Sweet Dreams [One shot]

[WillDfly]

 
"Why don't you start from the beginning?"

The Nurse sits on a swivel chair, with his usual confident smile and pen on hand, while Hisao lays on the infirmary bed, with an ECG connected to his chest and a displeased look on his face.

"Well, in the beginning, all matter and energy were contained in a singularity..."

A loud sigh from Goro stops his sarcastic rant, and the playful grin is replaced with a serious frown.

"Look, I get it. It's annoying and uncomfortable, but you had a relapse, and a serious one at that. If I wasn't helping with the post-festival rounds, we wouldn't be having this conversation."

Hisao knows things could have gone much worse were it not for Nurse. He looks properly apologetic, but still defiant.

"But if you don't feel like cooperating, I'll just keep you here under observation. Who knows, I might decide it's better to take you to the city hospital just to be sure..."

The student quickly raises his hands, pleading. Going back to the hospital is the last thing he'd want to.

"No! No need, I'll cooperate. See? 100% cooperative, just ask away."

Nurse nods, satisfied. You could argue his ethics and his methods, but how low he's willing to stoop for the students' health is the best testament to how much he cares.

"Then, yesterday. From the top. Don't spare details."

Hisao lets out a dejected sigh, but they both know he lost.

"I slept late, since it was Sunday. Checked the festival from my window and had my usual bottled breakfast."

"I briefly considered skipping the festival altogether, but half my week was spent helping Shizune and Misha with it, so it would be a waste not to enjoy it. Not that I had much of an alternative, they picked me up at my room.”

Nurse gives him a suggestive look, that goes dutifully ignored.

“We walked around the festival visiting the stalls. Hmm... I actually had a small episode when I tried too hard at one of the games, but it didn't last.”

Hisao pauses for a moment, in case more details are required, but no further question comes forth.

"When I got back to the dorms, I read for a bit in bed, and went to sleep."

"How much is 'a bit'?"

Hisao scratches the back of his head a bit before answering.

"An hour or two?"

His eyes meet Nurse's, who doesn't try to hide his incredulity.

"Maaaybe four?"

Nurse just shakes his head in disbelief and gestures a 'go on'.

"It wasn't long before I fell asleep and started dreaming. When I woke up, I was already on this bed, this cursed beeping on my ears."

Hisao punctuates his statement with an annoyed gesture to the ECG machine.

Nurse thinks about arguing that cursed beeping was better then no beeping, but he understands that the noise's a symbol for hospitalization. It never comes up unless there's something wrong. Given Hisao's history, he couldn't blame the kid for wanting to shoot the electronic messenger.

Tapping his pen on the clipboard, he goes for another subject.

"You said something about dreaming? What did you dream about?"

"Does it matter?"

Hisao's tone is no longer aggressive or defiant, just defensive.

"Dunno, but I can't figure out if you don't tell me. Something must have triggered your flutter. You had it while you were asleep, didn't you?"

"Yes, but I don't think..."

He turns his gaze towards the other infirmary bed, hidden in its drawn curtain.

"Hisao. Look at me. You think I would be asking you any of this if there was a single soul around to hear it? I assure you, nothing you say's gonna leave this room."

"Okay, but still..."

His embarrassment is crystal clear, specially to someone used to working with teenagers. It does nothing but goad the Nurse on.

"Ooh, it was one of those dreams, huh? I see."

He asks with a mischievous grin.

Hisao sighs with defeat again. Nurse has this effect with many students

"Yes, it was. Now can we move on? Please?"

"Sorry, kiddo. If something in your dream did trigger the flutter, I need to know. We'll have to take extra precautions if you had such a reaction merely dreaming about the opposite sex. Or the same one, I don't judge. Heck, this one time..."

"It was the opposite sex!"

Hisao blurts out, both to clear any misunderstanding and to avoid whatever Goro was going to tell, but immediately feels flustered by his own overreaction.

"Not that I'd judge either, but that's not the case."

His gaze wanders from Nurses expectant look to the empty beds, to the ground, to the door, then back to the grinning medic.

He lets out a heavy sigh.

"Fine. In my dream, I was in my bedroom back home, playing a game, I think. Reading too. Yeah, I know, huge nerd, dreaming about books."

"You said it, not me."

