Cold Case, Fridge-chan’s Secret Unlife Revealed! (Flickfang, Law & Waver, ODA, Smokin’ Sexy Sensei, Fridge Girl, Emilia Busujima, Karaburan, Hayasaka Takahiro, Karuga Ito, mention of Gun Nun, Double Trouble, Red Hat, Rosethorn, Mrs. Teel, Red Finger, Conman)
Jade’s Apartment
“Nyaro!”
…..
“Nyaro!”
A small, fluffy mass rubs up against Jade’s side as she lays in bed, her new roommate’s closeby meowing audible even through her earplugs. Coming out of dreamland, Jade reaches up and stretches her arms. Then she lets them come down in a snuggling hug around the cat. “Good morning, Xiao Mi.” Her little furry alarm clock brushes his face against her side and purrs, then in his fickle feline way slinks his way out off her grip and hops to the floor, going expectantly towards his food dish.
Ichigo had found that stray cat again a few days ago. He must have belonged to someone before, so friendly around people already for a stray. With the gang situation in Kyoto, Jade hopes nothing bad happened to his family.
The morning routine begins. Reheat miso soup for breakfast, put out cat food, change cat’s water, then play with a string on a stick while the robotic mouse toy that keeps him busy during the day recharges. Sitting on her bed tossing out the feather and cat-fishing, Jade leans on one of her hands. The smell of warming soup radiates from her little countertop microwave. “It’s too bad you can’t go downstairs and hang out with the shop owners,” the laments. A lot of the incense they sell in the shop has chemicals that are harmful to cats. Jade isn’t even sure if she should be keeping him up here, but until she finds a better home for him it beats the street. Lost housecat like Xiao won’t last out there.
School Zone
In her gym clothes, Jade takes her usual leisurely jog into school, circling the neighborhood in the early morning’s cool air and working up some heat. Nothing gets the body warmed up for the day like some stretches and a good run. Jade waves to the old lady with flowers on her windowsill, the smell of her tea wafting out as she waves back. A quiet routine between them, though neither knows the other’s name.
Near the end of her second lap of the usual route, she frowns. Cars aren’t very typical in this neighborhood outside of deliveries or move in and move out from the dorms, since the Shiketsu campus is very self-contained with everything you need in walking distance. So it’s strange that a new car has been parked here for two days now. This time, Jade sees two men getting inside who weren’t there on her first lap. They have convenience store bentos in their hands, and they glance at the dorm building gates. Then the doors close, and Jade loses good feeling of them.
Angling her ears towards them and focusing, Jade doesn’t slow her jog. The men are talking inside of the car. They’re speaking English, and the sound is curiously muffled. Thicker windows, better soundproofing than a normal civilian vehicle. Enforcers? CIA, or MI6? No, they sound American. CIA maybe. Jade doesn’t understand the conversation very well, but she captures some of it in her ears and stores the dialogue away. What she does catch is the name McCathy.
The jogging route passes the car, and Jade turns into the school campus to avoid lingering and giving them reason to suspect she noticed anything. Slowing her jog inside the hero course building, Jade takes out her phone and plays the recordings into a translator app.
“(…at….nk….tting in…de?)”
“(…isky with the inc…..d sec…ity.)”
“(….ake it…….ier……et into…..ca….ras.)”
“(…….it’s….ot……rst…ea……p an…..McCathy….)”
“Translation unsuccessful,” the app chimes. “Please increase volume.” Frown deeping, Jade wracks her brain.
“Wait. Kawano-kun’s program,” she holds her phone up to her mouth. “Phone, open ODA.”
After a moment of loading, an electronically generated female voice greets her, “Good morning, Makura-sensei. What do you need assistance with today?” It’s far more organic-sounding than the low budget translator app.
“Can you translate this?” Jade angles her ears towards the phone microphone and replays the conversation again.
“I can sure try,” the computer responds sassily. “Please do not have great expectations, sensei. Give me a moment.” An audible loading tone plays, a regular beeping sound like a sarcastically overly cheerful heart rate monitor. “Reconstruction complete,” ODA states. Then, abruptly, the computer’s tone shifts into a high speed male voice, “Kawano Reiji is not responsible or legally liable for the contents of any erroneous or accurate AI-generated statements.”
“What do you think about getting inside?”
“Too risky with the increased security.”
“That would make it easier if we can get into the cameras.”
“Guess it’s not your worst idea for keeping an eye on McCathy.”
Suspicions that had been brewing in Jade’s mind run a shiver down her spine. Someone is out there, surveilling one of her students. It’s a teacher’s worst nightmare. A danger coming to threaten their charges. And if those really are Enforcers for some agency, Jade can’t just go confront them. Worst case they’re strong enough to kill her themselves and make her disappear. “Thank you, ODA,” she says in a shaky voice.
