[SS] Arduous Tasks

"Well, that hardly seems like enough time." He commented (more as an aside to himself than to Kuroko, as he was well aware that she had little patience to spare him and even less mercy). "Anyone can see that I'm not the one to blame here." He looked to the girl in his arms for some kind of support. "Look, I'm helping! Aren't I?" He didn't bother pleading the same with Natsumi, considering her usual disposition. If he'd had a hand free he might have even moved to stop her from talking.

"Honestly, what have I done to earn this low opinion of yours?" Hadn't he, in the past, displayed only the most chivalrous behaviour? The cast on his arm was testament to his selfless and helping nature.

He forgot the instance where she had caught him attempting to orchestrate a test for the new 'hydrodynamic school swimsuit'. (It had been a micro-bikini.)

Or the time he had acted as the 'drama coach' for the school's production of Romeo and Juliet. (With him filling in as Romeo, of course.)

Even the incident involving the art teacher and a heated debate about the depiction of the human form in renaissance art (In which he had nearly convinced said teacher to strip to prove her point.)

And that was without mentioning the numerous occasions where her official business as a Judgement officer had resulted in their paths crossing, usually while he was in the company of some woman or another.

He could not think for a second where the twin-tailed girl could have gotten her impression of him.

Guy Li was not a man known for his finesse to Shirai Kuroko. If she had to place his position on some sort of hierarchy, then she would inevitably place him below even the common ape (Especially given the ape could still be gentle creature, even if it was rough around the edges).

It was obvious what would end up happening at this stage if he tried explaining anything to her. The mental filters of a girl like Shirai Kuroko were a sight to behold.

But, the twintailed girl didn’t even attempt to take the plunge. As much as she may have wanted to teleport right above him and give him a solid drop kick to the head, she was unable to do so. After all, there was someone else who he was supporting.

“Calm down, Shirai Kuroko. This isn’t a hostage situation,” the girl muttered as she took a few deep breaths.

Besides, as much as her instincts told her to lash out at him, she knew full well that things could not be that simple when a certain dorm manager (who had placed them all here to begin with) was absolutely looming. She was not entirely devoid of restraint.

“Onee-sama. I think you’re more suited for this.” The girl crossed her arms as she quickly glanced towards Mikoto before resuming her dagger-like glare towards Guy. In the end, first impressions were truly a powerful foundation.

A sigh escaped Natsumi’s lips; she was technically at fault here. It wasn’t that she’d wanted to put the blame on Guy – God forbid, who would have such an idea?! No. It was simply that if she caused a ruckus here, only negative things would come out of it. So, Natsumi swallowed her well-developed pride, and uttered.

“…Yeah. He was helping out… for once.” She added that last bit as if the idea of complimenting him was akin to cutting her skin away.

Cracks of electricity emanated from the girl’s brown bangs. If looks could kill, then surely, it was time to call Anti-Skill and have her arrested on the account of murder. Yet, Mikoto scraped by and managed to keep her calm.

What most helped wasn’t Kuroko’s intervention, but the sight of the girl that Guy was carrying in his arms. She seemed quite familiar, and a realisation clicked in her mind. Her face changed from a dreadful, hate-filled scorn to that of a compassionate, perhaps even a little saddened, smile.

“How are you doing, Haruna-san? It has been a while.” She spoke with sudden formalness.

Natsumi, who was finally getting over the pain of getting run over by a wheelchair, rose to her feet and pointed towards the wheelchair; with a glare that indicated that Guy did not need to hold her any longer than he already was. How ridiculous was this man?

The girl in a beautiful green dress, at first seemingly distraught by the commotion she seemed to have caused, however quickly regained her spirits and answered Mikoto with a beamy smile.

“Misaka-san! It has been a while, I hope that you have been well! You too, Shirai-san and Hujisaka-san!”

Natsumi nodded with, surprisingly, a sincere smile.

...Yet the red elephant remained in the room.

“…and… who might this be?” Haruna asked in utter confusion. “I seem to recall we were in the School Garden… What might a man be doing in such a place?”

"I'm the new English teacher." Guy declared simply. "I don't think we've met, Haruna was it?" He didn't get the same dangerous presence from this girl as the other three, but he had to be prepared for the possibility that she shared their cruel streak. As he had found, sometimes the most delicate flowers bore the sharpest thorns. "You can call me Guy. It's a pleasure to meet you, young lady."

In what may have been the first demonstration of common sense and self-preservation he had shown in the entire time they had known him, he carefully placed the girl back into her wheelchair as best he could and dusted himself off.

"Sorry about that, this thing makes it kinda hard to move around freely." He patted the cast on his arm. "I hope the ride wasn't too uncomfortable." As though resigning himself to the firing squad, Guy rolled his shoulders and took a deep breath, turning to face Kuroko and Mikoto. "Now, I believe you were accusing me of something?" If he was going to receive the brunt of their anger, he'd rather see it coming. But he wouldn't go down without at least a parting shot. He glanced at Natsumi. "How did you end up in that position in the first place, anyway?"

