[Episode 24311] [Episode 24311]"Sakura?!! What are you doing here?!"
Clearly, the resident nurse of Tomobiki High School and Shinto shrine priestess has had better days. Her normal work clothing -- a blouse and skirt, that under a white doctor's smock -- are all about to fall off her, there was no sign whatsoever of a bra, her nylons were torn and it looks as if her panties are about to be ripped in half. "I..." she pants, her mind now quite out to lunch thanks to Moreau's bio-virus, then stares pleadingly at him. "P-please..." she staggers to her feet; she had collapsed on stumbling into Tampopo's. "Ataru, please..." she moans, staggering against a table as she tries to get to him. "Please help me...! Please..."
Ataru's jaw hits the floor as the sincerity of the nurse's words strikes home. Without thinking about it, he leaps over the counter, then walks over to boost Sakura into his arms, carrying her over to a booth as far from Priss as possible. He knew Tampopo, not to mention Sylia and the other Sabres, would kill him if he got the singer infected with this damned hentai bug flying around the place. As soon as she feels his arms around her, Sakura groans, then moves to hold him tight even as he tries to let her go. "Ataruuuuuuuuuuuuuu..." she whines.
"Oba-chan, get the hell out here!!!" Priss yells into the back of the shop. "We got a problem!!!"
Footsteps herald Tampopo's arrival. "Priss-chan, what are...?!" she quickly spots someone she normally wouldn't allow into her establishment trying to put the moves on her ward, then sighs as she marches over, grabbing her BAS from over the counter.
WHANG!!
One priestess/nurse into la-la land, a la carte.
Ataru pants, collapsing against the counter. "Th-thanks!" he breathes out. "Shit...!"
"That worked," Priss quips.
Tampopo sets aside her fighting spatula as she moves to examine the unconscious Sakura. "Hmmm..." escapes her as her fingers dance over the younger woman's shiatsu lines, then she shakes her head. "She's got it, full-force. Amazing that she was able to come here from school, but why isn't she trying to go after her fiance, for heaven's sake?"
"Can you help her?" Ataru wonders.
"Not at this stage, I'm afraid," Tampopo grimaces. "I can give her something to calm her down, let her think things out first, but there's only one way to get this gunk of her system for sure."
"Oh, great..."
Later...
"Ugh..."
"Daijoubu (Are you alright), Sensei?"
Sakura's stormy grey eyes flutter open, then she finds herself staring at a lovely teenage girl with partially-braided black hair and brown eyes, she now dressed in a yutaka. Looking around, she notices she is in a booth at Tampopo's. Her head throbs from both the influence of the flu that drove her inner desires into hyperwarp and the blow from Tampopo's BAS, something she was familiar with. "I..." she rubs her head, then notices that she herself is in a yutaka. "What happened...?" she mutters, then pauses as she notes the other people present.
"You've been infected by a designer-made bio-virus meant to drive your sexual desires to the point where you would have no conscious control over them, Sakurambou-sensei," the black-haired, brown-eyed woman her age replies. "Much to Ataru-kun's considerable surprise, you came in here intent on seeking gratification from him directly. You're lucky that Kamekichi-san was around to stop you from raping him on the spot and winding up suffering far worse in return."
Tampopo enters Sakura's arc of vision, causing the latter to duck back automatically. "Well, at least you're able to think things out clearly for the next hour or so," the chef reports. "Now, mind telling us why you came here? If you're so hot and heavy for a man, why didn't you go find your fiance and do it with him, for heaven's sake?"
Sakura blinks, then shudders as images flood her mind. "He...!" she stutters, tears streaming down her cheeks.
Niagara Falls results. The others duck the shower of tears, then Ataru sighs. "Oh, man, this just CAN'T be good!"
Manami and Yuu instantly move to comfort. The Sabres (Priss having been shooed back into Ataru's bedroom for her safety, now fortified with some of the white powder Tampopo had given her friends) exchange confused looks. Chigaiko tries not to feel TOO nauseous; her personal feelings and thoughts concerning Sakura were almost as bad as those she had for Lum and Shinobu. Finally, Sakura calms down enough to explain what brought her to Tampopo's in the first place. "I got this flu -- or whatever it is -- when I was examining some boys at school this morning. When I started to feel like I wanted one of them to make love to me, I moved to focus myself on Tsubame. After all, he IS my fiance, of course! So I got out of school and moved as fast as I could to his place. But when I got there..."
"You noticed some other ladies had preceeded you," Yuu finishes.
"H-hai," the nurse stutters, sniffing back a new bout of tears, then she sighs. "I...! Well, I wasn't going to let Tsubame-kun go without a fight, so I tried to blast down the door. But there was some sort of magical seal over it that blocked me from getting in. It blocked all the other doors and windows, too. I..." she sniffs again, then nods thanks as Manami hands her a handkerchief. "So I started to feel myself drown in my own passions when I..." her eyes fell on Ataru. "Well, I thought of you. And..." she shrugs.
"Positively or negatively?"
"Chigaiko!!" Ataru, Manami and Yuu spin on the other member of their sex-clique.
"I've got a right to ask this," she stares at them, then the ice in her eyes turns glacial as she focuses on Sakura. "Don't think for an instant that I'm ignorant about how you look on Ataru-kun, Sensei. Yeah, he's done some real bone-headed things to you, but you haven't been as much a help to him in return despite what you think. So what EXACTLY did you think of when you thought of him, Sensei?"
