In Motion

Naiki wasn't particularly paying attention to the orientation speech. Instead she was smelling the air and scanning the audience.

She could smell blond on the air. It was a lovely scent as always.

It wasn't all that big of a trick. Different ethnicities, with different genetics and slightly different body chemistries put out somewhat different smells. When one spent one's life learning to distinguish specific people from the whole by scent, it became relatively simple to distinguish whole groups from each other. Add to that a rather specific fascination with blonds and she had definitely learned to tell that subset apart from the others.

There were more than a handful of blonds in the building with her.

There were also one or two people that were less human than she and her siblings were, but that was less important.

For the moment, she was instead focused on comparing the various merits of one blond to the next. Though most of what she saw around her were just little kids - a whole year younger than her. Still, there were a couple of people where she could see the face of the doctor that patched them all up for three years starting about the time they were six or seven.  

Mum had really liked Dr. Njaladottir, so clearly blonds were very important.

Naiki herself really had three things going for her, looks wise. She was tall, she had big breasts already at sixteen, and she had green hair, making her exotic! However, other than that, she was kind of bleagh. She didn't have the crazy body-builder muscles, but she did have a little more visible definition than was ideal for getting dates save from a certain set of guys or girls, or so she'd heard anyway. Her face was bland and her teeth were visibly sharp. Fortunately, apparently most people never got past the second of her three appearance advantages to really notice, or at least she told herself that.

The guy at the podium said something about time or something and people started moving out of their seats.

"Okay," Naiki said, flipping to her feet and twisting about. "Finally! So let's get to class!"

She walked out the door with a bare glance toward her sister and brother, not giving time for either Deimosu to decide that he needed to perform brotherly oversight or for Eija to decide that she needed a sibling security blanket.

Dry land tended to be a sort of muted sensation for Naiki. Scents, sights and sounds were the most clear and sight and sound could be downright spectacular, but she almost had to be touching someone to pick up an electrical field off of them and forget feeling motions. The air was just not nearly thick enough to pull that off.

Still most people stayed on dry land, and thus dry land was where all the really fun and interesting stuff happened. It was also where a lot of the bloody and dangerous stuff happened. She wanted to be around for the first bit. She didn't want Eija or Deimosu to be alone for the second bit. So, Naiki tolerated dry land and thrived on the people it put her in contact with.

Her thoughts were diverted from her calmly cheerful walk through the hallways as she came to an intersection of several halls and the crowd started to split up into different directions.

"Home-room," she muttered. "Home-room. Where's the home-room?"

Blinking she turned around to thrust a hand against the wall, blocking the way for whatever random person was to her side.

Well, not entirely random.

A small cloud of dust rose up from the impact between her hand and the wall causing her to wince briefly at the minor amount of damage she'd just done to the establishment. Oh well, wasn't like anybody would know it was her. She turned her attention toward the girl whose passage she had just blocked.

Naiki wasn't exactly sure what the girl was aside from not human, because there were about twenty near-human races that she knew about and had never met yet. This one had red marks on her face resembling something like chains along her cheeks and down her neck along with a circle with a keyhole on her forehead. Not tattoos, marks, Naiki couldn't smell any ink on the girl. Dark, blood-red hair hung over one side of her face, obscuring it. Of course, the thing that drew Naiki's attention was the cane the girl was leaning heavily on and the dry, withered smell that she was now getting off the girl's left arm and leg.

"Oh crap! I just accosted a cripple," she snapped in Greek to herself, smacking her forehead and then switching to English as she failed to note the grimace and twitching eye from the girl in front of her. "Hey, how do I find my homeroom?"

"I'd imagine you'd check your introductory packet," the other girl said bitterly before hobbling around Naiki and continuing down the hall.

"Introductory packet?" Naiki said aloud as the girl left.

"You can read, Deep One?" the girl called back in Greek. "Can't you?"

"Of course I can read," Naiki shouted. "I…wait. What? Did you call me 'Deep One'?! That's rude and completely uncalled fo…" she paused and thought about what she had said. "…okay, maybe with the 'cripple' thing it was a little called for, but…wait, what? You speak Greek?!"

Of course, the girl was already out of her sight and the crowds were thinning in her particular area. She looked around as people started to leave her area, some a bit faster than was normal, though not because of her from the looks of things.

"Ah, come on, you're not all going to leave me out here lost for the bell to ring, are you?" she asked no one in particular, receiving no answer in particular back.

