DUCT TAPE IV: Oh, Yuuuuli!
by Ebonhawk

He sat quietly out back, just waiting for Mia to come home from shopping and the guys to get out of school for the weekend. They always hung out with him over the weekend. He really hoped they didn't mind that he'd used some of their things earlier. He was sure they wouldn't. They were nice guys, for the most part. He preferred not to think about the time Ryo'd threatened to have White Blaze eat him just because he'd been caught playing marbles with some kids from school using their armor-spheres. Geez, you'd think they'd have been happy with him because he'd been winning! No, they'd been pi - uh, can't use that word or Mia'll wash my mouth out with soap again! - *angry* and yelled at him. And with the words they'd used - even Cye!!! - Mia would have gone through probably ten bars of soap on each of them! They'd have been blowing bubbles with every breath for the rest of their natural lives.

At least Cye would be happy with him today, he knew. He'd taken care of his fish real good. They'd looked so hungry and the water had been so cold; surely they had been freezing!

He sighed and blinked in boredom. He was starting to think that maybe he should get Rowen or Sage to sharpen his little pocketknife when he heard his name called.

"Yuli! The cookies are ready!" Mia hollered from the kitchen window.

"Yeah!" He jumped excitedly to his feet and rushed inside.

Rowen staggered in the front door, dropping his bag after a few steps and wandering dazedly into the living room. Barely making it to the couch, he crashed, sprawling inelegantly across it on his stomach. "G'night," he intoned to Cye, who was leaning down and peering at his face. He was almost oblivious when an earthquake hit...or at least what felt like one.

Staring at the person in front of him without seeing who it was, Rowen asked, "Uzzat???" Then, Kento's face came suddenly into focus and he realized it wasn't an earthquake. It was just Kento waking him up. "Why'd ya do tha'? I was seepin' so good, too..." he slurred, his voice set on whine factor ten.

"Take it upstairs," Kento told him uncompassionately. "I want the couch. There's still a couple good hours of cartoon watchin' left."

Rowen stuck out his tongue and gave Kento a big, slobbery raspberry before slipping in a heavy tangle to the floor. Somehow climbing to his hands and knees, he started the long, crawling journey up to his room.

Ryo sat down at the desk in his room, ready to do his homework then get down to some serious playing over the next two days. He pulled out his language skills book and flipped open to the page he'd marked off earlier. Gazing forlornly down at the type that seemed to just stretch on forever across the paper, he decided he needed something to fidget with, just to keep his hands busy while he read the stuff.

Soccer ball! Jumping up from his seat, Ryo raced over to his closet and pulled the door open. He found his soccer ball easily; it was right up front and on top of everything...only, it looked kind of *flat*. Turning it over in his hands, Ryo found a huge gash in it. The kind of gash left by a dull pocketknife.

Gripping the poor remains of the ball tightly in one hand, he turned to stalk out of his room when something else caught his eye. His new sneakers...the ones that had cost him an arm and a leg and half his soul...where once they had been a pristine, untouched, virgin white, they were now grungy with dark, heavy mud... snagged and ripped by thorns and twigs... destroyed. Who had done this??? The small, dirty handprint on the pale wall told him all he needed to know.

"Yuli," he snarled, his eyes narrowed dangerously.

"BYAAAAAARRRK!!!"

Cye grimaced and studiously avoided making eye contact with Kento, the source of the foundation-shaking belch.

"Oh, that felt good. I'm hungry now."

"What a surprise," Cye muttered, marking down the answer to the math problem.

"I know! I'll go get that sandwich that I brought over this morning." Kento was up off the couch and bounding into the kitchen post-haste. "AAAAHHHH!!!"

Cye jumped to his feet and raced into the kitchen when he heard the terrified cry. Kento's voice was horror-filled and Cye couldn't imagine what could be happening. Nothing ever did that to Kento! Wearing only socks on his feet, Cye slid across the linoleum floor when he hit it, slipping right past Kento and (landing on his rear) slamming hard into the cupboard doors just below the sink.

Shaking the dizziness from his head, he looked up at Kento. The Chinese boy stood in front of the open refrigerator, freely weeping.

Slowly, unsteadily pushing to his feet, Cye cautiously walked (or slid, rather) over to Kento. "What's wrong?"

"S'gone!" the other sobbed into his hands, muffling his words.

"What's gone, Kento?"

"My sandwich...my little piece of heaven... Mama made it for me, Cye!"

Cye rolled his eyes and turned away from him, then suddenly he caught sight of something that made his heart drop and his stomach lurch. Was that what he thought it was in the microwave? He forced himself to slip his way over to the far counter and, closing his eyes briefly and taking a deep breath, pulled open the door of the microwave.

Finding the courage to look inside, he nearly fainted when he saw the horrible truth... Someone had taken his fishbowl and stuffed it in, then zapped it. Five scaly little bodies floated on the surface of the water, not moving.

"NO! Queen Lizzy! Ringo! John, Paul, and George! You can't be dead! You can't be! No, no, no!" Cye wailed, tearing at his hair and backing away from the carnage. "Who could have done this to you??"

