Chapter 2

The next day Natsuru woke up frustrated. It had taken him six hours after he got home to transform back into a guy. He was looking forward to when he could control his tranformation. Then he would never have to participate in a battle.

He rewrapped his bracelet and left for school praying that there wasn't another fight. At least large-scale battles like that were pretty rare. He just hoped that there would be no fights at all.

He got to the bus stop a bit late again, and, again ended up sitting next to Kaede.

"Good morning, Natsuru-san." She said, seeming a bit preoccupied.

""M-m-morning, Sakura-san." Natsuru replied.

There was silence for an uncomfortable moment, then Kaede turned to him.

"Did you see the Proxy Battle yesterday?" She asked, trying to sound less interested than she was.

"Uh…" Natsuru settled on the simplest lie. "No I wasn't watching it, I had left."

"So you didn't see the mysterious Blue Kampfer?" Kaede asked disappointedly.

Natsuru's stomach did a backflip. "M-mysterious Blue K-Kampfer?" he stammered, trying to sound intrigued.

Kaede looked at Natsuru. He seemed to be more nervous than normal, but maybe she was imagining it.

"Yeah, she was amazing!" Kaede replied, "There was a Black Kampfer that was trying to attack me and suddenly this huge ball of fire came and knocked him right out of the sky."

Natsuru tried to think of something normal to say. "B-but I thought the Blues h-had only one Z-Zauber."

"I thought so too. I guess Shizuku-san kept one hidden. Maybe I'll ask her…" she trailed off thoughtfully.

When Natsuru got to class, he noticed something on his desk. It was the school newspaper. On the front page was a picture of…him in Kampfer form, up on the roof. It was a fuzzy picture, but you could make out the face and body. Natsuru suddenly noticed how attractive the girl in the picture was, but he quickly pushed that notion out of his head. It was him after all.

Kanji came up behind him. "Well I thought you'd like it, but you seem utterly absorbed!"

Natsuru whirled around. "Oh, uh, you left this here?"

Kanji smiled widely. "Yep, and not only that, I took that picture. Go on, read the article!"

Natsuru did. It started with the headline: "Elusive Blue Hottie Saves School Idol and White Captain Sakura Kaede from an Attack by a Black!" and just got worse from there, recapping the event and going into three pages of detail about how the Blue Kampfer stopped the Black and what she looked like.

"Umm…yeah Sakura-san told me about this on the bus this morning. I—" Natsuru was cut off by Kanji:

"You talked to Sakura Kaede? When? Is this normal? Can I hit you up for an interview?"

"I—um—well—" luckily Natsuru was saved from answering by class starting.

A floor above them, on the divide between the boys' side and the girls' side, the student president's office was crowded and loud.

Shizuku Sangu had a lot on her mind, not least of which was the identity of this new Blue Zauber. Unfortunatly, there was no quiet for her to think; her office was currently occupied by both Sakura Kaede and Minagawa Hitomi, demanding answers.

"How is it that hard to find out who she is?" Hitomi was yelling at her.

"You mean you don't know either?" Kaede asked, obviously disappointed. She had just walked in.

"What puzzles me," Sangu replied "is why you both feel you need to know."

At that Kaede blushed a bit and turned her eyes down. Hitomi, however, was unabashed.

"Of course we need to know! We're Captains, don't we have a right to know?"

"Well," Sangu responded, "maybe Kaede does, she needs to report to the Moderators, but you are my enemy, why should you be one of the first to know?"

Hitomi waved it off. "We're also friends. I tell you about my Kampfer, you tell me about yours, even Kaede tells us about her Kampfer, the only people who don't bother are…Blacks."

Sangu knew that Hitomi would compare her to a Black Kampfer sometime; it was the worst insult in her repertoire.

"I'm not a Black Kampfer, Hitomi. When I find out who she is, I'll be sure to tell you. Now, please I have other appointments and if you ever want me to figure out who this Blue Kampfer is, you really need to let me get some work done."

Kaede quickly got up and left the room, Hitomi following sullenly behind her.

Sangu turned her attention to Akane, who had just walked into the office.

"Anything?"

Akane snorted. "Yeah, I wish. There ain't no leads anywhere. I'm thinking we better make ourselves a fight to lure her out."

Sangu sighed. She really didn't want to resort to this. "Alright, I guess we've got no choice. Be at the main entrance as soon as classes let out."

By the end of the day, Hitomi had managed to cool off and accept that it was possible that Sangu knew nothing about the Blue Kampfer. Her anger towards Sangu had almost completely died when Sangu stopped her on the way out of school.

"Hitomi, why would you ever think I would have told you who she was?" Sangu asked her maliciously. She didn't seem to be acting like her normal self.

Then the meaning of what she said began to sink in the anger that had died away began to resurface.

"You mean you do know!" she yelled at Sangu.

"Doesn't really matter, does it? You won't know, so…" Sangu began to turn to leave.

Before she knew what she was doing, Hitomi had transformed and sent an arch of lighting hurling in Sangu's direction. Sangu, though seemed to have been…expecting it, in fact she looked…triumphant as she deflected the Zauber attack with her blades.

