---

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Holy shit.

Had she said that out loud? No?

“Holy shit,” Kanna mumbled. Her shock was blessedly short-lived though, and before the ballistic skateboard even made landfall she retrieved the tiny, weathered digital camera from her pocket. Quick as a flick she managed to snap a picture of the poor moron—was that the Sakaguchi brother? Figures—while he was still reeling from the blow.

She checked the little display screen and bit back a grin. Action shot. Minimal blur. Good stuff. When she heard Shiori and the Olympian Ogre mutter about things getting “crowded,” she waited patiently until she heard footsteps and took another picture of them walking away from their miserly victim.

Oh, shit, right. Ken.

Once the coast was only just clear, she scrambled out from her corner without even a second thought for her mutilated sandwich. Lunch was temporary, violence made headlines. She ran over to Ken, still laid out in a daze, and snapped her fingers in his face.

“Hey, whoa, Sakaguchi—you good? Hey, how many fingers—hold on,” she said. The board had hit him square, and already an ugly bruise was forming around the split skin around his nose and beneath his eye. She took him by the chin and gently turned his head to one side, leaned back and snapped a picture, then patted him gently on the cheek. “How many fingers am I holding up?” she asked, but with one hand in a cast and the other full of camera, she wasn’t holding up any. She took another picture. His nose was running with enough blood to stain both his shirt and the pavement. “Man, lookit all this. Wow. Thank god for capillaries, huh? You’ll be fine, probably. Just don’t tilt your head back.”

Satisfied with her glamour shots, Kanna sprang back up to her feet and searched after the departed delinquents. She’d seen the direction they’d gone, and there were only so many places for them to go that weren’t back inside. An alley between the buildings, the alcove of dumpsters, maybe the old sports shed.

“Yun!” she called back to the corner, nudging Ken’s leg with her foot. “Hey, Yun! Get a teacher or somethin’, poor guy’s bleedin’ out here!”

Conscience clear, Kanna hastily scurried off. Time was of the essence, and there was no telling what those two would get up to next. Where did you go from assault? Arson? Murder? Truancy? She’d get her answers sooner than she thought, because no sooner had she passed the dumpsters did she catch sight of them amidst the trees around the sports shed.

Oh, jackpot. From Blowing Smoke to Blowing Off Steam? Puff Puff Smash? Some pun about skateboards and cigarettes that she'd figure out later? The articles practically wrote themselves.

Kanna hunched, using the trees for cover, and snapped one or two more of them lingering near the shed. Dark, murky, but still good enough quality for the page. She’d blur Shiori thoroughly first, of course, but Totsuka would be lucky to get a black bar over his eyes. If they went inside, she could try and get a few pictures through the window. The photos would be blurry, but guerilla shots like that could really bring a piece together.

She waited, watching, camera ready. Her rabbit heart kept thumping wildly, but her hands were still as stone.

---

---

The sudden display of precision and violence was quite the sight to witness, even from an obscured view. While shock was the correct initial response for most people, a hearty belly laugh was instead the visceral response from Yun. It was ridiculous, after all! All of his theories about their new wonder of a classmate just got a major boost to their credibility!

Before his imagination could run wild even further with regards to the mystery that was Totsuka, a cry for help beckoned for Yun. His immediate response upon hearing this was to turn about and leave. The idea of Yun being responsible for someone else’s health should be horrifying for everyone involved but Kanna had bolted before he could protest the idea. Now left alone with Sakaguchi, Yun reluctantly went over to the injured skater to give words of assurance before leaving for help.

"Uh... Hang in there guy. I’ll go get... Someone more responsible. Yeah.” Pop quiz, who the hell was the school nurse? Regardless of the answer, Yun already failed this test as he decided to go back to his classroom instead. To his credit, he decided to power walk back with urgency. The last thing he needed was to get disciplined by the school prefect for running in the halls. On his way back, he was already muttering to himself what he would actually say. His message needed to be concise and to the point. Arriving at his home room’s entrance, Yun cleared his throat and announced his message with vigor appropriate to the situation.

"Uh, Sakaguchi got injured on his skateboard and it was in no way funny... I think he’s still on the ground out there."

Nailed it, Yun.

---

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Kanna sat back against the dumpster, flipping through the photos she’d taken with barely-suppressed glee. Between the skateboard javelining, Sakaguchi’s glamour shot, and the candids of Shiori and Totsuka blowing smoke beside the sports shed, the front page was going to be spoiled for choice.

What a way to start the year. Maybe this didn’t lead anywhere—assault was hard to ignore, but Sakaguchi wasn’t exactly a local hero, and sad as it was she doubted school officials were chomping at the bit to defend him. But hey, if it did, she’d be plastering the takedown of the Utsubyo Ogre all over her college applications. This was way bigger than the Familymart Weasels, and almost as big as the Pic-Land apple seed scandal. A few more like this, and Kanna was sure she’d have internships clawing each other’s throats out just to get ahold of her.

"Whatever the fuck you think you're doing: don't. This ain't a request."

Kanna yelped, but thankfully this time she slapped her uncasted hand over her mouth. Shiori and Totsuka had passed—she hadn’t even heard them coming, oops—but the big fellow had stopped to mad dog her, and give some less-than-subtle advice before stomping off.

