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Chapter 1 - Mifuyu's Magical Multiplying Mole

A short story I wrote for extra credit in chemistry. Mifuyu of the Supernatural Research Association gets a mole which isn't quite what it seems.

Chapter 1 - Mifuyu's Magical Multiplying Mole

Chapter 1 - Mifuyu's Magical Multiplying Mole


Mifuyu's Magical Multiplying Mole

“What a beautiful dress,” Yuki sighed, running expert fingers over the fine silk. “I can just see myself wearing this to the next school dance…”

“That would be disturbing,” Koji said.

“Why's that?” Yuki demanded.

“Well…because…because you're a guy!” Koji blustered.

Yuki Ajiadou was the Chairman of the Supernatural Phenomena Research Association, a group of five students of different classes at CLAMP Academy. He had the ability to redirect and triple kinetic energy, swapping his body and the space he was occupying with another chunk of space in a different location, teleporting him immediately from point A to point B. Needless to say, this was not exactly a normal ability; in fact, it was distinctly supernatural, meaning that Yuki was well-suited to be the Chairman of the Association.

Koji Takamura, on the other hand, was an eleven-year old sixth-grader and the youngest son of the Takamura ninja clan, a world-famous family usually hired as bodyguards for the rich and famous. Although Koji clearly had natural aptitude for the arts of his family, due to his…uh…physical limitations, he was not entirely capable of performing most of them.

Yuki sighed. “Koji, you are still such a child in many manners. You need to realize that I am a woman in all the ways that count.”

“Yeah, except for the fact that you're a guy!!” Koji expostulated.

“How rude!” Yuki exploded. “Is it my fault that I got stuck with a stupid Y chromosome? Is one random chromosome enough to stand between me and my dreams? Is a microscopic piece of DNA supposed to change anything about me?”

“In a nutshell, yes,” said Takayuki Usagiya under his breath. Takayuki was a sixteen-year old high school junior at CLAMP Academy, who was constantly attended to by Koizumi, his maid. Koizumi had been serving the Usagiya family for generations, but remained young and beautiful as always, for the simple reason that she was dead. It was Koizumi's opinion that good help may have been hard to find, but it wasn't nearly as rare as good employers, so instead of taking her chances in reincarnation she became a ghost and had stayed with the Usagiya family ever since.

Fortunately Yuki didn't hear him. Flames literally roaring about him in his emotion, Yuki brushed back his long, straight hair, took a deep breath, and climbed up on his favorite soapbox, concerning his belief that he embodied the heart and soul of womankind.

It was a well-worn topic, but one that never became farther from Yuki's heart, which was why Yuki didn't notice at first when Rion Ibuki tapped him on the shoulder.

“Chairman,” Rion said quietly, “Mifuyu-san is waving.”

Yuki snapped out of his tirade and looked at Rion. “What?”

Rion pointed. She was the second-youngest of the Association at fourteen, in her second year of middle school. She was the granddaughter of a famous Shinto priest and possessed a kind of spiritual “radar” which allowed her to sense supernatural auras. Although her spiritual skills were finely developed, the same could not be said of her social skills, which might as well have taken a permanent vacation years ago for all the socializing Rion did.

Sure enough, the last and oldest member (though you couldn't tell it by either looking at or talking to her) was waving extremely energetically to her Association from the front of a pet shop not far down the mall. Mifuyu Mizukagami was a swordswoman who never went anywhere without her legendary family blade, the Kotetsu, strapped firmly to her back, and who, unlike Koji, was able to use the martial arts of her family to their fullest potential. Unfortunately, her incredible physical growth had clearly stunted that of her intellect, because Mifuyu was about as focused and intelligent as a cream puff.

“You guys, I found the place!” Mifuyu yelled, waving a piece of paper in her other hand and nearly poking a passerby in the eye. “The place my friend told me about! C`mon, I wanna pet!”

That was the real reason the Association was in the mall this afternoon. Mifuyu had suddenly and inexplicably taken it into her head that she wanted a pet. Because Mifuyu rarely got any ideas about anything and because it took an earthquake to dislodge said ideas when they finally squeezed into her barely existing mind, the rest of the Association had given in when she insisted she wanted them all to come with her and help her choose.

“What kind of animal are you looking for, Mizukagami-san?” Takayuki asked, looking around the pet store as they entered it.