His expression clearly tells he doesn't disagree, though.

"Anyways, suddenly Misha barged in, with that loud laughter of hers, you know the one."

"Me and everything with ears in a 10 km radius, yes. And quite a few things without ears too, I'd think."

"Well, she said something like 'you're finally here Hicchan, what took you so long?'. She's never been to my house, so I figured it was a dream and then we were in my room here in the dorms. She started talking about how Shizune'd been ignoring her, and that she was lonely..."

"Wait, the location changed because you realized it was a dream?"

"Yeah, it happens sometimes. I notice something odd, then everything around me gets sort of fuzzy, soft, what's the word... malleable. And I change it."

Nurse makes a small note, but doesn't interrupt anymore.

"But that's when it got weird. She came with some talk about how I was 'taking Shicchan away' and that I should 'at least comfort' her. Next thing I know, she was kissing me and unbuttoning my shirt, which freaked me out. I... I still don't feel comfortable..."

Hisao massages his scar over his shirt and idly wonders who brought the uniform from his room, he remembers going to sleep topless. Something for later.

"I managed to make my scar disappear, but I couldn't affect Misha. It was like she got more real and solid the more conscious I was of the dream. Then she began transforming... no, not transforming, more like..."

A small pause as he recalls, to try and describe the experience.

"You know those 'when you see it, you will shit bricks' pictures? You see nothing weird at first glance, but then you look from another angle, and it's like 'how could I not see this before?'."

Nurse nods his understanding.

"It was like that. She got slender, more... endowed, her eyes had vertical slits for pupils and her drills were these red horns pointing down..."

Hisao used his hands to show what he meant.

"...and I could swear that was something moving behind her shoulder. But she didn't give me time to figure any of that, she kept undressing both of us and making out with me."

"And you?"

"Well, I figured it was a pretty good dream, even if I had little power over it, so I started getting into it. Then she kissed me real deep and... next thing I know, I'm here."

"I see..."

Nurse looks up at the ceiling, tapping his chin with a pen.

"You ever heard of lucid dreaming, Hisao?"

"Hmm... Doesn't ring a bell, no."

"This awareness and control over dreams you mentioned sound very much like it. Thing is, sometimes the dreamer's imagination takes over and he ends up creating vivid nightmares and night terrors. Or dreams that deceive the dreamers themselves. Ever experienced that?"

"Sometimes, as a child."

"And yesterday, apparently."

"You think that was what caused my flutter?"

"It's not unheard of, though fearsome lucid dreams usually give a stronger reaction then... other types. But let me see here..."

He makes a show of consulting his notes, adjusting imaginary glasses.

"You took your meds late, ate festival food, overexerted yourself, slept late and had a stimulating lucid dream. All this just days after that scare with Emi on the track. Did I get everything right?"

"Well... you got nothing wrong..."

He lowers his head, feeling worse as Nurse enumerate his sins.

"Not that big of a mystery, then, is it? Various small things that almost killed you.”

Hisao shivers at the word, but doesn't raise his head. Goro sighs, it was not his intention to get te kid down, but reality was reality.

“Look. It was an extraordinary situation, so I'm not going to nag and repeat everything you already know about your health, the school and stuff.”

He waits for Hisao to meet his gaze.

“However you are going to meet Emi in the mornings, Wednesday onwards. This is no longer a medical suggestion, you are nearly guaranteed to keel over if you don't get regular exercise, and there's no one I trust more than her, now that she knows of your condition.”

Goro can see the fear in the kid's eyes, but also the determination to live on. He nods and starts unplugging the ECG so they can both go home.

Before Hisao can get up, though, he is held against the bed. Nurse gets uncomfortably close and speaks with a low, but clear voice.

“Speaking of Emi, I hear you stood her up. She was really, really sad, which made me very, very upset. If you do that again, your heart will stop being a problem, understood?”

Hisao is immediately staggered by his tone, and the usual twinkle of humor is nowhere to be seen in Goro's open eye.

“I-- Mi-- Shiz...”

The experience is so removed from anything he's seen from Nurse, he can't even finish a word.

“You can bring your new ladyfriends together, but you. do. not. disappoint her again. Plus, she makes food that's way healthier and tastier than you'll get anywhere else around. Now go rest.”

