"I thought Karma-san said we'd have a substitute." Fuyu plucked the strings on his ukulele, tuning it.
"Y'all seem to keep forgetting this," Fumei pointed out as she worked on her laptop. "But Nagisa-sensei is a teacher-in-fucking-training, remember. Technically we shoulda had a sub all goddamn year, but our 'actual' fucking teacher doesn't give shit."
"Yeah, but won't they send someone once they realize our class is unsupervised?" asked Marihara.
"At best they'll send funckin' Hanji-san or some shit." Just then the door opened, and in walked Ms Hanji, the school's resident custodian/faculty assistant/exam administrator/substitute teacher.
"Hello wonderful students of class 3-5!" Ms Hanji chirped, she didn't have any way of speaking besides chirping. The way she talked as well as her spiked up, bleached-blonde, punk haircut tended to remind people of a cockatoo. "You all know me, of course. Since your teacher in training, Mr Shiota—"
"Nagisa-sensei," corrected about eight people at the same time.
"Alrighty," she shrugged, "he called in sick last night, sounded pretty nasty, and since we all forgot that Mr Kenmura, that's your actual teacher, has a perfect lack of attendance record, we didn't plan a substitute, so I am here!"
"Woo-hoo," Marihara deadpanned sarcastically. Silently, they were all anxious for their after-school meeting to determine the fate of their missing classmate who, for once, wasn't Kiya. Students shot worried glances toward Kirasaya's seat so often that Ms Hanji took notice and asked about it, but they told her nothing.
—
Weaknesses:
(1) Doesn't run very fast
(2) Avoids places with a lot of pedestrian traffic
(3) Allergic to shellfish
Nagisa had been following his target for nearly twenty hours straight, and his list of weaknesses was exactly three. He wasn't sure if that was good or bad. He had gathered the information fairly quickly, but unless he planned on chasing the guy down a backstreet and force-feeding him lobster, it wasn't very helpful. The guy was also paranoid as hell, and a pretty good martial artist, so this wasn't going to be that easy.
Nagisa would have liked to gather more information, but time was running short, and Kirasaya was probably scared out of her wits. It was time to make a plan. It was time to kill the target.
—
They were early, but that didn't matter. Fumei, Shirota, and Saishuu walked into Matsuraiken, ready to make their plans. Ready to save Kirasaya.
By the time five o'clock rolled around, a lot of the class was there, though a handful of students had opted out. Like Ippantekina's group, who were just jerks, and Mirikitani and Ken, who didn't think they'd be useful for much. The Ryouma twins were also missing; according to Shirota, who'd somehow managed to get the numbers of everyone in class (even Kiya, though as far as Fumei knew, they had never spoken), their parents weren't letting them come.
Finally, Karma arrived.
"Is this everyone?" Karma asked, his brows furrowed. "We're pretty much on our own here. Chiba and Hayami shipped out early this morning, and Kayano had to leave as well for a shoot."
"Plus they're probably gonna be expecting us this time," Asui pointed out, walking in late. "To sum up, we have more people, technically, but way less training, no weapons, and no element of surprise."
"Shirota-kun," Saishuu turned to his friend, "did you bring the things?"
"Yeah," Shirota responded. "That means we do have weapons, but I have to make sure to get them back to my brother before he notices they're gone, or we're all in trouble. Who here's a good shot?"
"I'm not even gonna ask," Karma sighed, "but we'll have a talk later." He called over his shoulder, "Murumatsu-kun, you in?"
"Yeah, I'm listening." Murumatsu responded, serving a bowl of noodles to a customer.
With that, Karma explained the plan. He'd stayed up very late the previous night putting it together, and he revised it as the students told him things that might help. When finally the plan was done, they left. At five o'clock the next day, they were at the place where Kirasaya was being held.
The priority here was stealth. If no one knew they were there, they would be met with no resistance. As soon as he saw an opportunity, Karma led a group of just a few students in through an open window, Murumatsu doing the same with a second group on the other side of the building, and they quietly snuck through the halls in search of Kirasaya.
—
Sundown: the day of the assassination. The target was heading down a backstreet alone. Nagisa had a knife strapped to each thigh. The instruction had been to make it look like a gang-hit to discourage others from yadda yadda yadda. Nagisa didn't really care why. That wasn't his job. His job was to make this gory. And not get caught.
Following the target silently keeping a watchful eye from the roof of the nearby buildings, Nagisa waited for the opportunity. As soon as the sun went down, Nagisa drew one of his knives, and descended on the man, prepared to be met with resistance.
—
"I've got her!" Fumei's soft whisper came through the speaker of Karma's phone.
"Got her or found her? There's a difference," came Karma's reply.
"Found her," answered Fumei. "I'm in the vents above a room on the—" she paused as if checking something— "East side of the building. She's tied to a chair, no locks, two guards playing some sort of card game. Ritsu, can you please show Karma where we are on the map." The AI's avatar nodded.
