ATF Saga II: GTO – Onizuka’s Code
Just after
“Excuse me,” Jaynin said, pleasantly but a bit distractedly. “Can I log in?”
“J-just a second! Heeheeeheee!!” Jaynin looked at her, now clapping her hands to her mouth in a vain attempt to stop giggling, and he was about to inquire what could possibly be so funny until he noticed the two discarded high-heeled shoes on the floor a short distance away from her chair. That made what was really going on painfully obvious. With an exasperated sigh, Jaynin hit the bottom panel of the desk with the side of his foot.
A surprised yelp came from underneath the desk followed by the thunk! of a human head hitting the shelf. Quickly the secretary, still giggling, pushed herself away from the desk, rolling far enough away to reveal that her feet were bound together. She set to work on freeing herself while the culprit crawled out from underneath with his now bruised noggin.
“What was that for?” Liger complained, standing up and rubbing his head. “That hurt.”
“Some of us still need to log in,” Jaynin replied. “Besides, don’t you think we’ve pestered her enough?”
Liger was about to respond before getting thwapped by a high heel. “This isn’t the first time you’ve done this,” she said in a tone of businesslike irritation. “Honestly, how can I do my job if you people will never leave me alone? And don’t you even start,” the secretary said warningly to Jaynin, putting her other shoe back on and straightening her slightly mussed bow. “You’re not innocent either.” With a yelp, Liger hobbled away clutching his shin as the secretary finished her preening and slid back to her computer. “Now. Login procedure for Jaynin……done. You’re now logged in. Have a nice day.” The last was delivered with a somewhat exasperated sigh.
Jaynin shrugged, getting back to the business of rereading his new script. Before heading up to the Stories floor, he decided to make a quick stop at the food court and pick up a snack. As he entered the store, the entry chime sounded again.
“Good afternoon,” she clerk said, smiling pleasantly. Jaynin bought a small bag of pretzels and a soda, paying for them without paying attention to the clerk and chatting as he usually did. When he left the store he was hit square in the face with a potato.
“POTATOES WILL RULE THE WORLD!” RulerOfDragons proclaimed loudly, wearing a sack of potatoes on his back and tossing them around the room completely at random. “BOW DOWN TO THE POTATOES!”
“CHEESE WILL RULE THE WORLD!” ILoveCheese countered, throwing wedges of cheese to counter RoD’s potato barrage. What resulted was a complete and total mess, with burst potatoes, squashed cheese and combinations of both all over the floor. The poor secretary cringed behind her desk, trying to log AW in as the gastronomic ammunition flew through the air.
“I shall return!” RoD yelled when his potato sack was empty, crashing through the glass façade of the ATF Building™ and running away. ILC spotted AW and ran over to him as he grumbled, still in his nightgown and looking like his mind was still asleep.
Next to the food store was the maids’ quarters. The ATF kept a staff of maids on call since messes that were non-destructive did not activate the building’s auto-regen capability and thus remained a mess until cleaned up. Unlike most quarters, though, this one had a steel security shutter and combination padlock on the door. The reason for this became obvious when two maids, both catgirls, quietly slipped outside dressed in rather attractive maids’ clothing. They knew that they could become targets as easily as the secretary had. However, to the last of them, they agreed that the hefty monthly stipend for wearing the maid costume was well worth the trouble.
When the path was clear enough to walk to the elevators, Jaynin did so, pressing the button to take him to the Stories floor. Fortunately this time the elevator ride was nice and quiet, with no explosions or anything like that to –
CRASH! “Kyahahaha… come out, HDS-san, I want to PLAY!” There was the sound of multiple people landing atop the roof of the elevator car, followed by an insane Haruko-type laugh. The identity of one of the people was confirmed when a purple guitar crashed through the roof of the elevator car. Jaynin crouched and looked upwards, sure that Raichyll and HisDivineShadow were warring again, likely over nothing at all.
“Foolish human, do you think that a mere musical instrument can defeat the Lord of Shadows?” Thereupon followed another crash, followed by two more as the wildly swinging guitar blew holes in the walls of the elevator shaft before they both leapt off the elevator car into some other floor to fight in. Fitfully, the elevator ascended to the 7th floor, the Stories section. As Jaynin walked out of the car, the shaft filled with black lightning, obliterating the elevator car itself and obscuring the figure that whizzed down the shaft, laughing evilly.
“Lucifer! Stop that! Get back here NOW!” Andy yelled, chasing Lucifer on his destructive rampage down the elevator shaft.
Jaynin was merely thankful that he had escaped with his hide intact and walked down the hall towards the Plot Generator. As he turned a corner, he heard a knock.
