answer but “You, my queen” would result in a terrible bashing from the hard hair iron, which Hikaru, being a mirror, did not really fancy.
So he held his tongue day after day, and cringed inwardly while telling Takaki that she was the fairest.
So Takaki went about her daily rituals in her own world. Meanwhile, the one who was truly the fairest in the land, Princess Inoo, grew prettier and prettier as the years flew by.
~
One day, Hikaru-mirror finally grew fed up with lying to Takaki.
“All right!” he screamed at her one morning. “You’re not the fairest, okay? Your perm really sucks. And please, you need to get a dress sense!”
Takaki dropped her hair iron in surprise.
“…Then who’s the fairest?”
Hikaru paused, noticing the killing intent radiating from Takaki. But being an enchanted mirror, he had to answer, no matter what.
“…it’s the Princess,” he squeaked at last, and wished he hadn’t, because immediately after a hair iron came flying his way and landed right in his face.
“Ow!”
~
“NAKAJIMA!” roared Takaki when she had finished murdering Hikaru. Immediately, Nakajima Yuto, the best huntsman, ran up to her, panting.
“Go find the Princess,” hissed Takaki. “Drag her into the woods, and kill her.”
“…but…”
“And I want to see her heart as proof! Got it?”
“Yes ma’am,” squeaked Yuto, noticing the nasty glint in her eyes. He scurried away.
But Yuto had no intention of killing the pretty princess at all. Instead, he went to the well where she was reading a Physics textbook and dragged her away.
“Your stepmom’s gonna kill you,” he whispered to her urgently when they had reached the woods. “Run away and hide!”
Inoo nodded, and ran like her life depended on it. (It did.)
Huntsman Yuto killed a random deer and sent the heart back to the Queen via registered mail, before escaping. It wouldn’t to for him to be found by the Queen now.
~
Meanwhile, Inoo had grown tired after running non-stop through the endless woods, and stopped in a clearing to catch her breath.
Coincidentally, she spotted a tiny cottage in the middle of the clearing. Curiosity got the better of her, and she barged in.
Two chibis looked up at her from where they were playing cards.
“Hey lady,” one of them said, “who’re you?”
“I’m a princess,” Inoo replied. “My stepmom wants to kill me, so can I hide out here?”
“Sure,” said the other one. He stuck out his hand. “I’m Daiki. He’s Yamada.”
Yamada nodded a greeting.
“That,” said Daiki, continuing his tour of the cottage, “is the kitchen. The one currently raiding the fridge is Kento. The dude stoning on the couch is Fuma. Hokuto’s over there, he’s playing tag with Yugo - that’s the one over there - and Chinen’s the short one growing mushrooms in the corner.”
“I’M NOT SHORT!” hollered said mushroom farmer. “You guys are just secretly wearing platforms!”
Kento lifted his head from the fridge and snorted.
“Jealous,” he sighed, and turned back to rummaging, ignoring Chinen as he shrieked in apoplectic rage.
Inoo smiled slightly at the ensuing chaos.
Life here was going to be fun.
~
“Hikaru-mirror,” said Takaki a couple of days later, “who’s the fairest in the land?”
There was a pause, and Takaki opened her eyes to glare at Hikaru.
“…It’s the Princess,” Hikaru reluctantly ground out at last.
“I thought I killed her!” screeched Takaki, furious.
Hikaru gave the mirror-version of a shrug.
“Apparently not.”
Takaki huffed, and stormed off to the secret lair hidden within her closet.
~
“I need to kill off that brat, since that useless huntsman didn’t do it for me,” mused Takaki, pacing around the secret lair. “But how…..?”
She trailed off as she spotted the thick open volume on her table.
“AHA!”
Later on, the maid who came in to clear up the Queen’s bedroom thought she heard fizzling and evil laughter coming from the closet. Screaming, she ran down the hallway like a headless chicken, crashing into butlers and mops before finally bashing into a pillar.
Nobody believed her story.
~
Several days later, Inoo waved goodbye as the seven chibis (“We’re not chibis! We’re just petite!” argued Chinen) left the cottage and headed to their workplace at the nearby quarry.
Meanwhile, Inoo began to clean up the house, humming a vague tune to herself as she did so.
Knock, knock, knock.
Inoo peered out the window to see a tall guy with curly hair at the door.
“Hi!” said the guy, whose voice Inoo vaguely found familiar. “I’m Ogata, Ogata Yamato. I sell hair curlers, would you like to buy one?”
Inoo shook her head.
“I don’t actually need a hair curler, mister. My hair’s already curly.”
