extrasaltypotato: (Mitsuko Upset)
Hikaru Aosora 光青空 (Akira Tsukuda 光佃), PIX WIZ ([personal profile] extrasaltypotato) wrote in [community profile] unfinishedlibrary2025-11-19 04:29 pm

Stop Trying To Make Fetch A Thing! (Week II)

Who: Michiko Tsukuda? and mostly OTA
Where: In various Woodhurst locations.
When: 19/NOV/2019 to 27/NOV/2019
What: A strangely upbeat and very girly Michiko Tsukuda crashes straight into the life she tried to slip into like a cute new skirt.
Why: Comedy and pathos, baby.
Warning: Intense bullying and sexism, the Pod People creep factor.


1: And hide her away from the rest of the world - School, Throughout
[Michiko seems weirdly upbeat when she comes back to class, all dressed up in her uniform with the skirt, wearing a... cute new hat... and a hair bow in the back? And is that nail polish? Is she taking selfies at the lunch table and snapping pictures of sausages cut into octopus shapes in her lunch boxes? Most of the other girls look at her like she's a space alien. Too many, though not most, of the boys are still sniggering as she passes - the joke about 'tsuk-u-da' hasn't yet gotten old.

But in the middle of the week, when one of them walks up to her to hassle her about it, she winces. And when he actually calls her that, miming the obscene joke with a banana, Michiko does something unexpected.

She starts crying, and bolts for the girl's bathroom like a frightened rabbit.

Thrown off his script, the bewildered bully stammers something, and at the approach of a teacher, retreats. The tears weren't an act or tactical maneuver either; she's still distraught, quickly donning her hat if anyone else comes in as she dabs away tears. What on Earth is going on with Michiko Tsukuda?]


2: That's All They Really Want - Woodhurst, Afternoons
[She's mostly going shopping and taking pictures of her finds - at Dream Palace (A), at the Anime and Comics Merch Store (B), at Clothing Stores (C) and at an Ice Cream Shop (D), seeking things that are, above all... cute. Shoujo manga like Idol Fancy, plushies of the Zodiac Madiens and of a half-rose half-fox JRPG mascot, cute skirts and anime or video game t-shirts with female characters in gold, pink and teal, sundaes or parfaits with twice her daily allowance of sugar and Instagram appeal.

Most of this stuff didn't appeal to her until this week. And she still never takes off that hat.]


3: When The Working Day Is Done - Home, Evening
[Of course she invites her friends to another watch party! You know her, she wouldn't miss hanging out with her friends and watching anime over Chocostiks and popcorn for the world!

Though, it is a little odd that she starts with Zodiac Maidens, Nightmare Rouser Seiko, and sighs dreamily at Saburo noticing that Junko is actually pretty cute in Majong Heart Flippers, innit? Stranger still, the second season finale of Ad Terra where the OLS Endurance runs into an Earth ship - to their horror, the UES Dreadnought, with it's winged skull figurehead - seems to...

...bore her? Last week, hadn't Michiko been hyping this episode up?]


4: Oh Daddy Dearest, You're Still Number One - Home, closed to close CR
[She comes home for a second watch party, hugging her father warmly, which takes him aback. They converse, but her phone is out and her eyes flick to it - more often when the conversation turns to Japanese - and her mother scolds her for it. When her mom takes the phone, she huffs that she's going up to her room, terminating the conversation, and leaving you alone with the Tsukuda parents.

And her father, in his shirt with the tie removed, exchanges a haunted glance with her mother, in her yukata. And Ms. Tsukuda nods, and Mr. Tsukuda takes off his glasses and polishes them before pushing them back up his nose.]


You're Michiko's friends - even those who only met her last week. You know her better than us.

[That last sentence is clearly very difficult for him to admit. It takes Ms. Tsukuda putting a hand on Mr. Tsukuda's back in silent support for him to continue.]

And... that's not her, is it? That girl is not our Michiko. Am I wrong? Or am I going crazy?
codeswitchcraft: (sad)

[personal profile] codeswitchcraft 2025-11-22 07:53 pm (UTC)(link)
Michiko is wrong. Siobhan has only known her for a little over a week and she's sure of it. And it isn't that she personally disapproves of this version of Michiko's new interests--in fact, Siobhan enjoys most of them, and Thorne even moreso, and she's already used a little more of the money that came with the school uniform to get one of those Seedling plushies--but that's Siobhan, not Michiko.

Something is very, very wrong. And luckily, Siobhan knows exactly what is going wrong. (And she is very, very glad that she insisted to Hikaru that they still watch the movie together, even though he was right that she'd be bothered by it.)

"You are not going mad," Siobhan says very, very sincerely, taking Mr. Tsukuda's hand and pressing it between her own. "I have seen an informative film about something like this. Michiko has been bodysnatched. It is up us, her friends, to either rescue her or failing that avenge her."
shelloflight: (Missus Tsukuda)

[personal profile] shelloflight 2025-11-22 07:57 pm (UTC)(link)
They are surprised at the vehemence of this - as much from its source as its intensity.

But they recover quickly. “Charles was thinking along those lines. And then we stopped hearing from him. Please be careful,” missus Tsukuda says.

Mister Tsukuda, on the other hand, looks like he wants to ask something, but has thought better of it.
codeswitchcraft: (sad)

[personal profile] codeswitchcraft 2025-11-22 08:06 pm (UTC)(link)
"I will be very careful," Siobhan promises. "I will not go out seeking the abductors unarmed. The bows of the school archery club may not be of the best make, but they are sufficient to my purposes."
shelloflight: (Mister Tsukuda)

[personal profile] shelloflight 2025-11-22 08:19 pm (UTC)(link)
Mister Tsukuda extricates his hands from the freak who is down for hunting aliens with a bow and arrow.

“…how did you end up meeting my girl, miss - uh -”

“Shaavhan,” the Missus supplies.

“Yes. Siobhan,” the Mr. concludes.

“Like the man from that one cartoon I watched with our girl, the general -”

“Kaede-chan, itoshī hito, mō tetsudau no wa yamete kudasai.”
codeswitchcraft: (Default)

[personal profile] codeswitchcraft 2025-11-22 08:44 pm (UTC)(link)
"At the school," she explains. "These boys were saying horrible things about her because of your surname, so she threw her ramen at them, and then I helped throw other food at them. And we were in the detention together."
shelloflight: (Mister Tsukuda)

[personal profile] shelloflight 2025-11-22 08:49 pm (UTC)(link)
“That… does sound like her,” Mister Tsukuda says, trying not to laugh.

Reassured that at the very least, Sio means to help, and is just like that.

Kaede Tsukuda shakes her head. “It’s not like it’s hard to pronounce. What you see is what you get.”
codeswitchcraft: (Default)

[personal profile] codeswitchcraft 2025-11-22 08:56 pm (UTC)(link)
"I didn't think it was hard either," says Siobhan. "Those boys just wanted an excuse to be terrible. Some people are like that. They'll probably grow up to be Griefers," she adds scornfully. "I bet you anything, deutschmarks to donuts."

(She had done a little research on the Earthly equivalent of the Green Wood she'd named herself for with Thorne's help and it turned out that here it was a Black Forest and also deutschmarks were a kind of money there. Siobhan was very proud of adapting the meme she'd learned to a new currency.)