Look at him up there, riding the gun barrel in the most blatant dream imagery Ataru could possibly imagine. Listen to him boast! Listen to him crow! Look at how tiny his gun barrel was! “Just watch!” he would say. “Any moment now it will grow much larger!”
“Make it shrink a little,” Ataru commanded with tremendous amusement in his voice. It made for a nice opportunity, seeing the rich snob get taken down a peg or three. Why not indulge while he had the chance? “Then maybe turn the tank into a fire hydrant, which bursts open and soaks him and only him long before he expects it.”
He waited a moment. Mendo continued rubbing the gun barrel, continued insisting he just needed a little bit longer before it would grow to gigantic proportions, while Shinobu wearily watched and sadly shook her head. Nothing else of note happened.
“Uh…” he began. “Why isn’t anything…?”
“Oh, Mendo! Don’t you realise how silly you look just now? You’re as bad as Ataru sometimes.”
“Wait, wait… I think something is happening!” Mendo said, but he was wrong as usual. Nothing was happening, except maybe Shinobu getting more and more embarrassed by the display in front of her. This left Ataru scratching his head in puzzlement: Why wasn’t anything changing?
Luckily his floating blue alligator buddy had the answer, with a floating sign held up above his helpful head. It read, “She’s still the centre of the dream, so you can’t actually change anything while she’s paying attention to it.”
Ataru tilted his head and thought for a moment about that. “Have a bikini-clad dancing Shinobu appear behind the real Shinobu.”
Lo and behold, there she was. In a one-piece bikini just dancing away to a tune only she could hear while the other - real - Shinobu was still paying attention to the dumbass on the tank. So… He could, in theory, do pretty much anything he wanted to the dream so long as Shinobu wasn’t aware of it when he made the change? Ugh. No scene changes then; he’d have to make do with wherever she dragged him off to. The school would do for now, but…
“Any moment now,” Mendo was saying quite insistently.
“Um… I’m sorry to say, but this is getting pretty pathetic.”
Then again, her attention was rather taken up by watching Mendo humiliate himself. “Make the dancing Shinobu go away,” he commanded, though he did so with great lament. Its presence would complicate the dream and he was starting to formulate a new plan. Right. He would have to set things up while Shinobu wasn’t watching, which could be a little bit on the tricky side. Once he set things in motion he wouldn’t be able to direct damage control effectively, or rather direct the situation without at least providing some form of distraction. While that was a level of complication he really didn’t want to have to deal with, he didn’t exactly have much of a choice in the matter.
“Might as well get started,” he said with a small adjustment to his cap. “Alright, guys! We gotta work fast while her attention is on one thing! Here are your instructions, and I want you to listen carefully….”
<hr>
She recognised that it was a dream immediately. It was rather an easy thing to do with her mental discipline, in particular in light of the rather odd dream she’d just had. The details were fuzzy on things at the edge of her vision, like they weren’t even there unless she was looking at them. In addition to this, she was in her office at school and the colours were either much more faded or vibrant than usual depending on what she was looking at and whether it had any sort of emotional weight attached to it. For example, she rather enjoyed sitting in that chair and so it seemed practically luminescent, while the desk next to it almost appeared in shades of grey. Little clues like that helped her understand what was happening quite adequately.
Another big clue was the fact that she was floating in the air, and there was another Sakura relaxing in the seat. “Fruit basket,” the other her was muttering over and over like a mantra. “Fruit basket. Fruit basket. Fruit basket.”
“I suppose that makes sense,” Sakura said. “Though it is rather… Boring, I suppose? Perhaps if I concentrate, I can make the dream into something a little more exciting.”
“If you’re bored, then I’m here to brighten up your day!” a familiar voice called, and Ataru Moroboshi bounded into the room, momentarily making Sakura lose concentration completely. It was one of the boy’s talents. He could shatter a statue’s concentration with his antics! “You wanted to see me, Sakura dear?”
“Not especially,” Sakura said.
“Yes,” the other Sakura replied. “I realised recently that I never properly thanked you for assisting me when we first met. Thanks to you, I am now free of disease spirits.”
“Aw, it wasn’t anything!” Ataru replied, though he was using a tone which indicated anything but humility. “How were you going to thank me? A kiss? A date? Maybe a massage?”
“Mind out of the gutter!” both Sakuras commanded at once. Ugh! And she was going to have to thank the real one when she woke up. She really should make the dream move on to some other topic before - “I got you a fruit basket.”
“A fruit basket?” Moroboshi said, scanning the room. “I don’t see a basket anywhere…”
“What about now?” the dream Sakura said, and the regular floaty Sakura’s mouth dropped when her other self slipped off her jacket, revealing a body clad in - Well, some sort of fruity lingerie, formed from bits of fruit with thread through the middle. This was - How was this a basket?! More to the point! Why was the other Sakura seductively reclining on the chair and giving Ataru Moroboshi bedroom eyes?! “Please enjoy!” the other Sakura said, and all that the real one could do was watch in paralysed horror as Ataru Moroboshi leaned in to do exactly that.
