Disclaimer: I don't own Infinite Stratos in any sense.

Discord: A3dTszc

(See A/N at the top of Chapter 1 for context)

Ichika's general strategy for curing aging was relatively straightforward.

He didn't need perfect knowledge of how the human body operated.

There were tons and tons of metabolic pathways, and all sorts of other crazy processes going on in order to keep the human body running, and it would be a monumental task, trying to decipher every last one of them. Eventually, he did want all of that figured out, but it wasn't strictly necessary yet in order to get a cure.

None of those fancy molecular shenanigans mattered because the process of aging was nothing more than the lifetime accumulation of damage. So it didn't matter how that damage itself was actually caused. He didn't have to figure out how to slow it down, and he didn't even need to stop it from accumulating.

Instead, he could allow the damage to occur as normal, and simply repair it afterwards. Then repeat that procedure as needed. This sidestepped all of his ignorance on what processes caused this damage, and instead allowed him to focus strictly on how to fix it as it built up.

So his role was similar to a car mechanic. A mechanic did not need to know every last detail about how the vehicle they were working on was constructed. They just needed to know a couple of details on all the major systems, and how to fix them. They did not need to know what specific ores needed to be mined to create the metal alloys in the chassis, or how to manufacture the rubber tires, or any of that other nonsense.

Just the procedures on how to do the maintenance. And this was what Ichika could do with the human body as well.

All he needed to do was classify all types of damage that accumulated in the body during the aging process, and find a way to remove that damage in each of those cases.

And he had also been given a pretty significant advantage in this area before he had even started, as Ichika had access to all published medical, and biological research from around the world to help him out.

Nobody had yet tried to tackle aging head on just yet, so nobody had a list of these types of damage ready to go, but by reading between the lines of these research papers, he could get very good guesses at what some of those categories of damage might be.

All that remained was to create a valid intervention for each of these types of damage with his nanomachines, and then do some tests on rats. If he could make one of those live forever, then he could probably start working with humans soon after.

But something else had to come first before he could truly get started.

His original plan to work with the rest of humanity had to be discarded.

He had originally planned to create a biotech company that would have allowed him to go through all of the legal loopholes and bureaucracy required to allow him to conduct human clinical trials for his cure when he finally had it. To test it out on other humans to get the kinks worked out before administering it to his sister.

However, this required that the government he lived under wasn't acting like a bunch of pricks, so he would have to proceed on his own in total secrecy instead. Humanity was his enemy now, and so he had to start treating them as such.

He'd have to resurrect an old plan of his.

Back in his less ambitious days, he had come up with a plan to acquire an island and build a secret research facility underground on it. Islands were hard to get to, so they were defensible if he ever needed to dig in with a robot army of some sort. And doing all of his work underground would prevent it from being seen by spy satellites.

He had all the technology requirements needed to pull this off as well. It was actually easier to do this than to mine asteroids. The only real advantage of asteroid mining in the first place was the versatility it allowed him in his plans. That had been the reason why he had eventually decided to go that route.

Creating rockets and telling the media that he was going to start asteroid mining with them had given him the perfect cover to develop the ballistic missiles he had needed for his nuclear option.

Additionally, all of the infrastructure that would have to be in place during a large scale asteroid mining operation like that could easily be converted into a military blockade of the entire planet, or some sort of space-faring armada. So he could spend years developing an army in space right under the public scrutiny without raising any red flags.

And he was actually well underway into doing this. That prospecting mission he had just launched, had actually been a Von Neumann Probe. An entity with all the instructions and abilities necessary to land on that asteroid and begin replicating itself. On its own, it could convert the entire mass of that asteroid into whatever Ichika desired. It'd just take a few years to pull off.

That same tech could be easily dropped onto an island somewhere on Earth to do the same thing much faster.

His new goal was to build a base on Earth that he could defend with his technology if a war broke out. He had to finish it in 3 years, and it had to be strong enough to allow him to hold out until his space army was completed. At that point he could retreat into space if it came to that.

If he failed in this mission, and if the rest of the world indeed united against him, he would have no choice but to resort to Plan B.

So he'd have to begin construction as soon as he could. That was where he intended to do his anti-aging research. He couldn't risk letting the public find out, so as soon as this base of his was operational, he would begin ramping up his tests.