At least until the bell rang and the scents in the hallway started to pare down to one that smelled rather like an adult. Turning back to look over her shoulder to see a teacher coming down the hall, stop and stare at the damaged wall before looking to Naiki and crossing his arms.

The green-haired girl sighed and let her arms and head droop as she realized that an extra trip to the office was forthcoming.

First class. First day.

Not even that.
________________________________________

"Now, Miss Semezou," the woman behind the desk said. "We can understand you feeling frustrated about being lost. But that is no reason to take it out on the building."

Naiki's feet were bouncing as she sat in the chair. The assistant principal watched her fidgeting and foot tapping and wondered if the girl might have been a sufferer of ADHD or something similar. Then again, there was her height and clear athleticism and she wondered if there was some other explanation.

"Yeah," Naiki said. "I got a bit careless, but didn't break the wall this time, just sort of dented it. I'll hold back more next time."

The woman across from her grimaced slightly at the implications, it wasn't as though they used anything as cheap as dry wall for the hallways. It was real hardwood and shouldn't have been vulnerable to a simple, casual smack. The rational answer, of course, was that the girl was trying to cover for her mistake by making it look like more of an accident.
Of course, in a previous month, the student body vice president had gone into the teacher's office to brew a pot of coffee for the faculty meeting and two minutes later, power surges had sparked off flames all throughout the main building.

For her part, Naiki was worried about only one thing: her mother being called. She really didn't want to be training memory, attention and precision control simultaneously. The first two usually involved booby traps and the last usually involved trying to not-break things which Naiki didn't want broken.

"Now, I have your room assignment and schedule here," the woman said. "And we're going to set this incident aside for now, but do realize that this means you've already had your warning."

"Yes, thank you, Ma'am, Mrs. Grissom, Ma'am," Naiki said quickly. "Can I go now please?"

"You may," the vice principal said.

She turned at her desk to look toward her printer, took the sheet from it and twisted again to find Naiki gone.

Shaking her head with a sigh, the woman waited a moment, wondering whether or not to buzz the receptionist to cut the girl off at the front office. And then the door opened and the embarrassed looking girl came bobbing in apologetically, the asymmetrically braided "shark tail" of her green hair, obviously dyed, shaking behind her.

"Umm, you said something about room assignments and schedule?" Naiki asked nervously.

The assistant principal held out the paper with a tightly controlled smirk, or maybe grimace and Naiki gingerly took it before leaving the room waving apologetically.

Clearly a nice if somewhat scatterbrained girl.

Hopefully she wasn't going to be too much trouble.
________________________________________

As Mrs. Grissom paid her tribute to the patron saint of impeccably bad timing, Murphy, Naiki was making her way to the class that she was already thirty minutes late for. It was much easier this time, what with the lack of people in the halls and actually having a paper that told her where she needed to be.

Following a familiar stand-out scent trail to a particular door with the emblazoned numbers indicating that this is where she was supposed to be. She approached this set of details and information with her usual level of caution and consideration by pulling door open and half-barging inside.

"Okay, hey," she said, waving at the teacher who was staring at her along with most of the class. "Umm, sorry, I got lost and had to go to office and get my room assignments re-printed. So, sorry again, and I guess I'll sit down and get on with...whatever."

The green-haired girl scanned the room and found an empty seat which she started to head for and paused as she caught sight of a certain mane of red-hair in the back of the room.

"Oh hey, it's the cripple-girl," she said, waving in a friendly manner. "I mean, sorry, the girl I scared accidentally. Sorry about that."

There was no missing the image of the mentioned girl's twitching eye and mouth as Naiki talked.

"Wait," Naiki said in embarrassment. "That didn't come out right, maybe…"

"Maybe you could quit rambling, introduce yourself and sit down?" the teacher asked.

"Oh, right," the girl said, scratching the back of her head. "Umm, I'm Naiki Semezou, and I'm new here, my brother and sister are attending school too. We're kind of triplets, and Mum taught us mostly and school really isn't my thing, but I'll try not to cause too much trouble. All right?"

She gave a wide, nervous toothy smile, her hands both raised with two thumbs up and most of the people in the class sort of twittered at her. Which was equal parts annoying and relieving. At least she didn't have Eija's problem. Still, the most annoying thing about the class was the more or less absence of anything blond.

"Please sit down, Miss Semezou," the teacher said with a weary sigh. "I believe you'll find the book in your desk."

