A/N: Shiga Hitomi is a character featured in the Love Live mobile game, School Idol Festival, and you can find more information about her on the wiki for that game, if you're interested, but she definitely is not an OC.
Four days after the rising star idol group Muse made the announcement of its reentry into the Love Live competition, Shiga Hitomi returned to school after an extended leave of absence. She was a member of Otonokizaka Academy's disciplinary committee, as indicated by the red armband she wore strapped around her right arm. While that seemed to imply her possessing a sort of aura based on fear and intimidation by influence by her occupation, being apart the school's resident police force, the disciplinary committee of this particular school was actually little more than an unspoken joke. They had little say in the matters of the student council, the students of Otonokizaka were so well-behaved that there was rarely an incident to resolve, and the committee barely had enough members to keep supporting itself. Shiga Hitomi herself had intentionally skipped classes and going to school altogether because of these issues.
No, the reason Shiga Hitomi could appear so intimidating and so easily strike fear into the other students was because she was absolutely wild. She was obsessed with strength to an insane degree. She wanted strength to protect the morals of society, but she also wanted those around her to be strong too, or else they could instantly fall prey to humanity's natural faults, and thus, become enemies for her to strike down with the law. It was a vicious cycle, and this young woman refused to let herself get dragged under by it. However, more than a little part of her found great enjoyment in chancing upon strong enemies who opposed her moral values. It was the greatest way to test her strength, after all.
Shiga Hitomi had heard from some friends in the committee about the sudden rise in popularity of the school's idol club. Known as Jin or Boss to those who feared and respected her, Shiga Hitomi was a strict upholder of all good morals; in her opinion, this 'idol club' sounded a little dubious. Dubious enough to drag her back to school, even. Girls who pranced around in cute little uniforms, usually revealing more than a fair share of skin, while singing cute little songs, and making cute little poses with their cute little bodies. It made her feel queasy.
High school girls should not be displaying themselves in such an unacceptable way. Who knew what sort of ideas would fill the freshmen's heads to see their upperclassmen acting that way. Who knew what kind of elderly male deviants might be watching their videos on the internet right at this very second. They weren't the biggest law-breakers this school could have produced, that was for sure, but it still seemed unnatural to let the girls slide by without a firm talking to, at least.
When Shiga Hitomi entered the school building that morning, she decided to head directly to confront the Student Council President herself. She had been quite surprised to hear that the head of the student council herself was apart of the whole charade. Especially when she had been the person who helped set up groups like the disciplinary committee to protect the degradation of morals like this in the first place.
"Student Council President Ayase Eri! You are under investigation by the Student Disciplinary Committee with allegations of undermining the school's moral codes by your own free will!"
Eri and Nozomi quickly released their embrace as Shiga Hitomi stormed into the council meeting room. Since it was still early in the morning, classes had not yet begun, and the council room itself was completely empty apart from the three women. That was the reason the student council president and her trusty advisor had rendezvoused here at this time, but now with Hitomi present, their current plans had to be immediately dropped; three was a crowd, after all.
"Hello there!" Nozomi smiled ever so innocently, licking some stray saliva off of her lips, "Do you need something from the student council? You're awfully loud for this early in the morning, um...?"
"You're Shiga Hitomi!" Eri exclaimed.
Hitomi nodded. "Yes, that's right. I'm glad that you remember me, Eri. It's been a while since I last saw you, and you really haven't changed much. Not too strong-looking."
"Oh, who is this, Erichi? A jilted ex-lover?" Nozomi teased.
The blonde half-Russian was hasty to deny the accusation, as much of a jab at her as it was. "O-Of course not! Of course not! I just know her from the disciplinary committee!"
She sighed, turning back to Hitomi again, "Hitomi, what are you doing here? This is the first time you've shown up at school in quite a while. I was afraid something had happened to you, but I didn't know what your home address was, or else I would have visited you myself. You were always the most dedicated member of the committee, so your absence was sorely missed."
"Enough with the sweet words, you're always trying to butter somebody up that way. Student President Ayase, I came back to this school because I heard you had joined the idol club recently, in spite of still having duties of the council president. I've watched your group's performance videos on the net, a friend linked them. Don't you get what you're doing to the morals of our fellow students, when you act so shamelessly like this?"
Eri grinned a little to try and hide her terrible confusion. She was getting some bad vibes from the fellow third year, but she couldn't bring herself to turn a committee member away without listening to her opinion fully and lacking any bias. "I'm, er, not sure I'm following?"
"You're dancing around on a stage like a fool, wearing skimpy dresses and singing flirty songs! What's with that?"
"It's kind of a long story, actually," Eri nervously laughed.