He was going to have to―

"Ichika Orimura?" A timid voice broke Ichika out of his thoughts.

Ichika blinked.

Glancing up at the speaker, he found a green haired woman leaning over his desk and smiling nervously at him.

Ms. Yamada Maya, Ichika was pretty sure. He hadn't really been paying much attention for the past few minutes, but he vaguely remembered her introducing herself.

"Yo," he replied, in an uncaring, bored tone.

"C-can you please introduce yourself to the class?" His teacher asked. "Pretty please?"

Ichika could feel the stares of everyone else in the class immediately zero in on the back of his head.

He was in the front row center seat after all. Which meant that all of his classmates were either beside him, or behind him. In perfect positions to shamelessly stare at him.

It was annoying. And it made him think that maybe he should have murdered them all with his nanomachines after all.

But he understood that whatever he said in the next few moments would permanently colour all of his classmates' impressions of him.

"Hm? Didn't you just do that?" He replied lazily.

She had just announced his name to everyone after all. What more did she want from him?

A hesitant and confused look crossed his teacher's face.

"N-no, I meant can you please stand up and tell us all about yourself?"

"Ah, I see."

And Ichika did see.

She wanted him to get up and ramble about his life for a few moments.

"I gotcha, I gotcha. Right-o. Sure thing, teach," he complied, rising to his feet.

He knew exactly what was expected of him now.

Standing up, he turned around to face the rest of the class.

Their eyes were practically shining. They all were clearly very interested in what he was about to say.

'Better not disappoint…'

Chifuyu Orimura slowly walked down the hallway towards her classroom. She had just gotten out of another meeting, and now had to go meet her class.

She had no idea what to expect from them.

Well… she had some idea.

She usually ended up with all of the crazy ones.

Chifuyu was fairly certain that there was a school-wide conspiracy against her. Among all the teachers, and the board members. Everyone else among the staff had probably made a secret agreement behind her back to send all of the... 'special' students to her class because she was the only one there who was capable enough to straighten them out.

She had no proof, but she was almost certain that this was the case. She had met some of the other teacher's classes in previous years, and none of them had even held a candle to hers in that department.

It was annoying.

And this year in particular would probably be even more annoying than usual due to the fact that she also had her brother in her class.

Normally, she would be pretty happy about that. Ecstatic even. She wouldn't show it at all on the outside, of course, but she would gladly take any opportunity for them to spend time together, even if it was only as teacher and student. Just because she had missed out on so much of those opportunities because of the threat her mother posed.

But in this case, things were a little different. She could already predict that this year was going to be a handful.

The craziest students, plus the world's only male IS pilot, all in the same class, was a recipe for disaster. Even she could see this.

So as she walked up to her classroom door and reached to open it and enter the room, she made the prediction that the year would either be more annoying than usual... or it would be mildly entertaining. Probably even a bit of both.

She could already tell that her little brother was going to get into all sorts of trouble on a daily basis. Both the funny kind, and the annoying kind.

And she would have to be there to deal with the mess in both cases.

Just before she opened the door however, she paused as she heard her assistant Maya Yamada speak from inside the class.

She heard her assistant introduce her brother, and Ichika stand up to prepare to introduce himself.

Curiosity got the better of her as to what he would say, so she lowered her hand and instead decided to listen in for a few moments before opening the door.

She hadn't exactly told Ichika that she was his teacher, or that she even worked at the IS Academy at all. So this was an opportunity for her to see a little of what her brother was like when she wasn't around.

Which was perfect considering how little she actually knew about him.

So she'd listen to his introduction, and then enter the class.

"Hey everyone," Ichika began. "I live on planet Earth."

"For those of you who don't know where that is, I'll admit that it can be a bit hard to find sometimes. Especially at night. But it's a pretty great place, I gotta say. Ten out of ten. Would recommend."

All of the shining eyes that had been staring at him moments ago had now been replaced by disbelieving, and confused stares.

"As for my hobbies," Ichika continued, "...I have a few hobbies."

The class looked hopeful once again.

"I like to spend my time breathing air, and using my eyes to see things in front of me."

...Those hopes were dashed.

"Though I do have a few other hobbies as well."

A few dared to raise their hopes once again.

"...Listening to sounds, for example."

...And were promptly disappointed.

Ichika ignored the disbelieving stares and pressed on.