Naiki took out a book from the stack of texts in her desk, she wasn't quite sure it was the correct book but that was mostly because she was, for the moment, focused on other things than the introductory stuff that was going on in these first classes. So she sat in her desk and turned through pages, eyes skimming over the text here and there and worrying about her mother getting word that she had gotten into trouble the first day.

"Now, I see we're running out of time," the teacher said calmly, glancing up toward the clock. "So I'll leave you with an assignment to be finished by the end of the week. I'll need an essay summarizing the class syllabus and your opinions as to why it is arranged the way it is."

Naiki nodded absently.

"Got it," she said, not looking up from her desk and the picture she was doodling.

A simple buzz signaled the end of the class and the teacher walked out of the room as Naiki paused in confusion before glancing up and around

"Wait. What?"

The boy next to her glanced over, twisting in his desk as the break period between classes saw many of the students doing likewise. Mostly they were coming together in small groups of two and three to discuss the class, the new students or anything else.

"He gave a homework assignment," the boy said. "But it wasn't really that hard. All you have to do is summarize what we'll be studying out of the book and say why you think it was put in that order. You've got notes right? I've been watching you scribble stuff for a while now."

Naiki glanced back down at her childish doodle of her mother putting her through various exaggerated training exercises. Okay, so she'd forgotten to get her teeth out of that particular worry. This brought up focus and awareness again: her big problems. Namely that she sometimes, like now, failed to shift focus and thus let awareness slip.

"Or maybe not," the boy beside her said with a knowing smile. "What's that some sort of superhero character?"

He was on the small side with clearly Mid-Eastern looks to his face, and wearing a pair of simple glasses under short-cropped dark hair. Very nice and friendly to the look and very nerdy, which wouldn't have mattered really… if he were blond. Still, didn't need to be blond to be a friend to talk to.

"No. I'm kind of worried Mum will hear I screwed up my first day," Naiki said. "She gets upset when we screw up basic stuff and then she takes over training from us."

"Training," her class-neighbor asked. "I guess you do some sort of sport?"

"Martial arts," Naiki explained. "And stuff."

Exorcism, which Naiki barely knew anything about, was not something to discuss too openly. Nor was magic or chi channeling or anything else "new age-y".

"I'm Issa Massri," he said, holding out a hand to her.

Naiki blinked and looked up at him.

"Wow, there'res lots of people from all over the place here," she said.

"Indeed, I'd guess you were from one of the US Asian states," Issa said. "But your English is accented incorrectly for that."

"Born in Greece," the green-haired girl said in a friendly tone. "But I think Mum is Japanese-Australian originally."

"Ah, so this must be a home co –"

Issa was interrupted by the clunking sound of a cane that thudded pointedly into the floor behind the two talking students. Naiki turned about and found the non-human girl with the red-marks and withered left side.

"Before you continue with this conversation," she said darkly in Greek. "I wish to make you aware, Deep One –"

"Hey, I apologized, stop being rude," Naiki snapped irritably.

"I wish to make you aware, Scion of the Waters," the girl continued irritably. "That you have offended Hel Logesdottir multiple times now. I will not stand for further public humiliation."

Naiki blinked and scratched her head.

"When did I humiliate you?" she asked seriously.

Hel's visible eye twitched and she glanced toward Issa.

"Massri, I hope you don't intend to let this one distract you," she said. "Her mere presence is going to reduce our comparative averages without you letting your scores relax as well."

"How am I going to reduce your 'comparative averages'?" Naiki asked in a confused manner.

"Very clearly you are of a sort whose puissance in physical capabilities is in direct inverse proportion to your accomplishments of the mental variety," Hel said irritably.

"Hey, thanks," the green-haired girl said. "I try to work out all the….wait. What?"

And of course, the other girl was already limping back to her desk without hanging around to answer the question.

Issa laughed a bit nervously and turned to look toward Naiki.

"Don't worry too much about her," he said. "Every week the school puts out the class averages and she's been comparing us to other classes in our year. Class 3E is consistently scoring better than our class and every once in a while, so does Class 3B."

"Oh … a competition, got it," Naiki said. "Yeah, okay, I'll keep out of her way so she can get all her high grades and stuff and just do my thing."

"Well, it's class averages she worries about," Issa said.

"Okay, so what's that got to do with me?" the green-haired girl asked.

"You're part of the class."

"But I'm not part of the average class, so we're fine," Naiki said with a shrug before turning back to her text books. "Next class was history right?"

"That was last class," Issa said.

