Categories > Anime/Manga > Revolutionary Girl Utena > The Princes of Misanthropy
Stay For The Cheap Beer
0 reviewsIn which the Princes of Misanthropy alternately ROCK OUT and injure one another.
1Funny
They were never asked how they had met.
"Time Compression," Seifer would have answered, and added something about Lunatic Pandora.
"Revolution," Saionji would have said, and added something about the World's Shell.
Spike would have merely flipped the questioner the bird. In that, perhaps, he was more honest than either of the others.
Even Spike, however, had no answer to the question of why exactly they'd formed a band. Any of the three of them would simply shuffle their feet and look downcast. Nonetheless, one could apparently expect to see the Princes of Misanthropy - S. Almasy on lead guitar and vocals, W. the Bloody on bass, and K. Saionji on the drums - performing at the Neo-Tokyo bar every Friday night.
The audiences came for the bizarrity. They stayed, if they stayed, for the cheap beer. They rarely stayed.
*
"You've got no bloody idea of the fingering," Spike said, arranging his hands deliberately on the guitar. "Look, it's like this."
Seifer grabbed the guitar back from him, a growl in his voice. "I know the fingering."
"I'd agree with you, only you /don't/. This is why you sound crap on stage."
"If I sound bad, it's because I'm trying to figure out if there's any possible way to make your lyrics make sense! 'Pulchritudinous'?"
"Pulchritudinous is a word!"
"Sometimes," Saionji interrupted, frowning down at where his drumsticks crossed over the drum, "I pretend the drums are Anthy. Then I hit them."
Seifer and Spike stared at him for a moment.
Later, it would occur to them that they were meant to be arguing about something. By then, however, all three of them were very drunk, and talking about how you just couldn't trust spunky young heroines with supernatural powers, nope nope nope.
*
"What rhymes with 'misogyny'?" Spike asked, looking at the ceiling.
"'Sodomy'," Saionji suggested, looking at the floor.
"Trust you to bring up sodomy," Seifer muttered, his words making bubbles in his aspirin-infused water. Despite having approximately twice Saionji's body weight and being decidedly taller than Spike, alcohol poisoning always treated him much worse than either. Seifer considered it decidedly unfair, and thought that in that, it fit perfectly with all the rest of his life ever. For those reasons, of course, he could write a rock song eight times better than anything William the Ponce could do, but see previous statement RE: decidedly unfair.
"No it doesn't," Spike said.
"Close as you're going to get."
Spike considered. "Suppose it's appropriate."
"Something like that."
"Don't talk so loud. I'm out of Silences, I'll just have to Firaga both of you. And, personally, the chance to kill you both is something I count as a miracle."
"There are no miracles," Saionji said.
After a brief pause, Spike asked, "You steal that from somewhere?"
"Yeah."
"Will they notice if I use it in a song?"
"No."
"Perfect," Spike said, and smiled a decidedly fangy smile.
A few moments later, he asked "What rhymes with 'miracles'?"
*
Saionji was watching TV. It was the home shopping channel, which he felt was doing great harm to his masculinity, but they were showing a range of exceptionally cool letter openers and Saionji was strongly considering buying one. They would make a replacement for his sadly abandoned swords, and he thought that maybe next time Seifer missed his cue onstage, he could shove a letter opener where his spine met his skull and solve all their problems for ever.
It was perhaps in reaction to this thought that the yell emerged from Seifer's room, and he stormed out of it shouting for Spike.
Spike was mixing blood with Weet-Bix, as was his habit, and his mouth was rimmed with decidedly crumb-laden red. "What?" he asked.
"'I loved a maid as fair as summer, with sunlight in her hair; pink fabric wraps her tender form, my heart is swaddled there'."
"Some of my best work."
"It's a love song to Quistis/. You are trying to get me to sing a Hynedamn /love song to Quistis/. 'Dawn at Balamb' was /meant to be about how none of the bastards at Garden recognise my true potential."