"Thinking, too. That is a great hobby. Who doesn't like thinking?"

"And wouldn't you know it, just like many other people... I too have a name," Ichika claimed. "If you say it out loud, and I hear it, I might actually respond to it."

"It's actually a pretty crazy concept. Like telepathy. Verbalize my name aloud and I can tell that you're referring to me even from a distance."

"But since I don't want to give up my whole life story here and now, as I'm sure I've already bored most of you with the extensive, and numerous details about my life I've just shared, I think I'll have to leave you all with just that and pass it off to whoever's next in line."

He turned back around to face his substitute homeroom teacher Ms. Yamada.

"How was that?" he asked.

He could hear the entire rest of the class collectively face-fault behind him.

Personally, Ichika thought he had done a pretty solid job.

Chifuyu was almost impressed, as she opened the door.

Absolutely no information had been shared. Not even his name. He had spoken for about thirty seconds, and had managed to still not relay literally any information about himself.

He had utterly wasted everybody's time, and had managed to irritate her all at once.

She hadn't even entered the classroom yet, and her brother was already bothering her.

She quietly stepped inside the room.

Immediately, Chifuyu noticed that all of the attention was still focused on her brother, and nobody noticed her yet.

"Umm…" she heard Maya hum in confusion. Trying desperately to figure out how to respond to the ridiculous introduction given by her brother.

Chifuyu frowned.

She had a bit of a soft spot for Ms. Yamada. The shy teacher had helped her out a lot in the past in dealing with students who were a little too… emotional for Chifuyu to deal with properly.

Even when all the other teachers conspired against her to send all the crazy students her way, Maya would always be there at her side so that they could face them down together.

So it bothered her a bit that her brother was giving the girl a hard time.

She'd step in and help her assistant out, and give her brother a good whack over the head as retribution.

So she quietly approached her brother, clipboard in hand, from a direction that prevented anyone else in the room from noticing her.

But just as she was about to bring her clipboard down over her brother's head, she altered her plan of action on a whim.

She saw Ichika's stance, and how… impressive it actually was. To an untrained eye it looked totally relaxed. And to Ichika himself, it probably felt that way too since he was clearly so used to it.

But Chifuyu could easily spot how properly balanced it was. And how expertly hidden it's nature was. It wasn't just a brilliant stance, it had been specifically constructed to look like it wasn't. It was highly deceptive, and it was only due to the fact that she had a very similar stance herself that she even recognized it.

Ichika was clearly always ready for an attack at any time, but simultaneously, he made it look like he wasn't. He was inviting attacks from those who weren't skilled enough to notice this detail. Which meant that he had trained quite extensively without her knowledge.

Especially since he could take that stance without even thinking about it.

All of these observations flashed through her head in about a tenth of a second.

So she changed her plan slightly. She remembered some of the information she had researched on her brother on the internet and in particular, how talented he apparently was at Kendo, and devised a bit of a test at the last moment.

Exactly how skilled was he?

Chifuyu was very good at estimating other people's skill levels based on almost no information about them. A simple move from them was all it would typically take for her to get a good read.

And since her brother still hadn't noticed her yet, mostly due to the results of her own extensive training in hiding her presence without needing to think about it, this was a perfect opportunity.

She shifted the clipboard to her other hand and swung her fist instead.

Time slowed down to a near standstill as she completely focused on the movement. It was perfectly calculated, and she was prepared at any instant to radically accelerate or decelerate her strike even mid flight. While simultaneously ensuring that it looked like a simple, playful whack over the head to anyone watching, rather than a ridiculously precise and calculated movement that pretty much nobody else in the world had the skill to replicate.

She had fantastic control over her own strength and could easily halve, double, or triple the force of any of her strikes even after she had thrown them. And she would do so depending on the rate at which her brother reacted.

She would push him right to the very edge of his reaction speed, and then would be able to deduce how much strength he was hiding as a result.

If he was slower than expected, she'd slow down. If he was faster, she'd speed up. If he didn't react at all… she'd whack him.

Well… she intended to whack him anyway. But if he didn't move at all, she would have overestimated his abilities.

And she would make this split second decision in the roughly half second window of time that it would take for her fist to close the distance to her brother's head.

Abruptly, Ichika's desk exploded as he instinctively dodged a high speed swing from an unknown source.

