Chapter 10
Learning is Never Easy
That same morning, Blaze and his little sister appeared to be having a lie in, though to be fair, they had earned it. Well, Blaze had. He had once again been woken up by his little sister, who had had multple nightmare's about the Negatone that Trio the Minor had summoned. Blaze had managed to calm her down and get her to fall back to sleep, but not too long later -maybe an hour or so- the child would once again awaken, allowing the whole situation to replay over and over again. The boy had finally fallen asleep around two hours after the sixth time Ellen had awoken, and thankfully, they both had undestirbed sleep for the duration of the night. Though that was soon about to change.
At about 8:30m, a knock came at the door and when no one answered, the knocking became more persistent. It was enough to wake the whole neighborhood and thankfully, Blaze included.
He walked through the living room and straight to the door, -his hair untidy from how he had slept- opening it to see Hibiki and Kanade dressed in their school uniforms.
"Blaze! we're gonna be late if you don't get dressed!" Kanade exclaimed, confusing the boy completely as he rubbed his eyes.
"Late for what?"
"For school! Don't tell me you forgot about today being the first day back!"
If Blaze hadn't been awake before, he was now. As soon as he heard Kanade mention the word 'school' he quickly made a dash for his room, tossing things left, right and centre whilst in his closet looking for his uniform. Whilst he was doing that, Hibiki and Kanade had got Ellen up from her sleep and made her something to eat, so that Blaze wouldn't have something else to worry about that morning.
"What's wong (wrong) with Onii-chama?" the little girl asked as Kanade plated some of the freshly made breakfast and placed it in front of her.
"Your brother is running a bit late, that's all. Don't worry about that though, we've got everything under control. Why don't you eat your breakfast before it gets cold okay?"
"Okway." Ellen said, her mind now focussed on the cut up pieces of toast in front of her.
Whilst the child ate her breakfast, a thought appeared in Kanade's mind, one which she knew would cause trouble if it wasn't taken care off and so she turned to Hibiki.
"Watch Ellen for a minute okay?"
"Why? What are you doing?"
"Just do it! I'll be right back. This is important!" Kanade said in a more annoyed tone, her eyebrows twitching in anger at the same time before she turned and walked away.
"H-hey!" Hibiki called out, but just saw Kanade ignore her and keep walking, straight towards Blaze's room.
She could still hear few crashes coming from inside, and decided that it would be best for her to knock rather than just barge in like Hibiki would, and so did just that, waiting for a reply from inside, which she soon got.
"One sec!" Came Blaze's reply from inside, and after another moment or two, opening the door, now completely dressed in the Aria Academy's school uniform.
"I'm done, see?"
"That's not why I knocked on the door Blaze. Have you thought about who's going to watch Ellen whilst we're at school?" Kanade asked, watching as Blaze made the same realization she had earlier and quickly looked annoyed at himself for forgetting something so important.
"How could I forget...?!"
"Don't be so hard on yourself, Blaze. With everything that's been going on recently, it's only natural that someone could forget. You could still try to see if someone's free to look after Ellen for today."
"And what do I say? 'Hi, it's Blaze, I was wondering if you could watch over my sister, who got turned into a two year old for some strange reason and therefore can't go to school'. If I say that, we could all get exposed."
"Can't your parents look after her?" Kanade asked, knowing it was probably their best choice given their situation, but that hope was soon shot down when she saw Blaze shake his head.
"They can't, they're both really busy as it is, our mum's even been roped in to help dad with the celebration that suposed to be happening soon."
"Well... What about Aphrodite-sama? She could look after Ellen and that way, we won't be exposed as Precure. That and when Ellen was in Major Land before, Aphrodite-sama seemed to have control of things."
"I guess it's worth a shot."
"Good, and while you try to arrange something, Hibiki and I will help Ellen get dressed."
Blaze gave a nod and a silently thank you along with it, before picking up his phone, scrolling through the contacts until he reached Ako's number. Once he had found it, he clicked the contact and put the phone to his ear, listening to the noise it made as he waited for a minute or two before the young girl answered.
"Hello?"
"Hey Ako, it's Blaze. I was hoping your mum would be able to watch Ellen until we got back from school?"
"Let me guess, you didn't arrange for someone else to look after your sister? Wow, talk about being stupid."
"You of all people know that I couldn't do that, I'd be risking the exposure of the Precure!" Blaze said in an annoyed voice before he heard Ako once again begin to speak.
