A/N: Umm yeah…I had to take an AP exam, it was evil, it's near the end of the school year and if I have to have Festival Time for one more chapter, I'm going to go postal. Thankfully before that can happen though I've changed the name of the chapter. And time has just flown since I last updated so I'm trying the fastest I can. Have fun reading and as a side note the two extra names in here (Daisuke and Sakura) were chosen at complete randomness so no yelling at me.

Disclaimer: I wish I did but I don't own it and I'm still working on my escape plan from the last chapter, I just might be a while.

Word Key:

Text

"Talking"

'Thoughts'

"Thoughts also when two sides of the brain are arguing"

Dream

Tape Recorder

Chapter Seventeen: Confessions (Do or Die Time)

It was after dinner, which had made a death in a graveyard look like a New Year's Party. Mahiru apologized over and over for any insult she may have dropped anytime through out the entire night. Each time Mitsuru shrugged it off and kept silent.

After a while during what seemed to be Mahiru's hundredth time apologizing to him, the silent boy finally spoke, "I'll be back in a moment, stay here."

"Alright." She said as he walked off in some obscure direction. When he turned a corner she leaned up against the pole of a nearby booth. "It's becoming a category six disaster and fast," she murmured to herself, "I have no choice…I have to tell him about it now before he gets majorly ticked and leaves. Better to do it sooner than later, or now rather never; it's the do or die time. Okay death is a bit extreme but still…"

She sighed, but when and how to tell was the problem. After all, this was Mitsuru; she couldn't just walk up to him and say, 'Hey, Mitsuru, I listened to your tape and I feel the same way you do, let's start going out without having to resort to trickery and threats.' It just simply ISN'T done, unless you want lots of pain and possibly death.

As the girl was contemplating how this was going to be done, the boy who had been running the ball toss appeared next to her behind the booth she had been leaning against. "Hey," he said, "haven't gotten to talk to you much. You've been hanging around that guy all night, I thought maybe I'd never get to talk to you, but here you are." The boy gave a warm smile, but something about it seemed fake.

"Umm…Excuse me, but do I know you from anywhere other than tonight?" she asked, "I feel like l should, but I'm drawing a blank."

"Oh, silly me, I'm Daisuke. You and I go to school together."

'Oh yeah I remember him now!' Mahiru thought. "But wait, why would you want to talk to me? Don't you have a girlfriend? Sakura I believe her name was, yeah that's it, Sakura."

Daisuke shrugged his shoulders, "Yeah…I did but I found something, a little more to my liking." As he said this he gave Mahiru a once over with his eyes.

Mahiru didn't get the hint that Daisuke had been giving her at all. "Oh poor girl. I hope Sakura isn't too badly upset, I'll have to give her a call later and see how she's doing."

Daisuke sweat-dropped, but before he could say anything else to Mahiru a voice behind them cleared its throat to show that he was standing right there. Mahiru turned around saying, "Hey Mitsuru! Where did you go to anyways?" No sooner than she said that she about squealed with delight.

Mitsuru was holding two extremely large chocolate soft-serve ice cream cones. "I, uh, knew that you liked chocolate and, um, figured you wanted some, er, dessert."

"Thanks a lot Mitsuru, I really appreciate it," she smiled at him.

"In fact," he handed both cones to her, "why don't you go pick out someplace that you would like to sit and eat it and I'll catch up to ya in a few." Mitsuru said, gently ushering her away from the booth.

"Mitsuru?"

"Don't worry; I'll only be a few minutes, I promise." He tried a small smile but since he was not completely used to it yet, the smile looked more like a cringe.

"If you say so…" He was definitely acting strange, but it was better not to question his actions. "I'm gonna sit up on the bridge that overlooks the river if that's all right with you."

"That's nice, see you soon." Mitsuru was still smiling until he saw her turn a corner and disappear. The smile disintegrated from his lips as he turned to the other boy.

