Current mood:	drained
Current music:	"Lonely Nights" by Porno Grafitti
Entry tags:	trick, writing

This is why she wouldn't pick the yellow card.
Just something that came about from Celeste's prodding and Prism's strange prophetic complaint that Naruto/Ino fiction always has to have the line "Blondes Have More Fun."

Me, I just wanted an excuse to flood the poor, unsuspecting world with more TricK vignettes.

Be careful, it's full of pit-drop POV changes, traps involving poorly executed jokes, and a trailed off ending that leaves you lost. Set in the middle of the third season (yeah, like that matters).


The only way Ueda could get Naoko out of her apartment (aside from when she was evicted) was to treat her to dinner. It was the only way he could ensure her staying put long enough for her small attention span to listen to whatever brilliant thesis of events he had to impart on her for a few small, clarifications.

Naoko Yamada thought those small clarifications meant having to explain everything over again to the big lug, but she usually didn’t have time to point that out as she was scarfing food. And usually only half-paying attention because she was prone to laughing at him, which wasn’t pretty with a mouth full of shrimp. Not in the least.

This time Ueda seemed even more desperate to get her opinion. Using logical deduction, Naoko found that the more insistent he was directly correlated to how outrageous the antics were of whatever person he was trying to disprove. The cultists in general had become more absurd as of late. Maybe it was in the water, like Big Mama’s, their first case. Or that bastard Ueda trying to slip aphrodisiacs into her drinks again. Didn’t matter though, as she had taken up to switching the food arbitrarily, just in case the numbskull tried it again.

Ueda blinked and watched her take a large swill of her tea. For some reason it looked as if she was glaring at him. “So, you know why I brought you here...”

“No,” Naoko said curtly and smacked her lips. She only knew that it was going to be so bad he offered her an all you can eat buffet without even trying. A pity, she was only on her third plate and his stories had a way of making her lose her appetite. Well, not really, but making it a lot less pleasant when she ate.

“There’s a new spiritualist going around calling themselves ‘The New Jackson,’ saying they can change their features at will.”

Naoko raised an eyebrow. “Jackson?”

“Ah,” Ueda nodded, impressed with his flawless English that was apparently so perfect it left Naoko speechless with the execution.

“...the creepy child molester?”

“Who’s a child molester?” Ueda snapped back incredulously.

“Jackson, right? That’s the name he’s borrowing from, I bet. From the celebrity that had so many plastic surgeries he looks like a retarded Shitzu now.” Naoko laughed at her own joke. It was shrill enough it made the people around them twitch a little and drop the carefully gathered rice from their chopsticks in her wake.

“You’re so crass, woman,” Ueda grumbled and snapped open a lobster claw. He was sullen and didn’t want to admit that he had no idea who she was talking about.

“Hey, you want me to go investigate an ugly look-alike of a famous child molester with you,” Naoko spoke in a matter of fact, waving her chopsticks in his face. “No wonder you treated me to Viking style food. This is going to be worse than the one with the rainbow colored fan...”

“Ah,” Ueda found a perfect opening to flex his superior knowledge. “Did you know that most Vikings were predisposed to being blonde?”

Naoko blinked. “Yeah, so?”

Ueda was, despite all previous encounters, expecting a little more enthusiasm. “Ah, yes. But the blonde ones of the clans were favored.”

“So?”

Ueda grimaced, wishing he had some kind of supernatural powers that would allow him to make her play along. Just once. “So if a legend talked about a boy with brown hair that went out on a raid, got lost in the melee, and then came back from the raid a year later with his hair a golden blond, do you think that is supposed to be taken as face value?”

Naoko scoffed. “Maybe he got scared and it turned blond.”

Ueda poked her. “YOU. That isn’t genetically possible. If you have brown you stay brown. Black you stay black. Blonde you stay blonde. The only color that comes out of extreme fear is white, because trauma can cause the natural dye producers to stop functioning.”

“Maybe he only was a little scared and it was a really pale brown,” Naoko offered helpfully before pulling up another plate to clean off.

“Not genetically possible,” Ueda glared at her. But Naoko wasn’t even looking at him; she was making moony eyes at the teriyaki in a way she had never looked at a man.

Stupid teriyaki, Ueda thought.

“Maybe he pulled a Yabe,” Naoko tried again, feeling a little guilty since this food was really good, and if she got him to talk for a lecture worth she might be able to steal some of the pickled plumbs off his plate.

“A what? ...Oh.” Ueda had to blink and recall the bumbling policeman’s...hair. He had thought about it for so long as some kind of bad French hat he had trouble reconciling it as a wig. “That.”

“Maybe an Ishihara then. I heard blondes have more fun anyway.”

And somehow the thought of a Viking with ADD, jumping around like the young police detective Ishihara made Ueda suddenly feel a lot less hungry.

Naoko, being perceptive about things like that, zeroed in for the kill. “Are you going to let me eat that if you’re finished?”

“Ah, well it’s all you can eat you beggar. You can always get—” too late as she swiped the remnants of his food and sluiced them onto her plate “—more.”

“Hee. All the food I can eat. It’s like that one song. ‘Oh blondes just want to have fun~’” Naoko sang in something that was the equivalent of taking the English language out into a back alley and shooting it in the kneecaps. Then peeing on it for added emphasis. One could hear the gagging noises of other patrons as they tried not to choke on their dinner.

But it’s not as if you could blame Naoko Yamada. Well, not entirely. It was a Cyndi Lauper song, and as such perfectly in character for her to sing it like a cat in heat.

Ueda realized this is why he didn’t like going out in public with Yamada. “Well, this new person was able to change his hair in an instant from black to blonde without any help from peroxide.”

“Pera-what? Is that another word for child-molester?”

“No woman!” Ueda snapped, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms like a petulant child. “It’s how the Viking managed to dye his hair blonde. But for such a thing to work it would need hours of draining and rinsing. And they checked for wigs. Nothing.”

“It’s a wig then,” Naoko said with certainty. “Just better than Yabe’s. I can prove it's a trick.”

“Really? How?”

Naoko smirked, noting his eagerness. This meant she might be able to wheedle more food out of him at a later date if she played her cards right. “Well, just lots of slight of hand and gullibility from the people that watch him.”

Ueda was about to protest that he saw the trick done in front of his eyes, but even he wasn’t foolish enough to step into an open-ended trap like that. Not after the last four times. Really.

“So tell me then.”

“If you promise me two more all you can eats.”

“Fine. But you’ll have to come with me and discredit him yourself.”

“That’s perfectly all right with me,” Naoko smiled happily, only realizing after she did that he again agreed to quickly. There had to be a catch. “Wait, what does that mean?”

Ueda sighed. “Well you’ll have to beat him at his own game. And no one will believe you can change your appearance being the flat-chested—”

“Hey!”

“—person that you are.”

Naoko glared daggers at him.

Ueda smiled sheepishly. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll give you three if you just keep your mouth shut and don’t make up any silly predictions. Go in, get blonde, get out. Over and done with.”

“You’re not the one that has to turn into a Yankee for this,” Naoko sniped, retreating back into inhaling as much food as she could get for her consolment.

Ueda nodded, thinking of Naoko as a blonde with loose socks and bad Engrish shirts. Despite her flashy get up, she was still flat-chested. And sulky. Suddenly his appetite reared up again at the happy thought.