Sorry for delaying this chapter! I had a writing block on this chapter for a very long time…

Chapter 11

Shizuka followed us back to the Academy after the incident where she turned her Alice on Narumi. It was pretty amusing to see Narumi falling under her Alice immediately. It was lucky we had it done in an empty room, or else Narumi would have been embarrassed for life. Hotaru, being the blackmailer she was, took a video of the event and used it as the ultimate material to make Narumi listen to her.

Narumi gave in. That's why I'm stuck in the bus with two squabbling girls on either side of me. Even Hotaru's blackmail couldn't make them go away. I was sure doomed with these two girls.

"No, he belongs to all of us!" Permy screamed. I winced, screw the previous thought. I was—

"Sakura is my fiancé! He doesn't belong to any girl but me!" Shizuka shrieked, I covered my ears. Having two girls quarrelling over me was annoying as my brain was going to implode from overload of girlish nonsense from the two beside me.

Hotaru looked at me with pity in her eyes, Narumi was amused and Natsume was… jealous. Too bad for Natsume.

"Excuse me… Sakura-san?" Luca's timid voice sounded from behind me. I turned around, grateful for the distraction.

"Imai-san asked me to pass the message on that she wants to talk to you… if you get out of this." Luca said. I threw a glance behind me; Hotaru was sipping a cup of cold orange juice as she stared at me, a smirk evident on her face.

I sighed and leaned my head against the chair, blocking the noise off and turned my mind to other matters.

Persona had not objected to the idea like I thought he would. D.A students being let out of the Academy was dangerous and the Elementary School Principal would have dragged Natsume and I out of this. There was something was fishy about this, who would let two of the 'prized possessions of the Elementary School Principal' get out of his sight?

In the mean time, I had nothing to do and was getting quite bored. Mother would be in the Academy, Shiki would be coming in to report about the AAO. Sakurano and Subaru had been told about the resistance party to the Elementary School Principal.

Things were starting to gear up; more and more people were beginning to get involved in this party. Hotaru had started to make weapons in her lab. She told me it was just in case anything came up. Our next meeting with Shiki was tomorrow, so there was some time to dig around the school and catch up on the latest events.

The bus shuddered to a halt and for one moment, I thought we had reached our destination. Then there was a shout and a gun shot. Something was up, and we were right in the middle of it. The girls' squabbling had died down and I could hear Narumi's voice whispering our situation into his phone.

"Get down on the floor and no movements unless you want the man to drop dead." A voice said.

Everyone got up and followed his instructions, even I did too. The 'hijacker' was wearing black and had a black mask on his face. His eyes swept over us and he turned around.

"Reo-sama, they're all here! Including the famous Black Cat you mentioned!" he shouted. His gun was aimed at us and our bus driver was slumped over the wheel, blood pooling around him. Dead.

"Shut up, you'll alert the outsiders that we're kidnapping them." Reo said as he boarded the bus and looked at the load of students. It must be fated that I had an encounter with him two years ago and another one at the AAO. Fate is so twisted sometimes.

"Sakura, are you alright? Your Nullification must've protected you, because while you were sleeping, they blasted some music sung by Reo and that's why they can't move freely now. I can move my lips because of your Nullification stone, but I can't move my body." Shizuka whispered, her lips barely moving. I remembered the small Nullification stone a few months after our meeting; it must've protected her partially.

"No talking, kids back there!" the man barked as Reo climbed into sight. He saw Narumi on the floor and his eyebrows shot right up.

"Sempai, I'm surprised… We meet again. Ah, and the Kuro Neko too… This is such a coincidence that we meet each other here." Reo said, using his Alice.

Too bad it didn't have an effect on me.

And too bad his kidnapping was going to fail.

I focused on the Alices his guard had. Once again, it was the Barrier Alice; I keep running into that all the time. Now would probably be a good time to teleport out and get some help. The Barrier Alice would be near useless if I used my Nullification.

To use two Alices at the same time would take a lot of concentration, but I was sure I could manage. There was a huge flash of blue light and I was out of the bus immediately. I could hear the chaos in the bus back there.

Better get moving. I used an Invisibility Alice to sneak around the bus. There were four guards, including the one inside and Reo; all of them were Alice-users. A Barrier, Flying, Ice, Doppelganger and Mind reader; quite a mixture though they weren't anything to Nullification.

I sneaked up on the four guards and knocked them out before stealing their guns and tying them up. This was really easy. I teleported onto the bus to find that Reo was trying to extract information on where the 'missing' one was; what a silly question…

The guard collapsed immediately when I landed a blow and I threw the gun out of the door. Reo looked up, startled by his guard collapsing suddenly.