“I’m writing, dammit. The next story will be finished soon. I promise. And it’ll be a TK one this time.”
Chibi snickered and waited for the litany to end, then knocked on the door again.
“I’m writing, dammit.” Jaynin shook his head and walked by Bridge’s office. “The next story will be finished soon. I promise. And it’ll be a TK one this time.”
Chibi knocked on the door again.
“I’m writing, dammit…” Jaynin heard as he took another corner. Finally, he arrived at the quietly humming Plot Generator room and went inside.
Scanning the story into the device took only a few minutes, then a light and “OK” flashed on the main screen. That meant Jaynin could travel to the dimension he wished and see the plot he’d written out take form… he opened a portal, and stepped inside.
Ekichi Onizuka was half-awake at the first bell of the day. “Oh man, is it morning already?” He yawned. “I stayed up too late last night playing games… I knew I should have stopped when I started hallucinating about Fuyutsuki being in the game…”
The chimes rang again, signifying first period, and Onizuka grudgingly got up and began to dress. “Oh damn, I missed another faculty meeting. Oh well, not like they ever say anything important at those, and all Uchiyamada does is yell at me.” He lit a cigarette and headed down to the homeroom of Class 3-4.
As seemed to be the case at the moment, about half of the class was for Onizuka and the other half was still trying to get him fired or force him to quit in some way. Those who were with Onizuka were principally Yoshikawa, Kikuchi, Kunio and his cohorts, and Tomoko. Still against Onizuka was mainly Miyabi, along with her cohorts. This morning, they were again plotting against Onizuka, but having run into a wall as of late as their most effective measures had been short-circuited by either Onizuka’s skill or more likely his sheer luck.
“What are we going to do, Miyabi?” one of her underlings asked. “We’re running out of options to try. With Kikuchi on that bastard Onizuka’s side now, our best plan of attack is gone, and Kunio and his gang of losers are probably on his side too.”
“As well as Tomoko,” another pointed out coldly.
“She was too stupid to be of help,” Miyabi replied in kind. “All her nutrients went to her boobs instead of her brain, the stupid cow.” The cow in question was endowed with an F-cup chest at the age of 14 and probably could have been useful in implicating Onizuka in a sexual harassment charge had she not been so damned slow in the head. She had even told the pervert it was OK to touch her chest when she’d botched the gym-shorts-heist plan.
“I still think that Kikuchi had the right idea before he turned traitor,” Miyabi went on. “The key to getting into Onizuka’s head is that other teacher, Fuyutsuki. We can use her against him.”
“But how?” the cohort with glasses asked. “Because Kikuchi blew it, she’ll believe him over any kind of rumor or story we try to make up now. And…”
“Leave that to me,” Miyabi replied. “I hear the girls in Fuyutsuki’s class definitely want to teach her a lesson. I think we’ll be able to come to some sort of agreement…”
“Shh!” someone hissed as Onizuka strolled into the room, smoking as usual. He put out his cigarette on his shoe and opened his roll book to begin taking roll.
Miyabi started to make her move at lunchtime that day. Feeling out the dissident girls in Fuyutsuki’s class, she gathered them together and began to work on a plan with them. The girls were all too eager to cooperate, displeased as they were with the boys’ evident attention on her during classtime.
“Perfect,” Miyabi said to her cohorts later in the day. “The first phase will take place just after school today.”
“What are we gonna do?” one of them asked.
“We’re not going to do anything, so to speak. We’re going to let the girls from Fuyutsuki’s class to the real work here. We just have to make sure no one puts their nose in where it’s not wanted.” Miyabi grinned coldly. “Once that’s done, Fuyutsuki’s sure to go running to Onizuka. And her ‘teacher’s pride’ won’t let her say how she was totally trounced by her students.”
“But if they beat her up, won’t that just make Onizuka mad? Remember what he did to Anko? He tied her up and spanked her!”
“That’s the beauty of this,” Miyabi said. “What they’re going to do won’t even leave a mark, but when they’re done, Fuyutsuki will be out of her mind.” When the others looked at her uncomprehendingly, Miyabi explained the plan.
After classes, Fuyutsuki was headed outside when she noticed a sign hung on the door she usually took to get outside. “Please use locker room exits” it directed her with an arrow pointing in the direction of the nearby gymnasium and its exits. “I wonder what could be going on?” Fuyutsuki wondered to herself. Nevertheless, she did not question the sign and headed off in the direction of the girls’ locker room.
