Thought I'd write another Naru-centric snippet just for the fun of it...
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The karaoke duet of the pair continued as another song they had chosen began to play.
Gimme, Gimme, Gimme by Narada Michael Walden and Patti Austin was what people at the wedding reception were now receiving.
While the bridegroom didn't have the singing talent that the bride possessed., his efforts did endear the audience as he continued singing with her 'till the song was over.
Keitaro and Naru Urashima waved gratefully at the applauding audience who cheered and whistled.
"How about you take a rest, honey?" Naru said to her husband with a smile that made his heart skip a bit. "You look a bit exhausted."
"Yeah, even after all those rehearsals we went through I still get worn out so easily after just a few songs." Keitaro admitted as he tried to catch his breath and drank gratefully from the bottle of water she gave him.
Naru had become a producer for a studio belonging to a music company after graduating from the university where she had studied music and a quite successful one at that. Keitaro had decided on trying to become a doctor after getting into Tokyo University, which he managed in the end after having a few setbacks and successes.
Funny that she after doing a surprise performance during a concert, she had proposed to her boyfriend on live television after dragging him on stage and pushing the mike into his face and asking what his answer was. When he said yes the audience erupted into applause, cheering, whistling and waving. As an encore Naru did a cover of Tell It to My Heart by Taylor Dayne that made them even go wilder.
Too bad the other girls didn't take this news that very well. They tended to be that way when in time loops where they were more active and aggressive in their pursuit of Keitaro's heart and affections, and a real pain in the neck at that. It certainly was no walk in the park when competing with Mutsumi Otohime when she really got serious and wasn't keen on stepping aside for anyone û even if it was her. At least they were able of temporary alliances in order to counter whatever Motoko and Kanako came up with to tip the scales in their favour. Her best friend Mitsune, alias Kitsune, was starting to become a formidable rival with her romantic drinking buddy act (she even managed to reel in Keitaro in many earlier loops). Always having to prevent Su from shanghaiing Keitaro to Molmol was starting to give her some serious headaches that not even painkillers could dull. She remembered the times she had to go Modesty Blaise to extract Keitaro from the clutches of the fair Molmolian princess... sometimes even two when Kaolla wanted to share the clumsy manager with her sister Amalla. Early on she had learned not to underestimate Shinobu since she had developed a knack for worming herself into Keitaro's soft heart, but most of the time playing on Keitaro's intense fear of ending up behind bars for child molestation and statutory rape and ending up the prison bitch of some big-muscled, tattooed yakuza thug and being force to dine on cockroaches stuck in his food would put a stop to Shinobu's tricks (she felt a bit bad about doing that, but only a little).
You could never be too certain that the other girls would try to play wedding crashers, so this time she had drugged them, tied them up and locked them inside the underground tunnels under the Hinata-sou and replaced them with lifelike android copies during the entire wedding. She wasn't certain if Keitaro was on to her switcharoo scheme, but he didn't seem to have said that he noticed something weird like the Kaolla-bot petting and feeding Tama-chan without trying to eat her whatsoever when the opportunity arose.
She was about to ask her husband if he was up to another song now, but was interrupted by a thunderous detonation coming from underneath the inn-turned-dormitory, followed by others. The last explosion made a big hole in the ground û and out of it emerged Kanako Urashima, Motoko Aoyama, Kaolla Su, Shinobu Maehara and Mutsumi Otohime, all of them suppressing coughs while looking burnt and scorched a bit... and from the looks of it they weren't happy at all which was a serious understatement.
"Uh-oh!" Naru squeaked as goosebumps streaked over her back.
Slowly, methodically they strode towards her; their eyes not promising good things in the future.
"You're dead meat!" they all growled in perfect synchronization and prepared to charge her.
Naru Urashima acted swiftly by tearing off her long skirt and swung it around for momentum before she threw the large piece of fabric at them, obstructing their vision as well as distracting them.
Her husband quickly realized why she had chosen to wear tennis shoes during the entire wedding as he found himself yanked after her by his sleeve as she made for the stone stairs leading down from the Hinata-sou with the other girls hot on her trail and him trailing blood from his nostrils.
Arriving at their car, Naru opened the door and threw her now husband Keitaro into the drivers seat and slammed the door shut. Then she ran over to the other side and seated herself beside him on the adjacent seat.
"Step on it, darling!" Naru shouted.
He obliged to his wife's request naturally, seeing the burning fury in the eyes of the other girls who were rapidly approaching them.
The van they had inherited from Seta began swiftly to roll away from where it had so recently been parked.
"I hope the new engine we rigged into this car can make us outrun Motoko-chan," Keitaro shouted to her over the roar of the powerful car engine.
"But then again, maybe not," was Naru's deadpan comment as she looked behind her and saw the dust trail closing in on them.
"Do we still have the paint bucket we filled with oil in the back seat?" he queried anxiously, but still kept his eyes on the road.
"Good idea, Keitaro!"
Opening the side window of her door, Naru hurled the cylindrical missile on the road behind the van. Motoko Aoyama enraged as she was paid no heed to the oil slick and as a result lost her balance and crashed into a lamp post after sliding out of control.
"Ouch!" Naru winced in sympathy as she witnessed here handiwork. "That certainly has got to hurt!"
"No kidding, Naru," Keitaro added. "But where to now?"
"Gee, Hokkaido sounds like a nice place to visit now," Naru suggested with a smug smirk as they made their escape from town...
End song: No Lookin' Back by Kenny Loggins...