He looked around warily, trying to find any hints of an attacker. "Show yourself!" he cried out, infusing the message with the Voice Pheromone. It was a pretty strong attack, but I had the Nullification and his Alice was rendered useless.

I decided to have some fun with the Alice Tacoma had so kindly gave me when I brushed his hand accidentally two years ago.

Immediately, Reo slumped to the ground and a snore was heard. Urgh, what a troublesome man. Tacoma's Alice was a Sleeping Alice that enabled the target to fall asleep with one look.

I slid forward silently to sit beside Shizuka and came to view as I let the Invisibility down. I changed Shizuka's face back again as I had changed her face in the moment before I teleported out and after I used the Nullification.

"That was fast." Shizuka told me and I shrugged, it would be better if we could continue on our way as soon as possible. I saw Narumi give me a look as he dialed the Academy again.

~*~*~*~*~

It was good to be back at the Academy. However, the recent accident when we came back was making me wonder… how did Reo get out from the Academy? It was certainly suspicious. Persona saved me from thinking too much when he appeared outside my room again.

"This is your latest mission." He said, tossing the familiar black file to me.

"The mission contents are inside and I expect you to be back soon. Your teachers will be informed of your absence." Persona continued and he disappeared from sight.

I opened the file and groaned. I would need a disguise for this mission as stated. Retrieve a disc from the AAO branch you went to 2 years ago. That was my latest mission. I remembered Hotaru's ring that could disguise me as Imai Sakura and Luca's Animal Pheromone that had helped us find the AAO branch. A laptop would be useful if I was going to copy the information into another disc.

I went off to inform Hotaru and Shizuka, hoping I could manage to get something from Hotaru free. Not that it would ever happen.

~*~*~*~*~

With the disguise intact, I headed to the High School Division. The big problem was how to get the key from Sakurano and Subaru. They would surely disagree with my request… wouldn't they? I sucked on the Guillotine sweet as I teleported into the premises of the High School Division.

It was a good thing I hadn't forgotten where they were staying. Finding the notebook was another matter, though. I searched high and low, but I still couldn't find the notebook… Damn those two. I was running out of time.

Where on Earth would Sakurano place that notebook and key?! Sheesh!

There was a murmur of voices and the door opened just as Sakurano and Subaru stepped into the room. Sakurano sank into a chair, dropping all his books onto the small table with a thump.

"It looks like someone has been in here, Subaru." He voiced out his thought as he glanced around the messy room. Oops, I had forgotten to clean up my mess… Caught guilty by Sakurano. Good thing I had remembered to use my Invisibility Alice.

"Yes. I don't think our little intruder found what she was looking for, though." Subaru knelt down and picked a handkerchief off the floor. Caught guilty by Subaru now… Oh no, that's Hotaru's handkerchief—she lent it to me before I left two years ago. I'm so sorry, Hotaru!

Subaru was squinting at the initials on the handkerchief, "Property of Hotaru Imai. If found, please return and pay 2000 rabbits or be fined 50000 rabbits." He read out loud. Hotaru's messages really could cheer my life up… In fact, the words were chilling me to the bone now.

I inched towards Sakurano; if the notebook was with them, it had to be with Sakurano. The problem was where had he put it? One place would be in that pile of books… or his pocket.

"Do you think the person might have been looking for this?" Sakurano asked as he pulled the notebook out of his pocket and flipped the notebook open to reveal a shining key. Perfect. Now, how was I going to get that notebook?

"Maybe, the person didn't take anything from the room." Subaru paced around the room. Sharp. I took one step towards Sakurano just as he stood up.

"Well, we should tidy the room up and go for dinner. It's probably Tonouichi and his gang or someone else." Sakurano said lightly as he slid the book into his text book. Subaru kept silent and they started cleaning up the room.

I slipped the notebook out and stuffed it in my pocket and left the note that I had written into the textbook. Then I teleported out of the room.

Dear Subaru 'Oniisan',

I'll be borrowing the portal key and the notebook for a mission. Thanks.

Imai Sakura, little sister of Imai Hotaru

Well, I would be handing Hotaru a load of trouble in the form of her brother but there was a need for the note since I was taking it without permission and it was what Uncle told me to do. Later, when the moon shone in through the huge glass windows, I opened the portal without much difficulty and was on my way to complete the mission.