Miyabi peeked around the corner. “She fell for it. Excellent.” Waving her cohorts forward, she said, “All we have to do is keep people from sticking their noses into the girls’ locker room until they’re done with the first phase. Got it?” The other two nodded and headed off to cover the other entrances to the girls’ locker room. Miyabi waited just long enough to take down the fake sign before she took up her place, leaning casually against the wall next to the door.
“What? This door is locked…?” Fuyutsuki said, coming to the door the girls usually used to head out to the athletic fields for gym class and finding it refusing to budge. “That’s odd. I wonder why the door would be locked if they were using it as a detour…?”
“That’s because there wasn’t any detour,” sneered a female voice. Fuyutsuki turned around to see several girls from her class. Instantly she knew that they’d tricked her into coming this way for a reason.
“Is there a problem?” she asked calmly, in a futile attempt to dissuade them from whatever it was they were about to do. “Can I help you girls with something?”
“Look, she’s doing her cute act again,” one girl said disparagingly. “No wonder all the boys start drooling whenever she comes into the room.”
“She leads them on. I bet that she likes all the attention.”
“Teachers shouldn’t be competition. They should teach the lessons and keep their noses out of student business.”
“I… I…” Fuyutsuki stammered, getting the feeling that whatever they were planning was going to be a lot worse than being in a bathroom stall and doused with a bucket of water. “Hey! What are you doing? I am a teacher! Keep your hands off – “
“You’re no teacher!” the girl who was acting as ringleader sneered. “We’re going to have a little encouragement session to help you remember your role!” She snapped her fingers, and they set to work.
Outside, Miyabi could faintly hear the protestations of Fuyutsuki and the derisive laughter of the girls. She snickered. “That’s right… you get her nice and worked up. When Onizuka finds her…” A cool grin curved the corners of her mouth upwards. A sudden footstep caused her to snap out of her daydreaming. “Who’s there!”
“Oh, Miyabi-chan!” Tomoko said, waving. “I was looking for Miss Fuyutsuki. Mr. Onizuka wanted me to return something that she’d lost. Did you see where she went?”
Miyabi waited for a few beats before answering. Tomoko was dumb enough to believe whatever stupid sugar story she spun and go looking elsewhere. But she was starting to realize that standing guard out here was going to be fairly boring, and if she played her cards right, she could land herself some entertainment in the form of this stupid bimbo. And apparently she’d forgotten that Miyabi had told her never to speak with her again. Well, in that case… “No, I haven’t, Tomoko. What did Onizuka tell you to give her?”
“Miss Fuyutsuki dropped one of her books leaving class today,” Tomoko said. She didn’t realize that the book she was holding was one of Onizuka’s and there was a note tucked inside of the front cover. Presumably a note asking Fuyutsuki for a date. “Tomoko saw her come this way. Are you sure you didn’t see her, Miyabi?”
“No, but I’m pretty sure she’ll come by this way to leave the building,” Miyabi said. “While we wait for her, do you want to play a game with me?”
“A game? Yay! What kind of game?” Tomoko asked, flinging her arms up in joy and coincidentally letting the book fly out her arms and skid into the hall.
“Well, first of all… come in here,” Miyabi said, sliding open the door to a gym equipment room and flicking on the light switch. Unused equipment was neatly stacked waiting for the time when it would be pulled out. But it was a quiet, secluded place, and that was what mattered. “First, I want you to sit down here…”
Meanwhile, inside the locker room, the girls had succeeded in tying Fuyutsuki to a bench with jump ropes that they used in class, arms together and tied over her head, ankles also tied that way. She struggled and was considering a rather shameful scream for help when the ringleader produced a roll of duct tape and taped her mouth shut. “That’s to make sure no one interrupts us,” she said, laying the roll aside. “You won’t need to speak for this lesson, Teacher. Just nodding yes or no will do just fine.”
Fuyutsuki tried to call for help then, but only a muffled sound came out of her mouth. The assembled girls snickered. “Now then,” the leader went on, “first things first. We want to teach you a lesson for being such a tease to the boys.”
[i]But I’m not a tease![/i] Fuyutsuki wanted to protest. She couldn’t. They wouldn’t believe her, and she couldn’t make a sound. Still, that didn’t explain why they were taking off her shoes… what could they be planning to…
“Oh, good!” a girl kneeling at Fuyutsuki’s feet said gleefully when the teacher let out a muffled yelp and wiggled on the bench in reaction to her gentle stroke. “She’s ticklish here.”
“She’s VERY ticklish,” the one at her waist said, tapping her nails on Fuyutsuki’s wiggling belly through the fabric of her shirt. “And we haven’t even done anything yet.”