<hr>
So, in defiance of expectations, the dream Ataru spotted the thorny bush and hacked away at it with his sword to allow her to pass… “unmolested” was the word he’d used. In all honesty, Ran had fully expected that Ataru would have used his sword on her bush, but she was a little disappointed- Relieved! That he had not done anything of the sort.
Still. She was definitely keeping an eye on those handsome features. It wouldn’t be long before he tried something perverted, like maybe grope her or try to hug her or kiss her or just tackle her to the ground and make wild, passionate love wherever they happened to land. Any moment now, he would say or do something. Any moment now…
“My lady!” Ataru said. Aha! Here it comes! “There appears to be a large puddle lying ahead of us! I shall create a bridge from my own body, as it would not do for your clothes to become damp! For this material, moisture would make them transparent, and I cannot permit such humiliation to befall your fairness!”
“Eee, thank you so much, good sir knight!” she replied, using her innocent tone. Not because she was trying to make him lower his guard or anything and just go for her. No, no. Absolutely not. To emphasise this, once she was upon his back while he lay face down in the mud, she did take great pleasure in a few well-placed stomps. If she had to go through the motions of this stupid dream then she might as well just go with it. “Thank you again!” she said.
“My pleasure, m’lady!” the Ataru knight declared, his front completely caked in mud. Yep. That was a pretty big turnoff right there. Why would she ever want to do anything with someone so dirty, so filthy? It would be positively… <i>naughty</i>. “Hark! A rose blossoms upon this tree! A beauty growing in the midst of a hideous landscape, surrounded on all sides by evil. It dost remindeth me of thine own fairest self!”
“… Thank you?” Ran replied. “I think? Um, pardon me for asking, but where exactly did you get that lute? I don’t think you were carrying that a moment ago…”
“An excellent observation,” Ataru said, slowly strumming out a tune. “Your intelligence rivals your beauty! You truly are the fairest maiden, and your presence lifts me into song. <i>My love, my love, my lovely love, how I love to love my lovely love…</i>”
There was an accident on the planet Diarishis which resulted in a third moon made entirely of cheese. Ran had visited the surface once with her family on a tourist package deal that dealt with curious universal anomalies, and the atmosphere stunk to high heaven. Eat a meal? All you taste is cheese. Drink a bottle of water you brought from offworld? Tasted of cheese. Every lyric, every note, every intonation, every <i>everything</i> about this ‘song’ was so thoroughly cheesy that Ran wished she were back there right at that very moment having herself an all-you-can-eat buffet. Her senses might well be assaulted by less cheese.
In short: She was getting rather sick of the goody-goody act, which was clearly wish fulfillment on Lum’s part. She wanted her man to be a hopeless romantic and utterly devoted to her. Guh! Boring much? It would make Ran fall asleep on the spot if not for the fact that she was already asleep to begin with! Though come to think, that was giving her an idea for how to get away from this idiot…
“Oh, no!” she cried out, placing the back of her palm directly against her forehead. “The witch’s curse is overtaking me! I fall faint! The only cure is true love’s first kiss!”
After that it was simply a case of lying perfectly still and waiting for the schmuck to try and smooch her. Sure, it was a dream, but she could probably still drain him of life energy and make him piss off already, right?
“M-My lady!” the idiot knight weeped. “Very well! Accept this kiss!”
Which is the point when Ran, through mostly but not quite completely closed eyes, witnessed Ataru bashfully kiss his fingers and then reach down to touch her lips with them.
“HOW CHASTE CAN YOU POSSIBLY BEEEEEEEE?!” Ran yelled. “YOU’RE SOOOO BORING! DULL! IT’S INFURIATING! WHAT KIND OF DREAM MAN ARE YOU EVEN SUPPOSED TO BE WHEN YOU MISS ALL THE SIGNALS THAT A GIRL JUST WANTS TO GET FUCKED?!”
“I’m sorry, my lady, have I offended thee in some manner?”
“You sure have, you stupid knight!”
It was a little bit weird hearing the same voice answer the question being asked. A little disorienting as well, but then Ran turned around and - Unconsciously wiped the corner of her mouth, not because she was drooling or anything so undignified, perish the thought. It was just that she was a little surprised to see Ataru cosplaying as Tarzan, with the rugged six pack and all.
“Hey there, cutie!” the wilder Ataru said with a cheerful, one might even call it slightly perverse, wave and grin. “Wanna come back to my place and let me rock your world?”
“Away, foul primitive!” the knightly Ataru called, drawing out his blade and stepping forward for a fight. “You shalt not interfere in my lady’s purity and -”
It’s amazing, really, how some men will just let their guard down around a pretty girl. All it took was a gentle tug on his shoulder to spin him around, and then Ran rushed her head forward to capture his stupid, chaste lips. A short little drain later, and the knight was slumped to the ground while complaining about the good old days.
“What the hell are you waiting for?!” she yelled at the other Ataru. “You better come down here and let me take you up on that promise! Right now!”
- Ran fully asserts herself over the dream, which takes a more erotic turn.
- The dream attempts to force things back on track, but Ran fights it every step.
- Meanwhile, Sakura keeps trying to change the dream she’s in, but finds it keeps returning to the same points.
- Shinobu’s dream continues from her perspective.
- Ataru plays on Shinobu’s jealousy to control the dream.
- Something else
No comments:
Post a Comment