After leaping out of the way, Ichika glanced back towards the source of the strike and caught the irritated gaze of Chifuyu Orimura. His beloved sister.

And she didn't look too happy.

"What do you think you're doing giving that sort of introduction, moron?" His sister asked him.

Ichika was just confused.

Why was his sister here? Where had she even come from? He was pretty sure she hadn't been in the room a few seconds ago.

"D-did you follow me here?" He asked. "I assure you that's unnecessary."

Had she escorted him here to ensure he made it there safely? While he certainly appreciated the gesture, he didn't think she needed to do that. She also hadn't done that for him since he had been in elementary school.

A tick mark appeared on his sister's forehead.

"I work here you idiot."

"Oh."

Well that was certainly unexpected, Chifuyu thought to herself.

Her brother had broken her test.

He had done something that she had only seen a handful of other people in the world do.

She had expected Ichika to dodge as quickly as he could based on instinct. But he hadn't done so. He had done something instead that had demonstrated a completely different level of skill.

There was a philosophy in combat that only the strongest people in the world were capable of adhering to effectively. And that was the philosophy of Subconscious Minimal Effort.

The Minimal Effort part, referred to the ability of staying exactly one step ahead of your opponent, and no further. Allowing a person to defeat an opponent as easily and efficiently as possible, while also having the added advantage of deceiving any spectator about their true level of skill.

Chifuyu herself followed this philosophy, as did her psychotic family, and now apparently, so did her brother.

But the best of the best were capable of taking this concept one step further.

The Subconscious part of this philosophy is when a fighter is so skilled at adhering to this idea that it has become ingrained in their instinctual response.

Instead of dodging an unexpected strike outright, they will dodge it with the narrowest margin of error possible so that their opponent will think to themselves: 'Look at that! He just barely dodged my attack in time! I can win this!' Or some nonsense along those lines.

And they will be so good at this that the subconscious part of their mind will perform this for them without them having to think about it at all. Or in Ichika's case, without him even noticing that he had done so at all.

In that brief window of time, as her fist had advanced towards her brother's head, Ichika's instincts had kicked in, and he had attempted to dodge. But his instincts had guided him to follow this philosophy. So they had calculated the speed and strength of her attack, anticipated where it would land, and guided Ichika to dodge at a speed that would have allowed him to dodge it by a hair, and no more.

But Chifuyu herself, was a master in this philosophy as well.

Seeing the fact that her strike would miss by a hair, she had sped up her attack mid swing by a tiny amount. Just enough so that her strike would in fact land after all, but only just.

Ichika's subconscious instincts had again flared as a result, seeing this new outcome, and had sped up the speed of the dodge a little more once again.

...And it had immediately devolved into an arms race.

Both had immediately started accelerating their respective maneuvers in an attempt to just barely stay ahead of the other.

At any point, either of them could have simply put the game aside and went all out. But it was in neither of their best interests to do so.

Chifuyu wanted to see what her brother was capable of, and would not see it if she simply struck him down in an instant with her full strength. And Ichika was following Subconscious Minimal Effort, which meant he would not go all out unless he had no other choice. If her attack would land if he didn't do so, in other words.

And Chifuyu had wanted to pinpoint the exact moment where this would happen. Where Ichika could accelerate no further. Where he capped out. And then she would have been able to take a mental note of the level of strength she had used to get that to happen, to get an estimate on the upper bound of Ichika's abilities.

So they had both started rapidly accelerating, and then the game had transcended to an entirely new level.

Ichika's instincts, and her own, had immediately taken things up a notch when they had tried to start anticipating the rate at which they were each accelerating, and even the rate that that acceleration itself was increasing, to try and remain just slightly ahead of the other.

...And then Chifuyu had eventually been met with a decision.

She could either stop her test in order to avoid destroying her brother's desk, by either summoning a good portion of her hidden strength to whack him for real, or by simply stopping her strike, or she could continue her test by accelerating even further and accepting the fact that no matter what happened, her fist would hit that desk at the end of its trajectory and destroy it.

She had fundamentally been limited by space, and her own curiosity.

She didn't have the room to both stop her strike from doing any collateral damage, and continue her test of Ichika's reflexes, so she had to choose between them.

Her curiosity had won out, and so she had pushed the test further.

Ichika had stayed just a hair in front of her fist the whole way down, until it crashed into the desk.

