Author's Note: Having just watched episode ten of the series, I must admit that I like their storyline even better than my own. I don't know, call me a dragon nut.

Chapter 7.

Louise was now officially freaked out... Saito was thinking. By late afternoon, the girls had heard all manner of beastly growling coming from outside the ruins they were hiding in. The bandits hadn't returned, though she would have almost welcomed such a familiar danger. Saito had left them earlier and had returned looking somewhat nervous. He wouldn't go into details, but the young man had separated himself from the girls and seemed to be deep in thought.

"What's wrong Saito?" Louise asked gently. She wanted to yell, she wanted to argue, but right now the distressing noises coming from outside made her scared silly.

"I sent a message for help to come." Saito said enigmatically.

"But to who? Guiche? Agnes?" Louise demanded irately. "Where are we and why won't you tell us anything?"

"I don't want to worry you." Saito replied seriously. He looked almost... scared.

The other girls had gathered around, already worried from waiting. As the light faded from the sky outside a strange light passed over the broken windows accompanied by the roar of some beast. Then suddenly the light disappeared and the beast fell silent.

"We've been discovered." Siesta almost cried. All the girls were looking to Saito as their protector as he stood, leaving his sword against the wall.

"Might as well get this over with." He said sadly.

"HI-RA-GA SAI-TO!" Some woman screamed at the top of her lungs as she burst into the room. The girls regarded the woman aghast in her strange clothing as she lunged at Saito, connecting with a vicious kick to his midsection. Saito crumpled to the floor out of breath as the infuriated woman began stomping on his back and head relentlessly.

"Shouldn't we do something?" Henrietta asked in terror as the woman commenced to put Saito in a series of complicated submission holds slamming him into the concrete over and over.

"She's going to kill us!" Siesta whimpered as she cowered behind Tabitha.

The woman was now holding up Saito by the front of his tunic hammering his face with her fist. Louise could stand it no longer and grabbed her arm as it reared back for another assault. The woman's dangerous glare turned on her and it took all Louise's noble upbringing to meet that stare in defiance. Saito was her familiar and she was NOT going to have him beaten by someone other than herself.

Saito groaned and drew the attention of both the woman and Louise. He was bruised but looked remarkably intact for someone just having been beaten senseless. "Hi Mom, long time no see..."

Saito thanked goodness the delivery van his mother owned didn't have windows in the back. He'd hoped that he'd been wrong when he'd beaten up the teenage thugs that had found the girls that afternoon. The abandoned building they'd stayed in was apparently their clubhouse. He'd left them only to go confirm his suspicions. The really were in Tokyo not far from his old home.

The girls had commented on the strange carriage, but if they looked out now they'd see only one moon and the hysterics really WOULD be starting.

Saito sat in the passenger seat as his mother drove them toward his home and the girls were looking around in fright enough as it was. "When someone turned in your laptop to the police we started a citywide search for you. Where have you been all this time? Your father has been beside himself with worry. He used all his vacation time searching for you and now you show back up all of a sudden dressed up in that get up with a bunch of cosplay girls, and my only son's best explanation is 'It's complicated'?"

"A lot has happened Mom. If I thought for an instant you'd believe me I'd tell you." Saito replied miserably.

"Oh you'll have plenty of time to explain when I get you home. I'm not letting you out of my sight until then. Now where do I need to drop these girls off?" Mrs. Hiraga ranted irately.

"You can't Mom, they have nowhere to go." Saito tried to explain.

"You picked up a bunch of homeless girls?" His mother demanded, incensed.

"No Mom, they're foreigners. I've got to find a way to get them home. They're... my responsibility now." Saito said quietly.

"I thought you were from a different world Saito." Louise said weakly. Saito turned to look at her.

Saito's mother looked at Louise. "What's she saying son? Tell me you haven't gotten involved with international terrorists."

"No Mom!" Saito denied. He then looked sadly at Louise. "You mean you can't understand Louise?"

"Apparently I'm the only one of us that can understand your language, unless you're the one speaking it." Louise said seriously. "It's probably because of the spell I cast on you when you first came to the academy. We can understand you and you can understand us, but no one else appears to be able to."

Saito nodded and then pulled the lever on the bottom of his seat to let it swivel around. "Promise me you won't go nuts." He said extending his hand to Louise.

