16-Nov-2001
Title: The Babysitter - To Tell the Tooth
Authors: Wufei is WHAT?!? Productions (Yoiko and Tzigane)
Fandom: Gundam Wing
Type: Humorous Fic-stuffs ~_^v
Spoilers: None
Rating: PG-13? Not sure.
Pairings: None, really. ^_^
Warnings: Cuteness. Teeth. Speck or two of blood. Mild sibling rivalry.
Disclaimers: We don't own Gundam Wing, and the Gundam Wing characters are used here without permission. This is a work of fanfiction, intended solely for entertainment purposes, and is not meant to be taken as a claim to copyright for the elements in the story which were not created by us. Also, we intend no disrespect whatsoever towards the creators and rightful owners of Gundam Wing.
Archive: Gundam Wing Addiction
C&C: Please, feel free. ^_^
Notes: If you're already familiar with our Babysitter series, you should know about what to expect. Brace yourselves for the newest gripping installment in the lives of Treize's kids!
It could only be brought to you by Wufei is WHAT?!? Productions.
In every child's life, there comes a time when he or she must face the Ultimate Horror of Kid-dom. Such a time had come in the life of one Relena "Princess" Peacecraft, whose true character was being sorely tested for the first time in her young life. Yes, the time had come for her to face the Ultimate Horror.
It was time to contend with... Her First Loose Tooth!
"WAH! I don't *want* you to pull my teeth!"
"But princess," her daddy protested, "if you let me pull your tooth, we can put it in your own sweet little Tooth Fairy Box and the Tooth Fairy will come and give you five dollars for it!"
Indeed, inflation had struck even the Tooth Fairy. Mirialdo recalled, in his own tooth-pulling years, having received only a dollar per tooth. There seemed something innately *unfair* about Relena receiving *five* for hers.
"*Five* dollars!?" he said, scowling. "That's not fair! That's not *right*!!"
"Hush, Mirialdo," his mother told him firmly, shaking her head. "Your sister is unhappy!"
"I don't *care*!" he declared, visibly upset. Being the oldest child was horrible! "I hope that the Tooth *Goblin* comes instead of the Tooth *Fairy*, and that he gobbles her all up or takes her away to live with the Gypsies! They're all like Duo Maxwell, you know," he taunted.
"WAHHHHHHH!!!" Relena shrieked even more loudly, reaching up to cover her mouth in horror. No way! No WAY was anyone pulling one of *her* pearly whites!!!
"Mirialdo Peacecraft!" his mother scolded, appalled. "What a horrible thing to say! You go to your room, young man, and don't you come out until you're ready to apologize to your sister!"
"Fine!" Miri snapped. "I'll just be in there for the rest of my LIFE!"
"Don't you take that tone of voice with your mother!" Mr. Peacecraft thundered, and Miri, knowing better than to continue challenging parental authority, scampered off to his room to sulk. It simply wasn't fair!
"There, there, now, Princess, he was only joking." Relena sobbed on her mother's shoulder miserably.
"You're all mean!" she wailed. "Miri hates me, and you want to pull my teeth out!"
"Now, now, Princess, settle down," her father said wearily. "We don't have to worry about your teeth right now if you're not ready. Why don't you go outside and play with your little friends, and we'll just leave your teeth alone for now?"
"I want you to promise you won't pull them at all!" Relena cried.
"Well, now, Princess, I can't promise that..."
"You're MEAN! You're all mean and HATEFUL!" Relena shrieked, and tore free from her mother and ran outside, sobbing loudly.
"Go *play,* young man," Heero's mother said, shoving him gently out onto the back porch.
"Scientists don't *play*, they experiment!" Heero replied sulkily, glowering at the door as his mother closed it firmly. With a huff, Heero zipped up his jacket and pulled his gloves on to protect him from the chilly November air. Further down the road, Mr. Barton was burning a pile of leaves, and the scent filled the air richly. Heero peered in the direction of the smudge of smoke drifting towards the clouds, but the trees that sheltered the Barton house were too thick. Nobody ever saw Mr. or Mrs. Barton.
It was enough to make a scientist curious.
"Oi, Heero! Whaddya think of my fort?" Heero turned to see that Duo Maxwell did indeed have a fort in his back yard. Eyes wide, Heero trotted over to the gate. He knew his mother didn't mind if he played at the next-door neighbors' house; he only had to worry about asking permission if he wanted to go further down the street.
"Cool," he said, peering up at Duo's new fort. It resembled a castle on top of the hill, with a little drawbridge and a crenellated wall and everything!
