Chapter 3 Pre-Invasion of Baba Yaga Castle: Part I

Hoshi snuggled up to Kid and relaxed on her bed, where they had been for the last ten peaceful minutes since Aura had been dragged away to referee another one of Patty and Zetha's Fish Fights; the sounds of which could be heard outside. Zetha's shouts resounded as she fought Patty with a fish until Aura deemed an attack fouled with the blow of the whistle provided for her post. Only to have the bloody dead fish thrown in Aura’s face as Zetha’s way of saying she didn’t agree with the call.
A loud crash of glass came; Hoshi and Kid looked up at the cause of the sound. One of the windows in Hoshi’s room had been smashed by a fish thrown through the glass from the odd game below.
“Why don’t you just go bathe in the damn fish blood if you like it so much!” was the loud shout of Aura following the broken window, “’cause I sure as hell don’t wanna be covered in the damn stuff!”
“Oh my god that’s a great idea!” was Zetha’s over-enthusiastic response.
Hoshi sighed; she just got the odd feeling none of this was going to end well as she tried to keep Kid calm about the broken and therefore asymmetrical window.
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Aura’s eye twitched. She had fish blood all over her. The fish from whence it came from had gone soaring through a window on the third floor.
“I was kidding, you idiot!” Her shouts were not taken in by Zetha, who was already gathering all the fish and dragging them inside Kid’s place. She intended to bleed them out and bathe in the mess. She sighed then looked at her clothes and cursed under her breath. Her clean clothes were in her backpack back at Baba Yaga Castle, meaning she’d have to wait till she got back to get the fish blood off of her.
After the obnoxiously long trip back to the castle, Aura made her way back to Giriko’s room where she had left her backpack. Once she reached the door, Aura slowly opened it a crack and looked in. The room was surprisingly calm despite the destroyed or partially destroyed furniture that occupied it. The damage was probably from Giriko, who was passed out on the couch. Aura, after spotting her backpack in the corner of the room, laughed quietly to herself at the sight, closed the door once again, and went to go shower off the fish blood from herself.
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After a while, Hoshi had managed to calm Kid down enough about the broken window and was now escorting him downstairs to get him away from the sight in hopes of avoiding another freak out. They crossed into the living room, then stopped. In the middle of the room was a bathtub, its contents being Zetha and enough fish blood to fill the tub. Bits of gore that made its way through the filter floated on the surface.
“Oh, hey,” The young weapon greeted them as she lounged in her grisly bath.
“Why would you do this?!” Kid asked starting to lose his shit again for, much to his displeasure, Zetha had placed the tub in an awkward position, so as to make the room asymmetrical.
“What? I’m wearing my red bikini,” Zetha replied with a grin. She assumed the problem Kid had was that she was taking a bath in the living room.
He was wordless for a moment, “That is not what I meant.”
Hoshi sighed and put her hand to her face as she thought to herself ‘Why Zetha? Why?’
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Aura carefully opened the door to Giriko’s room and peeked inside. Much to her surprise, he was still asleep. She walked in and, as quietly as she could, tip-toed over to her backpack and picked it up, making sure to hold the towel wrapped around her up. She dug through the backpack and pulled out her clean, goreless clothes. She set them aside and shoved the dirty ones back in. The fish blood on them was starting to smell worse than it first had.
Aura looked back over at Giriko once again to see if he was still asleep; he was. With a sense of relief, Aura turned her back to the sleeping chainsaw and dropped her towel to begin and dress herself.
“Well this is a nice sight to wake up to,” Came from behind her. Aura turned quickly and blushed as she swiftly grabbed the towel back off the ground to recover herself. The source of the voice was Giriko, who had woken up just as Aura dropped her towel. Ah, what wonderful timing.
Giriko smirked as he got up off the couch, strutted over towards Aura, and out the door. As he passed her, he smacked while simultaneously briefly grabbing her ass. He closed the door behind him as he walked out.