Naiki glanced back over her shoulder at the sound of a thump and wondered briefly why Hel was repeatedly letting her head fall against the desk she was sitting at, but shrugged it off and turned back to trying to get out the right book for the next class as the teacher walked in through the door.

The next break in classes saw a handful of other students besides Issa gravitating toward the new student out of curiosity.

"Did you say that your family practices martial arts?" one guy asked, sitting on a desk talking to her.

"Yeah, I've been practicing like forever," Naiki answered casually.

"So you can break boards and bricks and stuff?" a girl asked.

Naiki snorted a bit at the way they asked about such simple things. She could break boards, bricks, most cars, buildings…cause earthquakes. Okay, the last was less martial arts and more just her, but still.

"Sure," she said in a friendly tone after getting hold of herself.

"Oh, awesome! We've got like our very own VP Jeon here," one of the kids said.

"VP Jeon?" Naiki asked.

"Yoon-Ji Jeon," Hel noted from where she sat, "Mathematical and scientific prodigy, adoptive daughter of Jeon Industries owner and CEO, Kyung-Suk Jeon, Vice President of the absurdly influential student council at this institution. She has a reputation for being one of the more dangerous people at this school and she is the leading high scorer for Class 3E."

"She also reprogrammed a coffeemaker to shut down the entire school for a week!" one of the students said in a tone of sheer awe.

"Wait. Really?" Naiki said with her mouth open. "That's so cool! Think she'll do it again?"

"I am beginning to severely hate this girl," Hel muttered. "I swear there is a God in the faculty somewhere."

The next couple of classes went rather like the first handful until lunch started to approach and Naiki's eyes were fixated on the clock as it ticked along.

"Naiki, you've switched the page numbers on the math syllabus with those from the English class," Issa noted. "If you do that you're going to have trouble when you're studying for the next class."

"Yeah, yeah," Naiki said. "They'll tell us what to read the day before anyway, what's it matter?"

"This is how they tell us what to read," the Egyptian told her.

Naiki thought about it a moment, eyes drifting off the class clock.

"Wait, what?" she asked.

"The syllabus tells us when all the subjects will be discussed so that they don't have to tell us the day before," he explained.

"So…I have to keep track of it myself," Naiki said eyes widening. "That's not fair. That's like Mum's special training not fair."

"It's to get us ready for the real world," Issa explained. "At least that's what they…"
The bell rang and Naiki stood up in a flash.

"Okay, that's lunch," she said with a broad, toothy smile. "I'll be sitting with my brother and sister if you want to keep talking … so, be right back!"

With that she exited the door quickly, almost knocking over one of the guys in the doorway and pushing aside one of the girls. Hel grimaced and shook her head as the shouted apology trailed back and the displaced other students muttered about the incident.

Naiki was in the halls, tracking down the scent of food wafting up through the halls with an unerring direction. She licked her lips at the scent of the spices and meats and juices she smelled, even this far away. She moved fast, not really bothering to keep her athletic ability hidden despite the fact that it more than passed what most people considered normal. There never seemed to be anyone commenting on the matter, though, so she didn't know why she should bother keeping such things hidden.

Which was why she was surprised to find that Hel was already in line at the cafeteria as Naiki came to the room. It was enough of a surprise; especially since she didn't think she'd smelled Hel ahead of her until after she'd seen the girl, that the green-haired martial artist paused and arched an eyebrow as she tried to comprehend how a crippled girl had beaten her to the food. Especially when said girl had still been cleaning her desk when Naiki left the room.

While the green-haired fighter was standing there, three figures pushed past and spotted the cripple pushing her tray along the lines, waiting to be served.

"There she is, always first one here, the fake," one of them muttered.

"Wait, is there a teacher around?" one of the others asked.

"Or that crazy Korean girl?" another asked. "Every time we've messed with Logesdottir, we've ended up in detention."

"Right, and this time we're going to get her and show her that we mean business," the third said.

They started to crack their knuckles and smile darkly as they advanced toward where their target was transplanting her purchased lunch items into a bag so that she could carry it to a seat without anyone having to help her. She didn't seem to be paying any heed to anything else at the moment and it was almost inevitable that the thugs would likely get several shots at her.

At least until a green-haired form leaped over the three and landed gracefully down in front of them. Naiki's own knuckles being cracked in gleeful anticipation while she smiled broadly down towards them. The play of her muscles was visible even through the jacket she was wearing as she looked at them.

"Hey," she said. "I don't think it's fair. I mean even if you lot are a bunch of no-skill scum, she's a cripple. And you have to take her in ambush? There is a whole lot wrong with this picture."

