Little Busybody

Today a different event happened than usual. While we were in the club room Tamamo suddenly stood up and told Elise that something was happening in his house. Elise was incredulous at the sudden comment and asked him how he knew that, but she only replied that one of the vases in the temple was thrown to hit someone. I have no idea how that was enough to make her talk but she accepted it without complaint and they both ran out of the school. That was all rather strange, but I imagine it must be part of what they do on a regular basis.

Time passed but they did not return, I thought I should make a serious matter of it and my curiosity was aroused. What could have really happened, were they in trouble? And if so, what would it be like? I decided to go and check it out to see for myself and to be able to help them with whatever they needed, so without telling my grandfather I set off to my friends' house.

I had done this trip hundreds of times before, but doing it alone today felt very different because we almost always talked during the trip to make it more enjoyable, but alone it felt like a really serious matter, it made me nervous about something that really shouldn't be. When I arrived at the house the door was closed, something usual in reality, it made sense. I knocked on the door with rhythm to show that it was a friendly visit. The door opened almost immediately, to my surprise it was the glass girl who opened the door, it seemed so strange that even scared me, behind her I could see a little of the house, my suspicions became real. There were a lot of things lying on the floor, broken glass and ceramics, a couple of destroyed furniture, in the back I could see Maria, who was sitting in the hall, she was crying a lot, she was very nervous, Levia was next to her trying to calm her down a little, her clothes were red, was that blood? Momo looked at me and was quite disappointed, I more or less understood what was going on and went in to help.

"What happened?"
"Are you all right?"
"Should we call 911?"

When I had a better view of the house I could see that things were even worse. Lisa was lying on another couch, she had a huge bruise on her torso, it looked like she was resting from her injuries, and even if in her face I could see her anger. What had happened to cause her to get hurt? Wasn't she a demon? What could have harmed her like that? Momo slammed the door shut and without saying anything she went back to the dining room where it looked like she was working on some weird machine. When I was looking around I tripped over something, I almost fell but I managed to regain my posture, when I saw what it was I found one of the robot girls on the floor, broken in half, you could see the parts inside. I screamed when I saw her, the other android was next to her, she seemed to be trying to fix it as best as she could, but it didn't look like something possible with such a level of damage.

A beeping sound started to be heard in the house, Momo started to scream in panic and started to look for a screwdriver on the table while cursing in a way similar to Elise when she was losing in a video game, it was shocking to see her acting like that, I just thought she was not capable of doing that. When she found it she started to adjust something on the strange device, she hit one of the red liquid tubes and pressed a couple of buttons, with that the beep calmed down and she sighed, her hands were shaking, was she really that nervous about that thing?

"It can't be, the house has been robbed?"
"Is everything all right?"
"We have to call the police, my grandfather can find the person who did this!"

"......"
"No.... don't do it"
"....."
"This is different...."

It was maria who answered me this time, it seemed that even though she was sad she was still trying to be polite to me.

The door rang again, and someone was knocking to enter, momo opened the door again. This time it was a group of very strange people, they were all wearing black suits with dark glasses, were they from that group that deals with aliens? They didn't introduce themselves, instead, Momo just opened the door more to let them in, although at the end of the group, among all of them I could see a familiar face, it was Tamamo who came smiling a little.

"It's about time they arrived"
"Quickly, the most important for now is the androids"
"They are special models, prototypes of the Empire's electronic warfare class"
"He will want them working perfectly on his return, unfortunately, the column support was completely destroyed"
"We have to make a new one, who has the 3D printer that can make titanium?"
"Here is part of what is left, do the rest the same"
"The demon is still not fully recovered, she is barely stable"
"I know you don't know how to treat her but I need you to hurry"
"He wants to see her fully recovered for his return"
"Don't want to piss him off too, show him why you are combat medics!"
"The rest, well the house doesn't clean itself!"
"Let's go! Let's go! Move it!"

Momo began to give them very precise instructions on what they should do, it was almost as if this was not the first time she had done something like this. The men in black began to work immediately following the instructions to the letter. They had an almost perfect precision as if I were watching more choreography than people working. Several of them arrived with a couple of briefcases and equipment, they set up a computer and began to assemble a medium-sized machine, others began to pull out something that looked like a remote control and scanned the androids, on one of the monitors they saw a diagram of them and began to discuss how to repair them.