Daisuke was about to give the guy, who had been blocking his attempts to hook with Mahiru, a piece of his mind when he turned toward him. Walking toward him, this Mitsuru, as Mahiru had called him, grabbed Daisuke by the collar of his shirt and dragged him off to an alley situated between two buildings. Mitsuru threw him against the wall, (for Mitsuru himself it was more like a light toss) feet dangling about three inches off the ground and he was pinned up against the wall by Mitsuru's right arm. And of course Mitsuru had him pinned by his neck therefore cutting off Daisuke's air supply. Needless to say, Mitsuru was REALLY pissed off at this guy.

"Listen and listen good you miserable piece of shit. I hate repeating myself and any threats over and over because it gets annoying as hell, understand me?" There was, of course, the sound of choking but nothing else. Mitsuru pressed his arm harder to the boy's neck. "Nod dammit if you understand." Daisuke nodded. "That's good, now stay the hell away from Mahiru and if I ever see you flirting with her again, I swear by all that is holy that people will never EVER find your remains. Is that clear to you?"

There were a few noises before Daisuke said, "That doesn't scare me."

Mitsuru looked at him; this was officially the stupidest human being he had ever met. "You're stupider than you look." He pushed his arm just a bit harder against the boy's throat; he was now turning a lovely shade of purple from lack of air. "Now… let's try this again, and if I have to do this one more time I'm going to hurt you severely and then later hunt you down. You ever come near my girl again like you have tonight I will beat the mother loving shit out of you. Do you understand that?"

The boy shook his head as much as he possibly could. "Alright then," Mitsuru dropped him, "get the hell out of my sight before I change my mind." Daisuke ran like a bat out of hell in the opposite direction of Mitsuru. "Glad that's over." He muttered on his way to meet Mahiru.

That was when the voice decided to bring itself out of silence by singing, 'I say you say, what can make me feel this way? My girl, my girl, talkin' 'bout my girl.' And then it started laughing, it would repeat the song then start laughing again. "And what, may I ask is so damn funny?" The voice tried to answer but every time broke down into hysterics. "Dammit get a grip on yourself!"

There was silence before the voice said, 'You Mitsuru, you crack the hell out of me.' "What did I do?" 'Okay there was that one time when you got drunk off eggnog-,' "Not that time, now dammit!" 'Alright then, how about your constant denials that you actually have immense feelings other than hate for Mahiru.' "How many times do we have to go through that?" 'And I'm not done so sushmar. THEN there's this boy whose very existence in this plane a.k.a. life you threatened for flirting with Mahiru.' "OH shit." 'AND then you basically call her your GIRLFRIEND!'

The voice once again broke down in hysterical laughter and Mitsuru wanted to jump off a cliff onto sharp rocks. How, how could he allow himself to slip up like that? "Shit," he mumbled, "shit, shit, shit." 'Now,' The voice said all cheerful, 'Since you have indeed made it known to yourself. No, I take that. Now that you have admitted to yourself and others that you do indeed like Mahiru and think of her in that way you've only got one thing left to do…' "Never, never in a million damn years will I-," 'You want to get rid of me don't you? The great annoyance that has been bugging you since that night she brought you back from the dead. I may not have been saying things, the only reason I started talking to you was because your skull is so damn thick you can't register anything! Just admit and give in to the fact that you like her and do give a shit about how she feels!'

During the whole conversation Mitsuru had been walking and came to sit down upon the steps that led up to the bridge. Placing his head in his hands he sighed, "I can't do it." 'If you tell me that one more time, I will take over this body and beat the shit out of you. Swallow your damn pride already, that's what's putting you through this hell.' Mitsuru shook his head muttering over and over, several times, "I've gone crazy, I've finally gone crazy."

A few yards away in their "spy attire" Akira and Misoka were carefully observing the tengu. "Misoka, what exactly is going on with Mitsuru?" Akira asked looking over at the older of the two.

"I believe Akira…that he is finally coming to a realization that-," At that moment Mahiru had yelled out Mitsuru's name. "Quick, move!" Misoka hissed pulling Akira out of the aisle, way behind one of the booths.

"Why'd we have to move?" Akira questioned Misoka again.

