Exam no Jutsu
Part Two: Key Player
Kids in colorful costumes and prep school uniforms race through a hallway. The walls and floor are all one seamless expanse of the same concrete-like material yet the ceiling is transparent and perfectly smooth. Far above, powerful lights hang from cross-crossing catwalk bridges and throw strange shadows at the testing grounds below. When they get to an intersection between hallways, the kids scatter at random either left, right, or straight forward. No one goes back the way they came.
One of the kids, a shark-toothed boy with craggy surfacing to his skin, plants his feet and laughs derisively at the ones lagging behind. He sweeps an arm to the side and a pale quartz growth surges off the surface of one wall. It lances out rapidly and smashes its tip into powder as it fails to drill into the wall on the other end. Still, many of the kids let out cries of frustration and stumble out of their runs.
A flat-topped boy with screws in his neck tries to punch through the crystal jamming the way forward, and the crystal summoner sneers at him one last time before turning on his heel and darting away around the bend. Fireballs and a bouncing, gnashing tomato ineffectually chase behind him. A few of the delayed teens begin to army crawl beneath the quartz, or climb over the crushed end, only to be grabbed by their frustrated competitors. Arguments start. In one case, a shoving match breaks out.
None of them take notice of a blue-coated blur running through the cluster and swiftly sliding beneath the crystal wedge. When its metal helmet taps the pale quartz, it doesn't make a sound. The fuzzy shape of a gloved hand darts back underneath a moment later and snatches out the over-sized peaked cap that got left behind. Frankie is too busy swinging a red-headed guy around by the ankles to take any notice.
Marumaru fits the cap back on her head and takes a moment to ensure it's exactly square with the brim facing directly forward before she begins running again. She chooses the right-hand path without any hesitation. She knows that there's few of the other kids ahead of her in this direction, but that's not factored into her decision at all.
Left. Straight. Right, left, left.
This is a maze. She's already solved it. Mentally, she pats herself on the back for being one of the few both willing and able to scout the whole thing out before this contest started. Besides the other students in this test, the only problem remaining is--
A tactile sensor beneath the floor registers Maru's weight and a panel slides away, disappearing into the previously-unbroken ground. A high tech emitter bar whines at the edge of hearing as it gears up to fire something off. Maru's mind races to predict if she can clear whatever it is before it can fire, but she quickly realizes she just doesn't have the speed.
The bar releases a flash of blue light in an elliptical portal. The obstacle remains there for a couple seconds, hanging in the air, and a panel further on slides away to reveal another bar that whines in crescendo. Maru throws herself backwards to the ground, bracing not just her feet but also her hands against the flooring to kill her momentum faster.
Her ninja costume is taking a lot of abuse today. At least repairing stuff like that is cheap in the Quirk Age.
Marumaru, also known as Nyoro Hoge, stops centimeters away from blue portal light. She's breathing hard. And she's seen this before. Minutes ago, more than a dozen kids were dumped into a portal just like this one, and unceremoniously teleported back to the entry hall of the maze room. Not the harshest penalty, but every second counts when you're racing Japan's top young talent for the limited pool of official licenses.
The portal sizzles away and shows the next portal already looming a half meter away above the next emitter bar. From her viewpoint on the ground, Hoge can spot more emitters further along in series. The keening at the edge of her hearing is starting to become too annoying for words, but the worst is the bar directly in front of her building up to another zap.
Maru shoves herself into a log roll and clears it just in time. Blue light eclipses her vision and leaves a distracting afterimage. She pushes herself up and gets her feet directly under her so she can stand with the narrowest profile possible. The next portal fizzles out, leaving another gap and blinding blue lights trapping her in on either direction. And so she begins her stroll through the hallway.
They don't think very highly of us, Hoge reflects when she has to spring into a precise forward jump to clear one of the bars with a different timing. Maybe they legally can't put us at any real risk? She has a brief impulse to try cartwheeling the rest of the way, but laughs it off.
A little ways after she walks free of the trap series, she notices a vibration beneath her feet stop. The whine in the air finally ends, as well. Hoge looks back at the hall she traversed, and catches the last glimpse of the shutters closing. The machining is so perfect that no hint of a visible gap remains.