"I don't know, Cye, but I intend to find out who," Kento said to him, having finally collected himself. He patted Cye's shoulder and turned him away from the awful sight. It was while wiping at his tears and sniffling, that Cye saw it sitting on the table. It was Yuli's pocketknife. The young boy *had* spent the entire day here, hadn't he?

"Never mind looking for anything, Ken. I know who did it."

"Who? It wasn't Mia. She wouldn't do anything like this to your fish...she wouldn't eat my sandwich."

"Not Mia."

"Then who?"

Cye growled deep in his throat and expelled the name with purest malevolence, "Yuli."

"Huh?" Kento asked in confusion. Then it dawned on him. "Oh... Yuli..." he paused before continuing spitefully, "Yuli..."

Laying sound asleep on his bed, Rowen was awakened by a terrified scream. He swung his head around wildly, trying to bring himself fully back into consciousness. It wasn't working too well. Crawling out of bed, he tripped over an open book lying in the middle of the floor.

It was his favorite astronomy book...the big, thick, REALLY expensive one. Blinking down on it, he saw many brightly colored lines shooting brilliantly across the pages. What had happened to his book?!

He flipped a few and found more and more waxy, colored lines decorating the type. Then, looking at the floor near the book, he found many, many bits of evidence. The only evidence he needed for a conviction, as far as he was concerned. He face screwed up in anger as he kicked them out of the way.

Crayons.

Whole, broken, paper ripped halfway off, no paper, red, purple, green, blue, yellow...any way you could imagine...they were there. And so where several other books in the same condition as the first. The books...they were all his. The crayons that had defaced them... those belonged to-

"Yuli!"

Sage sat quietly in the den, flipping through a magazine. He heard several angry and anguished shouts but ignored them. It wasn't an uncommon occurrence in this house. Then he realized that all the voices were crying out the same name... Uh-oh! He jumped up out of the upholstered chair and booked it up to his room. It was just as he'd feared.

Someone had TOUCHED his crystals. That one, the rose quartz...it was set down just slightly off of where it was supposed to be! And the rutilated quartz (author's note: this stone it known to my friends and I as mutilated corpse! *grin*)...it was upside down! He wasn't even going to *think* about the amethyst and fluorite clusters. But his prize, the centerpiece of his collection, the nearly foot long, unflawed, absolutely clear quartz crystal as thick as his forearm...it was missing.

Then he noticed his window was open. He hadn't left it that way. Slowly, he made his way across his room and forced himself to look out and down. There, shattered into millions - no billions! - of tiny pieces, lay his crystal. Only one thought crossed his mind at this point. The boy was going to die.

"Yuli!!!"

"You ate my sandwich, Yuli," he heard someone say behind him as he sat and played the new video game Mia had gotten him. It was Kento.

"You destroyed my soccer ball and my new sneakers, Yuli." Ryo, also behind him.

"You used my books to color in, Yuli." Ulp. That was Rowen.

"You annihilated my crystal, Yuli." Uh... Sage didn't sound too happy.

"You BOILED my fish, Yuli." Eep! Cye.

Hands were suddenly around his throat, making it difficult to breathe and sending his vision totally wonky.

"You BOILED my fish, Yuli! You overfed them and then you BOILED THEM! You made my fish into SOUP! It wasn't even GOOD soup! At least you could have given them THAT! But no!!! You gave them too much food when they didn't even NEED it and then you BOILED them in the microwave! You NUKED my fish!!!"

Kento and the others struggled to pry Cye's hands away from Yuli's neck. It wasn't easy.

"CYE!" Rowen shouted, trying to break through the red haze of hatred that clouded Cye's mind. "We *can't* kill him! No matter how much he deserves it! Just think of what Mia would do to us!"

That got through. Visions of Ryo after Mia'd found out about the threat to have White Blaze eat Yuli still haunted his nights... He didn't ever want to end up like that. It was too horrible.

"Then what are we going to do to him? We aren't just going to let him get away with everything?" Cye questioned, his voice rough with grief. "Especially after what he did to Queen Lizzy and the Beatles."

Ryo thought for a long moment and then grinned viciously. Tossing a look around at his buddies, he said, "I know what we can do."

The tape was once again put into action.

They sat contentedly on the deck out back, sipping at their fresh lemonade. There was a slight breeze and it ruffled through their hair, keeping away the early autumn heat.

"Do you think it'll hold?" Kento asked lazily.

"Yeah. He's not that heavy and we did use a lot of tape," Rowen replied just as lazily.

Sage snorted in amusement. "A lot? We used five whole rolls. One for each of us!"

"Yeah. And we each used our own color, too. I'm sure glad we found that place that carries the colored stuff."

"I don't know, Cye. I'm kinda partial to the old-fashioned grey myself," Ryo commented.

"Well, we'll just use that next time. It was just so appropriate to use the colored stuff on him this time, though," Rowen said thoughtfully. Then all talk subsided and they looked up high into the nearest tree.

Hanging from one of the thick limbs, nearly twenty feet up and wrapped securely in duct tape of red, orange, green, and two shades of blue, was Yuli. He rather resembled a wriggling caterpillar in a cocoon, Cye thought. A colorful one, at that.

END