"You can call me Guy. It's a pleasure to meet you, young lady. Sorry about that, this thing makes it kinda hard to move around freely. I hope the ride wasn't too uncomfortable."

“No, it’s alright, thank you very much.” Haruna felt a slight sense of bashfulness from this man’s straightforwardness, and a slight blush on her cheeks appeared. 

Nonetheless, she smiled gently. It seemed that, unlike many of the Tokiwadai girls, she grew a certain habit of dealing with men to a degree where being princess carried didn’t have her rile up in embarrassment.

"Now, I believe you were accusing me of something? How did you end up in that position in the first place, anyway?"

“Why do you always suppose I’m the one provoking my problems? Rich implication coming from you, of all people!” Natsumi expressed indignantly, clearly offended that she was assumed to be the main perpetrator of this situation. How rude could this hypocrite be?!

“Now now…” Haruna waved a hand in a vain effort to cool off Natsumi’s irritation. 

She turned her wheelchair to face Guy properly – and it was to be noticed that it was quite a traditional wheelchair. One you didn’t really see around Academy City due to its lack of any technological inventions.

“Nac– Hujisaka-san is right, I’m the one who got a little carried away… I thought it’d be a little fun to rush down the hallway and didn’t notice someone was there…”

This brought a shocked expression to everyone’s – save for Natsumi’s – faces. She had said it in almost such a carefree way that it could almost be forgotten that she had ignored a basic safety principle.

“Uuuuuh...”

To be honest, Kuroko couldn’t help but feel out of place. Between the barbarian (okay, maybe he wasn’t being barbaric for once) carrying some girl she had never met before as well as the girl and Mikoto recognizing each other, she couldn’t help but feel like a third wheel.

Moreover, this girl called Haruna had recognized her and called her by name. Had she ever met this girl before? Would it be rude to say she had not known who the newcomer was?

Kuroko’s jaw could only drop as she mulled over the question.



But, she could not let that hold her.

She may have been a deceptive girl on the outset when it came to her own selfish goals, but she still had an air of cordiality that she needed to maintain. In other words, she needed to gather information, pronto.

So, she closed her mouth, tugged at Mikoto’s sleeve like a child, and asked a very simple question.

“Onee-sama? Who is she?”

“Nac– Hujisaka-san is right, I’m the one who got a little carried away… I thought it’d be a little fun to rush down the hallway and didn’t notice someone was there…”

"I see. Well, be careful from now on, alright?" The new girl, Haruna, seemed gentle enough. Certainly not the sort to cause trouble on purpose. At least no one had gotten hurt this time, so he supposed there was no need to take it any further than a gentle reminder. "What were you doing up so early anyway?" He wasn't meaning to pry, but curiosity got the better of him. Surely anyone with the choice would still be asleep at this time of the morning? He certainly would have been if he'd had the option.

“Thank you… Ahhh, yes, you must not know me. I’m sorry.”

Once Guy had eased Haruna back onto her mobility device, she spun around to properly face Kuroko once hearing the question the red-haired girl had uttered. Perhaps had she not completely heard what was said, but she could guess the contents of it easily enough.

Her long, partially braided hair and light green dressed fluttered lightly as she did so.


“My name is Yuki Haruna. I am the daughter of one of the teachers who work here, and while I normally reside outside of Academy City, I was given permission to visit my mother!” She brought her hands together sweetly as she said this, a fond smile prefacing her following explanation meant to answer both Kuroko and Guy’s questions. “I have heard much of the Judgement officer who is also said to be Misaka-san’s sidekick, and I could only conclude that you are the famous Shirai-san!”

Not one ounce of malice could be measured in her words, nay, it seemed to be pure admiration that Haruna exerted at the sight of the pig-tailed girl. Had there been a specific reason, or was she the type to be overjoyed at any meeting of any sort? No one could tell for the moment, as Haruna ended her explanation there.

“She’s the daughter of the teacher you stood in for a while back.” Natsumi slightly nudged Guy and muttered under her breath, for an additional bit of context.

The daughter of one of the teachers? It was hardly the answer she had expected to hear, but one she could come to accept given the circumstances. She would have questioned what kind of mother works so far away from her daughter that they could only see each other so sparingly, but in retrospect, the same could be said for the parents of every student in Academy City.

Though, one could question how applicable that was for people from Tokiwadai like Kuroko. She was the daughter of a pair of a pair of convenience chain magnates, after all. That kind of thing would inevitably create some level of distance between parent and child.

“I have heard much of the Judgement officer who is also said to be Misaka-san’s sidekick, and I could only conclude that you are the famous Shirai-san!”