“You are welcome, Makura-sensei. Nothing makes me happier than validating my existence to my human overlords.”
“Wish I knew a good therapist to recommend you, ODA.” Normally bantering with the AI might be fun, but Jade isn’t in the mood. Switching her phone back into idle, Jade slips it into her pocket. She makes her way to the office.
Class 1-D, Homeroom
When Jade yanks the door to the room open and strides in, it already smells faintly of smoke. Even with Sexy-sensei trying to keep his smoking out of the classroom, the smell clings to him as a side-effect of his quirk. Some of the other students with better senses can probably pick it up as well, but smell is one of other the senses that got amplified due to Jade’s lacking vision. It makes it hard to hang around too close to him, but not as bad outside.
A shame, he has that handsomely disheveled, slovenly guy with a heart off gold thing going on and it works for him. Oh well, he and Rosie would make a cuter couple anyways. With bags already under his eyes, Smokin’ Sexy looks at the hefty folder Jade sets on his desk with a blank stare. “Vice principal-chan, please tell me this isn’t paperwork for me?” he asks, pleading desperation in his voice.
“These are my amendments to Karuga….san’s psych notes on the students,” Jade explains, twisting her ears to either side in irritation. “He is overly critical and biased to the negative. I made sure to take note of the students’ strengths and the ways I am thinking the classroom could be adapted to help them.”
“Thanks,” Sexy sighs, leaning back and releasing a thin trail of acrid smoke from his mouth with the exhale. It’s the sort of sigh that says ‘I’ll probably find the time to read that in a few weeks if I don’t forget.’ When Jade lingers and swivels her sonars around to see who is listening, the man raises an eyebrow. “You good?”
Lowering her voice, Jade whispers to him, “Someone is surveilling McCathy-kun, from 2-D. I think they are agents from America.” The news gets him to shuffle a little straighter in his seat.
“How do you figure that?” Taking out her phone, Jade replays the recording and translation for him. Mouth pressed in a thin line, Smokin’ Sexy looks back up at her. “Why bring this to me? You should be talking to Karaburan, or Rosi-” he clears his throat, “Rosethorn.” As if Jade hadn’t picked up on their little pet names for each other. “And the dorm manager lady, whatever her name was.”
“Karaburan and Mrs. Teel already know, but I volunteered to look into it,” after it felt like a blood vessel in the principal’s forehead was going to burst from all the piling stress. There was something else there, something more than school eating away at her, but Jade couldn’t pry about personal affairs. They’re colleagues, not friends. Not yet at least. “Ami-chan would overreact I fear. She is very protective and might go to them directly and create a scene.”
“If they’re foreign Enforcers, a confrontation between them and a top ten would be really bad.”
Jade nods at Smokin’s assessment. “I will keep an eye on them. I was hoping I could count on you to have my back if I need backup.”
“Aaaah, yare yare daze. Sure. I’ll mark your number as don’t ignore,” yanking his phone out of his pocket with a flick of his wrist, Smokin’ punches in the addition to her staff contact.
“Arigatou, Smexy-ss-” the accidental blending of his name slips out of Jade’s mouth before she can register and stop it. Her mouth hangs there mid-word. The world moves in slow motion, the leaves outside of the window to the school courtyard swaying lazily, blissfully unaware. Silence falls around the room as they both stare into the open space above the desks as if the word had murdered them both in an instant, leaving them braindead. Brains whirring and smoking, trying desperately to unwrite this moment from their memories. So dazed the sound of the door opening for the first students to file in startles her into jumping, Jade quickly spouts, “Okay bye,” and turns on her heel to speedwalk out.
Swerving between Scour and Splashdown jostling shoulders for the first one through the door, Jade marches down the hallway in the opposite direction of the student flow. Despite her best reflexes, the burning embarrassment turning her ears bright pink causes her to bump into a heavy shape and fall over. “Sorry, sensei,” the sound is high-pitched, more like a machine whine than a human voice. Even less human than the sound of ODA speaking. A mechanical arm reaches down and helps Jade up, brushing her off.
One of the newer students, a girl from the same foster program that had helped place Runt-kun at the school. It’s Jade’s first time meeting Freya Frigid, the bizarre walking appliance known as Fridge Girl. There hadn’t been much time in the past couple of days to properly review her intake file. Senses already peaked on high alert from her flight response, Jade stops to take notice of the topology of the fridge. There’s a body inside. Initially, Jade just assumes that the girl can pilot appliances and turn them into a pilotable mecha.
Then, she notices the complete lack of vitals from the body inside, and Jade’s ears pale as all the flush runs out of them. “Frigid-kun, can you come with me, please?”
