Disclaimer: I do not own No. 6.
A/N: An entire week... I had hoped that I wouldn't be forced to only update on weekends for another couple weeks, but school had other ideas. It looks like weekend updates are the best I'll be able to do for awhile. I wasn't able to even start writing this chapter at all until last night. I appologize for how infrequent updates will be for the time being. Anyway, the idea for this chapter comes from a friend, who suggested Shion's mother coming along during a lesson.
It was about halfway through a driving lesson and Rikiga had yet to say or do anything to mess it up. Despite this, Shion was still rather nervous. The reason? Shion's mother had decided to come along that day. Her comments so far had all been positive, however, having delt with at least one problem during all of the previous driving lessons, he was sure his luck would not hold much longer. What he was most worried about was the fact that since Rikiga wasn't causing problems, anything that happened would probably be his fault. This meant he was putting a lot of pressure on himself because he did not want to make any mistakes.
Meanwhile, Inukashi, who was still extremely annoyed by how long it had taken to retrieve the car keys after Rikiga had locked them out of the car, started ranting about it (though quietly so it wouldn't affect Shion's driving). Because Karan was sitting between the two, she heard every word, and frowned.
"What do you mean he locked you guys out of the car?"
"I mean he left the car keys in the car and we had to wait around for someone to come unlock the door for us." Inukashi replied, smirking slightly when she saw Rikiga start to look panicked - he probably figured that Karan would be angry when she found out about all his crazy ideas.
"Well, I'm sure that could happen to anyone," Karan said.
"What about the time we were in the mountains and his ringtone caused two landslides?" Inukashi continued.
Karan's eyes widened. "What?!"
"Everyone's fine, see?" Rikiga spoke up quickly.
"At least no one got hurt." Karan finally stated, though she looked rather shocked by what she had just heard.
"Don't forget that time in the construction zone when he literally told Shion to go down a flight of stairs."
"I did not tell him to go down a flight of stairs. Well, I mean, I guess I did, but I didn't know there were stairs there, so-" Rikiga attempted to explain.
Karan buried her face in her hands. "You've got to be kidding me..."
"Then there was the time-" Inukashi began.
"If you stop talking about it I'll pay for your dogs' food for another three months." Rikiga interrupted.
Inukashi considered it for a moment. "Five months."
"Three and a half," Rikiga negotiated.
"There was that time where he-"
"FINE! Okay, okay, five months!" Rikiga agreed.
Inukashi grinned and said nothing else about the subject. Karan decided that thinking about it anymore would probably give her a headache so she chose to focus on the road again. Rikiga just looked relieved that the conversation was over.
A few minutes later, they arrived at large building that Karan needed to go to for a meeting, and she headed inside with a nervous glance at the car.
As soon as she was out of sight, Rikiga breathed a huge sigh of relief.