*spike*
"Kuga Natsuki?" I blinked, and carefully did not think about what this person asking me might be capable of. Actually meeting her in person left me once again running up against the limitations of my previous knowledge about the HiMEs - she was cute.
Not elegant, not distant, and not in the least forbidding; she was none of the things you might expect from the tea drinking or the traditional house... or, for that matter, from the First District incident, either.
Beautiful, yeah, sure - I'd clued in by now that that was pretty much to be expected. She was taller than any of the HiME I'd met so far (and, in fact, taller than any of the ones I'd meet later), and somehow seemed slimmer, perhaps because Yukino's build was so beyond the pale that my subconcious didn't compare them. And her degree of self-posession was just as advertised, but that didn't mean anything - I could easily see her as some plantation daughter in the antebellum South, for instance, and...
Dammit, the woman looked like she was born to wear freckles!
"I have no idea," I told her - which was nothing less than the truth.
"Ara? And yet, she told me to come talk to you if I had any questions..." It was eerie. She didn't give the slightest hint of being anything more than curious or, at worst, slightly concerned, yet some instinctive voice in the back of my mind was hopping up and down in the back of my mind, screaming for me to run for my life... and would have been, even if I hadn't known better than to buy the act.
Unfortunately, running wouldn't have done any good, and I was completely at a loss for what was going on. "About what? And when?"
She looked at me for a moment, and then, quite abruptly, that ominous... whatever-it-was... that had been lurking behind the pleasantries abruptly vanished as she pulled out a cell phone and waved it at me. "Natsuki sent me an email, last night.
She said she'd talk to me this morning, but..."
Huh. "The last I saw her was about one in the morning - she seemed fine, then, and was saying she'd be talking to you sometime this morning..."
"Hmmm." She frowned. "Well, I suppose she can take care of herself, but it still worries me... And I still need to find that substitute for Sakomizu-sensei..." She shook her head, then smiled at me. "Thank you anyway, though!"
"I'll let you know if I see her," I promised, then, on the spur of the moment, decided to take advantage of the opportunity. "Oh! Before I forget, this-" I handed her the envelope I'd been fiddling with earlier, since there'd been a spare set sitting on the copier and I could easily give those to Akira... assuming she didn't get ahold of one of the other sets on her own, of course. "-is another copy of what she was planning to talk to you about. It'll probably be a bit surp-"
A connection closed in my brain, and my eyes widened. "Shit."
"You've thought of something?"
"...I think she might have kidnapped Sakomizu."
Boy, I'm making this a bit of a habit, aren't I?
Ja, -n
(ETA: line breaks fixed)
===========
===============================================
"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."
"Kuga Natsuki?" I blinked, and carefully did not think about what this person asking me might be capable of. Actually meeting her in person left me once again running up against the limitations of my previous knowledge about the HiMEs - she was cute.
Not elegant, not distant, and not in the least forbidding; she was none of the things you might expect from the tea drinking or the traditional house... or, for that matter, from the First District incident, either.
Beautiful, yeah, sure - I'd clued in by now that that was pretty much to be expected. She was taller than any of the HiME I'd met so far (and, in fact, taller than any of the ones I'd meet later), and somehow seemed slimmer, perhaps because Yukino's build was so beyond the pale that my subconcious didn't compare them. And her degree of self-posession was just as advertised, but that didn't mean anything - I could easily see her as some plantation daughter in the antebellum South, for instance, and...
Dammit, the woman looked like she was born to wear freckles!
"I have no idea," I told her - which was nothing less than the truth.
"Ara? And yet, she told me to come talk to you if I had any questions..." It was eerie. She didn't give the slightest hint of being anything more than curious or, at worst, slightly concerned, yet some instinctive voice in the back of my mind was hopping up and down in the back of my mind, screaming for me to run for my life... and would have been, even if I hadn't known better than to buy the act.
Unfortunately, running wouldn't have done any good, and I was completely at a loss for what was going on. "About what? And when?"
She looked at me for a moment, and then, quite abruptly, that ominous... whatever-it-was... that had been lurking behind the pleasantries abruptly vanished as she pulled out a cell phone and waved it at me. "Natsuki sent me an email, last night.
She said she'd talk to me this morning, but..."
Huh. "The last I saw her was about one in the morning - she seemed fine, then, and was saying she'd be talking to you sometime this morning..."
"Hmmm." She frowned. "Well, I suppose she can take care of herself, but it still worries me... And I still need to find that substitute for Sakomizu-sensei..." She shook her head, then smiled at me. "Thank you anyway, though!"
"I'll let you know if I see her," I promised, then, on the spur of the moment, decided to take advantage of the opportunity. "Oh! Before I forget, this-" I handed her the envelope I'd been fiddling with earlier, since there'd been a spare set sitting on the copier and I could easily give those to Akira... assuming she didn't get ahold of one of the other sets on her own, of course. "-is another copy of what she was planning to talk to you about. It'll probably be a bit surp-"
A connection closed in my brain, and my eyes widened. "Shit."
"You've thought of something?"
"...I think she might have kidnapped Sakomizu."
Boy, I'm making this a bit of a habit, aren't I?
Ja, -n
(ETA: line breaks fixed)
===========
===============================================
"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."