High above the city's skyline, Yokuza soared through the sky, the wind a gentle breeze brushing against his skin as he pierced through the sky. His snow wings spread out in an impressive wingspan, primed to slice through any foolish clouds daring to cross the elemental's path. Sat upon her father's back, Saigo playfully murmured, blissfully swaying from side to side, lost in her own world as her tail flailed and whipped in the wind.
"See, Antie Yumi wasn't scary now was she?" Yokuza remarked teasingly, snapping Saigo out of her dazed state. Her cheerful demeanour turned to a sour pout as she grabbed her tail and hugged it for support.
"I'm not scared of her," Saigo murmured her cheeks turning slightly pink from embarrassment. Sensing his daughter's embarrassment, Yokuza couldn't stifle his amusement in time, letting out a quick snicker and pushing Saigo's pink colouration to a radiant glow.
"I'm not!" Saigo exclaimed. Raising her hands, and forming them into small fists before lightly pounding them against the back of Yokuza's head, her strikes rebounding off the guy's head while leaving only messy hair as a result of her efforts. Seeing her efforts weren't yielding any results, Saigo gave up, her attempt to get back at her father for laughing at her being nothing but a failure. With a defeated huff, Saigo sat back on her butt before wrapping her tail and wings around herself into a cacoon, resembling a flower bulb moments away from blooming.
"Father, you really shouldn't tease her. She might stop going back willingly for check-ups and start running away more," a snarky and condescending female voice asked, making Yokuza snicker again.
"Come now, Nana. She's just playing up in hopes my resolve will crack and make me take her to the nearby Aether Zone Naia constantly goes to," Yokuza remarked. His remark coaxed a sudden shiver from the Saigo cacoon, its form and stability mildly faltering as Saigo let out a meek whimper at being found out.
(Nana-Ka Sakamoto is a slightly short seventeen-year-old humanoid kitsune/snow leopard; she has slightly long bubblegum-textured pink hair with pale cyan ends, golden eyes with small pink five-pointed stars in her pupils, a slight hourglass figure, faintly tanned skin, a trailing thirty-five centimetres long extremely fluffy pink cat-like tail covered in pale cyan leopard spots with the end of the tail splitting into eight kitsune tail-looking extensions, fuzzy cat-like pink ears with cyan ends and spots which are a cross between a snow leopard and a kitsune, and tanned leopard spot-looking marks all over her body)
(Nana-Ka is wearing a pale pink tank top, poofy black fur knee-low shorts, pale pink rubber rain boots, and a puffy golden fur coat filled with many pockets on its inner side)
Nana-Ka lowered her eyebrows into an unamused frown, disappointment oozing from her eyes. Her stare was only sparsely interrupted by the cool breeze of her elevated location brushing her face and forcing her eyes closed. As she fluttered her eyes open and turned her gaze to the land below, the tech whiz sighed in solemn resignation, the sights below her mixed with her father's ignorance fueling her already sunken mood. She stood atop her floating maroon-red magic barrier, creasing her brows with her fingers as she rubbed her eyes in frustration.
Slumping her shoulders under the weight of her shame from her father's apparent ignorance, Nana-Ka could only muster a tilt of her head before she leapt in front of her father, conjuring another magic barrier beneath her feet (magic barriers are made from condensed mana[wavey energy] usual formed into circles).
Reacting before the girl even jumped, Yokuza halted his momentum in an instant, catching the Saigo cacoon flinging off his back with one hand before he stood up straight in the air. Yokuza placed the Saigo cacoon upon his head, an amused grin on his face, the gift of his poutful daughter's face giving him a joy like no other.
"Father, we went over Lumios City's border wall ages ago," Nana-Ka grumbled, wafting her tail to the side before flicking it in the ground's direction in a contemptive manner. She narrowed her eyes, watching the grin on her father's face remain set in its ways and making the girl's tail bend at multiple acute angles from her rising annoyance before stating, "Do you like annoying us or...". Without a word, Yokuza swiped his arm up, uppercutting the attacking crow-like aether beast in the face, shocking Nana-Ka at the creature's sudden appearance before it was sent flying towards its flock.
