Chapter 13 - Storm Brewing

...

I walked to Abydos the next morning, clad in my usual suit. I saw Master Shiba walking the streets and decided to say hello.

"Yo, boss!" I called out.

"Huh? Well if it isn't Sensei!" He says with a laugh. "Heading over to the school again?"

"Yeah. Where are you off to?" I ask.

"Off to go scope out a new venue." He says.

"Venue? Is your store closing?" I ask, worried.

"Yeah. Got an eviction notice this morning." He says, sadly.

"Wait. I thought buildings in a district were owned by the school? I know the girls wouldn't kick you out."

"Well, a while back, Abydos sold off a bunch of buildings to pay off their debt. I'm not sure how many, but I'd wager the school doesn't actually own much of the district." He explains.

"What? But who did they sell to?" I ask.

"I don't remember the name exactly... It was something that starts with a 'k'." He says, trying to remember.

A 'k'... no...

"It wouldn't be... Kaiser, would it?" I ask slowly.

"Yeah, that's it." He says, causing horror to fill my body.

"Oh shit. That's bad."

"What is?" He asks, confused.

"Abydos owes its debt to Kaiser Loans. Recently, we found out that those goons that were attacking the school recently were being paid with the very same money the girls were using to pay off the debt." I explain, causing the dog man's eyes to widen in understanding.

"Seems like they're up to something."

"Yeah..." I trail off. "I gotta go tell the girls."

"You'd better hurry then, Sensei." He says.

I nod and begin to run, but I stop and turn back to him. "Oh, and boss?"

He turns back around. "Yeah?"

"If you're still gonna be in the ramen business, give me a call sometime. I'll help you get started back up again."

"Sensei, you don't have to do that." He says politely.

"Yes I do. Your ramen was damn good, and if I can help other people try it, then you bet I'm gonna do everything I can."

He laughs boisterously. "You're a good person, Sensei. Bye for now."

"Later!" I say, as we part ways.

I hope to have his ramen again, but for now, I've got a bigger problem to worry about.

Pulling out the Shittim Chest as I run, I call to my AI. "Arona."

"Yes, Sensei?" She asks, appearing on the screen.

"I need you to find out how much of Abydos is owned by the school and how much is owned by Kaiser."

"On it, Sensei!"

I make it to Abydos, somewhat winded. "Oh, Sensei. You're here already?" Ayane greets.

"Yeah, got something' you need to see." I say, linking the Chest to her laptop.

A map appears, confusing her. "What is... this?"

"A map of the Abydos district. The pink areas are owned by the the school, the yellow areas are owned by the Kaiser Corporation."

"Kaiser?!" Ayane shouts in horror. "But this... we barely own any of this district! Even parts of the school building are owned by them!"

"I ran into Master Shiba this morning, they evicted him. Apparently, the school sold off a bunch of buildings back in the day to pay off the debt."

"No way..." Ayane tries to deny it.

"Call the other girls, we gotta let them know."

Ayane nods resolutely as she texts the other girls.

A little while later, I wait outside the school for the girls. "Oh, Sensei!" Nonomi says, seeing me. "You're certainly here early!"

"Yup. Had something to tell Ayane this mornin'."

"Oh? What was it?" She asks.

"You'll find out at the meeting."

"Aww." She pouts. "Okay then. You can tell me once we're all together. If it's important, we should all know about it." She stays silent for a moment. "...A lot has changed since you came here. We got our very first advisor, and we were able to fight off the gangs that were harassing us. We secured the supplies we needed and overcame so many problems. But... it seems like we have more problems to face than ever."

I chuckle despondently. "Sometimes it seems that way..."

"The Helmet Gang, Problem Solver, the Kaiser Corporation... I wonder what else lies ahead."

"Who knows?" I ask rhetorically. "We'll just have to wait and see, so we can face it head on."

"...Do you think that the Foreclosure Task Force will be able to keep moving forward?" She asks, after a moment.

"Of course." I smile. "You gals are strong. I know you can overcome this."

"Hmmm... Yup yup! If you say so, then it must be true!" She says, causing me to laugh.

"Hi, Nonomi, Sensei." Shiroko's quiet voice interrupts us.

"Oh, Shiroko. Here already?" The blonde girl asks.

"...Where's Hoshino?" The wolf girl asks, looking around.

"Hoshino? She's already here." Nonomi explains.

"Might be takin' a nap, like usual." I guess.

"Ah, okay." Shiroko says.

"Oh, right! Apparently, Sensei found out something really important, so we're all gonna meet up to discuss it!" Nonomi explains, remembering our conversation.

"Okay, I get it." Shiroko says. "I'll go back first, then." She says, walking inside rather quickly.

"That was..." I trail off, trying to gather my thoughts.