Fuyutsuki tried to protest with a frantic squeal as she saw the girl standing near her head wiggle fingers near her underarms. The touch resulted in an almost-audible squeal of giggling. “Good. Very good,” the leader said. “Now, let’s start teaching our teacher a lesson that we’ve prepared…”
“Why am I doing this, Miyabi?” Tomoko asked uncertainly, sitting with her arms overhead and perched on a vaulting horse.
“The point of the game is to see if you can stay like that, with your arms up,” Miyabi said, a sly smile beginning to form on her face.
“Okay, but I don’t see how this is a – OH! HEehheheehehehheeh Tomoko’s ticklish, Miyabi-chaaaaan!!!” Tomoko brought her hands down in an attempt to cover her sides.
“There wouldn’t be much point to the game if you weren’t,” Miyabi explained patiently. “Now come on, Tomoko.”
“Okay!” she cried, throwing her arms up and behind her head in a too-bubbly burst of energy, not coincidentally making her chest bounce in a manner sure to attract all males within a hundred yards. The temporary shadow of irritation that crossed Miyabi’s face was quickly replaced by the glee of tickling this dimwitted bimbo. It was something to pass the time, and not anything she’d report to that bastard Onizuka.
“Now let’s try again, Tomoko…” Miyabi started to dance her nails on Tomoko’s sides, making the girl cry out in a bubbly cascade of giggling that had probably been taught to her by the agency that she did commercials for.
“Hahahahahahhaa hahaahhaah eheheheheheh!!! Nyahahahahahahahahah!!!” Tomoko bounced giddily on her seat, shaking her head back and forth and up and down, squirming about on the vaulting horse but staying in the same spot as she had been told. Pleased with this, she slowly made her way into the big-chested girl’s underarms, and got an even better response. “AHAHAHAHAAHHAHHA!!! HEHEHEHEEHEHEHEHE MIYABI!!! THAT SPOT’S THE MOST TICKLISH!!! HEEHEHEHEHEH!!!”
“You’re doing a good job so far!” Miyabi said, keeping her snickering to herself and watching the girl try not to cover herself for no other reason than she’d been told not to. “Keep it up!”
Fuyutsuki, by contrast, wasn’t laughing quite so hard or as loud, both due to the fact that she had been gagged and the fact that the girls were teasing her, making her wait for the worst to come.
After tickling her through her socks and shirt for a few minutes, giggling at her squirming attempts to get free and her muffled protestations, the leader decided it was time to get serious. “Now then! This time we’re gonna make sure that you never lead the boys on again!” And to her dismay Fuyutsuki saw the girl at her feet whisk her socks off, exposing her soft feet to the cool locker room air, and the girl at her stomach rolled her shirt back so that her trim belly was visible, and worst of all, the girl at her underarms was sliding her fingers into Fuyutsuki’s shirtsleeves, something that tickled all by itself and made her squirm a great deal.
“She’s squirmin’ like a worm on a hook!” the girl in charge of tickling Fuyutsuki’s underarms said delightedly. “C’mon! Let’s get started!” She began to lightly rake her nails up and down in Fuyutsuki’s hollows, causing the teacher to arch her back off the bench momentarily. The leader had been waiting for this moment to arrive, and quickly slid a gym bag filled with clothes underneath her. Now Fuyutsuki was trapped in a slightly arched position, making her midriff a deliciously vulnerable target for the girl who was stationed there. She wasted no time in digging her fingers into Fuyutsuki’s sides, eliciting another muffled scream of laughter.
Now Fuyutsuki was being tickled in her two most sensitive spots, and the tickling already threatened to drive her mad. The girl at her feet hadn’t even started yet, but the ticklish tingly feeling raced through her body from underneath her arms and along her sides, closing her eyes almost by reflex and laughing helplessly into the tape which muffled most sound.
The girl at Fuyutsuki’s feet had been struck with a rather clever idea. Reaching into her own gym bag, she rooted around and came up with a hairbrush that she usually used to straighten out her hair after running around on the track during class. Then, with one hand, she managed to get under Fuyutsuki’s wildly wiggling toes and pry the toes on one foot backward, keeping her foot nicely smoothed out and her toes exposed. The mere act of her toes being touched just made her giggle harder, and it was a veritable explosion of laughter when the soft brush ran underneath her toes.
“That’s it, girls! Just like that! Let’s keep this up for a few minutes and then we’ll see if she’s willing to learn her lesson!” Nodding and smirking, the girls continued to tickle and tease the trapped Fuyutsuki, reveling in every squeal, giggle and squirm they could wring out of her sensitive body.