Behind her, the person she was protecting winced and slowly turned to face the scene as more people came into the lunch room.

Naiki was tall, just about an inch taller than the average adult man. This meant that she was freakishly tall as far as other sixteen year olds were concerned. This was combined with a physique that was neither the wiry muscle of a slender athlete, nor the absurdly over-developed bulging muscles of a dedicated body-builder, but which was that of a predator or warrior perfectly balanced to maximize strength without lacking grace and flexibility. Finally, the sharp teeth that were usually overshadowed by her honestly friendly attitude were, in cases like this, just not human enough that it made most intelligent people subconsciously worry that not everything was as it seemed.

These three stopped at Naiki's chest and failed to catch most of the other warning signs.

"Listen, Boobs," the central thug, and presumably the leader said. "You're one of the new students so you don't know, but we've got business with Miss Birthmark over there. Get out of the way and you won't get hurt pretending to be a fighter."

"Pretending…." Naiki repeated in thorough disbelief. "Oh that's it, this is personal now. First you're picking on defenseless girls…" Hel's grip on her bag of lunch tightened enough that it tore the paper and spilled the contents down to the ground. "…and now calling me a fake?"

Behind her, Hel started to quietly whisper something under her breath.

"What do you think, Hel?" Naiki asked the girl behind her suddenly.

"Huh, Hel?" the red-marked girl asked, blinking in surprise as her whispering was interrupted with that statement. The distraction didn't last long. "Listen you barbarian, I am well capable of…Don't look away from me!"

She would have continued but then Hel's eyes widened and she quickly hobbled away to find a place behind a pillar as another girl pushed her way through the gathering crowd out into the open to pass up the three thugs and approach Naiki. Well, actually, the crowd seemed to have reflexively jerked away from her approach, but the visible effect was much the same until you realized she wasn't actually touching anyone.

The new girl was much shorter than Naiki, though there was a clear family resemblance in some of their facial features. Her shoulders were slender and despite the clear resemblance to Naiki, her features were much more elegant and refined. She was a real beauty. Though the shivers running down several spines in the area had little to do with how pretty she was.

Behind the girl a tall, blond young man followed, arms crossed over his chest. He overtopped Naiki by a couple of inches and most of the kids and even adults in the room as well. And there was a slight tingling feeling in the air around him as the crisis built up that put several people on edge.

"Naiki?!" the girl asked nervously. "What is going on here?"

"I'm just about to teach these jerks a lesson or two," Naiki said her smile not fading. "That's all, Eija."

"You know what Mitera told us," Eija said. "We're not supposed to be fighting in school. Deimosu tell her."

"They accused me of pretending to be a fighter," Naiki said.

"Sorry, Eija," Deimosu said. "For once I actually think she has the right idea. In fact, if this isn't a real challenge, then I might just join in."

"Really?" Eija protested before switching to Greek. "Look we can't just go around fighting or we're going to attract attention, and it isn't a real challenge, so you shouldn't be letting them get to you like…like…"

"Hey, they were also going ambush this little crippled girl from my class over..." Naiki paused as she turned around. "Hey, where'd she go? Uh, whatever, look, they're bullies, thugs and they insulted me, they need to be taught a lesson."

Meanwhile the thugs were nervously eyeing Deimosu and sweating as the crowd formed around them. It was just moments away from either a teacher or…one of them caught sight of a backscratcher leaning against the shoulder of an Asian girl that was turning to glance toward them with a sour expression and starting to head their way with a look of determination.

Behind her was a curious looking young man almost as tall as the blond Heracles in front of them, and with a decidedly dangerous looking circular scar over one eye, and the frown on his face was anything but encouraging. The room was starting to pile up with known and apparent badasses who seemed to be very willing to throw down with the three of them. Or they could just opt for the challenge thing the one guy said and only have to fight one idiotic girl with boobs.

Who, honestly speaking, was arguably the worst person in the room they could have chosen to fight. Then again, of the two worst choices, Naiki was the least likely to forget that the matter was not deadly.

"All right!" he said. "We challenge you to a fair fight, girl! We'll see how much of a fighter you really are."

All three of the Semezou siblings stopped talking and turned to look at the leader of the thugs. Naiki's face slowly broadening back into the smile she'd had when she first landed in front of them.

"You've got it," Naiki said eagerly.

"All right, very good!" proclaimed a new, German-accented voice, drawing all attention to it.