"Somehow, Shiroko seems..." Nonomi begins.

"Let's follow her." I say.

"Yeah, okay!" She chirps.

Nonomi and I stealthily followed Shiroko for a bit, staying far enough back that her wolf ears wouldn't hear us.

She entered a room, staying there for a while when-

BANG

CRASH

"Oww... That hurt, Shiroko." A voice speaks.

Nonomi and I look at each other. "...Hoshino?" She asks, surprised and curious.

"Don't act like you don't know anything." The wolf girl says, clearly upset.

Okay, what the hell? I step out from hiding and enter the classroom, Nonomi in tow. Entering the room, the two girls are clearly arguing.

"Act? I don't know what you're talking about." Hoshino says.

"That's a lie." Shiroko counters.

"It's not a lie... huh?" Hoshino notices me and Nonomi.

"I heard a crash. You two alright?" I ask, hiding my eavesdropping.

"U-Um..." Shiroko tries to speak.

"What the hell is going on?" Nonomi shouts, uncharacteristically.

"...This is between me and Hoshino." The wolf girl shuts the blonde down. "I'm sorry, but please leave us.

"No can do!" Nonomi chirps, her tone doing a 180 for a moment, before turning serious again. "There are no secrets in the Foreclosure Task Force. You know that we're all on the same team, right?"

"...U-Um." Shiroko tries to speak again.

"So if you don't explain what's going on, you'll be punished." The blonde says sweetly.

I'm a bit scared right now... as is Shiroko, who says "T-True..."

"Um... so..." Hoshino begins. "Guess I got caught trying to sneak in a nap to rest my old bones. But that's not fair. You already know how lazy I am. It comes to me as naturally as breathing. You don't have to get so angry, Shiroko tends to take things too seriously."

She's clearly avoiding the situation.

The pink haired girl stands up and stretches. "Well. It should be about time for the meeting. Let's head to the club room."

As she walks out of the door, I speak "Hoshino."

She turns around. "Yeah, Sensei?"

"I ain't gonna force you to speak, that'd make me a hypocrite. But if you need to talk, we're here for ya. Got it?" I ask, serious as can be.

"Relax. It's fine, Sensei. Come on." She walks quickly away.

I let out a sigh as Shiroko as quickly leaves as well.

"...Fuck it, they'll talk when they want to. Come on, Nonomi."

She looks a bit sad, but complies. "All right, Sensei."

A few minutes later, we all gather together and enter the room, in awkward silence. Serika and Ayane, who're already inside, notice us.

"Guys this is bad! Look at this!" The cat girl cries.

"It's a land registration map of... huh?" Ayane stops herself, noticing the tense atmosphere.

Serika looks at us for a moment. "Why does everyone feel so tense?"

"D-Did something happen?" The elf girl asks.

"Nothin." I shut down. "It's best you three look at the map." I say to the silent girls.

Ayane nods, flopping down a printed out map of Abydos onto the whiteboard.

"What's this?" Hoshino asks.

"This is a property map of the Abydos district, including all of its recent transactions." Ayane explains.

"Huh? You mean this shows who owns the land?" Nonomi asks, confused. "Everyone knows that Abydos' land belongs to the school, so what's the point of showing us this?"

"The point is-" I say, catching their attentions "-that the Kaiser Corporation, more specifically Kaiser Construction, owns over ninety-five percent of the land in the Abydos district that isn't currently under sand."

"What?!" Hoshino shouts, loudly. Didn't know she had it in her.

"Huh?!" Nonomi shouts as well.

Even Shiroko appears rattled, despite her normally calm demeanor.

"Wait. The Abydos district belongs to Kaiser?!" The blonde girl shouts.

"Yeah. I ran into Master Shiba this morning, who mentioned he got evicted and the other day. I got Arona to look up the land ownership here and... found this." I say, motioning to the map.

Shiroko then levels a mean glare at Hoshino. "What?" The pink haired girl asks.

"N-No way... Not the ramen shop..." Nonomi says, disbelieving.

"Not only that, but the main building of Abydos, along with the surrounding desert and wilderness, and even the buildings that nature has not reclaimed... all of that belongs to them." Ayane sadly explains. "The only areas they don't have control over are the main building of the school and the surrounding area..."

"B-But how is this possible?" Nonomi cries.

"From what Master Shiba told me, the school sold off a lot of land to pay off the debt, though it clearly didn't amount to much." I say, crossing my arms. "Go figure they sold it to the ones that hold their debt."

"It must've been the old Abydos Student Council." Hoshino says, catching our attentions. "The Student Council has voting rights on school assets. Only they would be allowed to do this."

"She's right." Ayane confirms.

"But... the Abydos Student Council has been gone for two years..." Nonomi points out.

