*Edited: October 23, 2010

Beta: chococookie-mallow

A/N: Many of you have commented on the fluff of last chapter and, well *shrugs*, what can I say? I was in a fluffy mood! XD

It is a fact that I hate updating during the week (I have no idea why though) but since FF was being stupid and I couldn't update when I was supposed to, I decided to post anyway =)

Oh! And Clarification: This fict is canon, excluding Mikan meeting Yuka-san, so the Hanahime incident and everything else has happened. Mikan just never met her mom before because of what happened with her and Kaori-chan (read chapter 6 for more info)

Rated T: for slight language

Summary: "I hate everything about you." Five words. "I... I hate you too, Natsume." And so the first domino in a long line fell… "Good." For better or for worse only time would tell… He never did see the tears streaming down her face as he walked away.

Chapter 9: Protection

"Unforgivable!" A voice hissed, cutting through the silence, quickly followed by the sound of someone being hit across the face.

Persona resisted the urge to hold his cheek where he had been hit by the ringed hand of the Elementary school principal, although he couldn't stop himself from forming his face into a pained grimace. He had been both bruised and cut by the sharp jewels on the other's fingers; blood trickled slowly across his pale skin.

Standing on two knees with his leader towering over him, Persona knew that he was in deep trouble. All because he failed.

'I failed.'

"I'm sorry, Master." Persona murmured a string of apologies with a bowed head.

"Hmph," the child sneered and bent over slightly to jerk the DA teachers head up. Eyes that were such a dark blue, they almost looked black glared into submissive obsidian. "You had better be. After all: you owe me. I'm the one who saved you - I kept you even after what you did. Even after you killed your precious Yukihara-sensei. Did I not?"

It was a rhetorical question, but Persona gave a slight jerk of his head in agreement anyway.

He did keep him, Persona knew. He was right. He had to pay him back - Persona owed him.

"I will not fail again."

"Tch."

"Such a disgrace – beaten by an untrained 14 year-old." His eyes were merciless, a glare in his unforgiving eyes.

"You will not fail again."

The boy released Persona with a snarl, pushing him over on the process. But even watching as he slowly sat up, red staining the side of his face, the principal didn't care. He just walked around to the front of his large wooden desk and sat there, one arm propping his head up. Passive eyes watched as Persona slowly stood, his masked features carefully blank.

"Leave." he ordered.

"Yes, Master."

And he left.

OoOoO

On the other end of the school, in the high school division, stood a certain Tsubasa Andou who was currently hugging Mikan so hard that she was turning blue from lack of air.

"You don't know how worried I was! How come you didn't come and see us sooner? And that little Ringo girl is really cute! And-!"

Until a fist came down atop his head.

"You big idiot!" Misaki snapped at the shadow caster, pummelling him into the floor. "She. Can't. Breathe!"

"Ah, sorry, sorry!" Tsubasa wailed in fear, lifting his arms over his head in a pathetic attempt to protect himself from his pink haired counterparts' kicks of fury.

To the side of this all, Mikan watched with wide eyes, but did not interfere. She knew it was best to just let it play out-

Crack!

"Mother f-!"

"Language, Andou!"

-despite how terrible it sounded.

"Ne, Onee-chan?" a little girl asked from below, tugging on the skirt of Mikan's uniform.

A smile played on her lips .

"Hmm?"

"How come you're not helping Tsubasa-nii?"

'Tsubasa-nii?'

"Ah..."

She just didn't have a way to answer that and instead just told Ringo not to worry about it, to which she responded, "Oh. Okay!"

Ten minutes later a rumpled looking Tsubasa stood beside a smiling Misaki, a wobbly grin on his face.

"Ah hahaha..." Tsubasa laughed softly, scratching the back of his head. "Well..."

Mikan giggled at the two and grinned down at Ringo.

"It's nice seeing you, sempai, but I really only came for a short visit. I still have to drop Ringo off to her class and then get to mine."

Sighs of disappointment were heard from the two seniors and Mikan frowned guiltily.

"Fine," Tsubasa said finally, "But you'd better come back soon!"

"Yes, sir!"

"Alrighty then - get going. You have... fifteen minutes before class starts and it takes a while to go between departments, so I would hurry."

