When James opened his eyes, he thought he saw Harue looking down on him. A Harue wearing a tightly fitted nurse’s uniform and with much bigger… assets.

  “Harue?” he squeaked, embarrassingly.

  “Ara, ara,” the woman said. She pulled back a little, and James could see that she wasn’t Harue at all. She had longer, blonder hair and the the rest of her was… different, as he’d already noticed. “You have a good eye, James.”

  “Who are you? Where am I?”

  “You’re in the infirmary. I’m the school nurse, Nanamori Saiako.” She bowed. It wasn’t a deep bow, but it did give him a good view down— he quickly looked away.

  “Why do you look like Harue, ah… Nanamori-sensei?” he asked, hoping he’d gotten her name right.

  “We’re related!” Nanamori said. She didn’t say anything about the name, so hopefully that was all right. He looked down at himself. He was covered with a thin sheet, but he was still fully clothed, fortunately. He sat up.

  “What happened to me?” he asked.

  Nanamori shrugged. “You fainted from all the excitement,” she said. “You’ve been out for about an hour, but all you needed was rest.”

  James looked around the infirmary. There were three other beds here, all empty. “Excitement? It was a military attack! Was I the only one who got hurt?”

  They wouldn’t have taken those soldiers to the infirmary. They were…He cut the thought off.

  Nanamori only shrugged again. “I wouldn’t know about that. You were the only one that Fujitaka brought in.”

  “But the helicopter, the crash, the explosion…”

  She cocked her head thoughtfully, a gesture that reminded him of Harue. “If you say so? It did get rather loud, but I didn’t go out to check. Anyway, you’re free to go. I think your friends are waiting for you.”

  “Just like that?”

  She smiled, a wide grin that looked more than a little predatory. “If you request it, I can give you a more… thorough examination.”

  “No, that’s fine, I’m good to go!” James said quickly, swinging his legs off the bed and heading out the only door. Beyond it was a waiting room where Suki, Harue, Mitsue and Kana were waiting, looking either worried or subdued.

  “James!” Suki said, jumping to her feet. “You’re all right!”

  James felt a warmth flow through him at the sight of her obvious concern.“Yeah, I’m fine, I just fainted.”

  Wait, no I didn’t. There was a light, coming from my necklace…

  Harue had come forward as well and was now standing behind Suki. She looked over his shoulder and greeted Nanamori.

  “Hello, Aunt Saiako-san,” she said, bowing.

  “Hello to you too. Why so glum, Haru-chan?” Nanamori said from behind him. James awkwardly stepped out of the way so that he wasn’t between them.

  “Ah, it’s just that I thought I would have a bit more… freedom here.”

  “Well, keep on thinking that, Haru-chan. I’ve broken from the Shrine.”

  “Really!” Harue said in surprise. “I hadn’t heard!”

  “Mmn. I imagine Eldest Sister had her reasons for having me tell you, but I’m not privy to them. No, you’re not going to get any directives from me.”

  Harue’s entire demeanour changed in an instant. She straightened up and beamed a wide smile at the nurse. “You were always my favourite, Auntie Saia!”

  Nanamori scoffed. “A likely story. You think I was born yesterday?”

  “You’re very wise for someone as young and beautiful as you!” Harue said quickly. “But you know, my allowance is really tight, so I was wondering—”

  “Shameless wench!” Nanamori exclaimed. “Be off with you, and take the rest of these brats with you!”

  “Yes, Auntie Saia!” Harue laughed and practically skipped out of the waiting room. Everyone else followed.

  “So, Harue, your family runs a shrine?” Mitsue asked. He gave James a significant glance.

  “Yeah, I guess,” Harue replied. “I’m technically a shrine maiden.”

  “Technically?”

  “Well… no, I am a shrine maiden. I’m just off duty right now?”

  “Sorry,” James interrupted, “But can we talk about what happened with the attack?”

  “Eh, it was pretty much over once the helicopter blew up,” Harue said. “The school staff cleaned it all up.”

  “What? Nanamori-sensei said I was only out for an hour!”

  “They were quick,” Mitsue told him, “See for yourself.” He gestured to the window at the T-junction they were headed towards. Stepping forward, James realised that they were still in the academic building and that the top of the T was a corridor overlooking the inner courtyard. Sure enough, he couldn’t see any sign of the exploded helicopter.

  There were still signs of damage, broken windows and shattered facade, but the building had held up remarkably well, and he could see that the damaged areas had already been festooned with yellow warning tape.

