Description: Ayane sneaks into Taiyo and is spotted by Namie, leading to a chance encounter.
"Not at all, Chief. I will endeavor to have the school's intermurals rosters appropriately itemized within a week's time, and hopefully the Student Yearbook Committee will be able to use the information by the time it needs it." Oishi Hirofumi inclines his head towards Taiyo High's academic chief of staff, whose poor mood has set the school's entire managerial staff on edge. "Resilience in the face of adversity" is the school's motto, and in the face of the recent Atelier Group suspicions and propoganda, the motto has come dangerously close to withering, despite its very message!
The two men are speaking within the Student Records room, but the Chief is in the process of leaving, which allows Oishi to work alone, in the silence, as he prefers it. He's got a bit of a reputation for staying late, but also has a reputation for being a distractible busybody - the two have nothing to do with each other, right?
So soon as the door to the office closes and Oishi ducks his head to his work, the lights in the Student Records Room -- flicker out.
---
On Taiyo's rooftop, a young woman in a cowl quickly speaks ancient syllables, and draws two fingers through the air, knifelike. She vanishes, sinking through the very shingles she had been kneeling upon.
---
In the dark, a muffled thump and strangled yelp mark the last moments of Oishi Hirofumi's consciousness. The lights flicker back on, and that same cowled woman from before is seen rifling through the computer Oishi had been using for his work.
Her work is short, considering Oishi had been compiling the sports teams at the time.
VOLLEYBALL TEAM - TAMURO SAWAKO, SHIBUKJI KOKO, ICHIHARA KUMIKO, SHUNJI YOSHIKO, AIRI KIRI, SHIROKAWA YUKA.
Under 'Airi Kiri', a young woman with chestnut hair and a radiant smile draws a scowl from the cowled woman's otherwise pretty features. She returns the desktop to its default state, stands, and makes her way out of the records room. Hopefully nobody's around - the school IS closed - but then again, she's a ninja. She'll make do.
Layout, page design, photo editing, article writing. All of these are things that Namie Yamada does not excel at, and dislikes having to spend precious time that could be spent doing more interesting or active things doing. The Yearbook club needs many of these types of people, but it also needs people to go feel the pulse of the student body to know what they feel is important, and people to find those clubs and individuals that are truly exceptional and should be highlighted; this is where the black haired girl is at her best.
Sometimes, however, the paperwork simply needs doing, and on these occasions her adequate skills are levied. Truth be told, she had gotten herself into a bit of a pickle. She was supposed to get the sports team rosters so names could be put to the faces taken for the team photographs. No big deal, but she forgot about it until a couple days ago and now she was taking heat for broken deadlines.
"What's the big deal, anyway?" she speaks to herself as she walks up the stairs to the second floor, "In Jr. High we just had the team managers submit the names along with the photos. Oh well, if I can get them to speed it up a little bit it'll only be two weeks late, and that's not too bad." She grins a little and picks up her pace, walking quickly down the hall towards the records office and-
"Oh!" Namie comes to a quick stop as a girl she doesn't recognize walks out of a darkened room. "Hello! ...I like your headband!" She gives a quick smile and then lifts up onto her toes, looking right over the ninja's head and into the room behind. "Aww, did they just close up for the night?" Making a pout she huffs softly before turning her eyes to the shorter girl with distinctive hair. "I guess we can't win everything, right?" Another bright smile, followed by a sudden look of embarrassment. "...I'm blocking you, aren't I?"
Her headband is nice! Unfortunately, the rest of Ayane's outfit is beyond notice - she's wearing the big cowl. Just black gi pants and a dumpy grey shawl.
Ayane doesn't startle in the typical fashion - when Namie blocks her way, the girl doesn't jump, but she does afford herself a quick inhalation, a subtle bite of the lip. Crimson eyes scan the woman in front of her - strong legs, a deliberately lowered center of gravity, an earned efficiency of motion. Still, this stranger has a habit of keeping her eyes off of the core, more interested in the circumstances than the opponent. Perhaps she's a hobbyist. Nothing the Black Spider Clan might mount in retaliation against the Mugen Tenshin.
