3

Somehow, not sure how, but it was the octopus' voice that had finally calmed her down. His voice, it was the only thing persistently droning through her haze, eventually it was enough to bring her mentality to a state of a more normalized reality:

It was just a monotonous voice, teaching math.

A masculine voice. No harm had come to her.

Her gray eyes rose to meet the back of a black-robed professor uniform. The octopus scribbled on about fractional equations on the chalkboard.

This asshole.

She watched his tentacles move in a passionate sort of way, expressive in using them to educate, to speak, to do practically everything. Even to take a drink of water from a glass.

Zumi was slowly becoming more perplexed as she watched his movements, her chin slowly rising from her previous fog.

This is the jerk that blew a hole in the moon?

He looked harmless in a way, and his gesturing made her on edge. Perhaps that was his play, he played a fool, an innocent, and that was what he used to cover his killer instinct? With that smiley face head? So unnatural. So... unreal. His head was practically an emoticon. Perhaps this was yet another reason not to trust it, hiding his blood-lust with something generally seen in society as harmless?

She questioned in her mind. She sought to stare him down. Quietly.

This is the thing... that's going to end the world? Seriously?

A certain red-haired boy who sat to her right spied it first. The rising.

He admitted that it was a treat to watch her scream out and cuss, utterly frightened, then hauled to her desk and abruptly dumped. He had wanted to laugh so remorselessly at her failure to save herself.

But he hadn't.

How weak it had been for her to meakly cry out to Karasuma! Like a little baby bird.

The only reason he held back his laughter was because of Koro Sensei's glare. Right at his face. He never obeyed anyone, but as his mouth opened and that huge smiley face stared right at him, he knew full well what was going through the sensei's mind.

Karma snapped his jaw shut. Koro Sensei had a plan to teach her, and the sensei didn't want her first experience in E Class to be one of mockery. If he was to get in the way of Koro Sensei's educational plan for her, he'd definitely get backlash. Perhaps in the means of hair spray and a snazzy new haircut, seeing as that was how the professor liked to torment him, with flat out embarrassment.

He had even painted his nails at one point in time.

Sensei nodded at him and swiftly turned around, back facing the class again to start a new chapter.

The sensei saved Zumi from him prodding at her... for now.

A little movement stirred his eyes from his textbook. Karma shifted his eyes peripherally, meeting her shoes first, and working up her legs, to her torso, then to her face, where her eyes began to blink, slowly, as if waking from a dream.

Her eyelashes fluffing so delicately upon her lower lids as she blinked.

She was thin, like a little sick flower, her eyes now finally just beginning to bloom.

Ah. So, you're awake now?

Unmoving, he didn't want her to be aware that he was watching. She'd floated back. So, this experience had shocked her, panicked her. Karma observed her details, scrutinizing.

She hated having panic attacks.

They had started because of her father.

Peeking up at the backs of the heads of the class for the first time, her mind started to come to about them. Her eyes jolted around, one by one at them.

What a bunch of rejects!

She well, was a reject now, because of the falling to E Class... but these students?

They really are.

Quite a few of them had thier hair dyed weird colors. One of her new classmates had his blue hair up in buns... like a girl.

Is he gay?

Aw. She's looking at everyone.

Karma observed her. He was surprised, and he couldn't help a tiny trickle of a smirk appear on the right side of his mouth, hiding it.

Her literally watched her watch them, glares going from one student to the next, and the way she did it was one by one. Slowly, he could tell she was individually taking them in, their outward appearances. Eyes moving floor to head on each one, assessing, obviously thinking in her mind, inside herself. Forming her first opinions.

He wondered what she was thinking of Nagisa. Her eyes bubbled to the left at him, and had stayed on him the longest out of the whole class so far.

This girl.

Observant.

Zumi then noticed that the silent word had spread around the class that her head was up.

The red head realized it was mostly the boys, a few girls.

Of course. Getting a look in, aren't we?

Something stunned him. It was the eye contact she made with Isogai.

Long.

A strange look crossed her face, as Zumi's gaze flashed at Koro Sensei, then back at Isogai's weary, down-turned frown.

He noted that she must know him.