Sakura gulps, surprised by the accusation from this woman -- Wait! Who was she?! She'd seen her at school, but...! -- then she looks down. "A bit of both, admittedly. Yes, I..." she closes her eyes. "There was a moment when I did suspect that you were somehow behind whatever this is that's affecting us all. Force of habit, I suppose. But then again, I am a nurse. I do understand a lot about infectious diseases and regardless of what else this is that's affected us, it does act like an infectious disease."
"Like you said, Sylia-san: a bio-war agent," Linna gazes on the Sabres' leader.
"Agreed," Sylia nods.
Ataru gazes on the nurse, then sighs. "So what did you conclude about this whole thing?"
Sakura returns his look, then noticing the tranquil stare on his face, smirks. "Well, first of all, it's affected both men and women spanning a far wider age-range than what you normally targetted..." -- she keeps to past tense to ensure she didn't sound accusatory -- "...in your girl-hunts. Further, everyone, for the most part, is going after those they want to be with. If it was you..."
"All the girls'd be coming after me. And only the cute ones," he finishes.
Sakura flusters, then nods before jolting on hearing a chuckle escape him. The others gaze his way, many surprised by his reaction. "I'm okay," he waves them down, then sighs. "I suppose I have to expect that given what I've done in the past. Though I do admit now that after you glomped me earlier, I can understand how you must've felt when I glomped all of you in the past."
"Ataru..." she gapes at him, then rises, feeling his forehead. "Okay, who are you and what have you done with the real Ataru?!"
Silence, then Yuu and Manami collapse in peals of merriment. Linna and Nene snicker; even Sylia and Tampopo grin. Chigaiko remains stonily silent. Ataru gazes on Sakura, then shrugs. The nurse sees his grin, then laughs herself. Finally, Sakura takes a deep breath, then gazes on the other young women in the room. "So I take it you've only spent time with these girls, eh...?"
"Just us, Sensei," Yuu points to herself, then Manami and Chigaiko. "Sylia-san and her friends are, you might say, casualties of this situation, especially when you factor in Lum's time-travel devices. They're from the year 2033 in a parallel universe..."
"And we are trying to ensure they won't be affected, much less carry this bug back into their universe if and when they get the chance to return," Tampopo finishes.
"Ah!" Sakura nods, then blinks. "Are you sure it was Lum that did this?"
"Pretty sure, though if this bio-virus has something to do with it, I wouldn't blame her directly for it."
"Save for gross negligence in having such a device in a place where it can do so much harm," Sylia notes.
"Agreed. She keeps all that stuff in her bikini top," Ataru rolls his eyes, then sighs, turning to Sakura. "Sensei?"
"Hai, Ataru, what is it?"
"You want to try to take another crack at getting Tsubame?"
Silence. Sakura stares wide-eyed at Ataru as the jist of his question sinks in, then she looks down at herself for a moment. Taking a deep breath, she whispers, her hands coming together before her. "I..." she begins, then sighs. "I just don't know..."
"Before you consider jumping into the sack with Ataru-kun here, you have to know the price of admission," Yuu warns.
Sakura gazes at her, then peers intently at her, then Manami, then Chigaiko before looking once more at Ataru. "I see..."
"The chances are there that being with Tsubame might provoke the same thing, Sakura," Tampopo warns.
"That's something to keep in mind," Manami nods.
"How many women were with your fiance, Sensei?" Linna asks.
"Three," Sakura takes a deep breath. "All Westerners. I think they were study-mates of Tsubame's when he was apprentacing in Europe."
"Is your fiance paranormally-powered?" Sylia asks.
"He's a sorcerer, Sylia-san. Pretty good one, too," Ataru explains.
Sakura stares at him. "That's being courteous!"
"Hey, it's the truth."
She considers that, then moves to stand directly in front of him. Before he can say anything, she shrugs off her yutaka. "Hey, what the hell are...?!" Chigaiko moves to shove the nurse away from Ataru.
Yuu and Manami leap up to hold her back, the more accepting feelings the out-of-towners have for Sakura quickly drowning out Chigaiko's sense of outrage. The three teens quickly shuffle to a corner booth. "Chigaiko, if you butt in like this, Ataru'll start feeling that you don't trust him to make his own decisions!" Yuu hisses as soon as they are out of hearing range. "That's the same mistake Miyaki and Lum made. Do you want to start that up now that you've finally won him over from those girls?"
"Of course I trust him!" Chigaiko hisses back. "It's HER I don't trust!"
"Let him decide that," Manami insists.
"Sakura, why are you doing this?"
All three spin around, gazing wide-eyed at Ataru. He is holding Sakura by the shoulders, but doing nothing else. The nurse has a confused look on her face, she looking everywhere else by his eyes. "Don't you think I'm beautiful?" she whispers.
He takes a deep breath. Oh, man, he didn't need THIS! "Yes, you're beautiful, Sakura! Very beautiful! But that's not the damned point!" he turns her head to face him. "Look. Thanks to this bio-virus, you've got three options. One, you can do it with me. You've been given a hint as to what that'll cost you. Two, you go back and try to get to Tsubame. I think you'll face the same thing with him. Three, you find someone else and take your chances with him, whoever he is. Right now, you've got the chance to think this through. Take it, please!"
Silence falls as Sakura considers his words, then faces him. "Alright, then..."
(Posted Thu, 23 Jan 2003 06:04)
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