Chapter Five

It was the beginning of their fifth shift to watch over Eden, the first weekend that they had to spend almost an entire day with her. Kotetsu was very anxious, despite their previous successes to keep the girl out of trouble. And it seemed that Blue Rose was right; all that the young lady needed was a hobby to take her mind off of things. Hell, she was almost enjoyable to be around even!

For the past few days, everyone became a little more enlightened. Karina was told about Eden's specific situation, along with all the other heroes for that matter (word travels fast when fellow heroes are tied up from crime fighting because of a peculiar mess). When trouble called for the heroes to be away, if possible, Eden was dropped under the watchful eye of another member who worked at Apollon Media, usually the nice, if strict, aging black lady who works in the same office as Kotetsu and Barnaby. Thankfully, such instances only numbered in at two while the pair had to take care of the NEXT.

Barnaby quietly observed his partner nervously tapping his foot on the sidewalk as they waited outside of Apollon Media Headquarters for Eden to be dropped off to them. Detective Verre was nice enough to drive her to them while on his way to work instead of them fetching her. The younger man watched Kotetsu just a bit longer before deciding to say something.

"What are you so nervous about, Old Man?" His tone wasn't very understanding.

"How can you not be nervous?" The brunette couldn't stop himself from mindlessly biting at his thumb. "We've only spent a handful of hours with Eden before. A whole day now? I don't think we can do this."

"It's not a full 24 hours. Just from early noon to early evening." Wild Tiger did not seem comforted and kept up his nervous habits. Barnaby sighed. "Listen; Blue Rose and Fire Emblem gave us some good ideas to keep the girl entertained. I don't think we have anything to worry about."

"Ugh…" Kotetsu couldn't help himself. "I wish someone had the day free, just in case we needed their help." He started to chew on his thumb harder.

"Hey." The blonde abruptly placed his hands on the older man's shoulders, turning him around and shook him a bit for good measure. When his amber eyes finally focused of Barnaby's green one's, the latter spoke. "We've done this before. She's just a girl! Nothing to fret about." But Kotetsu just averted his gaze as if he wasn't listening.

"Hey!" Barbany shook his partner again, harder, and then yanked Kotetsu's thumb away from his mouth, firmly holding the man's rough hand in his own. "That's a terrible habit. Now listen!" He leaned in closer so that Tiger couldn't look away, squeezing his hand.

"At the very least, be comforted in the fact that we're doing this together. I'm your partner and we can do this. Together, we fight crime, capture criminals and rescue the innocent. We can handle a teenager. Okay?"

At the very least, Kotetsu seemed to be focused and listening now. He was quiet, but obviously listening. A moment passed where he just looked into the younger man's eyes before looking down at Barnaby holding his hand. Barnaby looked at it too, before becoming flustered for some reason. Both men could feel their faces turning hot, and they backed away from each other at the same moment, releasing their hands. Too close, perhaps?

"What I'm trying to say," Barnaby began after a few moments of awkward pause. "Is that comparatively, you have nothing to be nervous about." Another pause. "So suck it up."

"You're right, Bunny." Kotetsu admitted. He looked over at the hand he had been biting at, the same hand Bunny had held onto, before turning his head towards companion, smiling. "I just needed a good talking to. Thanks."

For better or worse, only another minute passed before a familiar black car pulled up to the curb and stopped a few feet away from the pair. A young man in a suit got out of the driver's side of the vehicle and Eden stepped out from the back seat. The man came up and shook hands with both of the heroes.

"Mr. Clarkson and I give you our sincerest thanks."

"You say that every time we see you, Detective." The older man tried to get Verre to lighten up, patting him on the back and giving him a wide grin. "It's fine, really!" He ignored Barnaby's scoff.

"Yes, but, today you will be watching her for almost the entire day." The younger of the duo watched Kotetsu's face falter a bit, seeing all his fears coming back in an instant.

"It's nothing, really." Barnaby stepped in. "I think we've even began to like each other."

"That sure does make things easy." Mr. Verre gave a warm but brief laugh, saying thank you again to the men, made sure that Eden had all her belongings with her, and said his farewells. Within a minute, he was back in his car and speeding off to work.