Isogai had said E Class wasn't that bad.

Of course, from the documents she had to sign, she gathered why he wasn't able to tell her anything. Secrecy of the mission here was on government lock down. But still...

He got the picture from her look. Her eyes narrowed at him darkly, and he snapped back to the front before sensei noticed.

Isogai.

She sighed heavily. Rolling her eyes at the other boys' 'i'm trying to be nonchalant, but I'm not pulling it off well' looks, and apted to pulling out her notebook to draw.

Look at me if you want. Yes, yes, the new girl's snapped out of it.

So, she isn't interested that the guys are giving her attention.

Hmm, she's at least somewhat humble.

She dug a notebook out and a pencil.

Wait a second.

She stopped looking around.

Was it because they started all looking at her? That she gave up? How unimpressive. Honestly, he deeply wanted her eyes to of made it to the back of the class. She missed out on at least the last third of the class due to the other's noticing.

She hadn't noticed him, staring... yet.

Did she just get bored? Did she think that since what she was doing was figured out, that it was hopelessly compromising to look at the rest of the class?

She was quite good at drawing. For good reason. She drew inside her diary at home every night, usually drawing events that happened, or drawing other things.

The class noticed she had began to draw, and quit staring.

Her mind wasn't in a place to learn arithmetic. So she sat quietly instead, drawing a huge bat with giant fangs. It was actually quite impressive, she'd been working on learning to shade better with pencil.

That's it you losers.

She just concentrated her efforts into art.

Go on thinking that I lost interest.

She had been compromised.

She didn't want them to know that she had been looking at them, she wanted her thoughts to go unmatched with glares. She wanted to do it secretly, so she could spend as much time on each one as she wanted, without them knowing, letting her eyes fall and rise over their forms one by one. Sizing them up.

She'd complete her solo mission at any cost. These 'assassins' 'classmates', there was no way she let them best her.

Hurt her.

She wanted that initial grasp on them, the pre-look into their characters.

She trusted no one, so she vowed to absorb as much initial outward data about them as much as possible. Zumi spied names on notebooks when she could, hair color, posture, how many notes each one took, colors of their backpacks, and if they were open, what was inside them.

Drawing... a perfect distraction.

How smart.

A basic tactic, but it had worked.

He watched her again, start to do as she was doing before.

She had noticed the class was beginning to note that she was looking around, but she didn't want that. For reasons he didn't know, he met all challenges face-first usually, kind of pushing and butting heads word-wise to create issues.

It wasn't the drama he liked, it was the tension. He liked fighting, so much that it had landed him down in E Class.

So you began to draw.

A ploy, to bore them again. To get them to look away. A silent lie, to make it appear that you've lost interest, when you really haven't.

Karma found this entertaining.

A cheap manipulation tactic albeit.

He watched her eyes poke around again, starting where she left off. From the angle, he could tell she was gathering information.

Decidedly, he wanted to intercede in her plan to irritate her. Maybe it'd piss her off.

His face turned into something devilish as he devised.

A small wad of paper right by her pointer finger, made a swish, just as she was about to hatch in some texture into the bat's body, then to move to the next person.

It had come from the right.

Her eyebrows furrowed.

Damn it.

She could of been sweating bullets right now. Her concentration was shot!

Glancing, the perpetrator came into focus. The one who had noticed what she was doing.

A guy her age.

He had a light tan. He gets outside some. No freckles. Not so much sun that it's marked on his skin.

Lanky. Fit.

Hazel eyes.

Her gaze met his. He had a plain smile on his face.

His irises are kind of yellow.

A rich hazelly-warm tone. Like buttercups softly blowing in the setting sun.

His hair was such a saturated red. Dyed.

Not a natural red, a salmony red.

He sat four-feet away.

My neighbor...

Even though she would of preferred to of gotten a desk off to the side somewhere.

Or better yet.

Not at all.

So I could leave when I wanted.

Or even better... Just not being taught by this monster or in this position at the E Class at all.

Karma put on the plainest look he could.

He pulled her from her 'studies' of his classmates.

Instead of doing what he expected: her looking flustered, maybe giving him an angry glare, to give him something to go off of, to use against her later... she instead blandly stared right back at him. Unfazed.