  “Most of the helicopter was in pieces small enough to carry away,” Harue said. “Nice work, Mitsue!”

  “Thank you,” Mitsue said, sounding a bit subdued.

  “But… who were they? What were they trying to do?” James asked.

  “There were no survivors,” Kana said, sounding a little too pleased about that fact.

  “The school staff assured us that it was all being handled by the proper authorities and that we should not trouble ourselves over the matter,” Mitsue said.

  “But all those men… and the helicopter! They can’t mean to just cover it all up, can they?”

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  “It seems unlikely to succeed,” Mitsue agreed. “But that did seem to be their intention.”

  “I’ve seen this kind of stonewalling before,” Harue said. “You’re not going to get past it by asking questions and being outraged.”

  “So you’re saying we should keep quiet about this as well?” James asked.

  “We should keep quiet about it, yeah. That doesn’t mean we can’t find out what’s going on.” Harue gave him the same predatory grin he’d just seen on her Aunt. “It just means we have to pursue other avenues of inquiry.”

  The group led James, still protesting, to the Frame shed. Matsuri was preparing a demonstration for them, he was told. James really felt that they should still be talking about the attack, but when they got to the building, he had to shut up, impressed despite himself.

  This was the first time he’d seen frames in real life. Despite being deployed widely in Japan in both civilian and military roles, they hadn’t seen much use off the island. Too expensive, not worth the cost, the commentators said.

  They were pretty cool, though. James gaped at the twelve humanoid robots that were lined up against the walls of this huge room. Some of them had their cowlings opened up for repairs, others were just standing in place, twelve feet tall, hooked up to… power or cooling fluid, James didn’t know.

  Matsuri was in the open cockpit of one of the frames, waving at them. Her frame was holding what looked like a ten-foot-long foam sword.

  “Have you gotten that hunk of junk moving yet?” Harue called out.

  “Shut up! It was in storage over the summer, I had to do checks!” Matsuri yelled back.

  “What’s the demonstration going to be?” James said. He could see the sword, but there weren’t any other pilots getting their frames ready.

  “Matsuri is going to duel Harue,” Suki said. “With the foam weapon.”

  “You can’t be serious,” James said. He looked again at the sword. Foam or not, it was more than a foot wide. Swung as hard as a frame could, James had no doubt it could break bones.

  “Harue was confident,” Mitsue put in, putting his hand on James’s shoulder. “I suggest that we observe, so that we might learn something about her.”

  Despite James’s misgivings, the duel went ahead. The group was herded to the side of the room, leaving the large central space free for the combatants. Kana was the hardest to persuade, stating that she wanted a closer look at the fight, but she was eventually convinced on the ground that more obstacles to avoid would make things hard for Matsuri.

  The two fighters faced each other across the concrete floor. On the face of it, there couldn’t have been a greater disparity between them. Harue’s calm confidence was the only thing that made James think that this might not end up with another trip to the infirmary.

  There were about twenty-five feet between the combatants, which sounded like a lot. To the frame, though, it was within sword range after just a single step.

  “Ready?” Harue asked.

  “Go!” Matsuri called, her amplified voice ringing out of her speakers. She swung her sword.

  Harue had called the frame slow and clumsy. It wasn’t that. The extra arm length and the length of the foam sword meant that when Matsuri swung it, the tip moved far, far faster than any human swordmaster could manage. It was just a blur, too fast to see. James could only intuit where it was because the rest of the sword was moving more slowly.

  It crashed into the ground. Harue wasn’t there.

  “What!” Matsuri’s voice, made harsher by the speakers, was almost distorted as she screeched in surprise.

  Like everyone else, James blinked and looked around for Harue. It didn’t take long.

  She was standing right next to the back leg of Matsuri’s frame, her arm cocked back for a punch. Into the steel plate armour that sheathed the leg. Matsuri’s frame wasn’t a military model, but it was designed for combat. Its armour could take a small calibre bullet without a scratch and should protect against much heavier fire.

  Harue dented it with a punch.

  “What are you doing?” Matsuri screamed. James wasn’t sure if she was screaming about the punch, or that Harue was standing where she might easily get stepped on.

  Matsuri was a good pilot. A lesser pilot wouldn’t have been able to push off her back leg, pivoting around on her front leg and then pushing back with that. It was a complicated, dance-like maneuver that let her get distance from the insect that was in danger of being crushed.

  Not that Harue seemed to care. She had a thoughtful frown on her face, gently rubbing her hand that had just punched a dent in steel plate.