"Yes. No further deals have come to light since the Student Council disappeared." The elf girl confirms once again.

"I see. Two years ago..." Hoshino trails off, clearly lost in her memories.

"What have they done? Those idiot Student Council members..." Serika seethes. "How could they sell the school's damned land?! The school belongs to the students! Why would they do something like this?!"

"This is huge, and we had no idea..." Nonomi says, still trying to believe it.

"The district belongs to the school." Ayane lectures. "That's common knowledge, so we were only concerned about the school's debt, not it's assets. If only I had known sooner..."

"Don't beat yourself up over this, girls." I say, serious. "None of you could have seen this coming unless you explicitly looked for it. School districts are owned by said schools. How many times has a school sold off their land?" No one answers. "None? Then y'all couldn't have seen this comin'."

Hoshino lets out a sign. "Even if you had known, there's nothing you could have done. This happened before you entered the school, before the Foreclosure Task Force had even begun."

"Hoshino, you're the only third year here, right?" I ask.

"Yeah..." She admits reluctantly. "I used to be part of the Student Council back then."

"Oh, really? Is that true?" Serika asks, upset.

"Yes, in fact, she was the Vice President." Ayane confirms, not helping the situation.

"Serika, chill. Even Hoshino was surprised to learn this just a second ago." I point out.

"That's true, but I never did meet the upperclassmen in the council." The pink haired girl explains, plopping down on the couch. "By the time I joined, all of the former members had already resigned. The number of enrolled students was single-digit, there were no faculty members and classes had been suspended for a long time." She pauses, a look of nostalgia on her face.

"The Student Council room was like an empty warehouse. None of the previous members had left any documents, to make things worse. It was a time when the school building was moved several times to avoid ruin. The last Student Council was only the new president and me." She explains, sorrow now hidden in her eyes, along with the nostalgia. "The president was an idiot with the lowest grades in the school and accepted the position blindly, and I was an ill-tempered first year. Ugh... everything was a mess."

"The student with the lowest grades was the President? What kind of a Student Council is that?" Serika asks, annoyed and confused.

"Grades don't indicate whether someone is suited for a job or not, Serika." Shiroko defends.

The elf girl awkwardly chuckles. "Your grades aren't that good, either, Serika."

The cat girl blushes. "I-I know that! Why are you bringing up my grades all of a sudden? I was just saying!"

"No, she's right."

"Huh?" Serika snaps her head toward Hoshino, after she said such a thing.

"We may have called it a Student Council, but we were so incompetent. I ended up joining by complete accident..." Nostalgia returns to her expression. "Hmm... I was pretty aimless back then. I had no idea what I was doing. I was a total idiot."

"You shouldn't blame yourself." The wolf girl says. "In fact, after the Student Council was disbanded, it was only thanks to you that the Foreclosure Task Force was established in Abydos."

"Huh?" Hoshino's heterochromatic eyes widen.

"You may be lazy, but you're always the first to take initiative when it really matters." Shiroko continues.

"Yeah, when Serika went missing you were the most adamant to ask Sensei for help." Ayane points out.

"Is that right? I don't remember..." The pink haired girl says.

"You may be annoying, but you're someone I respect." Shiroko... compliments?

"Wh-What's this? What's come over you, Shiroko?" Hoshino asks, surprised. "Hearing you say that makes me feel so embarrassed."

"...Well, I just wanted wanted to say it." Shiroko says, averting her gaze.

"Why do you think the former Council sold the land to Kaiser?" Nonomi interjects.

"Probably the same reason they took the loan. They wanted to finish their problems quickly." I explain. "Guess they didn't know that good things come to those who wait."

"Oh, I didn't know those upperclassmen very well, but I'm sure they worked hard for the benefit of the school." Hoshino argues. "Perhaps they did it to pay off the debt..."

"That was my theory as well." I agree.

"Looking at the records, the land was sold at a very low price." Ayane explains.

"Low enough that it wouldn't've mattered." I conclude.

"So they kept selling land..." Nonomi realizes.

"What? That's so weird..." Serika says.

"Unless they were manipulated. Kaiser Loans owned the debt, but they sold to Kaiser Construction." I theorize. "Seems the Student Council fell in the spider's web."

"Wh-What?" Serika asks, confused.

"...Oh." Hoshino says, realizing it. "I see..."

"It was Kaiser who lent the money to Abydos." Seems Shiroko caught on as well.

"That means..." Nonomi begins.

"Kaiser Loans lent the school more money than they could ever repay, forcing them to sell the land to keep up with the rising interest." Shiroko concludes.