For a group that had spent the past four evenings together, they stared uncomfortably at each other. It was Eden who made the first move, hunting out her notebook from her bag and quickly scribbling something down on it. Even though Kotetsu and Barnaby had gotten pretty good at reading some of her sign language, they were far from understanding the language as a whole.

'What's the plan for today?' Was scrawled across the unlined, beige paper.

"Well," Began Bunny, "We can go see a movie after lunch if you'd like. Karina said that you might like to go shopping afterwards too, since the malls have sales on the weekend." Eden took back her notebook and began to write something else down, showing it to her chaperones.

'That's okay for now. But I hope you two didn't make any plans for dinner.'


To reach their destination, she wrote down the address that they needed to go to. She didn't give them the name of a restaurant or other markers to help them know where they would be going; just an address to put into the GPS that neither of them recognized. Up until now, they had managed to walk or take a taxi wherever they needed to go; the men's motorcycle and sidecar were just too small to fit three people. After asking three different taxi drivers if they knew how to get to the address, they all declined the offer when they found out the surrounding neighborhood.

"What's wrong with these guys?" Kotetsu growled out, angry to be turned down a third time. "Do you live in the bad side of town? If it wasn't Ben's day off…"

"Calm down, Old Man." Barnaby interrupted his ramblings. "We'll just take the bikes." And then they headed back towards the Apollon Media parking lot.

As they were heading to Barnaby's motorbike to make the drive, Eden made another comment. Kotetsu had noticed that she was lagging behind and that she was frantically scribbling something down. He backtracked to meet with her.

"Come along, Eden." He tried to encourage her with a smile, motioning towards the pink bike. "The sun's starting to get low and I'm getting hungry." She flipped her book around for him to read it.

"'It's small.' Yeah, but we'll fit." The father tried to reaffirm her. He led her over to the bikes and showed her. She seemed unconvinced and wrote something else down.

'How?'

"Yeah; the sidecar isn't built to hold but one person." For it to transform into a proper motorcycle, it had to keep a slick body in both forms to keep it speedy, so even as an attachment to Barnaby's bike, it could only hold one person safely. Then Kotetsu got really excited.

"You can ride behind one of us!" He exclaimed. "I can actually ride my bike for once, and you can choose who you want to sit with!" The older man was so excited that he would be riding the streets all cool looking for once, he didn't notice what Eden wrote in reply. "You probably want to ride behind Bunny, most girls want to, I'd imagine…"

"'I'm not doing that.'" Barnaby read Eden's note out loud, her book in his hands. Tiger's happy mood popped.

"What? Why not?"

"'I'm sort of scared of motorcycles.'"

"What type of teenager is scared of motorcycles?" Eden had to take her book back from Barnaby to reply to Kotetsu. It took her a minute because she had a lengthy reply.

'I've never been on one before, and last semester a girl in school fell off of one and had to stay in the hospital for a week. I have a logical apprehension towards motorbikes.'

"Fine, fine, whatever, Eden." The older man relented, obviously unhappy that he wasn't going to zoom down the streets looking cool on a bike. "You would be safe with us, but whatever."

"It's good to see some caution in someone her age. Think of where she works, after all."

"Yeah, yeah." But Wild Tiger wasn't thinking about her anymore. The girl made her way around the vehicle, looking over the sidecar before figuring out how to get into it. She sat down with a smile on her face, waiting for the other two to join her.

Barnaby made it over to the bike as well, throwing his leg over it like he had a million times and settling his hands on the handles. "Come along, Old Man." Kotetsu gave a huff of annoyance but made his way over. He stopped and gave an unsatisfied glare at Barnaby before continuing. The blonde returned the favor. "Get on."

Kotetsu heaved a heavy sigh and unenthusiastically swung his leg over the bike behind Barnaby. How embarrassing, he thought. A man his age riding behind someone like Barnaby Brooks Jr.; there must be something like a ten year age difference between the two of them. And damn this pink bike! It's too damn small! Wild Tiger was uncomfortably close to his partner. He was adjusting in his seat when Eden held up her book for the two to read it.