She scrapes the ground with her feet. The lack of the tingle and sound is somehow more noticeable than when they had arrived. Hoge gets herself back into the Marumaru mindset with a couple heel hops in place, and turns back the way she was originally heading. Her stride has been broken. Time is wasting. She can't count on such a childish obstacle having cleared out the other applicants that had come this way before her. When she gets into running form again, the afterimage of her movement lags just a little behind.
Five students run into a brightly lit dead end path in the maze. They are charging forward in a wedge formation, leaning hard into the sprint, their arms flung straight behind themselves like stiff beams. Each one is in a black bodysuit with accompanying face mask, and differently colored gi. Their sleeves are bound in place with armored bracers; their waists hold tool belts; their head veils are secured with a black band and metal forehead plate.
Nomi Oda, in a cyan gi and veil, leads the formation. When he stops in place and throws his hands out to the left and right, the other four members of his group slide into place behind the line marked by his arms. He gives a mental command through the telepathic link maintained by his squadmate.
<First key located. Look closely for traps!>
Tsuga Una, a girl in orange, is that relay. In a subconscious reflex, she redirects the order to only this group of five, and not the other wing of five elsewhere in the maze. Seijin High School has sent ten applicants, all second year students, into this license test. Their training has made an action division like this into a natural strategy.
Seek and destroy. The first goal is to secure at least ten keys. The secondary goal is to ensure that as many UA students fail as possible. Knocking anyone else out of the running is just a bonus. The only way to make a name for the school is to overcome the leader in the nation. There's no glory in second place!
<Right!> <Yeah!> <You got it!> <On it.>
The rest of the squad sounds off mentally. Then they carefully skulk around the perimeter of the room, testing each step before putting their weight forward. Everything is going by the numbers. They've drilled these maneuvers until they were sick of the routine, and then a dozen times more.
Oda casually flicks a cats-eye marble across the room in a low-powered toss of his left hand. Yet, at the end of its arc, it suddenly rails off like a shot in an unnaturally straight line right at the far wall. Shortly before impact, a little cloud of blue-black smoke engulfs it, and a larger plume surges out and disperses to reveal the pink ninja in their squad, chipper Kai Kae. Back where she was moments ago, a cats-eye marble drops from a little dark cloud and quietly clatters on the ground.
<Thanks, boss!> she pipes in by habit.
<Of course,> is Oda's equally reflexive reply.
<Do you have to use my head for... ah! Nevermind! Stray thought!> Una runs her hands in a searching pattern along one of the etched walls to cover up her fluster. Everyone joins in, in their own way. They check over the floor, and tighten their orbit of the center of the room and the hard white circle of spotlight that marks a small pedestal and an oversized brass key.
Its standing with the eye pointed up at the glass ceiling. Its polished surface glitters in the bright light as they encircle it from all sides. Ogura Yasushi, a broad guy dressed in a fine purple version of their school uniform, gives a quick hand sign that he's going to channel his Oversight.
Instantly, his vision moves to a point high above and looking straight down on everyone. All around, people run and fight in other parts of the maze. They leave long, undulating, snake-like motion trails of almost a dozen overlapping possibilities. Yasushi has trained extensively to interpret this strange vision to provide a frightening level of intel to his team. The bird's eye view has made navigating the maze trivial, too.
Intense focus and mental strain comes through the empathic link that joins the students together. Una has to work consciously to dull it for the others, and it still bleeds through somewhat.
<Yeah, it's trapped. Slam-down type. A couple times, Kosho gets caught.>
<No way, bro! Not in this life!>
<Ha. Maybe.>
Tanifuji Kosho, their ace in gray gear, is a Quirk Revolver. He has six shots of six quirks, and he's loaded from not just this squad but also their B-team. <You just watch!> He raises two claw-shaped fists to his chest and concentrates on one of his borrowed Quirks. Pulling his hands apart, a shadowy double manifests in the space between until it matches Kosho one for one.
The shadow clone walks forward with the same subtle swagger that Kosho has been unable to train out of himself. It gets close to the pedestal with the key and reaches out to touch it. The moment the featherlight hand crosses the edge of the white light laying on the top of the pillar, a ring reveals itself in the floor below and a sudden blue portal sweeps from a point near the ceiling to speed down into it. The shadow boy is sucked into its surface and flung away into the unknown.