She sat there for a few more moments, quiet, before peering out to find that she was alone. A smirk wormed its way onto her face.

“Well boy howdy buckaroo, you betcha,” she mumbled in her best—or worst—kansai accent. He’d said it himself, it wasn’t a request. If he wasn’t asking, then she didn’t have to answer.

Lunch was all but over, and Kanna headed back into the classroom still unbothered by her lost sandwich. What was there to mourn, really? She had a full plate now, and she’d be chewing on this story all night.

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The air in the school was charged by lunch, Kanna could feel the hairs on the back of her neck standing up. God damn was this good.

She sat at her desk grinning like an idiot, too absorbed in the paper to touch her sandwich. It was beautiful, absolutely pristine—she’d owe Umeko and Shoichi sweets for the killer formatting. There’d been some brief tentativeness over publishing a story like this in their first issue of the year; one editor had called it a hit-piece, but Kanna was firm that it wasn’t gossip and in the end, she liked to think her article and the evidence were compelling enough to put it to print.

And wow, the effect had been incredible, and that made sense. Intrigue! Peril! Blood! Highschool kids loved blood and they ate up danger like they’d been starved for months. And in a way they had been starved—of entertainment. Utsubyo wasn’t nearly as boring as it led people to believe, but all of its interesting bits were buried and convoluted and, frankly, it was much harder to sell her peers on scandals in a local orchard than it was to get them buzzing over a bully, even if the Pic-Land was up to some actual shit. Totsuka might be middle-sized fish, but Utsubyo was a small pond, even if it was deeper than other, bigger ponds.

Her mood was dampened a bit though, when she saw Ms. Touga enter the room looking like she’d just been left out in the rain. Immediately she snatched up Shiori and the Ogre, and Kanna felt a little pang of guilt. Well, half a pang. She didn’t care much about Totsuka, but Shiori wasn’t a bad person—depending on who you asked, and right now Kanna was asking herself. Sure she was a little rough, more than a little rude, and occasionally she would beat people up, but the story hadn’t been about her doing any of that. The whole point of blurring her in the pictures had been to avoid getting her in trouble, which wouldn’t count for shit if she just up and confessed to a teacher.

Damn, should have cropped the stupid picture instead, she thought, but didn’t really mean it. Cutting Shiori out would have ruined the balance. God, why’d she have to have red hair? No, that looked good too. Really, it was just an unwinnable situation and her hands were tied.

Sort of.

Kanna tore a chunk of paper from her notebook and scribbled onto it: NO EVIDENCE, PLAY DUMB. This was true; Kanna had blurred and barred the photos herself. The originals were still on her own, personal flashdrive, and she didn’t see any reason they needed to be anywhere else. It felt a bit wrong, but she could square herself with that. She had a strict rule—she didn’t lie about her work, but omitting things wasn’t the same as lying about them.

She took up her sandwich and got up from her seat, making her way to Shiori’s. In her mind, just dropping off her note would have been a bit too obvious, so she decided she needed a cover. And, wouldn’t you know it, there behind Shiori’s desk was just such a cover.

Kanna briefly set her sandwich down on Shiori’s desk, and as she did, she subtly slid her note onto the clutter of books and other delinquent miscellanea—cigs, switchblades, a leather jacket or something, Kanna didn’t know, she didn’t look closely. Then she took the seat, spun it around, and sat down facing the desk behind her.

“Heeeeey, Sakaguchi~!” she chimed, taking up her sandwich again. Akari ate like a tiger mauling some idiot who had fallen into her enclosure, but Kanna was already committed. This was dangerous work after all, sometimes you dealt with tigers, sometimes you got eaten. The French had a saying for it, but she didn’t speak French.

“How’re you doin’? How’s things? Been a minute, just figured we could chat, y’know? Heard about your brother—awful shit. How’s he holding up?”

---

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Still alive, not bad.

Akari was not the easiest person to have a conversation with. She wasn’t quite as prickly as Shiori could be, but Akari had a certain…vertical presence that inspired doubt in those who approached her. Kanna had been a fearful sort herself once, too intimidated to risk the ire of people much bigger and stronger than she was. Now, though the prospect that Akari might at any moment become tired of her presence and hurl her headlong across the classroom was still there, it didn’t scare her.

Besides, what had started out as a means to cover her little informational dead drop seemed to be blossoming into something worth sticking around for.

“Vengeance? Spicy.” She held her sandwich in her mouth and pulled the notebook from her pocket. “I didn’t know you and Kenzo were so close. Is it an honor thing? Or is it, like, about respect?”

The beatdown article had been a good one-off to start the year, get people’s blood pumping. Kanna had planned to do one or two follow-up pieces to cover Kenzo’s recouperation and whatever punishments got dolled out, enough keep people’s interests for a few more issues until the buzz wore off, and she’d had enough time to find a new hit.

But if Akari was planning to make some kind of crusade out of this, Kanna was more than happy to keep tapping the vein. Chances were high that Totsuka would just body the girl and it’d be over in another day, but that was another solid article itself. And hey, maybe there’d be an upset. Maybe Akari would hold her own—hell, maybe this campaign dragged on for days, or weeks. With the right coverage, this little spat could turn into a thrilling serial.

“You ever been in a fight with someone bigger than you?”