It was fantastic, as anything on CLAMP campus was likely to be. Spacious cages filled with dogs and cats of all species, ages, and sexes lined the left wall. Gerbils, ferrets, hamsters, and weasels gamboled in still more cages to the right. In the back, the cages turned to aquariums holding tropical fish, turtles, and bizarre amphibians, including (but not limited to) frogs, toads, axolotls, newts, and salamanders. The center of the store was a riot of brightly feathered birds, some singing, some squawking, and some speaking fluent Japanese. The store smelled fresh and natural and animalish.

“I'm not really sure,” Mifuyu confessed, brushing her huge and heavy braid out of her face. “I just know that ever since the Zetton incident I've felt like I wanted a pet.”

“Seeing Sakiko-chan and Zetton made you want a pet?” Koji asked.

“Yes,” Mifuyu said succinctly, looking around.

“Awwww!” Yuki squealed, looking at the left wall. “Those kittens are so cute! Get a kitten, Mifuyu-chan. They're all so cute, and when they get older, they're so magnificent! Cats always look like actors to me, just playing parts, with secrets that they hide from their owners!”

“Get a dog,” Takayuki advised. “Dogs are playful and loyal. You could use a dog to help take care of you just in case.”

“If you're inspired by Zetton, you should get a salamander,” Koji said. “Just…make sure it doesn't eat fire first.”

“I would get a bird, Mizukagami-san,” Rion said softly. “Birdsong is so beautiful, and I'm sure that if you were to buy a lark it would bring you good luck.”

Rion was big on good luck.

“No, I don't really want a bird,” Mifuyu said decisively. “And I definitely don't want something slimy like a salamander. And I'm allergic to cats and dogs…what's over here?”

“Ferrets, rats, mice—”

Yuki squeaked—he didn't like mice.

“—hamsters, gerbils, lots of furry little things basically,” Koji continued. “Martens, squirrels, and—I don't even know what that is.”

“It's an ermine,” said Takayuki.

“Not that, that,” Koji said, pointing.

That was an unusual-looking animal covered mostly in brown fur. It was lying belly-up on the soil at the bottom of its cage, to all appearances sound asleep. Its round little belly rose and fell with great force for such a small animal.

“It's a mole,” Takayuki said.

“I like the pine marten,” Yuki said. “And the ermine is—Mifuyu-chan? Mifuyu?”

Mifuyu's eyes had gone totally blank. This was not an unusual occurance, as Mifuyu's eyes reflected the state of her mind, which went blank on an average of twice a conversation, but as the other members of the Supernatural Phenomena Research Association watched, their oldest member's eyes filled to overflowing with sparkles of adoration.

“Mifuyu-chan?” Yuki waved his hands in front of the swordswoman's face. “Mifuyu. Hellooooo. Earth to Mifuyu-chan.”

“Even for her, that's pretty vacuous,” Koji said.

Suddenly Mifuyu exploded into action. She knocked Yuki, Koji, and Takayuki into a pile at Rion's feet, whipped the cage containing the sleeping mole off the shelf, and screamed over to the cash register. Before the boys of the Association could even register the knot Mifuyu had unwittingly knocked their bodies into, she was out the door and blazing trails (through people, bushes, walls, and everything else that happened to be in her way) for home.

“I'll kill her for this,” Koji threatened. “As soon as I know whose hands are mine.”

“Those are.”

“Are not, those are Yuki's!”

“OW!”

“Hey, that was my foot!”

“Whose leg is caught in my bag?”

“Rion-chan, a little help here!”

But Rion's attention was held by a ferret in a cage.

“RION!!” Yuki pleaded.

“This ferret…” Rion said darkly. “It is possessed by a spirit.”

The ferret twitched.

“I must exorcise it right away,” Rion said to herself, picking up the ferret's cage and taking it to the cash register. “How much?”

“RION-CHAAAAAN!!” Yuki screamed as Rion left the pet shop, leaving the three of them tangled on the floor without a backwards glance.

* * *

“You're so cute, yes you ar~re!!” Mifuyu sang in a little-girl voice to the mole, who had woken up after its whirlwind ride to Mifuyu's house and was now surveying its new owner with a look halfway between skeptical curiosity and total horror.

“Takayuki-kun said you're called a mole,” Mifuyu said, opening the cage door and putting her hand into the cage. “Come here, little cutie. C`mon! C`mon!”