"Ah... yeah. Sorry. I thought the office was open, too." Ayane's lipbite softens into a smile - the girl's expression is *almost* genuine. She's got the sort of eyes that won't ever crease into a smile. She doesn't *attempt* to slink past Namie - there's an efficiency of motion here, a warping of space, almost. Ayane simply turns to the side and places a hand against Namie's midsection, applying hard force there. The majesty of the movement that follows isn't in how Ayane forces movement - the opposite, really. Namie wins the unique sensation of being a fulcrum for somebody else's lateral movement, a bar for them to swing from. It's a unique feeling.
"...Maybe try again tomorrow." With light steps, the young woman briskly makes her way down the hallway.
Within seconds, the lights to the Editing Room flicker back on. Oishi Hirofumi - Mr. Oishi - lies face-down on the desk, unconscious, nose bloodied.
When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. The office being closed means another day the Yearbook club will have to wait, but it also means Namie is effectively cut loose from her duties for the night, and luck has granted her the immediate opportunity to make a new friend. Now she starts looking at Ayane a bit closer, just in time for her space to be slightly invaded, followed by a maneuver that leaves the girl blinking in surprise. She looks down at her side where she was touched, where Ayane was, and then to where she is now, but all she hears is a quiet comment followed by seeing the other girl leave.
That might normally make her pout again, except just then the lights flicker back to life, drawing her attention. "Mr. Oishi..!" she gasps, rushing inside to check on him. This takes precious time, the girl looking over him while trying to get him to respond, checking his pulse when he fails to do so. Should Ayane simply break into a dead sprint she might make it out of there should Namie be the only one around.
Once she finds out he's alive with a strong pulse she rushes out of the room, assignment completely forgotten as she races down the hall, trying desperately to catch up to the mysterious, now suspicious girl that has a pretty good head start.
Namie's rush inwards to check Mr. Oishi's pulse was a heartfelt decision, but ultimately a poor one. While the girl runs into the office, her acquaintance - the suspect - ducks into the nearest open room! It's a poor decision, really, considering the second floor of Taiyo High doesn't have any multilevel classrooms, but Ayane is desperate to leave. She can't afford to be caught up in questioning right now.
By the time Namie is stepping back out of the Yearbook Club's classroom, Ayane has opened a window in the adjacent classroom and slipped through it like water through rocks. While the drop is high, Ayane's deliberately snagged her cowl on the corner of the classroom window's metal-lined pane - she tumbles end over end unfurling that cowl, limbs sprawled in a trained attempt to capture any sort of surface or object to break her fall. When she's five feet from the ground, cowl almost fully unraveled, a slender arm reaches up to grab at the cowl connecting her to the window, and a vicious tug reverses the momentum of her fall. Glass shatters in a loud fashion, and should Namie follow the noise, she'll see her 'acquaintance' as a shock of purple hair vanishing into the crowd, a teenager among teenagers.
Rapidly, the dull gray of that cowl covers up whatever purple hair might have alerted Namie to her foe's presence - Ayane has slipped away for now, lost in the crowd.
The breaking window gives a pretty good indication of where the ninja went, and Namie rushes into the classroom and over to the broken window. She could jump down to the ground pretty easily herself and make up some of that lost time, but as she looks around she can't even so much as see Ayane in that crowd. With people walking away and the cowl covering the only real way the high schooler could spot her at a distance there's simply no hope other than random chance that she'd be able to catch up.
If nobody was hurt she'd take that tiny chance in a heartbeat, but with someone bleeding in the other room she has bigger things to worry about. She leaves the window and heads back into the records office and, not knowing what else to do, calls for police and an ambulance. Looks like she's going to be doing an entirely different type of paperwork than she'd expected.
The ninja's initial assessment was exactly correct; a hobbyist without real training and no interest in Ayane or her clan. Or rather, no interest until today.
Log created on 23:59:21 01/11/2015 by Namie, and last modified on 01:20:04 01/12/2015.