At that moment, as fist met surface, the weaker of the two gave out. The desk was smashed and she hadn't felt a thing.

Since her brother had successfully dodged, all she had managed to figure out was a lower bound on his capabilities. Chifuyu now knew that he was at least on her former student Laura Bodewig's level. When she wasn't using her special ability, anyways.

That was a lower estimate, too. It was very likely that he was significantly stronger than that.

If Chifuyu had decided to spare Ichika's desk, and stop her strike earlier than she had, her estimate for this lower bound of skill would have been much lower, and as a result, far more inaccurate. So a sacrificed desk had been worth the information.

But she had not gotten the full picture. So while she now knew that he was good enough to fight on Bodewig's level―which to be fair, had come as a massive surprise to her, as that girl was way stronger than anyone her age should be―she did not know if that was the best he could do.

She still needed more information.

But she couldn't just… swing at him again to get it. Her last test had only been possible because she could disguise it as being an action prompted from her being irritated at her brother giving his teacher a hard time.

She'd have to figure something else out.

'Well that certainly explains a lot of things,' Ichika thought to himself.

So his big sister Chifuyu worked here.

Before he could reply to her in detail, however, he was sidetracked after seeing what remained of his desk from the corner of his eye.

"Whoa," Ichika made his amazement known as he finally took notice of the rubble that his desk had been smashed into by his sister's bare hand.

It was in utter shambles.

He knelt down on the ground and started sifting through the debris.

"How much did you practice, big sis?" Ichika asked in amazement.

She had to have spent hundreds of hours just smashing tables to get this good at it.

"Just look at how clean this cut is," Ichika pointed out, showing the piece of wood to her. "How did you even do this?"

From his position on the ground, he looked back up and met his sister's eyes.

"Truly masterful work. Well done. I am in awe."

Ichika observed as his sister's eyes narrowed further in irritation.

That was when the whispers started. All of his classmates started whispering to each other about how they were siblings, and how crazy that was.

Ichika thought it was strange however, that nobody else commented on his newly destroyed desk. That was way cooler in his opinion than the fact that his teacher was related to him.

Hearing the whispers, and wanting to end this conversation, Chifuyu simply sighed in irritation and said: "Sit down already, you're holding everything up."

Then she turned and started walking towards the front of the class.

As she walked towards the front of the room, Chifuyu put aside all of her thoughts about testing her brother's strength even further to satisfy her curiosity, and instead considered all of the reasons why she was even at the academy as an instructor in the first place.

She had been doing a lot of thinking about that recently.

All things considered, there really wasn't a whole lot keeping her there. It was really just a couple of threads that she just couldn't snip, yet.

If strength were her only goal, she would probably benefit more by asking her billionaire brother to build her a training field with a blank cheque to all of the worlds most state of the art equipment with no strings attached, and with no students to have to waste her time teaching.

Then she could literally retire from public life altogether and spend all of her time doing what she needed to do to prepare for the day their mother showed up.

She'd probably have to sit down and explain everything about their family to Ichika if she did this though, and she was definitely dreading that conversation.

But either way, strength wasn't her only goal so it was a moot point. It was her main goal, but she couldn't afford to only focus on it.

While she was in her position at the academy, she had a very wide field of view into what all of the governments of the world were up to, and she would lose that if she left. She'd also lose all of her connections. She had actually managed to find a few allies that she was pretty sure would come to her aid if things really started to go south. And the only reason she was allowed to remain in contact with them was due to her position.

So even though she had no choice but to admit that all of her reasons for wanting to remain there were pretty much gone now, there still remained all the reasons that were forcing her to be there. And those problems wouldn't go away no matter how much money her brother threw at them. She was at the IS Academy for several important reasons, and she couldn't just leave whenever she wanted to.

None of this inner turmoil appeared in her expression at all.

She turned back around to face her class, and immediately noticed the irritated look that Ichika was trying to conceal.

Her little brother was definitely still annoyed at how their situation had turned out.

He had not wanted to come to this place at all, and had basically been forced into this arrangement.

Chifuyu was pretty sure that the public had no idea just how close they had all come to being wiped out in a wide scale war after Ichika's status as an IS pilot came out.

The government had wanted her brother to be ripped apart on a dissection table so they could figure out what the reason was.