She showed zero expression.

And as un-showing as her expression was, so were her eyes in their adjusting in and out on his appearance.

He actually felt something hitch inside him.

It was the way she... stared.

She knew fully well he had caught her.

He knew she didn't care.

Was it that he had actually physically done something about it? That he had launched a note her way, which she as of yet, hasn't opened?

The others just turned around a few times to look. He had actually taken physical action.

When met with non physical protest, she resorted to manipulation to get what she wanted, when met with upfront conflict...

She faced it.

How unexpected.

She judged her battles, and chose from them which approach was the most appropriate.

He smiled now, brushing some of his bangs out of his face.

This salmon haired, smiling moron held up a notebook, on it written in a simplistic style, "What are you drawing?"

Zumi instead didn't respond, she moved her eyes around his face, and somehow, he seemed uncaring.

When done with that, she moved her steady orbs to his clothing:

A white stark shirt, unbuttoned at the top. The collar, and the top two buttons, exposing a bit of his chest.

Sloppy, or on purpose?

His black jacket was a suit jacket.

Black skinny jeans.

Black dress shoes.

Semi-casual.

This guy's family had money. His clothing was tailored.

No backpack.

She finally wrote on her portrait.

Inside he wanted her searching, scanning eyes to quit.

It had gotten... strange.

At first, as she stared at him, he felt a bit flush. She looked at him openly, accepting the challenge.

Their eyes met, and he realized, her eyes were the most gray he'd ever seen.

A white-washed, toneless gray. The opposite of his eyes. It was as if there was no color.

It was almost... sad.

Something stuck to him: As the middles changed, lessening the gray, widening the gray, her thoughts obviously racing, her mind filling with her assessment, it was the only thing that made her look alive at all.

She was thin, that he'd already seen, but she was also so pale, obviously not all the way Japanese, like him.

Maybe she was a fourth, like him.

Karma's challenge, had begun to take a turn on him. Those eyes, searched.

Taking in his outline.

They searched across his face, down his neck, at his unbuttoned top, and at the skin underneath, then down his torso.

Looking at his exposed skin, his clothing.

She was so...

Probing.

He couldn't let this turn on him.

She decided to go ahead and respond, letting her eyes finally fall away from him.

Obviously, and she knew, behind that smile, a sweet one that seemed a tad unnatural on his face, it had gotten awkward for him, her searching glares blew daggers at him, spikes of scrutiny.

He had kept his cool primarily, but it was one little shift in his posture, the one that caused him to change his blank look into a smile.

He had tried to smooth it over with a slick smirk, but she wasn't easily fooled.

When her eyes made it to his pants, trying to see if he was wearing a belt, which he was, a black leather one, with a silver buckle, and judging the size of his waist, trying to see exactly how fit he was...

If these peers were assassins, or at last training to be assassins, she wanted to know who was going to be slow. She wanted to know who was chubby. Speed was determined by two things: the fit-ness of someone's lower half. Their abdominals, glutes and legs.

She studied martial arts, it was basic knowledge.

That had made him uncomfortable.

He was a boy as a matter of fact.

She decided to give in.

I guess it's not like I'm revealing anything.

Not an address, phone number, or personal security numbers.

The way he sat in his desk gave her the impression that his guy was a slacker anyway.

She held up her notebook just enough for him to see the bat. 'A bat.' She had written.

His eyes narrowed at the small letters, and adjusted his posture to be sitting straight now.

He penned in his notebook again, glancing up front to the back of the professor, then back at the spiral notebook, before holding it up.

Clearly, he was interested in what she was doing, but didn't want the octopus up front to notice.

He knew the professor was secretly kind of a perv.

"Why that?" The paper said.

Maybe he could open her up with conversation, a simple tactic. He'd really was kind of interested, nobody in the class drew well, but he wanted to use the art to open up speech. Complimentary reverse psychology.

I'll say something nice.

Even though he actually did think it was quite decent.

And then... I'll get you to slip out info.

Inside him, devil horns prodded his guts. He'd get her to spill... something.