"I had hoped you wouldn't end up being my enemy, since I respected your convictions, but I'll do what I have to!" Hitomi curled up her fist and took a swipe at Eri's head, intending to strike the student council president directly at her face. She could feel her fist come in contact with something hard, and for her point of view, it appeared she had successfully struck the other girl. Eri remained standing completely still, her expression hidden behind Hitomi's fist.
"Oh my God!" Nozomi screeched.
Hitomi looked over to Nozomi, clearly indifferent to her cries. "You're the one who likes to grope girls' breasts, aren't you? I probably should have gone after you first; you're even more of a deviant, but you're both in the idol club, so it doesn't really matter!"
"Shiga Hitomi!"
Hitomi gasped, and she could only whisk her attention back to Eri so fast before she was caught with a slap, cracking hard across the face. Eri stood leaning over on Hitomi's right, appearing to have taken no more than a single step to the side, standing away from reach of the disciplinary committee member's outstretched arm while still reaching over it to strike her. Hitomi, her cheek throbbing, looked at Eri with widened eyes. There was a small, red bruise on her forehead, indicating where Hitomi had hit her but Eri's sharp eyes bore down on Hitomi in rage, a glare as harsh and cold as the steel on an old blade. Her slap had stung quite a bit, too.
Hitomi didn't understand; she had surely punched Eri with enough force to knock her to the ground, or even put her out of consciousness. She had even felt the punch make contact.
"What...?"
"Shiga Hitomi, it's against school rules to physically assault another student. You of all people should know that!" Eri shouted.
"But...but I hit you, didn't I...?"
"Yes you did, but that's only because you grazed my face as I was moving out of the way, since you caught me off-guard." explained the student council president, "But please, don't ever do anything like that again! I'm going to be kind because you were absent for so long and neglect writing you up for this, but I believe we're done talking here, Shiga Hitomi. The idol club is going nowhere, it's a great help to raising the school's popularity! I'm not budging on my decision, no matter what you try to do to me!"
Hitomi could only focus on one thing from that entire speech, and it certainly had nothing to do with Eri's devotions to the idol club. "...How did you move that quickly?"
Eri blushed. "Oh, I guess it's because of all the dance training since I've joined the idol club...?"
"Not to mention how Erichi used to be a ballerina-in-training as a young girl. That probably helped too." Nozomi added, giggling.
"Nozomi, s-stop that! She doesn't need to know about any of that!" Eri reprimanded her friend, her face glowing brighter than any spotlight, and she seemed to have almost totally forgotten about Hitomi's clear act of insubordination just before. Nozomi continued to poke and prod at her friend, cackling all the while. Eri was practically shrieking for her friend to stop spilling anymore secrets about her youth.
Shiga Hitomi, however, had her hands and mind full to notice, as she replayed Eri's half-assed explanation over and over. That couldn't have been right. Did practicing in the idol club seriously allow her to move like that? It was one thing to avoid a punch coming from out of nowhere, but even when caught off-guard she jumped out of the way so narrowly that she only suffered the tiniest scrape because of it? It didn't make any sense. It had to have been a fluke, but the young woman believed, or at least wanted to believe, in something more. Hitomi was starting to entertain the idea that the student council president might have been a strong enemy like she'd always hoped to face, which immediately overrode her initial desires to not want to contend against her. She approached Eri.
"Ayase Eri..."
"W-What is it?"
Without warning, again, Hitomi took a swing at the student council president. This time, Eri completely avoided it, twisting her body sideways so that the punch slipped harmlessly past her back. Hitomi swiped at her again and again. Each time, Eri dodged with the gracefulness expected of an experienced dancer, as if it were completely effortless, all of it done entirely on instinct. Eri turned, she ducked, she swerved, lifting her arms and crossing her legs to ensure not a single fleck of skin on Hitomi's battle-trained fists touched her. It brought to mind images from the videos of the idol club's performances she had viewed online. Eri had been especially active in them.
Hitomi couldn't believer her eyes. Could it be...the idol club taught her...? That earlier excitement was really bubbling inside Hitomi's veins now. No one would need to know how to be this quick to avoid the fists of justice unless-
"Is the idol club really a den of villains in disguise?" she asked herself.
"S-Shiga Hitomi!" Eri was shouting now. "If you don't stop this right away, I am going to have to report to the school principal about this!"
Hitomi wanted to continue testing Eri, to see if she could eventually strike her, but suddenly a pair of arms took hold of her from behind. Feminine hands grasped firmly onto her breasts, clenching them with a firm but gentle squeeze.
"Wha-!"
"Nozomi!"
Tojo Nozomi held onto Hitomi from behind, preventing the wild girl from throwing another punch, and she sank her fingers as deeply as she could into the tit-flesh beneath Hitomi's uniform.
"Oh, a 89 bust, eh?" Nozomi purred, her voice like a soft puff of warm air in Hitomi's earlobe, "You're a big girl, despite not being very feminine. You're almost as big as me!"