Outside in the hall, Yoshikawa, after finishing his daily tutorial in Playstation games with Onizuka, was headed for home. (Author’s Note: A quick experiment revealed that MICROSOFT Word accepts “Xbox” as a legitimate word, but not “Playstation”.) Along the way he happened to notice the “dropped” book that Tomoko had left behind when Miyabi had convinced her to go and play. “Isn’t this the book with the note that Onizuka wanted to give to Fuyutsuki? Didn’t he give that to Tomoko?” Yoshikawa looked around but could find no sign of Tomoko. “I guess I’d better give this back to Onizuka…” With a sigh, he turned around and started heading back up to Onizuka’s rooftop dwelling.
“Ya forget somethin’, Yoshikawa?” Onizuka asked around his cigarette, still absorbed in his game.
“No, but I found this in the hall.” Yoshikawa handed over the book with the note inside of it.
“Oh crap! You mean Tomoko didn’t give this to Fuyutsuki like I asked her to?” Yoshikawa just shook his head. “Aww dammit, now I have to go find her myself. She’s probably already at home – where did you find this, Yoshikawa?”
“It was near the exit by the gymnasium… near the door to the girls’ locker room…”
“I’d better go down there then. She might have locked herself in a storage closet or something.” Sighing, Onizuka took the book and jumped down the stairs, two at a time.
“NAHAHAHHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAH EHEEHHEEH!!! OH PLEASE MIYABI-CHAAHAHHAAHHAHAHAHAHAAAAN!!!” Tomoko was wildly shaking with laughter now as Miyabi, having hoisted herself up onto the horse, had taken one of Tomoko’s feet into her lap and was now tracing her fingernail in a slow circle all over Tomoko’s sole. Remarkably, she was still trying to keep still for Miyabi, and she relished it.
“I should probably go and check outside to see if anything’s wrong,” she mused to herself. “Okay, Tomoko, you’ve done so well, I’m going to give you a break now. You just sit here and don’t move, okay?”
“Okay! Yay!” Tomoko squealed in delight, still giggling some as she settled down. Miyabi slid off the vaulting horse and, slipping out into the hall, quietly walked to the corner and peeked around it.
“Okay… I think she’s learned the lesson, girls,” the ringleader of the girls tormenting Fuyutsuki said. “Now then, teacher, are you going to promise not to tease the boys anymore?” Fuyutsuki did the only thing she could, nodding as fast as possible. “And you’re not to tell anyone of this. Especially not Onizuka.”
The girls giggled at her obviously servile gesture and smirked at one another. “I dunno, how about we give her a little after-class help…?”
Miyabi burst through the doors at that time. “Break it up,” she said breathlessly, “Onizuka and Yoshikawa are coming!” The girls quickly got up and scattered, fleeing the scene before Onizuka could find any of them. If he saw anyone doing something to Fuyutsuki, he’d probably thrash them to hell and back, regardless of the consequences. The leader only stopped long enough to take the tape off of Fuyutsuki’s mouth and flee.
“This storage closet is open. I wonder who – Tomoko?” Onizuka asked in disbelief as he came upon the storage closet. “Tomoko, what are you doing in there?”
“Miyabi and I are playing a game!” she said. “She went off to let me have a break.”
“Tomoko, Miyabi isn’t around here anywhere,” Yoshikawa said. “You’ll be waiting forever if you wait for her to come back.”
“Oh, she left? She must have forgotten. Oh well.” Tomoko put her sock and shoe back on and joined Onizuka.
“Now Tomoko, why didn’t you give this book to Fuyutsuki like I asked?”
“Oh! Sorry Teacher, I forgot! I couldn’t find her and then I found Miyabi and she wanted me to play and…”
“Never mind,” Onizuka cut her off. “We’ve got to give this to her.”
“Someone?” Fuyutsuki called out once she was reasonably sure the girls were gone. “Can someone help me?”
“Ah! Fuyutsuki!” Onizuka yelled, tossing the book aside and charging into the girls’ locker room. “Fuyutsuki! What happened? Why are you…” Onizuka looked around the room frantically as Yoshikawa and Tomoko trotted in after him and started to free Fuyutsuki.
“Are you all right?” Onizuka demanded when he was satisfied that no one was around for him to vent on. “Why were you tied up like that? What did they do to you?”
“What? Oh – nothing,” Fuyutsuki said quickly with a blush. “Just some students playing tricks. I’m all right. Really. There’s no need for you to worry.”
The next day, Onizuka’s homeroom class was abuzz with gossiping about the events of the previous day.
“Did you hear? They found Miss Fuyutsuki in the girls’ locker room the other day, tied to a bench!”
“Nothing was wrong with her and she wouldn’t say what had happened?”