"Yes." Ayane agrees. "At first, they must have told them to sell the useless lands in the wasteland and desert. The land had already been ruined, so anyone would have been tempted by such an offer. But because they sold it at such a low price, the debt never decreased, and they kept handing over more and more land. And so, the Abydos district slowly became the property of Kaiser..."

"A truly vicious cycle." I say, leaning back into my seat. "Ayane, your letter to me mentioned that you thought the Helmet Gang was after the school itself. Seems like you wasn't wrong, just a bit off on who wanted it exactly."

"Then, the reason they lent that money to Abydos in the first place..." Nonomi trails off. "Was so they could take the land."

"It's a trap they've been preparing for a long time. Maybe even decades..." Hoshino realizes. "It was all a massive conspiracy."

"I can't believe it!" Serika shouts in outrage. "They played right into the hands of those Kaiser bastards! The Student Council was so stupid! How could they fall into their trap so easily?!"

"Don't blame the victims, Serika. People tend to lose sight of things when they're desperate." I explain. "Usually in life-or-death scenarios, people will revert to a more animalistic mentality, their sole goal to survive. This is a similar situation. The school was desperate to fix things, so they took a loan to fix things quickly. They were desperate to pay the loan, so they sold their own land. They wanted things to be fixed quick, but instead of persevering, they went for the easy way out, not seeing the long-term problems that'd cause."

"I know that, but... I still feel so angry?" Serika says, averting her eyes. "Why would they do something so cruel to Abydos? We were already struggling..."

"Serika..." Ayane says softly.

"Like Sensei said, when people are suffering, they become desperate." The pink haired girl says. "And desperate people will do anything to alleviate their suffering. That's all there is to it, Serika."

"I see..." The elf girl says. "All of this is slowly coming together. After the Student Council disappeared, the Kaiser Corporation had no way to buy more land. This school was the last piece they didn't own, so they hired gangs to harass us!"

"And hired Problem Solver." I add. "I should note that those girls were worried about failing them something fierce."

"Still... why do they want the land?" Nonomi asks. "The Abydos district is nothing but wilderness and sand-blasted ruins."

"I-I know." Ayane agrees. "I haven't the slightest clue what could be gained by taking that."

"I've got an idea." I say.

"Sensei?" The wolf asks.

"The other day, I ran into Gehenna's Head Prefect Hina." The girls' eyes widen. "She heard that Kaiser was up to something in the desert."

"The desert..." Hoshino says.

"The only thing I can figure is that they want somethin' under the land. Though, I've got no clue as to what." I theorize.

"Wh-Why would the Head Prefect...?" The elf girl asks.

"Why would she tell you that, Sensei?" Shiroko asks.

"Only thing I can figure, is that she finds them sketchy too." I reason.

"Come on guys! What is there to think about?" Serika asks. "The Abydos desert is in our district. Why don't we just go? If you're so curious as to what's out there, then let's go and see for ourselves!"

"...Wow, Serika. You actually had a good idea for once." Hoshino... praises? "You've grown so much. I'm so proud."

The cat girl's face burns crimson. "What is this feeling? Is this what it's like to be supported?"

Now I feel kinda worried about her.

Ayane awkwardly chuckles. "Yes, Serika is right."

"Welp." I say, getting up. "Then let's go, girls."

"Right!" They say, as one.

As we begin to leave, Shiroko stops me. "...Sensei. Do you have a moment before we leave?" I nod.

She motions to follow. We walk to a classroom, on the other side of the building to talk.

"You dragged me all the way here. What's up?" I ask, leaning against a desk.

"Here." She hands me a paper. "I found it in Hoshino's bag."

My eyes narrow at Hoshino's letter of resignation from the Foreclosure Task Force in my hands...

"I... see." I unconsciously growl out.

"I didn't tell anyone about this, but... I'm sure Hoshino knows that I went through her bag." Shiroko confesses.

"Why'd you go through her bag anyways?" Curious as to what prompted that.

"She's never been away for too long before, yet she was gone all weekend." She explains. "She's never been gone for that long before."

"Almost all weekend. I saw her Saturday morning, and she went to sleep right after." I correct.

"Still, I couldn't understand why she would do that, so I went through her bag and found this... I'm sorry." She says, lowering her head. "I know that something's not a crime just because I don't understand it. I'll accept any punishment you decide to give."

"All right, then." I walk over to her and flick her on the nose. She recoils from the act, confused. "You've been punished, now keep this stuff a secret."

"O-Okay. Hoshino... I think she's hiding something from us..." She says, rubbing her nose.

I nod in agreement. "Well, enough of that for now. Let's go." I say, as Shiroko follows me outside as we begin to head for the desert.

Desert... ugh, I hate the desert.

AN

I went back and changed a bit at the end of Chapter 11, by the way.

I hope you all enjoyed this chapter, and look forward to the next!