Ogata frowned.
“Well,” he said a moment later, face brightening up, “you could try it out, just in case!”
Inoo sighed, and gave in, opening the door for Ogata. He took a shiny hair iron from his basket, and suddenly, quicker than Inoo could react, plunged the curler straight into Inoo’s pretty hair.
Inoo blinked, and suddenly felt a numbing sensation where the hair iron had hit.
“Oh,” was all she could say before the poison took effect.
“Her breath will still!” cackled Ogata. “Her blood congeal!”
Inoo toppled to the floor, body stiff, eyes closed.
Ogata whooped, and suddenly, in one fluid motion, reached his hand up to his hair and pulled…
…to reveal Queen Takaki.
~
A deer, peeking in through the window, noticed Takaki’s horrendously curled hair and raced off immediately to find the seven petite chibis. After all, there was a lunatic mutant in their house, they should be informed.
~
Hokuto leaned back against the wall, and took a sip of water.
“What the hell?!” came a sudden shriek from Yamada. Hokuto looked over, only to see said chibi’s shirt collar currently in the very firm grip of a deer. “Geroff me!”
“I think,” stated Fuma dryly, “he wants you to follow him.”
“…You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Well,” said Kento, “I guess it must want to drag you somewhere, so why not save it the trouble and follow it?”
Daiki sighed and got to his feet.
“Let’s hurry up and go, then.”
~
Takaki felt good. She’d managed to kill off her rival in beauty with the poisoned hair iron, and she felt on top of the world.
A sudden scream of “Holy cow! There’s a weirdo in our house!” cut short her victory Banana Dance, and she whirled around to see seven chibis following a deer and running towards the house.
Panicking, she ran out of the door and ran as fast as she could along the single path leading away from the house.
“Chase her!” shrieked Chinen, and they all changed the course of their mad charge.
Finally, Takaki, skidding round a bend, stopped dead in her tracks as the end of the path was just ahead, cut off sharply as a massive canyon loomed below.
“We’ve got you now, lunatic!” said Yamada triumphantly, brandishing his stick at Takaki.
“D-d-don’t you dare! I have a hair iron, and I know how to use it!” hissed Takaki, trembling slightly.
Yugo rolled his eyes, and reached into his pocket to pull out a rubber mouse. He tossed it at Takaki’s feet.
Takaki screamed and jumped backwards, only to feel nothing solid beneath her feet. She glared at the offending rock face which had been too short for her massive leap, before she fell, arms flailing like a windmill.
And that was the last of Queen Takaki.
~
Back at the cottage, the seven petite chibis gathered silently around Princess Inoo’s body.
“Dude,” said Daiki. “She’s sleeping.”
“No,” Hokuto said, crouching down to touch her arm. “Her body’s cold. She’s…”
“…Dead,” murmured Kento quietly.
The sky cried silent tears as the seven of them built a simple glass coffin for the Princess.
~
A couple of weeks later, a prince was riding in his carriage in the forest.
“Hang on,” said Prince Yabu. “I hear singing. Why is there singing in the forest?”
“That is the small mourning ceremony that’s held here every week for the Princess who sleeps eternally in a glass coffin,” said Ryutaro, the Prince’s personal manservant.
“A Princess in a glass coffin?” asked Prince Yabu, intrigued.
“Yes, sir,” said Keito, the carriage driver, from where he was sitting in front of the carriage. “Would you like to see?”
“Let’s go!”
~
The carriage drove into a clearing, and Prince Yabu stepped out to see a glass-and-crystal coffin with a golden base glittering in the sunlight. Quietly, he approached it, and the seven chibis stopped their singing.
Prince Yabu looked into the open coffin, and saw a beautiful princess with pale skin and soft black ringlets, eyes closed as though she was only asleep.
“What a pity,” he murmured. “I’d like to kiss her, just once.”
He leant down and ran his fingers through her hair, and kissed her.
In the process, his fingers dislodged the poison spike embedded in her scalp, and suddenly, as he was placing her body back down, her eyes flew open.
“Oh,” she said, and the seven chibis yelped in sudden surprise. “What happened?”
“You woke up!” yelled Fuma gleefully.
She beamed at him, then turned her attention to the handsome brunette prince standing next to the coffin.
“Oh,” she said again. “Oh my.”
“Um, hi,” he said, smiling a no-eye-smile. “I’m Yabu. Would you marry me?”
Inoo blushed prettily and giggled, before shyly taking his outstretched hand.
They got into the carriage, and rode off into the sunset.
And they lived happily ever after.
~
Except for Takaki.