Duran-kun and Kiyo-chan's Omake Theater
(featuring the Kuga-Fujino family pets)
Fuka Shrine was a stately place, sincerely dedicated to Shinto worship and practices. This was in stark contrast to the Christian chapel on academy grounds, where the sincerity of devotion to God was regularly disrupted by such things as bioweapon research labs in the basement or robot nuns or choir girls with their own Kill Sat. The shrine was different. Things were taken seriously there (except when Shiho, serving as part-time miko, got distracted by her love life).
Therefore, seeing a snaking trail of turned-up dirt trace its way across the grassy hill was not a common event.
"I think I saw something like this in an American cartoon once," Reito Kanzaki mentioned to Shizuru Fujino as they descended from the shrine.
"Did you guys get your love charms?" Shiho said cheerily, meeting them on the steps.
"Yes, we did." Shizuru held up the slip of paper, inked with the charm blessed by the shrine's kami.
The drill-curled junior high student looked at her quizzically.
"Um, I understand why Reito would want a love charm to help him win Mai's heart." Shiho would happily have let him have it for free, since she definitely wanted Mai to choose Reito...or anyone else that wasn't Yuuichi Tate, for that matter. "But, Shizuru, you're happy with Natsuki, aren't you?" She bit her lip, suddenly afraid that she was blundering into something sensitive. Luckily, she wasn't.
"Yes, very much, but I'm planning to throw her a surprise party and I'm hoping she'll forgive me by bedtime."
"Personally," Reito changed the subject, "I was more curious about that." He nodded towards the dirt trail. "Won't that be hard for you to have to re-seed it all?"
"Oh, no. Actually, Grandpa wanted to put a garden in over there, so Kiyohime is actually helping by breaking up the soil."
Suddenly, the purple hydra burst up through the ground and lay limply on the earth. Several of her heads looked over towards the three students, who rushed over at once.
"What's wrong?" Shiho exclaimed. "She looks really sick!"
"Do we need to take her to the vet's?" Reito asked. "My car's parked just outside the gates."
"No," Shizuru mused, "I think I've seen this before." She pursed her lips thoughtfully, then gave Kiyohime a sharp smack on the back. With a low coughing sound, her central mouth opened and spat out a very confused vole. Her second head bent over and poked at it, prompting the scared rodent to scurry back into the hole.
"Kiyohime, we've talked before about what can happen when you burrow too fast."
Her sixth head gave a curious hiss.
"No, I don't think the vole would accept your tunneling a new den for him as an apology."
~X X X~
A/N: And I wanted to send a big thank-you to all of you, the readers, for helping to bring D&KOT! to over 100,000 hits! I hope you keep on enjoying these omake!