"Yeah, only there was a problem with that."
"What?"
"It was bloody boring. Audience wants a bit of romance."
"I'm not singing this."
"Yeah, you'll probably just shout it, like you always do..."
"Sometimes I pretend the drums are Utena," Saionji pointed out, frowning at the shopping channel. "Then I hit them harder."
Seifer and Spike stared at him for a moment.
Later, it would occur to them that they were meant to be arguing about something. By then, however, all three of them were very drunk, and talking about how when you got right down to it, friends and family always let you down in the end, the bastards.
*
"Why don't we ever sing in Japanese?" Saionji asked, tilting the Miyamoto Musashi action figure on his windowsill to better catch the morning light, when it was morning. He'd lost Musashi's original two swords, and had needed to replace them with a katana and a sai taken from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. This was one of the many things Saionji would die before admitting.
"Look," Spike said. "I do English. That's what I do."
"You make a cock-up of English, is what you do," Seifer muttered. Spike's speaking patterns had started to rub off on him after weeks of singing - or more accurately shouting - Spike's lyrics on a regular basis.
"You got something you'd like to say?" Spike asked, turning to face Seifer.
"You always write the songs, and they're always awful. Last night they were throwing bottles at me."
"Yeah, but you caught them, so no harm done."
"That's not the point. We should do one of mine."
"Oh, yeah, that'd be great. 'Rarg I hate Squall I should have been the hero'. That'll have them packed in, that will."
"Are you implying I'm single-minded?" said Seifer, stepping towards Spike in a way Saionji instantly recognised as meaning that they wouldn't be out of his room for several hours. And he really wanted to sleep before long.
He managed to block out the sound of Spike's reply - "I'm bloody saying it", apparently - by wrapping a pillow around his ears. Eventually he slept, and dreamt of Touga boxing a kangaroo. This was probably a euphemism.
*
Every Friday night, at seven-thirty PM, the Princes of Misanthropy took the stage. Every Thursday afternoon, at three PM, they rehearsed on location. Often, the Thursday audiences were bigger than the Friday ones. The rehearsals were much more entertaining than the performances, if only because the Princes of Misanthropy rarely argued in concert.
"You're not wearing that," Spike said, in much the same tone as he would use to say "put your shirt back on you wanker". Living with Saionji, this was a sentence he had used far more often than he had ever expected to need.
"The fire cross trenchcoat is a trademark of our band," Seifer replied, haughtily.
"No, being bloody awful is a trademark of our band," Spike riposted. "The fire cross trenchcoat is a tatty piece of leather that's got holes and smells of that bloody oil."
"Geezard oil is good for leather."
"Yeah, well, it's not so good for the atmosphere around you is all I'm saying."
"Spike," said Seifer, deciding to try for the higher ground - though one could probably be on higher ground than any of the Princes of Misanthropy at sea level - "it's obvious this isn't about the coat, and it's just pathetic that you can't get to grips with your issues."
"My issues are your bloody Geezard oil, and who's talking about being unable to get to grips with his issues? Hey, I think I see Squall in the back corner..."
"That's Hyne-damned juvenile, Spike."
"I know you are but what am I?"
"Sometimes I pretend the drums are Touga," Saionji said, frowning at the ceiling. "Only he's shirtless. I don't really know what that's about."
Seifer and Spike stared at him for a moment.
They had no money, and thus could not get very drunk and talk about how they were really superior to their rivals, it was all in how you looked at it. The uncomfortable silence thus lasted many hours, and ended only with Spike breaking a bottle over Seifer's head, and a subsequent three-person five-faction brawl that took forty five minutes and caused Spike to lose three teeth that would, doubtless, grow back by morning.
The next day, Spike had written a song called "Second Teething", and Seifer said he hated it. Spike had offered to give him a closer perspective on the subject, Seifer had pointed out that he'd greatly desire to see Spike try, and Saionji had turned on /Eastenders/.
