[Omi]

If you're a bad student, you can remedy that by studying, doing homework, or cheating. I'm not advocating it, just musing. Well, if you're bad at a sport, you can practice, practice, or cheat.

But what to do if you're a bad assassin? I haven't quite figured out how to —practice- it and as for cheating, well, it's hard to cheat at things that aren't quite legal in the first place.

My reason for these sudden insecurities is that I accomplished absolutely nothing today. I tried, I really did. But I couldn't remember a thing about the target. Name, I remembered. Height, no. Gender, no. Hair color, no. Reason for being a target, no. Seat number on incoming airplane, yes. Names of all seven Hertz employees, yes.

Youji turns to me. It's inevitable.

"What'd you find out, Chibi?"

I can think of at least seven ways Aya could kill me by use of objects in the living room. I can think of thirteen more involving kitchen implements. About eighty involving his bare hands and/or eyes, twenty-

"Omi. Do you have any information reguarding the mission to give us?"

I envy Youji's UV protective sunglasses. As "ultraviolet glare" would be the best words to describe the look I was getting. Corny, yes, but we can't all be witty when under fire.

I hold onto my notebook, as if it can save me. More likely than Youji.

Now, how to make this less painful. What to say

Bless me, Father, for I have sinned

Um..

"Actually, nothing"

I give my best innocent smile and pray for some mercy.

Youji blinks.

Aya blinks.

If Ken were here he'd blink too. But as it is, he's battling the washing machine with American currency.

I just thought I'd stay low andlearn the lay of the school today. Rather than snooping and"

Youji accepts this.

Aya blinks again.

"Be that as it may, I suggest you take the data folder with you tomorrow. The less time we spend on this, the easier it will be."

I have a sneaking suspicion I didn't fool him.

[Ken] I never liked doing laundry in the first place. It's basically sitting next to a row of large, irritable looking machines full of boiling water as they spin your clothes around in hypnotic circles. And then you have to pay them. Not my idea of fun.

But somehow, I ended up in this small room of washing machines. Right now I'm waiting.

I've been doing so for at least three months.

The place that I'm at happens to be a block away from our current residence (some guy got transferred to London for a year, and is renting us his house. Persia got it for us. Persia has "connections".) This is what Omi calls "convenient". I call it walking past who knows how many people with a basket of clothes. It's very embarrassing.

But somehow I got here, after several narrow run ins with homicidal MAC trucks.

There's only one other person in here with me, a kind of oldish lady who looks well, kid of familiar, actually. Better her company than none at all

"How's it going?" I ask casually. As if I don't know. The washing machine is probably driving her insane as well.

No answer.

Washing machine, one. Old lady,zero.

The building itself is all white inside (save the corners, where the white linoleum has turned yellow and is curling away from the floor) and has the general feel of a low budget hospital.

It smells of fabric softener rather than antiseptic, and has rows of washing machines instead of rooms, but the whiteness and mechanical hum are the same.

I think it's a marketing scheme, if you make something white, people automatically assume it's clean, and what better place to —wash- things than a very, very clean one?

The machine clicks and slowly winds down with a sort of broken thump.

I get the laundry out, put it into the basket and leave. Quickly.

That lady still hasn't said anything.

Ken, one. Washing machine, zero.

And now to cross the street

[Youji] I swear, other missions we've had could be described as "dangerous" or "gruesome" or at least "quick". "Bloody", maybe. But never have we had "weird, impossible, and comical". This isn't the Kritiker Way. See, most assassins (if not all) are arguably the most messed up people in, well, the entire world. We have more problems than most college entry exams. So, in return for being generally deranged, we get to live a very surreal life. Black, leather, sunglasses, guns, doting women, fast cars. Killers are sexy. It's our birthright.

But first we get stuck in a flower shop. That was bad, but at least our nightlife was interesting. At least we had an under lit room with a giant screen. Ignoring that said room was ugly

Now, we get to interact with small children all day. We get to replenish their Kleenex supply and run off copies of worksheets. We get to grade those worksheets at home.

I feel we, as assassins, are being publicly mocked.