"F-fifteen?"

"Yeah."

"Oh crap! C'mon Ringo-chan! We've gotta run!" Mikan exclaimed, dashing towards the exit.

"Okay, Nee-chan!" the little girl replied and followed Mikan out the door. "Bye Tsubasa-nii! By Misaki-nee!"

Watching her pigtails disappear out the door, two pairs of eyes blinked owlishly.

"Misaki-nee?" Misaki muttered.

"Tsubasa-nii?" wondered Tsubasa.

"..."

"..."

"That is so cute!" gushed Misaki. "Aw... She called me her big sister!"

"Yeah! I feel kinda sorry for her though. Having a tomboyish sister like you will be tough. Really, It's a good thing that I am her big brother, otherwise- Ah. M-misaki, what are you doing with that bat? Oh. Oh no! I was just kidding! Ow! Ouch! Geeze woman, chill! Gah! Don't hit me there! Watch where your aiming that thing! Misakiiii!"

And Mikan just continued her run to the Elementary division, completely unaware of what her favorite sempai was going through.

"Whew!" Mikan breathed, wiping a hand across her face with a small smile at her surrogate younger sister. They had finally arrived, and both girls were standing at the door of Ringo's classroom. "Well," she stopped to take a deep breath, "we made it on time, ne Ringo-chan?"

An equally - if not more - out of breath eight year old nodded her head with a smile of her own, taking large gulps of air all the while.

"Thanks for dropping me off onee-chan!" she thanked sweetly.

"Sure thing! I have to go now though, okay?"

"Ah. Alright. Bye!"

"Bye," Mikan agreed and then turned to leave once Ringo left.

She walked through the hallways of the elementary school division, watching idly as children ran to class, a few also accompanied by older students as they went.

"Being a kid sure must be nice..." Mikan said wistfully, stepping outside the front doors of the school and onto the stone steps. She had another ten minutes to get to class.

"Probably," a voice drawled from beside her in response to her words and Mikan didn't even flinch, already used to his sudden appearances. "Children usually don't have to deal with the stuff that we do - or at least normal ones don't."

Somehow Mikan knew that the two of them were not included in the normal category.

"Hello Natsume," she smiled.

"Hn."

"So-"

"Hn."

She glared at him.

"Don't interrupt."

"..."

"Thank you. Now-"

"Hn."

Mikan sighed in annoyance before continuing.

"As I was saying Oh Immature One, have you figured out what the flower is?" she asked him quietly as they walked together towards the middle school division. It had been almost a week since Mikan had been branded by the mysterious Alice stone and she was growing impatient, worried about what it might do to her. Natsume had said it would be alright, but...

"Yes."

"Oh! Good! So what is it then?"

"I'm not going to tell you."

Mikan's eye twitched as she turned her head towards Natsume.

"Huh?"

Said boy shrugged innocently.

Innocent?

Natsume?

Hah. I didn't know his face could portray such emotion.

"You heard me."

"But-! But why not, Natsume? That's not at all fair and-"

"Chill, Polka," Natsume broke in and Mikan crossed her arms and pouted childishly.

"I'm not going to tell you, but someone else will."

"Huh? What do you mean?"

"The... man who gave you the stone... he wants to talk to you himself."

"Oh."

"Hn."

"..."

"..."

"...Ne, Natsume?"

"Hm?"

"Who is the person who gave the stone to me?"

Natsume opened his mouth to answer but the closed it quickly. He glanced over at Mikan to pin her with a crimson gaze and told her, "The principal of the High School Division Kazumi Yukihara."

Mikan's eyes went wide.

Principal Yukihara was by far the most well-known of the three principals both for his good looks and stoic demeanour. He was what kept the school running as well as it did and helped find many Alice's with his powers. There were also rumours that he was immortal or something - hadn't aged a day since he was 20, but Mikan wasn't sure that she believed that. Yes, the blue-eyed man was defiantly the most well-known and it was for many reasons.

One of them was that he was an extremely intimidating person.

"What!"

The nullifier half squeaked, half shrieked her words and Natsume winced.

Mikan was so shocked that she missed his eyes flickering to his left and him giving a small nod to the person standing in the shadows of a large tree. The shadowed person made five signs with his hands that only members of the DA knew towards Natsume. He replied with just one before his gaze returned to the girl beside him.

