Chapter 12

"And then he tipped over into the craps table. All the while, Danny just runs up and jumps into my hands like nothing happened." I said as I made an exaggerated motion with my ice cream cone.

The small woman shook lightly, amusement radiating off her. No sound escaped, but she was smiling as she took another bite of strawberry from her half empty bowl. We sat in the small ice cream shop on brightly colored vinyl cushions.

"Yeah, I swear to god, that cat's smarter than half the people I deal with most of the time."

She rolled her eyes at that, gesturing around before knocking a fist on her temple lightly.

"True, people can be pretty thick. Seems strange really, how few people really think about the world around them."

I said before taking a bite of the fudge dipped cone, god it was so good. Chocolate wasn't common in Kirigakure, in fact, only Konoha, as a central trading hub, could afford to import cocoa and produce chocolate. Nevermind ice cream, the Land of Water had milk, but sugar was harder to come by. Most sweetener used in Land of Water was actually honey produced by the Sumire family, and that was harder to get after their compound was destroyed in the war.

"I mean, people assume so much. I can assume Danny did all that by accident, or that it was coincidence, or a hundred million other things but I mean, really. How much coincidence can actually happen in this world and how much can be planned?"

I paused, looking at her for a moment.

"Hey, you ain't out here to look innocent and get close to me, are you?"

I said it jokingly and the woman did a mock expression of astonishment as she looked around, hands on her chest. She radiated cheer about the joke, no suspicion or being put off at the jab.

I let out a breath as I took another bite.

"Do you, like, live around here or something?"

She tilted her hand back and forth in a motion that meant kind of before doing the steering wheel motion with her hands.

"Had to commute? Me too."

Looking at my scrolln I saw it was getting later in the day, not really late, the mall was still open, but the sun was probably going to set soon.

"And I probably actually have to leave soon, if I can drag my escort from the bookstore."

Oobleck hadn't even looked up from the book after I arrived to get the card this all was supposed to go on, nor did he do more than nod and agree when I asked if I could grab some ice cream. He also agreed to me seeing if I could acquire a flamethrower, which meant he hadn't actually been listening, or if he had didn't see anything wrong with me having a flamethrower, both could be true.

She made a gesture that said what can you do before she started more on her ice cream. I looked at the scroll I had and went down the sites she suggested on the notes section of my phone.

"Thanks for the help, by the way. I hadn't really done this before."

She waved her gloved hand like it was no problem, though that did remind me of something I didn't think about.

"By the way, what's your name? My name is Ume."

She paused as she held up her spoon and pointed it down at the bowl.

I looked at her and then the bowl.

"Ice cream?"

She shook her head and rolled her eyes. Pointing at the bowl again.

"Sundai?" I replied.

She shook again before pointing at the flavors, one at a time, and pushing her hands together.

"Strawberry, vanilla, cho... oh, Neopolitan?"

I finally got, the word not one commonly used, but fitting. In fact, considering her color scheme, I should have known. A lot of people at Beacon had outfit color schemes that matched their color based names. I mean, I knew the history behind it, the color revolution was covered in Oobleck's class' textbook and honestly I couldn't think it was that strange. Most people I knew had names with double, or even triple meanings attached to them, and heck, my name meant plum.

She clapped before congratulating herself with another spoonful of ice cream.

"Alright, well, it was nice meeting you, I guess I'll see you around then." I paused, looking at my scroll. "These things can text, right?"

She raised an eyebrow at me.

"Well, I figured it would be silly to ask you to call me, since it's not like I could see you… Why are you looking at me like that?"

Her head had tilted as she picked up my scroll herself, punched in the number and called her own and slid it back. Her scroll buzzed and she clicked to answer. I saw immediately that instead of defaulting to a voice call it was showing a video of her waving into it.

"Oh, it defaults to video calls." I picked up, turning it a little bit. "Seems like a waste of energy honestly, wouldn't it use less battery to do just voice?"

She shrugged her shoulders before ending the call.

"Oh well, texts would be faster anyway."

Nevermind I couldn't sense the emotions associated with her signs over the scroll network. It helped tremendously in figuring out her less direct signs.

I waved goodbye before heading out to get Oobleck. It took a little bit of time to drag Oobleck from the bookstore before we started walking out of the mall. The two of us headed to a hardware store to grab the joints for the bunkbeds before going to a general store for me to get some shampoo and stuff to put in my room. That took only about twenty minutes, which was rather amazing in and of itself, really.

You never think about how convenient something like bottle shampoo and general stores are until you go without. I mean, I made my own shampoo and soap, but it wasn't because I was picky. It was just easier to get in large quantities, especially if you wanted it to be scentless. Nevermind that shinobi have to stay clean. Even when you're on a mission you have to constantly do upkeep because you don't want an enemy to discover you because you had body odor. Even little contraptions like tiny nail clippers, tweezers, toothpaste or floss were hard to find. Metalwork just wasn't advanced enough to make such things en masse in the Land of Water. Most of that metal had to be imported, then processed and that was expensive, so it was reserved for things like tools and weapons instead. I honestly think tonight would be the first time in a long time that I didn't clean my fingernails with a senbon needle.

