Masaki Tomomi
Location: Zeus High School – Floor 2 (Class 208)
Time: Noon

It was always a rather interesting experience to get a reaction of either Gennadiya or Rachel, one rather inexpressive, and the other always playing it cool and acting as if she never got affected by the actions of others. So having the both of them cringe a bit with the last portion of your little act was both unusual and pretty funny to watch.

“Yes, yeah, I can have lunch with you.” Rachel answered, giving you a half-hearted glare. “Your cooking is good, I got to ask you to teach me one of these days. Everything I make always ends up tasting insipid…”

Insipid… it was more like that every time she so much as touched egg fried rise, an Asian somewhere woke up screaming in incoherent terror, but it was best to keep that particular comment to yourself. Mostly because sometimes you were the Asian screaming in horror. Rice shouldn’t be treated that way. It is inhuman. Your Japanese spirit rebels against the thought.

Genna nodded at your invitation, but then your attention returned to Rachel and her pencil, once again tapping against the desk.

“There’s no plan. I mean, Cynthia’s dumb as a brick so I’m not worried about any scheme she has in mind, and much as I loathe the brat, I don’t think she really has bad intentions.” She transmitted; her bad mood clear despite the particular method of communication. She didn’t even reply to your barb about her lack of empathy, which probably said volumes about how worried she actually was. “But just that she keeps trying to drag Shelia into the mud with her is… I think it is pressuring her too much.”

“I don’t think having a friendly rivalry would be bad for Shelia, though. It could do her some good…” Gennadiya gently tapped her pencil to add her own opinion to the mix.

“If it was someone else, maybe. But Shelia doesn’t work that way, you know? For her it only adds pressure, makes her feel cornered and pushed, I guess. I mean, I’m just worried because she is…” Rachel’s message paused for a moment, not because she was searching for words, but because she didn’t want to say what she was going to say. “She’s fragile-“

You recalled Shelia for a moment. Perhaps it was due to putting her side-by-side with the very cynical Rachel, but she was indeed painfully innocent if you thought about it. Sometimes one had to wonder if she’d been kept away from the world in a nuclear refuge.

No, wait a moment, before that…

The both of you turned towards Gennadiya.

“Since when do you know morse?” Rachel hissed between her teeth, echoing your own surprise.

The Russian girl looked quite smug, but before she could answer…

Your desk and the various implements on top of it clattered. Your chair trembled a bit, as the vibrations of the tremor traveled through the floors of the school building and reached you.

It was sudden, and startling enough to make everyone in the classroom react in one way or the other, but by the time people processed what had just happened, the tremor was completely gone.

What was that, an earthquake? That made sense, but…

Everyone fell silent as your teacher stood up. Mr. Hunt frowned openly, as if considering that something like his class shouldn’t be interrupted by something as unimportant as an earthquake.

And yet, you could detect something strange beneath his calm façade. An impatience of some sort as well as surprise, yet no fear, or perhaps you should say no startlement.

The muscular teacher looked at his wristwatch, still frowning, and muttered something inaudible. You were able to make out the word ‘early’, but that just left you confused.

Early? What was early? You were fairly sure you were supposed to be at lunch break five minutes ago…

“Class is dismissed.” Mr. Hunt cleared his throat before announcing such. “You can go. We’ll… continue these exercises next class. There won’t be homework today.” He said curtly, before walking out of the classroom in a stride that was just a bit too hurried.

You felt strange, but ultimately the behavior of the teacher was just a minor note, something you caught from the corner of your eyes and was permanently engraved in your memory regardless of your will or interest. That was just how your ‘gift’ worked, after all.

It was just a small aside compared to having experienced the brief quake. You exchanged somewhat confused stares with the girls, who didn’t quite seem to know how to react.

“Should we get to the ground floor?” Rachel suggested. “Seriously, at least he should’ve addressed what just happened.” She added with a frown.

“Seems to be over already…” Genna commented. “At least I don’t have to deal with this anymore… today.” She left her pen over her paper, as if she considered the issue solved.


Lorelei Weber
Location: Zeus High School – 5th Floor (Student Council Room)
Time: Noon

“If only some club administrators weren’t absolute assholes like Fontaine, maybe that’d work. No… actually we should just implement that, at least that’d force them to show their faces instead of hiding behind their members.” Rosalin grumbled. “I don’t have a problem with Jones, but I wish Petrov wouldn’t send him every time to argue the budget. One would think he’d have the balls to come fight for it himself…”

“Rosalin, language.” Rose gently chided her friend, who sighed.