~*~*~*~*~

Landing in the meadow and hiking up over the hill all the way to the volcano in one day was exhausting. But I was in the AAO branch by morning; the ruins were overgrown with plants and the sunlight emphasized on how worn down the building was. The disc is in one of the computers in the room where Natsume caused the explosion.

How useful. I remembered that there were more than four computers in the room. Their information wasn't helping to me any much. Thankfully, the disc proved easy to find as there was only one computer that was still working in there.

Hotaru had given me a tiny laptop to copy the information from the disc. She didn't charge me for that, thank heavens. I only needed to wait for a full minute and it had done its duty. I got up, ready to leave when my gaze landed on a painting. It seemed familiar and I recalled where I had seen it.

It was the graveyard of Penguin; come to think of it, it had been 2 years ago. The laptop beeped, reminding me of the task at hand and I pulled the disc out as I watch the laptop start to unravel the information it had found.

500 files copied. Do you want to view them now? The textbox popped up. I clicked 'no' and stored all the copied information into another disc. It would be safer that way and Hotaru had already told me to throw the laptop away after I had used it. I placed the two discs into my pocket and got ready to leave.

The snap of a twig should have alerted me that I wasn't the only one there, but I didn't pay attention to it. Because of that, I was kidnapped a second time.

~*~*~*~*~*~

I awoke groggily to find myself bound and gagged in the boot of a car. Boy, it was sweltering in there. Wasn't there any ventilation around? It was frustrating how I managed to land myself in these kidnapping situations all the time.

From what I could tell, the car was moving on some highway judging from the hum of other cars rushing past. There was no Alice cloaking the car and the person driving it was a non-Alice user. They must have trusted the medicine to keep me knocked out until we had reached our destination.

Bad luck for them, I guess.

I rummaged in my pockets and scowled when I realized that the two discs were gone. The kidnappers must have taken them away so I wouldn't accomplish my mission. How troublesome. They hadn't taken the key and the notebook from me; that was good.

I teleported to the backseat of the car and listened to the two AAO kidnappers converse in low voices.

"Boss will be pleased with the good work we've done." The smug driver said.

"Yeah, that Alice user back in the boot didn't get the information so that's good." The plump passenger said as he held up two discs. I leaned forward and swiped the two discs out of his hand, sliding it into my pocket.

I was out of there immediately and on my way back to the Academy. The trip did take quite a bit out of me as the distance between the Academy and my location was too much to cover. I landed in an alleyway to rest.

I managed to get some bread from a kindly old woman. She offered to take me in and I refused her generous offer—she could be in trouble if I stayed with her. Wandering along the dark alleys, I found a box that was big enough to fit me and crawled inside and fell asleep immediately.

When I woke up, the sun was shining dimly and there were big thunderous clouds drifting above the town. I felt refreshed and teleported to the front of the Academy. The guards recognized my uniform and pulled me in immediately.

"Call the higher ups! We've found a student wandering outside the Academy!" the guard shouted. He thought that I was a student attempting to leave the Academy? Ridiculous! As if I'd want to return to the world out there. Not after knowing it was dangerous while I had my Alices.

"Let go of me!" I hissed as I jerked my arm out of his and stalked up the long pathway to the dormitories to get cleaned up. It would be easier to use the Teleportation Alice, but I was exhausted by the previous teleportation.

I heard the guards talking to each other in surprise, the radio was blaring loudly with messages from the 'higher ups'. I crept around the dormitories before I spotted my window. Deciding that my body couldn't hold the strain of another Alice usage, I quickly climbed up a tall pine tree outside my window and jumped in.

The room was clean and tidy; credit to the robot caretaker. I wanted to jump into the shower at once, but first… I had to hide the information I had obtained. The invisible bag that Hotaru gave me years ago would be good for this.

I entered the toilet for a bath and set the two discs aside. I showered and hid the copy in the invisible bag stuck in one of the cupboards in the bathroom. Then I took the key and the notebook and shoved it into my pocket. The original copy went into another pocket.

I met Persona in the D.A. classroom and handed him the disc. He took it and said, "Good work, Shiro Neko. However, your capture by the AAO wasn't really dignified for the top agent of the Dangerous Ability class and I am disappointed by it."

I scoffed silently at his remark. It didn't matter to me that he was disappointed anyway. He flicked his hand, dismissing me as he headed to decipher the information. I left the room and clutched the invisible bag in my pocket.

It was time to go and decipher this part of the information too. I might as well let Subaru and Sakurano know what was going on, seeing that I was going to have to explain for the missing key and notebook. And I would probably need Hotaru with me too.