*
"I think I know how we can break into the big time," Seifer said. He'd been walking on air ever since a fan had asked him to sign her arm the previous day. Seifer hadn't been aware he had fans, but hadn't been surprised when it turned out he did.
"Get a new lead guitarist?" Saionji asked. He had been aware he had fans, and had been extremely surprised when it turned out he didn't. He'd been bitter at Seifer ever since. More than usual, at least.
"Be less crap?" Spike asked. He was utterly sure he had fans. Somewhere. They were just the shy type.
"We've got to be the opening act for a popular band!" Seifer announced, with the decidedly self-satisfied air of Moses on Sinai.
There was a slight pause.
"So," Saionji said, working through this in his head, "as an unpopular and somewhat awful band... we should endeavour to appear before a bunch of people who don't want to see us anyway, playing second fiddle to a band they really do want to see?"
"You could put it that way."
"Kyouichi Saionji does not bow to anyone!"
Ignoring Saionji's heartfelt and vaguely incoherent protest, Spike lit a cigarette, and Seifer glared at him reproachfully. "How do we get this golden opportunity, anyway?"
"I thought you'd ask that," Seifer said. Not only was he Moses on Sinai, but he was revealing the heretofore unknown Eleventh through Fifteenth Commandments, all of which were 'Thou Shalt Have One Other God Before Me, And It Shall Be Seifer Almasy'. "I've already got the invitation. They're called Me And My Rocket Launcher, and the manager said that the band was really excited about getting us on stage."
He threw Spike a leaflet, which Saionji caught before Spike could reach it. Spike pretended he hadn't been trying to anyway, and perhaps managed to convince someone, somewhere. "What do they play?" he asked, endeavouring to sound bored.
"Same stuff as us, just not as good."
"That's gotta take effort."
Saionji frowned at the leaflet. "Did you read this?"
"Of course," Seifer replied, but with an Expression on his face that probably counted as slander.
"'Me and My Rocket Launcher boasts Harmony Kendall on drums, Shiori Takatsuki on keyboard, Yuffie Kisaragi on bass guitar...'" Saionji paused in his recitation, to allow the final indignity time to sink in, "'and Super Duper Selphie Booyaka Tilmitt on lead guitar, vocals, and tap-dancing...'"
The leaflet disappeared into ashes. Saionji was sure Seifer was selling blood in order to keep himself in Firas, and he wasn't even sure it was Seifer's blood. Metaphorically, Moses methodically smashed each and every tablet of the Commandments against the nearest rock, inspiring punk guitarists many thousands of years later.
"It was still a good idea," Seifer muttered.
"Be less crap it is, then," Saionji said, and Spike nodded.
*
The other bands that performed at NeoTokyo seemed to live for their music, spending every waking hour tuning their instruments, writing new songs, practicing their playing and generally allowing themselves to become a coherent whole. The Princes of Misanthropy, on the other hand, seemed to live for their constant three-way war. They rarely lacked something to argue about - every skirmish was merely another aspect of the greater argument, which could be summed up as Both Of You Suck And Are Holding Me Back From Greatness.
This particular argument, on the surface, seemed to be about a recent pizza, on which Seifer had conveniently forgotten to order mushrooms. Saionji, a dedicated fan of fungus, had taken exception to this. Two minutes after the argument had begun, they were already far enough afield that Saionji was discussing Seifer's Freudian gunblade obsession, and Seifer was holding forth on the subject of Saionji's stupid green hair. Spike was slung out on a recliner, eating popcorn and apparently vastly amused.
Finally, Saionji decided to take drastic measures to end the argument as quickly as possible.
Saionji was proud of his resounding slap of justice. He'd honed it to a fine art, with the perfect force, angle, and follow-through for any situation. Backhand, forehand, even a slap that resembled a karate chop, there was no variation on open-palm percussion that Saionji had not mastered. He had found that whenever things weren't going his way in Ohtori, the proper application of a resounding slap of justice would end any trouble in short order.
