Shiro Kawabata
Shiro navigated the illuminated hallways in an unstealthily stealthy manner, which essentially entailed leaping over railings, summersaulting across corners, and a myriad of other things that were blatantly obvious and drew more attention than was intended to be avoided. All the while jamming out to the tune he seldom indulged in, courtesy of the little chip in his noggin. Perhaps the spy movie he had watched last night with a certain someone was to blame, which he had somehow managed to find time for between school work and DGO. Speaking of which, the student received a messages concerning the latter just as he flipped into an empty corridor.
To: Paper Moon
From: White Noise
Subject: Re:Re: Progress
Listed teams have been organized and are currently on standby. Just about done with with preparations for the expedition vehicles. Will we need any armored support for this outing?
The message was succinct and lacked any voice or liveliness the writer actually bore. Shiro’s eyes lingered on the brief series of sentences before he composed a response.
To: White Noise
From: Paper Moon
Subject: Re:Re:Re: Progress
We want to keep a low profile, but outfit one of the tanks just in case. Thanks for holding down the fort.
He replied with a similar dull tone.
White Noise was an old friend of Shiro, or rather, Paper Moon. On paper she too was unaffiliated with any cabal, but unlike the Assassin, was not involved with the Sweepers in the slightest. Or at least that had been the case up until now. The boy had cashed in a favor, so to speak. They crossed paths in the midst of a boss raid which they both signed up to carry, and did just that, just as a coherent unit rather than two heads of separate parties. But this was back when they were first years. Fast forward, and the two have met up a fair amount of times. In DGO that is. That’s not to say they haven’t ran into each other IRL, but they have been scrupulous to keep interactions of the sort to a bare minimum. She was a true drifter up until a couple days ago when Moon practically got on his knees and
dogeza’d the hell outta a sidewalk.
It was thanks to White Noise that Shiro had the leisure to treat himself to an exiguous break from DGO and swing by the hospital. But proper etiquette dictated that visitors were required to bring gifts for the incapacitated. And even if there weren’t any unspoken rules set in society's stone, the boy’s moral compass would steer him towards a present regardless. Now to what gift it would lead him to was the real question. Shiro mulled over what screamed “Asahi” and would brighten that broski’s day up real good. Since he was hospitalized, he didn’t want to take any risks by crashing in with a parfait or something that wouldn’t fit the setting. Oh, what about a-
It was only now did Shiro realize that his presence wasn’t the only thing that filled what he thought was a vacant hallway. His absent-minded stroll had led him astray from the school’s exit and right into the sights of a lingering student. But this was no stranger, well, actually, he was. A complete stranger. Somebody he’s never met face to face. But something felt familiar about the boy all of whose facial features were doused in cerulean dye. Shiro’s gut wasn’t referring to the guy’s looks, that whole facet was completely foreign to him. It was the air around him. It brimmed with potential, explosive energy. It could almost be likened to… rocket fuel? Nah, that couldn’t be right.
”Suhh dude!” Shiro energetically took a mallet to the now acutely shattered ice and greeted the student with a congenial wave. Hopefully this person wouldn’t go bonkers and bombard him with questions about Paper Moon.
"How goes it on scholarly forefront?"@RoflsMazoy
Akane Himura
Meanwhile within the room in which DGO Commons, the club which embodied R&R, a place for students to unravel and just chillax and escape the pressing atmosphere of basically molding their futures... well, not a whole lot was going on. Akane and three of her classmates sat around a secluded table far off from the lesser minds that were Ken and a handful of Strykers who agreed to sacrifice a portion of their priceless time. Ken's eyes danced across the whiteboard to the symphony of ballpoint pens scrawling deep ravines into loose leaf paper and subsequently filling them with ink at a rate that could triumph light. He felt his own confidence wane in the presence of the chronic power plant, the members of which only communicated with each other every so often for external opinion.
"...Are they even human?" Ken found himself muttering in a voice deprived of breath, blinded by zenith of rigor. To save himself what remained of his own faith in himself, the student turned to face the board that led to nowhere finite.
On it were words encased in bubbles sporadically deposited in hasty handwriting that bore no relation to organization whatsoever. A few were headed with locations rich in mobs to farm and their respective loot drops, haphazardly not organized by rate. Some consisted of potential ideas for the faction as a whole to put on for the upcoming festival. Assorted ideas such
"Concert?" or
"Shiro as a maid > Ivory Masks' maids? and even
"Let's just give people free shit" all floated aimlessly within the sea of dissociation. Needless to say, they had not made any concrete progress.
Akane noticed the wall the think-tank had run into and decided to capitalize on the hiccup. Under the guise of friendly conversation to slip in a moment of respite from their studies, the redhead poked at her classmates,
"Hey, hey, what are your classes doing for the festival~?" She asked in a sweet tune that shaved ten years off of Ken's life.
"Yakitori stand." Yayoi almost instantly chimed in as she graced her pen a brief rest and leaned back, daring the chair's legs to give out.
"A couple students from my class are pretty gifted writers, so they're excising certain parts from Kenji Miyazawa's Night On The Galactic Railroad and reformatting them into a play! Though there aren't that many roles, so most of the class is working on scenery." Another girl gave a vibrant rundown on her class' unique idea.
"Horror room." The last one curtly stated before she delved into her work yet again.
Akane rubbed her chin for a few moments and gave her thoughts adequate time to coalesce into a breakthrough idea, denoted by the snap of her fingers,
"How about we have Shiro in a maid outfit, starring in a concert to anime numbers?" Although the three girls were oblivious to it, Ken was well aware that his higher-up was being completely sarcastic
"Sure, I'll run the idea by him right away!" He replied ecstatically as he proceeded to x out the aforementioned bubbles, except for the one with Shiro in a maid get up. It was then that a rather inconsiderately strong knock struck the door a series of three times.
"Come in." Ken said in a despondent tone, unable to gather enough energy to yell at the guest for the door's sake.
@Kimiyosis