Disclaimer: I own nothing.

A Sort of Fairy Tale

Chapter 2: In which the shoe doesn't fit

The last thing Kazuha remembered before she'd completely passed out was the nice, slightly tangy taste of a ripened orange. Oranges had always been her favorite fruit, and she was known to spend many an afternoon simply sitting in the comforts of her living room, snacking on them.

The sight she woke up to, however, was most definitely not her living room. In fact, she wasn't even in her house. No, she was in the middle of the goshdarned forest with a somewhat handsome boy manhandling her, demanding that she wake up.

She blinked.

"She's awake," a tiny little… well, a Fairy was all Kazuha could think to describe it, said, wonderingly. She had the sudden urge to pinch his cheeks. "But I thought only a sign of True Love could break the spell?"

"A sign of True Love?" Another Fairy perked up at those choice words, monocle gleaming in the sunlight. "So little Heiji's finally growing up?"

And there was Uncle Grumpy, looking thoughtful in the corner. Finally, a face she recognized! "Sleepy must not have quite gotten it right," he was saying to himself.

Her gaze returned to the boy who was kneeling in front of her, his grip still tight on her shoulders.

"Ouch," she said, quite audibly.

This word seemed to snap him out of his reverie. He let go quickly, and the sudden loss of support almost sent Kazuha sprawling backwards on the dirt floor. "Okay," he said, standing up and brushing the dust from his pants, "you're awake. You can go live happily ever after. I'm going to go and kill the Queen."

Kazuha coughed, her throat sore. "Okay. Fine." She stood up, gingerly testing her balance. She was all good and ready to tell that horrible, rude boy he could go shove it for all she cared when she caught sight of what used to be her house.

She reached out and grabbed said boy by the collar, ignoring his yelps.

"What happened to my house?" she questioned, voice and expression icy cold.

The boy let out a sheepish laugh. "Ahaha. Yeah. About that…"

-OOO-

"Fix it," she said, simply.

"What?" The boy, Heiji, as she had just recently learned, stared at her in disbelief. "No way!"

"Yes, way!" she insisted, emphasizing each syllable with a hard jab to his chest. "You broke my house. Now I have nowhere to live in. Do you want to make an innocent girl have to fend for herself in the horrors of this FOREST? Don't you know what's in this forest, don't you, don't you?"

"Mushrooms, oak trees, a few pine trees, berries, nuts, squirrels, a lake or two, with fish," came the easy reply. "There's hardly anything to scare anyone."

"There are bears in this forest, you moron," she said, flailing her arms wildly. She looked like she was about to start wailing. "I can't live like this!"

"I've lived in this forest for over ten years," he told her, matter-of-factly, "there are no bears."

This seemed to surprise her. "None?" she asked, lip quivering.

The 'lip quivering' seemed to disturb him quite a bit. "None," he said, firmly, after regaining his composure.

"But –" and here she turned to Grumpy, "Uncle Dopey told me…"

"There's your answer right there, kid," Grumpy said, gruffly, "Uncle Dopey."

"Oh." Kazuha appeared to feel very foolish indeed now. As she stared at the remnants of her house, she promptly started to complain again, "but you blew up my house!"

"It was an unfortunate accident," Heiji said, looking snootily down at her. Kazuha couldn't help but wonder at his sudden change of tone and diction. "And I offer you my sincerest apologies, and I would dearly, dearly love to help, but I'm afraid I have to meet a deadline…"

"What?" Kazuha asked, blankly.

Heiji pinched the bridge of his nose. "It was an accident, all right? I'm freaking sorry but I have to go and kill that stupid Queen, okay?"

"No, it is NOT okay!" Kazuha bristled. Conan and Kid refrained from bursting out into schoolgirl-esque giggles at the sight of Heiji being screamed at by a girl who was at the very least six inches shorter than him (which was quite a feat, for Heiji wasn't that tall himself). "You ruined my house! Where am I supposed to live?"

Heiji twitched. "Go build a tent, then."

"A TENT?"

Heiji covered his ears. "I'd thank you very much to refrain from shrieking like a banshee," he said, stiffly.

"And I would thank you very much to refrain from being a total bastard," she retorted, ignoring his open-mouthed look, "and to please help me rebuild my house."

"It was an accident, and I have a very important matter of business to attend to!" he argued, getting over her use of such a vulgar word. He hadn't been around girls very much, but weren't they supposed to be delicate and not swear at Prince Charmings? "Your uncle – he'll help you, won't he?"

Her voice simply rose along with her temper. "Speaking of uncles, I seem to be missing six of them!"

He blanched. "I said I was –"

"BEAR."

He blinked. "No, I was –"

"You incomprehensible moron, there is a BEAR behind you!" And she took off running, ponytail flipping behind her. Grumpy balked, swore under his breath, and followed after. Conan and Kid remained with him, staring, just staring.

