The Castle Guarded by the Swaying Cherry Blossoms II

While Ryota wasn't facing Hana, he could still call out to her. "I wasn't uppity! I just called her the nickname she hated twice!"

"That is quite impolite," said Hana. "You should respect your elder sister."
She paused. "Oh, where are my manners? I'm Kuma Hana, at your service."
she bowed.

"But she teases me all the time! I bet she said I'm a lazy kitten to tease me! She could have just said I'm lazy but no! Nao went for something that annoys me!"

Ryota started to shake his head for a few seconds. After he failed to wiggle out, the boy said can you let go of me Nao!? I can't even work if you keep your tight grip on my head!"

edited 24th May '12 5:22:55 AM by JustaUsername

Nao smiled at the girl "Ringo Nao, nice to meet you! And this is my brother Ringo Ryoka!" She then glared at the boy in her still unrelenting grasp "First I want to hear it. Call me Onee-sama."

Looking at his sister straight in the eye, Ryota responded "Only after you apologize for calling me a kitten!"

"I do believe that violence cannot cause politeness, Ringo Nao," said Hana. "As to you... Ryoka... Be polite to your elder sister. Impoliteness leads to pride, pride leads to selfishness, and selfishness leads to evil. And once you go down that path it is very hard to turn aside."

"Hmmgh. Fine! I'm sorry for calling you a kitten!" Nao apologizes but still holds onto the boy "Now, call me Onee-sama."

Ryota responded "Onee-sama. There, are you happy Nao?"

"I am, keep on calling me that." Nao sas and lets go of the boy "Now, let's go work some more!"

Hana looked, disapprovingly, at Ryota.
"Now, you listen to me, and listen carefully, Ringo Ryoka-san," she said, annoyed, "show your sister the proper respect. Not to mention that by disregarding your upperclassmen's words you behave in an even more impolite way."

Ryota shouted with a angry voice "I'd show my sister more respect if she'd show me respect! You know what she got for my birthday two years ago? Cat ears. And she suggested I wear them all the time because I'm her kitten and I need to look cute! I'm a boy and as a boy I don't want the label cute!"

The boy soon calmed down and added "Whatever, we should get back to work anyways." Ryota than continued scrubbing the paint off.

Hana just stood there, tapping her foot and looking from Nao to Ryota, trying to make sense of their relationship. After a while, she simply gave up, and went back to cleaning the same place she cleaned before, muttering while she did so: "1. d4, d5; 2. c4, e6; 3. Nc3, Be7..."

Kei just scrubbed away at the statue in front of her, trying not to draw attention to herself.

"...Um, that looks painful..." Alice doubtfully commented, a small frown on her face. This 'Masuko Masuko' character seemed tough, but with a bruise like that... and this girl was her junior! Alice couldn't let the slightly younger kids run wild and hurt themselves!

Rising to a standing position, Alice slowly held her hand out. "W-we really should find someone, I think... what if it's really bad?"

Ichigo wiped sweat from her bro, exhaling triumphantly as she looked down at the now clean surface she'd been scrubbing away at. She couldn't feel too pleased, though. There were still a lot of defaced statues and whatnot around the area that needed seeing to. Once again she found herself frowning as she thought of the people who would do such a terrible thing. Idiots! Didn't the have anything else better to do with themselves than this?

She turned to look around at the rest of the damage, and at the same time happened to see one of the younger volunteers fall over with a large bucket of water. Ouch. Someone went to check on her, and Ichigo felt inclined to do the same.

"Are you alright?" She asked with a sympathetic smile, eying the bruise that had started to form.

"I'm fine!" declared Masuko. The bruise was something of a dull, throbbing pain, but it wasn't as if it was something that she would let stop her. She refused to let something so minor keep her from doing, well, anything!

"Masuko Masuko's burning spirit does not allow her to stop for minor injuries!" she cried, pumping her fist in to air, "Masuko Masuko will power forward and clean the whole park if she has to! With a winning smile and a cheerful disposition!"

edited 24th May '12 12:00:38 PM by AnnoR

"Masuko-kun, come over here. Even small injuries have to be properly cleaned. Then you can continue to clean, full of enthusiasm and safe in the knowledge that it won't get any worse" said the teacher in charge, beckoning the girl to come closer for him to inspect the wound.

In no time, Masuko's injury would be cleaned and lightly bandaged... and with that the day progressed. There was no real hurry to do the cleaning, so there was plenty of time for the kids to play and chat. Eventually, the teacher bought everyone lunches from the various stands... though many of the stand owners refused pay after seeing the kids working so earnestly.

By the time the sun was about to go down the horizon the park was sparkling clean and their mission was accomplished.

"Well, isn't that a nice sight. Everyone! As a teacher and a citizen of this city I couldn't be any prouder of every single one of you. What we did today is a show of how youthful spirit and love of..." said the teacher though his speech was interrupted when suddenly his cellphone started to ring "Ah, sorry everyone... one moment..."

