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Mitsuba sighed to himself, squatting next to the vegetable field in the practice garden by himself. He wasn't completely alone, however, with a few mokke scattered around playing hide and seek amongst the plants.
Recently, he had been noticing Tsukasa's frequent visits to the girl's bathroom, bothering Nene and the Honorable No. 7 at every chance he could get. Ever since getting under the same bond to the girl, he had been… acting differently.
How different? For starters, Mitsuba wasn't the subject of his strange experiments as much as before. He behaved in front of Sakura much better, with her even praising him about it sometimes. He already got along with Natsuhiko, but he was learning to actually treat him as part of the group and being aware of his existence (it was funny when it wasn't the case, though).
As much as it was a nice change, Mitsuba couldn't help but feel a little disturbed. Nope, scratch that, everything about the twins creeped him out. It was really odd how different they acted when Nene was around compared to when she wasn't.
It was like they'd tear anyone who would even dare to look at her wrongly into pieces without any remorse at all.
He shivered at the thought. No way was he going to get to their bad side at all, not after that horrifying image.
"Mitsuba-kun?" He heard Nene's voice as she approached him from behind. Ah, was it time for her club activities already? It seemed so early.
"Oh, radish-senpai. What's up?"
"Nothing much. Aren't you hanging out with Kou-kun today?" She asked him a simple, innocent question, but of course, knowing Mitsuba, he had taken it the other way.
"W-what do you take me for?! It's not like I wanna hang off that lame guy all the time, you know!" He retaliated, covering half of his face with his sleeve. If she had seen him with his cheeks all red, she would have caught his bluff.
Nene only laughed weakly. "Ahah… guess I was wrong, then. By the way, have you seen Hanako-kun?"
Leave it to radish-senpai to go looking for crazy knife first. "I haven't. He hasn't been here. Even Minamoto-kun hasn't been around either."
"Huh… That's weird. Maybe they're busy? But they usually come around at this time, since it's the end of classes today." Nene looked at the ground, deep in thought. She had that face of worry, he could tell.
She was way too nice for her own good.
Maybe that's why Hanako and Tsukasa loved to hang around her pretty much all the time? But who was he to say what the actual reason was. He was aware of their, say, "attraction" to Nene, but even he wasn't sure if it was what he thought it was or not.
Bluntly putting it, the whole situation was confusing to him. Sure, Nene was a good person, easy to get along with (although that's something he'd refuse to admit openly ever) but this was entirely strange, considering the fact even Tsukasa would act so uncharacteristically behaved towards her. He already was sorta good around Sakura, but this felt different.
This felt… bizzare.
It was probably a sibling thing he could never understand. Yeah, that's probably it.
Just then they both heard running footsteps towards them, and in came Kou, looking very frantic. "Senpai, Mitsuba!"
"Eh? Kou-kun? Is something the matter?"
"You gotta get away! There's a very angry monster chasing me right now!" Kou shouted. "Hanako and I were tryna fight it off but it started rampaging, so I had to lead it away from the students."
"And you decided to come over here?! Are you an idiot?!" Mitsuba screamed at him frantically, shaking the blond boy by the shoulders.
"That's why you gotta get outta here—oh crap!" Kou and Mitsuba saw the huge, bear like creature stomp into the practice garden, roaring angrily. The sight of it's intimidating blood-red eyes were enough to inflict fear already.
"W-what is that?!" Nene exclaimed, with the two boys immediately walking up in front of her in a protective stance.
"Eek! Don't come any closer!!" Transforming into his school mystery form, Mitsuba sided by Kou as the blond got his staff sparking with lightning. Even if it didn't look like it, they were both scared out of their wits.
The monster growled, it's dark brown fur spiking right up and it scraped up the dirt underneath, readying itself to charge at them. At this time it would have been great if Hanako had appeared to lend them a hand, but right now, he was still nowhere to be seen.
"We gotta protect Senpai, Mitsuba! Don't let it get here!"
"Do you even hear yourself right now?! How are we supposed to stop a big, gross looking thing like that?!"
Maybe it was for the best that Mitsuba hadn't called it gross, as now the monster suddenly became more agitated. It let out another loud roar and stampeded towards them.
"Stay back!!" Mitsuba used his scarf and in impulse, pulled Kou right out of the creature's way. He tried to fling the monster far back from them with his scarf again, but it just made it more angrier than ever.
"Wait, Mitsuba! Senpai's still out there! We gotta get her!" Kou turned to Nene. She was frozen into place, unable to move and run away from the coming doom.
"Radish-senpai! Get away from there!!" Mitsuba screamed, but to no avail. Nene still wasn't moving. She fearfully closed her eyes shut.
I gotta save her! Just as he was about to use his scarf to pull her back to them, something had gotten in front of the monster's way. There was the swipe of a blade and to his surprise, the thing painfully yelped and stopped in it's tracks, now sporting a lengthy wound on its face.
"...Huh?" With the commotion gone to a quick halt, to everyone's surprise, Hanako had finally made an appearance, having his cape on and everything.
Except right now, Mitsuba could see how extremely pissed off he was right now. He had never seen him look so frightening, even without uttering a word to them. Sometimes it was easy to forget that no matter how childish and annoying Hanako was, he was still the Honorable No. 7, who had powers still beyond his understanding.
And when there was the Honorable No. 7, there was Tsukasa.
"That was a nice slice, Amane!" Tsukasa manifested from next to his brother and Nene, immediately latching onto the girl and examining the injury on the monster. As always, he had that wide grin, but to Mitsuba, it felt way sinister than usual.
"But I think it'd look much more better completely in half."
Unfortunately for the creature, Hanako seemingly had the same thought, because in less than a few seconds, their tsueshiro flew to the monster and wrapped itselves around it's body, rendering it immobilized.
Then followed a blur of black, one more swing of that sharp knife, and the agonizing scream of pain. Mitsuba could just watch the twins stand on the spot where the monster had been, the only evidence of it ever being there were the disintegrating dust forming below their feet.
Once again, that reality of just how powerful they were sunk in. Mitsuba felt relieved in a sense that he wasn't in that monster's shoes. Who in their right mind would try messing with those two?
"Hanako-kun! Tsukasa-kun!" Nene had called out to them. Instantly, the brothers flocked towards her (mostly Hanako frantically fussing over her for any signs of injuries).
"Are you okay, Yashiro? You didn't get hurt, right?"
"I'm fine! I'm more worried about you and Tsukasa-kun, though!"
"You guys took that thing down so fast!" Kou ran up to them, just as Mitsuba transformed back to his normal form. Tsukasa beamed, chuckling at the young exorcist.
"Of course! Anyone who'd try to hurt Nene deserves to die, after all~!"
Yikes. Both Mitsuba and Kou grimaced at that. It wouldn't end great if anyone ever tried to cross them when it came to their senpai's safety.
"P-please don't kill anyone…" Nene had to interject. Tsukasa pouted, but he quickly cheered up upon him floating up behind her and pulling her into a hug.
Radish-senpai! Did you not just see them mercilessly kill that thing just now?!
"Okay! If Nene says so! No killing until Amane tells me to!"
Lies. Mitsuba knew Tsukasa and Hanako would try to destroy anyone who would want to harm Nene regardless of what she says.
"Hey! Who says you get to hug her?"
"Says me, Amane!"
As the brothers began to bicker amongst themselves, with Nene and Kou attempting to calm them down, the third school mystery let out a long, tired breath. Here was to another day of being unable to comprehend the disaster twins.
He just knew he had a load of things to tell Sakura after everything later on.