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Anyway, I don’t think I can beat the captain of the Martial Arts Team just with two months of Judo classes, Lorelei.” She directed a very rare half-smile towards you. “But the thought of beating her up does cheer me up some, thanks.”

“The idea of making her take care of the paperwork has its appeal, you have to admit.” Alexander said, placing aside an already finished stack.

“Yes, but certain considerations get in the way of that.” Rose replied. “Considerations like the Geneva Convention.”

“Ah yes. That one does indeed get in the way sometimes.” Alexander nodded. “Well, I think you can continue helping us here.” He said, apparently done with his own dose of light sarcasm and already ready to tackle the next stack. “We’ll just send Joz to fetch Henry’s lazy ass, and-“

You reached towards the misplaced paper, only to find it slipping away from you as your workstation clattered around you, the papers you had stacked so neatly in a tower falling apart and spreading through the floor as if the world itself was having a laugh at you.

The light tremor ran through the building, and then disappeared entirely in the span of a second, but it was enough to startle everyone.

By the time you all had stood up, it had passed, but a certain tension had replaced the somewhat relaxed air from earlier.

“We should go make sure nobody’s hurt.” Rose said nervously, pushing aside an errant strand of hair from her eyes. “I’m sure everything’s alright, but some students may have panicked…”

“Yes, we ought to go help the teachers.” Alexander frowned. “We’ll go to their break room. We can sort out this mess later.” He said, waving his hand at the flood of paper that had replaced the formerly tidy floor.

“Wait a minute.” Rosalin interrupted quickly. “Jozefa, Lorelei. Can you girls go fetch Henry? He’s probably slacking off somewhere and trying to not get involved, but we probably want all the people we can get to help, just in case.”

Well now. It seemed like you were going to go fetch Henry, after all. Although you had the feeling Rosalin simply didn’t want Jozefa wandering the hallways by herself right now.


Myo
Location: Zeus High School – Courtyard (Track Field)
Time: Noon

“Oh, you know, the usual, nothing of note aside from being the one in charge over here.” She added with a small grumble. Understandably enough. The track team wasn’t particularly fractious or hard to manage, as far as you knew, but it was probably still quite the task to handle.

You speculated internally about her being Shirai, trying to recall what you knew about that particular girl. It had been many, many years since the last time you’d met, after all. She had always seemed very flashy for a stealth specialist, but she was pretty good at disguising herself.

Kirstin’s body type didn’t match. The heights were somewhat similar, and there were many ways to disguise a bust, but… no, there was just no way to know. Maybe, you should-.

“Actually, there’s something you could help me with.” Kirstin said apologetically. Oh. So she was approaching you in order to ask you a favor. That explained the unusual sociability. “You see, we were supposed to get our papers over to the Student Council, but it seems our captain forgot about it entirely. One has to wonder how she remembers all the papers and stuff the other clubs asked of her, then forgets about hers…” She sighed and put a hand on her head, as if fighting off a headache.

“Anyway, you think you could go over there with the papers real quick? You’d be doing me one hell of a favor, as I still need to keep things going over here.” She added.

Well now. This was quite opportune. You were fairly sure of your newly assigned companion’s ability to find you if you were to find an isolated place with no witnesses to communicate with her, and this was a good opportunity to just disappear off the map for a few minutes, enough to at least talk some with her…

You were busy with these thoughts when it happened.

It was lightning fast, but you felt it, under your feet, the light tremor that ran through the school terrains. Your clubmates didn’t notice, you were in the ground after all, and the noise of their talk drowned whatever small clattering there was in the surroundings, but your trained senses noticed the unusual fact unerringly.

And… you could feel it all of a sudden.

A sense of pressure you couldn’t quite explain. Urgency and cautiousness. As if time was suddenly running out. The very air grew strange, as if things were changing in a completely indescribably way under your very eyes, and you were the only one who noticed.

There wasn’t a logical explanation for this. You’d been trained since you had memory to be an assassin, and you were abnormal even for this school, an anomaly even for other anomalies. It was simply something instinctive, something that had been asleep since many months ago that had suddenly woken up and started screaming wrongness at you.

This small quake was the start of something. Of what, you couldn’t tell, but you had your mission to fulfill.