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"You say that like I didn't intend to," Yokuza remarked smugly as he lowered his arm before adding, "Also, it's the second thing.".
"Huh?" Nana-Ka uttered in confusion, still feeling the effects of her prior shock. Taking a moment to collect her thoughts. Nana-Ka mulled over her father's response, her expression souring as she picked it apart before slumping her shoulders the second she realised what he was implying.
"More like both," Nana-Ka grumbled in frustration, slapping at her swaying tail and knocking the kinks out of it. As she tried to refocus on her conversation with Yokuza, Nana-Ka felt her composure crumble, reducing her to a grumbling bundle of frustration before smashing her tail through a small cloud behind her, reducing it into cyan rain that sput out sparks and crackles.
"So, hyper-focus is bad outside of making stuff?" Saigo uttered. She poked her head out the top of her wing cacoon, instantly closing her eyes as the ambient sunlight blinded her. Adverting her eyes, Nana-Ka heavily exhaled, her tail frizzing up in tandem with her rising displeasure at being outed by her father. Still, her attention was momentarily diverted from herself as she noticed two sections of the crow-like aether beast flock bursting into a dark blue mist.
"Took them long enough...," Nana-Ka grumbled under her breath, the pops of the exploding aether beasts ringing in her ears and forcing her to cover them.
Meanwhile, Temperance groaned in pain, not from anything physical but from watching Nakamai struggle to solve basic subtraction math questions, enthused on the basics. The young-looking kitsune clung to her head, the treacherous challenge of twenty-five minus eighty-seven too daunting for even her mind. The girl mentally clawed at her brain, racking the few practical brain cells she had left after the rest were barbequed to nothing while Temperance and the Sakamoto siblings watched her.
"I don't get it...," Nakamai uttered, sulking and pressing her pen against the touchpad covered in math equations matching her skill level. She stared at the droves of her working out, the tension building in her making the very numbers dance before her in a teasing manner. Xenazuki slowly blinked, gauging if Nakamai was serious or not, before leaning forward onto the low table and staring at the touchpad in Nakamai's hands.
"What's there not to get? Just subtract the smaller number from the bigger number then put a minus symbol behind the answer," Xenazuki remarked, absently pointing at the original equation on the touchpad's other tap. However, despite the concise and clear instructions given to her, Nakamai was no closer to figuring out the answer. Xenazuki slapped her forehead before flopping back against her large tail, unable to believe a kitsune of any age could be bad at basic mathematics.
"Nakamai's more anxious about math than Tem-Tem was fighting against the Dream Savant," Kannachi remarked amusedly, the remark bringing a small smirk to the gaggle of girls. Temperance silently swivelled his head towards his friend, judgement oozing from his very soul and glancing at Nakamai's tails as they steadily turned red and redder. Without wasting time by responding, Temperance rose from his sitting position and made his way straight for the hallway door, retracting his non-human body parts into his body as he left the room.
"Come on, Tem-Tem. That was supposed to be a compliment...," Nakamai mumbled to herself, feeling slightly guilty and upset with herself for believing she offended Temperance.
However, her feelings swiftly froze up, the sound of a whistle reminiscent of a kettle catching her attention as Nakamai's tails turned bright red. But the second Kannachi turned to look at the source of the noise, all the girls were hit by an audible flashbang, a clash of a deafening whistle and Nakamai's scream of frustration racing straight into everyone's ears.
The deafening clash was nauseating, smashing against the girl's senses and turning those senses inside out. In an instant, all the other girls present in the room were out cold. After what felt like hours, Nakamai's screaming slowly tittered out, into an exhausted murmur before she collapsed to the floor but retained enough energy to land on Xenakuzi's tail intentionally. Left as the sole survivor of Nakamai's outburst, Mochiko sat on the sofa in shock but otherwise unaffected, surrounded by his knocked-out siblings and friends. He took one look at the touchpad and instantly got a dumbfounded expression.
"Why are there letters?" Mochiko uttered.