"Nozomi, what are you doing?" Eri was about ready to throw a fit.
Hitomi could feel Nozomi's fingers rolling up and down the length and width of her breasts, trying to touch every single inch there was to cover, and she knew right away that this woman was even more unscrupulous than she'd ever given her credit for.
"You...you're the real danger to the student body here! You're the one who's disrupting morals without any regard for others' feelings!"
Nozomi pouted. "Now that's not a nice thing to say! I'm just having a little fun, and no one's ever told on me, so it's not like it's hurting anyone! C'mon now!"
"Nozomi, please, this is all getting too out of hand," Eri stated.
Nozomi, in response, just shook her head. "I'm doing this to protect you too, Erichi," she responded in a serious tone as she continued to fondle and squeeze Hitomi's chest. "This girl is trying to attack you, and she isn't going to hold back her punches! We can't stop her with words, so we have to stop her with force!"
"Nozomi...you can't be serious...I mean, really, you just can't be serious..."
"I'm sorry, Erichi; the cards warned me that we would face enemies outside of the Love Live!"
"Nozomi, what are you going to do to her?"
"I'm going," Hitomi tried to struggle free, but Nozomi's grip was abnormally strong for a girl who looked like she'd never lifted a single barbell before, "I'm going to take her down long enough so we can have her detained and suspended. I'm going to use my ultimate groping technique, the one I've spent my whole high school life perfecting!"
"What? But Nozomi, you can't!" Eri cried. "If you do that, I'll have no choice but to write you up for sexual assault, and you'll get suspended! You can't do it! I won't be able to overlook it, so please, don't do it!"
"Yes, it is sort of a sacrificial technique, isn't it? Sorry, Erichi." Nozomi smiled sadly.
"Nozomi! No! Stop being ridiculous! This isn't the right way!"
'These two have been reading too much manga!' Hitomi thought, a girl who watched too much anime before coming to school. During Eri and Nozomi's entire exchange, Hitomi had been steadily, cautiously, working on slipping her right arm free. Nozomi had failed to notice, because Hitomi had kept the movements so slight, and Eri's shouts were only dragging Nozomi's attention further away from the woman she was holding in her arms. All of this talk and arguing about 'ultimate groping techniques' was totally absurd, but it also proved to Hitomi that the idol club was delving in some very dangerous practices. Hitomi's convictions had been solidified; once she removed the student council president and her aide from the picture, she would go after the rest of the idol club and shut them down for good. Her fists would deal out justice accordingly.
Nozomi had felt Hitomi's arm break out of her grasp, but she was already dropping onto her knees after the other girl elbowed her, hard, in the stomach. Nozomi flew into a coughing fit as she clutched her wounded belly.
"Nozomi!" Eri dashed over to her friend's side, running past Hitomi without a second look.
Hitomi turned to face the both of them. She was done playing games, done letting herself be made a fool, done being treated like a non-threat by these two moral-dodging heathens. The idol club had officially incited the full wrath of the upholding student disciplinary committee member named Shiga Hitomi. Reaching behind her, Hitomi knew she had just the weapon in hand to deal with the two young women. Something she had spent two months' allowance on, a weapon designed specifically to take down opponents of the demonic variety.
"Sorry, Erichi, I let my guard down, but I still have my cards! I'll wow her into submission with my future-telling skills!" Nozomi proclaimed, removing a tarot deck from inside her school jacket.
"Whatever you say, Nozomi." Eri stood up, "If you have another plan, we can work on it together. My words won't reach Hitomi's ears anymore. She always was someone with a strange fascination for fighting, even though it's not exactly a thing normal people would regularly engage in." Eri sighed. "We might have to indulge her with this, just this one time."
"Yeah," Nozomi smiled grimly at the prospect.
Hitomi remained silent, brandishing what appeared to be a large, red baton, covered in a litter of tiny bumps.
"W-What is that?" Eri stammered.
Nozomi flushed and chuckled, "Oh my...I've only seen that in certain stores before..."
"It's a weapon for fighting demons, so that I can properly protect the school. I haven't really gotten to try it yet, but I was told it won't kill humans, although it should be enough to subdue you two. It's sad that things have come to this, Student Council President Ayase Eri."
Eri thought that Hitomi was verifiably insane to be carrying around such a ridiculous weapon, but the young woman seemed just as confident in her abilities too. The blonde prepared herself to dodge as soon as Hitomi took the first swing. She spread her legs farther apart, and prepared her arms to give herself just enough space, and enough push against wind resistance, so she could move at her fastest. Eri wasn't going to lay a hand on Hitomi, for striking a fellow student went against her code of ethics as well as school rules, but thanks to her increased stamina since idol training, she was certain she could continuously evade the third year's attacks until Hitomi was forced to surrender out of weariness. Nozomi would help in that regard too; neither of them wished to hurt Hitomi, she simply needed to be properly educated on her mistakes.