However, while Seifer was several inches shorter than Saionji, he was not in the slightest like a Rose Bride or a tiny piano player. While Saionji's ultimate attack rocked him on his feet for a moment, and left a large red mark on his face that was quickly turning white, it neither knocked Seifer down nor persuaded him to accept Saionji's point of view. Indeed, Seifer's eyes narrowed, and before Saionji could accept the failure of the only technique he was really good at, Seifer had punched him in the right eye.
Spike sat right up at that one, laughing and making sure his popcorn was within easy reach.
After that, it was really just a fight scene. Highlights included Saionji attempting to shut Seifer's right arm in the fridge, Seifer breaking Saionji's favourite snowglobe over his head, Saionji extracting bitter revenge by breaking Seifer's guitar over his head, and the part where Seifer was perched over Saionji's prostrate form, gnawing on the back of his neck, while Saionji ineffectively attempted to shake free.
A click distracted both of them, just as Seifer was sure he was about to bite through Saionji's spinal cord and paralyse him for life. Both of them turned to look at Spike, whose face was largely concealed by a camera.
Three things occurred to them.
* At some point during the battle, their shirts had come off. This was something that happened frequently around Saionji, and which Seifer would spend more time studying, but that would take away precious time from attempting to break his neck.
* They were in a decidingly compromising position.
* These would hardly be the first pictures of them Spike had sold over the Internet. Even worse, the first batch had gone to "nomiracles0002", and every time Saionji tried to think of someone the buyer could be that wouldn't embarass him horribly, he drew a blank.
It would be nice if these three things had stopped their battle, and for a moment, they did. A bare few seconds later, however, Saionji and Seifer had decided who was going to hold Spike and who was going to hit him, and the resultant battle broke almost every mirror in the house.
Once they'd calmed down, Saionji suddenly recalled breaking Seifer's guitar, and that they had a gig in three days.
Fortunately, the money "squallscutesorceress" paid for the pictures was more than enough to replace it. Seifer's dignity, however, may have been permanently lost.
"Time Compression," Seifer would have answered, and added something about Lunatic Pandora.
"Revolution," Saionji would have said, and added something about the World's Shell.
Spike would have merely flipped the questioner the bird. In that, perhaps, he was more honest than either of the others.
Even Spike, however, had no answer to the question of why exactly they'd formed a band. Any of the three of them would simply shuffle their feet and look downcast. Nonetheless, one could apparently expect to see the Princes of Misanthropy - S. Almasy on lead guitar and vocals, W. the Bloody on bass, and K. Saionji on the drums - performing at the Neo-Tokyo bar every Friday night.
The audiences came for the bizarrity. They stayed, if they stayed, for the cheap beer. They rarely stayed.
*
"You've got no bloody idea of the fingering," Spike said, arranging his hands deliberately on the guitar. "Look, it's like this."
Seifer grabbed the guitar back from him, a growl in his voice. "I know the fingering."
"I'd agree with you, only you /don't/. This is why you sound crap on stage."
"If I sound bad, it's because I'm trying to figure out if there's any possible way to make your lyrics make sense! 'Pulchritudinous'?"
"Pulchritudinous is a word!"
"Sometimes," Saionji interrupted, frowning down at where his drumsticks crossed over the drum, "I pretend the drums are Anthy. Then I hit them."
Seifer and Spike stared at him for a moment.
Later, it would occur to them that they were meant to be arguing about something. By then, however, all three of them were very drunk, and talking about how you just couldn't trust spunky young heroines with supernatural powers, nope nope nope.
*
"What rhymes with 'misogyny'?" Spike asked, looking at the ceiling.
"'Sodomy'," Saionji suggested, looking at the floor.