To borrow a phrase that her brother used all the time, the Japanese government had drawn a line in the sand and wouldn't budge on that issue, either. That would have happened if they had gotten their way.

But they hadn't. Because Chifuyu had drawn her own line in the sand.

The government wanted Ichika dead on an operating table so they could figure out what made him tick, and she had disagreed to put it lightly.

She'd personally murder a million innocent people with her bare hands just to keep him safe. That was the bottom line. Children, elders, women, men, politicians, royalty… animals even, she didn't care. It didn't make a difference to her.

Ichika was hers, and that was that. She would personally destroy every threat to that. She didn't give a damn what the government ordered, or even the emperor. She'd murder them all.

But both sides had had this level of conviction. The government didn't just... back off after not getting their way. It doubled down.

Both sides had been ready to use extreme force to get the other to capitulate.

At first, one might think that the Government of Japan would win that battle. It was one person against a national government, after all. Two people if you counted her brother. But one also had to take into account the fact that she had personal ties to Tabane Shinonono. Someone who would not take the government's side in that sort of situation.

The government knew that she and Tabane were friends. There was no way that they could prove that they were still in contact with each other, but she and Tabane had gone to school together, and the government had dug up all of that information a long time ago.

So it was an open secret that Tabane would come to her aid.

The public didn't know this, but the people up top would.

Ichika was pretty close with Tabane too. Or at least he used to be. Chifuyu had no idea if he still was, but they were clearly close enough. Because when Chifuyu had explained this situation to Tabane as it had been unfolding, Tabane had been furious. And had reassured her that yes, in fact, she would help out her I-kkun if it came down to it.

Both sides had seen the writing on the wall, and both sides hadn't cared. Thousands of people would have died in the ensuing conflict, but the genetic data from her brother was apparently worth that sacrifice to the government.

This was how powerful the IS units had become.

A military without an IS unit could not defeat another military that had one. So the potential of reverse engineering whatever process was happening inside her brother to allow him to pilot one was worth this risk.

There were something like 4 billion people in the world who were men, after all. And if one country could figure out how to get them to pilot these machines, and then hid that information from everyone else, they could become a superpower. Their IS pilot pool would double in size. And whoever had that edge would become incredibly powerful.

So the government wanted this data. And there was no way to extract it without killing her brother, apparently. But she certainly wouldn't ever let that happen.

So the proceeding events had pretty much been inevitable.

The government would try to arrest her brother. She would refuse to let him go. They would try to use force. Then she would kill them all.

Then shit would hit the fan.

Because you can't just murder a bunch of government agents and then just… go back to normal life after. The military would be called in, as well as all of the country's top IS pilots, and everything would immediately escalate.

But at the last moment, just before they had all spiraled into this gigantic clusterfuck of a situation, the rational, non-blood thirsty part of her brain had remembered about the IS Academy.

There were a few convenient legal loopholes that had allowed her to get her brother enrolled as a student there, giving him legal protection.

It was the only location in the world where everyone there was immune from the jurisdiction of all governments. Which meant that the Japanese government in particular, couldn't do anything to anyone that was legally allowed to be there without violating an international treaty, losing all international support, and suffering from some pretty severe consequences as a nation.

They might try to kidnap Ichika with a black ops, off the books operation, but she had experience in both participating in, and countering such missions.

So she could effectively delay this conflict for as long as Ichika was a student at the academy. Which meant that she had about 3 years to figure out how to properly deal with the inevitable situation facing them when her brother finally graduated. Because the government would be waiting for him there at the end.

If nothing changed by then, they'd all be back at square one. With everyone drawing lines in the sand again, and getting ready to start a war.

But 3 years was a long time.

Ichika sure hadn't liked being forcibly enrolled. But he had grudgingly admitted that it had probably been the best option they had had after she explained herself.

But if she were being honest, part of her wished that she hadn't done it. Just so she could actually have an excuse to kill everyone that intended to come after her brother now, so they wouldn't become a problem later.

And judging by the look in her brother's eye at that moment, it seemed as if it still didn't sit well with him either.

But as much as she wanted to leave, she knew that it probably wouldn't be a good idea.

Ichika needed to be there to stop a war from happening over him, and she needed to be there to make sure he was still there.

But she could not deny that there was a large part of her that really wanted to start that war.