Eri had spoken with Hitomi on several occasions before, and knew that she was a good person who had the strongest convictions about justice of anyone in the entire school. Surely this entire conflict could be solved peacefully, with words and not violence.
Honoka placed her lunch box down onto the table, whereas Umi and Kotori were already digging deep into their own meals while chatting about classes and upcoming scheduling for idol practice.
"Sorry I was late! The teacher held me back, heh heh heh," Honoka removed the top of her lunch box and split her chopsticks apart. Her
"Don't tell me you got reprimanded for sleeping in class again, Honoka!" Umi shook her head, the dismay clear on her face.
Honoka slipped a tiny clump of rice into her mouth. "Well, it was more about grades slipping, but I already have it under control! I've contracted Yukiho to help me study for my tests for the next couple of months!"
"You have to pay your own sister to help you...Honoka, I hope you'll still have time for all of the training we still need to do..."
"Of course I will! Of course I will!"
"You don't sound too reassured about it, Honoka," Kotori teased from the sidelines.
"I'll find some way to make it work! I always do!"
Umi allowed herself to give off the faintest hint of a smile before taking a sip from her green tea. "You always do, definitely. I trust you, Honoka."
"Thanks, Umi..."
"But if you don't, you know we're going to have to come to your house, drag you away from your textbook and carry you up to the school roof for practice, right?" Umi smirked.
Kotori and Honoka exchanged beaming grins, nearly on the verge of bursting into laughter. Instead, they exchanged bites of their food, giggling the whole time. Umi resumed eating by herself, not interested in sharing food, or worse, sharing germs. She kept close watch on her two friends nonetheless.
"Honoka! Kotori! Umi!"
The three second-years looked up to see their underclassman and fellow Muse, Rin, rushing toward them. She was running exceptionally fast, her shoes barely grazing the earth beneath her as she dashed for the table. It was almost like she was flying, hurtling herself through the air, and when she'd finally stopped just short of crashing into the table, the three second-years could have sworn they felt a breeze on their faces.
Rin looked to all three of them, one at a time. Her eyes were bulging wide, and her face was stark white.
"Hey!"
"R-Rin, are you okay?" Umi asked.
Rin shook her head, and a spray of sweat flew from her face. "No...no...no! It's bad, it's really bad! Eri and Nozomi, they're in the infirmary right now! They're badly injured! So much so, they could even...even..." Rin choked before she could dare finish speaking.
Honoka, Umi and Kotori exchanged horrified glances before following after Rin to the infirmary. They needed to see this for themselves.
It was still break period from classes, but Yazawa Nico had decided to remain in her classroom, eating by herself. She normally shared lunch with the rest of the girls, but recently the tiny third-year had felt she'd hit a sudden burst of inspiration for their next song, and she intended to spend the whole lunch break writing it down, so she could show the others at the next club meeting. She was going to prove to them all that she was good for something outside of providing a club room with her idol obsession. Her ego refused anything less than total respect, maybe even subjugation if they were willing.
Nico wrote at a steady pace, unaware of the wide grin she bore on her lips. She was really confident about her newest song ideas; she had never tried writing lyrics very much before, but then again, she'd never been so driven about it before now. She had only finished some of the first sheet when she felt a hand tap her on the shoulder.
"Yazawa Nico?"
"What is it?" Nico snapped, looking over her shoulder to see a girl wearing some sort of cap over her eyes. She looked like trouble, but Nico wasn't going to be intimidated, in fact the girl was clearly breaking school uniform rules, so if either one of them was in trouble right now, it was this weirdo who'd just shown up.
"You're in the school idol club, aren't you?"
"I'm the founder, actually!" Nico boasted. She liked to tell people that sometimes, even though she left out the rest of the explanation how the original members abandoned her and she initially had tried to sabotage Honoka's efforts to make a idol group for helping the school.
The girl suddenly seemed to tense up. "So that's how it is. Then does that mean, you formed the idol group 'Muse' as well? I asked the student council president but she didn't want to tell me."
Nico thought that definitely sounded unusual, Eri was dedicated to helping students, but she decided to look over that, especially when she considered the other question the girl had presented her. Even though it was Honoka who formed and essentially led Muse in all of its idol-related activities, Nico could not help but use this chance to get herself a little more respect in the classroom. This girl probably knew nothing about Muse, and Nico wouldn't mind at all being the one to teach her.
"Actually, I didn't form the group, but I'm also sort of the Center of the group." Nico was lying through her teeth and she felt only the slightest bit of shame for it.
The strange and irate young woman raised a bumpy, red baton high over her head.