The young mage looked even more uneasy as Saito guided her to sit in his lap and turned his seat back around to face forward. He then pointed out at the sky just as the clouds parted and the single pale moon hung before her as it began to rise in the night sky. It was almost worth it to share this sight with her as she leaned back into his chest, holding her hands up to her mouth in shock as she trembled. "Welcome to my world." Saito whispered into her ear with a melancholy tenderness.

The other girls had clustered behind his seat to see the sky as well and they seemed to be realizing the situation they were in. "How are we going to get home?" Henrietta asked in mortification.

"An entirely different world and sky." Tabitha muttered, mesmerized.

"My... my ancestors come from here?" Siesta said looking around at what, to them, was an alien landscape.

Saito's mother pulled up to their house in the suburbs and let out the swordsman and his charges. "Get those girls inside before someone sees them. I'll take the van back to the shop and bring some proper clothes. Then we're going to sit down and have a proper discussion about this."

As the van sped away, Saito hurried the girls inside who were busy looking at all the neighborhood houses. "This is a rather large home, are your family merchants?" Henrietta was asking.

Saito quickly got the girls inside. "Sort of, my mother is a seamstress. She owns her own dress shop nearby."

"There are lesser nobles who don't have houses this nice." Louise added with a new appreciation. "She must serve the nobility of this land."

"Actually she barely makes ends meet, at least since my father left." Saito explained. "You guys wait here and I'll go change into some other clothes."

Four feminine hands grabbed him, before he could go three steps. He looked back at four blushing girls who all had the same thing on their minds. "Toilet." They all said in unison.

It took some time for Saito to get the girls sorted out. But before it was all over, they had been educated in how to use a modern toilet. While the girls got things in order, Saito went to his old room and found it just as he'd left it. He then changed into a change of clothes that looked just like the ones he'd left behind in Tristain and returned to the girls.

In the living room, Tabitha was looking over the books on the bookshelf while Louise and Henrietta sat uneasily on the couch and Siesta was looking around the attached kitchen. "Where do you keep the wood Saito? I'll make some tea for you and mistress."

"We don't burn wood here Siesta." Saito said seriously.

"You mean you use those new coal burning stoves? Wow, your mother really is upscale." Siesta replied in awe.

"No, we have an electric range." Saito explained. He went and showed Siesta how to turn on the stove and how to control the heat. It was amazing how little cooking technology had changed over the centuries. Once Siesta had a heat source, and had been shown where the cooking implements were Saito quickly became a liability and was ushered out of the kitchen as she got busy.

"I'm home." Hiraga Ayako exclaimed as she entered bringing some packages in with her. "I brought these girls some clothes to wear. Pajamas, underwear, and some kimonos, sorry but that's all we had available at the store."

"Thanks Mom." Saito said gratefully. "How did you know what sizes to get though?"

"It's a talent." Mrs. Hiraga replied flatly. "I can measure these girls up just from looking."

"Oh." Saito said with a chuckle. "Sorry for causing you problems."

"I'm just happy you're safe. I need to call your father and grandfather and let them know you're finally home." Ayako said with a grimace. "These girls can stay here tonight but then tomorrow we can call their embassies and get them shipped home."

"There aren't any embassies we can call Mom. Sit down, this explanation is going to take a while." The Hiraga son said seriously.

Mrs. Hiraga sat down in the chair in the living room. Saito took a seat next to her on the couch with Henrietta, Louise, and Tabitha beside him in that order. Siesta finally brought the tea from the kitchen for everyone on a platter, and politely served his mother as if she were the family's retainer and then stood behind Saito.

Mrs. Hiraga accepted the tea and then looked at the girl. "She's carrying the cosplay a little far isn't she? Who is this girl?"

"Her name is Siesta mother, she's my maid." Saito said uneasily.

Mrs. Hiraga's eyebrow shot up as she studied Siesta. The girl could at least understand Saito so she curtsied with practiced grace. "Aren't we doing well, what with having servants now? You mean she isn't cosplaying?"

"Like I said mom, it's complicated." Saito said uneasily.

"So who are these other three?" Ayako demanded.

"This is Henrietta, Queen of Tristain; Louise Valliere, third daughter of Duke Valliere of the same country; and finally Princess Tabitha of Gallia." Saito introduced the other girls who all stood and curtsied like proper nobility. Mrs. Hiraga nodded somberly before downing her tea in a single gulp. "Mom, I realize this is upsetting..."

"Let me tell you why." Mrs. Hiraga interrupted. "Your father and I have been worried sick for months wondering if you were dead in an alley somewhere, and then you come home with this absolutely ridiculous story? I taught you not to lie to me, and I guess you need another lesson!"