"Were you trying to fight me!" Hitomi exclaimed, annoyed.

Sangu just smiled slightly as she hurled one of her daggers at Hitomi.

Hitomi had already leapt out of the way and was preparing for Sangu to swing it around at her, when Sangu tugged on the chain, pulling the dagger back to her hand and freezing.

"Akane, go!" she called, and the form of the Blue Gewehr leapt from behind her and ran into the park next to the school.

Sangu turned to Hitomi, "Sorry I had to do that. We needed a strong fighting intent to root out the Zauber."

Hitomi narrowed her eyes, nothing forgiven. "Just be sure to tell me when you find out."

Natsuru had almost made it. He had made it down the stairwell and out the main door when suddenly a fight had broken out. He couldn't see who it was or hear what was being said, but his bracelet had begun to glow. When he ran out of the school grounds he had made it to a hidden little grove in the park when he transformed.

He looked down at himself, hoping he wouldn't meet anyone on the walk back home. He managed to make it three quarters of the way there when someone stopped him.

"Hey, babe, wanna hang over at my house tonight?" called one of the guys. None of them were students at Seitetsu Gakuin, so there was no danger of him being recognized. By the looks of them, though, that would not be the least of his problems.

One of them sidled up next to him. "Come on, baby, we can give you a nice night…" the guy ran his hand up Natsuru's side and stopped when he reached his chest. It was an odd and—sickly—not unpleasant feeling as the pervert began to squeeze his chest.

Natsuru brought his leg up into the guy's crotch and he doubled over, immediately Natsuru wrestled free from his grasp and ran as fast as he could away, thanking god for the supernatural speed given to Kampfers.

He didn't stop running until he made it to his house, where he opened the door, slammed it shut, locked it, dead bolted it, and then checked to make sure all the curtains were closed. He threw himself into his couch and tried to convince himself that that whole encounter had not happened. He hadn't made much progress when there was a knock on the door.

He froze, then slowly got up and checked the peephole. To his surprise it was not the three guys from before coming back to rape him. It was a girl wearing the Seitetsu Gakuin uniform-Akane Mishima.

He tried to sound like he normally did, in male form. "Y-yes, w-what do you want?" he stuttered out.

Through the peephole, he saw Akane smile wickedly. "Just shut the fuck up and open this door by the time I count to ten or I am going to shoot that door to hell and you with it if I got to. One…"

Natsuru fumbled with the deadbolt.

"Three…

He unlocked it as fast as he could.

"Five..."

He struggled with the door, having trouble with his sweaty hands trying to get a grasp on it.

"Nine…"

At the last second he threw the door open and jumped back a little as he saw the gun pointed at—well, it used to be at the door but now—him.

Akane pulled her gun back and smiled cheerfully as if this kind of thing happened every day. "Hey, so there you are! You gonna let me in?"

Natsuru, on auto-pilot, silently opened the door wider and stepped out of the doorway. Akane strode into the house.

"Well, I guess I can go back to the Prez and tell 'er I found that Zauber she was look'n for, eh?" Akane asked as she looked around at Natsuru's house. "I'm Akane. If I'm gonna be workn' with ya I better know your name, eh?"

Natsuru slowly understood that this meant she didn't know who he was, and she had just followed him here.

"I'm N-nasturu s-Senou, I—" Then he realized his mistake.

"You what?" Akane's eyes narrowed in suspision.

He couldn't figure out what he could do to take it back. "I-I'm a second year at Seitetsu Gakuin."

Akane smiled. "Heh-so am I. I don't recognize you though…" She looked even more suspicious.

"Um-I don't go often—I've been ill." Natsuru prayed she wouldn't ask any more questions about his identity.

"How long?" Akane ask nodding to his bracelet.

"I-uh-" he decided on the truth "just since a couple nights ago."

Akane whistled, impressed. "That was one nice bit of Zauber magic yesterday for your first time."

"I—" Natsuru stopped as his bracelet began to glow.

"Oh," Akane said, noticing it too, "yeah, now that you're away from that little battle we set up…."

Natsuru jumped and made for the bathroom. "I've got to—" he stopped when Akane grabbed his arm.

"You're tryn' to hide somethin' bitch?" she asked, the suspicion returning, "Just stay here a minute."

Natsuru struggled to break free, but it proved futile. His bracelet's glow grew brighter and brighter until he reverted back to male form.

Akane's grip loosened as she stared in incomprehension. Why was she now holding the wrist of some pathetic looking guy… then she began to understand, and first a smile, then bursts of laughter rose up in her.

"HAHAH—you got it hard! HAHAH! Oh my, quite a few guys are goin' to be disappointed with this! Hahah!"

Now she was doubled up with laughter. She had a hard transformation, but changing personalities was nothing compared to this.

She slowly stopped laughing as she noticed the expression on his face. He looked pretty pitiful.

"Right," she said straightening up and trying with moderate success to hold back her amusemt. "Well, better get this to the Captain."