Saturday morning Kurt had just finished breakfast and was cleaning the dishes when his doorbell rang. After putting down the bowl he was just finishing, he made his way to the door to open it, revealing a patiently waiting Touya.

“Good morning. Thank you for your help.” The Tanuki greeted the werewolf as he stepped inside.

“No need to thank me, I am happy to help.” Kurt replied with a smile as he guided his young friend to his small living room table. After they both sat down he leaned on to the table and continued. “So what do you actually know about those bullies?”

“What is there to know?” Touya grumbled defensively. “They are assholes that won’t leave me alone.”

“If we can figure out the why behind their bullying, we might have a much easier time solving this issue than just beating them all up in retaliation until they get the message.”

“What do you mean?” Touya asked, head turned to the side, ears twitching in confusion.

“Well in my experience, Bullies usually do it for one of two reasons. Even if they might not understand that themselves.” Kurt began while placing his tablet on the table and opening a drawing app. “Either they use it to let out stress or frustrations they don’t know how to deal with. Or because they get something out of this.” Splitting the page evenly between the two he gave Touya a chance to ask a question or two. When none came, he continued.

“Of course both of these might overlap some, and have various root causes. The stress could be from strained relationships, or pressure to perform, or any of a myriad reasons.” Noting his examples down, he switched to the other half of the page. “And what they could get out of it can vary just as much. They could do it to get clout with a group of some sort. They might genuinely be sadists that enjoy seeing suffering, or they might feel better about themselves by proving to themselves there’s someone they can push around still.”

“I see, but how does any of that help us, even if we did know about it?” Touya inquired as he took in the graphic Kurt had sketched out.

“Well it depends. If they were dealing with stress poorly, we could try helping them deal with that in a healthier way. If they do it out of an inferiority complex, dealing with that might be more effective.”

“And you really think any of that would make them leave me alone?”

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“Most likely. So what do you know about them?”

“Not much.” Touya mumbled. “I’ve been seeing them around our neighborhood for about a month by now. I ran into them just about anywhere in that area before. And they seem to always stick together.”

“Hm. are there any other Tanuki around where you live?” Kurt asked, thinking back to his last encounter with a group of Tanuki.

“Not that I know of.”

“Hm, then they might be that scared pack of Tanuki I went past a few weeks ago.” Kurt said as he begins taking notes on what they know about the bullies on a new page.

“So they are as far as we know the only Tanuki around. And they have no trouble going after you, but would rather stay out of my way.”

“So what are we doing?”

“Honestly, as un satisfying as it sounds for now, try figuring out where and how they live.” Kurt suggested. “Because if there’S no other Tanuki around, they might simply be out of their depth living on their own.”

“But what will that help?”

“I would hope that if they are indeed overwhelmed with living in the city, just helping them get that all in order might either get them to back off, or at least leave them too busy to harass you as much.”

“I guess.” Touya mumbled unsurely.

“Anyways, mind lending me a quick hand with the dishes?” Kurt asked as he got up. “I wanted to head over to meet with Eva, but I wasn’t able to finish cleaning up before you arrived.”

“Ah sure.” The Tanuki agreed as he too got up and followed Kurt to hsi small Kitchen counter.

~~~

“Hey Eva, have you figured everything out for the Dinner tomorrow?” Kurt inquired as he spotted the disguised Kitsune cleaning the shrine grounds. He had just returned with Touya, though they had not come across the other Tanuki on their way there.

“Oh morning Kurt.” Eva greeted him while pausing and leaning against her broom. “And yes. I found I didn’t have an appropriate outfit packed, but luckily Yukiko is lending me an appropriately formal Kimono. And offered to help me put it on.”

“And here I expected you to just create one with your whole fox magic.”

Kurt joked with a smirk. Touya meanwhile, after deciding he had no part in this conversation, headed inside.

The Kitsune let out a deep sigh before responding to that. “I was planning to, until both Yukiko and Komaki reminded me that whoever invited us could be touchy about that. Even advised me not to hide the ear and tail once in the private room mentioned in the letter.”

“And Karasuza?”

“Ready to help keep an eye on it all. I’ll go over to get her tomorrow morning.”

“Great.” Kurt replied. “So there’s nothing left to do but not get too worked up.”

“We could always get worked up about other things.” Eva teased before chuckling.

Kurt, a slight blush on his face replied. “Or we could try out this new game I came across to pass the time.”

“Maybe once I am done with my shift.”