I try to comb my hair into some semblance of order. Last night, Ken had lurched in the screen door with our laundry; He deposited it in a heap on the couch and bounded upstairs.

This morning I had extracted something that seemed to be mine from the pile, which crackled in warning. Yes, Kenken had forgotten to use fabric softener, or whatever that stuff is that makes it un-staticy.

The effect on my hair was immediate and devastating.

Hair gel. Need hair gel.

I root through the cabinets in the bathroom, praying that one of my teammates had the presence of mind to

No. of course not.

Ah, here we are. Who says I'm not resourceful?

Someone knocks on the bathroom door, then opens it without waiting for my response. Ken, the very one who is responsible for my electrocuted hair..

"Kudou, are you putting aloe vera in your hair?" He gawks for a second and retrieves a few towels.

"Watcha gonna do with those, Kenken?" I don't seem to remember a towel fetish.

"Goin' to put out the toast."

Of course. Why hadn't I though of that.

[Omi] the thing about living far away from school, with three of your teammates, a rental car and various degrees of cluelessness is that you never get to school on time. First, Ken's customary bonfire burnt through three towels he was trying to put it out with, changing the house's smell of burnt toast to burnt towel. Which is a very odd one indeed.

Then Youji strolls downstairs, and Ken makes a comment about aloe and Youji's hair.

By that time, I should have been in my first period class.

Fifteen minutes later, we head out. I have the mission information in my binder today, so I can keep an eye out for the target. Rapture.

After catching every red light in this town, some in the next town over, and sometimes just stopping at the green lights, we arrive at school. I forgo the battle of wills with my locker and sneak into first period, hoping they've forgotten to take attendance.

"Mr. Tasukiyo Omi. Where have you been?"

The teacher recovers nicely from the horrors of my surname and manages to glare over his glasses. Which is not easily done, considering the fact that they are the large, cricket-eyed types that would probably overbalance if he put them on his nose. Point.

"Sorry, my ride was late" I unleashed the Chibi Eyes of Guilt and blinked to increase their destructive power.

"Very well, just try to arrive on time in the future"

I nod as if I will devote myself heart and soul to being punctual.

Bleargh, another fun fun day of school.

[Aya] teachers are an under-appreciated lot, really. The fact that they can glare passively as thousands of students ignore them completely. I get enough ignorance (in more ways than one) from my teammates. And now

"How could I have failed this?"

A particularly annoying student waves a paper in my face. I look it over briefly.

"Well, I assume that if you want to do well you could make an effort to do the assigned work?" I suggested. I thought it was fairly kind, for me, almost civil. But her face turned red and she removed the paper from mine.

The blank paper, might I add. Save my (civil) red mark at the top. Yes, teachers have to have the strength of will to keep I stared at the wall. This room will be intact with all its inhabitants alive and whole by the end of the day. Say nothing for pencils.

"Mr. Fujimiya, if you could please grade these worksheets" the teacher, whose name temporarily escapes me (it was something almost as strange as the classroom) appears in front of me and slaps a sheath of papers on my desk. On top of my hand, actually, but it seems that people overlook me rather easily here. This could be an advantage, or it could be annoying. Right now, with my hand trapped under several pounds of raw paperweight, it's annoying.

"Thanks!" The teacher raises a hand to me (to show that he is not hostile, in the way of the first Americans? Or out of laziness?) I look down to the papers, extracting my hand and uncapping the business end of a red pen. Of which I will go through many. You know the red looks a bit like blood. Red blood students running them through with a I mean yes. This class is mortally boring, so I have some excuse.

[Ken] Oh, well this is just great. Just lovely. Just wonderful. Just effing great. See, I found a little piece of unobtrusive paper in my mailbox, giving me the new month's lesson plan. First on the list, badminton.

Okay, this is bad. I've never heard of this sport.

Second, I can barely say it.

Third, I have to teach it to blood sucking preteens in four minutes.

Oh, crud.

"Um yeah.. today we start baduminton.. bad..badminton. Ahem. Well, I guess you should all get your little" I looked at the packet they gave me "rackets. And balls. Shuttlecocks. Meet on the field"

A student raises a hand halfway. "Um you can't play badminton outside."