As fast as it appeared, the dangerous look on his face goes away, and he's back to his frivolous grin as he releases a very shocked Hisao, who stumbles out of the office, too shocked to say anything back.

After closing the door behind the student, Goro locks it and traces two ideograms on the wood. Then a third one, for good measure.

He crosses the room and sits on the window. His two hands busy lighting up a cigarette -with no lighter-, he uses a purple tail to pull back the curtain on the second infirmary bed. Misha is sitting on it, arms crossed and looking pissed off.

"Was that necessary?"

"Hey, I'm not the one who gave the kid a heart attack. Did he taste good?”

He takes a deep drag and blows the smoke up.

“You can drop the glamour, by the way. Nobody's gonna enter."

"Just like there wasn't anybody listening to Hicchan?"

"I said not a soul, and that's true. You succubi don't have those."

Misha huffs and points a finger at Goro.

"Word play. The truth is you tricked him just to embarrass us. And quit it with the cigarette!"

"Of course I tricked and embarrassed him, just like you invaded his dream and sucked his vitality. What did you expect?"

With a chuckle, he drops the cigarette on the windowsill, where it turns back into his pen. The young girl is still miffed, looking away with her cheeks puffed. His smile falters and he lets out a long, long sigh.

"Look, it's been a looong day. And night, and then morning. I should've controlled myself better, but I'm quite tired, very frustrated and severely un-inebriated. When I thought of how he ignored Emi after she spent the night making food for him..."

Still, it's not like him to let the mask slip. He has enough experience to not be affected by pretty much anything a human kid could do, but Meiko and her daughter were more of a chip on his shoulder than even he expected.

"C'mon, how often do you get to lower your guard and just take a deep breath in your own body?"

Misha tries to give him a menacing look, but gives up after a few unfruitful seconds. Closing her eyes, she unveils her true self.

Her hair drills close up and solidify into downward devilish horns. The small excesses of fat she uses to disguise her preternatural body go to all the right places to make her as voluptuous as possible, and then some more. A pointed tail and a small pair of leather wings sprout from her back. When she opens her eyes, they have red, snake-like irises.

What she sees with them is a small purple fox sitting on the window, still wearing a labcoat and stethoscope, with five fluffy tails behind him.

"It's good right?"

He stretches like a cat.

"Staying on two feet makes me all stiff. Speaking of stiff... Was 'comfort me' the best seduction you could come up with? You're embarrassing your kin, kid."

"Shut up! It worked. Besides, there isn't a manual, you know? It's been less then a year since I got my horns."

"And you gonna lose them if you keep going after the Hakamichi girl. Her father is only a quarter ogre, but 100% bigoted, and has the right connections. If he caught wind of this incident, he could turn the council on ya and separate you two for good."

"But... but it shouldn't have been an incident. I never lost control.”

Not like her distant relative, who ended up revealing herself to that Setou guy and made him nuts.

“In your defense, it seems like he is not a normal kid."

Besides, if she hadn't called him immediately, Hisao would be a corpse by the time anyone could've checked on him.

"I'll have to prepare some charms to figure out what's his deal, but I think it's something to do with the dreamworld.”

“That lucid dream thing you were saying?”

“Hells no! The day a mundane lucid dreamer is able to undo a succubus' glamour, novice as she may be, is the day I refuse fried tofu. Do you have the number of that green-hair baku girl from your class?”

“Suzu? It's in the class ledger.”

“Well, tell her to expect a shikigami from me tonight. She can probably help me figure this out.”

“Gonna pay a night visit to a student, Gocchan~?”

“You know I can text Jigoro, right? I have him on speed dial.”

The little girl's insubordination doesn't even bother the ancient fox spirit, but some respect is due.

“Don't worry, I won't tell anyone. Specially if you're gonna help Hicchan.”

“Yeah, yeah, now go talk to her. I'll go forage for some herbs we're gonna need tonight.”

Misha concentrates, focusing for a few seconds to reform her usual appearance.

Nurse just leaps off the windowsill, does a flip and lands on two feet, fully human.

Even looking carefully, she couldn't tell the moment he transformed. Something to be expected, considering the five hundred years' worth of experience he has on her.