"Trust you to bring up sodomy," Seifer muttered, his words making bubbles in his aspirin-infused water. Despite having approximately twice Saionji's body weight and being decidedly taller than Spike, alcohol poisoning always treated him much worse than either. Seifer considered it decidedly unfair, and thought that in that, it fit perfectly with all the rest of his life ever. For those reasons, of course, he could write a rock song eight times better than anything William the Ponce could do, but see previous statement RE: decidedly unfair.
"No it doesn't," Spike said.
"Close as you're going to get."
Spike considered. "Suppose it's appropriate."
"Something like that."
"Don't talk so loud. I'm out of Silences, I'll just have to Firaga both of you. And, personally, the chance to kill you both is something I count as a miracle."
"There are no miracles," Saionji said.
After a brief pause, Spike asked, "You steal that from somewhere?"
"Yeah."
"Will they notice if I use it in a song?"
"No."
"Perfect," Spike said, and smiled a decidedly fangy smile.
A few moments later, he asked "What rhymes with 'miracles'?"
*
Saionji was watching TV. It was the home shopping channel, which he felt was doing great harm to his masculinity, but they were showing a range of exceptionally cool letter openers and Saionji was strongly considering buying one. They would make a replacement for his sadly abandoned swords, and he thought that maybe next time Seifer missed his cue onstage, he could shove a letter opener where his spine met his skull and solve all their problems for ever.
It was perhaps in reaction to this thought that the yell emerged from Seifer's room, and he stormed out of it shouting for Spike.
Spike was mixing blood with Weet-Bix, as was his habit, and his mouth was rimmed with decidedly crumb-laden red. "What?" he asked.
"'I loved a maid as fair as summer, with sunlight in her hair; pink fabric wraps her tender form, my heart is swaddled there'."
"Some of my best work."
"It's a love song to Quistis/. You are trying to get me to sing a Hynedamn /love song to Quistis/. 'Dawn at Balamb' was /meant to be about how none of the bastards at Garden recognise my true potential."
"Yeah, only there was a problem with that."
"What?"
"It was bloody boring. Audience wants a bit of romance."
"I'm not singing this."
"Yeah, you'll probably just shout it, like you always do..."
"Sometimes I pretend the drums are Utena," Saionji pointed out, frowning at the shopping channel. "Then I hit them harder."
Seifer and Spike stared at him for a moment.
Later, it would occur to them that they were meant to be arguing about something. By then, however, all three of them were very drunk, and talking about how when you got right down to it, friends and family always let you down in the end, the bastards.
*
"Why don't we ever sing in Japanese?" Saionji asked, tilting the Miyamoto Musashi action figure on his windowsill to better catch the morning light, when it was morning. He'd lost Musashi's original two swords, and had needed to replace them with a katana and a sai taken from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. This was one of the many things Saionji would die before admitting.
"Look," Spike said. "I do English. That's what I do."
"You make a cock-up of English, is what you do," Seifer muttered. Spike's speaking patterns had started to rub off on him after weeks of singing - or more accurately shouting - Spike's lyrics on a regular basis.
"You got something you'd like to say?" Spike asked, turning to face Seifer.
"You always write the songs, and they're always awful. Last night they were throwing bottles at me."
"Yeah, but you caught them, so no harm done."
"That's not the point. We should do one of mine."
"Oh, yeah, that'd be great. 'Rarg I hate Squall I should have been the hero'. That'll have them packed in, that will."
"Are you implying I'm single-minded?" said Seifer, stepping towards Spike in a way Saionji instantly recognised as meaning that they wouldn't be out of his room for several hours. And he really wanted to sleep before long.
He managed to block out the sound of Spike's reply - "I'm bloody saying it", apparently - by wrapping a pillow around his ears. Eventually he slept, and dreamt of Touga boxing a kangaroo. This was probably a euphemism.
*
Every Friday night, at seven-thirty PM, the Princes of Misanthropy took the stage. Every Thursday afternoon, at three PM, they rehearsed on location. Often, the Thursday audiences were bigger than the Friday ones. The rehearsals were much more entertaining than the performances, if only because the Princes of Misanthropy rarely argued in concert.