The mole looked cautiously at the extended hand, then nosed at it. Mifuyu shrieked with giggles. The mole jumped away, looking alarmed.

“Moles. Hmm. Ooh! I need to know what moles like to do!” Mifuyu skipped to her computer, in an ecstasy of happiness. “Moles…moles…www.google.com…search for MOLES!!”

She didn't notice that she'd left the cage door open.

* * *

Rion sat in her family's temple home, wearing the traditional garb of a Shinto priestess. She was readying herself to perform an exorcism.

The possessed ferret sat opposite her, mimicking her position with an uncanny humor that was lost on the serious young priestess.

“Ha…” Rion whispered, drawing an ofuda—a piece of parchment inscribed with Shinto symbols—out of her sleeve. “Rin pyou tou sha kai—”

The ferret twitched.

“Now stay still,” Rion said crossly. “Rin pyou tou—”

The ferret suddenly went berserk. It jumped onto Rion's head and sprang off onto the wall, which it hit headfirst. This seeming not to disturb it, it scuttled up the wall sideways by two claws until it hit the ceiling and flopped down to the floor.

Rion whirled on the ferret. “Rin pyou tou sha kai jin retsu—”

The ferret recovered and spazzed out, making half of its fur go straight up and half of it lay flat. It ran madly in a circle, hit the wall, and went into reverse, zooming right between Rion's legs until it hit the brazier holding the sacred fire.

For a minute, both Rion and the ferret stood where they were, watching each other. Rion was breathing hard, holding her ofuda in one hand, holding the other in front of her like a shield. The ferret was standing with its tail fully bushed out and the rest of its fur going wavy.

For a minute they watched. Then the ferret's tail caught on fire.

For a moment, the ferret did not seem to notice. Then suddenly, as it had done everything else, the ferret went into overdrive spaz mode and zoomed straight forward. It knocked Rion off her feet, went straight up the wall, hit the ceiling, bounced off the floor back onto the ceiling, and rocketed around the room like a little bouncy ball until it splatted against the ground and was still, except for the occasional twitch.

Rion threw her ponytails out of her face. “Rin pyou tou sha—”

The ferret took off.

* * *

An hour later, Mifuyu had learned many interesting things about moles, and was beginning to feel peckish. Dinner wouldn't be for several more hours—she went into the kitchen to grab some cookies for fast energy on her mole search.

And found said mole in the cookie jar, having consumed said cookies.

“Nooo!” Mifuyu cried, pulling her satiated pet out of the jar. “No, mole! Bad mole. Don't eat cookies. They're bad for you! The Internet said!”

The mole burped.

“One of those websites said you shouldn't be given sugar,” Mifuyu said, dropping her mole onto the table and pulling a new bag of cookies out of the cupboard. “Sugar is for me. Makes me hyper. Moles aren't supposed to be hyper. At least, I don't think they are.”

Mifuyu stuffed three cookies into her mouth, dropped the rest into the cookie jar, and took her mole back into her room. She put him back into his cage, and this time made sure to lock the cage door.

“I need to give you a name,” she said. “And it has to be a good one, too. The word for mole is mogura, but you're a boy mole, so I think I'll call you…Moguro!”

This important decision made, Mifuyu returned to her Internet research. But cookies have a magnetism that draws more of their kind to them, especially inside of people's stomachs. Before long, Mifuyu went back to snag another few cookies.

Her mole was in the jar again.

“MOGURO!!” Mifuyu cried, yanking the mole out of the cookie crumbs. “I told you not to…how did you get out of your cage?”

Moguro blinked at her.

“Come on.” Mifuyu marched back to her room. “You're going back in your cage. I don't know how you got out, but—”

Mifuyu stopped dead. Moguro was still in his cage.

“But—then—” The girl stared at the mole in her hand, then the mole in the cage. Mifuyu may have been dumb, but she wasn't blind. They were both identical. They were both her Moguro.

“I think I'll have to show you to the Association,” Mifuyu said calmly to both Moguros. Then she fainted.

* * *

“No…no…stay still…no…no! No, bad ferret. No, nope, no, don't touch the lamp. No…no, not the lamp, not the sofa…no, stay away…no, bad ferret. Bad ferret! Don't touch the—”

CRASH

“Bad ferret! No carrots!”

Those are for rabbits, Rion-chan.