<Distance break. 3 shots left. Yeah, teleporter for sure.... See, that's all you saw, 'Sushi. Not ME, bro!>
With irritation coming through the psychic link, Yasushi gives a dismissive mental grunt.
Oda fetches some marbles from a hip bag bound to his belt and rolls them across the spaces between his fingers. It helps him think. As he closes in on the pedestal, the rest of the team naturally clusters in beside him, in their usual places to either side.
<I want to see if there's a way to trick the mechanism. Trigger it again, Kosho.>
<Huh? Ya sure? That leaves only 2 shots left of that one.>
<Yes, I am. We can just meet up with Rasen later for a reload if we need to.>
<Well, okay...>
Kosho gets into the summoning stance again. Moments later, a dark shape is stumbling the short distance forward and tries to catch itself on the pillar. As soon as its arms grab hold, a blue ellipses slams down from above and disappears it into thin air.
Kae quiets her giggling behind a hand held up to her face mask. Yasushi rolls his eyes and shakes his head. Una quirks her head to the side and lifts her gaze in distant concentration. And Oda is crouched on the ground, intently watching the spot where the ring disappeared again beneath the floor. The galaxy marble he tried to jam it with is long gone.
<Squad leader, something's wrong. Surprise? Anger? Fear? Is everyone okay?>
Oda looks up to check on Una's face when that message comes across the link. He glances around at the other four members of his squad crowding around him. Everyone else starts searching, too, suddenly on alert. They turn in place. Hands hover near pouches and saya. They start to fan out a bit with their backs to each other so they can be alert for attack.
<Sound off.>
<I'm fine!>
<On alert.>
<Doing overwatch.>
<Huh? Are you guys not here with me?>
Kae gasps out loud and Una pulls a kunai. Yasushi is rigid with his focus on his Quirk. The focus bleed-over and his own pure adrenaline flood Oda's brain and he sweeps his squad again with wide, disbelieving eyes. Pink orange gray purple and him, cyan. No one else here. Illusion? Mental attack? Invisibility?
<Hey! Kosho! Tell me what you see!>
Except for Yasushi, everyone is moving like agitated bees and looking around in every direction. Una and Kae are shoulder to shoulder. The gray-garbed figure of Kosho backs towards the rest of the group with his helmet fixed on the hallway out of this chamber. He has a wakizashi held out horizontal in front of him, still in the dull matte saya.
<Huh? I can barely hear you guys or whatever! I'm back at the start! Didn't you get zapped too?>
<Look out! Enemy within!> The roar of Yasushi's mental voice cuts through the line and Una is too distracted to modulate. Chatter from the other team adds to mental noise.
<What did he say?> <Hey, confirm!> <Here? There? Whose? Where?> <Did you guys hear me? Game reset!!> <Are you serious? How many?> <Gray! Gray!> <Everyone, high alert. Take it seriously.> <You got it!> <On it.> <Yes.> <Returning now.>
The saya sweeps hard in a precise level arc, a movement that has been repeated hundreds of times. The gray figure leaves a jitter of motion trail, rate irregular and uneven, making the guard timing harder. Still, Una gets the throwing dagger swiping in time and diverts the strike so it only catches her blade. The force and awkward parry conspire to throw her off balance. She pivots a leg backward and counterbalances with her free arm.
Her hand passes over the pedestal.
Blue light slams down again, catching her halfway. Even the parts outside of the descending oval resonate ultrablue and her entire body disappears back to the start of the maze.
<FUCK!> The surge of disapproval and chastisement is cut off harshly in the middle.
Back in the key chamber, Oda, Yasushi, and Kae hurry away from the pedestal and try to encircle the figure of Marumaru. Her quirk Wasuremono has washed out all the light coming off her body, making her appearance muted and indistinct. The metal of her bug-like helmet is a matte gray and the edge meeting her gray peaked cap is blurred into obscurity. Her jacket billows at the shoulders from being tucked under her gear belt and crossed abreast. She relaxes into a natural sword stance with her shoulders down and her chin up. The saya-guarded blade hangs unmoving in front of her in a ready position.
Her foot slides into a forward stance. It is entirely silent. The sword rises one-handed into a higher position, fist above the eyeline, and ready to slash down. Maru's free hand hangs loose near her belt, almost like a gunslinger.