  Matsuri regained her footing, making sure to keep her sword pointed at Harue. “What was that?” she yelled through the speakers. “What was that noise?”

  Harue grinned. This time, James was watching for it, and he saw what happened. Not the jump, that was too fast for him to see. But at the top of her arc, she slowed enough for him to make out the blur as she dodged past the extended sword and landed on Matsuri’s cockpit. Bracing herself with one hand, she cocked back the other, exactly like before.

  “STOP THIS IMMEDIATELY!”

  The voice that shouted out managed to be louder than Matsuri’s speakers. Loud enough to startle Harue, who froze in place with her arm still drawn back and looked over to see who it was.

  Matsuri had already frozen, in shock at the sight of Harue suddenly appearing on her windshield. It was a moment longer before a strangled, “Senpai?” came out of the speakers.

  The girl who strode into the frame shed had dark hair, cut short and dark, eyes, flashing with anger. She was wearing the school uniform, which James thought was a bit premature, but as she was clearly an older student, she was probably used to wearing it.

  “Toei Matsuri, you know better than this! We do not use the frames to brawl with humans!” she yelled.

  “She wanted to, though,” Matsuri’s sulky voice came through the speakers.

  Harue sighed and stepped back off the raised cockpit, falling the five feet to the ground without issue.

  “I guess the fun’s over,” she said. Then she jumped as the new girl turned her wrath on her.

  “You’re banned from this building!” the girl shouted. “If you try anything this dangerous again, I’ll have you up before the student council!”

  “Chill, lady, I’m not even in your stupid club.”

  If Harue had expected that to calm things down, she was proved mistaken. The girl unleashed a torrent of abuse, both for Harue and for Matsuri once she had parked her frame and come down. The rest of the groups slowly backed away and left them to it.

  “It has been quite the first day, has it not?”

  James glanced at Mitsue. “I’d call that an understatement.”

  Somehow, they’d gotten through the rest of the day without further incident. James never got his full tour, but after all the events so far he was more than happy to hole up in his room for the rest of the afternoon, only coming down to the cafeteria for dinner. He was looking forward to getting some rest.

  He still had a lot of questions, though.

  “What do you make of the girls?” he asked.

  Mitsue sighed. “I still don’t know what to make of Harue’s warning about Suki-san,” he said. “As a shrine maiden, her talk of souls has some weight, but…”

  “So shrine maidens actually have mystic powers? Does that explain what Harue did?”

  Mitsue looked troubled. “Many temples and shrines are just places for tourism or for ordinary people to practice the rituals that have been passed down to them.”

  “Not all of them, though?”

  “Not all,” Mitsue agreed. “The details are not part of my training, but we were taught to be cautious around such places, lest we wake something we would rather not. Some temples are tasked with demon-hunting, for example, while others seal gateways to dangerous mythic realms. In either case, you might expect the attendants to have access to magical enhancement or combative arts.”

  “And that would explain what we saw?”

  “Perhaps. It wouldn’t explain the sense of danger I feel, though.” Mitsue looked pensive for a moment but shook his head and started getting changed.

  “Such attendants would be protectors of humanity, not threats to us.”

  James wanted to ask more about the temples, but he was distracted by the clothes that Mitsue was getting into.

  “Are those pyjamas?” he asked. Mitsue had changed from his casual clothes into a pair of loose cloth pants and a tunic. They were both featureless black.

  “They are not,” Mitsue told him. Walking over to the wardrobe for his use, Mitsue reached back behind the hanging clothes and withdrew a short shovel and a pick, each about three feet long. They were attached to leather straps, which Mitsue used to secure them to his back.

  “What are you doing?” James asked. It wasn’t, he thought, the craziest thing he’d seen today, but he wasn’t prepared to adjust his standards on that basis. This was still pretty crazy.

  “Do not concern yourself, James. This is just a hobby of mine,” Mitsue said calmly. Tools secured, he put on the traditional black face mask.

  “Are you going out to bury bodies or something? Tell me you’re not doing that.”

  Mitsue faced James and looked him in the eyes. Placing a hand on James’s shoulder, he might have seemed sincere if James had been able to see his face.

  “I am not burying bodies, or indeed committing any crimes. I’d invite you with me, but you need your rest.”

  He broke off from James and headed for the balcony door. “Also, I don’t think you would appreciate the route I take to get there. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Wait, where are you going, you can’t—” but Mitsue had already gone outside. By the time James reached the balcony, Mitsue was gone.

  “What is it about this crazy school?” James asked, but there was no one to answer him.

  yeah.