“Yeah, it was really strange, and Onizuka started to freak out!”
Miyabi smiled slightly. Perfect, this was all going according to her plan. Now, to see if Onizuka had played his role as she’d predicted he would…
“Actually, if you ask me,” Yoshikawa said, “when I found the book that Onizuka told Tomoko to give to Fuyutsuki, I could have sworn I heard somebody laughing!”
“Oh, that was me!” Tomoko broke in. “Miyabi-chan and I were playing a game and she was tickling me. I was laughing a lot! It was so hard to sit still!”
“Bah,” Urumi Kanzaki said, breaking into the conversation. “That’s no big deal. I don’t see why you’re so scared of being tickled.”
“But Tomoko’s very ticklish!” she protested, hugging herself.
“Look, what you’re so freaked out about is nothing more than an involuntary reaction caused by light stimuli on particularly sensitive areas of the body. Come on, how is that really supposed to be ‘torture’ of any kind?” she finished with a derisive chuckle.
Onizuka slid the door open then, looking like he’d been hit by a truck. He was smoking again, not unusual for him, but today when he tried to crush the cigarette on his heel he dropped it into the trash can by mistake, which caught on fire. It took Onizuka a moment to even notice the fire, and he was still standing there dumbly when Kikuchi blasted the burning trash can with the fire extinguisher.
“Onizuka, what is the matter with you?” he asked, putting the extinguisher back. “Have you lost your wits or something?”
“Didn’t sleep all night… had to… urp… guard Fuyutsuki’s apartment…” he fell face-first onto his desk with a crash, causing the students to start laughing. Even Miyabi laughed, but for a different reason.
[i]Onizuka, I have you now…[/i] A few more nights of constant vigil at Fuyutsuki’s door would break him.
“Scuse me… urp… one minute, class.” Onizuka shambled off to the school store and guzzled a number of energy drinks. “There now… I feel better already! Amazing what those things can do for you.”
“If you drink that many at once, you’ll start to ruin your health,” Urumi said with a knowing half-grin on her face.
“Shut up. I know that. Anyway, what were you talking about when I got in here? An involuntary stimuli on reactions that…”
“I was merely explaining to Tomoko why she didn’t need to be so afraid of being tickled – “
“But Tomoko’s TICKLISH!” she wailed. “VERY!”
“And I suppose you aren’t, Miss Kanzaki?”
“It’s not a matter if I am or not,” she said. “It’s entirely in the mind. I can choose not to be bothered by it. I’ll show you.” Urumi stood and walked to the front of the class, then stood before Onizuka’s desk with her arms raised. “Go on, try it. I’ll prove that I can ignore it. Don’t you believe me? Okay, watch this then.” She put her foot on the desk and started untying her shoe. “I know what you’re thinking, Onizuka.”
“And what’s that?” Onizuka said, staring impassively.
“You’re thinking that I’m not ticklish at all and just doing this to make you look stupid.”
“The thought had occurred to me,” Onizuka replied. “And I still don’t get what you’re doing.”
“Then watch.” Urumi laid her shoe neatly on the floor and rolled her sock inside it, then propped her bare foot on Yoshikawa’s desk. “The truth of the matter is, Onizuka, I’m rather ticklish myself. Go on, Yoshikawa.”
Yoshikawa hesitated, feeling slightly foolish and unsure of himself. “Um… Kanzaki…”
“Just do it, Yoshikawa,” Urumi said with some impatience. With a sigh, Yoshikawa tentatively stretched a finger out and traced a tiny circle on her sole. The reaction was immediate. Urumi Kanzaki, child prodigy, IQ over 200, started giggling like a little girl.
“How do I know you’re not faking it?” Onizuka asked, still unmoved.
Kikuchi adjusted his glasses and peered at her face. “Her reactions appear to be genuine…”
Kunio shoved Yoshikawa out of the way and took his seat. “Man, you suck! It’s simple, really. Watch me do it!” He suddenly attacked Urumi’s soles with all five of his fingers. Urumi gave a reflexive squeal of laughter and a jerk, and an equally reflexive kick in the face to Kunio.
Kikuchi nodded. “I think it’s authentic.”
“I allowed myself to react that time,” Urumi explained, shifting herself around and propping her bare foot on Onizuka’s desk now. “It’s all in the mind. This time, I won’t react.” Shrugging, Onizuka tapped an unlit cigarette from his carton, and flipping it around, traced the end along Urumi’s arch.
“Whoa…” Kunio gasped. “Not even a flinch. Is she holding it back?”