She wrote below the gargantuan bat. "Why not?" Upturning only the edge of her notebook, so he could see the simple statement.

He smirked, and she was able to see the edge of his teeth for a second, she could tell that response mused him.

Like I care.

She wasn't here for someone else's entertainment.

He lazily scribbled a few more words onto the random page below his math equations.

'It's really good. I like it.'

She just nodded.

He was unsure whether that nod meant that she was saying thank you, or whether it was because she couldn't accept a compliment.

Even a half honest one?

Maybe she just didn't care.

If she was flattered at all, in any sort of way, he'd monopolize on that that draw out answers.

She honestly, was a bit weird.

His concept of her had changed, upon entering he thought she was weak.

But as he watched her, he had realized she actually was quite an in-depth thinker, and extremely judgmental.

All quite cold.

He figured he'd try, she was a little humble he'd observed. She shunned away at the other guys... but he was Karma.

He scribbled and held it up 'Do you know Isogai?' He paired it with a smile of flattery.

Trying to please her eyes. He knew the E Class' girls considered him one of the top good looking ones in the class.

He wasn't below using his own suaveness to his advantage.

Being attractive after all, was quite a poker hand to hold, especially being an assassin.

Plenty of times he'd showed fake interest to get information out of girls. They were easy to play into his hands like putty. He'd just smile and whirl them and their little hidden secrets out of their mouths and around his fingers.

Her lip crunched in at that statement.

How observant.

Indeed. She'd going to have to watch out for this one.

He was too astute.

She wasn't interested in being blackmailed. If she told him yes or no, it wouldn't matter. Depending on this person's association with Isogai, he might be able to get information out of him without her knowing anyway.

He had spelled it clearly to her that he had seen the look she gave Isogai.

It's be an under-the-nose play, but it was possible.

She didn't know this one's level of discretion, how deep he'd allow himself to dig.

The digging alone was annoying.

What should she do then?

She just nodded.

That'll have to do. She confirmed only something he already knew anyway.

He can try to bombard Isogai with questions if he wanted, he wouldn't get that far. Isogai didn't know a lot about her. They were just acquaintances, and she made sure to keep it that way.

In asking Isogai about her, (if it was to happen), it might make this guy look like he was snooping or something else... like he was interested.

And that might be just enough of a barrier for a person not to start asking.

But that depends. If he was the type of person to be upfront about feelings, he could just lie his way all through it. Tell Isogai a lie, ('ohh I like her'), in an attempt to get him to spill, unfazed and uncaring about how it made him look.

But if he was a pretty boy, then she knew for sure, that his self image he wouldn't allow to crumble by asking about a female.

Now would we pretty boy?

He took her nod with a small chin tilt, his bangs falling in his face, nothing but a simple acknowledgement.

Aww so she does.

Karma bet she was hoping that he'd leave her alone, and not to question her or Isogai period.

Hence her shut-off response.

Also, his poker-hand hadn't fazed her.

So... that wasn't something she was even entertaining in her mind.

Most girls her age did.

How grown.

She shut down the conversation after that. Body language just as icy as before.

He watched her continue drawing the rest of math, and much of social studies. Spying out of his peripherals again, here and there.

Let him look as much as he wants.

Let him act like he's spying.

I can still see you looking you salmon haired idiot.

She wasn't saying shit.

Nobody needed to know anything about her, or her's mom's life.

It was their business.

And only their business.

Koro Sensei suddenly swung around.

"Nrughghgh class! Time for Physical Education!"

All the students began closing their books, and Zumi stood too, stretching, snatching up her backpack.

Nobody attempted to advance. At least not yet. They would though, to try to get to know her.

She'd avoid it if possible.

Zumi ripped the bat out of her notebook, and smacked it down on Karma's desk, her palm slamming the picture down like she was smacking someone across the face.

Loud enough that it surprised everyone left in class.

She let her gray eyes storm down on his shocked wide ones.

That action he obviously hadn't expected.

"Since you liked it so well."

She heard the professor chuckle up front.

She had smacked her hand down purposefully loud. She wanted to get under his skin before she took off, a tactic to show him he didn't get anywhere with her.

You'll never win.