“Rin pyou tou sha kai jin retsu sai—no, NO! Bad ferret! Bad ferret! Don't go near that! No, no, that's quite close eno—no!”

SMASH

“No, now you just twitch right there. No moving. No, don't move. No…no…NO MOVING!!”

SHATTER

That was my grandfather's! Stay there! Stay where you are! Freeze! No, don't twitch again! Rin pyou tou sha—”

BAM!!!

* * *

“I will never forgive Mifuyu or Rion-chan,” Yuki grumbled. “Getting us tangled like that, then not even bothering to help…they've got a thing or two to learn about leaving other girls on the floor like that!”

Koji and Takayuki exchanged looks. It had taken them fourteen minutes to untangle themselves from the floor of the pet store, even with the manager, two employees, and four customers helping.

It was school now again, and the first meeting of the week for the Supernatural Phenomena Research Association. Mifuyu and Rion were both late, and Yuki was steaming.

“So rude…so impolite…SO THERE YOU ARE!!!”

Mifuyu had just come in, looking dazed. Nothing unusual there.

“Mifuyu-chan, I have a bone to pick with you!” Yuki roared.

“Chairman, you have to see this!”

Mifuyu shoved her backpack into Yuki's arms, unzipped it, and pulled out two moles, one with a pink ribbon around its neck, one with a blue ribbon around its own.

“I thought you only got one mole?” Koizumi, Takayuki's ghostly maid, adjusted her glasses and peered at the two moles. “Sir, I distinctly heard you say Mifuyu-san bought one (1) mole.”

“I did.” Takayuki looked at the moles as well. “Why did you buy another?”

“I didn't.”

“Then where did it come from?” Yuki asked, curiosity aroused.

Thin air,” Mifuyu said dramatically. “I locked Moguro—” she jiggled the blue-ribboned mole—“in his cage and went to get cookies. When I opened the jar, I found Moguro Mark Two—” she held up the pink-ribboned mole—“inside. And he ate all my cookies, too!”

Koji was not about to be drawn off the concrete paths of practical logic into the amorphous world of Mifuyu's. “Could it have snuck into your house somehow?”

“No,” Mifuyu snapped. “All the doors and windows were locked. There were no holes. No signs of forced entry. I checked. Nothing! This mole came out of thin air, I'm telling you!”

“Supernatural,” Yuki breathed.

“A supernatural mole?” Takayuki took off his glasses and wiped the earpieces with a cloth. “Unlikely, but seems like the only way to explain a mole appearing out of nowhere in your house. Where's Rion? She could check it for auras.”

“I'm afraid Rion-san is absent today, sir,” said Koizumi.

“Absent?” Yuki frowned. “Guess she's sick. Too bad…maybe we can figure it out without her.”

* * *

“FERRET!! THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE!! BREAK ANYTHING ELSE AND I SWEAR—”

WHAM

“THAT DOES IT!!! OM BAZARA DARUMA KIRI SOUKA. RIN PYO TOU SHA KAI—”

SIZZLE. SPAZ.

BANG!!!!!!!

TWITCH. TWITCH.

FERRET!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

* * *

“Without Rion-chan, we'll have to rely on you, Koizumi-san,” Yuki said cheerfully.

“Me, Yuki-san?”

“You can sense ki in things,” Yuki said. “You did with the Subway Train Monster—you could tell us it wasn't human. Maybe you can sense if there is something supernatural about these moles.”

“I will try, Yuki-san.” Koizumi puffed up somewhat, happy to be useful. She adjusted her glasses importantly and floated over to the moles. Reaching out, she prodded the pink mole with one finger.

The mole exploded. Not literally—figuratively. It multiplied, spraying copy-moles all over the clubroom, each with a pink ribbon around its neck. Soon the room was completely filled with moles.

Mifuyu, closest to the door, managed to kick it open and run outside. Yuki jumped when the moles began to multiply, and teleported away. Koji and Takayuki weren't as lucky in escaping—they were caught up by the flood of moles and carried out of the clubroom.

* * *

Miharu Takanashi, President of the Lifestyle-Monitoring Committee, was eating lunch with some of her cronies, brainstorming new ways to try and get rid of the Supernatural Phenomena Research Association. Both clubs were permanently in each other's way—the Supernatural Association existed to research, report on, and publicize the knowledge of supernatural phenomena (as implied by the name). The Lifestyle-Monitoring Committee had no problem with that, per se—however, since the Association's research invariably resulted in the destruction of school property, the Lifestyle Committee saw them as a threat to school life and constantly campaigned for their disbandment.