<Stealth quirk, of some kind.>
Yasushi, flooding the connection with a growing headache, adds in <They wait for us to act.>
<Best odds?>
<All at once.>
<Right!> <Do it!>
They rush in. Maru breaks backwards and towards Kae. Maru feints the downswing chop of the saya and Kae disappears in a cloud of smoke. Yasushi's head lunges out of the cloud, following the swipe of large hands. But Maru is already diving diagonally away, tumbling into a roll out of the encirclement.
Inside the mask, Hoge's mind is blazing. Excitement drowns out everything else. Fear. Regret. Guilt. Disgust. It is all buried under the avalanche. Every nerve ending is alive. Every second stretches out into possibilities. Beneath the mask, below eyes dialed as wide open as possible, Hoge is smiling.
Nothing has been like this thrill!
As soon as her feet get under her, something hard cracks itself apart on the helmet. Glass shards dust her clothes. On her boot, her elbow guard, and the ground around her feet, more marbles drive in hard. In reflex to avoid the stinging strikes, she stays in the balled up position, and rolls backwards over her shoulder again. She springs up on one arm, causing more marbles to buzz by and destroy themselves on the hard ground.
Maru can't hold herself long in a hand-stand like this. Her breath soundlessly hisses in its rush in and out of her helm. Even before she's all the way up, she's tilting off balance and falling backwards - onto her waiting feet.
She shakes the pain out of her wrist and leaves a fan of gray arcs in the air. Unfamiliar with Wasuremono, Yasushi puts his arms up in a boxing guard and hops backwards to give ground. Suddenly, Kae shifts places with half a marble scattered behind Maru's shoulder.
The wisps of smoke flicker on the edge of Hoge's vision. Her free hand slices out and grabs a clutch of pink veil and the long hair underneath. Unperturbed, Kae locks into a daggerhand and drives her fingers painfully into muscle between Maru's ribs. With manic brutality, Hoge pulls Kae's head back by her hair and folds her own body forward. The metal forehead of Marumaru's helmet smashes into the metal decoration of Kae's headband. Hoge aims the blow not at Kae's head, but at a place just behind it.
The steel plate chimes. Kae makes a cough mixed with a groan of agony. When Maru lets go, Kae immediately drops to the ground in a daze. She curls up and cries in hoarse sobs. White pain dots the stunned girl's vision. She tries to escape by confused instinct and exchanges position with more glass debris, ending up between Marumaru and Yasushi.
Yasushi has to halt his vengeful charge to avoid stomping on the sudden appearance of Kae. <What is wrong with this person? Is that a Shiketsu uniform?> He keeps one eye on Maru, who is clutching at the bruised rib and holding her saya out like a bat with the wrong hand. Yasushi kneels down to check on his stricken teammate.
<What's going on,> Una asks with agitation over her mental line.
<Empty line,> Oda barks. Surprise and annoyance come through, but no mental words. Oda stalks forward, the gaps between his fingers full of glass marbles shimmering in the light. <Sending Kae. Get her up and return here.>
Yasushi looks back at Oda when he receives that command. After a beat, he nods in understanding. Then he gets his arms under Kae's knees and behind her shoulders and hauls her up into a princess carry. Glaring death at Maru, he whispers in Kae's ear, "We're getting you to the others."
When he turns to jog towards the pedestal, Maru begins to run forward, and Ora throws his arms in a perfect baseball pitch. A shotgun of glass marbles fires off at Maru, striking her in the head, the shoulder, the chest and the kidneys. Some strike her in the hip, or ricochet off the saya, leaving perfectly curved dents in the wood. Inside the helmet, Hoge yells out in pain, but Wasuremono has never been keyed this high before. Her scream is counteracted even before it forms in her throat.
Maru crouches into a tight guard. Everything with even thin armor or padding on it is covering every part that isn't. The saya is held out across her to catch whatever blows it can. The marbles on the ground unnaturally launch themselves back up at Maru and keep her locked in place.
Yasushi gets to the pedestal and props Kae up on her feet. <Look alive. Concussion maybe?> He lets her slump on the bright, white pedestal and hurries backwards so the blue portal misses him. She disappears from the chamber, spirited away to the rest of the squad.