"Alright, I'm on my way," Karma said after a moment. "Kiya-san, Ushiwara-kun, I'm sending you the map, make your way there, and don't be seen. Everyone else get out as fast as possible without being caught. We'll meet at the park a couple blocks away to make sure everyone got out." Various whispered affirmations came through the speaker of Karma's phone as he headed toward the room Ritsu had indicated, keeping out of sight. He'd never been as good at stealth as he was at combat, and he nearly got caught a couple times, but he managed to make it to the door.
"So what now?" He heard an uncertain whisper from beside him and jumped; it was Ushiwara. He hadn't even seen the kid. "Kiya's up in the vents with Fumei-kun, the guards are still there."
"We all enter, and we try to take down the guards in absolute silence while Kiya-san unties Kirasaya-chan," Karma explained.
"The door's locked," Ushiwara whispered, frowning. "I already checked before you got here." Karma thought for a moment, then knocked on the door.
"Hey guys, I brought dinner, open up!" he called through the door.
"Alright! I'm starving!" he heard one of the guards say as he approached. The door clicked and swung open and Karma knocked the guy out with a good solid punch to the head, knuckles popping as he did so.
At almost the same time, the vent opened and the two girls spilled out, Fumei dropping onto the shoulders of the other guard and attempting to strangle him into unconsciousness, while Kiya went straight to the bound girl and began untying her.
Then Fumei was tossed off of the man's shoulders. She hit the card table, but it only moved a few inches, and Fumei was virtually unharmed.
"You want to knock me out, you should send someone who weighs more that five kilograms." The guard snorted and reached for his communicator.
Fumei shot toward him and kicked it out of his hand, then Ushiwara was behind him trying to put as much pressure as possible on the man's jugular to block blood flow some and slow him down. Finally, Karma roundhouse kicked the second guard, knocking him out.
"Got it." Kiya smirked. Her tongue flicked across her lip as the ropes fell away from Kirasaya. They heard a scraping noise, and turned to see Ushiwara pushing the card table several feet.
"Dang Fumei-kun, you got flung at this thing and only moved it a few inches. How much do you weigh, anyway?" Ushiwara raised an eyebrow at her.
"It's rude to ask a woman about her weight, damn moron," Fumei snapped. Then she went to a cabinet in the room and opened it, apparently looking for something. Then another, where she apparently found what she was looking for, Kirasaya's sword. "Here you are, Akemi." She tossed it to her recently unbound friend, who nodded her thanks.
"There's an exit at the end of the hall," informed Ritsu. "you should be able to make it if you go quickly."
"Well come on then kids," Karma ordered. "We're not out of the woods yet."
The group was silent as could be until they got out of the door, then they full-on sprinted. They ran like their lives depended on it to the meeting place a few blocks away. It was twilight, and the students were all seated on benches, or swings, or just on the ground.
Murumatsu stood as they arrived. "If you've got yours, everyone's accounted for."
"I've got them." Karma affirmed, sighing. "I'm going to call Nagisa now." He dialed his boyfriend's number, hoping against hope that the job wasn't already done.
—
Nagisa's phone rang, and immediately he knew it was Karma. Had it been anyone else, the device would have remained silent. He held a knife to his target's throat, and the man was perfectly still, knowing one false move could result in his death.
"Sorry, I have to get this." Nagisa answered the call, tightening his grip in warning. "Hello."
"We've got her," Karma said. "You don't have to go through with this, she's safe."
"Really?" Nagisa asked, relief filling his voice and staunching his bloodlust slightly.
"Yes, really," He could hear the smile in Karma's voice. "We're all waiting for you at the park on 7th street."
"I'll be there," Nagisa said, and hung up. He released the man with a huge sigh of relief. "Today's your lucky day." Nagisa told the man, smiling, but allowing his bloodlust to seep outward, freezing him in place. "I suggest you stop messing around with powerful people. Don't follow me, and don't try to find me again. Be grateful that you're leaving with your life. Maybe take up a less illegal job. Start a gym or something. Good luck."
With that, the blue haired assassin walked away, disappearing in the pitch black street.
—
"Karma?" Nagisa called uncertainly as he reached the park. He found the red-head, as well most of his students and Murumatsu, sitting by the jungle gym, just waiting for him, smiles on their faces. "Kirasaya-san, you're really—"
"Yup!" Kirasaya got up and walked toward him. "They really saved me."
"And you didn't—" Karma started.
"Nope." Nagisa smiled back at the assembled group. "You called just in time. Thank you all so much." After a lot of hugging and congratulations, they headed to their respective homes. Karma and Nagisa were the last to leave, walking back to their apartment hand in hand, ready to sleep for a week.
[This chapter took me a bajillion years to write, and I barely got it done in time, mostly because I tried to take out a bunch of the page breaks (aka time-skips and POV changes) but by doing that I would have pretty much tripled the length, and I didn't want to write that much b/c I thought it might get boring, so I gave up on that dream.
Anyway, there's only one more chapter in this arc, and it's gonna be a nice, fun, low-tension chap which I think we all deserve after this whole mess. After that, I'm going on a brief hiatus so I can get a head start on the next arc, otherwise the chapters will be really crappy, and I won't have time to edit them. (Trust me, I've had the problem before.)
Love y'all.
<3 Raaor!]