"There is so not a bear behind me," Heiji said.

"There kind of is," Kid said, "maybe you should run."

"Maybe," Heiji agreed. "You guys can take care of him, can't you?"

Conan and Kid shrugged. "We'll see."

"Wha –"

"Just a piece of advice, maybe you should start running," Conan said, conversationally.

"But –"

"ROAR."

Heiji gulped as he felt the stomps quaking the earth behind him. "Bye." And ran as fast as his legs could carry him.

-OOO-

Heiji found that he caught up to That Girl and Her Uncle rather quickly, considering that he was far taller than both of them, and he'd had experience in running away from things.

"I don't know how," Kazuha managed in between laboured breaths, "but this is YOUR fault somehow."

"Shut up and run," he spat.

-OOO-

"No, no, I really think we ought to use That spell," Conan said, pushing his glasses further up the bridge of his nose.

Kid frowned. "No, no, I think that This spell would be much more efficient. Less blood, you know."

"Less blood, yes, but a greater chance of the thing regenerating and chasing after us with green slime and a deformed paw."

"Well, I just think that it would be in very unpleasant taste to just kill the poor creature from the inside out. Have a heart, man!"

"Oh, this coming from the one who wanted to cast the Spell-That-Cannot-Be-Named on the Queen? That's rich!"

"Well, we kind of have to make a decision as to which spell we are going to use before –" And the Bear, looking to be very angry and frustrated about being caught in their magical net, swiped at it furiously and continued on his merry rampage, following the footprints Heiji and co. had so conveniently left behind.

" – before the Bear decides to pick up where he left off," Kid finished weakly.

-OOO-

"My shoe!" Heiji exclaimed, stopping abruptly in his mad dash away from the Bear.

Kazuha, for reasons unknown to herself, also stopped. "You moron!" she said, rolling her eyes to the heavens as he ran back and grabbed his shoe.

He practically dove, his face mere inches from the ground as he closed outstretched fingers around his precious shoe…

And hastily withdrew his hand just as a pair of shiny and sharp teeth closed around his fingers.

"YOU TOTAL LOSER!" Kazuha wailed at him, grabbing his arm and dragging him behind her. "LOOK WHAT YOU DID!"

He ignored her, but did answer back with a particular angry tirade of his own. "MY SHOES!" he screamed, "MY CONVERSE SHOES!" He looked like he had half a mind to run back there, shove his hand down the Bear's throat, and retrieve his left shoe.

"Don't you dare –" Kazuha hissed. "What kind of an idiot goes to get his head bitten off by a bear just because of some silly shoes?"

"They are not silly!" Heiji was whining now. "They're Converse, you unfashionable woman! And that Bear just ate my shoe!"

"Well, they were ugly anyway."

Heiji stopped to give her a "oh-no-you-didn't" Look. "You did not just insult the single greatest shoe company on the planet, you – you – you –"

"WILL YOU RUN ALREADY, FOR THE LOVE OF –"

Poof.

The Bear was gone.

"Sorry we're late," Kid said, scratching his head sheepishly, Conan following after with a more dignified expression.

"You bet you're late!" Heiji snarled, "thanks to you, that Bear got my sho –"

He trailed off as he spied an unidentifiable mess sitting pleasantly on the dirt path, glinting in the sunlight.

"Hey, look!" Kid said, zipping past the open-mouthed boy and heading straight for the said mess, "it's your shoe! Or what's left of it, anyway!"

-OOO-

Kazuha stared at him with a look that spoke volumes of pity and disgust. "Stop – stop crying…"

"I am not crying."

She rolled her eyes.

"You're annoying," she told him, bluntly, as she reached over, grabbed the remnants of Heiji's precious Converse shoes, and shoved them on his feet.

"Now that that's taken care of…" She pointed to where her house used to stand. "FIX MY HOUSE."

Heiji's mouth had dropped open however, and he was currently pointing at his shoes, which hung limply by his big toe, "You just made it worse!"

This continued on for quite some time until Kid spotted a battered pumpkin lying off to the path a few feet in front of them. He tilted his head to the side, deep in thought.

He checked to make sure that Conan wasn't looking. That fairy was such a party pooper, honestly, always stopping him from having fun and just this once, if he would just look the other way for maybe about five minutes and –

Kid zipped past the arguing teenagers, slipped his wand discreetly from his pocket, and chanted a few words under his breath. Swish and flick went the motions of his wand, and yes, yes, yes, he thought, he'd actually gotten away with it when he felt the undeniable pressure of a wand against the back of his neck.

"Drop the wand," Conan said, through gritted teeth, "and no one gets hurt."

"BUT IT'S MY SHOE –"

"AND IT'S MY HOUSE –"

Kid arched an eyebrow.

Conan sighed. "Oh, just do it already."