But even Miharu Takanashi, firmest, most stalwart partisan against the Association, never expected what happened now.

Moles burst from every nook and cranny of CLAMP school, flooding through the doors, classrooms, and windows. Fortunately, since it was lunchtime, most of the school was out in the open when the moles began to multiply in the SPRA clubroom. Therefore, instead of being crushed by the massive amount of moles, they were swept up in the tide. Miharu included.

Struggling to swim against the inexorable current of moles, but failing miserably, Miharu managed to see—far away—the unmistakable forms of Takayuki and Koji, two of the five people she detested most in the world.

“You must be behind this!” she screeched at them. “You and that association! I'll have you for this! I'll haul you up to the School Boa—”

A mole plastered across her mouth, silencing her.

* * *

Rion was resting against her wall, the ferret temporarily—and probably faking—unconscious across the room from her. In the time she had tried to exorcise it, Rion had changed her mind about the ferret. It wasn't possessed. It was Amatsu Mikaboshi himself, come to drive her to suicide or peticide, whichever came first.

There was a bang in the middle of the room. Rion screamed. But it was only Yuki, appearing as he always did when he teleported.

“Rion-chan!” Yuki gasped. “There's a problem! Mifuyu's mole, it—”

Something hit the wall.

Rion jumped up and opened the window—and moles poured in. Rion and Yuki both screamed as a tidal wave of moles washed by outside, several spilling in. Then two well-known cheeks came into view.

Koji burst into the room like a fish, gasping for breath. Koizumi and Takayuki dragged themselves in after him—Koizumi pressed over the window, using what remained of her ghostly body to knock the moles away, and Yuki slammed the window closed again, right through her.

“What's going on?!” Rion gasped.

“Mifuyu's mole!” Koji exploded. “It multiplied!”

“That explains why there were two moles in her house,” Takayuki said. “The first one multiplied.”
“Why on earth is a mole multiplying?” Rion asked.


“We don't know,” Yuki said. “It's obviously magical.”

“Mifuyu's Magical Multiplying Mole,” Koizumi suggested.

“Sounds like the title to some short story,” Takayuki grumbled.

“Sorry, sir,” Koizumi said, chastened.

“It's not your fault the thing's multiplying,” Koji said. “It's Mifuyu's. Where is she, anyway?”

“I don't know,” Yuki muttered. “She went out the door when the moles exploded. Hmm…Koizumi-san, can you find her?”

“I can try,” Koizumi said. “Sir, should I?”

“Please do,” Takayuki answered. “Mifuyu is the only one who might know how to stop the multiplying of this mole.”

“We're doomed then,” Koji muttered as Koizumi took off through the window faster than the eye could see.

* * *

Minutes later, as the SPRA cowered in Rion's house underneath the tons of moles, Koizumi found Mifuyu, clinging desperately to the top of a tree.

“Mifuyu-san!” Koizumi called.

“Koizumi!” Mifuyu shrieked, too afraid to bother with honorifics. “Help me, please!”

“I'll get Yuki-san!” Koizumi informed Mifuyu. Then she gasped. The tree Mifuyu was holding onto finally bent to the pressure of hundreds of thousands of moles belaboring it and fell over. Mifuyu, still clinging to the top, screamed bloody murder as the tree went from vertical to horizontal in a matter of moments, riding the waves of moles like a raft on the ocean.

Koizumi shot back to Rion's house, screaming, “YUKI-SAAAAAN!!!”

* * *

Mifuyu looked miserably through the branches of her tree into the mass of moles beneath. And to think, all I wanted was one cute little pet, Mifuyu thought sadly to herself. Now I still have cute little pets…about seventy gajillion of them.

In fact, Mifuyu was off on the number. Unknown to her, the moles had spread out of CLAMP school campus, flowing over Tokyo. They inundated Japan, rolled into the ocean, boiled over the water, landed in China, and spread out over Asia. One single mole was turning into a mole of moles, 6.02 times 10 to the twenty-third moles, and that was almost more moles than the world could hold.