They make the arrangements for the incursion into Hisao's subconscious, as for his protection until the situation is clarified. It would be useless to know what's wrong with him and then have him die due to a vampire or a tanuki.

As Misha is leaving, she pokes her head back in the infirmary.

“By the way, I totally ship you and the shrine maiden auntie, and it's super cute how protective you are of her daughter.”

She closes back the door just in time for a thrown scalpel to get firmly stuck to it.


Notes:
Yamaku as a school to acclimatize supernatural beings into human society makes lots of sense, since most monster shenanigans can be disguised as disability, and any unfortunate incident is more easily dismissed as medical occurrence.

Kitsune, Oni and Baku are youkai who, like Succubi, are easily googleable.

This came from the simple Halloween idea of Misha as Succubus, everything else just got glued together on that, including a more detailed description of the youkai vs. katawa situation that got cut.

I decided to use this different script-like style to see how it would go, but I could eventually turn it into prose.

Feedback is very welcome. I have one more crossover and 13 parts of a proper fanfic in various states of completion that could use it.

[Toothless]

Interesting take. Wonder what kind of monster the other girls are.

[WillDfly]

I was just going to answer directly, but practice is only gonna help me. Is this a 1,5-shot now?

Mutou drops another book on the pile and rubs his temples, cradling a massive headache. His research's hit a stump, and none of this material is helping. He keeps amassing and registering data, but any reasonable conclusion evades him. It's like trying to catch the smoke floating up from his forgotten cigarette on the dirty ashtray.

That half bottle of whisky in his cabinet starts to sound too tempting, so he gets up and serves a glass. The smell alone calms him, and he grabs a binder on the way to the couch, where he tosses used clothes aside until he has space to sit comfortably. If the literature won't help, maybe reviewing his notes will reveal something, like that cripple TV doctor Myagi is always talking about on lunch break.

Dominant and recessive genes can't explain his observations, neither can mitochondrial DNA. Careful breeding yields results comparable to pure chance, and the unthinkable experiments conducted during WWII took eugenics completely out of the equation. On the other hand, sometimes characteristics lost for tens of generations show up completely by surprise, as if waiting for some hidden variable, and cause all sorts of unpredictable emergencies.

Leafing through the last year's registers, he ponders.

Hakamichi's father has one quarter of oni inheritance, but is stronger then most pure bloods, and that ultimately led to his wife's death. Even so, the Student Council president hasn't presented any evidence of it so far, unless you count her unnatural stubbornness.

Her cousin Satou is a distant cait sidhe descendant on her mother's side. The only time it ever came up since she came to Yamaku was that very embarrassing situation when some silver vine ended up on her tea. Mutou sported the nail marks for a good week or two after his attempt to pry her from a slightly licked and very nervous Ikezawa.

Speaking of Ikezawa, it's good she's being taken care of by the school, but she always makes him feels bad. Her scars are not so bad, but the out-of-control zashiki-warashi that hid in her house caused a tragedy that could never be mended.

Tezuka's file is one of the thickest. The slime student on class 2-2 filed several complaints about her insistently asking him jellyfish questions, and other students have similar grievances. She's friends with most of the ghosts, who appreciate that she speaks with them in public, even if they don't get her. Still, no spiritual power, no supernatural blood. As far as anyone can tell, she's just weird.

That's not the case for her friend, Ibarazaki. Her mother was a talented shrine maiden, and Goro is keeping up with the tradition of kitsunes falling for monk-types, to Mutou's eternal amusement. Emi inherited powerful spirit powers, that neutralize supernatural influences.

Nurse is trying to get her to help with the newest acquisition, Nakai. He'd be completely forgettable, just another cardiac arrest, but our scouts picked something up from him. None of them could tell exactly what, and the tests made in his old hospital and here in the school couldn't pinpoint what's up with him, besides his heart. His physical exams are almost completely normal, except... he couldn't find anywhere on the literature theta waves like this, and there was that issue with Mikado.

Mutou is quite tired of all this shit. Yamaku is a whole mixed mess of youkai, monsters and onmyouji, and even a jotun exchange student. They form about half of the staff and 5-10% of the students, and keeping their identities secret is a big hassle, even if it's only enforced when normal (hah!) students are involved.