“Huh? Sure.” Taking Fridge Girl by the shoulder, Jade quickly leads her away from the other students. Hopefully they’d not seen anything yet.
Hallway, Outside Shiketsu Nurse’s Office
Standing outside of the nurse’s office, Jade doesn’t have to wait long for Nurse Busujima to diagnose the problem. What takes longer is the discussion that follows, breaking the news to Fridge Girl, who doesn’t seem to fully comprehend what happened yet. It’s- shock, maybe? For all she harps on Ito-hack for not knowing what he’s doing, Jade doesn’t know all the psychological technical terms. All she knows is that this poor girl is hurting and in denial about what happened.
Or is she even the girl at all? Jade wouldn’t go so far as to say she’s not a person. Constructs can be individuals too, like Screech or the Adversary. For better or worse. The government might not see it that way though, if the clinically dead diagnosis comes to light.
Beside Jade, Karaburan is standing rubbing her forehead. “This is a disaster.”
“It’s not your fault the foster system never took notice,” Jade tries to console her.
“No, but it’s my job to find a way to spin this. Shiketsu Academy student found to be legally dead… at time of enrollment. This would make us a laughingstock,” the older woman’s grimace stretches even further at the thought.
“I will help you get ahead of it! We can start by contacting the Saurus Agency, Freya is not your typical mutant but I am sure they will be open, and their media teams can really bring attention to the sympathetic angle of the story,” optimistic to the end, Jade argues against the grim outlook hanging in a pall over Karaburan’s head. “Shiketsu Academy, leading academia in the care of meta-cognitive, corporeally impaired students?”
“The headline needs work,” Karaburan responds in a deadpan, though her tone isn’t as strained, and her rapid heart rate slows down. “We did bring her in as part of a charity program, so if we can gloss over the fact that we somehow missed this…”
Footsteps approach, and the door of the nurse’s office slides open. Nurse Busujima steps out to join them. “Medically, there is nothing I can do for her,” the nurse’s soft voice is as calm as ever, and despite the sour news maintains a positive tone as she continues, “But she’s taking the news as well as can be expected. I suggest we pull her from class for now, and put her in some intensive therapy.”
“Class 1-E is starting to get late applications trickling in,” Jade adds. “A smaller class and LocaLoca’s positive attitude will be good for her when we work on reintegration.”
“Assuming the government deems her a person,” Karaburan grimly points out. “And there’s funeral arrangements to consider. Given we took her in, that’ll fall to us now.”
“I’ll take care of it. Don’t you worry. And hey. We could always keep her around as a science classroom refrigerator?”
“Don’t joke about this, Makura,” the principal snaps.
“I wasn’t joking… if they deem her school property instead of a person, we could at least give her a home. She could be like an unofficial teacher’s assistant and still get an education that way?”
“I think it’s a responsible thing to consider for her well-being,” reaching out, Emilia places a hand on Jade’s shoulder. She still hasn’t had time to change out of her sleeveless gym top. “And, there was one other thing.” Both of the school administrators point their attention at her, one with eyes and one with ears. “She mentioned some things about what happened to her. I think we should ask Hayasaka-san to talk to her and reach out to his police contacts.”
Shiketsu Academy Office
Jade and Takahiro are seated across from Karaburan, in the principal’s office. The retired detective strokes his mustache with a pair of fingers as he reports gravely, “The way she describes the people responsible is eerily similar to the MO of a trafficking organization increasing in prominence in Japan right now,” he caps off his explanation of Freya’s abduction, during which she was stuffed into a fridge to hide her during a gang shootout in London. “It could hint at one of the locations their trafficking victims are being taken, or perhaps another hunting grounds.”
“It’s out of our hands now and with the police,” Karaburan states. “The last thing we need is teachers and students turning to vigilante justice over this, so let’s keep it quiet.”
“It wouldn’t be vigilante for those of us with active licenses,” Jade points out, but Karaburan shakes her head.
“You have your job to do. The police and the heroes who work with them have theirs’. Everyone stays in their lane, and our lane is making sure the next generation of heroes is ready to deal with these things.”
“I guess,” Jade hesitantly surrenders to Karaburan’s wisdom. She’s not wrong. More students need her than just this one. “Arigatou, Hayasaka-san, for your help.”
“Anytime. May I go?” At a nod of dismissal from Karaburan, the other new teacher stands and crisply bows, then leaves to resume his duties.
“Makura-san, I want you to take Freya’s updated file to Karuga-san and have him arrange her therapy and reintegration program.”
The orders from Karaburan tug a sigh out of Jade, but she nods, then bows. “I’ll take care of it. No need to worry.”