"You're not wearing that," Spike said, in much the same tone as he would use to say "put your shirt back on you wanker". Living with Saionji, this was a sentence he had used far more often than he had ever expected to need.
"The fire cross trenchcoat is a trademark of our band," Seifer replied, haughtily.
"No, being bloody awful is a trademark of our band," Spike riposted. "The fire cross trenchcoat is a tatty piece of leather that's got holes and smells of that bloody oil."
"Geezard oil is good for leather."
"Yeah, well, it's not so good for the atmosphere around you is all I'm saying."
"Spike," said Seifer, deciding to try for the higher ground - though one could probably be on higher ground than any of the Princes of Misanthropy at sea level - "it's obvious this isn't about the coat, and it's just pathetic that you can't get to grips with your issues."
"My issues are your bloody Geezard oil, and who's talking about being unable to get to grips with his issues? Hey, I think I see Squall in the back corner..."
"That's Hyne-damned juvenile, Spike."
"I know you are but what am I?"
"Sometimes I pretend the drums are Touga," Saionji said, frowning at the ceiling. "Only he's shirtless. I don't really know what that's about."
Seifer and Spike stared at him for a moment.
They had no money, and thus could not get very drunk and talk about how they were really superior to their rivals, it was all in how you looked at it. The uncomfortable silence thus lasted many hours, and ended only with Spike breaking a bottle over Seifer's head, and a subsequent three-person five-faction brawl that took forty five minutes and caused Spike to lose three teeth that would, doubtless, grow back by morning.
The next day, Spike had written a song called "Second Teething", and Seifer said he hated it. Spike had offered to give him a closer perspective on the subject, Seifer had pointed out that he'd greatly desire to see Spike try, and Saionji had turned on /Eastenders/.
*
"I think I know how we can break into the big time," Seifer said. He'd been walking on air ever since a fan had asked him to sign her arm the previous day. Seifer hadn't been aware he had fans, but hadn't been surprised when it turned out he did.
"Get a new lead guitarist?" Saionji asked. He had been aware he had fans, and had been extremely surprised when it turned out he didn't. He'd been bitter at Seifer ever since. More than usual, at least.
"Be less crap?" Spike asked. He was utterly sure he had fans. Somewhere. They were just the shy type.
"We've got to be the opening act for a popular band!" Seifer announced, with the decidedly self-satisfied air of Moses on Sinai.
There was a slight pause.
"So," Saionji said, working through this in his head, "as an unpopular and somewhat awful band... we should endeavour to appear before a bunch of people who don't want to see us anyway, playing second fiddle to a band they really do want to see?"
"You could put it that way."
"Kyouichi Saionji does not bow to anyone!"
Ignoring Saionji's heartfelt and vaguely incoherent protest, Spike lit a cigarette, and Seifer glared at him reproachfully. "How do we get this golden opportunity, anyway?"
"I thought you'd ask that," Seifer said. Not only was he Moses on Sinai, but he was revealing the heretofore unknown Eleventh through Fifteenth Commandments, all of which were 'Thou Shalt Have One Other God Before Me, And It Shall Be Seifer Almasy'. "I've already got the invitation. They're called Me And My Rocket Launcher, and the manager said that the band was really excited about getting us on stage."
He threw Spike a leaflet, which Saionji caught before Spike could reach it. Spike pretended he hadn't been trying to anyway, and perhaps managed to convince someone, somewhere. "What do they play?" he asked, endeavouring to sound bored.
"Same stuff as us, just not as good."
"That's gotta take effort."
Saionji frowned at the leaflet. "Did you read this?"
"Of course," Seifer replied, but with an Expression on his face that probably counted as slander.