It seemed that the moles did not need oxygen to breathe, since even when they entered the ocean or were crushed beneath tons of their comrades, they did not die. Immortal multiplying moles. This was probably the strangest thing the Supernatural Phenomena Research Association had ever encountered.

There was a pop, and suddenly Yuki was next to Mifuyu on the tree.

“Yuki!!” Mifuyu had never been happier to see him.

“Koizumi told me!” Yuki shouted, scrabbling for a handhold. “Throw me so we can teleport out of here!”

“How can I throw you?” Mifuyu demanded. “I can't stand up!”

“Just forty centimeters of movement! That's all I need to teleport! Throw me into the moles!”

Mifuyu blanched, but nodded. She grabbed the Chairman, holding him awkwardly in her arms like a child, and heaved him into the air, keeping hold of his hand. Even for Mifuyu, it was difficult to do sitting down, but she managed to get Yuki his forty centimeters.

Yuki teleported.

* * *

“Mifuyu, what did you do to make the mole multiply so much?!” Koji expostulated when Yuki and Mifuyu, both white and shaking and filled with previously unrealized mole-phobia, appeared in Rion's house.

“Nothing,” Mifuyu protested.

“When did it first multiply?” Takayuki asked sharply. “Think. When must it have been?”

Mifuyu thought. She pondered, and considered, and reflected, and cogitated, although the last made her feel queasy. “Well, I think it was after Moguro first ate my cookies—”

“Sugar,” Yuki, Takayuki, and Koizumi said at the same time.

“Sugar must act as the multiplicative catalyst,” Yuki said. “Maybe some other kind of food reverses the effect?”

“Or at least stops it,” said Koizumi.

“But what kind of food?” Rion asked.

“Salt,” Koji said at once. “Sweet and salty. Gotta be salt.”

“So do we have to feed salt to all of the Moguros at once?” Mifuyu demanded. “We can't do that! They keep multiplying! We'll never end it!”

“I think if we just feed the original Moguro salt, they should all stop,” Yuki said, but he didn't sound sure.

“How can we find the original Moguro anyway?” Koizumi asked. “I could maybe find him, but there are so many…it would take me—”

“He's on the roof,” Rion interrupted quietly.

At Yuki's last sentence, Rion had tuned her spiritual radar for moles. The copied moles she felt as a ghostly presence—the original Moguro stood out like a shout in her mind. He was above them.

The roof creaked.

“How do we feed him salt?” Koji asked. “We can't go out there! We'll be crushed!”

“We have to get him in here,” Takayuki said.

“How?!”

Yuki thought briefly and hard.

“We have to break the roof and drop him in. No, listen,” the Chairman said hurriedly, “because we don't have much time before it breaks on its own. Mifuyu, break a hole in the roof where Rion points you to. Koji, put a net over the hole right after Rion feels Moguro drop into the room. I'm going to get salt.”

“But Chairman—” Takayuki began.

Too late. Yuki had already given a skip into the air, attaining forty centimeters of height, and teleported away so urgently there was a crack like a whip as he disappeared.

The Supernatural Phenomena Research Association looked at each other, sighed, and got to work.

Mifuyu pulled her sword, the Kotetsu, from its sheath and sighted up at the ceiling. “Where, Rion-chan?”

Rion stood directly underneath the signal of Moguro and pointed. “There.” Then she ran.

Mifuyu leapt into the air and sliced open the ceiling with one smooth, powerful strike. Whatever Mifuyu lacked in brainpower (and she lacked quite a lot) she made up for in her martial arts expertise.

Moles poured in through the ceiling.

“Now!” Rion called, feeling Moguro drop into with all the others.

Koji was ready. Pulling out a net and four shuriken (ninja stars) he threw the entire confection up onto the ceiling at once. The shuriken plunged into the ceiling, fastening the net securely at all four corners over the hole—the net halted the waterfall of moles.

Now they had a pile of moles on the floor of Rion's house.

Yuki appeared with a snap, holding a salt shaker. “I hope this is enough.” He looked at the moles. “Which one is Moguro?”

Mifuyu felt trepidation. “Um. I…don't—”

“In all, to show—” Koizumi began.

That was as far as she got. The ferret exploded. Obviously “in all, to show” sounded very much like “rin pyou tou sha” to it.

The ferret went spastic all over the room and everything in it. The SPRA was in chaos.

“Stop that ferret!”

“WAAAAAAH!!”