'Now be sure to hang onto Barnaby nice and tight. We don't want you to fall off.'

"I'm getting to it!" The elder man could hardly believe how flustered he was becoming over a bike ride. He could even feel his face heat up over it. But he managed to wrap his arms around Barnaby's waist and lightly lock his fingers in front of the young man, though he tried his best to touch as little of the blonde as possible while doing it.

"If you hold on like that," Bunny critiqued, "you'll fall off while we're trying to exit the parking garage." He let go of his bike to fix Kotetsu's hold, firmly grasping the man's tanned hands and squeezing them together, then finally pushing them against his red jacket right above his belt. Kotetsu imagined this was right where Barnaby's navel was and began to feel very embarrassed when he realized he was thinking about how smooth and firm the younger man's stomach was.

When he looked over at Eden to try and get his mind off of such things, she was glancing between the two, back and forth with a wide eye and curious expression on her face. She had noted in the past that Kotetsu honestly expressed his feelings while Barnaby tried to keep them to himself; she recognized that when the heroes first started watching her. She found it funny that even though the two were different personality wise, they had the same expression on their faces.

Barnaby finally entered the address of wherever dinner happened to be taking place into his motorcycle's GPS, revved up the bike, and drove out into the city following the bike's directions. When the trio was finally able to merge onto the highway and pick up some real speed, Kotetsu had to hold onto his hat and found his face assaulted by the younger man's long hair. He must have been making a funny face because when he looked over to check on Eden, she was smiling and wiping away tears from her eyes as if she was laughing. With a huff, he yanked his hat off his head and pushed it into the girl's hands for safe keeping and to distract her from his predicament. He would have laughed at how Eden looked as well (her short but fluffy hair poofed in the wind, making her look like some sort of fuzzy puppy), but Barnaby's hair kept getting in his mouth.

"Hey! Bunny! Can you hear me?"

"Yeah?" The younger man called out over the loud rush of wind in their ears.

"You need to cut your hair! It's too long and hits my face!" Kotetsu tried to spit out a mouthful of blonde locks.

"Quit whining, Old Man! It's not like we ride like this all the time."

"It's longer than Eden's! You're starting to look like a girl!"

"Shut up and lay your head against me if it bothers you that much!"

The girl must have been able to hear their conversation because Kotetsu noticed that Eden was doubled over now in the side car, holding her belly and still smiling. He stuck his tongue out at her, but she didn't notice. So the older man was forced to frown and just follow the good advice of his partner. Reluctantly, he laid his head against Barnaby's left shoulder. Like this, he could actually push some of the hair over and behind his head and effectively keep it from whipping it into his face. If Kotetsu thought that his situation was embarrassing before, he was wrong; this was the most embarrassing part of the whole drive.

And then he heard a click. He had been too busy feeling sorry for himself and didn't even notice that Eden had taken a picture of him on her cell phone. She gave a triumphant grin and Kotetsu could have died of a heart attack right then and there. On instinct, he reached out and tried to snatch the phone from her, but she pulled away.

"Why you little—" He leaned over further at the same moment Barnaby made to turn off the highway and he nearly fell off the bike and into the sidecar. The motorcycle jostled a little from being unbalanced and forced Kotetsu to reassume his position as a baby monkey on Barnaby's back.

"Quit playing around, Old Man!" The hero scolded. Wild Tiger felt his dignity slowly drain out of him. He gave a glare at Eden, who didn't seem to mind in her entertaining ride.

"This isn't over." He said, more to himself than to the girl.


A/N: Time skip! Writing out (and reading) all those specific days that Tiger and Bunny would be watching Eden would be tedious.

To the stalker readers: Hi! I hope you're enjoying yourselves. :) But if there is something you don't like, I can't make things better if you don't review, or fav, or follow or something.

Fun Fact!: I chose this title for my story because Tiger & Bunny titles their episodes after idioms. Other possible titles I thought about include, "The Pen is Mightier than the Sword", "Truth is Stranger than Fiction", and "Bite Off More than You Can Chew".

Thanks for reading and I hope everyone is enjoying themselves!