"'Me and My Rocket Launcher boasts Harmony Kendall on drums, Shiori Takatsuki on keyboard, Yuffie Kisaragi on bass guitar...'" Saionji paused in his recitation, to allow the final indignity time to sink in, "'and Super Duper Selphie Booyaka Tilmitt on lead guitar, vocals, and tap-dancing...'"
The leaflet disappeared into ashes. Saionji was sure Seifer was selling blood in order to keep himself in Firas, and he wasn't even sure it was Seifer's blood. Metaphorically, Moses methodically smashed each and every tablet of the Commandments against the nearest rock, inspiring punk guitarists many thousands of years later.
"It was still a good idea," Seifer muttered.
"Be less crap it is, then," Saionji said, and Spike nodded.
*
The other bands that performed at NeoTokyo seemed to live for their music, spending every waking hour tuning their instruments, writing new songs, practicing their playing and generally allowing themselves to become a coherent whole. The Princes of Misanthropy, on the other hand, seemed to live for their constant three-way war. They rarely lacked something to argue about - every skirmish was merely another aspect of the greater argument, which could be summed up as Both Of You Suck And Are Holding Me Back From Greatness.
This particular argument, on the surface, seemed to be about a recent pizza, on which Seifer had conveniently forgotten to order mushrooms. Saionji, a dedicated fan of fungus, had taken exception to this. Two minutes after the argument had begun, they were already far enough afield that Saionji was discussing Seifer's Freudian gunblade obsession, and Seifer was holding forth on the subject of Saionji's stupid green hair. Spike was slung out on a recliner, eating popcorn and apparently vastly amused.
Finally, Saionji decided to take drastic measures to end the argument as quickly as possible.
Saionji was proud of his resounding slap of justice. He'd honed it to a fine art, with the perfect force, angle, and follow-through for any situation. Backhand, forehand, even a slap that resembled a karate chop, there was no variation on open-palm percussion that Saionji had not mastered. He had found that whenever things weren't going his way in Ohtori, the proper application of a resounding slap of justice would end any trouble in short order.
However, while Seifer was several inches shorter than Saionji, he was not in the slightest like a Rose Bride or a tiny piano player. While Saionji's ultimate attack rocked him on his feet for a moment, and left a large red mark on his face that was quickly turning white, it neither knocked Seifer down nor persuaded him to accept Saionji's point of view. Indeed, Seifer's eyes narrowed, and before Saionji could accept the failure of the only technique he was really good at, Seifer had punched him in the right eye.
Spike sat right up at that one, laughing and making sure his popcorn was within easy reach.
After that, it was really just a fight scene. Highlights included Saionji attempting to shut Seifer's right arm in the fridge, Seifer breaking Saionji's favourite snowglobe over his head, Saionji extracting bitter revenge by breaking Seifer's guitar over his head, and the part where Seifer was perched over Saionji's prostrate form, gnawing on the back of his neck, while Saionji ineffectively attempted to shake free.
A click distracted both of them, just as Seifer was sure he was about to bite through Saionji's spinal cord and paralyse him for life. Both of them turned to look at Spike, whose face was largely concealed by a camera.
Three things occurred to them.
* At some point during the battle, their shirts had come off. This was something that happened frequently around Saionji, and which Seifer would spend more time studying, but that would take away precious time from attempting to break his neck.
* They were in a decidingly compromising position.
* These would hardly be the first pictures of them Spike had sold over the Internet. Even worse, the first batch had gone to "nomiracles0002", and every time Saionji tried to think of someone the buyer could be that wouldn't embarass him horribly, he drew a blank.
It would be nice if these three things had stopped their battle, and for a moment, they did. A bare few seconds later, however, Saionji and Seifer had decided who was going to hold Spike and who was going to hit him, and the resultant battle broke almost every mirror in the house.
Once they'd calmed down, Saionji suddenly recalled breaking Seifer's guitar, and that they had a gig in three days.
Fortunately, the money "squallscutesorceress" paid for the pictures was more than enough to replace it. Seifer's dignity, however, may have been permanently lost.
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