Love Hina Fan Fiction ❯ Identity Crisis ❯ The Hollow Statues ( Chapter 1 )

Identity Crisis

Chapter 1: The Hollow Statues

Keitaro busily scrubbed the rocks around the hot spring after yet another harrowing day of studying. He sighed, wiping the drops of sweat off of his forehead and looked up at the setting sun. It was a normal day at Hinata house, everything had gone as expected: Kitsune was lazy, Naru was yelling, and Sarah was wondering when her 'daddy' would come back, when suddenly, a loud crash thundered through the tranquil landscape, followed by a car horn. Keitaro looked up and saw a van that was flipping end-over-end until it landed on its side and ground to a stop against a boulder. Moments later a man reached up and started to crawl out of the driver's window.

"Seta-san!" Keitaro shouted enthusiastically as he rushed to greet the man. "What are you doing here?"

Seta wiped the blood from the gouge on his forehead and grinned. "I just got back from another excavation! How's everything around here? I hope Sarah hasn't…"

"Daddy!" Sarah shouted as she launched herself at Seta and wrapped him in a firm hug.

"I hope you've been good, Sarah," Seta said with a wide, knowing grin. "I'll be home for at least a month, hopefully Keitaro won't mind if I take you off his hands for a while. Where is Keitaro, anyway?" Seta asked cluelessly.

"Umm, right here, Seta-san" Keitaro answered disbelievingly, on the verge of a *sweat drop*, that crash must have done more to the archeologist than he thought.

"Ah, how are you, Keitaro?" Seta asked.

"Fine, I guess," Keitaro answered, the threatening *sweat drop* appearing on his head.

"That's good!" Seta replied then scratched his head for a moment as though he were trying to remember something. "Oh, Keitaro, I almost forgot!" Seta said as he jumped on top of the van and slid the side door open, "I got a pair of statues from a strange pacific island. They seem to relate to that "turtle kingdom" I keep finding evidence of." After much rustling and a few dust clouds, Seta lifted out a large crate twice his size and set it on the ground next to the van. "Since my research lab at the university's so crowded, I was hoping you could take care of these statues for me."

"I'll do my best, Seta-san!" Keitaro answered dutifully. Seta then took a crowbar and pried open the crate. As soon as the crate opened, the area seemed to explode with bubble wrap and packing material as it was shoved out of the crate, covering the immediate area. The wrapping fell to the side to reveal two statues, one male, one female, both about 3 feet tall and carved elegantly out of dark wood, both figures sitting on turtles. Keitaro gingerly positioned both statues under his arms and hefted them up. "Whoa, these are pretty light!" Keitaro exclaimed amazedly as both statues lifted off of the ground like a child's play thing.

"Strange, isn't it, Keitaro?" Seta said as he took out a handkerchief and wiped the blood off his forehead. "I'm guessing these figurines are hollow on the inside, yet for what purpose I'm not sure." Seta grinned and turned to Sarah. "Now Sarah, will you be a good girl?"

Sarah was sitting on top of a pile of bubble wrap from the crate, protecting its precious cargo, merrily popping the packaging. "Yeah, sure," the girl said, engrossed in her new hobby of creating patterns out of the deflated bubbles.

"Wish I'd thought of that," Keitaro muttered to himself, eyeing Sarah warily.

"What's that, Keitaro?" Seta asked the ronin absent-mindedly.

"Nothing, Seta-san," Keitaro answered as he carried the two statues into his room.

***

A few hours later, after a festive party the girls insisted on throwing for Seta's return, Keitaro weakly swept the floor. "Girls are bigger slobs than guys," Keitaro muttered to himself, "especially when they know someone else will clean up after them." He thought back on the parties of old and remembered various moments in which Kitsune got spectacularly sloshed and tried to sing karaoke. Fortunately, the other girls stopped her before she could start an encore, but the amusing memory stayed with him.

The young ronin got on his knees and reached underneath the table to pull out an empty bottle. "That Kitsune, not a care in the world except for the next drink…" Keitaro grumbled, griping about his lot in life. Of course, he knew he wasn't really mad at the girls, they really helped him shape up his grades in the last year, and he appreciated that. However, there was one thing he would like above all else: a vacation.

***

Kitsune stumbled into Keitaro's room with a small bottle of sake in her left hand and her right trying to keep her robe somewhat closed. "Aww… no Keitaro to tease," Kistune pouted, but the expression was soon replaced by a sly grin. She clumsily waded through the young college-hopeful's room, and came face to face with two strange wooden statues. The male statue caught her eye, so she stared at it appreciatively and admired the natives' honesty in carving the human figure. Then, in a true Kitsune gesture, she glanced southward on the figure, "Moshi moshi" she said drunkenly to the wooden figurine. "What's Keitaro doing with such naughty figures in his room?" At that moment, a sly idea came into her head. "I wonder how bad he'd freak if one of these was missing the next morning" the foxy woman pondered aloud.

Her decision made, Kitsune took a swig from her bottle for extra courage and picked up the hollow wooden statue. She carefully tucked it underneath one arm, and set the empty sake bottle in its place on Keitaro's desk. As stealthily as a drunken woman could, Kitsune snuck out of Keitaro's room and into her own. "Now where to hide it?" the girl pondered mischievously. "Oh! I know the perfect place," Kitsune said rather loudly, she carefully hid the statue then stumbled to her futon and collapsed onto the spread in a drunken giggle and drifted to sleep.