"My dad helped me make it!" Duo crowed. "Since the trees weren't big enough for a tree-house, he said a castle would be better! And I like it better, anyway!"
"It's cool," Heero repeated, and started walking up the hill. The hole they'd dug was still there; it was a foot-deep indentation in the side of the hill. Heero wondered about it. The hole should have filled in evenly, once all the dirt had been scraped back into it, but it just hadn't worked that way. He'd have to do a displaced-dirt experiment later.
"Yeah, isn't it neat? Come on in!" Duo said, and Heero stepped over the wooden drawbridge. The castle was made all of wood, but Mr. Maxwell had painted it, inside and out, to look like it was built with gray stones. There was a little ladder leading up to the top of the wall, and a sturdy ledge that ran around the perimeter, allowing a sentry to walk along the wall and peer out over the yard. There was also a round tower with a pointy top, and inside it was just enough room for three or four small children to sit together if they scrunched in. On the far wall, opposite the drawbridge, was a small archery target with one of Duo's carefully-blunted arrows protruding from it.
Wide-eyed with curiosity, Heero glanced around and had just opened his mouth to speak when he suddenly heard a loud cry of "HEE~EERO!!"
"Oh, NO!" he gasped, shivering. "It's... It's..."
"Hi, Relena!" Duo greeted as the teary-eyed little girl burst into his castle, sobbing. "This is a no-girls-allowed castle!"
"Oh, HEERO!" Relena wailed, clinging tightly to Heero in her obvious distress. "They want to pull my *TOOFIE*!!! And Miri said that the TOOTH Goblin would come and take me away to the Gypsies and they're all like Duo and they'll EAT me!!!"
"No touching!" Heero gasped, trying to scrape her off of him.
"Yeah, no touching. Besides, there's no such thing as a Tooth Goblin!" Duo informed her.
"There... there isn't?" Relena sniffled.
"Nope," Duo agreed. "Everybody knows that the Tooth *Fairy* is really a witch and *she's* the one who'll take you to live with the Gypsies if she doesn't eat you first!"
"WAHHHH!!!!!!!"
"Get OFF ME!" Heero howled, squirming in Relena's unbreakable grip. "Nobody's going to give you to the Gypsies -- they wouldn't *want* you! Now lemme go!" At that, Relena clutched him tighter, sobbing into the back of his new jacket -- a jacket that, up until now, had never been touched by Cooties. At the very thought of cooties and girl snot ruining his jacket, Heero started to cry as well. Relena, assuming that Heero was being sensitive to her feelings, planted a big wet kiss on his tear-streaked cheek.
"Ooooh..." said a pair of voices in familiar chorus from the castle's entryway.
"Heewo and Wewena sitting in a twee..."
"K-I-eth-eth-I-N-G..."
"Fiwst comes wuv-"
"Then cometh marriage-"
"SHUT UP!" Heero shrieked, scrubbing at his eyes with his little fists. "Trowa! Quatre! HELP ME!"
"It'th jutht a *girl*, Heero," Quatre sighed dramatically. Even if Relena *did* have cooties, it's not like she was *that* much worse than his sisters.
Then again...
"I don't WANT to be given to the GYPSIES!!!" Relena shrieked.
"Don't wowwy, Wewena," Trowa replied. "The Gypsies would bwing you back as soon as they weawized how mean you awe."
"I'm a LADY!" the little girl sobbed. "Ladies aren't mean!!"
"Please..." Heero sobbed. "Make her lemme go!" Duo thought about stealing a kiss while Heero was helpless, but taking pity on the dark-haired boy, he started prying Relena's fingers loose, which only brought about *more* shrieking on her part.
"For pity's sake," Miri said from behind them, and pulled Relena away from Heero, who tore up the ladder to the ledge at the top of the wall and proceeded to have what appeared to be an epileptic fit as he struggled to brush the cooties off.
"Miri! I thought you were sent to your room!" Relena said accusingly, turning to face her brother. Heero noticed that she seemed miraculously able to stand on her own two feet, now that he was out of reach.
Girls. There was no understanding them.
"I apologized," Miri said, scowling. "Even if it's not fair."
"You said ugly things to me," Relena said, huge blue eyes welling up with tears.
"Sorry." Not that he *really* was, but he *had* promised his mother he'd apologize, and it might even prove worth the effort... especially if it kept back those ear-splitting shrieks.
"Okay," Relena said.
"So," Duo said thoughtfully. "Never had a loose tooth before, huh?"
