Disclaimer: I do not own No. 6.

A/N: Thank you PrincessTutu22 and The Mistress of Fire for your very kind reviews! To The Mistress of Fire: No, Rikiga can not. And he still can't in this chapter.

Honestly, Nezumi was really just surprised it hadn't happened sooner. What had caused it, none of them were certain. All they did know for sure was that the car stopped about five minutes ago, and when they went to see what the problem was, they found one of the tires was flat.

"That's alright, I'll just replace it," Nezumi told Shion, who was freaking out over having broken the car.

But when he went to get the spare tire from the trunk, it wasn't there.

"What? I know for a fact I had an extra tire in here."

It was at that point he saw Rikiga trying extremely hard to look nonchalant and refusing to make eye contact with any of them. "Rikiga, what did you do?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Rikiga replied unconvincingly. It was probably because he was sweating a lot even though it was a rather cool morning.

"Clearly, you do. What happened to the spare?"

"Nothing... Oh look! A rare species of bird!"

"Don't change the subject!"

Rikiga proceeded to continue stalling for a while longer until Inukashi started yelling at him. Apparently, she had been planning to take her dogs for a walk that afternoon, but obviously she couldn't if she was stranded here all day.

"Okay, okay. So, um, I kind of needed it for something, so I took it after the last lesson..." Rikiga explained sheepishly.

"Is it really that hard to just go to a store and buy your own?"

"Yes."

"That was a rhetorical question." Nezumi sighed. "What are we supposed to do now, then?"

"Why are you asking me?"

"You caused the problem, at least try to help fix it!"

Inukashi had pulled out the map and was now searching for nearby stores that sell tires. "Well... There's a store that might sell tires a few miles up the road," she commented. "And it looks like there's one of those stores that sells pretty much everything a few miles further than that."

"Okay, Shion, Inukashi, you stay here with the car. Rikiga and I will go buy a tire." Nezumi spoke up.

"Why me?" complained Rikiga, not wanting to walk to the store.

"Two reasons. One; I no longer trust you alone within ten feet of my car. Two; I don't have any money with me at the moment and since you stole the other tire, you're buying the new one."

"But I-"

"Should have thought of that before you stole the tire!" With that, Nezumi stormed off angrily in the direction of the store, and Rikiga had no choice but to follow.

When they finally reached the first store, they discovered that it did not in fact sell tires at all. "Of course," sighed Nezumi, whose irritation only grew when Rikiga complained about having to walk even farther.

The second store did sell tires, much to their relief. However, the store happened to be out of tires at the moment.

Fortunately, there was a shop next to the store that had some tires, so they were able to buy one there.

Then they had to walk all the way back to the car, and Rikiga spent the entire time complaining. Needless to say, Nezumi was exhausted and annoyed by the time they returned and he replaced the flat tire with the new one.

A few minutes later, the car stopped again. "If it's another flat tire-" Nezumi growled with a glare at Rikiga. It wasn't. The car was out of gasoline.

Nezumi sighed in relief. "Oh, that's not too bad. I always bring a container of gasoline just in case."

"Um... Actually..." Rikiga spoke up nervously.

"What." Nezumi couldn't even muster up the energy to glare at him.

"Well... You know how I said I needed the tire for something? I also needed gasoline..."

"What were you doing?"

"Trying to see if I could blow up a tire."