“It knocked Yuki over!”

“Stupid ferret!”

“Get it with your sword, Mifuyu-chan!”

“It's possessed!”

“EEEEEEEEK!!!”

“YAAAAAAAHHH!!”

SPAZ. TWITCH.

“STUPID FERRET!!!!”

Mifuyu suddenly shrieked, not with anger or surprise, but with joy. “LOOK! Everyone, there's Moguro!”

Everyone, even the ferret, looked. The ferret's mad spazzing had knocked the moles all over the room. Lying on the ground, blinking innocently, was a single mole with a blue ribbon around its neck.

“The original!” Yuki exclaimed, running at the mole with the salt shaker. “Here, Moguro. Here, mole. Have the nice salt.”

Yuki upended the salt shaker on Moguro's head. The mole gulped, sneezed, and gulped again.

“Now what?” Koji asked.

He needn't have asked. As he finished speaking, Moguro began to shake.

“What did you do to my mole?!” Mifuyu demanded.

“He's going to go spastic!” Rion pulled out an ofuda.

She was almost right.

Moguro suddenly began to inhale. He inhaled with a terrible power. The other moles in the room flew into his mouth, which didn't make sense, because each mole was bigger than Moguro's mouth, but the SPRA had encountered stranger things. The net (which had been bulging dangerously with the amount of moles it was trying to hold back) fell from the ceiling, and the moles flew in through the hole and into Moguro's mouth.

Moguro kept on inhaling, and the moles kept disappearing back into him. His mole-vacuum ability seemed only to touch his copies, because none of the SPRA felt any pull at all.

It took nearly five minutes for Moguro to inhale the mole of his copy moles. Then he gulped again, burped, shook his head, and blinked at Mifuyu.

Mifuyu picked him up.

“That's the end of the copy-moles,” the swordswoman said. “Right, Moguro?”

Moguro sneezed at her and went to sleep.

“At last,” Yuki muttered.

The other members of the SPRA looked at Yuki. As they watched, he seemed to fill with life, glowing, now burning with it, until the air around him literally caught on fire.

“At last,” Yuki repeated, his voice trembling with momentum, “at long, long last, the Supernatural Phenomena Research Association has real, true, living proof that supernatural happenings do exist!! WE CAN BE RECOGNIZED AS AN OFFICIAL CLUB!!!!”

“Um, Chairman—” Mifuyu began.

But before Mifuyu could say another word, Yuki had grabbed her hand and Takayuki's. Purely by reflex, Mifuyu and Takayuki grabbed Rion and Koji's hands respectively. Yuki jumped—and they all disappeared.

* * *

Miharu Takanashi was finishing her lunch when the entire group of the Supernatural Idiots jumped out at her. She screeched and choked on her onigiri rice ball.

“Takanashi-san!” Yuki declared, striking a pose equal parts authority and seduction, his long hair crackling with energy. “We have official proof of supernatural happenings!”

What?!” Miharu choked.

“Show her, Mifuyu!” Yuki commanded.

You didn't argue with the Chairman and win. Mifuyu held up Moguro.

“This is Mifuyu's Magical Multiplying Mole!” Yuki proclaimed with the air of an Oscar-winning actress delivering the most dramatic line of a movie. “It is responsible for the mole of moles that was covering the earth just moments a—”

Amendment to an earlier statement. You didn't argue with the Chairman and win…unless you were Miharu Takanashi.

“WHAT TRIPE ARE YOU FULL OF NOW, AJIADOU-SAN?!?!?!” Miharu exploded. “There WERE no moles on this campus until you brought this one, and there were certainly no moles covering the earth! A mole of moles. How ridiculous!! If you keep this up, I'll have you all sent to an insane asylum!!!”

And glaring roundly at all of the Supernatural Phenomena Research Association but at Yuki in particular, Miharu shoved the last of her onigiri into her mouth and walked away with her nose in the air.

The SPRA stared after her in silence.

“Umm…what just happened here?” Rion ventured.

“Look,” Takayuki said. “Nothing's broken. After the moles started multiplying, they would have crushed something beneath themselves. But…”

Mifuyu pointed. “That's the tree I was on when Koizumi-san found me. But…now it's whole.”

“It is, sir,” Koizumi said, confused.