"Okay okay, I get it. But I don't think mama would be able to look after Ellen, she's already busy enough planning an upcoming celebration. It's so busy that even grandpa had to go and help her."
"So I guess Otokichi won't be able to look after Ellen either?"
"No, sorry."
"It's fine... Thanks anyway, Ako" Blaze said, a little downhearted about the fact that not even the young girls family couldn't look after Ellen before putting down the phone.
Sighing, he then made his way back to his friends, who were still in Ellen's room finishing helping the child get ready for the day. Upon entering, the boy saw his two friends look away from his little sister and notice the look on his face as he began to explain what was wrong.
"Aphrodite-sama isn't able to watch over Ellen, and neither is Otokitchi."
"So what are you gonna do, Blaze?" Hibiki asked, watching the boy rub the back of his head as he then began to give his answer.
"I guess the only thing we can do is take Ellen with us. It's not like we have any other options."
"But what about the risk of exposing us?" Kanade asked, remembering what Blaze had said not long before about it and watched as Blaze sighed.
"There isn't any other option for us right now. Even though I hate to admit it, there isn't enough time to find anyone to look after her that won't risk our exposure."
"I guess he does have a point. You should know more than any of us that you can't leave a child at Ellen's age on their own, Kanade. What with helping look after Souta for so long."
Kanade quickly shot Hibiki a look for the way the girl had mentioned that last part, but soon sighed, knowing that she was right. Even though she didn't like to admit it. The young pastry chef then looked back to Blaze and gave him a reassuring smile, knowing that the boy was probably more on edge than her and Hibiki could ever be at a time like this.
"Okay then. We'll help out as much as you need Blaze. We're all in the same boat if the news about the Precure gets out so we should work together to make sure that it doesn't."
"Thanks. We should probably get going now, before we run even more behind." Blaze said,picking Ellen up and placing her into her stroller, quickly securing her inside before grabbing his and the little girls bags and heading out of the house for their first day of the new term.
The group arrived at school around twenty minutes later, and entered the school. Luckily, most of the students had already gone to their classrooms so there wasn't too much hastle. So the group quickly made their way over to an empty room and entered.
"Are you sure about this place, Blaze? What if someone comes in here?" Kanade asked worriedly as she looked around the room.
"We won't have to worry about that. This is one of the clubrooms. No one should come in here at least until lunchtime, so Ellen should be fine here until then."
"And at lunch time?"
"We'll just have to cross that bridge when we come to it. Right now we'll have to go to class. Hummy, do you think you can watch over Ellen till we get back?" Blaze asked, watching the kitten poke her head out of Hibiki's bag to give her response.
"Of course nya!"
"Thanks, we'll be back soon." Blaze said, ruffling Ellen's hair with a caring smile before he, Hibiki and Kanade exited the room and went to their classrooms.
Hummy watched the group go whilst the child wandered around the room curiously, before sitting in the corner and playing with her favourite stuffed kitten toy. She did this for a while before she got bored and started to look for something else to do, which Hummy took notice of and quickly came up with an idea.
"Wanna play hide and seek nya?"
"Weah!" Chibi Ellen cheered in delight with the biggest smile on her face that Hummy had ever seen, even on her own face.
"Okay, I'll count and you hide nya!"
"Okway!" The child cheered, seeing the kitten cover her face with her paws and start counting as she herself went to hide.
She picked up her stuffed kitten and clumsily wandered around the room, looking for a place to hide. As she did, she saw the bag of her things sitting in the stroller, and instantly grabbed it -dropping the toy in the process- and pulled everything out of the bag, before she tried to climb inside.
She soon found out that she was a bit too big for that random hiding place, and so after getting picking up her toy once again, she went on to find a new hiding place. For a moment anyway, as she had ran around the room she had noticed her transformation item, lay on the ground with the rest of the stuff she had dropped on the floor from her bag.
Curiousity once again taking hold, the child picked the strange item up and began to play with it, sticking it in her mouth every once in awhile. She then noticed the door, that hadn't been shut properly after her three friends left for their classes, and wandered out whilst Hummy still counted, thinking there might be a better hiding place than in the room they were in.
"98... 99... 100 nya! Coming nya!" Hummy cried out not 20 seconds later, removing her paws from over her eyes and what she was met with made her panic.
