I Just Love You ~REBORN AND UPDATED~

[Red Mage Dragon Tiamat]

*thumbs up* ^_^ great work man.

[_agz_]

Thank you, urban and Tiamat. *gives both of them boxes of pocky* Your words are most appreciated. May you live long lives and have maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaany pleasant sexual encounters. ^_^

Scene 5, Take 1!


***

Kari peered along the barrel of the water gun she held, her tongue clamped tightly in the side of her mouth and one eye closed. She was trying desperately to get her gun lined up with the little target at the bottom of the water meter before the operator could start the race. Out of one corner of her eye she could see the other kids fumbling with their guns, trying to figure out what exactly they were supposed to do with them.

She chuckled inwardly, her thumbs poised threateningly over the gun's twin buttons. She was ready to kick some ass.

In the other corner of her eye, Kari saw Tai. He was handing money over to the operator, who looked rather bemused. She didn't know it, but her brother was less than pleased with this predicament.

While half her brain was focused on keeping her gun aligned with the target, the other half dedicated itself to watching her brother, who was now standing just to the left of her, his hands in his pockets, all his weight resting on one leg. She didn't see the slightly annoyed expression on his face or the irritated tapping of his fingers against the insides of his pockets.

All she saw was her big brother, standing there and watching her. Something in her chest inflated, and she snapped both of her eyes forward. She would beat this silly little game in the name of Tai, and no one could stop her!

A head poked out from the other side of the game booth, and Kari's concentration slipped as her head automatically turned to look at the face that went with the head.

She blinked.

It was a boy, about Kari's age, with oddly pointed brown hair and equally brown eyes. He, too, was blinking, and for the same reason: both felt that, somehow, they were meeting in the wrong place and the wrong time, that they were in some way going against an unknown and unspoken rule that governed the universe.

Kari began to smile at him, then stopped. Her eyes rested on the thing in his hands.

It was a water gun of the same likeness as the one she held.

The boy was the enemy.

She narrowed her eyes at him.

He narrowed his eyes right back, and took one hand off his gun to point a single finger in her direction.

"I'm gonna beat you!" he said.

A fire, which had been slowly burning at a few twigs in the middle of a forest clearing in Kari's soul, exploded into an all-out blazing inferno. She shook her fist defiantly at the boy, a look of angry confidence on her face, and focused once again on the target.

Oh, that little boy was going *down*.

***

O_O This scene came outta nowhere.

Ah, well, that is the way things go! Huzzah!

agz

[Duce]

Nice, very good work.

[urban dream]

Ah, a change in style! An enjoyable read, and it really makes you wonder what's going to happen next...

[_agz_]

Thank you, Duce and urban dream. Urban, where do you see a style change? O_o

Scene...6? Yeah. I think it's six. Take 16.5. And...ROLLING!


***

Tai gave the operator his most withering glare as he parted with his money. The man was thin and balding, and the area between his mouth and his nose kept doing a little twitch that reminded Tai of the twitch of a rat's snout when it smells something it likes. It was both amusing and unnerving, and Tai felt himself unconsciously edging away from the guy, who was leering as he pocketed the money.

Once he felt he was at a safe distance, Tai returned his attention to his sister, and found himself startled. She was hunched over her water gun, her arms splayed at either side of her body, elbows pointing in opposite directions. He could see the muscles of her back pushing against her shirt, and the way the tendons in her neck pulled the flesh up, looking like strings caught under silk. Sweat trickled through her hair, onto the protruding tendons and down the back of her shirt. He watched these lines of liquid as they traveled across her skin, glistening in the afternoon light.

*Whoa*, he thought.

He would have said even more if he'd been able to see her face, which was even more-tightly knit than her muscles. The expression on it was caught somewhere between frothing anger and crazed determination, which made her normally sweet face look horribly vengeful. It was rage beyond her age, something heretofore never measured or even *felt* by most children her age.

All in all, she was handling it pretty well.

*I'm gonna beat ya I'm gonna beat ya I'm gonna beat ya--* her mind ranted. *Gonna beat ya gonna beat ya gonna beat ya gonna--*

*DING!*

"And they're off!" screamed the man with the rat-twitch, taking his hand off the starter bell.

Kari's thumbs were down before the bell had gotten even halfway done *DING*ing. Water jetted in a thin-yet-powerful stream from the mouth of her gun like a horizontal geyser, rushing through the air, uncaring and unseeing and unfeeling and--

--and it hit the target with a THWACK! that rang in Kari's ears longer than the bell had. Instantly the blue water in the tubular meter a few inches above began to rise, rise, RISE!