The speaker came into the middle of the crowd and took in all the onlookers with a brilliant smile and a wave of his silk-covered hand. He was clearly older than most of the students looking on, probably eighteen, and had come into much of the height he'd have in life already. This put him in the same height range as the yet unidentified kid with the scar and the tall blond named Deimosu.

"You heard the challenge and the acceptance," the young man said. "Vice President Jeon, I believe you can serve as referee in this case."

Jeon had already stopped in her path when the other student stepped out into the middle of things, and now was basically staring forward with a flabbergasted look.

"Uh, you don't want me to stop them from having a fight?" she asked, confused.

"When it was just a brawl that certainly was your duty, Yooji," the tall man said.

"But now that a challenge has been made and accepted," the soldier coming up to Yooji's side said. "It is not just a brawl?"

"Exactly, now I've already dispatched Miss Lot to secure the rugby field for us," the German senior said. "Now, I must discuss the situation with the faculty and staff. Arrange terms and rules and I shall meet you at the field for the event."

"Uh, sure, Karl," Yooji said, blinking as he left. "Yeah sure! What the hell do I know about refereeing a martial arts challenge?"

"It'll be real easy," Deimosu said. "When she's knocked out all three of them, you declare her the winner?"

"Wait, all three of us?" one of the thugs said.

"You don't mean you were thinking you'd fight her alone?" Eija said with widened eyes.

"Well, we have to give her some sort of chance," the thug leader said. "It wouldn't be sportsman-like otherwise. I mean we know karate?"

"What sort of karate?" Naiki asked, curiously. "Kyokushin Kaikan? Shotokan? Isshin-Ryu? How many dan?"

"Umm, it's that place near the mall," one of the thugs said. "And who's Dan?"

Several people put their faces into their hands.

"You don't have any more friends, do you?" Naiki asked, somewhat hopefully.

"Attention, will all classes please move from the cafeteria and class rooms to the rugby field to witness a demonstration fighting match that shall be fought for the honor of Hel Logesdottir," a voice declared over the intercom.

Eija frowned as she heard the announcement.

"I've heard that name somewhere before," she said.

"All right," Naiki called out happily. "You heard them, let's go demonstrate!"

She was the first out the door and she was standing expectantly in the middle of the field as the crowd started to file in to the benches around her. The green-haired girl was stretching her hands and tightening her fists in clear anticipation, in between giving friendly waves to the surrounding crowd, her shark's tail braid swinging behind her as she moved about.

"She can't really be seriously thinking about taking on all three of those guys at once," Yooji said to Eija. "Is your sister crazy?"

"That is a matter for some debate," Eija noted quietly. "However, these three do not even have skill enough to threaten me. It is not a matter of whether she will win; it is a matter of whether she will win cleanly."

"Your sister is a skilled soldier then?" Damir asked her.

"Deimosu is actually technically more skilled," Eija said thoughtfully. "But Naiki…"
She stopped talking and frowned, unwilling to explain further.

Instead, she focused around her, wondering how any student, even the council president as this "Karl" was supposed to be, had managed to make a near-brawl into a school-wide sporting event.

"Hello, hello and welcome back to Bravura Academy," Karl's voice called out. "Now, as our name implies we thrive on displays of boldness, daring and excellence of skill. Included in that is the fighting skills, such as wrestling and boxing which we maintain full teams in. As well as in other forms which these students have seen fit to demonstrate for us today and which the faculty has graciously allowed us to witness. Hmm, we seem to be missing members of the school band. Somebody really needs to look into fixing the music hall's intercom."

Naiki grimaced as she looked over toward the speaking young man and tapped her foot impatiently as he went on and that Jeon girl walked out onto the field. Across from her, the three thugs were lounging about and waving at the crowd, flexing, posing and generally seeming to forget they were actually about to have a fight.

"Are you sure about this?" Yooji asked Naiki, glancing away from the green-haired girl and towards the thugs. "I can always call it off, you know."

"Nah, I'll be fine," Naiki said with a smile. "I just wish this wouldn't take so long. Hey, by the way. Aren't you some sort of fighter too?"

Yooji paused and looked very carefully over at Naiki.

"And if I am?" she asked.

"Because it'd be just cool to take on another great fighter when they weren't trying to kill me," the green-haired girl said.

Yooji's expression became rather unreadable then, at least to Naiki, and the Korean girl took a step back and then turned toward the stands and pointing.

"Oh look, I think Karl's almost done," Yooji said quickly.