"If Mitsuru spotted us neither of us would see our next birthday, and that would be if we were lucky." The fox explained, "If we weren't lucky, we wouldn't see tomorrow at all."

The younger grimaced, "That would be very bad. But uhh, what was he coming to a realization about?"

Misoka sighed, "Keep watching and you'll figure it out…eventually."

Back at the bridge Mahiru yelled down, "Hey silly! If you don't hurry up, you're going to have to drink this ice cream instead!"

Mitsuru hopped onto his feet like a scared rabbit, cursing himself for doing so. Making sure no one was around Mitsuru used his short-cut of going straight up instead of using the stairs. Mahiru didn't expect it and let out a small scream. "Meh-Mitsuru! I didn't expect that."

He looked at her, "Expect what? I always fly everyday. Or at least I used to until you fell and Oboro ordered me to walk everywhere with you." Instead of turning over a new leaf after his talk with the voice in his head, he stayed the same old grumpy, I hate everyone in the world, damn everything, Mitsuru.

Mahiru was speechless at that remark, it had been awhile since she heard one of those types of remarks; after all, anything over twenty minutes is a record for him, yet at the same time, Mahiru was nearing the end of her patience rope and was about ready to snap. The girl instead tried for her more usual apologetic tone…in the opinion of the authoress, really should have gone with throwing ice cream at him, but that's a waste of perfectly good ice cream. "I'm sorry Mitsuru, it's just that I'm used to more normal ways of things. Oh and here's your ice cream too." She held out the cone for him to take.

He took the ice cream, "Feh, for information woman, I'm NOT normal. Therefore I don't care if I meet your normal standards and the only reason I'm here is because of your damned blackmailing scheme." Mitsuru glared angrily at the ice cream as if it were the cause of all this "trouble" instead of Mahiru.

"Mitsuru," she sighed, "I give up. With you I just can't win, it's like beating your head against a brick wall. The wall doesn't budge and all that it's left you with is a headache." Mitsuru rolled his eyes. "Whatever, I don't care."

"But I do care! It's your fault that I have to resort to blackmail!"

"How the hell is it my fault?"

"BECAUSE YOU DON'T TALK TO PEOPLE! THE ONLY WAY I COULD EVEN FIND OUT HOW YOU FELT ABOUT ME WAS TO LISTEN TO THAT STUPID TAPE OF YOURS!" She cried.

Really quickly back to our spies…

Akira was wide-eyed at the fact that that was probably the first time he had ever heard Mahiru yell at somebody like that. Misoka was trying his best not to completely breakdown into hysterics, resulting in his entire body shaking.

"Uhh what's so funny?"

Immediately Misoka recomposed himself. "The fact that she listened to a tape…poor girl." He let a breath escape, "Of course Mitsuru's probably wishing that he never thought of those dreams in the first place."

"Misoka, what did you do to Mitsuru?"

The fox looked at him dead in the eye. Staring up at the wolf he said, "I swear on my honor that for once since I have met Mitsuru that I did not do this. He did it all himself."

"You promise you're telling the truth."

"Akira, if I had done it I would be bragging about it like all the other pranks. This time it was all his own doing. Now enough with the questions, we have to see what happens next."

And now, back to our regularly scheduled couple…

Mitsuru stood there stunned. If he walked, no ran, about twenty feet in the opposite direction of Mahiru he'd be over the river. Then there was only a small hop and a bit of a fall between here and oblivion. But then again it could be another ploy and he wanted to make sure of that because he died once. That time was a bitch and the second time around definitely wasn't going to be enjoyable.

TBC

A/N: Dammit this was supposed to be THE chapter! Dammit, dammit, dammit! Curse my thinking that this chapter was becoming too long! Well on a positive note of this, I've already got a good portion of the next chapter written out so I'm hoping to have to before the end of the month. Just to be on the safe side though, if I don't update before June 16 don't expect to update until about July 10 or 11 because I'm going to be at Transylvania University in Lexington Ky. For 3 weeks to Governor's School for the Arts, I'm going for Visual Art. Tata until next time!