***

Keitaro toweled off his now clean, exhausted arms after what seemed like hours of picking up and scrubbing at the house. Wearily he looked at the clock and saw it was 1:38 AM, "Just great…" Keitaro said to himself, bitter about the whole ordeal. "It's a good thing there's a few weeks of vacation left." He slid open his bedroom door and staggered in, with little regard to the cleanliness of his own room, Keitaro shrugged off his pants and shirt and collapsed onto his futon in a sleep that even Naru couldn't wake.

***

Morning seemed to come too quickly for Keitaro. With a disgruntled groan, the weary ronin fought consciousness, but emerged from its sweet embrace despite the best efforts available. A nagging headache throbbed heavily, fogging Keitaro's concentration. `Uggh, what a horrible headache,' Keitaro thought, barely able to form the words through the piercing agony. `I really shouldn't have tried to enter that drinking contest, even if I stopped at three cups of sake,' the ronin added to lament. In a daze of confusion, Keitaro rolled to one side and shoved an arm against the futon below. As steadily as Keitaro's compromised equilibrium would allow, the young Tokyo University hopeful stood upright, only to stumble slightly the floor of the room seemed to shift and jump. After Keitaro was somewhat steadier on weary feet and a little more confident that a fall wasn't imminent, the ronin waddled to the door and slid it open.

Keitaro took two independent steps forward before the stumbling began again and a churning from the stomach's pit made itself known. `I feel horrible,' was the thought that flittered through the ronin's mind as Keitaro clutched the sidewall, desperately trying not to fall. With gelatin-legs, Keitaro opened the bathroom door and nearly fell in.

`First thing's first,' the young ronin decided, positioning in front of the toilet and lifting the lid and seat. Then, the ronin rested one arm against the bathroom wall and used the other to pull down the underwear. Next, Keitaro reached below to take care of the business on hand, only for the said hand to meet air. Frustrated, Keitaro looked down to see what the problem was and gasped in horror. What greeted Keitaro's gaze were two prominent mounds of flesh contained in a baby T-shirt that blocked the ronin's view of the lower quarters. `What the hell?' Keitaro's mind thought in confusion and looked forward and saw a glimpse from the sink's mirror of Konno `Kitsune' Mitsune with her panties pulled down to her knees. `This… this isn't POSSIBLE' Keitaro's mind protested. `I think… I'm going to be sick!' was added a moment later as undigested alcohol seethed and a sudden surge of bile rose up Keitaro's throat. As quickly as possible, Keitaro kneeled down to the toilet and puked the contents of Kitsune's stomach out.

"Is this… some kind of cruel joke?" Keitaro muttered in Kitsune's weak, tired voice.

***

Meanwhile, in Keitaro's room, Kitsune woke up rather refreshed. The girl blinked her eyes but the world was still all a blur, "What the hell is this?" Kitsune muttered, then gasped as the strange, male voice echoed in her ears. Kitsune reached to the side of the futon and found a pair of glasses. With a casual motion, the glasses were slid over the eyes and everything was brought back into focus.

Kitsune stood up and looked in a mirror to see Urashima Keitaro looking back. "Oh great," Kitsune muttered, "how did that idiot do this?" However, the sheer humor of the situation didn't escape Kitsune as several hilarious and rather lewd ideas came to the fore in her mind. "Hmm, I wonder…" Kitsune pondered as she pulled out the rim of Keitaro's boxers and looked down. "Why hello there," Kitsune said with a sideways grin as she fought back laughter.

***

Ten minutes later, Naru rolled up her futon and set it to the side after she finished preparing for the day ahead. She recalled hearing Keitaro on the floor below her waking up not 10 minutes ago. `That Keitaro, he must've slept in just because we're on vacation,' Naru thought, exasperated. With good humored frustration, Naru removed the floor panel leading to Keitaro's room.

"Hey Keitaro, I was wondering if…" Naru paused as she looked down and saw Keitaro's body in a rather… private moment. Her mind shivered in horror as Naru grabbed the nearest thing to her, which was a rather thick textbook. "Keitaro, you PERVERT!"

Kitsune looked up and saw Naru wielding a large book and stopped his actions as quickly as possible. "Naru!" Kitsune shouted, "Wait, I'm not…!" Kitsune grabbed his throat in horror. Her new voice-box had choked up and gagged him, just as Kistune was going to reveal her true identity.

"What, you're NOT a pervert?!" Naru shouted as she threw the book. *WHAM*, the book smashed against Kitsune's now ridiculously thick cranium, sending the new boy, caught with his pants down, flying into the far wall.

"So much for having fun with this situation…" Kistune grumbled.

***

"Uggh, how much did she drink?" Keitaro grumbled in agony as the last of Kistune's stomach contents finally left him in a dribble of brown fluid. Keitaro, now more awake and less dizzy, stood up weakly and flushed the toilet. `Ok, do NOT panic,' Keitaro thought. `There's a perfectly reasonable explanation to all of… oh god, how does she walk with these things?' Keitaro took a step forward towards the sink and stumbled, Kitsune's panties, which were still wrapped around her knees easily tripped up the still unfamiliar Keitaro. With quick reflexes, Keitaro grabbed the side of the sink and avoided falling face-first onto the bathroom floor.

With even more care, Keitaro once again stood up completely and noticed the cause of the trip. "Oops," Keitaro said nervously as he slipped the panties back up, making special care to NOT look at the area they were going to protect. "This is going to take some getting used to," Keitaro muttered as she leaned forward to get face to face to the mirror, and then felt his new bosom resting against the sink and looked down at the mounds. "A LOT of getting used to."