"Polka?"

"Oh, yeah-? Hey! Why'd you stop walking? We don't have that much longer to get to class and if we stop now then-"

"You aren't going to class today, Polka."

Mikan blinked.

"Huh?"

"You are going to go meet Principal Yukihara."

Mikan let out a squeak at the idea.

"W-when?"

"Now."

"Natsume – " Mikan called.

"What is it this time, Polka?"

"Stop calling me Polka." She replied stoically.

"Tsk." Smirked Natsume.

OoOoO

The hesitant sound of her knuckles against his wooden door is what woke Kazumi Yukihara from his daydream and the man took a deep steadying breath before saying, "Come in."

The door opened quietly and was shut with a soft click as a young girl walked into the room looking nervous and gripping the edge of her skirt as she sat down in one of the two chairs in front of his desk.

It appeared as though his reputation had made its way to his niece's (though she didn't know it) ears.

That would make things more difficult.

"Ah..." Mikan said slowly, uncertainly, and for the first time she looked up to meet Kazumi's eyes. And it was painful.

She looked almost exactly like her mother when she was younger, but still: she had her fathers' nose, his smile, and the colour of Mikan's hair was a mix of Yuka's brown and Izumi's blonde made up of honey brown locks as a base with streaks of gold and subtle stripes of bronze in the mix. The shape of her eyes were Izumi's, his younger brother, as well - only larger and the color was, like her hair, a mix of her mother and fathers creating a pretty hazel. According to the report she also had Izumi's personality.

'Brother, she's just like you,' he thought sadly.

"Principal-san?" asked Mikan slowly, and Kazumi released the breath he hadn't known he'd been holding in one long gush. "Are you feeling alright?"

Not trusting his voice, the enigma of a principal nodded before working to calm himself down.

Meanwhile, Mikan's comfort level had reached an all-time low as she internally freaked out over the fact that he had been staring at her so long and so strangely. Did she have something on her face? Was her discomfort so clearly showing? Did she look weird or something? Did she smell?

Resisting the urge to sniff herself to check (she didn't need any more of his strange looks) Mikan absentmindedly tugged at her hair in a lame attempt to make it look nicer.

After what seemed like hours, the silence was broken.

Principal Yukihara caught Mikan's eye. "You don't need to look shaken, I don't bite."

This calmed her down, but only a bit.

"You are here to ask about the mark."

The principals' words were a statement instead of a question, but Mikan took it.

"Yes, Principal-san," she replied politely.

"May I see it?"

"Hm? Ah, yes."

She held out her hand for the blond man to see and his blue eyes studied it critically from their place behind the large wooden desk that separated them.

"It turned out well I see," he said more to himself than the girl standing in front of him and Mikan said nothing.

"This just so happens to be a form of protection that was made for you. Just what it protects you from... well, you will figure that out in due time. Due to your lineage and your Alices- yes I know that you have more than one, but we will talk about that later - and what happened not too long ago, I felt this necessary."

"I-I see," Mikan stuttered out, flustered and more than a little bit worried that the principal knew the secret that she had been trying to keep ever since the Hanahime Incident. Natsume was going to kill her.

But then she remembered something.

"Wait... what does my lineage have to do with this?" she questioned, blinking large hazel eyes once as she tried to figure it out.

Mikan's grandfather was no one important nor was he an Alice. None of the relatives that she had met were either except for Aunt Konan, but the only thing that made her stand out was that she owned a somewhat well-known restaurant in Osaka. No matter how Mikan looked at it, her lineage had nothing to do with the need to be protected.

And she voiced her opinions.

"I really don't see how this matters Principal-san. Why-?"

"Well," the blond before her said with a miniscule smile, "I should want to protect my niece, shouldn't I?"

A/N: And I will just stop here because I am mean. ^^

Wanna know how Mikan will react? Wait and see...

Oh and: I am making it a goal to get 150+ reviews by chapter 10! So there is this chapter (#9) and the next (#10) to reach that goal. Review count is currently at 110, so I need 20 this time and next time at least to make it. Please help out and drop a review! If we can make it, I will have a surprise for you all~! ;D

Thanks for reading

Review please!