Multiple things had been carelessly tossed around the room during Ellen's hunt for a hiding place, and sure that worried Hummy, knowing that she would have to clean things a little before the rest of the group returned. But the thing that worried her the most was that the door to the room was wide open... and Ellen was nowhere to be seen.
"Oh no, Nya!" Hummy cried, her little paws once again raising towards her face, though more in horror this time and quickly ran out of the room, searching for the little girl and hoping that she would find her before Blaze did...
Unlukily for the small kitten, that didn't seem to be the case. While, Ellen had been looking for a place to hide, she went past the groups classroom, catching Blaze's attention at the same time. He quickly looked towards the door and saw multiple notes fly past and wondered what was going on. Hibiki and Kanade both took notice of this and decided to find out what was on his mind
"Is something wrong, Blaze? You seem kind of distracted." Kanade asked, Hibiki giving a nod of agreement in a rare case of them thinking the same thing.
"It might be nothing, but I thought I saw some notes from the legendary score go past our classroom." Blaze said after deciding that hiding what he saw was a bad idea and watched his two friends nod to each other.
"Maybe you should go and find out if that's what you saw and if it is, we can add the notes to the rest of the ones we have."
"To be honest, I have to agree with Hibiki, even though it pains me to say it. Plus, it'll cause less suspicion if one of us goes to check it out."
Blaze watched as Hibiki gave Kanade a really annoyed look and sighed, but even so nodded towards them, knowing that they were right in this case. He then raised his hand to get the teachers attention.
"Can I go to the bathrooms?" He asked, as normally as he could, watching the teacher nod and make a hand gesture towards the door to the room.
Being given the permission, Blaze then exited the room, and made his way in the direction he had seen the notes go in. He continued until he saw a glow of pale blue light and suddenly got a very bad feeling in the pit of his stomach, and even quicker than before made his way forward.
Moments later, he saw the source of the light: his little sister in her Cure form -more like a chibi cure form- and instantly had to dodge an attack that the child had accidently sent. Her outfit consisted of the same style, but much smaller and in a cuter way that made her chibiness shine even more. She also appeared to be sat in a nest of notes she had summoned and was happily waving the smaller version of the Love Guitar Rod around, sending more Tone Rings flying.
But this time, rather than dodging the attacks, Blaze cut them apart using his flare daggers and proceeded to make his way towards the child.
"Ellen, you need to stop this now, you're gonna hurt someone!" Blaze called, still cutting apart the tone rings, until a handful of notes flew into his face, obscuring his vision.
Because of this, Blaze was unable to see the next attack and was ultimately hit by it, being sent backwards into the wall before sliding down towards the floor. But shortly afterwards, he heard nothing and didn't seem to feel anymore attacks being launched. All he heard was one thing: whimpering. The boy finally managed to get the notes away from his face and instantly saw the young child tearing up, looking scared.
"It's okay, Ellen... I'm fine, see?" Blaze said, trying his best to smile for the child as he once again made his way towards the child, lifting her out of the note nest once he was close enough. He smiled as transformation then vanished, and she clutched onto him tightly.
"Lets go and find Hummy now okay?"
Blaze watched his little sister nod in reply and then went back towards the room where he saw the small kitten running back inside, trying to hide her frantic look.
"Siren nya! There you... I mean, what's the matter Blaze, nya?" She then asked, as Blaze rubbed his forehead with his free hand whilst beginning to speak.
"I was just wondering, why I found my little sister wandering around the school on her own and transforming into a Cure to do damage to an empty classroom?"
"W-well... I... um nya..."
Blaze let out a sigh as he watched the small creature nervously try to come up with a complete sentence, to at least explain why Ellen had ended up alone in the first place. He knew that Ellen wouldn't like it if he started getting annoyed so he just gave Hummy a pat on the head in order to tell her to relax.
"Just calm down, Hummy. As long as it doesn't happen again I'l let it go this one time." He told her as he heard the bell ring.
"There's the bell for break, Hibiki and Kanade should be here soon." The boy stated, sitting down on one of the chairs with his little sister on his lap whilst the kitten nodded. Neither of them noticed someone watching them from outside the school building...
(Author: Well here you go guys! :) Another chapter is here :) Sorry if it isn't very good, I've tried my best to make sure there aren't as many spelling and gramar mistakes. Anyway, I hope you all like it everyone :D)