---

---

Ah. "Well, if you say so." Nao responded neutrally, withdrawing his hand as the girl stood up with a smile on her face. His neutral look hid a twinge of hurt-annoyance (so what if she rejected his hand, she didn't need it anyway) that quickly faded away. She seemed pretty robust for her age, as well as cheerful. She also didn't seem hurt. Well, in that case there was no point in sticking around here. Face neutral, he turned around, ready to head back to Riku-san and the others when-

"Ooh you're that girl! I mean boy! From Sceptre 4!"

Nao froze midturn, eyes going wide as he registered the comment. Behind him, the small girl continued to chatter, words only vaguely heard and registered as the offending comment swirled in his mind like whipped cream on coffee. For a couple of seconds, nothing was felt, but then suddenly a spark of irritation was in him.

Oooh you're that girl! Girl. Girl. GIRL.

Remember what you promised. Deep breaths.

Nao whirled back around to face the brown-haired pipsqueak who called him a girly-looking kid (an exaggeration), eyebrows twitching in anger and annoyance blazing in his eyes. "Oi, kid." Raising an eyebrow that was twitching with irritation, Nao gestured to himself, pointing out his suit, shirt and pants. "Does this look like a dress to you?" he asked sarcastically. Before the HOMRA child could reply, he continued, voice extremely annoyed, "No. And that is because its not a dress. So don't make the same mistake again next time.", he said angrily, completely ignoring the fact that he had features like a girl and long hair that was tied in a ponytail, which made him look about as male as a crossdresser, which was to say only marginally.

"And oh, they do teach us all that," He said faux-casually, slipping one hand into his pocket. "They even taught us how to see small children. Unfortunately, they didn't teach us how to see microbes, which was why I bumped into you." Nao said nastily, raising his chin and looking down at the girl (wait, she was from HOMRA!) with irritated eyes, straightening hs spine to stand at his full height to further accentuate the height difference. Then, in a tone that was completely unapologetic much like gossiping ladies of the middle ages who brought about upperclass damsel's downfalls through the power of badly-placed rumors: "I do apologise! Although I guess I shouldn't have expected much, since you're just a brat from HOMRA. It'll take you forever to even think about beating me." he boasted, crossing his arms with pride.

It was completely inappropriate to respond so badly to a small comment, but years of actively drowning out his emotions had caused Nao to have the emotional maturity of a two year old and years of carefully not thinking about responses of degrading comments, an astounding lack of education in levels followed by finally having the words 'girly' meant explained to him and how it factored in as an insult had caused Nao to not quite understand whether to react lightly or heavily for the varying levels of insults and thus respond to almost everything as if he were holding a blunt hammer to smash rocks with. Also, it was normal to respond as such if one was insulted, right? And she was HOMRA! And she insulted him first! So what he was doing was normal and thus it was entirely ok to lambast the girl in front of him!

Ha! See if she insults Sceptre 4 again.