"I don't know if it's good or bad, but it's certainly good for this institution that we have an increasing enrollment rate…at least ever since her attendance" said a brown-haired lady.
Athrun and Kira could not help but to keep their eyes longer than they should be on her. Considering that this school looks well-aged and is so large, that it took them 15 minutes from the south entrance to the north administration office, they expected the administrator to be some old geezer, but instead, the headmistress is a beautiful young lady. Together with the kingdom-style uniform, she looked smart.
At a glance the two managed to scan the contents of the room. It was pretty simple 80 square feet room, painted plain white with wooden linings on the edges of the ceiling and the patterned-carpeted floor. Across the door, lay a furnished tan-colored willow table, coupled with two matching guest chairs and a larger, fancier one for the headmistress. The wall section behind it is window panes arranged in a Victorian style, overlooking stadium towards the east. The rest of the furniture consists of ceramic cabinets, shelves, and counters, along with several potted plants resting on them. Above the door is an exit light signal in which was installed a camera.
"Take a seat" she said, prompting the two to follow suit, "you guys sure were early. The rest of the school would probably not arrive for a couple of days...My apologies, let me introduce myself. My name is Murrue Ramius, headmistress of this institution. Nice to meet you, Mr…" she glanced over at the computer screen on her desk, "Zala, and Mr. Yamato"
Although those last names were just fabrication in official 'documents', they just nodded and smiled. "Do all new students have to go through this same procedure?" asked Athrun.
"As you presumed, yes. But by the looks of it, I'm sure the two of you are familiar with the rules and regulations of this school already. However, there are slight additions this year, which would be explained in these files" she paused, waiting for the printer to finish its task, "Well, that pretty much sums it up. You ought to get settled in to your respective dorms. Your belongings have been transported to the entrance of the room which I have assigned you to. I'm sure you would like to stay together, right?"
She handed Athrun a thick folder containing the essential materials. On the folder lay the school's official symbol. Although he had seen it before, the symbol on the folder seemed a little different. The hexagonal scheme and emerald background color are still the same, along with the standing scarlet armored griffins on the right and left side respectively, but a shield has been added to the left one and a sword on the right one along. The sparkles on the empty dark green space in between the two griffins have been switched to the outer area since the griffins are now back to back instead of facing each other.
"We will take our leave then, headmistress" said Kira, before he stumbled and fell onto the desk. Only Athrun caught Kira's unusual clumsy act; in that he planted one of DARTH's invisible tactical bug on the back of the computer monitor.
First Encounter
He walked past a large but empty living room that emits a soothing ambience. An elevator and a flight of stairs were set on the west end, while the east side contained a small recreation area with pool tables, arcade games, televisions, and some others. The corridor on the north side leads to a reading room and that leaves the south side to be the entrance. The dormitory building itself, assigned only to high school boys, was 10 floors high.
He climbed up to the 10th floor, entered through a door and headed east along the corridor which leads to dorm rooms. He slid his ID card across the reader of the door at the end of the corridor. Upon entering, he was met by several tangling cables all linking up to three paper-thin notebooks, and a compact parabolic antenna, in front of his roommate, who was sitting on the carpeted floor, facing the south-eastern balcony glass doors.
"The most dangerous place is the safest place" he said, dropping a heavy, bulky looking black bag into the closet, which is to the right of the door, and another bloated sporting bag onto one of the two beds facing the eastern windows. "Andy kept the items with the lobby counter of all places. Anyway, Kira, how's the progress?" He walked towards the expert programmer.
"Satisfactory. The school's database is now infected with undetectable trojans. Now we have unrestricted access to every information of any clearance level, all electronic-controlled equipments, including cameras" All this he said without stopping or slowing his fingers on the keyboards of the left and middle laptops. When he finally ended, the last command windows on three laptop screens disappeared and the school's infrastructure map took its place. From bottom to top, red regions were replaced until the whole map was covered with greens ones. "Done."
Kira's programming talent never ceased to amaze Athrun. Although Waltfeld said that the school's database is insanely protected, he still managed to hack into it. Just give the man a satellite connection, a link-up source and a notebook; he will be able to get past any protection. "Where are the target dorms?" asked the blue-hair.