Urumi shrugged, her face perfectly normal and even. “Like I said, I’m choosing not to react. It’s that simple. If you just think about what it is that’s happening, you can ignore it.”
“That’s odd,” Kikuchi said. “It’s as if she became completely not ticklish at all…”
“Weird, man,” one of Kunio’s friends piped up. “It’s like she’s made of ice or somethin’.”
Onizuka flipped the cigarette into the trash can. “Well, Miss Kanzaki, I think you’ve made your point.” He grinned sardonically. “I concede the argument to you.”
In the back of the room, Miyabi’s mind had gone into race mode. It was no coincidence that this should come up. Somehow, Onizuka knew what had happened… and had set this whole demonstration up as a way to point out to her that he knew. She gritted her teeth. There was still hope. Just because he knew didn’t mean that he could stop it… That was it! Fuyutsuki must have told him what had happened, and now…
Fuyutsuki was still looking a little pale and apprehensive as her teaching period approached. She wondered if the girls in her class would be satisfied with yesterday’s antics, or if they’d find tormenting her too fun a pastime to give up so easily…
“Hey there Fuyutsuki. What’s wrong? Are you still freaked out about what happened yesterday?” Onizuka asked, tossing his books onto his desk as he strolled into the faculty room.
“Oh! Mr. Onizuka! No, I’m… just feeling a bit ill, that’s all. I’m perfectly all right. You don’t need to worry.”
“Fuyutsuki, why won’t you tell me what happened yesterday?”
“It’s nothing at all, Mr. Onizuka! Just a little bit of mischief by some students…” She looked away, a bit ashamed.
“Hmm…” Onizuka crouched, smoking his cigarette as he usually did when deep in thought. Then his head came up. “Miss Fuyutsuki, when you were leaving yesterday, did you happen to see Miyabi from my class?”
“Oh… why, yes I did,” Fuyutsuki recalled. “She was a little ways behind me. She must have been headed for the same exit that I did but took a different detour to get out…”
“Ah ha.” Onizuka smacked his fist into his palm. “I think I know what’s going on now. Didn’t you say before that the girls in your class had been playing tricks on you?”
“Well, yes, but – “
“I know exactly what happened. Don’t worry, Miss Fuyutsuki, I’ll have it all take care of before today’s class is over.” He grinned. “Miyabi knows about Onizuka’s Code – an eye for an eye, a butt for a butt.”
“Wh-what?” Fuyutsuki asked, a little startled.
“Never mind. You just go get ready to teach class, okay?” He strolled away, musing to himself. “You put those girls up to this, didn’t you? You thought you could use Fuyutsuki to get to me… Well, teacher’s got a lesson plan for you.”
That day, after class, Fuyutsuki headed for the normal exit, which she gratefully noted was not out of order today. But her rather eager strides for the door were rudely interrupted when the girls who had trapped her yesterday, plus Miyabi, slipped out of a storage room to accost her.
“G-girls…” Fuyutsuki began, taking a step back.
“You spilled, didn’t you?” Miyabi asked. “You told Onizuka what happened.”
“Didn’t we tell you to keep your mouth shut and not tell anyone?”
“I guess yesterday’s lesson didn’t sink in as well as we thought it had. I guess we’ll have to review!”
“That’s right, girls,” Onizuka said from behind them, doing his usual badass-gangster routine, complete with headband and cigarette. “Teacher’s here and it’s time for the lesson to start.”
“Onizuka! You bastard!” Miyabi shouted, starting to flee while looking back at him – and running smack into Fuyutsuki, sending them both careening to the ground. The other girls ran down the hall and made a clean getaway, but Onizuka snagged Miyabi’s arm before she could get up and flee. “I don’t think so. This is one class you’re not gonna cut.”
“Stop it! You pervert, let me go! I’ll sue you for sexual harassment! You bastard, I’ll – mmph!”
“Quit whining, it’s annoying,” Onizuka said, wadding up a cloth and sticking it in her mouth to silence her. “God, you students are such hypocrites sometimes. Usually you think I’m just some robot that stands at the front of the class and reads out of a textbook, but when it’s convenient for you, I become your teacher. Well, tough luck,” he said, coolly lighting another cigarette and blowing the smoke towards the vent. He sat there for a moment, smoking and collecting his thoughts while Miyabi twisted and made angry sounds from where she was tied to the vaulting horse. Then he stuck his head out the door and called, “Tomoko, Miyabi wants to play another game with you.”
“Oh? Thanks, Teacher! Are you going to play too? Are you? Huh?”
“Of course I am,” Onizuka said, laying down his cigarette as Tomoko came into the storage room. “Are YOU ready to play, Miyabi?”