Hoge is no longer smiling. Her heart pounds in her ears, and new bruises keep time all across her skin. Whenever she takes in a gulping breath, her left side complains. If it weren't for the portal trap, getting even this far might have been impossible. That idea keeps Hoge in a razor focus. Her anger is ice, ground to a blade edge. She takes a momentary pause in the hail at her to switch her sword back to her dominant hand. She is so tired.
She is not leaving without the key.
Yasushi rolls his head to crack his neck. He pumps his elbows towards each other behind has back, and his sternum pops. Then he gets into a low stance with his hands open on front of him. Ready to grapple. The burly youth barrels forward with his eyes blazing.
Maru throws herself into a forward roll, forcing him to compensate with a turn. Oda sweeps his hands towards himself, and scattered shards from smashed marbles speed along the ground. They orient like caltrops, jagged edges in all directions, right in Maru's path. Just before entering a second roll right through the debris, Maru pushes off with hands and feet, and monkey vaults over.
Oda tries to lift them up to pelt at her from behind, but she turns the landing arm into a pivot and swings her legs around at his shins. He easily jumps over the improvised kick. The shards clatter back to the floor as his concentration breaks. Yasushi kicks his foot through the glass and sends some fragments into Maru's head and shoulders, but they do nothing but silently deflect off the hardened costume pieces there.
Maru smoothly tumbles to her feet and takes a moment to jump backwards once, then again, making space from the technicolor ninjas and keeping both in sight. She's sweating in her costume. It's a struggle to force herself to breathe deeply, and moving like this is aggravating her rib. The adrenaline is helping but not enough. If she keeps playing defense then she'll be the one to break first.
Hoge forces herself back into the well-drilled basic sword stance. She carefully sidesteps with her back facing the walls. Oda and Yasushi circle with her. Oda is moving his arms in long, fluid motions, gathering discarded marbles and broken glass into smaller piles. His eyes are on Maru. He goes by the sound. Yasushi is trying to burn her with just the fury in his eyes. Beneath the face mask, his nostrils are flaring. He takes in huge lungfuls of air as his hands clench, release, clench, release.
Hoge finds her place and plants her feet. Three beats pass. Oda thrusts a palm forward with all his power. A blast of marbles launches itself from the ground like ocean spray. Maru runs into it and slashes through, taking blows to the head and arms. When she sprints forward, the only sounds are scattered marbles tinkling like rain on the floor.
Yasushi takes the opening and checks her waist with his shoulder. Automatically, his powerful arms encircle her in a crushing grip. As he locks into the grab, he watches his arms pass into the colorless blur he tackled, and his eyes go wide. Yasushi feels weight on his shoulder, then it rolls over top it, and onto his back.
Oda watches Maru leaving a broken-projector fantascope trail of herself tumbling over Yasushi as just another obstacle. He tries to process what he's seeing even as his years of practice take over and begin pelting his last few pocketed marbles at the optical illusion.
His glass bullets strike the shapes of Maru again and again as she serpentines and pirouettes in her rapid approach on him. Each and every time, he hears the marble fly past and smash itself against the ground some distance away, except for the first couple that catch Yasushi in the back of the head and small of his back.
His conscious mind catches up with his unconscious thoughts when she gets close to striking distance with him. He slides back, parting the glass shards as he does so. And he readies himself to lead his target.
Yasushi undoes his belt and loops it around his left fist, leaving the rest to dangle free. Then he kicks out to turn in place and whips the belt through Maru's afterimages in heavy sweeps as he rushes to backup his squad leader.
Marumaru is electric with singular focus. Her skin feels iced over. Her core blooms with fire. There is no sound left to her in all the world. When her legs pump her forward, it feels like the world slides past as she remains still. When her sword arm rises up, it feels like summoning thunderclouds. The present moment stretches before her to the point of breaking. She makes sure that the strength of her body pushes into the core of the earth. The saya descends.
Oda watches the image of Marumaru freeze in place. His fingers spread. His hand snaps up. He fires a fan of marbles up between himself and Maru's head. In delight and shock, he watches a delayed smear of motion that is Maru's head snapping back from the force of the marble catching her in the top lens of her helmet.
Before he sees it move, he feels the saya catch him on his outstretched hand. The chamber fills with his bestial scream. Three fingers broken.