Aura felt like all her blood had rushed to her face. Once she heard the door close behind Giriko, she quickly dressed herself. She silently cursed herself for thinking Giriko would stay asleep. Once finished, she opened the door and looked at Giriko. He re-entered, the open door the only invitation he needed.
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Hoshi had managed to get Kid away from the asymmetrical window and Zetha’s blood bath and sighed with relief now that the OCD shinigami was “calmly” working on having the window fixed.
Utilizing her magic Hoshi, flustered, turned her thoughts to Aura. ‘Where did you run off to? And why did you break the window?’
‘Oh. Hey… I forgot you were capable of this…’ Aura thought back, she was still blushing about the incident with Giriko, which was keeping her from actually focusing on Hoshi’s questions.
‘Your thoughts seem more scattered than usual. Is everything alright?’ Hoshi responded slightly sympathetic.
Aura ignored the slight insult of her thoughts. ‘… I took a shower to get the damn fish blood off. I went back to senpai’s room to get redressed and figured it would be fine cause he was asleep…’ her thoughts trailed off. Hoshi was easily able to figure out the end results of this little mistake Aura made and chuckled to herself. Kid took no notice of this due to his preoccupation with the window.
‘You really thought he would stay asleep?’
‘Oh shut it…’ Aura wasn’t overly fond of being teased herself.
Hoshi snickered, ‘Oh calm down. At least one thing turned out right.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Zetha took your advice. She’s currently sitting in a bathtub full of fish blood in the living room.’
Aura quickly put her hand to her forehead, arousing a curious look from Giriko sitting next to her.
“What the hell did you do that for?”
Aura looked up at him forgetting that Hoshi was using her magic to speak with her. “Oh, uh. That witch who hangs around Shinigami-sama’s son told me her friend, the crazy weapon, made a bath of blood that she’s actually sitting in.” She decided to keep out the part about the fish blood.
The twisted chainsaw started laughing, “That sounds awesome. Maybe I should try something like that,” he paused for a moment as he smirked, “only I think I can do better.” Giriko got up and started to head out the door, the smirk still on his face.
Aura thought to Hoshi, ‘Great. I think I gave senpai an idea and I don’t think it’s going to end well.’ Aura followed the chainsaw curious as to what he was planning.
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Aura dragged Hoshi out from the mountain of blankets occupying the young witch’s bed. The black fuzz ball of a cat hissed as the blonde finally succeeded in getting her out of the mountain. “Why are you dragging me out of bed now?!” She hissed.
“I’m booooorrrreeed!” The blonde whined, “Senpai’s too busy using the minions to fill his blood pool to play…”
“He’ll run out of them eventually, you know.” Hoshi was hoping this might entice the female weapon to leave and wait for this, thus allowing her to sleep in peace.
“I doubt it… I swear every time he cuts one of them open and bleeds them out like another 10 take its place.” Aura continued to hold the young witch up, a look of disappointment on her face.
Hoshi angrily flicked her tail as she raised an ‘eyebrow’ at this statement, “Is that even possible?” The blonde shrugged.
“I don’t know but it has been a week and there seems to be no shortage in Arachnophobia’s followers.”
Hoshi made her aggravation apparent; since this tactic seemed to be failing, she began to think of another way to get the blonde to leave her alone. She just wanted to return to her mountain of blankets once more.
Aura opened her mouth to question the look being given to her, but fortunately for Hoshi, Patty barged in and grabbed Aura’s arm and dragged her off. Hoshi gladly escaped back to her mountain.
“Wait where are we going?!”
“You promised to help me build my giraffe tower, remember?” The younger blonde weapon replied as she quickly headed down the hall.
“Oh yeah…” The vague memory of this agreement returned to her. Patty had asked her as she had been leaving the city, to prevent her from getting upset Aura had agreed, mostly in the hopes of Patty forgetting between now and the next time she saw her. Sadly this was not the case as Aura was dragged away by her wrist.
Hoshi laughed a little at Aura as she settled herself under her mountain. She hoped Kid would soon join her for her nap as well. Patty should be able to keep Aura occupied for a while.  
