Fruits Basket Fan Fiction ❯ The Small Things ❯ The Hat ( Chapter 1 )

Author's Note:

 

My second fanfic (see `A Caged Heart). Haru may seem a bit out of character (but I hope he isn't - once he actually appears in the fanfic, which is soon, I hope) - but I don't know him too well. Not as much apologizing now (though I do apologize for the rushed ending of my first fanfic - I got sick of it after a while and just wanted it to end). If you don't like this fanfic, you probably won't like any of my possibly-future work.

 

You may notice a slight change in tone. Only in a few places, of course (Just a warning in advance). Let's just say … that I have a few friends who are a bad influence (but how others have remained as innocent as they are, I will never know). And if you don't understand anything, you will when you're older. Or, hopefully, you won't at all. Well, actually it's nothing compared to all those X-rated fanfics, but when if you're mind is deep enough in the gutters, anything can mean something else. Not like mine. Of course.

 

Also, there are many references to and details about the CIA in this fanfic. I have no idea if any of it is true, since much of it was created in the haphazard wilderness that is my imagination - so I would greatly appreciate it if I am not tarred and feathered for any untruths. Or for any truths that were not meant to be revealed to the public. With that said, I would also like to mention (for no particular reason) that there are, without a doubt, no aliens whatsoever, and even if there were (which there aren't), they most certainly would not be being probed (and even if they were, it definitely would not be probing of the anal kind) at this very moment in any closed-off sectors of North American territory. Ahem.

 

Anyway - comments welcomed, but much criticism probably won't be listened to, since I tend to not take any of it in until after I have completed the fanfic, as I fear it might put me off. Or maybe I'll actually listen to it, and it might just help. I usually (usually meaning according the first and only other time) wait till I've written most of the fanfic (or at least have a better plot idea than I do now) before I post it, but I need motivation to continue, so I have decided to post the first four chapters I have up.

 

Once again: Time between chapters varies. So please hold.

 

Story set at several different times (it fast-forwards at places - only once so far, but I'm just warning you again), but hopefully you can figure out where bits fit without my help. `Cause I sure as hell don't know half the time.

 

Also, I don't own Fruits Basket nor any of their characters - only how they act in this fanfic. So please don't sue, because I have no money (and this won't be repeated often).

 

Oh, and this is just the working title, just because I had to name it something, and I was listening to Blink182 (All the Small Things, for all you un-seers-of-words-that-aren't-there). But I suppose if I keep it, I'll have to work that in somehow.

 

And even though this is set in Japan, everyone speaks English. Hey - if all the other fanfic-writers are doing that, why shouldn't I? I don't bloody else know how to do it…

 

Enjoy!

 

 

PS. Not all Author's Notes will be this long. I promise. (Bloody f***!!! It's over 500 words!)

 

 

The Hat:

 

A tall woman stood in the shadows of a tree atop a small mound-like hill, both towering over the rest of the graveyard. She wore a black trench coat, with a wide-brimmed hat of the same shade sitting slightly crooked on her head. A delicately patterned, black veil of lace hung from the hat and curtained her face. The only other colour she wore was the indigo of the lacy hatband that encircled her ornate headwear. That, and a bright blue headset which the veil had stubbornly refused to conceal.

 

Apparently the Agency had run out of black ones.

 

She always made calls from a graveyard. It was the only place where one could go unnoticed for long periods of time while talking animatedly when completely alone, and dressed completely in black. With big lacy hats.

 

You see, upon the initiation of an agent's employment in the Agency, the agent is required to obtain, by means legal or otherwise (though the former is customarily preferred - that is, by a slim margin of the more principled members of the generally unscrupulous organization), a suitable accessory to hide the main features of one's face (as is essential to those in that particular choice of occupation). The majority usually chooses a pair of stereotypical, black sunglasses with reflective lenses, but this particular agent had paid a visit to the most renowned hatter in the vicinity and had purchased what the entire Agency had since referred to as `the hat'.

 

Many of her colleagues wondered why she even bothered with it, since her auburn bangs masked most of her face anyway. The truth was simply that she loved hats. Especially big, lacy ones.

 

But today, not even the hat could lighten her dark temperament.

 

“What??!!”

 

“I'm sorry, Agent Smith.” Approximately two hundred and fifty-eight metres away, trapped in the confines of a tiny office in one of the lesser of the top-secret Japan-based sub-divisions of the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States of America, Patrick Carter cringed. No one liked being the one to give Agent Smith bad news. Actually, that went for all the Agent Smiths (and indeed, there were hoards and countless hoards of them), but this one was especially irritable. Her voice screeched horrendously when she was upset, and even more so she was unbelievably pissed off. Which she was. Right in his left ear.

 

“Are you sure?”

 

“Yes. The boss said that if we were to send in a female infiltrator, it would be preferable that she was reasonably ignorant of the methods of espionage, deceit and the like, so as to better educate her. Someone with such… experience as Miss Candy would simply not do.”

 

“God damn it, Carter! Wh-”

 

Suddenly, a movement in the edges of the agent's peripheral vision caught her attention. A young couple stood in the distance, eyeing her uncertainly. In an instant, she had switched from absolutely livid to sorrowful and desolate, altering the yet unarticulated words forming in her head to something that would better fit such an occasion.

 

“Why, Carter? Why did you have to die? Oh, why couldn't it have been me? Oh, why couldn't I have been the one to spontaneously combust? Why, my Carter?” she sobbed, one fist outstretched to the great unknown, the other clasped close to her heart.

 

The couple shifted uneasily and hurried away, keeping their prying eyes fixed on the ground.

 

“At another graveyard?” asked the voice in her ear, after a brief silence.

 

“As usual.” She said, daintily drying her eyes and dusting the lint off her shoulders. “Now, where was I?”

 

Carter remained silent, hoping that she had forgot. Unfortunately for him, this Agent Smith had an amazingly photographic memory, unlike another Agent Smith who was really far too old to even be in the business at all.

 

“Ah, yes. Where on earth does the boss expect me to find a young, attractive, naive girl looking for a job and somewhere to live?”

 

“Well, I don't know. I'm just the messenger. Look around - keep your eyes peeled, I guess.”

 

Agent Smith sighed.

 

“Thanks Carter. Bye.” She tapped the side of the headset, a manicured finger completely ignoring the veil. She sighed again. “Oh god. God, god, god, god, gods.”

 

A pair of keen, green eyes surveyed the graveyard dejectedly.

 

There was a crowd of people surrounding one of the graves, but few of them were female, and only two were in the suitable age range. However, the taller one appeared to be armed (very discretely, mind you) with something resembling a lead pipe - and the other was just plain freaky.

 

“Oh bloody -” Agent Smith exhaled loudly.

 

How could she expect that another would-be-agent would appear conveniently within a ten-metre radius of her current location? Had she lost all sense of reality already? What did she think this mission was? Some random unpublished writer's fanfic or -

 

A muffled sob sounded from other side of the tree.

 

Agent Smith froze.