DAY TWO ; 1:30 A.M.
Akane Owari was as close as she could get to the school without blowing herself to hell. She'd been pacing the border for the past hour, at least – maybe longer, she didn't actually know what time it was. In her head, the pictures of how Nidai could have died played over and over – saving someone, maybe, or battling Sakura Oogami.
Sakura Oogami was just about the only person that Owari could see ever beating Nidai, and even then she didn't know. She supposed that Oogami could probably do it. Oogami mastered in that sort of thing, and she was big…
Oogami and Nidai must have had a showdown. That was the only explanation. Why they'd have a showdown to the death was beyond Owari, but maybe it'd just gotten out of hand.
She wondered if she could shoot through one of the windows from here.
She took aim and squinted. Maybe it'd work better once it was light out, so that she could see better. The school was bathed in artificial light, yellow and casting strange shadows over everything, but it wasn't enough. As well as that, it wasn't like she had an extremely powerful gun. It wasn't anything to scoff at, but it was no Uzi, either.
She crouched down at the edge of the zone, staring straight at the school. This was border that ran closest to the school – if she jumped, she could probably make it into the school from here. But it wasn't the ground that was the danger zone, it was the whole area. Owari didn't quite get how it worked, probably some radio thing, or something, she didn't know, but she did know that if she stepped over this (now visible, she'd drawn a line in the dirt) her collar would give a long beep and then probably blow up.
She didn't know what the long beep was for, but she was sure as hell glad for it – she'd stumbled into the danger zone, just a foot inside of it, really, and her collar had given her enough warning to jump back.
She didn't know how the others were doing, and she thought of them sparingly. Most of her mental attention was focused on the school – on whether anyone would get close enough to the windows for her to shoot, or something like that, or how on earth to get close enough so that she could shoot without someone having to be close to the windows.
She ran a thumb over her collar, wondering if she could yank it off. It felt completely solid, though – she could feel a slight bump where it hooked together, but even if she put her fingernail inside that, she couldn't pry it apart. She could keep working at it, but…
She'd just keep an eye on the school for now.
19 STUDENTS REMAINING
We've got the beginning of fun stuff happening in one of these chapters! Probably the last one of today, actually, but here's what Akane's doing after running off.