Patty dragged Aura outside to an absurdly large pile of stuffed giraffes. Aura wasn’t even going to bother questioning her how she was able to acquire this many giraffes, she figured it was best left a mystery. Patty released her wrist and began handing Aura some of the giraffes to begin the tower with.
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After nearly a half hour the two had somehow managed to finish the 3 story tower of giraffes. Patty and Aura stepped back to admire their handy work when something caught Aura’s eye. The top of the tower was just in the right place that if they stood on it the two of them would be right outside one of Hoshi’s bedroom windows. Aura smirked, a plot of mischief coming to her twisted mind. She turned to Patty to share her idea and attempt to gain an accomplice.
“Hey Patty, wanna play a fun little game on top of the tower?”  Her voice was thick with mischief.
Patty turned her head towards Aura, her eyes lighting up with excitement, “What’s the game?”
“We get a couple big signs and hold them outside Hoshi’s window to see how angry we can make her or Kid,” Aura smirked.
“What’s gonna be on the signs?” Patty was more interested in climbing the tower but seeing Kid freak out in a funny way could easily add to the fun.
“You know that weird little rhyme people say sometimes, the whole “x and x sitting in a tree” crap? Well we do that and make funny faces. It will probably bother Hoshi more, but it could still be fun.” Aura’s childishness was showing its colors once again.
“Um, Okay,” Patty sang, “can we write them in crayon? And draw some giraffes on them?” Patty enthusiastically responded.
Aura shrugged, “I guess. You get the crayons to draw and write with and I’ll get the signs.”
“Kay” Patty replied as hurried to go find her box of crayons; she hoped she still had enough yellow. Aura laughed a little as she went to fetch some signs.
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Hoshi was starting to doze off. Kid’s arms wrapped around her as she cuddled more to his sleeping form. A rather loud giggle came from the widow, and much to Hoshi’s regret, she glanced up at the sound. Her eye twitched, outside the window were Aura and Patty who were bouncing around holding ridiculously colorful signs which read, “Hoshi and Kid, sitting in a tree K.I.S.S.I.N.G.” The signs were clearly written in Green and Blue crayon, the only difference other than color between the signs was the slightly misshapen giraffe drawn on the sign held by Patty. Hoshi wasn’t sure what they were standing on or how the hell they got up there, but at that moment she didn’t care about that. All she cared about was the hope that they would fall so that she could go back to being almost asleep.
Luckily for Hoshi, her wish came true shortly after Aura and Patty had started to sing the obnoxious song written on their signs, as Black*Star ran into the base of the Giraffe tower which held them up. He had been talked into having a fish fight with Zetha and had somehow managed to not see the tower as he dodged several fish Zetha had violently chucked at him. The sudden blow to the tower caused it to fall, dropping Aura and Patty down to the ground below as it toppled.
Aura landed on the ground first, having been on the side in which Black*Star had hit. She had landed awkwardly on her left arm and started to sit up. Before she could sit fully upright and move out of the way, Patty came down and landed on Aura’s arm, a disturbing snapping sound was heard. Aura yelled out various curses for a moment or two before the slightly stunned Patty jumped up and went over to her, now in ruins, giraffe tower. She apparently had not heard the snap as she had the falling of her beloved stuffed tower.
Black*Star popped his head out of the remains of the stuffed tower and laughed, “I guess it couldn’t take my awesomeness!”
Aura’s eye twitched as she looked at her arm, it was already swelling badly and she could tell by the pain it was clearly broken from the combination of the sudden impact and landing of Patty on her arm. ‘Damn it, not again,' she thought as she got up, carefully minding the arm. She wasn’t going to bother trying to have a cast put on it that would just get in her way. She quietly left Patty to gather up her giraffes to try and rebuild the tower and Black*Star who was trying to get out of the stuffed nightmare and get back to the fish fight he intended to win. After managing to get away, she headed back to Baba Yaga Castle, she figured at least there she wouldn’t have to worry about the arm being put in a cast or some shit like that.