Maru curses inwardly as she's thrown backward by the blow. She stumbles, unbalanced, neck sore, right into Yasushi. Oda can't revenge on her without catching his teammate in the volley, so with his eyes red with tears and a snarl under his mask, he lunges at her with his good hand. If he can get a grip on her, too, there will be no escape.
Yasushi flings the belt across Maru's chest and shoulder. He grabs it with both hands and pulls it back and tight against her. She immediately drops her sword to grab at his hands and tries to pull them down in a bid for freedom. It's no use. He is much stronger than her.
Her trick with the light is fading. It's hard to tell, since she's still perpetually out of focus, but her body language calls her exhausted. Half out of his mind, Oda snatches at her too. That's when Maru pushes herself back against Yasushi, as if to throw them both to the ground, but he won't be so easily tricked. He plants himself like a mountain.
Her legs kick up. Oda moves to grab her ankles. She kicks the broken hand held protectively near his body, and he screams again, halting. She stomps up Oda's torso and pushes off him, and he falls backwards on his ass, slipping into the marbles and broken glass and falling to his back. Maru flings her legs up over her head, still holding on to Yasushi's hands. She uses the momentum to stretch the belt, then pivot free of it. Her flip ends with her feet on Yasushi's broad shoulders.
She smacks him in the eyes with a pair of slaps.
He lets out a cry of pain and frustration that nearly becomes a bad word. Temporarily blinded, he stumbles around when Maru jumps off his shoulders. He can't hear where she landed. Yasushi rubs his watering eyes and hurries to look all around himself, then spots Oda struggling with her as she hauls him towards the pedestal by the ankles.
Yasushi picks up his belt and throws it at her, and she braces to take it, but keeps going. He picks up her sheathed sword and throws it at her, and she cringes in clear fear, but it bounces off her and clatters on the ground nearby. He starts to run forward and scoops up some glass, then throws it at her as best he can without cutting himself. She lets go of Oda's leg to guard herself that time with one arm, being especially protective of that side.
Perfect. Yasushi rushes in, ready to piledrive this insane asshole into the ground. He aims for that side, and is going to really enjoy grabbing her right there where it hurts with as hard a grip as he can. He hopes he can break a bone. He's getting up to full stride so he can tackle her down and run her over before the big slam.
Hoge dives forward at the last moment she can. She lands with all her weight on Oda and knocks the wind from his lungs with a wet cough. In his momentum, Yasushi blasts past and tackles into the pedestal. He roars in absolute rage and does his best to twist himself away and go for Maru one last time, but disappears into blue light before he can touch her.
The chamber is a ruin. Hoge is covered in bruises and a few punctures that got through her costume. Her saya is beat to hell. She knows she deserves the lecture that's going to come out of that. Spent, she rolls off of Oda's prone body. He struggles to catch his breath and coughs a bit on every inhale.
"What-- the- --fuck-"
Maru's mask releases a hiss of steam through the front filter. It smells like peppermint, lavender, and wood dust. A few breaths later, and a voice comes from the helmet as if from down a hallway.
"Pulling the knife was too much."
Oda's first instinct is anger. His squad was the one that got attacked, this Shiketsu ninja bitch was the aggressor. But the more he thought about it, the more he could see the twisted logic in it. She clearly had real weapons that she was not using, which is more than any of them could say.
<We need medical rendevous. Set it up. Meet at entry pit when able.>
<Got it.> <Fucking cunt.> <Language.>
"Why aren't you real ninja?"
Oda screws up his face at that and forces himself to push up into a sitting position. "What's that mean?"
Maru sits up too, and gets into crossed legs. "Those weren't shinobi arts. No ninjitsu that I can see. Why dress like ninja and not train like them?"
"What? That's all fake stuff. It's just the gimmick of our hero school, mostly. We train for field work and espionage but a quirk's a quirk."
Maru shakes her head in a mix of disappointment and disgust. "I'm extra glad I didn't get into my safety school now."
Oda furrows his brow. "...Hanh? Hey, your safety school was the dream pick I worked hard to qualify for. Be careful with your words."
The expressionless mask stares through him. Then the voice - a little louder, a little firmer, a lot closer - says to him, "I'm the worst in my class."
Oda blinks slowly at her. He truly has no response.