“Eee!” Tomoko giggled, enthusiastically digging her nails into Miyabi’s sides and causing her to let out a great squeal of laughter despite her attempts to remain silent and stoic.
“Easy there, Tomoko, give her a chance,” Onizuka chuckled as he concerned himself with the removal of her shoes. “Go easy on her for a bit.”
“Okay! How about here! Kootchy coo, Miyabi-chan!” Tomoko giggled as she slowed her tempo down and worked up her sides into her underarms. The giggling and thrashing became less pronounced, allowing Miyabi to open her eyes and direct murderous glares at Onizuka, even if those glares were blunted by her continuing urge to giggle.
“You’re probably wondering how I figured this all out, aren’t you, Miyabi?” Onizuka asked casually as he gripped her big toe and started randomly skittering his fingers on her sole. “To tell you the truth, Fuyutsuki didn’t tell me anything at all. She just said that some students were playing tricks and that I shouldn’t get involved. And I wasn’t going to until I heard that you’d been following her yesterday.”
Onizuka chuckled to himself, picking up the tempo on her foot and seemingly impassive to Miyabi’s increasingly frantic giggling and squirming. “Then when Tomoko kept bringing up the fact that she was ticklish, I realized that there had to be SOME reason why she was doing so. The kicker was when Yoshikawa said he’d heard laughter when he found the book. At first, I didn’t understand why Fuyutsuki would be tied down with her stomach and feet bare, but after Miss Kanzaki’s demonstration this morning, it came to me. And I knew that you were the one telling them what to do.”
Miyabi’s frantic giggling had managed to dislodge the cloths enough for her to spit them out, and she tried to counter with an appropriate retort, but all that came out was “Ghahaha HahhahahAH AHaheheHEEHeheh you bastard!!! WHahahAHAHahahhEHEHehehehEHhAHAHAH TOMOKO! STOP!”
“Ooo! Miyabi-chan, you’re good at this game! Tomoko’s going to have to try harder to make you cover up!” Tomoko, of course, was oblivious to the fact that Miyabi was tied up as she wormed and wiggled her hands into Miyabi’s shirtsleeves.
“NAhahAHAHAHahAHAHHEHEHEHHEEHHEEHEH TOMOKO!!! NAHAHAHAHAHAHHT THERE! STAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAP OH PLHEHEHEHEEHHEHZE STOPPIT!!! HAHAHAHAAAHHHAHAHAHAH C’MON! WE CAN BEHEHEHEEHEHHEEHH FRIENDS AGAIN!”
“What’s that? Tomoko can’t understand you, Miyabi. Stop laughing and then speak.” The statement was not delivered with a hint of evil teasing as it otherwise might be, but Tomoko’s absolute girlish innocence and lack of wits. She contorted herself comically, trying to get her hands all the way down to Miyabi’s belly.
“Like this, Tomoko.” Onizuka reached up to tug Miyabi’s shirt free and pulled it up a bit to expose her stomach. He then returned to trying to poke various things he’d found in the equipment pile through Miyabi’s toes, which caused her no small amount of laughter.
“GHAHAHAHAHAHHAH YOU PERVERT!!! HAHAAHAHAHAHAHAH haHAAHEHEHeh ENO!!! NO TOMOKO! NOT THEHEHEHHEHEHEEHHEEHEHEHEHEHHEEHEHEHEHEEHEHHEEHEHEHEEHEEHHEEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHHEEHHEHEHEHEHRE!!!! AHAAAA!!!” Tomoko, in her usual form, had instead opted to blow raspberries on Miyabi’s stomach, making cutesy noises at Miyabi each time she did so.
“How long did you keep this up on Fuyutsuki? Ten minutes? Fifteen? Twenty? Ahh, we’ll go with twenty. I don’t have anything to do this afternoon and Yoshikawa has to go home early, so he can’t help me on the part I’m stuck at and…” Onizuka rattled off his list, still searching for creative ways to tickle Miyabi’s soles as her laughter echoed and reverberated off the walls of the tiny storage room.
Some twenty minutes later, Onizuka untied Miyabi and left the room. “My job here is done. But you can keep playing Tomoko. I’m sure Miyabi won’t mind.”
“Thanks for playing with us teacher!” Tomoko said with a wave, giggling and returning to her playful tickling of Miyabi. Miyabi was a little too tired to effectively resist Tomoko, even slow as she was, and it took her even more time to finally get up and chase Tomoko off with a barrage of belly tickling. Only then did she return to the storage room and start putting herself back together.
“You
bastard, Onizuka… this isn’t the end of my plans. Just you wait…”
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