What happened next was that the teacher got some news which made the normally composed man a strange mix of happiness and panic. His wife was going into labor with their first child. This much the students could glean from the fragments of conversation they could catch from the professor. He wasn't exactly being quiet as he spoke with his wife.

"Alright... understood! I'll be there in minutes even if I have to run all the way there. Love you too, honey..." With that the teacher hung up and then looked over to his students "Ichigo, Kuma, Mizuki, you and the rest of the upperclassmen are in charge now! You just need to get the cleaning equipment to the storage shed... a-after that make sure everyone gets on their way home before it becomes night... I-I have to go now! Sorry for this!"

With that, their teacher started to walk quite fast towards the steps that would lead him down to the streets... though the moment he stepped on them he started to run at a speed that would leave a professional sprinter to shame.

With that, the kids of Sakurasaki were left alone in the grounds of the park which once had been a shrine. Twilight was quickly approaching, but there was no need to hurry on home just yet.

edited 24th May '12 12:19:14 PM by daltar

Happy that a teacher was going to make sure Masuko... um, Masuko wasn't hurt, Alice returned to the area she'd been scrubbing away at, moving her bucket from its original position so that the afore-mentioned girl - and any other student, really - may use it if needed.

Eventually, by the time the day was over, Alice was back to lying on the ground, having just finished gulping down her drink. She's managed to clean a bit of graffiti, and with everyone else's help the place was back to looking beautiful... But man, was that tiring work.

You'd be proud, right? Alice asked... someone in her head. You liked this place a lot, so I hope you're happy!

With a groan, Alice sat up and sighed. The teacher had rushed off, and they had to clean up the cleaning supplies... boo.

"But Masuko Masuko is... fine..." Masuko headed over to her teacher and allowed her injury to be treated. It really wasn't too bad, but getting it sanitized and bandaged was probably for the best. After that was done with, she spent her time cleaning away, running around, and generally being as helpful to the others as she could possibly manage. Once that was done, it was time to get to packing up all the cleaning supplies.

"Without hesitation, Masuko Masuko will gather all the cleaning supplies for her fellow volunteers!" she declared, cheerfully, before attempting to gather far more buckets and other cleaning supplies then she could likely manage.

"They're still here?" Hanako muttered, looking down. She'd eaten the snacks she'd brought with her hours ago; swapped the battery for a spare; finished the game and repeatedly attempted to go through it without losing a life to no avail... and there was still a horde of schoolgirls down there. No way was she going to climb down into that. Finally getting bored of the machine's silence, too, she turned up the volume, which resulted in a few... questionable noises. Occasionally. Mostly just music.

Sergei shook his head quietly at the antics of his fellow pupils. Would they take anything seriously? Nevertheless, he still had to do his bit. Dutifully taking his share of the cleaning equipment, he began walking toward the storage shed.

Hana looked toward Hanako; she thought about telling her to go and do her part, but then remembered that this was the girl that was obsessed with H-games — didn't she sit and play them the whole time?
Shaking her head, she took a few sponges, buckets, and the like, and headed toward the shed, keeping an eye on her underclassmen.

With all the cleaning done, Ryota took the chance to finally snooze without his older sister breathing down his neck. The boy didn't realise it would be dark soon so Nao or someone else would be quick to wake him up or that sleeping in the park at night would not be good for one's safety.

However, there's one thing Ryota does know, when the night begins, it will be impossible for him to go to sleep again until it's late. Parents and other adults blame him for this problem but he's tried to fix this with things like warm milk but it doesn't work, his body just won't go to sleep until it's way past the ideal bed time. And it's going to be a school day tomorrow, he's going to be really tired if he just depended on this night's sleep.

And thus, while the put the equipment away, finished their chats or just rested from a hard day of work, the sun dipped lower in the horizon... and a cold wind started to blow, carrying with it a heavy unpleasant aura.

Should one of the kids look back at the monument they would see stain of the mysterious paint on the side of the monument... one that wasn't there before. A mere minute after that more and more splashes started to manifest out nowhere on the sacred monument.

The cold wind started to blow just a tad stronger and the sounds of the city around them seemed to fade, isolating them in an expectant eerie silence.

The whole park seemed to holds it's breath in wait... until suddenly a strong crashing sound could be heard coming from the stone monument... almost as if a big hammer had just hit the unyielding stone. A sound which started to repeat itself every half minute, until a crack started to appear on the side of the stone monument.

Masuko had taken note of the odd music she was hearing, and immediately approached the source, a girl sitting in a tree. What was she doing sitting in the tree and playing music? They had to finish gathering supplies! And what were those other noises? "Hey, Masuko Masuko noticed that-"

And then, the thudding of something striking the monument. The splatterings of red paint all over it, coming seemingly from no where. Masuko stared for a moment. What... what was going on...?

"E-eh...?" she stared, "What's... what's going on?!"