She hadn't exactly informed Ichika of the fact that she would immediately start slaughtering thousands of people to ensure he was never taken away from her, though. Chifuyu had gone to great lengths to hide that part of herself from him. So Ichika probably wasn't even aware of how far she would go.

"And you will refer to me as Orimura-sensei while we are at school, is that clear?" She clarified to her brother with a cold voice.

It was probably best to get that out of the way now.

Chifuyu definitely didn't want to make it seem like she was there for his sake, or to make it look like she was being overprotective, or that she was hovering, or clingy, so she intended to put a good bit of distance between them. Just like always.

Her feelings for her brother ran a whole lot deeper than Ichika probably realized, and frankly, even she was disturbed by them at times. But that was a whole can of worms that she was just going to lock in the back of her mind like always, and never even consider trying to open until her mother was dead.

In any case, the best way to do this was to put as much distance between them as possible. So she would not allow familial, casual names between them like she usually would when they were alone. She was his teacher first while they were in the walls of the academy.

"You're my homeroom teacher?" Ichika asked.

"Yes. You have a problem with that?"

"Not at all, Orimura sensei."

"Good."

'This will actually be kind of interesting,' Ichika thought to himself.

It would also sort of suck, though. His sister being here.

The whole situation in general sort of sucked. But coming to the academy was certainly better than Plan B, that was for sure.

Mostly due to the fact that he had never told Chifuyu about his nuclear option, and would probably need to explain it to her if he ever intended to go through with it. Just to… you know. Explain why there were now 8 billion dead people. And he was definitely dreading that conversation.

He had gone to great lengths to hide that part of himself from her, so she probably had no idea how far he was willing to go.

But the main reason why it'd suck that his sister in particular was his teacher of all things, was the fact that he would be forced to put up his act unless he wanted her asking him about why he was so much different than he was when it was just the two of them.

When it was just the two of them, Ichika was happy, and showed it.

When he was forced to interact with others, and his sister wasn't around, he wasn't. And he showed it.

He would not hide at all the fact that he hated basically everyone and would scare off anyone who tried to get too close to him.

But Chifuyu had never seen him like that before. So he'd have to put up an act around her and pretend to be friendly to his classmates in order to prevent her from getting suspicious of him.

It pissed him off. The whole situation was just… shitty.

But if he had to remain there and deal with his annoying classmates, he would make one thing sure. The government would not be calling the shots in 3 years time. He would use this time to prepare for that moment.

He'd have to delay his vision to be prepared for the war, but he'd make damn sure that he won it when the time came.

"Alright class!" He heard his sister announce, breaking his train of thought. "I'm your homeroom teacher Ms. Chifuyu Orimura. It's my job to train you well enough to stand on your feet in one year."

The rest of the class immediately started freaking out after hearing that.

"Huh," Ichika grunted in disbelief. "She sure is popular."

He took a long look at his sister as she made an admirable attempt to not let her irritation at being worshipped show, and then he grinned.

Because it was ironic, what his sister was doing. And pretty funny. It seemed as if she was attempting to use the same strategy that he used to use back in middle school. By looking cold all the time, nobody would ever bother him. Though to be fair, part of the reason nobody but Dan, Houki, Rin, and Ran, had ever befriended him probably had more to do with the reputation he had carefully built up for himself than the scowl he used to always wear.

But in any case, his sister's scowl, and powerful presence seemed to horribly backfire on her. Instead of being intimidated, his classmates worshipped her like a goddess.

'So this is what she's been up to ever since retiring from her career as a pilot then, huh?'

She had won one final Mondo Grosso and went out in a blaze of glory after having never lost a match. And then became a teacher?

Ichika knew that he would never have the patience to do that.

In fact, it looked like Chifuyu didn't have the patience for it either. It just rubbed him the wrong way that his sister wasn't doing what she seemed to love anymore. And it was even more annoying that he didn't know why.

He was rich now. So she was rich now too by proxy. She had signed a document a few years ago making her a co-owner in most of his companies. None of what he had done would have even been possible without her. And there was a huge lump sum of cash just waiting for her in an account as a result.

She certainly didn't need to work to pay off any bills or debts anymore, or to take care of him. She could go back to being a professional IS pilot at any time.

And Ichika had no idea why she wasn't taking the opportunity.

AN: I have no beta reader for this story. So there may be errors.