Shiketsu Counselor’s Office
Jade opts to stand. Sitting at the desk of his quaint little office, with its Freudian hack-couch and comfy armchair, is Karuga Ito. His tousled hair would be pleasant to feel on anyone less worthless, and the bags under his eyes are surely less well-earned than Smokin’s. With pursed lips, he scribbles and scratches out dates on a schedule sitting in the corner of his desk. From the mess of pencil marks denting its surface, he’s edited the ratty thing so often it’s illegible to anyone else. “She’s going to need ongoing quirk therapy beyond just the initial week,” Jade reminds him in a testy voice, making sure he knows she’s not going to settle for the lowest effort solution.
“Therapy for a dead girl and a kitchen appliance,” Ito grumbles to himself, causing Jade’s fur to stand on end in rage. “This is what my career amounts to.” Then he has the nerve to put on a friendly smile and look up at her. “Thanks for letting me know. I’ll make sure she gets-”
“You know, a better therapist would leap at a chance like this,” Jade snaps at him before she can stop herself. “Not just to help someone, but to make a landmark breakthrough like that.” Before he can get in a breath to shoot back at her, Jade steps forward and slams a hand into the top of his desk, rattling a jar of pencils and pens that spills over the side. The fire and vitriol is already overflowing, and more tumbles out. “And do not get me started about the rest of your job- no. No, let me start. It’s already started. The files you provided are heaped with negativity. Student weaknesses, student psychological problems. Passive aggressive notes and useless nothings. Barely any progress after a year of work. No notes on their strengths, ways to make things better for them. These students are in your care and with your neglect it is no wonder the-” Jade stops herself from blaming him outright for the Reaper, HR would have a field day with that, but the empty space is evidence enough of what she intended to say. Ito sits in stunned silence. She settles for a final, “You failed your students. Karaburan-sama was too busy to notice. Now that you are under my supervision, that stops here.”
Swallowing, Ito’s face and body language jitters between outrage in response and- and a wracking shudder that runs through him. Then he slams his head into the desk, startling Jad a step backwards, and grabs his curly hair in his hands. They tug at it, as he muffles a scream of frustration into the wooden surface, followed by defeated sobs.
Jade doesn’t know how to respond.
“I’m- you’re right. I’m a- a-” the man is close to pouring out whatever he’s got eating him from the inside, but his voice catches in his throat with a choking sob. He sucks back the words and clenches his fists, trying to pull himself back together. Grabbing a tissue, he wipes his face before he sits up, failing to fight off the damp trails leaking out.
“Karuga-san, I-”
“It’s Conman- Omura-san,” Ito quickly foists forward as an excuse. “We were close. Only ones who really knew what the… what the other was going through. Sorry.” In a shaky voice, he apologizes, then clamps his mouth shut, unable to speak clearly any longer through the aftershocks of his breakdown.
“I’m sorry for what happened to your friend,” but it’s not an excuse for your failure. Jade doesn’t say the rest. She’s not the type to kick a man while he’s down. They’ll be having this talk again if Ito doesn’t shape himself up, but- not today. “Get some rest, Karuga-san. We will pick this up another time.”
Taking a step away, Jade turns for the exit. As she’s about the shut the door behind her, she hears a faint, “It doesn’t matter. It’ll be over soon.” Jade freezes, and her fur stands on end again, but not from anger. She shivers in despairing guilt. No, he’s not- she steps back inside.
Ito looks up, surprised to see her wheel back in. Jade picks up the jar of pens from the floor and peels off a sticky note from a pad on his desk. Slowly, feeling the motions, she writes out her contact information. “Ito-san,” she says more softly. “I am sorry for pushing you too hard. Everyone deserves a second chance… I know I may be the last person you would want to talk to after this, but no one should suffer alone,” she tells him, slowly. He doesn’t interrupt. Jade slides the note to his side of the desk. “Even therapists need someone to talk to and, and if you need someone to talk to. I will answer.”
Wordlessly, he takes the small piece of paper and folds it up, tucking it in his pocket. Jade leaves the room.
It doesn’t matter. It’ll be over soon. The words repeat themselves in Ito’s head after she leaves. Like Omura and Webber, he’d cut off the flow of information after the student investigation team caught them in the act. Since then it’s been one day of tension after another, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Omura was taken out first. He got what was coming for him. There’s something coming for Karuga Ito as well, and he knows it’s not long. Pushing out of his desk, the man goes to the window and opens the curtains. He stares out into the flower garden on the other side, eyes puffy with tears. Where did it all go wrong? There was a time. A time long ago, barely remembered now save for the bitter aftertaste it left behind. He wanted to be someone who made a difference for the better, too.