But his glass is empty and the unhelpful binder joins the mess on the center table. He has a test to give in the morning, so he needs to get himself ready to bed. The sofa is cozy, though, so he decides to relax for a few minutes before calling it a day.

He'll wake up late in the morning with back pain and curse his work and the gods.

[Oddball]

“Speaking of Emi, I hear you stood her up. She was really, really sad, which made me very, very upset. If you do that again, your heart will stop being a problem, understood?”

This line seems out of place to me, but otherwise the story seems interesting enough and even pretty cute.

The second part felt more like a summary than a story though. You were telling us ideas, but not putting them into any real context.

Also, I'm big into the supernatural, myths, legends, and anything monsters, and I still had to look up what a zashiki warashi was.

Finally, good idea turning the script into prose. It would have lost a lot of it's effect in script form.

[WillDfly]

“Speaking of Emi, I hear you stood her up. She was really, really sad, which made me very, very upset. If you do that again, your heart will stop being a problem, understood?”

This line seems out of place to me, but otherwise the story seems interesting enough and even pretty cute.

Do you mean it would be better somewhere else in the text or just scrap it entirely? I thought it was necessary to show his over-protectiveness and add a bit of hidden dark to his character, but I'm open to improving basically anything.

Edit: I tried improving it a bit.

The second part felt more like a summary than a story though. You were telling us ideas, but not putting them into any real context.

Well, it was mostly to answer Toothless's question, so no wonder. Mutou and his research were just the best in-universe tool I could find to do it in a special manner.

Also, I'm big into the supernatural, myths, legends, and anything monsters, and I still had to look up what a zashiki warashi was.

Finally, good idea turning the script into prose. It would have lost a lot of it's effect in script form.

I have a bunch of regrets (I guess one always does, in these things), but if someone learned something new, I count it as a win.

[Toothless]

I had to look stuff up to. I really like the story behind these mythical creatures.
You wrote the last part just for me, i feel special now.

[Mirage_GSM]

I decided to use this different script-like style to see how it would go, but I could eventually turn it into prose.

I'm not sure what you mean... This is not script style; it's limited omniscient narration.

I agree that anyone not really familiar with Japanese folklore will have some serious googling to do to make sense of this story. (I also had to look up the zashiki-warashi.)

As for that one line of nurse, it simply seems to be out of character for him to bodily threaten one of his students.

I found the story itself quite entertaining, though a few lines would have needed past perfect tense.

[WillDfly]

Eh, I guess most of the "scriptiness" was removed by the long editing. Maybe having no prose in the same paragraph as dialogue is less significant than I thought.

The experience is so removed from anything he's seen from Nurse, he can't even finish a word.
...
The young girl is still miffed, looking away with her cheeks puffed. His smile falters and he lets out a long, long sigh.
"Look, it's been a looong day. And night, and then morning. I should've controlled myself better, but I'm quite tired, very frustrated and severely un-inebriated. When I thought of how he ignored Emi after she spent the night making food for him..."
Still, it's not like him to let the mask slip. He has enough experience to not be affected by pretty much anything a human kid could do, but Meiko and her daughter were more of a chip on his shoulder than even he expected.

Do these additions help?
Of course the real Nurse wouldn't do this, but this is a 500 year kitsune Nurse, he's not human and has seen humanity do more shit to each other than anyone should. He hides a much deeper darkness and he's not letting this shitty new brat make his precious little protégé sad.

Hopefully the obscure references were more of a prod to curiosity than a immersion-breaker. Zashiki warashis show on some manga/anime, like Holic, Yuragisou no Yuuna-san and Mouse (nsfw), so I knew of them before.
I caught one of the past perfects, but couldn't find any other.

As always, I thank you all for the feedback and corrections.

[Mirage_GSM]

Do these additions help?
Of course the real Nurse wouldn't do this, but this is a 500 year kitsune Nurse, he's not human and has seen humanity do more shit to each other than anyone should. He hides a much deeper darkness and he's not letting this shitty new brat make his precious little protégé sad.

Depends. I'd say 500 years of experience would make it even less likely that he'd slip up they way he did...

[Oddball]

Nurse threatening somebody feels out of character no matter how you slice it.

Granted, he does it a few times in the game, but it's always obvious that he's joking and he only does it after Hisao has gotten used to him and on friendly terms.