Saito's mother dragged the poor boy up by his ear walking over to the door to the hallway to beat him severely.

"I'm beginning to see why Saito puts up with the beatings from Louise all the time." Siesta whispered seriously.

Louise looked ready to fume as Henrietta and Tabitha nodded sagely. Apparently, this was the type of physical familial love that he was accustomed to. "He'll fit in well with your eldest sister." Henrietta added.

"I am not that bad." Louise squawked defensively.

Saito was slapped around for a few moments, but Mrs. Hiraga didn't really have much energy left for it. "Now, sit there and consider telling me the truth or else at least think up a better lie while I call your father and grandfather."

Saito returned to his seat while his mother picked up the phone and started dialing as she stepped into the hall. He had no idea what he was going to do now. Saito was going to have to find some way to take care of the girls. None of the girls had a wand and he didn't know how they were going to figure out how to get back even if they did. He was probably going to have to go find a job to support these girls. A sudden vision of coming home in a suit to a house full of four beautiful young women caused his nose to spontaneously bleed. That or his mother hit him harder than he thought. It was a toss up.

"Yeah Dad, he just called me up out of the blue." His mother said walking in with the phone to her ear. "Months without word, and then all of a sudden he shows up with a bunch of girls in tow with some stupid story about them being from some foreign land I've never heard of."

Saito's mother paused as she listened to his grandfather. She then continued. "Yeah, some place called Tristain and one girl from Gallia. He says they're the queen and princess of these places if you can believe it. What?"

Saito looked up at his mother as she began looking off into the distance with a strange look on her face. She then looked at Saito oddly and held out the phone. "Your grandfather wants to speak to you Saito."

Saito gulped and accepted the phone, hoping more than anything to keep his hearing. His grandfather was one of the few men that could keep his mother under control. He'd always viewed the old man as some sort of wizard in his own right with the way he managed to handle his daughter. "Yeah, Gramps?"

"You've really stepped into it hip deep this time haven't you boy?" His grandfather asked quietly. "Your mother's been worried sick. She even called your father and you know what kind of mood that puts her in."

"I know Gramps, I'm sorry. I don't know how else to explain it. I didn't mean to disappear without telling everyone what was going on. I wasn't able to contact anyone where I was." Saito said truthfully.

"I see. Well, I assume you haven't any way to return these girls from wherever they come from?" His grandfather's voice asked from the phone. "What are you going to do now boy?"

"I... I don't know. They're all my responsibility now. I can't turn my back on them. I guess it means I'll have to find work to support us for now and figure out where to go from there." The young man explained desperately.

"Interesting... You've grown much in the last few months, my boy. You're sounding a lot more mature than the little half grown child that left us." His grandfather noted happily. "Well, perhaps I can help you out a little. It's the off season up here in the mountains, why don't you come up and help me at the inn and you can earn some extra money while you're at it. Sound like a good idea?"

"Yeah! That would help a lot!" The young familiar shouted in excitement.

"Excellent, it's settled then. Give the phone to your mother." The old man commanded.

"Yes, what now?" Saito's mother said into the phone. She was silent for a long time.

"Saito, what is that thing?" Henrietta whispered.

"It's called a telephone. It's used for long distance communication. My grandfather lives a few hours away and with it we can talk to him like he's in the same room." The excited young man explained. If he could get these girls to the mountains he could teach them the language in seclusion and earn enough money to support them. His grandfather could help put them up too.

"You've got to be kidding me!" Saito's mother raged at the phone. "Dad, I just can't... Well, of course I do... Okay... Bye..."

Ayako looked haunted as she put the phone away and sat down heavily looking at Saito. "Your grandfather wants you to come to the mountains?"

"Yeah Mom."

Mrs. Hiraga shook her head sadly and looked ready to cry. "I just got you back as if from the dead and now you're going to up and leave me here again."

Saito looked down. "I'm sorry Mom. I was going to be going off to school anyway."

"Schools have phones." Mrs. Hiraga scolded. "I don't have to like it, but apparently your grandfather believes at least part of your story. We'll see where we stand tomorrow."

"Thanks Mom."

"Just don't talk to me right now."

A/N: A lot of readers have commented on how they couldn't understand why Saito would put up with Louise beating him all the time. In this and the next chapter we'll begin to explore the family life of one Hiraga Saito.