“Ah, how flattering.” Shaking off any form of confrontational tone, she moved closer and closer to Mikoto and melting into an almost perverse smile. “To have heard of me as onee-sama’s one-and-only. Truly the world knows no boundaries if people are spreading rumors of our relationship like this, onee-sama~”

Something was clearly lost in this impromptu game of telephone.

“She’s the daughter of the teacher you stood in for a while back.”

“Ah.” That made sense. “You know, with all that’s been going on here, I almost forgot that you weren’t always here, Cro Magnon-sensei.”

"That's so sweet. You can't remember life before I turned up." Guy willfully ignored her intended meaning and substituted his own. "I guess that means this 'primitive human' is one of your little gang now, right, sidekick-chan?" He decided, quite calculatedly, that giving Kuroko a cutesy nickname of his own would be enough to irritate her. It was a recurring theme of their interactions, escalation and a refusal to back down. She would insult him, or as was so often the case, assault him and he would intentionally anger her in the hopes that it might condition her to think twice next time.

And yet it never did.

Neither of them would learn their lesson.

It was decidedly different from his reason for teasing Mikoto and the others. In those cases, he drew amusement from their responses, like tickling a kitten or (in Natsumi's case) prodding a tiger, there was enjoyment to be had in seeing them react.

But between him and Kuroko, it was war.

Her brow furrowed. Her mouth morphed into a scowl. To that brunette, the acrid words she had thrown at the man with the position of ‘teacher’ before her had been deftly deflected back towards at her. Though, she was a lady of Tokiwadai. Even when hurling weapons and taking damage, she could nary afford to let herself lose composure. Those transformations to her face melted away in an instant as a far more insidiously courteous one took its place.

“Allow me to intercede here, dear Cro Magnon-sensei.”

With her hands to her face, Kuroko gave off a chuckle that would give the stereotypical rich girl a run for her money.

“Your presence is as like that of a horse or a mule. Such is the difference between a sidekick and you. For as long as time weathers everything down, the one thing that is truly irreplaceable to someone like Onee-sama will be her sidekick.”

Was her logic sensible? Had she avoided going too overboard? The answer was a 100% NO. However, Shirai Kuroko would be damned if she let the man before her have a leg up. That was essential to war.

“Hey…”

“Oi…”

A frown, that was born not of anger but simply of pure confusion, drew itself commonly across Mikoto’s and Natsumi’s faces as the latter’s eyes squinted slightly.

The atmosphere had suddenly grown very thick in an absurd rivalry between the two people you would expect the least… 

And while Mikoto would have tried to stop them, she quickly came to realise that given that they were all commonly damned to spend the day together, it was best for them to sort out their differences on their own. It would be too difficult and way too exhausting to handle this idiot and that idiot over the course of a whole day…

The only positive vibe came from Haruna, who smiled gently as if witnessing two lovebirds teasing each other relentlessly in their awkwardness. She clasped her hands together with a small exclamation of happiness.

“Tokiwadai sure has grown lively around here! It has been a while since I have seen so many things going on in such little time. I assume it must be thanks to you, Guy-sensei!”

Unbeknownst to her, the pure sentiment of discomfort and slight shudder that ran through the three girls at the idea that anyone would acknowledge this man as a positive source of influence and as a teacher…

"Hey! Horses and mules are humble, noble animals. There's nothing wrong with an honest day's hard work. Not that I'd expect you to understand." A pampered princess couldn't empathise with a beast of burden, after all.

"Speaking of hard work..." Guy sought to turn the topic of conversation back to the matter at hand. They had been assigned a task to complete, and though he felt perfectly at ease shirking his responsibilities, he preferred to do it someplace close by so he could at least pretend to be working when someone came to check up on him.

Being lazy took skill if one wanted to get away with it.

“Tokiwadai sure has grown lively around here! It has been a while since I have seen so many things going on in such little time. I assume it must be thanks to you, Guy-sensei!”

"Well, I don't like to brag..."

That was a lie.

"But as a teacher, it's my duty to bring out the best in people around me." He shrugged. It would have been laughable to hear, had he not delivered that statement with such confidence and self assurance.

It took a good deal of willpower for Aiko to stifle her laughter at the scene unfolding in front of her. From the sound of the crash and shriek she'd heard just moments before, Aiko wouldn't have guessed that the scene would end up so funny. The pair she was following out of sheer boredom and curiosity had made their way to the site of this most harmless of accidents. Their arrival swiftly followed by the back and forth banter so characteristic of her favorite odd ball of a teacher. Though his presence here was quite unexpected.

“Tokiwadai sure has grown lively around here! It has been a while since I have seen so many things going on in such little time. I assume it must be thanks to you, Guy-sensei!”

"Well, I don't like to brag... But as a teacher, it's my duty to bring out the best in people around me."