"I'm the class representative of 1-D because I can get good grades but I am the worst hero student in the entire school. Combat? Bad. Everyone else is a genius. Quirk? A joke. Let's not get into it. And the actual heroism thing?"
Maru looks up and into the middle distance. Oda is dumbfounded. Is she reminiscing right now? She broke his hand.
"Well, I think I've met all the top heroes of the coming generation, let's just say that." She gets up and brushes glass bits and floor dirt off her costume. Then she bends down to offer a hand to Oda. It's her left, for his. He is still holding his broken right hand to his chest, above his heart.
After a moment's hesitation, he takes her hand. She helps him to his feet.
"Everything I learned was because of Shiketsu. So I'll say whatever I want about other schools. The worst of them all still beat you."
He clicks his teeth at that. But he doesn't respond.
"Before you go," She is so arrogant! "I want to show you something I noticed when I watched you all do your floor routine at the beginning." With her right hand, Hoge draws a shuriken from a hip pouch and spins it directly at the key on its pedestal. The shadow of the flying star crosses the pedestal light and instantly the blue portal once again appears. Before it can begin its descent, the shuriken whizzes past - straight through the key.
The hologram shudders before restabilizing. In the next instant, the portal goes past, slamming into its ring within the floor. The shuriken bounces harmlessly off the opposite wall and clatters on the ground.
"Why wouldn't a real key get teleported away, too? Baaaaaaaka."
With the last word she roughly shoves him into place next to the pedestal. Oda stares at Hoge. Hoge watches him, with her hands on her hips. Oda looks at the key. Really looks at it. The sparkle doesn't match an overhead light.
He sighs. He swipes his hand through the key hologram and watches the light bands dance back into place as the teleport trap takes him away.
Hoge limps around, now that the adrenaline is through her. She picks through the room for her fallen hat and returns it to her head, taking an extra moment to ensure the school emblem is visible. She fetches her battle-injured saya and reattaches it securely to her back again so it doesn't interfere with her movements. She walks the long way around to pick up her shuriken and put it back into place with the others in their row.
And she begins her long investigation of the patterned walls of the chamber. The only notable difference from the smooth surfaces of the rest of the maze she's seen. Eventually, tracing her fingers through the etched lines, she feels what she was looking for. One of the rectangular sections pulls out and up on hidden arms, revealing a little square alcove in which is mounted a red keycard.
Hoge removes her helmet and shakes her hair free. She wipes her scentless sweat off her face with her sleeve. And she carefully slides the keycard into the helmet, in the space behind her head, before securing it back on and latching it firmly behind the neck.
Hoge can feel a familiar rumbling beneath her feet. Something to do with the retrieval? She backs away from the wall with her senses wide open. She expects danger from any direction. Wasuremono rises up like a bodyguard, leaving her tired but wired. Her nerves are starting to fray and hunger is already gnawing at her. But everything gets pushed down to a distant second place after staying at high alert.
As she backpedals, Hoge notices something. Inertia. Her balance is telling her that she's rotating, but her stance is telling her she's staying still. She whips around to look at the hallway out of this room, but the path is sealed by a shutter that she didn't even notice closing. When she runs towards the obstruction, the mysterious sensation is even more obvious.
The entire room is rotating! The maze changes!
Her gloved hands catch her run, braced against the shutter.
I don't know the path to get out of the labyrinth!
The impressively silent action of the shutter pulls it into the complex of machinery underground. The floor returns to its unbroken expanse. Hoge is looking down a long hall path that lacks the hard right-angle turn that led her to this chamber. The shadows lay across different patterns, from different fixtures above. And the path is not empty.
Hoge's breath comes in harder. Her emotions shift across the tiny distance between anxiety and disdain. When she steps forward, she has to force herself to unclench her fists and relax her shoulders. A mantra comes to mind. It's one that she's had to use in several social encounters with this girl.
Calm. Cool. Professional. Respectful distance. Collected. In control. Calm. Cool. Professional. Respectful...
There in the straight hall is a member of her own class. Someone she has to provide good example and appropriate support to. Someone she is responsible for, in some small way. A small way that grinds in her guts like desert sand.
Brown hair.
Black habit.
Lethally armed.
The Gun Nun: Last Rite.
The accused American. McCathy Sally.
Sally turns her way. Hoge marches forward. Maru's mask trails a white haze of aromatic steam.