And now they've cut off my escape route.

"Oh. Well then you can just meet in the field house"

They accept this and slouch off in the direction of the field house. I read over the packet thing. It is complete with some really frightening drawings of old men holding badminton rackets. They have some sort of shorts that look like kilts on, also

But for all its fashion sense, the packet gives me a bit of an idea what badminton is about. And from what I've observed of other teachers, you don't have to know what you're doing to teach gym. The kids won't listen to you anyway, so you basically have to be good at doing nothing for long periods of time and complaining about it.

I've gotten that down quite well.

We make it to the field house, and I start to talk at them.

"Okay, sofirst you should practice.. um do what's this.." I look down to the packet again "clear, clear, drop smash, smash." Yeah. That's apparently Badminton-ese for "Hit it really high twice, barely tap it over the net, and try to drive the shuttlecock through your opponent's heart."

This works well for me, because, as taxing as teaching gym is, there is (supposedly) a mission, and (supposedly) work to do. Though I'm for the plan of killing everyone in this school, assuming that one person will be the target. But we can't all have our ways, and our Frostee Leader thinks that mass murder would be conspicuous. A lot he knows.

Omi has taken the precious manila folder with him, so I get to go from memory. Okay, the target has "light brown hair" this eliminates all of three teachers. Is "about 5'3". (ooh, look at the special assassins not using metric) this eliminates another two.

I go through the list mentally, flipping through a yearbook (that someone left in his gym locker it wasn't my fault I had a key) and looking for a match,

The yearbook pictures are in black and white, which doesn't help me at all.

Here we are,

Franny Keyes.

We had automatically assumed that the target would be using an alias, but perhaps we underestimated her.

Good Ken, good. Maybe you'll get a cookie when you get home.

I am alone with nothing but my happy thoughts until a shuttlecock comes flying into my face.

My eye, to be precise.

And for all their looks of being cream puffs with feathers, those things can hurt.

Badly,

I swear, it took my eye out.

The evil student who attempted my murder mumbles something I presume to be an apology, and skitters off.

[Omi] I can imagine not getting any information for the mission. I did that yesterday. But in its defense, yesterday I couldn't imagine getting the mission information confiscated. Yes.

I was reading over it in class, when the teacher swoops over to my desk and materializes peering over my shoulder. Then she made a nasty little remark about paying attention, snatched the folder, and swooped back to her desk to continue the lecture.

I was dumbfounded.

I had never been so dead in my entire life.

And so I sit in the nurse's office, pretending to be sick or something (I forgot the excuse I gave, but I'm sitting on a cot. So it wasn't "I'm dead" which is the phrase that's running through my mind right now)

I need to figure out how to get that folder back.

If I don't, not only am I going to be sacrificed to Persia.

I hope that teacher doesn't have a habit of reading the things she confiscates.

I also hope that none of my teammates are inclined to eat their own

I'm drowning in my misery, silent and out of the way, when I find a hand on my head.

"Ken?!?!" It certainly feels like Ken's hand, and he's the only one who ever assumed my head was that of a small, fuzzy mammal. Or a walking stick.

"Chibi! Fancy meeting you here!"

I think I might have turned a nice shade of cyan, because he gives me a strange look (after removing his hand, it wouldn't be possible otherwise) and says something to the effect of "Yeesh.. I guess they really do have a purpose behind vaccinations."

Oh yes, Ken. Think that I've caught a strange American virus. Think that I've gotten malaria. Think that I'm turning into a monster. Think I've done anything other than lose the mission folder.

"Well, I guess we should take you home?" He's holding an ice pack to his left eye. I guess one of the gym students got fed up with soccer rants and, well, socked her. Him. Bad pun. Bad.

"No. No. Don't take me home here. I'll stay here. Here is good." I babble furiously to get my point across.

But it works.

He shrugs and walks out, saying something I could swear was " darn badminton" I think Ken needs to work a bit on dictation.

[Baaah twas a bad chapter. Next will be better, I promise! Really! Did Youji even have a POV here? I forgot]