Yuki was quiet, frozen in his pose, as he had been ever since Miharu's tirade. Now he brushed a lock of hair out of his face and said reflectively, “I don't think Takanashi-san was trying to freeze us out. I think she really doesn't know what we're talking about.”

“But she was there!” Koji protested. “She yelled at Takayuki-san and me!”

“There's only one thing I can think of that answers those criteria,” Yuki said, deflating back to normal. “When Moguro sucked up all those copy moles, he sucked all the buildings and everything back to normal; and somehow he sucked away everyone's memories of it too.”

“I guess that's good,” Rion said. “Otherwise the entire world would be wondering about the mole of moles.”

“But that means we're still unofficial!” Koji protested.

“Think, Koji-kun,” Takayuki said. “Would you rather the moles were gone and we are still unofficial, or do you want to feed Moguro sugar again and deal with another mole of moles?” The tall boy frowned. “Wait a minute. That didn't come out right.”

But he got his point across. Just thinking about another mole of moles made Koji blanche.

“I think I'd take my chances with the moles,” Yuki grumbled.

“YUKI-SAN!!!!” the rest of the SPRA yelled, terrified.

“I'm joking,” Yuki said. “It's just so irritating…we were so close this time.”

“There'll be other weird happenings,” Takayuki said. “There always have been so far, anyway.”

“It'll be okay,” Rion said. “I'll pray for our good fortune.”

“By the way,” Mifuyu said, shoving Moguro into Yuki's face, “what are we doing with Moguro? Can I keep him? I bought him. I wanna keep him. He's cute, even if he is potentially a weapon of mass destruction.” Everybody blanched, thinking of it that way, but Mifuyu wasn't done. “CanICanICanICanI, PLEEEEEEEAAAAAAASSSSE?!?!?!?!?!?!”

Yuki looked at Mifuyu's huge, melting eyes, which seemed to expand like seas, and agreed, more because Mifuyu was still holding the Kotetsu in her other hand than because he trusted Mifuyu to keep Moguro safe.

“Just keep him away from sugar, okay Mifuyu-san?” Koji intervened.

Mifuyu didn't hear him. She was dancing away towards her house singing, “I'm hungry Moguro! What should I have? Ooh, you think some chocolate cake? How `bout apple pie a la mode? Flan? Trifle? Pudding? What kind? Moguro, you're so CU~UTE!!”

The Supernatural Phenomena Research Association looked at each other, and at one accord, they all fainted dead away.


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theWriter on August 20, 2006, 8:32:11 AM

theWriter on
theWriterIan...This was absolutely adorable. I can't express it...All the time I was reading this I was smiling. And though moles are rather...homely...you pulled off the "awwww" factor quite well. My only complain it at the end with the "CanIcanIcanI"....Though I do understand where you're coming from, it looks a little bit odd on paper. And the "cuut~te". The hyphen thingy probably works the best.

Otherwise?

Great. A original and fun read.

This is the first going on my favorite list in a helluva long time. :D

omiyage_umi on June 20, 2006, 7:35:18 PM

omiyage_umi on
omiyage_umiWow... now i have finally read the story that you explained to me at least five times... but now i forgot what does it have to do with science again >_< i get the feeling there's a pun in the word mole but i might be wrong also i think i need your phone number cuz i already miss you and sarah and it's sad that you're moving at least i can keep in touch through fan art central...recently i've noticed that the friends i make unique bonds with in a short time leave... also what happened to your other stories i still can't find mine i'm rambling again i haven't posted or commented in a while is prob'ly why I should really get some sleep i have summer school to go to and i'm sick AGAIN yeah sleeps sounds nice OH AND I ALSO SAW ALL 26 EPS. OF EXCELL SAGA SHE DOES TALK FAST I DON'T MIND HYATT BUT MY SISTER DOES we both cried when LORD IL PALAZZO shoots Excell in the near end eps. but then i cried tears that were a mixture of get over it it's an anime and joy when they both fell down the trap door BUT THE VERY LAST EPISODE SCARED ME I WAS SHOCKED AFTERALL... GEEZ anywho i should go to bed BUT FIRST watermelon i need to eat watermelon...-_- no really i do i'll go raid my fridge......................................
THE EVILNESS THAT IS A FOODLE HA YOU THOUGHT IT WAS OVER THE CARD GAMES THE CARD GAMES THAT IS WHERE THE FOODLE LURKS ^_0 ^-^ ......CHUDLES