Her ears full of THWACK!, her eyes full of red, and her heart full of love, Kari fought with all her young might to keep her stream straight and true and on the target, which was barely half the size of a quarter. Through the plastic of her meter she could see the--

--ENEMY--

--little boy on the other side. He was glaring at her fiercely, his teeth gritted against one another, his eyes hidden behind a red haze that seemed to have invaded and conquered most of his upper face. The water in his own meter was less than an inch short of Kari's, and gaining. He snarled soundlessly at her and hunched even closer to his gun.

Her stream wavered and hit the paneling just to the left of the target, water splattering all over her. The boy's meter was now a mere centimeter away from catching up to her own.

Kari fought the urge to snarl back and, with titanic effort, forced herself to focus once again on the target before her. The target was all. There was nothing else. The target was all.

ALL.

The stream realigned itself with the target, and her meter jetted up in a sudden burst of manic speed that spread the gap between her and the boy and--

*DING*

Kari blinked. The THWACK! left her ears, the red dropped from her eyes (the love, however, faded gently and sweetly away), and she suddenly felt like she'd never been so relaxed and peaceful in all her life. She looked around, taking in all the disappointed kids that were shambling away, the flashing lights at the top of her meter, and the sound of Tai congratulating her. This last she latched onto immediately as she carefully pushed herself off the stool, which was a bit too high for her, and landed gracefully on the ground. She grinned up at her brother, who grinned back, and in that moment she felt that all the world was well and good.

Then someone ran up behind her and kicked her in the ass.

***


^_^ I am a mad bastard, doncha think?

If you can guess who the kid is, you get a free box of pocky. Imaginary, of course, but it's the thought that counts. ^_^

[Duce]

Good work, nicely done and to who kicked her my only guess would be the little boy on the other side that she said she was going to beat

[urban dream]

That, in my humble opinion, was the best part to date! It's extremely well written, and the tension is very well drawn out. The last sentence cracked me up, because it was so completely unexpected.

As for the style change: Well, what I meant was that up until the part before today's everything was quite peaceful and harmless. Not much happened (Kari asked Tai whether he'd take her to the fair, they went to the fair and looked around the fair) and you mostly concentrated on the characters, what they feel and think, how they move. And then, suddenly, with the introduction of the water gun game and Kari's determination to win it, strong tension and action enter the story. That's a style change of sorts in my opinion...

...oh yeah, and who kicked Kari's arse? Hmmm. Let me think.
It was...
It was...
BATMAN!!!

[Red Mage Dragon Tiamat]

your lemon's really great done, and I like your style very much. Hope to read more from you soon

[_agz_]

Thank you, Tiamat and urban!


Scene 7, take 1!


***

Kari was just hitting the top of her arc when her brain began to tell her that, yes, you WERE just kicked in the ass, and yes, you DID go flying, and yes, you ARE gonna kill that boy when you land.

It was only as the arc reached its end that Kari realized that she was not going to be landing on her feet, oh no. Her arms pinwheeled, as if she were trying to push herself backwards through the air.

She hit the ground face-first, scraping a knee and an elbow on the same side and cutting her chin open so that it gushed blood and she bit her tongue filling her mouth with bitter copper blood--

Kari groaned, and slumped on the ground.

***

Tai was just approaching his sister to congratulate her when she suddenly became airborne. He watched in startled awe as she rose up into the air, peaked, hanging in the air over the sidewalk, caught in time, and then came back down--

--HARD.

He heard her groan--a sharply agonizing sound that shook him to his bones and made his skin crawl as if made of maggots--and was there by her side, pulling her to her feet, hands unconsciously checking her for injuries--

He saw her cut chin, and anger swelled like a thunderous roar in his belly. Who would dare? Who would *dare*? How *dare*--

Tai

[Red Mage Dragon Tiamat]

...this may be the worst-written scene so far. -_-


*kicks self*

The next one WILL be better...by the power of the LEMON, I swear it WILL BE!

I see, pointing to this comment, you are not happy with your work, but it remembers me on myself. I never like my lemons too.
Anyways I think it's the right way to be successful. ^_^

The scene is not that bad you think. It's pretty good done, like the whole lemon so far, no worries, you'll make it all great. I trust in your skill