"Great!" Naiki said smiling.

"Is everybody ready? Vice President Jeon?" Karl asked from his position holding the microphone.

"Are you guys all ready?" Yooji asked.

"Is that girl really going to take us all on?" one of the thugs asked with a smile.

"Why?  Are you scared?" Naiki asked.

"Hell no!" came the response.

They'd been scared of fighting the girl's brother along with Yoon-Ji Jeon and the mysteriously threatening boy that had been standing with her all at once. But a girl that wasn't Jeon? That couldn't have been a threat at all.

They still hadn't bothered to actually look past her chest to see what sort of condition she was in.

"Okay then," Yooji said, raising her hand and the backscratcher in it. "Begin!"

And she backed away quickly to give room as the three thugs started to move forward toward Naiki, only to find her running at them and already having covered more than half the distance.

"You're going to find out why I'm named after the goddess of victory!" she shouted with a broad grin as she flashed her arm out in a knife hand that slammed into the first thug's abdomen, hard, doubling him over in pain. From that, she launched into a spinning roundhouse aimed at the next thug's head and which her target barely dodged under with a desperate duck.

Yooji found herself coming back to the sidelines as Eija released a loud sigh.
"She's being sloppy," Eija said.

"Yes, neither of those two opponents should be an issue any longer," Damir agreed. "She is holding back for some reason."

Yooji glanced back out toward where the girl was blocking the third thug's attack and wondered why the girl would be holding back at all.

"I suppose she wants the fight to look good," the calm, sweet voice of Amber Lot said as she stepped up to join them with a quiet smile. "Did I miss anything? Newspaper and Yearbook are both going to want photos here."

She lifted up a digital camera to snap a shot of the action on the field.

Naiki flowed around behind the third thug and swiped his feet out from under him with a needlessly showy motion that ended a bit too slowly for actual use in a fight. The result being that she barely had time to duck aside as the thug she'd earlier missed completely with her own roundhouse swiped out a punch at her.

Naiki whistled slightly as she bent back double and the kid's fist passed over her. The guy was a bit more skilled than she had thought at first. She planted her hands back and shifted her weight so that her legs would follow the same path, and thus bring her knees slamming into the back of her attacker. The blow sent him sprawling past Naiki's position as the green-haired girl pushed into and off his back to move into a flip that landed her gracefully near the third thug.

She'd lost track of the first opponent in her playing around, but was aware of him now as he slammed his fist into the back of her head. The actual blow didn't do anything given how much body-hardening she'd put herself through, but it did send her sprawling to the ground in an embarrassing display.

Rolling to her feet angrily, Naiki pulled herself into a tighter stance, such as what she should have started with rather than merely playing games. Even as she located two of her opponents, the third came up behind her, slipping his hands in under her arms and pulling her back into what was supposed to be a hold for the other two to take advantage of.

Naiki should have been able to easily take care of the so-called hold and pound that opponent, and the other two, into submission now that she wasn't just messing about. However, she was angry at the fact that she'd allowed that last hit in on her. Making the fight more exciting was one thing, actually being shown up for no other reason than that she had been caught being stupid was something else again. She waited for the other two to get closer.

As Naiki prepared her action, Yooji's eyes seemed to fade off, as if staring at something very far away, and her voice almost forced its way weakly out of her mouth.

"Hybrid biological form," she muttered. "Intense psychokinetic potential."

"What did you sa…" Amber started to ask.

Everybody in the stand marveled as what looked like a burst of green light rippled out of Naiki's form and in its wake the three thugs strewn about unconscious on the rugby field as Naiki stood in a small crater.

She took in a deep breath and then crossed her arms with a smugly proud look as she thrust her chin out and smiled in satisfaction. Not the wide toothy smile from before, just a normal, triumphant smile of accomplishment as the crowd murmured and began clapping in at first small patches before growing louder.

"And Okaasan is going to nail her hide to the wall," Deimosu said, shaking his head while his other sister sighed in agreement.

The Jeon girl walked up beside Naiki with slow, deliberate steps and a frowning grimace on her face. Once there, the hand holding the backscratcher went up and silence washed out over the assembled students as Yooji looked about the stadium.

"Winner is Naiki Semezou!" she shouted to renewed applause.

"Do you hear that students, the honor of Hel Logesdottir is secure!" Student President Karl declared. "How truly wonderful it is that chivalry is not dead in this day and age."