Kid smiled with maniacal glee.

And that was how, for the next hour, Heiji and Kazuha came to find themselves trapped in a pumpkin-shaped carriage.

-OOO-

"It's not that I don't want you tagging along," Heiji began, diplomatically.

Kazuha snorted in a rather unladylike fashion.

"Okay. It is." He frowned at her. "And like I've said before, I'm really very sorry about your house, but I don't have the time to rebuild the stupid thing." He paused. "Okay. Here's an idea. You can come along until we find like, a little inn or something. And then you can stay there with your uncle."

"I'm not staying at an inn!" Kazuha wrinkled her nose. "Everybody comes and goes and then there's room service, and – and I want my own house back. I lived there all my life, with my uncles and my family and you can't take that away!"

"You can't come with me!" Heiji insisted, flailing his arms around. "I'm going off to kill the Queen. And I don't want a sensitive girl like you tagging along. You'd probably scream and throw up and – and all of that stuff when you saw the blood."

Kazuha stared. Because this was most definitely the first time someone had called her a 'sensitive girl'.

"First of all," she said, struggling to reign in her temper, "I'm not that sensitive of a girl. And second of all, why are you going to kill the Queen?"

"Because she killed my parents and tried to get me killed," he said, stiffly, and made up to try and shove the carriage door open. It didn't budge.

"Oh." For once, she was rendered speechless. "But – " And then a horrifying thought crossed her mind, "wait, do you mean you actually saw her killing your parents?"

"No," he said, and then stopped. "Sort of. I don't remember much. I was only four. But…" He shook his head. "Whatever. I'm going to off the old hag's head, and you're only going to get in the way."

Kazuha opened her mouth to protest. "I'll stay out of the way," she said, finally, "I mean, you never know, you might need some help…"

"That's what the pixies are for," Heiji answered, offhandedly.

"Well – okay, but still –"

"They have magic powers. Unless you've got fairy wings and a wand hidden somewhere on you, you're not going to be any more help than them. And they're kind of idiots as it is."

"I'm going!" She stood up only to hit her head on the ceiling. "Ow…"

"Stupid," Heiji said, exasperatedly, yanking her ponytail towards him so that he could inspect the growing lump on her head. "That's what I mean. Not that I care about you, or anything, but I don't want you to get killed on account of me. You can't come with me. You've got to have other relatives, right? Why don't you stay with one of them?"

She avoided looking at him and Heiji tried not to wonder why her hair felt so much softer than his. "I don't have anyone else," she said, finally. "My parents died when I was little, too. Uncle Grumpy's all I have left. And – well, let's face it, he's not getting any younger, is he? He's not really up to getting a job. I suppose I could go and work some place if I had to. But where in the world are we supposed to go? We have no place to go. If you would just let us – go with you –"

Heiji sighed. "What in the world would make you think that we could offer you anything? We sleep in the woods, you know. It's not like I can really check into an inn with my name, because according to the Queen, I'm supposed to be dead. Not to mention the fact that we don't have any money. At all. We can't offer you safety, either, in case you didn't figure that out from the Bear earlier. I attract trouble. I guess you can handle yourself okay. But as you said, your uncle's not all that young – and dammit, why are you crying?"

"I MISS MY UNCLES!" She wailed.

Heiji felt a funny squirming feeling in his chest. Guilt? It was his fault that her uncles had… well…

"They were the – they were – they were the only family I had left," she hiccupped, "and now – and now –"

"…fine." It came out as a mumble, barely audible.

Kazuha sniffled. "What?"

"You can – you can come with us." He avoided eye contact and tried to ignore the foreboding feeling that was flowing through his very body. "BUT! You have to take care of yourself. When we wake up, you wake up. You eat what we eat. You have to take turns keeping watch as well. You're not getting any special treatment because you're – you're a girl. You don't even act like one anyway. And – well, you just better make sure you pull your weight, okay? Make sure you know how to defend yourself because it's not like we're all going to go around protecting you when we have our own battles to fight. Okay?"

"Yes!" Her eyes sparkled. "Don't worry, you – you won't even know I'm here."

"And you still owe me a pair of shoes."

The sparkle in her eyes diminished. "…fine."

"Fine."

"Then I guess we have a deal."

"I guess we do."

"You can let go of my head now."

Blushing furiously, he dropped her head and shoved her away from him as quickly as possible. She ended up banging her head against the nearest wall. She glowered. He coughed.

"Sorry."

He could hear her muttering angrily under her breath. Good gosh, he was already regretting this.

-To be continued

Hey, thanks for all the reviews! You have no idea how much they mean to me. :D As for this story, well, let's just say it's going to be as random as it gets. And we all know how random I can get, right? Haha. The updates will be rather sporadic, as my muse doesn't stick to schedules very well… heh. But, at any rate, please continue to review and support this story!