That was it, that was the last she could take.

"Ahahaha!"

Aiko couldn't contain her laughter any further. The self assured way he had made that deceleration was too much.  

"Maybe you should focus more on bringing the best out of yourself Guy-Sensei. I think I see you slacking off far more then I see you teach."

Smart remarks aside, it looked like everyone was doing okay and no one was seriously hurt. Though Misaka's "One and Only" seemed to be edging ever closer to her snapping point, that is, if she hadn't already reached it. The fuse on that one seemed shorter than most.

This was clearly going nowhere. The more she wanted to put the beast of burden in his place, the more he would throw something back. Shirai Kuroko had a plethora of come backs she could use. But, he was hardly a slouch of an opponent and she could acknowledge that.

In the end, she, too, was one of the many young ojou-samas of Tokiwadai. So, she knew better than anyone that she needed to be the better person and let things slide. She would simply place her focus away from the barbarian of a teacher and place her attention on the newcomers.

She was hardly admitting defeat. It was merely a tactical retreat and she would stand by that statement. Such discretion was truly necessary in war.

But, with all that was being said, Kuroko couldn’t help but let herself slide one last comment in as she had heard Aiko and Haruna deliver their own two yen. Just one last blade. She rested her hand on her neck and addressed Guy.

“Well, Mr. Wonderful Teacher and Prideful Beast of Burden, shouldn’t you get to work?”

They couldn’t dawdle. After all, Shirai Kuroko knew all too well, what would happen if they had dawdled. Frankly, her neck couldn’t handle the punishment two days in a row.

Yes, this was her truce.

Mikoto, having only arrived not too long ago and having kept herself from the… rather energetic banter between Kuroko and Guy, set a hand on Kuroko’s shoulder. “Hey, Kuroko, let’s get going. I feel like a bad omen is coming real soon… Besides, we’re going to be exhausted by the end of the day if we keep arguing with this idiot.” Knowing the gesture would appease her almost immediately, Mikoto started half dragging Kuroko away by the shoulder.

As for Natsumi, she suddenly frowned and made a very fast stride out of the building, following along Mikoto and Kuroko but without a word to Guy.

Seeing this, Haruna seemed a little shocked.

“Li-sensei… You don’t seem quite popular with… many of your students” She had a small, innocent laugh that would almost mask the sharp, clackity sounds that quickly announced doom from the end of the hallway.

...

...

“Indeed, Li-sensei, your attempts at slacking with your students don’t seem to be going quite well, are they?” Were the words that were heard echoing the corridors.

“Li-sensei… You don’t seem quite popular with… many of your students”

"Oh, they're just the hot and cold types. It's just how they show affection." He may have sincerely believed that. Of the three girls, only Kuroko was completely hostile, having shown a willingness to cooperate only in the heat of a life-or-death struggle. But even she was a good girl at heart. "If you want to see what someone who really dislikes me, then you're in luck." He turned about to greet the Dorm Mistress with a beaming smile.

“Indeed, Li-sensei, your attempts at slacking with your students don’t seem to be going quite well, are they?”

"A pleasure to see you again, too!" He responded as if her words hadn't been laden with scathing disdain. "I would explain the situation, but we both know that would make no difference, don't we?"

“Hey, Kuroko, let’s get going. I feel like a bad omen is coming real soon… Besides, we’re going to be exhausted by the end of the day if we keep arguing with this idiot.”

With that Misaka and Koroko made their exit. Aiko decided to hang back for a few moments, she didn't want it to look like she was following them. Especially not after she'd made her exit and gone her separate way before. Though waiting a few moments might have been a bad idea since it seems the omen Misaka had mention was unfortunately accurate.

“Li-sensei… You don’t seem quite popular with… many of your students”

"Oh, they're just the hot and cold types. It's just how they show affection. If you want to see what someone who really dislikes me, then you're in luck."

“Indeed, Li-sensei, your attempts at slacking with your students don’t seem to be going quite well, are they?

"I would explain the situation, but we both know that would make no difference, don't we?"

Damn, why did she have to show up now. If I'm going to follow them, I'll need to sneak by the Dorm Mistress. Luckily right now it seems like she's distracted by Li-sensei so I might have a chance.

Aiko was not one the could be considered a rule abiding resident of this dorm. She boasted many infractions of the policies of the dorm such as sneaking out at night, returning past curfew, and the constant wearing of the fall uniform during the summer... something she was doing right now as it were. Many of such infractions she had yet to been punished for and it would continue to stay that way if Aiko could help it.

While the Dorm Mistress was being distracted, Aiko slowly began skirting the edge of the furthest wall from the mistress. While doing so, Aiko used her ability to block some light from getting to her, draping her in shadows so hopefully she wouldn't be noticed. One step at a time she made her way towards the door.