"No," the little girl sniffled, rubbing at an eye. "I take care of my teeth! I should have known someone like you would have had one before..."
"We've *aww* had woose teeth, Wewena," Trowa told her firmly. "They get woose aww on theiw own, you know."
Miri nodded. "*I* already lost most of *my* baby teeth. They're just teeth that come out to be replaced with new, big ones."
"Yeah," Quatre agreed. "That'th all. There'th thith thtory my thithter told me, that if you don't thtick your tongue in the hole when the tooth fallth out, the big tooth will come in gold. If you thtick your tongue in one time, it cometh out thilver, but if you do it more than that, it'th jutht a tooth. I keep thticking my tongue in," he admitted sheepishly.
The sound of an angry voice broke into their conversation. "Are you all playing without me!?!?! Even that big MiriALdo!? Injustice!"
"Hi, Wufei!" Heero said, turning to see his friend, red playsuit bright and cheery as Wufei crunched through autumn leaves on his way up the hill. "We're talking about loose teeth!"
"I have no loose teeth. All of my teeth are *good* teeth," Wufei declared, slightly cranky. Treize had put him in the stupid red suit and sent him outside to play. Life wasn't fair!
"No, siwwy," Trowa told him. "Youw baby teeth faww out and then you get gwown-up ones."
"Yeth," Quatre agreed. "*I've* already lotht *three*. Thee?" He opened his mouth to show the ones that were now coming into place.
"Oh." For a moment, Wufei seemed to have no answer to *that*, but then he looked at Relena and scowled. "Have you been crying again? Girls," he snorted.
"But what am I going to DO?!?" Relena wailed. "I don't WANT them to pull my toofies!"
"Try eating caramel," Heero suggested. "My grandpa got his teeth stuck in a 'Sugar Daddy' bar one time, and they all came right out of his head!"
"ALL of 'em?!?" Duo asked, wide-eyed and appalled.
"Well, only the fake ones. He had teeth that the dentist made for him. And every night he would take them out and put them in a jar."
"Eew."
"You shoulda seen them sticking in the candy."
"Eew! Heero, that's gross!"
"Is not," Heero said, pouting.
"It ith, too," Quatre agreed. "Groth."
"I think it's pwetty gwoss," Trowa added.
"It's not gross!" Heero insisted. "It's SCIENCE! A dentist can make teeth for you, even if you lose all of your real ones! It's cool!"
"*I* think it's cool," Wufei offered, climbing up to sit next to Heero.
"But where am I going to get caramel?" Relena asked.
"I dunno," Heero replied. "If I had caramel, I would have eated it already."
"You're so mean!" Relena cried.
"Don't be whiny, female," Wufei sniffed, frowning disapprovingly.
"I beweive you ought to twy a stwing," Trowa told her. "A stwing is an easy way to get youw tooth out. I tie stwing to mine when I need to puww one."
"But where would I get a string?" Relena asked, sniffling.
Duo snapped his fingers. "Hey! I've got some in the house! I could go and get it!! We could tie one end to the doorknob and slam it, like in the cartoons! OR, you could tie one end to the bed and jump out the window! But you'd have to have a rubber sheet-"
"DUO!" Heero and Wufei both bellowed.
"I'm NOT jumping out the window!" Relena shrieked.
"Plierth would be thmarter," Quatre said quickly, before Duo could reply. "Jutht grab it with a pair of plierth and yank it right out."
"NOBODY'S PULLING MY TOOF WITH PLIERS!" Relena shrieked.
"That would be inhumane," Heero said. "Unless you had anesthesia."
"I like that movie!" Duo said. "I have it on tape. We can all watch it!"
"ANESTHESIA, not Anastasia!"
"'kay, whatever," Duo replied, grinning. It was *so* easy to get a rise out of Heero!
"NO PLIERS!" Relena howled.
"*Fine,*" Miri said, exasperated. "No pliers. If you'll hold still, I can take care of the problem with one good punch."
"YOU WOULDN'T DARE HIT ME! I'd tell Daddy and he'd SPANK you!"
"If you punch hard enough, you could knock her out," Heero suggested. "Then we wouldn't have to worry about anesthesia."
"And we could jutht pull it out with the plierth!" Quatre added, beaming at him.
At all of that, Wufei snorted, stomping over to Relena. "Show me which one is loose!" he demanded.
"No!" she wailed. "You'll use pliers on me!"
"I don't have any pliers, dummy," he told her firmly. "I just want to see which one it is! I've never *had* a loose tooth."