"Tamamo?"
"What is going on here?"
"No one wants to tell me what happened"
"Is everything ok?" I asked her.

"Don't worry, everything is fine"
"There was just an unexpected encounter"
"But don't wait too long, by the day after tomorrow everything will surely be back to normal"

"And Elise? Where is she?"

"Oh, her?"
"Well, she went out to get ready to chase the culprit."
"Right now she's in her personal room getting ready"
"You know, hunter stuff."

"Can I go and see?"
"Maybe she needs help"

"Oh, no, no"
"It's a hard place to get to."
"Alsop it's a pretty personal place for her"
"She doesn't like people going there."
"But if you want to help, why don't you come with me?"
"Right now we're short-staffed at the store."
"You're the same height as Charlotte, right?"

The rest of the day was spent in the cafeteria working as a waitress, it was also the first time I was dressed as a Maid. The place luckily wasn't very crowded, but we were only working with 3 people so it was quite busy, we had to stay until it was closing time. Although when I heard Tamamo hide the truth from Saeko about why Adelis wasn't coming today and why he needed her to work extra hours, that's when I realized that I had overlooked something. She was nowhere to be found, her house was in ruins and she was nowhere to be found and so was Elise, plus she didn't want the truth to be known. When we finally closed Tamamo stayed with me in the store waiting for my grandfather to arrive, so we started talking about various topics, but none about what happened, she was very good at manipulating the conversation to avoid the topic, and even when I confronted her directly she just didn't respond directly, all quite suspicious, surely this must be one of those big and dangerous cases. Maybe she was just protecting me in her own way, but I really wanted to know the truth and help, but I also respected our friendship and didn't insist anymore. 

The next day neither of them showed up for class. It seems that Elise was still busy and Tamamo was probably trying to keep that house under control. The day was pretty boring without them, although some of her classmates were glad she was gone, the girls who always spend the day fighting with her. Another girl, Yukiko, was a girl I used to be with a lot before, she had come to talk to me apologizing for what happened some time ago, but she kept insisting that I should leave my new friends aside, I just told her that I couldn't do that, after all even now that they didn't want my help I should be there helping them any way. Then some of Elise's friends came over, they are the ones she usually plays with at recess, they asked me if I knew what happened, apparently, they had agreed to visit some video game stores after school, whatever happened was really unexpected.

Since both Elise and Tamamo did not come today, I called my grandfather to let him know. He also suspected that something bad was happening, I agreed with his way of thinking, but even so, I was not able to tell him the truth, I wanted to help my friends, so I made up an excuse mentioning that it seemed that something was broken in their house and they had to fix it, I was not good at lying, but also knowing that my grandfather might notice the lie because of his work made me even more nervous, he even said that "Ummm" in his suspicious voice, he had all the signs that he didn't believe it, but after a few moments of complete silence he said he was fine, I'm sure it was an important emergency, he told me that he was leaving a little late today so I had to stay at school until he arrived.

Since I had to wait for the time to pass, I headed to the club lounge. Elise had brought a console to pass the time when we weren't doing anything at the club, which was most of the time. It sure had a lot of games on it, so it was the best option to be entertained. When I got to the place and turned on the console I saw that most of the games they had were car games or shooting games. I know she is a tomboy, but doesn't she have something different? She must have something hidden somewhere, it's impossible that she doesn't have something with pretty things somewhere, but no matter how hard I looked I didn't find anything, the only interesting thing for me was an MMORPG game, where she had an account with a character of a woman with a lot of pretty armor, while I was playing with her another player approached me offering me to change my weapon for a pretty mount, it was a pink unicorn, so I accepted the deal, I changed the Ashbringer's weapon for the pretty horse, but when I wrote to thank him the other player disconnected immediately, how strange.

While I was playing someone else came into the club room, it was the new girl in our class, Sakura. The same one seemed that she wanted to speak with Elise, but I warned her that she would not come today, although that she should have known it. She listened to the answer and stayed a while sharing with me and asking about my grandfather, which I was very glad to see that she was also a fan of his and was quite aware of his career. I was quite happy to have her around, so I offered her an invitation to join our club, she told me that she had already joined the archery club but I informed her that there was no limit to how many clubs a person could join, and since our activities were sporadic to put it lightly she gladly accepted, even filling out the paperwork right away. With her, little by little our club was getting bigger.