Naiki lifted both of her hands up and waved in celebration, and then felt herself gagging as Yooji's backscratcher caught on her collar and she was suddenly dragged down to stare at the crater that had been made in her last action.

"Now fix your mess!" Yooji shouted as the audience got quiet again.

"Uh…sure," Naiki said, not terribly surprised at either the command or how it was made. Nor was she at all intimidated, but was moderately impressed. Especially with the way the girl was already walking off, apparently used to her orders being met without question. "Wow, I have to try to fight it out with her sometime."

Yooji meanwhile focused obsessively on moving one foot ahead of the other and making sure that her expression stayed annoyed and not at all fearful as she walked back toward the sidelines, passing Amber carrying a towel along the way.

"Good job, vice president," Amber said under her breath, "But you're still scaring all the boys."

Yooji winced, wondering just what sort of rumors she'd spawned now.

The blond herself walked over to where Naiki was looking at the section of blown away dirt and sod and trying to figure out how she was going to fix it. She hadn't noticed, or didn't care about, the warning gestures that Eija was quietly trying to give her.

"Here you go," Amber said in a friendly tone as she handed over the towel.

Naiki nodded and reached over to grab the towel, squinting at the sun behind Amber and then eyes opening wide as she got her first good look at the girl backlit by the afternoon sun to glorious effect. The light touched on her sandy blond hair and the light breeze whipped her school uniform skirt and blond locks up dramatically. An uplifting melody of appropriate music played through the air as if from afar, such as from the band hall.

Still holding the towel, jaw slack and mind frozen, Naiki tried to remember what to do when faced with heavenly beautiful blonds.

"Anyway, I'm glad to meet one of Eija's sisters," the girl said with a friendly, all-accepting smile. "I'll see you later okay?"

As Amber walked off to join the flow of students back to school, Naiki weakly waved after her, blinking, "Later," she breathed.

Then Amber turned about, bringing up her little digital camera and Naiki quickly gave an appropriately victorious pose in the moments before the automatic flash went off, and then the blond girl disappeared into the mass of other people returning to class.

"I have seen heaven," Naiki muttered.

"Hey, Naiki," Issa said, coming up to her side. "Hurry up and clean this up so you can get to class on time."

"Oh! Right!" Naiki said, again looking around for any sort of dirt that she could use to fill the emptied area. "Don't worry, I'll be right there."  Neither of them at the moment stopped to wonder where Hel might be.
________________________________________

It was sometime later when the three thugs woke up in the infirmary, groaning and wondering what happened.

"Damn it, did she have some sort of stun gun on her?" the leader asked.

Which was when the tip of a cane was planted in his chest and he followed the cane up to meet Hel's one visible eye.

"Oh, you," he said. "What the Hell do you thi…"

He'd tried to sit up and winced in pain as every muscle in his body seemed to protest at the effort. Apparently whatever weapon that the Semezou girl used really took a lot out of a guy.

"Because of you three," Hel said in a shaky voice. "My name is across the school as someone to be protected. Because of you three I'm seen as helpless…."

That one visible eye was wide open and twitching as she barely held onto her anger.

"Hey, don't look at us, girl," one thug said, also trying to sit up. "We were just going to beat the crap out of you."

"Yeah, you want to complain, talk to the girl with the dyed hair," the last thug noted.

"Oh, I'm going to talk to her," Hel said thwacking each of the thugs with her cane as she did so. "Oh yes…and then…"

"Ahem," a voice said.

She paused in her speech, and then turned around to see the nurse standing there.

"Miss Logesdottir, I can understand some desire for revenge," the woman said. "But I have to insist you return to class now before I have to report this. It wouldn't be a good idea to have detention on the first day back."

"You would dare threaten me with incarceration?" Hel asked, "Me of all people?"

"Detention it is," the nurse said.

"But," Hel responded, deflating suddenly.

"And since you're here, we'll see about those vitamin shots you were supposed to be in here for two hours ago," the nurse added.

"But," Hel said weakly as the woman walked away.

Slowly her mind reached back to the lunch room when she'd been whispering a little curse under her breath meant to deal with the annoying philistines making trouble for her. A little curse interrupted at the end with "huh, Hel?"

She stared, wide-eyed and shaking as her cane was brought down to the ground and she was leaning on it.

"I cast that curse on myself?!" she demanded. "Damn it!"

Meanwhile over the school's intercom, one of the teachers gave a message.

"Would Naiki Semezou please report to the office," the announcement called out, "Regarding the matter of a missing pitcher's mound."