"To the south of here; it's the high school girls' dorm building. There's nothing in between us except for the soccer fields and football courts. The two stays in the same room, which is facing us, on the 9th floor. Physical monitoring would be greatly eased this way" answered Kira as he connected a pair of glasses and a watch to the laptop, before standing up, stretching, and noticing the sporting bag on Athrun's bed. "Uniforms?"
Athrun slumped onto the bed and tossed him the bag. Kira, upon pulling out some of the contents, said, "I guess expensive schools needs expensive, fancy uniforms too"
"Yeah" the other replied as he looked over the selection of courses in which they, sophomores, are allowed to choose. "Don't worry about that" Kira said, "I have submitted your selection that matches Athha. It seems she likes physical, practical activities a lot"
"How's Cylne? Are her courses suited to your taste?" asked Athrun, which to his amusement, Kira flinched slightly. The latter sighed and said, "all are non-vigorous, such as computers, psychology, medical, instrumental music, except for two, cooking and home economics"
Athrun grinned at him and teased, "looks like the making of a good housewife, huh, Kira?" This comment made Kira's face turn a darker shade, "We cannot get involved emotionally with the targets. Remember Allster? That mission was almost compromised"
Athrun remembered that operation 3 years back, where the objective was to investigate the suspicion of treason of EAF diplomat, George Allster. His daughter got involved with Kira. She tagged along Kira whenever he was in view. During the conclusion of the mission, she almost walked in on him while he was hacking into the databank of the diplomat. He was about to silence her, but that involvement deterred him. Fortunately, Athrun created a distraction by triggering the fire alarm, but consequently, the computer forced shutdown itself, cutting the hacking short, and lengthening the duration of the mission.
The lake and its surrounding grassy field shone in response to the mysterious full moon's glow, with nothing to disturb their tame character, expect, for two shadows, which darted back and forth the trees. The sound of rapid footsteps grew louder by the second, until the two shadows clashed by the lake's side, followed by a chain of blows and parries.
"You've gotten a lot better, Kira" said Athrun as they backed away from each other. Kira just sniggered and resumed his jujitsu stance. Athrun followed suit with his karate stance before they lunged at each other again. The karate user performed a round-house kick which ended in a throw by the sparing partner. Athrun quickly regained himself and dashed back at him, this time feinting to the left before striking an elbow blow to the right. Kira rashly used his left upper arm to block such a strong blow, resulting in an instant numbness to his whole left arm. He backed off a distance, but Athrun kept going at him.
Kira expected him to throw a punch, but Athrun spun his body around the right of him, stepped on his right foot and swung a deadly karate chop to the back of the neck. Kira successfully delayed the chop by hitting Athrun's left abdomen, therefore granting him time to drop and sweep-kicked his sparring partner off the ground. As usual, Athrun quickly recovered before the two finally drew their pocket knifes and charged at each other. In a flash, one of the knives launched out of the combat zone. Kira was on the ground on his back, with his right fist on Athrun's face. However, Athrun had won the spar. His right foot had disabled Kira's left hand and the knife on his right hand was on Kira's throat.
A clapping immediately followed the end of the match. Athrun and Kira instantaneously got back on their feet and faced the source of the ovation. A man with a shoulder-length blond hair, Western facial features, and a pair of blue eyes, emerged under the moonlight. He was wearing one of the school's staff uniform, which Kira and Athrun recognized as the male version of the headmistress's.
"I was strolling around the park to catch some air, until some noise drew me here. You do know that students aren't allowed to be out past 10 am, right? Nevertheless, it was great, boys. You guys should represent the school on the Annual Martial Arts Meet," said the man, "oh…forgive me. I'm the superintendent of this Dublin Institution, Rau le Creuset. Nice to meet you…err?" he offered handshakes to both of them.
Athrun and Kira quickly introduced themselves, which to his surprise, that they were only high school students. "The world has so much different talents. That's why national diversity in this school is great, would you agree? Anyway, it's getting late. Don't get yourselves sick before the school starts" Creuset said, smiling, before walking away from them. They watched as the figure slowly sank under the shadows of the trees. In the database, Creuset is indeed the Superintendent; however, he was shown to wear a white eyemask, unlike the one they just encountered which resembled someone else. Suspicion immediately arose in each boy's minds.
A/N: I hope it's not too dragged out. This chapter is just basically showing Athrun's and Kira's specialty. Thanks for the reviews!