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45. Idle Hands

Hey day early! My Monday is busy this week so I figured I'd get this out now. Let me know of any typos/grammar issues/sentences that make no sense (Opal, what is going on? Why does the sentence keep going? Does it have an end? If you're asking these questions, it's a problem, and I will fix it), I got kinda tired so they're bound to be there.

Rule 38: When all else fails, do it yourself.

"Otsuka, something's going to happen."

She tried to be calm. They'd talked about TT using her to pass on insider information to the police or heroes, she'd even decided on two methods she could use to do just that depending on how seriously each party took her. She was hoping she'd only need the first route though since the second came with a few risks she didn't like so much. The point was, she was prepared for this.

"They know the location of your summer camp, I don't know how, but they do and they're already planning an attack on it."

Otsuka had forewarning of an attack. Soon, UA would have forewarning of the attack. This right here, they could save lives by doing this. "Ok."

"Ok?"

"Ok," Otsuka repeated more firmly now. "I'll make sure the message gets passed on."

TT slumped, stepping forward to bring her into a hug. "Thank you," he whispered. They both hated this. TT never wanted to be a villain. But they would play with the hand they'd been dealt and see what they could do to lessen the impact so maybe this wouldn't end as badly as it had begun. "Now, what would you do if I'd been holding a knife?"

Otsuka let her legs turn to jelly, twisting to catch his arm just as she fell out of his grip. Training had begun.

***

Otsuka had been in the support classroom before. After her internship ended in a damaged costume, she'd been able to come here to ask for a few alterations. Or mostly the one alteration. She'd told them to scratch the twisting red strips along her right arm as well as the nude material, the whole purpose of having one sleeve that wasn't a proper sleeve was so she had access to some of her skin without having to remove half her costume (which was something she'd made sure would be easy to do— undoing the top half of the zipper left her in a sports bra— in the case of an emergency that needed more skin than a single arm). Since skin contact with her was the only thing she knew of that kept people from getting sick when she used her mist, the ability to provide that was kind of crucial.

The student in charge of her costume, Hatsume Mei, was delighted to do the simple change for her. Progress had been slower than Mei had expected— something about proper permissions for modifications, Otsuka wasn't clear on it— but now Otsuka had her new and improved costume.

Stepping into the 1-H classroom always had an unusual effect on Otsuka. A long, long eight plus years ago, Otsuka's parents had allowed her to sit in their labs (which were much cleaner than this place but still tended to have at least one or two things in places they shouldn't be) as they worked sometimes. 

She remembered watching closely as they designed tools well beyond her understanding at the time and probably now too. She remembered wanting so much to understand. Obviously, at that age, she wasn't going to grasp everything but they still gave her the explanations she so badly wanted, even if they were made a little more child friendly. Describing electrons as electric eels wasn't necessarily the most scientific way of putting it, but it had worked.