Once that was done Oobleck and I headed back to the laundromat and I resealed all the clean clothing before we headed back on a bullhead. There were a couple of questions and weird looks from the staff, but nothing too bad. I couldn't tell how surprised they actually were, as their auras weren't unlocked, but they didn't seem too shocked. They did work at a super powered college, after all.

The floor was pretty empty as night fell on Beacon. Some of the teams had gone into the city to explore the kingdom surrounding their home, hopefully, for the next four years. Some of the teams were in the common room hanging out or chatting, others were at the library doing homework or other recreational activities while others were just hanging out in their rooms with their teams, getting used to the new people they were expected to spend the rest of their hunting careers with if they made it through.

Team CRDL were not spending time bonding. They had no need after all, the four boys had known each other for years, as all four of them had attended the same prep school and had come from the same town. It hadn't been hard for the four boys to find each other during the initiation, since they had been in the same launch group and their team had formed. The four of them were already very comfortable with each other, familiar with their fighting styles as well as the group hierarchy, which was why the four of them didn't question their leader Cardin as he peered out into the hallway.

At least not out loud.

Cardin Winchester was a lot of things, he was a large boy, charismatic, strong and one of the top students in his year at his previous hunter school. Such things meant he was not one who would be easily dismissed, yet just that had happened this morning. If it was just a casual slight, it wouldn't have been as bad, but that shrimp of an auditor had done so in front of his entire floor.

That couldn't stand, he wouldn't let it stand.

His scroll buzzed and he hit the device. Russel appeared on the screen a moment later.

"Is she coming?"

"Yeah, I saw her going up the stairs. You ready?"

Cardin nodded before going down the hallway. There Sky and Dove quickly set up the trap. It was a simple enough thing, a board painted to match the hall carpet put on top of some marbles. It wasn't that hard to put together, since the workshop had plenty of supplies and the marbles they had themselves. They quickly returned to the room, two of them holding out their scrolls to record it. It took a few minutes, but soon the door to the stairwell opened and there was the red headed auditor, who was flicking through her notebook as she headed towards the first door. Sky had to hold back a snicker as the small girl set her first foot on the board, then the second and then…

Nothing. She walked forward even as both feet hit the board before she went to the first door and knocked on it. Cardin looked down at the two of them, a look of anger on his face. Why hadn't that worked? Even on a carpeted floor the change in weight on the surface should have made her fall flat on her butt, and yet...

The redhead didn't pay them any heed as she found the first door unoccupied before pausing to write a note, which she slipped under the door before moving across the hall.

In a coarse whisper Cardin said:

"Come on"

He started to search the room for a moment before he found what he was looking for. The bat was in one of the closets. While less subtle, the girl seemed distracted enough as she moved down the hallway. He wasn't going to let her just get away with this, no way.

As he got to the hallway he found that she was only a door down from them at this point. Looking down at the notebook, she continued her stride and Cardin tried to roll the bat out into the hallway and… she stepped over it. It wasn't even a deliberate step, it just seemed that her stride, however short it was, naturally went over it as the bat rolled down the hallway.

Was it luck or was she baiting him somehow? It didn't matter either way, his patience on this was already running out as he reached down to throw a ball that had been with the bat only to freeze when his eyes met hers for a moment and he saw. Nothing, no recognition, no acknowledgement, the eyes looked at him and through him without a moment's pause before she ignored his team's door completely and headed down the hallway.

No way, no freaking way. She was baiting him. There was no way she didn't know he was there. Leaning out, he bodily threw the ball at her head and it…

She seemed to turn lightly and it just brushed past her hair as it thumped down the hallway. She didn't even acknowledge it as she knocked on the door to no answer before writing a note and continuing down.

"Hey!"

Cardin yelled at her, bursting into the hallway. There was no response as she knocked on the next door, seeming not to hear him. He stepped up behind her and attempted to grab her shoulder, but she turned just out of his grip. This time talking aloud.

"I suppose I'll have to visit later, no one seems to be on this floor." Before stowing her notebook and heading towards the stairs.

That was the last straw. There was no way he would just be ignored like that, there was no way he was going to…

Weightlessness hit his body as his foot hit something slick on the floor and he fell back, his anger clouding his judgement as his foot hit and slid on the very ball he'd thrown at her that had bounced back down the hallway. Cardin's body hit the ground with a solid twack that resounded throughout the hallway. His aura took the damage, but he was half stunned at the sudden fall. When he managed to push himself to look at his surroundings he noticed that the girl had already left the floor, disappearing into the stairwell. His anger still raging, he turned to his other two teammates.

"Why didn't yo…"

"Hey, did you guys…"

Twack!

All three of them turned their heads immediately to see Russel, who had come from the other stairwell and somehow managed to trip the marble trap the red headed auditor just blatantly ignored.

Cardin was steaming as he glared at his team, then the opposite stairwell. This wasn't over.

Short chapter, been busy. Reviews would be nice, thank you.