"Oh." Well, that seemed all right to *her*. After all, what harm could it do to show Wufei her loose tooth? She opened her mouth wide and pointed before closing it again, saying, "It's this one."
"Show me again?" he said, black eyes suddenly gleaming as all of the other boys gathered around.
"This one!" She opened her mouth once more and pointed, surprised as he reached out and put his little fingers in her mouth.
"This one?" he said, wriggling it.
"Unh!" Relena said by way of agreement, surprised as she felt a little separation and a coppery flood in her mouth.
"That," Wufei said, holding out Relena's little white tooth, "is the way to pull a tooth!"
"Cool," Heero said with a 'that's that' sort of nod.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!! I'm BLEEEEEEEEEEEEEDING! I'm BLEEEEEEEEEEEEEDING! WAAAAAAH!"
"Here we go," Miri said, wincing.
"I WANT MY MO~OMMY!!!"
"Girls," Heero said, disgusted.
"This is why I *don't* want girls in my castle!" Duo added.
"Relena alwayth maketh noithe like that," Quatre said, putting his hands over his ears.
"Wight," Trowa replied.
"Don't you want your tooth?" Wufei asked. "The Tooth Dragon will give you money for it."
"It's 'Fairy,' " Heero said.
"No. It's Dragon. Dragons like white, and teeth are white," Wufei corrected.
There was nothing that could be said, in the face of such unshakable logic. Heero decided to do an experiment the next time *he* lost a tooth to see if it really WAS a Tooth Dragon and not a Fairy. Maybe that was why he hadn't been able to catch the Tooth *Fairy* yet... because it was really a Dragon!
"WAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!"
"What you need ith thome thalt water," Quatre told Relena sagely, hearing her wail even through the hands over his ears.
"Yeah," Trowa agreed. "Watew will help stop the bweeding. I'ww bet Duo's mommy would give you some watew, Wewena..."
"If you don't swallow, it'll get all over your dress," Duo spoke, "and that would be icky. Go knock on the door, Mommy will take care of it."
"Here," Wufei said to Mirialdo, handing over the tooth. "YOU keep it, make sure the Tooth Dragon gets it. He'd be angry if you don't give him his tooth," he said knowledgeably.
"And then he carries you off to the Gypsies, right?" Miri asked.
"Of course. Everyone knows that."
"WAAAAAAH!" Relena wailed. "I DON'T WANNA GO TO THE GYPSIES!!!"
Fortunately for Relena, the Tooth Dragon didn't carry her off to the Gypsies, though she did have nightmares about it that night. In the morning, when she awoke, she found five dollars where her tooth had been, and that seemed to make it worth all the trouble. Relena showed off her money at the breakfast table, and her parents cooed over how sweet she was and how perfectly lovely her tooth was, for the Tooth Fairy to pay so much money for it.
Miri didn't even bother with the snide remark he wanted so desperately to say; he merely turned on his heel and sent *himself* to his room.
What else was a misunderstood young man to do?
"Hello, boys. What are you doing?" Relena asked, trudging up the hill toward Duo's castle.
"We're having a secret meeting!" Duo said, pointing to a sign that said, "No Gurls Allowd!"
"Ok," Relena said, and traipsed right into the castle and began following Heero, who at first only edged away from her nervously one step at a time, but eventually worked his way up to running full-tilt in an effort to get away from her.
"HEY! Can't you read?" Duo asked, irritated.
"No," Relena replied simply.
"Well, the sign says 'no girls allowed!' "
Relena thought about that for a minute. "I'm not a girl, I'm a lady."
"No ladies, either!"
"But the sign doesn't *say* that! So I can stay! Hee~eero, don't you want to see the hole where my tooth was?"
"NO!"
"I got five dollars. If you let me kiss you, I'll buy you some candy."
Heero had to think about that one. "No," he said, scowling. "I still have Halloween candy."
"Got any caramels?" Duo asked.
"No."
"Bummer. We could've tried to make our teeth loose, so *we* could get money!"
"I think I might have thome caramelth in my Halloween thack!" Quatre said enthusiastically. "Wanna go thee?"
"YEAH!" At that, four little boys followed Quatre off to his house, leaving Relena standing alone in the middle of the castle.
"Hmph," Relena said, glaring at their backs as they left. Oh, well. It was probably time for her to torment her big brother, anyway. If all else failed, she could wave her five-dollar bill in his face. With that thought in mind, she skipped down the hill and headed for home, smiling a wide, gap-toothed grin.
~Owari!~
(:./yoiko/sitter9)
